Presently a bolt was shot and the door pushed open with an effort. It
was little used, and there was ice against it. Then a man's face
peered out irresolutely into the dusk. A knock upon the front door,
upon a night like this, seemed so unlikely that he doubted if he had
heard rightly.
"Anybody here?" he said. Then he saw the woman's figure propped
stiffly against the door-post. "Who is it?" he asked, in a startled
voice. "Is it you, Mrs. Lane?"
Madelon aroused herself. "I want to see Mr. Otis's son a minute if I
can," she said, with a great effort. Then she raised her piteous eyes
to the face before her, and realized dimly that it was the face of
the young man who had taken her place at the ball, and sent her
homeward to work all this misery on that dreadful night.
"I am Mr. Otis's son," returned the young man, wonderingly.
"What"--then he gave a cry--"why, it is you!"
"I want--to--see you--a minute," said Madelon, and her voice sounded
far away in her own ears.
The young man started. "Why, you're half frozen," he cried out, "and
here I am keeping you standing out here! Come in."
Madelon shrank back. "No," she faltered, "I--only want to ask--"
But Jim Otis took her by the arm with gentle force, and she was so
spent that she could but let him have his way, and lead her into the
house and the warm living-room, staggering under his supporting
clasp.
"Mother," called Jim Otis--"mother, come here, quick!" He placed
Madelon tenderly on the settle, and his mother came hurriedly out of
the pantry.
"What is it?" she asked. "What is the matter, Jim? Who was it
knocked? Why, who's that?"
Madelon leaned back helplessly in the corner of the settle, her head
hanging half unconsciously. The young man stooped over her and
unfastened her cloak and hood. "Come here, quick, mother!" he cried,
and his voice was as sweet with pity as a woman's. "This poor girl is
half dead with the cold."
Mrs. Otis, large and fair-faced, with her soft, massive curves
swathed in purple thibet, stared for a second in speechless wonder.
"Who is it? How did she get here?" she whispered.
"Hush--I don't know. She's from Ware Centre. Her name's Hautville."
"Seems to me I've heard of her. What has she come here for, Jim?"
"Hush--I don't know. She'll hear you. Go and get something hot for
her to drink. I saw her at the ball the other night. Go quick,
mother."
"I'll get her some brandy cordial," said Mrs. Otis, with sudden
alacrity. She needed time always to get her mental bearing thoroughly
in any emergency, but action was prompt afterwards. She made a quick
motion towards the cupboard, but Madelon aroused herself suddenly.
Her senses had lapsed for a few minutes upon coming into the warm
room. "Where am I?" she asked, in a bewildered way.
"In our house," replied Mrs. Otis, promptly. "Jim just brought you
in, and it's lucky you come just as you did, for I don't know but
you'd froze to death if you'd been out much longer. Now, I'll get you
some of my brandy cordial, and that'll warm you right up. Did you
come way over from Ware Centre this dreadful night?"
"Yes, ma'am," replied Madelon, with the dazed look still in her eyes.
Mrs. Otis looked back on her way to the cupboard.
"Rode way over from Ware Centre in an open sleigh?" she said.
"No, ma'am; I walked."
Mrs. Otis stopped and looked at Madelon with a gasp, then at her son.
"She's out of her head, I'm afraid," said she.
"You didn't really walk over from Ware Centre?" questioned Jim.
"Yes, I did," replied Madelon. She stood up with sudden decision. "I
want to see you a minute," she said to Jim. Then she turned to Mrs.
Otis. "I don't need anything to take," said she. "I was only a little
dizzy for a minute when I came into this warm room. I feel better
now. I only want to ask your son a question, then I must go home--"
Before Mrs. Otis could speak she asked the question with no preface.
"Didn't you see him give me the knife?" she cried out, with fiercely
imploring eyes upon Jim Otis's face.
The young man turned deadly white. He looked at her and did not
answer.
"Didn't you?" she repeated.
"What knife?" asked Jim Otis, slowly.
"You know what knife! The knife that my brother handed me when I
started home from the ball--the knife that I stabbed Lot Gordon with.
