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Title: The Valiants of Virginia
Author: Hallie Erminie Rives
Illustrator: Andre Castaigne
Release Date: September 29, 2010 [EBook #33963]
Language: English
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THE VALIANTS
OF VIRGINIA
By HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES
(MRS. POST WHEELER)
Author of "The Kingdom of Slender Swords,"
"Satan Sanderson," etc.
WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR
BY ANDRÉ CASTAIGNE
A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT 1912
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
[Illustration]
TO
THE REAL JOHN
"Molly, Molly Bright!
Can I get there by candle-light?"
"Yes, if your legs are long enough."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE CRASH 1
II VANITY VALIANT 12
III THE NEVER-NEVER LAND 21
IV THE TURN OF THE PAGE 29
V THE LETTER 36
VI A VALIANT OF VIRGINIA 44
VII ON THE RED ROAD 49
VIII MAD ANTHONY 59
IX UNCLE JEFFERSON 71
X WHAT HAPPENED THIRTY YEARS AGO 80
XI DAMORY COURT 90
XII THE CASE OF MOROCCO LEATHER 102
XIII THE HUNT 109
XIV SANCTUARY 119
XV MRS. POLY GIFFORD PAYS A CALL 124
XVI THE ECHO 138
XVII THE TRESPASSER 142
XVIII JOHN VALIANT MAKES A DISCOVERY 152
XIX UNDER THE HEMLOCKS 163
XX ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 173
XXI AFTER THE STORM 179
XXII THE ANNIVERSARY 188
XXIII UNCLE JEFFERSON'S STORY 197
XXIV IN DEVIL-JOHN'S DAY 203
XXV JOHN VALIANT ASKS A QUESTION 219
XXVI THE CALL OF THE ROSES 223
XXVII BEYOND THE BOX-HEDGE 230
XXVIII NIGHT 238
XXIX AT THE DOME 244
XXX THE GARDENERS 255
XXXI TOURNAMENT DAY 267
XXXII A VIRGINIAN RUNNYMEDE 275
XXXIII THE KNIGHT OF THE CRIMSON ROSE 289
XXXIV KATHARINE DECIDES 300
XXXV "WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER" 309
XXXVI BY THE SUN-DIAL 317
XXXVII THE DOCTOR SPEAKS 328
XXXVIII THE AMBUSH 334
XXXIX WHAT THE CAPE JESSAMINES KNEW 340
XL THE AWAKENING 346
XLI THE COMING OF GREEF KING 359
XLII IN THE RAIN 369
XLIII THE EVENING OF AN OLD SCORE 378
XLIV THE MAJOR BREAKS SILENCE 386
XLV RENUNCIATION 398
XLVI THE VOICE FROM THE PAST 408
XLVII WHEN THE CLOCK STRUCK 415
XLVIII THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE 427
THE VALIANTS OF VIRGINIA
CHAPTER I
THE CRASH
"Failed!" ejaculated John Valiant blankly, and the hat he held dropped
to the claret-colored rug like a huge white splotch of sudden fright.
"The Corporation--failed!"
The young man was the glass of fashion, from the silken ribbon on the
spotless Panama to his pearl-gray gaiters, and well favored--a lithe
stalwart figure, with wide-set hazel eyes and strong brown hair waving
back from a candid forehead. The soft straw, however, had been wrung to
a wisp between clutching fingers and the face was glazed in a kind of
horrified and assiduous surprise, as if the rosy peach of life, bitten,
had suddenly revealed itself an unripe persimmon. The very words
themselves came with a galvanic twitch and a stagger that conveyed a
sense at once of shock and of protest. Even the white bulldog stretched
on the floor, nose between paws and one restless eye on his master in
a troubled wonder that any one should prefer to forsake the ecstatic
sunshine of the street, with its thousand fascinating scents and
cross-trails, for a stuffy business office, lifted his wrinkling pink
nose and snuffled with acute and hopeful inquiry.
Never had John Valiant's innocuous and butterfly existence known a
surprise more startling. He had swung into the room with all the
nonchalant habits, the ingrained certitude of the man born with
achievement ready-made in his hands. And a single curt statement--like
the ruthless blades of a pair of shears--had snipped across the one
splendid scarlet thread in the woof that constituted life as he knew it.
He had knotted his lavender scarf that morning a vice-president of
the Valiant Corporation--one of the greatest and most successful of
modern-day organizations; he sat now in the fading afternoon trying to
realize that the huge fabric, without warning, had toppled to its fall.
With every nerve of his six feet of manhood in rebellion, he rose and
strode to the half-opened window, through which sifted the smell of
growing things--for the great building fronted the square--and the soft
alluring moistness of early spring. "Failed!" he repeated helplessly,
and the echo seemed to go flittering about the substantial walls like a
derisive India-rubber bat on a spree.
The bulldog sat up, thumping the rug with a vibrant tail. There was
some mistake, surely; one went out by the door, not by the window! He
rose, picked up the Panama in his mouth, and padding across the rug,
poked it tentatively into his master's hand. But no, the hand made no
response. Clearly they were not to go out, and he dropped it and went
puzzledly back and lay down with pricked ears, while his master stared
out into the foliaged day.
How solid and changeless it had always seemed--that great business
fabric woven by the father he could so dimly remember! His own invested
fortune had been derived from the great corporation the elder Valiant
had founded and controlled until his death. With almost unprecedented
earnings, it had stood as a very Gibraltar of finance, a type and sign
of brilliant organization. Now, on the heels of a trust's dissolution
which would be a nine-days' wonder, the vast structure had crumpled up
like a cardboard. The rains had descended and the floods had come, and
it had fallen!
The man at the desk had wheeled in his revolving chair and was looking
at the trim athletic back blotting the daylight, with a smile that was
little short of a covert sneer. He was one of the local managers of
the Corporation whose ruin was to be that day's sensation, a colorless
man who had acquired middle age with his first long trousers and had
been dedicated to the commercial treadmill before he had bought a
safety-razor. He despised all loiterers along the primrose paths, and
John Valiant was but a decorative figurehead.
The bulldog lifted his head. The ghost of a furred throaty growl rumbled
in the silence, and the man at the desk shrank a little, as the hair
rippled up on the thick neck and the faithful red-rimmed eyes opened a
shade wider. But John Valiant did not turn. He was bitterly absorbed
with his own thoughts.
Till this moment he had never really known how proud he had always
been of the Corporation, of the fact that he was its founder's son.
His election to high office in the small coterie that controlled
its destinies he had known very well to be but the modern concrete
expression of his individual holdings, but it had nevertheless deeply
pleased him. The fleeting sense of power, the intimate touching of wide
issues in a city of Big Things had flattered him; for a while he had
dreamed of playing a great part, of pushing the activities of the
Corporation into new territory, invading foreign soil. He might have
done much, for he had begun with good equipment. He had read law, had
even been admitted to the bar. But to what had it come? A gradual
slipping back into the rut of careless amusement, the tacit assumption
of his prerogatives by other waiting hands. The huge wheels had
continued to turn, smoothly, inevitably, and he had drawn his dividends
... and that was all. John Valiant swallowed something that was very
like a sob.
As he stood trying to plumb the depth of the calamity, self-anger began
to stir and buzz in his heart like a great bee. Like a tingling X-ray
there went stabbing through the husk woven of a thousand inherent habits
the humiliating knowledge of his own uselessness. In those profitless
seasons through which he had sauntered, as he had strolled through his
casual years of college, he had given least of his time and thought to
the concern which had absorbed his father's young manhood. He, John
Valiant--one of its vice-presidents! waster, on whose expenditures there
had never been a limit, who had strewn with the foolish free-handedness
of a prodigal! Idler, with a reputation in three cities as a leader of
cotillions!
"Fool!" he muttered under his breath, and on the landscape outside the
word stamped itself on everything as though a thousand little devils had
suddenly turned themselves into letters of the alphabet and were
skipping about in fours.
Valiant started as the other spoke at his elbow. He, too, had come to
the window and was looking down at the pavement. "How quickly some news
spreads!"
For the first time the young man noted that the street below was filling
with a desultory crowd. He distinguished a knot of Italian laborers
talking with excited gesticulations--a smudged plasterer, tools in
hand,--clerks, some hatless and with thin alpaca coats--all peering at
the voiceless front of the great building, and all, he imagined, with a
thriving fear in their faces. As he watched, a woman, coarsely dressed,
ran across the street, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes.
"The notice has gone up on the door," said the manager. "I sent word to
the police. Crowds are ugly sometimes."
Valiant drew a sudden sharp breath. The Corporation down in the mire,
with crowds at its doors ready to clamor for money entrusted to it, the
aggregate savings of widow and orphan, the piteous hoarded sums earned
by labor over which pinched sickly faces had burned the midnight oil!
The older man had turned back to the desk to draw a narrow typewritten
slip of paper from a pigeonhole. "Here," he said, "is a list of the
bonds of the subsidiary companies recorded in your name. These are
all, of course, engulfed in the larger failure. You have, however,
your private fortune. If you take my advice, by the way," he added
significantly, "you'll make sure of keeping that."
"What do you mean?" John Valiant faced him quickly.
The other laughed shortly. "'A word to the wise,'" he quoted. "It's
very good living abroad. There's a boat leaving to-morrow."
A dull red sprang into the younger face. "You mean--"
"Look at that crowd down there--you can hear them now. There'll be
a legislative investigation, of course. And the devil'll get the
hindmost." He struck the desk-top with his hand. "Have you ever seen
the bills for this furniture? Do you know what that rug under your feet
cost? Twelve thousand--it's an old Persian. What do you suppose the
papers will do to that? Do you think such things will seem amusing to
that rabble down there?" His hand swept toward the window. "It's been
going on for too many years, I tell you! And now some one'll pay the
piper. The lightning won't strike _me_--I'm not tall enough. _You're_
a vice-president."
"Do you imagine that _I_ knew these things--that I have been a party to
what you seem to believe has been a deliberate wrecking?" Valiant
towered over him, his breath coming fast, his hands clenched hard.
"You?" The manager laughed again--an unpleasant laugh that scraped the
other's quivering nerves like hot sandpaper. "Oh, lord, no! How should
you? You've been too busy playing polo and winning bridge prizes. How
many board meetings have you attended this year? Your vote is proxied
as regular as clockwork. But you're _supposed_ to know. The people down
there in the street won't ask questions about patent-leather pumps and
ponies; they'll want to hear about such things as rotten irrigation
loans in the Stony-River Valley--to market an alkali desert that is the
personal property of the president of this Corporation."
Valiant turned a blank white face. "Sedgwick?"
"Yes. You know his principle: 'It's all right to be honest, if you're
not too _damn_ honest.' He owns the Stony-River Valley bag and baggage.
It was a big gamble and he lost."
For a moment there was absolute silence in the room. From outside came
the rising murmur of the crowd and cutting through it the shrill cry of
a newsboy calling an evening extra. Valiant was staring at the other
with a strange look. Emotions to which in all his self-indulgent life he
had been a stranger were running through his mind, and outré passions
had him by the throat. Fool and doubly blind! A poor pawn, a catspaw
raking the chestnuts for unscrupulous men whose ignominy he was now
called on, perforce, to share! In his pitiful egotism he had consented
to be a figurehead, and he had been made a tool. A red rage surged over
him. No one had ever seen on John Valiant's face such a look as grew on
it now.
He turned, retrieved the Panama, and without a word opened the door.
The older man took a step toward him--he had a sense of dangerous
electric forces in the air--but the door closed sharply in his face. He
smiled grimly. "Not crooked," he said to himself; "merely callow. A
well-meaning, manicured young fop wholly surrounded by men who knew what
they wanted!" He shrugged his shoulders and went back to his chair.
Valiant plunged down in the elevator to the street. Its single other
passenger had his nose buried in a newspaper, and over the reader's
shoulder he saw the double-leaded head-line: "Collapse of the Valiant
Corporation!"
He pushed past the guarded door, and threading the crowd, made toward
the curb, where the bulldog, with a bark of delight, leaped upon the
seat of a burnished car, rumbling and vibrating with pent-up power.
There were those in the sullen anxious crowd who knew whose was that
throbbing metal miracle, the chauffeur spick and span from shining
cap-visor to polished brown puttees, and recognizing the white face that
went past, pelted it with muttered sneers. But he scarcely saw or heard
them, as he stepped into the seat, took the wheel from the chauffeur's
hand and threw on the gear.
He had afterward little memory of that ride. Once the leaping anger
within him jerked the throttle wide and the car responded with a
breakneck dart through the startled traffic, till the sight of an
infuriated mounted policeman, baton up, brought him to himself with a
thud. He had small mind to be stopped at the moment. His mouth set in a
sudden hard sharp line, and under it his hands gripped the slewing wheel
to a tearing serpentine rush that sent the skidding monster rearing on
side wheels, to swoop between two drays in a hooting plunge down a side
street. His tight lips parted then in a ragged laugh, bit off by the
jolt of the lurching motor and the slap of the bulging air.
As the sleek rubber shoes spun noiselessly and swiftly along the avenue
the myriad lights that were beginning to gleam wove into a twinkling
mist. He drove mechanically past a hundred familiar things and places:
the particular chop-house of which he was an habitué--the ivied wall of
his favorite club, with the cluster of faces at the double window--the
florist's where daily he stopped for his knot of Parma violets--but he
saw nothing, till the massive marble fronts of the upper park side
ceased their mad dance as the car halted before a tall iron-grilled
doorway with wide glistening steps, between windows strangely shuttered
and dark.
He sprang out and touched the bell. The heavy oak parted slowly; the
confidential secretary of the man he had come to face stood in the
gloomy doorway.
"I want to see Mr. Sedgwick."
"You can't see him, Mr. Valiant."
"But I _will_!" Sharp passion leaped into the young voice. "He must
speak to me."
The man in the doorway shook his head. "He won't speak to anybody any
more," he said. "Mr. Sedgwick shot himself two hours ago."
CHAPTER II
VANITY VALIANT
"The witness is excused."
In the ripple that stirred across the court room at the examiner's
abrupt conclusion, John Valiant, who had withstood that pitiless hail
of questions, rose, bowed to him and slowly crossed the cleared space
to his counsel. The chairman looked severely over his eye-glasses, with
his gavel lifted, and a statuesque girl, in the rear of the room, laid
her delicately gloved hand on a companion's and smiled slowly without
withdrawing her gaze, and with the faintest tint of color in her face.
Katharine Fargo neither smiled nor flushed readily. Her smile was an
index of her whole personality, languid, symmetrical, exquisitely
perfect. The little group with whom she sat looked somewhat out of
place in that mixed assemblage. They had not gasped at the tale of the
Corporation's unprecedented earnings, the lavish expenditure for its
palatial offices. The recital of the tragic waste, the nepotism, the
mole-like ramifications by which the vast structure had been undermined,
had left them rather amusedly and satirically appreciative. Smartly
groomed and palpably members of a set to whom John Valiant was a
familiar, they had had only friendly nods and smiles for the young man
at whom so many there had gazed with jaundiced eyes.
To the general public which read its daily newspaper perhaps none
of the gilded set was better known than "Vanity Valiant." The very
nickname--given him by his fellows in facetious allusion to a flippant
newspaper paragraph laying at his door the alleged new fashion of a
masculine vanity-box--had taken root in the fads and elegancies he
affected. The new Panhard he drove was the smartest car on the avenue,
and the collar on the white bulldog that pranced or dozed on its leather
seat sported a diamond buckle. To the space-writers of the social
columns, he had been a perennial inspiration. They had delighted to
herald a more or less bohemian gathering, into which he had smuggled
this pet, as a "dog-dinner"; and when one midnight, after a staid and
stodgy "bridge," in a gust of wild spirits he had, for a wager, jumped
into and out of a fountain on a deserted square, the act, dished up
by a night-hawking reporter had, the following Sunday, inspired three
metropolitan sermons on "The Idle Rich." The patterns of his waistcoats,
and the splendors of his latest bachelors' dinner at Sherry's--with such
items the public had been kept sufficiently familiar. To it, he stood
a perfect symbol of the eider ease and insolent display of inherited
wealth. And the great majority of those who had found place in that
roomy chamber to listen to the ugly tale of squandered millions, looked
at him with a resentment that was sharpened by his apparent nonchalance.
For the failure of the concern upon which a legislature had now turned
the search-light of its inquiry, might to him have been a thing of
trivial interest, and the present task an alien one, which he must
against his will go through with. Often his eyes had wandered to the
window, through which came the crisp _clip-trip-clop_ of the cab horses
on the asphalt, the irritant clang of trolleys and the monstrous panther
purr of motors. Only once had this seeming indifference been shaken:
when the figures of the salary voted the Corporation's chief officers
had been sardonically cited--when in the tense quiet a woman had laughed
out suddenly, a harsh jeering note quickly repressed. For one swift
second then Valiant's gaze had turned to the rusty black gown, the
flushed face of the sleeping child against the tawdry fall of the
widow's veil. Then the gaze had come back, and he was once more the
abstracted spectator, boredly waiting his release.
Long before the closing session it had been clear that, as far as
indictments were concerned, the investigation would be barren of result.
Of individual criminality, flight and suicide had been confession, but
more sweeping charges could not be brought home. The gilded fool had
not brought himself into the embarrassing purview of the law. This
certainty, however, had served to goad the public and sharpen the satire
of the newspaper paragraphist; and the examiner, who incidentally had a
reputation of his own to guard, knew his cue. There were possibilities
for the exercise of his especial gifts in a vice-president of the
Corporation who was also Vanity Valiant, the decorative idler of social
fopperies and sumptuous clothes.
Valiant took the chair with a sensation almost of relief. Since that day
when he had spun down-town in his motor to that sharp enlightenment,
his daily round had gone on as usual, but beneath the habitual pose,
the worldly mask of his class, had lain a sore sensitiveness that had
cringed painfully at the sneering word and the envenomed paragraph.
Always his mental eye had seen a white-faced crowd staring at a marble
building, a coarsely-dressed woman crossing the street with a
handkerchief pressed to her face.
And mingling with the sick realization of his own inadequacy had woven
panging thoughts of his father. The shattered bits of recollection of
him that he had preserved had formed a mosaic which had pictured the
hero of his boyhood. Yet his father's name would now go down, linked
not to success and achievement, but to failure, to chicanery, to the
robbing of the poor. The thought had become a blind ache that had
tortured him. Beneath the old characteristic veneer it had been working
a strange change. Something old had been dying, something new budding
under the careless exterior of the man who now faced his examiner in the
big armchair that May afternoon.
John Valiant's testimony, to those of his listeners who cherished a
sordid disbelief in the ingenuousness of the man who counts his wealth
in seven figures, seemed a pose of gratuitous insolence. It had a
clarity and simplicity that was almost horrifying. He did not stoop to
gloze his own monumental flippancy. He had attended only one directors'
meeting during that year. Till after the crash, he had known little, had
cared less, about the larger investments of the Corporation's capital:
he had left all that to others.
Perhaps to the examiner himself this blunt directness--the bitter
unshadowed truth that searched for no evasions--had appeared effrontery;
the contemptuous and cynical frankness of the young egoist who sat
secure, his own millions safe, on the ruins of the enterprise from
which they were derived. The questions, that had been bland with suave
innuendo, acquired an acrid sarcasm, a barbed and stinging satire, which
at length touched indiscretion. He allowed himself a scornful reference
to the elder Valiant as scathing as it was unjustified.
To the man in the witness-chair this had been like an electric shock.
Something new and unguessed beneath the husk of boredom, the indolent
pose of body, had suddenly looked from his blazing eyes: something
foreign to Vanity Valiant, the club habitué, the spoiled scion of
wealth. For a brief five minutes he spoke, in a fashion that surprised
the court room--a passionate defense of his father, the principles on
which the Corporation had been founded and its traditional policies: few
sentences, but each hot as lava and quivering with feeling. Their very
force startled the reporters' bench and left his inquisitor for a moment
silent.
The latter took refuge in a sardonic reference to the Corporation's
salary-list. Did the witness conceive, he asked with effective
deliberation, that he had rendered services commensurate with the annual
sums paid him? The witness thought that he had, in fact, received just
about what those services were worth. Would Mr. Valiant be good enough
to state the figures of the salary he had been privileged to draw as a
vice-president?
The answer fell as slowly in the sardonic silence. "I have never drawn a
salary as an officer of the Valiant Corporation."
Then it was that the irritated examiner had abruptly dismissed the
witness. Then the ripple had swept over the assemblage, and Katharine
Fargo, gazing, had smiled that slow smile in which approval struggled
with mingled wonder and question.
* * * * *
The jostling crowd flocked out into the square, among them a fresh-faced
girl on the arm of a gray-bearded man in black frock coat and
picturesque broad-brimmed felt hat. She turned her eyes to his.
"So that," she said, "is John Valiant! I'd almost rather have missed
Niagara Falls. I must write Shirley Dandridge about it. I'm so sorry I
lost that picture of him that I cut out of the paper."
"I reckon he's not such a bad lot," said her uncle. "I liked the way he
spoke of his father."
He hailed a cab. "Grand Central Station," he directed, with a glance at
his watch, "and be quick about it. We've just time to make our train."
"Yessir! Dollar'n a half, sir."
The gentleman seated the girl and climbed in himself. "I know the legal
fare," he said, "if I am from Virginia. And if you try to beat me out of
more, you'll be sorry."
* * * * *
Some hours later, in an inner office of a down-town sky-scraper, the
newly-appointed receiver of the Valiant Corporation, a heavy, thick-set
man with narrow eyes, sat beside a table on which lay a small black
satchel with a padlock on its handle, whose contents--several bundles
of crisp papers--he had been turning over in his heavy hands with a look
of incredulous amazement. A sheet containing a mass of figures and
memoranda lay among them.
The shock was still on his face when a knock came at the door, and a man
entered. The newcomer was gray-haired, slightly stooped and lean-jowled,
with a humorous expression on his lips. He glanced in surprise at the
littered table.
"Fargo," said the man at the desk, "do you notice anything queer about
me?"
His friend grinned. "No, Buck," he said judicially, "unless it's that
necktie. It would stop a Dutch clock."
"Hang the haberdashery! Read this--from young Valiant." He passed over a
letter.
Fargo read. He looked up. "Securities aggregating three millions!" he
said in a hushed voice. "Why, unless I've been misinformed, that
represents practically all his private fortune."
The other nodded. "Turned over to the Corporation with his resignation
as a vice-president, and without a blessed string tied to 'em! What do
you think of that?"
"Think! It's the most absurdly idiotic thing I ever met. Two weeks ago,
before the investigation ... but _now_, when it's perfectly certain they
can bring nothing home to him--" He paused. "Of course I suppose it'll
save the Corporation, eh? But it may be ten years before its securities
pay dividends. And this is real money. Where the devil does _he_ come in
meanwhile?"
The receiver pursed his lips. "I knew his father," he said. "He had the
same crazy quixotic streak."
He gathered the scattered documents and locked them carefully with the
satchel in a safe. "Spectacular young ass!" he said explosively.
"I should say so!" agreed Fargo. "Do you know, I used to be afraid my
Katharine had a leaning toward him. But thank God, she's a sensible
girl!"
CHAPTER III
THE NEVER-NEVER LAND
Dusk had fallen that evening when John Valiant's Panhard turned into
a cross-street and circled into the yawning mouth of his garage. Here,
before he descended, he wrote a check on his knee with a slobbering
fountain-pen.
"Lars," he said to the chauffeur, "as I dare say you've heard, things
have not gone exactly smoothly with me lately, and I'm uncertain
about my plans. I've made arrangements to turn the car over to the
manufacturers, and take back the old one. I must drive myself hereafter.
I'm sorry, but you must look for another place."
The dapper young Swede touched his cap gratefully as he looked at the
check's figures. Embarrassment was burning his tongue. "I--I've heard,
sir. I'm sure it's very kind, sir, and when you need another...."
"Thank you, Lars," said Valiant, as he shook hands, "and good luck. I'll
remember."
Lars, the chauffeur, looked after him. "Going to skip out, he is! I
thought so when he brought that stuff out of the safe-deposit. Afraid
they'll try to take the boodie away from him, I guess. The papers seem
to think he's rotten, but he's been a mighty good boss to me. He's a
dead swell, all right, anyhow," he added pridefully, as he slid the car
to its moorings, "and they'll have to get up early to catch him asleep!"
A little later John Valiant, the bulldog at his heels, ascended the
steps of his club, where he lodged--he had disposed of his bachelor
apartment a fortnight ago. The cavernous seats of the lounge were all
occupied, but he did not pause as he strode through the hall. He took
the little pile of letters the boy handed him at the desk and went
slowly up the stairway.
He wandered into the deserted library and sat down, tossing the letters
on the magazine-littered table. He had suddenly remembered that it was
his twenty-fifth birthday.
In the reaction from the long strain he felt physically spent. He
thought of what he had done that afternoon with a sense of satisfaction.
A reversal of public judgment, in his own case, had not entered his
head. He knew his world--its comfortable faculty of forgetting, and
the multitude of sins that wealth may cover. To preserve at whatever
personal cost the one noble monument his father's genius had reared, and
to right the wrong that would cast its gloomy shadow on his name--this
had been his only thought. What he had done would have been done no
matter what the outcome of the investigation. But now, he told himself,
no one could say the act had been wrung from him. That, he fancied,
would have been his father's way.
Fancied--for his recollections of his father were vague and fragmentary.
They belonged wholly to his pinafore years. His early memories of his
mother were, for that matter, even more unsubstantial. They were of a
creature of wonderful dazzling gowns, and more wonderful shining jewels,
who lived for the most part in an over-sea city as far away as the
moon (he was later to identify this as Paris) and who, when she came
home--which was not often--took him driving in the park and gave him
chocolate macaroons. He had always held her in more or less awe and had
breathed easier when she had departed. She had died in Rome a year later
than his father. He had been left then without a near relative in the
world and his growing years had been an epic of nurses and caretakers, a
boys' school on the continent, and a university course at home. As far
as his father was concerned, he had had only his own childish
recollections.
He smiled--a slow smile of reminiscence--for there had come to him at
that moment the dearest of all those memories--a play of his childhood.
He saw himself seated on a low stool, watching a funny old clock with a
moon-face, whose smiling lips curved up like military mustachios, and
wishing the lazy long hands would hurry. He saw himself stealing down
a long corridor to the door of a big room strewn with books and papers,
that through some baleful and mysterious spell could not be made to open
at all hours. When the hands pointed right, however, there was the "Open
Sesame"--his own secret knock, two fierce twin raps, with one little
lonesome one afterward--and this was unfailing. Safe inside, he saw
himself standing on a big, polar-bear-skin rug, the door tight-locked
against all comers, an expectant baby figure, with his little hand
clasped in his father's. The white rug was the magic entrance to the
Never-Never Country, known only to those two.
He could hear his own shrill treble:
"Wishing-House, Wishing-House, where are you?"
Then the deeper voice (quite unrecognizable as his father's) answering:
"Here I am, Master; here I am!"
And instantly the room vanished and they were in the Never-Never Land,
and before them reared the biggest house in the world, with a row of
white pillars across its front a mile high.
Valiant drew a deep breath. Some magic of time and place was repainting
that dead and dusty infancy in sudden delicate lights and filmy colors.
What had been but blurred under-exposures on the retina of his brain
became all at once elfin pictures, weird and specter-like as the
dissolving views of a camera obscura.
He and his father had lived alone in Wishing-House. No one else had
possessed the secret. Not his mother. Not even the more portentous
person whom he had thought must own the vast hotel in which they lived
(in such respect did she seem to be held by the servants), who wore
crackling black silk and a big bunch of keys for a sole ornament, and
who had called him her "lamb." No, in the Never-Never Land there had
been only his father and he!
Yet they were anything but lonely, for the country was inhabited by
good-natured friendly savages, as black as a lump of coal, most of them
with curly white hair. These talked a queer language, but of course his
father and he could understand them perfectly. These savages had many
curious and enthralling customs and strange cuddling songs that made one
sleepy, and all these his father knew by heart. They lived in little
square huts around Wishing-House, made of sticks, and had dozens and
dozens of children who wore no clothes and liked to dance in the sun and
eat cherries. They were very useful barbarians, too, for they chopped
the wood and built the fires and made the horses' coats shine--for he
and his father would have scorned to walk, and went galloping like the
wind everywhere. The forests about were filled with small brown cats,
tremendously furry, with long whiskers and sharp, beedy black eyes, and
sometimes they would hunt these on horseback; but they never caught
them, because the cats could run just a little bit faster than the
horses.
Christmas time at home was not so very exciting, but at Wishing-House
what a time they had! Then all the savages and their wives and children
received presents, and he and his father had a dreadfully scary shivery
time remembering them all, because some had so many children they ran
out of names and had to use numbers instead. So there was always the
harrowing fear that one might inadvertently be left out, and sometimes
they couldn't remember the last one till the very final minute. After
the Christmas turkey, the oldest and blackest savage of all would come
in where his father and he sat at the table, with a pudding as big as
the gold chariot in the circus, and the pudding, by some magic spell,
would set itself on fire, while he carried it round the table, with all
the other savages marching after him. This was the most awe-inspiring
spectacle of all. Christmases at other places were a long way apart, but
they came as often as they were wanted at Wishing-House, which, he
recalled, was very often indeed.
John Valiant felt an odd beating of the heart and a tightening of
the throat, for he saw another scene, too. It was the one hushed and
horrible night, after the spell had failed and the door had refused to
open for a long time, when dread things had been happening that he could
not understand, when a big man with gold eye-glasses, who smelled of
some curious sickish-sweet perfume, came and took him by the hand and
led him into a room where his father lay in bed, very gray and quiet.
The white hand on the coverlet had beckoned to him and he had gone close
up to the bed, standing very straight, his heart beating fast and hard.
"John!" the word had been almost a whisper, very tense and anxious, very
distinct. "John, you're a little boy, and father is going away."
"To--to Wishing-House?"
The gray lips had smiled then, ever so little, and sadly. "No, John."
"Take me with you, father! Take me with you, and let us find it!" His
voice had trembled then, and he had had to gulp hard.
"Listen, John, for what I am saying is very important. You don't know
what I mean now, but sometime you will." The whisper had grown strained
and frayed, but it was still distinct. "I can't go to the Never-Never
Land. But you may sometime. If you ... if you do, and if you find
Wishing-House, remember that the men who lived in it ... before you and
me ... were gentlemen. Whatever else they were, they were always that.
Be ... like them, John ... will you?"
"Yes, father."
The old gentleman with the eye-glasses had come forward then, hastily.
"Good-night, father--"
He had wanted to kiss him, but a strange cool hush had settled on the
room and his father seemed all at once to have fallen asleep. And he had
gone out, so carefully, on tiptoe, wondering, and suddenly afraid.
CHAPTER IV
THE TURN OF THE PAGE
John Valiant stirred and laughed, a little self-consciously, for there
had been drops on his face.
Presently he took a check-book from his pocket and began to figure on
the stub, looking up with a wry smile. "To come down to brass tacks,"
he muttered, "when I've settled everything (thank heaven, I don't owe
my tailor!) there will be a little matter of twenty-eight hundred odd
dollars, a passé motor and my clothes between me and the bread-line!"
Everything else he had disposed of--everything but the four-footed
comrade there at his feet. At his look, the white bulldog sprang up
whining and made joyful pretense of devouring his master's immaculate
boot-laces. Valiant put his hand under the eager muzzle, lifted the
intelligent head to his knee and looked into the beseeching amber eyes.
"But I'd not sell you, old chap," he said softly; "not a single lick
of your friendly pink tongue; not for a beastly hundred thousand!"
He withdrew his caressing hand and looked again at the check-stub.
Twenty-eight hundred! He laughed bleakly. Why, he had spent more than
that a month ago on a ball at Sherry's! This morning he had been rich;
to-night he was poor! He had imagined this in the abstract, but now of
a sudden the fact seemed fraught with such a ghastly and nightmarish
ridiculousness as a man might feel who, going to bed with a full thatch
of hair, confronts the morning mirror to find himself as bald as a
porcelain mandarin.
What could he do? He could not remember a time when he had not had all
that he wanted. He had never borrowed from a friend or been dunned by an
importunate tradesman. And he had never tried to earn a dollar in his
life; as to current methods of making a living, he was as ignorant as a
Pueblo Indian.
What did others do? The men he knew who joked of their poverty and their
debts, and whose hilarious habit it was to picture life as a desperate
handicap in which they were forever "three jumps ahead of the sheriff",
somehow managed to cling to their yachts and their stables. Few of his
friends had really gone "smash", and of these all but one had taken
themselves speedily and decently off. He thought of Rod Creighton, the
one failure who had clung to the old life, achieving for a transient
period the brilliant success of living on his friends. When this ended
he had gone on the road for some champagne or other. Everybody had
ordered from him at the start. But this, too, had failed. He had dropped
out of the clubs and there had at last befallen an evil time when he had
come to haunt the avenue, as keen for stray quarters as any pan-handler.
Where was Creighton now, he wondered?
Across the avenue was Larry Treadwell's brokerage office. Larry had a
brain for business; as a youthful scamp in knickerbockers he had been as
sharp as a steel-trap. But what did he, John Valiant, know of business?
Less than of law! Why, he was not fit to smirk behind a counter and
measure lace insertion for the petticoats of the women he waltzed with!
All he was really fit for was to work with his hands!
He thought of a gang of laborers he had seen that afternoon breaking the
asphalt with crowbars. What must it be to toil through the clammy cold
of winter and the smothering fur-heat of summer, in some revolting
routine of filth and unredeemable ugliness? He looked down at his supple
white fingers and shivered.
He rose grimly and dragged his chair facing the window. The night was
balmy and he looked down across the darker sea of reefs, barred like a
gigantic checker-board by the shining lines of streets, to where the
flashing electric signs of the theater district laid their wide swath
of colored radiance. The manifold calls of the street and the buzz of
trolleys made a dull tonal background, subdued and far-away.
To be outside! All that light and color and comfort and pleasure would
hum and sparkle on just the same, though he was no longer within the
circle of its effulgence--slaving perhaps, he thought with a twisted
smile, at some tawdry occupation that called for no experience, to
pay for a meal in some second-rate restaurant and a pallet in some
shabby-genteel, hall bedroom, till his clothes were replaced by
ill-fitting "hand-me-downs"--till by wretched gradations he arrived
finally at the status of the dime seat in the gallery and five-cent
cigars!
There was one way back. It lay through the hackneyed gateway of
marriage. Youth, comeliness and fine linen, in the world he knew, were
a fair exchange for wealth any day. "Cutlet for cutlet"--the satiric
phrase ran through his mind. Why not? Others did so. And as for himself,
it perhaps need be no question of plain and spinstered millions--there
was Katharine Fargo!
He had known her since a time when she bestrode a small fuzzy pony in
the park, cool as a grapefruit and with a critical eye, even in her ten
years, for social forms and observances. In the intervals of fashionable
boarding-schools he had seen her develop, beautiful, cold, stately and
correct. The Fargo fortune--thanks to modern journalism, which was fond
of stating that if the steel rails of the Fargo railways were set end
to end, the chain would reach from the earth to the planet Saturn or
thereabouts--was as familiar to the public imagination as Caruso or
the Hope diamond. And the daughter Katharine had not lacked admirers;
shop-girls knew the scalps that dangled from her girdle. But in his
heart John Valiant was aware, by those subtle signs which men and women
alike distinguish, that while Katharine Fargo loved first and foremost
only her own wonderful person, he had been an easy second in her regard.
He remembered the last Christmas house-party at the Fargos' place on
the St. Lawrence. Its habitués irreverently dubbed this "The Shack",
but it was the nursling of folk who took their camping luxuriously, in
a palatial structure which, though built, as to its exterior, of logs,
was equipped within with Turkish bath, billiard-room and the most
indefatigable chef west of St. Petersburg. The evening before his host's
swift motor had hooted him off to the station, as its wide hall exhaled
the bouquet of after-dinner cigars, he had looked at her standing in the
wide doorway, a rare exquisite creature--her face fore-shortened and
touched to a borrowed tenderness by the flickering glow of the burning
logs in the room behind--the perfect flower, he had thought, of the
civilization in which he lived.
John Valiant looked down at the bulldog squatted on the floor, his eyes
shining in the dimness. A little hot ripple had run over him. "Not on
your life, Chum!" he said. "No shameless barter! There must be other
things besides money and social position in this doddering old world,
after all!"
The dog whined with delight at the voice and jumped up to lick the
strong tense hand held down to him. "Do you know, old chap," his master
continued, "I've been handing myself a collection of cold marble truths
in the last few weeks? I've been the prize dolt of the whole show, and
you ought to have thrown me over long ago. You've probably realized it
all along, but it has never dawned on me until lately. I've worn the
blue ribbon so long I'd come to think it was a decoration. All my life
I've been just another of those well-meaning, brainless young idiots who
have never done a blessed thing that's the slightest value to anybody
else. Well, Chum, we're through. We're going to begin doing something
for ourselves, if it's only raising cabbages! And we're going to stand
it without any baby-aching--the nurse never held our noses when we took
our castor-oil!"
It was folded down, that old bright page. _Finis_ had been written to
the rose-colored chapter. And even as he told himself, he was conscious
of a new rugged something that had been slowly dawning within him, a
sense of courage, even of zest, and a furious hatred of the self-pity
that had wrenched him even for a moment.
He turned from the window, picked up his letters, and followed by the
dog, went slowly up another flight to his room.
CHAPTER V
THE LETTER
He tore open the letters abstractedly: the usual dinner-card or
two, a tailor's spring announcement, a chronic serial from an
exclamatory marble-quarrying company, a quarterly statement of a
club house-committee. The last two missives bore a nondescript look.
One was small, with the name of a legal firm in its corner. The other
was largish, corpulent and heavy, of stout Manila paper, and bore, down
one side, a gaudy procession of postage stamps proclaiming that it had
been registered.
"What's in that, I wonder?" he said to himself, and then, with a smile
at the unmasculine speculation, opened the smaller envelope.
"Dear Sir," began the letter, in the most uncompromisingly conventional
of typewriting:
"_Dear Sir_:
"Enclosed please find, with title-deed, a memorandum opened in
your name by the late John Valiant some years before his death.
It was his desire that the services indicated in connection
with this estate should continue till this date. We hand you
herewith our check for $236.20 (two hundred and thirty-six
dollars and twenty cents), the balance in your favor, for which
please send receipt,
"And oblige,
"Yours very truly,
"(Enclosure) EMERSON AND BALL."
He turned to the memorandum. It showed a sizable initial deposit
against which was entered a series of annual tax payments with minor
disbursements credited to "Inspection and care." The tax receipts were
pinned to the account.
The larger wrapper contained an unsealed envelope, across which was
written in faded ink and in an unfamiliar dashing, slanting handwriting,
his own name. The envelope contained a creased yellow parchment, from
between whose folds there clumped and fluttered down upon the floor a
long flattish object wrapped in a paper, a newspaper clipping and a
letter.
Puzzledly he unfolded the crackling thing in his hands. "Why," he said
half aloud, "it's--it's a deed made over to me." He overran it swiftly.
"Part of an old Colony grant ... a plantation in Virginia, twelve
hundred odd acres, given under the hand of a vice-regal governor in the
sixteenth century. I had no idea titles in the United States went back
so far as that!" His eye fled to the end. "It was my father's! What
could he have wanted of an estate in Virginia? It must have come into
his hands in the course of business."
He fairly groaned. "Ye gods! If it were only Long Island, or even Pike
County! The sorriest, out-at-elbow, boulder-ridden, mosquito-stung old
rock-farm there would bring a decent sum. But Virginia! The place where
the dialect stories grow. The paradise of the Jim-crow car and the
hook-worm, where land-poor, clay-colored colonels with goatees sit in
green wicker lawn-chairs and watch their shadows go round the house,
while they guzzle mint-juleps and cuss at lazy 'cullud pussons.' Where
everybody is an F. F. V. and everybody's grandfather was a patroon, or
whatever they call 'em, and had a thousand slaves 'befo de wah'!"
Who ever heard of Virginia nowadays, except as a place people came
_from_? The principal event in the history of the state since the Civil
War had been the discovery of New York. Its men had moved upon the
latter en masse, coming with the halo about them of old Southern names
and legends of planter hospitality--and had married Northern women, till
the announcement in the marriage column that the fathers of bride and
bridegroom had fought in opposing armies at the battle of Manassas had
grown as hackneyed as the stereotyped "Whither are we drifting?"
editorial. But was Virginia herself anything more, in this twentieth
century, than a hot-blooded, high-handed, prodigal legend, kept alive
in the North by the banquets of "Southern Societies" and annual poems on
"The Lost Cause"?
He picked up the newspaper clipping. It was worn and broken in the folds
as if it had been carried for months in a pocketbook.
"It will interest readers of this section of Virginia (the
paragraph began) to learn, from a recent transfer received for
record at the County Clerk's Office, that Damory Court has
passed to Mr. John Valiant, minor--"
He turned the paper over and found a date; it had been printed in the
year of the transfer to himself, when he was six years old--the year his
father had died.
"--John Valiant, minor, the son of the former owner.
"There are few indeed who do not recall the tragedy with which
in the public mind the estate is connected. The fact, moreover,
that this old homestead has been left in its present state
(for, as is well known, the house has remained with all its
contents and furnishings untouched) to rest during so long a
term of years unoccupied, could not, of course, fail to be
commented on, and this circumstance alone has perhaps tended to
keep alive a melancholy story which may well be forgotten."
He read the elaborate, rather stilted phraseology in the twenty-year-old
paper with a wondering interest. "An old house," he mused, "with a bad
name. Probably he couldn't sell it, and maybe nobody would even live in
it. That would explain why it remained so long unoccupied--why there are
no records of rentals. Probably the land was starved and run down. At
any rate, in twenty years it would be overgrown with stubble."
Yet, whatever their condition, acres of land were, after all, a tangible
thing. This lawyer's firm might, instead, have sent him a bundle of
beautifully engraved certificates of stock in some zinc-mine whose
imaginary bottom had dropped out ten years ago. Here was real property,
in size, at least, a gentleman's domain, on which real taxes had been
paid during a long term--a sort of hilarious consolation prize, hurtling
to him out of the void like the magic gift of the traditional fairy
god-mother.
"It's an off-set to the hall-bedroom idea, at any rate," he said to
himself humorously. "It holds out an escape from the noble army of
rent-payers. When my twenty-eight hundred is gone, I could live down
there a landed proprietor, and by the same mark an honorary colonel,
and raise the cabbages I was talking about--eh, Chum?--while you stalk
rabbits. How does that strike you?"
He laughed whimsically. He, John Valiant, of New York, first-nighter at
its theaters, hail-fellow-well-met in its club corridors and welcome
diner at any one of a hundred brilliant glass-and-silver-twinkling
supper-tables, entombed on the wreck of a Virginia plantation, a
would-be country gentleman, on an automobile and next to nothing a year!
He bethought himself of the fallen letter and possessed himself of it
quickly. It lay with the superscription side down. On it was written,
in the same hand which had addressed the other envelope:
_For my son, John Valiant,
When he reaches the age of twenty-five._
That, then, had been written by his father--and he had died nearly
twenty years ago! He broke the seal with a strange feeling as if,
walking in some familiar thoroughfare, he had stumbled on a lichened and
sunken tombstone.
"When you read this, my son, you will have come to man's
estate. It is curious to think that this black, black ink may
be faded to gray and this white, white paper yellowed, just
from lying waiting so long. But strangest of all is to think
that you yourself whose brown head hardly tops this desk, will
be as tall (I hope) as I! How I wonder what you will look like
then! And shall I--the real, real I, I mean--be peering over
your strong broad shoulder as you read? Who knows? Wise men
have dreamed such a thing possible--and I am not a bit wise.
"John, you will not have forgotten that you are a Valiant. But
you are also a Virginian. Will you have discovered this for
yourself? Here is the deed to the land where I and my father,
and his father, and many, many more Valiants before them were
born. Sometime, perhaps, you will know why you are John Valiant
of New York instead of John Valiant of Damory Court. I can not
tell you myself, because it is too true a story, and I have
forgotten how to tell any but fairy tales, where everything
happens right, where the Prince marries the beautiful Princess
and they live happily together ever after.
"You may never care to live at Damory Court. Maybe the life you
will know so well by the time you read this will have welded
you to itself. If so, well and good. Then leave the old place
to your son. But there is such a thing as racial habit, and the
call of blood. And I know there is such a thing, too, as fate.
'Every man carries his fate on a riband about his neck'; so the
Moslem put it. It was my fate to go away, and I know now--since
distance is not made by miles alone--that I myself shall never
see Damory Court again. But life is a strange wheel that goes
round and round and comes back to the same point again and
again. And it may be your fate to go back. Then perhaps you
will cry (but, oh, not on the old white bear's-skin rug--never
again with me holding your small, small hand!)--
"'Wishing-House! Wishing-House! Where are you?'
"And this old parchment deed will answer answer--
"'Here I am, Master; here I am!'
"Ah, we are only children, after all, playing out our plays. I
have had many toys, but O John, John! The ones I treasure most
are all in the Never-Never Land!"
CHAPTER VI
A VALIANT OF VIRGINIA
For a long time John Valiant sat motionless, the opened letter in his
hand, staring at nothing. He had the sensation, spiritually, of a
traveler awakened with a rude shock amid wholly unfamiliar surroundings.
He had passed through so many conflicting states of emotion that
afternoon and evening that he felt numb.
He was trying to remember--to put two and two together. His father had
been Southern-born; yes, he had known that. But he had known nothing
whatever of his father's early days, or of his forebears; since he had
been old enough to wonder about such things, he had had no one to ask
questions of. There had been no private papers or letters left for his
adult perusal. It had been borne upon him very early that his father's
life had not been a happy one. He had seldom laughed, and his hair had
been streaked with gray, yet when he died he had been but ten years
older than the son was now.
Phrases of the letter ran through his mind: "_Sometime, perhaps, you
will know why you are John Valiant of New York instead of John Valiant
of Damory Court.... I can not tell you myself._" There was some tragedy,
then, that had blighted the place, some "melancholy story," as the
clipping put it.
He bent over the deed spread out upon the table, following with his
finger the long line of transfers: "'To John Valyante,'" he muttered;
"what odd spelling! 'Robert Valyant'--without the 'e.' Here, in 1730,
the 'y' begins to be 'i.'" There was something strenuous and appealing
in the long line of dates. "Valiant. Always a Valiant. How they held on
to it! There's never a break."
A curious pride, new-born and self-conscious, was dawning in him. He was
descended from ancestors who had been no weaklings. A Valiant had
settled on those acres under a royal governor, before the old frontier
fighting was over and the Indians had sullenly retired to the westward.
The sons of those who had braved sea and savages had bowed their strong
bodies and their stronger hearts to raze the forests and turn the
primeval jungles into golden plantations. Except as regarded his father,
Valiant had never known ancestral pride before. He had been proud of
his strong and healthy frame, of his ability to ride like a dragoon,
unconsciously, perhaps, a little proud of his wealth. But pride in the
larger sense, reverence for the past based upon a respect for ancient
lineage, he had never known until this moment.
Where was his facetious concept of Virginia now? He remembered his
characterization of it with a wincing half-humorous mortification--a
slender needle-prick of shame. The empty pretensions, subsisting on
the vanished glories of the past, had suddenly acquired character and
meaning. He himself was a Virginian.
There below him stretched the great cañoned city, its avenues roaring
with nightly gaiety, its roadways bright with the beams of shuttling
motors, its theaters and cafés brilliant with women in throbbing hues
and men in black and white, and its "Great White Way" blazing with
incandescents, interminable and alluring--an apotheosis of fevered
movement and hectic color. He knew suddenly that he was sick of it
all: its jostle and glitter, its mad race after bubbles, its hideous
under-surface contrasts of wealth and squalor, its lukewarm friendships
and false standards which he had been so bitterly unlearning. He knew
that, for all his self-pity, he was at heart full of a tired longing for
wide uncrowded nature, for green breezy interludes and a sky of
untainted sunlight or peaceful stars.
There stole into his mood an eery suggestion of intention. Why should
the date assigned for that deed's delivery have been the very day on
which he had elected poverty? Here was a foreordination as pointed as
the index-finger of a guide-post. "'Every man carries his fate,'" he
repeated, "'on a riband about his neck.' Chum, do you believe in fate?"
For answer the bulldog, cocking an alert eye on his master, discontinued
his occupation--a conscientious if unsuccessful mastication of the
flattish packet that had fallen from the folded deed--and with much
solicitous tail-wagging, brought the sodden thing in his mouth and put
it into the outstretched hand.
His master unrolled the pulpy wad and extricated the object it had
enclosed--an old-fashioned iron door-key.
* * * * *
After a time Valiant thrust the key into his pocket, and rising, went to
a trunk that lay against the wall. Searching in a portfolio, he took out
a small old-fashioned photograph, much battered and soiled. It had been
cut from a larger group and the name of the photographer had been erased
from the back. He set it upright on the desk, and bending forward,
looked long at the face it disclosed. It was the only picture he had
ever possessed of his father.
He turned and looked into the glass above the dresser. The features
were the same, eyes, brow, lips, and strong waving hair. But for its
time-stains the photograph might have been one of himself, taken
yesterday.
For an hour he sat in the bright light thinking, the pictured face
propped on the desk before him, the dog snuggled against his knee.
CHAPTER VII
ON THE RED ROAD
The green, mid May Virginian afternoon was arched with a sky as blue as
the tiles of the Temple of Heaven and steeped in a wash of sunlight as
yellow as gold: smoke-hazy peaks piling up in the distance, billowy
verdure like clumps of trembling jade between, shaded with masses of
blue-black shadow, and lazying up and down, by gashed ravine and rounded
knoll a road like red lacquer, fringed with stone wall and sturdy shrub
and splashed here and there with the purple stain of the Judas-tree and
the snow of dogwood blooms. Nothing in all the springy landscape but
looked warm and opalescent and inviting--except a tawny bull that from
across a barred fence-corner switched a truculent tail in silence and
glowered sullenly at the big motor halted motionless at the side of the
twisting road.
Curled worm-like in the driver's seat, with his chin on his knees, John
Valiant sat with his eyes upon the distance. For an hour he had whirred
through that wondrous shimmer of color with a flippant loitering breeze
in his face, sweet from the crimson clover that poured and rioted
over the roadside: past nests of meditative farm-buildings, fields of
baby-green corn, occasional ramshackle dirt-daubed cabins with doorways
hung with yellow honeysuckle and flagrant trumpet-vines, and here and
there a quiet old church, Gothic and ivied and gray whose leaded
windows watched benignantly over myrtled graveyards. A great soothing
suspiration of peace seemed to swell from it all to lap the traveler
like the moist balminess of a semi-tropical sea.
"Chum old man," said Valiant, with his arm about the bulldog's neck, "if
those color-photograph chaps had shown us this, we simply wouldn't have
believed it, would we? Such scenery beats the roads we're used to, what?
If it were all like this--but of course it isn't. We'll get to our own
bailiwick presently, and wake up. Never mind; we're country gentlemen,
Chummy, en route to our estate! No silly snuffle, now! Out with it!
That's right,"--as a sharp bark rewarded him--"that's the proper
enthusiasm." He wound his strong fingers in a choking grip in the scruff
of the white neck, as a chipmunk chattered by on the low stone wall.
"No, you don't, you cannibal! He's a jolly little beggar, and he doesn't
deserve being eaten!"
He filled his brier-wood pipe and drew in great breaths of the fragrant
incense. "What a pity you don't smoke, Chum; you miss such a lot! I saw
a poodle once in a circus that did. But he'd been to college. Think how
you could think if you only smoked! We may have to do a lot of thinking,
where we're bound to. Wonder what we'll find? Oh, that's right, leave it
all to me, of course, and wash your paws of the whole blooming
business!"
After a time he shook himself and knocked the red core from the
pipe-bowl against his boot-heel. "I hate to start," he confessed, half
to the dog and half to himself. "To leave anything so sheerly beautiful
as this! However, on with the dance! By the road map the village can't
be far now. So long, Mr. Bull!"
He clutched the self-starter. But there was only a protestant wheeze;
the car declined to budge. Climbing down, he cranked vigorously. The
motor turned over with a surly grunt of remonstrance and after a
tentative _throb-throb_, coughed and stopped dead. Something was wrong.
With a sigh he flung off his tweed jacket, donned a smudgy "jumper,"
opened his tool-box, and, with a glance at his wrist-watch which told
him it was three o'clock, threw up the monster's hood and went bitterly
to work.
At half past three the investigation had got as far as the lubricator.
At four o'clock the bulldog had given it up and gone nosing afield. At
half past four John Valiant lay flat on his back like some disreputable
stevadore, alternately tinkering with refractory valves and cursing the
obdurate mechanism. Over his right eye an ooze of orange-colored oil
glowered and glistened and indefatigably drip-dripped into his shrinking
collar. A sharp stone gnawed frenziedly into the small of his back
and just as he made a final vicious lunge, something gave way and
a prickling red-hot stab of pain shot zigzagging from his smitten
crazy-bone through every tortured crevice of his impatient frame. Like
steel from flint it struck out a crisp oath that brought an answering
bovine snort from the fence-corner.
Worming like a lizard to freedom, his eyes puckered shut with the
wretched pang, John Valiant sat up and shook his grimy fist in the air.
"You silly loafing idiot!" he cried. "Thump your own crazy-bone and see
how you like it! You--oh, lord!"
His arm dropped, and a flush spread over his face to the brow. For
his eyes had opened. He was gesturing not at the bull but at a girl,
who fronted him beside the road, haughtiness in the very hue of her
gray-blue linen walking suit and, in the clear-cut cameo face under her
felt cavalry hat, myrtle-blue eyes, that held a smolder of mingled
astonishment and indignation. The long ragged stems of two crimson roses
were thrust through her belt, a splash of blood-red against the pallid
weave. An instant he gazed, all the muscles of his face tightened with
chagrin.
[Illustration]
"I--I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I didn't see you. I really
didn't. I was--I was talking to the bull."
The girl had been glancing from the flushed face to the thistly
fence-corner, while the startled dignity of her features warred with
an unmistakable tendency to mirth. He could see the little rebellious
twitch of the vivid lips, the tell-tale flutter of the eyelids, and the
tremor of the gauntleted hand as it drew the hat firmly down over her
curling masses of red-bronze. "What hair!" he was saying to himself.
"It's red, but _what_ a red! It has the burnish of hot copper! I never
_saw_ such hair!"
He had struggled to his feet, nursing his bruised elbow, irritably
conscious of his resemblance to an emerging chimney-sweep. "I don't
habitually swear," he said, "but I'd got to the point when something
_had_ to explode."
"Oh," she said, "don't mind me!" Then mirth conquered and she broke
forth suddenly into a laugh that seemed to set the whole place aquiver
with a musical contagion. They both laughed in concert, while the bull
pawed the ground and sent forth a rumbling bellow of affront and
challenge.
She was the first to recover. "You _did_ look so funny!" she gasped.
"I can believe it," he agreed, making a vicious dab at his smudged brow.
"The possibilities of a motor for comedy are simply stupendous."
She came closer and looked curiously at the quiescent monster--at the
steamer-trunk strapped on the carrier and the bulging portmanteau
peeping over the side of the tonneau. "Is it broken?"
"Merely on strike, I imagine. I think it resents the quality of the
gasoline I got at Charlottesville. I can't decide whether it needs a
monkey-wrench or a mustard-plaster. To tell the truth, it has been out
of commission and I'm not much of an expert, though I can study it out
in time. Are we far from the village?"
"About a mile and a half."
"I'll have to have it towed after me. The immediate point is my traps. I
wonder if there is likely to be a team passing."
"I'm afraid it's not too certain," answered the girl, and now he noted
the liquid modulation, with its slightly questioning accent, charmingly
Southern. "There is no livery, but there is a negro who meets the train
sometimes. I can send him if you like."
"You're very good," said Valiant, as she turned away, "and I'll be
enormously obliged. Oh--and if you see a white dog, don't be frightened
if he tries to follow you. He's perfectly kind."
She looked back momentarily.
"He--he always follows people he likes, you see--"
"Thank you," she said. The tone had now a hint--small, yet
perceptible--of aloofness. "I'm not in the least afraid of dogs." And
with a little nod, she swung briskly on up the Red Road.
John Valiant stood staring after her till she had passed from view
around a curve. "Oh, glory!" he muttered. "To begin by shaking your fist
at her and end by making her wonder if you aren't trying to be fresh!
You poor, profane, floundering dolt!"
After a time he discarded his "jumper" and contrived a make-shift
toilet. "What a type!" he said to himself. "Corn-flower eyes and a
blowse of coppery hair." A fragment of verse ran through his mind:
"Tawny-flecked, russet-brown, in a tangle of gold,
The billowy sweep of her flame-washed hair,
Like amber lace, laid fold on fold,
Or beaten metal beyond compare."
"Delicacy and strength!" he muttered, as he climbed again to the leather
seat. "The steel blade in the silk scabbard. With that face in repose
she might have been a maid of honor of the Stuarts' time! Yet when she
laughed--"
* * * * *
The girl walked on up the highway with a lilting stride, now and then
laughing to herself, or running a few steps, occasionally stopping by
some hedge to pull a leaf which she rubbed against her cheek, smelling
its keen new scent, or stopping to gaze out across the orange-green
belts of sunny wind-dimpled fields, one hand pushing back her mutinous
hair from her brow, the other shielding her eyes. When she had passed
beyond the ken of the stranded motor, she began to sing a snatch of a
cabin song, her vivid red lips framing themselves about the absurd words
with a humorous exaggeration of the soft darky pronunciation. Beneath
its fun her voice held a haunting dreamy quality, as she sang, sometimes
in the blaze of sun, sometimes with leaf-shadows above her through
which the light spurted down in green-gilt splashes. Once she stopped
suddenly, and crouching down by a thorn-hedge, whistled--a low mellow
tentative pipe--and in a moment a brown-flecked covey of baby partridges
rushed out of the grass to dart instantly back again. She laughed, and
springing up, threw back her head and began a bird song, her slender
throat pulsing to the shake and reedy trill. It was marvelously done,
from the clear, long opening note to the soaring rapture that seemed to
bubble and break all at once into its final crescendo.
Farther on the highroad looped around a strip of young forest, and she
struck into this for a short cut. Here the trees stirred faintly in the
breeze, filling the place with leafy rustlings and whisperings; yet it
was so still that when a saffron-barred hornet darted through with an
intolerant high-keyed hum, it made the air for an instant angrily
vocal, and a woodpecker's tattoo at some distance sounded with startling
loudness, like a crackling series of pistol-shots.
In the depth of this wood she sat down to rest on the sun-splashed roots
of a tree. Leaning back against the seamed trunk, her felt hat fallen to
the ground, she looked like some sea-woman emerging from an earth-hued
pool to comb her hair against a dappled rock. The ground was sparsely
covered with gray-blue bushes whose fronds at a little distance blended
into a haze till they seemed like billows of smoke suddenly solidified,
and here and there a darting red or yellow flower gave the illusion of
an under-tongue of flame. Her eyes, passionately eager, peered about
her, drinking in each note of color as her quick ear caught each
twig-fall, each sound of bird and insect.
