Audrey by Mary Johnston
CHAPTER XVIII
A QUESTION OF COLORS
Evelyn, seated at her toilette table, and in the hands of Mr. TimothyGreen, hairdresser in ordinary to Williamsburgh, looked with unseeing eyesat her own fair reflection in the glass before her. Chloe, the blackhandmaiden who stood at the door, latch in hand, had time to grow tired ofwaiting before her mistress spoke. "You may tell Mr. Haward that I am athome, Chloe. Bring him here."
The hairdresser drew a comb through the rippling brown tresses andcommenced his most elaborate arrangement, working with pursed lips, andhead bent now to this side, now to that. He had been a hard-pressed mansince sunrise, and the lighting of the Palace candles that night mightfind him yet employed by some belated dame. Evelyn was very pale, andshadows were beneath her eyes. Moved by a sudden impulse, she took fromthe table a rouge pot, and hastily and with trembling fingers rubbed bloominto her cheeks; then the patch box,--one, two, three Tory partisans. "NowI am less like a ghost," she said, "Mr. Green, do I not look well andmerry, and as though my sleep had been sound and dreamless?"
In his high, cracked voice, the hairdresser was sure that, pale orglowing, grave or gay, Mistress Evelyn Byrd would be the toast at the ballthat night. The lady laughed, for she heard Haward's step upon thelanding. He entered to the gay, tinkling sound, tent over the hand sheextended, then, laying aside hat and cane, took his seat beside the table.
"'Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare, And beauty draws us with a single hair,'"
he quoted, with a smile. Then: "Will you take our hearts in blue to-night,Evelyn? You know that I love you best in blue."
She lifted her fan from the table, and waved it lightly to and fro. "I goin rose color," she said. "'Tis the gown I wore at Lady Rich's rout. Idare say you do not remember it? But my Lord of Peterborough said"--Shebroke off, and smiled to her fan.
Her voice was sweet and slightly drawling. The languid turn of the wrist,the easy grace of attitude, the beauty of bared neck and tinted face, oflowered lids and slow, faint smile,--oh, she was genuine fine lady, if shewas not quite Evelyn! A breeze blowing through the open windows stirredtheir gay hangings of flowered cotton; the black girl sat in a corner andsewed; the supple fingers of the hairdresser went in and out of the heavyhair; roses in a deep blue bowl made the room smell like a garden. Hawardsighed, so pleasant was it to sit quietly in this cool chamber, after theglare and wavering of the world without. "My Lord of Peterborough ismagnificent at compliments," he said kindly, "but 'twould be a jeweledspeech indeed that outdid your deserving, Evelyn. Come, now, wear theblue! I will find you white roses; you shall wear them for a breast knot,and in the minuet return me one again."
Evelyn waved her fan. "I dance the minuet with Mr. Lee." Her tone wasstill sweetly languid, her manner most indifferent. The thick and glossytress that, drawn forward, was to ripple over white neck and bosom was tooloosely curled. She regarded it in the mirror with an anxious frown, thenspoke of it to the hairdresser.
Haward, smiling, watched her with heavy-lidded eyes. "Mr. Lee is afortunate gentleman," he said. "I may gain the rose, perhaps, in thecountry dance?"
"That is better," remarked the lady, surveying with satisfaction thenew-curled lock. "The country dance? For that Mr. Lightfoot hath mypromise."
"It seems that I am a laggard," said Haward.
The knocker sounded below. "I am at home, Chloe," announced the mistress;and the slave, laying aside her work, slipped from the room.
Haward played with the trifles upon the dressing table. "Wherein have Ioffended, Evelyn?" he asked, at last.
The lady arched her brows, and the action made her for the moment verylike her handsome father. "Why, there is no offense!" she cried. "An oldacquaintance, a family friend! I step a minuet with Mr. Lee; I stand upfor a country dance with Mr. Lightfoot; I wear pink instead of blue, andhave lost my liking for white roses,--what is there in all this that needssuch a question? Ah, you have broken my silver chain!"
"I am clumsy to-day!" he exclaimed. "A thousand pardons!" He let thebroken toy slip from his fingers to the polished surface of the table, andforgot that it was there. "Since Colonel Byrd (I am sorry to learn) keepshis room with a fit of the gout, may I--an old acquaintance, a familyfriend--conduct you to the Palace to-night?"
The fan waved on. "Thank you, but I go in our coach, and need no escort."The lady yawned, very delicately, behind her slender fingers; then droppedthe fan, and spoke with animation: "Ah, here is Mr. Lee! In a good hour,sir! I saw the bracelet that you mended for Mistress Winston. Canst do asmuch for my poor chain here? See! it and this silver heart have partedcompany."
