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Madelon: A Novel, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 17 |
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_ Chapter XVII However the tale of Madelon's and Lot's engagement had found mouth--whether Margaret Bean had vented her knowledge when it grew too big for her or not--it was scarce one day before the whole village was agape with it. With that tendency of the human mind born of involuntary self-knowledge which leads it to suspect a selfish motive in all untoward actions, many gave unhesitatingly a reason for Madelon's choice. The women nodded astutely at each other, and the men exchanged shrewd affirmative grunts. "She's goin' to marry Lot to pay off Burr," they all agreed. "She'll get all the money." Madelon herself had never thought of that. She had never considered the fact that her marriage with Lot would rob Burr of his prospective wealth; and, if she had, she would have dismissed the thought as of no moment. Capacity for revenge of that sort was not in her; even the imagination of it was lacking. She would simply have resolved to give the property to Burr if she should outlive Lot, and she would have carried out her resolution. Consciously, perhaps, this consideration was no more evident to her father and her brothers than to herself. The Hautvilles were not mercenary, and retaliation, involving personal profit at the expense of an enemy, was not of their code. They did have, however, a consideration no less selfish, in a way, and no less acute when they heard the news. One and all thought, "Now Madelon will be cleared of all suspicion that she may have brought upon herself. Nobody will believe that Lot Gordon would marry a girl who attempted his life. Every hint of disgrace will be removed from her and us all by this marriage." Louis, when he heard the news, gave an involuntary glance at his own hands at the thought of Madelon's crimsoned ones, to which he had tried to blind his memory. "Well, maybe it's the best thing that could happen," he said, grimly, but his wonder over it was great. He knew well enough, however he tried to hide the knowledge from himself, that Madelon's story had been true. He looked at his brother Richard, and Richard looked back at him; and one's knowledge for once faced the other's boldly in their utter astonishment. Then they nodded at each other in a stern understanding of assent. It was best their sister should cover her crime and avert the disgrace, which she had seemed to hang over all of them, in that way. When the male Hautvilles came home to dinner, on the noon of the day after Burr called, Madelon knew at once that they had all heard. They sat down to the table and ate in silence. None of them spoke a word to Madelon on the subject, but she knew they had heard. After dinner they all went out again except her father. He stood on the hearth, filling his pipe moodily, with an automatic motion of his fingers, his eyes aloof. Madelon moved about with quick, decided motions, clearing the dinner-table. David, when the tobacco was well packed in his pipe-bowl, turned his eyes mechanically upon the glowing coals on the hearth, but made no motion to light it. He looked slowly and furtively about presently at Madelon's wedding-silk, which lay heaped in a chair with a green and gold shimmer, as of leaves and flowers. All unmoved by, and oblivious of, the splendor of woman's gear was David Hautville usually, but this silk, radiant with the weaving of party-lights, affected him with a memory of old happiness, so vague that it was scarce more than a memory of a memory. In splendid silken raiment had Madelon's mother gone as a bride years ago. It had been in reality widely different from this gown of Madelon's, but still, looking at this, David Hautville's masculine eyes saw dimly beyond it another dapple of gorgeous tints, and heard a soft rustle of silken skirts out of the past. He would not have said that this bright mass of silk in the chair made him think of his wife's wedding-gown, but he knew by that thought it was Madelon's. He stared at it, scowling over his great mustache. Then he looked slowly around at his daughter. She was just coming out of the pantry, and faced him as he spoke. "I suppose this is true I've heard," said he. Madelon's face blazed red before his eyes, but her mouth was firm and hard, and her eyes unflinching. "Yes, sir," she replied; and she took a dish from the table and turned about, and went again into the pantry, carrying it. David Hautville, rearing his great height before the fire, casting a long shadow over the room, stood, holding his unlighted pipe, and staring again at the wedding-silk, until his daughter returned. Then he brought his gaze to bear upon her again. "I suppose you've thought over what you're going to do, and feel it's for the best," said he, with a kind of stern embarrassment. David Hautville felt no resentment because his daughter had not confided her engagement to him. From his very lack of understanding of the feminine character, and his bewilderment over it, he was disposed to give his daughter a wide latitude in a matter of this kind. Not comprehending the feminine gait to matrimony, but recognizing its inevitability, he was inclined to stand silently out of the road, unless his prejudices were too violently shocked. He had also a mild respect for, and understanding of, reticence concerning one's own affairs, and was, moreover, furtively satisfied with the match. "Yes, I have," answered Madelon, calmly. "How soon were you calculating--" asked her father, pressing the tobacco harder into the pipe-bowl, and casting a meditative