"WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER"
The Tournament Ball at Damory Court that night was more than an event.
The old mansion was an irresistible magnet. The floor of its yellow
parlor was known to be of delectable hugeness. Its gardens were a
legend. The whole place, moreover, was steeped in the very odor of old
mystery and new romance. Small wonder that to this particular affair the
elect--the major was the high custodian of the rolls, his decisions
being as the laws of the Medes and Persians--came gaily from the
farthest county line, and the big houses of the neighborhood were
crammed with over-night guests.
By half past nine o'clock the phalanx of chaperons decreed by old
custom had begun to arrive, and the great iron gate at the foot of
the drive--erect and rustless now--saw an imposing processional of
carriages. These passed up a slope as radiant with the fairy light
of paper lanterns as a Japanese thoroughfare in festival season. The
colored bulbs swung moon-like from tree and shrub, painting their
rainbow lusters on grass and driveway. Under the high gray columns of
the porch and into the wide door, framed in its small leaded panes that
glowed with the merry light within, poured a stream of loveliness: in
carriage-wraps of light tints, collared and edged with fur or eider, or
wide-sleeved mandarin coats falling back from dazzling throats and arms,
hair swathed with chiffon against the night dews, and gallantly
cavaliered by masculine black and white.
These from their tiring-rooms overflowed presently, garbed like
dreams, to make obeisance to the dowagers and then to drift through
flower-lined corridors, the foam on recurrent waves of discovery.
Behind the rose-bower in the hall, which shielded a dozen colored
musicians--violins, cello, guitars and mandolins--came premonitory
chirps and shivers, which presently wove into the low and dreamy melody
of _Carry me back to old Virginia_. Around the walls of the yellow
parlor, chairs stood two deep, occupied, or preempted by fan or
gloves or lacy handkerchief. The floor, newly waxed, gleamed in the
candle-light like beaten moonbeams. At its farther end was a low dais
covered by a thin Persian prayer-rug, where a single great tapestried
chair of dull gold waited throne-like, flanked on either side by the
chaperons, ladies of honor to the queen to come.
Promptly as the clock in the hall chimed ten, the music merged into a
march. Doors on opposite sides of the upper hall swung wide and down
the broad staircase came, with slow step, a stately procession: two
heralds in fawn-colored doublets with scroll and trumpets wound with
flowers, behind them the Queen of Beauty, her finger-tips resting
lightly in the hand of the Knight of the Crimson Rose, and these
followed by as brave a concourse of lords and ladies as ever graced
castle-hall in the gallant days "when knighthood was in flower."
Shirley's gown was of pure white: her arms were swathed in tulle,
crossed with straps of seed-pearl, over which hung long semi-flowing
sleeves of satin, and from her shoulders rose a stiff pointed medieval
collar of Venetian lace, against whose pale traceries her bronze hair
glowed with rosy lights. The edge of the square-cut corsage was powdered
with the pearls and against their sheen her breast and neck had the
soft creamy ivory of magnolia buds. Her straight plain train of satin,
knotted with fresh white rose-buds (Nancy Chalmers had labored for a
frantic half-hour in the dressing-room for this effect) was held by the
seven-year-old Byloe twins, in beribboned knickerbockers, duly impressed
with the grandeur of their privilege and grimly intent on acquitting
themselves with glory.
Shirley's face was still touched with the surprise that had swept it
as Valiant had stepped to her side. She had looked to see him in the
conventional panoply a sober-sided masculine mode decrees. What she
had beheld was a figure that might have stepped out of an Elizabethan
picture-frame. He was in deep purple slashed with gold. A cloak of thin
crimson velvet narrowly edged with ermine hung from his shoulders, lined
with tissue-like cloth-of-gold. From the rolling brim of his hat swept a
curling purple plume. He wore a slender dress-sword, and an order set
with brilliants sparkled on his breast.
The costume had been one he had worn at a fancy ball of the winter
before. It had been made from a painting at Windsor of one of the Dukes
of Buckingham, and it made a perfect foil for Shirley's white.
The eleven knights of the tourney, each with his chosen lady, if less
splendid, were tricked out in sufficiently gorgeous attire. The Knight
of Castlewood was in olive velveteen slashed with yellow, with Nancy
Chalmers, in flowered panniers and beaded pompadour, on his arm. The
Lord of Brandon wore black and silver, and Westover's champion was in
forest green. Many an ancient brocade had been awakened for the nonce
from its lavender bed, and ruffs and gold-braid were at no premium.
