Audrey

Mirabell nodded and looked wise, but said nothing.

When the church bells rang Audrey was ready, and she walked to church with

Mistress Stagg much as, the night before, she had walked between the

lilacs to the green door when the Westover coach had passed from her

sight. Now she sat in the church much as she had sat at the window the

night through. She did not know that people were staring at her; nor had

she caught the venomous glance of Mistress Deborah, already in the pew,

and aware of more than had come to her friend's ears.

Audrey was not listening, was scarcely thinking. Her hands were crossed in

her lap, and now and then she raised one and made the motion of pushing

aside from her eyes something heavy that clung and blinded. What part of

her spirit that was not wholly darkened and folded within itself was back

in the mountains of her childhood, with those of her own blood whom she

had loved and lost. What use to try to understand to-day,--to-day with its

falling skies, its bewildered pondering over the words that were said to

her last night? And the morrow,--she must leave that. Perhaps when it

should dawn he would come to her, and call her "little maid," and laugh at

her dreadful dream. But now, while it was to-day, she could not think of

him without an agony of pain and bewilderment. He was ill, too, and

suffering. Oh, she must leave the thought of him alone! Back then to the

long yesterdays she traveled, and played quietly, dreamily, with Robin on

the green grass beside the shining stream, or sat on the doorstep, her

head on Molly's lap, and watched the evening star behind the Endless

Mountains.

It was very quiet in the church save for that one great voice speaking.

Little by little the voice impressed itself upon her consciousness. The

eyes of her mind were upon long ranges of mountains distinct against the

splendor of a sunset sky. Last seen in childhood, viewed now through the

illusion of the years, the mountains were vastly higher than nature had

planned them; the streamers of light shot to the zenith; the black forests

were still; everywhere a fixed glory, a gigantic silence, a holding of the

breath for things to happen.

By degrees the voice in her ears fitted in with the landscape, became, so

solemn and ringing it was, like the voice of the archangel of that sunset

land. Audrey listened at last; and suddenly the mountains were gone, and

the light from the sky, and her people were dead and dust away in that

hidden valley, and she was sitting in the church at Williamsburgh, alone,

without a friend.

What was the preacher saying? What ball of the night before was he

describing with bitter power, the while he gave warning of handwriting

upon the wall such as had menaced Belshazzar's feast of old? Of what

shameless girl was he telling,--what creature dressed in silks that should

have gone in rags, brought to that ball by her paramour-The gaunt figure in the pulpit trembled like a leaf with the passion of

the preacher's convictions and the energy of his utterance. On had gone

the stream of rhetoric, the denunciations, the satire, the tremendous

assertions of God's mind and purposes. The lash that was wielded was

far-reaching; all the vices of the age--irreligion, blasphemy,

drunkenness, extravagance, vainglory, loose living--fell under its sting.

The condemnation was general, and each man looked to see his neighbor

wince. The occurrence at the ball last night,--he was on that for final

theme, was he? There was a slight movement throughout the congregation.

Some glanced to where would have sat Mr. Marmaduke Haward, had not the

gentleman been at present in his bed, raving now of a great run of luck at

the Cocoa Tree; now of an Indian who, with his knee upon his breast, was

throttling him to death. Others looked over their shoulders to see if that

gypsy yet sat beneath the gallery. Colonel Byrd took out his snuffbox and

studied the picture on the lid, while his daughter sat like a carven lady,

with a slight smile upon her lips.