Audrey

The shadows lengthened, and a wind of the evening entered the wood. Haward

shook off the lethargy that had kept him lying there for the better part

of an afternoon, rose to his feet, and left the green dell for the road,

all shadow now, winding back to the toy metropolis, to Marot's ordinary,

to the ball at the Palace that night.

The ball at the Palace!--he had forgotten it. Flare of lights, wail of

violins, a painted, silken crowd, laughter, whispers, magpie chattering,

wine, and the weariness of the dance, when his soul would long to be with

the night outside, with the rising wind and the shining stars. He half

determined not to go. What mattered the offense that would be taken? Did

he go he would repent, wearied and ennuyé, watching Evelyn, all

rose-colored, moving with another through the minuet; tied himself perhaps

to some pert miss, or cornered in a card-room by boisterous gamesters, or,

drinking with his peers, called on to toast the lady of his dreams. Better

the dull room at Marot's ordinary, or better still to order Mirza, and

ride off at the planter's pace, through the starshine, to Fair View. On

the river bank before the store MacLean might be lying, dreaming of a

mighty wind and a fierce death. He would dismount, and sit beside that

Highland gentleman, Jacobite and strong man, and their moods would chime

as they had chimed before. Then on to the house and to the eastern window!

Not to-night, but to-morrow night, perhaps, would the darkness be pierced

by the calm pale star that marked another window. It was all a mistake,

that month at Westover,--days lost and wasted, the running of golden sands

ill to spare from Love's brief glass....

His mood had changed when, with the gathering dusk, he entered his room at

Marot's ordinary. He would go to the Palace that night; it would be the

act of a boy to fling away through the darkness, shirking a duty his

position demanded. He would go and be merry, watching Evelyn in the gown

that Peterborough had praised.

When Juba had lighted the candles, he sat and drank and drank again of the

red wine upon the table. It put maggots in his brain, fired and flushed

him to the spirit's core. An idea came, at which he laughed. He bade it

go, but it would not. It stayed, and his fevered fancy played around it

as a moth around a candle. At first he knew it for a notion, bizarre and

absurd, which presently he would dismiss. All day strange thoughts had

come and gone, appearing, disappearing, like will-o'-the-wisps for which a

man upon a firm road has no care. Never fear that he will follow them! He

sees the marsh, that it has no footing. So with this Jack-o'-lantern

conception,--it would vanish as it came.