Part 16 (2/2)
”Ay, where the road nears the river. Well?”
”I heard all that Hugon and the schoolmaster said. I hid behind a fallen tree and watched them leave the schoolhouse; then I followed them, making no noise, back to the creek, where Hugon had a boat. They crossed the creek, and fastened the boat on this side. I could follow them no farther; the woods hid them; but they have gone downstream to that bend in the road. Hugon had his hunting-knife and pistols; the schoolmaster carried a coil of rope.” She flung back her head, and her hands went to her throat as though she were stifling. ”The turn in the road is very sharp. Just past the bend they will stretch the rope from side to side, fastening it to two trees. He will be hurrying home before the bursting of the storm--he will be riding the planter's pace”--
”Man and horse will come cras.h.i.+ng down!” cried the storekeeper, with a great oath ”And then”--
”Hugon's knife, so there will be no noise.... They think he has gold upon him: that is for the schoolmaster.... Hugon is an Indian, and he will hide their trail. Men will think that some outlying slave was in the woods, and set upon and killed him.”
Her voice broke; then went on, gathering strength: ”It was so late, and I knew that he would ride fast because of the storm. I remembered this house, and thought that, if I called, some one might come and ferry me over the creek. Now I will run through the woods to the road, for I must reach it before he pa.s.ses on his way to where they wait.” She turned her face toward the pine wood beyond the house.
”Ay, that is best!” agreed the storekeeper. ”Warned, he can take the long way home, and Hugon and this other may be dealt with at his leisure. Come, my girl; there's no time to lose.”
They left behind them the creek, the blooming dooryard, the small white house, and the gentle Quakeress. The woods received them, and they came into a world of livid greens and grays dashed here and there with ebony,--a world that, expectant of the storm, had caught and was holding its breath. Save for the noise of their feet upon dry leaves that rustled like paper, the wood was soundless. The light that lay within it, fallen from skies of iron, was wild and sinister; there was no air, and the heat wrapped them like a mantle. So motionless were all things, so fixed in quietude each branch and bough, each leaf or twig or slender needle of the pine, that they seemed to be fleeing through a wood of stone, jade and malachite, emerald and agate.
They hurried on, not wasting breath in speech. Now and again MacLean glanced aside at the girl, who kept beside him, moving as lightly as presently would move the leaves when the wind arose. He remembered certain scurrilous words spoken in the store a week agone by a knot of purchasers, but when he looked at her face he thought of the Highland maiden whose story he had told. As for Audrey, she saw not the woods that she loved, heard not the leaves beneath her feet, knew not if the light were gold or gray. She saw only a horse and rider riding from Williamsburgh, heard only the rapid hoofbeats. All there was of her was one dumb prayer for the rider's safety. Her memory told her that it was no great distance to the road, but her heart cried out that it was so far away,--so far away! When the wood thinned, and they saw before them the dusty strip, pallid and lonely beneath the storm clouds, her heart leaped within her; then grew sick for fear that he had gone by. When they stood, ankle-deep in the dust, she looked first toward the north, and then to the south. Nothing moved; all was barren, hushed, and lonely.
”How can we know? How can we know?” she cried, and wrung her hands.
MacLean's keen eyes were busily searching for any sign that a horseman had lately pa.s.sed that way. At a little distance above them a shallow stream of some width flowed across the way, and to this the Highlander hastened, looked with attention at the road-bed where it emerged from the water, then came back to Audrey with a satisfied air. ”There are no hoof-prints,”
he said. ”No marks upon the dust. None can have pa.s.sed for some hours.”
A rotted log, streaked with velvet moss and blotched with fan-shaped, orange-colored fungi, lay by the wayside, and the two sat down upon it to wait for the coming horseman. Overhead the thunder was rolling, but there was as yet no breath of wind, no splash of raindrops. Opposite them rose a gigantic pine, towering above the forest, red-brown trunk and ultimate cone of deep green foliage alike outlined against the dead gloom of the sky. Audrey shook back her heavy hair and raised her face to the roof of the world; her hands were clasped upon her knee; her bare feet, slim and brown, rested on a carpet of moss; she was as still as the forest, of which, to the Highlander, she suddenly seemed a part. When they had kept silence for what seemed a long time, he spoke to her with some hesitation: ”You have known Mr. Haward but a short while; the months are very few since he came from England.”
The name brought Audrey down to earth again. ”Did you not know?” she asked wonderingly. ”You also are his friend,--you see him often. I thought that at times he would have spoken of me.” For a moment her face was troubled, though only for a moment. ”But I know why he did not so,” she said softly to herself. ”He is not one to speak of his good deeds.” She turned toward MacLean, who was attentively watching her, ”But I may speak of them,” she said, with pride. ”I have known Mr. Haward for years and years. He saved my life; he brought me here from the Indian country; he was, he is, so kind to me!”
