MADELENE
To give himself, journeyman cooper, the feeling of ease and equality,
Arthur dressed, with long-discontinued attention to detail, from his
extensive wardrobe which the eighteen months since its last accessions
had not impaired or antiquated. And, in the twilight of an early
September evening, he went forth to settle the matter that had become the
most momentous.
There is in dress a something independent of material and cut and even of
the individuality of the wearer; there is a spirit of caste. If the lady
dons her maid's dress, some subtle essence of the menial permeates her,
even to her blood, her mind, and heart. The maid, in madame's dress,
putting on "airs," is merely giving an outlet to that which has entered
into her from her clothes. Thus, Arthur assumed again with his "_grande
toilette_" the feeling of the caste from which he had been ejected.
Madelene, come herself to open the door for him, was in a summer dress of
no pretentions to style other than that which her figure, with its large,
free, splendid lines, gave whatever she happened to wear. His nerves, his
blood, responded to her beauty, as always; her hair, her features, the
grace of the movements of that strong, slender, supple form, gave him the
sense of her kinship with freedom and force and fire and all things keen
and bright. But stealthily and subtly it came to him, in this mood
superinduced by his raiment, that in marrying her he was, after all,
making sacrifices--she was ascending socially, he descending,
condescending. The feeling was far too vague to be at all conscious; it
is, however, just those hazy, stealthy feelings that exert the most
potent influence upon us. When the strong are conquered is it not always
by feeble forces from the dark and from behind?
"You have had good news," said Madelene, when they were in the dim
daylight on the creeper-screened back porch. For such was her generous
interpretation of his expression of self-confidence and
self-satisfaction.
"Not yet," he replied, looking away reflectively. "But I hope for it."
There wasn't any mistaking the meaning of that tone; she knew what was
coming. She folded her hands in her lap, and there softly entered and
pervaded her a quiet, enormous content that made her seem the crown of
the quiet beauty of that evening sky whose ocean of purple-tinted crystal
stretched away toward the shores of the infinite.
"Madelene," he began in a self-conscious voice, "you know what my
position is, and what I get, and my prospects. But you know what I was,
too; and so, I feel I've the right to ask you to marry me--to wait until
I get back to the place from which I had to come down."
The light was fading from the sky, from her eyes, from her heart. A
moment before he had been there, so near her, so at one with her; now
he was far away, and this voice she heard wasn't his at all. And his
words--She felt alone in the dark and the cold, the victim of a cheat
upon her deepest feelings.
"I was bitter against my father at first," he went on. "But since I have
come to know you I have forgiven him. I am grateful to him. If it hadn't
been for what he did I might never have learned to appreciate you, to--"
"Don't--_please_!" she said in the tone that is from an aching heart.
"Don't say any more."
Arthur was astounded. He looked at her for the first time since he began;
instantly fear was shaking his self-confidence at its foundations.
"Madelene!" he exclaimed. "I know that you love me!"
She hid her face in her hands--the sight of them, long and narrow and
strong, filled him with the longing to seize them, to feel the throb of
their life thrill from them into him, troop through and through him like
victory-bringing legions into a besieged city. But her broken voice
stopped him. "And I thought you loved me," she said.
"You know I do!" he cried.
She was silent.
"What is it, Madelene?" he implored. "What has come between us? Does your
father object because I am--am not well enough off?"
She dropped her hands from before her face and looked at him. The first
time he saw her he had thought she was severe; ever since he had wondered
how he could have imagined severity into a countenance so gentle and
sweet. Now he knew that his first impression was not imaginary; for she
had again the expression with which she had faced the hostile world of
Saint X until he, his love, came into her life. "It is I that must ask
you what has changed you, Arthur," she said, more in sadness than in
bitterness, though in both. "I don't seem to know you this evening."
Arthur lost the last remnant of his self-consciousness. He saw he was
about to lose, if indeed he had not already lost, that which had come to
mean life to him--the happiness from this woman's beauty, the strength
from her character, the sympathy from her mind and heart. It was in
terror that he asked: "Why, Madelene? What is it? What have I done?" And
in dread he studied her firm, regular profile, a graceful strength that
was Greek, and so wonderfully completed by her hair, blue black and thick
and wavy about the temple and ear and the nape of the neck.
The girl did not answer immediately; he thought she was refusing to hear,
yet he could find no words with which to try to stem the current of those
ominous thoughts. At last she said: "You talk about the position you have
'come down from' and the position you are going back to--and that you are
grateful to your father for having brought you down where you were humble
enough to find me."
"Madelene!"
"Wait!" she commanded. "You wish to know what is the matter with me. Let
me tell you. We didn't receive you here because you are a cooper or
because you had been rich. I never thought about your position or your
prospects. A woman--at least a woman like me--doesn't love a man for his
position, doesn't love him for his prospects. I've been taking you at
just what you were--or seemed to be. And you--you haven't come, asking me
to marry you. You treat me like one of those silly women in what they
call 'society' here in Saint X. You ask me to wait until you can support
me fashionably--I who am not fashionable--and who will always support
myself. What you talked isn't what I call love, Arthur. I don't want to
hear any more about it--or, we might not be able to be even friends."
