The Valiants of Virginia Part 19

"Alas! who shall number the drops of the rain?

Or give to the dead leaves their greenness again?

Who shall seal up the caverns the earthquake hath rent?

Who shall bring forth the winds that within them are pent?

To a voice who shall render an image? or who From the heats of the noontide shall gather the dew?"

Her eyes turned restlessly about the room. It had been hers as a girl, for Rosewood had been the old Garland homestead. It seemed now all at once to be full of calling memories of her youth. She looked again at the page and turned the leaf:

"Hush! That which is done I regret not. I breathe no reproaches. That's best Which G.o.d sends. 'Twas His will; it is mine. And the rest Of that riddle I will not look back to!"

She closed the book hastily and thrust it out of sight, beneath a magazine.

"How strange that it should have been to-day!" It had been on Shirley's lips to question, but the door had closed, and she went slowly down-stairs. She sat a while thinking, but at length grew restless and began to walk to and fro across the floor, her hands clasped behind her head so that the cool air filled her flowing sleeves. In the hall she could hear the leisurely kon-_kon_--kon-_kon_ of the tall clock. The evening outside was exquisitely still and the metallic monotone was threaded with the airy _fiddle-fiddle_ of crickets in the gra.s.s and punctuated with the rain-glad _cloap_ of a frog.

Presently, with the mellow whirrings that accompany the movements of such antiques, the ancient timepiece struck ten. At the sound she threw a thin scarf over her shoulders and stole out to the porch. Its deep odorous shadow was crossed by oblongs of lemon-colored light from the windows. Before the kitchen door Ranston's voice was humming huskily:

"'Steal away; Steal away!

Steal away to Jesus.

Steal away! Steal away home--'"

accompanied by the soft alto of Aunt Judy the cook.

Shirley stepped lightly down to the wet gra.s.s. Looking back, she could see her mother's lighted blind. All around the ground was splotched with rose-petals, looking in the squares of light like b.l.o.o.d.y rain. Beyond the margin of this brightness all was in darkness, for the moon was not yet risen, and a light damp breeze pa.s.sed in a slow rhythm as if the earth were breathing moistly in its sleep. Somewhere far away sounded the faint inquiring _woo-o-o_ of an owl and in the wet branches of a walnut tree a pigeon moved murmurously.

She skimmed the lawn and ran a little way down the lane. A shuffling sound presently fell on her ear.

"Is that you, Unc' Jefferson?" she called softly.

"Yas'm!" The footsteps came nearer. "Et's me, Miss Shirley." He t.i.ttered noiselessly, and she could see his bent form vibrating in the gloom.

"Yo' reck'n Ah done fergit?"

"No, indeed. I knew you wouldn't do that. How is he?"

"He right much bettah," he replied in the same guarded tone. "Doctah he say he be all right in er few days, on'y he gotter lay up er while. Dat was er ugly nip he got f'om dat 'spisable rep_tyle_. Ah reck'n de moc'sins is wuss'n dem ar Floridy yallargaters."

"Do you think there can be any others about the grounds?"

"No'm. Dey mos'ly keeps ter de ma'shlan' en on'y runs whah de undah-bresh ez thick. I gwineter fix dat ter-morrow. Mars' Valiant he tell me ter grub et all out en make er bon-fiah ob it."

"That's right, Unc' Jefferson. Good night, and thank you for coming."

She started back to the house, when his voice stopped her.

"Mis Shirley, yo' don' keer ef de ole man geddahs two er three ob dem roses? Seems lak young mars' moughty fon' ob dem. He got one in er gla.s.s but et's mos' daid now."

"Wait a minute," she said, and disappeared in the darkness, returning quickly with a handful which she put in his grasp.

"There!" she whispered, and slipped back through the perfumed dark.

An hour later she stood in the cozy stillness of her bedroom. It was hung in silvery blue with curtains of softly figured shadow-cloth having a misty design of mauve and pink hydrangeas. A tilted mirror on the draped dressing-table had a dark mahogany frame set in upright posts carved in a heavy pattern of grape-leaves. Two candles in silver candlesticks stood before it, their friendly light winking from the fittings of the dark bed, from the polished surface of the desk in the corner and from the old piece of brocade stretched above the mantel, worked like shredded silver cobwebs.

She threw off her gown, slipped into a soft loose robe of maize-colored silk and stood before the small gla.s.s. She pulled out the amber pins and drew her wonderful hair on either side of her face, looking out at her reflection like a mermaid from between the rippling waves of a moon-golden sea. She gazed a long critical minute from eyes whose blue seemed now almost black.

At last she turned, and seating herself at the desk, took from it a diary. She scanned the pages at random, her eyes catching lines here and there. "A good run to-day. Betty and Judge Chalmers and the Pendleton boys. My fourth brush this season." A frown drew itself across her brows, and she turned the page. "One of the hounds broke his leg, and I gave him to Rickey." ... "Chilly Lusk to dinner to-day, after swimming the Loring Rapid."

