Mr. Noble's house in Birmingham was one of our ugly brick-red American cottages, with many sharp points to its roof, many slender chimneys, a profusion of bay windows and plate glass, and an air of band-box newness, suggestive of fresh paint and scarcely dry plastering. It stood on a slight knoll overlooking a quiet part of the little city, and commanding a view of the mountains in every direction, as well as of the broken picturesque valley. Its ample lawn, shaded by a few native trees, had been set with grass, as if in defiance of Southern custom, and the broad walks were not flanked with the conventional parallel rows of shrubs and flowers so dear to the heart of the old-time Southerner.
As Moreton and Reynolds passed through the low iron gate in front of this house, on the evening of Mr. Noble's dinner, they paused just inside the inclosure, and turned about to take a view of the surrounding landscape. The horizon in every direction was broken by irregular lines of blue hills and mountains, the higher peaks sharply defined against a soft crepuscular sky, whilst the lower ones, seen through the thin gray smoke of the valley, were scarcely distinguishable from the fragmentary clouds floating lazily in the furthest distance. A gentle breeze, running northward, with just an audible ripple, had in it, along with its mountain freshness and purity, a dreamy, languor-breeding influence, suggestive of those palm-studded islands and warm seas a little further south. Overhead the sky was as blue and soft as that of Lombardy, and set with fervid, flaring stars.
"This strikes me as very near the ideal climate, don't you know, a golden mean between the indolent, dreamy South and the restless, over-realistic North," said Moreton, taking in a deep draught of the sweet, stimulating air.
"The air is pure and wholesome," said Reynolds, "but the scenery is hopelessly monotonous and uninspiring. Six years of it will dry your enthusiasm down to the impalpable dust of dreams. I fear I have had too much of it."
"No doubt you have," Moreton bluntly responded, "considering your way of taking it, crooning over there in that remote cabin, aloof from every genuine human influence, morbidly browsing the weeds of your own conscience." His tone was light and chaffing, but Reynolds, as if cut by some hidden meaning of the words, started a little, then, catching his friend's humor, said:
"Well, let's go into this palace of pleasure and perhaps I may there get my conscience purified in the light of—"
"The light of her eyesAnd the dew of her lips,Where the moth never fliesAnd the bee never sips,"—
Moreton hummed, taking his friend's arm and moving toward the house. The windows gave forth long streams of light, and a subdued sound of voices came from within the brilliant rooms. To the somewhat rusted taste of Reynolds there came, along with the gleam of chandeliers and the polite murmur, a little thrill, as if he were about to re-enter a long-abandoned but much loved atmosphere. Already the old fascination was returning. He saw through an open window the flutter of fans and the gleam of white throats, laces and pearls. For a single instant all the charms of young womanhood gayly but modestly attired, ready for its half-shy, half-daring little assaults upon the masculine heart, burst upon him. As a drunkard, after a long abstinence, feels his whole nature change at the first sip of wine, Reynolds was at once borne off his guard, and for the instant all the period of his mountain seclusion disappeared. It was as if his gay, almost dissolute life had never been arrested. Some one struck a few rapid chords from a grand piano and then followed some airy popular song.
"Why the house is full," said Moreton in an undertone, as they mounted the broad steps to the hall door. "Mr. Noble has exceedingly liberal views on the subject of 'a few friends.' We are going to see theeliteof Montgomery as well as thebon tonof Birmingham, if I guess correctly."
Reynolds made no response. He paused on the threshold and stood for a moment in a faltering attitude. But for the presence of Moreton, he would have turned away and retraced his steps to the hotel, or, more likely, to his cabin in the mountains. One who for years has been entirely beyond the outmost pale of polite society, is apt to feel this trepidation, when on the point of re-entering the charmed circle.
The company was not so large as Moreton had imagined. The evening was warm enough to admit of open windows, hence the sound of voices had the more easily reached the outside. Fifteen or twenty persons, mostly young, were scattered throughout a row of elaborate rooms, now made into one by means of folding doors and movable curtains. Mr. Noble, if possible more supple and elastic than ever before, and Mrs. Noble, a tall woman, dressed in elegant taste, greeted Moreton and Reynolds with admirable ease and cordiality. The company was so small that the arrival of two new guests was at once known to all. Moreton glanced about, seeing many faces that he knew, but Reynolds felt himself a stranger to all. His tall, erect figure, bronzed face and graceful bearing attracted the furtive glances of more than one woman present. Moreton, in bowing low over Mrs. Noble's hand, had managed to say to her unheard by any one else: "Mr. Reynolds, my friend here, is a misanthrope and has long been out of society. You will do me the greatest of favors if you will make him the especial object of your gracious attention this evening."
"Certainly," she answered, in a very sweet and low voice, "you shall see how readily I grant your every request, Mr. Moreton. Leave your friend to me."
She kept her promise with scrupulous fidelity, and Reynolds found himself drawn into the midst of a charming circle, where, for a time, all memory of the past few years was drowned in the music of gentle voices.
Miss Cordelia Noble, the banker's daughter, with whom he presently found himself in conversation, was a merry-eyed, ruby-lipped blonde, as supple and ready as her father and at need as dignified and gracious as her mother. She had just returned with her aunt from New York and talked in a most charming way of the opening of the social season there, of the parties, the opera, the art exhibitions and all the other features of importance to fashionable folk in the metropolis. Her voice was a sincere, honest, girlish one, and her sayings were spiced with those little grotesqueries of thought and phrasing which stay with a bright girl for a while after her so-called school days are over. Reynolds had not dreamed of how hungry he really was for even this slight sort of social food, and it was well for him that he did not suspect that, before the dinner was half over, he had become, by force of tacit consent amongst all present, the center of the evening's interest.
Moreton was delighted. He had determined to win his friend back from his hermit's life, no matter what might have been in the first place the secret reason for his retirement to such an outlandish den as the mountaineer's cabin.
"My father has told me that you are to be one of the party going with him to General DeKay's," Miss Noble said to Reynolds.
"Yes," he answered, "and I expect a most delightful time. I hope you are going too?"
"Yes, I could not afford to let such an opportunity pass. I have always greatly desired to see something of field sports. I dote on dogs, and I really believe I should like to shoot, and ride after the hounds in a real fox-chase."
"I am glad you are going," he said. "Your enthusiasm will be a great help when birds are scarce or when we shoot poorly. Will there be other ladies?"
"Oh, quite a number, I dare say. There will be one, at least, the dearest, charmingest woman that ever lived. Mrs. Ransom, a widow, but lovely, fascinating, every thing, indeed, that's sweet and interesting. She was married only a few months when her husband died—he was killed in a duel or something romantic, several years ago—and she looks like a mere girl now."
Miss Noble was looking directly into Reynolds' face, as she delivered this girlish speech, and she saw something like a shadow flit across his brow and eyes, as if her words had caused him annoyance, but it passed away instantly.
"If you really are fond of dogs," he said, "I shall be proud to show you mine. I fancy I have two that can not be matched in the whole world."
"What sort are they?" she inquired with immediate interest. "You see my father has made me quite a connoisseur; I am away up in dog-knowledge." She held up a little plump hand to show how high her attainments soared.
"Are they pointers, setters or droppers?"
Reynolds laughed. Her outright earnestness of interest in such a subject amused him, whilst it also made him feel justified in pursuing the theme, always a pleasant one to a genuine sportsman.
"One is a pointer, the other a setter," he answered.
"And do they work well together? Do they understand each other's movements, back each other, and all that?" she inquired.
