Madelon

“ That night he lingered behind the others when they dispersed for the night, and went up to Madelon and threw an arm around her, and laid his cheek against hers. “Oh, Madelon, I wish—” he began, and then he caught his breath, and his cheek against hers was wet, and Madelon turned and comforted him, as a woman will turn and comfort a man for even his pity for her sorrow.
“There is no need for you to fret,” she said, with a sort of gentle authority, as if she had been his mother. “I've got my life to live, and I've got strength enough to live it. I shall do well enough.” ”

“ Madelon saw, without seeming to look, that Burr's handsome face was white as death and haggard.
“Are you sick?” she asked, suddenly. “Why do you look so? What is the matter with you?” and she put a half-bitter, half-anxiously compassionate weight upon the you.
“I believe I am going mad,” Burr groaned, with the quick grasp of a man at the pity of the woman he loves. “Oh, Madelon!” He held out his hands towards her like a child, but she stood back from him, and looked straight at him with sharp questioning in her eyes. ”

“ Madelon kept glancing at him as she picked. Compunction and pity softened more and more her fiery heart, the more so since she felt the guilt of happiness in the face of the woe of another upon her. Finally she said, with that fond reversion to the little homely truths and waysides of life with which the feminine mind strives often to comfort, that she would put up for him a jug of her blackberry cordial, and furthermore that she hoped his cough was better. ”

“ He arose slowly.
“I met Burr on his way down to Parson Fair's,” he said.
Madelon covered up the bread closely with a linen towel. There was a surging in her ears, as if misery itself had a veritable sound, and her face was as white as the ashes on the hearth, but she kept it turned away from Lot.
“Well,” said he, in his husky drawl, “a rose isn't a rose to a bee, she's only a honey-pot; and she's only one out of a shelfful to him; she can't complain, it's what she was born to. If she finds any fault it's got to be with creation, and what's one rose to face creation? ”

“ No knowledge of her body at all had Madelon Hautville, no knowledge of anything on earth except her one aim—to save her lover's life. She was nothing but a purpose concentrated upon one end; there was in her that great impetus of the human will which is above all the swift forces of the world when once it is aroused.
She unharnessed the horse quickly from the parson's sleigh, and led him, restive again at the near prospect of his stall and feed, back to the tavern stable, paid for him, and struck out on the homeward road, straight and swift as one of her Indian ancestors. ”

“ Madelon's languid pulses began to flutter with a sudden interest, increasing to breathless excitement as the croupier began to deal out the cards. "Rouge perd et la couleur," and the poor little piece was swept away. Madelon's heart sank with a sudden pang, and then it beat faster, and her cheeks flushed, as, with a quick impulse, without a moment's hesitation, she threw her remaining ten francs on to the same spot. ”

“ Enough of the New England conscience she had to give her a certain comfort in holding herself to duty, like a knife to a grindstone.
The third week of April had begun when one morning Dorothy Fair came to the door. Madelon was out in the field beside the house, laying some lengths of cloth on the green sunny levels to whiten. The grass had turned quite green in places, and the sun was hot as midsummer. The buds on the trees opened before one's eyes, as if unfolded by warm fingers. People walked languidly, for the humid heat served to force nothing to life in them but dreams ”

“ Her cheeks were brilliant with the damp wind, her eyes gleaming, her mouth half smiling as she looked around. For the first time for weeks it seemed to Madelon that she had really come home, and the old familiar place did not look strange to her with the threatening light of her own future over it. She tossed off her hood and her red cloak, and proposed with her old manner that they have some music.
The men looked at her and each other. “She's a woman,” old David muttered under his mustache, and got his viol.
Soon the grand chorus began, and Madelon sang and sang, with all her old fervor. ”

“ Madelon, moving along, was as the ghost of one who had belonged to the spring, as a part of its radiant hope and stir of life and youth in days past, but was now done with it forever. The spring sounds and sights, and all its sweet influence, seemed to tear her heart anew with memories of the visions of fair futures which she had forfeited. The loss of the sweet dreams which the spring awakens in the human heart is not one of the least losses of life. Though the spring be unfulfilled, it sweetens the year.
Just before Madelon reached Lot Gordon's house, she met Burr going to court Dorothy. ”

“ A long garland of flowers after her own design had she wrought in bright-colored silks around the petticoat, and there were knots of red ribbon to fasten the loopings here and there. And she wore another red rose in her lace tucker against her soft brown bosom. Madelon wore, too, trim black-silk stockings with red clocks over her slender ankles, and little black-satin shoes with steel buckles and red rosettes. Every one of her brothers, except the youngest, Richard, must needs compare her in his own heart, to her disparagement, with some maid not his sister, but they all viewed her with pride. ”

“ The future has your face, and the past. My whole world is made up of you and my vain hunger. Oh, love, and not toil, is the curse of man!”
“You knew about Burr,” Madelon said, in a quiet, agitated voice. “Why—did you?”
Lot gave a sharp cry, as if he had been wounded anew. “Oh,” he cried, “you are blind, blind, blind—a woman is born blind to love! If I had had the face and the body of him it would have been me you would have turned to, Madelon. Don't you know? can't you see? He has been false to you, he cares no more for you. ”

“ How could she be pleased over her wedding-clothes if she did not love you? She does, Burr! She is a child—I can talk to her. I will make her. Let me go, Burr! You wait here, and not fret. Oh, how pale you look! I tell you, you shall have her, Burr!”
“I tell you, Madelon, she does not love me, and I will not have you go.”
Madelon stood looking at him, her face all at once changing curiously as if from some revelation from within. She remembered suddenly that old scene with Eugene, and a suspicion seized her. “There's somebody else!” she cried out, fiercely. “There's no truth in her. ”

