Audrey Part 20

He came and leaned upon the back of the settle. "You sent for me, Audrey,"

he said, and laid his hand lightly upon her hair.

She shrank from his touch. "The minister made me write the letter," she said, in a low voice. "I did not wish to trouble you, sir."

Upon her wrist were dark marks. "Did Darden do that?" demanded Haward, as he took his seat beside her.

Audrey looked at the bruise indifferently; then with her other hand covered it from sight. "I have a favor to ask of Mr. Haward," she said. "I hope that after his many kindnesses he will not refuse to do me this greatest one. If he should grant my request, the grat.i.tude which I must needs already feel toward him will be increased tenfold." The words came precisely, in an even voice.

Haward smiled. "Child, you have conned your lesson well. Leave the words of the book, and tell me in your own language what his reverence wants."

Audrey told him, but it seemed to her that he was not listening. When she had come to an end of the minister's grievances, she sat, with downcast eyes, waiting for him to speak, wishing that he would not look at her so steadily. She meant never to show him her heart,--never, never; but beneath his gaze it was hard to keep her cheek from burning, her lip from quivering.

At last he spoke: "Would it please you, Audrey, if I should save this man from his just deserts?"

Audrey raised her eyes. "He and Mistress Deborah are all my friends," she said. "The glebe house is my home."

Deep sadness spoke in voice and eye. The shaft of light, moving, had left her in the outer shadow: she sat there with a listless grace; with a dignity, too, that was not without pathos. There had been a forlorn child; there had been an unfriended girl; there was now a woman, for Life to fondle or to wreak its rage upon. The change was subtle; one more a lover or less a lover than Haward might not have noted it. "I will pet.i.tion the Commissary to-night," he said, "the Governor to-morrow. Is your having in friends so slight as you say, little maid?"

Oh, he could reach to the quick! She was sure that he had not meant to accuse her of ingrat.i.tude, and pitifully sure that she must have seemed guilty of it. "No, no!" she cried. "I have had a friend"--Her voice broke, and she started to her feet, her face to the door, all her being quiveringly eager to be gone. She had asked that which she was bidden to ask, had gained that which she was bidden to gain; for the rest, it was far better that she should go. Better far for him to think her dull and thankless as a stone than see--than see--

When Haward caught her by the hand, she trembled and drew a sobbing breath. "'I have had a friend,' Audrey?" he asked. "Why not 'I have a friend'?"

"Why not?" thought Audrey. "Of course he would think, why not? Well, then"--

"I have a friend," she said aloud. "Have you not been to me the kindest friend, the most generous"--She faltered, but presently went on, a strange courage coming to her. She had turned slightly toward him, though she looked not at him, but upward to where the light streamed through the high window. It fell now upon her face. "It is a great thing to save life," she said. "To save a soul alive, how much greater! To have kept one soul in the knowledge that there is goodness, mercy, tenderness, G.o.d; to have given it bread to eat where it sat among the stones, water to drink where all the streams were dry,--oh, a king might be proud of that! And that is what you have done for me.... When you sailed away, so many years ago, and left me with the minister and his wife, they were not always kind. But I knew that you thought them so, and I always said to myself, 'If he knew, he would be sorry for me.' At last I said, 'He is sorry for me; there is the sea, and he cannot come, but he knows, and is sorry.' It was make-believe,--for you thought that I was happy, did you not?--but it helped me very much. I was only a child, you know, and I was so very lonely. I could not think of mother and Molly, for when I did I saw them as--as I had seen them last. The dark scared me, until I found that I could pretend that you were holding my hand, as you used to do when night came in the valley. After a while I had only to put out my hand, and yours was there waiting for it. I hope that you can understand--I want you to know how large is my debt.... As I grew, so did the debt. When I was a girl it was larger than when I was a child. Do you know with whom I have lived all these years? There is the minister, who comes reeling home from the crossroads ordinary, who swears over the dice, who teaches cunning that he calls wisdom, laughs at man and scarce believes in G.o.d. His hand is heavy; this is his mark." She held up her bruised wrist to the light, then let the hand drop. When she spoke of the minister, she made a gesture toward the shadows growing ever thicker and darker in the body of the house. It was as though she saw him there, and was pointing him out.

