KATHARINE DECIDES
Katharine left the field of Runnymede with John Valiant in the
dun-colored motor. She sat in the passenger's seat beside him, while the
bulldog capered, ecstatically barking, from side to side of the rear
cushions. Her father had declined the honor, remarking that he
considered a professional chauffeur a sufficient risk of his valuable
life and that the Chalmers' grays were good enough for him--a decision
which did not wholly displease Katharine.
The car was not the smart Panhard in which she had so often spun down
the avenue or along the shell-roads of the north shore. It lacked those
fin-de-siecle appurtenances which marked the ne plus ultra of its kind,
as her observant eye recognized; but it ran staunch and true. The
powerful hands that gripped the steering-wheel were brown with sun and
wind, and the handsome face above it had a look of keenness and energy
she had never surprised before. They passed many vehicles and there were
few whose occupants did not greet him. In fact, as he presently
remarked, it was a saving of energy to keep his hat off; and he tossed
the Panama into the rear seat. On the rim of the village a group raised
a cheer to which he nodded laughingly, and farther on a little old lady
on a timid vine-covered porch beside a church, waved a black-mitted hand
to him with a sweet old-time gesture. Katharine noted that he bowed to
her with extra care.
"That's Miss Mattie Sue Mabry," he said, "the quaintest, dearest thing
you ever saw. She taught my father his letters." A small freckled-faced
girl was swinging on the gate. "You really must know Rickey Snyder!" he
said, and halted the car at the curb. "Rickey," he called, "I want to
introduce you to Miss Fargo."
"Howdy do?" said Rickey, approaching with an ingratiating bob of the
head. "I saw you at the tournament. Is it true that you can ride on the
train wherever you want to without ever buying any ticket?"
Katharine smiled back. "I'm not sure they'd all take me for nothing,"
she said, "but perhaps a few of them would."
"That must be grand," sighed Rickey. "I reckon you've seen everything in
the world, almost."
"No, indeed. I never saw a tournament like this, for instance. It was
tremendously exciting. Wasn't it!"
"My goodness gracious, yes! Mr. Valiant, I most cried when you chose
Miss Shirley Queen of Beauty, I was that glad! She was a lot the
prettiest girl there. Though I like your looks right much too, Miss
Fargo," she added tactfully.
"Oh, Mr. Valiant!" Rickey called after them as the car started. "Now
you're at Damory Court, are you going to let us children keep on playing
up at the Hemlocks?"
"Well I should _think_ so!" he answered. "Play there all the time, if
you like."
"Oh, thank you," said Rickey, radiant. "And there won't be any snakes
there now, for you've cleared all the underbrush away."
As they sped on, Katharine's cheek had a faintly heightened color. But,
"What a deliciously odd child!" she laughed.
"She's a character," he said. "She worships the ground Miss Dandridge
walks on. There's a good reason for it. You must get Miss Chalmers to
tell you the story."
Where the Red Road stretched level before them, he threw the throttle
open for a long rush through the thymy-scented air. The light, late
afternoon breeze drew by them, sweeping back Katharine's graceful
sinuous veil and spraying them with odors of clover and sunny fruit.
They passed orchard clumps bending with young apples, boundless aisles
of green, young-tasseled corn and shadowy groves that smelled of fern
and sassafras, opening out into more sun-lighted vistas overarched by
the intense penetrable blue of the June sky.
John Valiant had never seemed to her so wholly good to see, with his
waving hair ruffling in their flight and the westerning sun shining
redly on his face. Midway of this spurt he looked at her to say: "Did
you ever know a more beautiful countryside? See how the pink-and-yellow
of those grain fields fades into the purple of the hills. Very few
painters have ever captured a tint like that. It's like raspberries
crushed in curdled milk."
"I've quite lost my heart to it all," she said, her voice jolting with
the speed of their course. "It's a perfect pastoral ... so different
from our terrific city pace.... Of course it must be a trifle dull at
times ... seeing the same people always ... and without the theater and
the opera and the whirl about one--but ... the kind of life one reads
about ... in the novels of the South, you know ... I suppose one doesn't
realize that it actually exists until one comes to a Southern place like
this. And the negro servants! How odd it must be to have a white-headed
old darky in a brass-buttoned swallow-tail for a butler! So picturesque!
At Judge Chalmers', I have a feeling all the time that I'm walking
through a stage rehearsal."
The car slackened speed as it slid by a whitewashed cabin at whose
entrance sat a dusky gray-bearded figure. Valiant pointed. "Do you see
him?" he asked.
