Suddenly she jerked her arm away from her father's grasp, and stood up, with a convulsive flutter of her white plumage like a bird. She flung back her curls and disclosed her beautiful pale face, all strained to terrified resolve, and her dilated blue eyes "I will not!" she cried out, addressing her father alone, "I will not, father. I have made up my mind that I will not."

Then, as Parson Fair said not a word, only looked at her with stern questioning, she went on, shrill and fast, "I will not; no, I will not! Nobody can make me! I thought I would, I thought I must, until this last. Now when it comes to this, I can do no more. I will not, father."

"Why?" said Parson Fair.

"I would have kept my promise, father. I would have kept it, no matter if—I would have been faithful to him if he—" Suddenly Dorothy turned on Burr with a gasp of terror and defiance. "I would never have done this, you know," she cried; "it would never have come to this, if you had spoken and told me you were innocent."

"What do you mean, child?" said Parson Fair, sternly.

"He would not tell me that he did not stab his cousin Lot," replied Dorothy, setting her sweet mouth doggedly. Her blue eyes met her father's with shrinking and yet steadfast defiance.

"Dorothy," said he, "do you not know that he is innocent by his cousin's own confession?"

"Why, then, does he not say so?" finished Dorothy. "How do I know who did it? Madelon Hautville said she was guilty, then Lot Gordon; and Burr would not deny his guilt when I asked him. How do I know which? Madelon Hautville was trying to shield him; I am not blind. Then Lot liked her. How do I know which?" Suddenly she cried out to Burr so loud that the people in the entry below heard her, "Tell me now that you are innocent, and either your cousin Lot or Madelon Hautville guilty," she demanded. "Tell me!"

Burr, white and rigid, looked at her, and made no reply. "Tell me," she cried, in her sweet, shrill voice, "tell me now that you did not stab your cousin Lot, and Madelon Hautville spoke the truth, and I will keep my promise to you, even if my heart is not yours."

Parson Fair grasped his daughter's arm again. "No man whom you have promised to wed should reply to such distrust as this," he said. "Dorothy, I command you to go down-stairs and be married to this man."

Then Dorothy broke away from him with a wild shriek. "No, I will not marry this man with his cousin's blood on his soul! I will not, father; you shall not make me! I will not! Night and day I shall see that knife in his hand. I will not marry him, because he tried to kill his cousin Lot. I will not, I will not!" The black woman pushed between them with a savage murmur of love and wrath, and caught her mistress in her arms, and crooned over her, like a wild thing over her young.

"There is no use in prolonging this, sir," Burr said to Parson Fair.

The elder man looked at him with a strange mixture of helpless dignity and sympathy and wrath. "You know that I have no share in this," he said, and he glanced almost piteously from Burr to his mother. "I could never have believed that my daughter—"

"We will say no more about it, sir," responded Burr. "I hold neither you nor your daughter in any blame." Then he offered his arm to his mother, and the three went out and down-stairs, and the black woman clapped to the chamber door with a great jar upon her mistress, whose calm of obstinacy had broken into wailing hysterics which betokened no less stanchness. Parson Fair, Burr Gordon, and his mother, at the foot of the stairs among the curious wedding-guests, looked for a second at one another.

The parson's fine state seemed to have deserted him. There were red spots on his pale cheeks. His long hands twitched nervously. "I will—inform them," he said, huskily, at length, but Burr moved before him. "No, sir; I will do it," he said.

Then he strode into the great north parlor, where the more important guests were assembled, and where he and Dorothy were to have been married. He stood alone in the clear space between the windows, and knew, as the eyes of the people met his, that they had heard Dorothy's last wild cry, and knew why she would not marry him. He stood for a second facing them all before he spoke, and in spite of the shame of rejection which he felt heaped upon him by them all, and a subtler shame arising from his own heart, in spite of the fact that he could not offer any defense, or do aught but bend his back to the full weight of his humiliation, he had a certain majesty of demeanor. Revolt at humiliation alone precipitates the full measure of it, and the strength which survives defeat, even of one's own convictions, is of a good quality. Silence under wrongful accusation gives the bearing of a hero.

There was a hush over the assembly so complete that it seemed as if the very personalities of the listeners were drawn back from self-consciousness to give free scope for sound. When Burr spoke, everybody heard.

"The marriage between Dorothy Fair and myself is broken off," was all he said. Then he went out of the room as proudly as if his bride had been by his side, through the entry to the study. Parson Fair and his mother were there. "They know it," he announced, quite calmly; then he took his fine wedding-hat from the table.

"Where are you going?" his mother demanded, quickly.

"To walk a little way." Burr turned to Parson Fair. "I beg you not to feel that you must deal severely with your daughter for this," he said, "for she does not deserve it. She was justified in asking what she did, and in feeling distrust that I did not answer."

"If a wife's faith cannot survive her husband's silence, then is she no true spouse, and 'twas the part of a man not to answer," said this Parson Fair, who had all his life followed in most roads the lead of his womankind, and not known it, so much state had he been allowed in his captivity.

"She was justified," said Burr, "and I beg you, sir, not to visit any displeasure upon her. I have not at any time been worthy of her, although God knows had she not cast me off, and did not this last, with what I remember now of her manner for the last few weeks, make me sure that her heart is no longer mine, I would have lived my life for her, as best I could; and will now, should she say the word."

With that, Burr Gordon thrust on his wedding-hat, and was out of the study and out of the south door of the house.



Chapter XXV

In the yard was drawn up in state, behind the five white horses, the grand old Gordon coach, which had not been used before since the death of Lot's father. Lot had insisted upon furnishing the coach and the horses for his cousin's wedding. The man who stood by the horses' heads looked up at Burr in a dazed way when he came out of the house and spoke to him.

"When my mother is ready you can take her home, Silas," said Burr. "Then drive over to my cousin's, and put up the coach and the horses."

The man gasped and looked at him. "Do you hear what I say?" said Burr, shortly.

The man gave an affirmative grunt, and strove to speak, but Burr cut him short. "Look out for that bad place in the road, before you get to the bridge," he said, and went on out of the yard. The road was suddenly full of departing wedding-guests, fluttering along with shrill clatter of persistently individual notes, like a flock of birds.

Burr, out of the yard, passed along through their midst with a hasty yet dignified pace. He said to himself that he would not seem to be running away. He looked neither to the right nor left, except to avoid collisions with silken and muslin petticoats, yet he was conscious of the hush of voices as he passed, and knew that they all recognized him in the broad moonlight.

When he reached the lane which led across-lots to the old place, he plunged into it by a sudden impulse. He went half-way down its leafy tunnel; then he stopped and sat down on a great stone which had fallen off the bordering wall.

Great spiritual as well as great physical catastrophes stun for a while, and there is after both a coming to one's self and an examining one's faculties, as well as one's bones, to see if they be still in working order. Burr Gordon, sitting there on his stone of meditation, in the moonlit dapple of the lane, came slowly to a full realization of himself in his change of state, and strove to make sure what power of action he had left under these new conditions.

His first thought was a cowardly one—that he would sell out, or rather give up his estate to his cousin, take his mother, and turn his back upon the village altogether. He knew what he had to expect. He tasted well in advance the miserable and half ludicrous shame of a man who has been openly jilted by a woman. He tasted, too, the covertly whispered suspicion which had perhaps never quite departed, and which now was surely raised to new life by Dorothy's loud cries of accusation. He knew that he was utterly defenceless under both shame and suspicion, being fettered fast by his own tardy but stern sense of duty and loyalty. It seemed to him at first that he would be crippled beyond cure in his whole life if he should stay where he was; and then he felt the spring of the fighting instinct within him, and said proudly to himself that he would turn his back upon nothing. He would brave it all.

There was a light wind, and now and then the young trees in the lane were driven into a soft tumult of whispering leaves. Burr did not notice when into this voice of the wind and this noise as of a crowd of softly scurrying ghosts there came a crisp rustle of muslin and a quick footstep up the lane. He only looked up when Madelon Hautville stopped before him and looked at him with incredulous alarm, as if she could not believe the evidence of her own eyes.

