Audrey Part 12

"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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s, 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 unG.o.dly books, a plaintive and pa.s.sionate 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 sh.o.r.e, 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, rea.s.sured, 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 gra.s.sy cape all in the shadow of a towering sycamore. Beyond the point, crowning the low green slope of the bank, and topped with a s.h.a.ggy 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.p.a.ces 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ces, there cool shadows of fruit-trees; broken by circles and squares of box; green with the gra.s.s 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 gra.s.sy 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 pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude 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.