"Darden's Audrey!" said Truelove, in a whisper.

"That at the very first; not afterwards," answered MacLean. "She was dressed, they say, as upon the night at the Palace, that first night of Haward's fever. When she came upon the stage, there was a murmur like the wind in the leaves. She was most beautiful,--'beauteous in hatred,' as the Sultan in the play called her,--dark and wonderful, with angry eyes. For a little while she must stand in silence, and in these moments men and women stared at her, then turned and looked at Haward. But when she spoke we forgot that she was Darden's Audrey."

MacLean laughed again. "When the play was ended,--or rather, when her part in it was done,--the house did shake so with applause that Stagg had to remonstrate. There's naught talked of to-day in Williamsburgh but Arpasia; and when I came down Palace Street this morning, there was a great crowd about the playhouse door. Stagg might sell his tickets for to-night at a guinea apiece. 'Venice Preserved' is the play."

"And Marmaduke Haward,--what of him?" asked Truelove softly.

"He is English," said MacLean, after a pause. "He can make of his face a smiling mask, can keep his voice as even and as still as the pool that is a mile away from the fierce torrent its parent. It is a gift they have, the English. I remember at Preston"--He broke off with a sigh. "There will be an end some day, I suppose. He will win her at last to his way of thinking; and having gained her, he will be happy. And yet to my mind there is something unfortunate, strange and fatal, in the aspect of this girl. It hath always been so. She is such a one as the Lady in Green. On a Halloween night, standing in the twelfth rig, a man might hear her voice upon the wind. I would old Murdoch of Coll, who hath the second sight, were here: he could tell the ending of it all."

An hour later found the Highlander well upon his way to Williamsburgh, walking through wood and field with his long stride, his heart warm within him, his mind filled with the thought of Truelove and the home that he would make for her in the rude, upriver country. Since the two had sat beneath the oak, clouds had gathered, obscuring the sun. It was now gray and cold in the forest, and presently snow began to fall, slowly, in large flakes, between the still trees.

MacLean looked with whimsical anxiety at several white particles upon his suit of fine cloth, claret-colored and silver-laced, and quickened his pace. But the snow was but the lazy vanguard of a storm, and so few and harmless were the flakes that when, a, mile from Williamsburgh and at some little distance from the road, MacLean beheld a ring of figures seated upon the Gounod beneath a giant elm, he stopped to observe who and what they were that sat so still beneath the leafless tree in the winter weather.

The group, that at first glimpse had seemed some conclave of beings uncouth and lubberly and solely of the forest, resolved itself into the Indian teacher and his pupils, escaped for the afternoon from the bounds of William and Mary. The Indian lads--slender, bronze, and statuesque--sat in silence, stolidly listening to the words of the white man, who, standing in the midst of the ring, with his back to the elm-tree, told to his dusky charges a Bible tale. It was the story of Joseph and his brethren. The clear, gentle tones of the teacher reached MacLean's ears where he stood un.o.bserved behind a roadside growth of bay and cedar.

A touch upon the shoulder made him turn, to find at his elbow that sometime pupil of Mr. Charles Griffin in whose company he had once trudged from Fair View store to Williamsburgh.

"I was lying in the woods over there," said Hugon sullenly. "I heard them coming, and I took my leave. 'Peste!' said I. 'The old, weak man who preaches quietness under men's injuries, and the young wolf pack, all brown, with Indian names!' They may have the woods; for me, I go back to the town where I belong."

He shrugged his shoulders, and stood scowling at the distant group.

MacLean, in his turn, looked curiously at his quondam companion of a sunny day in May, the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin with whom he had struggled in wind and rain beneath the thunders of an August storm. The trader wore his great wig, his ancient steinkirk of tawdry lace, his high boots of Spanish leather, cracked and stained. Between the waves of coa.r.s.e hair, out of coal-black, deep-set eyes looked the soul of the half-breed, fierce, vengeful, ignorant, and embittered.

