“The young folks are counting mightily on the dance to-night,” observed Mrs. Livy Stowe ofSeven Oaks. “Even the Buckner girls have got new ball dresses.”
“Improvident,Icall 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.
“Ibelieveyou!” said Mrs. Gifford with emphasis. “We all know who you mean. Why any woman can’t be satisfied with having hadonehusband, 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 luckythere’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’smine, 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 neveroccurredto 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 everlastinglyclose-mouthed,” she added, with an aggravated sigh. “She never lets out anything. Why, I’ve been trying foryearsto 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 Lordshouldsee 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. Nowdon’tyou feel like giving me a few little details—thedate 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 himmuch 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 daylightAnd go home with the gyrls in the morning,’
“‘Dance all night till broad daylightAnd 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 preferto 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 downon 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.”
“
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 onthe 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 ersmellter-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 barefootedchildren 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 withits 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 thewaiting 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—andbut 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 ofDixie, 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 enterprizedand 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 haveto 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.”
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 blareseemed 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 maybe 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 tourneyin 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 Crœsus’ 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 ofwhich 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 sorrelsatin—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 hebestrode 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 muchas 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 nowin 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 Ilovehim 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 stillthat 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 upYou 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.
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, ashe 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, Imost 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 shouldthinkso!” 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 grovesthat 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 whitewashedcabin 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 believeit; 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 wonderfulhow 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. “Itwasmy 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, “Youare 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.
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 thehigh 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 ofCarry 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 oppositesides 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 musicceased 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. “Howdidyou manage it?”
“Home talent with a vengeance. Uncle Jeffersonand 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 foryeahs!” 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 inhis 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!