Madelon Part 35

"I will go and see her if you think it is best," said Mrs. Gordon. In her heart she rebelled bitterly against seeming to plead with this unwilling bride to come to her son. Had she not felt guilty for her son, with the conviction of his own secret deflection, she would never have mounted the spiral stairs to Dorothy Fair's chamber that night. Parson Fair led the way, and Burr followed. The people stood back with a kind of awed curiosity. Some of the young girls were quite pale, and their eyes were dilated. Folk longed to follow them up-stairs, but they did not dare.

At the door of Dorothy's chamber crouched, like a fierce dog on guard, the great black African woman. When the three drew near she looked up at them with a hostile roll of savage eyes and a glitter of white teeth between thick lips. The parson advanced, and she sprang up and put her broad back against the door and rolled out defiance at him from under her burring tongue.

But he continued to advance with unmoved front, as if she had been the Satanas of his orthodoxy, which, indeed, she did not faintly image. She moved aside with a savage sound in her throat, and he threw the door wide open. There sat Dorothy Fair before them at her dimity dressing-table, with all her slender body huddled forward and resting seemingly upon her two bare white arms, which encompa.s.sed her bowed head like sweet rings. Not a glimpse of Dorothy's face could be seen under the wide flow of her fair curls, which parted only a little over the curve of one pink shoulder. Dorothy wore her wedding-gown of embroidered India muslin; but her satin slippers were widely separated upon the floor, as if she had kicked them hither and thither; and on the bed, in a great, careless, fluffy heap, lay her wedding-veil, as if it had been tossed there.

Elvira Gordon, at a signal from Parson Fair, entered the room past the sullen negress, who rolled her eyes and muttered low, and went close to the girl at the dressing-table.

"Dorothy!" said Mrs. Gordon.

Dorothy made no sign that she heard.

"Dorothy, do you know it is an hour after the time set for your wedding?"

Dorothy was so still that instinctively Mrs. Gordon bent close over her and listened; but she heard quite plainly the soft pant of her breath, and knew she had not fainted.

Mrs. Gordon straightened herself and looked at her. It was strange how that delicate, girlish form under the soft flow of fair locks and muslin draperies should express, in all its half-suggested curves, such utter obstinacy that it might have been the pa.s.sive unresponsiveness of marble. Even that soft tumult of agitated breath could not alter that impression. When Mrs. Gordon spoke again her words seemed to echo back in her own ears, as if she had spoken in an empty room.

"Dorothy Fair," said she, with a kind of solemn authority, "neither I nor any other human being can look into your heart and see why you do this; and you owe it to my son, who has your solemn promise, and to your father, whose only child you are, to speak. If you are sick, say so; if at the last minute you have a doubt as to your affection for Burr, say so. My son will keep his promise to you with his life, but he will not force himself upon you against your wishes. You need fear nothing; but you must either speak and give us your reason for this, or get up and put on your wedding-veil and your shoes, and come down, where they have been waiting over an hour. You cannot put such a slight upon my son, or your father, or all these people, any longer.

You do not think what you are doing, Dorothy."

Mrs. Gordon's even, weighty voice softened to motherly appeal in the closing words. Dorothy remained quite silent and motionless. Then Burr gave a great sigh of impatient misery, and strode across to Dorothy, and bent low over her, touching her curls with his lips, and whispered. She did not stir. "Won't you, Dorothy?" he said, gently, then quite aloud; and then again, "Have you forgotten what you promised me, Dorothy?" and still again, "Are you sick? Have I offended you in any way? Can't you tell me, Dorothy?"

At length, when Dorothy persisted in her silence, he stood back from her and spoke with his head proudly raised. "I will say no more," he said; "I have come here to keep my solemn promise, and be married to you, and here I will remain until you or your father bid me go, with something more than silence. That may be enough for my pride, but 'tis not enough for my honor. I will go back to your father's study, Dorothy, and wait there until you speak and tell me what you wish."

