MR. HAWKINS NOBLE.
Moreton, the more he thought the matter over, grew surer and surer of
the fact that he had discovered Reynolds, his long lost friend. They
had been art students together in Paris, and had been companions in a
rather wild eastern ramble during which some quite memorable
adventures had befallen them. Finally they had separated, on account
of a mild sort of quarrel over a sweetheart, Reynolds quitting the
field most mysteriously, leaving Moreton free to press his suit,
which at the last wholly failed. It does not matter here what was
the extent or color of their disagreement, but it may be said that
there was nothing violent or tragic in it. In fact it may all be
summed up in the sentence: Reynolds disappeared; and so sudden and
secret was his going that Moreton lost him quite as effectually as if
he had died and been buried. Such a disappearance has in it an
element of tragic mystery that burns into one's memory. Moreton
really knew little of Reynolds, save that he was an American and a
Southerner, a fascinating companion, and a genial, brave, liberal
fellow. If their parting had been the ordinary one, such as must
come at length to any traveling companions, perhaps a few months
might have sufficed to obliterate all regrets connected with it. But
the peculiar circumstances under which it had come about had served
to fasten it with a rather fiery emphasis in Moreton's memory. He
remembered Reynolds as a proud, peculiarly sensitive man, given to
excess of sentiment, an extremist, running to great lengths of
self-indulgence at times, and at other times a model of temperateness
that bordered on utter self-denial. A man with a violent conscience,
prone to brood over follies and indulge gloomy regret for sins about
which most young men would unhesitatingly have made broad jokes, but
yet a man given to unlimited pleasures. In person he was of noble
proportions, quite a typical low-country Southerner, bearing in his
high-bred face an air of fearlessness and obvious pride touched to a
degree with something that suggested recklessness. He was reckless,
indeed, now and again, always, however, suffering the extremest pangs
of repentance after each lapse into excesses.
It had seemed to surprise Reynolds in the last degree when he
discovered that Moreton had become his rival, and surprise had
quickly blazed up into furious anger. For a time it had appeared as
if there must be a fight, but before this could happen Reynolds
controlled himself and the reaction came. Moreton appeared to be
successful, and his rival, in a fit of gloom, disappeared from the
scene. It is easy to understand how Moreton would be affected by
such a turn of affairs, and when, a day or two after the events of
the preceding chapter, Reynolds appeared at the hotel in Birmingham,
the meeting was, of course, a very cordial one; for Moreton was in no
mood to allow his friend any room to doubt his sincerity. He had not
prospered with his suit after Reynolds' departure. Somehow he could
not press it with that ardor which kept his heart on fire so long as
a rival was in view. It may have been that the mystery of Reynolds'
flight cast a damper on the feelings of the young lady as well as
over his own spirit. It is even possible that in truth she preferred
the impulsive, magnetic Southerner to the rather matter-of-fact
Englishman. At all events, Moreton's wooing had languished with the
ending of the rivalry, the young lady showing a decided willingness
to have done with the affair on the shortest possible notice.
Such things may appear to conclude very easily and naturally, to the
best satisfaction of those concerned; but usually a sting remains
with one or more of the actors that time is slow to remove. Moreton
had felt this sting from two sources. He had lost his friend, he had
lost his sweetheart. His friendship had been deep and true, his
passion for the girl had been strong, no matter if not rooted deeper
than his fancy. At one point Conscience griped Moreton with bitter
force: he had been ungrateful to Reynolds, who had not hesitated to
risk his life for him in the most desperate exigency of his quite
eventful career. And now Reynolds had added self-sacrifice to
heroism.
So that it will be readily understood how Moreton easily fell into a
state of mind that rendered him restless and self-accusing. His
great wish that he might one day find his friend again, and in some
way make reparation for the injury done him, was tinged with such
sentimentality as the situation would naturally generate in a mind,
which though quite practical and well-balanced, was somewhat given to
visionary fancies.
They sat down to a good dinner, and, with due appreciation of its
qualities, paused between its courses to let their conversation
lightly circle around the point of their past trouble, without coming
quite to it. Reynolds knew that Moreton was still a bachelor, he had
caught this much from his friend's manner and talk. It flashed
through his mind that, after all, he had, perhaps, done himself great
wrong and Moreton no good by acting up to a standard of duty
recognized by few men. But it was too late to consider the matter
now. It was all over and the dead past must bury its dead. Besides,
had he not long ago dashed aside the poor bauble he had once called
love! The subject could not, would not be avoided, nevertheless, and
when it had been reached and fully talked over, both felt relieved.
"She is married," said Moreton, "and is living in Florence. Her
husband is Count somebody and she is an invalid, so I have heard."
"I give you my word, Moreton," responded Reynolds, after a moment's
silence, "that I am sincerely glad she is married, and quite sorry
that she has lost her superb health. Suppose we dismiss her forever
from our minds and our lives."
