Part 14 (1/2)

”_If_ he did not kill Lot to say so!” repeated Madelon. ”_If_ he did not! You know he did not.”

”He would not tell me so,” said Dorothy, with her stubbornness of meekness, and her blue eyes met Madelon's, although there were tears welling up in them.

”Tell you so!” cried Madelon. ”What are you made of, Dorothy Fair?”

”He would not,” repeated Dorothy. ”If he _was_ innocent, why should he not have told me if he loved me?”

Madelon looked at her. ”You don't love him!” she cried out, sharply.

”You don't love him, and that's why. You don't love him, Dorothy Fair!”

Dorothy flushed red and drew herself up with gentle stiffness. ”You cannot expect me to unveil my heart to you,” said she.

”You have betrayed it,” persisted Madelon. ”You don't love him, Dorothy Fair! Shame on you, after all!”

”What right have you to say that?” demanded Dorothy, and this time with some show of anger.

”The right of another woman who does love him, and would save his life,” Madelon answered, fiercely. ”The right of a woman who can love more in an hour than such as you in a lifetime!”

”You--don't know--”

”I do know. You don't love him or you would not have distrusted him.

You would have made him tell you the truth. You would have flung your arms around him, and you would not have let him go until he told you.

Did you do that? Answer me: did you do that?”

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.

Chapter X

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 pa.s.s; 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. The wind blew from the icy northwest more frequently in fiercer gusts. Madelon Hautville sped along before it, her red cloak flying out like a flag, and took no thought of it at all. She was, while still in the flesh and upon the earth, so intensified in spirit that there existed for her consciousness neither heat nor cold. She reached the old road, the short-cut, stretched down through the stiff white woods to her own home; she hastened along it a little way, then she stopped and faced back and stood irresolute. The icy wind stiffened her face, but she did not note it. She looked back at the road with its blue snow-furrows stretching between the desolate woods, at the spires and roofs of the village beyond. If one followed that road to the village and took the first one upon the right, and travelled ten miles, one would come to the town of Kingston.

Madelon began moving along on the road to the village, vaguely at first, as if half in a dream, then with gathering purpose. Back she went, in her tracks, straight to the village and the tavern stable, and asked of Dexter Beers another horse to drive to Kingston. But he refused her, standing before her, blocking the stable door, looking aside with a kind of timid doggedness. ”Can't let ye have another horse to-day nohow,” said he; ”too cold to let 'em out.”

”I'll pay you well,” said Madelon.