CHAPTER XI.

DALLYING.

The quail-shoot, after the enthusiastic contest of the first day, abated to a sort of desultory skirmish, each sportsman going into the field as best suited his mood. The weather bred a languor, peculiarly Southern and dreamy, which was aided by the quietude and isolation of the place. The bustle and activity with which the sport had begun became irregularly intermittent. Day after day the sky was serene and cloudless, tinted with that cool, bird-egg blue, tender, delicate, transparent, against which the lines of wood came out with a peculiar semi-tropical effect. Nearly all the time there was a breeze, not the rollicking Northern wind that whisks things about, but a fitful breath that palpitated lazily in the tops of the dull old trees and stirred the vines and plants and dry, thin grass in a fashion wholly indefinite and aimless. It was a luxury to idle around in the shadowy nooks and corners of DeKay Place, where the spirit of old times hovered like a vague, fascinating perfume. Life lost its rough angles here, its outlines softening down to harmonize with the monotonous equipoise of its surroundings. The river had the charm of all low-country streams, a warm, slow, lagging motion, a look of lapsing away into some strange, silent, unexplored region; its murmur was a lingering, never quite ended good-by.

To Reynolds those were days of deep and sweet excitement into which now and then darted a pang like a stab in the heart. He was with Agnes Ransom a great deal. Shy and strangely limited in conversation as she was, he yet found her monosyllables and simplest phrases quite enough to hold him to her side. She had not read a great deal of art and literature, she had but fragmentary glimpses of knowledge, her round of life had been confined to a small compass: still she seemed to have gathered a great deal, and a depth rather than a width of experience was in some subtle way suggested by her words and looks.

Moreton was unreservedly happy. Born sportsman as he was, it must have been a genuine old-time love that made him prefer sitting on the veranda or on one of the rustic benches with Miss Noble to following the pointers and setters afield under the cloudless sky and over-warm beams of this waning, low-country winter. He also allowed himself to become interested to a certain extent in the plans of Miss Crabb. From his English point of view, this eager, outspoken, persistent young woman, with her mingled air of freshness, alertness and strangely hindered ambition, was a very novel and interesting study. He recognized and respected the worthiness and purity of her aims, whilst he could not keep from regarding her doings with a curiosity little short of that with which he would have observed the gambols of a rare species of monkey. He had not been long enough in America to become indifferent to the oddities and sharp salients of American character and our social contrasts and discords, nor had his tastes resigned themselves to such breezy, democratic familiarity as Miss Crabb insisted upon; but he was a good hater of shams, and her genuineness appealed to him in its spirit if not in its manner. He walked with her an hour back and forth on one of the long verandas, scarcely aware how much he was promising when he agreed to make some sketches for her. He had been, as the reader knows, an art-student once, but had lacked either talent or industry or both, getting on no further than to become a clever sketcher. Miss Crabb told him all she knew touching every subject she could think of, even going so far as to give the details of the distressing tragic circumstances under which Mrs. Ransom had been made a widow. It was a sad story of a mere girl marrying a handsome, dashing, rather reckless youth, who led her a romantic life for a time and finally deserted her, going away to Texas where he had been killed in a street fight with a desperado at San Antonio. Such stories were rather common in the South at one time. The first decade after the close of the war was, in the Gulf States, one of humiliation, nervousness, doubt--a decade that soured and vitiated many young lives, making almost outlaws of youths who, under a milder influence would have been good citizens, or at least, harmless ones. Sudden poverty, the stagnation of agriculture and trade, the ebbing of all commercial tides, the swift leveling of social eminences, and the desperation that followed dire defeat, were supplemented and aggravated by political annoyances of the most grievous nature. But the one demoralizing element most active and potent was the prejudice, deep-seated and woven into the very tissues of the Southern youth, against gaining a livelihood by manual labor in plebeian employments. Of course it is no wonder that this prejudice existed, indeed it would have been amazing if it had not existed; but the result was the destruction of many young men who really had in them the qualities that go, under ordinary circumstances, to make up valuable citizens.

