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Show 9 VALIANTS sV1D(iIN1A B Ml HALLE ERMINE RIVL3 - - I ILLUSTRATIONS - LAUREN STOUT J SYNOPSIS. John Valiant, a rich society favorite, flilrlilr-nly dlsroveu that the Valiant cor-jxjnillun, cor-jxjnillun, which his father fulllldvd and which was the principal s.hurce of his wealth. Juts faih-d. lie vuluntnrlly turns .over his private fortune to the receiver Tor the corporation. His entlrn remalniriK possessions consist of an old motor car. a white huil dotf and iJaniory court, a neglected neg-lected estate in Virginia. On the way to namory court lie meets Shirley I'and-ride. I'and-ride. an auhurn-halred heauty, and decides de-cides that he Is K"ini; to like VirKinia. Immensely. Im-mensely. Shirley's mother. Mrs. Datitl-rhlKe. Datitl-rhlKe. and Major Ilrlstnw exchange reminiscences rem-iniscences during which It Is revealed That the major. Valiant's father, and a man named Sasson were rivals for the hand of Mrs. liandridLte In her youth, fiasson and Valiant fought a duel on her account In which the former was killed. Valiant finds Damory court overgrown with weeds and creepers and the buildings build-ings In a very much neglected condition. He decides to rehahilltale the place and make the land produce a llvlne; for him. Valiant saves Shirley from the bite of a snake, which bites him. Knowing the leadllness of the bite. Shirley sucks the aoison from the wound and saves his life. Shirley tells her mother of the Incident ind the latter is strangely moved at bearing that a Valiant Is again living at - Oamory court. Valiant learns for the llrst time that his father left Virginia on account of a duel In which Doctor Smithnll and Major Bristow acted as his father's seconds. CHAPTER XVIII Continued. i "Yon are cold," he said. "Isn't that gown too thin for this night air?" "No. I often walk here till quite late. Listen!" The bird song had broken forth again, to be answered this time by a rival's m a distant thicket. "My nightingale Is in good voice." "I never heard a nightingale before I came to Virginia. I wonder why it sings only at night." i "What an odd idea! Why, It sings In the daytime, too." "Really? But I suppose It escapes notice in the general chorus. Is it a large bird?" "No; smaller than a thrush. Only a little bigger than a robin. Its nest is over there in that hedge a tiny loose cup of dried oak-leaves, lined with hair, and the eggs are olive color, kow pretty the hedge looks now, all tangled with firefly sparks!" "Doesn't it! Uncle Jefferson calls them 'lightning-bugs.' " "The name is much more picturesque. pic-turesque. But all the darky sayings are. Do you find him and Aunt Daphne useful?" "He has been a godsend," he said fervently; "and her cooking has taught me to treat her with passipn-ate passipn-ate respect. He's teaching me now about flowers it's surprising how many kinds he knows. He's a walking herbarium." "Come and see mine," she said. "Roses are our specialty we have to live up to the Rosewood name. But beyond the arbors, are beds and beds of other flowers. See by this big tree are speed-well and delphinium. The tree is a black-walnut. It's a ( dreadful thing to have one as big as that. When you want something that costs a lot of money you go and look at it and wonder which you want most, that . particular luxury or the tree. I know a girl who had two in her yard only a little bigger than this, and she went to Europe on them. But so far I've always voted for the tree. How does your garden come on?" "Famously. Uncle Jefferson has shanghaied a half-dozen negro gardeners gar-deners from where I can't imagine and he's having the time of his life hectoring over them. He refers to the upper and lower terraces as 'up-and-down-stairs.' I've got seeds, but it will be a long time before they flower." "Oh, would you like some slips?" she cried. "Or, better still, I can Shirley, Who Had Again Seated Herself, Her-self, Suddenly Laughed, and Pointed Point-ed to the Book. give you the roses already rooted Mad Charles end Marechal Neil and Cloth of Gold and cabbage and ramblers. ram-blers. We have geraniums and futnsias, too. and the coral honey-- honey-- suckle. That's different from the wild one, you know." "You are too good! If you would only advise me where to set them! But I dare say you think me presuming" presum-ing" She turned her full face to him. ."'Presuming!' You're punishing me now for the dreadful way I talked to you about Damory Court before I knew who you were. Oh, it was unpardonable! un-pardonable! And after the splendid ,(hing you oad done I lead about It ;iat same evening with your money. ! in-' m'" "No, no!" he protested. "There was nothing splendid about it. It was only pride. You see the corporation was my father's great idea .the thing he created and put his soul into and it was foundering. I know that would have hurt him. One thing I've wanted to say to you, ever since the day we talked together about the duel. I want to say that whatever lay behind it, my