Tell me that you saw it, that you saw me take it, here before your
mother, and then you must go to New Salem and testify, and set Burr
Gordon free! He is in prison for murder, and I am guilty, and they
will not believe it. You must tell them, and they will. You saw my
brother give me that knife."
Still Jim Otis, with his white face, stood looking at her, and
answered not a word. His mother, continually opening her mouth to
speak, then shutting it, looked first at one, then at the other, with
round, dilated eyes, turning her head and quivering all over her soft
bulk, like some great agitated and softly feathered bird.
"Why don't you speak?" demanded Madelon.
"What is it you want me to say?" said Jim Otis, then, hesitatingly.
"Say? Say that you saw my brother Richard give me the knife that I
did the deed with."
Jim Otis stood silent, with his pale, handsome face bent doggedly
towards the floor.
"Say so! You saw it!"
Still Jim Otis did not speak, and Madelon pressed close to him, and
thrust her agonized face before his. "Have mercy upon me and speak!"
she groaned.
"Jim, what does she mean?" asked his mother, in a frightened whisper.
"Is she out of her head?"
"No; hush, mother," replied Jim. Then he turned to the girl. "No," he
said, with stern, defiant eyes upon her face, "I did not see your
brother give you the knife."
"You did! I know you did!"
"I _did not!_"
"You did see him! You were looking at us when I went out!"
"I was tightening a string in the fiddle when you went out," said Jim
Otis.
"You must have seen."
"I tell you I did not."
Madelon looked at him as if she would penetrate his soul, and he met
her eyes fully.
"I did not see your brother give you the knife," he replied, with a
steady, unflinching look at her; but a long shudder went over him as
he spoke. The first deliberate lie of his whole life was Jim Otis
telling, for he had seen Richard Hautville give his sister the knife.
Madelon believed his lie at last, and turned away. What with her sore
exhaustion of body and this last disappointment her heart almost
failed her. She went back to the settle for her cloak and her hood,
and tied them on, while the others stood watching her, seemingly in a
maze. She made for the door, but Jim Otis stopped her.
"You cannot go back to Ware Centre to-night," he said.
Madelon looked at him with proud determination, although she could
scarce stand. "I must go," said she, and would have pressed past him,
but he took hold of her arm.
"Mother," he said, "tell her she cannot go. There has been no such
night as this for forty years, and it is dark now. To-morrow morning
I will carry her home; but to-night, as she is, it is out of the
question. Tell her so, mother."
Mrs. Otis gathered herself together then, and came forward and laid
hold of Madelon's arm, and strove to pull her back towards the
settle. "Come," said she, as if Madelon were a child--"come, that's a
good girl. You stay with us till morning, and then my son shall hitch
up and carry you home. I shouldn't dare to have him go way over to
Ware Centre to-night, cold as 'tis. He ain't very tough. You stay
here with us to-night, and don't worry anything about it. I don't
know what you're talkin' about, an' I guess you don't--you are all
wore out, poor child; but I guess there didn't nobody have any knife,
and I guess he'll git out of prison pretty soon. You just take off
your things, and I'll get some pillows out of the bedroom, and you
lay down on the settle by the fire while I get some supper. The
kettle's on now. And then I'll heat the warming-pan and get the
spare-room bed as warm as toast, and mix you up a tumbler of hot
brandy cordial, and then you drink it all down and get right into
bed, and I'll tuck you up, and I guess you'll feel better in the
morning, and things will look different."
"Let me go," Madelon said to Jim Otis.
"She mustn't go, mother," he said, never looking at Madelon at all,
although he still held fast to her straining arm.
"Well," said Mrs. Otis, "You ain't no daughter of mine, and if you
set out to go I suppose I ain't any right to hinder you. But there's
one thing maybe you ain't thought of--I can't let my son take you
'way over to Ware Centre a night like this, nohow. He's all I've got
now, and I can't have anything happen to him. He can't go with you,
and there ain't any stable here, and there ain't a neighbor round
here that will hitch up and carry you there to-night, and--I suppose
you know, if you've got common-sense, that if you set out to walk
there, the way you are, you don't stand much chance of gettin' there
alive."
Madelon stared at her.
"I don't really know myself what you and my son have been talkin'
about," continued Mrs. Otis, "but near's I can make out you think
you've done something wrong, and somebody's in prison you want to get
out. I suppose you've got sense enough to know that if you freeze to
death going home to-night you can't do anything more to get him out.
