Audrey

by Mary Johnston

MacLean had a lean and wiry strength which had stood him in good stead upon more than one occasion in his checkered career. He now drove an arm like a bar of iron between two broadcloth coats, sent the wearers thereof to right and left, and found himself one of an inner ring and facing Mistress Truelove Taberer, who stood at bay against the silversmith's long table. One arm was around the boy who had rowed her to the Fair View store a week agone; with the other she was defending her face from the attack of a beribboned gallant desirous of a kiss. The boy, a slender, delicate lad of fourteen, struggled to free himself from his sister's restraining arm, his face white with passion and his breath coming in gasps. "Let me go, Truelove!" he commanded. "If I am a Friend, I am a man as well! Thou fellow with the shoulder knots, thee shall pay dearly for thy insolence!"

Truelove tightened her hold. "Ephraim, Ephraim! If a man compel thee to go with him a mile, thee is to go with him twain; if he take thy cloak, thee is to give him thy coat also; if he—Ah!" She buried her profaned cheek in her arm and began to cry, but very softly.

Her tormentors, flushed with wine and sworn to obtain each one a kiss, laughed more loudly, and one young rake, with wig and ruffles awry, lurched forward to take the place of the coxcomb who had scored. Ephraim wrenched himself free, and making for this gentleman might have given or received bodily injury, had not a heavy hand falling upon his shoulder stopped him in mid-career.

"Stand aside, boy," said MacLean, "This quarrel's mine by virtue of my making it so. Mistress Truelove, you shall have no further annoyance. Now, you Lowland cowards that cannot see a flower bloom but you wish to trample it in the mire, come taste the ground yourself, and be taught that the flower is out of reach!"

As he spoke he stepped before the Quakeress, weaponless, but with his eyes like steel. The half dozen spendthrifts and ne'er-do-weels whom he faced paused but long enough to see that this newly arrived champion had only his bare hands, and was, by token of his dress, undoubtedly their inferior, before setting upon him with drunken laughter and the loudly avowed purpose of administering a drubbing. The one that came first he sent rolling to the floor. "Another for Hector!" he said coolly.

The silversmith, ensconced in safety behind the table, wrung his hands. "Sirs, sirs! Take your quarrel into the street! I'll no have fighting in my store. What did ye rin in here for, ye Quaker baggage? Losh! did ye ever see the like of that! Here, boy, ye can get through the window. Rin for the constable! Rin, I tell ye, or there'll be murder done!"

A gentleman who had entered the store unobserved drew his rapier, and with it struck up a heavy cane which was in the act of descending for the second time upon the head of the unlucky Scot. "What is all this?" he asked quietly. "Five men against one,—that is hardly fair play. Ah, I see there were six; I had overlooked the gentleman on the floor, who, I hope, is only stunned. Five to one,—the odds are heavy. Perhaps I can make them less so." With a smile upon his lips, he stepped backward a foot or two until he stood with the weaker side.

Now, had it been the constable who so suddenly appeared upon the scene, the probabilities are that the fight, both sides having warmed to it, would, despite the terrors of the law, have been carried to a finish. But it was not the constable; it was a gentleman recently returned from England, and become in the eyes of the youth of Williamsburgh the glass of fashion and the mould of form. The youngster with the shoulder knots had copied color and width of ribbon from a suit which this gentleman had worn at the Palace; the rake with the wig awry, who passed for a wit, had done him the honor to learn by heart portions of his play, and to repeat (without quotation marks) a number of his epigrams; while the pretty fellow whose cane he had struck up practiced night and morning before a mirror his bow and manner of presenting his snuffbox. A fourth ruffler desired office, and cared not to offend a prospective Councilor. There was rumor, too, of a grand entertainment to be given at Fair View; it was good to stand well with the law, but it was imperative to do so with Mr. Marmaduke Haward. Their hands fell; they drew back a pace, and the wit made himself spokesman. Roses were rare so early in the year; for him and his companions, they had but wished to compliment those that bloomed in the cheeks of the pretty Quakeress. This servant fellow, breathing fire like a dragon, had taken it upon himself to defend the roses,—which likely enough were grown for him,—and so had been about to bring upon himself merited chastisement. However, since it was Mr. Marmaduke Haward who pleaded for him—A full stop, a low bow, and a flourish. "Will Mr. Haward honor me? 'Tis right Macouba, and the box—if the author of 'The Puppet Show' would deign to accept it"—

"Rather to change with you, sir," said the other urbanely, and drew out his own chased and medallioned box.

The gentleman upon the floor had now gotten unsteadily to his feet. Mr. Haward took snuff with each of the six; asked after the father of one, the brother of another; delicately intimated his pleasure in finding the noble order of Mohocks, that had lately died in London, resurrected in Virginia; and fairly bowed the flattered youths out of the store. He stood for a moment upon the threshold watching them go triumphantly, if unsteadily, up the street; then turned to the interior of the store to find MacLean seated upon a stool, with his head against the table, submitting with a smile of pure content to the ministrations of the dove-like mover of the late turmoil, who with trembling fingers was striving to bind her kerchief about a great cut in his forehead.