father's whole life was darkened by that event. Now that I can put two and two together, I know that it was the cause of his sadnes3." "Ah, I can believe that," she replied. re-plied. "I think he had only two Interests myself and the corporation. So you see why I'd rather save that and be a beggar the rest of my natural life. But I'm not a beggar. Damory Court alone is worth I know it now a hundred hun-dred times what I left." "You are so utterly different from what I imagined you!" "I could never have imagined you," he said, "never." "I must be terribly outre." "You are so many women in one. When I listened to your harp playing I could hardly believe it was the sam you I saw galloping across the fieM3 that morning. Now you are a different woman from both of those." As she looked at him, her lips ctfrled corner-wise, her foot slipped oft the sheer edge of the turf. She sayed toward him aEd he caught her, feeling feel-ing for a sharp instant the adorable nearness of her body. It ridged all his skin with a creeping delight. She recovered re-covered her footing with an exclamation, exclama-tion, and turned back somewhat abruptly ab-ruptly to the porch where she seated herself on the step, drawing her filmr skirt aside to make a place for hirrM There was a moment of silence which he broke. "That exquisite serenade you were playing! You know the words, of course." "They are more lovely, if possible, than the score. Do you care for poetry?" "Ive always loved It," he said. "I've been reading some lately a little old-fashioned old-fashioned book I found at -Damory Court. It's 'Lucile.' Do you know it?" "Yes. It's my mother's favorite." He drew it from his pocket. "See, I've got it here. It's marked, too." He opened it, to close it instantly not, however, before she had put out her hand and laid it, palm down, on the page. "That rose! Oh, let me have it!" "Never!" he protested. "Look here. When I put it between the leaves, I did so at random. I didn't see till now that 1 had opened it at a marked passage." "Let us read it," she said. I He leaned and held the leaf to the light from the doorway and the two heads bent together over the text. A sound fell behind them and both turned. A slight figure, in a soft gray gown with old lace at the throat, stood in the doorway behind them. John Valiant sprang to his feet. "Ah, Shirley, I thought I heard voices. Is that you, Chilly?" "It's not Mr. Lusk, mother," said Shirley. "It's our new neighbor, Mr. Valiant." As he bent over the frail hand, murmuring mur-muring the conventional" words that presentations are believed to require, Mrs. Dandridge sank into a deep cushioned chair. "Won't you sit down?" she said. He noticed that she did not look directly at him, and that her face was as pallid as her hair. "Thank you," said John Valiant, and resumed his place on the lower step. Shirley, who had again Seated herself, her-self, suddenly laughed, and pointed to the book which lay between them. "Imagine what we are doing, dearest! We were reading 'Lucile' together." She saw the other wince, and the deep dark eyes lifted, as if under compulsion, com-pulsion, from the book-cover to Valiant's Vali-ant's face. ,He was startled by Shirley's Shir-ley's cry and the sudden limp unconscious uncon-scious settling-back into the cushions of the fragile form. CHAPTER XIX. Night A quicker breeze was stirring as John Valiant went back along the Red Road. He had waited in the garden at Rosewood till Shirley, aided by Emmallne and with Ranston's anxious face hovering in the background, having hav-ing performed those gentle offices which a woman'3 fainting spell requires, re-quires, had come to reassure him and to say good night. As he threw off his coat in the bedroom he had chosen for his own, he felt the hard corner of the "Lucile" in the pocket, and drawing it out, laid it on the table by tne bedside. He seemed to feel again the tingle of his cheek where a curling stiud of her coppery hair had sprung against it when her head had bent beside his own to read the marked lines. When he had undressed he sat an hour in the candle-blaze, a dressing-gown dressing-gown thrown over his shoulders, striving striv-ing vainly to recreate that evening call, to remember her every word and look and movement. For a breath her face would flush suddenly before him, like a live thing; then It would mysteriously fade and elude him, though he clenched his hands on the irmi o his chair in the fierce mental effort to recall It. Only the intense blue of her eyes, the tawny sweep of her hair these and the touch of her, the consciousness of her warm and vivid fragrance, remained to wrap all his senses in a mist woven of gold and fire. Shirley, meanwhile, had sat some time beside her mother's bed, leaning from a white chintz-covered chair, her anxiety only partially allayed by reassurances, reas-surances, now and then stooping to lay her young, cheek against the delicate arm in its lacy sleeve or to pass her hand lovingly up and down its outline, noting