"In the most perfect way imaginable. They are like perfectly drilled soldiers, their minds seem to keep pace exactly."
"Oh, isn't it the most beautiful sight! I know it must be. My father has described it to me so often and I am so anxious to see something of it. I don't know why I shouldn't, do you? Mamma rather objects—talks of cruelty to birds, and sneers in her sweet way, at the idea of a young lady caring for field sports. Do you see any wrong in it? I really think I should like to have a gun."
"When I was in India I saw a young lady shoot at a tiger," said Reynolds, "but she missed it."
"And ever since you have kept the incident in mind as proof positive of the modern woman's inefficiency in the field of Diana," she quickly replied.
"Not altogether," he said; "Diana's field was so broad." But Miss Noble was not scholar enough to feel the point of his meaning. She was ready enough, however, and responded:
"Oh, yes, the whole blue heaven to sail across; I had forgotten that her glory, after all, was mostly moonshine."
"We poor men have been unable to forget it since the dreadful fate of Acteon and the drowsy experience of Endymion; but if you will promise not to turn the weapon against me I shall be glad to let you try a beautiful little English twenty-gauge gun of mine when we find the game."
"How good of you," she exclaimed delightedly; "it will be charming. Don't tell mamma, she would ridicule me out of it."
"Never; I shall die with the secret, if need be. I would not miss seeing you fire your first shot for any thing."
"Now there," she exclaimed, "you can't quite be fair; there was something in your voice that suggested a lack of confidence in my nerve and ability, I shan't shut my eyes and dodge and—and—squeak."
"Of course not," said Reynolds, "I shall expect nothing of the kind. You will kill your bird handsomely, and I shall applaud you and give youencoreand——"
"If you are going to make fun of me, I shall stay at home," she exclaimed with spirit. "I'm in earnest. I really wish to know how to shoot."
Reynolds' eyes involuntarily ran over the outlines of the girl's fine form and rested for a moment on her animated face. She was indeed in earnest, and she looked a perfect model for a Diana, so far as strength and symmetry went. True her bright, vivacious American face had nothing of the straight-cut Grecian severity of beauty, but it was a brave, self-reliant, earnest face, tinged with healthy blood and beaming with the spirit of girlish enterprise. It needed but a look into her eyes for one to know that she was as pure as a violet, with the charm of an infinite capacity for love hovering like a separate atmosphere about her. She was a woman in nothing but physique. Girlhood of the freshest and charmingest sort was apparent in all that she said and did. Reynolds felt her sweet, breeze-like influence pass over him with the effect of a rare fragrance. He gave himself up wholly to her mood. It was like romping in a furtive way, this light, free prattle with one so young, so frank, so childlike and so beautiful.
"Why, if you wish to shoot you shall," he said with smiling earnestness. "I should be glad to show you how. It's quite easy to learn. There's nothing difficult or objectionable in it."
"Oh, do you really mean it? Do you think it quite——proper? I never could see any real impropriety, and somehow I have fancied that I have a genuine passion for it. Perhaps I shall not like it after I have tried it—but, yes I shall, I know I shall. Don't you think so?"
She had a way of opening her eyes wide, as a child does, when asking a question, and she looked straight into his with a simple fearlessness that was far removed from boldness.
"I think you would like any thing that—that—you ought to like," he said.
"I do not like that," she replied naïvely; "it has the ring of flattery. Why do men always do that? Do they think we like it?"
"I don't think you do," he responded, laughing and opening his eyes a little wider in turn. "I really didn't mean flattery, however: I meant to say that you are constituted to enjoy real, rational pastimes and recreations, that you have healthy, natural tastes. That is not flattery, I hope."
"You put it in the least objectionable shape, to say the least," she replied, "and I am willing to compromise, remembering your promise about the gun. I have an ambition that I will confide to you." She leaned toward him a little and added: "When I go to Newport next summer I want to be able to tell my friends about shooting quails in Alabama. It will be so much better than their poor mockery of fox-chasing—that's absurd."
"Ah, I begin to understand," said Reynolds. "You may count on me to aid you in every possible way. You shall have most interesting and realistic experiences to relate at the seaside, if you will let me be your guide and teacher. I beg to be your abettor-in-chief."
Mrs. Noble and Moreton approached, just at this point, and the subject was dropped. In fact Moreton at once drew Miss Cordelia away to some other part of the house, and managed to be near her for the rest of the evening. But the girl left with Reynolds something that lingered, diffusing itself throughout his consciousness, with the effect of a mildly exhilarating potion. Strangely enough, the words of Moreton's little song:
"The light of her eyesAnd the dew of her lips,Where the moth never fliesAnd the bee never sips,"
had all the evening been tinkling in his ears. Not that Miss Noble had troubled him in the least with any thing like love at first sight. She was not a girl for him to fall in love with; but her gentle, earnest voice, her grace of person and manner, and her half-girlish, half-womanly independence of speech had touched him and quickened in him germs of sympathy he had thought long since dead. He felt old dry wells of feeling bubbling afresh. He was gently moved as if by a subtle change within him. Mrs. Noble found him with this mood upon him, and it lent to his talk its freshness and fascination. She was charmed, and when she was told that for the past six years he had scarcely left the cabin over in the mountains, the touch of mystery did not lessen her interest in him.
Moreton, without thought of what sympathy he might arouse by his peculiarly graphic manner of presenting the subject, described to Miss Cordelia the wild, strange prettiness of Milly White and the pathetic ignorance in which her whole nature seemed steeped.
"Why, how romantic!" she exclaimed, "she must be interesting. She ought to be taught. There may be something well worth developing behind those wonderful, mysterious eyes of that girl."
Cordelia's school days were not yet so far in the past that she had got rid of certain academical theories. She still reveled in the belief that education might make a king of a frog.
"If she could be taught," said Moreton, in a reflective way; "but I suppose such a thing is impossible. She comes of such vulgar ancestry, ignorance and stupidity are her heritage, don't you know, and she probably has no capacity. Her limitations are set and nothing can broaden them, I fear. But her beauty, if it may be called by that name, is certainly remarkable. I have never seen a more perfect form—petite, lithe as a leopard's and as graceful as a fawn's, and her face has something in it so appealingly and so hopelessly sweet and pure. But then such vacancy, such hideous ignorance."
Cordelia grew interested. Her vivid imagination took quick and strong hold on his sketch of this mountain girl, filling in with its own lines and coloring the spaces he had left.
"Why hasn't Mr. Reynolds taught her?" she exclaimed, with just a trace of deprecation in her voice. "He has been over there so long, living in the same house. It's a shame that he has not directed her mind so as to awaken some——" she stopped short and a little color flushed her cheeks.
"Oh, Reynolds sees nothing of her fine points," Moreton hastened to say without choice of words. "He's a Southerner, don't you know, and considers her poor white trash—that's the phrase here. He thinks it absurd that a gentleman should look at such a girl long enough to form any opinion as to the question of her beauty."
The conversation was broken in upon and ended at this point by some trivial turn of the evening's happenings, and soon after Reynolds and Moreton took their leave.
They walked toward the hotel, each silently revolving in his mind that part of his experience at the banker's house which had chanced to most deeply impress him. Reynolds, in fact, was scarcely conscious of his companion's presence, so full was he of many other indeterminate but wholly pleasing plans for making Miss Noble happy with his dogs and gun when they should meet at General DeKay's plantation. Moreton had lighted a cigarette and pulled his hat down over his eyes.
"This girl of White's—how old is she, Reynolds?" he presently inquired, in a tone so abrupt that his companion looked up as if startled. "She's scarcely a woman yet, is she?"
