WHAT THE CAPE JESSAMINES KNEW
Emmaline was crouched in a chair in the hall, a rug thrown over her
knees, in open-mouthed slumber. She started up at the touch of Shirley's
hand, yawning widely.
"I 'clare t' goodness," she muttered, "I was jes' fixin' t' go t'
sleep!" The lamp on the table was low and she turned up the wick, then
threw up her arms like ramrods, in delight.
"Lor', honey," she said in a rapturous whisper, "I reck'n they all say
yo' was th' _purties'_ queen on earth, when th' vict'ry man set that
crown, with th' di'mon's as big as scaley-barks, on that little gol'
haid! But yo' pale, honey-chile. Yo' dance yo'se'f mos' ter death, I
reck'n."
"I--I'm so tired, Emmaline. Take the crown. It's heavy."
The negro woman untangled the glittering points from the meshing hair
with careful fingers. "Po' li'l chickydee-dee!" she said lovingly.
"Reck'n she flop all th' feddahs outer her wings. Gimme that ol' tin
crown--I like ter lam' it out th' winder! Come on, now; we go up-stairs
soft so's not ter 'sturb Mis' Judith."
In the silvery-blue bedroom, she deftly unfastened the hooks of the
heavy satin gown and coaxed her mistress to lie on the sofa while she
unpinned the masses of waving hair till they lay in a rich surge over
the cushion. Then she brought a brush and crouching down beside her,
began with long gentle strokes to smooth out the silken threads, talking
to her the while in a soft crooning monotone.
"I jes' know Mis' Judith wish she well ernuf ter see her chile bein'
queens en things 'mongst all th' othah qual'ty! When they want er
_queen_ they jes' gotter come fo' her little girl. Talk 'bout th'
stars--she 'way above _them_! Ranston he say Mistah Valiant 'bout th'
bestes' dancer in th' world; say th' papers up in New York think th' sun
rise en set in his heels. 'Spec' ter-night he dance er little with th'
othahs jes' ter be p'lite, till he git back ter th' one he put th' crown
on. So-o-o tired she is! But Em'line gwine ter bresh away all th'
achiness--en she got yo' baid all turned _down_ fo' yo'--en yo' pretty
little night-dress all _ready_--en yo' gwineter _sleep_--en
_sleep_--till yo' kyan sleep no mo' _nohow_!"
Under these ministrations Shirley lay languid and speechless, her eyes
closed. The fear that had stricken her heart by turns seemed a cold hand
pressing upon its beating and an algid vapor rising stealthily over it.
But her hands were hot and her eyelids burned. Finally she roused
herself.
"Thank you, Emmaline," she said in a tired voice, "good night now; I'm
going to sleep, and you must go to bed, too."
But alone in the warm wan dark, Shirley lay staring open-eyed at the
ceiling. Slowly the terror was seizing upon her, the dread, noiseless
and intangible, folding her in the shadow of its numbing wings. Was her
mother the one over whom that old duel had been fought? Was it she whose
love had been wrecked in that long-ago tragedy that all at once seemed
so horribly near and real? Was that the explanation of her fainting? She
remembered the cape jessamines. Was the date of that duel--of the death
of Sassoon--the anniversary her mother kept?
She sat up in bed, trembling. Then she rose, and opening the door with
caution, crept down the stair, sliding her hot hand before her along
the cool polished banister. Only a subdued glimmer came through the
curtained windows, stealing in with the ever-present scent of the
arbors. It was so still she thought she could hear the very heart of the
dark beating. As she passed through the lower hall, a hound on the
porch, scenting her, stirred, thumped his tail on the flooring, and
whined. Groping her way to the dining-room, she lighted a candle and
passed through a corridor into a low-ceilinged chamber employed as a
general receptacle--a glorified garret, as Mrs. Dandridge dubbed it.
It showed a strange assemblage! A row of chests, stored with winter
clothing, gave forth a clean pungent smell of cedar, and at one side
stood an antique spinet and a worn set of horsehair furniture. Sofa and
chairs were piled with excrescences in the shape of old engravings in
carved ebony frames, ancient scrap-books and what-not, and on a table
stood a rounded glass case with a flat base--the sort in which an older
generation had been wont to display to awestruck admiration its
terrifying concoctions of wax fruit.
Shirley had turned her miserable eyes on a book-shelf along one wall.
The volumes it contained had been her father's, and among them stood a
row of tomes taller than their fellows--the bound numbers of a county
newspaper, beginning before the war. The back of each was stamped with
the year. She was deciphering these faded imprints. "Thirty years ago,"
she whispered; "yes, here it is."
She set down the candle and dragged out one of the huge leather-backs.
Staggering under the weight, she rested its edge on the table and began
feverishly to turn the pages, her eye on the date-line. She stopped
presently with a quick breath--she had reached May 15th. The year was
that of the duel: the date was the day following the jessamine
anniversary. Fearfully her eye overran the columns.
Then suddenly she put her open hand on the page as though to blot out
the words, every trace of color stricken from cheek and brow. But the
line seemed to glow up through the very flesh: "_Died, May 14th; Edward
Sassoon, in his twenty-sixth year_."
The book slipped to the floor with a crash that echoed through the room.
It was true, then! It _was_ Sassoon's death that her mother mourned. The
man in whose arms she had stood such a little while ago by the old dial
of Damory Court was the son of the man who had killed him! She lifted
her hands to her breast with a gesture of anguish, then dropped to her
knees, buried her face on the dusty seat of one of the rickety horsehair
chairs and broke into a wild burst of sobs, noiseless but terrible, that
seemed to rise in her heart and tear themselves up through her breast.
"Oh, God," she whispered, "just when I was so happy! Oh, mother, mother!
You loved him, and your heart broke when he died. It was Valiant who
broke it--Valiant--Valiant. His father!"
She slipped down upon the bare floor and crouched there shuddering and
agonized, her disheveled hair wet with her tears. Was her love to be but
the thing of an hour, a single clasp--and then, forever, nothing? His
father's deed was not his fault. Yet how could she love a man whose
every feature brought a pang to that mother she loved more than
herself? So, over and over, the wheel of her thought turned in the same
desolate groove, and over and over the paroxysms of grief and longing
submerged her.
Dawn was paling the guttering candle and streaking the sky outside
before she composed herself. She rose heavily, as white as a narcissus
flower, winding back her hair from her quivering face, and struggling to
repress the tearless sobs that still caught stranglingly at her breath.
The gray infiltrating light seemed gaunt and cruel, and the thin
cheeping of waking sparrows on the lawn came to her with a haunting
intolerable note of pain.
Noiselessly as she had descended, she crept again up the stair. As she
passed her mother's door, she paused a moment, and laying her arms out
across it, pressed her lips to the dark grain of the wood.