The Valiants of Virginia Part 22

"I desire to inform you, sah," said the major, stung, "that I too am a descendant of those bullies and swash-bucklers, as you call them. And I wish from my heart I thought we, nowadays, could hold a tallow-dip to them. Whatever their habits, they had their ideals, and they lived up to them."

"You refer, no doubt," said the doctor with sarcasm, "to our friend Devil-John and his ideal treatment of his wife!"

"No, sah," replied the major warmly. "I'm _not_ referring to Devil-John.

There were exceptions, no doubt, but for the most part they treated their women folk as I believe their Maker made them to be treated! The man who failed in his courtesy there, sah, was called to account for it.

He was mighty apt to find himself standing in the cool dawn at the b.u.t.t-end of a--"

He broke off and coughed. There was an awkward pause in which he set down his gla.s.s noisily and rose and stood before the open bookcase. "I envy you this, sah," he said with somewhat of haste. "A fine old collection. Bless my soul, what a curious volume!"

As he spoke, his hand jerked out a heavy-looking leather-back. Valiant, who had risen and stood beside him, saw instantly that what he had drawn from the shelf was the morocco case that held the rusted dueling-pistol!

In the major's hands the broken box opened. A sudden startled look darted across his leonine face. With a smothered exclamation he thrust it back between the books and closed the gla.s.s door.

Valiant had paled. His previous finding of the weapon had escaped his mind. Now he read, as clearly as if it had been printed in black-letter across the sunny wall, the significance of the major's confusion. That weapon had been in his father's hand when he had faced his opponent in that fatal duel! It flashed across his mind as the doctor lunged for his hat and stick and got to his feet.

"Come, Bristow," said the latter irritably. "Your feet will grow fast to the floor presently. We mustn't talk a new neighbor to death. I've got to see a patient at six."

CHAPTER XXV

JOHN VALIANT ASKS A QUESTION

Valiant went with them to the outer door. A painful thought was flooding his mind. It hampered his speech and it was only by a violent effort that he found voice:

"One moment! There is a question I would like to ask."

Both gentlemen had turned upon the steps and as they faced him he thought a swift glance pa.s.sed between them. They waited courteously, the doctor with his habitual frown, the major's hand fumbling for the black ribbon on his waistcoat.

"Since I came here, I have heard"--his tone was uneven--"of a duel in which my father was a princ.i.p.al. There was such a meeting?"

"There was," said the doctor after the slightest pause of surprise. "Had you known nothing of it?"

"Absolutely nothing."

The major cleared his throat. "It was something he might naturally not have made a record of," he said. "The two had been friends, and it--it was a fatal encounter for the other. The doctor and I were your father's seconds."

There was a moment's silence before Valiant spoke again. When he did his voice was steady, though drops had sprung to his forehead. "Was there any circ.u.mstance in that meeting that might be construed as reflecting on his--honor?"

"Good G.o.d, no!" said the major explosively.

"On his bearing as a gentleman?"

There was a hiatus this time in which he could hear his heart beat. In that single exclamation the major seemed to have exhausted his vocabulary. He was looking at the ground. It was the doctor who spoke at last, in a silence that to the man in the doorway weighed like a hundred atmospheres.

"No!" he said bluntly. "Certainly not. What put that into your head?"

When he was alone in the library Valiant opened the gla.s.s door and took from the shelf the morocco case. The old shiver of repugnance ran over him at the very touch of the leather. In the farthest corner was a low commode. He set the case on this and moved the big tapestry screen across the angle, hiding it from view.

The major and the doctor walked in silence till they had left Damory Court far behind them. Then the doctor observed caustically, "Nice graceful little act of yours, yanking that infernal pistol out before his face like that!"

"How in Sam Hill could I guess?" the other retorted. "It's long enough since I saw that old case. I--I brought it there myself, Southall--that very morning, immediately after the meeting. To think of its lying there untouched in that empty room all these years!"

There was another silence. "How straight he put the question to us!

Right out from the shoulder, for all the world like his father. Well, you said the right thing. There are times when a gentleman simply _has_ to lie like one."

The doctor shut his teeth with a snap, as though he had caught a rabbit.

"Look here, Bristow," he said hotly, "I've never cared a hang what your opinions of Valiant were after that duel. I'll keep my own."

"Oh, all right," rejoined the major. "But let's be honest with ourselves. If you could split a silver dollar nine times out of ten at fifteen paces, would you exchange shots with a man who was beside himself with liquor?"

