AMOR VINCIT
By now it was early spring in Virginia, and a time of balm and
pleasantness. The season had not entered into its complete heritage of
gay hues, sweet odors, song, and wealth of bliss. Its birthday robe was
yet a-weaving, its coronal of blossoms yet folded buds, its choristers
not ready with their fullest pæans. But everywhere was earnest of
future riches. In the forest the bloodroot was in flower, and the
bluebird and the redbird flashed from the maple that was touched with
fire to the beech just lifted from a pale green fountain. In Mistress
Stagg’s garden daffodils bloomed, and dim blue hyacinths made sweet
places in the grass. The sun lay warm upon upturned earth, blackbirds
rose in squadrons and darkened the yet leafless trees, and every wind
brought rumors of the heyday toward which the earth was spinning. The
days were long and sweet; at night a moon came up, and between it and
the earth played soft and vernal airs. Then a pale light flooded the
garden, the shells bordering its paths gleamed like threaded pearls,
and the house showed whiter than a marble sepulchre. Mild incense, cool
winds, were there, but quiet came fitfully between the bursts of noise
from the lit theatre.
On such a night as this Audrey, clothed in red silk, with a band of
false jewels about her shadowy hair, slipped through the stage door
into the garden, and moved across it to the small white house and rest.
Her part in the play was done; for all their storming she would not
stay. Silence and herself alone, and the mirror in her room; then,
sitting before the glass, to see in it darkly the woman whom she
had left dead upon the boards yonder,--no, not yonder, but in a far
country, and a fair and great city. Love! love! and death for love! and
her own face in the mirror gazing at her with eyes of that long-dead
Greek. It was the exaltation and the dream, mournful, yet not without
its luxury, that ended her every day. When the candle burned low, when
the face looked but dimly from the glass, then would she rise and
quench the flame, and lay herself down to sleep, with the moonlight
upon her crossed hands and quiet brow.
* * * * *
She passed through the grape arbor, and opened the door at which Haward
had knocked that September night of the Governor’s ball. She was in
Mistress Stagg’s long room; at that hour it should have been lit only
by a dying fire and a solitary candle. Now the fire was low enough,
but the room seemed aflare with myrtle tapers. Audrey, coming from the
dimness without, shaded her eyes with her hand. The heavy door shut to
behind her; unseeing still she moved toward the fire, but in a moment
let fall her hand and began to wonder at the unwonted lights. Mistress
Stagg was yet in the playhouse; who then had lit these candles? She
turned, and saw Haward standing with folded arms between her and the
door.
The silence was long. He was Marmaduke Haward with all his powers
gathered, calm, determined, so desperate to have done with this thing,
to at once and forever gain his own and master fate, that his stillness
was that of deepest waters, his cool equanimity that of the gamester
who knows how will fall the loaded dice. Dressed with his accustomed
care, very pale, composed and quiet, he faced her whose spirit yet
lingered in a far city, who in the dreamy exaltation of this midnight
hour was ever half Audrey of the garden, half that other woman in a
dress of red silk, with jewels in her hair, who, love’s martyr, had
exulted, given all, and died.
“How did you come here?” she breathed at last. “You said that you would
come never again.”
“After to-night, never again,” he answered. “But now, Audrey, this once
again, this once again!”
Gazing past him she made a movement toward the door. He shook his head.
“This is my hour, Audrey. You may not leave the room, nor will Mistress
Stagg enter it. I will not touch you, I will come no nearer to you.
Stand there in silence, if you choose, or cover the sight of me from
your eyes, while for my own ease, my own unhappiness, I say farewell.”
“Farewell!” she echoed. “Long ago, at Westover, that was said between
you and me.... Why do you come like a ghost to keep me and peace apart?”
He did not answer, and she locked her hands across her brow that burned
beneath the heavy circlet of mock gems. “Is it kind?” she demanded,
with a sob in her voice. “Is it kind to trouble me so, to keep me
here”--
“Was I ever kind?” he asked. “Since the night when I followed you, a
child, and caught you from the ground when you fell between the corn
rows, what kindness, Audrey?”
“None!” she answered, with sudden passion. “Nor kindness then! Why went
you not some other way?”
“Shall I tell you why I was there that night,--why I left my companions
and came riding back to the cabin in the valley?”
She uncovered her eyes, “I thought--I thought then--that you were
sent”--
He looked at her with strange compassion. “My own will sent me....
When, that sunny afternoon, we spurred from the valley toward the
higher mountains, we left behind us a forest flower, a young girl of
simple sweetness, with long dark hair,--like yours, Audrey.... It was
to pluck that flower that I deserted the expedition, that I went back
to the valley between the hills.”
Her eyes dilated, and her hands very slowly rose to press her temples,
to make a shadow from which she might face the cup of trembling he was
pouring for her.
“_Molly!_” she said, beneath her breath.
