Audrey Part 30

Haward caught her by the wrists, bruising them in his grasp. "Audrey, Audrey! Let these fancies be! If we love each other"--

"If!" she echoed, and pulled her hands away. Her voice was strange, her eyes were bright and strained, her face was burning. "But if not, what then? And how should I love you who are a stranger to me? Oh, a generous stranger who, where he thinks he has done a wrong, would repair the damage." Her voice broke; she flung back her head and pressed her hands against her throat. "You have done me no wrong," she said. "If you had, I would forgive you, would say good-by to you, would go my way.... as I am going now. Let me pa.s.s, sir!"

Haward barred her way. "A stranger!" he said, beneath his breath. "Is there then no tie between shadow and substance, dream and reality?"

"None!" answered Audrey, with defiance. "Why did you come to the mountains, eleven years ago? What business was it of yours whether I lived or died? Oh, G.o.d was not kind to send you there!"

"You loved me once!" he cried. "Audrey, Audrey, have I slain your love?"

"It was never yours!" she answered pa.s.sionately, "It was that other's,--that other whom I imagined, who never lived outside my dream!

Oh, let me pa.s.s, let me begone! You are cruel to keep me. I--I am so tired."

White to the lips, Haward moved backward a step or two, but yet stood between her and the door. Moments pa.s.sed before he spoke; then, "Will you become my wife?" he asked, in a studiously quiet voice. "Marry me, Audrey, loving me not. Love may come in time, but give me now the right to be your protector, the power to clear your name."

She looked at him with a strange smile, a fine gesture of scorn. "Marry you, loving you not! That will I never do. Protector! That is a word I have grown to dislike. My name! It is a slight thing. What matter if folk look askance when it is only Darden's Audrey? And there are those whom an ill fame does not frighten. The schoolmaster will still give me books to read, and tell me what they mean. He will not care, nor the drunken minister, nor Hugon.... I am going back to them, to Mistress Deborah and the glebe house. She will beat me, and the minister will curse, but they will take me in.... I will work very hard, and never look to Fair View. I see now that I could never reach the mountains." She began to move toward the door. He kept with her, step for step, his eyes upon her face. "You will come no more to the glebe house," she said. "If you do, though the mountains be far the river is near."

He put his hand upon the latch of the door. "You will rest here to-night?"

he asked gently, as of a child. "I will speak to Colonel Byrd; to-morrow he will send some one with you down the river. It will be managed for you, and as you wish. You will rest to-night? You go from me now to your room, Audrey?"

"Yes," she answered, and thought she spoke the truth.

"I love you,--love you greatly," he continued. "I will conquer,--conquer and atone! But now, poor tired one, I let you go. Sleep, Audrey, sleep and dream again." He held open the door for her, and stood aside with bent head.

She pa.s.sed him; then turned, and after a moment of silence spoke to him with a strange and sorrowful stateliness. "You think, sir," she said, "that I have something to forgive?"

"Much," he answered,--"very much, Audrey."

"And you wish my forgiveness?"

"Ay, Audrey, your forgiveness and your love."

"The first is mine to give," she said. "If you wish it, take it. I forgive you, sir. Good-by."

"Good-night," he answered. "Audrey, good-night."

"Good-by," she repeated, and slowly mounting the broad staircase pa.s.sed from his sight.

It was dark in the upper hall, but there was a great glimmer of sky, an opal s.p.a.ce to mark a window that gave upon the sloping lawn and pallid river. The pale light seemed to beckon. Audrey went not on to her attic room, but to the window, and in doing so pa.s.sed a small half-open door. As she went by she glanced through the aperture, and saw that there was a narrow stairway, built for the servants' use, winding down to a door in the western face of the house.

Once at the open window, she leaned forth and looked to the east and the west. The hush of the evening had fallen; the light was faint; above the last rose flush a great star palely shone. All was quiet, deserted; nothing stirring on the leaf-carpeted slope; no sound save the distant singing of the slaves. The river lay bare from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, save where the Westover landing stretched raggedly into the flood. To its piles small boats were tied, but there seemed to be no boatmen; wharf and river appeared as barren of movement and life as did the long expanse of dusky lawn.

"I will not sleep in this house to-night," said Audrey to herself. "If I can reach those boats unseen, I will go alone down the river. That will be well. I am not wanted here."

