THE PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN
June came to tide-water Virginia with long, warm days and with the odor
of many roses. Day by day the cloudless sunshine visited the land:
night by night the large pale stars looked into its waters. It was a
slumberous land, of many creeks and rivers that were wide, slow, and
deep, of tobacco fields and lofty, solemn forests, of vague marshes,
of white mists, of a haze of heat far and near. The moon of blossoms
was past, and the red men--few in number now--had returned from their
hunting, and lay in the shade of the trees in the villages that the
English had left them, while the women brought them fish from the
weirs, and strawberries from the vines that carpeted every poisoned
field or neglected clearing. The black men toiled amidst the tobacco
and the maize; at noontide it was as hot in the fields as in the middle
passage, and the voices of those who sang over their work fell to a
dull crooning. The white men who were bound served listlessly; they
that were well were as lazy as the weather; they that were newly come
over and ill with the “seasoning” fever tossed upon their pallets,
longing for the cooling waters of home. The white men who were free
swore that the world, though fair, was warm, and none walked if he
could ride. The sunny, dusty roads were left for shadowed bridle paths;
in a land where most places could be reached by boat, the water would
have been the highway but that the languid air would not fill the
sails. It was agreed that the heat was unnatural, and that, likely
enough, there would be a deal of fever during the summer.
But there was thick shade in the Fair View garden, and when there was
air at all it visited the terrace above the river. The rooms of the
house were large and high-pitched; draw to the shutters, and they
became as cool as caverns. Around the place the heat lay in wait: heat
of wide, shadowless fields, where Haward’s slaves toiled from morn to
eve; heat of the great river, unstirred by any wind, hot and sleeping
beneath the blazing sun; heat of sluggish creeks and of the marshes,
shadeless as the fields. Once reach the mighty trees drawn like a
cordon around house and garden, and there was escape.
To and fro and up and down in the house went the erst waiting-woman
to my Lady Squander, carrying matters with a high hand. The negresses
who worked under her eye found her a hard taskmistress. Was a room
clean to-day, to-morrow it was found that there was dust upon the
polished floor, finger marks on the paneled walls. The same furniture
must be placed now in this room, now in that; china slowly washed and
bestowed in one closet transferred to another; an eternity spent upon
the household linen, another on the sewing and resewing, the hanging
and rehanging, of damask curtains. The slaves, silent when the greenish
eyes and tight, vixenish face were by, chattered, laughed, and sung
when they were left alone. If they fell idle, and little was done of a
morning, they went unrebuked; thoroughness, and not haste, appearing to
be Mistress Deborah’s motto.
The master of Fair View found it too noisy in his house to sit therein,
and too warm to ride abroad. There were left the seat built round the
cherry-tree in the garden, the long, cool box walk, and the terrace
with a summer-house at either end. It was pleasant to read out of
doors, pacing the box walk, or sitting beneath the cherry-tree,
with the ripening fruit overhead. If the book was long in reading,
if morning by morning Haward’s finger slipped easily in between the
selfsame leaves, perhaps it was the fault of poet or philosopher. If
Audrey’s was the fault, she knew it not.
How could she know it, who knew herself, that she was a poor, humble
maid, whom out of pure charity and knightly tenderness for weak and
sorrowful things he long ago had saved, since then had maintained, now
was kind to; and knew him, that he was learned and great and good, the
very perfect gentle knight who, as he rode to win the princess, yet
could stoop from his saddle to raise and help the herd girl? She had
found of late that she was often wakeful of nights; when this happened,
she lay and looked out of her window at the stars and wondered about
the princess. She was sure that the princess and the lady who had given
her the guinea were one.
In the great house she would have worked her fingers to the bone. Her
strong young arms lifted heavy weights; her quick feet ran up and down
stairs for this or that; she would have taken the waxed cloths from the
negroes, and upon her knees and with willing hands have made to shine
like mirrors the floors that were to be trodden by knight and princess.
But almost every morning, before she had worked an hour, Haward would
call to her from the box walk or the seat beneath the cherry-tree; and
“Go, child,” would say Mistress Deborah, looking up from her task of
the moment.
