"It is such sweet weather. Do you hear my mocking birds?" she inquired, trying to smile. "They have been having a stormy concert."
"Yes, they have had a real war of song all the morning," he answered.
A long space of silence ensued, during which they heard Uncle Mono chanting an African ditty to a lagging, melancholy tune, while he worked in his patch some distance away. Presently Reynolds almost abruptly said:
"You have been ill, your aunt says. I am so glad you are with me again. I have been lonely and—and sad. I was afraid you were worse than your aunt would acknowledge."
"It is all over now," she replied with a short, repressed sigh. "Do you feel strong enough to walk out? The morning is very inviting."
"It is a happy thought," he almost cheerily responded, rising and taking up his hat; "let us go out at once. I am tired of being indoors, despite the good nursing I have had."
They passed into the broad hall, where she took from a table her hat, on which the twisted sprig of mistletoe still remained, just as he had fixed it on the day of the shoot, and thence they went forth among the magnolia trees on the front lawn.
"One can never quite lose sight of the river here," said Reynolds; "see how it shines under the boughs yonder. Isn't it fine?"
"Have you noticed that the gentle roar it had some weeks ago is almost silenced?" she asked.
"I had not, but I do now," he answered; "what is the cause?"
"It has fallen so low that its current is too sluggish, I suppose; but Uncle Mono and the rest of the negroes have a pretty saying that the river sings till the mocking birds begin, and then it becomes silent in order to listen to their voices."
"That is a poetical idea."
"They have a more grotesque one about the moon crossing the river."
"What is that?"
"They claim that if one takes a skiff and goes to the middle of the river, exactly at midnight when the moon is full, one may see the moon in the water making all sorts of wry faces at the moon in the sky."
"I have observed that myself," said Reynolds, very gravely.
"The moon making faces?" she exclaimed with a little smile, looking inquiringly up into his face.
"Yes, the skiff or the wind breaks the surface of the water into ripples which cause the reflection of the moon to appear to do all manner of fantastic things."
"Oh, I understand it now. I had never thought of that."
"But," she added, after a moment of silence, "it would be cruel to explain away Uncle Mono's fanciful legend or myth of the Alabama and the moon. Don't you think so?"
"The old scamp is not so ignorant," said Reynolds. "It would not be so easy as you might imagine to destroy his stories. He would have plenty of expedients for evading the demonstrations of natural philosophy."
"I should hope he would," she said, "for there is something fascinating in all his grotesqueries. They seem to have a smack of genuine African wildness of poetry in them."
They sat down on a low wooden bench, mossy with age and exposure to the weather, under a grand magnolia tree. Here they were in the full tide of the breeze with all the freshness and fragrance of the morning around them. The dingy old house, so large and plain and yet so picturesquely Southern, was just sufficiently removed to be nearly lost in its vines and trees. Reynolds felt some sort of dread lest their conversation should fall away from the lightness with which it had begun—a dread almost betrayed when he said:
"Can't you think of another negro conceit? I am sorry I spoiled the one about the moon."
"They have a story of the owl and the magnolia bloom," she answered, after a pause. "They say that the big laughing owl comes, in his wisdom, every spring, when the buds of the magnolias are just on the point of opening, and says to the tree: 'Hold fast, hold fast; if you speak now you'll lose your influence for a whole year,' but the tree does not heed the wise counsel. It opens its lips (the petals of its flowers) and spills its perfume. Then the owl laughs dismally and the tree has no more perfume for a year."
"That doesn't sound much like a thought of savage origin. It has a weak touch of civilization in it somewhere."
"Oh, the negroes have gathered liberally from us, no doubt," she said, reflectively stirring some dry leaves with the toe of her tiny boot.
It vexed him that this action reminded him of Milly White. He rubbed his forehead to try to dissipate the thought. Perhaps there was, scarcely known to himself, a deeper reason for his irritation in the consciousness that they both were beating against the wind to reach some common ground from which they might banish forever any allusion to what they felt must always remain a dreary memory. After a long silence, Mrs. Ransom, with the outright courage of her womanly sense of what was for the best, did not hesitate to approach the point.
"This thing, that you told me of the other day, must be our secret. The world has no right to it. I have considered it from every point of view possible to me, and I can see no other safe or proper course. Am I right?"
Reynolds was startled by the steadiness and firmness of her voice and manner, but he clutched eagerly at the comfort of her suggestion, so like an echo of his own thought.
"I am glad to hear you say that," he replied. "I was on the point of saying it myself. Let us bury the subject forever. It is one of the inscrutable turns of fate over which we never had control. It is in the past. Let it stay there."
"I thought at first that I could not bear it, but it came to me, after the first shock, that you are the one most burdened and that I ought to help you," she responded, with an infinite tenderness in her voice. "I know you were not to blame."
"God knows how true that is, and how I love you," said he, in a husky accent, his cheeks pale with intense feeling, his eyes burning strangely.
Her face was turned somewhat from him, and as he looked at its fine profile and gentle grace of expression, he upbraided fate with unutterable rebuke because he had not been allowed to see and know her before any ill had befallen her. How little he understood the value that trouble and sorrow had added to her charms. He thought of nothing but the pathetic aspect of her experiences and the effect of her past and his upon the present and the future. He chafed under the conviction that this secret which they now held between them would never fall back among those cast aside things that form the rubbish of the past, but would stay close to them ready to come into view at any unguarded moment. In fact, would they not have to keep always this common burden well in view in order not to allow the cover to fall from it?
"Does your shoulder pain you?" she asked; but she knew that it was an older and more dangerous hurt that caused the pallor in his cheeks.
"No, it is coming along finely," he answered, with an effort at cheerfulness. "I shall be going away in a few days."
"Not so very few; you are not strong yet."
"Oh, yes, I am beginning to feel quite like myself, and my wound is almost healed."
"I shall miss you when you are gone," she said, with a little smile. "You have been my patient so long."
"Do you imagine that I can stay away? Don't you know that I will be back surprisingly soon? How can I live where you are not, Agnes?"
Just a hint of color suffused her cheeks. She dropped her eyes in a charming way, with that girlish air disclosing itself in her outlines, and yet some indefinable expression of great trouble remained.
"You will find the mountains delightful at this time of the year," she said. "The spring is very forward. The wild-flowers will be out and the mountain-slopes will be growing green."
"But there is nothing left for me up there. Moreton is gone, the Nobles are gone: it will be very lonely."
"Then why go at all? Stay with us as long as you can," she said, with all the old naïveté in her voice. "The bass-fishing is beginning, uncle says, and you and he can enjoy it together. The spring fishing is very fine here."
"That will insure my return," he said, with the first laugh. "But I shall have to go up to Birmingham and look after some affairs. They are running a coal-switch into some of my lands, and I must see to leasing some of the best veins."
"Such lands must be quite valuable. Have you a large amount?" she asked, but she could not have told why.
"I have a great many acres, but the extent of the coal deposits remains to be ascertained. I have been offered a large sum for the estate, however."
