The sheriff turned to David Hautville. "Guess you'd better take your
gal home," he said, his red, bristling cheeks broad with laughter.
"Guess she's kind of off her balance, she feels so bad about her
beau."
David's black eyes flashed haughtily at Jonas Hapgood, who
straightened his face suddenly. He deigned not a word to him, but he
turned to his daughter with a stern air. "Whether it is one way, or
whether it is the other way," said he, "we go neither by staying
here. Come home."
"I won't go!"
David looked sharply at his daughter's face. Jonas Hapgood's doubt
was over him too. He wondered, with a great spasm of wrath, if she
could be accusing herself to shield this man who had played her
false.
He grasped her arm again. "Come," he said, "I'll have no more of
this," and Madelon went out with her father. Full of spirit as she
was, she had always been strangely docile with him. He had ruled all
his children with a firm hand from their youth up, and tuned their
wills to suit his ear as he did his viol strings.
"I'll have no foolery," he said to her, gruffly, when they were out
on the road. "I'll have no putting yourself in the wrong to save a
man that's given you the go-by. If ye be fooling me, ye can stop it
now if you're a daughter of mine." He shook his head fiercely at
her.
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 that _I_ did 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! _You_ must 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.