CHAPTER XXVII
THE MISSION OF TRUELOVE
Mistress Truelove Taberer, having read in a very clear and gentle voicethe Sermon on the Mount to those placid Friends, Tobias and MarthaTaberer, closed the book, and went about her household affairs with aquiet step, but a heart that somehow fluttered at every sound without thedoor. To still it she began to repeat to herself words she had read:"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children ofGod ... blessed are the peacemakers"--
Winter sunshine poured in at the windows and door. Truelove, kneeling towipe a fleck of dust from her wheel, suddenly, with a catch of her breathand a lifting of her brown eyes, saw in the Scripture she had beenrepeating a meaning and application hitherto unexpected. "Thepeacemaker ... that is one who makes peace,--in the world, betweencountries, in families, yea, in the heart of one alone. Did he not say,last time he came, that with me he forgot this naughty world and all itsstrife; that if I were always with him"--
Truelove's countenance became exalted, her gaze fixed. "If it were acall"--she murmured, and for a moment bowed her head upon the wheel; thenrose from her knees and went softly through the morning tasks. When theywere over, she took down from a peg and put on a long gray cloak and agray hood that most becomingly framed her wild-rose face; then came andstood before her father and mother. "I am going forth to walk by thecreekside," she said, in her sweet voice. "It may be that I will meetAngus MacLean."
"If thee does," answered one tranquil Friend, "thee may tell him that uponnext seventh day meeting will be held in this house."
"Truly," said the other tranquil Friend, "my heart is drawn toward thatyoung man. His mind hath been filled with anger and resistance and theturmoil of the world. It were well if he found peace at last."
"Surely it were well," agreed Truelove sweetly, and went out into thecrisp winter weather.
The holly, the pine, and the cedar made green places in the woods, and themultitude of leaves underfoot were pleasant to tread. Clouds were in thesky, but the spaces between were of serenest blue, and in the sunshine thecreek flashed diamonds. Truelove stood upon the bank, and, with her handshading her eyes, watched MacLean rowing toward her up the creek.
When he had fastened his boat and taken her hand, the two walked soberlyon beside the sparkling water until they came to a rude seat built beneathan oak-tree, to which yet clung a number of brown leaves. Truelove satdown, drawing her cloak about her, for, though the sun shone, the air waskeen. MacLean took off his coat, and kneeling put it beneath her feet. Helaughed at her protest. "Why, these winds are not bleak!" he said. "Thisland knows no true and honest cold. In my country, night after night haveI lain in snow with only my plaid for cover, and heard the spirits call inthe icy wind, the kelpie shriek beneath the frozen loch. I listened; thenshut my eyes and dreamed warm of glory and--true love."
"Thy coat is new," said Truelove, with downcast eyes. "The earth willstain the good cloth."
MacLean laughed. "Then will I wear it stained, as 'tis said a courtieronce wore his cloak."
"There is lace upon it," said Truelove timidly.
MacLean turned with a smile, and laid a fold of her cloak against his darkcheek. "Ah, the lace offends you,--offends thee,--Truelove. Why, 'tis butto mark me a gentleman again! Last night, at Williamsburgh, I supped withHaward and some gentlemen of Virginia. He would have me don this suit. Imight not disoblige my friend."
"Thee loves it," said Truelove severely. "Thee loves the color, and thefeel of the fine cloth, and the ruffles at thy wrists."
The Highlander laughed. "Why, suppose that I do! Look, Truelove, how braveand red are those holly berries, and how green and fantastically twistedthe leaves! The sky is a bright blue, and the clouds are silver; and thinkwhat these woods will be when the winter is past! One might do worse,meseems, than to be of God's taste in such matters."
Truelove sighed, and drew her gray cloak more closely around her.
"Thee is in spirits to-day, Angus MacLean," she said, and sighed oncemore.
"I am free," he answered. "The man within me walks no longer with ahanging head."
"And what will thee do with thy freedom?"
The Highlander made no immediate reply, but, chin in hand, studied thedrifts of leaves and the slow-moving water. "I am free," he said at last."I wear to-day the dress of a gentleman. I could walk without shame intoa hall that I know, and find there strangers, standers in dead men'sshoon, brothers who want me not,--who would say behind their hands, 'Hehas been twelve years a slave, and the world has changed since he wentaway!' ... I will not trouble them."
