Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Madelon

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The women sat with their mitted hands folded on their silken laps,
their best brooches pinning decorously their fine-wrought
neckerchiefs, their bosoms filled with sober knowledge and patient
acquiescence. The young girls sat among them very still, with the
stillness of unrest, like birds who alight only to fly, their soft
cheeks burning, their necks and arms showing rosy through their
laces, their little clasped fingers full of pulses, and their hearts
tumultuous and stirred to imagination by the sweet surmise and
ignorance of love. They looked seldom at the young men, and the young
men at them, as they sat waiting. Still there were some who had
learned in city schools the suavities which cover like clothes the
primal emotions of life, and they moved about with exchanges of fine
courtesies, while the others looked at them wondering.

When the tall clock in the south room struck eight, there was a hush
among these few who had learned to flock gracefully, chattering like
birds, bearing always the same aspect to one another, without regard
to selfish joys or pains. The lawyer's wife, in a grand gown and
topknot of feathers, which she was said to have worn to a great party
at the governor's house in Boston, composed to majestic approval her
handsome florid face, and stood back with a white-gloved hand on an
arm of each of her daughters, slender and pretty, and unshrinkingly
radiant in the faces of the doctor's college-bred son and his
visiting classmate. The doctor's wife, also, who had come of a grand
family, and appeared always on festive occasions in some
well-preserved splendor of her maiden days, which had been prolonged,
drew back, spreading out with both hands a vast expanse of purple
velvet skirt. She quite eclipsed as with a murky purple cloud the two
meek elderly women and a timid young girl who sat behind her. They
immediately peered around her sumptuous folds with anxious eyes lest
they might lose sight of the bridal party; but the bridal party did
not come.

A passageway was left quite clear to the space between the windows on
the west side of the room, where it was whispered the bride and groom
were to stand, and the people all pressed back towards the walls; but
no one came. A little hum of wondering conversation rose and fell
again at fancied stirs of entrance. Folk hushed and nudged each other
a dozen times, and craned their necks, and the clock struck the
half-hour, and the bridal party had not come.

In a great chair near the clear space between the windows sat the
bridegroom's mother, with a large pearl brooch gleaming out of the
black satin folds on her bosom. Her face, between long lace lappets,
looked as clearly pallid and passively reflective as the pearls. Not
a muscle stirred about her calm mouth and the smooth triangle of
forehead between her curtain slants of gray hair. If she speculated
deeply within herself, and was agitated over the delay, not a
restless glance of her steadily mild eyes betrayed it.

People wondered a little that she should not be busied about the
bridal preparations, instead of waiting there like any other guest;
but it was said that Dorothy had refused absolutely to have any
helping hands but those of her old black slave woman about her. It
was known, too, that Dorothy had only once taken tea with Burr's
mother since the engagement, and everybody speculated as to how they
would get on together. Dorothy had, in truth, received the rigorously
courteous overtures of her future mother with the polite offishness
of a scared but well-trained child, and the proud elder woman had not
increased them.

"When she comes here to live I shall do my duty by her, but I shall
not force myself upon her," she told Burr. Burr's mother had not seen
any of the dainty bridal gewgaws, but that she kept to herself.
People glanced frequently at her with questioning eyes as the time
went on; but she sat there with the gleam of her personality as
unchanged in her face as the gleam of the pearls on her bosom.

"Catch her looking flustered!" one woman whispered to another. After
the clock struck nine a long breath seemed to be drawn simultaneously
by the company; it was quite audible. Then came a sharp hissing
whisper of wonder and consternation; then a hush, and all faces
turned towards the door. Burr Gordon, his face stern and white, stood
there looking across at his mother. She rose at once and went to him
with a stately glide, and they disappeared amid a distinct buzz of
curiosity that could no longer be restrained.

"They've gone into the parson's study," whispered one to another.
Some reported, upon the good authority of a neighbor's imagination,
that Parson Fair had "fallen down dead;" some that Dorothy had
fainted away; some that the black woman had killed her and her
father.

Meanwhile, Burr and his mother went into Parson Fair's study. There
stood the minister by his desk, with his proudly gentle brow all
furrowed, and his fine, long scholar-fingers clutching nervously at
the back of his arm-chair. He cast one glance around as the door
opened and shut, then looked away, then commanded himself with an
effort, and stepped forward and bowed courteously to the woman in her
black satin and pearls. Elvira Gordon looked from one to the other,
and the two men followed her glances, and each waited for the other
to speak.