Dressed like a bride herself was Madelon Hautville, in a sheer white gown, which she had fashioned for herself out of an old crape shawl which had belonged to her mother, and cunningly wrought with great garlands of red flowers. She was going to Burr Gordon's wedding, not knowing the lateness of the hour; for her brother Richard had played a trick upon her, and set back the clock two hours, when to his great wrath she would not stay at home. The others were half in favor of her going, thinking that it showed her pride; but Richard was sorely set against it, and watched his chance, and slipped back the hands of the clock that she should be too late to see the wedding of the man who had forsaken her.

Madelon looked at Burr, and he at her, and neither spoke. Then, when she saw surely who it was, she cried out half in wonder and half chidingly, as if she had been his mother reproaching him for his tardiness: "What are you doing here, Burr Gordon? Do you know 'tis nearly eight o'clock, and time for your wedding?"

"'Tis nearly ten," said Burr, "and there is no wedding."

"Nearly ten?"

"Yes."

"But 'twas not eight by our clock."

Burr took out the great gold timepiece which had belonged to his father, and held it towards her, and she saw the face plainly in the moonlight.

"What does this mean?" she said; and then she cried, half shrinking away from him, "Are you married then? Where is she?"

"Dorothy Fair is at home in her chamber, and I am not married, and never shall be."

"Why—what does this mean, Burr Gordon?"

"She will not have me, and—no blame to her."

"Will not have you, and the people there, and the hour set! Will not have you? Burr, she shall have you! I promise you she shall. I will go talk to her. She is a child, and she does not know—I can make her listen. She shall have you, Burr. I will go this minute, and talk to her, and do you come after me."

Madelon gave a forward bound, like a deer, but Burr sprang up and caught her by the arm. "Why do you stop me, Burr Gordon?" she cried, trying to wrest her arm away.

"Do you think I have no manhood left, Madelon Hautville, that I will let you, you beg a woman who does not love me to marry me?"

"She does love you, she shall love you!"

"I tell you she does not!" Burr spoke with a bitterness which might well have come from slighted love, and, indeed, so complex and contradictory are the workings of the mind of a man, and so strong is the bent when once set in one direction, that not loving Dorothy Fair, and loving this other woman with his whole heart, he yet felt for the moment that he would rather his marriage had taken place and he were not free. His freedom, which he knew was a shame to welcome, galled him for the time worse than a chain, and he felt more injured than if he had loved this girl who had jilted him; for something which was more precious to him than love had been slighted and made for naught.

"She does—you are mad, Burr Gordon! She was all ready to marry you. She came to me to help on her wedding-clothes. She was all smiling and pleased. 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. If she thinks—she shall not—nor he—I will not have it so!"

"For God's sake, Madelon, don't!" said Burr, not fairly comprehending what she said. He sat down again upon the stone, and leaned his head upon his hands. In truth he felt dazed and helpless, as if he had reached suddenly the mouth of many roads and knew not which to take. The intricacy of the situation was fairly paralyzing to an order of mind like his, which was wont to grasp, though shrewdly enough, only the straight course of cause and effect. He revolved dizzily in his mind the fact that he could not tell Madelon the reason which Dorothy had given for her rejection of him, and the conviction was fast gaining upon him that it was not the true and only reason. He held fiercely to his loyalty to Madelon, and his shammed loyalty to Dorothy, and his slipping clutch of loyalty to himself, and knew not what to say nor what course to take.

Madelon, as he settled back upon the stone and bowed his head, made towards him one of those motions which the body has kept intact from the primitive order of things, when it was free to obey Love; then she stood back and looked at him a moment, while indignation and that compassion which is the very holiness of love swelled high within her. Then suddenly she leaned forward against him in her white robes, with the soft impetus of a white flowering tree driven by the wind, and put her arms around him, and drew his unhappy head against her bosom, and stroked his hair, and poured out in broken words her wrath against Dorothy Fair, and her pity for him. And all this she did in utter self-despite and forgetfulness, not caring if he should discover how great her love for him still was, believing fully that his whole heart had belonged to the other girl, and was breaking for her, and arguing thence no good for herself.

"She shall never marry him, that I swear to you, Burr," she cried, passionately, "and in time she may turn to you again; there is no faith in her."

Burr listened a while bewildered, not fully knowing nor asking what she meant, letting his head rest against her bosom, as if he were a child whom she comforted.

"Burr, you shall have her, you shall have her yet!" she said, over and over, as if Dorothy were a sweetmeat for which he longed, until at last a great shame and resolution seemed to go over him like a wave, and he put her away and rose up.

"Madelon," he said, "you don't know. Listen. You will scorn me after this—you will never look at me again, but listen: Dorothy must never know, for all the slight of this last must come from her and not from me, since she is a woman and I a man; but you shall know the whole truth. I never loved Dorothy Fair, Madelon, not as I love you, as God is my witness. She was pretty to look at, and I liked—but you cannot understand the weakness of a man that makes him ashamed of himself. I left you, and—I went—courting her because she was Parson Fair's only daughter, and I was poor, and that was not all the reason. I liked her pretty face and her pretty ways well enough, but all the time it was you and you alone in my heart; and, knowing that, I left you, though I was a man. I turned Judas to my own self, and denied and would have sold the best that was in me. Now you know the truth, Madelon Hautville."

Madelon looked at him. Her lips parted, as if her breath came hard.

Burr made as if to pass on without another word, but she held out her hand to stop him, though she did not touch him.

"Stop, Burr," she said, with a strange, almost oratorical manner, that he had never seen in her before. It was almost as if she mounted before his eyes a platform of her own love and higher purposes. "Listen to me," she said. "That night when I was in such terrible anger with you that for a second I would have killed you, I put it out of your power forever to do anything that could turn me against you again. I broke my own spirit that night, Burr. The wrong I would have done you outweighs all you ever have done or ever can do me. There is no wrong in this world that you can do me, if I will not take it so; and as for the wrong you may have done yourself—that only makes me more faithful to you, Burr."

Burr stood looking at her, speechless. It was to him as if he saw the true inner self of the girl, which he had dimly known by half-revealings but had never truly seen before. For a minute it was not Madelon Hautville in flesh and blood who stood before him, but the ghost of her, made evident by her love for him; and his very heart seemed to melt within him with shame and wonder and worship. "Oh, Madelon!" he gasped out, at length.

But Madelon turned away then. "You must go home now," said she, "and I must. Good-night, Burr."

"Good-night," said Burr, as if he repeated it at her bidding.

Then they passed without touching each other. Madelon went home down the lane, across the fields, and Burr went out in the silent street, whence all the wedding-guests had departed, and homeward also.



Chapter XXVI

In this little Vermont village, lying among peacefully sloping hills, away from boisterous river-courses, there was small chance of those physical convulsions which sometimes disturb the quiet of generations. The roar of a spring freshet never smote the ears of the dwellers therein, and the winters passed with no danger of avalanches. From its sheltered situation destructive storms seldom launched themselves upon it; the oldest inhabitant could remember little injury from lightning or hail or wind.

However, there is no village in this world so sheltered in situation that it is not exposed to the full brunt of the great forces of human passion, when they lash themselves at times into the fury of storm. It was here in this little village of Ware Centre, which could never know flood or volcanic fire, as if a sort of spiritual whirlpool had appeared suddenly in its midst. The thoughts of all the people, lying down upon their pillows, or rising for their daily tasks, centred upon it, and it was as if the minds of all were prone upon the edge of it, gazing curiously into the vortex.

The Sunday after Burr Gordon's disastrous wedding-day the faces of all the people on their way to meeting wore the same expression, in different degrees of intensity. One emotion of strained curiosity and wonder made one family of the whole village. The people thought and spoke of only one subject; they asked each other one question—"Will any of them be at meeting?" The Unitarian church was nearly deserted that Sunday, for Parson Fair's former parishioners returned to their old gathering place, under stronger pressure, for the time, than religious tenets.

It was a burning day for May—as hot as midsummer. The flowers were blossoming visibly under the eyes of the people, but they did not notice. They flocked into the meeting-house and looked about them, all with the same expression in their eyes.

When Burr Gordon and his mother entered, a thrill seemed to pass through the whole congregation. Nobody had thought they would come. Mrs. Gordon, gliding with even pace, softly murmurous in her Sunday silk, followed her son, who walked with brave front, although he was undeniably pale, up the aisle to their pew. He stood about to let his mother enter, meeting the eyes of the people as he did so; then sat down himself, and a long glance and a long nudge of shoulders passed over the meeting-house. Burr and his mother both knew it, but she sat in undisturbed serenity of pallor, and he stirred not a muscle, though a red spot blazed out on each cheek.

