THE UNINVITED GUEST
“Mistress Audrey?” said the Governor graciously, as the lady in damask
rose from her curtsy. “Mistress Audrey whom? Mr. Haward, you gave me
not the name of the stock that hath flowered in so beauteous a bloom.”
“Why, sir, the bloom is all in all,’” answered Haward. “What root it
springs from matters not. I trust that your Excellency is in good
health,--that you feel no touch of our seasoning fever?”
“I asked the lady’s name, sir,” said the Governor pointedly. He was
standing in the midst of a knot of gentlemen, members of the Council
and officers of the colony. All around the long room, seated in chairs
arow against the walls, or gathered in laughing groups, or moving about
with a rustle and gleam of silk, were the Virginians his guests. From
the gallery, where were bestowed the musicians out of three parishes,
floated the pensive strains of a minuet, and in the centre of the
polished floor, under the eyes of the company, several couples moved
and postured through that stately dance.
“The lady is my ward,” said Haward lightly. “I call her Audrey. Child,
tell his Excellency your other name.”
If he thought at all, he thought that she could do it. But such an
estray, such a piece of flotsam, was Audrey, that she could not help
him out. “They call me Darden’s Audrey,” she explained to the Governor.
“If I ever heard my father’s name, I have forgotten it.”
Her voice, though low, reached all those who had ceased from their own
concerns to stare at this strange guest, this dark-eyed, shrinking
beauty, so radiantly attired. The whisper had preceded her from the
hall: there had been fluttering and comment enough as, under the fire
of all those eyes, she had passed with Haward to where stood the
Governor receiving his guests. But the whisper had not reached his
Excellency’s ears. In London he had been slightly acquainted with Mr.
Marmaduke Haward, and now knew him for a member of his Council, and a
gentleman of much consequence in that Virginia which he had come to
rule. Moreover, he had that very morning granted a favor to Mr. Haward,
and by reason thereof was inclined to think amiably of the gentleman.
Of the piece of dark loveliness whom the Virginian had brought forward
to present, who could think otherwise? But his Excellency was a formal
man, punctilious, and cautious of his state. The bow with which he
received the strange lady’s curtsy had been profound; in speaking to
her he had made his tones honey-sweet, while his compliment quite
capped the one just paid to Mistress Evelyn Byrd. And now it would
appear that the lady had no name! Nay, from the looks that were being
exchanged, and from the tittering that had risen amongst the younger
of his guests, there must be more amiss than that! His Excellency
frowned, drew himself up, and turned what was meant to be a searching
and terrible eye upon the recreant in white satin. Audrey caught the
look, for which Haward cared no whit. Oh, she knew that she had no
business there,--she that only the other day had gone barefoot on
Darden’s errands, had been kept waiting in hall or kitchen of these
people’s houses! She knew that, for all her silken gown, she had no
place among them; but she thought that they were not kind to stare and
whisper and laugh, shaming her before one another and before him. Her
heart swelled; to the dreamy misery of the day and evening was added a
passionate sense of hurt and wrong and injustice. Her pride awoke, and
in a moment taught her many things, though among them was no distrust
of him. Brought to bay, she put out her hand and found a gate; pushed
it open, and entered upon her heritage of art.
The change was so sudden that those who had stared at her sourly or
scornfully, or with malicious amusement or some stirrings of pity,
drew their breath and gave ground a little. Where was the shrinking,
frightened, unbidden guest of a moment before, with downcast eyes
and burning cheeks? Here was a proud and easy and radiant lady,
with witching eyes and a wonderful smile. “I am only Audrey, your
Excellency,” she said, and curtsied as she spoke. “My other name lies
buried in a valley amongst far-off mountains.” She slightly turned,
and addressed herself to a portly, velvet-clad gentleman, of a very
authoritative air, who, arriving late, had just shouldered himself into
the group about his Excellency. “By token,” she smiled, “of a gold
moidore that was paid for a loaf of bread.”
The new Governor appealed to his predecessor. “What is this, Colonel
Spotswood, what is this?” he demanded, somewhat testily, of the
open-mouthed gentleman in velvet.
