THE ECHO
When the major entered his room, Jereboam, his ancient body-servant, was
dawdling about putting things to rights, his seamed visage under his
white wool suggesting a charred stump beneath a crisp powdering of snow.
"Jedge Chalmahs done tellyfoam ter ax yo' ovah ter Gladden Hall ter
suppah ter-night, suh," he said. "De jedge 'low he gwine git eben wid
yo' fo' dat las' game ob pokah when yo' done lam him."
"Tell him not to-night, Jerry," said the other wearily. "Some other
time."
The old darky ruminated as he plodded down to the doctor's telephone.
"Whut de mattah now? He got dat ar way-off-yondah look ergen." He shook
his head forebodingly. "Ah heahed he hummin' dat tune when he dress
hisse'f dis mawnin'. Sing befo' yo' eat, cry befo' yo' sleep!"
The major had, indeed, a far-away look as he sat there, a heavy lonely
figure, that bright morning. It had slipped to his face with the news of
the arrival at Damory Court. He told himself that he felt queer. A
mocking-bird was singing in a tulip-tree outside, and the gray cat sat
on the window-sill, watching the foliage with blinking lust. There was
no breeze and the leaves of the Virginia creeper that curled about the
sash were trembling with the sensuous delight of the sunshine. Suddenly
he seemed to hear elfin voices close to his ear:
"_Which was it she loved? Valiant or Sassoon?_"
It was so distinct that he started, vexed and disturbed. Really, it was
absurd. He would be seeing things next! "Southall may be right about
that exercise," he muttered; "I'll walk more." He began the projected
reform without delay, striding up and down the room. But the little
voices presently sounded again, shouting like gnomes inside a hill:
"_Which was it? Valiant or Sassoon?_"
"I wish to God I knew!" said the major roughly, standing still. It
silenced them, but the sound of his own voice, as though it had been a
pre-concerted signal, drew together a hundred inchoate images of other
days. There was the well-ordered garden of Damory Court--it rose up,
gloomy with night shadows, across his great clothes-press against the
wall--with himself sitting on a rustic bench smoking and behind him
the candle-lighted library window with Beauty Valiant pacing up and
down, waiting for daylight. There was a sun-lighted stretch between
two hemlocks, with Southall and he measuring the ground--the grass
all dewy sparkles and an early robin teetering on a thorn-bush.
Eight--nine--ten--he caught himself counting the paces.
He wiped his forehead. Between the hemlocks now were two figures
facing each other, one twitching uncertainly, the other palely rigid;
and at one side, held screen-wise, a raised umbrella. In some ghostly
way he could see straight through the latter--see the doctor's hand
gripping the handle, his own, outstretched beyond its edge, holding a
handkerchief ready to flutter down. A silly subterfuge those umbrellas,
but there must be no actual witnesses to the final act of a "gentlemen's
meeting"! A silly code, the whole of it, now happily outgrown! He
thought thus with a kind of dumb irritant wonder, while the green
picture hung a moment--as a stone thrown in air hangs poised at height
before it falls--then dissolved itself in two sharp crackles, with a
gasping interval between. The scene blurred into a single figure
huddling down--huddling down--
"_Which did she love?_" The major shook his head helplessly. It was,
after all, only the echo, become all at once audible on a shallow
woman's lips, of a question that had always haunted him. It had first
come to him on the heels of that duel, when he had stood, somewhat later
that hateful morning, holding a saddled horse before the big pillared
porch. It had whispered itself then from every moving leaf. "_Sassoon or
Valiant?_" If she had loved Sassoon, of what use the letter Valiant was
so long penning in the library? But--if it were Valiant she loved? The
man who, having sworn not to lift his hand against the other, had broken
his sacred word to her! Who had stained the unwritten code by facing an
opponent maddened with liquor! Yet, what was there a woman might not
condone in the one man? Would she read, forgive and send for him?
The major laughed out suddenly, harshly, in the quiet room, and looked
down as if he expected to see that letter still lying in his hand. But
the laugh could not still a regular pulsing sound that was in his
ears--elfin like the voices, but as distinct--the sound of a horse's
hoofs going from Damory Court.
He had heard those hoof-beats echo in his brain for thirty years!