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Madelon: A Novel, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 13 |
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_ Chapter XIII Elvira Gordon had gone home hoping that Lot might yet speak. She had heard his rattling cough as she picked her way out of the icy yard, and Madelon also heard it when she entered it. She knocked at the side door, and Margaret Bean opened it. She had a gruel cup in her hand. "I want to see him," said Madelon. Margaret Bean looked at her. Her starched calico apron flared out widely over her lank knees across the doorway. "I'm afraid he ain't able to see nobody this morning," said she, and the asperity in her tone was less veiled than usual. Her voice was not so hoarse. She was mindful of this girl's former conduct at her master's bedside, and herself half believed her mad or guilty. A suspicious imagination had Margaret Bean, and Madelon would have found in her a much readier belief than in others. "I've got to see him, whether he's able or not," said Madelon. "The doctor said--" "I'm going to see him!" Madelon pushed roughly in past the smooth apron and ran through the entry to Lot's room, with the housekeeper staring after her in a helpless ruffle of indignation. "She's gone in there," she told her husband, who appeared in the kitchen door, dish-towel in hand. Margaret Bean's husband always washed the dishes and performed all the irresponsible domestic duties of the establishment. He was commonly adjudged not as smart as his wife, and little store was set by his counsels. Indeed, at times the only dignity of his man's estate which seemed left to this obediently pottering old body was the masculine pronoun which necessarily expressed him still. However, even in that the undisturbed use was not allowed. "Margaret Bean's husband" was usually substituted for "He," and nothing left of him but the superior feminine element feebly qualified by masculinity. Margaret Bean's husband's name was Zenas, but scarcely anybody knew it, and he had almost forgotten it himself through never being addressed by it. Margaret herself spoke of her husband as "Him," but she never called him anything, except sometimes "You." However, he always knew when she meant him, and there was no need of specification. Now he half thought she was appealing to his masculine authority from her bewildered air. He stiffened his meek old back. "Want me to go in there and order her out?" "_You!_ Go back in there and finish them dishes." Margaret Bean's husband went back into the kitchen, and Margaret followed Madelon with a sly, determined air, to Lot's room. The great square northwest room was warm, but the frost had not yet melted from the window-panes. The room looked full of hard white lines of frost, and starched curtains, and high wainscoting; but the hardest white lines of all were in Lot Gordon's face, sunken sharply in his pillows, showing between the stiff dimity slants of his bed-hangings as in a tent door. He looked already like a dead man, except for his eyes. It seemed as if the life in them could never die when they saw Madelon. She bent over him, darkening the light. "Speak now!" said she. Lot Gordon looked up at her. "I tell you, speak! I will not bear this any longer. I am at the end." Still Lot Gordon looked up at her silently. Then Madelon made a quick motion in the folds of her skirt, and there was the long gleam of a hunting-knife above the man in the bed. Margaret Bean, standing by the door, shrieked faintly, but she did not stir. "I have tried everything," said Madelon. "This is the last. Speak, or I will make your speaking of no avail. I will strike again, and this time they shall find me beside you and not Burr. My new guilt shall prove my old, and they will hang me and not him. Speak, or, before God, I will strike!" Then Lot Gordon spoke. "I love you, Madelon," said he. "Say what I bid you, Lot Gordon; not that." "All your bidding is in that." "Will you?" "I will clear--Burr." Madelon slipped her knife away, and stood back. Margaret Bean slunk farther around past the bedpost. Neither of them could see her. "On one condition," said Lot Gordon. "What?" "That you marry me." Madelon gasped. "You?" Lot laughed faintly, stretching his ghastly mouth. "You think it is an offer of wedlock from a churchyard knight," he said. "What are you talking about, Lot Gordon?" "Marry me!" "Marry you? I am going to prison to-day for stabbing you. If you die, I die for your murder. Marriage between us? You are mad, Lot Gordon." Lot Gordon opened his mouth to speak, but he coughed instead. He half raised himself feebly, and his cough shook the bed. Madelon waited until he lay back, gasping. "You are mad to talk so," she said again, but her voice was softer. "No madder--than--my ancestors made me," Lot stammered, feebly. Great drops of sweat stood on his forehead. Madelon stood looking at him. He lay still, breathing hard, for a little; then he spoke again. "Say you will marry me, and I will clear him," he said, "or else--strike as you will. But all will believe that Burr struck the first blow and you the second for love of him, and though he be not hung, the mark of the noose will be round his neck in folks' fancies