Eyes arched with fan-shielded whispers, and fair faces, fore-shortened as they turned back over powder-white shoulders, followed their swallow-like movement. From an ever-widening circle of masculine devotees Katharine Fargo watched them with a smile that cloaked an increasing and unwelcome question.
Katharine had never looked more handsome; a critical survey of her mirror at Gladden Hall had assured her of that. Never had her poise been more superb, her toilet more enrapturing. She was exquisitely gowned in rose-colored mousseline-de-soie, embroidered in tiny brilliants laid on in Greek patterns. From her neck, in a single splendid loop of iridescence against the rosy mist, depended those fabulous pearls—“the kind you simplycan’tbelieve,” as Betty Page confided to her partner—on whose newspaper reproduction (actual diameter) metropolitan shop-girls had been wont to gaze with glistening eyes; and within their milky circlet, on her rounded breast, trembled three pale gold-veined orchids.
Watching that quadrille through her drooping emerald-tinted eyes, she had received a sudden enlightening impression of Shirley’s flawless beauty. At the tournament her fleeting glimpse had adjudged the other merely sweetly pretty. The Chalmers’ surrey had stopped en route for Shirley, but in her wraps and veil she had then been all but invisible. This had been Katharine’s first adequate view, and the sight of her radiant charm had the effect almost of a blow.
For Katharine, be it said, had wholly surrendered to the old, yet new, attraction that had swept her on the tourney field. This feeling was no less cerebral and intellectual than it had been: she was no Galatea waiting her Pygmalion. But it was strong for all that. And what had lain always in the back of her mind as a half-formed intention, had become a self-admitted purpose during the motor ride. So as she watched them in the waltz, seasoned artificialist as she was, Katharine for a breath had had need of all her address to keep the ball of conversation sparklingly a-roll. Her natural assurance, however, came quickly to her aid. She had been an acknowledged beauty too many seasons—had known John Valiant, or believed she had, too long and too well—to allow the swift keen edge of trepidation that had touched her to cool into prescience.
In another moment the waltz fainted out, to be succeeded by adeux-temps, and presently the host,in his crimson cloak, was doffing his plumed hat before her. Circling the polished floor in the maze, there was something gratefully like former days in the assured touch, the true and ready guidance. The intrusive question faded. He was the John Valiant she had always known, of flashing repartee and graceful compliment, yet with a touch of dignity, too—as befitted the lord of a manor—which sat well upon him. After a decorous dozen of rounds, she took his arm and allowed her perfect figure to be conducted through the various rooms of the ground floor, chatting in quite the old-time way, till a new gallant claimed her.
The mellow strings made on their merry tune, and at length theWashington Postmarched all in flushed unity of purpose to the great muslin-walled porch with its array of tables groaning under viands concocted by Aunt Daphne for the delectation of the palate-weary: layer-cakes, furry-brown with chocolate, or saffron with orange icing; fruit-cake richer than an Indian begum; angel-cake as white (as the major was to remark) as innocence and almost as sweet as the lady upon whom he pressed it at the moment; yellow jumbles, kisses that crumbled at a touch, and all nameless toothsome inventions for which new-laid eggs are beaten and golden citron sliced.
And then once more the waltz-strain supervened and in the yellow parlor joy was again unconfined.Among the masculine contingent, perhaps, the same catholicity of age no longer prevailed, certain of the elders showing an inclination toward one end of the front porch, now hazing with the fragrance of Havanas. But the dowagers’ fans plied on, the rose-corners echoed their light laughter and the couples footed it as though midnight was yet unreached and dawn as far afield as Judgment Day.
Again Valiant claimed Katharine and they glided off onThe Beautiful Blue Danube. Her paleness now had a tinge of color but nevertheless he thought she drooped. “You are tired,” he said, “shan’t we sit it out?”
“Oh, do you mind?” she responded gratefully. “Ithasbeen a fairly strenuous day, hasn’t it!”
He guided her to a corridor, where branches of rhododendron screened an alcove of settees and seductive cushions. Here, her weariness seemed put to rout. There was no drooping of fringed lids, no disconcerting silences; she chatted with ease and piquancy.
“It’s like a fairy tale,” she said at length dreamily,—“this wonderful life. To step into it from New York is like coming out of a hot-house into the spring out-of-doors! It makes our city existence seem so sordidly artificial. You have chosen right.”
“I know it. And yet two months ago a life ahundred miles from the avenue would have seemed a sad and sandy Sahara. I know better now.”
“I have been listening to pæans all the evening,” she said. “And you deserve them. It’s a fine big thing you are attempting—the restoring of this old estate. And I know you have even bigger plans, too.”
