AT THE GATE.
Reynolds started to go on foot to White's cabin among the mountains.
His immediate purpose was to arrange for sending his dogs down to
Birmingham in a few days, in order that they might be ready for the
trip to General DeKay's. He was glad of this excuse for getting away
for a time from the town, out into the woods, where he might try to
understand himself; for he was in a mood very different from any he
had experienced in the last six years, and in fact very different
from any he ever before had realized. Since the evening of Mr.
Noble's dinner a change had been going on within him. It was as if
some reservoir of feeling, hitherto sealed up, had been tapped, from
which a rare sensation had diffused itself throughout his being,
mildly thrilling his nerves and vaguely firing his blood. He could
trace this change to no definite source, nor could he be sure whether
it tended toward some new and brighter phase of his variable life, or
toward some lurking evil. He felt the pressure of a doubtful
presentiment, as all strongly imaginative natures at times do, and in
the midst of a vivid sense of pleasure there hovered a dim shadow of
dread.
It was in the twilight following an unusually warm day, that he
turned aside from the highway to follow a trail leading over a spur
of the mountain on the further side of which stood White's cabin.
The stars were already coming out in the soft, southern sky, and a
slender moon hung half-way down the west. The air was fragrant with
the keen essence of resin and the balsam of pine leaves, but there
was scarcely more than a mere breath astir among the frondous groves.
He walked rapidly, unconsciously timing his strides to the pulses of
his mood. Why would the voice of Miss Noble keep ringing in his
ears, and her earnest, honest eyes keep looking straight into his
with some almost imperceptible shadow of rebuke in them? And why did
the poor little face of Milly White now and again force itself upon
his inner vision? He could hardly be called morbidly sensitive, but
he had been for so long a time shut away from the finer and sweeter
social influences. Somewhat a dreamer, too, as are all persons who
dwell apart with nature and art. Since his hermit life began he had
been a contributor, under a _nom de plume_, to a number of English
and American publications, both as an artist and as a writer, so that
he had divided his time between the pleasures of the sportsman and
the milder excitements of the provincial magazineist. He had fancied
for a long time that he was happy, and that all the fascination of
woman's charms had ceased for him. Now as he strode along he was
loth to admit, even in the secrecy of self-communion, that the old
influence was taking hold again with a zest as fresh as it was keen
and deep. He stopped at the highest point reached by the sinuous
trail and sat down upon a stone. The tall, puffy column of black
smoke from the iron furnaces rose slantingly against the line of sky
above the valley where the town lay. In another direction, beyond a
dusky gulch, some lines of fire were burning along the mountain
sides, like the lights of an army camp. He tried to analyze his
feelings, but the effort was futile; he got up and went on down to
the cabin, his blood tingling as if with wine.
The moon had fallen to the western mountain-tops and was touching a
peak with its delicate horn when he reached the rustic gate. Milly
was there, as was her wont, to welcome him home.
"I knowed 'at ye'd come," she said, "fur I dremp last night at ye was
dead an' 'at's a sign, ye know."
Her face, upturned to his, caught from the faint moonlight, or from
some other heavenly reflection, a gleam of peaceful happiness that
added something which Reynolds never before had seen there, or if
ever he had seen it, it was when, a mere child, she had so faithfully
hung over him and tended him through a long and almost fatal illness.
The memory of her untiring patience and gentleness, her quick sense
of his needs and her silent but evidently deep joy at his final
recovery, now suddenly rushed upon him.
"I've ben a wushin' ye'd come an' I'm so glad!" she murmured, as she
opened the gate for him. "Hit air so lonesome when ye'r away."
Her lithe, plump figure was clothed in a clinging gown of cotton
stuff and a white kerchief was pinned about her throat. Down over
her shoulders in a long, rather thin brush fell her rimpled pale
yellow hair. Her cheeks glowed and her lips had on them the dew of
innocent and, alas, ignorant maidenhood. A flash of recognition
leaped into the mind of Reynolds, though he was scarcely conscious of
it, and Milly White's strange beauty was no longer invisible to him.
