The Light of the Western Stars by Zane Grey
XXIII. The Light of Western Stars
Blinded, like a wild creature, Madeline Hammond ran to her room. Shefelt as if a stroke of lightning had shattered the shadowy substance ofthe dream she had made of real life. The wonder of Danny Mains's story,the strange regret with which she had realized her injustice to Stewart,the astounding secret as revealed by Padre Marcos--these were forgottenin the sudden consciousness of her own love.
Madeline fled as if pursued. With trembling hands she locked the doors,drew the blinds of the windows that opened on the porch, pushed chairsaside so that she could pace the length of her room. She was now alone,and she walked with soft, hurried, uneven steps. She could be herselfhere; she needed no mask; the long habit of serenely hiding the truthfrom the world and from herself could be broken. The seclusion of herdarkened chamber made possible that betrayal of herself to which she wasimpelled.
She paused in her swift pacing to and fro. She liberated the thoughtthat knocked at the gates of her mind. With quivering lips she whisperedit. Then she spoke aloud:
"I will say it--hear it. I--I love him!"
"I love him!" she repeated the astounding truth, but she doubted heridentity.
"Am I still Madeline Hammond? What has happened? Who am I?" She stoodwhere the light from one unclosed window fell upon her image in themirror. "Who is this woman?"
She expected to see a familiar, dignified person, a quiet, unruffledfigure, a tranquil face with dark, proud eyes and calm, proud lips. No,she did not see Madeline Hammond. She did not see any one she knew. Wereher eyes, like her heart, playing her false? The figure before herwas instinct with pulsating life. The hands she saw, clasped together,pressed deep into a swelling bosom that heaved with each panting breath.The face she saw--white, rapt, strangely glowing, with parted, quiveringlips, with great, staring, tragic eyes--this could not be MadelineHammond's face.
Yet as she looked she knew no fancy could really deceive her, that shewas only Madeline Hammond come at last to the end of brooding dreams.She swiftly realized the change in her, divined its cause and meaning,accepted it as inevitable, and straightway fell back again into the moodof bewildering amaze.
Calmness was unattainable. The surprise absorbed her. She could not goback to count the innumerable, imperceptible steps of her undoing. Herold power of reflecting, analyzing, even thinking at all, seemed to havevanished in a pulse-stirring sense of one new emotion. She only feltall her instinctive outward action that was a physical relief, all herinvoluntary inner strife that was maddening, yet unutterably sweet; andthey seemed to be just one bewildering effect of surprise.
In a nature like hers, where strength of feeling had long been inhibitedas a matter of training, such a transforming surprise as suddenconsciousness of passionate love required time for its awakening, timefor its sway.
By and by that last enlightening moment came, and Madeline Hammond facednot only the love in her heart, but the thought of the man she loved.
Suddenly, as she raged, something in her--this dauntless newpersonality--took arms against indictment of Gene Stewart. Her mindwhirled about him and his life. She saw him drunk, brutal; she saw himabandoned, lost. Then out of the picture she had of him thus slowly grewone of a different man--weak, sick, changed by shock, growing strong,strangely, spiritually altered, silent, lonely like an eagle, secretive,tireless, faithful, soft as a woman, hard as iron to endure, and at thelast noble.
She softened. In a flash her complex mood changed to one wherein shethought of the truth, the beauty, the wonder of Stewart's uplifting.Humbly she trusted that she had helped him to climb. That influencehad been the best she had ever exerted. It had wrought magic in her owncharacter. By it she had reached some higher, nobler plane of trust inman. She had received infinitely more than she had given.
Her swiftly flying memory seemed to assort a vast mine of treasuresof the past. Of that letter Stewart had written to her brother shesaw vivid words. But ah! she had known, and if it had not made anydifference then, now it made all in the world. She recalled how herloosened hair had blown across his lips that night he had ridden downfrom the mountains carrying her in his arms. She recalled the strangejoy of pride in Stewart's eyes when he had suddenly come upon herdressed to receive her Eastern guests in the white gown with the redroses at her breast.
