Hugon went a-trading to the Southern Indians, but had lately returned to his lair at the crossroads ordinary, when, upon a sunny September morning, Audrey and Mistress Deborah, mounted upon the sorriest of Darden’s sorry steeds, turned from Duke of Gloucester into Palace Street.  They had parted with the minister before his favorite ordinary, and were on their way to the house where they themselves were to lodge during the three days of town life which Darden had vouchsafed to offer them.

For a month or more Virginia had been wearing black ribbons for the King, who died in June, but in the last day or so there had been a reversion to bright colors.  This cheerful change had been wrought by the arrival in the York of the Fortune of Bristol, with the new governor on board.  His Excellency had landed at Yorktown, and, after suitable entertainment at the hands of its citizens, had proceeded under escort to Williamsburgh.  The entry into the town was triumphal, and when, at the doorway of his Palace, the Governor turned, and addressed a pleasing oration to the people whom he was to rule in the name of the King and my Lord of Orkney, enthusiasm reached its height.  At night the town was illuminated, and well-nigh all its ladies and gentlemen visited the Palace, in order to pay their duty to its latest occupant.  It was a pleasure-loving people, and the arrival of a governor an occasion of which the most must be made.  Gentlemen of consideration had come in from every county, bringing with them wives and daughters.  In the mild, sunshiny weather the crowded town overflowed into square and street and garden.  Everywhere were bustle and gayety, gayety none the less for the presence of thirty or more ministers of the Established Church.  For Mr. Commissary Blair had convoked a meeting of the clergy for the consideration of evils affecting that body, not, alas! from without alone.  The Governor, arriving so opportunely, must, too, be addressed upon the usual subjects of presentation, induction, and all-powerful vestries.  It was fitting, also, that the college of William and Mary should have its say upon the occasion, and the brightest scholar thereof was even now closeted with the Latin master.  That the copy of verses giving the welcome of so many future planters, Burgesses, and members of Council would be choice in thought and elegant in expression, there could be no reasonable doubt.  The Council was to give an entertainment at the Capitol; one day had been set aside for a muster of militia in the meadow beyond the college, another for a great horse-race; many small parties were arranged; and last, but not least, on the night of the day following Darden’s appearance in town, his Excellency was to give a ball at the Palace.  Add to all this that two notorious pirates were standing their trial before a court-martial, with every prospect of being hanged within the se’ennight; that a deputation of Nottoways and Meherrins, having business with the white fathers in Williamsburgh, were to be persuaded to dance their wildest, whoop their loudest, around a bonfire built in the market square; that at the playhouse Cato was to be given with extraordinary magnificence, and one may readily see that there might have been found, in this sunny September week, places less entertaining than Williamsburgh.

Darden’s old white horse, with its double load, plodded along the street that led to the toy Palace of this toy capital.  The Palace, of course, was not its riders’ destination; instead, when they had crossed Nicholson Street, they drew up before a particularly small white house, so hidden away behind lilac bushes and trellised grapevines that it gave but here and there a pale hint of its existence.  It was planted in the shadow of a larger building, and a path led around it to what seemed a pleasant, shady, and extensive garden.

Mistress Deborah gave a sigh of satisfaction.  “Seven years come Martinmas since I last stayed overnight with Mary Stagg!  And we were born in the same village, and at Bath what mighty friends we were!  She was playing Dorinda, that’s in ‘The Beaux’ Stratagem,’ Audrey, and her dress was just an old striped Persian, vastly unbecoming.  Her Ladyship’s pink alamode, that Major D spilt a dish of chocolate over, she gave to me for carrying a note; and I gave it to Mary (she was Mary Baker then), for I looked hideous in pink, and she was that grateful, as well she might be!  Mary, Mary!”

A slender woman, with red-brown hair and faded cheeks, came running from the house to the gate.  “At last, my dear Deborah!  I vow I had given you up!  Says I to Mirabell an hour ago, you know that is my name for Charles, for ’twas when he played Mirabell to my Millamant that we fell in love, ’Well,’ says I, ’I’ll lay a gold-furbelowed scarf to a yard of oznaburg that Mr. Darden, riding home through the night, and in liquor, perhaps, has fallen and broken his neck, and Deborah can’t come.’  And says Mirabell But la, my dear, there you stand in your safeguard, and I’m keeping the gate shut on you!  Come in.  Come in, Audrey.  Why, you’ve grown to be a woman!  You were just a brown slip of a thing, that Lady Day, two years ago, that I spent with Deborah.  Come in the both of you.  There are cakes and a bottle of Madeira.”