"Ye ortn't to stay away so long," she added, not in rebuke, but in a
low, quavering voice like that of some happy bird. Her mountain
dialect, crabbed as it appears in writing, added emphasis to the
fresh, half wild tenderness of her tones.
All around the woods and little broken fields were dim and silent.
The warm southern stars burned overhead and the fitful balmy air
crept past with furtive whispers. The moon slipped down behind the
mountain, leaving on the peak a delicate wavering ghost that slowly
vanished into the common haze of the night. Reynolds paused in the
little gateway and looked down into Milly's lifted shining face. In
that instant a tender feeling, a subtle sense of some obscure but
immediate draught upon the inner sources of his passionate nature,
took complete possession of him. The touching sweetness of her face,
the wild grace of her form, and that charming expression of strength
and development, impressed him. He forgot the cabin, the pinched and
sapless mountain life and all its empty hopelessness. For the time
he saw nothing but Milly as his over-stimulated imagination lighted
her face and form with the allurements of irresistible beauty. He
stooped, and, swiftly folding her in his arms, kissed her
passionately.
"Oh!" she cried, her voice slipping with sharp sweetness away through
the dusky woods. It was like the quick musical chirp of a glad bird.
She clung to him with strong, loving arms.
[Illustration: Her voice was like the quick musical chirp of a glad
bird. She clung to him with strong, loving arms. _Page 68_.]
He let her go presently and said:
"It is late for you to be out; come in now, the night air is
beginning to be chilly and you'll catch a cold."
"Oh, no!" she naïvely responded, "let's us stay out yer, they're a
smokin' in ther, an' hit's so nice ter be out yer." Her mountain
dialect, as filtered through her pure, peculiarly musical voice, lost
all its harshness and became a fitting expression of a part of the
fascinating enigma of her character. "Ye'v' ben away so long, John,
an' sometimes I wus afeared to go er-sleep 'cause ye wus gone, an'
'cause I'd dream ye wus dead."
"Well, come in now," he gently urged, drawing the long pale brush of
her hair through his hand and passing on into the cabin.
She looked after him, the smile slowly fading out of her face and
giving place to that half-vacant, mildly hopeless expression which it
usually wore. She put her rather large but finely chiseled hands on
top of her head, with the fingers laced together, and with her elbows
extended gazed listlessly at the sky. She felt a vague sense of
disappointment blended with a delicious happiness. When Reynolds
entered the cabin, White and his wife were leaning over a mere
pretense of fire and smoking their pipes, with such abandonment to
the luxury that they merely glanced at him as he entered; but
mountain politeness overcame the tobacco at last, and they got up,
greeting him warmly. He shook hands with them in turn, asking about
their health, but declined to sit down, preferring after a few
commonplace inquiries, to go into his own room and be alone.
His first sensation on entering his apartment was one of disgust at
its rough and uninviting aspect. Indirectly the question was
assailing him: why had he ever been content in such a place? A query
of this nature may arise in one's mind without any definite form,
impressing itself by a sort of implication and indirect reflection
from a throng of comparisons involuntarily and almost unconsciously
made. Reynolds' nature was intensely virile, his passions powerful
and his imagination tropical. It goes with the saying that his
feelings and tastes were subject to violent and sudden changes. He
usually had, however, perfect self-control and an outward appearance
of calmness under the most trying circumstances. But let the
check-rein once break and his fiery passions get control of the bit,
then nothing that passion demands could escape him. He was aware of
this; he knew the need of self-restraint, for at the bottom his was a
noble soul, full of self-sacrifice and generous, liberal manliness.
