AUDREY AND EVELYN
Hugon went a-trading to the Southern Indians, but had lately returned
to his lair at the crossroads ordinary, when, upon a sunny September
morning, Audrey and Mistress Deborah, mounted upon the sorriest of
Darden’s sorry steeds, turned from Duke of Gloucester into Palace
Street. They had parted with the minister before his favorite ordinary,
and were on their way to the house where they themselves were to lodge
during the three days of town life which Darden had vouchsafed to offer
them.
For a month or more Virginia had been wearing black ribbons for the
King, who died in June, but in the last day or so there had been a
reversion to bright colors. This cheerful change had been wrought
by the arrival in the York of the Fortune of Bristol, with the new
governor on board. His Excellency had landed at Yorktown, and, after
suitable entertainment at the hands of its citizens, had proceeded
under escort to Williamsburgh. The entry into the town was triumphal,
and when, at the doorway of his Palace, the Governor turned, and
addressed a pleasing oration to the people whom he was to rule in
the name of the King and my Lord of Orkney, enthusiasm reached its
height. At night the town was illuminated, and well-nigh all its ladies
and gentlemen visited the Palace, in order to pay their duty to its
latest occupant. It was a pleasure-loving people, and the arrival
of a governor an occasion of which the most must be made. Gentlemen
of consideration had come in from every county, bringing with them
wives and daughters. In the mild, sunshiny weather the crowded town
overflowed into square and street and garden. Everywhere were bustle
and gayety,--gayety none the less for the presence of thirty or
more ministers of the Established Church. For Mr. Commissary Blair
had convoked a meeting of the clergy for the consideration of evils
affecting that body,--not, alas! from without alone. The Governor,
arriving so opportunely, must, too, be addressed upon the usual
subjects of presentation, induction, and all-powerful vestries. It was
fitting, also, that the college of William and Mary should have its
say upon the occasion, and the brightest scholar thereof was even now
closeted with the Latin master. That the copy of verses giving the
welcome of so many future planters, Burgesses, and members of Council
would be choice in thought and elegant in expression, there could be
no reasonable doubt. The Council was to give an entertainment at the
Capitol; one day had been set aside for a muster of militia in the
meadow beyond the college, another for a great horse-race; many small
parties were arranged; and last, but not least, on the night of the
day following Darden’s appearance in town, his Excellency was to give
a ball at the Palace. Add to all this that two notorious pirates were
standing their trial before a court-martial, with every prospect of
being hanged within the se’ennight; that a deputation of Nottoways and
Meherrins, having business with the white fathers in Williamsburgh,
were to be persuaded to dance their wildest, whoop their loudest,
around a bonfire built in the market square; that at the playhouse Cato
was to be given with extraordinary magnificence, and one may readily
see that there might have been found, in this sunny September week,
places less entertaining than Williamsburgh.
Darden’s old white horse, with its double load, plodded along the
street that led to the toy Palace of this toy capital. The Palace, of
course, was not its riders’ destination; instead, when they had crossed
Nicholson Street, they drew up before a particularly small white house,
so hidden away behind lilac bushes and trellised grapevines that it
gave but here and there a pale hint of its existence. It was planted
in the shadow of a larger building, and a path led around it to what
seemed a pleasant, shady, and extensive garden.
Mistress Deborah gave a sigh of satisfaction. “Seven years come
Martinmas since I last stayed overnight with Mary Stagg! And we were
born in the same village, and at Bath what mighty friends we were! She
was playing Dorinda,--that’s in ‘The Beaux’ Stratagem,’ Audrey,--and
her dress was just an old striped Persian, vastly unbecoming. Her
Ladyship’s pink alamode, that Major D---- spilt a dish of chocolate
over, she gave to me for carrying a note; and I gave it to Mary (she
was Mary Baker then),--for I looked hideous in pink,--and she was that
grateful, as well she might be! Mary, Mary!”
