Madelon

Madelon

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Madelon, by Mary E. Wilkins
Freeman This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
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Title: Madelon A Novel
Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Release Date: March 1, 2006 [EBook #17885]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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Produced by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly

Madelon
A Novel
By
Mary E. Wilkins

Author of "A Humble Romance" "Jane Field" etc.
New York Harper & Brothers Publishers 1896

Love is the crown, and the crucifixion, of life, and proves thereby its
own divinity.
Chapter I
There was a new snow over the village. Indeed, it had ceased to fall
only at sunset, and it was now eight o'clock. It was heaped apparently
with the lightness of foam on the windward sides of the roads, over the
fences and the stone walls, and on the village roofs. Its weight was
evident only on the branches of the evergreen-trees, which were bent
low in their white shagginess, and lost their upward spring.
There were evergreens--Norway pines, spruces, and
hemlocks--bordering the road along which Burr Gordon was coming.
Now and then he jostled a low-hanging bough and shook off its load of
snow upon his shoulders. Then he walked nearer the middle of the
street, tramping steadily through the new snow. This was an old road,
but little used of late years, and the forest seemed to be moving upon it
with the unnoted swiftness of a procession endless from the beginning
of the world. In places the branches of the opposite pines stretched to
each other like white-draped arms across the road, and slender,
snow-laden saplings stood out in young crowds well in advance of the
old trees. At times the road was no more than a cart-path through the
forest; but it was a short-cut to the Hautville place, and that was why
Burr Gordon went that way.
Everything was very still. The new-fallen snow seemed to muffle
silence itself, and do away with that wide susceptibility to sound which
affects one as forcibly as the crashing of cannon.
There was no whisper of life from the village, which lay a half-mile
back; no roll of wheels, or shout, or peal of bell. Burr Gordon kept on

in utter silence until he came near the Hautville house. Then he began
to hear music: the soaring sweetness of a soprano voice, the rich
undertone of a bass, and the twang of stringed instruments.
When he came close to the house the low structure itself, overlaid with
snow, and with snow clinging to its gray-shingled sides like shreds of
wool, seemed to vibrate and pulse and shake, and wax fairly sonorous
with music, like an organ.
Burr Gordon stood still in the road and listened. The constituents of the
concert resolved themselves to his ear. There was a wonderful soprano,
a tenor, a bass, one sweet boy's voice, a bass-viol, and a violin. They
were practising a fugue. The soprano rang out like the invitation of an
angel,
"Come, my beloved, haste away, Cut short the hours of thy delay,"
above all the others--even the shrill boy-treble. Then it followed, with
noblest and sweetest order, the bass in--
"Fly like a youthful hart or roe, Over the hills where the spices grow."
The very breath of the spices of Arabia seemed borne into the young
man's senses by that voice. He saw in vision the blue tops of those
delectable hills where the myrtle and the cassia grew; he felt within his
limbs the ardent impulse of the hart or roe. He stood with his head bent,
listening, until the music ceased; the blue hills sank suddenly into the
land of the past, and all the spice-plants withered away.
There was but a few minutes' interval; then there was a chorus--
"Strike the Timbrel."
Burr Gordon, listening, heard in that only the great soprano, and it was
to him like the voice of Miriam of old, summoning him to battle and
glory.
But when that music ceased he did not wait any longer nor enter the

house, but stole away silently. This time he travelled the main road,
which intersected the old one at the Hautville house. The village lights
shone before him all the way. He was half-way to the village when he
met his cousin, Lot Gordon. He knew he was coming through the pale
darkness of the night some time before he was actually in sight by his
cough. Lot Gordon had had for years a sharp cough which afflicted him