Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Madelon

M >> Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> Madelon

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

On came the merry whistlers. Burr sprang up and grasped Madelon
Hautville's arm. "He isn't dead," he whispered, hoarsely. "Somebody's
coming. Go home, quick!"

But Madelon looked at him with despairing obstinacy. "I'll stay,"
said she.

"I tell you, go! Somebody is coming. I'll get help. I'll send for the
doctor. Go home!"

"No!"

"Oh, Madelon, if you have ever loved me, go home!"

Madelon turned away at that. "I'll be there when they come for me,"
said she, and went swiftly down the road and out of sight in the
converging distance of trees, with the snow muffling her footsteps.

When she reached home she groped her way into the living-room, which
was lighted only by the low, red gleam of the coals on the hearth.
Her father's gruff voice called out from the bedroom beyond: "That
you, Madelon?"

"Yes," said she, and lighted a candle at the coals.

"Have the boys come?"

"No."

Madelon went up the steep stairs to her chamber, but before she
opened her door her brother Louis's voice, broken with pain, besought
her to come into his room and bathe his sprained shoulder for him.
She went in, set the candle on the table, and rubbed in the
cider-brandy and wormwood without a word. Louis, in the midst of his
pain, kept looking up wonderingly at his sister's face. It looked as
if it were frozen. She did not seem to see him. Nothing about her
seemed alive but her gently moving hands.

Suddenly he gave a startled cry. "What's that? Have you cut your
hand, Madelon?" Madelon glanced at her hand, and there was a broad
red stain over the palm and three of her fingers.

"No," said she, and went on rubbing.

"But it looks like blood!" cried Louis, knitting his pale brows at
her.

Madelon made no reply.

"Madelon, what is that on your hand?"

"Blood."

"How came it there?"

"You'll know to-morrow." Madelon put the stopper in the cider-brandy
and wormwood bottle; then she covered up the wounded arm and went
out.

"Madelon, what is it? What is the matter? What ails you?" Louis
called after her.

"You'll know to-morrow," said she, and shut her chamber door, which
was nearly opposite Louis's. His youngest brother Richard occupied
the same room, having his little cot at the other side, under the
window. When he came in, an hour later, Louis turned to him eagerly.

"Has anything happened?" he demanded.

The boy's face, which was always so like his sister's, had the same
despair in it now. "Don't know of anything that's happened," he
returned, surlily.

"What ails Madelon?"

"I tell you I don't know." Richard would say no more. He blew out
his candle and tumbled into bed, turned his face to the window and
lay awake until and hour before dawn. Then he arose, dressed himself,
and went down-stairs. He put more wood on the hearth fire, then knelt
down before it, and puffed out his boyish cheeks at the bellows until
the new flames crept through the smoke. Then he lighted the lantern,
and went to the barn to milk and feed the stock. That was always
Richard's morning task, and he always on his way thither replenished
the hearth fire, that his sister Madelon might have a lighter and
speedier task at preparing breakfast. Madelon usually arose a
half-hour after Richard, and she was not behindhand this morning. She
entered the great living-room, lit the candles, and went about
getting breakfast. Human daily needs arise and set on tragedy as
remorselessly as the sun.

Madelon Hautville, who had washed but a few hours ago the stain of
murder from her hand, in whose heart was an unsounded depth of
despair, mixed up the corn-meal daintily with cream, and baked the
cakes which her father and brothers loved before the fire, and laid
the table. She had always attended to the needs of the males of her
family with the stern faithfulness of an Indian squaw. Now, as she
worked, the wonder, softer than her other emotions, was upon her as
to how they would get on when she was in prison and after she was
dead; for she made no doubt that she had killed Lot Gordon and the
sheriff would be there presently for her, and she felt plainly the
fretting of the rope around her soft neck. She hoped they would not
come for her until breakfast was prepared and eaten, the dishes
cleared away, and the house tidied; but she listened like a savage
for a foot-fall and a hand at the door. She had packed a little
bundle ready to take with her before she left her chamber. Her cloak
and hood were laid out on the bed.

When she sat down at the table with her father and brothers, all of
them except Richard and Louis stared at her with open amazement and
questioned her. Richard and Louis stared furtively at their sister's
face, as stiff, set, and pale as if she were dead, but they asked no
questions. Madelon said, in a voice that was not hers, that she was
not sick, and put pieces of Indian cake into her untasting mouth and
listened. But breakfast was well over and the dishes put away before
anybody came. And then it was not the sheriff to hale her to prison
on a charge of murder, but an old man from the village big with news.

