Madelon Part 39

"Madelon!"

"It is all I can do to make amends," said she. Then she looked full at him, and did not shrink when she met his eyes, though her face grew white before the mad longing in them.

Lot stood up and leaned towards her, and she stood waiting. Then he threw out his hands, as if he would push her back, and turned away.

"You owe me no amends," he said, hoa.r.s.ely. "The wound that you gave me was my just desert for striving to take what you were not willing to give."

"Your life is your life," said she, steadily, "and I almost took it away from you. I would do this in token of repentance for that and whatever other harm I have done you unwittingly."

"You owe me no amends, and I will take none," said Lot, again.

Then he faced about towards her, and she started and looked at him, wondering and half in awe, for suddenly the love in the heart of the man showed itself in his face like a light, and it was almost as if she saw, unbelieving and denying, her own transfigured image in his eyes.

"Good-bye, Madelon," said Lot.

"Good-bye," she returned, faintly, and looked at him for the first time in all her life without the thought of Burr between them.

But that Lot did not know, and stood a moment gazing at her as a man gazes at one beloved under the shadow of long parting, striving to gain possession of somewhat to hold and cherish aside from the conditions of the flesh. Then he said good-bye again, and went away, with that soft winding glide of his through the underbrush which he might have learned from the wild dwellers in the woods, and was out of sight through the violet glooms of the firs.

Chapter XXVIII

The night before Madelon was married, as if by some tacit understanding of peace and harmony, the Hautvilles came together for a concert in the great living-room. Not one had said to another, "This is Madelon's last night at home, and we have been wroth with her; let us bury the hatchet, and raise our voices with one accord in our old songs;" but one impulse had seemed to move them all, as one wind moves the forest trees who are kin to one another, and they were all together at twilight, even Eugene and his bride.

Burr Gordon came also, but he and Madelon did not sit apart that evening. The weather was cool, even for late September, and an early frost was threatened. A great fire blazed on the hearth. Burr and Dorothy, on the settle in the chimney-corner, listened to the Hautville chorus, and Burr looked always at Madelon and Dorothy at Eugene. The Hautvilles stood together before the fire, old David with his ba.s.s-viol at his side, like the wife of his bosom; Louis holding his violin on his shoulder, like a child, pressing his dark cheek against it, and Eugene and Abner and Richard and Madelon uplifting their voices in the old songs and fugues.

The doors and windows were shut. n.o.body heard nor saw Lot Gordon when he crept like a fox round the house, and came under a window and rested his chin on the sill and remained there looking at Madelon.

She wore that night a soft gown of crimson wool, which clung about her limbs and her bosom, and showed her bare throat swelling with song into new curves which were indeed those of music itself. Lot, as he looked at her, saw her with the full meaning of her beauty as never Burr could, and as she could never see herself, for there is no looking-gla.s.s on earth like a vain love when it rises above the slight of its own desire. Greater praise than she would ever know again in her whole life went up for Madelon outside that window, as she sang, but she neither knew it nor missed anything when Lot went away.

At ten o'clock the concert ceased. Lot slunk away noiselessly, and soon Eugene and Dorothy went home, and Burr, lingering for a good-night kiss or two in the door.

Madelon set bread to rise that night, and fulfilled her little round of nightly tasks for the last time. Her father and brothers went to bed and left her there--all but Richard. He remained in a corner of the settle, his slim length flung out carelessly, his head tipped back as if he were asleep; but his black eyes flashed bright under their lids at his sister whenever she did not look at him. Madelon said not a word until her tasks were done; then she came and stood in front of Richard, and looked at him, frowning a little, for her pride was stung at his treatment of her, but holding out her hand. "Can't you bid me good-night, Richard?" said she, and tried to smile at him with that old loving comradeship which he had disowned.

The boy maintained his sullen silence for a moment, and Madelon waited. Then suddenly he cried, "Good-night," with sharp intonations, like the response of a surly dog, and sprang up and thrust something hard into her hand, with such roughness that it hurt her, and she started.

"'Tis a wedding-present for you," Richard said, savagely, with averted face. "I thought the one I gave you before would not serve for two weddings. Though there be but one bride, there should be different gifts."

Madelon gave one look at Richard; then she opened her hand, and there on her reddened palm lay a little gold pencil, which the boy must have spent all his little savings to buy. Madelon held it out to him.

"Take it back," said she; "I want no presents with words like that to sweeten them."

Richard's clenched hand hung by his side. He shook his head sullenly.

"Take it!" said Madelon; but he made no motion to do so.

"Then I shall let it fall on the floor," said Madelon.