Madelon Hautville sat in the singing seats, but he never looked at her nor she at him. There were curious eyes upon her also, for people wondered if Burr would turn to her now Dorothy Fair had jilted him; but she did not know it. She heeded nobody but Burr, though she did not look at him, and when she stood up in the midst of her brothers and sang, she sang neither to the Lord nor to the people, but to this one weak and humiliated man whom she loved. The people thought that she had never sung so before, recognizing, though ignorantly, that she struck that great chord of the heart whose capability of sound was in them also. For the time she stood before and led all the actors in that small drama of human life which was on the village stage, and in which she took involuntary part; and the audience saw and heard nobody but her.

Burr, stiff as a soldier, at the end of his pew, felt his heart leap to hope and resolve through the sound of this woman's voice in the old orthodox hymns, and laid hold unknowingly, by means of it, of the love and force which are at the roots of things for the strengthening of the world. With weak and false starts and tardy retrogrades he had woven around his feet a labyrinth of crossing paths of life, but now, of a sudden, he saw clearly his way out. He trampled down the scruples which hampered and blinded him like thorns and had their roots in a false pride of honor, and recognized that divine call of love to worship which simplifies all perplexities. He would take that girl singing yonder for is wife, if she were indeed so generous-minded after all, not now, but later, when there could be no possibility of slight to Dorothy Fair. His honest work in the world he would do, were it in the ploughshares or the wayside ditches, with no striving for aggrandizement through untoward ways, and so would he humbly attain the full dignity of his being.

When Madelon Hautville stopped singing not one in the meeting-house had seen Burr Gordon stir, but the soul in him had surely turned and faced about with a great rending as of swathing wills that bound it.

Parson Fair preached that morning. Great had been the speculation as to whether he would or not. When he stood up in his pulpit and faced the crowded pews and the steely glances of curious eyes through the shifting flutter of fans, he was as austerely composed as ever; but a buzzing whisper went through the audience like a veritable bee of gossip. "He looks dreadful," they hissed in each other's ears, with nudges and nods.

All the principal participants in the village commotion were there except Lot Gordon and Dorothy Fair. Dorothy had not come, in spite of her father's stern commands, and sterner they had been than any commands of his to his beloved child before. Dorothy had cowered before her father, in utter misery and trepidation, after the company had left that wedding-night, but yielded she had not—only fallen ill again of that light fever which so easily beset her under stress of mind.

That Sunday morning, striving to rise and go to meeting as her father said, and being in truth willing enough, since she had a terrified longing to see Eugene Hautville in the choir and ascertain if he were angry or glad, she fell back weak and dizzy on her pillows, and the doctor was called. Dorothy's fever ran lightly, as all ailments of hers, whether mental or physical, were wont to do; and yet she had a delicacy of organization which caused her to be shaken sorely by slight causes. A butterfly may not have the capacity for despair, but the touch of a finger can crush it; and had it more capacity, there would be no butterflies.

It was a full month before Dorothy was able to go out of doors, and all that time the gossips were cheated out of the sight of her, and her father was constrained to treat her with a sort of conscience-stricken tenderness, in spite of her grave fault. Her mother had never risen from a fever which seemed akin to this; and Dorothy, in spite of his stern Puritan creed, was yet dearer to him than that abstraction of her which he deemed her soul.

Looking at the girl, flushed softly with fever, her blue eyes shining like jewels, as she lay in her white nest, he knew that he loved her life more fiercely than he judged her sins. He would turn his back upon her and go out of her chamber, his black height bowed like a penitent, and down to his study, and wrestle there upon his knees for hours with that earthly and natural love which he accounted as of the Tempter, yet might after all have been an angel, and of the Lord. And when Dorothy came weakly down-stairs at last, with the great black woman guarding her steps as if she were a baby, he found not in himself the power of stern counsel and reproof which he had decided upon when she should have left her chamber.

All the neighbors knew when Dorothy Fair first stepped her foot out of doors, and told one another suspiciously that she did not look very sick, and that they guessed she might have come out sooner, and gone to meeting, had she been so minded.

And in truth the girl, beyond slight deflections in the curves of her soft cheeks, and a wistful enlarging and brightening of her blue eyes, as in thoughtful shadows, was not much changed. The first Sunday when she appeared in the meeting-house she wore, to the delight and scandal of the women, one of the new gowns and hats of her bridal outfit. Dorothy Fair, in a great plumed hat of peach-blow silk, in a pearly silk gown and pink-silk mitts, in a white-muslin pelerine all wrought with cunning needlework, sat in the parson's pew, and uplifted her lovely face towards her father in the pulpit, and nobody knew how her whole mind and fancy were set, not upon the sermon, but upon Eugene Hautville in the singing-seats behind her. And nobody dreamed how, as she sat there, she held before her face, as it were, a sort of mental hand-mirror, in which she could see her head of fair curls, her peach-blow hat, and her slender white-muslin shoulders reflected from Eugene's dark eyes. The fall of every curl had she studied well that morning, and the folds of the muslin pelerine over her shoulders. And when the congregation arose for the hymns and faced about towards the singers, then did Dorothy let her blue eyes seek, with an innocent unconsciousness, as of blue flowers, which would have deceived the very elect, Eugene's face.

But his black eyes met hers with no more fiery glances. Eugene never even looked at her, but sang, with stern averted face, which was paler and thinner than Dorothy's, though he had had no illness save of the spirit. In vain Dorothy sought his eyes, with her blue appealing ones, during every hymn; in vain once or twice during the sermon she even cast a glance around her shoulder with a slight fling of her curls aside, and a little shiver, as if she felt a draught. Eugene never looked her way that she could see.

When the long service was over, Dorothy, with sly, watchful eyes, quickened her pace, and strove so to manage that she and Eugene should emerge from the meeting-house side by side. But he was striding far ahead, with never a backward glance, when she came out, lifting daintily her pearly skirts. Burr was near her, but him she never thought of, even to avoid, and his mother's stately aside movement was not even seen by her. She courtesied prettily to those who met her face to face, from force of habit, and went on thinking of no one but Eugene.

Again, in the afternoon, Dorothy went to meeting, though her pulses began to beat, with a slight return of the fever, and again she strove with her cunning maiden wiles to attract this obdurate Eugene, and again in vain. That night Dorothy lay and wept awhile before she fell asleep, and dreamed that she and Eugene were a-walking in the lane and that he kissed her. And when she awoke, blushing in the darkness, she resolved that she would go a-walking in the lane on every pleasant day, in the hope that the dream might come true.

And Mistress Dorothy Fair, with many eyes in the neighbors' windows watching, went pacing slowly, for her delicate limbs as yet did not bear her strongly, day after day down the road and into the lane, and, with frequent rests upon wayside stones, to the farther end of it. And yet she did not meet Eugene therein, and her dream did not come true.

But it happened at last, about the middle of the month of June, when the great red and white roses in the dooryards were in such full bloom that in another day they would be past it and fall, that Dorothy and Eugene met in the lane; for there is room enough in time for most dreams to come true, and for the others there is eternity.

That afternoon Dorothy had gone forth as usual, but she said to herself that he would not come; and half-way down the lane she ceased peering into the green distances for him, and sat herself down on a stone, and leaned back against the trunk of a young maple, and shut her eyes wearily, and told herself in a sort of sad penitence that she would look no more for him, for he would not come.

The grass in the lane was grown long now, with a pink mist over the top of it; the trees at the sides leaned together heavy with foliage, and the bordering walls were all hidden under bushes and vines. Everywhere on bush and vine were spikes and corymbs of lusty blossoms. Birds were calling to their mates and their young; the locusts were shrilling out of depths of sunlight. Dorothy, in the midst of this uncontrolled passion of summer, was herself in utter tune and harmony with it. She was just as sweet and gracefully courtesying among her sisters as any flower among the host of the field; and she had silently and inconsequently, like the flower, her own little lust of life and bloom which none could overcome, and against which she could know no religion. This Dorothy, meekly leaning her slender shoulders against the maple-tree, with her blue eyes closed, and her little hands folded in her lap, could no more develop into aught towards which she herself inclined not than a daisy plant out in the field could grow a clover blossom. Moreover her heart, which had after all enough of the sweetness of love in it, opened or shut like the cup of a sensitive plant, with seemingly no volition of hers; therefore was she in a manner innocently helpless and docile before her own emotions and her own destiny.