He nodded, suddenly serious and thoughtful. “There’s a lot I’d like to do. It’s not only the house and grounds. There are ... other things. For instance, back on the mountain—on my own land—is a settlement they call Hell’s-Half-Acre. Probably it has well earned the name. It’s a wretched collection of hovels and surly men and drabs of women and unkempt children, the poorest of poor-whites. Not one of them can read or write, and they live like animals. If I’m ever able, I mean to put a manual-training school up there. And then—”
He ended with a half laugh, suddenly conscious that he was talking in a language she would scarcely understand—in fact, in a tongue new to himself. But there was no smile on her lips and her extraordinary eyes—cool gray, shot through with emerald—were looking into his with a frankness and sympathy he would not have guessed lay beneath her glacial placidity.
To Katharine, indeed, it made little differencewhat philanthropic fads the man she had chosen might affect as regarded his tenantry. Ambitions like these had a manorial flavor that did not displease her. And the Fargo millions would bear much harmless hammering. A change, subtle and incommunicable, passed over her.
“I shall think of you,” she sighed, “as working on in this splendid program. For itissplendid. But New York will miss you, John.”
“Ah, no. I’ve no delusions on that score. I dare say I’m almost forgotten there already. Here I have aplace.”
Her head, leaned back against the cushion, turned toward him, the pale orchids trembling on her bosom—she was so near that he could feel her breath on his cheek. A new waltz had begun to sigh its languorous measures.
“Place?” she queried. “Do you think you had no place there? Is it possible that you do not understand that your going has left—a void?”
He looked at her suddenly, and her eyes fell. No sophisticated blushing this, though it was by such effective employment of her charms that her wonderful body and pliant mind had been drilled and fashioned from her babyhood. Katharine at the moment was as near the luxury of real embarrassment as she had ever been in her life.
Before he answered, however, the big form of Major Bristow appeared, looking about him.
“It has—left a void,” she said, her eyes still downcast, her voice just low enough, “—forme.”
The major pounced upon them at this juncture, feelingly accusing John of the nefarious design of robbing the assemblage of its bright and particular star. When Katharine put her hand in her cavalier’s arm, her eyes were dewy under their long shading lashes and her fine lips ever so little tremulous. It had been her best available moment, and she had used it.
As she moved away, her faint color slightly heightened, she was glad of the interruption. It was better as it was. When John Valiant came to her again....
But to him, as he stood watching her move lightly from him, there was vouchsafed illumination. It came to him suddenly that that placidity and hauteur which he had so admired in the old days were no mask for fires within. The exquisite husk was the real Katharine. Hers was the loveliness of some tall white lily cut in marble, splendid but chill. And with the thought, between him and her there swept through the shimmering candle-lighted air a breath of wet rose-fragrance like an impalpable cloud, and set in the midst of it a misty star-tinted gown sprayed with lilies-of-the-valley, and above it a girl’s face clear and vivid, her deep shadow-blue eyes fixed on his.
The music of a two-step was languishing when, a little later, Valiant and Shirley strolled down between the garden box-hedges, cypress-shaped and lifting spire-like toward a sky which bent, a silent canopy of mauve and purplish blue. The moon drowsed between the trees like a great yellow moth, and the shadows of the branches lay on the ground like sharp bluish etchings on light green paper. Behind them Damory Court lay a nest of woven music and laughter. The long white-muslined porch shimmered goldenly, and beside it under the lanterns dallied a flirtatious couple or two, ghost-like in the shadows.
Peace brooded over all, a vast sweet silence creeping through the trees—only here and there the twitter of a waking bird—and around them was the glimmer of tall flowers standing like pensive moon-worshipers in an ecstasy of prayerless bloom.
“Come,” he said. “Let me take you to see the sun-dial now.”
The tangle had been cut away and a narrow gravel-path led through the pruned creepers. She made an exclamation of delight. The onyx-pillar stood in an oasis of white—moonflowers, white dahlias, mignonette and narcissus; bars of late lilies-of-the-valley beyond these, bordered with Arum-lilies, white clematis, iris and bridal-wreath, shading out into tender paler hues that ringed the spotless purity like dawning passion.
“White for happiness,” he quoted. “You said that when you brought me here—the day we planted the ramblers. Do you remember what I said? That some day, perhaps, I should love this spot the best of all at Damory Court.” He was silent a moment, tracing with his finger the motto on the dial’s rim. “When I was very little,” he went on,—“hardly more than three years old, I think,—my father and I had a play, in which we lived in a great mansion like this. It was called Wishing-House, and it was in the middle of the Never-Never Land—a sort of beautiful fairy country in which everything happened right. I know now that the Never-Never Land was Virginia, and that Wishing-House was Damory Court. No wonder my father loved it! No wonder his memory turned back to it always! I’ve wanted to make it as it was when he lived here. And I want the old dial to count happy hours for me.”
