The preacher walked down Angel Alley with his wife, in her white dress, upon his arm. The Alley was thronged with spectators who did not or who could not enter the chapel. Two policemen stepped forward to escort the minister, but he waved them back. He and Helen walked quietly to the chapel steps, and were about to enter, when a slight disturbance in the crowd, at their immediate side, caused Bayard to look around. A girl was struggling with an officer, to get near enough to speak to the minister.
“Get back there!” commanded the policeman. “Keep back, I say! This is no place nor time for the likes of you to pester the minister!”
“Let her come!” ordered Bayard authoritatively. For it was Lena. The girl was pale, and her handsome eyes had a ferocious look.
“I’ve got something to tell him,” announced Lena with calm determination. “It’s important, or I wouldn’t bother him, is it likely? I ain’t no such a fool nor flat.”
She approached, at Bayard’s beck, and said a few words in a tone so low that even the wife upon his arm did not understand them.
“Lena still feels a little anxious,” said Bayard aloud, distinctly. “Have you any wishes to express, Helen?”
But Helen, smiling, shook her head. She felt exalted and not afraid. She would have gone with him to death; but she did not think about death. She did not believe that his angels would suffer a pebble of Windover to dash against him; nor that a curl of his gold-brown head would come to harm. His mood ruled her utterly. His own exaltation, his beauty, his calm, his spiritual power, made clouds before her eyes, on which he moved as a god.
So they entered the chapel, together. As they did so, Bayard turned, and looked back. Before all the people there, the preacher lifted his hat to Lena, and passed on.
The girl’s dark face dropped upon her breast, as if she made obeisance before him; then she lifted it with the touching pride of lost self-respect regained. Her lips moved. “He thinks I’m fit, at last,” said Lena.
The preacher and his young wife passed through the rose-wreathed door, and into the chapel. Roses were there, too; their pale, pink lamps burned all over the chapel, wherever hand could reach, or foot could climb. This was the decoration chosen to welcome the June bride to Windover—the people’s flower, the blossom of the rocks and downs.