When she arrived at the foot of the narrow stair, she slipped through the door into a world all dusk and quiet, where was none to observe her, none to stay her. Crouching by the wall she crept to the front of the house, stole around the stone steps where, that morning, she had sat in the suns.h.i.+ne, and came to the parlor windows. Close beneath one was a block of stone. After a moment's hesitation she stood upon this, and, pressing her face against the window pane, looked her last upon the room she had so lately left. A low fire upon the hearth, darkly illumined it: he sat by the table, with his arms outstretched and his head bowed upon them. Audrey dropped from the stone into the ever growing shadows, crossed the lawn, slipped below the bank, and took her way along the river edge to the long landing. When she was half way down its length, she saw that there was a canoe which she had not observed and that it held one man, who sat with his back to the sh.o.r.e. With a quick breath of dismay she stood still, then setting her lips went on; for the more she thought of having to see those two again, Evelyn and the master of Fair View, the stronger grew her determination to commence her backward journey alone and at once.

She had almost reached the end of the wharf when the man in the boat stood up and faced her. It was Hugon. The dusk was not so great but that the two, the hunter and his quarry, could see each other plainly. The latter turned with the sob of a stricken deer, but the impulse to flight lasted not. Where might she go? Run blindly, north or east or west, through the fields of Westover? That would shortly lead to cowering in some wood or swamp while the feet of the searchers came momently nearer. Return to the house, stand at bay once more? With all her strength of soul she put this course from her.

The quick strife in her mind ended in her moving slowly, as though drawn by an invisible hand, to the edge of the wharf, above Hugon and his canoe.

She did not wonder to see him there. Every word that Haward had spoken in the Westover parlor was burned upon her brain, and he had said that he had come up river with an Indian. This was the Indian, and to hunt her down those two had joined forces.

"Ma'm'selle Audrey," whispered the trader, staring as at a spirit.

"Yes, Jean Hugon," she answered, and looked down the glimmering reaches of the James, then at the slender canoe and the deep and dark water that flowed between the piles. In the slight craft, with that strong man the river for ally, she were safe as in a tower of bra.s.s.

"I am going home, Jean," she said. "Will you row me down the river to-night, and tell me as we go your stories of the woods and your father's glories in France? If you speak of other things I will drown myself, for I am tired of hearing them. In the morning we will stop at some landing for food, and then go on again. Let us hasten"--

The trader moistened his lips. "And him," he demanded hoa.r.s.ely,--"that Englishman, that Marmaduke Haward of Fair View, who came to me and said, 'Half-breed, seeing that an Indian and a bloodhound have gifts in common, we will take up the quest together. Find her, though it be to lose her to me that same hour! And look that in our travels you try no foul play, for this time I go armed,'--what of him?"

Audrey waved her hand toward the house she had left. "He is there. Let us make haste." As she spoke she descended the steps, and, evading his eager hand, stepped into the canoe. He looked at her doubtfully, half afraid, so strange was it to see her sitting there, so like a spirit from the land beyond the sun, a _revenant_ out of one of old Pierre's wild tales, had she come upon him. With quickened breath he loosed the canoe from its mooring and took up the paddle. A moment, and they were quit of the Westover landing and embarked upon a strange journey, during which hour after hour Hugon made wild love, and hour after hour Audrey opened not her lips. As the canoe went swiftly down the flood, lights sprung up in the house it was leaving behind. A man, rising from his chair with a heavy sigh, walked to the parlor window and looked out upon lawn and sky and river, but, so dark had it grown, saw not the canoe; thought only how deserted, how desolate and lonely, was the scene.

In Williamsburgh as at Westover the autumn was dying, the winter was coming, but neither farewell nor greeting perturbed the cheerful town. To and fro through Palace and Nicholson and Duke of Gloucester streets were blown the gay leaves; of early mornings white frosts lay upon the earth like fairy snows, but midday and afternoon were warm and bright. Mistress Stagg's garden lay to the south, and in sheltered corners bloomed marigolds and asters, while a vine, red-leafed and purple-berried, made a splendid mantle for the playhouse wall.

Within the theatre a rehearsal of "Tamerlane" was in progress. Turk and Tartar spoke their minds, and Arpasia's death cry clave the air. The victorious Emperor pa.s.sed final sentence upon Bajazet; then, chancing to glance toward the wide door, suddenly abdicated his throne, and in the character of Mr. Charles Stagg blew a kiss to his wife, who, applauding softly, stood in the opening that was framed by the red vine.

"Have you done, my dear?" she cried. "Then pray come with me a moment!"

