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Lewis Rand

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Title: Lewis Rand

Author: Mary Johnston

Illustrator: F. C. Yohn


        
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                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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LEWIS RAND

by

MARY JOHNSTON

Author of _To Have And To Hold_, _Prisoners Of Hope_, etc.

With Illustrations by F. C. Yohn

Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press Cambridge

1908







[Illustration: I WILL MAKE COURT TO YOU IN A COURT SOME DAY!]




THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED

TO THE MEMORY OF

JOHN TYLER MORGAN

FOR THIRTY YEARS

UNITED STATES SENATOR

AND THROUGHOUT THE COURSE

OF A LONG LIFE

A GOOD MAN AND A PATRIOT




CONTENTS

      I. THE ROAD TO RICHMOND
     II. MR. JEFFERSON
    III. FONTENOY
     IV. THE TWO CANDIDATES
      V. MONTICELLO
     VI. RAND COMES TO FONTENOY
    VII. THE BLUE ROOM
   VIII. CARY AND JACQUELINE
     IX. EXPOSTULATION
      X. TO ALTHEA
     XI. IN THE GARDEN
    XII. A MARRIAGE AT SAINT MARGARET'S
   XIII. THE THREE-NOTCHED ROAD
    XIV. THE LAW OFFICE
     XV. COMPANY TO SUPPER
    XVI. AT LYNCH'S
   XVII. FAIRFAX AND UNITY
  XVIII. THE GREEN DOOR
    XIX. MONTICELLO AGAIN
     XX. THE NINETEENTH OF FEBRUARY
    XXI. THE CEDAR WOOD
   XXII. MAJOR EDWARD
  XXIII. A CHALLENGE
   XXIV. THE DUEL
    XXV. OLD SAINT JOHN'S
   XXVI. THE TRIAL OF AARON BURR
  XXVII. THE LETTER
 XXVIII. RAND AND MOCKET
   XXIX. THE RIVER ROAD
    XXX. HOMEWARD
   XXXI. HUSBAND AND WIFE
  XXXII. THE BROTHERS
 XXXIII. GREENWOOD
  XXXIV. FAIRFAX CARY
   XXXV. THE IMAGE
  XXXVI. IN PURSUIT
 XXXVII. THE SIMPLE RIGHT
XXXVIII. M. DE PINCORNET
  XXXIX. UNITY AND JACQUELINE
     XL. THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR




ILLUSTRATIONS

I will make court to you in a court some day (Frontispiece)

You are a scoundrel

Cary saw and flung out his arm, swerving his horse, but too late

Drink to me only with thine eyes






CHAPTER I

THE ROAD TO RICHMOND


The tobacco-roller and his son pitched their camp beneath a gum tree
upon the edge of the wood. It was October, and the gum was the colour of
blood. Behind it rolled the autumn forest; before it stretched a level
of broom-sedge, bright ochre in the light of the setting sun. The road
ran across this golden plain, and disappeared in a league-deep wood of
pine. From an invisible clearing came a cawing of crows. The sky was
cloudless, and the evening wind had not begun to blow. The small,
shining leaves of the gum did not stir, and the flame of the camp-fire
rose straight as a lance. The tobacco cask, transfixed by the trunk of a
young oak and drawn by strong horses, had come to rest upon the turf by
the roadside. Gideon Rand unharnessed the team, and from the platform
built in the front of the cask took fodder for the horses, then tossed
upon the grass a bag of meal, a piece of bacon, and a frying-pan. The
boy collected the dry wood with which the earth was strewn, then struck
flint and steel, guarded the spark within the tinder, fanned the flame,
and with a sigh of satisfaction stood back from the leaping fire. His
father tossed him a bucket, and with it swinging from his hand, he made
through the wood towards a music of water. Goldenrod and farewell-summer
and the red plumes of the sumach lined his path, while far overhead the
hickories and maples reared a fretted, red-gold roof. Underfoot were
moss and coloured leaves, and to the right and left the squirrels
watched him with bright eyes. He found the stream where it rippled
between banks of fern and mint. As he knelt to fill the pail, the red
haw and the purple ironweed met above his head.

Below him was a little mirror-like pool, and it gave him back himself
with such distinctness that, startled, he dropped the pail, and bending
nearer, began to study the image in the water. Back in Albemarle, in his
dead mother's room, there hung a looking-glass, but it was cracked and
blurred, and he seldom gazed within it. This chance mirror of the woods
was more to the purpose. The moments slipped away while he studied the
stranger and familiar in the pool below him. The image was not formed or
coloured like young Narcissus, of whom he had never heard, but he
observed it with interest. He was fourteen, and old for his years. The
eyes reflected in the stream were brooding, the mouth had lost its
boyish curves, the sanguine cheek was thin, the jaw settling square. His
imagination, slow to quicken, had, when aroused, quite a wizard might.
He sank deeper amid the ironweed, forgot his errand, and began to dream.
He was the son of a tobacco-roller, untaught and unfriended, but he
dreamed like a king. His imagination began to paint without hands images
of power upon a blank and mighty wall, and it painted like a young
Michael Angelo. It used the colours of immaturity, but it conceived with
strength. "When I am a man--" he said aloud; and again, "When I am a
man--" The eyes in the pool looked at him yearningly; the leaves from
the golden hickories fell upon the water and hid him from himself. In
the distance a fox barked, and Gideon Rand's deep voice came rolling
through the wood: "Lewis! Lewis!"

The boy dipped the pail, lifted it brimming, and rose from his knees. As
he did so, a man parted the bushes on the far side of the stream,
glanced at the mossed and slippery stones rising from its bed, then with
a light and steady foot crossed to the boy's side. He was a young man,
wearing a fringed hunting-shirt and leggins and a coonskin cap, and
carrying a long musket. Over his shoulder was slung a wild turkey, and
at his heels came a hound. He smiled, showing very white teeth, and drew
forward his bronze trophy.

"Supper," he said briefly.

The boy nodded. "I heard your gun. I've made a fire yonder beneath a
black gum. Adam Gaudylock, I am well-nigh a man!"

"So you be, so you be," answered the other; "well-nigh a man."

The boy beat the air with a branch of sumach. "I want to be a man! But I
don't want to be a tobacco-roller like my father, nor--"

"Nor a hunter like me," the other finished placidly. "Be the Governor of
Virginia, then, or come with me and make yourself King of the
Mississippi! I've watched you, boy! You're growing up ambitious,
ambitious as What's-his-name--him that you read of?"

"Lucifer," answered the boy--"ambitious as Lucifer."

"Well, don't spill the water, my kingling," said the hunter
good-naturedly. "Life's not so strange as is the way folk look at it.
You and I, now,--we're different! What I care for is just every common
day as it comes naturally along, with woods in it, and Indians, and an
elk or two at gaze, and a boat to get through the rapids, and a drop of
kill-devil rum, and some shooting, and a petticoat somewhere, and a hand
at cards,--just every common day! But you build your house upon
to-morrow. I care for the game, and you care for the prize. Don't go too
fast and far,--I've seen men pass the prize on the road and never know
it! Don't you be that kind, Lewis."

"I won't," said the boy. "But of course one plays to win. After supper,
will you tell me about New Orleans and the Mississippi, and the French
and the Spaniards, and the moss that hangs from the trees, and the
oranges that grow like apples? I had rather be king of that country than
Governor of Virginia."

The sun set, and the chill dusk of autumn wrapped the yellow sedge, the
dusty road, and the pines upon the horizon. The heavens were high and
cold, and the night wind had a message from the north. But it was warm
beneath the gum tree where the fire leaped and roared. In the light the
nearer leaves of the surrounding trees showed in strong relief; beyond
that copper fretwork all was blackness. Out of the dark came the
breathing of the horses, fastened near the tobacco-cask, the croaking of
frogs in a marshy place, and all the stealthy, indefinable stir of the
forest at night. At times the wind brought a swirl of dead leaves across
the ring of light, an owl hooted, or one of the sleeping dogs stirred
and raised his head, then sank to dreams again. The tobacco-roller,
weary from the long day's travel, wrapped himself in a blanket and slept
in the lee of his thousand pounds of bright leaf, but the boy and the
hunter sat late by the fire.

"We crossed that swamp," said Gaudylock, "with the canes rattling above
our heads, and a panther screaming in a cypress tree, and we came to a
village of the Chickasaws--"

"In the night-time?"

"In the night-time, and a mockingbird singing like mad from a china
tree, and the woods all level before us like a floor,--no brush at all,
just fine grass, with flowers in it like pinks in a garden. So we smoked
the peace pipe with the Chickasaws, and I hung a wampum belt with fine
words, and we went on, the next day, walking over strawberries so thick
that our moccasins were stained red. At noon we overtook a party of
boatmen from the Ohio,--tall men they were, with beards, and dark and
dirty as Indians,--and we kept company with them through the country of
the Chickasaws and the Choctaws until we came to a high bluff, and saw
the Mississippi before us, brown and full and marked with drifting
trees, and up the river the white houses of Natchez. There we camped
until we made out the flat-boat,--General Wilkinson's boat, all laden
with tobacco and flour and bacon, and just a few Kentucks with
muskets,--that the Spaniards at Natchez had been fools enough to let
pass! We hailed that boat, and it came up beneath the cottonwoods, and I
went aboard with the letters from Louisville, and on we went, down the
river, past the great woods and the strange little towns, and the
cotton-fields and the sugar-canes, and the moss hanging like banners
from taller trees than this gum, to New Orleans. And there the Intendant
would have laid hands on our cargo and sent every mother's son of us
packing, but Miro, that was governor, stood our friend, being frightened
indeed of what Kentucky might do if put to it! And there, on the levee,
we sold that tobacco and flour and bacon; and the tobacco which we sold
at home for shillings and pence, we sold at New Orleans for joes and
doubloons. Ay, ay, and not one picayune of duty did we pay! Ay, and we
opened the Mississippi!"

The speaker paused to take from his pouch several leaves of tobacco, and
to roll them deftly into a long cigar. The boy rose to throw more wood
upon the fire, then sat again at the trader's feet, and with his chin in
his hand stared into the glowing hollows.

"The West!" said Gaudylock, between slow puffs of smoke. "Kentucky and
the Ohio and the Mississippi, and then Louisiana and all that lies
beyond, and Mexico and its gold! Ha! the Mississippi open from its
source--and the Lord in Heaven knows where that may be--to the last
levee! and not a Spaniard to stop a pirogua, and right to trade in every
port, and no lingo but plain English, and Mexico like a ripe
apple,--just a touch of the bough, and there's the gold in hand! If I
were a dreamer, I would dream of the West."

"Folk have always dreamed of the West," said the boy. "Sailors and
kings, and men with their fortune to make. I've read about Cortez and
Pizarro,--it would be fine to be like that!"

"I thought you wanted to study law."

"I do; but I could be a great soldier, too."

Gaudylock laughed. "You would trap all the creatures in the wood! Well,
live long enough, and you'll hear a drum beat. They're restless,
restless, yonder on the rivers! But they'll need the lawyers, too. Just
see what the lawyers did when we fought the British! Mr. Henry and Mr.
Jefferson--"

The boy put forth a sudden hand, gathered to him a pine bough, and with
it smote the red coals of the fire. "Oh!" he cried, "from morn till
night my father keeps me in the fields. It's tobacco! tobacco! tobacco!
And I want to go to school--I want to go to school!"

"That's a queer wanting," said the other thoughtfully. "I've wanted fire
when I was cold, and venison when I was hungry, and liquor when I was in
company, and money when I was gaming, and a woman when the moon was
shining and I wished to talk,--but I have never wanted to go to school.
A schollard sees a wall every time he raises his head. I like the open."

"There are walls in the forest," answered the boy, "and I do not want to
be a tobacco-roller! I want to study law!"

The hunter laughed. "Ho! A lawyer among the Rands! I reckon you take
after your mother's folk!"

The boy looked at him wistfully. "I reckon I do," he assented. "But my
name is Rand."

"There are worse folk than the Rands," said the woodsman. "I've never
known one to let go, once he had man or beast by the throat! Silent and
holdfast and deadly to anger--that's the Rands. If Gideon wants tobacco
and you want learning, there'll be a tussle!"

"My father's a tyrant!" cried the boy passionately. "If he doesn't keep
his hands off me, I'll--I'll _kill_ him!"

Gaudylock took the cigarro from his lips. "You're too fond of that
word," he exclaimed, with some sternness. "All the wolves that the Rands
ever hunted have somehow got into their blood. Suppose you try a little
_un_learning? Great lawyers and great men and great conquerors and good
hunters don't kill their fathers, Lewis,--no, nor any other man,
excepting always in fair fight."

"I know--I know!" said Lewis. "Of course he's my father. But I never
could stand for any one to get in my way!"

"That's just what the rattlesnake says--and after a while nobody does
get in his way. But he must be a lonely creature."

"Do you think," asked the boy oddly,--"do you think I am really like
that,--like a rattlesnake?"

Adam gave his mellow laugh. "No, I don't. I think you are just a poor
human. I was always powerfully fond of you, Lewis,--and I never could
abide a rattler! There's the moon, and it's a long march to-morrow, and
folks sit up late in Richmond! Unroll the blankets, and let's to bed."

The boy obeyed, and the two lay down with the fire between them. The
man's thoughts went back to the Mississippi, to cane-brakes and bayous
and long levees; and the boy's mind perused the road before him.

"When I get to Richmond," he suddenly announced, "I am going to find a
place where they sell books. I have a dollar."

The hunter put his hand in his pouch, drew out a shining coin, and
tossed it across the fire. "There's another," he said. "Good Spanish!
Buy your _Cæsars_ and your _Pompeys_, and when you are a lawyer like Mr.
Jefferson, come West--come West!"

Men and beasts slumbered through the autumn night, waked at dawn, and,
breakfast eaten, took again the road. Revolving cask, horses, dogs, and
men, they crossed the wet sedge and entered the pine wood, left that
behind and traversed a waste of scrub and vine, low hills, and
rain-washed gullies. Chinquapin bushes edged the road, the polished nut
dark in the centre of each open burr; the persimmon trees showed their
fruit, red-gold from the first frosts; the black haw and cedar overhung
the ravines; there was much sassafras, and along the plashy streams the
mint grew thick and pungent-sweet. In the deep and pure blue sky above
them, fleecy clouds went past like galleons in a trade-wind.