"Done!" cried Moreton almost jocularly, extending his hand. "I have
been deuced near proposing that for the last half hour. It takes a
load off my breast and a cloud off my mind. Here's to a clear
future, old fellow!"
He filled their glasses and they drank in a genial if not a jovial
mood. It was a light way in which to dispose of so weighty a matter
as this had once been considered by them; but then it is the tricksy
summer breath that tranquilizes the sea after the tropic storm. They
were both glad to unburden themselves of certain troublesome doubts
as to the genuineness of the passion each had professed. This done,
that episode in their lives seemed to remove itself to a vast
distance in the dim past, so they fancied, and they dismissed it as a
departed illusion of their youth. Moreton looked at his friend with
more than the old admiration. Indeed Reynolds was a man of superb
physique and his face was one to win men and charm women. With all
his health and strength and what might be called weather-stain, there
was in his dark gray eyes and in his low, rich voice, a suggestion of
that nonchalance and indolence which have always been characteristic
of the highest type of Southerners. Nearly six feet in stature,
square shouldered, slender, compact, every inch an athlete, he gave
one an idea of strength, both physical and mental, which needed to be
roused into action.
"I think it deuced strange, don't you know, that I should have
stumbled into your den here in the mountains," said Moreton. "It is
like romance. They put such things in novels."
"It was a clever turn of luck," lightly responded Reynolds, "or,
perhaps I should say fate. No doubt it is ordered that you and I
shall yet work out together some subtle decree of Providence. After
all, incidents and events do not come of haphazard."
"I never philosophize, you know," said Moreton. "I am never
expecting any thing save the very thing I am looking and striving
for. I was turkey hunting when I found your outlandish cabin. What
the deuce are you doing over there?"
"That is a hard question. I have spent some delightfully quiet,
uneventful years in that house. I find good shooting at times, the
air is pure and sweet, the water is excellent, the retirement is
perfect." Reynolds paused for a time and then continued: "Oh well, I
had grown tired of wandering and rather disgusted with the world in
general and I fancied I should enjoy being a hermit for a while. I
tried it and found it charming."
Moreton thought he detected evidence in his friend's manner of a
reserve of some stronger reasons for thus hiding himself away from
the world; but he took the explanation without further question.
"That's a pretty lass of White's," Moreton said, after the
conversation had rambled over such parts of Reynolds' life for the
past few years as he cared to lay bare. "Her sweet, solemn, smiling,
troubled face has haunted me ever since I saw her."
Reynolds laughed.
"Don't make too much fun of the poor little thing," he said,
half-seriously, half lightly. "Hers is a vacant lot. She is as
scentless and colorless as she is cramped and undeveloped. I can't
imagine what she was made for."
"But what a form and what a haunting, hungry, sweet face she has!"
Reynolds looked with a sudden surprise into Moreton's eyes, his own
dilating. Presently he laughed again.
"I do believe you are in earnest," he exclaimed, in a tone at once
deprecatory and querulous, "for you couldn't have the heart, even at
this distance, to ridicule the unfortunate little creature. In this
region the poor whites are all deplorably ignorant and queer; but
she--she is a pathetic cipher, poor thing."
"Physically she is perfect," insisted Moreton. "Can it be possible
that you, a poet and artist, have all these years overlooked,
ignored, waived aside such a model? I tell you, Reynolds, she's a
genuine wood nymph, don't you know, a dryad whom the satyrs have
scared out of her wits. I never saw such eyes, such lips and----"
"Oh come now," said Reynolds, "I am not going to listen to such
nonsense. Besides, it strikes me as next to brutal to think of
discussing the charms of an arid, dull, ugly little cracker
girl----well no, not a cracker, either, a Sandlapper is the local
phrase. The fact that such girls exist and must become women and be
mothers of like beings, is to me a subject that it is a virtue to
shun. On such a theme seriousness is disheartening, levity is
diabolical."
"Every thing _au sérieux_, as of old!" exclaimed Moreton, "you
bewildering old philanthropist! I am too happy to quarrel with you
now. Wait till the newness of having discovered your hiding place
has somewhat rubbed off and I'll give you punch for punch with a
will. But I do say, in all candor, that I never was so struck with
any bit of wild beauty as I was with that queer, solemn-eyed girl of
White's. She might make any painter's fortune as a Daphne or----"
Reynolds interrupted him:
"It is only once in a century or two," he said, "that the world's
intermittent sentiment will permit a Millet or a Burns to cast the
glamor of genius over the stolid ugliness and the immitigable
emptiness of peasant life. As for me, I have no sympathy with it
from the standpoint of art. There is no artistic alchemy that can
make a sow's ear fine or beautiful. Those who undertake to idealize
ignorance, stupidity and coarseness are worse than such realists as
Zola, because they willfully deceive those whom they succeed in
interesting."
"Go on, wade out, you know I can't follow you," exclaimed Moreton.
"I love the shallow places, the soft sweet edges of all sorts of
streams; but I'll bet five to one on you for touching bottom at all
points and without weights!"
Reynolds laughed and waved aside the wine his friend offered.