"Let it," returned Richard, and forthwith the little gold pencil rolled on the floor under the settle, and Madelon turned away with a white face. But before she had reached the door Richard was at her side and his hand on her arm. "Oh, Madelon!" he said, striving to keep the sobs back. Then Madelon turned and laid a hand on each of his shoulders, and held him away, looking at him.

"Why did you speak to me like that?" said she; and then, without waiting for an answer, drew the boy's head down to her bosom, and held it there a moment, stroking his hair. "If ever you are sick after I am gone," said she, "I will come and take care of you; and if you don't get good things to eat I will see to that, too;" and then she kissed Richard's dark head, and put him away gently, bidding him with a tender laugh "not to be a baby," and went over to the settle and picked up the little gold pencil, and praised it and said she would treasure it all her life.

And then she bade Richard follow her into the best room, and opened the carved oak chest and displayed six beautiful shirts made of linen, which she had herself spun and woven and wrought with finest needlework in bands and bosoms, for a parting gift to him, because he was the nearest of all her brothers, though she must not say so. "The others have shirts enough," said she; "I have seen to that, for I have meant to do my duty to you all, but none of the others have bosoms and wristbands st.i.tched like these, and the linen is extra fine."

That night Richard would not go to his chamber, which he shared with his brother Louis, lest he wake and spy his face flushed with tears, but crept stealthily back down-stairs, and, all unbeknown to any one, lay all night on the settle in the living-room. He slept little, and often waked and wept in the darkness like a child rather than one of the fiery Hautville brothers.

When wrath with a beloved one is stilled in the human heart and love takes its place, it is with a threefold increase, a great rending of spirit, and a cruel turning of weapons against one's self. Richard was one who would always deal with entireties, being capable of no divisions nor subtleties of praise or blame. Whereas his anger had been fierce against his sister that she should love and marry the man who had flouted her, now it was turned wholly against himself for his injustice and ill-treatment of her. He racked himself with the memory of his surly words and looks; and those six shirts of fine linen, with the cunning needlework in band and bosom, seemed the veritable scriptural coals of fire on his head. Also good and simple reasons for his sister's course came to him as he lay there and influenced him still more. "She had it in her mind to kill him, though 'twas the other she struck," he said to himself; "'tis only fit that she should make amends to him for that and keep his house for him, and bake and brew and spin and weave for him." Richard in the darkness nodded his head in agreement with his own argument, and yet he hated Burr as well as ever, and the next morning when he saw him stand beside his sister before Parson Fair, he clenched his slender brown hands until the sinews stood out, and his black eyes still flashed hostility at him. Yet when he looked at Madelon's face his own softened, and he set his mouth hard to keep back the quiver in it. Madelon wore not the silk of green and gold in which she had planned to be wedded to Lot; that she could not bring her mind to do, since the old wretched dreams and imaginations seemed to cling to the garment and desecrate it for this. She wore instead a sober gown of a satin sheen with the rich purplish-red hue of a plum, which set off the dark bloom of her face by suggestion rather than contrast; but all the boy Richard noted of her costume was his little gold pencil slung on the long gold chain around her neck.

Madelon and Burr were married quite early in the morning, in the best room of the Hautville house, and n.o.body outside the two families was bidden to the wedding. After the marriage the bride tied on a white-muslin ap.r.o.n and pa.s.sed cake and currant wine; and the great Hautvilles sitting in sober state around the room, Elvira Gordon in her black satin and pearls, pretty Dorothy, and Parson Fair partook.

Then the bride went up to her chamber and put on a pelisse of stuff like her gown, lined with canary-colored satin, and a little cap of otter and a great m.u.f.f which she had fashioned herself out of skins which her brothers had brought home, and took over her arm, since the day was frosty, a long tippet of otter which she could wind round her throat, if need be, and came down all equipped for her wedding-journey.

In front of the Hautville house stood waiting a smart chaise with a fine young horse in the shafts, and the bride and groom came out and got in and drove away. But first, while Burr was gathering up the reins, David Hautville's hoa.r.s.e voice through the open door besought him to wait, and presently the old man came striding forth with the skin of a mighty bear which he had slain single-handed years ago, and which had been his chiefest treasure next to his viol ever since, kept beside his bed, whence no one dared remove it. He flung it up into the chaise, and tucked it well in over his daughter's knees.

"Oh, father, I will not take your bearskin!" Madelon cried, and the tears came into her eyes, for this touched her more than anything; and the memory of aught that she had ever lacked in tenderness towards them all seemed to smite her in the face.

"'Tis a sharp day for the time of year, and there'll be a frost to-night," was all old David Hautville said, and strode back into the house, keeping his face well turned away.