On the floor by his easel lay a scrap of white paper with something
scrawled upon it. He picked it up mechanically and saw that Milly
had been trying to copy the dog-sketch that still rested on the
easel. It was a poor, crude scratch, such as a little child might
have accomplished, showing in its stiff, hesitating lines the
limitations of the girl's vague notion of art. He smiled at this
evidence of the first stirrings of culture in a handful of almost
barren soil. Art is forever dropping seeds that germinate under all
the exigencies of weather. Few of the shootlets live to show more
than a tender point above the surface of the ground, but their number
is legion and each spike gives to the air an infinitesimal trace of
fragrance which cheers us as we breathe.
While he stood looking at her work, Milly came into the room through
a doorway that led from the kitchen. He was still smiling when he
looked towards her and said:
"Did you draw this, Milly?"
She put her hands over her face and leaned against the wall. The
light from a large lamp on the table gave to her figure the effect of
a strong sketch in charcoal. He noted her attitude with an artist's
eye, and with a man's eyes, too. There was a bird-like grace in the
droop of her shoulders and in the fine curves of her body and limbs.
Her flaxen hair gave forth just a modicum of golden light.
He did not repeat his inquiry. Something in her appearance checked
him. All that Moreton had said about her came into his mind with
almost startling force. How clearly he felt now the dryad-like
strength of her figure, and the infantile purity of her face. She
had the soul of a woman, too, for how tenderly she had nursed him.
"Get me my slippers, please, Milly," he presently said, more to break
up the situation than with a desire to be served.
She let fall her hands and sprang to obey him, with the noiseless
swiftness of a kitten. She fetched his slippers, and also his
dressing gown, from a corner of the room. This done she lingered
near him for awhile, as if hoping he might need some further help.
She would not look straight at him now, but kept her face half turned
away, glancing sidewise under her drooping eyelids, one hand
fluttering idly about the kerchief at her throat.
Some one lifted the latch of the door leading to the room in which
White and his wife were smoking. At the first click Milly darted
noiselessly into the kitchen. It was White, who hesitatingly thrust
his head past the door-post and said:
"I loaded three hunderd carterges fur the twelve-bore gun."
"Load a hundred for the twenty-gauge, if you please," said Reynolds,
"two and a half drams of powder and three-quarters of an ounce of
number eight shot. Put two wads on the powder, don't forget."
"All right, sir, I air 'quainted wuth jest what ye want. Them
shells'll be fixed up jest to the dot. Ye orter see them air dogs,
they shine same like they'd ben 'iled."
"Thank you, I'm glad of that. Good night," said Reynolds, anxious to
get back to his thoughts.
White withdrew his head.
Milly, from the shadows of the kitchen, gazed fixedly at Reynolds, as
he stood in the mellow light of the lamp.
He was, indeed, a man pleasing to look upon, strong, tall, nobly
proportioned, with a grand head and a dark, handsome face. His limbs
were long and muscular, his shoulders square and broad, his chest
deep, his waist rather slender, his whole bearing that of a man by
birth and of right a gentleman, and by reason of health and training
an athlete. Say what we may, such a man bears about with him a power
of fascination, a magnetism able to work great good or great evil or
both. He is a flame in which a soul may be warmed or burned up,
according to circumstances. A girl of Milly's ignorance and
inexperience had nothing to protect her from such danger as his
influence might bring. She would have gone unhesitatingly to any
length he might have asked, without the slightest thrill of doubt or
fear. Hers was not a nature capable of much expansion or
improvement. A long line of mountain ancestors had fixed in her the
hereditary simpleness, narrowness and mental barrenness of the
Sandlapper; but along with these limitations had come the gift of a
flower-like beauty of form and face, and a voice sweeter than any
bird's. She had come up in a wild, lonely way, running free in wind
and sun and rain, quite illiterate, utterly unaware of conventional
proprieties, truthful, honest, affectionate, passionate, after a
fashion, and as independent as any deer in the woods.