He was a relative of the Hautvilles, an uncle on the mother's side,
old and broken, scarcely able to find his feeble way on his shrunken
legs through the snow; but, with the instinct of gossip, the sharp
nose for his neighbors' affairs, still alert in him, he had arisen at
dawn to canvass the village, and had come thither at first, since he
anticipated that he might possibly have the delight of bringing the
intelligence before any of the family had heard it elsewhere. He came
in, dragging his old, snow-laden feet, tapping heavily with his stout
stick, and settled, cackling, into a chair.

"Heard the news?" queried Uncle Luke basset, his eyes, like black
sparks, twinkling rapidly at all their faces.

Madelon set the cups and saucers on the dresser.

"We don't have any time for anybody's business but our own," quoth
David Hautville, gruffly. He did not like his wife's uncle. He was
tightening a string in his bass-viol; he pulled it as he spoke, and
it gave out a fierce twang. Louis sat moodily over the fire with his
painful arm in wet bandages. Richard was whittling kindling-wood,
with nervous speed, beside him. Eugene and Abner were cleaning their
guns. They all looked at the eager old man except Richard and Louis
and Madelon.

"Burr Gordon has killed Lot so's to get his property," proclaimed the
old man, and his voice broke with eager delight and importance.

Madelon gave a cry and sprang forward in front of him. "It's a lie!"
she shouted.

The old man laughed in her face. "No, 'tain't, Madelon. You're
showin' a Christian sperrit to stan' up for him when he's jilted ye
for another gal, but 'tain't a lie. His knife, with his name on to
it, was a-stickin' out of Lot's side."

"_It's a lie!_ I killed him with my brother Richard's knife!"

The old man shrank back before her in incredulous horror. The great
bass-viol fell to the ground like a woman as David strode forward and
Abner and Eugene turned their shocked, white faces from their guns.

"I killed him with Richard's knife," repeated Madelon.

Richard got up and came around before her, thrusting his hand in his
pocket. He pulled out his own clasp-knife, and brandished it in her
face. "Here is my knife," he cried, fiercely--"my knife, with my name
cut in the handle. Say you killed Lot Gordon with it again!"

Madelon snatched the knife out of her brother's hand and looked at it
with straining eyes. There, indeed, was a rude "R. H." cut in the
horn handle. She gasped. "What does this mean?" she cried out.

"It means you have lost your wits," answered Richard, contemptuously;
but his eyes on his sister's face were full of pleading agony.

"What knife did you give me when I started home last night?"

"I gave you no knife."

Old Luke Basset asserted himself again. "The gal's lost her balance,"
he said. "It was Burr Gordon's knife, with his name cut into it, that
was stickin' out of Lot Gordon's side."

"Is Lot Gordon dead?" Louis demanded, hoarsely.

"No, he ain't dead, but the doctor thinks he can't live long. Ephraim
Steele and Eleazer Hooper were a-goin' home from the ball when they
come right on Lot layin' side of the road and Burr a-tryin' to draw
his knife out, so it shouldn't testify against him."

"It's a lie!" Madelon groaned. "Burr Gordon did not kill him. It was
I! He met me, and tried to--kiss me, and--the knife was in my
hand--Richard made me take it because I was coming home alone, and
there had been rumors of a bear."

"I did not," persisted Richard, doggedly. "I did not make her take my
knife. Here is my knife, with my name cut in the handle."

Madelon turned on him fiercely. "You did, you know you did!" said
she.

"Here is my knife, with my name cut on the handle."

"You gave me a knife as I was coming out of the tavern."

"No, I did not."

"You did, and I killed him with it. It was not Burr! I ran for help,
and I met Burr, and I told him what I had done, and he went back with
me to Lot. Then he sent me home when he heard somebody coming. Ask
Lot Gordon if I did not kill him; if he can speak he can tell you."

"There won't neither him nor Burr say a word," said the old man, "but
there was Burr's knife a-stickin' into Lot's side, with his name cut
into it."

Madelon turned sharply to Louis. "You saw the blood on my hand when I
was rubbing your arm last night," she said.

He made no reply, but stared gloomily at the fire.

"Louis, you saw Lot Gordon's blood on my hand?"

Louis sprang up with an oath, and pushed past her out of the room.

"Louis," Madelon cried, "tell them!"

"She is trying to shield Burr Gordon!" Louis called back, fiercely,
and the closing door shook the house like a cannon-shot.

"Where is Burr?" Madelon demanded of old Luke Basset.

"The sheriff took him to New Salem to jail this morning," he replied,
grinning.