Something had crept into his tone that struck her with a strange sweet terror and tumult of mind. The hand that clutched her skirts about her knees had begun to tremble and she caught the other hand to her cheek in a vague hesitant gesture. The moonflowers seemed to be great round eyes staring up at her.
“Shirley—” he said, and now his voice was shaken with longing—“will you make my happiness for me?”
She was standing perfectly still against the sun-dial, both hands, laced together, against her breast, her eyes on his with a strange startled look. Over the hush of the garden now, like the very soul of the passionate night, throbbed the haunting barcarole ofTales of Hoffmann:
“Night of stars and night of love—”
an inarticulate echo of his longing. He took a step toward her, and she turned like one in sudden terror seeking a way of escape. But he caught her close in his arms.
“I love you!” he said. “Hear it now in my bride’s garden that I’ve made for you! I love you, Iloveyou!”
For one instant she struggled. Then, slowly, her eyes turned to his, the sweet lips trembling, and something dawning deep in the dewy blue that turned all his leaping blood to quicksilver. “My darling!” he breathed, and their lips met.
In that delirious moment both had the sense of divine completion that comes only with love returned. For him there was but the woman in his arms, the one woman created for him since the foundation of the world. It was Kismet. For this he had come to Virginia. For this fate had turned and twisted a thousand ways. Through the riot of his senses, like a silver blaze, ran the legend of the calendar: “Every man carries his fateupon a riband about his neck.” For her, something seemed to pass from her soul with that kiss, some deep irrevocable thing, shy but fiercely strong, that had sprung to him at that lip-contact as steel to magnet. The foliage about them flared up in green light and the ground under her feet rose and fell like deep sea-waves.
She lifted her face to him. It was deathly pale, but the light that burned on it was lit from the whitest altar-fires of Southern girlhood. “Six weeks ago,” she whispered, “you had never seen me!”
He held her crushed to him. She could feel his heart thudding madly. “I’ve always known you,” he said. “I’ve seen you a thousand times. I saw you coming to meet me down a cherry-blossomed lane in Kyoto. I’ve seen your eyes peering from behind a veil in India. I’ve heard your voice calling to me, through the padding camels’ feet, from the desert mirages. You are the dream I have gone searching always! Ah,Shirley,Shirley,Shirley!”
While the vibrant strings hummed and sang through the roses, and the couples drifted on tireless and content, or blissfully “sat out” dances on the stairway, Katharine Fargo held her stately court no less gaily for the stealthy doubt that was creeping over her spirit. She had been so certain of what would happen that evening that when her father (between cigars on the porch with Judge Chalmers and Doctor Southall) had searched her out under a flag-of-truce, she had sent him to the right-about, laughingly declining to depart before royalty. But number followed number, and the knight in purple and gold had not paused again before her. Now the scarlet cloak no longer flaunted among the dancers, and the white satin gown and sparkling coronal had disappeared. The end of the next “round-dance” found her subsiding into the flower-banked alcove suddenly distrait amid her escort’s sallies. It was at this moment that she saw, entering the corridor from the garden, the missing couple.
It was not the faint flush on Shirley’s cheek—thatwas not deep—nor was it his nearness to her, though they stood closely, as lovers might. But there was in both their faces a something that resurgent conventionality had not had time to cover—a trembling reflection of that “light that never was, on sea or land”—which was like a death-stab to what lay far deeper than Katharine’s heart, her pride. She drew swiftly back, dismayed at the sudden verification, and for an instant her whole body chilled.
A craving for a glass of water has served its purpose a thousand times; as her cavalier solicitously departed to fetch the cooling draught, she rose, and carelessly humming the refrain the music had just left off, sauntered lightly out by another door to the open air. A swift glance about her showed her she was unobserved and she stepped down to the grass and along the winding path to a bench at some distance in the shrubbery. Here the smiling mask slipped from her face and with a shiver she dropped her hot face in her hands.
There were no tears. The wave that was welling over her was one of bitter humiliation. She had shot her bolt and missed—she, Katharine Fargo! For three years she had held John Valiant, romantically speaking, in the hollow of her shapely hand. Now she had all but thrown herself at his feet—and he had turned away to this flame-haired, vivid girl whom he had not known as many months!The rankling barb was dipped in no poison of unrequited love. Hers was the anger of the self-willed and intensely proud woman denied her dearest wish, and crossed and flouted for the first time in her pampered exquisite life.
