Audrey Part 34

"_Molly!_" she said, beneath her breath.

He nodded. "Well, Death had gathered the flower.... Accident threw across my path a tinier blossom, a helpless child. Save you then, care for you then, I must, or I had been not man, but monster. Did I care for you tenderly, Audrey? Did I make you love me with all your childish heart? Did I become to you father and mother and sister and fairy prince? Then what were you to me in those old days? A child fanciful and charming, too fine in all her moods not to breed wonder, to give the feeling that Nature had placed in that mountain cabin a changeling of her own. A child that one must regard with fondness and some pity,--what is called a dear child.

Moreover, a child whose life I had saved, and to whom it pleased me to play Providence. I was young, not hard of heart, sedulous to fold back to the uttermost the roseleaves of every delicate and poetic emotion, magnificently generous also, and set to play my life _au grand seigneur_.

To myself a.s.sume a responsibility which with all ease might have been transferred to an Orphan Court, to put my stamp upon your life to come, to watch you kneel and drink of my fountain of generosity, to open my hand and with an indulgent smile shower down upon you the coin of pleasure and advantage,--why, what a tribute was this to my own sovereignty, what subtle flattery of self-love, what delicate taste of power! Well, I kissed you good-by, and unclasped your hands from my neck, chided you, laughed at you, fondled you, promised all manner of pretty things and engaged you never to forget me--and sailed away upon the Golden Rose to meet my crowded years with their wine and roses, upas shadows and apples of Sodom.

How long before I forgot you, Audrey? A year and a day, perhaps. I protest that I cannot remember exactly."

He slightly changed his position, but came no nearer to her. It was growing quiet in the street beyond the curtained windows. One window was bare, but it gave only upon an unused nook of the garden where were merely the moonlight and some tall leafless bushes.

"I came back to Virginia," he said, "and I looked for and found you in the heart of a flowering wood.... All that you imagined me to be, Audrey, that was I not. Knight-errant, paladin, king among men,--what irony, child, in that strange dream and infatuation of thine! I was--I am--of my time and of myself, and he whom that day you thought me had not then nor afterwards form or being. I wish you to be perfect in this lesson, Audrey. Are you so?"

"Yes," she sighed. Her hands had fallen; she was looking at him with slowly parting lips, and a strange expression in her eyes.

He went on quietly as before, every feature controlled to impa.s.sivity and his arms lightly folded: "That is well. Between the day when I found you again and a night in the Palace yonder lies a summer,--a summer! To me all the summers that ever I had or will have,--ten thousand summers! Now tell me how I did in this wonderful summer."

"Ign.o.bly," she answered.

He bowed his head gravely. "Ay, Audrey, it is a good word." With a quick sigh he left his place, and walking to the uncurtained window stood there looking out upon the strip of moonlight and the screen of bushes; but when he turned again to the room his face and bearing were as impressive as before in their fine, still gravity, their repose of determination. "And that evening by the river when you fled from me to Hugon"--

"I had awaked," she said, in a low voice. "You were to me a stranger, and I feared you."

"And at Westover?"

"A stranger."

"Here in Williamsburgh, when by dint of much striving I saw you, when I wrote to you, when at last you sent me that letter, that piteous and cruel letter, Audrey?"

For one moment her dark eyes met his, then fell to her clasped hands. "A stranger," she said.

"The letter was many weeks ago. I have been alone with my thoughts at Fair View. And to-night, Audrey?"

"A stranger," she would have answered, but her voice broke. There were shadows under her eyes; her lifted face had in it a strained, intent expectancy as though she saw or heard one coming.

"A stranger," he acquiesced. "A foreigner in your world of dreams and shadows. No prince, Audrey, or great white knight and hero. Only a gentleman of these latter days, compact like his fellows of strength and weakness; now very wise and now the mere finger-post of folly; set to travel his own path; able to hear above him in the rarer air the trumpet call, but choosing to loiter on the lower slopes. In addition a man who loves at last, loves greatly, with a pa.s.sion that shall enn.o.ble. A stranger and your lover, Audrey, come to say farewell."