She drew back against the tree and caught her breath as a bulldog
frisked over a mossy boulder just in front of her.
A moment more and she had thrown herself on her knees with both arms
outstretched. "Oh, you splendid creature!" she cried, "you big, lovely
white darling!"
The dog seemed in no way averse to this sensational proceeding. He
responded instantly not merely with tail-wagging; but with ecstatic
grunts and growls. "Where did you come from?" she questioned, as his
pink tongue struggled desperately to find a cheek through the whorl of
coppery hair. "Why, you must be the one I was told not to be afraid of."
She petted and fondled the smooth intelligent muzzle. "As if any one
could be afraid of _you_! We'll set your master right on that point."
Smiling to herself, she pulled one of the roses from her belt, and
twisting a wisp of long grass, wound it round and round the dog's neck
and thrust the ragged rose-stem firmly through it. "Now," she said, and
pushed him gently from her, "go back, sir!"
He whined and licked her hand, but when she repeated the command, he
turned obediently and left her. A little way from her he halted, with a
sudden perception of mysterious punishment, shrugged, sat down, and
tried to reach the irksome grass-wisp with his teeth. This failing, he
rolled laboriously in the dirt.
Then he rose, cast a reproachful glance behind him, and trotted off.
CHAPTER VIII
MAD ANTHONY
Beyond the selvage of the sleepy leaf-sheltered village a cherry
bordered lane met the Red Road. On its one side was a clovered pasture
and beyond this an orchard, bounded by a tall hedge of close-clipped box
which separated it from a broad yard where the gray-weathered roof of
Rosewood showed above a group of tulip and catalpa trees. Viewed nearer,
the low stone house, with its huge overhanging eaves, would have looked
like a small boy with his father's hat on but for the trellises of
climbing roses that covered two sides and overflowed here and there on
long arbors, flecking the dull brown stone with a glorious crimson,
like a warrior's blood. On the sunny steps a lop-eared hound puppy
was playing with a mottled cat.
The front door was open, showing a hall where stood a grandfather's
clock and a spindle-legged table holding a bowl of potpourri. The
timepiece had landed from a sailing vessel at Jamestown wharf with the
household goods of that English Garland who had adopted the old Middle
Plantation when Dunmore was royal governor under George III. Framed
portraits and engravings lent tints of tarnished silver, old-rose and
sunset-golds--colors time-toned and reminiscent, carrying a charming
sense of peaceful content, of gentleness and long tradition. The dark
polished stairway had at its turn a square dormer-window which looked
out upon one of the rose-arbors.
Down this stair, somewhat later that afternoon, came Shirley Dandridge,
booted and spurred, the rebellious whorls of her russet hair now as
closely filleted as a Greek boy's, in a short divided skirt of yew-green
and a cool white blouse and swinging by its ribbon a green hat whose
rolling brim was caught up at one side by a crisp blue-black hawk's
feather. She stopped to peer out of the dormer-window to where, under
the latticed weave of bloom, beside a round iron table holding a hoop
of embroidery and a book or two, a lady sat reading.
The lady's hair was silver, but not with age. It had been so for many
years, refuted by the transparent skin and a color as soft as the cheek
of an apricot. It was solely in her dark eyes, deep and strangely
luminous, that one might see lurking the somber spirit of passion and of
pain. But they were eager and brilliant withal, giving the lie to the
cane whose crook one pale delicate hand held with a clasp that somehow
conveyed a sense of exasperate if semi-humorous rebellion. She wore
nun's gray; soft old lace was at her wrists and throat, and she was
knitting a scarlet silk stocking.
She looked up at Shirley's voice, and smiled brightly. "Off for your
ride, dear?"
"Yes. I'm going with the Chalmers."
"Oh, of course. Betty Page is visiting them, isn't she?"
Shirley nodded. "She came yesterday. I'll have to hurry, for I saw them
from my window turning into the Red Road." She waved her hand and ran
lightly down the stair and across the lawn to the orchard.
She pulled a green apple from a bough that hung over a stone wall and
with this in her hand she came close to the pasture fence and whistled a
peculiar call. It was answered by a low whinny and a soft thud of hoofs,
and a golden-chestnut hunter thrust a long nose over the bars, flaring
flame-lined nostrils to the touch of her hand. She laid her cheek
against the white thoroughbred forehead and held the apple to the eager
reaching lip, with several teasing withdrawings before she gave it to
its juicy crunching.
"No, Selim," she said as the wide nostrils snuffled over her shoulder,
the begging breath blowing warm against her neck. "No more--and no sugar
to-day. Sugar has gone up two cents a pound."
She let down the top bar of the fence and vaulting over, ran to a stable
and presently emerging with a saddle on her arm, whistled the horse to
her and saddled him. Then opening the gate, she mounted and cantered
down the lane to meet the oncoming riders--a kindly-faced, middle-aged
man, a younger one with dark features and coal-black hair, and two
girls.
Chisholm Lusk spurred in advance and lifted his hat. "I held up the
judge, Shirley," he said, "and made him bring me along. He tells me
there's a fox-hunt on to-morrow; may I come?"
"Pshaw! Chilly," said the judge. "I don't believe you ever got up at
five o'clock in your born days. You've learned bad habits abroad."
"You'll see," he answered. "If my man Friday doesn't rout me out
to-morrow, I'll be up for murder."
They rode an hour, along stretches of sunny highways or on shaded
bridle-paths where the horses' hoofs fell muffled in brown pine-needles
and drooping branches flicked their faces. Then, by a murky way gouged
with brusk gullies, across shelving fields and "turn-rows" in a long
détour around Powhattan Mountain, a rough spur in the shape of an
Indian's head that wedged itself forbiddingly between the fields of
springing corn and tobacco. They approached the Red Road again by a
crazy bridge whose adze-hewn flooring was held in place by wild
grape-vines and weighted down against cloudburst and freshet by heavy
boulders till it dipped its middle like an overloaded buckboard in the
yellow waters of the sluggish stream beneath. On the farther side they
pulled down to breathe their horses. Here the road was like a narrow
ruler dividing a desert from a promised land. On one hand a guttered
slope of marl and pebbles covered with a tatterdemalion forest--on the
other acre upon acre of burnished grain.
"Ah never saw such a frowsley-looking thing in mah life," said Betty
Page, in her soft South Carolinian drawl that was all vowels and
liquids, "as that wild hill beside those fields. For all the world like
a disgraceful tramp leering across the wall at a dandy."
Shirley applauded the simile, and the judge said, "This is a boundary.
That hobo-landscape is part of the deserted Valiant estate. The hill
hides the house."
She nodded. "Damory Court. It's still vacant, Ah suppose."
"Yes, and likely to be. Valiant is dead long ago, but apparently there's
never been any attempt to let it. I suppose his son is so rich that one
estate more or less doesn't figure much to him."
"I got a letter this morning from Dorothy Randolph," said Shirley. "The
Valiant Corporation is being investigated, you know, and her uncle had
taken her to one of the hearings, when John Valiant was in the chair.
From her description, they are making it sufficiently hot for that
silver-spooned young man."
"I don't reckon _he_ cares," said Lusk satirically. "Nothing matters
with his set if you have enough money."
The judge pointed with his crop. "That narrow wagon-track," he said,
"goes to Hell's-Half-Acre."
"Oh, yes," said Betty. "That's that weird settlement on the Dome where
Shirley's little protégée Rickey Snyder came from." It was all she said,
but her glance at the girl beside her was one of open admiration. For,
as all in the party knew, the lonely road had been connected with an act
of sheer impulsive daring in Shirley's girlhood that she would never
hear spoken of.
Judge Chalmers flicked his horse's ears gently with his rein and they
moved slowly on, presently coming in sight of a humble patch of ground,
enclosed in a worm-fence and holding a whitewashed cabin with a
well shaded by varicolored hollyhocks. Under the eaves clambered a
gourd-vine, beneath which dangled strings of onions and bright red
peppers. "Do let us get a drink!" said Chilly Lusk. "I'm as thirsty as
a cotton-batting camel."
"All right, we'll stop," agreed the judge, "and you'll have a chance to
see another local lion, Betty. This is where Mad Anthony lives. You must
have heard of him when you were here before. He's almost as celebrated
as the Reverend John Jasper of Richmond."
Betty tapped her temple. "Where have Ah heard of John Jasper?"
"He was the author of the famous sermon on _The Sun do Move_. He used to
prove it by a bucket of water that he set beside his pulpit Saturday
night. As it hadn't spilled in the morning he knew it was the earth that
stood still."
Betty nodded laughingly. "Ah remember now. He's the one who said there
were only four great races: the Huguenots, the Hottentots, the
Abyssinians and the Virginians. Is Mad Anthony really mad?"
"Only harmlessly," said Shirley. "He's stone blind. The negroes all
believe he conjures--that's voodoo, you know. They put a lot of stock
in his 'prophecisms.' He tells fortunes, too. S-sh!" she warned. "He's
sitting on the door-step. He's heard us."
The old negro had the torso of a black patriarch. He sat bolt upright
with long straight arms resting on his knees, and his face had that
peculiar expressionless immobility seen in Egyptian carvings. He had
slightly turned his head in their direction, his brow, under its shock
of perfectly white crinkly hair, twitching with a peculiar expression of
inquiry. His age might have been anything judging from his face which
was so seamed and creviced with innumerable tiny wrinkles that it most
resembled the tortured glaze of some ancient bitumen pottery unearthed
from a tomb of Kôr. Under their heavy lids his sightless eyeballs,
whitely opaque and lusterless, turned mutely toward the sound of the
horse hoofs.
The judge dismounted, and tossing his bridle over a fence-picket, took
from his pocket a collapsible drinking cup. "Howdy do, Anthony," he
said. "We just stopped for a drink of your good water."
The old negro nodded his head. "Good watah," he said in the gentle
quavering tones of extreme age. "Yas, Mars'. He'p yo'se'f. Come f'om de
centah ob de yerf, dat watah. En dah's folks say de centah of de yerf is
all fiah. Yo' reck'n dey's right, Mars' Chalmahs?"
"Now, how the devil do you know who I am, Anthony?" The judge set down
his cup on the well-curb. "I haven't been by here for a year."
The ebony head moved slowly from side to side. "Ol' Ant'ny don' need no
eyes," he said, touching his hand to his brow. "He see ev'ything heah."
The judge beckoned to the others and they trooped inside the paling.
"I've brought some other folks with me, Anthony; can you tell who they
are?"
The sightless look wavered over them and the white head shook slowly.
"Don' know young mars,'," said the gentle voice. "How many yuddahs wid
yo'? One, two? No, don' know young mistis, eidah."
"I reckon you _don't_ need any eyes," Judge Chalmers laughed, as he
passed the sweet cold water to the rest. "One of these young ladies
wants you to tell her fortune."
The old negro dropped his head, waving his gaunt hands restlessly. Then
his gaze lifted and the whitened eyeballs roved painfully about as if in
search of something elusive. The judge beckoned to Betty Page, but she
shook her head with a little grimace and drew back.
"You go, Shirley," she whispered, and with a laughing glance at the
others, Shirley came and sat down on the lowest step.
Mad Anthony put out a wavering hand and touched the young body. His
fingers strayed over the habit and went up to the curling bronze under
the hat-brim. "Dis de li'l mistis," he muttered, "ain' afeahd ob ol'
Ant'ny. Dah's fiah en she ain' afeahd, en dah's watah en she ain'
afeahd. Wondah whut Ah gwine tell huh? Whut de coloh ob yo' haih,
honey?"
"Black," put in Chilly Lusk, with a wink at the others. "Black as a
crow."
Old Anthony's hand fell back to his knee. "Young mars' laugh at de ol'
man," he said, "but _he_ don' know. Dat de coloh dat buhn mah han's--de
coloh ob gol', en eyes blue like er cat-bird's aig. Dah's er man gwine
look in dem eyes, honey, en gwine make 'em cry en cry." He raised his
head sharply, his lids shut tight, and swung his arm toward the North.
"Dah's whah he come f'om," he said, "en heah"--his arm veered and he
pointed straight toward the ragged hill behind them--"he stay."
Lusk laughed noiselessly. "He's pointing to Damory Court," he whispered
to Nancy Chalmers, "the only uninhabited place within ten miles. That's
as near as he often hits it, I fancy."
"Heah's whah he stay," repeated the old man. "Heap ob trouble wait heah
fo' him too, honey,--heap ob trouble, heah whah li'l mistis fin' him."
His voice dropped to a monotone, and he began to rock gently to and fro
as if he were crooning a lullaby. "Li'l trouble en gr'et trouble! Fo'
dah's fiah en she ain' afeahd, en dah's watah en she ain' afeahd. It's
de thing whut eat de ha'at outen de breas'--dat whut she afeahd of!"
"Come, Anthony," said Judge Chalmers, laying his hand on the old man's
shoulder. "That's much too mournful! Give her something nice to top off
with, at least!"
But Anthony paid no heed, continuing his rocking and his muttering.
"Gr'et trouble. Dah's fiah en she ain' afeahd, en dah's watah en she
ain' afeahd. En Ah sees yo' gwine ter him, honey. Ah heah's de
co'ot-house clock a-strikin' in de night--en yo' gwine. Don' wait, don'
wait, li'l mistis, er de trouble-cloud gwine kyah him erway f'om yo'....
When de clock strike thuhteen--when de clock strike thuhteen--"
The droning voice ceased. The gaunt form became rigid. Then he started
and turned his eyes slowly about him, a vague look of anxiety on his
face. For a moment no one moved. When he spoke again it was once more in
his gentle quavering voice:
"Watah? Yas, Mars', good watah. He'p yo'se'f."
The judge set a dollar bill on the step and weighted it with a stone, as
the rest remounted. "Well, good-by, Anthony," he said. "We're mightily
obliged."
He sprang into the saddle and the quartette cantered away. "My
experiment wasn't a great success, I'm afraid, Shirley," he said
ruefully.
"Oh, I think it was splendid!" cried Nancy. "Do you suppose he really
believes those spooky things? I declare, at the time I almost did
myself. What an odd idea--'when the clock strikes thirteen,' which, of
course, it never does."
"Don't mind, Shirley," bantered Lusk. "When you see all 'dem troubles'
coming, sound the alarm and we'll fly in a body to your rescue."
They let their horses out for a pounding gallop which pulled down
suddenly at a muffled shriek from Betty Page, as her horse went into the
air at sight of an automobile by the roadside.
"Now, whose under the canopy is that?" exclaimed Lusk.
"It's stalled," said Shirley. "I passed here this afternoon when the
owner was trying to start it, and I sent Unc' Jefferson as first aid to
the injured."
"I wonder who he can be," said Nancy. "I've never seen that car before."
"Why," said Betty gaily, "_Ah_ know! It's Mad Anthony's trouble-man, of
course, come for Shirley."
CHAPTER IX
UNCLE JEFFERSON
A red rose, while ever a thing of beauty, is not invariably a joy
forever. The white bulldog, as he plodded along the sunny highway, was
sunk in depression. Being trammeled by the limitations of a canine
horizon, he could not understand the whims of Adorable Ones met by the
way, who seemed so glad to see him that they threw both arms about him,
and then tied to his neck irksome colored weeds that prickled and
scratched and would not be dislodged. Lacking a basis of painful
comparison, since he had never had a tin can tied to his tail, he
accepted it as condign punishment and was puzzledly wretched. So it was
a chastened and shamed Chum who at length wriggled stealthily into the
seat of the stranded automobile beside his master and thrust a dirty
pink nose into his palm.
John Valiant lifted his hand to stroke the shapely head, then drew it
back with an exclamation. A thorn had pricked his thumb. He looked down
and saw the draggled flower thrust through the twist of grass. "Oh, pup
of wonders!" he exclaimed. "Where did you get that rose?"
Chum sat up and wagged his tail, for his master's tone, instead of
ridicule, held a dawning delight. Perhaps the thing had not been
intended as a disgrace after all! As the careful hand drew the misused
blossom tenderly from its tether, he barked joyously with recovered
spirits.
With the first sight of the decoration Valiant had had a sudden memory
of a splotch of vivid red against the belted gray-blue of a gown. He
grinned appreciatively. "And I _warned_ her," he chuckled. "Told her not
to be afraid!" He dusted the blossom painstakingly with his handkerchief
and held it to his face--a live brilliant thing, breathing musk-odors of
the mid-moon of paradise.
A long time he sat, while the dog dozed and yawned on the shiny cushion
beside him. Gradually the clover-breeze fainted and the lengthening
shadows dipped their fingers into indigo. On the far amethystine peaks
of the Blue Ridge leaned milky-breasted clouds through which the sun
sifted in wide bars. A blackbird began to flute from some near-by tree
and across the low stone wall he heard a feathery whir. Of a sudden Chum
sat up and barked in earnest.
Turning his head, his master saw approaching a dilapidated hack with
side-lanterns like great goggles and decrepit and palsied curtains. It
was drawn by a lean mustard-tinted mule, and on its front seat sat a
colored man of uncertain age, whose hunched vertebræ and outward-crooked
arms gave him a curious expression of replete and bulbous inquiry.
Abreast of the car he removed a moth-eaten cap.
"Evenin', suh," he said,--"evenin', evenin'."
"Howdy do," returned the other amiably.
"Ah reck'n yo'-all done had er breck-down wid dat machine-thing dar.
Spec' er graveyahd rabbit done cross yo' pahf. Yo' been hyuh 'bout er
hour, ain' yo'?"
"Nearer three," said Valiant cheerfully, "but the view's worth it."
A hoarse titter came from the conveyance, which gave forth sundry
creakings of leather. "Huyh! Huyh! Dat's so, suh. Dat's so! Hm-m. Reck'n
Ah'll be gittin' erlong back." He clucked to the mule and proceeded to
turn the vehicle round.
"Hold on," cried John Valiant. "I thought you were bound in the other
direction."
"No, _suh_. Ah'm gwine back whah I come f'om. Ah jus' druv out hyuh
'case Miss Shirley done met me, en she say, 'Unc' Jeffe'son, yo' go
'treckly out de Red Road, 'case er gemman done got stalled-ed.'"
"Oh--Miss Shirley. She told you, did she? What did you say her first
name was?"
"_Dat's_ huh fus' name, Miss Shirley. Yas, _suh_! Miss Shirley done
said f' me ter come en git de gemman whut--whut kinder dawg is yo' got
dar?"
"It's a bulldog. Can you give me a lift? I've got that small trunk
and--"
"Dat's a right fine dawg. Miss Shirley she moughty fond ob dawgs, too."
"Fond of dogs, is she?" said Valiant. "I might have known it. It was
nice of her to send you here, Uncle Jefferson. You can take me and my
traps, I suppose?"
"'Pens on whah yo' gwineter," answered Uncle Jefferson sapiently.
"I'm going to Damory Court."
A kind of shocked surprise that was almost stupefaction spread over the
other's face, like oil over a pool. "Dam'ry Co'ot! Dat's de old Valiant
place. Ain' nobody lives _dar_. Ah reck'n ain' nobody live dar fer mos'
er hun'erd yeahs!"
"The old house has a great surprise coming to it," said Valiant gravely.
"Henceforth some one is going to occupy it. How far is it away?"
"Measurin' by de coonskin en th'owin' in de tail, et's erbout two mile.
Ain' gwineter live dar yo'se'f, suh, is yo'?"
"I am for the present," was the crisp answer.
Uncle Jefferson stared at him a moment with his mouth open. Then
ejaculating under his breath, "Fo' de _Lawd_! Whut folks gwineter say
ter dat!" he shambled to the rear of the motor and began to unship the
steamer-trunk.
"By the way,"--John Valiant paused, with the portmanteau in his
hands,--"what do you ask for the job?"
The owner of the hack scratched his grizzled head. "Ah gen'ly chahges er
quahtah er trunk f'om de deepo' less'n et's one ob dem ar rich folks
f'om up Norf."
"I don't happen to be rich, so we'll make it a dollar. What makes you
think I'm from the North?"
Again the aguish mirth agitated the other, as he put aboard a hamper and
one of the motor's lamps, which Valiant added as an afterthought. "Ah
_knows_ et," he said ingenuously, "but Ah don' know _why_. Ah'll jes'
twis' er rope eroun' yo' trunk. Whut yo' gwineter do wid dat-ar?" he
asked, pointing to the car. "Ah kin come wid ole Sukey--dat's mah
mule--en fotch it in in de mawnin'. Ain' gwineter rain ter-night
nohow."--
This matter having been arranged, they started jogging down the
green-bordered road, the bulldog prospecting alongside. A meadow-lark
soared somewhere in the overarching blue, dropping golden notes; dusty
bumble-bees boomed hither and thither; genial crickets tuned their
fiddles in the "tickle-grass" and a hawking dragon-fly paused for an
impudent siesta between the mule's gyrating ears.
"S'pose'n de Co'ot done ben sold en yo' gwineter fix it up fo' de new
ownah," hazarded Uncle Jefferson presently.
Valiant did not answer directly. "You say the place hasn't been occupied
for many years," he observed. "Did you ever hear why, Uncle Jefferson?"
"Ah done _heerd_," said the other vaguely, "but Ah disremembahs. Sumpin
dat happened befo' Ah come heah f'om ol' Post-Oak Plantation. Reck'n
Majah Bristow _he_ know erbout it, er Mis' Judith--dat's Miss Shirley's
mothah. Her fathah wus Gen'l Tawm Dandridge, en he died fo' she wus
bawn."
Shirley Dandridge! A high-sounding name, with something of long-linked
culture, of arrogant heritage. In some subtle way it seemed to clothe
the personality of which Valiant had had that fleeting roadside glimpse.
Uncle Jefferson stared meditatively skyward whence dropped the bubbling
lark song. "Dat-ar buhd kin _sing_!" he said. "Queeh dat folkses cyan'
do dat, dey so moughty much smahtah. Nevah knowed nobody _could_, dough,
cep'n on'y Miss Shirley. Tain' er buhd nowhah in de fiel's dat she cyan'
mock."
"You mean she knows their calls?"
"Yas, suh, ev'y soun'. Done fool me heap er times. Dah's de cook's li'l
boy et Rosewood dat wuz sick las' summah, en he listen ev'y day ter de
mockin'-buhd dat nes' in one ob de tulip-trees. He jes' love dat buhd
next ter he mammy, en when et come fall en et don' come no mo', he ha'at
mos' broke. He jes' lay en cry en git right smaht wussur. Et las' seems
lak de li'l boy gwine die. When Mis' Shirley heah dat, she try en try
till she jes' git dat buhd's song ez pat ez de Lawd's Prayah, en one
evenin' she gwine en say ter he mammy ter tell him he mockin'-buhd done
come back, en he mammy she bundle him all up in de quilt en open de
winder, en sho' nuff, dah's Mistah Mockin'-buhd behin' de bushes, jes'
bus'in' hisse'f. Well, suh, seems lak dat chile hang on ter living jes'
ter heah dat buhd, en ev'y evenin', way till when de snow on de groun',
Mis' Shirley she hide out in de trees en sing en sing till de po' li'l
feller gwine ter sleep."
Valiant leaned forward, for Uncle Jefferson had paused. "Did the child
get well?" he asked eagerly.
The old man clucked to the leisurely mule. "Yas, _suh_!" he said. "He
done git well. He 'bout de on'riest young'un roun' heah now!
"Reck'n yo'-all come f'om New York?" inquired Uncle Jefferson, after a
little silence. "So! Dey say dat's er pow'ful big place. But Ah reck'n
ol' Richmon's big ernuf fo' me." He clucked to the leisurely mule and
added, "_Ah_ bin ter Richmon' onct. Yas, _suh_! Ah nevah see sech
houses--mos' all bigger'n de county co'ot-house."
John Valiant expressed a somewhat absent interest. He was looking
thoughtfully at the blossom in his hand, in an absorption through which
Uncle Jefferson's reminiscences oozed on:
"Mos' cur'ousest thing wus how e'vybody dar seem ter know e'vybody else.
Dey got street-kyahs dar, no hoss en no mule, jes' shoot up de hill en
down ergen, lak de debble skinnin' tan-bahk. Well, suh, Ah got on er
kyah en gib de man whut stan' on de flatfawm er nickel, en Ah set dar
lookin' outen de win'ow, till de man he call out 'Adams,' en er gemman
whut wah sittin' ercross f'om me, he git up en git off. De kyah start
ergen en de nex co'nah dat ar man on de flatfawm he yell out 'Monroe.'
En Mistah Monroe, he was sittin' up at de end, en he jump up en git off.
Den de kyah took anuddah staht, en bress mah soul, dat ar man on de
flatfawm he hollah 'Jeffe'son!' Ah clah' ter goodness, suh, Ah nebbah
skeered so bad en mah life. How dat man know me, suh? Well, suh, Ah jump
up lak Ah be'n shot, en Ah says, 'Fo' de _Lawd_, boss, Ah wa'n't
gwineter git off at dis co'nah, but ef yo' _says_ so, Ah reck'n Ah _got_
ter!' So Ah git off en Ah walk erbout fo' miles back ter de deepo!"
Uncle Jefferson's inward and volcanic amusement shook his passenger from
his reverie. "En dat ar wa'n't de wust. When Ah got ter de deepo, Ah
didn' have mah pocketbook. Er burglar had 'scaped off wid it en lef me
es nickelless ez er convic'."
CHAPTER X
WHAT HAPPENED THIRTY YEARS AGO
When Shirley came across the lawn at Rosewood, Major Montague Bristow
sat under the arbor talking to her mother.
The major was massive-framed, with a strong jaw and a rubicund
complexion--the sort that might be supposed to have attained the utmost
benefit to be conferred by a consistent indulgence in mint-juleps. His
blue eyes were piercing and arched with brows like sable rainbows, at
variance with his heavy iron-gray hair and imperial. His head was
leonine and he looked like a king who has humbled his enemy. It may be
added that his linen was fine and immaculate, his black string-tie
precisely tied and a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses swung by a flat
black cord against his white waistcoat. There was a touch of the
military in the squareness of shoulder and the lift of the rugged head,
no less than in the gallant little bow with which he rose to greet the
girl coming toward them.
"Shirley," said her mother, "the major's brutal, and he shan't have his
mint-julep."
"What has he been doing?" asked the other, her brows wrinkling in a
delightful way she had.
"He has reminded me that I'm growing old."
Shirley looked at the major skeptically, for his chivalry was undoubted.
During a long career in law and legislature it had been said of him that
he could neither speak on the tariff question nor defend a man for
murder, without first paying a tribute to "the women of the South, sah."
"Nothing of the sort," he rumbled.
Mrs. Dandridge's face softened to wistfulness. "Shirley, _am_ I?" she
asked, with a quizzical, almost a droll uneasiness. "Why, I've got every
emotion I've ever had. I read all the new French novels, and I'm even
thinking of going in for the militant suffragette movement."
The girl had tossed her hat and crop on the table and seated herself by
her mother's chair. Now reaching down, she drew one of the fragile
blue-veined hands up against her cheek, her bronze hair, its heavy coil
loosened, dropping over one shoulder like sunlit seaweed. "What was it
he said, dearest?"
"He thinks I ought to wear a worsted shawl and arctics." Her mother
thrust out one little thin-slippered foot, with its slender ankle
gleaming through its open-work stocking like mother-of-pearl. "Imagine!
In _May_. And he knows I'm vain of my feet! Major, if you had ever had a
wife, you would have learned wisdom. But you mean well, and I'll take
back what I said about the julep. You mix it, Shirley. Yours is even
better than Ranston's.
"She makes me one every day, Monty," she continued, as Shirley went into
the house. "And when she isn't looking, I pour it into the bush there.
See those huge, maudlin-looking roses? That's the shameless result. It's
a new species. I'm going to name it _Tipsium Giganticum_."
Major Bristow laughed as he bit the end off a cigar. "All the same," he
said in his big rumbling voice, "you need 'em, I reckon. You need more
than mint-juleps, too. You leave the whisky to me and the doctor, and
you take Shirley and pull out for Italy. Why not? A year there would do
you a heap of good."
She shook her head. "No, Monty. It isn't what you think. It's--here."
She lifted her hand and touched her heart. "It's been so for a long
time. But it may--it can't go on forever, you see. Nothing can."
The major had leaned forward in his chair. "Judith!" he said, and his
hand twitched, "it isn't true!" And then, "How do you know?"
She smiled at him. "You remember when that big surgeon from Vienna came
to see the doctor last year? Well, the doctor brought him to me. I'd
known it before in a way, but it had gone farther than I thought. No
one can tell just how long it may be. It may be years, of course, but
I'm not taking any sea trips, Monty."
He cleared his throat and his voice was husky when he spoke. "Shirley
doesn't know?"
"Certainly _not_. She mustn't." And then, in sudden sharpness: "You
shan't tell her, Monty. You wouldn't dare!"
"No, indeed," he assured her quickly. "Of course not."
"It's just among us three, Doctor Southall and you and me. We three have
had our secrets before, eh, Monty?"
"Yes, Judith, we have."
She bent toward him, her hands tightening on the cane. "After all, it's
true. To-day I _am_ getting old. I may look only fifty, but I feel sixty
and I'll admit to seventy-five. It's joy that keeps us young, and I
didn't get my fair share of that, Monty. For just one little week my
heart had it all--_all_--and then--well, then it was finished. It was
finished long before I married Tom Dandridge. It isn't that I'm
empty-headed. It's that I've been an empty-_hearted_ woman, Monty--as
empty and dusty and desolate as the old house over yonder on the ridge."
"I know, Judith, I know."
"You've been empty in a way, too," she said. "But it's been a different
way. You were never in love--really in love, I mean. Certainly not with
me, Monty, though you tried to make me think so once upon a time, before
Sassoon came along, and--Beauty Valiant."
The major blinked, suddenly startled. It was out, the one name neither
had spoken to the other for thirty years! He looked at her a little
guiltily; but her eyes had turned away. They were gazing between the
catalpas to where, far off on a gentle rise, the stained gable of a roof
thrust up dark and gaunt above its nest of foliage. "Everything changed
then," she continued dreamily, "everything."
The major's fingers strayed across his waistcoat, fumbling uncertainly
for his eye-glasses. For an instant he, too, was back in the long-ago
past, when he and Valiant had been comrades. What a long panorama
unfolded at the name; the times when they had been boys fly-fishing in
the Rapidan and fox-hunting about Pilot-Knob with the yelping
hounds--crisp winters of books and pipes together at the old university
at Charlottesville--later maturer years about Damory Court when the
trail of sex had deepened into man's passion and the devil's rivalry. It
had been a curious three-sided affair--he, and Valiant, and Sassoon.
Sassoon with his dissipated flair and ungovernable temper and strange
fits of recklessness; clean, high-idealed, straight-away Valiant; and
he--a Bristow, neither better nor worse than the rest of his name. He
remembered that mad strained season when he had grimly recognized his
own cause as hopeless, and with burning eyes had watched Sassoon and
Valiant racing abreast. He remembered that glittering prodigal dance
when he had come upon Valiant and Judith standing in the shrubbery, the
candle-light from some open door engoldening their faces: hers smiling,
a little flippant perhaps, and conscious of her spell; his grave and
earnest, yet wistful.
"You promise, John?"
"I give my sacred word. Whatever the provocation, I will not lift my
hand against him. Never, never!" Then the same voice, vibrant,
appealing. "Judith! It isn't because--because--you care for him?"
He had plunged away in the darkness before her answer came. What had it
mattered then to him what she had replied? And that very night had
befallen the fatal quarrel!
The major started. How that name had blown away the dust! "That's a long
time ago, Judith."
"Think of it! I wore my hair just as Shirley does now. It was the same
color, with the same fascinating little lights and whorls in it." She
turned toward him, but he sat rigidly upright, his gaze avoiding hers.
Her dreamy look was gone now, and her eyes were very bright.
"Thirty years ago to-morrow they fought," she said softly, "Valiant and
Sassoon. Every woman has her one anniversary, I suppose, and to-morrow's
mine. Do you know what I do, every fourteenth of May, Monty? I keep my
room and spend the day always the same way. There's a little book I
read. And there's an old haircloth trunk that I've had since I was a
girl. Down in the bottom of it are some--things, that I take out and set
round the room ... and there is a handful of old letters I go over from
first to last. They're almost worn out now, but I could repeat them all
with my eyes shut. Then, there's a tiny old straw basket with a yellow
wisp in it that once was a bunch of cape jessamines. I wore them to that
last ball--the night before it happened. The fourteenth of May used to
be sad, but now, do you know, I look forward to it! I always have a lot
of jessamines that particular day--I'll have Shirley get me some
to-morrow--and in the evening, when I go down-stairs, the house is full
of the scent of them. All summer long it's roses, but on the fourteenth
of May it has to be jessamines. Shirley must think me a whimsical old
woman, but I insist on being humored."
She was silent a moment, the point of her slender cane tracing circles
in the gravel. "It's a black date for you too, Monty. _I_ know. But men
and women are different. I wonder what takes the place to a man of a
woman's haircloth trunk?"
"I reckon it's a demijohn," he said mirthlessly.
A smile flashed over her face, like sunshine over a flower, and she
looked up at him slowly. "What bricks men are to each other! You and the
doctor were John Valiant's closest friends. What did you two care what
people said? Why, _women_ don't stick to each other like that! It isn't
in petticoats! It wouldn't do for women to take to dueling, Monty; when
the affair was over and done, the seconds would fall to with their
hatpins and jab each other's eyes out!"
He smiled, a little bleakly, and cleared his throat.
"Isn't it strange for me to be talking this way now!" she said
presently. "Another proof that I'm getting old. But the date brings it
very close; it seems, somehow, closer than ever this year.--Monty,
weren't you tremendously surprised when I married Tom Dandridge?"
"I certainly was."
"I'll tell you a secret. _I_ was, too. I suppose I did it because of a
sneaking feeling that some people were feeling sorry for me, which I
never could stand. Well, he was a man any one might honor. I've always
thought a woman ought to have two husbands: one to love and cherish, and
the other to honor and obey. I had the latter, at any rate."
"And you've lived, Judith," he said.
"Yes," she agreed, with a little sigh, "I've lived. I've had Shirley,
and she's twenty and adorable. Some of my emotions creak a bit in the
hinges, but I've enjoyed things. A woman is cat enough not to be wholly
miserable if she can sit in the sun and purr. And I've had people
enough, and books to read, and plenty of pretty things to look at, and
old lace to wear, and I've kept my figure and my vanity--I'm not too old
yet to thank the Lord for that! So don't talk to me about worsted shawls
and horrible arctics. For I won't wear 'em. Not if I know myself! Here
comes Shirley. She's made two juleps, and if you're a gentleman, you'll
distract her attention till I've got rid of mine in my usual way."
* * * * *
The major, at the foot of the cherry-bordered lane, looked back across
the box-hedge to where the two figures sat under the rose-arbor, the
mother's face turned lovingly down to Shirley's at her knee. He stood a
moment watching them from under his slouched hat-brim.
"You never looked at me that way, Judith, did you!" he sighed to
himself. "It's been a long time, too, since I began to want you
to--'most forty years. When it came to the show-down, I wasn't even as
fit as Tom Dandridge!"
He pulled his hat down farther over his big brow and sighed again as he
strode on. "You just couldn't make yourself care, could you! People
can't, maybe. And I reckon you were right about it. I wasn't fit."
CHAPTER XI
DAMORY COURT
"Dar's Dam'ry Co'ot smack-dab ahaid, suh."
John Valiant looked up. Facing them at an elbow of the broad road, was
an old gateway of time-nicked stone, clasping an iron gate that was
quaint and heavy and red with rust. Over it on either side twin
sugar-trees flung their untrammeled strength, and from it, leading up a
gentle declivity, ran a curving avenue of oaks. He put out his hand.
"Wait a moment," he said in a low voice, and as the creaking conveyance
stopped, he turned and looked about him.
Facing the entrance the land fell away sharply to a miniature valley
through which rambled a willow-bordered brook, in whose shallows
short-horned cows stood lazily. Beyond, alternating with fields of young
grain and verdured pastures like crushed velvet, rose a succession of
tranquil slopes crowned with trees that here and there grouped about a
white colonial dwelling, with its outbuildings behind it. Beyond,
whither wound the Red Road, he could see a drowsy village, with a spire
and a cupolaed court-house; and farther yet a yellow gorge with a wisp
of white smoke curling above it marked the course of a crawling far-away
railway. Over all the dimming yellow sunshine, and girdling the farther
horizon, in masses of purplish blue, the tumbled battlements of the Blue
Ridge.
His conductor had laboriously descended and now the complaining gates
swung open. Before them, as they toiled up the long ascent, the
neglected driveway was a riot of turbulent growth: thistle, white-belled
burdock, ragweed and dusty mullein stood waist high.
"Et's er moughty fine ol' place, suh, wid dat big revenue ob trees,"
said Uncle Jefferson. "But Ah reck'n et ain' got none ob de modern
connivances."
But Valiant did not answer; his gaze was straight before him, fixed on
the noble old house they were approaching. Its wide and columned front
peered between huge rugged oaks and slender silver poplars which cast
cool long shadows across an unkempt lawn laden with ragged mock-orange,
lilac and syringa bushes, its stately grandeur dimmed but not destroyed
by the shameful stains of the neglected years.
As he jumped down he was possessed by an odd sensation of old
acquaintance--as if he had seen those tall white columns before--an
illusory half-vision into some shadowy, fourth-dimensional landscape
that belonged to his subconscious self, or that, glimpsed in some
immaterial dream-picture, had left a faint-etched memory. Then, on a
sudden, the vista vibrated and widened, the white columns expanded and
shot up into the clouds, and from every bush seemed to peer a friendly
black savage with woolly white hair!
"Wishing-House!" he whispered. He looked about him, half expecting--so
vivid was the illusion--to see a circle of rough huts under the trees
and a multitude of ebony imps dancing in the sunshine. So Virginia had
been that secret Never-Never Land, the wondrous fairy demesne of his
childhood, with its amiable barbarians and its thickets of coursing
grimalkins! The hidden country which his father's thoughts, sadly
recurring, had painted to the little child that once he was, in the
guise of an endless wonder-tale! His eyes misted over, and it seemed to
him that moment that his father was very near.
Leaving the negro to unload his belongings, he traversed an overgrown
path of mossed gravel, between box-rows frowsled like the manes of lions
gone mad and smothered in an accumulation of matted roots and débris of
rotting foliage, and presently, the bulldog at his heels, found himself
in the rear of the house.
The building, with kitchen, stables and negro quarters behind it, had
been set on the boss of the wooded knoll. Along half its side ran a
wide porch that had once been glass-enclosed, now with panes gone and
broken and putty-crumbling sashes. Below it lay the piteous remnants of
a formal garden, grouped about an oval pool from whose center reared the
slender yellowed shaft of a fountain in whose shallow cup a robin was
taking its rain-water bath. The pool was dry, the tiles that had formed
its floor were prized apart with weeds; ribald wild grape-vines ran
amuck hither and thither; and over all was a drenching-sweet scent of
trailing honeysuckle.
Threading his way among the dank undergrowth of the desolate wilderness,
following the sound of running water, he came suddenly to a little lake
fed from unseen pipes, that spread its lily-padded surface coolly and
invitingly under a clump of elms. Beside it stood a spring-house with a
sadly sagging roof. With a dead branch he probed the water's depth. "Ten
feet and a pebble bottom," he said. The lake's overflow poured in a
musical cascade down between fern-covered rocks, to join, far below, the
stream he had seen from the gateway. Beyond this the ground rose again
to a hill, densely forested and flanked by runnelled slopes of
poverty-stricken broom-sedge as stark and sear as the bad-lands of an
alkali desert. As he gazed, a bird bubbled into a wild song from the
grape-vine tangle behind him, and almost at his feet a rabbit scudded
blithely out of the weeds and darted back.
"Mine!" he said aloud with a rueful pride. "And for general
run-downness, it's up to the advertisement." He looked musingly at the
piteous wreck and ruin, his gaze sweeping down across the bared fields
and unkempt forest. "Mine!" he repeated. "All that, I suppose, for it
has the same earmarks of neglect. Between those cultivated stretches it
looks like a wedge of Sahara gone astray." His gaze returned to the
house. "Yet what a place it must have been in its time!" It had not
sprung into being at the whim of any one man; it had grown mellowly and
deliberately, expressing the multiform life and culture of a stock.
Generation after generation, father and son, had lived there and loved
it, and, ministering to all, it had given to each of itself. The wild
weird beauty was infecting him and the pathos of the desolation caught
at his heart. He went slowly back to where his conductor sat on the
lichened horse-block.
"We's heah," called Uncle Jefferson cheerfully. "Whut we gwineter do
nex', suh? Reck'n Ah bettah go ovah ter Miss Dandridge's place fer er
crowbah. Lawd!" he added, "ef he ain' got de key! Whut yo' think ob dat
now?"
John Valiant was looking closely at the big key; for there were words,
which he had not noted before, engraved in the massive flange: _Friends
all hours._ He smiled. The sentiment sent a warm current of pleasure to
his finger-tips. Here was the very text of hospitality!
A Lilliputian spider-web was stretched over the preempted keyhole, and
he fetched a grass-stem and poked out its tiny gray-striped denizen
before he inserted the key in the rusted lock. He turned it with a
curious sense of timidity. All the strength of his fingers was necessary
before the massive door swung open and the leveling sun sent its late
red rays into the gloomy interior.
He stood in a spacious hall, his nostrils filled with a curious but not
unpleasant aromatic odor with which the place was strongly impregnated.
The hall ran the full length of the building, and in its center a wide,
balustraded double staircase led to upper darkness. The floor, where his
footprints had disturbed the even gray film of dust, was of fine close
parquetry and had been generously strewn everywhere with a mica-like
powder. He stooped and took up a pinch in his fingers, noting that it
gave forth the curious spicy scent. Dim paintings in tarnished frames
hung on the walls. From a niche on the break of the stairway looked down
the round face of a tall Dutch clock, and on one side protruded a huge
bulging something draped with a yellowed linen sheet. From its shape he
guessed this to be an elk's head. Dust, undisturbed, lay thickly on
everything, ghostly floating cobwebs crawled across his face, and a bat
flitted out of a fireplace and vanished squeaking over his head. With
Uncle Jefferson's help he opened the rear doors and windows, knocked up
the rusted belts of the shutters and flung them wide.
But for the dust and cobwebs and the strange odor, mingled with the
faint musty smell that pervades a sunless interior, the former owner of
the house might have deserted it a week ago. On a wall-rack lay two
walking-sticks and a gold-mounted hunting-crop, and on a great carved
chest below it had been flung an opened book bound in tooled leather.
John Valiant picked this up curiously. It was _Lucile_. He noted that
here and there passages were marked with penciled lines--some light and
femininely delicate, some heavier, as though two had been reading it
together, noting their individual preferences.
He laid it back musingly, and opening a door, entered the large room
it disclosed. This had been the dining-room. The walls were white,
in alternate panels with small oval mirrors whose dust-covered
surfaces looked like ground steel. At one end stood a crystal-knobbed
mahogany sideboard, holding glass candlesticks in the shape of
Ionic columns--above it a quaint portrait of a lady in hoops and
love-curls--and at the other end was a huge fireplace with rust-red
fire-dogs and tarnished brass fender. All these, with the round
centipede table and the Chippendale chairs set in order against the
walls, were dimmed and grayed with a thick powdering of dust.
The next room that he entered was big and wide, a place of dark colors,
nobly smutched of time. It had been at once library and living-room.
Glass-faced book-shelves ran along one side--well-stocked, as the dusty
panes showed--and a huge pigeonholed desk glowered in the big bow-window
that opened on to what had been the garden. On the wall hung an old map
of Virginia. At one side the dark wainscoting yawned to a cavernous
fireplace and inglenook with seats in black leather. By it stood a great
square tapestry screen, showing a hunting scene, set in a heavy frame.
A great leather settee was drawn near the desk and beside this stood a
reading-stand with a small china dog and a squat bronze lamp upon it.
In contrast to the orderly dining-room there was about this chamber a
sense of untouched disorder--a desk-drawer jerked half-open, a yellowed
newspaper torn across and flung into a corner, books tossed on desk and
lounge, and in the fireplace a little heap of whitened ashes in which
charred fragments told of letters and papers burned in haste. A bottle
that had once held brandy and a grimy goblet stood on the desk, and in
a metal ash-tray on the reading-stand lay a half-smoked cigar that
crumbled to dust in the intruder's fingers.
One by one Valiant forced open the tall French windows, till the fading
light lay softly over the austere dignity of the apartment. In that
somber room, he knew, had had place whatever was most worthy in the
lives of his forebears. The thought of generation upon generation had
steeped it in human association.
Suddenly he lifted his eyes. Above the desk hung a life-size portrait
of a man, in the high soft stock and velvet collar of half a century
before. The right eye, strangely, had been cut from the canvas. He stood
straight and tall, one hand holding an eager hound in leash, his face
proud and florid, his single, cold, steel-blue eye staring down through
its dusty curtain with a certain malicious arrogance, and his lips set
in a sardonic curve that seemed about to sneer. It was for an instant as
if the pictured figure confronted the young man who stood there, mutely
challenging his entrance into that tomb-like and secret-keeping quiet;
and he gazed back as fixedly, repelled by the craft of the face, yet
subtly attracted. "I wonder who you were," he said. "You were cruel.
Perhaps you were wicked. But you were strong, too."
He returned to the outer hall to find that the negro had carried in his
trunk, and he bade him place it, with the portmanteau, in the room he
had just left. Dusk was falling. The air was full of a faint far chirr
of night insects, like an elfin serenade, and here and there among the
trees pulsed the greenish-yellow spark of a firefly.
"Uncle Jefferson," said Valiant abruptly, "have you a family?"
"No, _suh_. Jes' me en mah ol' 'ooman."
"Can she cook?"
"Cook!" The genial titter again captured his dusky escort. "When she got
de _fixens_, Ah reck'n she de beaten'es cook in dis heah county."
"How much do you earn, driving that hack?"
Uncle Jefferson ruminated. "Well, suh, 'pens on de weddah. Mighty lucky
sometimes dis yeah ef Ah kin pay de groc'ry man."
"How would you both like to live here with me for a while? She could
cook and you could take care of me."
Uncle Jefferson's eyes seemed to turn inward with mingled surprise and
introspection. He shifted from one foot to the other, swallowed
difficultly several times, and said, "Ah ain' nebbah seed yo' befo',
suh."
"Well, I haven't seen you either, have I?"
"Dat's de trufe, suh, 'deed et is! Hyuh, hyuh! Whut Ah means ter say
is dat de ol' 'ooman kain' cook no fancy didoes like what dey eats up
Norf. She kin jes' cook de Ferginey style."
"That sounds good to me," quoth Valiant. "I'll risk it. Now as to
wages--"
"Ah ain' specticulous as ter de wages," said Uncle Jefferson. "Ah
knows er gemman when Ah sees one. 'Sides, ter-day's Friday en et's
baid luck. Ah sho' is troubled in mah min' wheddah we-all kin suit
yo' perpensities, but Ah reck'n we kin take er try ef _yo'_ kin."
"Then it's a bargain," responded Valiant with alacrity. "Can you come at
once?"
"Yas, suh, me en Daph gwineter come ovah fus' thing in de mawnin'. Whut
yo'-all gwineter do fo' yo' suppah?"
"I'll get along," Valiant assured him cheerfully. "Here is five dollars.
You can buy some food and things to cook with, and bring them with you.
Do you think there's a stove in the kitchen?"
"Ah reck'n," replied Uncle Jefferson. "En ef dar _ain'_ Daph kin cook er
Chris'mus dinnah wid fo' stones en er tin skillet. Yas, _suh_!"
He trudged away into the shadows, but presently, as the new master of
Damory Court stood in the gloomy hall, he heard the shambling step again
behind him. "Ah done neglectuated ter ax yo' name, suh. Ah did, fo' er
fac'."
"My name is Valiant. John Valiant."
Uncle Jefferson's eyes turned upward and rolled out of orbit. "Mah
Lawd!" he ejaculated soundlessly. And with his wide lips still framed
about the last word, he backed out of the doorway and disappeared.
CHAPTER XII
THE CASE OF MOROCCO LEATHER
Alone in the ebbing twilight, John Valiant found his hamper, spread a
napkin on the broad stone steps and took out a glass, a spoon and part
of a loaf of bread. The thermos flask was filled with milk. It was not a
splendid banquet, yet he ate it with as great content as the bulldog at
his feet gnawed his share of the crust. He broke his bread into the milk
as he had not done since he was a child, and ate the luscious pulp with
a keen relish bred of the long outdoor day. When the last drop was gone
he brushed up the very crumbs from the cloth, laughing to himself as he
did so. It had been a long time since he remembered being so hungry!
It was almost dark when the meal was done and, depleted hamper in hand,
he reentered the empty echoing house. He went into the library, lighted
the great brass lamp from the motor and began to rummage. The drawers of
the dining-room sideboard yielded nothing; on a shelf of the butler's
pantry, however, was a tin box which proved to be half full of wax
candles, perfectly preserved.
"The very thing!" he said triumphantly. Carrying them back, he fixed
several in the glass-candlesticks and set them, lighted, all about the
somber room till the soft glow flooded its every corner. "There," he
said, "that is as it should be. No big blatant search-light here! And no
glare of modern electricity would suit that old wainscoting, either." He
looked up at the painting on the wall; it seemed as if the sneer had
smoothed out, the hard cruel eye softened. "You needn't be afraid," he
said, nodding. "I understand."
He dragged the leather settee to the porch and by the light of the
motor-lamp dusted it thoroughly, and wheeling it back, set it under the
portrait. He washed the glass from which he had dined and filled it at
the cup of the garden fountain, put into it the rose from his hat and
set it on the reading-stand. The small china dog caught his eye and he
picked it up casually. The head came off in his hands. It had been a
bon-bon box and was empty save for a narrow strip of yellowed paper, on
which were written some meaningless figures: 17-28-94-0. He pondered
this a moment, then thrust it into one of the empty pigeonholes of the
desk. On the latter stood an old-fashioned leaf-calendar; the date
it exposed was May 14th. Curiously enough the same date would recur
to-morrow. The page bore a quotation: "Every man carries his fate on
a riband about his neck." The line had been quoted in his father's
letter. May 14th!--how much that date and that motto may have meant for
him!
He put the calendar back, filled his pipe and sat down facing the open
bow-window. The dark was mysteriously lifting, the air filling with a
soft silver-gray translucence that touched the wild growth as with a
fairy gossamer. Presently, from between the still elms, the new sickle
moon climbed into view. From the garden came a plaintive bird-cry,
long-drawn and wavering and then, from farther away, the triple mellow
whistle of a whippoorwill.
The place was alive now with bird-notes, and he listened with a new
delight. He thought suddenly, with a kind of impatient wonder, that
never in his life had he sat perfectly alone in a solitude and listened
to the voices of the night. The only out-of-doors he knew had been
comprised in motor-whirls on frequented highroads, seashore, or mountain
months where bridge and dancing were forever on the cards, or else such
up-to-date "camping" as was indulged in at the Fargos' "shack" on the
St. Lawrence. He sat now with his senses alert to a new world that his
sophisticated eye and ear had never known. Something new was entering
into him that seemed the spirit of the place; the blessing of the tall
silver poplars outside, the musical scented gardens and the moonlight
laid like a placid benediction over all.
He rose to push the shutter wider and in the movement his elbow sent a
shallow case of morocco leather that had lain on the desk crashing to
the floor. It opened and a heavy metallic object rolled almost to his
feet. He saw at a glance that it was an old-fashioned rusted
dueling-pistol.
The box had originally held two pistols. He shuddered as he stooped to
pick up the weapon, and with the crawling repugnance mingled a panging
anger and humiliation. From his very babyhood it had always been
so--that unconquerable aversion to the touch of a firearm. There had
been moments in his youth when this unreasoning shrinking had filled him
with a blind fury, had driven him to strange self-tests of courage. He
had never been able to overcome it. He had always had a natural distaste
for the taking of life; hunting was an unthinkable sport to him, and
he regarded the lusty pursuit of small feathered or furry things for
pleasure with a mingled wonder and contempt. But analyzation had told
him that his peculiar abhorrence was no mere outgrowth of this. It lay
far deeper. He had rarely, of recent years, met the test. Now, as he
stood in these unaccustomed surroundings, with the cold touch of the
metal the old shuddering held him, and the sweat broke in beads on his
forehead. Setting his teeth hard, he crossed the room, slipped the box
with its pistol between the volumes of the bookcase, and returned to his
seat.
The bulldog, aroused from a nap, thrust a warm muzzle between his knees.
"It's uncanny, Chum!" he said, as his hand caressed the velvety head.
"Why should the touch of that fool thing chill my spine and make my
flesh tiptoe over my bones? Is it a mere peculiarity of temperament?
Some men hate cats'-eyes. Some can't abide sitting on plush. I knew a
chap once who couldn't see milk poured from a pitcher without getting
goose-flesh. People are born that way, but there must be a cause. Why
should I hate a pistol? Do you suppose I was shot in one of my previous
existences?"
For a long while he sat there, his pipe dead, his eyes on the
moonlighted out-of-doors. The eery feeling that had gripped him had
gone as quickly as it had come. At last he rose, stretching himself
with a great boyish yawn, put out all save one of the candles and taking
a bath-robe, sandals and a huge fuzzy towel from the steamer-trunk,
stripped leisurely. He donned the bath-robe and sandals and went out
through the window to the garden and down to where lay the little lake
ruffling silverly under the moon. On its brink he stopped, and tossing
back his head, tried to imitate one of the bird-calls but was
unsuccessful. With a rueful laugh he threw off the bath-robe and stood
an instant glistening, poised in the moonlight like a marble faun,
before he dove, straight down out of sight.
Five minutes later he pulled himself up over the edge, his flesh
tingling with the chill of the water, and drew the robe about his cool
white shoulders. Then he thrust his feet into his sandals and sped
quickly back. He rubbed himself to a glow, and blowing out the remaining
candle, stretched himself luxuriously between the warm blankets on the
couch. The dog sniffed inquiringly at his hand, then leaped up and
snuggled down close to his feet.
The soft flooding moonlight sent its radiance into the gloomy room,
touching lovingly its dark carven furniture and bringing into sharp
relief the lithe contour of the figure under the fleecy coverlid, the
crisp damp hair, the expressive face, and the wide-open dreamy eyes.
John Valiant's thoughts had fled a thousand miles away, to the tall girl
who all his life had seemed to stand out from his world, aloof and
unsurpassed--Katharine Fargo. He tried to picture her, a perfect
chatelaine, graceful and gracious as a tall, white, splendid lily, in
this dead house that seemed still to throb with living passions. But the
picture subtly eluded him and he stirred uneasily under the blanket.
After a time his hand stretched out to the reading-stand and drew the
glass with its vivid blossom nearer, till, in his nostrils, its musky
odor mingled with the dew-wet scent of the honeysuckle from the garden.
At last his eyes closed. "Every man carries his fate ... on a riband
about his neck," he muttered drowsily, and then, "Roses ... red
roses...."
And so he fell asleep.
CHAPTER XIII
THE HUNT
He awoke to a musical twittering and chirping, to find the sun
pouring into the dusty room in a very glory. He rolled from the
blanket and stood upright, filling his lungs with a long deep breath
of satisfaction. He felt singularly light-hearted and alive. The
bulldog came bounding through the window, dirty from the weeds, and
flung himself upon his master in a canine rapture.
"Get out!" quoth the latter, laughing. "Stop licking my feet! How the
dickens do you suppose I'm to get into my clothes with your ridiculous
antics going on? Down, I say!"
He began to dress rapidly. "Listen to those birds, Chum!" he said.
"There's an ornithological political convention going on out there. Wish
I knew what they were chinning about--they're so mightily in earnest.
See them splashing in that fountain? If you had any self-respect you'd
be taking a bath yourself. You need it! Hark!" He broke off and
listened. "Who's that singing?"
The sound drew nearer--a lugubrious chant, with the weirdest minor
reflections, faintly suggestive of the rag-time ditties of the
music-halls, yet with a plaintive cadence:
"As he went mowin' roun' de fiel'
Er moc'sin bit him on de heel.
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh, toodle-link-uh,
Da-a-dee-e-eaye!
"Dey kyah'd him in ter his Sally deah.
She say, 'Mah Lawd, yo' looks so queah!'
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh, toodle-link-uh,
Da-a-dee-e-e-aye!"
A smile of genuine delight crossed the listener's face. "That would make
the everlasting fortune of a music-hall artist," Valiant muttered, as,
coatless, and with a towel over his arm, he stepped to the piazza.
"Dey laid him down--spang on de groun'.
He-e-e shet-up-his-eyes en looked all aroun'.
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh, toodle-link-uh,
Da-a-dee e-e-aye!
"So den he died, giv' up de Ghos'.
To Abrum's buzzum he did pos'--
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh-day--"
"Good morning, Uncle Jefferson."
The singer broke off his refrain, set down the twig-broom that he had
been wielding and came toward him. "Mawnin', suh. Mawnin'," he said.
"Hopes yo'-all slep' good. Ah reck'n dem ar birds woke yo' up; dey's
makin' seh er 'miration."
"Thank you. Never slept better in my life. Am I laboring under a
delusion when I imagine I smell coffee?"
Just then there came a voice from the open door of the kitchen: "Calls
yo'se'f er _man_, yo' triflin' reconstructed niggah! W'en marstah
gwineter git he brekfus' wid' yo' ramshacklin' eroun' wid dat dawg all
dis Gawd's-blessid mawnin'? Go fotch some mo' fiah-wood dis minute. Yo'
heah?"
A turbaned head poked itself through the door, with a good-natured
leaf-brown face beneath it, which broadened into a wide smile as its
owner bobbed energetically at Valiant's greeting. "Fo' de _Lawd_!" she
exclaimed, wiping floury hands on a gingham apron. "Yo' sho' is up
early, but Ah got yo' brekfus' mos' ready, suh."
"All right, Aunt Daphne. I'll be back directly."
He sped down to the lake to plunge his head into the cool water and
thereby sharpen the edge of an appetite that needed no honing. From the
little valley through which the stream meandered, rose a curdled mist,
fraying now beneath the warming sun. The tall tangled grass through
which he passed was beaded with dew like diamonds and hung with a
thousand fairy jeweled webs. The wild honeysuckle was alive with quick
whirrings of hummingbirds, and he hung his pocket-mirror from a twig and
shaved with a woodsy chorus in his ears.
He came up the trail again to find the reading-stand transferred to the
porch and laid with a white cloth on which was set a steaming
coffee-pot, with fresh cream, saltless butter and crisp hot biscuit; and
as he sat down, with a sigh of pure delight, in his dressing-gown--a
crêpy Japanese thing redeemed from womanishness by the bold green bamboo
of its design--Uncle Jefferson planted before him a generous platter of
bacon, eggs and potatoes. These he attacked with a surprising keenness.