Since the afternoon beneath the willow-tree, Haward, while encouraging her to speak of her long past, her sylvan childhood, her dream memories, had somewhat sternly checked every expression of grat.i.tude for the part which he himself had played or was playing, in the drama of her life. Walking in the minister's orchard, sitting in the garden or upon the terrace of Fair View house, drifting on the sunset river, he waved that aside, and went on to teach her another lesson. The teaching was exquisite; but when the lesson for the day was over, and he was alone, he sat with one whom he despised. The learning was exquisite; it was the sweetest song, but she knew not its name, and the words were in a strange tongue. She was Audrey, that she knew; and he,--he was the plumed knight, who, for the lack of a better listener, told her gracious tales of love, showed her how warm and beautiful was this world that she sometimes thought so sad, sang to her sweet lines that poets had made. Over and through all she thought she read the name of the princess. She had heard him say that with the breaking of the heat he should go to Westover, and one day, early in summer, he had shown her the miniature of Evelyn Byrd. Because she loved him blindly, and because he was wise in his generation, her trust in him was steadfast as her native hills, large as her faith in G.o.d. Now it was sweet beneath her tongue to be able to tell one that was his friend how worthy of all friends.h.i.+p--nay, all reverence--he was. She spoke simply, but with that strange power of expression which nature had given her.
Gestures with her hands, quick changes in the tone of her voice, a countenance that gave ample utterance to the moment's thought,--as one morning in the Fair View library she had brought into being that long dead Elosa whose lines she spoke, so now her auditor of to-day thought that he saw the things of which she told.
She had risen, and was standing in the wild light, against the background of the forest that was breathless, as if it too listened, ”And so he brought me safely to this land,” she said. ”And so he left me here for ten years, safe and happy, he thought. He has told me that all that while he thought of me as safe and happy. That I was not so,--why, that was not his fault! When he came back I was both. I have never seen the suns.h.i.+ne so bright or the woods so fair as they have been this summer. The people with whom I live are always kind to me now,--that is his doing. And ah! it is because he would not let Hugon scare or harm me that that wicked Indian waits for him now beyond the bend in the road.” At the thought of Hugon she shuddered, and her eyes began to widen. ”Have we not been here a long time?” she cried. ”Are you sure? Oh, G.o.d! perhaps he has pa.s.sed!”
”No, no,” answered MacLean, with his hand upon her arm. ”There is no sign that he has done so. It is not late; it is that heavy cloud above our heads that has so darkened the air. Perhaps he has not left Williamsburgh at all: perhaps, the storm threatening, he waits until to-morrow.”
From the cloud above came a blinding light and a great crash of thunder,--the one so intense, the other so tremendous, that for a minute the two stood as if stunned. Then, ”The tree!” cried Audrey. The great pine, blasted and afire, uprooted itself and fell from them like a reed that the wind has snapped. The thunder crash, and the din with which the tree met its fellows of the forest, bore them down, and finally struck the earth from which it came, seemed an alarum to waken all nature from its sleep. The thunder became incessant, and the wind suddenly arising the forest stretched itself and began to speak with no uncertain voice.
MacLean took his seat again upon the log, but Audrey slipped into the road, and stood in the whirling dust, her arm raised above her eyes, looking for the horseman whose approach she could not hope to hear through the clamor of the storm. The wind lifted her long hair, and the rising dust half obscured her form, bent against the blast. On the lonesome road, in the partial light, she had the seeming of an apparition, a creature tossed like a ball from the surging forest. She had made herself a world, and she had become its product. In all her ways, to the day of her death, there was about her a touch of mirage, illusion, fantasy. The Highlander, imaginative like all his race, and a believer in things not of heaven nor of earth, thought of spirits of the glen and the sh.o.r.e.
There was no rain as yet; only the hurly-burly of the forest, the white dust cloud, and the wild commotion overhead. Audrey turned to MacLean, watching her in silence. ”He is coming!” she cried. ”There is some one with him. Now, now he is safe!”
CHAPTER XV
HUGON SPEAKS HIS MIND
MacLean sprang up from the log, and, joining her, saw indeed two hors.e.m.e.n galloping toward them, their heads bent and riding cloaks raised to s.h.i.+eld them from the whirlwind of dust, dead leaves, and broken twigs. He knew Haward's powerful steed Mirza, but the other horse was strange.
The two rode fast. A moment, and they were splas.h.i.+ng through the stream; another, and the horses, startled by Audrey's cry and waving arms and by the sudden and violent check on the part of their riders, were rearing and curveting across the road. ”What the devil!” cried one of the hors.e.m.e.n.
”Imp or sprite, or whatever you are, look out! Haward, your horse will trample her!”
But Audrey, with her hand on Mirza's bridle, had no fears. Haward stared at her in amazement. ”Child, what are you doing here? Angus, you too!” as the storekeeper advanced. ”What rendezvous is this? Mirza, be quiet!”
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