A slender woman, with red-brown hair and faded cheeks, came running
from the house to the gate. “At last, my dear Deborah! I vow I had
given you up! Says I to Mirabell an hour ago,--you know that is my name
for Charles, for ’twas when he played Mirabell to my Millamant that we
fell in love,--‘Well,’ says I, ‘I’ll lay a gold-furbelowed scarf to a
yard of oznaburg that Mr. Darden, riding home through the night, and
in liquor, perhaps, has fallen and broken his neck, and Deborah can’t
come.’ And says Mirabell--But la, my dear, there you stand in your
safeguard, and I’m keeping the gate shut on you! Come in. Come in,
Audrey. Why, you’ve grown to be a woman! You were just a brown slip of
a thing, that Lady Day, two years ago, that I spent with Deborah. Come
in the both of you. There are cakes and a bottle of Madeira.”
Audrey fastened the horse against the time that Darden should remember
to send for it, and then followed the ex-waiting-woman and the former
queen of a company of strollers up a grassy path and through a little
green door into a pleasant room, where grape leaves wreathed the
windows and cast their shadows upon a sanded floor. At one end of the
room stood a great, rudely built cabinet, and before it a long table,
strewn with an orderly litter of such slender articles of apparel as
silk and tissue scarfs, gauze hoods, breast knots, silk stockings, and
embroidered gloves. Mistress Deborah must needs run and examine these
at once, and Mistress Mary Stagg, wife of the lessee, manager, and
principal actor of the Williamsburgh theatre, looked complacently over
her shoulder. The minister’s wife sighed again, this time with envy.
“What with the theatre, and the bowling green, and tea in your
summer-house, and dancing lessons, and the sale of these fine things,
you and Charles must turn a pretty penny! The luck that some folk have!
_You_ were always fortunate, Mary.”
Mistress Stagg did not deny the imputation. But she was a kindly soul,
who had not forgotten the gift of my Lady Squander’s pink alamode. The
chocolate stain had not been so very large.
“I’ve laid by a pretty piece of sarcenet of which to make you a
capuchin,” she said promptly. “Now, here’s the wine. Shan’t we go into
the garden, and sip it there? Peggy,” to the black girl holding a
salver, “put the cake and wine on the table in the arbor; then sit here
by the window, and call me if any come. My dear Deborah, I doubt if I
have so much as a ribbon left by the end of the week. The town is that
gay! I says to Mirabell this morning, says I, ‘Lord, my dear, it a’most
puts me in mind of Bath!’ And Mirabell says--But here’s the garden
door. Now, isn’t it cool and pleasant out here? Audrey may gather
us some grapes. Yes, they’re very fine, full bunches; it has been a
bounteous year.”
The grape arbor hugged the house, but beyond it was a pretty, shady,
fancifully laid out garden, with shell-bordered walks, a grotto, a
summer-house, and a gate opening into Nicholson Street. Beyond the
garden a glimpse was to be caught through the trees of a trim bowling
green. It had rained the night before, and a delightful, almost vernal
freshness breathed in the air. The bees made a great buzzing amongst
the grapes, and the birds in the mulberry-trees sang as though it were
nesting time. Mistress Stagg and her old acquaintance sat at a table
placed in the shadow of the vines, and sipped their wine, while Audrey
obediently gathered clusters of the purple fruit, and thought the
garden very fine, but oh, not like--There could be no garden in the
world so beautiful and so dear as that! And she had not seen it for so
long, so long a time. She wondered if she would ever see it again.
When she brought the fruit to the table, Mistress Stagg made room for
her kindly enough; and she sat and drank her wine and went to her world
of dreams, while her companions bartered town and country gossip. It
has been said that the small white house adjoined a larger building. A
window in this structure, which had much the appearance of a barn, was
now opened, with the result that a confused sound, as of several people
speaking at once, made itself heard. Suddenly the noise gave place to a
single high-pitched voice:--
“‘Welcome, my son! Here lay him down, my friends,
Full in my sight, that I may view at leisure
The bloody corse, and count those glorious wounds.’”
A smile irradiated Mistress Stagg’s faded countenance, and she blew
a kiss toward the open window. “He does Cato so extremely well; and
it’s a grave, dull, odd character, too. But Mirabell--that’s Charles,
you know--manages to put a little life in it, a _Je ne sais quoi_,
a touch of Sir Harry Wildair. Now--now he’s pulling out his laced
handkerchief to weep over Rome! You should see him after he has fallen
on his sword, and is brought on in a chair, all over blood. This is
the third rehearsal; the play’s ordered for Monday night. Who is it,
Peggy? Madam Travis! It’s about the lace for her damask petticoat, and
there’s no telling how long she may keep me! My dear Deborah, when
you have finished your wine, Peggy shall show you your room. You must
make yourself quite at home. For says I to Mirabell this morning, ‘Far
be it from me to forget past kindnesses, and in those old Bath days
Deborah was a good friend to me,--which was no wonder, to be sure,
seeing that when we were little girls we went to the same dame school,
and always learned our book and worked our samplers together.’ And says
Mirabell--Yes, yes, ma’am, I’m coming!”