"I can't visit Birmingham any more, now that Cordelia is gone. I wish she could have staid. She is a charming friend," she said, with that inconsequence which is so apparent in written conversation, but which runs unnoticed through the oral intercourse of even the best talkers.
"A few days—a week, at furthest—will set all my things to rights," he continued. "And then, if I may, I will come back to—to try the bass with General DeKay."
It is by such bridges of straw that many a gulf is spanned; but who can successfully laugh at the structure, no matter how fragile, if it is able to serve the purpose for which it is built? Happy is he who can at will bind together or hold apart the incidents of life with the almost imperceptible gossamer threads of tact.
At the end of an hour they had managed to forget themselves somewhat, and it was with a feeling closely akin to annoyance that Mrs. Ransom read on a card brought to her by a servant—"MALLORY BERESFORD."
"Mr. Beresford has come," she said, a decided flush coming into her cheeks, "and wishes to see me. I shall have to go, I suppose. Will you return to the house now?"
"No, I will get some more air. You will come back, won't you, when he is gone?"
"Yes; that is, if he doesn't stay too long," answered she with a bright smile.
Reynolds let his eyes follow her lithe and supple form as she walked briskly toward the house. She was carrying her hat in her hand and there was a bit of bright ribbon fluttering back over one shoulder and down her back, under her dark coil of hair. Touches of the Southern, the warm, the dusky, the dreamy, filled in the spaces of the picture beyond and around and over her. The light brush of her feet, in the crisp, fallen leaves and tufts of grass, came back to him, and along with it a thrill sweeter and more mournful than any chord of the Æolian harp. He shook himself, drew his hand across his face, arose and strolled idly about under the trees.
"It is worth a great effort," he was thinking, "and I shall succeed. Life gives up its measure of happiness at last to the brave and earnest. The past shall not mold my future and hers. I will take her and go abroad. She shall forget, among the beauties and interesting changes of travel, all this foolish panorama that our imaginations have made out of the coincidents and calamities for which neither of us is to blame. Oh, we shall be happy yet!" He held his head high and his eyes flashed with mingled hope and defiance.
When he thought of Milly White he added: "I shall not forget to repay her for all her faithfulness and childish affection."
Faithfulness and childish affection! Faithfulness and childish affection! the echo went ringing away into the remotest nooks of his consciousness. For a time he struggled hard and finally he hurled memory aside to give himself wholly up to forming plans for the future. But no one is vigilant enough to keep unwelcome guests long out of the chamber of his brain. They flit in so swiftly at any chance opening. How giant strong and yet how furtive and silent they are!
Reynolds lingered in the pleasant shadows of the magnolia trees, now slowly walking to and fro, now resting on some one of the old lichen-grown seats, his thoughts oscillating between the past and the future. He was aware, but not vividly, of how aimless and cowardly his life until now had been, and he was not quite sure that, no matter how strong might be his present purpose, the cowardice did not still linger with him. One thing he did realize perfectly: that he had not told the whole truth to Agnes Ransom. He might have avoided killing her husband had he been prompted by the highest moral motives. If before the act he had been as willing to fly from San Antonio and go bury himself in the lonely depths of Sand Mountain as he was after the blood was on his hands, he could to-day look up into the bright sweet sky and feel no load on his heart. But then, Heaven forgive the thought, Agnes could not have been his! It was with a dull, almost stolid sense of the gloom and hopelessness of his situation that he at the same time pondered the possibilities of the future. Throughout his consciousness, too, independent of the past or the future, the present fact of Agnes Ransom's love for him diffused itself with constantly increasing power, warmer, more vitalizing, more glorifying than sunshine and spring-tide and virile health combined. He knew and he did not know that he was trying to deceive himself and the woman he loved. He was aware and he was not aware that all his reasoning regarding the future was sophistry and that the things of the past were not dead. He smiled there under the dusky trees as if he were a guileless youth in the sweet wonder of his first love. He held his head high. Had he not flung all weights of memory behind him and set his eyes on a fair and calm future? Yes, he was going to be happy. He was already happy. He would take Agnes far away, beyond the sea, where no hint of the past could ever come. At length he caught a distant glimpse of Beresford going away, and then a little thrill of pity stole into his bosom. The man looked lonely, even at that distance, and moved as if bearing a burden of trouble, or so at least Reynolds' imagination colored the apparition.
Mrs. Ransom did not come forth immediately. She had borne the interview with firmness, and had tried to soften with such art as she could command the wound she was forced to inflict. Beresford was a gentleman as well as a man, and whilst he had urged his plea with all the passion of a strong nature, he had taken his final dismissal with the dignity of a courageous, if not lofty soul.
When he was gone, the reaction upon Mrs. Ransom's sensitive and already sorely taxed nerves was more than she had expected, and she went to her room and cried. It seemed so bitter a thing to do to one so earnest and honorable and gentle.
Reynolds saw the traces of tears on her face, when at last she did come out to look for him, but he avoided saying anything to call up an explanation. She told him the story, however, in her straightforward, simple way, acknowledging her regret and her tears, and ending with some outright praise of Beresford's worthiness.
"I am sorry he came," said Reynolds. "I felt for him when I saw him going away; but what else could you do?"
"Did he look sad?" she inquired with perfect naïveté, a sweet sorrowfulness in her voice.
"Oh, I couldn't tell, he was too far off," answered Reynolds. "It will all come right. We will not allow our imaginations to follow him. I must tell you my plans. I hope they will be your plans too."
She lifted her eyes to his but did not speak.
"First of all, Agnes," he went on, "will you be my wife?" The words fell dryly, strangely on her ear.
They were standing close to a tree and she was lightly leaning against the bole. She felt a quick but vague sense of fear, or something akin to it, strike coldly into her heart.
It was inexplicable, an almost irresistible impulse toward flight took hold of her. She could not speak. Something forbade it.
"Answer me, Agnes: you will marry me, won't you, love?" His voice was low and appealing.
Her trepidation and weakness were but momentary. She mastered herself by a strong effort, and, with a brave, earnest smile, put both her hands in his.
"Yes, I will marry you," she said.
He lifted the hands swiftly and kissed them, then he led her to one of the seats.
"I have been planning such a delightful life for us," he began, and with passionate eloquence went on to disclose his idea of their going abroad, for a time at least, to live in Italy or Switzerland or France, together, for each other, the blissful life of love.
Her imagination responded readily to his eloquent descriptions, and her face was soon aglow with enthusiastic interest. She had always dreamed of foreign travel, and the subject was one into which she could cast herself with all the abandon of a child. He saw with delight how his proposition pleased her, and he talked with a freedom and earnestness that were irresistible. They were now very happy lovers indeed, and the time sped on golden wings until a servant came to call them to luncheon. They had slipped away from the troubles that had haunted them into the true realm of the young—the rosy region of dreams.
