Chapter 29

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_ Chapter XXIX

As Burr and Madelon, setting forth on their wedding-journey, drove down the village street, they met many whom they knew; and had it not been for their self-engrossment they could not have failed to notice and wonder at the cold greetings they received, and the many averted faces which greeted them not at all.

Indeed, Burr did remark upon it when they met Daniel Plympton, who nodded with a surly air and turned his fat and pleasant countenance resolutely away, with a gesture that seemed to belie his own identity.

"What's come across Dan'l?" he said, laughing, for at that time coldness from the outside world seemed but provocative of amusement. Then he sang out gayly to the Morgan horse, and they flew along the road, under the outreaching branches, red and gold and russet, past old landmarks and houses and more familiar faces which bore strange looks towards them, and yet surprised them not, for a strangeness was over all the old sights and ways for them both. To the bride and groom, riding through the village where they had been born and bred, and whence all their earthly imaginations had sprung, came an experience like a resurrection. They saw it all: the paths their feet had trodden, the doors they had entered, the friends they had known from childhood, but all seemed no longer the same, since their own conditions of life had changed; and change in one's self is the vital spring of change in all besides.

As they rode along old associations lost their holds over them in their new world, which was the outcome of the old, and would in its turn wax old again. Burr looked at his own home, as he went by, as if he had never seen it; even his memory of himself and his childhood days was dim, and he and Madelon, glancing at Lot's windows and having his image forced, as it were, upon their consciousness, regarded it as they might have done an actor in some old drama of history in which they also had taken part, but which had long since passed off the stage.

They left the house behind and were swiftly out of sight, over the crest of a long hill with a great spread of golden maple branches closing after them like a curtain, and neither of them dreamed in what straits Lot Gordon lay behind his vacant windows--and all through this love and bliss and paradise of theirs.

The smart chaise and the Morgan horse had scarcely disappeared before Margaret Bean came hurriedly out of Lot Gordon's house and went rattling in her starched draperies towards the village; and soon after that the doctor was seen driving thither furiously in his tilting sulky, while windows were opened and spying heads thrust out all along his course.

An hour later everybody knew that Lot Gordon, some said by a fall in climbing over a stone wall, some said by a severe fit of coughing, had caused his old wound to beset him again with danger of his life. That night, indeed, the tide of rancorous gossip swelled high. The spirit of persecution and righteous retribution which finds easy birth in New England villages was fast getting to itself feet and hands and tongue and a whole body of active powers.

A stormy bridal night had Burr and Madelon known had they been at home; and had Lot Gordon died during the next three days, in which he lay in imminent danger, there had been fleet horses on the track of the swift Morgan, and the wedding-journey had come to a close.

Yet the Hautville men heard nothing of the bitterness which was gathering towards Madelon and Burr, for people, fearing their fierce tempers, hesitated until the time was come to disclose it to them. Even old Luke Basset dared not carry news to them. The tongues were always hushed when one of them drew near; and as for Eugene, who, having a wife, might perhaps have discovered it, he and Dorothy took the stage coach for Boston the day after the marriage, and were paying a visit at Dorothy's aunt's there.

After three days Lot Gordon was reported to be no longer hovering between life and death, and yet it was said on good authority, through the doctor's wife in fact, that he might at any time, by an injudicious step or a harder coughing-spell, end his life through the opening of that old wound, for which they held either Madelon or Burr, or perhaps both, accountable; and public indignation swelled higher and higher. It was resolved that when the bridal couple returned a constant espionage should be kept upon them, and in case of Lot's death active measures should be taken.

"We ain't goin' to have a man murdered to death in our midst by no French and Injuns nowadays and let it slide," proclaimed a fiery spirit in the store one night. Then when the door opened and Abner Hautville, dark and warlike in his carriage as any fighting chief, appeared, the man asked ostentatiously for a "quart of m'lasses, and not so black and gritty as the last was nuther," transferring the rancor in his tone to an inoffensive object with Machiavellian policy.

However, Margaret Bean's husband was in the store that night, and heard it all. He had been sent thither for a half-pound of ginger, and told not to linger; but linger he did, disposing his old bones with a stiff fling upon a handy half-barrel and listening to every word with a shrewd sense, for which no one would have given him credit, that he could by repetition and enlargement, if necessary, appease his wife's wrath at his delay. The workings of the human mind towards selfish ends even in the simplest organization have an art beyond all mechanism, and can astonish the wisest when revealed.

