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 thatIdid 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!Youmust 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.
“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.
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, “andI'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 seehim?”
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.
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, thePilgrim's Progress, Milton, andGulliver'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.
“She is ill in her chamber,” the Parson said again, with a kind of forbidding helplessness.
“I would see her only for a minute. I beg you to let me, sir. It is life and death, I tell you—it is life and death!”
Whether Parson Fair motioned her to ascend, or whether he simply stood aside to allow her to pass, he never knew, but Madelon was up the winding stairs with a swirl of her cloak, as if the wind had caught it. Parson Fair followed her, and motioned her to the south front chamber, and was about to rap on the door when it was flung open violently, and the great black princess stood there, scowling at them.
“I have a guest here for your mistress,” said Parson Fair; but the black woman blocked his way, speaking fast in her wrathful gibberish.
However, at a stately gesture from her master she stood aside, and he held the door open, and Madelon entered. “You had better not remain long, to tire her,” said the parson, and closed the door. Immediately the uncouth savage voice was raised high again, and quelled by the parson's calm tone. Then there was a great settling of a heavy body close to the threshold. The black woman had thrown herself at the sill of her darling's door, to keep watch, like a faithful dog.
Madelon Hautville, when she entered Dorothy Fair's room, had her mind not been fixed upon its one end, which was above all such petty details of existence, might well have looked about her. No such dainty maiden bower was there in the whole village as this. Madelon's own chamber, carpetless and freezing cold, with its sparse furniture and scanty sweep of white curtains across the furred windows which filled the room with the blue-white light of frost, was desolation to it.
A great fire blazed on Dorothy Fair's chamber hearth. The red glow of it was over the whole room, and the frost on the windows was melting. Curtains of a soft blue-and-white stuff, said to have been brought from overseas, hung at Dorothy's windows and between the high posts of her bed. She had also her little rocking-chair and footstool frilled and cushioned with it. There was a fine white matting on her floor, and a thick rug with a basket of flowers wrought on it beside her bed. The high white panel-work around Dorothy's mantel was carved with curving garlands and festoons of ribbon and flowers, and on the shelf stood tall china vases and bright candlesticks. Dorothy's dressing-table had a petticoat of finest dimity, trimmed with tiny tassels. Above it hung her fine oval mirror, in a carved gilt frame. Upon the table were scattered silver and ivory things and glass bottles, the like of which Madelon had never seen. The room was full of that mingled perfume of roses and lavender which was always about Dorothy herself.
The counterpane on Dorothy's bed was all white and blue, and quilted in a curious fashion, and her pillows were edged with lace. In the midst of this white-and-blue nest, her slender little body half buried in her great feather-bed, her lovely yellow locks spreading over her pillow, lay Dorothy Fair when Madelon entered. She half raised herself, and stared at her with blue, dilated eyes, and shrank back with a little whimper of terror when she came impetuously to her bedside.
“You don't believe it,” Madelon said, with no preface.
Dorothy stared at her, trembling. “You mean—”
“I mean you don't believe he killed him! You don't believe Burr Gordon killed his cousin Lot!”
Dorothy sank weakly back on her pillows. Great tears welled up in her blue eyes and rolled down her soft cheeks. “Theysawhim there,” she sobbed out, “and they found his knife. Oh, I didn't think he was so wicked!”
Madelon caught her by one slender arm hard, as if she would have shaken her. “Youbelieve it!” she cried out. “You believe that Burr did it—you!”
“They—saw—him—there,” moaned Dorothy, with a terrified roll of her tearful eyes at Madelon's face.
“Saw him there!What if they did see him there? What if the whole town saw him? What if you saw him? What if you saw him strike the blow with your own eyes? Wouldn't you tear them out of your own head before you believed it? Wouldn't you cut your own tongue out before you'd bear witness against him?”
Dorothy sobbed convulsively.
“I would,” said Madelon.
Dorothy hid her face away from her in the pillow.
