Audrey Part 11

"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 gla.s.ses toward him slowly filled them with wine. "It is true," he said, "that it is not my intention to become a pet.i.tioner 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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.s. "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 ma.s.s of bloom, pa.s.sed his gla.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 pet.i.tion aesculapius? 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 b.u.t.tercup-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 gla.s.s that now he dresses before tells him not; but he thinks a truer gla.s.s 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."