RENUNCIATION
The grim posse that gathered in haste that afternoon did not ride far.
Its work had been singularly well done. It brought back to Damory Court,
however, a white bulldog whose broken leg made his would-be joyful bark
trail into a sad whimper as his owner took him into welcoming arms.
Next day the major was carried to his final rest in the myrtled shadow
of St. Andrew's. At the service the old church was crowded to its doors.
Valiant occupied a humble place at one side--the others, he knew, were
older friends than he. The light of the late afternoon came dimly in
through the stained-glass windows and seemed to clothe with subtle
colors the voice of the rector as he read the solemn service. The
responses came brokenly, and there were tears on many faces.
Valiant could see the side-face of the doctor, its saturnine grimness
strangely moved, and beyond him, Shirley and her mother. Many glanced at
them, for the major's will had been opened that morning and few there
had been surprised to learn that, save for a life-annuity for old
Jereboam, he had left everything he possessed to Shirley. Miss Mattie
Sue was beside them, and between, wan with weeping, sat Rickey Snyder.
Shirley's arm lay shelteringly about the small shoulders as if it would
stay the passion of grief that from time to time shook them.
The evening before had been further darkened by the child's
disappearance and Miss Mattie Sue had sat through half the night in
tearful anxiety. It was Valiant who had solved the riddle. In her first
wild compunction, Rickey had gasped out the story of her meeting with
Greef King, his threat and her own terrorized silence, and when he heard
of this he had guessed her whereabouts. He had found her at the Dome, in
the deserted cabin from which on a snowy night six years ago, Shirley
had rescued her. She had fled there in her shabbiest dress, her toys and
trinkets left behind, taking with her only a string of blue glass beads
that had been Shirley's last Christmas present.
"Let me stay!" she had wailed. "I'm not fit to live down there! It's all
my fault that it happened. I was a coward. I ought to stay here in
Hell's-Half-Acre forever and ever!" Valiant had carried her back in his
arms down the mountain--she had been too spent to walk.
He thought of this now as he saw that arm about the child in that
protective, almost motherly gesture. It made his own heartache more
unbearable. Such a little time ago he had felt that arm about _him_!
He leaned his hot head against the cool plastered wall, trying to keep
his mind on the solemn reading. But Shirley's voice and laugh seemed to
be running eerily through the chanting lines, and her face shut out
pulpit and lectern. It swept over him suddenly that each abominable hour
could but make the situation more impossible for them both. He had seen
her as she entered the church, had thought her even paler than in the
wood, the bluish shadows deeper under her eyes. Those delicate charms
were in eclipse.
And it was he who was to blame!
It came to him with a stab of enlightenment. He had been thinking only
of himself all the while. But for her, it was his presence that had now
become the unbearable thing. A cold sweat broke on his forehead. "...
for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner: as all my fathers were.
O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength before I go
hence...." The intoning voice fell dully on his ears.
To go away! To pass out of her life, to a future empty of her? How
could he do that? When he had parted from her in the rain he had felt
a frenzy of obstinacy. It had seemed so clear that the barrier must
in the end yield before their love. He had never thought of surrender.
Now he told himself that flight was all that was left him. She--her
happiness--nothing else mattered. Damory Court and its future--the plans
he had made--the Valiant name--in that clarifying instant he knew that
all these, from that May day on the Red Road, had clung about _her_. She
had been the inspiration of all.
"Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom--"
The voices of the unvested choir rose clearly and some one at his side
was whispering that this had been the major's favorite hymn. But he
scarcely heard.
When the service was ended the people filled the big yard while the last
reverent words were spoken at the grave. Valiant, standing with the
rest, saw Shirley, with her mother and the doctor, pass out of the gate.
She was not looking toward him. A mist was before his eyes as they drove
away, and the vision of her remained wavering and indistinct--a pale
blurred face under shining hair.
He realized after a time that the yard was empty and the sexton was
locking the church door. He went slowly to the gate, and just outside
some one spoke to him. It was Chisholm Lusk. They had not met since the
night of the ball. Even in his own preoccupation, Valiant noted that
Lusk's face seemed to have lost its exuberant youthfulness. It was worn
as if with sleeplessness, and had a look of suffering that touched him.
And all at once, while they stood looking at each other, Valiant knew
what the other had waited to say.
"I won't beat about the bush," said Lusk stammering. "I've got to ask
you something. I reckon you've guessed that I--that Shirley--"
Valiant touched the young fellow's arm. "Yes," he said, "I think I
know."
"It's no new thing, with me," said the other hoarsely. "It's been three
years. The night of the ball, I thought perhaps that--I don't mean to
ask what you might have a right to resent--but I must find out. Is there
any reason why I shouldn't try my luck?"
Valiant shook his head. "No," he said heavily, "there is no reason."
The boyish look sprang back to Lusk's face. He drew a long breath. "Why,
then I _will_," he said. "I--I'm sorry if I hurt you. Heaven knows I
didn't want to!"
He grasped the other's hand with a man's heartiness and went up the road
with a swinging stride; and Valiant stood watching him go, with his
hands tight-clenched at his side.
* * * * *
A little later Valiant climbed the sloping driveway of Damory Court. It
seemed to stare at him from a thousand reproachful eyes. The bachelor
red squirrel from his tree-crotch looked down at him askance. The
redbirds, flashing through the hedges, fluttered disconsolately.
