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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 tofall only at sunset, and it was now eight o'clock. It was heapedapparently with the lightness of foam on the windward sides of theroads, 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 upwardspring.

There were evergreens—Norway pines, spruces, andhemlocks—bordering the road along which Burr Gordon was coming.Now and then he jostled a low-hanging bough and shook off its load ofsnow upon his shoulders. Then he walked nearer the middle of thestreet, tramping steadily through the new snow. This was an old road,but little used of late years, and the forest seemed to be movingupon it with the unnoted swiftness of a procession endless from thebeginning of the world. In places the branches of the opposite pinesstretched to each other like white-draped arms across the road, andslender, snow-laden saplings stood out in young crowds well inadvance of the old trees. At times the road was no more than acart-path through the forest; but it was a short-cut to the Hautvilleplace, and that was why Burr Gordon went that way.

Everything was very still. The new-fallen snow seemed to mufflesilence itself, and do away with that wide susceptibility to soundwhich affects one as forcibly as the crashing of cannon.

There was no whisper of life from the village, which lay ahalf-mile back; no roll of wheels, or shout, or peal of bell. BurrGordon kept on in utter silence until he came near the Hautvillehouse. Then he began to hear music: the soaring sweetness of asoprano voice, the rich undertone of a bass, and the twang ofstringed instruments.

When he came close to the house the low structure itself, overlaidwith snow, and with snow clinging to its gray-shingled sides likeshreds of wool, seemed to vibrate and pulse and shake, and wax fairlysonorous with music, like an organ.

Burr Gordon stood still in the road and listened. The constituentsof the concert resolved themselves to his ear. There was a wonderfulsoprano, a tenor, a bass, one sweet boy's voice, a bass-viol, and aviolin. They were practising a fugue. The soprano rang out like theinvitation 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 itfollowed, 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 theyoung man's senses by that voice. He saw in vision the blue tops ofthose delectable hills where the myrtle and the cassia grew; he feltwithin his limbs the ardent impulse of the hart or roe. He stood withhis head bent, listening, until the music ceased; the blue hills sanksuddenly into the land of the past, and all the spice-plants witheredaway.

There was but a few minutes' interval; then there was achorus—
  “Strike the Timbrel.”

Burr Gordon, listening, heard in that only the great soprano, andit was to him like the voice of Miriam of old, summoning him tobattle and glory.

But when that music ceased he did not wait any longer nor enterthe house, but stole away silently. This time he travelled the mainroad, which intersected the old one at the Hautville house. Thevillage lights shone before him all the way. He was half-way to thevillage when he met his cousin, Lot Gordon. He knew he was comingthrough the pale darkness of the night some time before he wasactually in sight by his cough. Lot Gordon had had for years a sharpcough which afflicted him particularly when he walked abroad in nightair. It carried as far as the yelp of a dog; when Burr first heard ithe stopped short, and looked irresolutely at the thicket beside theroad. He had a half-impulse to slink in there among the snowy bushesand hide until his cousin passed by. Then he shook his head angrilyand kept on.