The shadows lengthened, and a wind of the evening entered the wood. Haward
shook off the lethargy that had kept him lying there for the better part
of an afternoon, rose to his feet, and left the green dell for the road,
all shadow now, winding back to the toy metropolis, to Marot's ordinary,
to the ball at the Palace that night.
The ball at the Palace!--he had forgotten it. Flare of lights, wail of
violins, a painted, silken crowd, laughter, whispers, magpie chattering,
wine, and the weariness of the dance, when his soul would long to be with
the night outside, with the rising wind and the shining stars. He half
determined not to go. What mattered the offense that would be taken? Did
he go he would repent, wearied and ennuyé, watching Evelyn, all
rose-colored, moving with another through the minuet; tied himself perhaps
to some pert miss, or cornered in a card-room by boisterous gamesters, or,
drinking with his peers, called on to toast the lady of his dreams. Better
the dull room at Marot's ordinary, or better still to order Mirza, and
ride off at the planter's pace, through the starshine, to Fair View. On
the river bank before the store MacLean might be lying, dreaming of a
mighty wind and a fierce death. He would dismount, and sit beside that
Highland gentleman, Jacobite and strong man, and their moods would chime
as they had chimed before. Then on to the house and to the eastern window!
Not to-night, but to-morrow night, perhaps, would the darkness be pierced
by the calm pale star that marked another window. It was all a mistake,
that month at Westover,--days lost and wasted, the running of golden sands
ill to spare from Love's brief glass....
His mood had changed when, with the gathering dusk, he entered his room at
Marot's ordinary. He would go to the Palace that night; it would be the
act of a boy to fling away through the darkness, shirking a duty his
position demanded. He would go and be merry, watching Evelyn in the gown
that Peterborough had praised.
When Juba had lighted the candles, he sat and drank and drank again of the
red wine upon the table. It put maggots in his brain, fired and flushed
him to the spirit's core. An idea came, at which he laughed. He bade it
go, but it would not. It stayed, and his fevered fancy played around it
as a moth around a candle. At first he knew it for a notion, bizarre and
absurd, which presently he would dismiss. All day strange thoughts had
come and gone, appearing, disappearing, like will-o'-the-wisps for which a
man upon a firm road has no care. Never fear that he will follow them! He
sees the marsh, that it has no footing. So with this Jack-o'-lantern
conception,--it would vanish as it came.