The Valiants of Virginia Part 5

MAD ANTHONY

Beyond the selvage of the sleepy leaf-sheltered village a cherry bordered lane met the Red Road. On its one side was a clovered pasture and beyond this an orchard, bounded by a tall hedge of close-clipped box which separated it from a broad yard where the gray-weathered roof of Rosewood showed above a group of tulip and catalpa trees. Viewed nearer, the low stone house, with its huge overhanging eaves, would have looked like a small boy with his father's hat on but for the trellises of climbing roses that covered two sides and overflowed here and there on long arbors, flecking the dull brown stone with a glorious crimson, like a warrior's blood. On the sunny steps a lop-eared hound puppy was playing with a mottled cat.

The front door was open, showing a hall where stood a grandfather's clock and a spindle-legged table holding a bowl of potpourri. The timepiece had landed from a sailing vessel at Jamestown wharf with the household goods of that English Garland who had adopted the old Middle Plantation when Dunmore was royal governor under George III. Framed portraits and engravings lent tints of tarnished silver, old-rose and sunset-golds--colors time-toned and reminiscent, carrying a charming sense of peaceful content, of gentleness and long tradition. The dark polished stairway had at its turn a square dormer-window which looked out upon one of the rose-arbors.

Down this stair, somewhat later that afternoon, came s.h.i.+rley Dandridge, booted and spurred, the rebellious whorls of her russet hair now as closely filleted as a Greek boy's, in a short divided skirt of yew-green and a cool white blouse and swinging by its ribbon a green hat whose rolling brim was caught up at one side by a crisp blue-black hawk's feather. She stopped to peer out of the dormer-window to where, under the latticed weave of bloom, beside a round iron table holding a hoop of embroidery and a book or two, a lady sat reading.

The lady's hair was silver, but not with age. It had been so for many years, refuted by the transparent skin and a color as soft as the cheek of an apricot. It was solely in her dark eyes, deep and strangely luminous, that one might see lurking the somber spirit of pa.s.sion and of pain. But they were eager and brilliant withal, giving the lie to the cane whose crook one pale delicate hand held with a clasp that somehow conveyed a sense of exasperate if semi-humorous rebellion. She wore nun's gray; soft old lace was at her wrists and throat, and she was knitting a scarlet silk stocking.

She looked up at s.h.i.+rley's voice, and smiled brightly. "Off for your ride, dear?"

"Yes. I'm going with the Chalmers."

"Oh, of course. Betty Page is visiting them, isn't she?"

s.h.i.+rley nodded. "She came yesterday. I'll have to hurry, for I saw them from my window turning into the Red Road." She waved her hand and ran lightly down the stair and across the lawn to the orchard.

She pulled a green apple from a bough that hung over a stone wall and with this in her hand she came close to the pasture fence and whistled a peculiar call. It was answered by a low whinny and a soft thud of hoofs, and a golden-chestnut hunter thrust a long nose over the bars, flaring flame-lined nostrils to the touch of her hand. She laid her cheek against the white thoroughbred forehead and held the apple to the eager reaching lip, with several teasing withdrawings before she gave it to its juicy crunching.

"No, Selim," she said as the wide nostrils snuffled over her shoulder, the begging breath blowing warm against her neck. "No more--and no sugar to-day. Sugar has gone up two cents a pound."

She let down the top bar of the fence and vaulting over, ran to a stable and presently emerging with a saddle on her arm, whistled the horse to her and saddled him. Then opening the gate, she mounted and cantered down the lane to meet the oncoming riders--a kindly-faced, middle-aged man, a younger one with dark features and coal-black hair, and two girls.

Chisholm Lusk spurred in advance and lifted his hat. "I held up the judge, s.h.i.+rley," he said, "and made him bring me along. He tells me there's a fox-hunt on to-morrow; may I come?"

"Pshaw! Chilly," said the judge. "I don't believe you ever got up at five o'clock in your born days. You've learned bad habits abroad."

"You'll see," he answered. "If my man Friday doesn't rout me out to-morrow, I'll be up for murder."

They rode an hour, along stretches of sunny highways or on shaded bridle-paths where the horses' hoofs fell m.u.f.fled in brown pine-needles and drooping branches flicked their faces. Then, by a murky way gouged with brusk gullies, across shelving fields and "turn-rows" in a long detour around Powhattan Mountain, a rough spur in the shape of an Indian's head that wedged itself forbiddingly between the fields of springing corn and tobacco. They approached the Red Road again by a crazy bridge whose adze-hewn flooring was held in place by wild grape-vines and weighted down against cloudburst and freshet by heavy boulders till it dipped its middle like an overloaded buckboard in the yellow waters of the sluggish stream beneath. On the farther side they pulled down to breathe their horses. Here the road was like a narrow ruler dividing a desert from a promised land. On one hand a guttered slope of marl and pebbles covered with a tatterdemalion forest--on the other acre upon acre of burnished grain.

"Ah never saw such a frowsley-looking thing in mah life," said Betty Page, in her soft South Carolinian drawl that was all vowels and liquids, "as that wild hill beside those fields. For all the world like a disgraceful tramp leering across the wall at a dandy."

s.h.i.+rley applauded the simile, and the judge said, "This is a boundary.

That hobo-landscape is part of the deserted Valiant estate. The hill hides the house."

She nodded. "Damory Court. It's still vacant, Ah suppose."

"Yes, and likely to be. Valiant is dead long ago, but apparently there's never been any attempt to let it. I suppose his son is so rich that one estate more or less doesn't figure much to him."

"I got a letter this morning from Dorothy Randolph," said s.h.i.+rley. "The Valiant Corporation is being investigated, you know, and her uncle had taken her to one of the hearings, when John Valiant was in the chair.

From her description, they are making it sufficiently hot for that silver-spooned young man."

"I don't reckon _he_ cares," said Lusk satirically. "Nothing matters with his set if you have enough money."

The judge pointed with his crop. "That narrow wagon-track," he said, "goes to h.e.l.l's-Half-Acre."

"Oh, yes," said Betty. "That's that weird settlement on the Dome where s.h.i.+rley's little protegee Rickey Snyder came from." It was all she said, but her glance at the girl beside her was one of open admiration. For, as all in the party knew, the lonely road had been connected with an act of sheer impulsive daring in s.h.i.+rley's girlhood that she would never hear spoken of.

Judge Chalmers flicked his horse's ears gently with his rein and they moved slowly on, presently coming in sight of a humble patch of ground, enclosed in a worm-fence and holding a whitewashed cabin with a well shaded by varicolored hollyhocks. Under the eaves clambered a gourd-vine, beneath which dangled strings of onions and bright red peppers. "Do let us get a drink!" said Chilly Lusk. "I'm as thirsty as a cotton-batting camel."

"All right, we'll stop," agreed the judge, "and you'll have a chance to see another local lion, Betty. This is where Mad Anthony lives. You must have heard of him when you were here before. He's almost as celebrated as the Reverend John Jasper of Richmond."

Betty tapped her temple. "Where have Ah heard of John Jasper?"

"He was the author of the famous sermon on _The Sun do Move_. He used to prove it by a bucket of water that he set beside his pulpit Sat.u.r.day night. As it hadn't spilled in the morning he knew it was the earth that stood still."

Betty nodded laughingly. "Ah remember now. He's the one who said there were only four great races: the Huguenots, the Hottentots, the Abyssinians and the Virginians. Is Mad Anthony really mad?"

"Only harmlessly," said s.h.i.+rley. "He's stone blind. The negroes all believe he conjures--that's voodoo, you know. They put a lot of stock in his 'prophecisms.' He tells fortunes, too. S-s.h.!.+" she warned. "He's sitting on the door-step. He's heard us."

The old negro had the torso of a black patriarch. He sat bolt upright with long straight arms resting on his knees, and his face had that peculiar expressionless immobility seen in Egyptian carvings. He had slightly turned his head in their direction, his brow, under its shock of perfectly white crinkly hair, twitching with a peculiar expression of inquiry. His age might have been anything judging from his face which was so seamed and creviced with innumerable tiny wrinkles that it most resembled the tortured glaze of some ancient bitumen pottery unearthed from a tomb of Kor. Under their heavy lids his sightless eyeb.a.l.l.s, whitely opaque and l.u.s.terless, turned mutely toward the sound of the horse hoofs.

The judge dismounted, and tossing his bridle over a fence-picket, took from his pocket a collapsible drinking cup. "Howdy do, Anthony," he said. "We just stopped for a drink of your good water."

The old negro nodded his head. "Good watah," he said in the gentle quavering tones of extreme age. "Yas, Mars'. He'p yo'se'f. Come f'om de centah ob de yerf, dat watah. En dah's folks say de centah of de yerf is all fiah. Yo' reck'n dey's right, Mars' Chalmahs?"

"Now, how the devil do you know who I am, Anthony?" The judge set down his cup on the well-curb. "I haven't been by here for a year."

The ebony head moved slowly from side to side. "Ol' Ant'ny don' need no eyes," he said, touching his hand to his brow. "He see ev'ything heah."

The judge beckoned to the others and they trooped inside the paling.

"I've brought some other folks with me, Anthony; can you tell who they are?"

The sightless look wavered over them and the white head shook slowly.

"Don' know young mars,'," said the gentle voice. "How many yuddahs wid yo'? One, two? No, don' know young mistis, eidah."

"I reckon you _don't_ need any eyes," Judge Chalmers laughed, as he pa.s.sed the sweet cold water to the rest. "One of these young ladies wants you to tell her fortune."

The old negro dropped his head, waving his gaunt hands restlessly. Then his gaze lifted and the whitened eyeb.a.l.l.s roved painfully about as if in search of something elusive. The judge beckoned to Betty Page, but she shook her head with a little grimace and drew back.

"You go, s.h.i.+rley," she whispered, and with a laughing glance at the others, s.h.i.+rley came and sat down on the lowest step.

Mad Anthony put out a wavering hand and touched the young body. His fingers strayed over the habit and went up to the curling bronze under the hat-brim. "Dis de li'l mistis," he muttered, "ain' afeahd ob ol'

Ant'ny. Dah's fiah en she ain' afeahd, en dah's watah en she ain'

afeahd. Wondah whut Ah gwine tell huh? Whut de coloh ob yo' haih, honey?"

"Black," put in Chilly Lusk, with a wink at the others. "Black as a crow."

Old Anthony's hand fell back to his knee. "Young mars' laugh at de ol'

man," he said, "but _he_ don' know. Dat de coloh dat buhn mah han's--de coloh ob gol', en eyes blue like er cat-bird's aig. Dah's er man gwine look in dem eyes, honey, en gwine make 'em cry en cry." He raised his head sharply, his lids shut tight, and swung his arm toward the North.

"Dah's whah he come f'om," he said, "en heah"--his arm veered and he pointed straight toward the ragged hill behind them--"he stay."

Lusk laughed noiselessly. "He's pointing to Damory Court," he whispered to Nancy Chalmers, "the only uninhabited place within ten miles. That's as near as he often hits it, I fancy."

"Heah's whah he stay," repeated the old man. "Heap ob trouble wait heah fo' him too, honey,--heap ob trouble, heah whah li'l mistis fin' him."

His voice dropped to a monotone, and he began to rock gently to and fro as if he were crooning a lullaby. "Li'l trouble en gr'et trouble! Fo'