Heavy footfalls all at once approached her—two men were coming from the house. There was the spitting crackle of a match, and as she peered out, its red flare lighted the massive face and floating hair of Major Bristow. His companion’s face was in the shadow. She waited, thinking they would pass; but to her annoyance, when she looked again, they had seated themselves on a bench a few paces away.
To be found mooning in the shrubbery like a schoolgirl did not please her, but it seemed there was no recourse, and she had half arisen, when the major’s gruff-voiced companion spoke a name that caused her to sit down abruptly. To do Katharine justice, it did not occur to her at the moment that she was eavesdropping. And such was the significance of the sentences she heard, and such their bearing on the turmoil of her mind, that a woman of more sensitive fiber might have lingered.
“Bristow, Shirley’s a magnificent girl.”
“Finest in seven counties,” agreed the major’s bass.
“Whom do you reckon she’ll choose to marry?”
“Chilly Lusk, of course. The boy’s been in lovewith her since they were in bibs. And he comes as near being fit for her as anybody.”
“Humph!” said the other sardonically. “No man I ever saw was half good enough for a good woman. But good women marry just the same. It isn’t Lusk. I used to think it would be, but I’ve got a pair of eyes in my head, if you haven’t. It’s young Valiant.”
The pearl fan twisted in Katharine’s fingers. What she had guessed was an open secret, then!
The major made an exclamation that had the effect of coming after a jaw-dropped silence. “I—I never thought of that!”
The other resumed slowly, somewhat bitterly, it seemed to the girl listening. “If her mother was in love with Sassoon—”
Katharine’s heart beat fast and then stood still. Sassoon! That was the name of the man Valiant’s father had killed in that old duel of which Judge Chalmers had told! “If her mother”—Shirley Dandridge’s mother—“was in love with Sassoon!” Why—
“Wasshe?”
The major’s query held a sharpness that seemed almost appeal. She was conscious that the other had faced about abruptly.
“I’ve always believed so, certainly. If she had loved Valiant, would she have thrown him overmerely because he broke his promise not to be a party to a quarrel?”
“You think not?” said the major huskily.
“Not under the circumstances. Valiant was forced into it. No gentleman, at that day, could have declined the meeting. He could have explained it to Judith’s satisfaction—a woman doesn’t need much evidence to justify the man she’s in love with. He must have written her—he couldn’t have gone away without that—and if she had loved him, she would have called him back.”
The major made no answer. Katharine saw a cigar fall unheeded upon the grass, where it lay glowing like a panther’s eye.
The other had risen now, his stooped figure bulking in the moonlight. His voice sounded harsh and strained: “I loved Beauty Valiant,” he said, “and his son is his son to me—but I have to think of Judith, too. She fainted, Bristow, when she saw him—Shirley told me about it. Her mother has made her think it was the scent of the roses! He’s his father’s living image, and he’s brought the past back with him. Every sound of his voice, every sight of his face, will be a separate stab! Oh, his mere presence will be enough for Judith to bear. But with her heart in the grave with Sassoon, what would love between Shirley and young Valiant mean to her? Think of it!”
He broke off, and there was a blank of silence, inwhich he turned with almost a sigh. Then Katharine saw him reach the bench with a single stride and drop his hand on the bowed shoulder.
“Bristow!” he said bruskly. “You’re ill! This confounded philandering at your time of life—”
The major’s face looked ashy pale, but he got up with a laugh. “Not I,” he said; “I was never better in my life! We’ve had our mouthful of air. Come on back to the house.”
“Not much!” grunted the other. “I’m going where we both ought to have been hours ago.” He threw away his cigar and stalked down the path into the darkness.
The major stood looking after him till he had disappeared, then suddenly dropped on the bench and covered his face. Something like a groan burst from him.
“My God!” he said, and his voice came to Katharine with a quaver of age and suffering—very different from the jovial accents of the ballroom—“if I were only sure itwasSassoon!”
Presently he rose, and went slowly toward the lighted doorway.
Not long after, from the musicians’ bower the sound ofHome, Sweet Homedrifted over the poignant rose-scent, and presently the driveway resounded to rolling wheels and the voices of negro drivers, and the house-entrance jostled with groups, muffled in loose carriage-wraps, silken cloaks and light overcoats, calling tired but laughing farewells.
Katharine, on the step, found herself looking into Valiant’s eyes. “How can I tell you how much I have enjoyed it all?” she said. “I’ve stayed till the very last minute—which is something for one’s fourth season! And now, good-by, for we are off to-morrow for Hot Springs.” Her face may have been a little worn, a trifle hard under the emerald-tinted eyes, but her smile seemed friendly and unclouded.
