A SABBATH DAY’S JOURNEY
Although the house of worship which boasted as its ornament the
Reverend Gideon Darden was not so large and handsome as Bruton church,
nor could rival the painted glories of Poplar Spring, it was yet a
building good enough,--of brick, with a fair white spire and a decorous
mantle of ivy. The churchyard, too, was pleasant, though somewhat
crowded with the dead. There were oaks for shade, and wild roses for
fragrance, and the grass between the long gravestones, prone upon
mortal dust, grew very thick and green. Outside the gates,--a gift from
the first master of Fair View,--between the churchyard and the dusty
highroad ran a long strip of trampled turf, shaded by locust-trees and
by one gigantic gum that became in the autumn a pillar of fire.
Haward, arriving somewhat after time, found drawn up upon this piece of
sward a coach, two berlins, a calash, and three chaises, while tied to
hitching-posts, trees, and the fence were a number of saddle-horses. In
the shade of the gum-tree sprawled half a dozen negro servants, but on
the box of the coach, from which the restless horses had been taken,
there yet sat the coachman, a mulatto of powerful build and a sullen
countenance. The vehicle stood in the blazing sunshine, and it was both
cooler and merrier beneath the tree,--a fact apparent enough to the
coachman, but the knowledge of which, seeing that he was chained to the
box, did him small good. Haward glanced at the figure indifferently;
but Juba, following his master upon Whitefoot Kate, grinned from ear to
ear. “Larnin’ not to run away, Sam? Road’s clear: why don’ you carry
off de coach?”
Haward dismounted, and leaving Juba first to fasten the horses, and
then join his fellows beneath the gum-tree, walked into the churchyard.
The congregation had assembled, and besides himself there were none
without the church save the negroes and the dead. The service had
commenced. Through the open door came to him Darden’s voice: “_Dearly
beloved brethren_”--
Haward waited, leaning against a tomb deep graven with a coat of
arms and much stately Latin, until the singing clave the air, when
he entered the building, and passed down the aisle to his own pew,
the chiefest in the place. He was aware of the flutter and whisper on
either hand,--perhaps he did not find it unpleasing. Diogenes may have
carried his lantern not merely to find a man, but to show one as well,
and a philosopher in a pale gray riding dress, cut after the latest
mode, with silver lace and a fall of Mechlin, may be trusted to know
the value as well as the vanity of sublunary things.
Of the gathering, which was not large, two thirds, perhaps, were people
of condition; and in the country, where occasions for display did not
present themselves uncalled, it was highly becoming to worship the Lord
in fine clothes. So there were broken rainbows in the tall pews, with a
soft waving of fans to and fro in the essenced air, and a low rustle of
silk. The men went as fine as the women, and the June sunshine, pouring
in upon all this lustre and color, made a flower-bed of the assemblage.
Being of the country, it was vastly better behaved than would have been
a fashionable London congregation; but it certainly saw no reason why
Mr. Marmaduke Haward should not, during the anthem, turn his back upon
altar, minister, and clerk, and employ himself in recognizing with a
smile and an inclination of his head his friends and acquaintances.
They smiled back,--the gentlemen bowing slightly, the ladies making a
sketch of a curtsy. All were glad that Fair View house was open once
more, and were kindly disposed toward the master thereof.
The eyes of that gentleman were no longer for the gay parterre. Between
it and the door, in uncushioned pews or on rude benches, were to be
found the plainer sort of Darden’s parishioners, and in this territory,
that was like a border of sober foliage to the flower-bed in front, he
discovered whom he sought.
Her gaze had been upon him since he passed the minister’s pew, where
she stood between my Lady Squander’s ex-waiting-woman and the branded
schoolmaster, but now their eyes came full together. She was dressed in
some coarse dark stuff, above which rose the brown pillar of her throat
and the elusive, singular beauty of her face. There was a flower in her
hair, placed as he had placed the rosebuds. A splendor leaped into her
eyes, but her cheek did not redden; it was to his face that the color
rushed. They had but a moment in which to gaze at each other, for the
singing, which to her, at least, had seemed suddenly to swell into a
great ascending tide of sound, with somewhere, far away, the silver
calling of a trumpet, now came to an end, and with another silken
rustle and murmur the congregation sat down.
