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Madelon: A Novel, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 24 |
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_ Chapter XXIV The wedding was to be at eight o'clock in the evening, and nearly all the village was bidden to it--even many of the Unitarian faction who had been Parson Fair's old parishioners. At half-past seven o'clock the street was full of people. The village women rustled through the soft dusk with silken whispers of wide best skirts. Young girls with spring buds in their hair flounced about with white muslins, and fluttering with ribbons, flitted along. The men, holding back firmly their best broadcloth shoulders, marched past in their creaking Sunday shoes. Before eight o'clock the fine old rooms in Parson Fair's house were lined with faces solemnly expectant, as the faces of simple country folk are wont to be before the great rites of love and death. The women sat with their mitted hands folded on their silken laps, their best brooches pinning decorously their fine-wrought neckerchiefs, their bosoms filled with sober knowledge and patient acquiescence. The young girls sat among them very still, with the stillness of unrest, like birds who alight only to fly, their soft cheeks burning, their necks and arms showing rosy through their laces, their little clasped fingers full of pulses, and their hearts tumultuous and stirred to imagination by the sweet surmise and ignorance of love. They looked seldom at the young men, and the young men at them, as they sat waiting. Still there were some who had learned in city schools the suavities which cover like clothes the primal emotions of life, and they moved about with exchanges of fine courtesies, while the others looked at them wondering. When the tall clock in the south room struck eight, there was a hush among these few who had learned to flock gracefully, chattering like birds, bearing always the same aspect to one another, without regard to selfish joys or pains. The lawyer's wife, in a grand gown and topknot of feathers, which she was said to have worn to a great party at the governor's house in Boston, composed to majestic approval her handsome florid face, and stood back with a white-gloved hand on an arm of each of her daughters, slender and pretty, and unshrinkingly radiant in the faces of the doctor's college-bred son and his visiting classmate. The doctor's wife, also, who had come of a grand family, and appeared always on festive occasions in some well-preserved splendor of her maiden days, which had been prolonged, drew back, spreading out with both hands a vast expanse of purple velvet skirt. She quite eclipsed as with a murky purple cloud the two meek elderly women and a timid young girl who sat behind her. They immediately peered around her sumptuous folds with anxious eyes lest they might lose sight of the bridal party; but the bridal party did not come. A passageway was left quite clear to the space between the windows on the west side of the room, where it was whispered the bride and groom were to stand, and the people all pressed back towards the walls; but no one came. A little hum of wondering conversation rose and fell again at fancied stirs of entrance. Folk hushed and nudged each other a dozen times, and craned their necks, and the clock struck the half-hour, and the bridal party had not come. In a great chair near the clear space between the windows sat the bridegroom's mother, with a large pearl brooch gleaming out of the black satin folds on her bosom. Her face, between long lace lappets, looked as clearly pallid and passively reflective as the pearls. Not a muscle stirred about her calm mouth and the smooth triangle of forehead between her curtain slants of gray hair. If she speculated deeply within herself, and was agitated over the delay, not a restless glance of her steadily mild eyes betrayed it. People wondered a little that she should not be busied about the bridal preparations, instead of waiting there like any other guest; but it was said that Dorothy had refused absolutely to have any helping hands but those of her old black slave woman about her. It was known, too, that Dorothy had only once taken tea with Burr's mother since the engagement, and everybody speculated as to how they would get on together. Dorothy had, in truth, received the rigorously courteous overtures of her future mother with the polite offishness of a scared but well-trained child, and the proud elder woman had not increased them. "When she comes here to live I shall do my duty by her, but I shall not force myself upon her," she told Burr. Burr's mother had not seen any of the dainty bridal gewgaws, but that she kept to herself. People glanced frequently at her with questioning eyes as the time went on; but she sat there with the gleam of her personality as unchanged in her face as the gleam of the pearls on her bosom. "Catch her looking flustered!" one woman whispered to another. After the clock struck nine a long breath seemed to be drawn simultaneously by the company; it was quite audible. Then came a sharp hissing whisper of wonder and consternation; then a hush, and all faces turned towards the door. Burr Gordon, his face stern and white, stood there looking across at his mother. She rose at once and went to him with a stately glide, and they disappeared amid a distinct buzz of curiosity that could no longer be restrained. "They've gone into the parson's study," whispered one to another. Some reported, upon the good authority of a neighbor's imagination, that Parson Fair had "fallen down dead;" some that Dorothy had fainted away; some that the black woman had killed her and her father. Meanwhile, Burr and his mother went into Parson Fair's study. There stood the minister by his desk, with his proudly gentle brow all furrowed, and his fine, long scholar-fingers clutching nervously at the back of his arm-chair. He cast one glance around as the door opened and shut, then looked away, then commanded himself with an effort, and stepped forward and bowed courteously to the woman in her black satin and pearls. Elvira Gordon looked from one to the other, and the two men followed her glances, and each waited for the other to speak. "Where is she?" she asked, finally. "She is up in her chamber," replied Parson Fair, in a voice more strained with his own anxiety than it had ever been in the pulpit over the sins of his fellow-men. "I know not what to say or do--I never thought that daughter of mine--she will not come--" Then Elvira Gordon cast a quick, sharp glance at her son, which he met with proud misery and resentment. "It is quite true, mother," he said. "We have both tried, and she will not come." "Perhaps a woman--" said Parson Fair. "I wish her mother were alive," he added, with a break in his voice. "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 encompassed 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 passive 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! Nobody 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 assembled, and where he and Dorothy were to have been married. He stood alone in the clear space 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 assembly 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 God 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. _ |
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