“Odso!” cried the latter. “’Tis the little maid of the
sugar-tree!--Marmaduke Haward’s brown elf grown into the queen of all
the fairies!” Crossing to Audrey he took her by the hand. “My dear
child,” he said, with a benevolence that sat well upon him, “I always
meant to keep an eye upon thee, to see that Mr. Haward did by thee all
that he swore he would do. But at first there were cares of state, and
now for five years I have lived at Germanna, half way to thy mountains,
where echoes from the world seldom reach me. Permit me, my dear.” With
a somewhat cumbrous gallantry, the innocent gentleman, who had just
come to town and knew not the gossip thereof, bent and kissed her upon
the cheek.
Audrey curtsied with a bright face to her old acquaintance of the
valley and the long road thence to the settled country. “I have been
cared for, sir,” she said. “You see that I am happy.”
She turned to Haward, and he drew her hand within his arm. “Ay, child,”
he said. “We are keeping others of the company from their duty to
his Excellency. Besides, the minuet invites. I do not think I have
heard music so sweet before to-night. Your Excellency’s most obedient
servant! Gentlemen, allow us to pass.” The crowd opened before them,
and they found themselves in the centre of the room. Two couples were
walking a minuet; when they were joined by this dazzling third, the
ladies bridled, bit their lips, and shot Parthian glances.
It was very fortunate, thought Audrey, that the Widow Constance
had once, long ago, taught her to dance, and that, when they were
sent to gather nuts or myrtle berries or fagots in the woods, she
and Barbara were used to taking hands beneath the trees and moving
with the glancing sunbeams and the nodding saplings and the swaying
grapevine trailers. She that had danced to the wind in the pine tops
could move with ease to the music of this night. And since it was so
that with a sore and frightened and breaking heart one could yet, in
some strange way, become quite another person,--any person that one
chose to be,--these cruel folk should not laugh at her again! They
had not laughed since, before the Governor yonder, she had suddenly
made believe that she was a carefree, great lady. Well, she would make
believe to them still.
Her eyes were as brilliant as Haward’s that shone with fever; a smile
stayed upon her lips; she moved with dignity through the stately dance,
scarce erring once, graceful and fine in all that she did. Haward,
enamored, his wits afire, went mechanically through the oft-trod
measure, and swore to himself that he held in his hand the pearl of
price, the nonpareil of earth. In this dance and under cover of the
music they could speak to each other unheard of those about them.
“‘Queen of all the fairies,’ did he call you?” he asked. “That was well
said. When we are at Fair View again, thou must show me where thou
wonnest with thy court, in what moonlit haunt, by what cool stream”--
“I would I were this night at Fair View glebe house,” said Audrey. “I
would I were at home in the mountains.”
Her voice, sunken with pain and longing, was for him alone. To the
other dancers, to the crowded room at large, she seemed a brazen
girl, with beauty to make a goddess, wit to mask as a great lady,
effrontery to match that of the gentleman who had brought her here.
The age was free, and in that London which was dear to the hearts
of the Virginians ladies of damaged reputation were not so unusual
a feature of fashionable entertainments as to receive any especial
notice. But Williamsburgh was not London, and the dancer yonder, who
held her rose-crowned head so high, was no lady of fashion. They
knew her now for that dweller at Fair View gates of whom, during the
summer just past, there had been whispering enough. Evidently, it was
not for naught that Mr. Marmaduke Haward had refused invitations,
given no entertainments, shut himself up at Fair View, slighting old
friends and evincing no desire to make new ones. Why, the girl was a
servant,--nothing more nor less; she belonged to Gideon Darden, the
drunken minister; she was to have married Jean Hugon, the half-breed
trader. Look how the Governor, enlightened at last, glowered at her;
and how red was Colonel Spotswood’s face; and how Mistress Evelyn Byrd,
sitting in the midst of a little court of her own, made witty talk,
smiled upon her circle of adorers, and never glanced toward the centre
of the room, and the dancers there!