Burr turned to go, but Parson Fair thrust out his arm before him to stop him, and himself came forward and grasped Dorothy, with hardly a gentle hand, by a slender arm. "Daughter," said Parson Fair in a voice which Dorothy had never heard from his lips except when he addressed wayward sinners from the pulpit, "I command you to stop this folly; stand up and finish dressing yourself, and go down-stairs and fulfil your promise to this man whom you have chosen." The black woman pressed forward, then stood back at a glance from her master's blue eyes.

Dorothy did not stir; then her father spoke again, and his nervous hand tightened on her arm. "Dorothy," said he, "I command you to rise"--and there was a great authority of fatherhood and priesthood in his voice, and even Dorothy was moved before it to respond, though not to yielding.

Suddenly she jerked her arm away from her father's grasp, and stood up, with a convulsive flutter of her white plumage like a bird. She flung back her curls and disclosed her beautiful pale face, all strained to terrified resolve, and her dilated blue eyes "I will not!" she cried out, addressing her father alone, "I will not, father. I have made up my mind that I will not."

Then, as Parson Fair said not a word, only looked at her with stern questioning, she went on, shrill and fast, "I will not; no, I will not! n.o.body can make me! I thought I would, I thought I must, until this last. Now when it comes to this, I can do no more. I will not, father."

"Why?" said Parson Fair.

"I would have kept my promise, father. I would have kept it, no matter if--I would have been faithful to him if he--" Suddenly Dorothy turned on Burr with a gasp of terror and defiance. "I would never have done this, you know," she cried; "it would never have come to this, if you had spoken and told me you were innocent."

"What do you mean, child?" said Parson Fair, sternly.

"He would not tell me that he did not stab his cousin Lot," replied Dorothy, setting her sweet mouth doggedly. Her blue eyes met her father's with shrinking and yet steadfast defiance.

"Dorothy," said he, "do you not know that he is innocent by his cousin's own confession?"

"Why, then, does he not say so?" finished Dorothy. "How do I know who did it? Madelon Hautville said she was guilty, then Lot Gordon; and Burr would not deny his guilt when I asked him. How do I know which?

Madelon Hautville was trying to shield him; I am not blind. Then Lot liked her. How do I know which?" Suddenly she cried out to Burr so loud that the people in the entry below heard her, "Tell me now that you are innocent, and either your cousin Lot or Madelon Hautville guilty," she demanded. "Tell me!"

Burr, white and rigid, looked at her, and made no reply. "Tell me,"

she cried, in her sweet, shrill voice, "tell me now that you did not stab your cousin Lot, and Madelon Hautville spoke the truth, and I will keep my promise to you, even if my heart is not yours."

Parson Fair grasped his daughter's arm again. "No man whom you have promised to wed should reply to such distrust as this," he said.

"Dorothy, I command you to go down-stairs and be married to this man."

Then Dorothy broke away from him with a wild shriek. "No, I will not marry this man with his cousin's blood on his soul! I will not, father; you shall not make me! I will not! Night and day I shall see that knife in his hand. I will not marry him, because he tried to kill his cousin Lot. I will not, I will not!" The black woman pushed between them with a savage murmur of love and wrath, and caught her mistress in her arms, and crooned over her, like a wild thing over her young.

"There is no use in prolonging this, sir," Burr said to Parson Fair.

The elder man looked at him with a strange mixture of helpless dignity and sympathy and wrath. "You know that I have no share in this," he said, and he glanced almost piteously from Burr to his mother. "I could never have believed that my daughter--"

"We will say no more about it, sir," responded Burr. "I hold neither you nor your daughter in any blame." Then he offered his arm to his mother, and the three went out and down-stairs, and the black woman clapped to the chamber door with a great jar upon her mistress, whose calm of obstinacy had broken into wailing hysterics which betokened no less stanchness. Parson Fair, Burr Gordon, and his mother, at the foot of the stairs among the curious wedding-guests, looked for a second at one another.