The tobacco-roller was a taciturn man, and the boy, his son, never
thought of disburdening his soul to his father. Each had the power to
change for the other the aspect of the world, but they themselves were
strangers. Gideon Rand, as he rode, thought of the bright leaf in the
cask, of the Richmond warehouse, and fixed the price in his mind. His
mind was in a state of sober jubilation. His only brother, a lonely,
unloved, and avaricious merchant in a small way, had lately died, and
had left him money. The hundred acres upon the Three-Notched Road that
Gideon had tilled for another were in the market. The money would buy
the land and the small, dilapidated house already occupied by the
Rands. The purchase was in train, and in its own fashion Gideon's
sluggish nature rejoiced. He was as land-mad as any other Virginian, but
he had neither a lavish hand nor a climbing eye. What he loved was the
black earth beneath the tobacco, and to walk between the rows and feel
the thick leaves. For him it sufficed to rise at dawn and spend the day
in the fields overseeing the hands, to come home at dusk to a supper of
corn bread and bacon, to go to bed within the hour and sleep without a
dream until cockcrow, to walk the fields again till dusk and
supper-time. Church on Sunday, Charlottesville on Court Days, Richmond
once a year, varied the monotony. The one passion, the one softness,
showed in his love for horses. He broke the colts for half the county;
there was no horse that he could not ride, and his great form and
coal-black locks were looked for and found at every race. The mare that
he was riding he had bought with his legacy, before he bought the land
on the Three-Notched Road. He was now considering whether he could
afford to buy in Richmond a likely negro to help him and Lewis in the
fields. With all the stubbornness of a dull mind, he meant to keep Lewis
in the fields. Long ago, when he was a handsome young giant, he had
married above him. His wife was a beautiful and spirited woman, and when
she married the son of her father's tenant, it was with every intention
of raising him to her own level in life. But he was the stronger, and he
dragged her down to his. As her beauty faded and her wit grew biting, he
learned to hate her, and to hate learning because she had it, and the
refinements of life because she practised them, and law because she came
of a family of lawyers. She was dead and he was glad of it,--and now her
son was always at a book, and wanted to be a lawyer! "I'll see him a
slave-driver first!" said Gideon Rand to himself, and flecked his whip.

On the other side of the cask Adam Gaudylock whistled along the road.
He, too, had business in Richmond, and problems not a few to solve, but
as he was a man who never sacrificed the present to the past, and rarely
to the future, he alone of the three really drank the wine of the
morning air, saw how blue was the sky, and admired the crimson trailers
that the dewberry spread across the road. When his gaze followed the
floating down from a milkweed pod, or marked the scurry of a chipmunk at
a white oak's root, or dwelt upon the fox-grape's swinging curtain, he
would have said, if questioned, that life in the woods and in an Indian
country taught a man the use of his eyes. "Love of Nature" was a phrase
at which he would have looked blank, and a talisman which he did not
know he possessed, and it may be doubted if he could have defined the
word "Romance." He whistled as he rode, and presently, the sun rising
higher and the clear wind blowing with force, he began to sing,--

     "From the Walnut Hills to the Silver Lake,
                 Row, boatmen, row!
     Danger in the levee, danger in the brake,
                 Row, boatmen, row!
     Yellow water rising, Indians on the shore!"

Lewis Rand, perched upon the platform before the cask, his feet
dangling, his head thrown back against the wood, and his eyes upon the
floating clouds, pursued inwardly and with a swelling heart the
oft-broken, oft-renewed argument with his father. "I do not want to go
to the fields. I want to go to school. Every chance I've had, I've
learned, and I want to learn more and more. I do not want to be like
you, nor your father, nor his father, and I do not want to be like Adam
Gaudylock. I want to be like my mother's folk. You've no right to keep
me planting and suckering and cutting and firing and planting again, as
though I were a negro! Negroes don't care, but I care! I'm not your
slave. Tobacco! I hate the sight of it, and the smell of it! There's too
much tobacco raised in Virginia. You fought the old King because he was
a tyrant, but you would make me spend my life in the tobacco-field! You
are a tyrant, too. I'm to be a man just as you're a man. You went your
way; well, I'm going mine! I'm going to be a lawyer, like--like Ludwell
Cary at Greenwood. I'm not afraid of your horse-whip. Strike, and be
damned to you! You can break every colt in the country, but you can't
break me! I've seen you strike my mother, too!"

     "Way down in New Orleans,
       Beneath an orange tree,
     Beside the lapping water,
       Upon the old levee,
     A-laughing in the moonlight,
       There sits the girl for me!"

sang Gaudylock.

     "She's sweeter than the jasmine,
       Her name it is Delphine."

The day wore on, the land grew level, and the clearings more frequent.
Stretches of stacked corn appeared like tented plains, brown and silent
encampments of the autumn; and tobacco-houses rose from the fields
whence the weed had been cut. Blue smoke hung in wreaths above the high
roofs, for it was firing-time. Now and then they saw, far back from the
road and shaded by noble trees, dwelling-houses of brick or wood. Behind
the larger sort of these appeared barns and stables and negro quarters,
all very cheerful in the sunny October weather. Once they passed a
schoolhouse and a church, and twice they halted at cross-road taverns.
The road was no longer solitary. Other slow-rolling casks of tobacco
with retinue of men and boys were on their way to Richmond, and there
were white-roofed wagons from the country beyond Staunton. Four strong
horses drew each wagon, manes and tails tied with bright galloon, and
harness hung with jingling bells. Whatever things the mountain folk
might trade with were in the wagons,--butter, flour, and dried meat,
skins of deer and bear, hemp, flaxseed, wax, ginseng, and maple sugar.
Other vehicles used the road, growing more numerous as the day wore into
the afternoon, and Richmond was no longer far away. Coach and chaise,
curricle and stick-chair, were encountered, and horsemen were frequent.

In 1790 men spoke when they passed; moreover, Rand and Gaudylock were
not entirely unknown. The giant figure of the one had been seen before
upon that road; the other was recognized as a very able scout, hunter,
and Indian trader, restless as quicksilver and daring beyond all reason.
Men hailed the two cheerily, and asked for the news from Albemarle, and
from Kentucky and the Mississippi.

"Mr. Jefferson is coming home," answered Rand; and "Spain is not so
black as she is painted," said the trader.

"We hear," quoth the gentleman addressed, "that the Kentuckians make
good Spanish subjects."

"Then you hear a damned lie," said Gaudylock imperturbably. "The boot's
on the other foot. Ten years from now a Kentuckian may rule in New
Orleans."

The gentleman laughed, settled back in his stick-chair, and spoke to his
horse. "Mr. Jefferson is in Richmond," he remarked to Rand, and vanished
in a cloud of dust.

The tobacco-cask and its guardians kept on by wood and stream,
plantation, tavern, forge, and mill, now with companions and now upon a
lonely road. At last, when the frogs were at vespers, and the wind had
died into an evening stillness, and the last rays of the sun were
staining the autumn foliage a yet deeper red, they came by way of Broad
Street into Richmond. The cask of bright leaf must be deposited at
Shockoe Warehouse; this they did, then as the stars were coming out,
they betook themselves to where, at the foot of Church Hill, the Bird in
Hand dispensed refreshment to man and beast.




CHAPTER II

MR. JEFFERSON


By ten of the Capitol clock Gideon Rand had sold his tobacco and
deposited the price in a well-filled wallet. "Eighteen shillings the
hundred," he said, with grim satisfaction. "And the casks I sent by
Mocket sold as well! Good leaf, good leaf! Tobacco pays, and learning
don't. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Lewis Rand!"

Father and son came out from the cool, dark store, upon the unpaved
street, and joined Adam Gaudylock where he lounged beneath a sycamore.
Up and down the street were wooden houses, shops of British merchants,
prosperous taverns, and dwelling-houses sunk in shady gardens. An
arrow-flight away brawled the river among bright islands. The sky above
the bronze sycamores was very blue, the air crystal, the sunshine
heavenly mild. The street was not crowded. A Quaker in a broad-brimmed
hat went by, and then a pretty girl, and then a minister talking broad
Scotch, and then a future chief justice who had been to market and had a
green basket upon his arm. Gideon drew another breath of satisfaction.
"I've been thinking this long time of buying a negro, and now I can do
it! Mocket says there's a likely man for sale down by the market. Lewis,
you go straight to Mocket now, and tell him I'll wait for him there! Are
you coming with me, Adam Gaudylock?"

"Why," said Gaudylock, with candour, "I have business presently in
Governor Street, and a man to meet at the Indian Queen. And I think I'll
go now with Lewis. Somehow, the woods have spoiled me for seeing men
bought and sold."

"They're black men," said Rand indifferently. "I'll see you, then, at
dinner-time, at the Bird in Hand. I'm going home to-morrow.--Lewis, if
you want to, you can look around this morning with Tom Mocket!" He
glanced at his son's flushing face, and, being in high good humour,
determined to give the colt a little rein. "Be off, and spend your
dollar! See what sights you can, for we'll not be in Richmond again for
many a day! They say there's a brig in from Barbadoes."

He put up his wallet, and with a nod to Gaudylock strode away in the
direction of the market, but presently halted and turned his head.
"Lewis!"

"Yes, father."

"Don't you be buying any more books! You hear me?"

He swung away, and his son stood under the sycamore tree and looked
after him with a darkened face. Gaudylock put a hand upon his shoulder.
"Never mind, Lewis! Before we part I'm going to talk to Gideon." He
laughed. "Do you know what the Cherokees call me? They call me
Golden-Tongue. Because, you see, I can persuade them to 'most
anything,--always into the war-path, and sometimes out of it! Gideon may
be obstinate, but he can't be as obstinate as an Indian. Now let's go to
Mocket's."

The way to Mocket's lay down a steep hillside, and along the river-bank,
under a drift of coloured leaves, and by the sound of falling water.
Mocket dwelt in a small house, in a small green yard with a broken gate.
A red creeper mantled the tiny porch, and lilac bushes, clucked under by
a dozen hens, hedged the grassy yard. As the hunter and Lewis Rand
approached, a little girl, brown and freckled, barefoot and dressed in
linsey, sprang up from the stone before the gate, and began to run
towards the house. Her foot caught in a trailing vine, and down she
fell. Adam was beside her at once. "Why, you little partridge!" he
exclaimed, and lifted her to her feet.

"It's Vinie Mocket," said his companion. "Vinie, where's your father?"

"I don't know, thir," answered Vinie. "Tom knows. Tom's down there, at
the big ship. I'll tell him."

She slipped from Gaudylock's clasp and pattered off toward the river,
where the brig from Barbadoes showed hull and masts. The hunter sat down
upon the porch step, and drew out his tobacco pouch. "She's like a
partridge," he said.

"She's just Vinie Mocket," answered the boy. "There's a girl who stays
sometimes at Mrs. Selden's, on the Three-Notched Road. She's not
freckled, and her eyes are big, and she never goes barefoot. I reckon
it's silk she wears."

"What's her name?" asked the hunter, filling his pipe.

"Jacqueline--Jacqueline Churchill. She lives at Fontenoy."

"Fontenoy's a mighty fine place," remarked Gaudylock.

"And the Churchills are mighty fine people.--Here's the partridge back,
with another freckle-face."

"That's Tom Mocket," said Lewis. "If Vinie's a partridge, Tom's a
weasel."

The weasel, sandy-haired and freckled, came up the path with long steps.
"Hi, Lewis! Father's gone toward the market looking for your father.
That's a brig from the Indies down there, and the captain's our
cousin--ain't he, Vinie? I know who you are, sir. You're Adam Gaudylock,
the great hunter!"

"So I am, so I am!" quoth Adam. "Look here, little partridge, at what
I've got in my pouch!"

The partridge busied herself with the beaded thing, and the two boys
talked aside. "I've till dinner time to do what I like in," said Lewis
Rand. "Have you got to work?"

"Not unless I want to," Young Mocket answered blissfully. "Father, he
don't care! Besides"--he swelled with pride--"I don't work now at the
wharf. I'm at Chancellor Wythe's."

"Chancellor Wythe's! What are you doing there?"

"Helping him. Maybe, by and by, I'll be a lawyer, too."

"Heugh!" said the other. "Do you mean you're reading law?"

"No-o, not just exactly. But I let people in--and I hear what they talk
about. I like it better than the wharf, anyhow. I'll go with you and
show you things. Is Mr. Gaudylock coming?"

"No," replied Adam. "I'll finish my pipe, and take a look at the ship
down there, and then I'll meet a friend at the Indian Queen. Be off with
you both! Vinie will stay and talk to me."

"Yeth, thir," said Vinie, her brown arm deep in the beaded pouch.

The two lads left behind the scarlet-clad porch, the hunter and Vinie,
the little green yard and the broken gate. "Where first? demanded Tom.

"Where is the best place in Richmond to buy books?"

Young Mocket considered. "There's a shop near the bridge. What do you
want with books?"

"I want to read them. We'll go to the bridge first."

Tom hung back. "Don't you want to see the brig from Barbadoes? She's a
beauty. There's a schooner from Baltimore, too, at the Rock Landing. You
won't? Then let's go over to Widewilt's Island. Well, they whipped a man
this morning and he's in the pillory now, down by the market. Let's go
look at him.--Pshaw! what's the use of books! Don't you want to see the
Guard turn out at noon, and hear the trumpet blow? Well, come on to the
bridge! Nancy, the apple-woman, is there too."

The shop near the bridge to which they resorted was dark and low, but
learning was spread upon its counter, and a benevolent dragon of
knowledge in horn spectacles ran over the wares for Lewis Rand. "De Jure
Maritimo, six shillings eightpence, my lad. Burnet's History and
Demosthenes' Orations, two crowns, Mr. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, a great book and dear! Common Sense--and that's Tom
Paine's, and you may have it for two pistareens."

The boy shook his head. "I want a law-book."

The genie put forth The Principles of Equity, and named the price.

"'Tis too dear."

A gentleman lounging against the counter closed the book into which he
had been dipping, and drew nearer to the would-be purchaser.

"Equity is an expensive commodity, my lad," he said kindly. "How much
law have you read?"

"I have read The Law of Virginia," answered the boy. "I borrowed it. I
worked a week for Mr. Douglas, and read The Law of Nations rest-hours.
Mrs. Selden, on the Three-Notched Road, gave me The Federalist. Are you
a lawyer, sir?"

The gentleman laughed, and the genie behind the counter laughed. Young
Mocket plucked Lewis Rand by the sleeve, but the latter was intent upon
the personage before him and did not heed.

"Yes," said the gentleman, "I am a lawyer. Are you going to be one?"

"I am," said the boy. "Will you tell me what books I ought to buy? I
have two dollars."

The other looked at him with keen light eyes. "That amount will not buy
you many books," he said. "You should enter some lawyer's office where
you may have access to his library. You spoke of the Three-Notched Road.
Are you from Albemarle?"

"Yes, sir. I am Gideon Rand's son."

"Indeed! Gideon Rand! Then Mary Wayne was your mother?"

"Yes, sir."

"I remember," said the gentleman, "when she married your father. She was
a beautiful woman. I heard of her death while I was in Paris."

The boy's regard, at first solely for the books, had been for some
moments transferred to the gentleman who, it seemed, was a lawyer, and
had known his people, and had been to Paris. He saw a tall man, of a
spare and sinewy frame, with red hair, lightly powdered, and keen blue
eyes. Lewis Rand's cheek grew red, and his eyes at once shy and eager.
He stammered when he spoke. "Are you from Albemarle, sir?"

The other smiled, a bright and gracious smile, irradiating his ruddy,
freckled face. "I am," he said.

"From--from Monticello?"

"From Monticello." The speaker, who loved his home with passion, never
uttered its name without a softening of the voice. "From Monticello," he
said again. "There are books enough there, my lad. Some day you shall
ride over from the Three-Notched Road, and I will show you them."

"I will come," said Lewis Rand. The colour deepened in his face and a
moisture troubled his vision. The shop, the littered counter, the
guardian of the books, and President Washington's Secretary of State
wavered like the sunbeam at the door.

Jefferson ran his hand over the row of books. "Mr. Smith, give the lad
old Coke, yes, and Locke on Government, and put them to my
account.--Where do you go to school?"

The boy swallowed hard, straightened his shoulders, and looked his
questioner in the face. "Nowhere, sir--not now. My father hates
learning, and I work in the fields. I am very much obliged to you for
the books,--and had I best buy Blackstone with the two dollars?"

The other smiled. "No, no, not Blackstone. Blackstone's frippery. You've
got old Coke. Buy for yourself some book that shall mean much to you all
your life.--Mr. Smith, give him Plutarch's Lives--Ossian, too. He's rich
enough to buy Ossian.--As for law-books, my lad, if you will come to
Monticello, I will lend you what you need. I like your spirit." He
looked at his watch. "I have to dine at the Eagle with the Governor and
Mr. Randolph. When do you return to Albemarle?"

"To-morrow, sir."

"Then I may overtake you on the road. Once I did your father a good
turn, and I shall be glad to have a word with him now. He must not keep
the son of Mary Wayne in the fields. Some day I will ride down the
Three-Notched Road, and examine you on old Coke. Don't spare study; if
you will be a lawyer, become a good one, not a smatterer. Good-day to
you!"

He left the shop. The bookseller gazed after him, then nodded and smiled
at the boy. "You look transfigured, my lad! Well, he's a great man, and
he'll be a greater one yet. He's for the people, and one day the people
will be for him! I'll tie up your books--and if you can make a friend of
Mr. Jefferson, you do it!"

Lewis Rand came out into the sunlight with "old Coke" and Locke,
Plutarch and Ossian, under his arm, and in his soul I know not what
ardour of hero-worship, what surging resolve and aspiration. Young
Mocket, at his elbow, regarded him with something like awe. "That was
Mr. Jefferson," he said. "He knows General Washington and Marquis
Lafayette and Doctor Franklin. He's just home from Paris, and they have
made him Secretary of State--whatever that is. He wrote the Declaration
of Independence. He's a rich man--he's a lawyer, too. He lives at a
place named Monticello."

"I know," said Lewis Rand, "I've been to Monticello. When I am a man I
am going to have a house like it, with a terrace and white pillars and a
library. But I shall have a flower garden like the one at Fontenoy."

"Ho! your house! Is Fontenoy where Ludwell Cary lives?"

"No; he lives at Greenwood. The Churchills live at Fontenoy.--Now we'll
go see the Guard turn out. Is that the apple-woman yonder? I've a
half-a-bit left."

An hour later, having bought the apples, and seen the pillared Capitol,
and respectfully considered the outside of Chancellor Wythe's law
office, and having parted until the afternoon with Tom Mocket, who
professed an engagement on the Barbadoes brig, young Lewis Rand betook
himself to the Bird in Hand. There in the bare, not over clean chamber
which had been assigned to the party from Albemarle, he deposited his
precious parcel first in the depths of an ancient pair of saddle-bags,
then, thinking better of it, underneath the straw mattress of a small
bed. It was probable, he knew, that even there his father might discover
the treasure. What would follow discovery he knew full Well. The beating
he could take; what he wouldn't stand would be, say, Gideon's flinging
the books into the fire. "He shan't, he shan't," said the boy's hot
heart. "If he does, I'll--I'll--"

Through the window came Gaudylock's voice from the porch of the Bird in
Hand. "You Stay-at-homes--you don't know what's in the wilderness!
There's good and there's bad, and there's much beside. It's like the
sea--it's uncharted."

Lewis Rand closed the door of the room, and went out upon the shady
porch, where he found the hunter and a lounging wide-eyed knot of
listeners to tales of Kentucky and the Mississippi. The dinner-bell
rang. Adam fell pointedly silent, and his audience melted away. The
hunter rose and stretched himself. "There is prime venison for dinner,
and a quince tart and good apple brandy. Ha! I was always glad I was
born in Virginia. Here is Gideon swinging down the hill--Gideon and his
negro!"

The tobacco-roller joined them, and with a wave of the hand indicated
his purchase of the morning. This was a tall and strong negro, young,
supple, and of a cheerful countenance. Rand was in high good-humour.
"He's a runaway, Mocket says, but I'll cure him of that! He's strong as
an ox and as limber as a snake." Taking the negro's hand in his, he bent
the fingers back. "Look at that! easy as a willow! He'll strip tobacco!
His name is Joab."

The namesake of a prince in Israel looked blithely upon his new family.
"Yaas, marster," he said, with candour. "Dat is my name dat sho' is!
Jes' Joab. An' I is strong as en ox,--don' know 'bout de snaik. Marster,
is you gwine tek me 'way from Richmond?"

"Albemarle," said the tobacco-roller briefly. "To-morrow morning."

Joab studied the vine above the porch. "Kin I go tell my ole mammy
good-bye? She's washin' yonder in de creek."

Rand nodded, and the negro swung off to where, upon the grassy common
sloping to Shockoe Creek, dark washer-women were spreading clothes. The
bell of the Bird in Hand rang again, and the white men went to dinner.

Following the venison, the tart, and apple brandy came the short, bright
afternoon, passed by Lewis Rand upon the brig from the Indies with Tom
Mocket and little Vinie and a wrinkled skipper who talked of cocoanuts
and strange birds and red-handkerchiefed pirates, and spent by Gideon
first in business with the elder Mocket, and then in conversation with
Adam Gaudylock. Lewis, returning at supper-time to the Bird in Hand,
found the hunter altered no whit from his habitual tawny lightness, but
his father in a mood that he knew, sullen and silent. "Adam's been
talking to him," thought the boy. "And it's just the same as when Mrs.
Selden talks to him. Let me go--not he!"

In the morning, at six of the clock, the two Rands, the negro Joab, the
horses, and the dogs took the homeward road to Albemarle. Adam Gaudylock
was not returning with them; he had trader's business with the merchants
in Main Street, hunter's business with certain cronies at the Indian
Queen, able scout and man-of-information business in Governor Street,
and business of his own upon the elm-shaded walk above the river. Over
level autumn fields and up and down the wooded hills, father and son and
the slave travelled briskly toward the west. As the twilight fell, they
came up with three white wagons, Staunton bound, and convoyed by
mountaineers. That night they camped with these men in an expanse of
scrub and sassafras, but left them at dawn and went on toward Albemarle.
A day of coloured woods, of infrequent clearings, and of streams to
ford, ended in an evening of cool wind and rosy sky. They descended a
hill, halted, and built their fire in a grassy space beside a river.
Joab tethered the horses and made the fire, and fried the bacon and
baked the hoecake. As he worked he sang:--

     "David an' Cephas, an' ole brer Mingo,
     Saul an' Paul, an' de w'ite folk sinners--
           Oh, my chillern, follow de Lawd!"

Supper was eaten in silence. When it was over, Gideon Rand sat with his
back against a pine and smoked his pipe. His son went down to the river
and stretched his length upon a mossed and lichened boulder. The deep
water below the stone did not give him back himself as had done the
streamlet five days before. This was a river, marred with eddies and
with drifting wood, and red with the soil. The evening wind was blowing,
and the sycamore above him cast its bronze leaves into the flood which
sucked them under, or bore them with it on its way to the larger river
and the ultimate sea. This stream had no babbling voice; its note was
low and grave. Youth and mountain sources forgotten, it hearkened before
the time to ocean voices. The boy, idle upon the lichened stone,
listened too, to distant utterances, to the sirens singing beyond the
shadowy cape. The earth soothed him; he lay with half shut eyes, and
after the day's hot communion with old wrongs, he felt a sudden peace.
He was at the turn; the brute within him quiet behind the eternal bars;
the savage receding, the man beckoning, the after man watching from
afar. The inner stage was cleared and set for a new act. He had lowered
the light, he had rested, and he had filled the interval with forms and
determinations beautiful and vague, vague as the mists, the sounds, the
tossed arms of the Ossian he had dared to open last night, before his
father, by the camp-fire of the mountaineers. In the twilight of his
theatre he rested; a shadowy figure, full of mysteries, full of
possibilities, a boy in the grasp of the man within him, neither boy
nor man unlovable, nor wholly unadmirable, both seen, and seeing,
"through a glass darkly."

He turned on his side, and the light went up sharply. A man riding a
beautiful and spirited horse was coming over the hilltop. Horse and
rider paused a moment upon the crest, standing clear against the eastern
sky. In the crystal air and the sunset glow they crowned the hill like a
horse and rider nobly done in bronze. A moment thus, then they began to
pick their way down the rocky road. Lewis Rand looked, and started to
his feet. That horse had been bred in Albemarle, and that horseman he
had met in Richmond. The boy's heart beat fast and the colour surged to
his cheek. There was little, since the hour in the bookshop, that he
would not have done or suffered for the approaching figure. All along
the road from Richmond his imagination had conjured up a score of
fantastic instances, in each of which he had rescued, or died for, or
had in some impossibly romantic and magnificent fashion been the
benefactor of the man who was drawing near to the river and camp-fire.
As superbly generous as any other youth, he was, at present, in his
progress through life, in the land of shrines. He must have his idol,
must worship and follow after some visible hero, some older, higher,
stronger, more subtle-fine and far-ahead adventurer. Heretofore, in his
limited world, Adam Gaudylock had seemed nearest the gates of escape.
But Adam, he thought, was of the woods and the earth, even as his father
was, and as the tobacco was, and as he himself was. His enormous need
was for some one to follow whose feet were above the fat, red fields and
the leafy trails. All this was present with him as he watched the
oncoming figure. Great men kept their word. Had not Mr. Jefferson said
that he would overtake them?--and there he was! He was coming down to
the camp-fire, he was going to stop and talk to the surly giant, like
Giant Despair, who sat and smoked beside it.

Lewis Rand left the river and the windy sycamore and hastened across the
sere grass. "Father, father!" he cried. "Do you know who that is?" In
his young voice there was both warning and appeal. Adam Gaudylock, he
knew, had spoken to his father, but Gideon had given no sign. Suppose,
no matter _who_ spoke, his father would give, forever, no other sign
than that oft seen and always hated jerk of the head toward the
tobacco-fields?

Gideon Rand took his pipe from his lips. "It's Mr. Jefferson," he
answered laconically. "He's the one man in this country to whom I'd
listen."

Jefferson rode up to the group about the camp-fire, checked his horse,
and gave the tobacco-roller and his son a plain man's greeting to plain
men. The eagerness of the boy's face did not escape him; when he
dismounted, flung the reins of Wildair to his groom, and crossed the bit
of turf to the fire beneath the pines, he knew that he was pleasing a
young heart. He loved youth, and to the young he was always nobly kind.

"Good-evening, Mr. Rand," he said. "You are homeward bound, as I am. It
is good to see Albemarle faces after years of the French. I had the
pleasure of making your son's acquaintance yesterday. It is a great
thing to be the father of a son, for so one ceases to be a loose end and
becomes a link in the great chain. Your son, I think, will do you
honour. And, man to man, you must pay him in the same coin. We on a
lower rung of the ladder must keep our hands from the ankles of the
climbers above us! Make room for me on that log, my lad! Your father and
I will talk awhile."

Thus it was that an able lawyer took up the case of young Lewis Rand. It
was the lawyer's pleasure to give aid to youth, and to mould the mind
of youth. He had many protégés, to all of whom he was invariably kind,
invariably generous. The only return he exacted was that of homage. The
yoke was not heavy, for, after all, the homage was to Ideas, to large,
sagacious, and far-reaching Thought. It was in the year 1790 that he
broke Gideon Rand's resistance to his son's devotion to other gods than
those of the Rands. The year that followed that evening on the Albemarle
road found Lewis Rand reading law in an office in Charlottesville. A few
more years, and he was called to the bar; a little longer, and his name
began to be an oft-spoken one in his native county, and not unknown
throughout Virginia.




CHAPTER III

FONTENOY


In the springtime of the year 1804 the spectacle of human conduct ranged
from grave to gay, from gay to grave again much as it had done in any
other springtime of any other year. In France the consular chrysalis was
about to develop imperial wings. The British Lion and the Russian Bear
were cheek by jowl, and every Englishman turned his spyglass toward
Boulogne, where was gathered Buonaparte's army of invasion. In the New
World Spanish troops were reluctantly withdrawing from the vast
territory sold by a Corsican to a Virginian, while to the eastward of
that movement seventeen of the United States of America pursued the
uneven tenor of their way. Washington had been dead five years.
Alexander Hamilton was yet the leading spirit of the Federalist party,
while Thomas Jefferson was the idol of the Democrat-Republicans.

In the sovereign State of Virginia politics was the staple of
conversation as tobacco was the staple of trade. Party feeling ran high.
The President of the Union was a Virginian and a Republican; the Chief
Justice was a Virginian and a Federalist. Old friends looked askance, or
crossed the road to avoid a meeting, and hot bloods went a-duelling. The
note of the time was Ambition; the noun most in use the name of Napoleon
Buonaparte. It seemed written across the firmament; to some in letters
of light and to others in hell fire. With that sign in the skies, men
might shudder and turn to a private hearth, or they might give loosest
rein to desire for Fame. In the columns of the newspapers, above the
name of every Roman patriot, each party found voice. From a lurid
background of Moreau's conspiracy and d'Enghien's death, of a moribund
English King and Premier, of Hayti aflame, and Tripoli insolent, they
thundered, like Cassandra, of home woes. To the Federalist, reverencing
the dead Washington, still looking for leadership to Hamilton, now so
near that fatal Field of Honour, unconsciously nourishing love for that
mother country from which he had righteously torn himself, the name of
Democrat-Republican and all that it implied was a stench in the
nostrils. On the other hand, the lover of Jefferson, the believer in the
French Revolution and that rider of the whirlwind whom it had bred, the
far-sighted iconoclast, and the poor bawler for simplicity and red
breeches, all found the Federalist a mete burnished fly in the country's
pot of ointment. Nowhere might be found a man so sober or so dull as to
cry, "A plague o' both your houses!"

In the county of Albemarle April was blending with May. The days were
soft and sunshiny, apt to be broken by a hurry of clouds, of slanting
trees, and silver rain. When the sun came out again, it painted a great
bow in the heavens. Beneath that bright token bloomed a thousand
orchards; and the wheat and the young corn waved in the wet breeze. The
land was rolling and red in colour, with beautiful trees and narrow
rivers. Eastward it descended to misty plains, westward the mountains
rose, bounding a noble landscape of field and forest. For many years the
axe had swung and trees had fallen, but the forest yet descended to the
narrow roads, observed itself in winding streams, gloomed upon the
sunlit clearings where negroes sang as they tilled the soil. In the
all-surrounding green the plantations showed like intaglios. From
pleasant hillsides, shady groves, and hamlets of offices and quarters,
the sedate red-brick, white-porticoed "great houses" looked easily
forth upon a world which interested them mightily.

Upon a morning in late April of the year 1804, the early sunshine,
overflowing such a plantation, dipped at last into a hollow halfway
between the house and the lower gates, and overtook two young creatures
playing at make-believe, their drama of the moment being that of the
runaway servant.