Haward did not turn again, and the service went drowsily on. Darden was
bleared of eye and somewhat thick of voice; the clerk’s whine was as
sleepy a sound as the buzzing of the bees in and out of window, or the
soft, incessant stir of painted fans. A churchwarden in the next pew
nodded and nodded, until he nodded his peruke awry, and a child went
fast asleep, with its head in its mother’s lap. One and all worshiped
somewhat languidly, with frequent glances at the hourglass upon the
pulpit. They prayed for King George the First, not knowing that he was
dead, and for the Prince, not knowing that he was King. The minister
preached against Quakers and witchcraft, and shook the rafters with his
fulminations. Finally came the benediction and a sigh of relief.
In that country and time there was no unsociable and undignified
scurrying homeward after church. Decorous silence prevailed until
the house was exchanged for the green and shady churchyard: but then
tongues were loosened, and the flower-bed broken into clusters. One
must greet one’s neighbors; present or be presented to what company
might be staying at the various great houses within the parish;
talk, laugh, coquet, and ogle; make appointments for business or for
pleasure; speak of the last horse-race, the condition of wheat and
tobacco, and the news brought in by the Valour, man-of-war, that the
King was gone to Hanover. In short, for the nonce, the churchyard
became a drawing-room, with the sun for candles, with no painted images
of the past and gone upon the walls, but with the dead themselves
beneath the floor.
The minister, having questions to settle with clerk and sexton, tarried
in the vestry room; but his wife, with Audrey and the schoolmaster,
waited for him outside, in the shade of an oak-tree that was just
without the pale of the drawing-room. Mistress Deborah, in her
tarnished amber satin and ribbons that had outworn their youth, bit
her lip and tapped her foot upon the ground. Audrey watched her
apprehensively. She knew the signs, and that when they reached home a
storm might break that would leave its mark upon her shoulders. The
minister’s wife was not approved of by the ladies of Fair View parish,
but had they seen how wistful was the face of the brown girl with her,
they might have turned aside, spoken, and let the storm go by. The
girl herself was scarcely noticed. Few had ever heard her story, or,
hearing it, had remembered; the careless many thought her an orphan,
bound to Darden and his wife,--in effect their servant. If she had
beauty, the ladies and gentlemen who saw her, Sunday after Sunday, in
the minister’s pew, had scarce discovered it. She was too dark, too
slim, too shy and strange of look, with her great brown eyes and that
startled turn of her head. Their taste was for lilies and roses, and it
was not an age that counted shyness a grace.
Mr. Marmaduke Haward was not likely to be accused of diffidence. He had
come out of church with the sleepy-headed churchwarden, who was now
wide awake and mightily concerned to know what horse Mr. Haward meant
to enter for the great race at Mulberry Island, while at the foot of
the steps he was seized upon by another portly vestryman, and borne
off to be presented to three blooming young ladies, quick to second
their papa’s invitation home to dinner. Mr. Haward was ready to curse
his luck that he was engaged elsewhere; but were not these Graces the
children to whom he had used to send sugar-plums from Williamsburgh,
years and years ago? He vowed that the payment, which he had never
received, he would take now with usury, and proceeded to salute the
cheek of each protesting fair. The ladies found him vastly agreeable;
old and new friends crowded around him; he put forth his powers and
charmed all hearts,--and all the while inwardly cursed the length of
way to the gates, and the tardy progress thereto of his friends and
neighbors.
But however slow in ebbing, the tide was really set toward home and
dinner. Darden, coming out of the vestry room, found the churchyard
almost cleared, and the road in a cloud of dust. The greater number of
those who came a-horseback were gone, and there had also departed both
berlins, the calash, and two chaises. Mr. Haward was handing the three
Graces into the coach with the chained coachman, Juba standing by,
holding his master’s horse. Darden grew something purpler in the face,
and, rumbling oaths, went over to the three beneath the oak. “How many
spoke to you to-day?” he asked roughly of his wife. “Did _he_ come and
speak?”
“No, he didn’t!” cried Mistress Deborah tartly. “And all the gentry
went by; only Mr. Bray stopped to say that everybody knew of your fight
with Mr. Bailey at the French ordinary, and that the Commissary had
sent for Bailey, and was going to suspend him. I wish to Heaven I knew
why I married you, to be looked down upon by every Jill, when I might
have had his Lordship’s own man! Of all the fools”--
“You were not the only one,” answered her husband grimly. “Well, let’s
home; there’s dinner yet. What is it, Audrey?” This in answer to an
inarticulate sound from the girl.