The parson's fine state seemed to have deserted him. There were red spots on his pale cheeks. His long hands twitched nervously. "I will--inform them," he said, huskily, at length, but Burr moved before him. "No, sir; I will do it," he said.

Then he strode into the great north parlor, where the more important guests were a.s.sembled, and where he and Dorothy were to have been married. He stood alone in the clear s.p.a.ce between the windows, and knew, as the eyes of the people met his, that they had heard Dorothy's last wild cry, and knew why she would not marry him. He stood for a second facing them all before he spoke, and in spite of the shame of rejection which he felt heaped upon him by them all, and a subtler shame arising from his own heart, in spite of the fact that he could not offer any defense, or do aught but bend his back to the full weight of his humiliation, he had a certain majesty of demeanor.

Revolt at humiliation alone precipitates the full measure of it, and the strength which survives defeat, even of one's own convictions, is of a good quality. Silence under wrongful accusation gives the bearing of a hero.

There was a hush over the a.s.sembly so complete that it seemed as if the very personalities of the listeners were drawn back from self-consciousness to give free scope for sound. When Burr spoke, everybody heard.

"The marriage between Dorothy Fair and myself is broken off," was all he said. Then he went out of the room as proudly as if his bride had been by his side, through the entry to the study. Parson Fair and his mother were there. "They know it," he announced, quite calmly; then he took his fine wedding-hat from the table.

"Where are you going?" his mother demanded, quickly.

"To walk a little way." Burr turned to Parson Fair. "I beg you not to feel that you must deal severely with your daughter for this," he said, "for she does not deserve it. She was justified in asking what she did, and in feeling distrust that I did not answer."

"If a wife's faith cannot survive her husband's silence, then is she no true spouse, and 'twas the part of a man not to answer," said this Parson Fair, who had all his life followed in most roads the lead of his womankind, and not known it, so much state had he been allowed in his captivity.

"She was justified," said Burr, "and I beg you, sir, not to visit any displeasure upon her. I have not at any time been worthy of her, although G.o.d knows had she not cast me off, and did not this last, with what I remember now of her manner for the last few weeks, make me sure that her heart is no longer mine, I would have lived my life for her, as best I could; and will now, should she say the word."

With that, Burr Gordon thrust on his wedding-hat, and was out of the study and out of the south door of the house.

Chapter XXV

In the yard was drawn up in state, behind the five white horses, the grand old Gordon coach, which had not been used before since the death of Lot's father. Lot had insisted upon furnishing the coach and the horses for his cousin's wedding. The man who stood by the horses'

heads looked up at Burr in a dazed way when he came out of the house and spoke to him.

"When my mother is ready you can take her home, Silas," said Burr.

"Then drive over to my cousin's, and put up the coach and the horses."

The man gasped and looked at him. "Do you hear what I say?" said Burr, shortly.

The man gave an affirmative grunt, and strove to speak, but Burr cut him short. "Look out for that bad place in the road, before you get to the bridge," he said, and went on out of the yard. The road was suddenly full of departing wedding-guests, fluttering along with shrill clatter of persistently individual notes, like a flock of birds.

Burr, out of the yard, pa.s.sed along through their midst with a hasty yet dignified pace. He said to himself that he would not seem to be running away. He looked neither to the right nor left, except to avoid collisions with silken and muslin petticoats, yet he was conscious of the hush of voices as he pa.s.sed, and knew that they all recognized him in the broad moonlight.

When he reached the lane which led across-lots to the old place, he plunged into it by a sudden impulse. He went half-way down its leafy tunnel; then he stopped and sat down on a great stone which had fallen off the bordering wall.

Great spiritual as well as great physical catastrophes stun for a while, and there is after both a coming to one's self and an examining one's faculties, as well as one's bones, to see if they be still in working order. Burr Gordon, sitting there on his stone of meditation, in the moonlit dapple of the lane, came slowly to a full realization of himself in his change of state, and strove to make sure what power of action he had left under these new conditions.