She disappeared, and the black girl showed the two guests through the
hall and up a tiny stairway into a little dormer-windowed, whitewashed
room. Mistress Deborah, who still wore remnants of my Lady Squander’s
ancient gifts of spoiled finery, had likewise failed to discard the
second-hand fine-lady airs acquired during her service. She now
declared herself excessively tired by her morning ride, and martyr,
besides, to a migraine. Moreover, it was enough to give one the spleen
to hear Mary Stagg’s magpie chatter and to see how some folk throve,
willy-nilly, while others just as good--Here tears of vexation ensued,
and she must lie down upon the bed and call in a feeble voice for her
smelling salts. Audrey hurriedly searched in the ragged portmanteau
brought to town the day before in the ox-cart of an obliging
parishioner, found the flask, and took it to the bedside, to receive in
exchange a sound box of the ear for her tardiness. The blow reddened
her cheek, but brought no tears to her eyes. It was too small a thing
to weep for; tears were for blows upon the heart.
It was a cool and quiet little room, and Mistress Deborah, who had
drunk two full glasses of the Madeira, presently fell asleep. Audrey
sat very still, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes upon them,
until their hostess’s voice announced from the foot of the stairs that
Madam Travis had taken her departure. She then slipped from the room,
and was affably received below, and taken into the apartment which they
had first entered. Here Mistress became at once extremely busy. A fan
was to be mounted; yards of silk gathered into furbelows; breast knots,
shoulder knots, sword knots, to be made up. Her customers were all
people of quality, and unless she did her part not one of them could go
to the ball. Audrey shyly proffered her aid, and was set to changing
the ribbons upon a mask.
Mistress Stagg’s tongue went as fast as her needle: “And Deborah
is asleep! Poor soul! she’s sadly changed from what she was in old
England thirteen years ago. As neat a shape as you would see in
a day’s journey, with the prettiest color, and eyes as bright as
those marcasite buttons! And she saw the best of company at my Lady
Squander’s,--no lack there of kisses and guineas and fine gentlemen,
you may be sure! There’s a deal of change in this mortal world, and
it’s generally for the worse. Here, child, you may whip this lace on
Mr. Lightfoot’s ruffles. I think myself lucky, I can tell you, that
there are so few women in Cato. If ’tweren’t so, I should have to go
on myself; for since poor, dear, pretty Jane Day died of the smallpox,
and Oriana Jordan ran away with the rascally Bridewell fellow that we
bought to play husbands’ parts, and was never heard of more, but is
supposed to have gotten clean off to Barbadoes by favor of the master
of the Lady Susan, we have been short of actresses. But in this play
there are only Marcia and Lucia. ‘It is extremely fortunate, my dear,’
said I to Mirabell this very morning, ‘that in this play, which is the
proper compliment to a great gentleman just taking office, Mr. Addison
should have put no more than two women.’ And Mirabell says--Don’t put
the lace so full, child; ’twon’t go round.”
“A chair is stopping at the gate,” said Audrey, who sat by the window.
“There’s a lady in it.”
The chair was a very fine painted one, borne by two gayly dressed
negroes, and escorted by a trio of beribboned young gentlemen, prodigal
of gallant speeches, amorous sighs, and languishing glances. Mistress
Stagg looked, started up, and, without waiting to raise from the floor
the armful of delicate silk which she had dropped, was presently
curtsying upon the doorstep.
The bearers set down their load. One of the gentlemen opened the
chair door with a flourish, and the divinity, compressing her hoop,
descended. A second cavalier flung back Mistress Stagg’s gate, and the
third, with a low bow, proffered his hand to conduct the fair from the
gate to the doorstep. The lady shook her head; a smiling word or two,
a slight curtsy, the wave of a painted fan, and her attendants found
themselves dismissed. She came up the path alone, slowly, with her head
a little bent. Audrey, watching her from the window, knew who she was,
and her heart beat fast. If this lady were in town, then so was he;
he would not have stayed behind at Westover. She would have left the
room, but there was not time. The mistress of the house, smiling and
obsequious, fluttered in, and Evelyn Byrd followed.
