The Valiants of Virginia Part 10

The sound drew nearer--a lugubrious chant, with the weirdest minor reflections, faintly suggestive of the rag-time ditties of the music-halls, yet with a plaintive cadence:

"As he went mowin' roun' de fiel'

Er moc'sin bit him on de heel.

Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh, toodle-link-uh, Da-a-dee-e-eaye!

"Dey kyah'd him in ter his Sally deah.

She say, 'Mah Lawd, yo' looks so queah!'

Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh, toodle-link-uh, Da-a-dee-e-e-aye!"

A smile of genuine delight crossed the listener's face. "That would make the everlasting fortune of a music-hall artist," Valiant muttered, as, coatless, and with a towel over his arm, he stepped to the piazza.

"Dey laid him down--spang on de groun'.

He-e-e shet-up-his-eyes en looked all aroun'.

Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh, toodle-link-uh, Da-a-dee e-e-aye!

"So den he died, giv' up de Ghos'.

To Abrum's buzzum he did pos'-- Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh-day--"

"Good morning, Uncle Jefferson."

The singer broke off his refrain, set down the twig-broom that he had been wielding and came toward him. "Mawnin', suh. Mawnin'," he said.

"Hopes yo'-all slep' good. Ah reck'n dem ar birds woke yo' up; dey's makin' seh er 'miration."

"Thank you. Never slept better in my life. Am I laboring under a delusion when I imagine I smell coffee?"

Just then there came a voice from the open door of the kitchen: "Calls yo'se'f er _man_, yo' triflin' reconstructed n.i.g.g.ah! W'en marstah gwineter git he brekfus' wid' yo' ramshacklin' eroun' wid dat dawg all dis Gawd's-blessid mawnin'? Go fotch some mo' fiah-wood dis minute. Yo'

heah?"

A turbaned head poked itself through the door, with a good-natured leaf-brown face beneath it, which broadened into a wide smile as its owner bobbed energetically at Valiant's greeting. "Fo' de _Lawd_!" she exclaimed, wiping floury hands on a gingham ap.r.o.n. "Yo' sho' is up early, but Ah got yo' brekfus' mos' ready, suh."

"All right, Aunt Daphne. I'll be back directly."

He sped down to the lake to plunge his head into the cool water and thereby sharpen the edge of an appet.i.te that needed no honing. From the little valley through which the stream meandered, rose a curdled mist, fraying now beneath the warming sun. The tall tangled gra.s.s through which he pa.s.sed was beaded with dew like diamonds and hung with a thousand fairy jeweled webs. The wild honeysuckle was alive with quick whirrings of hummingbirds, and he hung his pocket-mirror from a twig and shaved with a woodsy chorus in his ears.

He came up the trail again to find the reading-stand transferred to the porch and laid with a white cloth on which was set a steaming coffee-pot, with fresh cream, saltless b.u.t.ter and crisp hot biscuit; and as he sat down, with a sigh of pure delight, in his dressing-gown--a crepy j.a.panese thing redeemed from womanishness by the bold green bamboo of its design--Uncle Jefferson planted before him a generous platter of bacon, eggs and potatoes. These he attacked with a surprising keenness.

As he b.u.t.tered his fifth biscuit he looked at the dog, rolling on his back in morning ecstasy, with a look of humorous surprise.

"Chum," he said, "what do you think of that? All my life a single roll and a cup of coffee have been the most I could ever negotiate for breakfast, and then it was apt to taste like chips and whetstones. And now look at this plate!" The dog ceased winnowing his ear with a hind foot and looked back at his master with much the same expression.

Clearly his own needs had not been forgotten.

"Reck'n Ah bettah go ter git dat ar machine thing," said Uncle Jefferson behind him. "Ol' 'ooman, heah, she 'low ter fix up de kitchen dis mawnin' en we begin on de house dis evenin'."

"Right-o," said Valiant. "It's all up-hill, so the motor won't run away with you. Aunt Daphne, can you get some help with the cleaning?"

"He'p?" that worthy responded with fine scorn. "_No_, suh. Moughty few, in de town 'cep'n low-down yaller new-issue trash det ain' wu'f killin'!

Ah gwineter go fo' dat house mahse'f 'fo' long, hammah en tongs, en git it fix' up!"

"Splendid! My destiny is in your hands. You might take the dog with you, Uncle Jefferson; the run will do him good."

When the latter had disappeared and truculent sounds from the kitchen indicated that the era of strenuous cleaning had begun, he reentered the library, changed the water in the rose-gla.s.s and set it on the edge of the shady front porch, where its flaunting blossom made a dash of bright crimson against the grayed weather-beaten brick. This done, he opened the one large room on the ground-floor that he had not visited.

It was double the size of the library, a parlor hung in striped yellow silk vaguely and tenderly faded, with a tall plate mirror set over a marble-topped console at either side. In one corner stood a grand piano of Circa.s.sian walnut with keys of tinted mother-of-pearl and a slender music-rack inlaid with morning-glories in the same material. From the center of the ceiling, above an oval table, depended a great chandelier hung with gla.s.s prisms. He drew his handkerchief across the table; beneath the disfiguring dust it showed a highly polished surface inlaid with different colored woods, in an intricate Italian-like landscape.

The legs of the consoles were bowed, delicately carved, and of gold-leaf. The chairs and sofas were covered with dusty slip-covers of muslin. He lifted one of these. The tarnished gold furniture was Louis XV, the upholstery of yellow brocade with a pattern of pink roses. Two j.a.panese hawthorn vases sat on teak-wood stands and a corner held a gla.s.s cabinet containing a collection of small ivories and faience.

His appreciative eye kindled. "What a room!" he muttered. "Not a jarring note anywhere! That's an old Crowe and Christopher piano. I'll get plenty of music out of that! You don't see such chandeliers outside of palaces any more except in the old French chateaus. It holds a hundred candles if it holds one! I never knew before all there was in that phrase 'the candle-lighted fifties.' I can imagine what it looked like, with the men in white stocks and flowered waistcoats and the women in their crinolines and red-heeled slippers, bowing to the minuet under that candle-light! I'll bet the girls bred in this neighborhood won't take much to the turkey-trot and the bunny-hug!"

He went thoughtfully back to the great hall, where sat the big chest on which lay the volume of _Lucile_. He pushed down the antique wrought-iron hasp and threw up the lid. It was filled to the brim with textures: heavy portieres of rose-damask, table-covers of faded soft-toned tapestry, window-hangings of dull green--all with tobacco-leaves laid between the folds and sifted thickly over with the sparkling white powder. At the bottom, rolled in tarry-smelling paper, he found a half-dozen thin, Persian prayer-rugs.

"Phew!" he whistled. "I certainly ought to be grateful to that law firm that 'inspected' the place. Think of the things lying here all these years! And that powder everywhere! It's done the work, too, for there's not a sign of moth. If I'm not careful, I'll stumble over the family plate--it seems to be about the only thing wanting."

The mantelpiece, beneath the shrouded elk's head, was of gray marble in which a crest was deeply carved. He went close and examined it. "A sable greyhound, rampant, on a field argent," he said. "That's my own crest, I suppose." There touched him again the same eery sensation of acquaintance that had possessed him with his first sight of the house-front. "Somehow it's familiar," he muttered; "where have I seen it before?"

He thought a moment, then went quickly into the library and began to ransack the trunk. At length he found a small box containing keepsakes of various kinds. He poured the medley on to the table--an uncut moonstone, an amethyst-topped pencil that one of his tutors had given him as a boy, a tiger's claw, a compa.s.s and what-not. Among them was a man's seal-ring with a crest cut in a cornelian. He looked at it closely. It was the same device.