To the twanging of the deft black fingers, they passed in gorgeous array
between files of low-cut gowns and flower-like faces and masculine
swallow-tails, to the yellow parlor. Once there the music ceased with
a splendid crash, the eleven knights each dropped upon one knee, the
eleven ladies-in-waiting curtsied low, and Shirley, seated upon the
dais, leaned her burnished head to receive the crown. What though the
bauble was but bristol-board, its jeweled chasing but tinsel and paste?
On her head it glowed and trembled, a true diadem. As Valiant set the
glittering thing on those rich and wonderful coils, the music of her
presence was singing a swift melody in his blood.
His coronation address held no such flowery periods as would have rolled
from the major's soul. He had chosen a single paragraph he had lighted
on in an old book in the library--a history of the last Crusade in
French black-letter. He had translated and memorized the archaic
phrasing, keeping the quaint feeling of the original:
"These noble Knights bow in your presence, fair lady, as their Liege,
whom they know as even in judgment, as dainty in fulfilling these our
acts of arms, and do recommend their all unto your Good Grace in as
lowly wise as they can. O Queen, in whom the whole story of virtue is
written with the language of beauty, your eyes, which have been only
wont to discern the bowed knees of kneeling hearts and, inwardly turned,
found always the heavenly solace of a sweet mind, see them, ready in
heart and able with hands not only to assailing but to prevailing."
A hushed rustle of applause--not loud: the merest whisper of silken feet
and feathered fans tapped softly--testified to a widespread approbation.
It was the first sight many there had had of John Valiant and in both
looks and manner befitted their best ideals. True, his accent had not
that subtle gloze, that consonantal softness and intonation that mark
the Southron, but he was a Southron for all that, and one of themselves.
The queen's curtsey was the signal for the music, which throbbed
suddenly into a march, and she stepped down beside him. Couple after
couple, knights and ladies, ranged behind them, till the twenty-four
stood ready for the royal quadrille. It was the old-fashioned lancers,
but the deliberate strain lent the familiar measures something of the
stately effect of the minuet. The rhythmic waves alternately bore
Shirley to his arms and whisked her away, for fleeting hand-touch of
this or that demure or laughing maid, giving him glimpses of the seated
rows by the walls, of flower vistas, of open windows beyond which peered
shining black faces delightedly watching.
Quadrilles were not invented as aids to conversation, and John Valiant's
and Shirley's was necessarily limited. "The decorations are simply
delicious!" she said as they faced each other briefly. "How _did_ you
manage it?"
"Home talent with a vengeance. Uncle Jefferson and I did it with our
little hatchets. But the roses--"
They were swooped apart and Shirley found herself curtseying to Chilly
Lusk. "More than queen!" he said under his breath. "I had my heart set
on naming you to-day. I reckon I've lost my rabbit-foot!"
Opposite, in the turn, Betty Page had slipped her dainty hand into John
Valiant's. "Ah haven't seen such a lovely dance for _yeahs_!" she
sighed. "Isn't Shirley too sweet? If Ah had hair like hers, Ah wouldn't
speak to a soul on earth!"
The exigencies of the figure gave no space for answer, and presently,
after certain labyrinthine evolutions, Shirley's eyes were gazing into
his again. "How adorably you look!" he whispered, as he bowed over her
hand. "How does it feel to be a queen?"
"This little head was never made to wear a crown," she laughed. "Queens
should be regal. Miss Fargo would have--"
The music swept the rest away, but not the look of blinding reproach he
gave her that made her heart throb wildly as she glided on.
* * * * *
The last note of the quadrille slipped into a waltz dreamily slow, and
Valiant put his arm about Shirley and they floated away. Once before,
in the moonlighted garden at Rosewood, she had lain in his arms for
one brief instant; then she had seemed like some trapped wood-thing
resisting. Now, her slender body swaying to his every motion, she was
another creature. Under the drooping tawny hair her face was almost as
pale as the white satin of her gown; her lips were parted, and as they
moved, he could feel her heart rise and fall to her languorous breath.
There was no speech between them; for those few golden moments all
else vanished utterly, and he guided by instinct, as oblivious to the
floor-full as if he were drifting through some enchanted ether, holding
to his breast the incarnation of all loveliness, a thing of as frail
enchantment as the glow of stars upon snow, yet for him always the one
divine vision!