When he went at last late for his supper, Madelon,
as he expected, noticed him only by an angry flash
of her black eyes, under drooping lids. She said
not one word to him, and as the days went on treated
him coldly; and yet she did not give to the matter
its full seriousness of meaning.
Madelon, well acquainted with Eugene’s caressing
manner, thought simply that, seeing poor Dorothy’s
alarm, he had striven to soothe her with endearments
and assurance that he would not hurt her, as he would
have done with a child. As for Dorothy, Madelon
credited her with the soft spirit which she knew she
possessed. She scorned them both, and felt as
jealous for Burr’s sake as he himself could have
done, that other hands than his had touched his bride’s;
and yet she did not dream of the full significance
of it all.
She wrought a marvellous garland of red roses on Dorothy
Fair’s green silk, and scarcely left herself
time to sleep that she might complete that and her
stint of household linen. She had nothing to add
to her own wedding-garments.
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.