The schoolmaster answered for her: “Mr. Marmaduke Haward has not gone
with the coach. Perhaps he only waited until the other gentlefolk
should be gone. Here he comes.”
The sward without the gates was bare of all whose presence mattered,
and Haward had indeed reëntered the churchyard, and was walking toward
them. Darden went to meet him. “These be fine tales I hear of you, Mr.
Darden,” said his parishioner calmly. “I should judge you were near the
end of your rope. There’s a vestry meeting Thursday. Shall I put in a
good word for your reverence? Egad, you need it!”
“I shall be your honor’s most humble, most obliged servant,” quoth the
minister. “The affair at the French ordinary was nothing. I mean to
preach next Sunday upon calumny,--calumny that spareth none, not even
such as I. You are for home, I see, and our road for a time is the
same. Will you ride with us?”
“Ay,” said Haward briefly. “But you must send yonder fellow with the
scarred hands packing. I travel not with thieves.”
He had not troubled to lower his voice, and as he and Darden were now
themselves within the shadow of the oak, the schoolmaster overheard
him and answered for himself. “Your honor need not fear my company,”
he said, in his slow and lifeless tones. “I am walking, and I take the
short cut through the woods. Good-day, worthy Gideon. Madam Deborah and
Audrey, good-day.”
He put his uncouth, shambling figure into motion, and, indifferent and
lifeless in manner as in voice, was gone, gliding like a long black
shadow through the churchyard and into the woods across the road. “I
knew him long ago in England,” the minister explained to their new
companion. “He’s a learned man, and, like myself, a calumniated one.
The gentlemen of these parts value him highly as an instructor of
youth. No need to send their sons to college if they’ve been with him
for a year or two! My good Deborah, Mr. Haward will ride with us toward
Fair View.”
Mistress Deborah curtsied; then chided Audrey for not minding her
manners, but standing like a stock or stone, with her thoughts a
thousand miles away. “Let her be,” said Haward. “We gave each other
good-day in church.”
Together the four left the churchyard. Darden brought up two sorry
horses; lifted his wife and Audrey upon one, and mounted the other.
Haward swung himself into his saddle, and the company started, Juba
upon Whitefoot Kate bringing up the rear. The master of Fair View
rode beside the minister, and only now and then spoke to the women.
The road was here sunny, there shady; the excessive heat broken, the
air pleasant enough. Everywhere, too, was the singing of birds, while
the fields that they passed of tobacco and golden, waving wheat were
charming to the sight. The minister was, when sober, a man of parts,
with some education and a deal of mother wit; in addition, a close
and shrewd observer of the times and people. He and Haward talked of
matters of public moment, and the two women listened, submissive and
admiring. It seemed that they came very quickly to the bridge across
the creek and the parting of their ways. Would Mr. Haward ride on to
the glebe house?
It appeared that Mr. Haward would. Moreover, when the house was
reached, and Darden’s one slave came running from a broken-down
stable to take the horses, he made no motion toward returning to the
bridge which led across the creek to his own plantation, but instead
dismounted, flung his reins to Juba, and asked if he might stay to
dinner.
Now, by the greatest good luck, considered Mistress Deborah, there
chanced to be in her larder a haunch of venison roasted most noble;
the ducklings and asparagus, too, cooked before church, needed but to
be popped into the oven; and there was also an apple tart with cream.
With elation, then, and eke with a mind at rest, she added her shrill
protests of delight to Darden’s more moderate assurances, and, leaving
Audrey to set chairs in the shade of a great apple-tree, hurried into
the house to unearth her damask tablecloth and silver spoons, and to
plan for the morrow a visit to the Widow Constance, and a casual remark
that Mr. Marmaduke Haward had dined with the minister the day before.
Audrey, her task done, went after her, to be met with graciousness most
unusual. “I’ll see to the dinner, child. Mr. Haward will expect one
of us to sit without, and you had as well go as I. If he’s talking to
Darden, you might get some larkspur and gilliflowers for the table.
La! the flowers that used to wither beneath the candles at my Lady
Squander’s!”
