Suddenly all Madelon's beauty was cheapened in her own eyes. She saw
herself swart and harsh-faced as some old savage squaw beside this
fair angel. She turned on herself as well as on her recreant lover
with rage and disdain--and all the time she lilted without one break.
The ball swung on and on, and Madelon, up in the musicians' gallery,
sang the old country-dances in the curious dissyllabic fashion termed
lilting. It never occurred to her to wonder how it was that Dorothy
Fair, the daughter of the orthodox minister, should be at the
ball--she who had been brought up to believe in the sinful and
hellward tendencies of the dance. Madelon only grasped the fact that
she was there with Burr; but others wondered, and the surprise had
been great when Dorothy in her blue brocade had appeared in the
ball-room.
This had been largely of late years a liberal and Unitarian village,
but Parson Fair had always held stanchly to his stern orthodox
tenets, and promulgated them undiluted before his thinning
congregations and in his own household. Dorothy could not only not
play cards or dance, but she could not be present at a party where
the cards were produced or the fiddle played. There was, indeed, a
rumor that she had learned to dance when she was in Boston at school,
but no one knew for certain.
Dorothy Fair was advancing daintily between the two long lines,
holding up her blue brocade to clear her blue-satin shoes, to meet
the young man from the opposite corner, flinging out gayly towards
her, when suddenly, with no warning whatever, a great dark woman sped
after her through the dance, like a wild animal of her native woods.
She reached out her black hand and caught Dorothy by the white,
lace-draped arm, and she whispered loud in her ear.
The people near, finding it hard to understand the African woman's
thick tongue, could not exactly vouch for the words, but the purport
of her hurried speech they did not mistake. Parson Fair had
discovered Mistress Dorothy's absence, and home she must hasten at
once. It was evident enough to everybody that staid and decorous
Dorothy had run away to the ball with Burr Gordon, and a smothered
titter ran down the files of the Virginia reel.
Burr Gordon cast a fierce glance around; then he sprang to Dorothy's
side, and she looked palely and piteously up at him.
He pulled her hand through his arm and led her out of the ball-room,
with the black woman following sulkily, muttering to herself. Burr
bent closely down over Dorothy's drooping head as they passed out of
the door. "Don't be frightened, sweetheart," whispered he. Madelon
saw him as she lilted, and it seemed to her that she heard what he
said.
It was not long after when she felt a touch on her shoulder as she
sat resting between the dances, gazing with her proud, bright eyes
down at the merry, chattering throng below. She turned, and her
brother Richard stood there with a strange young man, and Richard
held Louis's fiddle on his shoulder.
"This is Mr. Otis, Madelon," said Richard, "and he came up from
Kingston to the ball, and he can fiddle as well as Louis, and he said
'twas a shame you should lilt all night and not have a chance to
dance yourself; and so I ran home and got Louis's fiddle, and there
are plenty down there to jump at the chance of you for a
partner--and--" the boy leaned forward and whispered in his sister's
ear: "Burr Gordon's gone--and Dorothy Fair."
Madelon turned her beautiful, proud face towards the stranger, and
did not notice Richard at all. "Thank you, sir," said she, inclining
her long neck; "but I care not to dance--I'd as lief lilt."
"But," said the strange young man, pressing forward impetuously and
gazing into her black eyes, "you look tired; 'tis a shame to work you
so."
"I rest between the dances, and I am not tired," said Madelon,
coldly.
"I beg you to let me fiddle for the rest of the ball," pleaded the
young man. "Let me fiddle while you dance; you may be sure I'll
fiddle my best for you."
A tender note came into his voice, and, curiously enough, Madelon did
not resent it, although she had never seen him before and he had no
right. She looked up in his bright fair face with sudden hesitation,
and his blue eyes bent half humorously, half lovingly upon her. She
had a fierce desire to get away from this place, out into the night,
and home. "I do not care to dance," said she, falteringly; "but I
could go home, if you felt disposed to fiddle."
"Then go home and rest," cried the stranger, brightly. "'Tis a strain
on the throat to lilt so long, and you cannot put in a new string as
you can in a fiddle."
With that the young man came forward to the front of the little
gallery, and Madelon yielded up her place hesitatingly.
"But you cannot dance yourself, sir," said she.
"I have danced all I want to to-night," he replied, and began tuning
the fiddle.
"I'm sure I'm much obliged to you, sir," Madelon said, and got her
hood and cloak from the back of the gallery with no more parley.
The young man cast admiring glances after her as she went out, with
her young brother at her heels.
"I'm going home with you," Richard said to her as they went down the
gallery stairs.
"Not a step," said she. "You've just been after the fiddle, and
they're going to dance the Fisher's Hornpipe next."
"You'll be afraid in that lonesome stretch after you leave the
village."
"Afraid!" There was a ring of despairing scorn in the girl's voice,
as if she faced already such woe that the supposition of new terror
was an absurdity.
They had come down to the ball-room floor, and were standing directly
in front of the musicians' gallery. The young fiddler, Jim Otis,
leaned over and looked at them.
"I don't care," said Richard, "I won't let you go alone unless you
take my knife."
Madelon laughed. "What nonsense!" said she, and tried to pass her
brother.
But Richard held her by the arm while he rummaged in his pocket for
the great clasp-knife which he had earned himself by the sale of some
rabbit-skins, and which was the pride of his heart and his dearest
treasure, and opened it. "Here," said he, and he forced the
clasp-knife into his sister's hand. Otis, leaning over the gallery,
saw it all. Many of the dancers had gone to supper; there was no
other person very near them. "If you should meet a _bear_, you could
kill him with that knife--it's so strong," said the boy. "If you
don't take it I'll go home with you, and it's so late father won't
let me come out again to-night."
"Well, I'll take it," Madelon said, wearily, and she passed out of
the ball-room with the knife in her hand, under her cloak.
When she got out in the cold night air she sped along fast over the
creaking snow, still holding the knife clutched fast in her hand. She
began to lilt again as she went, and again Burr and Dorothy danced
together before her eyes. She passed Parson Fair's house, and the
best-room windows were lighted. She thought that Burr was there, and
she lilted more loudly the Virginia reel.
After Parson Fair's house was some time left behind, and she had come
into the lengthy stretch of road, she saw a shadowy figure ahead. She
could not at first tell whether it was moving towards or from
her--whether it was a man or a woman; or, indeed, whether it were not
a forest tree encroaching on the road and moving in the wind. She
kept on swiftly, holding her knife under her cloak. She had stopped
singing.
Presently she saw that the figure was a man, and coming her way; and
then her heart stood still, for she knew by the swing of his
shoulders that it was Burr Gordon. She threw back her proud head and
sped along towards him, grasping her knife under her cloak and
looking neither to the right nor left. She swerved not her eyes a
hair's-breadth when she came close to him--so close that their
shoulders almost touched in passing in the narrow path.
Suddenly there was a quick sigh in her ear--"Oh, Madelon!" Then an
arm was flung around her waist and hot lips were pressed to her own.
The mixed blood of two races, in which action is quick to follow
impulse, surged up to Madelon's head. She drew the hand which held
the knife from under her cloak and struck. "Kiss me again, Burr
Gordon, if you dare!" she cried out, and her cry was met by a groan
as he fell away from her into the snow.