The two crossed the garden, and entered the grape arbor where in September Mistress Stagg had entertained her old friend, my Lady Squander's sometime waiting-maid. Now the vines were bare of leaves, and the suns.h.i.+ne streaming through lay in a flood upon the earth. Mary Stagg's chair was set in that golden warmth, and upon the ground beside it had fallen some bright sewing. The silken stuff touched a coa.r.s.er cloth, and that was the skirt of Darden's Audrey, who sat upon the ground asleep, with her arm across the chair, and her head upon her arm.

"How came she here?" demanded Mr. Stagg at last, when he had given a tragedy start, folded his arms, and bent his brows.

"She ran away," answered Mistress Stagg, in a low voice, drawing her spouse to a little distance from the sleeping figure. "She ran away from the glebe house and went up the river, wanting--the Lord knows why!--to reach the mountains. Something happened to bring her to her senses, and she turned back, and falling in with that trader, Jean Hugon, he brought her to Jamestown in his canoe. She walked from there to the glebe house,--that was yesterday. The minister was away, and Deborah, being in one of her pa.s.sions, would not let her in. She's that hard, is Deborah, when she's angry, harder than the nether millstone! The girl lay in the woods last night. I vow I'll never speak again to Deborah, not though there were twenty Baths behind us!" Mistress Stagg's voice began to tremble. "I was sitting sewing in that chair, now listening to your voices in the theatre, and now harking back in my mind to old days when we weren't prosperous like we are now.... And at last I got to thinking of the babe, Charles, and how, if she had lived and grown up, I might ha' sat there sewing a pretty gown for my own child, and how happy I would have made her. I tried to see her standing beside me, laughing, pretty as a rose, waiting for me to take the last st.i.tch. It got so real that I raised my head to tell my dead child how I was going to knot her ribbons, ... and there was this girl looking at me!"

"What, Millamant! a tear, my soul?" cried the theatric Mr. Stagg.

Millamant wiped away the tear. "I'll tell you what she said. She just said: 'You were kind to me when I was here before, but if you tell me to go away I'll go. You need not say it loudly.' And then she almost fell, and I put out my arm and caught her; and presently she was on her knees there beside me, with her head in my lap.... And then we talked together for a while. It was mostly me--she didn't say much--but, Charles, the girl's done no wrong, no more than our child that's dead and in Christ's bosom. She was so tired and worn. I got some milk and gave it to her, and directly she went to sleep like a baby, with her head on my knee."

The two went closer, and looked down upon the slender form and still, dark face. The sleeper's rest was deep. A tress of hair, fallen from its fastening, swept her cheek; Mistress Stagg, stooping, put it in place behind the small ear, then straightened herself and pressed her Mirabell's arm.

"Well, my love," quoth that gentleman, clearing his throat. "'Great minds, like Heaven, are pleased in doing good.' My Millamant, declare your thoughts!"

Mistress Stagg twisted her ap.r.o.n hem between thumb and finger. "She's more than eighteen, Charles, and anyhow, if I understand it rightly, she was never really bound to Darden. The law has no hold on her, for neither vestry nor Orphan Court had anything to do with placing her with Darden and Deborah. She's free to stay."

"Free to stay?" queried Charles, and took a prodigious pinch of snuff. "To stay with us?"

"Why not?" asked his wife, and stole a persuasive hand into that of her helpmate. "Oh, Charles, my heart went out to her! I made her so beautiful once, and I could do it again and all the time. Don't you think her prettier than was Jane Day? And she's graceful, and that quick to learn!

You're such a teacher, Charles, and I know she'd do her best.... Perhaps, after all, there would be no need to send away to Bristol for one to take Jane's place."

"H'm!" said the great man thoughtfully, and bit a curl of Tamerlane's vast periwig. "'Tis true I esteem her no dullard," he at last vouchsafed; "true also that she hath beauty. In fine, solely to give thee pleasure, my Millamant, I will give the girl a trial no later than this very afternoon."

Audrey stirred in her sleep, spoke Haward's name, and sank again to rest.

Mr. Stagg took a second pinch of snuff. "There's the scandal, my love. His Excellency the Governor's ball, Mr. Eliot's sermon, Mr. Marmaduke Haward's illness and subsequent duels with Mr. Everard and Mr. Travis, are in no danger of being forgotten. If this girl ever comes to the speaking of an epilogue, there'll be in Williamsburgh a nine days' wonder indeed!"

"The wonder would not hurt," said Mistress Stagg simply.

"Far from it, my dear," agreed Mr. Stagg, and closing his snuffbox, went with a thoughtful brow back to the playhouse and the Tartar camp.