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Madelon: A Novel, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 18 |
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_ Chapter XVIII Then Madelon sat alone, sewing, setting nice stitches in her green-and-gold silk. Like other women, heretofore when she had sewn a new gown she had builded for herself air-castles of innocent vanity and love when she should be dressed in it. Now she builded no more, but sat and sewed among the ruins of all her happy maiden fancies. She had given herself no care concerning any other arrangements for her wedding than this gown--she felt even no curiosity concerning it. She left all that to Lot, as a victim leaves the details of his death to the executioner. She supposed he would send for her and tell her before long. When she heard a scraping step at the door she knew instinctively that the message had come. Margaret Bean's husband's simple old face confronted her when she opened the door. The weather was moderating fast that morning. The sun had the warmth of spring, and the old man stood in a shower of rainbow drops from the melting icicles on the eaves. He handed her a letter, backed clumsily and apologetically from under the drops, then retreated carefully down the slippery path, his clumsy old joints jolting. Madelon, back in the kitchen, stood for a second looking at the letter. Then she opened it, and read the message written in Lot Gordon's strange poetic style: "Madelon,--The rose waits in the garden for her lover, because he has wings and she has none. But had the rose wings and her lover none, then would she leave her garden and fly to him with her honey in her heart, for love must be found. "Lot Gordon." Enough strength of New England blood Madelon had to feel towards Lot a new impulse of scorn that he should write her thus, instead of bidding her come, simply, like a man, displaying his power over her that they both knew. Small store of honey did she bear in her heart when she set out to obey Lot's call. She hurried along, indeed, with her cloak flying out at either side, like red wings in the south wind, but not from eagerness to see her lover. She was in constant dread lest she meet Burr on the road; but she gained Lot's house without seeing him or knowing that his miserable, jealous eyes watched her from an opposite window. Burr was up in his chamber when Madelon went into his cousin's house. Presently he went down-stairs, where his mother was, with a face so full of the helpless appeal of agony that she looked at him as she used to do when he came in hurt from play. "What is the matter, Burr, are you sick?" she said, in her quiet voice. She was sitting in a rocking-chair in the sun with her knitting-work. She swayed on gently as she spoke, and her long, delicate fingers still slipped the yarn over the needle. "Yes, I am sick, mother; I am sick to death," Burr groaned out. Then he went down on the floor at his mother's feet, and hid his face in her lap, as he had used to do when he was a child in trouble. Mrs. Gordon's stern repose of manner had never seemed to repel any demonstration of her son's. Now she continued to knit above his head, but he apparently felt no lack of sympathy in her. She asked no more questions, but waited for him to speak. "She's just gone in there," he half sobbed out, presently. "Oh, mother, what shall I do--what shall I do?" "You'll have to get used to it," said his mother. "You'll have to make up your mind to it, Burr." "Mother, I can't! Oh, God, I can't see her every day there with him. Mother, we've got to sell out and move away. You'll be willing to, won't you? Won't you, mother?" "You forget Dorothy. She can't leave the town where her father is." "I wish I could forget Dorothy in honor!" Burr cried out. "You can't," said his mother, "and there's an end of it." "I know it," said Burr. He got up and stood looking moodily out of the window. "You know," said his mother, still knitting, "how I have felt from the very first about Madelon Hautville. I never approved of her for a wife for you; I approve of her still less now, after her violent conduct and her consent to marry Lot, whom she cannot care for. Still, since you feel as you do about it, I should be glad to have you marry her, if such a thing could be done with any show of honor; but it cannot. You know that as well as I. You must marry Dorothy Fair, and Madelon is going to marry Lot. Leaving everything else out of the question, it is out of your power to say anything on account of the money which you will lose by her marriage with him. You know what she might think." "Curse the money!" Burr cried out. "Curse the money and the position and all the damned lot of bubbles that come between a man and what's worth more, and will last!" "Burr, don't talk so!" "I can't help it, mother. I mean it. Curse it, I say, and the infernal weakness that makes a man see double on women's faces when there's only one woman in his heart! Mother, why didn't you know about that last, so you could tell me when I was a boy?" His mother colored a little. "I never taught you to be fickle," she said, with a kind of shamed bewilderment. "I never have been fickle. This is something else worse." Burr looked at his mother again, with the old expression of his when he had come in hurt from play. No matter how long Burr Gordon might live, no matter what brave deeds he might do--and there was brave stuff in him, for he would have gone to the gallows rather than betray Madelon--there would always be in him the appeal of a child to the woman who loved him. "Mother, I don't know how to bear it," he said. "You must bear it like a man." "It is hard to bear the consequence of unmanly conduct like a man," said Burr, shortly; then he went out, as if the old comfort from his mother had failed him. As for her, she finished heeling her stocking, and then went out into the kitchen and made a pudding that her son loved for his dinner. Burr went back up-stairs to his cold chamber, and watched for Madelon to come out of Lot's house. It seemed to him she was there an eternity, but in reality it was only a half-hour. She had found Lot sitting as usual before the fire with a leather-covered volume on his knees. "I have come," she said, standing just inside the door; then she started at the look he gave her. There was a significance in it which she could not understand. He did not say a word for full five minutes while she waited. He did not even ask her to be seated. "Do you know the date?" he asked then, harshly. There was no hint of roses and honey in his speech and manner to offend her like his letter. "Yes, I do." "You know the month