As he buttered his fifth biscuit he looked at the dog, rolling on his
back in morning ecstasy, with a look of humorous surprise.
"Chum," he said, "what do you think of that? All my life a single roll
and a cup of coffee have been the most I could ever negotiate for
breakfast, and then it was apt to taste like chips and whetstones. And
now look at this plate!" The dog ceased winnowing his ear with a hind
foot and looked back at his master with much the same expression.
Clearly his own needs had not been forgotten.
"Reck'n Ah bettah go ter git dat ar machine thing," said Uncle
Jefferson behind him. "Ol' 'ooman, heah, she 'low ter fix up de kitchen
dis mawnin' en we begin on de house dis evenin'."
"Right-o," said Valiant. "It's all up-hill, so the motor won't run away
with you. Aunt Daphne, can you get some help with the cleaning?"
"He'p?" that worthy responded with fine scorn. "_No_, suh. Moughty few,
in de town 'cep'n low-down yaller new-issue trash det ain' wu'f killin'!
Ah gwineter go fo' dat house mahse'f 'fo' long, hammah en tongs, en git
it fix' up!"
"Splendid! My destiny is in your hands. You might take the dog with you,
Uncle Jefferson; the run will do him good."
When the latter had disappeared and truculent sounds from the kitchen
indicated that the era of strenuous cleaning had begun, he reentered the
library, changed the water in the rose-glass and set it on the edge of
the shady front porch, where its flaunting blossom made a dash of bright
crimson against the grayed weather-beaten brick. This done, he opened
the one large room on the ground-floor that he had not visited.
It was double the size of the library, a parlor hung in striped yellow
silk vaguely and tenderly faded, with a tall plate mirror set over a
marble-topped console at either side. In one corner stood a grand piano
of Circassian walnut with keys of tinted mother-of-pearl and a slender
music-rack inlaid with morning-glories in the same material. From the
center of the ceiling, above an oval table, depended a great chandelier
hung with glass prisms. He drew his handkerchief across the table;
beneath the disfiguring dust it showed a highly polished surface inlaid
with different colored woods, in an intricate Italian-like landscape.
The legs of the consoles were bowed, delicately carved, and of
gold-leaf. The chairs and sofas were covered with dusty slip-covers of
muslin. He lifted one of these. The tarnished gold furniture was Louis
XV, the upholstery of yellow brocade with a pattern of pink roses. Two
Japanese hawthorn vases sat on teak-wood stands and a corner held a
glass cabinet containing a collection of small ivories and faience.
His appreciative eye kindled. "What a room!" he muttered. "Not a jarring
note anywhere! That's an old Crowe and Christopher piano. I'll get
plenty of music out of that! You don't see such chandeliers outside of
palaces any more except in the old French châteaus. It holds a hundred
candles if it holds one! I never knew before all there was in that
phrase 'the candle-lighted fifties.' I can imagine what it looked like,
with the men in white stocks and flowered waistcoats and the women in
their crinolines and red-heeled slippers, bowing to the minuet under
that candle-light! I'll bet the girls bred in this neighborhood won't
take much to the turkey-trot and the bunny-hug!"
He went thoughtfully back to the great hall, where sat the big chest
on which lay the volume of _Lucile_. He pushed down the antique
wrought-iron hasp and threw up the lid. It was filled to the brim
with textures: heavy portières of rose-damask, table-covers of
faded soft-toned tapestry, window-hangings of dull green--all with
tobacco-leaves laid between the folds and sifted thickly over with the
sparkling white powder. At the bottom, rolled in tarry-smelling paper,
he found a half-dozen thin, Persian prayer-rugs.
"Phew!" he whistled. "I certainly ought to be grateful to that law firm
that 'inspected' the place. Think of the things lying here all these
years! And that powder everywhere! It's done the work, too, for there's
not a sign of moth. If I'm not careful, I'll stumble over the family
plate--it seems to be about the only thing wanting."
The mantelpiece, beneath the shrouded elk's head, was of gray marble
in which a crest was deeply carved. He went close and examined it. "A
sable greyhound, rampant, on a field argent," he said. "That's my own
crest, I suppose." There touched him again the same eery sensation
of acquaintance that had possessed him with his first sight of the
house-front. "Somehow it's familiar," he muttered; "where have I seen
it before?"
He thought a moment, then went quickly into the library and began to
ransack the trunk. At length he found a small box containing keepsakes
of various kinds. He poured the medley on to the table--an uncut
moonstone, an amethyst-topped pencil that one of his tutors had given
him as a boy, a tiger's claw, a compass and what-not. Among them was a
man's seal-ring with a crest cut in a cornelian. He looked at it
closely. It was the same device.
The ring had been his father's. Just when or how it had come into his
possession he could never remember. It had lain among these keepsakes so
many years that he had almost forgotten its existence. He had never worn
a ring, but now, as he went back to the hall, he slipped it on his
finger. The motto below the crest was worn away, but it showed clear in
the marble of the hall-mantel: _I clinge_.
His eyes turned from the carven words and strayed to the pleasant sunny
foliage outside. An arrogant boast, perhaps, yet in the event well
justified. Valiants had held that selfsame slope when the encircling
forests had rung with war-whoop and blazed with torture-fire. They had
held on through Revolution and Civil War. Good and bad, abiding and
lawless, every generation had cleaved stubbornly to its acres. _I
clinge._ His father had clung through absence that seemed to have been
almost exile, and now he, the last Valiant, was come to make good the
boast.
His gaze wavered. The tail of his eye had caught through the window a
spurt of something dashing and vivid, that grazed the corner of a
far-off field. He craned his neck, but it had passed the line of his
vision. The next moment, however, there came trailing on the satiny
stillness the high-keyed ululation of a horn, and an instant later a
long-drawn _hallo-o-o_! mixed with a pattering chorus of yelps.
He went close, and leaning from the sill, shaded his eyes with his hand.
The noise swelled and rounded in volume; it was nearing rapidly. As
he looked, the hunt dashed into full view between the tree-boles--a
galloping mêlée of khaki and scarlet, swarming across the fresh green of
a wheat field, behind a spotted swirl of hounds. It mounted a rise,
dipped momentarily into a gully and then, in a narrow sweeping curve,
came pounding on up the long slope, directly toward the house.
"Confound it!" said John Valiant belligerently; "they're on my land!"
They were near enough now for him to hear the voices of the men, calling
encouragement to the dogs, and to see the white ribbons of foam across
the flanks of the laboring horses. One scarlet-coated feminine rider,
detached from the bunch, had spurred in advance and was leading by a
clean hundred yards, bareheaded, her hat fallen back to the limit of
its ribbon knotted under her chin, and her waving hair gleaming like
tarnished gold.
"How she rides!" muttered the solitary watcher. "Cross-saddle, of
course,--the sensible little sport! She'll never in the world do that
wall!--Yes, by George!" For, with a beseeching cry and a straining tug,
she had fairly lifted her big golden-chestnut hunter over the high
barrier in a leap as clean as the flight of a flying squirrel. He saw
her lean forward to pat the wet arching neck as the horse settled again
into its pace.
John Valiant's admiration turned to delight. "Why," he said, "it's the
Lady-of-the-Roses!"
He put his hands on the sill and vaulted to the porch.
CHAPTER XIV
SANCTUARY
The tawny scudding streak that led that long chase had shot into the
yard, turning for a last desperate double. It saw the man in the
foreground and its bounding, agonized little wild heart that so prayed
for life, gave way. With a final effort, it gained the porch and
crouched down in its corner, an abject, sweated, hunted morsel, at
hopeless bay.
Like a flash, Valiant stooped, caught the shivering thing by the scruff,
and as its snapping jaws grazed his thumb, dropped it through the open
window behind him. "Sanctuary!" quoth he, and banged the shutter to.
At the same instant, as the place overflowed with a pandemonium of
nosing leaping hounds, he saw the golden-chestnut reined sharply down
among the ragged box-rows, with a shamefaced though brazen knowledge
that the girl who rode it had seen.
She sat moveless, her head held high, one hand on the hunter's
foam-flecked neck, and their glances met like crossed swords. The look
stirred something vague and deep within him. For an unforgettable
instant their eyes held each other, in a gaze rigid, challenging,
almost defiant; then it broke and she turned to the rest of the party
spurring in a galloping zigzag: a genial-faced man of middle age in
khaki who sat his horse like a cavalryman, a younger one with a reckless
dark face and straight black hair, and following these a half-dozen
youthful riders of both sexes, one of the lads heavily plastered with
mud from a wet cropper, and the girls chiefly gasps and giggles.
The elder of the two men pulled up beside the leader, his astonished
eyes sweeping the house-front, with its open blinds, the wisp of smoke
curling from the kitchen chimney. He said something to her, and she
nodded. The younger man, meanwhile, had flung himself from his horse, a
wild-eyed roan, and with his arm thrust through its bridle, strode
forward among the welter of hounds, where they scurried at fault, hither
and thither, yelping and eager.
"What rotten luck!" he exclaimed. "Gone to ground after twelve miles!
After him, Tawny! You mongrels! Do you imagine he's up a tree? After
him, Bulger! Bring him here!"
[Illustration]
He glanced up, and for the first time saw the figure in tweeds looking
on. Valiant was attracted by his face, its dash and generosity overlying
its inherent profligacy and weakness. Dark as the girl was light, his
features had the same delicate chiseling, the inbreeding, nobility
and indulgence of generations. He stared a moment, and the somewhat
supercilious look traveled over the gazer, from dusty boots to waving
brown hair.
"Oh!" he said. His view slowly took in the evidences of occupation. "The
house is open, I see. Going to get it fit for occupancy, I presume?"
"Yes."
The other turned. "Well, Judge Chalmers, what do you think of that? The
unexpected has happened at last." He looked again at the porch. "Who's
to occupy it?"
"The owner."
"Wonders will never cease!" said the young man easily, shrugging. "Well,
our quarry is here somewhere. From the way the dogs act I should say
he's bolted into the house. With your permission I'll take one of them
in and see." He stooped and snapped a leash on a dog-collar.
"I'm really very sorry," said Valiant, "but I'm living in it at
present."
The edge of a smile lifted the carefully trained mustache over the
other's white teeth. It had the perfectly courteous air of saying, "Of
course, if you say so. But--"
Valiant turned, with a gesture that included all. "If you care to
dismount and rest," he said, "I shall be honored, though I'm afraid I
can't offer you such hospitality as I should wish."
The judge raised his broad soft hat. "Thank you, sir," he said, with a
soft accent that delightfully disdained the letter "r." "But we mustn't
intrude any further. As you know, of course, the place has been
uninhabited for any number of years, and we had no idea it was to
acquire a tenant. You will overlook our riding through, I hope. I'm
afraid the neighborhood has got used to considering this a sort of
no-man's land. It's a pleasure to know that the Court is to be
reclaimed, sir. Come along, Chilly," he added. "Our fox has a burrow
under the house, I reckon--hang the cunning little devil!"
He whistled sharply to the dogs, who came leaping about his horse's legs
for their meed of praise--and clubbing. "Down, Fan! Down Trojan! Come
on, you young folks, to breakfast. We've had a prime run of it, anyhow,
and we'll put him up another day."
He waved his hat at the porch and turned his horse down the path, side
by side with the golden-chestnut. After them trooped the others, horses
walking wearily, riders talking in low voices, the girls turning often
to send swift bird-like glances behind them to where the straight
masculine figure still stood with the yellow sunshine on his face. They
did not leap the wall this time, but filed decorously through the
swinging gate to the Red Road. Then, as they passed from view behind the
hedges, John Valiant heard the younger voices break out together like
the sound of a bomb thrown into a poultry-yard.
After a time he saw the straggling bunch of riders emerge at a slow
canter on the far-away field. He saw the roan spurred beside the golden
chestnut and both dashed away, neck and neck in a race, the light
patrician form of the man leaning far forward and the girl swaying to
the pace as if she and her hunter were one.
* * * * *
John Valiant stood watching till the last rider was out of sight. There
was a warm flush of color in his face.
At length he turned with the ghost of a sigh, opened the hall door wide
and stalking a hundred yards away, sat down on the shady grass and began
to whistle, with his eyes on the door.
Presently he was rewarded. On a sudden, around the edge of the sill
peered a sharp, suspicious little muzzle. Then, like a flash of tawny
light, the fox broke sanctuary and shot for the thicket.
CHAPTER XV
MRS. POLY GIFFORD PAYS A CALL
The brown ivied house in the village was big and square and faced the
sleepy street. Its front was gay with pink oleanders in green tubs and
the yard spotted with annual encampments of geraniums and marigolds. A
one-storied wing contained a small door with a doctor's brass plate on
the clapboarding beside it. Doctor Southall was one of Mrs. Merryweather
Mason's paying guests--for she would have deemed the word boarder a
gratuitous insult, no less to them than to her. Another was the major,
who for a decade had occupied the big old-fashioned corner-room on the
second floor, companioned by a monstrous gray cat and waited on by an
ancient negro named Jereboam, who had been a slave of his father's.
The doctor was a sallow taciturn man with a saturnine face, eyebrows
like frosted thistles, a mouth as if made with one quick knife-slash and
a head nearly bald, set on a neck that would not have disqualified a
yearling ox. His broad shoulders were slightly stooped, and his mouth
wore habitually an expression half resentful, half sardonic, conveying
a cynical opinion of the motives of the race in general and of the
special depravity of that particular countryside. Altogether he exhaled
an air in contrast to which the major's old-school blend of charm and
courtesy seemed an almost ribald frivolity.
On this particular morning neither the major nor the doctor was in
evidence, the former having gone out early, and the latter being at the
moment in his office, as the brassy buzz of a telephone from time to
time announced. Two of the green wicker rocking-chairs on the porch,
however, were in agitant commotion. Mrs. Mason was receiving a caller in
the person of Mrs. Napoleon Gifford.
The latter had a middle-aged affection for baby-blue and a devouring
penchant for the ages and antecedents of others, at times irksome to
those to whom her "Let me see. You went to school with my first
husband's sister, didn't you?" or "Your daughter Jane must have been
married the year the old Israel Stamper place was burned," were
unwelcome reminders of the pace of time. To-day, of course, the topic
was the new arrival at Damory Court.
"After all these _years_!" the visitor was saying in her customary
italics. (The broad "a" which lent a dulcet softness to the speech of
her hostess was scorned by Mrs. Poly, her own "a's" being as narrow as
the needle through which the rich man reaches heaven.) "We came here
from Richmond when I was a bride--that's twenty-one years ago--and
Damory Court was forsaken then. And think what a condition the house
must be in now! Cared for by an agent who comes every other season from
New York. Trust a _man_ to do work like that!"
"I'm glad a Valiant is to occupy it," remarked Mrs. Mason in her sweet
flute-like voice. "It would be sad to see any one else there. For after
all, the Valiants were gentlemen."
Mrs. Gifford sniffed. "Would you have called Devil-John Valiant a
gentleman? Why, he earned the name by the dreadful things he did. My
grandfather used to say that when his wife lay sick--he hated her, you
know--he would gallop his horse with all his hounds full-cry after him
under her windows. Then that _ghastly_ story of the slave he pressed to
death in the hogshead of tobacco."
"I know," acquiesced Mrs. Mason. "He was a cruel man, and wicked, too.
Yet of course he was a gentleman. In the South the test of a gentleman
has never been what he _does_, but who he is. Devil-John was splendid,
for all his wickedness. He was the best swordsman in all Virginia. It
used to be said there was a portrait of him at Damory Court, and that
during the war, in the engagement on the hillside, a bullet took out one
of its eyes. But his grandson, Beauty Valiant, who lived at Damory
Court thirty years ago, wasn't his type at all. He was only twenty-five
when the duel occurred."
"He must have been brilliant," said the visitor, "to have founded that
great Corporation. It's a pity the son didn't take after him. Have you
seen the _papers_ lately? It seems that though he was to blame for the
wrecking of the concern they can't do anything to him. Some technicality
in the law, I suppose. But if a man is only rich enough they can't
convict him of anything. Why he should suddenly make up his mind to come
down _here_ I _can't_ see. With that old affair of his father's behind
him, I should think he'd prefer Patagonia."
"I take it, then, madam," Doctor Southall's forbidding voice rose from
the doorway, "that you are familiar with the circumstances of that old
affair, as you term it?"
The lady bridled. Her passages at arms with the doctor did not
invariably tend to sweeten her disposition. "I'm sure I only know what
people say," she said.
"'People?'" snorted the doctor irascibly. "Just another name for a
community that's a perfect sink of meanness and malice. If one believed
all he heard here he'd quit speaking to his own grandmother."
"You will admit, I suppose," said Mrs. Gifford with some spirit, "that
the name Valiant isn't what it used to be in this neighborhood?"
"I will, madam," responded the doctor. "When Valiant left this place (a
mark of good taste, I've always considered it) he left it the worse, if
possible, for his departure. Your remark, however, would seem to imply
demerit on his part. Was he the only man who ever happened to be at the
lucky end of a dueling-ground?"
"Then it isn't true that Valiant was a dead shot and Sassoon
intoxicated?"
"Madam," said the doctor, "I have no wish to discuss the details of that
unhappy incident with you or anybody else. I was one of those present,
but the circumstances you mention have never been descanted upon by me.
I merely wish to point out that the people whom you have been quoting,
are not only a set of ignoramuses with cotton-back souls, but as full of
uncharitableness as an egg is of meat."
"I see by the papers," said Mrs. Gifford, with an air of resignedly
changing the subject, "they've been investigating the failure of the
Valiant Corporation. The son seems to be getting the sharp end of the
stick. Perhaps he's coming down here because they've made it so hot for
him in New York. Well, I'm afraid he'll find _this_ county
disappointing."
"He will that!" agreed the doctor savagely. "No doubt he imagines he's
coming to a kindly countryside of gentle-born people with souls and
imaginations; he'll find he's lit in a section that's entirely too
ready to hack at his father's name and prepared in advance to call him
Northern scum and turn up its nose at his accent--a community so full
of dyed-in-the-wool snobbery that it would make Boston look like a
poor-white barbecue. I'm sorry for _him_!"
Mrs. Gifford, having learned wisdom from experience, resisted the
temptation to reply. She merely rocked a trifle faster and turned a
smile which she strove to make amusedly deprecative upon her hostess.
Just then from the rear of the house came a strident voice:
"Yo', Raph'el! Take yo' han's outer dem cherries! Don' yo' know ef yo'
swallahs dem ar pits, yo' gwineter hab 'pende_gee_tus en lump up en
die?"
The sound of a slap and a shrill yelp followed, and around the porch
dashed an infantile darky, as nude as a black Puck, with his hands full
of cherries, who came to a sudden demoralized stop in the embarrassing
foreground.
"Raph!" thundered the doctor. "Didn't I tell you to go back to that
kitchen?"
"Yas, suh," responded the imp. "But yo' didn' tell me ter stay dar!"
"If I see you out here again," roared the doctor, "I'll tie your ears
back--and _grease_ you--and SWALLOW you!" At which grisly threat, the
apparition, with a shrill shriek, turned and ran desperately for the
corner of the house.
"I hear," said the doctor, resuming, "that the young man who came to fix
the place up has hired Uncle Jefferson and his wife to help him. Who's
responsible for that interesting information?"
"Rickey Snyder," said Mrs. Mason. "She's got a spy-glass rigged up in a
sugar-tree at Miss Mattie Sue's and she saw them pottering around there
this morning."
"Little _limb_!" exclaimed Mrs. Gifford, with emphasis. "She's as cheeky
as a town-hog. I can't imagine what Shirley Dandridge was thinking of
when she brought that low-born child out of her sphere."
Something like a growl came from the doctor as he struck open the
screen-door. "'Limb!' I'll bet ten dollars she's an angel in a
cedar-tree at a church fair compared with some better-born young ones
I know of who are only fit to live when they've got the scarlet-fever
and who ought to be in the reformatory long ago. And as for Shirley
Dandridge, it's my opinion she and her mother and a few others like
her have got about the only drops of the milk of human kindness in
this whole abandoned community!"
"Dreadful man!" said Mrs. Gifford, sotto voce, as the door banged
viciously. "To think of his being born a Southall! Sometimes I can't
believe it!"
Mrs. Mason shook her head and smiled. "Ah, but that isn't the real
Doctor Southall," she said. "That's only his shell."
"I've heard that he has another side," responded the other with guarded
grimness, "but if he has, I wish he'd manage to show it sometimes."
Mrs. Mason took off her glasses and wiped them carefully. "I saw it when
my husband died," she said softly. "That was before you came. They were
old friends, you know. He was sick almost a year, and the doctor used to
carry him out here on the porch every day in his arms, like a child. And
then, when the typhus came that summer among the negroes, he quarantined
himself with them--the only white man there--and treated and nursed them
and buried the dead with his own hands, till it was stamped out. That's
the real Doctor Southall."
The rockers vibrated in silence for a moment. Then Mrs. Gifford said: "I
never knew before that he had anything to do with that duel. Was he one
of Valiant's seconds?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Mason; "and the major was the other. I was a little
girl when it happened. I can barely remember it, but it made a big
sensation."
"And over a love-affair!" exclaimed Mrs. Gifford in the tone of one to
whom romance was daily bread.
"I suppose it was."
"Why, my _dear_! Of _course_ it was. That's always been the story. What
on earth have men to fight duels about except us women? They only
_pretend_ it's cards or horses. Trust me, there's always a pair of silk
stockings at the bottom of it! Girls are so thoughtless--though you and
I were just as bad, I suppose, if we only remembered!--and they don't
realize that it's sometimes a serious thing to trifle with a man. That
is, of course, if he's of a certain type. _I_ think our Virginian girls
flirt outrageously. They quit only at the church door (though I _will_
say they generally stop then) and they take a man's ring without any
idea whatever of the sacredness of an engagement. You remember Ilsa
Eustis who married the man from Petersburg? She was engaged to two men
at once, and used to wear whichever ring belonged to the one who was
coming to see her. One day they came together. She was in the yard when
they stopped at the horse-block. Well, she tied her handkerchief round
her hand and said she'd burned herself pulling candy. (No, neither one
of them was the man from Petersburg.) When she was married, one of them
wrote her and asked for his ring. It had seven diamonds set in the shape
of a cross. I'm telling you this in confidence, just as it was told to
me. She didn't write a reply--she only sent him a telegram: 'Simply to
thy cross I cling.' She wears the stones yet in a bracelet."
For a time the conversation languished. Then Mrs. Gifford asked
suddenly: "_Who_ do you suppose she could have been?--the girl behind
that old Valiant affair."
Mrs. Mason shook her head. "No one knows for certain--unless, of course,
the major or the doctor, and I wouldn't question either of them for
worlds. You see, people had stopped gossiping about it before I was out
of school."
"But surely your husband--"
"The only quarrel we had while we were engaged was over that. I tried to
make him tell me. I imagined from something he said then that the young
men who _did_ know had pledged one another not to speak of it."
"I wonder why?" said the other thoughtfully.
"Oh, undoubtedly out of regard for the girl. I've always thought it so
decent of them! If there was a girl in the case, her position must have
been unpleasant enough, if she was not actually heart-broken. Imagine
the poor thing, knowing that wherever she went, people would be saying:
'She's the one they fought the duel over! Look at her!' If she grieved,
they'd say she'd been crazy in love with Sassoon, and point out the dark
circles under her eyes, and wonder if she'd ever get over it. If she
didn't mope, they'd say she was in love with Valiant and was glad it was
Sassoon who was shot. If she shut herself up, they'd say she had no
pride; if she didn't, they'd say she had no heart. It was far better to
cover the story up and let it die."
But the subject was too fascinating for her morning visitor to abandon.
"She probably loved one of them," she said. "I wonder which it was. I'll
ask the major when I see him. _I'm_ not afraid. He can't eat me!
Wouldn't it be _curious_," she continued, "if it should be somebody who
lives here now--whom we've always known! I can't think who it could have
been, though. There's Jenny Quarles--she's eight years older than we
are, if she's a day--she was a nice little thing, but you couldn't
_dream_ of anybody ever fighting a duel over her. There's Polly
Pendleton, and Berenice Garland--they must have been about the right
age, and they never married--but no, it _couldn't_ have been either of
them. The only other spinster I can think of is Miss Mattie Sue, and she
was as poor as Job's turkey and teaching school. Besides, she must have
been years and years too old. Hush! There's Major Bristow at the gate
now. And the doctor's just coming out again."
The major wore a suit of white linen, with a broad-brimmed straw hat,
and a pink was in his button-hole, but to the observing, his step might
have seemed to lack an accustomed jauntiness. As he came up the path
the doctor opened his office door. Standing on the threshold, his legs
wide apart and his hands under his coat-tails, he nodded grimly across
the marigolds. "How do you feel this morning, Major."
"Feel?" rumbled the major; "the way any gentleman ought to feel this
time of the morning, sah. Like hell, sah."
The doctor bent his gaze on the hilarious blossom in the other's lapel.
"If I were you, Bristow," he said scathingly, "I reckon I'd quit
galivanting around to bridge-fights with perfumery on my handkerchief
every evening. It's a devil of an example to the young."
The rocking-chairs behind the screening vines became motionless, and the
ladies exchanged surreptitious smiles. If the two gentlemen were aware
of each other's sterling qualities, their mutual appreciation was in
inverse ratio to its expression, and, as the Elucinian mysteries,
cloaked before the world. In public the doctor was wont to remark that
the major talked like a Cæsar, looked like a piano-tuner and was the
only man he had ever seen who could strut sitting down. Never were his
gibes so barbed as when launched against the major's white-waistcoated
and patrician calm, and conversely, never did the major's bland suavity
so nearly approach an undignified irritation as when receiving the
envenomed darts of that accomplished cynic.
The major settled his black tie. "A little wholesome exercise wouldn't
be a bad thing for you, Doctor," he said succinctly. "You're looking a
shade pasty to-day."
"Exercise!" snapped the other viciously, as he pounded down the steps.
"Ha, ha! I suppose you exercise--lazying out to the Dandridges once a
week for a julep, and the rest of the time wearing out good cane-bottoms
and palm-leaf fans and cussing at the heat. You'll go off with apoplexy
one of these days."
"I shall if they're scared enough to call _you_," the major shot after
him, nettled. But the doctor did not pause. He went on down the street
without turning his head.
The major lifted his hat gallantly to the ladies, whose presence he had
just observed. "I reckon," he said, as he found the string of his
glasses and adjusted them to gaze after the retreating form; "I reckon
if I did have apoplexy, I'd want Southall to handle the case, but the
temptation to get one in on him is sometimes a little too much for me."
"_Do_ sit down, Major," said Mrs. Gifford. "There's a question I'm just
dying to ask you. We've had _such_ an interesting conversation. You've
heard the news, of course, that young Mr. Valiant is coming to Damory
Court?"
The major sat down heavily. In the bright light his face seemed suddenly
pale and old.
"No?" the lady's tone was arch. "Have all the rest of us _really_ got
ahead of you for once? Yes, it's true. There's some one there getting it
to rights. Now here's the question. There was a woman, of course, at the
bottom of the Valiant duel. I'd never _dream_ of asking you who she was.
But which was it she loved, Valiant or Sassoon?"
CHAPTER XVI
THE ECHO
When the major entered his room, Jereboam, his ancient body-servant, was
dawdling about putting things to rights, his seamed visage under his
white wool suggesting a charred stump beneath a crisp powdering of snow.
"Jedge Chalmahs done tellyfoam ter ax yo' ovah ter Gladden Hall ter
suppah ter-night, suh," he said. "De jedge 'low he gwine git eben wid
yo' fo' dat las' game ob pokah when yo' done lam him."
"Tell him not to-night, Jerry," said the other wearily. "Some other
time."
The old darky ruminated as he plodded down to the doctor's telephone.
"Whut de mattah now? He got dat ar way-off-yondah look ergen." He shook
his head forebodingly. "Ah heahed he hummin' dat tune when he dress
hisse'f dis mawnin'. Sing befo' yo' eat, cry befo' yo' sleep!"
The major had, indeed, a far-away look as he sat there, a heavy lonely
figure, that bright morning. It had slipped to his face with the news of
the arrival at Damory Court. He told himself that he felt queer. A
mocking-bird was singing in a tulip-tree outside, and the gray cat sat
on the window-sill, watching the foliage with blinking lust. There was
no breeze and the leaves of the Virginia creeper that curled about the
sash were trembling with the sensuous delight of the sunshine. Suddenly
he seemed to hear elfin voices close to his ear:
"_Which was it she loved? Valiant or Sassoon?_"
It was so distinct that he started, vexed and disturbed. Really, it was
absurd. He would be seeing things next! "Southall may be right about
that exercise," he muttered; "I'll walk more." He began the projected
reform without delay, striding up and down the room. But the little
voices presently sounded again, shouting like gnomes inside a hill:
"_Which was it? Valiant or Sassoon?_"
"I wish to God I knew!" said the major roughly, standing still. It
silenced them, but the sound of his own voice, as though it had been a
pre-concerted signal, drew together a hundred inchoate images of other
days. There was the well-ordered garden of Damory Court--it rose up,
gloomy with night shadows, across his great clothes-press against the
wall--with himself sitting on a rustic bench smoking and behind him
the candle-lighted library window with Beauty Valiant pacing up and
down, waiting for daylight. There was a sun-lighted stretch between
two hemlocks, with Southall and he measuring the ground--the grass
all dewy sparkles and an early robin teetering on a thorn-bush.
Eight--nine--ten--he caught himself counting the paces.
He wiped his forehead. Between the hemlocks now were two figures
facing each other, one twitching uncertainly, the other palely rigid;
and at one side, held screen-wise, a raised umbrella. In some ghostly
way he could see straight through the latter--see the doctor's hand
gripping the handle, his own, outstretched beyond its edge, holding a
handkerchief ready to flutter down. A silly subterfuge those umbrellas,
but there must be no actual witnesses to the final act of a "gentlemen's
meeting"! A silly code, the whole of it, now happily outgrown! He
thought thus with a kind of dumb irritant wonder, while the green
picture hung a moment--as a stone thrown in air hangs poised at height
before it falls--then dissolved itself in two sharp crackles, with a
gasping interval between. The scene blurred into a single figure
huddling down--huddling down--
"_Which did she love?_" The major shook his head helplessly. It was,
after all, only the echo, become all at once audible on a shallow
woman's lips, of a question that had always haunted him. It had first
come to him on the heels of that duel, when he had stood, somewhat later
that hateful morning, holding a saddled horse before the big pillared
porch. It had whispered itself then from every moving leaf. "_Sassoon or
Valiant?_" If she had loved Sassoon, of what use the letter Valiant was
so long penning in the library? But--if it were Valiant she loved? The
man who, having sworn not to lift his hand against the other, had broken
his sacred word to her! Who had stained the unwritten code by facing an
opponent maddened with liquor! Yet, what was there a woman might not
condone in the one man? Would she read, forgive and send for him?
The major laughed out suddenly, harshly, in the quiet room, and looked
down as if he expected to see that letter still lying in his hand. But
the laugh could not still a regular pulsing sound that was in his
ears--elfin like the voices, but as distinct--the sound of a horse's
hoofs going from Damory Court.
He had heard those hoof-beats echo in his brain for thirty years!
CHAPTER XVII
THE TRESPASSER
Till the sun was high John Valiant lay on his back in the fragrant
grass, meditatively watching a bucaneering chicken-hawk draw widening
circles against the blue and listening to the vibrant tattoo of a
"pecker-wood" on a far-away tree, and the timorous wet whistle of a
bob-white. The sun shone through the tracery of the foliage, making a
quivering mosaic of light and shadow all about him. A robin ran across
the grass with his breast puffed out as if he had been stealing apples;
now and then an inquisitive yellow-hammer darted above and in the bushes
cardinals wove slender sharp flashes of living crimson. The whole place
was very quiet now. For just one thrilling moment it had burgeoned into
sound and movement: when the sweaty horses had stood snorting and
stamping in the yard with the hounds scampering between their legs and
the riding-coats winking like rubies in the early sunshine!
Had she recognized him as the smudged tinkerer of the stalled car? "She
saw me drop that wretched brute through the window," he chuckled. "I
could take oath to that. But she didn't give me away, true little sport
that she was. And she won't. I can't think of any reason, but I know."
The chuckle broadened to an appreciative grin. "What an ass she must
have thought me! To risk a nasty bite and rob her of her brush into the
bargain! How she looked at me, just for a minute, with that thoroughbred
face, out of those sea-deep eyes, under that whorling, marvelous
heaped-up hair of hers! Was she angry? I wonder!"
At length he rose and went back to the house. With a bunch of keys he
had found he went to the stables, after some difficulty gained access,
and propped the crazy doors and windows open to the sun. The building
was airy and well-lighted and contained a dozen roomy box-stalls, a
spacious loft and a carriage-house. The straw bedding had been
unremoved, mice-gnawed sacking and rotted hay lay in the mangers, and
the warped harness, hanging on its pegs, was a smelly mass of mildew and
decay. In the carriage-house were three vehicles--a coach with
rat-riddled upholstery and old-fashioned hoop-iron springs eaten through
with rust, a rockaway and a surrey. The latter had collapsed where it
stood. He found a stick, mowed away the festooning cobwebs, and moved
the débris piece-meal.
"There!" he said with satisfaction. "There's a place for the motor--if
Uncle Jefferson ever gets it here."
It was noon when he returned, after a wash-up in the lake, to the meal
with which Aunt Daphne, in a costume dimly suggestive of a bran-meal
poultice with a gingham apron on, regaled him. Fried chicken, corn-bread
so soft and fluffy that it had to be lifted from the pan with a spoon,
browned potatoes, and to his surprise, fresh milk. "Ah done druv ouah
ol' cow ovah, suh," explained Aunt Daphne. "'Case she gotter be milked,
er she run dry ez de Red Sea fo' de chillen ob Izril."
"Aunt Daphne," inquired Valiant with his mouth full, "what do you call
this green thing?"
"Dat? Dat's jes' turnip-tops, suh, wid er hunk er bacon in de pot.
Laws-er-me, et cert'n'y do me good ter see yo' git arter it dat way,
suh. Reck'n yo' got er appertite! Hyuh, Hyuh!"
"I have. I never guessed it before, and it's a magnificent discovery.
However, it suggests unwelcome reflections. Aunt Daphne, how long do you
estimate a man can dine like this on--well, say on a hundred dollars?"
"Er hun'ed dollahs, suh? Dat's er right smart heap o' money, 'deed et
is! Well, suh, 'pen's on whut yo' raises. Ef yo' raises yo' own
gyarden-sass, en chick'ns en aigs, Ah reck'n yo' kin live longah dan dat
ar Methoosalum, en still haf mos' of it in de ol' stockin'."
"Ah! I can grow all those things myself, you think?"
"Yo' cert'n'y _kin_," said Aunt Daphne. "Ev'ybody do. De chick'ns done
peck fo' deyselves en de yuddah things--yo' o'ny gotter 'courage 'em en
dey jes' grows."
Valiant ate his dessert with a thoughtful smile wrinkling his brow. As
he pushed back his chair he smote his hands together and laughed aloud.
"Back to the soil!" he said. "John Valiant, farmer! The miracle of it is
that it sounds good to me. I _want_ to raise my own grub and till my own
soil. I want to be my own man! And I'm beginning to see my way. Crops
will have to wait for another season, but there's water and pasture for
cattle now. There's timber--lots of it--on that hillside, too. I must
look into that."
He filled his pipe and climbed the staircase to the upper floor. Here
the lower hall was duplicated. He proceeded slowly and carefully with
the dusty task of window-opening. There were many bedrooms with great
four-posted, canopied beds and old-fashioned carved furniture of
mahogany and curly-maple, and in one he found a great cedar-lined chest
filled with bed-linen and napery. In these rooms were more evidences of
decay. They showed in faded hues, streaked and discolored finishings,
yellow mildew beneath the glass of framed engravings and unsightly
stains on walls and floors from leaks in the roof. On a dainty
dressing-table had been left a pin-cushion; its stuffing was strewn in a
tiny trickling trail to a mouse-hole in the base-board. The bedroom he
mentally chose for his own was the plainest of all, and was above the
library, fronting the vagabond garden. It had a great black desk with
many glass-knobbed drawers and a book-rack. The volumes this contained
were mostly of the historical sort: a history of the _Middle Plantation,
Meade's Old Churches,_ and at the end a parchment-bound tome inscribed
_The Valiants of Virginia_.
He lingered longest in a room over whose door was painted _The
Hilarium_. It had evidently been a nursery and schoolroom. Here on
the walls were many shelves wound over with networks of cobwebs, and
piled with the oddest assemblage of toys: wooden and splintered
soldiers that had once been bravely painted, dolls in various states of
worn-outness--one rag doll in a calico dress with shoe-button eyes and
a string of bright glass beads round her neck--a wooden box of marbles,
a tattered boxing-glove. There were school-books, too, thumbed and
dog-eared, from _First Reader_ to Cæsar's _Gallic Wars_, with names of
small Valiants scrawled on their fly-leaves. He carefully relocked the
door of this room; he wanted to dust those toys and books with his own
hands.
In the upper hall again he leaned from the window, sniffing the
far-flung scent of orchards and peach-blown fence-rows. The soft
whirring sound of a bird's wing went past, almost brushing his startled
face, and the old oaks seemed to stretch their bent limbs with a
faithful brute-like yawn of pleasure. In the room below he could hear
the vigorous sound of Aunt Daphne's hard-driven broom and the sound
flooded the echoing space with a comfortable commotion.
The present task was one after Aunt Daphne's own heart. A small mountain
of dust was growing on the terrace, and as beneath brush and rag the
colors of wall and parquetry stood forth, her face became one shiny
expanse of ebony satisfaction. When the bulldog, returning from his
jaunt, out-stripping Uncle Jefferson, bounced in to prance against her
she smote him lustily with her scrubbing-brush.
"Git outer heah, yo' good-fo'-nuffin' w'ite rapscallyun! Gwine trapse
yo' muddy feet all ovah dis yeah floor, whut Ah jes' scrubbed tell yo'
marstah kin eat off'n et?" She broke off to listen to Uncle Jefferson's
voice outside, directed toward the upper window.
"Dat yo', suh? Yas, suh, dis me. Well, suh, Ah take ol' Sukey out de Red
Road, en Ah hitch huh ter yo' machine-thing, en she done balk. Won't go
nohow ... whut, suh? 'Beat huh ovah de haid?' Yas, suh, done hit huh in
de haid six times wid de whip-han'l, en she look me in de eye en ain'
said er word.... 'Twis' huh tail?' _Me_, suh? No-suh-ree, suh. Mars'
Quarles' boy one time he twis' huh tail en dey sen' him ter de
horspit'l. 'Daid,' suh? No, suh, ain' daid, but et mos' bust him wide
open.... 'Set fiah undah huh?' Yas, suh, done set fiah undah huh. Mos'
burn up de harness, en ain' done no good.... Well, suh, Ah jes' gwineter
say no use waitin' fo' Sukey ter change huh min', so Ah put some
fence-rails undah huh en jock huh up en come home. En Ah's gwine out
arter suppah en Sukey be all right den, suh, Ah reck'n. Yas, suh."
Aunt Daphne plunged out with fire in her eye, but the laugh that came
from above was reassuring. "Never mind, Uncle Jefferson, Miss Sukey's
whims shall be regarded."
Chum, bouncing up the stairs like an animated bundle of springs, met his
master coming down. "Old man," said the latter, "I don't mind telling
you that I'm beginning to be taken with this place. But it's in a bad
way, and it's going to be put in shape. It's a large order, and we'll
have to work like horses. Don't you bother Aunt Daph! You just come with
your Uncle Dudley. He's going to take a look over the grounds."
He went to his trunk and fished out a soft shirt on which he knotted
a loose tie, exchanged his Panama for a slouch hat, and whistling
the barcarole from _Tales of Hoffmann_, went gaily out. "I feel
tremendously alive to-day," he confided to the dog, as he tramped
through the lush grass. "If you see me ladle the muck out of that
fountain with my own fair hands, don't have a fit. I'm liable to do
anything."
His eye swept up and down the slope. "There probably isn't a finer site
for a house in the whole South," he told himself. "The living-rooms
front south and west. We'll get scrumptious sunsets from that back
porch. And on the other side there's the view clear to the Blue Ridge.
And as for this garden, no landscape artist need apply. The outlines are
all here; it needs only to be put back. We'll first rake out the
rubbish, chop down that underbrush and trim the box. The shrubs only
want pruning. Then we'll mend the pool and set the fountain going and
put in some goldfish. Flower-seeds and bulbs are cheap enough, I fancy.
Just think of a bed of black and gold pansies running down to the lake!
And on the other side a wilderness garden. I've seen pictures of them in
the illustrated weeklies. Those rotten posts, under that snarl of vines,
were a pergola. Any old carpenter can rebuild that--I can draw the plans
myself."
He skirted the lake. "Only to grub out some of the lilies--there's too
many of them--and straighten the rim--and weed the pebble margin to
give those green rocks a show. I'll build a little wharf below them to
dive from, and--yes, I'll stock it with spotted trout. Not just to yank
out with a barbed hook, but to make it inhabited. How well a couple of
white swans would look preening in the shade out there! The roof's gone
from that oval summer-house, but it's no trick to put another on."
He penetrated farther into the tangle and came out into a partially
cleared space shaded with great trees, where the grass was matted with
clover into a thick rug, sprinkled with designs worked in bluebells and
field-daisies, with here and there a flaunting poppy, like a scarlet
medallion. He was but a few hundred yards from the house, yet the
silence was so deep that there might have been no habitation within
fifty miles. All at once he stopped short; there was a sudden movement
in the thicket beyond--the sound of light fast footfalls, as of some one
running away.
He made a lunge for the dog, but with a growl Chum tore himself from the
restraining grasp and dashed into the bushes. "A child, no doubt," he
thought as he plunged in pursuit, "and that lubberly brute will scare it
half to death!"
He pulled up with an exclamation. In a narrow wood-path a little
way from him, partly hidden by a windfall, stood a girl, her skirt
transfixed with a wickedly jagged sapling. He saw instantly how it
had happened; the windfall had blocked the way, and she had sprung
clean over it, not noting the screened spear, which now held her as
effectually as any railroad spike. She was struggling with silent
helpless fury to release herself, wrenching viciously at the offending
stuff, which seemed ridiculously stout, and disregarding utterly the
bulldog, frisking madly about her feet with sharp joyous barks.
In another moment Valiant had reached her and met her face, flushed,
half defiant, her eyes a blue gleam of smoldering anger as she
desperately, almost savagely, thrust wild tendrils of flame-colored hair
beneath the broad curved brim of her straw hat. At her feet lay a great
armful of cape jessamines.
A little thrill, light and warm and joyous, ran through him. Until that
instant he had not recognized her.
CHAPTER XVIII
JOHN VALIANT MAKES A DISCOVERY
"I'm so sorry," was what he said, as he kneeled to release her, and she
was grateful that his tone was unmixed with amusement. She bit her lips,
as by sheer strength of elbow and knee he snapped the offending bole
short off--one of those quick exhibitions of reserved strength that
every woman likes. Meanwhile he was uttering banal fragments of
sentences: "I hope you're not hurt. It was that unmannerly dog, I
suppose. What a sword-edge that sliver has! A bad tear, I'm afraid.
There!--now it's all right."
"I don't know how I could have been so silly--thank you so much," said
Shirley, panting slightly from her exertions. "I'm not the least bit
hurt--only my dress--and you know very well that I wasn't afraid of that
ridiculous dog." A richer glow stole to her cheeks as she spoke, a
burning recollection of a rose, which from her horse that morning at
Damory Court, she had glimpsed in its glass on the porch.
Both laughed a little. He imagined that he could smell that wonderful
hair, a subtle fragrance like that of sun-dried seaweed or the elusive
scent that clings to a tuft of long-plucked Spanish moss. "Chum stands
absolved, then," he said, bending to sweep together the scattered
jessamine. "Do you--do you run like that when you're _not_ frightened?"
"When I'm caught red-handed. Don't you?"
He looked puzzled.
She pointed to the flowers. "I had stolen them, and I was trying to
''scape off wid 'em' as the negroes say. Shocking, isn't it? But you
see, nobody has lived here since long before I was born, and I suppose
the flower-thieving habit has become ingrown."
"But," he interrupted, "there's acres of them going to waste. Why on
earth shouldn't you have them?"
"Of course I know better to-day, but there was a--a special reason. We
have none and this is the nearest place where they grow. My mother
wanted some for this particular day."
"Good heavens!" he cried. "You don't think you can't go right on taking
them? Why, you can ''scape off' with the whole garden any time!"
A droll little gleam of azure mischief darted at him suddenly out of her
eyes and then dodged back again. "Aren't you just a little rash with
other people's property?"
"Other people's?"
"What will the owner say?"
He bent back one of the long jessamine stems and wound it around the
others. "I can answer for him. Besides, I owe you something, you know.
I robbed you this morning--of your brush."
She looked at him, abruptly serious. "Why did you do that?"
"Sanctuary. His two beady eyes begged so hard for it. 'Twenty ravenous
hounds,' they said, 'and a dozen galloping horses. And look what a poor
shivering little red-brown morsel _I_ am!'"
For just an instant the bronze-gold head gave a quick imperious toss,
like a high-mettled pony under the flick of the whip. But as suddenly
the shadow of resentment passed; the mobile face under the bent hat-brim
turned thoughtful. "Poor little beastie!" she said meditatively. "We
so seldom think of his side, do we! We think only of the run, the
dog-music, the wild rush along the wet fields, with the horses straining
and pounding under us. I've ridden to hounds all my life. Everybody does
down here." She looked again at him. "Do you think it's wrong to kill
things?" she asked gravely.
"Oh, dear, no," he smiled. "I haven't a single _ism_. I'm not even a
vegetarian."
"But you would be if you had to kill your own meat?"
"Perhaps. So many of us would. As a matter of fact, I don't hunt
myself, but I'm no reformer."
"Why don't you hunt?"
"I don't enjoy it." He flushed slightly. "I hate firearms," he said, a
trifle difficultly. "I always have. I don't know why. Idiosyncrasy, I
suppose. But I shouldn't care for hunting, even with bows and arrows. I
would kill a tiger or a poisonous reptile, or anything else, in case of
necessity. But even then I should hardly enjoy it. I know some animals
are pests and have to be killed. Some men do, too. But I don't like to
do it myself."
"Wouldn't that theory lead to a wholesale evasion of responsibility?"
"Perhaps. I'm no philosopher. But a blackbird or a red fox is so pretty,
even when he is thieving, that I'd let him have the corn. I'm like the
Lord High Executioner in _The Mikado_ who was so tender-hearted that he
couldn't execute anybody and planned to begin with guinea-pigs and work
up. Only I'm afraid I couldn't even manage the guinea-pigs."
She laughed. "You wouldn't find many to practise on here. Do you raise
guinea-pigs up North?"
"Ah," he said ruefully, "you tag me, too. Have I by chance a large
letter N tattooed upon my manly brow? But I suppose it's the accent.
Uncle Jefferson catalogued me in five minutes. He said he didn't know
_why_ I was from 'de Norf,' but he '_knowed_' it. I've annexed him and
his wife, by the way."
"You're lucky to have them. Unc' Jefferson and Aunt Daph might have
slipped out of a plantation of the last century. They're absolutely
ante-bellum. Most of the negroes are more or less spoiled, as you'll
find, I'm afraid." She turned the conversation bluntly. "Had you seen
Damory Court before?"
"No, never."
"Do you like the general plan of the place?"
"Do I like it?" cried John Valiant. "Do I _like_ it!"
A quick pleasure glanced across her face. "It's nice of you to say it
that way. We ask that question so often it's become mechanical. You see,
it's our great show-place. We exhibit it to strangers as we show them
the Natural Bridge and Monticello, and expect them to rhapsodize. Years
ago the negroes would never set foot here. The house was supposed to be
haunted."
"I'm not afraid," he laughed. "I wouldn't blame any ghost for hanging
around. I'm thinking of haunting it myself in a hundred years or so."
"Oh, the specters are all laid long ago, if there ever were any."
At that moment a patter of footsteps and shrill shrieks came flying over
the last-year's leaves beyond the lilac bushes. "It's Rickey Snyder,"
she said, peering out smilingly as two children, pursued and pursuer,
burst into view. "Hush!" she whispered; "I wonder what they are up to."
The pair came in a whirl through the bushes. The foremost was a
seven-year-old negro girl, in a single short cottonade garment, wizened,
barelegged and bareheaded, her black wool parted in little angular
patches and tightly wrapped with bits of cord. The other was white and
as freckled as a turkey's egg, with hair cropped like a boy's. She
held a carving-knife cut from a shingle, whose edge had been deeply
ensanguined by poke-berry juice. The pursued one stumbled over a root
and came to earth in a heap, while the other pounced upon her like a
wildcat.
"Hold still, you limb of Satan," she scolded. "How can I do it when you
won't stay still?"
"Oh, Lawd," moaned the prostrate one, in simulated terror; "oh, Doctah,
good Doctah Snydah, has Ah _gotter_ hab dat operation? Is yo' sho'
gwineter twitter eroun' mah insides wid dem knives en saws en things?"
"It won't hurt," reassured the would-be operator; "no more than it did
Mis' Poly Gifford. And I'll put your liver right back again."
"Wait er minute. Ah jes' remembahs Ah fo'got ter make mah will. Ah
leabs--"
"Nonsense!" objected the other irritably. "You made it yesterday. They
always do it beforehand."
"No, suh; Ah done clean fergot et. Ah leabs mah thimble ter de Mefodis'
church, en mah black en w'ite kitten ter Rickey Snydah, en--"
"I don't want your old tabby!" said the beneficiary unfeelingly. "Now
flatten out, while I give you the chloroform."
"All right, Doctah. Ah's in de free-ward en 'tain't costin' me er cent!
But Ah's mighty skeered Ah gwineter wake up daid! Gord A'mighty, ef Ah
dies, save mah sinful soul! Oh, Mars' Judge Jesus, swing dat cha'yut
down en kyah me up ter Hebben! Rickey, yo' reck'n, arter all, Ah's
gwineter be er _black_ angel? Hesh-sh! Ah's driftin' away, Doctah, Ah's
driftin' away on de big wide ribber."
"Now you're asleep," declared the surgeon, and fell to with a flourish
of the gory blade.
The other reared herself. "Huh! How yo' reck'n Ah's gwineter be ersleep
wid yo' chunkin' me in de shoht-ribs wid dat ar stick? Ain' yo' done
cyarvin' me up yet?"
"Oh, nurse," wailed Rickey, turning the drama into a new channel, "I
can't wake Greenie up! She won't come out of the chloroform! She's
dying. Let's all sing and maybe it'll make it easier:
"'I went down to Jordan and what did I see,
Coming for to carry me home?
A band of angels waiting for me,
Coming for to carry me home!'"
The melody, however, was too much for the prospective corpse. She sat
up, shook the dead leaves from her hair and joined in, swaying her lean
body to and fro and clapping her yellow-lined hands together in an
ecstasy:
"'Sweeng low! Sweet Char-ee-yut!
Comin' fo' t'kyah me ho-o-o-ome.
Swee-eng low, swee-et Char-ee-yut!
Comin' fo' t'kyah me home!'"
The two were a strange contrast as they sang, the negro child swaying
with the emotionalism of her race and her voice dropping instinctively
to a soft alto accompaniment to the other's rigid soprano, and lending
itself to subtle half-tones and minor cadences.
A twig snapped under Valiant's foot. The singers faced about and saw
them. Both scrambled to their feet, the black girl to look at them with
a wide self-conscious grin. Rickey, tossing her short hair back from her
freckled face, came toward them.
"My goodness, Miss Shirley," she said, "we didn't see you at all." She
looked at Valiant. "Are you the man that's going to fix up Damory
Court?" she inquired, without any tedious formalities.
"Yes," said Valiant.
"Well," she said critically, "you've got your job cut out for you. But I
should say you're the kind to do it."
"Rickey!" Shirley's voice tried to be stern, but there was a hint of
laughter in it.
"What did I say now?" inquired Rickey. "I'm sure I meant it to be
complimentary."
"It was," said Valiant. "I shall try to deserve your good opinion."
"But what a ghastly play!" exclaimed Shirley. "Where did you learn it?"
"We were playing Mis' Poly Gifford in the hospital," Rickey answered.
"She's got a whole lot of little pebbles that they cut out--"
"Oh, Rickey!" expostulated Shirley with a shudder.
"They _did_. She keeps them in a little pasteboard box like
wedding-cake, with a blue ribbon around it. She was showing it to Miss
Mattie Sue yesterday. She was telling her all about it. She said all the
women there showed each other their cuts and bragged about how long they
were."
Valiant's merriment rang out under the trees, but Shirley was crimson.
"Well, I don't think it's a nice play," she said decidedly.
"That's just the way," murmured Rickey disconsolately, "yesterday it was
_Romeo and Juliet_ with the Meredith children, and their mother had a
conniption fit."
"Was that gruesome, too?"
"Not so very. I only poisoned Rosebud and June and stabbed myself. I
don't call _that_ gruesome."
"You certainly have a highly developed taste for the dramatic," said
Shirley. "I wonder what your next effort will be."
"It's to-morrow," Rickey informed her. "We're going to have the duel
between Valiant and Sassoon."
The smile was stricken from John Valiant's face. A duel--_the_
duel--between Valiant and Sassoon! He felt his blood beat quickly. Had
there been such a thing in his father's life? Was that what had blighted
it?
"Only not here where it really happened, but in the Meredith orchard.
Greenie's going to be--"
"Ah ain'!" contradicted Greenie. "Ah ain' gwineter be dat Valiant,
nohow!"
"You are, too!" insisted Rickey wrathfully. "You needn't be so pickety
and choosety--and after she kills Sassoon, we put the bloodhounds on her
trail."
Greenie tittered. "Dey ain' no dawg eroun' heah'd tech _me_," she said,
"en 'sides--"
"But, Rickey," Shirley interposed, "that wasn't a murder. That was a
duel between gentlemen. They don't--"
"I know it," assented Rickey cheerfully. "But it makes it more exciting.
_Will_ you come, Miss Shirley, deed and double? I won't charge you any
admission."
"I can't promise," said Shirley. "I might stand the duel, but I'm afraid
the hounds would be too blood-curdling. By the way," she added, "isn't
it about time Miss Mattie Sue had her tea?"
"It certainly is, Miss Shirley!" said Rickey, with penitent emphasis. "I
clean forgot it, and she'll row me up the gump-stump! Come on, Greenie,"
and she started off through the bushes.
But the other hung back. "Ah done tole yo' Ah ain' gwine be dat
Valiant," she said stubbornly.
"Look here, Greenville Female Seminary Simms," Rickey retorted, "don't
you multiply words with me just because your mammy was working there
when you were born and gave you a fancy name! If you'll promise to be
him, I'll get Miss Mattie Sue to let us make molasses candy."
CHAPTER XIX
UNDER THE HEMLOCKS
Shirley looked at Valiant with a deepening of her dimple. "Rickey isn't
an aristocrat," she said: "she's what we call here poor-white, but she's
got a heart of gold. She's an orphan, and the neighborhood in general,
and Miss Mattie Sue Mabry in particular, have adopted her."
He hardly heard her words for the painful wonder that was holding him.
He had canvassed many theories to explain his father's letter but such a
thing as a duel he had never remotely imagined. His father had taken a
man's life. Was it this thought--whatever the provocation, however
justified by the customs of the time and section--that had driven him to
self-exile? He recalled himself with an effort, for she was speaking
again.
"You've found Lovers' Leap, no doubt?"
"No. This is the first time I've been so far from the house. Is it near
here?"
"I'll show it to you." She held out her hand for the bunch of jessamine
and laid it on the broad roots of a tree that were mottled with lichen.
"Look there," she said suddenly; "isn't that a beauty?"
She was pointing to a jimson-weed on which had settled, with glassy
wings vibrating, a long, ungainly, needle-like insect with an odd
sword-like beak. "What is that?" he asked.
"A snake-doctor. If Unc' Jefferson were here he'd say, 'Bettah watch
out! Dah's er snek roun' erbout heah, sho'!' He'll fill you full of
darky superstitions."
He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm being introduced to them hourly. I've
met the graveyard rabbit--one of them had hoodooed my motor yesterday.
I'm to carry a buckeye in my pocket--by the way, is a buckeye a
horse-chestnut?--if I want to escape rheumatism. I've learned that it's
bad luck to make a bargain on a Friday, and the weepy consequences of
singing before breakfast." A blue-jay darted by them, to perch on a limb
and eye them saucily. "And the jay-bird! He goes to hell every Friday
noon to carry brimstone and tell the devil what folks have been up to."
She clapped her hands. "You're certainly learning fast. When I was
little I used to be delighted to see a blue-jay in the cedars on Friday
afternoon. It was a sign we'd been so good there was nothing to tell.
Follow me now and I'll show you the view from Lovers' Leap. But look
down. Don't lift your eyes till I tell you."
He dropped his gaze to the small brown boots and followed, his eyes
catching low side-glimpses of woodsy things--the spangled dance of
leaf-shadows, a chameleon lizard whisking through the roots of the
bracken, the creamy wavering wings of a white moth resting on a dead
stump. Suddenly the slim path between the trees took a quick turn, and
fell away at their feet. "There," she said. "This is the finest view at
Damory Court."
They stood on the edge of a stony ravine which widened at one end to a
shallow marshy valley. The rocks were covered with gray-green feathery
creepers, enwound with curly yellow tendrils of love-vine. Across the
ravine, on a lower level, began a grove of splendid trees that marched
up into the long stretch of neglected forest he had seen from the house.
Looking down the valley, fields of young tobacco lay tier on tier, and
beyond, in the very middle of the mellow vaporous distance, lifted the
tapering tower of a far-off church, hazily outlined against the azure.
"You love it?" he asked, without withdrawing his eyes.
"I've loved it all my life. I love everything about Damory Court. Ruined
as it is, it is still one of the most beautiful estates in all Virginia.
There's nothing finer even in Italy. Just behind us, where those
hemlocks stand, is where the duel the children spoke of was fought."
He turned his head. "Tell me about it," he said.
She glanced at him curiously. "Didn't you know? That was the reason the
place was abandoned. Valiant, who lived here, and the owner of another
plantation, who was named Sassoon, quarreled. They fought, the story is,
under those big hemlock trees. Sassoon was killed."
He looked out across the distance; he could not trust his face.
"And--Valiant?"
"He went away the same day and never came back; he lived in New York
till he died. He was the father of the Court's present owner. You never
heard the story?"
"No," he admitted. "I--till quite recently I never heard of Damory
Court."
