Madelon | Page 4

had both, although it was fairly back in history since the first Hautville, who, report said, was of a noble French family, had espoused an Iroquois Indian girl. The sturdy males of the family had handed down the name and the characteristics of the races through years of intermarriage with the English settlers. All the Hautvilles--the father, the four sons, and the daughter--were tall and dark, and straight as arrows, and they all had wondrous grace of manner, which abashed and half offended, while it charmed, the stiff village people. Not a young man in the village, no matter how finely attired in city-made clothing, had the courtly air of these Hautville sons, in their rude, half-woodland garb; not a girl, not even Dorothy Fair, could wear a gown of brocade with the grace, inherited from a far-away French grandmother, with which Madelon Hautville wore indigo cotton.
Moreover, the whole family was as musical as a band of troubadours, and while that brought them into constant requisition and gave them an importance in the town, it yet caused them to be held with a certain cheapness. Music as an end of existence and means of livelihood was lightly estimated by the followers of the learned professions, the wielders of weighty doctrines and drugs, and also by the tillers of the stern New England soil. The Hautvilles, furnishing the music in church, and for dances and funerals, were regarded much in the light of mountebanks, and jugglers with sweet sounds. People wondered that Lot and Burr Gordon should go to their house so much. Not a week all winter but Burr had been there once or twice, and Lot had been there nearly every night when his cousin was not. And he stayed late also--this night he outstayed Burr at Dorothy Fair's. The music was kept up until a late hour, for Madelon proposed tune after tune with nervous ardor when her father and brothers seemed to flag. Nobody paid much attention to Lot; he was too constant a visitor. He settled into a favorite chair of his near the fire, and listened with the firelight playing over his delicate, peaked face. Now and then he coughed.
Old David Hautville, the father, stood out in front of the hearth by his great bass-viol, leaning fondly over it like a lover over his mistress. David Hautville was a great, spare man--a body of muscles and sinews under dry, brown flesh, like an old oak-tree. His long, white mustache curved towards his ears with sharp sweeps, like doves' wings. His thick, white brows met over his keen, black eyes. He kept time with his head, jerking it impatiently now and then, when some one lagged or sped ahead in the musical race.
Three of the Hautville sons were men grown. One, Louis, laid his dark, smooth cheek caressingly against the violin which he played. Eugene sang the sonorous tenor, and Abner the bass, like an organ. The youngest son, Richard, small and slender as a girl, so like Madelon that he might have been taken for her had he been dressed in feminine gear, lifted his eager face at her side and raised his piercing, sweet treble, which seemed to pass beyond hearing into fancy. Madelon, her brown throat swelling above her lace tucker, like a bird's, stood in the midst of the men, and sang and sang, and her wonderful soprano flowed through the harmony like a river of honey; and yet now and then it came with a sudden fierce impetus, as if she would force some enemy to bay with music. Madelon was slender, but full of curves which were like the soft breast of a bird before an enemy. Sometimes as she sang she flung out her slender hands with a nervous gesture which had hostility in it. Truth was that she hated Lot Gordon both on his own account and because he came instead of his cousin Burr. She had expected Burr that night; she had taken his cousin's hand on the doorlatch for his. He had not been to see her for three weeks, and her heart was breaking as she sang. Any face which had appeared to her instead of his in the doorway that night would have been to her as the face of a bitter enemy or a black providence, but Lot Gordon was in himself hateful to her. She knew, too, by a curious revulsion of all her senses from unwelcome desire, that he loved her, and the love of any man except Burr Gordon was to her like a serpent.
She would not look at him, but somehow she knew that his eyes were upon her, and that they were full of love and malice, and she knew not which she dreaded more. She resolved that