AT THE RUIN.
Reynolds had been shut away from society for so long a time that he
had returned, in a degree, to the susceptibility and receptivity of
extreme youth. We grow like what we contemplate, is a very trite
truth, and he had absorbed much of the outright simplicity of the
mountaineers, without losing any of the character he had long ago
formed. Self-knowledge may be very valuable, but self-study does not
tend always toward happiness. One might almost venture to say that,
in a vast majority of cases, serious self-analysis amounts to remorse
if nothing worse. Moreover, one usually chooses solitude in which to
erect one's furnace and laboratory of self-criticism, where one may
make the heat as high and protracted as one pleases. The result is
usually a mass of unsightly slag instead of the fine and precious
metal one has hoped to turn out. Hence it is that a hermit returning
to the world after years of seclusion and self-delusion finds it a
paradise when he had expected to see it a hell. Men and women are so
much purer and stronger and nobler than he had pictured them, and all
the ways of human social life are so much sweeter and fresher than
his diseased brain had remembered them to be, that he sloughs his
crust, like a serpent, and comes out a new man.
The doctrine that evil experiences are ever of value, or rather that
a baptism in sin ever worked a positive good to the recipient, is too
dangerous to be received; but it sometimes appears that there is an
annealing influence exerted on character by the intense heat of
uncontrollable passions, tempering it at last to the highest degree
of sensitiveness and susceptibility. Reynolds was aware, in a vague
way, of the change so rapidly going on within him. It was as if his
nature were putting forth a tremendous spurt of power with which to
eject from its tissue the evil of the old life. What a mystery there
is in remorse and repentance and reform! But how much greater the
mystery of evil, that terrible, invisible acid, combining with all
the bases of human nature and disintegrating every crystal of beauty!
How shall the stream of a life, once defiled, be purified? The
simplest reagent will disclose the presence of sin, but what process
will eliminate it?
The Hand that made the mirror must remove the spots of tarnish.
Love is always the gateway of a new life. When its purple mists and
its wafts of heavenly perfumes come upon its victim his whole nature
feels as if the ultimate sources of impulse had been cleansed,
sweetened and electrified. New needs, new aspirations, fresh hopes
and the dewy vigor of morning leap into the heart. Ah, then how
bitter is the memory of misdeeds! Just then if Satan would get
behind and forever disappear, what a relief! What a joy if all the
past could be wiped out, as with a sponge, and existence be left to
date from the advent of love!
The meeting of Reynolds and Mrs. Ransom was much more than the
ordinary contact of life with life, whereby the spark of passion is
generated; it was significant of a blending of their past experiences
as well as of the creation of a new life for both. Even on the
instant when a mutual interest was awakened, their minds flashed back
over the past. No doubt love ought to be prospective always; but it
can not often be so.
Agnes Ransom could not realize that she was a widow. It was more as
if a very sweet romance of her experience had ended in sorrow and
disappointment. She looked back upon the short space of her wedded
life with a vision dimmed by mists and shadows. She was half aware
that her nature had gained much and lost little by the experience.
It all seemed very sad to her, and yet she felt that the sadness was
rather an atmosphere of the past than of the present. It hovered
somewhere behind her, it did not affect the future. Still there was
a protest somewhere, gentle and weak, but quite troublesome, against
this new, strong, imperious, wayward love, now rising in her bosom
and anon sinking away almost into the depths out of which it had
come. She trembled sometimes with a great fear, at other times she
abandoned herself to it with a serene fullness of content.
Close to the river's bank, all overgrown with wild vines and darkly
shadowed by clustering trees, there stood, distant about a mile from
the DeKay place, an almost shapeless pile of brick and stucco, the
ruins of a once stately Southern mansion. It had been burned,
whether by accident or the work of an incendiary is not known. Some
tragic legend was connected with its history--a vague story of
hereditary feud, bloody encounter, the gloom of crime and the solemn
hush that follows after violent death. It was not a story ever told
by a DeKay, for it affected the history of the family a generation or
two ago. The very oldest negroes on the plantation knew something of
the dark outlines of the tragedy; but they had learned not to more
than vaguely hint the extent of their knowledge by equivocal
allusions and dubious generalities. The affair dated back to the
early Alabama days, when slavery was in its most prosperous state in
a financial way, and when chivalry, so-called, was at its zenith.
The ruin, with its picturesque walls overgrown with vines, was a
fitting monument of the decay of medieval customs in the South as
well as of the downfall of a once proud and in many ways brave and
generous family.
