CHAPTER XIII.

AT THE RUIN.

Reynolds had been shut away from society for so long a time that he had returned, in a degree, to the susceptibility and receptivity of extreme youth. We grow like what we contemplate, is a very trite truth, and he had absorbed much of the outright simplicity of the mountaineers, without losing any of the character he had long ago formed. Self-knowledge may be very valuable, but self-study does not tend always toward happiness. One might almost venture to say that, in a vast majority of cases, serious self-analysis amounts to remorse if nothing worse. Moreover, one usually chooses solitude in which to erect one's furnace and laboratory of self-criticism, where one may make the heat as high and protracted as one pleases. The result is usually a mass of unsightly slag instead of the fine and precious metal one has hoped to turn out. Hence it is that a hermit returning to the world after years of seclusion and self-delusion finds it a paradise when he had expected to see it a hell. Men and women are so much purer and stronger and nobler than he had pictured them, and all the ways of human social life are so much sweeter and fresher than his diseased brain had remembered them to be, that he sloughs his crust, like a serpent, and comes out a new man.

The doctrine that evil experiences are ever of value, or rather that a baptism in sin ever worked a positive good to the recipient, is too dangerous to be received; but it sometimes appears that there is an annealing influence exerted on character by the intense heat of uncontrollable passions, tempering it at last to the highest degree of sensitiveness and susceptibility. Reynolds was aware, in a vague way, of the change so rapidly going on within him. It was as if his nature were putting forth a tremendous spurt of power with which to eject from its tissue the evil of the old life. What a mystery there is in remorse and repentance and reform! But how much greater the mystery of evil, that terrible, invisible acid, combining with all the bases of human nature and disintegrating every crystal of beauty! How shall the stream of a life, once defiled, be purified? The simplest reagent will disclose the presence of sin, but what process will eliminate it?

The Hand that made the mirror must remove the spots of tarnish.

Love is always the gateway of a new life. When its purple mists and its wafts of heavenly perfumes come upon its victim his whole nature feels as if the ultimate sources of impulse had been cleansed, sweetened and electrified. New needs, new aspirations, fresh hopes and the dewy vigor of morning leap into the heart. Ah, then how bitter is the memory of misdeeds! Just then if Satan would get behind and forever disappear, what a relief! What a joy if all the past could be wiped out, as with a sponge, and existence be left to date from the advent of love!

The meeting of Reynolds and Mrs. Ransom was much more than the ordinary contact of life with life, whereby the spark of passion is generated; it was significant of a blending of their past experiences as well as of the creation of a new life for both. Even on the instant when a mutual interest was awakened, their minds flashed back over the past. No doubt love ought to be prospective always; but it can not often be so.

Agnes Ransom could not realize that she was a widow. It was more as if a very sweet romance of her experience had ended in sorrow and disappointment. She looked back upon the short space of her wedded life with a vision dimmed by mists and shadows. She was half aware that her nature had gained much and lost little by the experience. It all seemed very sad to her, and yet she felt that the sadness was rather an atmosphere of the past than of the present. It hovered somewhere behind her, it did not affect the future. Still there was a protest somewhere, gentle and weak, but quite troublesome, against this new, strong, imperious, wayward love, now rising in her bosom and anon sinking away almost into the depths out of which it had come. She trembled sometimes with a great fear, at other times she abandoned herself to it with a serene fullness of content.

Close to the river's bank, all overgrown with wild vines and darkly shadowed by clustering trees, there stood, distant about a mile from the DeKay place, an almost shapeless pile of brick and stucco, the ruins of a once stately Southern mansion. It had been burned, whether by accident or the work of an incendiary is not known. Some tragic legend was connected with its history--a vague story of hereditary feud, bloody encounter, the gloom of crime and the solemn hush that follows after violent death. It was not a story ever told by a DeKay, for it affected the history of the family a generation or two ago. The very oldest negroes on the plantation knew something of the dark outlines of the tragedy; but they had learned not to more than vaguely hint the extent of their knowledge by equivocal allusions and dubious generalities. The affair dated back to the early Alabama days, when slavery was in its most prosperous state in a financial way, and when chivalry, so-called, was at its zenith. The ruin, with its picturesque walls overgrown with vines, was a fitting monument of the decay of medieval customs in the South as well as of the downfall of a once proud and in many ways brave and generous family.

