Audrey Part 14

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 pa.s.sed 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 la.s.situde 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?" Pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed before he turned back to the room, where the candles had burned low. "I will go to Westover to-morrow," he said. "G.o.d 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 "Ma.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed sleepless nights.

MacLean sat down, and drew his winegla.s.s 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 gla.s.s." 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 d.i.c.k Allen, who hath slandered me to Mistress Betty c.o.c.ke, 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 b.u.t.ton 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 winegla.s.s. "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 sh.o.r.e 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 ash.o.r.e. 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s between the long gravestones, p.r.o.ne 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 a.s.sembled, 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 pa.s.sed 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 l.u.s.tre and color, made a flower-bed of the a.s.semblage. 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 pa.s.sed 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 coa.r.s.e 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 hourgla.s.s 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 cl.u.s.ters. 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.