Her voice came like an echo, plaintive and clear and from far away: "Farewell."

"How steadily do I stand here to say farewell!" he said. "Yet I am eaten of my pa.s.sion. A fire burns me, a voice within me ever cries aloud. I am whirled in a resistless wind.... Ah, my love, the garden at Fair View! The folded rose that will never bloom, the dial where linger the heavy hours, the heavy, heavy, heavy hours!"

"The garden," she whispered. "I smell the box.... The path was all in sunshine. So quiet, so hushed.... I went a little farther, and I heard your voice where you sat and read--and read of Elosa.... _Oh, Evelyn, Evelyn!_"

"The last time--the last farewell!" he said. "When the Golden Rose is far at sea, when the winds blow, when the stars drift below the verge, when the sea speaks, then may I forget you, may the vision of you pa.s.s! Now at Fair View it pa.s.ses not; it dwells. Night and day I behold you, the woman that I love, the woman that I love in vain!"

"The Golden Rose!" she answered. "The sea.... Alas!"

Her voice had risen into a cry. The walls of the room were gone, the air pressed upon her heavily, the lights wavered, the waters were pa.s.sing over her as they had pa.s.sed that night of the witch's hut. How far away the bank upon which he stood! He spoke to her, and his voice came faintly as from that distant sh.o.r.e or from the deck of a swiftly pa.s.sing ship. "And so it is good-by, sweetheart; for why should I stay in Virginia? Ah, if you loved me, Audrey! But since it is not so--Good-by, good-by. This time I'll not forget you, but I will not come again. Good-by!"

Her lips moved, but there came no words. A light had dawned upon her face, her hand was lifted as though to stay a sound of music. Suddenly she turned toward him, swayed, and would have fallen but that his arm caught and upheld her. Her head was thrown back; the soft ma.s.ses of her wonderful hair brushed his cheek and shoulder; her eyes looked past him, and a smile, pure and exquisite past expression, just redeemed her face from sadness. "Good-morrow, Love!" she said clearly and sweetly.

At the sound of her own words came to her the full realization and understanding of herself. With a cry she freed herself from his supporting arm, stepped backward and looked at him. The color surged over her face and throat, her eyelids drooped; while her name was yet upon his lips she answered with a broken cry of ecstasy and abandonment. A moment and she was in his arms and their lips had met.

How quiet it was in the long room, where the myrtle candles gave out their faint perfume and the low fire leaped upon the hearth! Thus for a time; then, growing faint with her happiness, she put up protesting hands. He made her sit in the great chair, and knelt before her, all youth and fire, handsome, ardent, transfigured by his pa.s.sion into such a lover as a queen might desire.

"Hail, Sultana!" he said, smiling, his eyes upon her diadem. "Now you are Arpasia again, and I am Moneses, and ready, ah, most ready, to die for you."

She also smiled. "Remember that I am to quickly follow you."

"When shall we marry?" he demanded. "The garden cries out for you, my love, and I wish to hear your footstep in my house. It hath been a dreary house, filled with shadows, haunted by keen longings and vain regrets. Now the windows shall be flung wide and the sunshine shall pour in. Oh, your voice singing through the rooms, your foot upon the stairs!" He took her hands and put them to his lips. "I love as men loved of old," he said. "I am far from myself and my times. When will you become my wife?"

She answered him simply, like the child that at times she seemed: "When you will. But I must be Arpasia again to-morrow night. The Governor hath ordered the play repeated, and Margery Linn could not learn my part in time."

He laughed, fingering the red silk of her hanging sleeve, feasting his eyes upon her dark beauty, so heightened and deepened in the year that had pa.s.sed. "Then play to them--and to me who shall watch you well--to-morrow night. But after that to them never again! only to me, Audrey, to me when we walk in the garden at home, when we sit in the book-room and the candles are lighted. That day in May when first you came into my garden, when first I showed you my house, when first I rowed you home with the sunshine on the water and the roses in your hair! Love, love! do you remember?"

