Audrey Part 26

"We will leave the cards, and say good-night," said Haward, with a strong effort for self-control.

"Good-night with all my heart!" cried the other hotly,--"when you have promised to lay no further snare for that maid at your gates, whose name you have blasted, whose heart you have wrung, whose nature you have darkened and distorted"--

"Have you done?" demanded Haward. "Once more, 't were wise to say good-night at once."

"Not yet!" exclaimed the storekeeper, stretching out an eager hand. "That girl hath so haunting a face. Haward, see her not again! G.o.d wot, I think you have crushed the soul within her, and her name is bandied from mouth to mouth. 'T were kind to leave her to forget and be forgotten. Go to Westover: wed the lady there of whom you raved in your fever. You are her declared suitor; 'tis said that she loves you"--

Haward drew his breath sharply and turned in his chair. Then, spent with fatigue, irritable from recent illness, sore with the memory of the meeting by the river, determined upon his course and yet deeply perplexed, he narrowed his eyes and began to give poisoned arrow for poisoned arrow.

"Was it in the service of the Pretender that you became a squire of dames?" he asked. "'Gad, for a Jacobite you are particular!"

MacLean started as if struck, and drew himself up. "Have a care, sir! A MacLean sits not to hear his king or his chief defamed. In future, pray remember it."

"For my part," said the other, "I would have Mr. MacLean remember"--

The intonation carried his meaning. MacLean, flus.h.i.+ng deeply, rose from the table. "That is unworthy of you," he said. "But since before to-night servants have rebuked masters, I spare not to tell you that you do most wrongly. 'Tis sad for the girl she died not in that wilderness where you found her."

"Ads my life!" cried Haward. "Leave my affairs alone!"

Both men were upon their feet. "I took you for a gentleman," said the Highlander, breathing hard. "I said to myself: 'Duart is overseas where I cannot serve him. I will take this other for my chief'"--

"That is for a Highland cateran and traitor," interrupted Haward, pleased to find another dart, but scarcely aware of how deadly an insult he was dealing.

In a flash the blow was struck. Juba, in the next room, hearing the noise of the overturned table, appeared at the door. "Set the table to rights and light the candles again," said his master calmly. "No, let the cards lie. Now begone to the quarters! 'Twas I that stumbled and overset the table."

Following the slave to the door he locked it upon him; then turned again to the room, and to MacLean standing waiting in the centre of it. "Under the circ.u.mstances, we may, I think, dispense with preliminaries. You will give me satisfaction here and now?"

"Do you take it at my hands?" asked the other proudly. "Just now you reminded me that I was your servant. But find me a sword"--

Haward went to a carved chest; drew from it two rapiers, measured the blades, and laid one upon the table. MacLean took it up, and slowly pa.s.sed the gleaming steel between his fingers. Presently he began to speak, in a low, controlled, monotonous voice: "Why did you not leave me as I was? Six months ago I was alone, quiet, dead. A star had set for me; as the lights fail behind Ben More, it was lost and gone. You, long hated, long looked for, came, and the star arose again. You touched my scars, and suddenly I esteemed them honorable. You called me friend, and I turned from my enmity and clasped your hand. Now my soul goes back to its realm of solitude and hate; now you are my foe again." He broke off to bend the steel within his hands almost to the meeting of hilt and point. "A hated master," he ended, with bitter mirth, "yet one that I must thank for grace extended. Forty stripes is, I believe, the proper penalty."

Haward, who had seated himself at his escritoire and was writing, turned his head. "For my reference to your imprisonment in Virginia I apologize.

I demand the reparation due from one gentleman to another for the indignity of a blow. Pardon me for another moment, when I shall be at your service."

He threw sand upon a sheet of gilt-edged paper, folded and superscribed it; then took from his breast a thicker doc.u.ment. "The Solebay, man-of-war, lying off Jamestown, sails at sunrise. The captain--Captain Meade--is my friend. Who knows the fortunes of war? If by chance I should fall to-night, take a boat at the landing, hasten upstream, and hail the Solebay. When you are aboard give Meade--who has reason to oblige me--this letter. He will carry you down the coast to Charleston, where, if you change your name and lurk for a while, you may pa.s.s for a buccaneer and be safe enough. For this other paper"--He hesitated, then spoke on with some constraint: "It is your release from servitude in Virginia,--in effect, your pardon. I have interest both here and at home--it hath been many years since Preston--the paper was not hard to obtain. I had meant to give it to you before we parted to-night. I regret that, should you prove the better swordsman, it may be of little service to you."

He laid the papers on the table, and began to divest himself of his coat, waistcoat, and long, curled periwig. MacLean took up the pardon and held it to a candle. It caught, but before the flame could reach the writing Haward had dashed down the other's hand and beaten out the blaze. "'Slife, Angus, what would you do!" he cried, and, taken unawares, there was angry concern in his voice. "Why, man, 't is liberty!"

