Audrey Part 15

The minister, having questions to settle with clerk and s.e.xton, 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 reentered 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble; 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 a.s.surances, 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, pa.s.sed 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 ap.r.o.n 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 ap.r.o.n 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 gra.s.s, 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 pa.s.sion 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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s 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, pa.s.sed 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 Derwent.w.a.ter 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'"--