Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Madelon
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Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> Madelon
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"It is true," Burr said, quietly.
"Then if he dies without telling, there is no way of--saving you--"
Burr shook his head.
"The knife--how--came your knife there instead of Richard's?"
Burr smiled.
Bluish shadows came around Madelon's dark eyes and her mouth. She
gasped for breath as she spoke. "I--have--killed you, then," said
she. Suddenly she put up her white, stiffly quivering lips to Burr's.
"Kiss me!" she cried out. "I beg you to give me the kiss that I might
have killed you for last night!"
Burr bent down and kissed her, and she threw her arms around him and
pressed his head to her bosom. "They shall not," she cried out,
fiercely--"they shall not hang you! I will make them believe me!
Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Burr."
"Madelon," Burr said, huskily, "I have been double-faced and false to
you, but, as God is my witness, I'm glad I've got the chance to
suffer in your stead."
"You shall not! They shall believe I did it. I will make Lot Gordon
tell. He shall tell before he dies!"
The bolt slid back, and Alvin Mead's great bulk darkened the doorway.
Madelon turned her face towards him, with her arms still clasping
Burr and holding his head to her bosom. "This man is innocent!" she
cried out, with a fierce gesture of protection, as if she were
defending her young instead of her false lover. "I tell you he is
innocent--you must let him go! I am the one who stabbed Lot Gordon!"
Alvin Mead stared; his heavy pink jaw lopped.
"I tell you, you must let him go!" She released Burr from her arms
and gave him a push towards the door. "Go out," she said; "I am the
one to stay here."
But Alvin Mead collected and brought about his great body with a show
of lumbering fists. "Come," said he, "this ain't a-goin to do. We
can't have no sech work as this, young woman. It's time you went."
"Let him go, I tell you!" commanded Madelon, confronting him
fiercely. "I am going to stay."
"They won't let you come again if you don't go quietly now," Burr
whispered, and he laid his hand on her nervous shoulder.
"I ruther guess we won't have no sech doin's again," said Alvin Mead,
with sulky assent.
"You must go, Madelon."
Madelon tied on her hood. Her white face had its rigid, desperate
look again.
"I will make them believe me yet, and you shall be set free," she
said to Burr, with a stern nod, and passed out, while Alvin Mead
stood back to give her passage, watching her with sullen and wary
eyes. He was, in truth, half afraid of her.
Chapter VI
When Madelon, returning from New Salem, came in sight of her home the
first thing which she noticed was her father in the yard in front of
the house.
David Hautville's great figure stood out in the dusk of the snowy
landscape like a giant's. He was motionless. The roan mare's gallop
had evidently struck his ear some time before, and he knew that
Madelon was returning. He did not even look her way as she drew
nearer, but when she rode into the yard he made a swift movement
forward and seized the mare by the bridle. She reared, but Madelon
sat firm, with wretched, undaunted eyes upon her father. David
Hautville's eyes blazed back at her out of the whiteness of his
wrath.
"Where have you been?" he demanded, in a thick voice.
"To New Salem."
"What for?"
"To see Burr, and beg him to confess that I killed Lot."
"You didn't."
"I did."
"Fool!" David Hautville jerked the bridle so fiercely that the mare
reared far back again. He jerked her down to her feet, and she made a
vicious lunge at him, but he shunted her away.
"I'll fasten you into your chamber," he shouted, "if this work goes
on! I'll stop your making a fool of yourself."
"It is Lot Gordon that is making fools of you all," said Madelon, in
a hard, quiet voice.
"Did Burr Gordon say he didn't stab him?" cried her father.
"No; he wouldn't own it. He is trying to shield me."
"He did it himself, and he'll hang for it."
"No, he won't hang for what I did while I draw the breath of life.
I've got the strength of ten in me. You don't know me, if I am your
daughter." Madelon freed her bridle with a quick movement, and the
mare flew forward into the barn.
David Hautville stood looking after her in utter fury and
bewilderment. Her last words rang in his ears and seemed true to him.
He felt as if he did not know his own daughter. This awakening and
lashing into action, by the terrible pressure of circumstances, of
strange ancestral traits which he had himself transmitted was beyond
his simple comprehension. He shook his head with a fierce
helplessness and went into the barn.
"Go in and get the supper," he ordered, "and _I_'ll take care of the
mare."
As Madelon came out of the stall he grasped her roughly by the arm
and peered sharply into her face. The thought seized him that she
must surely not be in her right mind--that Burr's treatment of her
and his danger had turned her brain. "Be you crazy, Madelon?" he
asked, in his straightforward simplicity, and there was an accent of
doubt and pity in his voice.