"As a little girl," she went on, "I had a very vivid imagination, and
when I came here to play I used to imagine I could see them, Valiant so
handsome--his nickname was Beauty Valiant--and Sassoon. How awful to
come to such a lovely spot, just because of a young man's quarrel, and
to--to kill one's friend! I used to wonder if the sky was blue that day
and whether poor Sassoon looked up at it when he took his place; and
whom else he thought of that last moment."
"Had he parents?"
"No, neither of them had, I believe. But there might have been some one
else,--some one he cared for and who cared for him. That was the last
duel ever fought in Virginia. Dueling was a dreadful custom. I'm glad
it's gone. Aren't you?"
"Yes," he said slowly, "it was a thing that cut two ways. Perhaps
Valiant, if he could have had his choice afterward, would rather have
been lying there that morning than Sassoon."
"He must have suffered, too," she agreed, "or he wouldn't have exiled
himself as he did. I used to wonder if it was a love-quarrel--whether
they could have been in love with the same woman."
"But why should he go away?"
"I can't imagine, unless she had really loved the other man. If so, she
couldn't have borne seeing Valiant afterward." She paused with a little
laugh. "But then," she said, "it may have been nothing so romantic.
Perhaps they quarreled over cards or differed as to whose horse was the
better jumper. Valiant's grandfather, who was known as Devil-John, is
said to have called a man out because he rode past him on the wrong
side. Our ancestors in Virginia, I'm afraid, didn't stand on ceremony
when they felt uppish."
He did not smile. He was looking out once more over the luminous stretch
of fields, his side-face toward her. Curious and painful questions were
running through his brain. With an effort, he thrust these back and
recalled his attention to what she was saying.
"You wonder, I suppose, that we feel as we do toward these old estates,
and set store by them, and--yes, and brag of them insufferably as we do.
But it's in our blood. We love them as the English do their ancient
manors. They have made our legends and our history. And the history of
Virginia--"
She broke off with a shrug and, more himself now, he finished for her:
"--isn't exactly a trifling part of the history of these United States.
You are right."
"You Northerners think we are desperately conceited," she smiled, "but
it's true. We're still as proud of our land, and its old, old places,
and love them as well as our ancestors ever did. We wouldn't change a
line of their stately old pillars or a pebble of their darling homey
gardens. Do you wonder we resent their passing to people who don't care
for them in the Southern way?"
"But suppose the newcomers _do_ care for them?"
Her lips curled. "A young millionaire who has lived all his life in New
York, to care for Damory Court! A youth idiotically rich, brought up in
a superheated atmosphere of noise and money!"
He started uncontrollably. So that was what she thought! He felt himself
flushing. He had wondered what would be his impression of the
neighborhood and its people; their possible opinion of himself had never
occurred to him.
"Why," she went on, "he's never cared enough about the place even to
come and see it. For reasons of his own--good enough ones, perhaps,
according to the papers,--he finds himself tired of the city. I can
imagine him reflecting." With a mocking simulation of a brown-study, she
put her hand to her brow, pushing impatiently back the wayward luster:
"'Let me see. Don't I own an estate somewhere in the South? Ah-ha! yes.
If I remember, it's in Virginia. I'll send down and fix up the old
hovel.' Then he telephones for his architect to run down and see what
'improvements' it needs. And--here you are!"
He laughed shortly--a tribute to her mimicry--but it was a difficult
laugh. The desperately ennuyée pose, the lax drawl, the unaccustomed
mental effort and the sudden self-congratulatory "ah-ha!"--hitting off
to a hair the lackadaisical boredom of the haplessly rich young
boulevardier--this was the countryside's pen-picture of _him_!
"Don't you consider a longing for nature a wholesome sign?"
"Perhaps. The vagaries of the rich are always suggestive."
"You think there's no chance of his choosing to stay here because he
actually likes it?"
"Not the slightest," she said indifferently.
"You are so certain of this without ever having seen him?"
She glanced at him covertly, annoyedly sensible of the impropriety of
the discussion, since the man discussed was certainly his patron, maybe
his friend. But his insistence had roused a certain balky wilfulness
that would have its way. "It's true I've never seen him," she said, "but
I've read about him a hundred times in the Sunday supplements. He's a
regular feature of the high-roller section. His idea of a good time is a
dog-banquet at Sherry's. Why, a girl told me once that there was a
cigarette named after him--the Vanity Valiant!"
An angry glint slanted across his eyes. For some reason the silly story
on her lips stung him deeply. "You find the Sunday newspapers always so
dependable?"
"Well," she flashed, "you must know Mr. Valiant. _Is_ he a useful
citizen? What has he ever done except play polo and furnish spicy
paragraphs for the society columns?"
"Isn't that beside the point? Because he has been an idler, must he
necessarily be a--vandal?"
She laughed again. "_He_ wouldn't call it vandalism. He'd think it
decided improvement to make Damory Court as frantically different as
possible. I suppose he'll erect a glass cupola and a porte-cochère, all
up-to-date and varnishy, and put orchid hot-houses where the wilderness
garden was, and a modern marble cupid instead of the summer-house, and
lay out a kite-shaped track--"
Everything that was impulsive and explosive in John Valiant's nature
came out with a bang. "No!" he cried, "whatever else he is, he's not
such a preposterous ass as that!"
She faced him squarely now. Her eyes were sparkling. "Since you know him
so intimately and so highly approve of him--"
"No, no," he interrupted. "You mistake me. I shouldn't try to justify
him." His flush had risen to the roots of his brown hair, but he did not
lower his gaze. Now the red color slowly ebbed, leaving him pale. "He
_has_ been an idler--that's true enough--and till a week ago he was
'idiotically rich.' But his idling is over now. At this moment, except
for this one property, he is little better than a beggar."
She had taken a hasty step or two back from him, and her eyes were now
fixed on his with a dawning half-fearful question in them.
"Till the failure of the Valiant Corporation, he had never heard of
Damory Court, much less been aware that he owned it. It wasn't because
he loved it that he came here--no! How could it be? He had never set
foot in Virginia in his mortal life."
She put up her hands to her throat with a start. "Came?" she echoed.
"_Came!_"
"But if you think that even he could be so crassly stupid, so
monumentally blind to all that is really fine and beautiful--"
"Oh!" she cried with flashing comprehension. "Oh, how could you! You--"
He nodded curtly. "Yes," he said. "I am that haphazard harlequin, John
Valiant, himself."
CHAPTER XX
ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
There was a pause not to be reckoned by minutes but suffocatingly long.
She had grown as pale as he.
"That was ungenerous of you," she said then with icy slowness. "Though
no doubt you--found it entertaining. It must have still further amused
you to be taken for an architect?"
"I am flattered," he replied, with a trace of bitterness, "to have
suggested, even for a moment, so worthy a calling."
Though he spoke calmly enough, his thoughts were in ragged confusion. As
her gaze dived into his, he was conscious of outré fancies. She seemed
to him like some snow-cloud in woman's shape, edged with anger and swept
by a wrathful wind into this summery afternoon. For her part she was
telling herself with passionate resentment that he had no right so to
misrepresent himself--to lead her on to such a dénouement. At his answer
she put out her hand with a sudden gesture, as if bluntly thrusting the
matter from her concern, and turning, went back along the tree-shadowed
path.
He followed glumly, gnawing his lip, wanting to say he knew not what,
but wretchedly tongue-tied, noting that the great white moth was still
waving its creamy wings on the dead stump and wondering if she would
take the cape jessamines. He felt an embarrassed relief when, passing
the roots where they lay, she stooped to raise them.
Then all at once the blood seemed to shrink from his heart. With a
hoarse cry he leaped toward her, seized her wrist and roughly dragged
her back, feeling as he did so, a sharp fiery sting on his instep. The
next moment, with clenched teeth, he was viciously stamping his heel
again and again, driving into the soft earth a twisting root-like
something that slapped the brown wintered leaves into a hissing turmoil.
He had flung her from him with such violence that she had fallen
sidewise. Now she raised herself, kneeling in the feathery light, both
hands clasped close to her breast, trembling excessively with loathing
and feeling the dun earth-floor billow like a canvas sea in a theater.
Little puffs of dust from the protesting ground were wreathing about her
set face, and she pressed one hand against her shoulder to repress her
shivers.
"The horrible--horrible--thing!" she said whisperingly. "It would have
bitten me!"
He came toward her, panting, and grasping her hand, lifted her to her
feet. He staggered slightly as he did so, and she saw his lips twist
together oddly. "Ah," she gasped, "it bit you! It bit you!"
"No," he said, "I think not."
"Look! There on your ankle--that spot!"
"I did feel something, just that first moment." He laughed uncertainly.
"It's queer. My foot's gone fast asleep."
Every remnant of color left her face. She had known a negro child who
had died of a water-moccasin's bite some years before--the child of a
house-servant. It had been wading in the creek in the gorge. The doctor
had said then that if one of the other children....
She grasped his arm. "Sit down," she commanded, "here, on this log, and
see."
Her pale fright caught him. He obeyed, dragged off the low shoe and
bared the tingling spot. The firm white flesh was puffing up around two
tiny blue-rimmed punctures. He reached into his pocket, then remembered
that he had no knife. As a next best thing he knotted his handkerchief
quickly above the ankle, thrust a stick through the loop and twisted
it till the ligature cut deeply, while she knelt beside him, her lips
moving soundlessly, saying over and over to herself words like these: "I
must not be frightened. He doesn't realize the danger, but I do! I must
be quite collected. It is a mile to the doctor's. I might run to the
house and send Unc' Jefferson, but it would take too long. Besides, the
doctor might not be there. There is no one to do anything but me."
She crouched beside him, putting her hands by his on the stick and
wrenching it over with all her strength. "Tighter, tighter," she said.
"It must be tighter." But, to her dismay, at the last turn the
improvised cord snapped, and the released stick flew a dozen feet away.
Her heart leaped chokingly, then dropped into hammer-like thudding. He
leaned back on one arm, trying to laugh, but she noted that his breath
came shortly as if he had been running. "Absurd!" he said, frowning.
"How such--a fool thing--can hurt!"
Suddenly she threw herself on the ground and grasped his foot with both
her hands. He could see her face twitch with shuddering, and her eyes
dilating with some determined purpose.
"What are you going to do?"
"This," she said, and he felt her shrinking lips, warm and tremulous,
pressed hard against his instep.
He drew away sharply, with savage denial. "No--no! Not that! You shan't!
My lord--you shan't!" He dragged his numbing foot from her desperate
grasp, lifting himself, pushing her from him; but she fought with him,
clinging, panting broken sentences:
"You must! It's the only way. It was--a moccasin, and it's deadly. Every
minute counts!"
"I won't. No, stop! How do you know? It's not going to--here, listen!
Take your hands away. Listen!--_Listen!_ I can go to the house and send
Uncle Jefferson for the doctor and he--No! stop, I say! Oh--I'm sorry if
I hurt you. How strong you are!"
"Let me!"
"No! Your lips are not for that--good God, that damnable thing! You
yourself might be--"
"Let me! Oh, how cruel you are! It was my fault. But for me it would
never have--"
"No! I would rather--"
"_Let me!_ Oh, if you _died_!"
With all the force of her strong young body she wrenched away his
protestant hands. A thirst and a sickish feeling were upon him, a
curious irresponsible giddiness, and her hair which that struggle had
brought in tumbled masses about her shoulders, seemed to have little
flames running all over it. His foot had entirely lost its feeling.
There was a strange weakness in his limbs.
He felt it with a cool thriving surprise. Could it be death stealing
over him--really death, in this silly inglorious guise, from a miserable
crawling reptile? Death, when he had just begun a life that seemed so
worth living?
A sense of unreality came. He was asleep! The failure, the
investigation, Virginia--all was a dream. Presently he would wake in his
bachelor quarters to find his man setting out his coffee and grapefruit.
He settled back and closed his eyes.
Moments of half-consciousness, or consciousness jumbled with strange
imaginings, followed. At times he felt the pressure upon the wounded
foot, was sensible of the suction of the young mouth striving
desperately to draw the poison from the wound. From time to time he was
conscious of a white desperate face haloed with hair that was a mist of
woven sparkles. At times he thought himself a recumbent stone statue in
a wood, and her a great tall golden-headed flower lying broken at his
feet. Again he was a granite boulder and she a vine with yellow leaves
winding and clinging about him. Then a blank--a sense of movement and
of troublous disturbance, of insistent voices that called to him and
inquisitive hands that plucked at him, and then voices growing distant
again, and hands falling away, and at last--silence.
CHAPTER XXI
AFTER THE STORM
Inky clouds were gathering over the sunlight when Shirley came from
Damory Court, along the narrow wood-path under the hemlocks, and the way
was striped with blue-black shadows and filled with sighing noises. She
walked warily, halting often at some leafy rustle to catch a quick
breath of dread. As she approached the tree-roots where the cape
jessamines lay, she had to force her feet forward by sheer effort of
will. At a little distance from them she broke a stick and with it
managed to drag the bunch to her, turning her eyes with a shiver from
the trampled spot near by. She picked up the flowers, and treading with
caution, retraced her steps to the wider path.
She stepped into the Red Road at length in the teeth of a thunder-storm,
which had arisen almost without warning to break with the passionate
intensity of electric storms in the South. The green-golden fields were
now a gray seethe of rain and the farther peaks lifted like huge tumbled
masses of onyx against a sky stippled with wan yellow and vicious
violet. The wind leaped and roared and swished through the weeping
foliage, lashing the dull Pompeian-red puddles, swirling leaves and
twigs from the hedges and seeming to be intent on dragging her very
garments from her as she ran.
There was no shelter, but even had there been, she would not have
sought it. The turbulence of nature around her matched, in a way, her
overstrained feeling, and she welcomed the fierce bulge of the wind in
the up-blowing whorls of her hair and the drenching wetness of the rain.
At length, out of breath, she crouched down under a catalpa tree,
watching the fangs of lightning knot themselves against the baleful
gray-yellow dimness, making sudden flares of unbearable brightness
against which twigs etched themselves with the unrelieved sharpness of
black paper silhouettes.
She tried to fix her mind on near things, the bending grasses, the
scurrying red runnels and flapping shrubbery, but her thoughts wilfully
escaped the tether, turning again and again to the events of the last
two hours. She pictured Unc' Jefferson's eyes rolling up in ridiculous
alarm, his winnowing arm lashing his indignant mule in his flight for
the doctor.
At the mental picture she choked with hysterical laughter, then cringed
suddenly against the sopping bark. She saw again the doctor's gaze lift
from his first examination of the tiny punctures to send a swift
penetrant glance straight at her, before he bent his great body to
carry the unconscious man to the house. Again a fit of shuddering swept
over her. Then, all at once, tears came, strangling sobs that bent and
swayed her. It was the discharge of the Leyden jar, the loosing of the
tense bow-string, and it brought relief.
After a time she grew quieter. He would perhaps still be lying on the
couch in the dull-colored library, under the one-eyed portrait, his hair
waving crisply against the white blanket, his hands moving restlessly,
his lips muttering. Her imagination followed Aunt Daph shuffling to
fetch this and that, nagged by the doctor's sharp admonitions.
He would get well! The thought that perhaps she had saved his life gave
her a thrill that ran over her whole body. And until yesterday she had
never seen him! She kneeled in the blurred half-light, pushing her wet
hair back from her forehead and smiling up in the rain that still fell
fast.
In a few moments she rose and went on. The lightning came now at longer
and more irregular intervals and the thunder pealed less heavily. The
wan yellow murk was lifting. Here and there a soaked sun-beam peered
half-frightened through the racked mist-wreaths, as though to smell the
over-sweet fragrance of the wet jessamine in her arms.
At the gate of the Rosewood lane stood a mailbox on a cedar post and she
paused to fish out a draggled Richmond newspaper. As she thrust it
under her arm her eye caught a word of a head-line. With a flush she
tore it from its soggy wrapper, the wetted fiber parting in her eager
fingers, and resting her foot on the lower rail of the gate, spread it
open on her knee.
She stood stock-still until she had read the whole. It was the story of
John Valiant's sacrifice of his private fortune to save the ruin of the
involved Corporation.
Its effect upon her was a shock. She felt her throat swell as she read;
then she was chilled by the memory of what she had said to him: "What
has he ever done except play polo and furnish spicy paragraphs for the
society columns?"
"What a beast I was!" she said, addressing the wet hedge. "He had just
done that splendid thing. It was because of that that he was little
better than a beggar, and I said those horrible things!" Again she bent
her eyes, rereading the sentences: "_Took his detractors by surprise ...
had just sustained a grilling at the hands of the State's examiner which
might well have dried at their fount the springs of sympathy._"
She crushed up the paper in her hand and rested her forehead on the wet
rail. Idiotically rich--a vandal--a useless purse-proud _flâneur_. She
had called him all that! She could still see the paleness of his look as
she had said it.
Shirley, overexcited as she still was, felt the sobs returning. These,
however, did not last long and in a moment she found herself smiling
again. Though she had hurt him, she had saved him, too! When she
whispered this over to herself it still thrilled and startled her. She
folded the paper and hastened on under the cherry-trees.
Emmaline, the negro maid was waiting anxiously on the porch. She was
thin to spareness, with a face as brown as a tobacco leaf, restless
black eyes and wool neatly pinned and set off by an amber comb.
"Honey," called Emmaline, "I'se been feahin' fo' yo' wid all that
lightnin' r'arin' eroun'. Do yo' remembah when yo' useter run up en jump
plumb down in th' middle of yore feddah-baid en covah up dat little gol'
haid, en I useter tell yo' th' noise was th' Good Man rollin' eroun' his
rain-barr'l?" She laughed noiselessly, holding both hands to her thin
sides. "Yo' grow'd up now so yo' ain' skeered o' nothin' this side th'
Bad Place! Yo' got th' jess'mine? Give 'em to Em'line. She'll fix 'em
all nice, jes' how Mis' Judith like."
"All right, Emmaline," replied Shirley. "And I'll go and dress. Has
mother missed me?"
"No'm. She ain' lef' huh room this whole blessed day. Now yo' barth's
all ready--all 'cep'n th' hot watah, en I sen' Ranston with that th'
fus' thing. Yo' hurry en peel them wet close off yo'se'f, or yo' have
one o' them digested chills."
Her young mistress flown and the hot water despatched, the negro woman
spread a cloth on the floor and began to cut and dress the long stalks
of the flowers. This done she fetched bowls and vases, and set the
pearly-white clumps here and there--on the dining-room sideboard, the
hall mantel and the desk of the living-room--till the delicate fragrance
filled the house, quite vanquishing the rose-scent from the arbors.
When all was done, she stood in the doorway with arms akimbo, turning
about to survey her handiwork. "Mis' Judith be pleas' with that," she
said, nodding her woolly head with vigor. "Wondah why she want them
sprangly things! All th' res' o' th' time roses, but 'bout onct a yeah
seems like she jes' got to have them jess'mine en nothin' else."
She swept up the scattered twigs and leaves, and going into the
dining-room, began to lay the table for dinner. This room was square and
low, with a carved console and straight-backed chairs thinly cushioned
in faded blue to match the china. The olive-gray walls were brightened
with the soft dull gold of an old mirror and picture frames from which
dim faces looked placidly down. The crumbling splendor of the
storm-racked sunset fell through old-fashioned leaded window-panes,
tinging the white Capodimonte figures on the mantelpiece.
As the trim colored woman moved lightly about in the growing dusk, with
the low click of glass and muffled clash of silver, the light _tat-tat_
of a cane sounded, and she ran to the hall, where Mrs. Dandridge was
descending the stairway, one slim white hand holding the banister, under
the edge of a white silk shawl which drooped its heavy fringes to her
daintily-shod feet. On the lower step she halted, looking smilingly
about at the blossoming bowls.
"_Don'_ they smell up th' whole house?" said Emmaline. "I knowed yo' be
pleas', Mis' Judith. Now put yo' han' on mah shouldah en I'll take yo'
to yo' big cha'h."
They crossed the hall, the dusky form bending to the fragile pressure of
the fingers. "Now heah's yo' cha'h. Ranston he made up a little fiah
jes' to take th' damp out, en th' big lamp's lit, en Miss Shirley'll be
down right quick."
A moment later, in fact, Shirley descended the stair, in a filmy gown of
India-muslin, with a narrow belting of gold, against whose flowing
sleeves her bare arms showed with a flushed pinkness the hue of the pale
coral beads about her neck. The damp newspaper was in her hand.
At her step her mother turned her head: she was listening intently to
voices that came from the garden--a child's shrill treble opposing
Ranston's stentorian grumble.
"Listen, Shirley. What's that Rickey is telling Ranston?"
"Don' yo' come heah wid yo' no-count play-actin'. Cyan' fool Ranston wid
no sich snek-story, neidah. Ain' no moc'sin at Dam'ry Co'ot, en nebbah
_was_!"
"There was, too!" insisted Rickey. "One bit him and Miss Shirley found
him and sent Uncle Jefferson for Doctor Southall and it saved his life!
So there! Doctor Southall told Mrs. Mason. And he isn't a man who's just
come to fix it up, either; he's the really truly man that owns it!"
"Who on earth is that child talking about?"
Shirley put her arm around her mother and kissed her. Her heart was
beating quickly. "The owner has come to Damory Court. He--"
The small book Mrs. Dandridge held fell to the floor. "The owner! What
owner?"
"Mr. Valiant--Mr. John Valiant. The son of the man who abandoned it so
long ago." As she picked up the fallen volume and put it into her
mother's hands, Shirley was startled by the whiteness of her face.
"Dearest!" she cried. "You are ill. You shouldn't have come down."
"No. It's nothing. I've been shut up all day. Go and open the other
window."
Shirley threw it wide. "Can I get your salts?" she asked anxiously.
Her mother shook her head. "No," she said almost sharply. "There's
nothing whatever the matter with me. Only my nerves aren't what they
used to be, I suppose--and snakes always _did_ get on them. Now, give me
the gist of it first. I can wait for the rest. There's a tenant at
Damory Court. And his name's John--Valiant. And he was bitten by a
moccasin. When?"
"This afternoon."
Mrs. Dandridge's voice shook. "Will he--will he recover?"
"Oh, yes."
"Beyond any question?"
"The doctor says so."
"And you found him, Shirley--_you_?"
"I was there when it happened." She had crouched down on the rug in her
favorite posture, her coppery hair against her mother's knee, catching
strange reddish over-tones like molten metal, from the shaded lamp. Mrs.
Dandridge fingered her cane nervously. Then she dropped her hand on the
girl's head.
"Now," she said, "tell me _all_ about it."
CHAPTER XXII
THE ANNIVERSARY
The story was not a long one, though it omitted nothing: the morning
fox-hunt and the identification of the new arrival at Damory Court as
the owner of yesterday's stalled motor; the afternoon raid on the
jessamine, the conversation with John Valiant in the woods.
Mrs. Dandridge, gazing into the fire, listened without comment, but more
than once Shirley saw her hands clasp themselves together and thought,
too, that she seemed strangely pale. The swift and tragic sequel to that
meeting was the hardest to tell, and as she ended she put up her hand to
her shoulder, holding it hard. "It was horrible!" she said. Yet now she
did not shudder. Strangely enough, the sense of loathing which had been
surging over her at recurrent intervals ever since that hour in the
wood, had vanished utterly!
She read the newspaper article aloud and her mother listened with an
expression that puzzled her. When she finished, both were silent for a
moment, then she asked, "You must have known his father, dearest; didn't
you?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Dandridge after a pause. "I--knew his father."
Shirley said no more, and facing each other in the candle-glow, across
the spotless damask, they talked, as with common consent, of other
things. She thought she had never seen her mother more brilliant. An odd
excitement was flooding her cheek with red and she chatted and laughed
as she had not done for years. Even Ranston rolled his eyes in
appreciation, later confiding to Emmaline in the kitchen that "Mis'
Judith cert'n'y chipper ez er squ'rl dis evenin'. Reck'n she be breckin'
dat cane ovah some o' ouah haids yit! What yo' spos'n she say 'bout dem
aryplanes? She 'clah she tickle tuh deff ter ride in one--yas'm. Say et
soun' lak er thrash'n-machine en look lak er debble-fish but she don'
keer. When _she_ ride, she want tuh zip--yas she did! Dat's jes' whut
Mis' Judith say."
But after dinner the gaiety and effervescence faded quickly and Mrs.
Dandridge went early to her room. She mounted the stair with her arm
thrown about Shirley's pliant waist. At the window, where the balustrade
turned, she paused to peer into the night. The air outside was moist and
heavy with rose-scent.
"How alive they seem, Shirley," she said, "--the roses. But the
jessamine deserves its little hour." At her door she kissed her, looking
at her with a strange smile. "How curious," she said, as if to herself,
"that it should have happened, to-day!"
The reading-lamp had been lighted on her table. She drew a slim gold
chain from the bosom of her dress and held to the light a little
locket-brooch it carried. It was of black enamel, with a tiny
laurel-wreath of pearls on one side encircling a single diamond. The
other side was of crystal and covered a baby's russet-colored curl. In
her fingers it opened and disclosed a miniature at which she looked
closely for a moment.
As she snapped the halves shut, her eye fell on the open page of a book
that lay on the table in the circle of radiance. It was _Lucile_:
"Alas! who shall number the drops of the rain?
Or give to the dead leaves their greenness again?
Who shall seal up the caverns the earthquake hath rent?
Who shall bring forth the winds that within them are pent?
To a voice who shall render an image? or who
From the heats of the noontide shall gather the dew?"
Her eyes turned restlessly about the room. It had been hers as a girl,
for Rosewood had been the old Garland homestead. It seemed now all at
once to be full of calling memories of her youth. She looked again at
the page and turned the leaf:
"Hush! That which is done
I regret not. I breathe no reproaches. That's best
Which God sends. 'Twas His will; it is mine. And the rest
Of that riddle I will not look back to!"
She closed the book hastily and thrust it out of sight, beneath a
magazine.
* * * * *
"How strange that it should have been to-day!" It had been on Shirley's
lips to question, but the door had closed, and she went slowly
down-stairs. She sat a while thinking, but at length grew restless and
began to walk to and fro across the floor, her hands clasped behind her
head so that the cool air filled her flowing sleeves. In the hall she
could hear the leisurely kon-_kon_--kon-_kon_ of the tall clock. The
evening outside was exquisitely still and the metallic monotone was
threaded with the airy _fiddle-fiddle_ of crickets in the grass and
punctuated with the rain-glad _cloap_ of a frog.
Presently, with the mellow whirrings that accompany the movements of
such antiques, the ancient timepiece struck ten. At the sound she threw
a thin scarf over her shoulders and stole out to the porch. Its deep
odorous shadow was crossed by oblongs of lemon-colored light from the
windows. Before the kitchen door Ranston's voice was humming huskily:
"'Steal away; Steal away!
Steal away to Jesus.
Steal away! Steal away home--'"
accompanied by the soft alto of Aunt Judy the cook.
Shirley stepped lightly down to the wet grass. Looking back, she could
see her mother's lighted blind. All around the ground was splotched with
rose-petals, looking in the squares of light like bloody rain. Beyond
the margin of this brightness all was in darkness, for the moon was not
yet risen, and a light damp breeze passed in a slow rhythm as if the
earth were breathing moistly in its sleep. Somewhere far away sounded
the faint inquiring _woo-o-o_ of an owl and in the wet branches of a
walnut tree a pigeon moved murmurously.
She skimmed the lawn and ran a little way down the lane. A shuffling
sound presently fell on her ear.
"Is that you, Unc' Jefferson?" she called softly.
"Yas'm!" The footsteps came nearer. "Et's me, Miss Shirley." He tittered
noiselessly, and she could see his bent form vibrating in the gloom.
"Yo' reck'n Ah done fergit?"
"No, indeed. I knew you wouldn't do that. How is he?"
"He right much bettah," he replied in the same guarded tone. "Doctah he
say he be all right in er few days, on'y he gotter lay up er while. Dat
was er ugly nip he got f'om dat 'spisable rep_tyle_. Ah reck'n de
moc'sins is wuss'n dem ar Floridy yallargaters."
"Do you think there can be any others about the grounds?"
"No'm. Dey mos'ly keeps ter de ma'shlan' en on'y runs whah de
undah-bresh ez thick. I gwineter fix dat ter-morrow. Mars' Valiant he
tell me ter grub et all out en make er bon-fiah ob it."
"That's right, Unc' Jefferson. Good night, and thank you for coming."
She started back to the house, when his voice stopped her.
"Mis Shirley, yo' don' keer ef de ole man geddahs two er three ob dem
roses? Seems lak young mars' moughty fon' ob dem. He got one in er glass
but et's mos' daid now."
"Wait a minute," she said, and disappeared in the darkness, returning
quickly with a handful which she put in his grasp.
"There!" she whispered, and slipped back through the perfumed dark.
* * * * *
An hour later she stood in the cozy stillness of her bedroom. It was
hung in silvery blue with curtains of softly figured shadow-cloth having
a misty design of mauve and pink hydrangeas. A tilted mirror on the
draped dressing-table had a dark mahogany frame set in upright posts
carved in a heavy pattern of grape-leaves. Two candles in silver
candlesticks stood before it, their friendly light winking from the
fittings of the dark bed, from the polished surface of the desk in the
corner and from the old piece of brocade stretched above the mantel,
worked like shredded silver cobwebs.
She threw off her gown, slipped into a soft loose robe of maize-colored
silk and stood before the small glass. She pulled out the amber pins and
drew her wonderful hair on either side of her face, looking out at her
reflection like a mermaid from between the rippling waves of a
moon-golden sea. She gazed a long critical minute from eyes whose blue
seemed now almost black.
At last she turned, and seating herself at the desk, took from it a
diary. She scanned the pages at random, her eyes catching lines here and
there. "A good run to-day. Betty and Judge Chalmers and the Pendleton
boys. My fourth brush this season." A frown drew itself across her
brows, and she turned the page. "One of the hounds broke his leg, and I
gave him to Rickey." ... "Chilly Lusk to dinner to-day, after swimming
the Loring Rapid."
She bit her lip, turned abruptly to the new page and took up her pen.
"This morning a twelve mile run to Damory Court," she wrote. "This
afternoon went for cape jessamines." There she paused. The happenings
and sensations of that day would not be recorded. They were unwritable.
She laid down her pen and put her forehead on her clasped hands. How
empty and inane these entries seemed beside this rich and eventful
twenty-four hours just passed! What had she been doing a year ago
to-day? she wondered. The lower drawer of the desk held a number of
slim diaries like the one before her. She pulled it out, took up the
last-year's volume and opened it.
"Why," she said in surprise, "I got jessamine for mother this very same
day last year!" she pondered frowning, then reached for a third and a
fourth. From these she looked up, startled. That date in her mother's
calendar called for cape jessamines. What was the fourteenth of May to
her?
She bent a slow troubled gaze about her. The room had been hers as a
child. She seemed suddenly back in that childhood, with her mother
bending over her pillow and fondling her rebellious hair. When the wind
cried for loneliness out in the dark she had sung old songs to her that
had seemed to suit a windy night: _Mary of the Wild Moor_, and _I am
Dreaming Now of Hallie_. Sad songs! Even in those pinafore years Shirley
had vaguely realized that pain lay behind the brave gay mask. Was there
something--some event--that had caused that dull-colored life and
unfulfilment? And was to-day, perhaps, its anniversary?
Her thought darted to her father who had died before her birth, on whose
gray hair had been set the greenest laurels of the Civil War. She had
always been deeply proud of his military record--had never read his name
on a page of Confederate history without a new thrill. But she had never
thought of him and her mother as actors in a passionate love-romance.
Their portraits hung together in the living-room down-stairs: the grave
middle-aged man with graying hair, and the pale proud girl with the
strange shadow in the dark eyes. The canvases had been painted in the
year of her mother's marriage. The same sadness had been in her face
then. And their marriage and his death had both fallen in midwinter. No,
this May date was not connected with him!
"Dearest, dearest!" whispered Shirley, and a slow tear drew its shining
track down her cheek. "Is there something I've never known? Is there?"
CHAPTER XXIII
UNCLE JEFFERSON'S STORY
John Valiant sat propped up on the library couch, an open magazine
unheeded on his knee. The reading-stand beside him was a litter of
letters and papers. The bow-window was open and the honeysuckle breeze
blew about him, lifting his hair and ruffling the leaves of the papers.
In one corner, in a splotch of bright sunshine, lay the bulldog,
watching a strayed blue-bottle darting in panic hither and thither near
the ceiling.
Outside a colored maid--a new acquisition of Aunt Daphne's--named
Cassandra, black (in Doctor Southall's phrase) "as the inside of a cow,"
and dressed in a trim cotton-print "swing-clear," was sweeping the big
porch. Over the little cabin by the kitchens, morning-glories twirled
their young tendrils. Before its step stood a low shuck-bottom "rocker"
with a crimson dyed sheep-skin for upholstery, on which was curled a
brindle cat. Through its door Valiant could see a spool what-not, with
green pasteboard partitions, a chromo framed in pine-covers on the wall
and on a shelf a crêton-covered can full of bustling paper lighters. In
the garden three darkies were laboring, under the supervision of Uncle
Jefferson. The unsightly weeds and lichen were gone from the graveled
paths, and from the fountain pool, whose shaft now spouted a slender
spray shivered by the breeze into a million diamonds, which fell back
into the pool with a tintinabulant trickle and drip. The drunken wild
grape-vines now trailed with a pruned and sobered luxuriance and the
clamor of hammer and saw came from the direction of the lake, where a
carpenter refurbished the ruined summer-house.
The master of Damory Court closed the magazine with a sigh. "If I could
only do it all at once!" he muttered. "It takes such a confounded time.
Four days they've been working now, and they haven't done much more than
clean up." He laughed, and threw the magazine at the dog who dodged it
with injured alacrity. "After all, Chum," he remarked, "it's been thirty
years getting in this condition. I guess we're doing pretty well."
He picked up a plump package and weighed it in his hand. "There
are the seeds for the wilderness garden. Bachelor's-buttons and
love-lies-bleeding and Jacob's-ladder and touch-me-nots and
daffy-down-dillies and phlox and sweet-williams and love-in-a-mist
and four-o'clocks--not a blessed hot-house name among 'em, Chum! Don't
they sound homey and old-fashioned? The asters and dahlias and scarlet
geraniums are for nearer the house, and the pansies and petunias for
that sunny stretch down by the lake. Then there'll be sunflowers around
the kitchens and a trumpet-vine over the side of this porch."
He stretched luxuriously. "I'll take a hand at it myself to-morrow.
I'm as right as rain again now, thanks to Aunt Daph and the doctor.
Something of a crusty citizen, the doctor, but he's all to the good."
A heavy step came along the porch and Uncle Jefferson appeared with a
tray holding a covered dish with a plate of biscuit and a round jam-pot.
"Look here," said John Valiant, "I had my luncheon three hours ago. I'm
being stuffed like a milk-fed turkey."
The old man smiled widely. "Et's jes' er li'l snack er broth," he said.
"Reck'n et'll kinder float eroun' de yuddah things. Daph ain' got no use
fo' _tea_. She say she boun' ter mek yo' fit fo' ernuddah rassle wid dem
moc'sins. Dis' yeah pot's dat apple-buttah whut Miss Mattie Sue sen' yo'
by Rickey Snyder."
Valiant sniffed with satisfaction. "I'm getting so confoundedly
spoiled," he said, "that I'm tempted to stay sick and do nothing but
eat. By the way, Uncle Jefferson, where did Rickey come from? Does she
belong here?"
"No, suh. She come f'om Hell's-Half-Acre."
"What's that?"
"Dat's dat ornery passle o' folks yondah on de Dome," explained Uncle
Jefferson. "Dey's been dah long's Ah kin recommembah--jes' er ramshackle
lot o' shif'less po'-white trash whut git erlong anyways 't all. Ain'
nobody boddahs erbout dem 'less'n et's er guv'ment agint, fo' dey makes
dey own whisky, en dey drinks et, too."
"That's interesting," said Valiant. "So Rickey belonged there?"
"Yas, suh; nebbah'd a-come down heah 'cep'n fo' Miss Shirley. She de one
whut fotch de li'l gal outen dat place, en put huh wid Miss Mattie Sue,
three yeah ergo."
A sudden color came into John Valiant's cheeks. "Tell me about it." His
voice vibrated eagerly.
"Well, suh," continued Uncle Jefferson, "dey was one o' dem low-down
Hell's-Half-Acrers, name' Greef King, whut call hese'f de mayah ob de
Dome, en he went on de ram_page_ one day, en took ahtah his wife. She
was er po' sickly 'ooman, wid er li'l gal five yeah ol' by er fus'
husban'. He done beat huh heap o' times befo', but _dis_ time he boun'
ter finish huh. Ah reck'n he was too drunk fo' dat, en she got erway en
run down heah. Et was wintah time en dah's snow on de groun'. Dah's er
road f'om de Dome dat hits de Red Road clost' ter Rosewood--dat ar's
de Dandridge place--en she come dah. Reck'n she wuz er pitiful-lookin'
obstacle. 'Peahs lak she done put de li'l gal up in de cabin lof' en
hid de laddah, en she mos' crazy fo' feah Greef git huh. She lef' he
huntin' fo' de young 'un when she run erway. Dey was on'y Mis' Judith en
Miss Shirley en de gal Em'line at Rosewood, 'case Ranston de butlah en
de yuddahs gone ter disstracted meetin' down ter de Cullud Mefodis'
Chu'ch. Well, suh, dey wa'nt no time ter sen' fo' men. Whut yo' reck'n
Miss Shirley do? She ain' afeahd o' nuffin on dis yerf, en she on'y
sebenteen yeah ol' den, too. She don' tell Mis' Judith--no, _suh!_ She
run out ter de stable en saddle huh hoss, en she gallop up dat road ter
Hell's-Half-Acre lak er shot outen er shovel."
Valiant brought his hands together sharply. "Yes, yes," he said. "And
then?"
"When she come ter Greef King's cabin, he done foun' de laddah, en one
er he foots was on de rung. He had er ax in he han'. De po' li'l gal was
peepin' down thoo' de cracks o' de flo', en prayin' de bestes' she know
how. She say arterwuhds dat she reck'n de Good Lawd sen' er angel, fo'
Miss Shirley were all in white--she didn' stop ter change huh close. She
didn' say nuffin, Miss Shirley didn'. She on'y lay huh han' on Greef
King's ahm, en he look at huh face, en he drop he ax en go. Den she
clumb de laddah en fotch de chile down in huh ahms en take huh on de
hoss en come back. Dat de way et happen, suh."
"And Rickey was that little child!"
"Yas, suh, she sho' was. In de mawnin' er posse done ride up ter
Hell's-Half-Acre en take Greef King in. De majah he argyfy de case fo'
de State, en when he done git thoo', dey mos' put de tow eroun' King's
nek in de co'ot room. He done got th'ee yeah, en et mos' broke de
majah's ha'at dat dey couldn' give him no mo'. He wuz cert'n'y er bad
aig, dat Greef wuz. Dey say he done sw'ah he gwineter do up de majah
when he git out. De po' 'ooman she stay sick dah at Rosewood all wintah,
but she git no bettah moughty fas', en in de spring she up en die. Den
Miss Shirley she put li'l Rickey at Miss Mattie Sue's, en she pay fo'
huh keep eber sence outer huh own money. Dat whut she done, suh."
Such was the story which Uncle Jefferson told, standing in the doorway.
When his shuffling step had retreated, Valiant went to the table and
picked up a slim tooled volume that lay there. It was the _Lucile_ he
had found in the hall the night of his arrival. He opened it to a page
where, pressed and wrinkled but still retaining its bright red pigment,
lay what had been a rose.
He stood looking at it abstractedly, his nostrils widening to its
crushed spicy scent, then closed it and slipped it into his pocket.
CHAPTER XXIV
IN DEVIL-JOHN'S DAY
He was still sitting motionless when there came a knock at the door and
it opened to admit the gruff voice of Doctor Southall. A big form was
close behind him.
"Hello. Up, I see. I took the liberty of bringing Major Bristow."
The master of Damory Court came forward--limping the least trifle--and
shook hands.
"Glad to know you, sah," said the major. "Allow me to congratulate you;
it's not every one who gets bitten by one of those infernal moccasins
that lives to talk about it. You must be a pet of Providence, or else
you have a cast-iron constitution, sah."
Valiant waved his hand toward the man of medicine, who said, "I reckon
Miss Shirley was the Providence in the case. She had sense enough to
send for me quick and speed did it."
"Well, sah," the major said, "I reckon under the circumstances, your
first impressions of the section aren't anything for us to brag about."
"I'm delighted; it's hard for me to tell how much."
"Wait till you know the fool place," growled the doctor testily. "You'll
change your tune."
The major smiled genially. "Don't be taken in by the doctor's pessimism.
You'd have to get a yoke of three-year oxen to drag him out of this
state."
"It would take as many for me." Valiant laughed a little. "You who have
always lived here, can scarcely understand what I am feeling, I imagine.
You see, I never knew till quite recently--my childhood was largely
spent abroad, and I have no near relatives--that my father was a
Virginian and that my ancestors always lived here. To discover this all
at once and to come to this house, with their portraits on the walls and
their names on the title-pages of these books!" He made a gesture toward
the glass shelves. "Why, there's a room up-stairs with the very toys
they played with when they were children! To learn that I belong to it
all; that I myself am the last link in such a chain!"
"The ancestral instinct," said the doctor. "I'm glad to see that it
means something still, in these rotten days."
"Of course," John Valiant continued, "every one knows that he has
ancestors. But I'm beginning to see that what you call the ancestral
instinct needs a locality and a place. In a way it seems to me that an
old estate like this has a soul too--a sort of clan or family soul that
reacts on the descendant."
"Rather a Japanesy idea, isn't it?" observed the major. "But I know what
you mean. Maybe that's why old Virginian families hang on to their land
in spite of hell and high-water. They count their forebears real live
people, quite capable of turning over in their graves."
"Mine are beginning to seem very real to me. Though I don't even know
their Christian names yet, I can judge them by their handiwork. The men
who built Damory Court had a sense of beauty and of art."
"And their share of deviltry, too," put in the doctor.
"I suppose so," admitted his host. "At this distance I can bear even
that. But good or bad, I'm deeply thankful that they chose Virginia.
Since I've been laid up, I've been browsing in the library here--"
"A bit out of date now, I reckon," said the major, "but it used to pass
muster. Your grandfather was something of a book-worm. He wrote a
history of the family, didn't he?"
"Yes. I've found it. _The Valiants of Virginia._ I'm reading the
Revolutionary chapters now. It never seemed real before--it's been only
a slice of impersonal and rather dull history. But the book has made it
come alive. I'm having the thrill of the globe-trotter the first time he
sees the Tower of London or the field of Waterloo. I see more than that
stubble-field out yonder; I see a big wooden stockade with soldiers in
ragged buff and blue guarding it."
The major nodded, "Ah, yes," he said. "The Continental prison-camp."
"And just over the rise there I can see an old court-house, and the
Virginia Assembly boiling under the golden tongue-lashing of lean
raw-boned Patrick Henry. I see a messenger gallop up and see the members
scramble to their saddles--and then, Tarleton and his red-coats
streaming up, too late."
"Well," commented the doctor deliberately, "all I have to say is, don't
materialize too much to Mrs. Poly Gifford when you meet her. She'll have
you lecturing to the Ladies' Church Guild before you know it. She's
sailed herself out here already, I understand."
"She called the second day: my first visitor. I've subscribed to the
Guild."
The doctor chuckled. "Blame curiosity! That woman's housemaid-silly. She
can spin more street yarn than any ten in the county. Miss Mattie Sue's
been here, too, she told me. Ah, yes,"--looking quizzically at the
tray--"I recognize the apple-butter. A pot just like that goes to the
White House every Christmas there's a Democrat there. She reminds me of
a little drab-gray wren in horn-rimmed spectacles."
"She's perfectly dear!" said Valiant, "from her hoops to the calycanthus
bud tied in the corner of her handkerchief. She must be very old. She
told me she remembered seeing Jefferson at Monticello."
"She's growing younger," the doctor said. "Sixteen or seventeen years
ago she was very feeble and the Ladies' Guild agreed to support her for
life on consideration that she will her house and lot to the church,
next door. Mrs. Poly Gifford refers to her now, I believe, as a
dispensation of Providence. Did she bring the apple-butter herself?"
"No," smiled John Valiant. "She sent it afterward by Miss Rickey
Snyder."
The major stroked his imperial. "Rickey's an institution," he said. "I
hope she gave us all good characters. I'd hate to have Rickey Snyder
down on me! Have you heard her history?"
"Yes, Uncle Jefferson told me."
"I'm glad of that," shot out the doctor. "Now, we needn't have it from
Bristow. He's as fond of oratory as a maltese cat is of milk."
"He gave me a hint of the major's powers in that direction, in his
account of Greef King's trial."
"Humph!" retorted the doctor gloomily, "that was in his palmy days.
He's fallen off since then. Plenty of others been here to bore you,
I reckon, though of course you don't remember all the names yet."
Valiant summoned Uncle Jefferson.
"Yas, suh," grinned the old darky pridefully, "de folkses mos' lam de
face off'n dat-ar ol' knockah. Day 'fo' yistiddy dah wuz Mars' Quarles
en Jedge en Mis' Chalmahs. De jedge done sen' er streng o' silvah
perch."
"His place is Gladden Hall," the major said, "one of the finest mansions
round here. A sportsman, sah, and one of the best pokah hands in the
county."
"--En yistiddy dah's Mars' Chilly Lusk en de Pen'letons en de Byloes en
Mars' Livy Stowe f'om Seven Oaks, en de Woodrows en--"
"That'll do," said the major. "I'll just run over the tax-list; it'll be
quicker. There are kindly people here, sah," he went on, "but after all,
it's a narrow circle. We have our little pleasures and courtships and
scandals and we are satisfied with them. We're not gadabouts. Our girls
haven't all flirted around Europe and they don't talk of the Pincio and
the Champs Elysées as if they were Capitol Hill and Madison Street in
Richmond. But if I may say so, sah, I think in Virginia we get a little
closer to life as God Almighty intended it than people in some of your
big cities."
"Come, Bristow," interrupted the doctor, "tell the truth. This dog-gone
borough is as dull as a mud fence sticking with tadpoles. There isn't a
man in it with a soul above horse-flesh."
The doctor's shafts to-day, however, glanced off the major's buckler of
geniality like the Lilliputian arrows from Gulliver's eye-glass. "I hope
you ride, Mr. Valiant?" the latter asked genially.
"I'm fond of it," said Valiant, "but I have no horse as yet."
"I was thinking," pursued the major, "of the coming tournament."
"Tournament?"
The doctor cut in. "A ridiculous cock-a-doodle-do which gives the young
bucks a chance to rig out in silly toggery and prance their colts before
a lot of petticoats!"
"It's an annual affair," explained the major; "a kind of spectacle.
For many years, by the way, it has been held on a part of this
estate--perhaps you will have no objection to its use this season?--and
at night there is a dance at the Country Club. By the way, you must let
me introduce you there to-morrow. I've taken the liberty already of
putting your name up."
"Good lord!" growled the doctor, aside. "He counts himself _young_! If
I'd reached your age, Bristow--"
"You have," said the major, nettled. "Four years ago!--As I was saying,
Mr. Valiant, they ride for a prize. It's a very ancient thing--I've
seen references to it in a colonial manuscript in the Byrd Library at
Westover. No doubt it's come down directly from the old jousts."
"You don't mean to say," cried his hearer in genuine astonishment, "that
Virginia has a lineal descendant of the tourney?"
The major nodded. "Yes. Certain sections of Kentucky used to have it,
too, but it has died out there. It exists now only in this state. It's a
curious thing that the old knightly meetings of the middle ages should
survive to-day only on American soil and in a corner of Virginia."
Doctor Southall, meanwhile, had set his gaze on the litter of pamphlets.
He turned with an appreciative eye. "You're beginning in earnest. The
Agricultural Department. And the Congressional frank."
"I've gone to the fountainhead," said Valiant. "I'm trying to find out
possibilities. I've sent samples of the soil. It's lain fallow so long
it has occurred to me it may need special treatment."
The major pulled his mustache meditatively. "Not a bad idea," he said.
"He's starting right--eh, Southall? You're bringing the view-point of
practical science to bear on the problem, Mr. Valiant."
"I'm afraid I'm a sad sketch as a scientist," laughed the other.
"My point of view has to be a somewhat practical one. I must be
self-supporting. Damory Court is a big estate. It has grain lands and
forest as well. If my ancestors lived from it, I can. It's not only
that," he went on more slowly, "I want to make the most of the place for
its own sake, too. Not only of its possibilities for earning, but of its
natural beauties. I lack the resources I once had, but I can give it
thought and work, and if they can bring Damory Court back to anything
even remotely resembling what it once was, I'll not spare either."
The major smote his knee and even the doctor's face showed a grim, if
transient approval. "I believe you'll do it!" exclaimed the former. "And
let me say, sah, that the neighborhood is not unaware of the splendid
generosity which is responsible for the present lack of which you
speak."
Valiant put out his hand with a little gesture of deprecation, but the
other disregarded it. "Confound it, sah, it was to be expected of a
Valiant. Your ancestors wrote their names in capital letters over this
county. They were an up and down lot, but good or bad (and, as Southall
says, I reckon"--he nodded toward the great portrait above the
couch--"they weren't all little woolly lambs) they did big things in a
big way."
Valiant leaned forward eagerly, a question on his lips. But at the
moment a diversion occurred in the shape of Uncle Jefferson, who
reentered, bearing a tray on which sat sundry jugs and clinking
glasses, glowing with white and green and gold.
"You old humbug," said the doctor, "don't you know the major's that
poisoned with mint-juleps already that he can't get up before eight in
the morning?"
"Well, suh," tittered Uncle Jefferson, "Ah done foun' er mint-baid down
below de kitchens dis mawnin'. Yo'-all gemmun' 'bout de bigges' expuhts
in dis yeah county, en Ah reck'n Mars' Valiant sho' 'sist on yo'
samplin' et."
"Sah," said the major feelingly, turning to his host, "I'm proud to
drink your health in the typical beverage of Virginia!" He touched
glasses with Valiant and glared at the doctor, who was sipping his own
thoughtfully. "In my travels," he said, "I have become acquainted with a
drink called pousse-café, which contains all the colors of the rainbow.
But for chaste beauty, sah, give me this. No garish combination, you
will observe. A frosted goblet, golden at the bottom as an autumn
corn-ear, shading into emerald and then into snow. On top a white rim of
icebergs with the mint sprigs like fairy pine-trees. Poems have been
written on the julep, sah."
"They make good epitaphs, too," observed the doctor.
"I notice your glass isn't going begging," the major retorted. "Unc'
Jefferson, that's as good mint as grew in the gyarden of Eden. See that
those lazy niggers of yours don't grub the patch out by mistake."
"Yas, _suh_," said Uncle Jefferson, as he retired with the tray. "Ah
gwineter put er fence eroun' dat ar baid 'fo' sundown."
The question that had sprung to Valiant's lips now found utterance. "I
saw you look at the portrait there," he said to the major. "Which of my
ancestors is it?"
The other got up and stood before the mantelpiece in a Napoleonic
attitude. "That," he said, fixing his eye-glasses, "is your
great-grandfather, Devil-John Valiant."
"Devil-John!" echoed his host. "Yes, I've heard the name."
The doctor guffawed. "He earned it, I reckon. I never realized what a
sinister expression that missing optic gives the old ruffian. There was
a skirmish during the war on the hillside yonder and a bullet cut it
out. When we were boys we used to call him 'Old One-Eye.'"
"It interests me enormously." John Valiant spoke explosively.
"The stories of Devil-John would fill a mighty big book," said the
major. "By all accounts he ought to have lived in the middle ages."
Crossing the library, he looked into the dining-room. "I thought I
remembered. The portrait over the console there is his wife, your
great-grandmother. She was a wonderful swimmer, by the way," he went on,
returning to his seat. "It was said she had swum across the Potomac in
her hunting togs. When Devil-John heard of the feat, he swore he would
marry her and he did. It was a love-match, no doubt, on her side; he
must have been one to take with women. Even in those days, when men
still lived picturesquely and weren't all cut to the same pattern, he
must have been unique. There was something satanically splendid and
savage about him. My great-uncle used to say he stood six feet two, and
walked like an emperor on a love-spree. He was a man of sky-high rages,
with fingers that could bend a gold coin double.
"They say he bet that when he brought his bride home, she should walk
into Damory Court between rows of candlesticks worth twenty-thousand
dollars. He made the wager good, too, for when she came up those steps
out there, there was a row of ten candles burning on either side of the
doorway, each held by a young slave worth a thousand dollars in the
market. The whole state talked of the wedding and for a time Damory
Court was ablaze with tea-parties and dances. That was in the old days
of coaching and red-heeled slippers, when Virginia planters lived like
viceroys and money was only to throw to the birds. They were fast livers
and hard drinkers, and their passions ran away with them. Devil-John's
knew neither saddle nor bridle. Some say he grew jealous of his wife's
beauty. There were any number of stories told of his cruelties to her
that aren't worth repeating. She died early--poor lady--and your
grandfather was the only issue. Devil-John himself lived to be past
seventy, and at that age, when most men were stacking their sins and
groaning with the gout, he was dicing and fox-hunting with the youngest
of them. He always swore he would die with his boots on, and they say
when the doctor told him he had only a few hours leeway, he made his
slaves dress him completely and prop him on his horse. They galloped out
so, a negro on either side of him. It was a stormy night, black as the
Earl of Hell's riding-boots, with wind and lightning, and he rode
cursing at both. There's an old black-gum tree a mile from here that
they still call Devil-John's tree. They were just passing under it when
the lightning struck it. Lightning has no effect on the black-gum, you
know. The bolt glanced from the tree and struck him between the two
slaves without harming either of them. It killed his horse, too. That's
the story. To be sure at this date nobody can separate fact from
fiction. Possibly he wasn't so much worse than the rest of his
neighbors--not excepting even the parsons. 'Other times, other
manners.'"
"They weren't any worse than the present generation," said the doctor
malevolently. "Your four bottle men then knew only claret: now they
punish whisky-straight. They still trice up their gouty legs to take
after harmless foxes. And I dare say the women will be wearing
red-heeled slippers again next year."
The major buried his nose in his julep for a long moment before he
looked at the doctor blandly. "I agree with you, Bristow," he said;
"but it's the first time I ever heard you admit that much good of
your ancestors."
"Good!" said the doctor belligerently. "Me? I don't! I said people
now were no better. As for the men of that time, they were a cheap
swaggering lot of bullies and swash-bucklers. When I read history I'm
ashamed to be descended from them."
"I desire to inform you, sah," said the major, stung, "that I too am a
descendant of those bullies and swash-bucklers, as you call them. And I
wish from my heart I thought we, nowadays, could hold a tallow-dip to
them. Whatever their habits, they had their ideals, and they lived up to
them."
"You refer, no doubt," said the doctor with sarcasm, "to our friend
Devil-John and his ideal treatment of his wife!"
"No, sah," replied the major warmly. "I'm _not_ referring to Devil-John.
There were exceptions, no doubt, but for the most part they treated
their women folk as I believe their Maker made them to be treated! The
man who failed in his courtesy there, sah, was called to account for it.
He was mighty apt to find himself standing in the cool dawn at the
butt-end of a--"
He broke off and coughed. There was an awkward pause in which he set
down his glass noisily and rose and stood before the open bookcase. "I
envy you this, sah," he said with somewhat of haste. "A fine old
collection. Bless my soul, what a curious volume!"
As he spoke, his hand jerked out a heavy-looking leather-back. Valiant,
who had risen and stood beside him, saw instantly that what he had drawn
from the shelf was the morocco case that held the rusted dueling-pistol!
In the major's hands the broken box opened. A sudden startled look
darted across his leonine face. With a smothered exclamation he thrust
it back between the books and closed the glass door.
Valiant had paled. His previous finding of the weapon had escaped his
mind. Now he read, as clearly as if it had been printed in black-letter
across the sunny wall, the significance of the major's confusion. That
weapon had been in his father's hand when he had faced his opponent in
that fatal duel! It flashed across his mind as the doctor lunged for his
hat and stick and got to his feet.
"Come, Bristow," said the latter irritably. "Your feet will grow fast to
the floor presently. We mustn't talk a new neighbor to death. I've got
to see a patient at six."
CHAPTER XXV
JOHN VALIANT ASKS A QUESTION
Valiant went with them to the outer door. A painful thought was flooding
his mind. It hampered his speech and it was only by a violent effort
that he found voice:
"One moment! There is a question I would like to ask."
Both gentlemen had turned upon the steps and as they faced him he
thought a swift glance passed between them. They waited courteously, the
doctor with his habitual frown, the major's hand fumbling for the black
ribbon on his waistcoat.
"Since I came here, I have heard"--his tone was uneven--"of a duel in
which my father was a principal. There was such a meeting?"
"There was," said the doctor after the slightest pause of surprise. "Had
you known nothing of it?"
"Absolutely nothing."
The major cleared his throat. "It was something he might naturally not
have made a record of," he said. "The two had been friends, and it--it
was a fatal encounter for the other. The doctor and I were your father's
seconds."
There was a moment's silence before Valiant spoke again. When he did his
voice was steady, though drops had sprung to his forehead. "Was there
any circumstance in that meeting that might be construed as reflecting
on his--honor?"
"Good God, no!" said the major explosively.
"On his bearing as a gentleman?"
There was a hiatus this time in which he could hear his heart beat. In
that single exclamation the major seemed to have exhausted his
vocabulary. He was looking at the ground. It was the doctor who spoke at
last, in a silence that to the man in the doorway weighed like a hundred
atmospheres.
"No!" he said bluntly. "Certainly not. What put that into your head?"
When he was alone in the library Valiant opened the glass door and took
from the shelf the morocco case. The old shiver of repugnance ran over
him at the very touch of the leather. In the farthest corner was a low
commode. He set the case on this and moved the big tapestry screen
across the angle, hiding it from view.
* * * * *
The major and the doctor walked in silence till they had left Damory
Court far behind them. Then the doctor observed caustically, "Nice
graceful little act of yours, yanking that infernal pistol out before
his face like that!"
"How in Sam Hill could I guess?" the other retorted. "It's long enough
since I saw that old case. I--I brought it there myself, Southall--that
very morning, immediately after the meeting. To think of its lying there
untouched in that empty room all these years!"
There was another silence. "How straight he put the question to us!
Right out from the shoulder, for all the world like his father. Well,
you said the right thing. There are times when a gentleman simply _has_
to lie like one."
The doctor shut his teeth with a snap, as though he had caught a rabbit.
"Look here, Bristow," he said hotly, "I've never cared a hang what your
opinions of Valiant were after that duel. I'll keep my own."
"Oh, all right," rejoined the major. "But let's be honest with
ourselves. If you could split a silver dollar nine times out of ten at
fifteen paces, would you exchange shots with a man who was beside
himself with liquor?"
