Chapter 22

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_ Chapter XXII

That year, spring seemed to break over the village in a day, like a green flood. All at once people's thoughts were interrupted, and their eyes turned from selfish joys or pains by the emerald flash of fields and hill-sides in the morning sun, and the white flutter of flowering boughs past their windows like the festal garments of unexpected guests.

The first week in May, the cherry-trees were in blossom, and the alders and shad bushes were white in the borders of the woods against the filmy green of the birches. The young women got out their summer muslins, and trimmed their bonnets anew; their faces, all unknown to themselves, took on a new meaning of the spring, like new flowers, and the young men looked after them as they passed as if they were strangers in the village.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, in the first week of May, Eugene Hautville strolled across-lots over to the village. Through the fields north of the Hautville place there was an old foot-path to the former site of an old homestead, long ago burned to the ground and its ashes dissipated on winds long died away. The oldest inhabitants in the village barely remembered the house that used to stand there. The slant of its roof crossed their minds dimly when they spoke of it: they could not agree as to whether it had faced north or south. It might have seemed almost fabulous, had it not been for the thicket of old lilacs purpling with bloom every spring, which had first grown before its windows, and the perennial houseleek which had clustered round the door.

Then, too, east of where the house had stood there was an old apple orchard, the trees thereof bent to the ground like distorted old men, and, when spring came, bearing scarcely one bough of pink bloom, among others shaggy with gray moss like the beard of age.

Then, also, the lane still remained which had stretched, in days gone by, from the northward of the old house to the highway. The lane had divided the fields of the old landowners, and had been the thoroughfare for the dwellers in the house when they went to meeting and to mill.

The Hautvilles often used it in the summer-time for a short-cut to the village. Eugene went along this foot-path, which was in its way a little humble track of history of simple village life, passed the site of the house, and then struck into the lane. It stretched before him like a shaft of green light. The afternoon sun shone through young willow-leaves, transparent like green glass. Low overhead hung rosy tassels from out-reaching boughs of maples. Between the trees, the flowering alders seemed gleaming out of sight before him like the white skirts of maidens. Here and there the ground was blue with violets. Eugene picked some half mechanically, as he went along, and made a little nosegay, with some sprigs of alder. He was half through the lane, and had just emerged from a clump of alders, when he saw Dorothy Fair coming. She gave a start when she saw him appear with a great jostling of white branches, and made as if she would have fled; then she held up her head with gentle dignity and advanced, lifting her lady-skirts with dainty fingers on either side. Mistress Dorothy, being weary of fine needle-work upon her bridal linen, had come out a little way to take the air, and naturally enough had chosen for her walk this sweet lane, which opened upon the highway a stone's-throw below her house.

If Eugene Hautville, at sight of her, felt a quaking of his spirit, and would also fain have fled, he made no sign, but walked on proudly like a prince, with a bold yet graceful swing of his stalwart shoulders. And when he and Dorothy met, he bowed low before her, and she courtesied and he bade her good-day quite clearly, and she murmured a response with pretty, prim lips; and they would have passed on had not both, as if constrained by hands of force upon their necks, raised their faces and looked of a sudden into each other eyes with that same old look which they had exchanged in the meeting-house long ago.

Dorothy Fair wore on that day a thin wool gown of a mottled blue color like a dapple of spring violets. It was laid across her bosom in smooth plaits, and showed at the throat her finely wrought lace kerchief. The sun was so warm that she had put on her white straw hat with blue ribbons, and her soft curls flowed from under it to her blue belt ribbon. She wore, too, her little black-silk apron, cunningly worked in the corners with flowers in colored silks. Dorothy looked up in Eugene Hautville's face, and he looked down at her, for a force against which they had come into the world unarmed constrained them. Then she bent her head before him until he could see nothing but the white slant of her hat, and caught at her silk apron as if she would hide her face with that also.

Eugene stood still looking at her, his face radiant and glowing red. "Dorothy!" he stammered, and then Dorothy straightened herself suddenly, though she kept her face averted, flung up her head, caught up her blue skirts again, and made as if she would pass on without another word. Eugene, with his face all at once white, and his head proudly raise, stood aside to let her pass. "'Tis a warm day for the season," he said, with his old graceful courtesy. But Dorothy looked up at him again as she neared him in passing, and her sweet mouth was quivering like a frightened baby's, and the tears were in her blue eyes, and no man who loved her could have let her go by; and certainly not this fiery young Eugene. Suddenly, and with seemingly no more involvement of wills or ethics than the alders in their blossoming, the two were in each other's arms, and their lips were meeting in kisses.