It was towards this pathetic pile that Reynolds pulled with vigorous oar-strokes, as he and Mrs. Ransom set out upon the river from the little landing at DeKay Place. Unconsciously and with the ease that comes of great nervous and muscular force, made ready by his recent years of healthful habits and out-door training, he put such impulse into the little craft as made it leap like a skipping fish, leaving a whirling wake behind it, gleaming and darkling in sun and shade. He had not yet spoken of love. Indeed his heart was so full of this new and sweetly stormy passion that he could not master it sufficiently to clothe it in words. He was ever at the point of speaking and ever faltering and holding back his voice. So he found a relief in great muscular exertion. It was love thrilling along his nerves and sinews that made his arms tireless. He felt as if each long, strong sweep of the oars were bearing Agnes and him away from all the rest of the world, away from the past and into a sweet, shadowy solitude like that which the imagination has, in all ages, seen swimming on the furthest horizon, and towards which all lovers have hopefully but vainly steered their dream-ladened barks.

A sense of unworthiness repressed and almost smothered, a strong conscience bound down and enveloped in the fire of passion, these would make themselves felt in a dull, heavy, indefinite way. He could not shake off for long at a time a consciousness that all this deep, sweet, strong happiness flooding his soul to bursting, was ephemeral, and would vanish at the touch of the first sinister _faux pas_ by which the past might be uncovered.

Mrs. Ransom, in the after part of the boat, sat facing Reynolds, her lissome figure in an attitude of almost childish carelessness and grace. She was, apparently, as unaware of her rare charm of person as was he of his immense physical power. It is one of the wholesomest of out-door influences that eliminates, for the time, the frivolous conventionalities of social life, and establishes in their stead something of the freedom of the wind and the transparent freshness of running water. Nature, by some occult process, reaches our hearts and sponges off the sediment of artificial sentiment, so that the simpler elements of life are set to work in us without any hindrance. Given a boat, a calm, clear river, fine weather, a man and a woman, youth, strength, health, and what an infinitude of happiness may be expected! It is often the case that human experience is, under such circumstances, condensed to the last degree of denseness, or expanded to an ethereal tenuity never dreamed of in the hot-house narrowness of city life. Out-door realities are so strong and dreams are so wide and fair where the sun shines and the air is full of balm and the water flows with such a liberal, far-going murmur. Tragedy has a broader and deeper significance enacted without any stage limitations, and comedy catches a sparkle from the brooks and the daylight and the starlight, never reflected from gas jets and painted backgrounds.

Very little was said between Mrs. Ransom and Reynolds in the time it took to reach a place where they could land near the ruin, their conversation confining itself to observations on such little incidents as happened during their quick flight. Once a flock of wood-ducks sprang in a rapid whirl from the water near them and winged their way up the stream, their bright colors shining with a peculiar twinkle, as far as the eye could follow them. Little shadowy sandpipers ran along the sandy margins, here and there, or flew across from bank to bank with their comical jerky motion. In some places the reeds grew down to the water's edge in dense brakes wherein the hermit thrush and the catbird could be seen by fitful glimpses. The rapid movement of the boat kept changing the point of view, and at each change some new arrangement of the trees, the cane, the tall dry stalks of water grass or of the bold banks of the river attracted the eye.

Reynolds felt the stimulus of his passion tingling in his blood. His bronzed cheeks wore a faint flush and his eyes were full of earnest, tender light. He stranded the prow of the boat on a little crescent of sand at the foot of the bluff and helped Mrs. Ransom out. She had directed him where to land, and now he turned to her and asked:

"Now, how shall we get up to the top of the bluff?"

"There is a sort of stairway yonder by that old tree," she answered, pointing with her hand. "It is badly dilapidated, but we can climb it easily."

Somewhere, not very far away, they heard the booming of General DeKay's and Mr. Noble's guns. The sport must have been fine, for the shooting was rapid.

They found the stair--a zig-zag flight of crazy steps, leading up to the plateau above. In order to reach its foot, they had to stoop and creep under the low-hanging boughs of a tree. Reynolds took hold of her arm to help her. On a sudden impulse she freed herself from him. A thrill had come with his touch, and something like fear took momentary possession of her. She fled nimbly up the steps ahead of him, as if she meant to escape him entirely. He scarcely noticed her start and her haste, for some vines and tangled branches hindered him and disturbed his vision. When she emerged into the sunlight of the level space on the bluff, Mrs. Ransom stopped, ashamed of her foolish flight, and turned about just in time to look straight into the eyes of Reynolds, as he was surmounting the topmost steps.

