Madelon Part 24

Madelon stood farther away from him, but her eyes did not fall before his.

"Why did you lie" said she. "You knew I stabbed you, and not yourself. You are a liar, Lot Gordon."

But Lot still smiled as he answered her. "However it may be with other men, no happening has come to me since I set foot upon this earth that I brought not upon myself by my own deeds. The hand that set the knife in my side was my own, and I have not lied."

"You have lied. Tell them the truth."

"I have told the truth that lies at the bottom of the well."

"Call them all in now, and tell them--I--did it, I--"

Lot Gordon raised himself a little, and looked at her with the mocking expression gone suddenly from his face. "What good do you think it would do if I did, Madelon?" he said, with a strange sadness in his voice.

She looked at him.

"I shall not die of the wound. You can't escape me by prison or a disgraceful death, and as for me, do you think it would make any difference to me if all the village pointed at you, Madelon?"

Madelon looked at him as if she were frozen.

"All the way to be set loose from your promise is by your own breaking it," said Lot.

"I will keep my promise," said Madelon, shutting her lips hard upon her words. She turned away.

"Madelon," said Lot.

She went towards the door as if she did not hear.

"Madelon."

She turned her white face slightly towards him and paused.

"Won't you come here to me a moment?"

"I cannot until I am driven to it!" she cried out, pa.s.sion leaping into her voice like fire. "I cannot go near you, Lot Gordon!"

She opened the door, and then she heard a sob. She hesitated a second, then looked around; and Lot Gordon's thin body was curled about in his chair and quivering with sobs like any child's.

Madelon closed the door, and went back and stood over him. She looked at him with a curious expression of pity struggling with loathing, as she might have looked at some wounded reptile.

"Well, I am here," she said, in a harsh voice.

"All my life my heart has had nothing, and now what it has it has not," moaned Lot, as if it had been to his mother. He looked up at her with his hollow blue eyes swimming in tears. He seemed for a minute like a little ailing boy appealing for sympathy, and the latent motherhood in the girl responded to that.

"You know I cannot help that, Lot," she said. "You know how you forced me into this to save the one I do love."

"Oh, Madelon, can't you love me?"

She shrank away from him and shook her head, but still her dark eyes were soft upon his face.

"Does not love for you count anything? I love you more than he--I do, Madelon."

"It is no use talking, I can never love you, Lot," she said, but gently.

"It ought to count. Love ought to count, dear. It is the best thing in the world we have to give. And I have given it to you; oh, G.o.d, how have I given it to you, Madelon!"

"Lot, don't--it's no use."

"Listen--you must listen, dear. You must hear it once. It can't turn you more against me. You don't know how I have loved you--you don't know. Listen. Never a morning have I waked but the knowledge of you came before the consciousness of myself. Never a night I fell asleep but 'twas you, you I lost last, and not myself. When I have been sick the sting of my longing for you has dulled all my pain of body. If I die I see not how that can die with me, for it is of my soul. I see not why I must not bear it forever."

"Lot, I must go!"

"Listen, Madelon; you must listen. When I have taken my solitary walks in the woods and pried into the secrets of the little wild things that live there in order to turn my mind from my own musing, I found always, always, that you were in them--I cannot tell you how, but you were, Madelon. There was a meaning of you in every bird-call and flutter of wings and race of wild four-footed things across the open. Every white alder-bush in the spring raised you up anew before me to madden me with vain longing, and every red sumach in the fall.

When I have sat here alone every book I have opened has had in it a meaning of you which the writer knew not of. You are in all my forethoughts and my memories and my imaginations. The future has your face, and the past. My whole world is made up of you and my vain hunger. Oh, love, and not toil, is the curse of man!"

"You knew about Burr," Madelon said, in a quiet, agitated voice.

"Why--did you?"

Lot gave a sharp cry, as if he had been wounded anew. "Oh," he cried, "you are blind, blind, blind--a woman is born blind to love! If I had had the face and the body of him it would have been me you would have turned to, Madelon. Don't you know? can't you see? He has been false to you, he cares no more for you. But if he had? In the end it is love and love alone that sweetens life, and what could his love be to mine?"

Madelon turned away again. "I can't stand here any longer, Lot," she said, and moved towards the door.

But Lot called her piteously: "Madelon, come back! If you have any mercy, come back!"

She stood irresolute, frowning; then she went back. "What is it?" she asked, impatiently.

"Madelon, kiss me once."

"I can't--I can't! Don't ask that of me, Lot."

"Madelon, once!"

Madelon bent over him, keeping her body stiffly aloof, and kissed him on his hollow forehead. Lot closed his eyes and smiled like a contented child; then suddenly he opened them upon Madelon, and the look in them was not a child's. She shrank away with a strong shudder, flushing with anger and shame, and made resolutely for the door again. She looked back and spoke out sharply to him, with her hand on the latch: "Mind you do not say one word about--what I said I'd do, until the last." Then she went out, flinging to the door quickly lest she hear Lot's voice again.

When she got home there was no one there. Eugene had not returned.

She went about preparing dinner as usual; it was on the table when the men, all except Eugene, came home, and none of them dreamed she had left the house. They inquired where Eugene was, and she replied that she did not know. They did not suspect that she had taken advantage of this lack of guardianship, and yet there was something unwonted in her manner which led them to look at each other furtively when they first noticed it. The perfect poise of decision at which she had arrived affected their minds in some subtle fashion. Eugene, when he returned late in the afternoon, noticed the change in her, in spite of his own perturbation. He looked hard at her staid face, fixed into a sort of unquestioning and dignified acquiescence with misery, but he said nothing. Madelon, in this state, was not to be questioned even by her father. He simply muttered to himself, as he strode out of the room, that she was a woman.

Madelon's manner was the same as the days went on. There ceased to be any question as to her sanity among her father and brothers. She no longer paced overhead like a wild thing. She no longer made fierce outbreaks of despairing appeal. They no longer kept watch over her lest she commit some folly, and became easier in their minds about her.

They made no objections when, three weeks later, she asked for the sleigh and the roan to go to New Salem and make some purchases for herself. She went early in the afternoon, and returned in good season with her parcels. They did not dream that she had been in a strange spirit of bitterness and shameful misery and feminine pride to purchase her wedding-gown for her marriage with Lot Gordon.

Her frantic and unreasoning impulse of concealment was still strong.

It was almost as if the whole horror of it were not so plainly thrust upon her if none but she knew it; then there was the agony of shame which made her fain to turn her back and deafen her ears to her own self, let alone all these others.

They rather wondered, the next morning, when they saw Madelon seated at work upon some shining lengths of silk, at the magnificence of her purchase in New Salem; but they knew that she had a little private fund of her own, which they had never questioned her right to spend.

"Guess she's been saving her egg-and-b.u.t.ter money," Abner said, when she went out for something.

His father nodded. "Glad she's got a new gown. Guess she'll show folks she ain't quite done for on account of that fellow," he said.