AUDREY AWAKES
There had lately come to Virginia, and to the convention of its clergy
at Williamsburgh, one Mr. Eliot, a minister after the heart of a large
number of sober and godly men whose reputation as a body suffered at
the hands of Mr. Darden, of Fair View parish, Mr. Bailey, of Newport,
Mr. Worden, of Lawn’s Creek, and a few kindred spirits. Certainly Mr.
Eliot was not like these; so erect, indeed, did he hold himself in
the strait and narrow path that his most admiring brethren, being,
as became good Virginians, somewhat easy-going in their saintliness,
were inclined to think that he leaned too far the other way. It was
commendable to hate sin and reprove the sinner; but when it came to
raining condemnation upon horse-racing, dancing, Cato at the playhouse,
and like innocent diversions, Mr. Eliot was surely somewhat out of
bounds. The most part accounted for his turn of mind by the fact that
ere he came to Virginia he had been a sojourner in New England.
He was mighty in the pulpit, was Mr. Eliot; no droning reader of last
year’s sermons, but a thunderer forth of speech that was now acrid,
now fiery, but that always came from an impassioned nature, vehement
for the damnation of those whom God so strangely spared. When, as had
perforce happened during the past week, he must sit with his brethren
in the congregation and listen to lukewarm--nay, to dead and cold
adjurations and expoundings, his very soul itched to mount the pulpit
stairs, thrust down the Laodicean that chanced to occupy it, and
himself awaken as with the sound of a trumpet this people who slept
upon the verge of a precipice, between hell that gaped below and God
who sat on high, serenely regardful of his creatures’ plight. Though
so short a time in Virginia, he was already become a man of note, the
prophet not without honor, whom it was the fashion to admire, if not to
follow. It was therefore natural enough that the Commissary, himself a
man of plain speech from the pulpit, should appoint him to preach in
Bruton church this Sunday morning, before his Excellency the Governor,
the worshipful the Council, the clergy in convention, and as much of
Williamsburgh, gentle and simple, as could crowd into the church. Mr.
Eliot took the compliment as an answer to prayer, and chose for his
text Daniel fifth and twenty-seventh.
Lodging as he did on Palace Street, the early hours of the past night,
which he would have given to prayer and meditation, had been profaned
by strains of music from the Governor’s house, by laughter and swearing
and much going to and fro in the street beneath his window. These
disturbances filling him with righteous wrath, he came down to his
breakfast next morning prepared to give his hostess, who kept him
company at table, line and verse which should demonstrate that Jehovah
shared his anger.
“Ay, sir!” she cried. “And if that were all, sir”--and straightway she
embarked upon a colored narration of the occurrence at the Governor’s
ball. This was followed by a wonderfully circumstantial account of Mr.
Marmaduke Haward’s sins of omission against old and new acquaintances
who would have entertained him at their houses, and been entertained in
turn at Fair View, and by as detailed a description of the toils that
had been laid for him by that audacious piece who had forced herself
upon the company last night.
Mr. Eliot listened aghast, and mentally amended his sermon. If he knew
Virginia, even so flagrant a case as this might never come before a
vestry. Should this woman go unreproved? When in due time he was in
the church, and the congregation was gathering, he beckoned to him one
of the sidesmen, asked a question, and when it was answered, looked
fixedly at a dark girl sitting far away in a pew beneath the gallery.
It was a fine, sunny morning, with a tang of autumn in the air, and
the concourse within the church was very great. The clergy showed like
a wedge of black driven into the bright colors with which nave and
transept overflowed. His Excellency the Governor sat in state, with
the Council on either hand. One member of that body was not present.
Well-nigh all Williamsburgh knew by now that Mr. Marmaduke Haward
lay at Marot’s ordinary, ill of a raging fever. Hooped petticoat and
fragrant bodice found reason for whispering to laced coat and periwig;
significant glances traveled from every quarter of the building toward
the tall pew where, collected but somewhat palely smiling, sat Mistress
Evelyn Byrd beside her father. All this was before the sermon. When the
minister of the day mounted the pulpit, and, gaunt against the great
black sounding-board, gave out his text in a solemn and ringing voice,
such was the genuine power of the man that every face was turned toward
him, and throughout the building there fell a sudden hush.
Audrey looked with the rest, but she could not have said that she
listened,--not at first. She was there because she always went to
church on Sunday. It had not occurred to her to ask that she might stay
at home. She had come from her room that morning with the same still
face, the same strained and startled look about the eyes, that she had
carried to it the night before. Black Peggy, who found her bed unslept
in, thought that she must have sat the night through beside the window.