He nodded. “Well, Death had gathered the flower.... Accident threw
across my path a tinier blossom, a helpless child. Save you then, care
for you then, I must, or I had been not man, but monster. Did I care
for you tenderly, Audrey? Did I make you love me with all your childish
heart? Did I become to you father and mother and sister and fairy
prince? Then what were you to me in those old days? A child fanciful
and charming, too fine in all her moods not to breed wonder, to give
the feeling that Nature had placed in that mountain cabin a changeling
of her own. A child that one must regard with fondness and some
pity,--what is called a dear child. Moreover, a child whose life I had
saved, and to whom it pleased me to play Providence. I was young, not
hard of heart, sedulous to fold back to the uttermost the roseleaves of
every delicate and poetic emotion, magnificently generous also, and set
to play my life _au grand seigneur_. To myself assume a responsibility
which with all ease might have been transferred to an Orphan Court,
to put my stamp upon your life to come, to watch you kneel and drink
of my fountain of generosity, to open my hand and with an indulgent
smile shower down upon you the coin of pleasure and advantage,--why,
what a tribute was this to my own sovereignty, what subtle flattery of
self-love, what delicate taste of power! Well, I kissed you good-by,
and unclasped your hands from my neck, chided you, laughed at you,
fondled you, promised all manner of pretty things and engaged you never
to forget me--and sailed away upon the Golden Rose to meet my crowded
years with their wine and roses, upas shadows and apples of Sodom. How
long before I forgot you, Audrey? A year and a day, perhaps. I protest
that I cannot remember exactly.”
He slightly changed his position, but came no nearer to her. It was
growing quiet in the street beyond the curtained windows. One window
was bare, but it gave only upon an unused nook of the garden where were
merely the moonlight and some tall leafless bushes.
“I came back to Virginia,” he said, “and I looked for and found you
in the heart of a flowering wood.... All that you imagined me to be,
Audrey, that was I not. Knight-errant, paladin, king among men,--what
irony, child, in that strange dream and infatuation of thine! I was--I
am--of my time and of myself, and he whom that day you thought me had
not then nor afterwards form or being. I wish you to be perfect in this
lesson, Audrey. Are you so?”
“Yes,” she sighed. Her hands had fallen; she was looking at him with
slowly parting lips, and a strange expression in her eyes.
He went on quietly as before, every feature controlled to impassivity
and his arms lightly folded: “That is well. Between the day when I
found you again and a night in the Palace yonder lies a summer,--a
summer! To me all the summers that ever I had or will have,--ten
thousand summers! Now tell me how I did in this wonderful summer.”
“Ignobly,” she answered.
He bowed his head gravely. “Ay, Audrey, it is a good word.” With a
quick sigh he left his place, and walking to the uncurtained window
stood there looking out upon the strip of moonlight and the screen of
bushes; but when he turned again to the room his face and bearing were
as impressive as before in their fine, still gravity, their repose of
determination. “And that evening by the river when you fled from me to
Hugon”--
“I had awaked,” she said, in a low voice. “You were to me a stranger,
and I feared you.”
“And at Westover?”
“A stranger.”
“Here in Williamsburgh, when by dint of much striving I saw you, when
I wrote to you, when at last you sent me that letter, that piteous and
cruel letter, Audrey?”
For one moment her dark eyes met his, then fell to her clasped hands.
“A stranger,” she said.
“The letter was many weeks ago. I have been alone with my thoughts at
Fair View. And to-night, Audrey?”
“A stranger,” she would have answered, but her voice broke. There were
shadows under her eyes; her lifted face had in it a strained, intent
expectancy as though she saw or heard one coming.
“A stranger,” he acquiesced. “A foreigner in your world of dreams and
shadows. No prince, Audrey, or great white knight and hero. Only a
gentleman of these latter days, compact like his fellows of strength
and weakness; now very wise and now the mere finger-post of folly; set
to travel his own path; able to hear above him in the rarer air the
trumpet call, but choosing to loiter on the lower slopes. In addition
a man who loves at last, loves greatly, with a passion that shall
ennoble. A stranger and your lover, Audrey, come to say farewell.”
Her voice came like an echo, plaintive and clear and from far away:
“Farewell.”
“How steadily do I stand here to say farewell!” he said. “Yet I am
eaten of my passion. A fire burns me, a voice within me ever cries
aloud. I am whirled in a resistless wind.... Ah, my love, the garden at
Fair View! The folded rose that will never bloom, the dial where linger
the heavy hours, the heavy, heavy, heavy hours!”
“The garden,” she whispered. “I smell the box.... The path was all in
sunshine. So quiet, so hushed.... I went a little farther, and I heard
your voice where you sat and read--and read of Eloïsa.... _Oh, Evelyn,
Evelyn!_”
“The last time--the last farewell!” he said. “When the Golden Rose is
far at sea, when the winds blow, when the stars drift below the verge,
when the sea speaks, then may I forget you, may the vision of you pass!
Now at Fair View it passes not; it dwells. Night and day I behold you,
the woman that I love, the woman that I love in vain!”
“The Golden Rose!” she answered. “The sea.... Alas!”
Her voice had risen into a cry. The walls of the room were gone, the
air pressed upon her heavily, the lights wavered, the waters were
passing over her as they had passed that night of the witch’s hut.