"There is Meshawa," he said,--"Meshawa, who was a little boy when I went to school, but who used to laugh when I talked of France. Pardieu! one day I found him alone when it was cold, and there was a fire in the room. Next time I talked he did not laugh! They are all"--he swept his hand toward the circle beneath the elm--"they are all Saponies, Nottoways, Meherrins; their fathers are lovers of the peace pipe, and humble to the English. A Monacan is a great brave; he laughs at the Nottoways, and says that there are no men in the villages of the Meherrins."

"When do you go again to trade with your people?" asked MacLean.

Hugon glanced at him out of the corners of his black eyes. "They are not my people; my people are French. I am not going to the woods any more. I am so prosperous. Diable! shall not I as well as another stay at Williamsburgh, dress fine, dwell in an ordinary, play high, and drink of the best?"

"There is none will prevent you," said MacLean coolly. "Dwell in town, take your ease in your inn, wear gold lace, stake the skins of all the deer in Virginia, drink Burgundy and Champagne, but lay no more arrows athwart the threshold of a gentleman's door."

Hugon's lips twitched into a tigerish grimace. "So he found the arrow?

Mortdieu! let him look to it that one day the arrow find not him!"

"If I were Haward," said MacLean, "I would have you taken up."

The trader again looked sideways at the speaker, shrugged his shoulders and waved his hand. "Oh, he--he despises me too much for that! Eh bien!

to-day I love to see him live. When there is no wine in the cup, but only dregs that are bitter, I laugh to see it at his lips. She,--Ma'm'selle Audrey, that never before could I coax into my boat,--she reached me her hand, she came with me down the river, through the night-time, and left him behind at Westover. Ha! think you not that was bitter, that drink which she gave him, Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View? Since then, if I go to that house, that garden at Williamsburgh, she hides, she will not see me; the man and his wife make excuse! Bad! But also he sees her never. He writes to her: she answers not. Good! Let him live, with the fire built around him and the splinters in his heart!"

He laughed again, and, dismissing the subject with airiness somewhat exaggerated, drew out his huge gilt snuffbox. The snow was now falling more thickly, drawing a white and fleecy veil between the two upon the road and the story-teller and his audience beneath the distant elm. "Are you for Williamsburgh?" demanded the Highlander, when he had somewhat abruptly declined to take snuff with Monsieur Jean Hugon.

That worthy nodded, pocketing his box and incidentally making a great jingling of coins.

"Then," quoth MacLean, "since I prefer to travel alone, twill wait here until you have pa.s.sed the rolling-house in the distance yonder. Good-day to you!"

He seated himself upon the stump of a tree, and, giving all his attention to the snow, began to whistle a thoughtful air. Hugon glanced at him with fierce black eyes and twitching lips, much desiring a quarrel; then thought better of it, and before the tune had come to an end was making with his long and noiseless stride his lonely way to Williamsburgh, and the ordinary in Nicholson Street.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE PLAYER

About this time, Mr. Charles Stagg, of the Williamsburgh theatre in Virginia, sent by the Horn of Plenty, bound for London, a long letter to an ancient comrade and player of small parts at Drury Lane. A few days later, young Mr. Lee, writing by the Golden Lucy to an agreeable rake of his acquaintance, burst into a five-page panegyric upon the Arpasia, the Belvidera, the Monimia, who had so marvelously dawned upon the colonial horizon. The recipient of this communication, being a frequenter of b.u.t.ton's, and chancing one day to crack a bottle there with Mr. Colley Cibber, drew from his pocket and read to that gentleman the eulogy of Darden's Audrey, with the remark that the writer was an Oxford man and must know whereof he wrote.

Cibber borrowed the letter, and the next day, in the company of Wilks and a bottle of Burgundy, compared it with that of Mr. Charles Stagg,--the latter's correspondent having also brought the matter to the great man's notice.

"She might offset that pretty jade Fenton at the Fields, eh, Bob?" said Cibber. "They're of an age. If the town took to her"--

"If her Belvidera made one pretty fellow weep, why not another?" added Wilks. "Here--where is't he says that, when she went out, for many moments the pit was silent as the grave--and that then the applause was deep--not shrill--and very long? 'Gad, if 'tis a Barry come again, and we could lay hands on her, the house would be made!"