"If Valiant was a dead shot, the better for him," said the doctor
grimly. "If Sassoon was drunk, so much the worse for Sassoon. His
condition was the affair of his seconds. Valiant was no more responsible
for it than for the quarrel. Neither was of his making. Just because a
man is a crack shot and stays sober, is he to bear any insult--stand up
to be shot at into the bargain--and take no hand in the game himself?
Answer me that?"
"It didn't touch his honor, of course," replied the major. "We could all
agree on that. He was within his rights. But it wasn't like a Valiant."
They were at the parting now and the major held out his hand. "Oh,
well," he said, "it's long enough ago, and there's nothing against his
son. I like the young chap, Southall. He's his father all over again,
eh?"
"When I first saw him," said the doctor huskily, "I thought I had slid
back thirty years and that our old Beauty Valiant was lying there before
me. I loved him, Bristow, and somehow--whatever happened that day at the
Hemlocks--it couldn't make a damned bit of difference to me!"
CHAPTER XXVI
THE CALL OF THE ROSES
In the great hall at Damory Court the candles in their brass
wall-sconces blinked back from the polished parquetry and the shining
fire-dogs, filling the rather solemn gloom with an air of warmth and
creature-comfort.
Leaning against the newel-post, Valiant gazed about him. How different
it all looked from the night of his coming!
It occurred to him with a kind of wonder that a fortnight ago he had
never known this house existed. Then he had conceived the old hectic
life the only one worth knowing, the be-all and end-all of modern
felicity. It was as if a single stroke had cut his life in two parts
which had instantly recoiled as far asunder as the poles. Strangely,
the new seemed more familiar than the old; there had been moments
when he remembered the past almost as in the placid day one recalls a
thriving dream of the night before, which, itself unreal, has left an
overpowering impression behind it. Little fragments of the old nightly
mosaic--the bitt-music across the dulled glisten of pounded asphalt,
the featherbone girl flaring high in air in electric rain, a pointed
clock-tower spiking the upper night-gloom, the faint halitus of musk
from a downy theater-wrap--fluttered about him. But all seemed far away,
hackneyed, shop-worn, as banal as the scenery of an opera.
He began to walk up and down the floor, teasing pricks of restlessness
urging him. He opened the door and passed into the unlighted
dining-room. On the sideboard sat a silver loving-cup that had arrived
the day before in a huge box with his books and knick-knacks. He had won
it at polo. He lifted it, fingering its carved handles. He remembered
that when that particular score had been made, Katharine Fargo had sat
in one of the drags at the side-line.
But the memory evoked no thrill. Instead, the thought of her
palely-cold, passionless beauty called up another mobile thoroughbred
face instinct with quick flashings of mirth and hauteur. Again he felt
the fierce clutch of small fingers, as they fought with his in that
struggle for his life. Each line of that face stood before him--the
arching brows, the cameo-delicacy of profile, the magnolia skin and hair
like a brown-gold cloud across the sun.
A soft clicking patter trailed itself over the polished floor and the
bulldog's nose was thrust between his knees. He bent down and fondled
the satiny head to still the sudden surge of loneliness that had
overflowed his heart--an ache for he knew not what. A depression was on
him, he knew not why--something that had a keen edge of longing like
physical hunger.
He set back the loving-cup and went out to the front porch to prowl
aimlessly up and down past the great gray-stained Ionic columns. It was
not late, but the night was very still. The Virginia creeper waved
gently to and fro in a soundless breeze that was little more than a
whisper. The sky was heavily sprinkled with stars whose wan clustering
was blotted here and there by floating shreds of cloud, like vaporous,
filmy leaves stripped by some upper gale from the Tree of Heaven. The
lawn lay a mass of mysterious shadow, stirring with faint chirps and
rustles and laden with the poignant scent of the garden honeysuckle. He
could hear the howl of a lonesome hound, a horse neighed impatiently on
a distant meadow, and from far down the Red Road, beyond the gate, came
the rude twitter of a banjo and the voice of the strolling darky player:
"All Ah wants in dis creation--
Pretty yellah gal, en er big plantation!"
When the twangling notes died away in the distance they had served only
to intensify the stillness. He felt that peculiar detachedness that one
senses in thick black dark, as though he and his immediate surroundings
were floating in some soundless, ambient ether. The white bulldog
scurried noiselessly back and forth across the clipped grass, now
emerging like a canine ghost in the light from the doorway, now
suffering total eclipse. Staring into the furry gloom, he seemed, as in
those moments of semi-delirium in the forest, to see Shirley's face
advance and retreat as though it lay on the very pulsing heart of the
darkness.
He stepped down to the graveled drive and followed it to the gate, then,
bareheaded, took the Red Road. Along this highway he had rattled in
Uncle Jefferson's crazy hack--with her red rose in his hand. The musky
scent of the pressed leaves in the book in his pocket seemed to be all
about him.
The odor of living roses, in fact, was in the air. It came on the
scarce-felt breeze, a heavy calling perfume. He walked on, keeping the
road by the misty infiltrating shimmer of the stars, with a sensation
rather of gliding than of walking. Now and then from some pasture came
the snort and whinny of horses or the grunt of a frog from a marshy
sink, and once, where a narrow path joined the road, he felt against his
trousers the sniffing nose of a silent and friendly puppy. It occurred
to him that if, as scientists say, colors emit sound-tones, scents
also should possess a music of their own: the honeysuckle fragrance,
maybe--soft mellow fluting as of diminutive wind-instruments; the
far-faint sickly odor of lilies--the upper register of faery violins;
this spicy breath of roses--blending, throbbing chords like elfin echoes
of an Italian harp. The fancy pleased him; he could imagine the perfume
now in the air carried with it an under-music, like a ghostly harping.
It came to him at the same instant that this was no mere fancy.
Somewhere in the languorous night a harp was being played. He paused and
listened intently, then went on toward the sound. Presently he became
aware that he had passed it, had left it on one side, and he went back,
stumbling along the low stone wall till it opened to a shadowy lane,
full of foliaged whispers. The rose scent had grown stronger; it was
almost, in that heavy air, as if he were breasting an etherial sea of
attar. He felt as if he were treading on a path of rose-leaves, down
which the increasing melody flowed crimsonly to him, calling, calling.
He stopped stock-still. He had been skirting a close-cropped hedge of
box. This had ended abruptly and he was looking straight up a bar of
green-yellow radiance from a double doorway. The latter opened on a
porch and the light, flung across this, drenched an arbor of climbing
roses, making it stand out a mass of woven rubies set in emerald.
He drew a long sigh of more than delight, for framed in the doorway he
saw a figure in misty white, leaning to the gilded upright of a harp. He
knew at once that it was Shirley. Holding his breath, he came closer,
his feet muffled in the thick grass. She wore a gown of some gauze-like
material sprinkled with knots of embroidery and with her lifted face and
filmy aureole of hair, she looked like a tall golden candle. He stood
in the dense obscurity, one hand gripping the gnarled limb of a catalpa,
his eyes following the shapely arms from wrist to shoulder, the
fingers straying across the strings, the bending cheek caressing
the carved wood. She was playing the melody of Shelley's _Indian
Serenade_--touching the chords softly and tenderly--and his lips
moved, molding themselves soundlessly to the words:
"I arise from dreams of thee,
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright;
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me--who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!"
The serenade died in a single long note. As if in answer to it there
rose a flood of bird-music from beyond the arbor--jets of song that
swelled and rippled to a soaring melody. She heard it, too, for the
gracile fingers fell from the strings. She listened a moment, with head
held to one side, then sprang up and came through the door and down the
steps.
He hesitated a moment, then a single stride took him from the shadow.
CHAPTER XXVII
BEYOND THE BOX-HEDGE
As he greeted her, his gaze plunged deep into hers. She had recoiled
a step, startled, to recognize him almost instantly. He noted the
shrinking and thought it due to a stabbing memory of that forest-horror.
His first words were prosaic enough:
"I'm an unconscionable trespasser," he said. "It must seem awfully
prowly, but I didn't realize I was on private property till I passed the
hedge there."
As her hand lay in his, a strange fancy stirred in him: in that
wood-meeting she had seemed something witch-like, the wilful spirit of
the passionate spring herself, mixed of her aerial essences and jungle
wildernesses; in this scented dim-lit close she was grave-eyed, subdued,
a paler pensive woman of under half-guessed sadnesses and haunting
moods. With her answer, however, this gravity seemed to slip from her
like a garment. She laughed lightly.
"I love to prowl myself. I think sometimes I like the night better than
the day. I believe in one of my incarnations I must have been a
panther."
"Do you know," he said, "I followed the scent of those roses? I smelled
it at Damory Court."
"It goes for miles when the air is heavy as it is to-night. How terrible
it would be if roses were intoxicating like poppies! I get almost tipsy
with the odor sometimes, like a cat with catnip."
They both laughed. "I'm growing superstitious about flowers," he said.
"You know a rose figured in our first meeting. And in our last--"
She shrank momentarily. "The cape jessamines! I shall always think of
_that_ when I see them!"
"Ah, forgive me!" he begged. "But when I remember what you did--for me!
Oh, I know! But for you, I must have died."
"But for me you wouldn't have been bitten. But don't let's talk of it."
She shivered suddenly.
"You are cold," he said. "Isn't that gown too thin for this night air?"
"No, I often walk here till quite late. Listen!"
The bird song had broken forth again, to be answered this time by a
rival's in a distant thicket. "My nightingale is in good voice."
"I never heard a nightingale before I came to Virginia. I wonder why it
sings only at night."
"What an odd idea! Why, it sings in the day-time, too."
"Really? But I suppose it escapes notice in the general chorus. Is it a
large bird?"
"No; smaller than a thrush. Only a little bigger than a robin. Its nest
is over there in that hedge--a tiny loose cup of dried oak-leaves, lined
with hair, and the eggs are olive color. How pretty the hedge looks now,
all tangled with firefly sparks!"
"Doesn't it! Uncle Jefferson calls them 'lightning-bugs.'"
"The name is much more picturesque. But all the darky sayings are. I
heard him telling our butler once, of something, that 'when de debble
heah dat, he gwine sen' fo' he smellin'-salts.' Who else would ever have
put it that way? Do you find him and Aunt Daph useful?"
"He has been a godsend," he said fervently; "and her cooking has taught
me to treat her with passionate respect. As Uncle Jefferson says she
can 'put de big pot in de li'l one en mek soup outer de laigs.' He's
teaching me now about flowers--it's surprising how many kinds he knows.
He's a walking herbarium."
"Come and see mine," she said. "Roses are our specialty--we have to live
up to the Rosewood name. But beyond the arbors, are beds and beds of
other flowers. See--by this big tree are speedwell and delphinium. The
tree is a black-walnut. It's a dreadful thing to have one as big as
that. When you want something that costs a lot of money you go and look
at it and wonder which you want most, that particular luxury or the
tree. I know a girl who had two in her yard only a little bigger than
this, and she went to Europe on them. But so far I've always voted for
the tree."
"Perhaps you've not been sufficiently tempted."
"Maybe," she assented, and in a bar of light from a window, stooped over
a glimmering patch to pull him a sprig of bluebells. "The wildings are
hard to find," she said, "so I grow a few here. What ghostly tintings
they show in this half-light! My corn-flowers aren't in bloom yet. Here
are wild violets. They are the single ones, you know, the kind two
children play cock-fighting with." She picked two of the blossoms and
hooked their heads together. "See, both pull till one rooster's head
drops off." She bent again and passed her hand lovingly over a mass of
starry blooms. "And here are some bluet, the violet roosters' little
pale-blue hens. How does _your_ garden come on?"
"Famously. Uncle Jefferson has shanghaied a half-dozen negro
gardeners--from where I can't imagine--and he's having the time of his
life hectoring over them. He refers to the upper and lower terraces as
'up- and down-stairs.' I've got seeds, but it will be a long time before
they flower."
"Oh, would you like some slips?" she cried. "Or, better still, I can
give you the roses already rooted--Mad Charles and Maréchal Neil and
Cloth of Gold and cabbage and ramblers. We have geraniums and fuchsias,
too, and the coral honeysuckle. That's different from the wild one, you
know."
"You are too good! If you would only advise me where to set them! But I
dare say you think me presuming."
She turned her full face to him. "'Presuming!' You're punishing me now
for the dreadful way I talked to you about Damory Court--before I knew
who you were. Oh, it was unpardonable! And after the splendid thing you
had done--I read about it that same evening--with your money, I mean!"
"No, no!" he protested. "There was nothing splendid about it. It was
only pride. You see the Corporation was my father's great idea--the
thing he created and put his soul into--and it was foundering. I know
that would have hurt him. One thing I've wanted to say to you, ever
since the day we talked together--about the duel. I want to say that
whatever lay behind it, my father's whole life was darkened by that
event. Now that I can put two and two together, I know that it was the
cause of his sadness."
"Ah, I can believe that," she replied.
"I think he had only two interests--myself and the Corporation. So you
see why I'd rather save that and be a beggar the rest of my natural
life. But I'm not a beggar. Damory Court alone is worth--I know it
now--a hundred times what I left."
"But to give up your own world--to let it all slip by, and to come here
to a spot that to you must seem desperately dull."
"I came here because the door of the old life was closed to me."
"You closed it yourself," she answered quickly.
"Maybe. But for whatever reason, it was closed. And you call this
dull--_dull_? Why, my life seems never to have had real interest
before!"
"I'm so glad you think that! You are so utterly different from what I
imagined you!"
"I could never have imagined you," he said, "never."
"I must be terribly outré."
"You are so many women in one. When I listened to your harp playing I
could hardly believe it was the same you I saw galloping across the
fields that morning. Now you are a different woman from both of those."
As she looked at him, her lips curled corner-wise, her foot slipped on
the sheer edge of the turf. She swayed toward him and he caught her,
feeling for a sharp instant the adorable nearness of her body. It ridged
all his skin with a creeping delight. She recovered her footing with an
exclamation, and turned back somewhat abruptly to the porch where she
seated herself on the step, drawing her filmy skirt aside to make a
place for him. There was a moment of silence which he broke.
"That exquisite serenade you were playing! You know the words, of
course."
"They are more lovely, if possible, than the score. Do you care for
poetry?"
"I've always loved it," he said. "I've been reading some lately--a
little old-fashioned book I found at Damory Court. It's _Lucile_. Do you
know it?"
"Yes. It's my mother's favorite."
He drew it from his pocket. "See, I've got it here. It's marked, too."
He opened it, to close it instantly--not, however, before she had put
out her hand and laid it, palm down, on the page. "That rose! Oh, let me
have it!"
"Never!" he protested. "Look here. When I put it between the leaves, I
did so at random. I didn't see till now that I had opened it at a marked
passage."
"Let us read it," she said.
He leaned and held the leaf to the light from the doorway and the two
heads bent together over the text.
A sound fell behind them and both turned. A slight figure, in a soft
gray gown with old lace at the throat, stood in the doorway behind them.
John Valiant sprang to his feet.
"Ah, Shirley, I thought I heard voices. Is that you, Chilly?"
"It's not Mr. Lusk, mother," said Shirley. "It's our new neighbor, Mr.
Valiant."
As he bent over the frail hand, murmuring the conventional words that
presentations are believed to require, Mrs. Dandridge sank into a deep
cushioned chair. "Won't you sit down?" she said. He noticed that she did
not look directly at him, and that her face was as pallid as her hair.
"Thank you," said John Valiant, and resumed his place on the lower step.
Shirley, who had again seated herself, suddenly laughed, and pointed to
the book which lay between them. "Imagine what we were doing, dearest!
We were reading _Lucile_ together."
She saw the other wince, and the deep dark eyes lifted, as if under
compulsion, from the book-cover to Valiant's face. He was startled by
Shirley's cry and the sudden limp unconscious settling-back into the
cushions of the fragile form.
CHAPTER XXVIII
NIGHT
A quicker breeze was stirring as John Valiant went back along the Red
Road. It brushed the fraying clouds from the sky, leaving it a pale
gray-blue, sprinkled with wan stars. He had waited in the garden at
Rosewood till Shirley, aided by Emmaline and with Ranston's anxious face
hovering in the background, having performed those gentle offices which
a woman's fainting spell requires, had come to reassure him and to say
good night.
The road seemed no longer dark; it swam before him now in a soft winged
mistiness with here and there an occasional cedar thrusting grotesquely
above huddled cobble-wall and black-lined rail-fence. As he went, her
form swam before him. The texture of each shadowy bush seemed that gauzy
drapery, sprayed with lilies-of-the-valley, and the leaves syllabled her
name in cautious whispers. That brief touch of her, when he had caught
her in his arms, lingered, as the memory of the harp music on his inner
ear, pricking his senses like fine musk, a thing of soft new pulses
flashing over him like spurts of vapor.
As he threw off his coat in the bedroom he had chosen for his own, he
felt the hard corner of the _Lucile_ in the pocket, and drawing it out,
laid it on the table by the bedside. He seemed to feel again the tingle
of his cheek where a curling strand of her coppery hair had sprung
against it when her head had bent beside his own to read the marked
lines. By now perhaps that riotous crown was all unbound and falling
redly about her shoulders, those shoulders no longer peeping from a
weave of lilies, but draped in virginal white. Perhaps she knelt now by
her silk-covered bed, warming the coverlid with her breast, her
down-bent face above her locked palms. What did she pray for, he
wondered. As a child, his own prayers had been comprehensive ones. Even
the savages who lived at Wishing-House and their innumerable offspring
had been regularly included in those petitions.
When he had undressed he sat an hour in the candle-blaze, a
dressing-gown thrown over his shoulders, striving vainly to recreate
that evening call, to remember her every word and look and movement. For
a breath her face would flush suddenly before him, like a live thing;
then it would mysteriously fade and elude him, though he clenched his
hands on the arms of his chair in the fierce mental effort to recall it.
Only the intense blue of her eyes, the tawny sweep of her hair--these
and the touch of her, the consciousness of her warm and vivid fragrance,
remained to wrap all his senses in a mist woven of gold and fire.
* * * * *
Shirley, meanwhile, had sat some time beside her mother's bed, leaning
from a white chintz-covered chair, her anxiety only partially allayed by
reassurances, now and then stooping to lay her young cheek against the
delicate arm in its lacy sleeve or to pass her hand lovingly up and down
its outline, noting with a recurrent passion of tenderness the
transparency of the skin with its violet veining and the shadows beneath
the closed eyes. Emmaline, moving on soft worsted-shod feet about the
dim room, at length had whispered:
"You go tuh baid, honey. I stay with Mis' Judith till she go tuh sleep."
"Yes, go, Shirley," said her mother. "Haven't I any privileges at all?
Can't I even faint when I feel like it, without calling out the
fire-brigade? You'll pamper me to death and heaven knows I don't need
it."
"You won't let me telephone for Doctor Southall?"
"Certainly not!"
"And you are _sure_ it was nothing but the roses?"
"Why, what else should it be?" said her mother almost peevishly. "I must
really have the arbors thinned out. On heavy nights it's positively
overpowering. Go along now, and we'll talk about it to-morrow. I can
ring if I want anything."
In her own room Shirley undressed thoughtfully. There was between her
and her mother a fine tenuous bond of sympathy and feeling as rare,
perhaps, as it was lovely. She could not remember when the other had not
been a semi-invalid, and her earliest childhood recollections were
punctuated with the tap of the little cane. To-night's sudden
indisposition had shocked and disturbed her; to faint at a rush of
perfume seemed to suggest a growing weakness that was alarming.
To-morrow, she told herself, she would send Ranston with a wagon-load of
the roses to the hospital at Charlottesville.
She slipped on a pink shell-shaded dressing-gown of slinky silk with a
riot of azaleas scattered in the weave, and then, dragging a chair
before the open window, drew aside the light curtain and began to brush
her hair. She parted the lustrous mass with long sweeps of her white
arm, forward first over one shoulder, then over the other. The silver
brush smoothed the lighter ashen ripples that netted and fretted into a
fine amber lace, till they lay, a rich warm mahogany like red earth. The
coppery whorls eddied and merged themselves, showing under-glints of
russet and dun-gold, curling and clasping in flame-tinted furrows like a
living field of gold under a silver harrow. Outside the window the
stars lay on the lapis-lazuli sky like white flower-petals on still deep
water, and in the pasture across the hedges she could see the form of
Selim, her chestnut hunter, standing ghostly, like an equine sentinel.
When that shimmering glory lay in two thick braids against her
shoulders, Shirley rose with a sigh and went to her writing-desk, where
lay her diary. But she was in no mood to write, and she turned from it,
frowning a little, with the reflection that she had not written in it
since the night of the cape jessamines.
All at once her gaze fell upon the floor, and she shrank backward from a
twisting thread-like thing whose bright saffron-yellow glowed sharply
against the dark carpet. She saw in an instant, however, that it was
nothing more dangerous than a fragment of love-vine from the garden,
which had clung to her skirt. She picked up the tiny mass of tendrils
and with a slow smile tossed it over her right shoulder through the
window. "If it takes root," she said aloud, "my sweetheart loves me."
She leaned from the sill to peer down into the misty garden, but could
not follow its fall.
Long ago her visitor would have reached Damory Court. She had a vision
of him wandering, candle in hand, through the empty echoing rooms,
looking at the voiceless portraits on the walls, thinking perhaps of his
father, of the fatal duel of which he had never known. She liked the
way he had spoken of his father!
Or, maybe he was sitting in the lonely library, with some volume from
its shelves on his knees. She pictured Uncle Jefferson fetching his pipe
and jar of tobacco and striking the match on his broad foot to light it.
She remembered one of the old darky's sayings: "Er man ain' nachally no
angel, but 'thouten terbacker, Ah reck'n he be pizen-ugly ernuf ter giv
de Bad Man de toof-ache!" In that instant when her cheek had touched his
rough tweed jacket, she had been sensible of that woodsy pipy fragrance.
A vivid flush swept up her face and with a sudden gesture she caught her
open palms to her cheek. With what a daring softness his eyes had hazed
as they looked down at her under his crisp waving hair. Why was the
memory of that look so sharply sweet?
As she leaned, out of the stillness there came to her ear a mellow
sound. It was the bell of the court-house in the village. She counted
the strokes falling clearly or faintly as the sluggish breeze ebbed or
swelled. It was eleven.
She drew back, dropped the curtain to shut out the wan glimmer, and in
the darkness crept into the soft bed as if into a hiding-place.
CHAPTER XXIX
AT THE DOME
A warm sun and an air mildly mellow. A faint gold-shadowed mist over the
valley and a soft lilac haze blending the rounded outlines of the hills.
A breeze shook the twigs on the cedars, fluttered the leaves of the
poplars till they looked a quivering mass of palpitating silver, bearing
away with it the cool elastic grace-notes of the dripping water, as it
sparkled over the big green-streaked rocks at the foot of the little
lake at Damory Court. Over the wild grape-vines a pair of drunken
butterflies reeled, kissing wings, and on the stone rim of the fountain
basin a tiny brown-green lizard lay motionless, sunning itself. Through
the shrubbery a cardinal darted like a crimson shuttle, to rock
impudently from a fleering limb, and here and there on the bluish-ivory
sky, motionless as a pasted wafer, hung a hawk; from time to time one of
these wavered and slanted swiftly down, to climb once more in a huge
spiral to its high tower of sky.
Perhaps it wondered, as its telescopic eye looked down. That had been
its choicest covert, that disheveled tangle where the birds held
perpetual carnival, the weasel lurked in the underbrush and the rabbit
lined his windfall. Now the wildness was gone. The lines of the formal
garden lay again ordered and fair. The box-rows had been thinned of
their too-aged shrubs and filled in anew. The wilderness garden to-be
was still a stretch of raked and level soil, but all across this slender
green spears were thrusting up--the promise of buds and blooms. A
pergola, glistening white, now upheld the runaway vines, making a
sickle-like path from the upper terrace to the lake. In the barn loft
the pigeons still quarrelled over their new cotes of fresh pine, and
under a clump of locust trees at a little distance from the house, a
half-dozen dolls' cabins on stilts stood waiting the honey-storage of
the black and gold bees.
There were new denizens, also. These had arrived in a dozen zinc tanks
and willow hampers, to the amaze of a sleepy express clerk at the
railroad station: two swans now sailed majestically over the lily-pads
of the lake, along its gravel rim a pair of bronze-colored ducks waddled
and preened, and its placid surface rippled and broke to the sluggish
backs of goldfish and the flirting fins of red Japanese carp. Hens and
guinea-fowl strutted and ran in a wire wattle behind the kitchen, and on
the wall, now straightened and repaired, a splendid peacock spread his
barbaric plumage of spangled purple and screeched exultingly to his
sober-hued mate.
The house itself wore another air. Its look of unkemptness had largely
vanished. The comb of the roof had been straightened and the warped
shutters repaired. The boards of the porch flooring had been relaid.
Moss and green lichen had been scoured from the bases of the great
weather-beaten pillars. These, however, bore no garish coat of new
paint. The soft gray tone of age remained, but the bleakness and
forlornness were gone; there was about all now a warmth and genial
bearing that hinted at mellowed beauty, firelight and cheerful voices
within.
Valiant heaved a long sigh of satisfaction as he stood in the sunlight
gazing at the results of his labors. He was not now the flippant
boulevardier to whom money was the _sine qua non_ of existence. He had
learned a sovereign lesson--one gained not through the push and fight
of crowds, but in the simple peace of a countryside, unvexed by the
clamor of gold and the complex problems of a competitive existence--that
he had inherited a need of activity, of achievement: that he had been
born to do. He had worked hard, with hand and foot, with hoe and
mattock--strenuous perspiring effort that made his blood course fast and
brought muscle-weariness over which nature had nightly poured her
soothing medicaments of peace and sleep. His tanned face was as clear as
a fine brown porcelain, his eye bright, and his muscles rippled up
under his skin with elastic power.
"Chum," he said, to the dog rolling on his back in the grass, "what do
you think of it all, anyway?" He reached down, seized a hind leg and
whirling him around like a teetotum, sent him flying into the bushes,
whence Chum launched again upon him, like a catapult. He caught the
white shoulders and held him vise-like. "Just about right, eh? But wait
till we get those ramblers!
"And to think," he continued, whimsically releasing him, "that I might
have gone on, one of the little-neck-clam crowd I've always trained
with, at the same old pace, till the Vermouth-cocktail-Palm-Beach career
got a double Nelson on me and the umpire counted me out. And I'd have
ended by lazying along through my forties with a bay-window and a bunch
of boudoir keys! Now I can kiss my hand to it all. At this moment I
wouldn't swap this old house and land, and the sunshine and that
'gyarden' and Unc' Jefferson and Aunt Daph and the chickens and the
birds and all the rest of it, for a mile of Millionaires' Row."
He drew from his jacket pocket a somewhat worn note and unfolded the
dainty paper with its characteristic twirly handwriting. "The scarlet
geraniums rimming the porch," he muttered, "the coral honeysuckle on
the old dead tulip-tree, and the fuchsias and verbenas by the straight
walk. How right she is! They're all growing, too. I haven't lost a
single slip." He caught himself up short, strode to the nearest
porch-pillar and rapped on it smartly with his knuckles.
"I must knock on wood," he said, "or I'll lose my luck." He laughed a
little. "I'm certainly catching Uncle Jefferson's superstitions. Perhaps
that's in the soil, too!"
He went into the house and to the library. The breeze through the
wide-flung bow-window was fluttering the papers on the desk and the map
on the wall was flapping sidewise. He went to straighten it, and then
saw what he had not noticed before--that it covered something that had
been let into the plaster. He swung it aside and made an exclamation.
He was looking at a square, uncompromising wall-safe, with a round
figured disk of white metal on its face. He knelt before it and tried
its knob. After a moment it turned easily. But the resolute steel door
would not open, though he tried every combination that came into his
mind. "No use," he said disgustedly. "One must have the right numbers."
Then he lifted his fretted frame and smote his grimy hands together.
"Confound it!" he said with a short laugh. "Here I am, a bankrupt, with
all this outfit--clear to the very finger-bowls--handed to me on a
silver tray, and I'm mad as scat because I can't open the first locked
thing I find!"
He ran up-stairs and donned a rough corduroy jacket and high leather
leggings. "We're going to climb the hill to-day, Chum," he announced,
"and no more moccasins need apply."
In the lower hall, however, he suddenly stopped stock-still. "The slip
of paper that was in the china dog!" he exclaimed. "What a chump I am
not to have thought of it!" He found it in its pigeonhole and, kneeling
down before the safe, tried the numbers carefully, first right, then
left: 17--28--94--0. The heavy door opened.
"I was right!" he exulted. "It's the plate." He drew it out, piece by
piece. Each was bagged in dark-red Canton flannel. He broke the tape of
one bag and exposed a great silver pitcher, tarnished purple-blue like a
raven's wing--then a tea-service. Each piece, large and small, was
marked with the greyhound rampant and the motto. "And to think," he
said, "that my great-great-grandfather buried you with his own hands
under the stables when Tarleton's raiders swept the valley before the
surrender at Yorktown! Only wait till Aunt Daphne gets you polished up,
and on the sideboard! You're the one thing the place has needed!"
* * * * *
With the dog for comrade he traversed the garden and plunged across the
valley below, humming as he went one of the songs with which Uncle
Jefferson was wont to regale his labors:
"My gran'mothah lived on yondah li'l green,
Fines' ol' lady _evah_ wuz seen.
Tummy-eye, tummy-oh, tummy-umpy-tumpy-tee.
Fines' ol' lady _evah_ yo' see!"
The ridiculous refrain rang out through the bewildering vistas of the
wooded slope as he swung on, up the hill, through the underbrush.
The place was pathless and overgrown with paw-paw bushes and sassafras.
Great trees stood so thickly in places as to make a twilight and the
sunnier spots were masses of pink laurel, poison-ivy, flaming purple
rhododendron and wine-red tendrils of interbraided briers. This was the
forest land of whose possibilities he had thought. In the heart of the
woods he came upon a great limb that had been wrenched off by storm. The
broken wood was of a deep rich brown, shading to black. He broke off
his song, snapped a twig and smelled it. Its sharp acrid odor was
unmistakable. He suddenly remembered the walnut tree at Rosewood and
what Shirley had said: "I know a girl who had two in her yard, and she
went to Europe on them."
He looked about him; as far as he could see the trees reared, hardy and
perfect, untouched for a generation. He selected one of medium size and
pulling a creeper, measured its circumference and gaging this measure
with his eye, made a penciled calculation on the back of an envelope.
"Great Scott!" he said jubilantly to the dog; "that would cut enough to
wainscot the Damory Court library and build twenty sideboards!"
He sat down on a mossed boulder, breathless, his eyes sparkling. He
had thought himself almost a beggar, and here in his hand was a small
fortune! "Talk about engagement rings!" he muttered. "Why, a dozen of
these ought to buy a whole tiara!"
Far below him he could see the square tower of the old parish church of
St. Andrew. The day before he had gone there to service, slipping into a
pew at the rear. There had been flowers in silver vases on either side
of the reading-desk, and dim hues from the stained-glass windows had
touched the gray head of the rector above the brass lectern and the
crooked oak beams of the roof, and he had caught himself all at once
thinking that but for its drooping hat, Shirley's head might have
outshone that of the saint through whose bright mantle the colors came.
After the service the rector had showed him the vestry and the church
books with their many records of Valiants before him, and he had sat for
a moment in the Valiant pew, fancying her standing there sometime beside
him, with her trim gloved hand by his on the prayer-book.
At length he rose and climbed on, presently turning at a right-angle to
bisect the strip to its boundary before he paused to rest. "I'm no
timber-cruiser," he said to himself as he wiped his brow, "but I
calculate there are all of three hundred trees big enough to cut. Why,
suppose they are worth on an average only a hundred apiece. That would
make--Good lord!" he muttered, "and I've been mooning about poverty!"
The growth was smaller and sparser now and before long he came, on the
hill's very crest, to the edge of a ragged clearing. It held a squalid
settlement, perhaps a score of dirt-daubed cabins little better than
hovels, some of them mere mud-walled lean-tos, with sod roofs and
window-panes of flour-sacking. Fences and outhouses there was none.
Littered paths rambled aimlessly hither and thither from chip-strewn
yards to starved patches of corn, under-cultivated and blighted. Over
the whole place hung an indescribable atmosphere of disconsolate filth,
of unredeemed squalor and vileness. Razor-backed hogs rooted everywhere,
snapped at by a handful of lean and spiritless hounds. A slatternly
woman lolled under a burlap awning beside one of the cabins from whose
interior came the sound of men's voices raised in a fierce quarrel.
Undisturbed by the hideous din, a little girl of about three years was
dragging by a string an old cigar-box in which was propped a rag-doll.
She was barelegged and barearmed, her tiny limbs burned a dark red by
the sun, and she wore a single garment made from the leg of a patched
pair of overalls. Her hair, bleached the color of corn-silk, fell over
her face in elfin wildness.
With one hand on the dog's collar, hushing him to silence, Valiant,
unseen, looked at the wretched place with a shiver. He had glimpsed many
wretched purlieus in the slums of great cities, but this, in the open
sunlight, with the clean woods about it and the sweet clear blue above,
stood out with an unrelieved boldness and contrast that was doubly
sinister and forbidding. He knew instantly that the tawdry corner was
the community known as Hell's-Half-Acre, the place to which Shirley had
made her night ride to rescue Rickey Snyder.
A quick glad realization of her courage rushed through him. On its heels
came a feeling of shame that a spot like this could exist, a foul blot
on such a landscape. It was on his own land! Its denizens held place
by squatter sovereignty, but he was, nevertheless, their landlord. The
thought bred a new sense of responsibility. Something should be done for
them, too--for that baby, dragging its rag-doll in the cigar-box, poor
little soul, abandoned to a life of besottedness, ignorance and evil!
As he gazed, the uproar in the cabin reached a climax. A red-bearded
figure in nondescript garments shot from the door and collapsed in a
heap in the dirt. He got up with a dreadful oath--a thrown jug grazing
his temple as he did so--and shaking his fist behind him, staggered into
a near-by lean-to.
Valiant turned away with a feeling almost of nausea, and plunged back
down the forest hillside, the shrill laughter of the woman under the
strip of burlap echoing in his ears.
CHAPTER XXX
THE GARDENERS
He saw them coming through the gate on the Red Road--the major and
Shirley in a lilac muslin by his side--and strode to meet them. Behind
them Ranston propelled a hand-cart filled with paper bundles from each
of which protruded a bunch of flowering stems. There was a flush in
Shirley's cheek as her hand lay in Valiant's. As for him, his eyes, like
wilful drunkards, returned again and again, between the major's
compliments, to her face.
"You have accomplished wonders, sah! I had no idea so much could be done
in such a limited time. We are leisurely down here, and seldom do to-day
what can be put off till to-morrow. Real Northern hustle, eh, Shirley?
You have certainly primped the old place up. I could almost think I was
looking at Damory Court in the sixties, sah!"
"That's quite the nicest thing you could have said, Major," responded
Valiant. "But it needs the flowers." He looked at Shirley with sparkling
eyes. "How splendid of you to bring them! I feel like a robber."
"With our bushels of them? We shall never miss them at all. Have you set
out the others?"
"I have, indeed. Every one has rooted, too. You shall see them." He led
the way up the drive till they stood before the porch.
"Gad!" chuckled the major. "Who would think it had been unoccupied for
three decades? At this rate, you'll soon be giving dances, sah."
"Ah," said Valiant. "That's the very thing I want to suggest. The
tournament comes off next week, I understand, and it's been the custom
to have a ball that night. The tourney ground is on this estate, and
Damory Court is handier than the Country Club. Why wouldn't it be
appropriate to hold the dance here? The ground-floor rooms are in order,
and if the young people would put up with it, it would be a great
pleasure to me, I assure you."
"Oh!" breathed Shirley. "That would be too wonderful!"
The major seized his hand and shook it heartily. "I can answer for the
committee," he said. "They'll jump at it. Why, sah, the new generation
has never set eyes inside the house. It's a golden legend to them."
"Then I'll go ahead with arrangements."
Shirley's eyes were overrunning the cropped lawn, which now showed a
clear smooth slope between the arching trees. "It was lovely in its
ruin," she said, "but it was pathetic, too. Unc' Jefferson used to
say 'De ol' place look lak et ben griebin' etse'f ter deff wid
lonesomeness.' Somehow, now it looks glad. Just hear that small
citizen!"
A red squirrel sat up in a tree-crotch, his paws tucked into his furry
breast, barking angrily at them. "He's shocked at the house-cleaning,"
she said; "a sign he's a bachelor."
"So am I," said Valiant.
"Maybe he's older than you," she countered; "and sot in his ways."
"I accept him as a warning," he said, and she laughed with him.
He led them around the house and down the terraces of the formal garden,
and here the major's encomiums broke forth again. "You are going to take
us old folks back, sah," he said with real feeling. "This gyarden in its
original lines was unique. It had a piquancy and a picturesqueness that,
thank God, are to be restored! One can understand the owner of an estate
like this having no desire to spend his life philandering abroad. We all
hope, sah, that you will recur to the habit of your ancestors, and count
Damory Court home."
Valiant smiled slowly. "I don't dream of anything else," he said. "My
life, as I map it out, seems to begin here. The rest doesn't count--only
the years when I was little and had my father."
The major carefully adjusted his eye-glasses. His head was turned away.
"Ah, yes," he said.
"The last twenty years," continued the other, "from my present
view-point, are valuable mainly for contrast."
"As a consistent regimen of _pâté de foie gras_," said Shirley
quizzically, "makes one value bread and butter?"
He shook his head at her. "As starvation makes one appreciate plenty.
The next twenty years are to be here. But they hold side-trips, too. Now
and then there's a jaunt back to the city."
"Contrast again?" she asked interestedly.
"Yes and no. Yes, because no one who has never known that blazing
clanging life can really understand the peace and blessedness of a place
like this. No, because there are some things which are to be found only
there. There are the galleries and the opera. I need a breath of them
both."
"You're right," nodded the major. "Birds are birds, and Melba is Melba.
But a sward like this in the early morning, with the dew on the grass,
is the best opera for a steady diet."
"I called them only side-trips," said John Valiant.
"And semi-occasional longer flights, too," the major reflected. "A
look-see abroad once in a blue moon. Why not?"
"Yes. For mental photographs--impressions one can't get from between
book-covers. There's an old cloister garden I know in Italy and a
particular river-bank in Japan in the cherry-blossom season, and a tiny
island with a Greek castle on it in the Ægean. Little colored memories
for me to bring away to dream over. But always I come back here to
Damory Court. For this is--home!"
They walked beneath the pergola to the lake, where Shirley gave a cry of
delight at sight of its feathered population. "Where _did_ you get them
from?" she asked.
"Washington. In crates."
"That explains it," she exclaimed. "One day last week the little darkies
in the village all insisted a circus was coming. They must have seen
these being hauled here. They watched the whole afternoon for the
elephants."
"Poor youngsters!" he said. "It's a shame to fool them. But I've had all
the circus I want getting the live stock installed."
"They won't suffer," said the major. "Rickey Snyder'll get them up a
three-ringed show at the drop of a hat and drop it herself. Besides,
there's tournament day coming, and they can live on that. I see you've
dredged out some of the lilies."
"Yes. I take my dip here every morning."
"We used to have a diving-board when we were little shavers," pursued
the major. "I remember once, your father--"
He cleared his throat and stopped dead.
"Please," said John Valiant, "I--I like to hear about him."
"It was only that I struck my head on a rock on the bottom and--stayed
down. The others were frightened, but he--he dove down again and again
till he brought me out. It was a narrow squeak, I reckon."
A silence fell. Looking at the tall muscular form beside her, Shirley
had a sudden vision of a determined little body cleaving the dark water,
over and over, now rising panting for breath, now plunging again, never
giving up. And she told herself that the son was the same sort. That
hard set of the jaw, those firm lips, would know no flinching. He might
suffer, but he would be strong. Subconsciously her mind was also swiftly
contrasting him with Chilly Lusk: the same spare lithe frame but set off
by light skin, brown hair and hazel eyes; the two faces, alike sharply
and clearly chiseled, but this one purged of the lazy scorn, the
satiety, and reckless indulgence.
Half unconsciously she spoke her thought aloud: "You look like your
father, do you not?"
"Yes," he replied, "there's a strong likeness. I have a photograph which
I'll show you sometime. But how did you know?"
"Perhaps I only guessed," she said in some confusion. To cover this she
stooped by the pebbly marge and held out her hand to the bronze ducks
that pushed and gobbled about her fingers. "What have you named them?"
she asked.
"Nothing. _You_ christen them."
"Very well. The light one shall be Peezletree and the dark one
Pilgarlic. I got the names from John Jasper--he was Virginia's famous
negro preacher. I once heard him hold forth when he read from one of the
Psalms--the one about the harp and the psaltery--and he called it
peezletree."
"Speaking of ducks," said the major, tweaking his gray imperial,
"reminds me of Judge Chalmers' white mallard. He had a pair that were so
much in love they did nothing but loaf around honey-cafuddling with
their wings over each other's backs. It was a lesson in domesticity for
the community, sah. Well, the drake got shot for a wild one, and if
you'll believe it, the poor little duck was that inconsolable it would
have brought tears to your eyes. The whole Chalmers family were
affected."
Shirley had put one hand over her mouth to repress a smile. "Major,
Major!" she murmured reprovingly. But his guilty glance avoided her.
"Yes, sah, nothing would console her. So at last Chalmers got another
drake, the handsomest he could find, and trotted him out to please her.
What do you reckon that little white duck did? She looked at the judge
once reproachfully and then waddled down to a black muck-bed and lay
down in it. She came out with as fine a suit of mourning as you ever
saw. And believe it or not, sah, but she wouldn't go in the water for
ten days!"
Valiant's laugh rang out over the lake--to be answered by a sudden sharp
screech from the terrace, where the peacock strutted, a blaze of
spangled purple and gold. They turned to see Aunt Daphne issue from the
kitchen, twig-broom in hand.
"Heah!" she exclaimed. "What fo' yo' kyahin' on like er wil' _gyraff_
we'n we got comp'ny, yo' triflin' ol' fan-tail, yo'! Git outen heah!"
She waved her weapon and the bird, with a raucous shriek of defiance,
retired in ruffled disorder. The master of Damory Court looked at
Shirley. "What shall we name _him_?"
"I'd call him Fire-Cracker if he goes off like that," she said. And
Fire-Cracker the bird was christened forthwith.
"And now," said Shirley, "let's set out the ramblers."
The major had brought a rough plan, sketched from memory, of the old
arrangement of the formal garden. "I'll just go over the lines of the
beds with Unc' Jefferson," he proposed, "while you two potter over
these roses." So Valiant and Shirley walked back up the slope beneath
the pergola together. The sun was westering fast, and long lilac
cloud-trails lay over the terraces. But the bumbling bees were still
busy in the honeysuckle and hawking dragon-flies shot hither and
thither. A robin was tilting on the rim of the fountain and it looked at
them with head turned sidewise, with a low sweet pip that mingled with
the trickling laugh of the falling water.
With Ranston puffing and blowing like a black porpoise over his creaking
go-cart, they planted the ramblers--crimson and pink and white--Valiant
much of the time on his knees, his hands plunging deep into the black
spongy earth, and Shirley with broad hat flung on the grass, her fingers
separating the clinging thread-like roots and her small arched foot
tamping down the soil about them. Her hair--the color of wet raw wood in
the sunlight--was very near the brown head and sometimes their fingers
touched over the work. Once, as they stood up, flushed with the
exercise, a great black and orange butterfly, dazed with the sun-glow,
alighted on Valiant's rolled-up sleeve. He held his arm perfectly still
and blew gently on the wavering pinions till it swam away. When a
redbird flirted by, to his delight she whistled its call so perfectly
that it wheeled in mid-flight and tilted inquiringly back toward them.
As they descended the terrace again to the pergola, he said, "There's
only one thing lacking at Damory Court--a sun-dial."
"Then you haven't found it?" she cried delightedly. "Come and let me
show you."
She led the way through the maze of beds at one side till they reached a
hedge laced thickly with Virginia creeper. He parted this leafy screen,
bending back the springing fronds that thrust against the flimsy muslin
of her gown and threatened to spear the pink-rosed hat that cast an
adorable warm tint over her creamy face, thinking that never had the old
place seen such a picture as she made framed in the deep green.
Some such thought was in the major's mind, too, as he came slowly up the
terrace below. He paused, to take off his hat and wipe his brow.
"With the place all fixed up this way," he sighed to himself, "I could
believe it was only last week that Beauty Valiant and Southall and I
were boys, loafing around this gyarden. And to think that now it's
Valiant's son and Judith's daughter! Why, it seems like yesterday that
Shirley there was only knee-high to a grasshopper--and I used to tell
her her hair was that color because she ran through hell bareheaded. I'm
about a thousand years old, I reckon!"
Meanwhile the two figures above had pushed through the tangle into a
circular sunny space where stood a short round pillar of red onyx. It
was a sun-dial, its vine-clad disk cut of gray polished stone in which
its metal tongue was socketed. Round the outer edge of the disk ran an
inscription in archaic lettering. Valiant pulled away the clustering ivy
leaves and read: _I count no hours but the happy ones_.
"If that had only been true!" he said.
"It is true. See how the vines hid the sun from it. It ceased to mark
the time after the Court was deserted."
He snapped the clinging tendrils and swept the cluster from its stone
face. "It shall begin to count again from this moment. Will it mark only
happy hours for me, I wonder? I'll bribe it with flowers."
"White for happiness," she said.
"I'll put moonflowers at its base and where you are standing, Madonna
lilies. The outer part of the circle shall have bridal-wreath and white
irises, and they shall shade out into pastel colors--mauves and grays
and heliotropes. Oh, I shall love this spot!--perhaps sometime the best
of all."
"Which do you love the most now?"
He leaned slightly toward her, one hand on the dial's time-notched rim.
"Don't you know?" he said in a lower voice. "Could any other spot mean
to me what that acre under the hemlocks means?"
Her face was turned from him, her fingers pulling at the drifting vine,
and a splinter of sunlight tangled in her hair like a lace of fireflies.
"I could never forget it," he continued. "The thing that spoiled my
father's life happened there, yet there we two first talked, and there
you--"
"Don't!" she said, facing him. "Don't!"
"Ah, let me speak! I want to tell you that I shall carry the memory of
that afternoon, and of your brave kindness, always, always! If I were
never to see you again in this life, I should always treasure it. If I
died of thirst in some Sahara, it would be the last thing I should
remember--your face would be the last thing I should see! If I--"
He paused, his veins beating hard under the savage self-repression, his
hand trembling against the stone, his voice a traitor, yielding to
something that rose in his throat to choke the stumbling words.
In the silence there was the sound of a slow footfall on the gravel
walk, and at the same moment he saw a magical change. Shirley drew back.
The soft gentian blue of her eyes darkened. The lips that an instant
before had been tremulous, parted in a low delicious laugh. She swept
him a deep curtsey.
"I am beholden to you, sir," she said gaily, "for a most knightly
compliment. There's the major. Come and let us show him where we've
planted the ramblers."
CHAPTER XXXI
TOURNAMENT DAY
The noon sun of tournament day shone brilliantly over the village,
drowsy no longer, for many vehicles were hitched at the curb, or moved
leisurely along the leafy street: big, canvas-topped country wagons
drawn by shaggy-hoofed horses and set with chairs that had bumped and
jostled their holiday loads from outlying tobacco plantation and
stud-farm; sober, black-covered buggies, long, narrow, springless
buckboards, frivolous side-bar runabouts and antique shays resurrected
from the primeval depths of cobwebbed stables, relics of tarnished
grandeur and faded fortune. Here and there a motor crept, a bilious and
replete beetle among insects of wider wing. Knots of high-booted men
conversed on street corners, men hand-cuffed, it would seem, to their
whips; children romped and ran hither and thither; and through all
sifted a varicolored stream of negroes, male and female, good-natured
and voluble. For tournament day was a county event, and the annual sport
of the quality had long outstripped even circus day in general
popularity.
At midday vehicles resolved themselves into luncheon-booths--hampers
stowed away beneath the seats, disclosing all manner of picnic
edibles--the court-house yard was an array of grass-spread table-cloths,
and an air of plenty reigned.
Within Mrs. Merryweather Mason's brown house hospitality sat enthroned
and the generous dining-room was held by a regiment of feminine
out-of-town acquaintances. At intervals Aunt Charity, the cook, issued
from the kitchen to peer surreptitiously through the dining-room door
with vast delight.
"Dey cert'n'y do take aftah dat fried chick'n," she said to old
Jereboam, who, with a half-dozen extras, had been pressed into
perspiring tray-service. "Dey got all de Mefodis' preachahs Ah evah see
laid in de shade dis day. Hyuh! hyuh!"
"'Deed dey has! Hyuh! hyuh!" echoed Jereboam huskily.
The Mason yard, an hour later, was an active encampment of
rocking-chairs, and a din of conversation floated out over the pink
oleanders, whose tubs had achieved a fresh coat of bright green paint
for the occasion. Mrs. Poly Gifford--a guest of the day--here shone
resplendent.
"The young folks are counting mightily on the dance to-night," observed
Mrs. Livy Stowe of
[Illustration]
Seven Oaks. "Even the Buckner girls have got new ball dresses."
"Improvident, _I_ call it," said Mrs. Gifford. "They can't afford such
things, with Park Hill mortgaged up to the roof the way it is."
Mrs. Mason's soft apologetic alto interposed. "They're sweet girls, and
we're never young but once. I think it was so fine of Mr. Valiant to
offer to give the ball. I hear he's motored to Charlottesville three or
four times for fixings, though I understand he's poor enough since he
gave up his money as he did. What a princely act that was!"
"Ye-e-es," agreed Mrs. Gifford, "but a little--what shall I call
it?--precipitous! If I were married to a man like that I should always
be in terror of his adopting an orphan asylum or turning Republican or
something equally impossible."
"He's good-looking enough for most girls to be willing to risk it,"
returned Mrs. Stowe, "to say nothing of a widow or two I might mention,"
she added cryptically.
"I _believe_ you!" said Mrs. Gifford with emphasis. "We all know who you
mean. Why any woman can't be satisfied with having had _one_ husband, I
can't see."
The other pursed her lips. "I know some women with live husbands, for
that matter," she said, "who, if the truth were told, aren't either.
It's lucky there's no marriage in heaven or there'd be a precious
mix-up before they got through with it!"
"Well," Mrs. Gifford rejoined, "the Bible may say there's no marriage or
giving in marriage in heaven, but if I see Poly there, I'll say to them,
'Look here. That's _mine_, and all you women angels keep your wings off
him!'"
The listening phalanx relaxed in smiles. Presently Mrs. Mason said:
"I was at Miss Mattie Sue's the other day. Mr. Valiant had just called
on her. She was tremendously pleased. She said he was the living image
of his father."
"Oh, it never _occurred_ to me," cried Mrs. Gifford, in some excitement,
"that she might be able to guess who the woman was at the bottom of that
old duel. But Miss Mattie Sue is so ever_lastingly_ close-mouthed," she
added, with an aggravated sigh. "She never lets out anything. Why, I've
been trying for _years_ to find out how old she is. In the winter--when
she was so sick, you know--I went to see her one day, and I said: 'Now,
Miss Mattie Sue, you know you're pretty sick. Not that I think you're
going to die, but one never knows. And if the Lord _should_ see fit to
call you, I know you would want everything to be done right. I was
thinking,' I said, 'of the stone, for I know the ladies of the church
would want to do something nice. Now _don't_ you feel like giving me a
few little details--the date you were born, for instance?' I thought
I'd find out then, but I didn't. She turned her head on the pillow and
says she, 'It's mighty thoughtful of you, Mrs. Gifford, but I like
simplicity. Just put on my tombstone "Here lies Mattie Sue Mabry. Born a
virgin, died a virgin."'"
* * * * *
The doctor shut his office door with a vicious slam and from the vantage
of the wire window-screen looked sourly across the beds of marigold and
nasturtium.
"I reckon if Mrs. Poly Gifford shut her mouth more than ten minutes
hand-running," he said malevolently, "the top of her head'd fly from
here to Charlottesville. What on earth can they find to gabble about?
They've been at it since ten o'clock!"
The major, ensconced with a cigar in the easy chair behind him,
flourished his palm-leaf fan and smote an errant fly. He was in gayest
plumage. His fine white waistcoat was a miracle, his spats a pattern,
and the pink in his button-hole had a Beau Brummelish air which many a
youthful gallant was to envy him ere the day was done.
"Speaking of Damory Court," he said in his big voice. "The dance idea
was a happy thought of young Valiant's. I'll be surprised if he doesn't
do it to the queen's taste."
The doctor nodded. "This place can't teach him much about such
folderolings, I reckon. He's led more cotillions than I've got hairs
on my head."
"I'd hardly limit it to that," said the major, chortling at the easy
thrust. "And after all, even folderolings have their use."
"Who said they hadn't? If people choose to make whirling dervishes of
themselves, they at least can reflect that it's better for their livers
than cane-bottom chairs. Though that's about all you can say in favor of
the modern ball."
"Pshaw!" said the major. "I remember a time when you used to rig out in
a claw-hammer and
"'Dance all night till broad daylight
And go home with the gyrls in the morning,'
"with the bravest of us. Used to like it, too."
"I got over it before I was old enough to make myself a butt of
hilarity," the doctor retorted. "I see by the papers they've invented a
new dance called the grizzly bear. I believe there's another named the
yip-kyoodle. I hope you've got 'em down pat to show the young folks
to-night, Bristow."
The major got up with some irritation. "Southall," he said, "sometimes
I'm tempted to think your remarks verge upon the personal. You don't
have to watch me dance if you don't choose to."
"No, thank God," muttered the doctor. "I prefer to remember you when
you still preserved a trace of dignity--twenty odd years ago."
"If dignity--" the major's blood was rising now,--"consists in your
eternal tasteless bickerings, I want none of it. What on earth do you
do it for? You had some friends once."
"Friends!" snapped the other, "the fewer I have the better!"
The major clapped on his straw hat angrily, strode to the door, and
opened it. But on the threshold he stopped, and presently shut it,
turned back slowly and resumed his chair. The doctor was relighting his
cigar, but an odd furtive look had slipped to his face, and the hand
that struck the match was unsteady.
For a time both sat smoking, at first in silence, then talking in a
desultory way on indifferent topics. Finally the major rose and tossed
his cigar into the empty grate.
"I'll be off now," he said. "I must be on the field before the others."
As he went down the steps a carriage, drawn by a pair of dancing grays,
plunged past. "Who are those people with the Chalmers, I wonder," said
the doctor. "They're strangers here."
The major peered. "Oh," he said, over his shoulder, "I forgot to tell
you. That's Silas Fargo, the railroad president from New York, and his
daughter Katharine. His private car's down on the siding. They're at
the judge's--he's chief counsel for the road in this state. They'll be
at the tournament, I reckon. You'll be there, won't you?"
The doctor was putting some phials and instruments into a worn leather
bag. "No," he said, shortly. "I'm going to take a ten-mile drive--to add
to this county's population, I expect. But I'm coming to the dance.
Promised Valiant I would in a moment of temporary aberration."
CHAPTER XXXII
A VIRGINIAN RUNNYMEDE
"June in Virginia is something to remember."
To-day the master of Damory Court deemed this a true saying. For the air
was like wine, and the drifting white wings of cloud, piled above the
amethystine ramparts of the far Blue Ridge, looked down upon a violet
world bound in green and silver.
In his bedroom Valiant stood looking into the depths of an ancient
wardrobe. Presently he took from a hook a suit of white flannel in which
he arrayed himself. Over his soft shirt he knotted a pale gray scarf.
The modish white suit and the rolling Panama threw out in fine contrast
the keen sun-tanned face and dark brown eyes.
In the hall below he looked about him with satisfaction. For the last
three days he had labored tirelessly to fit the place for the evening's
event. The parlor now showed walls rimmed with straight-back chairs and
the grand piano--long ago put in order--had been relegated to the
library. That instinct for the artistic, which had made him a last
resort in the vexing problems of club entertainments, had aided him in
the Court's adornment. Thick branches of holly, axed from the hollows
by Uncle Jefferson, lined the balustrade of the stairway, the burnished
green of ivy leaves was twined with the prisms of the chandelier in the
big yellow-hung parlor, and bands of twisted laurel were festooned along
the upper walls. The massed green was a setting for a prodigal use of
flowers. Everywhere wild blossoms showed their spreading clusters, and
he had searched every corner of the estate, even climbing the ragged
forest slope, to the tawdry edge of Hell's Half-Acre, to plunder each
covert of its hidden blooms.
He had intended at first to use only the wild flowers, but that morning
Ranston had arrived from Rosewood with a load of red roses that had made
him gasp with delight. Now these painted the whole a splendid riotous
crimson. They stood banked in windows and fireplaces. Great clumps
nodded from shadowed corners and a veritable bower of them waited for
the musicians at the end of the hall. Through the whole house wreathed
the sweet rose-scent, mingled with the frailer fragrance of the
wildings. John Valiant drew a single great red beauty from its brethren
and fastened it in his button-hole.
Out in the kitchens Cassandra's egg-beating clattered like a watchman's
rattle, while Aunt Daphne put the finishing touches to an array of
lighter edibles destined to grace the long table on the rear porch, now
walled in with snow-white muslin and hung with candle-lusters. Under the
trees Uncle Jefferson was even then experimenting with various punch
compounds, and a delicious aroma of vanilla came to Valiant's nostrils
together with Aunt Daphne's wrathful voice:
"Heah, yo' Greenie Simms! Whah yo' gwine?"
"Ain' gwine nowhah. Ah's done been whah Ah's gwine."
"Yo' set down dat o'ange er Ah'll smack yo' bardaciously ovah! Ef yo'
_steals_, what gwineter become ob yo' _soul_?"
"Don' know nuffin' 'bout mah soul," responded the ebony materialist.
"But Ah knows Ah got er body, 'cause Ah buttons et up e'vy day, en Ah
lakes et plump."
"Yo' go back en wuk fo' yo' quahtah yankin' on dat ar ice-cream
freezah," decreed Aunt Daphne exasperatedly, "er yo' don' git er _smell_
ter-night. Yo' heah dat!"
The threat proved efficacious, for Greenie, muttering sullenly that she
"didn' nebbah feel no sky-lark in de ebenin'," returned to her labors.
* * * * *
The Red Road, as Valiant's car passed, was dotted with straggling
pedestrians: humble country folk who trudged along the grassy foot-path
with no sullen regard for the swift cars and comfortable carriages that
left them behind; sturdy barefooted children who called shrilly after
him, and happy-go-lucky negro youths clad in their best with Sunday
shoes dangling over their shoulders, slouching regardlessly in the
dust--all bound for the same Mecca, which presently rose before him, a
gateway of painted canvas proclaiming the field to which it opened
Runnymede.
This was a spacious level meadow into which debouched the ravine on
whose rim he had stood with Shirley on that unforgettable day. But its
stake-and-ridered fence enclosed now no mere stretch of ill-kept sward.