Madelon laid her hand on her fair head, and turned it with no gentle hand. “Listen to me now,” she said. “You've got to listen. You've got to hear what I say. You ought to believe without being told, without knowing anything about it, that he's innocent, if you're a woman and love him; but I'm going to tell you. Burr Gordon didn't kill his cousin Lot. I did!”
Dorothy gave a faint scream and shrank away from her.
“I did!” repeated Madelon. “Now do you believe he's innocent, when somebody else has told you?”
Dorothy's face was white as her pillows, her eyes big with terror. There was a soft thud against her door. The black woman was keeping arduous watch.
“You couldn't!” Dorothy gasped out.
“I could! Look at my hands; they are as strong as a man's.”
“You—couldn't!”
“I could, and I did.”
Dorothy shook her head in hysterical doubt.
“Listen,” said Madelon—“listen. I'll tell you why I did it, Dorothy Fair. Burr Gordon had been with me a little before he went with you. Perhaps you knew it. If you did, I am not blaming you—he's got taking ways, you couldn't help it; and I am not blaming him—he's a man, and you're fairer complexioned than I am. But I was fool enough to be mad without any good reason—you understand I am not saying anything against him, Dorothy Fair—when I saw him with you at the ball. He had a right to take anybody to the ball that he chose. It was naught to me, but I was mad. I have a quick temper. And I started home when that young man from Kingston offered to fiddle for the dancing after you and Burr went out; and my brother Richard made me take his knife for fear I might meet stragglers, and I had it open under my cloak. And when I got to that lonely part of the road, after the turn, I saw somebody coming, and I thought it was Burr. He walked like him. And I looked away—I did not want to see his face; and when I came up to him the first thing I knew he threw his arm around me and kissed me, and—something seemed to leap up in me and I struck with Richard's knife. And—then he fell down, and I looked and it was not Burr—it was his cousin Lot. And—then Burr came, and we heard whistling, and others were coming, and he made me run, and the others came up and found him; and now they say he did it and not I. It was I who stabbed Lot Gordon, Dorothy Fair!”
“It was Burr's knife, with his initials cut in the handle, that they found,” said Dorothy, with a kind of piteous doggedness. There was in this fair little maiden the same power of adherence to a mental attitude which her father had shown in his religious tenets. Wherever the men and women of this family stood they were fixed beyond their own capability of motion.
Madelon gave a bewildered sigh. “I know not how that was,” said she, “unless—” a red flush mounted over her whole face. “No, he would not have done that for me,” she said, as if to herself.
A red flush on Dorothy's face seemed to respond to that on Madelon's. “You think he put his knife there to take suspicion from you?” she cried out, quickly.
Madelon shook her head. “I don't know about the knife,” she said, “but I know I stabbed Lot Gordon.”
“He would not have done that,” said Dorothy, with troubled, angry blue eyes on her face. “He would have thought of—others. He never changed the knife, Madelon Hautville!”
“I know nothing about the knife,” repeated Madelon, “but Burr Gordon did not kill his cousin.”
“He was there, and it was his knife,” said Dorothy. There was now a curious indignation in her manner. It was almost as if she preferred to believe her lover guilty of murder rather than unduly solicitous for her rival.
Madelon Hautville turned upon her with a kind of fierce solemnity. “Dorothy Fair,” said she, “look at me!” and the soft, blue-eyed face, full of that gentle unyielding which is the firmest of all, looked up at her from the pillows—“Dorothy Fair, did that man, who's locked up over there in jail in New Salem, for a crime he's innocent of, ever kiss you?”
Madelon's face seemed to wax stiff and white. She looked like one who bared her breast for a mortal hurt as she spoke. Dorothy went pink to the roots of her yellow hair and the frill on her nightgown. She made an angry shamed motion of her head, which might have signified anything.
“And you can believe this thing of him after that!” said Madelon, with a look of despairing scorn. “He has kissed you, Dorothy Fair, and you can think he has committed a murder!”
Dorothy gasped. “They said—” she began again.