"No, father," she replied, "I am not crazy. Let me go."
She broke away from him and was out of the barn door, but suddenly
she turned and came running back. The sudden softness in his voice
had stirred the woman in her to weakness. She went close to her
father, and threw up her arms around his great neck, and clung to
him, and sobbed as if she would sob her soul away, and pleaded with
him as for her life.
"Father!" she cried--"father, help me! Believe me! Tell them I did
it! Tell them it is true! Don't let them hang Burr. Help me to save
him, father! Don't let them! Save him! Oh, you will save him, father?
You will? Tell me, father--tell me, tell me!" Madelon's voice rose
into a wild shriek.
A sudden conviction of his solution of the matter and of his own
astuteness came over David Hautville's primitive masculine
intelligence. His daughter was wellnigh distraught with her lover's
faithlessness and his awful crime and danger. She was to be watched
and guarded lest she make a further spectacle of herself; but treated
softly as might be, for she was naught but a woman, and liable to
mischievous ailments of nerve and brain. David pressed his daughter's
dark head with his hard, tender hand against his shoulder, then
forced her gently away from him.
"It'll be all right," said he, soothingly--"it'll be all right. Don't
you worry."
"Father, you will?"
"I'll fix it all right. Don't you worry."
"Father, you promise?"
"I'll do everything I can. Don't you worry, Madelon. You'd better go
in and get supper now. I'll go along to the house with you and get
the lantern. It's getting too dark to do the work here."
David drew his daughter along, out of the barn, across the snowy yard
to the house, she pleading frantically all the way, he soothing her
with his sudden wisdom of assent and evasion.
The hearth fire was blazing high when Madelon entered the kitchen.
The red glare of it was on her white face, upturned to her father's
with one last pleading of despair. She clutched his arm and shook his
great frame to and fro.
"Father, promise me you'll go over to New Salem to-night and tell
them to set him free and take me instead! Father!"
"We'll see about it, Madelon," answered David Hautville. There was a
tone in his voice which she had never heard before. It might have
come unconsciously to himself from some memory, so old that it was
itself forgotten, of his dead wife's voice over the child in her
cradle. Some echo of it might have yet lingered in the old father's
soul, through something finer than his instinct for sweet sounds from
human throat and viol--through his ear for love.
"Get the supper now, and we'll see about it," said David Hautville.
He began fumbling with clumsy fingers, all unused to women's gear, at
the string of this daughter's cloak; but she pulled herself away from
him suddenly, and the old hard lines came into her face. "We'll say
no more about it," said she. She lit a candle quickly at the hearth
fire, and was out of the room to put away her cloak and hood. Her
father lighted his lantern slowly and went back to the barn, plodding
meditatively through the snowy track, with the melting mood still
strong upon him. He was disposed to carry matters now with a high and
tender hand with the girl to bring her to reason, and he brought all
his crude diplomacy to bear upon the matter.
When he reached the barn his son Eugene stood in the doorway. He had
just come from the woods, and the smell of wounded cedar-trees was
strong about him. He stood leaning upon his axe as if it were a
staff. "Who's been out with the mare?" he asked.
"Your sister."
"Where?"
"To New Salem."
"To see _him_?"
David nodded grimly. His lantern cast a pale circle of light on the
snow about them.
"About--that?"
"To get him to own up she did it."
Eugene Hautville stared at his father, scowling his handsome dark
brows. He was the most graceful mannered of all the Hautville sons,
and by some accounted the best-looking.
"Is she crazy?" he said.
"No, she's a woman," returned his father, with a strange accent of
contempt and toleration.
"Did the coward lay it to her when she gave him the chance?" demanded
Eugene.
"No; she said he wouldn't, to shield her."
Eugene moved his axe suddenly; the lantern-light struck it, and there
was a bright flash of sharp steel in their eyes. "Shield her!" he
cried out, with an oath. "I wish I could meet him in the path once.
I'd give him a taste before they put the rope 'round his neck, the
lying murderer!"
David nodded his head in savage assent.
"What's going to be done with Madelon?" cried Eugene, fiercely.
"I've been thinking--" said his father, slowly.
"No sister of mine shall go about rolling herself in the dust at that
fellow's feet if I can help it."
"I've been thinking--would you lock her in her chamber a spell?"
"Lock Madelon in her chamber! She'd get out or she'd beat her brains
out against the wall."
