The Valiants of Virginia Part 41

"Let me stay!" she had wailed. "I'm not fit to live down there! It's all my fault that it happened. I was a coward. I ought to stay here in h.e.l.l's-Half-Acre forever and ever!" Valiant had carried her back in his arms down the mountain--she had been too spent to walk.

He thought of this now as he saw that arm about the child in that protective, almost motherly gesture. It made his own heartache more unbearable. Such a little time ago he had felt that arm about _him_!

He leaned his hot head against the cool plastered wall, trying to keep his mind on the solemn reading. But Shirley's voice and laugh seemed to be running eerily through the chanting lines, and her face shut out pulpit and lectern. It swept over him suddenly that each abominable hour could but make the situation more impossible for them both. He had seen her as she entered the church, had thought her even paler than in the wood, the bluish shadows deeper under her eyes. Those delicate charms were in eclipse.

And it was he who was to blame!

It came to him with a stab of enlightenment. He had been thinking only of himself all the while. But for her, it was his presence that had now become the unbearable thing. A cold sweat broke on his forehead. "...

for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner: as all my fathers were.

O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength before I go hence...." The intoning voice fell dully on his ears.

To go away! To pa.s.s out of her life, to a future empty of her? How could he do that? When he had parted from her in the rain he had felt a frenzy of obstinacy. It had seemed so clear that the barrier must in the end yield before their love. He had never thought of surrender.

Now he told himself that flight was all that was left him. She--her happiness--nothing else mattered. Damory Court and its future--the plans he had made--the Valiant name--in that clarifying instant he knew that all these, from that May day on the Red Road, had clung about _her_. She had been the inspiration of all.

"Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom--"

The voices of the unvested choir rose clearly and some one at his side was whispering that this had been the major's favorite hymn. But he scarcely heard.

When the service was ended the people filled the big yard while the last reverent words were spoken at the grave. Valiant, standing with the rest, saw Shirley, with her mother and the doctor, pa.s.s out of the gate.

She was not looking toward him. A mist was before his eyes as they drove away, and the vision of her remained wavering and indistinct--a pale blurred face under shining hair.

He realized after a time that the yard was empty and the s.e.xton was locking the church door. He went slowly to the gate, and just outside some one spoke to him. It was Chisholm Lusk. They had not met since the night of the ball. Even in his own preoccupation, Valiant noted that Lusk's face seemed to have lost its exuberant youthfulness. It was worn as if with sleeplessness, and had a look of suffering that touched him.

And all at once, while they stood looking at each other, Valiant knew what the other had waited to say.

"I won't beat about the bush," said Lusk stammering. "I've got to ask you something. I reckon you've guessed that I--that Shirley--"

Valiant touched the young fellow's arm. "Yes," he said, "I think I know."

"It's no new thing, with me," said the other hoa.r.s.ely. "It's been three years. The night of the ball, I thought perhaps that--I don't mean to ask what you might have a right to resent--but I must find out. Is there any reason why I shouldn't try my luck?"

Valiant shook his head. "No," he said heavily, "there is no reason."

The boyish look sprang back to Lusk's face. He drew a long breath. "Why, then I _will_," he said. "I--I'm sorry if I hurt you. Heaven knows I didn't want to!"

He grasped the other's hand with a man's heartiness and went up the road with a swinging stride; and Valiant stood watching him go, with his hands tight-clenched at his side.

A little later Valiant climbed the sloping driveway of Damory Court. It seemed to stare at him from a thousand reproachful eyes. The bachelor red squirrel from his tree-crotch looked down at him askance. The redbirds, flashing through the hedges, fluttered disconsolately.

Fire-Cracker, the peac.o.c.k, was shrieking from the upper lawn and the strident discord seemed to mock his mood.

