initial commit of ebook 14513HEADmain

1 files changed, 12437 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/14513-0.txt b/14513-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f84c130
--- /dev/null
+++ b/14513-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12437 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Audrey, by Mary Johnston
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Audrey
+
+Author: Mary Johnston
+
+Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14513]
+Last Updated: August 20, 2023
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Audrey Longhurst and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUDREY ***
+
+
+
+
+    AUDREY
+
+    BY
+    MARY JOHNSTON
+
+    AUTHOR OF “TO HAVE AND TO HOLD” AND
+    “PRISONERS OF HOPE”
+
+
+    WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+    F.C. YOHN
+
+    BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+    HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+    The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+    1902
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1901, 1902, BY MARY JOHNSTON
+    COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
+    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+    _Published February, 1902_
+
+
+
+
+    _Books by Mary Johnston._
+
+
+    AUDREY. With Illustrations in color. Crown 8vo, $1.50
+
+    PRISONERS OF HOPE. With Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
+
+    TO HAVE AND TO HOLD. With 8 Illustrations
+      by HOWARD PYLE, E.B. THOMPSON,
+      A.W. BETTS, and EMLEN McCONNELL.
+      Crown 8vo, $1.50.
+
+
+    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN & CO.
+    BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
+
+[Illustration: GAZED WITH WIDE-OPEN EYES AT THE INTRUDER (page 106)]
+
+    TO
+    ELOISE, ANNE, AND ELIZABETH
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER  TITLE                                                  PAGE
+
+    I.       THE CABIN IN THE VALLEY                                   1
+
+    II.      THE COURT OF THE ORPHAN                                  16
+
+    III.     DARDEN’S AUDREY                                          38
+
+    IV.      THE ROAD TO WILLIAMSBURGH                                52
+
+    V.       THE STOREKEEPER                                          63
+
+    VI.      MASTER AND MAN                                           73
+
+    VII.     THE RETURN OF MONSIEUR JEAN HUGON                        92
+
+    VIII.    UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE                                106
+
+    IX.      MACLEAN TO THE RESCUE                                   117
+
+    X.       HAWARD AND EVELYN                                       131
+
+    XI.      AUDREY OF THE GARDEN                                    145
+
+    XII.     THE PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN                             163
+
+    XIII.    A SABBATH DAY’S JOURNEY                                 179
+
+    XIV.     THE BEND IN THE ROAD                                    194
+
+    XV.      HUGON SPEAKS HIS MIND                                   206
+
+    XVI.     AUDREY AND EVELYN                                       222
+
+    XVII.    WITHIN THE PLAYHOUSE                                    237
+
+    XVIII.   A QUESTION OF COLORS                                    249
+
+    XIX.     THE GOVERNOR’S BALL                                     262
+
+    XX.      THE UNINVITED GUEST                                     273
+
+    XXI.     AUDREY AWAKES                                           287
+
+    XXII.    BY THE RIVERSIDE                                        300
+
+    XXIII.   A DUEL                                                  312
+
+    XXIV.    AUDREY COMES TO WESTOVER                                322
+
+    XXV.     TWO WOMEN                                               337
+
+    XXVI.    SANCTUARY                                               349
+
+    XXVII.   THE MISSION OF TRUELOVE                                 363
+
+    XXVIII.  THE PLAYER                                              375
+
+    XXIX.    AMOR VINCIT                                             391
+
+    XXX.     THE LAST ACT                                            401
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+  GAZED WITH WIDE-OPEN EYES AT THE INTRUDER (page 106)    _Frontispiece_
+
+  “HAD YOU LOVED ME--I HAD BEEN HAPPY”                                58
+
+  AUDREY LEFT HER WARNING TO BE SPOKEN BY MACLEAN                    206
+
+  “I DO NOT THINK I HAVE THE HONOR OF KNOWING”--                     270
+
+  HER DARK EYES MADE APPEAL                                          342
+
+  “JEAN! JEAN HUGON!”                                                414
+
+
+
+
+AUDREY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CABIN IN THE VALLEY
+
+
+The valley lay like a ribbon thrown into the midst of the encompassing
+hills. The grass which grew there was soft and fine and abundant; the
+trees which sprang from its dark, rich mould were tall and great of
+girth. A bright stream flashed through it, and the sunshine fell warm
+upon the grass and changed the tassels of the maize into golden plumes.
+Above the valley, east and north and south, rose the hills, clad in
+living green, mantled with the purpling grape, wreathed morn and eve
+with trailing mist. To the westward were the mountains, and they dwelt
+apart in a blue haze. Only in the morning, if the mist were not there,
+the sunrise struck upon their long summits, and in the evening they
+stood out, high and black and fearful, against the splendid sky. The
+child who played beside the cabin door often watched them as the valley
+filled with shadows, and thought of them as a great wall between her
+and some land of the fairies which must needs lie beyond that barrier,
+beneath the splendor and the evening star. The Indians called them the
+Endless Mountains, and the child never doubted that they ran across the
+world and touched the floor of heaven.
+
+In the hands of the woman who was spinning the thread broke and the
+song died in the white throat of the girl who stood in the doorway.
+For a moment the two gazed with widening eyes into the green September
+world without the cabin; then the woman sprang to her feet, tore from
+the wall a horn, and, running to the door, wound it lustily. The echoes
+from the hills had not died when a man and a boy, the one bearing a
+musket, the other an axe, burst from the shadow of the forest, and at
+a run crossed the greensward and the field of maize between them and
+the women. The child let fall her pine cones and pebbles, and fled to
+her mother, to cling to her skirts, and look with brown, frightened
+eyes for the wonder that should follow the winding of the horn. Only
+twice could she remember that clear summons for her father: once when
+it was winter and snow was on the ground, and a great wolf, gaunt and
+bold, had fallen upon their sheep; and once when a drunken trader from
+Germanna, with a Pamunkey who had tasted of the trader’s rum, had not
+waited for an invitation before entering the cabin. It was not winter
+now, and there was no sign of the red-faced trader or of the dreadful,
+capering Indian. There was only a sound in the air, a strange noise
+coming to them from the pass between the hills over which rose the sun.
+
+The man with the musket sent his voice before him as he approached
+the group upon the doorstep: “Alce, woman! What’s amiss? I see naught
+wrong!”
+
+His wife stepped forward to meet him. “There’s naught to see, William.
+It’s to hear. There was a noise. Molly and I heard it, and then we lost
+it. There it is again!”
+
+Fronting the cabin, beyond the maize field and the rich green grass
+and the placid stream, rose two hills, steep and thickly wooded, and
+between them ran a narrow, winding, and rocky pass. Down this gorge, to
+the listening pioneer, now came a confused and trampling sound.
+
+“It is iron striking against the rocks!” he announced. “The hoofs of
+horses”--
+
+“Iron!” cried his wife. “The horses in Virginia go unshod! And what
+should a troop of horse do here, beyond the frontier, where even the
+rangers never come?”
+
+The man shook his head, a frown of perplexity upon his bronzed and
+bearded face. “It is the sound of the hoofs of horses,” he said, “and
+they are coming through the pass. Hark!”
+
+A trumpet blew, and there came a noise of laughter. The child pressed
+close to her brother’s side. “Oh, Robin, maybe ’t is the fairies!”
+
+Out from the gloom of the pass into the sunshine of the valley,
+splashing through the stream, trampling the long grass, laughing, and
+calling one rider to the other, burst a company of fifty horsemen. The
+trumpet blew again, and the entire party, drawing rein, stared at the
+unexpected maize field, the cabin, and the people about the door.
+
+Between the intruders and the lonely folk, whose nearest neighbors were
+twenty miles away, was only a strip of sunny grass, dotted over with
+the stumps of trees that had been felled lest they afford cover for
+attacking savages. A man, riding at the head of the invading party,
+beckoned, somewhat imperiously, to the pioneer; and the latter, still
+with his musket in the hollow of his arm, strode across the greensward,
+and finding himself in the midst, not of rude traders and rangers,
+but of easy, smiling, periwigged gentlemen, handsomely dressed and
+accoutred, dropped the butt of his gun upon the ground, and took off
+his squirrel-skin cap.
+
+“You are deep in the wilderness, good fellow,” said the man who
+had beckoned, and who was possessed of a stately figure, a martial
+countenance, and an air of great authority. “How far is it to the
+mountains?”
+
+The pioneer stared at the long blue range, cloudlike in the distance.
+“I don’t know,” he answered. “I hunt to the eastward. Twenty miles,
+maybe. You’re never going to climb them?”
+
+“We are come out expressly to do so,” answered the other heartily,
+“having a mind to drink the King’s health with our heads in the clouds!
+We need another axeman to clear away the fallen trees and break the
+nets of grapevine. Wilt go along amongst our rangers yonder, and earn a
+pistole and undying fame?”
+
+The woodsman looked from the knot of gentlemen to the troop of hardy
+rangers, who, with a dozen ebony servants and four Meherrin Indians,
+made up the company. Under charge of the slaves were a number of
+packhorses. Thrown across one was a noble deer; a second bore a brace
+of wild turkeys and a two-year-old bear, fat and tender; a third had a
+legion of pots and pans for the cooking of the woodland cheer; while
+the burden of several others promised heart’s content of good liquor.
+From the entire troop breathed a most enticing air of gay daring and
+good-fellowship. The gentlemen were young and of cheerful countenances;
+the rangers in the rear sat their horses and whistled to the
+woodpeckers in the sugar-trees; the negroes grinned broadly; even the
+Indians appeared a shade less saturnine than usual. The golden sunshine
+poured upon them all, and the blue mountains that no Englishman had
+ever passed seemed for the moment as soft and yielding as the cloud
+that slept along their summits. And no man knew what might be just
+beyond the mountains: Frenchmen, certainly, and the great lakes and
+the South Sea: but, besides these, might there not be gold, glittering
+stones, new birds and beasts and plants, strange secrets of the hills?
+It was only westward-ho! for a week or two, with good company and good
+drink--
+
+The woodsman shifted from one foot to the other, but his wife, who had
+now crossed the grass to his side, had no doubts.
+
+“You’ll not go, William!” she cried. “Remember the smoke that you saw
+yesterday from the hilltop! If the Northern Indians are on the warpath
+against the Southern, and are passing between us and the mountains,
+there may be straying bands. I’ll not let you go!”
+
+In her eagerness she clasped his arm with her hands. She was a comely,
+buxom dame, and the circle on horseback, being for the most part young
+and gallant, and not having seen a woman for some days, looked kindly
+upon her.
+
+“And so you saw a smoke, goodwife, and are afraid of roving Indians?”
+said the gentleman who had spoken before. “That being the case, your
+husband has our permission to stay behind. On my life, ’t is a shame to
+ride away and leave you in danger of such marauders!”
+
+“Will your Excellency permit me to volunteer for guard duty?” demanded
+a young man who had pressed his horse to the leader’s side. “It’s odds,
+though, that when you return this way you’ll find me turned Papist.
+I’ll swear your Excellency never saw in Flanders carved or painted
+saint so worthy of your prayers as yonder breathing one!”
+
+The girl Molly had followed her parents, and now stood upon a little
+grassy knoll, surveying with wide brown eyes the gay troop before her.
+A light wind was blowing, and it wrapped her dress of tender, faded
+blue around her young limbs, and lifted her loosened hair, gilded by
+the sunshine into the likeness of an aureole. Her face was serious and
+wondering, but fair as a woodland flower. She had placed her hand upon
+the head of the child who was with her, clinging to her dress. The
+green knoll formed a pedestal; behind was the sky, as blue as that of
+Italy; the two figures might have been some painted altar-piece.
+
+The sprightly company, which had taken for its motto “Sic juvat
+transcendere montes,” looked and worshiped. There was a moment of
+silent devotion, broken by one of the gentlemen demanding if ’t were
+not time for dinner; another remarked that they might go much farther
+and fare much worse, in respect of a cool, sweet spot in which to rest
+during the heat of the afternoon; and a third boldly proposed that
+they go no farther at all that day. Their leader settled the question
+by announcing that, Mr. Mason’s suggestion finding favor in his sight,
+they would forthwith dismount, dine, drink red wine and white, and
+wear out the heat of the day in this sylvan paradise until four of
+the clock, when the trumpet should sound for the mount; also, that if
+the goodwife and her daughter would do them the honor to partake of
+their rustic fare, their healths should be drunk in nothing less than
+Burgundy.
+
+As he spoke he swung himself from the saddle, pulled out his ruffles,
+and raised his hat. “Ladies, permit me,”--a wave of his hand toward his
+escort, who were now also on foot. “Colonel Robertson, Captain Clonder,
+Captain Brooke, Mr. Haward, Mr. Beverley, Dr. Robinson, Mr. Fontaine,
+Mr. Todd, Mr. Mason,--all of the Tramontane Order. For myself, I am
+Alexander Spotswood, at your service.”
+
+The pioneer, standing behind his wife, plucked her by the sleeve.
+“Ecod, Alce, ’t is the Governor himself! Mind your manners!”
+
+Alce, who had been a red-cheeked dairymaid in a great house in
+England, needed no admonition. Her curtsy was profound; and when the
+Governor took her by the hand and kissed her still blooming cheek, she
+curtsied again. Molly, who had no memories of fine gentlemen and the
+complaisance which was their due, blushed fire-red at the touch of his
+Excellency’s lips, forgot to curtsy, and knew not where to look. When,
+in her confusion, she turned her head aside, her eyes met those of the
+young man who had threatened to turn Papist. He bowed, with his hand
+upon his heart, and she blushed more deeply than before.
+
+By now every man had dismounted, and the valley was ringing with the
+merriment of the jovial crew. The negroes led the horses down the
+stream, lightened them of saddle and bridle, and left them tethered
+to saplings beneath which the grass grew long and green. The rangers
+gathered fallen wood, and kindled two mighty fires, while the gentlemen
+of the party threw themselves down beside the stream, upon a little
+grassy rise shadowed by a huge sugar-tree. A mound of turf, flanked
+by two spreading roots, was the Governor’s chair of state, and Alce
+and Molly he must needs seat beside him. Not one of his gay company
+but seemed an adept in the high-flown compliment of the age; out of
+very idleness and the mirth born of that summer hour they followed
+his Excellency’s lead, and plied the two simple women with all the
+wordy ammunition that a tolerable acquaintance with the mythology of
+the ancients and the polite literature of the present could furnish.
+The mother and daughter did not understand the fine speeches, but
+liked them passing well. In their lonely lives, a little thing made
+conversation for many and many a day. As for these golden hours,--the
+jingle and clank and mellow laughter, the ruffles and gold buttons
+and fine cloth, these gentlemen, young and handsome, friendly-eyed,
+silver-tongued, the taste of wine, the taste of flattery, the sunshine
+that surely was never yet so bright,--ten years from now they would
+still be talking of these things, still wishing that such a day could
+come again.
+
+The negroes were now busy around the fires, and soon the cheerful odor
+of broiling meat rose and blended with the fragrance of the forest.
+The pioneer, hospitably minded, beckoned to the four Meherrins, and
+hastening with them to the patch of waving corn, returned with a goodly
+lading of plump, green ears. A second foraging party, under guidance
+of the boy, brought into the larder of the gentry half a dozen noble
+melons, golden within and without. The woman whispered to the child,
+and the latter ran to the cabin, filled her upgathered skirts with the
+loaves of her mother’s baking, and came back to the group upon the
+knoll beneath the sugar-tree. The Governor himself took the bread from
+the little maid, then drew her toward him.
+
+“Thanks, my pretty one,” he said, with a smile that for the moment
+quite dispelled the expression of haughtiness which marred an otherwise
+comely countenance. “Come, give me a kiss, sweeting, and tell me thy
+name.”
+
+The child looked at him gravely. “My name is Audrey,” she answered,
+“and if you eat all of our bread we’ll have none for supper.”
+
+The Governor laughed, and kissed the small dark face. “I’ll give thee a
+gold moidore, instead, my maid. Odso! thou’rt as dark and wild, almost,
+as was my little Queen of the Saponies that died last year. Hast never
+been away from the mountains, child?”
+
+Audrey shook her head, and thought the question but a foolish one. The
+mountains were everywhere. Had she not been to the top of the hills,
+and seen for herself that they went from one edge of the world to the
+other? She was glad to slip from the Governor’s encircling arm, and
+from the gay ring beneath the sugar-tree; to take refuge with herself
+down by the water side, and watch the fairy tale from afar off.
+
+The rangers, with the pioneer and his son for their guests, dined
+beside the kitchen fire, which they had kindled at a respectful
+distance from the group upon the knoll. Active, bronzed and daring men,
+wild riders, bold fighters, lovers of the freedom of the woods, they
+sprawled upon the dark earth beneath the walnut-trees, laughed and
+joked, and told old tales of hunting or of Indian warfare. The four
+Meherrins ate apart and in stately silence, but the grinning negroes
+must needs endure their hunger until their masters should be served.
+One black detachment spread before the gentlemen of the expedition a
+damask cloth; another placed upon the snowy field platters of smoking
+venison and turkey, flanked by rockahominy and sea-biscuit, corn
+roasted Indian fashion, golden melons, and a quantity of wild grapes
+gathered from the vines that rioted over the hillside; while a third
+set down, with due solemnity, a formidable array of bottles. There
+being no chaplain in the party, the grace was short. The two captains
+carved, but every man was his own Ganymede. The wines were good and
+abundant: there was champagne for the King’s health; claret in which
+to pledge themselves, gay stormers of the mountains; Burgundy for the
+oreads who were so gracious as to sit beside them, smile upon them,
+taste of their mortal fare.
+
+Sooth to say, the oreads were somewhat dazed by the company they
+were keeping, and found the wine a more potent brew than the liquid
+crystal of their mountain streams. Red roses bloomed in Molly’s
+cheeks; her eyes grew starry, and no longer sought the ground; when
+one of the gentlemen wove a chaplet of oak leaves, and with it crowned
+her loosened hair, she laughed, and the sound was so silvery and
+delightful that the company laughed with her. When the viands were
+gone, the negroes drew the cloth, but left the wine. When the wine
+was well-nigh spent, they brought to their masters long pipes and
+japanned boxes filled with sweet-scented. The fragrant smoke, arising,
+wrapped the knoll in a bluish haze. A wind had arisen, tempering the
+blazing sunshine, and making low music up and down the hillsides.
+The maples blossomed into silver, the restless poplar leaves danced
+more and more madly, the hemlocks and great white pines waved their
+broad, dark banners. Above the hilltops the sky was very blue, and the
+distant heights seemed dream mountains and easy of climbing. A soft
+and pleasing indolence, born of the afternoon, the sunlight, and the
+red wine, came to dwell in the valley. One of the company beneath the
+spreading sugar-tree laid his pipe upon the grass, clasped his hands
+behind his head, and, with his eyes on the azure heaven showing between
+branch and leaf, sang the song of Amiens of such another tree in such
+another forest. The voice was manly, strong, and sweet; the rangers
+quit their talk of war and hunting to listen, and the negroes, down by
+the fire which they had built for themselves, laughed for very pleasure.
+
+When the wine was all drunken and the smoke of the tobacco quite blown
+away, a gentleman who seemed of a somewhat saturnine disposition, and
+less susceptible than his brother adventurers to the charms of the
+wood nymphs, rose, and declared that he would go a-fishing in the
+dark crystal of the stream below. His servant brought him hook and
+line, while the grasshoppers in the tall grass served for bait. A rock
+jutting over the flood formed a convenient seat, and a tulip-tree lent
+a grateful shade. The fish were abundant and obliging; the fisherman
+was happy. Three shining trophies had been landed, and he was in the
+act of baiting the hook that should capture the fourth, when his eyes
+chanced to meet the eyes of the child Audrey, who had left her covert
+of purple-berried alder, and now stood beside him. Tithonus, green and
+hale, skipped from between his fingers, and he let fall his line to
+put out a good-natured hand and draw the child down to a seat upon the
+rock. “Wouldst like to try thy skill, moppet?” he demanded.
+
+The child shook her head. “Are you a prince?” she asked, “and is the
+grand gentleman with, the long hair and the purple coat the King?”
+
+The fisherman laughed. “No, little one, I’m only a poor ensign. The
+gentleman yonder, being the representative in Virginia of my Lord of
+Orkney and his Majesty King George the First, may somewhat smack of
+royalty. Indeed, there are good Virginians who think that were the King
+himself amongst us he could not more thoroughly play my Lord Absolute.
+But he’s only the Governor of Virginia, after all, bright eyes.”
+
+“Does he live in a palace, like the King? My father once saw the King’s
+house in a place they call London.”
+
+The gentleman laughed again. “Ay, he lives in a palace, a red brick
+palace, sixty feet long and forty feet deep, with a bauble on top
+that’s all afire on birth-nights. There are green gardens, too, with
+winding paths, and sometimes pretty ladies walk in them. Wouldst like
+to see all these fine things?”
+
+The child nodded. “Ay, that I would! Who is the gentleman that sang,
+and that now sits by Molly? See! with his hand touching her hair. Is he
+a Governor, too?”
+
+The other glanced in the direction of the sugar-tree, raised his
+eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, and returned to his fishing. “That
+is Mr. Marmaduke Haward,” he said, “who, having just come into a great
+estate, goes abroad next month to be taught the newest, most genteel
+mode of squandering it. Dost not like his looks, child? Half the ladies
+of Williamsburgh are enamored of his _beaux yeux_.”
+
+Audrey made no answer, for just then the trumpet blew for the mount,
+and the fisherman must needs draw in and pocket his hook and line.
+Clear, high, and sweet, the triumphant notes pierced the air, and were
+answered from the hills by a thousand fairy horns. The martial-minded
+Governor would play the soldier in the wilderness; his little troop of
+gentlemen and rangers and ebony servants had come out well drilled for
+their tilt against the mountains. The echoes were still ringing, when,
+with laughter, some expenditure of wit, and much cheerful swearing, the
+camp was struck. The packhorses were again laden, the rangers swung
+themselves into their saddles, and the gentlemen beneath the sugar-tree
+rose from the grass, and tendered their farewells to the oreads.
+
+Alce roundly hoped that their Honors would pass that way again upon
+their return from the high mountains, and the deepening rose of Molly’s
+cheeks and her wistful eyes added weight to her mother’s importunity.
+The Governor swore that in no great time they would dine again in the
+valley, and his companions confirmed the oath. His Excellency, turning
+to mount his horse, found the pioneer at the animal’s head.
+
+“So, honest fellow,” he exclaimed good-naturedly, “you will not with
+us to grave your name upon the mountain tops? Let me tell you that you
+are giving Fame the go-by. To march against the mountains and overcome
+them as though they were so many Frenchmen, and then to gaze into the
+promised land beyond--Odso, man, we are as great as were Cortez and
+Pizarro and their crew! We are heroes and paladins! We are the Knights
+of”--
+
+His horse, impatient to be gone, struck with a ringing sound an
+iron-shod hoof against a bit of rock. “The Knights of the Horseshoe,”
+said the gentleman nearest the Governor.
+
+Spotswood uttered a delighted exclamation: “’Gad, Mr. Haward, you’ve
+hit it! Well-nigh the first horseshoes used in Virginia--the number
+we were forced to bring along--the sound of the iron against the
+rocks--the Knights of the Horseshoe! ’Gad, I’ll send to London and have
+little horseshoes--little gold horseshoes--made, and every man of us
+shall wear one. The Knights of the Golden Horseshoe! It hath an odd,
+charming sound, eh, gentlemen?”
+
+None of the gentlemen were prepared to deny that it was a quaint and
+pleasing title. Instead, out of very lightness of heart and fantastic
+humor, they must needs have the Burgundy again unpacked, that they
+might pledge at once all valorous discoverers, his Excellency the
+Governor of Virginia, and their new-named order. And when the wine was
+drunk, the rangers were drawn up, the muskets were loaded, and a volley
+was fired that brought the echoes crashing about their heads. The
+Governor mounted, the trumpet sounded once more, and the joyous company
+swept down the narrow valley toward the long, blue, distant ranges.
+
+The pioneer, his wife and children, watched them go. One of the
+gentlemen turned in his saddle and waved his hand. Alce curtsied, but
+Molly, at whom he had looked, saw him not, because her eyes were full
+of tears. The company reached and entered a cleft between the hills; a
+moment, and men and horses were lost to sight; a little longer, and not
+even a sound could be heard.
+
+It was as though they had taken the sunshine with them; for a cloud had
+come up from the west, and the sun was hidden. All at once the valley
+seemed a sombre and lonely place, and the hills with their whispering
+trees looked menacingly down upon the clearing, the cabin, and the five
+simple English folk. The glory of the day was gone. After a little more
+of idle staring, the frontiersman and his son returned to their work in
+the forest, while Alce and Molly went indoors to their spinning, and
+Audrey sat down upon the doorstep to listen to the hurry of voices in
+the trees, and to watch the ever-deepening shadow of the cloud above
+the valley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE COURT OF THE ORPHAN
+
+
+An hour before dusk found the company that had dined in the valley
+making their way up the dry bed of a stream, through a gorge which
+cleft a line of precipitous hills. On either hand the bank rose
+steeply, giving no footing for man or beast. The road was a difficult
+one; for here a tall, fern-crowned rock left but a narrow passage
+between itself and the shaggy hillside, and there smooth and slippery
+ledges, mounting one above the other, spanned the way. In places,
+too, the drought had left pools of dark, still water, difficult to
+avoid, and not infrequently the entire party must come to a halt while
+the axemen cleared from the path a fallen birch or hemlock. Every
+man was afoot, none caring to risk a fall upon the rocks or into
+the black, cold water of the pools. The hoofs of the horses and the
+spurs of the men clanked against the stones; now and then one of the
+heavily laden packhorses stumbled and was sworn at, and once a warning
+rattle, issuing from a rank growth of fern on the hillside, caused
+a momentary commotion. There was no more laughter, or whistling, or
+calling from the van to the rear guard. The way was arduous, and every
+man must watch his footsteps; moreover, the last rays of the sun were
+gilding the hilltops above them, and the level that should form their
+camping-place must be reached before the falling of the night.
+
+The sunlight had all but faded from the heights, when one of the
+company, stumbling over a round and mossy rock, measured his length
+upon the ground, amid his own oaths at his mishap, and the exclamations
+of the man immediately in his rear, whose progress he had thus
+unceremoniously blocked. The horse of the fallen man, startled by the
+dragging at the reins, reared and plunged, and in a moment the entire
+column was in disorder. When the frightened animals were at last
+quieted, and the line re-formed, the Governor called out to know who it
+was that had fallen, and whether any damage had been suffered.
+
+“It was Mr. Haward, sir!” cried two or three; and presently the injured
+gentleman himself, limping painfully, and with one side of his fine
+green coat all stained by reason of contact with a bit of muddy ground,
+appeared before his Excellency.
+
+“I have had a cursed mishap,--saving your presence, sir,” he explained.
+“The right ankle is, I fear, badly sprained. The pain, is exquisite,
+and I know not how I am to climb mountains.”
+
+The Governor uttered an exclamation of concern: “Unfortunate! Dr.
+Robinson must look to the hurt at once.”
+
+“Your Excellency forgets my dispute with Dr. Robinson as to the dose
+of Jesuit bark for my servant,” said the sufferer blandly. “Were I _in
+extremis_ I should not apply to him for relief.”
+
+“I’ll lay my life that you are not _in extremis_ now,” retorted the
+doctor. “If ever I saw a man with a sprained ankle keep his color so
+marvelously, or heard him speak in so composed a tone! The pain must be
+of a very unusual degree indeed!”
+
+“It is,” answered Mr. Haward calmly. “I cannot possibly go on in this
+condition, your Excellency, nor can I dream of allowing my unlucky
+accident to delay this worshipful company in their ascent of the
+mountains. I will therefore take my servant and ride slowly back to
+the cabin which we left this afternoon. Doubtless the worthy pioneer
+will give me shelter until my foot is healed, and I will rejoin your
+Excellency upon your return through the valley.”
+
+As he spoke, for the greater ease of the injured member, he leaned
+against a towering lock. He was a handsome youth, with a trick of
+keeping an unmoved countenance under even such a fire of laughter and
+exclamation as greeted his announcement.
+
+“And for this you would lose the passing of the Appalachian Mountains!”
+cried Spotswood. “Why, man! from those heights we may almost see Lake
+Erie; may find out how near we are to the French, how easily the
+mountains may be traversed, what promise of success should his Majesty
+determine to plant settlements beyond them or to hold the mountain
+passes! There is service to be done and honor to be gained, and you
+would lag behind because of a wrenched ankle! Zoons, sir! at Blenheim I
+charged a whole regiment of Frenchmen, with a wound in my breast into
+which you might have thrust your hand!”
+
+The younger man shrugged his shoulders. “Beggars may not be choosers,”
+he said coolly. “The sunlight is fast fading, and if we would be out of
+this gorge before nightfall we must make no further tarrying. I have
+your Excellency’s permission to depart?”
+
+One of the gentlemen made a low-voiced but audible remark to his
+neighbor, and another hummed a line from a love song. The horses moved
+impatiently amongst the loose stones, and the rangers began to mutter
+that night would be upon them before they reached a safer footing.
+
+“Mr. Haward! Mr. Haward!” said the Governor sternly. “It is in my mind
+that you meditate inflicting a greater harm than you have received.
+Let me tell you, sir, if you think to so repay a simple-minded
+hospitality”--
+
+Mr. Haward’s eyes narrowed. “I own Colonel Spotswood for Governor of
+Virginia,” he said, speaking slowly, as was his wont when he was angry.
+“His office does not, I think, extend farther than that. As for these
+pleasant-minded gentlemen who are not protected by their rank I beg to
+inform them that in my fall my sword arm suffered no whit.”
+
+Turning, he beckoned to a negro who had worked his way from the
+servants in the rear, along the line of rangers, to the outskirts of
+the group of gentlemen gathered around the Governor and the injured
+man. “Juba,” he ordered, “draw your horse and mine to one side. Your
+Excellency, may I again remind you that it draws toward nightfall, and
+that this road will be no pleasant one to travel in the dark?”
+
+What he said was true; moreover, upon the setting out of the expedition
+it had been laughingly agreed that any gentleman who might find his
+spirits dashed by the dangers and difficulties of the way should be at
+liberty at any time to turn his back upon the mountains, and his face
+toward safety and the settlements. The Governor frowned, bit his lips,
+but finally burst into unwilling laughter.
+
+“You are a very young gentleman, Mr. Marmaduke Haward!” he cried. “Were
+you a little younger, I know what ointment I should prescribe for
+your hurt. Go your ways with your broken ankle; but if, when I come
+again to the cabin in the valley, I find that your own injury has not
+contented you, look to it that I do not make you build a bridge across
+the bay itself! Gentlemen, Mr. Haward is bent upon intrusting his cure
+to other and softer hands than Dr. Robinson’s, and the expedition must
+go forward without him. We sorrow to lose him from our number, but we
+know better than to reason with--ahem!--a twisted ankle. _En avant_,
+gentlemen! Mr. Haward, pray have a care of yourself. I would advise
+that the ankle be well bandaged, and that you stir not from the chimney
+corner”--
+
+“I thank your Excellency for your advice,” said Mr. Haward
+imperturbably, “and will consider of taking it. I wish your Excellency
+and these merry gentlemen a most complete victory over the mountains,
+from which conquest I will no longer detain you.”
+
+He bowed as he spoke, and began to move, slowly and haltingly, across
+the width of the rocky way to where his negro stood with the two horses.
+
+“Mr. Haward!” called the Governor.
+
+The recreant turned his head. “Your Excellency?”
+
+“It was the right foot, was it not?” queried his sometime leader. “Ah,
+I thought so! Then it were best not to limp with the left.”
+
+Homeric laughter shook the air; but while Mr. Haward laughed not,
+neither did he frown or blush. “I will remember, sir,” he said simply,
+and at once began to limp with the proper foot. When he reached the
+bank he turned, and, standing with his arm around his horse’s neck,
+watched the company which he had so summarily deserted, as it put
+itself into motion and went slowly past him up its dusky road. The
+laughter and bantering farewells moved him not; he could at will draw
+a line around himself across which few things could step. Not far
+away the bed of the stream turned, and a hillside, dark with hemlock,
+closed the view. He watched the train pass him, reach this bend, and
+disappear. The axemen and the four Meherrins, the Governor and the
+gentlemen of the Horseshoe, the rangers, the negroes,--all were gone
+at last. With that passing, and with the ceasing of the laughter and
+the trampling, came the twilight. A whippoorwill began to call, and the
+wind sighed in the trees. Juba, the negro, moved closer to his master;
+then upon an impulse stooped, and lifting above his head a great rock,
+threw it with might into one of the shallow pools. The crashing sound
+broke the spell of the loneliness and quiet that had fallen upon the
+place. The white man drew his breath, shrugged his shoulders, and
+turned his horse’s head down the way up which he had so lately come.
+
+The cabin in the valley was not three miles away. Down this ravine to
+a level place of pines, through the pines to a strip of sassafras and
+a poisoned field, past these into a dark, rich wood of mighty trees
+linked together with the ripening grape, then three low hills, then
+the valley and the cabin and a pair of starry eyes. It was full moon.
+Once out from under the stifling walls of the ravine, and the silver
+would tremble through the leaves, and show the path beneath. The trees,
+too, that they had blazed,--with white wood pointing to white wood, the
+backward way should be easy.
+
+The earth, rising sheer in darkness on either hand, shut in the bed
+of the stream. In the warm, scented dusk the locusts shrilled in the
+trees, and far up the gorge the whippoorwill called and called. The
+air was filled with the gold of fireflies, a maze of spangles, now
+darkening, now brightening, restless and bewildering. The small, round
+pools caught the light from the yet faintly colored sky, and gleamed
+among the rocks; a star shone out, and a hot wind, heavy with the smell
+of the forest, moved the hemlock boughs and rustled in the laurels.
+
+The white man and the negro, each leading his horse, picked their way
+with caution among the pitfalls of the rocky and uneven road. With the
+passing of the Governor and his train a sudden cure had been wrought,
+for now Haward’s step was as firm and light as it had been before his
+fall. The negro looked at him once or twice with a puzzled face, but
+made no comment and received no enlightenment. Indeed, so difficult
+was their way that they were left but scant leisure for speech. Moment
+by moment the darkness deepened, and once Haward’s horse came to its
+knees, crashing down among the rocks and awakening every echo.
+
+The way, if hard, was short. The hills fell farther apart, the banks
+became low and broad, and fair in front, between two slender pines,
+shone out the great round moon. Leaving the bed of the stream, the two
+men entered a pine wood, dim and fragrant and easy to thread. The moon
+rose higher, and the light fell in wide shafts between trees that stood
+well apart, with no vines to grapple one to another or undergrowth to
+press about their knees.
+
+There needed no watchfulness: the ground was smooth, the light was
+fair; no motion save the pale flicker of the fireflies, no sound save
+the sigh of the night wind in the boughs that were so high overhead.
+Master and man, riding slowly and steadily onward through a wood that
+seemed interminably the same, came at last to think of other things
+than the road which they were traveling. Their hands lost grasp upon
+the reins, and their eyes, ceasing to glance now here, now there, gazed
+steadfastly down the gray and dreamlike vista before them, and saw no
+longer hole and branch, moonlight and the white scars that the axe
+had made for guidance. The vision of the slave was of supper at the
+quarters, of the scraping of the fiddle in the red firelight, of the
+dancing and the singing. The white man saw, at first, only a girl’s
+face, shy and innocent,--the face of the woodland maid who had fired
+his fancy, who was drawing him through the wilderness back to the cabin
+in the valley. But after a while, in the gray stillness, he lost the
+face, and suddenly thought, instead, of the stone that was to cover
+his father’s grave. The ship that was to bring the great, dark, carven
+slab should be in by now; the day after his return to Williamsburgh the
+stone must be put in place, covering in the green sod and that which
+lay below. _Here, lieth in the hope of a joyful resurrection_--
+
+His mind left the grave in the churchyard at Williamsburgh, and
+visited the great plantation of which he was now sole master. There
+was the house, foursquare, high-roofed, many-windowed, built of dark
+red brick that glowed behind the veil of the walnuts and the oaks.
+There, too, were the quarters,--the home quarter, that at the creek,
+that on the ridge. Fifty white servants, three hundred slaves,--and
+he was the master. The honeysuckles in the garden that had been his
+father’s pride, the shining expanse of the river, the ship--his ship,
+the Golden Rose--that was to take him home to England,--he forgot
+the night and the forest, and saw these things quite plainly. Then
+he fell to thinking of London and the sweets that he meant to taste,
+the heady wine of youth and life that he meant to drain to the lees.
+He was young; he could spare the years. One day he would come back to
+Virginia, to the dim old garden and quiet house. His factor would give
+account, and he would settle down in the red brick house, with the
+tobacco to the north and east, the corn to the west, and to the south
+the mighty river,--the river silvered by the moon, the river that lay
+just beyond him, gleaming through the trees--
+
+Startled by the sudden tightening of the reins, or by the tearing of
+some frightened thing through the canes that beset the low, miry bank,
+the horse sprang aside; then stood trembling with pricked ears. The
+white man stared at the stream; turned in his saddle and stared at the
+tree trunks, the patches of moonlight, and the impenetrable shadow that
+closed each vista. “The blazed trees!” he exclaimed at last. “How long
+since we saw one?”
+
+The slave shook his head. “Juba forgot to look. He was away by a river
+that he knew.”
+
+“We have passed from out the pines,” said Haward. “These are oaks. But
+what is that water, and how far we are out of our reckoning the Lord
+only knows!”
+
+As he spoke he pushed his horse through the tall reeds to the bank of
+the stream. Here in the open, away from the shadow of the trees, the
+full moon had changed the night-time into a wonderful, silver day.
+Narrow above and belows the stream widened before him into a fairy
+basin, rimmed with reeds, unruffled, crystal-clear, stiller than a
+dream. The trees that grew upon the farther side were faint gray clouds
+in the moonlight, and the gold of the fireflies was very pale. From
+over the water, out of the heart of the moonlit wood, came the song
+of a mockingbird, a tumultuous ecstasy, possessing the air and making
+elfin the night.
+
+Haward backed his horse from the reeds to the oak beneath which waited
+the negro. “’Tis plain that we have lost our way, Juba,” he said,
+with a laugh. “If you were an Indian, we should turn and straightway
+retrace our steps to the blazed trees. Being what you are, you are more
+valuable in the tobacco fields than in the forest. Perhaps this is the
+stream which flows by the cabin in the valley. We’ll follow it down,
+and so arrive, at least, at a conclusion.”
+
+They dismounted, and, leading their horses, followed the stream for
+some distance, to arrive at the conclusion that it was not the one
+beside which they had dined that day. When they were certain of this,
+they turned and made their way back to the line of reeds which they had
+broken to mark their starting-point. By now the moon was high, and the
+mockingbird in the wood across the water was singing madly. Turning
+from the still, moonlit sheet, the silent reeds, the clear mimicker in
+the slumbrous wood, the two wayfarers plunged into the darkness beneath
+the spreading branches of the oak-trees. They could not have ridden far
+from the pines; in a very little while they might reach and recognize
+the path which they should tread.
+
+An hour later, the great trees, oak and chestnut, beech and poplar,
+suddenly gave way to saplings, many, close-set, and overrun with
+grapevines. So dense was the growth, so unyielding the curtain of
+vines, that men and horses were brought to a halt as before a fortress
+wall. Again they turned, and, skirting that stubborn network, came upon
+a swamp, where leafless trees, white as leprosy, stood up like ghosts
+from the water that gleamed between the lily-pads. Leaving the swamp
+they climbed a hill, and at the summit found only the moon and the
+stars and a long plateau of sighing grass. Behind them were the great
+mountains; before them, lesser heights, wooded hills, narrow valleys,
+each like its fellow, each indistinct and shadowy, with no sign of
+human tenant.
+
+Haward gazed at the climbing moon and at the wide and universal dimness
+of the world beneath; then turned to the negro, and pointed to a few
+low trees growing at the eastern end of the plateau.
+
+“Fasten the horses there, Juba,” he said. “We will wait upon this
+hilltop until morning. When the light comes, we may be able to see the
+clearing or the smoke from the cabin.”
+
+When the horses had been tethered, master and man lay down upon the
+grass. It was so still upon the hilltop, and the heavens pressed so
+closely, that the slave grew restless and strove to make talk. Failing
+in this, he began to croon a savage, mournful air, and presently,
+forgetting himself, to sing outright.
+
+“Be quiet!” ordered his master. “There may be Indians abroad.”
+
+The song came to an end as abruptly as it lad begun, and the singer,
+having nothing better to do, went fast asleep. His companion, more
+wakeful, lay with his hands behind his head and his eyes upon the
+splendor of the firmament. Lying so, he could not see the valleys nor
+the looming mountains. There were only the dome of the sky, the grass,
+and himself. He stared at the moon, and made pictures of her shadowy
+places; then fell to thinking of the morrow, and of the possibility
+that after all he might never find again the cabin in the valley. While
+he laughed at this supposition, yet he played with it. He was in a mood
+to think the loss of the trail of the expedition no great matter. The
+woods were full of game, the waters of fish; he and Juba had only to
+keep their faces to the eastward, and a fortnight at most would bring
+them to the settlements. But the valleys folded among the hills were
+many; what if the one he sought should still elude him? What if the
+cabin, the sugar-tree, the crystal stream, had sunk from sight, like
+the city in one of Monsieur Gralland’s fantastic tales? Perhaps they
+had done so,--the spot had all the air of a bit of fairyland,--and the
+woodland maid was gone to walk with the elves. Well, perchance for
+her it would be better so. And yet it would be pleasant if she should
+climb the hillside now and sit beside him, with her shy dark eyes and
+floating hair. Her hair was long and fine, and the wind would lift it;
+her face was fair, and another than the wind should kiss it. The night
+would not then be so slow in going.
+
+He turned upon his side, and looked along the grassy summit to the
+woods upon the opposite slope and to the distant mountains. Dull
+silver, immutable, perpetual, they reared themselves to meet the
+moonbeams. Between him and those stern and changeless fronts, pallid as
+with snows, stretched the gray woods. The moon shone very brightly, and
+there was no wind. So unearthly was the quiet of the night, so solemn
+the light, so high and still and calm the universe around him, that awe
+fell upon his soul. It was well to lie upon the hilltop and guess at
+the riddle of the world; now dimly to see the meaning, now to lose it
+quite, to wonder, to think of death. The easy consciousness that for
+him death was scores of years away, that he should not meet the spectre
+until the wine was all drunken, the garlands withered, and he, the
+guest, ready to depart, made these speculations not at all unpleasing.
+He looked at his hand, blanched by the moonlight, lying beside him upon
+the grass, and thought how like a dead hand it seemed, and what if he
+could not move it, nor his body, nor could ever rise from the grass,
+but must lie there upon the lonely hilltop in the untrodden wilderness,
+until that which had ridden and hunted and passed so buoyantly through
+life should become but a few dry bones, a handful of dust. He was of
+his time, and its laxness of principle and conduct; if he held within
+himself the potential scholar, statesman, and philosopher, there were
+also the skeptic, the egotist, and the libertine. He followed the
+fashion and disbelieved much, but he knew that if he died to-night
+his soul would not stay with his body upon the hilltop. He wondered,
+somewhat grimly, what it would do when so much that had clothed it
+round--pride of life, love of pleasure, desire, ambition--should
+be plucked away. Poor soul! Surely it would feel itself something
+shrunken, stripped of warmth, shiveringly bare to all the winds of
+heaven. The radiance of the moon usurped the sky, but behind that veil
+of light the invisible and multitudinous stars were shining. Beyond
+those stars were other stars, beyond those yet others; on and on went
+the stars, wise men said. Beyond them all, what then? And where was the
+place of the soul? What would it do? What heaven or hell would it find
+or make for itself? Guesswork all!
+
+The silver pomp of the night began to be oppressive to him. There was
+beauty, but it was a beauty cold and distant, infinitely withdrawn
+from man and his concerns. Woods and mountains held aloof, communing
+with the stars. They were kindred and of one house; it was man who
+was alien, a stranger and alone. The hilltop cared not that he lay
+thereon; the grass would grow as greenly when he was in his grave; all
+his tragedies since time began he might reenact there below, and the
+mountains would not bend to look.
+
+He flung his arm across his eyes to shut out the moonlight, and tried
+to sleep. Finding the attempt a vain one, and that the night pressed
+more and more heavily upon him, he sat up with the intention of shaking
+the negro awake, and so providing himself with other company than his
+own thoughts.
+
+His eyes had been upon the mountains, but now, with the sudden
+movement, he faced the eastern horizon and a long cleft between the
+hills. Far down this opening something was on fire, burning fiercely
+and redly. Some one must have put torch to the forest; and yet it did
+not burn as trees burn. It was like a bonfire ... it was a bonfire in a
+clearing! There were not woods about it, but a field--and the glint of
+water--
+
+The negro, awakened by foot and voice, sprang up, and stood bewildered
+beside his master. “It is the valley that we have been seeking, Juba,”
+said the latter, speaking rapidly and low. “That burning pile is the
+cabin, and ’t is like that there are Indians between us and it! Leave
+the horses; we shall go faster without them. Look to the priming of
+your gun, and make no noise. Now!”
+
+Rapidly descending the hill, they threw themselves into the woods at
+its base. Here they could not see the fire, but now and then, as they
+ran, they caught the glow, far down the lines of trees. Though they
+went swiftly they went warily as well, keeping an eye and ear open
+and muskets ready. But there was no sound other than their own quick
+footfalls upon the floor of rotting leaves, or the eager brushing of
+their bodies through occasional undergrowth; no sight but the serried
+trees and the checkered light and shade upon the ground.
+
+They came to the shallow stream that flashed through the valley, and
+crossing it found themselves on cleared ground, with only a long strip
+of corn between them and what had been a home for English folk. It was
+that no longer: for lack of fuel the flames were dying down; there was
+only a charred and smoking pile, out of which leaped here and there a
+red tongue.
+
+Haward had expected to hear a noise of savage triumph, and to see dark
+figures moving about their handiwork. There was no noise, and the
+moonlight showed no living being. The night was changelessly still and
+bright; the tragedy had been played, and the mountains and the hills
+and the running water had not looked.
+
+It took but a few minutes to break through the rustling corn and reach
+the smouldering logs. Once before them, there seemed naught to do but
+to stand and stare at the ruin, until a tongue of flame caught upon a
+piece of uncharred wood, and showed them the body of the pioneer lying
+at a little distance from the stone that had formed his doorstep. At a
+sign from Haward the negro went and turned it over, then, let it sink
+again into the seared grass. “Two arrows, Marse Duke,” he said, coming
+back to the other’s side. “An’ they’ve taken his scalp.”
+
+Three times Haward made the round of the yet burning heap. Was it only
+ruined and fallen walls, or was it a funeral pyre as well? To know, he
+must wait for the day and until the fire had burned itself out. If the
+former were the case, if the dead man alone kept the valley, then now,
+through the forest and the moonlight, captives were being haled to some
+Indian village, and to a fate more terrible than that of the man who
+lay there upon the grass with an arrow through his heart.
+
+If the girl were still alive, yet was she dead to him. He was no
+Quixote to tilt with windmills. Had a way to rescue her lain fair
+before him, he would have risked his life without a thought. But the
+woods were deep and pathless, and only an Indian could find and keep a
+trail by night. To challenge the wilderness; to strike blindly at the
+forest, now here, now there; to dare all, and know that it was hopeless
+daring,--a madman might do this for love. But it was only Haward’s
+fancy that had been touched, and if he lacked not courage, neither did
+he lack a certain cool good sense which divided for him the possible
+from that which was impossible, and therefore not to be undertaken.
+
+Turning from the ruin, he walked across the trampled sward to the
+sugar-tree in whose shade, in the golden afternoon, he had sung to his
+companions and to a simple girl. Idle and happy and far from harm had
+the valley seemed.
+
+         “Here shall he see
+          No enemy
+    But winter and rough weather.”
+
+Suddenly he found that he was trembling, and that a sensation of
+faintness and of dull and sick revolt against all things under the
+stars was upon him. Sitting down in the shadow of the tree, he rested
+his face in his hands and shut his eyes, preferring the darkness within
+to that outer night which hid not and cared not, which was so coldly at
+peace. He was young, and though stories of such dismal things as that
+before him were part of the stock in trade of every ancient, garrulous
+man or woman of his acquaintance, they had been for him but tales; not
+horrible truths to stare him in the face. He had seen his father die;
+but he had died, in his bed, and like one who went to sleep.
+
+The negro had followed him, and now stood with his eyes upon the
+dying flames, muttering to himself some heathenish charm. When it was
+ended, he looked about him uneasily for a time; then bent and plucked
+his master by the sleeve. “We cyarn’ do nothin’ here, Marse Duke,” he
+whispered. “An’ the wolves may get the horses.”
+
+With a laugh and a groan, the young man rose to his feet. “That is
+true, Juba,” he said. “It’s all over here,--we were too late. And it’s
+not a pleasant place to lie awake in, waiting for the morning. We’ll go
+back to the hilltop.”
+
+Leaving the tree, they struck across the grass and entered the strip
+of corn. Something low and dark that had lain upon the ground started
+up before them, and ran down the narrow way between the stalks. Haward
+made after it and caught it.
+
+“Child!” he cried. “Where are the others?”
+
+The child had struggled for a moment, desperately if weakly, but at the
+sound of his voice she lay still in his grasp, with her eyes upon his
+face. In the moonlight each could see the other quite plainly. Raising
+her in his arms, Haward bore her to the brink of the stream, laved her
+face and chafed the small, cold hands.
+
+“Now tell me, Audrey,” he said at last. “Audrey is your name, isn’t it?
+Cry, if you like, child, but try to tell me.”
+
+Audrey did not cry. She was very, very tired, and she wanted to go to
+sleep. “The Indians came,” she told him in a whisper, with her head
+upon his breast. “We all waked up, and father fired at them through the
+hole in the door. Then they broke the door down, and he went outside,
+and they killed him. Mother put me under the bed, and told me to stay
+there, and to make no noise. Then the Indians came in at the door,
+and killed her and Molly and Robin. I don’t remember anything after
+that,--maybe I went to sleep. When I was awake again the Indians were
+gone, but there was fire and smoke everywhere. I was afraid of the
+fire, and so I crept from under the bed, and kissed mother and Molly
+and Robin, and left them lying in the cabin, and came away.”
+
+She sighed with weariness, and the hand with which she put back her
+dark hair that had fallen over her face was almost too heavy to lift.
+“I sat beside father and watched the fire,” she said. “And then I heard
+you and the black man coming over the stones in the stream. I thought
+that you were Indians, and I went and hid in the corn.”
+
+Her voice failed, and her eyelids drooped. In some anxiety Haward
+watched her breathing and felt for the pulse in the slight brown wrist;
+then, satisfied, he lifted the light burden, and, nodding to the negro
+to go before, recommenced his progress to the hill which he had left an
+hour agone.
+
+It was not far away. He could see the bare summit above the treetops,
+and in a little while they were upon its slope. A minute more and they
+came to the clump of trees, and found the horses in safety, Haward
+paused to take from the roll strapped behind his saddle a riding cloak;
+then, leaving the negro with the horses, climbed to the grassy level.
+Here he spread the cloak upon the ground, and laid the sleeping child
+upon it, which done, he stood and looked at his new-found charge for a
+moment; then turning, began to pace up and down upon the hilltop.
+
+It was necessary to decide upon a course of action. They had the
+horses, the two muskets, powder and shot. The earth was dry and warm,
+and the skies were cloudless. Was it best to push on to Germanna, or
+was it best to wait down there in the valley for the return of the
+Governor and his party? They would come that way, that was certain, and
+would look to find him there. If they found only the ruined cabin, they
+might think him dead or taken by the Indians, and an attempt to seek
+him, as dangerous, perhaps, as fruitless, might be made. He decided
+that he would wait. To-morrow he would take Juba and the horses and the
+child and go down into the valley; not back to the sugar-tree and that
+yet smouldering pyre, but to the woods on this side of the stream.
+
+This plan thought out, he went; and took his seat beside the child. She
+was moaning in her sleep, and he bent over and soothed her. When she
+was quiet he still kept her hand in his, as he sat there waiting for
+the dawn. He gave the child small thought. Together he and Juba must
+care for her until they could rejoin the expedition: then the Governor,
+who was so fond of children, might take her in hand, and give her for
+nurse old Dominick, who was as gentle as a woman. Once at Germanna
+perhaps some scolding _Hausfrau_ would take her, for the sake of the
+scrubbing and lifting to be gotten out of those small hands and that
+slender frame. If not, she must on to Williamsburgh and the keeping of
+the vestry there. The next Orphan Court would bind her to some master
+or mistress who might (or might not) be kind to her, and so there would
+be an end to the matter.
+
+The day was breaking. Moon and stars were gone, and the east was dull
+pink, like faded roses. A ribbon of silver mist, marking the course of
+the stream below, drew itself like a serpent through the woods that
+were changing from gray to green. The dank smell of early morning rose
+from the dew-drenched earth, and in the countless trees of the forest
+the birds began to sing.
+
+A word or phrase which is as common and familiar as our hand may, in
+some one minute of time, take on a significance and present a face so
+keen and strange that it is as if we had never met it before. An Orphan
+Court! Again he said the words to himself, and then aloud. No doubt
+the law did its best for the fatherless and motherless, for such waifs
+and strays as that which lay beside him. When it bound out children,
+it was most emphatic that they should be fed and clothed and taught;
+not starved or beaten unduly, or let to grow up ignorant as negroes.
+Sometimes the law was obeyed, sometimes not.
+
+The roses in the east bloomed again, and the pink of their petals
+melted into the clear blue of the upper skies. Because their beauty
+compelled him Haward looked at the heavens. The Court of the Orphan!...
+_When my father and my mother forsake, me, the Lord taketh me up_.
+Haward acknowledged with surprise that portions of the Psalter did
+somehow stick in the memory.
+
+The face of the child was dark and thin, but the eyes were large and
+there was promise in the mouth. It was a pity--
+
+He looked at her again, and suddenly resolved that he, Marmaduke
+Haward, would provide for her future. When they met once more, he
+should tell the Governor and his brother adventurers as much; and if
+they chose to laugh, why, let them do so! He would take the child to
+Williamsburgh with him, and get some woman to tend her until he could
+find kind and decent folk with whom to bestow her. There were the new
+minister of Fair View parish and his wife,--they might do. He would
+give them two thousand pounds of sweet-scented a year for the child’s
+maintenance. Oh, she should be well cared for! He would--if he thought
+of it--send her gifts from London; and when she was grown, and asked in
+marriage, he would give her for dowry a hundred acres of land.
+
+As the strengthening rays of the sun, shining alike upon the just
+and the unjust, warmed his body, so his own benevolence warmed his
+heart. He knew that he was doing a generous thing, and his soul felt
+in tune with the beamy light, the caroling of the birds, the freshness
+and fragrance of the morning. When at last the child awoke, and, the
+recollection of the night coming full upon her, clung to him, weeping
+and trembling, he put his arm around her and comforted her with all the
+pet names his memory could conjure up.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DARDEN’S AUDREY
+
+
+It was May Day in Virginia, in the year 1727. In England there were
+George the First, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, and
+Ireland King and Defender of the Faith; my Lord of Orkney, Governor
+in chief of Virginia; and William Gooch, newly appointed Lieutenant
+Governor. In Virginia there were Colonel Robert Carter, President of
+the Council and Governor _pro tem._; the Council itself; and Mistress
+Martha Jaquelin.
+
+By virtue of her good looks and sprightliness, the position of her
+father in the community, and the fact that this 1st of May was one and
+the same with her sixteenth birthday, young Mistress Jaquelin was May
+Queen in Jamestown. And because her father was a worthy gentleman and
+a gay one, with French blood in his veins and Virginia hospitality in
+his heart, he had made a feast for divers of his acquaintances, and,
+moreover, had provided, in a grassy meadow down by the water side, a
+noble and seasonable entertainment for them, and for the handful of
+townsfolk, and for all chance comers.
+
+Meadow and woodland and marsh, ploughed earth and blossoming orchards,
+lay warm in the sunshine. Even the ruined town, fallen from her estate,
+and become but as a handmaid to her younger sister, put a good face
+upon her melancholy fortunes. Honeysuckle and ivy embraced and hid
+crumbling walls, broken foundations, mounds of brick and rubbish, all
+the untouched memorials of the last burning of the place. Grass grew
+in the street, and the silent square was strewn with the gold of the
+buttercups. The houses that yet stood and were lived in might have been
+counted on the fingers of one hand, with the thumb for the church.
+But in their gardens the flowers bloomed gayly, and the sycamores and
+mulberries in the churchyard were haunts of song. The dead below had
+music, and violets in the blowing grass, and the undertone of the
+river. Perhaps they liked the peace of the town that was dead as they
+were dead; that, like them, had seen of the travail of life, and now,
+with shut eyes and folded hands, knew that it was vanity.
+
+But the Jaquelin house was built to the eastward of the churchyard and
+the ruins of the town, and, facing the sparkling river, squarely turned
+its back upon the quiet desolation at the upper end of the island and
+upon the text from Ecclesiastes.
+
+In the level meadow, around a Maypole gay with garlands and with
+fluttering ribbons, the grass had been closely mown, for there were
+to be foot-races and wrestling bouts for the amusement of the guests.
+Beneath a spreading tree a dozen fiddlers put their instruments in
+tune, while behind the open windows of a small, ruinous house, dwelt in
+by the sexton, a rustic choir was trying over “The Beggar’s Daughter of
+Bednall Green.” Young men and maidens of the meaner sort, drawn from
+the surrounding country, from small plantation, store and ordinary,
+mill and ferry, clad in their holiday best and prone to laughter,
+strayed here and there, or, walking up and down the river bank, where
+it commanded a view of both the landing and the road, watched for the
+coming of the gentlefolk. Children, too, were not lacking, but rolled
+amidst the buttercups or caught at the ribbons flying from the Maypole,
+while aged folk sat in the sun, and a procession of wide-lipped
+negroes, carrying benches and chairs, advanced to the shaven green and
+put the seats in order about the sylvan stage. It was but nine of the
+clock, and the shadow of the Maypole was long upon the grass. Along the
+slightly rising ground behind the meadow stretched an apple orchard in
+full bloom, and between that line of rose and snow and the lapping of
+the tide upon the yellow sands lay, for the length of a spring day, the
+kingdom of all content.
+
+The shadow of the Maypole was not much shrunken when the guests of the
+house of Jaquelin began to arrive. First to come, and from farthest
+away, was Mr. Richard Ambler, of Yorktown, who had ridden from that
+place to Williamsburgh the afternoon before, and had that morning
+used the planter’s pace to Jamestown,--his industry being due to the
+fact that he was courting the May Queen’s elder sister. Following
+him came five Lees in a chariot, then a delegation of Burwells, then
+two Digges in a chaise. A Bland and a Bassett and a Randolph came on
+horseback, while a barge brought up river a bevy of blooming Carters, a
+white-sailed sloop from Warwick landed a dozen Carys, great and small,
+and two periaguas, filled with Harrisons, Aliens, and Cockes, shot over
+from the Surrey shore.
+
+From a stand at one end of the grassy stage, trumpet and drum
+proclaimed that the company had gathered beneath the sycamores before
+the house, and was about to enter the meadow. Shrill-voiced mothers
+warned their children from the Maypole, the fiddlers ceased their
+twanging, and Pretty Bessee, her name cut in twain, died upon the air.
+The throng of humble folk--largely made up of contestants for the
+prizes of the day, and of their friends and kindred--scurried to its
+appointed place, and with the issuing from the house gates of the May
+Queen and her court the festivities commenced.
+
+An hour later, in the midst of a bout at quarterstaff between the
+Jamestown blacksmith and the miller from Princess Creek, a coach and
+four, accompanied by a horseman, crossed the neck, rolled through the
+street, and, entering the meadow, drew up a hundred feet from the ring
+of spectators.
+
+The eyes of the commonalty still hung upon every motion of the
+blacksmith and the miller, but by the people of quality the cudgelers
+were for the moment quite forgot. The head of the house of Jaquelin
+hurried over the grass to the coach door. “Ha, Colonel Byrd! When we
+heard that you were staying overnight at Green Spring, we hoped that,
+being so near, you would come to our merrymaking. Mistress Evelyn, I
+kiss your hands. Though we can’t give you the diversions of Spring
+Garden, yet such as we have are at your feet. Mr. Marmaduke Haward,
+your servant, sir! Virginia has missed you these ten years and more.
+We were heartily glad to hear, t’other day, that the Golden Rose had
+brought you home.”
+
+As he spoke the worthy gentleman strove to open the coach door; but the
+horseman, to whom the latter part of his speech was addressed, and who
+had now dismounted, was beforehand with him. The door swung open, and a
+young lady, of a delicate and pensive beauty, placed one hand upon the
+deferential arm of Mr. Marmaduke Haward and descended from the painted
+coach to the flower-enameled sward. The women amongst the assembled
+guests fluttered and whispered; for this was youth, beauty, wealth,
+London, and the Court, all drawn in the person of Mistress Evelyn Byrd,
+bred since childhood in the politest society of England, newly returned
+with her father to his estate of Westover in Virginia, and, from her
+garlanded gypsy hat to the point of her silken shoe, suggestive of the
+rainbow world of _mode_.
+
+Her father--alert, vivacious, handsome, with finely cut lips that
+were quick to smile, and dark eyes that smiled when the lips were
+still--followed her to the earth, shook out his ruffles, and extended
+his gold snuffbox to his good friend Mr. Jaquelin. The gentleman who
+had ridden beside the coach threw the reins of his horse to one of the
+negroes who had come running from the Jaquelin stables, and, together
+with their host, the three walked across the strip of grass to the row
+of expectant gentry. Down went the town-bred lady until the skirt of
+her blue-green gown lay in folds upon the buttercups; down went the
+ladies opposite in curtsies as profound, if less exquisitely graceful.
+Off came the hats of the gentlemen; the bows were of the lowest;
+snuffboxes were drawn out, handkerchiefs of fine holland flourished;
+the welcoming speeches were hearty and not unpolished.
+
+It was a society less provincial than that of more than one shire that
+was nearer to London by a thousand leagues. It dwelt upon the banks
+of the Chesapeake and of great rivers; ships dropped their anchors
+before its very doors. Now and again the planter followed his tobacco
+aboard. The sands did not then run so swiftly through the hourglass;
+if the voyage to England was long, why, so was life! The planters
+went, sold their tobacco,--Sweet-scented, E. Dees, Oronoko, Cowpen,
+Non-burning,--talked with their agents, visited their English kindred;
+saw the town, the opera, and the play,--perhaps, afar off, the King;
+and returned to Virginia and their plantations with the last but one
+novelty in ideas, manner, and dress. Of their sons not a few were
+educated in English schools, while their wives and daughters, if for
+the most part they saw the enchanted ground only through the eyes of
+husband, father, or brother, yet followed its fashions, when learned,
+with religious zeal. In Williamsburgh, where all men went on occasion,
+there was polite enough living: there were the college, the Capitol,
+and the playhouse; the palace was a toy St. James; the Governors that
+came and went almost as proper gentlemen, fitted to rule over English
+people, as if they had been born in Hanover and could not speak their
+subjects’ tongue.
+
+So it was that the assembly which had risen to greet Mr. Jaquelin’s
+latest guests, besides being sufficiently well born, was not at all
+ill bred, nor uninformed, nor untraveled. But it was not of the gay
+world as were the three whom it welcomed. It had spent only months, not
+years, in England; it had never kissed the King’s hand; it did not know
+Bath nor the Wells; it was innocent of drums and routs and masquerades;
+had not even a speaking acquaintance with great lords and ladies; had
+never supped with Pope, or been grimly smiled upon by the Dean of St.
+Patrick’s, or courted by the Earl of Peterborough. It had not, like the
+elder of the two men, studied in the Low Countries, visited the Court
+of France, and contracted friendships with men of illustrious names;
+nor, like the younger, had it written a play that ran for two weeks,
+fought a duel in the Field of Forty Footsteps, and lost and won at the
+Cocoa Tree, between the lighting and snuffing of the candles, three
+thousand pounds.
+
+Therefore it stood slightly in awe of the wit and manners and fine
+feathers, curled newest fashion, of its sometime friends and neighbors,
+and its welcome, if warm at heart, was stiff as cloth of gold with
+ceremony. The May Queen tripped in her speech as she besought Mistress
+Evelyn to take the flower-wreathed great chair standing proudly forth
+from the humbler seats, and colored charmingly at the lady of fashion’s
+smiling shake of the head and few graceful words of homage. The young
+men slyly noted the length of the Colonel’s periwig and the quality of
+Mr. Hayward’s Mechlin, while their elders, suddenly lacking material
+for discourse, made shift to take a deal of snuff. The Colonel took
+matters into his own capable hands.
+
+“Mr. Jaquelin, I wish that my tobacco at Westover may look as finely
+a fortnight hence as does yours to-day! There promise to be more
+Frenchmen in my fields than Germans at St. James. Mr. Gary, if I
+come to Denbigh when the peaches are ripe, will you teach me to make
+persico? Mr. Allen, I hear that you breed cocks as courageous as those
+of Tanagra. I shall borrow from you for a fight that I mean to give.
+Ladies, for how much gold will you sell the recipe for that balm of
+Mecca you must use? There are dames at Court would come barefoot to
+Virginia for so dazzling a bloom. Why do you patch only upon the Whig
+side of the face? Are you all of one camp, and does not one of you grow
+a white rosebush against the 29th of May? May it please your Majesty
+the May Queen, I shall watch the sports from this seat upon your right
+hand. Egad, the miller quits himself as though he were the moss-grown
+fellow of Sherwood Forest!”
+
+The ice had thawed; and by the time the victorious miller had
+been pushed forward to receive the smart cocked hat which was the
+Virginia rendition of the crown of wild olive, it had quite melted.
+Conversation became general, and food was found or made for laughter.
+When the twelve fiddlers who succeeded the blacksmith and the miller
+came trooping upon the green, they played, one by one, to perhaps as
+light-hearted a company as a May Day ever shone upon. All their tunes
+were gay and lively ones, and the younger men moved their feet to the
+music, while a Strephon at the lower end of the lists seized upon a
+blooming Chloe, and the two began to dance “as if,” quoth the Colonel,
+“the musicians were so many tarantula doctors.”
+
+A flower-wreathed instrument of his calling went to the player of the
+sprightliest air; after which awardment, the fiddlers, each to the tune
+of his own choosing, marched off the green to make room for Pretty
+Bessee, her father the beggar, and her suitors the innkeeper, the
+merchant, the gentleman, and the knight.
+
+The high, quick notes of the song suited the sunshiny weather, the
+sheen of the river, the azure skies. A light wind brought from the
+orchard a vagrant troop of pink and white petals to camp upon the
+silken sleeve of Mistress Evelyn Byrd. The gentleman sitting beside her
+gathered them up and gave them again to the breeze.
+
+“It sounds sweetly enough,” he said, “but terribly old-fashioned:--
+
+    ‘I weigh not true love by the weight of the purse,
+        And beauty is beauty in every degree.’
+
+That’s not Court doctrine.”
+
+The lady to whom he spoke rested her cheek upon her hand, and looked
+past the singers to the blossoming slope and the sky above. “So much
+the worse for the Court,” she said. “So much the better for”--
+
+Haward glanced at her. “For Virginia?” he ended, with a smile. “Do you
+think that they do not weigh love with gold here in Virginia, Evelyn?
+It isn’t really Arcady.”
+
+“So much the better for some place, somewhere,” she answered quietly.
+“I did not say Virginia. Indeed, from what travelers like yourself have
+told me, I think the country lies not upon this earth. But the story is
+at an end, and we must applaud with the rest. It sounded sweetly, after
+all,--though it was only a lying song. What next?”
+
+Her father, from his station beside the May Queen, caught the question,
+and broke the flow of his smiling compliments to answer it. “A race
+between young girls, my love,--the lucky fair who proves her descent
+from Atalanta to find, not a golden apple, but a golden guinea. Here
+come from the sexton’s house the pretty light o’ heels!”
+
+The crowd, gentle and simple, arose, and pushed back all benches,
+stools, and chairs, so as to enlarge the circumference of the ring, and
+the six girls who were to run stepped out upon the green. The youngest
+son of the house of Jaquelin checked them off in a shrill treble:--
+
+“The blacksmith’s Meg--Mall and Jenny from the crossroads ordinary--the
+Widow Constance’s Barbara--red-headed Bess--Parson Darden’s Audrey!”
+
+A tall, thin, grave gentleman, standing behind Haward, gave an
+impatient jerk of his body and said something beneath his breath.
+Haward looked over his shoulder. “Ha, Mr. Le Neve! I did not know you
+were there. I had the pleasure of hearing you read at Williamsburgh
+last Sunday afternoon,--though this is your parish, I believe? What was
+that last name that the youngster cried? I failed to catch it.”
+
+“Audrey, sir,” answered the minister of James City parish; “Gideon
+Darden’s Audrey. You can’t but have heard of Darden? A minister of the
+gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, sir; and a scandal, a shame, and a
+stumbling-block to the Church! A foul-mouthed, brawling, learned sot! A
+stranger to good works, but a frequenter of tippling houses! A brazen,
+dissembling, atheistical Demas, who will neither let go of the lusts
+of the flesh nor of his parish,--a sweet-scented parish, sir, with the
+best glebe in three counties! And he’s inducted, sir, inducted, which
+is more than most of the clergy of Virginia, who neither fight nor
+drink nor swear, can say for themselves!”
+
+The minister had lost his gravity, and spoke with warmth and
+bitterness. As he paused for breath, Mistress Evelyn took her eyes from
+the group of those about to run and opened her fan. “A careless father,
+at least,” she said. “If he hath learning, he should know better than
+to set his daughter there.”
+
+“She’s not his own, ma’am. She’s an orphan, bound to Darden and his
+wife, I suppose. There’s some story or other about her, but, not being
+curious in Mr. Darden’s affairs, I have never learned it. When I came
+to Virginia, five years ago, she was a slip of a girl of thirteen
+or so. Once, when I had occasion to visit Darden, she waylaid me in
+the road as I was riding away, and asked me how far it was to the
+mountains, and if there were Indians between them and us.”
+
+“Did she so?” asked Haward. “And which is--Audrey?”
+
+“The dark one--brown as a gypsy--with the dogwood in her hair. And mark
+me, there’ll be Darden’s own luck and she’ll win. She’s fleeter than
+a greyhound. I’ve seen her running in and out and to and fro in the
+forest like a wild thing.”
+
+Bare of foot and slender ankle, bare of arm and shoulder, with heaving
+bosom, shut lips, and steady eyes, each of the six runners awaited the
+trumpet sound that should send her forth like an arrow to the goal, and
+to the shining guinea that lay thereby. The spectators ceased to talk
+and laugh, and bent forward, watching. Wagers had been laid, and each
+man kept his eyes upon his favorite, measuring her chances. The trumpet
+blew, and the race was on.
+
+When it was over and won, the May Queen rose from her seat and crossed
+the grass to her fine lady guest. “There are left only the prizes for
+this and for the boys’ race and for the best dancer. Will you not give
+them, Mistress Evelyn, and so make them of more value?”
+
+More curtsying, more complimenting, and the gold was in Evelyn’s white
+hand. The trumpet blew, the drum beat, the fiddlers swung into a quick,
+staccato air, and Darden’s Audrey, leaving the post which she had
+touched some seconds in advance of the foremost of those with whom she
+had raced, came forward to receive the guinea.
+
+The straight, short skirt of dull blue linen could not hide the lines
+of the young limbs; beneath the thin, white, sleeveless bodice showed
+the tint of the flesh, the rise and fall of the bosom. The bare feet
+trod the grass lightly and firmly; the brown eyes looked from under the
+dogwood chaplet in a gaze that was serious, innocent, and unashamed. To
+Audrey they were only people out of a fairy tale,--all those gay folk,
+dressed in silks and with curled hair. They lived in “great houses,”
+and men and women were born to till their fields, to row their boats,
+to doff hats or curtsy as they passed. They were not real; if you
+pricked them they would not bleed. In the mountains that she remembered
+as a dream there were pale masses of bloom far up among the cliffs;
+very beautiful, but no more to be gained than the moon or than rainbow
+gold. She looked at the May party before which she had been called much
+as, when a child, she had looked at the gorgeous, distant bloom,--not
+without longing, perhaps, but indifferent, too, knowing that it was
+beyond her reach.
+
+When the gold piece was held out to her, she took it, having earned it;
+when the little speech with which the lady gave the guinea was ended,
+she was ready with her curtsy and her “Thank you, ma’am.” The red came
+into her cheeks because she was not used to so many eyes upon her, but
+she did not blush for her bare feet, nor for her dress that had slipped
+low over her shoulder, nor for the fact that she had run her swiftest
+five times around the Maypole, all for the love of a golden guinea, and
+for mere youth and pure-minded ignorance, and the springtime in the
+pulses.
+
+The gold piece lay within her brown fingers a thought too lightly, for
+as she stepped back from the row of gentlefolk it slid from her hand to
+the ground. A gentleman, sitting beside the lady who had spoken to her,
+stooped, and picking up the money gave it again into her hand. Though
+she curtsied to him, she did not look at him, but turned away, glad to
+be quit of all the eyes, and in a moment had slipped into the crowd
+from which she had come. It was midday, and old Israel, the fisherman,
+who had brought her and the Widow Constance’s Barbara up the river
+in his boat, would be going back with the tide. She was not loath to
+leave: the green meadow, the gaudy Maypole, and the music were good,
+but the silence on the river, the shadow of the brooding forest, the
+darting of the fish hawk, were better.
+
+In the meadow the boys’ race and the rustic dance were soon over. The
+dinner at the Jaquelin house to its guests lasted longer, but it too
+was hurried; for in the afternoon Mr. Harrison’s mare Nelly was to run
+against Major Burwell’s Fearnaught, and the stakes were heavy.
+
+Not all of the company went from the banquet back to the meadow, where
+the humbler folk, having eaten their dinner of bread and meat and
+ale, were whiling away with sports of their own the hour before the
+race. Colonel Byrd had business at Williamsburgh, and must reach his
+lodgings there an hour before sunset. His four black horses brought
+to the door the great vermilion-and-cream coach; an ebony coachman in
+scarlet cracked his whip at a couple of negro urchins who had kept
+pace with the vehicle as it lumbered from the stables, and a light
+brown footman flung open the door and lowered the steps. The Colonel,
+much regretting that occasion should call him away, vowed that he had
+never spent a pleasanter May Day, kissed the May Queen’s hand, and was
+prodigal of well-turned compliments, like the gay and gallant gentleman
+that he was. His daughter made her graceful adieux in her clear, low,
+and singularly sweet voice, and together they were swallowed up of
+the mammoth coach. Mr. Haward took snuff with Mr. Jaquelin; then,
+mounting his horse,--it was supposed that he too had business in
+Williamsburgh,--raised his hat and bade farewell to the company with
+one low and comprehensive bow.