with a recurrent passion of tenderness ten-derness the transparency of the skin with its violet veining and the shadows shad-ows beneath the closed eyes. Emma-line, Emma-line, moving on soft worsted-shod feet about the dim room, at length had whispered. "You go tuh baid, honey. I stay with Mis' Judith till she go tuh sleep." "Yes, go, Shirley," said her mother. Tried the Numbers Carefully, First Right, Then Left: 172891 0. The Heavy Door Opened, t "Haven't I any privileges at all? Can't I even faint when I feel like it, without calling out the fire-brigade? You'll pamper me to death and heaven knows I don't need it." "You won't let me telephone for Doctor Doc-tor Southall?" "Certainly not!" "And you are sure it was nothing but the roses?" "Why, what else should it be?" said her mother almost peevishly. "I must really have the arbors thinned out. On heavy nights it's positively overpowering. overpower-ing. Go along now, and we'll talk about it tomorrow. I can ring if I want anything." In her room Shirley undressed thoughtfully. There was between her and her mother a fine tenuous bond of sympathy and feeling as rare, perhaps, per-haps, as it was lovely. She could not remember when the other had not been a semi-invalid, and her earliest childhood recollections were punctuated punctu-ated with the tap of the little cane. Tonight's sudden indisposition had shocked and disturbed her; to faint at a rush of perfume seemed to suggest sug-gest a growing weakness that was alarming. Tomorrow, she told herself, she would send Ranston with a wagon-load wagon-load of the roses to the hospital at Charlottesville. She slipped on a pink shell-shaded dressing-gown of slinky silk with a riot of azaleas scattered in the weave, and then, dragging her chair before the open window, drew aside the light curtain and began to brush her hair. All at once her gaze fell upon the floor, and she shrank backward from a twisting thread-like thing whose bright saffron-yellow glowed sharply against the dark carpet. She saw in an instant, in-stant, however, that it was nothing more dangerous than a fragment of love-vine from the garden, which had clung to her skirt. She picked up the tiny mass of tendrils and with a slow smile tossed it over her right shoulder through the window. "If It takes root," she said aloud, "my sweetheart sweet-heart loves me." She leaned from the sill to peer down into the misty garden, gar-den, but could not follow its fall. Long ago her visitor would have reached Damory Court. She had a vision of him wandering, candle In hand, through the empty echoing rooms, looking at the voiceless portraits por-traits on the walls, thinking perhaps of his father, of the fatal duel of which he had never known. She liked the way he had spoken of his father! As she leaned, out of the stillness there came to her ear a mellow sound. It was the bell of the courthouse In the village. Sl:e counted the strokes falling clearly or faintly as the sluggish slug-gish breeze ebbed or swelled. It was eleven. She drew back, dropped the curtain to shut out the wan glimmer, and in the darkness crept into the soft bed as if into a hiding-place. A warm sun and an air mildly mellow. mel-low. A faint gold-shadowed mist over the valley and a soft lilac haze blending blend-ing the rounded outlines of the hills. Through the shrubbery at Damory Court a cardinal darted like a crimson crim-son shuttle, to rock Impudently from a fleering limb, and here and there on the bluish-ivory sky, motionless as a pasted wafer, hung a hawk; from time to time one of thse wavered and slanted swiftly down, to climb once more in a huge spiral to its high tower of sky. Perhaps it wondered, as its telescopic tele-scopic eye looked down. That had been its choicest covert, that disheveled dishev-eled tangle where the birds held perpetual per-petual carnival, the weasel lurked in the underbrush and the rabbit lined his windfall. Now the wildness was gone. A pergola, glistening white, now upheld the runaway vines, making a sickle-like path from the upper terrace ter-race to the lake. In the barn loft the pigeons still quarrelled over their new cotes of fresh pine, and under a clump of locust trees at a little distance from the house, a half-dozen dolls' cabins on stilts stood waiting the honey-storage of the black and gold bees. There were new denizens, also. These had arrived in a dozen zinc tanks and willow hampers, to the amaze of a sleepy express clerk at the railroad station: two swans now sailed majestically over the lily-ponds of the lake, along its gravel rim and a pair of bronze-colored ducks waddled and preened, and its placid surface rippled and broke to the sluggish backs of goldfish and the flirting fins of red Japanese carp. The house itself wore another air. Its look of unkemptness had largely vanished. The soft gray tone of age remained, but the bleakness and for-lornness for-lornness were gone; there was about all now a warmth and genial bearing that hinted at mellowed beauty, firelight fire-light