THE MAJOR BREAKS SILENCE
Ten minutes later a motor was hurling itself along the Red Road to
the village. The doctor was in his office and no time was lost in the
return. En route they passed Judge Chalmers driving, and seeing the
flying haste, he turned his sweating pair and lashed them after the car.
So that when the major finally opened his eyes from the big leather
couch, he looked on the faces of two of his oldest friends. Recollection
and understanding seemed to come at once.
"Well--Southall?"
The doctor's hand closed over the white one on the settee. He did not
answer, but his chin was quivering and he was winking fast.
"How long?" asked the major after a lengthy minute.
"Maybe--maybe an hour, Bristow. Maybe not."
The major winced and shut his eyes, but when the doctor, reaching
swiftly for a phial on the table, turned again, it was to find that
look once more on him, now in yearning appeal. "Southall," he said,
"send for Judith. I--I must see her. There's time."
The judge started up. "I'll bring her," he said, and his voice had all
the tenderness of a woman's. "My carriage is at the door and with those
horses she ought to be here in twenty minutes." He leaned over the
couch. "Bristow," he said, "would you--would you like me to send for the
rector?"
The major smiled, a little wistfully, and shook his head. He lay silent
for a while after the judge had gone out--he seemed housing his
strength--while the ormolu clock on the desk ticked ominously on, and
the doctor busied himself with the glasses beside him. Presently he said
huskily:
"You've had a bad fall, Bristow. You were dizzy, I reckon."
"Dizzy!" echoed the major with feeble asperity. "It was Greef King."
"Greef King! Good God!"
"He was hiding behind the screen. He struck me with something. He swore
at his trial he'd get me. I was--a fool not to have remembered his time
was out."
A look, wolf-like and grim, had sprung into the doctor's face. His eyes
searched the room, and he crossed the floor and picked up something from
the rug. He looked at it a moment, then thrust it hastily into his
breast pocket.
"I--remember now. It was a pistol. He snapped it twice, but it missed
fire."
"He can't hide where we'll not find him!" The doctor spoke with low but
terrible energy.
"Not that I care--myself," said the major difficultly. "But I reckon
he'd better be settled with, or he'll--be killing some one worth while
one of these days."
A big tear suddenly loosed itself from the doctor's eyelid and rolled
down his cheek, and he turned hastily away.
"There's no call to feel bad," said the major gruffly. "I've sort of
been a thorn-in-the-flesh to you, Southall. We always rowed, somehow,
and yet--"
The doctor choked and cleared his throat.
"I reckon," the major murmured with a faint smile, "you won't get quite
so much fun out of Chalmers--and the rest. They never did rise to you
like I did."
A little later he asked for the restorative. "Ten minutes gone," he said
then. "Chalmers ought to be at Rosewood by now ... what a fool way to
go--like this. But it wasn't--apoplexy, Southall, anyway."
* * * * *
At the sound of wheels on the drive, Valiant went out quietly. Huddled
in a corner of the hall were Uncle Jefferson and Aunt Daphne, with
Jereboam, the major's body-servant. Aunt Daphne, her apron thrown over
her face was rocking to and fro silently, and old Jereboam's head was
bowed on his breast. Valiant went quickly to the rear of the hall. A
painful embarrassment had come to him--a curious confusion mingling
with a fastidious sense of shrinking. How should he meet this woman who
recoiled from the very sight of his face? In the swiftness of the tragic
event he had forgotten this. From the background he saw Judge Chalmers
lift down the frail form, and suddenly his heart leaped. There were two
feminine figures; Shirley was with her mother.
The doctor stood just inside the library door and Mrs. Dandridge went
hastily toward him, her light cane tapping through the stricken silence.
Jereboam lifted his head and looked at her piteously.
"Reck'n Mars' Monty cyan' see ole Jerry now," he quavered, "but yo'-all
gib him mah love, Mis' Judith, and tell him--" His voice broke.
"Yes, yes, Jerry. I will."
The doctor closed the door upon her and came to where Shirley waited.
"Come, my dear," he said, and dropped his arm about her. "Let us go out
to the garden."
As they passed Valiant, she held out her hand to him. There was no word
between them, but as his hand swallowed hers, his heart said to her, "I
love you, I love you! No matter what is between us, I shall always love
you!"