"I may not accept it," said MacLean, with dry lips. "That letter, also, is useless to me. I would you were all villain."

"Your scruple is fantastic!" retorted the other, and as he spoke he put both papers upon the escritoire, weighting them with the sandbox. "You shall take them hence when our score is settled,--ay, and use them as best you may! Now, sir, are you ready?"

"You are weak from illness," said MacLean hoa.r.s.ely, "Let the quarrel rest until you have recovered strength."

Haward laughed. "I was not strong yesterday," he said. "But Mr. Everard is pinked in the side, and Mr. Travis, who would fight with pistols, hath a ball through his shoulder."

The storekeeper started. "I have heard of those gentlemen! You fought them both upon the day when you left your sickroom?"

"a.s.suredly," answered the other, with a slight lift of his brows. "Will you be so good as to move the table to one side? So. On guard, sir!"

The man who had been ill unto death and the man who for many years had worn no sword acquitted themselves well. Had the room been a field behind Montagu House, had there been present seconds, a physician, gaping chairmen, the interest would have been breathless. As it was, the lady upon the wall smiled on, with her eyes forever upon the blossoms in her hand, and the river without, when it could be heard through the clas.h.i.+ng of steel, made but a listless and dreamy sound. Each swordsman knew that he had provoked a friend to whom his debt was great, but each, according to his G.o.dless creed, must strive as though that friend were his dearest foe. The Englishman fought coolly, the Gael with fervor. The latter had an unguarded moment. Haward's blade leaped to meet it, and on the other's s.h.i.+rt appeared a bright red stain.

In the moment that he was touched the Highlander let fall his sword.

Haward, not understanding, lowered his point, and with a gesture bade his antagonist recover the weapon. But the storekeeper folded his arms. "Where blood has been drawn there is satisfaction," he said. "I have given it to you, and now, by the bones of Gillean-na-Tuaidhe, I will not fight you longer!"

For a minute or more Haward stood with his eyes upon the ground and his hand yet closely clasping the rapier hilt; then, drawing a long breath, he took up the velvet scabbard and slowly sheathed his blade. "I am content,"

he said. "Your wound, I hope, is slight?"

MacLean thrust a handkerchief into his bosom to stanch the bleeding. "A pin p.r.i.c.k," he said indifferently.

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 pa.s.sion had brought all that was highest in this gentleman's nature into his countenance, softening and enn.o.bling 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 cla.s.s." 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 pa.s.s 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.

He came to the dial, and, bending, pressed his lips against the carven words that, so often as they had stood there together, she had traced with her finger. "Love! thou mighty alchemist!" he breathed. "Life! that may now be gold, now iron, but never again dull lead! Death"--He paused; then, "There shall be no death," he said, and left the withered garden for the lonely, echoing house.

CHAPTER XXIV

AUDREY COMES TO WESTOVER

It was ten of the clock upon this same night when Hugon left the glebe house. Audrey, crouching in the dark beside her window, heard him bid the minister, as drunk as himself, good-night, and watched him go unsteadily down the path that led to the road. Once he paused, and made as if to return; then went on to his lair at the crossroads ordinary. Again Audrey waited,--this time by the door. Darden stumbled upstairs to bed. Mistress Deborah's voice was raised in shrill reproach, and the drunken minister answered her with oaths. The small house rang with their quarrel, but Audrey listened with indifference; not trembling and stopping her ears, as once she would have done. It was over at last, and the place sunk in silence; but still the girl waited and listened, standing close to the door. At last, as it was drawing toward midnight, she put her hand upon the latch, and, raising it very softly, slipped outside. Heavy breathing came from the room where slept her guardians; it went evenly on while she crept downstairs and unbarred the outer door. Sure and silent and light of touch, she pa.s.sed like a spirit from the house that had given her shelter, nor once looked back upon it.

The boat, hidden in the reeds, was her destination; she loosed it, and taking the oars rowed down the creek. When she came to the garden wall, she bent her head and shut her eyes; but when she had left the creek for the great dim river, she looked at Fair View house as she rowed past it on her way to the mountains. No light to-night; the hour was late, and he was asleep, and that was well.

It was cold upon the river, and sere leaves, loosening their hold upon that which had given them life, drifted down upon her as she rowed beneath arching trees. When she left the dark bank for the unshadowed stream, the wind struck her brow and the glittering stars perplexed her. There were so many of them. When one shot, she knew that a soul had left the earth.

Another fell, and another,--it must be a good night for dying. She ceased to row, and, leaning over, dipped her hand and arm into the black water.

The movement brought the gunwale of the boat even with the flood.... Say that one leaned over a little farther ... there would fall another star.

G.o.d gathered the stars in his hand, but he would surely be angry with one that came before it was called, and the star would sink past him into a night forever dreadful.... The water was cold and deep and black. Great fish throve in it, and below was a bed of ooze and mud....