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.