“You are so sweet and gay to-night,” said Haward to Audrey. “Take your
pleasure, child, for it is a sad world, and the blight will fall. I
love to see you happy.”
“Happy!” she answered. “I am not happy!”
“You are above them all in beauty,” he went on. “There is not one here
that’s fit to tie your shoe.”
“Oh me!” cried Audrey. “There is the lady that you love, and that loves
you. Why did she look at me so, in the hall yonder? And yesterday, when
she came to Mistress Stagg’s, I might not touch her or speak to her!
You told me that she was kind and good and pitiful. I dreamed that she
might let me serve her when she came to Fair View.”
“She will never come to Fair View,” he said, “nor shall I go again to
Westover. I am for my own house now, you brown enchantress, and my own
garden, and the boat upon the river. Do you remember how sweet were our
days in June? We will live them over again, and there shall come for
us, besides, a fuller summer”--
“It is winter now,” said Audrey, with a sobbing breath, “and cold and
dark! I do not know myself, and you are strange. I beg you to let me
go away. I wish to wash off this paint, to put on my own gown. I am no
lady; you do wrong to keep me here. See, all the company are frowning
at me! The minister will hear what I have done and be angry, and
Mistress Deborah will beat me. I care not for that, but you--Oh, you
have gone far away,--as far as Fair View, as far as the mountains! I am
speaking to a stranger”--
In the dance their raised hands met again. “You see me, you speak to
me at last,” he said ardently. “That other, that cold brother of the
snows, that paladin and dream knight that you yourself made and dubbed
him me,--he has gone, Audrey; nay, he never was! But I myself, I am not
abhorrent to you?”
“Oh,” she answered, “it is all dark! I cannot see--I cannot
understand”--
The time allotted to minuets having elapsed, the musicians after a
short pause began to play an ancient, lively air, and a number of
ladies and gentlemen, young, gayly dressed, and light of heart as
of heels, engaged in a country dance. When they were joined by Mr.
Marmaduke Haward and his shameless companion, there arose a great
rustling and whispering. A young girl in green taffeta was dancing
alone, wreathing in and out between the silken, gleaming couples,
coquetting with the men by means of fan and eyes, but taking hands and
moving a step or two with each sister of the dance. When she approached
Audrey, the latter smiled and extended her hand, because that was the
way the lady nearest her had done. But the girl in green stared coldly,
put her hand behind her, and, with the very faintest salute to Mr.
Marmaduke Haward, danced on her way. For one moment the smile died on
Audrey’s lips; then it came resolutely back, and she held her head high.
The men, forming in two rows, drew their rapiers with a flourish, and,
crossing them overhead, made an arch of steel under which the women
must pass. Haward’s blade touched that of an old acquaintance. “I have
been leaning upon the back of a lady’s chair,” said the latter gruffly,
under cover of the music and the clashing steel,--“a lady dressed in
rose color, who’s as generous (to all save one poor devil) as she is
fair. I promised her I would take her message; the Lord knows I would
go to the bottom of the sea to give her pleasure! She says that you are
not yourself; begs that you will--go quietly away”--
An exclamation from the man next him, and a loud murmur mixed with some
laughter from those in the crowded room who were watching the dancers,
caused the gentleman to break off in the middle of his message. He
glanced over his shoulder; then, with a shrug, turned to his vis-a-vis
in white satin. “Now you see that ’twill not answer,--not in Virginia.
The women--bless them!--have a way of cutting Gordian knots.”
A score of ladies, one treading in the footsteps of another, should
have passed beneath the flashing swords. But there had thrust itself
into their company a plague spot, and the girl in green taffeta and
a matron in silver brocade, between whom stood the hateful presence,
indignantly stepped out of line and declined to dance. The fear of
infection spreading like wildfire, the ranks refused to close, and
the company was thrown into confusion. Suddenly the girl in green, by
nature a leader of her kind, walked away, with a toss of her head,
from the huddle of those who were uncertain what to do, and joined her
friends among the spectators, who received her with acclaim. The sound
and her example were warranty enough for the cohort she had quitted. A
moment, and it was in virtuous retreat, and the dance was broken up.
