Audrey Part 27

The girl awoke from her dream of self-murder with a cry of terror. Not the river, good Lord, not the river! Not death, but life! With a second shuddering cry she lifted hand and arm from the water, and with frantic haste dried them upon the skirt of her dress. There had been none to hear her. Upon the midnight river, between the dim forests that ever spoke, but never listened, she was utterly alone. She took the oars again, and went on her way up the river, rowing swiftly, for the mountains were far away, and she might be pursued.

When she drew near to Jamestown she shot far out into the river, because men might be astir in the boats about the town landing. Anch.o.r.ed in midstream was a great ship,--a man-of-war, bristling with guns. Her boat touched its shadow, and the lookout called to her. She bent her head, put forth her strength, and left the black hull behind her. There was another ship to pa.s.s, a slaver that had come in the evening before, and would land its cargo at sunrise. The stench that arose from it was intolerable, and, as the girl pa.s.sed, a corpse, heavily weighted, was thrown into the water.

Audrey went swiftly by, and the river lay clean before her. The stars paled and the dawn came, but she could not see the sh.o.r.es for the thick white mist. A spectral boat, with a sail like a gray moth's wing, slipped past her. The shadow at the helm was whistling for the wind, and the sound came strange and shrill through the filmy, ashen morning. The mist began to lift. A few moments now, and the river would lie dazzlingly bare between the red and yellow forests. She turned her boat sh.o.r.ewards, and presently forced it beneath the bronze-leafed, drooping boughs of a sycamore. Here she left the boat, tying it to the tree, and hoping that it was well hidden. The great fear at her heart was that, when she was missed, Hugon would undertake to follow and to find her. He had the skill to do so. Perhaps, after many days, when she was in sight of the mountains, she might turn her head and, in that lonely land, see him coming toward her.

The sun was shining, and the woods were gay above her head and gay beneath her feet. When the wind blew, the colored leaves went before it like flights of birds. She was hungry, and as she walked she ate a piece of bread taken from the glebe-house larder. It was her plan to go rapidly through the settled country, keeping as far as possible to the great s.p.a.ces of woodland which the axe had left untouched; sleeping in such dark and hidden hollows as she could find; begging food only when she must, and then from poor folk who would not stay her or be overcurious about her business. As she went on, the houses, she knew, would be farther and farther apart; the time would soon arrive when she might walk half a day and see never a clearing in the deep woods. Then the hills would rise about her, and far, far off she might see the mountains, fixed, cloudlike, serene, and still, beyond the miles of rustling forest. There would be no more great houses, built for ladies and gentlemen, but here and there, at far distances, rude cabins, dwelt in by kind and simple folk. At such a home, when the mountains had taken on a deeper blue, when the streams were narrow and the level land only a memory, she would pause, would ask if she might stay. What work was wanted she would do. Perhaps there would be children, or a young girl like Molly, or a kind woman like Mistress Stagg; and perhaps, after a long, long while, it would grow to seem to her like that other cabin.

These were her rose-colored visions. At other times a terror took her by the shoulders, holding her until her face whitened and her eyes grew wide and dark. The way was long and the leaves were falling fast, and she thought that it might be true that in this world into which she had awakened there was for her no home. The cold would come, and she might have no bread, and for all her wandering find none to take her in. In those forests of the west the wolves ran in packs, and the Indians burned and wasted. Some bitter night-time she would die.... Watching the sky from Fair View windows, perhaps he might idly mark a falling star.

All that day she walked, keeping as far as was possible to the woods, but forced now and again to traverse open fields and long stretches of sunny road. If she saw any one coming, she hid in the roadside bushes, or, if that could not be done, walked steadily onward, with her head bent and her heart beating fast. It must have been a day for minding one's own business, for none stayed or questioned her. Her dinner she begged from some children whom she found in a wood gathering nuts. Supper she had none. When night fell, she was glad to lay herself down upon a bed of leaves that she had raked together; but she slept little, for the wind moaned in the half-clad branches, and she could not cease from counting the stars that shot. In the morning, numbed and cold, she went slowly on until she came to a wayside house. Quaker folk lived there; and they asked her no question, but with kind words gave her of what they had, and let her rest and grow warm in the sunshine upon their doorstep. She thanked them with shy grace, but presently, when they were not looking, rose and went her way. Upon the second day she kept to the road. It was loss of time wandering in the woods, skirting thicket and marsh, forced ever and again to return to the beaten track. She thought, also, that she must be safe, so far was she now from Fair View. How could they guess that she was gone to the mountains?