"Oh, the sun!" wailed Deb. "We can't pretend it's dark any longer! God
has gone and made another day! We'll see you running away,--all of us
white folk, and the overseer and Mammy Chloe! If you climb this willow,
the dogs will tree you like they did Aunt Dinah's Jim! Lie down and I'll
cover you with leaves like the babes in the wood!"

Miranda, a slim black limb of Satan in a blue cotton gown, flung herself
with promptitude upon the ground. "Heap de beech leaves an' de oak
leaves upon dis heah po' los' niggah. Oh, my lan'! don' you heah 'um
comin'?"

Dead leaves fell upon her in a shower, and her accomplice gathered more
with frantic haste. "Oh, it's the ghost in the tobacco-house! it's a
rock rolling down the mountain! it's--it's something splashing in the
swamp!"

"Is I a-hidin' in de swamp? Den don' th'ow no oak leaves on dis niggah,
for dey don' grow dyar. Gawd A'moughty, lis'en to de river roarin'! I's
hidin' by de river--I's hidin' by de river! I's hidin' by de river
Jordan!"

Deb swayed to and fro, beating her hands in her excitement. "I see a
boat--a great big boat! It's as big as the Ark! The finders are in it,
and the dogs and the guns! Let us pray! O Jesus, save Miranda, even
though it is a scarlet sin to run away! O Jesus, don't let them take her
to the Court House! O Jesus, let them take me--"

Miranda reared herself from her leafy bed. "Humph! what you gwine do at
de Co'te House? Answer me dat! I knows what de Lawd gwine say. He gwine
say, 'Run for it, niggah!' Yaas, Lawd, I sholy gwine do what _you_
say--I gwine run to de very aidge of de yearth.

     "Oh, I fool you, Mister Oberseer Man!
     Oh, I fool you, my ole Marster!
     Cotch de mockin'bird co'tin' in de locus',
     Cotch de bullfrog gruntin' in de ma'sh,
     Cotch de black snake trabellin' 'long his road,
     But you ain' gwine see dis niggah enny mo'!

"Miss Deb, ef I gets to de big gate fust, you gwine lemme hol' dat doll
baby Marse Edward gin you?"

Deb brushed the last oak leaf from the skirt of her green gown, tossed
her yellow hair out of her brown eyes, and scrambled up the steep side
of the dell to a level of lawn and flowers. Her handmaiden followed her,
and they paused for breath beneath the white blooms of a mighty catalpa.
A hundred yards away, across an expanse of dewy turf, rose the great
house, bathed in sunlight. Box, syringa, and honeysuckle environed it,
and a row of poplars made a background of living green. It had tall
white pillars, and shallow steps leading down to a gravelled drive. The
drive was over-arched by elm and locust, and between the trees was
planted purple lilac. All of fresh and fair and tender met in the late
April weather, in the bright and song-filled morning, in the dew and in
the flowers. Upon the steps, between the white pillars, were gathered
several muslined figures, flowery bright to match the morning. In the
drive below, two horsemen, booted and spurred, clad in many-caped
riding-coats and attended by a negro groom, were in the act of lifting
tall hats to the ladies of the house they were quitting.

"Hi!" panted Miranda. "Marse Ludwell Cary, Marse Fairfax Cary, an' dat
brack niggah Eli! Whar dey gwine dis mawnin'?"

"To the Court House--to the election," answered Deb. "I know all about
it, for I asked Uncle Edward. If the Federalists win, the crops will be
good, and General Washington and my father and my grandfather will lie
quiet in their graves. We are Federalists. If the Republicans win, the
country will go to the devil."

"Hi, dat so?" said Miranda. "Le's run open de big gate. Dey two gent'men
moughty free wid dey money."

Racing over the jewelled turf, mistress and maid arrived at the big gate
in time to swing it open before the approaching riders. Young Fairfax
Cary laughed and tossed a coin to Miranda, who bobbed and showed her
teeth, while his elder brother stooped gallantly to the pretty child of
the house he was leaving. "Do you know what you are like in your narrow
green gown and your blowing, yellow hair? You are like a daffodil in
your sister's garden."

"If you were to swing me up from the ground," said Deb meditatively, "I
could stand upon the toe of your boot, and hold by Pluto's mane, and
ride with you as far as the creek.--What flower is Jacqueline like?"

"Like no flower that blooms," said Mr. Ludwell Cary. "Ah, well sprung,
Proserpina! Now shall we go fast as the wind?"

They went fast as the wind to the creek, and then went like the wind
back to the gate, where Ludwell Cary swung the child down to earth and
the waiting Miranda.

Deb curtsied to him. "Wish me good luck, Daffy-down-Dilly!" he said,
with his charming smile.

"I do," she answered earnestly. "I hope that you will kill the Devil."

He looked puzzled. "Is that feasible? I don't know where to find him."

"Aren't you going to fight him at the Court House? Uncle Edward said
that you were going to put down Lucifer."

The two brothers broke into laughter. "I say, Fair!" cried the elder.
"Has Lewis Rand a cloven hoof? I've scarcely seen him, you know, since I
went to England!"

"He's all cloven hoof, damn him!" the other answered cheerfully. "Best
ride on. He'll have been at the Court House this hour!"

Ludwell Cary glanced at his watch. "Early or late, the result will be
the same. The county's going for him twice over!"

"A damned tobacco-roller's son!" growled the other.

The elder brother laughed. "'A man's a man for a' that,' Fair. I dare
say old Gideon rolled tobacco with all his might. As for his son, his
worst enemy--and I don't know that I am that--couldn't deny him courage
and energy."

"He's a dangerous man--"

"Most men are who have won by fighting. But I don't think he loves
violence. Well, well, I'm coming! Good-bye, little one!"

Deb curtsied and Miranda bobbed, the gentlemen touched their hats, black
Eli grinned, the horses began to canter, and, the leafy road bending
sharply, the party for the Court House passed suddenly from view as
though the earth had swallowed them up.

Miranda bent her eyes upon her mistress. "Hit's time you wuz in de
schoolroom. An' Lan' o' Goshen! Jes' look at yo' wet shoes! I reckon
Mammy Chloe gwine whup me!"

Deb considered her stockings and slippers. "There's no school to-day.
Mr. Drew's going to the Court House to vote. Uncle Edward says it is the
duty of every gentleman to vote against this damned upstart and the
Democrat-Republican party. The damned upstart's other name is Lewis
Rand. I'll ask Jacqueline to beg Mammy Chloe not to whip you. I like wet
feet."

The parlour at Fontenoy was large and high and cool, hung with green
paper, touched with the dull gold of old mirrors, of a carved console or
two, of oval frames enclosing dim portraits. Long windows opened to the
April breeze, and from above the high mantel a Churchill in lovelocks
and plumed hat looked down upon Jacqueline seated at her harp. She was
playing Water parted from the Sea, playing it dreamily, with an absent
mind. Deb, hearing the music from the hall, came and stood beside her
sister. They were orphans, dwelling with an uncle.

"Jacqueline," said the child, "do you believe in the Devil?"

Jacqueline played on, but turned a lovely face upon her sister. "I don't
know, honey," she said. "I suppose we must, but I had rather not."

"Uncle Edward doesn't. He says 'What the Devil!' but he doesn't believe
in the Devil. Then why do he and Uncle Dick call Mr. Lewis Rand the
Devil?"

Jacqueline's hands left the strings. "They neither say nor mean that,
Deb. Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward are Federalists. They do not like
Republicans, nor Mr. Jefferson, nor Mr. Jefferson's friends. Mr. Lewis
Rand is Mr. Jefferson's friend, and he is his party's candidate for the
General Assembly, and so they do not like him. But they do not call him
such names as that."

"Mr. Ludwell Cary doesn't like him either," said Deb. "Why, Jacqueline?"

"Mr. Ludwell Cary is his political opponent."

"And Mr. Fairfax Cary called him a damned tobacco-roller's son."

Jacqueline reddened. "Mr. Fairfax Cary might be thankful to have so
informed a mind and heart. It is well to blame a man for his birth!"

"Mr. Ludwell Cary said, 'A man's a man for a' that.' What does that
mean, Jacqueline?"

"It means," said Jacqueline, "that--that man stamps the guinea, but God
sees the gold."

"Won't you tell me a story?" demanded Deb. "Tell me about the time when
you were a little girl and you used to stay at Cousin Jane Selden's. And
about the poor boy who lived on the next place--and the apple tree and
the little stream where you played, and the mockingbird he gave you. And
how his father was a cruel man, and you cried because he had to work so
hard all day in the hot fields. You haven't told me that story for a
long time."

"I have forgotten it, Deb."

"Then tell me about summer before last, when you were at Cousin Jane
Selden's again, and you were grown, and you saw the poor boy again--only
he was a man--and his father was dead, and he talked to you in Cousin
Jane Selden's flower garden. You never told me that story but once."

"I have forgotten that one too."

"Why does your breath come long like that, Jacqueline? I have gotten my
feet wet. Will you tell Mammy Chloe not to whip Miranda? Here is Uncle
Edward!"

Major Edward Churchill entered from the garden, for which he had an
attachment almost comparable to his love for the old Fontenoy library
and the Fontenoy stables. He was a gentleman of the old school, slight,
withered, high-nosed and hawk-eyed, dressed with precision and carrying
an empty sleeve. The arm he had lost at Yorktown; a temper too hot to
hold he daily lost, but he had the art to keep his friends. There were
duels to his account, as well as a reputation for great courage and
coolness during the late war. Under the name of Horatius he contributed
to The Virginia Federalist diatribes of a polished ferocity against the
Democrat-Republicans and their chief, and he owned Mustapha, the noblest
race-horse of the day. He was a bachelor, a member of the Cincinnati, a
Black Cockade, a friend of Alexander Hamilton, a scholar, and a sceptic;
a proud, high, fiery man, who had watched at the death-bed of many
things. He made his home with his brother, the master of Fontenoy; and
his niece Jacqueline, the daughter of a younger, long dead brother, was
to him youth, colour, music, and romance.

"The moss-rose is in bloom," he announced, standing in the parlour door.
"Come see it, Jacqueline."

They went out into the garden and stood before the moss-rose bush. "Oh,
beautiful!" exclaimed Jacqueline, and touched the rose with her lips. It
was sunny in the garden, and the box smelled strong and sweet. The Major
plucked a sprig and studied it as though box were a rarity. "I have
found," he said, "Ludwell Cary's visit highly agreeable. He has come
home to Virginia as likely a man as one could find in a summer day. He
adorns the state. I predict for him a long and successful career."

"Yes, indeed," assented Jacqueline. "I like him very much. How well he
talks! And travel has not made him forget the old days here."

The Major plucked another sprig of box. "In the old days, my dear, your
father and your Uncle Dick and I used to plan--well, well, castles in
Spain! castles in Spain! But he's a handsome fellow!"

"He is indeed," said Jacqueline. "His eyes are especially fine. I like
that clear grey--frank and kind."

"He has sense and principle--he has mind."

"That is evident," answered his niece. "He does everything admirably.
Last night after supper he read to Unity and me. He reads extremely
well. The book was the Death of Wallenstein. He made me see that murder!
My heart stood still."

"He is to be admired for standing up to-day against that damned
demagogue, Lewis Rand! No matter if he is defeated. Every gentleman
applauds him. You women adore victory, but let me tell you, a vanquished
Federalist is still the conqueror of any ranting Republican!"

"Did I tell you," asked Jacqueline, "that Mr. Pincornet holds the
dancing class at Fontenoy this week?"

"The dancing class be damned! Ludwell Cary is a man and a gentleman,
Jacqueline--"

"Yes," said Jacqueline.

The Major threw away his sprig of box. "The Sphinx was a woman, and
every woman is an incarnate riddle! Why don't you care for him,
Jacqueline?"

"I do care for him. I like him very much."

"Pshaw!" said the Major irritably. "Don't look at that rose any longer!
It's cankered! And it's time that Dick and I were off. We vote--" he put
his shapely, nervous hand upon his niece's shoulder--"we vote,
Jacqueline, for Ludwell Cary."

"Yes, uncle," said Jacqueline. "I know--I know."

Colonel Dick Churchill, large and beaming, and Major Edward Churchill,
thin and saturnine, rode away, and from between the white pillars Deb
and Jacqueline watched them go. Colonel Dick's wife was an invalid, and
lay always in the cool and spacious "chamber," between dimity bed
curtains, with her key basket on the counterpane.

"Jacqueline," said Deb, "whom do you vote for?"

"Women do not vote, honey."

"But if you _did_ vote, Jacqueline?"

"Do you remember," asked Jacqueline, "how Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
offended Mr. Alexander Pope?"

"Ah," said Deb. "I'm little, and I ask questions, but I'm not crooked!
Will Mr. Lewis Rand ever come to Fontenoy, Jacqueline?"

"You are going to wear your blue gown to the dancing class," said
Jacqueline. "Unity is going to wear her yellow jaconet, and I shall wear
white. I will make you a wreath of syringa like stars. And you may wear
your gloves."

"Oh-h!" breathed Deb. "And my cornelian ring--and the flowered
scarf--and--and your fan, Jacqueline?"

"Yes," said Jacqueline. "I am tired this morning, Deb. The sunlight is
so strong. I think I'll go darken my room, and lie down upon my bed."

"Does your head ache?"

"Yes, my head," said Jacqueline, and went into the house.




CHAPTER IV

THE TWO CANDIDATES


The town, established forty years before this April morning, had been
named for a Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, lately become Queen of
England. During the Revolution it had been the scene of a raid of
Tarleton's and a camp of detention for British prisoners. It was the
county seat to which three successive presidents of the United States
must travel to cast their votes; and somewhat later than the period of
this story it was to rub elbows with a great institution of learning. No
city even in our own time, it was, a hundred years ago, slight enough in
size to suit the genius for tempered solitude characteristic of a
tobacco-growing State.

A few dwelling-houses of frame and brick rose from an emerald mist of
gardens, and there were taverns, much at the service of all who came to
town with money in their purse. The Swan allured the gentlefolk of the
county, the coach-and-four people, Jehus of light curricles, and riders
of blooded horses. The Eagle had the stage-coach patronage, and thrice a
week blew a lusty horn. Besides the inns and the dwelling-houses there
were stores and a half-built church, the Court House, and the shady
Court House yard.

For a great part of the time, the Court House, the centre of gravity for
the county, appeared to doze in the sunshine. At stated intervals,
however, it awoke, and the drowsy town with it. Once awake, both became
very wide awake indeed. Court days doubled the population; an election
made a beehive of the place.

It was the fourth Wednesday in April, and election day. A man was to be
sent to the House of Delegates at Richmond. All likelihood was upon the
side of the candidate of the Democrat-Republicans, but the Federalists
had a fighting chance. There were reasons why this especial election was
of great interest to the county, and the motto of both parties was "No
malingering!" Early in the morning, by the Three-Notched Road, the
Barracks Road, and the Secretary's Road, through the shady Thoroughfare,
over the misty Rivanna, the Hardware, and the Rapidan, the county began
to pour electors into Charlottesville. They came upon wheels, on
horseback, and afoot; the strong and the weak, the halt and the blind,
the sick and the well, the old and the young, all the free men of
Albemarle, all alert, all pleasurably excited over the prospect of the
fight.