“They said!Are you a woman, Dorothy Fair, and don't you know that the man you love enough to let him kiss you should do no wrong in your eyes, or else it's a shame to you, and you should kill him to wipe it out?” Dorothy shrank away from her in the bed, her frightened blue eyes staring at her over her shoulder. “My God! don't you know,” said Madelon, “the man you love is yourself? When you believe in his guilt you believe in your own; when you strike him for it you strike yourself. Don't you know that, Dorothy Fair?”
Dorothy looked at her, all white and trembling. She gave a half-sob. Suddenly Madelon's tone changed. “Don't be afraid,” said she. “I'm different from you. I don't wonder he liked you better. It's no blame to him. I know you care about him. You don't believe he did it.”
“I don't know,” sobbed Dorothy. The door opened a crack, and the black woman's watchful eyes appeared.
“Oh, you do know, you do know! I tell you, I did it—I! Can't you believe me? I'm a wicked woman, and I love anybody I love in a different way from any that a woman as good as you are can. I did it, Dorothy, and not Burr! He mustn't suffer for it. We must see him, you and I together! Don't you believe me?”
“I don't—know,” sobbed Dorothy. The dark face appeared quite fully in the door. Madelon cast a quick glance about the room. Dorothy's pretty Bible, with a blue-silk-ribbon marker hanging from it, lay on her dimity dressing-table. Madelon sprang across and got it. The black woman stood in the doorway, muttering to herself. She looked all ready to spring to Dorothy's defence. Madelon did not notice her at all. She went close to Dorothy, put the Bible on the bed, and laid her right hand upon it.
“I swear upon this Holy Book,” said she, “that this hand of mine is the one that stabbed Lot Gordon. I swear, and I call God to witness, and may I be struck dead as I speak if what I say is not true. Now do you believe what I say, Dorothy Fair?”
Dorothy looked at her and the Bible in bewildered terror. She nodded.
Something like joy came into Madelon's face. “Then we will save him, you and I!” she cried out. “We will save him together! He shall not be hung! He shall be set free! They shall let him out of jail to-day, and put me there instead. We will save him! He would not own that I was guilty and he innocent; Lot would not own it, nor my brother Richard, but now—we will save him—now!”
“How?” asked Dorothy, feebly.
“He will own it to you. Burr will own it to you if you go and plead with him. He can't help owning it to you. And then you shall go to Lot, and when you ask him for your sake, that you may marry Burr, if he knows Burr has told you, and does not care about me, he will speak. He will be sure to speak for you. Come!”
Dorothy raised herself on one elbow and stared at Madelon, her yellow hair falling about her fair startled face. “Where?” said she.
“With me to New Salem.”
“To New Salem?”
“Yes, to New Salem—to see Burr.”
“But I am ill, and the doctor has bid me stay in bed. I have been ill ever since the ball with a headache and fever.”
“You talk about headache and fever when Burr is there in prison! I tell you if my two feet were cut off I would walk to him on the stumps to set him free!”
“How can I go?” said Dorothy. Her blue eyes kindled a little under Madelon's fiery zeal.
“We will take your father's horse and sleigh.”
“But the horse is gone lame, and has not been used for a month.”
“I will get one from Dexter Beers at the tavern,” said Madelon, promptly. “I will lead him over here and harness him into the sleigh.”
“My father will not let me go,” said Dorothy.
“He is a minister of the gospel—he will let his daughter go to save a life.”
“I tell you he will not,” said Dorothy. “I know my father better than you. He will not let me go out when I am ill. It is freezing cold, too. If I go I must go without his knowledge and consent.”
“I am going without my father's,” said Madelon, shortly, “and I go at a greater cost than that, too.”
“It's the second time I have deceived and disobeyed my father in a week's time,” Dorothy said.
“You talk about your father when it is Burr—Burr—that's at stake!” Madelon cried out. “What is your father to Burr if you love him? That ought to go before anything else. It says so in your Bible—it says so in your Bible, Dorothy Fair!”