Busy scythes, rollers and grass-cutters from the Country Club had
smoothed and shaven a rectangle in its center till it lay like a carpet
of crushed green velvet, set in an expanse of life-everlasting and pale
budding goldenrod.
He halted his car at the end of the field and snapped a leash in the
bulldog's collar. "I hate to do it, old man," he said apologetically to
Chum's reproachful look, "but I've got to. There are to be some stunts,
and in such occasions you're apt to be convinced you're the main one of
the contestants, which might cause a mix-up. Never mind; I'll anchor you
where you won't miss anything."
With the excited dog tugging before him, he threaded his way through the
press with keen exhilaration. This was not a crowd like that of a city;
rather it resembled the old-homestead day of some unbelievably populous
family, at reunion with its servants and retainers. All its members
knew one another and the air was musical with badinage. Now and then
his gloved hand touched his cap at a salutation. He was conscious of
swift bird-like glances from pretty girls. Here was none of the rigid
straight-ahead gaze or vacant stare of the city boulevard; the eyes that
looked at him, frankly curious and inquiring, were full of easy open
comradeship. There was about both men and women an air of being at the
same time more ceremonious and more casual than those he had known. Some
of the girls wore gowns and hats that might that morning have issued
from the Rue de la Paix; others were habited in cheap materials. But
about the latter hung no benumbing self-consciousness. All bore
themselves alike. And all seemed to possess musical voices, graceful
movements and a sense of quiet dignity. He was beginning to realize that
there might really exist straitened circumstances, even actual poverty,
which yet created no sort of social difference.
Opposite the canvas-covered grand stand sat twelve small mushroom tents,
each with a staff and tiny flag. Midway lines of flaxen ropes stretched
between rows of slender peeled saplings from whose tops floated fanged
streamers of vivid bunting. A pavilion of purple cloth, open at the
sides, awaited the committee, and near the center, a negro band was
disposed on camp-stools, the brass of the waiting instruments winking
in the sunlight. The stand was a confused glow of color, of light gauzy
dresses, of young girls in pastel muslins with flowers in their belts,
picturesque hats and slender articulate hands darting in vivacious
gestures like white swallows--the gentry from the "big houses." About
the square babbled and palpitated the crowd of the farm-wagon and
carry-all; and at the lower end, jostling, laughing and skylarking
beyond the barrier, a picturesque block of negroes, picked out by
flashing white teeth, red bandannas folded above wrinkled countenances
and garish knots of ribbon flaunting above the pert yellow faces of a
younger mulatto race.
The light athletic figure, towed by the white bulldog, drew many
glances. Valiant's eyes, however, as they swept the seats, were
looking for but one, and at first vainly. He felt a quick pang of
disappointment. Perhaps she would not come! Perhaps her mother was still
ill. Perhaps--but then suddenly his heart beat high, for he saw her in
the lower tier, with a group of young people. He could not have told
what she wore, save that it was of soft Murillo blue with a hat whose
down-curved brim was wound with a shaded plume of the same tint. Her
mother was not with her. She was not looking his way as he passed--her
arms at the moment being held out in an adorable gesture toward a little
child in a smiling matron's lap--and but a single glance was vouchsafed
him before the major seized upon him and bore him to the purple
pavilion, for he was one of the committee.
But for this distraction, he might have seen, entering the stand with
the Chalmers just as the band struck up a delirious whirl of _Dixie_,
the two strangers whom the doctor had observed an hour before as they
whirled by the Merryweather Mason house behind the judge's grays. Silas
Fargo might have passed in any gathering for the unobtrusive city man.
Katharine was noticeable anywhere, and to-day her tall willowy figure in
its champagne-color lingerie gown and hat garnished with bronze and gold
thistles, setting in relief her ivory statuesque face, drew a wave of
whispered comment which left a sibilant wake behind them. The party
made a picturesque group as they now disposed themselves, Katharine's
colorless loveliness contrasting with the eager sparkle of pretty Nancy
Chalmers and the gipsy-like beauty of Betty Page.
"You call it a tournament, don't you?" asked Katharine of the judge.
"Yes," he replied. "It's a kind of contest in which twelve riders
compete for the privilege of naming a Queen of Beauty. There's a ball
to-night, at which the lucky lady is crowned. Those little tents are
where the noble knights don their shining armor. See, there go their
caparisoned chargers."
A file of negroes was approaching the tents, each leading a horse whose
saddle and bridle were decorated with fringes of various hues. In the
center of the roped lists, directly in front of the stand, others were
planting upright in the ground a tall pole from whose top projected a
horizontal arm like a slender gallows. From this was suspended a cord at
whose end swung a tiny object that whirled and glittered in the sun.
The judge explained. "On the end of the cord is a silver ring, at which
the knights tilt with lances. Twelve rings are used. The pike-points are
made to fit them, and the knight who carries off the greatest number of
the twelve is the victor. The whole thing is a custom as ancient as
Virginia--a relic, of course, of the old jousting of the feudal ages.
The ring is supposed to represent the device on the boss of the shield,
at which the lance-thrust was aimed."
"How interesting!" exclaimed Katharine, and turning, swept the stand
with her lorgnette. "I suppose all the county's F. F. V's. are here,"
she said laughingly to Nancy Chalmers. "I've often wondered, by the way,
what became of the Second Families of Virginia."
"Oh, they've mostly emigrated North," answered Nancy. "The ones that are
left are all ancient. There are families here that don't admit they ever
began at all."
Silas Fargo shook his stooped shoulders with laughter. "Up North," he
said genially, "we've got regular factories that turn out ready-made
family-trees for anybody who wants to roost in one."
Betty Page turned her piquant brown face toward him reflectively. "Ah
do think you No'therners are wonderful," she said in her languorous
Carolinian, "at being just what you want to be! Ah met a No'thern
gyrl once at White Sulphur Springs who said such clever things, and
Ah asked her, 'How did you ever learn to talk like you do?' What do
you reckon the gyrl said? She said she had to be clever because
her nose was so big. She tried wearing tricky little hats and a
follow-me-in-the-twilight expression, but it made her seem ridiculous,
so she finally thought of brains and epigrams, and took to reading
Bernard Shaw and Walter Pater, and it worked fine. She said trouble
suited her profile, and she'd discovered people looked twice at sad
eyes, so she'd cultivated a pensive look for yeahs. Ah think that was
mighty bright! Down South we're too lazy to work over ourselves that
way."
* * * * *
And now over the fluttering stand and the crowd about the barriers, a
stir was discernible. Katharine looked again at the field. "Who is that
splendid big old man giving directions? The one who looks like a lion.
He's coming this way now."
"That's Major Montague Bristow," said the judge. "He's been master of
the heralds for years. The tournament could hardly happen without the
major."
"I'm sure I'd like him," she answered. "What a lovely girl he is talking
to!"
It was Shirley who had beckoned the major from the lists. She was
leaning over the railing. "Why has Ridgeley Pendleton left?" she asked
in a low voice. "Isn't he one of the twelve?"
"He was. But he's ill. He wasn't feeling up to it when he came, but
he didn't give up till half an hour ago. We'll have to get along with
eleven knights."
She made an exclamation of dismay. "Poor Ridge! And what a pity! There
have never been less than the full number. It will spoil the royal
quadrille to-night, too. Why doesn't the committee choose some one in
his place?"
"Too late. Besides, he would have no costume."
"Surely that's not so important as filling the Round Table?"
"It's too bad. But I'm afraid it can't be helped."
She bent still closer. "Listen. Why not ask Mr. Valiant? He is our host
to-night. I'm sure he'd be glad to help out, even without the costume."
"Egad!" he said, pulling his imperial. "None of us had thought of him.
He could ride Pendleton's mount, of course." He reflected a moment.
"I'll do it. It's exactly the right thing. You're a clever girl,
Shirley."
He hastily crossed the field, while she leaned back, her eyes on the
flanneled figure--long since recognized--under the purple pavilion. She
saw the committee put their heads together and hurriedly enter.
In the moment's wait, Shirley's gloved fingers clasped and unclasped
somewhat nervously. The riders had been chosen long before John
Valiant's coming. If a saddle, however, was perforce to be vacant, what
more appropriate than that he should fill it? The thought had come to
her instantly, bred of an underlying regret, which she had all along
cherished, that he was not to take part. But beneath this was a deeper
passionate wish that she did not attempt to analyze, to see him assume
his place with others long habituated to that closed circle--a place
rightfully his by reason of birth and name--and to lighten the gloomy
shadow, that must rest on his thoughts of his father, with warmer
sunnier things. She heaved a secret sigh of satisfaction as the
white-clad figure rose in acquiescence.
The major returned to the grand stand and held up his hand for silence.
"Our gracious Liege," he proclaimed, in his big vibrant voice, "Queen of
Beauty yet unknown, Lords, Knights and Esquires, Fair Dames and gentles
all! Whereas divers noble persons have enterprized and taken upon them
to hold jousts royal and tourney, you are hereby acquainted that the
lists of Runnymede are about to open for that achievement of arms and
grand and noble tournament for which they have so long been famed. But
an hour since one of our noble knights, pricking hither to tilt for his
lady, was beset by a grievous malady. However, lest our jousting lack
the royal number, a new champion hath at this last hour been found to
fill the Table Round, who of his courtesy doth consent to ride without
armor."
A buzz ran over the assemblage. "It must be Pendleton who has
defaulted," said Judge Chalmers. "I heard this morning he was sick.
Who's the substitute knight, I wonder?"
At the moment a single mounted herald before the tents blew a long blast
on a silver horn. Their flaps parted and eleven knights issued to mount
their steeds and draw into line behind him. They were brilliantly decked
in fleshlings with slashed doublets and plumed chapeaus, and short
jeweled cloaks drooped from their shoulders. Pages handed each a long
lance which was held perpendicular, the butt resting on the right
stirrup.
"Why," cried Katharine, "it's like a bit out of the medieval pageant at
Earl's Court! Where do you get the costumes?"
"Some we make," Judge Chalmers answered, "but a few are the real
thing--so old they have to be patched up anew each year. The ancient
lances have disappeared. The pikes we use now were found in '61, hidden
ready for the negro insurrection, when John Brown should give the
signal."
Under the pavilion, just for the fraction of a second, Valiant
hesitated. Then he turned swiftly to the twelfth tent. Its flag-staff
bore a long streamer of deep blood-red. He snatched this from its place,
flung it about his waist and knotted it sash-wise. He drew the rose from
his lapel and thrust it through the band of his Panama, leaped to the
saddle of the horse the major had beckoned, and with a quick thrust of
his heel, swung to the end of the stamping line.
The field and grand stand had seen the quick decision, with its instant
action, and as the hoofs thudded over the turf, a wave of hand-clapping
ran across the seats like a silver rain. "Neatly done, upon my word!"
said the judge, delighted. "What a daring idea! Who is it? Is it--bless
my soul, it is!"
Katharine Fargo had dropped her lorgnette with an exclamation. She stood
up, her wide eyes fixed on that figure in pure white, with the blood-red
cordon flaunting across his horse's flanks and the single crimson
blossom glowing in his hat.
"The White Knight!" she breathed. "Who is he?"
Judge Chalmers looked round in sudden illumination. "I forgot that you
would be likely to know him," he said. "That is Mr. John Valiant of
Damory Court."
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE KNIGHT OF THE CRIMSON ROSE
The row of horsemen had halted in a curving line before the grand stand,
and now in the silence the herald, holding a parchment scroll, spurred
before each rider in turn, demanding his title. As this was given he
whirled to proclaim it, accompanying each evolution with a blast on his
horn. "Knight of the Golden Spur," "Knight of Castlewood," "Lord of
Brandon," "Westover's Knight," "Knight of the Silver Cross": the names,
fanciful, or those of family estates, fell on John Valiant's ear with a
pungent flavor of medievalism. His eyes, full of the swaying crowd, the
shift and shimmer of light and color, returned again and again to an
alluring spot of blue at one side, which might for him have been the
heart of the whole festal out-of-doors. He started as he became aware
that the rider next him had answered and that the herald had paused
before him.
"Knight of the Crimson Rose!" It sprang to his lips without forethought,
an echo, perhaps, of the improvised sash and the flower in his hat-band,
but the shout of the herald and the trumpet's blare seemed to make the
words fairly bulge with inevitability. And through this struck a sudden
appalled feeling that he had really spoken Shirley's name, and that
every one had heard. He could not see her face, and clutched his lance
fiercely to overcome an insane desire to stoop hideously in his saddle
and peer under the shading hat-brim. Lest he should do this, he fastened
his eyes determinedly on the major, who now proceeded to deliver himself
of the "Charge to the Knights."
The major made an appealing center to the charming picture as he stood
on the green turf, "the glass of fashion and the mold of form," his head
bare, his shock of blond-gray hair thrown back, and one hand thrust
between the buttons of his snowy waistcoat. His rich bass voice rolled
out to the farthest corner of the field:
"Sir Knights!
"The tournament to which we are gathered to-day is to us traditional; a
rite of antiquity and a monument of ancient generations. This relic of
the jousts of the Field of the Cloth-of-Gold points us back to an era of
knightly deeds, fidelity to sacred trust, obligation to duty and loyalty
to woman--the watchwords of true knighthood.
"We like to think that when our forefathers, offspring of men who
established chivalry, came from over-seas, they brought with them not
only this ancient play, but the precepts it symbolizes. We may be
proud, indeed, knowing that this is no hollow ceremonial, but an earnest
that the flower of knighthood has not withered in the world, that in an
age when the greed of gold was never so dazzling, the spirit of true
gallantry has not faded but blooms luxuriant in the sparkling dews of
the heart of this commonwealth.
"Yours is no bitter ride by haunted tarn or through enchanted forest--no
arrowed vigil on beleagered walls. You go not in gleaming steel and
fretted mail to meet the bite of blade and crash of battle-ax. Yet is
your trial one of honor and glory. I charge you that in the contest
there be no darkling envy for the victor, but only true comradeship and
that generosity which is the badge of noble minds.
"I summon you to bow the knee loyally before your queen. For as the
contest typifies life's battle, so shall she stand for you as the type
of womanhood, the crown of knighthood. The bravest thoughts of chivalry
circle about her. The stars of heaven only may be above her head, the
glowworm in the night-chill grasses the only fire at her feet; still the
spot that holds her is richer than if ceiled with cedar and painted with
vermilion, and sheds a light far for him who else were lampless.
"Most Noble Knights! In the name of that high tradition which this day
preserves! In the memory of those other knights who practised the
tourney in its old-time glory! In the sight of your Queen of Beauty! I
charge you, Southern gentlemen, to joust with that valor, fairness and
truth which are the enduring glories of the knighthood of Virginia!"
Over the ringing applause Nancy Chalmers looked at him with a little
smile, quizzical yet soft. "Dear old major!" she whispered to Betty
Page. "How he loves the center of the stage! And he's effective, too.
Thirty years ago, father says, he might have been anything he wanted
to--even United States Senator. But he would never leave the state. Not
that I blame him for that," she added; "I'd rather be a church-mouse in
Virginia than Croesus' daughter anywhere else."
The twelve horsemen were now sitting their restive mounts in a group at
one end of the lists. Two mounted monitors had stationed themselves on
either side of the rope-barrier; a third stood behind the upright from
whose arm was suspended the silver ring. The herald blew a blast,
calling the title of the first of the knights. Instantly, with lance at
rest, the latter galloped at full speed down the lists. There was a
sharp musical clash, and as he dashed on, the ring flew the full length
of its tether and swung back, whirling swiftly. It had been a close
thrust, for the iron pike-point had smitten its rim. A cheer went up,
under cover of which the rider looped back outside the lists to his
former position.
In an upper tier of the stand a spectator made a cup of his hands. "The
Knight of the Golden Spur against the field," he called. "What odds?"
"Five to one, Spotteswood," a voice answered.
"Ten dollars," announced the first.
"Good." And both made memorandum on their cuffs.
A second time the trumpet sounded, and the Knight of Castlewood flashed
ingloriously down the roped aisle--a miss.
Again and again the clear note rang out and a mounted figure plunged by,
and presently, in a burst of cheering, the herald proclaimed "The Knight
of the Black Eagle--one!" and Chilly Lusk, in old-rose doublet and inky
plume cantered back with a silver ring upon his pike.
The hazards in the stand multiplied. Now it was Westover's Knight
against him of the Silver Cross; now, the Lord of Brandon to win. The
gentlemen wagered coin of the realm; the ladies gloves and chocolates.
One pretty girl, amid a gale of chaff, staked a greyhound puppy. The
arena swam in a lustrous light, and the greensward glistened in its
frame of white and dusky spectators. In the sunshine the horses--every
one of them groomed till his coat shone like black, gray or sorrel
satin--curveted and whinnied, restive and red-nostriled under the tense
rein. The riders sat erect and statuesque, pikes in air, cloaks flapping
from their shoulders, waiting the call that sent each in turn tilting
against the glittering and elusively breeze-swinging silver circlet.
No simple thing, approaching leisurely and afoot, to send that tapering
point straight to the tiny mark. But at headlong gallop, astride a
blooded horse straining to take the bit, a deed requiring a nice eye, a
perfect seat and an unwavering arm and hand! Those knights who looped
back with their pikes thus braceleted had spent long hours in practise
and each rode as naturally as he breathed; yet more than once a horse
shied in mid-course and at the too-eager thrust of the spur bolted
through the ropes. Valiant made his first essay--and missed--with the
blood singing in his ears. The ring flew from his pike, catching him a
swinging blow on the temple in its rebound, but he scarcely felt it.
As he cantered back he heard the major's bass pitting him against the
field, and for a moment again the spot of blue seemed to spread over all
the watching stand.
And then, suddenly, stand and field all vanished. He saw only the long
level rope-lined lane with its twinkling mid-air point. An exhilaration
caught him at the feel of the splendid horse-flesh beneath him--that
sense of oneness with the creature he bestrode which the instinctive
horseman knows. He lifted his lance and hefted it, seeking its absolute
balance, feeling its point as a fencer with his rapier. When again the
blood-red sash streamed away the herald's cry, "Knight of the Crimson
Rose--One!" set the field hand-clapping. From the next joust also,
Valiant returned with the gage upon his lance. Two had gone to the
Champion of Castlewood and two to scattering riders. When Valiant won
his fourth the grand stand thundered with applause.
Katherine Fargo was watching with a gaze that held a curious puzzle.
After that recognition of the White Knight, Judge Chalmers had told in a
few words the story of Damory Court, its ancient history, the unhappy
duel that had sent its owner into a Northern exile, and the son's recent
coming. It had more than surprised her. Her father's appreciative
chuckle that "the young vagabond seemed after all to have fallen on his
feet" had left her strangely silent. She was undergoing a curious mental
bouleversement. Valiant's passionate defense of his father in that
fierce burst of anger in the court room had at first startled her with
its sense of unsuspected force. Later, however, she had come to think it
theatric and overdrawn, and she had heard of his quixotic surrender of
his fortune with a wonder not unmixed with an almost pitying scorn. She
despised eccentricity as much as she respected wealth, and the act had
seemed a ridiculous impulse or a silly affectation, destined to be
repented long and bitterly in cold blood. So she had thought of him
since his evanishment with a regret less sharp for being glozed with a
certain contempt.
The discovery of him to-day had dissipated this. She had an unerring
sense of social values and she made no error in her estimate of the
people by whom she was now surrounded. The recital of the Valiant
generations, the size of the estate, the position into which its heir
had stepped by very reason of being who he was, appealed to her instinct
and imagination and respect for blood. She had a sudden conception of
new values, beside which money counted little. The last of a line more
ancient than the state itself, master of a homestead famous throughout
its borders, John Valiant loomed larger in her eyes at the moment than
ever before.
The trumpet again pealed its silvery proclamation. Judge Chalmers was
on his feet. "Fifty to ten on the Crimson Rose," he cried. This time,
however, there were no takers. He called again, but none heard him; the
last tilts were too absorbing.
Where had John Valiant learned that trick of the loose wrist and
inflexible thrust, but at the fencing club? Where that subconscious
management of the rein, that nice gage of speed and distance, but on the
polo field? The old sports stood him now in good stead. "Why, he has a
seat like a centaur!" exclaimed the judge--praise indeed in a community
where riding was a passion and horse-flesh a fetish!
"Oh, dear!" mourned Nancy Chalmers. "I've bet six pairs of gloves on
Quint Carter. Never mind; if it has to be anybody else, I'd rather it
were Mr. Valiant. It's about time Damory Court got something after
Rip-Van-Winkling it for thirty years. Besides, he's giving us the dance,
and I _love_ him for that! Quint still has a chance, though. If he takes
the next two, and Mr. Valiant misses--"
Katherine looked at her with a little smile. "He won't miss," she said.
She had seen that look on his face before and read it aright. John
Valiant had striven in many contests, not only of skill but of strength
and daring, before crowded grand stands. But never in all his life had
he so desired to pluck the prize. His grip was tense on the lance as the
yellow doublet and olive plume of Castlewood shot away for a last
time--and failed. An instant later the Knight of the Crimson Rose
flashed down the lists with the last ring on his pike.
And the tourney was won.
In the shouting and hand-clapping Valiant took the rose from his
hat-band and bound it with a shred of his sash to his lance-point. As he
rode slowly toward the massed stand, the whole field was so still that
he could hear the hoofs of the file of knights behind him. The people
were on their feet.
The mounted herald blew his blast. "By the Majesties of St. Michael and
St. George," he proclaimed, "I declare the Knight of the Crimson Rose
the victor of this our tourney, and do charge him now to choose his
Queen of Beauty, that all may do her homage!"
Shirley saw the horse coming down the line, its rider bareheaded now,
and her heart began to race wildly. Beyond wanting him to take part, she
had not thought. She looked about her, suddenly dismayed. People were
smiling at her and clapping their hands. From the other end of the stand
she saw Nancy Chalmers throwing her a kiss, and beside her a tall pale
girl in champagne-color staring through a jeweled lorgnette.
She was conscious all at once that the flanneled rider was very close
... that his pike-point, with its big red blossom, was stretching up to
her.
* * * * *
With the rose in her hand she curtsied to him, while the blurred throng
cheered itself hoarse, and the band struck up _You Great Big Beautiful
Doll_, with extraordinary rapture, to the tune of which the noise
finally subsided to a battery of hilarious congratulations which left
her flushed and a little breathless. Nancy Chalmers and Betty Page had
burst upon her like petticoated whirlwinds and presently, when the
crowd had lessened, the judge came to introduce his visitor.
"Mr. Fargo and his daughter are our guests at Gladden Hall," he told
her. "They are old friends of Valiant's, by the way; they knew him in
New York."
"Katharine's lighting her incense now, I guess," observed Silas Fargo.
"See there!" He pointed across the stand, where stood a willowy tan
figure, one hand beckoning to the concourse below, where Valiant stood,
the center of a shifting group, round which the white bulldog, mad with
recovered liberty, tore in eccentric circles.
As they looked, she called softly, "John! John!"
Shirley saw him start and face about, then come quickly toward her,
amazement and welcome in his eyes.
As Shirley turned away a little later with the major, that whispering
voice seemed still to sound in her ears--"John! John!" There smote her
suddenly the thought that when he had chosen her his Queen of Beauty, he
had not seen the other--had not known she was there.
A few moments before the day had been golden; she went home through a
landscape that somehow seemed to have lost its brightest glow.
CHAPTER XXXIV
KATHARINE DECIDES
Katharine left the field of Runnymede with John Valiant in the
dun-colored motor. She sat in the passenger's seat beside him, while the
bulldog capered, ecstatically barking, from side to side of the rear
cushions. Her father had declined the honor, remarking that he
considered a professional chauffeur a sufficient risk of his valuable
life and that the Chalmers' grays were good enough for him--a decision
which did not wholly displease Katharine.
The car was not the smart Panhard in which she had so often spun down
the avenue or along the shell-roads of the north shore. It lacked those
fin-de-siècle appurtenances which marked the ne plus ultra of its kind,
as her observant eye recognized; but it ran staunch and true. The
powerful hands that gripped the steering-wheel were brown with sun and
wind, and the handsome face above it had a look of keenness and energy
she had never surprised before. They passed many vehicles and there were
few whose occupants did not greet him. In fact, as he presently
remarked, it was a saving of energy to keep his hat off; and he tossed
the Panama into the rear seat. On the rim of the village a group raised
a cheer to which he nodded laughingly, and farther on a little old lady
on a timid vine-covered porch beside a church, waved a black-mitted hand
to him with a sweet old-time gesture. Katharine noted that he bowed to
her with extra care.
"That's Miss Mattie Sue Mabry," he said, "the quaintest, dearest thing
you ever saw. She taught my father his letters." A small freckled-faced
girl was swinging on the gate. "You really must know Rickey Snyder!" he
said, and halted the car at the curb. "Rickey," he called, "I want to
introduce you to Miss Fargo."
"Howdy do?" said Rickey, approaching with an ingratiating bob of the
head. "I saw you at the tournament. Is it true that you can ride on the
train wherever you want to without ever buying any ticket?"
Katharine smiled back. "I'm not sure they'd all take me for nothing,"
she said, "but perhaps a few of them would."
"That must be grand," sighed Rickey. "I reckon you've seen everything in
the world, almost."
"No, indeed. I never saw a tournament like this, for instance. It was
tremendously exciting. Wasn't it!"
"My goodness gracious, yes! Mr. Valiant, I most cried when you chose
Miss Shirley Queen of Beauty, I was that glad! She was a lot the
prettiest girl there. Though I like your looks right much too, Miss
Fargo," she added tactfully.
"Oh, Mr. Valiant!" Rickey called after them as the car started. "Now
you're at Damory Court, are you going to let us children keep on playing
up at the Hemlocks?"
"Well I should _think_ so!" he answered. "Play there all the time, if
you like."
"Oh, thank you," said Rickey, radiant. "And there won't be any snakes
there now, for you've cleared all the underbrush away."
As they sped on, Katharine's cheek had a faintly heightened color. But,
"What a deliciously odd child!" she laughed.
"She's a character," he said. "She worships the ground Miss Dandridge
walks on. There's a good reason for it. You must get Miss Chalmers to
tell you the story."
Where the Red Road stretched level before them, he threw the throttle
open for a long rush through the thymy-scented air. The light, late
afternoon breeze drew by them, sweeping back Katharine's graceful
sinuous veil and spraying them with odors of clover and sunny fruit.
They passed orchard clumps bending with young apples, boundless aisles
of green, young-tasseled corn and shadowy groves that smelled of fern
and sassafras, opening out into more sun-lighted vistas overarched by
the intense penetrable blue of the June sky.
John Valiant had never seemed to her so wholly good to see, with his
waving hair ruffling in their flight and the westerning sun shining
redly on his face. Midway of this spurt he looked at her to say: "Did
you ever know a more beautiful countryside? See how the pink-and-yellow
of those grain fields fades into the purple of the hills. Very few
painters have ever captured a tint like that. It's like raspberries
crushed in curdled milk."
"I've quite lost my heart to it all," she said, her voice jolting with
the speed of their course. "It's a perfect pastoral ... so different
from our terrific city pace.... Of course it must be a trifle dull at
times ... seeing the same people always ... and without the theater and
the opera and the whirl about one--but ... the kind of life one reads
about ... in the novels of the South, you know ... I suppose one doesn't
realize that it actually exists until one comes to a Southern place like
this. And the negro servants! How odd it must be to have a white-headed
old darky in a brass-buttoned swallow-tail for a butler! So picturesque!
At Judge Chalmers', I have a feeling all the time that I'm walking
through a stage rehearsal."
The car slackened speed as it slid by a whitewashed cabin at whose
entrance sat a dusky gray-bearded figure. Valiant pointed. "Do you see
him?" he asked.
"I see a very ordinary old colored man sitting on the door-step,"
Katharine replied.
"That's Mad Anthony, our local Mother Shipton. He's a prophet and
soothsayer. Uncle Jefferson--that's my body-servant--insists that he
foretold my coming to Damory Court. If we had more time you could have
your fortune told."
"How thrilling!" she commented with half-humorous irony.
He pointed to a great white house set in a grove of trees. "That is
Beechwood," he told her, "the Beverley homestead. Young Beverley
was the Knight of the Silver Cross. A fine old place, isn't it? It
was burned by the Indians during the French and Indian War. My
great-great-great-grandfather--" He broke off. "But then, those old
things won't interest you."
"They interest you a great deal, don't they?" she asked.
"Yes," he admitted, "they do. You see, my ancestors are such new
acquaintances, I find them absorbing. You know when I lived in New
York--"
"Last month."
He laughed a little--not quite the laugh she had known in the past.
"Yes, but I can hardly believe it; I seem to have been here half a
lifetime. To think that a month ago I was a double-dyed New Yorker."
"It's been a strange experience for you. Don't you feel rather
Jekyl-and-Hydish?"
"That's a terrible compound!" he laughed, as he swept the car round a
curve, skilfully evading a bumping wagon-load of farm-hands. "In which
capacity am I Mr. Hyde, by the way?"
She smiled at him round the edge of her blown veil. "Figures of speech
aren't to be analyzed. You are Dr. Jekyl in New York, anyway. You read
what the papers said? No? It's just as well; it would have been likely
to turn your head."
"Could anything be as likely to do that as--this?" With a glance he
indicated her presence beside him.
She made him a mocking bow. "Be careful," she warned. "Speeches like
that smack of disloyalty to your queen. What a pretty girl she is! I
congratulated you on your prowess. I must add my congratulations on your
taste."
He returned her bow of a moment since.
"It was all a most unique thing," she went on. "And to-night at your
ball I shall witness the coronation. I can hardly wait to see Damory
Court. Do you know, in all these years I never suspected what a
versatile genius you were? It's too wonderful how you have stepped into
this life--into the people's thoughts and feelings--as you have. When
you come back to New York--"
He looked at her, oddly she thought. "Why should I go back?"
"Why? Because it's your natural habitat. Isn't it?"
"That's the word," he said smiling. "It _was_ my habitat. This is my
home."
She was silent a moment in sheer surprise. She had thought of this
Southern essay as a quickly passing incident, a colorful chapter whose
page might any day be turned. But it was impossible to mistake his
meaning. Clearly, he was deeply infatuated with this Arcadian experience
and had no thought at present but to continue it indefinitely.
But it would pass! He was a New Yorker, after all. And what more
charming than to have an old place in such a countryside--a position
ready-made at one's hand, to step into for a month or two when ennui
made the old haunts tasteless? It was worth some cultivation. One must
anchor somewhere. Virginia was not so far from the center; splendid
estates of Northerners dotted even the Carolinas. Here one might be in
hand-touch with everything. And it was no small thing to hold one of the
oldest and proudest names in a section like this. One could always have
a town-house too--there was Washington, and there was Europe....
They were passing the entrance of a cherry-bordered lane, and without
taking his hands from the gear, he nodded toward the low broad-eaved
dwelling with its flowering arbors that showed in flashing glimpses of
brown and red between the intervening trees. "The palace of the queen!"
he said--"Rosewood, by name."
She looked in some curiosity. Clearly, if not a refuge of genteel
poverty, neither was it the abode of wealth; so, from her assured
rampart of the Fargo millions, Katharine reflected complacently. The
girl was a local favorite, of course--he had been tactful as to that. It
was fortunate, in a way, that he had not seen her, Katharine, in the
grand stand until afterward. Feeling toward her as she believed he did,
with his absurd directness, he would have been likely to drop the rose
in her lap, never reflecting that, the tourney being a local function,
the choice should not fall upon an outlander. That would not have tended
to increase his popularity in the countryside, and popularity was the
very salt of social success. So Katharine pondered, her mind, like a
capable general's, running somewhat ahead of the moment.
The slowing of the car brought her back to the present, and she looked
up to see before them the great gate of Gladden Hall. She did not speak
till they had quite stopped.
Then, as her hand lay in his for farewell, "You are right in your
decision," she said softly. "This is your place. You are a Valiant of
Virginia. I didn't realize it before, but I am beginning to see all it
means to you."
Her voice held a lingering indefinable quality that was almost sadness,
and for that one slender instant, she opened on him the unmasked
batteries of her glorious gray eyes.
CHAPTER XXXV
"WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER"
The Tournament Ball at Damory Court that night was more than an event.
The old mansion was an irresistible magnet. The floor of its yellow
parlor was known to be of delectable hugeness. Its gardens were a
legend. The whole place, moreover, was steeped in the very odor of old
mystery and new romance. Small wonder that to this particular affair the
elect--the major was the high custodian of the rolls, his decisions
being as the laws of the Medes and Persians--came gaily from the
farthest county line, and the big houses of the neighborhood were
crammed with over-night guests.
By half past nine o'clock the phalanx of chaperons decreed by old
custom had begun to arrive, and the great iron gate at the foot of
the drive--erect and rustless now--saw an imposing processional of
carriages. These passed up a slope as radiant with the fairy light
of paper lanterns as a Japanese thoroughfare in festival season. The
colored bulbs swung moon-like from tree and shrub, painting their
rainbow lusters on grass and driveway. Under the high gray columns of
the porch and into the wide door, framed in its small leaded panes that
glowed with the merry light within, poured a stream of loveliness: in
carriage-wraps of light tints, collared and edged with fur or eider, or
wide-sleeved mandarin coats falling back from dazzling throats and arms,
hair swathed with chiffon against the night dews, and gallantly
cavaliered by masculine black and white.
These from their tiring-rooms overflowed presently, garbed like
dreams, to make obeisance to the dowagers and then to drift through
flower-lined corridors, the foam on recurrent waves of discovery.
Behind the rose-bower in the hall, which shielded a dozen colored
musicians--violins, cello, guitars and mandolins--came premonitory
chirps and shivers, which presently wove into the low and dreamy melody
of _Carry me back to old Virginia_. Around the walls of the yellow
parlor, chairs stood two deep, occupied, or preempted by fan or
gloves or lacy handkerchief. The floor, newly waxed, gleamed in the
candle-light like beaten moonbeams. At its farther end was a low dais
covered by a thin Persian prayer-rug, where a single great tapestried
chair of dull gold waited throne-like, flanked on either side by the
chaperons, ladies of honor to the queen to come.
Promptly as the clock in the hall chimed ten, the music merged into a
march. Doors on opposite sides of the upper hall swung wide and down
the broad staircase came, with slow step, a stately procession: two
heralds in fawn-colored doublets with scroll and trumpets wound with
flowers, behind them the Queen of Beauty, her finger-tips resting
lightly in the hand of the Knight of the Crimson Rose, and these
followed by as brave a concourse of lords and ladies as ever graced
castle-hall in the gallant days "when knighthood was in flower."
Shirley's gown was of pure white: her arms were swathed in tulle,
crossed with straps of seed-pearl, over which hung long semi-flowing
sleeves of satin, and from her shoulders rose a stiff pointed medieval
collar of Venetian lace, against whose pale traceries her bronze hair
glowed with rosy lights. The edge of the square-cut corsage was powdered
with the pearls and against their sheen her breast and neck had the
soft creamy ivory of magnolia buds. Her straight plain train of satin,
knotted with fresh white rose-buds (Nancy Chalmers had labored for a
frantic half-hour in the dressing-room for this effect) was held by the
seven-year-old Byloe twins, in beribboned knickerbockers, duly impressed
with the grandeur of their privilege and grimly intent on acquitting
themselves with glory.
Shirley's face was still touched with the surprise that had swept it
as Valiant had stepped to her side. She had looked to see him in the
conventional panoply a sober-sided masculine mode decrees. What she
had beheld was a figure that might have stepped out of an Elizabethan
picture-frame. He was in deep purple slashed with gold. A cloak of thin
crimson velvet narrowly edged with ermine hung from his shoulders, lined
with tissue-like cloth-of-gold. From the rolling brim of his hat swept a
curling purple plume. He wore a slender dress-sword, and an order set
with brilliants sparkled on his breast.
The costume had been one he had worn at a fancy ball of the winter
before. It had been made from a painting at Windsor of one of the Dukes
of Buckingham, and it made a perfect foil for Shirley's white.
The eleven knights of the tourney, each with his chosen lady, if less
splendid, were tricked out in sufficiently gorgeous attire. The Knight
of Castlewood was in olive velveteen slashed with yellow, with Nancy
Chalmers, in flowered panniers and beaded pompadour, on his arm. The
Lord of Brandon wore black and silver, and Westover's champion was in
forest green. Many an ancient brocade had been awakened for the nonce
from its lavender bed, and ruffs and gold-braid were at no premium.
To the twanging of the deft black fingers, they passed in gorgeous array
between files of low-cut gowns and flower-like faces and masculine
swallow-tails, to the yellow parlor. Once there the music ceased with
a splendid crash, the eleven knights each dropped upon one knee, the
eleven ladies-in-waiting curtsied low, and Shirley, seated upon the
dais, leaned her burnished head to receive the crown. What though the
bauble was but bristol-board, its jeweled chasing but tinsel and paste?
On her head it glowed and trembled, a true diadem. As Valiant set the
glittering thing on those rich and wonderful coils, the music of her
presence was singing a swift melody in his blood.
His coronation address held no such flowery periods as would have rolled
from the major's soul. He had chosen a single paragraph he had lighted
on in an old book in the library--a history of the last Crusade in
French black-letter. He had translated and memorized the archaic
phrasing, keeping the quaint feeling of the original:
"These noble Knights bow in your presence, fair lady, as their Liege,
whom they know as even in judgment, as dainty in fulfilling these our
acts of arms, and do recommend their all unto your Good Grace in as
lowly wise as they can. O Queen, in whom the whole story of virtue is
written with the language of beauty, your eyes, which have been only
wont to discern the bowed knees of kneeling hearts and, inwardly turned,
found always the heavenly solace of a sweet mind, see them, ready in
heart and able with hands not only to assailing but to prevailing."
A hushed rustle of applause--not loud: the merest whisper of silken feet
and feathered fans tapped softly--testified to a widespread approbation.
It was the first sight many there had had of John Valiant and in both
looks and manner befitted their best ideals. True, his accent had not
that subtle gloze, that consonantal softness and intonation that mark
the Southron, but he was a Southron for all that, and one of themselves.
The queen's curtsey was the signal for the music, which throbbed
suddenly into a march, and she stepped down beside him. Couple after
couple, knights and ladies, ranged behind them, till the twenty-four
stood ready for the royal quadrille. It was the old-fashioned lancers,
but the deliberate strain lent the familiar measures something of the
stately effect of the minuet. The rhythmic waves alternately bore
Shirley to his arms and whisked her away, for fleeting hand-touch of
this or that demure or laughing maid, giving him glimpses of the seated
rows by the walls, of flower vistas, of open windows beyond which peered
shining black faces delightedly watching.
Quadrilles were not invented as aids to conversation, and John Valiant's
and Shirley's was necessarily limited. "The decorations are simply
delicious!" she said as they faced each other briefly. "How _did_ you
manage it?"
"Home talent with a vengeance. Uncle Jefferson and I did it with our
little hatchets. But the roses--"
They were swooped apart and Shirley found herself curtseying to Chilly
Lusk. "More than queen!" he said under his breath. "I had my heart set
on naming you to-day. I reckon I've lost my rabbit-foot!"
Opposite, in the turn, Betty Page had slipped her dainty hand into John
Valiant's. "Ah haven't seen such a lovely dance for _yeahs_!" she
sighed. "Isn't Shirley too sweet? If Ah had hair like hers, Ah wouldn't
speak to a soul on earth!"
The exigencies of the figure gave no space for answer, and presently,
after certain labyrinthine evolutions, Shirley's eyes were gazing into
his again. "How adorably you look!" he whispered, as he bowed over her
hand. "How does it feel to be a queen?"
"This little head was never made to wear a crown," she laughed. "Queens
should be regal. Miss Fargo would have--"
The music swept the rest away, but not the look of blinding reproach he
gave her that made her heart throb wildly as she glided on.
* * * * *
The last note of the quadrille slipped into a waltz dreamily slow, and
Valiant put his arm about Shirley and they floated away. Once before,
in the moonlighted garden at Rosewood, she had lain in his arms for
one brief instant; then she had seemed like some trapped wood-thing
resisting. Now, her slender body swaying to his every motion, she was
another creature. Under the drooping tawny hair her face was almost as
pale as the white satin of her gown; her lips were parted, and as they
moved, he could feel her heart rise and fall to her languorous breath.
There was no speech between them; for those few golden moments all
else vanished utterly, and he guided by instinct, as oblivious to the
floor-full as if he were drifting through some enchanted ether, holding
to his breast the incarnation of all loveliness, a thing of as frail
enchantment as the glow of stars upon snow, yet for him always the one
divine vision!
CHAPTER XXXVI
BY THE SUN-DIAL
Eyes arched with fan-shielded whispers, and fair faces, fore-shortened
as they turned back over powder-white shoulders, followed their
swallow-like movement. From an ever-widening circle of masculine
devotees Katharine Fargo watched them with a smile that cloaked an
increasing and unwelcome question.
Katharine had never looked more handsome; a critical survey of her
mirror at Gladden Hall had assured her of that. Never had her poise been
more superb, her toilet more enrapturing. She was exquisitely gowned in
rose-colored mousseline-de-soie, embroidered in tiny brilliants laid
on in Greek patterns. From her neck, in a single splendid loop of
iridescence against the rosy mist, depended those fabulous pearls--"the
kind you simply _can't_ believe," as Betty Page confided to her
partner--on whose newspaper reproduction (actual diameter) metropolitan
shop-girls had been wont to gaze with glistening eyes; and within their
milky circlet, on her rounded breast, trembled three pale gold-veined
orchids.
Watching that quadrille through her drooping emerald-tinted eyes, she
had received a sudden enlightening impression of Shirley's flawless
beauty. At the tournament her fleeting glimpse had adjudged the other
merely sweetly pretty. The Chalmers' surrey had stopped en route for
Shirley, but in her wraps and veil she had then been all but invisible.
This had been Katharine's first adequate view, and the sight of her
radiant charm had the effect almost of a blow.
For Katharine, be it said, had wholly surrendered to the old, yet new,
attraction that had swept her on the tourney field. This feeling was
no less cerebral and intellectual than it had been: she was no Galatea
waiting her Pygmalion. But it was strong for all that. And what had lain
always in the back of her mind as a half-formed intention, had become a
self-admitted purpose during the motor ride. So as she watched them in
the waltz, seasoned artificialist as she was, Katharine for a breath had
had need of all her address to keep the ball of conversation sparklingly
a-roll. Her natural assurance, however, came quickly to her aid. She had
been an acknowledged beauty too many seasons--had known John Valiant, or
believed she had, too long and too well--to allow the swift keen edge of
trepidation that had touched her to cool into prescience.
In another moment the waltz fainted out, to be succeeded by a
_deux-temps_, and presently the host, in his crimson cloak, was doffing
his plumed hat before her. Circling the polished floor in the maze,
there was something gratefully like former days in the assured touch,
the true and ready guidance. The intrusive question faded. He was the
John Valiant she had always known, of flashing repartee and graceful
compliment, yet with a touch of dignity, too--as befitted the lord of a
manor--which sat well upon him. After a decorous dozen of rounds, she
took his arm and allowed her perfect figure to be conducted through the
various rooms of the ground floor, chatting in quite the old-time way,
till a new gallant claimed her.
The mellow strings made on their merry tune, and at length the
_Washington Post_ marched all in flushed unity of purpose to the great
muslin-walled porch with its array of tables groaning under viands
concocted by Aunt Daphne for the delectation of the palate-weary:
layer-cakes, furry-brown with chocolate, or saffron with orange icing;
fruit-cake richer than an Indian begum; angel-cake as white (as the
major was to remark) as innocence and almost as sweet as the lady upon
whom he pressed it at the moment; yellow jumbles, kisses that crumbled
at a touch, and all nameless toothsome inventions for which new-laid
eggs are beaten and golden citron sliced.
And then once more the waltz-strain supervened and in the yellow parlor
joy was again unconfined. Among the masculine contingent, perhaps, the
same catholicity of age no longer prevailed, certain of the elders
showing an inclination toward one end of the front porch, now hazing
with the fragrance of Havanas. But the dowagers' fans plied on, the
rose-corners echoed their light laughter and the couples footed it as
though midnight was yet unreached and dawn as far afield as Judgment
Day.
Again Valiant claimed Katharine and they glided off on _The Beautiful
Blue Danube_. Her paleness now had a tinge of color but nevertheless he
thought she drooped. "You are tired," he said, "shan't we sit it out?"
"Oh, do you mind?" she responded gratefully. "It _has_ been a fairly
strenuous day, hasn't it!"
He guided her to a corridor, where branches of rhododendron screened an
alcove of settees and seductive cushions. Here, her weariness seemed put
to rout. There was no drooping of fringed lids, no disconcerting
silences; she chatted with ease and piquancy.
"It's like a fairy tale," she said at length dreamily,--"this wonderful
life. To step into it from New York is like coming out of a hot-house
into the spring out-of-doors! It makes our city existence seem so
sordidly artificial. You have chosen right."
"I know it. And yet two months ago a life a hundred miles from the
avenue would have seemed a sad and sandy Sahara. I know better now."
"I have been listening to pæans all the evening," she said. "And you
deserve them. It's a fine big thing you are attempting--the restoring of
this old estate. And I know you have even bigger plans, too."
He nodded, suddenly serious and thoughtful. "There's a lot I'd like to
do. It's not only the house and grounds. There are ... other things. For
instance, back on the mountain--on my own land--is a settlement they
call Hell's-Half-Acre. Probably it has well earned the name. It's a
wretched collection of hovels and surly men and drabs of women and
unkempt children, the poorest of poor-whites. Not one of them can read
or write, and they live like animals. If I'm ever able, I mean to put a
manual-training school up there. And then--"
He ended with a half laugh, suddenly conscious that he was talking in a
language she would scarcely understand--in fact, in a tongue new to
himself. But there was no smile on her lips and her extraordinary
eyes--cool gray, shot through with emerald--were looking into his with a
frankness and sympathy he would not have guessed lay beneath her glacial
placidity.
To Katharine, indeed, it made little difference what philanthropic fads
the man she had chosen might affect as regarded his tenantry. Ambitions
like these had a manorial flavor that did not displease her. And the
Fargo millions would bear much harmless hammering. A change, subtle and
incommunicable, passed over her.
"I shall think of you," she sighed, "as working on in this splendid
program. For it _is_ splendid. But New York will miss you, John."
"Ah, no. I've no delusions on that score. I dare say I'm almost
forgotten there already. Here I have a _place_."
Her head, leaned back against the cushion, turned toward him, the pale
orchids trembling on her bosom--she was so near that he could feel her
breath on his cheek. A new waltz had begun to sigh its languorous
measures.
"Place?" she queried. "Do you think you had no place there? Is it
possible that you do not understand that your going has left--a void?"
He looked at her suddenly, and her eyes fell. No sophisticated blushing
this, though it was by such effective employment of her charms that her
wonderful body and pliant mind had been drilled and fashioned from her
babyhood. Katharine at the moment was as near the luxury of real
embarrassment as she had ever been in her life.
Before he answered, however, the big form of Major Bristow appeared,
looking about him.
"It has--left a void," she said, her eyes still downcast, her voice just
low enough, "--for _me_."
The major pounced upon them at this juncture, feelingly accusing John of
the nefarious design of robbing the assemblage of its bright and
particular star. When Katharine put her hand in her cavalier's arm, her
eyes were dewy under their long shading lashes and her fine lips ever so
little tremulous. It had been her best available moment, and she had
used it.
As she moved away, her faint color slightly heightened, she was glad of
the interruption. It was better as it was. When John Valiant came to her
again....
But to him, as he stood watching her move lightly from him, there was
vouchsafed illumination. It came to him suddenly that that placidity and
hauteur which he had so admired in the old days were no mask for fires
within. The exquisite husk was the real Katharine. Hers was the
loveliness of some tall white lily cut in marble, splendid but chill.
And with the thought, between him and her there swept through the
shimmering candle-lighted air a breath of wet rose-fragrance like an
impalpable cloud, and set in the midst of it a misty star-tinted gown
sprayed with lilies-of-the-valley, and above it a girl's face clear and
vivid, her deep shadow-blue eyes fixed on his.
The music of a two-step was languishing when, a little later, Valiant
and Shirley strolled down between the garden box-hedges, cypress-shaped
and lifting spire-like toward a sky which bent, a silent canopy of mauve
and purplish blue. The moon drowsed between the trees like a great
yellow moth, and the shadows of the branches lay on the ground like
sharp bluish etchings on light green paper. Behind them Damory Court lay
a nest of woven music and laughter. The long white-muslined porch
shimmered goldenly, and beside it under the lanterns dallied a
flirtatious couple or two, ghost-like in the shadows.
Peace brooded over all, a vast sweet silence creeping through the
trees--only here and there the twitter of a waking bird--and around them
was the glimmer of tall flowers standing like pensive moon-worshipers in
an ecstasy of prayerless bloom.
"Come," he said. "Let me take you to see the sun-dial now."
The tangle had been cut away and a narrow gravel-path led through the
pruned creepers. She made an exclamation of delight. The onyx-pillar
stood in an oasis of white--moonflowers, white dahlias, mignonette and
narcissus; bars of late lilies-of-the-valley beyond these, bordered with
Arum-lilies, white clematis, iris and bridal-wreath, shading out into
tender paler hues that ringed the spotless purity like dawning passion.
"White for happiness," he quoted. "You said that when you brought me
here--the day we planted the ramblers. Do you remember what I said? That
some day, perhaps, I should love this spot the best of all at Damory
Court." He was silent a moment, tracing with his finger the motto on the
dial's rim. "When I was very little," he went on,--"hardly more than
three years old, I think,--my father and I had a play, in which we lived
in a great mansion like this. It was called Wishing-House, and it was in
the middle of the Never-Never Land--a sort of beautiful fairy country in
which everything happened right. I know now that the Never-Never Land
was Virginia, and that Wishing-House was Damory Court. No wonder my
father loved it! No wonder his memory turned back to it always! I've
wanted to make it as it was when he lived here. And I want the old dial
to count happy hours for me."
Something had crept into his tone that struck her with a strange sweet
terror and tumult of mind. The hand that clutched her skirts about her
knees had begun to tremble and she caught the other hand to her cheek in
a vague hesitant gesture. The moonflowers seemed to be great round eyes
staring up at her.
"Shirley--" he said, and now his voice was shaken with longing--"will
you make my happiness for me?"
She was standing perfectly still against the sun-dial, both hands, laced
together, against her breast, her eyes on his with a strange startled
look. Over the hush of the garden now, like the very soul of the
passionate night, throbbed the haunting barcarole of _Tales of
Hoffmann_:
"Night of stars and night of love--"
an inarticulate echo of his longing. He took a step toward her, and she
turned like one in sudden terror seeking a way of escape. But he caught
her close in his arms.
"I love you!" he said. "Hear it now in my bride's garden that I've made
for you! I love you, I _love_ you!"
For one instant she struggled. Then, slowly, her eyes turned to his, the
sweet lips trembling, and something dawning deep in the dewy blue that
turned all his leaping blood to quicksilver. "My darling!" he breathed,
and their lips met.
In that delirious moment both had the sense of divine completion that
comes only with love returned. For him there was but the woman in his
arms, the one woman created for him since the foundation of the world.
It was Kismet. For this he had come to Virginia. For this fate had
turned and twisted a thousand ways. Through the riot of his senses, like
a silver blaze, ran the legend of the calendar: "Every man carries his
fate upon a riband about his neck." For her, something seemed to pass
from her soul with that kiss, some deep irrevocable thing, shy but
fiercely strong, that had sprung to him at that lip-contact as steel to
magnet. The foliage about them flared up in green light and the ground
under her feet rose and fell like deep sea-waves.
She lifted her face to him. It was deathly pale, but the light that
burned on it was lit from the whitest altar-fires of Southern girlhood.
"Six weeks ago," she whispered, "you had never seen me!"
He held her crushed to him. She could feel his heart thudding madly.
"I've always known you," he said. "I've seen you a thousand times. I saw
you coming to meet me down a cherry-blossomed lane in Kyoto. I've seen
your eyes peering from behind a veil in India. I've heard your voice
calling to me, through the padding camels' feet, from the desert
mirages. You are the dream I have gone searching always! Ah, _Shirley_,
_Shirley_, _Shirley_!"
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE DOCTOR SPEAKS
While the vibrant strings hummed and sang through the roses, and the
couples drifted on tireless and content, or blissfully "sat out" dances
on the stairway, Katharine Fargo held her stately court no less gaily
for the stealthy doubt that was creeping over her spirit. She had been
so certain of what would happen that evening that when her father
(between cigars on the porch with Judge Chalmers and Doctor Southall)
had searched her out under a flag-of-truce, she had sent him to the
right-about, laughingly declining to depart before royalty. But number
followed number, and the knight in purple and gold had not paused again
before her. Now the scarlet cloak no longer flaunted among the dancers,
and the white satin gown and sparkling coronal had disappeared. The end
of the next "round-dance" found her subsiding into the flower-banked
alcove suddenly distrait amid her escort's sallies. It was at this
moment that she saw, entering the corridor from the garden, the missing
couple.
It was not the faint flush on Shirley's cheek--that was not deep--nor
was it his nearness to her, though they stood closely, as lovers
might. But there was in both their faces a something that resurgent
conventionality had not had time to cover--a trembling reflection of
that "light that never was, on sea or land"--which was like a death-stab
to what lay far deeper than Katharine's heart, her pride. She drew
swiftly back, dismayed at the sudden verification, and for an instant
her whole body chilled.
A craving for a glass of water has served its purpose a thousand times;
as her cavalier solicitously departed to fetch the cooling draught, she
rose, and carelessly humming the refrain the music had just left off,
sauntered lightly out by another door to the open air. A swift glance
about her showed her she was unobserved and she stepped down to the
grass and along the winding path to a bench at some distance in the
shrubbery. Here the smiling mask slipped from her face and with a shiver
she dropped her hot face in her hands.
There were no tears. The wave that was welling over her was one of
bitter humiliation. She had shot her bolt and missed--she, Katharine
Fargo! For three years she had held John Valiant, romantically speaking,
in the hollow of her shapely hand. Now she had all but thrown herself at
his feet--and he had turned away to this flame-haired, vivid girl whom
he had not known as many months! The rankling barb was dipped in no
poison of unrequited love. Hers was the anger of the self-willed and
intensely proud woman denied her dearest wish, and crossed and flouted
for the first time in her pampered exquisite life.
Heavy footfalls all at once approached her--two men were coming from the
house. There was the spitting crackle of a match, and as she peered out,
its red flare lighted the massive face and floating hair of Major
Bristow. His companion's face was in the shadow. She waited, thinking
they would pass; but to her annoyance, when she looked again, they had
seated themselves on a bench a few paces away.
To be found mooning in the shrubbery like a schoolgirl did not please
her, but it seemed there was no recourse, and she had half arisen, when
the major's gruff-voiced companion spoke a name that caused her to sit
down abruptly. To do Katharine justice, it did not occur to her at the
moment that she was eavesdropping. And such was the significance of the
sentences she heard, and such their bearing on the turmoil of her mind,
that a woman of more sensitive fiber might have lingered.
"Bristow, Shirley's a magnificent girl."
"Finest in seven counties," agreed the major's bass.
"Whom do you reckon she'll choose to marry?"
"Chilly Lusk, of course. The boy's been in love with her since they
were in bibs. And he comes as near being fit for her as anybody."
"Humph!" said the other sardonically. "No man I ever saw was half good
enough for a good woman. But good women marry just the same. It isn't
Lusk. I used to think it would be, but I've got a pair of eyes in my
head, if you haven't. It's young Valiant."
The pearl fan twisted in Katharine's fingers. What she had guessed was
an open secret, then!
The major made an exclamation that had the effect of coming after a
jaw-dropped silence. "I--I never thought of that!"
The other resumed slowly, somewhat bitterly, it seemed to the girl
listening. "If her mother was in love with Sassoon--"
Katharine's heart beat fast and then stood still. Sassoon! That was the
name of the man Valiant's father had killed in that old duel of which
Judge Chalmers had told! "If her mother"--Shirley Dandridge's
mother--"was in love with Sassoon!" Why--
"_Was_ she?"
The major's query held a sharpness that seemed almost appeal. She was
conscious that the other had faced about abruptly.
"I've always believed so, certainly. If she had loved Valiant, would
she have thrown him over merely because he broke his promise not to
be a party to a quarrel?"
"You think not?" said the major huskily.
"Not under the circumstances. Valiant was forced into it. No gentleman,
at that day, could have declined the meeting. He could have explained it
to Judith's satisfaction--a woman doesn't need much evidence to justify
the man she's in love with. He must have written her--he couldn't have
gone away without that--and if she had loved him, she would have called
him back."
The major made no answer. Katharine saw a cigar fall unheeded upon the
grass, where it lay glowing like a panther's eye.
The other had risen now, his stooped figure bulking in the moonlight.
His voice sounded harsh and strained: "I loved Beauty Valiant," he said,
"and his son is his son to me--but I have to think of Judith, too. She
fainted, Bristow, when she saw him--Shirley told me about it. Her mother
has made her think it was the scent of the roses! He's his father's
living image, and he's brought the past back with him. Every sound of
his voice, every sight of his face, will be a separate stab! Oh, his
mere presence will be enough for Judith to bear. But with her heart in
the grave with Sassoon, what would love between Shirley and young
Valiant mean to her? Think of it!"
He broke off, and there was a blank of silence, in which he turned with
almost a sigh. Then Katharine saw him reach the bench with a single
stride and drop his hand on the bowed shoulder.
"Bristow!" he said bruskly. "You're ill! This confounded philandering at
your time of life--"
The major's face looked ashy pale, but he got up with a laugh. "Not I,"
he said; "I was never better in my life! We've had our mouthful of air.
Come on back to the house."
"Not much!" grunted the other. "I'm going where we both ought to have
been hours ago." He threw away his cigar and stalked down the path into
the darkness.
The major stood looking after him till he had disappeared, then suddenly
dropped on the bench and covered his face. Something like a groan burst
from him.
"My God!" he said, and his voice came to Katharine with a quaver of age
and suffering--very different from the jovial accents of the
ballroom--"if I were only sure it _was_ Sassoon!"
Presently he rose, and went slowly toward the lighted doorway.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE AMBUSH
Not long after, from the musicians' bower the sound of _Home, Sweet
Home_ drifted over the poignant rose-scent, and presently the driveway
resounded to rolling wheels and the voices of negro drivers, and the
house-entrance jostled with groups, muffled in loose carriage-wraps,
silken cloaks and light overcoats, calling tired but laughing farewells.
Katharine, on the step, found herself looking into Valiant's eyes. "How
can I tell you how much I have enjoyed it all?" she said. "I've stayed
till the very last minute--which is something for one's fourth season!
And now, good-by, for we are off to-morrow for Hot Springs." Her face
may have been a little worn, a trifle hard under the emerald-tinted
eyes, but her smile seemed friendly and unclouded.