"There is the minister's wife," she said, and the motion of her hand again accused the shadows. "Oh, their roof has sheltered me; I have eaten of their bread. But truth is truth. There is the schoolmaster with the branded hands. He taught me, you know. There is"--she was looking with wide eyes into the deepest of the shadows--"there is Hugon!" Her voice died away. Haward did not move or speak, and for a minute there was silence in the dusky playhouse. Audrey broke it with a laugh, soft, light, and clear, that came oddly upon the mood of the hour. Presently she was speaking again: "Do you think it strange that I should laugh? I laughed to think I have escaped them all. Do you know that they call me a dreamer?

Once, deep in the woods, I met the witch who lives at the head of the creek. She told me that I was a dream child, and that all my life was a dream, and I must pray never to awake; but I do not think she knew, for all that she is a witch. They none of them know,--none, none! If I had not dreamed, as they call it,--if I had watched, and listened, and laid to heart, and become like them,--oh, then I should have died of your look when at last you came! But I 'dreamed;' and in that long dream you, though you were overseas, you showed me, little by little, that the spirit is not bond, but free,--that it can walk the waves, and climb to the sunset and the stars. And I found that the woods were fair, that the earth was fair and kind as when I was a little child. And I grew to love and long for goodness. And, day by day, I have had a life and a world where flowers bloomed, and the streams ran fresh, and there was bread indeed to eat. And it was you that showed me the road, that opened for me the gates!"

She ceased to speak, and, turning fully toward him, took his hand and put it to her lips. "May you be very happy!" she said. "I thank you, sir, that when you came at last you did not break my dream. The dream fell short!"

The smile upon her face was very sweet, very pure and n.o.ble. She would have gone without another word, but Haward caught her by the sleeve. "Stay awhile!" he cried. "I too am a dreamer, though not like you, you maid of Dian, dark saint, cold vestal, with your eyes forever on the still, white flame! Audrey, Audrey, Audrey! Do you know what a pretty name you have, child, or how dark are your eyes, or how fine this hair that a queen might envy? Westover has been dull, child."

Audrey shook her head and smiled, and thought that he was laughing at her.

A vision of Evelyn, as Evelyn had looked that morning, pa.s.sed before her.

She did not believe that he had found Westover dull.

"I am coming to Fair View, dark Audrey," he went on. "In its garden there are roses yet blooming for thy hair; there are sweet verses calling to be read; there are cool, sequestered walks to be trodden, with thy hand in mine,--thy hand in mine, little maid. Life is but once; we shall never pa.s.s this way again. Drink the cup, wear the roses, live the verses! Of what sing all the sweetest verses, dark-eyed witch, forest Audrey?"

"Of love," said Audrey simply. She had freed her hand from his clasp, and her face was troubled. She did not understand; never had she seen him like this, with shining eyes and hot, unsteady touch.

"There is the ball at the Palace to-morrow night," he went on. "I must be there, for a fair lady and I are to dance together." He smiled. "Poor Audrey, who hath never been to a ball; who only dances with the elves, beneath the moon, around a beechen tree! The next day I will go to Fair View, and you will be at the glebe house, and we will take up the summer where we left it, that weary month ago."

"No, no," said Audrey hurriedly, and shook her head. A vague and formless trouble had laid its cold touch upon her heart; it was as though she saw a cloud coming up, but it was no larger than a man's hand, and she knew not what it should portend, nor that it would grow into a storm. He was strange to-day,--that she felt; but then all her day since the coming of Evelyn had been sad and strange.

