CHAPTER V.

SOME LIGHT TALK.

Mr. Noble's house in Birmingham was one of our ugly brick-red American cottages, with many sharp points to its roof, many slender chimneys, a profusion of bay windows and plate glass, and an air of band-box newness, suggestive of fresh paint and scarcely dry plastering. It stood on a slight knoll overlooking a quiet part of the little city, and commanding a view of the mountains in every direction, as well as of the broken picturesque valley. Its ample lawn, shaded by a few native trees, had been set with grass, as if in defiance of Southern custom, and the broad walks were not flanked with the conventional parallel rows of shrubs and flowers so dear to the heart of the old-time Southerner.

As Moreton and Reynolds passed through the low iron gate in front of this house, on the evening of Mr. Noble's dinner, they paused just inside the inclosure, and turned about to take a view of the surrounding landscape. The horizon in every direction was broken by irregular lines of blue hills and mountains, the higher peaks sharply defined against a soft crepuscular sky, whilst the lower ones, seen through the thin gray smoke of the valley, were scarcely distinguishable from the fragmentary clouds floating lazily in the furthest distance. A gentle breeze, running northward, with just an audible ripple, had in it, along with its mountain freshness and purity, a dreamy, languor-breeding influence, suggestive of those palm-studded islands and warm seas a little further south. Overhead the sky was as blue and soft as that of Lombardy, and set with fervid, flaring stars.

"This strikes me as very near the ideal climate, don't you know, a golden mean between the indolent, dreamy South and the restless, over-realistic North," said Moreton, taking in a deep draught of the sweet, stimulating air.

"The air is pure and wholesome," said Reynolds, "but the scenery is hopelessly monotonous and uninspiring. Six years of it will dry your enthusiasm down to the impalpable dust of dreams. I fear I have had too much of it."

"No doubt you have," Moreton bluntly responded, "considering your way of taking it, crooning over there in that remote cabin, aloof from every genuine human influence, morbidly browsing the weeds of your own conscience." His tone was light and chaffing, but Reynolds, as if cut by some hidden meaning of the words, started a little, then, catching his friend's humor, said:

"Well, let's go into this palace of pleasure and perhaps I may there get my conscience purified in the light of--"

"The light of her eyes And the dew of her lips, Where the moth never flies And the bee never sips,"--

Moreton hummed, taking his friend's arm and moving toward the house. The windows gave forth long streams of light, and a subdued sound of voices came from within the brilliant rooms. To the somewhat rusted taste of Reynolds there came, along with the gleam of chandeliers and the polite murmur, a little thrill, as if he were about to re-enter a long-abandoned but much loved atmosphere. Already the old fascination was returning. He saw through an open window the flutter of fans and the gleam of white throats, laces and pearls. For a single instant all the charms of young womanhood gayly but modestly attired, ready for its half-shy, half-daring little assaults upon the masculine heart, burst upon him. As a drunkard, after a long abstinence, feels his whole nature change at the first sip of wine, Reynolds was at once borne off his guard, and for the instant all the period of his mountain seclusion disappeared. It was as if his gay, almost dissolute life had never been arrested. Some one struck a few rapid chords from a grand piano and then followed some airy popular song.

"Why the house is full," said Moreton in an undertone, as they mounted the broad steps to the hall door. "Mr. Noble has exceedingly liberal views on the subject of 'a few friends.' We are going to see the _elite_ of Montgomery as well as the _bon ton_ of Birmingham, if I guess correctly."

Reynolds made no response. He paused on the threshold and stood for a moment in a faltering attitude. But for the presence of Moreton, he would have turned away and retraced his steps to the hotel, or, more likely, to his cabin in the mountains. One who for years has been entirely beyond the outmost pale of polite society, is apt to feel this trepidation, when on the point of re-entering the charmed circle.

The company was not so large as Moreton had imagined. The evening was warm enough to admit of open windows, hence the sound of voices had the more easily reached the outside. Fifteen or twenty persons, mostly young, were scattered throughout a row of elaborate rooms, now made into one by means of folding doors and movable curtains. Mr. Noble, if possible more supple and elastic than ever before, and Mrs. Noble, a tall woman, dressed in elegant taste, greeted Moreton and Reynolds with admirable ease and cordiality. The company was so small that the arrival of two new guests was at once known to all. Moreton glanced about, seeing many faces that he knew, but Reynolds felt himself a stranger to all. His tall, erect figure, bronzed face and graceful bearing attracted the furtive glances of more than one woman present. Moreton, in bowing low over Mrs. Noble's hand, had managed to say to her unheard by any one else: "Mr. Reynolds, my friend here, is a misanthrope and has long been out of society. You will do me the greatest of favors if you will make him the especial object of your gracious attention this evening."