Audrey, finding the two men in conversation beneath the apple-tree,
passed on to the ragged garden, where clumps of hardy, bright-colored
flowers played hide-and-seek with currant and gooseberry bushes. Haward
saw her go, and broke the thread of his discourse. Darden looked up,
and the eyes of the two men met; those of the younger were cold and
steady. A moment, and his glance had fallen to his watch which he had
pulled out. “’Tis early yet,” he said coolly, “and I dare say not quite
your dinner time,--which I beg that Mistress Deborah will not advance
on my account. Is it not your reverence’s habit to rest within doors
after your sermon? Pray do not let me detain you. I will go talk awhile
with Audrey.”
He put up his watch and rose to his feet. Darden cleared his throat. “I
have, indeed, a letter to write to Mr. Commissary, and it may be half
an hour before Deborah has dinner ready. I will send your servant to
fetch you in.”
Haward broke the larkspur and gilliflowers, and Audrey gathered up
her apron and filled it with the vivid blooms. The child that had
thus brought loaves of bread to a governor’s table spread beneath a
sugar-tree, with mountains round about, had been no purer of heart, no
more innocent of rustic coquetry. When her apron was filled she would
have returned to the house, but Haward would not have it so. “They will
call when dinner is ready,” he said. “I wish to talk to you, little
maid. Let us go sit in the shade of the willow yonder.”
It was almost a twilight behind the cool green rain of the willow
boughs. Through that verdant mist Haward and Audrey saw the outer world
but dimly. “I had a fearful dream last night,” said Audrey. “I think
that that must have been why I was to glad to see you come into church
to-day. I dreamed that you had never come home again, overseas, in the
Golden Rose. Hugon was beside me, in the dream, telling me that you
were dead in England: and suddenly I knew that I had never really seen
you; that there was no garden, no terrace, no roses, no _you_. It was
all so cold and sad, and the sun kept growing smaller and smaller.
The woods, too, were black, and the wind cried in them so that I was
afraid. And then I was in Hugon’s house, holding the door,--there was
a wolf without,--and through the window I saw the mountains; only they
were so high that my heart ached to look upon them, and the wind cried
down the cleft in the hills. The wolf went away, and then, somehow, I
was upon the hilltop.... There was a dead man lying in the grass, but
it was too dark to see. Hugon came up behind me, stooped, and lifted
the hand.... Upon the finger was that ring you wear, burning in the
moonlight.... Oh me!”
The remembered horror of her dream contending with present bliss shook
her spirit to its centre. She shuddered violently, then burst into a
passion of tears.
Haward’s touch upon her hair, Haward’s voice in her ear, all the old
terms of endearment for a frightened child,--“little maid,” “little
coward,” “Why, sweetheart, these things are shadows, they cannot hurt
thee!” She controlled her tears, and was the happier for her weeping.
It was sweet to sit there in the lush grass, veiled and shadowed from
the world by the willow’s drooping green, and in that soft and happy
light to listen to his voice, half laughing, half chiding, wholly
tender and caressing. Dreams were naught, he said. Had Hugon troubled
her waking hours?
He had come once to the house, it appeared; but she had run away and
hidden in the wood, and the minister had told him she was gone to the
Widow Constance’s. That was a long time ago; it must have been the day
after she and Mistress Deborah had last come from Fair View.
“A long time,” said Haward. “It was a week ago. Has it seemed a long
time, Audrey?”
“Yes,--oh yes!”
“I have been busy. I must learn to be a planter, you know. But I have
thought of you, little maid.”
Audrey was glad of that, but there was yet a weight upon her heart.
“After that dream I lay awake all night, and it came to me how wrongly
I had done. Hugon is a wicked man,--an Indian. Oh, I should never have
told you, that first day in the garden, that he was waiting for me
outside! For now, because you took care of me and would not let him
come near, he hates you. He is so wicked that he might do you a harm.”
Her eyes widened, and the hand that touched his was cold and trembling.