The garden continued to be the enchanted garden. To gather its flowers,
red and white, to pace with him cool paved walks between walls of
scented box, to sit beside him beneath the cherry-tree or upon the
grassy terrace, looking out upon the wide, idle river,--it was dreamy
bliss, a happiness too rare to last. There was no harm; not that she
ever dreamed there could be. The house overlooked garden and terrace;
the slaves passed and repassed the open windows; Juba came and went;
now and then Mistress Deborah herself would sally forth to receive
instructions concerning this or that from the master of the house. And
every day, at noon, the slaves drew to all the shutters save those of
the master’s room, and the minister’s wife and ward made their curtsies
and went home. The latter, like a child, counted the hours upon the
clock until the next morning; but then she was not used to happiness,
and the wine of it made her slightly drunken.
The master of Fair View told himself that there was infection in this
lotus air of Virginia. A fever ran in his veins that made him languid
of will, somewhat sluggish of thought, willing to spend one day like
another, and all in a long dream. Sometimes, in the afternoons, when
he was alone in the garden or upon the terrace, with the house blank
and silent behind him, the slaves gone to the quarters, he tossed aside
his book, and, with his chin upon his hand and his eyes upon the sweep
of the river, first asked himself whither he was going, and then,
finding no satisfactory answer, fell to brooding. Once, going into the
house, he chanced to come upon his full-length reflection in a mirror
newly hung, and stopped short to gaze upon himself. The parlor of his
lodgings at Williamsburgh and the last time that he had seen Evelyn
came to him, conjured up by the memory of certain words of his own.
“A truer glass might show a shrunken figure,” he repeated, and with a
quick and impatient sigh he looked at the image in the mirror.
To the eye, at least, the figure was not shrunken. It was that of a man
still young, and of a handsome face and much distinction of bearing.
The dress was perfect in its quiet elegance; the air of the man
composed,--a trifle sad, a trifle mocking. Haward snapped his fingers
at the reflection. “The portrait of a gentleman,” he said, and passed
on.
That night, in his own room, he took from an escritoire a picture of
Evelyn Byrd, done in miniature after a painting by a pupil of Kneller,
and, carrying it over to the light of the myrtle candles upon the
table, sat down and fell to studying it. After a while he let it drop
from his hand, and leaned back in his chair, thinking.
The night air, rising slightly, bent back the flame of the candles,
around which moths were fluttering, and caused strange shadows upon
the walls. They were thick about the curtained bed whereon had died
the elder Haward,--a proud man, choleric, and hard to turn from his
purposes. Into the mind of his son, sitting staring at these shadows,
came the fantastic notion that amongst them, angry and struggling
vainly for speech, might be his father’s shade. The night was feverish,
of a heat and lassitude to foster grotesque and idle fancies. Haward
smiled, and spoke aloud to his imaginary ghost.
“You need not strive for speech,” he said. “I know what you would say.
_Was it for this I built this house, bought land and slaves?... Fair
View and Westover, Westover and Fair View. A lady that will not wed
thee because she loves thee! Zoons, Marmaduke! thou puttest me beside
my patience!... As for this other, set no nameless, barefoot wench
where sat thy mother! King Cophetua and the beggar maid, indeed! I
warrant you Cophetua was something under three-and-thirty!_”
Haward ceased to speak for his father, and sighed for himself. “Moral:
Three-and-thirty must be wiser in his day and generation.” He rose
from his chair, and began to walk the room. “If not Cophetua, what
then,--what then?” Passing the table, he took up the miniature again.
“The villain of the piece, I suppose, Evelyn?” he asked.
The pure and pensive face seemed to answer him. He put the picture
hastily down, and recommenced his pacing to and fro. From the garden
below came the heavy odor of lilies, and the whisper of the river tried
the nerves. Haward went to the window, and, leaning out, looked, as now
each night he looked, up and across the creek toward the minister’s
house. To-night there was no light to mark it; it was late, and all the
world without his room was in darkness. He sat down in the window seat,
looked out upon the stars and listened to the river. An hour had passed
before he turned back to the room, where the candles had burned low.
“I will go to Westover to-morrow,” he said. “God knows, I should be a
villain”--
He locked the picture of Evelyn within his desk, drank his wine and
water, and went to bed, strongly resolved upon retreat. In the morning
he said, “I will go to Westover this afternoon;” and in the afternoon
he said, “I will go to-morrow.” When the morrow came, he found that
the house lacked but one day of being finished, and that there was
therefore no need for him to go at all.
Mistress Deborah was loath, enough to take leave of damask and mirrors
and ornaments of china,--the latter fine enough and curious enough
to remind her of Lady Squander’s own drawing-room; but the leaf of
paper which Haward wrote upon, tore from his pocket-book, and gave her
provided consolation. Her thanks were very glib, her curtsy was very
deep. She was his most obliged, humble servant, and if she could serve
him again he would make her proud. Would he not, now, some day, row up
creek to their poor house, and taste of her perry and Shrewsbury cakes?
