BY THE SUN-DIAL
Eyes arched with fan-shielded whispers, and fair faces, fore-shortened
as they turned back over powder-white shoulders, followed their
swallow-like movement. From an ever-widening circle of masculine
devotees Katharine Fargo watched them with a smile that cloaked an
increasing and unwelcome question.
Katharine had never looked more handsome; a critical survey of her
mirror at Gladden Hall had assured her of that. Never had her poise been
more superb, her toilet more enrapturing. She was exquisitely gowned in
rose-colored mousseline-de-soie, embroidered in tiny brilliants laid
on in Greek patterns. From her neck, in a single splendid loop of
iridescence against the rosy mist, depended those fabulous pearls--"the
kind you simply _can't_ believe," as Betty Page confided to her
partner--on whose newspaper reproduction (actual diameter) metropolitan
shop-girls had been wont to gaze with glistening eyes; and within their
milky circlet, on her rounded breast, trembled three pale gold-veined
orchids.
Watching that quadrille through her drooping emerald-tinted eyes, she
had received a sudden enlightening impression of Shirley's flawless
beauty. At the tournament her fleeting glimpse had adjudged the other
merely sweetly pretty. The Chalmers' surrey had stopped en route for
Shirley, but in her wraps and veil she had then been all but invisible.
This had been Katharine's first adequate view, and the sight of her
radiant charm had the effect almost of a blow.
For Katharine, be it said, had wholly surrendered to the old, yet new,
attraction that had swept her on the tourney field. This feeling was
no less cerebral and intellectual than it had been: she was no Galatea
waiting her Pygmalion. But it was strong for all that. And what had lain
always in the back of her mind as a half-formed intention, had become a
self-admitted purpose during the motor ride. So as she watched them in
the waltz, seasoned artificialist as she was, Katharine for a breath had
had need of all her address to keep the ball of conversation sparklingly
a-roll. Her natural assurance, however, came quickly to her aid. She had
been an acknowledged beauty too many seasons--had known John Valiant, or
believed she had, too long and too well--to allow the swift keen edge of
trepidation that had touched her to cool into prescience.
In another moment the waltz fainted out, to be succeeded by a
_deux-temps_, and presently the host, in his crimson cloak, was doffing
his plumed hat before her. Circling the polished floor in the maze,
there was something gratefully like former days in the assured touch,
the true and ready guidance. The intrusive question faded. He was the
John Valiant she had always known, of flashing repartee and graceful
compliment, yet with a touch of dignity, too--as befitted the lord of a
manor--which sat well upon him. After a decorous dozen of rounds, she
took his arm and allowed her perfect figure to be conducted through the
various rooms of the ground floor, chatting in quite the old-time way,
till a new gallant claimed her.
The mellow strings made on their merry tune, and at length the
_Washington Post_ marched all in flushed unity of purpose to the great
muslin-walled porch with its array of tables groaning under viands
concocted by Aunt Daphne for the delectation of the palate-weary:
layer-cakes, furry-brown with chocolate, or saffron with orange icing;
fruit-cake richer than an Indian begum; angel-cake as white (as the
major was to remark) as innocence and almost as sweet as the lady upon
whom he pressed it at the moment; yellow jumbles, kisses that crumbled
at a touch, and all nameless toothsome inventions for which new-laid
eggs are beaten and golden citron sliced.
And then once more the waltz-strain supervened and in the yellow parlor
joy was again unconfined. Among the masculine contingent, perhaps, the
same catholicity of age no longer prevailed, certain of the elders
showing an inclination toward one end of the front porch, now hazing
with the fragrance of Havanas. But the dowagers' fans plied on, the
rose-corners echoed their light laughter and the couples footed it as
though midnight was yet unreached and dawn as far afield as Judgment
Day.
Again Valiant claimed Katharine and they glided off on _The Beautiful
Blue Danube_. Her paleness now had a tinge of color but nevertheless he
thought she drooped. "You are tired," he said, "shan't we sit it out?"
"Oh, do you mind?" she responded gratefully. "It _has_ been a fairly
strenuous day, hasn't it!"
