The weeks went past, and the Sunday before the day set for her
wedding came again. She had seen Lot but three times in the interval.
He had sent for her, and she had gone obediently, and remained a
short time, pleading her work as an excuse to return home. Lot had
not sought to detain her; he had vexed her with no vain appeals, but
treated her with a sort of sad deference which would have perplexed
her had she cared enough for him to dwell upon it.
Lot was said to be in no better health. He did not stir abroad on
those warm spring days. Once he had put on his great-coat, and was
for setting foot on the springing grass in the sunny yard, but
Margaret Bean had remarked to him how she had heard, whilst
purchasing a bit of cheese in the store, a man say that he guessed
Lot Gordon wasn't much worse, only afraid of a wife that could use a
knife. Margaret Bean had shaken in her starched petticoats as she
said it, not knowing how the news might affect her master towards the
monger of it; but she was disposed to risk a little rather than have
a mistress over her.
Lot said nothing in response about the matter, but pulled off his
great-coat and sank into his chair with a fit of coughing, and
declared he felt not well enough to go out that day.
That last Sunday Madelon went to him without being summoned, in the
early evening after supper. On her last visit, the week before, he
had asked her, and she had promised to come.
The frogs were calling across the meadows as she went along; there
was a young moon shining with frequent silvery glances through the
budding trees, which tossed athwart it like foam, and the mists
curled along the horizon distances. Madelon, moving along, was as the
ghost of one who had belonged to the spring, as a part of its radiant
hope and stir of life and youth in days past, but was now done with
it forever. The spring sounds and sights, and all its sweet
influence, seemed to tear her heart anew with memories of the visions
of fair futures which she had forfeited. The loss of the sweet dreams
which the spring awakens in the human heart is not one of the least
losses of life. Though the spring be unfulfilled, it sweetens the
year.
Just before Madelon reached Lot Gordon's house, she met Burr going to
court Dorothy. They were to be married in two weeks more. Madelon and
Burr exchanged a murmur of salutations and passed each other.
Madelon went directly into Lot's house, to his sitting-room, as she
was used to do lately, and found Lot standing in the midst of the
room, waiting for her, with a lighted candle in his hand.
"I heard your footstep when you came through that open space, where
the road has a hollow echo," he said; "and I have been waiting for
you ever since."
"You could not hear me; it is a half-mile away," said Madelon.
"A half-mile! what's a hundred miles when 'tis the heart that
listens, and not the ears? Come; I have something I want to show
you."
Lot led the way and Madelon followed out of the room across the front
entry, with its spiral of stair mounting its landscape-papered
height, and Lot opened the door of the opposite room, the great north
parlor. "Wait here a minute," he said to Madelon, and she waited in
the entry after he entered until he called her to follow.
Lot had lighted every candle in the great branching candelabra upon
the shelf, and the room was full of light. Madelon looked about her,
and even her despairing calm was stirred a little. Never had she seen
or dreamed of a room like this. She grasped no details; her
bewildered eyes saw them all melting into each other, combining newly
and vanishing like kaleidoscopic pictures--folds and gleaming
stretches of crimson damask and velvet, the dark polish of precious
woods, spots and arabesques of gold and the satin shimmer of
wall-paper, lights and shades of steel engravings, and elegant and
graceful lady-treasures of gilded books and work-boxes and vases on
shelf and tables. There was even a little piano, the only one in the
village, with slender, fluted legs, and a mother-of-pearl garland
over the key-board.
"I have had this all newly furnished for you. I hope it may please
you," said Lot; and he looked at Madelon with hollow, wistful eyes.
That brought her to herself. "It is very pretty," she replied, and
turned away.
Lot sighed. "Well, I have something more to show you," said he, and
went forlornly before her, stooping weakly and coughing now and then,
into the great middle room of the house, which was fitted up with
carven oak which Governor Winthrop might have used. Here, too, Lot
lighted all the branches of the candelabra on the shelf; and the
great buffet directly responded with the dazzling white glitter of
silver from the cream-jugs and ewers and spoons thereon.
Then Lot threw open the fine carved doors of the cupboard, and the
shelves were covered with precious blue china, brought from over
seas, and wine-glasses like bubbles of crystal, and decanters as
graceful as plumes.
"Do you like it, Madelon?" Lot asked; and Madelon replied, as before,
that it was pretty.
Lot showed Madelon all the wealth of his house before they returned
to the sitting-room. Much had been there from his father's day, but
much had been added to please this bride, who looked at it more
coldly and with less part in it than she would have looked at the
treasures in a merchant's windows. She saw, unmoved by any pride of
possession, great canopied bedsteads, and chests of drawers whose
carven tops reached the ceiling, and mirrors in gilded frames. She
saw marvellous stores of linen damask napery in such delicate and
graceful designs, from foreign looms, as she had never dreamed. She
saw an India shawl, and lengths of silk and satin and velvet, and
turned away from it all to the obstinate contemplation and endurance
of her own misery.
At last Lot led the way back to the sitting-room. He set the candle
on the shelf, and gave a strange, beseeching glance around the room
at his books. It was as if he besought, with the irrationality of
grief, those only friends he fairly knew for help and sympathy.
Then he turned to Madelon and laid a hand on each of her shoulders,
and looked at her. "No, there is no need now," he said, when she
would have shrunk away from him; and something in his voice hushed
her, and she stood still.
"Madelon," said Lot Gordon, "tell me true, as before God. You are a
woman, and always, I have heard, a woman takes comfort and pleasure
in life with such gear as I have shown you, alone, even if she has
little else. Would not all this give you some little happiness, even
as my wife, Madelon?"
Madelon looked at Lot and hesitated. She had a feeling that her word
of reply would stab him more cruelly than her knife had done.
"Madelon, tell me!"
"Will you have the truth?"
Lot nodded.
"No, Lot."
"Madelon, I can buy you more than all this. Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Lot gave a great sigh. "Dearly bought possessions are worse than
poverty, you hold," said he. "Then, Madelon, there is no sweetening
in all this for your bondage?"
She shook her head. "I shall do my duty, as I have promised," she
said. "All this is useless. Let me go, Lot."
"Madelon!"
She looked up in his face, and a strange awe came over her at the
look in it. A more secret lurking-place than any of the little wild
things that he loved to discover had the self in Lot Gordon, and
Madelon saw it for the first time, and perhaps he, also.
"True love exists not unless it can do away with the desire of
possession. I love you, Madelon," said Lot; and then he let go of her
shoulders and went over to the mantel-shelf, and leaned against it,
with his head bent.
Madelon, all bewildered and trembling, stared at him.
"I--don't think I know what you mean," she gasped out, finally.
"You are--free," said Lot.