Part 31 (2/2)
”There be Indians on the frontier. They burn houses and carry away prisoners. And there are wolves and dangerous beasts”--
”I am used to danger.”
Truelove's voice trembled more and more. ”And thee must dwell among negroes and rude men, with none to comfort thy soul, none to whom thee can speak in thy dark hours?”
”Before now I have spoken to the tobacco I have planted, the trees I have felled, 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, and I sit upon my doorstep and begin to hear the voices of the past crying to me like the spirits in the valley of Glensyte, I will think of you instead.”
”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. The carnation deepening from brow to throat, and the tears trembling upon her long lashes, she suddenly hid her countenance in her gray cloak. MacLean, on his knees beside her, drew away the folds. ”Truelove, Truelove! do you know what you have said?”
Truelove put her hand upon her heart. ”Oh, I fear,” she whispered, ”I fear that I have asked thee, Angus MacLean, to let me be--to let me be--thy wife.”
The water shone, and the holly berries were gay, and a robin redbreast sang a cheerful song. Beneath the rustling oak-tree there was ardent speech on the part of MacLean, who found in his mistress a listener sweet and shy, and not garrulous of love. But her eyes dwelt upon him and her hand rested at ease within his clasp, and she liked to hear him speak of the home they were to make in the wilderness. It was to be thus, and thus, and thus! With impa.s.sioned eloquence the Gael adorned the shrine and advanced the merit of the divinity, and the divinity listened with a smile, a blush, a tear, and now and then a meek rebuke.
When an hour had pa.s.sed, the sun went under a cloud and the air grew colder. The bird had flown away, but in the rising wind the dead leaves rustled loudly. MacLean and Truelove, leaving their future of honorable toil, 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's quiet home. ”And Marmaduke Haward awaits thee at Williamsburgh?” said the Quakeress. ”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 drives him; 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. ”There were the Governor and his fellow Councilors, with others of condition or fas.h.i.+on. 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 fires beneath.”
The two walked in silence for a few moments, when MacLean spoke again: ”He drank to her. At the last, when this lady had been toasted, and that, he rose and drank to 'Audrey,' and threw his winegla.s.s over his shoulder. He hath done what he could. The world knows that he loves her honorably, seeks her vainly in marriage. Something more I know. He gathered the company together last evening that, as his guests, the highest officers, the finest gentlemen of the colony, should go with him to the theatre to see her for the first time as a player. Being what they were, and his guests, and his pa.s.sion known, he would insure for her, did she well or did she ill, order, interest, decent applause.” MacLean broke off with a short, excited laugh. ”It was not needed,--his mediation. But he could not know that; no, nor none of us. True, Stagg and his wife had bragged of the powers of this strangely found actress of theirs that they were training to do great things, but folk took it for a trick of their trade. Oh, there was curiosity enough, but 'twas on Haward's account.... Well, he drank to her, standing at the head of the table at Marot's ordinary, and the gla.s.s crashed over his shoulder, and we all went to the play.”
”Yes, yes!” cried Truelove, breathing quickly, and quite forgetting how great a vanity was under discussion.
”'Twas 'Tamerlane,' the play that this traitorous generation calls for every 5th of November. It seems that the Governor--a Whig as rank as Argyle--had ordered it again for this week. 'Tis a cursed piece of slander that pictures the Prince of Orange a virtuous Emperor, his late Majesty of France a hateful tyrant. But for Haward, whose guest I was, I had not sat there with closed lips. I had sprung to my feet and given those flatterers, those traducers, the lie! The thing taunted and angered until she entered. Then I forgot.”
”And she--and Audrey?”
”Arpasia was her name in the play. She entered late; her death came before the end; there was another woman who had more to do. It all mattered not, I have seen a great actress.”
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