"The crossroads schoolmaster taught me," she explained. "He has a scar in each hand, and is a very wicked man, but he knows more than the Commissary himself. The minister, too, has a cupboard filled with books, and he buys the new ones as the ships bring them in. When I have time, and Mistress Deborah will not let me go to the woods, I read. And I remember what I read. I could"—
A smile trembled upon her lips, and her eyes grew brighter. Fired by the desire that he should praise her learning, and in her very innocence bold as a Wortley or a Howe, she began to repeat the lines which he had been reading beneath the cherry-tree:—
"'When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll'"—
The rhythm of the words, the passion of the thought, the pleased surprise that she thought she read in his face, the gesture of his hand, all spurred her on from line to line, sentence to sentence. And now she was not herself, but that other woman, and she was giving voice to all her passion, all her woe. The room became a convent cell; her ragged dress the penitent's trailing black. That Audrey, lithe of mind as of body; who in the woods seemed the spirit of the woods, in the garden the spirit of the garden, on the water the spirit of the water,—that this Audrey, in using the speech of the poet, should embody and become the spirit of that speech was perhaps, considering all things, not so strange. At any rate, and however her power came about, at that moment, in Fair View house, a great actress was speaking.
"'Fresh blooming Hope, gay daughter of the skies,
And Faith'"—
The speaker lost a word, hesitated, became confused. Finally silence; then the Audrey of a while before, standing with heaving bosom, shy as a fawn, fearful that she had not pleased him, after all. For if she had done so, surely he would have told her as much. As it was, he had said but one word, and that beneath his breath, "Eloïsa!"
It would seem that her fear was unfounded; for when he did speak, there were, God wot, sugar-plums enough. And Audrey, who in her workaday world was always blamed, could not know that the praise that was so sweet was less wholesome than the blame.
Leaving the library they went into the hall, and from the hall looked into great, echoing, half-furnished rooms. All about lay packing-cases, many of them open, with rich stuffs streaming from them. Ornaments were huddled on tables, mirrors and pictures leaned their faces to the walls; everywhere was disorder.
"The negroes are careless, and to-day I held their hands," said Haward. "I must get some proper person to see to this gear."
Up stairs and down they went through the house, that seemed very large and very still, and finally they came out of the great front door, and down the stone steps on to the terrace. Below them, sparkling in the sunshine, lay the river, the opposite shore all in a haze of light. "I must go home," Audrey shyly reminded him, whereat he smiled assent, and they went, not through the box alley to the gate in the wall, but down the terrace, and out upon the hot brown boards of the landing. Haward, stepping into a boat, handed her to a seat in the stern, and himself took the oars. Leaving the landing, they came to the creek and entered it. Presently they were gliding beneath the red brick wall with the honeysuckle atop. On the opposite grassy shore, seated in a blaze of noon sunshine, was Hugon.