Herbert Ransom came of an honorable and once wealthy family at Pensacola, Florida. He was one of what has been rather familiarly termed the "first crop of young men since the war," which means that during the war he was too young to be a soldier, and became a man soon after its close. He was bright, handsome, vain, unprincipled, and yet he passed current in society and married Agnes DeKay, a beautiful girl scarcely sixteen, whose father, a brother of General DeKay, was very poor, very proud and very old. For a time the young people lived a sweet, idyllic sort of life on an old plantation near Mariana, Florida; but Ransom's restless, rollicking nature would not be confined to mere domestic quietude. He tried speculation in cotton with just enough success to lead him swiftly to financial ruin. The plantation was sold at a great sacrifice and Agnes had to return to her father, while Ransom went to western Texas with the avowed purpose of looking after some wild lands belonging to his father's estate, but really with no hope of ever again seeing his wife. He had been gone nearly a year when the news of his tragic death in a street fight in San Antonio reached his relations in Pensacola. Soon after this Agnes' parents died and she was left with an income barely sufficient to support her. She had no children, and, with a widowed aunt, she lived in the old family homestead at Pensacola, until General DeKay came and persuaded her to become his adopted daughter. This meager outline of what seemed to Moreton a most pathetic story, fell glibly from the lips of Miss Crabb, along with sundry shrewd strictures upon social laws that render women so powerless to struggle with adversity and neglect.

"When a woman gets married," she observed, "she becomes helpless. She plunges into the gulf of matrimony with a mill-stone at her neck, so that she may be sure to disappear utterly. If she ever again comes to the surface it is but to air troubles for which there is no cure."

"If that is the case," said Moreton, "if I were a woman I should try and not marry."

Miss Crabb laughed.

"Oh, I presume there will always be a majority of fools among us," she replied. "Silly girls and restless spinsters, ready to be martyred for the mere romance of the thing; but you know, as well as I, that this is an awfully one-sided world."

"Yes, but you women make it so, don't you know, by decoying us over to your side, thus destroying the equilibrium. If we were the antipodes of each other, now, this would be a gloriously balanced world! All the sorrow-making material on one side and all the joy-bringers on the other!"

"You are like the rest--you won't condescend to sensibly argue a question with a woman. You must go off into badinage, as if a woman could not understand and enjoy cogent reasoning. I don't like insincerity, Mr. Moreton."

"I beg a thousand pardons," he exclaimed. "I did not mean to be insincere--indeed, Miss Crabb, I was under the impression that I was making myself quite entertaining, don't you know, I----"

She laughed again, a clear, honest, prairie laugh, throwing back her head and holding up one hand as if to ward off something.

"Oh, it's the same thing over and over. Wherever I go men look upon me as a sort of monstrosity at large by some accident, because I travel alone, just as a man may, and because I attend to my business, just as a man does. It's really funny sometimes; I overhear what they say. They comment on me. 'A cheeky old girl,' 'a newspaper crank,' 'a stiff-minded female,' and 'a meddling nuisance,' are the delicate and friendly epithets applied to me by men. One fellow at the Cincinnati convention called me 'a bag of gimlets' to my face."

"But then your absolute knowledge that the man was mistaken must have ruined the point of his remark," said Moreton. "Conscious innocence is an impenetrable shield."

She looked up at him with a flash of momentary anger in her eyes, then laughing again she said:

"Oh, go on, I'm used to it, and, besides, I can't afford to quarrel with you until I have your sketches in hand; you _must_ make the sketches, Mr. Moreton: they will be invaluable to me. I want to get on in literature, and the only way in which I can do that is to get into the great illustrated magazines: they are the highways to fame." There was a hungry, almost greedy ring to her voice, as if her longing for literary recognition were rooted in her heart. Moreton fancied that her lips quivered as she spoke. Her manner touched his sympathy.

"You'll get on fast enough, Miss Crabb," he quickly said; "your energy and persistence and your capacity for work will take you through, never fear." It was the best he could think of, though he felt its utter inadequacy to her fancied needs. As he looked down upon her his rather heavy, thoroughly English face wore a very kindly expression.