He guided her to a corridor, where branches of rhododendron screened an
alcove of settees and seductive cushions. Here, her weariness seemed put
to rout. There was no drooping of fringed lids, no disconcerting
silences; she chatted with ease and piquancy.
"It's like a fairy tale," she said at length dreamily,--"this wonderful
life. To step into it from New York is like coming out of a hot-house
into the spring out-of-doors! It makes our city existence seem so
sordidly artificial. You have chosen right."
"I know it. And yet two months ago a life a hundred miles from the
avenue would have seemed a sad and sandy Sahara. I know better now."
"I have been listening to paeans all the evening," she said. "And you
deserve them. It's a fine big thing you are attempting--the restoring of
this old estate. And I know you have even bigger plans, too."
He nodded, suddenly serious and thoughtful. "There's a lot I'd like to
do. It's not only the house and grounds. There are ... other things. For
instance, back on the mountain--on my own land--is a settlement they
call Hell's-Half-Acre. Probably it has well earned the name. It's a
wretched collection of hovels and surly men and drabs of women and
unkempt children, the poorest of poor-whites. Not one of them can read
or write, and they live like animals. If I'm ever able, I mean to put a
manual-training school up there. And then--"
He ended with a half laugh, suddenly conscious that he was talking in a
language she would scarcely understand--in fact, in a tongue new to
himself. But there was no smile on her lips and her extraordinary
eyes--cool gray, shot through with emerald--were looking into his with a
frankness and sympathy he would not have guessed lay beneath her glacial
placidity.
To Katharine, indeed, it made little difference what philanthropic fads
the man she had chosen might affect as regarded his tenantry. Ambitions
like these had a manorial flavor that did not displease her. And the
Fargo millions would bear much harmless hammering. A change, subtle and
incommunicable, passed over her.
"I shall think of you," she sighed, "as working on in this splendid
program. For it _is_ splendid. But New York will miss you, John."
"Ah, no. I've no delusions on that score. I dare say I'm almost
forgotten there already. Here I have a _place_."
Her head, leaned back against the cushion, turned toward him, the pale
orchids trembling on her bosom--she was so near that he could feel her
breath on his cheek. A new waltz had begun to sigh its languorous
measures.
"Place?" she queried. "Do you think you had no place there? Is it
possible that you do not understand that your going has left--a void?"
He looked at her suddenly, and her eyes fell. No sophisticated blushing
this, though it was by such effective employment of her charms that her
wonderful body and pliant mind had been drilled and fashioned from her
babyhood. Katharine at the moment was as near the luxury of real
embarrassment as she had ever been in her life.
Before he answered, however, the big form of Major Bristow appeared,
looking about him.
"It has--left a void," she said, her eyes still downcast, her voice just
low enough, "--for _me_."
The major pounced upon them at this juncture, feelingly accusing John of
the nefarious design of robbing the assemblage of its bright and
particular star. When Katharine put her hand in her cavalier's arm, her
eyes were dewy under their long shading lashes and her fine lips ever so
little tremulous. It had been her best available moment, and she had
used it.
As she moved away, her faint color slightly heightened, she was glad of
the interruption. It was better as it was. When John Valiant came to her
again....
But to him, as he stood watching her move lightly from him, there was
vouchsafed illumination. It came to him suddenly that that placidity and
hauteur which he had so admired in the old days were no mask for fires
within. The exquisite husk was the real Katharine. Hers was the
loveliness of some tall white lily cut in marble, splendid but chill.
And with the thought, between him and her there swept through the
shimmering candle-lighted air a breath of wet rose-fragrance like an
impalpable cloud, and set in the midst of it a misty star-tinted gown
sprayed with lilies-of-the-valley, and above it a girl's face clear and
vivid, her deep shadow-blue eyes fixed on his.