+
+The equipage made a wide turn; the ladies and gentlemen upon the
+Jaquelin porch fluttered fans and handkerchiefs; the Colonel, leaning
+from the coach window, waved his hand; and the horseman lifted his hat
+the second time. The very especial guests were gone; and though the
+remainder of the afternoon was as merry as heart could wish, yet a
+bouquet, a flavor, a tang of the Court and the great world, a breath of
+air that was not colonial, had gone with them. For a moment the women
+stood in a brown study, revolving in their minds Mistress Evelyn’s
+gypsy hat and the exceeding thinness and fineness of her tucker; while
+to each of the younger men came, linked to the memory of a charming
+face, a vision of many-acred Westover.
+
+But the trumpet blew, summoning them to the sport of the afternoon, and
+work stopped upon castles in Spain. When a horse-race was on, a meadow
+in Virginia sufficed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE ROAD TO WILLIAMSBURGH
+
+
+April had gone out in rain, and though the sun now shone brightly from
+a cloudless sky, the streams were swollen and the road was heavy.
+The ponderous coach and the four black horses made slow progress.
+The creeping pace, the languid warmth of the afternoon, the scent of
+flowering trees, the ceaseless singing of redbird, catbird, robin, and
+thrush, made it drowsy in the forest. In the midst of an agreeable
+dissertation upon May Day sports of more ancient times the Colonel
+paused to smother a yawn; and when he had done with the clown, the
+piper, and the hobby-horse, he yawned again, this time outright.
+
+“What with Ludwell’s Burgundy, piquet, and the French peace, we sat
+late last night. My eyes are as heavy as the road. Have you noticed,
+my dear, how bland and dreamy is the air? On such an afternoon one is
+content to be in Virginia, and out of the world. It is a very land of
+the Lotophagi,--a lazy clime that Ulysses touched at, my love.”
+
+The equipage slowly climbed an easy ascent, and as slowly descended
+to the level again. The road was narrow, and now and then a wild
+cherry-tree struck the coach with a white arm, or a grapevine swung
+through the window a fragrant trailer. The woods on either hand were
+pale green and silver gray, save where they were starred with dogwood,
+or where rose the pink mist of the Judas-tree. At the foot of the hill
+the road skirted a mantled pond, choked with broad green leaves and
+the half-submerged trunks of fallen trees. Upon these logs, basking in
+the sunlight, lay small tortoises by the score. A snake glided across
+the road in front of the horses, and from a bit of muddy ground rose a
+cloud of yellow butterflies.
+
+The Colonel yawned for the third time, looked at his watch, sighed,
+lifted his finely arched brows with a whimsical smile for his own
+somnolence; then, with an “I beg your pardon, my love,” took out a lace
+handkerchief, spread it over his face and head, and, crossing his legs,
+sunk back into the capacious corner of the coach. In three minutes the
+placid rise and fall of his ruffles bore witness that he slept.
+
+The horseman, who, riding beside the lowered glass, had at intervals
+conversed with the occupants of the coach, now glanced from the
+sleeping gentleman to the lady, in whose dark, almond-shaped eyes
+lurked no sign of drowsiness. The pond had been passed, and before
+them, between low banks crowned with ferns and overshadowed by
+beech-trees, lay a long stretch of shady road.
+
+Haward drew rein, dismounted, and motioned to the coachman to check the
+horses. When the coach had come to a standstill, he opened the door
+with as little creaking as might be, and held out a petitionary hand.
+“Will you not walk with me a little way, Evelyn?” he asked, speaking in
+a low voice that he might not wake the sleeper. “It is much pleasanter
+out here, with the birds and the flowers.”
+
+His eyes and the smile upon his lips added, “and with me.” From what he
+had been upon a hilltop, one moonlight night eleven years before, he
+had become a somewhat silent, handsome gentleman, composed in manner,
+experienced, not unkindly, looking abroad from his apportioned mountain
+crag and solitary fortress upon men, and the busy ways of men, with
+a tolerant gaze. That to certain of his London acquaintance he was
+simply the well-bred philosopher and man of letters; that in the minds
+of others he was associated with the peacock plumage of the world
+of fashion, with the flare of candles, the hot breath of gamesters,
+the ring of gold upon the tables; that one clique had tales to tell
+of a magnanimous spirit and a generous hand, while yet another grew
+red at mention of his name, and put to his credit much that was not
+creditable, was perhaps not strange. He, like his neighbors, had many
+selves, and each in its turn--the scholar, the man of pleasure, the
+indolent, kindly, reflective self, the self of pride and cool assurance
+and stubborn will--took its place behind the mask, and went through
+its allotted part. His self of all selves, the quiet, remote, crowned,
+and inscrutable _I_, sat apart, alike curious and indifferent, watched
+the others, and knew how little worth the while was the stir in the
+ant-hill.
+
+But on a May Day, in the sunshine and the blossoming woods and the
+company of Mistress Evelyn Byrd, it seemed, for the moment, worth the
+while. At his invitation she had taken his hand and descended from
+the coach. The great, painted thing moved slowly forward, bearing the
+unconscious Colonel, and the two pedestrians walked behind it: he with
+his horse’s reins over his arm and his hat in his hand; she lifting her
+silken skirts from contact with the ground, and looking, not at her
+companion, but at the greening boughs, and at the sunlight striking
+upon smooth, pale beech trunks and the leaf-strewn earth beneath. Out
+of the woods came a sudden medley of bird notes, clear, sweet, and
+inexpressibly joyous.
+
+“That is a mockingbird,” said Haward. “I once heard one of a moonlight
+night, beside a still water”--
+
+He broke off, and they listened in silence. The bird flew away, and
+they came to a brook traversing the road, and flowing in wide meanders
+through the forest. There were stepping-stones, and Haward, crossing
+first, turned and held out his hand to the lady. When she was upon his
+side of the streamlet, and before he released the slender fingers, he
+bent and kissed them; then, as there was no answering smile or blush,
+but only a quiet withdrawal of the hand and a remark about the crystal
+clearness of the brook, looked at her, with interrogation in his smile.
+
+“What is that crested bird upon yonder bough,” she asked,--“the one
+that gave the piercing cry?”
+
+“A kingfisher,” he answered, “and cousin to the halcyon of the
+ancients. If, when next you go to sea, you take its feathers with you,
+you need have no fear of storms.”
+
+A tree, leafless, but purplish pink with bloom, leaned from the
+bank above them. He broke a branch and gave it to her. “It is the
+Judas-tree,” he told her. “Iscariot hanged himself thereon.”
+
+Around the trunk of a beech a lizard ran like a green flame, and they
+heard the distant barking of a fox. Large white butterflies went past
+them, and a hummingbird whirred into the heart of a wild honeysuckle
+that had hasted to bloom. “How different from the English forests!” she
+said. “I could love these best. What are all those broad-leaved plants
+with the white, waxen flowers?”
+
+“May-apples. Some call them mandrakes, but they do not rise shrieking,
+nor kill the wight that plucks them. Will you have me gather them for
+you?”
+
+“I will not trouble you,” she answered, and presently turned aside to
+pull them for herself.
+
+He looked at the graceful, bending figure and lifted his brows; then,
+quickening his pace until he was up with the coach, he spoke to the
+negro upon the box. “Tyre, drive on to that big pine, and wait there
+for your mistress and me. Sidon,”--to the footman,--“get down and take
+my horse. If your master wakes, tell him that Mistress Evelyn tired of
+the coach, and that I am picking her a nosegay.”
+
+Tyre and Sidon, Haward’s steed, the four black coach horses, the
+vermilion-and-cream coach, and the slumbering Colonel, all made a
+progress of an hundred yards to the pine-tree, where the cortége came
+to a halt. Mistress Evelyn looked up from the flower-gathering to find
+the road bare before her, and Haward, sitting upon a log, watching her
+with something between a smile and a frown.
+
+“You think that I, also, weigh true love by the weight of the purse,”
+he said. “I do not care overmuch for your gold, Evelyn.”
+
+She did not answer at once, but stood with her head slightly bent,
+fingering the waxen flowers with a delicate, lingering touch. Now that
+there was no longer the noise of the wheels and the horses’ hoofs,
+the forest stillness, which is composed of sound, made itself felt.
+The call of birds, the whir of insects, the murmur of the wind in the
+treetops, low, grave, incessant, and eternal as the sound of the sea,
+joined themselves to the slow waves of fragrance, the stretch of road
+whereon nothing moved, the sunlight lying on the earth, and made a
+spacious quiet.
+
+“I think that there is nothing for which you care overmuch,” she said
+at last. “Not for gold or the lack of it, not for friends or for
+enemies, not even for yourself.”
+
+“I have known you for many years,” he answered. “I have watched you
+grow from a child into a gracious and beautiful woman. Do you not think
+that I care for you, Evelyn?”
+
+Near where he sat so many violets were blooming that they made a purple
+carpet for the ground. Going over to them, she knelt and began to
+pluck them. “If any danger threatened me,” she began, in her clear,
+low voice, “I believe that you would step between me and it, though
+at the peril of your life. I believe that you take some pleasure in
+what you are pleased to style my beauty, some pride in a mind that you
+have largely formed. If I died early, it would grieve you for a little
+while. I call you my friend.”
+
+“I would be called your lover,” he said.
+
+She laid her fan upon the ground, heaped it with violets, and turned
+again to her reaping. “How might that be,” she asked, “when you do
+not love me? I knew that you would marry me. What do the French call
+it,--_mariage de convenance_?”
+
+Her voice was even, and her head was bent so that he could not see
+her face. In the pause that followed her words treetop whispered to
+treetop, but the sunshine lay very still and bright upon the road and
+upon the flowers by the wayside.
+
+“There are worse marriages,” Haward said at last. Rising from the log,
+he moved to the side of the kneeling figure. “Let the violets rest,
+Evelyn, while we reason together. You are too clear-eyed. Since they
+offend you, I will drop the idle compliments, the pretty phrases, in
+which neither of us believes. What if this tinted dream of love does
+not exist for us? What if we are only friends--dear and old friends”--
+
+He stooped, and, taking her by the busy hands, made her stand up
+beside him. “Cannot we marry and still be friends?” he demanded, with
+something like laughter in his eyes. “My dear, I would strive to make
+you happy; and happiness is as often found in that temperate land where
+we would dwell as in Love’s flaming climate.” He smiled and tried to
+find her eyes, downcast and hidden in the shadow of her hat. “This is
+no flowery wooing such as women love,” he said; “but then you are like
+no other woman. Always the truth was best with you.”
+
+Upon her wrenching her hands from his, and suddenly and proudly raising
+her head, he was amazed to find her white to the lips.
+
+“The truth!” she said slowly. “Always the truth was best! Well, then,
+take the truth, and afterwards and forever and ever leave me alone!
+You have been frank; why should not I, who, you say, am like no other
+woman, be so, too? I will not marry you, because--because”--The crimson
+flowed over her face and neck; then ebbed, leaving her whiter than
+before. She put her hands, that still held the wild flowers, to her
+breast, and her eyes, dark with pain, met his. “Had you loved me,” she
+said proudly and quietly, “I had been happy.”
+
+[Illustration: “HAD YOU LOVED ME--I HAD BEEN HAPPY”]
+
+Haward stepped backwards until there lay between them a strip of sunny
+earth. The murmur of the wind went on and the birds were singing, and
+yet the forest seemed more quiet than death. “I could not guess,” he
+said, speaking slowly and with his eyes upon the ground. “I have spoken
+like a brute. I beg your pardon.”
+
+“You might have known! you might have guessed!” she cried, with
+passion. “But, you walk an even way; you choose nor high nor low; you
+look deep into your mind, but your heart you keep cool and vacant.
+Oh, a very temperate land! I think that others less wise than you may
+also be less blind. Never speak to me of this day! Let it die as these
+blooms are dying in this hot sunshine! Now let us walk to the coach and
+waken my father. I have gathered flowers enough.”
+
+Side by side, but without speaking, they moved from shadow to sunlight,
+and from sunlight to shadow, down the road to the great pine-tree. The
+white and purple flowers lay in her hand and along her bended arm; from
+the folds of her dress, of some rich and silken stuff, chameleon-like
+in its changing colors, breathed the subtle fragrance of the perfume
+then most in fashion; over the thin lawn that half revealed, half
+concealed neck and bosom was drawn a long and glossy curl, carefully
+let to escape from the waved and banded hair beneath the gypsy hat.
+Exquisite from head to foot, the figure had no place in the unpruned,
+untrained, savage, and primeval beauty of those woods. Smooth sward,
+with jets of water and carven nymphs embowered in clipped box or
+yew, should have been its setting, and not this wild and tangled
+growth, this license of bird and beast and growing things. And yet the
+incongruous riot, the contrast of profuse, untended beauty, enhanced
+the value of the picture, gave it piquancy and a completer charm.
+
+When they were within a few feet of the coach and horses and negroes,
+all drowsing in the sunny road, Haward made as if to speak, but she
+stopped him with her lifted hand. “Spare me,” she begged. “It is bad
+enough as it is, but words would make it worse. If ever a day might
+come--I do not think that I am unlovely; I even rate myself so highly
+as to think that I am worthy of your love. If ever the day shall come
+when you can say to me, ‘Now I see that love is no tinted dream; now
+I ask you to be my wife indeed,’ then, upon that day--But until then
+ask not of me what you asked back there among the violets. I, too, am
+proud”--Her voice broke.
+
+“Evelyn!” he cried. “Poor child--poor friend”--
+
+She turned her face upon him. “Don’t!” she said, and her lips were
+smiling, though her eyes were full of tears. “We have forgot that it
+is May Day, and that we must be light of heart. Look how white is that
+dogwood-tree! Break me a bough for my chimney-piece at Williamsburgh.”
+
+He brought her a branch of the starry blossoms. “Did you notice,” she
+asked, “that the girl who ran--Audrey--wore dogwood in her hair? You
+could see her heart beat with very love of living. She was of the
+woods, like a dryad. Had the prizes been of my choosing, she should
+have had a gift more poetical than a guinea.”
+
+Haward opened the coach door, and stood gravely aside while she entered
+the vehicle and took her seat, depositing her flowers upon the cushions
+beside her. The Colonel stirred, uncrossed his legs, yawned, pulled the
+handkerchief from his face, and opened his eyes.
+
+“Faith!” he exclaimed, straightening himself, and taking up his radiant
+humor where, upon falling-asleep, he had let it drop. “The way must
+have suddenly become smooth as a road in Venice, for I’ve felt no
+jolting this half hour. Flowers, Evelyn? and Haward afoot? You’ve been
+on a woodland saunter, then, while I enacted Solomon’s sluggard!”
+The worthy parent’s eyes began to twinkle. “What flowers did you
+find? They have strange blooms here, and yet I warrant that even in
+these woods one might come across London pride and none-so-pretty and
+forget-me-not”--
+
+His daughter smiled, and asked him some idle question about the
+May-apple and the Judas-tree. The master of Westover was a treasure
+house of sprightly lore. Within ten minutes he had visited Palestine,
+paid his compliments to the ancient herbalists, and landed again in his
+own coach, to find in his late audience a somewhat _distraite_ daughter
+and a friend in a brown study. The coach was lumbering on toward
+Williamsburgh, and Haward, with level gaze and hand closed tightly upon
+his horse’s reins, rode by the window, while the lady, sitting in her
+corner with downcast eyes, fingered the dogwood blooms that were not
+paler than her face.
+
+The Colonel’s wits were keen. One glance, a lift of his arched brows,
+the merest ghost of a smile, and, dragging the younger man with
+him, he plunged into politics. Invective against a refractory House
+of Burgesses brought them a quarter of a mile upon their way; the
+necessity for an act to encourage adventurers in iron works carried
+them past a milldam; and frauds in the customs enabled them to reach a
+crossroads ordinary, where the Colonel ordered a halt, and called for
+a tankard of ale. A slipshod, blue-eyed Cherry brought it, and spoke
+her thanks in broad Scotch for the shilling which the gay Colonel flung
+tinkling into the measure.
+
+That versatile and considerate gentleman, having had his draught, cried
+to the coachman to go on, and was beginning upon the question of the
+militia, when Haward, who had dismounted, appeared at the coach door.
+“I do not think that I will go on to Williamsburgh with you, sir,” he
+said. “There’s some troublesome business with my overseer that ought
+not to wait. If I take this road and the planter’s pace, I shall reach
+Fair View by sunset. You do not return to Westover this week? Then I
+shall see you at Williamsburgh within a day or two. Evelyn, good-day.”
+
+Her hand lay upon the cushion nearest him. He would have taken it in
+his own, as for years he had done when he bade her good-by; but though
+she smiled and gave him “Good-day” in her usual voice, she drew the
+hand away. The Colonel’s eyebrows went up another fraction of an inch,
+but he was a discreet gentleman who had bought experience. Skillfully
+unobservant, his parting words were at once cordial and few in number;
+and after Haward had mounted and had turned into the side road, he put
+his handsome, periwigged head out of the coach window and called to
+him some advice about the transplanting of tobacco. This done, and the
+horseman out of sight, and the coach once more upon its leisurely way
+to Williamsburgh, the model father pulled out of his pocket a small
+book, and, after affectionately advising his daughter to close her eyes
+and sleep out the miles to Williamsburgh, himself retired with Horace
+to the Sabine farm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE STOREKEEPER
+
+
+It was now late afternoon, the sun’s rays coming slantingly into the
+forest, and the warmth of the day past and gone. To Haward, riding at a
+gallop down the road that was scarce more than a bridle path, the rush
+of the cool air was grateful; the sharp striking of protruding twigs,
+the violent brushing aside of hanging vines, not unwelcome.
+
+It was of the man that the uppermost feeling in his mind was one of
+disgust at his late infelicity of speech, and at the blindness which
+had prompted it. That he had not divined, that he had been so dull as
+to assume that as he felt, or did not feel, so must she, annoyed him
+like the jar of rude noises or like sand blowing into face and eyes. It
+was of him, too, that the annoyance was purely with himself; for her,
+when at last he came to think of her, he found only the old, placid
+affection, as far removed from love as from hate. If he knew himself,
+it would always be as far removed from love as from hate.
+
+All the days of her youth he had come and gone, a welcome guest at
+her father’s house in London. He had grown to be her friend, watching
+the crescent beauty of face and mind with something of the pride and
+tenderness which a man might feel for a young and favorite sister; and
+then, at last, when some turn of affairs sent them all home to Virginia
+to take lot and part there, he had thought of marriage.
+
+His mind had turned, not unwillingly, from the town and its apples
+of Sodom to his Virginia plantation that he had not seen for more
+than ten years. It was his birthplace, and there he had spent his
+boyhood. Sometimes, in heated rooms, when the candles in the sconces
+were guttering down, and the dawn looked palely in upon gaming tables
+and heaped gold, and seamed faces, haggardly triumphant, haggardly
+despairing, determinedly indifferent, there had come to him visions of
+cool dawns upon the river, wide, misty expanses of marsh and forest,
+indistinct and cold and pure. The lonely “great house,” too,--the house
+which his father had built with so much love and pains, that his son
+and his son’s sons should have a worthy home,--appealed to him, and the
+garden, and the fishing-boats, and the old slaves in the quarters. He
+told himself that he was glad to go back.
+
+Had men called him ambitious, he would have smiled, and felt truly
+that they had bungled in the word. Such and such things were simply
+his appurtenances; in London, the regard due to a gentleman who to
+a certain distinction in his manner of amusing himself added the
+achievement of a successful comedy, three lampoons quoted at all
+London tea-tables, and a piece of Whig invective, so able, stern, and
+sustained that many cried that the Dean had met his match; in Virginia,
+the deferential esteem of the colony at large, a place in the Council,
+and a great estate. An alliance with the master of Westover was in
+itself a desirable thing, advantageous to purse and to credit; his
+house must have a mistress, and that mistress must please at every
+point his fastidious taste.
+
+What better to do than to give it for Mistress Evelyn Byrd? Evelyn, who
+had had for all her suitors only a slow smile and shake of the head;
+Evelyn, who was older than her years; Evelyn, who was his friend as he
+was hers. Love! He had left that land behind, and she had never touched
+its shores; the geography of the poets to the contrary, it did not lie
+in the course of all who passed through life. He made his suit, and now
+he had his answer.
+
+If he did not take trouble to wonder at her confession, or to modestly
+ask himself how he had deserved her love, neither did he insult her
+with pity or with any lightness of thought. Nor was he ready to believe
+that his rejection was final. Apparently indifferent as he was, it was
+yet his way to move steadily and relentlessly, if very quietly, toward
+what goal he desired to reach. He thought that Fair View might yet call
+Evelyn Byrd its mistress.
+
+Since turning into the crossroad that, running south and east, would
+take him back to the banks of the James and to his own house, he had
+not slackened speed, but now, as he saw through the trees before him a
+long zigzag of rail fence, he drew rein. The road turned, and a gate
+barred his way. When he had opened it and passed through, he was upon
+his own land.
+
+He had ridden off his irritation, and could now calmly tell himself
+that the blunder was made and over with, and that it was the duty of
+the philosopher to remember it only in so far as it must shape his
+future course. His house of cards had toppled over; but the profound
+indifferentism of his nature enabled him to view the ruins with
+composure. After a while he would build the house again. The image of
+Evelyn, as she had stood, dark-eyed and pale, with the flowers pressed
+to her bosom, he put from him. He knew her strength of soul; and with
+the curious hardness of the strong toward the strong, and also not
+without the delicacy which, upon occasion, he could both feel and
+exhibit, he shut the door upon that hour in the forest.
+
+He had left the woods, and was now riding through a field of newly
+planted tobacco. It and the tobacco house in the midst of it were
+silent, deserted, bathed in the late sunshine. The ground rose
+slightly, and when he had mounted with it he saw below him the huddle
+of cabins which formed the ridge quarter, and winding down to it a
+string of negroes. One turned his head, and saw the solitary horseman
+upon the summit of the slope behind him; another looked, and another,
+until each man in line had his head over his shoulder. They knew that
+the horseman was their master. Some had been upon the plantation when
+he was a boy; others were more recent acquisitions who knew not his
+face; but alike they grinned and ducked. The white man walking beside
+the line took off his hat and pulled a forelock. Haward raised his hand
+that they might know he saw, and rode on.
+
+Another piece of woods where a great number of felled trees cumbered
+the ground, more tobacco, and then, in worn fields where the tobacco
+had been, knee-deep wheat rippling in the evening breeze. The wheat
+ran down to a marsh, and to a wide, slow creek that, save in the
+shadow of its reedy banks, was blue as the sky above. Haward, riding
+slowly beside his green fields and still waters, noted with quiet,
+half-regretful pleasure this or that remembered feature of the
+landscape. There had been little change. Here, where he remembered deep
+woods, tobacco was planted; there, where the tobacco had been, were
+now fields of wheat or corn, or wild tangles of vine-rid saplings and
+brushwood: but for this it might have been yesterday that he had last
+ridden that way.
+
+Presently he saw the river, and then the marshes with brown dots that
+were his cattle straying over them, and beyond these the home landing
+and the masts of the Golden Rose. The sun was near its setting; the men
+had left the fields; over all things were the stillness and peace, the
+encroaching shadows, the dwindling light, so golden in its quality, of
+late afternoon. When he crossed the bridge over the creek, the hollow
+sound that the boards gave forth beneath his horse’s hoofs had the
+depth and resonance of drumbeats, and the cry of a solitary heron in
+the marsh seemed louder than its wont. He passed the rolling-house and
+drew near to the river, riding again through tobacco. These plants were
+Oronoko; the mild sweet-scented took the higher ground. Along the river
+bank grew a row of tall and stately trees: passing beneath them, he saw
+the shining water between brown columns or through a veil of slight,
+unfolding leaves. Soon the trees fell away, and he came to a stretch of
+bank,--here naked earth, there clad in grass and dewberry vines. Near
+by was a small landing, with several boats fastened to its piles; and
+at a little distance beyond it, shadowed by a locust-tree, a strongly
+built, two-roomed wooden house, with the earth around it trodden hard
+and bare, and with two or three benches before its open door. Haward
+recognized the store which his father--after the manner of his kind,
+merchant and trader as well as planter and maker of laws--had built,
+and which, through his agent in Virginia, he had maintained.
+
+Before one of the benches a man was kneeling with his back to Haward,
+who could only see that his garb was that of a servant, and that his
+hands were busily moving certain small objects this way and that upon
+the board. At the edge of the space of bare earth were a horse-block
+and a hitching-post. Haward rode up to them, dismounted, and fastened
+his horse, then walked over to the man at the bench.
+
+So intent was the latter upon his employment that he heard neither
+horse nor rider. He had some shells, a few bits of turf, and a double
+handful of sand, and he was arranging these trifles upon the rough,
+unpainted boards in a curious and intricate pattern. He was a tall
+man, with hair that was more red than brown, and he was dressed in a
+shirt of dowlas, leather breeches, and coarse plantation-made shoes and
+stockings.
+
+“What are you doing?” asked Haward, after a moment’s silent watching of
+the busy fingers and intent countenance.
+
+There was no start of awakened consciousness upon the other’s part.
+“Why,” he said, as if he had asked the question of himself, “with this
+sand I have traced the shores of Loch-na-Keal. This turf is green
+Ulva, and this is Gometra, and the shell is Little Colonsay. With this
+wet sand I have moulded Ben Grieg, and this higher pile is Ben More.
+If I had but a sprig of heather, now, or a pebble from the shore of
+Scridain!”
+
+The voice, while harsh, was not disagreeably so, and neither the words
+nor the manner of using them smacked of the rustic.
+
+“And where are Loch-na-Keal and Ulva and Scridain?” demanded Haward.
+“Somewhere in North Britain, I presume?”
+
+The second question broke the spell. The man glanced over his shoulder,
+saw that he was not alone, and with one sweep of his hand blotting
+loch and island and mountain out of existence, rose to his feet, and
+opposed to Haward’s gaze a tall, muscular frame, high features slightly
+pockmarked, and keen dark blue eyes.
+
+“I was dreaming, and did not hear you,” he said, civilly enough. “It’s
+not often that any one comes to the store at this time of day. What d’
+ye lack?”
+
+As he spoke he moved toward the doorway, through which showed shelves
+and tables piled with the extraordinary variety of goods which were
+deemed essential to the colonial trade. “Are you the storekeeper?”
+asked Haward, keeping pace with the other’s long stride.
+
+“It’s the name they call me by,” answered the man curtly; then, as he
+chanced to turn his eyes upon the landing, his tone changed, and a
+smile irradiated his countenance. “Here comes a customer,” he remarked,
+“that’ll make you bide your turn.”
+
+A boat, rowed by a young boy and carrying a woman, had slipped out
+of the creek, and along the river bank to the steps of the landing.
+When they were reached, the boy sat still, the oars resting across his
+knees, and his face upturned to a palace beautiful of pearl and saffron
+cloud; but the woman mounted the steps, and, crossing the boards, came
+up to the door and the men beside it. Her dress was gray and unadorned,
+and she was young and of a quiet loveliness.
+
+“Mistress Truelove Taberer,” said the storekeeper, “what can you
+choose, this May Day, that’s so fair as yourself?”
+
+A pair of gray eyes were lifted for the sixth part of a second, and
+a voice that bad learned of the doves in the forest proceeded to
+rebuke the flatterer. “Thee is idle in thy speech, Angus MacLean,” it
+declared. “I am not fair; nor, if I were, should thee tell me of it.
+Also, friend, it is idle and tendeth toward idolatry to speak of the
+first day of the fifth month as May Day. My mother sent me for a paper
+of White-chapel needles, and two of manikin pins. Has thee them in thy
+store of goods?”
+
+“Come you in and look for yourself,” said the storekeeper. “There’s
+woman’s gear enough, but it were easier for me to recount the names of
+all the children of Gillean-ni-Tuaidhe than to remember how you call
+the things you wear.”
+
+So saying he entered the store. The Quakeress followed, and Haward,
+tired of his own thoughts, and in the mood to be amused by trifles,
+trod in their footsteps.
+
+Door and window faced the west, and the glow from the sinking sun
+illumined the thousand and one features of the place. Here was the
+glint of tools and weapons; there pewter shone like silver, and
+brass dazzled the eyes. Bales of red cotton, blue linen, flowered
+Kidderminster, scarlet serge, gold and silver drugget, all sorts of
+woven stuffs from lockram to brocade, made bright the shelves. Pendent
+skins of buck and doe showed like brown satin, while looking-glasses
+upon the wall reflected green trees and painted clouds. In one dark
+corner lurked kegs of powder and of shot; another was the haunt of
+aqua vitæ and right Jamaica. Playing-cards, snuffboxes, and fringed
+gloves elbowed a shelf of books, and a full-bottomed wig ogled a
+lady’s headdress of ribbon and malines. Knives and hatchets and duffel
+blankets for the Indian trade were not wanting.
+
+Haward, leaning against a table laden with so singular a miscellany
+that a fine saddle with crimson velvet holsters took the head of the
+board, while the foot was set with blue and white china, watched the
+sometime moulder of peak and islet draw out a case filled with such
+small and womanish articles as pins and needles, tape and thread, and
+place it before his customer. She made her choice, and the storekeeper
+brought a great book, and entered against the head of the house of
+Taberer so many pounds of tobacco; then, as the maiden turned to
+depart, heaved a sigh so piteous and profound that no tender saint
+in gray could do less than pause, half turn her head, and lift two
+compassionate eyes.
+
+“Mistress Truelove, I have read the good book that you gave me, and I
+cannot deny that I am much beholden to you,” and her debtor sighed like
+a furnace.
+
+The girl’s quiet face flushed to the pink of a seashell, and her eyes
+grew eager.
+
+“Then does thee not see the error of thy ways, Angus MacLean? If it
+should be given me to pluck thee as a brand from the burning! Thee will
+not again brag of war and revenge, nor sing vain and ruthless songs,
+nor use dice or cards, nor will thee swear any more?”
+
+The voice was persuasion’s own. “May I be set overtide on the Lady’s
+Rock, or spare a false Campbell when I meet him, or throw up my cap for
+the damned Hogan Mogan that sits in Jamie’s place, if I am not entirely
+convert!” cried the neophyte. “Oh, the devil! what have I said?
+Mistress Truelove--Truelove”--
+
+But Truelove was gone,--not in anger or in haste, for that would have
+been unseemly, but quietly and steadily, with no looking back. The
+storekeeper, leaping over a keg of nails that stood in the way, made
+for the door, and together with Haward, who was already there, watched
+her go. The path to the landing and the boat was short; she had taken
+her seat, and the boy had bent to the oars, while the unlucky Scot was
+yet alternately calling out protestations of amendment and muttering
+maledictions upon his unguarded tongue. The canoe slipped from the
+rosy, unshadowed water into the darkness beneath the overhanging trees,
+reached the mouth of the creek, and in a moment disappeared from sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MASTER AND MAN
+
+
+The two men, left alone, turned each toward the interior of the store,
+and their eyes met. Alike in gray eyes and in dark blue there was
+laughter. “Kittle folk, the Quakers,” said the storekeeper, with a
+shrug, and went to put away his case of pins and needles. Haward, going
+to the end of the store, found a row of dusty bottles, and breaking the
+neck of one with a report like that of a pistol set the Madeira to his
+lips, and therewith quenched his thirst. The wine cellar abutted upon
+the library. Taking off his riding glove he ran his finger along the
+bindings, and plucking forth The History of a Coy Lady looked at the
+first page, read the last paragraph, and finally thrust the thin brown
+and gilt volume into his pocket. Turning, he found himself face to face
+with the storekeeper.
+
+“I have not the honor of knowing your name, sir,” remarked the latter
+dryly. “Do you buy at this store, and upon whose account?”
+
+Haward shook his head, and applied himself again to the Madeira.
+
+“Then you carry with you coin of the realm with which to settle?”
+continued the other. “The wine is two shillings; the book you may have
+for twelve-pence.”
+
+“Here I need not pay, good fellow,” said Haward negligently, his eyes
+upon a row of dangling objects. “Fetch me down yonder cane; ’t is as
+delicately tapered and clouded as any at the Exchange.”
+
+“Pay me first for the wine and the book,” answered the man composedly.
+“It’s a dirty business enough, God knows, for a gentleman to put finger
+to; but since needs must when the devil drives, and he has driven me
+here, why, I, Angus MacLean, who have no concerns of my own, must e’en
+be faithful to the concerns of another. Wherefore put down the silver
+you owe the Sassenach whose wine you have drunken and whose book you
+have taken.”
+
+“And if I do not choose to pay?” asked Haward, with a smile.
+
+“Then you must e’en choose to fight,” was the cool reply. “And as I
+observe that you wear neither sword nor pistols, and as jack boots
+and a fine tight-buttoned riding coat are not the easiest clothes to
+wrestle in, it appears just possible that I might win the cause.”
+
+“And when you’ve thrown me, what then?”
+
+“Oh, I would just draw a rope around you and yonder cask of Jamaica,
+and leave you to read your stolen book in peace until Saunderson
+(that’s the overseer, and he’s none so bad if he was born in Fife)
+shall come. You can have it out with him; or maybe he’ll hale you
+before the man that owns the store. I hear they expect him home.”
+
+Haward laughed, and abstracting another bottle from the shelf broke
+its neck. “Hand me yonder cup,” he said easily, “and we’ll drink to
+his home-coming. Good fellow, I am Mr. Marmaduke Haward, and I am glad
+to find so honest a man in a place of no small trust. Long absence and
+somewhat too complaisant a reference of all my Virginian affairs to my
+agent have kept me much in ignorance of the economy of my plantation.
+How long have you been my storekeeper?”
+
+Neither cup for the wine nor answer to the question being forthcoming,
+Haward looked up from his broken bottle. The man was standing with his
+body bent forward and his hand pressed against the wood of a great cask
+behind him until the finger-nails showed white. His head was high, his
+face dark red and angry, his brows drawn down until the gleaming eyes
+beneath were like pin points.
+
+So sudden and so sinister was the change that Haward was startled. The
+hour was late, the place deserted; as the man had discovered, he had no
+weapons, nor, strong, active, and practiced as he was, did he flatter
+himself that he could withstand the length of brawn and sinew before
+him. Involuntarily, he stepped backward until there was a space between
+them, casting at the same moment a glance toward the wall where hung
+axe and knife and hatchet.
+
+The man intercepted the look, and broke into a laugh. The sound was
+harsh and gibing, but not menacing. “You need not be afraid,” he said.
+“I do not want the feel of a rope around my neck,--though God knows
+why I should care! Here is no clansman of mine, and no cursed Campbell
+either, to see my end!”
+
+“I am not afraid,” Haward answered calmly. Walking to the shelf that
+held an array of drinking vessels, he took two cups, filled them with
+wine, and going back to his former station, set one upon the cask
+beside the storekeeper. “The wine is good,” he said. “Will you drink?”
+
+The other loosened the clasp of his hand upon the wood and drew
+himself upright. “I eat the bread and drink the water which you give
+your servants,” he answered, speaking with the thickness of hardly
+restrained passion. “The wine cup goes from equal to equal.”
+
+As he spoke he took up the peace offering, eyed it for a moment with a
+bitter smile, then flung it with force over his shoulder. The earthen
+floor drank the wine; the china shivered into a thousand fragments. “I
+have neither silver nor tobacco with which to pay for my pleasure,”
+continued the still smiling storekeeper. “When I am come to the end of
+my term, then, an it please you, I will serve out the damage.”
+
+Haward sat down upon a keg of powder, crossed his knees, and, with
+his chin upon his hand, looked from between the curled lengths of his
+periwig at the figure opposite. “I am glad to find that in Virginia, at
+least, there is honesty,” he said dryly. “I will try to remember the
+cost of the cup and the wine against the expiry of your indenture. In
+the mean time, I am curious to know why you are angry with me whom you
+have never seen before to-day.”
+
+With the dashing of the wine to earth the other’s passion had
+apparently spent itself. The red slowly left his face, and he leaned
+at ease against the cask, drumming upon its head with his fingers. The
+sunlight, shrinking from floor and wall, had left but a single line of
+gold. In the half light strange and sombre shapes possessed the room;
+through the stillness, beneath the sound of the tattoo upon the cask
+head, the river made itself heard.
+
+“For ten years and more you have been my--master,” said the
+storekeeper. “It is a word for which I have an invincible distaste. It
+is not well--having neither love nor friendship to put in its place--to
+let hatred die. When I came first to this slavery, I hated all
+Campbells, all Whigs, Forster that betrayed us at Preston, and Ewin Mor
+Mackinnon. But the years have come and the years have gone, and I am
+older than I was at twenty-five. The Campbells I can never reach: they
+walk secure, overseas, through Lorn and Argyle, couching in the tall
+heather above Etive, tracking the red deer in the Forest of Dalness.
+Forster is dead. Ewin Mackinnon is dead, I know; for five years ago
+come Martinmas night I saw his perjured soul on its way to hell. All
+the world is turning Whig. A man may hate the world, it is true, but he
+needs a single foe.”
+
+“And in that capacity you have adopted me?” demanded Haward.
+
+MacLean let his gaze travel over the man opposite him, from the looped
+hat and the face between the waves of hair to the gilt spurs upon the
+great boots; then turned his eyes upon his own hand and coarsely clad
+arm stretched across the cask. “I, too, am a gentleman, the brother of
+a chieftain,” he declared. “I am not without schooling. I have seen
+something of life, and of countries more polite than the land where
+I was born, though not so dear. I have been free, and have loved my
+freedom. Do you find it so strange that I should hate you?”
+
+There was a silence; then, “Upon my soul, I do not know that I do,”
+said Haward slowly. “And yet, until this day I did not know of your
+existence.”
+
+“But I knew of yours,” answered the storekeeper. “Your agent hath an
+annoying trick of speech, and the overseers have caught it from him.
+‘Your master’ this, and ‘your master’ that; in short, for ten years it
+hath been, ‘Work, you dog, that your master may play!’ Well, I have
+worked; it was that, or killing myself, or going mad. I have worked
+for you in the fields, in the smithy, in this close room. But when you
+bought my body, you could not buy my soul. Day after day, and night
+after night, I sent it away; I would not let it bide in these dull
+levels, in this cursed land of heat and stagnant waters. At first it
+went home to its own country,--to its friends and its foes, to the
+torrent and the mountain and the music of the pipes; but at last the
+pain outweighed the pleasure, and I sent it there no more. And then it
+began to follow you.”
+
+“To follow me!” involuntarily exclaimed Haward.
+
+“I have been in London,” went on the other, without heeding the
+interruption. “I know the life of men of quality, and where they most
+resort. I early learned from your other servants, and from the chance
+words of those who had your affairs in charge, that you were young,
+well-looking, a man of pleasure. At first when I thought of you the
+blood came into my cheek, but at last I thought of you constantly,
+and I felt for you a constant hatred. It began when I knew that Ewin
+Mackinnon was dead. I had no need of love; I had need of hate. Day
+after day, my body slaving here, my mind has dogged your footsteps. Up
+and down, to and fro, in business and in pleasure, in whatever place I
+have imagined you to be, there have I been also. Did you never, when
+there seemed none by, look over your shoulder, feeling another presence
+than your own?”
+
+He ceased to speak, and the hand upon the cask was still. The sunshine
+was clean gone from the room, and without the door the wind in the
+locust-tree answered the voice of the river. Haward rose from his seat,
+but made no further motion toward departing. “You have been frank,” he
+said quietly. “Had you it in mind, all this while, so to speak to me
+when we should meet?”
+
+“No,” answered the other. “I thought not of words, but of”--
+
+“But of deeds,” Haward finished for him. “Rather, I imagine, of one
+deed.”
+
+Composed as ever in voice and manner, he drew out his watch, and held
+it aslant that the light might strike upon the dial. “’T is after six,”
+he remarked as he put it away, “and I am yet a mile from the house.”
+The wine that he had poured for himself had been standing, untouched,
+upon the keg beside him. He took it up and drank it off; then wiped his
+lips with his handkerchief, and passing the storekeeper with a slight
+inclination of his head walked toward the door. A yard beyond the man
+who had so coolly shown his side of the shield was a rude table, on
+which were displayed hatchets and hunting knives. Haward passed the
+gleaming steel; then, a foot beyond it, stood still, his face to the
+open door, and his back to the storekeeper and the table with its
+sinister lading.
+
+“You do wrong to allow so much dust and disorder,” he said sharply. “I
+could write my name in that mirror, and there is a piece of brocade
+fallen to the floor. Look to it that you keep the place more neat.”
+
+There was dead silence for a moment; then MacLean spoke in an even
+voice: “Now a fool might call you as brave as Hector. For myself, I
+only give you credit for some knowledge of men. You are right. It is
+not my way to strike in the back an unarmed man. When you are gone, I
+will wipe off the mirror and pick up the brocade.”
+
+He followed Haward outside. “It’s a brave evening for riding,” he
+remarked, “and you have a bonny bit of horseflesh there. You’ll get to
+the house before candlelight.”
+
+Beside one of the benches Haward made another pause. “You are a
+Highlander and a Jacobite,” he said. “From your reference to Forster,
+I gather that you were among the prisoners taken at Preston and
+transported to Virginia.”
+
+“In the Elizabeth and Anne of Liverpool, _alias_ a bit of hell afloat;
+the master, Captain Edward Trafford, _alias_ Satan’s first mate,” quoth
+the other grimly.
+
+He stooped to the bench where lay the débris of the coast and mountains
+he had been lately building, and picked up a small, deep shell. “My
+story is short,” he began. “It could be packed into this. I was born
+in the island of Mull, of my father a chieftain, and my mother a lady.
+Some schooling I got in Aberdeen, some pleasure in Edinburgh and
+London, and some service abroad. In my twenty-third year--being at home
+at that time--I was asked to a hunting match at Braemar, and went. No
+great while afterwards I was bidden to supper at an Edinburgh tavern,
+and again I accepted the invitation. There was a small entertainment to
+follow the supper,--just the taking of Edinburgh Castle. But the wine
+was good, and we waited to powder our hair, and the entertainment could
+hardly be called a success. Hard upon that convivial evening, I, with
+many others, was asked across the Border to join a number of gentlemen
+who drank to the King after our fashion, and had a like fancy for oak
+boughs and white roses. The weather was pleasant, the company of the
+best, the roads very noble after our Highland sheep tracks. Together
+with our English friends, and enlivened by much good claret and by
+music of bagpipe and drum, we strolled on through a fine, populous
+country until we came to a town called Preston, where we thought we
+would tarry for a day or two. However, circumstances arose which
+detained us somewhat longer. (I dare say you have heard the story?)
+When finally we took our leave, some of us went to heaven, some to
+hell, and some to Barbadoes and Virginia. I was among those dispatched
+to Virginia, and to all intents and purposes I died the day I landed.
+There, the shell is full!”
+
+He tossed it from him, and going to the hitching-post loosed Haward’s
+horse. Haward took the reins from his hand. “It hath been ten years and
+more since Virginia got her share of the rebels taken at Preston. If I
+remember aright, their indentures were to be made for seven years. Why,
+then, are you yet in my service?”
+
+MacLean laughed. “I ran away,” he replied pleasantly, “and when I was
+caught I made off a second time. I wonder that you planters do not
+have a Society for the Encouragement of Runaways. Seeing that they are
+nearly always retaken, and that their escapades so lengthen their term
+of service, it would surely be to your advantage! There are yet several
+years in which I am to call you master.”
+
+He laughed again, but the sound was mirthless, and the eyes beneath
+the half-closed lids were harder than steel. Haward mounted his horse
+and gathered up the reins. “I am not responsible for the laws of the
+realm,” he said calmly, “nor for rebellions and insurrections, nor for
+the practice of transporting overseas those to whom have been given
+the ugly names of ‘rebel’ and ‘traitor.’ Destiny that set you there
+put me here. We are alike pawns; what the player means we have no way
+of telling. Curse Fate and the gods, if you choose,--and find that
+your cursing does small good,--but regard me with indifference, as one
+neither more nor less the slave of circumstances than yourself. It has
+been long since I went this way. Is there yet the path by the river?”
+
+“Ay,” answered the other. “It is your shortest road.”
+
+“Then I will be going,” said Haward. “It grows late, and I am not
+looked for before to-morrow. Good-night.”
+
+As he spoke he raised his hat and bowed to the gentleman from whom he
+was parting. That rebel to King George gave a great start; then turned
+very red, and shot a piercing glance at the man on horseback. The
+latter’s mien was composed as ever, and, with his hat held beneath his
+arm and his body slightly inclined, he was evidently awaiting a like
+ceremony of leave-taking on the storekeeper’s part. MacLean drew a long
+breath, stepped back a pace or two, and bowed to his equal. A second
+“Good-night,” and one gentleman rode off in the direction of the great
+house, while the other went thoughtfully back to the store, got a cloth
+and wiped the dust from the mirror.
+
+It was pleasant riding by the river in the cool evening wind, with the
+colors of the sunset yet gay in sky and water. Haward went slowly,
+glancing now at the great, bright stream, now at the wide, calm fields
+and the rim of woodland, dark and distant, bounding his possessions.
+The smell of salt marshes, of ploughed ground, of leagues of flowering
+forests, was in his nostrils. Behind him was the crescent moon; before
+him a terrace crowned with lofty trees. Within the ring of foliage
+was the house; even as he looked a light sprang up in a high window,
+and shone like a star through the gathering dusk. Below the hill the
+home landing ran its gaunt black length far out into the carmine
+of the river; upon the Golden Rose lights burned like lower stars;
+from a thicket to the left of the bridle path sounded the call of a
+whippoorwill. A gust of wind blowing from the bay made to waver the
+lanterns of the Golden Rose, broke and darkened the coral peace of the
+river, and pushed rudely against the master of those parts. Haward laid
+his hand upon his horse that he loved. “This is better than the Ring,
+isn’t it, Mirza?” he asked genially, and the horse whinnied under his
+touch.
+
+The land was quite gray, the river pearl-colored, and the fireflies
+beginning to sparkle, when he rode through the home gates. In the dusk
+of the world, out of the deeper shadow of the surrounding trees, his
+house looked grimly upon him. The light had been at the side; all the
+front was stark and black with shuttered windows. He rode to the back
+of the house and hallooed to the slaves in the home quarter, where were
+lights and noisy laughter, and one deep voice singing in an unknown
+tongue.
+
+It was but a stone’s throw to the nearest cabin, and Haward’s call made
+itself heard above the babel. The noise suddenly lessened, and two or
+three negroes, starting up from the doorstep, hurried across the grass
+to horse and rider. Quickly as they came, some one within the house was
+beforehand with them. The door swung open; there was the flare of a
+lighted candle, and a voice cried out to know what was wanted.
+
+“Wanted!” exclaimed Haward. “Ingress into my own house is wanted! Where
+is Juba?”
+
+One of the negroes pressed forward. “Heah I is, Marse Duke! House all
+ready for you, but you done sont word”--
+
+“I know,--I know,” answered Haward impatiently. “I changed my mind. Is
+that you, Saunderson, with the light? Or is it Hide?”
+
+The candle moved to one side, and there was disclosed a large white
+face atop of a shambling figure dressed in some coarse, dark stuff.
+“Neither, sir,” said an expressionless voice. “Will it please your
+Honor to dismount?”
+
+Haward swung himself out of the saddle, tossed the reins to a negro,
+and, with Juba at his heels, climbed the five low stone steps and
+entered the wide hall running through the house and broken only by the
+broad, winding stairway. Save for the glimmer of the solitary candle
+all was in darkness; the bare floor, the paneled walls, echoed to his
+tread. On either hand squares of blackness proclaimed the open doors of
+large, empty rooms, and down the stair came a wind that bent the weak
+flame. The negro took the light from the hand of the man who had opened
+the door, and, pressing past his master, lit three candles in a sconce
+upon the wall.
+
+“Yo’ room’s all ready, Marse Duke,” he declared. “Dere’s candles
+enough, an’ de fire am laid an’ yo’ bed aired. Ef you wan’ some supper,
+I kin get you bread an’ meat, an’ de wine was put in yesterday.”
+
+Haward nodded, and taking the candle began to mount the stairs. Half
+way up he found that the man in the sad-colored raiment was following
+him. He raised his brows, but being in a taciturn humor, and having,
+moreover, to shield the flame from the wind that drove down the stair,
+he said nothing, going on in silence to the landing, and to the great
+eastward-facing room that had been his father’s, and which now he meant
+to make his own. There were candles on the table, the dresser, and the
+mantelshelf. He lit them all, and the room changed from a place of
+shadows and monstrous shapes to a gentleman’s bedchamber,--somewhat
+sparsely furnished, but of a comfortable and cheerful aspect. A
+cloth lay upon the floor, the windows were curtained, and the bed
+had fresh hangings of green and white Kidderminster. Over the mantel
+hung a painting of Haward and his mother, done when he was six years
+old. Beneath the laughing child and the smiling lady, young and
+flower-crowned, were crossed two ancient swords. In the middle of the
+room stood a heavy table, and pushed back, as though some one had
+lately risen from it, was an armchair of Russian leather. Books lay
+upon the table; one of them open, with a horn snuffbox keeping down the
+leaf.
+
+Haward seated himself in the great chair, and looked around him with
+a thoughtful and melancholy smile. He could not clearly remember his
+mother. The rings upon her fingers and her silvery laughter were all
+that dwelt in his mind, and now only the sound of that merriment
+floated back to him and lingered in the room. But his father had died
+upon that bed, and beside the dead man, between the candles at the head
+and the candles at the foot, he had sat the night through. The curtains
+were half drawn, and in their shadow his imagination laid again that
+cold, inanimate form. Twelve years ago! How young he had been that
+night, and how old he had thought himself as he watched beside the
+dead, chilled by the cold of the crossed hands, awed by the silence,
+half frighted by the shadows on the wall; now filled with natural
+grief, now with surreptitious and shamefaced thoughts of his changed
+estate,--yesterday son and dependent, to-day heir and master! Twelve
+years! The sigh and the smile were not for the dead father, but for his
+own dead youth, for the unjaded freshness of the morning, for the world
+that had been, once upon a time.
+
+Turning in his seat, his eyes fell upon the man who had followed
+him, and who was now standing between the table and the door. “Well,
+friend?” he demanded.
+
+The man came a step or two nearer. His hat was in his hand, and his
+body was obsequiously bent, but there was no discomposure in his
+lifeless voice and manner. “I stayed to explain my presence in the
+house, sir,” he said. “I am a lover of reading, and, knowing my
+weakness, your overseer, who keeps the keys of the house, has been so
+good as to let me, from time to time, come here to this room to mingle
+in more delectable company than I can choose without these walls.
+Your Honor doubtless remembers yonder goodly assemblage?” He motioned
+with his hand toward a half-opened door, showing a closet lined with
+well-filled bookshelves.
+
+“I remember,” replied Haward dryly. “So you come to my room alone at
+night, and occupy yourself in reading? And when you are wearied you
+refresh yourself with my wine?” As he spoke he clinked together the
+bottle and glass that stood beside the books.
+
+“I plead guilty to the wine,” answered the intruder, as lifelessly as
+ever, “but it is my only theft. I found the bottle below, and did not
+think it would be missed. I trust that your Honor does not grudge it
+to a poor devil who tastes Burgundy somewhat seldomer than does your
+Worship. And my being in the house is pure innocence. Your overseer
+knew that I would neither make nor meddle with aught but the books,
+or he would not have given me the key to the little door, which I now
+restore to your Honor’s keeping.” He advanced, and deposited upon the
+table a large key.
+
+“What is your name?” demanded Haward, leaning back in his chair.
+
+“Bartholomew Paris, sir. I keep the school down by the swamp, where
+I impart to fifteen or twenty of the youth of these parts the
+rudiments of the ancient and modern tongues, mathematics, geography,
+fortifications, navigation, philosophy”--
+
+Haward yawned, and the schoolmaster broke the thread of his discourse.
+“I weary you, sir,” he said. “I will, with your permission, take my
+departure. May I make so bold as to beg your Honor that you will not
+mention to the gentlemen hereabouts the small matter of this bottle of
+wine? I would wish not to be prejudiced in the eyes of my patrons and
+scholars.”
+
+“I will think of it,” Haward replied. “Come and take your snuffbox--if
+it be yours--from the book where you have left it.”
+
+“It is mine,” said the man. “A present from the godly minister of this
+parish.”
+
+As he spoke he put out his hand to take the snuffbox. Haward leaned
+forward, seized the hand, and, bending back the fingers, exposed the
+palm to the light of the candles upon the table.
+
+“The other, if you please,” he commanded.
+
+For a second--no longer--a wicked soul looked blackly out of the face
+to which he had raised his eyes. Then the window shut, and the wall
+was blank again. Without any change in his listless demeanor, the
+schoolmaster laid his left hand, palm out, beside his right.
+
+“Humph!” exclaimed Haward. “So you have stolen before to-night? The
+marks are old. When were you branded, and where?”
+
+“In Bristol, fifteen years ago,” answered the man unblushingly. “It was
+all a mistake. I was as innocent as a newborn babe”--
+
+“But unfortunately could not prove it,” interrupted Haward. “That is of
+course. Go on.”
+
+“I was transported to South Carolina, and there served out my term. The
+climate did not suit me, and I liked not the society, nor--being of a
+peaceful disposition--the constant alarms of pirates and buccaneers.
+So when I was once more my own man I traveled north to Virginia with
+a party of traders. In my youth I had been an Oxford servitor, and
+schoolmasters are in demand in Virginia. Weighed in the scales with
+a knowledge of the humanities and some skill in imparting them, what
+matters a little mishap with hot irons? My patrons are willing to let
+bygones be bygones. My school flourishes like a green bay-tree, and the
+minister of this parish will speak for the probity and sobriety of my
+conduct. Now I will go, sir.”
+
+He made an awkward but deep and obsequious reverence, turned and went
+out of the door, passing Juba, who was entering with a salver laden
+with bread and meat and a couple of bottles. “Put down the food, Juba,”
+said Haward, “and see this gentleman out of the house.”
+
+An hour later the master dismissed the slave, and sat down beside
+the table to finish the wine and compose himself for the night. The
+overseer had come hurrying to the great house, to be sent home again by
+a message from the owner thereof that to-morrow would do for business;
+the negro women who had been called to make the bed were gone; the
+noises from the quarter had long ceased, and the house was very still.
+In his rich, figured Indian nightgown and his silken nightcap, Haward
+sat and drank his wine, slowly, with long pauses between the emptying
+and the filling of the slender, tall-stemmed glass. A window was
+open, and the wind blowing in made the candles to flicker. With the
+wind came a murmur of leaves and the wash of the river,--stealthy and
+mournful sounds that sorted not with the lighted room, the cheerful
+homeliness of the flowered hangings, the gleeful lady and child above
+the mantelshelf. Haward felt the incongruity: a slow sea voyage, and
+a week in that Virginia which, settled one hundred and twenty years
+before, was yet largely forest and stream, had weaned him, he thought,
+from sounds of the street, and yet to-night he missed them, and would
+have had the town again. When an owl hooted in the walnut-tree outside
+his window, and in the distance, as far away as the creek quarter, a
+dog howled, and the silence closed in again, he rose, and began to walk
+to and fro, slowly, thinking of the past and the future. The past had
+its ghosts,--not many; what spectres the future might raise only itself
+could tell. So far as mortal vision went, it was a rose-colored future;
+but on such a night of silence that was not silence, of loneliness that
+was filled with still, small voices, of heavy darkness without, of
+lights burning in an empty house, it was rather of ashes of roses that
+one thought.
+
+Haward went to the open window, and with one knee upon the window seat
+looked out into the windy, starlit night. This was the eastern face
+of the house, and, beyond the waving trees, there were visible both
+the river and the second and narrower creek which on this side bounded
+the plantation. The voice with which the waters swept to the sea came
+strongly to him. A large white moth sailed out of the darkness to the
+lit window, but his presence scared it away.
+
+Looking through the walnut branches, he could see a light that burned
+steadily, like a candle set in a window. For a moment he wondered
+whence it shone; then he remembered that the glebe lands lay in that
+direction. The parish was building a house for its new minister, when
+he left Virginia, those many years ago. Suddenly he recalled that the
+minister--who had seemed to him a bluff, downright, honest fellow--had
+told him of a little room looking out upon an orchard, and had said
+that it should be the child’s.
+
+It was possible that the star which pierced the darkness might mark
+that room. He knit his brows in an effort to remember when, before this
+day, he had last thought of a child whom he had held in his arms and
+comforted, one splendid dawn, upon a hilltop, in a mountainous region.
+He came to the conclusion that he must have forgotten her quite six
+years ago. Well, she would seem to have thriven under his neglect,--and
+he saw again the girl who had run for the golden guinea. It was true
+that when he had put her there where that light was shining, it was
+with some shadowy idea of giving her gentle breeding, of making a
+lady of her. But man’s purposes are fleeting, and often gone with the
+morrow. He had forgotten his purpose; and perhaps it was best this
+way,--perhaps it was best this way.
+
+For a little longer he looked at the light and listened to the voice of
+the river; then he rose from the window seat, drew the curtains, and
+began thoughtfully to prepare for bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE RETURN OF MONSIEUR JEAN HUGON
+
+
+To the north the glebe was bounded by a thick wood, a rank and dense
+“second growth” springing from earth where had once stood, decorously
+apart, the monster trees of the primeval forest; a wild maze of young
+trees, saplings and underbrush, overrun from the tops of the slender,
+bending pines to the bushes of dogwood and sassafras, and the rotting,
+ancient stumps and fallen logs, by the uncontrollable, all-spreading
+vine. It was such a fantastic thicket as one might look to find in
+fairyland, thorny and impenetrable: here as tall as a ten years’ pine,
+there sunken away to the height of the wild honeysuckles; everywhere
+backed by blue sky, heavy with odors, filled, with the flash of wings
+and the songs of birds. To the east the thicket fell away to low and
+marshy grounds, where tall cypresses grew, and myriads of myrtle
+bushes. Later in the year women and children would venture in upon the
+unstable earth for the sake of the myrtle berries and their yield of
+fragrant wax, and once and again an outlying slave had been tracked
+by men and dogs to the dark recesses of the place; but for the most
+part it was given over to its immemorial silence. To the south and the
+west the tobacco fields of Fair View closed in upon the glebe, taking
+the fertile river bank, and pressing down to the crooked, slow-moving,
+deeply shadowed creek, upon whose farther bank stood the house of the
+Rev. Gideon Darden.
+
+A more retired spot, a completer sequestration from the world of mart
+and highway, it would have been hard to find. In the quiet of the early
+morning, when the shadows of the trees lay across the dewy grass,
+it was an angle of the earth as cloistral and withdrawn as heart of
+scholar or of anchorite could wish. On one side of the house lay a tiny
+orchard, and the windows of the living room looked out upon a mist of
+pink and white apple blooms. The fragrance of the blossoms had been
+in the room, but could not prevail against the odor of tobacco and
+rum lately introduced by the master of the house and minister of the
+parish. Audrey, sitting beside a table which had been drawn in front of
+the window, turned her face aside, and was away, sense and soul, out
+of the meanly furnished room into the midst of the great bouquets of
+bloom, with the blue between and above. Darden, walking up and down,
+with his pipe in his mouth, and the tobacco smoke curling like an
+aureole around his bullet head, glanced toward the window.
+
+“When you have written that which I have told you to write, say so,
+Audrey,” he commanded. “Don’t sit there staring at nothing!”
+
+Audrey came back to the present with a start, took up a pen, and drew
+the standish nearer. “‘Answer of Gideon Darden, Minister of Fair View
+Parish, in Virginia, to the several Queries contained in my Lord Bishop
+of London’s Circular Letter to the Clergy in Virginia,’” she read, and
+poised her pen in air.
+
+“Read out the questions,” ordered Darden, “and write my answer to each
+in the space beneath. No blots, mind you, and spell not after the
+promptings of your woman’s nature.”
+
+Going to a side table, be mixed for himself, in an old battered silver
+cap, a generous draught of bombo; then, with the drink in his hand,
+walked heavily across the uncarpeted floor to his armchair, which
+creaked under his weight as he sank into its leathern lap. He put down
+the rum and water with so unsteady a hand that the liquor spilled, and
+when he refilled his pipe half the contents of his tobacco box showered
+down upon his frayed and ancient and unclean coat and breeches. From
+the pocket of the latter he now drew forth a silver coin, which he
+balanced for a moment upon his fat forefinger, and finally sent
+spinning across the table to Audrey.
+
+“’Tis the dregs of thy guinea, child, that Paris and Hugon and I
+drank at the crossroads last night. ‘Burn me,’ says I to them, ‘if
+that long-legged lass of mine shan’t have a drop in the cup!’ And say
+Hugon”--
+
+What Hugon said did not appear, or was confided to the depths of the
+tankard which the minister raised to his lips. Audrey looked at the
+splendid shilling gleaming upon the table beside her, but made no
+motion toward taking it into closer possession. A little red had come
+into the clear brown of her cheeks. She was a young girl, with her
+dreams and fancies, and the golden guinea would have made a dream or
+two come true.
+
+“‘Query the first,’” she read slowly, “‘How long since you went to the
+plantations as missionary?’”
+
+Darden, leaning back in his chair, with his eyes uplifted through the
+smoke clouds to the ceiling, took his pipe from his mouth, for the
+better answering of his diocesan. “‘My Lord, thirteen years come St.
+Swithin’s day,’” he dictated. “‘Signed, Gideon Darden.’ Audrey, do not
+forget thy capitals. Thirteen years! Lord, Lord, the years, how they
+fly! Hast it down, Audrey?”
+
+Audrey, writing in a slow, fair, clerkly hand, made her period, and
+turned to the Bishop’s second question: “‘Had you any other church
+before you came to that which you now possess?’”
+
+“‘No, my Lord,’” said the minister to the Bishop; then to the ceiling:
+“I came raw from the devil to this parish. Audrey, hast ever heard
+children say that Satan comes and walks behind me when I go through the
+forest?”
+
+“Yes,” said Audrey, “but their eyes are not good. You go hand in hand.”
+
+Darden paused in the lifting of his tankard. “Thy wits are brightening,
+Audrey; but keep such observations to thyself. It is only the
+schoolmaster with whom I walk. Go on to the next question.”
+
+The Bishop desired to know how long the minister addressed had been
+inducted into his living. The minister addressed, leaning forward,
+laid it off to his Lordship how that the vestries in Virginia did not
+incline to have ministers inducted, and, being very powerful, kept the
+poor servants of the Church upon uneasy seats; but that he, Gideon
+Darden, had the love of his flock, rich and poor, gentle and simple,
+and that in the first year of his ministry the gentlemen of his vestry
+had been pleased to present his name to the Governor for induction.
+Which explanation made, the minister drank more rum, and looked out of
+the window at the orchard and at his neighbor’s tobacco.
+
+“You are only a woman, and can hold no office, Audrey,” he said, “but I
+will impart to you words of wisdom whose price is above rubies. Always
+agree with your vestry. Go, hat in hand, to each of its members in
+turn, craving advice as to the management of your own affairs. Thunder
+from the pulpit against Popery, which does not exist in this colony,
+and the Pretender, who is at present in Italy. Wrap a dozen black sheep
+of inferior breed in white sheets and set them arow at the church door,
+but make it stuff of the conscience to see no blemish in the wealthier
+and more honorable portion of your flock. So you will thrive, and come
+to be inducted into your living, whether in Virginia or some other
+quarter of the globe. What’s the worthy Bishop’s next demand? Hasten,
+for Hugon is coming this morning, and there’s settlement to be made of
+a small bet, and a hand at cards.”
+
+By the circular letter and the lips of Audrey the Bishop proceeded
+to propound a series of questions, which the minister answered with
+portentous glibness. In the midst of an estimate of the value of a
+living in a sweet-scented parish a face looked in at the window, and a
+dark and sinewy hand laid before Audrey a bunch of scarlet columbine.
+
+“The rock was high,” said a voice, “and the pool beneath was deep and
+dark. Here are the flowers that waved from the rock and threw colored
+shadows upon the pool.”
+
+The girl shrank as from a sudden and mortal danger. Her lips trembled,
+her eyes half closed, and with a hurried and passionate gesture she
+rose from her chair, thrust from her the scarlet blooms, and with one
+lithe movement of her body put between her and the window the heavy
+writing table. The minister laid by his sum in arithmetic.
+
+“Ha, Hugon, dog of a trader!” he cried. “Come in, man. Hast brought the
+skins? There’s fire-water upon the table, and Audrey will be kind. Stay
+to dinner, and tell us what lading you brought down river, and of your
+kindred in the forest and your kindred in Monacan-Town.”
+
+The man at the window shrugged his shoulders, lifted his brows, and
+spread his hands. So a captain of Mousquetaires might have done; but
+the face was dark-skinned, the cheek-bones were high, the black eyes
+large, fierce, and restless. A great bushy peruke, of an ancient
+fashion, and a coarse, much-laced cravat gave setting and lent a touch
+of grotesqueness and of terror to a countenance wherein the blood of
+the red man warred with that of the white.
+
+“I will not come in now,” said the voice again. “I am going in my boat
+to the big creek to take twelve doeskins to an old man named Taberer. I
+will come back to dinner. May I not, ma’m’selle?”
+
+The corners of the lips went up, and the thicket of false hair swept
+the window sill, so low did the white man bow; but the Indian eyes were
+watchful. Audrey made no answer; she stood with her face turned away
+and her eyes upon the door, measuring her chances. If Darden would let
+her pass, she might reach the stairway and her own room before the
+trader could enter the house. There were bolts to its heavy door, and
+Hugon might do as he had done before, and talk his heart out upon the
+wrong side of the wood. Thanks be! lying upon her bed and pressing the
+pillow over her ears, she did not have to hear.
+
+At the trader’s announcement that his present path led past the house,
+she ceased her stealthy progress toward her own demesne, and waited,
+with her back to the window, and her eyes upon one long ray of sunshine
+that struck high against the wall.
+
+“I will come again,” said the voice without, and the apparition was
+gone from the window. Once more blue sky and rosy bloom spanned the
+opening, and the sunshine lay in a square upon the floor. The girl drew
+a long breath, and turning to the table began to arrange the papers
+upon it with trembling hands.
+
+“‘Sixteen thousand pounds of sweet-scented, at ten shillings the
+hundredweight; for marriage by banns, five shillings; for the preaching
+of a funeral sermon, forty shillings; for christening’”--began Darden
+for the Bishop’s information. Audrey took her pen and wrote; but before
+the list of the minister’s perquisites had come to an end the door flew
+open, and a woman with the face of a vixen came hurriedly into the
+room. With her entered the breeze from the river, driving before it the
+smoke wreaths, and blowing the papers from the table to the floor.
+
+Darden stamped his foot. “Woman, I have business, I tell ye,--business
+with the Bishop of London! I’ve kept his Lordship at the door this
+se’nnight, and if I give him not audience Blair will presently be down
+uon me with tooth and nail and his ancient threat of a visitation.
+Begone and keep the house! Audrey, where are you, child?”
+
+“Audrey, leave the room!” commanded the woman. “I have something to say
+that’s not for your ears. Let her go, Darden. There’s news, I tell you.”
+
+The minister glanced at his wife; then knocked the ashes from his pipe
+and nodded dismissal to Audrey. His late secretary slipped from her
+seat and left the room, not without alacrity.
+
+“Well?” demanded Darden, when the sound of the quick young feet had
+died away. “Open your budget, Deborah. There’s naught in it, I’ll
+swear, but some fal-lal about your flowered gown or an old woman’s
+black cat and corner broomstick.”
+
+Mistress Deborah Darden pressed her thin lips together, and eyed her
+lord and master with scant measure of conjugal fondness. “It’s about
+some one nearer home than your bishops and commissaries,” she said.
+“Hide passed by this morning, going to the river field. I was in the
+garden, and he stopped to speak to me. Mr. Haward is home from England.
+He came to the great house last night, and he ordered his horse for ten
+o’clock this morning, and asked the nearest way through the fields to
+the parsonage.”
+
+Darden whistled, and put down his drink untasted.
+
+“Enter the most powerful gentleman of my vestry!” he exclaimed. “He’ll
+be that in a month’s time. A member of the Council, too, no doubt, and
+with the Governor’s ear. He’s a scholar and fine gentleman. Deborah,
+clear away this trash. Lay out my books, fetch a bottle of Canary,
+and give me my Sunday coat. Put flowers on the table, and a dish of
+bonchrétiens, and get on your tabby gown. Make your curtsy at the door;
+then leave him to me.”
+
+“And Audrey?” said his wife.
+
+Darden, about to rise, sank back again and sat still, a hand upon
+either arm of his chair. “Eh!” he said; then, in a meditative tone,
+“That is so,--there is Audrey.”
+
+“If he has eyes, he’ll see that for himself,” retorted Mistress Deborah
+tartly. “‘More to the purpose,’ he’ll say, ‘where is the money that I
+gave you for her?’”
+
+“Why, it’s gone,” answered Darden “Gone in maintenance,--gone in meat
+and drink and raiment. He didn’t want it buried. Pshaw, Deborah, he has
+quite forgot his fine-lady plan! He forgot it years ago, I’ll swear.”
+
+“I’ll send her now on an errand to the Widow Constance’s,” said the
+mistress of the house. “Then before he comes again I’ll get her a
+gown”--
+
+The minister brought his hand down upon the table. “You’ll do no such
+thing!” he thundered. “The girl’s got to be here when he comes. As for
+her dress, can’t she borrow from you? The Lord knows that though only
+the wife of a poor parson, you might throw for gewgaws with a bona
+roba! Go trick her out, and bring her here. I’ll attend to the wine and
+the books.”
+
+When the door opened again, and Audrey, alarmed and wondering, slipped
+with the wind into the room, and stood in the sunshine before the
+minister, that worthy first frowned, then laughed, and finally swore.
+
+“’Swounds, Deborah, your hand is out! If I hadn’t taken you from
+service, I’d swear that you were never inside a fine lady’s chamber.
+What’s the matter with the girl’s skirt?”
+
+“She’s too tall!” cried the sometime waiting woman angrily. “As for
+that great stain upon the silk, the wine made it when you threw your
+tankard at me, last Sunday but one.”
+
+“That manteau pins her arms to her sides,” interrupted the minister
+calmly, “and the lace is dirty. You’ve hidden all her hair under that
+mazarine, and too many patches become not a brown skin. Turn around,
+child!”
+
+While Audrey slowly revolved, the guardian of her fortunes, leaning
+back in his chair, bent his bushy brows and gazed, not at the circling
+figure in its tawdry apparel, but into the distance. When she stood
+still and looked at him with a half-angry, half-frightened face, he
+brought his bleared eyes to bear upon her, studied her for a minute,
+then motioned to his wife.
+
+“She must take off this paltry finery, Deborah,” he announced. “I’ll
+have none of it. Go, child, and don your Cinderella gown.”
+
+“What does it all mean?” cried Audrey, with heaving bosom. “Why did she
+put these things upon me, and why will she tell me nothing? If Hugon
+has hand in it”--
+
+The minister made a gesture of contempt. “Hugon! Hugon, half Monacan
+and half Frenchman, is bartering skins with a Quaker. Begone, child,
+and when you are transformed return to us.”
+
+When the door had closed he turned upon his wife. “The girl has
+been cared for,” he said. “She has been fed,--if not with cates and
+dainties, then with bread and meat; she has been clothed,--if not in
+silk and lace, then in good blue linen and penistone. She is young and
+of the springtime, hath more learning than had many a princess of old
+times, is innocent and good to look at. Thou and the rest of thy sex
+are fools, Deborah, but wise men died not with Solomon. It matters not
+about her dress.”
+
+Rising, he went to a shelf of battered, dog-eared books, and taking
+down an armful proceeded to strew the volumes upon the table. The red
+blooms of the columbine being in the way, he took up the bunch and
+tossed it out of the window. With the light thud of the mass upon the
+ground eyes of husband and wife met.
+
+“Hugon would marry the girl,” said the latter, twisting the hem of her
+apron with restless fingers.
+
+Without change of countenance, Darden leaned forward, seized her by
+the shoulder and shook her violently. “You are too given to idle and
+meaningless words, Deborah,” he declared, releasing her. “By the Lord,
+one of these days I’ll break you of the habit for good and all! Hugon,
+and scarlet flowers, and who will marry Audrey, that is yet but a child
+and useful about the house,--what has all this to do with the matter in
+hand, which is simply to make ourselves and our house presentable in
+the eyes of my chief parishioner? A man would think that thirteen years
+in Virginia would teach any fool the necessity of standing well with
+a powerful gentleman such as this. I’m no coward. Damn sanctimonious
+parsons and my Lord Bishop’s Scotch hireling! If they yelp much longer
+at my heels, I’ll scandalize them in good earnest! It’s thin ice,
+though,--it’s thin ice; but I like this house and glebe, and I’m going
+to live and die in them,--and die drunk, if I choose, Mr. Commissary
+to the contrary! It’s of import, Deborah, that my parishioners, being
+easy folk, willing to live and let live, should like me still, and that
+a majority of my vestry should not be able to get on without me. With
+this in mind, get out the wine, dust the best chair, and be ready with
+thy curtsy. It will be time enough to cry Audrey’s banns when she is
+asked in marriage.”
+
+Audrey, in her brown dress, with the color yet in her cheeks, entering
+at the moment, Mistress Deborah attempted no response to her husband’s
+adjuration. Darden turned to the girl. “I’ve done with the writing for
+the nonce, child,” he said, “and need you no longer. I’ll smoke a pipe
+and think of my sermon. You’re tired; out with you into the sunshine!
+Go to the wood or down by the creek, but not beyond call, d’ye mind.”
+
+Audrey looked from one to the other, but said nothing. There were many
+things in the world of other people which she did not understand; one
+thing more or less made no great difference. But she did understand the
+sunlit roof, the twilight halls, the patterned floor of the forest.
+Blossoms drifting down, fleeing shadows, voices of wind and water,
+and all murmurous elfin life spoke to her. They spoke the language of
+her land; when she stepped out of the door into the air and faced the
+portals of her world, they called to her to come. Lithe and slight and
+light of foot, she answered to their piping. The orchard through which
+she ran was fair with its rosy trees, like gayly dressed curtsying
+dames; the slow, clear creek that held the double of the sky enticed,
+but she passed it by. Straight as an arrow she pierced to the heart
+of the wood that lay to the north. Thorn and bramble, branch of bloom
+and entangling vine, stayed her not; long since she had found or had
+made for herself a path to the centre of the labyrinth. Here was a
+beech-tree, older by many a year than the young wood,--a solitary
+tree spared by the axe what time its mates had fallen. Tall and
+silver-gray the column of the trunk rose to meet wide branches and the
+green lace-work of tender leaves. The earth beneath was clean swept,
+and carpeted with the leaves of last year; a wide, dry, pale brown
+enchanted ring, against whose borders pressed the riot of the forest.
+Vine and bush, flower and fern, could not enter; but Audrey came and
+laid herself down upon a cool and shady bed.