Without the Court House yard, under the locust trees to the right of the
open gate, were placed long tables, and on them three mighty
punch-bowls, flanked by drinking-cups and guarded by house servants of
venerable appearance and stately manners. Here good Federalists
refreshed themselves. To the left of the gate, upon the trampled grass
beneath a mulberry, appeared other punch-bowls, and in addition a barrel
of whiskey, ready broached for all good Democrat-Republicans. The sunny
street was filled with horses, vehicles, and servants; the broad path
between the trees, the turf on either hand, and the Court House steps
were crowded with riotous voters. All ranks of society, all ages,
occupations, and opinions, met in the genial weather, beneath the trees
where sang every bird of spring.

Within the Court House the throng, slight at first, was rapidly
increasing. The building was not large, and from end to end, and on the
high window-sills beneath the long green blinds, the people pushed and
shoved and stood a-tiptoe. It was yet early morning, and for some
unexplained reason the Federalist candidate had not arrived.

Upon the Justice's Bench, raised high above the crowded floor, sat the
candidate of the Democrat-Republicans--the Republicans, pure and simple,
as they were beginning to be called. Near him stood the sheriff and the
deputy-sheriff; around him pressed committee-men, heelers with tallies,
vociferous well-wishers, and prophets of victory, and a few, a very few,
personal and private friends. On the other hand, strongly gathering and
impatiently awaiting their candidate, his foes gloomed upon him.
Everywhere was a buzzing of voices: farmers and townspeople voting
loudly, the sheriff as loudly recording each vote, the clerk humming
over his book, the crowd making excited comment. There was no
ballot-voting; it was a _viva voce_ matter, and each man knew his
fellow's creed.

Lewis Rand sat at ease, a tall and personable man, with the head of a
victor, and a face that had the charm of strength. The eye was keen and
dark, the jaw square, the thick brown hair cut short, as was the
Republican fashion. His dress was plain but good, worn with a certain
sober effect, an "it pleases me," that rendered silk and fine ruffles
superfluous. He was listening to a wide-girthed tavern-keeper and old
soldier of the Revolution's loud declaration that Lewis Rand was the
coming man, and that he was for Lewis Rand. The old county wanted no
English-thinking young Federalist in Richmond. "Too many Federalists
there a'ready! Mr. Lewis Rand, Mr. Sheriff!"

The Republicans applauded. The custom of the time required that the man
voted for should thank the man who voted, and that aloud and aptly, with
no slurring acknowledgment of service. Lewis Rand, a born speaker and
familiar with his audience, was at no loss. "I thank you, Mr. Fagg! May
your shadow never grow less! The old county--Mr. Jefferson's county,
gentlemen--may be trusted to hold its own, in Richmond or in Washington,
in Heaven or in Hell! Mr. Fagg, I will drink your health in punch of the
Eagle's brewing! Your very obliged friend and servant!"

From street and yard without came a noise of cheering, with cries of
"Black Cockade! Black Cockade! The party of Washington--Washington
forever!--The old county for Cary!--Albemarle for Cary!--The county for
a _gentleman!_"

"Mr. Ludwell Cary has arrived," announced the sheriff.

"Here comes the gentleman!" cried a man from a windowsill. "Stand up,
Lewis Rand, and show him a man!"

The throng at the door parted, and with a Federalist and distinguished
following the two Carys entered, the elder quiet and smiling, the
younger flushed, bright-eyed, and anxious. The attachment between these
two brothers was very strong; it was to be seen in every glance that
passed between them, in every tone of voice used by each to the other.
The elder played fond Mentor, and the younger thought his brother a
demi-god. They were men of an old name, an old place, an inherited
charm. "Ludwell Cary!" cried a mail. "Long live Ludwell Cary!"

Rand left the Justice's Bench, stepped forward, and greeted his
opponent. The two touched hands. "I trust I see you in health, Mr.
Cary?"

"Mr. Rand, I thank you, I am very well. You are early in the lists!"

"I am accustomed to early rising," answered Rand. "This morning I have
ridden from the Wolf Trap. Will you sit?"

"Ah," said Cary, "I rode from Fontenoy. After you, sir!"

They sat down, side by side, upon the Justice's Bench, the Federalist
very easy, the Republican, lacking the perfection of the other's
manner, with a stiffness and constraint of which he was aware and which
he hated in himself. He knew himself well enough to know that presently,
in the excitement of the race, the ugly mantle would slip from the
braced athlete, but at the moment he felt his disadvantage. Subtly and
slowly, released from some deep, central tarn of his most secret self, a
vapour of distaste and dislike began to darken the cells of clear
thought. As a boy he had admired and envied Ludwell Cary; for his
political antagonist, pure and simple, he had, unlike most around him,
often the friendliest feeling; but now, sitting there on the Justice's
Bench, he wondered if he were going to hate Cary. Suddenly an image came
out of the vapour. "How long has he been at Fontenoy? Does he think he
can win there, too?"

The younger Cary marched to the polls with his head held high, and voted
loudly for his brother. The latter smiled upon him, and said with
simplicity, "Thank you, Fair!" The Republican candidate looked
attentively at the young man. The spirit and the fire, subdued in the
elder brother, was in the younger as visible as lightning. Rand was
quick at divining men, and now he thought, "This man would make a
tireless enemy."

Following Fairfax Cary came another of the group who had entered with
the Carys. "Mr. Peyton votes for Mr. Ludwell Cary!" cried the sheriff.
The Federalists applauded, the Republicans groaned, the tallymen took
note, and Cary bowed his thanks. "Mr. Peyton, your very humble servant!
Mount Eagle and Greenwood are old comrades-at-arms!"

"I'll kill _your_ vote, Craven Peyton!" came a voice. "I vote, Mr.
Sheriff, for Lewis Rand!"

"Ludwell Cary!" cried another, "and there's a killer killed, Dick
Carr!"

"I'll draw a bead on you, Gentry!" put in a third. "The best shot in the
county, Mr. Sheriff, and that's Lewis Rand!"

"Lewis Rand stands ten ahead!" cried a committee-man; and the sheriff,
"Gentlemen, gentlemen! order at the polls!"

A small, wizened man, middle-aged and elaborately dressed in much
ancient and tarnished finery, came bowing through the crowd. A curled
wig shadowed a narrow face, and lace ruffles fell over long-fingered
hands, yellow as old ivory. The entire figure was fantastic, even a
little grotesque, though after a pleasant fashion. In a mincing voice
and with a strong French accent, M. Achille Pincornet, dancing-master
and performer on the violin, intimated that he wished to vote for Mr.
Ludwell Cary. Lewis Rand glanced sharply up, then made a sign to a
sandy-haired and freckled man who, tally in hand, stood near him.

"I challenge that vote!" cried the man with the tally.

"Mr. Pincornet's vote is challenged!" shouted the sheriff.

"Order, order, gentlemen! Your reason, Mr. Mocket?"

"The gentleman is a Frenchman and not a citizen of the United States! He
is not even a citizen of the French Republic! He is an émigré. He has no
vote. Mark off his name!"

"Sir!" cried the challenged voter, "I am a de Pincornet, cadet of a
house well known in Gascony! If I left France, I left it to find a great
and free country, a country where one gentleman may serve another!"

A roar of laughter, led by Mocket, arose from the younger and lower sort
of Republicans. "But you do serve, Mr. Pincornet! You teach all the
'Well-born' how to dance!"

"Didn't you teach the Carys? They dance beautifully."

"Are brocaded coats still worn in Gascony?"

"_Ne sutor supra crepidam judicaret!_ Caper all you please on a waxed
floor, but leave Virginians to rule!"

Fairfax Cary, hot and angry, put in an oar. "Mr. Sheriff, Mr. Sheriff!
Mr. Pincornet has lived these twelve years in Albemarle! We have no more
respected, no more esteemed citizen. His vote's as good as any
man's--and rather better, I may remark, than that of some men!" He
looked pointedly at Mocket.

Lewis Rand gave his henchman a second guiding glance.

"It is merely," said Mocket promptly, "a question of that Alien Law of
which the 'Well-born' are so proud. Show your papers, Mr. Pincornet. If
you are a citizen of the United States, you have papers to show for it."

"Yes, sir," agreed the sheriff. "That's right, Mr. Mocket. Let me see
your papers, Mr. Pincornet."

"Papers, papers! I have no papers!" cried Mr. Pincornet.

"But every gentleman here--and I have no care for the canaille--knows
that I live in Albemarle, in a small house between Greenwood and
Fontenoy! I have lived there since I left France in the abhorred year of
'92, with tears of rage in my eyes! I came to this land, where, seeing
that I must eat, and that my dancing was always admired, I said to
myself, '_T'enez_, Achille, my friend, we will teach these Virginians to
dance!' Mr. Fairfax Cary has been my pupil, and it gives me pleasure to
vote for his brother to go make the laws for my adopted country--"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Pincornet," interrupted the sheriff, "but you have no
vote. I'll have to ask you to stand aside."

"Come up here, Mr. Pincornet," said Cary, from the Justice's Bench. "I
want to ask you about a gentleman of your name whom I had the honour to
meet in London--M. le Vicomte de Pincornet, a very gallant man--"

"That," said the dancing master, "would be my cousin Alexandre. He
escaped during the Terror hidden under a load of hay, his son driving in
a blouse and red nightcap. Will Mr. Cary honour me?" and out came a
tortoise-shell snuff-box.

The voting quickened. "Rand is ahead--Rand is winning!" went from mouth
to mouth. Fairfax Cary, caring much where his brother cared little,
welcomed impetuously the wave of Federalists which that rumour brought
in from the yard and street. "Ha, Mr. Gilmer, Mr. Carter, you are
welcome! Who votes? Who votes as General Hamilton and Mr. Adams and
Judge Marshall vote? Who votes as _Washington_ would have voted?"

So many crowded to vote as Washington would have voted, that it almost
seemed as though his shade might lead the Federalists to victory. But
the dead Washington must cope with the living Jefferson; mild monarchism
and stately rule with a spirit born of time, nursed by Voltaire and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, grown articulate in the French Revolution, and
now full swing toward majority. When thrown, the Democrat-Republicans
rose from the earth like Antæus. Much of the gentle blood and many of
the prominent men of the county voted for Lewis Rand. Jefferson's
personal following of friends and kinsmen was large; these accepted his
man as a matter of course, while to the plain men of the county Lewis
Rand was more even than the coming man: he was of them; he was a plain
man. The clamour and excitement grew. "Here come the Three-Notched Road
people!" cried a voice. "They all rolled tobacco with Gideon Rand!"

The Three-Notched Road people voted to a man for the son of Gideon Rand,
and were promptly reinforced by a contingent of hot Republicans from the
Ragged Mountains. At ten o'clock Lewis Rand was again well ahead, but at
this hour there was a sharp rally of the Federalists. A cheering from
without announced the arrival of some popular voter, and Colonel
Churchill and his brother, Major Edward, and an array of Federalists
from the Fontenoy district, entered the Court House.

"The Churchills are coming, Oho! Oho!" sang out a wag perched on the
window-sill.

"Not to that tune," roared a Scot from the gallery. "Mon, they're
Tories!"

"Gentlemen, gentlemen! order at the polls!" shouted the sheriff.
"Colonel Churchill, for whom do you vote?"

"I vote, sir," cried the Colonel, "for Mr. Ludwell Cary, for a gentleman
and a patriot, sir, and may the old county never be represented but by
such!"

"Order, order at the polls! Colonel Churchill votes for Mr. Ludwell
Cary! Major Edward Churchill, whom do you vote for?"

"For whom do you suppose, Mr. Sheriff?" said the Major. "For Mr. Ludwell
Cary."

Cary rose from the bench and stepped forward to the edge of the
platform. "Colonel Dick, Major Edward, I thank you both. May I deserve
your confidence and your favour! Fontenoy is as dear to me as
Greenwood."

"By God, you shall win, Ludwell!" cried Colonel Dick. "Here's a regiment
of us to see you through!"

"Rome hasn't fallen yet," added Major Edward. "I don't hear the geese
cackling."

"One's cackling now," smiled Cary, and Mr. Tom Mocket stepped up to the
polls.

"It's not a goose; it's a turkey buzzard!"

"It's not feathered at all," said Fairfax Cary. "It's a mangy jackal to
a mangy lion."

The young man had spoken loudly and contemptuously. Rand, on the
Justice's Bench, and Mocket, in the act of voting, both heard, and both
looked his way. Ludwell Cary knit his brows, and meeting his brother's
eyes, slightly shook his head. Look and gesture said, "Leave abuse
alone, Fair."

Mocket voted for Rand. "I challenge that vote!" cried Major Edward
Churchill. "The man's been in prison."

Amid the noise that followed, the Jackal was heard to cry, "It's a lie!
Lewis, tell them it's a lie! Major Churchill, you'd better be careful! I
was acquitted, and you know it."

"Do I?" answered the Major coolly. "I know that you ought to be making
shoes in the penitentiary! Mr. Sheriff, you should really have this
courtroom sprinkled with vinegar. There's gaol fever in the air."

"I don't see, Mr. Sheriff," came Rand's voice from the Justice's Bench,
"that any more vinegar is needed. Gentlemen, all--whether Federalist or
Republican--I was Mr. Mocket's lawyer in the case referred to. Twelve
good men and true--men of this county--pronounced him innocent. It is
not surprising that my friends the Federalists should wish to gain
time,--they are leagued with old Time,--but I protest against their
gaining it by such means. This is not a matter of parties; it is a
matter of a man being held innocent till he is proved guilty. A hundred
men here can testify as to the verdict in this case. Mr. Mocket,
gentlemen--" He paused and regarded the sandy-haired and freckled Tom,
the brother of little Vinie, the sometime door-boy in Chancellor Wythe's
law office, with a smile so broadly humorous, humane, and tolerant, that
suddenly the courtroom smiled with him. "Tom Mocket, gentlemen, is a
scamp, but he's not a scoundrel! The election proceeds, Mr. Sheriff."

"I vote for Lewis Rand!" shouted the scamp out of the uproar. "Richmond
now, then Washington! We'll send Lewis Rand as high as he can go!"

"As high as the gallows!" growled Major Edward Churchill.

"Send him," said a voice in the doorway, "out West. Mr. Jefferson gained
Louisiana, but 'twill take a stronger man to gain Mexico. Mexico wants a
Buonaparte."

The day wore on with no lessening of heat and clamour. The Court House
becoming too full, men betook themselves to the yard or to the street,
where, mounted on chairs or on wagons from which the horses had been
taken, they harangued their fellows. Public speaking came easily to this
race. To-day good liquor and emulation pricked them on, and the spring
in the blood. Under the locusts to the right of the gate Federalists
apostrophized Washington, lauded Hamilton, the Judiciary, and the beauty
of the English Constitution, denounced the French, denounced the
Louisiana Purchase, denounced the Man of the People, and his every tool
and parasite, and lifted to the skies the name of Ludwell Cary. To the
left of the gate, under the locusts, the Republicans praised the
President of the United States and all his doings, and poured oblation
to Lewis Rand. From side to side of the path there were alarms and
incursions. Before noon there had occurred a number of hand-to-hand
fights, one, at least, accompanied by "gouging," and a couple of duels
had been arranged.