At this moment a portly gentleman, wearing a bland smile between his
iron-gray mutton-chop whiskers, and a vast gold seal below his vest,
approached Moreton from another part of the large dining room. This
was Mr. Hawkins Noble, a person of importance in Birmingham, a banker
in fact, whose money and financial sagacity had given to that
prosperous little city the larger part of its vim and activity. It
was to be seen at a glance that he was what some one has aptly and
inelegantly phrased as a "big fish in a little puddle." He was a New
Yorker, and his connection with a great banking house in the
metropolis had followed him to Birmingham with the effect of a
separate atmosphere circulating close about his stout figure. There
was in his movements a celerity quite out of keeping with his heavy
limbs and rotund body, and his small blue eyes had a twinkle which
was a compromise between the glint of ice and the genial reflection
from a June sky. He rubbed his hands together as he came near the
table.
"Hello, Moreton," he exclaimed, with the intonation of one speaking
at a telephone, "pardon me for interrupting you, but I have a matter
of importance. Oh, keep your seat," he hastily added, as Moreton
made a movement to rise, "it's nothing in the slightest private, only
an urgent invitation for you to join me in a most delightful bit of
field sport. General DeKay, who owns a grand plantation and quail
preserve below here, has sent me word to collect a party of gentlemen
and bring them next week for a few days' shooting. How does that
strike you?"
"It strikes me deuced hard," answered Moreton. "Don't you know I
never did refuse a thing like that, never."
Mr. Noble laughed. He looked like a man who thoroughly enjoyed
laughing for the sake of the general shaking up it gave him.
Reynolds could not help wondering how this rather over-corpulent old
gentleman could ever manage to get much comfort out of active field
sports.
"It's bound to be a most delightful affair," continued Mr. Noble.
"The General has some fine dogs, I shall take mine, you yours: now
where can I find one or two more good fellows who are up to such
music?"
Moreton rose.
"Allow me, Mr. Noble, to present my friend, Colonel Reynolds, who is
a most enthusiastic sportsman and who has a choice kennel."
The banker reached for Reynolds' hand with a readiness and swiftness
which, though incomparable, had no appearance of undue haste. It was
merely indicative of a nimbleness and a promptness for which in all
his affairs Mr. Noble was noted. His mind and body acted together on
the instant and on the slightest call.
"An enthusiastic sportsman," he said, "is a man after my own
heart-pattern. I am glad of your acquaintance, Colonel Reynolds.
May I book you and your choicest dogs for the shooting? Don't say
no, for we shall have a grand time of it."
"Why, I thank you, indeed, sir, but I can hardly say whether----"
"Come, now, Reynolds," interposed Moreton, "I can't go without you,
you know, and you mustn't refuse. I fancy I can see the dogs down to
a point now and the birds whirring up from the cover. It makes my
blood tingle to think of it!"
"Allow me also to insist," added Mr. Noble with a nimble bow and
genial smile. "I can vouch for the sport, as also for General
DeKay's cordial hospitality. He has a large preserve, which he has
been at great pains to stock, and he insists upon my bringing a
little army down to shoot with him over his grounds."
Reynolds saw no way out of it; in fact he quickly felt the
fascination of the proposed sport taking hold of him. He had been
shut up in the mountains for so long that the thought of a few days
with jovial companions in the open fields of the low country was like
a fragrant breath from the past.
"It is very kind of you, Mr. Noble," he at length said, "and if I
can, in your opinion, add any thing to the success of your very
attractive plan, I ought not to refuse, especially as I am hungry for
a genuine old-fashioned day with the quails."
"Good!" exclaimed the banker, again darting his soft white hand
towards Reynolds, "I am delighted. I am off now on some pressing
business; shall be glad to give you and Mr. Moreton further details
of our project in due time. Shall hope to have you both at my house
to dine before we are off for General DeKay's."
He bowed with amazing suppleness and walked swiftly from the room.
He left behind him, so to speak, lingering in the air, a suggestion
of irrepressible alertness, outrightness and vim.
"There's an old boy for you," said Moreton, resuming his seat at the
table and motioning Reynolds to do likewise. "I have never seen
another at all like him. Make a friend of him, and there's no end to
the good he will do you. There's not a doubt that he left urgent
business to come here and get me into his party. I'm delighted that
you were here, don't you know, for we'll have a rare lark. General
DeKay is one of your fine old-time Southern planters, I'm told, whose
hospitality is as broad as his fields."
"I'm a fool for consenting to join you," Reynolds bluntly exclaimed,
"but I am committed to the folly and must make the most of it."
"Since when have you come to consider a day or so behind the dogs in
good quail cover a folly?" said Moreton, with a ring of good-humored
resentment in his voice.
"You misconstrue me," replied Reynolds, "I shrink from the other
feature of the affair. I am out of society for good and all. I fear
there will be more women than dogs and quail."
Moreton laughed as a vision of Mr. Noble's charming daughter arose in
his mind. She at least would be one of the party.