+
+By human measurement the house that she had left was hard by; even
+from under the beech-tree Mistress Deborah’s thin call could draw her
+back to the walls which sheltered her, which she had been taught to
+call her home. But it was not her soul’s home, and now the veil of the
+kindly woods withdrew it league on league, shut it out, made it as if
+it had never been. From the charmed ring beneath the beech-tree she
+took possession of her world; for her the wind murmured, the birds
+sang, insects hummed or shrilled, the green saplings nodded their
+heads. Flowers, and the bedded moss, and the little stream that leaped
+from a precipice of three feet into the calm of a hand-deep pool spoke
+to her. She was happy. Gone was the house and its inmates; gone Paris
+the schoolmaster, who had taught her to write, and whose hand touching
+hers in guidance made her sick and cold; gone Hugon the trader, whom
+she feared and hated. Here were no toil, no annoy, no frightened
+flutterings of the heart; she had passed the frontier, and was safe in
+her own land.
+
+She pressed her cheek against the dead leaves, and, with the smell of
+the earth in her nostrils, looked sideways with half-closed eyes and
+made a radiant mist of the forest round about. A drowsy warmth was
+in the air; the birds sang far away; through a rift in the foliage a
+sunbeam came and rested beside her like A gilded snake.
+
+For a time, wrapped in the warmth and the green and gold mist, she
+lay as quiet as the sunbeam; of the earth earthy, in pact with the
+mould beneath the leaves, with the slowly crescent trunks, brown or
+silver-gray, with moss and lichened rock, and with all life that basked
+or crept or flew. At last, however, the mind aroused, and she opened
+her eyes, saw, and thought of what she saw. It was pleasant in the
+forest. She watched the flash of a bird, as blue as the sky, from limb
+to limb; she listened to the elfin waterfall; she drew herself with
+hand and arm across the leaves to the edge of the pale brown ring,
+plucked a honeysuckle bough and brought it back to the silver column of
+the beech; and lastly, glancing up from the rosy sprig within her hand,
+she saw a man coming toward her, down the path that she had thought
+hidden, holding his arm before him for shield against brier and branch,
+and looking curiously about him as for a thing which he had come out to
+seek.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE
+
+
+In the moment in which she sprang to her feet she saw that it was
+not Hugon, and her heart grew calm again. In her torn gown, with her
+brown hair loosed from its fastenings, and falling over her shoulders
+in heavy waves whose crests caught the sunlight, she stood against
+the tree beneath which she had lain, gazed with wide-open eyes at the
+intruder, and guessed from his fine coat and the sparkling toy looping
+his hat that he was a gentleman. She knew gentlemen when she saw them:
+on a time one had cursed her for scurrying like a partridge across the
+road before his horse, making the beast come nigh to unseating him;
+another, coming upon her and the Widow Constance’s Barbara gathering
+fagots in the November woods, had tossed to each a sixpence; a third,
+on vestry business with the minister, had touched her beneath the chin,
+and sworn that an she were not so brown she were fair; a fourth, lying
+hidden upon the bank of the creek, had caught her boat head as she
+pushed it into the reeds, and had tried to kiss her. They had certain
+ways, had gentlemen, but she knew no great harm of them. There was
+one, now--but he would be like a prince. When at eventide the sky was
+piled with pale towering clouds, and she looked, as she often looked,
+down the river, toward the bay and the sea beyond, she always saw this
+prince that she had woven--warp of memory, woof of dreams--stand erect
+in the pearly light. There was a gentleman indeed!
+
+As to the possessor of the title now slowly and steadily making his way
+toward her she was in a mere state of wonder. It was not possible that
+he had lost his way; but if so, she was sorry that, in losing it, he
+had found the slender zigzag of her path. A trustful child,--save where
+Hugon was concerned,--she was not in the least afraid, and being of a
+friendly mind looked at the approaching figure with shy kindliness, and
+thought that he must have come from a distant part of the country. She
+thought that had she ever seen him before she would have remembered it.
+
+Upon the outskirts of the ring, clear of the close embrace of flowering
+bush and spreading vine. Haward paused, and looked with smiling eyes at
+this girl of the woods, this forest creature that, springing from the
+earth, had set its back against the tree.
+
+“Tarry awhile,” he said. “Slip not yet within the bark. Had I known, I
+should have brought oblation of milk and honey.”
+
+“This is the thicket between Fair View and the glebe lands,” said
+Audrey, who knew not what bark of tree and milk and honey had to do
+with the case. “Over yonder, sir, is the road to the great house. This
+path ends here; you must go back to the edge of the wood, then turn to
+the south”--
+
+“I have not lost my way,” answered Haward, still smiling. “It is
+pleasant here in the shade, after the warmth of the open. May I not sit
+down upon the leaves and talk to you for a while? I came out to find
+you, you know.”
+
+As he spoke, and without waiting for the permission which he asked,
+he crossed the rustling leaves, and threw himself down upon the earth
+between two branching roots. Her skirt brushed his knee; with a
+movement quick and shy she put more distance between them, then stood
+and looked at him with wide, grave eyes. “Why do you say that you came
+here to find me?” she asked. “I do not know you.”
+
+Haward laughed, nursing his knee and looking about him. “Let that pass
+for a moment. You have the prettiest woodland parlor, child! Tell me,
+do they treat you well over there?” with a jerk of his thumb toward the
+glebe house. “Madam the shrew and his reverence the bully, are they
+kind to you? Though they let you go like a beggar maid,”--he glanced
+kindly enough at her bare feet and torn gown,--“yet they starve you
+not, nor beat you, nor deny you aught in reason?”
+
+Audrey drew herself up. She had a proper pride, and she chose to
+forget for this occasion a bruise upon her arm and the thrusting
+upon her of Hugon’s company. “I do not know who you are, sir, that
+ask me such questions,” she said sedately. “I have food and shelter
+and--and--kindness. And I go barefoot only of week days”--
+
+It was a brave beginning, but of a sudden she found it hard to go on.
+She felt his eyes upon her and knew that he was unconvinced, and into
+her own eyes came the large tears. They did not fall, but through
+them she saw the forest swim in green and gold. “I have no father or
+mother,” she said, “and no brother or sister. In all the world there is
+no one that is kin to me.”
+
+Her voice, that was low and full and apt to fall into minor cadences,
+died away, and she stood with her face raised and slightly turned from
+the gentleman who lay at her feet, stretched out upon the sere beech
+leaves. He did not seem inclined to speech, and for a time the little
+brook and the birds and the wind in the trees sang undisturbed.
+
+“These woods are very beautiful,” said Haward at last, with his gaze
+upon her, “but if the land were less level it were more to my taste.
+Now, if this plain were a little valley couched among the hills, if to
+the westward rose dark blue mountains like a rampart, if the runlet
+yonder were broad and clear, if this beech were a sugar-tree”--
+
+He broke off, content to see her eyes dilate, her bosom rise and fall,
+her hand go trembling for support to the column of the beech.
+
+“Oh, the mountains!” she cried. “When the mist lifted, when the cloud
+rested, when the sky was red behind them! Oh, the clear stream, and the
+sugar-tree, and the cabin! Who are you? How did you know about these
+things? Were you--were you there?”
+
+She turned upon him, with her soul in her eyes. As for him, lying at
+length upon the ground, he locked his hands beneath his head and began
+to sing, though scarce above his breath. He sang the song of Amiens:--
+
+    “Under the greenwood tree,
+     Who loves to lie with me.”
+
+When he had come to the end of the stanza he half rose, and turned
+toward the mute and breathless figure leaning against the beech-tree.
+For her the years had rolled back: one moment she stood upon the
+doorstep of the cabin, and the air was filled with the trampling of
+horses, with quick laughter, whistling, singing, and the call of a
+trumpet; the next she ran, in night-time and in terror, between rows of
+rustling corn, felt again the clasp of her pursuer, heard at her ear
+the comfort of his voice. A film came between her eyes and the man at
+whom she stared, and her heart grew cold.
+
+“Audrey,” said Haward, “come here, child.”
+
+The blood returned to her heart, her vision cleared, and her arm fell
+from its clasp upon the tree. The bark opened not; the hamadryad had
+lost the spell. When at his repeated command she crossed to him, she
+went as the trusting, dumbly loving, dumbly grateful child whose life
+he had saved, and whose comforter, protector, and guardian he had been.
+When he took her hands in his she was glad to feel them there again,
+and she had no blushes ready when he kissed her upon the forehead. It
+was sweet to her who hungered for affection, who long ago had set his
+image up, loving him purely as a sovereign spirit or as a dear and
+great elder brother, to hear him call her again “little maid;” tell her
+that she had not changed save in height; ask her if she remembered this
+or that adventure, what time they had strayed in the woods together.
+Remember! When at last, beneath his admirable management, the wonder
+and the shyness melted away, and she found her tongue, memories came
+in a torrent. The hilltop, the deep woods and the giant trees, the
+house he had built for her out of stones and moss, the grapes they
+had gathered, the fish they had caught, the thunderstorm when he had
+snatched her out of the path of a stricken and falling pine, an alarm
+of Indians, an alarm of wolves, finally the first faint sounds of the
+returning expedition, the distant trumpet note, the nearer approach,
+the bursting again into the valley of the Governor and his party, the
+journey from that loved spot to Williamsburgh,--all sights and sounds,
+thoughts and emotions, of that time, fast held through lonely years,
+came at her call, and passed again in procession before them. Haward,
+first amazed, then touched, reached at length the conclusion that the
+years of her residence beneath the minister’s roof could not have been
+happy; that she must always have put from her with shuddering and
+horror the memory of the night which orphaned her; but that she had
+passionately nursed, cherished, and loved all that she had of sweet and
+dear, and that this all was the memory of her childhood in the valley,
+and of that brief season when he had been her savior, protector,
+friend, and playmate. He learned also--for she was too simple and
+too glad either to withhold the information or to know that she had
+given it--that in her girlish and innocent imaginings she had made of
+him a fairy knight, clothing him in a panoply of power, mercy, and
+tenderness, and setting him on high, so high that his very heel was
+above the heads of the mortals within her ken.
+
+Keen enough in his perceptions, he was able to recognize that here was
+a pure and imaginative spirit, strongly yearning after ideal strength,
+beauty, and goodness. Given such a spirit, it was not unnatural that,
+turning from sordid or unhappy surroundings as a flower turns from
+shadow to the full face of the sun, she should have taken a memory
+of valiant deeds, kind words, and a protecting arm, and have created
+out of these a man after her own heart, endowing him with all heroic
+attributes; at one and the same time sending him out into the world,
+a knight-errant without fear and without reproach, and keeping him by
+her side--the side of a child--in her own private wonderland. He saw
+that she had done this, and he was ashamed. He did not tell her that
+that eleven-years-distant fortnight was to him but a half-remembered
+incident of a crowded life, and that to all intents and purposes she
+herself had been forgotten. For one thing, it would have hurt her;
+for another, he saw no reason why he should tell her. Upon occasion
+he could be as ruthless as a stone; if he were so now he knew it
+not, but in deceiving her deceived himself. Man of a world that was
+corrupt enough, he was of course quietly assured that he could bend
+this woodland creature--half child, half dryad--to the form of his
+bidding. To do so was in his power, but not his pleasure. He meant to
+leave her as she was; to accept the adoration of the child, but to
+attempt no awakening of the woman. The girl was of the mountains, and
+their higher, colder, purer air; though he had brought her body thence,
+he would not have her spirit leave the climbing earth, the dreamlike
+summits, for the hot and dusty plain. The plain, God knew, had dwellers
+enough.
+
+She was a thing of wild and sylvan grace, and there was fulfillment
+in a dark beauty all her own of the promise she had given as a child.
+About her was a pathos, too,--the pathos of the flower taken from its
+proper soil, and drooping in earth which nourished it not. Haward,
+looking at her, watching the sensitive, mobile lips, reading in the
+dark eyes, beneath the felicity of the present, a hint and prophecy
+of woe, felt for her a pity so real and great that for the moment his
+heart ached as for some sorrow of his own. She was only a young girl,
+poor and helpless, born of poor and helpless parents dead long ago.
+There was in her veins no gentle blood; she had none of the world’s
+goods; her gown was torn, her feet went bare. She had youth, but not
+its heritage of gladness: beauty, but none to see it; a nature that
+reached toward light and height, and for its home the house which he
+had lately left. He was a man older by many years than the girl beside
+him, knowing good and evil; by instinct preferring the former, but at
+times stooping, open-eyed, to that degree of the latter which a lax
+and gay world held to be not incompatible with a convention somewhat
+misnamed “the honor of a gentleman.” Now, beneath the beech-tree in the
+forest which touched upon one side the glebe, upon the other his own
+lands, he chose at this time the good; said to himself, and believed
+the thing he said, that in word and in deed he would prove himself her
+friend.
+
+Putting out his hand he drew her down upon the leaves; and she sat
+beside him, still and happy, ready to answer him when he asked her
+this or that, readier yet to sit in blissful, dreamy silence. She was
+as pure as the flower which she held in her hand, and most innocent
+in her imaginings. This was a very perfect knight, a great gentleman,
+good and pitiful, that had saved her from the Indians when she was a
+little girl, and had been kind to her,--ah, so kind! In that dreadful
+night when she had lost father and mother and brother and sister, when
+in the darkness her childish heart was a stone for terror, he had come,
+like God, from the mountains, and straightway she was safe. Now into
+her woods, from over the sea, he had come again, and at once the load
+upon her heart, the dull longing and misery, the fear of Hugon, were
+lifted. The chaplet which she laid at his feet was not loosely woven of
+gay-colored flowers, but was compact of austerer blooms of gratitude,
+reverence, and that love which is only a longing to serve. The glamour
+was at hand, the enchanted light which breaks not from the east or the
+west or the north or the south was upon its way; but she knew it not,
+and she was happy in her ignorance.
+
+“I am tired of the city,” he said. “Now I shall stay in Virginia. A
+longing for the river and the marshes and the house where I was born
+came upon me”--
+
+“I know,” she answered. “When I shut my eyes I see the cabin in the
+valley, and when I dream it is of things which happen in a mountainous
+country.”
+
+“I am alone in the great house,” he continued, “and the floors echo
+somewhat loudly. The garden, too; beside myself there is no one
+to smell the roses or to walk in the moonlight. I had forgotten
+the isolation of these great plantations. Each is a province and a
+despotism. If the despot has neither kith nor kin, has not yet made
+friends, and cares not to draw company from the quarters, he is lonely.
+They say that there are ladies in Virginia whose charms well-nigh
+outweigh their dowries of sweet-scented and Oronoko. I will wed such an
+one, and have laughter in my garden, and other footsteps than my own in
+my house.”
+
+“There are beautiful ladies in these parts,” said Audrey. “There is the
+one that gave me the guinea for my running yesterday. She was so very
+fair. I wished with all my heart that I were like her.”
+
+“She is my friend,” said Haward slowly, “and her mind is as fair as her
+face. I will tell her your story.”
+
+The gilded streak upon the earth beneath the beech had crept away,
+but over the ferns and weeds and flowering bushes between the slight
+trees without the ring the sunshine gloated. The blue of the sky was
+wonderful, and in the silence Haward and Audrey heard the wind whisper
+in the treetops. A dove moaned, and a hare ran past.
+
+“It was I who brought you from the mountains and placed you here,” said
+Haward at last. “I thought it for the best, and that when I sailed away
+I left you to a safe and happy life. It seems that I was mistaken. But
+now that I am at home again, child, I wish you to look upon me, who am
+so much your elder, as your guardian and protector still. If there is
+anything which you lack, if you are misused, are in need of help, why,
+think that your troubles are the Indians again, little maid, and turn
+to me once more for help!”
+
+Having spoken honestly and well and very unwisely, he looked at his
+watch and said that it was late. When he rose to his feet Audrey did
+not move, and when he looked down upon her he saw that her eyes, that
+had been wet, were overflowing. He put out his hand, and she took it
+and touched it with her lips; then, because he said that he had not
+meant to set her crying, she smiled, and with her own hand dashed away
+the tears.
+
+“When I ride this way I shall always stop at the minister’s house,”
+said Haward, “when, if there is aught which you need or wish, you must
+tell me of it. Think of me as your friend, child.”
+
+He laid his hand lightly and caressingly upon her head. The ruffles
+at his wrist, soft, fine, and perfumed, brushed her forehead and her
+eyes. “The path through your labyrinth to its beechen heart was hard
+to find,” he continued, “but I can easily retrace it. No, trouble not
+yourself, child. Stay for a time where you are. I wish to speak to the
+minister alone.”
+
+His hand was lifted. Audrey felt rather than saw him go. Only a few
+feet, and the dogwood stars, the purple mist of the Judas-tree, the
+white fragrance of a wild cherry, came like a painted arras between
+them. For a time she could hear the movement of the branches as he put
+them aside; but presently this too ceased, and the place was left to
+her and to all the life that called it home.
+
+It was the same wood, surely, into which she had run two hours before,
+and yet--and yet--When her tears were spent, and she stood up, leaning,
+with her loosened hair and her gown that was the color of oak bark,
+against the beech-tree, she looked about her and wondered. The wonder
+did not last, for she found an explanation.
+
+“It has been blessed,” said Audrey, with all reverence and simplicity,
+“and that is why the light is so different.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MACLEAN TO THE RESCUE
+
+
+Saunderson, the overseer, having laboriously written and signed a pass,
+laid down the quill, wiped his inky forefinger upon his sleeve, and
+gave the paper to the storekeeper, who sat idly by.
+
+“Ye’ll remember that the store chiefly lacks in broadcloth of Witney,
+frieze and camlet, and in women’s shoes, both silk and callimanco. And
+dinna forget to trade with Alick Ker for three small swords, a chafing
+dish, and a dozen mourning and hand-and-heart rings. See that you have
+the skins’ worth. Alick’s an awfu’ man to get the upper hand of.”
+
+“I’m thinking a MacLean should have small difficulty with a Ker,” said
+the storekeeper dryly. “What I’m wanting to know is why I am saddled
+with the company of Monsieur Jean Hugon.” He jerked his thumb toward
+the figure of the trader standing within the doorway. “I do not like
+the gentleman, and I’d rather trudge it to Williamsburgh alone.”
+
+“Ye ken not the value of the skins, nor how to show them off,” answered
+the other. “Wherefore, for the consideration of a measure of rum, he’s
+engaged to help you in the trading. As for his being half Indian,
+Gude guide us! It’s been told me that no so many centuries ago the
+Highlandmen painted their bodies and went into battle without taking
+advantage even of feathers and silk grass. One half of him is of the
+French nobeelity; he told me as much himself. And the best of ye--sic
+as the Campbells--are no better than that.”
+
+He looked at MacLean with a caustic smile. The latter shrugged his
+shoulders. “So long as you tie him neck and heels with a Campbell I
+am content,” he answered. “Are you going? I’ll just bar the windows
+and lock the door, and then I’ll be off with yonder copper cadet of a
+French house. Good-day to you. I’ll be back to-night.”
+
+“Ye’d better,” said the overseer, with another widening of his thin
+lips. “For myself, I bear ye no ill-will; for my grandmither--rest her
+soul!--came frae the north, and I aye thought a Stewart better became
+the throne than a foreign-speaking body frae Hanover. But if the store
+is not open the morn I’ll raise hue and cry, and that without wasting
+time. I’ve been told ye’re great huntsmen in the Highlands; if ye
+choose to turn red deer yourself, I’ll give ye a chase, _and trade ye
+down, man, and track ye down_.”
+
+MacLean half turned from the window. “I have hunted the red deer,” he
+said, “in the land where I was born, and which I shall see no more, and
+I have been myself hunted in the land where I shall die. I have run
+until I have fallen, and I have felt the teeth of the dogs. Were God
+to send a miracle--which he will not do--and I were to go back to the
+glen and the crag and the deep birch woods, I suppose that I would hunt
+again, would drive the stag to bay, holloing to my hounds, and thinking
+the sound of the horns sweet music in my ears. It is the way of the
+earth. Hunter and hunted, we make the world and the pity of it.”
+
+Setting to work again, he pushed to the heavy shutters. “You’ll find
+them open in the morning,” he said, “and find me selling,--selling
+clothing that I may not wear, wine that I may not drink, powder
+and shot that I may not spend, swords that I may not use; and
+giving,--giving pride, manhood, honor, heart’s blood”--
+
+He broke off, shot to the bar across the shutters, and betook himself
+in silence to the other window, where presently he burst into a fit
+of laughter. The sound was harsh even to savagery. “Go your ways,
+Saunderson,” he said. “I’ve tried the bars of the cage; they’re too
+strong. Stop on your morning round, and I’ll give account of my
+trading.”
+
+The overseer gone, the windows barred, and the heavy door shut and
+locked behind him, MacLean paused upon the doorstep to look down upon
+his appointed companion. The trader, half sitting, half reclining upon
+a log, was striking at something with the point of his hunting-knife,
+lightly, delicately, and often. The something was a lizard, about
+which, as it lay in the sunshine upon the log, he had wrought a pen of
+leafy twigs. The creature, darting for liberty this way and that, was
+met at every turn by the steel, and at every turn suffered a new wound.
+MacLean looked; then bent over and with a heavy stick struck the thing
+out of its pain.
+
+“There’s a time to work and a time to play, Hugon,” he said coolly.
+“Playtime’s over now. The sun is high, and Isaac and the oxen must have
+the skins well-nigh to Williamsburgh. Up with you!”
+
+Hugon rose to his feet, slid his knife into its sheath, and announced
+in good enough English that he was ready. He had youth, the slender,
+hardy, perfectly moulded figure of the Indian, a coloring and a
+countenance that were not of the white and not of the brown. When
+he went a-trading up the river, past the thickly settled country,
+past the falls, past the French town which his Huguenot father had
+helped to build, into the deep woods and to the Indian village
+whence had strayed his mother, he wore the clothing that became the
+woods,--beaded moccasins, fringed leggings, hunting-shirt of deerskin,
+cap of fur,--looked his part and played it well. When he came back to
+an English country, to wharves and stores, to halls and porches of
+great houses and parlors of lesser ones, to the streets and ordinaries
+of Williamsburgh, he pulled on jack boots, shrugged himself into a
+coat with silver buttons, stuck lace of a so-so quality at neck and
+wrists, wore a cocked hat and a Blenheim wig, and became a figure alike
+grotesque and terrible. Two thirds of the time his business caused
+him to be in the forests that were far away; but when he returned to
+civilization, to stare it in the face and brag within himself, “I am
+lot and part of what I see!” he dwelt at the crossroads ordinary, drank
+and gamed with Paris the schoolmaster and Darden the minister, and
+dreamed (at times) of Darden’s Audrey.
+
+The miles to Williamsburgh were long and sunny, with the dust thick
+beneath the feet. Warm and heavy, the scented spring possessed the
+land. It was a day for drowsing in the shade: for them who must needs
+walk in the sunshine, languor of thought overtook them, and sparsity of
+speech. They walked rapidly, step with step, their two lean and sinewy
+bodies casting the same length of shadow; but they kept their eyes upon
+the long glare of white dust, and told not their dreams. At a point in
+the road where the storekeeper saw only confused marks and a powdering
+of dust upon the roadside bushes, the half-breed announced that there
+had been that morning a scuffle in a gang of negroes; that a small man
+had been thrown heavily to the earth, and a large man had made off
+across a low ditch into the woods; that the overseer had parted the
+combatants, and that some one’s back had bled. No sooner was this piece
+of clairvoyance aired than he was vexed that he had shown a hall-mark
+of the savage, and hastily explained that life in the woods, such as a
+trader must live, would teach any man--an Englishman, now, as well as a
+Frenchman--how to read what was written on the earth. Farther on, when
+they came to a miniature glen between the semblance of two hills, down
+which, in mockery of a torrent, brabbled a slim brown stream, MacLean
+stood still, gazed for a minute, then, whistling, caught up with his
+companion, and spoke at length upon the subject of the skins awaiting
+them at Williamsburgh.
+
+The road had other travelers than themselves. At intervals a cloud of
+dust would meet or overtake them, and out of the windows of coach or
+chariot or lighter chaise faces would glance at them. In the thick dust
+wheels and horses’ hoofs made no noise, the black coachmen sat still
+upon the boxes, the faces were languid with the springtime. A moment
+and all were gone. Oftener there passed a horseman. If he were riding
+the planter’s pace, he went by like a whirlwind, troubling only to
+curse them out of his path; if he had more leisure, he threw them a
+good-morning, or perhaps drew rein to ask this or that of Hugon. The
+trader was well known, and was an authority upon all matters pertaining
+to hunting or trapping. The foot passengers were few, for in Virginia
+no man walked that could ride, and on a morn of early May they that
+walked were like to be busy in the fields. An ancient seaman, lame and
+vagabond, lurched beside them for a while, then lagged behind; a witch,
+old and bowed and bleared of eye, crossed their path; and a Sapony
+hunter, with three wolves’ heads slung across his shoulder, slipped
+by them on his way to claim the reward decreed by the Assembly. At a
+turn of the road they came upon a small ordinary, with horses fastened
+before it, and with laughter, oaths, and the rattling of dice issuing
+from the open windows. The trader had money; the storekeeper had none.
+The latter, though he was thirsty, would have passed on; but Hugon
+twitched him by the sleeve, and producing from the depths of his great
+flapped pocket a handful of crusadoes, écues, and pieces of eight,
+indicated with a flourish that he was prepared to share with his less
+fortunate companion.
+
+They drank standing, kissed the girl who served them, and took to the
+road again. There were no more thick woods, the road running in a blaze
+of sunshine past clumps of cedars and wayside tangles of blackberry,
+sumac, and elder. Presently, beyond a group of elms, came into sight
+the goodly college of William and Mary, and, dazzling white against the
+blue, the spire of Bruton church.
+
+Within a wide pasture pertaining to the college, close to the roadside
+and under the boughs of a vast poplar, half a score of students were
+at play. Their lithe young bodies were dark of hue and were not
+overburdened with clothing; their countenances remained unmoved,
+without laughter or grimacing; and no excitement breathed in the voices
+with which they called one to another. In deep gravity they tossed a
+ball, or pitched a quoit, or engaged in wrestling. A white man, with a
+singularly pure and gentle face, sat upon the grass at the foot of the
+tree, and watched the studious efforts of his pupils with an approving
+smile.
+
+“Wildcats to purr upon the hearth, and Indians to go to school!” quoth
+MacLean. “Were you taught here, Hugon, and did you play so sadly?”
+
+The trader, his head held very high, drew out a large and bedizened
+snuffbox, and took snuff with ostentation. “My father was of a great
+tribe--I would say a great house--in the country called France,” he
+explained, with dignity. “Oh, he was of a very great name indeed! His
+blood was--what do you call it?--_blue_. I am the son of my father:
+I am a Frenchman. _Bien_! My father dies, having always kept me with
+him at Monacan-Town; and when they have laid him full length in the
+ground, Monsieur le Marquis calls me to him. ‘Jean,’ says he, and his
+voice is like the ice in the stream, ‘Jean, you have ten years, and
+your father--may _le bon Dieu_ pardon his sins!--has left his wishes
+regarding you and money for your maintenance. To-morrow Messieurs de
+Sailly and de Breuil go down the river to talk of affairs with the
+English Governor. You will go with them, and they will leave you at the
+Indian school which the English have built near to the great college
+in their town of Williamsburgh. There you will stay, learning all that
+Englishmen can teach you, until you have eighteen years. Come back to
+me then, and with the money left by your father you shall be fitted out
+as a trader. Go!’ ... Yes, I went to school here; but I learned fast,
+and did not forget the things I learned, and I played with the English
+boys--there being no scholars from France--on the other side of the
+pasture.”
+
+He waved his hand toward an irruption of laughing, shouting figures
+from the north wing of the college. The white man under the tree had
+been quietly observant of the two wayfarers, and he now rose to his
+feet, and came over to the rail fence against which they leaned.
+
+“Ha, Jean Hugon!” he said pleasantly, touching with his thin white hand
+the brown one of the trader. “I thought it had been my old scholar!
+Canst say the belief and the Commandments yet, Jean? Yonder great
+fellow with the ball is Meshawa,--Meshawa that was a little, little
+fellow when you went away. All your other playmates are gone,--though
+you did not play much, Jean, but gloomed and gloomed because you must
+stay this side of the meadow with your own color. Will you not cross
+the fence and sit awhile with your old master?”
+
+As he spoke he regarded with a humorous smile the dusty glories of his
+sometime pupil, and when he had come to an end he turned and made as if
+to beckon to the Indian with the ball. But Hugon drew his hand away,
+straightened himself, and set his face like a flint toward the town.
+“I am sorry, I have no time to-day,” he said stiffly. “My friend and I
+have business in town with men of my own color. My color is white. I do
+not want to see Meshawa or the others. I have forgotten them.”
+
+He turned away, but a thought striking him his face brightened, and
+plunging his hand into his pocket he again brought forth his glittering
+store. “Nowadays I have money,” he said grandly. “It used to be that
+Indian braves brought Meshawa and the others presents, because they
+were the sons of their great men. I was the son of a great man, too;
+but he was not Indian and he was lying in his grave, and no one brought
+me gifts. Now I wish to give presents. Here are ten coins, master. Give
+one to each Indian boy, the largest to Meshawa.”
+
+The Indian teacher, Charles Griffin by name, looked with a whimsical
+face at the silver pieces laid arow upon the top rail. “Very well,
+Jean,” he said. “It is good to give of thy substance. Meshawa and the
+others will have a feast. Yes, I will remember to tell them to whom
+they owe it. Good-day to you both.”
+
+The meadow, the solemnly playing Indians, and their gentle teacher
+were left behind, and the two men, passing the long college all astare
+with windows, the Indian school, and an expanse of grass starred with
+buttercups, came into Duke of Gloucester Street. Broad, unpaved, deep
+in dust, shaded upon its ragged edges by mulberries and poplars, it
+ran without shadow of turning from the gates of William and Mary to
+the wide sweep before the Capitol. Houses bordered it, flush with the
+street or set back in fragrant gardens; other and narrower ways opened
+from it; half way down its length wide greens, where the buttercups
+were thick in the grass, stretched north and south. Beyond these greens
+were more houses, more mulberries and poplars, and finally, closing the
+vista, the brick façade of the Capitol.
+
+The two from Fair View plantation kept their forest gait; for the
+trader was in a hurry to fulfill his part of the bargain, which was
+merely to exhibit and value the skins. There was an ordinary in
+Nicholson Street that was to his liking. Sailors gamed there, and other
+traders, and half a dozen younger sons of broken gentlemen. It was as
+cleanly dining in its chief room as in the woods, and the aqua vitæ, if
+bad, was cheap. In good humor with himself, and by nature lavish with
+his earnings, he offered to make the storekeeper his guest for the day.
+The latter curtly declined the invitation. He had bread and meat in his
+wallet, and wanted no drink but water. He would dine beneath the trees
+on the market green, would finish his business in town, and be half way
+back to the plantation while the trader--being his own man, with no
+fear of hue and cry if he were missed--was still at hazard.
+
+This question settled, the two kept each other company for several
+hours longer, at the end of which time they issued from the store at
+which the greater part of their business had been transacted, and
+went their several ways,--Hugon to the ordinary in Nicholson Street,
+and MacLean to his dinner beneath the sycamores on the green. When
+the frugal meal had been eaten, the latter recrossed the sward to the
+street, and took up again the round of his commissions.
+
+It was after three by the great clock in the cupola of the Capitol when
+he stood before the door of Alexander Ker, the silversmith, and found
+entrance made difficult by the serried shoulders of half a dozen young
+men standing within the store, laughing, and making bantering speeches
+to some one hidden from the Highlander’s vision. Presently an appealing
+voice, followed by a low cry, proclaimed that the some one was a woman.
+
+MacLean had a lean and wiry strength which had stood him in good stead
+upon more than one occasion in his checkered career. He now drove an
+arm like a bar of iron between two broadcloth coats, sent the wearers
+thereof to right and left, and found himself one of an inner ring
+and facing Mistress Truelove Taberer, who stood at bay against the
+silversmith’s long table. One arm was around the boy who had rowed her
+to the Fair View store a week agone; with the other she was defending
+her face from the attack of a beribboned gallant desirous of a kiss.
+The boy, a slender, delicate lad of fourteen, struggled to free himself
+from his sister’s restraining arm, his face white with passion and his
+breath coming in gasps. “Let me go, Truelove!” he commanded. “If I am a
+Friend, I am a man as well! Thou fellow with the shoulder knots, thee
+shall pay dearly for thy insolence!”
+
+Truelove tightened her hold. “Ephraim, Ephraim! If a man compel thee to
+go with him a mile, thee is to go with him twain; if he take thy cloak,
+thee is to give him thy coat also; if he--Ah!” She buried her profaned
+cheek in her arm and began to cry, but very softly.
+
+Her tormentors, flushed with wine and sworn to obtain each one a kiss,
+laughed more loudly, and one young rake, with wig and ruffles awry,
+lurched forward to take the place of the coxcomb who had scored.
+Ephraim wrenched himself free, and making for this gentleman might have
+given or received bodily injury, had not a heavy hand falling upon his
+shoulder stopped him in mid-career.
+
+“Stand aside, boy,” said MacLean, “This quarrel’s mine by virtue of my
+making it so. Mistress Truelove, you shall have no further annoyance.
+Now, you Lowland cowards that cannot see a flower bloom but you wish to
+trample it in the mire, come taste the ground yourself, and be taught
+that the flower is out of reach!”
+
+As he spoke he stepped before the Quakeress, weaponless, but with his
+eyes like steel. The half dozen spendthrifts and ne’er-do-weels whom he
+faced paused but long enough to see that this newly arrived champion
+had only his bare hands, and was, by token of his dress, undoubtedly
+their inferior, before setting upon him with drunken laughter and the
+loudly avowed purpose of administering a drubbing. The one that came
+first he sent rolling to the floor. “Another for Hector!” he said
+coolly.
+
+The silversmith, ensconced in safety behind the table, wrung his hands.
+“Sirs, sirs! Take your quarrel into the street! I’ll no have fighting
+in my store. What did ye rin in here for, ye Quaker baggage? Losh! did
+ye ever see the like of that! Here, boy, ye can get through the window.
+Rin for the constable! Rin, I tell ye, or there’ll be murder done!”
+
+A gentleman who had entered the store unobserved drew his rapier, and
+with it struck up a heavy cane which was in the act of descending for
+the second time upon the head of the unlucky Scot. “What is all this?”
+he asked quietly. “Five men against one,--that is hardly fair play. Ah,
+I see there were six; I had overlooked the gentleman on the floor, who,
+I hope, is only stunned. Five to one,--the odds are heavy. Perhaps I
+can make them less so.” With a smile upon his lips, he stepped backward
+a foot or two until he stood with the weaker side.
+
+Now, had it been the constable who so suddenly appeared upon the scene,
+the probabilities are that the fight, both sides having warmed to it,
+would, despite the terrors of the law, have been carried to a finish.
+But it was not the constable; it was a gentleman recently returned from
+England, and become in the eyes of the youth of Williamsburgh the glass
+of fashion and the mould of form. The youngster with the shoulder knots
+had copied color and width of ribbon from a suit which this gentleman
+had worn at the Palace; the rake with the wig awry, who passed for a
+wit, had done him the honor to learn by heart portions of his play, and
+to repeat (without quotation marks) a number of his epigrams; while
+the pretty fellow whose cane he had struck up practiced night and
+morning before a mirror his bow and manner of presenting his snuffbox.
+A fourth ruffler desired office, and cared not to offend a prospective
+Councilor. There was rumor, too, of a grand entertainment to be given
+at Fair View; it was good to stand well with the law, but it was
+imperative to do so with Mr. Marmaduke Haward. Their hands fell; they
+drew back a pace, and the wit made himself spokesman. Roses were rare
+so early in the year; for him and his companions, they had but wished
+to compliment those that bloomed in the cheeks of the pretty Quakeress.
+This servant fellow, breathing fire like a dragon, had taken it upon
+himself to defend the roses,--which likely enough were grown for
+him,--and so had been about to bring upon himself merited chastisement.
+However, since it was Mr. Marmaduke Haward who pleaded for him--A full
+stop, a low bow, and a flourish. “Will Mr. Haward honor me? ’Tis right
+Macouba, and the box--if the author of ‘The Puppet Show’ would deign to
+accept it”--
+
+“Rather to change with you, sir,” said the other urbanely, and drew out
+his own chased and medallioned box.
+
+The gentleman upon the floor had now gotten unsteadily to his feet. Mr.
+Haward took snuff with each of the six; asked after the father of one,
+the brother of another; delicately intimated his pleasure in finding
+the noble order of Mohocks, that had lately died in London, resurrected
+in Virginia; and fairly bowed the flattered youths out of the store. He
+stood for a moment upon the threshold watching them go triumphantly,
+if unsteadily, up the street; then turned to the interior of the store
+to find MacLean seated upon a stool, with his head against the table,
+submitting with a smile of pure content to the ministrations of the
+dove-like mover of the late turmoil, who with trembling fingers was
+striving to bind her kerchief about a great cut in his forehead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HAWARD AND EVELYN
+
+
+MacLean put aside with much gentleness the hands of his surgeon, and,
+rising to his feet, answered the question in Haward’s eyes by producing
+a slip of paper and gravely proffering it to the man whom he served.
+Haward took it, read it, and handed it back; then turned to the Quaker
+maiden. “Mistress Truelove Taberer,” he said courteously. “Are you
+staying in town? If you will tell me where you lodge, I will myself
+conduct you thither.”
+
+Truelove shook her head, and slipped her hand into that of her brother
+Ephraim. “I thank thee, friend,” she said, with gentle dignity, “and
+thee, too, Angus MacLean, though I grieve that thee sees not that it
+is not given us to meet evil with evil, nor to withstand force with
+force. Ephraim and I can now go in peace. I thank thee again, friend,
+and thee.” She gave her hand first to Haward, then to MacLean. The
+former, knowing the fashion of the Quakers, held the small fingers a
+moment, then let them drop; the latter, knowing it, too, raised them to
+his lips and imprinted upon them an impassioned kiss. Truelove blushed,
+then frowned, last of all drew her hand away.
+
+With the final glimpse of her gray skirt the Highlander came back to
+the present. “Singly I could have answered for them all, one after the
+other,” he said stiffly. “Together they had the advantage. I pay my
+debt and give you thanks, sir.”
+
+“That is an ugly cut across your forehead,” replied Haward. “Mr. Ker
+had best bring you a basin of water. Or stay! I am going to my lodging.
+Come with me, and Juba shall dress the wound properly.”
+
+MacLean turned his keen blue eyes upon him. “Am I to understand that
+you give me a command, or that you extend to me an invitation? In the
+latter case, I should prefer”--
+
+“Then take it as a command,” said Haward imperturbably. “I wish your
+company. Mr. Ker, good-day; I will buy the piece of plate which you
+showed me yesterday.”
+
+The two moved down the room together, but at the door MacLean, with his
+face set like a flint, stood aside, and Haward passed out first, then
+waited for the other to come up with him.
+
+“When I drink a cup I drain it to the dregs,” said the Scot. “I walk
+behind the man who commands me. The way, you see, is not broad enough
+for you and me and hatred.”
+
+“Then let hatred lag behind,” answered Haward coolly. “I have negroes
+to walk at my heels when I go abroad. I take you for a gentleman,
+accept your enmity an it please you, but protest against standing here
+in the hot sunshine.”
+
+With a shrug MacLean joined him. “As you please,” he said. “I have in
+spirit moved with you through London streets. I never thought to walk
+with you in the flesh.”
+
+It was yet warm and bright in the street, the dust thick, the air
+heavy with the odors of the May. Haward and MacLean walked in silence,
+each as to the other, one as to the world at large. Now and again
+the Virginian must stop to bow profoundly to curtsying ladies, or to
+take snuff with some portly Councilor or less stately Burgess who,
+coming from the Capitol, chanced to overtake them. When he paused his
+storekeeper paused also, but, having no notice taken of him beyond a
+glance to discern his quality, needed neither a supple back nor a ready
+smile.
+
+Haward lodged upon Palace Street, in a square brick house, lived in by
+an ancient couple who could remember Puritan rule in Virginia, who had
+served Sir William Berkeley, and had witnessed the burning of Jamestown
+by Bacon. There was a grassy yard to the house, and the path to the
+door lay through an alley of lilacs, purple and white. The door was
+open, and Haward and MacLean, entering, crossed the hall, and going
+into a large, low room, into which the late sunshine was streaming,
+found the negro Juba setting cakes and wine upon the table.
+
+“This gentleman hath a broken head, Juba,” said the master. “Bring
+water and linen, and bind it up for him.”
+
+As he spoke he laid aside hat and rapier, and motioned MacLean to a
+seat by the window. The latter obeyed the gesture in silence, and in
+silence submitted to the ministrations of the negro. Haward, sitting at
+the table, waited until the wound had been dressed; then with a wave of
+the hand dismissed the black.
+
+“You would take nothing at my hands the other day,” he said to the grim
+figure at the window. “Change your mind, my friend,--or my foe,--and
+come sit and drink with me.”
+
+MacLean reared himself from his seat, and went stiffly over to the
+table. “I have eaten and drunken with an enemy before to-day,” he said.
+“Once I met Ewin Mor Mackinnon upon a mountain side. He had oatcake in
+his sporran, and I a flask of usquebaugh. We couched in the heather,
+and ate and drank together, and then we rose and fought. I should have
+slain him but that a dozen Mackinnons came up the glen, and he turned
+and fled to them for cover. Here I am in an alien land; a thousand
+fiery crosses would not bring one clansman to my side; I cannot fight
+my foe. Wherefore, then, should I take favors at his hands?”
+
+“Why should you be my foe?” demanded Haward. “Look you, now! There was
+a time, I suppose, when I was an insolent youngster like any one of
+those who lately set upon you; but now I call myself a philosopher and
+man of a world for whose opinions I care not overmuch. My coat is of
+fine cloth, and my shirt of holland; your shirt is lockram, and you
+wear no coat at all: _ergo_, saith a world of pretty fellows, we are
+beings of separate planets. ‘As the cloth is, the man is,’--to which
+doctrine I am at times heretic. I have some store of yellow metal,
+and spend my days in ridding myself of it,--a feat which you have
+accomplished. A goodly number of acres is also counted unto me, but in
+the end my holding and your holding will measure the same. I walk a
+level road; you have met with your precipice, and, bruised by the fall,
+you move along stony ways; but through the same gateway we go at last.
+Fate, not I, put you here. Why should you hate me who am of your order?”
+
+MacLean left the table, and twice walked the length of the room, slowly
+and with knitted brows. “If you mean the world-wide order,--the order
+of gentlemen,”--he said, coming to a pause with the breadth of the
+table between him and Haward, “we may have that ground in common. The
+rest is debatable land. I do not take you for a sentimentalist or a
+redresser of wrongs. I am your storekeeper, purchased with that same
+yellow metal of which you so busily rid yourself; and your storekeeper
+I shall remain until the natural death of my term, two years hence.
+We are not countrymen; we own different kings; I may once have walked
+your level road, but you have never moved in the stony ways; my eyes
+are blue, while yours are gray; you love your melting Southern music,
+and I take no joy save in the pipes; I dare swear you like the smell
+of lilies which I cannot abide, and prefer fair hair in women where I
+would choose the dark. There is no likeness between us. Why, then”--
+
+Haward smiled, and drawing two glasses toward him slowly filled them
+with wine. “It is true,” he said, “that it is not my intention to
+become a petitioner for the pardon of a rebel to his serene and German
+Majesty the King; true also that I like the fragrance of the lily. I
+have my fancies. Say that I am a man of whim, and that, living in a
+lonely house set in a Sahara of tobacco fields, it is my whim to desire
+the acquaintance of the only gentleman within some miles of me. Say
+that my fancy hath been caught by a picture drawn for me a week agone;
+that, being a philosopher, I play with the idea that your spirit, knife
+in hand, walked at my elbow for ten years, and I knew it not. Say that
+the idea has for me a curious fascination. Say, finally, that I plume
+myself that, given the chance, I might break down this airy hatred.”
+
+He set down the bottle, and pushed one of the brimming glasses across
+the table. “I should like to make trial of my strength,” he said,
+with, a laugh. “Come! I did you a service to-day; in your turn do me a
+pleasure.”
+
+MacLean dragged a chair to the table, and sat down. “I will drink
+with you,” he said, “and forget for an hour. A man grows tired--It is
+Burgundy, is it not? Old Borlum and I emptied a bottle between us, the
+day he went as hostage to Wills; since then I have not tasted wine.
+’Tis a pretty color.”
+
+Haward lifted his glass. “I drink to your future. Freedom, better days,
+a stake in a virgin land, friendship with a sometime foe.” He bowed to
+his guest and drank.
+
+“In my country,” answered MacLean, “where we would do most honor, we
+drink not to life, but to death. _Crioch onarach!_ Like a gentleman may
+you die.” He drank, and sighed with pleasure.
+
+“The King!” said Haward. There was a china bowl, filled with red
+anemones, upon the table. MacLean drew it toward him, and, pressing
+aside the mass of bloom, passed his glass over the water in the bowl.
+“The King! with all my heart,” he said imperturbably.
+
+Haward poured more wine. “I have toasted at the Kit-Kat many a piece of
+brocade and lace less fair than yon bit of Quaker gray that cost you a
+broken head. Shall we drink to Mistress Truelove Taberer?”
+
+By now the Burgundy had warmed the heart and loosened the tongue of
+the man who had not tasted wine since the surrender of Preston. “It is
+but a mile from the store to her father’s house,” he said. “Sometimes
+on Sundays I go up the creek upon the Fair View side, and when I am
+over against the house I holloa. Ephraim comes, in his boat and rows me
+across, and I stay for an hour. They are strange folk, the Quakers. In
+her sight and in that of her people I am as good a man as you. ‘Friend
+Angus MacLean,’ ‘Friend Marmaduke Haward,’--world’s wealth and world’s
+rank quite beside the question.”
+
+He drank, and commended the wine. Haward struck a silver bell, and bade
+Juba bring another bottle.
+
+“When do you come again to the house at Fair View?” asked the
+storekeeper.
+
+“Very shortly. It is a lonely place, where ghosts bear me company. I
+hope that now and then, when I ask it, and when the duties of your day
+are ended, you will come help me exorcise them. You shall find welcome
+and good wine.” He spoke very courteously, and if he saw the humor of
+the situation his smile betrayed him not.
+
+MacLean took a flower from the bowl, and plucked at its petals with
+nervous fingers. “Do you mean that?” he asked at last.
+
+Haward leaned across the table, and their eyes met. “On my word I do,”
+said the Virginian.
+
+The knocker on the house door sounded loudly, and a moment later a
+woman’s clear voice, followed by a man’s deeper tones, was heard in the
+hall.
+
+“More guests,” said Haward lightly. “You are a Jacobite; I
+drink my chocolate at St. James’ Coffee House; the gentleman
+approaching--despite his friendship for Orrery and for the Bishop of
+Rochester--is but a Hanover Tory; but the lady,--the lady wears only
+white roses, and every 10th of June makes a birthday feast.”
+
+The storekeeper rose hastily to take his leave, but was prevented both
+by Haward’s restraining gesture and by the entrance of the two visitors
+who were now ushered in by the grinning Juba. Haward stepped forward.
+“You are very welcome, Colonel. Evelyn, this is kind. Your woman told
+me this morning that you were not well, else”--
+
+“A migraine,” she answered, in her clear, low voice. “I am better now,
+and my father desired me to take the air with him.”
+
+“We return to Westover to-morrow,” said that sprightly gentleman.
+“Evelyn is like David of old, and pines for water from the spring at
+home. It also appears that the many houses and thronged streets of this
+town weary her, who, poor child, is used to an Arcady called London!
+When will you come to us at Westover, Marmaduke?”
+
+“I cannot tell,” Haward answered. “I must first put my own house in
+order, so that I may in my turn entertain my friends.”
+
+As he spoke he moved aside, so as to include in the company MacLean,
+who stood beside the table. “Evelyn,” he said, “let me make known to
+you--and to you, Colonel--a Scots gentleman who hath broken his spear
+in his tilt with fortune, as hath been the luck of many a gallant man
+before him. Mistress Evelyn Byrd, Colonel Byrd--Mr. MacLean, who was an
+officer in the Highland force taken at Preston, and who has been for
+some years a prisoner of war in Virginia.”
+
+The lady’s curtsy was low; the Colonel bowed as to his friend’s friend.
+If his eyebrows went up, and if a smile twitched the corners of his
+lips, the falling curls of his periwig hid from view these tokens of
+amused wonder. MacLean bowed somewhat stiffly, as one grown rusty in
+such matters. “I am in addition Mr. Marmaduke Haward’s storekeeper,”
+he said succinctly, then turned to the master of Fair View. “It grows
+late,” he announced, “and I must be back at the store to-night. Have
+you any message for Saunderson?”
+
+“None,” answered Haward. “I go myself to Fair View to-morrow, and then
+I shall ask you to drink with me again.”
+
+As he spoke he held out his hand. MacLean looked at it, sighed, then
+touched it with his own. A gleam as of wintry laughter came into his
+blue eyes. “I doubt that I shall have to get me a new foe,” he said,
+with regret in his voice.
+
+When he had bowed to the lady and to her father, and had gone out
+of the room and down the lilac-bordered path and through the gate,
+and when the three at the window had watched him turn into Duke of
+Gloucester Street, the master of Westover looked at the master of
+Fair View and burst out laughing. “Ludwell hath for an overseer the
+scapegrace younger son of a baronet; and there are three brothers of an
+excellent name under indentures to Robert Carter. I have at Westover a
+gardener who annually makes the motto of his house to spring in pease
+and asparagus. I have not had him to drink with me yet, and t’other day
+I heard Ludwell give to the baronet’s son a hound’s rating.”
+
+“I do not drink with the name,” said Haward coolly. “I drink with the
+man. The churl or coward may pass me by, but the gentleman, though his
+hands be empty, I stop.”
+
+The other laughed again; then dismissed the question with a wave of his
+hand, and pulled out a great gold watch with cornelian seals. “Carter
+swears that Dr. Contesse hath a specific that is as sovereign for the
+gout as is St. Andrew’s cross for a rattlesnake bite. I’ve had twinges
+lately, and the doctor lives hard by. Evelyn, will you rest here while
+I go petition Æsculapius? Haward, when I have the recipe I will return,
+and impart it to you against the time when you need it. No, no, child,
+stay where you are! I will be back anon.”
+
+Having waved aside his daughter’s faint protest, the Colonel
+departed,--a gallant figure of a man, with a pretty wit and a heart
+that was benevolently gay. As he went down the path he paused to
+gather a sprig of lilac. “Westover--Fair View,” he said to himself,
+and smiled, and smelled the lilac; then--though his ills were somewhat
+apocryphal--walked off at a gouty pace across the buttercup-sprinkled
+green toward the house of Dr. Contesse.
+
+Haward and Evelyn, left alone, kept silence for a time in the quiet
+room that was filled with late sunshine and the fragrance of flowers.
+He stood by the window, and she sat in a great chair, with her hands
+folded in her lap, and her eyes upon them. When silence had become more
+loud than speech, she turned in her seat and addressed herself to him.
+
+“I have known you do many good deeds,” she said slowly. “That gentleman
+that was here is your servant, is he not, and an exile, and unhappy?
+And you sent him away comforted. It was a generous thing.”
+
+Haward moved restlessly. “A generous thing,” he answered. “Ay, it
+was generous. I can do such things at times, and why I do them who
+can tell? Not I! Do you think that I care for that grim Highlander,
+who drinks my death in place of my health, who is of a nation that I
+dislike, and a party that is not mine?”
+
+She shook her head. “I do not know. And yet you helped him.”
+
+Haward left the window, and came and sat beside her. “Yes, I helped
+him. I am not sure, but I think I did it because, when first we met,
+he told me that he hated me, and meant the thing he said. It is my
+humor to fix my own position in men’s minds; to lose the thing I have
+that I may gain the thing I have not; to overcome, and never prize the
+victory; to hunt down a quarry, and feel no ardor in the chase; to
+strain after a goal, and yet care not if I never reach it.”
+
+He took her fan in his hand, and fell to counting the slender ivory
+sticks. “I tread the stage as a fine gentleman,” he said. “It is the
+part for which I was cast, and I play it well with proper mien and
+gait. I was not asked if I would like the part, but I think that I do
+like it, as much as I like anything. Seeing that I must play it, and
+that there is that within me which cries out against slovenliness, I
+play it as an artist should. Magnanimity goes with it, does it not, and
+generosity, courtesy, care for the thing which is, and not for that
+which seems? Why, then, with these and other qualities I strive to
+endow the character.”
+
+He closed the fan, and, leaning back in his chair, shaded his eyes with
+his hand. “When the lights are out,” he said; “when forever and a night
+the actor bids the stage farewell; when, stripped of mask and tinsel,
+he goes home to that Auditor who set him his part, then perhaps he
+will be told what manner of man he is. The glass that now he dresses
+before tells him not; but he thinks a truer glass would show a shrunken
+figure.”
+
+He sat in silence for a moment; then laughed, and gave her back her
+fan. “Am I to come to Westover, Evelyn?” he asked. “Your father
+presses, and I have not known what answer to make him.”
+
+“You will give us pleasure by your coming,” she said gently and at
+once. “My father wishes your advice as to the ordering of his library;
+and you know that my pretty stepmother likes you well.”
+
+“Will it please you to have me come?” he asked, with his eyes upon her
+face.
+
+She met his gaze very quietly. “Why not?” she answered simply. “You
+will help me in my flower garden, and sing with me in the evening, as
+of old.”
+
+“Evelyn,” he said, “if what I am about to say to you distresses you,
+lift your hand, and I will cease to speak. Since a day and an hour in
+the woods yonder, I have been thinking much. I wish to wipe that hour
+from your memory as I wipe it from mine, and to begin afresh. You are
+the fairest woman that I know, and the best. I beg you to accept my
+reverence, homage, love; not the boy’s love, perhaps; perhaps not the
+love that some men have to squander, but _my_ love. A quiet love, a
+lasting trust, deep pride and pleasure”--
+
+At her gesture he broke off, sat in silence for a moment, then rising
+went to the window, and with slightly contracted brows stood looking
+out at the sunshine that was slipping away. Presently he was aware that
+she stood beside him.
+
+She was holding out her hand. “It is that of a friend,” she said. “No,
+do not kiss it, for that is the act of a lover. And you are not my
+lover,--oh, not yet, not yet!” A soft, exquisite blush stole over her
+face and neck, but she did not lower her lovely candid eyes. “Perhaps
+some day, some summer day at Westover, it will all be different,” she
+breathed, and turned away.
+
+Haward caught her hand, and bending pressed his lips upon it. “It is
+different now!” he cried. “Next week I shall come to Westover!”
+
+He led her back to the great chair, and presently she asked some
+question as to the house at Fair View. He plunged into an account of
+the cases of goods which had followed him from England by the Falcon,
+and which now lay in the rooms that were yet to be swept and garnished;
+then spoke lightly and whimsically of the solitary state in which he
+must live, and of the entertainments which, to be in the Virginia
+fashion, he must give. While he talked she sat and watched him, with
+the faint smile upon her lips. The sunshine left the floor and the
+wall, and a dankness from the long grass and the closing flowers and
+the heavy trees in the adjacent churchyard stole into the room. With
+the coming of the dusk conversation languished, and the two sat in
+silence until the return of the Colonel.
+
+If that gentleman did not light the darkness like a star, at least
+his entrance into a room invariably produced the effect of a sudden
+accession of was lights, very fine and clear and bright. He broke a
+jest or two, bade laughing farewell to the master of Fair View, and
+carried off his daughter upon his arm. Haward walked with them to the
+gate, and came back alone, stepping thoughtfully between the lilac
+bushes.
+
+It was not until Juba had brought candles, and he had taken his seat at
+table before the half-emptied bottle of wine, that it came to Haward
+that he had wished to tell Evelyn of the brown girl who had run for the
+guinea, but had forgotten to do so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AUDREY OF THE GARDEN
+
+
+The creek that ran between Fairview and the glebe lands was narrow and
+deep; upon it, moored to a stake driven into a bit of marshy ground
+below the orchard, lay a crazy boat belonging to the minister. To this
+boat, of an early, sunny morning, came Audrey, and, standing erect,
+pole in hand, pushed out from the reedy bank into the slow-moving
+stream. It moved so slowly and was so clear that its depth seemed
+the blue depth of the sky, with now and then a tranquil cloud to be
+glided over. The banks were low and of the greenest grass, save where
+they sank still lower and reeds abounded, or where some colored bush,
+heavy with bloom, bent to meet its reflected image. It was so fair
+that Audrey began to sing as she went down the stream; and without
+knowing why she chose it, she sang a love song learned out of one of
+Darden’s ungodly books, a plaintive and passionate lay addressed by
+some cavalier to his mistress of an hour. She sang not loudly, but very
+sweetly; carelessly, too, and as if to herself; now and then repeating
+a line twice or maybe thrice; pleased with the sweet melancholy of the
+notes, but not thinking overmuch of the meaning of the words. They
+died upon her lips when Hugon rose from a lair of reeds and called to
+her to stop. “Come to the shore, ma’m’selle!” he cried. “See, I have
+brought you a ribbon from the town. Behold!” and he fluttered a crimson
+streamer.
+
+Audrey caught her breath; then gazed, reassured, at the five yards of
+water between her and the bank. Had Hugon stood there in his hunting
+dress, she would have felt them no security; but he was wearing his
+coat and breeches of fine cloth, his ruffled shirt, and his great black
+periwig. A wetting would not be to his mind.
+
+As she answered not, but went on her way, silent now, and with her
+slender figure bending with the motion of the pole, he frowned and
+shrugged; then took up his pilgrimage, and with his light and swinging
+stride kept alongside of the boat. The ribbon lay across his arm,
+and he turned it in the sunshine. “If you come not and get it,” he
+wheedled, “I will throw it in the water.”
+
+The angry tears sprang to Audrey’s eyes. “Do so, and save me the
+trouble,” she answered, and then was sorry that she had spoken.
+
+The red came into the swarthy cheeks of the man upon the bank. “You
+love me not,” he said. “Good! You have told me so before. But here I
+am!”
+
+“Then here is a coward!” said Audrey. “I do not wish you to walk there.
+I do not wish you to speak to me. Go back!”
+
+Hugon’s teeth began to show. “I go not,” he answered, with something
+between a snarl and a smirk. “I love you, and I follow on your
+path,--like a lover.”
+
+“Like an Indian!” cried the girl.
+
+The arrow pierced the heel. The face which he turned upon her was
+the face of a savage, made grotesque and horrible, as war-paint and
+feathers could not have made it, by the bushy black wig and the lace
+cravat.
+
+“Audrey!” he called. “Morning Light! Sunshine in the Dark! Dancing
+Water! Audrey that will not be called ‘mademoiselle’ nor have the
+wooing of the son of a French chief! Then shall she have the wooing of
+the son of a Monacan woman. I am a hunter. I will woo as they woo in
+the woods.”
+
+Audrey bent to her pole, and made faster progress down the creek. Her
+heart was hot and angry, and yet she was afraid. All dreadful things,
+all things that oppressed with horror, all things that turned one white
+and cold, so cold and still that one could not run away, were summed up
+for her in the word “Indian.” To her the eyes of Hugon were basilisk
+eyes,--they drew her and held her; and when she looked into them, she
+saw flames rising and bodies of murdered kindred; then the mountains
+loomed above her again, and it was night-time, and she was alone save
+for the dead, and mad with fear and with the quiet.
+
+The green banks went by, and the creek began to widen. “Where are you
+going?” called the trader. “Wheresoever you go, at the end of your path
+stand my village and my wigwam. You cannot stay all day in that boat.
+If you come not back at the bidden hour, Darden’s squaw will beat you.
+Come over, Morning Light, come over, and take me in your boat, and tie
+your hair with my gift. I will not hurt you. I will tell you the French
+love songs that my father sang to my mother. I will speak of land that
+I have bought (oh, I have prospered, ma’m’selle!), and of a house that
+I mean to build, and of a woman that I wish to put in the house,--a
+Sunshine in the Dark to greet me when I come from my hunting in the
+great forests beyond the falls, from my trading with the nation of the
+Tuscaroras, with the villages of the Monacans. Come over to me, Morning
+Light!”
+
+The creek widened and widened, then doubled a grassy cape all in the
+shadow of a towering sycamore. Beyond the point, crowning the low green
+slope of the bank, and topped with a shaggy fell of honeysuckle and
+ivy, began a red brick wall. Half way down its length it broke, and six
+shallow steps led up to an iron gate, through whose bars one looked
+into a garden. Gazing on down the creek past the farther stretch of the
+wall, the eye came upon the shining reaches of the river.
+
+Audrey turned the boat’s head toward the steps and the gate in the
+wall. The man on the opposite shore let fall an oath.
+
+“So you go to Fair View house!” he called across the stream. “There are
+only negroes there, unless”--he came to a pause, and his face changed
+again, and out of his eyes looked the spirit of some hot, ancestral
+French lover, cynical, suspicious, and jealously watchful--“unless
+their master is at home,” he ended, and laughed.
+
+Audrey touched the wall, and over a great iron hook projecting
+therefrom threw a looped rope, and fastened her boat.
+
+“I stay here until you come forth!” swore Hugon from across the creek.
+“And then I follow you back to where you must moor the boat. And then
+I shall walk with you to the minister’s house. Until we meet again,
+ma’m’selle!”
+
+Audrey answered not, but sped up the steps to the gate. A sick fear
+lest it should be locked possessed her; but it opened at her touch,
+disclosing a long, sunny path, paved with brick, and shut between lines
+of tall, thick, and smoothly clipped box. The gate clanged to behind
+her; ten steps, and the boat, the creek, and the farther shore were
+hidden from her sight. With this comparative bliss came a faintness and
+a trembling that presently made her slip down upon the warm and sunny
+floor, and lie there, with her face within her arm and the tears upon
+her cheeks. The odor of the box wrapped her like a mantle; a lizard
+glided past her; somewhere in open spaces birds were singing; finally a
+greyhound came down the path, and put its nose into the hollow of her
+hand.
+
+She rose to her knees, and curled her arm around the dog’s neck; then,
+with a long sigh, stood up, and asked of herself if this were the way
+to the house. She had never seen the house at close range, had never
+been in this walled garden. It was from Williamsburgh that the minister
+had taken her to his home, eleven years before. Sometimes from the
+river, in those years, she had seen, rising above the trees, the steep
+roof and the upper windows; sometimes upon the creek she had gone past
+the garden wall, and had smelled the flowers upon the other side.
+
+In her lonely life, with the beauty of the earth about her to teach her
+that there might be greater beauty that she yet might see with a daily
+round of toil and sharp words to push her to that escape which lay in
+a world of dreams, she had entered that world, and thrived therein. It
+was a world that was as pure as a pearl, and more fantastic than an
+Arabian tale. She knew that when she died she could take nothing out of
+life with her to heaven. But with this other world it was different,
+and all that she had or dreamed of that was fair she carried through
+its portals. This house was there. Long closed, walled in, guarded
+by tall trees, seen at far intervals and from a distance, as through
+a glass darkly, it had become to her an enchanted spot, about which
+played her quick fancy, but where her feet might never stray.
+
+But now the spell which had held the place in slumber was snapped,
+and her feet was set in its pleasant paths. She moved down the alley
+between the lines of box, and the greyhound went with her. The branches
+of a walnut-tree drooped heavily across the way; when she had passed
+them she saw the house, square, dull red, bathed in sunshine. A moment,
+and the walk led her between squat pillars of living green into the
+garden out of the fairy tale.
+
+Dim, fragrant, and old time; walled in; here sunshiny spaces, there
+cool shadows of fruit-trees; broken by circles and squares of box;
+green with the grass and the leaves, red and purple and gold and
+white with the flowers; with birds singing, with the great silver
+river murmuring by without the wall at the foot of the terrace, with
+the voice of a man who sat beneath a cherry-tree reading aloud to
+himself,--such was the garden that she came upon, a young girl, and
+heavy at heart.
+
+She was so near that she could hear the words of the reader, and she
+knew the piece that he was reading; for you must remember that she was
+not untaught, and that Darden had books.
+
+    “‘When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll,
+      And swelling organs lift the rising soul,
+      One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight,
+      Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight’”--
+
+The greyhound ran from Audrey to the man who was reading these verses
+with taste and expression, and also with a smile half sad and half
+cynical. He glanced from his page, saw the girl where she stood against
+the dark pillar of the box, tossed aside the book, and went to her down
+the grassy path between rows of nodding tulips. “Why, child!” he said.
+“Did you come up like a flower? I am glad to see you in my garden,
+little maid. Are there Indians without?”
+
+At least, to Audrey, there were none within. She had been angered, sick
+at heart and sore afraid, but she was no longer so. In this world that
+she had entered it was good to be alive; she knew that she was safe,
+and of a sudden she felt that the sunshine was very golden, the music
+very sweet. To Haward, looking at her with a smile, she gave a folded
+paper which she drew from the bosom of her gown. “The minister sent me
+with it,” she explained, and curtsied shyly.
+
+Haward took the paper, opened it, and fell to poring over the crabbed
+characters with which it was adorned. “Ay? Gratulateth himself that
+this fortunate parish hath at last for vestryman Mr. Marmaduke Haward;
+knoweth that, seeing I am what I am, my influence will be paramount
+with said vestry; commendeth himself to my favor; beggeth that I listen
+not to charges made by a factious member anent a vastly magnified
+occurrence at the French ordinary; prayeth that he may shortly present
+himself at Fair View, and explain away certain calumnies with which his
+enemies have poisoned the ears of the Commissary; hopeth that I am in
+good health; and is my very obedient servant to command. Humph!”
+
+He let the paper flutter to the ground, and turned to Audrey with a
+kindly smile. “I am much afraid that this man of the church, whom I
+gave thee for guardian, child, is but a rascal, after all, and a wolf
+in sheep’s clothing. But let him go hang while I show you my garden.”
+
+Going closer, he glanced at her keenly; then went nearer still, and
+touched her cheek with his forefinger. “You have been crying,” he said.
+“There _were_ Indians, then. How many and how strong, Audrey?”
+
+The dark eyes that met his were the eyes of the child who, in the
+darkness, through the corn, had run from him, her helper. “There was
+one,” she whispered, and looked over her shoulder.
+
+Haward drew her to the seat beneath the cherry-tree, and there, while
+he sat beside her, elbow on knee and chin on hand, watching her, she
+told him of Hugon. It was so natural to tell him. When she had made an
+end of her halting, broken sentences, and he spoke to her gravely and
+kindly, she hung upon his words, and thought him wise and wonderful
+as a king. He told her that he would speak to Darden, and did not
+despair of persuading that worthy to forbid the trader his house. Also
+he told her that in this settled, pleasant, every-day Virginia, and
+in the eighteenth century, a maid, however poor and humble, might not
+be married against her will. If this half-breed had threats to utter,
+there was always the law of the land. A few hours in the pillory or a
+taste of the sheriff’s whip might not be amiss. Finally, if the trader
+made his suit again, Audrey must let him know, and Monsieur Jean Hugon
+should be taught that he had another than a helpless, friendless girl
+to deal with.
+
+Audrey listened and was comforted, but the shadow did not quite leave
+her eyes. “He is waiting for me now,” she said fearfully to Haward,
+who had not missed the shadow. “He followed me down the creek, and
+is waiting over against the gate in the wall. When I go back he will
+follow me again, and at last I will have to cross to his side. And then
+he will go home with me, and make me listen to him. His eyes burn me,
+and when his hand touches me I see--I see”--
+
+Her frame shook, and she raised to his gaze a countenance suddenly
+changed into Tragedy’s own. “I don’t know why,” she said, in a stricken
+voice, “but of them all that I kissed good-by that night I now see
+only Molly. I suppose she was about as old as I am when they killed
+her. We were always together. I can’t remember her face very clearly;
+only her eyes, and how red her lips were. And her hair: it came to
+her knees, and mine is just as long. For a long, long time after you
+went away, when I could not sleep because it was dark, or when I was
+frightened or Mistress Deborah beat me, I saw them all; but now I see
+only Molly,--Molly lying there _dead_.”
+
+There was a silence in the garden, broken presently by Haward. “Ay,
+Molly,” he said absently.
+
+With his hand covering his lips and his eyes upon the ground, he fell
+into a brown study. Audrey sat very still for fear that she might
+disturb him, who was so kind to her. A passionate gratitude filled her
+young heart; she would have traveled round the world upon her knees to
+serve him. As for him, he was not thinking of the mountain girl, the
+oread who, in the days when he was younger and his heart beat high,
+had caught his light fancy, tempting him from his comrades back to the
+cabin in the valley, to look again into her eyes and touch the brown
+waves of her hair. She was ashes, and the memory of her stirred him not.
+
+At last he looked up. “I myself will take you home, child. This fellow
+shall not come near you. And cease to think of these gruesome things
+that happened long ago. You are young and fair; you should be happy. I
+will see to it that”--
+
+He broke off, and again looked thoughtfully at the ground. The book
+which he had tossed aside was lying upon the grass, open at the poem
+which he had been reading. He stooped and raised the volume, and,
+closing it, laid it upon the bench beside her. Presently he laughed.
+“Come, child!” he said. “You have youth. I begin to think my own not
+past recall. Come and let me show you my dial that I have just had put
+up.”
+
+There was no load at Audrey’s heart: the vision of Molly had passed;
+the fear of Hugon was a dwindling cloud. She was safe in this old sunny
+garden, with harm shut without. And as a flower opens to the sunshine,
+so because she was happy she grew more fair. Audrey every day, Audrey
+of the infrequent speech and the wide dark eyes, the startled air,
+the shy, fugitive smiles,--that was not Audrey of the garden. Audrey
+of the garden had shining eyes, a wild elusive grace, laughter as
+silvery as that which had rung from her sister’s lips, years agone,
+beneath the sugar-tree in the far-off blue mountains, quick gestures,
+quaint fancies which she feared not to speak out, the charm of mingled
+humility and spirit; enough, in short, to make Audrey of the garden a
+name to conjure with.
+
+They came to the sun-dial, and leaned thereon. Around its rim were
+graved two lines from Herrick, and Audrey traced the letters with her
+finger. “The philosophy is sound,” remarked Haward, “and the advice
+worth the taking. Let us go see if there are any rosebuds to gather
+from the bushes yonder. Damask buds should look well against your hair,
+child.”
+
+When they came to the rosebushes he broke for her a few scarce-opened
+buds, and himself fastened them in the coils of her hair. Innocent and
+glad as she was,--glad even that he thought her fair,--she trembled
+beneath his touch, and knew not why she trembled. When the rosebuds
+were in place they went to see the clove pinks, and when they had seen
+the clove pinks they walked slowly up another alley of box, and across
+a grass plot to a side door of the house; for he had said that he must
+show her in what great, lonely rooms he lived.
+
+Audrey measured the height and breadth of the house with her eyes. “It
+is a large place for one to live in alone,” she said, and laughed.
+“There’s a book at the Widow Constance’s; Barbara once showed it to
+me. It is all about a pilgrim; and there’s a picture of a great square
+house, quite like this, that was a giant’s castle,--Giant Despair. Good
+giant, eat me not!”
+
+Child, woman, spirit of the woodland, she passed before him into a dim,
+cool room, all littered with books. “My library,” said Haward, with a
+wave of his hand. “But the curtains and pictures are not hung, nor the
+books in place. Hast any schooling, little maid? Canst read?”
+
+Audrey flushed with pride that she could tell him that she was not
+ignorant; not like Barbara, who could not read the giant’s name in the
+pilgrim book.
+
+“The crossroads schoolmaster taught me,” she explained. “He has a
+scar in each hand, and is a very wicked man, but he knows more than
+the Commissary himself. The minister, too, has a cupboard filled with
+books, and he buys the new ones as the ships bring them in. When I have
+time, and Mistress Deborah will not let me go to the woods, I read. And
+I remember what I read. I could”--
+
+A smile trembled upon her lips, and her eyes grew brighter. Fired
+by the desire that he should praise her learning, and in her very
+innocence bold as a Wortley or a Howe, she began to repeat the lines
+which he had been reading beneath the cherry-tree:--
+
+    “‘When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll’”--
+
+The rhythm of the words, the passion of the thought, the pleased
+surprise that she thought she read in his face, the gesture of his
+hand, all spurred her on from line to line, sentence to sentence. And
+now she was not herself, but that other woman, and she was giving
+voice to all her passion, all her woe. The room became a convent cell;
+her ragged dress the penitent’s trailing black. That Audrey, lithe
+of mind as of body; who in the woods seemed the spirit of the woods,
+in the garden the spirit of the garden, on the water the spirit of
+the water,--that this Audrey, in using the speech of the poet, should
+embody and become the spirit of that speech was perhaps, considering
+all things, not so strange. At any rate, and however her power came
+about, at that moment, in Fair View house, a great actress was speaking.
+
+    “‘Fresh blooming Hope, gay daughter of the skies,
+      And Faith’”--
+
+The speaker lost a word, hesitated, became confused. Finally silence;
+then the Audrey of a while before, standing with heaving bosom, shy as
+a fawn, fearful that she had not pleased him, after all. For if she had
+done so, surely he would have told her as much. As it was, he had said
+but one word, and that beneath his breath, “_Eloïsa!_”
+
+It would seem that her fear was unfounded; for when he did speak, there
+were, God wot, sugar-plums enough. And Audrey, who in her workaday
+world was always blamed, could not know that the praise that was so
+sweet was less wholesome than the blame.
+
+Leaving the library they went into the hall, and from the hall looked
+into great, echoing, half-furnished rooms. All about lay packing-cases,
+many of them open, with rich stuffs streaming from them. Ornaments
+were huddled on tables, mirrors and pictures leaned their faces to the
+walls; everywhere was disorder.
+
+“The negroes are careless, and to-day I held their hands,” said Haward.
+“I must get some proper person to see to this gear.”
+
+Up stairs and down they went through the house, that seemed very large
+and very still, and finally they came out of the great front door, and
+down the stone steps on to the terrace. Below them, sparkling in the
+sunshine, lay the river, the opposite shore all in a haze of light. “I
+must go home,” Audrey shyly reminded him, whereat he smiled assent, and
+they went, not through the box alley to the gate in the wall, but down
+the terrace, and out upon the hot brown boards of the landing. Haward,
+stepping into a boat, handed her to a seat in the stern, and himself
+took the oars. Leaving the landing, they came to the creek and entered
+it. Presently they were gliding beneath the red brick wall with the
+honeysuckle atop. On the opposite grassy shore, seated in a blaze of
+noon sunshine, was Hugon.
+
+They in the boat took no notice. Haward, rowing, spoke evenly on, his
+theme himself and the gay and lonely life he had led these eleven
+years; and Audrey, though at first sight of the waiting figure she had
+paled and trembled, was too safe, too happy, to give to trouble any
+part of this magic morning. She kept her eyes on Haward’s face, and
+almost forgot the man who had risen from the grass and in silence was
+following them.