Then there's another thing--it's night. You can't do much to get him
out anyway before morning. I don't believe they ever let folks out at
night, and my son shall carry you over just as soon as it's fit in
the morning, and you'll do just as much good as if you went
to-night."
Still Madelon stood staring at her. Then presently she began
unfastening her hood and cloak. "If you can keep me till morning I
shall be obliged," she said, with a kind of stern gratitude.
"Stay just as well as not!" cried Mrs. Otis. "Jim, just take her
things and lay 'em in the bedroom. Then you have her set right down
close to the hearth, and get all warmed through, while I get supper."
Handsome young Jim Otis stood by with his brows knit moodily while
Madelon Hautville removed her wraps, then took them over his arm, and
conducted her to the warm seat in the hearth-corner which his mother
designated.
In his heart he judged this girl whom he was defending to be guilty,
yet was full of intensest admiration, and was sorely torn between the
two and his own remorse over his false witnessing. "If I'm called
into court and sworn on the Bible, I won't own up that I saw her take
that knife," he muttered to himself, as he laid the red cloak and
hood on the high feather-bed in his mother's room.
This handsome, stalwart young man, who had hitherto been considered
full of a gay audacity where womenfolk were concerned, able to make
almost any pretty girl flutter at his smile, was strangely abashed
before this beautiful Madelon Hautville, stained, in his eyes, with
crime. He brought in wood and mended the hearth fire; he moved about
doing such household tasks as were allotted to his masculine hands,
and scarcely let his eyes rest once upon the girl in the
chimney-corner. He dreaded the sight of that beautiful face which
gave him such a shock of pity and admiration and horror. Jim Otis's
mind could not compass this new revelation of a woman, but he would
not betray her even for her own pleading if he went down perjured to
his grave. So valiant was he in her defence that he withstood her
against her own self.
Madelon's mother had died when she was a little girl. She could not
fairly remember that ever in her whole life she had been so tended
and petted as she was that night by Jim Otis's mother. Kind indeed
her father and her brothers had always been to her. They had watched
over her with jealous fondness, and had taken all rougher tasks upon
themselves, but the devotion of woman, which extends to all the minor
details of life, she had never known.
She had never had a supper-table set out for her own especial
pleasure with this and that dish to tempt her appetite, as Mrs. Otis
set out hers that night. A dish of a fine and sublimated porridge did
Mrs. Otis make for her--a porridge mixed with cream and sprinkled
with nutmeg and fat plums. "I thought some hot porridge would do you
good," said Mrs. Otis, when she sat the smoking bowl before Madelon.
Then she whispered low, that her son, who was putting another stick
on the fire before coming to table, might not hear, "It's the same
kind of porridge I had after my son was born--with cream and plums in
it. I used to think there never was anything so good." This porridge
might well have possessed a flavor of the sweetest memories of
motherhood to the older woman, but to the girl, wild with longing to
be gone and carry out her purpose, manna from heaven would not have
yielded its full measure of sweetness.
She would scarcely have eaten at all had not Jim Otis's mother
remarked, as she watched her reluctant sips of the good porridge, "As
I said just now, you ain't any daughter of mine, and I ain't any
right to dictate, but if you want to get that man, whoever he is, out
of prison, you'll have to eat enough to get some strength to do it."
Simply placid as Mrs. Otis looked, she had often wisdom enough to
gain her ends by means of that shrewd finesse of government which
appeals to the reason of others as applied to the furthering of their
own desires.
Madelon after that swallowed her porridge almost greedily, and when
supper was over went up-stairs to bed, following Mrs. Otis as readily
as any meek young daughter of her own might have done. The spirit of
resistance was laid for the time in this poor Madelon Hautville, but
it had yielded, after all, more to the will of her own reason than to
Jim Otis's mother or the weariness of her own flesh.
When Mrs. Otis came down-stairs she was flushed with pleasant
motherly victory. "She's drunk all that hot cordial," she said to her
son, "every drop of it, and I've tucked her into bed with the extra
comfortables over her, an' she eat quite a good supper, an' I told
her to go right to sleep, and I guess she will."
