However the tale of Madelon's and Lot's engagement had found
mouth--whether Margaret Bean had vented her knowledge when it grew
too big for her or not--it was scarce one day before the whole
village was agape with it. With that tendency of the human mind born
of involuntary self-knowledge which leads it to suspect a selfish
motive in all untoward actions, many gave unhesitatingly a reason for
Madelon's choice.
The women nodded astutely at each other, and the men exchanged shrewd
affirmative grunts. "She's goin' to marry Lot to pay off Burr," they
all agreed. "She'll get all the money."
Madelon herself had never thought of that. She had never considered
the fact that her marriage with Lot would rob Burr of his prospective
wealth; and, if she had, she would have dismissed the thought as of
no moment. Capacity for revenge of that sort was not in her; even the
imagination of it was lacking. She would simply have resolved to give
the property to Burr if she should outlive Lot, and she would have
carried out her resolution. Consciously, perhaps, this consideration
was no more evident to her father and her brothers than to herself.
The Hautvilles were not mercenary, and retaliation, involving
personal profit at the expense of an enemy, was not of their code.
They did have, however, a consideration no less selfish, in a way,
and no less acute when they heard the news. One and all thought, "Now
Madelon will be cleared of all suspicion that she may have brought
upon herself. Nobody will believe that Lot Gordon would marry a girl
who attempted his life. Every hint of disgrace will be removed from
her and us all by this marriage."
Louis, when he heard the news, gave an involuntary glance at his own
hands at the thought of Madelon's crimsoned ones, to which he had
tried to blind his memory. "Well, maybe it's the best thing that
could happen," he said, grimly, but his wonder over it was great. He
knew well enough, however he tried to hide the knowledge from
himself, that Madelon's story had been true. He looked at his brother
Richard, and Richard looked back at him; and one's knowledge for once
faced the other's boldly in their utter astonishment. Then they
nodded at each other in a stern understanding of assent. It was best
their sister should cover her crime and avert the disgrace, which she
had seemed to hang over all of them, in that way.
When the male Hautvilles came home to dinner, on the noon of the day
after Burr called, Madelon knew at once that they had all heard. They
sat down to the table and ate in silence. None of them spoke a word
to Madelon on the subject, but she knew they had heard. After dinner
they all went out again except her father. He stood on the hearth,
filling his pipe moodily, with an automatic motion of his fingers,
his eyes aloof. Madelon moved about with quick, decided motions,
clearing the dinner-table. David, when the tobacco was well packed in
his pipe-bowl, turned his eyes mechanically upon the glowing coals on
the hearth, but made no motion to light it. He looked slowly and
furtively about presently at Madelon's wedding-silk, which lay heaped
in a chair with a green and gold shimmer, as of leaves and flowers.
All unmoved by, and oblivious of, the splendor of woman's gear was
David Hautville usually, but this silk, radiant with the weaving of
party-lights, affected him with a memory of old happiness, so vague
that it was scarce more than a memory of a memory. In splendid silken
raiment had Madelon's mother gone as a bride years ago. It had been
in reality widely different from this gown of Madelon's, but still,
looking at this, David Hautville's masculine eyes saw dimly beyond it
another dapple of gorgeous tints, and heard a soft rustle of silken
skirts out of the past. He would not have said that this bright mass
of silk in the chair made him think of his wife's wedding-gown, but
he knew by that thought it was Madelon's. He stared at it, scowling
over his great mustache. Then he looked slowly around at his
daughter. She was just coming out of the pantry, and faced him as he
spoke.
"I suppose this is true I've heard," said he.
Madelon's face blazed red before his eyes, but her mouth was firm and
hard, and her eyes unflinching. "Yes, sir," she replied; and she took
a dish from the table and turned about, and went again into the
pantry, carrying it.
David Hautville, rearing his great height before the fire, casting a
long shadow over the room, stood, holding his unlighted pipe, and
staring again at the wedding-silk, until his daughter returned. Then
he brought his gaze to bear upon her again.
"I suppose you've thought over what you're going to do, and feel it's
for the best," said he, with a kind of stern embarrassment. David
Hautville felt no resentment because his daughter had not confided
her engagement to him. From his very lack of understanding of the
feminine character, and his bewilderment over it, he was disposed to
give his daughter a wide latitude in a matter of this kind. Not
comprehending the feminine gait to matrimony, but recognizing its
inevitability, he was inclined to stand silently out of the road,
unless his prejudices were too violently shocked. He had also a mild
respect for, and understanding of, reticence concerning one's own
affairs, and was, moreover, furtively satisfied with the match.
"Yes, I have," answered Madelon, calmly.
"How soon were you calculating--" asked her father, pressing the
tobacco harder into the pipe-bowl, and casting a meditative eye at
the coals.