This fair and demure daughter of Puritans might well, as she stood there in her lover's embrace, being already, as she was, the betrothed bride of another, have been accounted fickle and false, but perhaps in a sense she was not. Never had she forgot or been untrue to her first love-dreams, which Eugene had caused, but had held to them with that mild negative obstinacy of her nature which she could not herself overcome. Now it was to her as if she were reconciled to her true lover, and was faithful instead of false; and less false she surely was to her own self.

Right contentedly had she loved for a time Burr's love for her and his tenderness, and had been stirred thereby to passion, but now she loved this other man for something better than her own sweet image in his eyes.

Never a word she said, but her hat slipped down on her shoulders, hanging by its blue strings, and she let her head lie on Eugene's shoulder, with a strange sense of wontedness and of remembering something which had never been.

And, also, all Eugene's fond words in her ear seemed to her like the strains of old songs which were past her memory. Burr's, although she had listened happily, had never seemed to her like that.

They stood together so for a few minutes, while the alder-flowers shook out sweetness, as from perfumed garments, at their side, and a bee who had left his hive and winter honey, and made that day another surprise of spring, hummed from one white raceme to another and then was away, disappearing in the blue air with a last gleam of filmy wing as behind a sapphire wall.

Neither of the lovers had knowingly heard the bee's hum, but when it ceased the silence seemed to make an accusing sense audible to them. They let each other go and stood apart guiltily, as if some one had entered the lane and was spying upon them.

Dorothy spoke first, without raising her pale little face, all drooped round with her curls. "What shall I do?" she said, like a child. She was trembling, and could scarcely control her tongue.

Eugene made no reply. He stood looking moodily at the ground, where his nosegay of violets and alders was all scattered and trampled.

Suddenly he had the feeling as of a thief in another man's garden, and a shame before Dorothy herself came over him. Eugene Hautville's principles of honor, in spite of his fiery nature, read like a primer, with no subtleties of evasion therein. Here was another man's betrothed, and he had wooed her away! He had kissed her lips, which were vowed to another. He had wronged her and Burr Gordon also. Strangely enough, Dorothy's own responsibility never occurred to him at all; he never dreamed of blaming her for falsity either to himself or Burr. That little fair trembling creature, clad like a violet in her mottled blue, seemed to him at once above and below all questions of personal agency. She bloomed like a flower in her garden, infinitely finer than those who wrangled around her and strove to gather her, and yet in a measure helpless before them.

In a moment Dorothy answered her question negatively herself: "I will not marry Burr," she said, without raising her head, and yet with that tone of voice which accompanies a lift of chin and stiffening of the neck muscles.

Eugene looked at her, and extended his arms as if he would take her to him again; then drew them back. "I do not know what to counsel you," he said, slowly. Then his eyes fell before the sudden shame and distress in Dorothy's.

"You do not know what do counsel me!" she cried. "Then you do not--care--" Tears rolled over her cheeks, and Eugene gathered her into his arms again, and laid his cheek against her fair head, and soothed her as he would have soothed a child. "There, there," he whispered, "it is not that, it is not that, sweet. I would die for you, I love you so! It is not that, but you are the promised wife of another man. How can I turn a thief even for you, Dorothy? How can I bid you be false, and forswear yourself? There's honor as well as love, child."

"But love is honor," said Dorothy.

"Not for a man," said Eugene.

Then she clung to him softly and modestly, and sobbed, and he kissed her hair and whispered in one breath that she was all his own, and in another that he knew not what to do, and was near distracted between his love and his sense of honor, until Dorothy said something which set him pleading for his rival whether he would or no, for the sake of stern justice.

"I am afraid of him, I am afraid of Burr," Dorothy whispered in his ear. "How could I have married him, when I was so afraid, even if you had not come?"

"Afraid?"

"_You--know--what--they said--Burr did!_"

Eugene held her away from him by her slender arms, and looked at her. "You did not believe that?"

"He would not tell me he was innocent, even when I begged him so."

"You knew he was."

"Why did he not tell me, when I begged him so?" she said, and the soft unyielding in her tone was absolute.

"Dorothy!"

"I am so afraid--you don't know," she whispered, piteously.

"But--you know Burr was cleared."

"Yes, I know, but even now he will not tell me on the Bible, as I asked him, that he is innocent."

"Dorothy, he _is_ innocent," Eugene said, with solemn and bitter emphasis of which she knew not the full meaning.

