CHAPTER VI.

AT THE GATE.

Reynolds started to go on foot to White's cabin among the mountains. His immediate purpose was to arrange for sending his dogs down to Birmingham in a few days, in order that they might be ready for the trip to General DeKay's. He was glad of this excuse for getting away for a time from the town, out into the woods, where he might try to understand himself; for he was in a mood very different from any he had experienced in the last six years, and in fact very different from any he ever before had realized. Since the evening of Mr. Noble's dinner a change had been going on within him. It was as if some reservoir of feeling, hitherto sealed up, had been tapped, from which a rare sensation had diffused itself throughout his being, mildly thrilling his nerves and vaguely firing his blood. He could trace this change to no definite source, nor could he be sure whether it tended toward some new and brighter phase of his variable life, or toward some lurking evil. He felt the pressure of a doubtful presentiment, as all strongly imaginative natures at times do, and in the midst of a vivid sense of pleasure there hovered a dim shadow of dread.

It was in the twilight following an unusually warm day, that he turned aside from the highway to follow a trail leading over a spur of the mountain on the further side of which stood White's cabin. The stars were already coming out in the soft, southern sky, and a slender moon hung half-way down the west. The air was fragrant with the keen essence of resin and the balsam of pine leaves, but there was scarcely more than a mere breath astir among the frondous groves. He walked rapidly, unconsciously timing his strides to the pulses of his mood. Why would the voice of Miss Noble keep ringing in his ears, and her earnest, honest eyes keep looking straight into his with some almost imperceptible shadow of rebuke in them? And why did the poor little face of Milly White now and again force itself upon his inner vision? He could hardly be called morbidly sensitive, but he had been for so long a time shut away from the finer and sweeter social influences. Somewhat a dreamer, too, as are all persons who dwell apart with nature and art. Since his hermit life began he had been a contributor, under a _nom de plume_, to a number of English and American publications, both as an artist and as a writer, so that he had divided his time between the pleasures of the sportsman and the milder excitements of the provincial magazineist. He had fancied for a long time that he was happy, and that all the fascination of woman's charms had ceased for him. Now as he strode along he was loth to admit, even in the secrecy of self-communion, that the old influence was taking hold again with a zest as fresh as it was keen and deep. He stopped at the highest point reached by the sinuous trail and sat down upon a stone. The tall, puffy column of black smoke from the iron furnaces rose slantingly against the line of sky above the valley where the town lay. In another direction, beyond a dusky gulch, some lines of fire were burning along the mountain sides, like the lights of an army camp. He tried to analyze his feelings, but the effort was futile; he got up and went on down to the cabin, his blood tingling as if with wine.

The moon had fallen to the western mountain-tops and was touching a peak with its delicate horn when he reached the rustic gate. Milly was there, as was her wont, to welcome him home.

"I knowed 'at ye'd come," she said, "fur I dremp last night at ye was dead an' 'at's a sign, ye know."

Her face, upturned to his, caught from the faint moonlight, or from some other heavenly reflection, a gleam of peaceful happiness that added something which Reynolds never before had seen there, or if ever he had seen it, it was when, a mere child, she had so faithfully hung over him and tended him through a long and almost fatal illness. The memory of her untiring patience and gentleness, her quick sense of his needs and her silent but evidently deep joy at his final recovery, now suddenly rushed upon him.

"I've ben a wushin' ye'd come an' I'm so glad!" she murmured, as she opened the gate for him. "Hit air so lonesome when ye'r away."

Her lithe, plump figure was clothed in a clinging gown of cotton stuff and a white kerchief was pinned about her throat. Down over her shoulders in a long, rather thin brush fell her rimpled pale yellow hair. Her cheeks glowed and her lips had on them the dew of innocent and, alas, ignorant maidenhood. A flash of recognition leaped into the mind of Reynolds, though he was scarcely conscious of it, and Milly White's strange beauty was no longer invisible to him.

"Ye ortn't to stay away so long," she added, not in rebuke, but in a low, quavering voice like that of some happy bird. Her mountain dialect, crabbed as it appears in writing, added emphasis to the fresh, half wild tenderness of her tones.

All around the woods and little broken fields were dim and silent. The warm southern stars burned overhead and the fitful balmy air crept past with furtive whispers. The moon slipped down behind the mountain, leaving on the peak a delicate wavering ghost that slowly vanished into the common haze of the night. Reynolds paused in the little gateway and looked down into Milly's lifted shining face. In that instant a tender feeling, a subtle sense of some obscure but immediate draught upon the inner sources of his passionate nature, took complete possession of him. The touching sweetness of her face, the wild grace of her form, and that charming expression of strength and development, impressed him. He forgot the cabin, the pinched and sapless mountain life and all its empty hopelessness. For the time he saw nothing but Milly as his over-stimulated imagination lighted her face and form with the allurements of irresistible beauty. He stooped, and, swiftly folding her in his arms, kissed her passionately.