Mistress Stagg, meeting her at the stairfoot with the tidings (just
gathered from the lips of a passer-by) of Mr. Haward’s illness, thought
that the girl took the news very quietly. She made no exclamation,
said nothing good or bad; only drew her hand across her brow and eyes,
as though she strove to thrust away a veil or mist that troubled her.
This gesture she repeated now and again during the hour before church
time. Mistress Stagg heard no more of the ball this morning than she
had heard the night before. Something ailed the girl. She was not
sullen, but she could not or would not talk. Perhaps, despite the fact
of the Westover coach, she had not been kindly used at the Palace.
The ex-actress pursed her lips, and confided to her Mirabell that
times were not what they once were. Had she not, at Bath, been given a
ticket to the Saturday ball by my Lord Squander himself? Ay, and she
had footed it, too, in the country dance, with the best of them, with
captains and French counts and gentlemen and ladies of title,--ay, and
had gone down the middle with, the very pattern of Sir Harry Wildair!
To be sure, no one had ever breathed a word against her character; but,
for her part, she believed no great harm of Audrey, either. Look at the
girl’s eyes, now: they were like a child’s or a saint’s.
Mirabell nodded and looked wise, but said nothing.
When the church bells rang Audrey was ready, and she walked to church
with Mistress Stagg much as, the night before, she had walked between
the lilacs to the green door when the Westover coach had passed from
her sight. Now she sat in the church much as she had sat at the window
the night through. She did not know that people were staring at her;
nor had she caught the venomous glance of Mistress Deborah, already in
the pew, and aware of more than had come to her friend’s ears.
Audrey was not listening, was scarcely thinking. Her hands were crossed
in her lap, and now and then she raised one and made the motion of
pushing aside from her eyes something heavy that clung and blinded.
What part of her spirit that was not wholly darkened and folded within
itself was back in the mountains of her childhood, with those of her
own blood whom she had loved and lost. What use to try to understand
to-day,--to-day with its falling skies, its bewildered pondering over
the words that were said to her last night? And the morrow,--she must
leave that. Perhaps when it should dawn he would come to her, and call
her “little maid,” and laugh at her dreadful dream. But now, while it
was to-day, she could not think of him without an agony of pain and
bewilderment. He was ill, too, and suffering. Oh, she must leave the
thought of him alone! Back then to the long yesterdays she traveled,
and played quietly, dreamily, with Robin on the green grass beside the
shining stream, or sat on the doorstep, her head on Molly’s lap, and
watched the evening star behind the Endless Mountains.
It was very quiet in the church save for that one great voice speaking.
Little by little the voice impressed itself upon her consciousness.
The eyes of her mind were upon long ranges of mountains distinct
against the splendor of a sunset sky. Last seen in childhood, viewed
now through the illusion of the years, the mountains were vastly
higher than nature had planned them; the streamers of light shot to
the zenith; the black forests were still; everywhere a fixed glory, a
gigantic silence, a holding of the breath for things to happen.
By degrees the voice in her ears fitted in with the landscape, became,
so solemn and ringing it was, like the voice of the archangel of that
sunset land. Audrey listened at last; and suddenly the mountains were
gone, and the light from the sky, and her people were dead and dust
away in that hidden valley, and she was sitting in the church at
Williamsburgh, alone, without a friend.
What was the preacher saying? What ball of the night before was he
describing with bitter power, the while he gave warning of handwriting
upon the wall such as had menaced Belshazzar’s feast of old? Of what
shameless girl was he telling,--what creature dressed in silks that
should have gone in rags, brought to that ball by her paramour--
The gaunt figure in the pulpit trembled like a leaf with the passion
of the preacher’s convictions and the energy of his utterance. On
had gone the stream of rhetoric, the denunciations, the satire, the
tremendous assertions of God’s mind and purposes. The lash that was
wielded was far-reaching; all the vices of the age--irreligion,
blasphemy, drunkenness, extravagance, vainglory, loose living--fell
under its sting. The condemnation was general, and each man looked to
see his neighbor wince. The occurrence at the ball last night,--he was
on that for final theme, was he? There was a slight movement throughout
the congregation. Some glanced to where would have sat Mr. Marmaduke
Haward, had not the gentleman been at present in his bed, raving now
of a great run of luck at the Cocoa Tree; now of an Indian who, with
his knee upon his breast, was throttling him to death. Others looked
over their shoulders to see if that gypsy yet sat beneath the gallery.
Colonel Byrd took out his snuffbox and studied the picture on the lid,
while his daughter sat like a carven lady, with a slight smile upon her
lips.
