Audrey
CHAPTER XII
THE PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN
June came to tide-water Virginia with long, warm days and with the odor of
many roses. Day by day the cloudless sunshine visited the land: night by
night the large pale stars looked into its waters. It was a slumberous
land, of many creeks and rivers that were wide, slow, and deep, of tobacco
fields and lofty, solemn forests, of vague marshes, of white mists, of a
haze of heat far and near. The moon of blossoms was past, and the red
men—few in number now—had returned from their hunting, and lay in the
shade of the trees in the villages that the English had left them, while
the women brought them fish from the weirs, and strawberries from the
vines that carpeted every poisoned field or neglected clearing. The black
men toiled amidst the tobacco and the maize; at noontide it was as hot in
the fields as in the middle passage, and the voices of those who sang over
their work fell to a dull crooning. The white men who were bound served
listlessly; they that were well were as lazy as the weather; they that
were newly come over and ill with the "seasoning" fever tossed upon their
pallets, longing for the cooling waters of home. The white men who were
free swore that the world, though fair, was warm, and none walked if he
could ride. The sunny, dusty roads were left for shadowed bridle paths;
in a land where most places could be reached by boat, the water would
have been the highway but that the languid air would not fill the sails.
It was agreed that the heat was unnatural, and that, likely enough, there
would be a deal of fever during the summer.
But there was thick shade in the Fair View garden, and when there was air
at all it visited the terrace above the river. The rooms of the house were
large and high-pitched; draw to the shutters, and they became as cool as
caverns. Around the place the heat lay in wait: heat of wide, shadowless
fields, where Haward's slaves toiled from morn to eve; heat of the great
river, unstirred by any wind, hot and sleeping beneath the blazing sun;
heat of sluggish creeks and of the marshes, shadeless as the fields. Once
reach the mighty trees drawn like a cordon around house and garden, and
there was escape.
To and fro and up and down in the house went the erst waiting-woman to my
Lady Squander, carrying matters with a high hand. The negresses who worked
under her eye found her a hard taskmistress. Was a room clean to-day,
to-morrow it was found that there was dust upon the polished floor, finger
marks on the paneled walls. The same furniture must be placed now in this
room, now in that; china slowly washed and bestowed in one closet
transferred to another; an eternity spent upon the household linen,
another on the sewing and resewing, the hanging and rehanging, of damask
curtains. The slaves, silent when the greenish eyes and tight, vixenish
face were by, chattered, laughed, and sung when they were left alone. If
they fell idle, and little was done of a morning, they went unrebuked;
thoroughness, and not haste, appearing to be Mistress Deborah's motto.
The master of Fair View found it too noisy in his house to sit therein,
and too warm to ride abroad. There were left the seat built round the
cherry-tree in the garden, the long, cool box walk, and the terrace with a
summer-house at either end. It was pleasant to read out of doors, pacing
the box walk, or sitting beneath the cherry-tree, with the ripening fruit
overhead. If the book was long in reading, if morning by morning Haward's
finger slipped easily in between the selfsame leaves, perhaps it was the
fault of poet or philosopher. If Audrey's was the fault, she knew it not.
How could she know it, who knew herself, that she was a poor, humble maid,
whom out of pure charity and knightly tenderness for weak and sorrowful
things he long ago had saved, since then had maintained, now was kind to;
and knew him, that he was learned and great and good, the very perfect
gentle knight who, as he rode to win the princess, yet could stoop from
his saddle to raise and help the herd girl? She had found of late that she
was often wakeful of nights; when this happened, she lay and looked out of
her window at the stars and wondered about the princess. She was sure that
the princess and the lady who had given her the guinea were one.
In the great house she would have worked her fingers to the bone. Her
strong young arms lifted heavy weights; her quick feet ran up and down
stairs for this or that; she would have taken the waxed cloths from the
negroes, and upon her knees and with willing hands have made to shine like
mirrors the floors that were to be trodden by knight and princess. But
almost every morning, before she had worked an hour, Haward would call to
her from the box walk or the seat beneath the cherry-tree; and "Go,
child," would say Mistress Deborah, looking up from her task of the
moment.
The garden continued to be the enchanted garden. To gather its flowers,
red and white, to pace with him cool paved walks between walls of scented
box, to sit beside him beneath the cherry-tree or upon the grassy terrace,
looking out upon the wide, idle river,—it was dreamy bliss, a happiness
too rare to last. There was no harm; not that she ever dreamed there could
be. The house overlooked garden and terrace; the slaves passed and
repassed the open windows; Juba came and went; now and then Mistress
Deborah herself would sally forth to receive instructions concerning this
or that from the master of the house. And every day, at noon, the slaves
drew to all the shutters save those of the master's room, and the
minister's wife and ward made their curtsies and went home. The latter,
like a child, counted the hours upon the clock until the next morning; but
then she was not used to happiness, and the wine of it made her slightly
drunken.
The master of Fair View told himself that there was infection in this
lotus air of Virginia. A fever ran in his veins that made him languid of
will, somewhat sluggish of thought, willing to spend one day like another,
and all in a long dream. Sometimes, in the afternoons, when he was alone
in the garden or upon the terrace, with the house blank and silent behind
him, the slaves gone to the quarters, he tossed aside his book, and, with
his chin upon his hand and his eyes upon the sweep of the river, first
asked himself whither he was going, and then, finding no satisfactory
answer, fell to brooding. Once, going into the house, he chanced to come
upon his full-length reflection in a mirror newly hung, and stopped short
to gaze upon himself. The parlor of his lodgings at Williamsburgh and the
last time that he had seen Evelyn came to him, conjured up by the memory
of certain words of his own.
"A truer glass might show a shrunken figure," he repeated, and with a
quick and impatient sigh he looked at the image in the mirror.
To the eye, at least, the figure was not shrunken. It was that of a man
still young, and of a handsome face and much distinction of bearing. The
dress was perfect in its quiet elegance; the air of the man composed,—a
trifle sad, a trifle mocking. Haward snapped his fingers at the
reflection. "The portrait of a gentleman," he said, and passed on.
That night, in his own room, he took from an escritoire a picture of
Evelyn Byrd, done in miniature after a painting by a pupil of Kneller,
and, carrying it over to the light of the myrtle candles upon the table,
sat down and fell to studying it. After a while he let it drop from his
hand, and leaned back in his chair, thinking.
The night air, rising slightly, bent back the flame of the candles, around
which moths were fluttering, and caused strange shadows upon the walls.
They were thick about the curtained bed whereon had died the elder
Haward,—a proud man, choleric, and hard to turn from his purposes. Into
the mind of his son, sitting staring at these shadows, came the fantastic
notion that amongst them, angry and struggling vainly for speech, might be
his father's shade. The night was feverish, of a heat and lassitude to
foster grotesque and idle fancies. Haward smiled, and spoke aloud to his
imaginary ghost.
"You need not strive for speech," he said. "I know what you would say.
Was it for this I built this house, bought land and slaves?... Fair View
and Westover, Westover and Fair View. A lady that will not wed thee
because she loves thee! Zoons, Marmaduke! thou puttest me beside my
patience!... As for this other, set no nameless, barefoot wench where sat
thy mother! King Cophetua and the beggar maid, indeed! I warrant you
Cophetua was something under three-and-thirty!"
Haward ceased to speak for his father, and sighed for himself. "Moral:
Three-and-thirty must be wiser in his day and generation." He rose from
his chair, and began to walk the room. "If not Cophetua, what then,—what
then?" Passing the table, he took up the miniature again. "The villain of
the piece, I suppose, Evelyn?" he asked.
The pure and pensive face seemed to answer him. He put the picture hastily
down, and recommenced his pacing to and fro. From the garden below came
the heavy odor of lilies, and the whisper of the river tried the nerves.
Haward went to the window, and, leaning out, looked, as now each night he
looked, up and across the creek toward the minister's house. To-night
there was no light to mark it; it was late, and all the world without his
room was in darkness. He sat down in the window seat, looked out upon the
stars and listened to the river. An hour had passed before he turned back
to the room, where the candles had burned low. "I will go to Westover
to-morrow," he said. "God knows, I should be a villain"—
He locked the picture of Evelyn within his desk, drank his wine and water,
and went to bed, strongly resolved upon retreat. In the morning he said,
"I will go to Westover this afternoon;" and in the afternoon he said, "I
will go to-morrow." When the morrow came, he found that the house lacked
but one day of being finished, and that there was therefore no need for
him to go at all.