She sat still a few minutes and kept her eyes closed. Then she thought she heard a stir down the lane, but she would not open her eyes to look, so sadly and impatiently sure was she that he would not come. Even when she knew there was a footstep drawing near she would not look. She kept her eyes closed, and made as if she were asleep; and some one passed her, and she would not look, so sure was she that it was not Eugene.

But that afternoon Eugene Hautville, who had gone all this time the long way to the village, felt his own instincts, or the natural towardness of his heart, too strong for him. Often, watching from a distance across the fields, he had seen a pale flutter of skirts in the lane, and knew well enough that Dorothy was there, and had turned back; but this time he walked on. When he came to Dorothy he cast one glance at her, then set his face sternly and kept on, with his heart pulling him back at every step. Dorothy did not open her eyes until he had fairly passed her, and then she looked and saw him going away from her without a word. Then she gave a little cry that no one could have interpreted with any written language. She called not Eugene by his name; she said no word; but her heart gave that ancient cry for its lover which was before all speech; and that human love-call drowned out suddenly all the others.

But when Eugene stopped and turned, Dorothy blushed so before his eyes that her very neck and arms glowed pink through her lace tucker and sleeves. She shrank away, twisting herself and hiding her face, so that he could see naught of her but the flow of her muslin skirts and her curling fair locks.

Eugene stood a minute looking at her. His dark face was as red as Dorothy's. He made a motion towards her, then drew back and held up his head resolutely.

"It is a pleasant day," he said, as if they were exchanging the everyday courtesies of life; and then when she made no reply, he added that he hoped she was quite recovered from her sickness.

And then he was pressing on again, white in the face now and wrestling fiercely with himself that he might, as it were, pass his own heart which stood in the way; but Dorothy rose up, with a sob, and pressed before him, touching his arm with her slender one in her lace sleeve, and shaking out like any flower the rose and lavender scent in her garments.

"I want to speak to you," she said, and strove in vain to command her voice.

Eugene bowed and tried to smile, and waited, and looked above her head, through the tree branches into the field.

"I want to know if—you are angry with me because—I would not—marry Burr," said Dorothy, catching her breath between her words.

"I told you that you had no reason—that he was not guilty," Eugene said, with a kind of stern doggedness; and still he did not look at her.

"I could not marry—him," Dorothy panted, softly.

"I told you you had no reason," Eugene said again, as if he were saying a lesson that he had taught himself.

"Are you angry—with me because I could not marry him?" Dorothy asked, with her soft persistency in her own line of thought, and not his.

Then Eugene in desperation looked down at her, and saw her face worn into sweet wistfulness by her illness, her dilated eyes and lips parted and quivering into sobs, like a baby's.

"I am not angry, but I encourage no woman to be false to her betrothal vows," he said, and strove to make his voice hard; but Dorothy bent her head, and the sobs came, and he took her in his arms.

"Are you angry with me?" Dorothy sobbed, piteously, against his breast.

"No, not with you, but myself," said Eugene. "It is all with myself. I will take the blame of it all, sweet," and he smoothed her hair and kissed her and held her close and tried to comfort her; and it seemed to him that he could indeed take all the blame of her inconstancy and distrust, and could even bear his self-reproach for her sake, so much he loved her.

"I would not have married Burr—even if—he had told me—he was innocent," Dorothy said, after a while. She was hushing her sobs, and her very soul was smiling within her for joy as Eugene's fond whispers reached her ears.

"Why?" said Eugene.

"Because—you came first—when you looked at me in the meeting-house," Dorothy whispered back. Then she suddenly lifted her face a little, and looked up at him, with one soft flushed cheek crushed against his breast, and Eugene bent his face down to hers. They stood so, and for a minute had, indeed, the whole world to their two selves, for love as well as death has the power of annihilation; and then there was a stir in the lane, a crisp rustle of petticoats and a hiss of whispering voices; and they started and fell apart. There in the lane before them, their eyes as keen as foxes, with the scent of curiosity and gossip, their cheeks red with the shame of it, and their lips forming into apologetic and terrified smiles, stood Margaret Bean and two others—the tavern-keeper's wife and the wife of the man who kept the village store.

For a second the three women fairly cowered beneath Eugene Hautville's eyes, and Margaret Bean began to stammer as if her old tongue were palsied. Then Eugene collected himself, made them one of his courtly bows, turned to Dorothy with another, offered her his arm, and walked away with her out of the lane, before the eyes of the prying gossips.



Chapter XXVII

It was four o'clock that summer afternoon when the three women—Margaret Bean, the tavern-keeper's wife, and the storekeeper's wife—who had followed Dorothy and Eugene into the lane to pry upon them set forth to communicate by word of mouth the scandalous proceedings they had witnessed; and long before midnight all the village knew. The women crept cautiously at a good distance behind Dorothy and Eugene out of the lane, and watched, with incredulous eyes turning to each other for confirmation, the pair walk into Parson Fair's house together. Then they could do no more, since their ears were not long enough, and each went her way to tell what she had seen.

All the neighbors knew when Eugene Hautville left Parson Fair's house that afternoon, but their knowledge stopped there. Nobody ever discovered just what was said within those four walls when Dorothy—who, soft plumaged though she was, had flown in the faces of all her decorous feminine antecedents and her goodly teaching—confronted her father with her new lover at her side.

It was safe enough to assume, for one who knew her and them well, that the two men did finally turn and protect her and shelter her each against himself, and his own despite, as well as one another. After that Eugene Hautville was seen every Sunday night and twice in the week going into Parson Fair's house, and the candles burned late in the north parlor.

The banns were published in a month's time. Some accounted it unseemly haste, after the other banns which had come to naught, and some said 'twas better so, and they blamed not Parson Fair for placing such a flighty and jilting maid safe within the pale of wedlock—and they guessed he was thankful enough to find a husband for her, even if 'twas one of the Hautvilles.

However, Eugene was held in somewhat more of esteem than the others, since he had in his own right a snug little sum in bank which had come to him from an uncle whose name he bore. When it was known that Eugene had bought the old Squire Damon place, a goodly house with a box-bordered front walk, and a pillared front door, and would take his bride home to it, public favor became quite strong for him. Folk opined that he would, even if he was a Hautville, make full as good a husband as Burr, and that Dorothy Fair would have the best of the bargain all around. While many held Dorothy in slight esteem for her instability and delicacy, and thought she was no desirable helpmeet for any man, some were of the opinion that she had shown praiseworthy judgment and shrewdness in jilting Burr for Eugene.

Dorothy this time made small show of her wedding, and was married in her father's study with only the necessary witnesses and no guests. Eugene Hautville had chafed. Dorothy also, with her feminine desire for all minor details of happiness, was aggrieved that she could never now appear before the public gaze in all the splendor of her wedding-gear. But Parson Fair stood firm for once, and would have it so.

All the watchful neighbors saw was, after nightfall and moonrise, Parson Fair's door open, and the bride and groom appear for a second in a golden shaft of light which flashed into gloom at the closing of the door, and left there two shadows, as if the story of their life and love had already been told and passed into history. And then the neighbors saw them move up the road with long vanishing flutters of the bride's white draperies, and the great black woman, steadying a basket against her hip, in their wake, following her mistress like a faithful dog, with perhaps the most unselfish love of all.

The black woman favored Eugene more than she had ever favored Burr, perhaps because she was a true slave of love, and leaned with the secret leanings of her mistress's heart against all words of mouth, obeying her commands with a fuller understanding of them than Dorothy herself.

When this new lover came a-courting, the African woman had always greeted him at the door with that wide, sudden smile of hers, at once simple, like a child's, and wild, like the grin of an animal; and her voice, in her thick jargon, was nearly as softly rich to him as to Dorothy. Moreover she kept no longer jealous watch at the door of the room where the lovers sat, and was fond of treating the young man with little cakes which she made with honey, whose like was to be eaten nowhere else in the village.

