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Jewel Weed

Page 95

"When we are married," Dick answered with silly masculine

self-consciousness.

"And that is to be soon!"

"As soon as I can manage it. I can't bear to have Lena living as she

does now; and there's no reason why we shouldn't cut it short."

"No reason at all. I don't wonder you feel so. Good-by, both of you."

Dick saw her to the door and Madeline walked out with her usual

deliberate serenity.

She found her way home with bottled-up emotions, as a hurt child holds

in the cry until he gets to the spot where mother's breast waits for the

inarticulate sobs. Everything she had done and said seemed to have been

the act of some far-away self, that had hardly any connection with the

real Madeline. The earth danced around her and she was incapable of real

thought. And yet the well-trained, automatic body that was her outer

shell conducted itself with reason. It even stopped in the living-room

to kiss her mother; it apparently skimmed a new copy of Life; it

convoyed her slowly up stairs to her own room, where it shut and locked

her door. But here her real self resumed control, as she threw herself

into an easy chair by the window and stared out at the desolation of

December where dead leaves went whirling in elfin eddying clouds.

For a few moments she let the solar system rock and reel around her, and

watched everything she had thought stable go up in smoke. Then upon the

world, swirling and pounding meaninglessly, there came an intense quiet.

She knew that the outer world was as serene as ever; but a great

throbbing pain within showed her that it was only her own little atom of

self that was revolutionized. Nature was not upset. There was still

order for her to hold fast to. For the first time she began to analyze

herself and her emotions.

She could not say that she had planned her future, but it had seemed so

natural and inevitable that she had accepted it without planning, almost

without thought. Dick and she had belonged to each other ever since they

could remember. At ten they had been outspoken lovers, and ever since

there had been that intimate comradeship that seemed to her to imply the

unspoken relation, behind, above, below. All this she had taken for

granted, like mother-love and her own dawning womanhood. And now Dick,

the chief corner-stone of her edifice, was torn away, and the whole airy

structure toppled and dissolved.

"I've been assuming all this," she said to herself, "and marriage isn't

a thing to take for granted. Shouldn't I have resented it if Dick had

appropriated me as though I belonged to him and had lost my freedom of

choice? I've been unfair to him. And now--if I should never marry--there

are surely plenty of good things left in the world. But are there?"

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