Her father had long ago betaken himself homeward, and the big three-seated surrey—holding “six comf’table and nine fumiliah,” in the phrase of Lige the coachman—had returned for the rest: Judge Chalmers, the two younger girls and Shirley.Katharine greeted the latter with a charming smile. What more natural than that she should find herself straightway on the rear seat with royalty? The two girls safely disposed in the middle, the judge climbed up beside the driver, who cracked his whip and they were off.
The way was not long, and Katharine had need of despatch if that revengeful weapon were to be used which fate had put into her hands. She wasted little time.
“It seems so strange,” she said, “to find our host in such surroundings! I can scarcely believe him the same John Valiant I’ve danced with a hundred times in New York. He’s been here such a short while and yet he couldn’t possibly be more at home if he’d lived in Virginia always. And you all treat him as if he were quite one of yourselves.”
Shirley smiled enchantingly. “Why, yes,” she said, “maybe it seems odd to outsiders. But, you see, with us a Valiant is always a Valiant. No matter where he has lived, he’s the son of his father and the master of Damory Court.”
“That’s the wonderful part of it. It’s so—so English, somehow.”
“Is it?” said Shirley. “I never thought of it. But perhaps it seems so. We have the old houses and the old names and think of them, no doubt, in the same way.”
“What a sad life his father had!” pursued Katharinedreamily. “You know all about the duel, of course?”
Shirley shrank imperceptibly now. The subject touched Valiant so closely it seemed almost as if it belonged to him and to her alone—not a thing to be flippantly touched on. “Yes,” she said somewhat slowly, “every one here knows of it.”
“No doubt it has been almost forgotten,” the other continued, “but John’s coming must naturally have revamped the old story. What was it about—the quarrel? A love-affair?”
“I—I don’t think it is known.”
But reluctant coldness did not deter the questioner. “Who was it said there was a petticoat back of every ancient war?” quoted Katharine, lightly. “I fancy it’s the same with the duello. But how strange that nobodyknows. Some of the older ones must, don’t you think?”
“It’s so long ago,” murmured Shirley. “I suppose some could tell if they would.”
“Major Bristow, perhaps,” conjectured Katharine thoughtfully.
“He was one of the seconds,” admitted Shirley unhappily. “But by common consent that side of it wasn’t talked of at the time. Men in Virginia have old-fashioned ideas about women....”
“Ah, it’sfineof them!” pæaned Katharine. “I can imagine the men who knew about that dreadful affair, in their Southern chivalry, drawing a cordonof silence about the name of that girl with her broken heart! For if she loved one of the two, it must have been Sassoon—not Valiant, else he would have stayed. How terrible to see one’s lover killed in such a way.... It was quickly ended for him, but the poor woman was left to bear it all the years! She may be living yet, here maybe, some one whom everybody knows. I suppose I am imaginative,” she added, “but I can’t help wondering about her. I fancy she would never wholly get over it, never be able to forget him, though she tried.”
Shirley made some reply that was lost in the whirring wheels. The other’s words seemed almost an echo of what she herself had been thinking.
“Maybe she married after a while, too. A woman must make a life for herself, you know. If she lives here, it will be sad for her, this opening of the old wound by John’s coming.... And looking so like his father—”
Katharine paused. There was a kind of exhilaration in this subtle baiting. Determined as she was that Shirley should guess at the truth before that ride ended, bludgeon-wielding was not to her taste. She preferred the keen needle-point that injected its poison before the thrust was even felt. She waited, wondering just how much it would be necessary for her to say.
Shirley stirred uneasily, and in the glimpsing light her face looked troubled. Katharine’s voice hadtouched pathos, and in spite of her distaste of the subject, Shirley had been entering into the feeling of that supposititious woman. There had come to her, like a touch of eery clairvoyance, the suggestion the other had meant to convey of her actual existence; and this was sharpened by the sudden recollection that Valiant had himself told her of the resemblance that Katharine recalled.
The judge, on the front seat, was telling a low-toned story over his shoulder for the delectation of Nancy and Betty, but Shirley was not listening. Her whole mind was full of what Katharine had been saying. She was picturing to herself this woman, her secret hidden all these years, hearing of John Valiant’s coming to Damory Court, learning of this likeness, shrinking from sight of it, dreading the painful memory it must thrust upon her.
“Suppose”—Katharine’s voice was dreamy—“that she and John met suddenly, without warning. What would she do? Would she say anything? Perhaps she would faint....”
Shirley started violently. Her hands, as they drew her cloak uncertainly about her, began to tremble, as if with cold. Something fell from them to the bottom of the surrey.