It was wordless, a heart-whisper that only love itself could hear, and
he could read no answer in the deep pools of her eyes, heavy now with
unshed tears. But in some subtle way this voiceless greeting comforted
and lightened by a little the weight of dumb impotence that he had
borne.
* * * * *
In the library, lighted so brightly by the sunlight, yet grave with the
hush of that solemn presence, the major looked into the face of the
woman for whose coming he had waited so anxiously.
"It's all--up, Judith," he said faintly. "I've come to the jumping-off
place."
She looked at him whitely. "Monty, Monty!" she cried. "Don't leave me
this way! I always thought--"
He guessed what she would have said. "Heaven knows you're needed more
than me, Judith. After all, I reckon when my time had to come I'd have
chosen the quick way." His voice trailed out and he struggled for
breath.
"Jerry's in the hall, Monty. He asked me to give you his love."
"Poor old nigger! He--used to tote me on his back when I was a little
shaver." There was a silence. "Don't kneel, Judith," he said at length.
"You will be so tired."
She rose obediently and drew up a chair. "Monty," she faltered
tremulously, "shall I say a prayer? I've never prayed much--my prayers
never seemed to get above the ceiling, somehow. But I'll--try."
He smiled wanly. "I wouldn't want any better than yours, Judith. But
seems as if I'd been prayed over enough. I reckon God Almighty's like
anybody else, and doesn't want to be ding-donged all the time."
He seemed to have been gathering his resolution, and presently his hand
fumbled over his breast. "My wallet; give it to me." She drew it from
the pocket and the uncertain fingers took out a key. "It opens a tin
box in my trunk. There's--a letter in it for you." He paused a moment,
panting: "Judith," he said, "I've got to tell you, but it's mighty hard.
The letter ... it's one Valiant gave me for you--that morning, after the
duel. I--never gave it to you."
If she had been white before, she grew like marble now. Her slim fingers
clutched the little cane till it rattled against the chair, and the lace
at her throat shook with her breathing. "Yes--Monty."
He lifted his hand with difficulty and put the key into hers. "The
seal's still unbroken, Judith," he said, "but I've kept it these thirty
years."
She was holding the key in her hands, looking down upon it. There was a
strained half-fearful wonder in her face. For an instant she seemed
quite to have forgotten him in the grip of some swift and painful
emotion.
"I loved you, Judith!" he stammered in anguished appeal. "From the
time we were boy and girl together, I loved you. You never cared for
me--Sassoon and Valiant had the inside track. You might have loved me;
but I had no chance with either of them. Then came the duel. There was
only Valiant then. I overheard his promise to you that night, Judith. He
had broken that! If you cared more for him than for Sassoon, you might
have forgiven him, and I should have lost you! I didn't want you to call
him back, Judith! I wanted my chance! And so--I took it. That's--the
reason, dear. It's--it's a bad one, isn't it!"
A shiver went over her set face--like a breath of wind over tall grass,
and she seemed to come back from an infinite distance to place and
moment. Between the curtains a white butterfly hovered an instant, and
in the yard she heard the sound of some winged thing fluttering. The
thought darted to her that it was the sound of her own dead heart
awaking. She looked at the key and all at once put a hand to her mouth
as though to still words clamoring there.
"Judith," he said tremulously, between short struggles for breath,
"all these years, after I found there was no chance for me, I reckon
I've--prayed only one prayer. 'God, let it be Sassoon that she loved!'
And I've prayed that mighty near every day. The thought that maybe it
was Valiant has haunted me like a ghost. You never told--and I never
dared ask you. Judith--"
Her face was still averted, and when she did not speak he turned his
head from her on the pillow, with a breath that was almost a moan. She
started, looking at him an instant in piteous hesitation, then swiftly
kissed the little key and closed her hand tight upon it. Truth? She saw
only the pillow and the graying face upon it! She threw herself on her
knees by the couch and laid her lips on the pallid forehead.
"It--it _was_ Sassoon, Monty," she said, and her voice broke on the
first lie she had ever told.
"Thank God!" he gasped. He struggled to raise himself on his elbow, then
suddenly the strength faded out and he settled back.
Her cry brought the doctor, but this time the restorative seemed of no
avail, and after a time he came and touched her shoulder. With a last
long look at the ash-pale face on the settee she followed him from the
room. In the yellow parlor he put her into a chair.
"No," he said, in answer to her look, "he won't rouse again."
"I will wait," she told him, and he left her, shutting the door with
careful softness.
