IN DEVIL-JOHN'S DAY
He was still sitting motionless when there came a knock at the door and
it opened to admit the gruff voice of Doctor Southall. A big form was
close behind him.
"Hello. Up, I see. I took the liberty of bringing Major Bristow."
The master of Damory Court came forward--limping the least trifle--and
shook hands.
"Glad to know you, sah," said the major. "Allow me to congratulate you;
it's not every one who gets bitten by one of those infernal moccasins
that lives to talk about it. You must be a pet of Providence, or else
you have a cast-iron constitution, sah."
Valiant waved his hand toward the man of medicine, who said, "I reckon
Miss Shirley was the Providence in the case. She had sense enough to
send for me quick and speed did it."
"Well, sah," the major said, "I reckon under the circumstances, your
first impressions of the section aren't anything for us to brag about."
"I'm delighted; it's hard for me to tell how much."
"Wait till you know the fool place," growled the doctor testily. "You'll
change your tune."
The major smiled genially. "Don't be taken in by the doctor's pessimism.
You'd have to get a yoke of three-year oxen to drag him out of this
state."
"It would take as many for me." Valiant laughed a little. "You who have
always lived here, can scarcely understand what I am feeling, I imagine.
You see, I never knew till quite recently--my childhood was largely
spent abroad, and I have no near relatives--that my father was a
Virginian and that my ancestors always lived here. To discover this all
at once and to come to this house, with their portraits on the walls and
their names on the title-pages of these books!" He made a gesture toward
the glass shelves. "Why, there's a room up-stairs with the very toys
they played with when they were children! To learn that I belong to it
all; that I myself am the last link in such a chain!"
"The ancestral instinct," said the doctor. "I'm glad to see that it
means something still, in these rotten days."
"Of course," John Valiant continued, "every one knows that he has
ancestors. But I'm beginning to see that what you call the ancestral
instinct needs a locality and a place. In a way it seems to me that an
old estate like this has a soul too--a sort of clan or family soul that
reacts on the descendant."
"Rather a Japanesy idea, isn't it?" observed the major. "But I know what
you mean. Maybe that's why old Virginian families hang on to their land
in spite of hell and high-water. They count their forebears real live
people, quite capable of turning over in their graves."
"Mine are beginning to seem very real to me. Though I don't even know
their Christian names yet, I can judge them by their handiwork. The men
who built Damory Court had a sense of beauty and of art."
"And their share of deviltry, too," put in the doctor.
"I suppose so," admitted his host. "At this distance I can bear even
that. But good or bad, I'm deeply thankful that they chose Virginia.
Since I've been laid up, I've been browsing in the library here--"
"A bit out of date now, I reckon," said the major, "but it used to pass
muster. Your grandfather was something of a book-worm. He wrote a
history of the family, didn't he?"
"Yes. I've found it. _The Valiants of Virginia._ I'm reading the
Revolutionary chapters now. It never seemed real before--it's been only
a slice of impersonal and rather dull history. But the book has made it
come alive. I'm having the thrill of the globe-trotter the first time he
sees the Tower of London or the field of Waterloo. I see more than that
stubble-field out yonder; I see a big wooden stockade with soldiers in
ragged buff and blue guarding it."
The major nodded, "Ah, yes," he said. "The Continental prison-camp."
"And just over the rise there I can see an old court-house, and the
Virginia Assembly boiling under the golden tongue-lashing of lean
raw-boned Patrick Henry. I see a messenger gallop up and see the members
scramble to their saddles--and then, Tarleton and his red-coats
streaming up, too late."
"Well," commented the doctor deliberately, "all I have to say is, don't
materialize too much to Mrs. Poly Gifford when you meet her. She'll have
you lecturing to the Ladies' Church Guild before you know it. She's
sailed herself out here already, I understand."
"She called the second day: my first visitor. I've subscribed to the
Guild."
The doctor chuckled. "Blame curiosity! That woman's housemaid-silly. She
can spin more street yarn than any ten in the county. Miss Mattie Sue's
been here, too, she told me. Ah, yes,"--looking quizzically at the
tray--"I recognize the apple-butter. A pot just like that goes to the
White House every Christmas there's a Democrat there. She reminds me of
a little drab-gray wren in horn-rimmed spectacles."
