Audrey Part 8

"You are only a woman, and can hold no office, Audrey," he said, "but I will impart to you words of wisdom whose price is above rubies. Always agree with your vestry. Go, hat in hand, to each of its members in turn, craving advice as to the management of your own affairs. Thunder from the pulpit against Popery, which does not exist in this colony, and the Pretender, who is at present in Italy. Wrap a dozen black sheep of inferior breed in white sheets and set them arow at the church door, but make it stuff of the conscience to see no blemish in the wealthier and more honorable portion of your flock. So you will thrive, and come to be inducted into your living, whether in Virginia or some other quarter of the globe. What's the worthy Bishop's next demand? Hasten, for Hugon is coming this morning, and there's settlement to be made of a small bet, and a hand at cards."

By the circular letter and the lips of Audrey the Bishop proceeded to propound a series of questions, which the minister answered with portentous glibness. In the midst of an estimate of the value of a living in a sweet-scented parish a face looked in at the window, and a dark and sinewy hand laid before Audrey a bunch of scarlet columbine.

"The rock was high," said a voice, "and the pool beneath was deep and dark. Here are the flowers that waved from the rock and threw colored shadows upon the pool."

The girl shrank as from a sudden and mortal danger. Her lips trembled, her eyes half closed, and with a hurried and pa.s.sionate gesture she rose from her chair, thrust from her the scarlet blooms, and with one lithe movement of her body put between her and the window the heavy writing table. The minister laid by his sum in arithmetic.

"Ha, Hugon, dog of a trader!" he cried. "Come in, man. Hast brought the skins? There's fire-water upon the table, and Audrey will be kind. Stay to dinner, and tell us what lading you brought down river, and of your kindred in the forest and your kindred in Monacan-Town."

The man at the window shrugged his shoulders, lifted his brows, and spread his hands. So a captain of Mousquetaires might have done; but the face was dark-skinned, the cheek-bones were high, the black eyes large, fierce, and restless. A great bushy peruke, of an ancient fashion, and a coa.r.s.e, much-laced cravat gave setting and lent a touch of grotesqueness and of terror to a countenance wherein the blood of the red man warred with that of the white.

"I will not come in now," said the voice again. "I am going in my boat to the big creek to take twelve doeskins to an old man named Taberer. I will come back to dinner. May I not, ma'm'selle?"

The corners of the lips went up, and the thicket of false hair swept the window sill, so low did the white man bow; but the Indian eyes were watchful. Audrey made no answer; she stood with her face turned away and her eyes upon the door, measuring her chances. If Darden would let her pa.s.s, she might reach the stairway and her own room before the trader could enter the house. There were bolts to its heavy door, and Hugon might do as he had done before, and talk his heart out upon the wrong side of the wood. Thanks be! lying upon her bed and pressing the pillow over her ears, she did not have to hear.

At the trader's announcement that his present path led past the house, she ceased her stealthy progress toward her own demesne, and waited, with her back to the window, and her eyes upon one long ray of sunshine that struck high against the wall.

"I will come again," said the voice without, and the apparition was gone from the window. Once more blue sky and rosy bloom spanned the opening, and the sunshine lay in a square upon the floor. The girl drew a long breath, and turning to the table began to arrange the papers upon it with trembling hands.

"'Sixteen thousand pounds of sweet-scented, at ten shillings the hundredweight; for marriage by banns, five shillings; for the preaching of a funeral sermon, forty shillings; for christening'"--began Darden for the Bishop's information. Audrey took her pen and wrote; but before the list of the minister's perquisites had come to an end the door flew open, and a woman with the face of a vixen came hurriedly into the room. With her entered the breeze from the river, driving before it the smoke wreaths, and blowing the papers from the table to the floor.

Darden stamped his foot. "Woman, I have business, I tell ye,--business with the Bishop of London! I've kept his Lordship at the door this se'nnight, and if I give him not audience Blair will presently be down uon me with tooth and nail and his ancient threat of a visitation. Begone and keep the house! Audrey, where are you, child?"