The mid-day meal at the DeKay place was not, as is, perhaps, the prevailing custom on plantations, the principal one. Dinner came on early in the evening and was all the more enjoyable on account of the delightful temperature of the hour throughout most of the year.
Late in the afternoon a young gentleman from an adjoining plantation came down the river in a little boat to make a friendly visit. He had been one of the guests on the day of the shoot, a dapper, talkative youth whose fund of good spirits made him welcome at all times. He liked wine and tobacco, was somewhat of a horseman and never tired of discussing questions of angling and field sports. Of course General DeKay, who cared for nothing so much as such companionship, would not let him return until after dinner. His name was Lapham. The Laphams were a fine old family—nearly all the Alabama families below the mountains are reported to be fine and old—and he retained in his speech and manner much that was ultra old and Southern, along with certain strong traces of quite modern "slang and snap," as it is called.
He sat next to Mrs. Ransom at table, entertaining her and the rest with an account of some recent races at New Orleans, or Tuscaloosa, or somewhere, that he had been to see. There had been a row among some sports ending in one being killed.
"It was a mean murder," he remarked, "the man was given no show. I hope the law will be swift, as in the case of your man, Colonel Reynolds."
Reynolds looked at him with quick inquiry and Mrs. Ransom's face showed the shrinking of her feelings.
"Oh, they got him below Selma and hanged him," added Lapham in answer to the question in Reynolds' eyes. "They made short work of it: caught him and strung him up to the first tree."
"I haven't read the papers for several days," said General DeKay. "They lynched him, did they? Hanging is the popular thing now."
"Yes," answered Lapham. "He deserved it, I believe. It was a bad case. Killed a young fellow who had just been married. Loved the girl himself, it is said, and did the deed out of sheer revenge, because she took the young man in preference to himself. The circumstances were atrocious. The young wife is reported to have lost her reason on account of the affair."
There came a depressing silence over the little group at the table. Mrs. DeKay made haste to change the topic of conversation to one she was sure would interest the gentlemen.
"Have you tried the trout since this fine weather has come?" she asked, addressing Lapham. "I should think the angling might be good now."
The mention of trout (bass are called trout in the South) set the young man in the midst of one of his favorite elements. He began at once to tell how he had killed a four-pounder that very morning. He always killed four-pounders. "It was the gamiest fish I ever hooked, I think,—a regular savage. I toiled with it a full half hour before I could land it. At one time it had out nearly a hundred yards of line and I thought I never should get it checked up. If it had gone a little further my rod or my line—one would have suffered. It was jolly sport."
"I must rig up my tackle and try the river to-morrow," said the General. "Are you strong enough to join me, Colonel Reynolds? Of course you will come down, Mr. Lapham?"
"I am sorry," answered Reynolds, "but I fear my shoulder is too tender. I am quite anxious to get well, and to that end must heed my doctor's advice."
"I will join you, General," said Lapham with eager readiness. "This morning's taste has made me ravenous for another round with the finny beauties."
"What flies are best here?" inquired Reynolds, thinking of something else.
"Oh, we use minnows," said Lapham, "though I have had success with a bob of deer-tail hairs and red feathers. The trout won't rise to a regular fly."
"Up in the mountains I find the 'Doctor' and the brown hackle very killing," said Reynolds. "I have had rare sport in the smaller streams. The bass there are quite as game as brook trout."
"The mountain fish are like the mountain crackers: game but not over wise," Lapham quickly responded, with an intonation meant as a guaranty of the originality of his humor.
"Neither would be easily handled by a novice, I grant you," said Reynolds with a peculiar smile.
Lapham laughed merrily. The retort pleased him better than his own venture.
"I was up in the mountains last winter deer hunting," he said, "and there's one thing I can testify to in behalf of those crackers: they are very hospitable and obliging; they seem to think they can't do too much for one. But the women! It kept me in a state of chronic melancholy to see the poor things."
"Their life is a lonely, dreary, hopeless one," replied Reynolds, "but they are good, and as true as steel."
"Yes, no doubt they are good. I know they are kind, and all that. They asked me to smoke with them and called me sonny!"
"Did you go when they called you?" the General asked, with the ready familiarity of old acquaintance.
"Yes," said Lapham, "I recognize the fitness of the appellation."
Reynolds was thinking of Milly White. She was, in his mind, unseparable from any idea of the mountains and their people. He felt an impulse to resent, as personal to her, every suggestion made at the expense of the mountaineers. He could see her now, standing by the little gate gazing down the crooked, stony road, patiently watching for his return. He strove to brush aside the reflections that began to crowd into his brain, and with the help of Lapham's skipping levity and the unusual volubility of General DeKay's talk, he at last succeeded in hiding his uneasiness and lack of sympathy with the quiet merriment of the occasion.
Mrs. Ransom appeared to be lighter-hearted than at any other time since the adventure at the ruin. Her face was touched with a charming color and she followed Lapham's shallow chatter with smiling attention. It was from her that Reynolds finally caught the ability to forget himself and to fall into the spirit that ruled the rest of the company. Once engaged, he put forth his powers with good effect. For Lapham's benefit he described the Derby and theGrand Prix, a pigeon shoot in England where the stake was a thousand pounds, angling in Scotland and some hunting adventures in Algiers. From sport he easily drifted to art and from art into the ever wonderful and fascinating scenery of Switzerland and Italy. It was Agnes who led him on to speak of Paris and Rome, the two cities of every young woman's dream. She was full of the thought of going with him to the old world. It was intoxicating her. How far away it would be—that life beyond the sea—from the dreary, sorrowful pool of her narrow and bitter experience! That night in the quiet of her chamber she thought it all over, and she was dreaming of it when next morning the mocking-birds awoke her. Reynolds, too, went to his room with an almost light heart. From his window he saw Lapham, with a little sail set, go up the river before the night breeze, in the light of a crescent moon that hung over in the west.
"I will return to Birmingham to-morrow," he thought. He was in haste to get his affairs all arranged and then come back and persuade Agnes to name the earliest day possible for their marriage. He felt a mighty impatience, as if each moment endangered the cup of happiness now bubbling at his lips.
But the thought of going back to the mountains chilled him. Why need he go at all? Why should any sordid consideration enter into the discussion of his plans? Had he not already shut out of his life the dreamy hermitage and all that pertained to it? He tried to imagine a line drawn across the past at a point on this side of all his unprofitable experiences, a line over which he would teach his memory not to cross. Could he not, by a supreme effort of will, tear wholly away from his old self, as from a chrysalis sheath, purify himself and spend the rest of his days in the summer atmosphere of a calm and peaceful life? How it tormented him to perceive his lack of genuine courage and sincerity in this exacting crisis! He tried not to know that his new hopes and desires were not borne up by an underswell of true repentance. The selfishness of mere regret and remorse taunted him insidiously, whilst the happiness that beckoned him on was tricked in sensuous tinsel-tints, the exponents of a very low power of good. He struggled fiercely, silently, fighting down in detail the troops of phantoms that beset him. Finally he cheated himself into believing, or feigning to believe, that he had gained the victory. The field is clear, he thought, I am a man once more.
