Audrey

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER XIII

  A SABBATH DAY'S JOURNEY

  Although the house of worship which boasted as its ornament the ReverendGideon Darden was not so large and handsome as Bruton church, nor couldrival the painted glories of Poplar Spring, it was yet a building goodenough,--of brick, with a fair white spire and a decorous mantle of ivy.The churchyard, too, was pleasant, though somewhat crowded with the dead.There were oaks for shade, and wild roses for fragrance, and the grassbetween the long gravestones, prone upon mortal dust, grew very thick andgreen. Outside the gates,--a gift from the first master of FairView,--between the churchyard and the dusty highroad ran a long strip oftrampled turf, shaded by locust-trees and by one gigantic gum that becamein the autumn a pillar of fire.

  Haward, arriving somewhat after time, found drawn up upon this piece ofsward a coach, two berlins, a calash, and three chaises, while tied tohitching-posts, trees, and the fence were a number of saddle-horses. Inthe shade of the gum-tree sprawled half a dozen negro servants, but on thebox of the coach, from which the restless horses had been taken, there yetsat the coachman, a mulatto of powerful build and a sullen countenance.The vehicle stood in the blazing sunshine, and it was both cooler andmerrier beneath the tree,--a fact apparent enough to the coachman, butthe knowledge of which, seeing that he was chained to the box, did himsmall good. Haward glanced at the figure indifferently; but Juba,following his master upon Whitefoot Kate, grinned from ear to ear."Larnin' not to run away, Sam? Road's clear: why don' you carry off decoach?"

  Haward dismounted, and leaving Juba first to fasten the horses, and thenjoin his fellows beneath the gum-tree, walked into the churchyard. Thecongregation had assembled, and besides himself there were none withoutthe church save the negroes and the dead. The service had commenced.Through the open door came to him Darden's voice: "_Dearly belovedbrethren_"--

  Haward waited, leaning against a tomb deep graven with a coat of arms andmuch stately Latin, until the singing clave the air, when he entered thebuilding, and passed down the aisle to his own pew, the chiefest in theplace. He was aware of the flutter and whisper on either hand,--perhaps hedid not find it unpleasing. Diogenes may have carried his lantern notmerely to find a man, but to show one as well, and a philosopher in a palegray riding dress, cut after the latest mode, with silver lace and a fallof Mechlin, may be trusted to know the value as well as the vanity ofsublunary things.

  Of the gathering, which was not large, two thirds, perhaps, were people ofcondition; and in the country, where occasions for display did not presentthemselves uncalled, it was highly becoming to worship the Lord in fineclothes. So there were broken rainbows in the tall pews, with a softwaving of fans to and fro in the essenced air, and a low rustle of silk.The men went as fine as the women, and the June sunshine, pouring in uponall this lustre and color, made a flower-bed of the assemblage. Being ofthe country, it was vastly better behaved than would have been afashionable London congregation; but it certainly saw no reason why Mr.Marmaduke Haward should not, during the anthem, turn his back upon altar,minister, and clerk, and employ himself in recognizing with a smile and aninclination of his head his friends and acquaintances. They smiledback,--the gentlemen bowing slightly, the ladies making a sketch of acurtsy. All were glad that Fair View house was open once more, and werekindly disposed toward the master thereof.

  The eyes of that gentleman were no longer for the gay parterre. Between itand the door, in uncushioned pews or on rude benches, were to be found theplainer sort of Darden's parishioners, and in this territory, that waslike a border of sober foliage to the flower-bed in front, he discoveredwhom he sought.

  Her gaze had been upon him since he passed the minister's pew, where shestood between my Lady Squander's ex-waiting-woman and the brandedschoolmaster, but now their eyes came full together. She was dressed insome coarse dark stuff, above which rose the brown pillar of her throatand the elusive, singular beauty of her face. There was a flower in herhair, placed as he had placed the rosebuds. A splendor leaped into hereyes, but her cheek did not redden; it was to his face that the colorrushed. They had but a moment in which to gaze at each other, for thesinging, which to her, at least, had seemed suddenly to swell into a greatascending tide of sound, with somewhere, far away, the silver calling of atrumpet, now came to an end, and with another silken rustle and murmurthe congregation sat down.