Her father had long ago betaken himself homeward, and the big
three-seated surrey--holding "six comf'table and nine fumiliah," in the
phrase of Lige the coachman--had returned for the rest: Judge Chalmers,
the two younger girls and Shirley. Katharine greeted the latter with a
charming smile. What more natural than that she should find herself
straightway on the rear seat with royalty? The two girls safely disposed
in the middle, the judge climbed up beside the driver, who cracked his
whip and they were off.
The way was not long, and Katharine had need of despatch if that
revengeful weapon were to be used which fate had put into her hands. She
wasted little time.
"It seems so strange," she said, "to find our host in such surroundings!
I can scarcely believe him the same John Valiant I've danced with a
hundred times in New York. He's been here such a short while and yet he
couldn't possibly be more at home if he'd lived in Virginia always. And
you all treat him as if he were quite one of yourselves."
Shirley smiled enchantingly. "Why, yes," she said, "maybe it seems odd
to outsiders. But, you see, with us a Valiant is always a Valiant. No
matter where he has lived, he's the son of his father and the master of
Damory Court."
"That's the wonderful part of it. It's so--so English, somehow."
"Is it?" said Shirley. "I never thought of it. But perhaps it seems so.
We have the old houses and the old names and think of them, no doubt, in
the same way."
"What a sad life his father had!" pursued Katharine dreamily. "You know
all about the duel, of course?"
Shirley shrank imperceptibly now. The subject touched Valiant so closely
it seemed almost as if it belonged to him and to her alone--not a thing
to be flippantly touched on. "Yes," she said somewhat slowly, "every one
here knows of it."
"No doubt it has been almost forgotten," the other continued, "but
John's coming must naturally have revamped the old story. What was it
about--the quarrel? A love-affair?"
"I--I don't think it is known."
But reluctant coldness did not deter the questioner. "Who was it said
there was a petticoat back of every ancient war?" quoted Katharine,
lightly. "I fancy it's the same with the duello. But how strange that
nobody _knows_. Some of the older ones must, don't you think?"
"It's so long ago," murmured Shirley. "I suppose some could tell if they
would."
"Major Bristow, perhaps," conjectured Katharine thoughtfully.
"He was one of the seconds," admitted Shirley unhappily. "But by common
consent that side of it wasn't talked of at the time. Men in Virginia
have old-fashioned ideas about women...."
"Ah, it's _fine_ of them!" pæaned Katharine. "I can imagine the men who
knew about that dreadful affair, in their Southern chivalry, drawing a
cordon of silence about the name of that girl with her broken heart!
For if she loved one of the two, it must have been Sassoon--not Valiant,
else he would have stayed. How terrible to see one's lover killed in
such a way.... It was quickly ended for him, but the poor woman was left
to bear it all the years! She may be living yet, here maybe, some one
whom everybody knows. I suppose I am imaginative," she added, "but I
can't help wondering about her. I fancy she would never wholly get over
it, never be able to forget him, though she tried."
Shirley made some reply that was lost in the whirring wheels. The
other's words seemed almost an echo of what she herself had been
thinking.
"Maybe she married after a while, too. A woman must make a life for
herself, you know. If she lives here, it will be sad for her, this
opening of the old wound by John's coming.... And looking so like his
father--"
Katharine paused. There was a kind of exhilaration in this subtle
baiting. Determined as she was that Shirley should guess at the truth
before that ride ended, bludgeon-wielding was not to her taste. She
preferred the keen needle-point that injected its poison before the
thrust was even felt. She waited, wondering just how much it would be
necessary for her to say.
Shirley stirred uneasily, and in the glimpsing light her face looked
troubled. Katharine's voice had touched pathos, and in spite of her
distaste of the subject, Shirley had been entering into the feeling of
that supposititious woman. There had come to her, like a touch of eery
clairvoyance, the suggestion the other had meant to convey of her actual
existence; and this was sharpened by the sudden recollection that
Valiant had himself told her of the resemblance that Katharine recalled.
The judge, on the front seat, was telling a low-toned story over his
shoulder for the delectation of Nancy and Betty, but Shirley was not
listening. Her whole mind was full of what Katharine had been saying.
She was picturing to herself this woman, her secret hidden all these
years, hearing of John Valiant's coming to Damory Court, learning of
this likeness, shrinking from sight of it, dreading the painful memory
it must thrust upon her.
"Suppose"--Katharine's voice was dreamy--"that she and John met
suddenly, without warning. What would she do? Would she say anything?
Perhaps she would faint...."
Shirley started violently. Her hands, as they drew her cloak uncertainly
about her, began to tremble, as if with cold. Something fell from them
to the bottom of the surrey.
Through her chiffon veil Katharine noted this with a slow smile. It had
been easier than she had thought. She said no more, and the carriage
rolled on, to the accompaniment of giggles over the judge's peroration.
As it neared the Rosewood lane she leaned toward Shirley.
"You have dropped your fan," said she "--and your gloves, too.... I
might have reached them for you. Why, we are there already. How short
the drive has seemed!"
"Don't drive up the lane, Lige," said Shirley, and her voice seemed
sharp and strange even to herself. "The wheels would wake mother."
Katharine bade her good-by with careful sweetness, as the judge bundled
her down in his strong friendly arms.
"No," she told him, "don't come with me. It's not a bit necessary.
Emmaline will be waiting for me."
He climbed into her vacant place as the girls called their good nights.
"We'll all sleep late enough in the morning, I reckon," he said with a
laugh, "but it's been a great success!"
CHAPTER XXXIX
WHAT THE CAPE JESSAMINES KNEW
Emmaline was crouched in a chair in the hall, a rug thrown over her
knees, in open-mouthed slumber. She started up at the touch of Shirley's
hand, yawning widely.
"I 'clare t' goodness," she muttered, "I was jes' fixin' t' go t'
sleep!" The lamp on the table was low and she turned up the wick, then
threw up her arms like ramrods, in delight.
"Lor', honey," she said in a rapturous whisper, "I reck'n they all say
yo' was th' _purties'_ queen on earth, when th' vict'ry man set that
crown, with th' di'mon's as big as scaley-barks, on that little gol'
haid! But yo' pale, honey-chile. Yo' dance yo'se'f mos' ter death, I
reck'n."
"I--I'm so tired, Emmaline. Take the crown. It's heavy."
The negro woman untangled the glittering points from the meshing hair
with careful fingers. "Po' li'l chickydee-dee!" she said lovingly.
"Reck'n she flop all th' feddahs outer her wings. Gimme that ol' tin
crown--I like ter lam' it out th' winder! Come on, now; we go up-stairs
soft so's not ter 'sturb Mis' Judith."
In the silvery-blue bedroom, she deftly unfastened the hooks of the
heavy satin gown and coaxed her mistress to lie on the sofa while she
unpinned the masses of waving hair till they lay in a rich surge over
the cushion. Then she brought a brush and crouching down beside her,
began with long gentle strokes to smooth out the silken threads, talking
to her the while in a soft crooning monotone.
"I jes' know Mis' Judith wish she well ernuf ter see her chile bein'
queens en things 'mongst all th' othah qual'ty! When they want er
_queen_ they jes' gotter come fo' her little girl. Talk 'bout th'
stars--she 'way above _them_! Ranston he say Mistah Valiant 'bout th'
bestes' dancer in th' world; say th' papers up in New York think th' sun
rise en set in his heels. 'Spec' ter-night he dance er little with th'
othahs jes' ter be p'lite, till he git back ter th' one he put th' crown
on. So-o-o tired she is! But Em'line gwine ter bresh away all th'
achiness--en she got yo' baid all turned _down_ fo' yo'--en yo' pretty
little night-dress all _ready_--en yo' gwineter _sleep_--en
_sleep_--till yo' kyan sleep no mo' _nohow_!"
Under these ministrations Shirley lay languid and speechless, her eyes
closed. The fear that had stricken her heart by turns seemed a cold hand
pressing upon its beating and an algid vapor rising stealthily over it.
But her hands were hot and her eyelids burned. Finally she roused
herself.
"Thank you, Emmaline," she said in a tired voice, "good night now; I'm
going to sleep, and you must go to bed, too."
But alone in the warm wan dark, Shirley lay staring open-eyed at the
ceiling. Slowly the terror was seizing upon her, the dread, noiseless
and intangible, folding her in the shadow of its numbing wings. Was her
mother the one over whom that old duel had been fought? Was it she whose
love had been wrecked in that long-ago tragedy that all at once seemed
so horribly near and real? Was that the explanation of her fainting? She
remembered the cape jessamines. Was the date of that duel--of the death
of Sassoon--the anniversary her mother kept?
She sat up in bed, trembling. Then she rose, and opening the door with
caution, crept down the stair, sliding her hot hand before her along
the cool polished banister. Only a subdued glimmer came through the
curtained windows, stealing in with the ever-present scent of the
arbors. It was so still she thought she could hear the very heart of the
dark beating. As she passed through the lower hall, a hound on the
porch, scenting her, stirred, thumped his tail on the flooring, and
whined. Groping her way to the dining-room, she lighted a candle and
passed through a corridor into a low-ceilinged chamber employed as a
general receptacle--a glorified garret, as Mrs. Dandridge dubbed it.
It showed a strange assemblage! A row of chests, stored with winter
clothing, gave forth a clean pungent smell of cedar, and at one side
stood an antique spinet and a worn set of horsehair furniture. Sofa and
chairs were piled with excrescences in the shape of old engravings in
carved ebony frames, ancient scrap-books and what-not, and on a table
stood a rounded glass case with a flat base--the sort in which an older
generation had been wont to display to awestruck admiration its
terrifying concoctions of wax fruit.
Shirley had turned her miserable eyes on a book-shelf along one wall.
The volumes it contained had been her father's, and among them stood a
row of tomes taller than their fellows--the bound numbers of a county
newspaper, beginning before the war. The back of each was stamped with
the year. She was deciphering these faded imprints. "Thirty years ago,"
she whispered; "yes, here it is."
She set down the candle and dragged out one of the huge leather-backs.
Staggering under the weight, she rested its edge on the table and began
feverishly to turn the pages, her eye on the date-line. She stopped
presently with a quick breath--she had reached May 15th. The year was
that of the duel: the date was the day following the jessamine
anniversary. Fearfully her eye overran the columns.
Then suddenly she put her open hand on the page as though to blot out
the words, every trace of color stricken from cheek and brow. But the
line seemed to glow up through the very flesh: "_Died, May 14th; Edward
Sassoon, in his twenty-sixth year_."
The book slipped to the floor with a crash that echoed through the room.
It was true, then! It _was_ Sassoon's death that her mother mourned. The
man in whose arms she had stood such a little while ago by the old dial
of Damory Court was the son of the man who had killed him! She lifted
her hands to her breast with a gesture of anguish, then dropped to her
knees, buried her face on the dusty seat of one of the rickety horsehair
chairs and broke into a wild burst of sobs, noiseless but terrible, that
seemed to rise in her heart and tear themselves up through her breast.
"Oh, God," she whispered, "just when I was so happy! Oh, mother, mother!
You loved him, and your heart broke when he died. It was Valiant who
broke it--Valiant--Valiant. His father!"
She slipped down upon the bare floor and crouched there shuddering and
agonized, her disheveled hair wet with her tears. Was her love to be but
the thing of an hour, a single clasp--and then, forever, nothing? His
father's deed was not his fault. Yet how could she love a man whose
every feature brought a pang to that mother she loved more than
herself? So, over and over, the wheel of her thought turned in the same
desolate groove, and over and over the paroxysms of grief and longing
submerged her.
Dawn was paling the guttering candle and streaking the sky outside
before she composed herself. She rose heavily, as white as a narcissus
flower, winding back her hair from her quivering face, and struggling to
repress the tearless sobs that still caught stranglingly at her breath.
The gray infiltrating light seemed gaunt and cruel, and the thin
cheeping of waking sparrows on the lawn came to her with a haunting
intolerable note of pain.
Noiselessly as she had descended, she crept again up the stair. As she
passed her mother's door, she paused a moment, and laying her arms out
across it, pressed her lips to the dark grain of the wood.
CHAPTER XL
THE AWAKENING
The sun had passed the meridian next day when Valiant awoke, from a
sleep as deep as Abou ben Adhem's, yet one crowded with flying tiptoe
dreams. Inchoate and of such flimsy material that the first whiff of
reality dissipated them like smoke, these nevertheless left behind them
a fragrance, a sensation of golden sweetness and delight. The one great
fact of Shirley's love had lain at the core of all these honied images,
and his mind was full of it as his eyes opened, wide all at once, to the
new day.
He looked at his watch and rolled from the bed with a laugh. "Past
twelve!" he exclaimed. "Good heavens! What about all the work I had laid
out for to-day?"
He went down the stair in his bath-robe. The walls were still
wreath-hung, but the rooms had been despoiled of their roses: only a
dozen vases of blooms still unwithered remained of the greater glory;
and in the yellow parlor--a great heap of shriveled petals, broken ivy
and dewy-blue cedar berries, sprinkled with wisps of feathers and
sequinned beads--lay the shattered remainders of last night's gaiety.
Presently he was splashing in the lake, shooting under his curved hand
unerring jets of water at Chum, who danced about the rim barking, now
venturing to wet a valorous paw, now scrambling up the bank to escape
the watery javelins.
It was another perfect day, though far on the mountainous horizon a
blue-black density promised otherwise for the morrow. The sun lay
golden-soft over the huddled hills. Birds darted hither and thither,
self-important bumble-bees boomed from vine to vine and the shady
lake-corners flashed with dragon-flies. The stately white swans turned
their arching necks interrogatively toward the splashing, and the brown
ducks, Peezletree and Pilgarlic, quacked and gobbled softly to each
other among the lily-pads.
Valiant came up the terraces with his blood bounding to a new rapture.
Crossing the garden, he ran quickly to the little close which held the
sun-dial and pulled a single great passion-flower. He stood a moment
holding it to his face, his nostrils catching its faint elusive perfume.
Only last night, under the moon, he had stood there with Shirley in his
arms. A gush of the unbelievable sweetness of that moment poured over
him. His face softened.
Standing with his sandaled feet deep in the white blossoms, the sun
on his damp hair and the loose robe clinging to his moist limbs, he
gave himself to a sudden day-dream. A wonderful waking dream of joy
overflooding years of ambitionless ease; of the Damory Court that
should be in days to come.
Summer would pass to autumn, with maple-foliage falling in golden rain,
and fawn-brown fields scattered with life-everlasting, with the wine-red
beauty of October, its purple pageant of crimsoning woods, its opal haze
of Indian summer, and scent of burning leaves. Frost would lay its
spectral stain over the old house like star-dew, and the scent of cider
would linger under the apple-trees. In his mind's eye he could see
Uncle Jefferson bent with the weight of hickory-logs for the eager
chimney-piece, deep as the casement of a fortress. Snow-sandaled winter
would lay its samite on the dark blue ramparts of the mountains, and
droop the naked boughs of the mock-orange bushes, dishevel the
evergreens like rough-and-tumble schoolboys, and cover the frosted ruts
of the Red Road. But in Damory Court would be cheerful warmth and
friendly noises, with a loved woman standing before the crackling
fireplace whose mottoed "_I clinge_" was for him written in her fringed
and gentian eyes. So he stood dreaming--a dream in the open sunlight, of
a future that should never end, of work and plan, of comradeship and
understanding, of cheer and tenderness and clasping hands and clinging
lips--of a woman's arms held out in that same adorable gesture of the
tourney field, to little children's uncertain footsteps across that
polished floor.
* * * * *
When he came from the little close there was a new mystery in the
sunshine, a fresh and joyous meaning in the intense blue overarching
of the imponderable sky. Every bird-note held its own love-secret. A
wood-thrush sang it from a silver birch beside the summer-house, and
a bob-white whistled it in the little valley beyond. Even the long
trip-hammer of a far-away woodpecker beat a radiant tattoo.
He paused to greet the flaming peacock that sent out a curdling screech,
in which the tentative _potterack! potterack!_ of a guinea-fowl tangled
itself softly. "Go on," he invited. "Explode all you want to, old
Fire-Cracker. Hang your purple-and-gold pessimism! You only make the
birds sound sweeter. Perhaps that's what you're for--who knows?"
He tried to work, but work was not for that marvelous afternoon. He
wandered about the gardens, planning this or that addition: a little
longer sweep to the pansy-bed--a clump of bull-rushes at the farther end
of the lake. He peered into the stable: a saddle horse stood there now,
but there should be more steeds stamping in those stalls one day, good
horse-flesh bought with sound walnut timber from the hillside. How he
and Shirley would go galloping over those gleaming roads, in that
roseate future when she belonged to him!
Uncle Jefferson, from the door of the kitchens, watched him swinging
about in the sunshine, whistling the _Indian Serenade_.
"Young mars' feel 'way up in de clouds _dis_ day," he said to Aunt
Daphne. "He wake up ez glad ez ef he done 'fessed 'ligion las' night.
Well, all de folkses cert'n'y 'joyed deyselves. Ol' Mistah Fargo done
eat 'bout forty uh dem jumbles. Ah heah him talkin' ter Mars' John.
'Reck'n yo' mus' hab er crackahjack cook down heah,' he say. Hyuh,
hyuh!"
"G'way wid yo' blackgyardin'!" sniffed Aunt Daphne, delighted. "Don'
need ter come eroun' honey-caffuddlin' _me_!"
"Dat's whut he say," insisted Uncle Jefferson; "he did fo' er fac'!"
She drew her hands from the suds and looked at him anxiously.
"Jeffe'son, yo' reck'n Mars' John gwineter fetch dat Yankee 'ooman heah
ter Dam'ry Co'ot, ter be ouah mistis?"
"Humph!" scoffed her spouse. "Dat high-falutin' gal whut done swaller de
ramrod? No suh-ree-bob-tail! De oldah yo' gits, de mo' foolishah yo'
citations is! Don' yo' tek no mo' trouble on yo' back den yo' kin keek
off'n yo' heels! _She_ ain' gwineter run _dis_ place, er ol' Devil-John
tuhn ovah in he grave!"
Sunset found Valiant sitting in the music-room before the old square
piano. In the shadowy chamber the keys of mother-of-pearl gleamed with
dull colors under his fingers. He struck at first only broken chords,
that became finally the haunting barcarole of _Tales of Hoffmann_. It
was the air that had drifted across the garden when he had stood with
Shirley by the sun-dial, in the moment of their first kiss. Over and
over he played it, improvising dreamy variations, till the tender melody
seemed the dear ghost of that embrace. At length he went into the
library and in the crimsoning light sat down at the desk, and began to
write:
"_Dear Bluebird of mine_:
"I can't wait any longer to talk to you. Less than a day has
passed since we were together, but it might have been eons, if
one measured time by heart-beats. What have you been doing and
thinking, I wonder? I have spent those eons in the garden, just
wandering about, dreaming over those wonderful, wonderful
moments by the sun-dial. Ah, dear little wild heart born of the
flowers, with the soul of a bird (yet you are woman, too!) that
old disk is marking happy hours now for me!
"How have I deserved this thing that has come to me?--sad
bungler that I have been! Sometimes it seems too glad and
sweet, and I am suddenly desperately afraid I shall wake to
find myself facing another dull morning in that old, useless,
empty life of mine. I am very humble, dear, before your love.
"Shall I tell you when it began with me? Not last night--nor
the day we planted the ramblers. (Do you know, when your little
muddy boot went trampling down the earth about their roots, I
wanted to stoop down and kiss it? So dear everything about you
was!) Not that evening at Rosewood, with the arbor fragrance
about us. (I think I shall always picture you with roses all
about you. Red roses the color of your lips!) No, it was not
then that it began--nor that dreadful hour when you fought with
me to save my life--nor the morning you sat your horse in the
box-rows in that yew-green habit that made your hair look like
molten copper. No, it began the first afternoon, when I sat in
my motor with your rose in my hand! It has never left me since,
by day or by night. And yet there are people in this age of
airships and honking highways and typewriters who think
love-at-first-sight is as out-of-date as our little
grandmothers' hoops rusting in the garret. Ah, sweetheart, I,
for one, know better!
"Suppose I had not come to Virginia--and known _you_! My heart
jumps when I think of it. It makes one believe in fate. Here at
the Court I found an old leaf-calendar--it sits at my elbow
now, just as I came on it. The date it shows is May 14th, and
its motto is: _Every man carries his fate upon a riband about
his neck_. I like that.
"That first Sunday at St. Andrew's, I thought of a day--may it
be soon!--when you and I might stand before that altar, with
your people (my people, too, now) around us, and I shall hear
you say: 'I, Shirley, take thee, John--' And to think it is
really to come true! Do you remember the text the minister
preached from? It was 'But all men perceive that they have
riches, and that their faces shine as the faces of angels.' I
think I shall go about henceforth with my face shining, so that
all men will see that _I_ have riches--your love for me, dear.
"I am so happy I can hardly see the words--or perhaps it is
that the sun has set. I am sending this over by Uncle
Jefferson. Send me back just a word by him, sweetheart, to say
I may come to you to-night. And add the three short words I am
so thirsty to hear over and over--one verb between two
pronouns--so that I can kiss them all at once!"
He raised his head, a little flushed and with eyes brilliant, lighted a
candle, sealed the letter with the ring he wore and despatched it.
Thereafter he sat looking into the growing dusk, watching the pale lamps
of the constellations deepen to green gilt against the lapis-lazuli
of the sky, and listening to the insect noises dulling into the woven
chorus of evening. Uncle Jefferson was long in returning, and he grew
impatient finally and began to prowl through the dusky corridors like a
leopard, then to the front porch and finally to the driveway, listening
at every turn for the familiar slouching step.
When at length the old negro appeared, Valiant took the note he
brought, his heart beating rapidly, and carried it hastily in to the
candle-light. He did not open it at once, but sat for a full minute
pressing it between his palms as though to extract from the delicate
paper the beloved thrill of her touch. His hand shook slightly as he
drew the folded leaves from the envelope. How would it begin? "My Knight
of the Crimson Rose?" or "Dear Gardener?" (She had called him Gardener
the day they had set out the roses) or perhaps even "Sweetheart"? It
would not be long, only a mere "Yes" or "Come to me," perhaps; yet even
the shortest missive had its beginning and its ending.
He opened and read.
For an instant he stared unbelievingly. Then the paper crackled to a
ball in his clutched hand, and he made a hoarse sound which was half
a cry, then sat perfectly still, his whole face shuddering. What he
crushed in his hand was no note of tender love-phrases; it was an abrupt
dismissal. The staggering contretemps struck the color from his face and
left every nerve raw and quivering. To be "nothing to her, as she could
be nothing to him"? He felt a ghastly inclination to laugh. Nothing to
her! The meaning of the lines was monstrous. It was inconceivable.
Presently, his brows frowning heavily, he spread out the crumpled paper
and reread it with bitter slowness, weighing each phrase. "Something
which she had learned since she last saw him, which lay between them."
She had not known it, then, last night, when they had kissed beside the
sun-dial! She had loved him then! What could there be that thrust them
irrevocably apart?
He sprang up and paced the floor in a blinding passion of resentment and
revolt. "You _shall!_ you _shall_!" he said between his set teeth. "We
belong to each other! There can be nothing, nothing to separate us!"
Again he pored over the page. "She could not see him again, could not
even explain." The words seemed to echo themselves, bleak as hail on a
prison pane. "If he went to St. Andrew's, he might find the reason why."
What could she mean by the reference to St. Andrew's? He caught at that
as a clue. Could the old church tell him what had reared itself in such
dismal fashion between them?
Without stopping to think of the darkness or that the friendly doors of
the edifice would be closed, he caught up his hat and went swiftly down
the drive to the road, along which he plunged breathlessly. The blue
star-sprinkled sky was now streaked with clouds like faded orchids, and
the shadows on the uneven ground under his hurried feet made him giddy.
Through the din and hurly-burly of his thoughts he was conscious of
dimly-moving shapes across fences, the sweet breath of cows, and a negro
pedestrian who greeted him in passing. He was stricken suddenly with
the thought that Shirley was suffering, too. It seemed incredible that
he should now be raging along a country road at nightfall to find
something that so horribly hurt them both.
It was almost dark--save for the starlight--when he saw the shadow of
the square ivy-grown spire rearing stark from its huddle of foliage
against the blurred background. He pushed open the gate and went slowly
up the worn path toward the great iron-bound and hooded door. Under the
larches on either hand the outlines of the gravestones loomed pallidly,
and from the bell-tower came the faint inquiring cry of a small owl.
Valiant stood still, looking about him. What could he learn here? He
read no answer to the riddle. A little to one side of the path something
showed snow-like on the ground, and he went toward it. Nearer, he
saw that it was a mass of flowers, staring up whitely from the
semi-obscurity from within an iron railing. He bent over, suddenly
noting the scent; it was cape jessamine.
With a curious sensation of almost prescience plucking at him, he took a
box of vestas from his pocket and struck one. It flared up illuminating
a flat granite slab in which was cut a name and inscription:
_EDWARD SASSOON_
"Forgive us our trespasses."
The silence seemed to crash to earth like a great looking-glass and
shiver into a million pieces. The wax dropped from his fingers and in
the supervening darkness a numb fright gripped him by the throat.
Shirley had laid these there, on the grave of the man his father had
killed--the cape jessamines she had wanted that day, _for her mother_!
He understood.
* * * * *
It came to him at last that there was a chill mist groping among the
trees and that he was very cold.
He went back along the Red Road stumblingly. Was this to be the end of
the dream, which he had fancied would last forever? Could it be that she
was not for him? Was it no hoary lie that the sins of the fathers were
visited upon the third and fourth generation?
When he reentered the library the candle was guttering in the burned
wings of a night-moth. The place looked all at once gaunt and desolate
and despoiled. What could Virginia, what could Damory Court, be to him
without her? The wrinkled note lay on the desk and he bent suddenly with
a sharp catching breath and kissed it. There welled over him a wave of
rebellious longing. The candle spread to a hazy yellow blur. The walls
fell away. He stood under the moonlight, with his arms about her, his
lips on hers and his heart beating to the sound of the violins behind
them.
He laughed--a harsh wild laugh that rang through the gloomy room. Then
he threw himself on the couch and buried his face in his hands. He was
still lying there when the misty rain-wet dawn came through the
shutters.
CHAPTER XLI
THE COMING OF GREEF KING
It was Sunday afternoon, and under the hemlocks, Rickey Snyder had
gathered her minions--a dozen children from the near-by houses with the
usual sprinkling of little blacks from the kitchens. There were parents,
of course, to whom this mingling of color and degree was a matter of
conventional prohibition, but since the advent of Rickey, in whose soul
lay a Napoleonic instinct of leadership, this was more honored in the
breach than in the observance.
"My! Ain't it scrumptious here now!" said Cozy Cabell, hanging yellow
lady-slippers over her ears. "I wish we could play here always."
"Mr. Valiant will let us," said Rickey. "I asked him."
"Oh, _he_ will," responded Cozy gloomily, "but he'll probably go and
marry somebody who'll be mean about it."
"Everybody doesn't get married," said one of the Byloe twins, with
masculine assurance. "Maybe he won't."
"Much a boy knows about it!" retorted Cozy scornfully. "Women _have_ to,
and some one of them will make him. (Greenville Female Seminary Simms,
if you slap that little nigger again, I'll slap _you_!)"
Greenie rolled over on the grass and tittered. "Miss Mattie Sue didn',"
she said. "Ah heah huh say de yuddah day et wuz er moughty good feelin'
ter go ter baid Mistis en git up Marstah!"
"Well," said Cozy, tossing her head till the flower earrings danced,
"I'm going to get married if the man hasn't got anything but a character
and a red mustache. Married women don't have to prove they could have
got a husband if they had wanted to."
"Let's play something," proposed Rosebud Meredith, on whom the
discussion palled. "Let's play King, King Katiko."
"It's Sunday!"--this from her smaller and more righteous sister. "We're
forbidden to play anything but Bible games on Sunday, and if Rosebud
does, I'll tell."
"Jay-bird tattle-tale!" sang Rosebud derisively. "Don't care if you do!"
"Well," decreed Rickey. "We'll play Sunday-school then. It would take a
saint to object to that. I'm superintendent and this stump's my desk.
All you children sit down under that tree."
They ranged themselves in two rows, the white children, in clean
Sabbath pinafores and go-to-meeting knickerbockers, in front and the
colored ones, in ginghams and cotton-prints, in the rear--the habitual
expression of a differing social station. "Oh!" shrieked Miss Cabell,
"and I'll be Mrs. Merryweather Mason and teach the infants' class."
"There isn't any infant class," said Rickey. "How could there be when
there aren't any infants? The lesson is over and I've just rung the bell
for silence. Children, this is Missionary Sunday, and I'm glad to see so
many happy faces here to-day. Cozy," she said, relenting, "you can be
the organist if you want to."
"I won't," said Cozy sullenly. "If I can't be table-cloth I won't be
dish-rag."
"All right, you needn't," retorted Rickey freezingly. "Sit up, Greenie.
People don't lie on their backs in Sunday-school."
Greenie yawned dismally, and righted herself with injured slowness.
"Ah diffuses ter 'cep' yo' insult, Rickey Snydah," she said. "Ah'd
ruthah lose mah 'ligion dan mah laz'ness. En Ah 'spises yo' 'spisable
dissisition!"
"Let us all rise," continued Rickey, unmoved, "and sing _Kingdom
Coming_." And she struck up lustily, beating time on the stump with a
stick:
"From all the dark places of earth's heathen races,
O, see how the thick shadows flee!"
and the rows of children joined in with unction, the colored contingent
coming out strong on the chorus:
"De yerf shall be full ob de wunduhful story
As watahs dat covah de sea!"
The clear voices in the quiet air startled the fluttering birds and sent
a squirrel to the tip-top of an oak, from which he looked down, flirting
his brush. They roused a man, too, who had lain in a sodden sleep under
a bush at a little distance. He was ragged and soiled and his heavy
brutal face, covered with a dark stubble of some days' growth, had an
ugly scar slanting from cheek to hair. Without getting up, he rolled
over to command a better view, and set his eyes, blinking from their
slumber, on the children.
"We will now take up the collection," said Rickey. ("You can do it,
June. Use a flat piece of bark). Remember that what we give to-day is
for the poor heathen in--in Alabama."
"That's no heathen place," objected Cozy with spirit. "My cousin lives
in Alabama."
"Well, then," acquiesced Rickey, "anywhere you like. But I reckon your
cousin wouldn't be above taking the money. For the poor heathen who have
never heard of God, or Virginia, or anything. Think of them and give
cheerfully."
The bark-slab made its rounds, receiving leaves, acorns, and an
occasional pin. Midway, however, there arose a shrill shriek from the
bearer and the collection was scattered broadcast. "Rosebud Meredith,"
said Rickey witheringly, "it would serve you right for putting that
toad in the plate if your hand would get all over warts! I'm sure I
hope it will." She rescued the fallen piece of bark and announced: "The
collection this afternoon has amounted to a hundred dollars and seven
cents. And now, children, we will skip the catechism and I will tell you
a story."
Her auditors hunched themselves nearer, a double row of attentive white
and black faces, as Rickey with a preliminary bass cough, began in a
drawling tone whose mimicry called forth giggles of ecstasy.
"There were once two little sisters, who went to Sunday-school and loved
their teacher ve-e-ery much. They were always good and attentive--_not_
like that little nigger over _there_! The one with his thumb in his
mouth! One was little Mary and the other was little Susy. They had a
mighty rich uncle who lived in Richmond, and once he came to see them
and gave them each a dollar. And they were ve-e-ery glad. It wasn't a
mean old paper dollar, all dirt and creases; nor a battered whitey
silver dollar; but it was a bright round _gold_ dollar, right out of
the mint. Little Mary and little Susy could hardly sleep that night for
thinking of what they could buy with those gold dollars.
"Early next morning they went down-town, hand in hand, to the store, and
little Susy bought a bag of goober-peas, and sticks and sticks of
striped candy, and a limber jack, and a gold ring, and a wax doll with
a silk dress on that could open and shut its eyes--"
"Huh!" said the captious Cozy. "You can't buy a wax doll for a dollar.
My littlest, littlest one cost three, and she didn't have a stitch to
her back!"
"Shut up!" said Rickey briefly. "Dolls were cheaper then." She looked at
the row of little negroes, goggle-eyed at the vision of such largess.
"What do you think little Mary did with _her_ gold dollar? She loved
dolls and candy, too, but she had heard about the poo-oo-r heathen.
There was a tear in her eye, but she took the dollar home, and next day
when she went to Sunday-school, she dropped it in the missionary-box.
"Little children, what do you reckon became of that dollar? It bought a
big satchelful of tracts for a missionary. He had been a poor man with
six children and a wife with a bone-felon on her right hand--not a child
old enough to wash dishes and all of them young enough to fall in the
fire--so he had to go and be a missionary. He was going to Alabam--to a
cannibal island, and he took the tracts and sailed away in a ship that
landed him on the shore. And when the heathen cannibals saw him they
were ve-e-ery glad, for there hadn't been any shipwrecked sailors for a
long time, and they were ve-e-ery hungry. So they tied up the missionary
and gathered a lot of wood to make a fire and cook him.
"But it had rained and rained and rained for so long that the wood was
all wet, and it wouldn't burn, and they all cried because they were so
hungry. And then they happened to find the satchelful of tracts, and the
tracts were ve-e-ery _dry_. They took them and stuck them under the wet
wood, and the tracts burned and the wood caught fire and they _cooked_
the missionary and ATE him.
"Now, little children, which do you think did the most good with her
dollar--little Susy or little Mary?"
The front row sniggered, and a sigh came from the colored ranks. "Dem
ar' can'bals," gasped a dusky infant breathlessly, "--dey done eat up
all dat candy en dem goober-peas, too?"
The inquiry was drowned in a shriek from several children in unison.
They scrambled to their feet, casting fearful glances over their
shoulders. The man who had been lying behind the bush had risen and was
coming toward them at a slouching amble, one foot dragging slightly. His
appearance, indeed, was enough to cause panic. With his savage face,
set now in a grin, and his tramp-like costume, he looked fierce and
animal-like. White and black, the children fled like startled rabbits,
older ones dragging younger, without a backward look--all save Rickey,
who stood quite still, her widening eyes fixed on him in a kind of
blanched fascinated terror.
He came close to her, never taking his eyes from hers, then put his
heavy grimy hand under her chin and turned her twitching face upward,
chuckling.
"Ain't afeahd, damn me!" he said with admiration. "Wouldn't skedaddle
with th' fine folks' white-livered young 'uns! Know who I am, don't ye?"
"Greef King." Rickey's lips rather formed than spoke the name.
"Right. An' I know you, too. Got jes' th' same look ez when ye wuzn't no
higher'n my knee. So ye ain't at th' Dome no mo', eh? Purkle an' fine
linning an' a eddication. Ho-ho! Goin' ter make ye another ladyess like
the sweet ducky-dovey that rescooed ye from th' lovin' embrace o' yer
fond step-parient, eh?"
Rickey's small arm went suddenly out and her fingers tore at his
shirt-band. "Don't you," she burst in a paroxysm of passion; "don't you
even speak her name! If you do, I'll kill you!"
So fierce was her leap that he fell back a step in sheer surprise. Then
he laughed loudly. "Why, ye little spittin' wile-cat!" he grinned.
He leaned suddenly, gripped her wrist and covering her mouth tightly
with his palm, dragged her behind a clump of dogwood bushes. A heavy
step was coming along the wood-path. He held her motionless and
breathless in this cruel grip till the pedestrian passed. It was Major
Bristow, his spruce white hat on the back of his head, his unsullied
waistcoat dappled with the leaf-shadows. He stepped out briskly toward
Damory Court, swinging his stick, all unconscious of the fierce scrutiny
bent on him from behind the dogwoods.
Greef King did not withdraw his hand till the steps had died in the
distance. When he did, he clenched his fist and shook it in the air.
"There he goes!" he said with bitter hatred. "Yer noble friend that sent
me up for six years t' break my heart on th' rock-pile! Oh, he's a
top-notcher, he is! But he's got Greef King to reckon with yit!" He
looked at her balefully and shook her.
"Look-a-yere," he said in a hissing voice. "Ye remember _me_. I'm a bad
one ter fool with. Yer maw foun' that out, I reckon. Now ye'll promise
me ye'll tell nobody who ye've seen. I'm only a tramp; d'ye hear?" He
shook her roughly.
Rickey's fingers and teeth were clenched hard and she said no word. He
shook her again viciously, the blood pouring into his scarred face. "Ye
snivelin' brat, ye!" he snarled. "I'll show yer!" He began to drag her
after him through the bushes. A few yards and they were on the brink of
the headlong ugly chasm of Lovers' Leap. She cast one desperate look
about her and shut her eyes. Catching her about the waist he leaned over
and held her out in mid-air, as if she had been a kitten. "Ye ain't seen
me, hev yer? Promise, or over ye go. Ye won't look so pretty when yere
layin' down there on them rocks!"
The child's face was paper-white and she had begun to tremble like a
leaf, but her eyes remained closed.
"One--two--" he counted deliberately.
Her eyes opened. She turned one shuddering glance below, then
her resolution broke. She clutched his arm and broke into wild
supplications. "I promise, I promise!" she cried. "Oh, don't let go!
I promise!"
He set her on the solid ground and released her, looking at her
with a sneering laugh. "Now we'll see ef ye belong here or up ter
Hell's-Half-Acre," he said. "Fine folks keeps their promises, I've
heerd tell."
Rickey looked at him a moment shaking; then she burst into a passion
of sobs and with her face averted ran from him like a deer through the
bushes.
CHAPTER XLII
IN THE RAIN
Shirley stood looking out at the rain. It was falling in no steady
downpour which held forth promise of ending, but with a gentle constancy
that gave the hills a look of sodden discomfort and made disconsolate
miry pools by the roadside. The clouds were not too thick, however, to
let through a dismal gray brightness that shone on the foliage and
touched with glistening lines of high-light the draggled tufts of the
soaked bluegrass. Now and then, across the dripping fields, fraying
skeins of mist wandered, to lie curdled in the flooded hollows where,
here and there, cattle stood lowing at intervals in a mournful key.
The indoors had become impossible to her. She was sick of trying to
read, sick of the endless pacings and purposeless invention of needless
tasks. She wanted movement, the cobwebby mist about her knees, the wet
rain in her face. She ran up-stairs and came down clad in a close
scarlet jersey, with leather gaiters and a soft hat.
Emmaline saw her thus accoutered with disapproval. "Lawdy-mercy,
chile!" she urged; "you ain't goin' out? It's rainin' cats en dawgs!"
"I'm neither sugar nor salt, Emmaline," responded Shirley listlessly,
dragging on her rain-coat, "and the walk will do me good."
On the sopping lawn she glanced up at her mother's window. Since the
night of the ball her own panging self-consciousness had overlaid the
fine and sensitive association between them. She had been full of a
horrible feeling that her face must betray her and the cause of her loss
of spirits be guessed.
Her mother had, in fact, been troubled by this, but was far from
guessing the truth. A somewhat long indisposition had followed her first
sight of Valiant, and she had not witnessed the tournament. She had hung
upon Shirley's description of it, however, with an excited interest that
the other was later to translate in the light of her own discovery. If
the thought had flitted to her that fate might hold something deeper
than friendship in Shirley's acquaintance with Valiant, it had been of
the vaguest. His choice of her as Queen of Beauty had seemed a natural
homage to that swift and unflinching act of hers which had saved his
life. There was in her mind a more obvious explanation of Shirley's
altered demeanor. "Perhaps it's Chilly Lusk," she had said to herself.
"Have they had a foolish quarrel, I wonder? Ah, well, in her own time
she will tell me."
* * * * *
There was some relief to Shirley's overcharged feelings in the very
discomfort of the drenched weather: the sucking pull of the wet clay on
her boots and the flirt of the drops on her cheeks and hair. She thrust
her dog-skin gloves into her pocket and held her arms outstretched to
let the wind blow through her fingers. The moisture clung in damp
wreaths to her hair and rolled in great drops down her coat as she went.
The wildest, most secluded walks had always drawn her most and she
instinctively chose one of these to-day. It was the road whereon
squatted Mad Anthony's whitewashed cabin. "Dah's er man gwine look in
dem eyes, honey, en gwine make 'em cry en cry." She had forgotten the
incident of that day, when he had read her fortune, but now the
quavering prophecy came back to her with a shivering sense of reality.
"Fo' dah's fiah en she ain' afeahd, en dah's watah en she ain' afeahd.
Et's de thing whut eat de ha'at outen de breas'--dat whut she afeahd
of!" If it were only fire and water that threatened her!
She struck her hands together with an inarticulate cry. She remembered
the laugh in Valiant's eyes as they had planted the roses, the
characteristic gesture with which he tossed the waving hair from his
forehead--how she had named the ducks and the peacock and chosen the
spots for his flowers; and she smiled for such memories, even in the
stabbing knowledge that these dear trivial things could mean nothing to
her in the future. She tried to realize that he was gone from her life,
that he was the one man on earth whom to marry would be to strike to the
heart her love and loyalty to her mother, and she said this over and
over to herself in varying phrases:
"You can't! No matter how much you love him, you can't! His father
deliberately ruined your mother's life--your own mother! It's bad enough
to love him--you can't help that. But you can help marrying him. You
would hate yourself. You can never kiss him again, or feel his arms
around you. You can't touch his hand. You mustn't even see him. Not if
it breaks your heart--as your mother's heart was broken!"
She had turned into an unbeaten way that ambled from the road through a
track of tall oaks and pines, scarce more than a bridle-path, winding
aimlessly through bracken-strewn depths so dense that even the
wild-roses had not found them. In her childish hurts she had always fled
to the companionship of the trees. She had known them every one--the
black-gum and pale dogwood and gnarled hickory, the prickly-balled
"button-wood," the lowly mulberry and the majestic red oak and walnut.
They had seemed friendly and pitying counselors, standing about her with
arms intertwined. Now, with the rain weeping in soughing gusts through
them, they offered her no comfort. She suddenly threw herself face down
on the soaked moss.
"Oh, God!" she cried. "I love him so! And I had only that one evening.
It doesn't seem just. If I could only have him, and suffer some other
way! He's suffering, too, and it isn't our fault! We neither of us
harmed any one! He isn't responsible for what his father did--why, he
hardly knew him! Oh, God, why must it be so hard for us? Millions of
other people love each other and nothing separates them like this!"
Shirley's warm breath made a little fog against the star-eyed moss. She
was scarcely conscious of her wet and clinging clothing, and the soaked
strands of her hair. She was so wrapped in her desolation that she no
longer heard the sound of the persevering rain and the wet swishing of
the bushes--parting now to a hurried step that fell almost without sound
on the spongy forest soil. She started up suddenly to see Valiant before
her.
He was in a somewhat battered walking suit of brown khaki, with a
leather belt and a felt hat whose brim, stiff with the wet, was curved
down visor-wise over his brow. In an instant he had drawn her upright,
and they stood, looking at each other, drenched and trembling.
"How can you?" he said with a roughness that sounded akin to anger.
"Here in this atrocious weather--like this!" he laid a hand on her arm.
"You're wet through."
"I--don't mind the rain," she answered, drawing away, yet feeling with a
guilty thrill the masterfulness of his tone, as well as its real
concern. "I'm often wet."
His gaze searched her face, feature by feature, noting her pallor, the
blue-black shadows beneath her eyes, the caught breath, uneven like a
child's from crying. He still held her hands in his.
"Shirley," he said, "I know what you intended to tell me by those
flowers--I went to St. Andrew's that night, in the dark, after I read
your letter. Who told you? Your--mother?"
"No, no!" she cried. "She would never have told me!"
His face lighted. With an irresistible movement he caught her to him.
"Shirley!" he cried. "It shan't be! It shan't, I tell you! You can't
break our lives in two like this! It's unthinkable."
"No, no!" she said piteously, pushing him from her. "You don't
understand. You are a man, and men--can't."
"I do understand," he insisted. "Oh, my darling, my darling! It isn't
right for that spectral thing to come between us! Why, it belonged to a
past generation! However sad the outcome of that duel, it held no
dishonor. I know only too well the ruin it brought my father! It's
enough that it wrecked three lives. It shan't rise again, like Banquo's
ghost to haunt ours! I know what you think--I would love you the more,
if I _could_ love you more, for that sweet loyalty--but it's wrong,
dear. It's wrong!"
"It's the only way."
"Listen. Your mother loves you. If she knew you loved me, she would bear
_anything_ rather than have you suffer like this. You say she wouldn't
have told you herself. Why, if my father--"
She tore her hands from his and faced him with a cry. "Ah, that is it!
You knew your father so little. He was never to you what she is to me.
Why, I've been all the life she has had. I remember when she mended my
dolls, and held me when I had scarlet fever, and sang me the songs the
trees sang to themselves at night. I said my prayers at her knee till I
was twelve years old. We were never apart a day till I went away to
school."
She paused, breathless.
"Doesn't that prove what I say?" he said, bending toward her. "She loves
you far better than herself. She wants _your_ happiness."
"Could that mean hers?" she demanded, her bosom heaving. "To see us
together--always--always! To be reminded in everything--the lines of
your face--the tones of your voice, maybe,--of _that_! Oh, you don't
know how women feel--how they remember--how they grieve! I've gone over
all you can say till my soul cries out, but it can't change it. It
can't!"
Valiant felt as though he were battering with bruised knuckles at a
stone wall. A helpless anger simmered in him. "Suppose," he said
bitterly, "that your mother one day, perhaps after long years, learns of
your sacrifice. She is likely to guess in the end, I think. Will it add
to her pleasure, do you fancy, to discover that out of this conception
of filial loyalty--for it's that, I suppose!--you have spoiled your own
life?"
She shuddered. "She will never learn," she said brokenly. "Oh, I know
she would not have spoken. She would suffer anything for my happiness.
But I wouldn't have her bear any more for my sake."
His anger faded suddenly, and when he looked at her again, tears were
burning in his eyes.
"Shirley!" he said. "It's _my_ heart, too, that you are binding on the
wheel! I love you. I want nothing but you! I'd rather beg my bread from
door to door with your hand in mine than sit on a throne without you!
What can there be in life for me unless you share it? Think of our love!
Think of the fate that brought me here to find you in Virginia! Think of
our garden--where I thought we would live and work and dream, till we
were old and gray--_together_, darling! Don't throw our love away like
this!"
His entreaties left her only whiter, but unmoved. She shook her head,
gazing at him through great clear tears that welled over and rolled down
her cheeks.
"I can't fight," she said. "I have no strength left." She put out her
hand as she spoke and dropped it with a little limp gesture that had in
it tired despair, finality and hopelessness. It caught at his heart more
strongly than any words. He felt a warm gush of pity and tenderness.
He took her hand gently without speaking, and pressed it hard against
his lips. It seemed to him very small and cold.
They passed together through the wet bracken, his strong arm guiding her
over the uneven path, and came to the open in silence.
"Don't come with me," she said then, and without a backward glance, went
rapidly from him down the shimmering road.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE EVENING OF AN OLD SCORE
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!--Major Bristow's ivory-headed camphor-wood stick
thumped on the great door of Damory Court. The sound had a tang of
impatience, for he had used the knocker more than once without result.
Now he strode to the end of the porch and raised his voice in a
stentorian bellow that brought Uncle Jefferson shuffling around the path
from the kitchens with all the whites of his eyes showing.
"You dog-gone lazy rascal!" thundered the major. "What do you mean, sah,
by keeping a gentleman cooling his heels on the door-step like a
tax-collector? Where's your master?"
"Fo' de Lawd, Major, Ah ain' seen Mars' John sence dis mawnin'. Staht
out aftah breakfus' en he nevah showed up ergen et all. Yo' reck'n whut
de mattah, suh?" he added anxiously. "'Peahs lak sumpin' preyin' on he
mind. Don' seem er bit hese'f lately."
"H-m-m!" The major looked thoughtful. "Isn't he well?"
"No, _suh_. Ain' et no mor'n er hummin'-buhd dese las' few days. Jes'
hangs eroun' lonesome lak. Don' laugh no mo', don' sing no mo'. Ain'
play de pianny sence de day aftah de ball. Me en Daph moght'ly pestered
'bout him."
"Pshaw!" said the major. "Touch of spring fever, I reckon. Aunt Daph
feeds him too well. Give him less fried chicken and more ash-cake and
buttermilk. Make him some juleps."
The old negro shook his head. "Moghty neah use up all dat mint-baid Ah
foun'," he said, "but ain' do no good. Majah, Ah's sho' 'feahed sumpin'
gwineter happen."
"Nonsense!" the major sniffed. "What fool idea's got under your wool
now? Been seeing Mad Anthony again, I'll bet a dollar."
Uncle Jefferson swallowed once or twice with seeming difficulty and
turned the gravel with his toe. "Dat's so," he said gloomily. "Ah done
see de old man de yuddah day 'bout et. Ant'ny, _he_ know! He see trouble
er-comin' en trouble er-gwine. Dat same night de hoss-shoe drop off'n de
stable do', en dis ve'y mawnin' er buhd done fly inter de house. Das' er
mighty bad hoodoo, er mighty bad hoodoo!"
"Shucks!" said the major. "You're as loony as old Anthony, with your
infernal signs. If your Mars' John's been out all day I reckon he'll
turn up before long. I'll wait for him a while." He started in, but
paused on the threshold. "Did you say--ah--that mint was all gone, Unc'
Jefferson?"
Uncle Jefferson's lips relaxed in a wide grin. "Ah reck'n dah's er few
stray sprigs lef', suh. Step in en mek yo'se'f et home. Ef Mars' John
see yo', he be mought'ly hoped up. Ah gwineter mix yo' dat julep in two
shakes!"
He disappeared around the corner of the porch and the major strode into
the hall, threw his gray slouch hat on the table, and sat down.
It was quiet and peaceful, that ancient hall. He fell to thinking of the
many times, of old, when he had sat there. The house was the same again,
now. It had waked from a thirty-years' slumber to a renewed prime. Only
he had lived on meanwhile and now was old! He sighed.
How gay the place had been the night of the ball, with the lights and
roses and music! He remembered what the doctor had said about Valiant
and Shirley--it had lain ever since in his mind, a painful speculation.
The recollection roused another thought from which he shrank. He stirred
uneasily. What on earth kept that old darky so long over that julep?
A slight noise made him turn his head. But nothing moved. Only a creak
of the woodwork, he thought, and settled back again in his chair.
It was, in fact, a stealthy footfall he had heard. It came from the
library, where a shabby figure crouched, listening, in the corner behind
the tapestried screen--a man evilly clad, with a scarred cheek.
It had been with no good purpose that Greef King had dogged the major
these last days. He hugged a hot hatred grown to white heat in six years
of prison labor within bleak walls at the clicking shoe-machine, or with
the chain-gang on blazing or frosty turnpikes. He had slunk behind him
that afternoon, creeping up the drive under cover of the bushes, and
while the other talked with Uncle Jefferson, had skirted the house and
entered from the farther side, through an open French window. Now as he
peered from behind the screen, a poker, snatched from the fireplace, was
in his hand. His furtive gaze fell upon a morocco-covered case on a
commode by his side. He lifted its lid and his eyes narrowed as he saw
that it held a pistol. He set down the poker noiselessly and took the
weapon. He tilted it--it was rusted, but there were loads in the
chambers. He crouched lower, with a whispered curse: the major was
coming into the library, but not alone--the old nigger was with him!
Uncle Jefferson bore a tray with a frosted goblet over whose rim peeped
green leaves and which spread abroad an ambrosial odor, which the major
sniffed approvingly as the other set the burden on the desk at his
elbow.
"Majah," said the latter solemnly, "you reck'n Mars' John en Miss
Shirley--"
"Good lord!" said the major, wheeling to the small ormolu clock on the
desk. "It's 'most four o'clock. Haven't you any idea where he's gone?"
"No, suh, less'n he's gwineter look ovah dem walnut trees. Whut Ah's
gwine ter say--yo' reck'n Mars' John en Miss--"
"Walnut trees? Is he going to sell them?"
"Tree man come f'om up Norf' somewhah ter see erbout et yistiddy. Yas,
suh. Yo' reck'n Mars' John en--"
"Nice pot of money tied up in that timber! _He_ saw it right off. You're
a lucky old rascal to have him for a master."
"Hyuh, hyuh!" agreed Uncle Jefferson. "Dam'ry Co'ot er heap bettah dan
drivin' er ol' stage ter de deepo fer drummahs en lightnin'-rod agents.
Ah sho' do pray de Good Man ter mek Mars' John happy," he added soberly,
"but Ah's mought'ly 'sturbed in mah mind--mought'ly 'sturbed!"
The hidden watcher waited motionless. From where he stood he could look
through the rear window. He waited till he saw the negro's bent figure
disappear into the kitchens. Then he noiselessly lifted himself upright,
and resting the pistol on the screen-top, took deliberate aim and
pulled the trigger.
The hammer clicked sharply on the worthless thirty-year old cartridge,
and the major sprang around with an exclamation, as with an oath, the
other dashed the screen aside and again pulled the trigger.
"You infernal murderer!" cried the major. It was all he said, for, as he
swung his chair up, the one-time bully of Hell's-Half-Acre rushed in and
struck him a single sledge-hammer blow with the clubbed pistol. It fell
full on the major's temple, and the heavy iron crashed through.
Greef King stood an instant breathing hard, then, without withdrawing
his eyes from the prostrate form, his hand groped for the cold goblet
and lifting it to his lips he drained it to its dregs. "There!" he
said. "There's my six-years' debt paid in full, ye lily-livered,
fancy-weskited hellion! Take that from the mayor of the Dome!"
There was a man's step on the gravel and the sudden bark of a dog. The
pistol fell from his hand. He stole on tiptoe along the corridor and
leaped through the French window. As he dashed across the lawn, a
startled cry came from the house behind him.
No human eye had seen him, but he had been observed for all that: Run
your best now, Greef King! Double and turn how you will, there is a
swifter Nemesis pursuing. It is only a dog, and not a big one at that,
but it is of a faithful breed that knows neither fear nor quarter. Like
white lightning, without a bark or growl, Chum launched himself on the
fleeing quarry, and in the shadow of the trees his teeth met in the
ragged trousers-leg.
Kicking, beating with his hands at the dragging weight, the man dashed
on. Not till they had reached the hemlocks was that fierce grip broken,
and then it was with a tearing of flesh and sinew. Panting, snarling
with rage and pain, the man seized a fallen branch and stood at bay,
striking out with vicious sweeping blows. But the bulldog, the hair
bristling up on his thick neck, his red-rimmed eyes fiery, circled
beyond reach of the flail, crouching for another spring.
Again he launched himself, and the man, dodging, blundered full-face
into a thorn-bush. The sharp spines slashed his forehead and the
starting blood blinded him, so that he ran without sense of
direction--straight upon the declivity of Lovers' Leap.
He was toppling on its edge before he could stop, and then threw himself
backward, clutching desperately at the slippery fern-covered rock,
feeling his feet dangling over nothing. He dug his fingers into the
yielding soil and with knee and elbow strove frenziedly to crawl to the
path.
But the white bulldog was upon him. The clamping teeth met in the
striving fingers, and with a scream of pain Greef King's hold let go
and dog and man went down together.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE MAJOR BREAKS SILENCE
Ten minutes later a motor was hurling itself along the Red Road to
the village. The doctor was in his office and no time was lost in the
return. En route they passed Judge Chalmers driving, and seeing the
flying haste, he turned his sweating pair and lashed them after the car.
So that when the major finally opened his eyes from the big leather
couch, he looked on the faces of two of his oldest friends. Recollection
and understanding seemed to come at once.
"Well--Southall?"
The doctor's hand closed over the white one on the settee. He did not
answer, but his chin was quivering and he was winking fast.
"How long?" asked the major after a lengthy minute.
"Maybe--maybe an hour, Bristow. Maybe not."
The major winced and shut his eyes, but when the doctor, reaching
swiftly for a phial on the table, turned again, it was to find that
look once more on him, now in yearning appeal. "Southall," he said,
"send for Judith. I--I must see her. There's time."
The judge started up. "I'll bring her," he said, and his voice had all
the tenderness of a woman's. "My carriage is at the door and with those
horses she ought to be here in twenty minutes." He leaned over the
couch. "Bristow," he said, "would you--would you like me to send for the
rector?"
The major smiled, a little wistfully, and shook his head. He lay silent
for a while after the judge had gone out--he seemed housing his
strength--while the ormolu clock on the desk ticked ominously on, and
the doctor busied himself with the glasses beside him. Presently he said
huskily:
"You've had a bad fall, Bristow. You were dizzy, I reckon."
"Dizzy!" echoed the major with feeble asperity. "It was Greef King."
"Greef King! Good God!"
"He was hiding behind the screen. He struck me with something. He swore
at his trial he'd get me. I was--a fool not to have remembered his time
was out."
A look, wolf-like and grim, had sprung into the doctor's face. His eyes
searched the room, and he crossed the floor and picked up something from
the rug. He looked at it a moment, then thrust it hastily into his
breast pocket.
"I--remember now. It was a pistol. He snapped it twice, but it missed
fire."
"He can't hide where we'll not find him!" The doctor spoke with low but
terrible energy.
"Not that I care--myself," said the major difficultly. "But I reckon
he'd better be settled with, or he'll--be killing some one worth while
one of these days."
A big tear suddenly loosed itself from the doctor's eyelid and rolled
down his cheek, and he turned hastily away.
"There's no call to feel bad," said the major gruffly. "I've sort of
been a thorn-in-the-flesh to you, Southall. We always rowed, somehow,
and yet--"
The doctor choked and cleared his throat.
"I reckon," the major murmured with a faint smile, "you won't get quite
so much fun out of Chalmers--and the rest. They never did rise to you
like I did."
A little later he asked for the restorative. "Ten minutes gone," he said
then. "Chalmers ought to be at Rosewood by now ... what a fool way to
go--like this. But it wasn't--apoplexy, Southall, anyway."
* * * * *
At the sound of wheels on the drive, Valiant went out quietly. Huddled
in a corner of the hall were Uncle Jefferson and Aunt Daphne, with
Jereboam, the major's body-servant. Aunt Daphne, her apron thrown over
her face was rocking to and fro silently, and old Jereboam's head was
bowed on his breast. Valiant went quickly to the rear of the hall. A
painful embarrassment had come to him--a curious confusion mingling
with a fastidious sense of shrinking. How should he meet this woman who
recoiled from the very sight of his face? In the swiftness of the tragic
event he had forgotten this. From the background he saw Judge Chalmers
lift down the frail form, and suddenly his heart leaped. There were two
feminine figures; Shirley was with her mother.
The doctor stood just inside the library door and Mrs. Dandridge went
hastily toward him, her light cane tapping through the stricken silence.
Jereboam lifted his head and looked at her piteously.
"Reck'n Mars' Monty cyan' see ole Jerry now," he quavered, "but yo'-all
gib him mah love, Mis' Judith, and tell him--" His voice broke.