Strangely enough his mental struggle ended in confirming instead of rejecting the thought of returning to Birmingham at once and closing out his interests there. After all, why should he hesitate? What possible objection existed? How could he be affected? He brushed it all aside as sheer sentimentality unworthy of consideration. He could not assume to be responsible for every body who had chanced to come within the radius of his life. What is a man here for, save to forge his own way to happiness?
And so he rushed from one extreme to the other, wholly unable to see the fine straight line of right, wholly unwilling bravely to assume the responsibility of lifting the burden his own hands had packed and bound. Not see the right! Yes, he saw it at last, clearly enough he thought. Reparation, reparation. He would right all the wrongs he had done. He would do good all the rest of his life. Kindliness, charity, blessings. He would leave a trail of good deeds behind him wherever he should go. The poor should remember him and the afflicted should feel the touch of his tenderness. With Agnes beside him, with her pure soul to influence and encourage him, to what a height of unselfishness he might rise. He smiled and felt reassured. All was well.
There is no phase of life so steadfast and at the same time so tricksy and variable as what is called being in love: the current is all one way and yet its force appears to act in every direction. Love sets for itself impossible tasks with a perfect confidence, attempts any height, and, alas, too often is willing to delve in the mire and dregs of things with the hope of finding one glittering grain of its desire. No doubt supreme passion and supreme happiness lie far apart. Form, color, sound, perfume and whatever appeals through them, may constitute, we know not to what extent, the values of passion. Happiness is not so clothed that its substance is covered or its footing invisible. It appeals to the conscience more than to the senses. One may say: I am happy, and go delightedly through the giddy rounds of the little whirlwinds of pleasurable emotion, but he is all the time conscious of the vacuum and lack of equilibrium that have caused the unusual excitement. He is vaguely or otherwise mindful of the fact that he is indulging a delusion. His conscience argues that steadfastness, poise, evenness and certainty are the foundation stones of happiness. Too often these foundation stones seem to lie far away, so that, like the old poet, one cries out: "Oh, had I the wings of a dove!" Reynolds and Agnes had fixed their eyes on this distant place where, amid new scenes and strange people, the temple of their love might become the dwelling-place of immeasurable happiness. And why should they not realize this dream? They were young, strong and loving. He had wealth sufficient for a life of reasonable luxury, and was not their secret their own? Over and over again the argument was made and the pleasing conclusion reached.
It was a comfort to them both to reiterate their expressions of confidence in the future; for all the time there lurked a doubt somewhere on the outer boundary of their field of thought, a doubt each hoped the other did not know of. Not that either questioned the purity or perfectness of the other's love, that was impossible, but this dark secret of the past seemed to link them together on an insecure footing which might give way at any time, plunging them into an abyss of irremediable suffering. It mattered not how far away or how shadowy this doubt was, or how often it seemed to be utterly driven off, the lesion it caused to the tissue of their love-dreams was incurable and therefore dreadful, notwithstanding its obscurity. It might be forgotten for a time, even for a long time, but it could not be put away wholly and forever.
However, love takes all risks, braves all dangers, attacks every obstacle. There was no longer hesitation, even if the doubt would linger. They were impatient to embark upon their voyage to love's land, as they imagined it, somewhere beyond the sea. They laughed, they sang, they exchanged sweet, airy utterances of passion, as did the birds in the green mazes of the tree-tops above them. They made the most of the moments.
"'Clar' ter goodness!" muttered Uncle Mono, whose eyes were not so old that he failed to note the wooing. "'Clar' ter goodness! Ef de young boss haint a rus'ler den I dunno nuffin'. W'y he done kotch de pore leetle missus, same lak er hawk ketch um bird. She not hab time ter squeak 'fore she gone! Mebbe it turn out de bes' kin', I dunno, but seem lak dar's somefin' 'sterious sorter bodderin' my min' 'bout it. Wha' dat boss come f'om, anyhow? an' wha' he gwine ter go to, I'd lak ter know? But he's er rus'ler, sho's you bo'n, he is!"
General DeKay and his wife saw how matters were drifting, too, and they discussed the probable outcome with many doubts and misgivings. They were not persons fond of borrowing trouble, however, and they did not know of any objection to Reynolds. In fact, the General had grown to like him very much. Moreton had told them that Reynolds was wealthy and of a good family, and had let fall a great many apparently accidental references to his friend's good qualities. There seemed to be no foundation upon which to base an objection, no plausible reason for interference, so the love-passage was left to be worked out to its ending, whatever that might be.
Reynolds got ready to go to Birmingham. The DeKay place was about two hours' drive from Montgomery over a level country highway. So on the morning set for his departure a carriage stood ready at the gate in front of the lawn. He had taken formal leave of General DeKay early in the morning when that sport-loving planter was on the point of joining Lapham in an excursion for bass. The General had warmly urged him to return soon, so as to test the qualities of the fish in the Alabama, and he had readily accepted the invitation. Now he was lingering on the veranda with Agnes, who, dressed in a pale blue morning gown and flushed with the sweet emotions that filled her breast, was looking her loveliest. Her blue eyes had lost for the time all traces of the quiet sadness they had so long harbored, and were beaming with a tender, happy light. She stood up erect and strong, her slender figure, with its softly rounded outlines, poised with such grace as always suggests a reserve of abundant elasticity and youthful alertness. Whoever had studied her face at that time would have declared that its expression was in every way witchingly girlish, simply and charmingly beautiful, full of truth and earnest faith in the right; but he would not have called it an intellectual face, or one indexing a strongly developed character. She would make a good wife, he might have said, a trusting, gentle, ever-loving, ever-faithful companion, the comfort of a strong man, the sweet light of a home; but she could never be any thing more.
"A week, love, and then—" said Reynolds, pausing to look fondly down into her eyes.
"And then you will come back to me," she quickly replied, "I know you will, and I shall wait for you and think of you every minute of the time."
"Oh, you must not worry about me, or be impatient. The days will soon slip by. Take good care of yourself and——"
"You are the one who needs that advice," she urged, "for your wound is not entirely well, you know. Do be very, very careful, for, for—you are very dear to somebody now!"
He would have kissed her then, but Uncle Mono very unopportunely made his appearance around the corner of the veranda. Mono was old and wise. He knew that the departure of a guest from the house was the golden moment for a servant possessing his liberal opportunities. The lifting force of emancipation from slavery had not raised his pride above the level of those tricks which, in his days of bondage, had served to soothe his palm with pieces of silver, and even of gold sometimes, tossed from the lavish, careless hands of visitors whom he had waited upon. He came shambling along with his old hat in his hand, bowing very low and grinning the grin of the trickster who is sure that his trick must win. As he came near he said:
"Berry sorry yo' gwine away, boss, berry sorry. Hope yo' not fo'get ole Mono when yo' done gone. 'Cessful journey to yo', boss."
