"Yes," said Valiant.

"Well," she said critically, "you've got your job cut out for you. But I should say you're the kind to do it."

"Rickey!" Shirley's voice tried to be stern, but there was a hint of laughter in it.

"What did I say now?" inquired Rickey. "I'm sure I meant it to be complimentary."

"It was," said Valiant. "I shall try to deserve your good opinion."

"But what a ghastly play!" exclaimed Shirley. "Where did you learn it?"

"We were playing Mis' Poly Gifford in the hospital," Rickey answered.

"She's got a whole lot of little pebbles that they cut out--"

"Oh, Rickey!" expostulated Shirley with a shudder.

"They _did_. She keeps them in a little pasteboard box like wedding-cake, with a blue ribbon around it. She was showing it to Miss Mattie Sue yesterday. She was telling her all about it. She said all the women there showed each other their cuts and bragged about how long they were."

Valiant's merriment rang out under the trees, but Shirley was crimson.

"Well, I don't think it's a nice play," she said decidedly.

"That's just the way," murmured Rickey disconsolately, "yesterday it was _Romeo and Juliet_ with the Meredith children, and their mother had a conniption fit."

"Was that gruesome, too?"

"Not so very. I only poisoned Rosebud and June and stabbed myself. I don't call _that_ gruesome."

"You certainly have a highly developed taste for the dramatic," said Shirley. "I wonder what your next effort will be."

"It's to-morrow," Rickey informed her. "We're going to have the duel between Valiant and Sa.s.soon."

The smile was stricken from John Valiant's face. A duel--_the_ duel--between Valiant and Sa.s.soon! He felt his blood beat quickly. Had there been such a thing in his father's life? Was that what had blighted it?

"Only not here where it really happened, but in the Meredith orchard.

Greenie's going to be--"

"Ah ain'!" contradicted Greenie. "Ah ain' gwineter be dat Valiant, nohow!"

"You are, too!" insisted Rickey wrathfully. "You needn't be so pickety and choosety--and after she kills Sa.s.soon, we put the bloodhounds on her trail."

Greenie t.i.ttered. "Dey ain' no dawg eroun' heah'd tech _me_," she said, "en 'sides--"

"But, Rickey," Shirley interposed, "that wasn't a murder. That was a duel between gentlemen. They don't--"

"I know it," a.s.sented Rickey cheerfully. "But it makes it more exciting.

_Will_ you come, Miss Shirley, deed and double? I won't charge you any admission."

"I can't promise," said Shirley. "I might stand the duel, but I'm afraid the hounds would be too blood-curdling. By the way," she added, "isn't it about time Miss Mattie Sue had her tea?"

"It certainly is, Miss Shirley!" said Rickey, with penitent emphasis. "I clean forgot it, and she'll row me up the gump-stump! Come on, Greenie,"

and she started off through the bushes.

But the other hung back. "Ah done tole yo' Ah ain' gwine be dat Valiant," she said stubbornly.

"Look here, Greenville Female Seminary Simms," Rickey retorted, "don't you multiply words with me just because your mammy was working there when you were born and gave you a fancy name! If you'll promise to be him, I'll get Miss Mattie Sue to let us make mola.s.ses candy."

CHAPTER XIX

UNDER THE HEMLOCKS

Shirley looked at Valiant with a deepening of her dimple. "Rickey isn't an aristocrat," she said: "she's what we call here poor-white, but she's got a heart of gold. She's an orphan, and the neighborhood in general, and Miss Mattie Sue Mabry in particular, have adopted her."

He hardly heard her words for the painful wonder that was holding him.

He had canva.s.sed many theories to explain his father's letter but such a thing as a duel he had never remotely imagined. His father had taken a man's life. Was it this thought--whatever the provocation, however justified by the customs of the time and section--that had driven him to self-exile? He recalled himself with an effort, for she was speaking again.

"You've found Lovers' Leap, no doubt?"

"No. This is the first time I've been so far from the house. Is it near here?"

"I'll show it to you." She held out her hand for the bunch of jessamine and laid it on the broad roots of a tree that were mottled with lichen.

"Look there," she said suddenly; "isn't that a beauty?"

She was pointing to a jimson-weed on which had settled, with gla.s.sy wings vibrating, a long, ungainly, needle-like insect with an odd sword-like beak. "What is that?" he asked.

"A snake-doctor. If Unc' Jefferson were here he'd say, 'Bettah watch out! Dah's er snek roun' erbout heah, sho'!' He'll fill you full of darky superst.i.tions."

He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm being introduced to them hourly. I've met the graveyard rabbit--one of them had hoodooed my motor yesterday.

I'm to carry a buckeye in my pocket--by the way, is a buckeye a horse-chestnut?--if I want to escape rheumatism. I've learned that it's bad luck to make a bargain on a Friday, and the weepy consequences of singing before breakfast." A blue-jay darted by them, to perch on a limb and eye them saucily. "And the jay-bird! He goes to h.e.l.l every Friday noon to carry brimstone and tell the devil what folks have been up to."

She clapped her hands. "You're certainly learning fast. When I was little I used to be delighted to see a blue-jay in the cedars on Friday afternoon. It was a sign we'd been so good there was nothing to tell.

Follow me now and I'll show you the view from Lovers' Leap. But look down. Don't lift your eyes till I tell you."

He dropped his gaze to the small brown boots and followed, his eyes catching low side-glimpses of woodsy things--the spangled dance of leaf-shadows, a chameleon lizard whisking through the roots of the bracken, the creamy wavering wings of a white moth resting on a dead stump. Suddenly the slim path between the trees took a quick turn, and fell away at their feet. "There," she said. "This is the finest view at Damory Court."

They stood on the edge of a stony ravine which widened at one end to a shallow marshy valley. The rocks were covered with gray-green feathery creepers, enwound with curly yellow tendrils of love-vine. Across the ravine, on a lower level, began a grove of splendid trees that marched up into the long stretch of neglected forest he had seen from the house.

Looking down the valley, fields of young tobacco lay tier on tier, and beyond, in the very middle of the mellow vaporous distance, lifted the tapering tower of a far-off church, hazily outlined against the azure.

"You love it?" he asked, without withdrawing his eyes.

"I've loved it all my life. I love everything about Damory Court. Ruined as it is, it is still one of the most beautiful estates in all Virginia.

There's nothing finer even in Italy. Just behind us, where those hemlocks stand, is where the duel the children spoke of was fought."

He turned his head. "Tell me about it," he said.

She glanced at him curiously. "Didn't you know? That was the reason the place was abandoned. Valiant, who lived here, and the owner of another plantation, who was named Sa.s.soon, quarreled. They fought, the story is, under those big hemlock trees. Sa.s.soon was killed."