Читать книгу Milly - Maurice Thompson - Страница 5

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Moreton, the more he thought the matter over, grew surer and surer of the fact that he had discovered Reynolds, his long lost friend. They had been art students together in Paris, and had been companions in a rather wild eastern ramble during which some quite memorable adventures had befallen them. Finally they had separated, on account of a mild sort of quarrel over a sweetheart, Reynolds quitting the field most mysteriously, leaving Moreton free to press his suit, which at the last wholly failed. It does not matter here what was the extent or color of their disagreement, but it may be said that there was nothing violent or tragic in it. In fact it may all be summed up in the sentence: Reynolds disappeared; and so sudden and secret was his going that Moreton lost him quite as effectually as if he had died and been buried. Such a disappearance has in it an element of tragic mystery that burns into one's memory. Moreton really knew little of Reynolds, save that he was an American and a Southerner, a fascinating companion, and a genial, brave, liberal fellow. If their parting had been the ordinary one, such as must come at length to any traveling companions, perhaps a few months might have sufficed to obliterate all regrets connected with it. But the peculiar circumstances under which it had come about had served to fasten it with a rather fiery emphasis in Moreton's memory. He remembered Reynolds as a proud, peculiarly sensitive man, given to excess of sentiment, an extremist, running to great lengths of self-indulgence at times, and at other times a model of temperateness that bordered on utter self-denial. A man with a violent conscience, prone to brood over follies and indulge gloomy regret for sins about which most young men would unhesitatingly have made broad jokes, but yet a man given to unlimited pleasures. In person he was of noble proportions, quite a typical low-country Southerner, bearing in his high-bred face an air of fearlessness and obvious pride touched to a degree with something that suggested recklessness. He was reckless, indeed, now and again, always, however, suffering the extremest pangs of repentance after each lapse into excesses.

It had seemed to surprise Reynolds in the last degree when he discovered that Moreton had become his rival, and surprise had quickly blazed up into furious anger. For a time it had appeared as if there must be a fight, but before this could happen Reynolds controlled himself and the reaction came. Moreton appeared to be successful, and his rival, in a fit of gloom, disappeared from the scene. It is easy to understand how Moreton would be affected by such a turn of affairs, and when, a day or two after the events of the preceding chapter, Reynolds appeared at the hotel in Birmingham, the meeting was, of course, a very cordial one; for Moreton was in no mood to allow his friend any room to doubt his sincerity. He had not prospered with his suit after Reynolds' departure. Somehow he could not press it with that ardor which kept his heart on fire so long as a rival was in view. It may have been that the mystery of Reynolds' flight cast a damper on the feelings of the young lady as well as over his own spirit. It is even possible that in truth she preferred the impulsive, magnetic Southerner to the rather matter-of-fact Englishman. At all events, Moreton's wooing had languished with the ending of the rivalry, the young lady showing a decided willingness to have done with the affair on the shortest possible notice.

Such things may appear to conclude very easily and naturally, to the best satisfaction of those concerned; but usually a sting remains with one or more of the actors that time is slow to remove. Moreton had felt this sting from two sources. He had lost his friend, he had lost his sweetheart. His friendship had been deep and true, his passion for the girl had been strong, no matter if not rooted deeper than his fancy. At one point Conscience griped Moreton with bitter force: he had been ungrateful to Reynolds, who had not hesitated to risk his life for him in the most desperate exigency of his quite eventful career. And now Reynolds had added self-sacrifice to heroism.

So that it will be readily understood how Moreton easily fell into a state of mind that rendered him restless and self-accusing. His great wish that he might one day find his friend again, and in some way make reparation for the injury done him, was tinged with such sentimentality as the situation would naturally generate in a mind, which though quite practical and well-balanced, was somewhat given to visionary fancies.

They sat down to a good dinner, and, with due appreciation of its qualities, paused between its courses to let their conversation lightly circle around the point of their past trouble, without coming quite to it. Reynolds knew that Moreton was still a bachelor, he had caught this much from his friend's manner and talk. It flashed through his mind that, after all, he had, perhaps, done himself great wrong and Moreton no good by acting up to a standard of duty recognized by few men. But it was too late to consider the matter now. It was all over and the dead past must bury its dead. Besides, had he not long ago dashed aside the poor bauble he had once called love! The subject could not, would not be avoided, nevertheless, and when it had been reached and fully talked over, both felt relieved.

"She is married," said Moreton, "and is living in Florence. Her husband is Count somebody and she is an invalid, so I have heard."

"I give you my word, Moreton," responded Reynolds, after a moment's silence, "that I am sincerely glad she is married, and quite sorry that she has lost her superb health. Suppose we dismiss her forever from our minds and our lives."