After Dorothy and Eugene were wedded they faded into comparative insignificance in the thoughts of the villagers, which were then centred upon Burr Gordon and Madelon. The curtain went down upon Eugene and his bride as upon any pair of wedded lovers in his Shakespeare book.

Burr was in exceedingly ill repute, but he did not himself know it. Many of his old friends treated him coolly, but he attributed that to the embarrassed sympathy and constraint which they naturally felt towards him in his position. He thought they avoided him because they knew well that he would suspect even friendliness lest it contain a pity which would hurt his pride; and he thanked them for it. But the truth was, that outcry of Dorothy's against him on the wedding-night had lashed up into a hurricane all the suspicions which Lot's avowal had stilled. They did away easily enough with the force of Lot's statement, for there are many theories to furnish skin-fits for every difficulty, if one searches in the infinity of possibilities.

Lot's true reason none fathomed, for it was beyond their sounding-lines of selfish curiosity; but they found another which seemed to meet the needs of the case as well.

Lot, they said, had bargained with Burr to give up all claim to Madelon, and he would set him free by confessing an attempt at suicide. Margaret Bean, it was reported, had seen the letter which Lot had written to Burr in prison. When Madelon, who, half crazed by anxiety about her lover, had wrongfully accused herself to save him, had seen him turn to her rival and scorn her after his release, she had accepted Lot in a rage of pride and jealousy, as he had planned for her to do. The breaking off of the marriage betwixt her and Lot they mostly attributed to the simple cause he had mentioned—his failing health—though some thought that he had hesitated about marrying into the Hautville family when it came to it.

Suspicion had been for a time somewhat hushed against Madelon, the more so that she had been seen, since Dorothy had jilted Burr, to pass him with scarcely a nod, and was popularly supposed to hold an Indian grudge against him, and to be still anxious to wed his cousin Lot.

However, the tide soon turned again. On the Sunday after the banns between Dorothy and Eugene had been published, Burr had been seen to walk home openly with Madelon from evening meeting; and it was soon known that he was courting her regularly.

Then darker whispers were circulated. People said now that they were accomplices in attempted crime. 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. The attitude of Madelon's father and brothers towards herself and Burr had done much to strengthen suspicion. High voices and strange remarks had been overheard by folk strolling casually, of a pleasant evening, past the Hautville house.

In truth, at first old David Hautville and all his sons except Eugene had risen against Burr and Madelon, all their pride in arms that she should return to this man who had once forsaken her for another. But later they had yielded, for their pride was undermined by their own gloomy convictions as to Madelon, which they confided not to one another. However, the boy Richard still greeted Burr surlily, with a fierce black flash under frowning brows, and scarcely spoke to Madelon at all until the day before her marriage. That was set some two months after Dorothy's.

Burr and Madelon, during the days of their betrothal, were as closely beset by spies on every hand as a party of Madelon's old kindred might have been, encamped in a wooded country, where every bush veiled savage eyes and every tree stood in front of a foeman, but they did not know it. Folk knew when Mrs. Gordon went to visit her son's betrothed, though 'twas on a dark evening. They knew what she wore, and how long she stayed. They knew when Madelon returned her visit; they knew, to remember, in many cases, more details of their daily lives than Burr and Madelon themselves.

Madelon had few wedding preparations to make. The wedding-garments which she had stitched with sorrow for her marriage with Lot would serve her now. She employed her time in increasing still further the household stores of linen for her father's and brothers' use, when she should be gone, and in making a great stock of sweet-sauce, jelly, and cordials from the fruits and berries of the season.

One afternoon in late summer, when the high blackberries were ripe, Madelon set forth with a great basket on her arm. A fine cordial, good for many ills, she knew how to make from the berries, and had planned to brew a goodly quantity this year. She went down the road a way, then over some bars, with her hands on the highest and a spring like a willow branch set free, across a pasture where some red cows were grazing, then over another set of bars, into a rough and shaggy land sloping gradually into a hill. Here the high blackberries grew in great thorny thickets, and Madelon pressed among them warily and began picking. She had not picked long—indeed the bottom of her basket was not covered—when she heard a rustle in the bushes behind her and looked over her shoulder hurriedly, and there was Lot Gordon.

Lot came forward from a cluster of young firs, parting the rank undergrowth with the careless wonted movement of one who steers his way among his own household goods. Well used to all the wild disorder of out-doors was Lot Gordon, and could have picked his way of a dark night among the stones and bushes and trees of many a pasture and woodland. Moreover, Lot, uprising from the great nest which he had hollowed out for himself from a sweet fern growth under the balsam firs, exhaling their fragrant breath of healing, and coming into sight, made better show than he had ever done in his own book-walled study.

Here, where the minds of other men swerved him and incited him not, where only Nature herself held him in leading-strings with unsearchable might or was laid bare before his daring eyes and many a secret discovered, Lot Gordon gained his best grace of home. The balsam firs framed him with more truth than the door of his own dwelling. To Madelon, as he came out from them, he looked more a man than he had ever done; for all unconsciously to her mind of strong and simple bent, he had seemed at times scarce a man but rather some strange character from a book, which had gotten life through too strong imagining.

Moreover to-day his likeness to Burr came out strongly. Madelon saw the cant of his head and swing of his shoulders, with a half sense of shame that he was not Burr, and yet with a sudden understanding of him that she had never felt before. She had not seen him since her betrothal to Burr. She thought to herself that he was thinner, and that the red flush on his cheeks was the flush of fever and not of the summer sun.

"How do you do, Lot?" she said. Madelon's cheeks were a splendid red; her green sunbonnet hung by its strings low on her neck, and her head, with black hair clinging to her temples in moist rings, was thrust out from the green tangle of vines like a flower. When Lot did not answer at once, but stood pale and trembling, as if an icy wind had struck him, before her, she pulled the pricking vines loose from her dress, and came out. "How do you do, Lot?" she said, again. Still Lot did not answer, and after a minute she turned with impatient dignity as if to enter her fastness again; but then Lot spoke.

"Like mankind," he said, "'tis not well, and it tends to death, but we were born with a lash at our backs to do it."

Madelon knit her brows impatiently, for this was his old talk, that savored to her of ink and parchment and thoughts laid up in studied guise, like mummies. Then she noted his poor face, and again the look like Burr, which caused her heart to melt with the fancy of her love in like case, and she said, with that gracious kindness which became her well, that it was a pleasant day, and the smell of the balsam fir was good for him.

But Lot looked at her with his great eyes set in hungry hollows, and answered her in that stilted speech which she liked not, trying to smile his old mocking smile with his poor lips, which only trembled like a child's when tears are coming. "There are rivers of honey and gardens of spices, and branches dropping balm," said Lot, "where a man can walk but his soul cannot follow him. His soul waits outside and strives to taste the sweet when he swallows it, and smell the balm and the spices when he breathes them in, but cannot; and that is only good for a man which is good for his soul."

"I don't know what you mean," said Madelon, shortly.

"I mean that I am outside all the good of this world, since the one good which I crave and cannot have is the gate to all the rest," said Lot. Then suddenly he cried out passionately, lifting up his face to the sky, "O God, why need it be so? Why need a man be a bond-slave to one hunger? Why need this one woman be the angel with the flaming sword before all the little pleasures I used to taste and love? Why need she come between me and the breath of the woods, and the incense of the fields, and their secrets which were to me before my own, so I can take no more delight in them?"

Madelon looked at him half in pity, half in proud resentment. "If it is so," she said, "it was not of my own accord I came; you know that, Lot Gordon. I meant no harm to you, and the harm that I did you brought upon yourself. I would not have come here to-day if I had known you were here and that it would disturb you."

"You could not have helped coming," said Lot. "I have been here since morning, and you have been here all the while."

"Why do you talk so, Lot Gordon?" cried Madelon, angrily, for Lot's covert meanings fretted her straightforwardness beyond endurance. "You know that I have just come here!"

"You came here when I did," said Lot, "when the fields were dewy. You held up your skirts and stepped daintily. I went ahead and you followed, high-kilted, pointing your steps among the wet grasses like a dove. Had I looked over my shoulder I could have seen you, but I looked not lest the power of flight might be in you like the dove."

"I shall go away if you talk like this. I will not stay here and listen to it; you know I was not here," said Madelon, and she paled a little, for she almost thought, used to his fanciful talk though she were, that Lot had gone mad.