Reynolds did not answer promptly, but kept his eyes on Moreton's face while they walked two or three paces.
"Oh, the devil, what do I know or care about her?" he at length said. "You'd better go out and interview her. She seems to have tangled your fancy." The words look brutal, but his voice and manner were merely indifferent and light, with a touch of good-humored raillery.
"She does stay in my head somehow," Moreton frankly replied. "And I confess that it amazes me to know that you have never discovered what deuced physical perfection she has. You needn't try to make me believe in your obtuseness, however: I know you too well, don't you know."
Reynolds laughed, and laying his hand on Moreton's arm, said:
"You have happened to see her at some exceptional angle and with an artist's eye. Poor little thing, it is a small measure that fills her life. Hers is a hopeless lot. Let's choose a better subject. Now there's Miss Noble."
Moreton did not respond promptly, but looked rather searchingly at his friend. He almost resented the democratic freedom that linked so readily and intimately the names of Milly White and Cordelia Noble. Presently he said:
"Miss Noble is an exceptional American girl. She has all the naïveté and freshness of the country without any trace of its deuced vulgarity."
"Your long residence of two months in this great country fully equips you for criticism," replied Reynolds with mock gravity.
"I have lived a thousand years in America," was Moreton's response. "Every hour has been a decade. I never felt a genuine sentiment before I came here. You must pardon me if I arrogate to myself the right to speak patronizingly to one who has only been here thirty or thirty-five years."
"I see how it is," said Reynolds. "The same old story. Another sweetheart. You had four in Paris, three in Rome, two in Geneva, two in——"
"Oh, come now, none of that," Moreton exclaimed with an impatient gesture. "For once and forever I am in earnest, don't you know. I mean to marry Miss Noble."
"I am heartily glad of it," said Reynolds, grasping his friend's hand. "I cordially congratulate you, Moreton. What a sweet, bright, perfectly natural girl she is! I honor you all the more for your choice."
As they walked on to the hotel, Reynolds was thinking what a fair outcome this marriage would be to Moreton's rather adventuresome bachelor career. He did not dare figure for himself any thing so happy, but his imagination was full of floating, rosy fantasies, formless as yet, but ready to take almost any shape of beauty, grace or passion. He felt a quicker movement of his blood, he breathed deeper, a wider horizon seemed open to him all at once. He dared not try to analyze his state of feeling, lest the test should dissipate it. Like some mere stripling just fallen in love, he heard all through his dreams that night a sweet, strange voice singing that light stanza of Moreton's song:
"The light of her eyesAnd the dew of her lips,Where the moth never fliesAnd the bee never sips."
Reynolds started to go on foot to White's cabin among the mountains. His immediate purpose was to arrange for sending his dogs down to Birmingham in a few days, in order that they might be ready for the trip to General DeKay's. He was glad of this excuse for getting away for a time from the town, out into the woods, where he might try to understand himself; for he was in a mood very different from any he had experienced in the last six years, and in fact very different from any he ever before had realized. Since the evening of Mr. Noble's dinner a change had been going on within him. It was as if some reservoir of feeling, hitherto sealed up, had been tapped, from which a rare sensation had diffused itself throughout his being, mildly thrilling his nerves and vaguely firing his blood. He could trace this change to no definite source, nor could he be sure whether it tended toward some new and brighter phase of his variable life, or toward some lurking evil. He felt the pressure of a doubtful presentiment, as all strongly imaginative natures at times do, and in the midst of a vivid sense of pleasure there hovered a dim shadow of dread.
It was in the twilight following an unusually warm day, that he turned aside from the highway to follow a trail leading over a spur of the mountain on the further side of which stood White's cabin. The stars were already coming out in the soft, southern sky, and a slender moon hung half-way down the west. The air was fragrant with the keen essence of resin and the balsam of pine leaves, but there was scarcely more than a mere breath astir among the frondous groves. He walked rapidly, unconsciously timing his strides to the pulses of his mood. Why would the voice of Miss Noble keep ringing in his ears, and her earnest, honest eyes keep looking straight into his with some almost imperceptible shadow of rebuke in them? And why did the poor little face of Milly White now and again force itself upon his inner vision? He could hardly be called morbidly sensitive, but he had been for so long a time shut away from the finer and sweeter social influences. Somewhat a dreamer, too, as are all persons who dwell apart with nature and art. Since his hermit life began he had been a contributor, under anom de plume, to a number of English and American publications, both as an artist and as a writer, so that he had divided his time between the pleasures of the sportsman and the milder excitements of the provincial magazineist. He had fancied for a long time that he was happy, and that all the fascination of woman's charms had ceased for him. Now as he strode along he was loth to admit, even in the secrecy of self-communion, that the old influence was taking hold again with a zest as fresh as it was keen and deep. He stopped at the highest point reached by the sinuous trail and sat down upon a stone. The tall, puffy column of black smoke from the iron furnaces rose slantingly against the line of sky above the valley where the town lay. In another direction, beyond a dusky gulch, some lines of fire were burning along the mountain sides, like the lights of an army camp. He tried to analyze his feelings, but the effort was futile; he got up and went on down to the cabin, his blood tingling as if with wine.
The moon had fallen to the western mountain-tops and was touching a peak with its delicate horn when he reached the rustic gate. Milly was there, as was her wont, to welcome him home.
"I knowed 'at ye'd come," she said, "fur I dremp last night at ye was dead an' 'at's a sign, ye know."
Her face, upturned to his, caught from the faint moonlight, or from some other heavenly reflection, a gleam of peaceful happiness that added something which Reynolds never before had seen there, or if ever he had seen it, it was when, a mere child, she had so faithfully hung over him and tended him through a long and almost fatal illness. The memory of her untiring patience and gentleness, her quick sense of his needs and her silent but evidently deep joy at his final recovery, now suddenly rushed upon him.
"I've ben a wushin' ye'd come an' I'm so glad!" she murmured, as she opened the gate for him. "Hit air so lonesome when ye'r away."
Her lithe, plump figure was clothed in a clinging gown of cotton stuff and a white kerchief was pinned about her throat. Down over her shoulders in a long, rather thin brush fell her rimpled pale yellow hair. Her cheeks glowed and her lips had on them the dew of innocent and, alas, ignorant maidenhood. A flash of recognition leaped into the mind of Reynolds, though he was scarcely conscious of it, and Milly White's strange beauty was no longer invisible to him.
"Ye ortn't to stay away so long," she added, not in rebuke, but in a low, quavering voice like that of some happy bird. Her mountain dialect, crabbed as it appears in writing, added emphasis to the fresh, half wild tenderness of her tones.
All around the woods and little broken fields were dim and silent. The warm southern stars burned overhead and the fitful balmy air crept past with furtive whispers. The moon slipped down behind the mountain, leaving on the peak a delicate wavering ghost that slowly vanished into the common haze of the night. Reynolds paused in the little gateway and looked down into Milly's lifted shining face. In that instant a tender feeling, a subtle sense of some obscure but immediate draught upon the inner sources of his passionate nature, took complete possession of him. The touching sweetness of her face, the wild grace of her form, and that charming expression of strength and development, impressed him. He forgot the cabin, the pinched and sapless mountain life and all its empty hopelessness. For the time he saw nothing but Milly as his over-stimulated imagination lighted her face and form with the allurements of irresistible beauty. He stooped, and, swiftly folding her in his arms, kissed her passionately.
