Audrey

by Mary Johnston

"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 passions 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 lustre 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 assertion passed 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 passionate, 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.