"If Valiant was a dead shot, the better for him," said the doctor grimly. "If Sa.s.soon was drunk, so much the worse for Sa.s.soon. His condition was the affair of his seconds. Valiant was no more responsible for it than for the quarrel. Neither was of his making. Just because a man is a crack shot and stays sober, is he to bear any insult--stand up to be shot at into the bargain--and take no hand in the game himself?

Answer me that?"

"It didn't touch his honor, of course," replied the major. "We could all agree on that. He was within his rights. But it wasn't like a Valiant."

They were at the parting now and the major held out his hand. "Oh, well," he said, "it's long enough ago, and there's nothing against his son. I like the young chap, Southall. He's his father all over again, eh?"

"When I first saw him," said the doctor huskily, "I thought I had slid back thirty years and that our old Beauty Valiant was lying there before me. I loved him, Bristow, and somehow--whatever happened that day at the Hemlocks--it couldn't make a d.a.m.ned bit of difference to me!"

CHAPTER XXVI

THE CALL OF THE ROSES

In the great hall at Damory Court the candles in their bra.s.s wall-sconces blinked back from the polished parquetry and the shining fire-dogs, filling the rather solemn gloom with an air of warmth and creature-comfort.

Leaning against the newel-post, Valiant gazed about him. How different it all looked from the night of his coming!

It occurred to him with a kind of wonder that a fortnight ago he had never known this house existed. Then he had conceived the old hectic life the only one worth knowing, the be-all and end-all of modern felicity. It was as if a single stroke had cut his life in two parts which had instantly recoiled as far asunder as the poles. Strangely, the new seemed more familiar than the old; there had been moments when he remembered the past almost as in the placid day one recalls a thriving dream of the night before, which, itself unreal, has left an overpowering impression behind it. Little fragments of the old nightly mosaic--the bitt-music across the dulled glisten of pounded asphalt, the featherbone girl flaring high in air in electric rain, a pointed clock-tower spiking the upper night-gloom, the faint halitus of musk from a downy theater-wrap--fluttered about him. But all seemed far away, hackneyed, shop-worn, as ba.n.a.l as the scenery of an opera.

He began to walk up and down the floor, teasing p.r.i.c.ks of restlessness urging him. He opened the door and pa.s.sed into the unlighted dining-room. On the sideboard sat a silver loving-cup that had arrived the day before in a huge box with his books and knick-knacks. He had won it at polo. He lifted it, fingering its carved handles. He remembered that when that particular score had been made, Katharine Fargo had sat in one of the drags at the side-line.

But the memory evoked no thrill. Instead, the thought of her palely-cold, pa.s.sionless beauty called up another mobile thoroughbred face instinct with quick flashings of mirth and hauteur. Again he felt the fierce clutch of small fingers, as they fought with his in that struggle for his life. Each line of that face stood before him--the arching brows, the cameo-delicacy of profile, the magnolia skin and hair like a brown-gold cloud across the sun.

A soft clicking patter trailed itself over the polished floor and the bulldog's nose was thrust between his knees. He bent down and fondled the satiny head to still the sudden surge of loneliness that had overflowed his heart--an ache for he knew not what. A depression was on him, he knew not why--something that had a keen edge of longing like physical hunger.

He set back the loving-cup and went out to the front porch to prowl aimlessly up and down past the great gray-stained Ionic columns. It was not late, but the night was very still. The Virginia creeper waved gently to and fro in a soundless breeze that was little more than a whisper. The sky was heavily sprinkled with stars whose wan cl.u.s.tering was blotted here and there by floating shreds of cloud, like vaporous, filmy leaves stripped by some upper gale from the Tree of Heaven. The lawn lay a ma.s.s of mysterious shadow, stirring with faint chirps and rustles and laden with the poignant scent of the garden honeysuckle. He could hear the howl of a lonesome hound, a horse neighed impatiently on a distant meadow, and from far down the Red Road, beyond the gate, came the rude twitter of a banjo and the voice of the strolling darky player:

"All Ah wants in dis creation-- Pretty yellah gal, en er big plantation!"

When the tw.a.n.gling notes died away in the distance they had served only to intensify the stillness. He felt that peculiar detachedness that one senses in thick black dark, as though he and his immediate surroundings were floating in some soundless, ambient ether. The white bulldog scurried noiselessly back and forth across the clipped gra.s.s, now emerging like a canine ghost in the light from the doorway, now suffering total eclipse. Staring into the furry gloom, he seemed, as in those moments of semi-delirium in the forest, to see Shirley's face advance and retreat as though it lay on the very pulsing heart of the darkness.