Audrey Part 31

CHAPTER XXVII

THE MISSION OF TRUELOVE

Mistress Truelove Taberer, having read in a very clear and gentle voice the Sermon on the Mount to those placid Friends, Tobias and Martha Taberer, closed the book, and went about her household affairs with a quiet step, but a heart that somehow fluttered at every sound without the door. To still it she began to repeat to herself words she had read: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of G.o.d ... blessed are the peacemakers"--

Winter suns.h.i.+ne poured in at the windows and door. Truelove, kneeling to wipe a fleck of dust from her wheel, suddenly, with a catch of her breath and a lifting of her brown eyes, saw in the Scripture she had been repeating a meaning and application hitherto unexpected. "The peacemaker ... that is one who makes peace,--in the world, between countries, in families, yea, in the heart of one alone. Did he not say, last time he came, that with me he forgot this naughty world and all its strife; that if I were always with him"--

Truelove's countenance became exalted, her gaze fixed. "If it were a call"--she murmured, and for a moment bowed her head upon the wheel; then rose from her knees and went softly through the morning tasks. When they were over, she took down from a peg and put on a long gray cloak and a gray hood that most becomingly framed her wild-rose face; then came and stood before her father and mother. "I am going forth to walk by the creekside," she said, in her sweet voice. "It may be that I will meet Angus MacLean."

"If thee does," answered one tranquil Friend, "thee may tell him that upon next seventh day meeting will be held in this house."

"Truly," said the other tranquil Friend, "my heart is drawn toward that young man. His mind hath been filled with anger and resistance and the turmoil of the world. It were well if he found peace at last."

"Surely it were well," agreed Truelove sweetly, and went out into the crisp winter weather.

The holly, the pine, and the cedar made green places in the woods, and the mult.i.tude of leaves underfoot were pleasant to tread. Clouds were in the sky, but the s.p.a.ces between were of serenest blue, and in the suns.h.i.+ne the creek flashed diamonds. Truelove stood upon the bank, and, with her hand shading her eyes, watched MacLean rowing toward her up the creek.

When he had fastened his boat and taken her hand, the two walked soberly on beside the sparkling water until they came to a rude seat built beneath an oak-tree, to which yet clung a number of brown leaves. Truelove sat down, drawing her cloak about her, for, though the sun shone, the air was keen. MacLean took off his coat, and kneeling put it beneath her feet. He laughed at her protest. "Why, these winds are not bleak!" he said. "This land knows no true and honest cold. In my country, night after night have I lain in snow with only my plaid for cover, and heard the spirits call in the icy wind, the kelpie shriek beneath the frozen loch. I listened; then shut my eyes and dreamed warm of glory and--true love."

"Thy coat is new," said Truelove, with downcast eyes. "The earth will stain the good cloth."

MacLean laughed. "Then will I wear it stained, as 'tis said a courtier once wore his cloak."

"There is lace upon it," said Truelove timidly.

MacLean turned with a smile, and laid a fold of her cloak against his dark cheek. "Ah, the lace offends you,--offends thee,--Truelove. Why, 'tis but to mark me a gentleman again! Last night, at Williamsburgh, I supped with Haward and some gentlemen of Virginia. He would have me don this suit. I might not disoblige my friend."

"Thee loves it," said Truelove severely. "Thee loves the color, and the feel of the fine cloth, and the ruffles at thy wrists."

The Highlander laughed. "Why, suppose that I do! Look, Truelove, how brave and red are those holly berries, and how green and fantastically twisted the leaves! The sky is a bright blue, and the clouds are silver; and think what these woods will be when the winter is past! One might do worse, meseems, than to be of G.o.d's taste in such matters."

Truelove sighed, and drew her gray cloak more closely around her.

"Thee is in spirits to-day, Angus MacLean," she said, and sighed once more.

"I am free," he answered. "The man within me walks no longer with a hanging head."

"And what will thee do with thy freedom?"

The Highlander made no immediate reply, but, chin in hand, studied the drifts of leaves and the slow-moving water. "I am free," he said at last.

"I wear to-day the dress of a gentleman. I could walk without shame into a hall that I know, and find there strangers, standers in dead men's shoon, brothers who want me not,--who would say behind their hands, 'He has been twelve years a slave, and the world has changed since he went away!' ... I will not trouble them."

His face was as sombre as when Truelove first beheld it. Suddenly, and against her will, tears came to her eyes. "I am glad--I and my father and mother and Ephraim--that thee goes not overseas, Angus MacLean," said the dove's voice. "We would have thee--I and my father and mother and Ephraim--we would have thee stay in Virginia."

"I am to stay," he answered. "I have felt no shame in taking a loan from my friend, for I shall repay it. He hath lands up river in a new-made county. I am to seat them for him, and there will be my home. I will build a house and name it Duart; and if there are hills they shall be Dun-da-gu and Grieg, and the sound of winter torrents shall be to me as the sound of the waters of Mull."