Fire-Cracker, the peacock, was shrieking from the upper lawn and the
strident discord seemed to mock his mood.
The great house had become home to him; he told himself that he
would make no other. The few things he had brought--his books and
trophies--had grown to be a part of it, and they should remain. The ax
should not be laid to the walnut grove. As his father had done, he would
leave behind him the life he had lived there, and the old Court should
be once more closed and deserted. Uncle Jefferson and Aunt Daphne might
live on in the cabin back of the kitchens. There was pasturage for the
horse and the cows and for old Sukey, and some acres had already been
cleared for planting. And there would be the swans, the ducks and
chickens, the peafowl and the fish.
A letter had come to him that morning. The Corporation had resumed
business with credit unimpaired. Public opinion was more than friendly
now. A place waited for him there, and one of added honor, in a concern
that had rigorously cleansed itself and already looked forward to a new
career of prosperity. But he thought of this now with no thrill. The old
life no longer called. There were still wide unpeopled spaces somewhere
where a man's hand and brain were no less needed, and there was work
there that would help him to bear, if not forget.
He paced up and down the porch under the great gray columns, his steps
spiritless and lagging. The Virginia creeper, trailing over its end,
waved to and fro with a sound like a sigh. How long would it be before
the lawn was once more unkempt and draggled? Before burdock and thistle,
mullein and Spanish-needle would return to smother the clover? Before
Damory Court, on which he had spent such loving labor, would lie
again as it lay that afternoon when he had rattled thither on Uncle
Jefferson's crazy hack? Before there would be for him, in some far-away
corner of the world, only Wishing-House and the Never-Never Land?
In the hall he stood a moment before the fireplace, his eyes on its
carven motto, _I clinge_: the phrase was like a spear-thrust. He began
to wander restlessly through the house, up and down, like a prowling
animal. The dining-room looked austere and chill--only the little lady
in hoops and love-curls who had been his great-grandmother smiled
wistfully down from her gilt frame above the console--and in the library
a melancholy deeper than that of yesterday's tragedy seemed to hang,
through which Devil-John, drawing closer the leash of his leaping hound,
glared sardonically at him from his one cold eye. The shutters of the
parlor were closed, but he threw them open and let the rich light
pierce the yellow gloom, glinting from the figures in the cabinet and
weaving a thousand tiny rainbows in the prisms of the great chandelier.
He went up-stairs, into the bedrooms one by one, now and then passing
his hand over a polished chair-back or touching an ornament or a frame
on the wall: into _The Hilarium_ with its records of childish study and
play. The dolls stood now on dress-parade in glass cases, and prints in
bright colors, dear to little people, were on the walls. He opened the
shutters here, too, and stood some time on the threshold before he
turned and went heavily down-stairs.
Through the rear door he could see the kitchens, and Aunt Daphne sitting
under the trumpet-vine piecing a nine-patch calico quilt with little
squares of orange and red and green cloth. Two diminutive darkies were
sprawled on the ground looking up at her with round serious eyes, while
a wary bantam pecked industriously about their bare legs.
"En den whut de roostah say, Aunt Daph?"
"Ol' roostah he hollah ter all he wifes, 'Oo--ooo! Oo--ooo! Young
_Mars'_ come!--Young _Mars'_ come! Young _Mars'_ come!' En dey
all mighty skeered, 'case Mars' John he cert'n'y fond ob fried
chick'n. But de big tuhkey gobbler he don' b'leeve et 'tall.
'Doubtful--doubtful--doubtful!' he say, lak dat. Den de drake he peep
eroun' de cornah, en he say, 'Haish! Haish! Haish!' Fo' he done seed
Mars' John comin', sho' nuff. But et too late by den, fo' Aunt Daph
she done grab Mis' Pullet, en Mars' John he gwineter eat huh dis bery
evenin' fo' he suppah. Now you chillen run erlong home ter yo' mammies,
en don' yo' pick none ob dem green apples on de way, neidah."
* * * * *
It was not till after dark had come that Valiant said good-by to the
garden. He loved it best under the starlight. He sat a long hour under
the pergola overlooking the lake, where he could dimly see the green
rocks, and the white froth of the water bubbling and chuckling down over
their rounded outlines to the shrouded level below. The moon lifted
finally and soared through the sky, blowing out the little lamps of
stars. Under its light a gossamer mist robed the landscape in a
shimmering opalescence, in which tree and shrub altered their values and
became transmuted to silver sentinels, watching over a demesne of
violet-velvet shadows filled with sleepy twitterings and stealthy
rustlings and the odor of wild honeysuckle.
At last he stood before the old sun-dial, rearing its column from its
pearly clusters of blossoms. "_I count no hours but the happy ones_": he
read the inscription with an indrawn breath. Then, groping at its base,
he lifted the ivy that had once rambled there and drew up the tangle
again over the stone disk. His Bride's-Garden!
In the library, an hour later, sitting at the big black pigeonholed
desk, he wrote to Shirley:
"I am leaving to-night on the midnight train. Uncle Jefferson
will give you this note in the morning. I will not stay at
Damory Court to bring more pain into your life. I am going very
far away. I understand all you are feeling--and so, good-by,
good-by. God keep you! I love you and I shall love you always,
always!"