He spoke lightly, but the word mountaineer, as he uttered it, called up with electrical swiftness, a thought that sent a strange thrill through him. A low, pathetically plaintive voice seemed to speak to him in the mountain dialect. He saw a little coarsely-clad form leaning on the gate at White's, with the pale starlight glimmering on its upturned face.
As Miss Beresford had said it was to be, the dinner was served by the ladies, who passed behind the chairs of the gentlemen, flitting nimbly back and forth, receiving the viands from the hands of negro servants at the door of an ante-room, and presenting them to the guests. It was a study worthy of an artist's handling, that ample dining-room, with its curiously carved panels of oak, its antique mahogany side-board, its ponderous brass chandeliers and its high-backed chairs. Even Miss Crabb, as she actively busied herself with the part of the duties that fell to her share, showed to picturesquely good effect amidst such foils to her vivacious face and restless energy.
She was, by temperament and education, a person not likely to slight any opportunity of furthering her own plans, no matter how great the breach of small proprieties involved in the act. Even as she brightly and smartly hurried hither and thither around the table, she was thinking of how her experiences and observations here at the DeKay mansion would look in the pages of a certain magazine, if only she could get it accepted, with a number of picturesque, ultra Southern illustrations, and with her name appended in full: Sara Annah Crabb. She imagined the stir such an event would cause in Ringville, where as yet her genius was not especially admired. She nursed a dream of sudden fame quite masculine and muscular, so to speak, which would enable her to get even with the male editors who had so often made sport of her prose and verse and even of her name. She was a good girl, honest, conscientious and full of kindness, but she had had a very hard struggle with life, and she was mightily ambitious. The adroitness with which she now and then slipped from her pocket a little note-book and pencil and the rapidity with which she jotted down certain memoranda of what she saw or heard prevented much notice being given to the incivility by either host or guests. Indeed she had a quiet, semi-furtive celerity that, coupled with what may be called an insignificance of manner, neutralized any vulgarity which otherwise would have been observable to an offensive degree. Then, too, she talked so rapidly and volubly that if one looked at her at all one must have been wholly occupied with what her lips were doing. It was a wonder how she could impress one as being a very quiet person and yet be skipping about and talking like that.
She was a revelation to Moreton. She gave him a glimpse of American intellectual life in the crude state exemplified from a feminine standpoint. He had heard of and read of the strong-minded women of the western continent, but here was the first instance that had come within his view. Strange to say, he rather liked her. Her freedom was racy of the West, the breezy, broad, grassy, fertile West, where, as he imagined, the buffaloes ventured into the outskirts of the cities and where the men took their guns with them to church. Perhaps he did not imagine this, after all, but the spirit of it was in his thoughts. She seemed to him a fair exponent of society molded by such surrounding. He felt with æsthetic nicety how, turning from Miss Crabb's harmless inquisitiveness, chic and crude vim, the lines of feminine force and beauty, by comparison, were graded through a thousand changes to reach such perfection as he perceived in Miss Noble. He even found himself chivalrously attacking providence for showing such a difference in bestowing gifts upon the two girls. Why should Miss Crabb be so tall and angular and sallow, so lacking in the lines of grace, so sharp-voiced and ugly? Why could she not have been rich, at least? Poor girl! she must carry so much while Miss Noble had beauty, health, grace, riches.
The windows were open, allowing a gentle ripple of air through the room, charged with a woodsy freshness and that grateful balm always present on warm winter evenings in the south. Once when Mrs. Ransom leaned over Reynolds' shoulder in performing some needed service, the loose end of a simple ribbon at her throat was blown lightly against his cheek and he caught the merest waft of violet perfume from the flowers on her breast. It was a slight thing, but it was to him the sweetest part of the dinner.
It was a slight thing, but it was to him the sweetest
part of the dinner. Page 88.
Women appear to be little aware, as a rule, of the powerful influence they may wield over men by their sweet negative qualities as well as by their sweet positive ones. For instance, the absence of a high harsh voice is next in value to the presence of a gentle and low one. A quiet, modest shyness of manner may be apparent from the total absence of any angular self-assertion rather than from the actual existence of the manner itself. Hence it is that most women who fancy themselves strikingly attractive to men, are really quite the reverse, whilst it is often the case that the shy, sensitive woman who shrinks from self-display, wins admiration from the other sex without possessing any positive qualities especially charming. With the approach of Mrs. Ransom, a half-formed sense of satisfaction and subtle delight crept into Reynolds' bosom, as if with the fragrance of the flowers she wore he breathed in a rarer and more precious element exhaled by her own flower-like nature. It is good for a man to be able to keep undulled his susceptibleness to such delicate influences, for thereby his nature enriches and sweetens itself. The crucial test of virility of the highest order is that of its sensitiveness to the finest and purest demands of woman's nature. The man's soul has lost its morning freshness whose nerves do not tingle response to the least touch of the most ethereal breath of feminine sweetness, sincerity and beauty, and he is a brute who pauses to trace his susceptibility to some gross origin.
"It is quite charming to dine under such ministration," said Reynolds, while receiving some delicate dish from the steady little hand, "but I should——"