Madelon | Page 2

thicket beside the road. He had a half-impulse to slink in there among the snowy bushes and hide until his cousin passed by. Then he shook his head angrily and kept on.
However, when the two men drew near each other Burr kept well to his side of the road and strode on rapidly, hoping his cousin might not recognize him. But Lot, with a hoarse laugh and another cough, swerved after him and jostled him roughly.
"Can't cheat me, Burr Gordon," said he.
"I don't want to cheat you," returned Burr, in a surly tone.
"You can't if you do. Set me down anywhere in the woods when there's a wind, and I'll tell ye what the trees are if it's so dark you can't see a leaf by the way the boughs blow. The maples strike out stiff like dead men's arms, and the elms lash like live snakes, and the pines stir all together like women. I can tell the trees no matter how dark 'tis by the way they move, and I can tell a Gordon by the swing of his shoulders, no matter how fast he slinks by on the other side in the shadow. You don't set much by me, Burr, and I don't set any too much by you, but we've got to swing our shoulders one way, whether we will or no, because our father and our grandfather did before us. Good Lord, aren't men in leading-strings, no matter how high they kick!"
"I can't stand here in the snow talking," said Burr, and he tried to push past. But the other man stood before him with another laugh and cough. "You aren't talking, Burr; I'm the one that's talking, and I've heard stuff that was worse to listen to. You'd better stand still."
"I tell you I'm going," said Burr, with a thrust of his elbow in his cousin's side.
"Well," said Lot, "go if you want to, or go if you don't want to. That last is what you're doing, Burr Gordon."
"What do mean by that?"
"You're going to see Dorothy Fair when you want to see Madelon Hautville, because you don't want to do what you want to. Well, go on. I'm going to see Madelon and hear her sing. I've given up trying to work against my own motions. It's no use; when you think you've done it, you haven't. You never can get out of this one gait that you were born to except in your own looking-glass. Go and court Dorothy Fair, and in spite of yourself you'll kiss the other girl when you're kissing her. Well, I sha'n't cheat Madelon Hautville that way."
"You know--she will not--you know Madelon Hautville never--" stammered Burr Gordon, furiously.
Lot laughed again. "You think she sets so much by you she'll never kiss me," said he. "Don't be too sure, Burr. Nature's nature, and the best of us come under it. Madelon Hautville's got her place, like all the rest. There isn't a rose that's too good to take a bee in. Go do your own courting, and trust me to do mine. Courting's in our blood--I sha'n't disgrace the family."
Burr Gordon went past his cousin with a smothered ejaculation. Lot laughed again, and tramped, coughing, away to the Hautville house. When he drew near the house the chorus within were still practising "Strike the Timbrel." When he opened the door and entered there was no cessation in the music, but suddenly the girl's voice seemed to gain new impulse and hurl itself in his face like a war-trumpet.
Burr Gordon kept on to Minister Jonathan Fair's great house in the village, next the tavern. There was a light in the north parlor, and he knew Dorothy was expecting him. He raised the knocker, and knew when it fell that a girl's heart within responded to it with a wild beat.
He waited until there was a heavy shuffle of feet in the hall and the door opened, and Minister Fair's black servant-woman stood there flaring a candle before his eyes.
"Who be you?" said she, in her rich drone, which had yet a twang of hostility in it.
Burr Gordon ignored her question. "Is Miss Dorothy at home?" said he.
"Yes, she's at home, I s'pose," muttered the woman, grudgingly. She distrusted this young man as a suitor for Dorothy. The girl's mother had long been dead, and this old dark woman, whose very thoughts seemed to the village people to move on barbarian pivots of their own, had a jealous guardianship of her which exceeded that of her father.
Now she filled up the doorway before Burr Gordon with her majestic, palpitating bulk, her great black face stiffened back with obstinacy. It was said that she had been born in Africa, and had been a princess in her own country; and, indeed, she