Audrey Part 10

"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 b.u.t.tons, stuck lace of a so-so quality at neck and wrists, wore a c.o.c.ked 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sengers 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 a.s.sembly. 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 pa.s.sed on; but Hugon twitched him by the sleeve, and producing from the depths of his great flapped pocket a handful of crusadoes, ecues, 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 gra.s.s 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, pa.s.sing the long college all astare with windows, the Indian school, and an expanse of gra.s.s starred with b.u.t.tercups, 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 b.u.t.tercups were thick in the gra.s.s, stretched north and south. Beyond these greens were more houses, more mulberries and poplars, and finally, closing the vista, the brick facade 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 vitae, 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 pa.s.sion 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 c.o.xcomb 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 un.o.bserved 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 chastis.e.m.e.nt. 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 n.o.ble 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 impa.s.sioned 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.sy 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.