"Oh!" she cried, her voice slipping with sharp sweetness away through the dusky woods. It was like the quick musical chirp of a glad bird. She clung to him with strong, loving arms.
Her voice was like the quick musical chirp of a glad bird. She clung to him with strong, loving arms. Page 68.Her voice was like the quick musical chirp of a glad bird.She clung to him with strong, loving arms.Page 68.
He let her go presently and said:
"It is late for you to be out; come in now, the night air is beginning to be chilly and you'll catch a cold."
"Oh, no!" she naïvely responded, "let's us stay out yer, they're a smokin' in ther, an' hit's so nice ter be out yer." Her mountain dialect, as filtered through her pure, peculiarly musical voice, lost all its harshness and became a fitting expression of a part of the fascinating enigma of her character. "Ye'v' ben away so long, John, an' sometimes I wus afeared to go er-sleep 'cause ye wus gone, an' 'cause I'd dream ye wus dead."
"Well, come in now," he gently urged, drawing the long pale brush of her hair through his hand and passing on into the cabin.
She looked after him, the smile slowly fading out of her face and giving place to that half-vacant, mildly hopeless expression which it usually wore. She put her rather large but finely chiseled hands on top of her head, with the fingers laced together, and with her elbows extended gazed listlessly at the sky. She felt a vague sense of disappointment blended with a delicious happiness. When Reynolds entered the cabin, White and his wife were leaning over a mere pretense of fire and smoking their pipes, with such abandonment to the luxury that they merely glanced at him as he entered; but mountain politeness overcame the tobacco at last, and they got up, greeting him warmly. He shook hands with them in turn, asking about their health, but declined to sit down, preferring after a few commonplace inquiries, to go into his own room and be alone.
His first sensation on entering his apartment was one of disgust at its rough and uninviting aspect. Indirectly the question was assailing him: why had he ever been content in such a place? A query of this nature may arise in one's mind without any definite form, impressing itself by a sort of implication and indirect reflection from a throng of comparisons involuntarily and almost unconsciously made. Reynolds' nature was intensely virile, his passions powerful and his imagination tropical. It goes with the saying that his feelings and tastes were subject to violent and sudden changes. He usually had, however, perfect self-control and an outward appearance of calmness under the most trying circumstances. But let the check-rein once break and his fiery passions get control of the bit, then nothing that passion demands could escape him. He was aware of this; he knew the need of self-restraint, for at the bottom his was a noble soul, full of self-sacrifice and generous, liberal manliness.
On the floor by his easel lay a scrap of white paper with something scrawled upon it. He picked it up mechanically and saw that Milly had been trying to copy the dog-sketch that still rested on the easel. It was a poor, crude scratch, such as a little child might have accomplished, showing in its stiff, hesitating lines the limitations of the girl's vague notion of art. He smiled at this evidence of the first stirrings of culture in a handful of almost barren soil. Art is forever dropping seeds that germinate under all the exigencies of weather. Few of the shootlets live to show more than a tender point above the surface of the ground, but their number is legion and each spike gives to the air an infinitesimal trace of fragrance which cheers us as we breathe.
While he stood looking at her work, Milly came into the room through a doorway that led from the kitchen. He was still smiling when he looked towards her and said:
"Did you draw this, Milly?"
She put her hands over her face and leaned against the wall. The light from a large lamp on the table gave to her figure the effect of a strong sketch in charcoal. He noted her attitude with an artist's eye, and with a man's eyes, too. There was a bird-like grace in the droop of her shoulders and in the fine curves of her body and limbs. Her flaxen hair gave forth just a modicum of golden light.
He did not repeat his inquiry. Something in her appearance checked him. All that Moreton had said about her came into his mind with almost startling force. How clearly he felt now the dryad-like strength of her figure, and the infantile purity of her face. She had the soul of a woman, too, for how tenderly she had nursed him.
"Get me my slippers, please, Milly," he presently said, more to break up the situation than with a desire to be served.
She let fall her hands and sprang to obey him, with the noiseless swiftness of a kitten. She fetched his slippers, and also his dressing gown, from a corner of the room. This done she lingered near him for awhile, as if hoping he might need some further help. She would not look straight at him now, but kept her face half turned away, glancing sidewise under her drooping eyelids, one hand fluttering idly about the kerchief at her throat.
Some one lifted the latch of the door leading to the room in which White and his wife were smoking. At the first click Milly darted noiselessly into the kitchen. It was White, who hesitatingly thrust his head past the door-post and said:
"I loaded three hunderd carterges fur the twelve-bore gun."
"Load a hundred for the twenty-gauge, if you please," said Reynolds, "two and a half drams of powder and three-quarters of an ounce of number eight shot. Put two wads on the powder, don't forget."
"All right, sir, I air 'quainted wuth jest what ye want. Them shells'll be fixed up jest to the dot. Ye orter see them air dogs, they shine same like they'd ben 'iled."
"Thank you, I'm glad of that. Good night," said Reynolds, anxious to get back to his thoughts.
White withdrew his head.
Milly, from the shadows of the kitchen, gazed fixedly at Reynolds, as he stood in the mellow light of the lamp.
He was, indeed, a man pleasing to look upon, strong, tall, nobly proportioned, with a grand head and a dark, handsome face. His limbs were long and muscular, his shoulders square and broad, his chest deep, his waist rather slender, his whole bearing that of a man by birth and of right a gentleman, and by reason of health and training an athlete. Say what we may, such a man bears about with him a power of fascination, a magnetism able to work great good or great evil or both. He is a flame in which a soul may be warmed or burned up, according to circumstances. A girl of Milly's ignorance and inexperience had nothing to protect her from such danger as his influence might bring. She would have gone unhesitatingly to any length he might have asked, without the slightest thrill of doubt or fear. Hers was not a nature capable of much expansion or improvement. A long line of mountain ancestors had fixed in her the hereditary simpleness, narrowness and mental barrenness of the Sandlapper; but along with these limitations had come the gift of a flower-like beauty of form and face, and a voice sweeter than any bird's. She had come up in a wild, lonely way, running free in wind and sun and rain, quite illiterate, utterly unaware of conventional proprieties, truthful, honest, affectionate, passionate, after a fashion, and as independent as any deer in the woods.
It would not be making the statement too strong to say that Reynolds came to a discovery of her striking beauty as one comes upon those haunting visions of loveliness in one's dreams. Why had he not noticed it before? He was vaguely aware that in some way Cordelia Noble had opened his eyes by stirring up the stagnant fountains of his nature and setting old currents to flowing in his veins. Her light girlish prattle had fallen into his ears with the effect that a shower produces on parched and withered sod, and it had had the charm of bird-songs after a long, dreary winter.
He remained at the cabin several days before the time came for going to General DeKay's, and it was in some way soothing and restful to have Milly shyly hovering around him. He did not fully realize how deeply he was absorbed in studying her face, her form, her free, wild grace of motion and attitude, and the strange, crude music of her voice. She followed him wherever he went, or at least whenever he would permit it, content to be near him, like some faithful animal. She had always acted thus, but he never had noticed it before.