+
+Now, had the trader, in his hunting shirt and leggings, his moccasins
+and fur cap, been walking in the great woods, this silence, even
+with others in company, would have been natural enough to his Indian
+blood; but Monsieur Jean Hugon, in peruke and laced coat, walking in a
+civilized country, with words a-plenty and as hot as fire-water in his
+heart, and none upon his tongue, was a figure strange and sinister. He
+watched the two in the boat with an impassive face, and he walked like
+an Indian on an enemy’s trail, so silently that he scarce seemed to
+breathe, so lightly that his heavy boots failed to crush the flowers or
+the tender grass.
+
+Haward rowed on, telling Audrey stories of the town, of great men whose
+names she knew, and beautiful ladies of whom she had never heard; and
+she sat before him with her slim brown hands folded in her lap and
+the rosebuds withering in her hair, while through the reeds and the
+grass and the bushes of the bank over against them strode Hugon in his
+Blenheim wig and his wine-colored coat. Well-nigh together the three
+reached the stake driven in among the reeds, a hundred yards below the
+minister’s house. Haward fastened the boat, and, motioning to Audrey
+to stay for the moment where she was, stepped out upon the bank to
+confront the trader, who, walking steadily and silently as ever, was
+almost upon them.
+
+But it was broad daylight, and Hugon, with his forest instincts,
+preferred, when he wished to speak to the point, to speak in the dark.
+He made no pause; only looked with his fierce black eyes at the quiet,
+insouciant, fine gentleman standing with folded arms between him and
+the boat; then passed on, going steadily up the creek toward the bend
+where the water left the open smiling fields and took to the forest.
+He never looked back, but went like a hunter with his prey before him.
+Presently the shadows of the forest touched him, and Audrey and Haward
+were left alone.
+
+The latter laughed. “If his courage is of the quality of his
+lace--What, cowering, child, and the tears in your eyes! You were
+braver when you were not so tall, in those mountain days. Nay, no need
+to wet your shoe.”
+
+He lifted her in his arms, and set her feet upon firm grass. “How long
+since I carried you across a stream and up a dark hillside!” he said.
+“And yet to-day it seems but yesternight! Now, little maid, the Indian
+has run away, and the path to the house is clear.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his smoke-filled, untidy best room Darden sat at table, his drink
+beside him, his pipe between his fingers, and open before him a book
+of jests, propped by a tome of divinity. His wife coming in from the
+kitchen, he burrowed in the litter upon the table until he found an
+open letter, which he flung toward her. “The Commissary threatens
+again, damn him!” he said between smoke puffs. “It seems that t’other
+night, when I was in my cups at the tavern, Le Neve and the fellow who
+has Ware Creek parish--I forget his name--must needs come riding by.
+I was dicing with Paris. Hugon held the stakes. I dare say we kept
+not mum. And out of pure brotherly love and charity, my good, kind
+gentlemen ride on to Williamsburgh on a tale-bearing errand! Is that
+child never coming back, Deborah?”
+
+“She’s coming now,” answered his wife, with her eyes upon the letter.
+“I was watching from the upper window. He rowed her up the creek
+himself.”
+
+The door opened, and Audrey entered the room. Darden turned heavily in
+his chair, and took the long pipe from between his teeth. “Well?” he
+said. “You gave him my letter?”
+
+Audrey nodded. Her eyes were dreamy; the red of the buds in her
+hair had somehow stolen to her cheeks; she could scarce keep her
+lips from smiling. “He bade me tell you to come to supper with him
+on Monday,” she said. “And the Falcon that we saw come in last week
+brought furnishing for the great house. Oh, Mistress Deborah, the most
+beautiful things! The rooms are all to be made fine; and the negro
+women do not the work aright, and he wants some one to oversee them.
+He says that he has learned that in England Mistress Deborah was own
+woman to my Lady Squander, and so should know about hangings and china
+and the placing of furniture. And he asks that she come to Fair View
+morning after morning until the house is in order. He wishes me to
+come, too. Mistress Deborah will much oblige him, he says, and he will
+not forget her kindness.”
+
+Somewhat out of breath, but very happy, she looked with eager eyes
+from one guardian to the other. Darden emptied and refilled his pipe,
+scattering the ashes upon the book of jests. “Very good,” he said
+briefly.
+
+Into the thin visage of the ex-waiting-woman, who had been happier
+at my Lady Squander’s than in a Virginia parsonage, there crept a
+tightened smile. In her way, when she was not in a passion, she was
+fond of Audrey; but, in temper or out of temper, she was fonder of the
+fine things which for a few days she might handle at Fair View house.
+And the gratitude of the master thereof might appear in coins, or in
+an order on his store for silk and lace. When, in her younger days, at
+Bath or in town, she had served fine mistresses, she had been given
+many a guinea for carrying a note or contriving an interview, and in
+changing her estate she had not changed her code of morals. “We must
+oblige Mr. Haward, of course,” she said complacently. “I warrant you
+that I can give things an air! There’s not a parlor in this parish that
+does not set my teeth on edge! Now at my Lady Squander’s”--She embarked
+upon reminiscences of past splendor, checked only by her husband’s
+impatient demand for dinner.
+
+Audrey, preparing to follow her into the kitchen, was stopped, as she
+would have passed the table, by the minister’s heavy hand. “The roses
+at Fair View bloom early,” he said, turning her about that he might
+better see the red cluster in her hair. “Look you, Audrey! I wish you
+no great harm, child. You mind me at times of one that I knew many
+years ago, before ever I was chaplain to my Lord Squander or husband
+to my Lady Squander’s waiting-woman. A hunter may use a decoy, and he
+may also, on the whole, prefer to keep that decoy as good as when ’twas
+made. Buy not thy roses too dearly, Audrey.”
+
+To Audrey he spoke in riddles. She took from her hair the loosened
+buds, and looked at them lying in her hand. “I did not buy them,” she
+said. “They grew in the sun on the south side of the great house, and
+Mr. Haward gave them to me.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN
+
+
+June came to tide-water Virginia with long, warm days and with the odor
+of many roses. Day by day the cloudless sunshine visited the land:
+night by night the large pale stars looked into its waters. It was a
+slumberous land, of many creeks and rivers that were wide, slow, and
+deep, of tobacco fields and lofty, solemn forests, of vague marshes,
+of white mists, of a haze of heat far and near. The moon of blossoms
+was past, and the red men--few in number now--had returned from their
+hunting, and lay in the shade of the trees in the villages that the
+English had left them, while the women brought them fish from the
+weirs, and strawberries from the vines that carpeted every poisoned
+field or neglected clearing. The black men toiled amidst the tobacco
+and the maize; at noontide it was as hot in the fields as in the middle
+passage, and the voices of those who sang over their work fell to a
+dull crooning. The white men who were bound served listlessly; they
+that were well were as lazy as the weather; they that were newly come
+over and ill with the “seasoning” fever tossed upon their pallets,
+longing for the cooling waters of home. The white men who were free
+swore that the world, though fair, was warm, and none walked if he
+could ride. The sunny, dusty roads were left for shadowed bridle paths;
+in a land where most places could be reached by boat, the water would
+have been the highway but that the languid air would not fill the
+sails. It was agreed that the heat was unnatural, and that, likely
+enough, there would be a deal of fever during the summer.
+
+But there was thick shade in the Fair View garden, and when there was
+air at all it visited the terrace above the river. The rooms of the
+house were large and high-pitched; draw to the shutters, and they
+became as cool as caverns. Around the place the heat lay in wait: heat
+of wide, shadowless fields, where Haward’s slaves toiled from morn to
+eve; heat of the great river, unstirred by any wind, hot and sleeping
+beneath the blazing sun; heat of sluggish creeks and of the marshes,
+shadeless as the fields. Once reach the mighty trees drawn like a
+cordon around house and garden, and there was escape.
+
+To and fro and up and down in the house went the erst waiting-woman
+to my Lady Squander, carrying matters with a high hand. The negresses
+who worked under her eye found her a hard taskmistress. Was a room
+clean to-day, to-morrow it was found that there was dust upon the
+polished floor, finger marks on the paneled walls. The same furniture
+must be placed now in this room, now in that; china slowly washed and
+bestowed in one closet transferred to another; an eternity spent upon
+the household linen, another on the sewing and resewing, the hanging
+and rehanging, of damask curtains. The slaves, silent when the greenish
+eyes and tight, vixenish face were by, chattered, laughed, and sung
+when they were left alone. If they fell idle, and little was done of a
+morning, they went unrebuked; thoroughness, and not haste, appearing to
+be Mistress Deborah’s motto.
+
+The master of Fair View found it too noisy in his house to sit therein,
+and too warm to ride abroad. There were left the seat built round the
+cherry-tree in the garden, the long, cool box walk, and the terrace
+with a summer-house at either end. It was pleasant to read out of
+doors, pacing the box walk, or sitting beneath the cherry-tree,
+with the ripening fruit overhead. If the book was long in reading,
+if morning by morning Haward’s finger slipped easily in between the
+selfsame leaves, perhaps it was the fault of poet or philosopher. If
+Audrey’s was the fault, she knew it not.
+
+How could she know it, who knew herself, that she was a poor, humble
+maid, whom out of pure charity and knightly tenderness for weak and
+sorrowful things he long ago had saved, since then had maintained, now
+was kind to; and knew him, that he was learned and great and good, the
+very perfect gentle knight who, as he rode to win the princess, yet
+could stoop from his saddle to raise and help the herd girl? She had
+found of late that she was often wakeful of nights; when this happened,
+she lay and looked out of her window at the stars and wondered about
+the princess. She was sure that the princess and the lady who had given
+her the guinea were one.
+
+In the great house she would have worked her fingers to the bone. Her
+strong young arms lifted heavy weights; her quick feet ran up and down
+stairs for this or that; she would have taken the waxed cloths from the
+negroes, and upon her knees and with willing hands have made to shine
+like mirrors the floors that were to be trodden by knight and princess.
+But almost every morning, before she had worked an hour, Haward would
+call to her from the box walk or the seat beneath the cherry-tree; and
+“Go, child,” would say Mistress Deborah, looking up from her task of
+the moment.
+
+The garden continued to be the enchanted garden. To gather its flowers,
+red and white, to pace with him cool paved walks between walls of
+scented box, to sit beside him beneath the cherry-tree or upon the
+grassy terrace, looking out upon the wide, idle river,--it was dreamy
+bliss, a happiness too rare to last. There was no harm; not that she
+ever dreamed there could be. The house overlooked garden and terrace;
+the slaves passed and repassed the open windows; Juba came and went;
+now and then Mistress Deborah herself would sally forth to receive
+instructions concerning this or that from the master of the house. And
+every day, at noon, the slaves drew to all the shutters save those of
+the master’s room, and the minister’s wife and ward made their curtsies
+and went home. The latter, like a child, counted the hours upon the
+clock until the next morning; but then she was not used to happiness,
+and the wine of it made her slightly drunken.
+
+The master of Fair View told himself that there was infection in this
+lotus air of Virginia. A fever ran in his veins that made him languid
+of will, somewhat sluggish of thought, willing to spend one day like
+another, and all in a long dream. Sometimes, in the afternoons, when
+he was alone in the garden or upon the terrace, with the house blank
+and silent behind him, the slaves gone to the quarters, he tossed aside
+his book, and, with his chin upon his hand and his eyes upon the sweep
+of the river, first asked himself whither he was going, and then,
+finding no satisfactory answer, fell to brooding. Once, going into the
+house, he chanced to come upon his full-length reflection in a mirror
+newly hung, and stopped short to gaze upon himself. The parlor of his
+lodgings at Williamsburgh and the last time that he had seen Evelyn
+came to him, conjured up by the memory of certain words of his own.
+
+“A truer glass might show a shrunken figure,” he repeated, and with a
+quick and impatient sigh he looked at the image in the mirror.
+
+To the eye, at least, the figure was not shrunken. It was that of a man
+still young, and of a handsome face and much distinction of bearing.
+The dress was perfect in its quiet elegance; the air of the man
+composed,--a trifle sad, a trifle mocking. Haward snapped his fingers
+at the reflection. “The portrait of a gentleman,” he said, and passed
+on.
+
+That night, in his own room, he took from an escritoire a picture of
+Evelyn Byrd, done in miniature after a painting by a pupil of Kneller,
+and, carrying it over to the light of the myrtle candles upon the
+table, sat down and fell to studying it. After a while he let it drop
+from his hand, and leaned back in his chair, thinking.
+
+The night air, rising slightly, bent back the flame of the candles,
+around which moths were fluttering, and caused strange shadows upon
+the walls. They were thick about the curtained bed whereon had died
+the elder Haward,--a proud man, choleric, and hard to turn from his
+purposes. Into the mind of his son, sitting staring at these shadows,
+came the fantastic notion that amongst them, angry and struggling
+vainly for speech, might be his father’s shade. The night was feverish,
+of a heat and lassitude to foster grotesque and idle fancies. Haward
+smiled, and spoke aloud to his imaginary ghost.
+
+“You need not strive for speech,” he said. “I know what you would say.
+_Was it for this I built this house, bought land and slaves?... Fair
+View and Westover, Westover and Fair View. A lady that will not wed
+thee because she loves thee! Zoons, Marmaduke! thou puttest me beside
+my patience!... As for this other, set no nameless, barefoot wench
+where sat thy mother! King Cophetua and the beggar maid, indeed! I
+warrant you Cophetua was something under three-and-thirty!_”
+
+Haward ceased to speak for his father, and sighed for himself. “Moral:
+Three-and-thirty must be wiser in his day and generation.” He rose
+from his chair, and began to walk the room. “If not Cophetua, what
+then,--what then?” Passing the table, he took up the miniature again.
+“The villain of the piece, I suppose, Evelyn?” he asked.
+
+The pure and pensive face seemed to answer him. He put the picture
+hastily down, and recommenced his pacing to and fro. From the garden
+below came the heavy odor of lilies, and the whisper of the river tried
+the nerves. Haward went to the window, and, leaning out, looked, as now
+each night he looked, up and across the creek toward the minister’s
+house. To-night there was no light to mark it; it was late, and all the
+world without his room was in darkness. He sat down in the window seat,
+looked out upon the stars and listened to the river. An hour had passed
+before he turned back to the room, where the candles had burned low.
+“I will go to Westover to-morrow,” he said. “God knows, I should be a
+villain”--
+
+He locked the picture of Evelyn within his desk, drank his wine and
+water, and went to bed, strongly resolved upon retreat. In the morning
+he said, “I will go to Westover this afternoon;” and in the afternoon
+he said, “I will go to-morrow.” When the morrow came, he found that
+the house lacked but one day of being finished, and that there was
+therefore no need for him to go at all.
+
+Mistress Deborah was loath, enough to take leave of damask and mirrors
+and ornaments of china,--the latter fine enough and curious enough
+to remind her of Lady Squander’s own drawing-room; but the leaf of
+paper which Haward wrote upon, tore from his pocket-book, and gave her
+provided consolation. Her thanks were very glib, her curtsy was very
+deep. She was his most obliged, humble servant, and if she could serve
+him again he would make her proud. Would he not, now, some day, row up
+creek to their poor house, and taste of her perry and Shrewsbury cakes?
+Audrey, standing by, raised her eyes, and made of the request a royal
+invitation.
+
+For a week or more Haward abode upon his plantation, alone save for his
+servants and slaves. Each day he sent for the overseer, and listened
+gravely while that worthy expounded to him all the details of the
+condition and conduct of the estate; in the early morning and the late
+afternoon he rode abroad through his fields and forests. Mill and ferry
+and rolling house were visited, and the quarters made his acquaintance.
+At the creek quarter and the distant ridge quarter were bestowed the
+newly bought, the sullen and the refractory of his chattels. When,
+after sunset, and the fields were silent, he rode past the cabins,
+coal-black figures, new from the slave deck, still seamed at wrist and
+ankle, mowed and jabbered at him from over their bowls of steaming
+food; others, who had forgotten the jungle and the slaver, answered,
+when he spoke to them, in strange English; others, born in Virginia,
+and remembering when he used to ride that way with his father, laughed,
+called him “Marse Duke,” and agreed with him that the crop was looking
+mighty well. With the dark he reached the great house, and negroes from
+the home quarter took--his horse, while Juba lighted him through the
+echoing hall into the lonely rooms.
+
+From the white quarter he procured a facile lad who could read and
+write, and who, through too much quickness of wit, had failed to
+prosper in England. Him he installed as secretary, and forthwith began
+a correspondence with friends in England, as well as a long poem which
+was to serve the double purpose of giving Mr. Pope a rival and of
+occupying the mind of Mr. Marmaduke Haward. The letters were witty and
+graceful, the poem was the same; but on the third day the secretary,
+pausing for the next word that should fall from his master’s lips,
+waited so long that he dropped asleep. When he awoke, Mr. Haward was
+slowly tearing into bits the work that had been done on the poem. “It
+will have to wait upon my mood,” he said. “Seal up the letter to Lord
+Hervey, boy, and then begone to the fields. If I want you again, I will
+send for you.”
+
+The next day he proposed to himself to ride to Williamsburgh and see
+his acquaintances there. But even as he crossed the room to strike the
+bell for Juba a distaste for the town and its people came upon him. It
+occurred to him that instead he might take the barge and be rowed up
+the river to the Jaquelins’ or to Green Spring; but in a moment this
+plan also became repugnant. Finally he went out upon the terrace, and
+sat there the morning through, staring at the river. That afternoon he
+sent a negro to the store with a message for the storekeeper.
+
+The Highlander, obeying the demand for his company,--the third or
+fourth since his day at Williamsburgh,--came shortly before twilight to
+the great house, and found the master thereof still upon the terrace,
+sitting beneath an oak, with a small table and a bottle of wine beside
+him.
+
+“Ha, Mr. MacLean!” he cried, as the other approached. “Some days have
+passed since last we laid the ghosts! I had meant to sooner improve our
+acquaintance. But my house has been in disorder, and I myself,”--he
+passed his hand across his face as if to wipe away the expression into
+which it had been set,--“I myself have been poor company. There is a
+witchery in the air of this place. I am become but a dreamer of dreams.”
+
+As he spoke he motioned his guest to an empty chair, and began to pour
+wine for them both. His hand was not quite steady, and there was about
+him a restlessness of aspect most unnatural to the man. The storekeeper
+thought him looking worn, and as though he had passed sleepless nights.
+
+MacLean sat down, and drew his wineglass toward Mm. “It is the heat,”
+he said. “Last night, in the store, I felt that I was stifling; and
+I left it, and lay on the bare ground without. A star shot down the
+sky, and I wished that a wind as swift and strong would rise and sweep
+the land out to sea. When the day comes that I die, I wish to die a
+fierce death. It is best to die in battle, for then the mind is raised,
+and you taste all life in the moment before you go. If a man achieves
+not that, then struggle with earth or air or the waves of the sea is
+desirable. Driving sleet, armies of the snow, night and trackless
+mountains, the leap of the torrent, swollen lakes where kelpies
+lie in wait, wind on the sea with the black reef and the charging
+breakers,--it is well to dash one’s force against the force of these,
+and to die after fighting. But in this cursed land of warmth and ease
+a man dies like a dog that is old and hath lain winter and summer upon
+the hearthstone.” He drank his wine, and glanced again at Haward. “I
+did not know that you were here,” he said. “Saunderson told me that you
+were going to Westover.”
+
+“I was,--I am,” answered Haward briefly. Presently he roused himself
+from the brown study into which he had fallen.
+
+“’Tis the heat, as you say. It enervates. For my part, I am willing
+that your wind should arise. But it will not blow to-night. There is
+not a breath; the river is like glass.” He raised the wine to his lips,
+and drank deeply. “Come,” he said, laughing. “What did you at the store
+to-day? And does Mistress Truelove despair of your conversion to _thee_
+and _thou_, and peace with all mankind? Hast procured an enemy to fill
+the place I have vacated? I trust he’s no scurvy foe.”
+
+“I will take your questions in order,” answered the other
+sententiously. “This morning I sold a deal of fine china to a parcel
+of fine ladies who came by water from Jamestown, and were mightily
+concerned to know whether your worship was gone to Westover, or had
+instead (as ’t was reported) shut yourself up in Fair View house. And
+this afternoon came over in a periagua, from the other side, a very
+young gentleman with money in hand to buy a silver-fringed glove. ‘They
+are sold in pairs,’ said I. ‘Fellow, I require but one,’ said he. ‘If
+Dick Allen, who hath slandered me to Mistress Betty Cocke, dareth to
+appear at the merrymaking at Colonel Harrison’s to-night, his cheek and
+this glove shall come together!’ ‘Nathless, you must pay for both,’ I
+told him; and the upshot is that he leaves with me a gold button as
+earnest that he will bring the remainder of the price before the duel
+to-morrow. That Quaker maiden of whom you ask hath a soul like the soul
+of Colna-dona, of whom Murdoch, the harper of Coll, used to sing. She
+is fair as a flower after winter, and as tender as the rose flush in
+which swims yonder star. When I am with her, almost she persuades me
+to think ill of honest hatred, and to pine no longer that it was not
+I that had the killing of Ewin Mackinnon.” He gave a short laugh, and
+stooping picked up an oak twig from the ground, and with deliberation
+broke it into many small pieces. “Almost, but not quite,” he said.
+“There was in that feud nothing illusory or fantastic; nothing of the
+quality that marked, mayhap, another feud of my own making. If I have
+found that in this latter case I took a wraith and dubbed it my enemy;
+that, thinking I followed a foe, I followed a friend instead”--He threw
+away the bits of bark, and straightened himself. “A friend!” he said,
+drawing his breath. “Save for this Quaker family, I have had no friend
+for many a year! And I cannot talk to them of honor and warfare and
+the wide world.” His speech was sombre, but in his eyes there was an
+eagerness not without pathos.
+
+The mood of the Gael chimed with the present mood of the Saxon. As
+unlike in their natures as their histories, men would have called them;
+and yet, far away, in dim recesses of the soul, at long distances from
+the flesh, each recognised the other. And it was an evening, too,
+in which to take care of other things than the ways and speech of
+every day. The heat, the hush, and the stillness appeared well-nigh
+preternatural. A sadness breathed over the earth; all things seemed
+new and yet old; across the spectral river the dim plains beneath the
+afterglow took the seeming of battlefields.
+
+“A friend!” said Haward. “There are many men who call themselves my
+friends. I am melancholy to-day, restless, and divided against myself.
+I do not know one of my acquaintance whom I would have called to be
+melancholy with me as I have called you.” He leaned across the table
+and touched MacLean’s hand that was somewhat hurriedly fingering the
+wineglass. “Come!” he said. “Loneliness may haunt the level fields as
+well as the ways that are rugged and steep. How many times have we
+held converse since that day I found you in charge of my store? Often
+enough, I think, for each to know the other’s quality. Our lives have
+been very different, and yet I believe that we are akin. For myself, I
+should be glad to hold as my friend so gallant though so unfortunate a
+gentleman.” He smiled and made a gesture of courtesy. “Of course Mr.
+MacLean may very justly not hold me in a like esteem, nor desire a
+closer relation.”
+
+MacLean rose to his feet, and stood gazing across the river at the
+twilight shore and the clear skies. Presently he turned, and his eyes
+were wet. He drew his hand across them; then looked curiously at the
+dew upon it. “I have not done this,” he said simply, “since a night at
+Preston when I wept with rage. In my country we love as we hate, with
+all the strength that God has given us. The brother of my spirit is to
+me even as the brother of my flesh.... I used to dream that my hand was
+at your throat or my sword through your heart, and wake in anger that
+it was not so ... and now I could love you well.”
+
+Haward stood up, and the two men clasped hands. “It is a pact, then,”
+said the Englishman. “By my faith, the world looks not so melancholy
+gray as it did awhile ago. And here is Juba to say that supper waits.
+Lay the table for two, Juba. Mr. MacLean will bear me company.”
+
+The storekeeper stayed late, the master of Fair View being an
+accomplished gentleman, a very good talker, and an adept at turning his
+house for the nonce into the house of his guest. Supper over they went
+into the library, where their wine was set, and where the Highlander,
+who was no great reader, gazed respectfully at the wit and wisdom arow
+before him. “Colonel Byrd hath more volumes at Westover,” quoth Haward,
+“but mine are of the choicer quality.” Juba brought a card table, and
+lit more candles, while his master, unlocking a desk, took from it a
+number of gold pieces. These he divided into two equal portions: kept
+one beside him upon the polished table, and, with a fine smile, half
+humorous, half deprecating, pushed the other across to his guest. With
+an, imperturbable face MacLean stacked the gold before him, and they
+fell to piquet, playing briskly, and with occasional application to the
+Madeira upon the larger table, until ten of the clock. The Highlander,
+then declaring that he must be no longer away from his post, swept
+his heap of coins across to swell his opponent’s store, and said
+good-night. Haward went with him to the great door, and watched him
+stride off through the darkness whistling “The Battle of Harlaw.”
+
+That night Haward slept, and the next morning four negroes rowed him up
+the river to Jamestown. Mr. Jaquelin was gone to Norfolk upon business,
+but his beautiful wife and sprightly daughters found Mr. Marmaduke
+Haward altogether charming. “’Twas as good as going to court,” they
+said to one another, when the gentleman, after a two hours’ visit,
+bowed himself out of their drawing-room. The object of their encomiums,
+going down river in his barge, felt his spirits lighter than they
+had been for some days. He spoke cheerfully to his negroes, and when
+the barge passed a couple of fishing-boats he called to the slim
+brown lads that caught for the plantation to know their luck. At the
+landing he found the overseer, who walked to the great house with
+him. The night before Tyburn Will had stolen from the white quarters,
+and had met a couple of seamen from the Temperance at the crossroads
+ordinary, which ordinary was going to get into trouble for breaking
+the law which forbade the harboring of sailors ashore. The three had
+taken in full lading of kill-devil rum, and Tyburn Will, too drunk to
+run any farther, had been caught by Hide near Princess Creek, three
+hours agone. What were the master’s orders? Should the rogue go to the
+court-house whipping post, or should Hide save the trouble of taking
+him there? In either case, thirty-nine lashes well laid on--
+
+The master pursed his lips, dug into the ground with the ferrule of
+his cane, and finally proposed to the astonished overseer that the
+rascal be let off with a warning. “’Tis too fair a day to poison with
+ugly sights and sounds,” he said, whimsically apologetic for his own
+weakness. “’Twill do no great harm to be lenient, for once, Saunderson,
+and I am in the mood to-day to be friends with all men, including
+myself.”
+
+The overseer went away grumbling, and Haward entered the house. The
+room where dwelt his books looked cool and inviting. He walked the
+length of the shelves, took out a volume here and there for his evening
+reading, and upon the binding of others laid an affectionate, lingering
+touch. “I have had a fever, my friends,” he announced to the books,
+“but I am about to find myself happily restored to reason and serenity;
+in short, to health.”
+
+Some hours later he raised his eyes from the floor which he had been
+studying for a great while, covered them for a moment with his hand,
+then rose, and, with the air of a sleepwalker, went out of the lit
+room into a calm and fragrant night. There was no moon, but the stars
+were many, and it did not seem dark. When he came to the verge of the
+landing, and the river, sighing in its sleep, lay clear below him,
+mirroring the stars, it was as though he stood between two firmaments.
+He descended the steps, and drew toward him a small rowboat that was
+softly rubbing against the wet and glistening piles. The tide was out,
+and the night was very quiet.
+
+Haward troubled not the midstream, but rowing in the shadow of the bank
+to the mouth of the creek that slept beside his garden, turned and
+went up this narrow water. Until he was free of the wall the odor of
+honeysuckle and box clung to the air, freighting it heavily; when it
+was left behind the reeds began to murmur and sigh, though not loudly,
+for there was no wind. When he came to a point opposite the minister’s
+house, rising fifty yards away from amidst low orchard trees, he rested
+upon his oars. There was a light in an upper room, and as he looked
+Audrey passed between the candle and the open window. A moment later
+and the light was out, but he knew that she was sitting at the window.
+Though it was dark, he found that he could call back with precision the
+slender throat, the lifted face, and the enshadowing hair. For a while
+he stayed, motionless in his boat, hidden by the reeds that whispered
+and sighed; but at last he rowed away softly through the darkness, back
+to the dim, slow-moving river and the Fair View landing.
+
+This was of a Friday. All the next day he spent in the garden, but on
+Sunday morning he sent word to the stables to have Mirza saddled. He
+was going to church, he told Juba over his chocolate, and he would wear
+the gray and silver.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A SABBATH DAY’S JOURNEY
+
+
+Although the house of worship which boasted as its ornament the
+Reverend Gideon Darden was not so large and handsome as Bruton church,
+nor could rival the painted glories of Poplar Spring, it was yet a
+building good enough,--of brick, with a fair white spire and a decorous
+mantle of ivy. The churchyard, too, was pleasant, though somewhat
+crowded with the dead. There were oaks for shade, and wild roses for
+fragrance, and the grass between the long gravestones, prone upon
+mortal dust, grew very thick and green. Outside the gates,--a gift from
+the first master of Fair View,--between the churchyard and the dusty
+highroad ran a long strip of trampled turf, shaded by locust-trees and
+by one gigantic gum that became in the autumn a pillar of fire.
+
+Haward, arriving somewhat after time, found drawn up upon this piece of
+sward a coach, two berlins, a calash, and three chaises, while tied to
+hitching-posts, trees, and the fence were a number of saddle-horses. In
+the shade of the gum-tree sprawled half a dozen negro servants, but on
+the box of the coach, from which the restless horses had been taken,
+there yet sat the coachman, a mulatto of powerful build and a sullen
+countenance. The vehicle stood in the blazing sunshine, and it was both
+cooler and merrier beneath the tree,--a fact apparent enough to the
+coachman, but the knowledge of which, seeing that he was chained to the
+box, did him small good. Haward glanced at the figure indifferently;
+but Juba, following his master upon Whitefoot Kate, grinned from ear to
+ear. “Larnin’ not to run away, Sam? Road’s clear: why don’ you carry
+off de coach?”
+
+Haward dismounted, and leaving Juba first to fasten the horses, and
+then join his fellows beneath the gum-tree, walked into the churchyard.
+The congregation had assembled, and besides himself there were none
+without the church save the negroes and the dead. The service had
+commenced. Through the open door came to him Darden’s voice: “_Dearly
+beloved brethren_”--
+
+Haward waited, leaning against a tomb deep graven with a coat of
+arms and much stately Latin, until the singing clave the air, when
+he entered the building, and passed down the aisle to his own pew,
+the chiefest in the place. He was aware of the flutter and whisper on
+either hand,--perhaps he did not find it unpleasing. Diogenes may have
+carried his lantern not merely to find a man, but to show one as well,
+and a philosopher in a pale gray riding dress, cut after the latest
+mode, with silver lace and a fall of Mechlin, may be trusted to know
+the value as well as the vanity of sublunary things.
+
+Of the gathering, which was not large, two thirds, perhaps, were people
+of condition; and in the country, where occasions for display did not
+present themselves uncalled, it was highly becoming to worship the Lord
+in fine clothes. So there were broken rainbows in the tall pews, with a
+soft waving of fans to and fro in the essenced air, and a low rustle of
+silk. The men went as fine as the women, and the June sunshine, pouring
+in upon all this lustre and color, made a flower-bed of the assemblage.
+Being of the country, it was vastly better behaved than would have been
+a fashionable London congregation; but it certainly saw no reason why
+Mr. Marmaduke Haward should not, during the anthem, turn his back upon
+altar, minister, and clerk, and employ himself in recognizing with a
+smile and an inclination of his head his friends and acquaintances.
+They smiled back,--the gentlemen bowing slightly, the ladies making a
+sketch of a curtsy. All were glad that Fair View house was open once
+more, and were kindly disposed toward the master thereof.
+
+The eyes of that gentleman were no longer for the gay parterre. Between
+it and the door, in uncushioned pews or on rude benches, were to be
+found the plainer sort of Darden’s parishioners, and in this territory,
+that was like a border of sober foliage to the flower-bed in front, he
+discovered whom he sought.
+
+Her gaze had been upon him since he passed the minister’s pew, where
+she stood between my Lady Squander’s ex-waiting-woman and the branded
+schoolmaster, but now their eyes came full together. She was dressed in
+some coarse dark stuff, above which rose the brown pillar of her throat
+and the elusive, singular beauty of her face. There was a flower in her
+hair, placed as he had placed the rosebuds. A splendor leaped into her
+eyes, but her cheek did not redden; it was to his face that the color
+rushed. They had but a moment in which to gaze at each other, for the
+singing, which to her, at least, had seemed suddenly to swell into a
+great ascending tide of sound, with somewhere, far away, the silver
+calling of a trumpet, now came to an end, and with another silken
+rustle and murmur the congregation sat down.
+
+Haward did not turn again, and the service went drowsily on. Darden was
+bleared of eye and somewhat thick of voice; the clerk’s whine was as
+sleepy a sound as the buzzing of the bees in and out of window, or the
+soft, incessant stir of painted fans. A churchwarden in the next pew
+nodded and nodded, until he nodded his peruke awry, and a child went
+fast asleep, with its head in its mother’s lap. One and all worshiped
+somewhat languidly, with frequent glances at the hourglass upon the
+pulpit. They prayed for King George the First, not knowing that he was
+dead, and for the Prince, not knowing that he was King. The minister
+preached against Quakers and witchcraft, and shook the rafters with his
+fulminations. Finally came the benediction and a sigh of relief.
+
+In that country and time there was no unsociable and undignified
+scurrying homeward after church. Decorous silence prevailed until
+the house was exchanged for the green and shady churchyard: but then
+tongues were loosened, and the flower-bed broken into clusters. One
+must greet one’s neighbors; present or be presented to what company
+might be staying at the various great houses within the parish;
+talk, laugh, coquet, and ogle; make appointments for business or for
+pleasure; speak of the last horse-race, the condition of wheat and
+tobacco, and the news brought in by the Valour, man-of-war, that the
+King was gone to Hanover. In short, for the nonce, the churchyard
+became a drawing-room, with the sun for candles, with no painted images
+of the past and gone upon the walls, but with the dead themselves
+beneath the floor.
+
+The minister, having questions to settle with clerk and sexton, tarried
+in the vestry room; but his wife, with Audrey and the schoolmaster,
+waited for him outside, in the shade of an oak-tree that was just
+without the pale of the drawing-room. Mistress Deborah, in her
+tarnished amber satin and ribbons that had outworn their youth, bit
+her lip and tapped her foot upon the ground. Audrey watched her
+apprehensively. She knew the signs, and that when they reached home a
+storm might break that would leave its mark upon her shoulders. The
+minister’s wife was not approved of by the ladies of Fair View parish,
+but had they seen how wistful was the face of the brown girl with her,
+they might have turned aside, spoken, and let the storm go by. The
+girl herself was scarcely noticed. Few had ever heard her story, or,
+hearing it, had remembered; the careless many thought her an orphan,
+bound to Darden and his wife,--in effect their servant. If she had
+beauty, the ladies and gentlemen who saw her, Sunday after Sunday, in
+the minister’s pew, had scarce discovered it. She was too dark, too
+slim, too shy and strange of look, with her great brown eyes and that
+startled turn of her head. Their taste was for lilies and roses, and it
+was not an age that counted shyness a grace.
+
+Mr. Marmaduke Haward was not likely to be accused of diffidence. He had
+come out of church with the sleepy-headed churchwarden, who was now
+wide awake and mightily concerned to know what horse Mr. Haward meant
+to enter for the great race at Mulberry Island, while at the foot of
+the steps he was seized upon by another portly vestryman, and borne
+off to be presented to three blooming young ladies, quick to second
+their papa’s invitation home to dinner. Mr. Haward was ready to curse
+his luck that he was engaged elsewhere; but were not these Graces the
+children to whom he had used to send sugar-plums from Williamsburgh,
+years and years ago? He vowed that the payment, which he had never
+received, he would take now with usury, and proceeded to salute the
+cheek of each protesting fair. The ladies found him vastly agreeable;
+old and new friends crowded around him; he put forth his powers and
+charmed all hearts,--and all the while inwardly cursed the length of
+way to the gates, and the tardy progress thereto of his friends and
+neighbors.
+
+But however slow in ebbing, the tide was really set toward home and
+dinner. Darden, coming out of the vestry room, found the churchyard
+almost cleared, and the road in a cloud of dust. The greater number of
+those who came a-horseback were gone, and there had also departed both
+berlins, the calash, and two chaises. Mr. Haward was handing the three
+Graces into the coach with the chained coachman, Juba standing by,
+holding his master’s horse. Darden grew something purpler in the face,
+and, rumbling oaths, went over to the three beneath the oak. “How many
+spoke to you to-day?” he asked roughly of his wife. “Did _he_ come and
+speak?”
+
+“No, he didn’t!” cried Mistress Deborah tartly. “And all the gentry
+went by; only Mr. Bray stopped to say that everybody knew of your fight
+with Mr. Bailey at the French ordinary, and that the Commissary had
+sent for Bailey, and was going to suspend him. I wish to Heaven I knew
+why I married you, to be looked down upon by every Jill, when I might
+have had his Lordship’s own man! Of all the fools”--
+
+“You were not the only one,” answered her husband grimly. “Well, let’s
+home; there’s dinner yet. What is it, Audrey?” This in answer to an
+inarticulate sound from the girl.
+
+The schoolmaster answered for her: “Mr. Marmaduke Haward has not gone
+with the coach. Perhaps he only waited until the other gentlefolk
+should be gone. Here he comes.”
+
+The sward without the gates was bare of all whose presence mattered,
+and Haward had indeed reëntered the churchyard, and was walking toward
+them. Darden went to meet him. “These be fine tales I hear of you, Mr.
+Darden,” said his parishioner calmly. “I should judge you were near the
+end of your rope. There’s a vestry meeting Thursday. Shall I put in a
+good word for your reverence? Egad, you need it!”
+
+“I shall be your honor’s most humble, most obliged servant,” quoth the
+minister. “The affair at the French ordinary was nothing. I mean to
+preach next Sunday upon calumny,--calumny that spareth none, not even
+such as I. You are for home, I see, and our road for a time is the
+same. Will you ride with us?”
+
+“Ay,” said Haward briefly. “But you must send yonder fellow with the
+scarred hands packing. I travel not with thieves.”
+
+He had not troubled to lower his voice, and as he and Darden were now
+themselves within the shadow of the oak, the schoolmaster overheard
+him and answered for himself. “Your honor need not fear my company,”
+he said, in his slow and lifeless tones. “I am walking, and I take the
+short cut through the woods. Good-day, worthy Gideon. Madam Deborah and
+Audrey, good-day.”
+
+He put his uncouth, shambling figure into motion, and, indifferent and
+lifeless in manner as in voice, was gone, gliding like a long black
+shadow through the churchyard and into the woods across the road. “I
+knew him long ago in England,” the minister explained to their new
+companion. “He’s a learned man, and, like myself, a calumniated one.
+The gentlemen of these parts value him highly as an instructor of
+youth. No need to send their sons to college if they’ve been with him
+for a year or two! My good Deborah, Mr. Haward will ride with us toward
+Fair View.”
+
+Mistress Deborah curtsied; then chided Audrey for not minding her
+manners, but standing like a stock or stone, with her thoughts a
+thousand miles away. “Let her be,” said Haward. “We gave each other
+good-day in church.”
+
+Together the four left the churchyard. Darden brought up two sorry
+horses; lifted his wife and Audrey upon one, and mounted the other.
+Haward swung himself into his saddle, and the company started, Juba
+upon Whitefoot Kate bringing up the rear. The master of Fair View
+rode beside the minister, and only now and then spoke to the women.
+The road was here sunny, there shady; the excessive heat broken, the
+air pleasant enough. Everywhere, too, was the singing of birds, while
+the fields that they passed of tobacco and golden, waving wheat were
+charming to the sight. The minister was, when sober, a man of parts,
+with some education and a deal of mother wit; in addition, a close
+and shrewd observer of the times and people. He and Haward talked of
+matters of public moment, and the two women listened, submissive and
+admiring. It seemed that they came very quickly to the bridge across
+the creek and the parting of their ways. Would Mr. Haward ride on to
+the glebe house?
+
+It appeared that Mr. Haward would. Moreover, when the house was
+reached, and Darden’s one slave came running from a broken-down
+stable to take the horses, he made no motion toward returning to the
+bridge which led across the creek to his own plantation, but instead
+dismounted, flung his reins to Juba, and asked if he might stay to
+dinner.
+
+Now, by the greatest good luck, considered Mistress Deborah, there
+chanced to be in her larder a haunch of venison roasted most noble;
+the ducklings and asparagus, too, cooked before church, needed but to
+be popped into the oven; and there was also an apple tart with cream.
+With elation, then, and eke with a mind at rest, she added her shrill
+protests of delight to Darden’s more moderate assurances, and, leaving
+Audrey to set chairs in the shade of a great apple-tree, hurried into
+the house to unearth her damask tablecloth and silver spoons, and to
+plan for the morrow a visit to the Widow Constance, and a casual remark
+that Mr. Marmaduke Haward had dined with the minister the day before.
+Audrey, her task done, went after her, to be met with graciousness most
+unusual. “I’ll see to the dinner, child. Mr. Haward will expect one
+of us to sit without, and you had as well go as I. If he’s talking to
+Darden, you might get some larkspur and gilliflowers for the table.
+La! the flowers that used to wither beneath the candles at my Lady
+Squander’s!”
+
+Audrey, finding the two men in conversation beneath the apple-tree,
+passed on to the ragged garden, where clumps of hardy, bright-colored
+flowers played hide-and-seek with currant and gooseberry bushes. Haward
+saw her go, and broke the thread of his discourse. Darden looked up,
+and the eyes of the two men met; those of the younger were cold and
+steady. A moment, and his glance had fallen to his watch which he had
+pulled out. “’Tis early yet,” he said coolly, “and I dare say not quite
+your dinner time,--which I beg that Mistress Deborah will not advance
+on my account. Is it not your reverence’s habit to rest within doors
+after your sermon? Pray do not let me detain you. I will go talk awhile
+with Audrey.”
+
+He put up his watch and rose to his feet. Darden cleared his throat. “I
+have, indeed, a letter to write to Mr. Commissary, and it may be half
+an hour before Deborah has dinner ready. I will send your servant to
+fetch you in.”
+
+Haward broke the larkspur and gilliflowers, and Audrey gathered up
+her apron and filled it with the vivid blooms. The child that had
+thus brought loaves of bread to a governor’s table spread beneath a
+sugar-tree, with mountains round about, had been no purer of heart, no
+more innocent of rustic coquetry. When her apron was filled she would
+have returned to the house, but Haward would not have it so. “They will
+call when dinner is ready,” he said. “I wish to talk to you, little
+maid. Let us go sit in the shade of the willow yonder.”
+
+It was almost a twilight behind the cool green rain of the willow
+boughs. Through that verdant mist Haward and Audrey saw the outer world
+but dimly. “I had a fearful dream last night,” said Audrey. “I think
+that that must have been why I was to glad to see you come into church
+to-day. I dreamed that you had never come home again, overseas, in the
+Golden Rose. Hugon was beside me, in the dream, telling me that you
+were dead in England: and suddenly I knew that I had never really seen
+you; that there was no garden, no terrace, no roses, no _you_. It was
+all so cold and sad, and the sun kept growing smaller and smaller.
+The woods, too, were black, and the wind cried in them so that I was
+afraid. And then I was in Hugon’s house, holding the door,--there was
+a wolf without,--and through the window I saw the mountains; only they
+were so high that my heart ached to look upon them, and the wind cried
+down the cleft in the hills. The wolf went away, and then, somehow, I
+was upon the hilltop.... There was a dead man lying in the grass, but
+it was too dark to see. Hugon came up behind me, stooped, and lifted
+the hand.... Upon the finger was that ring you wear, burning in the
+moonlight.... Oh me!”
+
+The remembered horror of her dream contending with present bliss shook
+her spirit to its centre. She shuddered violently, then burst into a
+passion of tears.
+
+Haward’s touch upon her hair, Haward’s voice in her ear, all the old
+terms of endearment for a frightened child,--“little maid,” “little
+coward,” “Why, sweetheart, these things are shadows, they cannot hurt
+thee!” She controlled her tears, and was the happier for her weeping.
+It was sweet to sit there in the lush grass, veiled and shadowed from
+the world by the willow’s drooping green, and in that soft and happy
+light to listen to his voice, half laughing, half chiding, wholly
+tender and caressing. Dreams were naught, he said. Had Hugon troubled
+her waking hours?
+
+He had come once to the house, it appeared; but she had run away and
+hidden in the wood, and the minister had told him she was gone to the
+Widow Constance’s. That was a long time ago; it must have been the day
+after she and Mistress Deborah had last come from Fair View.
+
+“A long time,” said Haward. “It was a week ago. Has it seemed a long
+time, Audrey?”
+
+“Yes,--oh yes!”
+
+“I have been busy. I must learn to be a planter, you know. But I have
+thought of you, little maid.”
+
+Audrey was glad of that, but there was yet a weight upon her heart.
+“After that dream I lay awake all night, and it came to me how wrongly
+I had done. Hugon is a wicked man,--an Indian. Oh, I should never have
+told you, that first day in the garden, that he was waiting for me
+outside! For now, because you took care of me and would not let him
+come near, he hates you. He is so wicked that he might do you a harm.”
+Her eyes widened, and the hand that touched his was cold and trembling.
+“If ever hurt came to you through me, I would drown myself in the river
+yonder. And then I thought--lying awake last night--that perhaps I had
+been troublesome to you, those days at Fair View, and that was why you
+had not come to see the minister, as you had said you would.” The dark
+eyes were pitifully eager; the hand that went to her heart trembled
+more and more. “It is not as it was in the mountains,” she said. “I am
+older now, and safe, and--and happy. And you have many things to do
+and to think of, and many friends--gentlemen and beautiful ladies--to
+go to see. I thought--last night--that when I saw you I would ask your
+pardon for not remembering that the mountains were years ago; for
+troubling you with my matters, sir; for making too free, forgetting my
+place”--Her voice sank; the shamed red was in her cheeks, and her eyes,
+that she had bravely kept upon his face, fell to the purple and gold
+blooms in her lap.
+
+Haward rose from the grass, and, with his back to the gray hole of the
+willow, looked first at the veil of leaf and stem through which dimly
+showed house, orchard, and blue sky, then down upon the girl at his
+feet. Her head was bent and she sat very still, one listless, upturned
+hand upon the grass beside her, the other lying as quietly among her
+flowers.
+
+“Audrey,” he said at last, “you shame me in your thoughts of me. I am
+not that knight without fear and without reproach for which you take
+me. Being what I am, you must believe that you have not wearied me;
+that I think of you and wish to see you. And Hugon, having possibly
+some care for his own neck, will do me no harm; that is a very foolish
+notion, which you must put from you. Now listen.” He knelt beside her
+and took her hand in his. “After a while, perhaps, when the weather is
+cooler, and I must open my house and entertain after the fashion of the
+country; when the new Governor comes in, and all this gay little world
+of Virginia flocks to Williamsburgh; when I am a Councilor, and must go
+with the rest, and must think of gold and place and people,--why, then,
+maybe, our paths will again diverge, and only now and then will I catch
+the gleam of your skirt, mountain maid, brown Audrey! But now in these
+midsummer days it is a sleepy world, that cares not to go bustling up
+and down. I am alone in my house; I visit not nor am visited, and the
+days hang heavy. Let us make believe for a time that the mountains are
+all around us, that it was but yesterday we traveled together. It is
+only a little way from Fair View to the glebe house, from the glebe
+house to Fair View. I will see you often, little maid, and you must
+dream no more as you dreamed last night.” He paused; his voice changed,
+and he went on as to himself: “It is a lonely land, with few to see
+and none to care. I will drift with the summer, making of it an idyl,
+beautiful,--yes, and innocent! When autumn comes I will go to Westover.”
+
+Of this speech Audrey caught only the last word. A wonderful smile, so
+bright was it, and withal so sad, came into her face. “Westover!” she
+said to herself. “That is where the princess lives.”
+
+“We will let thought alone,” continued Haward. “It suits not with this
+charmed light, this glamour of the summer.” He made a laughing gesture.
+“Hey, presto! little maid, there go the years rolling back! I swear I
+see the mountains through the willow leaves.”
+
+“There was one like a wall shutting out the sun when he went down,”
+answered Audrey. “It was black and grim, and the light flared like a
+fire behind it. And there was the one above which the moon rose. It
+was sharp, pointing like a finger to heaven, and I liked it best. Do
+you remember how large was the moon pushing up behind the pine-trees?
+We sat on the dark hillside watching it, and you told me beautiful
+stories, while the moon rose higher and higher and the mockingbirds
+began to sing.”
+
+Haward remembered not, but he said that he did so. “The moon is
+full again,” he continued, “and last night I heard a mockingbird
+in the garden. I will come in the barge to-morrow evening, and the
+negroes shall row us up and down the river--you and me and Mistress
+Deborah--between the sunset and the moonrise. Then it is lonely and
+sweet upon the water. The roses can be smelled from the banks, and if
+you will speak to the mockingbirds we shall have music, dryad Audrey,
+brown maid of the woods!”
+
+Audrey’s laugh, was silver-clear and sweet, like that of a forest nymph
+indeed. She was quite happy again, with all her half-formed doubts and
+fears allayed. They had never been of him,--only of herself. The two
+sat within the green and swaying fountain of the willow, and time went
+by on eagle wings. Too soon came the slave to call them to the house;
+the time within, though spent in the company of Darden and his wife,
+passed too soon; too soon came the long shadows of the afternoon and
+Haward’s call for his horse.
+
+Audrey watched him ride away, and the love light was in her eyes. She
+did not know that it was so. That night, in her bare little room, when
+the candle was out, she kneeled by the window and looked at the stars.
+There was one very fair and golden, an empress of the night. “That is
+the princess,” said Audrey, and smiled upon the peerless star. Far from
+that light, scarce free from the murk of the horizon, shone a little
+star, companionless in the night. “And that is I,” said Audrey, and
+smiled upon herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE BEND IN THE ROAD
+
+
+    “‘Brave Derwentwater he is dead;
+      From his fair body they took the head:
+      But Mackintosh and his friends are fled,
+      And they’ll set the hat upon another head’”--
+
+chanted the Fair View storekeeper, and looked aside at Mistress
+Truelove Taberer, spinning in the doorway of her father’s house.
+
+Truelove answered naught, but her hands went to and fro, and her eyes
+were for her work, not for MacLean, sitting on the doorstep at her feet.
+
+    “‘And whether they’re gone beyond the sea’”--
+
+The exile broke off and sighed heavily. Before the two a little yard,
+all gay with hollyhocks and roses, sloped down to the wider of the two
+creeks between which stretched the Fair View plantation. It was late of
+a holiday afternoon. A storm was brewing, darkening all the water, and
+erecting above the sweep of woods monstrous towers of gray cloud. There
+must have been an echo, for MacLean’s sigh came back to him faintly, as
+became an echo.
+
+“Is there not peace here, ‘beyond the sea’?” said Truelove softly.
+“Thine must be a dreadful country, Angus MacLean!”
+
+The Highlander looked at her with kindling eyes. “Now had I the harp of
+old Murdoch!” he said.
+
+    “‘Dear is that land to the east,
+      Alba of the lakes!
+      Oh, that I might dwell there forever’”--
+
+He turned upon the doorstep, and taking between his fingers the hem
+of Truelove’s apron fell to plaiting it. “A woman named Deirdre, who
+lived before the days of Gillean-na-Tuaidhe, made that song. She was
+not born in that land, but it was dear to her because she dwelt there
+with the man whom she loved. They went away, and the man was slain;
+and where he was buried, there Deirdre cast herself down and died.”
+His voice changed, and all the melancholy of his race, deep, wild, and
+tender, looked from his eyes. “If to-day you found yourself in that
+loved land, if this parched grass were brown heather, if it stretched
+down to a tarn yonder, if that gray cloud that hath all the seeming of
+a crag were crag indeed, and eagles plied between the tarn and it,”--he
+touched her hand that lay idle now upon her knee,--“if you came like
+Deirdre lightly through the heather, and found me lying here, and found
+more red than should be in the tartan of the MacLeans, what would you
+do, Truelove? What would you cry out, Truelove? How heavy would be thy
+heart, Truelove?”
+
+Truelove sat in silence, with her eyes upon the sky above the dream
+crags. “How heavy would grow thy heart, Truelove, Truelove?” whispered
+the Highlander.
+
+Up the winding water, to the sedges and reeds below the little yard,
+glided the boy Ephraim in his boat. The Quakeress started, and the
+color flamed into her gentle face. She took up the distaff that she had
+dropped, and fell to work again. “Thee must not speak to me so, Angus
+MacLean,” she said. “I trust that my heart is not hard. Thy death would
+grieve me, and my father and my mother and Ephraim”--
+
+“I care not for thy father and mother and Ephraim!” MacLean began
+impetuously. “But you do right to chide me. Once I knew a green glen
+where maidens were fain when paused at their doors Angus, son of
+Hector, son of Lachlan, son of Murdoch, son of Angus that was named for
+Angus Mor, who was great-grandson of Hector of the Battles, who was son
+of Lachlan Lubanach! But here I am a landless man, with none to do me
+honor,--a wretch bereft of liberty”--
+
+“To me, to all Friends,” said Truelove sweetly, halting a little in her
+work, “thee has now what thee thyself calls freedom. For God meant not
+that one of his creatures should say to another: ‘Lo, here am I! Behold
+thy God!’ To me, and my father and mother and Ephraim, thee is no bond
+servant of Marmaduke Haward. But thee is bond servant to thy own vain
+songs; thy violent words; thy idle pride, that, vaunting the cruel
+deeds of thy forefathers, calls meekness and submission the last worst
+evil; thy shameless reverence for those thy fellow creatures, James
+Stewart and him whom thee calls the chief of thy house,--forgetting
+that there is but one house, and that God is its head; thy love of
+clamor and warfare; thy hatred of the ways of peace”--
+
+MacLean laughed. “I hate not all its ways. There is no hatred in my
+heart for this house which is its altar, nor for the priestess of the
+altar. Ah! now you frown, Truelove”--
+
+Across the clouds ran so fierce a line of gold that Truelove, startled,
+put her hand before her eyes. Another dart of lightning, a low roll of
+thunder, a bending apart of the alder bushes on the far side of the
+creek; then a woman’s voice calling to the boy in the boat to come
+ferry her over.
+
+“Who may that be?” asked Truelove wonderingly.
+
+It was only a little way to the bending alders. Ephraim rowed across
+the glassy water, dark beneath the approach of the storm; the woman
+stepped into the boat, and the tiny craft came lightly back to its
+haven beneath the bank.
+
+“It is Darden’s Audrey,” said the storekeeper.
+
+Truelove shrank a little, and her eyes darkened. “Why should she
+come here? I never knew her. It is true that we may not think evil,
+but--but”--
+
+MacLean moved restlessly. “I have seen the girl but twice,” he said.
+“Once she was alone, once--It is my friend of whom I think. I know
+what they say, but, by St. Kattan! I hold him a gentleman too high of
+mind, too noble--There was a tale I used to hear when I was a boy. A
+long, long time ago a girl lived in the shadow of the tower of Duart,
+and the chief looked down from his walls and saw her. Afterwards they
+walked together by the shore and through the glens, and he cried her
+health when he drank in his hall, sitting amongst his tacksmen. Then
+what the men whispered the women spoke aloud; and so, more quickly
+than the tarie is borne, word went to a man of the MacDonalds who
+loved the Duart maiden. Not like a lover to his tryst did he come. In
+the handle of his dirk the rich stones sparkled as they rose and fell
+with the rise and fall of the maiden’s white bosom. She prayed to die
+in his arms; for it was not Duart that she loved, but him. She died,
+and they snooded her hair and buried her. Duart went overseas; the man
+of the MacDonalds killed himself. It was all wrought with threads of
+gossamer,--idle fancy, shrugs, smiles, whispers, slurring speech,--and
+it was long ago. But there is yet gossamer to be had for the gathering;
+it gleams on every hand these summer mornings.”
+
+By now Darden’s Audrey had left the boat and was close upon them.
+MacLean arose, and Truelove hastily pushed aside her wheel. “Is thee
+seeking shelter from the storm?” she asked tremulously, and with her
+cheeks as pink as a seashell. “Will thee sit here with us? The storm
+will not break yet awhile.”
+
+Audrey heeded her not, her eyes being for MacLean. She had been
+running,--running more swiftly than for a thousand May Day guineas.
+Even now, though her breath came short, every line of her slender
+figure was tense, and she was ready to be off like an arrow. “You are
+Mr. Haward’s friend?” she cried. “I have heard him say that you were
+so--call you a brave gentleman”--
+
+MacLean’s dark face flushed. “Yes, we are friends,--I thank God for it.
+What have you to do with that, my lass?”
+
+“I also am his friend,” said Audrey, coming nearer. Her hands were
+clasped, her bosom heaving. “Listen! To-day I was sent on an errand
+to a house far up this creek. Coming back, I took the short way home
+through the woods because of the storm. It led me past the schoolhouse
+down by the big swamp. I thought that no one was there, and I went
+and sat down upon the steps to rest a moment. The door behind me was
+partly open. Then I heard two voices: the schoolmaster and Jean Hugon
+were inside--close to me--talking. I would have run away, but I heard
+Mr. Haward’s name.” Her hand went to her heart, and she drew a sobbing
+breath.
+
+“Well!” cried MacLean sharply.
+
+“Mr. Haward went yesterday to Williamsburgh--alone--without Juba. He
+rides back--alone--to Fair View late this afternoon--he is riding now.
+You know the sharp bend in the road, with the steep bank above and the
+pond below?”
+
+“Ay, where the road nears the river. Well?”
+
+“I heard all that Hugon and the schoolmaster said. I hid behind a
+fallen tree and watched them leave the schoolhouse; then I followed
+them, making no noise, back to the creek, where Hugon had a boat. They
+crossed the creek, and fastened the boat on this side. I could follow
+them no farther; the woods hid them; but they have gone downstream to
+that bend in the road. Hugon had his hunting-knife and pistols; the
+schoolmaster carried a coil of rope.” She flung back her head, and
+her hands went to her throat as though she were stifling. “The turn
+in the road is very sharp. Just past the bend they will stretch the
+rope from side to side, fastening it to two trees. He will be hurrying
+home before the bursting of the storm--he will be riding the planter’s
+pace”--
+
+“Man and horse will come crashing down!” cried the storekeeper, with a
+great oath “And then”--
+
+“Hugon’s knife, so there will be no noise.... They think he has gold
+upon him: that is for the schoolmaster.... Hugon is an Indian, and he
+will hide their trail. Men will think that some outlying slave was in
+the woods, and set upon and killed him.”
+
+Her voice broke; then went on, gathering strength: “It was so late, and
+I knew that he would ride fast because of the storm. I remembered this
+house, and thought that, if I called, some one might come and ferry
+me over the creek. Now I will run through the woods to the road, for
+I must reach it before he passes on his way to where they wait.” She
+turned her face toward the pine wood beyond the house.
+
+“Ay, that is best!” agreed the storekeeper. “Warned, he can take the
+long way home, and Hugon and this other may be dealt with at his
+leisure. Come, my girl; there’s no time to lose.”
+
+They left behind them the creek, the blooming dooryard, the small
+white house, and the gentle Quakeress. The woods received them, and
+they came into a world of livid greens and grays dashed here and there
+with ebony,--a world that, expectant of the storm, had caught and was
+holding its breath. Save for the noise of their feet upon dry leaves
+that rustled like paper, the wood was soundless. The light that lay
+within it, fallen from skies of iron, was wild and sinister; there was
+no air, and the heat wrapped them like a mantle. So motionless were all
+things, so fixed in quietude each branch and bough, each leaf or twig
+or slender needle of the pine, that they seemed to be fleeing through a
+wood of stone, jade and malachite, emerald and agate.
+
+They hurried on, not wasting breath in speech. Now and again MacLean
+glanced aside at the girl, who kept beside him, moving as lightly as
+presently would move the leaves when the wind arose. He remembered
+certain scurrilous words spoken in the store a week agone by a knot of
+purchasers, but when he looked at her face he thought of the Highland
+maiden whose story he had told. As for Audrey, she saw not the woods
+that she loved, heard not the leaves beneath her feet, knew not if the
+light were gold or gray. She saw only a horse and rider riding from
+Williamsburgh, heard only the rapid hoofbeats. All there was of her was
+one dumb prayer for the rider’s safety. Her memory told her that it
+was no great distance to the road, but her heart cried out that it was
+so far away,--so far away! When the wood thinned, and they saw before
+them the dusty strip, pallid and lonely beneath the storm clouds, her
+heart leaped within her; then grew sick for fear that he had gone by.
+When they stood, ankle-deep in the dust, she looked first toward the
+north, and then to the south. Nothing moved; all was barren, hushed,
+and lonely.
+
+“How can we know? How can we know?” she cried, and wrung her hands.
+
+MacLean’s keen eyes were busily searching for any sign that a horseman
+had lately passed that way. At a little distance above them a shallow
+stream of some width flowed across the way, and to this the Highlander
+hastened, looked with attention at the road-bed where it emerged from
+the water, then came back to Audrey with a satisfied air. “There are no
+hoof-prints,” he said. “No marks upon the dust. None can have passed
+for some hours.”
+
+A rotted log, streaked with velvet moss and blotched with fan-shaped,
+orange-colored fungi, lay by the wayside, and the two sat down upon it
+to wait for the coming horseman. Overhead the thunder was rolling, but
+there was as yet no breath of wind, no splash of raindrops. Opposite
+them rose a gigantic pine, towering above the forest, red-brown trunk
+and ultimate cone of deep green foliage alike outlined against the dead
+gloom of the sky. Audrey shook back her heavy hair and raised her face
+to the roof of the world; her hands were clasped upon her knee; her
+bare feet, slim and brown, rested on a carpet of moss; she was as still
+as the forest, of which, to the Highlander, she suddenly seemed a part.
+When they had kept silence for what seemed a long time, he spoke to her
+with some hesitation: “You have known Mr. Haward but a short while; the
+months are very few since he came from England.”
+
+The name brought Audrey down to earth again. “Did you not know?” she
+asked wonderingly. “You also are his friend,--you see him often. I
+thought that at times he would have spoken of me.” For a moment her
+face was troubled, though only for a moment. “But I know why he did
+not so,” she said softly to herself. “He is not one to speak of his
+good deeds.” She turned toward MacLean, who was attentively watching
+her, “But I may speak of them,” she said, with pride. “I have known Mr.
+Haward for years and years. He saved my life; he brought me here from
+the Indian country; he was, he is, so kind to me!”
+
+Since the afternoon beneath the willow-tree, Haward, while encouraging
+her to speak of her long past, her sylvan childhood, her dream
+memories, had somewhat sternly checked every expression of gratitude
+for the part which he himself had played or was playing, in the drama
+of her life. Walking in the minister’s orchard, sitting in the garden
+or upon the terrace of Fair View house, drifting on the sunset river,
+he waved that aside, and went on to teach her another lesson. The
+teaching was exquisite; but when the lesson for the day was over,
+and he was alone, he sat with one whom he despised. The learning was
+exquisite; it was the sweetest song, but she knew not its name, and
+the words were in a strange tongue. She was Audrey, that she knew; and
+he,--he was the plumed knight, who, for the lack of a better listener,
+told her gracious tales of love, showed her how warm and beautiful was
+this world that she sometimes thought so sad, sang to her sweet lines
+that poets had made. Over and through all she thought she read the name
+of the princess. She had heard him say that with the breaking of the
+heat he should go to Westover, and one day, early in summer, he had
+shown her the miniature of Evelyn Byrd. Because she loved him blindly,
+and because he was wise in his generation, her trust in him was
+steadfast as her native hills, large as her faith in God. Now it was
+sweet beneath her tongue to be able to tell one that was his friend how
+worthy of all friendship--nay, all reverence--he was. She spoke simply,
+but with that strange power of expression which nature had given her.
+Gestures with her hands, quick changes in the tone of her voice, a
+countenance that gave ample utterance to the moment’s thought,--as one
+morning in the Fair View library she had brought into being that long
+dead Eloïsa whose lines she spoke, so now her auditor of to-day thought
+that he saw the things of which she told.
+
+She had risen, and was standing in the wild light, against the
+background of the forest that was breathless, as if it too listened,
+“And so he brought me safely to this land,” she said. “And so he left
+me here for ten years, safe and happy, he thought. He has told me that
+all that while he thought of me as safe and happy. That I was not
+so,--why, that was not his fault! When he came back I was both. I have
+never seen the sunshine so bright or the woods so fair as they have
+been this summer. The people with whom I live are always kind to me
+now,--that is his doing. And ah! it is because he would not let Hugon
+scare or harm me that that wicked Indian waits for him now beyond the
+bend in the road.” At the thought of Hugon she shuddered, and her eyes
+began to widen. “Have we not been here a long time?” she cried. “Are
+you sure? Oh, God! perhaps he has passed!”
+
+“No, no,” answered MacLean, with his hand upon her arm. “There is
+no sign that he has done so. It is not late; it is that heavy cloud
+above our heads that has so darkened the air. Perhaps he has not left
+Williamsburgh at all: perhaps, the storm threatening, he waits until
+to-morrow.”
+
+From the cloud above came a blinding light and a great crash of
+thunder,--the one so intense, the other so tremendous, that for a
+minute the two stood as if stunned. Then, “The tree!” cried Audrey.
+The great pine, blasted and afire, uprooted itself and fell from them
+like a reed that the wind has snapped. The thunder crash, and the din
+with which the tree met its fellows of the forest, bore them down, and
+finally struck the earth from which it came, seemed an alarum to waken
+all nature from its sleep. The thunder became incessant, and the wind
+suddenly arising the forest stretched itself and began to speak with no
+uncertain voice. MacLean took his seat again upon the log, but Audrey
+slipped into the road, and stood in the whirling dust, her arm raised
+above her eyes, looking for the horseman whose approach she could not
+hope to hear through the clamor of the storm. The wind lifted her long
+hair, and the rising dust half obscured her form, bent against the
+blast. On the lonesome road, in the partial light, she had the seeming
+of an apparition, a creature tossed like a ball from the surging
+forest. She had made herself a world, and she had become its product.
+In all her ways, to the day of her death, there was about her a touch
+of mirage, illusion, fantasy. The Highlander, imaginative like all his
+race, and a believer in things not of heaven nor of earth, thought of
+spirits of the glen and the shore.
+
+There was no rain as yet; only the hurly-burly of the forest, the white
+dust cloud, and the wild commotion overhead. Audrey turned to MacLean,
+watching her in silence. “He is coming!” she cried. “There is some one
+with him. Now, now he is safe!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+HUGON SPEAKS HIS MIND
+
+
+MacLean sprang up from the log, and, joining her, saw indeed two
+horsemen galloping toward them, their heads bent and riding cloaks
+raised to shield them from the whirlwind of dust, dead leaves, and
+broken twigs. He knew Haward’s powerful steed Mirza, but the other
+horse was strange.
+
+The two rode fast. A moment, and they were splashing through the
+stream; another, and the horses, startled by Audrey’s cry and waving
+arms and by the sudden and violent check on the part of their riders,
+were rearing and curveting across the road. “What the devil!” cried one
+of the horsemen. “Imp or sprite, or whatever you are, look out! Haward,
+your horse will trample her!”
+
+But Audrey, with her hand on Mirza’s bridle, had no fears. Haward
+stared at her in amazement. “Child, what are you doing here? Angus, you
+too!” as the storekeeper advanced. “What rendezvous is this? Mirza, be
+quiet!”
+
+Audrey left her warning to be spoken by MacLean. She was at peace,
+her head against Mirza’s neck, her eyes upon Haward’s face, clear in
+the flashing lightning. That gentleman heard the story with his usual
+calmness; his companion first swore, and then laughed.
+
+[Illustration: AUDREY LEFT HER WARNING TO BE SPOKEN BY MACLEAN]
+
+“Here’s a Canterbury tale!” he cried. “Egad, Haward, are we to take
+this skipping rope, vault it as though we were courtiers of Lilliput?
+Neither of us is armed. I conceive that the longest way around will
+prove our shortest way home.”
+
+“My dear Colonel, I want to speak with these two gentlemen.”
+
+“But at your leisure, my friend, at your leisure, and not in dying
+tones! I like not what I hear of Monsieur Jean Hugon’s pistols. Flank
+an ambush; don’t ride into it open-eyed.”
+
+“Colonel Byrd is right,” said the storekeeper earnestly. “Ride back,
+the two of you, and take the bridle path that will carry you to Fair
+View by way of the upper bridge. In the mean time, I will run through
+the woods to Mr. Taberer’s house, cross there, hurry to the quarters,
+rouse the overseer, and with a man or two we will recross the creek by
+the lower bridge, and coming upon these rogues unawares, give them a
+taste of their own medicine! We’ll hale them to the great house; you
+shall have speech of them in your own hall.”
+
+Neither of the riders being able to suggest a better plan, the
+storekeeper, with a wave of his hand, plunged into the forest, and was
+soon lost to view amidst its serried trunks and waving branches. Haward
+stooped from his saddle; Audrey set her bare foot upon his booted one,
+and he swung her up behind him. “Put thine arm around me, child,” he
+told her. “We will ride swiftly through the storm. Now, Colonel, to
+turn our backs upon the enemy!”
+
+The lightning was about them, and they raced to the booming of the
+thunder. Heavy raindrops began to fall, and the wind was a power to
+drive the riders on. Its voice shrilled above the diapason of the
+thunder; the forest swung to its long cry. When the horses turned
+from the wide into the narrow road, they could no longer go abreast.
+Mirza took the lead, and the bay fell a length behind. The branches
+now hid the sky; between the flashes there was Stygian gloom, but when
+the lightning came it showed far aisles of the forest. There was the
+smell of rain upon dusty earth, there was the wine of coolness after
+heat, there was the sense of being borne upon the wind, there was the
+leaping of life within the veins to meet the awakened life without.
+Audrey closed her eyes, and wished to ride thus forever. Haward, too,
+traveling fast through mist and rain a road whose end was hidden,
+facing the wet wind, hearing the voices of earth and sky, felt his
+spirit mount with the mounting voices. So to ride with Love to doom!
+On, and on, and on! Left behind the sophist, the apologist, the lover
+of the world with his tinsel that was not gold, his pebbles that were
+not gems! Only the man thundering on,--the man and his mate that was
+meant for him since time began! He raised his face to the strife
+above, he drew his breath, his hand closed over the hand of the woman
+riding with him. At the touch a thrill ran through them both; had the
+lightning with a sword of flame cut the world from beneath their feet,
+they had passed on, immortal in their happiness. But the bolts struck
+aimlessly, and the moment fled. Haward was Haward again; he recognized
+his old acquaintance with a half-humorous, half-disdainful smile. The
+road was no longer a road that gleamed athwart all time and space; the
+wind had lost its trumpet tone; Love spoke not in the thunder, nor
+seemed so high a thing as the lit heaven. Audrey’s hand was yet within
+his clasp; but it was flesh and blood that he touched, not spirit, and
+he was glad that it was so. For her, her cheek burned, and she hid
+her eyes. She had looked unawares, as by the lightning glare, into a
+world of which she had not dreamed. Its portals had shut; she rode on
+in the twilight again, and she could not clearly remember what she had
+seen. But she was sure that the air of that country was sweet, she was
+faint with its beauty, her heart beat with violence to its far echoes.
+Moreover, she was dimly aware that in the moment when she had looked
+there had been a baptism. She had thought of herself as a child, as a
+girl; now and for evermore she was a woman.
+
+They left the forest behind, and came to open fields where the tobacco
+had been beaten to earth. The trees now stood singly or in shivering
+copses. Above, the heavens were bare to their gaze, and the lightning
+gave glimpses of pale castles overhanging steel-gray, fathomless
+abysses. The road widened, and the bay was pushed by its rider to
+Mirza’s side. Fields of corn where the long blades wildly clashed, a
+wood of dripping cedars, a patch of Oronoko, tobacco house in midst,
+rising ground and a vision of the river, then a swift descent to the
+lower creek, and the bridge across which lay the road that ran to the
+minister’s house. Audrey spoke earnestly to the master of Fair View,
+and after a moment’s hesitation he drew rein. “We will not cross,
+Colonel,” he declared. “My preserver will have it that she has troubled
+us long enough; and indeed it is no great distance to the glebe house,
+and the rain has stopped. Have down with thee, then, obstinate one!”
+
+Audrey slipped to the earth, and pushed back her hair from her eyes.
+Colonel Byrd observed her curiously. “Faith,” he exclaimed, “’tis the
+Atalanta of last May Day! Well, child, I believe thou hast saved our
+lives. Come, here are three gold baubles that may pass for Hippomenes’
+apples!”
+
+Audrey put her hands behind her. “I want no money, sir. What I did was
+a gift; it has no price.” She was only Darden’s Audrey, but she spoke
+as proudly as a princess might have spoken. Haward smiled to hear her;
+and seeing the smile, she was comforted. “For he understands,” she said
+to herself. “He would never hurt me so.” It did not wound her that he
+said no word, but only lifted his hat, when she curtsied to them both.
+There was to-morrow, and he would praise her then for her quickness of
+wit and her courage in following Hugon, whom she feared so much.
+
+The riders watched her cross the bridge and turn into the road that
+led to the glebe house, then kept their own road in silence until it
+brought them to the doors of Fair View.
+
+It was an hour later, and drawing toward dusk, when the Colonel, having
+changed his wet riding clothes for a suit of his friend’s, came down
+the stairs and entered the Fair View drawing-room. Haward, in green,
+with rich lace at throat and wrist, was there before him, walking up
+and down in the cheerful light of a fire kindled against the dampness.
+“No sign of our men,” he said, as the other entered. “Come to the fire.
+Faith, Colonel, my russet and gold becomes you mightily! Juba took you
+the aqua vitæ?”
+
+“Ay, in one of your great silver goblets, with a forest of mint atop.
+Ha, this is comfort!” He sank into an armchair, stretched his legs
+before the blaze, and began to look about him. “I have ever said,
+Haward, that of all the gentlemen of my acquaintance you have the most
+exact taste. I told Bubb Dodington as much, last year, at Eastbury.
+Damask, mirrors, paintings, china, cabinets,--all chaste and quiet,
+extremely elegant, but without ostentation! It hath an air, too. I
+would swear a woman had the placing of yonder painted jars!”
+
+“You are right,” said Haward, smiling. “The wife of the minister of
+this parish was good enough to come to my assistance.”
+
+“Ah!” said the Colonel dryly. “Did Atalanta come as well? She is his
+reverence’s servant, is she not?”
+
+“No,” answered Haward shortly to the last question, and, leaning
+across, stirred the fire.
+
+The light caused to sparkle a jeweled pin worn in the lace of his
+ruffles, and the toy caught the Colonel’s eye. “One of Spotswood’s
+golden horseshoes!” he exclaimed. “I had them wrought for him in
+London. Had they been so many stars and garters, he could have made no
+greater pother! ’Tis ten years since I saw one.”
