The meeting of Reynolds and Mrs. Ransom was much more than the ordinary contact of life with life, whereby the spark of passion is generated; it was significant of a blending of their past experiences as well as of the creation of a new life for both. Even on the instant when a mutual interest was awakened, their minds flashed back over the past. No doubt love ought to be prospective always; but it can not often be so.
Agnes Ransom could not realize that she was a widow. It was more as if a very sweet romance of her experience had ended in sorrow and disappointment. She looked back upon the short space of her wedded life with a vision dimmed by mists and shadows. She was half aware that her nature had gained much and lost little by the experience. It all seemed very sad to her, and yet she felt that the sadness was rather an atmosphere of the past than of the present. It hovered somewhere behind her, it did not affect the future. Still there was a protest somewhere, gentle and weak, but quite troublesome, against this new, strong, imperious, wayward love, now rising in her bosom and anon sinking away almost into the depths out of which it had come. She trembled sometimes with a great fear, at other times she abandoned herself to it with a serene fullness of content.
Close to the river's bank, all overgrown with wild vines and darkly shadowed by clustering trees, there stood, distant about a mile from the DeKay place, an almost shapeless pile of brick and stucco, the ruins of a once stately Southern mansion. It had been burned, whether by accident or the work of an incendiary is not known. Some tragic legend was connected with its history—a vague story of hereditary feud, bloody encounter, the gloom of crime and the solemn hush that follows after violent death. It was not a story ever told by a DeKay, for it affected the history of the family a generation or two ago. The very oldest negroes on the plantation knew something of the dark outlines of the tragedy; but they had learned not to more than vaguely hint the extent of their knowledge by equivocal allusions and dubious generalities. The affair dated back to the early Alabama days, when slavery was in its most prosperous state in a financial way, and when chivalry, so-called, was at its zenith. The ruin, with its picturesque walls overgrown with vines, was a fitting monument of the decay of medieval customs in the South as well as of the downfall of a once proud and in many ways brave and generous family.
It was towards this pathetic pile that Reynolds pulled with vigorous oar-strokes, as he and Mrs. Ransom set out upon the river from the little landing at DeKay Place. Unconsciously and with the ease that comes of great nervous and muscular force, made ready by his recent years of healthful habits and out-door training, he put such impulse into the little craft as made it leap like a skipping fish, leaving a whirling wake behind it, gleaming and darkling in sun and shade. He had not yet spoken of love. Indeed his heart was so full of this new and sweetly stormy passion that he could not master it sufficiently to clothe it in words. He was ever at the point of speaking and ever faltering and holding back his voice. So he found a relief in great muscular exertion. It was love thrilling along his nerves and sinews that made his arms tireless. He felt as if each long, strong sweep of the oars were bearing Agnes and him away from all the rest of the world, away from the past and into a sweet, shadowy solitude like that which the imagination has, in all ages, seen swimming on the furthest horizon, and towards which all lovers have hopefully but vainly steered their dream-ladened barks.
A sense of unworthiness repressed and almost smothered, a strong conscience bound down and enveloped in the fire of passion, these would make themselves felt in a dull, heavy, indefinite way. He could not shake off for long at a time a consciousness that all this deep, sweet, strong happiness flooding his soul to bursting, was ephemeral, and would vanish at the touch of the first sinister faux pas by which the past might be uncovered.
Mrs. Ransom, in the after part of the boat, sat facing Reynolds, her lissome figure in an attitude of almost childish carelessness and grace. She was, apparently, as unaware of her rare charm of person as was he of his immense physical power. It is one of the wholesomest of out-door influences that eliminates, for the time, the frivolous conventionalities of social life, and establishes in their stead something of the freedom of the wind and the transparent freshness of running water. Nature, by some occult process, reaches our hearts and sponges off the sediment of artificial sentiment, so that the simpler elements of life are set to work in us without any hindrance. Given a boat, a calm, clear river, fine weather, a man and a woman, youth, strength, health, and what an infinitude of happiness may be expected! It is often the case that human experience is, under such circumstances, condensed to the last degree of denseness, or expanded to an ethereal tenuity never dreamed of in the hot-house narrowness of city life. Out-door realities are so strong and dreams are so wide and fair where the sun shines and the air is full of balm and the water flows with such a liberal, far-going murmur. Tragedy has a broader and deeper significance enacted without any stage limitations, and comedy catches a sparkle from the brooks and the daylight and the starlight, never reflected from gas jets and painted backgrounds.
Very little was said between Mrs. Ransom and Reynolds in the time it took to reach a place where they could land near the ruin, their conversation confining itself to observations on such little incidents as happened during their quick flight. Once a flock of wood-ducks sprang in a rapid whirl from the water near them and winged their way up the stream, their bright colors shining with a peculiar twinkle, as far as the eye could follow them. Little shadowy sandpipers ran along the sandy margins, here and there, or flew across from bank to bank with their comical jerky motion. In some places the reeds grew down to the water's edge in dense brakes wherein the hermit thrush and the catbird could be seen by fitful glimpses. The rapid movement of the boat kept changing the point of view, and at each change some new arrangement of the trees, the cane, the tall dry stalks of water grass or of the bold banks of the river attracted the eye.
Reynolds felt the stimulus of his passion tingling in his blood. His bronzed cheeks wore a faint flush and his eyes were full of earnest, tender light. He stranded the prow of the boat on a little crescent of sand at the foot of the bluff and helped Mrs. Ransom out. She had directed him where to land, and now he turned to her and asked:
"Now, how shall we get up to the top of the bluff?"
"There is a sort of stairway yonder by that old tree," she answered, pointing with her hand. "It is badly dilapidated, but we can climb it easily."