When wrath with a beloved one is stilled in the human heart and love
takes its place, it is with a threefold increase, a great rending of
spirit, and a cruel turning of weapons against one's self. Richard
was one who would always deal with entireties, being capable of no
divisions nor subtleties of praise or blame. Whereas his anger had
been fierce against his sister that she should love and marry the man
who had flouted her, now it was turned wholly against himself for his
injustice and ill-treatment of her. He racked himself with the memory
of his surly words and looks; and those six shirts of fine linen,
with the cunning needlework in band and bosom, seemed the veritable
scriptural coals of fire on his head. Also good and simple reasons
for his sister's course came to him as he lay there and influenced
him still more. "She had it in her mind to kill him, though 'twas the
other she struck," he said to himself; "'tis only fit that she should
make amends to him for that and keep his house for him, and bake and
brew and spin and weave for him." Richard in the darkness nodded his
head in agreement with his own argument, and yet he hated Burr as
well as ever, and the next morning when he saw him stand beside his
sister before Parson Fair, he clenched his slender brown hands until
the sinews stood out, and his black eyes still flashed hostility at
him. Yet when he looked at Madelon's face his own softened, and he
set his mouth hard to keep back the quiver in it. Madelon wore not
the silk of green and gold in which she had planned to be wedded to
Lot; that she could not bring her mind to do, since the old wretched
dreams and imaginations seemed to cling to the garment and desecrate
it for this. She wore instead a sober gown of a satin sheen with the
rich purplish-red hue of a plum, which set off the dark bloom of her
face by suggestion rather than contrast; but all the boy Richard
noted of her costume was his little gold pencil slung on the long
gold chain around her neck.
Madelon and Burr were married quite early in the morning, in the best
room of the Hautville house, and nobody outside the two families was
bidden to the wedding. After the marriage the bride tied on a
white-muslin apron and passed cake and currant wine; and the great
Hautvilles sitting in sober state around the room, Elvira Gordon in
her black satin and pearls, pretty Dorothy, and Parson Fair partook.
Then the bride went up to her chamber and put on a pelisse of stuff
like her gown, lined with canary-colored satin, and a little cap of
otter and a great muff which she had fashioned herself out of skins
which her brothers had brought home, and took over her arm, since the
day was frosty, a long tippet of otter which she could wind round her
throat, if need be, and came down all equipped for her wedding-journey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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