+
+Haward detached the horseshoe-shaped bauble from the lace, and laid it
+on the other’s palm. The master of Westover regarded it curiously, and
+read aloud the motto engraved upon its back: “‘Sic Juvat Transcendere
+Montes.’ A barren exploit! But some day I too shall please myself and
+cross these sun-kissing hills. And so the maid with the eyes is not his
+reverence’s servant? What is she?”
+
+Haward took the golden horseshoe in his own hand, and fell to studying
+it in the firelight. “I wore this to-night,” he said at length, with
+deliberation, “in order that it might bring to your mind that sprightly
+ultramontane expedition in which, my dear Colonel, had you not been
+in England, you had undoubtedly borne a part. You have asked me a
+question; I will answer it with a story, and so the time may pass
+more rapidly until the arrival of Mr. MacLean with our friends who
+set traps.” He turned the mimic horseshoe this way and that, watching
+the small gems, that simulated nails, flash in the red light. “Some
+days to the west of Germanna,” he said, “when about us were the lesser
+mountains, and before us those that propped the sky, we came one sunny
+noon upon a valley, a little valley, very peaceful below the heights.
+A stream shone through it, and there were noble trees, and beside the
+stream the cabin of a frontiersman.”
+
+On went the story. The fire crackled, reflecting itself in mirrors
+and polished wood and many small window panes. Outside, the rain had
+ceased, but the wind and the river murmured loudly, and the shadows
+of the night were gathering. When the narrative was ended, he who had
+spoken and he who had listened sat staring at the fire. “A pretty
+story!” said the Colonel at last. “Dick Steele should have had it;
+’twould have looked vastly well over against his Inkle and Yarico.
+There the maid the savior, here the man; there perfidy, here plain
+honesty; there for the woman a fate most tragical, here”--
+
+“Here?” said Haward, as the other paused.
+
+The master of Westover took out his snuffbox. “And here the continued
+kindness of a young and handsome preserver,” he said suavely, and
+extended the box to his host.
+
+“You are mistaken,” said Haward. He rose, and stood leaning against
+the mantel, his eyes upon the older man’s somewhat coldly smiling
+countenance. “She is as innocent, as high of soul, and as pure of heart
+as--as Evelyn.”
+
+The Colonel clicked to the lid of his box. “You will be so good as to
+leave my daughter’s name out of the conversation.”
+
+“As you please,” Haward answered, with hauteur.
+
+Another silence, broken by the guest. “Why did you hang that kit-kat
+of yourself behind the door, Haward?” he asked amiably. “’Tis too fine
+a piece to be lost in shadow. I would advise a change with yonder
+shepherdess.”
+
+“I do not know why,” said Haward restlessly. “A whim. Perhaps by nature
+I court shadows and dark corners.”
+
+“That is not so,” Byrd replied quietly. He had turned in his chair,
+the better to observe the distant portrait that was now lightened, now
+darkened, as the flames rose and fell. “A speaking likeness,” he went
+on, glancing from it to the original and back again. “I ever thought
+it one of Kneller’s best. The portrait of a gentleman. Only--you have
+noticed, I dare say, how in the firelight familiar objects change
+aspect many times?--only just now it seemed to me that it lost that
+distinction”--
+
+“Well?” said Haward, as he paused.
+
+The Colonel went on slowly: “Lost that distinction, and became the
+portrait of”--
+
+“Well? Of whom?” asked Haward, and, with his eyes shaded by his hand,
+gazed not at the portrait, but at the connoisseur in gold and russet.
+
+“Of a dirty tradesman,” said the master of Westover lightly. “In a
+word, of an own brother to Mr. Thomas Inkle.”
+
+A dead silence; then Haward spoke calmly: “I will not take offense,
+Colonel Byrd. Perhaps I should not take it even were it not as my guest
+and in my drawing-room that you have so spoken. We will, if you please,
+consign my portrait to the obscurity from which it has been dragged.
+In good time here comes Juba to light the candles and set the shadows
+fleeing.”
+
+Leaving the fire he moved to a window, and stood looking out upon the
+windy twilight. From the back of the house came a sound of voices and
+of footsteps. The Colonel put up his snuffbox and brushed a grain from
+his ruffles. “Enter two murderers!” he said briskly. “Will you have
+them here, Haward, or shall we go into the hall?”
+
+“Light all the candles, Juba,” ordered the master. “Here, I think,
+Colonel, where the stage will set them off. Juba, go ask Mr. MacLean
+and Saunderson to bring their prisoners here.”
+
+As he spoke, he turned from the contemplation of the night without to
+the brightly lit room. “This is a murderous fellow, this Hugon,” he
+said, as he took his seat in a great chair drawn before a table. “I
+have heard Colonel Byrd argue in favor of imitating John Rolfe’s early
+experiment, and marrying the white man to the heathen. We are about to
+behold the result of such an union.”
+
+“I would not have the practice universal,” said the Colonel coolly,
+“but ’twould go far toward remedying loss of scalps in this world, and
+of infidel souls hereafter. Your sprightly lover is a most prevailing
+missionary. But here is our Huguenot-Monacan.”
+
+MacLean, very wet and muddy, with one hand wrapped in a blood-stained
+rag, came in first. “We found them hidden in the bushes at the turn
+of the road,” he said hastily. “The schoolmaster was more peaceably
+inclined than any Quaker, but Hugon fought like the wolf that he is.
+Can’t you hang him out of hand, Haward? Give me a land where the
+chief does justice while the king looks the other way!” He turned and
+beckoned. “Bring them in, Saunderson.”
+
+There was no discomposure in the schoolmaster’s dress, and as little in
+his face or manner. He bowed to the two gentlemen, then shambled across
+to the fire, and as best he could held out his bound hands to the
+grateful blaze. “May I ask, sir,” he said, in his lifeless voice, “why
+it is that this youth and I, resting in all peace and quietness beside
+a public road, should be set upon by your servants, overpowered, bound,
+and haled to your house as to a judgment bar?”
+
+Haward, to whom this speech was addressed, gave it no attention. His
+gaze was upon Hugon, who in his turn glared at him alone. Haward had
+a subtle power of forcing and fixing the attention of a company; in
+crowded rooms, without undue utterance or moving from his place, he
+was apt to achieve the centre of the stage, the head of the table.
+Now, the half-breed, by very virtue of the passion which, false to his
+Indian blood, shook him like a leaf, of a rage which overmastered and
+transformed, reached at a bound the Englishman’s plane of distinction.
+His great wig, of a fashion years gone by, was pulled grotesquely
+aside, showing the high forehead and shaven crown beneath; his laced
+coat and tawdry waistcoat and ruffled shirt were torn and foul with
+mud and mould, but the man himself made to be forgotten the absurdity
+of his trappings. Gone, for him, were his captors, his accomplice, the
+spectator in gold and russet; to Haward, also, sitting very cold, very
+quiet, with narrowed eyes, they were gone. He was angered, and in the
+mood to give rein after his own fashion to that anger. MacLean and the
+master of Westover, the overseer and the schoolmaster, were forgotten,
+and he and Hugon met alone as they might have met in the forest.
+Between them, and without a spoken word, the two made this fact to be
+recognized by the other occupants of the drawing-room. Colonel Byrd,
+who had been standing with his hand upon the table, moved backward
+until he joined MacLean beside the closed door: Saunderson drew near to
+the schoolmaster: and the centre of the room was left to the would-be
+murderer and the victim that had escaped him.
+
+“Monsieur le Monacan,” said Haward.
+
+Hugon snarled like an angry wolf, and strained at the rope which bound
+his arms.
+
+Haward went on evenly: “Your tribe has smoked the peace pipe with the
+white man. I was not told it by singing birds, but by the great white
+father at Williamsburgh. They buried the hatchet very deep; the dead
+leaves of many moons of Cohonks lie thick upon the place where they
+buried it. Why have you made a warpath, treading it alone of your
+color?”
+
+“Diable!” cried Hugon. “Pig of an Englishman! I will kill you for”--
+
+“For an handful of blue beads,” said Haward, with a cold smile. “And I,
+dog of an Indian! I will send a Nottoway to teach the Monacans how to
+lay a snare and hide a trail.”
+
+The trader, gasping with passion, leaned across the table until his
+eyes were within a foot of Haward’s unmoved face. “Who showed you the
+trail and told you of the snare?” he whispered. “Tell me that, you
+Englishman,--tell me that!”
+
+“A storm bird,” said Haward calmly. “Okee is perhaps angry with his
+Monacans, and sent it.”
+
+“Was it Audrey?”
+
+Haward laughed. “No, it was not Audrey. And so, Monacan, you have
+yourself fallen into the pit which you digged.”
+
+From the fireplace came the schoolmaster’s slow voice: “Dear sir, can
+you show the pit? Why should this youth desire to harm you? Where is
+the storm bird? Can you whistle it before a justice of the peace or
+into a court room?”
+
+If Haward heard, it did not appear. He was leaning back in his chair,
+his eyes fixed upon the trader’s twitching face in a cold and smiling
+regard. “Well, Monacan?” he demanded.
+
+The half-breed straightened himself, and with a mighty effort
+strove in vain for a composure that should match the other’s cold
+self-command,--a command which taunted and stung now at this point,
+now at that. “I am a Frenchman!” he cried, in a voice that broke with
+passion. “I am of the noblesse of the land of France, which is a
+country that is much grander than Virginia! Old Pierre at Monacan-Town
+told me these things. My father changed his name when he came across
+the sea, so I bear not the _de_ which is a sign of a great man. Listen,
+you Englishman! I trade, I prosper, I buy me land, I begin to build me
+a house. There is a girl that I see every hour, every minute, while I
+am building it. She says she loves me not, but nevertheless I shall wed
+her. Now I see her in this room, now in that; she comes down the stair,
+she smiles at the window, she stands on the doorstep to welcome me when
+I come home from my hunting and trading in the woods so far away. I
+bring her fine skins of the otter, the beaver, and the fawn; beadwork
+also from the villages and bracelets of copper and pearl. The flowers
+bloom around her, and my heart sings to see her upon my doorstep....
+The flowers are dead, and you have stolen the girl away.... There was
+a stream, and the sun shone upon it, and you and she were in a boat. I
+walked alone upon the bank, and in my heart I left building my house
+and fell to other work. You laughed; one day you will laugh no more.
+That was many suns ago. I have watched”--
+
+Foam was upon his lips, and he strained without ceasing at his bonds.
+Already pulled far awry, his great peruke, a cataract of hair streaming
+over his shoulders, shading and softening the swarthy features between
+its curled waves, now slipped from his head and fell to the floor. The
+change which its absence wrought was startling. Of the man the moiety
+that was white disappeared. The shaven head, its poise, its features,
+were Indian; the soul was Indian, and looked from Indian eyes.
+Suddenly, for the last transforming touch, came a torrent of words in a
+strange tongue, the tongue of his mother. Of what he was speaking, what
+he was threatening, no one of them could tell; he was a savage giving
+voice to madness and hate.
+
+Haward pushed back his chair from the table, and, rising, walked across
+the room to the window. Hugon followed him, straining at the rope about
+his arms and speaking thickly. His eyes were glaring, his teeth bared.
+When he was so close that the Virginian could feel his hot breath,
+the latter turned, and uttering an oath of disgust struck the back of
+his hand across his lips. With the cry of an animal, Hugon, bound as
+he was, threw himself bodily upon his foe, who in his turn flung the
+trader from him with a violence that sent him reeling against the wall.
+Here Saunderson, a man of powerful build, seized him by the shoulders,
+holding him fast; MacLean, too, hurriedly crossed from the door. There
+was no need, for the half-breed’s frenzy was spent. He stood with
+glittering eyes following Haward’s every motion, but quite silent, his
+frame rigid in the overseer’s grasp.
+
+Colonel Byrd went up to Haward and spoke in a low voice: “Best send
+them at once to Williamsburgh.”
+
+Haward shook his head. “I cannot,” he said, with a gesture of
+impatience. “There is no proof.”
+
+“No proof!” exclaimed his guest sharply. “You mean”--
+
+The other met his stare of surprise with an imperturbable countenance.
+“What I say,” he answered quietly. “My servants find two men lurking
+beside a road that I am traveling. Being somewhat over-zealous, they
+take them up upon suspicion of meaning mischief and bring them before
+me. It is all guesswork why they were at the turn of the road, and what
+they wanted there. There is no proof, no witness”--
+
+“I see that there is no witness that you care to call,” said the
+Colonel coldly.
+
+Haward waved his hand. “There is no witness,” he said, without change
+of tone. “And therefore, Colonel, I am about to dismiss the case.”
+
+With a slight bow to his guest he left the window, and advanced to the
+group in the centre of the room. “Saunderson,” he said abruptly, “take
+these two men to the quarter and cut their bonds. Give them a start of
+fifty yards, then loose the dogs and hunt them from the plantation. You
+have men outside to help you? Very well; go! Mr. MacLean, will you see
+this chase fairly started?”
+
+The Highlander, who had become very thoughtful of aspect since entering
+the room, and who had not shared Saunderson’s start of surprise at
+the master’s latest orders, nodded assent. Haward stood for a moment
+gazing steadily at Hugon, but with no notice to bestow upon the bowing
+schoolmaster; then walked over to the harpsichord, and, sitting down,
+began to play an old tune, soft and slow, with pauses between the
+notes. When he came to the final chord he looked over his shoulder
+at the Colonel, standing before the mantel, with his eyes upon the
+fire. “So they have gone,” he said. “Good riddance! A pretty brace of
+villains!”
+
+“I should be loath to have Monsieur Jean Hugon for my enemy,” said the
+Colonel gravely.
+
+Haward laughed. “I was told at Williamsburgh that a party of traders go
+to the Southern Indians to-morrow, and he with them. Perhaps a month or
+two of the woods will work a cure.”
+
+He fell to playing again, a quiet, plaintive air. When it was ended, he
+rose and went over to the fire to keep his guest company; but finding
+him in a mood for silence, presently fell silent himself, and took
+to viewing structures of his own building in the red hollows between
+the logs. This mutual taciturnity lasted until the announcement of
+supper, and was relapsed into at intervals during the meal; but when
+they had returned to the drawing-room the two talked until it was late,
+and the fire had sunken to ash and embers. Before they parted for the
+night it was agreed that the master of Westover should remain with
+the master of Fair View for a day or so, at the end of which time the
+latter gentleman would accompany the former to Westover for a visit of
+indefinite length.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+AUDREY AND EVELYN
+
+
+Hugon went a-trading to the Southern Indians, but had lately returned
+to his lair at the crossroads ordinary, when, upon a sunny September
+morning, Audrey and Mistress Deborah, mounted upon the sorriest of
+Darden’s sorry steeds, turned from Duke of Gloucester into Palace
+Street. They had parted with the minister before his favorite ordinary,
+and were on their way to the house where they themselves were to lodge
+during the three days of town life which Darden had vouchsafed to offer
+them.
+
+For a month or more Virginia had been wearing black ribbons for the
+King, who died in June, but in the last day or so there had been a
+reversion to bright colors. This cheerful change had been wrought
+by the arrival in the York of the Fortune of Bristol, with the new
+governor on board. His Excellency had landed at Yorktown, and, after
+suitable entertainment at the hands of its citizens, had proceeded
+under escort to Williamsburgh. The entry into the town was triumphal,
+and when, at the doorway of his Palace, the Governor turned, and
+addressed a pleasing oration to the people whom he was to rule in
+the name of the King and my Lord of Orkney, enthusiasm reached its
+height. At night the town was illuminated, and well-nigh all its ladies
+and gentlemen visited the Palace, in order to pay their duty to its
+latest occupant. It was a pleasure-loving people, and the arrival
+of a governor an occasion of which the most must be made. Gentlemen
+of consideration had come in from every county, bringing with them
+wives and daughters. In the mild, sunshiny weather the crowded town
+overflowed into square and street and garden. Everywhere were bustle
+and gayety,--gayety none the less for the presence of thirty or
+more ministers of the Established Church. For Mr. Commissary Blair
+had convoked a meeting of the clergy for the consideration of evils
+affecting that body,--not, alas! from without alone. The Governor,
+arriving so opportunely, must, too, be addressed upon the usual
+subjects of presentation, induction, and all-powerful vestries. It was
+fitting, also, that the college of William and Mary should have its
+say upon the occasion, and the brightest scholar thereof was even now
+closeted with the Latin master. That the copy of verses giving the
+welcome of so many future planters, Burgesses, and members of Council
+would be choice in thought and elegant in expression, there could be
+no reasonable doubt. The Council was to give an entertainment at the
+Capitol; one day had been set aside for a muster of militia in the
+meadow beyond the college, another for a great horse-race; many small
+parties were arranged; and last, but not least, on the night of the
+day following Darden’s appearance in town, his Excellency was to give
+a ball at the Palace. Add to all this that two notorious pirates were
+standing their trial before a court-martial, with every prospect of
+being hanged within the se’ennight; that a deputation of Nottoways and
+Meherrins, having business with the white fathers in Williamsburgh,
+were to be persuaded to dance their wildest, whoop their loudest,
+around a bonfire built in the market square; that at the playhouse Cato
+was to be given with extraordinary magnificence, and one may readily
+see that there might have been found, in this sunny September week,
+places less entertaining than Williamsburgh.
+
+Darden’s old white horse, with its double load, plodded along the
+street that led to the toy Palace of this toy capital. The Palace, of
+course, was not its riders’ destination; instead, when they had crossed
+Nicholson Street, they drew up before a particularly small white house,
+so hidden away behind lilac bushes and trellised grapevines that it
+gave but here and there a pale hint of its existence. It was planted
+in the shadow of a larger building, and a path led around it to what
+seemed a pleasant, shady, and extensive garden.
+
+Mistress Deborah gave a sigh of satisfaction. “Seven years come
+Martinmas since I last stayed overnight with Mary Stagg! And we were
+born in the same village, and at Bath what mighty friends we were! She
+was playing Dorinda,--that’s in ‘The Beaux’ Stratagem,’ Audrey,--and
+her dress was just an old striped Persian, vastly unbecoming. Her
+Ladyship’s pink alamode, that Major D---- spilt a dish of chocolate
+over, she gave to me for carrying a note; and I gave it to Mary (she
+was Mary Baker then),--for I looked hideous in pink,--and she was that
+grateful, as well she might be! Mary, Mary!”
+
+A slender woman, with red-brown hair and faded cheeks, came running
+from the house to the gate. “At last, my dear Deborah! I vow I had
+given you up! Says I to Mirabell an hour ago,--you know that is my name
+for Charles, for ’twas when he played Mirabell to my Millamant that we
+fell in love,--‘Well,’ says I, ‘I’ll lay a gold-furbelowed scarf to a
+yard of oznaburg that Mr. Darden, riding home through the night, and
+in liquor, perhaps, has fallen and broken his neck, and Deborah can’t
+come.’ And says Mirabell--But la, my dear, there you stand in your
+safeguard, and I’m keeping the gate shut on you! Come in. Come in,
+Audrey. Why, you’ve grown to be a woman! You were just a brown slip of
+a thing, that Lady Day, two years ago, that I spent with Deborah. Come
+in the both of you. There are cakes and a bottle of Madeira.”
+
+Audrey fastened the horse against the time that Darden should remember
+to send for it, and then followed the ex-waiting-woman and the former
+queen of a company of strollers up a grassy path and through a little
+green door into a pleasant room, where grape leaves wreathed the
+windows and cast their shadows upon a sanded floor. At one end of the
+room stood a great, rudely built cabinet, and before it a long table,
+strewn with an orderly litter of such slender articles of apparel as
+silk and tissue scarfs, gauze hoods, breast knots, silk stockings, and
+embroidered gloves. Mistress Deborah must needs run and examine these
+at once, and Mistress Mary Stagg, wife of the lessee, manager, and
+principal actor of the Williamsburgh theatre, looked complacently over
+her shoulder. The minister’s wife sighed again, this time with envy.
+
+“What with the theatre, and the bowling green, and tea in your
+summer-house, and dancing lessons, and the sale of these fine things,
+you and Charles must turn a pretty penny! The luck that some folk have!
+_You_ were always fortunate, Mary.”
+
+Mistress Stagg did not deny the imputation. But she was a kindly soul,
+who had not forgotten the gift of my Lady Squander’s pink alamode. The
+chocolate stain had not been so very large.
+
+“I’ve laid by a pretty piece of sarcenet of which to make you a
+capuchin,” she said promptly. “Now, here’s the wine. Shan’t we go into
+the garden, and sip it there? Peggy,” to the black girl holding a
+salver, “put the cake and wine on the table in the arbor; then sit here
+by the window, and call me if any come. My dear Deborah, I doubt if I
+have so much as a ribbon left by the end of the week. The town is that
+gay! I says to Mirabell this morning, says I, ‘Lord, my dear, it a’most
+puts me in mind of Bath!’ And Mirabell says--But here’s the garden
+door. Now, isn’t it cool and pleasant out here? Audrey may gather
+us some grapes. Yes, they’re very fine, full bunches; it has been a
+bounteous year.”
+
+The grape arbor hugged the house, but beyond it was a pretty, shady,
+fancifully laid out garden, with shell-bordered walks, a grotto, a
+summer-house, and a gate opening into Nicholson Street. Beyond the
+garden a glimpse was to be caught through the trees of a trim bowling
+green. It had rained the night before, and a delightful, almost vernal
+freshness breathed in the air. The bees made a great buzzing amongst
+the grapes, and the birds in the mulberry-trees sang as though it were
+nesting time. Mistress Stagg and her old acquaintance sat at a table
+placed in the shadow of the vines, and sipped their wine, while Audrey
+obediently gathered clusters of the purple fruit, and thought the
+garden very fine, but oh, not like--There could be no garden in the
+world so beautiful and so dear as that! And she had not seen it for so
+long, so long a time. She wondered if she would ever see it again.
+
+When she brought the fruit to the table, Mistress Stagg made room for
+her kindly enough; and she sat and drank her wine and went to her world
+of dreams, while her companions bartered town and country gossip. It
+has been said that the small white house adjoined a larger building. A
+window in this structure, which had much the appearance of a barn, was
+now opened, with the result that a confused sound, as of several people
+speaking at once, made itself heard. Suddenly the noise gave place to a
+single high-pitched voice:--
+
+    “‘Welcome, my son! Here lay him down, my friends,
+      Full in my sight, that I may view at leisure
+      The bloody corse, and count those glorious wounds.’”
+
+A smile irradiated Mistress Stagg’s faded countenance, and she blew
+a kiss toward the open window. “He does Cato so extremely well; and
+it’s a grave, dull, odd character, too. But Mirabell--that’s Charles,
+you know--manages to put a little life in it, a _Je ne sais quoi_,
+a touch of Sir Harry Wildair. Now--now he’s pulling out his laced
+handkerchief to weep over Rome! You should see him after he has fallen
+on his sword, and is brought on in a chair, all over blood. This is
+the third rehearsal; the play’s ordered for Monday night. Who is it,
+Peggy? Madam Travis! It’s about the lace for her damask petticoat, and
+there’s no telling how long she may keep me! My dear Deborah, when
+you have finished your wine, Peggy shall show you your room. You must
+make yourself quite at home. For says I to Mirabell this morning, ‘Far
+be it from me to forget past kindnesses, and in those old Bath days
+Deborah was a good friend to me,--which was no wonder, to be sure,
+seeing that when we were little girls we went to the same dame school,
+and always learned our book and worked our samplers together.’ And says
+Mirabell--Yes, yes, ma’am, I’m coming!”
+
+She disappeared, and the black girl showed the two guests through the
+hall and up a tiny stairway into a little dormer-windowed, whitewashed
+room. Mistress Deborah, who still wore remnants of my Lady Squander’s
+ancient gifts of spoiled finery, had likewise failed to discard the
+second-hand fine-lady airs acquired during her service. She now
+declared herself excessively tired by her morning ride, and martyr,
+besides, to a migraine. Moreover, it was enough to give one the spleen
+to hear Mary Stagg’s magpie chatter and to see how some folk throve,
+willy-nilly, while others just as good--Here tears of vexation ensued,
+and she must lie down upon the bed and call in a feeble voice for her
+smelling salts. Audrey hurriedly searched in the ragged portmanteau
+brought to town the day before in the ox-cart of an obliging
+parishioner, found the flask, and took it to the bedside, to receive in
+exchange a sound box of the ear for her tardiness. The blow reddened
+her cheek, but brought no tears to her eyes. It was too small a thing
+to weep for; tears were for blows upon the heart.
+
+It was a cool and quiet little room, and Mistress Deborah, who had
+drunk two full glasses of the Madeira, presently fell asleep. Audrey
+sat very still, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes upon them,
+until their hostess’s voice announced from the foot of the stairs that
+Madam Travis had taken her departure. She then slipped from the room,
+and was affably received below, and taken into the apartment which they
+had first entered. Here Mistress became at once extremely busy. A fan
+was to be mounted; yards of silk gathered into furbelows; breast knots,
+shoulder knots, sword knots, to be made up. Her customers were all
+people of quality, and unless she did her part not one of them could go
+to the ball. Audrey shyly proffered her aid, and was set to changing
+the ribbons upon a mask.
+
+Mistress Stagg’s tongue went as fast as her needle: “And Deborah
+is asleep! Poor soul! she’s sadly changed from what she was in old
+England thirteen years ago. As neat a shape as you would see in
+a day’s journey, with the prettiest color, and eyes as bright as
+those marcasite buttons! And she saw the best of company at my Lady
+Squander’s,--no lack there of kisses and guineas and fine gentlemen,
+you may be sure! There’s a deal of change in this mortal world, and
+it’s generally for the worse. Here, child, you may whip this lace on
+Mr. Lightfoot’s ruffles. I think myself lucky, I can tell you, that
+there are so few women in Cato. If ’tweren’t so, I should have to go
+on myself; for since poor, dear, pretty Jane Day died of the smallpox,
+and Oriana Jordan ran away with the rascally Bridewell fellow that we
+bought to play husbands’ parts, and was never heard of more, but is
+supposed to have gotten clean off to Barbadoes by favor of the master
+of the Lady Susan, we have been short of actresses. But in this play
+there are only Marcia and Lucia. ‘It is extremely fortunate, my dear,’
+said I to Mirabell this very morning, ‘that in this play, which is the
+proper compliment to a great gentleman just taking office, Mr. Addison
+should have put no more than two women.’ And Mirabell says--Don’t put
+the lace so full, child; ’twon’t go round.”
+
+“A chair is stopping at the gate,” said Audrey, who sat by the window.
+“There’s a lady in it.”
+
+The chair was a very fine painted one, borne by two gayly dressed
+negroes, and escorted by a trio of beribboned young gentlemen, prodigal
+of gallant speeches, amorous sighs, and languishing glances. Mistress
+Stagg looked, started up, and, without waiting to raise from the floor
+the armful of delicate silk which she had dropped, was presently
+curtsying upon the doorstep.
+
+The bearers set down their load. One of the gentlemen opened the
+chair door with a flourish, and the divinity, compressing her hoop,
+descended. A second cavalier flung back Mistress Stagg’s gate, and the
+third, with a low bow, proffered his hand to conduct the fair from the
+gate to the doorstep. The lady shook her head; a smiling word or two,
+a slight curtsy, the wave of a painted fan, and her attendants found
+themselves dismissed. She came up the path alone, slowly, with her head
+a little bent. Audrey, watching her from the window, knew who she was,
+and her heart beat fast. If this lady were in town, then so was he;
+he would not have stayed behind at Westover. She would have left the
+room, but there was not time. The mistress of the house, smiling and
+obsequious, fluttered in, and Evelyn Byrd followed.
+
+There had been ordered for her a hood of golden tissue, with wide and
+long streamers to be tied beneath the chin, and she was come to try
+it on. Mistress Stagg had it all but ready,--there was only the least
+bit of stitchery; would Mistress Evelyn condescend to wait a very few
+minutes? She placed a chair, and the lady sank into it, finding the
+quiet of the shadowed room pleasant enough after the sunlight and
+talkativeness of the world without. Mistress Stagg, in her role of
+milliner, took the gauzy trifle, called by courtesy a hood, to the
+farthest window, and fell busily to work.
+
+It seemed to grow more and more quiet in the room: the shadow of the
+leaves lay still upon the floor; the drowsy humming of the bees outside
+the windows, the sound of locusts in the trees, the distant noises of
+the town,--all grew more remote, then suddenly appeared to cease.
+
+Audrey raised her eyes, and met the eyes of Evelyn. She knew that they
+had been upon her for a long time, in the quiet of the room. She had
+sat breathless, her head bowed over her work that lay idly in her lap,
+but at last she must look. The two gazed at each other with a sorrowful
+steadfastness; in the largeness of their several natures there was no
+room for self-consciousness; it was the soul of each that gazed. But in
+the mists of earthly ignorance they could not read what was written,
+and they erred in their guessing. Audrey went not far wide. This was
+the princess, and, out of the fullness of a heart that ached with loss,
+she could have knelt and kissed the hem of her robe, and wished her
+long and happy life. There was no bitterness in her heart; she never
+dreamed that she had wronged the princess. But Evelyn thought: “This is
+the girl they talk about. God knows, if he had loved worthily, I might
+not so much have minded!”
+
+From the garden came a burst of laughter and high voices. Mistress
+Stagg started up. “’Tis our people, Mistress Evelyn, coming from the
+playhouse. We lodge them in the house by the bowling green, but after
+rehearsals they’re apt to stop here. I’ll send them packing. The hood
+is finished. Audrey will set it upon your head, ma’am, while I am gone.
+Here, child! Mind you don’t crush it.” She gave the hood into Audrey’s
+hands, and hurried from the room.
+
+Evelyn sat motionless, her silken draperies flowing around her, one
+white arm bent, the soft curve of her cheek resting upon ringed
+fingers. Her eyes yet dwelt upon Audrey, standing as motionless, the
+mist of gauze and lace in her hands. “Do not trouble yourself,” she
+said, in her low, clear voice. “I will wait until Mistress Stagg
+returns.”
+
+The tone was very cold, but Audrey scarce noticed that it was so. “If I
+may, I should like to serve you, ma’am,” she said pleadingly. “I will
+be very careful.”
+
+Leaving the window, she came and knelt beside Evelyn; but when she
+would have put the golden hood upon her head, the other drew back with
+a gesture of aversion, a quick recoil of her entire frame. The hood
+slipped to the floor. After a moment Audrey rose and stepped back a
+pace or two. Neither spoke, but it was the one who thought no evil
+whose eyes first sought the floor. Her dark cheek paled, and her lips
+trembled; she turned, and going back to her seat by the window took up
+her fallen work. Evelyn, with a sharp catch of her breath, withdrew
+her attention from the other occupant of the room, and fixed it upon a
+moted sunbeam lying like a bar between the two.
+
+Mistress Stagg returned. The hood was fitted, and its purchaser
+prepared to leave. Audrey rose and made her curtsy, timidly, but with
+a quick, appealing motion of her hand. Was not this the lady whom he
+loved, that people said he was to wed? And had he not told her, long
+ago, that he would speak of her to Mistress Evelyn Byrd, and that she
+too would be her friend? Last May Day, when the guinea was put into her
+hand, the lady’s smile was bright, her voice sweet and friendly. Now,
+how changed! In her craving for a word, a look, from one so near him,
+one that perhaps had seen him not an hour before; in her sad homage for
+the object of his love, she forgot her late repulse, and grew bold.
+When Evelyn would have passed her, she put forth a trembling hand and
+began to speak, to say she scarce knew what; but the words died in
+her throat. For a moment Evelyn stood, her head averted, an angry red
+staining neck and bosom and beautiful, down-bent face. Her eyes half
+closed, the long lashes quivering against her cheek, and she smiled
+faintly, in scorn of the girl and scorn of herself. Then, freeing her
+skirt from Audrey’s clasp, she passed in silence from the room.
+
+Audrey stood at the window, and with wide, pained eyes watched her go
+down the path. Mistress Stagg was with her, talking volubly, and Evelyn
+seemed to listen with smiling patience. One of the bedizened negroes
+opened the chair door; the lady entered, and was borne away. Before
+Mistress Stagg could reenter her house Audrey had gone quietly up the
+winding stair to the little whitewashed room, where she found the
+minister’s wife astir and restored to good humor. Her sleep had helped
+her; she would go down at once and see what Mary was at. Darden, too,
+was coming as soon as the meeting at the church had adjourned. After
+dinner they would walk out and see the town, until which time Audrey
+might do as she pleased. When she was gone, Audrey softly shut herself
+in the little room, and lay down upon the bed, very still, with her
+face hidden in her arm.
+
+With twelve of the clock came Darden, quite sober, distrait in manner
+and uneasy of eye, and presently interrupted Mistress Stagg’s flow of
+conversation by a demand to speak with his wife alone. At that time of
+day the garden was a solitude, and thither the two repaired, taking
+their seats upon a bench built round a mulberry-tree.
+
+“Well?” queried Mistress Deborah bitterly. “I suppose Mr. Commissary
+showed himself vastly civil? I dare say you’re to preach before the
+Governor next Sunday? Or maybe they’ve chosen Bailey? He boasts that he
+can drink you under the table! One of these fine days you’ll drink and
+curse and game yourself out of a parish!”
+
+Darden drew figures on the ground with his heavy stick. “On such a fine
+day as this,” he said, in a suppressed voice, and looked askance at the
+wife whom he beat upon occasion, but whose counsel he held in respect.
+
+She turned upon him. “What do you mean? They talk and talk, and cry
+shame,--and a shame it is, the Lord knows! But it never comes to
+anything”--
+
+“It has come to this,” interrupted Darden, with an oath: “that this
+Governor means to sweep in the corners; that the Commissary--damned
+Scot!--to-day appointed a committee to inquire into the charges made
+against me and Bailey and John Worden; that seven of my vestrymen are
+dead against me; and that ‘deprivation’ has suddenly become a very
+common word!”
+
+“Seven of the vestry?” said his wife, after a pause. “Who are they?”
+
+Darden told her.
+
+“If Mr. Haward”--she began slowly, her green eyes steady upon the
+situation. “There’s not one of that seven would care to disoblige
+him. I warrant you he could make them face about. They say he
+knew the Governor in England, too; and there’s his late gift to
+the college,--the Commissary wouldn’t forget that. If Mr. Haward
+would”--She broke off, and with knit brows studied the problem more
+intently.
+
+“If he would, he could,” Darden finished for her. “With his interest
+this cloud would go by, as others have done before. I know that,
+Deborah. And that’s the card I’m going to play.”
+
+“If you had gone to him, hat in hand, a month ago, he’d have done you
+any favor,” said his helpmate sourly. “But it is different now. He’s
+over his fancy; and besides, he’s at Westover.”
+
+“He’s in Williamsburgh, at Marot’s ordinary,” said the other. “As for
+his being over his fancy,--I’ll try that. Fancy or no fancy, if a
+woman asked him for a fairing, he would give it her, or I don’t know
+my gentleman. We’ll call his interest a ribbon or some such toy, and
+Audrey shall ask him for it.”
+
+“Audrey is a fool!” cried Mistress Deborah. “And you had best be
+careful, or you’ll prove yourself another! There’s been talk enough
+already. Audrey, village innocent that she is, is the only one that
+doesn’t know it. The town’s not the country; if he sets tongues
+a-clacking here”--
+
+“He won’t,” said Darden roughly. “He’s no hare-brained one-and-twenty!
+And Audrey’s a good girl. Go send her here, Deborah. Bid her fetch me
+Stagg’s inkhorn and a pen and a sheet of paper. If he does anything for
+me, it will have to be done quickly. They’re in haste to pull me out of
+saddle, the damned canting pack! But I’ll try conclusions with them!”
+
+His wife departed, muttering to herself, and the reverend Gideon pulled
+out of his capacious pocket a flask of usquebaugh. In five minutes from
+the time of his setting it to his lips the light in which he viewed the
+situation turned from gray to rose color. By the time he espied Audrey
+coming toward him through the garden he felt a moral certainty that
+when he came to die (if ever he died) it would be in his bed in the
+Fair View glebe house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+WITHIN THE PLAYHOUSE
+
+
+Haward, sitting at the table in Marot’s best room, wrote an answer
+to Audrey’s letter, and tore it up; wrote another, and gave it to
+Juba, to be given to the messenger waiting below; recalled the negro
+before he could reach the door, destroyed the second note, and wrote a
+third. The first had been wise and kind, telling her that he was much
+engaged, lightly and skillfully waving aside her request--the only
+one she made--that she might see him that day. The second had been
+less wise. The last told her that he would come at five o’clock to the
+summer-house in Mistress Stagg’s garden.
+
+When he was alone in the room, he sat for some time very still, with
+his eyes closed and his head thrown back against the tall woodwork
+of his chair. His face was stern in repose: a handsome, even a fine
+face, with a look of power and reflection, but to-day somewhat worn
+and haggard of aspect. When presently he roused himself and took up
+the letter that lay before him, the paper shook in his hand. “Wine,
+Juba,” he said to the slave, who now reëntered the room. “And close the
+window; it is growing cold.”
+
+There were but three lines between the “Mr. Haward” and “Audrey;” the
+writing was stiff and clerkly, the words very simple,--a child’s asking
+of a favor. He guessed rightly that it was the first letter of her own
+that she had ever written. Suddenly a wave of passionate tenderness
+took him; he bowed his head and kissed the paper; for the moment
+many-threaded life and his own complex nature alike straightened to a
+beautiful simplicity. He was the lover, merely; life was but the light
+and shadow through which moved the woman whom he loved. He came back
+to himself, and tried to think it out, but could not. Finally, with a
+weary impatience, he declined to think at all. He was to dine at the
+Governor’s. Evelyn would be there.
+
+Only momentarily, in those days of early summer, had he wavered in his
+determination to make this lady his wife. Pride was at the root of his
+being,--pride and a deep self-will; though because they were so sunken,
+and because poisonous roots can flower most deceivingly, he neither
+called himself nor was called of others a proud and willful man. He
+wished Evelyn for his wife; nay, more, though on May Day he had shown
+her that he loved her not, though in June he had offered her a love
+that was only admiring affection, yet in the past month at Westover he
+had come almost to believe that he loved her truly. That she was worthy
+of true love he knew very well. With all his strength of will, he had
+elected to forget the summer that lay behind him at Fair View, and to
+live in the summer that was with him at Westover. His success had been
+gratifying; in the flush of it, he persuaded himself that a chamber of
+the heart had been locked forever, and the key thrown away. And lo now!
+a touch, the sudden sight of a name, and the door had flown wide; nay,
+the very walls were rived away! It was not a glance over the shoulder;
+it was full presence in the room so lately sealed.
+
+He knew that Evelyn loved him. It was understood of all their
+acquaintance that he was her suitor; months ago he had formally craved
+her father’s permission to pay his addresses. There were times in those
+weeks at Westover when she had come nigh to yielding, to believing that
+he loved her; he was certain that with time he would have his way....
+But the room, the closed room, in which now he sat!
+
+He buried his face in his hands, and was suddenly back in spirit in his
+garden at Fair View. The cherries were ripe; the birds were singing:
+great butterflies went by. The sunshine beat on the dial, on the walks,
+and the smell of the roses was strong as wine. His senses swam with the
+warmth and fragrance; the garden enlarged itself, and blazed in beauty.
+Never was sunshine so golden as that; never were roses so large, never
+odors so potent-sweet. A spirit walked in the garden paths: its name
+was Audrey.... No, it was speaking, speaking words of passion and of
+woe.... Its name was Eloïsa!
+
+When he rose from his chair, he staggered slightly, and put his hand
+to his head. Recovering himself in a moment, he called for his hat and
+cane, and, leaving the ordinary, turned his face toward the Palace.
+A garrulous fellow Councilor, also bidden to his Excellency’s dinner
+party, overtook him, and, falling into step, began to speak first of
+the pirates’ trial, and then of the weather. A hot and feverish summer.
+’Twas said that a good third of the servants arriving in the country
+since spring had died of their seasoning. The slaver lying in the York
+had thrown thirty blacks overboard in the ran from Barbadoes,--some
+strange sickness or other. Adsbud! He would not buy from the lot the
+master landed; had they been white, they had showed like spectres!
+September was the worst month of the year. He did not find Mr. Haward
+in looks now. Best consult Dr. Contesse, though indeed he himself had a
+preventive of fever which never failed. First he bled; then to so much
+of Peruvian bark--
+
+Mr. Haward declared that he was very well, and turned the conversation
+piratewards again.
+
+The dinner at the Palace was somewhat hurried, the gentlemen rising
+with the ladies, despite the enticements of Burgundy and champagne. It
+was the afternoon set apart for the Indian dance. The bonfire in the
+field behind the magazine had been kindled; the Nottoways and Meherrins
+were waiting, still as statues, for the gathering of their audience.
+Before the dance the great white father was to speak to them; the peace
+pipe, also, was to be smoked. The town, gay of mood and snatching at
+enjoyment, emptied its people into the sunny field. Only they who
+could not go stayed at home. Those light-hearted folk, ministers to a
+play-loving age, who dwelt in the house by the bowling green or in the
+shadow of the theatre itself, must go, at all rates. Marcia and Lucia,
+Syphax, Sempronius, and the African prince made off together, while the
+sons of Cato, who chanced to be twin brothers, followed with a slower
+step. Their indentures would expire next month, and they had thoughts,
+the one of becoming an overseer, the other of moving up country and
+joining a company of rangers: hence their somewhat haughty bearing
+toward their fellow players, who--except old Syphax, who acted for the
+love of it--had not even a bowing acquaintance with freedom.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Stagg saw their minions depart, and then themselves left
+the little white house in Palace Street. Mistress Deborah was with
+them, but not Audrey. “She can’t abide the sight of an Indian,” said
+the minister’s wife indifferently. “Besides, Darden will be here from
+the church presently, and he may want her to write for him. She and
+Peggy can mind the house.”
+
+The Capitol clock was telling five when Haward entered the garden by
+the Nicholson Street gate. There had arisen a zephyr of the evening,
+to loosen the yellow locust leaves and send them down upon the path,
+to lay cool fingers upon his forehead that burned, and to whisper low
+at his ear. House and garden and silent street seemed asleep in the
+late sunshine, safe folded from the storm of sound that raged in the
+field on the border of the town. Distance muffled the Indian drums,
+and changed the scream of the pipes into a far-off wailing. Savage
+cries, bursts of applause and laughter,--all came softly, blent like
+the hum of the bees, mellow like the sunlight. There was no one in the
+summer-house. Haward walked on to the grape arbor, and found there a
+black girl, who pointed to an open door, pertaining not to the small
+white house, but to that portion of the theatre which abutted upon the
+garden. Haward, passing a window of Mr. Stagg’s domicile, was aware of
+Darden sitting within, much engaged with a great book and a tankard of
+sack. He made no pause for the vision, and another moment found him
+within the playhouse.
+
+The sunlight entered in at the door and at one high window, but yet
+the place was dim. The gallery and the rude boxes were all in shadow;
+the sunbeams from the door struck into the pit, while those from the
+high window let fall a shaft of misty light upon the stage itself, set
+for a hall in Utica, with five cane chairs, an ancient settle, and a
+Spanish table. On the settle, in the pale gold of the falling light,
+sat Audrey, her hands clasped over her knees, her head thrown back, and
+her eyes fixed upon the shadowy, chill, and soundless space before her.
+Upon Haward’s speaking her name she sighed, and, loosing her hands,
+turned toward him. He came and leaned upon the back of the settle. “You
+sent for me, Audrey,” he said, and laid his hand lightly upon her hair.
+
+She shrank from his touch. “The minister made me write the letter,” she
+said, in a low voice. “I did not wish to trouble you, sir.”
+
+Upon her wrist were dark marks. “Did Darden do that?” demanded Haward,
+as he took his seat beside her.
+
+Audrey looked at the bruise indifferently; then with her other hand
+covered it from sight. “I have a favor to ask of Mr. Haward,” she said.
+“I hope that after his many kindnesses he will not refuse to do me this
+greatest one. If he should grant my request, the gratitude which I must
+needs already feel toward him will be increased tenfold.” The words
+came precisely, in an even voice.
+
+Haward smiled. “Child, you have conned your lesson well. Leave the
+words of the book, and tell me in your own language what his reverence
+wants.”
+
+Audrey told him, but it seemed to her that he was not listening. When
+she had come to an end of the minister’s grievances, she sat, with
+downcast eyes, waiting for him to speak, wishing that he would not look
+at her so steadily. She meant never to show him her heart,--never,
+never; but beneath his gaze it was hard to keep her cheek from burning,
+her lip from quivering.
+
+At last he spoke: “Would it please you, Audrey, if I should save this
+man from his just deserts?”
+
+Audrey raised her eyes. “He and Mistress Deborah are all my friends,”
+she said. “The glebe house is my home.”
+
+Deep sadness spoke in voice and eye. The shaft of light, moving, had
+left her in the outer shadow: she sat there with a listless grace; with
+a dignity, too, that was not without pathos. There had been a forlorn
+child; there had been an unfriended girl; there was now a woman, for
+Life to fondle or to wreak its rage upon. The change was subtle; one
+more a lover or less a lover than Haward might not have noted it.
+“I will petition the Commissary to-night,” he said, “the Governor
+to-morrow. Is your having in friends so slight as you say, little maid?”
+
+Oh, he could reach to the quick! She was sure that he had not meant to
+accuse her of ingratitude, and pitifully sure that she must have seemed
+guilty of it. “No, no!” she cried. “I have had a friend”--Her voice
+broke, and she started to her feet, her face to the door, all her being
+quiveringly eager to be gone. She had asked that which she was bidden
+to ask, had gained that which she was bidden to gain; for the rest, it
+was far better that she should go. Better far for him to think her dull
+and thankless as a stone than see--than see--
+
+When Haward caught her by the hand, she trembled and drew a sobbing
+breath. “‘I have had a friend,’ Audrey?” he asked. “Why not ‘I have a
+friend’?”
+
+“Why not?” thought Audrey. “Of course he would think, why not? Well,
+then”--
+
+“I have a friend,” she said aloud. “Have you not been to me the kindest
+friend, the most generous”--She faltered, but presently went on, a
+strange courage coming to her. She had turned slightly toward him,
+though she looked not at him, but upward to where the light streamed
+through the high window. It fell now upon her face. “It is a great
+thing to save life,” she said. “To save a soul alive, how much greater!
+To have kept one soul in the knowledge that there is goodness, mercy,
+tenderness, God; to have given it bread to eat where it sat among the
+stones, water to drink where all the streams were dry,--oh, a king
+might be proud of that! And that is what you have done for me.... When
+you sailed away, so many years ago, and left me with the minister and
+his wife, they were not always kind. But I knew that you thought them
+so, and I always said to myself, ‘If he knew, he would be sorry for
+me.’ At last I said, ‘He is sorry for me; there is the sea, and he
+cannot come, but he knows, and is sorry.’ It was make-believe,--for
+you thought that I was happy, did you not?--but it helped me very
+much. I was only a child, you know, and I was so very lonely. I could
+not think of mother and Molly, for when I did I saw them as--as I had
+seen them last. The dark scared me, until I found that I could pretend
+that you were holding my hand, as you used to do when night came in
+the valley. After a while I had only to put out my hand, and yours
+was there waiting for it. I hope that you can understand--I want you
+to know how large is my debt.... As I grew, so did the debt. When I
+was a girl it was larger than when I was a child. Do you know with
+whom I have lived all these years? There is the minister, who comes
+reeling home from the crossroads ordinary, who swears over the dice,
+who teaches cunning that he calls wisdom, laughs at man and scarce
+believes in God. His hand is heavy; this is his mark.” She held up her
+bruised wrist to the light, then let the hand drop. When she spoke
+of the minister, she made a gesture toward the shadows growing ever
+thicker and darker in the body of the house. It was as though she saw
+him there, and was pointing him out. “There is the minister’s wife,”
+she said, and the motion of her hand again accused the shadows. “Oh,
+their roof has sheltered me; I have eaten of their bread. But truth is
+truth. There is the schoolmaster with the branded hands. He taught me,
+you know. There is”--she was looking with wide eyes into the deepest of
+the shadows--“there is Hugon!” Her voice died away. Haward did not move
+or speak, and for a minute there was silence in the dusky playhouse.
+Audrey broke it with a laugh, soft, light, and clear, that came oddly
+upon the mood of the hour. Presently she was speaking again: “Do you
+think it strange that I should laugh? I laughed to think I have escaped
+them all. Do you know that they call me a dreamer? Once, deep in the
+woods, I met the witch who lives at the head of the creek. She told me
+that I was a dream child, and that all my life was a dream, and I must
+pray never to awake; but I do not think she knew, for all that she is
+a witch. They none of them know,--none, none! If I had not dreamed, as
+they call it,--if I had watched, and listened, and laid to heart, and
+become like them,--oh, then I should have died of your look when at
+last you came! But I ‘dreamed;’ and in that long dream you, though you
+were overseas, you showed me, little by little, that the spirit is not
+bond, but free,--that it can walk the waves, and climb to the sunset
+and the stars. And I found that the woods were fair, that the earth
+was fair and kind as when I was a little child. And I grew to love and
+long for goodness. And, day by day, I have had a life and a world where
+flowers bloomed, and the streams ran fresh, and there was bread indeed
+to eat. And it was you that showed me the road, that opened for me the
+gates!”
+
+She ceased to speak, and, turning fully toward him, took his hand and
+put it to her lips. “May you be very happy!” she said. “I thank you,
+sir, that when you came at last you did not break my dream. The dream
+fell short!”
+
+The smile upon her face was very sweet, very pure and noble. She would
+have gone without another word, but Haward caught her by the sleeve.
+“Stay awhile!” he cried. “I too am a dreamer, though not like you, you
+maid of Dian, dark saint, cold vestal, with your eyes forever on the
+still, white flame! Audrey, Audrey, Audrey! Do you know what a pretty
+name you have, child, or how dark are your eyes, or how fine this hair
+that a queen might envy? Westover has been dull, child.”
+
+Audrey shook her head and smiled, and thought that he was laughing at
+her. A vision of Evelyn, as Evelyn had looked that morning, passed
+before her. She did not believe that he had found Westover dull.
+
+“I am coming to Fair View, dark Audrey,” he went on. “In its garden
+there are roses yet blooming for thy hair; there are sweet verses
+calling to be read; there are cool, sequestered walks to be trodden,
+with thy hand in mine,--thy hand in mine, little maid. Life is but
+once; we shall never pass this way again. Drink the cup, wear the
+roses, live the verses! Of what sing all the sweetest verses, dark-eyed
+witch, forest Audrey?”
+
+“Of love,” said Audrey simply. She had freed her hand from his clasp,
+and her face was troubled. She did not understand; never had she seen
+him like this, with shining eyes and hot, unsteady touch.
+
+“There is the ball at the Palace to-morrow night,” he went on. “I must
+be there, for a fair lady and I are to dance together.” He smiled.
+“Poor Audrey, who hath never been to a ball; who only dances with the
+elves, beneath the moon, around a beechen tree! The next day I will go
+to Fair View, and you will be at the glebe house, and we will take up
+the summer where we left it, that weary month ago.”
+
+“No, no,” said Audrey hurriedly, and shook her head. A vague and
+formless trouble had laid its cold touch upon her heart; it was as
+though she saw a cloud coming up, but it was no larger than a man’s
+hand, and she knew not what it should portend, nor that it would grow
+into a storm. He was strange to-day,--that she felt; but then all her
+day since the coming of Evelyn had been sad and strange.
+
+The shaft of sunshine was gone from the stage, and all the house was
+in shadow. Audrey descended the two or three steps leading into the
+pit, and Haward followed her. Side by side they left the playhouse, and
+found themselves in the garden, and also in the presence of five or six
+ladies and gentlemen, seated upon the grass beneath a mulberry-tree, or
+engaged in rifling the grape arbor of its purple fruit.
+
+The garden was a public one, and this gay little party, having tired of
+the Indian spectacle, had repaired hither to treat of its own affairs.
+Moreover, it had been there, scattered upon the grass in view of the
+playhouse door, for the better part of an hour. Concerned with its own
+wit and laughter, it had caught no sound of low voices issuing from
+the theatre; and for the two who talked within, all outward noise had
+ranked as coming from the distant, crowded fields.
+
+A young girl, her silken apron raised to catch the clusters which a
+gentleman, mounted upon a chair, threw down, gave a little scream and
+let fall her purple hoard. “’Gad!” cried the gentleman. One and another
+exclaimed, and a withered beauty seated beneath the mulberry-tree
+laughed shrilly.
+
+A moment, an effort, a sharp recall of wandering thoughts, and Haward
+had the situation in hand. An easy greeting to the gentlemen, debonair
+compliments for the ladies, a question or two as to the entertainment
+they had left, then a negligent bringing forward of Audrey. “A little
+brown ward and ancient playmate of mine,--shot up in the night to be as
+tall as a woman. Make thy curtsy, child, and go tell the minister what
+I have said on the subject he wots of.”
+
+Audrey curtsied and went away, having never raised her eyes to note the
+stare of curiosity, the suppressed smile, the glance from eye to eye,
+which had trod upon her introduction to the company. Haward, remaining
+with his friends and acquaintances, gathered grapes for the blooming
+girl and the withered beauty, and for a little, smiling woman who was
+known for as arrant a scandalmonger as could be found in Virginia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A QUESTION OF COLORS
+
+
+Evelyn, seated at her toilette table, and in the hands of Mr. Timothy
+Green, hairdresser in ordinary to Williamsburgh, looked with unseeing
+eyes at her own fair reflection in the glass before her. Chloe, the
+black handmaiden who stood at the door, latch in hand, had time to grow
+tired of waiting before her mistress spoke. “You may tell Mr. Haward
+that I am at home, Chloe. Bring him here.”
+
+The hairdresser drew a comb through the rippling brown tresses and
+commenced his most elaborate arrangement, working with pursed lips, and
+head bent now to this side, now to that. He had been a hard-pressed
+man since sunrise, and the lighting of the Palace candles that night
+might find him yet employed by some belated dame. Evelyn was very pale,
+and shadows were beneath her eyes. Moved by a sudden impulse, she took
+from the table a rouge pot, and hastily and with trembling fingers
+rubbed bloom into her cheeks; then the patch box,--one, two, three
+Tory partisans. “Now I am less like a ghost,” she said, “Mr. Green, do
+I not look well and merry, and as though my sleep had been sound and
+dreamless?”
+
+In his high, cracked voice, the hairdresser was sure that, pale or
+glowing, grave or gay, Mistress Evelyn Byrd would be the toast at the
+ball that night. The lady laughed, for she heard Haward’s step upon the
+landing. He entered to the gay, tinkling sound, tent over the hand she
+extended, then, laying aside hat and cane, took his seat beside the
+table.
+
+    “‘Fair tresses man’s imperial race insnare,
+      And beauty draws us with a single hair,’”
+
+he quoted, with a smile. Then: “Will you take our hearts in blue
+to-night, Evelyn? You know that I love you best in blue.”
+
+She lifted her fan from the table, and waved it lightly to and fro.
+“I go in rose color,” she said. “’Tis the gown I wore at Lady Rich’s
+rout. I dare say you do not remember it? But my Lord of Peterborough
+said”--She broke off, and smiled to her fan.
+
+Her voice was sweet and slightly drawling. The languid turn of the
+wrist, the easy grace of attitude, the beauty of bared neck and tinted
+face, of lowered lids and slow, faint smile,--oh, she was genuine
+fine lady, if she was not quite Evelyn! A breeze blowing through the
+open windows stirred their gay hangings of flowered cotton; the black
+girl sat in a corner and sewed; the supple fingers of the hairdresser
+went in and out of the heavy hair; roses in a deep blue bowl made the
+room smell like a garden. Haward sighed, so pleasant was it to sit
+quietly in this cool chamber, after the glare and wavering of the world
+without. “My Lord of Peterborough is magnificent at compliments,” he
+said kindly, “but ’twould be a jeweled speech indeed that outdid your
+deserving, Evelyn. Come, now, wear the blue! I will find you white
+roses; you shall wear them for a breast knot, and in the minuet return
+me one again.”
+
+Evelyn waved her fan. “I dance the minuet with Mr. Lee.” Her tone was
+still sweetly languid, her manner most indifferent. The thick and
+glossy tress that, drawn forward, was to ripple over white neck and
+bosom was too loosely curled. She regarded it in the mirror with an
+anxious frown, then spoke of it to the hairdresser.
+
+Haward, smiling, watched her with heavy-lidded eyes. “Mr. Lee is a
+fortunate gentleman,” he said. “I may gain the rose, perhaps, in the
+country dance?”
+
+“That is better,” remarked the lady, surveying with satisfaction the
+new-curled lock. “The country dance? For that Mr. Lightfoot hath my
+promise.”
+
+“It seems that I am a laggard,” said Haward.
+
+The knocker sounded below. “I am at home, Chloe,” announced the
+mistress; and the slave, laying aside her work, slipped from the room.
+
+Haward played with the trifles upon the dressing table. “Wherein have I
+offended, Evelyn?” he asked, at last.
+
+The lady arched her brows, and the action made her for the moment very
+like her handsome father. “Why, there is no offense!” she cried. “An
+old acquaintance, a family friend! I step a minuet with Mr. Lee; I
+stand up for a country dance with Mr. Lightfoot; I wear pink instead of
+blue, and have lost my liking for white roses,--what is there in all
+this that needs such a question? Ah, you have broken my silver chain!”
+
+“I am clumsy to-day!” he exclaimed. “A thousand pardons!” He let the
+broken toy slip from his fingers to the polished surface of the table,
+and forgot that it was there. “Since Colonel Byrd (I am sorry to learn)
+keeps his room with a fit of the gout, may I--an old acquaintance, a
+family friend--conduct you to the Palace to-night?”
+
+The fan waved on. “Thank you, but I go in our coach, and need no
+escort.” The lady yawned, very delicately, behind her slender fingers;
+then dropped the fan, and spoke with animation: “Ah, here is Mr. Lee!
+In a good hour, sir! I saw the bracelet that you mended for Mistress
+Winston. Canst do as much for my poor chain here? See! it and this
+silver heart have parted company.”
+
+Mr. Lee kissed her hand, and took snuff with Mr. Haward; then, after an
+ardent speech crammed with references to Vulcan and Venus, chains that
+were not slight, hearts that were of softer substance, sat down beside
+this kind and dazzling vision, and applied his clever fingers to the
+problem in hand. He was a personable young gentleman, who had studied
+at Oxford, and who, proudly conscious that his tragedy of Artaxerxes,
+then reposing in the escritoire at home, much outmerited Haward’s
+talked-of comedy, felt no diffidence in the company of the elder fine
+gentleman. He rattled on of this and that, and Evelyn listened kindly,
+with only the curve of her cheek visible to the family friend. The
+silver heart was restored to its chain; the lady smiled her thanks; the
+enamored youth hitched his chair some inches nearer the fair whom he
+had obliged, and, with his hand upon his heart, entered the realm of
+high-flown speech. The gay curtains waved; the roses were sweet; black
+Chloe sewed and sewed; the hairdresser’s hands wove in and out, as
+though he were a wizard making passes.
+
+Haward rose to take his leave. Evelyn yielded him her hand; it was
+cold against his lips. She was nonchalant and smiling; he was easy,
+unoffended, admirably the fine gentleman. For one moment their eyes
+met. “I had been wiser,” thought the man, “I had been wiser to have
+myself told her of that brown witch, that innocent sorceress! Why
+something held my tongue I know not. Now she hath read my idyl, but all
+darkened, all awry.” The woman thought: “Cruel and base! You knew that
+my heart was yours to break, cast aside, and forget!”
+
+Out of the house the sunlight beat and blinded. Houses of red brick,
+houses of white wood; the long, wide, dusty Duke of Gloucester Street;
+gnarled mulberry-trees broad-leafed against a September sky, deeply,
+passionately blue; glimpses of wood and field,--all seemed remote
+without distance, still without stillness, the semblance of a dream,
+and yet keen and near to oppression. It was a town of stores, of
+ordinaries and public places; from open door and window all along Duke
+of Gloucester Street came laughter, round oaths, now and then a scrap
+of drinking song. To Haward, giddy, ill at ease, sickening of a fever,
+the sounds were now as a cry in his ear, now as the noise of a distant
+sea. The minister of James City parish and the minister of Ware Creek
+were walking before him, arm in arm, set full sail for dinner after a
+stormy morning. “For lo! the wicked prospereth!” said one, and “Fair
+View parish bound over to the devil again!” plained the other. “He’s
+firm in the saddle; he’ll ride easy to the day he drinks himself to
+death, thanks to this sudden complaisance of Governor and Commissary!”
+
+“Thanks to”--cried the other sourly, and gave the thanks where they
+were due.
+
+Haward heard the words, but even in the act of quickening his pace to
+lay a heavy hand upon the speaker’s shoulder a listlessness came upon
+him, and he forbore. The memory of the slurring speech went from him;
+his thoughts were thistledown blown hither and yon by every vagrant
+air. Coming to Marot’s ordinary he called for wine; then went up the
+stair to his room, and sitting down at the table presently fell asleep,
+with his head upon his arms.
+
+After a while the sounds from the public room below, where men were
+carousing, disturbed his slumber. He stirred, and awoke refreshed. It
+was afternoon, but he felt no hunger, only thirst, which he quenched
+with the wine at hand. His windows gave upon the Capitol and a green
+wood beyond; the waving trees enticed, while the room was dull and the
+noises of the house distasteful. He said to himself that he would walk
+abroad, would go out under the beckoning trees and be rid of the town.
+He remembered that the Council was to meet that afternoon. Well, it
+might sit without him! He was for the woods, where dwelt the cool winds
+and the shadows deep and silent.
+
+A few yards, and he was quit of Duke of Gloucester Street; behind him,
+porticoed Capitol, gaol, and tiny vineclad debtor’s prison. In the
+gaol yard the pirates sat upon a bench in the sunshine, and one smoked
+a long pipe, and one brooded upon his irons. Gold rings were in their
+ears, and their black hair fell from beneath colored handkerchiefs
+twisted turbanwise around their brows. The gaoler watched them,
+standing in his doorway, and his children, at play beneath a tree,
+built with sticks a mimic scaffold, and hanged thereon a broken puppet.
+There was a shady road leading through a wood to Queen’s Creek and the
+Capitol Landing, and down this road went Haward. His step was light;
+the dullness, the throbbing pulses, the oppression of the morning, had
+given way to a restlessness and a strange exaltation of spirit. Fancy
+was quickened, imagination heightened; to himself he seemed to see the
+heart of all things. Across his mind flitted fragments of verse,--now
+a broken line just hinting beauty, now the pure passion of a lovely
+stanza. His thoughts went to and fro, mobile as the waves of the sea;
+but firm as the reefs beneath them stood his knowledge that presently
+he was going back to Fair View. To-morrow, when the Governor’s ball
+was over, when he could decently get away, he would leave the town;
+he would go to his house in the country. Late flowers bloomed in his
+garden; the terrace was fair above the river; beneath the red brick
+wall, on the narrow little creek shining like a silver highway, lay a
+winged boat; and the highway ran past a glebe house; and in the glebe
+house dwelt a dryad whose tree had closed against her. Audrey!--a fair
+name. Audrey, Audrey!--the birds were singing it; out of the deep,
+Arcadian shadows any moment it might come, clearly cried by satyr, Pan,
+or shepherd. Hark! there was song--
+
+It was but a negro on the road behind, singing to himself as he went
+about his master’s business. The voice was the voice of the race,
+mellow, deep, and plaintive; perhaps the song was of love in a burning
+land. He passed the white man, and the arching trees hid him, but the
+wake of music was long in fading. The road leading through a cool and
+shady dell, Haward left it, and took possession of the mossy earth
+beneath a holly-tree. Here, lying on the ground, he could see the road
+through the intervening foliage; else the place had seemed the heart of
+an ancient wood.
+
+It was merry lying where were glimpses of blue sky, where the leaves
+quivered and a squirrel chattered and a robin sang a madrigal. Youth
+the divine, half way down the stair of misty yesterdays, turned upon
+his heel and came back to him. He pillowed his head upon his arm, and
+was content. It was well to be so filled with fancies, so iron of will,
+so headstrong and gay; to be friends once more with a younger Haward,
+with the Haward of a mountain pass, of mocking comrades and an irate
+Excellency.
+
+From the road came a rumble of oaths. Sailors, sweating and straining,
+were rolling a very great cask of tobacco from a neighboring warehouse
+down to the landing and some expectant sloop. Haward, lying at ease,
+smiled at their weary task, their grunting and swearing; when they were
+gone, smiled at the blankness of the road. All things pleased. There
+was food for mirth in the call of a partridge, in the inquisitive gaze
+of a squirrel, in the web of a spider gaoler to a gilded fly. There
+was food for greater mirth in the appearance on the road of a solitary
+figure in a wine-colored coat and bushy black peruke.
+
+Haward sat up. “Ha, Monacan!” he cried, with a laugh, and threw a stick
+to attract the man’s attention.
+
+Hugon turned, stood astare, then left the road and came down into the
+dell.
+
+“What fortune, trader?” smiled Haward. “Did your traps hold in the
+great forest? Were your people easy to fool, giving twelve deerskins
+for an old match-coat? There is charm in a woodsman life. Come, tell me
+of your journeys, dangers, and escapes.”
+
+The half-breed looked down upon him with a twitching face. “What
+hinders me from killing you now?” he demanded, with a backward look at
+the road. “None may pass for many minutes.”
+
+Haward lay back upon the moss, with his hands locked beneath his head.
+“What indeed?” he answered calmly. “Come, here is a velvet log, fit
+seat for an emperor--or a sachem; sit and tell me of your life in the
+woods. For peace pipe let me offer my snuffbox.” In his mad humor
+he sat up again, drew from his pocket, and presented with the most
+approved flourish, his box of chased gold. “Monsieur, c’est le tabac
+pour le nez d’un inonarque,” he said lazily.
+
+Hugon sat down upon the log, helped himself to the mixture with a grand
+air, and shook the yellow dust from his ruffles. The action, meant to
+be airy, only achieved fierceness. From some hidden sheath he drew a
+knife, and began to strip from the log a piece of bark. “Tell me, you,”
+he said. “Have you been to France? What manner of land is it?”
+
+“A gay country,” answered Haward; “a land where the men are all white,
+and where at present, periwigs are worn much shorter than the one
+monsieur affects.”
+
+“He is a great brave, a French gentleman? Always he kills the man he
+hates?”
+
+“Not always,” said the other. “Sometimes the man he hates kills him.”
+
+By now one end of the piece of bark in the trader’s hands was shredded
+to tinder. He drew from his pocket his flint and steel, and struck a
+spark into the frayed mass. It flared up, and he held first the tips
+of his fingers, then the palm of his hand, then his bared forearm, in
+the flame that licked and scorched the flesh. His face was perfectly
+unmoved, his eyes unchanged in their expression of hatred. “Can he do
+this?” he asked.
+
+“Perhaps not,” said Haward lightly. “It is a very foolish thing to do.”
+
+The flame died out, and the trader tossed aside the charred bit of
+bark. “There was old Pierre at Monacan-Town who taught me to pray to
+_le bon Dieu_. He told me how grand and fine is a French gentleman,
+and that I was the son of many such. He called the English great pigs,
+with brains as dull and muddy as the river after many rains. My mother
+was the daughter of a chief. She had strings of pearl for her neck, and
+copper for her arms, and a robe of white doeskin, very soft and fine.
+When she was dead and my father was dead, I came from Monacan-Town to
+your English school over yonder. I can read and write. I am a white man
+and a Frenchman, not an Indian. When I go to the villages in the woods,
+I am given a lodge apart, and the men and women gather to hear a white
+man speak.... You have done me wrong with that girl, that Ma’m’selle
+Audrey that I wish for wife. We are enemies: that is as it should be.
+You shall not have her,--never, never! But you despise me; how is that?
+That day upon the creek, that night in your cursed house, you laughed”--
+
+The Haward of the mountain pass, regarding the twitching face opposite
+him and the hand clenched upon the handle of a knife, laughed again. At
+the sound the trader’s face ceased to twitch. Haward felt rather than
+saw the stealthy tightening of the frame, the gathering of forces, the
+closer grasp upon the knife, and flung out his arm. A hare scurried
+past, making for the deeper woods. From the road came the tramp of a
+horse and a man’s voice, singing,--
+
+    “‘To all you ladies now on land’”--
+
+while an inquisitive dog turned aside from the road, and plunged into
+the dell.
+
+The rider, having checked his horse and quit his song in order to call
+to his dog, looked through the thin veil of foliage and saw the two men
+beneath the holly-tree. “Ha, Jean Hugon!” he cried. “Is that you? Where
+is that packet of skins you were to deliver at my store? Come over
+here, man!”
+
+The trader moistened his dry lips with his tongue, and slipped the
+knife back into its sheath. “Had we been a mile in the woods,” he said,
+“you would have laughed no more.”
+
+Haward watched him go. The argument with the rider was a lengthy one.
+He upon horseback would not stand still in the road to finish it, but
+put his beast into motion. The trader, explaining and gesticulating,
+walked beside his stirrup; the voices grew fainter and fainter,--were
+gone. Haward laughed to himself; then, with his eyes raised to the
+depth on depth of blue, serene beyond the grating of thorn-pointed
+leaves, sent his spirit to his red brick house and silent, sunny
+garden, with the gate in the ivied wall, and the six steps down to the
+boat and the lapping water.
+
+The shadows lengthened, and a wind of the evening entered the wood.
+Haward shook off the lethargy that had kept him lying there for the
+better part of an afternoon, rose to his feet, and left the green dell
+for the road, all shadow now, winding back to the toy metropolis, to
+Marot’s ordinary, to the ball at the Palace that night.
+
+The ball at the Palace!--he had forgotten it. Flare of lights, wail
+of violins, a painted, silken crowd, laughter, whispers, magpie
+chattering, wine, and the weariness of the dance, when his soul would
+long to be with the night outside, with the rising wind and the shining
+stars. He half determined not to go. What mattered the offense that
+would be taken? Did he go he would repent, wearied and ennuyé, watching
+Evelyn, all rose-colored, moving with another through the minuet;
+tied himself perhaps to some pert miss, or cornered in a card-room by
+boisterous gamesters, or, drinking with his peers, called on to toast
+the lady of his dreams. Better the dull room at Marot’s ordinary,
+or better still to order Mirza, and ride off at the planter’s pace,
+through the starshine, to Fair View. On the river bank before the store
+MacLean might be lying, dreaming of a mighty wind and a fierce death.
+He would dismount, and sit beside that Highland gentleman, Jacobite
+and strong man, and their moods would chime as they had chimed before.
+Then on to the house and to the eastern window! Not to-night, but
+to-morrow night, perhaps, would the darkness be pierced by the calm
+pale star that marked another window. It was all a mistake, that month
+at Westover,--days lost and wasted, the running of golden sands ill to
+spare from Love’s brief glass....
+
+His mood had changed when, with the gathering dusk, he entered his room
+at Marot’s ordinary. He would go to the Palace that night; it would be
+the act of a boy to fling away through the darkness, shirking a duty
+his position demanded. He would go and be merry, watching Evelyn in the
+gown that Peterborough had praised.
+
+When Juba had lighted the candles, he sat and drank and drank again of
+the red wine upon the table. It put maggots in his brain, fired and
+flushed him to the spirit’s core. An idea came, at which he laughed.
+He bade it go, but it would not. It stayed, and his fevered fancy
+played around it as a moth around a candle. At first he knew it for
+a notion, bizarre and absurd, which presently he would dismiss. All
+day strange thoughts had come and gone, appearing, disappearing, like
+will-o’-the-wisps for which a man upon a firm road has no care. Never
+fear that he will follow them! He sees the marsh, that it has no
+footing. So with this Jack-o’-lantern conception,--it would vanish as
+it came.
+
+It did not so. Instead, when he had drunken more wine, and had sat for
+some time methodically measuring, over and over again, with thumb and
+forefinger, the distance from candle to bottle, and from bottle to
+glass, the idea began to lose its wildfire aspect. In no great time it
+appeared an inspiration as reasonable as happy. When this point had
+been reached, he stamped upon the floor to summon his servant from the
+room below. “Lay out the white and gold, Juba,” he ordered, when the
+negro appeared, “and come make me very fine. I am for the Palace,--I
+and a brown lady that hath bewitched me! The white sword knot, sirrah;
+and cock my hat with the diamond brooch”--
+
+It was a night that was thronged with stars, and visited by a
+whispering wind. Haward, walking rapidly along the almost deserted
+Nicholson Street, lifted his burning forehead to the cool air and
+the star-strewn fields of heaven. Coming to the gate by which he had
+entered the afternoon before, he raised the latch and passed into the
+garden. By now his fever was full upon him, and it was a man scarce
+to be held responsible for his actions that presently knocked at the
+door of the long room where, at the window opening upon Palace Street,
+Audrey sat with Mistress Stagg and watched the people going to the ball.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE GOVERNOR’S BALL
+
+
+For an hour it had been very quiet, very peaceful, in the small white
+house on Palace Street. Darden was not there; for the Commissary had
+sent for him, having certain inquiries to make and a stern warning to
+deliver. Mistress Deborah had been asked to spend the night with an
+acquaintance in the town, so she also was out and gone. Mistress Stagg
+and Audrey kept the lower rooms, while overhead Mr. Charles Stagg, a
+man that loved his art, walked up and down, and, with many wavings of
+a laced handkerchief and much resort to a gilt snuffbox, reasoned with
+Plato of death and the soul. The murmur of his voice came down to the
+two women, and made the only sound in the house. Audrey, sitting by the
+window, her chin upon her hand and her dark hair shadowing her face,
+looked out upon the dooryard and the Palace Street beyond. The street
+was lit by torches, and people were going to the ball in coaches and
+chariots, on foot and in painted chairs. They went gayly, light of
+heart, fine of person, a free and generous folk. Laughter floated over
+to the silent watcher, and the torchlight gave her glimpses of another
+land than her own.
+
+Many had been Mistress Stagg’s customers since morning, and something
+had she heard besides admiration of her wares and exclamation at
+her prices. Now, as she sat with some gay sewing beneath her nimble
+fingers, she glanced once and again at the shadowed face opposite her.
+If the look was not one of curiosity alone, but had in it an admixture
+of new-found respect; if to Mistress Stagg the Audrey of yesterday,
+unnoted, unwhispered of, was a being somewhat lowlier than the Audrey
+of to-day, it may be remembered for her that she was an actress of the
+early eighteenth century, and that fate and an old mother to support
+had put her in that station.
+
+The candles beneath their glass shades burned steadily; the house
+grew very quiet; the noises of the street lessened and lessened, for
+now nearly all of the people were gone to the ball. Audrey watched
+the round of light cast by the nearest torch. For a long time she had
+watched it, thinking that he might perhaps cross the circle, and she
+might see him in his splendor. She was still watching when he knocked
+at the garden door.
