Audrey

by Mary Johnston

His late antagonist held out his hand. "It is well over. Come! We are not young hotheads, but men who have lived and suffered, and should know the vanity and the pity of such strife. Let us forget this hour, call each other friends again"—

"Tell me first," demanded MacLean, his arm rigid at his side,—"tell me first why you fought Mr. Everard and Mr. Travis."

Gray eyes and dark blue met. "I fought them," said Haward, "because, on a time, they offered insult to the woman whom I intend to make my wife."

So quiet was it in the room when he had spoken that the wash of the river, the tapping of walnut branches outside the window, the dropping of coals upon the hearth, became loud and insistent sounds. Then, "Darden's Audrey?" said MacLean in a whisper.

"Not Darden's Audrey, but mine," answered Haward,—"the only woman I have ever loved or shall love."

He walked to the window and looked out into the darkness. "To-night there is no light," he said to himself, beneath his breath. "By and by we shall stand here together, listening to the river, marking the wind in the trees." As upon paper heat of fire may cause to appear characters before invisible, so, when he turned, the flame of a great passion had brought all that was highest in this gentleman's nature into his countenance, softening and ennobling it. "Whatever my thoughts before," he said simply, "I have never, since I awoke from my fever and remembered that night at the Palace, meant other than this." Coming back to MacLean he laid a hand upon his shoulder. "Who made us knows we all do need forgiveness! Am I no more to you, Angus, than Ewin Mor Mackinnon?"

An hour later, those who were to be lifetime friends went together down the echoing stair and through the empty house to the outer door. When it was opened, they saw that upon the stone step without, in the square of light thrown by the candles behind them, lay an Indian arrow. MacLean picked it up. "'Twas placed athwart the door," he said doubtingly. "Is it in the nature of a challenge?"

Haward took the dart, and examined it curiously. "The trader grows troublesome," he remarked. "He must back to the woods and to the foes of his own class." As he spoke he broke the arrow in two, and flung the pieces from him.

It was a night of many stars and a keen wind. Moved each in his degree by its beauty, Haward and MacLean stood regarding it before they should go, the one back to his solitary chamber, the other to the store which was to be his charge no longer than the morrow. "I feel the air that blows from the hills," said the Highlander. "It comes over the heather; it hath swept the lochs, and I hear it in the sound of torrents." He lifted his face to the wind. "The breath of freedom! I shall have dreams to-night."

When he was gone, Haward, left alone, looked for a while upon the heights of stars. "I too shall dream to-night," he breathed to himself. "To-morrow all will be well." His gaze falling from the splendor of the skies to the swaying trees, gaunt, bare, and murmuring of their loss to the hurrying river, sadness and vague fear took sudden possession of his soul. He spoke her name over and over; he left the house and went into the garden. It was the garden of the dying year, and the change that in the morning he had smiled to see now appalled him. He would have had it June again. Now, when on the morrow he and Audrey should pass through the garden, it must be down dank and leaf-strewn paths, past yellow and broken stalks, with here and there wan ghosts of flowers.