"I'd hardly limit it to that," said the major, chortling at the easy thrust. "And after all, even folderolings have their use."

"Who said they hadn't? If people choose to make whirling dervishes of themselves, they at least can reflect that it's better for their livers than cane-bottom chairs. Though that's about all you can say in favor of the modern ball."

"Pshaw!" said the major. "I remember a time when you used to rig out in a claw-hammer and

"'Dance all night till broad daylight And go home with the gyrls in the morning,'

"with the bravest of us. Used to like it, too."

"I got over it before I was old enough to make myself a b.u.t.t of hilarity," the doctor retorted. "I see by the papers they've invented a new dance called the grizzly bear. I believe there's another named the yip-kyoodle. I hope you've got 'em down pat to show the young folks to-night, Bristow."

The major got up with some irritation. "Southall," he said, "sometimes I'm tempted to think your remarks verge upon the personal. You don't have to watch me dance if you don't choose to."

"No, thank G.o.d," muttered the doctor. "I prefer to remember you when you still preserved a trace of dignity--twenty odd years ago."

"If dignity--" the major's blood was rising now,--"consists in your eternal tasteless bickerings, I want none of it. What on earth do you do it for? You had some friends once."

"Friends!" snapped the other, "the fewer I have the better!"

The major clapped on his straw hat angrily, strode to the door, and opened it. But on the threshold he stopped, and presently shut it, turned back slowly and resumed his chair. The doctor was relighting his cigar, but an odd furtive look had slipped to his face, and the hand that struck the match was unsteady.

For a time both sat smoking, at first in silence, then talking in a desultory way on indifferent topics. Finally the major rose and tossed his cigar into the empty grate.

"I'll be off now," he said. "I must be on the field before the others."

As he went down the steps a carriage, drawn by a pair of dancing grays, plunged past. "Who are those people with the Chalmers, I wonder," said the doctor. "They're strangers here."

The major peered. "Oh," he said, over his shoulder, "I forgot to tell you. That's Silas Fargo, the railroad president from New York, and his daughter Katharine. His private car's down on the siding. They're at the judge's--he's chief counsel for the road in this state. They'll be at the tournament, I reckon. You'll be there, won't you?"

The doctor was putting some phials and instruments into a worn leather bag. "No," he said, shortly. "I'm going to take a ten-mile drive--to add to this county's population, I expect. But I'm coming to the dance.

Promised Valiant I would in a moment of temporary aberration."

CHAPTER x.x.xII

A VIRGINIAN RUNNYMEDE

"June in Virginia is something to remember."

To-day the master of Damory Court deemed this a true saying. For the air was like wine, and the drifting white wings of cloud, piled above the amethystine ramparts of the far Blue Ridge, looked down upon a violet world bound in green and silver.

In his bedroom Valiant stood looking into the depths of an ancient wardrobe. Presently he took from a hook a suit of white flannel in which he arrayed himself. Over his soft shirt he knotted a pale gray scarf.

The modish white suit and the rolling Panama threw out in fine contrast the keen sun-tanned face and dark brown eyes.

In the hall below he looked about him with satisfaction. For the last three days he had labored tirelessly to fit the place for the evening's event. The parlor now showed walls rimmed with straight-back chairs and the grand piano--long ago put in order--had been relegated to the library. That instinct for the artistic, which had made him a last resort in the vexing problems of club entertainments, had aided him in the Court's adornment. Thick branches of holly, axed from the hollows by Uncle Jefferson, lined the bal.u.s.trade of the stairway, the burnished green of ivy leaves was twined with the prisms of the chandelier in the big yellow-hung parlor, and bands of twisted laurel were festooned along the upper walls. The ma.s.sed green was a setting for a prodigal use of flowers. Everywhere wild blossoms showed their spreading cl.u.s.ters, and he had searched every corner of the estate, even climbing the ragged forest slope, to the tawdry edge of h.e.l.l's Half-Acre, to plunder each covert of its hidden blooms.