His face was as sombre as when Truelove first beheld it. Suddenly, andagainst her will, tears came to her eyes. "I am glad--I and my father andmother and Ephraim--that thee goes not overseas, Angus MacLean," said thedove's voice. "We would have thee--I and my father and mother andEphraim--we would have thee stay in Virginia."
"I am to stay," he answered. "I have felt no shame in taking a loan frommy friend, for I shall repay it. He hath lands up river in a new-madecounty. I am to seat them for him, and there will be my home. I will builda house and name it Duart; and if there are hills they shall be Dun-da-guand Grieg, and the sound of winter torrents shall be to me as the sound ofthe waters of Mull."
Truelove caught her breath. "Thee will be lonely in those forests."
"I am used to loneliness."
"There be Indians on the frontier. They burn houses and carry awayprisoners. And there are wolves and dangerous beasts"--
"I am used to danger."
Truelove's voice trembled more and more. "And thee must dwell amongnegroes and rude men, with none to comfort thy soul, none to whom thee canspeak in thy dark hours?"
"Before now I have spoken to the tobacco I have planted, the trees I havefelled, the swords and muskets I have sold."
"But at last thee came and spoke to me!"
"Ay," he answered. "There have been times when you saved my soul alive.Now, in the forest, in my house of logs, when the day's work is done, andI sit upon my doorstep and begin to hear the voices of the past crying tome like the spirits in the valley of Glensyte, I will think of youinstead."
"Oh!" cried Truelove. "Speak to me instead, and I will speak to thee ...sitting upon the doorstep of our house, when our day's work is done!"
Her hood falling back showed her face, clear pink, with dewy eyes. Thecarnation deepening from brow to throat, and the tears trembling upon herlong lashes, she suddenly hid her countenance in her gray cloak. MacLean,on his knees beside her, drew away the folds. "Truelove, Truelove! do youknow what you have said?"
Truelove put her hand upon her heart. "Oh, I fear," she whispered, "I fearthat I have asked thee, Angus MacLean, to let me be--to let me be--thywife."
The water shone, and the holly berries were gay, and a robin redbreastsang a cheerful song. Beneath the rustling oak-tree there was ardentspeech on the part of MacLean, who found in his mistress a listener sweetand shy, and not garrulous of love. But her eyes dwelt upon him and herhand rested at ease within his clasp, and she liked to hear him speak ofthe home they were to make in the wilderness. It was to be thus, and thus,and thus! With impassioned eloquence the Gael adorned the shrine andadvanced the merit of the divinity, and the divinity listened with asmile, a blush, a tear, and now and then a meek rebuke.
When an hour had passed, the sun went under a cloud and the air grewcolder. The bird had flown away, but in the rising wind the dead leavesrustled loudly. MacLean and Truelove, leaving their future of honorabletoil, peace of mind, and enduring affection, came back to the present.
"I must away," said the Highlander. "Haward waits for me at Williamsburgh.To-morrow, dearer to me than Deirdre to Naos! I will come again."
Hand in hand the two walked slowly toward that haunt of peace, Truelove'squiet home. "And Marmaduke Haward awaits thee at Williamsburgh?" said theQuakeress. "Last third day he met my father and me on the Fair View road,and checked his horse and spoke to us. He is changed."
"Changed indeed!" quoth the Highlander. "A fire burns him, a wind driveshim; and yet to the world, last night"--He paused.
"Last night?" said Truelove.
"He had a large company at Marot's ordinary," went on the other. "Therewere the Governor and his fellow Councilors, with others of condition orfashion. He was the very fine gentleman, the perfect host, free, smiling,full of wit. But I had been with him before they came. I knew the firesbeneath."
