SOME LIGHT TALK.
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 eyes
And the dew of her lips,
Where the moth never flies
And 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
the _elite_ of Montgomery as well as the _bon ton_ of 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
you _encore_ and----"
"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 eyes
And the dew of her lips,
Where the moth never flies
And 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 eyes
And the dew of her lips,
Where the moth never flies
And the bee never sips."