"I beat you climbing," she exclaimed, her voice shaking a little from the effect of her exertion.

"I feared you had left me for good and all," he replied; "but how pale you are! Was your effort too violent? Are you ill?"

"Not at all," she responded, the negative phrase peculiar to the Southern people falling with a sort of breathless readiness from her lips. "Am I really pale?"

"Perhaps not," he said, seeing the rosy light coming into her cheeks again. "I only imagined it; but it is a difficult place to climb, and you came up like a bird. You shouldn't take such risks: it is dangerous."

He looked about for the ruin. A tall, heavy chimney-stack rising above a tangled mass of wild vines and trees answered his inquiry.

"Come this way," she said, leading on; "there is a path, further up the slope, that goes round to the entrance."

He followed her quick movements, and soon she stopped before an arched doorway in the old semi-circular transom of which a few pieces of stained glass still remained. On either hand stood fragments of stuccoed pillars all festooned with vines. She paused but for a moment, then went under the arch and passed from roofless room to roofless room with the swift, certain step of one quite familiar with the place. Every where the ivy and wild grape vines had draped the crumbling walls and heaps of rubbish, so that, in places, bowers as fanciful as those of fairy-land, made a sweet crepuscular gloom, though the foliage was mostly gone. He tried to reach her side, but her quick turns and elusive movements kept her all the time just ahead of him, and her sweet voice came back to him, as if tossed to him over her shoulder, luring him on and on, in and out through the labyrinth of rooms. Once she stopped for the merest moment to look out, through a ragged opening which had once been a window, down upon the placid face of the river. He came close to her and bent low to gaze over her shoulder. She felt his breath on her neck.

"How lovely!" he murmured, in that deep, rich voice which always vibrated so strangely in her ears. His moment had come.

"Lovely," she echoed, and slipped away, like some shy, wild thing afeard of its own voice.

Reynolds was burning with a desire to speak to her of his love, and she, hardly knowing why, felt a sweet dread of him. She tripped along through what had been a broad hall and turned into an open space where some of the walls had crumbled into a great heap around the base of the stack of chimneys. Here it was that suddenly a man, wild-eyed, shaggy-headed, ragged and gaunt, sprang up before her in a menacing attitude with a heavy pistol in his hand. She gave one little chirruping scream, threw up her arms and sank in a crumpled heap to the ground. Reynolds sprang forward with a loud ejaculation. His movement had all the appearance of a furious attack upon the startled ruffian, who, in sheer self-defense, as he thought, raised the pistol and fired. Reynolds felt the blow and the dull pang of the bullet in his right shoulder. The man did not fire again, but turned and fled through the nearest opening. It was all so sudden, the whole thing happening within the space of half a minute, that no one of the actors had time to get more than a glimpse of the situation before the act was ended. The ruffian, as was afterward ascertained, was a condemned murderer who had escaped from jail just the night before he was to have been hanged. No doubt he was lying asleep when the approach of Mrs. Ransom startled him, and thinking it was an attempt to recapture him, he had fired and fled. The sound of the shot roused Mrs. Ransom from her half swoon and she leaped to her feet. Reynolds put forth his hand and touched her on the arm.

"Be calm--don't get scared, I can protect you," he said, but he could not see her. A cloud was in his eyes and a reeling sensation in his brain.

She looked up into his face and saw how deathly white it was.

"Are you hurt?" she quaveringly asked, taking a step nearer him.

He mumbled some unintelligible answer, felt blindly about in the air with his hands, staggered, gasped hoarsely, and fell at full length upon the ground, face-downward, arms outspread, and lay quite still. Suddenly, to Mrs. Ransom, the silence of the place became awful, dense, impenetrable. She screamed, but her voice seemed not to go a yard from her lips. She stood for a moment with clenched hands, her face pinched and thin, her eyes fixed upon the prostrate form of Reynolds; then she threw herself down beside him and tried with all her might to turn him so that she could see his features; but he was so heavy and she so weak that her effort was vain. She called for help until her voice became thick with hoarseness.

"Oh, is he dead?" she wailed, "is he dead? Oh, won't some one come! Must he die now! Oh, and I love him so--love him so!"