"I don't know but she would," assented David, perplexedly. "You can't
count on a woman when they rise up. She might go away a spell."
"Where?"
"We might send her somewhere."
Eugene laughed. The roan mare was pawing in her stall. Now and then
she pounded the floor with a clattering thud like an iron flail.
"How far do you suppose that mare would go if you tried to send her
anywhere?" he asked.
"Maybe Madelon wouldn't go."
"You'd have to halter the mare," said Eugene, "and drag her half the
way and stand from under, or she'd trample you down the other."
Eugene, although his words were strong, spoke quite softly, lowering
his sweet tenor. From where they stood they could see Madelon moving
to and fro behind the kitchen windows preparing supper.
"I don't know what to do," said David, after a pause.
"Watch her," returned Eugene, quietly.
"Watch her?"
"Yes. I've been under cover days before now watching for a pretty
white fox or a deer I wanted." Eugene laughed pleasantly.
"Will you?"
"I'll stay by the house to-morrow. She sha'n't go about accusing
herself of murder to save the man that's jilted her if I can help
it." As he spoke Eugene's handsome face darkened again vindictively.
He hated Burr Gordon for another reason of his own that nobody
suspected.
Suddenly Abner Hautville came running into the yard. "Who is it
there?" he called out. "Is that you, father? That you, Eugene?
Hello!"
"Hello!" Eugene called back. "What's the matter?"
Abner come panting alongside. He had run from the village, and,
vigorous as he was, breath came hard in the thin air. It was a very
cold night.
"Where have they gone?" he demanded.
"Who?"
"Louis and Richard. Where have they gone?"
There was a ghastly look in Abner's face, in spite of the glowing red
which the cold wind had brought to it. The other man seemed to catch
it and reflect it in their own faces as they stared at him.
Eugene turned quickly to his father. "Aren't they in the house?" he
asked.
"No, they ain't," returned David, with his eyes still on Abner's
face.
"Sure they ain't up chamber?"
"No; I was home a good half-hour before Madelon came. There wasn't a
soul in the house, and nobody could have come home since without my
knowing it."
"They didn't come home this noon either," said Eugene.
"Thought you said they'd gone to see to their traps on West
Mountain?" David rejoined.
"Thought they had when they didn't come." Eugene turned impatiently
on Abner. "Where do you think they've gone--what do you mean by
looking so?" he cried.
Abner dug his heel into the snow. "Don't know," he returned, in a
surly voice.
"What do you suspect, then? Good God! can't you speak out?"
Abner's features were heavier than his brother's--his speech and
manner slower. He paused a second, even then; then he turned towards
the house, and spoke, with his face away from them, with a curious
directness and taciturnity. "Didn't go to the traps on West
Mountain," he said, then; "went there myself. They hadn't been
there--no tracks; was home before father was to-night. Louis and
Richard hadn't come. Went down to the village; hadn't been there."
"You don't mean Louis and Richard have run away?" demanded David.
"Both their guns and their powder-horns and shot-bags are gone," said
Abner.
"They would have taken them anyway," said Louis.
"The chest in Louis's chamber is unlocked and the money he kept in
the till is gone, and his fiddle is gone, and the cider-brandy and
wormwood bottle to bathe his arm with, and two shoulders of pork out
of the cellar, and a sack of potatoes, and the blankets off his and
Richard's beds are gone too," said Abner. He began to move towards
the house.
His father made a bound after him and grasped his arm. "What do you
mean?" he cried out. "What do you think they've run away for?"
"Know as much as I do," replied Abner. He wrenched his arm away and
strode on towards the house. Then David Hautville and his son Eugene
stood looking at each other with a surmise of horror growing in their
eyes.
"What does he mean?" David whispered, hoarsely.
Eugene shook his head.
Presently Eugene went into the barn and fell to feeding the roan
mare, and David plunged heavily back to the house. He and Abner sat
one on each side of the fire and furtively watched Madelon preparing
supper.
She spoke never a word. Her red lips were a red line of resolution.
Her despairing eyes were fixed upon her work without a glance for
either of them.
However, when supper was set on the table, and she had blown the horn
at the door and waited, and nobody else came, she turned with sudden
life upon her father and her brothers, who had already begun to taste
the smoking hasty-pudding. "Where are the others?" she cried out,
shrilly. "Where are Louis and Richard?"
The men glanced at one another under sullen eyelids, but nobody
answered. "Where are they?" she repeated.
"You know as much about it as we do," Eugene said, then, in his soft
voice.
