“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?”