When at last the time arrived for his departure for General DeKay's, Reynolds rose early in the morning to get ready for the little journey. The DeKay place was down on the Alabama river, near Montgomery, and the company from Birmingham would go by rail to the former city, where General DeKay would have carriages for them. The fact is that Reynolds had no physical preparations to make, these having all been attended to with shrewd faithfulness by White; but there was a sort of indefinable dread, or aversion, or some other objection hovering in his mind in connection with the thought of leaving his retirement, his hermitage, and floating out once more upon the open sea of life. In the early gray of morning he crept silently from the cabin and walked or rather climbed to the mountain top and sat down on a stone with his face to the east. He had spent a restless night, indulging, between snatches of unrefreshing sleep, regret, remorse, repentance and other nightmares of conscience. He had almost involuntarily sought this high perch overlooking all the country round, as if expecting to be purified by the soft rare atmosphere and the exhilarating wildness and freshness of the view. The east was all aglow with the wonder of sunrise, whilst the valley wherein Birmingham lay was shrouded in a mottled cloak of coal smoke from the furnaces. The foot-hills, clothed in their bristling pines and ragged scrub-oaks, were softened almost into tenderness by the blueish film hovering over them. A dewy coolness and sweetness came up on the morning wind as if out of the lowest stratum of the valley, in strong contrast with the absolute dryness of the stony mountain top. Slowly the fire of the sunrise increased in the filmy east until the great morning-gate seemed suddenly to fly open with a wide upward flare of flame and long, glowing spears of gold reaching out across the valley and billowy foot-hills. Reynolds was in a condition that demanded solitude, and yet he felt no definite purpose in the mood, no clear reason for desiring to be alone. It filled him with a sudden annoyance when a slight sound caused him to turn and see Milly standing close by, bare-headed and smiling radiantly. He frowned.
"What are you here for, Milly?" he demanded sternly. "Go back immediately."
The girl did not speak. The light went out of her face and a strange grayness overspread it instead. She turned about with a shrinking motion and walked slowly away down the steep slope of the mountain into the straggling wood. Almost immediately Reynolds felt how brutal his act had been and regretted it, hated himself for it. He arose as if to follow her, but faltered and hesitated, allowing his eyes to wander over the grand mountain landscape now flooded with the full light of the sun. What sort of change was this that was coming into his life? Something like a warning shadow had fallen into his soul, and yet some sweet foreboding was with it, some tender, subtle charm luring him with a deep and sweet fascination. He stood a while gazing dreamily, but seeing nothing, then, shaking himself as one freeing himself from slumber, he walked rapidly in the direction taken by Milly. Half way down the slope in a shadowy clump of dwarf pines he found the girl sitting on an old log, her face buried in her hands, sobbing bitterly. He stopped close to her and stood for a moment looking at her. How pitiful a picture she made, with her drooping little form, almost covered by the thin gold veil of bright disheveled hair, outlined against a tangle of broken boughs! He sat down beside her and took one of her wet little hands in his.
General DeKay's house was on a slight knoll overlooking in one direction the Alabama river, and a broad stretch of fertile cotton lands, whilst every other view was lost in the dense shadows of semi-tropical woods. The building was wholly wanting in architectural beauty, yet it was picturesque enough, with its wide verandas and tall, heavy, stuccoed columns, its many-gabled roof and huge stack of chimneys. Tall magnolia trees grew about it, vines clambered over it, and its small-paned, many-mullioned windows and open halls, gave it an air of old-fashioned conservatism and hospitality quite in a line with what one has always read and heard of southern country life among the wealthy planters of the Gulf States. Spaciousness was the most marked feature of the building. The rooms were many and large, arranged for the comforts of unlimited light and air. When the windows and doors were all thrown open, a breeze blowing from any quarter flowed through the house with unchecked freedom. The floors were of ash, mostly uncarpeted, and the walls and ceilings were heavily paneled with oak. Wide winding stairways and huge fire-places, cumbrous chandeliers and sconces, together with what appeared an over-crowded amount of massive old-time furniture, suggested a formal stateliness rather out of keeping with that freedom of welcome which was and is the distinctive charm of southern hospitality. The mansion had been built and furnished long before the war, in the most prosperous and extravagant days of slavery, when the planter knew no limit to his ability to make and spend and when he set no bound to the number of his guests or the length of their stay under his roof. The dark gray stucco and weather-beaten shingles, together with the old-time arrangement of the doors and windows, gave to the building a very ancient look, as if it might have stood there since a time when men lived as did the old fighting and feasting barons of medieval England. Bucks' antlers hung in the hall, along with heavy rifles and fowling pieces, and a few striking ancestral portraits looked down from the dark walls. It had known much revelry of a thoroughly proper sort, this grand old home of the DeKays, and its inmates, for several generations, had exerted a marked influence in the social and political affairs of the state. The present owner had been a fighting general in the confederate army and had won by heroic bravery the right to his distinguished military title.
When the party from Birmingham reached this charming old house by the river, it was late in the afternoon. Several other guests had already arrived from Montgomery, Pensacola and Mobile. A corps of obsequious and clever negro servants, of both sexes and various ages, were ready to attend all comers. The host, a slender man of middle height, wearing a gray military beard, greeted every body with low bows and profuse words of welcome, whilst his rather stout and altogether good and motherly wife had a way that was welcome itself.
Reynolds and Moreton were given rooms adjoining and connected by a door, their windows looking down a long shining reach of the reed-bordered river. An ideal place to sit and smoke, Moreton thought, as he lighted a cigarette and drew a chair so that he could watch the silvery winged kite sailing about in the distance, its forked tail and small head giving it the effect of a fanciful Japanese design wavering on the background of blue-gray sky. A flock of domestic geese were on the river, floating idly, now and then lifting their wings and flapping them rapidly and screaming in clamorous concert. Wide fields, gently rolling, and distinctly showing the ridged and parallel rows of cotton and corn stalks, swept away almost to the horizon, bounded on one hand by the river, and on the other by a thick wood, where even the deciduous trees still retained a trace of summer greenery. Something in the air suggested the sea, and a sensation, as of extreme remoteness and isolation, took possession of Moreton's mind. It was his first experience of life on a low-country plantation. The idyllic simplicity, quietude and serenity impressed him as much as did the stateliness and amplitude. Here was an estate of thousands of acres—many miles in extent—bearing on its surface all the marks of almost primitive modes of husbandry. Worm fences, shallow plowing, the use of hoe and wooden rake; gates with pins and sockets instead of latches, clap-boards instead of shingles and plank, and so on throughout the gamut of bucolic appurtenances long since discarded in thrifty and progressive regions. But beyond all this, there was that indescribable air of isolation from the rest of the world, as if the plantation were an independent self-sufficient hereditament of the DeKays, owing no allegiance to any power outside its boundary lines. No other house, save the small cabins of negro tenants scattered here and there, was visible. The estate was too large to admit of neighbors.
When Moreton and Reynolds went down to the drawing-room they found themselves in the midst of a company composed largely of gentlemen, there being but four ladies besides the hostess. Miss Noble was surrounded by a group of young sportsmen freely discussing hunting and shooting topics, her bright, strong face and Juno form showing at their best. A tall young woman, a Miss Beresford from Montgomery, whose father had been governor of the state—and whose brother, Mr. Mallory Beresford, a noted shot, was present—stood near a window in conversation with Mr. Noble and General DeKay. But the most striking group in the room was composed of Mr. Mallory Beresford and two ladies, one a quick-spoken, alert, rather faded looking blonde, whose lips could not cover her irregular teeth, the other a pale, sweet-faced, almost slight young person, whose bearing, though decidedly womanly and dignified, had a girlish charm wholly indescribable. The blonde was speaking in a rapid manner, and her words, sharply accentuated, reached the ears of Reynolds:
"Oh, I am really not a guest," she was saying, "I invited myself. I came to gather material for a letter to our paper. I begged the privilege of General DeKay. A description of a shooting-party on a genuine old Southern plantation is a rare find for a correspondent. I feel that I am in grand luck." Her gestures amounted to gesticulations.