On went the word picture that showed how vice could flaunt it in so
fallen an age. The preacher spared not plain words, squarely turned
himself toward the gallery, pointed out with voice and hand the object
of his censure and of God’s wrath. Had the law pilloried the girl
before them all, it had been but little worse for her. She sat like a
statue, staring with wide eyes at the window above the altar. This,
then, was what the words in the coach last night had meant--this was
what the princess thought--this was what his world thought--
There arose a commotion in the ranks of the clergy of Virginia. The
Reverend Gideon Darden, quitting with an oath the company of his
brethren, came down the aisle, and, pushing past his wife, took his
stand in the pew beside the orphan who had lived beneath his roof, whom
during many years he had cursed upon occasion and sometimes struck, and
whom he had latterly made his tool, “Never mind him, Audrey, my girl,”
he said, and put an unsteady hand upon her shoulder. “You’re a good
child; they cannot harm ye.”
He turned his great shambling body and heavy face toward the
preacher, stemmed in the full tide of his eloquence by this unseemly
interruption, “Ye beggarly Scot!” he exclaimed thickly. “Ye
evil-thinking saint from Salem way, that know the very lining of the
Lord’s mind, and yet, walking through his earth, see but a poisonous
weed in his every harmless flower! Shame on you to beat down the flower
that never did you harm! The girl’s as innocent a thing as lives! Ay,
I’ve had my dram,--the more shame to you that are justly rebuked out of
the mouth of a drunken man! I have done, Mr. Commissary,” addressing
himself to that dignitary, who had advanced to the altar rail with his
arm raised in a command for silence. “I’ve no child of my own, thank
God! but the maid has grown up in my house, and I’ll not sit to hear
her belied. I’ve heard of last night; ’twas the mad whim of a sick man.
The girl’s as guiltless of wrong as any lady here. I, Gideon Darden,
vouch for it!”
He sat heavily down beside Audrey, who never stirred from her still
regard of that high window. There was a moment of portentous silence;
then, “Let us pray,” said the minister from the pulpit.
Audrey knelt with the rest, but she did not pray. And when it was
all over, and the benediction had been given, and she found herself
without the church, she looked at the green trees against the clear
autumnal skies and at the graves in the churchyard as though it were a
new world into which she had stepped. She could not have said that she
found it fair. Her place had been so near the door that well-nigh all
the congregation was behind her, streaming out of the church, eager
to reach the open air, where it might discuss the sermon, the futile
and scandalous interruption by the notorious Mr. Darden, and what Mr.
Marmaduke Haward might have said or done had he been present.
Only Mistress Stagg kept beside her; for Mistress Deborah hung back,
unwilling to be seen in her company, and Darden, from that momentary
awakening of his better nature, had sunk to himself again, and thought
not how else he might aid this wounded member of his household. But
Mary Stagg was a kindly soul, whose heart had led her comfortably
through life with very little appeal to her head. The two or three
young women--Oldfields and Porters of the Virginian stage--who were
under indentures to her husband and herself found her as much their
friend as mistress. Their triumphs in the petty playhouse of this town
of a thousand souls were hers, and what woes they had came quickly to
her ears. Now she would have slipped her hand into Audrey’s and have
given garrulous comfort, as the two passed alone through the churchyard
gate and took their way up Palace Street toward the small white house.
But Audrey gave not her hand, did not answer, made no moan, neither
justified herself nor blamed another. She did not speak at all, but
after the first glance about her moved like a sleepwalker.
When the house was reached she went up to the bedroom. Mistress
Deborah, entering stormily ten minutes later, found herself face to
face with a strange Audrey, who, standing in the middle of the floor,
raised her hand for silence in a gesture so commanding that the virago
stayed her tirade, and stood open-mouthed.
“I wish to speak,” said the new Audrey. “I was waiting for you. There’s
a question I wish to ask, and I’ll ask it of you who were never kind to
me.”
“Never kind to her!” cried the minister’s wife to the four walls. “And
she’s been taught, and pampered, and treated more like a daughter than
the beggar wench she is! And this is my return,--to sit by her in
church to-day, and have all Virginia think her belonging to me”--
“I belong to no one,” said Audrey. “Even God does not want me. Be quiet
until I have done.” She made again the gesture of pushing aside from
face and eyes the mist that clung and blinded. “I know now what they
say,” she went on. “The preacher told me awhile ago. Last night a lady
spoke to me: now I know what was her meaning. Because Mr. Haward, who
saved my life, who brought me from the mountains, who left me, when he
sailed away, where he thought I would be happy, was kind to me when he
came again after so many years; because he has often been to the glebe
house, and I to Fair View; because last night he would have me go with
him to the Governor’s ball, they think--they say out loud for all the
people to hear--that I--that I am like Joan, who was whipped last month
at the Court House. But it is not of the lies they tell that I wish to
speak.”