Dorothy, with her innocent, frightened eyes fixed upon the other girl's passionate face, as if she were being led by her into unknown paths, put back the coverlet and thrust one little white foot out of bed. Then swiftly the black woman, who had entered the room, backed against the door as stiffly as a sentinel, darted forward, and would have thrust her mistress into bed again, making uncouth protests the while, had not Dorothy motioned her away with a gentle dignity, which was hers for use when she chose.
“Go down-stairs, if you please,” said she, “and see if my father is in his study. If he is in there, and busy over his sermon, go to the barn, and drag out the sleigh for us.”
Dorothy, white and fair as an angel, in her straight linen nightgown, stood out on the floor, in front of her great black guardian, who made again as though she would seize her and force her back, and pleaded with her in a thick drone, like an anxious bee, not to go.
“Do as I bid you!” said Dorothy, and glided past her to her dimity dressing-table, and began combing out her yellow hair.
The black woman went out, muttering.
“If my father is in his study on the north side of the house, and busy over his sermon, we can get away; otherwise we cannot,” said Dorothy, combing the thick tress over her shoulder.
Madelon went to a south window of the room and looked out. She could see the barn, and across the road, farther down, the tavern. She watched while Dorothy bound up her hair, and soon she saw the black woman run, with a low crouch of her great body like a stealthy animal, across the yard.
“Your father is in his study,” Madelon said, quickly. “I will go over to the tavern for a horse if yours is too lame.”
“He can scarce stand,” said Dorothy. Her soft voice trembled; she trembled all over—then was still with nervous rigors. Bright pink spots were on her cheeks. A certain girlish daring was there in this gentle maiden for youthful love and pleasure, else she had not stolen away that night to the ball, but very little for tragic enterprise. And, moreover, her fine sense of decorum and womanly pride had always served her mainly in the place of courage, which she lacked.
Sorely afraid was Dorothy Fair, if the truth were told, to go with this passionate girl, who had declared to her face she had done murder, to visit a man who she still half believed, with her helpless tenacity of thought, was a murderer also. The love she had hitherto felt for him was eclipsed by terror at the new image of him which her fearful fancy had conjured up and could not yet dismiss, in spite of Madelon's assurances. She was, too, really ill, and her delicate nerves were still awry from the shock they had received the night of the ball. Parson Fair had been sternly indignant, and his daughter had quailed before him, and then had come the news concerning Burr. Sage tea, and hot foot-baths, and the doctor's nostrums had not cured her yet. Her very spirit trembled and fluttered at this undertaking; but she could not withstand this fierce and ardent girl who upbraided her with the cowardice and distrust of her love. Instinctively she tried to raise her sentiment to the standard of the other's and believe in Burr.
Madelon paused a second as she went out, and gave a strange, scrutinizing glance at her.
“Why do you not wear your blue-silk quilted hood with the swan's-down trimming?” said she. “It becomes you, and it is warm over your ears.”
“Yes, I will,” said Dorothy, looking at her wonderingly.
Madelon went softly out of the house, and ran across and down the road to the tavern. Dexter Beers, the landlord, was just going around the wide sweep of drive to the stable with a meal-sack over his shoulder. No one else was in sight; it was so cold there were no loafers about. Madelon ran after him, and overtook him before he reached the stable door.
“Can you let me take a horse?” said she, abruptly.
Dexter Beers looked slowly around at her with a quick roll of a black eye in a massive face. He had an enormous bulk, which he moved about with painful sidewise motions. His voice was husky.
“What d'ye want a horse for?” said he.
“I want it to put in Parson Fair's sleigh.”
“What for?”
“To take Dorothy to ride.”
“Parson's horse lame yet?”
Madelon nodded.
“Where's yours?”
“I can't have him.”
Dexter Beers still moved on with curious lateral twirls of his shoulders and heaves of his great chest, with its row of shining waistcoat buttons.
“Pooty cold day for a sleigh-ride,” he observed, with a great steam of breath.
