Chapter 6

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_ Chapter VI

When Madelon, returning from New Salem, came in sight of her home the first thing which she noticed was her father in the yard in front of the house.

David Hautville's great figure stood out in the dusk of the snowy landscape like a giant's. He was motionless. The roan mare's gallop had evidently struck his ear some time before, and he knew that Madelon was returning. He did not even look her way as she drew nearer, but when she rode into the yard he made a swift movement forward and seized the mare by the bridle. She reared, but Madelon sat firm, with wretched, undaunted eyes upon her father. David Hautville's eyes blazed back at her out of the whiteness of his wrath.

"Where have you been?" he demanded, in a thick voice.

"To New Salem."

"What for?"

"To see Burr, and beg him to confess that I killed Lot."

"You didn't."

"I did."

"Fool!" David Hautville jerked the bridle so fiercely that the mare reared far back again. He jerked her down to her feet, and she made a vicious lunge at him, but he shunted her away.

"I'll fasten you into your chamber," he shouted, "if this work goes on! I'll stop your making a fool of yourself."

"It is Lot Gordon that is making fools of you all," said Madelon, in a hard, quiet voice.

"Did Burr Gordon say he didn't stab him?" cried her father.

"No; he wouldn't own it. He is trying to shield me."

"He did it himself, and he'll hang for it."

"No, he won't hang for what I did while I draw the breath of life. I've got the strength of ten in me. You don't know me, if I am your daughter." Madelon freed her bridle with a quick movement, and the mare flew forward into the barn.

David Hautville stood looking after her in utter fury and bewilderment. Her last words rang in his ears and seemed true to him. He felt as if he did not know his own daughter. This awakening and lashing into action, by the terrible pressure of circumstances, of strange ancestral traits which he had himself transmitted was beyond his simple comprehension. He shook his head with a fierce helplessness and went into the barn.

"Go in and get the supper," he ordered, "and _I_'ll take care of the mare."

As Madelon came out of the stall he grasped her roughly by the arm and peered sharply into her face. The thought seized him that she must surely not be in her right mind--that Burr's treatment of her and his danger had turned her brain. "Be you crazy, Madelon?" he asked, in his straightforward simplicity, and there was an accent of doubt and pity in his voice.

"No, father," she replied, "I am not crazy. Let me go."

She broke away from him and was out of the barn door, but suddenly she turned and came running back. The sudden softness in his voice had stirred the woman in her to weakness. She went close to her father, and threw up her arms around his great neck, and clung to him, and sobbed as if she would sob her soul away, and pleaded with him as for her life.

"Father!" she cried--"father, help me! Believe me! Tell them I did it! Tell them it is true! Don't let them hang Burr. Help me to save him, father! Don't let them! Save him! Oh, you will save him, father? You will? Tell me, father--tell me, tell me!" Madelon's voice rose into a wild shriek.

A sudden conviction of his solution of the matter and of his own astuteness came over David Hautville's primitive masculine intelligence. His daughter was wellnigh distraught with her lover's faithlessness and his awful crime and danger. She was to be watched and guarded lest she make a further spectacle of herself; but treated softly as might be, for she was naught but a woman, and liable to mischievous ailments of nerve and brain. David pressed his daughter's dark head with his hard, tender hand against his shoulder, then forced her gently away from him.

"It'll be all right," said he, soothingly--"it'll be all right. Don't you worry."

"Father, you will?"

"I'll fix it all right. Don't you worry."

"Father, you promise?"

"I'll do everything I can. Don't you worry, Madelon. You'd better go in and get supper now. I'll go along to the house with you and get the lantern. It's getting too dark to do the work here."

David drew his daughter along, out of the barn, across the snowy yard to the house, she pleading frantically all the way, he soothing her with his sudden wisdom of assent and evasion.

The hearth fire was blazing high when Madelon entered the kitchen. The red glare of it was on her white face, upturned to her father's with one last pleading of despair. She clutched his arm and shook his great frame to and fro.

"Father, promise me you'll go over to New Salem to-night and tell them to set him free and take me instead! Father!"

"We'll see about it, Madelon," answered David Hautville. There was a tone in his voice which she had never heard before. It might have come unconsciously to himself from some memory, so old that it was itself forgotten, of his dead wife's voice over the child in her cradle. Some echo of it might have yet lingered in the old father's soul, through something finer than his instinct for sweet sounds from human throat and viol--through his ear for love.