The shaft of sunshine was gone from the stage, and all the house was in shadow. Audrey descended the two or three steps leading into the pit, and Haward followed her. Side by side they left the playhouse, and found themselves in the garden, and also in the presence of five or six ladies and gentlemen, seated upon the gra.s.s beneath a mulberry-tree, or engaged in rifling the grape arbor of its purple fruit.

The garden was a public one, and this gay little party, having tired of the Indian spectacle, had repaired hither to treat of its own affairs.

Moreover, it had been there, scattered upon the gra.s.s in view of the playhouse door, for the better part of an hour. Concerned with its own wit and laughter, it had caught no sound of low voices issuing from the theatre; and for the two who talked within, all outward noise had ranked as coming from the distant, crowded fields.

A young girl, her silken ap.r.o.n raised to catch the cl.u.s.ters which a gentleman, mounted upon a chair, threw down, gave a little scream and let fall her purple h.o.a.rd. "'Gad!" cried the gentleman. One and another exclaimed, and a withered beauty seated beneath the mulberry-tree laughed shrilly.

A moment, an effort, a sharp recall of wandering thoughts, and Haward had the situation in hand. An easy greeting to the gentlemen, debonair compliments for the ladies, a question or two as to the entertainment they had left, then a negligent bringing forward of Audrey. "A little brown ward and ancient playmate of mine,--shot up in the night to be as tall as a woman. Make thy curtsy, child, and go tell the minister what I have said on the subject he wots of."

Audrey curtsied and went away, having never raised her eyes to note the stare of curiosity, the suppressed smile, the glance from eye to eye, which had trod upon her introduction to the company. Haward, remaining with his friends and acquaintances, gathered grapes for the blooming girl and the withered beauty, and for a little, smiling woman who was known for as arrant a scandalmonger as could be found in Virginia.

CHAPTER XVIII

A QUESTION OF COLORS

Evelyn, seated at her toilette table, and in the hands of Mr. Timothy Green, hairdresser in ordinary to Williamsburgh, looked with unseeing eyes at her own fair reflection in the gla.s.s before her. Chloe, the black handmaiden who stood at the door, latch in hand, had time to grow tired of waiting before her mistress spoke. "You may tell Mr. Haward that I am at home, Chloe. Bring him here."

The hairdresser drew a comb through the rippling brown tresses and commenced his most elaborate arrangement, working with pursed lips, and head bent now to this side, now to that. He had been a hard-pressed man since sunrise, and the lighting of the Palace candles that night might find him yet employed by some belated dame. Evelyn was very pale, and shadows were beneath her eyes. Moved by a sudden impulse, she took from the table a rouge pot, and hastily and with trembling fingers rubbed bloom into her cheeks; then the patch box,--one, two, three Tory partisans. "Now I am less like a ghost," she said, "Mr. Green, do I not look well and merry, and as though my sleep had been sound and dreamless?"

In his high, cracked voice, the hairdresser was sure that, pale or glowing, grave or gay, Mistress Evelyn Byrd would be the toast at the ball that night. The lady laughed, for she heard Haward's step upon the landing. He entered to the gay, tinkling sound, tent over the hand she extended, then, laying aside hat and cane, took his seat beside the table.

"'Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare, And beauty draws us with a single hair,'"

he quoted, with a smile. Then: "Will you take our hearts in blue to-night, Evelyn? You know that I love you best in blue."

She lifted her fan from the table, and waved it lightly to and fro. "I go in rose color," she said. "'Tis the gown I wore at Lady Rich's rout. I dare say you do not remember it? But my Lord of Peterborough said"--She broke off, and smiled to her fan.

