Audrey

The master of Fair View told himself that there was infection in this

lotus air of Virginia. A fever ran in his veins that made him languid of

will, somewhat sluggish of thought, willing to spend one day like another,

and all in a long dream. Sometimes, in the afternoons, when he was alone

in the garden or upon the terrace, with the house blank and silent behind

him, the slaves gone to the quarters, he tossed aside his book, and, with

his chin upon his hand and his eyes upon the sweep of the river, first

asked himself whither he was going, and then, finding no satisfactory

answer, fell to brooding. Once, going into the house, he chanced to come

upon his full-length reflection in a mirror newly hung, and stopped short

to gaze upon himself. The parlor of his lodgings at Williamsburgh and the

last time that he had seen Evelyn came to him, conjured up by the memory

of certain words of his own.

"A truer glass might show a shrunken figure," he repeated, and with a

quick and impatient sigh he looked at the image in the mirror.

To the eye, at least, the figure was not shrunken. It was that of a man

still young, and of a handsome face and much distinction of bearing. The

dress was perfect in its quiet elegance; the air of the man composed,--a

trifle sad, a trifle mocking. Haward snapped his fingers at the

reflection. "The portrait of a gentleman," he said, and passed on.

That night, in his own room, he took from an escritoire a picture of

Evelyn Byrd, done in miniature after a painting by a pupil of Kneller,

and, carrying it over to the light of the myrtle candles upon the table,

sat down and fell to studying it. After a while he let it drop from his

hand, and leaned back in his chair, thinking.

The night air, rising slightly, bent back the flame of the candles, around

which moths were fluttering, and caused strange shadows upon the walls.

They were thick about the curtained bed whereon had died the elder

Haward,--a proud man, choleric, and hard to turn from his purposes. Into

the mind of his son, sitting staring at these shadows, came the fantastic

notion that amongst them, angry and struggling vainly for speech, might be

his father's shade. The night was feverish, of a heat and lassitude to

foster grotesque and idle fancies. Haward smiled, and spoke aloud to his

imaginary ghost.

"You need not strive for speech," he said. "I know what you would say.

Was it for this I built this house, bought land and slaves?... Fair View

and Westover, Westover and Fair View. A lady that will not wed thee

because she loves thee! Zoons, Marmaduke! thou puttest me beside my

patience!... As for this other, set no nameless, barefoot wench where sat

thy mother! King Cophetua and the beggar maid, indeed! I warrant you

Cophetua was something under three-and-thirty!"