"I see a very ordinary old colored man sitting on the door-step,"
Katharine replied.
"That's Mad Anthony, our local Mother Shipton. He's a prophet and
soothsayer. Uncle Jefferson--that's my body-servant--insists that he
foretold my coming to Damory Court. If we had more time you could have
your fortune told."
"How thrilling!" she commented with half-humorous irony.
He pointed to a great white house set in a grove of trees. "That is
Beechwood," he told her, "the Beverley homestead. Young Beverley
was the Knight of the Silver Cross. A fine old place, isn't it? It
was burned by the Indians during the French and Indian War. My
great-great-great-grandfather--" He broke off. "But then, those old
things won't interest you."
"They interest you a great deal, don't they?" she asked.
"Yes," he admitted, "they do. You see, my ancestors are such new
acquaintances, I find them absorbing. You know when I lived in New
York--"
"Last month."
He laughed a little--not quite the laugh she had known in the past.
"Yes, but I can hardly believe it; I seem to have been here half a
lifetime. To think that a month ago I was a double-dyed New Yorker."
"It's been a strange experience for you. Don't you feel rather
Jekyl-and-Hydish?"
"That's a terrible compound!" he laughed, as he swept the car round a
curve, skilfully evading a bumping wagon-load of farm-hands. "In which
capacity am I Mr. Hyde, by the way?"
She smiled at him round the edge of her blown veil. "Figures of speech
aren't to be analyzed. You are Dr. Jekyl in New York, anyway. You read
what the papers said? No? It's just as well; it would have been likely
to turn your head."
"Could anything be as likely to do that as--this?" With a glance he
indicated her presence beside him.
She made him a mocking bow. "Be careful," she warned. "Speeches like
that smack of disloyalty to your queen. What a pretty girl she is! I
congratulated you on your prowess. I must add my congratulations on your
taste."
He returned her bow of a moment since.
"It was all a most unique thing," she went on. "And to-night at your
ball I shall witness the coronation. I can hardly wait to see Damory
Court. Do you know, in all these years I never suspected what a
versatile genius you were? It's too wonderful how you have stepped into
this life--into the people's thoughts and feelings--as you have. When
you come back to New York--"
He looked at her, oddly she thought. "Why should I go back?"
"Why? Because it's your natural habitat. Isn't it?"
"That's the word," he said smiling. "It _was_ my habitat. This is my
home."
She was silent a moment in sheer surprise. She had thought of this
Southern essay as a quickly passing incident, a colorful chapter whose
page might any day be turned. But it was impossible to mistake his
meaning. Clearly, he was deeply infatuated with this Arcadian experience
and had no thought at present but to continue it indefinitely.
But it would pass! He was a New Yorker, after all. And what more
charming than to have an old place in such a countryside--a position
ready-made at one's hand, to step into for a month or two when ennui
made the old haunts tasteless? It was worth some cultivation. One must
anchor somewhere. Virginia was not so far from the center; splendid
estates of Northerners dotted even the Carolinas. Here one might be in
hand-touch with everything. And it was no small thing to hold one of the
oldest and proudest names in a section like this. One could always have
a town-house too--there was Washington, and there was Europe....
They were passing the entrance of a cherry-bordered lane, and without
taking his hands from the gear, he nodded toward the low broad-eaved
dwelling with its flowering arbors that showed in flashing glimpses of
brown and red between the intervening trees. "The palace of the queen!"
he said--"Rosewood, by name."
She looked in some curiosity. Clearly, if not a refuge of genteel
poverty, neither was it the abode of wealth; so, from her assured
rampart of the Fargo millions, Katharine reflected complacently. The
girl was a local favorite, of course--he had been tactful as to that. It
was fortunate, in a way, that he had not seen her, Katharine, in the
grand stand until afterward. Feeling toward her as she believed he did,
with his absurd directness, he would have been likely to drop the rose
in her lap, never reflecting that, the tourney being a local function,
the choice should not fall upon an outlander. That would not have tended
to increase his popularity in the countryside, and popularity was the
very salt of social success. So Katharine pondered, her mind, like a
capable general's, running somewhat ahead of the moment.
The slowing of the car brought her back to the present, and she looked
up to see before them the great gate of Gladden Hall. She did not speak
till they had quite stopped.
Then, as her hand lay in his for farewell, "You are right in your
decision," she said softly. "This is your place. You are a Valiant of
Virginia. I didn't realize it before, but I am beginning to see all it
means to you."
Her voice held a lingering indefinable quality that was almost sadness,
and for that one slender instant, she opened on him the unmasked
batteries of her glorious gray eyes.