Читать книгу Milly - Maurice Thompson - Страница 4

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That was a rain long to be remembered by the dwellers in the Sand Mountain country. The thunder with which the storm had been heralded soon ceased, and the masses of black clouds spread themselves wide, softening into a smooth, leaden-colored sheet from horizon to horizon, whilst the rain, driven by a throbbing wind, trailed in a wavering flood over the rugged landscape. Every ravine and rocky gully became a torrent of muddy water. The noises of the storm united into a wide bellowing that throbbed heavily around the house whose friendly shelter Moreton was but too glad to retain.

The inmates of the place were not over-talkative, sitting for most of the time listening with rather solemn attention to the heavy beating of the wind and rain.

After an hour had passed and Moreton's clothes had dried somewhat, he was glad to accept his host's invitation to go into the Colonel's part of the house. The glimpse he had caught of this sumptuous-looking room—sumptuous as compared with the rest of the uncouth, scantily furnished house—had set him to wondering what it could mean. As he passed through the low door-way the girl sprang up from a stool in front of an easel that stood near the middle of the floor. Her face was burning with the flush of one surprised in an act of the most furtive nature. Moreton paused, feeling with quick certainty how deeply he was embarrassing her. She turned her large eyes on him with a startled, momentary stare, and letting fall a charcoal pencil, fairly ran out of the room, carrying with her what appeared to be a small block of drawing paper. On the easel was an unfinished but powerful sketch of a large pointer dog. The room was littered with evidences of artistic and literary labor and recreation. The walls were lined with books. In the corners stood guns, fishing rods and other implements of sport by flood and field. On a table was a fine microscope, a tiny crucible and a blow-pipe. A pair of slippers sat on the broad hearth, and a sober-looking dressing-gown lay across a chair. Evidently the Colonel was a man who knew how to take his ease in his inn.

Moreton passed along by the book-shelves, glancing at the titles of the books, finding side by side the works of Stuart Mill and the poems of Andre Chenier, the novels of George Eliot and the rhymes of Jasmin the Troubadour, volumes of La Place, Goethe and Newton set among the stories of Thomas Hardy and William Black, whilst the poems of Longfellow and Tennyson and Keats were shoulder to shoulder with the latest fictions of Zola and Daudet. Copies of magazines and weekly literary and art journals were scattered promiscuously about in the room.

"The Colonel he air a outdacious quare man," said White, who had followed Moreton into the room, "but what he don't know hit ain't wo'th a knowin', though I can't jest see what good hit's a doin' of him. S'pose hit's fun for 'im, mebbe, to set here a drawin' of picters an' a writin' an' a paintin' an' all that air sort o' doin's. But then ef he wants to, an' he pays me for the use o' my house, hit's all proper I s'pect. Then he's all over a gentleman, the Colonel air, a perfect gentleman, with a heart es big es a fodder-stack."

"Does the Colonel make this his permanent home?" inquired Moreton, taking up a volume bound in old black leather, and glancing at its title page, on a space of which was written in a rather small but decidedly masculine hand, the name: John Mercer Reynolds.

"Fur more'n six years he's been right here constant, 'ceptin' when he'd go off for a while seein' to 'is business an' sich. Thet's 'is name ther' wher'yer a readin' in the book. I can't read no writin', but I know 'at hit's 'is name, though; Colonel John M. Reynolds, haint hit?"

Moreton made no reply; he was looking at the name in a musing way, his brows slightly contracted. Presently he turned to White and said:

"Where is Mr. Reynolds?"

"The Colonel he went out a huntin' this mornin' an' he haint come back yet. He'll be in 'fore long, a drippin' like a ash-hopper an' es wet es a swamp," answered White. Then, after a moment's pause he looked quizzically at Moreton and added:

"Ye don't hev any 'quaintance of the Colonel, hev ye?"

"I am not sure. The name is that of a friend of mine whom I have not seen for years. Is he tall and dark with deep gray eyes and—"

"Yes, sir, he air that kind of a man, an' he air fine-lookin' an' handsome an' hes ben all over ever' wher' an' knows all about most ever' thing an' ever' body. Yes, sir, that air Colonel he air a outdacious fine man."

"Yes, yes, he is, no doubt," Moreton responded absently, really quite unaware of what he was saying. His memory was busy with things of the past. Was it possible that he had thus again accidentally stumbled upon Reynolds? Of all the men he ever had met he liked Reynolds best. The very name had its fascination, just as something in the man himself had its mysterious charm, disconnected from any social, moral or intellectual attractiveness.

"Where did Mr. Reynolds come from when he came here?" he demanded, coming suddenly and wholly back to himself and looking at White who had begun to move away.

"The Colonel he kem f'm—kem f'm—f'm—I couldn't say e'zactly wher' the Colonel kem f'm; but som'ers in furren parts, I'm sartaing of thet."

"Six years ago, I think you told me."

"Yes, a leetle the rise of six. The Colonel he kem yer in Septem'er."

"Sings well, the Colonel, does he?"

"Sing! dern, but ye orter heer 'im, strenger. He ken beat a meth'dis' nigger all to striffins. He air a singer for ter mek yer hair stan', the Colonel air."

"Plays superbly on the guitar?"

"On the git-tar? Yer may say he does, strenger. When he plays onto the git-tar, I calls hit a pickin' onto the git ther', and the Colonel he ken git ther' with the bes' chunes 'at ever split the wind, dead sartaing."

White's sallow face betrayed, as he finished speaking, a perfect faith in the legitimacy of his humor, and Moreton felt bound to laugh.

At this point the girl came shyly to the door and said:

"Pap, dinner air ready."

