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.