  Haward did not turn again, and the service went drowsily on. Darden wasbleared of eye and somewhat thick of voice; the clerk's whine was assleepy a sound as the buzzing of the bees in and out of window, or thesoft, incessant stir of painted fans. A churchwarden in the next pewnodded and nodded, until he nodded his peruke awry, and a child went fastasleep, with its head in its mother's lap. One and all worshiped somewhatlanguidly, with frequent glances at the hourglass upon the pulpit. Theyprayed for King George the First, not knowing that he was dead, and forthe Prince, not knowing that he was King. The minister preached againstQuakers and witchcraft, and shook the rafters with his fulminations.Finally came the benediction and a sigh of relief.

  In that country and time there was no unsociable and undignified scurryinghomeward after church. Decorous silence prevailed until the house wasexchanged for the green and shady churchyard: but then tongues wereloosened, and the flower-bed broken into clusters. One must greet one'sneighbors; present or be presented to what company might be staying at thevarious great houses within the parish; talk, laugh, coquet, and ogle;make appointments for business or for pleasure; speak of the lasthorse-race, the condition of wheat and tobacco, and the news brought in bythe Valour, man-of-war, that the King was gone to Hanover. In short, forthe nonce, the churchyard became a drawing-room, with the sun for candles,with no painted images of the past and gone upon the walls, but with thedead themselves beneath the floor.

  The minister, having questions to settle with clerk and sexton, tarriedin the vestry room; but his wife, with Audrey and the schoolmaster, waitedfor him outside, in the shade of an oak-tree that was just without thepale of the drawing-room. Mistress Deborah, in her tarnished amber satinand ribbons that had outworn their youth, bit her lip and tapped her footupon the ground. Audrey watched her apprehensively. She knew the signs,and that when they reached home a storm might break that would leave itsmark upon her shoulders. The minister's wife was not approved of by theladies of Fair View parish, but had they seen how wistful was the face ofthe brown girl with her, they might have turned aside, spoken, and let thestorm go by. The girl herself was scarcely noticed. Few had ever heard herstory, or, hearing it, had remembered; the careless many thought her anorphan, bound to Darden and his wife,--in effect their servant. If she hadbeauty, the ladies and gentlemen who saw her, Sunday after Sunday, in theminister's pew, had scarce discovered it. She was too dark, too slim, tooshy and strange of look, with her great brown eyes and that startled turnof her head. Their taste was for lilies and roses, and it was not an agethat counted shyness a grace.

  Mr. Marmaduke Haward was not likely to be accused of diffidence. He hadcome out of church with the sleepy-headed churchwarden, who was now wideawake and mightily concerned to know what horse Mr. Haward meant to enterfor the great race at Mulberry Island, while at the foot of the steps hewas seized upon by another portly vestryman, and borne off to be presentedto three blooming young ladies, quick to second their papa's invitationhome to dinner. Mr. Haward was ready to curse his luck that he wasengaged elsewhere; but were not these Graces the children to whom he hadused to send sugar-plums from Williamsburgh, years and years ago? He vowedthat the payment, which he had never received, he would take now withusury, and proceeded to salute the cheek of each protesting fair. Theladies found him vastly agreeable; old and new friends crowded around him;he put forth his powers and charmed all hearts,--and all the whileinwardly cursed the length of way to the gates, and the tardy progressthereto of his friends and neighbors.

  But however slow in ebbing, the tide was really set toward home anddinner. Darden, coming out of the vestry room, found the churchyard almostclea
red, and the road in a cloud of dust. The greater number of those whocame a-horseback were gone, and there had also departed both berlins, thecalash, and two chaises. Mr. Haward was handing the three Graces into thecoach with the chained coachman, Juba standing by, holding his master'shorse. Darden grew something purpler in the face, and, rumbling oaths,went over to the three beneath the oak. "How many spoke to you to-day?" heasked roughly of his wife. "Did _he_ come and speak?"

  "No, he didn't!" cried Mistress Deborah tartly. "And all the gentry wentby; only Mr. Bray stopped to say that everybody knew of your fight withMr. Bailey at the French ordinary, and that the Commissary had sent forBailey, and was going to suspend him. I wish to Heaven I knew why Imarried you, to be looked down upon by every Jill, when I might have hadhis Lordship's own man! Of all the fools"--

  "You were not the only one," answered her husband grimly. "Well, let'shome; there's dinner yet. What is it, Audrey?" This in answer to aninarticulate sound from the girl.

