The incense that the manager offered at her shrine had a new and intoxicating flavour. It was unique, for her alone. It was such as an artist might feel at the first view of some fine example of a great painter's work, or a virtuoso's joy in the discovery amongst refuse lumber of a genuine Cremona. She could not, of course, discriminate the quality of his feeling, but she had never seen a man's face kindle with that impersonal fervour of delight which illumined his when he looked at her dancing pose and listened to the tones of her voice. She had begun to feel very kindly toward one who made her feel so kindly toward herself. Since she had discovered that her father considered it impossible that he could be an emissary of the revenue force seeking the moonshiner's lair, for which she had mistaken him when she had so jealously guarded him to the house that he might render an account of himself to the head of the enterprise, she had given rein to her interest in his personality; she had realised with a sort of wondering pleasure the delicacy, the refinement of the beauty of his face; her heart warmed to the look in his eyes. She had now no doubts of him; that universal attraction which his candid nature seemed to exert on all the world had too its influence on her. She had begun to entertain a sort of veneration for him, his wide experience, his evident singular knowledge of many things beyond her ken—with how few words he had seemed to make her voice, even to her limited comprehension, a different endowment, infinitely sweeter, stronger, with added liberties of compass. She longed even now to try the phrases which he had inculcated, telling her to sing them at short intervals and with due care, to assume her natural beautiful dancing poses, which he had taught her to accent for the greater effect.
The unknown vast world from which he had come had evolved a sudden interest for her; heretofore she had not even bethought herself to be aware of its existence, save as it now and again spewed out the revenue force, with their sombre menace, to be presently lost again in its unimagined turmoils.
Her mind was full of speculations concerning him. He was her first illustration of the gradations of society; he seemed to her a person of vast importance; she had a sort of reverence for the splendours of his calling; he was a showman—a part owner of the great enterprise whose "pictorial paper" he had spread upon the cabin floor, and he had opened to her a world of wonders to contemplate. Her beautiful eyes grew soft and bright with the thought of him.
Her mind longed to follow the trend of these new reflections. She was tired all at once of Eugene Binley's woes. The injustice in his incarceration here in the moonshiner's den was itself like the penance of imprisonment for a crime of which he believed himself innocent. Yet in putting the question to the test he risked more than his liberty—his life itself was jeopardised. His hard case had appealed to her woman's sympathy—the future was dim, veiled, he might not divine the issue of a day. He had had a certain interest for her; he was of a more dashing personality than the duller men she had known. The impulsive temperament that had lured him to his doom had a quality that struck her fancy in dearth of other attractions. He was quick, keen, fiery, and he had a spark of imagination that imparted warmth to others, bare and cold of mental attributes. He had added to his more definite and obvious troubles the æsthetic grief of falling desperately in love, and in a cautious and dubious way she had responded. This was a sentimental result of the privilege of shelter which Shadrach Pinnott had not anticipated, and which he by no means favoured. He had secured for the bare boon of subsistence an additional stalwart worker at the still, and one whose secrecy was pledged for the best of reasons. That Eugene Binley could not venture freely forth like the others, that he was not subject, therefore, to disclose by inadvertence in casual conversation the secrets of the trade, since he saw no one not concerned in the illicit manufacture, gave him an added value to his employer which Shadrach was not slow to appreciate. More countenance than shelter and subsistence he had no mind to afford him. Shadrach had taken no steps, however, to balk the romance thus far. He had some knowledge, perhaps, of the inconstancy of the feminine heart, and relied on this to furnish in due time the solution of the problem, or perhaps like many other people he merely postponed to a more convenient season the guessing of the difficult riddle which circumstance had propounded. Hence, though he now and then glanced askance at the lovers as they stood half in the shadow of the stalagmite, and half in the thin white light of the tallow dip, he said naught to discourage the "fool chin-choppin'" as he denominated their talk, thinking it the course least calculated to do harm. "Lovyers let alone will quar'l enough tharselves ter fling 'em apart. A peaceable disposed person needn't 'sturb hisself ter start a contention jes' ter separate 'em," he argued within himself.
"Leave it ter men?" she was echoing Binley's words dully. "I'd hate powerful ter leave anythink ez I war took up with ter sech ez men."
She gazed speculatively about the place, suddenly illumined with a preternatural brilliancy as Daniel Pinnott flung open the furnace door. All the white colonnades were a-glister with myriads of sparkling points of light. Far, far down the shadowy reaches of the cave they were visible now, with stately arches marking the confines of other and further chambers, unexplored perhaps and of an undemonstrated vastness. The light brought into evidence that peculiar incrustation of the walls of limestone caverns which takes the semblance of flowers, the rough projections seeming roses, lilies wrought in the rock, the similitude being so exact that here and there a flower can be found as perfect of symmetry as if carved by the chisel of a cunning workman. Glimpsed through one of the lofty arches the depending stalactites in a heavy group might have suggested to a cultivated imagination a great chandelier of imposing proportions and thus have heightened the semblance to some stately hall, the audience chamber of a sovereign, the throne-room of the buried splendours of some forgotten magic monarchy. The limitations of Clotilda's experience and mental scope forbade the fancy, but the uncouth forms of the distillers with their slouching shadows, their big hats, their bent postures, their dull lack-lustre faces, their grotesque gestures, gnome-like at their work, seemed indeed at variance with this scene of weird beauty, and little suggestive of those higher attributes of justice, of acumen, of perspicacity. "I'd sure hate ter leave it ter men."
It was the subject in all the world of paramount importance to him, and he was eagerly ready for the discussion of its phases anew. Every point they had often canvassed together with the keenness of a vital mutual interest, and there was naught new to urge. But as he shifted his weight, though still leaning against the pillar, and brought his brows together in a dubitating frown and began, "Waal, now,"—she suddenly revolted from the theme. Her mind, her heart were elsewhere. She hastily interrupted—"Of course, though, it's jes' ez ye think. Mebbe it would be best, arter all, ter leave it ter men."
Adversity is said to be of vast moral value in the discipline of the heart; it is a whetstone to the wits as well. Eugene Binley caught all the sense of dismissal that was in her mind as it unconsciously, insistently reached out for the new thoughts that surged upon it. He was cut to the soul. All that he had was at stake, his liberty, his life, or—if this unavailing seclusion were gratuitous—his restoration to the free, independent, open walks of existence. A terrible doubt beset him. Did she indeed care no longer? Had she ever cared—or was it but an idle whim in default of more serious interest that had lured his heart from him? He could not judge. His head was in a whirl. But remonstrance might avail naught. It was the fact that impressed his mind. He had surprised the revolt of her sentiment—it had been a momentary illumination like that of the open furnace door, now clashed close again, leaving the cave to its dull shadow, the far reaches of dense blackness through distant arches, the dim pure white radiance of the tallow dip, the subdued scintillations of the stalagmitic colonnades, the dull rotund glister of the copper still, the vermicular suggestions of the worm coiled up in the condenser, the intense line of vivid white light that defined the lower edge of the furnace door, the metal fitting ill to the masonry, and thus giving a glimpse of the roaring fire within. Clotilda had turned her face upward toward Eugene Binley, as if waiting for him to speak, but there was within it no light of interest, only dull attention.
He tried the experiment deliberately. "Oh, we uns can't make no decision now, short off; we uns hev been along that road many a time; but we don't often hev news in the mountings. Tell me su'thin' more 'bout the show an' that thar showman."
Her face was suddenly irradiated.