Madelon Part 17

Jim laughed a little, although his eyes were grave; he raise the fiddle to his shoulder. "Lord, no, mother. I wouldn't get a girl without asking you."

"I didn't know but you might have seen her over to Ware when you've been there to parties, and not said anything."

"I never saw her but that once, mother." Jim struck up "Kinloch of Kinloch," but he played softly, lest by any chance Madelon, aloft in her chamber, might hear.

"She's handsome as a picture," said his mother. "Who is it that's in prison, Jim?"

"A young man by the name of Gordon."

"What for?"

"They think he stabbed his cousin."

"My sakes! Do you s'pose he did, Jim?"

"I don't know, mother. I wasn't there."

"I s'pose the young man that did it is this girl's beau, and that's why she's so crazy to get him out."

Jim played the merry measure softly, and made no reply.

His mother stood before him quivering with curiosity, which she restrained lest it defeat its own ends. She had learned early that too impetuous feminine questioning is apt to strike a dead-wall in the masculine mind.

"I didn't quite understand what she meant about a knife," she ventured, with an eager glance at her son. He played a little louder, as if he did not hear.

"I s'pose she come here, walked all that way from Ware Centre, this dreadful night, 'cause she thought you could help to get her young man out of prison."

Jim nodded as he fiddled.

"But I can't see how your seein' her brother give her a knife could do any good. Of course that sweet, pretty girl didn't do it herself.

But you didn't see her brother give her the knife, Jim?"

"Didn't you hear me say I didn't?" replied Jim, with sudden force.

"Don't let's talk any more about it, mother. It's a dreadful piece of work, anyway. I don't half know what it means myself. That poor girl is 'most crazy because that fellow is in prison. That's why she came on this wild-goose chase after me. You can't tell anything by what she says."

"Wasn't he a nice kind of a fellow before this happened, Jim?"

"No, he was a scamp," said Jim Otis, angrily. He struck into the "Fisher's Hornpipe" with fury, regardless of the girl up-stairs.

"Land sakes, Jim, don't fiddle quite so loud as that--I'm dreadful afraid she'll hear," said his mother. "I shouldn't thought a girl that looks as sweet as she does would ever have taken up with a scamp."

"The sweetest girls are the worst fools," answered Jim, bitterly, but he obeyed his mother and played less loudly. The shadows of the winter night might have footed it to the soft measures of the hornpipe which Jim Otis played on his fiddle. His mother could scarcely hear it in the pantry when she went in there to set away the supper dishes. She shut the door every time, lest her son should feel the icy air from the fireless closet. She had always a belief that Jim was delicate, and took a certain pride in it, although she could not have told why.

Everything that was in the least likely to freeze to its injury had to be removed from the cold pantry and set on the hearth that bitter night. It was quite a while before her soft, heavy pattering, which jarred the house when she stepped on certain parts of the floor, ceased, and she took her knitting-work and sat down in her rocking-chair opposite her son.

Jim continued to fiddle, touching the strings as if his fingers were m.u.f.fled with down. The wind whistled more loudly than his fiddle; it had increased, and the cold with it. Some of Mrs. Otis's crocks froze on the hearth that night. No such cold had been known in Vermont for years. The frost on the window-panes thickened--the light of the full moon could not penetrate them; all over the house were heard sounds like those on a straining s.h.i.+p at sea. The old timbers cracked now and then with a report like a pistol. "It's a dreadful night," said Mrs. Otis, and as she spoke the returning wind struck the house, and she gasped as if it had in truth taken her breath away.

A few minutes before nine o'clock Mrs. Otis put away her knitting-work and got the great Bible off the desk. "Stop fiddling now, Jim," she said, solemnly. Mrs. Otis spoke with more direct authority in religious matters than in others. She felt herself well backed by the spiritual law. Jim finished the tune he was playing and lowered his fiddle from his shoulder. His mother found the place in the Bible, and the holy words were on her tongue when there was a sharp clash of sleigh-bells close under the window.

"Somebody's drove into the yard!" cried Mrs. Otis. "Who do you s'pose 'tis this time of night?"

"Hullo!" shouted a man's voice, hoa.r.s.ely, and Jim shouted "Hullo!" in response, and started towards the door.

"Ask who's there before you open the door," said the mother, anxiously. She stood listening a moment after Jim had gone; then she caught her shawl from a peg, put it over her head, and followed him--she was so afraid some harm would come to her son.

The outer door was open, and before it was drawn up a sleigh and a great, high-shouldered, snorting and pawing horse. In the sleigh was a man m.u.f.fled in furs like an Eskimo, leaning out and questioning Jim.

"When did she come?" asked the man.

"About five o'clock," answered Jim.

Then Mrs. Otis understood that they were talking about the girl in her spare-chamber, and she interposed, standing in the doorway. "She was just about tuckered out, what with the cold and that awful tramp," said she. "She most ought to have rode over." Mrs. Otis's voice was soft and conciliatory.

"We didn't know she was coming," replied the man in the sleigh, courteously, "or we should not have let her walk so far on such a day."

"Be you her brother?" questioned Mrs. Otis.

"Yes. I'm her brother Eugene."

"And you drove over to see where she was?"

"Yes; we've been very anxious."

"Well, you can be easy about her for to-night," said Mrs. Otis.

"She's tucked up nice and warm in my spare-chamber bed, and I give her a tumbler of my brandy cordial, and I guess she's sound asleep."

"He wants to take her home to-night, mother," said Jim, and there was a curious appeal in his tone.

Mrs. Otis, standing there on the door-step in the freezing moonlight, turned quickly upon the man in the sleigh, and all the soft conciliation was gone from her voice. "You ain't plannin' to take that girl way home to Ware Centre to-night?" said she.

"Father sent me for her," replied Eugene Hautville.

"Well, she ain't goin' a step!"

"Her father will expect me to bring her," said Eugene, with his unfailing courtesy. "He has been very anxious. I had hard work to find where she was. My father won't be satisfied if I come home without her."

"That girl ain't going out of this house to-night!"

"I've got a bearskin here to wrap her up in. She is used to being out in all weathers," persisted Eugene, gently.

"She can't go. Pull her out of a warm bed such a night as this! If you try to take that poor child out to-night I'll stand in my spare-chamber door, and you'll have to walk over me to do it--and my son won't see his mother hurt, I guess!"

Jim Otis stepped closer to the sleigh and spoke to Eugene Hautville in a low voice.

"Well," said Eugene, slowly, "maybe you're right, Otis. I don't know what father will say, but if she was as used up as you tell for, I don't know as 'tis safe. It is an awful night."

"I guess it ain't safe, and she ain't going," maintained Mrs. Otis from the door-step.