"Done!" cried Moreton almost jocularly, extending his hand. "I have been deuced near proposing that for the last half hour. It takes a load off my breast and a cloud off my mind. Here's to a clear future, old fellow!"

He filled their glasses and they drank in a genial if not a jovial mood. It was a light way in which to dispose of so weighty a matter as this had once been considered by them; but then it is the tricksy summer breath that tranquilizes the sea after the tropic storm. They were both glad to unburden themselves of certain troublesome doubts as to the genuineness of the passion each had professed. This done, that episode in their lives seemed to remove itself to a vast distance in the dim past, so they fancied, and they dismissed it as a departed illusion of their youth. Moreton looked at his friend with more than the old admiration. Indeed Reynolds was a man of superb physique and his face was one to win men and charm women. With all his health and strength and what might be called weather-stain, there was in his dark gray eyes and in his low, rich voice, a suggestion of that nonchalance and indolence which have always been characteristic of the highest type of Southerners. Nearly six feet in stature, square shouldered, slender, compact, every inch an athlete, he gave one an idea of strength, both physical and mental, which needed to be roused into action.

"I think it deuced strange, don't you know, that I should have stumbled into your den here in the mountains," said Moreton. "It is like romance. They put such things in novels."

"It was a clever turn of luck," lightly responded Reynolds, "or, perhaps I should say fate. No doubt it is ordered that you and I shall yet work out together some subtle decree of Providence. After all, incidents and events do not come of haphazard."

"I never philosophize, you know," said Moreton. "I am never expecting any thing save the very thing I am looking and striving for. I was turkey hunting when I found your outlandish cabin. What the deuce are you doing over there?"

"That is a hard question. I have spent some delightfully quiet, uneventful years in that house. I find good shooting at times, the air is pure and sweet, the water is excellent, the retirement is perfect." Reynolds paused for a time and then continued: "Oh well, I had grown tired of wandering and rather disgusted with the world in general and I fancied I should enjoy being a hermit for a while. I tried it and found it charming."

Moreton thought he detected evidence in his friend's manner of a reserve of some stronger reasons for thus hiding himself away from the world; but he took the explanation without further question.

"That's a pretty lass of White's," Moreton said, after the conversation had rambled over such parts of Reynolds' life for the past few years as he cared to lay bare. "Her sweet, solemn, smiling, troubled face has haunted me ever since I saw her."

Reynolds laughed.

"Don't make too much fun of the poor little thing," he said, half-seriously, half lightly. "Hers is a vacant lot. She is as scentless and colorless as she is cramped and undeveloped. I can't imagine what she was made for."

"But what a form and what a haunting, hungry, sweet face she has!"

Reynolds looked with a sudden surprise into Moreton's eyes, his own dilating. Presently he laughed again.

"I do believe you are in earnest," he exclaimed, in a tone at once deprecatory and querulous, "for you couldn't have the heart, even at this distance, to ridicule the unfortunate little creature. In this region the poor whites are all deplorably ignorant and queer; but she—she is a pathetic cipher, poor thing."

"Physically she is perfect," insisted Moreton. "Can it be possible that you, a poet and artist, have all these years overlooked, ignored, waived aside such a model? I tell you, Reynolds, she's a genuine wood nymph, don't you know, a dryad whom the satyrs have scared out of her wits. I never saw such eyes, such lips and——"

"Oh come now," said Reynolds, "I am not going to listen to such nonsense. Besides, it strikes me as next to brutal to think of discussing the charms of an arid, dull, ugly little cracker girl——well no, not a cracker, either, a Sandlapper is the local phrase. The fact that such girls exist and must become women and be mothers of like beings, is to me a subject that it is a virtue to shun. On such a theme seriousness is disheartening, levity is diabolical."

"Every thing au sérieux, as of old!" exclaimed Moreton, "you bewildering old philanthropist! I am too happy to quarrel with you now. Wait till the newness of having discovered your hiding place has somewhat rubbed off and I'll give you punch for punch with a will. But I do say, in all candor, that I never was so struck with any bit of wild beauty as I was with that queer, solemn-eyed girl of White's. She might make any painter's fortune as a Daphne or——"

Reynolds interrupted him:

"It is only once in a century or two," he said, "that the world's intermittent sentiment will permit a Millet or a Burns to cast the glamor of genius over the stolid ugliness and the immitigable emptiness of peasant life. As for me, I have no sympathy with it from the standpoint of art. There is no artistic alchemy that can make a sow's ear fine or beautiful. Those who undertake to idealize ignorance, stupidity and coarseness are worse than such realists as Zola, because they willfully deceive those whom they succeed in interesting."

"Go on, wade out, you know I can't follow you," exclaimed Moreton. "I love the shallow places, the soft sweet edges of all sorts of streams; but I'll bet five to one on you for touching bottom at all points and without weights!"

Reynolds laughed and waved aside the wine his friend offered.

