"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-gla.s.s 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 sh.e.l.l."

"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 gla.s.ses 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 Sa.s.soon, 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 Sa.s.soon 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 b.u.t.ton-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 h.e.l.l, 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 surrept.i.tious 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 gla.s.ses 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 Sa.s.soon?"

CHAPTER XVI

THE ECHO

When the major entered his room, Jereboam, his ancient body-servant, was dawdling about putting things to rights, his seamed visage under his white wool suggesting a charred stump beneath a crisp powdering of snow.

"Jedge Chalmahs done tellyfoam ter ax yo' ovah ter Gladden Hall ter suppah ter-night, suh," he said. "De jedge 'low he gwine git eben wid yo' fo' dat las' game ob pokah when yo' done lam him."

"Tell him not to-night, Jerry," said the other wearily. "Some other time."

The old darky ruminated as he plodded down to the doctor's telephone.

"Whut de mattah now? He got dat ar way-off-yondah look ergen." He shook his head forebodingly. "Ah heahed he hummin' dat tune when he dress hisse'f dis mawnin'. Sing befo' yo' eat, cry befo' yo' sleep!"

The major had, indeed, a far-away look as he sat there, a heavy lonely figure, that bright morning. It had slipped to his face with the news of the arrival at Damory Court. He told himself that he felt queer. A mocking-bird was singing in a tulip-tree outside, and the gray cat sat on the window-sill, watching the foliage with blinking l.u.s.t. There was no breeze and the leaves of the Virginia creeper that curled about the sash were trembling with the sensuous delight of the sunshine. Suddenly he seemed to hear elfin voices close to his ear:

"_Which was it she loved? Valiant or Sa.s.soon?_"

It was so distinct that he started, vexed and disturbed. Really, it was absurd. He would be seeing things next! "Southall may be right about that exercise," he muttered; "I'll walk more." He began the projected reform without delay, striding up and down the room. But the little voices presently sounded again, shouting like gnomes inside a hill:

"_Which was it? Valiant or Sa.s.soon?_"

"I wish to G.o.d I knew!" said the major roughly, standing still. It silenced them, but the sound of his own voice, as though it had been a pre-concerted signal, drew together a hundred inchoate images of other days. There was the well-ordered garden of Damory Court--it rose up, gloomy with night shadows, across his great clothes-press against the wall--with himself sitting on a rustic bench smoking and behind him the candle-lighted library window with Beauty Valiant pacing up and down, waiting for daylight. There was a sun-lighted stretch between two hemlocks, with Southall and he measuring the ground--the gra.s.s all dewy sparkles and an early robin teetering on a thorn-bush.

Eight--nine--ten--he caught himself counting the paces.

He wiped his forehead. Between the hemlocks now were two figures facing each other, one twitching uncertainly, the other palely rigid; and at one side, held screen-wise, a raised umbrella. In some ghostly way he could see straight through the latter--see the doctor's hand gripping the handle, his own, outstretched beyond its edge, holding a handkerchief ready to flutter down. A silly subterfuge those umbrellas, but there must be no actual witnesses to the final act of a "gentlemen's meeting"! A silly code, the whole of it, now happily outgrown! He thought thus with a kind of dumb irritant wonder, while the green picture hung a moment--as a stone thrown in air hangs poised at height before it falls--then dissolved itself in two sharp crackles, with a gasping interval between. The scene blurred into a single figure huddling down--huddling down--

"_Which did she love?_" The major shook his head helplessly. It was, after all, only the echo, become all at once audible on a shallow woman's lips, of a question that had always haunted him. It had first come to him on the heels of that duel, when he had stood, somewhat later that hateful morning, holding a saddled horse before the big pillared porch. It had whispered itself then from every moving leaf. "_Sa.s.soon or Valiant?_" If she had loved Sa.s.soon, of what use the letter Valiant was so long penning in the library? But--if it were Valiant she loved? The man who, having sworn not to lift his hand against the other, had broken his sacred word to her! Who had stained the unwritten code by facing an opponent maddened with liquor! Yet, what was there a woman might not condone in the one man? Would she read, forgive and send for him?