Audrey

by Mary Johnston

Audrey left her warning to be spoken by MacLean. She was at peace, her head against Mirza's neck, her eyes upon Haward's face, clear in the flashing lightning. That gentleman heard the story with his usual calmness; his companion first swore, and then laughed.

AUDREY LEFT HER WARNING TO BE SPOKEN BY MACLEAN

"Here's a Canterbury tale!" he cried. "Egad, Haward, are we to take this skipping rope, vault it as though we were courtiers of Lilliput? Neither of us is armed. I conceive that the longest way around will prove our shortest way home."

"My dear Colonel, I want to speak with these two gentlemen."

"But at your leisure, my friend, at your leisure, and not in dying tones! I like not what I hear of Monsieur Jean Hugon's pistols. Flank an ambush; don't ride into it open-eyed."

"Colonel Byrd is right," said the storekeeper earnestly. "Ride back, the two of you, and take the bridle path that will carry you to Fair View by way of the upper bridge. In the mean time, I will run through the woods to Mr. Taberer's house, cross there, hurry to the quarters, rouse the overseer, and with a man or two we will recross the creek by the lower bridge, and coming upon these rogues unawares, give them a taste of their own medicine! We'll hale them to the great house; you shall have speech of them in your own hall."

Neither of the riders being able to suggest a better plan, the storekeeper, with a wave of his hand, plunged into the forest, and was soon lost to view amidst its serried trunks and waving branches. Haward stooped from his saddle; Audrey set her bare foot upon his booted one, and he swung her up behind him. "Put thine arm around me, child," he told her. "We will ride swiftly through the storm. Now, Colonel, to turn our backs upon the enemy!"

The lightning was about them, and they raced to the booming of the thunder. Heavy raindrops began to fall, and the wind was a power to drive the riders on. Its voice shrilled above the diapason of the thunder; the forest swung to its long cry. When the horses turned from the wide into the narrow road, they could no longer go abreast. Mirza took the lead, and the bay fell a length behind. The branches now hid the sky; between the flashes there was Stygian gloom, but when the lightning came it showed far aisles of the forest. There was the smell of rain upon dusty earth, there was the wine of coolness after heat, there was the sense of being borne upon the wind, there was the leaping of life within the veins to meet the awakened life without. Audrey closed her eyes, and wished to ride thus forever. Haward, too, traveling fast through mist and rain a road whose end was hidden, facing the wet wind, hearing the voices of earth and sky, felt his spirit mount with the mounting voices. So to ride with Love to doom! On, and on, and on! Left behind the sophist, the apologist, the lover of the world with his tinsel that was not gold, his pebbles that were not gems! Only the man thundering on,—the man and his mate that was meant for him since time began! He raised his face to the strife above, he drew his breath, his hand closed over the hand of the woman riding with him. At the touch a thrill ran through them both; had the lightning with a sword of flame cut the world from beneath their feet, they had passed on, immortal in their happiness. But the bolts struck aimlessly, and the moment fled. Haward was Haward again; he recognized his old acquaintance with a half-humorous, half-disdainful smile. The road was no longer a road that gleamed athwart all time and space; the wind had lost its trumpet tone; Love spoke not in the thunder, nor seemed so high a thing as the lit heaven. Audrey's hand was yet within his clasp; but it was flesh and blood that he touched, not spirit, and he was glad that it was so. For her, her cheek burned, and she hid her eyes. She had looked unawares, as by the lightning glare, into a world of which she had not dreamed. Its portals had shut; she rode on in the twilight again, and she could not clearly remember what she had seen. But she was sure that the air of that country was sweet, she was faint with its beauty, her heart beat with violence to its far echoes. Moreover, she was dimly aware that in the moment when she had looked there had been a baptism. She had thought of herself as a child, as a girl; now and for evermore she was a woman.

They left the forest behind, and came to open fields where the tobacco had been beaten to earth. The trees now stood singly or in shivering copses. Above, the heavens were bare to their gaze, and the lightning gave glimpses of pale castles overhanging steel-gray, fathomless abysses. The road widened, and the bay was pushed by its rider to Mirza's side. Fields of corn where the long blades wildly clashed, a wood of dripping cedars, a patch of Oronoko, tobacco house in midst, rising ground and a vision of the river, then a swift descent to the lower creek, and the bridge across which lay the road that ran to the minister's house. Audrey spoke earnestly to the master of Fair View, and after a moment's hesitation he drew rein. "We will not cross, Colonel," he declared. "My preserver will have it that she has troubled us long enough; and indeed it is no great distance to the glebe house, and the rain has stopped. Have down with thee, then, obstinate one!"