Mr. Lee kissed her hand, and took snuff with Mr. Haward; then, after anardent speech crammed with references to Vulcan and Venus, chains thatwere not slight, hearts that were of softer substance, sat down besidethis kind and dazzling vision, and applied his clever fingers to theproblem in hand. He was a personable young gentleman, who had studied atOxford, and who, proudly conscious that his tragedy of Artaxerxes, thenreposing in the escritoire at home, much outmerited Haward's talked-ofcomedy, felt no diffidence in the company of the elder fine gentleman. Herattled on of this and that, and Evelyn listened kindly, with only thecurve of her cheek visible to the family friend. The silver heart wasrestored to its chain; the lady smiled her thanks; the enamored youthhitched his chair some inches nearer the fair whom he had obliged, and,with his hand upon his heart, entered the realm of high-flown speech. Thegay curtains waved; the roses were sweet; black Chloe sewed and sewed; thehairdresser's hands wove in and out, as though he were a wizard makingpasses.
Haward rose to take his leave. Evelyn yielded him her hand; it was coldagainst his lips. She was nonchalant and smiling; he was easy, unoffended,admirably the fine gentleman. For one moment their eyes met. "I had beenwiser," thought the man, "I had been wiser to have myself told her ofthat brown witch, that innocent sorceress! Why something held my tongue Iknow not. Now she hath read my idyl, but all darkened, all awry." Thewoman thought: "Cruel and base! You knew that my heart was yours to break,cast aside, and forget!"
Out of the house the sunlight beat and blinded. Houses of red brick,houses of white wood; the long, wide, dusty Duke of Gloucester Street;gnarled mulberry-trees broad-leafed against a September sky, deeply,passionately blue; glimpses of wood and field,--all seemed remote withoutdistance, still without stillness, the semblance of a dream, and yet keenand near to oppression. It was a town of stores, of ordinaries and publicplaces; from open door and window all along Duke of Gloucester Street camelaughter, round oaths, now and then a scrap of drinking song. To Haward,giddy, ill at ease, sickening of a fever, the sounds were now as a cry inhis ear, now as the noise of a distant sea. The minister of James Cityparish and the minister of Ware Creek were walking before him, arm in arm,set full sail for dinner after a stormy morning. "For lo! the wickedprospereth!" said one, and "Fair View parish bound over to the devilagain!" plained the other. "He's firm in the saddle; he'll ride easy tothe day he drinks himself to death, thanks to this sudden complaisance ofGovernor and Commissary!"
"Thanks to"--cried the other sourly, and gave the thanks where they weredue.
Haward heard the words, but even in the act of quickening his pace to laya heavy hand upon the speaker's shoulder a listlessness came upon him, andhe forbore. The memory of the slurring speech went from him; his thoughtswere thistledown blown hither and yon by every vagrant air. Coming toMarot's ordinary he called for wine; then went up the stair to his room,and sitting down at the table presently fell asleep, with his head uponhis arms.
After a while the sounds from the public room below, where men werecarousing, disturbed his slumber. He stirred, and awoke refreshed. It wasafternoon, but he felt no hunger, only thirst, which he quenched with thewine at hand. His windows gave upon the Capitol and a green wood beyond;the waving trees enticed, while the room was dull and the noises of thehouse distasteful. He said to himself that he would walk abroad, would goout under the beckoning trees and be rid of the tow
A few yards, and he was quit of Duke of Gloucester Street; behind him,porticoed Capitol, gaol, and tiny vineclad debtor's prison. In the gaolyard the pirates sat upon a bench in the sunshine, and one smoked a longpipe, and one brooded upon his irons. Gold rings were in their ears, andtheir black hair fell from beneath colored handkerchiefs twistedturbanwise around their brows. The gaoler watched them, standing in hisdoorway, and his children, at play beneath a tree, built with sticks amimic scaffold, and hanged thereon a broken puppet. There was a shady roadleading through a wood to Queen's Creek and the Capitol Landing, and downthis road went Haward. His step was light; the dullness, the throbbingpulses, the oppression of the morning, had given way to a restlessness anda strange exaltation of spirit. Fancy was quickened, imaginationheightened; to himself he seemed to see the heart of all things. Acrosshis mind flitted fragments of verse,--now a broken line just hintingbeauty, now the pure passion of a lovely stanza. His thoughts went to andfro, mobile as the waves of the sea; but firm as the reefs beneath themstood his knowledge that presently he was going back to Fair View.To-morrow, when the Governor's ball was over, when he could decently getaway, he would leave the town; he would go to his house in the country.Late flowers bloomed in his garden; the terrace was fair above the river;beneath the red brick wall, on the narrow little creek shining like asilver highway, lay a winged boat; and the highway ran past a glebe house;and in the glebe house dwelt a dryad whose tree had closed against her.Audrey!--a fair name. Audrey, Audrey!--the birds were singing it; out ofthe deep, Arcadian shadows any moment it might come, clearly cried bysatyr, Pan, or shepherd. Hark! there was song--
It was but a negro on the road behind, singing to himself as he went abouthis master's business. The voice was the voice of the race, mellow, deep,and plaintive; perhaps the song was of love in a burning land. He passedthe white man, and the arching trees hid him, but the wake of music waslong in fading. The road leading through a cool and shady dell, Hawardleft it, and took possession of the mossy earth beneath a holly-tree.Here, lying on the ground, he could see the road through the interveningfoliage; else the place had seemed the heart of an ancient wood.