"But you don't know, Mr. Moreton, you can't imagine what a hard time I have; how many ugly obstacles men put in my way, simply because I am a woman. I don't see why they do, but they do. It's awful sometimes."

"They are brutes, they ought to be punched, don't you know," he blurted; "they deserve no recognition by gentlemen."

"Yes, but they _do_ get recognition," she replied, half-mournfully. "They drink and smoke and swear themselves into prominence in every walk of life--into fame, fortune, and----"

"Oh, not so bad as that, I hope," he interposed. "Don't be discouraged. George Eliot and Georges Sand and----"

"They are not American women," she interrupted in turn, "and they have never tried editing a country newspaper or writing for a New York magazine. They were rich, or had influential friends, or made people believe they were men."

"Well, suppose you try adopting a masculine pseudonym, you might----"

"Never!" she exclaimed, with a little stamp of the foot. "Never! I shall win my way as a woman or not at all."

Moreton was beginning to comprehend, in a measure, the really pathetic hopelessness of Miss Crabb's intellectual predicament. To his mind she appeared a heroine with a self-imposed task quite as great as that of Joan of Arc. Like Joan, she must at last be man's victim. He could see the stake set and the fagots heaped for her already. It now seemed a mighty blessing of providence that she was not beautiful, that she was positively ugly and not at all likely to attract men. He had the English admiration for pluck and he felt a great desire to help her; but there was no way. Evidently she did not possess any genius and was only gifted with a shrewd, quick mind and a hungry imagination. She was mistaking notoriety for just fame and was deluding herself with the belief that her burning desire for success was proof positive of her power to succeed. Nevertheless her attitude was heroic and he wished her a better fate than was sure to befall her.

"But you must not commit the folly of setting yourself against men," he presently said, his voice taking on a persuasive tone; "you must recognize their power and the necessity of winning their confidence and help."

"I have tried that turn," she replied with a short laugh that had a ring of derision in it, "and it's no use. A woman must have beauty before she can influence men. All the wisdom of Minerva could not have compassed what Cleopatra's----"

"Hold," cried Moreton, with an affectation of lightness which he did not feel, "you are slandering my sex, or, at least, I am an exception. Not that I don't admit the power of beauty, but you put the rule too savagely, don't you know. Why, you really frighten me with your suggestion of masculine depravity!"

She laughed and changed the subject. They continued walking to and fro and chatting in a broken way with the sough of the wind and the swash of the river filling up the spaces.

"Some day," she said, recurring to the subject always uppermost in her mind, and turning to leave him, "some day my ship will come in."

Moreton breathed freer when she was gone. Her state of ferment, of restless effort, tired him.

Two or three hours later when he and Reynolds sat by a window of the latter's room, smoking cigars, he said:

"Miss Crabb told me something a while ago that surprised and touched me."

"Well, what was it?" inquired Reynolds, gazing dreamily out into the brilliant, moonlit night. He had just been for an hour talking with Mrs. Ransom and was now mentally going over again every word of the charming conversation. He was in love, he knew it, and was reveling in the luxury of it. Her sweet face and low, rich voice, her quiet grace of manner, her slender, supple form and that indescribable, mysterious half-sadness in her eyes and smile, had fired his imagination and filled his blood with a gentle tumult. Never before had the moon and stars and the grand expanse of heaven looked so lovely to him; never had the world seemed so good; never had life seemed so precious. Being in love is a trite thing, and may be going out of fashion, but it is worth experiencing once, at least, in every lifetime, as a test of the imagination, if for nothing else.

"She gave me an account of Mrs. Ransom's troubles," said Moreton. "It seems that hers has been a rather rough cruise."

Reynolds clamped his cigar between his teeth and looked up.

"I know, I know," he said, in a half-impatient voice. "Her husband deserted her."

"And was murdered out on the Texas border," added Moreton.

"Murdered," said Reynolds, as if weighing the word. "There has been a great deal of that sort of thing in Texas."

"In this instance," Moreton went on, "I fancy that the murder was all for the best. Poor little woman, how she must have suffered under such treatment as that young villain gave her. Pity that all such fellows don't go to Texas and get a hole bored through them!"