About midday, two men on horseback looked at her in pa.s.sing. One spoke to the other, and turning their horses they put after and overtook her. He who had spoken touched her with the b.u.t.t of his whip. "Ecod!" he exclaimed. "It's the la.s.s we saw run for a guinea last May Day at Jamestown! Why so far from home, light o' heels?"

A wild leap of her heart, a singing in her ears, and Audrey clutched at safety.

"I be Joan, the smith's daughter," she said stolidly. "I niver ran for a guinea. I niver saw a guinea. I be going an errand for feyther."

"Ecod, then!" said the other man. "You're on a wrong scent. 'Twas no dolt that ran that day!"

The man who had touched her laughed. "'Facks, you are right, Tom! But I'd ha' sworn 't was that brown girl. Go your ways on your errand for 'feyther'!" As he spoke, being of an amorous turn, he stooped from his saddle and kissed her. Audrey, since she was at that time not Audrey at all, but Joan, the smith's daughter, took the salute as stolidly as she had spoken. The two men rode away, and the second said to the first: "A Williamsburgh man told me that the girl who won the guinea could speak and look like a born lady. Didn't ye hear the story of how she went to the Governor's ball, all tricked out, dancing, and making people think she was some fine dame from Maryland maybe? And the next day she was scored in church before all the town. I don't know as they put a white sheet on her, but they say 't was no more than her deserts."

Audrey, left standing in the sunny road, retook her own countenance, rubbed her cheek where the man's lips had touched it, and trembled like a leaf. She was frightened, both at the encounter and because she could make herself so like Joan,--Joan who lived near the crossroads ordinary, and who had been whipped at the Court House.

Late that afternoon she came upon two or three rude dwellings cl.u.s.tered about a mill. A knot of men, the miller in the midst, stood and gazed at the mill-stream. They wore an angry look; and Audrey pa.s.sed them hastily by. At the farthest house she paused to beg a piece of bread; but the woman who came to the door frowned and roughly bade her begone, and a child threw a stone at her. "One witch is enough to take the bread out of poor folks' mouths!" cried the woman. "Be off, or I'll set the dogs on ye!" The children ran after her as she hastened from the inhospitable neighborhood. "'T is a young witch," they cried, "going to help the old one swim to-night!" and a stone struck her, bruising her shoulder.

She began to run, and, fleet of foot as she was, soon distanced her tormentors. When she slackened pace it was sunset, and she was faint with hunger and desperately weary. From the road a bypath led to a small clearing in a wood, with a slender spiral of smoke showing between the trees. Audrey went that way, and came upon a crazy cabin whose door and window were fast closed. In the unkempt garden rose an apple-tree, with the red apples shriveling upon its boughs, and from the broken gate a line of cedars, black and ragged, ran down to a piece of water, here ghastly pale, there streaked like the sky above with angry crimson. The place was very still, and the air felt cold. When no answer came to her first knocking, Audrey beat upon the door; for she was suddenly afraid of the road behind her, and of the doleful woods and the coming night.

The window shutter creaked ever so slightly, and some one looked out; then the door opened, and a very old and wrinkled woman, with lines of cunning about her mouth, laid her hand upon the girl's arm. "Who be ye?" she whispered. "Did ye bring warning? I don't say, mind ye, that I can't make a stream go dry,--maybe I can and maybe I can't,--but I didn't put a word on the one yonder." She threw up her arms with a wailing cry. "But they won't believe what a poor old soul says! Are they in an evil temper, honey?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Audrey. "I have come a long way, and I am hungry and tired. Give me a piece of bread, and let me stay with you to-night."

The old woman moved aside, and the girl, entering a room that was mean and poor enough, sat down upon a stool beside the fire. "If ye came by the mill," demanded her hostess, with a suspicious eye, "why did ye not stop there for bite and sup?"

"The men were all talking together," answered Audrey wearily. "They looked so angry that I was afraid of them. I did stop at one house; but the woman bade me begone, and the children threw stones at me and called me a witch."

