OCR Text |
Show ILLU5TRATION3 $ LAUREN 5TOUT J SYNOPSIS. John Valiant, a rich society favorite, suddenly discovers that the Valiant corporation, cor-poration, which his father founded and which was the principal source of his wealth, has failed. He voluntarily turns over his private fortune to the receiver for the corporation. CHAPTER III. Continued. To be outside! All that light and color and comfort and pleasure would hum and sparkle on just the same, though he was no longer within the circle of its effulgence slaving perhaps, per-haps, he thought with a twisted smile, at some tawdry occupation that called for no experience, to pay for a meal in some second-rate restaurant and a pallet in some shabby-genteel, hall bedroom, till his clothes were replaced Viv ill. fitting "hand-me-downs" till by wretched gradations he arrived finally at the status of the dime seat in the gallery and five-cent cigars! There was one way back. It lay through the hackneyed gateway of marriage. Youth, comeliness and fine linen, in the world he knew, were a fair exchange for wealth any day. "Cut'et for cutlet" the satiric phrase , ran through his mind. Why not? Others did so. And as for himself, it perhaps need be no question of plain and spinstered millions there was Katharine Fargo! In his heart John Valiant was aware, by those subtle signs which men and women alike distinguish, that while Katharine Fargo loved first and foremost fore-most her own wonderful person, he had been an easy second in her regard. re-gard. John Valiant looked down at the bulldog squatted on the floor, his eyes shining in the dimness. A little hot ripple had run over him. "Not on your life, Chum!" he said. "No shameless shame-less barter! There must be other things besides money and social position posi-tion in this doddering old world, after all! We're going to begin something for ourselves, If it's only raising cabbages! cab-bages! And we're going to stand it without any baby-aching the nurse never held our noses when we took our castor-oil!" It was folded down, that old bright page. Finis had been written to the rose-colored chapter. And even as he told himself, he was conscious of a new rugged something that had been slowly dawning within him, a sense of courage, even of zest, and a furious hatred of the Belf-pity that had wrenched him even for a moment. He turned from. the window, picked up his letters, and followed by the dog, went slowly up another flight to his room. ILe tore open the letters abstractedly: abstracted-ly: the usual dinner-card or two, a tailor's spring announcement, a chronic serial from an exclamatory marble-quarrying company, a quarterly statement of a club house-committee. The last two missives bore a nondescript nonde-script look. One was small, with the name of a legal firm in its corner. The other was largish, corpulent and heavy, of stout Manila paper, and bore, down one side, a gaudy procession of postage post-age stamps proclaiming that it had been registered. "What's In that, I wonder?" he said to himself, and then, with a smile at ItfllllllilHIIlllllllllillllHl For a Long Time John Valiant Sat Motionless, the Opened Letter in His Hand, Staring at Nothing. the unmasculine speculation, opened the snu.ller envelope. "Hear Sir," began the letter, in (he most uncompromisingly conventional of typewriting: "lNiir Sir: "Kudosed pleasp find. wi;h title-deed, title-deed, a memorandum opened in your name by the lnte John Valiant some years before his death. It was his desire that the services indicated in connection with this estate should continue con-tinue till this date. We hand you herewith our check for $:3fi.20 (two hundred . and thirty-yix dollars and twenty cents!, the balance in your favor, fa-vor, for which please send receipt, "And oblige, "Yours very truly, "Emerson and Ball." "(Enclosure) He turned to the memorandum. It howed a sizable Initial deposit against which was entered a series of annual tax payments with minor disburse-1 ments credited to "Inspection and I care." The tax receipts were pinned J to the account. The larger wrapper contained an unsealed un-sealed envelope, across which was written in faded ink and in an unfamiliar unfa-miliar dashing, slanting handwriting, his own name. The envelope contained con-tained a creased yellow parchment, from between whose folds there clumped and fluttered down upon the floor a long flattish object .wrapped in a paper, a newspaper clipping and a letter. Puzzled he unfolded the crackling thing iu his hands. "Why," he said half aloud, "it's it's a deed made over to me." He overran it swiftly. "Part of an old Colony grant a nlantafion in Virginia, twelve hun dred odd acres, given under the hand of a vice-regal governor in the sixteenth six-teenth century. I had no idea titles in the United States went back so far as that!" His eye fled to the end. "It