Audrey fastened the horse against the time that Darden should remember to send for it, and then followed the ex-waiting-woman and the former queen of a company of strollers up a grassy path and through a little green door into a pleasant room, where grape leaves wreathed the windows and cast their shadows upon a sanded floor.  At one end of the room stood a great, rudely built cabinet, and before it a long table, strewn with an orderly litter of such slender articles of apparel as silk and tissue scarfs, gauze hoods, breast knots, silk stockings, and embroidered gloves.  Mistress Deborah must needs run and examine these at once, and Mistress Mary Stagg, wife of the lessee, manager, and principal actor of the Williamsburgh theatre, looked complacently over her shoulder.  The minister’s wife sighed again, this time with envy.

“What with the theatre, and the bowling green, and tea in your summer-house, and dancing lessons, and the sale of these fine things, you and Charles must turn a pretty penny!  The luck that some folk have! You were always fortunate, Mary.”

Mistress Stagg did not deny the imputation.  But she was a kindly soul, who had not forgotten the gift of my Lady Squander’s pink alamode.  The chocolate stain had not been so very large.

“I’ve laid by a pretty piece of sarcenet of which to make you a capuchin,” she said promptly.  “Now, here’s the wine.  Shan’t we go into the garden, and sip it there?  Peggy,” to the black girl holding a salver, “put the cake and wine on the table in the arbor; then sit here by the window, and call me if any come.  My dear Deborah, I doubt if I have so much as a ribbon left by the end of the week.  The town is that gay!  I says to Mirabell this morning, says I, ’Lord, my dear, it a’most puts me in mind of Bath!’ And Mirabell says But here’s the garden door.  Now, isn’t it cool and pleasant out here?  Audrey may gather us some grapes.  Yes, they’re very fine, full bunches; it has been a bounteous year.”

The grape arbor hugged the house, but beyond it was a pretty, shady, fancifully laid out garden, with shell-bordered walks, a grotto, a summer-house, and a gate opening into Nicholson Street.  Beyond the garden a glimpse was to be caught through the trees of a trim bowling green.  It had rained the night before, and a delightful, almost vernal freshness breathed in the air.  The bees made a great buzzing amongst the grapes, and the birds in the mulberry-trees sang as though it were nesting time.  Mistress Stagg and her old acquaintance sat at a table placed in the shadow of the vines, and sipped their wine, while Audrey obediently gathered clusters of the purple fruit, and thought the garden very fine, but oh, not like There could be no garden in the world so beautiful and so dear as that!  And she had not seen it for so long, so long a time.  She wondered if she would ever see it again.

When she brought the fruit to the table, Mistress Stagg made room for her kindly enough; and she sat and drank her wine and went to her world of dreams, while her companions bartered town and country gossip.  It has been said that the small white house adjoined a larger building.  A window in this structure, which had much the appearance of a barn, was now opened, with the result that a confused sound, as of several people speaking at once, made itself heard.  Suddenly the noise gave place to a single high-pitched voice:

    “’Welcome, my son!  Here lay him down, my friends,
      Full in my sight, that I may view at leisure
      The bloody corse, and count those glorious wounds.’”

A smile irradiated Mistress Stagg’s faded countenance, and she blew a kiss toward the open window.  “He does Cato so extremely well; and it’s a grave, dull, odd character, too.  But Mirabell that’s Charles, you know manages to put a little life in it, a Je ne saïs quoi, a touch of Sir Harry Wildair.  Now now he’s pulling out his laced handkerchief to weep over Rome!  You should see him after he has fallen on his sword, and is brought on in a chair, all over blood.  This is the third rehearsal; the play’s ordered for Monday night.  Who is it, Peggy?  Madam Travis!  It’s about the lace for her damask petticoat, and there’s no telling how long she may keep me!  My dear Deborah, when you have finished your wine, Peggy shall show you your room.  You must make yourself quite at home.  For says I to Mirabell this morning, ’Far be it from me to forget past kindnesses, and in those old Bath days Deborah was a good friend to me, which was no wonder, to be sure, seeing that when we were little girls we went to the same dame school, and always learned our book and worked our samplers together.’  And says Mirabell Yes, yes, ma’am, I’m coming!”