Mistress Deborah was loath, enough to take leave of damask and mirrors and
ornaments of china,—the latter fine enough and curious enough to remind
her of Lady Squander's own drawing-room; but the leaf of paper which
Haward wrote upon, tore from his pocket-book, and gave her provided
consolation. Her thanks were very glib, her curtsy was very deep. She was
his most obliged, humble servant, and if she could serve him again he
would make her proud. Would he not, now, some day, row up creek to their
poor house, and taste of her perry and Shrewsbury cakes? Audrey, standing
by, raised her eyes, and made of the request a royal invitation.
For a week or more Haward abode upon his plantation, alone save for his
servants and slaves. Each day he sent for the overseer, and listened
gravely while that worthy expounded to him all the details of the
condition and conduct of the estate; in the early morning and the late
afternoon he rode abroad through his fields and forests. Mill and ferry
and rolling house were visited, and the quarters made his acquaintance. At
the creek quarter and the distant ridge quarter were bestowed the newly
bought, the sullen and the refractory of his chattels. When, after sunset,
and the fields were silent, he rode past the cabins, coal-black figures,
new from the slave deck, still seamed at wrist and ankle, mowed and
jabbered at him from over their bowls of steaming food; others, who had
forgotten the jungle and the slaver, answered, when he spoke to them, in
strange English; others, born in Virginia, and remembering when he used to
ride that way with his father, laughed, called him "Marse Duke," and
agreed with him that the crop was looking mighty well. With the dark he
reached the great house, and negroes from the home quarter took—his
horse, while Juba lighted him through the echoing hall into the lonely
rooms.
From the white quarter he procured a facile lad who could read and write,
and who, through too much quickness of wit, had failed to prosper in
England. Him he installed as secretary, and forthwith began a
correspondence with friends in England, as well as a long poem which was
to serve the double purpose of giving Mr. Pope a rival and of occupying
the mind of Mr. Marmaduke Haward. The letters were witty and graceful, the
poem was the same; but on the third day the secretary, pausing for the
next word that should fall from his master's lips, waited so long that he
dropped asleep. When he awoke, Mr. Haward was slowly tearing into bits the
work that had been done on the poem. "It will have to wait upon my mood,"
he said. "Seal up the letter to Lord Hervey, boy, and then begone to the
fields. If I want you again, I will send for you."
The next day he proposed to himself to ride to Williamsburgh and see his
acquaintances there. But even as he crossed the room to strike the bell
for Juba a distaste for the town and its people came upon him. It occurred
to him that instead he might take the barge and be rowed up the river to
the Jaquelins' or to Green Spring; but in a moment this plan also became
repugnant. Finally he went out upon the terrace, and sat there the morning
through, staring at the river. That afternoon he sent a negro to the
store with a message for the storekeeper.
The Highlander, obeying the demand for his company,—the third or fourth
since his day at Williamsburgh,—came shortly before twilight to the great
house, and found the master thereof still upon the terrace, sitting
beneath an oak, with a small table and a bottle of wine beside him.
"Ha, Mr. MacLean!" he cried, as the other approached. "Some days have
passed since last we laid the ghosts! I had meant to sooner improve our
acquaintance. But my house has been in disorder, and I myself,"—he passed
his hand across his face as if to wipe away the expression into which it
had been set,—"I myself have been poor company. There is a witchery in
the air of this place. I am become but a dreamer of dreams."
As he spoke he motioned his guest to an empty chair, and began to pour
wine for them both. His hand was not quite steady, and there was about him
a restlessness of aspect most unnatural to the man. The storekeeper
thought him looking worn, and as though he had passed sleepless nights.
MacLean sat down, and drew his wineglass toward Mm. "It is the heat," he
said. "Last night, in the store, I felt that I was stifling; and I left
it, and lay on the bare ground without. A star shot down the sky, and I
wished that a wind as swift and strong would rise and sweep the land out
to sea. When the day comes that I die, I wish to die a fierce death. It is
best to die in battle, for then the mind is raised, and you taste all life
in the moment before you go. If a man achieves not that, then struggle
with earth or air or the waves of the sea is desirable. Driving sleet,
armies of the snow, night and trackless mountains, the leap of the
torrent, swollen lakes where kelpies lie in wait, wind on the sea with the
black reef and the charging breakers,—it is well to dash one's force
against the force of these, and to die after fighting. But in this cursed
land of warmth and ease a man dies like a dog that is old and hath lain
winter and summer upon the hearthstone." He drank his wine, and glanced
again at Haward. "I did not know that you were here," he said. "Saunderson
told me that you were going to Westover."
"I was,—I am," answered Haward briefly. Presently he roused himself from
the brown study into which he had fallen.
