Читать книгу Milly - Maurice Thompson - Страница 6

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Reynolds spent the next few days with Moreton, and, before he was fully aware of it, he had accepted an invitation to dine at Mr. Noble's house, where he would meet "two or three charming friends," as the banker had declared, "without the least formality in the world."

The weather had taken a delightful change, the wind shifting to the south and bringing from the Gulf of Mexico, over the vast extent of pine woods, a summer balminess and pungency. The sky, without a cloud, blue and dreamy bent above the gray-green hills with a Sabbath purity that made every aspect of the landscape surrounding the little city one of sweet guardianship and secure repose, quite at variance with certain social conditions which rendered a considerable portion of the city's populace at times turbulent and dangerous. Many miners and operatives in the vast iron works had fallen into the habit of coming together, at such hours as they were unemployed, in the gaudily tinseled liquor saloons and gambling dens with which certain streets were liberally supplied. Here they would meet the quiet-mannered but impetuous and bellicose mountaineers, with whom they quarreled and fought, sometimes with fatal results.

On an evening a day or two prior to the time set for the dinner at Mr. Noble's, Moreton had a little adventure. It chanced that some business with a foreman of one of his iron establishments had kept him until some time after dark in the office of the latter. In going back to his hotel he took a short route which led him through one of the worst streets in the city. Passing by the brilliantly lighted dens he could hear the clink of glasses and the boisterous voices of the drinkers and hangers-on. Once or twice he was forced to leave the side-walk in order to avoid groups of wrangling fellows who appeared on the point of going into a free-for-all fight. It was while making his way around one of these clumps of would-be rioters that a voice of peculiarly familiar accent reached his ear. It was a high tenor, drawling as follows:

"Hit air my bottom erpinion 'at I ken whirp out the last dad-burned one uf ye, an' 'en not dull the p'int uf this air ole frog-sticker nuther."

"Well, why don't ye do it? Talk's talk, but doin' it is another thing intirely," retorted a heavier voice with just a trace of Irish in it.

"Hit ain't fur me to go to cuttin' uf ye, ef ye keeps off'n me; but I'll jest be b'iled up an' chawed over ef I don't let yer back bone out in front uf ye, ef ye starts onto me. An' now ye've hearn me," was the tenor's quick response.

Moreton stopped short and glanced sharply into the midst of the group. There was White with a long knife in one hand and a heavy stone in the other, his wizened face and sunken eyes full of defiance and his gaunt frame rigid but ready for desperate action.

"Kem on, ye sneakin' keerd-shufflers, an' I'll jest cut ye inter striffins," he continued; "this here knife hit air a eetchin' fur yer livers an' lights, hit air!"

Just then a pistol gleamed in the hand of the man nearest Moreton, and the clear, keen click of the lock was sharply audible. It was a slender, but very dangerous sound.

"Make shore fire with yer shootin-iron," White added quickly, his voice rising into a thin falsetto, "fur ef ye don't hit air good-by ter you, hit air!" As he spoke he prepared to rush forward.

On the instant there would have been deadly work, had not Moreton interfered.

"Here! what does this mean?" he exclaimed in a loud, authoritative way, stepping boldly into the midst of the men.

His commanding figure, cool bearing and patrician dress wrought an effect of which the sturdiest policeman might well have been proud. "Come with me, Mr. White," he continued, "and you fellows had better get to your homes in quick time."

He did not pause or hesitate, but took White by the arm with a strong grip and led him away. No doubt the very suddenness and boldness of Moreton's action had much to do with the success of his endeavor to befriend White, but it is quite probable that the respect for superior manners, dress and personal appearance, which underlies the gross democracy of the mob, did more. White himself would have resented, with all a mountaineer's well-fostered stubbornness, any man's interference with his luxury of a fight, had that man been, though his best friend, one of his own or a similar class. But he promptly recognized Moreton as both his friend and superior and so allowed himself to be hurried away, the young man's grip on his arm reminding him of a physical force fully proportioned to Moreton's rather massive stature. They soon reached a street where no further danger need be feared, and here Moreton, releasing White's arm, said:

"What sort of a beastly trouble is this you have been getting into? What was all that quarrel about?"

"Pa'cel o' them air dad burned gam'lers a rowin' wi' me," replied White, rather doggedly, closing his knife and putting it into his pocket.

"Fleeced you, I suppose; won all your money. Better let them alone, they'll always beat you," said Moreton, his voice very naturally taking on an advisory and cautionary ring.

"Yer calc'late ruther short, jest ther', Mr. Moreting (b'lieve thet air's yer name), fur I hev four dollars uf them same fellers' good money inter my jeens right now," White answered, with a chuckle of profound satisfaction. "Wen ye serpose 'at any uf them air gam'lers ken beat me a playin' uf seving up, w'y then ye air a foolin' yerself outdacious. Es fur them tother games, I don't know much 'bout 'em, but seving up hit air my game, jest to a dot, an' I do s'prise some uf 'em outdacious a playin' uf that air small game."

"Are you going out to your home to-night?" inquired Moreton.

"Yes, an' I s'pect 'at them air weemin'll be outdacious oneasy 'bout me, too, fur I promersed 'em 'at I'd be back by dinner time o' day, when I left 'em this mornin'," said White, rather dolefully.

After a moment of silence, he added in a hesitating way:

"Hev ye seen any thing uf the Colonel fur the last day er two? We've been kinder sorty oneasy 'bout him, too. Milly she say 'at she most knows 'at he air gone fur good an' 'at he ain't a comin' back no more. But then I think he air."

"Oh, Mr. Reynolds is here with me, don't you know, at my hotel. He's all right," said Moreton. "I hope your wife and daughter are well. Please give them my regards. They were so kind to me that day I staid in your house."

