Eugene left the road after he had cleared the village,
and struck off across the fields for a long tramp
through snowy solitudes as well known to him as, and
better suited to him for perplexed thoughts than,
any place in his home. In a way, out-doors was
the truest home of all these Hautvilles, with the
strain of wild nomadic blood in their veins.
The sight of the little fireless dwellings of woodland
things, the empty nests revealed on the naked trees,
the scattered berries on leafless bushes, the winter
larders of birds, the tiny track of a wild hare or
a partridge in the snow, disturbed less the current
of their inmost life, as being more the wonted surroundings
of their existence, than all the sounds and sights
and savors within four domestic walls.
Eugene tramped on for miles over paths well known
to him, which were hidden now beneath the snow, pondering
upon himself and Dorothy Fair, and never gave his
sister, whose guardian he had been, another thought.
Madelon, half an hour after Eugene had left, put on
her cloak and hood, and went down the road to Lot
Gordon’s. “I want to see him a minute,”
she said to Margaret Bean when the woman answered her
knock, and went in with no more ado. Her face
was white and stern in the shadow of her hood.
Margaret Bean recoiled a little when she looked at
her. “He’s up,” said she, backing
before her, half as if she were afraid. “I
guess you can walk right in.”
Madelon went into the sitting-room, and Lot’s
face confronted her at once, white and peaked, with
hollow blue eyes lit, as of old, with a mocking intelligence
of life.
He was sunken amid multifold wrappings in a great
chair before the fire, with a great leathern-bound
book on his knees. Beside him was a little stand
with writing-paper thereon, and sealing-wax and a
candle, a quill pen and an inkstand. All the room
was lined with books, and was full of the musty smell
of them.
Madelon went straight up to Lot and spoke out with
no word of greeting. “I have sent your
answer,” said she. “I will keep my
promise, but have you thought well of what you do,
Lot Gordon?”
Lot looked up at her and smiled, and the smile gave
a curiously gentle look to his face, in spite of the
sharp light in his eyes.
“The thought has been my meat and my drink,
my medicine and my breath of life,” said he.
“If I were a man I would rather—take
a snake to my breast than a woman who held me as one—”
“Two parallel lines can sooner meet than a woman
know the heart of a man. What do I care so I
hold you to mine?”
Madelon stood farther away from him, but her eyes
did not fall before his.
“Why did you lie” said she. “You
knew I stabbed you, and not yourself. You are
a liar, Lot Gordon.”
But Lot still smiled as he answered her. “However
it may be with other men, no happening has come to
me since I set foot upon this earth that I brought
not upon myself by my own deeds. The hand that
set the knife in my side was my own, and I have not
lied.”