He had intended at first to use only the wild flowers, but that morning Ranston had arrived from Rosewood with a load of red roses that had made him gasp with delight. Now these painted the whole a splendid riotous crimson. They stood banked in windows and fireplaces. Great clumps nodded from shadowed corners and a veritable bower of them waited for the musicians at the end of the hall. Through the whole house wreathed the sweet rose-scent, mingled with the frailer fragrance of the wildings. John Valiant drew a single great red beauty from its brethren and fastened it in his b.u.t.ton-hole.

Out in the kitchens Ca.s.sandra's egg-beating clattered like a watchman's rattle, while Aunt Daphne put the finishing touches to an array of lighter edibles destined to grace the long table on the rear porch, now walled in with snow-white muslin and hung with candle-l.u.s.ters. Under the trees Uncle Jefferson was even then experimenting with various punch compounds, and a delicious aroma of vanilla came to Valiant's nostrils together with Aunt Daphne's wrathful voice:

"Heah, yo' Greenie Simms! Whah yo' gwine?"

"Ain' gwine nowhah. Ah's done been whah Ah's gwine."

"Yo' set down dat o'ange er Ah'll smack yo' bardaciously ovah! Ef yo'

_steals_, what gwineter become ob yo' _soul_?"

"Don' know nuffin' 'bout mah soul," responded the ebony materialist.

"But Ah knows Ah got er body, 'cause Ah b.u.t.tons et up e'vy day, en Ah lakes et plump."

"Yo' go back en wuk fo' yo' quahtah yankin' on dat ar ice-cream freezah," decreed Aunt Daphne exasperatedly, "er yo' don' git er _smell_ ter-night. Yo' heah dat!"

The threat proved efficacious, for Greenie, muttering sullenly that she "didn' nebbah feel no sky-lark in de ebenin'," returned to her labors.

The Red Road, as Valiant's car pa.s.sed, was dotted with straggling pedestrians: humble country folk who trudged along the gra.s.sy foot-path with no sullen regard for the swift cars and comfortable carriages that left them behind; st.u.r.dy barefooted children who called shrilly after him, and happy-go-lucky negro youths clad in their best with Sunday shoes dangling over their shoulders, slouching regardlessly in the dust--all bound for the same Mecca, which presently rose before him, a gateway of painted canvas proclaiming the field to which it opened Runnymede.

This was a s.p.a.cious level meadow into which debouched the ravine on whose rim he had stood with Shirley on that unforgettable day. But its stake-and-ridered fence enclosed now no mere stretch of ill-kept sward.

Busy scythes, rollers and gra.s.s-cutters from the Country Club had smoothed and shaven a rectangle in its center till it lay like a carpet of crushed green velvet, set in an expanse of life-everlasting and pale budding goldenrod.

He halted his car at the end of the field and snapped a leash in the bulldog's collar. "I hate to do it, old man," he said apologetically to Chum's reproachful look, "but I've got to. There are to be some stunts, and in such occasions you're apt to be convinced you're the main one of the contestants, which might cause a mix-up. Never mind; I'll anchor you where you won't miss anything."

With the excited dog tugging before him, he threaded his way through the press with keen exhilaration. This was not a crowd like that of a city; rather it resembled the old-homestead day of some unbelievably populous family, at reunion with its servants and retainers. All its members knew one another and the air was musical with badinage. Now and then his gloved hand touched his cap at a salutation. He was conscious of swift bird-like glances from pretty girls. Here was none of the rigid straight-ahead gaze or vacant stare of the city boulevard; the eyes that looked at him, frankly curious and inquiring, were full of easy open comradeship. There was about both men and women an air of being at the same time more ceremonious and more casual than those he had known. Some of the girls wore gowns and hats that might that morning have issued from the Rue de la Paix; others were habited in cheap materials. But about the latter hung no benumbing self-consciousness. All bore themselves alike. And all seemed to possess musical voices, graceful movements and a sense of quiet dignity. He was beginning to realize that there might really exist straitened circ.u.mstances, even actual poverty, which yet created no sort of social difference.

