There had lately come to Virginia, and to the convention of its clergy at Williamsburgh, one Mr. Eliot, a minister after the heart of a large number of sober and godly men whose reputation as a body suffered at the hands of Mr. Darden, of Fair View parish, Mr. Bailey, of Newport, Mr. Worden, of Lawn’s Creek, and a few kindred spirits.  Certainly Mr. Eliot was not like these; so erect, indeed, did he hold himself in the strait and narrow path that his most admiring brethren, being, as became good Virginians, somewhat easy-going in their saintliness, were inclined to think that he leaned too far the other way.  It was commendable to hate sin and reprove the sinner; but when it came to raining condemnation upon horse-racing, dancing, Cato at the playhouse, and like innocent diversions, Mr. Eliot was surely somewhat out of bounds.  The most part accounted for his turn of mind by the fact that ere he came to Virginia he had been a sojourner in New England.

He was mighty in the pulpit, was Mr. Eliot; no droning reader of last year’s sermons, but a thunderer forth of speech that was now acrid, now fiery, but that always came from an impassioned nature, vehement for the damnation of those whom God so strangely spared.  When, as had perforce happened during the past week, he must sit with his brethren in the congregation and listen to lukewarm nay, to dead and cold adjurations and expoundings, his very soul itched to mount the pulpit stairs, thrust down the Laodicean that chanced to occupy it, and himself awaken as with the sound of a trumpet this people who slept upon the verge of a precipice, between hell that gaped below and God who sat on high, serenely regardful of his creatures’ plight.  Though so short a time in Virginia, he was already become a man of note, the prophet not without honor, whom it was the fashion to admire, if not to follow.  It was therefore natural enough that the Commissary, himself a man of plain speech from the pulpit, should appoint him to preach in Bruton church this Sunday morning, before his Excellency the Governor, the worshipful the Council, the clergy in convention, and as much of Williamsburgh, gentle and simple, as could crowd into the church.  Mr. Eliot took the compliment as an answer to prayer, and chose for his text Daniel fifth and twenty-seventh.

Lodging as he did on Palace Street, the early hours of the past night, which he would have given to prayer and meditation, had been profaned by strains of music from the Governor’s house, by laughter and swearing and much going to and fro in the street beneath his window.  These disturbances filling him with righteous wrath, he came down to his breakfast next morning prepared to give his hostess, who kept him company at table, line and verse which should demonstrate that Jéhovah shared his anger.

“Ay, sir!” she cried.  “And if that were all, sir” and straightway she embarked upon a colored narration of the occurrence at the Governor’s ball.  This was followed by a wonderfully circumstantial account of Mr. Marmaduke Haward’s sins of omission against old and new acquaintances who would have entertained him at their houses, and been entertained in turn at Fair View, and by as detailed a description of the toils that had been laid for him by that audacious piece who had forced herself upon the company last night.

Mr. Eliot listened aghast, and mentally amended his sermon.  If he knew Virginia, even so flagrant a case as this might never come before a vestry.  Should this woman go unreproved?  When in due time he was in the church, and the congregation was gathering, he beckoned to him one of the sidesmen, asked a question, and when it was answered, looked fixedly at a dark girl sitting far away in a pew beneath the gallery.

It was a fine, sunny morning, with a tang of autumn in the air, and the concourse within the church was very great.  The clergy showed like a wedge of black driven into the bright colors with which nave and transept overflowed.  His Excellency the Governor sat in state, with the Council on either hand.  One member of that body was not present.  Well-nigh all Williamsburgh knew by now that Mr. Marmaduke Haward lay at Marot’s ordinary, ill of a raging fever.  Hooped petticoat and fragrant bodice found reason for whispering to laced coat and periwig; significant glances traveled from every quarter of the building toward the tall pew where, collected but somewhat palely smiling, sat Mistress Evelyn Byrd beside her father.  All this was before the sermon.  When the minister of the day mounted the pulpit, and, gaunt against the great black sounding-board, gave out his text in a solemn and ringing voice, such was the genuine power of the man that every face was turned toward him, and throughout the building there fell a sudden hush.

