Audrey

By now it was early spring in Virginia, and a time of balm and

pleasantness. The season had not entered into its complete heritage of gay

hues, sweet odors, song, and wealth of bliss. Its birthday robe was yet

a-weaving, its coronal of blossoms yet folded buds, its choristers not

ready with their fullest pæans. But everywhere was earnest of future

riches. In the forest the bloodroot was in flower, and the bluebird and

the redbird flashed from the maple that was touched with fire to the beech

just lifted from a pale green fountain. In Mistress Stagg's garden daffodils bloomed, and dim blue hyacinths made sweet places in the grass.

The sun lay warm upon upturned earth, blackbirds rose in squadrons and

darkened the yet leafless trees, and every wind brought rumors of the

heyday toward which the earth was spinning. The days were long and sweet;

at night a moon came up, and between it and the earth played soft and

vernal airs. Then a pale light flooded the garden, the shells bordering

its paths gleamed like threaded pearls, and the house showed whiter than a

marble sepulchre. Mild incense, cool winds, were there, but quiet came

fitfully between the bursts of noise from the lit theatre.

On such a night as this Audrey, clothed in red silk, with a band of false

jewels about her shadowy hair, slipped through the stage door into the

garden, and moved across it to the small white house and rest. Her part

in the play was done; for all their storming she would not stay. Silence

and herself alone, and the mirror in her room; then, sitting before the

glass, to see in it darkly the woman whom she had left dead upon the

boards yonder,--no, not yonder, but in a far country, and a fair and great

city.

Love! love! and death for love! and her own face in the mirror

gazing at her with eyes of that long-dead Greek. It was the exaltation and

the dream, mournful, yet not without its luxury, that ended her every day.

When the candle burned low, when the face looked but dimly from the glass,

then would she rise and quench the flame, and lay herself down to sleep,

with the moonlight upon her crossed hands and quiet brow.

* * * * *

She passed through the grape arbor, and opened the door at which Haward

had knocked that September night of the Governor's ball. She was in

Mistress Stagg's long room; at that hour it should have been lit only by a

dying fire and a solitary candle. Now the fire was low enough, but the

room seemed aflare with myrtle tapers. Audrey, coming from the dimness

without, shaded her eyes with her hand. The heavy door shut to behind her;

unseeing still she moved toward the fire, but in a moment let fall her

hand and began to wonder at the unwonted lights. Mistress Stagg was yet in

the playhouse; who then had lit these candles? She turned, and saw Haward

standing with folded arms between her and the door.