She disappeared, and the black girl showed the two guests through the hall and up a tiny stairway into a little dormer-windowed, whitewashed room.  Mistress Deborah, who still wore remnants of my Lady Squander’s ancient gifts of spoiled finery, had likewise failed to discard the second-hand fine-lady airs acquired during her service.  She now declared herself excessively tired by her morning ride, and martyr, besides, to a migraine.  Moreover, it was enough to give one the spleen to hear Mary Stagg’s magpie chatter and to see how some folk throve, willy-nilly, while others just as good Here tears of vexation ensued, and she must lie down upon the bed and call in a feeble voice for her smelling salts.  Audrey hurriedly searched in the ragged portmanteau brought to town the day before in the ox-cart of an obliging parishioner, found the flask, and took it to the bedside, to receive in exchange a sound box of the ear for her tardiness.  The blow reddened her cheek, but brought no tears to her eyes.  It was too small a thing to weep for; tears were for blows upon the heart.

It was a cool and quiet little room, and Mistress Deborah, who had drunk two full glasses of the Madeira, presently fell asleep.  Audrey sat very still, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes upon them, until their hostess’s voice announced from the foot of the stairs that Madam Travis had taken her departure.  She then slipped from the room, and was affably received below, and taken into the apartment which they had first entered.  Here Mistress became at once extremely busy.  A fan was to be mounted; yards of silk gathered into furbelows; breast knots, shoulder knots, sword knots, to be made up.  Her customers were all people of quality, and unless she did her part not one of them could go to the ball.  Audrey shyly proffered her aid, and was set to changing the ribbons upon a mask.

Mistress Stagg’s tongue went as fast as her needle:  “And Deborah is asleep!  Poor soul! she’s sadly changed from what she was in old England thirteen years ago.  As neat a shape as you would see in a day’s journey, with the prettiest color, and eyes as bright as those marcasite buttons!  And she saw the best of company at my Lady Squander’s, no lack there of kisses and guineas and fine gentlemen, you may be sure!  There’s a deal of change in this mortal world, and it’s generally for the worse.  Here, child, you may whip this lace on Mr. Lightfoot’s ruffles.  I think myself lucky, I can tell you, that there are so few women in Cato.  If ’tweren’t so, I should have to go on myself; for since poor, dear, pretty Jane Day died of the smallpox, and Oriana Jordan ran away with the rascally Bridewell fellow that we bought to play husbands’ parts, and was never heard of more, but is supposed to have gotten clean off to Barbadoes by favor of the master of the Lady Susan, we have been short of actresses.  But in this play there are only Marcia and Lucia.  ’It is extremely fortunate, my dear,’ said I to Mirabell this very morning, ’that in this play, which is the proper compliment to a great gentleman just taking office, Mr. Addison should have put no more than two women.’  And Mirabell says Don’t put the lace so full, child; ’twon’t go round.”

“A chair is stopping at the gate,” said Audrey, who sat by the window.  “There’s a lady in it.”

The chair was a very fine painted one, borne by two gayly dressed negroes, and escorted by a trio of beribboned young gentlemen, prodigal of gallant speeches, amorous sighs, and languishing glances.  Mistress Stagg looked, started up, and, without waiting to raise from the floor the armful of delicate silk which she had dropped, was presently curtsying upon the doorstep.

The bearers set down their load.  One of the gentlemen opened the chair door with a flourish, and the divinity, compressing her hoop, descended.  A second cavalier flung back Mistress Stagg’s gate, and the third, with a low bow, proffered his hand to conduct the fair from the gate to the doorstep.  The lady shook her head; a smiling word or two, a slight curtsy, the wave of a painted fan, and her attendants found themselves dismissed.  She came up the path alone, slowly, with her head a little bent.  Audrey, watching her from the window, knew who she was, and her heart beat fast.  If this lady were in town, then so was he; he would not have stayed behind at Westover.  She would have left the room, but there was not time.  The mistress of the house, smiling and obsequious, fluttered in, and Evelyn Byrd followed.