so long as he draws the breath of life." "I will marry you," said Madelon. "Don't cheat yourself," Lot went on, in his disjointed sentences, broken with the rise of the cough in his throat. "This wound may not be--mortal--after all, and a man lives--long, sometimes, when he's sore put to it for breath. The spark of life dies hard, and you may fan it into a blaze again. All the doctor's nostrums may not stir my poor dying flesh--but give the spirit--what it craves--and 'tis sometimes--strong enough--to gallop the flesh where it will. Lord, I've seen a tree blossom in the fall, when 'twas warm enough. It may be a long life we'll--live together, Madelon. Don't--cheat--yourself into--thinking you'll be my widow, instead of--my wife. My wife you may be, and--the mother of my children." Madelon moved towards him with a curious, pushing motion, as if she thrust out of her way her own will. She bent over him her white face, holding her body aloof. "I will marry you, come what will. Now, set him free." Great tears stood in Lot's eyes. "Oh," he whispered, "you think only of him. I love you better than he does, Madelon." "Set him free," said she, in a hard voice. Lot heaved a great sigh, and rolled his eyes feebly about towards the door. "Find--Margaret Bean," he began; and with that Margaret Bean, who had kept the door ajar, slid out softly, "and tell her--to send her husband to--Parson Fair, and--Jonas Hapgood, and she--must go the other way for--the doctor. Tell them to come at once." With that Lot fell to coughing again, but Madelon went out quickly, and found Margaret Bean in the kitchen mixing gruel. "Mr. Gordon wishes your husband to go at once for Parson Fair and Jonas Hapgood, and you for the doctor," said she. "Is he took worse?" asked Margaret Bean, innocently, with a quick sniff of apprehension. "No, he is no worse, but he wishes to see them. He said to go at once." Margaret Bean cast an injured eye at the window, all blurred with the clinging shreds of the storm. "I don't see how I can get out in this awful storm nohow," she said. "I've got rheumatism now. Why can't _he_ go to see 'em all, I'd like to know?" "The doctor lives a quarter of a mile the other way. It will save time." Margaret Bean looked at the gruel. "I've got to make this gruel for him." "I will make it. Get your shawl, quick." "It ain't b'iled." "I tell you I will make it." "Why can't _he_ go to both places?" "I will go myself!" Madelon cried, suddenly. She had been bewildered, or that would have occurred to her before. She had never been one to send where she could go, but for the time Lot Gordon's will had overcome hers. "Tell your husband to go to the parson's and the sheriff's, quick, and I will go for the doctor," said she, and was flashing out of the yard in her red cloak before Margaret Bean had time to turn herself about from the prospect of her own going. Then she ordered her husband imperiously into his boots and great-coat and tippet, and sent him forth. She finished the gruel, and took it in to the sick man, and fed him with hard thrusts of the spoon. Lot looked about feebly for Madelon, and Margaret Bean replied to the look, in her husky voice, "She's gone, instead of me. I've got rheumatism too bad to venture out in such a storm and get my petticoats bedraggled." She spoke with a little whine of defiant crying, but Lot took no notice. He was exhausted. After he had eaten the gruel, he pointed to the chimney-cupboard. "What is it ye want?" said she. Lot pointed. "How do I know what ye want when ye jest p'int like that?" But there came then a look into Lot Gordon's eyes as expressive as a word, and Margaret Bean crossed over to the chimney-cupboard, and got out the brandy-flask and a wine-glass and some loaf-sugar. She mixed a little dose of the brandy and sugar, and would have fed it to the sick man as she had the gruel, but he motioned her aside, raised himself with an effort, and drank it down eagerly. Then he lay still, and soon a faint flush came into his face. Margaret Bean went back into the kitchen and mixed some bread, with her eye upon the window. Presently there was a wild gallop and great clash of bells past the window, and a shout at the door. Margaret Bean put on her little blue shawl and opened it when the shout had been twice repeated. Old David Hautville sat there in his sleigh, keeping a tight rein on his tugging roan. "My daughter here?" he shouted. "Whoa, there!" "There's sick folks here," said Margaret Bean, shivering in the doorway. "You hadn't ought to holler so." Her tearful eyes were more frankly hostile than usual. She had always looked down from her own slight eminence of life upon these Hautvilles, and now was full of scorn that her master was to marry one of them. "I want to know if my daughter is here," said David Hautville, and he did not lower his voice. It sounded like a hoarse bellow of wrath, coming out of the white whirl of snow. His fur coat was all crusted with snow, his great mustache heavy with it; the roan plunged in a rising cloud of it. "No, she ain't here," replied Margaret Bean, and her weak voice seemed by its very antithesis to express the utmost scorn and disgust at the brutality of the other. "Has she been here?" "Yes, she's been