Nobody who saw old man Bean pottering homeward that night, his back bent with age, yet moving with a childlike shuffle, carrying his parcel of ginger with tight clutch lest he drop it, like one whose weariness of body must make up for feebleness of mind, dreamed what a diplomat he was in his humble walk of life, and what an adept still in doubles and turns and twists and dodges towards his own petty ends.

A sweeter morsel than any sugar old man Bean, overborne with a sense of naughtiness and disobedience, like a child, carried home to his wife to quiet her chiding tongue.

Hardly had he entered the door when he heard afar the swift rattle of her starched skirts, like a very warning note of hostility, and cut in ahead of her reproaches with a triumphant manner.

"Pretty doin's there's goin' to be," said he; "never was nothin' like it in this town. That's what I stayed for. Thought ye'd orter know."

"What do you mean?" asked Margaret Bean, staring.

"Ye know what the doctor says about _him_?" The old man jerked his head towards the door.

Margaret nodded.

"Well, they're goin' to have 'em both hung for murder the minute he draws his last breath."

"Can't till they're tried," said Margaret, with a sniff of scorn at her husband's lack of legal knowledge.

"Well, they're goin' to clap 'em into jail the minute they git home, an' keep 'em there till they can hang 'em," persisted old man Bean.

"They ain't."

"I tell ye they are!"

Old man Bean had a cup of tea, plentifully sweetened with molasses, made from the ginger which he had purchased, and went to bed happy and peaceful, as one who has worked innocently and well his small powers to his own advantage; and soon after that Lot also heard the news which he had brought.

Margaret Bean said to herself that it was her duty; and her duty, and a great devouring thirst of curiosity, overcame her natural fear of injuring the sick man.

Lot Gordon was still in bed, but propped up on pillows, with a candle on the stand at his side, reading one of his leather-covered books. Margaret Bean shrank back when she had delivered herself of her news, for the flash in Lot's eyes was like lightning; and she waited in trembling certainty as for thunder.

"I tell ye 'tis a lie!" cried Lot Gordon. "Do ye hear, 'tis a lie! Go yourself and tell them so from me. The wound has naught to do with this. It was naught but a scratch, for I had not courage enough to strike deep, much as I wanted to be quit of the world and the fools in it. Go you down to the store and tell the gossips that have no affairs of their own, and must needs pry on their neighbors so. Dare any one of them to turn knife on his own flesh for the first time and strike deeper! The next time I'll do better. Tell them so! The fools! Sodom and Gomorrah, and fire from Heaven for wickedness! Lord, why not fire from Heaven for damned foolishness, that does more harm to the world than the shattering of all the commandments into stone-dust!"

"I felt that 'twas my duty to let you know, sir," stammered Margaret Bean, backing farther and farther away from him.

"Tell the fools that I say, and I'll swear to it, and so will the doctor swear, that 'twas not the wound that has been my ailment, but my cursed lungs; but if 'twas 'twould be naught to them, for I struck the blow myself. I tell you that neither the one nor the other of them struck the blow--it was I. Do you hear? It was I!"

"Yes, sir," said Margaret Bean, trembling, her eyes big, her white face elongated in her starched cap ruffles.

"Go to bed!" said Lot, savagely, and the old woman scuttled out, glad to be gone.

Never before had Lot addressed her so. "I believe he did do it himself," she told her husband next morning, for she could not wake him to intelligence that night; "he's jest ugly 'nough to."

The next day at early dawn Lot's bell, which was kept on his stand beside the bed, in case he should be worse in the night and need assistance, tinkled sharply.

"Send your husband after the doctor," Lot ordered, peremptorily, when Margaret answered it; and presently early risers saw old man Bean advancing in a rapid shuffle towards the doctor's, and soon the doctor himself whirled past, his back bent to the rapid motion of his gig. The report that Lot Gordon was worse went through the village like wildfire. A crowd collected in the store as soon as the shutters were down; there was a knot of men before the lawyer's office waiting for him to come; and several hot-headed young fellows pressed into the stable and urged upon Silas Beers that he should keep the old white racer in readiness for an emergency that day, and also several others which, if not as fleet, had good staying powers.

When the doctor entered Lot Gordon's chamber Margaret Bean followed, tremblingly officious, in his wake, with a bowl and spoon in hand.