"Certainly," she answered, in a very sweet and low voice, "you shall see how readily I grant your every request, Mr. Moreton. Leave your friend to me."

She kept her promise with scrupulous fidelity, and Reynolds found himself drawn into the midst of a charming circle, where, for a time, all memory of the past few years was drowned in the music of gentle voices.

Miss Cordelia Noble, the banker's daughter, with whom he presently found himself in conversation, was a merry-eyed, ruby-lipped blonde, as supple and ready as her father and at need as dignified and gracious as her mother. She had just returned with her aunt from New York and talked in a most charming way of the opening of the social season there, of the parties, the opera, the art exhibitions and all the other features of importance to fashionable folk in the metropolis. Her voice was a sincere, honest, girlish one, and her sayings were spiced with those little grotesqueries of thought and phrasing which stay with a bright girl for a while after her so-called school days are over. Reynolds had not dreamed of how hungry he really was for even this slight sort of social food, and it was well for him that he did not suspect that, before the dinner was half over, he had become, by force of tacit consent amongst all present, the center of the evening's interest.

Moreton was delighted. He had determined to win his friend back from his hermit's life, no matter what might have been in the first place the secret reason for his retirement to such an outlandish den as the mountaineer's cabin.

"My father has told me that you are to be one of the party going with him to General DeKay's," Miss Noble said to Reynolds.

"Yes," he answered, "and I expect a most delightful time. I hope you are going too?"

"Yes, I could not afford to let such an opportunity pass. I have always greatly desired to see something of field sports. I dote on dogs, and I really believe I should like to shoot, and ride after the hounds in a real fox-chase."

"I am glad you are going," he said. "Your enthusiasm will be a great help when birds are scarce or when we shoot poorly. Will there be other ladies?"

"Oh, quite a number, I dare say. There will be one, at least, the dearest, charmingest woman that ever lived. Mrs. Ransom, a widow, but lovely, fascinating, every thing, indeed, that's sweet and interesting. She was married only a few months when her husband died--he was killed in a duel or something romantic, several years ago--and she looks like a mere girl now."

Miss Noble was looking directly into Reynolds' face, as she delivered this girlish speech, and she saw something like a shadow flit across his brow and eyes, as if her words had caused him annoyance, but it passed away instantly.

"If you really are fond of dogs," he said, "I shall be proud to show you mine. I fancy I have two that can not be matched in the whole world."

"What sort are they?" she inquired with immediate interest. "You see my father has made me quite a connoisseur; I am away up in dog-knowledge." She held up a little plump hand to show how high her attainments soared.

"Are they pointers, setters or droppers?"

Reynolds laughed. Her outright earnestness of interest in such a subject amused him, whilst it also made him feel justified in pursuing the theme, always a pleasant one to a genuine sportsman.

"One is a pointer, the other a setter," he answered.

"And do they work well together? Do they understand each other's movements, back each other, and all that?" she inquired.

"In the most perfect way imaginable. They are like perfectly drilled soldiers, their minds seem to keep pace exactly."

"Oh, isn't it the most beautiful sight! I know it must be. My father has described it to me so often and I am so anxious to see something of it. I don't know why I shouldn't, do you? Mamma rather objects--talks of cruelty to birds, and sneers in her sweet way, at the idea of a young lady caring for field sports. Do you see any wrong in it? I really think I should like to have a gun."

"When I was in India I saw a young lady shoot at a tiger," said Reynolds, "but she missed it."

"And ever since you have kept the incident in mind as proof positive of the modern woman's inefficiency in the field of Diana," she quickly replied.

"Not altogether," he said; "Diana's field was so broad." But Miss Noble was not scholar enough to feel the point of his meaning. She was ready enough, however, and responded:

"Oh, yes, the whole blue heaven to sail across; I had forgotten that her glory, after all, was mostly moonshine."

"We poor men have been unable to forget it since the dreadful fate of Acteon and the drowsy experience of Endymion; but if you will promise not to turn the weapon against me I shall be glad to let you try a beautiful little English twenty-gauge gun of mine when we find the game."

"How good of you," she exclaimed delightedly; "it will be charming. Don't tell mamma, she would ridicule me out of it."