"Then why does he not swear that he is, to me?" Back went Dorothy always, in all reasoning, to the starting-point in her own mind.

"I tell you he is, child. It has been proven so."

"Then why--" Dorothy began, but Eugene interrupted her in her circle. "There is no more cause for you to fear him than me," he said almost harshly, in his stern resolve to be just. Then Dorothy turned on him with sudden passion. "I am afraid," she cried out, "I shall always be afraid; even if he were to swear to me now that he is innocent, I shall always be afraid, for I coupled him with that awful deed once in my thoughts, and I cannot separate him from it forever. He will always hold the knife in his hand; even if it were not for you, I should be near mad with fear. I bid black Phyllis stay by the door when he comes."

"Dorothy!"

"Yes, I do. What my mind has once laid hold of, that it will not let go. I cannot separate him from my old thought of him. I have tried to be faithful, and true, but even had he sworn to me that he was innocent, the fear would have remained. Save me from him--oh, Eugene, save me!"

But Eugene put her quite away from him, and looked at her almost sternly. His honor held the reins now in good earnest. The suspicion of Madelon, which he had never owned to himself, became a certainty. He defended his rival as strenuously as he would have defended himself, since it involved truth to himself. "I swear to you, Dorothy Fair," he said, "that Burr Gordon is innocent, and that your fear of him is groundless."

Dorothy looked at him with dilated eyes. She said not a word, but her mind travelled its circle again.

"It is so," said Eugene; "I know it."

Still Dorothy looked at him.

"All my heart is yours," Eugene went on, "but I would rather it broke, and yours too, before I counselled you to be false to a man for a reason like that."

A flush came over Dorothy's face. She pulled her straw hat from her shoulders to her head, and tied the blue strings under her chin. She gathered up daintily a fold of her blue mottled skirt on either side. "Then I will marry Burr this day week," she said. "I will endeavor to be a good and true wife to him, and I pray you to forget if you can what has passed between us to-day."

She said this as calmly and authoritatively as her father could have said it in the pulpit, and courtesied slightly, then went on down the lane and out into the open beyond, with a soft tilt of her blue skirts and as gently proud a carriage as when she walked into the meeting-house of a Sabbath.

Eugene said not a word to stop her, but stood staring after her. All his study of his Shakespeare helped him not to an understanding of this one girl, whom he saw with love-dimmed eyes. This sudden abetting on her part of his resolve gave him a sense of earthquake and revolution, yet he did not call her back or follow her.

He proceeded through the lane to the highway, then a few yards farther to the store, to get his Boston weekly paper. The mail had come in. On this warm spring day the loafers on the boxes and barrels within the store had crawled out to the bench on the piazza and sat there in a row. All mental states have their illustrative lives of body. This shabby row leaned and lopped and settled upon themselves, into all the lines and curves and downward slants of laziness, and with rank tobacco-smoke curling about them, like the very languid breath of it. However, when Eugene Hautville drew near, there was a slight shuffling stir; a drawling hum of conversation ceased, and when he entered the store their eyes followed him, bright with furtive attention. The mill of gossip had ground slowly in this heavy spring atmosphere, but it had ground steadily. They had been discussing Madelon Hautville and the breaking off of her marriage with Lot Gordon. It was village property by this time, and all tongues were exercised over it.

"Why ain't Lot Gordon goin' to marry her?" they asked each other, and exchanged answering looks of dark suspicion. The reason for not marrying which Lot used every means in his power to promulgate--his fast-failing health--gained little credence. The story came directly from the doctor's wife that Lot Gordon was no worse than he had been for the last ten years, and was likely to live ten years to come. Margaret Bean was said to have told a neighboring woman, who told another, who in her turn told another, and so started an endless chain of good authority, that Lot Gordon had never coughed so little as he did this spring, and "ate like a pig." He was, it is true, never seen on the highway, but there were those who said he was abroad again in his old woodland haunts.

"Guess he didn't change his mind about havin' Mad'lon Hautville 'cause he was so much worse than common," they said; "guess when the time drawed near he was afraid." Margaret Bean was, furthermore, on good authority reported to have intimated that never, if Madelon had come to that house while she was in it, would she and her husband have gone to bed without the scissors in the latch of their bedroom door.

Lot Gordon, who had forsworn himself to save Madelon, was now, by his last sacrifice for her, bidding fair to prove what her own assertions had failed to do--her guilt. He crept out secretly into cover of the woods, now and then, on a mild day; he could not deny himself that. But otherwise he stayed close, and coughed hard when there were listening ears, and complained like any old woman of his increasing aches and pains. Still his cunning availed little, although he did not dream of it.

