“Stop,” cried Ezra, and this time there was a ring of anger in his voice. “Even you may presume too far. Do not again speak that name to me.”
There is something untamed and untameable in the Russian nature which now and then comes to the surface and drives an excited Muscovite into acts seemingly at variance with the highly cultivated standard to which he aspires. The phenomenon may by the learned be attributed to a sudden reversion to the ancestral Asiatic savage. Madame was at this moment rapidly going back to the state of furious anger, when all sense of dignity would be lost. She was reverting to the Asiatic. And under the influence of her passion her physical appearance changed, her eyes became narrow slanting openings emitting sparks of steel-blue flame, her full red lips were drawn tightly over her teeth. She hissed out her words.
“Does her image still come between us?”
“It does come between us,” said Ezra looking almost as white as she did. “Her image will always come between me and every other woman on the whole earth, blotting out every other image and making me only hers. Oh, Olive! Oh, my wife!”
He gave a great sob of agony.
“Besotted fool!” burst from Madame’s colourless lips, “do you hold this language to me? You scorn me and my love! Then on your own head be the consequences. Ah, now nothing shall stop me. An angel from heaven, no, nor God Himself shall stand between me and my revenge. Ezra Weston, farewell!”
She left the room, shutting the door upon him and his misery. Unhappy man! His world seemed crumbling beneath his feet. He had lost his wife, and now his friend, the one whom he most revered, had cast him out from her regard. What could he do? His heart answered, nothing but dumbly suffer in the deserted home where he was left alone. What a black and barren waste was his life! And how fair and smiling it had looked a few short weeks ago! It was as if a devastating fire had passed over him leaving his heart like the desolated prairie, black and hopeless.
Madame went away alone for one day, no one knew whither, and came back with a look on her face that struck terror into all who saw her. Her smooth white face looked cruel and pitiless, and the gleam from her eyes reminded one of cold steel. Her soft hands sometimes closed on their own pink palms with a spasmodic clutch, as if she had the throat of an enemy between their cruel grasp and was crushing the life out of him. A cold dreadful face, a cruel sickening look that made Napoleon Pompey and Uncle David shiver within their souls, and caused the brethren to draw away affrighted from their once beloved leader. Perfection City was the abode of wretchedness. The Academy never opened its doors to the assembled Pioneers, who were afraid to come near Madame’s house. Each lived by himself, looking askance at his neighbour, for over all had fallen a spirit of suspicion. Only Brother Huntley, the deaf brother, and his mute wife were happy, working on contentedly, shielded by their misfortune from the full knowledge of the disasters that had come upon the Community.
The days dragged miserably by, seemingly endowed with a miraculous length of hours, for the sufferings of a life-time were compressed into that hideous fortnight. The glaring sun blazing down upon the blackened prairie seemed to Ezra to have become no unfitting symbol of hell. The light was hateful, darkness, eternal darkness would have been a relief to his brain. Could it be possible that he was going to live his life out in a realized purgatory? He was young, only twenty-five, and if his life was to stretch even to the average span of human existence, what an eternity of suffering lay before him! A brokenhearted man amid the ruins of his broken life.
It was on one of these days of utter black despair, like the days that had gone before and the days that were still to come, that the same ragged negro boy on the straggly Indian pony, who once before had made his appearance at Perfection City, was seen skulking around the old land near Weddell’s Gully. He seemed to want to see without being seen. By and bye Napoleon Pompey chanced that way and of course pounced upon him with the universal query of “whar he gwine?” The boy after some hesitation made it clear that he had come on a secret mission. He wanted to find Uncle David without being seen by anyone else, especially not by the white-faced lady, Madame, of whom he stood in shivering dread. Napoleon Pompey, sympathising with the dread, volunteered to take a letter to Uncle David without fear of detection. Thereupon the darkie delivered over to him a scrap of newspaper upon which was written a scrawl with the burnt end of a stick, and having done so galloped off on his straggly pony with a whoop of delight, as one who had escaped dreadful peril. Napoleon Pompey, finding it difficult to deliver his embassy to Uncle David undetected, gave the curious missive to Ezra with intimations that it was to be put into Uncle David’s hands right away.