Part 30 (1/2)
She stopped--and Madison raised his head, and his face was strained as with some sudden wonder as he looked at her.
”It is a glad story,” she said presently. ”It--it is my story.”
”You mean”--Madison's voice was hoa.r.s.e--”you mean that you've turned--_straight_!”
”They love me here,” she said. ”They trust me and they think me good--as they are. All think me that--the little children and this dear man here--and for a little while, since I have been here, I have lived like that. They made me believe that it was true--_true_. And there was shame and agony--and hope. It seemed they could not all be wrong, and I have asked and prayed that I might make it true always--and--and forgiveness for what I was.”
”You mean,” he said again hoa.r.s.ely, and he stepped toward her now, ”you mean that you are--_straight_!”
She did not answer--only now she turned her face toward him and lifted up her head.
And for a long minute Madison gazed into the tear-splashed eyes, deep, brave in chastened wistfulness, gazed--and like a man stunned walked from the room, the cottage, and out across the lawn.
--XX--
TO THE VICTOR ARE THE SPOILS
Many were still about the lawn as he left the cottage--they were all about him, those sick, half frantic creatures--and still they made noises; still some of them cried and sobbed; still in their waning paroxysms they moved hither and thither. They appealed to some numbed, dormant sense in Madison, in a subconscious way, as things to be avoided. And so, almost mechanically, he took the little path that, striking off at right angles to the wagon track where it joined the Patriarch's lawn, came out again upon the main road at the further end of the village.
And, as he walked, like tidal waves on-rus.h.i.+ng, emotions, utterly at variance one with another, hurled themselves upon him, and he was swept from his mental balance, tossed here and there, rolled gasping, strangling in the chaos and turmoil of the waters, as it were, and, rising, was hurled back again.
White as death itself was Madison's face; and at times his fingers with a twitching movement curled into clenched fists, at times his open palms sought his temples in a queer wriggling way and pressed upon them.
Doubt, anger, fear, a rage unhallowed--in cycles--buffeted him until his brain reeled, and he was as a man distraught.
It began at the beginning, that cycle, and dragged him along--and left him like one swooning, tottering, upon the edge of a precipice. And then it began over again.
And it began always with a picture of the Roost that night--the vicious, unkempt, ragged figure of the Flopper--the sickly, thin, greedy face of Pale Face Harry, the drug fiend, winching a little as he plunged the needle into his flesh--the easy, unprincipled gaiety and eagerness of Helena for the new path of crime--crime--crime--the Roost exuded crime--filth--immorality--typified them, framed them well as they had sat there, the four of them, while that bruised-nosed bouncer had brought them drink on his rattling tin tray. And then his own self-satisfied, smug, complacent egotism at his own cleverness, his unbounded confidence in his own ability to pull off the game, and--
Well, he had pulled it off--he'd won it--won it--won it--everybody had fallen for it--the b.o.o.bs had been plentiful--the harvest rich. What was the matter with him! He'd won--was winning every time the clock ticked.
Somebody back there was probably throwing good hard coin at him this minute--the d.a.m.ned fool! Madison threw back his head to laugh in derision, for there was mocking, contemptuous laughter in his soul--but the laugh died still-born upon his lips.
It was fear now--fear--staggering, appalling him. He was facing something--_something_--his brain did not seem to define it--something that was cold and stern and immutable, that was omnipotent, that embodied awe--a condemnation unalterable, unchangeable, before which he shrank back with his soul afraid. Before him seemed to unfold itself the wagon track, the road to the Patriarch's cottage; and he was there again, and whispering lips were around him, and men and women and children were there, and in front of them, leading them, slithered that twisted, misshapen, formless thing--and now they were upon the lawn, and about him everywhere, everywhere, everywhere was a sea of white faces out of which the eyes burned like living coals. What power was this that, loosed, had stricken them to palsied, moaning things!
Madison s.h.i.+vered a little--and a sweat bead oozed out and glistened upon his forehead. Hark--what was that! Clarionlike, clear as the chimes of a silver bell, rang now that childish voice--rang out, and rang out again--and the crutch was gone--and the lame boy ran, ran--_ran_! And who was that, that stood before him now--that golden-haired woman beside an empty wheel-chair, whose face was radiant, who cried aloud that she was _cured_! And who were these others of later days, this motley crowd of old and young, that pa.s.sed before him in procession, that cried out the same words that golden-haired woman by the wheel-chair had cried--and cried out: ”Faith! Faith! Faith!”
Madison swept the sweat bead from his forehead with a trembling hand. It was a lie--a lie--a lie! He had taught them to say that--but it was all bunk--and all were fools! He could laugh at them, jeer at them, mock at them, deride them--they were his playthings--and faith was his plaything--and he could laugh at them all!
And again he raised his head to laugh; and again the laugh was choked in his throat, still-born--_Helena was straight_! To his temples went his twitching hands. Anger raged upon him--and died in fear. Anger, for the instant maddening him, that he should lose her; rage in ungovernable fury that the game, his plans, the h.o.a.rd acc.u.mulated, was bursting like a bubble before his eyes--died in fear. No, no; he had not meant to laugh or mock--no, no; not that, not that! What was this loosed t.i.tanic power that had done these things--that had brought this change in Helena; that had brought a change in the Flopper, transforming the miserable, pitiful, whining thief into a man reaching out for decent things; that had wrought at least a physical metamorphosis in Pale Face Harry--that had transfigured those three who, in their ugly, abandoned natures then, had hung like vultures on his words in the Roost that night! What was this power that he was trifling with, that brought him now this cold, dead fear before which he quailed! What was this _something_ that in his temerity he had dared invoke--that rose now engulfing him, a puny maggot--that s.n.a.t.c.hed him up and flung him headlong, shackled, before this nebulous, terrifying tribunal, where out of nothingness, out of a void, the calm, majestic features of the Patriarch took form and changed, and changed, and kept changing, and grew implacable, set with the stamp of doom. What was it--in G.o.d's name, what was it brought these sweat beads bursting to his forehead! Was he going mad--was he mad already!
And then the cycle again--doubt, anger, fear--until his brain, exhausted, seemed to refuse its functions; and it was as though, heavy, oppressing, a dense fog shut down upon his mind and enveloped it; and now he walked as a man in great haste, hurrying, and now his pace was slow, uncertain.
And so he went on, following the little path that bordered the woods on one hand and the fields on the other; went on until he neared the village--and then he stopped suddenly, and turned about. Some one had called his name.
From the field, a man climbed over the fence and came toward him. The man's face was tanned and rugged, his form erect, and the sleeves rolled back above the elbows displayed browned and muscular forearms. Madison stared at the man apathetically. This was the farm of course where Pale Face Harry boarded, and this was Pale Face Harry--but--