"Thank you, Uncle Mono, I can never forget you. Did you ever play base-ball, Mono?" said Reynolds.
"Nah, sah, do'n know nuffin' 'bout dat," answered the old man, shaking his head and executing some ludicrous grimaces. "I nebber plays nuffin' 'cep'n' de fiddle an' de banjer, an' I'se gettin' so ole an' 'flicted dat I can't play dem to no good. Old Mono mos' run he ye'thly co'se, boss."
"You're not springy and active, then, Mono. You've lost the use of yourself pretty nearly, I suppose?"
"Dat's it, boss, dat's it. Ole man all cripple up wid 'fliction an' ole age. No 'count any mo'. He done los' all he sperit."
"Well, Mono," said Reynolds very gravely, taking some pieces of money from his pocket, "if you'll catch this dollar when I throw it to you, I'll give you another."
Mono prepared to use his hat.
"No, no," exclaimed Reynolds, laughing, "I'll not have that! Put down your hat and use your hands. Now, here it comes."
No cat, leaping out of the summer grass to catch a low-flying sparrow, ever displayed more nimbleness and adroitness than did old Mono in catching that dollar. It fell upon his dusky palm with a clear slap and immediately found its way into his trowsers pocket.
"Yah, yah, yah! let de oder 'n come, boss, I's ready for 'm!" shouted the old fellow in great delight.
"You're an intolerable fraud, Mono," said Reynolds, tossing him another dollar, "your afflictions are of the kind the good people sing about, that 'are oft in mercy sent;' a few more of the same sort would make a famous acrobat of you."
"Fanky, boss, fanky; tole yo' dat yo' wus a rus'ler, did'n' I? Goo'by, boss, 'cessful journey to yo', sah."
"Good-by, Mono, we'll go a fishing when I come back," Reynolds called after him, as he rapidly retreated.
"All right, boss, I go wid yo'. I show yo' wha' dey is, sho's yo' bo'n. Goo'by!"
The morning breeze was singing in the vines that clothed the heavy columns of the tall veranda, and its gentle current tossed some loose tresses across Mrs. Ransom's happy face. It was time for Reynolds to be on his road, but he faltered whenever he undertook to say the word of parting. Yet a minute or two, he would think: I will make up for the lost time when I get started. She had never appeared so beautiful as now, never so happy, never so loving.
"Walk down to the gate with me," he presently said: "it will give me a happy send-off on my journey, to look back and see you standing there watching me as I am going out of sight among the shadows of the wood."
They spent a long time passing over the space between the veranda and the gate. Here they paused to dally beside a bed of hyacinth or there to note how wonderfully large the violets were. A touch of childishness, or thoughtlessness (or was it that artlessness which comes of complete self-forgetfulness?) made their actions amusingly interesting to Mrs. DeKay, who watched them from the window.
The colored driver was perched upon his high seat in front of the DeKay landau and the team of chestnut mares was ready for the road. There was plenty of time left in which to reach Montgomery so as to take the north bound train.
"Agnes," Reynolds murmured, "you must be ready to set an early day for our marriage by the time of my return. We shall want to sail as early in June as possible. I have not yet spoken to your uncle and aunt, but I shall as soon as I return."
She was silent, but it was a silence just as satisfactory to her lover as any words could have been.
The barbaric imagination, always a part of the negro, must have been aroused in the driver as he lounged in his seat and gazed at the beautiful woman and the tall, strong man straying down the walk. Their figures were boldly relieved against the dull gray background of the old house, and framed in with vines and magnolia boughs. He had a vivid though savagely crude sense of the warmth and tenderness and freshness of the picture. His indolent, half-closed eyes and shining, jet black face were expressive of that dreamy phase of delight which is generated by mere passive receptivity. The delicate blue of Mrs. Ransom's dress, the charming bloom of her face and the supple grace and strength of her slender figure were to him as a star is to a poet, a mystery, a focus of unapproachable glory, never to be any nearer or any further away. He felt, without knowing it, all the æsthetic values of the scene before him; the cloudless, tender sky, the rich green of the magnolias, the wind-beaten and rain-stained old mansion all wrapped in semi-tropical vines, the flare of the sunlight and the soft glooms of the shade, and, beyond the house and the trees, the sheeny reeds and the broad, winding river, all these with the fresh perfumes and delicious spring wind, touched him and
"Passed like a glorious roll of drumsThrough the triumph of his dream."
He saw, he felt, he enjoyed—what more could his lazy, basking nature crave?
The parting was commonplace enough, a mere clasping of hands, strong, hopeful smiles and good-by. It could not be less, it might outwardly have been more, if the driver had not been there.
"You will come soon."
"Very soon—in a few days."
The carriage, a sort of open landau, began to move, and Reynolds sitting in the rear turned and furtively flung back a kiss.
She was already beginning to grow pale, but she touched her lips with her fingers and waved him adieu with a bright smile.
He kept his eyes upon her, as the distance gradually grew, and, so absorbed was he, it startled him when the vehicle suddenly came to a stand-still.
"Wha' do Gin'l DeKay lib?" called out the driver of a carriage whose way lay opposite to theirs.
"Jis back ya' leetle ways," answered Reynolds' driver.
"All right, I fought so; much 'bleeged."
Both carriages moved again. In passing Reynolds saw a slender, picturesque looking man, whose yellowish hair fell in profuse curls about his neck and shoulders. He wore a broad-brimmed, light colored hat and a close-fitting semi-military suit of gray.
It was a most irritating thing that this man and his vehicle should whisk into the line of Reynolds' vision and entirely hide Agnes from him. He craned his neck and tried to look over or past that wide slouch hat and those slender, curl-covered shoulders, but it was impossible.
"Damn the fellow!" he muttered. "Stop a moment, Dan," he called to the driver.
The mares were drawn up and the carriage came to a stand-still in a moment. Reynolds waited impatiently, hoping that some slight swerve in the road would give him one more glimpse of the blue dress and shining face. He felt that he could not thus abruptly and unauspiciously lose sight of her. But the road was straight and the vehicle kept well in the middle of it until it neared the gate of DeKay Place, where it turned and stopped.
Mrs. Ransom was there, with her face toward him. He snatched out his handkerchief and waved it rapidly to and fro, but before he could get any response from her, the young man had got out of his carriage and placed himself in front of her, so that she was completely eclipsed.
Reynolds uttered some phrase expressive of bitter disappointment. His driver turned a surreptitious look of wonder and inquiry upon him, but dared not speak when he saw that Reynolds was looking at what was going on at the gate. Naturally enough the negro shrewdly suspected that here was a little play of rivalry between two gentlemen, and that he had better not interfere.
As Reynolds leaned over the back of the seat and looked, there was a sudden movement made by the stranger that for a moment left Agnes in plain view, and he saw her throw up both hands and heard her cry out. Then the man clasped her and held her in his arms. Something in this scene startled Reynolds Strangely, he hardly knew why, and he hurriedly commanded the driver to drive back to the gate.
