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.
CHAPTER VII.
AN OLD PLANTATION HOUSE.
General DeKay's house was on a slight knoll overlooking in one direction the Alabama river, and a broad stretch of fertile cotton lands, whilst every other view was lost in the dense shadows of semi-tropical woods. The building was wholly wanting in architectural beauty, yet it was picturesque enough, with its wide verandas and tall, heavy, stuccoed columns, its many-gabled roof and huge stack of chimneys. Tall magnolia trees grew about it, vines clambered over it, and its small-paned, many-mullioned windows and open halls, gave it an air of old-fashioned conservatism and hospitality quite in a line with what one has always read and heard of southern country life among the wealthy planters of the Gulf States. Spaciousness was the most marked feature of the building. The rooms were many and large, arranged for the comforts of unlimited light and air. When the windows and doors were all thrown open, a breeze blowing from any quarter flowed through the house with unchecked freedom. The floors were of ash, mostly uncarpeted, and the walls and ceilings were heavily paneled with oak. Wide winding stairways and huge fire-places, cumbrous chandeliers and sconces, together with what appeared an over-crowded amount of massive old-time furniture, suggested a formal stateliness rather out of keeping with that freedom of welcome which was and is the distinctive charm of southern hospitality. The mansion had been built and furnished long before the war, in the most prosperous and extravagant days of slavery, when the planter knew no limit to his ability to make and spend and when he set no bound to the number of his guests or the length of their stay under his roof. The dark gray stucco and weather-beaten shingles, together with the old-time arrangement of the doors and windows, gave to the building a very ancient look, as if it might have stood there since a time when men lived as did the old fighting and feasting barons of medieval England. Bucks' antlers hung in the hall, along with heavy rifles and fowling pieces, and a few striking ancestral portraits looked down from the dark walls. It had known much revelry of a thoroughly proper sort, this grand old home of the DeKays, and its inmates, for several generations, had exerted a marked influence in the social and political affairs of the state. The present owner had been a fighting general in the confederate army and had won by heroic bravery the right to his distinguished military title.
When the party from Birmingham reached this charming old house by the river, it was late in the afternoon. Several other guests had already arrived from Montgomery, Pensacola and Mobile. A corps of obsequious and clever negro servants, of both sexes and various ages, were ready to attend all comers. The host, a slender man of middle height, wearing a gray military beard, greeted every body with low bows and profuse words of welcome, whilst his rather stout and altogether good and motherly wife had a way that was welcome itself.