Audrey by Mary Johnston
CHAPTER VIII
UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE
In the moment in which she sprang to her feet she saw that it was notHugon, and her heart grew calm again. In her torn gown, with her brownhair loosed from its fastenings, and falling over her shoulders in heavywaves whose crests caught the sunlight, she stood against the tree beneathwhich she had lain, gazed with wide-open eyes at the intruder, and guessedfrom his fine coat and the sparkling toy looping his hat that he was agentleman. She knew gentlemen when she saw them: on a time one had cursedher for scurrying like a partridge across the road before his horse,making the beast come nigh to unseating him; another, coming upon her andthe Widow Constance's Barbara gathering fagots in the November woods, hadtossed to each a sixpence; a third, on vestry business with the minister,had touched her beneath the chin, and sworn that an she were not so brownshe were fair; a fourth, lying hidden upon the bank of the creek, hadcaught her boat head as she pushed it into the reeds, and had tried tokiss her. They had certain ways, had gentlemen, but she knew no great harmof them. There was one, now--but he would be like a prince. When ateventide the sky was piled with pale towering clouds, and she looked, asshe often looked, down the river, toward the bay and the sea beyond, shealways saw this prince that she had woven--warp of memory, woof ofdreams--stand erect in the pearly light. There was a gentleman indeed!
As to the possessor of the title now slowly and steadily making his waytoward her she was in a mere state of wonder. It was not possible that hehad lost his way; but if so, she was sorry that, in losing it, he hadfound the slender zigzag of her path. A trustful child,--save where Hugonwas concerned,--she was not in the least afraid, and being of a friendlymind looked at the approaching figure with shy kindliness, and thoughtthat he must have come from a distant part of the country. She thoughtthat had she ever seen him before she would have remembered it.
Upon the outskirts of the ring, clear of the close embrace of floweringbush and spreading vine. Haward paused, and looked with smiling eyes atthis girl of the woods, this forest creature that, springing from theearth, had set its back against the tree.
"Tarry awhile," he said. "Slip not yet within the bark. Had I known, Ishould have brought oblation of milk and honey."
"This is the thicket between Fair View and the glebe lands," said Audrey,who knew not what bark of tree and milk and honey had to do with the case."Over yonder, sir, is the road to the great house. This path ends here;you must go back to the edge of the wood, then turn to the south"--
"I have not lost my way," answered Haward, still smiling. "It is pleasanthere in the shade, after the warmth of the open. May I not sit down uponthe leaves and talk to you for a while? I came out to find you, youknow."
As he spoke, and without waiting for the permission which he asked, hecrossed the rustling leaves, and threw himself down upon the earth betweentwo branching roots. Her skirt brushed his knee; with a movement quick andshy she put more distance between them, then stood and looked at him withwide, grave eyes. "Why do you say that you came here to find me?" sheasked. "I do not know you."
Haward laughed, nursing his knee and looking about him. "Let that pass fora moment. You have the prettiest woodland parlor, child! Tell me, do theytreat you well over there?" with a jerk of his thumb toward the glebehouse. "Madam the shrew and his reverence the bully, are they kind to you?Though they let you go like a beggar maid,"--he glanced kindly enough ather bare feet and torn gown,--"yet they starve you not, nor beat you, nordeny you aught in reason?"
Audrey drew herself up. She had a proper pride, and she chose to forgetfor this occasion a bruise upon her arm and the thrusting upon her ofHugon's company. "I do not know who you are, sir, that ask me suchquestions," she said sedately. "I have food and shelterand--and--kindness. And I go barefoot only of week days"--
It was a brave beginning, but of a sudden she found it hard to go on. Shefelt his eyes upon her and knew that he was unconvinced, and into her owneyes came the large tears. They did not fall, but through them she saw theforest swim in green and gold. "I have no father or mother," she said,"and no brother or sister. In all the world there is no one that is kin tome."
Her voice, that was low and full and apt to fall into minor cadences,died away, and she stood with her face raised and slightly turned from thegentleman who lay at her feet, stretched out upon the sere beech leaves.He did not seem inclined to speech, and for a time the little brook andthe birds and the wind in the trees sang undisturbed.
"These woods are very beautiful," said Haward at last, with his gaze uponher, "but if the land were less level it were more to my taste. Now, ifthis plain were a little valley couched among the hills, if to thewestward rose dark blue mountains like a rampart, if the runlet yonderwere broad and clear, if this beech were a sugar-tree"--
He broke off, content to see her eyes dilate, her bosom rise and fall, herhand go trembling for support to the column of the beech.
"Oh, the mountains!" she cried. "When the mist lifted, when the cloudrested, when the sky was red behind them! Oh, the clear stream, and thesugar-tree, and the cabin! Who are you? How did you know about thesethings? Were you--were you there?"