+
+Mistress Stagg, sitting in a dream of her own, started violently. “La,
+now, who may that be?” she exclaimed. “Go to the door, child. If ’tis
+a stranger, we shelter none such, to be taken up for the harboring of
+runaways!”
+
+Audrey went to the door and opened it. A moment’s pause, a low cry,
+and she moved backward to the wall, where she stood with her slender
+form sharply drawn against the white plaster, and with the fugitive,
+elusive charm of her face quickened into absolute beauty, imperious for
+attention. Haward, thus ushered into the room, gave the face its due.
+His eyes, bright and fixed, were for it alone. Mistress Stagg’s curtsy
+went unacknowledged save by a slight, mechanical motion of his hand,
+and her inquiry as to what he lacked that she could supply received
+no answer. He was a very handsome man, of a bearing both easy and
+commanding, and to-night he was splendidly dressed in white satin with
+embroidery of gold. To one of the women he seemed the king, who could
+do no wrong; to the other, more learned in the book of the world, he
+was merely a fine gentleman, whose way might as well be given him at
+once, since, spite of denial, he would presently take it.
+
+Haward sat down, resting his clasped hands upon the table, gazing
+steadfastly at the face, dark and beautiful, set like a flower against
+the wall. “Come, little maid!” he said. “We are going to the ball
+together, you and I. Hasten, or we shall not be in time for the minuet.”
+
+Audrey smiled and shook her head, thinking that it was his pleasure to
+laugh at her a little. Mistress Stagg likewise showed her appreciation
+of the pleasantry. When he repeated his command, speaking in an
+authoritative tone and with a glance at his watch, there was a moment
+of dead silence; then, “Go your ways, sir, and dance with Mistress
+Evelyn Byrd!” cried the scandalized ex-actress. “The Governor’s ball is
+not for the likes of Audrey!”
+
+“I will be judge of that,” he answered. “Come, let us be off, child! Or
+stay! hast no other dress than that?” He looked toward the mistress of
+the house. “I warrant that Mistress Stagg can trick you out! I would
+have you go fine, Audrey of the hair! Audrey of the eyes! Audrey of the
+full brown throat! Dull gold,--have you that, now, mistress, in damask
+or brocade? Soft laces for her bosom, and a yellow bloom in her hair.
+It should be dogwood, Audrey, like the coronal you wore on May Day. Do
+you remember, child? The white stars in your hair, and the Maypole all
+aflutter, and your feet upon the green grass”--
+
+“Oh, I was happy then!” cried Audrey and wrung her hands. Within a
+moment, however, she was calm again, and could look at him with a
+smile. “I am only Audrey,” she said. “You know that the ball is not
+for me. Why then do you tell me that I must go? It is your kindness;
+I know that it is your kindness that speaks. But yet--but yet”--She
+gazed at him imploringly: then from his steady smile caught a sudden
+encouragement. “Oh!” she exclaimed with a gesture of quick relief,
+and with tremulous laughter in her face and voice,--“oh, you are
+mocking me! You only came to show how a gentleman looks who goes to a
+Governor’s ball!”
+
+For the moment, in her relief at having read his riddle, there slipped
+from her the fear of she knew not what,--the strangeness and heaviness
+of heart that had been her portion since she came to Williamsburgh.
+Leaving the white wall against which she had leaned, she came a little
+forward, and with gayety and grace dropped him a curtsy. “Oh, the
+white satin like the lilies in your garden!” she laughed. “And the red
+heels to your shoes, and the gold-fringed sword knot, and the velvet
+scabbard! Ah, let me see your sword, how bright and keen it is!”
+
+She was Audrey of the garden, and Haward, smiling, drew his rapier and
+laid it in her hands. She looked at the golden hilt, and passed her
+brown fingers along the gleaming blade. “Stainless,” she said, and gave
+it back to him.
+
+Taking it, he took also the hand that had proffered it. “I was not
+laughing, child,” he said. “Go to the ball thou shalt, and with me.
+What! Thou art young and fair. Shalt have no pleasure”--
+
+“What pleasure in that?” cried Audrey. “I may not go, sir; nay, I will
+not go!”
+
+She freed her hand, and stood with heaving bosom and eyes that very
+slowly filled with tears. Haward saw no reason for her tears. It
+was true that she was young and fair; true, also, that she had few
+pleasures. Well, he would change all that. The dance,--was it not woven
+by those nymphs of old, those sprites of open spaces in the deep woods,
+from whose immemorial company she must have strayed into this present
+time? Now at the Palace the candles were burning for her, for her the
+music was playing. Her welcome there amidst the tinsel people? Trust
+him for that: he was what he was, and could compass greater things than
+that would be. Go she should, because it pleased him to please her,
+and because it was certainly necessary for him to oppose pride with
+pride, and before the eyes of Evelyn demonstrate his indifference to
+that lady’s choice of Mr. Lee for the minuet and Mr. Lightfoot for the
+country dance. This last thought had far to travel from some unused,
+deep-down quagmire of the heart, but it came. For the rest, the image
+of Audrey decked in silk and lace, turned by her apparel into a dark
+Court lady, a damsel in waiting to Queen Titania, caught his fancy in
+both hands. He wished to see her thus,--wished it so strongly that he
+knew it would come to pass. He was a gentleman who had acquired the
+habit of having his own way. There had been times when the price of his
+way had seemed too dear; when he had shrugged his shoulders and ceased
+to desire what he would not buy. To-night he was not able to count
+the cost. But he knew--he knew cruelly well--how to cut short this
+fruitless protest of a young girl who thought him all that was wise and
+great and good.
+
+“So you cannot say ‘yes’ to my asking, little maid?” he began, quiet
+and smiling. “Cannot trust me that I have reasons for the asking? Well,
+I will not ask again, Audrey, since it is so great a thing’”--“Oh,”
+cried Audrey, “you know that I would die for you!” The tears welled
+over, but she brushed them away with a trembling hand; then stood with
+raised face, her eyes soft and dewy, a strange smile upon her lips.
+She spoke at last as simply as a child: “Why you want me, that am only
+Audrey, to go with you to the Palace yonder, I cannot tell. But I will
+go, though I am only Audrey, and I have no other dress than this”--
+
+Haward got unsteadily to his feet, and lightly touched the dark head
+that she bowed upon her hands. “Why, now you are Audrey again,” he said
+approvingly. “Why, child, I would do you a pleasure!” He turned to
+the player’s wife. “She must not go in this guise. Have you no finery
+stowed away?”
+
+Now, Mistress Stagg, though much scandalized, and very certain that
+all this would never do, was in her way an artist, and could see as
+in a mirror what bare throat and shoulders, rich hair drawn loosely
+up, a touch of rouge, a patch or two, a silken gown, might achieve for
+Audrey. And after all, had not Deborah told her that the girl was Mr.
+Haward’s ward, not Darden’s, and that though Mr. Haward came and went
+as he pleased, and was very kind to Audrey, so that Darden was sure of
+getting whatever the girl asked for, yet she was a good girl, and there
+was no harm? For the talk that day,--people were very idle, and given
+to thinking the forest afire when there was only the least curl of
+smoke. And in short and finally it was none of her business; but with
+the aid of a certain chest upstairs, she knew what she could do! To
+the ball might go a beauty would make Mistress Evelyn Byrd look to her
+laurels!
+
+“There’s the birthday dress that Madam Carter sent us only last week,”
+she began hesitatingly. “It’s very beautiful, and a’most as good as
+new, and ’twould suit you to a miracle--But I vow you must not go,
+Audrey!... To be sure, the damask is just the tint for you, and there
+are roses would answer for your hair. But la, sir, you know ’twill
+never do, never in this world.”
+
+Half an hour later, Haward rose from his chair and bowed low as to some
+highborn and puissant dame. The fever that was now running high in his
+veins flushed his cheek and made his eyes exceedingly bright. When he
+went up to Audrey, and in graceful mockery of her sudden coming into
+her kingdom, took her hand and, bending, kissed it, the picture that
+they made cried out for some painter to preserve it. Her hand dropped
+from his clasp, and buried itself in rich folds of flowered damask; the
+quick rise and fall of her bosom stirred soft, yellowing laces, and
+made to flash like diamonds some ornaments of marcasite; her face was
+haunting in its pain and bewilderment and great beauty, and in the lie
+which her eyes gave to the false roses beneath those homes of sadness
+and longing. She had no word to say, she was “only Audrey,” and she
+could not understand. But she wished to do his bidding, and so, when he
+cried out upon her melancholy, and asked her if ’twere indeed a Sunday
+in New England instead of a Saturday in Virginia, she smiled, and
+strove to put on the mind as well as the garb of a gay lady who might
+justly go to the Governor’s ball.
+
+Half frightened at her own success, Mistress Stagg hovered around her,
+giving this or that final touch to her costume; but it was Haward
+himself who put the roses in her hair. “A little longer, and we will
+walk once more in my garden at Fair View,” he said. “June shall come
+again for us, and we will tread the quiet paths, my sweet, and all the
+roses shall bloom again for us. There, you are crowned! Hail, Queen!”
+
+Audrey felt the touch of his lips upon her forehead, and shivered.
+All her world was going round; she could not steady it, could not
+see aright, knew not what was happening. The strangeness made her
+dizzy. She hardly heard Mistress Stagg’s last protest that it would
+never do,--never in the world; hardly knew when she left the house.
+She was out beneath the stars, moving toward a lit Palace whence came
+the sound of violins. Haward’s arm was beneath her hand; his voice
+was in her ear, but it was as the wind’s voice, whose speech she did
+not understand. Suddenly they were within the Palace garden, with its
+winding, torchlit walks, and the terraces at the side; suddenly again,
+they had mounted the Palace steps, and the doors were open, and she
+was confronted with lights and music and shifting, dazzling figures.
+She stood still, clasped her hands, and gave Haward a piteous look.
+Her face, for all its beauty and its painted roses, was strangely the
+child’s face that had lain upon his breast, where he knelt amid the
+corn, in the valley between the hills, so long ago. He gave her mute
+appeal no heed. The Governor’s guests, passing from room to room,
+crossed and recrossed the wide hall, and down the stairway, to meet
+a row of gallants impatient at its foot, came fair women, one after
+the other, the flower of the colony, clothed upon like the lilies of
+old. Haward, entering with Audrey, saw Mr. Lee at the stairfoot, and,
+raising his eyes, was aware of Evelyn descending alone and somewhat
+slowly, all in rose color, and with a smile upon her lips.
+
+She was esteemed the most beautiful woman in Virginia, the most
+graceful and accomplished. Wit and charm and fortune were hers, and the
+little gay world of Virginia had mated her with Mr. Marmaduke Haward
+of Fair View. Therefore that portion of it that chanced to be in the
+hall of the Governor’s house withdrew for the moment its attention from
+its own affairs, and bestowed it upon those of the lady descending the
+stairs, and of the gold-and-white gentleman who, with a strange beauty
+at his side, stood directly in her path. It was a very wise little
+world, and since yesterday afternoon had been fairly bursting with its
+own knowledge. It knew all about that gypsy who had come to town from
+Fair View parish,--“La, my dear, just the servant of a minister!”--and
+knew to a syllable what had passed in the violent quarrel to which Mr.
+Lee owed his good fortune.
+
+[Illustration: “I DO NOT THINK I HAVE THE HONOR OF KNOWING”--]
+
+That triumphant gentleman now started forward, and, with a low bow,
+extended his hand to lead to the ballroom this rose-colored paragon and
+cynosure of all eyes. Evelyn smiled upon him, and gave him her scarf
+to hold, but would not be hurried; must first speak to her old friend
+Mr. Haward, and tell him that her father’s foot could now bear the
+shoe, and that he might appear before the ball was over. This done, she
+withdrew her gaze, from Haward’s strangely animated, vividly handsome
+countenance, and turned it upon the figure at his side. “Pray present
+me!” she said quickly. “I do not think I have the honor of knowing”--
+
+Audrey raised her head, that had been bent, and looked again, as she
+had looked yesterday, with all her innocent soul and heavy heart,
+into the eyes of the princess. The smile died from Evelyn’s lips, and
+a great wave of indignant red surged over face and neck and bosom.
+The color fled, but not the bitter anger. So he could bring his fancy
+there! Could clothe her that was a servant wench in a splendid gown,
+and flaunt her before the world--before the world that must know--oh,
+God! must know how she herself loved him! He could do this after that
+month at Westover! She drew her breath, and met the insult fairly. “I
+withdraw my petition,” she said clearly. “Now that I bethink me, my
+acquaintance is already somewhat too great. Mr. Lee, shall we not join
+the company? I have yet to make my curtsy to his Excellency.”
+
+With head erect, and with no attention to spare from the happy Mr. Lee,
+she passed the sometime suitor for her hand and the apple of discord
+which it had pleased him to throw into the assembly. A whisper ran
+around the hall. Audrey heard suppressed laughter, and heard a speech
+which she did not understand, but which was uttered in an angry voice,
+much like Mistress Deborah’s when she chided. A sudden terror of
+herself and of Haward’s world possessed her. She turned where she stood
+in her borrowed plumage, and clung to his hand and arm. “Let me go,”
+she begged. “It is all a mistake,--all wrong. Let me go,--let me go.”
+
+He laughed at her, shaking his head and looking into her beseeching
+face with shining, far-off eyes. “Thou dear fool!” he said. “The ball
+is made for thee, and all these folk are here to do thee honor!”
+Holding her by the hand, he moved with her toward a wide doorway,
+through which could be seen a greater throng of beautifully dressed
+ladies and gentlemen. Music came from this room, and she saw that there
+were dancers, and that beyond them, upon a sort of dais, and before a
+great carved chair, stood a fine gentleman who, she knew, must be his
+Excellency the Governor of Virginia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE UNINVITED GUEST
+
+
+“Mistress Audrey?” said the Governor graciously, as the lady in damask
+rose from her curtsy. “Mistress Audrey whom? Mr. Haward, you gave me
+not the name of the stock that hath flowered in so beauteous a bloom.”
+
+“Why, sir, the bloom is all in all,’” answered Haward. “What root it
+springs from matters not. I trust that your Excellency is in good
+health,--that you feel no touch of our seasoning fever?”
+
+“I asked the lady’s name, sir,” said the Governor pointedly. He was
+standing in the midst of a knot of gentlemen, members of the Council
+and officers of the colony. All around the long room, seated in chairs
+arow against the walls, or gathered in laughing groups, or moving about
+with a rustle and gleam of silk, were the Virginians his guests. From
+the gallery, where were bestowed the musicians out of three parishes,
+floated the pensive strains of a minuet, and in the centre of the
+polished floor, under the eyes of the company, several couples moved
+and postured through that stately dance.
+
+“The lady is my ward,” said Haward lightly. “I call her Audrey. Child,
+tell his Excellency your other name.”
+
+If he thought at all, he thought that she could do it. But such an
+estray, such a piece of flotsam, was Audrey, that she could not help
+him out. “They call me Darden’s Audrey,” she explained to the Governor.
+“If I ever heard my father’s name, I have forgotten it.”
+
+Her voice, though low, reached all those who had ceased from their own
+concerns to stare at this strange guest, this dark-eyed, shrinking
+beauty, so radiantly attired. The whisper had preceded her from the
+hall: there had been fluttering and comment enough as, under the fire
+of all those eyes, she had passed with Haward to where stood the
+Governor receiving his guests. But the whisper had not reached his
+Excellency’s ears. In London he had been slightly acquainted with Mr.
+Marmaduke Haward, and now knew him for a member of his Council, and a
+gentleman of much consequence in that Virginia which he had come to
+rule. Moreover, he had that very morning granted a favor to Mr. Haward,
+and by reason thereof was inclined to think amiably of the gentleman.
+Of the piece of dark loveliness whom the Virginian had brought forward
+to present, who could think otherwise? But his Excellency was a formal
+man, punctilious, and cautious of his state. The bow with which he
+received the strange lady’s curtsy had been profound; in speaking to
+her he had made his tones honey-sweet, while his compliment quite
+capped the one just paid to Mistress Evelyn Byrd. And now it would
+appear that the lady had no name! Nay, from the looks that were being
+exchanged, and from the tittering that had risen amongst the younger
+of his guests, there must be more amiss than that! His Excellency
+frowned, drew himself up, and turned what was meant to be a searching
+and terrible eye upon the recreant in white satin. Audrey caught the
+look, for which Haward cared no whit. Oh, she knew that she had no
+business there,--she that only the other day had gone barefoot on
+Darden’s errands, had been kept waiting in hall or kitchen of these
+people’s houses! She knew that, for all her silken gown, she had no
+place among them; but she thought that they were not kind to stare and
+whisper and laugh, shaming her before one another and before him. Her
+heart swelled; to the dreamy misery of the day and evening was added a
+passionate sense of hurt and wrong and injustice. Her pride awoke, and
+in a moment taught her many things, though among them was no distrust
+of him. Brought to bay, she put out her hand and found a gate; pushed
+it open, and entered upon her heritage of art.
+
+The change was so sudden that those who had stared at her sourly or
+scornfully, or with malicious amusement or some stirrings of pity,
+drew their breath and gave ground a little. Where was the shrinking,
+frightened, unbidden guest of a moment before, with downcast eyes
+and burning cheeks? Here was a proud and easy and radiant lady,
+with witching eyes and a wonderful smile. “I am only Audrey, your
+Excellency,” she said, and curtsied as she spoke. “My other name lies
+buried in a valley amongst far-off mountains.” She slightly turned,
+and addressed herself to a portly, velvet-clad gentleman, of a very
+authoritative air, who, arriving late, had just shouldered himself into
+the group about his Excellency. “By token,” she smiled, “of a gold
+moidore that was paid for a loaf of bread.”
+
+The new Governor appealed to his predecessor. “What is this, Colonel
+Spotswood, what is this?” he demanded, somewhat testily, of the
+open-mouthed gentleman in velvet.
+
+“Odso!” cried the latter. “’Tis the little maid of the
+sugar-tree!--Marmaduke Haward’s brown elf grown into the queen of all
+the fairies!” Crossing to Audrey he took her by the hand. “My dear
+child,” he said, with a benevolence that sat well upon him, “I always
+meant to keep an eye upon thee, to see that Mr. Haward did by thee all
+that he swore he would do. But at first there were cares of state, and
+now for five years I have lived at Germanna, half way to thy mountains,
+where echoes from the world seldom reach me. Permit me, my dear.” With
+a somewhat cumbrous gallantry, the innocent gentleman, who had just
+come to town and knew not the gossip thereof, bent and kissed her upon
+the cheek.
+
+Audrey curtsied with a bright face to her old acquaintance of the
+valley and the long road thence to the settled country. “I have been
+cared for, sir,” she said. “You see that I am happy.”
+
+She turned to Haward, and he drew her hand within his arm. “Ay, child,”
+he said. “We are keeping others of the company from their duty to
+his Excellency. Besides, the minuet invites. I do not think I have
+heard music so sweet before to-night. Your Excellency’s most obedient
+servant! Gentlemen, allow us to pass.” The crowd opened before them,
+and they found themselves in the centre of the room. Two couples were
+walking a minuet; when they were joined by this dazzling third, the
+ladies bridled, bit their lips, and shot Parthian glances.
+
+It was very fortunate, thought Audrey, that the Widow Constance
+had once, long ago, taught her to dance, and that, when they were
+sent to gather nuts or myrtle berries or fagots in the woods, she
+and Barbara were used to taking hands beneath the trees and moving
+with the glancing sunbeams and the nodding saplings and the swaying
+grapevine trailers. She that had danced to the wind in the pine tops
+could move with ease to the music of this night. And since it was so
+that with a sore and frightened and breaking heart one could yet, in
+some strange way, become quite another person,--any person that one
+chose to be,--these cruel folk should not laugh at her again! They
+had not laughed since, before the Governor yonder, she had suddenly
+made believe that she was a carefree, great lady. Well, she would make
+believe to them still.
+
+Her eyes were as brilliant as Haward’s that shone with fever; a smile
+stayed upon her lips; she moved with dignity through the stately dance,
+scarce erring once, graceful and fine in all that she did. Haward,
+enamored, his wits afire, went mechanically through the oft-trod
+measure, and swore to himself that he held in his hand the pearl of
+price, the nonpareil of earth. In this dance and under cover of the
+music they could speak to each other unheard of those about them.
+
+“‘Queen of all the fairies,’ did he call you?” he asked. “That was well
+said. When we are at Fair View again, thou must show me where thou
+wonnest with thy court, in what moonlit haunt, by what cool stream”--
+
+“I would I were this night at Fair View glebe house,” said Audrey. “I
+would I were at home in the mountains.”
+
+Her voice, sunken with pain and longing, was for him alone. To the
+other dancers, to the crowded room at large, she seemed a brazen
+girl, with beauty to make a goddess, wit to mask as a great lady,
+effrontery to match that of the gentleman who had brought her here.
+The age was free, and in that London which was dear to the hearts
+of the Virginians ladies of damaged reputation were not so unusual
+a feature of fashionable entertainments as to receive any especial
+notice. But Williamsburgh was not London, and the dancer yonder, who
+held her rose-crowned head so high, was no lady of fashion. They
+knew her now for that dweller at Fair View gates of whom, during the
+summer just past, there had been whispering enough. Evidently, it was
+not for naught that Mr. Marmaduke Haward had refused invitations,
+given no entertainments, shut himself up at Fair View, slighting old
+friends and evincing no desire to make new ones. Why, the girl was a
+servant,--nothing more nor less; she belonged to Gideon Darden, the
+drunken minister; she was to have married Jean Hugon, the half-breed
+trader. Look how the Governor, enlightened at last, glowered at her;
+and how red was Colonel Spotswood’s face; and how Mistress Evelyn Byrd,
+sitting in the midst of a little court of her own, made witty talk,
+smiled upon her circle of adorers, and never glanced toward the centre
+of the room, and the dancers there!
+
+“You are so sweet and gay to-night,” said Haward to Audrey. “Take your
+pleasure, child, for it is a sad world, and the blight will fall. I
+love to see you happy.”
+
+“Happy!” she answered. “I am not happy!”
+
+“You are above them all in beauty,” he went on. “There is not one here
+that’s fit to tie your shoe.”
+
+“Oh me!” cried Audrey. “There is the lady that you love, and that loves
+you. Why did she look at me so, in the hall yonder? And yesterday, when
+she came to Mistress Stagg’s, I might not touch her or speak to her!
+You told me that she was kind and good and pitiful. I dreamed that she
+might let me serve her when she came to Fair View.”
+
+“She will never come to Fair View,” he said, “nor shall I go again to
+Westover. I am for my own house now, you brown enchantress, and my own
+garden, and the boat upon the river. Do you remember how sweet were our
+days in June? We will live them over again, and there shall come for
+us, besides, a fuller summer”--
+
+“It is winter now,” said Audrey, with a sobbing breath, “and cold and
+dark! I do not know myself, and you are strange. I beg you to let me
+go away. I wish to wash off this paint, to put on my own gown. I am no
+lady; you do wrong to keep me here. See, all the company are frowning
+at me! The minister will hear what I have done and be angry, and
+Mistress Deborah will beat me. I care not for that, but you--Oh, you
+have gone far away,--as far as Fair View, as far as the mountains! I am
+speaking to a stranger”--
+
+In the dance their raised hands met again. “You see me, you speak to
+me at last,” he said ardently. “That other, that cold brother of the
+snows, that paladin and dream knight that you yourself made and dubbed
+him me,--he has gone, Audrey; nay, he never was! But I myself, I am not
+abhorrent to you?”
+
+“Oh,” she answered, “it is all dark! I cannot see--I cannot
+understand”--
+
+The time allotted to minuets having elapsed, the musicians after a
+short pause began to play an ancient, lively air, and a number of
+ladies and gentlemen, young, gayly dressed, and light of heart as
+of heels, engaged in a country dance. When they were joined by Mr.
+Marmaduke Haward and his shameless companion, there arose a great
+rustling and whispering. A young girl in green taffeta was dancing
+alone, wreathing in and out between the silken, gleaming couples,
+coquetting with the men by means of fan and eyes, but taking hands and
+moving a step or two with each sister of the dance. When she approached
+Audrey, the latter smiled and extended her hand, because that was the
+way the lady nearest her had done. But the girl in green stared coldly,
+put her hand behind her, and, with the very faintest salute to Mr.
+Marmaduke Haward, danced on her way. For one moment the smile died on
+Audrey’s lips; then it came resolutely back, and she held her head high.
+
+The men, forming in two rows, drew their rapiers with a flourish, and,
+crossing them overhead, made an arch of steel under which the women
+must pass. Haward’s blade touched that of an old acquaintance. “I have
+been leaning upon the back of a lady’s chair,” said the latter gruffly,
+under cover of the music and the clashing steel,--“a lady dressed in
+rose color, who’s as generous (to all save one poor devil) as she is
+fair. I promised her I would take her message; the Lord knows I would
+go to the bottom of the sea to give her pleasure! She says that you are
+not yourself; begs that you will--go quietly away”--
+
+An exclamation from the man next him, and a loud murmur mixed with some
+laughter from those in the crowded room who were watching the dancers,
+caused the gentleman to break off in the middle of his message. He
+glanced over his shoulder; then, with a shrug, turned to his vis-a-vis
+in white satin. “Now you see that ’twill not answer,--not in Virginia.
+The women--bless them!--have a way of cutting Gordian knots.”
+
+A score of ladies, one treading in the footsteps of another, should
+have passed beneath the flashing swords. But there had thrust itself
+into their company a plague spot, and the girl in green taffeta and
+a matron in silver brocade, between whom stood the hateful presence,
+indignantly stepped out of line and declined to dance. The fear of
+infection spreading like wildfire, the ranks refused to close, and
+the company was thrown into confusion. Suddenly the girl in green, by
+nature a leader of her kind, walked away, with a toss of her head,
+from the huddle of those who were uncertain what to do, and joined her
+friends among the spectators, who received her with acclaim. The sound
+and her example were warranty enough for the cohort she had quitted. A
+moment, and it was in virtuous retreat, and the dance was broken up.
+
+The gentlemen, who saw themselves summarily deserted, abruptly lowered
+their swords. One laughed; another, flown with wine, gave utterance to
+some coarse pleasantry; a third called to the musicians to stop the
+music. Darden’s Audrey stood alone, brave in her beautiful borrowed
+dress and the color that could not leave her cheeks. But her lips
+had whitened, the smile was gone, and her eyes were like those of a
+hunted deer. She looked mutely about her: how could she understand,
+who trusted so completely, who lived in a labyrinth without a clue,
+who had built her dream world so securely that she had left no way of
+egress for herself? These were cruel people! She was mad to get away,
+to tear off this strange dress, to fling herself down in the darkness,
+in the woods, hiding her face against the earth! But though she was
+only Audrey and so poor a thing, she had for her portion a dignity and
+fineness of nature that was a stay to her steps. Barbara, though not
+so poor and humble a maid, might have burst into tears, and run crying
+from the room and the house; but to do that Audrey would have been
+ashamed.
+
+“It was you, Mr. Corbin, that laughed, I think?” said Haward.
+“To-morrow I shall send to know the reason of your mirth. Mr. Everard,
+you will answer to me for that pretty oath. Mr. Travis, there rests the
+lie that you uttered just now: stoop and take it again.” He flung his
+glove at Mr. Travis’s feet.
+
+A great hubbub and exclamation arose. Mr. Travis lifted the glove with
+the point of his rapier, and in a loud voice repeated the assertion
+which had given umbrage to Mr. Haward of Fair View. That gentleman
+sprang unsteadily forward, and the blades of the two crossed in dead
+earnest. A moment, and the men were forced apart; but by this time the
+whole room was in commotion. The musicians craned their necks over the
+gallery rail, a woman screamed, and half a dozen gentlemen of years
+and authority started from the crowd of witnesses to the affair and
+made toward the centre of the room, with an eye to preventing further
+trouble. Where much wine had been drunken and twenty rapiers were out,
+matters might go from bad to worse.
+
+Another was before them. A lady in rose color had risen from her chair
+and glided across the polished floor to the spot where trouble was
+brewing. “Gentlemen, for shame!” she cried. Her voice was bell-like
+in its clear sweetness, final in its grave rebuke and its recall to
+sense and decency. She was Mistress Evelyn Byrd, who held sovereignty
+in Virginia, and at the sound of her voice, the command of her raised
+hand, the clamor suddenly ceased, and the angry group, parting, fell
+back as from the presence of its veritable queen.
+
+Evelyn went up to Audrey and took her by the hand. “I am not tired
+of dancing, as were those ladies who have left us,” she said, with
+a smile, and in a sweet and friendly voice. “See, the gentlemen are
+waiting I Let us finish out this measure, you and me.”
+
+At her gesture of command the lines that had so summarily broken
+re-formed. Back into the old air swung the musicians; up went the
+swords, crossing overhead with a ringing sound, and beneath the long
+arch of protecting steel moved to the music the two women, the dark
+beauty and the fair, the princess and the herdgirl. Evelyn led, and
+Audrey, following, knew that now indeed she was walking in a dream.
+
+A very few moments, and the measure was finished. A smile, a curtsy,
+a wave of Evelyn’s hand, and the dancers, disbanding, left the floor.
+Mr. Corbin, Mr. Everard, and Mr. Travis, each had a word to say to Mr.
+Haward of Fair View, as they passed that gentleman.
+
+Haward heard, and answered to the point; but when presently Evelyn
+said, “Let us go into the garden,” and he found himself moving with her
+and with Audrey through the buzzing, staring crowd toward the door of
+the Governor’s house, he thought that it was into Fair View garden they
+were about to descend. And when they came out upon the broad, torchlit
+walk, and he saw gay parties of ladies and gentlemen straying here and
+there beneath the trees, he thought it strange that he had forgotten
+that he had guests this night. As for the sound of the river below his
+terrace, he had never heard so loud a murmur. It grew and filled the
+night, making thin and far away the voices of his guests.
+
+There was a coach at the gates, and Mr. Grymes, who awhile ago had told
+him that he had a message to deliver, was at the coach door. Evelyn had
+her hand upon his arm, and her voice was speaking to him from as far
+away as across the river. “I am leaving the ball,” it said, “and I will
+take the girl in my coach to the place where she is staying. Promise me
+that you will not go back to the house yonder; promise me that you will
+go away with Mr. Grymes, who is also weary of the ball”--
+
+“Oh,” said Mr. Grymes lightly, “Mr. Haward agrees with me that Marot’s
+best room, cool and quiet, a bottle of Burgundy, and a hand at piquet
+are more alluring than the heat and babel we have left. We are going at
+once, Mistress Evelyn. Haward, I propose that on our way to Marot’s we
+knock up Dr. Contesse, and make him free of our company.”
+
+As he spoke, he handed into the coach the lady in flowered damask, who
+had held up her head, but said no word, and the lady in rose-colored
+brocade, who, through the length of the ballroom and the hall and the
+broad walk where people passed and repassed, had kept her hand in
+Audrey’s, and had talked, easily and with smiles, to the two attending
+gentlemen. He shut to the coach door, and drew back, with a low bow,
+when Haward’s deeply flushed, handsome face appeared for a moment at
+the lowered glass.
+
+“Art away to Westover, Evelyn?” he asked. “Then ’t is ‘Good-by,
+sweetheart!’ for I shall not go to Westover again. But you have a fair
+road to travel,--there are violets by the wayside; for it is May Day,
+you know, and the woods are white with dogwood and purple with the
+Judas-tree. The violets are for you; but the great white blossoms, and
+the boughs of rosy mist, and all the trees that wave in the wind are
+for Audrey.” His eyes passed the woman whom he would have wed, and
+rested upon her companion in the coach. “Thou fair dryad!” he said.
+“Two days hence we will keep tryst beneath the beech-tree in the woods
+beyond the glebe house.”
+
+The man beside him put a hand upon his shoulder and plucked him back,
+nor would look at Evelyn’s drawn and whitened face, but called to the
+coachman to go on. The black horses put themselves into motion, the
+equipage made a wide turn, and the lights of the Palace were left
+behind.
+
+Evelyn lodged in a house upon the outskirts of the town, but from the
+Palace to Mistress Stagg’s was hardly more than a stone’s throw. Not
+until the coach was drawing near the small white house did either of
+the women speak. Then Audrey broke into an inarticulate murmur, and
+stooping would have pressed her cheek against the hand that had clasped
+hers only a little while before. But Evelyn snatched her hand away,
+and with a gesture of passionate repulsion shrank into her corner of
+the coach. “Oh, how dare you touch me!” she cried. “How dare you look
+at me, you serpent that have stung me so!” Able to endure no longer,
+she suddenly gave way to angry laughter. “Do you think I did it for
+you,--put such humiliation upon myself for you? Why, you wanton, I
+care not if you stand in white at every church door in Virginia! It
+was for him, for Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View, for whose name
+and fame, if he cares not for them himself, his friends have yet some
+care!” The coach stopped, and the footman opened the door. “Descend,
+if you please,” went on Evelyn clearly and coldly. “You have had your
+triumph. I say not there is no excuse for him,--you are very beautiful.
+Good-night.”
+
+Audrey stood between the lilac bushes and watched the coach turn from
+Palace into Duke of Gloucester Street; then went and knocked at the
+green door. It was opened by Mistress Stagg in person, who drew her
+into the parlor, where the good-natured woman had been sitting all
+alone, and in increasing alarm as to what might be the outcome of this
+whim of Mr. Marmaduke Haward’s. Now she was full of inquiries, ready to
+admire and to nod approval, or to shake her head and cry, “I told you
+so!” according to the turn of the girl’s recital.
+
+But Audrey had little to say, little to tell. Yes, oh yes, it had been
+a very grand sight.... Yes, Mr. Haward was kind; he had always been
+kind to her.... She had come home with Mistress Evelyn Byrd in her
+coach.... Might she go now to her room? She would fold the dress very
+carefully.
+
+Mistress Stagg let her go, for indeed there was no purpose to be served
+in keeping her, seeing that the girl was clearly dazed, spoke without
+knowing what she said, and stood astare like one of Mrs. Salmon’s
+beautiful was ladies. She would hear all about it in the morning, when
+the child had slept off her excitement. They at the Palace couldn’t
+have taken her presence much amiss, or she would never in the world
+have come home in the Westover coach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+AUDREY AWAKES
+
+
+There had lately come to Virginia, and to the convention of its clergy
+at Williamsburgh, one Mr. Eliot, a minister after the heart of a large
+number of sober and godly men whose reputation as a body suffered at
+the hands of Mr. Darden, of Fair View parish, Mr. Bailey, of Newport,
+Mr. Worden, of Lawn’s Creek, and a few kindred spirits. Certainly Mr.
+Eliot was not like these; so erect, indeed, did he hold himself in
+the strait and narrow path that his most admiring brethren, being,
+as became good Virginians, somewhat easy-going in their saintliness,
+were inclined to think that he leaned too far the other way. It was
+commendable to hate sin and reprove the sinner; but when it came to
+raining condemnation upon horse-racing, dancing, Cato at the playhouse,
+and like innocent diversions, Mr. Eliot was surely somewhat out of
+bounds. The most part accounted for his turn of mind by the fact that
+ere he came to Virginia he had been a sojourner in New England.
+
+He was mighty in the pulpit, was Mr. Eliot; no droning reader of last
+year’s sermons, but a thunderer forth of speech that was now acrid,
+now fiery, but that always came from an impassioned nature, vehement
+for the damnation of those whom God so strangely spared. When, as had
+perforce happened during the past week, he must sit with his brethren
+in the congregation and listen to lukewarm--nay, to dead and cold
+adjurations and expoundings, his very soul itched to mount the pulpit
+stairs, thrust down the Laodicean that chanced to occupy it, and
+himself awaken as with the sound of a trumpet this people who slept
+upon the verge of a precipice, between hell that gaped below and God
+who sat on high, serenely regardful of his creatures’ plight. Though
+so short a time in Virginia, he was already become a man of note, the
+prophet not without honor, whom it was the fashion to admire, if not to
+follow. It was therefore natural enough that the Commissary, himself a
+man of plain speech from the pulpit, should appoint him to preach in
+Bruton church this Sunday morning, before his Excellency the Governor,
+the worshipful the Council, the clergy in convention, and as much of
+Williamsburgh, gentle and simple, as could crowd into the church. Mr.
+Eliot took the compliment as an answer to prayer, and chose for his
+text Daniel fifth and twenty-seventh.
+
+Lodging as he did on Palace Street, the early hours of the past night,
+which he would have given to prayer and meditation, had been profaned
+by strains of music from the Governor’s house, by laughter and swearing
+and much going to and fro in the street beneath his window. These
+disturbances filling him with righteous wrath, he came down to his
+breakfast next morning prepared to give his hostess, who kept him
+company at table, line and verse which should demonstrate that Jehovah
+shared his anger.
+
+“Ay, sir!” she cried. “And if that were all, sir”--and straightway she
+embarked upon a colored narration of the occurrence at the Governor’s
+ball. This was followed by a wonderfully circumstantial account of Mr.
+Marmaduke Haward’s sins of omission against old and new acquaintances
+who would have entertained him at their houses, and been entertained in
+turn at Fair View, and by as detailed a description of the toils that
+had been laid for him by that audacious piece who had forced herself
+upon the company last night.
+
+Mr. Eliot listened aghast, and mentally amended his sermon. If he knew
+Virginia, even so flagrant a case as this might never come before a
+vestry. Should this woman go unreproved? When in due time he was in
+the church, and the congregation was gathering, he beckoned to him one
+of the sidesmen, asked a question, and when it was answered, looked
+fixedly at a dark girl sitting far away in a pew beneath the gallery.
+
+It was a fine, sunny morning, with a tang of autumn in the air, and
+the concourse within the church was very great. The clergy showed like
+a wedge of black driven into the bright colors with which nave and
+transept overflowed. His Excellency the Governor sat in state, with
+the Council on either hand. One member of that body was not present.
+Well-nigh all Williamsburgh knew by now that Mr. Marmaduke Haward
+lay at Marot’s ordinary, ill of a raging fever. Hooped petticoat and
+fragrant bodice found reason for whispering to laced coat and periwig;
+significant glances traveled from every quarter of the building toward
+the tall pew where, collected but somewhat palely smiling, sat Mistress
+Evelyn Byrd beside her father. All this was before the sermon. When the
+minister of the day mounted the pulpit, and, gaunt against the great
+black sounding-board, gave out his text in a solemn and ringing voice,
+such was the genuine power of the man that every face was turned toward
+him, and throughout the building there fell a sudden hush.
+
+Audrey looked with the rest, but she could not have said that she
+listened,--not at first. She was there because she always went to
+church on Sunday. It had not occurred to her to ask that she might stay
+at home. She had come from her room that morning with the same still
+face, the same strained and startled look about the eyes, that she had
+carried to it the night before. Black Peggy, who found her bed unslept
+in, thought that she must have sat the night through beside the window.
+Mistress Stagg, meeting her at the stairfoot with the tidings (just
+gathered from the lips of a passer-by) of Mr. Haward’s illness, thought
+that the girl took the news very quietly. She made no exclamation,
+said nothing good or bad; only drew her hand across her brow and eyes,
+as though she strove to thrust away a veil or mist that troubled her.
+This gesture she repeated now and again during the hour before church
+time. Mistress Stagg heard no more of the ball this morning than she
+had heard the night before. Something ailed the girl. She was not
+sullen, but she could not or would not talk. Perhaps, despite the fact
+of the Westover coach, she had not been kindly used at the Palace.
+The ex-actress pursed her lips, and confided to her Mirabell that
+times were not what they once were. Had she not, at Bath, been given a
+ticket to the Saturday ball by my Lord Squander himself? Ay, and she
+had footed it, too, in the country dance, with the best of them, with
+captains and French counts and gentlemen and ladies of title,--ay, and
+had gone down the middle with, the very pattern of Sir Harry Wildair!
+To be sure, no one had ever breathed a word against her character; but,
+for her part, she believed no great harm of Audrey, either. Look at the
+girl’s eyes, now: they were like a child’s or a saint’s.
+
+Mirabell nodded and looked wise, but said nothing.
+
+When the church bells rang Audrey was ready, and she walked to church
+with Mistress Stagg much as, the night before, she had walked between
+the lilacs to the green door when the Westover coach had passed from
+her sight. Now she sat in the church much as she had sat at the window
+the night through. She did not know that people were staring at her;
+nor had she caught the venomous glance of Mistress Deborah, already in
+the pew, and aware of more than had come to her friend’s ears.
+
+Audrey was not listening, was scarcely thinking. Her hands were crossed
+in her lap, and now and then she raised one and made the motion of
+pushing aside from her eyes something heavy that clung and blinded.
+What part of her spirit that was not wholly darkened and folded within
+itself was back in the mountains of her childhood, with those of her
+own blood whom she had loved and lost. What use to try to understand
+to-day,--to-day with its falling skies, its bewildered pondering over
+the words that were said to her last night? And the morrow,--she must
+leave that. Perhaps when it should dawn he would come to her, and call
+her “little maid,” and laugh at her dreadful dream. But now, while it
+was to-day, she could not think of him without an agony of pain and
+bewilderment. He was ill, too, and suffering. Oh, she must leave the
+thought of him alone! Back then to the long yesterdays she traveled,
+and played quietly, dreamily, with Robin on the green grass beside the
+shining stream, or sat on the doorstep, her head on Molly’s lap, and
+watched the evening star behind the Endless Mountains.
+
+It was very quiet in the church save for that one great voice speaking.
+Little by little the voice impressed itself upon her consciousness.
+The eyes of her mind were upon long ranges of mountains distinct
+against the splendor of a sunset sky. Last seen in childhood, viewed
+now through the illusion of the years, the mountains were vastly
+higher than nature had planned them; the streamers of light shot to
+the zenith; the black forests were still; everywhere a fixed glory, a
+gigantic silence, a holding of the breath for things to happen.
+
+By degrees the voice in her ears fitted in with the landscape, became,
+so solemn and ringing it was, like the voice of the archangel of that
+sunset land. Audrey listened at last; and suddenly the mountains were
+gone, and the light from the sky, and her people were dead and dust
+away in that hidden valley, and she was sitting in the church at
+Williamsburgh, alone, without a friend.
+
+What was the preacher saying? What ball of the night before was he
+describing with bitter power, the while he gave warning of handwriting
+upon the wall such as had menaced Belshazzar’s feast of old? Of what
+shameless girl was he telling,--what creature dressed in silks that
+should have gone in rags, brought to that ball by her paramour--
+
+The gaunt figure in the pulpit trembled like a leaf with the passion
+of the preacher’s convictions and the energy of his utterance. On
+had gone the stream of rhetoric, the denunciations, the satire, the
+tremendous assertions of God’s mind and purposes. The lash that was
+wielded was far-reaching; all the vices of the age--irreligion,
+blasphemy, drunkenness, extravagance, vainglory, loose living--fell
+under its sting. The condemnation was general, and each man looked to
+see his neighbor wince. The occurrence at the ball last night,--he was
+on that for final theme, was he? There was a slight movement throughout
+the congregation. Some glanced to where would have sat Mr. Marmaduke
+Haward, had not the gentleman been at present in his bed, raving now
+of a great run of luck at the Cocoa Tree; now of an Indian who, with
+his knee upon his breast, was throttling him to death. Others looked
+over their shoulders to see if that gypsy yet sat beneath the gallery.
+Colonel Byrd took out his snuffbox and studied the picture on the lid,
+while his daughter sat like a carven lady, with a slight smile upon her
+lips.
+
+On went the word picture that showed how vice could flaunt it in so
+fallen an age. The preacher spared not plain words, squarely turned
+himself toward the gallery, pointed out with voice and hand the object
+of his censure and of God’s wrath. Had the law pilloried the girl
+before them all, it had been but little worse for her. She sat like a
+statue, staring with wide eyes at the window above the altar. This,
+then, was what the words in the coach last night had meant--this was
+what the princess thought--this was what his world thought--
+
+There arose a commotion in the ranks of the clergy of Virginia. The
+Reverend Gideon Darden, quitting with an oath the company of his
+brethren, came down the aisle, and, pushing past his wife, took his
+stand in the pew beside the orphan who had lived beneath his roof, whom
+during many years he had cursed upon occasion and sometimes struck, and
+whom he had latterly made his tool, “Never mind him, Audrey, my girl,”
+he said, and put an unsteady hand upon her shoulder. “You’re a good
+child; they cannot harm ye.”
+
+He turned his great shambling body and heavy face toward the
+preacher, stemmed in the full tide of his eloquence by this unseemly
+interruption, “Ye beggarly Scot!” he exclaimed thickly. “Ye
+evil-thinking saint from Salem way, that know the very lining of the
+Lord’s mind, and yet, walking through his earth, see but a poisonous
+weed in his every harmless flower! Shame on you to beat down the flower
+that never did you harm! The girl’s as innocent a thing as lives! Ay,
+I’ve had my dram,--the more shame to you that are justly rebuked out of
+the mouth of a drunken man! I have done, Mr. Commissary,” addressing
+himself to that dignitary, who had advanced to the altar rail with his
+arm raised in a command for silence. “I’ve no child of my own, thank
+God! but the maid has grown up in my house, and I’ll not sit to hear
+her belied. I’ve heard of last night; ’twas the mad whim of a sick man.
+The girl’s as guiltless of wrong as any lady here. I, Gideon Darden,
+vouch for it!”
+
+He sat heavily down beside Audrey, who never stirred from her still
+regard of that high window. There was a moment of portentous silence;
+then, “Let us pray,” said the minister from the pulpit.
+
+Audrey knelt with the rest, but she did not pray. And when it was
+all over, and the benediction had been given, and she found herself
+without the church, she looked at the green trees against the clear
+autumnal skies and at the graves in the churchyard as though it were a
+new world into which she had stepped. She could not have said that she
+found it fair. Her place had been so near the door that well-nigh all
+the congregation was behind her, streaming out of the church, eager
+to reach the open air, where it might discuss the sermon, the futile
+and scandalous interruption by the notorious Mr. Darden, and what Mr.
+Marmaduke Haward might have said or done had he been present.
+
+Only Mistress Stagg kept beside her; for Mistress Deborah hung back,
+unwilling to be seen in her company, and Darden, from that momentary
+awakening of his better nature, had sunk to himself again, and thought
+not how else he might aid this wounded member of his household. But
+Mary Stagg was a kindly soul, whose heart had led her comfortably
+through life with very little appeal to her head. The two or three
+young women--Oldfields and Porters of the Virginian stage--who were
+under indentures to her husband and herself found her as much their
+friend as mistress. Their triumphs in the petty playhouse of this town
+of a thousand souls were hers, and what woes they had came quickly to
+her ears. Now she would have slipped her hand into Audrey’s and have
+given garrulous comfort, as the two passed alone through the churchyard
+gate and took their way up Palace Street toward the small white house.
+But Audrey gave not her hand, did not answer, made no moan, neither
+justified herself nor blamed another. She did not speak at all, but
+after the first glance about her moved like a sleepwalker.
+
+When the house was reached she went up to the bedroom. Mistress
+Deborah, entering stormily ten minutes later, found herself face to
+face with a strange Audrey, who, standing in the middle of the floor,
+raised her hand for silence in a gesture so commanding that the virago
+stayed her tirade, and stood open-mouthed.
+
+“I wish to speak,” said the new Audrey. “I was waiting for you. There’s
+a question I wish to ask, and I’ll ask it of you who were never kind to
+me.”
+
+“Never kind to her!” cried the minister’s wife to the four walls. “And
+she’s been taught, and pampered, and treated more like a daughter than
+the beggar wench she is! And this is my return,--to sit by her in
+church to-day, and have all Virginia think her belonging to me”--
+
+“I belong to no one,” said Audrey. “Even God does not want me. Be quiet
+until I have done.” She made again the gesture of pushing aside from
+face and eyes the mist that clung and blinded. “I know now what they
+say,” she went on. “The preacher told me awhile ago. Last night a lady
+spoke to me: now I know what was her meaning. Because Mr. Haward, who
+saved my life, who brought me from the mountains, who left me, when he
+sailed away, where he thought I would be happy, was kind to me when he
+came again after so many years; because he has often been to the glebe
+house, and I to Fair View; because last night he would have me go with
+him to the Governor’s ball, they think--they say out loud for all the
+people to hear--that I--that I am like Joan, who was whipped last month
+at the Court House. But it is not of the lies they tell that I wish to
+speak.”
+
+Her hand went again to her forehead, then dropped at her side. A look
+of fear and of piteous appeal came into her face. “The witch said that
+I dreamed, and that it was not well for dreamers to awaken.” Suddenly
+the quiet of her voice and bearing was broken. With a cry, she hurried
+across the room, and, kneeling, caught at the other’s gown. “Ah! that
+is no dream, is it? No dream that he is my friend, only my friend who
+has always been sorry for me, has always helped me! He is the noblest
+gentleman, the truest, the best--he loves the lady at Westover--they
+are to be married--he never knew what people were saying--he was not
+himself when he spoke to me so last night”--Her eyes appealed to the
+face above her. “I could never have dreamed all this,” she said. “Tell
+me that I was awake!”
+
+The minister’s wife looked down upon her with a bitter smile. “So
+you’ve had your fool’s paradise? Well, once I had mine, though ’twas
+not your kind. ’Tis a pretty country, Audrey, but it’s not long before
+they turn you out.” She laughed somewhat drearily, then in a moment
+turned shrew again. “He never knew what people were saying?” she cried.
+“You little fool, do you suppose he cared? ’Twas you that played your
+cards all wrong with your Governor’s ball last night!--setting up for a
+lady, forsooth!--bringing all the town about your ears! You might have
+known that he would never have taken you there in his senses. At Fair
+View things went very well. He was entertained,--and I meant to see
+that no harm came of it,--and Darden got his support in the vestry. For
+he was bit,--there’s no doubt of that,--though what he ever saw in you
+more than big eyes and a brown skin, the Lord knows, not I! Only your
+friend!--a fine gentleman just from London, with a whole Canterbury
+book of stories about his life there, to spend a’most a summer on the
+road between his plantation and a wretched glebe house because he was
+only your friend, and had saved you from the Indians when you were a
+child, and wished to be kind to you still! I’ll tell you who did wish
+to be kind to you, and that was Jean Hugon, the trader, who wanted to
+marry you.”
+
+Audrey rose to her feet, and moved slowly backward to the wall.
+Mistress Deborah went shrilly on: “I dare swear you believe that Mr.
+Haward had you in mind all the years he was gone from Virginia? Well,
+he didn’t. He puts you with Darden and me, and he says, ‘There’s the
+strip of Oronoko down by the swamp,--I’ve told my agent that you’re to
+have from it so many pounds a year;’ and he sails away to London and
+all the fine things there, and never thinks of you more until he comes
+back to Virginia and sees you last May Day at Jamestown. Next morning
+he comes riding to the glebe house. ‘And so,’ he says to Darden, ‘and
+so my little maid that I brought for trophy out of the Appalachian
+Mountains is a woman grown? Faith, I’d quite forgot the child; but
+Saunderson tells me that you have not forgot to draw upon my Oronoko.’
+That’s all the remembrance you were held in, Audrey.”
+
+She paused to take breath, and to look with shrewish triumph at the
+girl who leaned against the wall. “I like not waking up,” said Audrey
+to herself. “It were easier to die. Perhaps I am dying.”
+
+“And then out he walks to find and talk to you, and in sets your pretty
+summer of all play and no work!” went on the other, in a high voice.
+“Oh, there was kindness enough, once you had caught his fancy! I wonder
+if the lady at Westover praised his kindness? They say she is a proud
+young lady: I wonder if she liked your being at the ball last night?
+When she comes to Fair View, I’ll take my oath that you’ll walk no more
+in its garden! But perhaps she won’t come now,--though her maid Chloe
+told Mistress Bray’s Martha that she certainly loves him”--
+
+“I wish I were dead,” said Audrey. “I wish I were dead, like Molly.”
+She stood up straight against the wall, and pushed her heavy hair from
+her forehead. “Be quiet now,” she said. “You see that I am awake; there
+is no need for further calling. I shall not dream again.” She looked at
+the older woman doubtfully. “Would you mind,” she suggested,--“would
+you be so very kind as to leave me alone, to sit here awake for a
+while? I have to get used to it, you know. To-morrow, when we go back
+to the glebe house, I will work the harder. It must be easy to work
+when one is awake. Dreaming takes so much time.”
+
+Mistress Deborah could hardly have told why she did as she was asked.
+Perhaps the very strangeness of the girl made her uncomfortable in
+her presence; perhaps in her sour and withered heart there was yet
+some little soundness of pity and comprehension; or perhaps it was
+only that she had said her say, and was anxious to get to her friends
+below, and shake from her soul the dust of any possible complicity with
+circumstance in moulding the destinies of Darden’s Audrey. Be that as
+it may, when she had flung her hood upon the bed and had looked at
+herself in the cracked glass above the dresser, she went out of the
+room, and closed the door somewhat softly behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+BY THE RIVERSIDE
+
+
+“Yea, I am glad--I and my father and mother and Ephraim--that thee is
+returned to Fair View,” answered Truelove. “And has thee truly no shoes
+of plain and sober stuffs? These be much too gaudy.”
+
+“There’s a pair of black callimanco,” said the storekeeper reluctantly;
+“but these of flowered silk would so become your feet, or this
+red-heeled pair with the buckles, or this of fine morocco. Did you
+think of me every day that I spent in Williamsburgh?”
+
+“I prayed for thee every day,” said Truelove simply,--“for thee and for
+the sick man who had called thee to his side. Let me see thy callimanco
+shoes. Thee knows that I may not wear these others.”
+
+The storekeeper brought the plainest footgear that his stock afforded.
+“They are of a very small size,--perhaps too small. Had you not better
+try them ere you buy? I could get a larger pair from Mr. Carter’s
+store.”
+
+Truelove seated herself upon a convenient stool, and lifted her gray
+skirt an inch above a slender ankle. “Perchance they may not be too
+small,” she said, and in despite of her training and the whiteness of
+her soul two dimples made their appearance above the corners of her
+pretty mouth. MacLean knelt to remove the worn shoe, but found in the
+shoestrings an obstinate knot. The two had the store to themselves;
+for Ephraim waited for his sister at the landing, rocking in his boat
+on the bosom of the river, watching a flight of wild geese drawn like
+a snowy streamer across the dark blue sky. It was late autumn, and the
+forest was dressed in flame color.
+
+“Thy fingers move so slowly that I fear thee is not well,” said
+Truelove kindly. “They that have nursed men with fever do often fall
+ill themselves. Will thee not see a physician?”
+
+MacLean, sanguine enough in hue, and no more gaunt of body than usual,
+worked languidly on. “I trust no lowland physician,” he said. “In my
+own country, if I had need, I would send to the foot of Dun-da-gu for
+black Murdoch, whose fathers have been physicians to the MacLeans of
+Duart since the days of Galethus. The little man in this parish,--his
+father was a lawyer, his grandfather a merchant; he knows not what was
+his great-grandfather! There, the shoe is untied! If I came every day
+to your father’s house, and if your mother gave me to drink of her
+elder-flower wine, and if I might sit on the sunny doorstep and watch
+you at your spinning, I should, I think, recover.”
+
+He slipped upon her foot the shoe of black cloth. Truelove regarded it
+gravely. “’Tis not too small, after all,” she said. “And does thee not
+think it more comely than these other, with their silly pomp of colored
+heels and blossoms woven in the silk?” She indicated with her glance
+the vainglorious row upon the bench beside her; then looked down at the
+little foot in its sombre covering and sighed.
+
+“I think that thy foot would be fair in the shoe of Donald Ross!” cried
+the storekeeper, and kissed the member which he praised.
+
+Truelove drew back, her cheeks very pink, and the dimples quite
+uncertain whether to go or stay. “Thee is idle in thy behavior,” she
+said severely. “I do think that thee is of the generation that will not
+learn. I pray thee to expeditiously put back my own shoe, and to give
+me in a parcel the callimanco pair.”
+
+MacLean set himself to obey, though with the expedition of a tortoise.
+Crisp autumn air and vivid sunshine pouring in at window and door
+filled and lit the store. The doorway framed a picture of blue sky,
+slow-moving water, and ragged landing; the window gave upon crimson
+sumac and the gold of a sycamore. Truelove, in her gray gown and close
+white cap, sat in the midst of the bouquet of colors afforded by the
+motley lining of the Fair View store, and gazed through the window at
+the riotous glory of this world. At last she looked at MacLean. “When,
+a year ago, thee was put to mind this store, and I, coming here to buy,
+made thy acquaintance,” she said softly, “thee wore always so stern
+and sorrowful a look that my heart bled for thee. I knew that thee was
+unhappy. Is thee unhappy still?”
+
+MacLean tied the shoestrings with elaborate care; then rose from his
+knees, and stood looking down from his great height upon the Quaker
+maiden. His face was softened, and when he spoke it was with a gentle
+voice. “No,” he said, “I am not unhappy as at first I was. My king is
+an exile, and my chief is forfeited. I suppose that my father is dead.
+Ewin Mackinnon, my foe upon whom I swore revenge, lived untroubled by
+me, and died at another’s hands. My country is closed against me; I
+shall never see it more. I am named a rebel, and chained to this soil,
+this dull and sluggish land, where from year’s end to year’s end the
+key keeps the house and the furze bush keeps the cow. The best years
+of my manhood--years in which I should have acquired honor--have gone
+from me here. There was a man of my name amongst those gentlemen,
+old officers of Dundee, who in France did not disdain to serve as
+private sentinels, that their maintenance might not burden a king as
+unfortunate as themselves. That MacLean fell in the taking of an island
+in the Rhine which to this day is called the Island of the Scots, so
+bravely did these gentlemen bear themselves. They made their lowly
+station honorable; marshals and princes applauded their deeds. The man
+of my name was unfortunate, but not degraded; his life was not amiss,
+and his death was glorious. But I, Angus MacLean, son and brother of
+chieftains, I serve as a slave; giving obedience where in nature it
+is not due, laboring in an alien land for that which profiteth not,
+looking to die peacefully in my bed! I should be no less than most
+unhappy.”
+
+He sat down upon the bench beside Truelove, and taking the hem of
+her apron began to plait it between his fingers. “But to-day,” he
+said,--“but to-day the sky seems blue, the sunshine bright. Why is
+that, Truelove?”
+
+Truelove, with her eyes cast down and a deeper wild rose in her cheeks,
+opined that it was because Friend Marmaduke Haward was well of his
+fever, and had that day returned to Fair View. “Friend Lewis Contesse
+did tell my father, when he was in Williamsburgh, that thee made a
+tenderer nurse than any woman, and that he did think that Marmaduke
+Haward owed his life to thee. I am glad that thee has made friends with
+him whom men foolishly call thy master.”
+
+“Credit to that the blue sky,” said the storekeeper whimsically; “there
+is yet the sunshine to be accounted for. This room did not look so
+bright half an hour syne.”
+
+But Truelove shook her head, and would not reckon further; instead
+heard Ephraim calling, and gently drew her apron from the Highlander’s
+clasp. “There will be a meeting of Friends at our house next fourth
+day,” she said, in her most dovelike tones, as she rose and held out
+her hand for her new shoes. “Will thee come, Angus? Thee will be
+edified, for Friend Sarah Story, who hath the gift of prophecy, will be
+there, and we do think to hear of great things. Thee will come?”
+
+“By St. Kattan, that will I!” exclaimed the storekeeper, with
+suspicious readiness. “The meeting lasts not long, does it? When the
+Friends are gone there will be reward? I mean I may sit on the doorstep
+and watch you--and watch _thee_--spin?”
+
+Truelove dimpled once more, took her shoes, and would have gone her way
+sedately and alone, but MacLean must needs keep her company to the end
+of the landing and the waiting Ephraim. The latter, as he rowed away
+from the Fair View store, remarked upon his sister’s looks: “What makes
+thy cheeks so pink, Truelove, and thy eyes so big and soft?”
+
+Truelove did not know; thought that mayhap ’twas the sunshine and the
+blowing wind.
+
+The sun still shone, but the wind had fallen, when, two hours later,
+MacLean pocketed the key of the store, betook himself again to the
+water’s edge, and entering a small boat, first turned it sunwise for
+luck’s sake, then rowed slowly downstream to the great-house landing.
+Here he found a handful of negroes--boatmen and house servants--basking
+in the sunlight. Juba was of the number, and at MacLean’s call
+scrambled to his feet and came to the head of the steps. “No, sah,
+Marse Duke not on de place. He order Mirza an’ ride off”--a pause--“an’
+ride off to de glebe house. Yes, sah, I done tol’ him he ought to rest.
+Goin’ to wait tel he come back?”
+
+“No,” answered MacLean, with a darkened face. “Tell him I will come to
+the great house to-night.”
+
+In effect, the storekeeper was now, upon Fair View plantation, master
+of his own time and person. Therefore, when he left the landing, he
+did not row back to the store, but, it being pleasant upon the water,
+kept on downstream, gliding beneath the drooping branches of red and
+russet and gold. When he came to the mouth of the little creek that ran
+past Haward’s garden, he rested upon his oars, and with a frowning face
+looked up its silver reaches.
+
+The sun was near its setting, and a still and tranquil light lay
+upon the river that was glassy smooth. Rowing close to the bank, the
+Highlander saw through the gold fretwork of the leaves above him far
+spaces of pale blue sky. All was quiet, windless, listlessly fair. A
+few birds were on the wing, and far toward the opposite shore an idle
+sail seemed scarce to hold its way. Presently the trees gave place to a
+grassy shore, rimmed by a fiery vine that strove to cool its leaves in
+the flood below. Behind it was a little rise of earth, a green hillock,
+fresh and vernal in the midst of the flame-colored autumn. In shape it
+was like those hills in his native land which the Highlander knew to be
+tenanted by the _daoine shi’_ the men of peace. There, in glittering
+chambers beneath the earth, they dwelt, a potent, eerie, gossamer folk,
+and thence, men and women, they issued at times to deal balefully with
+the mortal race.
+
+A woman was seated upon the hillock, quiet as a shadow, her head
+resting on her hand, her eyes upon the river. Dark-haired, dark-eyed,
+slight of figure, and utterly, mournfully still, sitting alone in the
+fading light, with the northern sky behind her, for the moment she wore
+to the Highlander an aspect not of earth, and he was startled. Then
+he saw that it was but Darden’s Audrey. She watched the water where
+it gleamed far off, and did not see him in his boat below the scarlet
+vines. Nor when, after a moment’s hesitation, he fastened the boat to a
+cedar stump, and stepped ashore, did she pay any heed. It was not until
+he spoke to her, standing where he could have touched her with his
+outstretched hand, that she moved or looked his way.
+
+“How long since you left the glebe house?” he demanded abruptly.
+
+“The sun was high,” she answered, in a slow, even voice, with no sign
+of surprise at finding herself no longer alone. “I have been sitting
+here for a long time. I thought that Hugon might be coming this
+afternoon.... There is no use in hiding, but I thought if I stole down
+here he might not find me very soon.”
+
+Her voice died away, and she looked again at the water. The storekeeper
+sat down upon the bank, between the hillock and the fiery vine, and
+his keen eyes watched her closely. “The river,” she said at last,--“I
+like to watch it. There was a time when I loved the woods, but now I
+see that they are ugly. Now, when I can steal away, I come to the river
+always. I watch it and watch it, and think.... All that you give it is
+taken so surely, and hurried away, and buried out of sight forever. A
+little while ago I pulled a spray of farewell summer, and went down
+there where the bank shelves and gave it to the river. It was gone in a
+moment for all that the stream seems so stealthy and slow.”
+
+“The stream comes from afar,” said the Highlander. “In the west,
+beneath the sun, it may be a torrent flashing through the mountains.”
+
+“The mountains!” cried Audrey. “Ah, they are uglier than the
+woods,--black and terrible! Once I loved them, too, but that was long
+ago.” She put her chin upon her hand, and again studied the river.
+“Long ago,” she said, beneath her breath.
+
+There was a silence; then, “Mr. Haward is at Fair View again,”
+announced the storekeeper.
+
+The girl’s face twitched.
+
+“He has been nigh to death,” went on her informant. “There were days
+when I looked for no morrow for him; one night when I held above his
+lips a mirror, and hardly thought to see the breath-stain.”
+
+Audrey laughed. “He can fool even Death, can he not?” The laugh was
+light and mocking, a tinkling, elvish sound which the Highlander
+frowned to hear. A book, worn and dog-eared, lay near her on the grass.
+He took it up and turned the leaves; then put it by, and glanced
+uneasily at the slender, brown-clad form seated upon the fairy mound.
+
+“That is strange reading,” he said.
+
+Audrey looked at the book listlessly. “The schoolmaster gave it to me.
+It tells of things as they are, all stripped of make-believe, and shows
+how men love only themselves, and how ugly and mean is the world when
+we look at it aright. The schoolmaster says that to look at it aright
+you must not dream; you must stay awake,”--she drew her hand across her
+brow and eyes,--“you must stay awake.”
+
+“I had rather dream,” said MacLean shortly. “I have no love for your
+schoolmaster.”
+
+“He is a wise man,” she answered. “Now that I do not like the woods I
+listen to him when he comes to the glebe house. If I remember all he
+says, maybe I shall grow wise, also, and the pain will stop.” Once more
+she dropped her chin upon her hand and fell to brooding, her eyes upon
+the river. When she spoke again it was to herself: “Sometimes of nights
+I hear it calling me. Last night, while I knelt by my window, it called
+so loud that I put my hands over my ears; but I could not keep out the
+sound,--the sound of the river that comes from the mountains, that goes
+to the sea. And then I saw that there was a light in Fair View house.”
+
+Her voice ceased, and the silence closed in around them. The sun was
+setting, and in the west were purple islands merging into a sea of
+gold. The river, too, was colored, and every tree was like a torch
+burning stilly in the quiet of the evening. For some time MacLean
+watched the girl, who now again seemed unconscious of his presence;
+but at last he got to his feet, and looked toward his boat. “I must be
+going,” he said; then, as Audrey raised her head and the light struck
+upon her face, he continued more kindly than one would think so stern a
+seeming man could speak: “I am sorry for you, my maid. God knows that I
+should know how dreadful are the wounds of the spirit! Should you need
+a friend”--
+
+Audrey shook her head. “No more friends,” she said, and laughed as she
+had laughed before. “They belong in dreams. When you are awake,--that
+is a different thing.”
+
+The storekeeper went his way, back to the Fair View store, rowing
+slowly, with a grim and troubled face, while Darden’s Audrey sat still
+upon the green hillock and watched the darkening river. Behind her,
+at no great distance, was the glebe house; more than once she thought
+she heard Hugon coming through the bushes and calling her by name. The
+river darkened more and more, and in the west the sea of gold changed
+to plains of amethyst and opal. There was a crescent moon, and Audrey,
+looking at it with eyes that ached for the tears that would not gather,
+knew that once she would have found it fair.
+
+Hugon was coming, for she heard the twigs upon the path from the glebe
+house snap beneath his tread. She did not turn or move; she would see
+him soon enough, hear him soon enough. Presently his black eyes would
+look into hers; it would be bird and snake over again, and the bird
+was tired of fluttering. The bird was so tired that when a hand was
+laid on her shoulder she did not writhe herself from under its touch;
+instead only shuddered slightly, and stared with wide eyes at the
+flowing river. But the hand was white, with a gleaming ring upon its
+forefinger, and it stole down to clasp her own. “Audrey,” said a voice
+that was not Hugon’s.
+
+The girl flung back her head, saw Haward’s face bending over her, and
+with a loud cry sprang to her feet. When he would have touched her
+again she recoiled, putting between them a space of green grass. “I
+have hunted you for an hour,” he began. “At last I struck this path.
+Audrey”--
+
+Audrey’s hands went to her ears. Step by step she moved backward, until
+she stood against the trunk of a blood-red oak. When she saw that
+Haward followed her she uttered a terrified scream. At the sound and at
+the sight of her face he stopped short, and his outstretched hand fell
+to his side. “Why, Audrey, Audrey!” he exclaimed. “I would not hurt
+you, child. I am not Jean Hugon!”
+
+The narrow path down which he had come was visible for some distance
+as it wound through field and copse, and upon it there now appeared
+another figure, as yet far off, but moving rapidly through the fading
+light toward the river. “Jean! Jean! Jean Hugon!” cried Audrey.
+
+The blood rushed to Haward’s face. “As bad as that!” he said, beneath
+his breath. Going over to the girl, he took her by the hands and strove
+to make her look at him; but her face was like marble, and her eyes
+would not meet his, and in a moment she had wrenched herself free of
+his clasp. “Jean Hugon! Help, Jean Hugon!” she called.
+
+The half-breed in the distance heard her voice, and began to run toward
+them.
+
+“Audrey, listen to me!” cried Haward. “How can I speak to you, how
+explain, how entreat, when you are like this? Child, child, I am
+no monster! Why do you shrink from me thus, look at me thus with
+frightened eyes? You know that I love you!”
+
+She broke from him with lifted hands and a wailing cry. “Let me go! Let
+me go! I am running through the corn, in the darkness, and I hope to
+meet the Indians! I am awake,--oh, God! I am wide awake!”
+
+With another cry, and with her hands shutting out the sound of his
+voice, she turned and fled toward the approaching trader. Haward, after
+one deep oath and an impetuous, quickly checked movement to follow
+the flying figure, stood beneath the oak and watched that meeting:
+Hugon, in his wine-colored coat and Blenheim wig, fierce, inquisitive,
+bragging of what he might do; the girl suddenly listless, silent, set
+only upon an immediate return through the fields to the glebe house.
+
+She carried her point, and the two went away without let or hindrance
+from the master of Fair View, who leaned against the stem of the oak
+and watched them go. He had been very ill, and the hour’s search,
+together with this unwonted beating of his heart, had made him
+desperately weary,--too weary to do aught but go slowly and without
+overmuch of thought to the spot where he had left his horse, mount
+it, and ride as slowly homeward. To-morrow, he told himself, he would
+manage differently; at least, she should be made to hear him. In
+the mean time there was the night to be gotten through. MacLean, he
+remembered, was coming to the great house. What with wine and cards,
+thought might for a time be pushed out of doors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+A DUEL
+
+
+Juba, setting candles upon a table in Haward’s bedroom, chanced
+to spill melted wax upon his master’s hand, outstretched on the
+board. “Damn you!” cried Haward, moved by sudden and uncontrollable
+irritation. “Look what you are doing, sirrah!”
+
+The negro gave a start of genuine surprise. Haward could punish,--Juba
+had more than once felt the weight of his master’s cane,--but justice
+had always been meted out with an equable voice and a fine impassivity
+of countenance. “Don’t stand there staring at me!” now ordered the
+master as irritably as before. “Go stir the fire, draw the curtains,
+shut out the night! Ha, Angus, is that you?”
+
+MacLean crossed the room to the fire upon the hearth, and stood with
+his eyes upon the crackling logs. “You kindle too soon your winter
+fire,” he said. “These forests, flaming red and yellow, should warm the
+land.”
+
+“Winter is at hand. The air strikes cold to-night,” answered Haward,
+and, rising, began to pace the room, while MacLean watched him with
+compressed lips and gloomy eyes. Finally he came to a stand before a
+card table, set full in the ruddy light of the fire, and taking up the
+cards ran them slowly through his fingers. “When the lotus was all
+plucked and Lethe drained, then cards were born into the world,” he
+said sententiously. “Come, my friend, let us forget awhile.”
+
+They sat down, and Haward dealt.
+
+“I came to the house landing before sunset,” began the storekeeper
+slowly. “I found you gone.”
+
+“Ay,” said Haward, gathering up his cards. “’Tis yours to play.”
+
+“Juba told me that you had called for Mirza, and had ridden away to the
+glebe house.”
+
+“True,” answered the other. “And what then?”
+
+There was a note of warning in his voice, but MacLean did not choose
+to heed. “I rowed on down the river, past the mouth of the creek,” he
+continued, with deliberation. “There was a mound of grass and a mass of
+colored vines”--
+
+“And a blood-red oak,” finished Haward coldly. “Shall we pay closer
+regard to what we are doing? I play the king.”
+
+“You were there!” exclaimed the Highlander. “You--not Jean
+Hugon--searched for and found the poor maid’s hiding-place.” The red
+came into his tanned cheek. “Now, by St. Andrew!” he began; then
+checked himself.
+
+Haward tapped with his finger the bit of painted pasteboard before him.
+“I play the king,” he repeated, in an even voice; then struck a bell,
+and when Juba appeared ordered the negro to bring wine and to stir the
+fire. The flames, leaping up, lent strange animation to the face of the
+lady above the mantelshelf, and a pristine brightness to the swords
+crossed beneath the painting. The slave moved about the room, drawing
+the curtains more closely, arranging all for the night. While he was
+present the players gave their attention to the game, but with the
+sound of the closing door MacLean laid down his cards.
+
+“I must speak,” he said abruptly. “The girl’s face haunts me. You do
+wrong. It is not the act of a gentleman.”
+
+The silence that followed was broken by Haward, who spoke in the
+smooth, slightly drawling tones which with him spelled irritation and
+sudden, hardly controlled anger. “It is my home-coming,” he said. “I
+am tired, and wish to-night to eat only of the lotus. Will you take up
+your cards again?”
+
+A less impetuous man than MacLean, noting the signs of weakness,
+fatigue, and impatience, would have waited, and on the morrow have been
+listened to with equanimity. But the Highlander, fired by his cause,
+thought not of delay. “To forget!” he exclaimed. “That is the coward’s
+part! I would have you remember: remember yourself, who are by nature
+a gentleman and generous; remember how alone and helpless is the girl;
+remember to cease from this pursuit!”
+
+“We will leave the cards, and say good-night,” said Haward, with a
+strong effort for self-control.
+
+“Good-night with all my heart!” cried the other hotly,--“when you have
+promised to lay no further snare for that maid at your gates, whose
+name you have blasted, whose heart you have wrung, whose nature you
+have darkened and distorted”--
+
+“Have you done?” demanded Haward. “Once more, ’t were wise to say
+good-night at once.”
+
+“Not yet!” exclaimed the storekeeper, stretching out an eager hand.
+“That girl hath so haunting a face. Haward, see her not again! God
+wot, I think you have crushed the soul within her, and her name is
+bandied from mouth to mouth. ’T were kind to leave her to forget and be
+forgotten. Go to Westover: wed the lady there of whom you raved in your
+fever. You are her declared suitor; ’tis said that she loves you”--
+
+Haward drew his breath sharply and turned in his chair. Then, spent
+with fatigue, irritable from recent illness, sore with the memory of
+the meeting by the river, determined upon his course and yet deeply
+perplexed, he narrowed his eyes and began to give poisoned arrow for
+poisoned arrow.
+
+“Was it in the service of the Pretender that you became a squire of
+dames?” he asked. “’Gad, for a Jacobite you are particular!”
+
+MacLean started as if struck, and drew himself up. “Have a care, sir! A
+MacLean sits not to hear his king or his chief defamed. In future, pray
+remember it.”