"Quick, Dan, make the horses go; hurry, I say!" he added in a voice rough with excitement. There was a cold feeling in his breast, as if a damp, chilling breath had blown through it, and a heavy weight seemed pressing on his brain.
In less than a minute the gate was reached and Reynolds had leaped to the ground. The man had let Mrs. Ransom go, and the two were standing facing each other. Both looked excited. She was very pale, but showed no sign of weakness, holding herself erect and steady. She turned her eyes upon Reynolds, as he came near, and made a movement with her lips, as if speaking, without emitting any sound. The man, who appeared to be an invalid, trembled a little and did not take his eyes off her face, even for an instant, but gazed at her with such yearning in his expression as would have touched the coldest observer. He had taken off his sombrero, holding it in his hand, and the light wind was tossing his long ringlets about his neck and cheeks. There was that peculiar droop to one of his shoulders, together with a hollowness of his chest on that side, which indicated that at some time in his life he had been desperately wounded.
"Agnes, Agnes, what is the matter?" Reynolds exclaimed in that startled, rasping voice which is common to all men when confronted by an overwhelming trouble. He asked this question involuntarily, aimlessly, for he well understood what all this quiet, terrible scene was about. He knew this man now. It was hard to comprehend how such a thing could be; but this was Ransom standing here, Ransom alive and confronting his wife. Agnes made two or three fruitless efforts before she was able to exclaim:
"Oh, John—Mr. Reynolds, go away! Go away! This is—this is my husband!" She did not say this demonstratively or noisily—her voice was low and quite calm, save that she seemed to falter a little. "Oh, I have always thought you were not dead and that you would come back!" she added, turning toward the man with something like a shudder in her tones.
"Ransom, is this indeed you?" demanded Reynolds, gathering enough force to crush down his bewilderment.
The man turned his eyes upon his interrogator for a second. His stare had in it a mingling of surprise and insolent bravado. Then with a slight start he ejaculated:
"Reynolds!"
Mrs. Ransom clasped her hands and looked helplessly and beseechingly from one to the other. Her lips quivered pitifully.
The two men stared at each other as if unwilling to accept the situation and yet unable to escape it. Each seemed waiting for the other to explain why he was there. It did not once occur to Reynolds that this man had the legal right to Agnes, and that henceforth she must be as lost as if dead. He went no further than to recognize that here was a mystery and a trouble. The catastrophe had been so peculiar and sudden, so lacking in those melodramatic features common to such scenes, that it had a dulling, numbing effect upon his faculties. Ransom was not so bewildered. It surprised him to see Reynolds and it displeased him as well, but he had prepared himself, before coming, for any kind of a scene with his wife; therefore, although excited, he was quite deliberate after the first little start of recognition had spent its force.
"I was not expecting to seeyou," he said with peculiar emphasis. "Nor you me, I suppose."
The man's whole manner was sinister and crafty, and yet, at the same time, there was something subdued, something suggestive of long suffering and unmerited injury, in the expression of his face and the attitude of his person. He appeared to Reynolds' startled and distorted vision an incarnate accusation. The situation might have had a touch of the supernatural in it, if its realism had not been so peculiarly pronounced and unmistakable. The whole affair was a cold, dull, immitigable affair. It did not even rise to the level of romance. It had come as death comes, a stark, overpowering, repulsive result of perfectly inexplicable causes, bearing down before it every thought of resistance or escape.
Reynolds had ready no response. The predicament was one which seemed to him malign in its whole bearing, with no room for words of inquiry or of explanation. A sense of suffocation assailed him, as if all those dreams and hopes and delightful anticipations that he had been so luxuriating in lately, had fallen dead in a wilted heap upon his heart.
Ransom was a strangely handsome man, with a dash of devil-may-care blended with melancholy in his face. His features were clearly and finely cut, delicate but not effeminate, showing strong traces of suffering, with something of that cool nervousness (if one may so express it) in their play, so often noticed in the faces of gamblers and outlaws. He was rather above the medium stature, well-knit and graceful, erect (saving that slight peculiar droop of one shoulder), alert and well-poised. He turned from Reynolds to Agnes and with the utmost tenderness said:
"Come, little wife, I've a long story to tell you—a strange story. I have not been so bad as you think. I have been just the same as dead, four years in a Mexican prison."
It was not what he said but the way in which he said it, that made his appeal so very affecting. Reynolds felt a vague thrill of pity. At the same time there came upon him the first shock of genuine realization of the situation. The phrase "little wife," as used by Ransom, enforced its deep significance at once. It struck with a directness that gave no chance for evasion.
"Oh, Herbert, Herbert!" cried Agnes, suddenly making a step forward and casting her arms around Ransom's neck. "Oh, is it really, really you!"
"Oh, Herbert, Herbert, is it really, really you!" Page 244."Oh, Herbert, Herbert, is it really, really you!"Page 244.
The lithe little figure in its rustling blue gown shrank close to him and quivered in his embrace. He bent his head and kissed her again and again, his long bright curls falling across her upturned face.
Reynolds recoiled as if he had received a blow, then, steadying himself, he looked upon them as one might look into one's own grave. Ransom's voice, murmuring all manner of caressing phrases, was infinitely musical and sweet, but there was that in it which betrayed a weakness not wholly physical, a suggestion of irresponsibility and insincerity.
It may have been the effect of long imprisonment, the nature of his wound and protracted mental worry, or it may have been altogether owing to the interpretation he had instantly given to the relationship between Agnes and Reynolds; but from whatever cause, his face was luminous with a pale glow expressive of the most pathetic misery blended with exultation.
Reynolds stood like a bronze statue, his eyes burning with a dull fire and his face seamed and shriveled.
Ransom clung to his wife, stroking her hair and kissing her cheek. His ecstasy was genuine, but it lacked the force of lofty passion.
Presently Agnes freed herself from his embrace, quite as suddenly as she had sought it, as if some revulsion of feeling or some strong conviction of the impropriety of such extreme action had mastered her. She looked at Reynolds, and meeting his gloomy, despairing gaze, let fall her eyes, a quick blush covering her cheeks. In that moment all the force of her surroundings rushed furiously upon her. The blush gave place to a deadly paleness that appeared to affect her face as a white heat. She put up one hand quickly, as if to touch her forehead, but lowered it again, staggered and fell. Both men sprang to her assistance. Reynolds brushed the other aside, as he might have brushed aside some insect. Then lifting Agnes in his arms he bore her to the house. He did this in a mood that eliminated from his thought, for the time, all else save the woman he loved. He carried her without at all feeling her weight, and his movement was so swift that Ransom did not try to keep pace with him; but followed him with slow, feeble steps into the hall and thence into the parlor. But it had not been a swoon, only a mere vanishing from her of strength sufficient to stand. She raised herself to a sitting posture, so soon as Reynolds put her on a sofa, and looked at him with an immediate understanding of what had happened. Ransom had not yet come in.