She turned upon him, with her soul in her eyes. As for him, lying atlength upon the ground, he locked his hands beneath his head and began tosing, though scarce above his breath. He sang the song of Amiens:--
"Under the greenwood tree, Who loves to lie with me."
When he had come to the end of the stanza he half rose, and turned towardthe mute and breathless figure leaning against the beech-tree. For her theyears had rolled back: one moment she stood upon the doorstep of thecabin, and the air was filled with the trampling of horses, with quicklaughter, whistling, singing, and the call of a trumpet; the next she ran,in night-time and in terror, between rows of rustling corn, felt again theclasp of her pursuer, heard at her ear the comfort of his voice. A filmcame between her eyes and the man at whom she stared, and her heart grewcold.
"Audrey," said Haward, "come here, child."
The blood returned to her heart, her vision cleared, and her arm fell fromits clasp upon the tree. The bark opened not; the hamadryad had lost thespell. When at his repeated command she crossed to him, she went as thetrusting, dumbly loving, dumbly grateful child whose life he had saved,and whose comforter, protector, and guardian he had been. When he took herhands in his she was glad to feel them there again, and she had no blushesready when he kissed her upon the forehead. It was sweet to her whohungered for affection, who long ago had set his image up, loving himpurely as a sovereign spirit or as a dear and great elder brother, to hearhim call her again "little maid;" tell her that she had not changed savein height; ask her if she remembered this or that adventure, what timethey had strayed in the woods together. Remember! When at last, beneathhis admirable management, the wonder and the shyness melted away, and shefound her tongue, memories came in a torrent. The hilltop, the deep woodsand the giant trees, the house he had built for her out of stones andmoss, the grapes they had gathered, the fish they had caught, thethunderstorm when he had snatched her out of the path of a stricken andfalling pine, an alarm of Indians, an alarm of wolves, finally the firstfaint sounds of the returning expedition, the distant trumpet note, thenearer approach, the bursting again into the valley of the Governor andhis party, the journey from that loved spot to Williamsburgh,--all sightsand sounds, thoughts and emotions, of that time, fast held through lonelyyears, came at her call, and passed again in procession before them.Haward, first amazed, then touched, reached at length the conclusion thatthe years of her residence beneath the minister's roof could not have beenhappy; that she must always have put from her with shuddering and horrorthe memory of the night which orphaned her; but that she had passionatelynursed, cherished, and loved all that she had of sweet and dear, and thatthis all was the memory of her childhood in the valley, and of that briefseason when he had been her savior, protector, friend, and playmate. Helearned also--for she was too simple and too glad either to withho
Keen enough in his perceptions, he was able to recognize that here was apure and imaginative spirit, strongly yearning after ideal strength,beauty, and goodness. Given such a spirit, it was not unnatural that,turning from sordid or unhappy surroundings as a flower turns from shadowto the full face of the sun, she should have taken a memory of valiantdeeds, kind words, and a protecting arm, and have created out of these aman after her own heart, endowing him with all heroic attributes; at oneand the same time sending him out into the world, a knight-errant withoutfear and without reproach, and keeping him by her side--the side of achild--in her own private wonderland. He saw that she had done this, andhe was ashamed. He did not tell her that that eleven-years-distantfortnight was to him but a half-remembered incident of a crowded life, andthat to all intents and purposes she herself had been forgotten. For onething, it would have hurt her; for another, he saw no reason why he shouldtell her. Upon occasion he could be as ruthless as a stone; if he were sonow he knew it not, but in deceiving her deceived himself. Man of a worldthat was corrupt enough, he was of course quietly assured that he couldbend this woodland creature--half child, half dryad--to the form of hisbidding. To do so was in his power, but not his pleasure. He meant toleave her as she was; to accept the adoration of the child, but to attemptno awakening of the woman. The girl was of the mountains, and theirhigher, colder, purer air; though he had brought her body thence, he wouldnot have her spirit leave the climbing earth, the dreamlike summits, forthe hot and dusty plain. The plain, God knew, had dwellers enough.
She was a thing of wild and sylvan grace, and there was fulfillment in adark beauty all her own of the promise she had given as a child. About herwas a pathos, too,--the pathos of the flower taken from its proper soil,and drooping in earth which nourished it not. Haward, looking at her,watching the sensitive, mobile lips, reading in the dark eyes, beneath thefelicity of the present, a hint and prophecy of woe, felt for her a pityso real and great that for the moment his heart ached as for some sorrowof his own. She was only a young girl, poor and helpless, born of poorand helpless parents dead long ago. There was in her veins no gentleblood; she had none of the world's goods; her gown was torn, her feet wentbare. She had youth, but not its heritage of gladness: beauty, but none tosee it; a nature that reached toward light and height, and for its homethe house which he had lately left. He was a man older by many years thanthe girl beside him, knowing good and evil; by instinct preferring theformer, but at times stooping, open-eyed, to that degree of the latterwhich a lax and gay world held to be not incompatible with a conventionsomewhat misnamed "the honor of a gentleman." Now, beneath the beech-treein the forest which touched upon one side the glebe, upon the other hisown lands, he chose at this time the good; said to himself, and believedthe thing he said, that in word and in deed he would prove himself herfriend.