“I'll pay you well for the horse,” said Madelon, in a hard voice. She followed him into the stable. He heaved the meal-sack from his shoulder to the floor with a grunt. Another man came forward with a peck measure in his hand. He was young, with a frosty yellow mustache. He had gone to school with Madelon and knew her well, but he looked at her with uncouth shyness without speaking. Then he began unfastening the mouth of the sack.
Madelon stepped forward impatiently towards the horse-stalls. There were the relay of coach-horses, great grays and bays, champing their feed, getting ready for their sure-footed rushes over the mountain roads when the coaches came in. She passed them by with sharp glances.
A man whose face was purplish red with cold was out in the rear of the stable, rubbing down a restive bay with loud “whoas,” and now and then a stronger word and a hard twitch at the halter. He looked curiously at Madelon as she walked up to one of the stalls.
“Better look out for them heels!” he called out, as she drew nearer. She paid no heed, but went straight into the stall, untied the horse, and began to back him out. “Hi, there!” the man shouted, and Dexter Beers and the young man came hurrying up. “Better look out for that gal—I believe she's gone crazy!” he called out. “I can't leave this darned beast—she'll get kicked to death if she don't look out. That old white won't stan' a woman in the stall. Whoa, there! whoa, darn ye! Stan' still!”
“Hullo, what ye doin' of?” demanded Dexter Beers, coming up.
Madelon calmly backed the horse out of his stall. “I want to hire this horse,” said she, holding his halter with a firm hand.
“That horse?”
“Yes. I'll pay you whatever you ask.”
Dexter Beers stared at her and the horse dubiously. “Jest as soon set a woman to drivin' the devil as that old white,” volunteered the man who was cleaning the bay. The young man stood gaping with wonder.
“Can I have this horse or not?” demanded Madelon. Her black eyes flashed imperiously at Dexter Beers. Her small brown hand held the halter of the old white with a grasp like steel.
“Dunno 'bout your drivin' that horse,” said Dexter Beers. “'Fraid you'll get run away with. Better take another.”
“Isn't this horse the fastest you've got on a short stretch?”
“S'pose he is, but I dunno 'bout a woman's drivin' of him.”
Madelon looked as if she were half minded to spring upon the back of the old white and settle the matter summarily. She fairly quivered with impatience.
“A woman who can drive David Hautville's roan can drive this horse, and you know it,” said she. She moved forward as she spoke, leading the high-stepping old white, and Dexter Beers stood aside.
“Well, David Hautville's roan is nigh a match for this one,” he grunted, hesitatingly, “but then ye know your own better. Hadn't ye better—”
But the old white was out of the stable at a trot, with Madelon running alongside.
“Don't ye want a man to hitch him up?” Dexter Beers called after her; but she was out of hearing.
“If the gal's ekal to drivin' that horse, she's ekal to hitchin' of him up,” said the man who was cleaning the bay. “If a gal wants to drive, let her hitch. Ye'd better let a woman go the whole figger when she gits started, just as ye'd better give an ugly cuss of a horse his head up hill an' down. It takes the mischief out of 'em quicker'n anything. Let her go it, Dexter—don't ye fret.”
“I don't want her breakin' any of the parson's daughter's bones with none of my horses,” said Dexter Beers, uneasily. “Wonder where the parson is?”
“Let 'em go it! They won't git smashed up, I guess,” said the other. “I've seen that gal of Hautville's with that mare of his'n. She kin drive most anythin' short of the devil, an' old white's got sense enough to know when he's well driv, ugly's he is. He wa'n't on the track for nothin'. He ain't no wuss, if he's as bad, as that roan mare. Let 'emgoit!”
“Wonder what's to pay?” said the young man, who had not spoken before.
“Dunno,” said Dexter Beers. “Somethin's to pay—that girl acted queer.”
“S'pose she takes it hard 'bout Burr Gordon. He used to fool 'round her, I've heerd, afore he went courtin' the parson's gal.”
“Dunno—queer she's so thick with the parson's gal all of a sudden.”