"Them's outdacious good weemin o' mine, Mr. Moreting, 'specially Milly, she air a gal 'at's all wool an' a yard wide, to a dead sartinty, she air," was the reply.

Moreton was not well enough versed in the mountain lingo to catch the full force of White's realistic comparison, but he understood that it was meant to express admiration and affection of a very touching sort, and immediately there arose in his mind a vision of Milly, as she had stood by the door that day, with one foot on the other and her solemnly innocent face half averted.

The two men walked on together to a point where they must separate if White went home.

"I hev ter go down this here street ef I want er git ter my lay-out," said the mountaineer, stopping. "I er much erbleeged to ye fur what ye've done."

Prompted by some impulse quite foreign to his English nature, Moreton held out his hand and said:

"Don't forget to give my kindest regards to your wife and daughter."

"Sarting, sarting," exclaimed White, "I'll do thet air." He took Moreton's hand with a hearty grasp, but stood as if faltering and hesitating. "Hit air kinder foolish, but I wanter ask ye ter see ef ye can't git the Colonel to kem home poorty soon. Sorter seems like things don't June roun' jest right ef he ain't ther'." Somewhere between his words there was a half-expressed meaning that seemed to reach and yet baffle and elude Moreton's understanding. "Ye needn' mind er sayin' 'at ther's trouble 'bout 'im er nothin'," continued White, "but jest kinder git 'im ter kem home like. Milly she hain't stout, no how." There was a tender tremor in his voice as he spoke the concluding words.

Moreton assured him that Reynolds would come home within a few days, and they parted.

White had been drinking some, but not enough to intoxicate him beyond a certain loosening of the tongue and a breaking of that crust of half-comical reserve which usually covers the Sand Mountain man. What he had said had affected Moreton peculiarly. As he slowly walked to the hotel "Milly she hain't stout, no how," kept ringing in the young man's mind, as some verse of a foolish song might have done, with an appealing, shadowy sort of sadness in it. He was far from being sentimental, he had never taken any interest in people socially much lower than himself, he had even been suspected of mild brutality in his feelings towards women of the lower classes, not because the brutality did really exist, but on account of his utter lack of sympathy with ignorance and ugliness; and now he was frankly acknowledging to himself that Milly White had touched a very sensitive chord in his nature. In some mysterious way he was actually sympathizing with her, as if in an elusive and nameless trouble. The feeling was not a deep or pervading one: it was, indeed, very slight, a mere breath, so to speak, barely rippling the surface of his consciousness, but it was so new and unique that it made itself distinctly and immediately separable in quality from all his past experiences. If the question had been put to him: Why do you think of Milly White—what is the basis of your interest in her? He would have answered: I have no interest in her—I think of her simply because her strangely sweet and yearning face stays in my memory and will not be cast out: there was an appeal in her eyes so mysteriously affecting.

White went afoot over the hills to his home, following the meanderings of a narrow, rugged road. He was not happy, though he sang nasal snatches of camp-meeting or revival songs as he trudged along. He had a sense of the unworthiness of his day's occupation that the jingle of the four dollars in his pocket could not neutralize. When he reached the rude gate in front of his cabin he encountered Milly. She was leaning against one of the low posts, her head bare and her face showing over-pale in the star-light.

"Hello, Milly!" he gently exclaimed. "Hain't ye gone ter bed yet?"

She unlatched the gate for him without speaking. He passed through and took her by the arm.

"He air down yer in town, Milly, down yer wi' the man 'at stopped in outen the rain thet air day," he almost whispered. "He air all right he air comin' home to-morrer er nex' day."

"I wush he would come," she murmured, and followed her father into the cabin.

Meantime Moreton went to his hotel, where he met Reynolds, to whom he gave the details of his street adventure.

Reynolds' face darkened a little.

"I wish I could have seen White," he said, in a tone that hinted of vexation. "I suspect that he has taken advantage of my absence by going on a spree. Are you sure he went directly home?"

"He said he was going, he went in that direction," Moreton answered. "He was inquiring about you, and I told him you were in my care and quite safe."

Reynolds laughed.

"Did he say that his weemin, as he calls them, were uneasy about me?"

"Something of the sort, I believe, but I gave him satisfactory assurance. He'll report you all right."

Reynolds laughed again, a laugh that left Moreton in some sort of doubt. It was a laugh that seemed to be tinged with contempt, or bitterness, or some other element quite foreign to any amused or pleasant state of mind.

"He told me in all seriousness," Moreton deliberately but lightly added, "that his daughter believed you would never come back."

"Yes," said Reynolds, "she always imagines some such thing when I am away. She's a queer little simpleton, but I owe a good deal to her and her mother. On that account I overlook a great many little annoyances they cause me."

They went in to supper and the conversation turned to a discussion of the preparations for General DeKay's shooting party. But all the time Moreton's mind kept returning to the mystery which he now felt was hovering about his friend's life, a mystery he dared not attempt to solve. It was plain to him that Reynolds had a secret which this lonely life in the mountains was intended to hide from the world. It is not difficult to discover that one's friend is not opening his whole heart to one, when such is the fact. The reserve of some heavy sorrow, or regret, or remorse may be carefully concealed, but its very concealment is disclosed by the sealed chamber whose door would, we know, be flung wide open, but for the skeleton within. A slight evasion, now and then, of certain careless questions, little hints inadvertently let fall in moments of apparent abstraction, certain abrupt changes of the drift of his talk when the subject was his own experiences, gave to Reynolds' conversation a quality which, to a nature like Moreton's, was as tantalizing as it was suggestive of some hidden trouble.