"Where is she?" she asked, finally.

"She is up in her chamber," replied Parson Fair, in a voice more
strained with his own anxiety than it had ever been in the pulpit
over the sins of his fellow-men. "I know not what to say or do--I
never thought that daughter of mine--she will not come--"

Then Elvira Gordon cast a quick, sharp glance at her son, which he
met with proud misery and resentment. "It is quite true, mother," he
said. "We have both tried, and she will not come."

"Perhaps a woman--" said Parson Fair. "I wish her mother were alive,"
he added, with a break in his voice.

"I will go and see her if you think it is best," said Mrs. Gordon. In
her heart she rebelled bitterly against seeming to plead with this
unwilling bride to come to her son. Had she not felt guilty for her
son, with the conviction of his own secret deflection, she would
never have mounted the spiral stairs to Dorothy Fair's chamber that
night. Parson Fair led the way, and Burr followed. The people stood
back with a kind of awed curiosity. Some of the young girls were
quite pale, and their eyes were dilated. Folk longed to follow them
up-stairs, but they did not dare.

At the door of Dorothy's chamber crouched, like a fierce dog on
guard, the great black African woman. When the three drew near she
looked up at them with a hostile roll of savage eyes and a glitter of
white teeth between thick lips. The parson advanced, and she sprang
up and put her broad back against the door and rolled out defiance at
him from under her burring tongue.

But he continued to advance with unmoved front, as if she had been
the Satanas of his orthodoxy, which, indeed, she did not faintly
image. She moved aside with a savage sound in her throat, and he
threw the door wide open. There sat Dorothy Fair before them at her
dimity dressing-table, with all her slender body huddled forward and
resting seemingly upon her two bare white arms, which encompassed her
bowed head like sweet rings. Not a glimpse of Dorothy's face could be
seen under the wide flow of her fair curls, which parted only a
little over the curve of one pink shoulder. Dorothy wore her
wedding-gown of embroidered India muslin; but her satin slippers were
widely separated upon the floor, as if she had kicked them hither and
thither; and on the bed, in a great, careless, fluffy heap, lay her
wedding-veil, as if it had been tossed there.

Elvira Gordon, at a signal from Parson Fair, entered the room past
the sullen negress, who rolled her eyes and muttered low, and went
close to the girl at the dressing-table.

"Dorothy!" said Mrs. Gordon.

Dorothy made no sign that she heard.

"Dorothy, do you know it is an hour after the time set for your
wedding?"

Dorothy was so still that instinctively Mrs. Gordon bent close over
her and listened; but she heard quite plainly the soft pant of her
breath, and knew she had not fainted.

Mrs. Gordon straightened herself and looked at her. It was strange
how that delicate, girlish form under the soft flow of fair locks and
muslin draperies should express, in all its half-suggested curves,
such utter obstinacy that it might have been the passive
unresponsiveness of marble. Even that soft tumult of agitated breath
could not alter that impression. When Mrs. Gordon spoke again her
words seemed to echo back in her own ears, as if she had spoken in an
empty room.

"Dorothy Fair," said she, with a kind of solemn authority, "neither I
nor any other human being can look into your heart and see why you do
this; and you owe it to my son, who has your solemn promise, and to
your father, whose only child you are, to speak. If you are sick, say
so; if at the last minute you have a doubt as to your affection for
Burr, say so. My son will keep his promise to you with his life, but
he will not force himself upon you against your wishes. You need fear
nothing; but you must either speak and give us your reason for this,
or get up and put on your wedding-veil and your shoes, and come down,
where they have been waiting over an hour. You cannot put such a
slight upon my son, or your father, or all these people, any longer.
You do not think what you are doing, Dorothy."

Mrs. Gordon's even, weighty voice softened to motherly appeal in the
closing words. Dorothy remained quite silent and motionless. Then
Burr gave a great sigh of impatient misery, and strode across to
Dorothy, and bent low over her, touching her curls with his lips, and
whispered. She did not stir. "Won't you, Dorothy?" he said, gently,
then quite aloud; and then again, "Have you forgotten what you
promised me, Dorothy?" and still again, "Are you sick? Have I
offended you in any way? Can't you tell me, Dorothy?"

At length, when Dorothy persisted in her silence, he stood back from
her and spoke with his head proudly raised. "I will say no more," he
said; "I have come here to keep my solemn promise, and be married to
you, and here I will remain until you or your father bid me go, with
something more than silence. That may be enough for my pride, but
'tis not enough for my honor. I will go back to your father's study,
Dorothy, and wait there until you speak and tell me what you wish."