eye at the coals. "He said a month--that was three weeks ago Monday. To-day is Wednesday." Madelon Hautville spoke with her proud chin raised, and her eyes as compelling as a queen's; but in spite of herself there came into her voice the tone of one who counts the days to death. Her father looked at her sharply. She turned again towards her task at the table. "Well, Lot Gordon can give ye a good home," said he. "His health ain't very good, that's the most I see about it. But he may last a number of years yet--folks in consumption do sometimes; and I hear he's gettin' over that cut he give himself. I suppose he did that because he thought you wouldn't have him." Madelon, moving about the table, did not say a word. "It must have been that," said David Hautville. "I suppose he thought you favored--" he was about to speak Burr's name; then he stopped short. He was usually one to plunge upon dangerous ground, but this time something stopped him--perhaps a look in his daughter's face. He laid his pipe carefully on the mantel-shelf, went over to Madelon, and laid a heavily tender hand on her shoulder. "D'ye want any money to buy your wedding-fixings with?" he said, in a half-whisper. "I've got all I want," replied Madelon, wincing as if he had struck her. "Because I've sold some skins, lately, and wood." David plunged a hand into his pocket, and began to pull out a leather pouch jingling with coins. "I've got all the money I want, father," said Madelon, catching her breath a little, but keeping her face steady. Could her father have understood, if she had told him, the pretty maiden providence, almost like one of the primal instincts, which had led her to save, year after year, little sums from her small earnings, towards her wedding-outfit? Could he, with his powerful masculine grasp of the large woes of life, have sensed this lesser one, and fairly known the piteous struggle it cost Madelon to spend her poor little wealth, which was to have furnished adornment for her bridal happiness with her lover, for such a purpose as this? Had she turned upon him then and there, and told him that she hated Lot Gordon, and would rather lie down in her grave than be his wife, he might have grasped that indeed, although not in her full sense of it, for the same sense of misery of that kind comes not to a man and a woman; but the other he would have puzzled over and solved it by his one sweeping solution of all feminine problems--by femininity itself. However, he continued to stand beside his daughter, looking at her across that great gulf of original conceptions of things which love itself can never quite bridge. Tears came into his keen black eyes, and his voice was hoarse when he spoke again. "Well, Madelon," said David Hautville, with a firmer laying on of his heavy hand on his daughter's shoulder, "ye've been a good daughter and sister, and we're all of us glad you've got over this last foolishness, and we don't lay it up against ye, and--we'll all miss ye when ye're gone." Madelon moved quietly away from her father's roughly tender hand. "I thought maybe the Widow Scoville would be willing to come here and live," said she. "She's a good cook and a good housekeeper. I'm going to see her about it." "Well, we'll see," said David Hautville, huskily--"we'll see." He turned away, and looked irresolutely at the shelf whereon his pipe lay, at the wedding-silk on the chair, at his great boots in the corner at the outer door, then at his bass-viol leaning in the corner which the dresser formed against the wall, and a light of decision flashed into his eyes. He drew his old arm-chair nearer the fire, carried the viol over to it, set it between his knees, flung an arm around its neck and began to play. His great chest heaved tenderly over it; its sweetly sonorous voice spoke to his soul. Here was the friend who vexed David Hautville with no problems of character or sex, but filled his simple understanding without appeal. These chords in which the viol spoke were from the foundations of things, like the spring-time and the harvest and the frosts; they abided eternally through all the vain speculations of life, and sounded above the grave. No imagination of a great artist had David Hautville, but his music was to him like his woodcraft. He traced out the chords and the harmonies with the same fervor that he followed the course of a stream or climbed a mountain-path. A great player was he, although the power of creation was not in him, for he fingered his viol with the ardor of a soul set in its favorite way of all others. As David Hautville played his great resonant viol he forgot all about his own perplexity and his daughter's love-troubles; but she, listening as she worked, did not forget. Madelon, swept around with these sweet waves of sounds, never once had her memory of her own misery submerged. A strange double consciousness she had, as she listened, of her senses and her soul. All her nerves lapsed involuntarily into delight at the sounds they loved, and all her soul wept above all melodies and harmonies in her ears. The spirit of an artist had Madelon, and could, had she wished, have made the songs she sung; and for that very reason music could never carry her away from her own self. She finished her household tasks and sat down again to sew upon her wedding-gown. After a while her father ceased playing, and leaned his viol tenderly back in its corner, pulled on his great boots, put on his leather jacket and his fur cap, lighted his pipe, shouldered his gun, and set out with his eyes full of the abstraction of one who follows alone a different path. _ |
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