The ring had been his father's. Just when or how it had come into his possession he could never remember. It had lain among these keepsakes so many years that he had almost forgotten its existence. He had never worn a ring, but now, as he went back to the hall, he slipped it on his finger. The motto below the crest was worn away, but it showed clear in the marble of the hall-mantel: _I clinge_.

His eyes turned from the carven words and strayed to the pleasant sunny foliage outside. An arrogant boast, perhaps, yet in the event well justified. Valiants had held that selfsame slope when the encircling forests had rung with war-whoop and blazed with torture-fire. They had held on through Revolution and Civil War. Good and bad, abiding and lawless, every generation had cleaved stubbornly to its acres. _I clinge._ His father had clung through absence that seemed to have been almost exile, and now he, the last Valiant, was come to make good the boast.

His gaze wavered. The tail of his eye had caught through the window a spurt of something das.h.i.+ng and vivid, that grazed the corner of a far-off field. He craned his neck, but it had pa.s.sed the line of his vision. The next moment, however, there came trailing on the satiny stillness the high-keyed ululation of a horn, and an instant later a long-drawn _hallo-o-o_! mixed with a pattering chorus of yelps.

He went close, and leaning from the sill, shaded his eyes with his hand.

The noise swelled and rounded in volume; it was nearing rapidly. As he looked, the hunt dashed into full view between the tree-boles--a galloping melee of khaki and scarlet, swarming across the fresh green of a wheat field, behind a spotted swirl of hounds. It mounted a rise, dipped momentarily into a gully and then, in a narrow sweeping curve, came pounding on up the long slope, directly toward the house.

"Confound it!" said John Valiant belligerently; "they're on my land!"

They were near enough now for him to hear the voices of the men, calling encouragement to the dogs, and to see the white ribbons of foam across the flanks of the laboring horses. One scarlet-coated feminine rider, detached from the bunch, had spurred in advance and was leading by a clean hundred yards, bareheaded, her hat fallen back to the limit of its ribbon knotted under her chin, and her waving hair gleaming like tarnished gold.

"How she rides!" muttered the solitary watcher. "Cross-saddle, of course,--the sensible little sport! She'll never in the world do that wall!--Yes, by George!" For, with a beseeching cry and a straining tug, she had fairly lifted her big golden-chestnut hunter over the high barrier in a leap as clean as the flight of a flying squirrel. He saw her lean forward to pat the wet arching neck as the horse settled again into its pace.

John Valiant's admiration turned to delight. "Why," he said, "it's the Lady-of-the-Roses!"

He put his hands on the sill and vaulted to the porch.

CHAPTER XIV

SANCTUARY

The tawny scudding streak that led that long chase had shot into the yard, turning for a last desperate double. It saw the man in the foreground and its bounding, agonized little wild heart that so prayed for life, gave way. With a final effort, it gained the porch and crouched down in its corner, an abject, sweated, hunted morsel, at hopeless bay.

Like a flash, Valiant stooped, caught the s.h.i.+vering thing by the scruff, and as its snapping jaws grazed his thumb, dropped it through the open window behind him. "Sanctuary!" quoth he, and banged the shutter to.

At the same instant, as the place overflowed with a pandemonium of nosing leaping hounds, he saw the golden-chestnut reined sharply down among the ragged box-rows, with a shamefaced though brazen knowledge that the girl who rode it had seen.

She sat moveless, her head held high, one hand on the hunter's foam-flecked neck, and their glances met like crossed swords. The look stirred something vague and deep within him. For an unforgettable instant their eyes held each other, in a gaze rigid, challenging, almost defiant; then it broke and she turned to the rest of the party spurring in a galloping zigzag: a genial-faced man of middle age in khaki who sat his horse like a cavalryman, a younger one with a reckless dark face and straight black hair, and following these a half-dozen youthful riders of both s.e.xes, one of the lads heavily plastered with mud from a wet cropper, and the girls chiefly gasps and giggles.