"Audrey, leave the room!" commanded the woman. "I have something to say that's not for your ears. Let her go, Darden. There's news, I tell you."

The minister glanced at his wife; then knocked the ashes from his pipe and nodded dismissal to Audrey. His late secretary slipped from her seat and left the room, not without alacrity.

"Well?" demanded Darden, when the sound of the quick young feet had died away. "Open your budget, Deborah. There's naught in it, I'll swear, but some fal-lal about your flowered gown or an old woman's black cat and corner broomstick."

Mistress Deborah Darden pressed her thin lips together, and eyed her lord and master with scant measure of conjugal fondness. "It's about some one nearer home than your bishops and commissaries," she said. "Hide pa.s.sed by this morning, going to the river field. I was in the garden, and he stopped to speak to me. Mr. Haward is home from England. He came to the great house last night, and he ordered his horse for ten o'clock this morning, and asked the nearest way through the fields to the parsonage."

Darden whistled, and put down his drink untasted.

"Enter the most powerful gentleman of my vestry!" he exclaimed. "He'll be that in a month's time. A member of the Council, too, no doubt, and with the Governor's ear. He's a scholar and fine gentleman. Deborah, clear away this trash. Lay out my books, fetch a bottle of Canary, and give me my Sunday coat. Put flowers on the table, and a dish of bonchretiens, and get on your tabby gown. Make your curtsy at the door; then leave him to me."

"And Audrey?" said his wife.

Darden, about to rise, sank back again and sat still, a hand upon either arm of his chair. "Eh!" he said; then, in a meditative tone, "That is so,--there is Audrey."

"If he has eyes, he'll see that for himself," retorted Mistress Deborah tartly. "'More to the purpose,' he'll say, 'where is the money that I gave you for her?'"

"Why, it's gone," answered Darden "Gone in maintenance,--gone in meat and drink and raiment. He didn't want it buried. Pshaw, Deborah, he has quite forgot his fine-lady plan! He forgot it years ago, I'll swear."

"I'll send her now on an errand to the Widow Constance's," said the mistress of the house. "Then before he comes again I'll get her a gown"--

The minister brought his hand down upon the table. "You'll do no such thing!" he thundered. "The girl's got to be here when he comes. As for her dress, can't she borrow from you? The Lord knows that though only the wife of a poor parson, you might throw for gewgaws with a bona roba! Go trick her out, and bring her here. I'll attend to the wine and the books."

When the door opened again, and Audrey, alarmed and wondering, slipped with the wind into the room, and stood in the sunshine before the minister, that worthy first frowned, then laughed, and finally swore.

"'Swounds, Deborah, your hand is out! If I hadn't taken you from service, I'd swear that you were never inside a fine lady's chamber. What's the matter with the girl's skirt?"

"She's too tall!" cried the sometime waiting woman angrily. "As for that great stain upon the silk, the wine made it when you threw your tankard at me, last Sunday but one."

"That manteau pins her arms to her sides," interrupted the minister calmly, "and the lace is dirty. You've hidden all her hair under that mazarine, and too many patches become not a brown skin. Turn around, child!"

While Audrey slowly revolved, the guardian of her fortunes, leaning back in his chair, bent his bushy brows and gazed, not at the circling figure in its tawdry apparel, but into the distance. When she stood still and looked at him with a half-angry, half-frightened face, he brought his bleared eyes to bear upon her, studied her for a minute, then motioned to his wife.

"She must take off this paltry finery, Deborah," he announced. "I'll have none of it. Go, child, and don your Cinderella gown."

"What does it all mean?" cried Audrey, with heaving bosom. "Why did she put these things upon me, and why will she tell me nothing? If Hugon has hand in it"--

The minister made a gesture of contempt. "Hugon! Hugon, half Monacan and half Frenchman, is bartering skins with a Quaker. Begone, child, and when you are transformed return to us."