"Oh!" she cried, her voice slipping with sharp sweetness away through the dusky woods. It was like the quick musical chirp of a glad bird. She clung to him with strong, loving arms.

He let her go presently and said:

"It is late for you to be out; come in now, the night air is beginning to be chilly and you'll catch a cold."

"Oh, no!" she naïvely responded, "let's us stay out yer, they're a smokin' in ther, an' hit's so nice ter be out yer." Her mountain dialect, as filtered through her pure, peculiarly musical voice, lost all its harshness and became a fitting expression of a part of the fascinating enigma of her character. "Ye'v' ben away so long, John, an' sometimes I wus afeared to go er-sleep 'cause ye wus gone, an' 'cause I'd dream ye wus dead."

"Well, come in now," he gently urged, drawing the long pale brush of her hair through his hand and passing on into the cabin.

She looked after him, the smile slowly fading out of her face and giving place to that half-vacant, mildly hopeless expression which it usually wore. She put her rather large but finely chiseled hands on top of her head, with the fingers laced together, and with her elbows extended gazed listlessly at the sky. She felt a vague sense of disappointment blended with a delicious happiness. When Reynolds entered the cabin, White and his wife were leaning over a mere pretense of fire and smoking their pipes, with such abandonment to the luxury that they merely glanced at him as he entered; but mountain politeness overcame the tobacco at last, and they got up, greeting him warmly. He shook hands with them in turn, asking about their health, but declined to sit down, preferring after a few commonplace inquiries, to go into his own room and be alone.

His first sensation on entering his apartment was one of disgust at its rough and uninviting aspect. Indirectly the question was assailing him: why had he ever been content in such a place? A query of this nature may arise in one's mind without any definite form, impressing itself by a sort of implication and indirect reflection from a throng of comparisons involuntarily and almost unconsciously made. Reynolds' nature was intensely virile, his passions powerful and his imagination tropical. It goes with the saying that his feelings and tastes were subject to violent and sudden changes. He usually had, however, perfect self-control and an outward appearance of calmness under the most trying circumstances. But let the check-rein once break and his fiery passions get control of the bit, then nothing that passion demands could escape him. He was aware of this; he knew the need of self-restraint, for at the bottom his was a noble soul, full of self-sacrifice and generous, liberal manliness.

On the floor by his easel lay a scrap of white paper with something scrawled upon it. He picked it up mechanically and saw that Milly had been trying to copy the dog-sketch that still rested on the easel. It was a poor, crude scratch, such as a little child might have accomplished, showing in its stiff, hesitating lines the limitations of the girl's vague notion of art. He smiled at this evidence of the first stirrings of culture in a handful of almost barren soil. Art is forever dropping seeds that germinate under all the exigencies of weather. Few of the shootlets live to show more than a tender point above the surface of the ground, but their number is legion and each spike gives to the air an infinitesimal trace of fragrance which cheers us as we breathe.

While he stood looking at her work, Milly came into the room through a doorway that led from the kitchen. He was still smiling when he looked towards her and said:

"Did you draw this, Milly?"

She put her hands over her face and leaned against the wall. The light from a large lamp on the table gave to her figure the effect of a strong sketch in charcoal. He noted her attitude with an artist's eye, and with a man's eyes, too. There was a bird-like grace in the droop of her shoulders and in the fine curves of her body and limbs. Her flaxen hair gave forth just a modicum of golden light.

He did not repeat his inquiry. Something in her appearance checked him. All that Moreton had said about her came into his mind with almost startling force. How clearly he felt now the dryad-like strength of her figure, and the infantile purity of her face. She had the soul of a woman, too, for how tenderly she had nursed him.

"Get me my slippers, please, Milly," he presently said, more to break up the situation than with a desire to be served.

She let fall her hands and sprang to obey him, with the noiseless swiftness of a kitten. She fetched his slippers, and also his dressing gown, from a corner of the room. This done she lingered near him for awhile, as if hoping he might need some further help. She would not look straight at him now, but kept her face half turned away, glancing sidewise under her drooping eyelids, one hand fluttering idly about the kerchief at her throat.

Some one lifted the latch of the door leading to the room in which White and his wife were smoking. At the first click Milly darted noiselessly into the kitchen. It was White, who hesitatingly thrust his head past the door-post and said:

"I loaded three hunderd carterges fur the twelve-bore gun."

"Load a hundred for the twenty-gauge, if you please," said Reynolds, "two and a half drams of powder and three-quarters of an ounce of number eight shot. Put two wads on the powder, don't forget."

"All right, sir, I air 'quainted wuth jest what ye want. Them shells'll be fixed up jest to the dot. Ye orter see them air dogs, they shine same like they'd ben 'iled."

"Thank you, I'm glad of that. Good night," said Reynolds, anxious to get back to his thoughts.

White withdrew his head.

Milly, from the shadows of the kitchen, gazed fixedly at Reynolds, as he stood in the mellow light of the lamp.