"Yes, yes, Jerry. I will."
The doctor closed the door upon her and came to where Shirley waited.
"Come, my dear," he said, and dropped his arm about her. "Let us go out
to the garden."
As they passed Valiant, she held out her hand to him. There was no word
between them, but as his hand swallowed hers, his heart said to her, "I
love you, I love you! No matter what is between us, I shall always love
you!"
It was wordless, a heart-whisper that only love itself could hear, and
he could read no answer in the deep pools of her eyes, heavy now with
unshed tears. But in some subtle way this voiceless greeting comforted
and lightened by a little the weight of dumb impotence that he had
borne.
* * * * *
In the library, lighted so brightly by the sunlight, yet grave with the
hush of that solemn presence, the major looked into the face of the
woman for whose coming he had waited so anxiously.
"It's all--up, Judith," he said faintly. "I've come to the jumping-off
place."
She looked at him whitely. "Monty, Monty!" she cried. "Don't leave me
this way! I always thought--"
He guessed what she would have said. "Heaven knows you're needed more
than me, Judith. After all, I reckon when my time had to come I'd have
chosen the quick way." His voice trailed out and he struggled for
breath.
"Jerry's in the hall, Monty. He asked me to give you his love."
"Poor old nigger! He--used to tote me on his back when I was a little
shaver." There was a silence. "Don't kneel, Judith," he said at length.
"You will be so tired."
She rose obediently and drew up a chair. "Monty," she faltered
tremulously, "shall I say a prayer? I've never prayed much--my prayers
never seemed to get above the ceiling, somehow. But I'll--try."
He smiled wanly. "I wouldn't want any better than yours, Judith. But
seems as if I'd been prayed over enough. I reckon God Almighty's like
anybody else, and doesn't want to be ding-donged all the time."
He seemed to have been gathering his resolution, and presently his hand
fumbled over his breast. "My wallet; give it to me." She drew it from
the pocket and the uncertain fingers took out a key. "It opens a tin
box in my trunk. There's--a letter in it for you." He paused a moment,
panting: "Judith," he said, "I've got to tell you, but it's mighty hard.
The letter ... it's one Valiant gave me for you--that morning, after the
duel. I--never gave it to you."
If she had been white before, she grew like marble now. Her slim fingers
clutched the little cane till it rattled against the chair, and the lace
at her throat shook with her breathing. "Yes--Monty."
He lifted his hand with difficulty and put the key into hers. "The
seal's still unbroken, Judith," he said, "but I've kept it these thirty
years."
She was holding the key in her hands, looking down upon it. There was a
strained half-fearful wonder in her face. For an instant she seemed
quite to have forgotten him in the grip of some swift and painful
emotion.
"I loved you, Judith!" he stammered in anguished appeal. "From the
time we were boy and girl together, I loved you. You never cared for
me--Sassoon and Valiant had the inside track. You might have loved me;
but I had no chance with either of them. Then came the duel. There was
only Valiant then. I overheard his promise to you that night, Judith. He
had broken that! If you cared more for him than for Sassoon, you might
have forgiven him, and I should have lost you! I didn't want you to call
him back, Judith! I wanted my chance! And so--I took it. That's--the
reason, dear. It's--it's a bad one, isn't it!"
A shiver went over her set face--like a breath of wind over tall grass,
and she seemed to come back from an infinite distance to place and
moment. Between the curtains a white butterfly hovered an instant, and
in the yard she heard the sound of some winged thing fluttering. The
thought darted to her that it was the sound of her own dead heart
awaking. She looked at the key and all at once put a hand to her mouth
as though to still words clamoring there.
"Judith," he said tremulously, between short struggles for breath,
"all these years, after I found there was no chance for me, I reckon
I've--prayed only one prayer. 'God, let it be Sassoon that she loved!'
And I've prayed that mighty near every day. The thought that maybe it
was Valiant has haunted me like a ghost. You never told--and I never
dared ask you. Judith--"
Her face was still averted, and when she did not speak he turned his
head from her on the pillow, with a breath that was almost a moan. She
started, looking at him an instant in piteous hesitation, then swiftly
kissed the little key and closed her hand tight upon it. Truth? She saw
only the pillow and the graying face upon it! She threw herself on her
knees by the couch and laid her lips on the pallid forehead.
"It--it _was_ Sassoon, Monty," she said, and her voice broke on the
first lie she had ever told.
"Thank God!" he gasped. He struggled to raise himself on his elbow, then
suddenly the strength faded out and he settled back.
Her cry brought the doctor, but this time the restorative seemed of no
avail, and after a time he came and touched her shoulder. With a last
long look at the ash-pale face on the settee she followed him from the
room. In the yellow parlor he put her into a chair.
"No," he said, in answer to her look, "he won't rouse again."
"I will wait," she told him, and he left her, shutting the door with
careful softness.
* * * * *
But the slight figure with its silver hair, sitting there, was not
alone. Ghosts were walking up and down. Not the misty wraiths John
Valiant had at times imagined went flitting along the empty corridors,
but faces very clear in the sunlight, that came and went with the
memories so long woven over by the shuttle of time--evoked now by the
touch of a key that her hand still clenched tightly in its palm.
There welled over her in a tide those days of puzzle, the weeks of
waiting silence, the slow inexorable months of heartache, the long years
that had deepened the mystery of Beauty Valiant's exile. In the first
shock of the news that Sassoon had fallen by his hand, she had thought
she could not forgive him that broken faith. She and his promise to her
had not weighed in the balance against his idea of manly "honor"! But
this bitterness had at length slipped away. "He will write," she had
told herself, "and explain." But no word had come. Whispers had flitted
to her--the tale of Sassoon's intoxication--stinging barbs that clung to
Beauty Valiant's name. That these should rest unanswered had filled her
with resentment and anger. Slowly, but with deadly surety, had grown the
belief that he no longer cared. In the end there had been left her only
pride--the pride that covers its wound and smiles. And she had hidden
her wound with flowers. But in the deepest well of her heart her love
for him had rested unchanged, clear and defined as a moss in amber,
wrapped in that mystery of silence.
In the little haircloth trunk back in her room lay an old scrap-book. It
held a few leaves torn from letters and many newspaper clippings. From
these she had known of his work, his marriage, the great commercial
success for which his name had stood--the name that from the day of his
going, she had so seldom taken upon her lips. Some of them had dealt
with his habits and idiosyncrasies, hints of an altered personality, an
aloofness or loneliness that had set him apart and made him, in a way, a
stranger to those who should have known him best. Thus her mind had come
to hold a double image: the grave man these shadowed forth, and the man
she had loved, whose youthful face was in the locket she wore always on
her breast. It was this face that was printed on her heart, and when
John Valiant had stood before her on the porch at Rosewood, it had
seemed to have risen, instinct, from that old grave.
He had not kept silence! He had written! It pealed through her brain
like a muffled bell. But Beauty Valiant was gone with her youth; in the
room near by lay that old companion who would never speak to her again,
the lifelong friend--who had really failed her thirty years ago!... and
in a tin box a mile away lay a letter....
* * * * *
"He won't rouse again," the doctor had said, but a little later, as he
and Valiant sat beside the couch, the major opened his eyes suddenly.
"Shirley," he whispered. "Where's Shirley?"
She was sitting on the porch just outside the open window, and when she
entered, tears were on her face. The doctor drew back silently; but when
Valiant would have done so, the major called him nearer.
"No," he panted; "I like to see you two together." His voice was very
weak and tired.
As she leaned and touched his hand, he smiled whimsically. "It's mighty
curious," he said, "but I can't get it out of my head that it's Beauty
Valiant and Judith that I'm really talking to. Foolish--isn't it?" But
the idea seemed to master him, and presently he began to call Shirley by
her mother's name. An odd youthfulness crept into his eyes; a subtle
paradoxical boyishness. His cheek tinged with color. The deep lines
about his mouth smoothed miraculously out.
"Judith," he whispered, "--you--sure you told me the truth a while ago,
when you said--you said--"
"Yes, yes," Shirley answered, putting her young arm under him, thinking
only to soothe the anxiety that seemed vaguely to thread some vague
hallucination.
He smiled again. "It makes it easier," he said. He looked at Valiant,
his mind seeming to slip farther and farther away. "Beauty," he gasped,
"you didn't go away after all, did you! I dreamed it--I reckon. It'll
be--all right with you both."
He sighed peacefully, and his eyes turned to Shirley's and closed.
"I'm--so glad," he muttered, "so glad I--didn't really do it, Judith. It
would have--been the--only--low-down thing--I--ever did."
The doctor went swiftly to the door and beckoned to Jereboam. "Come in
now, Jerry," he said in a low voice, "quickly."
The old negro fell on his knees by the couch. "Mars' Monty!" he cried.
"Is yo' gwine away en leab ol' Jerry? Is yo'? Mars'?"
The cracked but loving voice struck across the void of the failing
sense. For a last time the major opened his misting eyes.
"Jerry, you--black scoundrel!" he whispered, and Shirley felt his head
grow heavier on her arm, "I reckon it's--about time--to be going--home!"
CHAPTER XLV
RENUNCIATION
The grim posse that gathered in haste that afternoon did not ride far.
Its work had been singularly well done. It brought back to Damory Court,
however, a white bulldog whose broken leg made his would-be joyful bark
trail into a sad whimper as his owner took him into welcoming arms.
Next day the major was carried to his final rest in the myrtled shadow
of St. Andrew's. At the service the old church was crowded to its doors.
Valiant occupied a humble place at one side--the others, he knew, were
older friends than he. The light of the late afternoon came dimly in
through the stained-glass windows and seemed to clothe with subtle
colors the voice of the rector as he read the solemn service. The
responses came brokenly, and there were tears on many faces.
Valiant could see the side-face of the doctor, its saturnine grimness
strangely moved, and beyond him, Shirley and her mother. Many glanced at
them, for the major's will had been opened that morning and few there
had been surprised to learn that, save for a life-annuity for old
Jereboam, he had left everything he possessed to Shirley. Miss Mattie
Sue was beside them, and between, wan with weeping, sat Rickey Snyder.
Shirley's arm lay shelteringly about the small shoulders as if it would
stay the passion of grief that from time to time shook them.
The evening before had been further darkened by the child's
disappearance and Miss Mattie Sue had sat through half the night in
tearful anxiety. It was Valiant who had solved the riddle. In her first
wild compunction, Rickey had gasped out the story of her meeting with
Greef King, his threat and her own terrorized silence, and when he heard
of this he had guessed her whereabouts. He had found her at the Dome, in
the deserted cabin from which on a snowy night six years ago, Shirley
had rescued her. She had fled there in her shabbiest dress, her toys and
trinkets left behind, taking with her only a string of blue glass beads
that had been Shirley's last Christmas present.
"Let me stay!" she had wailed. "I'm not fit to live down there! It's all
my fault that it happened. I was a coward. I ought to stay here in
Hell's-Half-Acre forever and ever!" Valiant had carried her back in his
arms down the mountain--she had been too spent to walk.
He thought of this now as he saw that arm about the child in that
protective, almost motherly gesture. It made his own heartache more
unbearable. Such a little time ago he had felt that arm about _him_!
He leaned his hot head against the cool plastered wall, trying to keep
his mind on the solemn reading. But Shirley's voice and laugh seemed to
be running eerily through the chanting lines, and her face shut out
pulpit and lectern. It swept over him suddenly that each abominable hour
could but make the situation more impossible for them both. He had seen
her as she entered the church, had thought her even paler than in the
wood, the bluish shadows deeper under her eyes. Those delicate charms
were in eclipse.
And it was he who was to blame!
It came to him with a stab of enlightenment. He had been thinking only
of himself all the while. But for her, it was his presence that had now
become the unbearable thing. A cold sweat broke on his forehead. "...
for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner: as all my fathers were.
O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength before I go
hence...." The intoning voice fell dully on his ears.
To go away! To pass out of her life, to a future empty of her? How
could he do that? When he had parted from her in the rain he had felt
a frenzy of obstinacy. It had seemed so clear that the barrier must
in the end yield before their love. He had never thought of surrender.
Now he told himself that flight was all that was left him. She--her
happiness--nothing else mattered. Damory Court and its future--the plans
he had made--the Valiant name--in that clarifying instant he knew that
all these, from that May day on the Red Road, had clung about _her_. She
had been the inspiration of all.
"Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom--"
The voices of the unvested choir rose clearly and some one at his side
was whispering that this had been the major's favorite hymn. But he
scarcely heard.
When the service was ended the people filled the big yard while the last
reverent words were spoken at the grave. Valiant, standing with the
rest, saw Shirley, with her mother and the doctor, pass out of the gate.
She was not looking toward him. A mist was before his eyes as they drove
away, and the vision of her remained wavering and indistinct--a pale
blurred face under shining hair.
He realized after a time that the yard was empty and the sexton was
locking the church door. He went slowly to the gate, and just outside
some one spoke to him. It was Chisholm Lusk. They had not met since the
night of the ball. Even in his own preoccupation, Valiant noted that
Lusk's face seemed to have lost its exuberant youthfulness. It was worn
as if with sleeplessness, and had a look of suffering that touched him.
And all at once, while they stood looking at each other, Valiant knew
what the other had waited to say.
"I won't beat about the bush," said Lusk stammering. "I've got to ask
you something. I reckon you've guessed that I--that Shirley--"
Valiant touched the young fellow's arm. "Yes," he said, "I think I
know."
"It's no new thing, with me," said the other hoarsely. "It's been three
years. The night of the ball, I thought perhaps that--I don't mean to
ask what you might have a right to resent--but I must find out. Is there
any reason why I shouldn't try my luck?"
Valiant shook his head. "No," he said heavily, "there is no reason."
The boyish look sprang back to Lusk's face. He drew a long breath. "Why,
then I _will_," he said. "I--I'm sorry if I hurt you. Heaven knows I
didn't want to!"
He grasped the other's hand with a man's heartiness and went up the road
with a swinging stride; and Valiant stood watching him go, with his
hands tight-clenched at his side.
* * * * *
A little later Valiant climbed the sloping driveway of Damory Court. It
seemed to stare at him from a thousand reproachful eyes. The bachelor
red squirrel from his tree-crotch looked down at him askance. The
redbirds, flashing through the hedges, fluttered disconsolately.
Fire-Cracker, the peacock, was shrieking from the upper lawn and the
strident discord seemed to mock his mood.
The great house had become home to him; he told himself that he
would make no other. The few things he had brought--his books and
trophies--had grown to be a part of it, and they should remain. The ax
should not be laid to the walnut grove. As his father had done, he would
leave behind him the life he had lived there, and the old Court should
be once more closed and deserted. Uncle Jefferson and Aunt Daphne might
live on in the cabin back of the kitchens. There was pasturage for the
horse and the cows and for old Sukey, and some acres had already been
cleared for planting. And there would be the swans, the ducks and
chickens, the peafowl and the fish.
A letter had come to him that morning. The Corporation had resumed
business with credit unimpaired. Public opinion was more than friendly
now. A place waited for him there, and one of added honor, in a concern
that had rigorously cleansed itself and already looked forward to a new
career of prosperity. But he thought of this now with no thrill. The old
life no longer called. There were still wide unpeopled spaces somewhere
where a man's hand and brain were no less needed, and there was work
there that would help him to bear, if not forget.
He paced up and down the porch under the great gray columns, his steps
spiritless and lagging. The Virginia creeper, trailing over its end,
waved to and fro with a sound like a sigh. How long would it be before
the lawn was once more unkempt and draggled? Before burdock and thistle,
mullein and Spanish-needle would return to smother the clover? Before
Damory Court, on which he had spent such loving labor, would lie
again as it lay that afternoon when he had rattled thither on Uncle
Jefferson's crazy hack? Before there would be for him, in some far-away
corner of the world, only Wishing-House and the Never-Never Land?
In the hall he stood a moment before the fireplace, his eyes on its
carven motto, _I clinge_: the phrase was like a spear-thrust. He began
to wander restlessly through the house, up and down, like a prowling
animal. The dining-room looked austere and chill--only the little lady
in hoops and love-curls who had been his great-grandmother smiled
wistfully down from her gilt frame above the console--and in the library
a melancholy deeper than that of yesterday's tragedy seemed to hang,
through which Devil-John, drawing closer the leash of his leaping hound,
glared sardonically at him from his one cold eye. The shutters of the
parlor were closed, but he threw them open and let the rich light
pierce the yellow gloom, glinting from the figures in the cabinet and
weaving a thousand tiny rainbows in the prisms of the great chandelier.
He went up-stairs, into the bedrooms one by one, now and then passing
his hand over a polished chair-back or touching an ornament or a frame
on the wall: into _The Hilarium_ with its records of childish study and
play. The dolls stood now on dress-parade in glass cases, and prints in
bright colors, dear to little people, were on the walls. He opened the
shutters here, too, and stood some time on the threshold before he
turned and went heavily down-stairs.
Through the rear door he could see the kitchens, and Aunt Daphne sitting
under the trumpet-vine piecing a nine-patch calico quilt with little
squares of orange and red and green cloth. Two diminutive darkies were
sprawled on the ground looking up at her with round serious eyes, while
a wary bantam pecked industriously about their bare legs.
"En den whut de roostah say, Aunt Daph?"
"Ol' roostah he hollah ter all he wifes, 'Oo--ooo! Oo--ooo! Young
_Mars'_ come!--Young _Mars'_ come! Young _Mars'_ come!' En dey
all mighty skeered, 'case Mars' John he cert'n'y fond ob fried
chick'n. But de big tuhkey gobbler he don' b'leeve et 'tall.
'Doubtful--doubtful--doubtful!' he say, lak dat. Den de drake he peep
eroun' de cornah, en he say, 'Haish! Haish! Haish!' Fo' he done seed
Mars' John comin', sho' nuff. But et too late by den, fo' Aunt Daph
she done grab Mis' Pullet, en Mars' John he gwineter eat huh dis bery
evenin' fo' he suppah. Now you chillen run erlong home ter yo' mammies,
en don' yo' pick none ob dem green apples on de way, neidah."
* * * * *
It was not till after dark had come that Valiant said good-by to the
garden. He loved it best under the starlight. He sat a long hour under
the pergola overlooking the lake, where he could dimly see the green
rocks, and the white froth of the water bubbling and chuckling down over
their rounded outlines to the shrouded level below. The moon lifted
finally and soared through the sky, blowing out the little lamps of
stars. Under its light a gossamer mist robed the landscape in a
shimmering opalescence, in which tree and shrub altered their values and
became transmuted to silver sentinels, watching over a demesne of
violet-velvet shadows filled with sleepy twitterings and stealthy
rustlings and the odor of wild honeysuckle.
At last he stood before the old sun-dial, rearing its column from its
pearly clusters of blossoms. "_I count no hours but the happy ones_": he
read the inscription with an indrawn breath. Then, groping at its base,
he lifted the ivy that had once rambled there and drew up the tangle
again over the stone disk. His Bride's-Garden!
In the library, an hour later, sitting at the big black pigeonholed
desk, he wrote to Shirley:
"I am leaving to-night on the midnight train. Uncle Jefferson
will give you this note in the morning. I will not stay at
Damory Court to bring more pain into your life. I am going very
far away. I understand all you are feeling--and so, good-by,
good-by. God keep you! I love you and I shall love you always,
always!"
CHAPTER XLVI
THE VOICE FROM THE PAST
Though the doctor left the church with Shirley and her mother, he did
not drive to Rosewood, but to his office. There, alone with Mrs.
Dandridge while Shirley waited in the carriage, he unlocked the little
tin box that had been the major's, with the key Mrs. Dandridge gave him,
and put into her hands a little packet of yellow oiled-silk which bore
her name. He noted that it agitated her profoundly and as she thrust it
into the bosom of her dress, her face seemed stirred as he had never
seen it. When he put her again in the carriage, he patted her shoulder
with a touch far gentler than his gruff good-by.
At Rosewood, at length, alone in her room, she sat down with the packet
in her hands. During the long hours since first the little key had lain
in her palm like a live coal, she had been all afire with eagerness. Now
the moment had come, she was almost afraid.
She tried to imagine that letter's coming to her--then. Thirty years
ago! A May day, a day of golden sunshine and flowers. The arbors had
been covered with roses then, too, like those whose perfume drifted to
her now. Evil news flies fast, and she had heard of the duel very early
that morning. The letter would have reached her later. She would have
fled away with it to this very room to read it alone--as she did now!
With unsteady fingers she unwrapped the oiled-silk, broke the letter's
seal, and read:
"_Dearest_:
"Before you read this, you will no doubt have heard the thing
that has happened this sunshiny morning. Sassoon--poor Sassoon!
I can say that with all my heart--is dead. What this fact will
mean to you, God help me! I can not guess. For I have never
been certain, Judith, of your heart. Sometimes I have thought
you loved me--me only--as I love you. Last night when I saw you
wearing my cape jessamines at the ball, I was almost sure of
it. But when you made me promise, whatever happened, not to
lift my hand against him, then I doubted. Was it because you
feared for him? Would to God at this moment I knew this was not
true! For whatever the fact, I must love you, darling, you and
no other, as long as I live!"
When she had read thus far, she closed the letter, and pressing a hand
against her heart as if to still its throbbing, locked the written pages
in a drawer of her bureau. She went down-stairs and made Ranston bring
her chair to its accustomed place under the rose-arbor, and sat there
through the falling twilight.
She and Shirley talked but little at dinner, and what she said seemed to
come winging from old memories--her own girlhood, its routs and picnics
and harum-scarum pleasures. And there were long gaps in which she sat
silent, playing with her napkin, the light color coming and going in her
delicate cheek, lost in revery. It was not till the hall-clock struck
her usual hour that she rose to go to her room.
"Don't send Emmaline," she said. "I shan't want her." She kissed Shirley
good night. "Maybe after a while you will sing for me; you haven't
played your harp for ever so long."
In the subdued candle-light Mrs. Dandridge locked the door of her room.
She opened a closet, and from the very bottom of a small haircloth
trunk, lifted and shook out from its many tissue wrappings a faded
gown of rose-colored silk, with pointed bodice and old-fashioned
puff-sleeves. She spread this on the bed and laid with it a pair of
yellowed satin slippers and a little straw basket that held a spray of
what had once been cape jessamine.
In the flickering light she undressed and rearranged her hair,
catching its silvery curling meshes in a low soft coil. Looking almost
furtively about her, she put on the rose-colored gown, and pinned the
withered flower-spray on its breast. She lighted more candles--in
the wall-brackets and on the dressing-table--and the reading-lamp on
the desk. Standing before her mirror then, she gazed long at the
reflection--the poor faded rose-tint against the pale ivory of her
slender neck, and the white hair. A little quiver ran over her lips.
"'Whatever the fact,'" she whispered, "'... you and no other, as long as
I live.'"
She unlocked the bureau-drawer then, took out the letter, and seating
herself by the table, read the remainder:
"I write this in the old library and Bristow holds my horse by
the porch. He will give you this letter when I am gone.
"Last night we were dancing--all of us--at the ball. I can
scarcely believe it was less than twelve hours ago! The
calendar on my desk has a motto for each leaf. To-day's is
this: 'Every man carries his fate on a riband about his neck.'
Last night I would have smiled at that, perhaps; to-day I say
to myself, 'It's true--it's true!' Two little hours ago I could
have sworn that whatever happened to me, Sassoon would suffer
no harm.
"Judith, I could not avoid the meeting. You will know the
circumstances, and will see that it was forced upon me. But
though we met on the field, I kept my promise. _Sassoon did not
fall by my hand._"
She had begun to tremble so that the paper shook in her hands, and from
her breast, shattered by her quick breathing, the brown jessamine petals
dusted down in her lap. It was some moments before she could calm
herself sufficiently to read on.
"He fired at the signal and the shot went wide. I threw my
pistol on the ground. Then--whether maddened by my refusal to
fire, I can not tell--he turned his weapon all at once and shot
himself through the breast. It was over in an instant. The
seconds did not guess--do not even now, for it happened but an
hour ago. As the code decrees, their backs were turned when the
shots were fired. But there were circumstances I can not touch
upon to you which made them disapprove--which made my facing
him just then seem unchivalrous. I saw it in Bristow's face,
and liked him the better for it, even while it touched my
pride. They could not know, of course, that I did not intend to
fire. Well, you and they will know it now! And Bristow has my
pistol; he will find it undischarged--thank God, thank God!
"But will that matter to you? If you loved Sassoon, I shall
always in your mind stand as the indirect cause of his death!
It is for this reason I am going away--I could not bear to look
in your accusing eyes and hear you say it. Nor could I bear to
stay here, a reminder to you of such a horror. If you love me,
you will write and call me back to you. Oh, Judith, Judith, my
own dear love! I pray God you will!"
She put the letter down and laid her face upon it. "Beauty! Beauty!"
she whispered, dry-eyed. "I never knew! I never knew! But it
would have made no difference, darling. I would have forgiven you
anything--everything! You know that, now, dear! You have been certain
of it all these years that have been so empty, empty to me!"
* * * * *
But when the faded rose-colored gown and the poor time-yellowed slippers
had been laid back in the haircloth trunk; when, her door once more
unbolted, she lay in her bed in the dim glow of the reading-lamp, with
her curling silvery hair drifting across the pillow and the letter
beneath it, at last the tears came coursing down her cheeks.
And with the loosening of her tears, gradually and softly came
joy--infinitely deeper than the anguish and sense of betrayal. It poured
upon her like a trembling flood. Long, long ago he had gone out of the
world--it was only his memory that counted to her. Now that could no
longer spell pain or emptiness or denial. It was engoldened by a new
light, and in that light she would walk gently and smilingly to the end.
She found the slender golden chain that hung about her neck and opened
the little black locket with its circlet of laureled pearls. And as she
gazed at the face it held, which time had not touched with change, the
sound of Shirley's harp came softly in through the window. She was
playing an old-fashioned song, of the sort she knew her mother loved
best:
"Darling, I am growing old.
Silver threads among the gold
Shine upon my brow to-day;
Life is fading fast away.
But, my darling, you will be
Always young and fair to me."
Outside the leaves rustled, the birds called and the crickets sang their
unending epithalamia of summer nights, and on this tone-background the
melody rose tenderly and lingeringly like a haunting perfume of pressed
flowers. She smiled and lifted the locket to her face, whispering the
words of the refrain:
"Yes, my darling, you will be
Always young and fair to me!"
The smile was still on her lips when she fell asleep, and the little
locket still lay in her fingers.
CHAPTER XLVII
WHEN THE CLOCK STRUCK
"Sorrow weeps--sorrow sings." As Shirley played that night, the old
Russian proverb kept running through her mind. When she had pushed the
gold harp into its corner she threw herself upon a broad sofa in a
feathery drift of chintz cushions and dropped her forehead in her laced
fingers. A gilt-framed mirror hung on the opposite wall, out of which
her sorrowful brooding eyes looked with an expression of dumb and weary
suffering.
Her confused thoughts raced hither and thither. What would be the end?
Would Valiant forget after a time? Would he marry--Miss Fargo, perhaps?
The thought caused her a stab of anguish. Yet she herself could not
marry him. The barrier was impassable!
She was still lying listlessly among the cushions when a step sounded on
the porch and she heard Chilly Lusk's voice in the hall. With heavy
hands Shirley put into place her disheveled hair and rose to meet him.
"I'm awfully selfish to come to-night," he said awkwardly; "no doubt you
are tired out."
She disclaimed the weariness that dragged upon her spirits like leaden
weights, and made him welcome with her usual cordiality. She was, in
fact, relieved at his coming. At Damory Court, the night of the ball,
when she had come from the garden with her lips thrilling from Valiant's
kiss, she had suddenly met his look. It had seemed to hold a startled
realization that she had remembered with a remorseful compunction. Since
that night he had not been at Rosewood.
Ranston had lighted a pine-knot in the fireplace, and the walls were
shuddering with crimson shadows. Her hand was shielding her eyes, and as
she strove to fill the gaps in their somewhat spasmodic conversation
with the trivial impersonal things that belonged to their old intimacy,
the tiny flickering flames seemed to be darting unfriendly fingers
plucking at her secret. Leaning from her nest of cushions she thrust the
poker into the glowing resinous mass till sparks whizzed up the
chimney's black maw in a torrent.
"How they fly!" she said. "Rickey Snyder calls it raising a blizzard in
Hades. I used to think they flew up to the sky and became the littlest
stars. What a pity we have to grow up and learn so much! I'd rather have
kept on believing that when the red leaves in the woods whirled about in
a circle the fairies were dancing, and that it was the gnomes who put
the cockle-burs in the hounds' ears."
She had been talking at random, gradually becoming shrinkingly conscious
of his constrained and stumbling manner. She had, however, but half
defined his errand when he came to it all in a burst.
"I--I can't get to it, somehow, Shirley," he said with sudden
desperation, "but here it is. I've come to ask you to marry me. Don't
stop me," he went on hurriedly, lifting his hand; "whatever you say, I
must tell you. I've been trying to for months and months!" Now that he
had started, it came with a boyish vehemence that both chilled and
thrilled her. Even in her own desolation, and shrinking almost
unbearably from the avowal, the hope and brightness in his voice touched
her with pity. It seemed to her that life was a strange jumble of
unescapable and incomprehensible pain. And all the while, in the young
voice vibrant with feeling, her cringing ear was catching imagined
echoes of that other voice, graver and more self-contained, but shaken
by the same passion, in that iteration of "I love you! I love you!"
His answer came to him finally in her silence, and he released her hands
which he had caught in his own. They dropped, limp and unresponsive, in
her lap. "Shirley," he said brokenly, "maybe you can't care for me--yet.
But if you will marry me, I--I'll be content with so little, till--you
do."
She shook her head, her hair making dim flashes in the firelight. "No,
Chilly," she said. "It makes me wretched to give you pain, but I must--I
must! Love isn't like that. It doesn't come afterward. I know. I could
never give you what you want. You would end by despising me, as
I--should despise myself."
"I won't give up," he said incoherently. "I can't give up. Not so long
as I know there's nobody else. At the ball I thought--I thought perhaps
you cared for Valiant--but since he told me--"
He stopped suddenly, for she was looking at him from an ashen face. "He
told me there was no reason why I should not try my luck," he said
difficultly. "I asked him."
There was a silence, while he gazed at her, breathing deeply. Then he
tried to laugh.
"All right," he said hoarsely. "It--it doesn't matter. Don't worry."
She stretched out her hand to him in a gesture of wistful pain, and he
held it a moment between both of his, then released it and went
hurriedly out.
* * * * *
As the door closed, Shirley sat down, her head dropping into her hands
like a storm-broken flower. Valiant had accepted the finality of the
situation. With a wave of deeper hopelessness than had yet submerged
her, she realized that, against her own decision, something deep within
her had taken shy and secret comfort in his stubborn masculine refusal.
Against all fact, in face of the impossible, her heart had been clinging
to this--as though his love might even attain the miraculous and
somewhere, somehow, recreate circumstance. But now he, too, had bowed to
the decree. A kind of utter apathetic wretchedness seized upon her, to
replace the sharp misery that had so long been her companion--an empty
numbness in which, in a measure, she ceased to feel.
An hour dragged slowly by and at length she rose and went slowly up the
stairs. Her head felt curiously heavy, but it did not ache. Outside her
mother's door, as was her custom, she paused mechanically to listen. A
tiny pencil of light struck through the darkness and painted a spot of
brightness on her gown. It came through the keyhole; the lamp in her
mother's room was burning. "She has fallen asleep and forgotten it," she
thought, and softly turning the knob, pushed the door noiselessly open
and entered.
A moment she stood listening to the low regular breathing of the
sleeper. The reading-lamp shed a shaded glow on the pillow with its
spread-out silver hair, and on the delicate hands clasped loosely on the
coverlet. Shirley came close and looked down on the placid face. It was
smooth as a child's and a smile touched it lightly as if some pleasant
sleep-thought had just laid rosy fingers on the dreaming lips. The
light caught and sparkled from something bright that lay between her
mother's hands. It was the enamel brooch that held her own baby curl,
and she saw suddenly that what she had all her life thought was a solid
pendant, was now open locket-wise and that the two halves clasped a
miniature. It came to her at once that the picture must be Sassoon's,
and a quick thrill of pity and yearning welled up through her own
dejection. Stooping, she looked at it closely. She started as she did
so, for the face on the little disk of ivory was that of John Valiant.
An instant she stared unbelievingly. Then recollection of the
resemblance of which Valiant had told her rushed to her, and she
realized that it must be the picture of his father. The fact shocked and
confounded her. Why should her mother carry in secret the miniature of
the man who had killed--
Shirley's breath stopped. She felt her face tinging and a curious
weakness came on her limbs. Why indeed, unless--and the thought was like
a wild prayer in her mind--she had been mistaken in her surmise?
Thoughts came thronging in panic haste: the fourteenth of May and the
cape jessamines--these might point no less to Valiant than to Sassoon.
But her mother's fainting at the sight of the son--the eager interest
she had displayed in Shirley's accounts of him, from the episode of the
rose and the bulldog to the tournament ball--seemed now to stand out in
a new light, throbbing and roseate. Could it be? Had she been stumbling
along a blind trail, misled by the cunning dovetailing of circumstance?
Her heart was beating stiflingly. If she should be mistaken _now_! She
dashed her hand across her eyes as though to compel their clearness, and
looked again.
It was Beauty Valiant's face that lay in the locket, and that could mean
but one thing: it was he, not Sassoon, whom her mother loved!
The lamplight seemed to grow and spread to an unbearable radiance.
Shirley thought she cried out with a sudden sweet wildness, but she had
not moved or uttered a sound. The illumination was all about her, like a
splendid cloud. The impossible had happened. The miracle for which she
had hysterically prayed had been wrought!
When she blew out the light, the shining still remained. That glowing
knowledge, like a vitalizing and physical presence, passed with her
through the hall to her own room. As she stood in the elfish light of
her one candle, the poignancy of her joy was as sharp as her past pain.
Later was to come the wonder how that tragedy had bent Beauty Valiant's
life to exile and her mother's to unfulfilment, and in time she was to
know these things, too. But now the one great knowledge blotted out all
else. She need starve her fancy no longer! The hours with her lover
might again sweep across her memory undenied. She felt his arms, his
kisses, heard his whispers against her cheek and smelled the perfume of
Madonna lilies.
She drew the curtain and opened the window noiselessly to the night.
Only a few hours ago she had been singing to her harp in what
wretchedness! She laughed softly to herself. The quiet night was full of
his voice: "I love you! I want nothing but you!" How her pitiful error
had tortured and wrung them both! But to-morrow he, too, would know that
all was well.
A clear sound chimed across the distance--the bell of the court-house
clock, striking midnight. _One!_... _Two!_... How often lately it had
rung discordantly across her mood; now it seemed a clamant watcher,
tolling joy. _Three!_... _Four!_... _Five!_... Perhaps he was sleepless,
listening, too. Was he in the old library, thinking of her? _Six!_...
_Seven!_... _Eight!_... _Nine!_... If she could only send her message to
him on the bells! _Ten!_... It swelled more loudly now, more deliberate.
_Eleven!_... Another day was almost gone. _Twelve!_... "Joy cometh in
the morning"--ran the whisper across her thought. It was morning now.
_Thirteen!_
She caught a sharp breath. Her ear had not deceived her--the vibration
still palpitated on the air like a heart of sound. It had struck
thirteen! A little eery touch crept along her nerves and a cool dampness
broke on her skin, for she seemed to hear, quavering through the
wondering silence, the voice of Mad Anthony, as it had quavered to her
ear on the door-step of the negro cabin, with the well-sweep throwing
its long curved shadow across the group of laughing faces:
"Ah sees yo' gwine ter him. Ah heahs de co'ot-house clock a-strikin' in
de night--en yo' gwine.... Don' wait, don' wait, li'l mistis, er de
trouble-cloud gwine kyah him erway f'om yo'.... When de clock strike
thuhteen--when de clock strike thuhteen--"
She dropped the flowered curtain and drew back. A weird fancy had begun
to press on her brain. Had not Mad Anthony foretold truly what had gone
before? What if there were some cryptic meaning in this, too? To go to
him, at midnight, by a lonely country road--she, a girl? Incredible! Yet
her mind had opened to a vague growing fear that was swiftly mounting to
a thriving anxiety. That innate superstition, secretly cherished while
derided, which is the heritage of the Southron-born bred from centuries
of contact with a mystical race, had her in its grip. Yet all the while
her sober actual common-sense was crying out upon her--and crying in
vain. Unknown appetences that had lain darkling in her blood, come down
to her from long generations, were suddenly compelling her. The curtain
began to wave in a little wind that whispered in the silk, and somewhere
in the yard below she could hear Selim nipping the clover.
She was to go or the "trouble-cloud" would carry him away!
A strange expression of mingled fright and resolve grew on her face. She
ran on tiptoe to her wardrobe and with frantic haste dragged out a rough
cloak that fell over her soft house-gown, covering it to the feet. It
had a peaked hood falling from its collar and into this she thrust the
resentful masses of her hair. Every few seconds she caught her breath in
a short gasp, and once she paused with an apprehensive glance over her
shoulder and shivered. She scarcely knew what she did, nor did she ask
herself what might be the outcome of such an absurd adventure. She
neither knew nor cared. She was swept off her feet and whirled away into
some outlandish limbo of shadowy fear and crying dread.
Slipping off her shoes, she went swiftly and noiselessly down the stair.
She let herself out of the door and, shoes on again, ran across the
clover. A hound clambered about her, whining, but she silenced him with
a whispered word. Selim lifted his head and she patted the snuffling
inquiring muzzle an instant before, with her hand on his mane, she led
him through the hedge to the stable. It was but the work of a moment to
throw on a side-saddle and buckle the girth. Then, mounting, she turned
him into the lane.
He was thoroughbred, and her tense excitement seemed to communicate
itself to him. He blew the breath through his delicate flaring nostrils
and flung up his head at her restraining hand on the bridle. Once on the
Red Road, she let him have his will. The long vacant highway reeled out
behind her to the fierce and lonely hoof-tattoo. She was scarcely
conscious of consecutive thought--all was a vague jumble of chaotic
impressions threaded by that necessity that called her like an insistent
voice.
Copse and hedge flew by, streaks of distemper on the shifting gloom;
swarthy farmhouse roofs huddled like giant Indians on the trail, and
ponds in pastures glinted back the pale glimmering of stars. The
faint mist, tangled in the branches of the trees, made them look like
ghosts gathered to see her pass. Was this real or was she dreaming?
Was she, Shirley Dandridge, really galloping down an open road at
midnight--because of the hare-brained maunderings of a half-mad old
negro?
The great iron gate of Damory Court hung open, and scarcely slackening
her pace, she rode through and up the long drive. The glooming
house-front was blank and silent and its huge porch columns looked like
lonely gray monoliths in the wan light. Not a twinkle showed at chink
or cranny; the ponderous shutters were closed. There was a sense of
desertion, of emptiness about the place that brought her heart into
her throat with a sickly horrible feeling of certainty.
She jumped down from the blowing horse and hurried around the house. The
door of the kitchens was open and a ladder of dim reddish light fell
from it across the grass. She ran swiftly and looked in. A huddled
figure sat there, rocking to and fro in the lamplight.
"Aunt Daph," she called, "what is the matter?"
The turbaned head turned sharply toward her. "Dat yo', Miss Shirley?"
the old woman said huskily. "Is yo' come ter see Mars' John 'fo' he
gwine away? Yo' too late, honey, too late! He done gone ter de deepo fo'
ter ketch de thoo train. En, oh, honey, Ah knows in mah ole ha'at dat
Mars' John ain' nevah gwine come back ter Dam'ry Co'ot no mo'!"
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE
Along the dark turnpike John Valiant rode with his chin sunk on his
breast. He was wretchedly glad of the darkness, for it covered a
thousand familiar sights he had grown to love. Yet through the dark
came drifting sounds that caught at him with clutching hands--the bay
of a hound from some far-off kennel, the whirring note of frogs, the
impatient high whinny of a horse across pasture-bars--and his nostrils
widened to the wild braided fragrance of the fields over which the mist
was spinning its fairy carded wool.
The preparations for his going had been quickly made. He was leaving
behind him all but a single portmanteau. Uncle Jefferson had already
taken this--with Chum--to the station. The old man had now gone
sorrowfully afoot to the blockhouse, a half-mile up the track, to
bespeak the stopping of the express. He would go back on the horse his
master was riding.
The lonely little depot flanked a siding beside a dismal stretch of
yellow clay-bank gouged by rains. Its windows were dark and the
weather-beaten plank platform was illuminated by a single lantern
that hung on a nail beside the locked door, its sickly flame showing
bruise-like through smoky streakings of lamp-black. At one side, in the
shadow, was his bag, and beside it the tethered bulldog--sole spot of
white against the melancholy forlornness--lying with one splinted leg,
like a swaddled ramrod, sticking straight out before him.
In the saddle, Valiant struck his hand hard against his knee. Surely it
was a dream! It could not be that he was leaving Virginia, leaving
Damory Court, leaving _her_! But he knew that it was not a dream.
Far away, rounding Powhattan Mountain, he heard the long-drawn hoot of
the coming train, flinging its sky-warning in a host of scampering
echoes. Among them mixed another sound far up the desolate road, coming
nearer--the sound of a horse, galloping fast and hard.
His own fidgeted, flung up wide nostrils and neighed shrilly. Who was
coming along that runnelled highway at such an hour in such breakneck
fashion?
The train was nearer now; he could hear its low rumbling hum, rising to
a roar, and the click and spring of the rails. But though he lifted a
foot from the stirrup, he did not dismount. Something in the whirlwind
speed of that coming caught and held him motionless. He had a sudden
curious feeling that all the world beside did not exist; there were
only the sweeping rush of the nearing train--impersonal, unhuman--he,
sitting his horse in the gloom, and that unknown rider whose anguish
of speed outstripped the steam, riding--to whom?
The road skirted the track as it neared the station, and all at once a
white glare from the opened fire-box flung itself blindingly across the
dark, illuminating like a flare of summer lightning the patch of highway
and the rider. Valiant, staring, had an instant's vision of a streaming
cloak, of a girl's face, set in a tawny swirl of loosened hair. With a
cry that was lost in the shriek of escaping steam, he dragged his
plunging horse around and the white blaze swept him also, as the rider
pulled down at his side.
"You!" he cried. He leaned and caught the slim hands gripped on the
bridle, shaking now. "You!"
The dazzling brightness had gone by, and the air was full of the
groaning of the brakes as the long line of darkened sleepers shuddered
to its enforced stop. "John!"--He heard the sweet wild cry pierce
through the jumble of noises, and something in it set his blood running
molten through his veins. It held an agony of relief, of shame and of
appeal. "John ... John!"
And knowing suddenly, though not how or why, that all barriers were
swept away, his arms went out and around her, and in the shadow of
the lonely little station, they two, in their saddles, clung and
swayed together with clasping hands and broken words, while the train,
breathing heavily for a resentful second, shrieked itself away into the
night, and left only the fragrance from the misty fields, the crowding
silence and the sprinkling stars.
* * * * *
The breeze had risen and was blowing the mist away as they went back
along the road. A faint light was lifting, forerunner of the moon. They
rode side by side, and to the slow gait of the horses, touching noses in
low whinnyings of equine comradeship, by the faint glamour they gazed
into each other's faces. The adorable tweedy roughness of his shoulder
thrilled her cheek.
"... And you were going away. Yes, yes, I know. It was my fault. I ...
misunderstood. Forgive me!"
He kissed her hand. "As if there were anything to forgive! Do you
remember in the woods, sweetheart, the day it rained? What a brute I
was--to fight so! And all the time I wanted to take you in my arms
like a little hurt child...."
She turned toward him. "Oh, I _wanted_ you to fight! Even though it was
no use. I had given up, but your strength comforted me. To have you
surrender, too--"
"It was your face in the churchyard," he told her. "How pale and worn
you looked! It came to me then for the first time how horribly selfish
it would be to stay--how much easier going would make it for you."
"... And to think that it was Mad Anthony--Did the clock _really_ strike
thirteen, do you think? Or did I fancy it?"
"Why question it?" he said. "I believe in mysteries. The greatest
mystery of all is that you should love me. I doubt no miracle hereafter.
Dearest, dearest!"
* * * * *
At the entrance of the cherry lane, he fastened his horse to the hedge,
and noiselessly let down the pasture-bars for her golden chestnut. When
he came back to where she stood waiting on the edge of the lawn, the
late moon, golden-vestured, was just showing above the rim of the
hills, painting the deep soft blueness of the Virginian night with a
translucence as pure as prayer. Above the fallen hood of her cloak her
hair shone like a nimbus, and the loveliness of her face made him catch
his breath for the wonderfulness of it.
As they stood heavened in each other's arms, heart beating against
heart, and the whole world throbbing to joy, the nightingale beyond the
arbors began to bubble and thrill its unimaginable melody. It came to
them like the voice of the magical rose-scented night itself, set to
the wordless music of the silver leaves. It rose and swelled exultant to
break and die in a cascade of golden notes.
But in their hearts was the song that is fadeless, immortal.
THE END
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=Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.= By A. Conan Doyle.
=Ailsa Page.= By Robert W. Chambers.
=Alternative, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon.
=Ancient Law, The.= By Ellen Glasgow.
=Angel of Forgiveness, The.= By Rosa N. Carey.
=Angel of Pain, The.= By E. F. Benson.
=Annals of Ann, The.= By Kate Trumble Sharber.
=Anna the Adventuress.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
=Ann Boyd.= By Will N. Harben.
=As the Sparks Fly Upward.= By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
=At the Age of Eve.= By Kate Trimble Sharber.
=At the Mercy of Tiberius.= By Augusta Evans Wilson.
=At the Moorings.= By Rosa N. Carey.
=Awakening of Helen Richie, The.= By Margaret Deland.
=Barrier, The.= By Rex Beach.
=Bar 20.= By Clarence E. Mulford.
=Bar-20 Days.= By Clarence E. Mulford.
=Battle Ground, The.= By Ellen Glasgow.
=Beau Brocade.= By Baroness Orczy.
=Beechy.= By Bettina von Hutten.
=Bella Donna.= By Robert Hichens.
=Beloved Vagabond, The.= By William J. Locke.
=Ben Blair.= By Will Lillibridge.
=Best Man, The.= By Harold McGrath.
=Beth Norvell.= By Randall Parrish.
=Betrayal, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
=Better Man, The.= By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
=Beulah.= (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
=Bill Toppers, The.= By Andre Castaigne.
=Blaze Derringer.= By Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.
=Bob Hampton of Placer.= By Randall Parrish.
=Bob, Son of Battle.= By Alfred Ollivant.
=Brass Bowl, The.= By Louis Joseph Vance.
=Bronze Bell, The.= By Louis Joseph Vance.
=Butterfly Man, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon.
=By Right of Purchase.= By Harold Bindloss.
=Cab No. 44.= By R. F. Foster.
=Calling of Dan Matthews, The.= By Harold Bell Wright.
=Call of the Blood, The.= By Robert Hichens.
=Cape Cod Stories.= By Joseph C. Lincoln.
=Cap'n Eri.= By Joseph C. Lincoln.
=Cap'n Warren's Wards.= By Joseph C. Lincoln.
=Caravaners, The.= By the author of "Elizabeth and Her German
Garden."
=Cardigan.= By Robert W. Chambers.
=Carlton Case, The.= By Ellery H. Clark.
=Car of Destiny, The.= By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
=Carpet From Bagdad, The.= By Harold MacGrath.
=Cash Intrigue, The.= By George Randolph Chester.
=Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine.= Frank S. Stockton.
=Castle by the Sea, The.= By H. B. Marriot Watson.
=Challoners, The.= By E. F. Benson.
=Chaperon, The.= By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
=City of Six, The.= By C. L. Canfield.
=Circle, The.= By Katherine Cecil Thurston (author of "The
Masquerader," "The Gambler.")
=Colonial Free Lance, A.= By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.
=Conquest of Canaan, The.= By Booth Tarkington.
=Conspirators, The.= By Robert W. Chambers.
=Cynthia of the Minute.= By Louis Joseph Vance.
=Dan Merrithew.= By Lawrence Perry.
=Day of the Dog, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon.
=Depot Master, The.= By Joseph C. Lincoln.
=Derelicts.= By William J. Locke.
=Diamond Master, The.= By Jacques Futrelle.
=Diamonds Cut Paste.= By Agnes and Egerton Castle.
=Divine Fire, The.= By May Sinclair.
=Dixie Hart.= By Will N. Harben.
=Dr. David.= By Marjorie Benton Cooke.
=Early Bird, The.= By George Randolph Chester.
=Eleventh Hour, The.= By David Potter.
=Elizabeth in Rugen.= (By the author of "Elizabeth and Her German
Garden.")
=Elusive Isabel.= By Jacques Futrelle.
=Elusive Pimpernel, The.= By Baroness Orczy.
=Enchanted Hat, The.= By Harold McGrath.
=Excuse Me.= By Rupert Hughes.
=54-40 or Fight.= By Emerson Hough.
=Fighting Chance, The.= By Robert W. Chambers.
=Flamsted Quarries.= By Mary E. Waller.
=Flying Mercury, The.= By Eleanor M. Ingram.
=For a Maiden Brave.= By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.
=Four Million, The.= By O. Henry.
=Four Pool's Mystery, The.= By Jean Webster.
=Fruitful Vine, The.= By Robert Hichens.
=Ganton & Co.= By Arthur J. Eddy.
=Gentleman of France, A.= By Stanley Weyman.
=Gentleman, The.= By Alfred Ollivant.
=Get-Rick-Quick-Wallingford.= By George Randolph Chester.
=Gilbert Neal.= By Will N. Harben.
=Girl and the Bill, The.= By Bannister Merwin.
=Girl from His Town, The.= By Marie Van Vorst.
=Girl Who Won, The.= By Beth Ellis.
=Glory of Clementina, The.= By William J. Locke.
=Glory of the Conquered, The.= By Susan Glaspell.
=God's Good Man.= By Marie Corelli.
=Going Some.= By Rex Beach.
=Golden Web, The.= By Anthony Partridge.
=Green Patch, The.= By Bettina von Hutten.
=Happy Island.= (sequel to "Uncle William") By Jennette Lee.
=Hearts and the Highway.= By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
=Held for Orders.= By Frank H. Spearman.
=Hidden Water.= By Dane Coolidge.
=Highway of Fate, The.= By Rosa N. Carey.
=Homesteaders, The.= By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.
=Honor of the Big Snows, The.= By James Oliver Curwood.
=Hopalong Cassidy.= By Clarence E. Mulford.
=Household of Peter, The.= By Rosa N. Carey.
=House of Mystery, The.= By Will Irwin.
=House of the Lost Court, The.= By C. N. Williamson.
=House of the Whispering Pines, The.= By Anna Katherine Green.
=House on Cherry Street, The.= By Amelia E. Barr.
=How Leslie Loved.= By Anne Warner.
=Husbands of Edith, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon.
=Idols.= By William J. Locke.
=Illustrious Prince, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
=Imprudence of Prue, The.= By Sophie Fisher.
=Inez.= (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
=Infelice.= By Augusta Evans Wilson.
=Initials Only.= By Anna Katharine Green.
=In Defiance of the King.= By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.
=Indifference of Juliet, The.= By Grace S. Richmond.
=In the Service of the Princess.= By Henry C. Rowland.
=Iron Woman, The.= By Margaret Deland.
=Ishmael.= (Illustrated.) By Mrs. Southworth.
=Island of Regeneration, The.= By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
=Jack Spurlock, Prodigal.= By Horace Lorimer.
=Jane Cable.= By George Barr McCutcheon.
=Jeanne of the Marshes.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
=Jude the Obscure.= By Thomas Hardy.
=Keith of the Border.= By Randall Parrish.
=Key to the Unknown, The.= By Rosa N. Carey.
=Kingdom of Earth, The.= By Anthony Partridge.
=King Spruce.= By Holman Day.
=Ladder of Swords, A.= By Gilbert Parker.
=Lady Betty Across the Water.= By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
=Lady Merton, Colonist.= By Mrs. Humphrey Ward.
=Lady of Big Shanty, The.= By Berkeley F. Smith.
=Langford of the Three Bars.= By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.
=Land of Long Ago, The.= By Eliza Calvert Hall.
=Lane That Had No Turning, The.= By Gilbert Parker.
=Last Trail, The.= By Zane Grey.
=Last Voyage of the Donna Isabel, The.= By Randall Parrish.
=Leavenworth Case, The.= By Anna Katharine Green.
=Lin McLean.= By Owen Wister.
=Little Brown Jug at Kildare, The.= By Meredith Nicholson.
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=Order No. 11.= By Caroline Abbot Stanley.
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=Out of the Primitive.= By Robert Ames Bennett.
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=Pam Decides.= By Bettina von Hutten.
=Pardners.= By Rex Beach.
=Partners of the Tide.= By Joseph C Lincoln.
=Passage Perilous, The.= By Rosa N. Carey.
=Passers By.= By Anthony Partridge.
=Paternoster Ruby, The.= By Charles Edmonds Walk.
=Patience of John Moreland, The.= By Mary Dillon.
=Paul Anthony, Christian.= By Hiram W. Hays.
=Phillip Steele.= By James Oliver Curwood.
=Phra the Phoenician.= By Edwin Lester Arnold.
=Plunderer, The.= By Roy Norton.
=Pole Baker.= By Will N. Harben.
=Politician, The.= By Edith Huntington Mason.
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=Poppy.= By Cynthia Stockley.
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=Price of the Prairie, The.= By Margaret Hill McCarter.
=Prince of Sinners, A.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
=Prince or Chauffeur.= By Lawrence Perry.
=Princess Dehra, The.= By John Reed Scott.
=Princess Passes, The.= By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
=Princess Virginia, The.= By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
=Prisoners of Chance.= By Randall Parrish.
=Prodigal Son, The.= By Hall Caine.
=Purple Parasol, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon.
=Reconstructed Marriage, A.= By Amelia Barr.
=Redemption of Kenneth Galt, The.= By Will N. Harben.
=Red House on Rowan Street.= By Roman Doubleday.
=Red Mouse, The.= By William Hamilton Osborne.
=Red Pepper Burns.= By Grace S. Richmond.
=Refugees, The.= By A. Conan Doyle.
=Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, The.= By Anne Warner.
=Road to Providence, The.= By Maria Thompson Daviess.
=Romance of a Plain Man, The.= By Ellen Glasgow.
=Rose in the Ring, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon.
=Rose of Old Harpeth, The.= By Maria Thompson Daviess.
=Rose of the World.= By Agnes and Egerton Castle.
=Round the Corner in Gay Street.= By Grace S. Richmond.
=Routledge Rides Alone.= By Will Livingston Comfort.
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=Seats of the Mighty, The.= By Gilbert Parker.
=Septimus.= By William J. Locke.
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=Self-Raised.= (Illustrated.) By Mrs. Southworth.
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=Sheriff of Dyke Hole, The.= By Ridgwell Cullum.
=Sidney Carteret, Rancher.= By Harold Bindloss.
=Simon the Jester.= By William J. Locke.
=Silver Blade, The.= By Charles E. Walk.
=Silver Horde, The.= By Rex Beach.
=Sir Nigel.= By A. Conan Doyle.
=Sir Richard Calmady.= By Lucas Malet.
=Skyman, The.= By Henry Ketchell Webster.
=Slim Princess, The.= By George Ade.
=Speckled Bird, A.= By Augusta Evans Wilson.
=Spirit in Prison, A.= By Robert Hichens.
=Spirit of the Border, The.= By Zane Grey.
=Spirit Trail, The.= By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.
=Spoilers, The.= By Rex Beach.
=Stanton Wins.= By Eleanor M. Ingram.
=St. Elmo.= (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
=Stolen Singer, The.= By Martha Bellinger.
=Stooping Lady, The.= By Maurice Hewlett.
=Story of the Outlaw, The.= By Emerson Hough.
=Strawberry Acres.= By Grace S. Richmond.
=Strawberry Handkerchief, The.= By Amelia E. Barr.
=Sunnyside of the Hill, The.= By Rosa N. Carey.
=Sunset Trail, The.= By Alfred Henry Lewis.
=Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop.= By Anne Warner.
=Sword of the Old Frontier, A.= By Randall Parrish.
=Tales of Sherlock Holmes.= By A. Conan Doyle.
=Tennessee Shad, The.= By Owen Johnson.
=Tess of the D'Urbervilles.= By Thomas Hardy.
=Texican, The.= By Dane Coolidge.
=That Printer of Udell's.= By Harold Bell Wright.
=Three Brothers, The.= By Eden Phillpotts.
=Throwback, The.= By Alfred Henry Lewis.
=Thurston of Orchard Valley.= By Harold Bindloss.
=Title Market, The.= By Emily Post.
=Torn Sails.= A Tale of a Welsh Village. By Allen Raine.
=Trail of the Axe, The.= By Ridgwell Cullum.
=Treasure of Heaven, The.= By Marie Corelli.
=Two-Gun Man, The.= By Charles Alden Seltzer.
=Two Vanrevels, The.= By Booth Tarkington.
=Uncle William.= By Jennette Lee.
=Up from Slavery.= By Booker T. Washington.
=Vanity Box, The.= By C. N. Williamson.
=Vashti.= By Augusta Evans Wilson.
=Varmint, The.= By Owen Johnson.
=Vigilante Girl, A.= By Jerome Hart.
=Village of Vagabonds, A.= By F. Berkeley Smith.
=Visioning, The.= By Susan Glaspell.
=Voice of the People, The.= By Ellen Glasgow.
=Wanted--A Chaperon.= By Paul Leicester Ford.
=Wanted: A Matchmaker.= By Paul Leicester Ford.
=Watchers of the Plains, The.= Ridgwell Cullum.
=Wayfarers, The.= By Mary Stewart Cutting.
=Way of a Man, The.= By Emerson Hough.
=Weavers, The.= By Gilbert Parker.
=When Wilderness Was King.= By Randall Parrish.
=Where the Trail Divides.= By Will Lillibridge.
=White Sister, The.= By Marion Crawford.
=Window at the White Cat, The.= By Mary Roberts Rinehart.
=Winning of Barbara Worth, The.= By Harold Bell Wright.
=With Juliet in England.= By Grace S. Richmond.
=Woman Haters, The.= By Joseph C. Lincoln.
=Woman in Question, The.= By John Reed Scott.
=Woman In the Alcove, The.= By Anna Katharine Green.
=Yellow Circle, The.= By Charles E. Walk.
=Yellow Letter, The.= By William Johnston.
=Younger Set, The.= By Robert W. Chambers.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
1. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors;
otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's
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and after the word; words in the advertising pages that were typeset in
bold face have been noted with an equal sign (=) before and after the
word.
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with the advertising pages out of order; this has been corrected to
place those pages in alphabetical order by title.
4. The original book's Table of Contents showed Chapter XVI as beginning
on page 139; this has been corrected to show that the chapter in actual
fact begins on page 138.
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