"Never; I shall die with the secret, if need be. I would not miss seeing you fire your first shot for any thing."

"Now there," she exclaimed, "you can't quite be fair; there was something in your voice that suggested a lack of confidence in my nerve and ability, I shan't shut my eyes and dodge and--and--squeak."

"Of course not," said Reynolds, "I shall expect nothing of the kind. You will kill your bird handsomely, and I shall applaud you and give you _encore_ and----"

"If you are going to make fun of me, I shall stay at home," she exclaimed with spirit. "I'm in earnest. I really wish to know how to shoot."

Reynolds' eyes involuntarily ran over the outlines of the girl's fine form and rested for a moment on her animated face. She was indeed in earnest, and she looked a perfect model for a Diana, so far as strength and symmetry went. True her bright, vivacious American face had nothing of the straight-cut Grecian severity of beauty, but it was a brave, self-reliant, earnest face, tinged with healthy blood and beaming with the spirit of girlish enterprise. It needed but a look into her eyes for one to know that she was as pure as a violet, with the charm of an infinite capacity for love hovering like a separate atmosphere about her. She was a woman in nothing but physique. Girlhood of the freshest and charmingest sort was apparent in all that she said and did. Reynolds felt her sweet, breeze-like influence pass over him with the effect of a rare fragrance. He gave himself up wholly to her mood. It was like romping in a furtive way, this light, free prattle with one so young, so frank, so childlike and so beautiful.

"Why, if you wish to shoot you shall," he said with smiling earnestness. "I should be glad to show you how. It's quite easy to learn. There's nothing difficult or objectionable in it."

"Oh, do you really mean it? Do you think it quite----proper? I never could see any real impropriety, and somehow I have fancied that I have a genuine passion for it. Perhaps I shall not like it after I have tried it--but, yes I shall, I know I shall. Don't you think so?"

She had a way of opening her eyes wide, as a child does, when asking a question, and she looked straight into his with a simple fearlessness that was far removed from boldness.

"I think you would like any thing that--that--you ought to like," he said.

"I do not like that," she replied naïvely; "it has the ring of flattery. Why do men always do that? Do they think we like it?"

"I don't think you do," he responded, laughing and opening his eyes a little wider in turn. "I really didn't mean flattery, however: I meant to say that you are constituted to enjoy real, rational pastimes and recreations, that you have healthy, natural tastes. That is not flattery, I hope."

"You put it in the least objectionable shape, to say the least," she replied, "and I am willing to compromise, remembering your promise about the gun. I have an ambition that I will confide to you." She leaned toward him a little and added: "When I go to Newport next summer I want to be able to tell my friends about shooting quails in Alabama. It will be so much better than their poor mockery of fox-chasing--that's absurd."

"Ah, I begin to understand," said Reynolds. "You may count on me to aid you in every possible way. You shall have most interesting and realistic experiences to relate at the seaside, if you will let me be your guide and teacher. I beg to be your abettor-in-chief."

Mrs. Noble and Moreton approached, just at this point, and the subject was dropped. In fact Moreton at once drew Miss Cordelia away to some other part of the house, and managed to be near her for the rest of the evening. But the girl left with Reynolds something that lingered, diffusing itself throughout his consciousness, with the effect of a mildly exhilarating potion. Strangely enough, the words of Moreton's little song:

"The light of her eyes And the dew of her lips, Where the moth never flies And the bee never sips,"

had all the evening been tinkling in his ears. Not that Miss Noble had troubled him in the least with any thing like love at first sight. She was not a girl for him to fall in love with; but her gentle, earnest voice, her grace of person and manner, and her half-girlish, half-womanly independence of speech had touched him and quickened in him germs of sympathy he had thought long since dead. He felt old dry wells of feeling bubbling afresh. He was gently moved as if by a subtle change within him. Mrs. Noble found him with this mood upon him, and it lent to his talk its freshness and fascination. She was charmed, and when she was told that for the past six years he had scarcely left the cabin over in the mountains, the touch of mystery did not lessen her interest in him.

Moreton, without thought of what sympathy he might arouse by his peculiarly graphic manner of presenting the subject, described to Miss Cordelia the wild, strange prettiness of Milly White and the pathetic ignorance in which her whole nature seemed steeped.

"Why, how romantic!" she exclaimed, "she must be interesting. She ought to be taught. There may be something well worth developing behind those wonderful, mysterious eyes of that girl."

Cordelia's school days were not yet so far in the past that she had got rid of certain academical theories. She still reveled in the belief that education might make a king of a frog.