here." Margaret made as though to shut the door, but David Hautville stopped her. "Did she start for home?" "You'd better ask somebody that knows more about it." "Where did she go?" "You'd better ask somebody that knows about it!" repeated Margaret Bean, in her malicious meekness. Then she shut the door. David Hautville, with a great "whoa!" leaped out of the sleigh. He led up the roan with a fierce pull to the fence, and tied her there. Then he strode into the house, and through the entry to Lot's room, with no ceremony. "Where is my daughter?" he demanded, standing at Lot's bedside in his great fur coat, all bristling with points of snow. "She'll be back presently," answered Lot. His voice was a little stronger; there were two red spots on his cheeks. "Where's she gone?" "For the doctor." All at once David Hautville gave a great start. "Why, you're talking!" he cried out. "You couldn't speak." Lot nodded vaguely. "You're better, then?" cried the other, with a sharp look at him. Lot nodded again. "When did she come here?" "Just now." "Same damned nonsense, I suppose. She's gone mad. If the law don't finish that fellow, I will!" Lot motioned towards a chair. "Sit down," he whispered. "She coming back with the doctor?" "Yes," Lot coughed. David Hautville settled into a chair with a surly grunt. He watched Lot cough, holding to his straining chest, and thought that he must be worse, else he would not have sent for the doctor. He resolved to wait and take his daughter home with him, by force if necessary, but with no more disturbance of this man, who might be sick unto death. Seeing Lot cast his eyes about as if looking for something, and make a motion towards the table at his side, he rose up quickly and got him a spoonful of the cough mixture in a bottle thereon, and administered it to him gently. "Don't you touch my wet coat," said David Hautville, "or yo'll get a chill," and he held himself carefully away from the sick man. When Lot lay back, panting, he returned to his chair and did not speak again. The two remained in silence until there came the jingle of bells, the tramp of horses' feet, and the voice of men out in the yard. Lot lay still, with his eyes closed. David Hautville raised his head and looked at the window, thick with frost. Presently the door was opened softly, and the doctor came in, with Parson Fair and Jonas Hapgood. Madelon, in her snow-powdered red cloak, came last. David started up fiercely when he saw her; then he stood back and waited. The doctor bent over Lot and began counting his pulse. He eyed him sharply. "The pendulum still swings," said Lot. The doctor started. "You can speak, then!" he cried out, brusquely. Lot smiled. The doctor was old, and his long struggle with birth and death had begun to tell upon him. He had already visited Lot that morning, after a hard night with a patient, back in the hills. His face was haggard under its sharp gray bristle of beard; his eyes fierce, like an old dog's, with fatigue and hunger. He had just reached home and sat down to his breakfast when this new call came. He had thought Lot was dying from Madelon's imperative summons, and she had not undeceived him. She was growing cunning in her desperate efforts to save Burr Gordon. "What in thunder did ye send for me again for?" he snapped. This old country doctor was never chary of plain speaking, and his brusqueness had increased his popularity. Many of his patients were simple countrywomen, who had greater belief in that which they feared. They repeated his half-savage speeches to each other, and added, "He's a good doctor, if he does speak out." Lot only smiled that covert smile of his, which seemed to imply some wisdom of humor beyond the ken of others. "I ought to be dying," he said, with grim apology. "I ought not--to have disturbed you all for a less reason than to witness my final exit, but I want you to witness something else." Lot Gordon spoke quite strongly and connectedly. "What?" asked the doctor, irritably. "I want to make a statement," said Lot Gordon. There was a pause. Jonas Hapgood, with his look of heavy facetiousness, slightly tempered now with curiosity, stood lounging into his great snowy boots at the foot of the bed. Parson Fair, the consolation for the dying which he had thought to administer still in his mind, which could not swerve easily, his slender height in his black surtout inclined towards the sick man with gentle courtesy, waited. Margaret Bean peered around the bed-curtain. Madelon stood near the doctor, her face white as if she were dead, and a look of awful listening upon it. In the background David Hautville, wrathful and wondering, towered over them all. "I wish to declare in the presence of these witnesses," said Lot Gordon, "the doctor here testifying that I am in my right mind"--the doctor gave a surly grunt of assent--"that it is my firm belief that all mortal ills come to man through his own agency, and this last ill of mine is no exception. I declare solemnly before you all that my cousin Burr Gordon is not guilty of administering this wound which I bear in my side." The sheriff started forward. "Who did do it, then?" he cried out. "I myself," replied Lot Gordon. _ |
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