Audrey

Into Mistress Stagg's life had struck a shaft of colored light, had come a

note of strange music, had flown a bird of paradise. It was and it was not

her dead child come again. She knew that her Lucy had never been thus, and

the love that she gave Audrey was hardly mother love. It was more nearly

an homage, which, had she tried, she could not have explained. When they

were alone together, Audrey called the older woman "mother," often knelt

and laid her head upon the other's lap or shoulder.

In all her ways she was sweet and duteous, grateful and eager to serve. But her spirit dwelt

in a rarer air, and there were heights and depths where the waif and her

protectress might not meet. To this the latter gave dumb recognition, and

though she could not understand, yet loved her protégée. At night, in the

playhouse, this love was heightened into exultant worship. At all times

there was delight in the girl's beauty, pride in the comment and wonder of

the town, self-congratulation and the pleasing knowledge that wisdom is

vindicated of its children. Was not all this of her bringing about? Did it

not first occur to her that the child might take Jane Day's place? Even

Charles, who strutted and plumed himself and offered his snuffbox to every

passer-by, must acknowledge that! Mistress Stagg stopped her sewing to

laugh triumphantly, then fell to work more diligently than ever; for it

was her pleasure to dress Darden's Audrey richly, in soft colors, heavy

silken stuffs upon which was lavished a wealth of delicate needlework. It

was chiefly while she sat and sewed upon these pretty things, with Audrey,

book on knee, close beside her, that her own child seemed to breathe

again.

Audrey thanked her and kissed her, and wore what she was given to wear,

nor thought how her beauty was enhanced. If others saw it, if the wonder

grew by what it fed on, if she was talked of, written of, pledged, and

lauded by a frank and susceptible people, she knew of all this little

enough, and for what she knew cared not at all. Her days went dreamily by,

nor very sad nor happy; full of work, yet vague and unmarked as desert

sands. What was real was a past that was not hers, and those dead women to

whom night by night she gave life and splendor.

There were visitors to whom she was not denied. Darden came at times, sat

in Mistress Stagg's sunny parlor, and talked to his sometime ward much as

he had talked in the glebe-house living room,--discursively, of men and

parochial affairs and his own unmerited woes. Audrey sat and heard him,

with her eyes upon the garden without the window. When he lifted from the

chair his great shambling figure, and took his stained old hat and heavy

cane, Audrey rose also, curtsied, and sent her duty to Mistress Deborah,

but she asked no questions as to that past home of hers. It seemed not to

interest her that the creek was frozen so hard that one could walk upon it

to Fair View, or that the minister had bought a field from his wealthy

neighbor, and meant to plant it with Oronoko. Only when he told her that

the little wood--the wood that she had called her own--was being cleared,

and that all day could be heard the falling of the trees, did she lift

startled eyes and draw a breath like a moan. The minister looked at her

from under shaggy brows, shook his head, and went his way to his favorite

ordinary, rum, and a hand at cards.