It was merry lying where were glimpses of blue sky, where the leavesquivered and a squirrel chattered and a robin sang a madrigal. Youth thedivine, half way down the stair of misty yesterdays, turned upon his heeland came back to him. He pillowed his head upon his arm, and was content.It was well to be so filled with fancies, so iron of will, so headstrongand gay; to be friends once more with a younger Haward, with the Haward ofa mountain pass, of mocking comrades and an irate Excellency.
From the road came a rumble of oaths. Sailors, sweating and straining,were rolling a very great cask of tobacco from a neighboring warehousedown to the landing and some expectant sloop. Haward, lying at ease,smiled at their weary task, their grunting and swearing; when they weregone, smiled at the blankness of the road. All things pleased. There wasfood for mirth in the call of a partridge, in the inquisitive gaze of asquirrel, in the web of a spider gaoler to a gilded fly. There was foodfor greater mirth in the appearance on the road of a solitary figure in awine-colored coat and bushy black peruke.
Haward sat up. "Ha, Monacan!" he cried, with a laugh, and threw a stick toattract the man's attention.
Hugon turned, stood astare, then left the road and came down into thedell.
"What fortune, trader?" smiled Haward. "Did your traps hold in the greatforest? Were your people easy to fool, giving twelve deerskins for an oldmatch-coat? There is charm in a woodsman life. Come, tell me of yourjourneys, dangers, and escapes."
The half-breed looked down upon him with a twitching face. "What hindersme from killing you now?" he demanded, with a backward look at the road."None may pass for many minutes."
Haward lay back upon the moss, with his hands locked beneath his head."What indeed?" he answered calmly. "Come, here is a velvet log, fit seatfor an emperor--or a sachem; sit and tell me of your life in the woods.For peace pipe let me offer my snuffbox." In his mad humor he sat upagain, drew from his pocket, and presented with the most approvedflourish, his box of chased gold. "Monsieur, c'est le tabac pour le nezd'un inonarque," he said lazily.
Hugon sat down upon the log, helped himself to the mixture with a grandair, and shook the yellow dust from his ruffles. The action, meant to beairy, only achieved fierceness. From some hidden sheath he drew a knife,and began to strip from the log a piece of bark. "Tell me, you," he said."Have you been to France? What manner of land is it?"
"A gay country," answered Haward; "a land where the men are all white, andwhere at present, periwigs are worn much shorter than the one monsieuraffects."
"He is a great brave, a French gentleman? Always he kills the man hehates?"
"Not always," said the other. "Sometimes the man he hates kills him."
By now one end of the piece of bark in the trader's hands was shredded totinder. He drew from his pocket his flint and steel, and struck a sparkinto the frayed mass. It flared up, and he held first the tips of hisfingers, then the palm of his hand, then his bared forearm, in the flamethat licked and scorched the flesh. His face was perfectly unmoved, hiseyes unchanged in their expression of hatred. "Can he do this?" he asked.
"Perhaps not," said Haward lightly. "It is a very foolish thing to do."
The flame died out, and the trader tossed aside the charred bit of bark."There was old Pierre at Monacan-Town who taught me to pray to _le bonDieu_. He told me how grand and fine is a French gentleman, and that I wasthe son of many such. He called the English great pigs, with brains asdull and muddy as the river after many rains. My mother was the daughterof a chief. She had strings of pearl for her neck, and copper for herarms, and a robe of white doeskin, very soft and fine. When she was deadand my father was dead, I came from Monacan-Town to your English schoolover yonder. I can read and write. I am a white man and a Frenchman, notan Indian. When I go to the villages in the woods, I am given a lodgeapart, and the men and women gather to hear a white man speak.... You havedone me wrong with that girl, that Ma'm'selle Audrey that I wish for wife.We are enemies: that is as it should be. You shall not have her,--never,never! But you despise me; how is that? That day upon the creek, thatnight in your cursed house, you laughed"--
The Haward of the mountain pass, regarding the twitching face opposite himand the hand clenched upon the handle of a knife, laughed again. At thesound the trader's face ceased to twitch. Haward felt rather than saw thestealthy tightening of the frame, the gathering of forces, the closergrasp upon the knife, and flung out his arm. A hare scurried past, makingfor the deeper woods. From the road came the tramp of a horse and a man'svoice, singing,--
"'To all you ladies now on land'"--
while an inquisitive dog turned aside from the road, and plunged into thedell.