Through her chiffon veil Katharine noted this with a slow smile. It had been easier than she had thought. She said no more, and the carriage rolled on, to the accompaniment of giggles over the judge’speroration. As it neared the Rosewood lane she leaned toward Shirley.
“You have dropped your fan,” said she “—and your gloves, too.... I might have reached them for you. Why, we are there already. How short the drive has seemed!”
“Don’t drive up the lane, Lige,” said Shirley, and her voice seemed sharp and strange even to herself. “The wheels would wake mother.” Katharine bade her good-by with careful sweetness, as the judge bundled her down in his strong friendly arms.
“No,” she told him, “don’t come with me. It’s not a bit necessary. Emmaline will be waiting for me.”
He climbed into her vacant place as the girls called their good nights. “We’ll all sleep late enough in the morning, I reckon,” he said with a laugh, “but it’s been a great success!”
Emmaline was crouched in a chair in the hall, a rug thrown over her knees, in open-mouthed slumber. She started up at the touch of Shirley’s hand, yawning widely.
“I ’clare t’ goodness,” she muttered, “I was jes’ fixin’ t’ go t’ sleep!” The lamp on the table was low and she turned up the wick, then threw up her arms like ramrods, in delight.
“Lor’, honey,” she said in a rapturous whisper, “I reck’n they all say yo’ was th’purties’queen on earth, when th’ vict’ry man set that crown, with th’ di’mon’s as big as scaley-barks, on that little gol’ haid! But yo’ pale, honey-chile. Yo’ dance yo’se’f mos’ ter death, I reck’n.”
“I—I’m so tired, Emmaline. Take the crown. It’s heavy.”
The negro woman untangled the glittering points from the meshing hair with careful fingers. “Po’ li’l chickydee-dee!” she said lovingly. “Reck’n she flop all th’ feddahs outer her wings. Gimme that ol’ tin crown—I like ter lam’ it out th’ winder!Come on, now; we go up-stairs soft so’s not ter ’sturb Mis’ Judith.”
In the silvery-blue bedroom, she deftly unfastened the hooks of the heavy satin gown and coaxed her mistress to lie on the sofa while she unpinned the masses of waving hair till they lay in a rich surge over the cushion. Then she brought a brush and crouching down beside her, began with long gentle strokes to smooth out the silken threads, talking to her the while in a soft crooning monotone.
“I jes’ know Mis’ Judith wish she well ernuf ter see her chile bein’ queens en things ’mongst all th’ othah qual’ty! When they want erqueenthey jes’ gotter come fo’ her little girl. Talk ’bout th’ stars—she ’way abovethem! Ranston he say Mistah Valiant ’bout th’ bestes’ dancer in th’ world; say th’ papers up in New York think th’ sun rise en set in his heels. ’Spec’ ter-night he dance er little with th’ othahs jes’ ter be p’lite, till he git back ter th’ one he put th’ crown on. So-o-o tired she is! But Em’line gwine ter bresh away all th’ achiness—en she got yo’ baid all turneddownfo’ yo’—en yo’ pretty little night-dress allready—en yo’ gwinetersleep—ensleep—till yo’ kyan sleep no mo’nohow!”
Under these ministrations Shirley lay languid and speechless, her eyes closed. The fear that had stricken her heart by turns seemed a cold hand pressing upon its beating and an algid vapor risingstealthily over it. But her hands were hot and her eyelids burned. Finally she roused herself.
“Thank you, Emmaline,” she said in a tired voice, “good night now; I’m going to sleep, and you must go to bed, too.”
But alone in the warm wan dark, Shirley lay staring open-eyed at the ceiling. Slowly the terror was seizing upon her, the dread, noiseless and intangible, folding her in the shadow of its numbing wings. Was her mother the one over whom that old duel had been fought? Was it she whose love had been wrecked in that long-ago tragedy that all at once seemed so horribly near and real? Was that the explanation of her fainting? She remembered the cape jessamines. Was the date of that duel—of the death of Sassoon—the anniversary her mother kept?
She sat up in bed, trembling. Then she rose, and opening the door with caution, crept down the stair, sliding her hot hand before her along the cool polished banister. Only a subdued glimmer came through the curtained windows, stealing in with the ever-present scent of the arbors. It was so still she thought she could hear the very heart of the dark beating. As she passed through the lower hall, a hound on the porch, scenting her, stirred, thumped his tail on the flooring, and whined. Groping her way to the dining-room, she lighted a candle and passed through a corridor into a low-ceilinged chamberemployed as a general receptacle—a glorified garret, as Mrs. Dandridge dubbed it.