"She's perfectly dear!" said Valiant, "from her hoops to the calycanthus
bud tied in the corner of her handkerchief. She must be very old. She
told me she remembered seeing Jefferson at Monticello."
"She's growing younger," the doctor said. "Sixteen or seventeen years
ago she was very feeble and the Ladies' Guild agreed to support her for
life on consideration that she will her house and lot to the church,
next door. Mrs. Poly Gifford refers to her now, I believe, as a
dispensation of Providence. Did she bring the apple-butter herself?"
"No," smiled John Valiant. "She sent it afterward by Miss Rickey
Snyder."
The major stroked his imperial. "Rickey's an institution," he said. "I
hope she gave us all good characters. I'd hate to have Rickey Snyder
down on me! Have you heard her history?"
"Yes, Uncle Jefferson told me."
"I'm glad of that," shot out the doctor. "Now, we needn't have it from
Bristow. He's as fond of oratory as a maltese cat is of milk."
"He gave me a hint of the major's powers in that direction, in his
account of Greef King's trial."
"Humph!" retorted the doctor gloomily, "that was in his palmy days.
He's fallen off since then. Plenty of others been here to bore you,
I reckon, though of course you don't remember all the names yet."
Valiant summoned Uncle Jefferson.
"Yas, suh," grinned the old darky pridefully, "de folkses mos' lam de
face off'n dat-ar ol' knockah. Day 'fo' yistiddy dah wuz Mars' Quarles
en Jedge en Mis' Chalmahs. De jedge done sen' er streng o' silvah
perch."
"His place is Gladden Hall," the major said, "one of the finest mansions
round here. A sportsman, sah, and one of the best pokah hands in the
county."
"--En yistiddy dah's Mars' Chilly Lusk en de Pen'letons en de Byloes en
Mars' Livy Stowe f'om Seven Oaks, en de Woodrows en--"
"That'll do," said the major. "I'll just run over the tax-list; it'll be
quicker. There are kindly people here, sah," he went on, "but after all,
it's a narrow circle. We have our little pleasures and courtships and
scandals and we are satisfied with them. We're not gadabouts. Our girls
haven't all flirted around Europe and they don't talk of the Pincio and
the Champs Elysees as if they were Capitol Hill and Madison Street in
Richmond. But if I may say so, sah, I think in Virginia we get a little
closer to life as God Almighty intended it than people in some of your
big cities."
"Come, Bristow," interrupted the doctor, "tell the truth. This dog-gone
borough is as dull as a mud fence sticking with tadpoles. There isn't a
man in it with a soul above horse-flesh."
The doctor's shafts to-day, however, glanced off the major's buckler of
geniality like the Lilliputian arrows from Gulliver's eye-glass. "I hope
you ride, Mr. Valiant?" the latter asked genially.
"I'm fond of it," said Valiant, "but I have no horse as yet."
"I was thinking," pursued the major, "of the coming tournament."
"Tournament?"
The doctor cut in. "A ridiculous cock-a-doodle-do which gives the young
bucks a chance to rig out in silly toggery and prance their colts before
a lot of petticoats!"
"It's an annual affair," explained the major; "a kind of spectacle.
For many years, by the way, it has been held on a part of this
estate--perhaps you will have no objection to its use this season?--and
at night there is a dance at the Country Club. By the way, you must let
me introduce you there to-morrow. I've taken the liberty already of
putting your name up."
"Good lord!" growled the doctor, aside. "He counts himself _young_! If
I'd reached your age, Bristow--"
"You have," said the major, nettled. "Four years ago!--As I was saying,
Mr. Valiant, they ride for a prize. It's a very ancient thing--I've
seen references to it in a colonial manuscript in the Byrd Library at
Westover. No doubt it's come down directly from the old jousts."
"You don't mean to say," cried his hearer in genuine astonishment, "that
Virginia has a lineal descendant of the tourney?"
The major nodded. "Yes. Certain sections of Kentucky used to have it,
too, but it has died out there. It exists now only in this state. It's a
curious thing that the old knightly meetings of the middle ages should
survive to-day only on American soil and in a corner of Virginia."
Doctor Southall, meanwhile, had set his gaze on the litter of pamphlets.
He turned with an appreciative eye. "You're beginning in earnest. The
Agricultural Department. And the Congressional frank."
"I've gone to the fountainhead," said Valiant. "I'm trying to find out
possibilities. I've sent samples of the soil. It's lain fallow so long
it has occurred to me it may need special treatment."
