Audrey Part 28

Audrey rose, and turned her face, not to the justice of the peace and arbiter of the fate of witches, but to Evelyn, standing above her,--Evelyn, slighter, paler, than she had been at Williamsburgh, but beautiful in her colored, fragrant silks and the air that was hers of sweet and mournful distinction. Now she cried out sharply, while "That girl again!" swore the Colonel, beneath his breath.

Audrey did as she had been told, and made her curtsy. Then, while father and daughter stared at her, the gentleman very red and biting his lip, the lady marble in her loveliness, she tried to speak, to ask them to let her go, but found no words. The face of Evelyn, at whom alone she looked, wavered into distance, gazing at her coldly and mournfully from miles away. She made a faint gesture of weariness and despair; then sank down at Evelyn's feet, and lay there in a swoon.

CHAPTER XXV

TWO WOMEN

Evelyn, hearing footsteps across the floor of the attic room above her own bedchamber, arose and set wide the door; then went back to her chair by the window that looked out upon green gra.s.s and party-colored trees and long reaches of the shining river. "Come here, if you please," she called to Audrey, as the latter slowly descended the stair from the room where, half asleep, half awake, she had lain since morning.

Audrey entered the pleasant chamber, furnished with what luxury the age afforded, and stood before the sometime princess of her dreams. "Will you not sit down?" asked Evelyn, in a low voice, and pointed to a chair.

"I had rather stand," answered Audrey. "Why did you call me? I was on my way"--

The other's clear eyes dwelt upon her. "Whither were you going?"

"Out of your house," said Audrey simply, "and out of your life."

Evelyn folded her hands in her silken lap, and looked out upon river and sky and ceaseless drift of colored leaves. "You can never go out of my life," she said. "Why the power to vex and ruin was given you I do not know, but you have used it. Why did you run away from Fair View?"

"That I might never see Mr. Haward again," answered Audrey. She held her head up, but she felt the stab. It had not occurred to her that hers was the power to vex and ruin; apparently that belonged elsewhere.

Evelyn turned from the window, and the two women, the princess and the herdgirl, regarded each other. "Oh, my G.o.d!" cried Evelyn. "I did not know that you loved him so!"

But Audrey shook her head, and spoke with calmness: "Once I loved and knew it not, and once I loved and knew it. It was all in a dream, and now I have waked up." She pa.s.sed her hand across her brow and eyes, and pushed back her heavy hair. It was a gesture that was common to her. To Evelyn it brought a sudden stinging memory of the ballroom at the Palace; of how this girl had looked in her splendid dress, with the roses in her hair; of Haward's words at the coach door. She had not seen him since that night.

"I am going a long way," continued Audrey. "It will be as though I died. I never meant to harm you."

The other gazed at her with wide, dry eyes, and with an unwonted color in her cheeks. "She is beautiful," thought Audrey; then wondered how long she must stay in this room and this house. Without the window the trees beckoned, the light was fair upon the river; in the south hung a cloud, silver-hued, and shaped like two mighty wings. Audrey, with her eyes upon the cloud, thought, "If the wings were mine, I would reach the mountains to-night."

"Do you remember last May Day?" asked Evelyn, in a voice scarcely above a whisper. "He and I, sitting side by side, watched your running, and I praised you to him. Then we went away, and while we gathered flowers on the road to Williamsburgh he asked me to be his wife. I said no, for he loved me not as I wished to be loved. Afterward, in Williamsburgh, he spoke again.... I said, 'When you come to Westover;' and he kissed my hand, and vowed that the next week should find him here." She turned once more to the window, and, with her chin in her hand, looked out upon the beauty of the autumn. "Day by day, and day by day," she said, in the same hushed voice, "I sat at this window and watched for him to come. The weeks went by, and he came not. I began to hear talk of you. Oh, I deny not that it was bitter!"

"Oh me! oh me!" cried Audrey. "I was so happy, and I thought no harm."

