A few yards, and he was quit of Duke of Gloucester Street; behind him,
porticoed Capitol, gaol, and tiny vineclad debtor's prison. In the gaol
yard the pirates sat upon a bench in the sunshine, and one smoked a long
pipe, and one brooded upon his irons. Gold rings were in their ears, and
their black hair fell from beneath colored handkerchiefs twisted
turbanwise around their brows. The gaoler watched them, standing in his
doorway, and his children, at play beneath a tree, built with sticks a
mimic scaffold, and hanged thereon a broken puppet. There was a shady road
leading through a wood to Queen's Creek and the Capitol Landing, and down
this road went Haward. His step was light; the dullness, the throbbing
pulses, the oppression of the morning, had given way to a restlessness and
a strange exaltation of spirit. Fancy was quickened, imagination
heightened; to himself he seemed to see the heart of all things. Across
his mind flitted fragments of verse,--now a broken line just hinting
beauty, now the pure passion of a lovely stanza. His thoughts went to and
fro, mobile as the waves of the sea; but firm as the reefs beneath them
stood his knowledge that presently he was going back to Fair View.
To-morrow, when the Governor's ball was over, when he could decently get
away, he would leave the town; he would go to his house in the country.
Late flowers bloomed in his garden; the terrace was fair above the river;
beneath the red brick wall, on the narrow little creek shining like a
silver highway, lay a winged boat; and the highway ran past a glebe house;
and in the glebe house dwelt a dryad whose tree had closed against her.
Audrey!--a fair name. Audrey, Audrey!--the birds were singing it; out of
the deep, Arcadian shadows any moment it might come, clearly cried by
satyr, Pan, or shepherd. Hark! there was song-It was but a negro on the road behind, singing to himself as he went about
his master's business. The voice was the voice of the race, mellow, deep,
and plaintive; perhaps the song was of love in a burning land. He passed
the white man, and the arching trees hid him, but the wake of music was
long in fading. The road leading through a cool and shady dell, Haward
left it, and took possession of the mossy earth beneath a holly-tree.
Here, lying on the ground, he could see the road through the intervening
foliage; else the place had seemed the heart of an ancient wood.
It was merry lying where were glimpses of blue sky, where the leaves
quivered and a squirrel chattered and a robin sang a madrigal. Youth the
divine, half way down the stair of misty yesterdays, turned upon his heel
and came back to him. He pillowed his head upon his arm, and was content.
It was well to be so filled with fancies, so iron of will, so headstrong
and gay; to be friends once more with a younger Haward, with the Haward of
a mountain pass, of mocking comrades and an irate Excellency.