The major pulled his mustache meditatively. "Not a bad idea," he said.
"He's starting right--eh, Southall? You're bringing the view-point of
practical science to bear on the problem, Mr. Valiant."
"I'm afraid I'm a sad sketch as a scientist," laughed the other.
"My point of view has to be a somewhat practical one. I must be
self-supporting. Damory Court is a big estate. It has grain lands and
forest as well. If my ancestors lived from it, I can. It's not only
that," he went on more slowly, "I want to make the most of the place for
its own sake, too. Not only of its possibilities for earning, but of its
natural beauties. I lack the resources I once had, but I can give it
thought and work, and if they can bring Damory Court back to anything
even remotely resembling what it once was, I'll not spare either."
The major smote his knee and even the doctor's face showed a grim, if
transient approval. "I believe you'll do it!" exclaimed the former. "And
let me say, sah, that the neighborhood is not unaware of the splendid
generosity which is responsible for the present lack of which you
speak."
Valiant put out his hand with a little gesture of deprecation, but the
other disregarded it. "Confound it, sah, it was to be expected of a
Valiant. Your ancestors wrote their names in capital letters over this
county. They were an up and down lot, but good or bad (and, as Southall
says, I reckon"--he nodded toward the great portrait above the
couch--"they weren't all little woolly lambs) they did big things in a
big way."
Valiant leaned forward eagerly, a question on his lips. But at the
moment a diversion occurred in the shape of Uncle Jefferson, who
reentered, bearing a tray on which sat sundry jugs and clinking
glasses, glowing with white and green and gold.
"You old humbug," said the doctor, "don't you know the major's that
poisoned with mint-juleps already that he can't get up before eight in
the morning?"
"Well, suh," tittered Uncle Jefferson, "Ah done foun' er mint-baid down
below de kitchens dis mawnin'. Yo'-all gemmun' 'bout de bigges' expuhts
in dis yeah county, en Ah reck'n Mars' Valiant sho' 'sist on yo'
samplin' et."
"Sah," said the major feelingly, turning to his host, "I'm proud to
drink your health in the typical beverage of Virginia!" He touched
glasses with Valiant and glared at the doctor, who was sipping his own
thoughtfully. "In my travels," he said, "I have become acquainted with a
drink called pousse-cafe, which contains all the colors of the rainbow.
But for chaste beauty, sah, give me this. No garish combination, you
will observe. A frosted goblet, golden at the bottom as an autumn
corn-ear, shading into emerald and then into snow. On top a white rim of
icebergs with the mint sprigs like fairy pine-trees. Poems have been
written on the julep, sah."
"They make good epitaphs, too," observed the doctor.
"I notice your glass isn't going begging," the major retorted. "Unc'
Jefferson, that's as good mint as grew in the gyarden of Eden. See that
those lazy niggers of yours don't grub the patch out by mistake."
"Yas, _suh_," said Uncle Jefferson, as he retired with the tray. "Ah
gwineter put er fence eroun' dat ar baid 'fo' sundown."
The question that had sprung to Valiant's lips now found utterance. "I
saw you look at the portrait there," he said to the major. "Which of my
ancestors is it?"
The other got up and stood before the mantelpiece in a Napoleonic
attitude. "That," he said, fixing his eye-glasses, "is your
great-grandfather, Devil-John Valiant."
"Devil-John!" echoed his host. "Yes, I've heard the name."
The doctor guffawed. "He earned it, I reckon. I never realized what a
sinister expression that missing optic gives the old ruffian. There was
a skirmish during the war on the hillside yonder and a bullet cut it
out. When we were boys we used to call him 'Old One-Eye.'"
"It interests me enormously." John Valiant spoke explosively.
"The stories of Devil-John would fill a mighty big book," said the
major. "By all accounts he ought to have lived in the middle ages."
Crossing the library, he looked into the dining-room. "I thought I
remembered. The portrait over the console there is his wife, your
great-grandmother. She was a wonderful swimmer, by the way," he went on,
returning to his seat. "It was said she had swum across the Potomac in
her hunting togs. When Devil-John heard of the feat, he swore he would
marry her and he did. It was a love-match, no doubt, on her side; he
must have been one to take with women. Even in those days, when men
still lived picturesquely and weren't all cut to the same pattern, he
must have been unique. There was something satanically splendid and
savage about him. My great-uncle used to say he stood six feet two, and
walked like an emperor on a love-spree. He was a man of sky-high rages,
with fingers that could bend a gold coin double.