The two walked in silence for a few moments, when MacLean spoke again: "Hedrank to her. At the last, when this lady had been toasted, and that, herose and drank to 'Audrey,' and threw his wineglass over his shoulder. Hehath done what he could. The world knows that he loves her honorably,seeks her vainly in marriage. Something more I know. He gathered thecompany together last evening that, as his guests, the highest officers,the finest gentlemen of the colony, should go with him to the theatre tosee her for the first time as a player. Being what they were, and hisguests, and his passion known, he would insure for her, did she well ordid she ill, order, interest, decent applause." MacLean broke off with ashort, excited laugh. "It was not needed,--his mediation. But he could notknow that; no, nor none of us. True, Stagg and his wife had bragged of thepowers of this strangely found actress of theirs that they were trainingto do great things, but folk took it for a trick of their trade. Oh, therewas curiosity enough, but 'twas on Haward's account.... Well, he drank toher, standing at the head of the table at Marot's ordinary, and the glasscrashed over his shoulder, and we all went to the play."
"Yes, yes!" cried Truelove, breathing quickly, and quite forgetting howgreat a vanity was under discussion.
"'Twas 'Tamerlane,' the play that this traitorous generation calls forevery 5th of November. It seems that the Governor--a Whig as rank asArgyle--had ordered it again for this week. 'Tis a cursed piece of slanderthat pictures the Prince of Orange a virtuous Emperor, his late Majesty ofFrance a hateful tyrant. But for Haward, whose guest I was, I had not satthere with closed lips. I had sprung to my feet and given thoseflatterers, those traducers, the lie! The thing taunted and angered untilshe entered. Then I forgot."
"And she--and Audrey?"
"Arpasia was her name in the play. She entered late; her death came beforethe end; there was another woman who had more to do. It all mattered not,I have seen a great actress."
"Darden's Audrey!" said Truelove, in a whisper.
"That at the very first; not afterwards," answered MacLean. "She wasdressed, they say, as upon the night at the Palace, that first night ofHaward's fever. When she came upon the stage, there was a murmur like thewind in the leaves. She was most beautiful,--'beauteous in hatred,' as theSultan in the play called her,--dark and wonderful, with angry eyes. For alittle while she must stand in silence, and in these moments men and womenstared at her, then turned and looked at Haward. But when she spoke weforgot that she was Darden's Audrey."
MacLean laughed again. "When the play was ended,--or rather, when her partin it was done,--the house did shake so with applause that Stagg had toremonstrate. There's naught talked of to-day in Williamsburgh but Arpasia;and when I came down Palace Street this morning, there was a great crowdabout the playhouse door. Stagg might sell his tickets for to-night at aguinea apiece. 'Venice Preserved' is the play."
"And Marmaduke Haward,--what of him?" asked Truelove softly.
"He is English," said MacLean, after a pause. "He can make of his face asmiling mask, can keep his voice as even and as still as the pool that isa mile away from the fierce torrent its parent. It is a gift they have,the English. I remember at Preston"--He broke off with a sigh. "There willbe an end some day, I suppose. He will win her at last to his way ofthinking; and having gained her, he will be happy. And yet to my mindthere is something unfortunate, strange and fatal, in the aspect of thisgirl. It hath always been so. She is such a one as the Lady in Green. On aHalloween night, standing in the twelfth rig, a man might hear her voiceupon the wind. I would old Murdoch of Coll, who hath the second sight,were here: he could tell the ending of it all."
An hour later found the Highlander well upon his way to Williamsburgh,walking through wood and field with his long stride, his heart warm withinhim, his mind filled with the thought of Truelove and the home that hewould make for her in the rude, upriver country. Since the two had satbeneath the oak, clouds had gathered, obscuring the sun. It was now grayand cold in the forest, and presently snow began to fall, slowly, in largeflakes, between the still trees.
MacLean looked with whimsical anxiety at several white particles upon hissuit of fine cloth, claret-colored and silver-laced, and quickened hispace. But the snow was but the lazy vanguard of a storm, and so few andharmless were the flakes that when, a, mile from Williamsburgh and at somelittle distance from the road, MacLean beheld a ring of figures seatedupon the Gounod beneath a giant elm, he stopped to observe who and whatthey were that sat so still beneath the leafless tree in the winterweather.
The group, that at first glimpse had seemed some conclave of beingsuncouth and lubberly and solely of the forest, resolved itself into theIndian teacher and his pupils, escaped for the afternoon from the boundsof William and Mary. The Indian lads--slender, bronze, and statuesque--satin silence, stolidly listening to the words of the white man, who,standing in the midst of the ring, with his back to the elm-tree, told tohis dusky charges a Bible tale. It was the story of Joseph and hisbrethren. The clear, gentle tones of the teacher reached MacLean's earswhere he stood unobserved behind a roadside growth of bay and cedar.
