Audrey

In the upper gallery, where no payment was exacted, many servants with a

sprinkling of favorite mulatto or mustee slaves; in the boxes the lustre

and sweep of damask and brocade, light laughter, silvery voices, the

flutter of fans; everywhere the vividness and animation of a strangely

compounded society, where the shadows were deep and the lights were high.

Nor did the conversation of so motley an assemblage lack a certain

pictorial quality, a somewhat fantastic opulence of reference and

allusion. Of what might its members speak while they waited for the

drawing aside of the piece of baize which hung between them and an

Oriental camp? There was the staple of their wealth, a broad-leafed plant,

the smoke of whose far-spread burning might have wrapped its native fields

in a perpetual haze as of Indian summer; and there was the warfare,

bequeathed from generation to generation, against the standing armies of

the forest, that subtle foe that slept not, retreated not, whose vanguard,

ever falling, ever showed unbroken ranks beyond.

Trapper and trader and ranger might tell of trails through the wilderness vast and hostile, of

canoes upon unknown waters, of beasts of prey, creatures screaming in the

night-time through the ebony woods. Of Indian villages, also, and of red

men who, in the fastnesses that were left them, took and tortured and slew

after strange fashions. The white man, strong as the wind, drove the red

man before his face like an autumn leaf, but he beckoned to the black man,

and the black man came at his call. He came in numbers from a far country,

and the manner of his coming was in chains. What he had to sell was

valuable, but the purchase price came not into his hands. Of him also

mention was made to-night.

The master of the tall ship that had brought

him into the James or the York, the dealer to whom he was consigned, the

officer of the Crown who had cried him for sale, the planter who had

bought him, the divine who preached that he was of a race accursed,--all

were there, and all had interest in this merchandise. Others in the throng

talked of ships both great and small, and the quaintness of their names,

the golden flowers and golden women, the swift birds and beasts, the

namesakes of Fortune or of Providence, came pleasantly upon the ear. The

still-vexed Bermoothes, Barbadoes, and all the Indies were spoken of;

ports to the north and ports to the south, pirate craft and sunken

treasure, a flight, a fight, a chase at sea.

The men from Norfolk talked of the great Dismal and its trees of juniper and cypress, the traders of

trading, the masters from William and Mary of the humanities. The greater

men, authoritative and easy, owners of flesh and blood and much land,

holders of many offices and leaders of the people, paid their respects to

horse-racing and cock-fighting, cards and dice; to building, planting, the

genteelest mode of living, and to public affairs both in Virginia and at

home in England. Old friends, with oaths of hearty affection, and from

opposite quarters of the house, addressed each other as Tom, or Ned, or

Dick, while old enemies, finding themselves side by side, exchanged

extremely civil speeches, and so put a keener edge upon their mutual

disgust. In the boxes where glowed the women there was comfit talk, vastly

pretty speeches, asseverations, denials, windy sighs, the politest oaths,

whispering, talk of the play, and, last but not least, of Mr. Haward of

Fair View, and Darden's Audrey.