Madelon gave a great cry and started to rush out of the room, but her
father stood in her way.

"Where are you going?" he asked, sternly.

"I am going to get my hood and cloak, and then I am going to Lot
Gordon's." Her father stood aside, and she went out and up-stairs to
her chamber. She took up the red cloak which lay on her bed, and
examined it eagerly to see if by chance there was a blood stain
thereon to prove her guilt and Burr Gordon's innocence, but she could
find none. She had flung it back when she struck. She looked also
carefully at her pretty ball gown, but the black fabric showed no
stain.

When she went down-stairs with her cloak and hood on old Luke Basset
was gone, and so were her brothers. Her father stood waiting for her,
and he had on his fur cap and his heavy cloak. He came forward and
took her firmly by the arm. "I'm going with you to Lot Gordon's,"
said he. And they went out together and up the road, he still keeping
a firm hand on his daughter's arm, and neither spoke all the way to
Lot Gordon's house.

When they reached it David Hautville opened the door without touching
the knocker, and strode in with Madelon following. Old Margaret Bean
was just passing through the entry with a great roll of linen cloths
in her arms, and she stopped when she saw them.

"How is he?" whispered David, hoarsely.

"He's pretty low," returned Margaret Bean, at the same time nodding
her head cautiously towards the door on her right. Long, smooth loops
of sallow hair fell from Margaret Bean's clean white cap over her
cheeks, which looked as if they had been scrubbed and rasped red with
tears. Her own gray hair was strained back out of sight--not to be
discovered, even when there was a murder in the house.

"Does he know anybody?" queried David Hautville.

"Just as well as ever he did." Margaret Bean rubbed a tear dry on
her cheek with her starched apron.

"We've got to see him, then."

"I dunno as you can--the doctor--"

"I don't care anything about the doctor! We've _got_ to _see him!"_
David's voice rang out quite loud in the hush of murder and death
which seemed to fill the house. Margaret Bean stood aside with a
scared look. David Hautville threw open the door on the right, and he
and Madelon went in.

Lot Gordon's eyes turned towards them, but not his head. He lay as
still in bed as if he were already dead, and his long body raised the
gay patchwork quilt in a stiff ridge like a grave.

Madelon went close to him and bent over him. "Tell who stabbed you,"
said she, in a sharp voice.

Lot looked up at her, and a red flush came over his livid face.

"Tell who stabbed you."

Lot smiled feebly, but he did not speak.

Margaret Bean came in, with her old husband shuffling at her heels. A
great face, bristling with a yellow stubble of beard, appeared in the
door. It belonged to the sheriff, Jonas Hapgood, who had just
returned from taking Burr to New Salem. Madelon cast a desperate
glance around at them. "Lot Gordon," she cried out, "tell them--tell
them I was the one who stabbed you, and set Burr free!"

There was a chuckle from Jonas Hapgood in the door. "Likely story,"
he muttered to Margaret Bean's husband, and the old man nodded
wisely.

"Tell them!" commanded Madelon. She reached out a hand as if she
would shake Lot Gordon into obedience, wounded unto death although he
was, but Lot only smiled up in her face.

Then David Hautville bent his stern face down to the sick man's. "Lot
Gordon, tell the truth before God, daughter of mine or no daughter of
mine," said he, in his deep voice. Lot only followed Madelon with his
longing, smiling eyes.

"Speak, Lot Gordon!"

The wounded man turned his eyes on David and made a feeble motion,
scarcely more than a quiver of his hand, which seemed to express
negation.

"Can't you speak?"

Again Lot made that faint signal.

"He ain't spoke sence they brought him home," said Margaret
Bean--"not a word to the doctor nor nobody."

"I couldn't get a word out of him," announced the sheriff, stepping
farther into the room. "In course, there was Burr's knife and Burr
himself over him when the others came up, and that was proof enough;
but still we kinder thought we'd like to have Lot's word for it afore
he died, in case it came to hangin' with Burr; but I guess he's past
speakin'. I miss my guess if he can sense anything we say."

"Tell them--tell them I was the one who stabbed you, and Burr is
innocent!" Madelon pleaded; but he smiled back at her unmoved.

Jonas Hapgood's great body shook with mirth. "Likely story a gal did
it," he chuckled.

"I did do it!" returned Madelon, fiercely, turning to him.

"I guess you don't want your beau hung."

"I tell you I killed this man. I am the one to be hung!"

Chapter V

The sheriff turned to David Hautville. "Guess you'd better take your
gal home," he said, his red, bristling cheeks broad with laughter.
"Guess she's kind of off her balance, she feels so bad about her
beau."