There had been ordered for her a hood of golden tissue, with wide and
long streamers to be tied beneath the chin, and she was come to try
it on. Mistress Stagg had it all but ready,--there was only the least
bit of stitchery; would Mistress Evelyn condescend to wait a very few
minutes? She placed a chair, and the lady sank into it, finding the
quiet of the shadowed room pleasant enough after the sunlight and
talkativeness of the world without. Mistress Stagg, in her role of
milliner, took the gauzy trifle, called by courtesy a hood, to the
farthest window, and fell busily to work.
It seemed to grow more and more quiet in the room: the shadow of the
leaves lay still upon the floor; the drowsy humming of the bees outside
the windows, the sound of locusts in the trees, the distant noises of
the town,--all grew more remote, then suddenly appeared to cease.
Audrey raised her eyes, and met the eyes of Evelyn. She knew that they
had been upon her for a long time, in the quiet of the room. She had
sat breathless, her head bowed over her work that lay idly in her lap,
but at last she must look. The two gazed at each other with a sorrowful
steadfastness; in the largeness of their several natures there was no
room for self-consciousness; it was the soul of each that gazed. But in
the mists of earthly ignorance they could not read what was written,
and they erred in their guessing. Audrey went not far wide. This was
the princess, and, out of the fullness of a heart that ached with loss,
she could have knelt and kissed the hem of her robe, and wished her
long and happy life. There was no bitterness in her heart; she never
dreamed that she had wronged the princess. But Evelyn thought: “This is
the girl they talk about. God knows, if he had loved worthily, I might
not so much have minded!”
From the garden came a burst of laughter and high voices. Mistress
Stagg started up. “’Tis our people, Mistress Evelyn, coming from the
playhouse. We lodge them in the house by the bowling green, but after
rehearsals they’re apt to stop here. I’ll send them packing. The hood
is finished. Audrey will set it upon your head, ma’am, while I am gone.
Here, child! Mind you don’t crush it.” She gave the hood into Audrey’s
hands, and hurried from the room.
Evelyn sat motionless, her silken draperies flowing around her, one
white arm bent, the soft curve of her cheek resting upon ringed
fingers. Her eyes yet dwelt upon Audrey, standing as motionless, the
mist of gauze and lace in her hands. “Do not trouble yourself,” she
said, in her low, clear voice. “I will wait until Mistress Stagg
returns.”
The tone was very cold, but Audrey scarce noticed that it was so. “If I
may, I should like to serve you, ma’am,” she said pleadingly. “I will
be very careful.”
Leaving the window, she came and knelt beside Evelyn; but when she
would have put the golden hood upon her head, the other drew back with
a gesture of aversion, a quick recoil of her entire frame. The hood
slipped to the floor. After a moment Audrey rose and stepped back a
pace or two. Neither spoke, but it was the one who thought no evil
whose eyes first sought the floor. Her dark cheek paled, and her lips
trembled; she turned, and going back to her seat by the window took up
her fallen work. Evelyn, with a sharp catch of her breath, withdrew
her attention from the other occupant of the room, and fixed it upon a
moted sunbeam lying like a bar between the two.
Mistress Stagg returned. The hood was fitted, and its purchaser
prepared to leave. Audrey rose and made her curtsy, timidly, but with
a quick, appealing motion of her hand. Was not this the lady whom he
loved, that people said he was to wed? And had he not told her, long
ago, that he would speak of her to Mistress Evelyn Byrd, and that she
too would be her friend? Last May Day, when the guinea was put into her
hand, the lady’s smile was bright, her voice sweet and friendly. Now,
how changed! In her craving for a word, a look, from one so near him,
one that perhaps had seen him not an hour before; in her sad homage for
the object of his love, she forgot her late repulse, and grew bold.
When Evelyn would have passed her, she put forth a trembling hand and
began to speak, to say she scarce knew what; but the words died in
her throat. For a moment Evelyn stood, her head averted, an angry red
staining neck and bosom and beautiful, down-bent face. Her eyes half
closed, the long lashes quivering against her cheek, and she smiled
faintly, in scorn of the girl and scorn of herself. Then, freeing her
skirt from Audrey’s clasp, she passed in silence from the room.