It would not be making the statement too strong to say that Reynolds
came to a discovery of her striking beauty as one comes upon those
haunting visions of loveliness in one's dreams. Why had he not
noticed it before? He was vaguely aware that in some way Cordelia
Noble had opened his eyes by stirring up the stagnant fountains of
his nature and setting old currents to flowing in his veins. Her
light girlish prattle had fallen into his ears with the effect that a
shower produces on parched and withered sod, and it had had the charm
of bird-songs after a long, dreary winter.
He remained at the cabin several days before the time came for going
to General DeKay's, and it was in some way soothing and restful to
have Milly shyly hovering around him. He did not fully realize how
deeply he was absorbed in studying her face, her form, her free, wild
grace of motion and attitude, and the strange, crude music of her
voice. She followed him wherever he went, or at least whenever he
would permit it, content to be near him, like some faithful animal.
She had always acted thus, but he never had noticed it before.
When at last the time arrived for his departure for General DeKay's,
Reynolds rose early in the morning to get ready for the little
journey. The DeKay place was down on the Alabama river, near
Montgomery, and the company from Birmingham would go by rail to the
former city, where General DeKay would have carriages for them. The
fact is that Reynolds had no physical preparations to make, these
having all been attended to with shrewd faithfulness by White; but
there was a sort of indefinable dread, or aversion, or some other
objection hovering in his mind in connection with the thought of
leaving his retirement, his hermitage, and floating out once more
upon the open sea of life. In the early gray of morning he crept
silently from the cabin and walked or rather climbed to the mountain
top and sat down on a stone with his face to the east. He had spent
a restless night, indulging, between snatches of unrefreshing sleep,
regret, remorse, repentance and other nightmares of conscience. He
had almost involuntarily sought this high perch overlooking all the
country round, as if expecting to be purified by the soft rare
atmosphere and the exhilarating wildness and freshness of the view.
The east was all aglow with the wonder of sunrise, whilst the valley
wherein Birmingham lay was shrouded in a mottled cloak of coal smoke
from the furnaces. The foot-hills, clothed in their bristling pines
and ragged scrub-oaks, were softened almost into tenderness by the
blueish film hovering over them. A dewy coolness and sweetness came
up on the morning wind as if out of the lowest stratum of the valley,
in strong contrast with the absolute dryness of the stony mountain
top. Slowly the fire of the sunrise increased in the filmy east
until the great morning-gate seemed suddenly to fly open with a wide
upward flare of flame and long, glowing spears of gold reaching out
across the valley and billowy foot-hills. Reynolds was in a
condition that demanded solitude, and yet he felt no definite purpose
in the mood, no clear reason for desiring to be alone. It filled him
with a sudden annoyance when a slight sound caused him to turn and
see Milly standing close by, bare-headed and smiling radiantly. He
frowned.
"What are you here for, Milly?" he demanded sternly. "Go back
immediately."
The girl did not speak. The light went out of her face and a strange
grayness overspread it instead. She turned about with a shrinking
motion and walked slowly away down the steep slope of the mountain
into the straggling wood. Almost immediately Reynolds felt how
brutal his act had been and regretted it, hated himself for it. He
arose as if to follow her, but faltered and hesitated, allowing his
eyes to wander over the grand mountain landscape now flooded with the
full light of the sun. What sort of change was this that was coming
into his life? Something like a warning shadow had fallen into his
soul, and yet some sweet foreboding was with it, some tender, subtle
charm luring him with a deep and sweet fascination. He stood a while
gazing dreamily, but seeing nothing, then, shaking himself as one
freeing himself from slumber, he walked rapidly in the direction
taken by Milly. Half way down the slope in a shadowy clump of dwarf
pines he found the girl sitting on an old log, her face buried in her
hands, sobbing bitterly. He stopped close to her and stood for a
moment looking at her. How pitiful a picture she made, with her
drooping little form, almost covered by the thin gold veil of bright
disheveled hair, outlined against a tangle of broken boughs! He sat
down beside her and took one of her wet little hands in his.