Audrey Part 4

THE ROAD TO WILLIAMSBURGH

April had gone out in rain, and though the sun now shone brightly from a cloudless sky, the streams were swollen and the road was heavy. The ponderous coach and the four black horses made slow progress. The creeping pace, the languid warmth of the afternoon, the scent of flowering trees, the ceaseless singing of redbird, catbird, robin, and thrush, made it drowsy in the forest. In the midst of an agreeable dissertation upon May Day sports of more ancient times the Colonel paused to smother a yawn; and when he had done with the clown, the piper, and the hobby-horse, he yawned again, this time outright.

"What with Ludwell's Burgundy, piquet, and the French peace, we sat late last night. My eyes are as heavy as the road. Have you noticed, my dear, how bland and dreamy is the air? On such an afternoon one is content to be in Virginia, and out of the world. It is a very land of the Lotophagi,--a lazy clime that Ulysses touched at, my love."

The equipage slowly climbed an easy ascent, and as slowly descended to the level again. The road was narrow, and now and then a wild cherry-tree struck the coach with a white arm, or a grapevine swung through the window a fragrant trailer. The woods on either hand were pale green and silver gray, save where they were starred with dogwood, or where rose the pink mist of the Judas-tree. At the foot of the hill the road skirted a mantled pond, choked with broad green leaves and the half-submerged trunks of fallen trees. Upon these logs, basking in the sunlight, lay small tortoises by the score. A snake glided across the road in front of the horses, and from a bit of muddy ground rose a cloud of yellow b.u.t.terflies.

The Colonel yawned for the third time, looked at his watch, sighed, lifted his finely arched brows with a whimsical smile for his own somnolence; then, with an "I beg your pardon, my love," took out a lace handkerchief, spread it over his face and head, and, crossing his legs, sunk back into the capacious corner of the coach. In three minutes the placid rise and fall of his ruffles bore witness that he slept.

The horseman, who, riding beside the lowered gla.s.s, had at intervals conversed with the occupants of the coach, now glanced from the sleeping gentleman to the lady, in whose dark, almond-shaped eyes lurked no sign of drowsiness. The pond had been pa.s.sed, and before them, between low banks crowned with ferns and overshadowed by beech-trees, lay a long stretch of shady road.

Haward drew rein, dismounted, and motioned to the coachman to check the horses. When the coach had come to a standstill, he opened the door with as little creaking as might be, and held out a pet.i.tionary hand. "Will you not walk with me a little way, Evelyn?" he asked, speaking in a low voice that he might not wake the sleeper. "It is much pleasanter out here, with the birds and the flowers."

His eyes and the smile upon his lips added, "and with me." From what he had been upon a hilltop, one moonlight night eleven years before, he had become a somewhat silent, handsome gentleman, composed in manner, experienced, not unkindly, looking abroad from his apportioned mountain crag and solitary fortress upon men, and the busy ways of men, with a tolerant gaze. That to certain of his London acquaintance he was simply the well-bred philosopher and man of letters; that in the minds of others he was a.s.sociated with the peac.o.c.k plumage of the world of fashion, with the flare of candles, the hot breath of gamesters, the ring of gold upon the tables; that one clique had tales to tell of a magnanimous spirit and a generous hand, while yet another grew red at mention of his name, and put to his credit much that was not creditable, was perhaps not strange.

He, like his neighbors, had many selves, and each in its turn--the scholar, the man of pleasure, the indolent, kindly, reflective self, the self of pride and cool a.s.surance and stubborn will--took its place behind the mask, and went through its allotted part. His self of all selves, the quiet, remote, crowned, and inscrutable _I_, sat apart, alike curious and indifferent, watched the others, and knew how little worth the while was the stir in the ant-hill.

But on a May Day, in the sunshine and the blossoming woods and the company of Mistress Evelyn Byrd, it seemed, for the moment, worth the while. At his invitation she had taken his hand and descended from the coach. The great, painted thing moved slowly forward, bearing the unconscious Colonel, and the two pedestrians walked behind it: he with his horse's reins over his arm and his hat in his hand; she lifting her silken skirts from contact with the ground, and looking, not at her companion, but at the greening boughs, and at the sunlight striking upon smooth, pale beech trunks and the leaf-strewn earth beneath. Out of the woods came a sudden medley of bird notes, clear, sweet, and inexpressibly joyous.

"That is a mockingbird," said Haward. "I once heard one of a moonlight night, beside a still water"--

He broke off, and they listened in silence. The bird flew away, and they came to a brook traversing the road, and flowing in wide meanders through the forest. There were stepping-stones, and Haward, crossing first, turned and held out his hand to the lady. When she was upon his side of the streamlet, and before he released the slender fingers, he bent and kissed them; then, as there was no answering smile or blush, but only a quiet withdrawal of the hand and a remark about the crystal clearness of the brook, looked at her, with interrogation in his smile.

"What is that crested bird upon yonder bough," she asked,--"the one that gave the piercing cry?"

"A kingfisher," he answered, "and cousin to the halcyon of the ancients.

If, when next you go to sea, you take its feathers with you, you need have no fear of storms."