Gibber sighed. "You're dreaming, Bob," he said good-humoredly. "'Twas but a pack of Virginia planters, noisy over some _belle sauvage_ with a ranting tongue."

"Men's pa.s.sions are the same, I take it, in Virginia as in London,"

answered the other. "If the _belle sauvage_ can move to that manner of applause in one spot of earth, she may do so in another. And here again he says, 'A dark beauty, with a strange, alluring air ... a voice of melting sweetness that yet can so express anguish and fear that the blood turns cold and the heart is wrung to hear it'--Zoons, sir! What would it cost to buy off this fellow Stagg, and to bring the phoenix overseas?"

"Something more than a lottery ticket," laughed the other, and beckoned to the drawer. "We'll wait, Bob, until we're sure 'tis a phoenix indeed!

There's a gentleman in Virginia with whom I've some acquaintance, Colonel William Byrd, that was the colony's agent here. I'll write to him for a true account. There's time enough."

So thought honest Cibber, and wrote at leisure to his Virginia acquaintance. It made small difference whether he wrote or refrained from writing, for he had naught to do with the destinies of Darden's Audrey.

'Twas almost summer before there came an answer to his letter. He showed it to Wilks in the greenroom, between the acts of "The Provoked Husband."

Mrs. Oldfield read it over their shoulders, and vowed that 'twas a moving story; nay, more, in her next scene there was a moisture in Lady Townly's eyes quite out of keeping with the vivacity of her lines.

Darden's Audrey had to do with Virginia, not London; with the winter, never more the summer. It is not known how acceptable her Monimia, her Belvidera, her Isabella, would have been to London playgoers. Perhaps they would have received them as did the Virginians, perhaps not. Cibber himself might or might not have drawn for us her portrait; might or might not have dwelt upon the speaking eye, the slow, exquisite smile with which she made more sad her saddest utterances, the wild charm of her mirth, her power to make each auditor fear as his own the impending harm, the tragic splendor in which, when the bolt had fallen, converged all the pathos, beauty, and tenderness of her earlier scenes. A Virginian of that winter, writing of her, had written thus; but then Williamsburgh was not London, nor its playhouse Drury Lane. Perhaps upon that ruder stage, before an audience less polite, with never a critic in the pit or footman in the gallery, with no Fops' Corner and no great number of fine ladies in the boxes, the jewel shone with a l.u.s.tre that in a brighter light it had not worn. There was in Mr. Charles Stagg's company of players no mate for any gem; this one was set amongst pebbles, and perhaps by contrast alone did it glow so deeply.

However this may be, in Virginia, in the winter and the early spring of that year of grace Darden's Audrey was known, extravagantly praised, toasted, applauded to the echo. Night after night saw the theatre crowded, gallery, pit, and boxes. Even the stage had its row of chairs, seats held not too dear at half a guinea. Mr. Stagg had visions of a larger house, a fuller company, renown and prosperity undreamed of before that fortunate day when, in the grape arbor, he and his wife had stood and watched Darden's Audrey asleep, with her head pillowed upon her arm.

Darden's Audrey! The name clung to her, though the minister had no further lot or part in her fate. The poetasters called her Charmante, Anwet, Chloe,--what not! Young Mr. Lee in many a slight and pleasing set of verses addressed her as Sylvia, but to the community at large she was Darden's Audrey, and an enigma greater than the Sphinx. Why would she not marry Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View? Was the girl looking for a prince to come overseas for her? Or did she prefer to a dazzling marriage the excitement of the theatre, the adulation, furious applause? That could hardly be, for these things seemed to frighten her. At times one could see her shrink and grow pale at some great clapping or loud "Again!" And only upon the stage did the town behold her. She rarely went abroad, and at the small white house in Palace Street she was denied to visitors. True, 'twas the way to keep upon curiosity the keenest edge, to pique interest and send the town to the playhouse as the one point of view from which the riddle might be studied. But wisdom such as this could scarce be expected of the girl. Given, then, that 'twas not her vanity which kept her Darden's Audrey, what was it? Was not Mr. Haward of Fair View rich, handsome, a very fine gentleman? Generous, too, for had he not sworn, as earnestly as though he expected to be believed, that the girl was pure innocence? His hand was ready to his sword, nor were men anxious to incur his cold enmity, so that the a.s.sertion pa.s.sed without open challenge. He was mad for her,--that was plain enough. And she,--well she's woman and Darden's Audrey, and so doubly an enigma. In the mean time, to-night she plays Monimia, and her madness makes you weep, so sad it is, so hopeless, and so piercing sweet.