"Get the supper now, and we'll see about it," said David Hautville. He began fumbling with clumsy fingers, all unused to women's gear, at the string of this daughter's cloak; but she pulled herself away from him suddenly, and the old hard lines came into her face. "We'll say no more about it," said she. She lit a candle quickly at the hearth fire, and was out of the room to put away her cloak and hood. Her father lighted his lantern slowly and went back to the barn, plodding meditatively through the snowy track, with the melting mood still strong upon him. He was disposed to carry matters now with a high and tender hand with the girl to bring her to reason, and he brought all his crude diplomacy to bear upon the matter.

When he reached the barn his son Eugene stood in the doorway. He had just come from the woods, and the smell of wounded cedar-trees was strong about him. He stood leaning upon his axe as if it were a staff. "Who's been out with the mare?" he asked.

"Your sister."

"Where?"

"To New Salem."

"To see _him_?"

David nodded grimly. His lantern cast a pale circle of light on the snow about them.

"About--that?"

"To get him to own up she did it."

Eugene Hautville stared at his father, scowling his handsome dark brows. He was the most graceful mannered of all the Hautville sons, and by some accounted the best-looking.

"Is she crazy?" he said.

"No, she's a woman," returned his father, with a strange accent of contempt and toleration.

"Did the coward lay it to her when she gave him the chance?" demanded Eugene.

"No; she said he wouldn't, to shield her."

Eugene moved his axe suddenly; the lantern-light struck it, and there was a bright flash of sharp steel in their eyes. "Shield her!" he cried out, with an oath. "I wish I could meet him in the path once. I'd give him a taste before they put the rope 'round his neck, the lying murderer!"

David nodded his head in savage assent.

"What's going to be done with Madelon?" cried Eugene, fiercely.

"I've been thinking--" said his father, slowly.

"No sister of mine shall go about rolling herself in the dust at that fellow's feet if I can help it."

"I've been thinking--would you lock her in her chamber a spell?"

"Lock Madelon in her chamber! She'd get out or she'd beat her brains out against the wall."

"I don't know but she would," assented David, perplexedly. "You can't count on a woman when they rise up. She might go away a spell."

"Where?"

"We might send her somewhere."

Eugene laughed. The roan mare was pawing in her stall. Now and then she pounded the floor with a clattering thud like an iron flail.

"How far do you suppose that mare would go if you tried to send her anywhere?" he asked.

"Maybe Madelon wouldn't go."

"You'd have to halter the mare," said Eugene, "and drag her half the way and stand from under, or she'd trample you down the other." Eugene, although his words were strong, spoke quite softly, lowering his sweet tenor. From where they stood they could see Madelon moving to and fro behind the kitchen windows preparing supper.

"I don't know what to do," said David, after a pause.

"Watch her," returned Eugene, quietly.

"Watch her?"

"Yes. I've been under cover days before now watching for a pretty white fox or a deer I wanted." Eugene laughed pleasantly.

"Will you?"

"I'll stay by the house to-morrow. She sha'n't go about accusing herself of murder to save the man that's jilted her if I can help it." As he spoke Eugene's handsome face darkened again vindictively. He hated Burr Gordon for another reason of his own that nobody suspected.

Suddenly Abner Hautville came running into the yard. "Who is it there?" he called out. "Is that you, father? That you, Eugene? Hello!"

"Hello!" Eugene called back. "What's the matter?"

Abner come panting alongside. He had run from the village, and, vigorous as he was, breath came hard in the thin air. It was a very cold night.

"Where have they gone?" he demanded.

"Who?"

"Louis and Richard. Where have they gone?"

There was a ghastly look in Abner's face, in spite of the glowing red which the cold wind had brought to it. The other man seemed to catch it and reflect it in their own faces as they stared at him.

Eugene turned quickly to his father. "Aren't they in the house?" he asked.

"No, they ain't," returned David, with his eyes still on Abner's face.

"Sure they ain't up chamber?"

"No; I was home a good half-hour before Madelon came. There wasn't a soul in the house, and nobody could have come home since without my knowing it."

"They didn't come home this noon either," said Eugene.

"Thought you said they'd gone to see to their traps on West Mountain?" David rejoined.

"Thought they had when they didn't come." Eugene turned impatiently on Abner. "Where do you think they've gone--what do you mean by looking so?" he cried.

