CHAPTER XV

MRS. POLY GIFFORD PAYS A CALL

The brown ivied house in the village was big and square and faced the sleepy street. Its front was gay with pink oleanders in green tubs and the yard spotted with annual encampments of geraniums and marigolds. A one-storied wing contained a small door with a doctor's brass plate on the clapboarding beside it. Doctor Southall was one of Mrs. Merryweather Mason's paying guests--for she would have deemed the word boarder a gratuitous insult, no less to them than to her. Another was the major, who for a decade had occupied the big old-fashioned corner-room on the second floor, companioned by a monstrous gray cat and waited on by an ancient negro named Jereboam, who had been a slave of his father's.

The doctor was a sallow taciturn man with a saturnine face, eyebrows like frosted thistles, a mouth as if made with one quick knife-slash and a head nearly bald, set on a neck that would not have disqualified a yearling ox. His broad shoulders were slightly stooped, and his mouth wore habitually an expression half resentful, half sardonic, conveying a cynical opinion of the motives of the race in general and of the special depravity of that particular countryside. Altogether he exhaled an air in contrast to which the major's old-school blend of charm and courtesy seemed an almost ribald frivolity.

On this particular morning neither the major nor the doctor was in evidence, the former having gone out early, and the latter being at the moment in his office, as the brassy buzz of a telephone from time to time announced. Two of the green wicker rocking-chairs on the porch, however, were in agitant commotion. Mrs. Mason was receiving a caller in the person of Mrs. Napoleon Gifford.

The latter had a middle-aged affection for baby-blue and a devouring penchant for the ages and antecedents of others, at times irksome to those to whom her "Let me see. You went to school with my first husband's sister, didn't you?" or "Your daughter Jane must have been married the year the old Israel Stamper place was burned," were unwelcome reminders of the pace of time. To-day, of course, the topic was the new arrival at Damory Court.

"After all these _years_!" the visitor was saying in her customary italics. (The broad "a" which lent a dulcet softness to the speech of her hostess was scorned by Mrs. Poly, her own "a's" being as narrow as the needle through which the rich man reaches heaven.) "We came here from Richmond when I was a bride--that's twenty-one years ago--and Damory Court was forsaken then. And think what a condition the house must be in now! Cared for by an agent who comes every other season from New York. Trust a _man_ to do work like that!"

"I'm glad a Valiant is to occupy it," remarked Mrs. Mason in her sweet flute-like voice. "It would be sad to see any one else there. For after all, the Valiants were gentlemen."

Mrs. Gifford sniffed. "Would you have called Devil-John Valiant a gentleman? Why, he earned the name by the dreadful things he did. My grandfather used to say that when his wife lay sick--he hated her, you know--he would gallop his horse with all his hounds full-cry after him under her windows. Then that _ghastly_ story of the slave he pressed to death in the hogshead of tobacco."

"I know," acquiesced Mrs. Mason. "He was a cruel man, and wicked, too. Yet of course he was a gentleman. In the South the test of a gentleman has never been what he _does_, but who he is. Devil-John was splendid, for all his wickedness. He was the best swordsman in all Virginia. It used to be said there was a portrait of him at Damory Court, and that during the war, in the engagement on the hillside, a bullet took out one of its eyes. But his grandson, Beauty Valiant, who lived at Damory Court thirty years ago, wasn't his type at all. He was only twenty-five when the duel occurred."

"He must have been brilliant," said the visitor, "to have founded that great Corporation. It's a pity the son didn't take after him. Have you seen the _papers_ lately? It seems that though he was to blame for the wrecking of the concern they can't do anything to him. Some technicality in the law, I suppose. But if a man is only rich enough they can't convict him of anything. Why he should suddenly make up his mind to come down _here_ I _can't_ see. With that old affair of his father's behind him, I should think he'd prefer Patagonia."

"I take it, then, madam," Doctor Southall's forbidding voice rose from the doorway, "that you are familiar with the circumstances of that old affair, as you term it?"

The lady bridled. Her passages at arms with the doctor did not invariably tend to sweeten her disposition. "I'm sure I only know what people say," she said.

"'People?'" snorted the doctor irascibly. "Just another name for a community that's a perfect sink of meanness and malice. If one believed all he heard here he'd quit speaking to his own grandmother."

"You will admit, I suppose," said Mrs. Gifford with some spirit, "that the name Valiant isn't what it used to be in this neighborhood?"

"I will, madam," responded the doctor. "When Valiant left this place (a mark of good taste, I've always considered it) he left it the worse, if possible, for his departure. Your remark, however, would seem to imply demerit on his part. Was he the only man who ever happened to be at the lucky end of a dueling-ground?"

"Then it isn't true that Valiant was a dead shot and Sassoon intoxicated?"

"Madam," said the doctor, "I have no wish to discuss the details of that unhappy incident with you or anybody else. I was one of those present, but the circumstances you mention have never been descanted upon by me. I merely wish to point out that the people whom you have been quoting, are not only a set of ignoramuses with cotton-back souls, but as full of uncharitableness as an egg is of meat."