was my father's! What could he have wanted of an estate in Virginia? It must have come into his hands in the course of business." He picked up the newspaper clipping. clip-ping. It was worn and broken in the folds as if It had been carried for months in a pocketbook. "It will interest readers of this section sec-tion of Virginia (the paragraph began) be-gan) to "learn, from a recent transfer received for record at the County Clerk's office, that Damory Court has passed to Mr. John Valiant, minor " He turned the paper over and found a date; it had been printed in the year of the transfer to himself, when he was six years old the year his father had died. " John Valiant, minor, the son of the former owner. "There are few Indeed who do not recall the tragedy with which in the public mind the estate is connected. The fact, moreover, that -this old homestead home-stead has been left in its present state (for, as is well known, the house has remained with all its contents and furnishings fur-nishings untouched) to rest during so long a term of years unoccupied, could not, of course, fail to be commented on, and this circumstance alone has perhaps tended to keep alive a melancholy melan-choly story which may well be forgotten." for-gotten." He read the elaborate, rather stilted phraseology in the twenty-year-old paper pa-per with a wondering interest. "An old house," he mused, "with a bad name. Probably he couldn't sell it, ud maybe nobody would ever live In it. That would explain why It remained re-mained so long unoccupied why there are no records of rentalB. Probably the land was starved and run down. "It's an off-set to the hall-bedroom idea, at any rate," he said to himself humorously. "It holds out an escape from thfi nnhle nrmv of rent-navers. When my twenty-eight hundred is gone, I could live down there a landed proprietor, and by the same mark an honorary colonel, and raise the cabbages cab-bages I was talking about eh, Chum? while you stalk rabbits. How does that strike you?" He laughed whimsically. He, John Valiant, of -lew York, first-nighter at its theaters, ail-fellow-well-met in its dub corridors and welcome diner at any one of a hundred brilliant glass-and-silver-twinkllng supper tables, entombed en-tombed on the wreck of a Virginia plantation, a would-be country gentleman, gentle-man, on un automobile and next to nothing a year! He bethought himself of the fallen letter and possessed himself cf it quickly. It lay with the superscription superscrip-tion side down. On it was written, in the same hand which had addressed the other envelope: For my son, John Valiant, When he reaches the age of twenty-five. twenty-five. That, then, had been wrlttea by his father and he had died nearly twenty years ago! He broke the seal with a Liuu&c icnug ao 11, naming iu duujc familiar thoroughfare, he had stumbled stum-bled on a licheued and sunken tombstone. tomb-stone. "When you read this, my Bon, you will have come to man a estate. It is curious to think that tnis black, black ink may be faded to gray and this white, white paper yellowed, Just from lying waiting so long. But strangest of all Is to think that you yourself whose brown head hardly tops this desk, will be as tall (I hope, as I! How I wonder what yoj will look like then! And shall I th' real, real I, I mean be peering ov- your strong bro:ui shoulder as y'i read? Who knows? Wise men hare dreamed such a thing possible aud I am not a bit wise. "John, you will not have forgotten that you are a Valiant. But you are also a Virginian. Will you have discovered dis-covered this for yourself? Here is the deed to the land where I aud my father, and his father, and many, many more Valiants before them were born. Sometime, perhaps, you will know why you are John Valiant of New York instead in-stead of John Valiant of Damory Cort. I can not tell you myself, because be-cause it is too true a story, and I have forgotten how to tell any but fairy tales, where everything happens right, where the Prince marries the beautiful Princess and they liva happily together to-gether eTer after. I "You may never care to live at I Damory Court. Maybe the life you j will know so well by the time you I read this will have welded you to itself. it-self. If so, well and good. Then leave the old place to your son. But there Is such a thing as racial habit, and the call of blood. And I know there is such a thing, too. as fate. 