"No, no!" she said piteously, pushing him from her. "You don't understand. You are a man, and men--can't."

"I do understand," he insisted. "Oh, my darling, my darling! It isn't right for that spectral thing to come between us! Why, it belonged to a past generation! However sad the outcome of that duel, it held no dishonor. I know only too well the ruin it brought my father! It's enough that it wrecked three lives. It shan't rise again, like Banquo's ghost to haunt ours! I know what you think--I would love you the more, if I _could_ love you more, for that sweet loyalty--but it's wrong, dear. It's wrong!"

"It's the only way."

"Listen. Your mother loves you. If she knew you loved me, she would bear _anything_ rather than have you suffer like this. You say she wouldn't have told you herself. Why, if my father--"

She tore her hands from his and faced him with a cry. "Ah, that is it!

You knew your father so little. He was never to you what she is to me.

Why, I've been all the life she has had. I remember when she mended my dolls, and held me when I had scarlet fever, and sang me the songs the trees sang to themselves at night. I said my prayers at her knee till I was twelve years old. We were never apart a day till I went away to school."

She paused, breathless.

"Doesn't that prove what I say?" he said, bending toward her. "She loves you far better than herself. She wants _your_ happiness."

"Could that mean hers?" she demanded, her bosom heaving. "To see us together--always--always! To be reminded in everything--the lines of your face--the tones of your voice, maybe,--of _that_! Oh, you don't know how women feel--how they remember--how they grieve! I've gone over all you can say till my soul cries out, but it can't change it. It can't!"

Valiant felt as though he were battering with bruised knuckles at a stone wall. A helpless anger simmered in him. "Suppose," he said bitterly, "that your mother one day, perhaps after long years, learns of your sacrifice. She is likely to guess in the end, I think. Will it add to her pleasure, do you fancy, to discover that out of this conception of filial loyalty--for it's that, I suppose!--you have spoiled your own life?"

She shuddered. "She will never learn," she said brokenly. "Oh, I know she would not have spoken. She would suffer anything for my happiness.

But I wouldn't have her bear any more for my sake."

His anger faded suddenly, and when he looked at her again, tears were burning in his eyes.

"Shirley!" he said. "It's _my_ heart, too, that you are binding on the wheel! I love you. I want nothing but you! I'd rather beg my bread from door to door with your hand in mine than sit on a throne without you!

What can there be in life for me unless you share it? Think of our love!

Think of the fate that brought me here to find you in Virginia! Think of our garden--where I thought we would live and work and dream, till we were old and gray--_together_, darling! Don't throw our love away like this!"

His entreaties left her only whiter, but unmoved. She shook her head, gazing at him through great clear tears that welled over and rolled down her cheeks.

"I can't fight," she said. "I have no strength left." She put out her hand as she spoke and dropped it with a little limp gesture that had in it tired despair, finality and hopelessness. It caught at his heart more strongly than any words. He felt a warm gush of pity and tenderness.

He took her hand gently without speaking, and pressed it hard against his lips. It seemed to him very small and cold.

They pa.s.sed together through the wet bracken, his strong arm guiding her over the uneven path, and came to the open in silence.

"Don't come with me," she said then, and without a backward glance, went rapidly from him down the shimmering road.

CHAPTER XLIII

THE EVENING OF AN OLD SCORE

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!--Major Bristow's ivory-headed camphor-wood stick thumped on the great door of Damory Court. The sound had a tang of impatience, for he had used the knocker more than once without result.

Now he strode to the end of the porch and raised his voice in a stentorian bellow that brought Uncle Jefferson shuffling around the path from the kitchens with all the whites of his eyes showing.

"You dog-gone lazy rascal!" thundered the major. "What do you mean, sah, by keeping a gentleman cooling his heels on the door-step like a tax-collector? Where's your master?"

"Fo' de Lawd, Major, Ah ain' seen Mars' John sence dis mawnin'. Staht out aftah breakfus' en he nevah showed up ergen et all. Yo' reck'n whut de mattah, suh?" he added anxiously. "'Peahs lak sumpin' preyin' on he mind. Don' seem er bit hese'f lately."

"H-m-m!" The major looked thoughtful. "Isn't he well?"

"No, _suh_. Ain' et no mor'n er hummin'-buhd dese las' few days. Jes'

hangs eroun' lonesome lak. Don' laugh no mo', don' sing no mo'. Ain'

play de pianny sence de day aftah de ball. Me en Daph moght'ly pestered 'bout him."