She paused; but Arthur could not reply. To deny was impossible, and he
had no wish to attempt to make excuses. She had shown him to himself, and
he could only echo her just scorn.
"As for waiting," she went on, "I am sure, from what you say, that if you
ever got back in the lofty place of a parasite living idly and foolishly
on what you abstracted from the labor of others, you'd forget me--just as
your rich friends have forgotten you." She laughed bitterly. "O Arthur,
Arthur, what a fraud you are! Here, I've been admiring your fine talk
about your being a laborer, about what you'd do if you ever got the
power. And it was all simply envy and jealousy and trying to make
yourself believe you weren't so low down in the social scale as you
thought you were. You're too fine a gentleman for Madelene Schulze,
Arthur. Wait till you get back your lost paradise; then take a wife who
gives her heart only where her vanity permits. You don't want _me_, and
I--don't want you!"
Her voice broke there. With a cry that might have been her name or just
an inarticulate call from his heart to hers, he caught her in his arms,
and she was sobbing against his shoulder. "You can't mean it, Madelene,"
he murmured, holding her tight and kissing her cheek, her hair, her ear.
"You don't mean it."
"Oh, yes, I do," she sobbed. "But--I love you, too."
"Then everything else will straighten out of itself. Help me, Madelene.
Help me to be what we both wish me to be--what I can't help being, with
you by my side."
When a vanity of superiority rests on what used to be, it dies much
harder than when it rests upon what is. But Arthur's self-infatuation,
based though it was on the "used-to-be," then and there crumbled and
vanished forever. Love cleared his sight in an instant, where reason
would have striven in vain against the stubborn prejudices of snobbism.
Madelene's instinct had searched out the false ring in his voice and
manner; it was again instinct that assured her all was now well. And she
straightway, and without hesitation from coquetry or doubt, gave herself
frankly to the happiness of the love that knows it is returned in kind
and in degree.
"Yes, everything else will come right," she said. "For you _are_
strong, Arthur."
"I shall be," was his reply, as he held her closer. "Do I not love a
woman who believes in me?"
"And who believes because she knows." She drew away to look at him. "You
_are_ like your father!" she exclaimed. "Oh, my dear, my love, how rich
he made you--and me!"
* * * * *
At breakfast, the next morning, he broke the news to his mother. Instead
of returning his serene and delighted look she kept her eyes on her plate
and was ominously silent. "When you are well acquainted with her, mother,
you'll love her," he said. He knew what she was thinking--Dr. Schulze's
"unorthodox" views, to put it gently; the notorious fact that his
daughters did not frown on them; the family's absolute lack of standing
from the point of view of reputable Saint X.
"Well," said his mother finally, and without looking at her big, handsome
son, "I suppose you're set on it."
"Set--that's precisely the word," replied Arthur. "We're only waiting for
your consent and her father's."
"_I_ ain't got anything to do with it," said she, with a pathetic
attempt at a smile. "Nor the old doctor, either, judging by the look of
the young lady's eyes and chin. I never thought you'd take to a
strong-minded woman."
"You wouldn't have her _weak_-minded, would you, mother?"
"There's something between."
"Yes," said he. "There's the woman whose mind is weak when it ought to be
strong, and strong when it ought to be weak. I decided for one like you,
mother dear--one that would cure me of foolishness and keep me cured."
"A female doctor!"
Arthur laughed. "And she's going to practice, mother. We shouldn't
have enough to live on with only what I'd make--or am likely to make
anyway soon."
Mrs. Ranger lifted her drooping head in sudden panic.
"Why, you'll live _here_, won't you?"
"Of course," replied Arthur, though, as a matter of fact, he hadn't
thought where they would live. He hastened to add, "Only we've got to
pay board."
"I guess we won't quarrel about that," said the old woman, so immensely
relieved that she was almost resigned to the prospect of a Schulze, a
strong-minded Schulze and a practicing female doctor, as a
daughter-in-law.
"Madelene is coming up to see you this morning," continued Arthur. "I
know you'll make her--welcome." This wistfully, for he was now awake to
the prejudices his mother must be fighting.
"I'll have the horses hitched up, and go and see her," said Ellen,
promptly. "She's a good girl. Nobody could ever say a word against her
character, and that's the main thing." She began to contrast Madelene and
Janet, and the situation brightened. At least, she was getting a
daughter-in-law whom she could feel at ease with, and for whom she could
have respect, possibly even liking of a certain reserved kind.
"I suggested that you'd come," Arthur was replying. "But Madelene said
she'd prefer to come to you. She thinks it's her place, whether it's
etiquette or not. We're not going to go in for etiquette--Madelene
and I."
Mrs. Ranger looked amused. This from the young man who had for years
been "picking" at her because she was unconventional! "People will
misunderstand you, mother," had been his oft-repeated polite phrase. She
couldn't resist a mild revenge. "People'll misunderstand, if she comes.
They'll think she's running after me."
Like all renegades, the renegades from the religion of conventionality
are happiest when they are showing their contempt for that before which
they once knelt. "Let 'em think," retorted Arthur cheerfully. "I'll
telephone her it's all right," he said, as he rose from the table, "and
she'll be up here about eleven."