"If she could be taught," said Moreton, in a reflective way; "but I suppose such a thing is impossible. She comes of such vulgar ancestry, ignorance and stupidity are her heritage, don't you know, and she probably has no capacity. Her limitations are set and nothing can broaden them, I fear. But her beauty, if it may be called by that name, is certainly remarkable. I have never seen a more perfect form--petite, lithe as a leopard's and as graceful as a fawn's, and her face has something in it so appealingly and so hopelessly sweet and pure. But then such vacancy, such hideous ignorance."

Cordelia grew interested. Her vivid imagination took quick and strong hold on his sketch of this mountain girl, filling in with its own lines and coloring the spaces he had left.

"Why hasn't Mr. Reynolds taught her?" she exclaimed, with just a trace of deprecation in her voice. "He has been over there so long, living in the same house. It's a shame that he has not directed her mind so as to awaken some----" she stopped short and a little color flushed her cheeks.

"Oh, Reynolds sees nothing of her fine points," Moreton hastened to say without choice of words. "He's a Southerner, don't you know, and considers her poor white trash--that's the phrase here. He thinks it absurd that a gentleman should look at such a girl long enough to form any opinion as to the question of her beauty."

The conversation was broken in upon and ended at this point by some trivial turn of the evening's happenings, and soon after Reynolds and Moreton took their leave.

They walked toward the hotel, each silently revolving in his mind that part of his experience at the banker's house which had chanced to most deeply impress him. Reynolds, in fact, was scarcely conscious of his companion's presence, so full was he of many other indeterminate but wholly pleasing plans for making Miss Noble happy with his dogs and gun when they should meet at General DeKay's plantation. Moreton had lighted a cigarette and pulled his hat down over his eyes.

"This girl of White's--how old is she, Reynolds?" he presently inquired, in a tone so abrupt that his companion looked up as if startled. "She's scarcely a woman yet, is she?"

Reynolds did not answer promptly, but kept his eyes on Moreton's face while they walked two or three paces.

"Oh, the devil, what do I know or care about her?" he at length said. "You'd better go out and interview her. She seems to have tangled your fancy." The words look brutal, but his voice and manner were merely indifferent and light, with a touch of good-humored raillery.

"She does stay in my head somehow," Moreton frankly replied. "And I confess that it amazes me to know that you have never discovered what deuced physical perfection she has. You needn't try to make me believe in your obtuseness, however: I know you too well, don't you know."

Reynolds laughed, and laying his hand on Moreton's arm, said:

"You have happened to see her at some exceptional angle and with an artist's eye. Poor little thing, it is a small measure that fills her life. Hers is a hopeless lot. Let's choose a better subject. Now there's Miss Noble."

Moreton did not respond promptly, but looked rather searchingly at his friend. He almost resented the democratic freedom that linked so readily and intimately the names of Milly White and Cordelia Noble. Presently he said:

"Miss Noble is an exceptional American girl. She has all the naïveté and freshness of the country without any trace of its deuced vulgarity."

"Your long residence of two months in this great country fully equips you for criticism," replied Reynolds with mock gravity.

"I have lived a thousand years in America," was Moreton's response. "Every hour has been a decade. I never felt a genuine sentiment before I came here. You must pardon me if I arrogate to myself the right to speak patronizingly to one who has only been here thirty or thirty-five years."

"I see how it is," said Reynolds. "The same old story. Another sweetheart. You had four in Paris, three in Rome, two in Geneva, two in----"

"Oh, come now, none of that," Moreton exclaimed with an impatient gesture. "For once and forever I am in earnest, don't you know. I mean to marry Miss Noble."

"I am heartily glad of it," said Reynolds, grasping his friend's hand. "I cordially congratulate you, Moreton. What a sweet, bright, perfectly natural girl she is! I honor you all the more for your choice."

As they walked on to the hotel, Reynolds was thinking what a fair outcome this marriage would be to Moreton's rather adventuresome bachelor career. He did not dare figure for himself any thing so happy, but his imagination was full of floating, rosy fantasies, formless as yet, but ready to take almost any shape of beauty, grace or passion. He felt a quicker movement of his blood, he breathed deeper, a wider horizon seemed open to him all at once. He dared not try to analyze his state of feeling, lest the test should dissipate it. Like some mere stripling just fallen in love, he heard all through his dreams that night a sweet, strange voice singing that light stanza of Moreton's song:

"The light of her eyes And the dew of her lips, Where the moth never flies And the bee never sips."