The Valiants of Virginia Part 27

She led the way through the maze of beds at one side till they reached a hedge laced thickly with Virginia creeper. He parted this leafy screen, bending back the springing fronds that thrust against the flimsy muslin of her gown and threatened to spear the pink-rosed hat that cast an adorable warm tint over her creamy face, thinking that never had the old place seen such a picture as she made framed in the deep green.

Some such thought was in the major's mind, too, as he came slowly up the terrace below. He paused, to take off his hat and wipe his brow.

"With the place all fixed up this way," he sighed to himself, "I could believe it was only last week that Beauty Valiant and Southall and I were boys, loafing around this gyarden. And to think that now it's Valiant's son and Judith's daughter! Why, it seems like yesterday that Shirley there was only knee-high to a gra.s.shopper--and I used to tell her her hair was that color because she ran through h.e.l.l bareheaded. I'm about a thousand years old, I reckon!"

Meanwhile the two figures above had pushed through the tangle into a circular sunny s.p.a.ce where stood a short round pillar of red onyx. It was a sun-dial, its vine-clad disk cut of gray polished stone in which its metal tongue was socketed. Round the outer edge of the disk ran an inscription in archaic lettering. Valiant pulled away the cl.u.s.tering ivy leaves and read: _I count no hours but the happy ones_.

"If that had only been true!" he said.

"It is true. See how the vines hid the sun from it. It ceased to mark the time after the Court was deserted."

He snapped the clinging tendrils and swept the cl.u.s.ter from its stone face. "It shall begin to count again from this moment. Will it mark only happy hours for me, I wonder? I'll bribe it with flowers."

"White for happiness," she said.

"I'll put moonflowers at its base and where you are standing, Madonna lilies. The outer part of the circle shall have bridal-wreath and white irises, and they shall shade out into pastel colors--mauves and grays and heliotropes. Oh, I shall love this spot!--perhaps sometime the best of all."

"Which do you love the most now?"

He leaned slightly toward her, one hand on the dial's time-notched rim.

"Don't you know?" he said in a lower voice. "Could any other spot mean to me what that acre under the hemlocks means?"

Her face was turned from him, her fingers pulling at the drifting vine, and a splinter of sunlight tangled in her hair like a lace of fireflies.

"I could never forget it," he continued. "The thing that spoiled my father's life happened there, yet there we two first talked, and there you--"

"Don't!" she said, facing him. "Don't!"

"Ah, let me speak! I want to tell you that I shall carry the memory of that afternoon, and of your brave kindness, always, always! If I were never to see you again in this life, I should always treasure it. If I died of thirst in some Sahara, it would be the last thing I should remember--your face would be the last thing I should see! If I--"

He paused, his veins beating hard under the savage self-repression, his hand trembling against the stone, his voice a traitor, yielding to something that rose in his throat to choke the stumbling words.

In the silence there was the sound of a slow footfall on the gravel walk, and at the same moment he saw a magical change. Shirley drew back.

The soft gentian blue of her eyes darkened. The lips that an instant before had been tremulous, parted in a low delicious laugh. She swept him a deep curtsey.

"I am beholden to you, sir," she said gaily, "for a most knightly compliment. There's the major. Come and let us show him where we've planted the ramblers."

CHAPTER x.x.xI

TOURNAMENT DAY

The noon sun of tournament day shone brilliantly over the village, drowsy no longer, for many vehicles were hitched at the curb, or moved leisurely along the leafy street: big, canvas-topped country wagons drawn by s.h.a.ggy-hoofed horses and set with chairs that had b.u.mped and jostled their holiday loads from outlying tobacco plantation and stud-farm; sober, black-covered buggies, long, narrow, springless buckboards, frivolous side-bar runabouts and antique shays resurrected from the primeval depths of cobwebbed stables, relics of tarnished grandeur and faded fortune. Here and there a motor crept, a bilious and replete beetle among insects of wider wing. Knots of high-booted men conversed on street corners, men hand-cuffed, it would seem, to their whips; children romped and ran hither and thither; and through all sifted a varicolored stream of negroes, male and female, good-natured and voluble. For tournament day was a county event, and the annual sport of the quality had long outstripped even circus day in general popularity.

At midday vehicles resolved themselves into luncheon-booths--hampers stowed away beneath the seats, disclosing all manner of picnic edibles--the court-house yard was an array of gra.s.s-spread table-cloths, and an air of plenty reigned.

Within Mrs. Merryweather Mason's brown house hospitality sat enthroned and the generous dining-room was held by a regiment of feminine out-of-town acquaintances. At intervals Aunt Charity, the cook, issued from the kitchen to peer surrept.i.tiously through the dining-room door with vast delight.

"Dey cert'n'y do take aftah dat fried chick'n," she said to old Jereboam, who, with a half-dozen extras, had been pressed into perspiring tray-service. "Dey got all de Mefodis' preachahs Ah evah see laid in de shade dis day. Hyuh! hyuh!"

"'Deed dey has! Hyuh! hyuh!" echoed Jereboam huskily.

The Mason yard, an hour later, was an active encampment of rocking-chairs, and a din of conversation floated out over the pink oleanders, whose tubs had achieved a fresh coat of bright green paint for the occasion. Mrs. Poly Gifford--a guest of the day--here shone resplendent.

"The young folks are counting mightily on the dance to-night," observed Mrs. Livy Stowe of

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Seven Oaks. "Even the Buckner girls have got new ball dresses."

"Improvident, _I_ call 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.

"I _believe_ you!" said Mrs. Gifford with emphasis. "We all know who you mean. Why any woman can't be satisfied with having had _one_ husband, 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 lucky there'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's _mine_, 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 never _occurred_ to 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 ever_lastingly_ close-mouthed," she added, with an aggravated sigh. "She never lets out anything. Why, I've been trying for _years_ to 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 Lord _should_ see 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. Now _don't_ you feel like giving me a few little details--the date 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 b.u.t.ton-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 him much about such folderolings, I reckon. He's led more cotillions than I've got hairs on my head."