Reynolds smoked quite rapidly for a few seconds, with his eyelids nearly shut together, a barely perceptible grayish pallor spreading over his cheeks. Presently, in an even and steady, but very strange voice, he said:

"She is a lovely little woman, Moreton, a sweet, warm-hearted, true and noble little woman. I love her, Moreton. I'm going to marry her, if I can."

"Good!" exclaimed Moreton. "I'm glad to hear that. She will just suit you, make you a charming wife. I hope you'll find your way clear, old fellow."

For a time they both were silent, each thinking of his own love, and gazing out into the almost blue-black depths of the star-sprinkled sky. A gentle swashing sound came from the river along with the fragrance of pine-needles and the odor of turpentine. Somewhere, seemingly at a vast distance, an owl now and then laughed, as if from a sepulcher.

"My way seems clear enough," Reynolds at last said, "if I can understand her; but she is an elusive little woman, shy and incomprehensible at times."

Moreton laughed.

"They all are that way--it's a part of woman's nature to be inexplicable, don't you know, deuced inexplicable. Now there's that Miss Crabb: I never saw such an enigma. She's a man and a woman and a little school-girl, all in one."

Reynolds got up from his chair and began walking to and fro, his head thrown back, his hands clasped behind him. He frowned and pressed his lips over his cigar so that deep furrows came on each side of his mouth.

"Being in love appears to render you gloomy," Moreton lightly exclaimed, as he glanced into his friend's face. "Love is like wine, it makes some men surly whilst it makes others merry. Now I----"

Reynolds waved his hand impatiently and said almost abruptly:

"If she really loved her husband, in the first place, it must have been a dreadful ordeal she went through."

"Oh, she must have been very young, scarcely more than a child," said Moreton, as if hurrying to relieve Reynolds, if he could; "and I should think she has outgrown it in a great degree, by this time. She seems quite cheerful and in superb health."

Reynolds turned as he came near the middle of the room, and facing Moreton, appeared on the point of saying some momentous thing. A gloomy cloud of excitement had settled on his countenance. His lips faltered at the point of speech, and with a strange smile he resumed his pacing to and fro. Moreton's eyes followed him with a look of puzzled interest. Presently he laughed outright and exclaimed chaffingly:

"You make me think of that little girl of White's when you look like that, Reynolds. Your eyes are for all the world like hers, with those mysterious sad shadows in them. What the deuce is the matter?"

Reynolds' countenance changed abruptly; he essayed to laugh, but there was no sincerity in the effort. He shook his head and answered:

"My head is all in a whirl and I believe I am excited; but you must remember that I am hard hit and awfully in earnest." His attempt at making light of his show of feeling was not more successful than his laughter had been. He saw that Moreton felt its hollowness, and he made haste to add: "It has always been thus with me. I am a creature of extremes, a straw in the currents of passion."

From Moreton's rather phlegmatic point of view, this excitement was something inexplicable. He saw no reasonable cause for it in the situation, and his mind at once reverted to certain indications of a secret trouble observable in Reynolds ever since their first meeting in Birmingham. Naturally enough the rather strange home chosen by Reynolds amid the sterile mountains and among the rude, uninteresting mountaineers, came up to emphasize Moreton's suspicion that all was not well with his friend.

"What especial current of passion is tossing you just now, to render you so restless and moody?" Moreton demanded. "One would think you were meditating something as dark as suicide or assassination."

"Oh, I'm all right; I don't mean to do any thing diabolical, I'm too happy for that; give me another cigar, mine are locked up in my bag." He pulled himself together as he spoke, and laughed in a way so careless and natural that Moreton felt a sense of disappointment at having inwardly to acknowledge himself baffled, if not mistaken.

They smoked and talked until late, enjoying the lulling coolness of the night air coming in at the open windows. Reynolds was exceedingly cheerful, and when they separated for the night he said:

"If you have as sweet dreams as I expect to indulge in to-night, tell me in the morning, will you? Good night."

But Moreton, who slept lightly, awoke now and then, and heard him walking to and fro all the rest of the night.