"We walked towards the sun," persisted Lot, "but you were in my shadow and needed not to cast down your eyes. I saw some red flowers, but I did not pick them for you, and I heard you stop and break the stems as you came after. When we reached the shade of the firs there I sat down, but I left the space there, where the needles are smoothest and thickest, for you, and there you sat too, all day."

"Lot Gordon!"

"You need not mind, Madelon, for all day I looked not over my shoulder once. I saw not your face, nor touched your lips, nor your hand, nor even the fold of your dress. I harmed you not, even in my dreams, dear."

Madelon, standing quite free of the clinging blackberry vines, held up her dark head like an empress, and looked at him. In truth she felt little pity for Lot Gordon then, for she liked not being made to follow other than Burr even in a man's dreams. Still, when she spoke it was not unkindly, for in spite of this jealousy of herself for Burr, and in spite of her inability to understand such worship of herself, when she was spent in worship of another, she remembered how she had nearly taken the life of this man, and how he had striven to shield her, though against her will, and on hard and selfish conditions, and how he had at last sacrificed himself to set her free.

"Lot," said she, "there must be no more of this. I am almost your cousin's wife. You have no right." And then she repeated it passionately. "I say you have no right to love me like this, if I do not love you, Lot Gordon. I will have no other man but Burr think me at his heels. I will follow him till the day of my death, but no other. I would only have married you to save his life—you know that. You know I never loved you. You have no right."

"The right of love is every man's who sets not himself before it," returned Lot, with sad dignity. "I will not yield that even for love of you, Madelon; but myself shall be pushed yet farther out of sight, I promise you, and you shall be pestered no more, child. Go on with your berry-picking."

A great mound of rock uplifted itself like the swelling crouch of some fossil animal among the sweet ferns and the wild scramble of vines. Lot sank down upon it panting for breath. He leaned his head wearily forward between his hands, his elbows resting on his knees.

Madelon looked at him hesitatingly; she opened her mouth as if to speak, then was silent. She looked at the high vines, black with fruit, then at the field beyond, as if half minded to go away and leave them.

Finally she fell to picking again without a word. Lot coughed once, but he did not speak. 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. She said it with half-constrained kindness, not looking up from her berry-picking; but Lot lifted his head and thanked her and said the cough was nearly cured, with eagerness to respond to grace, like a child who has been chidden.

Then he watched her with bright eyes as she picked, his breath coming hard and quick. "Madelon!" he said, and stopped.

"What, Lot?"

"You remember—the gewgaws which I—showed you, Madelon—the feathers and ribbons and satins, and the other things? You cared not for them then. 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.

Lot said no more. He leaned his head upon his hands again. Madelon could hear his panting breath. She resolved that she would go away across the fields, down the road a piece, to another berry patch that she knew of. Still she did not go. One of those impulses which seem to come from authority outside one's self, or else from some hidden springs of motion which we know not of, had seized her. She looked at Lot and moved softly away a few steps, holding her skirts clear of the vines. Then she paused and looked again, and was away again. Her face was resolute and wary, as if she saw something which she feared and loathed, and yet would brave. Then she went close to Lot, and stood still over him a minute.

"Lot," she said.

He looked up at her, wonderingly. "Are you sick, Madelon?" he cried, and would have risen, but she motioned him back and spoke, turning her face away the while.

"Once I asked Burr to give me the kiss that I would have killed him for," said she, in a voice so sharpened by her stress of spirit that it might have come out of the flames of martyrdom. "Now I ask you to give me the kiss that I almost took your life for."

"Madelon!"

"It is all I can do to make amends," said she. Then she looked full at him, and did not shrink when she met his eyes, though her face grew white before the mad longing in them.

Lot stood up and leaned towards her, and she stood waiting. Then he threw out his hands, as if he would push her back, and turned away. "You owe me no amends," he said, hoarsely. "The wound that you gave me was my just desert for striving to take what you were not willing to give."

"Your life is your life," said she, steadily, "and I almost took it away from you. I would do this in token of repentance for that and whatever other harm I have done you unwittingly."

"You owe me no amends, and I will take none," said Lot, again.

Then he faced about towards her, and she started and looked at him, wondering and half in awe, for suddenly the love in the heart of the man showed itself in his face like a light, and it was almost as if she saw, unbelieving and denying, her own transfigured image in his eyes.

"Good-bye, Madelon," said Lot.

"Good-bye," she returned, faintly, and looked at him for the first time in all her life without the thought of Burr between them.

But that Lot did not know, and stood a moment gazing at her as a man gazes at one beloved under the shadow of long parting, striving to gain possession of somewhat to hold and cherish aside from the conditions of the flesh. Then he said good-bye again, and went away, with that soft winding glide of his through the underbrush which he might have learned from the wild dwellers in the woods, and was out of sight through the violet glooms of the firs.



Chapter XXVIII

The night before Madelon was married, as if by some tacit understanding of peace and harmony, the Hautvilles came together for a concert in the great living-room. Not one had said to another, "This is Madelon's last night at home, and we have been wroth with her; let us bury the hatchet, and raise our voices with one accord in our old songs;" but one impulse had seemed to move them all, as one wind moves the forest trees who are kin to one another, and they were all together at twilight, even Eugene and his bride.

Burr Gordon came also, but he and Madelon did not sit apart that evening. The weather was cool, even for late September, and an early frost was threatened. A great fire blazed on the hearth. Burr and Dorothy, on the settle in the chimney-corner, listened to the Hautville chorus, and Burr looked always at Madelon and Dorothy at Eugene. The Hautvilles stood together before the fire, old David with his bass-viol at his side, like the wife of his bosom; Louis holding his violin on his shoulder, like a child, pressing his dark cheek against it, and Eugene and Abner and Richard and Madelon uplifting their voices in the old songs and fugues.

The doors and windows were shut. 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. Greater praise than she would ever know again in her whole life went up for Madelon outside that window, as she sang, but she neither knew it nor missed anything when Lot went away.

At ten o'clock the concert ceased. Lot slunk away noiselessly, and soon Eugene and Dorothy went home, and Burr, lingering for a good-night kiss or two in the door.

Madelon set bread to rise that night, and fulfilled her little round of nightly tasks for the last time. Her father and brothers went to bed and left her there—all but Richard. He remained in a corner of the settle, his slim length flung out carelessly, his head tipped back as if he were asleep; but his black eyes flashed bright under their lids at his sister whenever she did not look at him. Madelon said not a word until her tasks were done; then she came and stood in front of Richard, and looked at him, frowning a little, for her pride was stung at his treatment of her, but holding out her hand. "Can't you bid me good-night, Richard?" said she, and tried to smile at him with that old loving comradeship which he had disowned.

The boy maintained his sullen silence for a moment, and Madelon waited. Then suddenly he cried, "Good-night," with sharp intonations, like the response of a surly dog, and sprang up and thrust something hard into her hand, with such roughness that it hurt her, and she started.

"'Tis a wedding-present for you," Richard said, savagely, with averted face. "I thought the one I gave you before would not serve for two weddings. Though there be but one bride, there should be different gifts."

Madelon gave one look at Richard; then she opened her hand, and there on her reddened palm lay a little gold pencil, which the boy must have spent all his little savings to buy. Madelon held it out to him. "Take it back," said she; "I want no presents with words like that to sweeten them."

Richard's clenched hand hung by his side. He shook his head sullenly.

"Take it!" said Madelon; but he made no motion to do so.

"Then I shall let it fall on the floor," said Madelon.

"Let it," returned Richard, and forthwith the little gold pencil rolled on the floor under the settle, and Madelon turned away with a white face. But before she had reached the door Richard was at her side and his hand on her arm. "Oh, Madelon!" he said, striving to keep the sobs back. Then Madelon turned and laid a hand on each of his shoulders, and held him away, looking at him.

"Why did you speak to me like that?" said she; and then, without waiting for an answer, drew the boy's head down to her bosom, and held it there a moment, stroking his hair. "If ever you are sick after I am gone," said she, "I will come and take care of you; and if you don't get good things to eat I will see to that, too;" and then she kissed Richard's dark head, and put him away gently, bidding him with a tender laugh "not to be a baby," and went over to the settle and picked up the little gold pencil, and praised it and said she would treasure it all her life.