"He came at last," continued Evelyn. "For a month he stayed here, paying me court. I was too proud to speak of what I had heard. After a while I thought it must have been an idle rumor." Her voice changed, and with a sudden gesture of pa.s.sion and despair she lifted her arms above her head, then clasped and wrung her hands. "Oh, for a month he forgot you! In all the years to come I shall have that comfort: for one little month, in the company of the woman whom, because she was of his own rank, because she had wealth, because others found her fair and honored her with heart as well as lip, he wished to make his wife,--for that short month he forgot you! The days were sweet to me, sweet, sweet! Oh, I dreamed my dreams!...

And then we were called to Williamsburgh to greet the new Governor, and he went with us, and again I heard your name coupled with his.... There was between us no betrothal. I had delayed to say yes to his asking, for I wished to make sure,--to make sure that he loved me. No man can say he broke troth with me. For that my pride gives thanks!"

"What must I do?" said Audrey to herself. "Pain is hard to bear."

"That night at the ball," continued Evelyn, "when, coming down the stair, I saw you standing beside him ... and after that, the music, and the lights, and you dancing with him, in your dark beauty, with the flowers in your hair ... and after that, you and I in my coach and his face at the window!... Oh, I can tell you what he said! He said: 'Good-by, sweetheart.... The violets are for you; but the great white blossoms, and the boughs of rosy mist, and all the trees that wave in the wind are for Audrey.'"

"For me!" cried Audrey,--"for me an hour in Bruton church next morning!"

A silence followed her words. Evelyn, sitting in the great chair, rested her cheek upon her hand and gazed steadfastly at her guest of a day. The sunshine had stolen from the room, but dwelt upon and caressed the world without the window. Faint, tinkling notes of a harpsichord floated up from the parlor below, followed by young Madam Byrd's voice singing to the perturbed Colonel:--

"'O Love! they wrong thee much, That say thy sweet is bitter, When thy rich fruit is such As nothing can be sweeter.

Fair house of joy and bliss'"--

The song came to an end, but after a pause the harpsichord sounded again, and the singer's voice rang out:--

"'Under the greenwood tree, Who loves to lie with me'"--

Audrey gave an involuntary cry; then, with her lip between her teeth, strove for courage, failed, and with another strangled cry sank upon her knees before a chair and buried her face in its cushions.

When a little time had pa.s.sed, Evelyn arose and went to her. "Fate has played with us both," she said, in a voice that strove for calmness. "If there was great bitterness in my heart toward you then, I hope it is not so now; if, on that night, I spoke harshly, unkindly, ungenerously, I--I am sorry. I thought what others thought. I--I cared not to touch you....

But now I am told that 't was not you that did unworthily. Mr. Haward has written to me; days ago I had this letter." It was in her hand, and she held it out to the kneeling girl. "Yes, yes, you must read; it concerns you." Her voice, low and broken, was yet imperious. Audrey raised her head, took and read the letter. There were but a few unsteady lines, written from Marot's ordinary at Williamsburgh. The writer was too weak as yet for many words; few words were best, perhaps. His was all the blame for the occurrence at the Palace, for all besides. That which, upon his recovery, he must strive to teach his acquaintance at large he prayed Evelyn to believe at once and forever. She whom, against her will and in the madness of his fever, he had taken to the Governor's house was most innocent,--guiltless of all save a childlike affection for the writer, a misplaced confidence, born of old days, and now shattered by his own hand.

Before that night she had never guessed his pa.s.sion, never known the use that had been made of her name. This upon the honor of a gentleman. For the rest, as soon as his strength was regained, he purposed traveling to Westover. There, if Mistress Evelyn Byrd would receive him for an hour, he might in some measure explain, excuse. For much, he knew, there was no excuse,--only pardon to be asked.

The letter ended abruptly, as though the writer's strength were exhausted.

Audrey read it through, then with indifference gave it back to Evelyn. "It is true,--what he says?" whispered the latter, crumpling the paper in her hand.

Audrey gazed up at her with wide, tearless eyes. "Yes, it is true. There was no need for you to use those words to me in the coach, that night,--though even then I did not understand. There is no reason why you should fear to touch me."

Her head sank upon her arm. In the parlor below the singing came to an end, but the harpsichord, lightly fingered, gave forth a haunting melody.