How far away the bank upon which he stood! He spoke to her, and his
voice came faintly as from that distant shore or from the deck of a
swiftly passing ship. “And so it is good-by, sweetheart; for why should
I stay in Virginia? Ah, if you loved me, Audrey! But since it is not
so--Good-by, good-by. This time I’ll not forget you, but I will not
come again. Good-by!”
Her lips moved, but there came no words. A light had dawned upon her
face, her hand was lifted as though to stay a sound of music. Suddenly
she turned toward him, swayed, and would have fallen but that his arm
caught and upheld her. Her head was thrown back; the soft masses of her
wonderful hair brushed his cheek and shoulder; her eyes looked past
him, and a smile, pure and exquisite past expression, just redeemed her
face from sadness. “Good-morrow, Love!” she said clearly and sweetly.
At the sound of her own words came to her the full realization and
understanding of herself. With a cry she freed herself from his
supporting arm, stepped backward and looked at him. The color surged
over her face and throat, her eyelids drooped; while her name was
yet upon his lips she answered with a broken cry of ecstasy and
abandonment. A moment and she was in his arms and their lips had met.
How quiet it was in the long room, where the myrtle candles gave out
their faint perfume and the low fire leaped upon the hearth! Thus for
a time; then, growing faint with her happiness, she put up protesting
hands. He made her sit in the great chair, and knelt before her, all
youth and fire, handsome, ardent, transfigured by his passion into such
a lover as a queen might desire.
“Hail, Sultana!” he said, smiling, his eyes upon her diadem. “Now you
are Arpasia again, and I am Moneses, and ready, ah, most ready, to die
for you.”
She also smiled. “Remember that I am to quickly follow you.”
“When shall we marry?” he demanded. “The garden cries out for you, my
love, and I wish to hear your footstep in my house. It hath been a
dreary house, filled with shadows, haunted by keen longings and vain
regrets. Now the windows shall be flung wide and the sunshine shall
pour in. Oh, your voice singing through the rooms, your foot upon the
stairs!” He took her hands and put them to his lips. “I love as men
loved of old,” he said. “I am far from myself and my times. When will
you become my wife?”
She answered him simply, like the child that at times she seemed: “When
you will. But I must be Arpasia again to-morrow night. The Governor
hath ordered the play repeated, and Margery Linn could not learn my
part in time.”
He laughed, fingering the red silk of her hanging sleeve, feasting
his eyes upon her dark beauty, so heightened and deepened in the year
that had passed. “Then play to them--and to me who shall watch you
well--to-morrow night. But after that to them never again! only to me,
Audrey, to me when we walk in the garden at home, when we sit in the
book-room and the candles are lighted. That day in May when first you
came into my garden, when first I showed you my house, when first I
rowed you home with the sunshine on the water and the roses in your
hair! Love, love! do you remember?”
“Remember?” she answered, in a thrilling voice. “When I am dead I shall
yet remember! And I will come when you want me. After to-morrow night
I will come.... Oh, cannot you hear the river? And the walls of the
box will be freshly green, and the fruit-trees all in bloom! The white
leaves drift down upon the bench beneath the cherry-tree.... I will sit
in the grass at your feet. Oh, I love you, have loved you long!”
They had risen and now with her head upon his breast and his arm about
her, they stood in the heart of the soft radiance of many candles. His
face was bowed upon the dark wonder of her hair; when at last he lifted
his eyes, they chanced to fall upon the one uncurtained window. Audrey,
feeling his slight, quickly controlled start, turned within his arm and
also saw the face of Jean Hugon, pressed against the glass, staring in
upon them.
Before Haward could reach the window the face was gone. A strip
of moonlight, some leafless bushes, beyond, the blank wall of the
theatre,--that was all. Raising the sash, Haward leaned forth until he
could see the garden at large. Moonlight still and cold, winding paths,
and shadows of tree and shrub and vine, but no sign of living creature.
He closed the window and drew the curtain across, then turned again to
Audrey. “A phantom of the night,” he said, and laughed.
She was standing in the centre of the room, with her red dress gleaming
in the candlelight. Her brow beneath its mock crown had no lines of
care, and her wonderful eyes smiled upon him. “I have no fear of it,”
she answered. “That is strange, is it not, when I have feared it for so
long? I have no other fear to-night than that I shall outlive your love
for me.”
“I will love you until the stars fall,” he said.
“They are falling to-night. When you are without the door look up, and
you may see one pass swiftly down the sky. Once I watched them from the
dark river”--
“I will love you until the sun grows old,” he said. “Through life and
death, through heaven or hell, past the beating of my heart, while
lasts my soul!... Audrey, Audrey!”
“If it is so,” she answered, “then all is well. Now kiss me good-night,
for I hear Mistress Stagg’s voice. You will come again to-morrow? And
to-morrow night,--oh, to-morrow night I shall see only you, think of
only you while I play! Good-night, good-night.”
They kissed and parted, and Haward, a happy man, went with raised face
through the stillness and the moonlight to his lodging at Marot’s
ordinary. No phantoms of the night disturbed him. He had found the
philosopher’s stone, had drunk of the divine elixir. Life was at last
a thing much to be desired, and the Giver of life was good, and the
_summum bonum_ was deathless love.