is up on Monday?" "I am not likely to forget." "True," said Lot; "it is the last thing a girl will forget--the day set for her happy marriage." He laughed. Madelon's face contracted. She set her mouth harder, and looked straight at Lot. "When you have done laughing," said she, "will you tell me what you want of me? I have to go home and get dinner." Lot still looked at her with his mocking smile. "I wished to inquire if you are ready to become my bride on Monday," said he. "Yes, I am ready. Is that all?" "I wished also to inquire if you have any plans concerning the ceremony which you would like carried out." "I have none." "Then will it suit you to come here on Monday at two o'clock in the afternoon, since the doctor tells me I shall scarcely be able to go out myself, and be united to me by Parson Fair?" "I am ready to carry out any plans you may make." "Your father and your brothers and my cousin Burr and his mother will, of course, be present at our wedding," said Lot, with wary eyes upon her face. Madelon looked at him as proudly as ever. "Very well," said she. She waited a minute longer; then she laid her hand on the doorlatch. "Wait a minute!" Lot cried. He looked at her hesitatingly. A flush crept over his white face. "Madelon," he began; then his cough interrupted him. He tried to force it back with fierce swallowings, but had to yield. He bent over double, and shook with rattling volleys. Madelon waited, her eyes averted, without a sign of pity. The near approach of her wedding-day caused a revolt of her whole maiden soul towards him so intense that it was as a contraction of the muscles. She was utterly hard to his suffering. At last he raised himself, panting, and cast a pale look around at her. "Well, what do you want?" she said. He motioned feebly towards is desk on the other side of the room. "Top drawer," he whispered, hoarsely; "left-hand corner--find--leather case--bring to me." Madelon crossed the room to the desk, opened the drawer, found the leather case, and carried it to Lot. "Here," said she. "Open it," Lot whispered. Madelon pressed the spring in the case, and held it out open towards Lot without a glance at its contents. "Look," he said. Madelon glanced at the little gold watch, curled round with a long gold chain, which the case contained, and continued to hold it out towards Lot. "I've looked," said she. "Here, take it; I must go home." "Oh, Madelon, it's for you." "I don't want it." "Take it--Madelon, won't you have it? I got it for you." "No, I don't want it. Shall I put it back in the drawer?" "Don't you think it's a pretty watch?" "Yes. Shall I put it back?" "You haven't any watch, Madelon." "I don't want one." Madelon closed the case impatiently, and turned away. "Oh, Madelon, won't you take it?" Lot begged, piteously. "I told you no--I do not care for it." Madelon put the case back in the desk drawer. Then she drew her cloak together, and went to the door again. "Oh," said Lot Gordon, weakly, in his hoarse voice, "the hardest thing in the whole world for Love to bruise himself against is the tender heart of a woman, when 'tis not inclined his way." "Good-bye," said Madelon, and shut the door behind her fiercely. That last speech of Lot's, which, like many of his speeches, seemed to her no human vernacular, added terror to her aversion of him. "He's more like a book than a man," she had often thought, and the fancy seized her now that the great leather-bound book upon his knees, and all those leather-bound books against his walls, had somehow possessed him with an uncanny life of their own. And she may have been in a measure right, for Lot Gordon, during his whole life, had dealt indirectly with human hearts through their translations in his beloved books rather than with the beating hearts of men and women around him. Still, although he spoke like one who learns a language from books instead of the familiar converse of people, and his thoughts clothed themselves in images which those about him disdained and threw off as impeding their hard race of life, poor Lot Gordon's heart beat in time with the hearts of his kind. But that Madelon could not know because hers was so set against it. She hurried out of the house and the yard, dreading again lest she should encounter Burr. But her haste was of no avail, for he came straight down his opposite terraces, and met her when she reached the road. She would have pushed past then, but he stood squarely before her. "Madelon, can't I speak with you a minute?" he pleaded. Madelon saw, without seeming to look, that Burr's handsome face was white as death and haggard. "Are you sick?" she asked, suddenly. "Why do you look so? What is the matter with you?" and she put a half-bitter, half-anxiously compassionate weight upon the _you_. "I believe I am going mad," Burr groaned, with the quick grasp of a man at the pity of the woman he loves. "Oh, Madelon!" He held out his hands towards her like a child, but she stood back from him, and looked straight at him with sharp questioning in her eyes. "Do you mean--" she began; then stopped, and questioned him with her eyes again. She was seized with the belief, which filled her at once with agony and an impulse of fierce protection like that of a mother defending her young with her own wounded bosom, that Burr had had a falling out with Dorothy. "Oh, Madelon!" Burr said again, and then he could say no more for very shame and honor. He had run out, indeed, in a half-frenzy. "She _shall_ not play you false!" Madelon cried out. "Dorothy Fair _shall_ keep her word with you." Burr looked at her, bewildered. "Marry her at once," Madelon cried, with a quick rush of her words--"at once. Do you hear me, Burr Gordon? It's all the way to do with a girl like that. Do you hear me?" "Yes, I hear you," Burr said, slowly, as if he were stunned. "Dorothy Fair _shall_ keep her promise to you--I will make her. She shall marry you whenever you say. I will go this very day and see her." "There is no need for you to do that, Madelon. I will marry her at once, as you advise. I think she will be willing," Burr said, slowly and coldly. Then he left her without another word, and went up his terraces with his back bent like an old man's. He was holding hard to his heart the surety that Madelon no longer cared for him, for it is scarcely within the imagination of either man or woman that one can love and yet give away. But by the time he entered the house his spirit had awakened within him, and he made a proud resolve that since Madelon so advised and was herself to marry that he would marry Dorothy Fair as soon as she should be willing. _ |
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