Swiftly as they had come these dreamful memories departed. There wasto be no rest for her mind. All she had thought and felt seemed only topresage a tumult.
Heedless, desperate, she cast off the last remnant of self-control,turned from the old proud, pale, cold, self-contained ghost of herselfto face this strange, strong, passionate woman. Then, with hands pressedto her beating heart, with eyes shut, she listened to the ringingtrip-hammer voice of circumstance, of truth, of fatality. The wholestory was revealed, simple enough in the sum of its complicated details,strange and beautiful in part, remorseless in its proof of great loveon Stewart's side, in dreaming blindness on her own, and, from the firstfatal moment to the last, prophetic of tragedy.
Madeline, like a prisoner in a cell, began again to pace to and fro.
"Oh, it is all terrible!" she cried. "I am his wife. His wife! Thatmeeting with him--the marriage--then his fall, his love, his rise,his silence, his pride! And I can never be anything to him. Could I beanything to him? I, Madeline Hammond? But I am his wife, and I love him!His wife! I am the wife of a cowboy! That might be undone. Can my lovebe undone? Ah, do I want anything undone? He is gone. Gone! Could hehave meant--I will not, dare not think of that. He will come back. No,he never will come back. Oh, what shall I do?"
*****
For Madeline Hammond the days following that storm of feeling wereleaden-footed, endless, hopeless--a long succession of weary hours,sleepless hours, passionate hours, all haunted by a fear slowly growinginto torture, a fear that Stewart had crossed the border to invite thebullet which would give her freedom. The day came when she knew thisto be true. The spiritual tidings reached her, not subtly as so manydivinations had come, but in a clear, vital flash of certainty. Then shesuffered. She burned inwardly, and the nature of that deep fire showedthrough her eyes. She kept to herself, waiting, waiting for her fears tobe confirmed.
At times she broke out in wrath at the circumstances she had failed tocontrol, at herself, at Stewart.
"He might have learned from Ambrose!" she exclaimed, sick with abitterness she knew was not consistent with her pride. She recalledChristine's trenchant exposition of Ambrose's wooing: "He tell me helove me; he kees me; he hug me; he put me on his horse; he ride awaywith me; he marry me."
Then in the next breath Madeline denied this insistent clamoring ofa love that was gradually breaking her spirit. Like a somber shadowremorse followed her, shading blacker. She had been blind to a man'shonesty, manliness, uprightness, faith, and striving. She had been deadto love, to nobility that she had herself created. Padre Marcos's grave,wise words returned to haunt her. She fought her bitterness, scorned herintelligence, hated her pride, and, weakening, gave up more and more toa yearning, hopeless hope.
She had shunned the light of the stars as she had violently dismissedevery hinting suggestive memory of Stewart's kisses. But one night shewent deliberately to her window. There they shone. Her stars! Beautiful,passionless as always, but strangely closer, warmer, speaking a kinderlanguage, helpful as they had never been, teaching her now that regretwas futile, revealing to her in their one grand, blazing task thesupreme duty of life--to be true.
Those shining stars made her yield. She whispered to them that they hadclaimed her--the West claimed her--Stewart claimed her forever, whetherhe lived or died. She gave up to her love. And it was as if he was therein person, dark-faced, fire-eyed, violent in his action, crushing her tohis breast in that farewell moment, kissing her with one burning kiss ofpassion, then with cold, terrible lips of renunciation.
"I am your wife!" she whispered to him. In that moment, throbbing,exalted, quivering in her first sweet, tumultuous surrender to love, shewould have
*****
And on the morning of the next day, when Madeline went out upon theporch, Stillwell, haggard and stern, with a husky, incoherent word,handed her a message from El Cajon. She read:
El Capitan Stewart captured by rebel soldiers in fight at Agua Prietayesterday. He was a sharpshooter in the Federal ranks. Sentenced todeath Thursday at sunset.