HAWARD AND EVELYN
MacLean put aside with much gentleness the hands of his surgeon, and,
rising to his feet, answered the question in Haward’s eyes by producing
a slip of paper and gravely proffering it to the man whom he served.
Haward took it, read it, and handed it back; then turned to the Quaker
maiden. “Mistress Truelove Taberer,” he said courteously. “Are you
staying in town? If you will tell me where you lodge, I will myself
conduct you thither.”
Truelove shook her head, and slipped her hand into that of her brother
Ephraim. “I thank thee, friend,” she said, with gentle dignity, “and
thee, too, Angus MacLean, though I grieve that thee sees not that it
is not given us to meet evil with evil, nor to withstand force with
force. Ephraim and I can now go in peace. I thank thee again, friend,
and thee.” She gave her hand first to Haward, then to MacLean. The
former, knowing the fashion of the Quakers, held the small fingers a
moment, then let them drop; the latter, knowing it, too, raised them to
his lips and imprinted upon them an impassioned kiss. Truelove blushed,
then frowned, last of all drew her hand away.
With the final glimpse of her gray skirt the Highlander came back to
the present. “Singly I could have answered for them all, one after the
other,” he said stiffly. “Together they had the advantage. I pay my
debt and give you thanks, sir.”
“That is an ugly cut across your forehead,” replied Haward. “Mr. Ker
had best bring you a basin of water. Or stay! I am going to my lodging.
Come with me, and Juba shall dress the wound properly.”
MacLean turned his keen blue eyes upon him. “Am I to understand that
you give me a command, or that you extend to me an invitation? In the
latter case, I should prefer”--
“Then take it as a command,” said Haward imperturbably. “I wish your
company. Mr. Ker, good-day; I will buy the piece of plate which you
showed me yesterday.”
The two moved down the room together, but at the door MacLean, with his
face set like a flint, stood aside, and Haward passed out first, then
waited for the other to come up with him.
“When I drink a cup I drain it to the dregs,” said the Scot. “I walk
behind the man who commands me. The way, you see, is not broad enough
for you and me and hatred.”
“Then let hatred lag behind,” answered Haward coolly. “I have negroes
to walk at my heels when I go abroad. I take you for a gentleman,
accept your enmity an it please you, but protest against standing here
in the hot sunshine.”
With a shrug MacLean joined him. “As you please,” he said. “I have in
spirit moved with you through London streets. I never thought to walk
with you in the flesh.”
It was yet warm and bright in the street, the dust thick, the air
heavy with the odors of the May. Haward and MacLean walked in silence,
each as to the other, one as to the world at large. Now and again
the Virginian must stop to bow profoundly to curtsying ladies, or to
take snuff with some portly Councilor or less stately Burgess who,
coming from the Capitol, chanced to overtake them. When he paused his
storekeeper paused also, but, having no notice taken of him beyond a
glance to discern his quality, needed neither a supple back nor a ready
smile.
Haward lodged upon Palace Street, in a square brick house, lived in by
an ancient couple who could remember Puritan rule in Virginia, who had
served Sir William Berkeley, and had witnessed the burning of Jamestown
by Bacon. There was a grassy yard to the house, and the path to the
door lay through an alley of lilacs, purple and white. The door was
open, and Haward and MacLean, entering, crossed the hall, and going
into a large, low room, into which the late sunshine was streaming,
found the negro Juba setting cakes and wine upon the table.
“This gentleman hath a broken head, Juba,” said the master. “Bring
water and linen, and bind it up for him.”
As he spoke he laid aside hat and rapier, and motioned MacLean to a
seat by the window. The latter obeyed the gesture in silence, and in
silence submitted to the ministrations of the negro. Haward, sitting at
the table, waited until the wound had been dressed; then with a wave of
the hand dismissed the black.
“You would take nothing at my hands the other day,” he said to the grim
figure at the window. “Change your mind, my friend,--or my foe,--and
come sit and drink with me.”
MacLean reared himself from his seat, and went stiffly over to the
table. “I have eaten and drunken with an enemy before to-day,” he said.
“Once I met Ewin Mor Mackinnon upon a mountain side. He had oatcake in
his sporran, and I a flask of usquebaugh. We couched in the heather,
and ate and drank together, and then we rose and fought. I should have
slain him but that a dozen Mackinnons came up the glen, and he turned
and fled to them for cover. Here I am in an alien land; a thousand
fiery crosses would not bring one clansman to my side; I cannot fight
my foe. Wherefore, then, should I take favors at his hands?”
