Madelon Part 27

Burr went back up-stairs to his cold chamber, and watched for Madelon to come out of Lot's house. It seemed to him she was there an eternity, but in reality it was only a half-hour.

She had found Lot sitting as usual before the fire with a leather-covered volume on his knees. "I have come," she said, standing just inside the door; then she started at the look he gave her. There was a significance in it which she could not understand.

He did not say a word for full five minutes while she waited. He did not even ask her to be seated. "Do you know the date?" he asked then, harshly. There was no hint of roses and honey in his speech and manner to offend her like his letter.

"Yes, I do."

"You know the month is up on Monday?"

"I am not likely to forget."

"True," said Lot; "it is the last thing a girl will forget--the day set for her happy marriage." He laughed.

Madelon's face contracted. She set her mouth harder, and looked straight at Lot. "When you have done laughing," said she, "will you tell me what you want of me? I have to go home and get dinner."

Lot still looked at her with his mocking smile. "I wished to inquire if you are ready to become my bride on Monday," said he.

"Yes, I am ready. Is that all?"

"I wished also to inquire if you have any plans concerning the ceremony which you would like carried out."

"I have none."

"Then will it suit you to come here on Monday at two o'clock in the afternoon, since the doctor tells me I shall scarcely be able to go out myself, and be united to me by Parson Fair?"

"I am ready to carry out any plans you may make."

"Your father and your brothers and my cousin Burr and his mother will, of course, be present at our wedding," said Lot, with wary eyes upon her face.

Madelon looked at him as proudly as ever. "Very well," said she. She waited a minute longer; then she laid her hand on the doorlatch.

"Wait a minute!" Lot cried. He looked at her hesitatingly. A flush crept over his white face. "Madelon," he began; then his cough interrupted him. He tried to force it back with fierce swallowings, but had to yield. He bent over double, and shook with rattling volleys. Madelon waited, her eyes averted, without a sign of pity.

The near approach of her wedding-day caused a revolt of her whole maiden soul towards him so intense that it was as a contraction of the muscles. She was utterly hard to his suffering. At last he raised himself, panting, and cast a pale look around at her.

"Well, what do you want?" she said.

He motioned feebly towards is desk on the other side of the room.

"Top drawer," he whispered, hoa.r.s.ely; "left-hand corner--find--leather case--bring to me."

Madelon crossed the room to the desk, opened the drawer, found the leather case, and carried it to Lot. "Here," said she.

"Open it," Lot whispered.

Madelon pressed the spring in the case, and held it out open towards Lot without a glance at its contents.

"Look," he said.

Madelon glanced at the little gold watch, curled round with a long gold chain, which the case contained, and continued to hold it out towards Lot. "I've looked," said she. "Here, take it; I must go home."

"Oh, Madelon, it's for you."

"I don't want it."

"Take it--Madelon, won't you have it? I got it for you."

"No, I don't want it. Shall I put it back in the drawer?"

"Don't you think it's a pretty watch?"

"Yes. Shall I put it back?"

"You haven't any watch, Madelon."

"I don't want one." Madelon closed the case impatiently, and turned away.

"Oh, Madelon, won't you take it?" Lot begged, piteously.

"I told you no--I do not care for it." Madelon put the case back in the desk drawer. Then she drew her cloak together, and went to the door again.

"Oh," said Lot Gordon, weakly, in his hoa.r.s.e voice, "the hardest thing in the whole world for Love to bruise himself against is the tender heart of a woman, when 'tis not inclined his way."

"Good-bye," said Madelon, and shut the door behind her fiercely. That last speech of Lot's, which, like many of his speeches, seemed to her no human vernacular, added terror to her aversion of him. "He's more like a book than a man," she had often thought, and the fancy seized her now that the great leather-bound book upon his knees, and all those leather-bound books against his walls, had somehow possessed him with an uncanny life of their own.

And she may have been in a measure right, for Lot Gordon, during his whole life, had dealt indirectly with human hearts through their translations in his beloved books rather than with the beating hearts of men and women around him. Still, although he spoke like one who learns a language from books instead of the familiar converse of people, and his thoughts clothed themselves in images which those about him disdained and threw off as impeding their hard race of life, poor Lot Gordon's heart beat in time with the hearts of his kind. But that Madelon could not know because hers was so set against it.

She hurried out of the house and the yard, dreading again lest she should encounter Burr. But her haste was of no avail, for he came straight down his opposite terraces, and met her when she reached the road.

She would have pushed past then, but he stood squarely before her.

"Madelon, can't I speak with you a minute?" he pleaded. Madelon saw, without seeming to look, that Burr's handsome face was white as death and haggard.

"Are you sick?" she asked, suddenly. "Why do you look so? What is the matter with you?" and she put a half-bitter, half-anxiously compa.s.sionate weight upon the _you_.

"I believe I am going mad," Burr groaned, with the quick grasp of a man at the pity of the woman he loves. "Oh, Madelon!" He held out his hands towards her like a child, but she stood back from him, and looked straight at him with sharp questioning in her eyes.

"Do you mean--" she began; then stopped, and questioned him with her eyes again. She was seized with the belief, which filled her at once with agony and an impulse of fierce protection like that of a mother defending her young with her own wounded bosom, that Burr had had a falling out with Dorothy.

"Oh, Madelon!" Burr said again, and then he could say no more for very shame and honor. He had run out, indeed, in a half-frenzy.

"She _shall_ not play you false!" Madelon cried out. "Dorothy Fair _shall_ keep her word with you."

Burr looked at her, bewildered.

"Marry her at once," Madelon cried, with a quick rush of her words--"at once. Do you hear me, Burr Gordon? It's all the way to do with a girl like that. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, I hear you," Burr said, slowly, as if he were stunned.

"Dorothy Fair _shall_ keep her promise to you--I will make her. She shall marry you whenever you say. I will go this very day and see her."