* * * * *
But the slight figure with its silver hair, sitting there, was not
alone. Ghosts were walking up and down. Not the misty wraiths John
Valiant had at times imagined went flitting along the empty corridors,
but faces very clear in the sunlight, that came and went with the
memories so long woven over by the shuttle of time--evoked now by the
touch of a key that her hand still clenched tightly in its palm.
There welled over her in a tide those days of puzzle, the weeks of
waiting silence, the slow inexorable months of heartache, the long years
that had deepened the mystery of Beauty Valiant's exile. In the first
shock of the news that Sassoon had fallen by his hand, she had thought
she could not forgive him that broken faith. She and his promise to her
had not weighed in the balance against his idea of manly "honor"! But
this bitterness had at length slipped away. "He will write," she had
told herself, "and explain." But no word had come. Whispers had flitted
to her--the tale of Sassoon's intoxication--stinging barbs that clung to
Beauty Valiant's name. That these should rest unanswered had filled her
with resentment and anger. Slowly, but with deadly surety, had grown the
belief that he no longer cared. In the end there had been left her only
pride--the pride that covers its wound and smiles. And she had hidden
her wound with flowers. But in the deepest well of her heart her love
for him had rested unchanged, clear and defined as a moss in amber,
wrapped in that mystery of silence.
In the little haircloth trunk back in her room lay an old scrap-book. It
held a few leaves torn from letters and many newspaper clippings. From
these she had known of his work, his marriage, the great commercial
success for which his name had stood--the name that from the day of his
going, she had so seldom taken upon her lips. Some of them had dealt
with his habits and idiosyncrasies, hints of an altered personality, an
aloofness or loneliness that had set him apart and made him, in a way, a
stranger to those who should have known him best. Thus her mind had come
to hold a double image: the grave man these shadowed forth, and the man
she had loved, whose youthful face was in the locket she wore always on
her breast. It was this face that was printed on her heart, and when
John Valiant had stood before her on the porch at Rosewood, it had
seemed to have risen, instinct, from that old grave.
He had not kept silence! He had written! It pealed through her brain
like a muffled bell. But Beauty Valiant was gone with her youth; in the
room near by lay that old companion who would never speak to her again,
the lifelong friend--who had really failed her thirty years ago!... and
in a tin box a mile away lay a letter....
* * * * *
"He won't rouse again," the doctor had said, but a little later, as he
and Valiant sat beside the couch, the major opened his eyes suddenly.
"Shirley," he whispered. "Where's Shirley?"
She was sitting on the porch just outside the open window, and when she
entered, tears were on her face. The doctor drew back silently; but when
Valiant would have done so, the major called him nearer.
"No," he panted; "I like to see you two together." His voice was very
weak and tired.
As she leaned and touched his hand, he smiled whimsically. "It's mighty
curious," he said, "but I can't get it out of my head that it's Beauty
Valiant and Judith that I'm really talking to. Foolish--isn't it?" But
the idea seemed to master him, and presently he began to call Shirley by
her mother's name. An odd youthfulness crept into his eyes; a subtle
paradoxical boyishness. His cheek tinged with color. The deep lines
about his mouth smoothed miraculously out.
"Judith," he whispered, "--you--sure you told me the truth a while ago,
when you said--you said--"
"Yes, yes," Shirley answered, putting her young arm under him, thinking
only to soothe the anxiety that seemed vaguely to thread some vague
hallucination.
He smiled again. "It makes it easier," he said. He looked at Valiant,
his mind seeming to slip farther and farther away. "Beauty," he gasped,
"you didn't go away after all, did you! I dreamed it--I reckon. It'll
be--all right with you both."
He sighed peacefully, and his eyes turned to Shirley's and closed.
"I'm--so glad," he muttered, "so glad I--didn't really do it, Judith. It
would have--been the--only--low-down thing--I--ever did."
The doctor went swiftly to the door and beckoned to Jereboam. "Come in
now, Jerry," he said in a low voice, "quickly."
The old negro fell on his knees by the couch. "Mars' Monty!" he cried.
"Is yo' gwine away en leab ol' Jerry? Is yo'? Mars'?"
The cracked but loving voice struck across the void of the failing
sense. For a last time the major opened his misting eyes.
"Jerry, you--black scoundrel!" he whispered, and Shirley felt his head
grow heavier on her arm, "I reckon it's--about time--to be going--home!"