"'Tis the heat, as you say. It enervates. For my part, I am willing that
your wind should arise. But it will not blow to-night. There is not a
breath; the river is like glass." He raised the wine to his lips, and
drank deeply. "Come," he said, laughing. "What did you at the store
to-day? And does Mistress Truelove despair of your conversion to thee
and thou, and peace with all mankind? Hast procured an enemy to fill the
place I have vacated? I trust he's no scurvy foe."
"I will take your questions in order," answered the other sententiously.
"This morning I sold a deal of fine china to a parcel of fine ladies who
came by water from Jamestown, and were mightily concerned to know whether
your worship was gone to Westover, or had instead (as 't was reported)
shut yourself up in Fair View house. And this afternoon came over in a
periagua, from the other side, a very young gentleman with money in hand
to buy a silver-fringed glove. 'They are sold in pairs,' said I. 'Fellow,
I require but one,' said he. 'If Dick Allen, who hath slandered me to
Mistress Betty Cocke, dareth to appear at the merrymaking at Colonel
Harrison's to-night, his cheek and this glove shall come together!'
'Nathless, you must pay for both,' I told him; and the upshot is that he
leaves with me a gold button as earnest that he will bring the remainder
of the price before the duel to-morrow. That Quaker maiden of whom you ask
hath a soul like the soul of Colna-dona, of whom Murdoch, the harper of
Coll, used to sing. She is fair as a flower after winter, and as tender as
the rose flush in which swims yonder star. When I am with her, almost she
persuades me to think ill of honest hatred, and to pine no longer that it
was not I that had the killing of Ewin Mackinnon." He gave a short laugh,
and stooping picked up an oak twig from the ground, and with deliberation
broke it into many small pieces. "Almost, but not quite," he said. "There
was in that feud nothing illusory or fantastic; nothing of the quality
that marked, mayhap, another feud of my own making. If I have found that
in this latter case I took a wraith and dubbed it my enemy; that, thinking
I followed a foe, I followed a friend instead"—He threw away the bits of
bark, and straightened himself. "A friend!" he said, drawing his breath.
"Save for this Quaker family, I have had no friend for many a year! And I
cannot talk to them of honor and warfare and the wide world." His speech
was sombre, but in his eyes there was an eagerness not without pathos.
The mood of the Gael chimed with the present mood of the Saxon. As unlike
in their natures as their histories, men would have called them; and yet,
far away, in dim recesses of the soul, at long distances from the flesh,
each recognised the other. And it was an evening, too, in which to take
care of other things than the ways and speech of every day. The heat, the
hush, and the stillness appeared well-nigh preternatural. A sadness
breathed over the earth; all things seemed new and yet old; across the
spectral river the dim plains beneath the afterglow took the seeming of
battlefields.
"A friend!" said Haward. "There are many men who call themselves my
friends. I am melancholy to-day, restless, and divided against myself. I
do not know one of my acquaintance whom I would have called to be
melancholy with me as I have called you." He leaned across the table and
touched MacLean's hand that was somewhat hurriedly fingering the
wineglass. "Come!" he said. "Loneliness may haunt the level fields as well
as the ways that are rugged and steep. How many times have we held
converse since that day I found you in charge of my store? Often enough, I
think, for each to know the other's quality. Our lives have been very
different, and yet I believe that we are akin. For myself, I should be
glad to hold as my friend so gallant though so unfortunate a gentleman."
He smiled and made a gesture of courtesy. "Of course Mr. MacLean may very
justly not hold me in a like esteem, nor desire a closer relation."
MacLean rose to his feet, and stood gazing across the river at the
twilight shore and the clear skies. Presently he turned, and his eyes were
wet. He drew his hand across them; then looked curiously at the dew upon
it. "I have not done this," he said simply, "since a night at Preston when
I wept with rage. In my country we love as we hate, with all the strength
that God has given us. The brother of my spirit is to me even as the
brother of my flesh.... I used to dream that my hand was at your throat or
my sword through your heart, and wake in anger that it was not so ... and
now I could love you well."
Haward stood up, and the two men clasped hands. "It is a pact, then," said
the Englishman. "By my faith, the world looks not so melancholy gray as it
did awhile ago. And here is Juba to say that supper waits. Lay the table
for two, Juba. Mr. MacLean will bear me company."