David's black eyes flashed haughtily at Jonas Hapgood, who
straightened his face suddenly. He deigned not a word to him, but he
turned to his daughter with a stern air. "Whether it is one way, or
whether it is the other way," said he, "we go neither by staying
here. Come home."

"I won't go!"

David looked sharply at his daughter's face. Jonas Hapgood's doubt
was over him too. He wondered, with a great spasm of wrath, if she
could be accusing herself to shield this man who had played her
false.

He grasped her arm again. "Come," he said, "I'll have no more of
this," and Madelon went out with her father. Full of spirit as she
was, she had always been strangely docile with him. He had ruled all
his children with a firm hand from their youth up, and tuned their
wills to suit his ear as he did his viol strings.

"I'll have no foolery," he said to her, gruffly, when they were out
on the road. "I'll have no putting yourself in the wrong to save a
man that's given you the go-by. If ye be fooling me, ye can stop it
now if you're a daughter of mine." He shook his head fiercely at
her.

But Madelon answered him with a burst of wrath that equalled his own.
"I stabbed him because I took him for the man who jilted me a-trying
to kiss me, with Dorothy Fair's kiss on his lips. _Me!_" she cried;
and she raised her hand as if she would have struck again had Burr
Gordon and his false lips been there.

Her father looked at her gloomily, then strode on with his eyes on
the snowy ground. He was still in doubt. David Hautville had that
primitive order of mind which distrusts and holds in contempt that
which it cannot clearly comprehend, and he could not comprehend
womankind. His sons were to him as words of one syllable in straight
lines; his daughter was written in compound and involved sentences,
as her mother had been before her. Fond and proud of Madelon as he
was, and in spite of his stern anxiety, her word had not the weight
with him that one of his son's would have had. It was as if he had
visions of endless twistings and complexities which might give it the
lie, and rob it, at all events, of its direct force.

Indeed, Madelon strengthened this doubt by crying out passionately
all at once, as they went on: "Father, you must believe me! I tell
you I did it! I--don't let them hang him! Father!" All Madelon's
proud fierceness was gone for a moment. She looked up at her father,
choking with great sobs.

David smiled down at her convulsed face. "She's nothing but a woman,"
he thought to himself, and he thought also, with a throb of angry
relief, that she had not killed Lot Gordon. "Come along home and red
up the house, and let's have no more fooling," he said, roughly, and
strode on faster and would not say another word, although Madelon
besought him hard to assure her that he believed her, and that Burr
should not be hanged, until they reached the Hautville house. Then he
turned on her and said, with keen sarcasm that stung more than a
whip-lash, "'Tis Parson Fair's daughter and not mine that should come
down the road in broad daylight a-bawling for Burr Gordon."

Madelon started back, and her face stiffened and whitened. She shut
her mouth hard and followed her father into the house. The great
living-room was empty; indeed, not one of the Hautville sons was in
the house; even Louis was gone. David took his axe out of the corner
and set out for the woods to cut some cedar fire-logs. Madelon put
the house in order, setting the kitchen and pantry to rights, going
through the icy chambers and making the high feather beds. In her own
room she paused long and searched again, holding up her red cloak and
her ball dress to the window, where they caught the wintry light, for
a stain of blood that might prove her guilt; but she could find none.

Madelon prepared dinner for her father and brothers as usual, and
when it was ready to be dished she stood in the doorway, with the
north wind buffeting her in the face, and blew the dinner-horn with a
blast that could be heard far off in the woods.

Presently her father emerged from under the snowy boughs with his axe
over his shoulder, and shortly afterwards Eugene and Abner came, in
Indian file, with their guns. Eugene was carrying a fat rabbit by its
long ears. Louis and Richard did not come at all. David asked sternly
of their brothers where they were, but neither Eugene nor Abner knew.
They had not seen them since David and Madelon left for Lot Gordon's
that morning.

Madelon set the food before her father and her brothers, and took her
place as usual, and ate as she might have filled a crock with milk or
cakes, tasting nothing which she put into her mouth. She did not
during the meal say another word concerning the tragedy in which she
was living, but there was a strange silent vehemence and fire about
her which seemed louder than speech. Now and then her father and her
brothers started and stared at her as if she had cried out. Two red
spots had come on her brown cheeks; her eyes were glittering with
dark light; her lips were a firm red; her fingers stiffened with
nervous clutches. She looked as if every muscle in her were strained
and rigid for a leap.