"Remember?" she answered, in a thrilling voice. "When I am dead I shall yet remember! And I will come when you want me. After to-morrow night I will come.... Oh, cannot you hear the river? And the walls of the box will be freshly green, and the fruit-trees all in bloom! The white leaves drift down upon the bench beneath the cherry-tree.... I will sit in the gra.s.s at your feet. Oh, I love you, have loved you long!"

They had risen and now with her head upon his breast and his arm about her, they stood in the heart of the soft radiance of many candles. His face was bowed upon the dark wonder of her hair; when at last he lifted his eyes, they chanced to fall upon the one uncurtained window. Audrey, feeling his slight, quickly controlled start, turned within his arm and also saw the face of Jean Hugon, pressed against the gla.s.s, staring in upon them.

Before Haward could reach the window the face was gone. A strip of moonlight, some leafless bashes, beyond, the blank wall of the theatre,--that was all. Raising the sash, Haward leaned forth until he could see the garden at large. Moonlight still and cold, winding paths, and shadows of tree and shrub and vine, but no sign of living creature. He closed the window and drew the curtain across, then turned again to Audrey. "A phantom of the night," he said, and laughed.

She was standing in the centre of the room, with her red dress gleaming in the candlelight. Her brow beneath its mock crown had no lines of care, and her wonderful eyes smiled upon him. "I have no fear of it," she answered. "That is strange, is it not, when I have feared it for so long?

I have no other fear to-night than that I shall outlive your love for me."

"I will love you until the stars fall," he said.

"They are falling to-night. When you are without the door look up, and you may see one pa.s.s swiftly down the sky. Once I watched them from the dark river"--

"I will love you until the sun grows old," he said. "Through life and death, through heaven or h.e.l.l, past the beating of my heart, while lasts my soul!... Audrey, Audrey!"

"If it is so," she answered, "then all is well. Now kiss me good-night, for I hear Mistress Stagg's voice. You will come again to-morrow? And to-morrow night,--oh, to-morrow night I shall see only you, think of only you while I play! Good-night, good-night."

They kissed and parted, and Haward, a happy man, went with raised face through the stillness and the moonlight to his lodging at Marot's ordinary. No phantoms of the night disturbed him. He had found the philosopher's stone, had drunk of the divine elixir. Life was at last a thing much to be desired, and the Giver of life was good, and the _summum bonum_ was deathless love.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE LAST ACT

Before eight of the clock, Mr. Stagg, peering from behind the curtain, noted with satisfaction that the house was filling rapidly; upon the stroke of the hour it was crowded to the door, without which might be heard angry voices contending that there must be yet places for the buying. The musicians began to play and more candles were lighted. There were laughter, talk, greetings from one part of the house to another, as much movement to and fro as could be accomplished in so crowded a s.p.a.ce.

The manners of the London playhouses were aped not unsuccessfully. To compare small things with great, it might have been Drury Lane upon a gala night. If the building was rude, yet it had no rival in the colonies, and if the audience was not so gay of hue, impertinent of tongue, or paramount in fashion as its London counterpart, yet it was composed of the rulers and makers of a land destined to greatness.

In the centre box sat his Excellency, William Gooch, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, resplendent in velvet and gold lace, and beside him Colonel Alexander Spotswood, arrived in town from Germanna that day, with his heart much set upon the pa.s.sage, by the a.s.sembly, of an act which would advantage his iron works. Colonel Byrd of Westover, Colonel Esmond of Castlewood, Colonel Carter, Colonel Page, and Colonel Ludwell were likewise of the Governor's party, while seated or standing in the pit, or mingling with the ladies who made gay the boxes, were other gentlemen of consequence,--Councilors, Burgesses, owners of vast tracts of land, of ships and many slaves. Of their number some were traveled men, and some had fought in England's wars, and some had studied in her universities.