And then she bade Richard follow her into the best room, and opened the carved oak chest and displayed six beautiful shirts made of linen, which she had herself spun and woven and wrought with finest needlework in bands and bosoms, for a parting gift to him, because he was the nearest of all her brothers, though she must not say so. "The others have shirts enough," said she; "I have seen to that, for I have meant to do my duty to you all, but none of the others have bosoms and wristbands stitched like these, and the linen is extra fine."

That night Richard would not go to his chamber, which he shared with his brother Louis, lest he wake and spy his face flushed with tears, but crept stealthily back down-stairs, and, all unbeknown to any one, lay all night on the settle in the living-room. He slept little, and often waked and wept in the darkness like a child rather than one of the fiery Hautville brothers.

When wrath with a beloved one is stilled in the human heart and love takes its place, it is with a threefold increase, a great rending of spirit, and a cruel turning of weapons against one's self. Richard was one who would always deal with entireties, being capable of no divisions nor subtleties of praise or blame. Whereas his anger had been fierce against his sister that she should love and marry the man who had flouted her, now it was turned wholly against himself for his injustice and ill-treatment of her. He racked himself with the memory of his surly words and looks; and those six shirts of fine linen, with the cunning needlework in band and bosom, seemed the veritable scriptural coals of fire on his head. Also good and simple reasons for his sister's course came to him as he lay there and influenced him still more. "She had it in her mind to kill him, though 'twas the other she struck," he said to himself; "'tis only fit that she should make amends to him for that and keep his house for him, and bake and brew and spin and weave for him." Richard in the darkness nodded his head in agreement with his own argument, and yet he hated Burr as well as ever, and the next morning when he saw him stand beside his sister before Parson Fair, he clenched his slender brown hands until the sinews stood out, and his black eyes still flashed hostility at him. Yet when he looked at Madelon's face his own softened, and he set his mouth hard to keep back the quiver in it. Madelon wore not the silk of green and gold in which she had planned to be wedded to Lot; that she could not bring her mind to do, since the old wretched dreams and imaginations seemed to cling to the garment and desecrate it for this. She wore instead a sober gown of a satin sheen with the rich purplish-red hue of a plum, which set off the dark bloom of her face by suggestion rather than contrast; but all the boy Richard noted of her costume was his little gold pencil slung on the long gold chain around her neck.

Madelon and Burr were married quite early in the morning, in the best room of the Hautville house, and nobody outside the two families was bidden to the wedding. After the marriage the bride tied on a white-muslin apron and passed cake and currant wine; and the great Hautvilles sitting in sober state around the room, Elvira Gordon in her black satin and pearls, pretty Dorothy, and Parson Fair partook.

Then the bride went up to her chamber and put on a pelisse of stuff like her gown, lined with canary-colored satin, and a little cap of otter and a great muff which she had fashioned herself out of skins which her brothers had brought home, and took over her arm, since the day was frosty, a long tippet of otter which she could wind round her throat, if need be, and came down all equipped for her wedding-journey.

In front of the Hautville house stood waiting a smart chaise with a fine young horse in the shafts, and the bride and groom came out and got in and drove away. But first, while Burr was gathering up the reins, David Hautville's hoarse voice through the open door besought him to wait, and presently the old man came striding forth with the skin of a mighty bear which he had slain single-handed years ago, and which had been his chiefest treasure next to his viol ever since, kept beside his bed, whence no one dared remove it. He flung it up into the chaise, and tucked it well in over his daughter's knees. "Oh, father, I will not take your bearskin!" Madelon cried, and the tears came into her eyes, for this touched her more than anything; and the memory of aught that she had ever lacked in tenderness towards them all seemed to smite her in the face.

"'Tis a sharp day for the time of year, and there'll be a frost to-night," was all old David Hautville said, and strode back into the house, keeping his face well turned away.

The horse that Burr drove was a young animal that he had purchased lately. It was of the stock of the Morgans, and stood with the faithfulness of a sentinel; but when the signal to start was given stepped out proudly as if to a battle charge, with eager tossings of heavy mane and high flings of knees and hoofs; and yet, when fairly on the road, never broke the swift precision of his course.

"He's got a fine horse there," Abner Hautville said, in his emphatic bass, as he watched them out of sight; and he further declared that for his part he would be willing to trade the roan for him. Then the boy Richard turned upon him, with a cry that was something between a sob and an oath: "Yes, trade off the roan and all we've got left to him, I'll warrant ye will!" he choked out. Then he was gone, pelting off madly across the fields, with his bold and innocent young heart, that had as yet known no fiercer passion than this for his sister, all aflame with grief and angry jealousy, as of one who sees his best haled off before his eyes, and still with awed submission to a power which he recognizes and understands not.



Chapter XXIX

As Burr and Madelon, setting forth on their wedding-journey, drove down the village street, they met many whom they knew; and had it not been for their self-engrossment they could not have failed to notice and wonder at the cold greetings they received, and the many averted faces which greeted them not at all.

Indeed, Burr did remark upon it when they met Daniel Plympton, who nodded with a surly air and turned his fat and pleasant countenance resolutely away, with a gesture that seemed to belie his own identity.

"What's come across Dan'l?" he said, laughing, for at that time coldness from the outside world seemed but provocative of amusement. Then he sang out gayly to the Morgan horse, and they flew along the road, under the outreaching branches, red and gold and russet, past old landmarks and houses and more familiar faces which bore strange looks towards them, and yet surprised them not, for a strangeness was over all the old sights and ways for them both. To the bride and groom, riding through the village where they had been born and bred, and whence all their earthly imaginations had sprung, came an experience like a resurrection. They saw it all: the paths their feet had trodden, the doors they had entered, the friends they had known from childhood, but all seemed no longer the same, since their own conditions of life had changed; and change in one's self is the vital spring of change in all besides.

As they rode along old associations lost their holds over them in their new world, which was the outcome of the old, and would in its turn wax old again. Burr looked at his own home, as he went by, as if he had never seen it; even his memory of himself and his childhood days was dim, and he and Madelon, glancing at Lot's windows and having his image forced, as it were, upon their consciousness, regarded it as they might have done an actor in some old drama of history in which they also had taken part, but which had long since passed off the stage.

They left the house behind and were swiftly out of sight, over the crest of a long hill with a great spread of golden maple branches closing after them like a curtain, and neither of them dreamed in what straits Lot Gordon lay behind his vacant windows—and all through this love and bliss and paradise of theirs.

The smart chaise and the Morgan horse had scarcely disappeared before Margaret Bean came hurriedly out of Lot Gordon's house and went rattling in her starched draperies towards the village; and soon after that the doctor was seen driving thither furiously in his tilting sulky, while windows were opened and spying heads thrust out all along his course.

An hour later everybody knew that Lot Gordon, some said by a fall in climbing over a stone wall, some said by a severe fit of coughing, had caused his old wound to beset him again with danger of his life. That night, indeed, the tide of rancorous gossip swelled high. The spirit of persecution and righteous retribution which finds easy birth in New England villages was fast getting to itself feet and hands and tongue and a whole body of active powers.

A stormy bridal night had Burr and Madelon known had they been at home; and had Lot Gordon died during the next three days, in which he lay in imminent danger, there had been fleet horses on the track of the swift Morgan, and the wedding-journey had come to a close.

Yet the Hautville men heard nothing of the bitterness which was gathering towards Madelon and Burr, for people, fearing their fierce tempers, hesitated until the time was come to disclose it to them. Even old Luke Basset dared not carry news to them. The tongues were always hushed when one of them drew near; and as for Eugene, who, having a wife, might perhaps have discovered it, he and Dorothy took the stage coach for Boston the day after the marriage, and were paying a visit at Dorothy's aunt's there.

After three days Lot Gordon was reported to be no longer hovering between life and death, and yet it was said on good authority, through the doctor's wife in fact, that he might at any time, by an injudicious step or a harder coughing-spell, end his life through the opening of that old wound, for which they held either Madelon or Burr, or perhaps both, accountable; and public indignation swelled higher and higher. It was resolved that when the bridal couple returned a constant espionage should be kept upon them, and in case of Lot's death active measures should be taken.

