Audrey

by Mary Johnston

Evelyn folded her hands in her silken lap, and looked out upon river and sky and ceaseless drift of colored leaves. "You can never go out of my life," she said. "Why the power to vex and ruin was given you I do not know, but you have used it. Why did you run away from Fair View?"

"That I might never see Mr. Haward again," answered Audrey. She held her head up, but she felt the stab. It had not occurred to her that hers was the power to vex and ruin; apparently that belonged elsewhere.

Evelyn turned from the window, and the two women, the princess and the herdgirl, regarded each other. "Oh, my God!" cried Evelyn. "I did not know that you loved him so!"

But Audrey shook her head, and spoke with calmness: "Once I loved and knew it not, and once I loved and knew it. It was all in a dream, and now I have waked up." She passed her hand across her brow and eyes, and pushed back her heavy hair. It was a gesture that was common to her. To Evelyn it brought a sudden stinging memory of the ballroom at the Palace; of how this girl had looked in her splendid dress, with the roses in her hair; of Haward's words at the coach door. She had not seen him since that night. "I am going a long way," continued Audrey. "It will be as though I died. I never meant to harm you."

The other gazed at her with wide, dry eyes, and with an unwonted color in her cheeks. "She is beautiful," thought Audrey; then wondered how long she must stay in this room and this house. Without the window the trees beckoned, the light was fair upon the river; in the south hung a cloud, silver-hued, and shaped like two mighty wings. Audrey, with her eyes upon the cloud, thought, "If the wings were mine, I would reach the mountains to-night."

"Do you remember last May Day?" asked Evelyn, in a voice scarcely above a whisper. "He and I, sitting side by side, watched your running, and I praised you to him. Then we went away, and while we gathered flowers on the road to Williamsburgh he asked me to be his wife. I said no, for he loved me not as I wished to be loved. Afterward, in Williamsburgh, he spoke again.... I said, 'When you come to Westover;' and he kissed my hand, and vowed that the next week should find him here." She turned once more to the window, and, with her chin in her hand, looked out upon the beauty of the autumn. "Day by day, and day by day," she said, in the same hushed voice, "I sat at this window and watched for him to come. The weeks went by, and he came not. I began to hear talk of you. Oh, I deny not that it was bitter!"

"Oh me! oh me!" cried Audrey. "I was so happy, and I thought no harm."

"He came at last," continued Evelyn. "For a month he stayed here, paying me court. I was too proud to speak of what I had heard. After a while I thought it must have been an idle rumor." Her voice changed, and with a sudden gesture of passion and despair she lifted her arms above her head, then clasped and wrung her hands. "Oh, for a month he forgot you! In all the years to come I shall have that comfort: for one little month, in the company of the woman whom, because she was of his own rank, because she had wealth, because others found her fair and honored her with heart as well as lip, he wished to make his wife,—for that short month he forgot you! The days were sweet to me, sweet, sweet! Oh, I dreamed my dreams!... And then we were called to Williamsburgh to greet the new Governor, and he went with us, and again I heard your name coupled with his.... There was between us no betrothal. I had delayed to say yes to his asking, for I wished to make sure,—to make sure that he loved me. No man can say he broke troth with me. For that my pride gives thanks!"

"What must I do?" said Audrey to herself. "Pain is hard to bear."

"That night at the ball," continued Evelyn, "when, coming down the stair, I saw you standing beside him ... and after that, the music, and the lights, and you dancing with him, in your dark beauty, with the flowers in your hair ... and after that, you and I in my coach and his face at the window!... Oh, I can tell you what he said! He said: 'Good-by, sweetheart.... The violets are for you; but the great white blossoms, and the boughs of rosy mist, and all the trees that wave in the wind are for Audrey.'"