The storekeeper stayed late, the master of Fair View being an accomplished
gentleman, a very good talker, and an adept at turning his house for the
nonce into the house of his guest. Supper over they went into the library,
where their wine was set, and where the Highlander, who was no great
reader, gazed respectfully at the wit and wisdom arow before him. "Colonel
Byrd hath more volumes at Westover," quoth Haward, "but mine are of the
choicer quality." Juba brought a card table, and lit more candles, while
his master, unlocking a desk, took from it a number of gold pieces. These
he divided into two equal portions: kept one beside him upon the polished
table, and, with a fine smile, half humorous, half deprecating, pushed the
other across to his guest. With an, imperturbable face MacLean stacked the
gold before him, and they fell to piquet, playing briskly, and with
occasional application to the Madeira upon the larger table, until ten of
the clock. The Highlander, then declaring that he must be no longer away
from his post, swept his heap of coins across to swell his opponent's
store, and said good-night. Haward went with him to the great door, and
watched him stride off through the darkness whistling "The Battle of
Harlaw."
That night Haward slept, and the next morning four negroes rowed him up
the river to Jamestown. Mr. Jaquelin was gone to Norfolk upon business,
but his beautiful wife and sprightly daughters found Mr. Marmaduke Haward
altogether charming. "'Twas as good as going to court," they said to one
another, when the gentleman, after a two hours' visit, bowed himself out
of their drawing-room. The object of their encomiums, going down river in
his barge, felt his spirits lighter than they had been for some days. He
spoke cheerfully to his negroes, and when the barge passed a couple of
fishing-boats he called to the slim brown lads that caught for the
plantation to know their luck. At the landing he found the overseer, who
walked to the great house with him. The night before Tyburn Will had
stolen from the white quarters, and had met a couple of seamen from the
Temperance at the crossroads ordinary, which ordinary was going to get
into trouble for breaking the law which forbade the harboring of sailors
ashore. The three had taken in full lading of kill-devil rum, and Tyburn
Will, too drunk to run any farther, had been caught by Hide near Princess
Creek, three hours agone. What were the master's orders? Should the rogue
go to the court-house whipping post, or should Hide save the trouble of
taking him there? In either case, thirty-nine lashes well laid on—
The master pursed his lips, dug into the ground with the ferrule of his
cane, and finally proposed to the astonished overseer that the rascal be
let off with a warning. "'Tis too fair a day to poison with ugly sights
and sounds," he said, whimsically apologetic for his own weakness. "'Twill
do no great harm to be lenient, for once, Saunderson, and I am in the mood
to-day to be friends with all men, including myself."
The overseer went away grumbling, and Haward entered the house. The room
where dwelt his books looked cool and inviting. He walked the length of
the shelves, took out a volume here and there for his evening reading, and
upon the binding of others laid an affectionate, lingering touch. "I have
had a fever, my friends," he announced to the books, "but I am about to
find myself happily restored to reason and serenity; in short, to health."
Some hours later he raised his eyes from the floor which he had been
studying for a great while, covered them for a moment with his hand, then
rose, and, with the air of a sleepwalker, went out of the lit room into a
calm and fragrant night. There was no moon, but the stars were many, and
it did not seem dark. When he came to the verge of the landing, and the
river, sighing in its sleep, lay clear below him, mirroring the stars, it
was as though he stood between two firmaments. He descended the steps, and
drew toward him a small rowboat that was softly rubbing against the wet
and glistening piles. The tide was out, and the night was very quiet.
Haward troubled not the midstream, but rowing in the shadow of the bank to
the mouth of the creek that slept beside his garden, turned and went up
this narrow water. Until he was free of the wall the odor of honeysuckle
and box clung to the air, freighting it heavily; when it was left behind
the reeds began to murmur and sigh, though not loudly, for there was no
wind. When he came to a point opposite the minister's house, rising fifty
yards away from amidst low orchard trees, he rested upon his oars. There
was a light in an upper room, and as he looked Audrey passed between the
candle and the open window. A moment later and the light was out, but he
knew that she was sitting at the window. Though it was dark, he found that
he could call back with precision the slender throat, the lifted face, and
the enshadowing hair. For a while he stayed, motionless in his boat,
hidden by the reeds that whispered and sighed; but at last he rowed away
softly through the darkness, back to the dim, slow-moving river and the
Fair View landing.
This was of a Friday. All the next day he spent in the garden, but on
Sunday morning he sent word to the stables to have Mirza saddled. He was
going to church, he told Juba over his chocolate, and he would wear the
gray and silver.