and cheerful voices within. Valiant heaved a long sigh of satisfaction satis-faction as he stood in the sunlight gazing gaz-ing at the results of his labors. He was not now the flippant boulevardier to whom money was the sine qua non of existence. He had le'arned a sovereign sover-eign lesson one gained not through the push'' and fight of crowds, but in the simple peace of a countryside, un-vexed un-vexed by the clamor of gold and the complex problems of a competitive existence ex-istence that he had inherited a need of activity, of achievement that he had been born to ,do. "Chum," he said, to the dog rolling on his back in the grass, "what do you think of it all, anyway?" He reached down, seized a hind leg and whirling him around like a teetotum, sent him flying into the bushes, whence Chum launched again upon him, like a catapult. He caught the white shoulders and held him vise-like. "Just about right, eh? But wait till we get those ramblers!" "And to think," he continued, whimsically whim-sically releasing him, "that I might have gone on, one of the little-neck-clam crowd I've always trained with, at tho same old pace, till the Ver-mouth-cocktall-Palm-Beach career got a double Nelson on me and the umpire counted me out. At this moment I wouldn't swap this old house and land, and the sunshine and that 'gyarden and Unc' Jefferson and Aunt Daph and the chickens and the birds and all the rest of it. for a mile of Millionaires' Mil-lionaires' Row." He went into the house and to the library. The breeze through the wide-flung wide-flung bow-window was fluttering the papers on the desk and the map on the wall was flapping sidewise. He went to straighten it, and then saw what he had not noticed before that it covered something that had been let into the plaster. He swung it aside and made an exclamation. ' He was looking at a square uncom promising wall-safe, with a round fig ured disk of white met al on its face. He knelt before it and tried knoT, After a moment it turned easily. Jut the resolute steel door would not open though he tried every combination that came Into his- mind. No use he said disgustedly. "One must have the right numbers." Then he lifted his fretted frame and smote his grimy hands together Con-found Con-found it!" he said with a short laugh "Here I am. a bankrupt, with all his outfit-clear to the very finger-bowls-handed to me on a silver tray, and I m-mad m-mad as scat because I can t open the first locked thing I find!" He ran upstairs and donned a rough corduroy jacket and high leather leggings. leg-gings. "We're going to climb the hill today, Chum," he announced, and no more moccasins need apply." In the lower hall, however, he suddenly sud-denly stopped stock-still. "The s lip of paper that was in the china dog. he exclaimed. "What a chump I am not to have thought of it!" He found it in its pigeonhole and, kneeling down before the safe, tried the numbers carefully, first right, then left: 17 2S 94 0. The heavy door opened. "I was right!" he exulted. "It's the piate." He drew it out, piece by piece. Each was bagged in dark-red Canton flannel. He broke U.e tape of one bag and exposed a gre.it silver pitcher, tarnished purple-bluo like a ravens wing then a tea-service. Each piece, large and small, was marked with the greyhound rampant and the motto. "And to think," he said, "that my great-great-grandfather buried you with his own hands under the stables when Tarleton's raiders swept the valley val-ley before the surrender at Yorktown! Only wait till Aunt Daphne gets you polished up, and on the sideboard! You're the one thing the place has needed!" " With the dog for comrade he traversed tra-versed the garden and plunged across the valley below, humming as he went. The place was pathless and overgrown over-grown with paw-paw bushes and sassafras. sassa-fras. Great trees stood so thickly in places as to make a twilight and the sunnier spots were masses of pink laurel, poison-ivy, flaming purple rllo-dodendron rllo-dodendron and wine-red tendrils of in-terbraided in-terbraided briers. This was the forest for-est land of whose possibilities he had thought. In the heart of the woods he came upon a great limb that had been wrenched off by storm. The broken wood was of a deep rich brown, shading to black. He broke off his song, snapped snap-ped a twig and smelled It Its sharp acrid odor was unmistakable. He Suddenly Sud-denly remembered the walnut tree at Rosewood and what Shirley had said: "I know a girl who had two in hi?r yard, and she went to Europe on them." He looked about him; as far as he could see the trees reared, hardy and perfect, untouched for a generation. He selected one of medium size and pulling a creeper, measured its circumference cir-cumference and gaging this measure with his eye, made a penciled calculation calcula-tion on the back of an envelope. "Great Scott!", he said jubilantly to the dog; "that would cut enough to wainscot, the Damory Court library and build twenty sideboards!" (TO BE CONTINUED.) |