THE RETURN OF MONSIEUR JEAN HUGON
To the north the glebe was bounded by a thick wood, a rank and dense
“second growth” springing from earth where had once stood, decorously
apart, the monster trees of the primeval forest; a wild maze of young
trees, saplings and underbrush, overrun from the tops of the slender,
bending pines to the bushes of dogwood and sassafras, and the rotting,
ancient stumps and fallen logs, by the uncontrollable, all-spreading
vine. It was such a fantastic thicket as one might look to find in
fairyland, thorny and impenetrable: here as tall as a ten years’ pine,
there sunken away to the height of the wild honeysuckles; everywhere
backed by blue sky, heavy with odors, filled, with the flash of wings
and the songs of birds. To the east the thicket fell away to low and
marshy grounds, where tall cypresses grew, and myriads of myrtle
bushes. Later in the year women and children would venture in upon the
unstable earth for the sake of the myrtle berries and their yield of
fragrant wax, and once and again an outlying slave had been tracked
by men and dogs to the dark recesses of the place; but for the most
part it was given over to its immemorial silence. To the south and the
west the tobacco fields of Fair View closed in upon the glebe, taking
the fertile river bank, and pressing down to the crooked, slow-moving,
deeply shadowed creek, upon whose farther bank stood the house of the
Rev. Gideon Darden.
A more retired spot, a completer sequestration from the world of mart
and highway, it would have been hard to find. In the quiet of the early
morning, when the shadows of the trees lay across the dewy grass,
it was an angle of the earth as cloistral and withdrawn as heart of
scholar or of anchorite could wish. On one side of the house lay a tiny
orchard, and the windows of the living room looked out upon a mist of
pink and white apple blooms. The fragrance of the blossoms had been
in the room, but could not prevail against the odor of tobacco and
rum lately introduced by the master of the house and minister of the
parish. Audrey, sitting beside a table which had been drawn in front of
the window, turned her face aside, and was away, sense and soul, out
of the meanly furnished room into the midst of the great bouquets of
bloom, with the blue between and above. Darden, walking up and down,
with his pipe in his mouth, and the tobacco smoke curling like an
aureole around his bullet head, glanced toward the window.
“When you have written that which I have told you to write, say so,
Audrey,” he commanded. “Don’t sit there staring at nothing!”
Audrey came back to the present with a start, took up a pen, and drew
the standish nearer. “‘Answer of Gideon Darden, Minister of Fair View
Parish, in Virginia, to the several Queries contained in my Lord Bishop
of London’s Circular Letter to the Clergy in Virginia,’” she read, and
poised her pen in air.
“Read out the questions,” ordered Darden, “and write my answer to each
in the space beneath. No blots, mind you, and spell not after the
promptings of your woman’s nature.”
Going to a side table, be mixed for himself, in an old battered silver
cap, a generous draught of bombo; then, with the drink in his hand,
walked heavily across the uncarpeted floor to his armchair, which
creaked under his weight as he sank into its leathern lap. He put down
the rum and water with so unsteady a hand that the liquor spilled, and
when he refilled his pipe half the contents of his tobacco box showered
down upon his frayed and ancient and unclean coat and breeches. From
the pocket of the latter he now drew forth a silver coin, which he
balanced for a moment upon his fat forefinger, and finally sent
spinning across the table to Audrey.
“’Tis the dregs of thy guinea, child, that Paris and Hugon and I
drank at the crossroads last night. ‘Burn me,’ says I to them, ‘if
that long-legged lass of mine shan’t have a drop in the cup!’ And say
Hugon”--
What Hugon said did not appear, or was confided to the depths of the
tankard which the minister raised to his lips. Audrey looked at the
splendid shilling gleaming upon the table beside her, but made no
motion toward taking it into closer possession. A little red had come
into the clear brown of her cheeks. She was a young girl, with her
dreams and fancies, and the golden guinea would have made a dream or
two come true.
“‘Query the first,’” she read slowly, “‘How long since you went to the
plantations as missionary?’”
Darden, leaning back in his chair, with his eyes uplifted through the
smoke clouds to the ceiling, took his pipe from his mouth, for the
better answering of his diocesan. “‘My Lord, thirteen years come St.
Swithin’s day,’” he dictated. “‘Signed, Gideon Darden.’ Audrey, do not
forget thy capitals. Thirteen years! Lord, Lord, the years, how they
fly! Hast it down, Audrey?”
Audrey, writing in a slow, fair, clerkly hand, made her period, and
turned to the Bishop’s second question: “‘Had you any other church
before you came to that which you now possess?’”
“‘No, my Lord,’” said the minister to the Bishop; then to the ceiling:
“I came raw from the devil to this parish. Audrey, hast ever heard
children say that Satan comes and walks behind me when I go through the
forest?”
“Yes,” said Audrey, “but their eyes are not good. You go hand in hand.”
Darden paused in the lifting of his tankard. “Thy wits are brightening,
Audrey; but keep such observations to thyself. It is only the
schoolmaster with whom I walk. Go on to the next question.”
The Bishop desired to know how long the minister addressed had been
inducted into his living. The minister addressed, leaning forward,
laid it off to his Lordship how that the vestries in Virginia did not
incline to have ministers inducted, and, being very powerful, kept the
poor servants of the Church upon uneasy seats; but that he, Gideon
Darden, had the love of his flock, rich and poor, gentle and simple,
and that in the first year of his ministry the gentlemen of his vestry
had been pleased to present his name to the Governor for induction.
Which explanation made, the minister drank more rum, and looked out of
the window at the orchard and at his neighbor’s tobacco.
“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 passionate 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 coarse, 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 pass, 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 passed 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
bonchrétiens, 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 penistone. 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 sex
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 mass upon the
ground eyes of husband and wife met.
“Hugon would marry the girl,” said the latter, twisting the hem of her
apron 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. Damn 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 passed 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 passed 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.