  The schoolmaster answered for her: "Mr. Marmaduke Haward has not gone withthe coach. Perhaps he only waited until the other gentlefolk should begone. Here he comes."

  The sward without the gates was bare of all whose presence mattered, andHaward had indeed reentered the churchyard, and was walking toward them.Darden went to meet him. "These be fine tales I hear of you, Mr. Darden,"said his parishioner calmly. "I should judge you were near the end of yourrope. There's a vestry meeting Thursday. Shall I put in a good word foryour reverence? Egad, you need it!"

  "I shall be your honor's most humble, most obliged servant," quoth theminister. "The affair at the French ordinary was nothing. I mean to preachnext Sunday upon calumny,--calumny that spareth none, not even such as I.You are for home, I see, and our road for a time is the same. Will youride with us?"

  "Ay," said Haward briefly. "But you must send yonder fellow with thescarred hands packing. I travel not with thieves."

  He had not troubled to lower his voice, and as he and Darden were nowthemselves within the shadow of the oak, the schoolmaster overheard himand answered for himself. "Your honor need not fear my company," he said,in his slow and lifeless tones. "I am walking, and I take the short cutthrough the woods. Good-day, worthy Gideon. Madam Deborah and Audrey,good-day."

  He put his uncouth, shambling figure into motion, and, indifferent andlifeless in manner as in voice, was gone, gliding like a long blackshadow through the churchyard and into the woods across the road. "I knewhim long ago in England," the minister explained to their new companion."He's a learned man, and, like myself, a calumniated one. The gentlemen ofthese parts value him highly as an instructor of youth. No need to sendtheir sons to college if they've been with him for a year or two! My goodDeborah, Mr. Haward will ride with us toward Fair View."

  Mistress Deborah curtsied; then chided Audrey for not minding her manners,but standing like a stock or stone, with her thoughts a thousand milesaway. "Let her be," said Haward. "We gave each other good-day in church."

  Together the four left the churchyard. Darden brought up two sorry horses;lifted his wife and Audrey upon one, and mounted the other. Haward swunghimself into his saddle, and the company started, Juba upon Whitefoot Katebringing up the rear. The master of Fair View rode beside the minister,and only now and then spoke to the women. The road was here sunny, thereshady; the excessive heat broken, the air pleasant enough. Everywhere,too, was the singing of birds, while the fields that they passed oftobacco and golden, waving wheat were charming to the sight. The ministerwas, when sober, a man of parts, with some education and a deal of motherwit; in addition, a close and shrewd observer of the times and people. Heand Haward talked of matters of public moment, and the two women listened,submissive and admiring. It seemed that they came very quickly to thebridge across the creek and the parting of their ways. Would Mr. Hawardride on to the glebe house?

  It appeared that Mr. Haward would. Moreover, when the house was reached,and Darden's one slave came running from a broken-down stable to take thehorses, he made no motion toward returning to the bridge which led acrossthe creek to his own plantation, but instead dismounted, flung his reinsto Juba, and asked if he might stay to dinner.

  Now, by the greatest good luck, considered Mistress Deborah, there chancedto be in her larder a haunch of venison roasted most noble; the ducklingsand asparagus, too, cooked before church, needed but to be popped into theoven; and there was also an apple tart with cream. With elation, then, andeke with a mind at rest, she added her shrill protests of delight toDarden's more moderate assurances, and, leaving Audrey to set chairs inthe shade of a great apple-tree, hurried into the house to unearth herdamask tablecloth and silver spoons, and to plan for the morrow a visit tothe Widow Constance, and a casual remark that Mr. Marmaduke Haward haddined with the minister the day before. Audrey, her task done, went afterher, to be met with graciousness most unusual. "I'll see to the dinner,child. Mr. Haward will expect one of us to sit without, and you had aswell go as I. If he's talking to Darden, you might get some larkspur andgilliflowers for the table. La! the flowers that used to wither beneaththe candles at my Lady Squander's!"