The rider, having checked his horse and quit his song in order to call tohis dog, looked through the thin veil of foliage and saw the two menbeneath the holly-tree. "Ha, Jean Hugon!" he cried. "Is that you? Where isthat packet of skins you were to deliver at my store? Come over here,man!"
The trader moistened his dry lips with his tongue, and slipped the knifeback into its sheath. "Had we been a mile in the woods," he said, "youwould have laughed no more."
Haward watched him go. The argument with the rider was a lengthy one. Heupon horseback would not stand still in the road to finish it, but put hisbeast into motion. The trader, explaining and gesticulating, walked besidehis stirrup; the voices grew fainter and fainter,--were gone. Hawardlaughed to himself; then, with his eyes raised to the depth on depth ofblue, serene beyond the grating of thorn-pointed leaves, sent his spiritto his red brick house and silent, sunny garden, with the gate in theivied wall, and the six steps down to the boat and the lapping water.
The shadows lengthened, and a wind of the evening entered the wood. H
The ball at the Palace!--he had forgotten it. Flare of lights, wail ofviolins, a painted, silken crowd, laughter, whispers, magpie chattering,wine, and the weariness of the dance, when his soul would long to be withthe night outside, with the rising wind and the shining stars. He halfdetermined not to go. What mattered the offense that would be taken? Didhe go he would repent, wearied and ennuye, watching Evelyn, allrose-colored, moving with another through the minuet; tied himself perhapsto some pert miss, or cornered in a card-room by boisterous gamesters, or,drinking with his peers, called on to toast the lady of his dreams. Betterthe dull room at Marot's ordinary, or better still to order Mirza, andride off at the planter's pace, through the starshine, to Fair View. Onthe river bank before the store MacLean might be lying, dreaming of amighty wind and a fierce death. He would dismount, and sit beside thatHighland gentleman, Jacobite and strong man, and their moods would chimeas they had chimed before. Then on to the house and to the eastern window!Not to-night, but to-morrow night, perhaps, would the darkness be piercedby the calm pale star that marked another window. It was all a mistake,that month at Westover,--days lost and wasted, the running of golden sandsill to spare from Love's brief glass....
His mood had changed when, with the gathering dusk, he entered his room atMarot's ordinary. He would go to the Palace that night; it would be theact of a boy to fling away through the darkness, shirking a duty hisposition demanded. He would go and be merry, watching Evelyn in the gownthat Peterborough had praised.
When Juba had lighted the candles, he sat and drank and drank again of thered wine upon the table. It put maggots in his brain, fired and flushedhim to the spirit's core. An idea came, at which he laughed. He bade itgo, but it would not. It stayed, and his fevered fancy played around itas a moth around a candle. At first he knew it for a notion, bizarre andabsurd, which presently he would dismiss. All day strange thoughts hadcome and gone, appearing, disappearing, like will-o'-the-wisps for which aman upon a firm road has no care. Never fear that he will follow them! Hesees the marsh, that it has no footing. So with this Jack-o'-lanternconception,--it would vanish as it came.
It did not so. Instead, when he had drunken more wine, and had sat forsome time methodically measuring, over and over again, with thumb andforefinger, the distance from candle to bottle, and from bottle to glass,the idea began to lose its wildfire aspect. In no great time it appearedan inspiration as reasonable as happy. When this point had been reached,he stamped upon the floor to summon his servant from the room below. "Layout the white and gold, Juba," he ordered, when the negro appeared, "andcome make me very fine. I am for the Palace,--I and a brown lady that hathbewitched me! The white sword knot, sirrah; and cock my hat with thediamond brooch"--
It was a night that was thronged with stars, and visited by a whisperingwind. Haward, walking rapidly along the almost deserted Nicholson Street,lifted his burning forehead to the cool air and the star-strewn fields ofheaven. Coming to the gate by which he had entered the afternoon before,he raised the latch and passed into the garden. By now his fever was fullupon him, and it was a man scarce to be held responsible for his actionsthat presently knocked at the door of the long room where, at the windowopening upon Palace Street, Audrey sat with Mistress Stagg and watched thepeople going to the ball.