DREAMS AND PLANS.
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 the _Grand 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.