  Audrey, finding the two men in conversation beneath the apple-tree, passedon to the ragged garden, where clumps of hardy, bright-colored flowersplayed hide-and-seek with currant and gooseberry bushes. Haward saw hergo, and broke the thread of his discourse. Darden looked up, and the eyesof the two men met; those of the younger were cold and steady. A moment,and his glance had fallen to his watch which he had pulled out. "'Tisearly yet," he said coolly, "and I dare say not quite your dinnertime,--which I beg that Mistress Deborah will not advance on my account.Is it not your reverence's habit to rest within doors after your sermon?Pray do not let me detain you. I will go talk awhile with Audrey."

  He put up his watch and rose to his feet. Darden cleared his throat. "Ihave, indeed, a letter to write to Mr. Commissary, and it may be half anhour before Deborah has dinner ready. I will send your servant to fetchyou in."

  Haward broke the larkspur and gilliflowers, and Audrey gathered up herapron and filled it with the vivid blooms. The child that had thus broughtloaves of bread to a governor's table spread beneath a sugar-tree, withmountains round about, had been no purer of heart, no more innocent ofrustic coquetry. When her apron was filled she would have returned to thehouse, but Haward would not have it so. "They will call when dinner isready," he said. "I wish to talk to you, little maid. Let us go sit in theshade of the willow yonder."

  It was almost a twilight behind the cool green rain of the willow boughs.Through that verdant mist Haward and Audrey saw the outer world but dimly."I had a fearful dream last night," said Audrey. "I think that that musthave been why I was to glad to see you come into church to-day. I dreamedthat you had never come home again, overseas, in the Golden Rose. Hugonwas beside me, in the dream, telling me that you were dead in England: andsuddenly I knew that I had never really seen you; that there was nogarden, no terrace, no roses, no _you_. It was all so cold and sad, andthe sun kept growing smaller and smaller. The woods, too, were black, andthe wind cried in them so that I was afraid. And then I was in Hugon'shouse, holding the door,--there was a wolf without,--and through thewindow I saw the mountains; only they were so high that my heart ached tolook upon them, and the wind cried down the cleft in the hills. The wolfwent away, and then, somehow, I was upon the hilltop.... There was a deadman lying in the grass, but it was too dark to see. Hugon came up behindme, stooped, and lifted the hand.... Upon the finger was that ring youwear, burning in the moonlight.... Oh me!"

  The remembered horror of her dream contending with present bliss shook herspirit to its centre. She shuddered violently, then burst into a passionof tears.

  Haward's touch upon her hair, Haward's voice in her ear, all the old termsof endearment for a frightened child,--"little maid," "little coward,""Why, sweetheart, these things are shadows, they cannot hurt thee!" Shecontrolled her tears, and was the happier for her weeping. It was sweet tosit there in the lush grass, veiled and shadowed f
rom the world by thewillow's drooping green, and in that soft and happy light to listen to hisvoice, half laughing, half chiding, wholly tender and caressing. Dreamswere naught, he said. Had Hugon troubled her waking hours?

  He had come once to the house, it appeared; but she had run away andhidden in the wood, and the minister had told him she was gone to theWidow Constance's. That was a long time ago; it must have been the dayafter she and Mistress Deborah had last come from Fair View.

  "A long time," said Haward. "It was a week ago. Has it seemed a long time,Audrey?"

  "Yes,--oh yes!"

  "I have been busy. I must learn to be a planter, you know. But I havethought of you, little maid."

  Audrey was glad of that, but there was yet a weight upon her heart. "Afterthat dream I lay awake all night, and it came to me how wrongly I haddone. Hugon is a wicked man,--an Indian. Oh, I should never have told you,that first day in the garden, that he was waiting for me outside! For now,because you took care of me and would not let him come near, he hates you.He is so wicked that he might do you a harm." Her eyes widened, and thehand that touched his was cold and trembling. "If ever hurt came to youthrough me, I would drown myself in the river yonder. And then Ithought--lying awake last night--that perhaps I had been troublesome toyou, those days at Fair View, and that was why you had not come to see theminister, as you had said you would." The dark eyes were pitifully eager;the hand that went to her heart trembled more and more. "It is not as itwas in the mountains," she said. "I am older now, and safe, and--andhappy. And you have many things to do and to think of, and manyfriends--gentlemen and beautiful ladies--to go to see. I thought--lastnight--that when I saw you I would ask your pardon for not rememberingthat the mountains were years ago; for troubling you with my matters, sir;for making too free, forgetting my place"--Her voice sank; the shamed redwas in her cheeks, and her eyes, that she had bravely kept upon his face,fell to the purple and gold blooms in her lap.

