Madelon Part 25

When Madelon was seated at her work again, and he pa.s.sed her to leave the room, he laid a heavy, caressing hand on her black head. "Glad ye've got ye a handsome gown," said he. "It's money well spent."

That day there was a great snow-storm--the last of the season. There had been many such that winter. Snow fell upon snow, and the bare ground was never seen. This time the storm lasted two days. On the morning of the third the sun came out and the wind blew. There was a northern gale all day. The new snow arose like a white spirit from its downfall, and was again all abroad in the air. It moved across the fields in great diamond-glittering shafts; it crested itself over the brows of hills in flas.h.i.+ng waves; it lengthened its sharp slants of white light from hour to hour against the windward sides of the fences and houses.

On the morning of the next day everything was still. The snow lay transfixed in blue whirlpools around the trees; the fields were full of frozen eddies, and the hill-tops curled with white wave-crests which never broke. There was a dead calm, and the mercury was fourteen degrees below zero. Everything seemed in the white region of death after the delirium of storm. That morning Madelon Hautville, after her household tasks were done, sat down again to sew her wedding-dress. The silk was of changeable tints, and flashed in patches of green and gold as it lay over her knee and swept around her to the floor.

All the others had gone, but presently, as she sewed, Richard came in with some parcels. He had been on an errand to the store. He tossed the packages on the dresser, then he went and stood directly in front of his sister, looking at her.

"I want to know if it's true," said he.

Then Madelon knew that he had heard. "Yes," said she.

"And that is--" Richard pointed at the silk.

"Yes."

Richard continued to look at his sister and the gorgeous silk. There was consternation in his look, and withal a certain relief. Boy as he was, he reasoned it out astutely. If Madelon married Lot Gordon the merest shadow of suspicion that her confession had been true would not cling to her, and Richard hated Burr, and was fiercely triumphant that he should not think his sister dying for love of him; and then Burr would lose the Gordon money.

All at once Madelon rose up, let her silk breadths slip rustling to the floor, and took Richard by the shoulder. "Richard," she said, "why could you not have told the truth about the knife, and not forced me to this? Why could you not?"

The boy looked aside from her doggedly. "I don't know what you mean about a knife," said he, but his voice shook.

"Yes, you do know, Richard! It is all over now. I must marry Lot. I have promised. I shall not try to escape it--I shall not try again to make people believe it was I. If you were to tell the truth now it would do no good. But you must tell me this, Richard. How came Burr Gordon's knife there instead of yours?"

The boy hesitated.

"Richard, you know you can trust me."

"Well," said Richard, slowly, in a low voice, "I came right up behind Burr before you were hardly out of sight. I'd got uneasy about your going home alone, and I'd thought I'd follow you unbeknown to you, and turn 'round and go back when you were safe in sight of home. Burr pulled my knife out of the wound quick and wiped it on the snow.

'Take it quick,' says he, and I knew what he meant, and put it in my pocket, and slid out of sight in the bushes; and then he whipped out his knife and laid it in the pool of blood, and the others came up, and 'twas all done in a second. That's how."

"He did it to save me," said Madelon, and her voice was fuller of exultant sweetness than it had ever been in a song.

"He's a rascal, that's what he is!" said Richard. "If he hadn't treated you so, it wouldn't ever have happened."

"He did it to save me," said Madelon, as if to herself; "it's worth all I'm going to do to save him." She sat down again, and took up her wedding-dress, and resumed sewing. Richard stood looking at her a minute; then he got his gun off the hooks where he kept it, put on his fur cap, and went out.

Madelon sat and sewed, in a broad slant of wintry suns.h.i.+ne, for an hour longer. Then a shadow pa.s.sed suddenly athwart the floor, the door opened, and Burr Gordon was in the room. He came straight across to her, but she sat still and drew her needle through her wedding-silk.

"Madelon!" he cried out, "is this true that I have just heard?

Madelon!"--Burr Gordon's handsome face was white as death, and he breathed hard, as if he had been running--"Madelon! tell me, for G.o.d's sake, is it--true?"

"Yes," said Madelon. She took another st.i.tch. The self-restraint of her New England mother was upon her then. Burr Gordon, betrothed to Dorothy Fair, loving her not, yet still n.o.ble enough and kind enough to have perilled his life to save hers, should know nothing of the greater sacrifice she was making for him.

"You are going to marry--Lot?"

"Yes."

"Oh, my G.o.d!"

Burr Gordon stood a moment looking at the girl sewing the breadths of s.h.i.+ning silk. Then he went over to the settle and sat down there and bent over, leaning his head on his hands. He knew no more at that moment of Madelon's mind than an utter stranger.