It was towards this pathetic pile that Reynolds pulled with vigorous
oar-strokes, as he and Mrs. Ransom set out upon the river from the
little landing at DeKay Place. Unconsciously and with the ease that
comes of great nervous and muscular force, made ready by his recent
years of healthful habits and out-door training, he put such impulse
into the little craft as made it leap like a skipping fish, leaving a
whirling wake behind it, gleaming and darkling in sun and shade. He
had not yet spoken of love. Indeed his heart was so full of this new
and sweetly stormy passion that he could not master it sufficiently
to clothe it in words. He was ever at the point of speaking and ever
faltering and holding back his voice. So he found a relief in great
muscular exertion. It was love thrilling along his nerves and sinews
that made his arms tireless. He felt as if each long, strong sweep
of the oars were bearing Agnes and him away from all the rest of the
world, away from the past and into a sweet, shadowy solitude like
that which the imagination has, in all ages, seen swimming on the
furthest horizon, and towards which all lovers have hopefully but
vainly steered their dream-ladened barks.
A sense of unworthiness repressed and almost smothered, a strong
conscience bound down and enveloped in the fire of passion, these
would make themselves felt in a dull, heavy, indefinite way. He
could not shake off for long at a time a consciousness that all this
deep, sweet, strong happiness flooding his soul to bursting, was
ephemeral, and would vanish at the touch of the first sinister _faux
pas_ by which the past might be uncovered.
Mrs. Ransom, in the after part of the boat, sat facing Reynolds, her
lissome figure in an attitude of almost childish carelessness and
grace. She was, apparently, as unaware of her rare charm of person
as was he of his immense physical power. It is one of the
wholesomest of out-door influences that eliminates, for the time, the
frivolous conventionalities of social life, and establishes in their
stead something of the freedom of the wind and the transparent
freshness of running water. Nature, by some occult process, reaches
our hearts and sponges off the sediment of artificial sentiment, so
that the simpler elements of life are set to work in us without any
hindrance. Given a boat, a calm, clear river, fine weather, a man
and a woman, youth, strength, health, and what an infinitude of
happiness may be expected! It is often the case that human
experience is, under such circumstances, condensed to the last degree
of denseness, or expanded to an ethereal tenuity never dreamed of in
the hot-house narrowness of city life. Out-door realities are so
strong and dreams are so wide and fair where the sun shines and the
air is full of balm and the water flows with such a liberal,
far-going murmur. Tragedy has a broader and deeper significance
enacted without any stage limitations, and comedy catches a sparkle
from the brooks and the daylight and the starlight, never reflected
from gas jets and painted backgrounds.
Very little was said between Mrs. Ransom and Reynolds in the time it
took to reach a place where they could land near the ruin, their
conversation confining itself to observations on such little
incidents as happened during their quick flight. Once a flock of
wood-ducks sprang in a rapid whirl from the water near them and
winged their way up the stream, their bright colors shining with a
peculiar twinkle, as far as the eye could follow them. Little
shadowy sandpipers ran along the sandy margins, here and there, or
flew across from bank to bank with their comical jerky motion. In
some places the reeds grew down to the water's edge in dense brakes
wherein the hermit thrush and the catbird could be seen by fitful
glimpses. The rapid movement of the boat kept changing the point of
view, and at each change some new arrangement of the trees, the cane,
the tall dry stalks of water grass or of the bold banks of the river
attracted the eye.
Reynolds felt the stimulus of his passion tingling in his blood. His
bronzed cheeks wore a faint flush and his eyes were full of earnest,
tender light. He stranded the prow of the boat on a little crescent
of sand at the foot of the bluff and helped Mrs. Ransom out. She had
directed him where to land, and now he turned to her and asked:
"Now, how shall we get up to the top of the bluff?"
"There is a sort of stairway yonder by that old tree," she answered,
pointing with her hand. "It is badly dilapidated, but we can climb
it easily."
Somewhere, not very far away, they heard the booming of General
DeKay's and Mr. Noble's guns. The sport must have been fine, for the
shooting was rapid.
They found the stair--a zig-zag flight of crazy steps, leading up to
the plateau above. In order to reach its foot, they had to stoop and
creep under the low-hanging boughs of a tree. Reynolds took hold of
her arm to help her. On a sudden impulse she freed herself from him.
A thrill had come with his touch, and something like fear took
momentary possession of her. She fled nimbly up the steps ahead of
him, as if she meant to escape him entirely. He scarcely noticed her
start and her haste, for some vines and tangled branches hindered him
and disturbed his vision. When she emerged into the sunlight of the
level space on the bluff, Mrs. Ransom stopped, ashamed of her foolish
flight, and turned about just in time to look straight into the eyes
of Reynolds, as he was surmounting the topmost steps.
"I beat you climbing," she exclaimed, her voice shaking a little from
the effect of her exertion.
"I feared you had left me for good and all," he replied; "but how
pale you are! Was your effort too violent? Are you ill?"
"Not at all," she responded, the negative phrase peculiar to the
Southern people falling with a sort of breathless readiness from her
lips. "Am I really pale?"
"Perhaps not," he said, seeing the rosy light coming into her cheeks
again. "I only imagined it; but it is a difficult place to climb,
and you came up like a bird. You shouldn't take such risks: it is
dangerous."
He looked about for the ruin. A tall, heavy chimney-stack rising
above a tangled mass of wild vines and trees answered his inquiry.
"Come this way," she said, leading on; "there is a path, further up
the slope, that goes round to the entrance."
He followed her quick movements, and soon she stopped before an
arched doorway in the old semi-circular transom of which a few pieces
of stained glass still remained. On either hand stood fragments of
stuccoed pillars all festooned with vines. She paused but for a
moment, then went under the arch and passed from roofless room to
roofless room with the swift, certain step of one quite familiar with
the place. Every where the ivy and wild grape vines had draped the
crumbling walls and heaps of rubbish, so that, in places, bowers as
fanciful as those of fairy-land, made a sweet crepuscular gloom,
though the foliage was mostly gone. He tried to reach her side, but
her quick turns and elusive movements kept her all the time just
ahead of him, and her sweet voice came back to him, as if tossed to
him over her shoulder, luring him on and on, in and out through the
labyrinth of rooms. Once she stopped for the merest moment to look
out, through a ragged opening which had once been a window, down upon
the placid face of the river. He came close to her and bent low to
gaze over her shoulder. She felt his breath on her neck.
"How lovely!" he murmured, in that deep, rich voice which always
vibrated so strangely in her ears. His moment had come.
"Lovely," she echoed, and slipped away, like some shy, wild thing
afeard of its own voice.
Reynolds was burning with a desire to speak to her of his love, and
she, hardly knowing why, felt a sweet dread of him. She tripped
along through what had been a broad hall and turned into an open
space where some of the walls had crumbled into a great heap around
the base of the stack of chimneys. Here it was that suddenly a man,
wild-eyed, shaggy-headed, ragged and gaunt, sprang up before her in a
menacing attitude with a heavy pistol in his hand. She gave one
little chirruping scream, threw up her arms and sank in a crumpled
heap to the ground. Reynolds sprang forward with a loud ejaculation.
His movement had all the appearance of a furious attack upon the
startled ruffian, who, in sheer self-defense, as he thought, raised
the pistol and fired. Reynolds felt the blow and the dull pang of
the bullet in his right shoulder. The man did not fire again, but
turned and fled through the nearest opening. It was all so sudden,
the whole thing happening within the space of half a minute, that no
one of the actors had time to get more than a glimpse of the
situation before the act was ended. The ruffian, as was afterward
ascertained, was a condemned murderer who had escaped from jail just
the night before he was to have been hanged. No doubt he was lying
asleep when the approach of Mrs. Ransom startled him, and thinking it
was an attempt to recapture him, he had fired and fled. The sound of
the shot roused Mrs. Ransom from her half swoon and she leaped to her
feet. Reynolds put forth his hand and touched her on the arm.
"Be calm--don't get scared, I can protect you," he said, but he could
not see her. A cloud was in his eyes and a reeling sensation in his
brain.
She looked up into his face and saw how deathly white it was.
"Are you hurt?" she quaveringly asked, taking a step nearer him.
He mumbled some unintelligible answer, felt blindly about in the air
with his hands, staggered, gasped hoarsely, and fell at full length
upon the ground, face-downward, arms outspread, and lay quite still.
Suddenly, to Mrs. Ransom, the silence of the place became awful,
dense, impenetrable. She screamed, but her voice seemed not to go a
yard from her lips. She stood for a moment with clenched hands, her
face pinched and thin, her eyes fixed upon the prostrate form of
Reynolds; then she threw herself down beside him and tried with all
her might to turn him so that she could see his features; but he was
so heavy and she so weak that her effort was vain. She called for
help until her voice became thick with hoarseness.
"Oh, is he dead?" she wailed, "is he dead? Oh, won't some one come!
Must he die now! Oh, and I love him so--love him so!"