"Ah, Miss Crabb, what journal do you represent?" inquired Mr. Beresford in a voice modulated to the gentlest southern inflections.
"The RingvilleStar, of Ringville, Indiana. I am the associate editor," she glibly responded.
Reynolds heard this much with his eyes fixed on the face of the other woman whose smile had that rare quality of sweetness suggesting sadness, and whose large, soft blue eyes beamed with a tenderness and truthfulness that seemed in some way touched with well repressed trouble. There are faces whose expression will at first sight suggest some secret story of grief or wrong or regret. Sometimes a high order of beauty will, of itself, carry with it, as the flower carries its perfume, a haunting reminder, or half-reminder, of the subtle ways of fate. Reynolds was aware that General DeKay was coming across the room to meet him, but he could not tear his gaze from the young woman's lovely face.
"I haven't presented you to my niece," said the General, taking the young man's arm. "She is really my daughter now, for I have made her my heir. Haven't much left for her to inherit, however, save a good old name."
For a moment Reynolds' hand closed over the warm, dainty fingers extended towards him, and he bowed low before Mrs. Ransom—Agnes Ransom, a name that was soon to become one of thrilling sweetness to him.
"Oh, it's very pleasant, in many ways, to belong to the press," Miss Crabb was saying. "One can go every where and see every thing. The railroads give us free passes and the hotels put our rates to the lowest. For instance, how could I ever have found my way into this delightful house and this charming company, if I hadn't carried the magic of the press with me?" She ended with a rather musical laugh. Her question was one that Beresford dared not attempt to answer, for, in fact, he knew of no other way by which she could have gained an entrance to this secluded and exclusive place. It chanced that he knew how the editor of a Montgomery paper had interested himself in Miss Crabb's behalf and begged General DeKay to extend her the privilege of "writing up" the shoot.
"She seems to be an excellent young woman, and then her paper is hopelessly obscure. You needn't fear you will ever hear of it again, unless she sends you a copy," the editor urged, "and I feel a sort of fraternal responsibility for her freedom of the country while she's here. We can't be too tender in our treatment of Northern editors. Whatever we do offensive to the least one of them will be trumpeted to the four winds by them all."
Beresford very much desired to talk with Mrs. Ransom, but the glib representative of theStarwent on so rapidly that he could find no chance for withdrawing his attention. Then when Reynolds appeared on the scene all hope faded out.
"You are a fine shot, Mr. Beresford, I presume," continued Miss Crabb, "kill birds on the wing?"
"I believe I am a fair shot," he answered, with a true sportsman's faith in the impressiveness of modesty. "I shoot well enough to enjoy the sport."
"I saw Captain Bogardus and Dr. Carver shoot together once," she said, "and it was just lovely. They hit most every time—little glass balls thrown out of a trap. It was extraordinary."
Reynolds and Mrs. Ransom had moved away. It was a great relief to Beresford when dinner was announced. At any other time he might have been able to bear, and even enjoy Miss Crabb's rapid and versatile conversation, but now that Agnes Ransom was seemingly absorbed in listening to this dark, handsome stranger, he could not keep his wits about him. Miss Crabb had to do all the talking, a thing she did not seem to regard as a hardship.
"There is a veritable ruin near here, I am told," she said, "a picturesque old heap, the remains of a grand mansion, on a bluff by the river. I should very much like to go and see it before I return to Montgomery. Do you know any thing about it?"
"No, I regret that I have not the pleasure. I believe I have never heard of it," he answered. "General DeKay should be able to inform you." And so he conducted her to the host and hastened to another part of the room, conscious of having been guilty of a petty turn.
Moreton had joined the group of which Miss Noble was the light, whilst Reynolds and Mrs. Ransom had found their way to Miss Beresford, whose ultra Southern face and figure were supplemented by conversational graces strikingly suggestive of a social era almost forgotten, save among the most conservative people of the low country. She was tall and dark, with regular features, large, rather expressionless black eyes and straight black hair. Mrs. Ransom introduced Reynolds, and then dinner was announced.
"This is a gentlemen's party," Miss Beresford said, on the way to the dining-room, "and it has been arranged that the ladies shall act as waiters, and we beg you not to criticise our methods too severely—we are not perfectly trained to the work."
"One who has been for several years living in the family of a mountaineer, as I have, should not be in a criticising mood," responded Reynolds; "how shall such an one presume to judge whether or no you balance a tray artistically?"
He spoke lightly, but the word mountaineer, as he uttered it, called up with electrical swiftness, a thought that sent a strange thrill through him. A low, pathetically plaintive voice seemed to speak to him in the mountain dialect. He saw a little coarsely-clad form leaning on the gate at White's, with the pale starlight glimmering on its upturned face.
As Miss Beresford had said it was to be, the dinner was served by the ladies, who passed behind the chairs of the gentlemen, flitting nimbly back and forth, receiving the viands from the hands of negro servants at the door of an ante-room, and presenting them to the guests. It was a study worthy of an artist's handling, that ample dining-room, with its curiously carved panels of oak, its antique mahogany side-board, its ponderous brass chandeliers and its high-backed chairs. Even Miss Crabb, as she actively busied herself with the part of the duties that fell to her share, showed to picturesquely good effect amidst such foils to her vivacious face and restless energy.
She was, by temperament and education, a person not likely to slight any opportunity of furthering her own plans, no matter how great the breach of small proprieties involved in the act. Even as she brightly and smartly hurried hither and thither around the table, she was thinking of how her experiences and observations here at the DeKay mansion would look in the pages of a certain magazine, if only she could get it accepted, with a number of picturesque, ultra Southern illustrations, and with her name appended in full: Sara Annah Crabb. She imagined the stir such an event would cause in Ringville, where as yet her genius was not especially admired. She nursed a dream of sudden fame quite masculine and muscular, so to speak, which would enable her to get even with the male editors who had so often made sport of her prose and verse and even of her name. She was a good girl, honest, conscientious and full of kindness, but she had had a very hard struggle with life, and she was mightily ambitious. The adroitness with which she now and then slipped from her pocket a little note-book and pencil and the rapidity with which she jotted down certain memoranda of what she saw or heard prevented much notice being given to the incivility by either host or guests. Indeed she had a quiet, semi-furtive celerity that, coupled with what may be called an insignificance of manner, neutralized any vulgarity which otherwise would have been observable to an offensive degree. Then, too, she talked so rapidly and volubly that if one looked at her at all one must have been wholly occupied with what her lips were doing. It was a wonder how she could impress one as being a very quiet person and yet be skipping about and talking like that.
She was a revelation to Moreton. She gave him a glimpse of American intellectual life in the crude state exemplified from a feminine standpoint. He had heard of and read of the strong-minded women of the western continent, but here was the first instance that had come within his view. Strange to say, he rather liked her. Her freedom was racy of the West, the breezy, broad, grassy, fertile West, where, as he imagined, the buffaloes ventured into the outskirts of the cities and where the men took their guns with them to church. Perhaps he did not imagine this, after all, but the spirit of it was in his thoughts. She seemed to him a fair exponent of society molded by such surrounding. He felt with æsthetic nicety how, turning from Miss Crabb's harmless inquisitiveness, chic and crude vim, the lines of feminine force and beauty, by comparison, were graded through a thousand changes to reach such perfection as he perceived in Miss Noble. He even found himself chivalrously attacking providence for showing such a difference in bestowing gifts upon the two girls. Why should Miss Crabb be so tall and angular and sallow, so lacking in the lines of grace, so sharp-voiced and ugly? Why could she not have been rich, at least? Poor girl! she must carry so much while Miss Noble had beauty, health, grace, riches.