“ He did not dream that Madelon's calm broke before his red-satin shoes, and that she was sitting alone before the kitchen fire with them in her lap, weeping bitterly. She was made of stern stuff to endure the worst of things; but, after all, the pitiful little accessories of grief and death are harder to bear without weakening, because all one's powers of defence are not enlisted against them. They are sometimes the scouts that kill. ”

“ That black atmosphere of suspicion and hatred, which gathers nowhere more easily than in a New England town, was thick around Burr and Madelon. They breathed, though as yet it was in less degree, the same noxious air as did the persecuted Quakers and witches of bygone times. The gases which lie at the bottom of human souls, which gossip and suspicious imaginations upstir, are deadlier than those at the bottoms of old wells. Still Madelon and Burr knew nothing of it, nor Burr's mother, nor Lot, nor any of the Hautville men. ”

“ She opened the door of a small parlour as she spoke, and stood aside for Madelon to enter. A little faded room, with a high desk standing in the window, gaudy ornaments on the mantelpiece, a worn Utrecht velvet sofa, and a semicircle of worsted-work chairs—not much in it all to awaken enthusiasm, one would think, and yet, as Madelon came in, she forgot disappointment, and fatigue, and everything else for a moment, in a glad recognition of well-remembered objects. ”

“ Then Madelon sat alone, sewing, setting nice stitches in her green-and-gold silk. Like other women, heretofore when she had sewn a new gown she had builded for herself air-castles of innocent vanity and love when she should be dressed in it. Now she builded no more, but sat and sewed among the ruins of all her happy maiden fancies. She had given herself no care concerning any other arrangements for her wedding than this gown—she felt even no curiosity concerning it. ”

“ Nobody 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-glass on earth like a vain love when it rises above the slight of its own desire. ”

“ She looked up in his face, and a strange awe came over her at the look in it. A more secret lurking-place than any of the little wild things that he loved to discover had the self in Lot Gordon, and Madelon saw it for the first time, and perhaps he, also.
“True love exists not unless it can do away with the desire of possession. I love you, Madelon,” said Lot; and then he let go of her shoulders and went over to the mantel-shelf, and leaned against it, with his head bent. ”

“ What I was playing before was mere rubbish—trash, unworthy of me and of my violin."
"And why do you play it?" asks Madelon, simply.
"Ah! why indeed?" said the violinist—"because one must live, my little Fraülein; and since they will play nothing else at the theatre, I must play it also, or I should be badly off."
"You are not rich, then?" said Madelon.
"Rich enough," he answered. "I gain enough to live upon, and I ask no more."
"Why don't you make money like papa?" says Madelon; "then you could play what you liked, you know. We are very rich sometimes." ”

“ Will you have them now, for your wedding-gift?”
“No, Lot,” said Madelon, quickly. “I thank you, but I cannot take them; I have enough.”
“Why not?”
“I have enough.”
“There is no need for you to tell me why,” said Lot. “A woman like you would almost veil herself from her own eyes for the sake of a lover, so great is her jealousy. The thoughts and the dreams with which I bought the gewgaws profane them in your eyes while I am alive.”
“I do not need them, and I cannot take them, Lot,” said Madelon, steadily. ”

“ The one tie that had bound her to the convent had been snapped by her aunt's death; if she lives, think the nuns—if indeed they find time to think of her at all—she is a burthen on our hands; if she dies, well then, one more coffin and another grave. This is perhaps the ebb-tide of Madelon's importance in the world; never before has been, never again will be, we may trust, her existence of so little moment to any human being—that existence which, meanwhile, in spite of all such indifference, in perfect unconsciousness of it indeed, is beginning to assert itself again. ”

“ Madelon looked at her. “You are a good woman,” said she, with fierce scorn. “You are a member of Parson Fair's church, and you keep to the commandments and all the creed. You are a good woman, and you believe in the eternal wrath of God and the guilt of your own son. You believe in that, in spite of what I tell you. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ She went out of the jail quickly, and she and Dorothy were soon in the sleigh and flying down the road. The old racer was not so old nor so weary that the impetus of the homeward stretch failed to stir him—for a mile or so, at least. After that his pace slackened, and then Madelon turned to the other girl, who looked up at her with a kind of piteous defiance. ”

“ He remained until near midnight, while the old black woman crouched with the patience of a watching animal outside the door, and he wooed Dorothy Fair with ardor and delight, although her softly affectionate kisses were to Madelon Hautville's as the fall of snow-flakes to drops of warm honey. ”

“ Louis sat discontentedly by the fire, with his arm soaking in cider-brandy and wormwood.
“Farnham Hollow is ten miles away,” said Richard.
“His horse is fast; he'd get him here by eight o'clock,” returned Louis.
Madelon was radiant. In spite of herself, she was full of hope in going to the ball. She knew Dorothy Fair would not be present, since her father was the orthodox parson, and she had seen her own face in her glass. With her rival away, what could not a face like that do with a heart that leaned towards it of its own nature? ”

“ I think she will be willing,” Burr said, slowly and coldly. Then he left her without another word, and went up his terraces with his back bent like an old man's. He was holding hard to his heart the surety that Madelon no longer cared for him, for it is scarcely within the imagination of either man or woman that one can love and yet give away. But by the time he entered the house his spirit had awakened within him, and he made a proud resolve that since Madelon so advised and was herself to marry that he would marry Dorothy Fair as soon as she should be willing. ”