"I want to see the doctor alone," said Lot; and the old woman retreated before his coldly imperious order. "Stay out in the kitchen," ordered Lot, further, "and don't come through the entry; I shall hear you if you do."

"Yes, sir," replied Margaret Bean, and obeyed, nor dared listen at the door, as was her wont, so terrified was she lest Lot could indeed hear and had heard in times past.

The doctor, redolent of herbs and drugs, set his medicine-chest on the floor, and advanced upon Lot, who waved him back with a half-laugh.

"Lord, let's have none of that nonsense this morning," he said. "Sit down; I want to talk to you."

The doctor was gray and unshaven and haggard as ever, from a midnight vigil, the crumbs of his hasty breakfast were on his waistcoat; his eyes were bright as steel under heavy, frowning brows.

"Are ye worse? Has it come on again?" he demanded.

"No; sit down."

The doctor snatched up his medicine-chest with a surly exclamation.

"Where are you going?" asked Lot.

"Back to my breakfast. I'll not be called out for nothing by you or any other man after I've been out all night. If you want a gossip, get the parson; he's got time enough on his hands. A man don't have to work so many hours a day saving souls as he does saving bodies."

Lot laughed. "And neither souls nor bodies saved by either of you, after all," said he, "for the Lord saves the one, if he has so ordained it; and as for the other, your nostrums only work so long as death does not choose to come."

"Have it your own way; save your own soul and your own body, as ye please, for all me," said the doctor, who was adjudged capable when crossed of being surly to a dying man; and he made for the door.

"For God's sake stop," cried Lot, "and come back here and listen! I did not call you for nothing. The lives and deaths of more than one are at stake; come back here!"

The doctor clamped his medicine-chest hard on the floor. "Be quick about it, then," said he, and sat down in a chair at Lot's bedside.

Lot fumbled under his pillow and produced a folded paper which he handed to the doctor. "I want you to sign this," said he.

The doctor scowled over the paper, got out his iron-bowed spectacles, adjusted them, and read aloud:

"I, Justinus Emmons, practising doctor of medicine, do hereby declare that the death of Lot Gordon of Ware Centre will, when it takes place, be due to phthisis, and phthisis alone, and not in any degree, however small, to the wound inflicted by himself some months since. And, furthermore, I declare that his death will follow from the natural progress of the disease of phthisis, which has not in any respect been accelerated by his self-inflicted wound."

"You want me to sign this, do you?" said the doctor.

"I will call in Margaret Bean and her husband for witnesses," said Lot.

"You think I am going to sign this?"

"I want it in addition to the certificate of the cause of death which you will have to make out after my decease. 'Tis an unnecessary formality, but I would have it so," Lot returned.

The doctor dashed the paper on the bed. "If you think I am going to subscribe to a lie for you, or any other man, you're mistaken," he cried. "It was enough for me to hold my tongue when you made that fool statement of yours that wouldn't have deceived a man with the brains of an ox."

"My death will be due to phthisis; my left lung is almost consumed, and you know it," affirmed Lot.

"And I tell you," said the doctor, stoutly, "that your death from phthisis might not have occurred for ten years to come. Does a tree die because half its boughs are gone? When you die, you die of that wound. The evil was greater than I thought at the time. It takes less to kill a diseased man than a sound one."

"Then my death will be due to my disease and not to my wound, if it would not have killed a sound man," cried Lot, eagerly.

"I tell you, your death will be due to that wound that Madelon Hautville, with maybe your cousin at her back, gave you."

Lot's face glared white at the doctor. "I gave the wound to myself!"

The doctor laughed.

"I tell you, I gave the wound myself!"

"Take your wound into court, and see what they say."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll give any man who will stab himself in just the same place, with the knife held in just the same way, every dollar I have in the world."

"You can't prove it."

"I can prove it."

"I can do away with your proof," said Lot, in a strange voice. The doctor looked at him sharply.

"Then you will not sign this paper?" Lot said, presently.

"No, I will not; and I tell you, once for all, when you die I make out my certificate as it should be."

"How?"

"By a wound from a knife or other sharp instrument, inflicted by a person or persons unknown."

Lot's face, towards the doctor, looked as if death had already struck it; but he spoke firmly. "How long will it be, first?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Approximate."

"A false step may do it."

"I can lie still!"

"A coughing-spell may do it."

"I will not cough!"

"More than that, a thought may do it, if it stirs your heart too much. I tell you as I should want to be told myself: your life hangs by a thread."