Audrey, standing by, raised her eyes, and made of the request a royal
invitation.
For a week or more Haward abode upon his plantation, alone save for his
servants and slaves. Each day he sent for the overseer, and listened
gravely while that worthy expounded to him all the details of the
condition and conduct of the estate; in the early morning and the late
afternoon he rode abroad through his fields and forests. Mill and ferry
and rolling house were visited, and the quarters made his acquaintance.
At the creek quarter and the distant ridge quarter were bestowed the
newly bought, the sullen and the refractory of his chattels. When,
after sunset, and the fields were silent, he rode past the cabins,
coal-black figures, new from the slave deck, still seamed at wrist and
ankle, mowed and jabbered at him from over their bowls of steaming
food; others, who had forgotten the jungle and the slaver, answered,
when he spoke to them, in strange English; others, born in Virginia,
and remembering when he used to ride that way with his father, laughed,
called him “Marse Duke,” and agreed with him that the crop was looking
mighty well. With the dark he reached the great house, and negroes from
the home quarter took--his horse, while Juba lighted him through the
echoing hall into the lonely rooms.
From the white quarter he procured a facile lad who could read and
write, and who, through too much quickness of wit, had failed to
prosper in England. Him he installed as secretary, and forthwith began
a correspondence with friends in England, as well as a long poem which
was to serve the double purpose of giving Mr. Pope a rival and of
occupying the mind of Mr. Marmaduke Haward. The letters were witty and
graceful, the poem was the same; but on the third day the secretary,
pausing for the next word that should fall from his master’s lips,
waited so long that he dropped asleep. When he awoke, Mr. Haward was
slowly tearing into bits the work that had been done on the poem. “It
will have to wait upon my mood,” he said. “Seal up the letter to Lord
Hervey, boy, and then begone to the fields. If I want you again, I will
send for you.”
The next day he proposed to himself to ride to Williamsburgh and see
his acquaintances there. But even as he crossed the room to strike the
bell for Juba a distaste for the town and its people came upon him. It
occurred to him that instead he might take the barge and be rowed up
the river to the Jaquelins’ or to Green Spring; but in a moment this
plan also became repugnant. Finally he went out upon the terrace, and
sat there the morning through, staring at the river. That afternoon he
sent a negro to the store with a message for the storekeeper.
The Highlander, obeying the demand for his company,--the third or
fourth since his day at Williamsburgh,--came shortly before twilight to
the great house, and found the master thereof still upon the terrace,
sitting beneath an oak, with a small table and a bottle of wine beside
him.
“Ha, Mr. MacLean!” he cried, as the other approached. “Some days have
passed since last we laid the ghosts! I had meant to sooner improve our
acquaintance. But my house has been in disorder, and I myself,”--he
passed his hand across his face as if to wipe away the expression into
which it had been set,--“I myself have been poor company. There is a
witchery in the air of this place. I am become but a dreamer of dreams.”
As he spoke he motioned his guest to an empty chair, and began to pour
wine for them both. His hand was not quite steady, and there was about
him a restlessness of aspect most unnatural to the man. The storekeeper
thought him looking worn, and as though he had passed sleepless nights.
MacLean sat down, and drew his wineglass toward Mm. “It is the heat,”
he said. “Last night, in the store, I felt that I was stifling; and
I left it, and lay on the bare ground without. A star shot down the
sky, and I wished that a wind as swift and strong would rise and sweep
the land out to sea. When the day comes that I die, I wish to die a
fierce death. It is best to die in battle, for then the mind is raised,
and you taste all life in the moment before you go. If a man achieves
not that, then struggle with earth or air or the waves of the sea is
desirable. Driving sleet, armies of the snow, night and trackless
mountains, the leap of the torrent, swollen lakes where kelpies
lie in wait, wind on the sea with the black reef and the charging
breakers,--it is well to dash one’s force against the force of these,
and to die after fighting. But in this cursed land of warmth and ease
a man dies like a dog that is old and hath lain winter and summer upon
the hearthstone.” He drank his wine, and glanced again at Haward. “I
did not know that you were here,” he said. “Saunderson told me that you
were going to Westover.”
“I was,--I am,” answered Haward briefly. Presently he roused himself
from the brown study into which he had fallen.