The windows were open, allowing a gentle ripple of air through the room, charged with a woodsy freshness and that grateful balm always present on warm winter evenings in the south. Once when Mrs. Ransom leaned over Reynolds' shoulder in performing some needed service, the loose end of a simple ribbon at her throat was blown lightly against his cheek and he caught the merest waft of violet perfume from the flowers on her breast. It was a slight thing, but it was to him the sweetest part of the dinner.
It was a slight thing, but it was to him the sweetest part of the dinner. Page 88.It was a slight thing, but it was to him the sweetestpart of the dinner.Page 88.
Women appear to be little aware, as a rule, of the powerful influence they may wield over men by their sweet negative qualities as well as by their sweet positive ones. For instance, the absence of a high harsh voice is next in value to the presence of a gentle and low one. A quiet, modest shyness of manner may be apparent from the total absence of any angular self-assertion rather than from the actual existence of the manner itself. Hence it is that most women who fancy themselves strikingly attractive to men, are really quite the reverse, whilst it is often the case that the shy, sensitive woman who shrinks from self-display, wins admiration from the other sex without possessing any positive qualities especially charming. With the approach of Mrs. Ransom, a half-formed sense of satisfaction and subtle delight crept into Reynolds' bosom, as if with the fragrance of the flowers she wore he breathed in a rarer and more precious element exhaled by her own flower-like nature. It is good for a man to be able to keep undulled his susceptibleness to such delicate influences, for thereby his nature enriches and sweetens itself. The crucial test of virility of the highest order is that of its sensitiveness to the finest and purest demands of woman's nature. The man's soul has lost its morning freshness whose nerves do not tingle response to the least touch of the most ethereal breath of feminine sweetness, sincerity and beauty, and he is a brute who pauses to trace his susceptibility to some gross origin.
"It is quite charming to dine under such ministration," said Reynolds, while receiving some delicate dish from the steady little hand, "but I should——"
"No," she interrupted with a grave, sweet smile, "do not say the rest. We think it quite fitting. My uncle at first refused to have any ladies included in the party; but I insisted on having one or two of my dearest friends, and it is agreed that we are not to be considered as forming any part of the company."
She passed on, without giving him any chance for further words. Beresford, who sat opposite, begrudged every syllable she had uttered.
All around the table the conversation was of field sports, adventures with dog and gun and prospects for the morrow's shooting. General DeKay and Mr. Noble, as veterans, led the discussions, the banker giving fluent and graphic accounts of his experiences in the Maine and Michigan woods, the General responding with racy bits of adventure in the game regions of Louisiana and Florida. Men who like field sports are, as a rule, earnest, healthy, vivacious fellows, fond of good cheer, with a decided leaning towards making the best of every thing. Such company as that around the board at the DeKay mansion, was, therefore, one to enjoy to the full the superb feast and all its attendant freedom from formality. The ladies retired when the cigars came in, leaving General DeKay and Mr. Noble to test some old brandy, while the younger men sipped a milder beverage, under the white wreaths of Cuban tobacco smoke. Two or three negro men-servants had quickly cleared the table, and now moved noiselessly about, or stood like white-aproned ebon statues, gazing thirstily upon the sparkling glasses.
Meanwhile the ladies were having their own pleasant dinner in the breakfast room, Miss Crabb entertaining them with a vivid account of some of her experiences as a correspondent and editor. Her sketches had a breadth and freedom, all the more fascinating to the Southern part of her audience, on account of the impressions they gave of a field of woman's labor unknown in the dreamy land of cotton and sugarcane, magnolias and mocking-birds. Miss Crabb was very earnest and sincere, deeply impressed with the importance and influence of her profession, and her straight forward manner of talking, along with a perfectly evident good-heartedness, won a peculiarly qualified admiration and respect from the majority of her listeners. Her effect with Miss Noble was quite different. The shrewd, wide-awake Northern girl knew very well how purely a matter of business Miss Crabb was making of the whole affair, and how like a dissecting-knife her pen would be. She sympathized with the young journalist, however, and silently hoped that she might make a success of her bold effort to penetrate to the inner heart of this old, exclusive Southern social circle, the picturesque charm of which seemed to hover like an atmosphere in the quaint, dingy, airy room.
All the doors and windows were open and the night breathed through the house, bearing the pungency of the men's tobacco in faint traces to the breakfast room, and presently the sound of a banjo along with the mellow, barbaric voice of a negro singer, filled the place. There was almost uproarious applause from many manly mouths. Uncle Mono was ending up the feast with his favorite song:
"De raccoon am a cunnin' ting,He rammel in de dahk,Wid nuffin' 'tall fo' to 'stu'b he mind,Tell he yer my 'coon-dog bahk!"
He was a jolly-faced, jet black old fellow, with a great shock of grizzly wool on his head, a comically flexible mouth, and dusky eyes that danced to the rapid time of his music.
It was the merest chance that suggested Uncle Mono and his banjo, but if it had been pre-arranged, as in a play, that his two or three humorous songs and his one pathetic love-ditty should close the evening's festivities, it would have been in accord with the highest art. The almost rude yet wholly fascinating carvings on the time-stained panels of the dining-room, seemed to especially favor the effect of such lyrical savageness and grotesquerie.
The impression upon Moreton's mind was strange, almost weird. When all was over and he was alone in his room, he leaned back in a chair, with his feet thrust out of the open window, and gazed into the soft sky with a haunting sense of how suddenly and far he had been removed from the glare and show and polite tumult of his own world. It was all very fascinating, this isolation and decay, these soft-tongued women, these knightly, half-grave, half-hilarious men, this strain of music from Dahomey.
"A westerly wind and a cloudy sky,Proclaim it a hunting morning,"
Sang some one of the merry sportsmen, as the dogs were loosed in a gently rolling field, where, on one hand, the stiff, straggling rows of dry cotton stalks ran down to the river bank, and on the other a dreary fallow plat, overgrown with yellow sedge and clumps of bushes, spread away to a dense wood. There was, in fact, a gentle breeze from the west, and a thin veil of fleece clouds covered the sky. The morning appeared propitious, every one was in high spirits.
The ladies, in an ample spring wagon, had been driven to an elevated point whence they could have a sweeping view of the grounds to be shot over. A field glass or two had been furnished them, so that distance need not trouble their observations.
The men, in a long line and distant from each other not less than twenty yards, walked slowly with the dogs running to and fro ahead of them.
The morning was balmy and warm, but not hot, with just a hint of dampness in the air. Along the river a low-hanging line of gray fog was slowly fading away.
The ladies alighted from the wagon, with the help of the colored driver, and disposed themselves in picturesque attitudes, their broad hats thrown back and the wind fluttering their ribbons. Miss Noble and Miss Crabb were the most interested, the latter making swift notes in a little red book.
Reynolds had quite forgotten his promise to Miss Noble about teaching her how to shoot. He had, in fact, forgotten her as well. Moreton was on one side of him, Beresford on the other. He felt the responsibility of having to shoot between too such marksmen; but he was also keenly alive to the opportunity it would give him for a display of his finest abilities as a sportsman. He had resolved to lead the field if possible and he could scarcely have told why. Mrs. Ransom had said something just before starting about Beresford being considered the best shot present. This may have served as a stimulus. She had not meant to be overheard by any gentleman of the party, her words being for Miss Crabb's ear; but Reynolds did hear. Her voice had a way of getting to him, as if it sought him of its own account. It was a very sweet and musical voice, suggesting a reserve of strength and depth, with just a suspicion in it of that vague sadness which lurked in her face.