“Why should you be my foe?” demanded Haward. “Look you, now! There was
a time, I suppose, when I was an insolent youngster like any one of
those who lately set upon you; but now I call myself a philosopher and
man of a world for whose opinions I care not overmuch. My coat is of
fine cloth, and my shirt of holland; your shirt is lockram, and you
wear no coat at all: _ergo_, saith a world of pretty fellows, we are
beings of separate planets. ‘As the cloth is, the man is,’--to which
doctrine I am at times heretic. I have some store of yellow metal,
and spend my days in ridding myself of it,--a feat which you have
accomplished. A goodly number of acres is also counted unto me, but in
the end my holding and your holding will measure the same. I walk a
level road; you have met with your precipice, and, bruised by the fall,
you move along stony ways; but through the same gateway we go at last.
Fate, not I, put you here. Why should you hate me who am of your order?”
MacLean left the table, and twice walked the length of the room, slowly
and with knitted brows. “If you mean the world-wide order,--the order
of gentlemen,”--he said, coming to a pause with the breadth of the
table between him and Haward, “we may have that ground in common. The
rest is debatable land. I do not take you for a sentimentalist or a
redresser of wrongs. I am your storekeeper, purchased with that same
yellow metal of which you so busily rid yourself; and your storekeeper
I shall remain until the natural death of my term, two years hence.
We are not countrymen; we own different kings; I may once have walked
your level road, but you have never moved in the stony ways; my eyes
are blue, while yours are gray; you love your melting Southern music,
and I take no joy save in the pipes; I dare swear you like the smell
of lilies which I cannot abide, and prefer fair hair in women where I
would choose the dark. There is no likeness between us. Why, then”--
Haward smiled, and drawing two glasses toward him slowly filled them
with wine. “It is true,” he said, “that it is not my intention to
become a petitioner for the pardon of a rebel to his serene and German
Majesty the King; true also that I like the fragrance of the lily. I
have my fancies. Say that I am a man of whim, and that, living in a
lonely house set in a Sahara of tobacco fields, it is my whim to desire
the acquaintance of the only gentleman within some miles of me. Say
that my fancy hath been caught by a picture drawn for me a week agone;
that, being a philosopher, I play with the idea that your spirit, knife
in hand, walked at my elbow for ten years, and I knew it not. Say that
the idea has for me a curious fascination. Say, finally, that I plume
myself that, given the chance, I might break down this airy hatred.”
He set down the bottle, and pushed one of the brimming glasses across
the table. “I should like to make trial of my strength,” he said,
with, a laugh. “Come! I did you a service to-day; in your turn do me a
pleasure.”
MacLean dragged a chair to the table, and sat down. “I will drink
with you,” he said, “and forget for an hour. A man grows tired--It is
Burgundy, is it not? Old Borlum and I emptied a bottle between us, the
day he went as hostage to Wills; since then I have not tasted wine.
’Tis a pretty color.”
Haward lifted his glass. “I drink to your future. Freedom, better days,
a stake in a virgin land, friendship with a sometime foe.” He bowed to
his guest and drank.
“In my country,” answered MacLean, “where we would do most honor, we
drink not to life, but to death. _Crioch onarach!_ Like a gentleman may
you die.” He drank, and sighed with pleasure.
“The King!” said Haward. There was a china bowl, filled with red
anemones, upon the table. MacLean drew it toward him, and, pressing
aside the mass of bloom, passed his glass over the water in the bowl.
“The King! with all my heart,” he said imperturbably.
Haward poured more wine. “I have toasted at the Kit-Kat many a piece of
brocade and lace less fair than yon bit of Quaker gray that cost you a
broken head. Shall we drink to Mistress Truelove Taberer?”
By now the Burgundy had warmed the heart and loosened the tongue of
the man who had not tasted wine since the surrender of Preston. “It is
but a mile from the store to her father’s house,” he said. “Sometimes
on Sundays I go up the creek upon the Fair View side, and when I am
over against the house I holloa. Ephraim comes, in his boat and rows me
across, and I stay for an hour. They are strange folk, the Quakers. In
her sight and in that of her people I am as good a man as you. ‘Friend
Angus MacLean,’ ‘Friend Marmaduke Haward,’--world’s wealth and world’s
rank quite beside the question.”
He drank, and commended the wine. Haward struck a silver bell, and bade
Juba bring another bottle.
“When do you come again to the house at Fair View?” asked the
storekeeper.
“Very shortly. It is a lonely place, where ghosts bear me company. I
hope that now and then, when I ask it, and when the duties of your day
are ended, you will come help me exorcise them. You shall find welcome
and good wine.” He spoke very courteously, and if he saw the humor of
the situation his smile betrayed him not.
MacLean took a flower from the bowl, and plucked at its petals with
nervous fingers. “Do you mean that?” he asked at last.