"I see by the papers," said Mrs. Gifford, with an air of resignedly changing the subject, "they've been investigating the failure of the Valiant Corporation. The son seems to be getting the sharp end of the stick. Perhaps he's coming down here because they've made it so hot for him in New York. Well, I'm afraid he'll find _this_ county disappointing."

"He will that!" agreed the doctor savagely. "No doubt he imagines he's coming to a kindly countryside of gentle-born people with souls and imaginations; he'll find he's lit in a section that's entirely too ready to hack at his father's name and prepared in advance to call him Northern scum and turn up its nose at his accent--a community so full of dyed-in-the-wool snobbery that it would make Boston look like a poor-white barbecue. I'm sorry for _him_!"

Mrs. Gifford, having learned wisdom from experience, resisted the temptation to reply. She merely rocked a trifle faster and turned a smile which she strove to make amusedly deprecative upon her hostess. Just then from the rear of the house came a strident voice:

"Yo', Raph'el! Take yo' han's outer dem cherries! Don' yo' know ef yo' swallahs dem ar pits, yo' gwineter hab 'pende_gee_tus en lump up en die?"

The sound of a slap and a shrill yelp followed, and around the porch dashed an infantile darky, as nude as a black Puck, with his hands full of cherries, who came to a sudden demoralized stop in the embarrassing foreground.

"Raph!" thundered the doctor. "Didn't I tell you to go back to that kitchen?"

"Yas, suh," responded the imp. "But yo' didn' tell me ter stay dar!"

"If I see you out here again," roared the doctor, "I'll tie your ears back--and _grease_ you--and SWALLOW you!" At which grisly threat, the apparition, with a shrill shriek, turned and ran desperately for the corner of the house.

"I hear," said the doctor, resuming, "that the young man who came to fix the place up has hired Uncle Jefferson and his wife to help him. Who's responsible for that interesting information?"

"Rickey Snyder," said Mrs. Mason. "She's got a spy-glass rigged up in a sugar-tree at Miss Mattie Sue's and she saw them pottering around there this morning."

"Little _limb_!" exclaimed Mrs. Gifford, with emphasis. "She's as cheeky as a town-hog. I can't imagine what Shirley Dandridge was thinking of when she brought that low-born child out of her sphere."

Something like a growl came from the doctor as he struck open the screen-door. "'Limb!' I'll bet ten dollars she's an angel in a cedar-tree at a church fair compared with some better-born young ones I know of who are only fit to live when they've got the scarlet-fever and who ought to be in the reformatory long ago. And as for Shirley Dandridge, it's my opinion she and her mother and a few others like her have got about the only drops of the milk of human kindness in this whole abandoned community!"

"Dreadful man!" said Mrs. Gifford, sotto voce, as the door banged viciously. "To think of his being born a Southall! Sometimes I can't believe it!"

Mrs. Mason shook her head and smiled. "Ah, but that isn't the real Doctor Southall," she said. "That's only his shell."

"I've heard that he has another side," responded the other with guarded grimness, "but if he has, I wish he'd manage to show it sometimes."

Mrs. Mason took off her glasses and wiped them carefully. "I saw it when my husband died," she said softly. "That was before you came. They were old friends, you know. He was sick almost a year, and the doctor used to carry him out here on the porch every day in his arms, like a child. And then, when the typhus came that summer among the negroes, he quarantined himself with them--the only white man there--and treated and nursed them and buried the dead with his own hands, till it was stamped out. That's the real Doctor Southall."

The rockers vibrated in silence for a moment. Then Mrs. Gifford said: "I never knew before that he had anything to do with that duel. Was he one of Valiant's seconds?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Mason; "and the major was the other. I was a little girl when it happened. I can barely remember it, but it made a big sensation."

"And over a love-affair!" exclaimed Mrs. Gifford in the tone of one to whom romance was daily bread.

"I suppose it was."

"Why, my _dear_! Of _course_ it was. That's always been the story. What on earth have men to fight duels about except us women? They only _pretend_ it's cards or horses. Trust me, there's always a pair of silk stockings at the bottom of it! Girls are so thoughtless--though you and I were just as bad, I suppose, if we only remembered!--and they don't realize that it's sometimes a serious thing to trifle with a man. That is, of course, if he's of a certain type. _I_ think our Virginian girls flirt outrageously. They quit only at the church door (though I _will_ say they generally stop then) and they take a man's ring without any idea whatever of the sacredness of an engagement. You remember Ilsa Eustis who married the man from Petersburg? She was engaged to two men at once, and used to wear whichever ring belonged to the one who was coming to see her. One day they came together. She was in the yard when they stopped at the horse-block. Well, she tied her handkerchief round her hand and said she'd burned herself pulling candy. (No, neither one of them was the man from Petersburg.) When she was married, one of them wrote her and asked for his ring. It had seven diamonds set in the shape of a cross. I'm telling you this in confidence, just as it was told to me. She didn't write a reply--she only sent him a telegram: 'Simply to thy cross I cling.' She wears the stones yet in a bracelet."

