The Valiants of Virginia Part 31

"That's Mad Anthony, our local Mother s.h.i.+pton. He's a prophet and soothsayer. Uncle Jefferson--that's my body-servant--insists that he foretold my coming to Damory Court. If we had more time you could have your fortune told."

"How thrilling!" she commented with half-humorous irony.

He pointed to a great white house set in a grove of trees. "That is Beechwood," he told her, "the Beverley homestead. Young Beverley was the Knight of the Silver Cross. A fine old place, isn't it? It was burned by the Indians during the French and Indian War. My great-great-great-grandfather--" He broke off. "But then, those old things won't interest you."

"They interest you a great deal, don't they?" she asked.

"Yes," he admitted, "they do. You see, my ancestors are such new acquaintances, I find them absorbing. You know when I lived in New York--"

"Last month."

He laughed a little--not quite the laugh she had known in the past.

"Yes, but I can hardly believe it; I seem to have been here half a lifetime. To think that a month ago I was a double-dyed New Yorker."

"It's been a strange experience for you. Don't you feel rather Jekyl-and-Hydish?"

"That's a terrible compound!" he laughed, as he swept the car round a curve, skilfully evading a b.u.mping wagon-load of farm-hands. "In which capacity am I Mr. Hyde, by the way?"

She smiled at him round the edge of her blown veil. "Figures of speech aren't to be a.n.a.lyzed. You are Dr. Jekyl in New York, anyway. You read what the papers said? No? It's just as well; it would have been likely to turn your head."

"Could anything be as likely to do that as--this?" With a glance he indicated her presence beside him.

She made him a mocking bow. "Be careful," she warned. "Speeches like that smack of disloyalty to your queen. What a pretty girl she is! I congratulated you on your prowess. I must add my congratulations on your taste."

He returned her bow of a moment since.

"It was all a most unique thing," she went on. "And to-night at your ball I shall witness the coronation. I can hardly wait to see Damory Court. Do you know, in all these years I never suspected what a versatile genius you were? It's too wonderful how you have stepped into this life--into the people's thoughts and feelings--as you have. When you come back to New York--"

He looked at her, oddly she thought. "Why should I go back?"

"Why? Because it's your natural habitat. Isn't it?"

"That's the word," he said smiling. "It _was_ my habitat. This is my home."

She was silent a moment in sheer surprise. She had thought of this Southern essay as a quickly pa.s.sing incident, a colorful chapter whose page might any day be turned. But it was impossible to mistake his meaning. Clearly, he was deeply infatuated with this Arcadian experience and had no thought at present but to continue it indefinitely.

But it would pa.s.s! He was a New Yorker, after all. And what more charming than to have an old place in such a countryside--a position ready-made at one's hand, to step into for a month or two when ennui made the old haunts tasteless? It was worth some cultivation. One must anchor somewhere. Virginia was not so far from the center; splendid estates of Northerners dotted even the Carolinas. Here one might be in hand-touch with everything. And it was no small thing to hold one of the oldest and proudest names in a section like this. One could always have a town-house too--there was Was.h.i.+ngton, and there was Europe....

They were pa.s.sing the entrance of a cherry-bordered lane, and without taking his hands from the gear, he nodded toward the low broad-eaved dwelling with its flowering arbors that showed in flas.h.i.+ng glimpses of brown and red between the intervening trees. "The palace of the queen!"

he said--"Rosewood, by name."

She looked in some curiosity. Clearly, if not a refuge of genteel poverty, neither was it the abode of wealth; so, from her a.s.sured rampart of the Fargo millions, Katharine reflected complacently. The girl was a local favorite, of course--he had been tactful as to that. It was fortunate, in a way, that he had not seen her, Katharine, in the grand stand until afterward. Feeling toward her as she believed he did, with his absurd directness, he would have been likely to drop the rose in her lap, never reflecting that, the tourney being a local function, the choice should not fall upon an outlander. That would not have tended to increase his popularity in the countryside, and popularity was the very salt of social success. So Katharine pondered, her mind, like a capable general's, running somewhat ahead of the moment.

The slowing of the car brought her back to the present, and she looked up to see before them the great gate of Gladden Hall. She did not speak till they had quite stopped.