Audrey looked with the rest, but she could not have said that she listened, not at first.  She was there because she always went to church on Sunday.  It had not occurred to her to ask that she might stay at home.  She had come from her room that morning with the same still face, the same strained and startled look about the eyes, that she had carried to it the night before.  Black Peggy, who found her bed unslept in, thought that she must have sat the night through beside the window.  Mistress Stagg, meeting her at the stairfoot with the tidings (just gathered from the lips of a passer-by) of Mr. Haward’s illness, thought that the girl took the news very quietly.  She made no exclamation, said nothing good or bad; only drew her hand across her brow and eyes, as though she strove to thrust away a veil or mist that troubled her.  This gesture she repeated now and again during the hour before church time.  Mistress Stagg heard no more of the ball this morning than she had heard the night before.  Something ailed the girl.  She was not sullen, but she could not or would not talk.  Perhaps, despite the fact of the Westover coach, she had not been kindly used at the Palace.  The ex-actress pursed her lips, and confided to her Mirabell that times were not what they once were.  Had she not, at Bath, been given a ticket to the Saturday ball by my Lord Squander himself?  Ay, and she had footed it, too, in the country dance, with the best of them, with captains and French counts and gentlemen and ladies of title, ay, and had gone down the middle with, the very pattern of Sir Harry Wildair!  To be sure, no one had ever breathed a word against her character; but, for her part, she believed no great harm of Audrey, either.  Look at the girl’s eyes, now:  they were like a child’s or a saint’s.

Mirabell nodded and looked wise, but said nothing.

When the church bells rang Audrey was ready, and she walked to church with Mistress Stagg much as, the night before, she had walked between the lilacs to the green door when the Westover coach had passed from her sight.  Now she sat in the church much as she had sat at the window the night through.  She did not know that people were staring at her; nor had she caught the venomous glance of Mistress Deborah, already in the pew, and aware of more than had come to her friend’s ears.

Audrey was not listening, was scarcely thinking.  Her hands were crossed in her lap, and now and then she raised one and made the motion of pushing aside from her eyes something heavy that clung and blinded.  What part of her spirit that was not wholly darkened and folded within itself was back in the mountains of her childhood, with those of her own blood whom she had loved and lost.  What use to try to understand to-day, to-day with its falling skies, its bewildered pondering over the words that were said to her last night?  And the morrow, she must leave that.  Perhaps when it should dawn he would come to her, and call her “little maid,” and laugh at her dreadful dream.  But now, while it was to-day, she could not think of him without an agony of pain and bewilderment.  He was ill, too, and suffering.  Oh, she must leave the thought of him alone!  Back then to the long yesterdays she traveled, and played quietly, dreamily, with Robin on the green grass beside the shining stream, or sat on the doorstep, her head on Molly’s lap, and watched the evening star behind the Endless Mountains.

It was very quiet in the church save for that one great voice speaking.  Little by little the voice impressed itself upon her consciousness.  The eyes of her mind were upon long ranges of mountains distinct against the splendor of a sunset sky.  Last seen in childhood, viewed now through the illusion of the years, the mountains were vastly higher than nature had planned them; the streamers of light shot to the zenith; the black forests were still; everywhere a fixed glory, a gigantic silence, a holding of the breath for things to happen.

By degrees the voice in her ears fitted in with the landscape, became, so solemn and ringing it was, like the voice of the archangel of that sunset land.  Audrey listened at last; and suddenly the mountains were gone, and the light from the sky, and her people were dead and dust away in that hidden valley, and she was sitting in the church at Williamsburgh, alone, without a friend.

What was the preacher saying?  What ball of the night before was he describing with bitter power, the while he gave warning of handwriting upon the wall such as had menaced Belshazzar’s feast of old?  Of what shameless girl was he telling, what creature dressed in silks that should have gone in rags, brought to that ball by her paramour

The gaunt figure in the pulpit trembled like a leaf with the passion of the preacher’s convictions and the energy of his utterance.  On had gone the stream of rhetoric, the denunciations, the satire, the tremendous assertions of God’s mind and purposes.  The lash that was wielded was far-reaching; all the vices of the age irreligion, blasphemy, drunkenness, extravagance, vainglory, loose living fell under its sting.  The condemnation was general, and each man looked to see his neighbor wince.  The occurrence at the ball last night, he was on that for final theme, was he?  There was a slight movement throughout the congregation.  Some glanced to where would have sat Mr. Marmaduke Haward, had not the gentleman been at present in his bed, raving now of a great run of luck at the Cocoa Tree; now of an Indian who, with his knee upon his breast, was throttling him to death.  Others looked over their shoulders to see if that gypsy yet sat beneath the gallery.  Colonel Byrd took out his snuffbox and studied the picture on the lid, while his daughter sat like a carven lady, with a slight smile upon her lips.