When the door had closed he turned upon his wife. "The girl has been cared for," he said. "She has been fed,--if not with cates and dainties, then with bread and meat; she has been clothed,--if not in silk and lace, then in good blue linen and p.e.n.i.stone. She is young and of the springtime, hath more learning than had many a princess of old times, is innocent and good to look at. Thou and the rest of thy s.e.x are fools, Deborah, but wise men died not with Solomon. It matters not about her dress."

Rising, he went to a shelf of battered, dog-eared books, and taking down an armful proceeded to strew the volumes upon the table. The red blooms of the columbine being in the way, he took up the bunch and tossed it out of the window. With the light thud of the ma.s.s upon the ground eyes of husband and wife met.

"Hugon would marry the girl," said the latter, twisting the hem of her ap.r.o.n with restless fingers.

Without change of countenance, Darden leaned forward, seized her by the shoulder and shook her violently. "You are too given to idle and meaningless words, Deborah," he declared, releasing her. "By the Lord, one of these days I'll break you of the habit for good and all! Hugon, and scarlet flowers, and who will marry Audrey, that is yet but a child and useful about the house,--what has all this to do with the matter in hand, which is simply to make ourselves and our house presentable in the eyes of my chief parishioner? A man would think that thirteen years in Virginia would teach any fool the necessity of standing well with a powerful gentleman such as this. I'm no coward. d.a.m.n sanctimonious parsons and my Lord Bishop's Scotch hireling! If they yelp much longer at my heels, I'll scandalize them in good earnest! It's thin ice, though,--it's thin ice; but I like this house and glebe, and I'm going to live and die in them,--and die drunk, if I choose, Mr. Commissary to the contrary! It's of import, Deborah, that my parishioners, being easy folk, willing to live and let live, should like me still, and that a majority of my vestry should not be able to get on without me. With this in mind, get out the wine, dust the best chair, and be ready with thy curtsy. It will be time enough to cry Audrey's banns when she is asked in marriage."

Audrey, in her brown dress, with the color yet in her cheeks, entering at the moment, Mistress Deborah attempted no response to her husband's adjuration. Darden turned to the girl. "I've done with the writing for the nonce, child," he said, "and need you no longer. I'll smoke a pipe and think of my sermon. You're tired; out with you into the sunshine! Go to the wood or down by the creek, but not beyond call, d'ye mind."

Audrey looked from one to the other, but said nothing. There were many things in the world of other people which she did not understand; one thing more or less made no great difference. But she did understand the sunlit roof, the twilight halls, the patterned floor of the forest.

Blossoms drifting down, fleeing shadows, voices of wind and water, and all murmurous elfin life spoke to her. They spoke the language of her land; when she stepped out of the door into the air and faced the portals of her world, they called to her to come. Lithe and slight and light of foot, she answered to their piping. The orchard through which she ran was fair with its rosy trees, like gayly dressed curtsying dames; the slow, clear creek that held the double of the sky enticed, but she pa.s.sed it by. Straight as an arrow she pierced to the heart of the wood that lay to the north. Thorn and bramble, branch of bloom and entangling vine, stayed her not; long since she had found or had made for herself a path to the centre of the labyrinth. Here was a beech-tree, older by many a year than the young wood,--a solitary tree spared by the axe what time its mates had fallen.

Tall and silver-gray the column of the trunk rose to meet wide branches and the green lace-work of tender leaves. The earth beneath was clean swept, and carpeted with the leaves of last year; a wide, dry, pale brown enchanted ring, against whose borders pressed the riot of the forest. Vine and bush, flower and fern, could not enter; but Audrey came and laid herself down upon a cool and shady bed.

By human measurement the house that she had left was hard by; even from under the beech-tree Mistress Deborah's thin call could draw her back to the walls which sheltered her, which she had been taught to call her home.

