Audrey

by Mary Johnston

Now, by the greatest good luck, considered Mistress Deborah, there chanced to be in her larder a haunch of venison roasted most noble; the ducklings and asparagus, too, cooked before church, needed but to be popped into the oven; and there was also an apple tart with cream. With elation, then, and eke with a mind at rest, she added her shrill protests of delight to Darden's more moderate assurances, and, leaving Audrey to set chairs in the shade of a great apple-tree, hurried into the house to unearth her damask tablecloth and silver spoons, and to plan for the morrow a visit to the Widow Constance, and a casual remark that Mr. Marmaduke Haward had dined with the minister the day before. Audrey, her task done, went after her, to be met with graciousness most unusual. "I'll see to the dinner, child. Mr. Haward will expect one of us to sit without, and you had as well go as I. If he's talking to Darden, you might get some larkspur and gilliflowers for the table. La! the flowers that used to wither beneath the candles at my Lady Squander's!"

Audrey, finding the two men in conversation beneath the apple-tree, passed on to the ragged garden, where clumps of hardy, bright-colored flowers played hide-and-seek with currant and gooseberry bushes. Haward saw her go, and broke the thread of his discourse. Darden looked up, and the eyes of the two men met; those of the younger were cold and steady. A moment, and his glance had fallen to his watch which he had pulled out. "'Tis early yet," he said coolly, "and I dare say not quite your dinner time,—which I beg that Mistress Deborah will not advance on my account. Is it not your reverence's habit to rest within doors after your sermon? Pray do not let me detain you. I will go talk awhile with Audrey."

He put up his watch and rose to his feet. Darden cleared his throat. "I have, indeed, a letter to write to Mr. Commissary, and it may be half an hour before Deborah has dinner ready. I will send your servant to fetch you in."

Haward broke the larkspur and gilliflowers, and Audrey gathered up her apron and filled it with the vivid blooms. The child that had thus brought loaves of bread to a governor's table spread beneath a sugar-tree, with mountains round about, had been no purer of heart, no more innocent of rustic coquetry. When her apron was filled she would have returned to the house, but Haward would not have it so. "They will call when dinner is ready," he said. "I wish to talk to you, little maid. Let us go sit in the shade of the willow yonder."

It was almost a twilight behind the cool green rain of the willow boughs. Through that verdant mist Haward and Audrey saw the outer world but dimly. "I had a fearful dream last night," said Audrey. "I think that that must have been why I was to glad to see you come into church to-day. I dreamed that you had never come home again, overseas, in the Golden Rose. Hugon was beside me, in the dream, telling me that you were dead in England: and suddenly I knew that I had never really seen you; that there was no garden, no terrace, no roses, no you. It was all so cold and sad, and the sun kept growing smaller and smaller. The woods, too, were black, and the wind cried in them so that I was afraid. And then I was in Hugon's house, holding the door,—there was a wolf without,—and through the window I saw the mountains; only they were so high that my heart ached to look upon them, and the wind cried down the cleft in the hills. The wolf went away, and then, somehow, I was upon the hilltop.... There was a dead man lying in the grass, but it was too dark to see. Hugon came up behind me, stooped, and lifted the hand.... Upon the finger was that ring you wear, burning in the moonlight.... Oh me!"

The remembered horror of her dream contending with present bliss shook her spirit to its centre. She shuddered violently, then burst into a passion of tears.

Haward's touch upon her hair, Haward's voice in her ear, all the old terms of endearment for a frightened child,—"little maid," "little coward," "Why, sweetheart, these things are shadows, they cannot hurt thee!" She controlled her tears, and was the happier for her weeping. It was sweet to sit there in the lush grass, veiled and shadowed from the world by the willow's drooping green, and in that soft and happy light to listen to his voice, half laughing, half chiding, wholly tender and caressing. Dreams were naught, he said. Had Hugon troubled her waking hours?

He had come once to the house, it appeared; but she had run away and hidden in the wood, and the minister had told him she was gone to the Widow Constance's. That was a long time ago; it must have been the day after she and Mistress Deborah had last come from Fair View.

"A long time," said Haward. "It was a week ago. Has it seemed a long time, Audrey?"

"Yes,—oh yes!"