Madelon Part 32

"You are--free," said Lot.

Chapter XXII

That year, spring seemed to break over the village in a day, like a green flood. All at once people's thoughts were interrupted, and their eyes turned from selfish joys or pains by the emerald flash of fields and hill-sides in the morning sun, and the white flutter of flowering boughs past their windows like the festal garments of unexpected guests.

The first week in May, the cherry-trees were in blossom, and the alders and shad bushes were white in the borders of the woods against the filmy green of the birches. The young women got out their summer muslins, and trimmed their bonnets anew; their faces, all unknown to themselves, took on a new meaning of the spring, like new flowers, and the young men looked after them as they pa.s.sed as if they were strangers in the village.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, in the first week of May, Eugene Hautville strolled across-lots over to the village. Through the fields north of the Hautville place there was an old foot-path to the former site of an old homestead, long ago burned to the ground and its ashes dissipated on winds long died away. The oldest inhabitants in the village barely remembered the house that used to stand there.

The slant of its roof crossed their minds dimly when they spoke of it: they could not agree as to whether it had faced north or south.

It might have seemed almost fabulous, had it not been for the thicket of old lilacs purpling with bloom every spring, which had first grown before its windows, and the perennial houseleek which had cl.u.s.tered round the door.

Then, too, east of where the house had stood there was an old apple orchard, the trees thereof bent to the ground like distorted old men, and, when spring came, bearing scarcely one bough of pink bloom, among others s.h.a.ggy with gray moss like the beard of age.

Then, also, the lane still remained which had stretched, in days gone by, from the northward of the old house to the highway. The lane had divided the fields of the old landowners, and had been the thoroughfare for the dwellers in the house when they went to meeting and to mill.

The Hautvilles often used it in the summer-time for a short-cut to the village. Eugene went along this foot-path, which was in its way a little humble track of history of simple village life, pa.s.sed the site of the house, and then struck into the lane. It stretched before him like a shaft of green light. The afternoon sun shone through young willow-leaves, transparent like green gla.s.s. Low overhead hung rosy ta.s.sels from out-reaching boughs of maples. Between the trees, the flowering alders seemed gleaming out of sight before him like the white skirts of maidens. Here and there the ground was blue with violets. Eugene picked some half mechanically, as he went along, and made a little nosegay, with some sprigs of alder. He was half through the lane, and had just emerged from a clump of alders, when he saw Dorothy Fair coming. She gave a start when she saw him appear with a great jostling of white branches, and made as if she would have fled; then she held up her head with gentle dignity and advanced, lifting her lady-skirts with dainty fingers on either side. Mistress Dorothy, being weary of fine needle-work upon her bridal linen, had come out a little way to take the air, and naturally enough had chosen for her walk this sweet lane, which opened upon the highway a stone's-throw below her house.

If Eugene Hautville, at sight of her, felt a quaking of his spirit, and would also fain have fled, he made no sign, but walked on proudly like a prince, with a bold yet graceful swing of his stalwart shoulders. And when he and Dorothy met, he bowed low before her, and she courtesied and he bade her good-day quite clearly, and she murmured a response with pretty, prim lips; and they would have pa.s.sed on had not both, as if constrained by hands of force upon their necks, raised their faces and looked of a sudden into each other eyes with that same old look which they had exchanged in the meeting-house long ago.

Dorothy Fair wore on that day a thin wool gown of a mottled blue color like a dapple of spring violets. It was laid across her bosom in smooth plaits, and showed at the throat her finely wrought lace kerchief. The sun was so warm that she had put on her white straw hat with blue ribbons, and her soft curls flowed from under it to her blue belt ribbon. She wore, too, her little black-silk ap.r.o.n, cunningly worked in the corners with flowers in colored silks.

Dorothy looked up in Eugene Hautville's face, and he looked down at her, for a force against which they had come into the world unarmed constrained them. Then she bent her head before him until he could see nothing but the white slant of her hat, and caught at her silk ap.r.o.n as if she would hide her face with that also.

Eugene stood still looking at her, his face radiant and glowing red.

"Dorothy!" he stammered, and then Dorothy straightened herself suddenly, though she kept her face averted, flung up her head, caught up her blue skirts again, and made as if she would pa.s.s on without another word. Eugene, with his face all at once white, and his head proudly raise, stood aside to let her pa.s.s. "'Tis a warm day for the season," he said, with his old graceful courtesy. But Dorothy looked up at him again as she neared him in pa.s.sing, and her sweet mouth was quivering like a frightened baby's, and the tears were in her blue eyes, and no man who loved her could have let her go by; and certainly not this fiery young Eugene. Suddenly, and with seemingly no more involvement of wills or ethics than the alders in their blossoming, the two were in each other's arms, and their lips were meeting in kisses.

This fair and demure daughter of Puritans might well, as she stood there in her lover's embrace, being already, as she was, the betrothed bride of another, have been accounted fickle and false, but perhaps in a sense she was not. Never had she forgot or been untrue to her first love-dreams, which Eugene had caused, but had held to them with that mild negative obstinacy of her nature which she could not herself overcome. Now it was to her as if she were reconciled to her true lover, and was faithful instead of false; and less false she surely was to her own self.