At this moment a portly gentleman, wearing a bland smile between his iron-gray mutton-chop whiskers, and a vast gold seal below his vest, approached Moreton from another part of the large dining room. This was Mr. Hawkins Noble, a person of importance in Birmingham, a banker in fact, whose money and financial sagacity had given to that prosperous little city the larger part of its vim and activity. It was to be seen at a glance that he was what some one has aptly and inelegantly phrased as a "big fish in a little puddle." He was a New Yorker, and his connection with a great banking house in the metropolis had followed him to Birmingham with the effect of a separate atmosphere circulating close about his stout figure. There was in his movements a celerity quite out of keeping with his heavy limbs and rotund body, and his small blue eyes had a twinkle which was a compromise between the glint of ice and the genial reflection from a June sky. He rubbed his hands together as he came near the table.

"Hello, Moreton," he exclaimed, with the intonation of one speaking at a telephone, "pardon me for interrupting you, but I have a matter of importance. Oh, keep your seat," he hastily added, as Moreton made a movement to rise, "it's nothing in the slightest private, only an urgent invitation for you to join me in a most delightful bit of field sport. General DeKay, who owns a grand plantation and quail preserve below here, has sent me word to collect a party of gentlemen and bring them next week for a few days' shooting. How does that strike you?"

"It strikes me deuced hard," answered Moreton. "Don't you know I never did refuse a thing like that, never."

Mr. Noble laughed. He looked like a man who thoroughly enjoyed laughing for the sake of the general shaking up it gave him. Reynolds could not help wondering how this rather over-corpulent old gentleman could ever manage to get much comfort out of active field sports.

"It's bound to be a most delightful affair," continued Mr. Noble. "The General has some fine dogs, I shall take mine, you yours: now where can I find one or two more good fellows who are up to such music?"

Moreton rose.

"Allow me, Mr. Noble, to present my friend, Colonel Reynolds, who is a most enthusiastic sportsman and who has a choice kennel."

The banker reached for Reynolds' hand with a readiness and swiftness which, though incomparable, had no appearance of undue haste. It was merely indicative of a nimbleness and a promptness for which in all his affairs Mr. Noble was noted. His mind and body acted together on the instant and on the slightest call.

"An enthusiastic sportsman," he said, "is a man after my own heart-pattern. I am glad of your acquaintance, Colonel Reynolds. May I book you and your choicest dogs for the shooting? Don't say no, for we shall have a grand time of it."

"Why, I thank you, indeed, sir, but I can hardly say whether——"

"Come, now, Reynolds," interposed Moreton, "I can't go without you, you know, and you mustn't refuse. I fancy I can see the dogs down to a point now and the birds whirring up from the cover. It makes my blood tingle to think of it!"

"Allow me also to insist," added Mr. Noble with a nimble bow and genial smile. "I can vouch for the sport, as also for General DeKay's cordial hospitality. He has a large preserve, which he has been at great pains to stock, and he insists upon my bringing a little army down to shoot with him over his grounds."

Reynolds saw no way out of it; in fact he quickly felt the fascination of the proposed sport taking hold of him. He had been shut up in the mountains for so long that the thought of a few days with jovial companions in the open fields of the low country was like a fragrant breath from the past.

"It is very kind of you, Mr. Noble," he at length said, "and if I can, in your opinion, add any thing to the success of your very attractive plan, I ought not to refuse, especially as I am hungry for a genuine old-fashioned day with the quails."

"Good!" exclaimed the banker, again darting his soft white hand towards Reynolds, "I am delighted. I am off now on some pressing business; shall be glad to give you and Mr. Moreton further details of our project in due time. Shall hope to have you both at my house to dine before we are off for General DeKay's."

He bowed with amazing suppleness and walked swiftly from the room. He left behind him, so to speak, lingering in the air, a suggestion of irrepressible alertness, outrightness and vim.

"There's an old boy for you," said Moreton, resuming his seat at the table and motioning Reynolds to do likewise. "I have never seen another at all like him. Make a friend of him, and there's no end to the good he will do you. There's not a doubt that he left urgent business to come here and get me into his party. I'm delighted that you were here, don't you know, for we'll have a rare lark. General DeKay is one of your fine old-time Southern planters, I'm told, whose hospitality is as broad as his fields."

"I'm a fool for consenting to join you," Reynolds bluntly exclaimed, "but I am committed to the folly and must make the most of it."

"Since when have you come to consider a day or so behind the dogs in good quail cover a folly?" said Moreton, with a ring of good-humored resentment in his voice.

"You misconstrue me," replied Reynolds, "I shrink from the other feature of the affair. I am out of society for good and all. I fear there will be more women than dogs and quail."

Moreton laughed as a vision of Mr. Noble's charming daughter arose in his mind. She at least would be one of the party.