"Where is he—Herbert, my husband—where is he?" she asked.
"Oh, Agnes! Agnes!" cried Reynolds, taking her again in his arms. "It can not be so! you can not, you will not, you shall not give me up for him!"
She sprang away from him and stood up pale and firm before him.
"Do not touch me again," she exclaimed, in a way that sent the blood in upon his heart. "You have no right. He is my husband. You said he was dead. You said—you—you deceived me—told me a falsehood—you—"
"For heaven's sake, Agnes, hold—don't say that! I told you true. I thought he was dead—I thought I killed him—I did not dream of his being alive!"
Ransom was standing by now glancing keenly from one to the other. When he spoke it was directly to Reynolds.
"If my wife wishes to talk longer with you, well and good, sir, but if not, you must see the propriety of leaving her to me." His manner was suave, but there was a mighty meaning in his voice and a steely glitter in his eyes.
"Leave her to you!" said Reynolds in a white heat of fury, "never!"
"Youmustleave me, and atonce," said Agnes firmly.
He looked into her eyes as if trying to read the lowest lines of their meaning, but he found nothing to aid him. The love-light had faded and in its stead the cold beam of loveless duty shone out clear and strong. He saw that she was as hopelessly gone from him as if she lay dead in her grave. He stretched out his arms toward her, but quickly withdrew them, not, however, on account of a swift, facile movement of Ransom's hand to the place where a pistol is usually concealed by a man who carries one, for he did not see it, but because her eyes repelled him. There was nothing for him to do but to go away forever. He rushed from the room and from the house. Half way to the gate he stopped and turned about, fixing upon the weather-stained old building a gaze that it would have been awful to contemplate, so intense, so wild, so malignant. His hands were clenched, his lips, so compressed that they seemed welded, were cold and purple. For a mere point of time he was a murderer; but, despite the intervening wall of the house, he could see Agnes clinging to her husband and the mood was flung aside. Her husband! What right had he to survive that well-aimed shot? What right had he to escape from a Mexican prison and drag his wrecked body and withered soul back here to crush out such a love as that which but an hour ago had lighted up the whole world?
It was but a flash of desperate passion, that came and went in an instant, leaving Reynolds all the more helplessly bewildered. What could he do? He stood there rigid, breathless, choking in the impotence of utter irresolution.
Again he turned towards the carriage. Far and near in the tender foliage of the trees the mocking birds sang with lusty fervor. The sweet South breathed upon him the warm, odorous breath of love's own clime.
Dan the driver, from his seat on the carriage, had watched this melodramatic scene from first to last, so far at least as it was not shut out from his vision, with all the open-mouthed wonder characteristic of a negro under such circumstances. He well knew that the predicament was one of no ordinary sort, and that weighty interests were involved. He had expected every moment to see knives or pistols gleam and flash, but he had been so dazed and scared that he could not have moved to save his life. He sat there gripping the lines and leaning forward in an attitude of painful rigidity, his shoulders elevated and his chin thrust out, lost to every thing but the excitement that had taken possession of him.
Uncle Mono, in blissful ignorance of the drama, was down in the little plat of ground devoted to his melon vines, stirring the sandy loam with a hoe and singing a lively camp-meeting song. The two silver dollars given to him by Reynolds had made him very happy indeed.
Reynolds took no note of any thing around him. The sunshine, the bird-songs, the voice of the merry old freedman and the dying rustle of the now almost motionless air did not reach his senses. Again and again he stopped as if to rush back, his arms twitching, his face rigid, but all the time he was half aware that fate was binding him more firmly each moment. Already the sweet life of the past month had receded into the far, hazy distance, as if its sphere had whirled away to the remotest region of space, almost beyond the reach of his vision, and with it all the best of his nature, leaving him groveling and baffled, a clod on a barren field.
"Drive me to Montgomery as fast as you can go, Dan," he said to the driver as he reached the gate and entered the landau.
"Drive fast, Dan, I am in a great hurry," said Reynolds, as the mares again moved gently along the road in the direction of Montgomery.
The negro waved his whip above the backs of the spirited animals, starting them into a rapid trot. The wheels made little noise on the light sandy surface over which they whirled. Reynolds sat bolt upright, looking neither to the right nor to the left, his vision introverted. He was calm as marble, so far as outward appearance went, and inwardly there was no commotion, but a cold, dull, smothering sense of defeat and despair.
The woods on either side of the road were dull and soundless, save that, where the tall clumps of pines shot above the rest of the trees, their tops let fall a mellow roar which the slightest breeze has power to awaken in their frondous meshes.
The negro presently began to sing, in a strangely melodious undertone, an old, old Alabama ditty;
"Oh, poor Lucy Neal,Oh, poor Lucy Neal,And if I had you by my side,How happy I would feel!"
Reynolds started, clenched his hands and began to breathe hard.
"Dan," he cried, "drive back, drive back, I can't bear it!"
Dan pulled up the mares and turned round in his seat:
"What yo' say, boss?" he inquired, touching his hat and but half repressing his surprise.
"Turn round and drive back. Be quick, make them go: do you hear?"
"Yah, sah," answered Dan. A flush had sprung into Reynolds' cheeks in response to his sudden resolve. How could he ever have thought of abandoning her in this cowardly way? She is mine, he thought, she loves me, he has no right to her now: I will go back and claim my own with a force that shall be irresistible.
"Drive faster, Dan, do you hear, drive faster!"
"Yah, sah, boss."
The mares put themselves forth to their utmost, gladly reaching back toward home. For a minute or two Reynolds was wholly in the power of this new mood. But it passed as suddenly as it had come, and again, with redoubled weight, the load of despair returned.
"Hold up, Dan, hold up!"
"Yah, sah." Dan once more brought the equipage to a standstill.
Flickering expressions of hesitancy, faltering and giving up of hope, played for a brief space of time on Reynolds' face, before he could say:
"Turn again: drive to Montgomery."
"By jiffs!" muttered Dan, sotto voce, "is de boss done gone 'stracted?"
He obeyed the order, however, not caring to risk the consequences of any open symptoms of disapproval. He was well aware that a storm was pent up in Reynolds' bosom, and he dreaded lest the slightest slip should turn its blasts and buffets loose upon him.
"Faster, can't you, Dan?" urged the heavy rasping voice behind him, and the half-frightened negro touched the spirited team with the whip. Away they flew, at what horsemen call a three-minute pace, flashing through the spaces of sunshine and sweeping over the long stretches of shade, until the open country was again reached, where, between straggling worm fences, the road cut across vast fertile plantations.
At length in the distance, crowning a swell of billowy, irregular land, Montgomery appeared, with its clay-red streets slanting up between long lines of gnarled trees and its house-roofs and church-spires struggling through the greenery of vines and orchards, and the gloom of old dusky groves. On the highest point the grayish white, rectangular capitol, with its heavy columns and diminutive windows, gleamed bare and almost barn-like, in contrast with the embowered and picturesque residences surrounding it.
