UNDER THE HEMLOCKS
Shirley looked at Valiant with a deepening of her dimple. "Rickey isn't
an aristocrat," she said: "she's what we call here poor-white, but she's
got a heart of gold. She's an orphan, and the neighborhood in general,
and Miss Mattie Sue Mabry in particular, have adopted her."
He hardly heard her words for the painful wonder that was holding him.
He had canvassed many theories to explain his father's letter but such a
thing as a duel he had never remotely imagined. His father had taken a
man's life. Was it this thought--whatever the provocation, however
justified by the customs of the time and section--that had driven him to
self-exile? He recalled himself with an effort, for she was speaking
again.
"You've found Lovers' Leap, no doubt?"
"No. This is the first time I've been so far from the house. Is it near
here?"
"I'll show it to you." She held out her hand for the bunch of jessamine
and laid it on the broad roots of a tree that were mottled with lichen.
"Look there," she said suddenly; "isn't that a beauty?"
She was pointing to a jimson-weed on which had settled, with glassy
wings vibrating, a long, ungainly, needle-like insect with an odd
sword-like beak. "What is that?" he asked.
"A snake-doctor. If Unc' Jefferson were here he'd say, 'Bettah watch
out! Dah's er snek roun' erbout heah, sho'!' He'll fill you full of
darky superstitions."
He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm being introduced to them hourly. I've
met the graveyard rabbit--one of them had hoodooed my motor yesterday.
I'm to carry a buckeye in my pocket--by the way, is a buckeye a
horse-chestnut?--if I want to escape rheumatism. I've learned that it's
bad luck to make a bargain on a Friday, and the weepy consequences of
singing before breakfast." A blue-jay darted by them, to perch on a limb
and eye them saucily. "And the jay-bird! He goes to hell every Friday
noon to carry brimstone and tell the devil what folks have been up to."
She clapped her hands. "You're certainly learning fast. When I was
little I used to be delighted to see a blue-jay in the cedars on Friday
afternoon. It was a sign we'd been so good there was nothing to tell.
Follow me now and I'll show you the view from Lovers' Leap. But look
down. Don't lift your eyes till I tell you."
He dropped his gaze to the small brown boots and followed, his eyes
catching low side-glimpses of woodsy things--the spangled dance of
leaf-shadows, a chameleon lizard whisking through the roots of the
bracken, the creamy wavering wings of a white moth resting on a dead
stump. Suddenly the slim path between the trees took a quick turn, and
fell away at their feet. "There," she said. "This is the finest view at
Damory Court."
They stood on the edge of a stony ravine which widened at one end to a
shallow marshy valley. The rocks were covered with gray-green feathery
creepers, enwound with curly yellow tendrils of love-vine. Across the
ravine, on a lower level, began a grove of splendid trees that marched
up into the long stretch of neglected forest he had seen from the house.
Looking down the valley, fields of young tobacco lay tier on tier, and
beyond, in the very middle of the mellow vaporous distance, lifted the
tapering tower of a far-off church, hazily outlined against the azure.
"You love it?" he asked, without withdrawing his eyes.
"I've loved it all my life. I love everything about Damory Court. Ruined
as it is, it is still one of the most beautiful estates in all Virginia.
There's nothing finer even in Italy. Just behind us, where those
hemlocks stand, is where the duel the children spoke of was fought."
He turned his head. "Tell me about it," he said.
She glanced at him curiously. "Didn't you know? That was the reason the
place was abandoned. Valiant, who lived here, and the owner of another
plantation, who was named Sassoon, quarreled. They fought, the story is,
under those big hemlock trees. Sassoon was killed."
He looked out across the distance; he could not trust his face.
"And--Valiant?"
"He went away the same day and never came back; he lived in New York
till he died. He was the father of the Court's present owner. You never
heard the story?"
"No," he admitted. "I--till quite recently I never heard of Damory
Court."
"As a little girl," she went on, "I had a very vivid imagination, and
when I came here to play I used to imagine I could see them, Valiant so
handsome--his nickname was Beauty Valiant--and Sassoon. How awful to
come to such a lovely spot, just because of a young man's quarrel, and
to--to kill one's friend! I used to wonder if the sky was blue that day
and whether poor Sassoon looked up at it when he took his place; and
whom else he thought of that last moment."
"Had he parents?"
"No, neither of them had, I believe. But there might have been some one
else,--some one he cared for and who cared for him. That was the last
duel ever fought in Virginia. Dueling was a dreadful custom. I'm glad
it's gone. Aren't you?"
"Yes," he said slowly, "it was a thing that cut two ways. Perhaps
Valiant, if he could have had his choice afterward, would rather have
been lying there that morning than Sassoon."
"He must have suffered, too," she agreed, "or he wouldn't have exiled
himself as he did. I used to wonder if it was a love-quarrel--whether
they could have been in love with the same woman."
"But why should he go away?"
"I can't imagine, unless she had really loved the other man. If so, she
couldn't have borne seeing Valiant afterward." She paused with a little
laugh. "But then," she said, "it may have been nothing so romantic.
