THE ANNIVERSARY
The story was not a long one, though it omitted nothing: the morning
fox-hunt and the identification of the new arrival at Damory Court as
the owner of yesterday's stalled motor; the afternoon raid on the
jessamine, the conversation with John Valiant in the woods.
Mrs. Dandridge, gazing into the fire, listened without comment, but more
than once Shirley saw her hands clasp themselves together and thought,
too, that she seemed strangely pale. The swift and tragic sequel to that
meeting was the hardest to tell, and as she ended she put up her hand to
her shoulder, holding it hard. "It was horrible!" she said. Yet now she
did not shudder. Strangely enough, the sense of loathing which had been
surging over her at recurrent intervals ever since that hour in the
wood, had vanished utterly!
She read the newspaper article aloud and her mother listened with an
expression that puzzled her. When she finished, both were silent for a
moment, then she asked, "You must have known his father, dearest; didn't
you?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Dandridge after a pause. "I--knew his father."
Shirley said no more, and facing each other in the candle-glow, across
the spotless damask, they talked, as with common consent, of other
things. She thought she had never seen her mother more brilliant. An odd
excitement was flooding her cheek with red and she chatted and laughed
as she had not done for years. Even Ranston rolled his eyes in
appreciation, later confiding to Emmaline in the kitchen that "Mis'
Judith cert'n'y chipper ez er squ'rl dis evenin'. Reck'n she be breckin'
dat cane ovah some o' ouah haids yit! What yo' spos'n she say 'bout dem
aryplanes? She 'clah she tickle tuh deff ter ride in one--yas'm. Say et
soun' lak er thrash'n-machine en look lak er debble-fish but she don'
keer. When _she_ ride, she want tuh zip--yas she did! Dat's jes' whut
Mis' Judith say."
But after dinner the gaiety and effervescence faded quickly and Mrs.
Dandridge went early to her room. She mounted the stair with her arm
thrown about Shirley's pliant waist. At the window, where the balustrade
turned, she paused to peer into the night. The air outside was moist and
heavy with rose-scent.
"How alive they seem, Shirley," she said, "--the roses. But the
jessamine deserves its little hour." At her door she kissed her, looking
at her with a strange smile. "How curious," she said, as if to herself,
"that it should have happened, to-day!"
The reading-lamp had been lighted on her table. She drew a slim gold
chain from the bosom of her dress and held to the light a little
locket-brooch it carried. It was of black enamel, with a tiny
laurel-wreath of pearls on one side encircling a single diamond. The
other side was of crystal and covered a baby's russet-colored curl. In
her fingers it opened and disclosed a miniature at which she looked
closely for a moment.
As she snapped the halves shut, her eye fell on the open page of a book
that lay on the table in the circle of radiance. It was _Lucile_:
"Alas! who shall number the drops of the rain?
Or give to the dead leaves their greenness again?
Who shall seal up the caverns the earthquake hath rent?
Who shall bring forth the winds that within them are pent?
To a voice who shall render an image? or who
From the heats of the noontide shall gather the dew?"
Her eyes turned restlessly about the room. It had been hers as a girl,
for Rosewood had been the old Garland homestead. It seemed now all at
once to be full of calling memories of her youth. She looked again at
the page and turned the leaf:
"Hush! That which is done
I regret not. I breathe no reproaches. That's best
Which God sends. 'Twas His will; it is mine. And the rest
Of that riddle I will not look back to!"
She closed the book hastily and thrust it out of sight, beneath a
magazine.
* * * * *
"How strange that it should have been to-day!" It had been on Shirley's
lips to question, but the door had closed, and she went slowly
down-stairs. She sat a while thinking, but at length grew restless and
began to walk to and fro across the floor, her hands clasped behind her
head so that the cool air filled her flowing sleeves. In the hall she
could hear the leisurely kon-_kon_--kon-_kon_ of the tall clock. The
evening outside was exquisitely still and the metallic monotone was
threaded with the airy _fiddle-fiddle_ of crickets in the grass and
punctuated with the rain-glad _cloap_ of a frog.
Presently, with the mellow whirrings that accompany the movements of
such antiques, the ancient timepiece struck ten. At the sound she threw
a thin scarf over her shoulders and stole out to the porch. Its deep
odorous shadow was crossed by oblongs of lemon-colored light from the
windows. Before the kitchen door Ranston's voice was humming huskily:
"'Steal away; Steal away!
Steal away to Jesus.
Steal away! Steal away home--'"
accompanied by the soft alto of Aunt Judy the cook.
Shirley stepped lightly down to the wet grass. Looking back, she could
see her mother's lighted blind. All around the ground was splotched with
rose-petals, looking in the squares of light like bloody rain. Beyond
the margin of this brightness all was in darkness, for the moon was not
yet risen, and a light damp breeze passed in a slow rhythm as if the
earth were breathing moistly in its sleep. Somewhere far away sounded
the faint inquiring _woo-o-o_ of an owl and in the wet branches of a
walnut tree a pigeon moved murmurously.