"Pshaw!" said the major. "Touch of spring fever, I reckon. Aunt Daph feeds him too well. Give him less fried chicken and more ash-cake and b.u.t.termilk. Make him some juleps."

The old negro shook his head. "Moghty neah use up all dat mint-baid Ah foun'," he said, "but ain' do no good. Majah, Ah's sho' 'feahed sumpin'

gwineter happen."

"Nonsense!" the major sniffed. "What fool idea's got under your wool now? Been seeing Mad Anthony again, I'll bet a dollar."

Uncle Jefferson swallowed once or twice with seeming difficulty and turned the gravel with his toe. "Dat's so," he said gloomily. "Ah done see de old man de yuddah day 'bout et. Ant'ny, _he_ know! He see trouble er-comin' en trouble er-gwine. Dat same night de hoss-shoe drop off'n de stable do', en dis ve'y mawnin' er buhd done fly inter de house. Das' er mighty bad hoodoo, er mighty bad hoodoo!"

"Shucks!" said the major. "You're as loony as old Anthony, with your infernal signs. If your Mars' John's been out all day I reckon he'll turn up before long. I'll wait for him a while." He started in, but paused on the threshold. "Did you say--ah--that mint was all gone, Unc'

Jefferson?"

Uncle Jefferson's lips relaxed in a wide grin. "Ah reck'n dah's er few stray sprigs lef', suh. Step in en mek yo'se'f et home. Ef Mars' John see yo', he be mought'ly hoped up. Ah gwineter mix yo' dat julep in two shakes!"

He disappeared around the corner of the porch and the major strode into the hall, threw his gray slouch hat on the table, and sat down.

It was quiet and peaceful, that ancient hall. He fell to thinking of the many times, of old, when he had sat there. The house was the same again, now. It had waked from a thirty-years' slumber to a renewed prime. Only he had lived on meanwhile and now was old! He sighed.

How gay the place had been the night of the ball, with the lights and roses and music! He remembered what the doctor had said about Valiant and Shirley--it had lain ever since in his mind, a painful speculation.

The recollection roused another thought from which he shrank. He stirred uneasily. What on earth kept that old darky so long over that julep?

A slight noise made him turn his head. But nothing moved. Only a creak of the woodwork, he thought, and settled back again in his chair.

It was, in fact, a stealthy footfall he had heard. It came from the library, where a shabby figure crouched, listening, in the corner behind the tapestried screen--a man evilly clad, with a scarred cheek.

It had been with no good purpose that Greef King had dogged the major these last days. He hugged a hot hatred grown to white heat in six years of prison labor within bleak walls at the clicking shoe-machine, or with the chain-gang on blazing or frosty turnpikes. He had slunk behind him that afternoon, creeping up the drive under cover of the bushes, and while the other talked with Uncle Jefferson, had skirted the house and entered from the farther side, through an open French window. Now as he peered from behind the screen, a poker, s.n.a.t.c.hed from the fireplace, was in his hand. His furtive gaze fell upon a morocco-covered case on a commode by his side. He lifted its lid and his eyes narrowed as he saw that it held a pistol. He set down the poker noiselessly and took the weapon. He tilted it--it was rusted, but there were loads in the chambers. He crouched lower, with a whispered curse: the major was coming into the library, but not alone--the old n.i.g.g.e.r was with him!

Uncle Jefferson bore a tray with a frosted goblet over whose rim peeped green leaves and which spread abroad an ambrosial odor, which the major sniffed approvingly as the other set the burden on the desk at his elbow.

"Majah," said the latter solemnly, "you reck'n Mars' John en Miss Shirley--"

"Good lord!" said the major, wheeling to the small ormolu clock on the desk. "It's 'most four o'clock. Haven't you any idea where he's gone?"

"No, suh, less'n he's gwineter look ovah dem walnut trees. Whut Ah's gwine ter say--yo' reck'n Mars' John en Miss--"

"Walnut trees? Is he going to sell them?"

"Tree man come f'om up Norf' somewhah ter see erbout et yistiddy. Yas, suh. Yo' reck'n Mars' John en--"

"Nice pot of money tied up in that timber! _He_ saw it right off. You're a lucky old rascal to have him for a master."