"He said a month--that was three weeks ago Monday. To-day is
Wednesday." Madelon Hautville spoke with her proud chin raised, and
her eyes as compelling as a queen's; but in spite of herself there
came into her voice the tone of one who counts the days to death.
Her father looked at her sharply. She turned again towards her task
at the table. "Well, Lot Gordon can give ye a good home," said he.
"His health ain't very good, that's the most I see about it. But he
may last a number of years yet--folks in consumption do sometimes;
and I hear he's gettin' over that cut he give himself. I suppose he
did that because he thought you wouldn't have him."
Madelon, moving about the table, did not say a word.
"It must have been that," said David Hautville. "I suppose he thought
you favored--" he was about to speak Burr's name; then he stopped
short. He was usually one to plunge upon dangerous ground, but this
time something stopped him--perhaps a look in his daughter's face. He
laid his pipe carefully on the mantel-shelf, went over to Madelon,
and laid a heavily tender hand on her shoulder.
"D'ye want any money to buy your wedding-fixings with?" he said, in a
half-whisper.
"I've got all I want," replied Madelon, wincing as if he had struck
her.
"Because I've sold some skins, lately, and wood." David plunged a
hand into his pocket, and began to pull out a leather pouch jingling
with coins.
"I've got all the money I want, father," said Madelon, catching her
breath a little, but keeping her face steady. Could her father have
understood, if she had told him, the pretty maiden providence, almost
like one of the primal instincts, which had led her to save, year
after year, little sums from her small earnings, towards her
wedding-outfit? Could he, with his powerful masculine grasp of the
large woes of life, have sensed this lesser one, and fairly known the
piteous struggle it cost Madelon to spend her poor little wealth,
which was to have furnished adornment for her bridal happiness with
her lover, for such a purpose as this? Had she turned upon him then
and there, and told him that she hated Lot Gordon, and would rather
lie down in her grave than be his wife, he might have grasped that
indeed, although not in her full sense of it, for the same sense of
misery of that kind comes not to a man and a woman; but the other he
would have puzzled over and solved it by his one sweeping solution of
all feminine problems--by femininity itself.
However, he continued to stand beside his daughter, looking at her
across that great gulf of original conceptions of things which love
itself can never quite bridge. Tears came into his keen black eyes,
and his voice was hoarse when he spoke again. "Well, Madelon," said
David Hautville, with a firmer laying on of his heavy hand on his
daughter's shoulder, "ye've been a good daughter and sister, and
we're all of us glad you've got over this last foolishness, and we
don't lay it up against ye, and--we'll all miss ye when ye're gone."
Madelon moved quietly away from her father's roughly tender hand. "I
thought maybe the Widow Scoville would be willing to come here and
live," said she. "She's a good cook and a good housekeeper. I'm going
to see her about it."
"Well, we'll see," said David Hautville, huskily--"we'll see." He
turned away, and looked irresolutely at the shelf whereon his pipe
lay, at the wedding-silk on the chair, at his great boots in the
corner at the outer door, then at his bass-viol leaning in the corner
which the dresser formed against the wall, and a light of decision
flashed into his eyes.
He drew his old arm-chair nearer the fire, carried the viol over to
it, set it between his knees, flung an arm around its neck and began
to play. His great chest heaved tenderly over it; its sweetly
sonorous voice spoke to his soul. Here was the friend who vexed David
Hautville with no problems of character or sex, but filled his simple
understanding without appeal. These chords in which the viol spoke
were from the foundations of things, like the spring-time and the
harvest and the frosts; they abided eternally through all the vain
speculations of life, and sounded above the grave. No imagination of
a great artist had David Hautville, but his music was to him like his
woodcraft. He traced out the chords and the harmonies with the same
fervor that he followed the course of a stream or climbed a
mountain-path. A great player was he, although the power of creation
was not in him, for he fingered his viol with the ardor of a soul set
in its favorite way of all others. As David Hautville played his
great resonant viol he forgot all about his own perplexity and his
daughter's love-troubles; but she, listening as she worked, did not
forget.
Madelon, swept around with these sweet waves of sounds, never once
had her memory of her own misery submerged. A strange double
consciousness she had, as she listened, of her senses and her soul.
All her nerves lapsed involuntarily into delight at the sounds they
loved, and all her soul wept above all melodies and harmonies in her
ears. The spirit of an artist had Madelon, and could, had she wished,
have made the songs she sung; and for that very reason music could
never carry her away from her own self.
She finished her household tasks and sat down again to sew upon her
wedding-gown. After a while her father ceased playing, and leaned his
viol tenderly back in its corner, pulled on his great boots, put on
his leather jacket and his fur cap, lighted his pipe, shouldered his
gun, and set out with his eyes full of the abstraction of one who
follows alone a different path.