The gentlemen, who saw themselves summarily deserted, abruptly lowered
their swords. One laughed; another, flown with wine, gave utterance to
some coarse pleasantry; a third called to the musicians to stop the
music. Darden’s Audrey stood alone, brave in her beautiful borrowed
dress and the color that could not leave her cheeks. But her lips
had whitened, the smile was gone, and her eyes were like those of a
hunted deer. She looked mutely about her: how could she understand,
who trusted so completely, who lived in a labyrinth without a clue,
who had built her dream world so securely that she had left no way of
egress for herself? These were cruel people! She was mad to get away,
to tear off this strange dress, to fling herself down in the darkness,
in the woods, hiding her face against the earth! But though she was
only Audrey and so poor a thing, she had for her portion a dignity and
fineness of nature that was a stay to her steps. Barbara, though not
so poor and humble a maid, might have burst into tears, and run crying
from the room and the house; but to do that Audrey would have been
ashamed.
“It was you, Mr. Corbin, that laughed, I think?” said Haward.
“To-morrow I shall send to know the reason of your mirth. Mr. Everard,
you will answer to me for that pretty oath. Mr. Travis, there rests the
lie that you uttered just now: stoop and take it again.” He flung his
glove at Mr. Travis’s feet.
A great hubbub and exclamation arose. Mr. Travis lifted the glove with
the point of his rapier, and in a loud voice repeated the assertion
which had given umbrage to Mr. Haward of Fair View. That gentleman
sprang unsteadily forward, and the blades of the two crossed in dead
earnest. A moment, and the men were forced apart; but by this time the
whole room was in commotion. The musicians craned their necks over the
gallery rail, a woman screamed, and half a dozen gentlemen of years
and authority started from the crowd of witnesses to the affair and
made toward the centre of the room, with an eye to preventing further
trouble. Where much wine had been drunken and twenty rapiers were out,
matters might go from bad to worse.
Another was before them. A lady in rose color had risen from her chair
and glided across the polished floor to the spot where trouble was
brewing. “Gentlemen, for shame!” she cried. Her voice was bell-like
in its clear sweetness, final in its grave rebuke and its recall to
sense and decency. She was Mistress Evelyn Byrd, who held sovereignty
in Virginia, and at the sound of her voice, the command of her raised
hand, the clamor suddenly ceased, and the angry group, parting, fell
back as from the presence of its veritable queen.
Evelyn went up to Audrey and took her by the hand. “I am not tired
of dancing, as were those ladies who have left us,” she said, with
a smile, and in a sweet and friendly voice. “See, the gentlemen are
waiting I Let us finish out this measure, you and me.”
At her gesture of command the lines that had so summarily broken
re-formed. Back into the old air swung the musicians; up went the
swords, crossing overhead with a ringing sound, and beneath the long
arch of protecting steel moved to the music the two women, the dark
beauty and the fair, the princess and the herdgirl. Evelyn led, and
Audrey, following, knew that now indeed she was walking in a dream.
A very few moments, and the measure was finished. A smile, a curtsy,
a wave of Evelyn’s hand, and the dancers, disbanding, left the floor.
Mr. Corbin, Mr. Everard, and Mr. Travis, each had a word to say to Mr.
Haward of Fair View, as they passed that gentleman.
Haward heard, and answered to the point; but when presently Evelyn
said, “Let us go into the garden,” and he found himself moving with her
and with Audrey through the buzzing, staring crowd toward the door of
the Governor’s house, he thought that it was into Fair View garden they
were about to descend. And when they came out upon the broad, torchlit
walk, and he saw gay parties of ladies and gentlemen straying here and
there beneath the trees, he thought it strange that he had forgotten
that he had guests this night. As for the sound of the river below his
terrace, he had never heard so loud a murmur. It grew and filled the
night, making thin and far away the voices of his guests.