“’Tis the heat, as you say. It enervates. For my part, I am willing
that your wind should arise. But it will not blow to-night. There is
not a breath; the river is like glass.” He raised the wine to his lips,
and drank deeply. “Come,” he said, laughing. “What did you at the store
to-day? And does Mistress Truelove despair of your conversion to _thee_
and _thou_, and peace with all mankind? Hast procured an enemy to fill
the place I have vacated? I trust he’s no scurvy foe.”
“I will take your questions in order,” answered the other
sententiously. “This morning I sold a deal of fine china to a parcel
of fine ladies who came by water from Jamestown, and were mightily
concerned to know whether your worship was gone to Westover, or had
instead (as ’t was reported) shut yourself up in Fair View house. And
this afternoon came over in a periagua, from the other side, a very
young gentleman with money in hand to buy a silver-fringed glove. ‘They
are sold in pairs,’ said I. ‘Fellow, I require but one,’ said he. ‘If
Dick Allen, who hath slandered me to Mistress Betty Cocke, dareth to
appear at the merrymaking at Colonel Harrison’s to-night, his cheek and
this glove shall come together!’ ‘Nathless, you must pay for both,’ I
told him; and the upshot is that he leaves with me a gold button as
earnest that he will bring the remainder of the price before the duel
to-morrow. That Quaker maiden of whom you ask hath a soul like the soul
of Colna-dona, of whom Murdoch, the harper of Coll, used to sing. She
is fair as a flower after winter, and as tender as the rose flush in
which swims yonder star. When I am with her, almost she persuades me
to think ill of honest hatred, and to pine no longer that it was not
I that had the killing of Ewin Mackinnon.” He gave a short laugh, and
stooping picked up an oak twig from the ground, and with deliberation
broke it into many small pieces. “Almost, but not quite,” he said.
“There was in that feud nothing illusory or fantastic; nothing of the
quality that marked, mayhap, another feud of my own making. If I have
found that in this latter case I took a wraith and dubbed it my enemy;
that, thinking I followed a foe, I followed a friend instead”--He threw
away the bits of bark, and straightened himself. “A friend!” he said,
drawing his breath. “Save for this Quaker family, I have had no friend
for many a year! And I cannot talk to them of honor and warfare and
the wide world.” His speech was sombre, but in his eyes there was an
eagerness not without pathos.
The mood of the Gael chimed with the present mood of the Saxon. As
unlike in their natures as their histories, men would have called them;
and yet, far away, in dim recesses of the soul, at long distances from
the flesh, each recognised the other. And it was an evening, too,
in which to take care of other things than the ways and speech of
every day. The heat, the hush, and the stillness appeared well-nigh
preternatural. A sadness breathed over the earth; all things seemed
new and yet old; across the spectral river the dim plains beneath the
afterglow took the seeming of battlefields.
“A friend!” said Haward. “There are many men who call themselves my
friends. I am melancholy to-day, restless, and divided against myself.
I do not know one of my acquaintance whom I would have called to be
melancholy with me as I have called you.” He leaned across the table
and touched MacLean’s hand that was somewhat hurriedly fingering the
wineglass. “Come!” he said. “Loneliness may haunt the level fields as
well as the ways that are rugged and steep. How many times have we
held converse since that day I found you in charge of my store? Often
enough, I think, for each to know the other’s quality. Our lives have
been very different, and yet I believe that we are akin. For myself, I
should be glad to hold as my friend so gallant though so unfortunate a
gentleman.” He smiled and made a gesture of courtesy. “Of course Mr.
MacLean may very justly not hold me in a like esteem, nor desire a
closer relation.”
MacLean rose to his feet, and stood gazing across the river at the
twilight shore and the clear skies. Presently he turned, and his eyes
were wet. He drew his hand across them; then looked curiously at the
dew upon it. “I have not done this,” he said simply, “since a night at
Preston when I wept with rage. In my country we love as we hate, with
all the strength that God has given us. The brother of my spirit is to
me even as the brother of my flesh.... I used to dream that my hand was
at your throat or my sword through your heart, and wake in anger that
it was not so ... and now I could love you well.”
Haward stood up, and the two men clasped hands. “It is a pact, then,”
said the Englishman. “By my faith, the world looks not so melancholy
gray as it did awhile ago. And here is Juba to say that supper waits.
Lay the table for two, Juba. Mr. MacLean will bear me company.”