It well might be, he thought, that she no longer cared for him. It was not long since she had seemed to, but women, he had always heard, were fickle, and he had so treated her that it might have turned any woman's heart cold. And his cousin Lot had the family wealth, and if she married him she would inherit it, and not he. What could he say to her, sewing so calmly upon her wedding-dress, seemingly in utter acquiescence and content with her fate? Could he take another step without going deeper into the slough of shame and distress where it seemed to him he already stood? And there was Dorothy.

Madelon never glanced at him as she sewed. Presently he arose and went over to her again. "Madelon," he said, hesitatingly, coloring red, "tell me you do not have any hard feelings towards me? I know I deserve it."

"You deserve nothing; it is I," she said, in a low voice.

"_You!_"

"I know what you did to save my life," she said. Her voice gave out a rich thrill, like a musical tone, as she spoke. She bent lower over her work.

"That was nothing. Madelon"--he paused a moment; she was silent--"Madelon, tell me. Are you--are you satisfied--with this step you are going to take?"

"Yes."

"There is nothing I can do? You know I would do--anything to-- You know if you wished--I would do whatever you said."

"You will marry Dorothy Fair," Madelon said, in such a tone of calm a.s.sertion that he quailed before it.

"Then you--are satisfied to--marry Lot-- It is your wish?"

"Yes."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" said Burr, and went out, while Madelon took another st.i.tch in her wedding-gown.

Chapter XVII

However the tale of Madelon's and Lot's engagement had found mouth--whether Margaret Bean had vented her knowledge when it grew too big for her or not--it was scarce one day before the whole village was agape with it. With that tendency of the human mind born of involuntary self-knowledge which leads it to suspect a selfish motive in all untoward actions, many gave unhesitatingly a reason for Madelon's choice.

The women nodded astutely at each other, and the men exchanged shrewd affirmative grunts. "She's goin' to marry Lot to pay off Burr," they all agreed. "She'll get all the money."

Madelon herself had never thought of that. She had never considered the fact that her marriage with Lot would rob Burr of his prospective wealth; and, if she had, she would have dismissed the thought as of no moment. Capacity for revenge of that sort was not in her; even the imagination of it was lacking. She would simply have resolved to give the property to Burr if she should outlive Lot, and she would have carried out her resolution. Consciously, perhaps, this consideration was no more evident to her father and her brothers than to herself.

The Hautvilles were not mercenary, and retaliation, involving personal profit at the expense of an enemy, was not of their code.

They did have, however, a consideration no less selfish, in a way, and no less acute when they heard the news. One and all thought, "Now Madelon will be cleared of all suspicion that she may have brought upon herself. n.o.body will believe that Lot Gordon would marry a girl who attempted his life. Every hint of disgrace will be removed from her and us all by this marriage."

Louis, when he heard the news, gave an involuntary glance at his own hands at the thought of Madelon's crimsoned ones, to which he had tried to blind his memory. "Well, maybe it's the best thing that could happen," he said, grimly, but his wonder over it was great. He knew well enough, however he tried to hide the knowledge from himself, that Madelon's story had been true. He looked at his brother Richard, and Richard looked back at him; and one's knowledge for once faced the other's boldly in their utter astonishment. Then they nodded at each other in a stern understanding of a.s.sent. It was best their sister should cover her crime and avert the disgrace, which she had seemed to hang over all of them, in that way.

When the male Hautvilles came home to dinner, on the noon of the day after Burr called, Madelon knew at once that they had all heard. They sat down to the table and ate in silence. None of them spoke a word to Madelon on the subject, but she knew they had heard. After dinner they all went out again except her father. He stood on the hearth, filling his pipe moodily, with an automatic motion of his fingers, his eyes aloof. Madelon moved about with quick, decided motions, clearing the dinner-table. David, when the tobacco was well packed in his pipe-bowl, turned his eyes mechanically upon the glowing coals on the hearth, but made no motion to light it. He looked slowly and furtively about presently at Madelon's wedding-silk, which lay heaped in a chair with a green and gold s.h.i.+mmer, as of leaves and flowers.

All unmoved by, and oblivious of, the splendor of woman's gear was David Hautville usually, but this silk, radiant with the weaving of party-lights, affected him with a memory of old happiness, so vague that it was scarce more than a memory of a memory. In splendid silken raiment had Madelon's mother gone as a bride years ago. It had been in reality widely different from this gown of Madelon's, but still, looking at this, David Hautville's masculine eyes saw dimly beyond it another dapple of gorgeous tints, and heard a soft rustle of silken skirts out of the past. He would not have said that this bright ma.s.s of silk in the chair made him think of his wife's wedding-gown, but he knew by that thought it was Madelon's. He stared at it, scowling over his great mustache. Then he looked slowly around at his daughter. She was just coming out of the pantry, and faced him as he spoke.

"I suppose this is true I've heard," said he.

Madelon's face blazed red before his eyes, but her mouth was firm and hard, and her eyes unflinching. "Yes, sir," she replied; and she took a dish from the table and turned about, and went again into the pantry, carrying it.