'Every man carries his fate on a riband ri-band about his neck;' so the Moslem put it. ' It was my fate to go away, and I know now since distance dis-tance is not made by miles alone that I myself shall never see Damory Court again. But life is a strange wheel that goes round and round and comes back to the same point again and again. And it may be your fate to go back. Then perhaps you will cry She Was the First to Recover. "You Did Look So Funny!" (but, oh, not on the old white bear's skin rug never again with me holding your small, small hand!) " 'Wishing-House! Wlshing-House! Where are you?' "And this old parchment deed will answer " 'Here I am, Master; here I am!' "Ah, we are only children, after all, playing out our plays. I have had many toys, but O John, John! The ones I treasure most are all in. the Never-Never Land!" CHAPTER IV. A Valiant of Virginia. For a long time John Valiant sat motionless, the opened letter in his hand, staring at nothing. He had the sensation, spiritually, of a traveler awakened with a rude shock amid wholly unfamiliar surroundings. - Hp wh trviner to remember to DUt two and two together. His father had been Southern-born; yes, he had known that. But he had known nothing noth-ing whatever of his father's eariy days, or of his forebears; since he had been old enough to wonder about such things, he had uad no one to ask questions of. Phrases of the letter ran through his mind: "Sometime, perhaps, you will know why you are John Valiant of New York instead of John Valiant of Damory Court . I cannot tell you myself." v There was some tragedy, then, that had blighted the place, some "melancholy story," as the clipping put it. He bent over the deed spread out upon the table, following with his Anger An-ger the long line of transfers: "'To John Valyante,,' " he muttered; "what odd spelling! 'Robert Valyant' without with-out the 'e.' Here, in 1730, the 'y' begins be-gins to be 'i.' " There was something strenuous and appealing in the long line of dates. "Valiant. Always a Valiant. Va-liant. How they held on to it! There's never a break." A curious pride, new-born and self- n,T.cniniia u-nq rlftwnlnp in him. He was descended from ancestors who had been no weaklings. A Valiant had settled on those acres under a royal governor, before tho old frontier fighting was over and the Indians had sullenly retired to the westward. The sons Of those who had braved sea and savages had bowed their strong bodies and their stronger hearts to raze the forests and turn the primeval jungles into golden plantations. planta-tions. There stole into his mood an eery suggestion of intention. Why should the date assigned for that deed's delivery de-livery have been the very day on which he had elected poverty? Here was a foreordination as pointed as the index-finger of a guide-post. " 'Every man carries his fate,' " he repeated, " 'on a riband about his neck.' Chum, do you believe in fate?" For answer the bulldog, cocking an alert eye on his master, discontinued his occupation a conscientious if unsuccessful un-successful mastication of the flattish packet that had fallen from the folded deed and with much solicitous tall-wagging, tall-wagging, brought the sodden thin(j in his mouth and put it Into the outstretched out-stretched hand. His master unrolled the pulpy wad and extricated the object It had enclosed en-closed an old-fashioned iron door-key. After a time Valiant thrust thn trv into his pocket, and rising, went to a trunk that lay against the wall. Searching in a portfolio, he took out a small old-fashioned photograph, much battered and soiled. It had been cut from a larger group and the name of the photographer had been erased from the back. He set it upright on the desk, and bending forward, looked long at the face it disclosed. It was the only picture he had ever possessed of his father. He turned and looked into the glass above the dresser. The features were the same, eyes, brow, lips, and strong waving hair. But for its time-stains, the photograph might have been one of himself, taken yesterday. CHAPTER V. On the Red Road. The green, mid-May Virginian afternoon was arched with a sky as blue as the tiles of the Temple of Heaven and steeped in a wash of sunlight sun-light as yellow as gold. Nothing In all the springy landscape but looked warm and opalescent and inviting except ex-cept a tawny bull that from across a barred fence-corner switched a truculent trucu-lent tail in silence and glowered sullenly sul-lenly at the big motor halted motionless motion-less at the side of the twisting road. Curled worm-like in the driver's seat, with his chin on his knees, John Valiant sat with his eyes upon the distance. For an hour he had whirred through that wondrous shimmer of color with a flippant loitering breeze in his face, sweet from the crimson clover that poured and rooted over the roadside. "Chum, old man," said Valiant, with his arm about the bulldog's neck, "if those color-photograph chaps had shown us this, we simply wouldn't have believed it, would we? Such scenery beats the roads we'e used to, what?" He wound his strong fingers in a choking grip in the scruff of the white neck, as a chipmunk chattered by on the low stone wall. "No, you don't you cannibal! He's a jolly little lit-tle beggar, and he doesn't deserve