Abner dug his heel into the snow. "Don't know," he returned, in a surly voice.

"What do you suspect, then? Good God! can't you speak out?"

Abner's features were heavier than his brother's--his speech and manner slower. He paused a second, even then; then he turned towards the house, and spoke, with his face away from them, with a curious directness and taciturnity. "Didn't go to the traps on West Mountain," he said, then; "went there myself. They hadn't been there--no tracks; was home before father was to-night. Louis and Richard hadn't come. Went down to the village; hadn't been there."

"You don't mean Louis and Richard have run away?" demanded David.

"Both their guns and their powder-horns and shot-bags are gone," said Abner.

"They would have taken them anyway," said Louis.

"The chest in Louis's chamber is unlocked and the money he kept in the till is gone, and his fiddle is gone, and the cider-brandy and wormwood bottle to bathe his arm with, and two shoulders of pork out of the cellar, and a sack of potatoes, and the blankets off his and Richard's beds are gone too," said Abner. He began to move towards the house.

His father made a bound after him and grasped his arm. "What do you mean?" he cried out. "What do you think they've run away for?"

"Know as much as I do," replied Abner. He wrenched his arm away and strode on towards the house. Then David Hautville and his son Eugene stood looking at each other with a surmise of horror growing in their eyes.

"What does he mean?" David whispered, hoarsely.

Eugene shook his head.

Presently Eugene went into the barn and fell to feeding the roan mare, and David plunged heavily back to the house. He and Abner sat one on each side of the fire and furtively watched Madelon preparing supper.

She spoke never a word. Her red lips were a red line of resolution. Her despairing eyes were fixed upon her work without a glance for either of them.

However, when supper was set on the table, and she had blown the horn at the door and waited, and nobody else came, she turned with sudden life upon her father and her brothers, who had already begun to taste the smoking hasty-pudding. "Where are the others?" she cried out, shrilly. "Where are Louis and Richard?"

The men glanced at one another under sullen eyelids, but nobody answered. "Where are they?" she repeated.

"You know as much about it as we do," Eugene said, then, in his soft voice.

Madelon stood with wild eyes flashing from one to another. Then she gave a sudden spring out of the room, and they heard her swift feet on the chamber-stairs. The men ate their hasty-pudding, bending their brows over it as if it were a witches' mess instead of their ordinary home fare.

Madelon came back so rapidly that she seemed to fly over the stairs. They scarcely heard the separate taps of her feet. She burst into the room and faced them in a sort of fury. "They have gone!" she gasped out. "Louis and Richard have gone! Where are they?"

David Hautville slowly shook his head. Then he took another spoonful of pudding. The brothers bent with stern assiduity over their bowls.

"You have hid them away!" shrieked Madelon. "You have hid them away lest Louis own that he saw blood on my hand, and Richard that he gave me his knife! What have you done with them?"

Not one of the three men spoke. They swallowed their pudding.

"Father! Abner! Eugene!" said Madelon, "tell me what you have done with my brothers, who can testify that I killed Lot Gordon, and save Burr?"

David Hautville wiped his mouth on his sleeve, rose up, and took his daughter firmly by the arm.

"We know no more what has become of your brothers than you do," said he. "If they have gone away for the reason you say, your old father would be the first to bring them back, if you were guilty as you say, daughter of mine though you be. But we know well enough, wherever your brothers have gone, and for whatever cause they have gone, that you have done nothing worse then go daft, as women will, to shield a fellow that's used you ill. You shall put us to no more shame while I am your father and you under my roof. Abner, fill up a bowl with the pudding."

Madelon's face was deathly white and full of rebellion as she looked up in her father's, but she held herself still with a stern dignity and did not struggle. David Hautville's will was up. His hand on her soft arm was like a vise of steel. The memories of her childhood were strong upon her. She knew of old that there was no appeal, and was too proud to contend where she must yield.

"Take the bowl," said her father, when Abner extended it filled with the steaming pudding--"take the bowl, and go you to your chamber. Eat your supper, and get in to your bed and stay there till morning."

Madelon still looked at her father with that same look of speechless but unyielding rebellion. She did not stir to take the bowl or go to her chamber.

"Do as I bid ye!" ordered her father, in a great voice.

Madelon took the bowl from her brother's hand and went out of the room as she was bid; and yet as she went they all knew that there was no yielding in her. _

Read next: Chapter 7

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