"If she don't she'll be down sick," said Jim, sternly. He sat by the
fire, tuning his fiddle.
"She can't hear your fiddle so it'll keep her awake, can she?" asked
Mrs. Otis, anxiously.
"Of course she can't, up in the front chamber, with all the doors
shut. Wouldn't have touched it if she could."
"Well, I don't s'pose she can. Jim--"
Jim twanged a string. "What is it, mother?"
"I don't want to have you think I'm interferin', Jim. I know you're
grown-up now, and I know there's things a young man might not want to
tell his mother till he gets ready, but I do kind of want to know one
thing, Jim."
Jim tightened the G string. He bent his face low over his violin. "I
don't know as I've ever kept much back from you, mother," he said,
soberly.
"No, I know you ain't, Jim; you've always told more to your mother
than most boys. But I didn't just know but this might be something
you hadn't got ready to speak about."
"What is it you want to know, mother?"
"Jim, is that your _girl?_"
Jim laughed a little, although his eyes were grave; he raise the
fiddle to his shoulder. "Lord, no, mother. I wouldn't get a girl
without asking you."
"I didn't know but you might have seen her over to Ware when you've
been there to parties, and not said anything."
"I never saw her but that once, mother." Jim struck up "Kinloch of
Kinloch," but he played softly, lest by any chance Madelon, aloft in
her chamber, might hear.
"She's handsome as a picture," said his mother. "Who is it that's in
prison, Jim?"
"A young man by the name of Gordon."
"What for?"
"They think he stabbed his cousin."
"My sakes! Do you s'pose he did, Jim?"
"I don't know, mother. I wasn't there."
"I s'pose the young man that did it is this girl's beau, and that's
why she's so crazy to get him out."
Jim played the merry measure softly, and made no reply.
His mother stood before him quivering with curiosity, which she
restrained lest it defeat its own ends. She had learned early that
too impetuous feminine questioning is apt to strike a dead-wall in
the masculine mind.
"I didn't quite understand what she meant about a knife," she
ventured, with an eager glance at her son. He played a little louder,
as if he did not hear.
"I s'pose she come here, walked all that way from Ware Centre, this
dreadful night, 'cause she thought you could help to get her young
man out of prison."
Jim nodded as he fiddled.
"But I can't see how your seein' her brother give her a knife could
do any good. Of course that sweet, pretty girl didn't do it herself.
But you didn't see her brother give her the knife, Jim?"
"Didn't you hear me say I didn't?" replied Jim, with sudden force.
"Don't let's talk any more about it, mother. It's a dreadful piece of
work, anyway. I don't half know what it means myself. That poor girl
is 'most crazy because that fellow is in prison. That's why she came
on this wild-goose chase after me. You can't tell anything by what
she says."
"Wasn't he a nice kind of a fellow before this happened, Jim?"
"No, he was a scamp," said Jim Otis, angrily. He struck into the
"Fisher's Hornpipe" with fury, regardless of the girl up-stairs.
"Land sakes, Jim, don't fiddle quite so loud as that--I'm dreadful
afraid she'll hear," said his mother. "I shouldn't thought a girl
that looks as sweet as she does would ever have taken up with a
scamp."
"The sweetest girls are the worst fools," answered Jim, bitterly, but
he obeyed his mother and played less loudly. The shadows of the
winter night might have footed it to the soft measures of the
hornpipe which Jim Otis played on his fiddle. His mother could
scarcely hear it in the pantry when she went in there to set away the
supper dishes. She shut the door every time, lest her son should feel
the icy air from the fireless closet. She had always a belief that
Jim was delicate, and took a certain pride in it, although she could
not have told why.
Everything that was in the least likely to freeze to its injury had
to be removed from the cold pantry and set on the hearth that bitter
night. It was quite a while before her soft, heavy pattering, which
jarred the house when she stepped on certain parts of the floor,
ceased, and she took her knitting-work and sat down in her
rocking-chair opposite her son.