Audrey stood at the window, and with wide, pained eyes watched her go
down the path. Mistress Stagg was with her, talking volubly, and Evelyn
seemed to listen with smiling patience. One of the bedizened negroes
opened the chair door; the lady entered, and was borne away. Before
Mistress Stagg could reenter her house Audrey had gone quietly up the
winding stair to the little whitewashed room, where she found the
minister’s wife astir and restored to good humor. Her sleep had helped
her; she would go down at once and see what Mary was at. Darden, too,
was coming as soon as the meeting at the church had adjourned. After
dinner they would walk out and see the town, until which time Audrey
might do as she pleased. When she was gone, Audrey softly shut herself
in the little room, and lay down upon the bed, very still, with her
face hidden in her arm.
With twelve of the clock came Darden, quite sober, distrait in manner
and uneasy of eye, and presently interrupted Mistress Stagg’s flow of
conversation by a demand to speak with his wife alone. At that time of
day the garden was a solitude, and thither the two repaired, taking
their seats upon a bench built round a mulberry-tree.
“Well?” queried Mistress Deborah bitterly. “I suppose Mr. Commissary
showed himself vastly civil? I dare say you’re to preach before the
Governor next Sunday? Or maybe they’ve chosen Bailey? He boasts that he
can drink you under the table! One of these fine days you’ll drink and
curse and game yourself out of a parish!”
Darden drew figures on the ground with his heavy stick. “On such a fine
day as this,” he said, in a suppressed voice, and looked askance at the
wife whom he beat upon occasion, but whose counsel he held in respect.
She turned upon him. “What do you mean? They talk and talk, and cry
shame,--and a shame it is, the Lord knows! But it never comes to
anything”--
“It has come to this,” interrupted Darden, with an oath: “that this
Governor means to sweep in the corners; that the Commissary--damned
Scot!--to-day appointed a committee to inquire into the charges made
against me and Bailey and John Worden; that seven of my vestrymen are
dead against me; and that ‘deprivation’ has suddenly become a very
common word!”
“Seven of the vestry?” said his wife, after a pause. “Who are they?”
Darden told her.
“If Mr. Haward”--she began slowly, her green eyes steady upon the
situation. “There’s not one of that seven would care to disoblige
him. I warrant you he could make them face about. They say he
knew the Governor in England, too; and there’s his late gift to
the college,--the Commissary wouldn’t forget that. If Mr. Haward
would”--She broke off, and with knit brows studied the problem more
intently.
“If he would, he could,” Darden finished for her. “With his interest
this cloud would go by, as others have done before. I know that,
Deborah. And that’s the card I’m going to play.”
“If you had gone to him, hat in hand, a month ago, he’d have done you
any favor,” said his helpmate sourly. “But it is different now. He’s
over his fancy; and besides, he’s at Westover.”
“He’s in Williamsburgh, at Marot’s ordinary,” said the other. “As for
his being over his fancy,--I’ll try that. Fancy or no fancy, if a
woman asked him for a fairing, he would give it her, or I don’t know
my gentleman. We’ll call his interest a ribbon or some such toy, and
Audrey shall ask him for it.”
“Audrey is a fool!” cried Mistress Deborah. “And you had best be
careful, or you’ll prove yourself another! There’s been talk enough
already. Audrey, village innocent that she is, is the only one that
doesn’t know it. The town’s not the country; if he sets tongues
a-clacking here”--
“He won’t,” said Darden roughly. “He’s no hare-brained one-and-twenty!
And Audrey’s a good girl. Go send her here, Deborah. Bid her fetch me
Stagg’s inkhorn and a pen and a sheet of paper. If he does anything for
me, it will have to be done quickly. They’re in haste to pull me out of
saddle, the damned canting pack! But I’ll try conclusions with them!”
His wife departed, muttering to herself, and the reverend Gideon pulled
out of his capacious pocket a flask of usquebaugh. In five minutes from
the time of his setting it to his lips the light in which he viewed the
situation turned from gray to rose color. By the time he espied Audrey
coming toward him through the garden he felt a moral certainty that
when he came to die (if ever he died) it would be in his bed in the
Fair View glebe house.