“Lord, I wouldn't tech a gal that could git the upperhand of a horse like that roan mare with a ten-foot pole,” half soliloquized the man at work over the bay. “Wouldn't have her if she owned half the township, an' went down on her knees to me—darned if I would. Don't want no woman that kin make horse-flesh like that knuckle under. Guess a man wouldn't have much show; hev to take his porridge 'bout the way she wanted to make it. Whoa, there! stan' still, can't ye? Darned if I want nothin' to do with sech woman folks or sech horses as ye be.”
Dexter Beers moved laboriously out to the stable door and peered after Madelon, but she had disappeared in Parson Fair's yard. The white horse had gone up the road at a brisk trot, but she had easily kept pace with him. She also harnessed him into the sleigh with no difficulty. The animal seemed docile, and as if he were to belie his hard reputation. There was, however, a proud and nervous cant to his old white head, and he set his jaw stiffly against his bit.
Dorothy came out in her quilted silk pelisse and her blue hood edged with swan's-down, and got into the sleigh. The black woman was keeping watch at the parson's study door the while, but he never swerved from his hard application of the doctrines. The sleigh slipped noiselessly out of the yard and up the road, for Madelon had not put on the bells. The old white went rather stiffly and steadily for the first quarter-mile; then he made a leap forward with a great lift of his lean white flanks, and they flew.
Dorothy gave a terrified gasp. “Don't be frightened,” Madelon said. “It's the horse that used to beat everything in the county. He's old now, but when he gets warmed up he's the fastest horse around for a short stretch. He can't hold out long, but while he does he goes; and I want to get a good start. I want to strike the New Salem road as soon as I can.”
Madelon had a growing fear lest Eugene might have freed himself, and might ride the roan across by a shorter cut, and so intercept her at the turn into the New Salem road. He might easily suspect her of attempting to see Burr again. If she passed the turn first she could probably escape him if her horse held out; and, indeed, he might not think she had gone that way if he did not see her.
Dorothy held fast to the side of the sleigh, which seemed to rise from the track as they sped on. “Don't be frightened,” Madelon said again. “This is the only horse in town that can beat my father's on a short stretch, and I don't know that he can always, but I don't think he has been used, and father's was ridden hard yesterday. I can manage this one in harness better than I can father's. Don't be frightened.” But Dorothy's face grew pale as the swan's-down around it, and her great blue eyes were fixed fearfully upon the bounding heels and flanks of the old white race-horse.
Madelon strained her eyes ahead as they neared the turn of the New Salem road. There was nobody in sight. Then she glanced across the fields at the right. Suddenly she swung out the reins over the back of the old white, and hallooed, and stood up in the sleigh.
Dorothy screamed faintly. “Sit still and hold on!” Madelon shouted. Dorothy shut her eyes. It seemed to her she was being hurled through space. Her slender body swung to and fro against the sleigh as she clung frantically to it.
Eugene Hautville, on the roan, was coming at a mad run across the open field on the right towards the turn of the road. It seemed for a second as if Madelon would reach it before he did; but they met there, and the roan reared to a stop in the narrow road directly in front of the old white, who plunged furiously.
“Look out there!” shouted Eugene, as the sleigh tilted on the snow-crust. The old white's temper was up at this sudden check, but the woman behind him had a stronger will than he. She brought him to a straining halt, and then she spoke to her brother.
“You let us pass!” she said, sternly.
“Where are you going?” he demanded. He looked uneasily at Dorothy as he spoke. It was easy enough to see that she was a restraint upon him, and that fair, timid face in its blue hood held his indignation well in check.
“We are going to New Salem,” replied Madelon. “Let us pass.”
“I want to know what you are going for,” said Eugene; and he tried to speak with fire, but he still looked furtively at Dorothy.
Nobody had ever suspected how that lovely face of hers had been in his dreams, unless it had been for a time Dorothy herself. Nobody had noticed in meeting, of a Sabbath day long since, when Dorothy had first returned from her Boston school, sundry glances which had passed between a pair of soft blue eyes in the parson's pew and a pair of fiery black ones in the singing-seats.