Right contentedly had she loved for a time Burr's love for her and his tenderness, and had been stirred thereby to pa.s.sion, but now she loved this other man for something better than her own sweet image in his eyes.

Never a word she said, but her hat slipped down on her shoulders, hanging by its blue strings, and she let her head lie on Eugene's shoulder, with a strange sense of wontedness and of remembering something which had never been.

And, also, all Eugene's fond words in her ear seemed to her like the strains of old songs which were past her memory. Burr's, although she had listened happily, had never seemed to her like that.

They stood together so for a few minutes, while the alder-flowers shook out sweetness, as from perfumed garments, at their side, and a bee who had left his hive and winter honey, and made that day another surprise of spring, hummed from one white raceme to another and then was away, disappearing in the blue air with a last gleam of filmy wing as behind a sapphire wall.

Neither of the lovers had knowingly heard the bee's hum, but when it ceased the silence seemed to make an accusing sense audible to them.

They let each other go and stood apart guiltily, as if some one had entered the lane and was spying upon them.

Dorothy spoke first, without raising her pale little face, all drooped round with her curls. "What shall I do?" she said, like a child. She was trembling, and could scarcely control her tongue.

Eugene made no reply. He stood looking moodily at the ground, where his nosegay of violets and alders was all scattered and trampled.

Suddenly he had the feeling as of a thief in another man's garden, and a shame before Dorothy herself came over him. Eugene Hautville's principles of honor, in spite of his fiery nature, read like a primer, with no subtleties of evasion therein. Here was another man's betrothed, and he had wooed her away! He had kissed her lips, which were vowed to another. He had wronged her and Burr Gordon also.

Strangely enough, Dorothy's own responsibility never occurred to him at all; he never dreamed of blaming her for falsity either to himself or Burr. That little fair trembling creature, clad like a violet in her mottled blue, seemed to him at once above and below all questions of personal agency. She bloomed like a flower in her garden, infinitely finer than those who wrangled around her and strove to gather her, and yet in a measure helpless before them.

In a moment Dorothy answered her question negatively herself: "I will not marry Burr," she said, without raising her head, and yet with that tone of voice which accompanies a lift of chin and stiffening of the neck muscles.

Eugene looked at her, and extended his arms as if he would take her to him again; then drew them back. "I do not know what to counsel you," he said, slowly. Then his eyes fell before the sudden shame and distress in Dorothy's.

"You do not know what do counsel me!" she cried. "Then you do not--care--" Tears rolled over her cheeks, and Eugene gathered her into his arms again, and laid his cheek against her fair head, and soothed her as he would have soothed a child. "There, there," he whispered, "it is not that, it is not that, sweet. I would die for you, I love you so! It is not that, but you are the promised wife of another man. How can I turn a thief even for you, Dorothy? How can I bid you be false, and forswear yourself? There's honor as well as love, child."

"But love is honor," said Dorothy.

"Not for a man," said Eugene.

Then she clung to him softly and modestly, and sobbed, and he kissed her hair and whispered in one breath that she was all his own, and in another that he knew not what to do, and was near distracted between his love and his sense of honor, until Dorothy said something which set him pleading for his rival whether he would or no, for the sake of stern justice.

"I am afraid of him, I am afraid of Burr," Dorothy whispered in his ear. "How could I have married him, when I was so afraid, even if you had not come?"

"Afraid?"

"_You--know--what--they said--Burr did!_"

Eugene held her away from him by her slender arms, and looked at her.

"You did not believe that?"

"He would not tell me he was innocent, even when I begged him so."

"You knew he was."

"Why did he not tell me, when I begged him so?" she said, and the soft unyielding in her tone was absolute.

"Dorothy!"

"I am so afraid--you don't know," she whispered, piteously.

"But--you know Burr was cleared."

"Yes, I know, but even now he will not tell me on the Bible, as I asked him, that he is innocent."

"Dorothy, he _is_ innocent," Eugene said, with solemn and bitter emphasis of which she knew not the full meaning.

"Then why does he not swear that he is, to me?" Back went Dorothy always, in all reasoning, to the starting-point in her own mind.

"I tell you he is, child. It has been proven so."

"Then why--" Dorothy began, but Eugene interrupted her in her circle.

"There is no more cause for you to fear him than me," he said almost harshly, in his stern resolve to be just. Then Dorothy turned on him with sudden pa.s.sion. "I am afraid," she cried out, "I shall always be afraid; even if he were to swear to me now that he is innocent, I shall always be afraid, for I coupled him with that awful deed once in my thoughts, and I cannot separate him from it forever. He will always hold the knife in his hand; even if it were not for you, I should be near mad with fear. I bid black Phyllis stay by the door when he comes."

"Dorothy!"

"Yes, I do. What my mind has once laid hold of, that it will not let go. I cannot separate him from my old thought of him. I have tried to be faithful, and true, but even had he sworn to me that he was innocent, the fear would have remained. Save me from him--oh, Eugene, save me!"

But Eugene put her quite away from him, and looked at her almost sternly. His honor held the reins now in good earnest. The suspicion of Madelon, which he had never owned to himself, became a certainty.