being be-ing eaten!" He filled his briar-wood pipe and drew in great breaths of the fragrant incense. "What a pity you don't smoke, Chum; you miss such a lot!" After a time he shook himself and knocked the red core from the pipe-bowl pipe-bowl against his boot-heel. "I hate to start," he confessed, half to the dog and half to himself. "To leave anything any-thing so sheerly beautiful as this! However, on with' the dance! By the road map the village can't be far now. So long, Mr. Bull!" He clutched the self-starter. But there was only a protestant wheeze; the car declined to budge. Climbing down, he cranked vigorously. The motor turned over with a surly grunt of remonstrance and after a tentative throb-throb, coughed and stopped dead. Something was wrong. With a sigh he flung off his tweed jfiket, donned a smudgy "jumper," opened his tool-box, and, with a glance at his wrist-watch which told him it was three o'clock, threw up the monster's hood and went bitterly to work. At half past three the investigation had got as far as the lubricator. At four o'clock the bulldog had given it up and gone nosing afield. At half past four John Valiant lay flat on his back, like some disreputable stevadore, alternately tinkering with refractory valves and cursing the obdurate mechanism. A sharp sfone gnawed frenziedly Into the small of his back and just as he made a final vicious lunge, something gave way and a prickling red-hot stab of pain Bhot zigzagging zig-zagging from his smitten crazy-bone through every tortured crevice of his impatient frame. Like steel from flint j it struck out a crisp oath that brought an answering bovine snort from the fence-corner. Worming like a lizard to freedom, his eyes puckered shut with the wretched pang, John Valiant sat up and shook his grimy fist in the air. "You silly loafing idiot!" he cried. "Thump your own crazy-bone and see how you like it! Y'ou oh, lord!" His arm dropped, and a flush spread over his face to the brow. For his eyes had opened. He was gesturing not at the bull but at a girl, who fronted him beside the road, haughtiness haughti-ness in the very hue of her gray-blue linen walking suit and, in the clear-cut clear-cut cameo face under her felt cavalry hat, myrtle-blue eyes that held a smolder of mingled astonishment and indignation. An instant he gazed, all the muscles of his face tightened with chagrin. "I I beg your pardon," he stammered. stam-mered. "I didn't see you. I really didn't I was 1 was talking to the bull." i The girl had been glancing from the flushed face to the thistly fence-corner, .while the startled dignity of her features feat-ures warred with an unmistakable tendency ten-dency to mirth. He had struggled to his feet, nursing his bruised elbow, irritably conscious of his resemblance to an emerging chimney-sweep. "I don't habitually swear," he said, "but I'd got to the point when something had to explode." "Oh," she said, "don't mind me!" Then mirth conquered and she broke forth suddenly into a laugh that seemed to set the whole place aquiver with a musical contagion. They both laughed In concert, while the bull pawed the ground and sent forth a rumbling bellow of affront and challenge. chal-lenge. She was the first to recover. "You did look so funny!" she gasped. "I can believe it," he agreed, making mak-ing a vicious dab at his smudged elbow. el-bow. "The possibilities of a motor for comedy are simply stupendous." She came closer and looked curiously curious-ly at the quiescent monster at the steamer-trunk strapped on the carrier and the bulging portmanteau peeping over the side of the tonneau. '"Is it broken?" "Merely on strike, I Imagine. Are we far from the village?" "About a mile and a half." "I'll have to have it towed after me. The immediate point is my traps. I wonder if there is likely to be a team passing." "I'm afraid It's not too certain." answered an-swered the girl, and now he noted the liquid modulation, with its slightly questioning accent, charmingly Southern. South-ern. "There is no livery, but there is a negro who meets the train sometimes. some-times. I can send him if you like." "You're very good," said Valiant, as she turned away, "and I'll be enormously enor-mously obliged. Oh and if you see a white dog, don't be frightened if he tries to follow you. He's perfectly kind." She looked back momentarily. "He he always follows people he likes, you see " "Thank you," she said. The tone had now a hint small, yet perceptible percepti-ble of aloofness. "I'm not in the least afraid of dogs." And with a little nod, she swung briskly on up the Red Road. John Valiant stood staring after her till she had passed from view around a curve. "Oh, glory!" he muttered. "To begin by shaking your fist at her and end by making her wonder if you aren't trying to be fresh! You poor profane, floundering dolt!" (TO BE CONTINUED.) |