Madelon Part 9

"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 n.o.body 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 G.o.d! 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, hoa.r.s.ely.

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 n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.siduity 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 s.h.i.+eld 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.

Chapter VII

The next morning Madelon came down-stairs as usual and prepared breakfast. When it was ready the family sat up to the table and ate silently and swiftly. No one addressed a word to Madelon. After breakfast David and his son Abner put on their leather jackets and their fur caps, and set forth for the woods with their axes, but Eugene lounged gracefully over to the hearth and sat down on the settle, and began reading his Shakespeare book. Eugene was the only one of the Hautvilles who ever read books. He studied faithfully the few in the house--the Shakespeare, the _Pilgrim's Progress_, Milton, and _Gulliver's Travels_. The others wondered at him. They could not understand how any one who could handle a gun or a musical instrument could lay finger on a book. "Made-up things," said Abner once, with a scornful motion towards Shakespeare.

"No more made-up than fugue," retorted Eugene, hotly; but they all cried out on him.

This morning Madelon cast one quick glance at him as he sauntered over to the settle with his book. Then she did not look his way again. She worked quietly, setting the kitchen to rights.

The day was very cold; the light in the room was dim and white, the windows were coated so thickly with the h.o.a.r-frost. Eugene kept stirring the fire and adding sticks as he read.

Finally, Madelon had finished her work in the kitchen, and went up-stairs. Then Eugene arose reluctantly, went out into the cold entry, and stood by the door with his book in hand. Madelon, pa.s.sing across the landing above, looked down and saw him standing there, and knew that what she suspected was true--that her brother was mounting guard over her lest she leave the house.

She finished her work in the chamber, and came down-stairs with some knitting-work in hand. She seated herself quietly in her own cus.h.i.+oned rocking-chair, and fell to work with yarn and clicking needles, like any peaceful housewife. She knitted and Eugene read, bending his handsome dark face, smiling with pleasure, over his Shakespeare book. This fierce winter day he was reading "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," and letting his fancy revel with Shakespeare's fairies in an enchanted summer wood. He was, however, alert as a watch-dog. He could at an instant's warning leave that delicate and dainty crew and those flowery sh.o.r.es, and intercept his sister, should she attempt to pa.s.s him and escape from the house.

Still, his alertness all came to naught, for Madelon, like some fleeing fox, took a sudden turn which no canny hunter could have antic.i.p.ated. She sat somewhat away from the hearth and well at Eugene's back. He would have asked her why she did not draw nearer the fire and if she were not cold had he not feared to encounter a sulky humor. He could not see the lengths of linen cloth, which she herself had spun and woven, lying in a great heap on the floor, half at her back, half under her petticoats. However, could he have seen it he would have thought of it merely as some mysterious domestic and feminine proceeding about which he neither knew nor cared to know anything.

Madelon, as she knitted, ever measured the distance between her brother and herself with her great black eyes, training her nerves and muscles for what she had to do as she would have trained a bow and arrow.