Her hand went again to her forehead, then dropped at her side. A look
of fear and of piteous appeal came into her face. “The witch said that
I dreamed, and that it was not well for dreamers to awaken.” Suddenly
the quiet of her voice and bearing was broken. With a cry, she hurried
across the room, and, kneeling, caught at the other’s gown. “Ah! that
is no dream, is it? No dream that he is my friend, only my friend who
has always been sorry for me, has always helped me! He is the noblest
gentleman, the truest, the best--he loves the lady at Westover--they
are to be married--he never knew what people were saying--he was not
himself when he spoke to me so last night”--Her eyes appealed to the
face above her. “I could never have dreamed all this,” she said. “Tell
me that I was awake!”
The minister’s wife looked down upon her with a bitter smile. “So
you’ve had your fool’s paradise? Well, once I had mine, though ’twas
not your kind. ’Tis a pretty country, Audrey, but it’s not long before
they turn you out.” She laughed somewhat drearily, then in a moment
turned shrew again. “He never knew what people were saying?” she cried.
“You little fool, do you suppose he cared? ’Twas you that played your
cards all wrong with your Governor’s ball last night!--setting up for a
lady, forsooth!--bringing all the town about your ears! You might have
known that he would never have taken you there in his senses. At Fair
View things went very well. He was entertained,--and I meant to see
that no harm came of it,--and Darden got his support in the vestry. For
he was bit,--there’s no doubt of that,--though what he ever saw in you
more than big eyes and a brown skin, the Lord knows, not I! Only your
friend!--a fine gentleman just from London, with a whole Canterbury
book of stories about his life there, to spend a’most a summer on the
road between his plantation and a wretched glebe house because he was
only your friend, and had saved you from the Indians when you were a
child, and wished to be kind to you still! I’ll tell you who did wish
to be kind to you, and that was Jean Hugon, the trader, who wanted to
marry you.”
Audrey rose to her feet, and moved slowly backward to the wall.
Mistress Deborah went shrilly on: “I dare swear you believe that Mr.
Haward had you in mind all the years he was gone from Virginia? Well,
he didn’t. He puts you with Darden and me, and he says, ‘There’s the
strip of Oronoko down by the swamp,--I’ve told my agent that you’re to
have from it so many pounds a year;’ and he sails away to London and
all the fine things there, and never thinks of you more until he comes
back to Virginia and sees you last May Day at Jamestown. Next morning
he comes riding to the glebe house. ‘And so,’ he says to Darden, ‘and
so my little maid that I brought for trophy out of the Appalachian
Mountains is a woman grown? Faith, I’d quite forgot the child; but
Saunderson tells me that you have not forgot to draw upon my Oronoko.’
That’s all the remembrance you were held in, Audrey.”
She paused to take breath, and to look with shrewish triumph at the
girl who leaned against the wall. “I like not waking up,” said Audrey
to herself. “It were easier to die. Perhaps I am dying.”
“And then out he walks to find and talk to you, and in sets your pretty
summer of all play and no work!” went on the other, in a high voice.
“Oh, there was kindness enough, once you had caught his fancy! I wonder
if the lady at Westover praised his kindness? They say she is a proud
young lady: I wonder if she liked your being at the ball last night?
When she comes to Fair View, I’ll take my oath that you’ll walk no more
in its garden! But perhaps she won’t come now,--though her maid Chloe
told Mistress Bray’s Martha that she certainly loves him”--
“I wish I were dead,” said Audrey. “I wish I were dead, like Molly.”
She stood up straight against the wall, and pushed her heavy hair from
her forehead. “Be quiet now,” she said. “You see that I am awake; there
is no need for further calling. I shall not dream again.” She looked at
the older woman doubtfully. “Would you mind,” she suggested,--“would
you be so very kind as to leave me alone, to sit here awake for a
while? I have to get used to it, you know. To-morrow, when we go back
to the glebe house, I will work the harder. It must be easy to work
when one is awake. Dreaming takes so much time.”
Mistress Deborah could hardly have told why she did as she was asked.
Perhaps the very strangeness of the girl made her uncomfortable in
her presence; perhaps in her sour and withered heart there was yet
some little soundness of pity and comprehension; or perhaps it was
only that she had said her say, and was anxious to get to her friends
below, and shake from her soul the dust of any possible complicity with
circumstance in moulding the destinies of Darden’s Audrey. Be that as
it may, when she had flung her hood upon the bed and had looked at
herself in the cracked glass above the dresser, she went out of the
room, and closed the door somewhat softly behind her.