It was very quiet in the church save for that one great voice speaking. Little by little the voice impressed itself upon her consciousness. The eyes of her mind were upon long ranges of mountains distinct against the splendor of a sunset sky. Last seen in childhood, viewed now through the illusion of the years, the mountains were vastly higher than nature had planned them; the streamers of light shot to the zenith; the black forests were still; everywhere a fixed glory, a gigantic silence, a holding of the breath for things to happen.
By degrees the voice in her ears fitted in with the landscape, became, so solemn and ringing it was, like the voice of the archangel of that sunset land. Audrey listened at last; and suddenly the mountains were gone, and the light from the sky, and her people were dead and dust away in that hidden valley, and she was sitting in the church at Williamsburgh, alone, without a friend.
What was the preacher saying? What ball of the night before was he describing with bitter power, the while he gave warning of handwriting upon the wall such as had menaced Belshazzar's feast of old? Of what shameless girl was he telling,—what creature dressed in silks that should have gone in rags, brought to that ball by her paramour—
The gaunt figure in the pulpit trembled like a leaf with the passion of the preacher's convictions and the energy of his utterance. On had gone the stream of rhetoric, the denunciations, the satire, the tremendous assertions of God's mind and purposes. The lash that was wielded was far-reaching; all the vices of the age—irreligion, blasphemy, drunkenness, extravagance, vainglory, loose living—fell under its sting. The condemnation was general, and each man looked to see his neighbor wince. The occurrence at the ball last night,—he was on that for final theme, was he? There was a slight movement throughout the congregation. Some glanced to where would have sat Mr. Marmaduke Haward, had not the gentleman been at present in his bed, raving now of a great run of luck at the Cocoa Tree; now of an Indian who, with his knee upon his breast, was throttling him to death. Others looked over their shoulders to see if that gypsy yet sat beneath the gallery. Colonel Byrd took out his snuffbox and studied the picture on the lid, while his daughter sat like a carven lady, with a slight smile upon her lips.
On went the word picture that showed how vice could flaunt it in so fallen an age. The preacher spared not plain words, squarely turned himself toward the gallery, pointed out with voice and hand the object of his censure and of God's wrath. Had the law pilloried the girl before them all, it had been but little worse for her. She sat like a statue, staring with wide eyes at the window above the altar. This, then, was what the words in the coach last night had meant—this was what the princess thought—this was what his world thought—
There arose a commotion in the ranks of the clergy of Virginia. The Reverend Gideon Darden, quitting with an oath the company of his brethren, came down the aisle, and, pushing past his wife, took his stand in the pew beside the orphan who had lived beneath his roof, whom during many years he had cursed upon occasion and sometimes struck, and whom he had latterly made his tool, "Never mind him, Audrey, my girl," he said, and put an unsteady hand upon her shoulder. "You're a good child; they cannot harm ye."
He turned his great shambling body and heavy face toward the preacher, stemmed in the full tide of his eloquence by this unseemly interruption, "Ye beggarly Scot!" he exclaimed thickly. "Ye evil-thinking saint from Salem way, that know the very lining of the Lord's mind, and yet, walking through his earth, see but a poisonous weed in his every harmless flower! Shame on you to beat down the flower that never did you harm! The girl's as innocent a thing as lives! Ay, I've had my dram,—the more shame to you that are justly rebuked out of the mouth of a drunken man! I have done, Mr. Commissary," addressing himself to that dignitary, who had advanced to the altar rail with his arm raised in a command for silence. "I've no child of my own, thank God! but the maid has grown up in my house, and I'll not sit to hear her belied. I've heard of last night; 'twas the mad whim of a sick man. The girl's as guiltless of wrong as any lady here. I, Gideon Darden, vouch for it!"
He sat heavily down beside Audrey, who never stirred from her still regard of that high window. There was a moment of portentous silence; then, "Let us pray," said the minister from the pulpit.
Audrey knelt with the rest, but she did not pray. And when it was all over, and the benediction had been given, and she found herself without the church, she looked at the green trees against the clear autumnal skies and at the graves in the churchyard as though it were a new world into which she had stepped. She could not have said that she found it fair. Her place had been so near the door that well-nigh all the congregation was behind her, streaming out of the church, eager to reach the open air, where it might discuss the sermon, the futile and scandalous interruption by the notorious Mr. Darden, and what Mr. Marmaduke Haward might have said or done had he been present.
Only Mistress Stagg kept beside her; for Mistress Deborah hung back, unwilling to be seen in her company, and Darden, from that momentary awakening of his better nature, had sunk to himself again, and thought not how else he might aid this wounded member of his household. But Mary Stagg was a kindly soul, whose heart had led her comfortably through life with very little appeal to her head. The two or three young women—Oldfields and Porters of the Virginian stage—who were under indentures to her husband and herself found her as much their friend as mistress. Their triumphs in the petty playhouse of this town of a thousand souls were hers, and what woes they had came quickly to her ears. Now she would have slipped her hand into Audrey's and have given garrulous comfort, as the two passed alone through the churchyard gate and took their way up Palace Street toward the small white house. But Audrey gave not her hand, did not answer, made no moan, neither justified herself nor blamed another. She did not speak at all, but after the first glance about her moved like a sleepwalker.