On went the word picture that showed how vice could flaunt it in so fallen an age.  The preacher spared not plain words, squarely turned himself toward the gallery, pointed out with voice and hand the object of his censure and of God’s wrath.  Had the law pilloried the girl before them all, it had been but little worse for her.  She sat like a statue, staring with wide eyes at the window above the altar.  This, then, was what the words in the coach last night had meant this was what the princess thought this was what his world thought

There arose a commotion in the ranks of the clergy of Virginia.  The Reverend Gideon Darden, quitting with an oath the company of his brethren, came down the aisle, and, pushing past his wife, took his stand in the pew beside the orphan who had lived beneath his roof, whom during many years he had cursed upon occasion and sometimes struck, and whom he had latterly made his tool, “Never mind him, Audrey, my girl,” he said, and put an unsteady hand upon her shoulder.  “You’re a good child; they cannot harm ye.”

He turned his great shambling body and heavy face toward the preacher, stemmed in the full tide of his eloquence by this unseemly interruption, “Ye beggarly Scot!” he exclaimed thickly.  “Ye evil-thinking saint from Salem way, that know the very lining of the Lord’s mind, and yet, walking through his earth, see but a poisonous weed in his every harmless flower!  Shame on you to beat down the flower that never did you harm!  The girl’s as innocent a thing as lives!  Ay, I’ve had my dram, the more shame to you that are justly rebuked out of the mouth of a drunken man!  I have done, Mr. Commissary,” addressing himself to that dignitary, who had advanced to the altar rail with his arm raised in a command for silence.  “I’ve no child of my own, thank God! but the maid has grown up in my house, and I’ll not sit to hear her belied.  I’ve heard of last night; ’twas the mad whim of a sick man.  The girl’s as guiltless of wrong as any lady here.  I, Gideon Darden, vouch for it!”

He sat heavily down beside Audrey, who never stirred from her still regard of that high window.  There was a moment of portentous silence; then, “Let us pray,” said the minister from the pulpit.

Audrey knelt with the rest, but she did not pray.  And when it was all over, and the benediction had been given, and she found herself without the church, she looked at the green trees against the clear autumnal skies and at the graves in the churchyard as though it were a new world into which she had stepped.  She could not have said that she found it fair.  Her place had been so near the door that well-nigh all the congregation was behind her, streaming out of the church, eager to reach the open air, where it might discuss the sermon, the futile and scandalous interruption by the notorious Mr. Darden, and what Mr. Marmaduke Haward might have said or done had he been present.

Only Mistress Stagg kept beside her; for Mistress Deborah hung back, unwilling to be seen in her company, and Darden, from that momentary awakening of his better nature, had sunk to himself again, and thought not how else he might aid this wounded member of his household.  But Mary Stagg was a kindly soul, whose heart had led her comfortably through life with very little appeal to her head.  The two or three young women Oldfields and Porters of the Virginian stage who were under indentures to her husband and herself found her as much their friend as mistress.  Their triumphs in the petty playhouse of this town of a thousand souls were hers, and what woes they had came quickly to her ears.  Now she would have slipped her hand into Audrey’s and have given garrulous comfort, as the two passed alone through the churchyard gate and took their way up Palace Street toward the small white house.  But Audrey gave not her hand, did not answer, made no moan, neither justified herself nor blamed another.  She did not speak at all, but after the first glance about her moved like a sleepwalker.

When the house was reached she went up to the bedroom.  Mistress Deborah, entering stormily ten minutes later, found herself face to face with a strange Audrey, who, standing in the middle of the floor, raised her hand for silence in a gesture so commanding that the virago stayed her tirade, and stood open-mouthed.

“I wish to speak,” said the new Audrey.  “I was waiting for you.  There’s a question I wish to ask, and I’ll ask it of you who were never kind to me.”

“Never kind to her!” cried the minister’s wife to the four walls.  “And she’s been taught, and pampered, and treated more like a daughter than the beggar wench she is!  And this is my return, to sit by her in church to-day, and have all Virginia think her belonging to me”

“I belong to no one,” said Audrey.  “Even God does not want me.  Be quiet until I have done.”  She made again the gesture of pushing aside from face and eyes the mist that clung and blinded.  “I know now what they say,” she went on.  “The preacher told me awhile ago.  Last night a lady spoke to me:  now I know what was her meaning.  Because Mr. Haward, who saved my life, who brought me from the mountains, who left me, when he sailed away, where he thought I would be happy, was kind to me when he came again after so many years; because he has often been to the glebe house, and I to Fair View; because last night he would have me go with him to the Governor’s ball, they think they say out loud for all the people to hear that I that I am like Joan, who was whipped last month at the Court House.  But it is not of the lies they tell that I wish to speak.”

