A great wave of red crept over Dorothy’s face,
but she replied, with cold dignity: “I
throw my arms around no man unbidden!”
“Unbidden!” repeated Madelon, and scorn
seemed to sound in her voice like the lash of a whip.
She flung out the reins over the horse’s back,
and they slipped along swiftly over the icy crust,
and not another word did she speak to Dorothy Fair
all the way home.
When they entered Parson Fair’s south yard there
was a swift disappearance of a dark face from a window,
and the door was flung open, and the grimly faithful
servant-woman came forth and lifted Dorothy out of
the sleigh, crooning the while in tender and angry
gutturals. Poor Dorothy Fair shook like a white
flower in a wind, for beside the rigor of the cold,
which seemed to pierce her very soul, the chill of
fever was still upon her. She chattered helplessly
when she tried to speak, and there were sobs in her
throat. The black woman half carried her into
the house, and up-stairs to her own chamber, where
the hearth-fire was blazing bright. She covered
her up warm in bed, with a hot brick at her feet,
and dosed her with warm herb drinks, and coddled her,
until, after some piteous weeping, she fell asleep.
But for Madelon Hautville there was no rest and no
sleep. She felt not the cold, and if she had
fever in her veins the fierce disregard of her straining
spirit was beyond it. No knowledge of her body
at all had Madelon Hautville, no knowledge of anything
on earth except her one aim—to save her
lover’s life. She was nothing but a purpose
concentrated upon one end; there was in her that great
impetus of the human will which is above all the swift
forces of the world when once it is aroused.
She unharnessed the horse quickly from the parson’s
sleigh, and led him, restive again at the near prospect
of his stall and feed, back to the tavern stable,
paid for him, and struck out on the homeward road,
straight and swift as one of her Indian ancestors.
A group of men in the stable door stood aside with
curious alacrity to let her pass; they stared after
her, then at each other.
“I swan!” said one.
“Wouldn’t like to be in the way when that
gal was headed anywheres,” said another.
“If that gal belonged to me I’d get her
some stronger bits,” said the man who had been
cleaning the bay horse when Madelon came for the white.
“I believe she’s lost her mind,”
said the tavern-keeper. “It’s the
last time I’ll ever let her have a horse, and
I told her so.” There came a blast of
northwest wind which buffeted them about their faces
and chests like an icy flail, and they scattered before
it, some to their duties in the stable, some into
the warm tavern for a mug of something hot to do away
with the chill. It was too cold a day to gossip
in a doorway. It was not long past noon, but the
cold had seemed to strengthen as the sun rode higher.
