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. Whensheride, 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 astrange 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 wasLucile:
“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 whoFrom the heats of the noontide shall gather the dew?”
“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 whoFrom 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 doneI regret not. I breathe no reproaches. That’s bestWhich God sends. ’Twas His will; it is mine. And the restOf that riddle I will not look back to!”
“Hush! That which is doneI regret not. I breathe no reproaches. That’s bestWhich God sends. ’Twas His will; it is mine. And the restOf 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-konof the tall clock. The evening outside was exquisitely still and the metallic monotone was threaded with the airyfiddle-fiddleof crickets in the grass and punctuated with the rain-gladcloapof 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—’”
“‘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 inquiringwoo-o-oof 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 reptyle. 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 lowerdrawer 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, andI 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 passionatelove-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?”
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 anddahlias 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 rampageone 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’, butdistime 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 theLucilehe 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.
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 needsa 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 onlya 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, “tellthe 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 himselfyoung! If I’d reached your age, Bristow—”
“You have,” said the major, nettled. “Four years ago!—As I was saying, Mr. Valiant, theyride 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 bea 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, bearinga 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 goodmint 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 consolethere 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 withthem. 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’mnotreferring 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.”
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 recordof,” 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 gracefullittle 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 simplyhasto 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 manis 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!”
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 lonelinessthat 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: