The Valiants of Virginia Part 26

"Oh!" breathed s.h.i.+rley. "That would be too wonderful!"

The major seized his hand and shook it heartily. "I can answer for the committee," he said. "They'll jump at it. Why, sah, the new generation has never set eyes inside the house. It's a golden legend to them."

"Then I'll go ahead with arrangements."

s.h.i.+rley's eyes were overrunning the cropped lawn, which now showed a clear smooth slope between the arching trees. "It was lovely in its ruin," she said, "but it was pathetic, too. Unc' Jefferson used to say 'De ol' place look lak et ben griebin' etse'f ter deff wid lonesomeness.' Somehow, now it looks glad. Just hear that small citizen!"

A red squirrel sat up in a tree-crotch, his paws tucked into his furry breast, barking angrily at them. "He's shocked at the house-cleaning,"

she said; "a sign he's a bachelor."

"So am I," said Valiant.

"Maybe he's older than you," she countered; "and sot in his ways."

"I accept him as a warning," he said, and she laughed with him.

He led them around the house and down the terraces of the formal garden, and here the major's encomiums broke forth again. "You are going to take us old folks back, sah," he said with real feeling. "This gyarden in its original lines was unique. It had a piquancy and a picturesqueness that, thank G.o.d, are to be restored! One can understand the owner of an estate like this having no desire to spend his life philandering abroad. We all hope, sah, that you will recur to the habit of your ancestors, and count Damory Court home."

Valiant smiled slowly. "I don't dream of anything else," he said. "My life, as I map it out, seems to begin here. The rest doesn't count--only the years when I was little and had my father."

The major carefully adjusted his eye-gla.s.ses. His head was turned away.

"Ah, yes," he said.

"The last twenty years," continued the other, "from my present view-point, are valuable mainly for contrast."

"As a consistent regimen of _pate de foie gras_," said s.h.i.+rley quizzically, "makes one value bread and b.u.t.ter?"

He shook his head at her. "As starvation makes one appreciate plenty.

The next twenty years are to be here. But they hold side-trips, too. Now and then there's a jaunt back to the city."

"Contrast again?" she asked interestedly.

"Yes and no. Yes, because no one who has never known that blazing clanging life can really understand the peace and blessedness of a place like this. No, because there are some things which are to be found only there. There are the galleries and the opera. I need a breath of them both."

"You're right," nodded the major. "Birds are birds, and Melba is Melba.

But a sward like this in the early morning, with the dew on the gra.s.s, is the best opera for a steady diet."

"I called them only side-trips," said John Valiant.

"And semi-occasional longer flights, too," the major reflected. "A look-see abroad once in a blue moon. Why not?"

"Yes. For mental photographs--impressions one can't get from between book-covers. There's an old cloister garden I know in Italy and a particular river-bank in j.a.pan in the cherry-blossom season, and a tiny island with a Greek castle on it in the aegean. Little colored memories for me to bring away to dream over. But always I come back here to Damory Court. For this is--home!"

They walked beneath the pergola to the lake, where s.h.i.+rley gave a cry of delight at sight of its feathered population. "Where _did_ you get them from?" she asked.

"Was.h.i.+ngton. In crates."

"That explains it," she exclaimed. "One day last week the little darkies in the village all insisted a circus was coming. They must have seen these being hauled here. They watched the whole afternoon for the elephants."

"Poor youngsters!" he said. "It's a shame to fool them. But I've had all the circus I want getting the live stock installed."

"They won't suffer," said the major. "Rickey Snyder'll get them up a three-ringed show at the drop of a hat and drop it herself. Besides, there's tournament day coming, and they can live on that. I see you've dredged out some of the lilies."

"Yes. I take my dip here every morning."

"We used to have a diving-board when we were little shavers," pursued the major. "I remember once, your father--"

He cleared his throat and stopped dead.

"Please," said John Valiant, "I--I like to hear about him."

"It was only that I struck my head on a rock on the bottom and--stayed down. The others were frightened, but he--he dove down again and again till he brought me out. It was a narrow squeak, I reckon."

A silence fell. Looking at the tall muscular form beside her, s.h.i.+rley had a sudden vision of a determined little body cleaving the dark water, over and over, now rising panting for breath, now plunging again, never giving up. And she told herself that the son was the same sort. That hard set of the jaw, those firm lips, would know no flinching. He might suffer, but he would be strong. Subconsciously her mind was also swiftly contrasting him with Chilly Lusk: the same spare lithe frame but set off by light skin, brown hair and hazel eyes; the two faces, alike sharply and clearly chiseled, but this one purged of the lazy scorn, the satiety, and reckless indulgence.

Half unconsciously she spoke her thought aloud: "You look like your father, do you not?"

"Yes," he replied, "there's a strong likeness. I have a photograph which I'll show you sometime. But how did you know?"

"Perhaps I only guessed," she said in some confusion. To cover this she stooped by the pebbly marge and held out her hand to the bronze ducks that pushed and gobbled about her fingers. "What have you named them?"

she asked.

"Nothing. _You_ christen them."

"Very well. The light one shall be Peezletree and the dark one Pilgarlic. I got the names from John Jasper--he was Virginia's famous negro preacher. I once heard him hold forth when he read from one of the Psalms--the one about the harp and the psaltery--and he called it peezletree."

"Speaking of ducks," said the major, tweaking his gray imperial, "reminds me of Judge Chalmers' white mallard. He had a pair that were so much in love they did nothing but loaf around honey-cafuddling with their wings over each other's backs. It was a lesson in domesticity for the community, sah. Well, the drake got shot for a wild one, and if you'll believe it, the poor little duck was that inconsolable it would have brought tears to your eyes. The whole Chalmers family were affected."

s.h.i.+rley had put one hand over her mouth to repress a smile. "Major, Major!" she murmured reprovingly. But his guilty glance avoided her.

"Yes, sah, nothing would console her. So at last Chalmers got another drake, the handsomest he could find, and trotted him out to please her.

What do you reckon that little white duck did? She looked at the judge once reproachfully and then waddled down to a black muck-bed and lay down in it. She came out with as fine a suit of mourning as you ever saw. And believe it or not, sah, but she wouldn't go in the water for ten days!"

Valiant's laugh rang out over the lake--to be answered by a sudden sharp screech from the terrace, where the peac.o.c.k strutted, a blaze of spangled purple and gold. They turned to see Aunt Daphne issue from the kitchen, twig-broom in hand.

"Heah!" she exclaimed. "What fo' yo' kyahin' on like er wil' _gyraff_ we'n we got comp'ny, yo' triflin' ol' fan-tail, yo'! Git outen heah!"

She waved her weapon and the bird, with a raucous shriek of defiance, retired in ruffled disorder. The master of Damory Court looked at s.h.i.+rley. "What shall we name _him_?"

"I'd call him Fire-Cracker if he goes off like that," she said. And Fire-Cracker the bird was christened forthwith.

"And now," said s.h.i.+rley, "let's set out the ramblers."

The major had brought a rough plan, sketched from memory, of the old arrangement of the formal garden. "I'll just go over the lines of the beds with Unc' Jefferson," he proposed, "while you two potter over these roses." So Valiant and s.h.i.+rley walked back up the slope beneath the pergola together. The sun was westering fast, and long lilac cloud-trails lay over the terraces. But the b.u.mbling bees were still busy in the honeysuckle and hawking dragon-flies shot hither and thither. A robin was tilting on the rim of the fountain and it looked at them with head turned sidewise, with a low sweet pip that mingled with the trickling laugh of the falling water.

With Ranston puffing and blowing like a black porpoise over his creaking go-cart, they planted the ramblers--crimson and pink and white--Valiant much of the time on his knees, his hands plunging deep into the black spongy earth, and s.h.i.+rley with broad hat flung on the gra.s.s, her fingers separating the clinging thread-like roots and her small arched foot tamping down the soil about them. Her hair--the color of wet raw wood in the sunlight--was very near the brown head and sometimes their fingers touched over the work. Once, as they stood up, flushed with the exercise, a great black and orange b.u.t.terfly, dazed with the sun-glow, alighted on Valiant's rolled-up sleeve. He held his arm perfectly still and blew gently on the wavering pinions till it swam away. When a redbird flirted by, to his delight she whistled its call so perfectly that it wheeled in mid-flight and tilted inquiringly back toward them.

As they descended the terrace again to the pergola, he said, "There's only one thing lacking at Damory Court--a sun-dial."

"Then you haven't found it?" she cried delightedly. "Come and let me show you."