In this new world that was so strange to her Darden's Audrey bore herself as best she might. While it was day she kept within the house, where the room that in September she had shared with Mistress Deborah was now for her alone. Hour after hour she sat there, book in hand, learning how those other women, those women of the past, had loved, had suffered, had fallen to dusty death. Other hours she spent with Mr. Charles Stagg in the long room downstairs, or, when Mistress Stagg had customers, in the theatre itself. As in the branded schoolmaster chance had given her a teacher skilled in imparting knowledge, so in this small and pompous man, who beneath a garb of fustian hugged to himself a genuine reverence and understanding of his art, she found an instructor more able, perhaps, than had been a greater actor. In the chill and empty playhouse, upon the narrow stage where, sitting in the September sunshine, she had asked of Haward her last favor, she now learned to speak for those sisters of her spirit, those dead women who through rapture, agony, and madness had sunk to their long rest, had given their hands to death and lain down in a common inn. To Audrey they were real; she was free of their company. The shadows were the people who lived and were happy; who night after night came to watch a soul caught in the toils, to thunder applause when death with rude and hasty hands broke the net, set free the prisoner.

The girl dreamed as she breathed. Wakened from a long, long fantasy, desolate and cold to the heart in an alien air, she sought for poppy and mandragora, and in some sort finding them dreamed again, though not for herself, not as before. It can hardly be said that she was unhappy. She walked in a pageant of strange miseries, and the pomp of woe was hers to portray. Those changelings from some fateful land, those pa.s.sionate, pale women, the milestones of whose pilgrimage spelled love, ruin, despair, and death, they were her kindred, her sisters. Day and night they kept her company: and her own pain lessened, grew at last to a still and dreamy sorrow, never absent, never poignant.

Of necessity, importunate grief was drugged to sleep. In the daylight hours she must study, must rehea.r.s.e with her fellow players; when night came she put on a beautiful dress, and to lights and music and loud applause there entered Monimia, or Belvidera, or Athenais. When the play was done and the curtain fallen, the crowd of those who would have stayed her ever gave way, daunted by her eyes, her closed lips, the atmosphere that yet wrapped her of pa.s.sion, woe, and exaltation, the very tragedy of the soul that she had so richly painted. Like the ghost of that woman who had so direfully loved and died, she was wont to slip from the playhouse, through the dark garden, to the small white house and her quiet room.

There she laid off her gorgeous dress, and drew the ornaments from her dark hair that was long as Molly's had been that day beneath the sugar-tree in the far-away valley.

She rarely thought of Molly now, or of the mountains. With her hair shadowing her face and streaming over bared neck and bosom she sat before her mirror. The candle burned low; the face in the gla.s.s seemed not her own. Dim, pale, dark-eyed, patient-lipped at last, out of a mist and from a great distance the other woman looked at her. Far countries, the burning noonday and utter love, night and woe and life, the broken toy, flung with haste away! The mist thickened; the face withdrew, farther, farther off; the candle burned low. Audrey put out the weak flame, and laid herself upon the bed. Sleep came soon, and it was still and dreamless. Sometimes Mary Stagg, light in hand, stole into the room and stood above the quiet form. The girl hardly seemed to breathe: she had a fashion of lying with crossed hands and head drawn slightly back, much as she might be laid at last in her final bed. Mistress Stagg put out a timid hand and felt the flesh if it were warm; then bent and lightly kissed hand or arm or the soft curve of the throat. Audrey stirred not, and the other went noiselessly away; or Audrey opened dark eyes, faintly smiled and raised herself to meet the half-awed caress, then sank to rest again.