Many were of gentle blood, sprung from worthy and venerable houses in that green island which with fondness they still called home, and many had made for themselves name and fortune, hewing their way to honor through a primeval forest of adversities. Lesser personages were not lacking, but crowded the gallery and invaded the pit. Old fighters of Indians were present, and masters of ships trading from the Spanish islands or from the ports of home. Rude lumbermen from Norfolk or the borders of the Dismal Swamp stared about them, while here and there showed the sad-colored coat of a minister, or the broad face of some Walloon from Spotswood's settlement on the Rapidan, or the keener countenances of Frenchmen from Monacan-Town. The armorer from the Magazine elbowed a great proprietor from the Eastern sh.o.r.e, while a famous guide and hunter, long and lean and brown, described to a magnate of Yorktown a buffalo capture in the far west, twenty leagues beyond the falls. Masters and scholars from William and Mary were there, with rangers, traders, sailors ash.o.r.e, small planters, merchants, loquacious keepers of ordinaries, and with men, now free and with a stake in the land, who had come there as indentured servants, or as convicts, runaways, and fugitives from justice. In the upper gallery, where no payment was exacted, many servants with a sprinkling of favorite mulatto or mustee slaves; in the boxes the l.u.s.tre and sweep of damask and brocade, light laughter, silvery voices, the flutter of fans; everywhere the vividness and animation of a strangely compounded society, where the shadows were deep and the lights were high.

Nor did the conversation of so motley an a.s.semblage lack a certain pictorial quality, a somewhat fantastic opulence of reference and allusion. Of what might its members speak while they waited for the drawing aside of the piece of baize which hung between them and an Oriental camp? There was the staple of their wealth, a broad-leafed plant, the smoke of whose far-spread burning might have wrapped its native fields in a perpetual haze as of Indian summer; and there was the warfare, bequeathed from generation to generation, against the standing armies of the forest, that subtle foe that slept not, retreated not, whose vanguard, ever falling, ever showed unbroken ranks beyond. Trapper and trader and ranger might tell of trails through the wilderness vast and hostile, of canoes upon unknown waters, of beasts of prey, creatures screaming in the night-time through the ebony woods. Of Indian villages, also, and of red men who, in the fastnesses that were left them, took and tortured and slew after strange fashions. The white man, strong as the wind, drove the red man before his face like an autumn leaf, but he beckoned to the black man, and the black man came at his call. He came in numbers from a far country, and the manner of his coming was in chains. What he had to sell was valuable, but the purchase price came not into his hands. Of him also mention was made to-night. The master of the tall ship that had brought him into the James or the York, the dealer to whom he was consigned, the officer of the Crown who had cried him for sale, the planter who had bought him, the divine who preached that he was of a race accursed,--all were there, and all had interest in this merchandise. Others in the throng talked of ships both great and small, and the quaintness of their names, the golden flowers and golden women, the swift birds and beasts, the namesakes of Fortune or of Providence, came pleasantly upon the ear. The still-vexed Bermoothes, Barbadoes, and all the Indies were spoken of; ports to the north and ports to the south, pirate craft and sunken treasure, a flight, a fight, a chase at sea. The men from Norfolk talked of the great Dismal and its trees of juniper and cypress, the traders of trading, the masters from William and Mary of the humanities. The greater men, authoritative and easy, owners of flesh and blood and much land, holders of many offices and leaders of the people, paid their respects to horse-racing and c.o.c.k-fighting, cards and dice; to building, planting, the genteelest mode of living, and to public affairs both in Virginia and at home in England. Old friends, with oaths of hearty affection, and from opposite quarters of the house, addressed each other as Tom, or Ned, or d.i.c.k, while old enemies, finding themselves side by side, exchanged extremely civil speeches, and so put a keener edge upon their mutual disgust. In the boxes where glowed the women there was comfit talk, vastly pretty speeches, a.s.severations, denials, windy sighs, the politest oaths, whispering, talk of the play, and, last but not least, of Mr. Haward of Fair View, and Darden's Audrey.

Haward, entering the pit, made his way quietly to where a servant was holding for him a place. The fellow pulled his forelock in response to his master's nod, then shouldered his way through the press to the ladder-like stairs that led to the upper gallery. Haward, standing at his ease, looked about him, recognizing this or that acquaintance with his slow, fine smile and an inclination of his head. He was much observed, and presently a lady leaned from her box, smiled, waved her fan, and slightly beckoned to him. It was young Madam Byrd, and Evelyn sat beside her.