Madelon stood with wild eyes flashing from one to another. Then she
gave a sudden spring out of the room, and they heard her swift feet
on the chamber-stairs. The men ate their hasty-pudding, bending their
brows over it as if it were a witches' mess instead of their ordinary
home fare.
Madelon came back so rapidly that she seemed to fly over the stairs.
They scarcely heard the separate taps of her feet. She burst into the
room and faced them in a sort of fury. "They have gone!" she gasped
out. "Louis and Richard have gone! Where are they?"
David Hautville slowly shook his head. Then he took another spoonful
of pudding. The brothers bent with stern assiduity over their bowls.
"You have hid them away!" shrieked Madelon. "You have hid them away
lest Louis own that he saw blood on my hand, and Richard that he gave
me his knife! What have you done with them?"
Not one of the three men spoke. They swallowed their pudding.
"Father! Abner! Eugene!" said Madelon, "tell me what you have done
with my brothers, who can testify that I killed Lot Gordon, and save
Burr?"
David Hautville wiped his mouth on his sleeve, rose up, and took his
daughter firmly by the arm.
"We know no more what has become of your brothers than you do," said
he. "If they have gone away for the reason you say, your old father
would be the first to bring them back, if you were guilty as you say,
daughter of mine though you be. But we know well enough, wherever
your brothers have gone, and for whatever cause they have gone, that
you have done nothing worse then go daft, as women will, to shield a
fellow that's used you ill. You shall put us to no more shame while I
am your father and you under my roof. Abner, fill up a bowl with the
pudding."
Madelon's face was deathly white and full of rebellion as she looked
up in her father's, but she held herself still with a stern dignity
and did not struggle. David Hautville's will was up. His hand on her
soft arm was like a vise of steel. The memories of her childhood were
strong upon her. She knew of old that there was no appeal, and was
too proud to contend where she must yield.
"Take the bowl," said her father, when Abner extended it filled with
the steaming pudding--"take the bowl, and go you to your chamber. Eat
your supper, and get in to your bed and stay there till morning."
Madelon still looked at her father with that same look of speechless
but unyielding rebellion. She did not stir to take the bowl or go to
her chamber.
"Do as I bid ye!" ordered her father, in a great voice.
Madelon took the bowl from her brother's hand and went out of the
room as she was bid; and yet as she went they all knew that there was
no yielding in her.
Chapter VII
The next morning Madelon came down-stairs as usual and prepared
breakfast. When it was ready the family sat up to the table and ate
silently and swiftly. No one addressed a word to Madelon. After
breakfast David and his son Abner put on their leather jackets and
their fur caps, and set forth for the woods with their axes, but
Eugene lounged gracefully over to the hearth and sat down on the
settle, and began reading his Shakespeare book. Eugene was the only
one of the Hautvilles who ever read books. He studied faithfully the
few in the house--the Shakespeare, the _Pilgrim's Progress_, Milton,
and _Gulliver's Travels_. The others wondered at him. They could not
understand how any one who could handle a gun or a musical instrument
could lay finger on a book. "Made-up things," said Abner once, with a
scornful motion towards Shakespeare.
"No more made-up than fugue," retorted Eugene, hotly; but they all
cried out on him.
This morning Madelon cast one quick glance at him as he sauntered
over to the settle with his book. Then she did not look his way
again. She worked quietly, setting the kitchen to rights.
The day was very cold; the light in the room was dim and white, the
windows were coated so thickly with the hoar-frost. Eugene kept
stirring the fire and adding sticks as he read.
Finally, Madelon had finished her work in the kitchen, and went
up-stairs. Then Eugene arose reluctantly, went out into the cold
entry, and stood by the door with his book in hand. Madelon, passing
across the landing above, looked down and saw him standing there, and
knew that what she suspected was true--that her brother was mounting
guard over her lest she leave the house.
She finished her work in the chamber, and came down-stairs with some
knitting-work in hand. She seated herself quietly in her own
cushioned rocking-chair, and fell to work with yarn and clicking
needles, like any peaceful housewife. She knitted and Eugene read,
bending his handsome dark face, smiling with pleasure, over his
Shakespeare book. This fierce winter day he was reading "A
Midsummer-Night's Dream," and letting his fancy revel with
Shakespeare's fairies in an enchanted summer wood. He was, however,
alert as a watch-dog. He could at an instant's warning leave that
delicate and dainty crew and those flowery shores, and intercept his
sister, should she attempt to pass him and escape from the house.