Moreton could not refrain from looking boldly, even searchingly, into that sweet, innocent, half-vacant face. He felt an obscure pang enter his breast, as if in some way her pathetic, hopeless prettiness accused him. She was probably sixteen, and, though rather slight, remarkably well-formed and graceful. Her scant, coarse drapery served to indicate more than to hide her body's curves and the outlines of her supple limbs. It was her face, however, that had in it the power of leaving in Moreton's memory a haunting, elusive impression that would not go out. She did not take a seat with her parents and their guest at the table, but filled the place of serving maid, passing silently behind their chairs, offering the dishes of ill-cooked coarse food and anticipating with swift movements the needs of each.

"Ef the Colonel wus here now," said White, poising a piece of fried bacon between his plate and his mouth, "ye'd never git him to eat this yere kind er victuals. Nary time, sir. He'd hev br'iled chicken, er squir'l, an' white bread an' milk an' I don't know what all. The Colonel he air high tony dinktom 'bout what he chaws, le' me tell ye. He keeps a lot o' wine in 'is closet, 'an hit air outdacious fine liquor, too."

Moreton, whose eyes followed Milly at every fair opportunity, saw her lean over White's chair and heard her say in a low, earnest tone:

"Hush, Pap, John he wudn' like hit ef ye said so much 'bout his doin's. I wush ye'd keep still 'bout him anyhow."

It was little more than a pretense of eating with Moreton. The corn bread, collards, sweet potatoes and fat fried bacon, which were to be washed down with bitter coffee, did not suit his English appetite. Then, too, he was so busy with the thought of Reynolds and so troubled by the wistful face of this strangely beautiful mountain girl, that even the choicest dinner might not have tempted him.

The rain held on steadily until far along in the afternoon. Reynolds did not come, and when Moreton saw the clouds breaking away in the west, and heard the swash of the shower slowly sinking into a desultory pattering on the cabin roof, he sat down at the Colonel's desk and wrote a short note as follows:

"MY DEAR REYNOLDS:

"If I am not mistaken, I have at last found you again. If I am mistaken you will pardon my blunder. If I were perfectly sure that you are my old friend whom I lost so easily and would give so much to see, I would not go from this house without having heard your voice and held your hand. I am so sure that you are the very Reynolds to whom I owe every thing and whose friendship is the warmest spot in my life, that I am nearly on the point of staying at a venture; but the rain seems over, and I have a very long walk and shall go at once. I am at the —— Hotel in Birmingham. Won't you come to see me at once? If you are my Reynolds you know how you will be received; if I have blundered and you are not the friend I have so long missed, you shall have the humble apologies of

"EDWARD MORETON."

When this hasty epistle was finished, Moreton addressed it and placed it on the table. A few minutes later the girl came into the room. Moreton rose.

"Will you be kind enough," he said to her, "to hand Colonel Reynolds this letter when he comes home?"

She looked sideways at him and blushed scarlet, but said nothing and did not move from where she had stopped beside the door. A bright strand of her hair had fallen forward across her shoulder and breast.

"I shall be greatly obliged," he continued, turning the envelope about on the table with his finger. "You will be doing me a great favor. Colonel Reynolds is a dear friend of mine."

Unconsciously he used a wheedling tone in speaking to her, as he would have done in trying to coax a little child.

She moved one hand nervously, and a pallor encroached upon the flush in her cheeks. Her sweet, strange eyes dilated with some sudden emotion. It may have been mere bashfulness and the embarrassment of ignorance and timidity. She appeared so helpless, so prettily forlorn, so innocent and sweet, and yet she seemed so vulgar, uncouth and hopelessly shallow, withal. Moreton, despite himself, felt the infection of her timidity and shyness and became silent. She stood for a time as if wavering between opposing impulses, then in a sudden and breathless way she said:

"Does John know you? Where'd ye ever see John? He never told me 'bout ye." She was still glancing sideways at him over her shoulder, and standing with one foot resting across the toe of the other, her left elbow pressed against the wall.

Moreton smiled and shook his head.

"It was a long way off from here that I saw him. Beyond the sea, across many countries. Ask him to tell you about Edward Moreton. He will remember a great many things that we did. We had many adventures together. He's a grand fellow."

"What air a grand feller? What d'ye mean by that there?" she slowly asked.

"Oh, I mean a great deal, every thing that is worth meaning," said Moreton. Then feeling that he had failed to satisfy her, he added in a very gentle tone: "I mean that he is good and that I like him."

She smiled, and a sudden pleasure flashed from her eyes; but her face quickly resumed its almost stolid repose and the vague trace of helplessness and pathetic innocence returned.

The rain was over and Moreton got ready to go just as the sun, now far down the west, swung free of the scattering cloud and flamed against a space of intensely blue sky above the most distant purple mountain peaks.

White refused to accept any pay for the shelter and food given to Moreton, and, carrying his practical mountain generosity still further, he slung the brace of turkeys across his shoulder and led the way for more than a mile, to put his guest into a path which was the shortest route over the mountain to a highway leading into Birmingham. The two men shook hands at parting on the highest swell of a heavy ridge, whence they could see the little city, with its great columns of coal-smoke and its shining white houses, lying far below amidst the gentle undulations of the valley. A long walk yet remained for Moreton, with no companion save the little spaniel; but his thoughts were of such a nature that he scarcely noted how rough and tiresome was the way. The clouds were now all gone and the sky, as night drew on, was filled with stars that, seen through the purified air, appeared to flame and waver like the flare of sunlight on ice. The temperature had fallen several degrees, giving a keen edge to the breeze which was now out of the north-west; but there still arose from the pine woods that resinous fragrance which is a balm for every wound that occasional inclemencies of the mountain weather may give. The streams had subsided as suddenly as they had risen, and all nature seemed hastening to regain that tranquil equilibrium for which the southern winters are noted.