Madelon: A Novel

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

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.