She bit her lip, turned abruptly to the new page and took up her pen.

"This morning a twelve mile run to Damory Court," she wrote. "This afternoon went for cape jessamines." There she paused. The happenings and sensations of that day would not be recorded. They were unwritable.

She laid down her pen and put her forehead on her clasped hands. How empty and inane these entries seemed beside this rich and eventful twenty-four hours just pa.s.sed! What had she been doing a year ago to-day? she wondered. The lower drawer of the desk held a number of slim diaries like the one before her. She pulled it out, took up the last-year's volume and opened it.

"Why," she said in surprise, "I got jessamine for mother this very same day last year!" she pondered frowning, then reached for a third and a fourth. From these she looked up, startled. That date in her mother's calendar called for cape jessamines. What was the fourteenth of May to her?

She bent a slow troubled gaze about her. The room had been hers as a child. She seemed suddenly back in that childhood, with her mother bending over her pillow and fondling her rebellious hair. When the wind cried for loneliness out in the dark she had sung old songs to her that had seemed to suit a windy night: _Mary of the Wild Moor_, and _I am Dreaming Now of Hallie_. Sad songs! Even in those pinafore years Shirley had vaguely realized that pain lay behind the brave gay mask. Was there something--some event--that had caused that dull-colored life and unfulfilment? And was to-day, perhaps, its anniversary?

Her thought darted to her father who had died before her birth, on whose gray hair had been set the greenest laurels of the Civil War. She had always been deeply proud of his military record--had never read his name on a page of Confederate history without a new thrill. But she had never thought of him and her mother as actors in a pa.s.sionate love-romance.

Their portraits hung together in the living-room down-stairs: the grave middle-aged man with graying hair, and the pale proud girl with the strange shadow in the dark eyes. The canvases had been painted in the year of her mother's marriage. The same sadness had been in her face then. And their marriage and his death had both fallen in midwinter. No, this May date was not connected with him!

"Dearest, dearest!" whispered Shirley, and a slow tear drew its shining track down her cheek. "Is there something I've never known? Is there?"

CHAPTER XXIII

UNCLE JEFFERSON'S STORY

John Valiant sat propped up on the library couch, an open magazine unheeded on his knee. The reading-stand beside him was a litter of letters and papers. The bow-window was open and the honeysuckle breeze blew about him, lifting his hair and ruffling the leaves of the papers.

In one corner, in a splotch of bright sunshine, lay the bulldog, watching a strayed blue-bottle darting in panic hither and thither near the ceiling.

Outside a colored maid--a new acquisition of Aunt Daphne's--named Ca.s.sandra, black (in Doctor Southall's phrase) "as the inside of a cow,"

and dressed in a trim cotton-print "swing-clear," was sweeping the big porch. Over the little cabin by the kitchens, morning-glories twirled their young tendrils. Before its step stood a low shuck-bottom "rocker"

with a crimson dyed sheep-skin for upholstery, on which was curled a brindle cat. Through its door Valiant could see a spool what-not, with green pasteboard part.i.tions, a chromo framed in pine-covers on the wall and on a shelf a creton-covered can full of bustling paper lighters. In the garden three darkies were laboring, under the supervision of Uncle Jefferson. The unsightly weeds and lichen were gone from the graveled paths, and from the fountain pool, whose shaft now spouted a slender spray shivered by the breeze into a million diamonds, which fell back into the pool with a tintinabulant trickle and drip. The drunken wild grape-vines now trailed with a pruned and sobered luxuriance and the clamor of hammer and saw came from the direction of the lake, where a carpenter refurbished the ruined summer-house.

The master of Damory Court closed the magazine with a sigh. "If I could only do it all at once!" he muttered. "It takes such a confounded time.

Four days they've been working now, and they haven't done much more than clean up." He laughed, and threw the magazine at the dog who dodged it with injured alacrity. "After all, Chum," he remarked, "it's been thirty years getting in this condition. I guess we're doing pretty well."

He picked up a plump package and weighed it in his hand. "There are the seeds for the wilderness garden. Bachelor's-b.u.t.tons and love-lies-bleeding and Jacob's-ladder and touch-me-nots and daffy-down-dillies and phlox and sweet-williams and love-in-a-mist and four-o'clocks--not a blessed hot-house name among 'em, Chum! Don't they sound homey and old-fashioned? The asters and dahlias and scarlet geraniums are for nearer the house, and the pansies and petunias for that sunny stretch down by the lake. Then there'll be sunflowers around the kitchens and a trumpet-vine over the side of this porch."

He stretched luxuriously. "I'll take a hand at it myself to-morrow.

I'm as right as rain again now, thanks to Aunt Daph and the doctor.

Something of a crusty citizen, the doctor, but he's all to the good."

A heavy step came along the porch and Uncle Jefferson appeared with a tray holding a covered dish with a plate of biscuit and a round jam-pot.

"Look here," said John Valiant, "I had my luncheon three hours ago. I'm being stuffed like a milk-fed turkey."