Truelove caught her breath. "Thee will be lonely in those forests."

"I am used to loneliness."

"There be Indians on the frontier. They burn houses and carry away prisoners. And there are wolves and dangerous beasts"--

"I am used to danger."

Truelove's voice trembled more and more. "And thee must dwell among negroes and rude men, with none to comfort thy soul, none to whom thee can speak in thy dark hours?"

"Before now I have spoken to the tobacco I have planted, the trees I have felled, the swords and muskets I have sold."

"But at last thee came and spoke to me!"

"Ay," he answered. "There have been times when you saved my soul alive.

Now, in the forest, in my house of logs, when the day's work is done, and I sit upon my doorstep and begin to hear the voices of the past crying to me like the spirits in the valley of Glensyte, I will think of you instead."

"Oh!" cried Truelove. "Speak to me instead, and I will speak to thee ...

sitting upon the doorstep of our house, when our day's work is done!"

Her hood falling back showed her face, clear pink, with dewy eyes. The carnation deepening from brow to throat, and the tears trembling upon her long lashes, she suddenly hid her countenance in her gray cloak. MacLean, on his knees beside her, drew away the folds. "Truelove, Truelove! do you know what you have said?"

Truelove put her hand upon her heart. "Oh, I fear," she whispered, "I fear that I have asked thee, Angus MacLean, to let me be--to let me be--thy wife."

The water shone, and the holly berries were gay, and a robin redbreast sang a cheerful song. Beneath the rustling oak-tree there was ardent speech on the part of MacLean, who found in his mistress a listener sweet and shy, and not garrulous of love. But her eyes dwelt upon him and her hand rested at ease within his clasp, and she liked to hear him speak of the home they were to make in the wilderness. It was to be thus, and thus, and thus! With impa.s.sioned eloquence the Gael adorned the shrine and advanced the merit of the divinity, and the divinity listened with a smile, a blush, a tear, and now and then a meek rebuke.

When an hour had pa.s.sed, the sun went under a cloud and the air grew colder. The bird had flown away, but in the rising wind the dead leaves rustled loudly. MacLean and Truelove, leaving their future of honorable toil, peace of mind, and enduring affection, came back to the present.

"I must away," said the Highlander. "Haward waits for me at Williamsburgh.

To-morrow, dearer to me than Deirdre to Naos! I will come again."

Hand in hand the two walked slowly toward that haunt of peace, Truelove's quiet home. "And Marmaduke Haward awaits thee at Williamsburgh?" said the Quakeress. "Last third day he met my father and me on the Fair View road, and checked his horse and spoke to us. He is changed."

"Changed indeed!" quoth the Highlander. "A fire burns him, a wind drives him; and yet to the world, last night"--He paused.

"Last night?" said Truelove.

"He had a large company at Marot's ordinary," went on the other. "There were the Governor and his fellow Councilors, with others of condition or fas.h.i.+on. He was the very fine gentleman, the perfect host, free, smiling, full of wit. But I had been with him before they came. I knew the fires beneath."

The two walked in silence for a few moments, when MacLean spoke again: "He drank to her. At the last, when this lady had been toasted, and that, he rose and drank to 'Audrey,' and threw his winegla.s.s over his shoulder. He hath done what he could. The world knows that he loves her honorably, seeks her vainly in marriage. Something more I know. He gathered the company together last evening that, as his guests, the highest officers, the finest gentlemen of the colony, should go with him to the theatre to see her for the first time as a player. Being what they were, and his guests, and his pa.s.sion known, he would insure for her, did she well or did she ill, order, interest, decent applause." MacLean broke off with a short, excited laugh. "It was not needed,--his mediation. But he could not know that; no, nor none of us. True, Stagg and his wife had bragged of the powers of this strangely found actress of theirs that they were training to do great things, but folk took it for a trick of their trade. Oh, there was curiosity enough, but 'twas on Haward's account.... Well, he drank to her, standing at the head of the table at Marot's ordinary, and the gla.s.s crashed over his shoulder, and we all went to the play."

"Yes, yes!" cried Truelove, breathing quickly, and quite forgetting how great a vanity was under discussion.

"'Twas 'Tamerlane,' the play that this traitorous generation calls for every 5th of November. It seems that the Governor--a Whig as rank as Argyle--had ordered it again for this week. 'Tis a cursed piece of slander that pictures the Prince of Orange a virtuous Emperor, his late Majesty of France a hateful tyrant. But for Haward, whose guest I was, I had not sat there with closed lips. I had sprung to my feet and given those flatterers, those traducers, the lie! The thing taunted and angered until she entered. Then I forgot."

"And she--and Audrey?"

"Arpasia was her name in the play. She entered late; her death came before the end; there was another woman who had more to do. It all mattered not, I have seen a great actress."