Some hampers containing luncheon had been deposited under a tree by a little spring near where the ladies were posted, and here, at the sound of a horn blown by the negro attendant, all were to come at high noon.
The shooting began early, the first birds being pointed by one of General DeKay's dogs. It was a fine strong bevy, flushed in a weedy swale. Mr. Noble and the General both fired right and left, getting but one bird each. The dogs dropped to shot and the game, well scattered, was marked down in some low sedge two hundred yards further on. Two of the dogs were now sent to retrieve the dead birds, which was scarcely done when another covey was flushed by some of the party, the birds taking almost the same flight as the first. This was enough to warm the blood in any sportsman's veins. The dogs fairly trembled with eagerness. The line was lengthened, the shooters getting further apart so as to cover a wide territory. Beresford's pointer was first to stand, Reynolds' setter, a noble dog, promptly backing, and two birds were flushed. It was a fine chance for a double shot, but Beresford missed with his first barrel and killed with his second. Reynolds cut down the missed bird with his right and killed another that flushed in front of him with his left. The shooting was now begun in earnest, Beresford making a very difficult double a few steps farther on, whilst Moreton distinguished himself by three straight misses. General DeKay and Mr. Noble were apparently the most excited men in the field. The banker was too ready, shooting as soon as his bird showed above cover, and the General was rather slow, poking his gun after his game until it had flown out of certain range.
As fresh bevies were flushed and the birds scattered themselves over a wide area, the sportsmen became separated, or hunted in twos and threes.
Miss Noble and Miss Crabb watched this eager skirmish line through their glasses, keeping up, meantime, a running discussion of the incidents as they occurred, with true feminine lapses, now and then, into criticism of whatever chanced to offend their notions of how a shoot should be conducted.
"I hope Mr. Reynolds will get outrageously beaten," exclaimed Miss Noble, "I really do."
"Why?" asked the editor.
"Because I do," was the response so perfectly intelligible and satisfactory to all women.
"Oh," said Miss Crabb, "you have a grudge, have you?"
"He promised me he would teach me how to shoot," Cordelia laughingly responded, "and, like all men, he has not kept his word."
"There! did you see that?" cried Miss Crabb still intently surveying the distant shooters.
"No, what was it?"
"Mr. Reynolds killed a bird that Mr. Beresford had missed and then turned and killed one that the English gentleman—what's his name?—had failed on! It was lovely—I like that!"
"Mr. Moreton appears not to be having good luck," said Cordelia, "but I fancy he's quite as good a shot as any of them. My father says that any one will have unlucky days, no matter how good a shot he may be."
"Mr. Reynolds hasn't missed yet, so far as I have observed," said Miss Crabb. "There went down two more birds before his gun. I think he has the best dog of any of them: it seems to know just what he wants."
"How is my brother succeeding?" inquired Miss Beresford from her seat on a wagon-cushion which she had laid on the ground and covered with a gay shawl.
"Very finely, indeed," was Miss Crabb's ready response. "The honors seem to lie between him and Mr. Reynolds. They easily lead the rest."
"My brother never has been beaten, I believe," Miss Beresford went on. "He is said to be the best shot in the state."
"Begging your pardon," Miss Crabb responded, "it really looks as if Mr. Reynolds would beat; he hasn't missed a shot yet, and I don't think he's going to."
Miss Beresford smiled rather incredulously, as if her faith in her brother's superiority could not so easily be shaken.
"But they are all getting so far away that I can not be sure any longer," continued the observant editor in an apologizing tone.
Mrs. Ransom was seated some distance apart from the rest, busying herself with pinning a wreath of bay leaves from material gathered off some small trees by the spring.
The firing, scattered far and wide, came to the ears of these listeners, softened down to a mere desultory booming, with now and then the quick repetition that told of a double shot. Even Miss Crabb ceased her efforts to follow the course of the merry sportsmen. She fell to work at her note-book as if venting a bitter spite upon it and for a time her tongue rested from its almost incessant labors.
Cordelia went to where Mrs. Ransom was busy with the bay leaves and sat down on the dry ground beside her.
"A victor's crown," she said gayly. "So you are going to reward the winner?"
"Oh no, I have been playing little girl. When I was a child I used to make wreaths like this, only I have lost the ready knack I had then."
"It's such a delightful thing to be a little girl," said Cordelia, impulsively laying her hand on Mrs. Ransom's arm and fixing her frank eyes upon her face. "I wish I could have always staid about thirteen—that's the golden age, I think, don't you?"
"I was a very happy little girl," replied Mrs. Ransom. The evasiveness in her voice and the far away look that came for a moment into her large blue eyes, were not observed by Cordelia, who, with a buoyant, retrospective ring in her voice, exclaimed—
"Oh, so was I, ever so happy. There never was any one who had so delightful a time. It was so easy to be happy then."
"You don't look very sad, even now," said Mrs. Ransom, wholly recovering her sweet, half-sad smile.
Cordelia laughed merrily.
"One can't always tell what a world of trouble a face like mine may mask," she replied in her lightest way, but it gave her a real pang the next moment, recollecting Mrs. Ransom's bitter experience. She picked up the wreath, which was now finished, and put it on her head. It gave to her plump, joyous face an air so free, fresh and almost rustic, that one might have mistaken her for a Western farmer's daughter. Mrs. Ransom looked at her for a moment, and then on a sudden impulse, put a hand on either glowing cheek, and drawing her forward, kissed her again and again.
"I hope your dear, sweet face will never be more of a mask than it is now," she said. "You blush as if my kiss had been——"
"Had been sour!" interrupted Cordelia with a ringing laugh.
Meantime the men were having what is called glorious sport. The dogs, now thoroughly warmed with their work, were behaving their best. It was a pleasing thing to see them consciously competing with each other, carefully beating back and forth in front of their masters, allowing no spot of ground to go unexamined, promptly standing or backing or dropping to shot, eagerly watching each other's movements and taking quick advantage of every favoring accident of ground-surface or of cover. Each dog took evident delight in seeing a bird, flushed from his point, killed by his master. A missed quail brought as much chagrin to dog as to sportsman.
Some of the party, in following the flight of the bevies, reached a country cut up by shallow ravines and gulches leading down to the river and filled with a dense tangle of small trees and matted vines. Here the shooting was quite difficult and exciting, and both sportsmen and dogs were taxed to the utmost of their skill; for it was impossible to know where a bird would flush or what direction its flight would take. Mr. Noble was peculiarly suited to this sort of thing. He was in his element where the cover was thickest and the swiftest action required. He displayed his nimbleness and readiness to good effect snap-shooting, as the birds whirred out of the dense cover to turn into it again, showing themselves for the merest point of time. He and Reynolds chanced to get together towards noon in a place where to kill a bird required almost electrical quickness. Reynolds rarely refused a shot and always killed. His movements did not appear surprisingly swift, but the gun always got to his shoulder in time. He did not snap-shoot, as the word goes: his aim was obtained with the promptness, celerity and certainty of a mechanical effect. Only four times during the sport did he fail to bring down his game, and every bird of fifty shot at was hit. But as a true sportsman, he was ready to yield the palm to the highest achievement, and while he felt a secret satisfaction in knowing that he had beaten Beresford, he took even keener pleasure in the victory of his dog. The noble animal had performed a feat in the presence of Beresford, Mr. Noble, Moreton and General DeKay, that proved him a king of dogs.