The crone stooped and stirred the fire; then from a cupboard brought forth bread and a little red wine, and set them before the girl. "They called you a witch, did they?" she mumbled as she went to and fro. "And the men were talking and planning together?"

Audrey ate the bread and drank the wine; then, because she was so tired, leaned her head against the table and fell half asleep. When she roused herself, it was to find her withered hostess standing over her with a sly and toothless smile. "I've been thinking," she whispered, "that since you're here to mind the house, I'll just step out to a neighbor's about some business I have in hand. You can stay by the fire, honey, and be warm and comfortable. Maybe I'll not come back to-night."

Going to the window, she dropped a heavy bar across the shutter. "Ye'll put the chain across the door when I'm out," she commanded. "There be evil-disposed folk may want to win in." Coming back to the girl, she laid a skinny hand upon her arm. Whether with palsy or with fright the hand shook like a leaf, but Audrey, half asleep again, noticed little beyond the fact that the fire warmed her, and that here at last was rest. "If there should come a knocking and a calling, honey," whispered the witch, "don't ye answer to it or unbar the door. Ye'll save time for me that way.

But if they win in, tell them I went to the northward."

Audrey looked at her with glazed, uncomprehending eyes, while the gnome-like figure appeared to grow smaller, to melt out of the doorway. It was a minute or more before the wayfarer thus left alone in the hut could remember that she had been told to bar the door. Then her instinct of obedience sent her to the threshold. Dusk was falling, and the waters of the pool lay pale and still beyond the ebony cedars. Through the twilit landscape moved the crone who had housed her for the night; but she went not to the north, but southwards toward the river. Presently the dusk swallowed her up, and Audrey was left with the ragged garden and the broken fence and the tiny firelit hut. Reentering the room, she fastened the door, as she had been told to do, and then went back to the hearth.

The fire blazed and the shadows danced; it was far better than last night, out in the cold, lying upon dead leaves, watching the falling stars. Here it was warm, warm as June in a walled garden; the fire was red like the roses ... the roses that had thorns to bring heart's blood.

Audrey fell fast asleep; and while she was asleep and the night was yet young, the miller whose mill stream had run dry, the keeper of a tippling house whose custom had dwindled, the ferryman whose child had peaked and pined and died, came with a score of men to reckon with the witch who had done the mischief. Finding door and window fast shut, they knocked, softly at first, then loudly and with threats. One watched the chimney, to see that the witch did not ride forth that way; and the father of the child wished to gather brush, pile it against the entrance, and set all afire.

The miller, who was a man of strength, ended the matter by breaking in the door. They knew that the witch was there, because they had heard her moving about, and, when the door gave, a cry of affright. When, however, they had laid hands upon her, and dragged her out under the stars, into the light of the torches they carried, they found that the witch, who, as was well known, could slip her shape as a snake slips its skin, was no longer old and bowed, but straight and young.

"Let me go!" cried Audrey. "How dare you hold me! I never harmed one of you. I am a poor girl come from a long way off"--

"Ay, a long way!" exclaimed the ferryman. "More leagues, I'll warrant, than there are miles in Virginia! We'll see if ye can swim home, ye witch!"

"I'm no witch!" cried the girl again. "I never harmed you. Let me go!"

One of the torchbearers gave ground a little. "She do look mortal young.

But where be the witch, then?"

Audrey strove to shake herself free. "The old woman left me alone in the house. She went to--to the northward."

"She lies!" cried the ferryman, addressing himself to the angry throng.

The torches, flaming in the night wind, gave forth a streaming, uncertain, and bewildering light; to the excited imaginations of the rustic avengers, the form in the midst of them was not always that of a young girl, but now and again wavered toward the semblance of the hag who had wrought them evil. "Before the child died he talked forever of somebody young and fair that came and stood by him when he slept. We thought 't was his dead mother, but now--now I see who 't was!" Seizing the girl by the wrists, he burst with her through the crowd. "Let the water touch her, she'll turn witch again!"

The excited throng, blinded by its own imagination, took up the cry. The girl's voice was drowned; she set her lips, and strove dumbly with her captors; but they swept her through the weed-grown garden and broken gate, past the cedars that were so ragged and black, down to the cold and deep water. She thought of the night upon the river and of the falling stars, and with a sudden, piercing cry struggled fiercely to escape. The bank was steep; hands pushed her forward: she felt the ghastly embrace of the water, and saw, ere the flood closed over her upturned face, the cold and quiet stars.

