The Valiants of Virginia

by Hallie Erminie Rives

THE CASE OF MOROCCO LEATHER

Alone in the ebbing twilight, John Valiant found his hamper, spread a napkin on the broad stone steps and took out a glass, a spoon and part of a loaf of bread. The thermos flask was filled with milk. It was not a splendid banquet, yet he ate it with as great content as the bulldog at his feet gnawed his share of the crust. He broke his bread into the milk as he had not done since he was a child, and ate the luscious pulp with a keen relish bred of the long outdoor day. When the last drop was gone he brushed up the very crumbs from the cloth, laughing to himself as he did so. It had been a long time since he remembered being so hungry!

It was almost dark when the meal was done and, depleted hamper in hand, he reentered the empty echoing house. He went into the library, lighted the great brass lamp from the motor and began to rummage. The drawers of the dining-room sideboard yielded nothing; on a shelf of the butler’s pantry, however, was a tin box which proved to be half full of wax candles, perfectly preserved.

“The very thing!” he said triumphantly. Carrying them back, he fixed several in the glass-candlesticks and set them, lighted, all about the somber room till the soft glow flooded its every corner. “There,” he said, “that is as it should be. No big blatant search-light here! And no glare of modern electricity would suit that old wainscoting, either.” He looked up at the painting on the wall; it seemed as if the sneer had smoothed out, the hard cruel eye softened. “You needn’t be afraid,” he said, nodding. “I understand.”

He dragged the leather settee to the porch and by the light of the motor-lamp dusted it thoroughly, and wheeling it back, set it under the portrait. He washed the glass from which he had dined and filled it at the cup of the garden fountain, put into it the rose from his hat and set it on the reading-stand. The small china dog caught his eye and he picked it up casually. The head came off in his hands. It had been a bon-bon box and was empty save for a narrow strip of yellowed paper, on which were written some meaningless figures: 17-28-94-0. He pondered this a moment, then thrust it into one of the empty pigeonholes of the desk. On the latter stood an old-fashioned leaf-calendar; the date it exposed was May 14th. Curiously enough the same date would recur to-morrow. The page bore a quotation: “Every man carries his fate on a riband about his neck.” The line had been quoted in his father’s letter. May 14th!—how much that date and that motto may have meant for him!

He put the calendar back, filled his pipe and sat down facing the open bow-window. The dark was mysteriously lifting, the air filling with a soft silver-gray translucence that touched the wild growth as with a fairy gossamer. Presently, from between the still elms, the new sickle moon climbed into view. From the garden came a plaintive bird-cry, long-drawn and wavering and then, from farther away, the triple mellow whistle of a whippoorwill.

The place was alive now with bird-notes, and he listened with a new delight. He thought suddenly, with a kind of impatient wonder, that never in his life had he sat perfectly alone in a solitude and listened to the voices of the night. The only out-of-doors he knew had been comprised in motor-whirls on frequented highroads, seashore, or mountain months where bridge and dancing were forever on the cards, or else such up-to-date “camping” as was indulged in at the Fargos’ “shack” on the St. Lawrence. He sat now with his senses alert to a new world that his sophisticated eye and ear had never known. Something new was entering into him that seemed the spirit of the place; the blessing of the tall silver poplars outside, the musical scented gardens and the moonlight laid like a placid benediction over all.

He rose to push the shutter wider and in the movement his elbow sent a shallow case of morocco leather that had lain on the desk crashing to the floor. It opened and a heavy metallic object rolled almost to his feet. He saw at a glance that it was an old-fashioned rusted dueling-pistol.

The box had originally held two pistols. He shuddered as he stooped to pick up the weapon, and with the crawling repugnance mingled a panging anger and humiliation. From his very babyhood it had always been so—that unconquerable aversion to the touch of a firearm. There had been moments in his youth when this unreasoning shrinking had filled him with a blind fury, had driven him to strange self-tests of courage. He had never been able to overcome it. He had always had a natural distaste for the taking of life; hunting was an unthinkable sport to him, and he regarded the lusty pursuit of small feathered or furry things for pleasure with a mingled wonder and contempt. But analyzation had told him that his peculiar abhorrence was no mere outgrowth of this. It lay far deeper. He had rarely, of recent years, met the test. Now, as he stood in these unaccustomed surroundings, with the cold touch of the metal the old shuddering held him, and the sweat broke in beads on his forehead. Setting his teeth hard, he crossed the room, slipped the box with its pistol between the volumes of the bookcase, and returned to his seat.