Haward leaned across the table, and their eyes met. “On my word I do,”
said the Virginian.
The knocker on the house door sounded loudly, and a moment later a
woman’s clear voice, followed by a man’s deeper tones, was heard in the
hall.
“More guests,” said Haward lightly. “You are a Jacobite; I
drink my chocolate at St. James’ Coffee House; the gentleman
approaching--despite his friendship for Orrery and for the Bishop of
Rochester--is but a Hanover Tory; but the lady,--the lady wears only
white roses, and every 10th of June makes a birthday feast.”
The storekeeper rose hastily to take his leave, but was prevented both
by Haward’s restraining gesture and by the entrance of the two visitors
who were now ushered in by the grinning Juba. Haward stepped forward.
“You are very welcome, Colonel. Evelyn, this is kind. Your woman told
me this morning that you were not well, else”--
“A migraine,” she answered, in her clear, low voice. “I am better now,
and my father desired me to take the air with him.”
“We return to Westover to-morrow,” said that sprightly gentleman.
“Evelyn is like David of old, and pines for water from the spring at
home. It also appears that the many houses and thronged streets of this
town weary her, who, poor child, is used to an Arcady called London!
When will you come to us at Westover, Marmaduke?”
“I cannot tell,” Haward answered. “I must first put my own house in
order, so that I may in my turn entertain my friends.”
As he spoke he moved aside, so as to include in the company MacLean,
who stood beside the table. “Evelyn,” he said, “let me make known to
you--and to you, Colonel--a Scots gentleman who hath broken his spear
in his tilt with fortune, as hath been the luck of many a gallant man
before him. Mistress Evelyn Byrd, Colonel Byrd--Mr. MacLean, who was an
officer in the Highland force taken at Preston, and who has been for
some years a prisoner of war in Virginia.”
The lady’s curtsy was low; the Colonel bowed as to his friend’s friend.
If his eyebrows went up, and if a smile twitched the corners of his
lips, the falling curls of his periwig hid from view these tokens of
amused wonder. MacLean bowed somewhat stiffly, as one grown rusty in
such matters. “I am in addition Mr. Marmaduke Haward’s storekeeper,”
he said succinctly, then turned to the master of Fair View. “It grows
late,” he announced, “and I must be back at the store to-night. Have
you any message for Saunderson?”
“None,” answered Haward. “I go myself to Fair View to-morrow, and then
I shall ask you to drink with me again.”
As he spoke he held out his hand. MacLean looked at it, sighed, then
touched it with his own. A gleam as of wintry laughter came into his
blue eyes. “I doubt that I shall have to get me a new foe,” he said,
with regret in his voice.
When he had bowed to the lady and to her father, and had gone out
of the room and down the lilac-bordered path and through the gate,
and when the three at the window had watched him turn into Duke of
Gloucester Street, the master of Westover looked at the master of
Fair View and burst out laughing. “Ludwell hath for an overseer the
scapegrace younger son of a baronet; and there are three brothers of an
excellent name under indentures to Robert Carter. I have at Westover a
gardener who annually makes the motto of his house to spring in pease
and asparagus. I have not had him to drink with me yet, and t’other day
I heard Ludwell give to the baronet’s son a hound’s rating.”
“I do not drink with the name,” said Haward coolly. “I drink with the
man. The churl or coward may pass me by, but the gentleman, though his
hands be empty, I stop.”
The other laughed again; then dismissed the question with a wave of his
hand, and pulled out a great gold watch with cornelian seals. “Carter
swears that Dr. Contesse hath a specific that is as sovereign for the
gout as is St. Andrew’s cross for a rattlesnake bite. I’ve had twinges
lately, and the doctor lives hard by. Evelyn, will you rest here while
I go petition Æsculapius? Haward, when I have the recipe I will return,
and impart it to you against the time when you need it. No, no, child,
stay where you are! I will be back anon.”
Having waved aside his daughter’s faint protest, the Colonel
departed,--a gallant figure of a man, with a pretty wit and a heart
that was benevolently gay. As he went down the path he paused to
gather a sprig of lilac. “Westover--Fair View,” he said to himself,
and smiled, and smelled the lilac; then--though his ills were somewhat
apocryphal--walked off at a gouty pace across the buttercup-sprinkled
green toward the house of Dr. Contesse.
Haward and Evelyn, left alone, kept silence for a time in the quiet
room that was filled with late sunshine and the fragrance of flowers.
He stood by the window, and she sat in a great chair, with her hands
folded in her lap, and her eyes upon them. When silence had become more
loud than speech, she turned in her seat and addressed herself to him.
“I have known you do many good deeds,” she said slowly. “That gentleman
that was here is your servant, is he not, and an exile, and unhappy?