“If ever hurt came to you through me, I would drown myself in the river
yonder. And then I thought--lying awake last night--that perhaps I had
been troublesome to you, those days at Fair View, and that was why you
had not come to see the minister, as you had said you would.” The dark
eyes were pitifully eager; the hand that went to her heart trembled
more and more. “It is not as it was in the mountains,” she said. “I am
older now, and safe, and--and happy. And you have many things to do
and to think of, and many friends--gentlemen and beautiful ladies--to
go to see. I thought--last night--that when I saw you I would ask your
pardon for not remembering that the mountains were years ago; for
troubling you with my matters, sir; for making too free, forgetting my
place”--Her voice sank; the shamed red was in her cheeks, and her eyes,
that she had bravely kept upon his face, fell to the purple and gold
blooms in her lap.
Haward rose from the grass, and, with his back to the gray hole of the
willow, looked first at the veil of leaf and stem through which dimly
showed house, orchard, and blue sky, then down upon the girl at his
feet. Her head was bent and she sat very still, one listless, upturned
hand upon the grass beside her, the other lying as quietly among her
flowers.
“Audrey,” he said at last, “you shame me in your thoughts of me. I am
not that knight without fear and without reproach for which you take
me. Being what I am, you must believe that you have not wearied me;
that I think of you and wish to see you. And Hugon, having possibly
some care for his own neck, will do me no harm; that is a very foolish
notion, which you must put from you. Now listen.” He knelt beside her
and took her hand in his. “After a while, perhaps, when the weather is
cooler, and I must open my house and entertain after the fashion of the
country; when the new Governor comes in, and all this gay little world
of Virginia flocks to Williamsburgh; when I am a Councilor, and must go
with the rest, and must think of gold and place and people,--why, then,
maybe, our paths will again diverge, and only now and then will I catch
the gleam of your skirt, mountain maid, brown Audrey! But now in these
midsummer days it is a sleepy world, that cares not to go bustling up
and down. I am alone in my house; I visit not nor am visited, and the
days hang heavy. Let us make believe for a time that the mountains are
all around us, that it was but yesterday we traveled together. It is
only a little way from Fair View to the glebe house, from the glebe
house to Fair View. I will see you often, little maid, and you must
dream no more as you dreamed last night.” He paused; his voice changed,
and he went on as to himself: “It is a lonely land, with few to see
and none to care. I will drift with the summer, making of it an idyl,
beautiful,--yes, and innocent! When autumn comes I will go to Westover.”
Of this speech Audrey caught only the last word. A wonderful smile, so
bright was it, and withal so sad, came into her face. “Westover!” she
said to herself. “That is where the princess lives.”
“We will let thought alone,” continued Haward. “It suits not with this
charmed light, this glamour of the summer.” He made a laughing gesture.
“Hey, presto! little maid, there go the years rolling back! I swear I
see the mountains through the willow leaves.”
“There was one like a wall shutting out the sun when he went down,”
answered Audrey. “It was black and grim, and the light flared like a
fire behind it. And there was the one above which the moon rose. It
was sharp, pointing like a finger to heaven, and I liked it best. Do
you remember how large was the moon pushing up behind the pine-trees?
We sat on the dark hillside watching it, and you told me beautiful
stories, while the moon rose higher and higher and the mockingbirds
began to sing.”
Haward remembered not, but he said that he did so. “The moon is
full again,” he continued, “and last night I heard a mockingbird
in the garden. I will come in the barge to-morrow evening, and the
negroes shall row us up and down the river--you and me and Mistress
Deborah--between the sunset and the moonrise. Then it is lonely and
sweet upon the water. The roses can be smelled from the banks, and if
you will speak to the mockingbirds we shall have music, dryad Audrey,
brown maid of the woods!”
Audrey’s laugh, was silver-clear and sweet, like that of a forest nymph
indeed. She was quite happy again, with all her half-formed doubts and
fears allayed. They had never been of him,--only of herself. The two
sat within the green and swaying fountain of the willow, and time went
by on eagle wings. Too soon came the slave to call them to the house;
the time within, though spent in the company of Darden and his wife,
passed too soon; too soon came the long shadows of the afternoon and
Haward’s call for his horse.
Audrey watched him ride away, and the love light was in her eyes. She
did not know that it was so. That night, in her bare little room, when
the candle was out, she kneeled by the window and looked at the stars.
There was one very fair and golden, an empress of the night. “That is
the princess,” said Audrey, and smiled upon the peerless star. Far from
that light, scarce free from the murk of the horizon, shone a little
star, companionless in the night. “And that is I,” said Audrey, and
smiled upon herself.