The great house had become home to him; he told himself that he would make no other. The few things he had brought--his books and trophies--had grown to be a part of it, and they should remain. The ax should not be laid to the walnut grove. As his father had done, he would leave behind him the life he had lived there, and the old Court should be once more closed and deserted. Uncle Jefferson and Aunt Daphne might live on in the cabin back of the kitchens. There was pasturage for the horse and the cows and for old Sukey, and some acres had already been cleared for planting. And there would be the swans, the ducks and chickens, the peafowl and the fish.

A letter had come to him that morning. The Corporation had resumed business with credit unimpaired. Public opinion was more than friendly now. A place waited for him there, and one of added honor, in a concern that had rigorously cleansed itself and already looked forward to a new career of prosperity. But he thought of this now with no thrill. The old life no longer called. There were still wide unpeopled s.p.a.ces somewhere where a man's hand and brain were no less needed, and there was work there that would help him to bear, if not forget.

He paced up and down the porch under the great gray columns, his steps spiritless and lagging. The Virginia creeper, trailing over its end, waved to and fro with a sound like a sigh. How long would it be before the lawn was once more unkempt and draggled? Before burdock and thistle, mullein and Spanish-needle would return to smother the clover? Before Damory Court, on which he had spent such loving labor, would lie again as it lay that afternoon when he had rattled thither on Uncle Jefferson's crazy hack? Before there would be for him, in some far-away corner of the world, only Wishing-House and the Never-Never Land?

In the hall he stood a moment before the fireplace, his eyes on its carven motto, _I clinge_: the phrase was like a spear-thrust. He began to wander restlessly through the house, up and down, like a prowling animal. The dining-room looked austere and chill--only the little lady in hoops and love-curls who had been his great-grandmother smiled wistfully down from her gilt frame above the console--and in the library a melancholy deeper than that of yesterday's tragedy seemed to hang, through which Devil-John, drawing closer the leash of his leaping hound, glared sardonically at him from his one cold eye. The shutters of the parlor were closed, but he threw them open and let the rich light pierce the yellow gloom, glinting from the figures in the cabinet and weaving a thousand tiny rainbows in the prisms of the great chandelier.

He went up-stairs, into the bedrooms one by one, now and then pa.s.sing his hand over a polished chair-back or touching an ornament or a frame on the wall: into _The Hilarium_ with its records of childish study and play. The dolls stood now on dress-parade in gla.s.s cases, and prints in bright colors, dear to little people, were on the walls. He opened the shutters here, too, and stood some time on the threshold before he turned and went heavily down-stairs.

Through the rear door he could see the kitchens, and Aunt Daphne sitting under the trumpet-vine piecing a nine-patch calico quilt with little squares of orange and red and green cloth. Two diminutive darkies were sprawled on the ground looking up at her with round serious eyes, while a wary bantam pecked industriously about their bare legs.

"En den whut de roostah say, Aunt Daph?"

"Ol' roostah he hollah ter all he wifes, 'Oo--ooo! Oo--ooo! Young _Mars'_ come!--Young _Mars'_ come! Young _Mars'_ come!' En dey all mighty skeered, 'case Mars' John he cert'n'y fond ob fried chick'n. But de big tuhkey gobbler he don' b'leeve et 'tall.

'Doubtful--doubtful--doubtful!' he say, lak dat. Den de drake he peep eroun' de cornah, en he say, 'Haish! Haish! Haish!' Fo' he done seed Mars' John comin', sho' nuff. But et too late by den, fo' Aunt Daph she done grab Mis' Pullet, en Mars' John he gwineter eat huh dis bery evenin' fo' he suppah. Now you chillen run erlong home ter yo' mammies, en don' yo' pick none ob dem green apples on de way, neidah."

It was not till after dark had come that Valiant said good-by to the garden. He loved it best under the starlight. He sat a long hour under the pergola overlooking the lake, where he could dimly see the green rocks, and the white froth of the water bubbling and chuckling down over their rounded outlines to the shrouded level below. The moon lifted finally and soared through the sky, blowing out the little lamps of stars. Under its light a gossamer mist robed the landscape in a shimmering opalescence, in which tree and shrub altered their values and became trans.m.u.ted to silver sentinels, watching over a demesne of violet-velvet shadows filled with sleepy twitterings and stealthy rustlings and the odor of wild honeysuckle.