Dorothy, half guiltily in those days, had arranged her curls and tied on her Sunday bonnets with a view to Eugene Hautville's eyes; and always, when she returned from meeting, had gone straight to her looking-glass, to be sure that she had looked fair in them. But nobody had ever known, and scarcely she herself.
She had come to think later that she had perhaps been mistaken, for never had Eugene made other advances to her than by those ardent glances; and Burr had come, and she had turned to him, and thought of Eugene Hautville only when he crossed her way, and then with a mixture of pique and shame. Never by any chance did her eyes meet his nowadays of a Sabbath day, and she listened coldly to his sweet tenor in the hymns. Now, suddenly, she looked straight up in his face and met his eyes, and a pink flush came into her white cheeks.
“Please to let us pass,” she said, in her gentle tone, which had yet a tincture of command in it. Any woman as fair as she, who has a right understanding of her looking-glass, has, however soft she may be, the instincts of a queen within her. She felt a proud resentment for her own old folly and for Eugene's old slighting of her, and indignation at his present attitude as she looked up at him with sudden daring.
Eugene threw back his head haughtily. “She wants to see Burr Gordon,” he thought, and would have died rather than let her think he would stand in the way of it. He jerked the roan aside, and seemed as if he would have been flung into the way-side bushes with her curving plunge.
“Pass, if you wish,” he said, with a graceful bend in his saddle, and was past them, riding the other way towards the village.
When they reached the county buildings, the court-house and the jail, in New Salem, the old race-horse was still not nearly spent, although he breathed somewhat hard. When Madelon sprang out to blanket and tie him he seemed to vibrate to her touch like electric steel, and showed that the old fire had not yet died out of his nerves and muscles.
Poor Dorothy Fair's knees were weak under her as she got out of the sleigh. Her pretty face was pitiful, her sweet mouth drooping at the corners like a troubled child's.
Madelon looked at her sharply when they stood before the jail door waiting for admittance. “I have seen you wear a curl each side of your face outside your hood,” said she.
“I didn't think of it to-day,” Dorothy replied, with forlorn surprise.
Madelon went close to the other girl peremptorily, as if she had been her mother, pulled forward two soft curls from under her hood, and arranged them becomingly against the pale cheeks; and Dorothy submitted.
Alvin Mead opened the jail door, and his great face took on a forbidding scowl when he saw Madelon Hautville.
“Can't let ye in,” he said, gruffly. “Ain't a visitin' day.” He would have shut the door in their faces had not Madelon made a quick spring against it.
“I don't want to come in!” she cried. “I don't want to see him to-day. It's this lady who wants to see him.”
“Can't see nobody,” said Alvin Mead, filling up the door like a surly living wedge.
“You must let us see him,” persisted Madelon. “She's Parson Fair's daughter. She is going to marry Burr Gordon—she must see him.”
Alvin Mead shook his head stubbornly. Then Dorothy spoke, thrusting her fair face forward, and looking up at him with terrified, innocent pleading, like a child, and yet speaking with a gentle lady's authority. “I beg you to let me come in, only for a few moments,” said she. “I will not make you any trouble. I will come out directly when you bid me to.”
Alvin Mead looked at her a second, then at Madelon with rough inquiry. “Who did ye say she was?” he growled.
“Parson Fair's daughter, the lady that's going to marry Burr Gordon.”
“I can't let but one of ye see him, and she can't stay more'n ten minutes,” said Alvin Mead, and moved aside, and Madelon and Dorothy entered.
They followed Alvin Mead down the icy, dark corridor to Burr's cell door. He unlocked it, and bade Dorothy enter. He cast a forbidding look at Madelon. “I will stand here,” she said with a strange meekness, almost as if her heart were broken; but when the jailer prepared to follow Dorothy into Burr's cell she caught him by the arm and tried to force him back, and cried out sharply that he should let her see him alone. “She is the girl he is going to marry, I tell you!” she said. “Let them see each other alone. You cannot come between two like that when they are in such trouble.”