But it was not her soul's home, and now the veil of the kindly woods withdrew it league on league, shut it out, made it as if it had never been. From the charmed ring beneath the beech-tree she took possession of her world; for her the wind murmured, the birds sang, insects hummed or shrilled, the green saplings nodded their heads. Flowers, and the bedded moss, and the little stream that leaped from a precipice of three feet into the calm of a hand-deep pool spoke to her. She was happy. Gone was the house and its inmates; gone Paris the schoolmaster, who had taught her to write, and whose hand touching hers in guidance made her sick and cold; gone Hugon the trader, whom she feared and hated. Here were no toil, no annoy, no frightened flutterings of the heart; she had pa.s.sed the frontier, and was safe in her own land.

She pressed her cheek against the dead leaves, and, with the smell of the earth in her nostrils, looked sideways with half-closed eyes and made a radiant mist of the forest round about. A drowsy warmth was in the air; the birds sang far away; through a rift in the foliage a sunbeam came and rested beside her like A gilded snake.

For a time, wrapped in the warmth and the green and gold mist, she lay as quiet as the sunbeam; of the earth earthy, in pact with the mould beneath the leaves, with the slowly crescent trunks, brown or silver-gray, with moss and lichened rock, and with all life that basked or crept or flew. At last, however, the mind aroused, and she opened her eyes, saw, and thought of what she saw. It was pleasant in the forest. She watched the flash of a bird, as blue as the sky, from limb to limb; she listened to the elfin waterfall; she drew herself with hand and arm across the leaves to the edge of the pale brown ring, plucked a honeysuckle bough and brought it back to the silver column of the beech; and lastly, glancing up from the rosy sprig within her hand, she saw a man coming toward her, down the path that she had thought hidden, holding his arm before him for shield against brier and branch, and looking curiously about him as for a thing which he had come out to seek.

CHAPTER VIII

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

In the moment in which she sprang to her feet she saw that it was not Hugon, and her heart grew calm again. In her torn gown, with her brown hair loosed from its fastenings, and falling over her shoulders in heavy waves whose crests caught the sunlight, she stood against the tree beneath which she had lain, gazed with wide-open eyes at the intruder, and guessed from his fine coat and the sparkling toy looping his hat that he was a gentleman. She knew gentlemen when she saw them: on a time one had cursed her for scurrying like a partridge across the road before his horse, making the beast come nigh to unseating him; another, coming upon her and the Widow Constance's Barbara gathering f.a.gots in the November woods, had tossed to each a sixpence; a third, on vestry business with the minister, had touched her beneath the chin, and sworn that an she were not so brown she were fair; a fourth, lying hidden upon the bank of the creek, had caught her boat head as she pushed it into the reeds, and had tried to kiss her. They had certain ways, had gentlemen, but she knew no great harm of them. There was one, now--but he would be like a prince. When at eventide the sky was piled with pale towering clouds, and she looked, as she often looked, down the river, toward the bay and the sea beyond, she always saw this prince that she had woven--warp of memory, woof of dreams--stand erect in the pearly light. There was a gentleman indeed!

As to the possessor of the t.i.tle now slowly and steadily making his way toward her she was in a mere state of wonder. It was not possible that he had lost his way; but if so, she was sorry that, in losing it, he had found the slender zigzag of her path. A trustful child,--save where Hugon was concerned,--she was not in the least afraid, and being of a friendly mind looked at the approaching figure with shy kindliness, and thought that he must have come from a distant part of the country. She thought that had she ever seen him before she would have remembered it.

Upon the outskirts of the ring, clear of the close embrace of flowering bush and spreading vine. Haward paused, and looked with smiling eyes at this girl of the woods, this forest creature that, springing from the earth, had set its back against the tree.

"Tarry awhile," he said. "Slip not yet within the bark. Had I known, I should have brought oblation of milk and honey."