Jim continued to fiddle, touching the strings as if his fingers were
muffled with down. The wind whistled more loudly than his fiddle; it
had increased, and the cold with it. Some of Mrs. Otis's crocks froze
on the hearth that night. No such cold had been known in Vermont for
years. The frost on the window-panes thickened--the light of the full
moon could not penetrate them; all over the house were heard sounds
like those on a straining ship at sea. The old timbers cracked now
and then with a report like a pistol. "It's a dreadful night," said
Mrs. Otis, and as she spoke the returning wind struck the house, and
she gasped as if it had in truth taken her breath away.
A few minutes before nine o'clock Mrs. Otis put away her
knitting-work and got the great Bible off the desk. "Stop fiddling
now, Jim," she said, solemnly. Mrs. Otis spoke with more direct
authority in religious matters than in others. She felt herself well
backed by the spiritual law. Jim finished the tune he was playing and
lowered his fiddle from his shoulder. His mother found the place in
the Bible, and the holy words were on her tongue when there was a
sharp clash of sleigh-bells close under the window.
"Somebody's drove into the yard!" cried Mrs. Otis. "Who do you s'pose
'tis this time of night?"
"Hullo!" shouted a man's voice, hoarsely, and Jim shouted "Hullo!" in
response, and started towards the door.
"Ask who's there before you open the door," said the mother,
anxiously. She stood listening a moment after Jim had gone; then she
caught her shawl from a peg, put it over her head, and followed
him--she was so afraid some harm would come to her son.
The outer door was open, and before it was drawn up a sleigh and a
great, high-shouldered, snorting and pawing horse. In the sleigh was
a man muffled in furs like an Eskimo, leaning out and questioning
Jim.
"When did she come?" asked the man.
"About five o'clock," answered Jim.
Then Mrs. Otis understood that they were talking about the girl in
her spare-chamber, and she interposed, standing in the doorway. "She
was just about tuckered out, what with the cold and that awful
tramp," said she. "She most ought to have rode over." Mrs. Otis's
voice was soft and conciliatory.
"We didn't know she was coming," replied the man in the sleigh,
courteously, "or we should not have let her walk so far on such a
day."
"Be you her brother?" questioned Mrs. Otis.
"Yes. I'm her brother Eugene."
"And you drove over to see where she was?"
"Yes; we've been very anxious."
"Well, you can be easy about her for to-night," said Mrs. Otis.
"She's tucked up nice and warm in my spare-chamber bed, and I give
her a tumbler of my brandy cordial, and I guess she's sound asleep."
"He wants to take her home to-night, mother," said Jim, and there was
a curious appeal in his tone.
Mrs. Otis, standing there on the door-step in the freezing moonlight,
turned quickly upon the man in the sleigh, and all the soft
conciliation was gone from her voice. "You ain't plannin' to take
that girl way home to Ware Centre to-night?" said she.
"Father sent me for her," replied Eugene Hautville.
"Well, she ain't goin' a step!"
"Her father will expect me to bring her," said Eugene, with his
unfailing courtesy. "He has been very anxious. I had hard work to
find where she was. My father won't be satisfied if I come home
without her."
"That girl ain't going out of this house to-night!"
"I've got a bearskin here to wrap her up in. She is used to being out
in all weathers," persisted Eugene, gently.
"She can't go. Pull her out of a warm bed such a night as this! If
you try to take that poor child out to-night I'll stand in my
spare-chamber door, and you'll have to walk over me to do it--and my
son won't see his mother hurt, I guess!"
Jim Otis stepped closer to the sleigh and spoke to Eugene Hautville
in a low voice.
"Well," said Eugene, slowly, "maybe you're right, Otis. I don't know
what father will say, but if she was as used up as you tell for, I
don't know as 'tis safe. It is an awful night."
"I guess it ain't safe, and she ain't going," maintained Mrs. Otis
from the door-step.
Then Eugene Hautville bent well out of his sleigh and asked a
question in the other man's ear.
"Yes, she did," replied Jim Otis.
"The poor girl is crazy over it," said Eugene. He and Jim talked for
a few moments, but Mrs. Otis, straining her ears on the door-step,
could not hear.
Suddenly Jim said, quite distinctly, "She wanted to know if I saw him
give her the knife."
There was a pause; then Eugene Hautville asked, in a voice with which
he might have addressed a judge of his life and death, "Did you?"
"No," said Jim Otis.