There had been ordered for her a hood of golden tissue, with wide and long streamers to be tied beneath the chin, and she was come to try it on.  Mistress Stagg had it all but ready, there was only the least bit of stitchery; would Mistress Evelyn condescend to wait a very few minutes?  She placed a chair, and the lady sank into it, finding the quiet of the shadowed room pleasant enough after the sunlight and talkativeness of the world without.  Mistress Stagg, in her rôle of milliner, took the gauzy trifle, called by courtesy a hood, to the farthest window, and fell busily to work.

It seemed to grow more and more quiet in the room:  the shadow of the leaves lay still upon the floor; the drowsy humming of the bees outside the windows, the sound of locusts in the trees, the distant noises of the town, all grew more remote, then suddenly appeared to cease.

Audrey raised her eyes, and met the eyes of Evelyn.  She knew that they had been upon her for a long time, in the quiet of the room.  She had sat breathless, her head bowed over her work that lay idly in her lap, but at last she must look.  The two gazed at each other with a sorrowful steadfastness; in the largeness of their several natures there was no room for self-consciousness; it was the soul of each that gazed.  But in the mists of earthly ignorance they could not read what was written, and they erred in their guessing.  Audrey went not far wide.  This was the princess, and, out of the fullness of a heart that ached with loss, she could have knelt and kissed the hem of her robe, and wished her long and happy life.  There was no bitterness in her heart; she never dreamed that she had wronged the princess.  But Evelyn thought:  “This is the girl they talk about.  God knows, if he had loved worthily, I might not so much have minded!”

From the garden came a burst of laughter and high voices.  Mistress Stagg started up. “’Tis our people, Mistress Evelyn, coming from the playhouse.  We lodge them in the house by the bowling green, but after rehearsals they’re apt to stop here.  I’ll send them packing.  The hood is finished.  Audrey will set it upon your head, ma’am, while I am gone.  Here, child!  Mind you don’t crush it.”  She gave the hood into Audrey’s hands, and hurried from the room.

Evelyn sat motionless, her silken draperies flowing around her, one white arm bent, the soft curve of her cheek resting upon ringed fingers.  Her eyes yet dwelt upon Audrey, standing as motionless, the mist of gauze and lace in her hands.  “Do not trouble yourself,” she said, in her low, clear voice.  “I will wait until Mistress Stagg returns.”

The tone was very cold, but Audrey scarce noticed that it was so.  “If I may, I should like to serve you, ma’am,” she said pleadingly.  “I will be very careful.”

Leaving the window, she came and knelt beside Evelyn; but when she would have put the golden hood upon her head, the other drew back with a gesture of aversion, a quick recoil of her entire frame.  The hood slipped to the floor.  After a moment Audrey rose and stepped back a pace or two.  Neither spoke, but it was the one who thought no evil whose eyes first sought the floor.  Her dark cheek paled, and her lips trembled; she turned, and going back to her seat by the window took up her fallen work.  Evelyn, with a sharp catch of her breath, withdrew her attention from the other occupant of the room, and fixed it upon a moted sunbeam lying like a bar between the two.

Mistress Stagg returned.  The hood was fitted, and its purchaser prepared to leave.  Audrey rose and made her curtsy, timidly, but with a quick, appealing motion of her hand.  Was not this the lady whom he loved, that people said he was to wed?  And had he not told her, long ago, that he would speak of her to Mistress Evelyn Byrd, and that she too would be her friend?  Last May Day, when the guinea was put into her hand, the lady’s smile was bright, her voice sweet and friendly.  Now, how changed!  In her craving for a word, a look, from one so near him, one that perhaps had seen him not an hour before; in her sad homage for the object of his love, she forgot her late repulse, and grew bold.  When Evelyn would have passed her, she put forth a trembling hand and began to speak, to say she scarce knew what; but the words died in her throat.  For a moment Evelyn stood, her head averted, an angry red staining neck and bosom and beautiful, down-bent face.  Her eyes half closed, the long lashes quivering against her cheek, and she smiled faintly, in scorn of the girl and scorn of herself.  Then, freeing her skirt from Audrey’s clasp, she passed in silence from the room.