And exactly at eleven she came, not a bit self-conscious or confused.
Mrs. Ranger looked up at her--she was more than a head the taller--and
found a pair of eyes she thought finest of all for their honesty
looking down into hers. "I reckon we've got--to kiss," said she, with a
nervous laugh.
"I reckon so," said Madelene, kissing her, and then, after a glance and
an irresistible smile, kissing her again. "You were awfully put out when
Arthur told you, weren't you?"
"Well, you know, the saying is 'A bad beginning makes a good ending,'"
said Ellen. "Since there was only Arthur left to me, I hadn't been
calculating on a daughter-in-law to come and take him away."
Madelene felt what lay behind that timid, subtle statement of the
case. Her face shadowed. She had been picturing a life, a home, with
just Arthur and herself; here was a far different prospect opening up.
But Mrs. Ranger was waiting, expectant; she must be answered. "I
couldn't take him away from you," Madelene said. "I'd only lose him
myself if I tried."
Tears came into Ellen's eyes and her hands clasped in her lap to steady
their trembling. "I know how it is," she said. "I'm an old woman,
and"--with an appeal for contradiction that went straight to Madelene's
heart--"I'm afraid I'd be in the way?"
"In the way!" cried Madelene. "Why, you're the only one that can teach me
how to take care of him. He says you've always taken care of him, and I
suppose he's too old now to learn how to look after himself."
"You wouldn't mind coming here to live?" asked Ellen humbly. She hardly
dared speak out thus plainly; but she felt that never again would there
be such a good chance of success.
It was full a minute before Madelene could trust her voice to make reply,
not because she hesitated to commit herself, but because she was moved to
the depths of her tender heart by this her first experience of about the
most tragic of the everyday tragedies in human life--a lone old woman
pleading with a young one for a little corner to sit in and wait for
death. "I wish it weren't quite such a grand house," she said at last
with a look at the old woman--how old she seemed just then!--a look that
was like light. "We're too poor to have the right to make any such start.
But, if you'd let me--if you're sure you wouldn't think me an
intruder--I'd be glad to come."
"Then that's settled," said Mrs. Ranger, with a deep sigh of relief.
But her head and her hands were still trembling from the nervous shock
of the suspense, the danger that she would be left childless and alone.
"We'll get along once you're used to the idea of having me about. I
know my place. I never was a great hand at meddling. You'll hardly know
I'm around."
Again Madelene had the choke in her throat, the ache at the heart. "But
you wouldn't throw the care of this house on my hands!" she exclaimed in
well-pretended dismay. "Oh, no, you've simply got to look after things!
Why, I was even counting on your helping me with my practice."
Ellen Ranger thrilled with a delight such as she had not had in many a
year--the matchless delight of a new interest. Her mother had been famous
throughout those regions in the pioneer days for skill at "yarbs" and at
nursing, and had taught her a great deal. But she had had small chance to
practice, she and her husband and her children being all and always so
healthy. All those years she had had to content herself with thinking and
talking of hypothetical cases and with commenting, usually rather
severely, upon the conduct of every case in the town of which she heard.
Now, in her old age, just as she was feeling that she had no longer an
excuse for being alive, here, into her very house, was coming a career
for her, and it the career of which she had always dreamed!
She forgot about the marriage and its problems, and plunged at once into
an exposition of her views of medicine--her hostility to the allopaths,
with their huge, fierce doses of dreadful poisons that had ruined most of
the teeth and stomachs in the town; her disdain of the homeopaths, with
their petty pills and their silly notion that the hair of the dog would
cure its bite. She was all for the medicine of nature and common sense;
and Madelene, able honestly to assent, rose in her esteem by leaps and
bounds. Before the end of that conversation Mrs. Ranger was convinced
that she had always believed the doctors should be women. "Who
understands a woman but a woman? Who understands a child but a woman? And
what's a man when he's sick but a child?" She was impatient for the
marriage. And when Madelene asked if she'd object to having a small
doctor's sign somewhere on the front fence, she looked astounded at the
question. "We must do better than that," she said. "I'll have you an
office--just two or three rooms--built down by the street so as to save
people coming clear up here. That'd lose you many a customer."
"Yes, it might lose us a good many," said Madelene, and you'd never have
thought the "us" deliberate.
That capped the climax. Mrs. Ranger was her new daughter's thenceforth.
And Madelene went away, if possible happier than when she and Arthur had
straightened it all out between themselves the night before. Had she not
lifted that fine old woman up from the grave upon which she was wearily
lying, waiting for death? Had she not made her happy by giving her
something to live for? Something to live for! "She looked years
younger immediately," thought Madelene. "That's the secret of
happiness--something to live for, something real and useful."
"I never thought you'd find anybody good enough for you," said Mrs.
Ranger to her son that evening. "But you have. She's got a heart and a
head both--and most of the women nowadays ain't got much of either."
And it was that night as Ellen was saying her prayers, that she asked God
to forgive her the sin of secret protest she had let live deep in a dark
corner of her heart--reproach of Hiram for having cut off their son. "It
was for the best," she said. "I see it now."