The music of a two-step was languishing when, a little later, Valiant
and Shirley strolled down between the garden box-hedges, cypress-shaped
and lifting spire-like toward a sky which bent, a silent canopy of mauve
and purplish blue. The moon drowsed between the trees like a great
yellow moth, and the shadows of the branches lay on the ground like
sharp bluish etchings on light green paper. Behind them Damory Court lay
a nest of woven music and laughter. The long white-muslined porch
shimmered goldenly, and beside it under the lanterns dallied a
flirtatious couple or two, ghost-like in the shadows.
Peace brooded over all, a vast sweet silence creeping through the
trees--only here and there the twitter of a waking bird--and around them
was the glimmer of tall flowers standing like pensive moon-worshipers in
an ecstasy of prayerless bloom.
"Come," he said. "Let me take you to see the sun-dial now."
The tangle had been cut away and a narrow gravel-path led through the
pruned creepers. She made an exclamation of delight. The onyx-pillar
stood in an oasis of white--moonflowers, white dahlias, mignonette and
narcissus; bars of late lilies-of-the-valley beyond these, bordered with
Arum-lilies, white clematis, iris and bridal-wreath, shading out into
tender paler hues that ringed the spotless purity like dawning passion.
"White for happiness," he quoted. "You said that when you brought me
here--the day we planted the ramblers. Do you remember what I said? That
some day, perhaps, I should love this spot the best of all at Damory
Court." He was silent a moment, tracing with his finger the motto on the
dial's rim. "When I was very little," he went on,--"hardly more than
three years old, I think,--my father and I had a play, in which we lived
in a great mansion like this. It was called Wishing-House, and it was in
the middle of the Never-Never Land--a sort of beautiful fairy country in
which everything happened right. I know now that the Never-Never Land
was Virginia, and that Wishing-House was Damory Court. No wonder my
father loved it! No wonder his memory turned back to it always! I've
wanted to make it as it was when he lived here. And I want the old dial
to count happy hours for me."
Something had crept into his tone that struck her with a strange sweet
terror and tumult of mind. The hand that clutched her skirts about her
knees had begun to tremble and she caught the other hand to her cheek in
a vague hesitant gesture. The moonflowers seemed to be great round eyes
staring up at her.
"Shirley--" he said, and now his voice was shaken with longing--"will
you make my happiness for me?"
She was standing perfectly still against the sun-dial, both hands, laced
together, against her breast, her eyes on his with a strange startled
look. Over the hush of the garden now, like the very soul of the
passionate night, throbbed the haunting barcarole of _Tales of
Hoffmann_:
"Night of stars and night of love--"
an inarticulate echo of his longing. He took a step toward her, and she
turned like one in sudden terror seeking a way of escape. But he caught
her close in his arms.
"I love you!" he said. "Hear it now in my bride's garden that I've made
for you! I love you, I _love_ you!"
For one instant she struggled. Then, slowly, her eyes turned to his, the
sweet lips trembling, and something dawning deep in the dewy blue that
turned all his leaping blood to quicksilver. "My darling!" he breathed,
and their lips met.
In that delirious moment both had the sense of divine completion that
comes only with love returned. For him there was but the woman in his
arms, the one woman created for him since the foundation of the world.
It was Kismet. For this he had come to Virginia. For this fate had
turned and twisted a thousand ways. Through the riot of his senses, like
a silver blaze, ran the legend of the calendar: "Every man carries his
fate upon a riband about his neck." For her, something seemed to pass
from her soul with that kiss, some deep irrevocable thing, shy but
fiercely strong, that had sprung to him at that lip-contact as steel to
magnet. The foliage about them flared up in green light and the ground
under her feet rose and fell like deep sea-waves.
She lifted her face to him. It was deathly pale, but the light that
burned on it was lit from the whitest altar-fires of Southern girlhood.
"Six weeks ago," she whispered, "you had never seen me!"
He held her crushed to him. She could feel his heart thudding madly.
"I've always known you," he said. "I've seen you a thousand times. I saw
you coming to meet me down a cherry-blossomed lane in Kyoto. I've seen
your eyes peering from behind a veil in India. I've heard your voice
calling to me, through the padding camels' feet, from the desert
mirages. You are the dream I have gone searching always! Ah, _Shirley_,
_Shirley_, _Shirley_!"