The master of Fair View told himself that there was infection in this
lotus air of Virginia. A fever ran in his veins that made him languid of
will, somewhat sluggish of thought, willing to spend one day like another,
and all in a long dream. Sometimes, in the afternoons, when he was alone
in the garden or upon the terrace, with the house blank and silent behind
him, the slaves gone to the quarters, he tossed aside his book, and, with
his chin upon his hand and his eyes upon the sweep of the river, first
asked himself whither he was going, and then, finding no satisfactory
answer, fell to brooding. Once, going into the house, he chanced to come
upon his full-length reflection in a mirror newly hung, and stopped short
to gaze upon himself. The parlor of his lodgings at Williamsburgh and the
last time that he had seen Evelyn came to him, conjured up by the memory
of certain words of his own.
"A truer glass might show a shrunken figure," he repeated, and with a
quick and impatient sigh he looked at the image in the mirror.
To the eye, at least, the figure was not shrunken. It was that of a man
still young, and of a handsome face and much distinction of bearing. The
dress was perfect in its quiet elegance; the air of the man composed,--a
trifle sad, a trifle mocking. Haward snapped his fingers at the
reflection. "The portrait of a gentleman," he said, and passed on.
That night, in his own room, he took from an escritoire a picture of
Evelyn Byrd, done in miniature after a painting by a pupil of Kneller,
and, carrying it over to the light of the myrtle candles upon the table,
sat down and fell to studying it. After a while he let it drop from his
hand, and leaned back in his chair, thinking.
The night air, rising slightly, bent back the flame of the candles, around
which moths were fluttering, and caused strange shadows upon the walls.
They were thick about the curtained bed whereon had died the elder
Haward,--a proud man, choleric, and hard to turn from his purposes. Into
the mind of his son, sitting staring at these shadows, came the fantastic
notion that amongst them, angry and struggling vainly for speech, might be
his father's shade. The night was feverish, of a heat and lassitude to
foster grotesque and idle fancies. Haward smiled, and spoke aloud to his
imaginary ghost.
"You need not strive for speech," he said. "I know what you would say.
Was it for this I built this house, bought land and slaves?... Fair View
and Westover, Westover and Fair View. A lady that will not wed thee
because she loves thee! Zoons, Marmaduke! thou puttest me beside my
patience!... As for this other, set no nameless, barefoot wench where sat
thy mother! King Cophetua and the beggar maid, indeed! I warrant you
Cophetua was something under three-and-thirty!"