"Sometimes a thread does not break," Lot said, with a meditative light in his eyes.

"That's true enough."

"This may not."

"True enough."

"How long will you give it to last, before you sign this paper?"

"A year."

"Then you will sign this if I live a year from to-day?"

"No, I will not sign it, for you may have another stab on New-year's day, if you seem likely to live so long," said the doctor, shortly; "but I will promise you not to make out your certificate of death from this wound."

"How great a chance of life have I?" Lot asked, hoarsely, after a minute's pause.

"Small."

"Yet there is one?"

"Yes."

The doctor opened his chest, and began selecting some bottles.

"I want no more of your nostrums," said Lot.

"Very well," said the doctor, replacing the bottles. "I would not make out that certificate sooner than necessary--that is all."

"Dose death and go to the root of the matter," said Lot. "Then you won't sign this paper?"

"No," replied the doctor, with a great emphasis of negation.

"There is one thing you will do," said he.

"What?" asked the doctor, suspiciously.

"If I die within a year, to your truest belief, from any other cause than this wound now in my side you will say so."

"Of course I will do that," replied the doctor, staring at him.

"And you will in such a case let this wound drop into oblivion, you will hold your peace concerning it, 'forever after?'"

"Of course I will."

"Swear to it?"

"I swear. But what in--"

Lot smiled. "Some time, when you have leisure, write a treatise on 'Who killed the man?'" he said, as if to turn the subject, "and keep going back to first causes. You'll find startling results; you may decide that 'twas your duty to sign the paper."

"I have no time for treatises," returned the doctor, gruffly.

"You may trace the killing back to yourself."

"I'm not afraid of it. Good-day."

"Shake hands with me, doctor," pleaded Lot, with a curious change of tone, "to show you bear no grudge for the breakfast you lost."

The doctor stared a second, then went up to him with extended hand, looking at him seriously. He thought Lot's illness had begun to affect his mind.

"Keep yourself quiet, and you may outlive the best of us," he said, soothingly, as if to a child or a woman, shook Lot's lean hand kindly, repeated his good-day, and was gone.

Lot waited until he heard the outer door close. Then he tinkled his bell for Margaret Bean. "When are they coming home?" he asked, shortly, when she stood beside him.

"His mother said she was expectin' of 'em Saturday."

"Get my clothes out of the closet, will you," said Lot.

"You ain't a-goin' to get up?"

"Yes, I'm better; get the clothes."

When Margaret Bean had laid the clothes out ready for him, and was gone, Lot laid still a moment, reflecting, with his eyes on the ceiling. He wished to cough, but with an effort he checked it, gasping once or twice. "Saturday," he said, aloud. "To-day is Wednesday--three days. Can I wait?" He paused; then as if answering another self, he said, "No; I could die a thousand deaths in that time. I can't wait."

Lot Gordon got up, moving by inches, with infinite care and pains, dressed himself, crawled out of his bedroom into his library, which was adjoining, and sat down at his desk. Margaret Bean came timidly to the door, and inquired if he did not want some breakfast. She had to repeat her query three times, he was writing so busily, and then he answered her "no" as if his thoughts were elsewhere. The old woman hungrily eyed the paper upon which he was scribbling, and went away with lingering backward glances.

Lot Gordon, bending painfully over his desk, using his quill pen, with wary motions of hand and wrist alone, that he might not jar his wounded side, wrote a letter to the bride upon her wedding-journey.

"Madelon," wrote Lot, "I pray you to pardon what I have done, and what I am about to do. The danger of blood-guiltiness and death have I brought upon you, and I now save you in the only way I know. I pray you, when you read this, and know what I have done, that you think of me with what charity you may, and that the love which caused the deed may be its saving grace."

Lot sat looking at what he had written for a moment, then tore it up, and wrote again:

"Madelon,--Alive I claimed nothing, dead I claim your memory, for the sake of the love for which I died."

And, after a moment, tore up that also.

And then he wrote again, with quivering lips, yet breathing guardedly:

"Madelon,--The love that was set betwixt man and woman that the race might not die is one love, but there is another. That have I found and found through you, and bless you for it, though death be needful to its keeping. There is another birth than that of the flesh, through this so great love, which can upon itself beget immortality of love unto the understanding of all which is above. A greater end of love than the life of worlds there is, which is love itself. That end have I attained through this great love in my own soul which you have shown me, else should I have never known it there, and died so, having lived to myself alone, and been no true lover.