He went not among the gossips himself, and no one as yet had ventured to approach him with the rumor that was fast gaining ground.

No one had ventured to broach the matter to the Hautville men, for obvious reasons. "I wouldn't vally your skin if that fellar overheard what you was sayin' of when he come up the road, Joe Simpson," one loafer drawled to another, when Eugene left the store that afternoon and had disappeared going the long way home.

"Hush up, will ye!" whispered the other, glancing around pale under his unshaven beard as if he feared Eugene might yet be there. The Hautville men, however, hearing nothing, and saying nothing about the matter to each other, had always, among themselves, a subtle exchange of uneasy thought concerning it. If one sat moodily by and moved out of her way without a word while Madelon prepared a meal, the others knew what it meant. They also knew well the meaning of each other's glances at her, and sudden lowering of brows. Madelon herself did not know. When she had come home that Sunday night, and announced that she was not going to be married at all, she had not understood the sharp questioning, and then the stern quiet that followed upon it. She had told them simply that Lot said that his lungs were gone; that he had ascertained the fact himself through his own knowledge of medicine; that he could only live a wreck of a man, if at all, and, knowing it was so, had made up his mind that he would not marry.

Lot had indeed told her so, and had made her believe it, doing away with much of the force of his giving her up for the sake of his love. It is difficult in any case for one to understand fully the love to which he cannot respond, for involuntarily the heart averts itself from it like an ear or an eye, and misses it like the highest notes of music and colors of the spectrum.

Madelon had stared dumbly at Lot when he told her she was free, and for a moment indeed had struggled with a consciousness which would have stirred her at least into pity and gratitude and remorse, which she had never known, had not Lot recovered himself and spoken again in his old manner. He tapped himself on his hollow chest. "After all," he said, "'tis best you are not seduced like most of your sex into making the accessories of life supply the lack of the primal needs of it, into taking sugar instead of bread, and weakening your stomach and your understanding. 'Tis best for you and best for me, and best for those that might come after us. Treasure of house and land and fine apparel and furnishings may be a goodly inheritance, but our heirs would thank us more for power to draw the breath of life freely, and you would do better without a gown to your back, or a shoe to your foot, and a mate that was not half a dead man; and I should do better alone in my anteroom of the tomb than with another life to disturb the peace of it, and rouse me to efforts which will send me farther on."

Madelon had stared at him, not knowing what to say, with compassion, and yet with growing conviction of his selfish ends, which disturbed it.

Lot tapped his chest again. "My lungs are gone," he said, shortly; "I need no doctor to tell me. I know enough of physics myself to send the whole village stumbling, instead of racing, into their graves, if I choose to use it. My lungs are gone, and you are well quit of me, and I of a foolish undertaking, though of a charming bride. Now, go your way, child, and take up your maiden dreams again, for all me."

Madelon looked at him proudly, although she was half dazed by what she heard. "I care nothing for all the fine things you have shown me," said she, "and I have told you truly always that I do not care for you, but I will keep my promise to marry you unless you yourself bid me to break it."

"I bid you to break it," said Lot, steadily, and his eyes met hers, and his old mocking smile played over his white face. Then suddenly he bent over with his racking cough, and Madelon made a step towards him, but he motioned her away. "Good-night--child," he gasped out.

Then Madelon had gone home and told her father and brothers, and thought their strange reception of the news due to anything but the truth. She had told them that she was guilty of wounding Lot Gordon almost to death. That they should now be rendered uneasy by suspicions, when she had given them actual knowledge, was something beyond her imagination. She fancied rather that they considered Lot had treated her badly, or else that she had a longing love for Burr, and, perhaps, had herself broken off her match with his cousin on that account. She strove hard to bear herself in such a manner that they should not think that. She put on as gay a face as she could muster, and even took, beside the dress, a little blue-silk mantle to embroider for Dorothy Fair's wedding outfit, and sang over it as she worked.

Still, in a way, although her pride led her to it, her singing and her gayety were no pretence, for Madelon, through much suffering, had reached that growth in love which enabled her to see over her own self and her own needs. That knife-thrust she had meant for her lover had stilled forever the jealous temper in her own heart, and she fairly dreamed as she embroidered Dorothy's bridal mantle some dreams of happiness that might have been Burr's; so filled was she with purest love for him that his imagination possessed her own. _

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