The horse that Burr drove was a young animal that he had purchased lately. It was of the stock of the Morgans, and stood with the faithfulness of a sentinel; but when the signal to start was given stepped out proudly as if to a battle charge, with eager tossings of heavy mane and high flings of knees and hoofs; and yet, when fairly on the road, never broke the swift precision of his course.

"He's got a fine horse there," Abner Hautville said, in his emphatic ba.s.s, as he watched them out of sight; and he further declared that for his part he would be willing to trade the roan for him. Then the boy Richard turned upon him, with a cry that was something between a sob and an oath: "Yes, trade off the roan and all we've got left to him, I'll warrant ye will!" he choked out. Then he was gone, pelting off madly across the fields, with his bold and innocent young heart, that had as yet known no fiercer pa.s.sion than this for his sister, all aflame with grief and angry jealousy, as of one who sees his best haled off before his eyes, and still with awed submission to a power which he recognizes and understands not.

Chapter XXIX

As Burr and Madelon, setting forth on their wedding-journey, drove down the village street, they met many whom they knew; and had it not been for their self-engrossment they could not have failed to notice and wonder at the cold greetings they received, and the many averted faces which greeted them not at all.

Indeed, Burr did remark upon it when they met Daniel Plympton, who nodded with a surly air and turned his fat and pleasant countenance resolutely away, with a gesture that seemed to belie his own ident.i.ty.

"What's come across Dan'l?" he said, laughing, for at that time coldness from the outside world seemed but provocative of amus.e.m.e.nt.

Then he sang out gayly to the Morgan horse, and they flew along the road, under the outreaching branches, red and gold and russet, past old landmarks and houses and more familiar faces which bore strange looks towards them, and yet surprised them not, for a strangeness was over all the old sights and ways for them both. To the bride and groom, riding through the village where they had been born and bred, and whence all their earthly imaginations had sprung, came an experience like a resurrection. They saw it all: the paths their feet had trodden, the doors they had entered, the friends they had known from childhood, but all seemed no longer the same, since their own conditions of life had changed; and change in one's self is the vital spring of change in all besides.

As they rode along old a.s.sociations lost their holds over them in their new world, which was the outcome of the old, and would in its turn wax old again. Burr looked at his own home, as he went by, as if he had never seen it; even his memory of himself and his childhood days was dim, and he and Madelon, glancing at Lot's windows and having his image forced, as it were, upon their consciousness, regarded it as they might have done an actor in some old drama of history in which they also had taken part, but which had long since pa.s.sed off the stage.

They left the house behind and were swiftly out of sight, over the crest of a long hill with a great spread of golden maple branches closing after them like a curtain, and neither of them dreamed in what straits Lot Gordon lay behind his vacant windows--and all through this love and bliss and paradise of theirs.

The smart chaise and the Morgan horse had scarcely disappeared before Margaret Bean came hurriedly out of Lot Gordon's house and went rattling in her starched draperies towards the village; and soon after that the doctor was seen driving thither furiously in his tilting sulky, while windows were opened and spying heads thrust out all along his course.

An hour later everybody knew that Lot Gordon, some said by a fall in climbing over a stone wall, some said by a severe fit of coughing, had caused his old wound to beset him again with danger of his life.

That night, indeed, the tide of rancorous gossip swelled high. The spirit of persecution and righteous retribution which finds easy birth in New England villages was fast getting to itself feet and hands and tongue and a whole body of active powers.

A stormy bridal night had Burr and Madelon known had they been at home; and had Lot Gordon died during the next three days, in which he lay in imminent danger, there had been fleet horses on the track of the swift Morgan, and the wedding-journey had come to a close.

Yet the Hautville men heard nothing of the bitterness which was gathering towards Madelon and Burr, for people, fearing their fierce tempers, hesitated until the time was come to disclose it to them.

Even old Luke Ba.s.set dared not carry news to them. The tongues were always hushed when one of them drew near; and as for Eugene, who, having a wife, might perhaps have discovered it, he and Dorothy took the stage coach for Boston the day after the marriage, and were paying a visit at Dorothy's aunt's there.

After three days Lot Gordon was reported to be no longer hovering between life and death, and yet it was said on good authority, through the doctor's wife in fact, that he might at any time, by an injudicious step or a harder coughing-spell, end his life through the opening of that old wound, for which they held either Madelon or Burr, or perhaps both, accountable; and public indignation swelled higher and higher. It was resolved that when the bridal couple returned a constant espionage should be kept upon them, and in case of Lot's death active measures should be taken.