"We ain't goin' to have a man murdered to death in our midst by no French and Injuns nowadays and let it slide," proclaimed a fiery spirit in the store one night. Then when the door opened and Abner Hautville, dark and warlike in his carriage as any fighting chief, appeared, the man asked ostentatiously for a "quart of m'lasses, and not so black and gritty as the last was nuther," transferring the rancor in his tone to an inoffensive object with Machiavellian policy.

However, Margaret Bean's husband was in the store that night, and heard it all. He had been sent thither for a half-pound of ginger, and told not to linger; but linger he did, disposing his old bones with a stiff fling upon a handy half-barrel and listening to every word with a shrewd sense, for which no one would have given him credit, that he could by repetition and enlargement, if necessary, appease his wife's wrath at his delay. The workings of the human mind towards selfish ends even in the simplest organization have an art beyond all mechanism, and can astonish the wisest when revealed.

Nobody who saw old man Bean pottering homeward that night, his back bent with age, yet moving with a childlike shuffle, carrying his parcel of ginger with tight clutch lest he drop it, like one whose weariness of body must make up for feebleness of mind, dreamed what a diplomat he was in his humble walk of life, and what an adept still in doubles and turns and twists and dodges towards his own petty ends.

A sweeter morsel than any sugar old man Bean, overborne with a sense of naughtiness and disobedience, like a child, carried home to his wife to quiet her chiding tongue.

Hardly had he entered the door when he heard afar the swift rattle of her starched skirts, like a very warning note of hostility, and cut in ahead of her reproaches with a triumphant manner.

"Pretty doin's there's goin' to be," said he; "never was nothin' like it in this town. That's what I stayed for. Thought ye'd orter know."

"What do you mean?" asked Margaret Bean, staring.

"Ye know what the doctor says about him?" The old man jerked his head towards the door.

Margaret nodded.

"Well, they're goin' to have 'em both hung for murder the minute he draws his last breath."

"Can't till they're tried," said Margaret, with a sniff of scorn at her husband's lack of legal knowledge.

"Well, they're goin' to clap 'em into jail the minute they git home, an' keep 'em there till they can hang 'em," persisted old man Bean.

"They ain't."

"I tell ye they are!"

Old man Bean had a cup of tea, plentifully sweetened with molasses, made from the ginger which he had purchased, and went to bed happy and peaceful, as one who has worked innocently and well his small powers to his own advantage; and soon after that Lot also heard the news which he had brought.

Margaret Bean said to herself that it was her duty; and her duty, and a great devouring thirst of curiosity, overcame her natural fear of injuring the sick man.

Lot Gordon was still in bed, but propped up on pillows, with a candle on the stand at his side, reading one of his leather-covered books. Margaret Bean shrank back when she had delivered herself of her news, for the flash in Lot's eyes was like lightning; and she waited in trembling certainty as for thunder.

"I tell ye 'tis a lie!" cried Lot Gordon. "Do ye hear, 'tis a lie! Go yourself and tell them so from me. The wound has naught to do with this. It was naught but a scratch, for I had not courage enough to strike deep, much as I wanted to be quit of the world and the fools in it. Go you down to the store and tell the gossips that have no affairs of their own, and must needs pry on their neighbors so. Dare any one of them to turn knife on his own flesh for the first time and strike deeper! The next time I'll do better. Tell them so! The fools! Sodom and Gomorrah, and fire from Heaven for wickedness! Lord, why not fire from Heaven for damned foolishness, that does more harm to the world than the shattering of all the commandments into stone-dust!"

"I felt that 'twas my duty to let you know, sir," stammered Margaret Bean, backing farther and farther away from him.

"Tell the fools that I say, and I'll swear to it, and so will the doctor swear, that 'twas not the wound that has been my ailment, but my cursed lungs; but if 'twas 'twould be naught to them, for I struck the blow myself. I tell you that neither the one nor the other of them struck the blow—it was I. Do you hear? It was I!"

"Yes, sir," said Margaret Bean, trembling, her eyes big, her white face elongated in her starched cap ruffles.

"Go to bed!" said Lot, savagely, and the old woman scuttled out, glad to be gone.

Never before had Lot addressed her so. "I believe he did do it himself," she told her husband next morning, for she could not wake him to intelligence that night; "he's jest ugly 'nough to."

The next day at early dawn Lot's bell, which was kept on his stand beside the bed, in case he should be worse in the night and need assistance, tinkled sharply.

"Send your husband after the doctor," Lot ordered, peremptorily, when Margaret answered it; and presently early risers saw old man Bean advancing in a rapid shuffle towards the doctor's, and soon the doctor himself whirled past, his back bent to the rapid motion of his gig. The report that Lot Gordon was worse went through the village like wildfire. A crowd collected in the store as soon as the shutters were down; there was a knot of men before the lawyer's office waiting for him to come; and several hot-headed young fellows pressed into the stable and urged upon Silas Beers that he should keep the old white racer in readiness for an emergency that day, and also several others which, if not as fleet, had good staying powers.

When the doctor entered Lot Gordon's chamber Margaret Bean followed, tremblingly officious, in his wake, with a bowl and spoon in hand.

"I want to see the doctor alone," said Lot; and the old woman retreated before his coldly imperious order. "Stay out in the kitchen," ordered Lot, further, "and don't come through the entry; I shall hear you if you do."

"Yes, sir," replied Margaret Bean, and obeyed, nor dared listen at the door, as was her wont, so terrified was she lest Lot could indeed hear and had heard in times past.

The doctor, redolent of herbs and drugs, set his medicine-chest on the floor, and advanced upon Lot, who waved him back with a half-laugh.

"Lord, let's have none of that nonsense this morning," he said. "Sit down; I want to talk to you."

The doctor was gray and unshaven and haggard as ever, from a midnight vigil, the crumbs of his hasty breakfast were on his waistcoat; his eyes were bright as steel under heavy, frowning brows.

"Are ye worse? Has it come on again?" he demanded.

"No; sit down."

The doctor snatched up his medicine-chest with a surly exclamation.

"Where are you going?" asked Lot.

"Back to my breakfast. I'll not be called out for nothing by you or any other man after I've been out all night. If you want a gossip, get the parson; he's got time enough on his hands. A man don't have to work so many hours a day saving souls as he does saving bodies."

Lot laughed. "And neither souls nor bodies saved by either of you, after all," said he, "for the Lord saves the one, if he has so ordained it; and as for the other, your nostrums only work so long as death does not choose to come."

"Have it your own way; save your own soul and your own body, as ye please, for all me," said the doctor, who was adjudged capable when crossed of being surly to a dying man; and he made for the door.

"For God's sake stop," cried Lot, "and come back here and listen! I did not call you for nothing. The lives and deaths of more than one are at stake; come back here!"

The doctor clamped his medicine-chest hard on the floor. "Be quick about it, then," said he, and sat down in a chair at Lot's bedside.

Lot fumbled under his pillow and produced a folded paper which he handed to the doctor. "I want you to sign this," said he.

The doctor scowled over the paper, got out his iron-bowed spectacles, adjusted them, and read aloud:

"I, Justinus Emmons, practising doctor of medicine, do hereby declare that the death of Lot Gordon of Ware Centre will, when it takes place, be due to phthisis, and phthisis alone, and not in any degree, however small, to the wound inflicted by himself some months since. And, furthermore, I declare that his death will follow from the natural progress of the disease of phthisis, which has not in any respect been accelerated by his self-inflicted wound."

"You want me to sign this, do you?" said the doctor.

"I will call in Margaret Bean and her husband for witnesses," said Lot.

"You think I am going to sign this?"

"I want it in addition to the certificate of the cause of death which you will have to make out after my decease. 'Tis an unnecessary formality, but I would have it so," Lot returned.

The doctor dashed the paper on the bed. "If you think I am going to subscribe to a lie for you, or any other man, you're mistaken," he cried. "It was enough for me to hold my tongue when you made that fool statement of yours that wouldn't have deceived a man with the brains of an ox."

"My death will be due to phthisis; my left lung is almost consumed, and you know it," affirmed Lot.

"And I tell you," said the doctor, stoutly, "that your death from phthisis might not have occurred for ten years to come. Does a tree die because half its boughs are gone? When you die, you die of that wound. The evil was greater than I thought at the time. It takes less to kill a diseased man than a sound one."