A tree, leafless, but purplish pink with bloom, leaned from the bank above them. He broke a branch and gave it to her. "It is the Judas-tree," he told her. "Iscariot hanged himself thereon."

Around the trunk of a beech a lizard ran like a green flame, and they heard the distant barking of a fox. Large white b.u.t.terflies went past them, and a hummingbird whirred into the heart of a wild honeysuckle that had hasted to bloom. "How different from the English forests!" she said.

"I could love these best. What are all those broad-leaved plants with the white, waxen flowers?"

"May-apples. Some call them mandrakes, but they do not rise shrieking, nor kill the wight that plucks them. Will you have me gather them for you?"

"I will not trouble you," she answered, and presently turned aside to pull them for herself.

He looked at the graceful, bending figure and lifted his brows; then, quickening his pace until he was up with the coach, he spoke to the negro upon the box. "Tyre, drive on to that big pine, and wait there for your mistress and me. Sidon,"--to the footman,--"get down and take my horse. If your master wakes, tell him that Mistress Evelyn tired of the coach, and that I am picking her a nosegay."

Tyre and Sidon, Haward's steed, the four black coach horses, the vermilion-and-cream coach, and the slumbering Colonel, all made a progress of an hundred yards to the pine-tree, where the cortege came to a halt.

Mistress Evelyn looked up from the flower-gathering to find the road bare before her, and Haward, sitting upon a log, watching her with something between a smile and a frown.

"You think that I, also, weigh true love by the weight of the purse," he said. "I do not care overmuch for your gold, Evelyn."

She did not answer at once, but stood with her head slightly bent, fingering the waxen flowers with a delicate, lingering touch. Now that there was no longer the noise of the wheels and the horses' hoofs, the forest stillness, which is composed of sound, made itself felt. The call of birds, the whir of insects, the murmur of the wind in the treetops, low, grave, incessant, and eternal as the sound of the sea, joined themselves to the slow waves of fragrance, the stretch of road whereon nothing moved, the sunlight lying on the earth, and made a s.p.a.cious quiet.

"I think that there is nothing for which you care overmuch," she said at last. "Not for gold or the lack of it, not for friends or for enemies, not even for yourself."

"I have known you for many years," he answered. "I have watched you grow from a child into a gracious and beautiful woman. Do you not think that I care for you, Evelyn?"

Near where he sat so many violets were blooming that they made a purple carpet for the ground. Going over to them, she knelt and began to pluck them. "If any danger threatened me," she began, in her clear, low voice, "I believe that you would step between me and it, though at the peril of your life. I believe that you take some pleasure in what you are pleased to style my beauty, some pride in a mind that you have largely formed. If I died early, it would grieve you for a little while. I call you my friend."

"I would be called your lover," he said.

She laid her fan upon the ground, heaped it with violets, and turned again to her reaping. "How might that be," she asked, "when you do not love me?

I knew that you would marry me. What do the French call it,--_mariage de convenance_?"

Her voice was even, and her head was bent so that he could not see her face. In the pause that followed her words treetop whispered to treetop, but the sunshine lay very still and bright upon the road and upon the flowers by the wayside.

"There are worse marriages," Haward said at last. Rising from the log, he moved to the side of the kneeling figure. "Let the violets rest, Evelyn, while we reason together. You are too clear-eyed. Since they offend you, I will drop the idle compliments, the pretty phrases, in which neither of us believes. What if this tinted dream of love does not exist for us? What if we are only friends--dear and old friends"--

He stooped, and, taking her by the busy hands, made her stand up beside him. "Cannot we marry and still be friends?" he demanded, with something like laughter in his eyes. "My dear, I would strive to make you happy; and happiness is as often found in that temperate land where we would dwell as in Love's flaming climate." He smiled and tried to find her eyes, downcast and hidden in the shadow of her hat. "This is no flowery wooing such as women love," he said; "but then you are like no other woman. Always the truth was best with you."

Upon her wrenching her hands from his, and suddenly and proudly raising her head, he was amazed to find her white to the lips.

"The truth!" she said slowly. "Always the truth was best! Well, then, take the truth, and afterwards and forever and ever leave me alone! You have been frank; why should not I, who, you say, am like no other woman, be so, too? I will not marry you, because--because"--The crimson flowed over her face and neck; then ebbed, leaving her whiter than before. She put her hands, that still held the wild flowers, to her breast, and her eyes, dark with pain, met his. "Had you loved me," she said proudly and quietly, "I had been happy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HAD YOU LOVED ME--I HAD BEEN HAPPY"]

Haward stepped backwards until there lay between them a strip of sunny earth. The murmur of the wind went on and the birds were singing, and yet the forest seemed more quiet than death. "I could not guess," he said, speaking slowly and with his eyes upon the ground. "I have spoken like a brute. I beg your pardon."

"You might have known! you might have guessed!" she cried, with pa.s.sion.

"But, you walk an even way; you choose nor high nor low; you look deep into your mind, but your heart you keep cool and vacant. Oh, a very temperate land! I think that others less wise than you may also be less blind. Never speak to me of this day! Let it die as these blooms are dying in this hot sunshine! Now let us walk to the coach and waken my father. I have gathered flowers enough."