"Lot Gordon."

And hesitated, reading it over; but at length tore that into shreds, and wrote yet again:

"Dear Child,--I pray you when I am gone that you wear the pretty gowns and the trinkets which I offered you once, for I would fain give you for your happiness more than my poor life."

Tears of self-pity fell from Lot's eyes as he wrote the last; then he laughed scornfully at himself, and tore that up. "Self dies hard," said he.

He wrote no more to Madelon, but now to Burr:

"Dear Cousin," he wrote, "I have this day discovered that my life is in imminent danger from the wound. If my death comes in that wise there will be trouble. I take the only way to save her, but I pray you, upon your honor, that you do not let her know, for even your love cannot sweeten her life fully for her if she knows; for love has taught me the heart of this woman. To you alone, for the sake of the honor of our blood, which has never been shed by our own hands before, I disclose this; for I would be set right in the eyes of one man when I am dead."

Lot Gordon pondered long over that; but finally tore up that as he had torn the others, and gathered up all the fragments and crawled across the room with them, and threw them on the hearthfire.

Then, leaving them blazing there, he returned to his desk, and wrote:

"_To all whom it may concern, or to all whom in their own estimation it may concern, this:_

"I, Lot Gordon, of Ware Centre, being weary of life, which is a dream, have resolved to force the waking. Having once before attempted in vain to take my life, I now attempt it again, and this time not in vain, for my hand has grown skilful with practice. I take my life because of no wrong done me by man or woman, nor because of any vain love; I take it solely because my days upon this earth being numbered through my distress of the lungs, I have not the courage to see death approach by inches, and prefer to meet him at one bound. I have lived unto myself, with no man accountable, and I die unto myself, with no man accountable; and this is the truth with my last breath.

"Lot Gordon."

This last Lot folded neatly and addressed it "To my fellow-townsmen," and laid it in a conspicuous place on his desk, and then wrote on another sheet and put that in his pocket. Then he opened a drawer of the desk, and took out all the trinkets which he had offered Madelon, in their pretty cases, and with them in his hands crept out of the room, and up-stairs, into the chamber which he had caused to be decked out so newly and grandly when he had thought to marry her. There was a great carven chest in a corner of the room, which Lot unlocked, and took from thence all those rich fabrics which he had bought for Madelon. And then he laid them all--the silken stuffs and plumes and fine linens and jewels--out on the great bed, under the grand canopy, and placed on the top the sheet of paper on which he had last written, "For Madelon Gordon."

Margaret Bean had listened when Lot climbed the stairs. She heard him when he came down again, entered his library, and shut the door. She waited a long time. For some reason which she did not herself know she felt cold with terror. She would not let her husband leave her alone in the kitchen for a moment. At last, when it was nearly noon, she bade him keep close at her heels, and went to the library door and knocked, and when no answer came, knocked again and again and again, louder and louder and louder. Then she made her husband open the door, with fierce urgings, and peered around his shoulder into the room. Then she gave one great shriek, and caught the old man by the arm with a frantic clutch, and was out of the house with him and screaming up the street.

Saturday morning Burr and Madelon came riding into the village. As they passed up the street everybody whom they met saluted them with a manner which had in it something respectful, apologetic, and solemn. The lovers felt no wonder at such return of cordiality, seeing in everything but reflections of their own moods, and knew not what it meant until they reached home.

Then Elvira Gordon, meeting them at the door, told them that Lot was dead by his own hand, by a knife-thrust which crossed the old wound in his side; and she dwelt upon the reason for his deed: that he had been slowly dying from the disease of his lungs, and had not the courage to die by inches, which reason now all the town believed, since the doctor had said no word in contradiction, and never would, being mindful of his oath.

Madelon listened, white and still, saying not a word; and she said nothing when, up in their chamber, whither she went to take off her bonnet, Burr, who had followed, took her in his arms, and they stood together, looking at each other and trembling. Knowing not, and never to know, the whole which he had done for them, they yet knew enough. Suddenly, in the light of their own love another greater showed revealed; and each exalted the image of Lot Gordon above the other, and was acquaint with the spirit of what he had written and kept back; for love that so outspeeds self and death needs no speech nor written sign to prove its being.

[THE END]
Mary E Wilkins Freeman's Book: Madelon: A Novel

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