Her hand went again to her forehead, then dropped at her side.  A look of fear and of piteous appeal came into her face.  “The witch said that I dreamed, and that it was not well for dreamers to awaken.”  Suddenly the quiet of her voice and bearing was broken.  With a cry, she hurried across the room, and, kneeling, caught at the other’s gown.  “Ah! that is no dream, is it?  No dream that he is my friend, only my friend who has always been sorry for me, has always helped me!  He is the noblest gentleman, the truest, the best he loves the lady at Westover they are to be married he never knew what people were saying he was not himself when he spoke to me so last night” Her eyes appealed to the face above her.  “I could never have dreamed all this,” she said.  “Tell me that I was awake!”

The minister’s wife looked down upon her with a bitter smile.  “So you’ve had your fool’s paradise?  Well, once I had mine, though ’twas not your kind.  ’Tis a pretty country, Audrey, but it’s not long before they turn you out.”  She laughed somewhat drearily, then in a moment turned shrew again.  “He never knew what people were saying?” she cried.  “You little fool, do you suppose he cared?  ’Twas you that played your cards all wrong with your Governor’s ball last night! setting up for a lady, forsooth! bringing all the town about your ears!  You might have known that he would never have taken you there in his senses.  At Fair View things went very well.  He was entertained, and I meant to see that no harm came of it, and Darden got his support in the vestry.  For he was bit, there’s no doubt of that, though what he ever saw in you more than big eyes and a brown skin, the Lord knows, not I!  Only your friend! a fine gentleman just from London, with a whole Canterbury book of stories about his life there, to spend a’most a summer on the road between his plantation and a wretched glebe house because he was only your friend, and had saved you from the Indians when you were a child, and wished to be kind to you still!  I’ll tell you who did wish to be kind to you, and that was Jean Hugon, the trader, who wanted to marry you.”

Audrey rose to her feet, and moved slowly backward to the wall.  Mistress Deborah went shrilly on:  “I dare swear you believe that Mr. Haward had you in mind all the years he was gone from Virginia?  Well, he didn’t.  He puts you with Darden and me, and he says, ’There’s the strip of Oronoko down by the swamp, I ’ve told my agent that you’re to have from it so many pounds a year;’ and he sails away to London and all the fine things there, and never thinks of you more until he comes back to Virginia and sees you last May Day at Jamestown.  Next morning he comes riding to the glebe house.  ‘And so,’ he says to Darden, ’and so my little maid that I brought for trophy out of the Appalachian Mountains is a woman grown?  Faith, I’d quite forgot the child; but Saunderson tells me that you have not forgot to draw upon my Oronoko.’  That’s all the remembrance you were held in, Audrey.”

She paused to take breath, and to look with shrewish triumph at the girl who leaned against the wall.  “I like not waking up,” said Audrey to herself.  “It were easier to die.  Perhaps I am dying.”

“And then out he walks to find and talk to you, and in sets your pretty summer of all play and no work!” went on the other, in a high voice.  “Oh, there was kindness enough, once you had caught his fancy!  I wonder if the lady at Westover praised his kindness?  They say she is a proud young lady:  I wonder if she liked your being at the ball last night?  When she comes to Fair View, I’ll take my oath that you’ll walk no more in its garden!  But perhaps she won’t come now, though her maid Chloe told Mistress Bray’s Martha that she certainly loves him”

“I wish I were dead,” said Audrey.  “I wish I were dead, like Molly.”  She stood up straight against the wall, and pushed her heavy hair from her forehead.  “Be quiet now,” she said.  “You see that I am awake; there is no need for further calling.  I shall not dream again.”  She looked at the older woman doubtfully.  “Would you mind,” she suggested, “would you be so very kind as to leave me alone, to sit here awake for a while?  I have to get used to it, you know.  To-morrow, when we go back to the glebe house, I will work the harder.  It must be easy to work when one is awake.  Dreaming takes so much time.”

Mistress Deborah could hardly have told why she did as she was asked.  Perhaps the very strangeness of the girl made her uncomfortable in her presence; perhaps in her sour and withered heart there was yet some little soundness of pity and comprehension; or perhaps it was only that she had said her say, and was anxious to get to her friends below, and shake from her soul the dust of any possible complicity with circumstance in moulding the destinies of Darden’s Audrey.  Be that as it may, when she had flung her hood upon the bed and had looked at herself in the cracked glass above the dresser, she went out of the room, and closed the door somewhat softly behind her.