There was a coach at the gates, and Mr. Grymes, who awhile ago had told
him that he had a message to deliver, was at the coach door. Evelyn had
her hand upon his arm, and her voice was speaking to him from as far
away as across the river. “I am leaving the ball,” it said, “and I will
take the girl in my coach to the place where she is staying. Promise me
that you will not go back to the house yonder; promise me that you will
go away with Mr. Grymes, who is also weary of the ball”--
“Oh,” said Mr. Grymes lightly, “Mr. Haward agrees with me that Marot’s
best room, cool and quiet, a bottle of Burgundy, and a hand at piquet
are more alluring than the heat and babel we have left. We are going at
once, Mistress Evelyn. Haward, I propose that on our way to Marot’s we
knock up Dr. Contesse, and make him free of our company.”
As he spoke, he handed into the coach the lady in flowered damask, who
had held up her head, but said no word, and the lady in rose-colored
brocade, who, through the length of the ballroom and the hall and the
broad walk where people passed and repassed, had kept her hand in
Audrey’s, and had talked, easily and with smiles, to the two attending
gentlemen. He shut to the coach door, and drew back, with a low bow,
when Haward’s deeply flushed, handsome face appeared for a moment at
the lowered glass.
“Art away to Westover, Evelyn?” he asked. “Then ’t is ‘Good-by,
sweetheart!’ for I shall not go to Westover again. But you have a fair
road to travel,--there are violets by the wayside; for it is May Day,
you know, and the woods are white with dogwood and purple with the
Judas-tree. The violets are for you; but the great white blossoms, and
the boughs of rosy mist, and all the trees that wave in the wind are
for Audrey.” His eyes passed the woman whom he would have wed, and
rested upon her companion in the coach. “Thou fair dryad!” he said.
“Two days hence we will keep tryst beneath the beech-tree in the woods
beyond the glebe house.”
The man beside him put a hand upon his shoulder and plucked him back,
nor would look at Evelyn’s drawn and whitened face, but called to the
coachman to go on. The black horses put themselves into motion, the
equipage made a wide turn, and the lights of the Palace were left
behind.
Evelyn lodged in a house upon the outskirts of the town, but from the
Palace to Mistress Stagg’s was hardly more than a stone’s throw. Not
until the coach was drawing near the small white house did either of
the women speak. Then Audrey broke into an inarticulate murmur, and
stooping would have pressed her cheek against the hand that had clasped
hers only a little while before. But Evelyn snatched her hand away,
and with a gesture of passionate repulsion shrank into her corner of
the coach. “Oh, how dare you touch me!” she cried. “How dare you look
at me, you serpent that have stung me so!” Able to endure no longer,
she suddenly gave way to angry laughter. “Do you think I did it for
you,--put such humiliation upon myself for you? Why, you wanton, I
care not if you stand in white at every church door in Virginia! It
was for him, for Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View, for whose name
and fame, if he cares not for them himself, his friends have yet some
care!” The coach stopped, and the footman opened the door. “Descend,
if you please,” went on Evelyn clearly and coldly. “You have had your
triumph. I say not there is no excuse for him,--you are very beautiful.
Good-night.”
Audrey stood between the lilac bushes and watched the coach turn from
Palace into Duke of Gloucester Street; then went and knocked at the
green door. It was opened by Mistress Stagg in person, who drew her
into the parlor, where the good-natured woman had been sitting all
alone, and in increasing alarm as to what might be the outcome of this
whim of Mr. Marmaduke Haward’s. Now she was full of inquiries, ready to
admire and to nod approval, or to shake her head and cry, “I told you
so!” according to the turn of the girl’s recital.
But Audrey had little to say, little to tell. Yes, oh yes, it had been
a very grand sight.... Yes, Mr. Haward was kind; he had always been
kind to her.... She had come home with Mistress Evelyn Byrd in her
coach.... Might she go now to her room? She would fold the dress very
carefully.
Mistress Stagg let her go, for indeed there was no purpose to be served
in keeping her, seeing that the girl was clearly dazed, spoke without
knowing what she said, and stood astare like one of Mrs. Salmon’s
beautiful was ladies. She would hear all about it in the morning, when
the child had slept off her excitement. They at the Palace couldn’t
have taken her presence much amiss, or she would never in the world
have come home in the Westover coach.