The storekeeper stayed late, the master of Fair View being an
accomplished gentleman, a very good talker, and an adept at turning his
house for the nonce into the house of his guest. Supper over they went
into the library, where their wine was set, and where the Highlander,
who was no great reader, gazed respectfully at the wit and wisdom arow
before him. “Colonel Byrd hath more volumes at Westover,” quoth Haward,
“but mine are of the choicer quality.” Juba brought a card table, and
lit more candles, while his master, unlocking a desk, took from it a
number of gold pieces. These he divided into two equal portions: kept
one beside him upon the polished table, and, with a fine smile, half
humorous, half deprecating, pushed the other across to his guest. With
an, imperturbable face MacLean stacked the gold before him, and they
fell to piquet, playing briskly, and with occasional application to the
Madeira upon the larger table, until ten of the clock. The Highlander,
then declaring that he must be no longer away from his post, swept
his heap of coins across to swell his opponent’s store, and said
good-night. Haward went with him to the great door, and watched him
stride off through the darkness whistling “The Battle of Harlaw.”
That night Haward slept, and the next morning four negroes rowed him up
the river to Jamestown. Mr. Jaquelin was gone to Norfolk upon business,
but his beautiful wife and sprightly daughters found Mr. Marmaduke
Haward altogether charming. “’Twas as good as going to court,” they
said to one another, when the gentleman, after a two hours’ visit,
bowed himself out of their drawing-room. The object of their encomiums,
going down river in his barge, felt his spirits lighter than they
had been for some days. He spoke cheerfully to his negroes, and when
the barge passed a couple of fishing-boats he called to the slim
brown lads that caught for the plantation to know their luck. At the
landing he found the overseer, who walked to the great house with
him. The night before Tyburn Will had stolen from the white quarters,
and had met a couple of seamen from the Temperance at the crossroads
ordinary, which ordinary was going to get into trouble for breaking
the law which forbade the harboring of sailors ashore. The three had
taken in full lading of kill-devil rum, and Tyburn Will, too drunk to
run any farther, had been caught by Hide near Princess Creek, three
hours agone. What were the master’s orders? Should the rogue go to the
court-house whipping post, or should Hide save the trouble of taking
him there? In either case, thirty-nine lashes well laid on--
The master pursed his lips, dug into the ground with the ferrule of
his cane, and finally proposed to the astonished overseer that the
rascal be let off with a warning. “’Tis too fair a day to poison with
ugly sights and sounds,” he said, whimsically apologetic for his own
weakness. “’Twill do no great harm to be lenient, for once, Saunderson,
and I am in the mood to-day to be friends with all men, including
myself.”
The overseer went away grumbling, and Haward entered the house. The
room where dwelt his books looked cool and inviting. He walked the
length of the shelves, took out a volume here and there for his evening
reading, and upon the binding of others laid an affectionate, lingering
touch. “I have had a fever, my friends,” he announced to the books,
“but I am about to find myself happily restored to reason and serenity;
in short, to health.”
Some hours later he raised his eyes from the floor which he had been
studying for a great while, covered them for a moment with his hand,
then rose, and, with the air of a sleepwalker, went out of the lit
room into a calm and fragrant night. There was no moon, but the stars
were many, and it did not seem dark. When he came to the verge of the
landing, and the river, sighing in its sleep, lay clear below him,
mirroring the stars, it was as though he stood between two firmaments.
He descended the steps, and drew toward him a small rowboat that was
softly rubbing against the wet and glistening piles. The tide was out,
and the night was very quiet.
Haward troubled not the midstream, but rowing in the shadow of the bank
to the mouth of the creek that slept beside his garden, turned and
went up this narrow water. Until he was free of the wall the odor of
honeysuckle and box clung to the air, freighting it heavily; when it
was left behind the reeds began to murmur and sigh, though not loudly,
for there was no wind. When he came to a point opposite the minister’s
house, rising fifty yards away from amidst low orchard trees, he rested
upon his oars. There was a light in an upper room, and as he looked
Audrey passed between the candle and the open window. A moment later
and the light was out, but he knew that she was sitting at the window.
Though it was dark, he found that he could call back with precision the
slender throat, the lifted face, and the enshadowing hair. For a while
he stayed, motionless in his boat, hidden by the reeds that whispered
and sighed; but at last he rowed away softly through the darkness, back
to the dim, slow-moving river and the Fair View landing.
This was of a Friday. All the next day he spent in the garden, but on
Sunday morning he sent word to the stables to have Mirza saddled. He
was going to church, he told Juba over his chocolate, and he would wear
the gray and silver.