+
+“For my part,” said the other, “I would have Mr. MacLean remember”--
+
+The intonation carried his meaning. MacLean, flushing deeply, rose
+from the table. “That is unworthy of you,” he said. “But since before
+to-night servants have rebuked masters, I spare not to tell you that
+you do most wrongly. ’Tis sad for the girl she died not in that
+wilderness where you found her.”
+
+“Ads my life!” cried Haward. “Leave my affairs alone!”
+
+Both men were upon their feet. “I took you for a gentleman,” said the
+Highlander, breathing hard. “I said to myself: ‘Duart is overseas where
+I cannot serve him. I will take this other for my chief’”--
+
+“That is for a Highland cateran and traitor,” interrupted Haward,
+pleased to find another dart, but scarcely aware of how deadly an
+insult he was dealing.
+
+In a flash the blow was struck. Juba, in the next room, hearing the
+noise of the overturned table, appeared at the door. “Set the table to
+rights and light the candles again,” said his master calmly. “No, let
+the cards lie. Now begone to the quarters! ’Twas I that stumbled and
+overset the table.”
+
+Following the slave to the door he locked it upon him; then turned
+again to the room, and to MacLean standing waiting in the centre of it.
+“Under the circumstances, we may, I think, dispense with preliminaries.
+You will give me satisfaction here and now?”
+
+“Do you take it at my hands?” asked the other proudly. “Just now you
+reminded me that I was your servant. But find me a sword”--
+
+Haward went to a carved chest; drew from it two rapiers, measured the
+blades, and laid one upon the table. MacLean took it up, and slowly
+passed the gleaming steel between his fingers. Presently he began to
+speak, in a low, controlled, monotonous voice: “Why did you not leave
+me as I was? Six months ago I was alone, quiet, dead. A star had set
+for me; as the lights fail behind Ben More, it was lost and gone.
+You, long hated, long looked for, came, and the star arose again. You
+touched my scars, and suddenly I esteemed them honorable. You called me
+friend, and I turned from my enmity and clasped your hand. Now my soul
+goes back to its realm of solitude and hate; now you are my foe again.”
+He broke off to bend the steel within his hands almost to the meeting
+of hilt and point. “A hated master,” he ended, with bitter mirth, “yet
+one that I must thank for grace extended. Forty stripes is, I believe,
+the proper penalty.”
+
+Haward, who had seated himself at his escritoire and was writing,
+turned his head. “For my reference to your imprisonment in Virginia I
+apologize. I demand the reparation due from one gentleman to another
+for the indignity of a blow. Pardon me for another moment, when I shall
+be at your service.”
+
+He threw sand upon a sheet of gilt-edged paper, folded and superscribed
+it; then took from his breast a thicker document. “The Solebay,
+man-of-war, lying off Jamestown, sails at sunrise. The captain--Captain
+Meade--is my friend. Who knows the fortunes of war? If by chance I
+should fall to-night, take a boat at the landing, hasten upstream, and
+hail the Solebay. When you are aboard give Meade--who has reason to
+oblige me--this letter. He will carry you down the coast to Charleston,
+where, if you change your name and lurk for a while, you may pass for
+a buccaneer and be safe enough. For this other paper”--He hesitated,
+then spoke on with some constraint: “It is your release from servitude
+in Virginia,--in effect, your pardon. I have interest both here and at
+home--it hath been many years since Preston--the paper was not hard
+to obtain. I had meant to give it to you before we parted to-night. I
+regret that, should you prove the better swordsman, it may be of little
+service to you.”
+
+He laid the papers on the table, and began to divest himself of his
+coat, waistcoat, and long, curled periwig. MacLean took up the pardon
+and held it to a candle. It caught, but before the flame could reach
+the writing Haward had dashed down the other’s hand and beaten out
+the blaze. “’Slife, Angus, what would you do!” he cried, and, taken
+unawares, there was angry concern in his voice. “Why, man, ’t is
+liberty!”
+
+“I may not accept it,” said MacLean, with dry lips. “That letter, also,
+is useless to me. I would you were all villain.”
+
+“Your scruple is fantastic!” retorted the other, and as he spoke he put
+both papers upon the escritoire, weighting them with the sandbox. “You
+shall take them hence when our score is settled,--ay, and use them as
+best you may! Now, sir, are you ready?”
+
+“You are weak from illness,” said MacLean hoarsely, “Let the quarrel
+rest until you have recovered strength.”
+
+Haward laughed. “I was not strong yesterday,” he said. “But Mr. Everard
+is pinked in the side, and Mr. Travis, who would fight with pistols,
+hath a ball through his shoulder.”
+
+The storekeeper started. “I have heard of those gentlemen! You fought
+them both upon the day when you left your sickroom?”
+
+“Assuredly,” answered the other, with a slight lift of his brows. “Will
+you be so good as to move the table to one side? So. On guard, sir!”
+
+The man who had been ill unto death and the man who for many years had
+worn no sword acquitted themselves well. Had the room been a field
+behind Montagu House, had there been present seconds, a physician,
+gaping chairmen, the interest would have been breathless. As it was,
+the lady upon the wall smiled on, with her eyes forever upon the
+blossoms in her hand, and the river without, when it could be heard
+through the clashing of steel, made but a listless and dreamy sound.
+Each swordsman knew that he had provoked a friend to whom his debt was
+great, but each, according to his godless creed, must strive as though
+that friend were his dearest foe. The Englishman fought coolly, the
+Gael with fervor. The latter had an unguarded moment. Haward’s blade
+leaped to meet it, and on the other’s shirt appeared a bright red stain.
+
+In the moment that he was touched the Highlander let fall his sword.
+Haward, not understanding, lowered his point, and with a gesture bade
+his antagonist recover the weapon. But the storekeeper folded his arms.
+“Where blood has been drawn there is satisfaction,” he said. “I have
+given it to you, and now, by the bones of Gillean-na-Tuaidhe, I will
+not fight you longer!”
+
+For a minute or more Haward stood with his eyes upon the ground and his
+hand yet closely clasping the rapier hilt; then, drawing a long breath,
+he took up the velvet scabbard and slowly sheathed his blade. “I am
+content,” he said. “Your wound, I hope, is slight?”
+
+MacLean thrust a handkerchief into his bosom to stanch the bleeding. “A
+pin prick,” he said indifferently.
+
+His late antagonist held out his hand. “It is well over. Come! We are
+not young hotheads, but men who have lived and suffered, and should
+know the vanity and the pity of such strife. Let us forget this hour,
+call each other friends again”--
+
+“Tell me first,” demanded MacLean, his arm rigid at his side,--“tell me
+first why you fought Mr. Everard and Mr. Travis.”
+
+Gray eyes and dark blue met. “I fought them,” said Haward, “because, on
+a time, they offered insult to the woman whom I intend to make my wife.”
+
+So quiet was it in the room when he had spoken that the wash of the
+river, the tapping of walnut branches outside the window, the dropping
+of coals upon the hearth, became loud and insistent sounds. Then,
+“Darden’s Audrey?” said MacLean in a whisper.
+
+“Not Darden’s Audrey, but mine,” answered Haward,--“the only woman I
+have ever loved or shall love.”
+
+He walked to the window and looked out into the darkness. “To-night
+there is no light,” he said to himself, beneath his breath. “By and
+by we shall stand here together, listening to the river, marking the
+wind in the trees.” As upon paper heat of fire may cause to appear
+characters before invisible, so, when he turned, the flame of a great
+passion had brought all that was highest in this gentleman’s nature
+into his countenance, softening and ennobling it. “Whatever my thoughts
+before,” he said simply, “I have never, since I awoke from my fever and
+remembered that night at the Palace, meant other than this.” Coming
+back to MacLean he laid a hand upon his shoulder. “Who made us knows
+we all do need forgiveness! Am I no more to you, Angus, than Ewin Mor
+Mackinnon?”
+
+An hour later, those who were to be lifetime friends went together
+down the echoing stair and through the empty house to the outer door.
+When it was opened, they saw that upon the stone step without, in
+the square of light thrown by the candles behind them, lay an Indian
+arrow. MacLean picked it up. “’Twas placed athwart the door,” he said
+doubtingly. “Is it in the nature of a challenge?”
+
+Haward took the dart, and examined it curiously. “The trader grows
+troublesome,” he remarked. “He must back to the woods and to the foes
+of his own class.” As he spoke he broke the arrow in two, and flung the
+pieces from him.
+
+It was a night of many stars and a keen wind. Moved each in his degree
+by its beauty, Haward and MacLean stood regarding it before they should
+go, the one back to his solitary chamber, the other to the store which
+was to be his charge no longer than the morrow. “I feel the air that
+blows from the hills,” said the Highlander. “It comes over the heather;
+it hath swept the lochs, and I hear it in the sound of torrents.” He
+lifted his face to the wind. “The breath of freedom! I shall have
+dreams to-night.”
+
+When he was gone, Haward, left alone, looked for a while upon the
+heights of stars. “I too shall dream to-night,” he breathed to himself.
+“To-morrow all will be well.” His gaze falling from the splendor of the
+skies to the swaying trees, gaunt, bare, and murmuring of their loss
+to the hurrying river, sadness and vague fear took sudden possession
+of his soul. He spoke her name over and over; he left the house and
+went into the garden. It was the garden of the dying year, and the
+change that in the morning he had smiled to see now appalled him. He
+would have had it June again. Now, when on the morrow he and Audrey
+should pass through the garden, it must be down dank and leaf-strewn
+paths, past yellow and broken stalks, with here and there wan ghosts of
+flowers.
+
+He came to the dial, and, bending, pressed his lips against the carven
+words that, so often as they had stood there together, she had traced
+with her finger. “Love! thou mighty alchemist!” he breathed. “Life!
+that may now be gold, now iron, but never again dull lead! Death”--He
+paused; then, “There shall be no death,” he said, and left the withered
+garden for the lonely, echoing house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+AUDREY COMES TO WESTOVER
+
+
+It was ten of the clock upon this same night when Hugon left the glebe
+house. Audrey, crouching in the dark beside her window, heard him bid
+the minister, as drunk as himself, good-night, and watched him go
+unsteadily down the path that led to the road. Once he paused, and made
+as if to return; then went on to his lair at the crossroads ordinary.
+Again Audrey waited,--this time by the door. Darden stumbled upstairs
+to bed. Mistress Deborah’s voice was raised in shrill reproach, and the
+drunken minister answered her with oaths. The small house rang with
+their quarrel, but Audrey listened with indifference; not trembling and
+stopping her ears, as once she would have done. It was over at last,
+and the place sunk in silence; but still the girl waited and listened,
+standing close to the door. At last, as it was drawing toward midnight,
+she put her hand upon the latch, and, raising it very softly, slipped
+outside. Heavy breathing came from the room where slept her guardians;
+it went evenly on while she crept downstairs and unbarred the outer
+door. Sure and silent and light of touch, she passed like a spirit from
+the house that had given her shelter, nor once looked back upon it.
+
+The boat, hidden in the reeds, was her destination; she loosed it, and
+taking the oars rowed down the creek. When she came to the garden wall,
+she bent her head and shut her eyes; but when she had left the creek
+for the great dim river, she looked at Fair View house as she rowed
+past it on her way to the mountains. No light to-night; the hour was
+late, and he was asleep, and that was well.
+
+It was cold upon the river, and sere leaves, loosening their hold upon
+that which had given them life, drifted down upon her as she rowed
+beneath arching trees. When she left the dark bank for the unshadowed
+stream, the wind struck her brow and the glittering stars perplexed
+her. There were so many of them. When one shot, she knew that a soul
+had left the earth. Another fell, and another,--it must be a good night
+for dying. She ceased to row, and, leaning over, dipped her hand and
+arm into the black water. The movement brought the gunwale of the boat
+even with the flood.... Say that one leaned over a little farther ...
+there would fall another star. God gathered the stars in his hand, but
+he would surely be angry with one that came before it was called, and
+the star would sink past him into a night forever dreadful.... The
+water was cold and deep and black. Great fish throve in it, and below
+was a bed of ooze and mud....
+
+The girl awoke from her dream of self-murder with a cry of terror.
+Not the river, good Lord, not the river! Not death, but life! With a
+second shuddering cry she lifted hand and arm from the water, and with
+frantic haste dried them upon the skirt of her dress. There had been
+none to hear her. Upon the midnight river, between the dim forests that
+ever spoke, but never listened, she was utterly alone. She took the
+oars again, and went on her way up the river, rowing swiftly, for the
+mountains were far away, and she might be pursued.
+
+When she drew near to Jamestown she shot far out into the river,
+because men might be astir in the boats about the town landing.
+Anchored in midstream was a great ship,--a man-of-war, bristling with
+guns. Her boat touched its shadow, and the lookout called to her. She
+bent her head, put forth her strength, and left the black hull behind
+her. There was another ship to pass, a slaver that had come in the
+evening before, and would land its cargo at sunrise. The stench that
+arose from it was intolerable, and, as the girl passed, a corpse,
+heavily weighted, was thrown into the water. Audrey went swiftly by,
+and the river lay clean before her. The stars paled and the dawn came,
+but she could not see the shores for the thick white mist. A spectral
+boat, with a sail like a gray moth’s wing, slipped past her. The shadow
+at the helm was whistling for the wind, and the sound came strange and
+shrill through the filmy, ashen morning. The mist began to lift. A
+few moments now, and the river would lie dazzlingly bare between the
+red and yellow forests. She turned her boat shorewards, and presently
+forced it beneath the bronze-leafed, drooping boughs of a sycamore.
+Here she left the boat, tying it to the tree, and hoping that it was
+well hidden. The great fear at her heart was that, when she was missed,
+Hugon would undertake to follow and to find her. He had the skill to do
+so. Perhaps, after many days, when she was in sight of the mountains,
+she might turn her head and, in that lonely land, see him coming toward
+her.
+
+The sun was shining, and the woods were gay above her head and gay
+beneath her feet. When the wind blew, the colored leaves went before
+it like flights of birds. She was hungry, and as she walked she ate a
+piece of bread taken from the glebe-house larder. It was her plan to
+go rapidly through the settled country, keeping as far as possible to
+the great spaces of woodland which the axe had left untouched; sleeping
+in such dark and hidden hollows as she could find; begging food only
+when she must, and then from poor folk who would not stay her or be
+overcurious about her business. As she went on, the houses, she knew,
+would be farther and farther apart; the time would soon arrive when
+she might walk half a day and see never a clearing in the deep woods.
+Then the hills would rise about her, and far, far off she might see the
+mountains, fixed, cloudlike, serene, and still, beyond the miles of
+rustling forest. There would be no more great houses, built for ladies
+and gentlemen, but here and there, at far distances, rude cabins, dwelt
+in by kind and simple folk. At such a home, when the mountains had
+taken on a deeper blue, when the streams were narrow and the level land
+only a memory, she would pause, would ask if she might stay. What work
+was wanted she would do. Perhaps there would be children, or a young
+girl like Molly, or a kind woman like Mistress Stagg; and perhaps,
+after a long, long while, it would grow to seem to her like that other
+cabin.
+
+These were her rose-colored visions. At other times a terror took her
+by the shoulders, holding her until her face whitened and her eyes grew
+wide and dark. The way was long and the leaves were falling fast, and
+she thought that it might be true that in this world into which she had
+awakened there was for her no home. The cold would come, and she might
+have no bread, and for all her wandering find none to take her in. In
+those forests of the west the wolves ran in packs, and the Indians
+burned and wasted. Some bitter night-time she would die.... Watching
+the sky from Fair View windows, perhaps he might idly mark a falling
+star.
+
+All that day she walked, keeping as far as was possible to the woods,
+but forced now and again to traverse open fields and long stretches of
+sunny road. If she saw any one coming, she hid in the roadside bushes,
+or, if that could not be done, walked steadily onward, with her head
+bent and her heart beating fast. It must have been a day for minding
+one’s own business, for none stayed or questioned her. Her dinner she
+begged from some children whom she found in a wood gathering nuts.
+Supper she had none. When night fell, she was glad to lay herself down
+upon a bed of leaves that she had raked together; but she slept little,
+for the wind moaned in the half-clad branches, and she could not cease
+from counting the stars that shot. In the morning, numbed and cold, she
+went slowly on until she came to a wayside house. Quaker folk lived
+there; and they asked her no question, but with kind words gave her
+of what they had, and let her rest and grow warm in the sunshine upon
+their doorstep. She thanked them with shy grace, but presently, when
+they were not looking, rose and went her way. Upon the second day she
+kept to the road. It was loss of time wandering in the woods, skirting
+thicket and marsh, forced ever and again to return to the beaten track.
+She thought, also, that she must be safe, so far was she now from Fair
+View. How could they guess that she was gone to the mountains?
+
+About midday, two men on horseback looked at her in passing. One spoke
+to the other, and turning their horses they put after and overtook
+her. He who had spoken touched her with the butt of his whip. “Ecod!”
+he exclaimed. “It’s the lass we saw run for a guinea last May Day at
+Jamestown! Why so far from home, light o’ heels?”
+
+A wild leap of her heart, a singing in her ears, and Audrey clutched at
+safety.
+
+“I be Joan, the smith’s daughter,” she said stolidly. “I niver ran for
+a guinea. I niver saw a guinea. I be going an errand for feyther.”
+
+“Ecod, then!” said the other man. “You’re on a wrong scent. ’Twas no
+dolt that ran that day!”
+
+The man who had touched her laughed. “’Facks, you are right, Tom! But
+I’d ha’ sworn ’t was that brown girl. Go your ways on your errand for
+’feyther’!” As he spoke, being of an amorous turn, he stooped from his
+saddle and kissed her. Audrey, since she was at that time not Audrey at
+all, but Joan, the smith’s daughter, took the salute as stolidly as she
+had spoken. The two men rode away, and the second said to the first: “A
+Williamsburgh man told me that the girl who won the guinea could speak
+and look like a born lady. Didn’t ye hear the story of how she went to
+the Governor’s ball, all tricked out, dancing, and making people think
+she was some fine dame from Maryland maybe? And the next day she was
+scored in church before all the town. I don’t know as they put a white
+sheet on her, but they say ’t was no more than her deserts.”
+
+Audrey, left standing in the sunny road, retook her own countenance,
+rubbed her cheek where the man’s lips had touched it, and trembled
+like a leaf. She was frightened, both at the encounter and because she
+could make herself so like Joan,--Joan who lived near the crossroads
+ordinary, and who had been whipped at the Court House.
+
+Late that afternoon she came upon two or three rude dwellings clustered
+about a mill. A knot of men, the miller in the midst, stood and gazed
+at the mill-stream. They wore an angry look; and Audrey passed them
+hastily by. At the farthest house she paused to beg a piece of bread;
+but the woman who came to the door frowned and roughly bade her begone,
+and a child threw a stone at her. “One witch is enough to take the
+bread out of poor folks’ mouths!” cried the woman. “Be off, or I’ll set
+the dogs on ye!” The children ran after her as she hastened from the
+inhospitable neighborhood. “’T is a young witch,” they cried, “going to
+help the old one swim to-night!” and a stone struck her, bruising her
+shoulder.
+
+She began to run, and, fleet of foot as she was, soon distanced her
+tormentors. When she slackened pace it was sunset, and she was faint
+with hunger and desperately weary. From the road a bypath led to a
+small clearing in a wood, with a slender spiral of smoke showing
+between the trees. Audrey went that way, and came upon a crazy cabin
+whose door and window were fast closed. In the unkempt garden rose an
+apple-tree, with the red apples shriveling upon its boughs, and from
+the broken gate a line of cedars, black and ragged, ran down to a piece
+of water, here ghastly pale, there streaked like the sky above with
+angry crimson. The place was very still, and the air felt cold. When no
+answer came to her first knocking, Audrey beat upon the door; for she
+was suddenly afraid of the road behind her, and of the doleful woods
+and the coming night.
+
+The window shutter creaked ever so slightly, and some one looked out;
+then the door opened, and a very old and wrinkled woman, with lines of
+cunning about her mouth, laid her hand upon the girl’s arm. “Who be
+ye?” she whispered. “Did ye bring warning? I don’t say, mind ye, that
+I can’t make a stream go dry,--maybe I can and maybe I can’t,--but I
+didn’t put a word on the one yonder.” She threw up her arms with a
+wailing cry. “But they won’t believe what a poor old soul says! Are
+they in an evil temper, honey?”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean,” said Audrey. “I have come a long way, and
+I am hungry and tired. Give me a piece of bread, and let me stay with
+you to-night.”
+
+The old woman moved aside, and the girl, entering a room that was mean
+and poor enough, sat down upon a stool beside the fire. “If ye came by
+the mill,” demanded her hostess, with a suspicious eye, “why did ye not
+stop there for bite and sup?”
+
+“The men were all talking together,” answered Audrey wearily. “They
+looked so angry that I was afraid of them. I did stop at one house;
+but the woman bade me begone, and the children threw stones at me and
+called me a witch.”
+
+The crone stooped and stirred the fire; then from a cupboard brought
+forth bread and a little red wine, and set them before the girl. “They
+called you a witch, did they?” she mumbled as she went to and fro. “And
+the men were talking and planning together?”
+
+Audrey ate the bread and drank the wine; then, because she was so
+tired, leaned her head against the table and fell half asleep. When she
+roused herself, it was to find her withered hostess standing over her
+with a sly and toothless smile. “I’ve been thinking,” she whispered,
+“that since you’re here to mind the house, I’ll just step out to a
+neighbor’s about some business I have in hand. You can stay by the
+fire, honey, and be warm and comfortable. Maybe I’ll not come back
+to-night.”
+
+Going to the window, she dropped a heavy bar across the shutter. “Ye’ll
+put the chain across the door when I’m out,” she commanded. “There be
+evil-disposed folk may want to win in.” Coming back to the girl, she
+laid a skinny hand upon her arm. Whether with palsy or with fright the
+hand shook like a leaf, but Audrey, half asleep again, noticed little
+beyond the fact that the fire warmed her, and that here at last was
+rest. “If there should come a knocking and a calling, honey,” whispered
+the witch, “don’t ye answer to it or unbar the door. Ye’ll save time
+for me that way. But if they win in, tell them I went to the northward.”
+
+Audrey looked at her with glazed, uncomprehending eyes, while the
+gnome-like figure appeared to grow smaller, to melt out of the doorway.
+It was a minute or more before the wayfarer thus left alone in the
+hut could remember that she had been told to bar the door. Then her
+instinct of obedience sent her to the threshold. Dusk was falling, and
+the waters of the pool lay pale and still beyond the ebony cedars.
+Through the twilit landscape moved the crone who had housed her for the
+night; but she went not to the north, but southwards toward the river.
+Presently the dusk swallowed her up, and Audrey was left with the
+ragged garden and the broken fence and the tiny firelit hut. Reentering
+the room, she fastened the door, as she had been told to do, and then
+went back to the hearth. The fire blazed and the shadows danced; it was
+far better than last night, out in the cold, lying upon dead leaves,
+watching the falling stars. Here it was warm, warm as June in a walled
+garden; the fire was red like the roses ... the roses that had thorns
+to bring heart’s blood.
+
+Audrey fell fast asleep; and while she was asleep and the night was
+yet young, the miller whose mill stream had run dry, the keeper of a
+tippling house whose custom had dwindled, the ferryman whose child had
+peaked and pined and died, came with a score of men to reckon with
+the witch who had done the mischief. Finding door and window fast
+shut, they knocked, softly at first, then loudly and with threats. One
+watched the chimney, to see that the witch did not ride forth that way;
+and the father of the child wished to gather brush, pile it against the
+entrance, and set all afire. The miller, who was a man of strength,
+ended the matter by breaking in the door. They knew that the witch was
+there, because they had heard her moving about, and, when the door
+gave, a cry of affright. When, however, they had laid hands upon her,
+and dragged her out under the stars, into the light of the torches they
+carried, they found that the witch, who, as was well known, could slip
+her shape as a snake slips its skin, was no longer old and bowed, but
+straight and young.
+
+“Let me go!” cried Audrey. “How dare you hold me! I never harmed one of
+you. I am a poor girl come from a long way off”--
+
+“Ay, a long way!” exclaimed the ferryman. “More leagues, I’ll warrant,
+than there are miles in Virginia! We’ll see if ye can swim home, ye
+witch!”
+
+“I’m no witch!” cried the girl again. “I never harmed you. Let me go!”
+
+One of the torchbearers gave ground a little. “She do look mortal
+young. But where be the witch, then?”
+
+Audrey strove to shake herself free. “The old woman left me alone in
+the house. She went to--to the northward.”
+
+“She lies!” cried the ferryman, addressing himself to the angry throng.
+The torches, flaming in the night wind, gave forth a streaming,
+uncertain, and bewildering light; to the excited imaginations of the
+rustic avengers, the form in the midst of them was not always that of a
+young girl, but now and again wavered toward the semblance of the hag
+who had wrought them evil. “Before the child died he talked forever of
+somebody young and fair that came and stood by him when he slept. We
+thought ’t was his dead mother, but now--now I see who ’t was!” Seizing
+the girl by the wrists, he burst with her through the crowd. “Let the
+water touch her, she’ll turn witch again!”
+
+The excited throng, blinded by its own imagination, took up the cry.
+The girl’s voice was drowned; she set her lips, and strove dumbly with
+her captors; but they swept her through the weed-grown garden and
+broken gate, past the cedars that were so ragged and black, down to the
+cold and deep water. She thought of the night upon the river and of
+the falling stars, and with a sudden, piercing cry struggled fiercely
+to escape. The bank was steep; hands pushed her forward: she felt the
+ghastly embrace of the water, and saw, ere the flood closed over her
+upturned face, the cold and quiet stars.
+
+So loud was the ringing in her ears that she heard no access of voices
+upon the bank, and knew not that a fresh commotion had arisen. She was
+sinking for the third time, and her mind had begun to wander in the
+Fair View garden, when an arm caught and held her up. She was borne
+to the shore; there were men on horseback; some one with a clear,
+authoritative voice was now berating, now good-humoredly arguing with,
+her late judges.
+
+The man who had sprung to save her held her up to arms that reached
+down from the bank above; another moment and she felt the earth again
+beneath her feet, but could only think that, with half the dying past,
+these strangers had been cruel to bring her back. Her rescuer shook
+himself like a great dog. “I’ve saved the witch alive,” he panted. “May
+God forgive and your Honor reward me!”
+
+“Nay, worthy constable, you must look to Sathanas for reward!” cried
+the gentleman who had been haranguing the miller and his company. These
+gentry, hardly convinced, but not prepared to debate the matter with
+a justice of the peace and a great man of those parts, began to slip
+away. The torchbearers, probably averse to holding a light to their own
+countenances, had flung the torches into the water, and now, heavily
+shadowed by the cedars, the place was in deep darkness. Presently there
+were left to berate only the miller and the ferryman, and at last these
+also went sullenly away without having troubled to mention the witch’s
+late transformation from age to youth.
+
+“Where is the rescued fair one?” continued the gentleman who, for his
+own pleasure, had led the conservers of law and order. “Produce the
+sibyl, honest Dogberry! Faith, if the lady be not an ingrate, you’ve
+henceforth a friend at court!”
+
+“My name is Saunders,--Dick Saunders, your Honor,” quoth the constable.
+“For the witch, she lies quiet on the ground beneath the cedar yonder.”
+
+“She won’t speak!” cried another. “She just lies there trembling, with
+her face in her hands.”
+
+“But she said, ‘O Christ!’ when we took her from the water,” put in a
+third.
+
+“She was nigh drowned,” ended the constable. “And I’m a-tremble myself,
+the water was that cold. Wauns! I wish I were in the chimney corner at
+the Court House ordinary!”
+
+The master of Westover flung his riding cloak to one of the constable’s
+men. “Wrap it around the shivering iniquity on the ground yonder; and
+you, Tom Hope, that brought warning of what your neighbors would do,
+mount and take the witch behind you. Master Constable, you will lodge
+Hecate in the gaol to-night, and in the morning bring her up to the
+great house. We would inquire why a lady so accomplished that she
+can dry a mill stream to plague a miller cannot drain a pool to save
+herself from drowning!”
+
+At a crossing of the ways, shortly before Court House, gaol, and
+ordinary were reached, the adventurous Colonel gave a good-night to the
+constable and his company, and, with a negro servant at his heels, rode
+gayly on beneath the stars to his house at Westover. Hardy, alert, in
+love with living, he was well amused by the night’s proceedings. The
+incident should figure in his next letter to Orrery or to his cousin
+Taylor.
+
+It figured largely in the table-talk next morning, when the sprightly
+gentleman sat at breakfast with his daughter and his second wife, a
+fair and youthful kinswoman of Martha and Teresa Blount. The gentleman,
+launched upon the subject of witchcraft, handled it with equal wit and
+learning. The ladies thought that the water must have been very cold,
+and trusted that the old dame was properly grateful, and would, after
+such a lesson, leave her evil practices. As they were rising from
+table, word was brought to the master that constable and witch were
+outside.
+
+The Colonel kissed his wife, promised his daughter to be merciful, and,
+humming a song, went through the hall to the open house door and the
+broad, three-sided steps of stone. The constable was awaiting him.
+
+“Here be mysteries, your Honor! As I serve the King, ’t weren’t Goody
+Price for whom I ruined my new frieze, but a slip of a girl!” He waved
+his hand. “Will your Honor please to look?”
+
+Audrey sat in the sunshine upon the stone steps with her head bowed
+upon her arms. The morning that was so bright was not bright for her;
+she thought that life had used her but unkindly. A great tree, growing
+close to the house, sent leaves of dull gold adrift, and they lay at
+her feet and upon the skirt of her dress. The constable spoke to her:
+“Now, mistress, here’s a gentleman as stands for the King and the law.
+Look up!”
+
+A white hand was laid upon the Colonel’s arm. “I came to make sure
+that you were not harsh with the poor creature,” said Evelyn’s pitying
+voice. “There is so much misery. Where is she? Ah!”
+
+To gain at last his prisoner’s attention, the constable struck her
+lightly across the shoulders with his cane. “Get up!” he cried
+impatiently. “Get up and make your curtsy! Ecod, I wish I’d left you in
+Hunter’s Pond!”
+
+Audrey rose, and turned her face, not to the justice of the peace
+and arbiter of the fate of witches, but to Evelyn, standing above
+her,--Evelyn, slighter, paler, than she had been at Williamsburgh, but
+beautiful in her colored, fragrant silks and the air that was hers of
+sweet and mournful distinction. Now she cried out sharply, while “That
+girl again!” swore the Colonel, beneath his breath.
+
+Audrey did as she had been told, and made her curtsy. Then, while
+father and daughter stared at her, the gentleman very red and biting
+his lip, the lady marble in her loveliness, she tried to speak, to
+ask them to let her go, but found no words. The face of Evelyn, at
+whom alone she looked, wavered into distance, gazing at her coldly and
+mournfully from miles away. She made a faint gesture of weariness and
+despair; then sank down at Evelyn’s feet, and lay there in a swoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+TWO WOMEN
+
+
+Evelyn, hearing footsteps across the floor of the attic room above her
+own bedchamber, arose and set wide the door; then went back to her
+chair by the window that looked out upon green grass and party-colored
+trees and long reaches of the shining river. “Come here, if you
+please,” she called to Audrey, as the latter slowly descended the
+stair from the room where, half asleep, half awake, she had lain since
+morning.
+
+Audrey entered the pleasant chamber, furnished with what luxury the age
+afforded, and stood before the sometime princess of her dreams. “Will
+you not sit down?” asked Evelyn, in a low voice, and pointed to a chair.
+
+“I had rather stand,” answered Audrey. “Why did you call me? I was on
+my way”--
+
+The other’s clear eyes dwelt upon her. “Whither were you going?”
+
+“Out of your house,” said Audrey simply, “and out of your life.”
+
+Evelyn folded her hands in her silken lap, and looked out upon river
+and sky and ceaseless drift of colored leaves. “You can never go out of
+my life,” she said. “Why the power to vex and ruin was given you I do
+not know, but you have used it. Why did you run away from Fair View?”
+
+“That I might never see Mr. Haward again,” answered Audrey. She held
+her head up, but she felt the stab. It had not occurred to her that
+hers was the power to vex and ruin; apparently that belonged elsewhere.
+
+Evelyn turned from the window, and the two women, the princess and the
+herdgirl, regarded each other. “Oh, my God!” cried Evelyn. “I did not
+know that you loved him so!”
+
+But Audrey shook her head, and spoke with calmness: “Once I loved and
+knew it not, and once I loved and knew it. It was all in a dream, and
+now I have waked up.” She passed her hand across her brow and eyes, and
+pushed back her heavy hair. It was a gesture that was common to her.
+To Evelyn it brought a sudden stinging memory of the ballroom at the
+Palace; of how this girl had looked in her splendid dress, with the
+roses in her hair; of Haward’s words at the coach door. She had not
+seen him since that night. “I am going a long way,” continued Audrey.
+“It will be as though I died. I never meant to harm you.”
+
+The other gazed at her with wide, dry eyes, and with an unwonted color
+in her cheeks. “She is beautiful,” thought Audrey; then wondered how
+long she must stay in this room and this house. Without the window the
+trees beckoned, the light was fair upon the river; in the south hung a
+cloud, silver-hued, and shaped like two mighty wings. Audrey, with her
+eyes upon the cloud, thought, “If the wings were mine, I would reach
+the mountains to-night.”
+
+“Do you remember last May Day?” asked Evelyn, in a voice scarcely above
+a whisper. “He and I, sitting side by side, watched your running, and
+I praised you to him. Then we went away, and while we gathered flowers
+on the road to Williamsburgh he asked me to be his wife. I said no, for
+he loved me not as I wished to be loved. Afterward, in Williamsburgh,
+he spoke again.... I said, ‘When you come to Westover;’ and he kissed
+my hand, and vowed that the next week should find him here.” She turned
+once more to the window, and, with her chin in her hand, looked out
+upon the beauty of the autumn. “Day by day, and day by day,” she said,
+in the same hushed voice, “I sat at this window and watched for him to
+come. The weeks went by, and he came not. I began to hear talk of you.
+Oh, I deny not that it was bitter!”
+
+“Oh me! oh me!” cried Audrey. “I was so happy, and I thought no harm.”
+
+“He came at last,” continued Evelyn. “For a month he stayed here,
+paying me court. I was too proud to speak of what I had heard. After a
+while I thought it must have been an idle rumor.” Her voice changed,
+and with a sudden gesture of passion and despair she lifted her arms
+above her head, then clasped and wrung her hands. “Oh, for a month
+he forgot you! In all the years to come I shall have that comfort:
+for one little month, in the company of the woman whom, because she
+was of his own rank, because she had wealth, because others found her
+fair and honored her with heart as well as lip, he wished to make his
+wife,--for that short month he forgot you! The days were sweet to me,
+sweet, sweet! Oh, I dreamed my dreams!... And then we were called to
+Williamsburgh to greet the new Governor, and he went with us, and
+again I heard your name coupled with his.... There was between us no
+betrothal. I had delayed to say yes to his asking, for I wished to make
+sure,--to make sure that he loved me. No man can say he broke troth
+with me. For that my pride gives thanks!”
+
+“What must I do?” said Audrey to herself. “Pain is hard to bear.”
+
+“That night at the ball,” continued Evelyn, “when, coming down the
+stair, I saw you standing beside him ... and after that, the music,
+and the lights, and you dancing with him, in your dark beauty, with
+the flowers in your hair ... and after that, you and I in my coach and
+his face at the window!... Oh, I can tell you what he said! He said:
+‘Good-by, sweetheart.... The violets are for you; but the great white
+blossoms, and the boughs of rosy mist, and all the trees that wave in
+the wind are for Audrey.’”
+
+“For me!” cried Audrey,--“for me an hour in Bruton church next morning!”
+
+A silence followed her words. Evelyn, sitting in the great chair,
+rested her cheek upon her hand and gazed steadfastly at her guest of a
+day. The sunshine had stolen from the room, but dwelt upon and caressed
+the world without the window. Faint, tinkling notes of a harpsichord
+floated up from the parlor below, followed by young Madam Byrd’s voice
+singing to the perturbed Colonel:--
+
+    “‘O Love! they wrong thee much,
+      That say thy sweet is bitter,
+      When thy rich fruit is such
+      As nothing can be sweeter.
+      Fair house of joy and bliss’”--
+
+The song came to an end, but after a pause the harpsichord sounded
+again, and the singer’s voice rang out:--
+
+    “‘Under the greenwood tree,
+      Who loves to lie with me’”--
+
+Audrey gave an involuntary cry; then, with her lip between her teeth,
+strove for courage, failed, and with another strangled cry sank upon
+her knees before a chair and buried her face in its cushions.
+
+When a little time had passed, Evelyn arose and went to her. “Fate has
+played with us both,” she said, in a voice that strove for calmness.
+“If there was great bitterness in my heart toward you then, I hope
+it is not so now; if, on that night, I spoke harshly, unkindly,
+ungenerously, I--I am sorry. I thought what others thought. I--I cared
+not to touch you.... But now I am told that ’t was not you that did
+unworthily. Mr. Haward has written to me; days ago I had this letter.”
+It was in her hand, and she held it out to the kneeling girl. “Yes,
+yes, you must read; it concerns you.” Her voice, low and broken, was
+yet imperious. Audrey raised her head, took and read the letter.
+There were but a few unsteady lines, written from Marot’s ordinary
+at Williamsburgh. The writer was too weak as yet for many words; few
+words were best, perhaps. His was all the blame for the occurrence
+at the Palace, for all besides. That which, upon his recovery, he
+must strive to teach his acquaintance at large he prayed Evelyn to
+believe at once and forever. She whom, against her will and in the
+madness of his fever, he had taken to the Governor’s house was most
+innocent,--guiltless of all save a childlike affection for the writer,
+a misplaced confidence, born of old days, and now shattered by his
+own hand. Before that night she had never guessed his passion, never
+known the use that had been made of her name. This upon the honor of
+a gentleman. For the rest, as soon as his strength was regained, he
+purposed traveling to Westover. There, if Mistress Evelyn Byrd would
+receive him for an hour, he might in some measure explain, excuse. For
+much, he knew, there was no excuse,--only pardon to be asked.
+
+The letter ended abruptly, as though the writer’s strength were
+exhausted. Audrey read it through, then with indifference gave it back
+to Evelyn. “It is true,--what he says?” whispered the latter, crumpling
+the paper in her hand.
+
+Audrey gazed up at her with wide, tearless eyes. “Yes, it is true.
+There was no need for you to use those words to me in the coach, that
+night,--though even then I did not understand. There is no reason why
+you should fear to touch me.”
+
+Her head sank upon her arm. In the parlor below the singing came to
+an end, but the harpsichord, lightly fingered, gave forth a haunting
+melody. It was suited to the afternoon: to the golden light, the
+drifting leaves, the murmurs of wind and wave, without the window: to
+the shadows, the stillness, and the sorrow within the room. Evelyn,
+turning slowly toward the kneeling figure, of a sudden saw it through a
+mist of tears. Her clasped hands parted; she bent and touched the bowed
+head. Audrey looked up, and her dark eyes made appeal. Evelyn stooped
+lower yet; her tears fell upon Audrey’s brow; a moment, and the two,
+cast by life in the selfsame tragedy, were in each other’s arms.
+
+“You know that I came from the mountains,” whispered Audrey. “I
+am going back. You must tell no one; in a little while I shall be
+forgotten.”
+
+“To the mountains!” cried Evelyn. “No one lives there. You would die of
+cold and hunger. No, no! We are alike unhappy: you shall stay with me
+here at Westover.”
+
+[Illustration: HER DARK EYES MADE APPEAL]
+
+She rose from her knees, and Audrey rose with her. They no longer
+clasped each other,--that impulse was past,--but their eyes met in
+sorrowful amity. Audrey shook her head. “That may not be,” she said
+simply. “I must go away that we may not both be unhappy.” She lifted
+her face to the cloud in the south, “I almost died last night. When you
+drown, there is at first fear and struggling, but at last it is like
+dreaming, and there is a lightness.... When that came I thought, ‘It is
+the air of the mountains,--I am drawing near them.’ ... Will you let me
+go now? I will slip from the house through the fields into the woods,
+and none will know”--
+
+But Evelyn caught her by the wrist. “You are beside yourself! I would
+rouse the plantation; in an hour you would be found. Stay with me!”
+
+A knock at the door, and the Colonel’s secretary, a pale and grave
+young man, bowing on the threshold. He was just come from the attic
+room, where he had failed to find the young woman who had been lodged
+there that morning. The Colonel, supposing that by now she was
+recovered from her swoon and her fright of the night before, and having
+certain questions to put to her, desired her to descend to the parlor.
+Hearing voices in Mistress Evelyn’s room--
+
+“Very well, Mr. Drew,” said the lady. “You need not wait. I will myself
+seek my father with--with our guest.”
+
+In the parlor Madam Byrd was yet at the harpsichord, but ceased to
+touch the keys when her step-daughter, followed by Darden’s Audrey,
+entered the room. The master of Westover, seated beside his young wife,
+looked quickly up, arched his brows and turned somewhat red, as his
+daughter, with her gliding step, crossed the room to greet him. Audrey,
+obeying a motion of her companion’s hand, waited beside a window,
+in the shadow of its heavy curtains. “Evelyn,” quoth the Colonel,
+rising from his chair and taking his daughter’s hand, “this is scarce
+befitting”--
+
+Evelyn stayed his further speech by an appealing gesture. “Let me speak
+with you, sir. No, no, madam, do not go! There is naught the world
+might not hear.”
+
+Audrey waited in the shadow by the window, and her mind was busy, for
+she had her plans to lay. Sometimes Evelyn’s low voice, sometimes the
+Colonel’s deeper tones, pierced her understanding; when this was so she
+moved restlessly, wishing that it were night and she away. Presently
+she began to observe the room, which was richly furnished. There were
+garlands upon the ceiling; a table near her was set with many curious
+ornaments; upon a tall cabinet stood a bowl of yellow flowers; the lady
+at the harpsichord wore a dress to match the flowers, while Evelyn’s
+dress was white; beyond them was a pier glass finer than the one at
+Fair View.
+
+This glass reflected the doorway, and thus she was the first to see the
+man from whom she had fled. “Mr. Marmaduke Haward, massa!” announced
+the servant who had ushered him through the hall.
+
+Haward, hat in hand, entered the room. The three beside the harpsichord
+arose; the one at the window slipped deeper into the shadow of the
+curtains, and so escaped the visitor’s observation. The latter bowed to
+the master of Westover, who ceremoniously returned the salute, and to
+the two ladies, who curtsied to him, but opened not their lips.
+
+“This, sir,” said Colonel Byrd, holding himself very erect, “is an
+unexpected honor.”
+
+“Rather, sir, an unwished-for intrusion,” answered the other. “I beg
+you to believe that I will trouble you for no longer time than matters
+require.”
+
+The Colonel bit his lip. “There was a time when Mr. Haward was most
+welcome to my house. If ’t is no longer thus”--
+
+Haward made a gesture of assent. “I know that the time is past. I am
+sorry that ’t is so. I had thought, sir, to find you alone. Am I to
+speak before these ladies?”
+
+The Colonel hesitated, but Evelyn, leaving Madam Byrd beside the
+harpsichord, came to her father’s side. That gentleman glanced at her
+keenly. There was no agitation to mar the pensive loveliness of her
+face; her eyes were steadfast, the lips faintly smiling. “If what you
+have to say concerns my daughter,” said the Colonel, “she will listen
+to you here and now.”
+
+For a few moments dead silence; then Haward spoke, slowly, weighing
+his words: “I am on my way, Colonel Byrd, to the country beyond the
+falls. I have entered upon a search, and I know not when it will be
+ended or when I shall return. Westover lay in my path, and there was
+that which needed to be said to you, sir, and to your daughter. When it
+has been said I will take my leave.” He paused; then, with a quickened
+breath, again took up his task: “Some months ago, sir, I sought and
+obtained your permission to make my suit to your daughter for her hand.
+The lady, worthy of a better mate, hath done well in saying no to my
+importunity. I accept her decision, withdraw my suit, wish her all
+happiness.” He bowed again formally; then stood with lowered eyes, his
+hand griping the edge of the table.
+
+“I am aware that my daughter has declined to entertain your proposals,”
+said the Colonel coldly, “and I approve her determination. Is this all,
+sir?”
+
+“It should, perhaps, be all,” answered Haward. “And yet”--He turned to
+Evelyn, snow-white, calm, with that faint smile upon her face. “May I
+speak to you?” he said, in a scarcely audible voice.
+
+She looked at him, with parting lips.
+
+“Here and now,” the Colonel answered for her. “Be brief, sir.”
+
+The master of Fair View found it hard to speak, “Evelyn”--he began,
+and paused, biting his lip. It was very quiet in the familiar parlor,
+quiet and dim, and drawing toward eventide. The lady at the harpsichord
+chanced to let fall her hand upon the keys. They gave forth a deep and
+melancholy sound that vibrated through the room. The chord was like
+an odor in its subtle power to bring crowding memories. To Haward,
+and perhaps to Evelyn, scenes long shifted, long faded, took on fresh
+colors, glowed anew, replaced the canvas of the present. For years the
+two had been friends; later months had seen him her avowed suitor. In
+this very room he had bent over her at the harpsichord when the song
+was finished; had sat beside her in the deep window seat while the
+stars brightened, before the candles were brought in.
+
+Now, for a moment, he stood with his hand over his eyes; then, letting
+it fall, he spoke with firmness. “Evelyn,” he said, “if I have wronged
+you, forgive me. Our friendship that has been I lay at your feet:
+forget it and forget me. You are noble, generous, high of mind: I
+pray you to let no remembrance of me trouble your life. May it be
+happy,--may all good attend you.... Evelyn, good-by!”
+
+He kneeled and lifted to his lips the hem of her dress. As he rose,
+and bowing low would have taken formal leave of the two beside her,
+she put out her hand, staying him by the gesture and the look upon her
+colorless face. “You spoke of a search,” she said. “What search?”
+
+Haward raised his eyes to hers that were quiet, almost smiling, though
+darkly shadowed by past pain. “I will tell you, Evelyn. Why should not
+I tell you this, also?... Four days ago, upon my return to Fair View, I
+sought and found the woman that I love,--the woman that, by all that is
+best within me, I love worthily! She shrank from me; she listened not;
+she shut eye and ear, and fled. And I,--confident fool!--I thought,
+‘To-morrow I will make her heed,’ and so let her go. When the morrow
+came she was gone indeed.” He halted, made an involuntary gesture of
+distress, then went on, rapidly and with agitation: “There was a boat
+missing; she was seen to pass Jamestown, rowing steadily up the river.
+But for this I should have thought--I should have feared--God knows
+what I should not have feared! As it is I have searchers out, both on
+this side and on the southern shore. An Indian and myself have come up
+river in his canoe. We have not found her yet. If it be so that she has
+passed unseen through the settled country, I will seek her toward the
+mountains.”
+
+“And when you have found her, what then, sir?” cried the Colonel,
+tapping his snuffbox.
+
+“Then, sir,” answered Haward with hauteur, “she will become my wife.”
+
+He turned again to Evelyn, but when he spoke it was less to her than
+to himself. “It grows late,” he said. “Night is coming on, and at the
+fall of the leaf the nights are cold. One sleeping in the forest would
+suffer ... if she sleeps. I have not slept since she was missed. I must
+begone”--
+
+“It grows late indeed,” replied Evelyn, with lifted face and a voice
+low, clear, and sweet as a silver bell,--“so late that there is a rose
+flush in the sky beyond the river. Look! you may see it through yonder
+window.”
+
+She touched his hand and made him look to the far window. “Who is it
+that stands in the shadow, hiding her face in her hands?” he asked at
+last, beneath his breath.
+
+“’Tis Audrey,” answered Evelyn, in the same clear, sweet, and
+passionless tones. She took her hand from his and addressed herself to
+her father. “Dear sir,” she said, “to my mind no quarrel exists between
+us and this gentleman. There is no reason”--she drew herself up--“no
+reason why we should not extend to Mr. Marmaduke Haward the hospitality
+of Westover.” She smiled and leaned against her father’s arm. “And now
+let us three,--you and Maria, whom I protest you keep too long at the
+harpsichord, and I, who love this hour of the evening,--let us go walk
+in the garden and see what flowers the frost has spared.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+SANCTUARY
+
+
+“Child,” demanded Haward, “why did you frighten me so?” He took her
+hands from her face, and drew her from the shadow of the curtain into
+the evening glow. Her hands lay passive in his; her eyes held the
+despair of a runner spent and fallen, with the goal just in sight.
+“Would have had me go again to the mountains for you, little maid?”
+Haward’s voice trembled with the delight of his ended quest.
+
+“Call me not by that name,” Audrey said. “One that is dead used it.”
+
+“I will call you love,” he answered,--“my love, my dear love, my true
+love!”
+
+“Nor that either,” she said, and caught her breath. “I know not why you
+should speak to me so.”
+
+“What must I call you then?” he asked, with the smile still upon his
+lips.
+
+“A stranger and a dreamer,” she answered. “Go your ways, and I will go
+mine.”
+
+There was silence in the room, broken by Haward. “For us two one path,”
+he said; “why, Audrey, Audrey, Audrey!” Suddenly he caught her in his
+arms. “My love!” he whispered--“my love Audrey! my wife Audrey!” His
+kisses rained upon her face. She lay quiet until the storm had passed;
+then freed herself, looked at him, and shook her head.
+
+“You killed him,” she said, “that one whom I--worshiped. It was not
+well done of you.... There was a dream I had last summer. I told it
+to--to the one you killed. Now part of the dream has come true.... You
+never were! Oh, death had been easy pain, for it had left memory, hope!
+But you never were! you never were!”
+
+“I am!” cried Haward ardently. “I am your lover! I am he who says to
+you, Forget the past, forget and forgive, and come with me out of
+your dreaming. Come, Audrey, come, come, from the dim woods into the
+sunshine,--into the sunshine of the garden! The night you went away I
+was there, Audrey, under the stars. The paths were deep in leaves, the
+flowers dead and blackening; but the trees will be green again, and the
+flowers bloom! When we are wed we will walk there, bringing the spring
+with us”--
+
+“When we are wed!” she answered. “That will never be.”
+
+“It will be this week,” he said, smiling. “Dear dryad, who have no
+friends to make a pother, no dowry to lug with you, no gay wedding
+raiment to provide; who have only to curtsy farewell to the trees and
+put your hand in mine”--
+
+She drew away her hands that he had caught in his, and pressed them
+above her heart; then looked restlessly from window to door. “Will you
+let me pass, sir?” she asked at last. “I am tired. I have to think what
+I am to do, where I am to go.”
+
+“Where you are to go!” he exclaimed. “Why, back to the glebe house, and
+I will follow, and the minister shall marry us. Child, child! where
+else should you go? What else should you do?”
+
+“God knows!” cried the girl, with sudden and extraordinary passion.
+“But not that! Oh, he is gone,--that other who would have understood!”
+
+Haward let fall his outstretched hand, drew back a pace or two, and
+stood with knitted brows. The room was very quiet; only Audrey breathed
+hurriedly, and through the open window came the sudden, lonely cry of
+some river bird. The note was repeated ere Haward spoke again.
+
+“I will try to understand,” he said slowly. “Audrey, is it Evelyn that
+comes between us?”
+
+Audrey passed her hand over her eyes and brow and pushed back her heavy
+hair. “Oh, I have wronged her!” she cried. “I have taken her portion.
+If once she was cruel to me, yet to-day she kissed me, her tears fell
+upon my face. That which I have robbed her of I want not.... Oh, my
+heart, my heart!”
+
+“‘T is I, not you, who have wronged this lady,” said Haward, after a
+pause. “I have, I hope, her forgiveness. Is this the fault that keeps
+you from me?”
+
+Audrey answered not, but leaned against the window and looked at the
+cloud in the south that was now an amethyst island. Haward went closer
+to her. “Is it,” he said, “is it because in my mind I sinned against
+you, Audrey, because I brought upon you insult and calumny? Child,
+child! I am of the world. That I did all this is true, but now I would
+not purchase endless bliss with your least harm, and your name is more
+to me than my own. Forgive me, Audrey, forgive the past.” He bowed his
+head as he stood before her.
+
+Audrey gazed at him with wide, dry eyes whose lids burned. A hot color
+had risen to her cheek; at her heart was a heavier aching, a fuller
+knowledge of loss. “There is no past,” she said. “It was a dream and a
+lie. There is only to-day ... _and you are a stranger_.”
+
+The purple cloud across the river began to darken; there came again the
+lonely cry of the bird; in the house quarter the slaves were singing
+as they went about their work. Suddenly Audrey laughed. It was sad
+laughter, as mocking and elfin and mirthless a sound as was ever heard
+in autumn twilight. “A stranger!” she repeated. “I know you by your
+name, and that is all. You are Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View, while
+I--I am Darden’s Audrey!”
+
+She curtsied to him, so changed, so defiant, so darkly beautiful, that
+he caught his breath to behold her. “You are all the world to me!” he
+cried. “Audrey, Audrey! Look at me, listen to me!”
+
+He would have approached her, would have seized her hand, but she
+waved him back. “Oh, the world! We must think of that! What would they
+say, the Governor and the Council, and the people who go to balls,
+and all the great folk you write to in England,--what would they say
+if you married me? Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View, the richest man
+in Virginia! Mr. Marmaduke Haward, the man of taste, the scholar, the
+fine gentleman, proud of his name, jealous of his honor! And Darden’s
+Audrey, who hath gone barefoot on errands to most houses in Fair View
+parish! Darden’s Audrey, whom the preacher pointed out to the people
+in Bruton church! They would call you mad; they would give you cap
+and bells; they would say, ‘Does he think that he can make her one of
+us?--her that we turned and looked long upon in Bruton church, when the
+preacher called her by a right name’”--
+
+“Child, for God’s sake!” cried Haward.
+
+“There is the lady, too,--the lady who left us here together! We must
+not forget to think of her,--of her whose picture you showed me at
+Fair View, who was to be your wife, who took me by the hand that night
+at the Palace. There is reproach in her eyes. Ah, do you not think
+the look might grow, might come to haunt us? And yourself! Oh, sooner
+or later regret and weariness would come to dwell at Fair View! The
+lady who walks in the garden here is a fine lady and a fit mate for a
+fine gentleman, and I am a beggar maid and no man’s mate, unless it be
+Hugon’s. Hugon, who has sworn to have me in the house he has built!
+Hugon, who would surely kill you”--
+
+Haward caught her by the wrists, bruising them in his grasp. “Audrey,
+Audrey! Let these fancies be! If we love each other”--
+
+“If!” she echoed, and pulled her hands away. Her voice was strange,
+her eyes were bright and strained, her face was burning. “But if not,
+what then? And how should I love you who are a stranger to me? Oh,
+a generous stranger who, where he thinks he has done a wrong, would
+repair the damage.” Her voice broke; she flung back her head and
+pressed her hands against her throat. “You have done me no wrong,” she
+said. “If you had, I would forgive you, would say good-by to you, would
+go my way.... as I am going now. Let me pass, sir!”
+
+Haward barred her way. “A stranger!” he said, beneath his breath. “Is
+there then no tie between shadow and substance, dream and reality?”
+
+“None!” answered Audrey, with defiance. “Why did you come to the
+mountains, eleven years ago? What business was it of yours whether I
+lived or died? Oh, God was not kind to send you there!”
+
+“You loved me once!” he cried. “Audrey, Audrey, have I slain your love?”
+
+“It was never yours!” she answered passionately, “It was that
+other’s,--that other whom I imagined, who never lived outside my dream!
+Oh, let me pass, let me begone! You are cruel to keep me. I--I am so
+tired.”
+
+White to the lips, Haward moved backward a step or two, but yet stood
+between her and the door. Moments passed before he spoke; then, “Will
+you become my wife?” he asked, in a studiously quiet voice. “Marry me,
+Audrey, loving me not. Love may come in time, but give me now the right
+to be your protector, the power to clear your name.”
+
+She looked at him with a strange smile, a fine gesture of scorn. “Marry
+you, loving you not! That will I never do. Protector! That is a word I
+have grown to dislike. My name! It is a slight thing. What matter if
+folk look askance when it is only Darden’s Audrey? And there are those
+whom an ill fame does not frighten. The schoolmaster will still give me
+books to read, and tell me what they mean. He will not care, nor the
+drunken minister, nor Hugon.... I am going back to them, to Mistress
+Deborah and the glebe house. She will beat me, and the minister will
+curse, but they will take me in.... I will work very hard, and never
+look to Fair View. I see now that I could never reach the mountains.”
+She began to move toward the door. He kept with her, step for step, his
+eyes upon her face. “You will come no more to the glebe house,” she
+said. “If you do, though the mountains be far the river is near.”
+
+He put his hand upon the latch of the door. “You will rest here
+to-night?” he asked gently, as of a child. “I will speak to Colonel
+Byrd; to-morrow he will send some one with you down the river. It will
+be managed for you, and as you wish. You will rest to-night? You go
+from me now to your room, Audrey?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, and thought she spoke the truth.
+
+“I love you,--love you greatly,” he continued. “I will
+conquer,--conquer and atone! But now, poor tired one, I let you go.
+Sleep, Audrey, sleep and dream again.” He held open the door for her,
+and stood aside with bent head.
+
+She passed him; then turned, and after a moment of silence spoke to him
+with a strange and sorrowful stateliness. “You think, sir,” she said,
+“that I have something to forgive?”
+
+“Much,” he answered,--“very much, Audrey.”
+
+“And you wish my forgiveness?”
+
+“Ay, Audrey, your forgiveness and your love.”
+
+“The first is mine to give,” she said. “If you wish it, take it. I
+forgive you, sir. Good-by.”
+
+“Good-night,” he answered. “Audrey, good-night.”
+
+“Good-by,” she repeated, and slowly mounting the broad staircase passed
+from his sight.
+
+It was dark in the upper hall, but there was a great glimmer of sky, an
+opal space to mark a window that gave upon the sloping lawn and pallid
+river. The pale light seemed to beckon. Audrey went not on to her attic
+room, but to the window, and in doing so passed a small half-open door.
+As she went by she glanced through the aperture, and saw that there was
+a narrow stairway, built for the servants’ use, winding down to a door
+in the western face of the house.
+
+Once at the open window, she leaned forth and looked to the east and
+the west. The hush of the evening had fallen; the light was faint;
+above the last rose flush a great star palely shone. All was quiet,
+deserted; nothing stirring on the leaf-carpeted slope; no sound save
+the distant singing of the slaves. The river lay bare from shore to
+shore, save where the Westover landing stretched raggedly into the
+flood. To its piles small boats were tied, but there seemed to be no
+boatmen; wharf and river appeared as barren of movement and life as did
+the long expanse of dusky lawn.
+
+“I will not sleep in this house to-night,” said Audrey to herself. “If
+I can reach those boats unseen, I will go alone down the river. That
+will be well. I am not wanted here.”
+
+When she arrived at the foot of the narrow stair, she slipped through
+the door into a world all dusk and quiet, where was none to observe
+her, none to stay her. Crouching by the wall she crept to the front of
+the house, stole around the stone steps where, that morning, she had
+sat in the sunshine, and came to the parlor windows. Close beneath one
+was a block of stone. After a moment’s hesitation she stood upon this,
+and, pressing her face against the window pane, looked her last upon
+the room she had so lately left. A low fire upon the hearth, darkly
+illumined it: he sat by the table, with his arms outstretched and his
+head bowed upon them. Audrey dropped from the stone into the ever
+growing shadows, crossed the lawn, slipped below the bank, and took
+her way along the river edge to the long landing. When she was half
+way down its length, she saw that there was a canoe which she had not
+observed and that it held one man, who sat with his back to the shore.
+With a quick breath of dismay she stood still, then setting her lips
+went on; for the more she thought of having to see those two again,
+Evelyn and the master of Fair View, the stronger grew her determination
+to commence her backward journey alone and at once.
+
+She had almost reached the end of the wharf when the man in the boat
+stood up and faced her. It was Hugon. The dusk was not so great but
+that the two, the hunter and his quarry, could see each other plainly.
+The latter turned with the sob of a stricken deer, but the impulse
+to flight lasted not. Where might she go? Run blindly, north or east
+or west, through the fields of Westover? That would shortly lead to
+cowering in some wood or swamp while the feet of the searchers came
+momently nearer. Return to the house, stand at bay once more? With all
+her strength of soul she put this course from her.
+
+The quick strife in her mind ended in her moving slowly, as though
+drawn by an invisible hand, to the edge of the wharf, above Hugon and
+his canoe. She did not wonder to see him there. Every word that Haward
+had spoken in the Westover parlor was burned upon her brain, and he had
+said that he had come up river with an Indian. This was the Indian, and
+to hunt her down those two had joined forces.
+
+“Ma’m’selle Audrey,” whispered the trader, staring as at a spirit.
+
+“Yes, Jean Hugon,” she answered, and looked down the glimmering reaches
+of the James, then at the slender canoe and the deep and dark water
+that flowed between the piles. In the slight craft, with that strong
+man the river for ally, she were safe as in a tower of brass.
+
+“I am going home, Jean,” she said. “Will you row me down the river
+to-night, and tell me as we go your stories of the woods and your
+father’s glories in France? If you speak of other things I will drown
+myself, for I am tired of hearing them. In the morning we will stop at
+some landing for food, and then go on again. Let us hasten”--
+
+The trader moistened his lips. “And him,” he demanded hoarsely,--“that
+Englishman, that Marmaduke Haward of Fair View, who came to me and
+said, ‘Half-breed, seeing that an Indian and a bloodhound have gifts in
+common, we will take up the quest together. Find her, though it be to
+lose her to me that same hour! And look that in our travels you try no
+foul play, for this time I go armed,’--what of him?”
+
+Audrey waved her hand toward the house she had left. “He is there. Let
+us make haste.” As she spoke she descended the steps, and, evading his
+eager hand, stepped into the canoe. He looked at her doubtfully, half
+afraid, so strange was it to see her sitting there, so like a spirit
+from the land beyond the sun, a _revenant_ out of one of old Pierre’s
+wild tales, had she come upon him. With quickened breath he loosed
+the canoe from its mooring and took up the paddle. A moment, and they
+were quit of the Westover landing and embarked upon a strange journey,
+during which hour after hour Hugon made wild love, and hour after hour
+Audrey opened not her lips. As the canoe went swiftly down the flood,
+lights sprung up in the house it was leaving behind. A man, rising from
+his chair with a heavy sigh, walked to the parlor window and looked
+out upon lawn and sky and river, but, so dark had it grown, saw not
+the canoe; thought only how deserted, how desolate and lonely, was the
+scene.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In Williamsburgh as at Westover the autumn was dying, the winter was
+coming, but neither farewell nor greeting perturbed the cheerful town.
+To and fro through Palace and Nicholson and Duke of Gloucester streets
+were blown the gay leaves; of early mornings white frosts lay upon
+the earth like fairy snows, but midday and afternoon were warm and
+bright. Mistress Stagg’s garden lay to the south, and in sheltered
+corners bloomed marigolds and asters, while a vine, red-leafed and
+purple-berried, made a splendid mantle for the playhouse wall.
+
+Within the theatre a rehearsal of “Tamerlane” was in progress. Turk and
+Tartar spoke their minds, and Arpasia’s death cry clave the air. The
+victorious Emperor passed final sentence upon Bajazet; then, chancing
+to glance toward the wide door, suddenly abdicated his throne, and
+in the character of Mr. Charles Stagg blew a kiss to his wife, who,
+applauding softly, stood in the opening that was framed by the red vine.
+
+“Have you done, my dear?” she cried. “Then pray come with me a moment!”
+
+The two crossed the garden, and entered the grape arbor where in
+September Mistress Stagg had entertained her old friend, my Lady
+Squander’s sometime waiting-maid. Now the vines were bare of leaves,
+and the sunshine streaming through lay in a flood upon the earth. Mary
+Stagg’s chair was set in that golden warmth, and upon the ground beside
+it had fallen some bright sewing. The silken stuff touched a coarser
+cloth, and that was the skirt of Darden’s Audrey, who sat upon the
+ground asleep, with her arm across the chair, and her head upon her arm.
+
+“How came she here?” demanded Mr. Stagg at last, when he had given a
+tragedy start, folded his arms, and bent his brows.
+
+“She ran away,” answered Mistress Stagg, in a low voice, drawing her
+spouse to a little distance from the sleeping figure. “She ran away
+from the glebe house and went up the river, wanting--the Lord knows
+why!--to reach the mountains. Something happened to bring her to her
+senses, and she turned back, and falling in with that trader, Jean
+Hugon, he brought her to Jamestown in his canoe. She walked from there
+to the glebe house,--that was yesterday. The minister was away, and
+Deborah, being in one of her passions, would not let her in. She’s that
+hard, is Deborah, when she’s angry, harder than the nether millstone!
+The girl lay in the woods last night. I vow I’ll never speak again
+to Deborah, not though there were twenty Baths behind us!” Mistress
+Stagg’s voice began to tremble. “I was sitting sewing in that chair,
+now listening to your voices in the theatre, and now harking back in my
+mind to old days when we weren’t prosperous like we are now.... And at
+last I got to thinking of the babe, Charles, and how, if she had lived
+and grown up, I might ha’ sat there sewing a pretty gown for my own
+child, and how happy I would have made her. I tried to see her standing
+beside me, laughing, pretty as a rose, waiting for me to take the last
+stitch. It got so real that I raised my head to tell my dead child how
+I was going to knot her ribbons, ... and there was this girl looking at
+me!”
+
+“What, Millamant! a tear, my soul?” cried the theatric Mr. Stagg.
+
+Millamant wiped away the tear. “I’ll tell you what she said. She just
+said: ‘You were kind to me when I was here before, but if you tell me
+to go away I’ll go. You need not say it loudly.’ And then she almost
+fell, and I put out my arm and caught her; and presently she was on her
+knees there beside me, with her head in my lap.... And then we talked
+together for a while. It was mostly me--she didn’t say much--but,
+Charles, the girl’s done no wrong, no more than our child that’s dead
+and in Christ’s bosom. She was so tired and worn. I got some milk and
+gave it to her, and directly she went to sleep like a baby, with her
+head on my knee.”
+
+The two went closer, and looked down upon the slender form and still,
+dark face. The sleeper’s rest was deep. A tress of hair, fallen from
+its fastening, swept her cheek; Mistress Stagg, stooping, put it in
+place behind the small ear, then straightened herself and pressed her
+Mirabell’s arm.
+
+“Well, my love,” quoth that gentleman, clearing his throat. “‘Great
+minds, like Heaven, are pleased in doing good.’ My Millamant, declare
+your thoughts!”
+
+Mistress Stagg twisted her apron hem between thumb and finger. “She’s
+more than eighteen, Charles, and anyhow, if I understand it rightly,
+she was never really bound to Darden. The law has no hold on her, for
+neither vestry nor Orphan Court had anything to do with placing her
+with Darden and Deborah. She’s free to stay.”
+
+“Free to stay?” queried Charles, and took a prodigious pinch of snuff.
+“To stay with us?”
+
+“Why not?” asked his wife, and stole a persuasive hand into that of
+her helpmate. “Oh, Charles, my heart went out to her! I made her so
+beautiful once, and I could do it again and all the time. Don’t you
+think her prettier than was Jane Day? And she’s graceful, and that
+quick to learn! You’re such a teacher, Charles, and I know she’d do her
+best.... Perhaps, after all, there would be no need to send away to
+Bristol for one to take Jane’s place.”
+
+“H’m!” said the great man thoughtfully, and bit a curl of Tamerlane’s
+vast periwig. “’Tis true I esteem her no dullard,” he at last
+vouchsafed; “true also that she hath beauty. In fine, solely to give
+thee pleasure, my Millamant, I will give the girl a trial no later than
+this very afternoon.”
+
+Audrey stirred in her sleep, spoke Haward’s name, and sank again to
+rest. Mr. Stagg took a second pinch of snuff. “There’s the scandal,
+my love. His Excellency the Governor’s ball, Mr. Eliot’s sermon, Mr.
+Marmaduke Haward’s illness and subsequent duels with Mr. Everard and
+Mr. Travis, are in no danger of being forgotten. If this girl ever
+comes to the speaking of an epilogue, there’ll be in Williamsburgh a
+nine days’ wonder indeed!”
+
+“The wonder would not hurt,” said Mistress Stagg simply.
+
+“Far from it, my dear,” agreed Mr. Stagg, and closing his snuffbox,
+went with a thoughtful brow back to the playhouse and the Tartar camp.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE MISSION OF TRUELOVE
+
+
+Mistress Truelove Taberer, having read in a very clear and gentle
+voice the Sermon on the Mount to those placid Friends, Tobias and
+Martha Taberer, closed the book, and went about her household affairs
+with a quiet step, but a heart that somehow fluttered at every sound
+without the door. To still it she began to repeat to herself words she
+had read: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the
+children of God ... blessed are the peacemakers”--
+
+Winter sunshine poured in at the windows and door. Truelove, kneeling
+to wipe a fleck of dust from her wheel, suddenly, with a catch of her
+breath and a lifting of her brown eyes, saw in the Scripture she had
+been repeating a meaning and application hitherto unexpected. “The
+peacemaker ... that is one who makes peace,--in the world, between
+countries, in families, yea, in the heart of one alone. Did he not say,
+last time he came, that with me he forgot this naughty world and all
+its strife; that if I were always with him”--
+
+Truelove’s countenance became exalted, her gaze fixed. “If it were a
+call”--she murmured, and for a moment bowed her head upon the wheel;
+then rose from her knees and went softly through the morning tasks.
+When they were over, she took down from a peg and put on a long gray
+cloak and a gray hood that most becomingly framed her wild-rose face;
+then came and stood before her father and mother. “I am going forth to
+walk by the creekside,” she said, in her sweet voice. “It may be that I
+will meet Angus MacLean.”
+
+“If thee does,” answered one tranquil Friend, “thee may tell him that
+upon next seventh day meeting will be held in this house.”
+
+“Truly,” said the other tranquil Friend, “my heart is drawn toward that
+young man. His mind hath been filled with anger and resistance and the
+turmoil of the world. It were well if he found peace at last.”
+
+“Surely it were well,” agreed Truelove sweetly, and went out into the
+crisp winter weather.
+
+The holly, the pine, and the cedar made green places in the woods, and
+the multitude of leaves underfoot were pleasant to tread. Clouds were
+in the sky, but the spaces between were of serenest blue, and in the
+sunshine the creek flashed diamonds. Truelove stood upon the bank, and,
+with her hand shading her eyes, watched MacLean rowing toward her up
+the creek.
+
+When he had fastened his boat and taken her hand, the two walked
+soberly on beside the sparkling water until they came to a rude seat
+built beneath an oak-tree, to which yet clung a number of brown leaves.
+Truelove sat down, drawing her cloak about her, for, though the sun
+shone, the air was keen. MacLean took off his coat, and kneeling put
+it beneath her feet. He laughed at her protest. “Why, these winds are
+not bleak!” he said. “This land knows no true and honest cold. In my
+country, night after night have I lain in snow with only my plaid for
+cover, and heard the spirits call in the icy wind, the kelpie shriek
+beneath the frozen loch. I listened; then shut my eyes and dreamed warm
+of glory and--true love.”
+
+“Thy coat is new,” said Truelove, with downcast eyes. “The earth will
+stain the good cloth.”
+
+MacLean laughed. “Then will I wear it stained, as ’tis said a courtier
+once wore his cloak.”
+
+“There is lace upon it,” said Truelove timidly.
+
+MacLean turned with a smile, and laid a fold of her cloak against his
+dark cheek. “Ah, the lace offends you,--offends thee,--Truelove. Why,
+’tis but to mark me a gentleman again! Last night, at Williamsburgh, I
+supped with Haward and some gentlemen of Virginia. He would have me don
+this suit. I might not disoblige my friend.”
+
+“Thee loves it,” said Truelove severely. “Thee loves the color, and the
+feel of the fine cloth, and the ruffles at thy wrists.”
+
+The Highlander laughed. “Why, suppose that I do! Look, Truelove, how
+brave and red are those holly berries, and how green and fantastically
+twisted the leaves! The sky is a bright blue, and the clouds are
+silver; and think what these woods will be when the winter is past! One
+might do worse, meseems, than to be of God’s taste in such matters.”
+
+Truelove sighed, and drew her gray cloak more closely around her.
+
+“Thee is in spirits to-day, Angus MacLean,” she said, and sighed once
+more.
+
+“I am free,” he answered. “The man within me walks no longer with a
+hanging head.”
+
+“And what will thee do with thy freedom?”
+
+The Highlander made no immediate reply, but, chin in hand, studied the
+drifts of leaves and the slow-moving water. “I am free,” he said at
+last. “I wear to-day the dress of a gentleman. I could walk without
+shame into a hall that I know, and find there strangers, standers in
+dead men’s shoon, brothers who want me not,--who would say behind their
+hands, ‘He has been twelve years a slave, and the world has changed
+since he went away!’ ... I will not trouble them.”
+
+His face was as sombre as when Truelove first beheld it. Suddenly, and
+against her will, tears came to her eyes. “I am glad--I and my father
+and mother and Ephraim--that thee goes not overseas, Angus MacLean,”
+said the dove’s voice. “We would have thee--I and my father and mother
+and Ephraim--we would have thee stay in Virginia.”
+
+“I am to stay,” he answered. “I have felt no shame in taking a loan
+from my friend, for I shall repay it. He hath lands up river in a
+new-made county. I am to seat them for him, and there will be my home.
+I will build a house and name it Duart; and if there are hills they
+shall be Dun-da-gu and Grieg, and the sound of winter torrents shall be
+to me as the sound of the waters of Mull.”
+
+Truelove caught her breath. “Thee will be lonely in those forests.”
+
+“I am used to loneliness.”
+
+“There be Indians on the frontier. They burn houses and carry away
+prisoners. And there are wolves and dangerous beasts”--
+
+“I am used to danger.”
+
+Truelove’s voice trembled more and more. “And thee must dwell among
+negroes and rude men, with none to comfort thy soul, none to whom thee
+can speak in thy dark hours?”
+
+“Before now I have spoken to the tobacco I have planted, the trees I
+have felled, the swords and muskets I have sold.”
+
+“But at last thee came and spoke to me!”
+
+“Ay,” he answered. “There have been times when you saved my soul alive.
+Now, in the forest, in my house of logs, when the day’s work is done,
+and I sit upon my doorstep and begin to hear the voices of the past
+crying to me like the spirits in the valley of Glensyte, I will think
+of you instead.”
+
+“Oh!” cried Truelove. “Speak to me instead, and I will speak to thee
+... sitting upon the doorstep of our house, when our day’s work is
+done!”
+
+Her hood falling back showed her face, clear pink, with dewy eyes. The
+carnation deepening from brow to throat, and the tears trembling upon
+her long lashes, she suddenly hid her countenance in her gray cloak.
+MacLean, on his knees beside her, drew away the folds. “Truelove,
+Truelove! do you know what you have said?”
