— 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-rushing, 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
245
