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Page 21
"Is Madeline married?"
Good God! Would she never speak!
"No," she answered, with a falling inflection.
His heart, which had stopped beating, sent a flood of blood through every
artery. But she had spoken as if it were the worst of news, instead of
good. Ah! could it be? In all his thoughts, in all his dreams by night or
day, he had never thought, he had never dreamed of that.
"Is she dead?" he asked, slowly, with difficulty, his will stamping the
shuddering thought into words, as the steel die stamps coins from strips
of metal.
"No," she replied again, with the same ill-boding tone.
"In God's name, what is it?" he cried, springing to his feet. Laura
looked out at the window so that she might not meet his eye as she
answered, in a barely audible voice--
"There was a scandal, and he deserted her; and afterward--only last
week--she ran away, nobody knows where, but they think to Boston."
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon when Henry heard the fate of
Madeline. By four o'clock he was on his way back to Boston. The
expression of his face as he sits in the car is not that which might be
expected under the circumstances. It is not that of a man crushed by a
hopeless calamity, but rather of one sorely stricken indeed, but still
resolute, supported by some strong determination which is not without
hope.
Before leaving Newville he called on Mrs. Brand, who still lived in the
same house. His interview with her was very painful. The sight of him set
her into vehement weeping, and it was long before he could get her to
talk. In the injustice of her sorrow, she reproached him almost bitterly
for not marrying Madeline, instead of going off and leaving her a victim
to Cordis. It was rather hard for him to be reproached in this way, but
he did not think of saying anything in self-justification. He was ready
to take blame upon himself.' He remembered no more now how she had
rejected, rebuffed, and dismissed him. He told himself that he had
cruelly deserted her, and hung his head before the mother's reproaches.
The room in which they sat was the same in which he had waited that
morning of the picnic, while in his presence she had put the finishing
touches to her toilet. There, above the table, hung against the wall the
selfsame mirror that on that morning had given back the picture of a girl
in white, with crimson braid about her neck and wrists, and a red feather
in the hat so jauntily perched above the low forehead--altogether a
maiden exceedingly to be desired. Perhaps, somewhere, she was standing
before a mirror at that moment. But what sort of a flush is it upon her
cheeks? What sort of a look is it in her eyes? What is this fell shadow
that has passed upon her face?
By the time Henry was ready to leave the poor mother had ceased her
upbraidings, and had yielded quite to the sense of a sympathy, founded in
a loss as great as her own, which his presence gave her. Re was the only
one in all the world from whom she could have accepted sympathy, and in
her lonely desolation it was very sweet. And at the last, when, as he was
about to go, her grief burst forth afresh, he put his arm around her and
drew her head to his shoulder, and tenderly soothed her, and stroked the
thin grey hair, till at last the long, shuddering sobs grew a little
calmer. It was natural that he should be the one to comfort her. It was
his privilege. In the adoption of sorrow, and not of joy, he had taken
this mother of his love to be his mother.
"Don't give her up," he said. "I will find her if she is alive."
CHAPTER VII.
A search, continued unintermittingly for a week among the hotels and
lodging-houses of Boston, proved finally successful. He found her. As she
opened the door of the miserable apartment which she occupied, and saw
who it was that had knocked, the hard, unbeautiful red of shame covered
her face. She would have closed the door against him, had he not quickly
stepped within. Her eyelids fluttered a moment, and then she met his gaze
with a look of reckless hardihood. Still holding the door half open, she
said--
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