Into Mistress Stagg's life had struck a shaft of colored light, had come a note of strange music, had flown a bird of paradise. It was and it was not her dead child come again. She knew that her Lucy had never been thus, and the love that she gave Audrey was hardly mother love. It was more nearly an homage, which, had she tried, she could not have explained. When they were alone together, Audrey called the older woman "mother," often knelt and laid her head upon the other's lap or shoulder. In all her ways she was sweet and duteous, grateful and eager to serve. But her spirit dwelt in a rarer air, and there were heights and depths where the waif and her protectress might not meet. To this the latter gave dumb recognition, and though she could not understand, yet loved her protegee. At night, in the playhouse, this love was heightened into exultant worship. At all times there was delight in the girl's beauty, pride in the comment and wonder of the town, self-congratulation and the pleasing knowledge that wisdom is vindicated of its children. Was not all this of her bringing about? Did it not first occur to her that the child might take Jane Day's place? Even Charles, who strutted and plumed himself and offered his snuffbox to every pa.s.ser-by, must acknowledge that! Mistress Stagg stopped her sewing to laugh triumphantly, then fell to work more diligently than ever; for it was her pleasure to dress Darden's Audrey richly, in soft colors, heavy silken stuffs upon which was lavished a wealth of delicate needlework. It was chiefly while she sat and sewed upon these pretty things, with Audrey, book on knee, close beside her, that her own child seemed to breathe again.

Audrey thanked her and kissed her, and wore what she was given to wear, nor thought how her beauty was enhanced. If others saw it, if the wonder grew by what it fed on, if she was talked of, written of, pledged, and lauded by a frank and susceptible people, she knew of all this little enough, and for what she knew cared not at all. Her days went dreamily by, nor very sad nor happy; full of work, yet vague and unmarked as desert sands. What was real was a past that was not hers, and those dead women to whom night by night she gave life and splendor.

There were visitors to whom she was not denied. Darden came at times, sat in Mistress Stagg's sunny parlor, and talked to his sometime ward much as he had talked in the glebe-house living room,--discursively, of men and parochial affairs and his own unmerited woes. Audrey sat and heard him, with her eyes upon the garden without the window. When he lifted from the chair his great shambling figure, and took his stained old hat and heavy cane, Audrey rose also, curtsied, and sent her duty to Mistress Deborah, but she asked no questions as to that past home of hers. It seemed not to interest her that the creek was frozen so hard that one could walk upon it to Fair View, or that the minister had bought a field from his wealthy neighbor, and meant to plant it with Oronoko. Only when he told her that the little wood--the wood that she had called her own--was being cleared, and that all day could be heard the falling of the trees, did she lift startled eyes and draw a breath like a moan. The minister looked at her from under s.h.a.ggy brows, shook his head, and went his way to his favorite ordinary, rum, and a hand at cards.

Mistress Deborah she beheld no more; but once the Widow Constance brought Barbara to town, and the two, being very simple women, went to the play to see the old Audrey, and saw instead a queen, tinseled, mock-jeweled, clad in silk, who loved and triumphed, despaired and died. The rude theatre shook to the applause. When it was all over, the widow and Barbara went dazed to their lodging, and lay awake through the night talking of these marvels. In the morning they found the small white house, and Audrey came to them in the garden. When she had kissed them, the three sat down in the arbor; for it was a fine, sunny morning, and not cold. But the talk was not easy; Barbara's eyes were so round, and the widow kept mincing her words. Only when they were joined by Mistress Stagg, to whom the widow became voluble, the two girls spoke aside.

"I have a guinea, Barbara," said Audrey. "Mr. Stagg gave it to me, and I need it not,--I need naught in the world. Barbara, here!--'tis for a warm dress and a Sunday hood."