"They say he bet that when he brought his bride home, she should walk
into Damory Court between rows of candlesticks worth twenty-thousand
dollars. He made the wager good, too, for when she came up those steps
out there, there was a row of ten candles burning on either side of the
doorway, each held by a young slave worth a thousand dollars in the
market. The whole state talked of the wedding and for a time Damory
Court was ablaze with tea-parties and dances. That was in the old days
of coaching and red-heeled slippers, when Virginia planters lived like
viceroys and money was only to throw to the birds. They were fast livers
and hard drinkers, and their passions ran away with them. Devil-John's
knew neither saddle nor bridle. Some say he grew jealous of his wife's
beauty. There were any number of stories told of his cruelties to her
that aren't worth repeating. She died early--poor lady--and your
grandfather was the only issue. Devil-John himself lived to be past
seventy, and at that age, when most men were stacking their sins and
groaning with the gout, he was dicing and fox-hunting with the youngest
of them. He always swore he would die with his boots on, and they say
when the doctor told him he had only a few hours leeway, he made his
slaves dress him completely and prop him on his horse. They galloped out
so, a negro on either side of him. It was a stormy night, black as the
Earl of Hell's riding-boots, with wind and lightning, and he rode
cursing at both. There's an old black-gum tree a mile from here that
they still call Devil-John's tree. They were just passing under it when
the lightning struck it. Lightning has no effect on the black-gum, you
know. The bolt glanced from the tree and struck him between the two
slaves without harming either of them. It killed his horse, too. That's
the story. To be sure at this date nobody can separate fact from
fiction. Possibly he wasn't so much worse than the rest of his
neighbors--not excepting even the parsons. 'Other times, other
manners.'"
"They weren't any worse than the present generation," said the doctor
malevolently. "Your four bottle men then knew only claret: now they
punish whisky-straight. They still trice up their gouty legs to take
after harmless foxes. And I dare say the women will be wearing
red-heeled slippers again next year."
The major buried his nose in his julep for a long moment before he
looked at the doctor blandly. "I agree with you, Bristow," he said;
"but it's the first time I ever heard you admit that much good of
your ancestors."
"Good!" said the doctor belligerently. "Me? I don't! I said people
now were no better. As for the men of that time, they were a cheap
swaggering lot of bullies and swash-bucklers. When I read history I'm
ashamed to be descended from them."
"I desire to inform you, sah," said the major, stung, "that I too am a
descendant of those bullies and swash-bucklers, as you call them. And I
wish from my heart I thought we, nowadays, could hold a tallow-dip to
them. Whatever their habits, they had their ideals, and they lived up to
them."
"You refer, no doubt," said the doctor with sarcasm, "to our friend
Devil-John and his ideal treatment of his wife!"
"No, sah," replied the major warmly. "I'm _not_ referring to Devil-John.
There were exceptions, no doubt, but for the most part they treated
their women folk as I believe their Maker made them to be treated! The
man who failed in his courtesy there, sah, was called to account for it.
He was mighty apt to find himself standing in the cool dawn at the
butt-end of a--"
He broke off and coughed. There was an awkward pause in which he set
down his glass noisily and rose and stood before the open bookcase. "I
envy you this, sah," he said with somewhat of haste. "A fine old
collection. Bless my soul, what a curious volume!"
As he spoke, his hand jerked out a heavy-looking leather-back. Valiant,
who had risen and stood beside him, saw instantly that what he had drawn
from the shelf was the morocco case that held the rusted dueling-pistol!
In the major's hands the broken box opened. A sudden startled look
darted across his leonine face. With a smothered exclamation he thrust
it back between the books and closed the glass door.
Valiant had paled. His previous finding of the weapon had escaped his
mind. Now he read, as clearly as if it had been printed in black-letter
across the sunny wall, the significance of the major's confusion. That
weapon had been in his father's hand when he had faced his opponent in
that fatal duel! It flashed across his mind as the doctor lunged for his
hat and stick and got to his feet.
"Come, Bristow," said the latter irritably. "Your feet will grow fast to
the floor presently. We mustn't talk a new neighbor to death. I've got
to see a patient at six."