It showed a strange assemblage! A row of chests, stored with winter clothing, gave forth a clean pungent smell of cedar, and at one side stood an antique spinet and a worn set of horsehair furniture. Sofa and chairs were piled with excrescences in the shape of old engravings in carved ebony frames, ancient scrap-books and what-not, and on a table stood a rounded glass case with a flat base—the sort in which an older generation had been wont to display to awestruck admiration its terrifying concoctions of wax fruit.
Shirley had turned her miserable eyes on a book-shelf along one wall. The volumes it contained had been her father’s, and among them stood a row of tomes taller than their fellows—the bound numbers of a county newspaper, beginning before the war. The back of each was stamped with the year. She was deciphering these faded imprints. “Thirty years ago,” she whispered; “yes, here it is.”
She set down the candle and dragged out one of the huge leather-backs. Staggering under the weight, she rested its edge on the table and began feverishly to turn the pages, her eye on the date-line. She stopped presently with a quick breath—she had reached May 15th. The year was that of the duel: the date was the day following the jessamineanniversary. Fearfully her eye overran the columns.
Then suddenly she put her open hand on the page as though to blot out the words, every trace of color stricken from cheek and brow. But the line seemed to glow up through the very flesh: “Died, May 14th; Edward Sassoon, in his twenty-sixth year.”
The book slipped to the floor with a crash that echoed through the room. It was true, then! ItwasSassoon’s death that her mother mourned. The man in whose arms she had stood such a little while ago by the old dial of Damory Court was the son of the man who had killed him! She lifted her hands to her breast with a gesture of anguish, then dropped to her knees, buried her face on the dusty seat of one of the rickety horsehair chairs and broke into a wild burst of sobs, noiseless but terrible, that seemed to rise in her heart and tear themselves up through her breast.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, “just when I was so happy! Oh, mother, mother! You loved him, and your heart broke when he died. It was Valiant who broke it—Valiant—Valiant. His father!”
She slipped down upon the bare floor and crouched there shuddering and agonized, her disheveled hair wet with her tears. Was her love to be but the thing of an hour, a single clasp—and then, forever, nothing? His father’s deed was not his fault. Yet how could she love a man whose everyfeature brought a pang to that mother she loved more than herself? So, over and over, the wheel of her thought turned in the same desolate groove, and over and over the paroxysms of grief and longing submerged her.
Dawn was paling the guttering candle and streaking the sky outside before she composed herself. She rose heavily, as white as a narcissus flower, winding back her hair from her quivering face, and struggling to repress the tearless sobs that still caught stranglingly at her breath. The gray infiltrating light seemed gaunt and cruel, and the thin cheeping of waking sparrows on the lawn came to her with a haunting intolerable note of pain.
Noiselessly as she had descended, she crept again up the stair. As she passed her mother’s door, she paused a moment, and laying her arms out across it, pressed her lips to the dark grain of the wood.
The sun had passed the meridian next day when Valiant awoke, from a sleep as deep as Abou ben Adhem’s, yet one crowded with flying tiptoe dreams. Inchoate and of such flimsy material that the first whiff of reality dissipated them like smoke, these nevertheless left behind them a fragrance, a sensation of golden sweetness and delight. The one great fact of Shirley’s love had lain at the core of all these honied images, and his mind was full of it as his eyes opened, wide all at once, to the new day.
He looked at his watch and rolled from the bed with a laugh. “Past twelve!” he exclaimed. “Good heavens! What about all the work I had laid out for to-day?”
He went down the stair in his bath-robe. The walls were still wreath-hung, but the rooms had been despoiled of their roses: only a dozen vases of blooms still unwithered remained of the greater glory; and in the yellow parlor—a great heap of shriveled petals, broken ivy and dewy-blue cedar berries, sprinkled with wisps of feathers and sequinnedbeads—lay the shattered remainders of last night’s gaiety.
Presently he was splashing in the lake, shooting under his curved hand unerring jets of water at Chum, who danced about the rim barking, now venturing to wet a valorous paw, now scrambling up the bank to escape the watery javelins.
It was another perfect day, though far on the mountainous horizon a blue-black density promised otherwise for the morrow. The sun lay golden-soft over the huddled hills. Birds darted hither and thither, self-important bumble-bees boomed from vine to vine and the shady lake-corners flashed with dragon-flies. The stately white swans turned their arching necks interrogatively toward the splashing, and the brown ducks, Peezletree and Pilgarlic, quacked and gobbled softly to each other among the lily-pads.
Valiant came up the terraces with his blood bounding to a new rapture. Crossing the garden, he ran quickly to the little close which held the sun-dial and pulled a single great passion-flower. He stood a moment holding it to his face, his nostrils catching its faint elusive perfume. Only last night, under the moon, he had stood there with Shirley in his arms. A gush of the unbelievable sweetness of that moment poured over him. His face softened.