Putting out his hand he drew her down upon the leaves; and she sat besidehim, still and happy, ready to answer him when he asked her this or that,readier yet to sit in blissful, dreamy silence. She was as pure as theflower which she held in her hand, and most innocent in her imaginings.This was a very perfect knight, a great gentleman, good and pitiful, thathad saved her from the Indians when she was a little girl, and had beenkind to her,--ah, so kind! In that dreadful night when she had lost fatherand mother and brother and sister, when in the darkness her childish heartwas a stone for terror, he had come, like God, from the mountains, andstraightway she was safe. Now into her woods, from over the sea, he hadcome again, and at once the load upon her heart, the dull longing andmisery, the fear of Hugon, were lifted. The chaplet which she laid at hisfeet was not loosely woven of gay-colored flowers, but was compact ofausterer blooms of gratitude, reverence, and that love which is only alonging to serve. The glamour was at hand, the enchanted light whichbreaks not from the east or the west or the north or the south was uponits way; but she knew it not, and she was happy in her ignorance.
"I am tired of the city," he said. "Now I shall stay in Virginia. Alonging for the river and the marshes and the house where I was born cameupon me"--
"I know," she answered. "When I shut my eyes I see the cabin in thevalley, and when I dream it is of things which happen in a mountainouscountry."
"I am alone in the great house," he continued, "and the floors echosomewhat loudly. The garden, too; beside myself there is no one to smellthe roses or to walk in the moonlight. I had forgotten the isolation ofthese great plantations. Each is a province and a despotism. If the despothas neither kith nor kin, has not yet made friends, and cares not to drawcompany from the quarters, he is lonely. They say that there are ladies inVirginia whose charms well-nigh outweigh their dowries of sweet-scentedand Oronoko. I will wed such an one, and have laughter in my garden, andother footsteps than my own in my house."
"There are beautiful ladies in these parts," said Audrey. "There is theone that gave me the guinea for my running yesterday. She was so veryfair. I wished with all my heart that I were like her."
"She is my friend," said Haward slowly, "and her mind is as fair as herface. I will tell her your story."
The gilded streak upon the earth beneath the beech had crept away, butover the ferns and weeds and flowering bushes between the slight treeswithout the ring the sunshine gloated. The blue of the sky was wonderful,and in the silence Haward and Audrey heard the wind whisper in thetreetops. A dove moaned, and a hare ran past.
"It was I who brought you from the mountains and placed you here," saidHaward at last. "I thought it for the best, and that when I sailed away Ileft you to a safe and happy life. It seems that I was mistaken. But nowthat I am at home again, child, I wish you to look upon me, who am so muchyour elder, as your guardian and protector still. If there is anythingwhich you lack, if you are misused, are in need of help, why, think thatyour troubles are the Indians again, little maid, and turn to me once morefor help!"
Having spoken honestly and well and very unwisely, he looked at his watchand said that it was late. When he rose to his feet Audrey did not move,and when he looked down upon her he saw that her eyes, that had been wet,were overflowing. He put out his hand, and she took it and touched it withher lips; then, because he said that he had not meant to set her crying,she smiled, and with her own hand dashed away the tears.
"When I ride this way I shall always stop at the minister's house," saidHaward, "when, if there is aught which you need or wish, you must tell meof it. Think of me as your friend, child."
He laid his hand lightly and caressingly upon her head. The ruffles at hiswrist, soft, fine, and perfumed, brushed her forehead and her eyes. "Thepath through your labyrinth to its beechen heart was hard to find," hecontinued, "but I can easily retrace it. No, trouble not yourself, child.Stay for a time where you are. I wish to speak to the minister alone."
His hand was lifted. Audrey felt rather than saw him go. Only a few feet,and the dogwood stars, the purple mist of the Judas-tree, the whitefragrance of a wild cherry, came like a painted arras between them. For atime she could hear the movement of the branches as he put them aside; butpresently this too ceased, and the place was left to her and to all thelife that called it home.
It was the same wood, surely, into which she had run two hours before, andyet--and yet--When her tears were spent, and she stood up, leaning, withher loosened hair and her gown that was the color of oak bark, against thebeech-tree, she looked about her and wondered. The wonder did not last,for she found an explanation.
"It has been blessed," said Audrey, with all reverence and simplicity,"and that is why the light is so different."