He was, indeed, a man pleasing to look upon, strong, tall, nobly proportioned, with a grand head and a dark, handsome face. His limbs were long and muscular, his shoulders square and broad, his chest deep, his waist rather slender, his whole bearing that of a man by birth and of right a gentleman, and by reason of health and training an athlete. Say what we may, such a man bears about with him a power of fascination, a magnetism able to work great good or great evil or both. He is a flame in which a soul may be warmed or burned up, according to circumstances. A girl of Milly's ignorance and inexperience had nothing to protect her from such danger as his influence might bring. She would have gone unhesitatingly to any length he might have asked, without the slightest thrill of doubt or fear. Hers was not a nature capable of much expansion or improvement. A long line of mountain ancestors had fixed in her the hereditary simpleness, narrowness and mental barrenness of the Sandlapper; but along with these limitations had come the gift of a flower-like beauty of form and face, and a voice sweeter than any bird's. She had come up in a wild, lonely way, running free in wind and sun and rain, quite illiterate, utterly unaware of conventional proprieties, truthful, honest, affectionate, passionate, after a fashion, and as independent as any deer in the woods.

It would not be making the statement too strong to say that Reynolds came to a discovery of her striking beauty as one comes upon those haunting visions of loveliness in one's dreams. Why had he not noticed it before? He was vaguely aware that in some way Cordelia Noble had opened his eyes by stirring up the stagnant fountains of his nature and setting old currents to flowing in his veins. Her light girlish prattle had fallen into his ears with the effect that a shower produces on parched and withered sod, and it had had the charm of bird-songs after a long, dreary winter.

He remained at the cabin several days before the time came for going to General DeKay's, and it was in some way soothing and restful to have Milly shyly hovering around him. He did not fully realize how deeply he was absorbed in studying her face, her form, her free, wild grace of motion and attitude, and the strange, crude music of her voice. She followed him wherever he went, or at least whenever he would permit it, content to be near him, like some faithful animal. She had always acted thus, but he never had noticed it before.

When at last the time arrived for his departure for General DeKay's, Reynolds rose early in the morning to get ready for the little journey. The DeKay place was down on the Alabama river, near Montgomery, and the company from Birmingham would go by rail to the former city, where General DeKay would have carriages for them. The fact is that Reynolds had no physical preparations to make, these having all been attended to with shrewd faithfulness by White; but there was a sort of indefinable dread, or aversion, or some other objection hovering in his mind in connection with the thought of leaving his retirement, his hermitage, and floating out once more upon the open sea of life. In the early gray of morning he crept silently from the cabin and walked or rather climbed to the mountain top and sat down on a stone with his face to the east. He had spent a restless night, indulging, between snatches of unrefreshing sleep, regret, remorse, repentance and other nightmares of conscience. He had almost involuntarily sought this high perch overlooking all the country round, as if expecting to be purified by the soft rare atmosphere and the exhilarating wildness and freshness of the view. The east was all aglow with the wonder of sunrise, whilst the valley wherein Birmingham lay was shrouded in a mottled cloak of coal smoke from the furnaces. The foot-hills, clothed in their bristling pines and ragged scrub-oaks, were softened almost into tenderness by the blueish film hovering over them. A dewy coolness and sweetness came up on the morning wind as if out of the lowest stratum of the valley, in strong contrast with the absolute dryness of the stony mountain top. Slowly the fire of the sunrise increased in the filmy east until the great morning-gate seemed suddenly to fly open with a wide upward flare of flame and long, glowing spears of gold reaching out across the valley and billowy foot-hills. Reynolds was in a condition that demanded solitude, and yet he felt no definite purpose in the mood, no clear reason for desiring to be alone. It filled him with a sudden annoyance when a slight sound caused him to turn and see Milly standing close by, bare-headed and smiling radiantly. He frowned.

"What are you here for, Milly?" he demanded sternly. "Go back immediately."

The girl did not speak. The light went out of her face and a strange grayness overspread it instead. She turned about with a shrinking motion and walked slowly away down the steep slope of the mountain into the straggling wood. Almost immediately Reynolds felt how brutal his act had been and regretted it, hated himself for it. He arose as if to follow her, but faltered and hesitated, allowing his eyes to wander over the grand mountain landscape now flooded with the full light of the sun. What sort of change was this that was coming into his life? Something like a warning shadow had fallen into his soul, and yet some sweet foreboding was with it, some tender, subtle charm luring him with a deep and sweet fascination. He stood a while gazing dreamily, but seeing nothing, then, shaking himself as one freeing himself from slumber, he walked rapidly in the direction taken by Milly. Half way down the slope in a shadowy clump of dwarf pines he found the girl sitting on an old log, her face buried in her hands, sobbing bitterly. He stopped close to her and stood for a moment looking at her. How pitiful a picture she made, with her drooping little form, almost covered by the thin gold veil of bright disheveled hair, outlined against a tangle of broken boughs! He sat down beside her and took one of her wet little hands in his.