Audrey stood at the window, and with wide, pained eyes watched her go down the path.  Mistress Stagg was with her, talking volubly, and Evelyn seemed to listen with smiling patience.  One of the bedizened negroes opened the chair door; the lady entered, and was borne away.  Before Mistress Stagg could reenter her house Audrey had gone quietly up the winding stair to the little whitewashed room, where she found the minister’s wife astir and restored to good humor.  Her sleep had helped her; she would go down at once and see what Mary was at.  Darden, too, was coming as soon as the meeting at the church had adjourned.  After dinner they would walk out and see the town, until which time Audrey might do as she pleased.  When she was gone, Audrey softly shut herself in the little room, and lay down upon the bed, very still, with her face hidden in her arm.

With twelve of the clock came Darden, quite sober, distrait in manner and uneasy of eye, and presently interrupted Mistress Stagg’s flow of conversation by a demand to speak with his wife alone.  At that time of day the garden was a solitude, and thither the two repaired, taking their seats upon a bench built round a mulberry-tree.

“Well?” queried Mistress Deborah bitterly.  “I suppose Mr. Commissary showed himself vastly civil?  I dare say you’re to preach before the Governor next Sunday?  Or maybe they’ve chosen Bailey?  He boasts that he can drink you under the table!  One of these fine days you’ll drink and curse and game yourself out of a parish!”

Darden drew figures on the ground with his heavy stick.  “On such a fine day as this,” he said, in a suppressed voice, and looked askance at the wife whom he beat upon occasion, but whose counsel he held in respect.

She turned upon him.  “What do you mean?  They talk and talk, and cry shame, and a shame it is, the Lord knows!  But it never comes to anything”

“It has come to this,” interrupted Darden, with an oath:  “that this Governor means to sweep in the corners; that the Commissary damned Scot! to-day appointed a committee to inquire into the charges made against me and Bailey and John Worden; that seven of my vestrymen are dead against me; and that ‘deprivation’ has suddenly become a very common word!”

“Seven of the vestry?” said his wife, after a pause.  “Who are they?”

Darden told her.

“If Mr. Haward” she began slowly, her green eyes steady upon the situation.  “There’s not one of that seven would care to disoblige him.  I warrant you he could make them face about.  They say he knew the Governor in England, too; and there’s his late gift to the college, the Commissary wouldn’t forget that.  If Mr. Haward would” She broke off, and with knit brows studied the problem more intently.

“If he would, he could,” Darden finished for her.  “With his interest this cloud would go by, as others have done before.  I know that, Deborah.  And that’s the card I’m going to play.”

“If you had gone to him, hat in hand, a month ago, he’d have done you any favor,” said his helpmate sourly.  “But it is different now.  He’s over his fancy; and besides, he’s at Westover.”

“He’s in Williamsburgh, at Marot’s ordinary,” said the other.  “As for his being over his fancy, I’ll try that.  Fancy or no fancy, if a woman asked him for a fairing, he would give it her, or I don’t know my gentleman.  We’ll call his interest a ribbon or some such toy, and Audrey shall ask him for it.”

“Audrey is a fool!” cried Mistress Deborah.  “And you had best be careful, or you’ll prove yourself another!  There’s been talk enough already.  Audrey, village innocent that she is, is the only one that doesn’t know it.  The town’s not the country; if he sets tongues a-clacking here”

“He won’t,” said Darden roughly.  “He’s no hare-brained one-and-twenty!  And Audrey’s a good girl.  Go send her here, Deborah.  Bid her fetch me Stagg’s inkhorn and a pen and a sheet of paper.  If he does anything for me, it will have to be done quickly.  They’re in haste to pull me out of saddle, the damned canting pack!  But I’ll try conclusions with them!”

His wife departed, muttering to herself, and the reverend Gideon pulled out of his capacious pocket a flask of usquebaugh.  In five minutes from the time of his setting it to his lips the light in which he viewed the situation turned from gray to rose color.  By the time he espied Audrey coming toward him through the garden he felt a moral certainty that when he came to die (if ever he died) it would be in his bed in the Fair View glebe house.