In the courtroom the parties jostled each other at the polls, and the
candidates, side by side upon the Justice's Bench, watched the day go
now this way and now that. Their partisans they must acceptably thank,
and they must be quick of wit with their adversaries. Fatigue did not
count, nor hoarseness from much speaking, nor an undercurrent of
consciousness that there were, after all, more parties than two, more
principles than those they advocated, more colours than black and white,
more epithets than hero and villain. They must act in their moment, and
accept its excitement. A colour burned in their cheeks, and the hair lay
damp upon their foreheads. They must listen and answer to men saying
loudly to their faces and before other men, "I hold with you, and your
mind is brother to my mind"; or saying, "I hold not with you, and you
and your mind are abominable to me! To outer darkness with you both!"

Sometimes they consulted with their committee-men, and sometimes punch
was brought, and they drank with their friends. Occasionally they spoke
to each other; when they did this, it was with extreme courtesy. Cary
used the buttoned foil with polished ease. Rand's manner was less
assured; there was something antique and laboured in his determined
grasp at the amenities of the occasion. It was the only heaviness. To
the other contest between them he brought an amazing sureness, a
suppleness, power, and audacity beyond praise. He directed his battle,
and at his elbow Tom Mocket, sandy-haired and ferret-eyed, did him
yeoman service.

At one o'clock there was an adjournment for dinner. The principal
Federalists betook themselves to the Swan; the principal Republicans to
the Eagle. The commonalty ate from the packed baskets upon the trampled
grass of the Court House yard. An hour later, when the polls were
reopened, men returned to them flushed with drink and in the temper for
a quarrel, the Republicans boisterous over a foreseen victory, the
Federalists peppery from defeat. In the yard the constable had to part
belligerents, in the courtroom the excitement mounted. The tide was set
now for Lewis Rand. The Federalists watched it with angry eyes; the
Republicans greeted with jubilation each new wave. The defeated found
some relief in gibes. "Holoa! here's Citizen Bonhomme--red breeches,
cockade, and Brutus crop!

     "Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!"

"That man ran away from Tarleton!--yes, you did, the very day that Mr.
Jefferson--a-hem!--_absented_ himself from Monticello!"

"Challenge that man--he deserted in the Indian War!

     "November the fourth, in the year ninety-one,
     We had a sore engagement near to Fort Jefferson!"

"Here's a traveller who has seen the mammoth and climbed the Salt
Mountain!"

"Here's a tobacco-roller! Hey, my man, don't you miss old friends on the
road?"

Under cover of the high words, laughter, and vituperation which made a
babel of the courtroom, Cary spoke to his opponent. "Mr. Rand, do you
remember that frosty morning, long ago, when you and I first met? I came
upon you in the woods, and together we gathered chinquapins. Does it
seem long to you since you were a boy?"

"Long enough!" answered Rand. "I remember that day very well."

"We told each other our names, I remember, and what each meant to do in
the world. We hardly foresaw this day." "It is not easy to foresee,"
said Rand slowly. "If we could, we might--"

"We might foresee our last meeting," smiled Cary, "as we remember our
first." He took a glass of wine from a passing servant and put it to his
lips, "To another meeting, in the wood!" he said, "since I may not quite
drink to your victory."

"Ah, my victory!" answered Rand. "When I have it, I don't know that I
shall care for it! That's a handsome youth, your brother--and he has
worked for you like a Trojan! I'll drink to your brother!"

"Here are the Green Spring folk!" cried a voice. "They always vote like
gentlemen!"

The Green Spring folk were a squadron, and they voted Cary again within
sight of the goal. A man who had been standing just without the open
door rested his long musket against the wall and advanced to the polls.
"Last time I voted here," he said, "'twas for Mr. Jefferson. I reckon
I'll have to vote to-day for Lewis Rand."

A tumult arose. "Adam Gaudylock belongs upon the Mississippi!--He isn't
an Albemarle man!--He's a Kentuck--He's a Louisianian--He's a subject of
Jefferson's new kingdom!--Challenged!--He can't vote in Albemarle!"

The hunter waited for the uproar to cease. "You Federalists are mighty
poor shots!" he exclaimed at last. "You make no account of the wind. I
am subject of no man's kingdom. I trade in New Orleans, and I travel on
the great rivers, and I've friends in Kentucky, and I hunt where the
hunting's good, but when I want to vote I come back to my own county
where I was born, and where I grew up among you all, and where I've yet
a pretty piece of land between here and the mountains. I voted here
before, and I'll vote here again. The Gaudylocks may wander and wander,
but their home is on the Three-Notched Road, and they vote in
Albemarle."

The vote standing, and Adam being followed by a string of hunters,
traders, and boatmen, the Republican candidate was again and finally in
advance. The winds blew for him from the four quarters. In the last
golden light of the afternoon there was a strong and sudden muster of
Republicans. From all directions stragglers appeared, voice after voice
proclaiming for the man who, regarded at first as merely a protégé of
Jefferson, had come in the last two years to be regarded for himself.
The power in him had ceased to be latent, and friend and foe were
beginning to watch Lewis Rand and his doings with intentness.

As the sun set behind the Ragged Mountains, the polls closed, and the
sheriff proclaimed the election of the Republican candidate.

The Court House was quickly emptied, nor was the Court House yard far
behind. The excitement had spent itself. The result, after all, had been
foreknown. It drew on chilly with the April dusk, and men were eager to
be at home, seated at their supper-tables, going over the day with
captured friends and telling the women the news. On wheels, on horseback
or afoot, drunk and sober, north, south, east, and west, they cantered,
rolled, and trudged away from the brick Court House and the trampled
grass, and the empty bowls beneath the locust trees.

The defeated candidate and the successful shook hands: Cary quiet and
smiling, half dignified and half nonchalant; Rand with less control and
certainty of himself. The one said with perfection the proper things,
the other said them to the best of his ability. Young Fairfax Cary,
standing by, twisting his riding-whip with angry fingers, curled his lip
at the self-made man's awkwardness of phrase. Rand saw the smile, but
went on with his speech. Colonel Churchill, who had been talking with
Adam Gaudylock, left the hunter and came up to Cary. "Ludwell, you and
Fair are not going to Greenwood to-night! I have orders from the ladies
to bring you back to Fontenoy--alive or dead!"

"I find myself very much alive, Colonel!" answered Cary. "Thank you,
I'll gladly spend the night at Fontenoy. Fontenoy would draw me, I
think, if I _were_ dead!"

"Dick has a middling Madeira," remarked Major Edward. "And after supper
Jacqueline shall sing to us. Good-evening, Mr. Rand!"

"Good-evening to you, Major Churchill," said Rand. "Good-evening, Mr.
Cary. Good-evening, gentlemen!"

"Here are Eli and Mingo with the horses," said Fairfax Cary, his back to
the Republican. "Let's away, Ludwell!"

Colonel Churchill laughed. "Fontenoy draws you too, Fairfax? Well, my
niece Unity is a pleasing minx--yes, by gad! Miss Dandridge is a
handsome jade! Come away, come away, gentlemen!"

Federalists and Republicans exchanged the stiffest of bows, and the
party for Fontenoy mounted and took the road. The Republicans whom they
left behind had a few moments of laughter and jubilation, and then they
also quitted the Court House yard and called to the servants for the
horses.

"You'll spend the night at Edgehill, I hope, Mr. Rand?" cried one. "Mrs.
Randolph expects you--she will wish to write to her father of your
day--"

"No, no, come with me!" put in another. "There's all this business to
talk over--and I've a letter to show you from Mr. Madison--"

"Best come to the Eagle!" cried a third. "No end of jolly fellows, and
bumpers to next year--"

Rand shook his head. "Thank you, Colonel Randolph--but I am riding to
Monticello. Mr. Jefferson has written for some papers from the library.
Burwell will care for me to-night. Present, if you will, my humble
services to Mrs. Randolph and the young ladies. By the same token I
cannot go with you, Mr. Carr, nor to the Eagle, Mr. Jones.--My grateful
thanks to you, one and all, gentlemen! I am a plain man--I can say no
more. We will ride together as far as the creek."

The negro Joab brought his horse, a magnificent animal, the gift of
Jefferson. He mounted and the party kept together as far as the creek,
where their ways parted. Rand checked his horse, said good-bye, and
watched the gentlemen who had given him their support ride cheerfully
away toward the light of home. He himself was waiting for Adam
Gaudylock, who was going with him to Monticello. After a moment's
thought he decided not to wait there beside the creek, but to turn his
horse and leave a message for Tom Mocket at a house which he had passed
five minutes before.




CHAPTER V

MONTICELLO


The house, a low frame one, stood back from the road, in a tangle of
old, old flowering shrubs. Rand drew rein before the broken gate, and a
young woman in a linsey gown rose from the porch step and came down the
narrow path toward him. She carried an earthenware pitcher and cup.
"It's water just from the well," she said, "fresh and cool. Won't you
have some?"

"Yes, I will," answered Rand. "Vinie, why don't you mend that gate?"

"I don't know, thir," said Vinie. "Tom's always going to."

Rand laughed. "Don't call me 'thir'! Vinie, I'm elected."

Vinie set down her pitcher beside a clump of white phlox and wiped her
hands on the skirt of her linsey dress. "Are you going away to
Richmond?" she asked.

"Not until October. When I do I'll go see the little old house you used
to live in, Vinie!"

"It's torn down," remarked Vinie soberly. "Here's Tom now, and--and--"

"Adam Gaudylock. Don't you remember Adam?"

The hunter and Tom Mocket came up together. "We beat them! we beat them,
hey, Lewis!" grinned the scamp; and Gaudylock cried, "Why, if here isn't
the little partridge again! Don't you want to see what I've got in my
pouch?"

"Yeth, thir," said Vinie.

Rand and his lieutenant talked together in a low voice, Mocket leaning
against black Selim's neck, Rand stooping a little, and with
earnestness laying down the law of the case. They talked for ten
minutes, and then Rand gathered up the reins, asked for another cup of
water, and with a friendly "Good-bye, Vinie!" rode off toward
Monticello, Adam Gaudylock going with him.

Brother and sister watched the riders down the road until the gathering
dark and the shadow of the trees by the creek hid them from sight. "Just
wait long enough and we'll see what we see," quoth Tom. "Lewis Rand's
going to be a great man!"

"How great?" asked Vinie. "Not as great as Mr. Jefferson?"

"I don't know," the scamp answered sturdily. "He might be. One thing's
certain, anyhow; he's not built like Mr. Madison or Mr. Monroe. He'll
not be content to travel the President's road always. He'll have a road
all his own." The scamp's imagination, not usually lively, bestirred
itself under the influence of the day, of wine, and the still audible
sound of horses' hoofs. "By George, Vinie! it will be a Roman road,
hard, paved, and fit for triumphs! He thinks it won't, but he's
mistaken. He doesn't see himself!"

Vinie took the pitcher from beneath the white phlox. "It's getting dark.
Tom, aren't we ever going to have that gate mended?--He's going away to
Richmond in October."

The successful candidate and Adam Gaudylock, followed by Joab on a great
bay horse, crossed Moore's Creek, and took the Monticello road. A red
light yet burned in the west, but the trees were dark along the way, and
the hollows filled with shadow. The dew was falling, the evening dank
and charged with perfume.

"I asked you to come with me," said Rand, "because I wanted to talk to
some one out of the old life. Mocket's out of the old life too, he and
Vinie. But--" he laughed. "They're afraid of me. Vinie calls me 'thir.'"

"Well, I'm not afraid of you," Adam said placidly. "No one at home at
Monticello?"

"No, but Burwell keeps a room in readiness. I am often there on errands
for Mr. Jefferson. Well, how go matters west of the mountains?"

"Christmas I spent at Louisville," answered Gaudylock, "and then went
down the river to New Orleans. The city's like a hive before swarming.
There are more boats at its wharves than buds on yonder Judas tree. And
back from the river the cotton's blooming now."

"Ah!" said Rand, "I should like to see that land! When you have done a
thing, Adam, a thing that you have striven with all your might to do,
does it at once seem to you a small thing to have done? It does to
me--tasteless, soulless, and poor, not worth a man's while. Where lies
the land of satisfaction?"

"No," answered Adam, "I don't look at things that way. But then I'm not
ambitious. Last year, in New Orleans, I watched a man gaming. He won a
handful of French crowns. 'Ha!' says he, 'they glittered, but they do
not glitter now! Again!'--and this time he won doubloons. 'We'll double
these,' says he, and so they did, and he won. 'This is a small matter,'
he said. We'll play for double-eagles,' and so they did, and he won.
'Haven't you a tract of sugar-canes?' says he. 'Money's naugh. Let us
play for land!' and he won the sugar-canes. 'That girl, that red-lipped
Jeanne of thine, that black eye in the Street of Flowers--I'll play for
her! Deal the cards!' But he never won the girl, and he lost the
sugar-canes and the gold."

"A man walks forward, or he walks backward. There's no standing still
in this world or the next. Where were you after New Orleans, before you
turned homeward?"

"At Mr. Blennerhassett's island in the Ohio. And that's a pleasant place
and a pleasant gentleman--"

"Listen!"

"Aye," answered the other; "I heard it some moments back. Some one is
fiddling beyond that tulip tree."

They were now ascending the mountain, moving between great trees, fanned
by a cooler wind than had blown in the valley. The road turned, showing
them a bit of roadside grass, a giant tulip tree, and a vision of a moon
just rising in the east. Upon a log, beneath the tree, appeared the dim
brocade and the curled wig of M. Achille Pincornet, resting in the
twilight and solacing his soul with the air of "Madelon Friquet." Around
him sparkled the fireflies, and above were the thousand gold cups of the
tulip tree. His bow achieved a long tremolo; he lowered the violin from
his chin, stood up, and greeted the travellers.

"That was a pretty air, Mr. Pincornet," said Rand. "Why are you on the
Monticello road? Your next dancing class is at Fontenoy."

"And how did you know that, sir?" demanded the Frenchman in his high,
thin voice. As he spoke, he restored his fiddle to its case with great
care, then as carefully brushed all leaf and mould from his faded silken
clothes.

"I know--I know," replied Rand. He regarded the figure in dusty finery
with a certain envy of any one who was going to Fontenoy, even as
dancing master, even as a man no longer young. Mr. Pincornet looked, in
the twilight, very pinched, very grey, very hungry. "Come on with me to
Monticello," said the young man. "Burwell will give us supper, and find
us a couple of bottles to boot."

"Sir," answered the Frenchman stiffly, but with an inner vision of
Monticello cheer, "I would not vote for you--"

Rand laughed. "I bear no malice, Mr. Pincornet. Opinion's but opinion.
I'll cut no traveller's throat because he likes another road than mine!
Come, come! Fish from the river, cakes and coffee, Mr. Pincornet--and
afterwards wine on the terrace!"