+
+Truelove put her hand upon her heart. “Oh, I fear,” she whispered, “I
+fear that I have asked thee, Angus MacLean, to let me be--to let me
+be--thy wife.”
+
+The water shone, and the holly berries were gay, and a robin redbreast
+sang a cheerful song. Beneath the rustling oak-tree there was ardent
+speech on the part of MacLean, who found in his mistress a listener
+sweet and shy, and not garrulous of love. But her eyes dwelt upon him
+and her hand rested at ease within his clasp, and she liked to hear him
+speak of the home they were to make in the wilderness. It was to be
+thus, and thus, and thus! With impassioned eloquence the Gael adorned
+the shrine and advanced the merit of the divinity, and the divinity
+listened with a smile, a blush, a tear, and now and then a meek rebuke.
+
+When an hour had passed, the sun went under a cloud and the air grew
+colder. The bird had flown away, but in the rising wind the dead leaves
+rustled loudly. MacLean and Truelove, leaving their future of honorable
+toil, peace of mind, and enduring affection, came back to the present.
+
+“I must away,” said the Highlander. “Haward waits for me at
+Williamsburgh. To-morrow, dearer to me than Deirdre to Naos! I will
+come again.”
+
+Hand in hand the two walked slowly toward that haunt of peace,
+Truelove’s quiet home. “And Marmaduke Haward awaits thee at
+Williamsburgh?” said the Quakeress. “Last third day he met my father
+and me on the Fair View road, and checked his horse and spoke to us. He
+is changed.”
+
+“Changed indeed!” quoth the Highlander. “A fire burns him, a wind
+drives him; and yet to the world, last night”--He paused.
+
+“Last night?” said Truelove.
+
+“He had a large company at Marot’s ordinary,” went on the other. “There
+were the Governor and his fellow Councilors, with others of condition
+or fashion. He was the very fine gentleman, the perfect host, free,
+smiling, full of wit. But I had been with him before they came. I knew
+the fires beneath.”
+
+The two walked in silence for a few moments, when MacLean spoke again:
+“He drank to her. At the last, when this lady had been toasted, and
+that, he rose and drank to ‘Audrey,’ and threw his wineglass over his
+shoulder. He hath done what he could. The world knows that he loves
+her honorably, seeks her vainly in marriage. Something more I know.
+He gathered the company together last evening that, as his guests,
+the highest officers, the finest gentlemen of the colony, should go
+with him to the theatre to see her for the first time as a player.
+Being what they were, and his guests, and his passion known, he would
+insure for her, did she well or did she ill, order, interest, decent
+applause.” MacLean broke off with a short, excited laugh. “It was not
+needed,--his mediation. But he could not know that; no, nor none of us.
+True, Stagg and his wife had bragged of the powers of this strangely
+found actress of theirs that they were training to do great things,
+but folk took it for a trick of their trade. Oh, there was curiosity
+enough, but ’twas on Haward’s account.... Well, he drank to her,
+standing at the head of the table at Marot’s ordinary, and the glass
+crashed over his shoulder, and we all went to the play.”
+
+“Yes, yes!” cried Truelove, breathing quickly, and quite forgetting how
+great a vanity was under discussion.
+
+“’Twas ‘Tamerlane,’ the play that this traitorous generation calls
+for every 5th of November. It seems that the Governor--a Whig as rank
+as Argyle--had ordered it again for this week. ’Tis a cursed piece of
+slander that pictures the Prince of Orange a virtuous Emperor, his
+late Majesty of France a hateful tyrant. But for Haward, whose guest I
+was, I had not sat there with closed lips. I had sprung to my feet and
+given those flatterers, those traducers, the lie! The thing taunted and
+angered until she entered. Then I forgot.”
+
+“And she--and Audrey?”
+
+“Arpasia was her name in the play. She entered late; her death came
+before the end; there was another woman who had more to do. It all
+mattered not, I have seen a great actress.”
+
+“Darden’s Audrey!” said Truelove, in a whisper.
+
+“That at the very first; not afterwards,” answered MacLean. “She was
+dressed, they say, as upon the night at the Palace, that first night of
+Haward’s fever. When she came upon the stage, there was a murmur like
+the wind in the leaves. She was most beautiful,--‘beauteous in hatred,’
+as the Sultan in the play called her,--dark and wonderful, with angry
+eyes. For a little while she must stand in silence, and in these
+moments men and women stared at her, then turned and looked at Haward.
+But when she spoke we forgot that she was Darden’s Audrey.”
+
+MacLean laughed again. “When the play was ended,--or rather, when her
+part in it was done,--the house did shake so with applause that Stagg
+had to remonstrate. There’s naught talked of to-day in Williamsburgh
+but Arpasia; and when I came down Palace Street this morning, there was
+a great crowd about the playhouse door. Stagg might sell his tickets
+for to-night at a guinea apiece. ‘Venice Preserved’ is the play.”
+
+“And Marmaduke Haward,--what of him?” asked Truelove softly.
+
+“He is English,” said MacLean, after a pause. “He can make of his face
+a smiling mask, can keep his voice as even and as still as the pool
+that is a mile away from the fierce torrent its parent. It is a gift
+they have, the English. I remember at Preston”--He broke off with a
+sigh. “There will be an end some day, I suppose. He will win her at
+last to his way of thinking; and having gained her, he will be happy.
+And yet to my mind there is something unfortunate, strange and fatal,
+in the aspect of this girl. It hath always been so. She is such a one
+as the Lady in Green. On a Halloween night, standing in the twelfth
+rig, a man might hear her voice upon the wind. I would old Murdoch of
+Coll, who hath the second sight, were here: he could tell the ending of
+it all.”
+
+An hour later found the Highlander well upon his way to Williamsburgh,
+walking through wood and field with his long stride, his heart warm
+within him, his mind filled with the thought of Truelove and the home
+that he would make for her in the rude, upriver country. Since the two
+had sat beneath the oak, clouds had gathered, obscuring the sun. It
+was now gray and cold in the forest, and presently snow began to fall,
+slowly, in large flakes, between the still trees.
+
+MacLean looked with whimsical anxiety at several white particles upon
+his suit of fine cloth, claret-colored and silver-laced, and quickened
+his pace. But the snow was but the lazy vanguard of a storm, and so few
+and harmless were the flakes that when, a mile from Williamsburgh and
+at some little distance from the road, MacLean beheld a ring of figures
+seated upon the Gounod beneath a giant elm, he stopped to observe who
+and what they were that sat so still beneath the leafless tree in the
+winter weather.
+
+The group, that at first glimpse had seemed some conclave of beings
+uncouth and lubberly and solely of the forest, resolved itself into
+the Indian teacher and his pupils, escaped for the afternoon from the
+bounds of William and Mary. The Indian lads--slender, bronze, and
+statuesque--sat in silence, stolidly listening to the words of the
+white man, who, standing in the midst of the ring, with his back to the
+elm-tree, told to his dusky charges a Bible tale. It was the story of
+Joseph and his brethren. The clear, gentle tones of the teacher reached
+MacLean’s ears where he stood unobserved behind a roadside growth of
+bay and cedar.
+
+A touch upon the shoulder made him turn, to find at his elbow that
+sometime pupil of Mr. Charles Griffin in whose company he had once
+trudged from Fair View store to Williamsburgh.
+
+“I was lying in the woods over there,” said Hugon sullenly. “I heard
+them coming, and I took my leave. ‘Peste!’ said I. ‘The old, weak man
+who preaches quietness under men’s injuries, and the young wolf pack,
+all brown, with Indian names!’ They may have the woods; for me, I go
+back to the town where I belong.”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, and stood scowling at the distant group.
+MacLean, in his turn, looked curiously at his quondam companion of a
+sunny day in May, the would-be assassin with whom he had struggled in
+wind and rain beneath the thunders of an August storm. The trader wore
+his great wig, his ancient steinkirk of tawdry lace, his high boots of
+Spanish leather, cracked and stained. Between the waves of coarse hair,
+out of coal-black, deep-set eyes looked the soul of the half-breed,
+fierce, vengeful, ignorant, and embittered.
+
+“There is Meshawa,” he said,--“Meshawa, who was a little boy when I
+went to school, but who used to laugh when I talked of France. Pardieu!
+one day I found him alone when it was cold, and there was a fire in
+the room. Next time I talked he did not laugh! They are all”--he swept
+his hand toward the circle beneath the elm--“they are all Saponies,
+Nottoways, Meherrins; their fathers are lovers of the peace pipe,
+and humble to the English. A Monacan is a great brave; he laughs at
+the Nottoways, and says that there are no men in the villages of the
+Meherrins.”
+
+“When do you go again to trade with your people?” asked MacLean.
+
+Hugon glanced at him out of the corners of his black eyes. “They are
+not my people; my people are French. I am not going to the woods any
+more. I am so prosperous. Diable! shall not I as well as another stay
+at Williamsburgh, dress fine, dwell in an ordinary, play high, and
+drink of the best?”
+
+“There is none will prevent you,” said MacLean coolly. “Dwell in town,
+take your ease in your inn, wear gold lace, stake the skins of all the
+deer in Virginia, drink Burgundy and Champagne, but lay no more arrows
+athwart the threshold of a gentleman’s door.”
+
+Hugon’s lips twitched into a tigerish grimace. “So he found the arrow?
+Mortdieu! let him look to it that one day the arrow find not him!”
+
+“If I were Haward,” said MacLean, “I would have you taken up.”
+
+The trader again looked sideways at the speaker, shrugged his
+shoulders and waved his hand. “Oh, he--he despises me too much for
+that! Eh bien! to-day I love to see him live. When there is no wine
+in the cup, but only dregs that are bitter, I laugh to see it at his
+lips. She,--Ma’m’selle Audrey, that never before could I coax into
+my boat,--she reached me her hand, she came with me down the river,
+through the night-time, and left him behind at Westover. Ha! think
+you not that was bitter, that drink which she gave him, Mr. Marmaduke
+Haward of Fair View? Since then, if I go to that house, that garden at
+Williamsburgh, she hides, she will not see me; the man and his wife
+make excuse! Bad! But also he sees her never. He writes to her: she
+answers not. Good! Let him live, with the fire built around him and the
+splinters in his heart!”
+
+He laughed again, and, dismissing the subject with airiness somewhat
+exaggerated, drew out his huge gilt snuffbox. The snow was now falling
+more thickly, drawing a white and fleecy veil between the two upon
+the road and the story-teller and his audience beneath the distant
+elm. “Are you for Williamsburgh?” demanded the Highlander, when he had
+somewhat abruptly declined to take snuff with Monsieur Jean Hugon.
+
+That worthy nodded, pocketing his box and incidentally making a great
+jingling of coins.
+
+“Then,” quoth MacLean, “since I prefer to travel alone, twill wait
+here until you have passed the rolling-house in the distance yonder.
+Good-day to you!”
+
+He seated himself upon the stump of a tree, and, giving all his
+attention to the snow, began to whistle a thoughtful air. Hugon glanced
+at him with fierce black eyes and twitching lips, much desiring a
+quarrel; then thought better of it, and before the tune had come to an
+end was making with his long and noiseless stride his lonely way to
+Williamsburgh, and the ordinary in Nicholson Street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE PLAYER
+
+
+About this time, Mr. Charles Stagg, of the Williamsburgh theatre in
+Virginia, sent by the Horn of Plenty, bound for London, a long letter
+to an ancient comrade and player of small parts at Drury Lane. A few
+days later, young Mr. Lee, writing by the Golden Lucy to an agreeable
+rake of his acquaintance, burst into a five-page panegyric upon the
+Arpasia, the Belvidera, the Monimia, who had so marvelously dawned
+upon the colonial horizon. The recipient of this communication, being
+a frequenter of Button’s, and chancing one day to crack a bottle there
+with Mr. Colley Cibber, drew from his pocket and read to that gentleman
+the eulogy of Darden’s Audrey, with the remark that the writer was an
+Oxford man and must know whereof he wrote.
+
+Cibber borrowed the letter, and the next day, in the company of
+Wilks and a bottle of Burgundy, compared it with that of Mr. Charles
+Stagg,--the latter’s correspondent having also brought the matter to
+the great man’s notice.
+
+“She might offset that pretty jade Fenton at the Fields, eh, Bob?” said
+Cibber. “They’re of an age. If the town took to her”--
+
+“If her Belvidera made one pretty fellow weep, why not another?” added
+Wilks. “Here--where is’t he says that, when she went out, for many
+moments the pit was silent as the grave--and that then the applause was
+deep--not shrill--and very long? ’Gad, if ’tis a Barry come again, and
+we could lay hands on her, the house would be made!”
+
+Gibber sighed. “You’re dreaming, Bob,” he said good-humoredly. “’Twas
+but a pack of Virginia planters, noisy over some _belle sauvage_ with a
+ranting tongue.”
+
+“Men’s passions are the same, I take it, in Virginia as in London,”
+answered the other. “If the _belle sauvage_ can move to that manner of
+applause in one spot of earth, she may do so in another. And here again
+he says, ‘A dark beauty, with a strange, alluring air ... a voice of
+melting sweetness that yet can so express anguish and fear that the
+blood turns cold and the heart is wrung to hear it’--Zoons, sir! What
+would it cost to buy off this fellow Stagg, and to bring the phoenix
+overseas?”
+
+“Something more than a lottery ticket,” laughed the other, and
+beckoned to the drawer. “We’ll wait, Bob, until we’re sure ’tis a
+phoenix indeed! There’s a gentleman in Virginia with whom I’ve some
+acquaintance, Colonel William Byrd, that was the colony’s agent here.
+I’ll write to him for a true account. There’s time enough.”
+
+So thought honest Cibber, and wrote at leisure to his Virginia
+acquaintance. It made small difference whether he wrote or refrained
+from writing, for he had naught to do with the destinies of Darden’s
+Audrey. ’Twas almost summer before there came an answer to his letter.
+He showed it to Wilks in the greenroom, between the acts of “The
+Provoked Husband.” Mrs. Oldfield read it over their shoulders, and
+vowed that ’twas a moving story; nay, more, in her next scene there was
+a moisture in Lady Townly’s eyes quite out of keeping with the vivacity
+of her lines.
+
+Darden’s Audrey had to do with Virginia, not London; with the winter,
+never more the summer. It is not known how acceptable her Monimia, her
+Belvidera, her Isabella, would have been to London playgoers. Perhaps
+they would have received them as did the Virginians, perhaps not.
+Cibber himself might or might not have drawn for us her portrait; might
+or might not have dwelt upon the speaking eye, the slow, exquisite
+smile with which she made more sad her saddest utterances, the wild
+charm of her mirth, her power to make each auditor fear as his own
+the impending harm, the tragic splendor in which, when the bolt had
+fallen, converged all the pathos, beauty, and tenderness of her earlier
+scenes. A Virginian of that winter, writing of her, had written thus;
+but then Williamsburgh was not London, nor its playhouse Drury Lane.
+Perhaps upon that ruder stage, before an audience less polite, with
+never a critic in the pit or footman in the gallery, with no Fops’
+Corner and no great number of fine ladies in the boxes, the jewel shone
+with a lustre that in a brighter light it had not worn. There was in
+Mr. Charles Stagg’s company of players no mate for any gem; this one
+was set amongst pebbles, and perhaps by contrast alone did it glow so
+deeply.
+
+However this may be, in Virginia, in the winter and the early spring of
+that year of grace Darden’s Audrey was known, extravagantly praised,
+toasted, applauded to the echo. Night after night saw the theatre
+crowded, gallery, pit, and boxes. Even the stage had its row of chairs,
+seats held not too dear at half a guinea. Mr. Stagg had visions of a
+larger house, a fuller company, renown and prosperity undreamed of
+before that fortunate day when, in the grape arbor, he and his wife had
+stood and watched Darden’s Audrey asleep, with her head pillowed upon
+her arm.
+
+Darden’s Audrey! The name clung to her, though the minister had no
+further lot or part in her fate. The poetasters called her Charmante,
+Anwet, Chloe,--what not! Young Mr. Lee in many a slight and pleasing
+set of verses addressed her as Sylvia, but to the community at large
+she was Darden’s Audrey, and an enigma greater than the Sphinx. Why
+would she not marry Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View? Was the girl
+looking for a prince to come overseas for her? Or did she prefer to a
+dazzling marriage the excitement of the theatre, the adulation, furious
+applause? That could hardly be, for these things seemed to frighten
+her. At times one could see her shrink and grow pale at some great
+clapping or loud “Again!” And only upon the stage did the town behold
+her. She rarely went abroad, and at the small white house in Palace
+Street she was denied to visitors. True, ’twas the way to keep upon
+curiosity the keenest edge, to pique interest and send the town to
+the playhouse as the one point of view from which the riddle might be
+studied. But wisdom such as this could scarce be expected of the girl.
+Given, then, that ’twas not her vanity which kept her Darden’s Audrey,
+what was it? Was not Mr. Haward of Fair View rich, handsome, a very
+fine gentleman? Generous, too, for had he not sworn, as earnestly as
+though he expected to be believed, that the girl was pure innocence?
+His hand was ready to his sword, nor were men anxious to incur his cold
+enmity, so that the assertion passed without open challenge. He was
+mad for her,--that was plain enough. And she,--well she’s woman and
+Darden’s Audrey, and so doubly an enigma. In the mean time, to-night
+she plays Monimia, and her madness makes you weep, so sad it is, so
+hopeless, and so piercing sweet.
+
+In this new world that was so strange to her Darden’s Audrey bore
+herself as best she might. While it was day she kept within the house,
+where the room that in September she had shared with Mistress Deborah
+was now for her alone. Hour after hour she sat there, book in hand,
+learning how those other women, those women of the past, had loved,
+had suffered, had fallen to dusty death. Other hours she spent with
+Mr. Charles Stagg in the long room downstairs, or, when Mistress Stagg
+had customers, in the theatre itself. As in the branded schoolmaster
+chance had given her a teacher skilled in imparting knowledge, so in
+this small and pompous man, who beneath a garb of fustian hugged to
+himself a genuine reverence and understanding of his art, she found an
+instructor more able, perhaps, than had been a greater actor. In the
+chill and empty playhouse, upon the narrow stage where, sitting in the
+September sunshine, she had asked of Haward her last favor, she now
+learned to speak for those sisters of her spirit, those dead women who
+through rapture, agony, and madness had sunk to their long rest, had
+given their hands to death and lain down in a common inn. To Audrey
+they were real; she was free of their company. The shadows were the
+people who lived and were happy; who night after night came to watch a
+soul caught in the toils, to thunder applause when death with rude and
+hasty hands broke the net, set free the prisoner.
+
+The girl dreamed as she breathed. Wakened from a long, long fantasy,
+desolate and cold to the heart in an alien air, she sought for poppy
+and mandragora, and in some sort finding them dreamed again, though not
+for herself, not as before. It can hardly be said that she was unhappy.
+She walked in a pageant of strange miseries, and the pomp of woe was
+hers to portray. Those changelings from some fateful land, those
+passionate, pale women, the milestones of whose pilgrimage spelled
+love, ruin, despair, and death, they were her kindred, her sisters. Day
+and night they kept her company: and her own pain lessened, grew at
+last to a still and dreamy sorrow, never absent, never poignant.
+
+Of necessity, importunate grief was drugged to sleep. In the daylight
+hours she must study, must rehearse with her fellow players; when night
+came she put on a beautiful dress, and to lights and music and loud
+applause there entered Monimia, or Belvidera, or Athenais. When the
+play was done and the curtain fallen, the crowd of those who would have
+stayed her ever gave way, daunted by her eyes, her closed lips, the
+atmosphere that yet wrapped her of passion, woe, and exaltation, the
+very tragedy of the soul that she had so richly painted. Like the ghost
+of that woman who had so direfully loved and died, she was wont to slip
+from the playhouse, through the dark garden, to the small white house
+and her quiet room. There she laid off her gorgeous dress, and drew the
+ornaments from her dark hair that was long as Molly’s had been that day
+beneath the sugar-tree in the far-away valley.
+
+She rarely thought of Molly now, or of the mountains. With her hair
+shadowing her face and streaming over bared neck and bosom she sat
+before her mirror. The candle burned low; the face in the glass seemed
+not her own. Dim, pale, dark-eyed, patient-lipped at last, out of a
+mist and from a great distance the other woman looked at her. Far
+countries, the burning noonday and utter love, night and woe and life,
+the broken toy, flung with haste away! The mist thickened; the face
+withdrew, farther, farther off; the candle burned low. Audrey put out
+the weak flame, and laid herself upon the bed. Sleep came soon, and it
+was still and dreamless. Sometimes Mary Stagg, light in hand, stole
+into the room and stood above the quiet form. The girl hardly seemed
+to breathe: she had a fashion of lying with crossed hands and head
+drawn slightly back, much as she might be laid at last in her final
+bed. Mistress Stagg put out a timid hand and felt the flesh if it were
+warm; then bent and lightly kissed hand or arm or the soft curve of the
+throat. Audrey stirred not, and the other went noiselessly away; or
+Audrey opened dark eyes, faintly smiled and raised herself to meet the
+half-awed caress, then sank to rest again.
+
+Into Mistress Stagg’s life had struck a shaft of colored light, had
+come a note of strange music, had flown a bird of paradise. It was
+and it was not her dead child come again. She knew that her Lucy had
+never been thus, and the love that she gave Audrey was hardly mother
+love. It was more nearly an homage, which, had she tried, she could
+not have explained. When they were alone together, Audrey called the
+older woman “mother,” often knelt and laid her head upon the other’s
+lap or shoulder. In all her ways she was sweet and duteous, grateful
+and eager to serve. But her spirit dwelt in a rarer air, and there
+were heights and depths where the waif and her protectress might not
+meet. To this the latter gave dumb recognition, and though she could
+not understand, yet loved her protégée. At night, in the playhouse,
+this love was heightened into exultant worship. At all times there was
+delight in the girl’s beauty, pride in the comment and wonder of the
+town, self-congratulation and the pleasing knowledge that wisdom is
+vindicated of its children. Was not all this of her bringing about? Did
+it not first occur to her that the child might take Jane Day’s place?
+Even Charles, who strutted and plumed himself and offered his snuffbox
+to every passer-by, must acknowledge that! Mistress Stagg stopped her
+sewing to laugh triumphantly, then fell to work more diligently than
+ever; for it was her pleasure to dress Darden’s Audrey richly, in
+soft colors, heavy silken stuffs upon which was lavished a wealth of
+delicate needlework. It was chiefly while she sat and sewed upon these
+pretty things, with Audrey, book on knee, close beside her, that her
+own child seemed to breathe again.
+
+Audrey thanked her and kissed her, and wore what she was given to
+wear, nor thought how her beauty was enhanced. If others saw it, if
+the wonder grew by what it fed on, if she was talked of, written of,
+pledged, and lauded by a frank and susceptible people, she knew of all
+this little enough, and for what she knew cared not at all. Her days
+went dreamily by, nor very sad nor happy; full of work, yet vague and
+unmarked as desert sands. What was real was a past that was not hers,
+and those dead women to whom night by night she gave life and splendor.
+
+There were visitors to whom she was not denied. Darden came at times,
+sat in Mistress Stagg’s sunny parlor, and talked to his sometime ward
+much as he had talked in the glebe-house living room,--discursively, of
+men and parochial affairs and his own unmerited woes. Audrey sat and
+heard him, with her eyes upon the garden without the window. When he
+lifted from the chair his great shambling figure, and took his stained
+old hat and heavy cane, Audrey rose also, curtsied, and sent her duty
+to Mistress Deborah, but she asked no questions as to that past home
+of hers. It seemed not to interest her that the creek was frozen so
+hard that one could walk upon it to Fair View, or that the minister had
+bought a field from his wealthy neighbor, and meant to plant it with
+Oronoko. Only when he told her that the little wood--the wood that she
+had called her own--was being cleared, and that all day could be heard
+the falling of the trees, did she lift startled eyes and draw a breath
+like a moan. The minister looked at her from under shaggy brows, shook
+his head, and went his way to his favorite ordinary, rum, and a hand at
+cards.
+
+Mistress Deborah she beheld no more; but once the Widow Constance
+brought Barbara to town, and the two, being very simple women, went
+to the play to see the old Audrey, and saw instead a queen, tinseled,
+mock-jeweled, clad in silk, who loved and triumphed, despaired and
+died. The rude theatre shook to the applause. When it was all over, the
+widow and Barbara went dazed to their lodging, and lay awake through
+the night talking of these marvels. In the morning they found the
+small white house, and Audrey came to them in the garden. When she had
+kissed them, the three sat down in the arbor; for it was a fine, sunny
+morning, and not cold. But the talk was not easy; Barbara’s eyes were
+so round, and the widow kept mincing her words. Only when they were
+joined by Mistress Stagg, to whom the widow became voluble, the two
+girls spoke aside.
+
+“I have a guinea, Barbara,” said Audrey. “Mr. Stagg gave it to me, and
+I need it not,--I need naught in the world. Barbara, here!--’tis for a
+warm dress and a Sunday hood.”
+
+“Oh, Audrey,” breathed Barbara, “they say you might live at Fair
+View,--that you might marry Mr. Haward and be a fine lady”--
+
+Audrey laid her hand upon the other’s lips. “Hush! See, Barbara, you
+must have the dress made thus, like mine.”
+
+“But if ’tis so, Audrey!” persisted poor Barbara. “Mother and I talked
+of it last night. She said you would want a waiting-woman, and I
+thought--Oh, Audrey!”
+
+Audrey bit her quivering lip and dashed away the tears. “I’ll want no
+waiting-woman, Barbara. I’m naught but Audrey that you used to be kind
+to. Let’s talk of other things. Have you missed me from the woods all
+these days?”
+
+“It has been long since you were there,” said Barbara dully. “Now I
+go with Joan at times, though mother frowns and says she is not fit.
+Eh, Audrey, if I could have a dress of red silk, with gold and bright
+stones, like you wore last night! Old days I had more than you, but
+all’s changed now. Joan says”--
+
+The Widow Constance rising to take leave, it did not appear what Joan
+had said. The visitors from the country went away, nor came again
+while Audrey dwelt in Williamsburgh. The schoolmaster came, and while
+he waited for his sometime pupil to slowly descend the stairs talked
+learnedly to Mr. Stagg of native genius, of the mind drawn steadily
+through all accidents and adversities to the end of its own discovery,
+and of how time and tide and all the winds of heaven conspire to bring
+the fate assigned, to make the puppet move in the stated measure.
+Mr. Stagg nodded, took out his snuffbox, and asked what now was the
+schoolmaster’s opinion of the girl’s Monimia last night,--the last act,
+for instance. Good Lord, how still the house was!--and then one long
+sigh!
+
+The schoolmaster fingered the scars in his bands, as was his manner
+at times, but kept his eyes upon the ground. When he spoke, there was
+in his voice unwonted life. “Why, sir, I could have said with Lear,
+_’Hysterica passio! down, thou climbing sorrow!’_--and I am not a man,
+sir, that’s easily moved. The girl is greatly gifted. I knew that
+before either you or the town, sir. Audrey, good-morrow!”
+
+Such as these from out her old life Darden’s Audrey saw and talked
+with. Others sought her, watched for her, laid traps that might achieve
+at least her presence, but largely in vain. She kept within the house;
+when the knocker sounded she went to her own room. No flowery message,
+compliment, or appeal, not even Mary Stagg’s kindly importunity, could
+bring her from that coign of vantage. There were times when Mistress
+Stagg’s showroom was crowded with customers; on sunny days young men
+left the bowling green to stroll in the shell-bordered garden paths;
+gentlemen and ladies of quality passing up and down Palace Street
+walked more slowly when they came to the small white house, and looked
+to see if the face of Darden’s Audrey showed at any window.
+
+Thus the winter wore away. The springtime was at hand, when one day
+the Governor, wrought upon by Mistress Evelyn Byrd, sent to Mr.
+Stagg, bidding him with his wife and the new player to the Palace.
+The three, dressed in their best, were ushered into the drawing-room,
+where they found his Excellency at chess with the Attorney-General; a
+third gentleman, seated somewhat in the shadow, watching the game. A
+servant placed, chairs for the people from the theatre. His Excellency
+checkmated his antagonist, and, leaning back in his great chair,
+looked at Darden’s Audrey, but addressed his conversation to Mr.
+Charles Stagg. The great man was condescendingly affable, the lesser
+one obsequious; while they talked the gentleman in the shadow arose
+and drew his chair to Audrey’s side. ’Twas Colonel Byrd, and he spoke
+to the girl kindly and courteously; asking after her welfare, giving
+her her meed of praise, dwelling half humorously upon the astonishment
+and delight into which she had surprised the play-loving town. Audrey
+listened with downcast eyes to the suave tones, the well-turned
+compliments, but when she must speak spoke quietly and well.
+
+At last the Governor turned toward her, and began to ask well-meant
+questions and to give pompous encouragement to the new player. No
+reference was made to that other time when she had visited the Palace.
+A servant poured for each of the three a glass of wine. His Excellency
+graciously desired that they shortly give ‘Tamerlane’ again, that
+being a play which, as a true Whig and a hater of all tyrants, he much
+delighted in, and as graciously announced his intention of bestowing
+upon the company two slightly tarnished birthday suits. The great man
+then arose, and the audience was over.
+
+Outside the house, in the sunny walk leading to the gates, the three
+from the theatre met, full face, a lady and two gentlemen who had been
+sauntering up and down in the pleasant weather. The lady was Evelyn
+Byrd; the gentlemen were Mr. Lee and Mr. Grymes.
+
+Audrey, moving slightly in advance of her companions, halted at the
+sight of Evelyn, and the rich color surged to her face; but the other,
+pale and lovely, kept her composure, and, with a smile and a few
+graceful words of greeting, curtsied deeply to the player. Audrey, with
+a little catch of her breath, returned the curtsy. Both women were
+richly dressed, both were beautiful; it seemed a ceremonious meeting of
+two ladies of quality. The gentlemen also bowed profoundly, pressing
+their hats against their hearts. Mistress Stagg, to whom her protégée’s
+aversion to company was no light cross, twitched her Mirabell by the
+sleeve and, hanging upon his arm, prevented his further advance. The
+action said: “Let the child alone; maybe when the ice is once broken
+she’ll see people, and not be so shy and strange!”
+
+“Mr. Lee,” said Evelyn sweetly, “I have dropped my glove,--perhaps in
+the summer-house on the terrace. If you will be so good? Mr. Grymes,
+will you desire Mr. Stagg yonder to shortly visit me at my lodging? I
+wish to bespeak a play, and would confer with him on the matter.”
+
+The gentlemen bowed and hasted upon their several errands, leaving
+Audrey and Evelyn standing face to face in the sunny path. “You are
+well, I hope,” said the latter, in her low, clear voice, “and happy?”
+
+“I am well, Mistress Evelyn,” answered Audrey. “I think that I am not
+unhappy.”
+
+The other gazed at her in silence; then, “We have all been blind,” she
+said. “’Tis not a year since May Day and the Jaquelins’ merrymaking.
+It seems much longer. You won the race,--do you remember?--and took
+the prize from my hand. And neither of us thought of all that should
+follow--did we?--or guessed at other days. I saw you last night at the
+theatre, and you made my heart like to burst for pity and sorrow. You
+were only playing at woe? You are not unhappy, not like that?”
+
+Audrey shook her head. “No, not like that.”
+
+There was a pause, broken by Evelyn. “Mr. Haward is in town,” she said,
+in a low but unfaltering voice, “He was at the playhouse last night. I
+watched him sitting in a box, in the shadow.... You also saw him?”
+
+“Yes,” said Audrey. “He had not been there for a long, long time. At
+first he came night after night.... I wrote to him at last and told
+him how he troubled me,--made me forget my lines,--and then he came no
+more.”
+
+There was in her tone a strange wistfulness. Evelyn drew her breath
+sharply, glanced swiftly at the dark face and liquid eyes. Mr. Grymes
+yet held the manager and his wife in conversation, but Mr. Lee, a small
+jessamine-scented glove in hand, was hurrying toward them from the
+summer-house.
+
+“You think that you do not love Mr. Haward?” said Evelyn, in a low
+voice.
+
+“I loved one that never lived,” said Audrey simply. “It was all in
+a dream from which I have waked. I told him that at Westover, and
+afterwards here in Williamsburgh. I grew so tired at last--it hurt me
+so to tell him ... and then I wrote the letter. He has been at Fair
+View this long time, has he not?”
+
+“Yes,” said Evelyn quietly. “He has been alone at Fair View.” The rose
+in her cheeks had faded; she put her lace handkerchief to her lips, and
+shut her hand so closely that the nails bit into the palm. In a moment,
+however, she was smiling, a faint, inscrutable smile, and presently she
+came a little nearer and took Audrey’s hand in her own.
+
+The soft, hot, lingering touch thrilled the girl. She began to speak
+hurriedly, not knowing why she spoke nor what she wished to say:
+“Mistress Evelyn”--
+
+“Yes, Audrey,” said Evelyn, and laid a fluttering touch upon the
+other’s lips, then in a moment spoke herself: “You are to remember
+always, though you love him not, Audrey, that he never was true lover
+of mine; that now and forever, and though you died to-night, he is
+to me but an old acquaintance,--Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View.
+Remember also that it was not your fault, nor his perhaps, nor mine,
+and that with all my heart I wish his happiness.... Ah, Mr. Lee, you
+found it? My thanks, sir.”
+
+Mr. Lee, having restored the glove with all the pretty froth of words
+which the occasion merited, and seen Mistress Evelyn turn aside to
+speak with Mr. Stagg, found himself mightily inclined to improve the
+golden opportunity and at once lay siege to this paragon from the
+playhouse. Two low bows, a three-piled, gold-embroidered compliment, a
+quotation from his “To Sylvia upon her Leaving the Theatre,” and the
+young gentleman thought his lines well laid. But Sylvia grew restless,
+dealt in monosyllables, and finally retreated to Mistress Stagg’s side.
+“Shall we not go home?” she whispered. “I--I am tired, and I have my
+part to study, the long speech at the end that I stumbled in last
+night. Ah, let us go!”
+
+Mistress Stagg sighed over the girl’s contumacy. It was not thus in
+Bath when she was young, and men of fashion flocked to compliment a
+handsome player. Now there was naught to do but to let the child have
+her way. She and Audrey made their curtsies, and Mr. Charles Stagg
+his bow, which was modeled after that of Beau Nash. Then the three
+went down the sunny path to the Palace gates, and Evelyn with the two
+gentlemen moved toward the house and the company within.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+AMOR VINCIT
+
+
+By now it was early spring in Virginia, and a time of balm and
+pleasantness. The season had not entered into its complete heritage of
+gay hues, sweet odors, song, and wealth of bliss. Its birthday robe was
+yet a-weaving, its coronal of blossoms yet folded buds, its choristers
+not ready with their fullest pæans. But everywhere was earnest of
+future riches. In the forest the bloodroot was in flower, and the
+bluebird and the redbird flashed from the maple that was touched with
+fire to the beech just lifted from a pale green fountain. In Mistress
+Stagg’s garden daffodils bloomed, and dim blue hyacinths made sweet
+places in the grass. The sun lay warm upon upturned earth, blackbirds
+rose in squadrons and darkened the yet leafless trees, and every wind
+brought rumors of the heyday toward which the earth was spinning. The
+days were long and sweet; at night a moon came up, and between it and
+the earth played soft and vernal airs. Then a pale light flooded the
+garden, the shells bordering its paths gleamed like threaded pearls,
+and the house showed whiter than a marble sepulchre. Mild incense, cool
+winds, were there, but quiet came fitfully between the bursts of noise
+from the lit theatre.
+
+On such a night as this Audrey, clothed in red silk, with a band of
+false jewels about her shadowy hair, slipped through the stage door
+into the garden, and moved across it to the small white house and rest.
+Her part in the play was done; for all their storming she would not
+stay. Silence and herself alone, and the mirror in her room; then,
+sitting before the glass, to see in it darkly the woman whom she
+had left dead upon the boards yonder,--no, not yonder, but in a far
+country, and a fair and great city. Love! love! and death for love! and
+her own face in the mirror gazing at her with eyes of that long-dead
+Greek. It was the exaltation and the dream, mournful, yet not without
+its luxury, that ended her every day. When the candle burned low, when
+the face looked but dimly from the glass, then would she rise and
+quench the flame, and lay herself down to sleep, with the moonlight
+upon her crossed hands and quiet brow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She passed through the grape arbor, and opened the door at which Haward
+had knocked that September night of the Governor’s ball. She was in
+Mistress Stagg’s long room; at that hour it should have been lit only
+by a dying fire and a solitary candle. Now the fire was low enough,
+but the room seemed aflare with myrtle tapers. Audrey, coming from the
+dimness without, shaded her eyes with her hand. The heavy door shut to
+behind her; unseeing still she moved toward the fire, but in a moment
+let fall her hand and began to wonder at the unwonted lights. Mistress
+Stagg was yet in the playhouse; who then had lit these candles? She
+turned, and saw Haward standing with folded arms between her and the
+door.
+
+The silence was long. He was Marmaduke Haward with all his powers
+gathered, calm, determined, so desperate to have done with this thing,
+to at once and forever gain his own and master fate, that his stillness
+was that of deepest waters, his cool equanimity that of the gamester
+who knows how will fall the loaded dice. Dressed with his accustomed
+care, very pale, composed and quiet, he faced her whose spirit yet
+lingered in a far city, who in the dreamy exaltation of this midnight
+hour was ever half Audrey of the garden, half that other woman in a
+dress of red silk, with jewels in her hair, who, love’s martyr, had
+exulted, given all, and died.
+
+“How did you come here?” she breathed at last. “You said that you would
+come never again.”
+
+“After to-night, never again,” he answered. “But now, Audrey, this once
+again, this once again!”
+
+Gazing past him she made a movement toward the door. He shook his head.
+“This is my hour, Audrey. You may not leave the room, nor will Mistress
+Stagg enter it. I will not touch you, I will come no nearer to you.
+Stand there in silence, if you choose, or cover the sight of me from
+your eyes, while for my own ease, my own unhappiness, I say farewell.”
+
+“Farewell!” she echoed. “Long ago, at Westover, that was said between
+you and me.... Why do you come like a ghost to keep me and peace apart?”
+
+He did not answer, and she locked her hands across her brow that burned
+beneath the heavy circlet of mock gems. “Is it kind?” she demanded,
+with a sob in her voice. “Is it kind to trouble me so, to keep me
+here”--
+
+“Was I ever kind?” he asked. “Since the night when I followed you, a
+child, and caught you from the ground when you fell between the corn
+rows, what kindness, Audrey?”
+
+“None!” she answered, with sudden passion. “Nor kindness then! Why went
+you not some other way?”
+
+“Shall I tell you why I was there that night,--why I left my companions
+and came riding back to the cabin in the valley?”
+
+She uncovered her eyes, “I thought--I thought then--that you were
+sent”--
+
+He looked at her with strange compassion. “My own will sent me....
+When, that sunny afternoon, we spurred from the valley toward the
+higher mountains, we left behind us a forest flower, a young girl of
+simple sweetness, with long dark hair,--like yours, Audrey.... It was
+to pluck that flower that I deserted the expedition, that I went back
+to the valley between the hills.”
+
+Her eyes dilated, and her hands very slowly rose to press her temples,
+to make a shadow from which she might face the cup of trembling he was
+pouring for her.
+
+“_Molly!_” she said, beneath her breath.
+
+He nodded. “Well, Death had gathered the flower.... Accident threw
+across my path a tinier blossom, a helpless child. Save you then, care
+for you then, I must, or I had been not man, but monster. Did I care
+for you tenderly, Audrey? Did I make you love me with all your childish
+heart? Did I become to you father and mother and sister and fairy
+prince? Then what were you to me in those old days? A child fanciful
+and charming, too fine in all her moods not to breed wonder, to give
+the feeling that Nature had placed in that mountain cabin a changeling
+of her own. A child that one must regard with fondness and some
+pity,--what is called a dear child. Moreover, a child whose life I had
+saved, and to whom it pleased me to play Providence. I was young, not
+hard of heart, sedulous to fold back to the uttermost the roseleaves of
+every delicate and poetic emotion, magnificently generous also, and set
+to play my life _au grand seigneur_. To myself assume a responsibility
+which with all ease might have been transferred to an Orphan Court,
+to put my stamp upon your life to come, to watch you kneel and drink
+of my fountain of generosity, to open my hand and with an indulgent
+smile shower down upon you the coin of pleasure and advantage,--why,
+what a tribute was this to my own sovereignty, what subtle flattery of
+self-love, what delicate taste of power! Well, I kissed you good-by,
+and unclasped your hands from my neck, chided you, laughed at you,
+fondled you, promised all manner of pretty things and engaged you never
+to forget me--and sailed away upon the Golden Rose to meet my crowded
+years with their wine and roses, upas shadows and apples of Sodom. How
+long before I forgot you, Audrey? A year and a day, perhaps. I protest
+that I cannot remember exactly.”
+
+He slightly changed his position, but came no nearer to her. It was
+growing quiet in the street beyond the curtained windows. One window
+was bare, but it gave only upon an unused nook of the garden where were
+merely the moonlight and some tall leafless bushes.
+
+“I came back to Virginia,” he said, “and I looked for and found you
+in the heart of a flowering wood.... All that you imagined me to be,
+Audrey, that was I not. Knight-errant, paladin, king among men,--what
+irony, child, in that strange dream and infatuation of thine! I was--I
+am--of my time and of myself, and he whom that day you thought me had
+not then nor afterwards form or being. I wish you to be perfect in this
+lesson, Audrey. Are you so?”
+
+“Yes,” she sighed. Her hands had fallen; she was looking at him with
+slowly parting lips, and a strange expression in her eyes.
+
+He went on quietly as before, every feature controlled to impassivity
+and his arms lightly folded: “That is well. Between the day when I
+found you again and a night in the Palace yonder lies a summer,--a
+summer! To me all the summers that ever I had or will have,--ten
+thousand summers! Now tell me how I did in this wonderful summer.”
+
+“Ignobly,” she answered.
+
+He bowed his head gravely. “Ay, Audrey, it is a good word.” With a
+quick sigh he left his place, and walking to the uncurtained window
+stood there looking out upon the strip of moonlight and the screen of
+bushes; but when he turned again to the room his face and bearing were
+as impressive as before in their fine, still gravity, their repose of
+determination. “And that evening by the river when you fled from me to
+Hugon”--
+
+“I had awaked,” she said, in a low voice. “You were to me a stranger,
+and I feared you.”
+
+“And at Westover?”
+
+“A stranger.”
+
+“Here in Williamsburgh, when by dint of much striving I saw you, when
+I wrote to you, when at last you sent me that letter, that piteous and
+cruel letter, Audrey?”
+
+For one moment her dark eyes met his, then fell to her clasped hands.
+“A stranger,” she said.
+
+“The letter was many weeks ago. I have been alone with my thoughts at
+Fair View. And to-night, Audrey?”
+
+“A stranger,” she would have answered, but her voice broke. There were
+shadows under her eyes; her lifted face had in it a strained, intent
+expectancy as though she saw or heard one coming.
+
+“A stranger,” he acquiesced. “A foreigner in your world of dreams and
+shadows. No prince, Audrey, or great white knight and hero. Only a
+gentleman of these latter days, compact like his fellows of strength
+and weakness; now very wise and now the mere finger-post of folly; set
+to travel his own path; able to hear above him in the rarer air the
+trumpet call, but choosing to loiter on the lower slopes. In addition
+a man who loves at last, loves greatly, with a passion that shall
+ennoble. A stranger and your lover, Audrey, come to say farewell.”
+
+Her voice came like an echo, plaintive and clear and from far away:
+“Farewell.”
+
+“How steadily do I stand here to say farewell!” he said. “Yet I am
+eaten of my passion. A fire burns me, a voice within me ever cries
+aloud. I am whirled in a resistless wind.... Ah, my love, the garden at
+Fair View! The folded rose that will never bloom, the dial where linger
+the heavy hours, the heavy, heavy, heavy hours!”
+
+“The garden,” she whispered. “I smell the box.... The path was all in
+sunshine. So quiet, so hushed.... I went a little farther, and I heard
+your voice where you sat and read--and read of Eloïsa.... _Oh, Evelyn,
+Evelyn!_”
+
+“The last time--the last farewell!” he said. “When the Golden Rose is
+far at sea, when the winds blow, when the stars drift below the verge,
+when the sea speaks, then may I forget you, may the vision of you pass!
+Now at Fair View it passes not; it dwells. Night and day I behold you,
+the woman that I love, the woman that I love in vain!”
+
+“The Golden Rose!” she answered. “The sea.... Alas!”
+
+Her voice had risen into a cry. The walls of the room were gone, the
+air pressed upon her heavily, the lights wavered, the waters were
+passing over her as they had passed that night of the witch’s hut.
+How far away the bank upon which he stood! He spoke to her, and his
+voice came faintly as from that distant shore or from the deck of a
+swiftly passing ship. “And so it is good-by, sweetheart; for why should
+I stay in Virginia? Ah, if you loved me, Audrey! But since it is not
+so--Good-by, good-by. This time I’ll not forget you, but I will not
+come again. Good-by!”
+
+Her lips moved, but there came no words. A light had dawned upon her
+face, her hand was lifted as though to stay a sound of music. Suddenly
+she turned toward him, swayed, and would have fallen but that his arm
+caught and upheld her. Her head was thrown back; the soft masses of her
+wonderful hair brushed his cheek and shoulder; her eyes looked past
+him, and a smile, pure and exquisite past expression, just redeemed her
+face from sadness. “Good-morrow, Love!” she said clearly and sweetly.
+
+At the sound of her own words came to her the full realization and
+understanding of herself. With a cry she freed herself from his
+supporting arm, stepped backward and looked at him. The color surged
+over her face and throat, her eyelids drooped; while her name was
+yet upon his lips she answered with a broken cry of ecstasy and
+abandonment. A moment and she was in his arms and their lips had met.
+
+How quiet it was in the long room, where the myrtle candles gave out
+their faint perfume and the low fire leaped upon the hearth! Thus for
+a time; then, growing faint with her happiness, she put up protesting
+hands. He made her sit in the great chair, and knelt before her, all
+youth and fire, handsome, ardent, transfigured by his passion into such
+a lover as a queen might desire.
+
+“Hail, Sultana!” he said, smiling, his eyes upon her diadem. “Now you
+are Arpasia again, and I am Moneses, and ready, ah, most ready, to die
+for you.”
+
+She also smiled. “Remember that I am to quickly follow you.”
+
+“When shall we marry?” he demanded. “The garden cries out for you, my
+love, and I wish to hear your footstep in my house. It hath been a
+dreary house, filled with shadows, haunted by keen longings and vain
+regrets. Now the windows shall be flung wide and the sunshine shall
+pour in. Oh, your voice singing through the rooms, your foot upon the
+stairs!” He took her hands and put them to his lips. “I love as men
+loved of old,” he said. “I am far from myself and my times. When will
+you become my wife?”
+
+She answered him simply, like the child that at times she seemed: “When
+you will. But I must be Arpasia again to-morrow night. The Governor
+hath ordered the play repeated, and Margery Linn could not learn my
+part in time.”
+
+He laughed, fingering the red silk of her hanging sleeve, feasting
+his eyes upon her dark beauty, so heightened and deepened in the year
+that had passed. “Then play to them--and to me who shall watch you
+well--to-morrow night. But after that to them never again! only to me,
+Audrey, to me when we walk in the garden at home, when we sit in the
+book-room and the candles are lighted. That day in May when first you
+came into my garden, when first I showed you my house, when first I
+rowed you home with the sunshine on the water and the roses in your
+hair! Love, love! do you remember?”
+
+“Remember?” she answered, in a thrilling voice. “When I am dead I shall
+yet remember! And I will come when you want me. After to-morrow night
+I will come.... Oh, cannot you hear the river? And the walls of the
+box will be freshly green, and the fruit-trees all in bloom! The white
+leaves drift down upon the bench beneath the cherry-tree.... I will sit
+in the grass at your feet. Oh, I love you, have loved you long!”
+
+They had risen and now with her head upon his breast and his arm about
+her, they stood in the heart of the soft radiance of many candles. His
+face was bowed upon the dark wonder of her hair; when at last he lifted
+his eyes, they chanced to fall upon the one uncurtained window. Audrey,
+feeling his slight, quickly controlled start, turned within his arm and
+also saw the face of Jean Hugon, pressed against the glass, staring in
+upon them.
+
+Before Haward could reach the window the face was gone. A strip
+of moonlight, some leafless bushes, beyond, the blank wall of the
+theatre,--that was all. Raising the sash, Haward leaned forth until he
+could see the garden at large. Moonlight still and cold, winding paths,
+and shadows of tree and shrub and vine, but no sign of living creature.
+He closed the window and drew the curtain across, then turned again to
+Audrey. “A phantom of the night,” he said, and laughed.
+
+She was standing in the centre of the room, with her red dress gleaming
+in the candlelight. Her brow beneath its mock crown had no lines of
+care, and her wonderful eyes smiled upon him. “I have no fear of it,”
+she answered. “That is strange, is it not, when I have feared it for so
+long? I have no other fear to-night than that I shall outlive your love
+for me.”
+
+“I will love you until the stars fall,” he said.
+
+“They are falling to-night. When you are without the door look up, and
+you may see one pass swiftly down the sky. Once I watched them from the
+dark river”--
+
+“I will love you until the sun grows old,” he said. “Through life and
+death, through heaven or hell, past the beating of my heart, while
+lasts my soul!... Audrey, Audrey!”
+
+“If it is so,” she answered, “then all is well. Now kiss me good-night,
+for I hear Mistress Stagg’s voice. You will come again to-morrow? And
+to-morrow night,--oh, to-morrow night I shall see only you, think of
+only you while I play! Good-night, good-night.”
+
+They kissed and parted, and Haward, a happy man, went with raised face
+through the stillness and the moonlight to his lodging at Marot’s
+ordinary. No phantoms of the night disturbed him. He had found the
+philosopher’s stone, had drunk of the divine elixir. Life was at last
+a thing much to be desired, and the Giver of life was good, and the
+_summum bonum_ was deathless love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE LAST ACT
+
+
+Before eight of the clock, Mr. Stagg, peering from behind the curtain,
+noted with satisfaction that the house was filling rapidly; upon the
+stroke of the hour it was crowded to the door, without which might be
+heard angry voices contending that there must be yet places for the
+buying. The musicians began to play and more candles were lighted.
+There were laughter, talk, greetings from one part of the house to
+another, as much movement to and fro as could be accomplished in so
+crowded a space. The manners of the London playhouses were aped not
+unsuccessfully. To compare small things with great, it might have
+been Drury Lane upon a gala night. If the building was rude, yet it
+had no rival in the colonies, and if the audience was not so gay of
+hue, impertinent of tongue, or paramount in fashion as its London
+counterpart, yet it was composed of the rulers and makers of a land
+destined to greatness.
+
+In the centre box sat his Excellency, William Gooch,
+Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, resplendent in velvet and gold lace,
+and beside him Colonel Alexander Spotswood, arrived in town from
+Germanna that day, with his heart much set upon the passage, by the
+Assembly, of an act which would advantage his iron works. Colonel Byrd
+of Westover, Colonel Esmond of Castlewood, Colonel Carter, Colonel
+Page, and Colonel Ludwell were likewise of the Governor’s party,
+while seated or standing in the pit, or mingling with the ladies who
+made gay the boxes, were other gentlemen of consequence,--Councilors,
+Burgesses, owners of vast tracts of land, of ships and many slaves. Of
+their number some were traveled men, and some had fought in England’s
+wars, and some had studied in her universities. Many were of gentle
+blood, sprung from worthy and venerable houses in that green island
+which with fondness they still called home, and many had made for
+themselves name and fortune, hewing their way to honor through a
+primeval forest of adversities. Lesser personages were not lacking,
+but crowded the gallery and invaded the pit. Old fighters of Indians
+were present, and masters of ships trading from the Spanish islands
+or from the ports of home. Rude lumbermen from Norfolk or the borders
+of the Dismal Swamp stared about them, while here and there showed
+the sad-colored coat of a minister, or the broad face of some Walloon
+from Spotswood’s settlement on the Rapidan, or the keener countenances
+of Frenchmen from Monacan-Town. The armorer from the Magazine elbowed
+a great proprietor from the Eastern shore, while a famous guide and
+hunter, long and lean and brown, described to a magnate of Yorktown
+a buffalo capture in the far west, twenty leagues beyond the falls.
+Masters and scholars from William and Mary were there, with rangers,
+traders, sailors ashore, small planters, merchants, loquacious keepers
+of ordinaries, and with men, now free and with a stake in the land,
+who had come there as indentured servants, or as convicts, runaways,
+and fugitives from justice. In the upper gallery, where no payment was
+exacted, many servants with a sprinkling of favorite mulatto or mustee
+slaves; in the boxes the lustre and sweep of damask and brocade, light
+laughter, silvery voices, the flutter of fans; everywhere the vividness
+and animation of a strangely compounded society, where the shadows were
+deep and the lights were high.
+
+Nor did the conversation of so motley an assemblage lack a certain
+pictorial quality, a somewhat fantastic opulence of reference and
+allusion. Of what might its members speak while they waited for the
+drawing aside of the piece of baize which hung between them and an
+Oriental camp? There was the staple of their wealth, a broad-leafed
+plant, the smoke of whose far-spread burning might have wrapped its
+native fields in a perpetual haze as of Indian summer; and there
+was the warfare, bequeathed from generation to generation, against
+the standing armies of the forest, that subtle foe that slept not,
+retreated not, whose vanguard, ever falling, ever showed unbroken ranks
+beyond. Trapper and trader and ranger might tell of trails through the
+wilderness vast and hostile, of canoes upon unknown waters, of beasts
+of prey, creatures screaming in the night-time through the ebony woods.
+Of Indian villages, also, and of red men who, in the fastnesses that
+were left them, took and tortured and slew after strange fashions. The
+white man, strong as the wind, drove the red man before his face like
+an autumn leaf, but he beckoned to the black man, and the black man
+came at his call. He came in numbers from a far country, and the manner
+of his coming was in chains. What he had to sell was valuable, but the
+purchase price came not into his hands. Of him also mention was made
+to-night. The master of the tall ship that had brought him into the
+James or the York, the dealer to whom he was consigned, the officer
+of the Crown who had cried him for sale, the planter who had bought
+him, the divine who preached that he was of a race accursed,--all
+were there, and all had interest in this merchandise. Others in the
+throng talked of ships both great and small, and the quaintness of
+their names, the golden flowers and golden women, the swift birds and
+beasts, the namesakes of Fortune or of Providence, came pleasantly upon
+the ear. The still-vexed Bermoothes, Barbadoes, and all the Indies
+were spoken of; ports to the north and ports to the south, pirate
+craft and sunken treasure, a flight, a fight, a chase at sea. The men
+from Norfolk talked of the great Dismal and its trees of juniper and
+cypress, the traders of trading, the masters from William and Mary of
+the humanities. The greater men, authoritative and easy, owners of
+flesh and blood and much land, holders of many offices and leaders of
+the people, paid their respects to horse-racing and cock-fighting,
+cards and dice; to building, planting, the genteelest mode of living,
+and to public affairs both in Virginia and at home in England. Old
+friends, with oaths of hearty affection, and from opposite quarters
+of the house, addressed each other as Tom, or Ned, or Dick, while old
+enemies, finding themselves side by side, exchanged extremely civil
+speeches, and so put a keener edge upon their mutual disgust. In the
+boxes where glowed the women there was comfit talk, vastly pretty
+speeches, asseverations, denials, windy sighs, the politest oaths,
+whispering, talk of the play, and, last but not least, of Mr. Haward of
+Fair View, and Darden’s Audrey.
+
+Haward, entering the pit, made his way quietly to where a servant was
+holding for him a place. The fellow pulled his forelock in response
+to his master’s nod, then shouldered his way through the press to the
+ladder-like stairs that led to the upper gallery. Haward, standing
+at his ease, looked about him, recognizing this or that acquaintance
+with his slow, fine smile and an inclination of his head. He was much
+observed, and presently a lady leaned from her box, smiled, waved her
+fan, and slightly beckoned to him. It was young Madam Byrd, and Evelyn
+sat beside her.
+
+Five minutes later, as Haward entered the box of the ladies of
+Westover, music sounded, the curtain was drawn back, and the play
+began. Upon the ruder sort in the audience silence fell at once: they
+that followed the sea, and they that followed the woods, and all the
+simple folk ceased their noise and gesticulation, and gazed spellbound
+at the pomp before them of rude scenery and indifferent actors. But
+the great ones of the earth talked on, attending to their own business
+in the face of Tamerlane and his victorious force. It was the fashion
+to do so, and in the play to-night the first act counted nothing, for
+Darden’s Audrey had naught to do with it. In the second act, when she
+entered as Arpasia, the entire house would fall quiet, staring and
+holding its breath.
+
+Haward bent over Madam Byrd’s hand; then, as that lady turned from him
+to greet Mr. Lee, addressed himself with grave courtesy to Evelyn,
+clothed in pale blue, and more lovely even than her wont. For months
+they had not met. She had written him one letter,--had written the
+night of the day upon which she had encountered Audrey in the Palace
+walk,--and he had answered it with a broken line of passionate thanks
+for unmerited kindness. Now as he bent over her she caught his wrist
+lightly with her hand, and her touch burned him through the lace of his
+ruffles. With her other hand she spread her fan; Mr. Lee’s shoulder
+knot also screened them while Mr. Grymes had engaged its owner’s
+attention, and pretty Madam Byrd was in animated conversation with the
+occupants of a neighboring box. “Is it well?” asked Evelyn, very low.
+
+Haward’s answer was as low, and bravely spoken with his eyes meeting
+her clear gaze, and her touch upon his wrist. “For me, Evelyn, it is
+very well,” he said. “For her--may I live to make it well for her,
+forever and a day well for her! She is to be my wife.”
+
+“I am glad,” said Evelyn,--“very glad.”
+
+“You are a noble lady,” he answered. “Once, long ago, I styled myself
+your friend, your equal. Now I know better my place and yours, and as
+from a princess I take your alms. For your letter--that letter, Evelyn,
+which told me what you thought, which showed me what to do--I humbly
+thank you.”
+
+She let fall her hand from her silken lap, and watched with unseeing
+eyes the mimicry of life upon the stage before them, where Selima knelt
+to Tamerlane, and Moneses mourned for Arpasia. Presently she said
+again, “I am glad;” and then, when they had kept silence for a while,
+“You will live at Fair View?”
+
+“Ay,” he replied. “I will make it well for her here in Virginia.”
+
+“You must let me help you,” she said. “So old a friend as I may claim
+that as a right. To-morrow I may visit her, may I not? Now we must look
+at the players. When she enters there is no need to cry for silence. It
+comes of itself, and stays; we watch her with straining eyes. Who is
+that man in a cloak, staring at us from the pit? See, with the great
+peruke and the scar!”
+
+Haward, bending, looked over the rail, then drew back with a smile.
+“A half-breed trader,” he said, “by name Jean Hugon. Something of a
+character.”
+
+“He looked strangely at us,” said Evelyn, “with how haggard a face! My
+scarf, Mr. Lee? Thank you. Madam, have you the right of the matter from
+Kitty Page?”
+
+The conversation became general, and soon, the act approaching its
+end, and other gentlemen pressing into the box which held so beautiful
+a woman, so great a catch, and so assured a belle as Mistress Evelyn
+Byrd, Haward arose and took his leave. To others of the brilliant
+company assembled in the playhouse he paid his respects, speaking
+deferentially to the Governor, gayly to his fellow Councilors and
+planters, and bowing low to many ladies. All this was in the interval
+between the acts. At the second parting of the curtain he resumed his
+former station in the pit. With intention he had chosen a section of it
+where were few of his own class. From the midst of the ruder sort he
+could watch her more freely, could exult at his ease in her beauty both
+of face and mind.
+
+The curtains parted, and the fiddlers strove for warlike music.
+Tamerlane, surrounded by the Tartar host, received his prisoners, and
+the defiant rant of Bajazet shook the rafters. All the sound and fury
+of the stage could not drown the noise of the audience. Idle talk and
+laughter, loud comment upon the players, went on,--went on until there
+entered Darden’s Audrey, dressed in red silk, with a jeweled circlet
+like a line of flame about her dark flowing hair. The noise sank,
+voices of men and women died away; for a moment the rustle of silk, the
+flutter of fans, continued, then this also ceased.
+
+She stood before the Sultan, wide-eyed, with a smile of scorn upon her
+lips; then spoke in a voice, low, grave, monotonous, charged like a
+passing bell with warning and with solemn woe. The house seemed to grow
+more still; the playgoers, box and pit and gallery, leaned slightly
+forward: whether she spoke or moved or stood in silence, Darden’s
+Audrey, that had been a thing of naught, now held every eye, was
+regnant for an hour in this epitome of the world. The scene went on,
+and now it was to Moneses that she spoke. All the bliss and anguish of
+unhappy love sounded in her voice, dwelt in her eye and most exquisite
+smile, hung upon her every gesture. The curtains closed; from the
+throng that had watched her came a sound like a sigh, after which,
+slowly, tongues were loosened. An interval of impatient waiting, then
+the music again and the parting curtains, and Darden’s Audrey,--the
+girl who could so paint very love, very sorrow, very death; the girl
+who had come strangely and by a devious path from the height and
+loneliness of the mountains to the level of this stage and the watching
+throng.
+
+At the close of the fourth act of the play, Haward left his station in
+the pit, and quietly made his way to the regions behind the curtain,
+where in the very circumscribed space that served as greenroom to
+the Williamsburgh theatre he found Tamerlane, Bajazet, and their
+satellites, together with a number of gentlemen invaders from the
+front of the house. Mistress Stagg was there, and Selima, perched upon
+a table, was laughing with the aforesaid gentlemen, but no Arpasia.
+Haward drew the elder woman aside. “I wish to see her,” he said, in a
+low voice, kindly but imperious. “A moment only, good woman.”
+
+With her finger at her lips Mistress Stagg glanced about her. “She
+hides from them always, she’s that strange a child: though indeed, sir,
+as sweet a young lady as a prince might wed! This way, sir,--it’s dark;
+make no noise.”
+
+She led him through a dim passageway, and softly opened a door. “There,
+sir, for just five minutes! I’ll call her in time.”
+
+The door gave upon the garden, and Audrey sat upon the step in the
+moonshine and the stillness. Her hand propped her chin, and her eyes
+were raised to the few silver stars. That mock crown which she wore
+sparkled palely, and the light lay in the folds of her silken dress.
+At the opening of the door she did not turn, thinking that Mistress
+Stagg stood behind her. “How bright the moon shines!” she said. “A
+mockingbird should be singing, singing! Is it time for Arpasia?”
+
+As she rose from the step Haward caught her in his arms. “It is I, my
+love! Ah, heart’s desire! I worship you who gleam in the moonlight,
+with your crown like an aureole”--
+
+Audrey rested against him, clasping her hands upon his shoulder. “There
+were nights like this,” she said dreamily. “If I were a little child
+again, you could lift me in your arms and carry me home, I am tired ...
+I would that I needed not to go back to the glare and noise. The moon
+shines so bright! I have been thinking”--
+
+He bent his head and kissed her twice. “Poor Arpasia! Poor tired child!
+Soon we shall go home, Audrey,--we two, my love, we two!”
+
+“I have been thinking, sitting here in the moonlight,” she went on,
+her hands clasped upon his shoulder, and her cheek resting on them. “I
+was so ignorant. I never dreamed that I could wrong her ... and when I
+awoke it was too late. And now I love you,--not the dream, but you. I
+know not what is right or wrong; I know only that I love. I think she
+understands--forgives. I love you so!” Her hands parted, and she stood
+from him with her face raised to the balm of the night. “I love you
+so,” she repeated, and the low cadence of her laugh broke the silver
+stillness of the garden. “The moon up there, she knows it. And the
+stars,--not one has fallen to-night! Smell the flowers. Wait, I will
+pluck you hyacinths.”
+
+They grew by the doorstep, and she broke the slender stalks and gave
+them into his hand. But when he had kissed them he would give them
+back, would fasten them himself in the folds of silk, that rose and
+fell with her quickened breathing. He fastened them with a brooch which
+he took from the Mechlin at his throat. It was the golden horseshoe,
+the token that he had journeyed to the Endless Mountains.
+
+“Now I must go,” said Audrey. “They are calling for Arpasia. Follow me
+not at once. Good-night, good-night! Ah, I love you so! Remember always
+that I love you so!”
+
+She was gone. In a few minutes he also reëntered the playhouse, and
+went to his former place where, with none of his kind about him, he
+might watch her undisturbed. As he made his way with some difficulty
+through the throng, he was aware that he brushed against a man in a
+great peruke, who, despite the heat of the house, was wrapped in an
+old roquelaure tawdrily laced; also that the man was keeping stealthy
+pace with him, and that when he at last reached his station the cloaked
+figure fell into place immediately behind him.
+
+Haward shrugged his shoulders, but would not turn his head, and thereby
+grant recognition to Jean Hugon, the trader. Did he so, the half-breed
+might break into speech, provoke a quarrel, make God knew what
+assertion, what disturbance. To-morrow steps should be taken--Ah, the
+curtain!
+
+The silence deepened, and men and women leaned forward holding their
+breath. Darden’s Audrey, robed and crowned as Arpasia, sat alone
+in the Sultan’s tent, staring before her with wide dark eyes, then
+slowly rising began to speak. A sound, a sigh as of wonder, ran from
+the one to the other of the throng that watched her. Why did she look
+thus, with contracted brows, toward one quarter of the house? What
+inarticulate words was she uttering? What gesture, quickly controlled,
+did she make of ghastly fear and warning? And now the familiar words
+came halting from her lips:--
+
+    “‘Sure ’tis a horror, more than darkness brings,
+            That sits upon the night!’”
+
+With the closing words of her speech the audience burst into a great
+storm of applause. ’Gad! how she acts! But what now? Why, what is this?
+
+It was quite in nature and the mode for an actress to pause in the
+middle of a scene to curtsy thanks for generous applause, to smile and
+throw a mocking kiss to pit and boxes, but Darden’s Audrey had hitherto
+not followed the fashion. Also it was not uncustomary for some spoiled
+favorite of a player to trip down, between her scenes, the step or two
+from the stage to the pit, and mingle with the gallants there, laugh,
+jest, accept languishing glances, audacious comparisons, and such
+weighty trifles as gilt snuffboxes and rings of price. But this player
+had not heretofore honored the custom; moreover, at present she was
+needed upon the stage. Bajazet must thunder and she defy; without her
+the play could not move, and indeed the actors were now staring with
+the audience. What was it? Why had she crossed the stage, and, slowly,
+smilingly, beautiful and stately in her gleaming robes, descended those
+few steps which led to the pit? What had she to do there, throwing
+smiling glances to right and left, lightly waving the folk, gentle and
+simple, from her path, pressing steadily onward to some unguessed-at
+goal. As though held by a spell they watched her, one and all,--Haward,
+Evelyn, the Governor, the man in the cloak, every soul in that motley
+assemblage. The wonder had not time to dull, for the moments were few
+between her final leave-taking of those boards which she had trodden
+supreme and the crashing and terrible chord which was to close the
+entertainment of this night.
+
+Her face was raised to the boxes, and it seemed as though her dark eyes
+sought one there. Then, suddenly, she swerved. There were men between
+her and Haward. She raised her hand, and they fell back, making for her
+a path. Haward, bewildered, started forward, but her cry was not to
+him. It was to the figure just behind him,--the cloaked figure whose
+hand grasped the hunting-knife which from the stage, as she had looked
+to where stood her lover, she had seen or divined. “Jean! Jean Hugon!”
+she cried.
+
+Involuntarily the trader pushed toward her, past the man whom he meant
+to stab to the heart. The action, dragging his cloak aside, showed the
+half-raised arm and the gleaming steel. For many minutes the knife had
+been ready. The play was nearly over, and she must see this man who
+had stolen her heart, this Haward of Fair View, die. Else Jean Hugon’s
+vengeance were not complete. For his own safety the maddened half-breed
+had ceased to care. No warning cried from the stage could have done
+aught but precipitate the deed, but now for the moment, amazed and
+doubtful, he turned his back upon his prey.
+
+In that moment the Audrey of the woods, a creature lithe and agile and
+strong of wrist as of will, had thrown herself upon him, clutching the
+hand that held the knife. He strove to dash her from him, but in vain;
+the house was in an uproar; and now Haward’s hands were at his throat,
+Haward’s voice was crying to that fair devil, that Audrey for whom he
+had built his house, who was balking him of revenge, whose body was
+between him and his enemy! Suddenly he was all savage; as upon a night
+in Fair View house he had cast off the trammels of his white blood, so
+now. An access of furious strength came to him; he shook himself free;
+the knife gleamed in the air, descended.... He drew it from the bosom
+into which he had plunged it, and as Haward caught her in his arms, who
+would else have sunk to the floor, the half-breed burst through the
+horror-stricken throng, brandishing the red blade and loudly speaking
+in the tongue of the Monacans. Like a whirlwind he was gone from the
+house, and for a time none thought to follow him.
+
+[Illustration: “JEAN! JEAN HUGON!”]
+
+They bore her into the small white house, and up the stair to her own
+room, and laid her upon the bed. Dr. Contesse came and went away, and
+came again. There was a crowd in Palace Street before the theatre.
+A man mounting the doorstep so that he might be heard of all, said
+clearly, “She may live until dawn,--no longer.” Later, one came out of
+the house and asked that there might be quiet. The crowd melted away,
+but throughout the mild night, filled with the soft airs and thousand
+odors of the spring, people stayed about the place, standing silent in
+the street or sitting on the garden benches.
+
+In the room upstairs lay Darden’s Audrey, with crossed hands and head
+put slightly back. She lay still, upon the edge of death, nor seemed to
+care that it was so. Her eyes were closed, and at intervals one sitting
+at the bed head laid touch upon her pulse, or held before her lips a
+slight ringlet of her hair. Mary Stagg sat by the window and wept, but
+Haward, kneeling, hid his face in the covering of the bed. The form
+upon it was not more still than he; Mistress Stagg, also, stifled her
+sobs, for it seemed not a place for loud grief.
+
+In the room below, amidst the tinsel frippery of small wares, waited
+others whose lives had touched the life that was ebbing away. Now
+and then one spoke in a hushed voice, a window was raised, a servant
+bringing in fresh candles trod too heavily; then the quiet closed
+in again. Late in the night came through the open windows a distant
+clamor, and presently a man ran down Palace Street, and as he ran
+called aloud some tidings. MacLean, standing near the door, went softly
+out. When he returned, Colonel Byrd, sitting at the table, lifted
+inquiring brows. “They took him in the reeds near the Capitol landing,”
+said the Highlander grimly. “He’s in the gaol now, but whether the
+people will leave him there”--
+
+The night wore on, grew old, passed into the cold melancholy of its
+latest hour. Darden’s Audrey sighed and stirred, and a little strength
+coming to her parting spirit, she opened her eyes and loosed her
+hands. The physician held to her lips the cordial, and she drank a
+very little. Haward lifted his head, and as Contesse passed him to set
+down the cup, caught him by the sleeve. The other looked pityingly at
+the man into whose face had come a flush of hope. “’T is but the last
+flickering of the flame,” he said. “Soon even the spark will vanish.”
+
+Audrey began to speak. At first her words were wild and wandering, but,
+the mist lifting somewhat, she presently knew Mistress Stagg, and liked
+to have her take the doctor’s place beside her. At Haward she looked
+doubtfully, with wide eyes, as scarce understanding. When he called her
+name she faintly shook her head, then turned it slightly from him and
+veiled her eyes. It came to him with a terrible pang that the memory of
+their latest meetings was wiped from her brain, and that she was afraid
+of his broken words and the tears upon her hand.
+
+When she spoke again it was to ask for the minister. He was below, and
+Mistress Stagg went weeping down the stairs to summon him. He came, but
+would not touch the girl; only stood, with his hat in his hand, and
+looked down upon her with bleared eyes and a heavy countenance.
+
+“I am to die, am I not?” she asked, with her gaze upon him.
+
+“That is as God wills, Audrey,” he answered.
+
+“I am not afraid to die.”
+
+“You have no need,” he said, and going out of the room and down the
+stairs, made Stagg pour for him a glass of aqua vitæ.
+
+Audrey closed her eyes, and when she opened them again there seemed to
+be many persons in the room. One was bending over her whom at first she
+thought was Molly, but soon she saw more clearly, and smiled at the
+pale and sorrowful face. The lady bent lower yet, and kissed her on the
+forehead. “Audrey,” she said, and Audrey looking up at her answered,
+“Evelyn.”
+
+When the dawn came glimmering in the windows, when the mist was cold
+and the birds were faintly heard, they raised her upon her pillows, and
+wiped the death dew from her forehead. “Audrey, Audrey, Audrey!” cried
+Haward, and caught at her hands.
+
+She looked at him with a faint and doubtful smile, remembering nothing
+of that hour in the room below, of those minutes in the moonlit garden.
+“Gather the rosebuds while ye may,” she said; and then, “The house is
+large. Good giant, eat me not!”
+
+The man upon his knees beside her uttered a cry, and began to speak to
+her, thickly, rapidly, words of agony, entreaty, and love. To-morrow
+and for all life habit would resume its sway, and lost love, remorse,
+and vain regrets put on a mask that was cold and fine and able to
+deceive. To-night there spoke the awakened heart. With her hands cold
+in his, with his agonized gaze upon the face from which the light was
+slowly passing, he poured forth his passion and his anguish, and she
+listened not. They moistened her lips, and one opened wide the window
+that gave upon the east. “It was all a dream,” she said; and again,
+“All a dream.” A little later, while the sky flushed slowly and the
+light of the candles grew pale, she began suddenly, and in a stronger
+voice, to speak as Arpasia:--
+
+    “‘If it be happiness, alas! to die,
+      To lie forgotten in the silent grave’”--
+
+“Forgotten!” cried Haward. “Audrey, Audrey, Audrey! Go not from me! Oh,
+love, love, stay awhile!”
+
+“The mountains,” said Audrey clearly. “The sun upon them and the
+lifting mist.”
+
+“The mountains!” he cried. “Ay, we will go to them, Audrey, we will go
+together! Why, you are stronger, sweetheart! There is strength in your
+voice and your hands, and a light in your eyes. Oh, if you will live,
+Audrey, I will make you happy! You shall take me to the mountains--we
+will go together, you and I! Audrey, Audrey”--
+
+But Audrey was gone already.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUDREY ***
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
+United States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
+Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
+on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
+phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
+  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
+  United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
+  you are located before using this eBook.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg™ License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
+other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
+Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
+provided that:
+
+• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+  the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
+  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
+  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+  Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+  Literary Archive Foundation.”
+
+• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
+  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
+  works.
+
+• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+  receipt of the work.
+
+• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+  distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
+of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
+
+Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org.
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
+
+The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact.
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
+widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic
+works
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org.
+
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.