  Haward rose from the grass, and, with his back to the gray hole of thewillow, looked first at the veil of leaf and stem through which dimlyshowed house, orchard, and blue sky, then down upon the girl at his feet.Her head was bent and she sat very still, one listless, upturned hand uponthe grass beside her, the other lying as quietly among her flowers.

  "Audrey," he said at last, "you shame me in your thoughts of me. I am notthat knight without fear and without reproach for which you take me. Beingwhat I am, you must believe that you have not wearied me; that I think ofyou and wish to see you. And Hugon, having possibly some care for his ownneck, will do me no harm; that is a very foolish notion, which you mustput from you. Now listen." He knelt beside her and took her hand in his."After a while, perhaps, when the weather is cooler, and I must open myhouse and entertain after the fashion of the country; when the newGovernor comes in, and all this gay little world of Virginia flocks toWilliamsburgh; when I am a Councilor, and must go with the rest, and mustthink of gold and place and people,--why, then, maybe, our paths willagain diverge, and only now and then will I catch the gleam of your skirt,mountain maid, brown Audrey! But now in these midsummer days it is asleepy world, that cares not to go bustling up and down. I am alone in myhouse; I visit not nor am visited, and the days hang heavy. Let us makebelieve for a time that the mountains are all around us, that it was butyesterday we traveled together. It is only a little way from Fair View tothe glebe house, from the glebe house to Fair View. I will see you often,little maid, and you must dream no more as you dreamed last night." Hepaused; his voice changed, and he went on as to himself: "It is a lonelyland, with few to see and none to care. I will drift with the summer,making of it an idyl, beautiful,--yes, and innocent! When autumn comes Iwill go to Westover."

  Of this speech Audrey caught only the last word. A wonderful smile, sobright was it, and withal so sad, came into her face. "Westover!" she saidto herself. "That is where the princess lives."

  "We will let thought alone," continued Haward. "It suits not with thischarmed light, this glamour of the summer." He made a laughing gesture."Hey, presto! little maid, there go the years rolling back! I swear I seethe mountains through the willow leaves."

  "There was one like a wall shutting out the sun when he went down,"answered Audrey. "It was black and grim, and the light flared like a firebehind it. And there was the one above which the moon rose. It was sharp,pointing like a finger to heaven, and I liked it best. Do you remember howlarge was the moon pushing up behind the pine-trees? We sat on the darkhillside watching it, and you told me beautiful stories, while the moonrose higher and higher and the mockingbirds began to sing."

  Haward remembered not, but he said that he did so. "The moon is fullagain," he continued, "and last night I heard a mockingbird in the garden.I will come in the barge to-morrow evening, and the negroes shall row usup and down the river--you and me and Mistress Deborah--between the sunsetand the moonrise. Then it is lonely and sweet upon the water. The rosescan be smelled from the banks, and if you will speak to the mockingbirdswe shall have music, dryad Audrey, brown maid of the woods!"

  Audrey's laugh, was silver-clear and sweet, like that of a forest nymphindeed. She was quite happy again, with all her half-formed doubts andfears allayed. They had never been of him,--only of herself. The two satwithin the green and swaying fountain of the willow, and time went by oneagle wings. Too soon came the slave to call them to the house; the timewithin, though spent in the company of Darden and his wife, passed toosoon; too soon came the long shadows of the afternoon and Haward's callfor his horse.

  Audrey watched him ride away, and the love light was in her eyes. She didnot know that it was so. That night, in her bare little room, when thecandle was out, she kneeled by the window and looked at the stars. Therewas one very fair and golden, an empress of the night. "That is theprincess," said Audrey, and smiled upon the peerless star. Far from thatlight, scarce free from the murk of the horizon, shone a little star,companionless in the night. "And that is I," said Audrey, and smiled uponherself.