Then, as her hand lay in his for farewell, "You are right in your decision," she said softly. "This is your place. You are a Valiant of Virginia. I didn't realize it before, but I am beginning to see all it means to you."

Her voice held a lingering indefinable quality that was almost sadness, and for that one slender instant, she opened on him the unmasked batteries of her glorious gray eyes.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

"WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER"

The Tournament Ball at Damory Court that night was more than an event.

The old mansion was an irresistible magnet. The floor of its yellow parlor was known to be of delectable hugeness. Its gardens were a legend. The whole place, moreover, was steeped in the very odor of old mystery and new romance. Small wonder that to this particular affair the elect--the major was the high custodian of the rolls, his decisions being as the laws of the Medes and Persians--came gaily from the farthest county line, and the big houses of the neighborhood were crammed with over-night guests.

By half past nine o'clock the phalanx of chaperons decreed by old custom had begun to arrive, and the great iron gate at the foot of the drive--erect and rustless now--saw an imposing processional of carriages. These pa.s.sed up a slope as radiant with the fairy light of paper lanterns as a j.a.panese thoroughfare in festival season. The colored bulbs swung moon-like from tree and shrub, painting their rainbow l.u.s.ters on gra.s.s and driveway. Under the high gray columns of the porch and into the wide door, framed in its small leaded panes that glowed with the merry light within, poured a stream of loveliness: in carriage-wraps of light tints, collared and edged with fur or eider, or wide-sleeved mandarin coats falling back from dazzling throats and arms, hair swathed with chiffon against the night dews, and gallantly cavaliered by masculine black and white.

These from their tiring-rooms overflowed presently, garbed like dreams, to make obeisance to the dowagers and then to drift through flower-lined corridors, the foam on recurrent waves of discovery.

Behind the rose-bower in the hall, which s.h.i.+elded a dozen colored musicians--violins, cello, guitars and mandolins--came premonitory chirps and s.h.i.+vers, which presently wove into the low and dreamy melody of _Carry me back to old Virginia_. Around the walls of the yellow parlor, chairs stood two deep, occupied, or preempted by fan or gloves or lacy handkerchief. The floor, newly waxed, gleamed in the candle-light like beaten moonbeams. At its farther end was a low dais covered by a thin Persian prayer-rug, where a single great tapestried chair of dull gold waited throne-like, flanked on either side by the chaperons, ladies of honor to the queen to come.

Promptly as the clock in the hall chimed ten, the music merged into a march. Doors on opposite sides of the upper hall swung wide and down the broad staircase came, with slow step, a stately procession: two heralds in fawn-colored doublets with scroll and trumpets wound with flowers, behind them the Queen of Beauty, her finger-tips resting lightly in the hand of the Knight of the Crimson Rose, and these followed by as brave a concourse of lords and ladies as ever graced castle-hall in the gallant days "when knighthood was in flower."

s.h.i.+rley's gown was of pure white: her arms were swathed in tulle, crossed with straps of seed-pearl, over which hung long semi-flowing sleeves of satin, and from her shoulders rose a stiff pointed medieval collar of Venetian lace, against whose pale traceries her bronze hair glowed with rosy lights. The edge of the square-cut corsage was powdered with the pearls and against their sheen her breast and neck had the soft creamy ivory of magnolia buds. Her straight plain train of satin, knotted with fresh white rose-buds (Nancy Chalmers had labored for a frantic half-hour in the dressing-room for this effect) was held by the seven-year-old Byloe twins, in beribboned knickerbockers, duly impressed with the grandeur of their privilege and grimly intent on acquitting themselves with glory.

s.h.i.+rley's face was still touched with the surprise that had swept it as Valiant had stepped to her side. She had looked to see him in the conventional panoply a sober-sided masculine mode decrees. What she had beheld was a figure that might have stepped out of an Elizabethan picture-frame. He was in deep purple slashed with gold. A cloak of thin crimson velvet narrowly edged with ermine hung from his shoulders, lined with tissue-like cloth-of-gold. From the rolling brim of his hat swept a curling purple plume. He wore a slender dress-sword, and an order set with brilliants sparkled on his breast.

The costume had been one he had worn at a fancy ball of the winter before. It had been made from a painting at Windsor of one of the Dukes of Buckingham, and it made a perfect foil for s.h.i.+rley's white.

The eleven knights of the tourney, each with his chosen lady, if less splendid, were tricked out in sufficiently gorgeous attire. The Knight of Castlewood was in olive velveteen slashed with yellow, with Nancy Chalmers, in flowered panniers and beaded pompadour, on his arm. The Lord of Brandon wore black and silver, and Westover's champion was in forest green. Many an ancient brocade had been awakened for the nonce from its lavender bed, and ruffs and gold-braid were at no premium.

To the tw.a.n.ging of the deft black fingers, they pa.s.sed in gorgeous array between files of low-cut gowns and flower-like faces and masculine swallow-tails, to the yellow parlor. Once there the music ceased with a splendid crash, the eleven knights each dropped upon one knee, the eleven ladies-in-waiting curtsied low, and s.h.i.+rley, seated upon the dais, leaned her burnished head to receive the crown. What though the bauble was but bristol-board, its jeweled chasing but tinsel and paste?

On her head it glowed and trembled, a true diadem. As Valiant set the glittering thing on those rich and wonderful coils, the music of her presence was singing a swift melody in his blood.

His coronation address held no such flowery periods as would have rolled from the major's soul. He had chosen a single paragraph he had lighted on in an old book in the library--a history of the last Crusade in French black-letter. He had translated and memorized the archaic phrasing, keeping the quaint feeling of the original:

"These n.o.ble Knights bow in your presence, fair lady, as their Liege, whom they know as even in judgment, as dainty in fulfilling these our acts of arms, and do recommend their all unto your Good Grace in as lowly wise as they can. O Queen, in whom the whole story of virtue is written with the language of beauty, your eyes, which have been only wont to discern the bowed knees of kneeling hearts and, inwardly turned, found always the heavenly solace of a sweet mind, see them, ready in heart and able with hands not only to a.s.sailing but to prevailing."

A hushed rustle of applause--not loud: the merest whisper of silken feet and feathered fans tapped softly--testified to a widespread approbation.

It was the first sight many there had had of John Valiant and in both looks and manner befitted their best ideals. True, his accent had not that subtle gloze, that consonantal softness and intonation that mark the Southron, but he was a Southron for all that, and one of themselves.

The queen's curtsey was the signal for the music, which throbbed suddenly into a march, and she stepped down beside him. Couple after couple, knights and ladies, ranged behind them, till the twenty-four stood ready for the royal quadrille. It was the old-fas.h.i.+oned lancers, but the deliberate strain lent the familiar measures something of the stately effect of the minuet. The rhythmic waves alternately bore s.h.i.+rley to his arms and whisked her away, for fleeting hand-touch of this or that demure or laughing maid, giving him glimpses of the seated rows by the walls, of flower vistas, of open windows beyond which peered s.h.i.+ning black faces delightedly watching.

Quadrilles were not invented as aids to conversation, and John Valiant's and s.h.i.+rley's was necessarily limited. "The decorations are simply delicious!" she said as they faced each other briefly. "How _did_ you manage it?"

"Home talent with a vengeance. Uncle Jefferson and I did it with our little hatchets. But the roses--"

They were swooped apart and s.h.i.+rley found herself curtseying to Chilly Lusk. "More than queen!" he said under his breath. "I had my heart set on naming you to-day. I reckon I've lost my rabbit-foot!"

Opposite, in the turn, Betty Page had slipped her dainty hand into John Valiant's. "Ah haven't seen such a lovely dance for _yeahs_!" she sighed. "Isn't s.h.i.+rley too sweet? If Ah had hair like hers, Ah wouldn't speak to a soul on earth!"

The exigencies of the figure gave no s.p.a.ce for answer, and presently, after certain labyrinthine evolutions, s.h.i.+rley's eyes were gazing into his again. "How adorably you look!" he whispered, as he bowed over her hand. "How does it feel to be a queen?"

"This little head was never made to wear a crown," she laughed. "Queens should be regal. Miss Fargo would have--"