A search, continued unintermittingly for a week among the hotels and
lodging-houses of Boston, proved finally successful. He found her. As she
opened the door of the miserable apartment which she occupied, and saw
who it was that had knocked, the hard, unbeautiful red of shame covered
her face. She would have closed the door against him, had he not quickly
stepped within. Her eyelids fluttered a moment, and then she met his gaze
with a look of reckless hardihood. Still holding the door half open, she
said--
"Henry Burr, what do you want?"
The masses of her dark hairs hung low about her neck in disorder, and
even in that first glance his eye had noted a certain negligent
untidiness about her toilet most different from her former ways. Her face
was worn and strangely aged and saddened, but beautiful still with the
quenchless beauty of the glorious eyes, though sleepless nights had left
their dark traces round them;
"What do you want? Why do you come here?" she demanded again, in harsh,
hard tones; for he had been too much moved in looking at her to reply at
once.
Now, however, he took the door-handle out of her hand and closed the
door, and said, with only the boundless tenderness of his moist eyes to
mend the bluntness of the words--
"Madeline, I want you. I want you for my wife."
The faintest possible trace of scorn was perceptible about her lips, but
her former expression of hard indifference was otherwise quite unchanged
as she replied, in a spiritless voice--
"So you came here to mock me? It was taking a good deal of trouble, but
it is fair you should have your revenge."
He came close up to her.
"I'm not mocking. I'm in earnest. I'm one of those fellows who can never
love but one woman, and love her for ever and ever. If there were not a
scrap of you left bigger than your thumb, I'd rather have it than any
woman in the world."
And now her face changed. There came into it the wistful look of those
before whom passes a vision of happiness not for them, a look such as
might be in the face of a doomed spirit which, floating by, should catch
a glimpse of heavenly meads, and be glad to have had it, although its own
way lay toward perdition. With a sudden impulse she dropped upon her
knee, and seizing the hem of his coat pressed it to her lips, and then,
before he could catch her, sprang away, and stood with one arm extended
toward him, the palm turned outward, warning him not to touch her. Her
eyes were marvellously softened with the tears that suffused them, and
she said--
"I thank you, Henry. You are very good. I did not think any man could be
so good. Now I remember, you always were very good to me. It will make
the laudanum taste much sweeter. No! no! don't! Pity my shame. Spare me
that! Oh, don't!"
But he was stronger than she, and kissed her. It was the second time he
had ever done it. Her eyes flashed angrily, but that was instantly past,
and she fell upon a chair crying as if her heart would break, her hands
dropping nervously by her sides; for this was that miserable, desolate
sorrow which does not care to hide its flowing tears and wrung face.
"Oh, you might have spared me that! O God! was it not hard enough
before?" she sobbed.
In his loving stupidity, thinking to reassure her, he had wounded the
pride of shame, the last retreat of self-respect, that cruellest hurt of
all. There was a long silence. She seemed to have forgotten that he was
there. Looking down upon her as she sat desolate, degraded, hopeless
before him, not caring to cover her face, his heart swelled till it
seemed as if it would burst, with such a sense of piteous loyalty and
sublimed devotion as a faithful subject in the brave old times might have
felt towards his queen whom he has found in exile, rags, and penury.
Deserted by gods and men she might be, but his queen for ever she was,
whose feet he was honoured to kiss. But what a gulf between feeling this
and making her understand his feeling!
At length, when her sobs had ceased, he said, quietly--
"Forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
"It's all the same. It's no matter," she answered, listlessly, wiping her
eyes with her hand. "I wish you would go away, though, and leave me
alone. What do you want with me?"
"I want what I have always wanted: I want you for my wife."
She looked at him with stupid amazement, as if the real meaning of this
already once declared desire had only just distinctly reached her mind,
or as if the effect of its first announcement had been quite effaced by
the succeeding outburst.
"Why, I thought you knew! You can't have heard--about me," she said.
"I have heard, I know all," he exclaimed, taking a step forward and
standing over her. "Forgive me, darling! forgive me for being almost glad
when I heard that you were free, and not married out of my reach. I can't
think of anything except that I've found you. It is you, isn't it? It is
you. I don't care what's happened to you, if it is only you."
As he spoke in this vehement, fiery way, she had been regarding him with
an expression of faint curiosity. "I believe you do really mean it," she
said, wonderingly, lingering over the words; "you always were a queer
fellow."
"Mean it!" he exclaimed, kneeling before her, his voice all tremulous
with the hope which the slightly yielding intonation of her words had
given him. "Yes--yes--I mean it."
The faint ghost of a smile, which only brought out the sadness of her
face, as a taper in a crypt reveals its gloom, hovered about her eyes.
"Poor boy!" she said; "I've, treated you very badly. I was going to make
an end of myself this afternoon, but I will wait till you are tired of
your fancy for me. It will make but little difference. There! there!
Please don't kiss me."