CHAPTER I THE DUVALS

One bright memory-only one;

And I walk by the light of its gleaming;

It brightens my days, and when days are done

It shines in the night o’er my dreaming.

Father THOMAS RYAN.

IN my wandering life of deepest shadow and occasional sunshine, there is but one thing for which I am altogether devoutly thankful,-I was born and bred in the South, and for generations on both sides of my family my ancestors were Southern people; consequently, without conflict, my qualities and defects are those of my race. For my own personal defects, given me at birth with a free hand by my whimsical fairy godmother, neither my family nor my beloved land is responsible.

My great-grandfather, Major Duval, fought in the War of the Revolution, and gave goodly sums towards the cause. He married at twenty-three a Miss Pope of Virginia, an heiress of whom he made rather a sudden and theatrical conquest, not later than five minutes after he discovered her. She, a fair-haired, dimpled beauty, wearing a silken hood, a green merino gown, little calfskin shoes with silver buckles, a black silk apron, and open-work mittens, was walking one golden October afternoon in a primeval forest near the banks of the Shenandoah. In the angle of her round arm lay a big ball of worsted, and the sun slanting down on her glancing needles struck diamond brilliance from their quick activity.

My great-grandfather, returning from the chase, young, dashing, good-looking, suddenly beheld this vision. He wore the buckskin clothes of the Virginian hunter, and carried his day’s trophy of wild turkey, ducks, and rabbits slung across his shoulder. His rifle held one last bullet.

Quickly advancing to the astonished young lady, he took off his bearskin cap, and making a bow so low that the turkeys touched the ground, he said, “Madame, permit me.” Then lifting the ball of worsted from its envied resting-place, he lightly tossed it high into the air, shot the bullet straight through its heart, and as it came down caught it and placed it, smoking with powder and with love, in her apron pocket.

The dimples all appeared as she said, “Sir, you can shoot and hit the mark.”

He bowed again and answered, “So can Cupid, and I hope,”-pointing to her fluttering heart-"in the right direction.”

The young lady, a very distant cousin whom he had never met, was from Richmond, visiting an aunt on an adjoining plantation. He walked home with her, in the mellow sunshine of an Indian summer afternoon, through the wonderful scarlet and gold forests of the early Virginia autumn, leaving on the doorstep of the wide plantation house his day’s hunt as his first love offering.

The next day he re-appeared, brave in satin small-clothes and lace ruffles, the queue of his fair hair tied with a silken ribbon, and offered himself with proper dignity as suitor for her hand. A month later they were married and lived happy ever afterwards.

I have an idea that my great-grandmother was the more interesting of the two (the Popes are an intellectual, fascinating family), and when she died so intense was her husband’s grief that finally nature mercifully relieved him with a gentle absent-minded forgetfulness.

When his children grew up, he sold his winter home in Richmond and afterwards lived entirely on his plantation, devoting the long summer days to bass fishing in the Shenandoah, which is no mean sport, as bass are wary and valorous fighters. Indeed, a mature father or bachelor fish of middle age and accumulated wisdom is seldom caught; the reckless youngsters who disregard the admonitions of their seniors are the only fish to be inveigled by the most tempting bait. Finally my great-grandfather gave up even this sport, and spent his days on the wide balcony which faced the virgin forest where he first saw the merry coquettish face of my great-grandmother. He read the Richmond newspaper from beginning to end, and gave it to a small darkey standing in attendance. This boy ran round the house, and handed him back the same paper, which “the good Major Duval” read all over again with reminiscent but deep satisfaction. It was evidently from this ancestor that my quite imbecile forgetfulness comes.

The old miniatures and portraits give him a round face, baby-like pink-and-white skin, fair hair, blue eyes, and the most friendly and engaging expression. How inevitably hereditary traits appear even in the third and fourth generation. My beautiful grandson of five said to me after a French lesson the other day: “Damma, isn’t it sad that one so young as I should have such a bad memory?” And immediately the picture of his Virginia ancestor, sitting on a wide vine-clad balcony and reading quite happily a newspaper for the fourth time, suggested itself to me.

Another Miss Pope, a kinswoman of mine, married and came to Texas to live. She was tall and dark, with jet-black hair, pearl-white teeth, a touch of dark down on her upper lip, and the most enchanting speaking voice I have ever heard. It was like golden velvet, and she talked with great brilliancy and a wealth of information on every conceivable subject, for she lived in books and not in the life around her. To that she was extremely indifferent, and had the reputation of being a humorously bad housekeeper.

My mother, with her sense of order and Spartan-like cleanliness, frankly disapproved of her, but my father loved her, and, as she was not his wife, forgave her disorder.

One afternoon when I was a very little girl my father drove out to see her, taking me with him. She lived a few miles from Austin and a little creek ran through the garden, so the flowers were glorious and plentiful, being always supplied with water. The wide hall was hung with family portraits, but the floor looked like a village street, literally covered with dried mud in little footprints, as if animals had wandered in and out at will.

The negro maid said Miss Anna was sick, but would the Judge and Miss Betty go right in. And we were shown into an immense bedroom opposite the drawing-room. A slight fever had given her a colour and she looked very handsome with her dark hair wandering over the pillow in two long thick plaits. Beside her stood a small table piled with books; some had toppled on to the bed, and there were books on the window-seat and on the sofa, and my father relieved the chair he was to sit upon of quite a small library.

He had first selected a large puffy-looking rocker, but our hostess smilingly admonished him: “Don’t take that chair, Judge, or you will sit on the new baby.” Then, seeing my eager look of interest, she said: “Go over and look at him, Betty,” and tiptoeing over to the soft white bundle, I found that it was an adorable three-months-old fat baby, sound asleep.

Then she began to talk, and though I was too little really to understand, the soft musical many-toned voice thrilled me with pleasure. After a while a stirring was heard under the bed, and an obese familiar sleepy pig made his appearance. He walked into the centre of the room, squealed loudly, stood for a moment, then trotted leisurely through the doorway, down the hall and out into the garden. She dreamily regarded but made no comment on the pig. Her rich honeyed tones continued unfalteringly. I was told afterwards that she was giving the last lines of Keats’s Ode to the Nightingale. The pig, however, disturbed the child, who cried, and my father, loving babies like a woman, lifted the new man in his arms, hushed him, and began to walk the floor.

Presently a pet peacock, the hardest bird in the world to tame, with his tail magnificently spread, stood in the doorway, advanced proudly into the room, but gave a loud shriek at seeing a stranger and fled down the hall, while no comment was made on him. It seemed to me that I was in a wonderful fairy dream, with such lovely things happening-a beautiful lady with long plaits, a soft pink baby, a peacock and a pig. Oh! I thought, if my home was only like this, how happy I should be.

My father’s voice brought me back from my dreams. He was saying, “Where is your pretty Yankee governess?” Mrs. Berkeley answered with a merry twinkle in her eye, “Gone. That’s the third, Judge, and I am going to have a new petition added to the Litany, ‘And from governesses, good Lord deliver us.’ “ This seemed to me a most beautiful sentiment, for I, too, wished to be delivered from governesses. I was too young to know that good-looking George Berkeley suffered from an impressionable nature. But eventually his wife, eight children, and later a strong-minded and elderly German governess, transformed him into a most exemplary husband.

My grandfather, Governor William Peyton Duval, was a son of the good Major Duval. His boyhood was spent in Richmond, Virginia. The house was kept by Aunt Barbara, a negro woman who was almost white. A strong character, quick-witted and capable, she had taught herself to read and write, an almost unheard-of accomplishment for a negro in those far-away days, and she was painfully thrifty,...