Burr turned to go, but Parson Fair thrust out his arm before him to
stop him, and himself came forward and grasped Dorothy, with hardly a
gentle hand, by a slender arm. "Daughter," said Parson Fair in a
voice which Dorothy had never heard from his lips except when he
addressed wayward sinners from the pulpit, "I command you to stop
this folly; stand up and finish dressing yourself, and go down-stairs
and fulfil your promise to this man whom you have chosen." The black
woman pressed forward, then stood back at a glance from her master's
blue eyes.

Dorothy did not stir; then her father spoke again, and his nervous
hand tightened on her arm. "Dorothy," said he, "I command you to
rise"--and there was a great authority of fatherhood and priesthood
in his voice, and even Dorothy was moved before it to respond, though
not to yielding.

Suddenly she jerked her arm away from her father's grasp, and stood
up, with a convulsive flutter of her white plumage like a bird. She
flung back her curls and disclosed her beautiful pale face, all
strained to terrified resolve, and her dilated blue eyes "I will
not!" she cried out, addressing her father alone, "I will not,
father. I have made up my mind that I will not."

Then, as Parson Fair said not a word, only looked at her with stern
questioning, she went on, shrill and fast, "I will not; no, I will
not! Nobody can make me! I thought I would, I thought I must, until
this last. Now when it comes to this, I can do no more. I will not,
father."

"Why?" said Parson Fair.

"I would have kept my promise, father. I would have kept it, no
matter if--I would have been faithful to him if he--" Suddenly
Dorothy turned on Burr with a gasp of terror and defiance. "I would
never have done this, you know," she cried; "it would never have come
to this, if you had spoken and told me you were innocent."

"What do you mean, child?" said Parson Fair, sternly.

"He would not tell me that he did not stab his cousin Lot," replied
Dorothy, setting her sweet mouth doggedly. Her blue eyes met her
father's with shrinking and yet steadfast defiance.

"Dorothy," said he, "do you not know that he is innocent by his
cousin's own confession?"

"Why, then, does he not say so?" finished Dorothy. "How do I know who
did it? Madelon Hautville said she was guilty, then Lot Gordon; and
Burr would not deny his guilt when I asked him. How do I know which?
Madelon Hautville was trying to shield him; I am not blind. Then Lot
liked her. How do I know which?" Suddenly she cried out to Burr so
loud that the people in the entry below heard her, "Tell me now that
you are innocent, and either your cousin Lot or Madelon Hautville
guilty," she demanded. "Tell me!"

Burr, white and rigid, looked at her, and made no reply. "Tell me,"
she cried, in her sweet, shrill voice, "tell me now that you did not
stab your cousin Lot, and Madelon Hautville spoke the truth, and I
will keep my promise to you, even if my heart is not yours."

Parson Fair grasped his daughter's arm again. "No man whom you have
promised to wed should reply to such distrust as this," he said.
"Dorothy, I command you to go down-stairs and be married to this
man."

Then Dorothy broke away from him with a wild shriek. "No, I will not
marry this man with his cousin's blood on his soul! I will not,
father; you shall not make me! I will not! Night and day I shall see
that knife in his hand. I will not marry him, because he tried to
kill his cousin Lot. I will not, I will not!" The black woman pushed
between them with a savage murmur of love and wrath, and caught her
mistress in her arms, and crooned over her, like a wild thing over
her young.

"There is no use in prolonging this, sir," Burr said to Parson Fair.

The elder man looked at him with a strange mixture of helpless
dignity and sympathy and wrath. "You know that I have no share in
this," he said, and he glanced almost piteously from Burr to his
mother. "I could never have believed that my daughter--"

"We will say no more about it, sir," responded Burr. "I hold neither
you nor your daughter in any blame." Then he offered his arm to his
mother, and the three went out and down-stairs, and the black woman
clapped to the chamber door with a great jar upon her mistress, whose
calm of obstinacy had broken into wailing hysterics which betokened
no less stanchness. Parson Fair, Burr Gordon, and his mother, at the
foot of the stairs among the curious wedding-guests, looked for a
second at one another.

The parson's fine state seemed to have deserted him. There were red
spots on his pale cheeks. His long hands twitched nervously. "I
will--inform them," he said, huskily, at length, but Burr moved
before him. "No, sir; I will do it," he said.