Perhaps they quarreled over cards or differed as to whose horse was the
better jumper. Valiant's grandfather, who was known as Devil-John, is
said to have called a man out because he rode past him on the wrong
side. Our ancestors in Virginia, I'm afraid, didn't stand on ceremony
when they felt uppish."
He did not smile. He was looking out once more over the luminous stretch
of fields, his side-face toward her. Curious and painful questions were
running through his brain. With an effort, he thrust these back and
recalled his attention to what she was saying.
"You wonder, I suppose, that we feel as we do toward these old estates,
and set store by them, and--yes, and brag of them insufferably as we do.
But it's in our blood. We love them as the English do their ancient
manors. They have made our legends and our history. And the history of
Virginia--"
She broke off with a shrug and, more himself now, he finished for her:
"--isn't exactly a trifling part of the history of these United States.
You are right."
"You Northerners think we are desperately conceited," she smiled, "but
it's true. We're still as proud of our land, and its old, old places,
and love them as well as our ancestors ever did. We wouldn't change a
line of their stately old pillars or a pebble of their darling homey
gardens. Do you wonder we resent their passing to people who don't care
for them in the Southern way?"
"But suppose the newcomers _do_ care for them?"
Her lips curled. "A young millionaire who has lived all his life in New
York, to care for Damory Court! A youth idiotically rich, brought up in
a superheated atmosphere of noise and money!"
He started uncontrollably. So that was what she thought! He felt himself
flushing. He had wondered what would be his impression of the
neighborhood and its people; their possible opinion of himself had never
occurred to him.
"Why," she went on, "he's never cared enough about the place even to
come and see it. For reasons of his own--good enough ones, perhaps,
according to the papers,--he finds himself tired of the city. I can
imagine him reflecting." With a mocking simulation of a brown-study, she
put her hand to her brow, pushing impatiently back the wayward luster:
"'Let me see. Don't I own an estate somewhere in the South? Ah-ha! yes.
If I remember, it's in Virginia. I'll send down and fix up the old
hovel.' Then he telephones for his architect to run down and see what
'improvements' it needs. And--here you are!"
He laughed shortly--a tribute to her mimicry--but it was a difficult
laugh. The desperately ennuyee pose, the lax drawl, the unaccustomed
mental effort and the sudden self-congratulatory "ah-ha!"--hitting off
to a hair the lackadaisical boredom of the haplessly rich young
boulevardier--this was the countryside's pen-picture of _him_!
"Don't you consider a longing for nature a wholesome sign?"
"Perhaps. The vagaries of the rich are always suggestive."
"You think there's no chance of his choosing to stay here because he
actually likes it?"
"Not the slightest," she said indifferently.
"You are so certain of this without ever having seen him?"
She glanced at him covertly, annoyedly sensible of the impropriety of
the discussion, since the man discussed was certainly his patron, maybe
his friend. But his insistence had roused a certain balky wilfulness
that would have its way. "It's true I've never seen him," she said, "but
I've read about him a hundred times in the Sunday supplements. He's a
regular feature of the high-roller section. His idea of a good time is a
dog-banquet at Sherry's. Why, a girl told me once that there was a
cigarette named after him--the Vanity Valiant!"
An angry glint slanted across his eyes. For some reason the silly story
on her lips stung him deeply. "You find the Sunday newspapers always so
dependable?"
"Well," she flashed, "you must know Mr. Valiant. _Is_ he a useful
citizen? What has he ever done except play polo and furnish spicy
paragraphs for the society columns?"
"Isn't that beside the point? Because he has been an idler, must he
necessarily be a--vandal?"
She laughed again. "_He_ wouldn't call it vandalism. He'd think it
decided improvement to make Damory Court as frantically different as
possible. I suppose he'll erect a glass cupola and a porte-cochere, all
up-to-date and varnishy, and put orchid hot-houses where the wilderness
garden was, and a modern marble cupid instead of the summer-house, and
lay out a kite-shaped track--"
Everything that was impulsive and explosive in John Valiant's nature
came out with a bang. "No!" he cried, "whatever else he is, he's not
such a preposterous ass as that!"
She faced him squarely now. Her eyes were sparkling. "Since you know him
so intimately and so highly approve of him--"
"No, no," he interrupted. "You mistake me. I shouldn't try to justify
him." His flush had risen to the roots of his brown hair, but he did not
lower his gaze. Now the red color slowly ebbed, leaving him pale. "He
_has_ been an idler--that's true enough--and till a week ago he was
'idiotically rich.' But his idling is over now. At this moment, except
for this one property, he is little better than a beggar."
She had taken a hasty step or two back from him, and her eyes were now
fixed on his with a dawning half-fearful question in them.
"Till the failure of the Valiant Corporation, he had never heard of
Damory Court, much less been aware that he owned it. It wasn't because
he loved it that he came here--no! How could it be? He had never set
foot in Virginia in his mortal life."
She put up her hands to her throat with a start. "Came?" she echoed.
"_Came!_"
"But if you think that even he could be so crassly stupid, so
monumentally blind to all that is really fine and beautiful--"
"Oh!" she cried with flashing comprehension. "Oh, how could you! You--"
He nodded curtly. "Yes," he said. "I am that haphazard harlequin, John
Valiant, himself."