AFTER THE STORM
Inky clouds were gathering over the sunlight when Shirley came from
Damory Court, along the narrow wood-path under the hemlocks, and the way
was striped with blue-black shadows and filled with sighing noises. She
walked warily, halting often at some leafy rustle to catch a quick
breath of dread. As she approached the tree-roots where the cape
jessamines lay, she had to force her feet forward by sheer effort of
will. At a little distance from them she broke a stick and with it
managed to drag the bunch to her, turning her eyes with a shiver from
the trampled spot near by. She picked up the flowers, and treading with
caution, retraced her steps to the wider path.
She stepped into the Red Road at length in the teeth of a thunder-storm,
which had arisen almost without warning to break with the passionate
intensity of electric storms in the South. The green-golden fields were
now a gray seethe of rain and the farther peaks lifted like huge tumbled
masses of onyx against a sky stippled with wan yellow and vicious
violet. The wind leaped and roared and swished through the weeping
foliage, lashing the dull Pompeian-red puddles, swirling leaves and
twigs from the hedges and seeming to be intent on dragging her very
garments from her as she ran.
There was no shelter, but even had there been, she would not have
sought it. The turbulence of nature around her matched, in a way, her
overstrained feeling, and she welcomed the fierce bulge of the wind in
the up-blowing whorls of her hair and the drenching wetness of the rain.
At length, out of breath, she crouched down under a catalpa tree,
watching the fangs of lightning knot themselves against the baleful
gray-yellow dimness, making sudden flares of unbearable brightness
against which twigs etched themselves with the unrelieved sharpness of
black paper silhouettes.
She tried to fix her mind on near things, the bending grasses, the
scurrying red runnels and flapping shrubbery, but her thoughts wilfully
escaped the tether, turning again and again to the events of the last
two hours. She pictured Unc' Jefferson's eyes rolling up in ridiculous
alarm, his winnowing arm lashing his indignant mule in his flight for
the doctor.
At the mental picture she choked with hysterical laughter, then cringed
suddenly against the sopping bark. She saw again the doctor's gaze lift
from his first examination of the tiny punctures to send a swift
penetrant glance straight at her, before he bent his great body to
carry the unconscious man to the house. Again a fit of shuddering swept
over her. Then, all at once, tears came, strangling sobs that bent and
swayed her. It was the discharge of the Leyden jar, the loosing of the
tense bow-string, and it brought relief.
After a time she grew quieter. He would perhaps still be lying on the
couch in the dull-colored library, under the one-eyed portrait, his hair
waving crisply against the white blanket, his hands moving restlessly,
his lips muttering. Her imagination followed Aunt Daph shuffling to
fetch this and that, nagged by the doctor's sharp admonitions.
He would get well! The thought that perhaps she had saved his life gave
her a thrill that ran over her whole body. And until yesterday she had
never seen him! She kneeled in the blurred half-light, pushing her wet
hair back from her forehead and smiling up in the rain that still fell
fast.
In a few moments she rose and went on. The lightning came now at longer
and more irregular intervals and the thunder pealed less heavily. The
wan yellow murk was lifting. Here and there a soaked sun-beam peered
half-frightened through the racked mist-wreaths, as though to smell the
over-sweet fragrance of the wet jessamine in her arms.
At the gate of the Rosewood lane stood a mailbox on a cedar post and she
paused to fish out a draggled Richmond newspaper. As she thrust it
under her arm her eye caught a word of a head-line. With a flush she
tore it from its soggy wrapper, the wetted fiber parting in her eager
fingers, and resting her foot on the lower rail of the gate, spread it
open on her knee.
She stood stock-still until she had read the whole. It was the story of
John Valiant's sacrifice of his private fortune to save the ruin of the
involved Corporation.
Its effect upon her was a shock. She felt her throat swell as she read;
then she was chilled by the memory of what she had said to him: "What
has he ever done except play polo and furnish spicy paragraphs for the
society columns?"
"What a beast I was!" she said, addressing the wet hedge. "He had just
done that splendid thing. It was because of that that he was little
better than a beggar, and I said those horrible things!" Again she bent
her eyes, rereading the sentences: "_Took his detractors by surprise ...
had just sustained a grilling at the hands of the State's examiner which
might well have dried at their fount the springs of sympathy._"
She crushed up the paper in her hand and rested her forehead on the wet
rail. Idiotically rich--a vandal--a useless purse-proud _flaneur_. She
had called him all that! She could still see the paleness of his look as
she had said it.
Shirley, overexcited as she still was, felt the sobs returning. These,
however, did not last long and in a moment she found herself smiling
again. Though she had hurt him, she had saved him, too! When she
whispered this over to herself it still thrilled and startled her. She
folded the paper and hastened on under the cherry-trees.
Emmaline, the negro maid was waiting anxiously on the porch. She was
thin to spareness, with a face as brown as a tobacco leaf, restless
black eyes and wool neatly pinned and set off by an amber comb.