Standing with his sandaled feet deep in the white blossoms, the sun on his damp hair and the looserobe clinging to his moist limbs, he gave himself to a sudden day-dream. A wonderful waking dream of joy overflooding years of ambitionless ease; of the Damory Court that should be in days to come.
Summer would pass to autumn, with maple-foliage falling in golden rain, and fawn-brown fields scattered with life-everlasting, with the wine-red beauty of October, its purple pageant of crimsoning woods, its opal haze of Indian summer, and scent of burning leaves. Frost would lay its spectral stain over the old house like star-dew, and the scent of cider would linger under the apple-trees. In his mind’s eye he could see Uncle Jefferson bent with the weight of hickory-logs for the eager chimney-piece, deep as the casement of a fortress. Snow-sandaled winter would lay its samite on the dark blue ramparts of the mountains, and droop the naked boughs of the mock-orange bushes, dishevel the evergreens like rough-and-tumble schoolboys, and cover the frosted ruts of the Red Road. But in Damory Court would be cheerful warmth and friendly noises, with a loved woman standing before the crackling fireplace whose mottoed “I clinge” was for him written in her fringed and gentian eyes. So he stood dreaming—a dream in the open sunlight, of a future that should never end, of work and plan, of comradeship and understanding, of cheer and tenderness and clasping hands andclinging lips—of a woman’s arms held out in that same adorable gesture of the tourney field, to little children’s uncertain footsteps across that polished floor.
When he came from the little close there was a new mystery in the sunshine, a fresh and joyous meaning in the intense blue overarching of the imponderable sky. Every bird-note held its own love-secret. A wood-thrush sang it from a silver birch beside the summer-house, and a bob-white whistled it in the little valley beyond. Even the long trip-hammer of a far-away woodpecker beat a radiant tattoo.
He paused to greet the flaming peacock that sent out a curdling screech, in which the tentativepotterack! potterack!of a guinea-fowl tangled itself softly. “Go on,” he invited. “Explode all you want to, old Fire-Cracker. Hang your purple-and-gold pessimism! You only make the birds sound sweeter. Perhaps that’s what you’re for—who knows?”
He tried to work, but work was not for that marvelous afternoon. He wandered about the gardens, planning this or that addition: a little longer sweep to the pansy-bed—a clump of bull-rushes at the farther end of the lake. He peered into the stable: a saddle horse stood there now, but there should be more steeds stamping in those stalls one day, goodhorse-flesh bought with sound walnut timber from the hillside. How he and Shirley would go galloping over those gleaming roads, in that roseate future when she belonged to him!
Uncle Jefferson, from the door of the kitchens, watched him swinging about in the sunshine, whistling theIndian Serenade.
“Young mars’ feel ’way up in de cloudsdisday,” he said to Aunt Daphne. “He wake up ez glad ez ef he done ’fessed ’ligion las’ night. Well, all de folkses cert’n’y ’joyed deyselves. Ol’ Mistah Fargo done eat ’bout forty uh dem jumbles. Ah heah him talkin’ ter Mars’ John. ‘Reck’n yo’ mus’ hab er crackahjack cook down heah,’ he say. Hyuh, hyuh!”
“G’way wid yo’ blackgyardin’!” sniffed Aunt Daphne, delighted. “Don’ need ter come eroun’ honey-caffuddlin’me!”
“Dat’s whut he say,” insisted Uncle Jefferson; “he did fo’ er fac’!”
She drew her hands from the suds and looked at him anxiously. “Jeffe’son, yo’ reck’n Mars’ John gwineter fetch dat Yankee ’ooman heah ter Dam’ry Co’ot, ter be ouah mistis?”
“Humph!” scoffed her spouse. “Dat high-falutin’ gal whut done swaller de ramrod? No suh-ree-bob-tail! De oldah yo’ gits, de mo’ foolishah yo’ citations is! Don’ yo’ tek no mo’ trouble on yo’ back den yo’ kin keek off’n yo’ heels!Sheain’ gwineter rundisplace, er ol’ Devil-John tuhn ovah in he grave!”
Sunset found Valiant sitting in the music-room before the old square piano. In the shadowy chamber the keys of mother-of-pearl gleamed with dull colors under his fingers. He struck at first only broken chords, that became finally the haunting barcarole ofTales of Hoffmann. It was the air that had drifted across the garden when he had stood with Shirley by the sun-dial, in the moment of their first kiss. Over and over he played it, improvising dreamy variations, till the tender melody seemed the dear ghost of that embrace. At length he went into the library and in the crimsoning light sat down at the desk, and began to write: