WHITHER?
"Drive fast, Dan, I am in a great hurry," said Reynolds, as the mares
again moved gently along the road in the direction of Montgomery.
The negro waved his whip above the backs of the spirited animals,
starting them into a rapid trot. The wheels made little noise on the
light sandy surface over which they whirled. Reynolds sat bolt
upright, looking neither to the right nor to the left, his vision
introverted. He was calm as marble, so far as outward appearance
went, and inwardly there was no commotion, but a cold, dull,
smothering sense of defeat and despair.
The woods on either side of the road were dull and soundless, save
that, where the tall clumps of pines shot above the rest of the
trees, their tops let fall a mellow roar which the slightest breeze
has power to awaken in their frondous meshes.
The negro presently began to sing, in a strangely melodious
undertone, an old, old Alabama ditty;
"Oh, poor Lucy Neal,
Oh, poor Lucy Neal,
And if I had you by my side,
How happy I would feel!"
Reynolds started, clenched his hands and began to breathe hard.
"Dan," he cried, "drive back, drive back, I can't bear it!"
Dan pulled up the mares and turned round in his seat:
"What yo' say, boss?" he inquired, touching his hat and but half
repressing his surprise.
"Turn round and drive back. Be quick, make them go: do you hear?"
"Yah, sah," answered Dan. A flush had sprung into Reynolds' cheeks
in response to his sudden resolve. How could he ever have thought of
abandoning her in this cowardly way? She is mine, he thought, she
loves me, he has no right to her now: I will go back and claim my own
with a force that shall be irresistible.
"Drive faster, Dan, do you hear, drive faster!"
"Yah, sah, boss."
The mares put themselves forth to their utmost, gladly reaching back
toward home. For a minute or two Reynolds was wholly in the power of
this new mood. But it passed as suddenly as it had come, and again,
with redoubled weight, the load of despair returned.
"Hold up, Dan, hold up!"
"Yah, sah." Dan once more brought the equipage to a standstill.
Flickering expressions of hesitancy, faltering and giving up of hope,
played for a brief space of time on Reynolds' face, before he could
say:
"Turn again: drive to Montgomery."
"By jiffs!" muttered Dan, sotto voce, "is de boss done gone
'stracted?"
He obeyed the order, however, not caring to risk the consequences of
any open symptoms of disapproval. He was well aware that a storm was
pent up in Reynolds' bosom, and he dreaded lest the slightest slip
should turn its blasts and buffets loose upon him.
"Faster, can't you, Dan?" urged the heavy rasping voice behind him,
and the half-frightened negro touched the spirited team with the
whip. Away they flew, at what horsemen call a three-minute pace,
flashing through the spaces of sunshine and sweeping over the long
stretches of shade, until the open country was again reached, where,
between straggling worm fences, the road cut across vast fertile
plantations.
At length in the distance, crowning a swell of billowy, irregular
land, Montgomery appeared, with its clay-red streets slanting up
between long lines of gnarled trees and its house-roofs and
church-spires struggling through the greenery of vines and orchards,
and the gloom of old dusky groves. On the highest point the grayish
white, rectangular capitol, with its heavy columns and diminutive
windows, gleamed bare and almost barn-like, in contrast with the
embowered and picturesque residences surrounding it.
Just before they entered a street of the city, they met Beresford and
another gentleman going toward the country in an open road wagon.
They had their guns and dogs. Beresford bowed and lifted his hat.
Reynolds returned the salute, rather from force of habit than from
any real notice given to the courtesy, but the incident took his
thoughts back past the drear defeat of to-day, to the sweet victory
of that short period now glimmering as if on the uttermost horizon of
memory.
"Drive directly to the railroad depot, Dan," he said, and all the way
through the city he sat calmly erect, like some thoughtful
professional man going to his office.
It was some time past noon when they reached the station and there
was no train until after nightfall.
Reynolds gave Dan a liberal reward in money.
"Good-by, Dan," he said, "don't drive the mares so fast going back:
they appear tired."
"Pow'ful hard on 'em, boss, a rushin' 'em disway an' dat way an' a
makin' 'em go der bes' licks all de way, up hill an' down. By jiffs,
but I's erfeared dey'd drap afo' dey got yer, boss!"
Reynolds turned away and began walking back and forth on the station
platform. A beautiful reach of the Alabama river lay in full view,
under high bluffs of chocolate-colored clay, and the breeze came over
the water sweet and cool.
Dan mounted to his seat and prepared to drive up into the city, where
he intended to get something to eat for himself and horses.
"Hold a moment," called Reynolds, taking a pencil and a small
memorandum-book from his pocket, "wait till I write a few words." He
began rapidly writing, then stopped and tore up the leaf, looked
aimlessly about for a time and turned abruptly off, saying in a
strangely dry voice:
"Never mind: good-by, Dan."
The carriage rolled away, the sound of its wheels on the street
coming back to his ears in gradually diminishing clacks, reminding
him that the last fragile link that had connected him with the old
plantation was broken. He walked across the railroad tracks and sat
down on a breezy point of the bluff overhanging the river. There was
something in the river, there was something in the wind, the water,
the sky and the wide horizon that cooled the fever in his blood for
the time and set his brain to work with less confusion. His long
years of hermit life had developed in him the habit of self-communion
to such an extent that it required solitude to reduce his distracted
faculties to something near their normal relations. We who view from
the mere artist's standpoint the operations of those influences that
control the destinies of men, sometimes see a hideous stroke of humor
in the doings of fate. Tragedy and comedy lie so close to each
other, that a mere change of intonation in the reading of a line may
determine the difference between them. So, in reality, what under
one light is incomparably tragic may, under another, appear trivial
and almost comic. Beresford's failure with Agnes Ransom, though just
as final and conclusive, seems a small thing beside the overwhelming
disaster that fell upon Reynolds in the same field, and yet one might
say: failure can go no further than failure: Beresford lost all,--how
could Reynolds lose more? Is it really a more hopeless and tragic
thing to love and be loved and lose than to love and not be loved and
lose? Was it the difference between the men, or the circumstances,
that enabled Beresford to take pleasure in a friend, his dogs and his
gun, whilst Reynolds sat dreary-hearted, wretched, unconsolable, with
folded hands and bowed head, alone by the river? This set of
questions may not be solved by any artistic analysis. The solution
is in the bold impression of the facts caught at a glance by every
one who has any considerable reach of human sympathy.
When at last Reynolds grew calm enough to examine the situation
somewhat in the light of cold reason, he saw that Agnes, not himself,
must bear the heaviest load of any one connected therewith. He knew
that she loved him and that, loving him, she would devote the rest of
her life to one whom she could not love, but to whom the laws of man
and of duty, and every dictate of a pure conscience, bound her.
Viewing it thus, his life seemed to end in a _cul-de-sac_. It had
been a barren life, for the most part, so far, even worse than
barren; it had been evil in no small degree. Conscience leaped upon
him and shook him as a wild beast shakes and worries its prey. He
felt its fangs and welcomed the agony they inflicted, as a relief
from the terrible numbness that had taken possession of him and
beside which any pain was pleasure.
It was almost dark when he went back to the station and entered the
little waiting-room, where Dan had deposited his traveling-bag, and
sat down on a bench to wait for the train. Several persons were
there, impatient to be going, as travelers by rail usually are, but
Reynolds was not in sympathy with their mood. He felt no concern
about the train, whether ten minutes or ten hours late. Why should
he not be just as content while waiting for a train as while doing
any thing else? What more interest was it to him to be going than it
was to be staying? The thought of the cabin and its household, of
White's oddities and humorous absurdities, and of Milly's faithful
patience and plebeian sweetness and sincerity, did not draw him: in
fact it repelled him. Why go back there at all? Why not go to
England and join Moreton, or to Egypt and engage with Doctor Blank
(another friend of his) in his scientific explorations? Then again
came conscience, with waving mane and flaming eyes, roaring and
baring its fangs. He could see no promise of escape from the
torment. But why should he struggle? He got up and walked to and
fro, as did the other restless waiters for the train. Strange what
tricks the brain plays under every sort of strain and torture. The
turmoil of his thoughts, like some tempest-tumbled sea, kept tossing
lightly on its surface as the sea might have tossed a cork, those
simple rhymes about
"The light of her eyes
And the dew of her lips,
Where the moth never flies
And the bee never sips."
He could not help it, any more than he could calm the awful
underswell of despair. He was far from feeling any presence of good
in all this agony. No sense of a coming purification, as a result of
the heat to which his soul was subjected. That his nature was giving
way before the intense blast of the furnace, he may have known, but
he had no thought of any separation of the little gold of good from
the mass of evil. How could he ever again think of trying to do
good? What a life of heavenly happiness he had just missed! He
clung desperately to the sensuous picture his memory kept before him,
reveling in the torture it generated. No thought of the future
entered his mind, unless the form of poor little Milly, which now and
again appeared to him, might be called a thought. From the outlines
of her supple figure and haunting face he shrank with an inward
shudder. Then suddenly, by some obscure cerebral operation, a
glimpse, momentary but thrillingly sharp and clear, disclosed to him
that other extreme of his situation. What a vast arc between the two
confines of oscillation! Agnes Ransom, Milly White! Now, at last,
he felt himself shriveling and wasting in the fire, as the blast from
the tuyeres of God's furnace was doubled and trebled. He began to
imagine how it all was to end, while some strange, thrilling whisper
suggested the outlines of duty. Duty! what did he care for duty!
Why should he, whose sweetest hopes had been dissipated by this
breath of providence, have any care for the happiness of others? But
his rebellion was weak. He arose, as the cars came crashing up to
the station, and prepared himself for he knew not what. Almost any
thing would be welcome. There seemed to be no place for him save the
barren, dreary cabin in the mountains. As he realized this, once
more his old arrogant nature flared up. "I will not go there," he
thought, and his cheeks flushed. "I will not be the dupe of
circumstance. I will go to the ends of the earth first."
Nevertheless, he went aboard the train and took his seat in a car
which was well filled with happy tourists returning to their Northern
homes. The first person upon whom his eyes chanced to fall was Miss
Crabb. She was busy with her note-book and pencil, her chin drawn
down and her brow con tracted with intense thought. He shrank from
her, as from something unbearable, and forthwith slipped away into
another car.