It was as if her grieving words called him back from lifelessness,
for he moaned, sighed deeply, and by a violent struggle turned
himself on his side with his face toward her. He opened his eyes and
looked inquiringly at her for a time, then he closed them with a
weak, tremulous motion of the lids. She clasped his head in her
arms, and summoning all her strength, lifted it upon her lap. The
blood was beginning to ooze through his saturated clothes and trickle
on the ground beside him. It almost crazed her to see this, but she
was as powerless as a child to help him. She could but bend over
him, and, brushing the dark heavy hair back from his forehead, where
cold beads of sweat had risen, kiss him again and again in the
ecstasy of her excitement. He was not unconscious now, but he was
limp and nerveless, his immense vitality slowly gathering itself for
the effort to recover equilibrium. Faint almost unto death as he
was, he felt the thrill her kisses sent throughout his frame, and he
did not note the pain of his ugly wound.
"Oh, you must not die, you must not die!" she wailed, in a sobbing
voice. "Open your eyes for my sake, John--for my sake, do you hear,
for I love you so!"
He heard every word, but he could not open his eyes or move his lips,
though slowly and surely his strength was coming back, despite the
rapid loss of blood.
The pistol ball was a very large one and it had made a bad, almost
fatal wound, having passed through his shoulder and a part of his
chest, barely missing the lung. The shock had had a paralyzing
effect, causing the insensibility from which he was rallying.
It was a striking picture they made grouped against the dark
back-ground of the old wall, with the dim light falling over them.
If a broken spear and a cloven helmet had rested hard by, it would
have served well for a tableau of medieval days, a lady nursing the
head of her fallen knight within the crumbling ruins of some battered
castle.
"Why _did_ we ever come here! Oh, love, my own love, open your eyes!
Speak to me: say you will not die, you will not die!"
Her words, so insistent, so despairing and so passionate, filled his
consciousness with an all-satisfying sense of happiness. He could
scarcely understand why she should not be willing to let him lie
quietly and listen to her, for he had not recovered himself
sufficiently to be able to grasp the reality of her suffering or of
his own condition.
"Speak to me, speak to me," she kept reiterating, until at last, like
one freeing himself reluctantly from a sweet dream, he moved his
lips, making no sound at first, but presently saying:
"Where are you, Agnes?"
His voice was so strange and so low that she could not catch his
words. She bowed her head so that her face almost touched his.
"What is it--what did you say?" she tenderly asked.
He put up his left hand and swept it over her cheek and down along
her shoulder. Then, as his wound began to pain him, he groaned in a
suppressed way.
"What ails me? What--ah, the shot--he hit me, I know--I remember
now," he said, beginning to gather strength. "Let me sit up."
With a strong effort he raised himself to a sitting posture and
smiled feebly.
"I have called and called, but no one will come. What shall we do?"
she cried, wringing her hands and gazing helplessly at him. "Oh, why
did we ever come here?"
"Be calm, darling," he said, looking fondly at her, the wan smile on
his face growing more intense. "I will show you that I am a man
worthy of your love." Then he arose and stood up, tall and beautiful
in his strength, before her, seeming to defy his wound and its pain,
though his face was pale as death.
"Come," he added, "let us go to the boat and return to the house.
Come, I am strong now, and I love you, Agnes, my own little
woman--come with me."
He caught her with his unhurt arm and drew her hard against his side.
With a swift, firm tread he went with her down to the landing, never
faltering or wavering until he had fixed himself in the stern of the
boat and directed her how to paddle out to the middle of the stream.
All this time he had been losing blood and his pain had been
excruciating. He had made a grand effort, and now the reaction came
with a power that he could not resist. He sank back with his head
resting on his arm and lay there as white and lifeless as if dead.
She thought him dead, and sat there numb and motionless, letting the
boat drift with the gentle current. Every thing about her appeared
shadowy, misty, unreal. Her heart scarcely beat. Why was it that,
in the midst of this awful trial, there came to her mind a vivid
memory of the short romance of her married life down on the old
plantation by Mariana? Some of those days were dreamily happy ones
with her wild boy husband--the days before discontent and trouble
came. Why would the reckless blue eyes and curling, yellow hair
waver before her, between the strong, pallid features of this man
whom she now loved with such fervor?
Slowly the boat drifted on in the sunlight, between the reed-covered
banks, bearing its strange load down toward the DeKay place. It was
a dark touch with which to end so charming an idyl as the past few
days had been; but life in the South favors the tragic and the
melodramatic: it is the life of passion and of sudden changes.