Madelon. Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
a smothered titter ran down the files of the Virginia reel.
Burr Gordon cast a fierce glance around; then he sprang to Dorothy's side, and she looked palely and piteously up at him.
He pulled her hand through his arm and led her out of the ball-room, with the black woman following sulkily, muttering to herself. Burr bent closely down over Dorothy's drooping head as they passed out of the door. “Don't be frightened, sweetheart,” whispered he. Madelon saw him as she lilted, and it seemed to her that she heard what he said.
It was not long after when she felt a touch on her shoulder as she sat resting between the dances, gazing with her proud, bright eyes down at the merry, chattering throng below. She turned, and her brother Richard stood there with a strange young man, and Richard held Louis's fiddle on his shoulder.
“This is Mr. Otis, Madelon,” said Richard, “and he came up from Kingston to the ball, and he can fiddle as well as Louis, and he said 'twas a shame you should lilt all night and not have a chance to dance yourself; and so I ran home and got Louis's fiddle, and there are plenty down there to jump at the chance of you for a partner—and—” the boy leaned forward and whispered in his sister's ear: “Burr Gordon's gone—and Dorothy Fair.”
Madelon turned her beautiful, proud face towards the stranger, and did not notice Richard at all. “Thank you, sir,” said she, inclining her long neck; “but I care not to dance—I'd as lief lilt.”
“But,” said the strange young man, pressing forward impetuously and gazing into her black eyes, “you look tired; 'tis a shame to work you so.”
“I rest between the dances, and I am not tired,” said Madelon, coldly.
“I beg you to let me fiddle for the rest of the ball,” pleaded the young man. “Let me fiddle while you dance; you may be sure I'll fiddle my best for you.”
A tender note came into his voice, and, curiously enough, Madelon did not resent it, although she had never seen him before and he had no right. She looked up in his bright fair face with sudden hesitation, and his blue eyes bent half humorously, half lovingly upon her. She had a fierce desire to get away from this place, out into the night, and home. “I do not care to dance,” said she, falteringly; “but I could go home, if you felt disposed to fiddle.”
“Then go home and rest,” cried the stranger, brightly. “'Tis a strain on the throat to lilt so long, and you cannot put in a new string as you can in a fiddle.”
With that the young man came forward to the front of the little gallery, and Madelon yielded up her place hesitatingly.
“But you cannot dance yourself, sir,” said she.
“I have danced all I want to to-night,” he replied, and began tuning the fiddle.
“I'm sure I'm much obliged to you, sir,” Madelon said, and got her hood and cloak from the back of the gallery with no more parley.
The young man cast admiring glances after her as she went out, with her young brother at her heels.
“I'm going home with you,” Richard said to her as they went down the gallery stairs.
“Not a step,” said she. “You've just been after the fiddle, and they're going to dance the Fisher's Hornpipe next.”
“You'll be afraid in that lonesome stretch after you leave the village.”
“Afraid!” There was a ring of despairing scorn in the girl's voice, as if she faced already such woe that the supposition of new terror was an absurdity.
They had come down to the ball-room floor, and were standing directly in front of the musicians' gallery. The young fiddler, Jim Otis, leaned over and looked at them.
“I don't care,” said Richard, “I won't let you go alone unless you take my knife.”
Madelon laughed. “What nonsense!” said she, and tried to pass her brother.
But Richard held her by the arm while he rummaged in his pocket for the great clasp-knife which he had earned himself by the sale of some rabbit-skins, and which was the pride of his heart and his dearest treasure, and opened it. “Here,” said he, and he forced the clasp-knife into his sister's hand. Otis, leaning over the gallery, saw it all. Many of the dancers had gone to supper; there was no other person very near them. “If you should meet a bear, you could kill him with that knife—it's so strong,” said the boy. “If you don't take it I'll go home with you, and it's so late father won't let me come out again to-night.”
“Well, I'll take it,” Madelon said, wearily, and she passed out of the ball-room with the knife in her hand, under her cloak.
When she got out in the cold night air she sped along fast over the creaking snow, still holding the knife clutched fast in her hand. She began to lilt again as she went, and again Burr and Dorothy danced together before her eyes. She passed Parson Fair's house, and the best-room windows were lighted. She thought that Burr was there, and she lilted more loudly the Virginia reel.
After Parson Fair's house was some time left behind, and she had come into the lengthy stretch of road, she saw a shadowy figure ahead. She could not at first tell whether it was moving towards or from her—whether it was a man or a woman; or, indeed, whether it were not a forest tree encroaching on the road and moving in the wind. She kept on swiftly, holding her knife under her cloak. She had stopped singing.
Presently she saw that the figure was a man, and coming her way; and then her heart stood still, for she knew by the swing of his shoulders that it was Burr Gordon. She threw back her proud head and sped along towards him, grasping her knife under her cloak and looking neither to the right nor left. She swerved not her eyes a hair's-breadth when she came close to him—so close that their shoulders almost touched in passing in the narrow path.
Suddenly there was a quick sigh in her ear—“Oh, Madelon!” Then an arm was flung around her waist and hot lips were pressed to her own.
The mixed blood of two races, in which action is quick to follow impulse, surged up to Madelon's head. She drew the hand which held the knife from under her cloak and struck. “Kiss me again, Burr Gordon, if you dare!” she cried out, and her cry was met by a groan as he fell away from her into the snow.
Chapter IV
Madelon stood for a second looking at the dark, prostrate form as one of her Iroquois ancestors might have looked at a fallen foe before he drew his scalping-knife; then suddenly the surging of the savage blood in her ears grew faint. She fell down on her knees beside him. “Have I killed you, Burr?” she said, and bent her face down to his—and it was not Burr, but Lot Gordon!
The white, peaked face smiled up at her out of the snow. “You haven't killed me if I die, since you took me for Burr,” whispered Lot Gordon.
“Are you much hurt?”
“I—don't know. The knife has gone a little way into my side. It has not reached my heart, but that was hurt unto death already by life, so this matters not.”
Madelon felt along his side and hit the handle of the clasp-knife, firmly fixed.
“Don't try to draw it out—you cannot,” said Lot, and his pain forced a groan from him. “I'll live, if I can, till the wound is healed for the sake of your peace. I'd be content to die of it, since you gave it in vengeance for another man's kiss, if it were not for you. But they shall never know—they shall never—know.” Lot's voice died away in a faint murmur between his parted lips; his eyes stared up with no meaning in them at the wintry stars.
Madelon ran back on the road to the village, taking great leaps through the snow, straining her eyes ahead. Now and then she cried out hoarsely, as if she really saw some one, “Hullo! hullo!” At the curve of the road she turned a headlong corner and ran roughly against a man who was hurrying towards her; and this time it was Burr Gordon.
Burr reeled back with