At last he stood before the old sun-dial, rearing its column from its pearly cl.u.s.ters of blossoms. "_I count no hours but the happy ones_": he read the inscription with an indrawn breath. Then, groping at its base, he lifted the ivy that had once rambled there and drew up the tangle again over the stone disk. His Bride's-Garden!

In the library, an hour later, sitting at the big black pigeonholed desk, he wrote to Shirley:

"I am leaving to-night on the midnight train. Uncle Jefferson will give you this note in the morning. I will not stay at Damory Court to bring more pain into your life. I am going very far away. I understand all you are feeling--and so, good-by, good-by. G.o.d keep you! I love you and I shall love you always, always!"

CHAPTER XLVI

THE VOICE FROM THE PAST

Though the doctor left the church with Shirley and her mother, he did not drive to Rosewood, but to his office. There, alone with Mrs.

Dandridge while Shirley waited in the carriage, he unlocked the little tin box that had been the major's, with the key Mrs. Dandridge gave him, and put into her hands a little packet of yellow oiled-silk which bore her name. He noted that it agitated her profoundly and as she thrust it into the bosom of her dress, her face seemed stirred as he had never seen it. When he put her again in the carriage, he patted her shoulder with a touch far gentler than his gruff good-by.

At Rosewood, at length, alone in her room, she sat down with the packet in her hands. During the long hours since first the little key had lain in her palm like a live coal, she had been all afire with eagerness. Now the moment had come, she was almost afraid.

She tried to imagine that letter's coming to her--then. Thirty years ago! A May day, a day of golden sunshine and flowers. The arbors had been covered with roses then, too, like those whose perfume drifted to her now. Evil news flies fast, and she had heard of the duel very early that morning. The letter would have reached her later. She would have fled away with it to this very room to read it alone--as she did now!

With unsteady fingers she unwrapped the oiled-silk, broke the letter's seal, and read:

"_Dearest_:

"Before you read this, you will no doubt have heard the thing that has happened this sunshiny morning. Sa.s.soon--poor Sa.s.soon!

I can say that with all my heart--is dead. What this fact will mean to you, G.o.d help me! I can not guess. For I have never been certain, Judith, of your heart. Sometimes I have thought you loved me--me only--as I love you. Last night when I saw you wearing my cape jessamines at the ball, I was almost sure of it. But when you made me promise, whatever happened, not to lift my hand against him, then I doubted. Was it because you feared for him? Would to G.o.d at this moment I knew this was not true! For whatever the fact, I must love you, darling, you and no other, as long as I live!"

When she had read thus far, she closed the letter, and pressing a hand against her heart as if to still its throbbing, locked the written pages in a drawer of her bureau. She went down-stairs and made Ranston bring her chair to its accustomed place under the rose-arbor, and sat there through the falling twilight.

She and Shirley talked but little at dinner, and what she said seemed to come winging from old memories--her own girlhood, its routs and picnics and harum-scarum pleasures. And there were long gaps in which she sat silent, playing with her napkin, the light color coming and going in her delicate cheek, lost in revery. It was not till the hall-clock struck her usual hour that she rose to go to her room.

"Don't send Emmaline," she said. "I shan't want her." She kissed Shirley good night. "Maybe after a while you will sing for me; you haven't played your harp for ever so long."

In the subdued candle-light Mrs. Dandridge locked the door of her room.

She opened a closet, and from the very bottom of a small haircloth trunk, lifted and shook out from its many tissue wrappings a faded gown of rose-colored silk, with pointed bodice and old-fashioned puff-sleeves. She spread this on the bed and laid with it a pair of yellowed satin slippers and a little straw basket that held a spray of what had once been cape jessamine.