Just before they entered a street of the city, they met Beresford and another gentleman going toward the country in an open road wagon. They had their guns and dogs. Beresford bowed and lifted his hat. Reynolds returned the salute, rather from force of habit than from any real notice given to the courtesy, but the incident took his thoughts back past the drear defeat of to-day, to the sweet victory of that short period now glimmering as if on the uttermost horizon of memory.
"Drive directly to the railroad depot, Dan," he said, and all the way through the city he sat calmly erect, like some thoughtful professional man going to his office.
It was some time past noon when they reached the station and there was no train until after nightfall.
Reynolds gave Dan a liberal reward in money.
"Good-by, Dan," he said, "don't drive the mares so fast going back: they appear tired."
"Pow'ful hard on 'em, boss, a rushin' 'em disway an' dat way an' a makin' 'em go der bes' licks all de way, up hill an' down. By jiffs, but I's erfeared dey'd drap afo' dey got yer, boss!"
Reynolds turned away and began walking back and forth on the station platform. A beautiful reach of the Alabama river lay in full view, under high bluffs of chocolate-colored clay, and the breeze came over the water sweet and cool.
Dan mounted to his seat and prepared to drive up into the city, where he intended to get something to eat for himself and horses.
"Hold a moment," called Reynolds, taking a pencil and a small memorandum-book from his pocket, "wait till I write a few words." He began rapidly writing, then stopped and tore up the leaf, looked aimlessly about for a time and turned abruptly off, saying in a strangely dry voice:
"Never mind: good-by, Dan."
The carriage rolled away, the sound of its wheels on the street coming back to his ears in gradually diminishing clacks, reminding him that the last fragile link that had connected him with the old plantation was broken. He walked across the railroad tracks and sat down on a breezy point of the bluff overhanging the river. There was something in the river, there was something in the wind, the water, the sky and the wide horizon that cooled the fever in his blood for the time and set his brain to work with less confusion. His long years of hermit life had developed in him the habit of self-communion to such an extent that it required solitude to reduce his distracted faculties to something near their normal relations. We who view from the mere artist's standpoint the operations of those influences that control the destinies of men, sometimes see a hideous stroke of humor in the doings of fate. Tragedy and comedy lie so close to each other, that a mere change of intonation in the reading of a line may determine the difference between them. So, in reality, what under one light is incomparably tragic may, under another, appear trivial and almost comic. Beresford's failure with Agnes Ransom, though just as final and conclusive, seems a small thing beside the overwhelming disaster that fell upon Reynolds in the same field, and yet one might say: failure can go no further than failure: Beresford lost all,—how could Reynolds lose more? Is it really a more hopeless and tragic thing to love and be loved and lose than to love and not be loved and lose? Was it the difference between the men, or the circumstances, that enabled Beresford to take pleasure in a friend, his dogs and his gun, whilst Reynolds sat dreary-hearted, wretched, unconsolable, with folded hands and bowed head, alone by the river? This set of questions may not be solved by any artistic analysis. The solution is in the bold impression of the facts caught at a glance by every one who has any considerable reach of human sympathy.
When at last Reynolds grew calm enough to examine the situation somewhat in the light of cold reason, he saw that Agnes, not himself, must bear the heaviest load of any one connected therewith. He knew that she loved him and that, loving him, she would devote the rest of her life to one whom she could not love, but to whom the laws of man and of duty, and every dictate of a pure conscience, bound her. Viewing it thus, his life seemed to end in acul-de-sac. It had been a barren life, for the most part, so far, even worse than barren; it had been evil in no small degree. Conscience leaped upon him and shook him as a wild beast shakes and worries its prey. He felt its fangs and welcomed the agony they inflicted, as a relief from the terrible numbness that had taken possession of him and beside which any pain was pleasure.
It was almost dark when he went back to the station and entered the little waiting-room, where Dan had deposited his traveling-bag, and sat down on a bench to wait for the train. Several persons were there, impatient to be going, as travelers by rail usually are, but Reynolds was not in sympathy with their mood. He felt no concern about the train, whether ten minutes or ten hours late. Why should he not be just as content while waiting for a train as while doing any thing else? What more interest was it to him to be going than it was to be staying? The thought of the cabin and its household, of White's oddities and humorous absurdities, and of Milly's faithful patience and plebeian sweetness and sincerity, did not draw him: in fact it repelled him. Why go back there at all? Why not go to England and join Moreton, or to Egypt and engage with Doctor Blank (another friend of his) in his scientific explorations? Then again came conscience, with waving mane and flaming eyes, roaring and baring its fangs. He could see no promise of escape from the torment. But why should he struggle? He got up and walked to and fro, as did the other restless waiters for the train. Strange what tricks the brain plays under every sort of strain and torture. The turmoil of his thoughts, like some tempest-tumbled sea, kept tossing lightly on its surface as the sea might have tossed a cork, those simple rhymes about
"The light of her eyesAnd the dew of her lips,Where the moth never fliesAnd the bee never sips."
He could not help it, any more than he could calm the awful underswell of despair. He was far from feeling any presence of good in all this agony. No sense of a coming purification, as a result of the heat to which his soul was subjected. That his nature was giving way before the intense blast of the furnace, he may have known, but he had no thought of any separation of the little gold of good from the mass of evil. How could he ever again think of trying to do good? What a life of heavenly happiness he had just missed! He clung desperately to the sensuous picture his memory kept before him, reveling in the torture it generated. No thought of the future entered his mind, unless the form of poor little Milly, which now and again appeared to him, might be called a thought. From the outlines of her supple figure and haunting face he shrank with an inward shudder. Then suddenly, by some obscure cerebral operation, a glimpse, momentary but thrillingly sharp and clear, disclosed to him that other extreme of his situation. What a vast arc between the two confines of oscillation! Agnes Ransom, Milly White! Now, at last, he felt himself shriveling and wasting in the fire, as the blast from the tuyeres of God's furnace was doubled and trebled. He began to imagine how it all was to end, while some strange, thrilling whisper suggested the outlines of duty. Duty! what did he care for duty! Why should he, whose sweetest hopes had been dissipated by this breath of providence, have any care for the happiness of others? But his rebellion was weak. He arose, as the cars came crashing up to the station, and prepared himself for he knew not what. Almost any thing would be welcome. There seemed to be no place for him save the barren, dreary cabin in the mountains. As he realized this, once more his old arrogant nature flared up. "I will not go there," he thought, and his cheeks flushed. "I will not be the dupe of circumstance. I will go to the ends of the earth first." Nevertheless, he went aboard the train and took his seat in a car which was well filled with happy tourists returning to their Northern homes. The first person upon whom his eyes chanced to fall was Miss Crabb. She was busy with her note-book and pencil, her chin drawn down and her brow con tracted with intense thought. He shrank from her, as from something unbearable, and forthwith slipped away into another car.