Still, his alertness all came to naught, for Madelon, like some
fleeing fox, took a sudden turn which no canny hunter could have
anticipated. She sat somewhat away from the hearth and well at
Eugene's back. He would have asked her why she did not draw nearer
the fire and if she were not cold had he not feared to encounter a
sulky humor. He could not see the lengths of linen cloth, which she
herself had spun and woven, lying in a great heap on the floor, half
at her back, half under her petticoats. However, could he have seen
it he would have thought of it merely as some mysterious domestic and
feminine proceeding about which he neither knew nor cared to know
anything.
Madelon, as she knitted, ever measured the distance between her
brother and herself with her great black eyes, training her nerves
and muscles for what she had to do as she would have trained a bow
and arrow.
Eugene turned a leaf in his Shakespeare book. Madelon made a leap, so
soft and swift that it seemed like an onslaught of Silence itself,
and he was smothered and wound about and entangled in folds of linen
as if it had been in truth his winding-sheet. He struggled as best he
might against his linen bands, and cried out as angrily as he could
for the linen that bound his mouth and his eyes, but he could not
release himself. Eugene was strong and lithe, but Madelon was nearly
as strong as he at any time; and now the great tension of her nerves
seemed to inform all her muscles with the strength of steel wire.
Eugene sat bound hard and fast to the settle, with his face swathed
like a mummy's, with only enough space clear for breath. "Let me go,
or I'll--" he threatened, in his smothered tone.
Madelon made no reply. She watched him struggle to be sure that he
could not free himself. Then she went out of the room. Eugene called
after her in a choke of fury, but she spoke not a word.
Up-stairs she hastened to her own chamber, and put on her red cloak
and hood, and was down the stairs again, out the door, and hurrying
up the road to the village. From time to time she glanced behind her
to be sure that her brother had not freed himself, and was not in
pursuit; then she sped on faster. The road was glare with ice, but
she did not slow her pace for that. She was as sure-footed as a hare.
She kept her arms close to her sides under her red cloak, and did not
pause until she came out on the village street where the houses were
thick. Then she went at a rapid walk, still glancing sharply behind
her to see if she were followed, until she came to Parson Fair's
house. She went up the front walk, between the rows of ice-coated
box, and up the stone steps under the stately columned porch, and
raised the knocker and let it fall with sharp impetus. The door
opened speedily a little way, and Parson Fair himself stood there,
his pale, stern old face framed in the dark aperture. He bowed with
gentle courtesy and bade her good-morning, and Madelon courtesied
hurriedly and spoke out her errand with no preface.
"Can I see your daughter, sir?" said she.
Parson Fair looked at Madelon's white face, touched on the cheeks and
lips with feverish red, at her set mouth and desperate eyes. The
story of her connection with the Gordon tragedy had not penetrated to
his study, neither did he know how Burr had forsaken her for his
Dorothy; but he saw something was amiss with her, although he was not
well versed in the signs of a woman's face. Parson Fair, moreover,
felt somewhat of interest in this Madelon Hautville, for he had a
decorously restrained passion for sweet sounds which she had often
gratified. Many a Sabbath day had he sat in his beetling pulpit and
striven to keep his mind fixed upon the spirit of the hymn alone, in
spite of his leaping pulses, when Madelon's great voice filled the
meeting-house. It was probable that he also, notwithstanding his
Christian grace, shared somewhat the popular sentiments towards these
musical and Bohemian Hautvilles; yet he looked with a dignified
kindness at the girl.
"I trust you are not ill," he said, without answering her question as
to whether she might see Dorothy.
Madelon did not act as if she heard what he said. "Can I see your
daughter, sir?" she repeated. She cast an anxious glance over her
shoulder for fear Eugene might appear in the road.
Parson Fair still eyed her with perplexity. "I believe Dorothy is ill
in her chamber," he said, hesitatingly. "I do not know--"
Madelon gave a dry sob. "I beg you to let me see her for a minute,
sir," she gasped out, "for the love of God. It is life and death!"
Parson Fair looked shocked and half alarmed. He had not had to do
with women like this, who spoke with such fervor of passion. His
womankind had swathed all their fiercer human emotions with shy
decorum and stern modesty, as Turkish women swathe their faces with
veils.
Madelon, still under the fear of Eugene, pressed inside the door as
she spoke, and he stood aside half involuntarily. "I beg you to let
me see her," she repeated. She looked at the stately wind of the
stairs up to the second floor, as if she were minded to ascend
without bidding to Dorothy's chamber.
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