Her voice was sweet and slightly drawling. The languid turn of the wrist, the easy grace of att.i.tude, the beauty of bared neck and tinted face, of lowered lids and slow, faint smile,--oh, she was genuine fine lady, if she was not quite Evelyn! A breeze blowing through the open windows stirred their gay hangings of flowered cotton; the black girl sat in a corner and sewed; the supple fingers of the hairdresser went in and out of the heavy hair; roses in a deep blue bowl made the room smell like a garden. Haward sighed, so pleasant was it to sit quietly in this cool chamber, after the glare and wavering of the world without. "My Lord of Peterborough is magnificent at compliments," he said kindly, "but 'twould be a jeweled speech indeed that outdid your deserving, Evelyn. Come, now, wear the blue! I will find you white roses; you shall wear them for a breast knot, and in the minuet return me one again."

Evelyn waved her fan. "I dance the minuet with Mr. Lee." Her tone was still sweetly languid, her manner most indifferent. The thick and glossy tress that, drawn forward, was to ripple over white neck and bosom was too loosely curled. She regarded it in the mirror with an anxious frown, then spoke of it to the hairdresser.

Haward, smiling, watched her with heavy-lidded eyes. "Mr. Lee is a fortunate gentleman," he said. "I may gain the rose, perhaps, in the country dance?"

"That is better," remarked the lady, surveying with satisfaction the new-curled lock. "The country dance? For that Mr. Lightfoot hath my promise."

"It seems that I am a laggard," said Haward.

The knocker sounded below. "I am at home, Chloe," announced the mistress; and the slave, laying aside her work, slipped from the room.

Haward played with the trifles upon the dressing table. "Wherein have I offended, Evelyn?" he asked, at last.

The lady arched her brows, and the action made her for the moment very like her handsome father. "Why, there is no offense!" she cried. "An old acquaintance, a family friend! I step a minuet with Mr. Lee; I stand up for a country dance with Mr. Lightfoot; I wear pink instead of blue, and have lost my liking for white roses,--what is there in all this that needs such a question? Ah, you have broken my silver chain!"

"I am clumsy to-day!" he exclaimed. "A thousand pardons!" He let the broken toy slip from his fingers to the polished surface of the table, and forgot that it was there. "Since Colonel Byrd (I am sorry to learn) keeps his room with a fit of the gout, may I--an old acquaintance, a family friend--conduct you to the Palace to-night?"

The fan waved on. "Thank you, but I go in our coach, and need no escort."

The lady yawned, very delicately, behind her slender fingers; then dropped the fan, and spoke with animation: "Ah, here is Mr. Lee! In a good hour, sir! I saw the bracelet that you mended for Mistress Winston. Canst do as much for my poor chain here? See! it and this silver heart have parted company."

Mr. Lee kissed her hand, and took snuff with Mr. Haward; then, after an ardent speech crammed with references to Vulcan and Venus, chains that were not slight, hearts that were of softer substance, sat down beside this kind and dazzling vision, and applied his clever fingers to the problem in hand. He was a personable young gentleman, who had studied at Oxford, and who, proudly conscious that his tragedy of Artaxerxes, then reposing in the escritoire at home, much outmerited Haward's talked-of comedy, felt no diffidence in the company of the elder fine gentleman. He rattled on of this and that, and Evelyn listened kindly, with only the curve of her cheek visible to the family friend. The silver heart was restored to its chain; the lady smiled her thanks; the enamored youth hitched his chair some inches nearer the fair whom he had obliged, and, with his hand upon his heart, entered the realm of high-flown speech. The gay curtains waved; the roses were sweet; black Chloe sewed and sewed; the hairdresser's hands wove in and out, as though he were a wizard making pa.s.ses.

Haward rose to take his leave. Evelyn yielded him her hand; it was cold against his lips. She was nonchalant and smiling; he was easy, unoffended, admirably the fine gentleman. For one moment their eyes met. "I had been wiser," thought the man, "I had been wiser to have myself told her of that brown witch, that innocent sorceress! Why something held my tongue I know not. Now she hath read my idyl, but all darkened, all awry." The woman thought: "Cruel and base! You knew that my heart was yours to break, cast aside, and forget!"