Side by side, but without speaking, they moved from shadow to sunlight, and from sunlight to shadow, down the road to the great pine-tree. The white and purple flowers lay in her hand and along her bended arm; from the folds of her dress, of some rich and silken stuff, chameleon-like in its changing colors, breathed the subtle fragrance of the perfume then most in fashion; over the thin lawn that half revealed, half concealed neck and bosom was drawn a long and glossy curl, carefully let to escape from the waved and banded hair beneath the gypsy hat. Exquisite from head to foot, the figure had no place in the unpruned, untrained, savage, and primeval beauty of those woods. Smooth sward, with jets of water and carven nymphs embowered in clipped box or yew, should have been its setting, and not this wild and tangled growth, this license of bird and beast and growing things. And yet the incongruous riot, the contrast of profuse, untended beauty, enhanced the value of the picture, gave it piquancy and a completer charm.

When they were within a few feet of the coach and horses and negroes, all drowsing in the sunny road, Haward made as if to speak, but she stopped him with her lifted hand. "Spare me," she begged. "It is bad enough as it is, but words would make it worse. If ever a day might come--I do not think that I am unlovely; I even rate myself so highly as to think that I am worthy of your love. If ever the day shall come when you can say to me, 'Now I see that love is no tinted dream; now I ask you to be my wife indeed,' then, upon that day--But until then ask not of me what you asked back there among the violets. I, too, am proud"--Her voice broke.

"Evelyn!" he cried. "Poor child--poor friend"--

She turned her face upon him. "Don't!" she said, and her lips were smiling, though her eyes were full of tears. "We have forgot that it is May Day, and that we must be light of heart. Look how white is that dogwood-tree! Break me a bough for my chimney-piece at Williamsburgh."

He brought her a branch of the starry blossoms. "Did you notice," she asked, "that the girl who ran--Audrey--wore dogwood in her hair? You could see her heart beat with very love of living. She was of the woods, like a dryad. Had the prizes been of my choosing, she should have had a gift more poetical than a guinea."

Haward opened the coach door, and stood gravely aside while she entered the vehicle and took her seat, depositing her flowers upon the cushions beside her. The Colonel stirred, uncrossed his legs, yawned, pulled the handkerchief from his face, and opened his eyes.

"Faith!" he exclaimed, straightening himself, and taking up his radiant humor where, upon falling-asleep, he had let it drop. "The way must have suddenly become smooth as a road in Venice, for I've felt no jolting this half hour. Flowers, Evelyn? and Haward afoot? You've been on a woodland saunter, then, while I enacted Solomon's sluggard!" The worthy parent's eyes began to twinkle. "What flowers did you find? They have strange blooms here, and yet I warrant that even in these woods one might come across London pride and none-so-pretty and forget-me-not"--

His daughter smiled, and asked him some idle question about the May-apple and the Judas-tree. The master of Westover was a treasure house of sprightly lore. Within ten minutes he had visited Palestine, paid his compliments to the ancient herbalists, and landed again in his own coach, to find in his late audience a somewhat _distraite_ daughter and a friend in a brown study. The coach was lumbering on toward Williamsburgh, and Haward, with level gaze and hand closed tightly upon his horse's reins, rode by the window, while the lady, sitting in her corner with downcast eyes, fingered the dogwood blooms that were not paler than her face.

The Colonel's wits were keen. One glance, a lift of his arched brows, the merest ghost of a smile, and, dragging the younger man with him, he plunged into politics. Invective against a refractory House of Burgesses brought them a quarter of a mile upon their way; the necessity for an act to encourage adventurers in iron works carried them past a milldam; and frauds in the customs enabled them to reach a crossroads ordinary, where the Colonel ordered a halt, and called for a tankard of ale. A slipshod, blue-eyed Cherry brought it, and spoke her thanks in broad Scotch for the shilling which the gay Colonel flung tinkling into the measure.

That versatile and considerate gentleman, having had his draught, cried to the coachman to go on, and was beginning upon the question of the militia, when Haward, who had dismounted, appeared at the coach door. "I do not think that I will go on to Williamsburgh with you, sir," he said. "There's some troublesome business with my overseer that ought not to wait. If I take this road and the planter's pace, I shall reach Fair View by sunset.

You do not return to Westover this week? Then I shall see you at Williamsburgh within a day or two. Evelyn, good-day."

Her hand lay upon the cushion nearest him. He would have taken it in his own, as for years he had done when he bade her good-by; but though she smiled and gave him "Good-day" in her usual voice, she drew the hand away.

The Colonel's eyebrows went up another fraction of an inch, but he was a discreet gentleman who had bought experience. Skillfully un.o.bservant, his parting words were at once cordial and few in number; and after Haward had mounted and had turned into the side road, he put his handsome, periwigged head out of the coach window and called to him some advice about the transplanting of tobacco. This done, and the horseman out of sight, and the coach once more upon its leisurely way to Williamsburgh, the model father pulled out of his pocket a small book, and, after affectionately advising his daughter to close her eyes and sleep out the miles to Williamsburgh, himself retired with Horace to the Sabine farm.