"Honey," called Emmaline, "I'se been feahin' fo' yo' wid all that
lightnin' r'arin' eroun'. Do yo' remembah when yo' useter run up en jump
plumb down in th' middle of yore feddah-baid en covah up dat little gol'
haid, en I useter tell yo' th' noise was th' Good Man rollin' eroun' his
rain-barr'l?" She laughed noiselessly, holding both hands to her thin
sides. "Yo' grow'd up now so yo' ain' skeered o' nothin' this side th'
Bad Place! Yo' got th' jess'mine? Give 'em to Em'line. She'll fix 'em
all nice, jes' how Mis' Judith like."
"All right, Emmaline," replied Shirley. "And I'll go and dress. Has
mother missed me?"
"No'm. She ain' lef' huh room this whole blessed day. Now yo' barth's
all ready--all 'cep'n th' hot watah, en I sen' Ranston with that th'
fus' thing. Yo' hurry en peel them wet close off yo'se'f, or yo' have
one o' them digested chills."
Her young mistress flown and the hot water despatched, the negro woman
spread a cloth on the floor and began to cut and dress the long stalks
of the flowers. This done she fetched bowls and vases, and set the
pearly-white clumps here and there--on the dining-room sideboard, the
hall mantel and the desk of the living-room--till the delicate fragrance
filled the house, quite vanquishing the rose-scent from the arbors.
When all was done, she stood in the doorway with arms akimbo, turning
about to survey her handiwork. "Mis' Judith be pleas' with that," she
said, nodding her woolly head with vigor. "Wondah why she want them
sprangly things! All th' res' o' th' time roses, but 'bout onct a yeah
seems like she jes' got to have them jess'mine en nothin' else."
She swept up the scattered twigs and leaves, and going into the
dining-room, began to lay the table for dinner. This room was square and
low, with a carved console and straight-backed chairs thinly cushioned
in faded blue to match the china. The olive-gray walls were brightened
with the soft dull gold of an old mirror and picture frames from which
dim faces looked placidly down. The crumbling splendor of the
storm-racked sunset fell through old-fashioned leaded window-panes,
tinging the white Capodimonte figures on the mantelpiece.
As the trim colored woman moved lightly about in the growing dusk, with
the low click of glass and muffled clash of silver, the light _tat-tat_
of a cane sounded, and she ran to the hall, where Mrs. Dandridge was
descending the stairway, one slim white hand holding the banister, under
the edge of a white silk shawl which drooped its heavy fringes to her
daintily-shod feet. On the lower step she halted, looking smilingly
about at the blossoming bowls.
"_Don'_ they smell up th' whole house?" said Emmaline. "I knowed yo' be
pleas', Mis' Judith. Now put yo' han' on mah shouldah en I'll take yo'
to yo' big cha'h."
They crossed the hall, the dusky form bending to the fragile pressure of
the fingers. "Now heah's yo' cha'h. Ranston he made up a little fiah
jes' to take th' damp out, en th' big lamp's lit, en Miss Shirley'll be
down right quick."
A moment later, in fact, Shirley descended the stair, in a filmy gown of
India-muslin, with a narrow belting of gold, against whose flowing
sleeves her bare arms showed with a flushed pinkness the hue of the pale
coral beads about her neck. The damp newspaper was in her hand.
At her step her mother turned her head: she was listening intently to
voices that came from the garden--a child's shrill treble opposing
Ranston's stentorian grumble.
"Listen, Shirley. What's that Rickey is telling Ranston?"
"Don' yo' come heah wid yo' no-count play-actin'. Cyan' fool Ranston wid
no sich snek-story, neidah. Ain' no moc'sin at Dam'ry Co'ot, en nebbah
_was_!"
"There was, too!" insisted Rickey. "One bit him and Miss Shirley found
him and sent Uncle Jefferson for Doctor Southall and it saved his life!
So there! Doctor Southall told Mrs. Mason. And he isn't a man who's just
come to fix it up, either; he's the really truly man that owns it!"
"Who on earth is that child talking about?"
Shirley put her arm around her mother and kissed her. Her heart was
beating quickly. "The owner has come to Damory Court. He--"
The small book Mrs. Dandridge held fell to the floor. "The owner! What
owner?"
"Mr. Valiant--Mr. John Valiant. The son of the man who abandoned it so
long ago." As she picked up the fallen volume and put it into her
mother's hands, Shirley was startled by the whiteness of her face.
"Dearest!" she cried. "You are ill. You shouldn't have come down."
"No. It's nothing. I've been shut up all day. Go and open the other
window."
Shirley threw it wide. "Can I get your salts?" she asked anxiously.
Her mother shook her head. "No," she said almost sharply. "There's
nothing whatever the matter with me. Only my nerves aren't what they
used to be, I suppose--and snakes always _did_ get on them. Now, give me
the gist of it first. I can wait for the rest. There's a tenant at
Damory Court. And his name's John--Valiant. And he was bitten by a
moccasin. When?"
"This afternoon."
Mrs. Dandridge's voice shook. "Will he--will he recover?"
"Oh, yes."
"Beyond any question?"
"The doctor says so."
"And you found him, Shirley--_you_?"
"I was there when it happened." She had crouched down on the rug in her
favorite posture, her coppery hair against her mother's knee, catching
strange reddish over-tones like molten metal, from the shaded lamp. Mrs.
Dandridge fingered her cane nervously. Then she dropped her hand on the
girl's head.
"Now," she said, "tell me _all_ about it."