It was as if her grieving words called him back from lifelessness, for he moaned, sighed deeply, and by a violent struggle turned himself on his side with his face toward her. He opened his eyes and looked inquiringly at her for a time, then he closed them with a weak, tremulous motion of the lids. She clasped his head in her arms, and summoning all her strength, lifted it upon her lap. The blood was beginning to ooze through his saturated clothes and trickle on the ground beside him. It almost crazed her to see this, but she was as powerless as a child to help him. She could but bend over him, and, brushing the dark heavy hair back from his forehead, where cold beads of sweat had risen, kiss him again and again in the ecstasy of her excitement. He was not unconscious now, but he was limp and nerveless, his immense vitality slowly gathering itself for the effort to recover equilibrium. Faint almost unto death as he was, he felt the thrill her kisses sent throughout his frame, and he did not note the pain of his ugly wound.

"Oh, you must not die, you must not die!" she wailed, in a sobbing voice. "Open your eyes for my sake, John--for my sake, do you hear, for I love you so!"

He heard every word, but he could not open his eyes or move his lips, though slowly and surely his strength was coming back, despite the rapid loss of blood.

The pistol ball was a very large one and it had made a bad, almost fatal wound, having passed through his shoulder and a part of his chest, barely missing the lung. The shock had had a paralyzing effect, causing the insensibility from which he was rallying.

It was a striking picture they made grouped against the dark back-ground of the old wall, with the dim light falling over them. If a broken spear and a cloven helmet had rested hard by, it would have served well for a tableau of medieval days, a lady nursing the head of her fallen knight within the crumbling ruins of some battered castle.

"Why _did_ we ever come here! Oh, love, my own love, open your eyes! Speak to me: say you will not die, you will not die!"

Her words, so insistent, so despairing and so passionate, filled his consciousness with an all-satisfying sense of happiness. He could scarcely understand why she should not be willing to let him lie quietly and listen to her, for he had not recovered himself sufficiently to be able to grasp the reality of her suffering or of his own condition.

"Speak to me, speak to me," she kept reiterating, until at last, like one freeing himself reluctantly from a sweet dream, he moved his lips, making no sound at first, but presently saying:

"Where are you, Agnes?"

His voice was so strange and so low that she could not catch his words. She bowed her head so that her face almost touched his.

"What is it--what did you say?" she tenderly asked.

He put up his left hand and swept it over her cheek and down along her shoulder. Then, as his wound began to pain him, he groaned in a suppressed way.

"What ails me? What--ah, the shot--he hit me, I know--I remember now," he said, beginning to gather strength. "Let me sit up."

With a strong effort he raised himself to a sitting posture and smiled feebly.

"I have called and called, but no one will come. What shall we do?" she cried, wringing her hands and gazing helplessly at him. "Oh, why did we ever come here?"

"Be calm, darling," he said, looking fondly at her, the wan smile on his face growing more intense. "I will show you that I am a man worthy of your love." Then he arose and stood up, tall and beautiful in his strength, before her, seeming to defy his wound and its pain, though his face was pale as death.

"Come," he added, "let us go to the boat and return to the house. Come, I am strong now, and I love you, Agnes, my own little woman--come with me."

He caught her with his unhurt arm and drew her hard against his side. With a swift, firm tread he went with her down to the landing, never faltering or wavering until he had fixed himself in the stern of the boat and directed her how to paddle out to the middle of the stream.

All this time he had been losing blood and his pain had been excruciating. He had made a grand effort, and now the reaction came with a power that he could not resist. He sank back with his head resting on his arm and lay there as white and lifeless as if dead. She thought him dead, and sat there numb and motionless, letting the boat drift with the gentle current. Every thing about her appeared shadowy, misty, unreal. Her heart scarcely beat. Why was it that, in the midst of this awful trial, there came to her mind a vivid memory of the short romance of her married life down on the old plantation by Mariana? Some of those days were dreamily happy ones with her wild boy husband--the days before discontent and trouble came. Why would the reckless blue eyes and curling, yellow hair waver before her, between the strong, pallid features of this man whom she now loved with such fervor?

Slowly the boat drifted on in the sunlight, between the reed-covered banks, bearing its strange load down toward the DeKay place. It was a dark touch with which to end so charming an idyl as the past few days had been; but life in the South favors the tragic and the melodramatic: it is the life of passion and of sudden changes.