For a time the conversation languished. Then Mrs. Gifford asked suddenly: "_Who_ do you suppose she could have been?--the girl behind that old Valiant affair."

Mrs. Mason shook her head. "No one knows for certain--unless, of course, the major or the doctor, and I wouldn't question either of them for worlds. You see, people had stopped gossiping about it before I was out of school."

"But surely your husband--"

"The only quarrel we had while we were engaged was over that. I tried to make him tell me. I imagined from something he said then that the young men who _did_ know had pledged one another not to speak of it."

"I wonder why?" said the other thoughtfully.

"Oh, undoubtedly out of regard for the girl. I've always thought it so decent of them! If there was a girl in the case, her position must have been unpleasant enough, if she was not actually heart-broken. Imagine the poor thing, knowing that wherever she went, people would be saying: 'She's the one they fought the duel over! Look at her!' If she grieved, they'd say she'd been crazy in love with Sassoon, and point out the dark circles under her eyes, and wonder if she'd ever get over it. If she didn't mope, they'd say she was in love with Valiant and was glad it was Sassoon who was shot. If she shut herself up, they'd say she had no pride; if she didn't, they'd say she had no heart. It was far better to cover the story up and let it die."

But the subject was too fascinating for her morning visitor to abandon. "She probably loved one of them," she said. "I wonder which it was. I'll ask the major when I see him. _I'm_ not afraid. He can't eat me! Wouldn't it be _curious_," she continued, "if it should be somebody who lives here now--whom we've always known! I can't think who it could have been, though. There's Jenny Quarles--she's eight years older than we are, if she's a day--she was a nice little thing, but you couldn't _dream_ of anybody ever fighting a duel over her. There's Polly Pendleton, and Berenice Garland--they must have been about the right age, and they never married--but no, it _couldn't_ have been either of them. The only other spinster I can think of is Miss Mattie Sue, and she was as poor as Job's turkey and teaching school. Besides, she must have been years and years too old. Hush! There's Major Bristow at the gate now. And the doctor's just coming out again."

The major wore a suit of white linen, with a broad-brimmed straw hat, and a pink was in his button-hole, but to the observing, his step might have seemed to lack an accustomed jauntiness. As he came up the path the doctor opened his office door. Standing on the threshold, his legs wide apart and his hands under his coat-tails, he nodded grimly across the marigolds. "How do you feel this morning, Major."

"Feel?" rumbled the major; "the way any gentleman ought to feel this time of the morning, sah. Like hell, sah."

The doctor bent his gaze on the hilarious blossom in the other's lapel. "If I were you, Bristow," he said scathingly, "I reckon I'd quit galivanting around to bridge-fights with perfumery on my handkerchief every evening. It's a devil of an example to the young."

The rocking-chairs behind the screening vines became motionless, and the ladies exchanged surreptitious smiles. If the two gentlemen were aware of each other's sterling qualities, their mutual appreciation was in inverse ratio to its expression, and, as the Elucinian mysteries, cloaked before the world. In public the doctor was wont to remark that the major talked like a Caesar, looked like a piano-tuner and was the only man he had ever seen who could strut sitting down. Never were his gibes so barbed as when launched against the major's white-waistcoated and patrician calm, and conversely, never did the major's bland suavity so nearly approach an undignified irritation as when receiving the envenomed darts of that accomplished cynic.

The major settled his black tie. "A little wholesome exercise wouldn't be a bad thing for you, Doctor," he said succinctly. "You're looking a shade pasty to-day."

"Exercise!" snapped the other viciously, as he pounded down the steps. "Ha, ha! I suppose you exercise--lazying out to the Dandridges once a week for a julep, and the rest of the time wearing out good cane-bottoms and palm-leaf fans and cussing at the heat. You'll go off with apoplexy one of these days."

"I shall if they're scared enough to call _you_," the major shot after him, nettled. But the doctor did not pause. He went on down the street without turning his head.

The major lifted his hat gallantly to the ladies, whose presence he had just observed. "I reckon," he said, as he found the string of his glasses and adjusted them to gaze after the retreating form; "I reckon if I did have apoplexy, I'd want Southall to handle the case, but the temptation to get one in on him is sometimes a little too much for me."

"_Do_ sit down, Major," said Mrs. Gifford. "There's a question I'm just dying to ask you. We've had _such_ an interesting conversation. You've heard the news, of course, that young Mr. Valiant is coming to Damory Court?"

The major sat down heavily. In the bright light his face seemed suddenly pale and old.

"No?" the lady's tone was arch. "Have all the rest of us _really_ got ahead of you for once? Yes, it's true. There's some one there getting it to rights. Now here's the question. There was a woman, of course, at the bottom of the Valiant duel. I'd never _dream_ of asking you who she was. But which was it she loved, Valiant or Sassoon?"