Then he strode into the great north parlor, where the more important
guests were assembled, and where he and Dorothy were to have been
married. He stood alone in the clear space between the windows, and
knew, as the eyes of the people met his, that they had heard
Dorothy's last wild cry, and knew why she would not marry him. He
stood for a second facing them all before he spoke, and in spite of
the shame of rejection which he felt heaped upon him by them all, and
a subtler shame arising from his own heart, in spite of the fact that
he could not offer any defense, or do aught but bend his back to the
full weight of his humiliation, he had a certain majesty of demeanor.
Revolt at humiliation alone precipitates the full measure of it, and
the strength which survives defeat, even of one's own convictions, is
of a good quality. Silence under wrongful accusation gives the
bearing of a hero.

There was a hush over the assembly so complete that it seemed as if
the very personalities of the listeners were drawn back from
self-consciousness to give free scope for sound. When Burr spoke,
everybody heard.

"The marriage between Dorothy Fair and myself is broken off," was all
he said. Then he went out of the room as proudly as if his bride had
been by his side, through the entry to the study. Parson Fair and his
mother were there. "They know it," he announced, quite calmly; then
he took his fine wedding-hat from the table.

"Where are you going?" his mother demanded, quickly.

"To walk a little way." Burr turned to Parson Fair. "I beg you not
to feel that you must deal severely with your daughter for this," he
said, "for she does not deserve it. She was justified in asking what
she did, and in feeling distrust that I did not answer."

"If a wife's faith cannot survive her husband's silence, then is she
no true spouse, and 'twas the part of a man not to answer," said this
Parson Fair, who had all his life followed in most roads the lead of
his womankind, and not known it, so much state had he been allowed in
his captivity.

"She was justified," said Burr, "and I beg you, sir, not to visit any
displeasure upon her. I have not at any time been worthy of her,
although God knows had she not cast me off, and did not this last,
with what I remember now of her manner for the last few weeks, make
me sure that her heart is no longer mine, I would have lived my life
for her, as best I could; and will now, should she say the word."

With that, Burr Gordon thrust on his wedding-hat, and was out of the
study and out of the south door of the house.

Chapter XXV

In the yard was drawn up in state, behind the five white horses, the
grand old Gordon coach, which had not been used before since the
death of Lot's father. Lot had insisted upon furnishing the coach and
the horses for his cousin's wedding. The man who stood by the horses'
heads looked up at Burr in a dazed way when he came out of the house
and spoke to him.

"When my mother is ready you can take her home, Silas," said Burr.
"Then drive over to my cousin's, and put up the coach and the
horses."

The man gasped and looked at him. "Do you hear what I say?" said
Burr, shortly.

The man gave an affirmative grunt, and strove to speak, but Burr cut
him short. "Look out for that bad place in the road, before you get
to the bridge," he said, and went on out of the yard. The road was
suddenly full of departing wedding-guests, fluttering along with
shrill clatter of persistently individual notes, like a flock of
birds.

Burr, out of the yard, passed along through their midst with a hasty
yet dignified pace. He said to himself that he would not seem to be
running away. He looked neither to the right nor left, except to
avoid collisions with silken and muslin petticoats, yet he was
conscious of the hush of voices as he passed, and knew that they all
recognized him in the broad moonlight.

When he reached the lane which led across-lots to the old place, he
plunged into it by a sudden impulse. He went half-way down its leafy
tunnel; then he stopped and sat down on a great stone which had
fallen off the bordering wall.

Great spiritual as well as great physical catastrophes stun for a
while, and there is after both a coming to one's self and an
examining one's faculties, as well as one's bones, to see if they be
still in working order. Burr Gordon, sitting there on his stone of
meditation, in the moonlit dapple of the lane, came slowly to a full
realization of himself in his change of state, and strove to make
sure what power of action he had left under these new conditions.

His first thought was a cowardly one--that he would sell out, or
rather give up his estate to his cousin, take his mother, and turn
his back upon the village altogether. He knew what he had to expect.
He tasted well in advance the miserable and half ludicrous shame of a
man who has been openly jilted by a woman. He tasted, too, the
covertly whispered suspicion which had perhaps never quite departed,
and which now was surely raised to new life by Dorothy's loud cries
of accusation. He knew that he was utterly defenceless under both
shame and suspicion, being fettered fast by his own tardy but stern
sense of duty and loyalty. It seemed to him at first that he would be
crippled beyond cure in his whole life if he should stay where he
was; and then he felt the spring of the fighting instinct within him,
and said proudly to himself that he would turn his back upon nothing.
He would brave it all.