After dinner Eugene and Abner went out again with their guns, and
David smoked his old pipe by the fire, while Madelon put away the
dishes and swept the floor. When her work was finished the pipe was
smoked out, and David rose up slowly, clapped his fur cap over his
white head, and took up his axe.

"Mind ye say what ye said this morning to nobody else," he said, as
he went out the door.

"I'll say it with my dying breath," returned Madelon, and she caught
her breath, as if it were indeed her last, as she spoke.

"Accuse yourself of murder, would ye, and be hung, and leave your own
kith and kin with nobody to keep house for them, for the sake of a
man that's left ye for another girl!"

"Father, I tell you that _I_ did it!"

But David clapped to the door on her speech, and the awful truth of
it seemed to smite her in her own face.

Madelon went up-stairs, and brushed and braided her black hair before
her glass; but the face therein did not look like her own to her, and
she felt all the time as if she were braiding and wreathing the hair
around another's head. One of those deeds had she committed which
lead a man to see suddenly the stranger that abides always in his
flesh and in his own soul, and makes him realize that of all the
millions of earth there is not one that he knows not better than his
own self, nor whose face can look so strange to him in the light of
his own actions.

Madelon put her red cloak over her shoulders as she might have put it
on a lay-figure, and tied on her hood. Then she went down-stairs, out
of the house to the barn, and put the side-saddle on the roan mare.

Not another woman in the village, and scarcely a man except the
Hautville sons, would have dared to ride this roan, with the backward
roll of her vicious eyes and her wicked, flat-laid ears; but Madelon
Hautville could not be thrown.

The mare, when she was saddled, danced an iron-bound dance in the
barn bay, but Madelon bade her stand still, and she obeyed, her
nostrils quivering, the breath coming from them in a snort of smoke,
and every muscle under her roan hide vibrating.

Then Madelon placed her foot in the stirrup, and was in the saddle,
pulling the bit hard against the jaw, and the mare shot out of the
barn with a fierce lash-out of her heels and an upheaval of her gaunt
roan flanks that threatened to dash the girl's head against the
lintel of the door.

But Madelon knew with what she had to do, and she bent low in the
saddle and passed out in safety. Then she spared not the mare for
nigh three miles on the New Salem road. It was ten miles to New
Salem, and it did not take long to reach it, riding a horse who went
at times as if all the fiends were in chase, and often sprang out
like a bow into the wayside bushes, and was off with a new spurt of
vicious terror. It was still far from sundown when Madelon Hautville
tied the roan outside the jail where Burr Gordon lay.

Burr was sitting in his cell, which was nothing but a rough chamber
with whitewashed walls and a grated window. It was furnished with a
bed, a table, and a chair. He had an inkstand and a great sheet of
paper on the table, and he was writing a letter when the bolt shot
and the jailer entered with Madelon Hautville.

Burr looked at her with a white, incredulous face. Then he started up
and came forward, but Madelon did not look at him. She turned to the
jailer, Alvin Mead. "I want to see him alone," said she,
imperatively.

"It's again my orders," said the jailer. He was a great man, with an
arm like a crow-bar. He was reputed to have used it as one many a
time at a house-raising.

"I've got to see him alone!"

"He's in here on a charge of murder, and it's again my orders,"
repeated Alvin Mead, like a parrot.

"I've got to see him alone!"

Alvin Mead looked at her irresolutely with his stupid light eyes;
then all his great system of bone and muscle seemed to back out of
the room before her. He shut the door after him, and they heard the
bolt slide.

Madelon turned to Burr. "Tell them," she gasped out--"tell them it
was--I!"

Burr did not speak for a minute; he stood looking at her. "Perhaps I
am not any too much of a man," he said, slowly, at length, "but you
ask me to be a good deal less of a man than I am."

Madelon did not seem to hear him. "I have told them I did it! I have
told them all," said she, "but they won't believe me--they won't
believe me! _You_ must tell them."

"I will die before I will tell them," said Burr Gordon.

Madelon looked at his white face, which was set against hers like a
rock; then she gave a great cry and fell down on her knees before
him. "Tell them," she moaned, "or they will hang you--they will hang
you, Burr!"

"Let them hang me, then!"

"Tell them; they won't believe me!"

Burr caught hold of her two arms and raised her to her feet. "See
here, Madelon," said he, "don't you know--"

She looked at him dumbly.

"Don't you know--I would not tell them if they would, but--I might
tell them until I was gray, and they would not believe me!"

Madelon cried out sharply, as if she in her turn had been struck to
the heart.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19