So loud was the ringing in her ears that she heard no access of voices upon the bank, and knew not that a fresh commotion had arisen. She was sinking for the third time, and her mind had begun to wander in the Fair View garden, when an arm caught and held her up. She was borne to the sh.o.r.e; there were men on horseback; some one with a clear, authoritative voice was now berating, now good-humoredly arguing with, her late judges.

The man who had sprung to save her held her up to arms that reached down from the bank above; another moment and she felt the earth again beneath her feet, but could only think that, with half the dying past, these strangers had been cruel to bring her back. Her rescuer shook himself like a great dog. "I've saved the witch alive," he panted. "May G.o.d forgive and your Honor reward me!"

"Nay, worthy constable, you must look to Sathanas for reward!" cried the gentleman who had been haranguing the miller and his company. These gentry, hardly convinced, but not prepared to debate the matter with a justice of the peace and a great man of those parts, began to slip away.

The torchbearers, probably averse to holding a light to their own countenances, had flung the torches into the water, and now, heavily shadowed by the cedars, the place was in deep darkness. Presently there were left to berate only the miller and the ferryman, and at last these also went sullenly away without having troubled to mention the witch's late transformation from age to youth.

"Where is the rescued fair one?" continued the gentleman who, for his own pleasure, had led the conservers of law and order. "Produce the sibyl, honest Dogberry! Faith, if the lady be not an ingrate, you've henceforth a friend at court!"

"My name is Saunders,--d.i.c.k Saunders, your Honor," quoth the constable.

"For the witch, she lies quiet on the ground beneath the cedar yonder."

"She won't speak!" cried another. "She just lies there trembling, with her face in her hands."

"But she said, 'O Christ!' when we took her from the water," put in a third.

"She was nigh drowned," ended the constable. "And I'm a-tremble myself, the water was that cold. Wauns! I wish I were in the chimney corner at the Court House ordinary!"

The master of Westover flung his riding cloak to one of the constable's men. "Wrap it around the shivering iniquity on the ground yonder; and you, Tom Hope, that brought warning of what your neighbors would do, mount and take the witch behind you. Master Constable, you will lodge Hecate in the gaol to-night, and in the morning bring her up to the great house. We would inquire why a lady so accomplished that she can dry a mill stream to plague a miller cannot drain a pool to save herself from drowning!"

At a crossing of the ways, shortly before Court House, gaol, and ordinary were reached, the adventurous Colonel gave a good-night to the constable and his company, and, with a negro servant at his heels, rode gayly on beneath the stars to his house at Westover. Hardy, alert, in love with living, he was well amused by the night's proceedings. The incident should figure in his next letter to Orrery or to his cousin Taylor.

It figured largely in the table-talk next morning, when the sprightly gentleman sat at breakfast with his daughter and his second wife, a fair and youthful kinswoman of Martha and Teresa Blount. The gentleman, launched upon the subject of witchcraft, handled it with equal wit and learning. The ladies thought that the water must have been very cold, and trusted that the old dame was properly grateful, and would, after such a lesson, leave her evil practices. As they were rising from table, word was brought to the master that constable and witch were outside.

The Colonel kissed his wife, promised his daughter to be merciful, and, humming a song, went through the hall to the open house door and the broad, three-sided steps of stone. The constable was awaiting him.

"Here be mysteries, your Honor! As I serve the King, 't weren't Goody Price for whom I ruined my new frieze, but a slip of a girl!" He waved his hand. "Will your Honor please to look?"

Audrey sat in the sunshine upon the stone steps with her head bowed upon her arms. The morning that was so bright was not bright for her; she thought that life had used her but unkindly. A great tree, growing close to the house, sent leaves of dull gold adrift, and they lay at her feet and upon the skirt of her dress. The constable spoke to her: "Now, mistress, here's a gentleman as stands for the King and the law. Look up!"

A white hand was laid upon the Colonel's arm. "I came to make sure that you were not harsh with the poor creature," said Evelyn's pitying voice.

"There is so much misery. Where is she? Ah!"

To gain at last his prisoner's attention, the constable struck her lightly across the shoulders with his cane. "Get up!" he cried impatiently. "Get up and make your curtsy! Ecod, I wish I'd left you in Hunter's Pond!"