There was a light wind, and now and then the young trees in the lane
were driven into a soft tumult of whispering leaves. Burr did not
notice when into this voice of the wind and this noise as of a crowd
of softly scurrying ghosts there came a crisp rustle of muslin and a
quick footstep up the lane. He only looked up when Madelon Hautville
stopped before him and looked at him with incredulous alarm, as if
she could not believe the evidence of her own eyes.

Dressed like a bride herself was Madelon Hautville, in a sheer white
gown, which she had fashioned for herself out of an old crape shawl
which had belonged to her mother, and cunningly wrought with great
garlands of red flowers. She was going to Burr Gordon's wedding, not
knowing the lateness of the hour; for her brother Richard had played
a trick upon her, and set back the clock two hours, when to his great
wrath she would not stay at home. The others were half in favor of
her going, thinking that it showed her pride; but Richard was sorely
set against it, and watched his chance, and slipped back the hands of
the clock that she should be too late to see the wedding of the man
who had forsaken her.

Madelon looked at Burr, and he at her, and neither spoke. Then, when
she saw surely who it was, she cried out half in wonder and half
chidingly, as if she had been his mother reproaching him for his
tardiness: "What are you doing here, Burr Gordon? Do you know 'tis
nearly eight o'clock, and time for your wedding?"

"'Tis nearly ten," said Burr, "and there is no wedding."

"Nearly ten?"

"Yes."

"But 'twas not eight by our clock."

Burr took out the great gold timepiece which had belonged to his
father, and held it towards her, and she saw the face plainly in the
moonlight.

"What does this mean?" she said; and then she cried, half shrinking
away from him, "Are you married then? Where is she?"

"Dorothy Fair is at home in her chamber, and I am not married, and
never shall be."

"Why--what does this mean, Burr Gordon?"

"She will not have me, and--no blame to her."

"Will not have you, and the people there, and the hour set! Will not
have you? Burr, she shall have you! I promise you she shall. I will
go talk to her. She is a child, and she does not know--I can make her
listen. She shall have you, Burr. I will go this minute, and talk to
her, and do you come after me."

Madelon gave a forward bound, like a deer, but Burr sprang up and
caught her by the arm. "Why do you stop me, Burr Gordon?" she cried,
trying to wrest her arm away.

"Do you think I have no manhood left, Madelon Hautville, that I will
let you, _you_ beg a woman who does not love me to marry me?"

"She does love you, she shall love you!"

"I tell you she does not!" Burr spoke with a bitterness which might
well have come from slighted love, and, indeed, so complex and
contradictory are the workings of the mind of a man, and so strong is
the bent when once set in one direction, that not loving Dorothy
Fair, and loving this other woman with his whole heart, he yet felt
for the moment that he would rather his marriage had taken place and
he were not free. His freedom, which he knew was a shame to welcome,
galled him for the time worse than a chain, and he felt more injured
than if he had loved this girl who had jilted him; for something
which was more precious to him than love had been slighted and made
for naught.

"She does--you are mad, Burr Gordon! She was all ready to marry you.
She came to me to help on her wedding-clothes. She was all smiling
and pleased. How could she be pleased over her wedding-clothes if she
did not love you? She does, Burr! She is a child--I can talk to her.
I will make her. Let me go, Burr! You wait here, and not fret. Oh,
how pale you look! I tell you, you shall have her, Burr!"

"I tell you, Madelon, she does not love me, and I will not have you
go."

Madelon stood looking at him, her face all at once changing curiously
as if from some revelation from within. She remembered suddenly that
old scene with Eugene, and a suspicion seized her. "There's somebody
else!" she cried out, fiercely. "There's no truth in her. If she
thinks--she shall not--nor he--I will not have it so!"

"For God's sake, Madelon, don't!" said Burr, not fairly comprehending
what she said. He sat down again upon the stone, and leaned his head
upon his hands. In truth he felt dazed and helpless, as if he had
reached suddenly the mouth of many roads and knew not which to take.
The intricacy of the situation was fairly paralyzing to an order of
mind like his, which was wont to grasp, though shrewdly enough, only
the straight course of cause and effect. He revolved dizzily in his
mind the fact that he could not tell Madelon the reason which Dorothy
had given for her rejection of him, and the conviction was fast
gaining upon him that it was not the true and only reason. He held
fiercely to his loyalty to Madelon, and his shammed loyalty to
Dorothy, and his slipping clutch of loyalty to himself, and knew not
what to say nor what course to take.

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