The road climbed on. Between the stems of the tall trees, feathered with
the green of mid-spring, the dogwood displayed its stars, and the fringe
tree rose like a fountain. Everywhere was the sound of wind in the
leaves. When the riders and the dancing master, who was afoot, reached
the crest of the little mountain, shaven and planed by the hand of man
into a fair plateau, the moon was shining brightly. In the silver light,
across the dim lawns, classically simple, grave, and fair, rose the
house that Jefferson had built. The gate clanged behind the party from
Charlottesville, a dog barked, a light flared, voices of negroes were
heard, and hurrying feet from the house quarter. Upon the lawn to the
right and left of the mansion were two toy houses, tiny brick offices
used by Jefferson for various matters. The door of one of these now
opened, and Mr. Bacon, the overseer, hastening across the wet grass,
greeted Rand and Gaudylock as they dismounted before the white portico.

"Evening, evening, Mr. Rand! I knew you'd be coming up, so I hurried on
afore ye. Cæsar and Joab, you take the horses round! Glad to see you,
Adam; you too, Mr. Pincornet! Well, Mr. Rand, you spoiled the Egyptians
this day! I never saw a finer election! Me and Mr. Fagg were talking of
you. 'His father was a fighter before him,' says Mr. Fagg, says he, 'and
he's a fighter, too, damn him!' says he, 'and we'll send him higher yet.
Damn the Federalists!' says he. 'He's a taller man than Ludwell Cary!'"

"I'm a mighty hungry man, Mr. Bacon," said Rand. "And so is Adam, and so
is Mr. Pincornet! You'll take supper with us, I hope? We'll make Adam
Gaudylock tell us stories of Louisiana."

"Thank'ee, Mr. Rand, I will. Your room's all ready, sir, and Burwell
shall bring you a julep. I reckon you're pretty tired. Lord! I'd rather
clear a mountain side and then plough it, than to have to sit there all
day on that there Justice's Bench and listen to them Federalists!
They're a lot! And that Fairfax Cary--he's a chip of the old block, he
surely is! He'd have gone through fire to-day to see his brother win.
This way, gentlemen! Sally'll have supper ready in a jiffy. I smell the
coffee now. Well, well, Mr. Rand! to think of the way you used to trudge
up here all weathers, snow or storm or hot sun, just for a book--and now
you come riding in on Selim, elected to Richmond, over the heads of the
Carys! Life's queer, ain't it? We'll hear of you at Fontenoy next!"

Rand smiled. "Life's not so queer as that, Mr. Bacon. I wish you
might--" he broke off.

"Might what?" asked Bacon.

"Hear of me at Fontenoy," answered Rand, and entered the wide hall as
one who was at home there. "I'll go bathe my face and hands," he said,
and turned into the passage that led to the bedrooms.

A tall clock struck the hour, a bell rang cheerfully, and Burwell flung
open the dining-room door. Rand, entering a moment later, found the
overseer, the hunter, and the dancing master awaiting him. With a nod
and a "Ha, Burwell!" for the old servant, he took his place at the
table, and he took it like a prince, throwing his tall, vigorous figure
into the armchair which marked the head of the board, seating himself
before the other and older men. In the wave of his hand toward the
three remaining places there was a condescension not the less remarkable
that it was entirely unconscious. The life within him was moving with
great rapidity. It was becoming increasingly natural for him to act,
simply, without thought, as his inner man bade. What yesterday was
uneasiness, and to-day seemed assurance, was apt by to-morrow to attain
convincingness. It was not that he appeared to value himself too highly.
Instead, he made no attempt at valuation; he went his way like wind or
wave. He took the armchair at the head of the Monticello table with the
simplicity of a child, and the bearing of a general who sups with his
officers after a victorious field.

The unfolding of the petal was not missed by his companions. Adam
Gaudylock, with a glance, half shrewd and half affectionate, for the man
whom he had known from boyhood, sank into the opposite seat with a light
and happy laugh. It mattered little to Adam where he sat in life,
provided that it was before a window. The overseer, a worthy, plain man,
had a thought of old Gideon Rand, but, remembering in time Mr.
Jefferson's high opinion of the man now occupying his chair, sat down
and unfolded his damask napkin with great care. Mr. Pincornet, indeed,
raised his eyebrows and made a backward movement from the table, but at
that moment a mulatto boy appeared with a plate of waffles. The light
from the wax candles burned, too, in certain crimson decanters. "Sit
down, sit down, Mr. Pincornet!" said Rand, and the dancing master took
the remaining place.

An hour later Rand pushed back his heavy chair and rose from the table,
ending the meal with as little ceremony as he had used in beginning it.
"I shall go write to Mr. Jefferson," he announced, as the four passed
into the hall. "You, Adam, what will you do?"

"First I'll smoke and then I'll sleep," said Adam. The moonlight
streamed in upon them through the open hall door. "I'll smoke outside.
That's a southern moon.

     "Kiss me, kiss me, flower o' night!
                  Madelon!
     'Ware the voices, 'ware the light!
                  Madelon!

"Will you smoke with me, Mr. Bacon? I'd like to try the Monticello leaf."

"I have to go to the quarters for a bit," answered the overseer.
"There's sickness there. I'll join you later, Mr. Gaudylock."

He went whistling away. Adam sat down upon the broad steps whitened by
the moon, filled his pipe, struck a spark from his flint and steel, and
was presently enveloped in fragrant smoke. The dancing-master,
hesitating somewhat disconsolately in the hall, at last went also into
the moonlight, where he walked slowly up and down upon the terrace, his
thin, beruffled hands clasped behind his old brocaded coat. What with
the moonlight and the ancient riches of his apparel, and a certain lost
and straying air, he had the seeming of a phantom from some faint,
bewigged, perfumed, and painted past.

Lewis Rand paused for a moment before the door, and looked out upon the
splendid night, then turned and passed into the library, where he called
for candles, and, sitting down at a desk, began to write. His letter was
to the President of the United States, and it was written freely and
boldly. "'Twas thus they did--'twas so I did. We won, and I am glad;
they lost, and that also is to my liking. As the party owes its victory
to your name and your power, so I owe my personal victory to your
ancient and continued kindness. May my name be abhorred if ever I forget
it! The Federalists mustered strongly. Mr. Ludwell Cary is extremely
'well born,' and that younger brother of his is--I know not why, he
troubles me. There is a breath of the future about him, and it breathes
cold. Well! I have fought and I have won. 'Let the blast of the desert
come: I shall be renowned in my day!' To-night, you see, I quote Ossian.
The moon is flooding the terrace. Were you here in your loved home, we
would talk together. Adam Gaudylock is with me. Lately he was in
Louisiana, and then with a Mr. Blennerhassett upon the Ohio. General
Wilkinson is at New Orleans. The Spaniards are leaving, the French well
affected. The mighty tide of our people has topped the mountains and is
descending into those plains of the Mississippi made ours by your
prophetic vision and your seizure of occasion. The First Consul is a
madman! He has sold to us an Empire! Empire! Emperor--Emperor of the
West! The sound is stately. You laugh. We are citizens of a republic.
Well! I am content. I aspire no higher. I am not Buonaparte. Your lilies
are budding beneath the windows; the sweet williams are all in bloom. I
have little news for you of town or country--Mrs. Randolph, doubtless,
sends you all. Work goes on upon the church. For me, I worship in the
fields with the other beasts of burden or of prey. The wheat looks well,
and there will be this year a great yield of apples. Major Churchill's
Mustapha won at Winchester. Colonel Churchill has cleared a large tract
of woods behind Fontenoy and will use it for tobacco. I rode by his
plant bed the other day, and the leaf is prime. I am a judge of tobacco.
They are bitter, the Fontenoy men. Mr. Ludwell Cary will, I suppose,
remain in the county. He is altering and refurnishing Greenwood. I
suppose that he will marry. The rains have been frequent this spring,
the roads heavy and the rivers turbid. The stream is much swollen by my
house on the Three-Notched Road. We hear that the feeling grows between
General Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Should the occasion arise, pray commend
me to the latter, whose acquaintance I had the honour to make last year
when I visited New York. There, if you please, is a spirit restless and
audacious! The mill on the Rockfish is grinding this spring. The murder
case of which I wrote you will be tried next court day. One Fitch killed
one Thomas Dole in North Garden; knocked at his door one night, called
him out, and shot him down. Dole had thwarted Fitch in some project or
other. I am retained by the State, and I mean to hang Fitch. Adam
Gaudylock says there is a region of the Mississippi where the cotton
grows taller than a man's head. We may find our gold of Ophir in that
plant. To-night I am a victor. I salute you, so much oftener than I a
victor! But victory is a mirage: this that I thought so fair is but a
piece of the desert; the _magnum bonum_ shines, looms, and beckons still
ahead! Had I been defeated, I believe I should have been in better
spirits. Now to the papers which you desired me to read and comment
upon: I find--"

The quill travelled on, conveying to sheet after sheet the opinion upon
certain vexed questions of a very able lawyer. The analysis was keen,
the reasoning just, the judgment final, the advice sound. The years
since that determinative hour in the Richmond book-shop had been well
harvested. The paper when he had finished it would have pleased the
ideal jurist.

He wrote until the clock struck ten; then folded, sealed, and
superscribed his letter, pushed back the heavy hair from his forehead,
and rose from the desk. The long windows opened upon the terrace, and
through them came the moonbeams and the fragrance of the April
night--music too, for Mr. Pincornet was playing the violin. The young
man extinguished the candles, and stepped into the silvery world
without the room. Adam Gaudylock had disappeared, and the overseer was
gone to bed. Lights were out in the quarters; the house was as still and
white as a mansion in a fairy tale. Mr. Pincornet was no skilled
musician, but the air he played was old and sweet, and it served the
hour. Below their mountain-top lay the misty valleys; to the east the
moon-flooded plains; to the west the far line of the Blue Ridge. The
night was cloudless.

Rand stood with his hands upon the balustrade, then walked down the
terrace and paused before the dancing master. "Before he hurt his hand
Mr. Jefferson played the violin beautifully," he said. "When I was
younger, in the days when I tried to do everything that he did, I tried
to learn it too. But I have no music in me."

"It is a solace," answered Mr. Pincornet. "I learned long ago, in the
South."

"I like the harp," announced Rand abruptly.

"It is a becoming instrument to a woman," replied Mr. Pincornet, and in
a somewhat ghostly fashion became vivacious. "Ah, a rounded arm, a white
hand, the rise and fall of a bosom behind the gold wires--and the notes
like water dropping, sweet, sweet! Ah, I, too, like the harp!"

"I have never heard it but twice," said Rand, and turned again to the
balustrade. Below him lay the vast and shadowy landscape. Here and there
showed a light--a pale earth-star shining from grey hill or vale. Rand
looked toward Fontenoy, and he looked wistfully. Behind him the violin
was telling of the springtime; from the garden came the smell of the
syringas; the young man's desire was toward a woman. "Is she playing her
harp to-night? is she playing to Ludwell Cary?"

     "Belle saison de ma jeunesse--
     Beaux jours du printemps!"

sang the violin. A shot sounded near the house. Adam Gaudylock emerged
from the shadow of the locust trees and crossed the moonlit lawn below
the terrace. "I've shot that night-hawk. He'll maraud no more," he said,
and passed on toward his quarter for the night.

Rand made a motion as if to follow, then checked himself. It was late,
and it had been a day of strife, but his iron frame felt no fatigue and
his mood was one of sombre exaltation. What was the use of going to bed,
of wasting the moonlit hours? He turned to the Frenchman. "Play me," he
commanded, "a conquering air! Play me the Marseillaise!"

Mr. Pincornet started violently. Down came the fiddle from his chin, the
bow in his beruffled hand cut the air with a gesture of angry
repudiation. When he was excited he forgot his English, and he now swore
volubly in French; then, recovering himself, stepped back a pace, and
regarded with high dudgeon his host of the night. "Sir," he cried,
"before I became a dancing master I was a French gentleman! I served the
King. I will teach you to dance, but--Morbleu!--I will not play you the
Marseillaise!"

"I beg your pardon," said Rand. "I forgot that you could not be a
Republican. Well, play me a fine Royalist air."

"Are you so indifferent?" asked the dancing master, not without a faded
scorn. "Royalist or Republican--either air?"

"Indifferent?" repeated Rand. "I don't know that I am indifferent.
Open-minded, perhaps,--though I don't know that that is calling it
rightly. The airs the angels sing, and the thundering march of the
damned through hell--why should I not listen to them both? I don't
believe in hell, nor much in angels, save one, but I like the argument.
Mr. Pincornet, I don't want to sleep. Suppose--suppose you teach me a
minuet?"

He laughed as he spoke, but he spoke in earnest. "Knowledge! I want all
kinds of knowledge. I know law, and I know what to do with a jury, and I
know tobacco--worse luck!--but I don't know the little things, the
little gracious things that--that make a man liked. If I were a
Federalist, and if I didn't know so much about tobacco, I would go, Mr.
Pincornet, to your dancing class at Fontenoy!" He laughed again. "I
can't do that, can I? The Churchills would all draw their swords. Come!
I have little time and few chances to acquire that which I have longed
for always,--the grace of life. Teach me how to enter a drawing-room;
how to--how to dance with a lady!"

His tone, imperious when he demanded the Marseillaise, was now genial,
softened to a mellow persuasiveness. Mr. Pincornet shrugged his
shoulders. He had been offended, but he was not unmagnanimous, and he
had a high sense of the importance of his art. He had seen in France
what came of uncultivated law-givers. If a man wanted knowledge, far be
it from Achille de Pincornet to withhold his handful! "You cannot learn
in a night," he said, "but I will show you the steps."

"I can manage a country dance, a reel or Congo," said Rand simply. "I
want to know politer things."

They left the terrace, went into the drawing-room, and lit the candles.
The floor, rubbed each morning until it shone, gave back the
heart-shaped flames. The slight furniture they pushed aside. The dancing
master tucked his violin under his chin, drew the bow across the
strings, and began the lesson.

The candles burned clear, strains of the _minuet de la cour_ rose and
fell in the ample room, the member from Albemarle and Mr. Pincornet
stepped, bent, and postured with the gravity of Indian sachems. The one
moved through the minuet in top-boots and riding-coat, the other taught
in what had been a red brocade. Rand, though tall and largely built,
moved with the step and carriage, light and lithe, of one who has used
the woods; the Frenchman had the suppleness of his profession and of an
ancient courtier. Now they bowed one to the other, now each to an
imaginary lady. Mr. Pincornet issued directions in the tone of a general
ordering a charge, his pupil obeyed implicitly. In the silent house,
raised high on a mountain-top above a sleeping world, in the lit room
with many open windows, through which poured the fragrance of spring,
they practised until midnight the _minuet de la cour._ The hour struck;
they gravely ceased to dance, and after five minutes spent in mutual
compliments, closed the long windows and put out the superfluous lights,
then said good-night, and, bedroom candle in hand, repaired each to his
own chamber. Rand had risen at dawn, and his day had been a battlefield,
but before he lay down in the dimity-hung, four-post bed he sat long at
the window of his small, white, quiet room. The moon shone brightly; the
air was soft and sweet. In the distance a lamb bleated, then all was
still again. The young man rested his chin on his hand, and studied the
highest stars. That day a milestone had been passed. He saw his road
stretching far, far before him, and he saw certain fellow travellers,
but the companion whom his heart cried for he could not see.