A touch upon the shoulder made him turn, to find at his elbow thatsometime pupil of Mr. Charles Griffin in whose company he had once trudgedfrom Fair View store to Williamsburgh.
"I was lying in the woods over there," said Hugon sullenly. "I heard themcoming, and I took my leave. 'Peste!' said I. 'The old, weak man whopreaches quietness under men's injuries, and the young wolf pack, allbrown, with Indian names!' They may have the woods; for me, I go back tothe town where I belong."
He shrugged his shoulders, and stood scowling at the distant group.MacLean, in his turn, looked curiously at his quondam companion of a sunnyday in May, the would-be assassin with whom he had struggled in wind andrain beneath the thunders of an August storm. The trader wore his greatwig, his ancient steinkirk of tawdry lace, his high boots of Spanishleather, cracked and stained. Between the waves of coarse hair, out ofcoal-black, deep-set eyes looked the soul of the half-breed, fierce,vengeful, ignorant, and embittered.
"There is Meshawa," he said,--"Meshawa, who was a little boy when I wentto school, but who used to laugh when I talked of France. Pardieu! one dayI found him alone when it was cold, and there was a fire in the room. Nexttime I talked he did not laugh! They are all"--he swept his hand towardthe circle beneath the elm--"they are all Saponies, Nottoways, Meherrins;their fathers are lovers of the peace pipe, and humble to the English. AMonacan is a great brave; he laughs at the Nottoways, and says that thereare no men in the villages of the Meherrins."
"When do you go again to trade with your people?" asked MacLean.
Hugon glanced at him out of the corners of his black eyes. "They are notmy people; my people are French. I am not going to the woods any more. Iam so prosperous. Diable! shall not I as well as another stay atWilliamsburgh, dress fine, dwell in an ordinary, play high, and drink ofthe best?"
"There is none will prevent you," said MacLean coolly. "Dwell in town,take your ease in your inn, wear gold lace, stake the skins of all thedeer in Virginia, drink Burgundy and Champagne, but lay no more arrowsathwart the threshold of a gentleman's door."
Hugon's lips twitched into a tigerish grimace. "So he found the arrow?Mortdieu! let him look to it that one day the arrow find not him!"
"If I were Haward," said MacLean, "I would have you taken up."
The trader again looked sideways at the speaker, shrugged his shouldersand waved his hand. "Oh, he--he despises me too much for that! Eh bien!to-day I love to see him live. When there is no wine in the cup, but onlydregs that are bi
tter, I laugh to see it at his lips. She,--Ma'm'selleAudrey, that never before could I coax into my boat,--she reached me herhand, she came with me down the river, through the night-time, and lefthim behind at Westover. Ha! think you not that was bitter, that drinkwhich she gave him, Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View? Since then, if I goto that house, that garden at Williamsburgh, she hides, she will not seeme; the man and his wife make excuse! Bad! But also he sees her never. Hewrites to her: she answers not. Good! Let him live, with the fire builtaround him and the splinters in his heart!"
He laughed again, and, dismissing the subject with airiness somewhatexaggerated, drew out his huge gilt snuffbox. The snow was now fallingmore thickly, drawing a white and fleecy veil between the two upon theroad and the story-teller and his audience beneath the distant elm. "Areyou for Williamsburgh?" demanded the Highlander, when he had somewhatabruptly declined to take snuff with Monsieur Jean Hugon.
That worthy nodded, pocketing his box and incidentally making a greatjingling of coins.
"Then," quoth MacLean, "since I prefer to travel alone, twill wait hereuntil you have passed the rolling-house in the distance yonder. Good-dayto you!"
He seated himself upon the stump of a tree, and, giving all his attentionto the snow, began to whistle a thoughtful air. Hugon glanced at him withfierce black eyes and twitching lips, much desiring a quarrel; thenthought better of it, and before the tune had come to an end was makingwith his long and noiseless stride his lonely way to Williamsburgh, andthe ordinary in Nicholson Street.