She skimmed the lawn and ran a little way down the lane. A shuffling
sound presently fell on her ear.
"Is that you, Unc' Jefferson?" she called softly.
"Yas'm!" The footsteps came nearer. "Et's me, Miss Shirley." He tittered
noiselessly, and she could see his bent form vibrating in the gloom.
"Yo' reck'n Ah done fergit?"
"No, indeed. I knew you wouldn't do that. How is he?"
"He right much bettah," he replied in the same guarded tone. "Doctah he
say he be all right in er few days, on'y he gotter lay up er while. Dat
was er ugly nip he got f'om dat 'spisable rep_tyle_. Ah reck'n de
moc'sins is wuss'n dem ar Floridy yallargaters."
"Do you think there can be any others about the grounds?"
"No'm. Dey mos'ly keeps ter de ma'shlan' en on'y runs whah de
undah-bresh ez thick. I gwineter fix dat ter-morrow. Mars' Valiant he
tell me ter grub et all out en make er bon-fiah ob it."
"That's right, Unc' Jefferson. Good night, and thank you for coming."
She started back to the house, when his voice stopped her.
"Mis Shirley, yo' don' keer ef de ole man geddahs two er three ob dem
roses? Seems lak young mars' moughty fon' ob dem. He got one in er glass
but et's mos' daid now."
"Wait a minute," she said, and disappeared in the darkness, returning
quickly with a handful which she put in his grasp.
"There!" she whispered, and slipped back through the perfumed dark.
* * * * *
An hour later she stood in the cozy stillness of her bedroom. It was
hung in silvery blue with curtains of softly figured shadow-cloth having
a misty design of mauve and pink hydrangeas. A tilted mirror on the
draped dressing-table had a dark mahogany frame set in upright posts
carved in a heavy pattern of grape-leaves. Two candles in silver
candlesticks stood before it, their friendly light winking from the
fittings of the dark bed, from the polished surface of the desk in the
corner and from the old piece of brocade stretched above the mantel,
worked like shredded silver cobwebs.
She threw off her gown, slipped into a soft loose robe of maize-colored
silk and stood before the small glass. She pulled out the amber pins and
drew her wonderful hair on either side of her face, looking out at her
reflection like a mermaid from between the rippling waves of a
moon-golden sea. She gazed a long critical minute from eyes whose blue
seemed now almost black.
At last she turned, and seating herself at the desk, took from it a
diary. She scanned the pages at random, her eyes catching lines here and
there. "A good run to-day. Betty and Judge Chalmers and the Pendleton
boys. My fourth brush this season." A frown drew itself across her
brows, and she turned the page. "One of the hounds broke his leg, and I
gave him to Rickey." ... "Chilly Lusk to dinner to-day, after swimming
the Loring Rapid."
She bit her lip, turned abruptly to the new page and took up her pen.
"This morning a twelve mile run to Damory Court," she wrote. "This
afternoon went for cape jessamines." There she paused. The happenings
and sensations of that day would not be recorded. They were unwritable.
She laid down her pen and put her forehead on her clasped hands. How
empty and inane these entries seemed beside this rich and eventful
twenty-four hours just passed! What had she been doing a year ago
to-day? she wondered. The lower drawer of the desk held a number of
slim diaries like the one before her. She pulled it out, took up the
last-year's volume and opened it.
"Why," she said in surprise, "I got jessamine for mother this very same
day last year!" she pondered frowning, then reached for a third and a
fourth. From these she looked up, startled. That date in her mother's
calendar called for cape jessamines. What was the fourteenth of May to
her?
She bent a slow troubled gaze about her. The room had been hers as a
child. She seemed suddenly back in that childhood, with her mother
bending over her pillow and fondling her rebellious hair. When the wind
cried for loneliness out in the dark she had sung old songs to her that
had seemed to suit a windy night: _Mary of the Wild Moor_, and _I am
Dreaming Now of Hallie_. Sad songs! Even in those pinafore years Shirley
had vaguely realized that pain lay behind the brave gay mask. Was there
something--some event--that had caused that dull-colored life and
unfulfilment? And was to-day, perhaps, its anniversary?
Her thought darted to her father who had died before her birth, on whose
gray hair had been set the greenest laurels of the Civil War. She had
always been deeply proud of his military record--had never read his name
on a page of Confederate history without a new thrill. But she had never
thought of him and her mother as actors in a passionate love-romance.
Their portraits hung together in the living-room down-stairs: the grave
middle-aged man with graying hair, and the pale proud girl with the
strange shadow in the dark eyes. The canvases had been painted in the
year of her mother's marriage. The same sadness had been in her face
then. And their marriage and his death had both fallen in midwinter. No,
this May date was not connected with him!
"Dearest, dearest!" whispered Shirley, and a slow tear drew its shining
track down her cheek. "Is there something I've never known? Is there?"