Opposite the canvas-covered grand stand sat twelve small mushroom tents, each with a staff and tiny flag. Midway lines of flaxen ropes stretched between rows of slender peeled saplings from whose tops floated fanged streamers of vivid bunting. A pavilion of purple cloth, open at the sides, awaited the committee, and near the center, a negro band was disposed on camp-stools, the bra.s.s of the waiting instruments winking in the sunlight. The stand was a confused glow of color, of light gauzy dresses, of young girls in pastel muslins with flowers in their belts, picturesque hats and slender articulate hands darting in vivacious gestures like white swallows--the gentry from the "big houses." About the square babbled and palpitated the crowd of the farm-wagon and carry-all; and at the lower end, jostling, laughing and skylarking beyond the barrier, a picturesque block of negroes, picked out by flashing white teeth, red bandannas folded above wrinkled countenances and garish knots of ribbon flaunting above the pert yellow faces of a younger mulatto race.

The light athletic figure, towed by the white bulldog, drew many glances. Valiant's eyes, however, as they swept the seats, were looking for but one, and at first vainly. He felt a quick pang of disappointment. Perhaps she would not come! Perhaps her mother was still ill. Perhaps--but then suddenly his heart beat high, for he saw her in the lower tier, with a group of young people. He could not have told what she wore, save that it was of soft Murillo blue with a hat whose down-curved brim was wound with a shaded plume of the same tint. Her mother was not with her. She was not looking his way as he pa.s.sed--her arms at the moment being held out in an adorable gesture toward a little child in a smiling matron's lap--and but a single glance was vouchsafed him before the major seized upon him and bore him to the purple pavilion, for he was one of the committee.

But for this distraction, he might have seen, entering the stand with the Chalmers just as the band struck up a delirious whirl of _Dixie_, the two strangers whom the doctor had observed an hour before as they whirled by the Merryweather Mason house behind the judge's grays. Silas Fargo might have pa.s.sed in any gathering for the un.o.btrusive city man.

Katharine was noticeable anywhere, and to-day her tall willowy figure in its champagne-color lingerie gown and hat garnished with bronze and gold thistles, setting in relief her ivory statuesque face, drew a wave of whispered comment which left a sibilant wake behind them. The party made a picturesque group as they now disposed themselves, Katharine's colorless loveliness contrasting with the eager sparkle of pretty Nancy Chalmers and the gipsy-like beauty of Betty Page.

"You call it a tournament, don't you?" asked Katharine of the judge.

"Yes," he replied. "It's a kind of contest in which twelve riders compete for the privilege of naming a Queen of Beauty. There's a ball to-night, at which the lucky lady is crowned. Those little tents are where the n.o.ble knights don their shining armor. See, there go their caparisoned chargers."

A file of negroes was approaching the tents, each leading a horse whose saddle and bridle were decorated with fringes of various hues. In the center of the roped lists, directly in front of the stand, others were planting upright in the ground a tall pole from whose top projected a horizontal arm like a slender gallows. From this was suspended a cord at whose end swung a tiny object that whirled and glittered in the sun.

The judge explained. "On the end of the cord is a silver ring, at which the knights tilt with lances. Twelve rings are used. The pike-points are made to fit them, and the knight who carries off the greatest number of the twelve is the victor. The whole thing is a custom as ancient as Virginia--a relic, of course, of the old jousting of the feudal ages.

The ring is supposed to represent the device on the boss of the shield, at which the lance-thrust was aimed."

"How interesting!" exclaimed Katharine, and turning, swept the stand with her lorgnette. "I suppose all the county's F. F. V's. are here,"

she said laughingly to Nancy Chalmers. "I've often wondered, by the way, what became of the Second Families of Virginia."

"Oh, they've mostly emigrated North," answered Nancy. "The ones that are left are all ancient. There are families here that don't admit they ever began at all."