And you sent him away comforted. It was a generous thing.”
Haward moved restlessly. “A generous thing,” he answered. “Ay, it
was generous. I can do such things at times, and why I do them who
can tell? Not I! Do you think that I care for that grim Highlander,
who drinks my death in place of my health, who is of a nation that I
dislike, and a party that is not mine?”
She shook her head. “I do not know. And yet you helped him.”
Haward left the window, and came and sat beside her. “Yes, I helped
him. I am not sure, but I think I did it because, when first we met,
he told me that he hated me, and meant the thing he said. It is my
humor to fix my own position in men’s minds; to lose the thing I have
that I may gain the thing I have not; to overcome, and never prize the
victory; to hunt down a quarry, and feel no ardor in the chase; to
strain after a goal, and yet care not if I never reach it.”
He took her fan in his hand, and fell to counting the slender ivory
sticks. “I tread the stage as a fine gentleman,” he said. “It is the
part for which I was cast, and I play it well with proper mien and
gait. I was not asked if I would like the part, but I think that I do
like it, as much as I like anything. Seeing that I must play it, and
that there is that within me which cries out against slovenliness, I
play it as an artist should. Magnanimity goes with it, does it not, and
generosity, courtesy, care for the thing which is, and not for that
which seems? Why, then, with these and other qualities I strive to
endow the character.”
He closed the fan, and, leaning back in his chair, shaded his eyes with
his hand. “When the lights are out,” he said; “when forever and a night
the actor bids the stage farewell; when, stripped of mask and tinsel,
he goes home to that Auditor who set him his part, then perhaps he
will be told what manner of man he is. The glass that now he dresses
before tells him not; but he thinks a truer glass would show a shrunken
figure.”
He sat in silence for a moment; then laughed, and gave her back her
fan. “Am I to come to Westover, Evelyn?” he asked. “Your father
presses, and I have not known what answer to make him.”
“You will give us pleasure by your coming,” she said gently and at
once. “My father wishes your advice as to the ordering of his library;
and you know that my pretty stepmother likes you well.”
“Will it please you to have me come?” he asked, with his eyes upon her
face.
She met his gaze very quietly. “Why not?” she answered simply. “You
will help me in my flower garden, and sing with me in the evening, as
of old.”
“Evelyn,” he said, “if what I am about to say to you distresses you,
lift your hand, and I will cease to speak. Since a day and an hour in
the woods yonder, I have been thinking much. I wish to wipe that hour
from your memory as I wipe it from mine, and to begin afresh. You are
the fairest woman that I know, and the best. I beg you to accept my
reverence, homage, love; not the boy’s love, perhaps; perhaps not the
love that some men have to squander, but _my_ love. A quiet love, a
lasting trust, deep pride and pleasure”--
At her gesture he broke off, sat in silence for a moment, then rising
went to the window, and with slightly contracted brows stood looking
out at the sunshine that was slipping away. Presently he was aware that
she stood beside him.
She was holding out her hand. “It is that of a friend,” she said. “No,
do not kiss it, for that is the act of a lover. And you are not my
lover,--oh, not yet, not yet!” A soft, exquisite blush stole over her
face and neck, but she did not lower her lovely candid eyes. “Perhaps
some day, some summer day at Westover, it will all be different,” she
breathed, and turned away.
Haward caught her hand, and bending pressed his lips upon it. “It is
different now!” he cried. “Next week I shall come to Westover!”
He led her back to the great chair, and presently she asked some
question as to the house at Fair View. He plunged into an account of
the cases of goods which had followed him from England by the Falcon,
and which now lay in the rooms that were yet to be swept and garnished;
then spoke lightly and whimsically of the solitary state in which he
must live, and of the entertainments which, to be in the Virginia
fashion, he must give. While he talked she sat and watched him, with
the faint smile upon her lips. The sunshine left the floor and the
wall, and a dankness from the long grass and the closing flowers and
the heavy trees in the adjacent churchyard stole into the room. With
the coming of the dusk conversation languished, and the two sat in
silence until the return of the Colonel.
If that gentleman did not light the darkness like a star, at least
his entrance into a room invariably produced the effect of a sudden
accession of was lights, very fine and clear and bright. He broke a
jest or two, bade laughing farewell to the master of Fair View, and
carried off his daughter upon his arm. Haward walked with them to the
gate, and came back alone, stepping thoughtfully between the lilac
bushes.
It was not until Juba had brought candles, and he had taken his seat at
table before the half-emptied bottle of wine, that it came to Haward
that he had wished to tell Evelyn of the brown girl who had run for the
guinea, but had forgotten to do so.