It was suited to the afternoon: to the golden light, the drifting leaves, the murmurs of wind and wave, without the window: to the shadows, the stillness, and the sorrow within the room. Evelyn, turning slowly toward the kneeling figure, of a sudden saw it through a mist of tears. Her clasped hands parted; she bent and touched the bowed head. Audrey looked up, and her dark eyes made appeal. Evelyn stooped lower yet; her tears fell upon Audrey's brow; a moment, and the two, cast by life in the selfsame tragedy, were in each other's arms.

"You know that I came from the mountains," whispered Audrey. "I am going back. You must tell no one; in a little while I shall be forgotten."

"To the mountains!" cried Evelyn. "No one lives there. You would die of cold and hunger. No, no! We are alike unhappy: you shall stay with me here at Westover."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HER DARK EYES MADE APPEAL]

She rose from her knees, and Audrey rose with her. They no longer clasped each other,--that impulse was past,--but their eyes met in sorrowful amity. Audrey shook her head. "That may not be," she said simply. "I must go away that we may not both be unhappy." She lifted her face to the cloud in the south, "I almost died last night. When you drown, there is at first fear and struggling, but at last it is like dreaming, and there is a lightness.... When that came I thought, 'It is the air of the mountains,--I am drawing near them.' ... Will you let me go now? I will slip from the house through the fields into the woods, and none will know"--

But Evelyn caught her by the wrist. "You are beside yourself! I would rouse the plantation; in an hour you would be found. Stay with me!"

A knock at the door, and the Colonel's secretary, a pale and grave young man, bowing on the threshold. He was just come from the attic room, where he had failed to find the young woman who had been lodged there that morning. The Colonel, supposing that by now she was recovered from her swoon and her fright of the night before, and having certain questions to put to her, desired her to descend to the parlor. Hearing voices in Mistress Evelyn's room--

"Very well, Mr. Drew," said the lady. "You need not wait. I will myself seek my father with--with our guest."

In the parlor Madam Byrd was yet at the harpsichord, but ceased to touch the keys when her step-daughter, followed by Darden's Audrey, entered the room. The master of Westover, seated beside his young wife, looked quickly up, arched his brows and turned somewhat red, as his daughter, with her gliding step, crossed the room to greet him. Audrey, obeying a motion of her companion's hand, waited beside a window, in the shadow of its heavy curtains. "Evelyn," quoth the Colonel, rising from his chair and taking his daughter's hand, "this is scarce befitting"--

Evelyn stayed his further speech by an appealing gesture. "Let me speak with you, sir. No, no, madam, do not go! There is naught the world might not hear."

Audrey waited in the shadow by the window, and her mind was busy, for she had her plans to lay. Sometimes Evelyn's low voice, sometimes the Colonel's deeper tones, pierced her understanding; when this was so she moved restlessly, wishing that it were night and she away. Presently she began to observe the room, which was richly furnished. There were garlands upon the ceiling; a table near her was set with many curious ornaments; upon a tall cabinet stood a bowl of yellow flowers; the lady at the harpsichord wore a dress to match the flowers, while Evelyn's dress was white; beyond them was a pier gla.s.s finer than the one at Fair View.

This gla.s.s reflected the doorway, and thus she was the first to see the man from whom she had fled. "Mr. Marmaduke Haward, ma.s.sa!" announced the servant who had ushered him through the hall.

Haward, hat in hand, entered the room. The three beside the harpsichord arose; the one at the window slipped deeper into the shadow of the curtains, and so escaped the visitor's observation. The latter bowed to the master of Westover, who ceremoniously returned the salute, and to the two ladies, who curtsied to him, but opened not their lips.

"This, sir," said Colonel Byrd, holding himself very erect, "is an unexpected honor."

"Rather, sir, an unwished-for intrusion," answered the other. "I beg you to believe that I will trouble you for no longer time than matters require."

The Colonel bit his lip. "There was a time when Mr. Haward was most welcome to my house. If 't is no longer thus"--

Haward made a gesture of a.s.sent. "I know that the time is past. I am sorry that 't is so. I had thought, sir, to find you alone. Am I to speak before these ladies?"