"Her way and mine are far apart--are far apart. I had better marry Vinie
Mocket." He spoke half aloud and with bitterness, looking from the
window toward Fontenoy. Suddenly the water smarted in his eyes, and he
stretched out his arms. "Oh, pardon, love!" he whispered, "I love but
you--and I'll love you to the end!" His fancy dwelt on Fontenoy. It was
for him enchanted land, the sleeping palace, strongly hedged. "But I am
not the appointed man," he thought. "I am a pauper, and no prince. It is
Ludwell Cary that goes in and out."




CHAPTER VI

RAND COMES TO FONTENOY


"I never dance but by candlelight," remarked Unity. "A Congo in the heat
of the afternoon, a jig before sunset,--la! I had rather plough by
moonlight. As well be a grasshopper in a daisy field! Elegance by
waxlight becomes rusticity in the sunshine,--and of all things I would
not be rustic! Oh, Mr. Cary, I've caught my gown in this rosebush!"

Mr. Fairfax Cary knelt to release the muslin prisoner. "Rusticity
becomes you so that if I were a king, you should dance with me the
livelong day. But I'll not grumble if only you'll dance with me as soon
as the candles are lit! Last night you were all for that booby, Ned
Hunter!"

"He's no booby," said Miss Dandridge. "He is bashful--though, indeed, I
think he is only bashful in company! We sat on the porch, and he told me
the long history of his life."

"Confound his impudence--"

"Oh, it was interesting as--as the Mysteries of Udolpho! You are a long
time over that briar, Mr. Cary. There! thank you! Listen to Mr.
Pincornet's fiddle. Scrape, scrape, scrape! The children are dancing,
and Jacqueline is helping them. Jacqueline is always helping some one.
But Mr. Pincornet thinks it is because she is in love with him. He is
sorry for her because he rather prefers me. I am in love with him too.
So is Molly Carter, so is Anne Page, and so will be little Deb as soon
as she is old enough. He is fifty, and French, and a dancing master, and
he wears an old, old, lace cravat and a powdered wig! When are we going
back to the house, Mr. Cary?"

"Let us walk a little farther!" pleaded the gentleman. "It is cool and
pleasant, with no fuss, and no Ned Hunter, with the history of his life,
confound him! Other men have histories as well as he! Your gown looks so
pretty against the leaves. Let us walk down to the lower gate."

Unity pursed her red lips, and considered the distance with velvety
black eyes. "I have on my dancing shoes,--but perhaps you will help me
across the brook!"

"I will," declared Fairfax Cary, and, when the brook was reached, was as
good as his word.

"I shall tell Uncle Dick to put safer stepping-stones," quoth Miss
Dandridge, with heightened colour. "How thick the mint grows here! We
are at the gate, Mr. Cary."

"Let us walk to the bend of the road! The wild honeysuckle is in bloom
there; I noticed it riding to Charlottesville the other morning. It is
just the colour of your gown."

"Then it must be beautiful," said Miss Dandridge, "for this
rose-coloured muslin came from London. Ah, you looked so angry and so
beaten on Wednesday, when you came back from Charlottesville!"

"I was not angry, and I was not beaten."

"Fie! You mean that your brother was."

"I mean nothing of the kind!" cried the younger Cary hotly. "My brother,
at the importunity of his friends, and for the good of the county,
consented to stand against this pet of Jefferson's, this--this _vaurien_
Lewis Rand. Some one had to stand. He knew what the result would be.
'Twas but a skirmish--just a seat in a tri-colour Republican House of
Delegates! My faith! the honour's not great. But wait awhile, Miss
Dandridge! The real battle's not yet. Beaten! Rands, Miss Dandridge,
don't beat Carys!"

"La, so warm!" exclaimed Unity. "I have never seen a man love a brother
so!"

"Ludwell Cary is worthy of any man's love--or any woman's either!"

"The pair of you ought to be put in the wax-works, and labelled 'The
Loving Brothers.' When you marry, there'll be no love left for your
wife."

"Just you try and see."

"The man whom I marry," said Miss Dandridge, "must have no thought but
for me. He must swoon if I frown, laugh if I smile, weep if I sigh, be
altogether desperate if I look another way. I am like Falkland in The
Rivals. Heigho! this is the bend of the road, Mr. Cary."

"I am altogether desperate when you look another way. When you looked at
Ned Hunter last night, I wanted to blow his brains out. He hasn't any,
but I should like to try."

"Then you would have been hanged for murder," remarked Miss Dandridge.
"Think how terrible that would be for us all!--Did you know that Mr.
Hunter once dined with General Washington?"

"You are a royal coquette. See, there is the honeysuckle! If I gather it
for you, will you wear one spray to-night?"

"It is a very stiff flower," said Unity thoughtfully, "and I have an
idea that Mr. Hunter will bring me violets. But--I will see if I can
find a place for one small spray."

She sat down upon a fallen tree, took her round chin into her hand, and
studied the point of her morocco shoe, while her cavalier, not without
detriment to his pumps and silk stockings, scrambled up the red bank to
the rosy flowers.

The honeysuckles did not grow upon the main road, but upon a rough and
narrow cross-country track, little used except by horsemen pressed for
time. Now, clear through the still afternoon, a sound of hoofs gave
warning that riders were coming down the steep and dangerous hill
beyond the turn. Unity looked up with interest, and Fairfax Cary paused
with his hand upon a coral bough. Suddenly there was a change in the
beat, then a frightened shout, and a sound of rolling stones and a wild
clatter of hoofs. Unity sprang to her feet; Cary came down the bank at a
run, tossed her his armful of blossoms, and was in the middle of the
road in time to seize by the bridle the riderless horse which came
plunging around the bend.

Fairfax Cary was strong, the black horse not quite mad with terror, and
the man mastered the brute. "Whose is he?" he asked. "If you will hold
him--he is quite quiet now--I will go see."

A negro came panting around the turn. "Gawd-a-moughty, marster! did you
cotch dat horse? You, Selim, I's gwine lam' you, I's gwine teach you er
lesson--dancin' roun' on yo' two foots 'cause you sees er scrap of
paper! R'arin' an' pitchin' an' flingin' white folks on er heap of
stones! I'll larn you! Yo' marster was a-dreamin', or you'd never
th'owed him! You jes wait twel I git you home! Marse Fairfax Cary, dis
debbil done th'owed my marster, an' he lyin' by de roadside, an' I don'
know whether he live or daid!"

"I know you now," exclaimed the younger Cary. "You're Mr. Lewis Rand's
servant. Hadn't you better stay here, Miss Dandridge, until I see what
really is the matter? Here, boy, stop chattering your teeth! Your
master's not killed. Was it at the top of the hill?"

"Halfway down, Marse Fairfax, whar de footpath goes down through de
papaw bushes. Joab'll show you."

"I'm coming too," said Miss Dandridge. "I'll lead Selim."

Without more ado the four rounded the bend of the road and began to
climb the hill. Halfway up, as Joab had stated, they found their man. He
lay beside the papaw bushes, among the loose stones, and he lay very
still. One arm was doubled under him. His head was thrown back, and his
brown hair was matted with blood.

"Oh!" cried Unity pitifully, and went down upon her knees beside the
unfortunate.

Cary examined the cut in the head. "Well, he's not dead, but he's had a
pretty fall! What's to be done? Joab--"

"Joab," commanded Miss Dandridge, "ride straight to Fontenoy and tell
Colonel Dick to send Big Jim and a couple of men with the old
litter!--and then ride to Charlottesville and bring Dr. Gilmer--"

"Are you going to take him to Fontenoy?" asked the younger Cary.

"Why not?" flashed Miss Dandridge. "Would you leave him to bleed to
death by the roadside? 'My enemy's dog--' and so forth. Hurry, Joab!"

The negro mounted his horse that had been grazing by the papaw bushes,
and was off at a gallop, leaving Unity and Cary with the luckless rider.
Cary brought water from the brook that brawled at the foot of the steep
hillside, and Unity wet the brow and lips of the unconscious man, but he
had given no sign of life when the relief party arrived from Fontenoy.
This consisted of four stout negroes bearing the litter, and of Colonel
Dick Churchill and Mr. Ned Hunter.

"Tut, tut!" cried Colonel Dick. "What's this? what's this? Damn this
place! My mare Nelly threw me here thirty years ago!--I was coming home
from a wedding. Senseless and cut across the head!--and I don't like the
way that arm's bent.--Ned Hunter, you take Big Jim's corner of the
litter for a minute. Now, Big Jim, you lift Mr. Rand.--So! we'll have
him at Fontenoy in a jiffy, and in bed in the blue room. Run ahead,
Unity, and tell Jacqueline and Mammy Chloe to make ready. His boy's
gone for Gilmer. Easy now, men! Yes, 'twas at this very spot my mare
Nelly threw me!--it was Maria Erskine's wedding."


The sun was low in the heavens when the good Samaritans and the
unconscious man arrived at the foot of the wide, white-pillared Fontenoy
porch. The arrival had many witnesses; for on hearing of the accident
the large party assembled for the dancing class had at once dropped all
employment and flocked to various coigns of vantage. A bevy of young
girls looked from one parlour window, and another framed Mr. Pincornet's
face and wig and flowered coat. In the hall and on the porch the elders
gathered, while on the broad porch steps young men in holiday dress
waited to see if they might be of help. Around the corner of the house
peered the house negroes, pleasurably excited by any catastrophe and any
procession, even that of a wounded man borne on a litter.

The cortège arrived. In the midst of much ejaculation, and accompanied
by a fire of directions from Colonel Dick, Lewis Rand was borne up the
steps and across the porch into the cool, wide hail. Here the litter was
met by Jacqueline Churchill. She came down the shadowy staircase in a
white gown, with a salver and a glass in her hand. "The room is ready,
Uncle Dick," she said, in a steady voice. "The blue room. Aunt Nancy
says you must make him take this cordial. I have lint and bandages all
ready. This way, Big Jim. Mind the wall!"

She turned and preceded the men up the stair, along a hallway and into a
pleasant chamber hung with blue and white. "Turn down the sheet, Mammy
Chloe," she directed a negro woman standing beside the bed. "Quick!
quick! he is bleeding so."

Rand was laid upon the bed, and as the men drew their arms from beneath
him, he moved his head, and his lips parted. A moment later he opened
his eyes. Colonel Dick heaved a sigh of relief. "He'll do now! Gilmer
shall come and bleed him, and he'll be out again before you can say Jack
Robinson! I'll have that place in the road mended to-morrow. Yes, yes,
Mr. Rand, you've had an accident. Lie still! you're with friends. Hey,
what did you say?"

Rand had said nothing articulate. His eyes were upon Jacqueline,
standing at the foot of the bed. The room was in the western wing of the
house, and where she stood she was bathed in the light of the sinking
sun. It made her brown hair golden and like a nimbus. Rand made a
straying motion with his hand. "I did not believe in heaven," he
muttered. "If I have erred--"

"Lie still, lie still!" said Jacqueline. In a moment she turned, left
the room, and went downstairs. "He is better," she told her cousin
Unity, who with Fairfax Cary was waiting in the lower hall; then went on
to the library, opened the door, and closed it softly behind her.

The room was dim, and she thought it vacant. There was an old leather
chair which she loved, which had always stood beside the glass doors
that gave upon the sunset, in whose worn depths she had, as a child,
told herself fairy tales, and found escape from childish woes. She went
straight to it now, sank into its old arms, and pressed her cheek
against the cool leather. She closed her eyes, and sat very still, and
tried to ease the throbbing of her heart. Some one coughed, and she
looked up to find her Uncle Edward regarding her from his own favourite
chair.

"I did not know you were there," she exclaimed. "I thought the room was
empty. What are you reading?"

"A Treatise on Hospitality," answered Major Churchill, with great
dryness. "I suppose Dick is making posset in his best racing cup? How is
the interesting patient?"

Jacqueline coloured. "Uncle Dick--"

"Uncle Dick," interrupted the Major, "is the best of fellows, but he is
not perspicacious. I am, and I say again, why the deuce did this damned
Republican get himself thrown at our very gates? In my day a horse might
act a little gaily, but a man kept his seat!"

Jacqueline coloured more deeply. "It was that bad place on the hill
road. I do not suppose that Mr. Rand is a poor horseman."

"Who said that he was?" demanded the Major testily. "A poor horseman! He
and his old wolf of a father used to break all the colts for twenty
miles round! That place in the road! Pshaw! I've ridden by that place in
the road for forty years, but I never had the indecency to be brought on
a litter into a gentleman's house who was not of my way of thinking! And
every man and woman on the place--barring poor Nancy--out to receive
him! I am not at home among fools, so I came here--though the Lord knows
there's many a fool to be found in a library!--Well, are any bones
broken?"

"Dr. Gilmer will tell us--oh, he looked like death!"

"Who?--William Gilmer?" demanded Uncle Edward with asperity. "Your
pronoun 'he' stands for your antecedent 'Gilmer.' But what's the English
tongue when we have a Jacobin in the house! Women like strange animals,
and they are vastly fond of pitying. But you were always a home body,
Jacqueline, and left Unity to run after the sea lions and learned pigs!
And now you sit there as white as your gown!"

Jacqueline smiled. "Perhaps I am of those who pity. I hear a horse upon
the road! It may be Dr. Gilmer!" and up she started.

"The horse has gone by," said Uncle Edward. "Gilmer cannot possibly be
here for an hour. Sit down, child, and don't waste your pity. The Rands
are used to hard knocks. I've seen old Gideon in the ring, black and
blue and blind with blood, demanding proof that he was beaten. The
gentleman upstairs will take care of himself. Bah!--Where is Ludwell
Cary this afternoon?"

"He rode, I think, to Charlottesville."

"You think! Don't you know?--What woman was ever straightforward!"

Major Churchill opened his book, looked at it, and tossed it aside; took
The Virginia Federalist from the table, and for perhaps sixty seconds
appeared absorbed in its contents, then with a loud "Pshaw!" threw it
down, and rising walked to a bookcase. "I am reading Swift," he said,
and brought a calf-bound volume to the window. "There was a man who knew
hatred and the _risus sardonicus_! Listen to this, Jacqueline."

Major Churchill read well, and it was his habit to read aloud to
Jacqueline, whose habit it was to listen. Now she sat before the window,
in the old leather chair, her slender face and form in profile, and her
eyes upon the sunset sky. It was her accustomed attitude, and Uncle
Edward read on with growing satisfaction, finding that he was upon a
passage which gave Democracy its due. He turned a page, then another,
glanced from the book, and discovered that his niece was not attending.
"Jacqueline!"

Jacqueline withdrew her eyes from the fading gold, and, turning in her
chair, faced her uncle with a faint smile. She loved him dearly, and he
loved her, and they had not many secrets from each other. Now she looked
at him with a wavering light upon her face, shook her head as if in
answer to some dim question of her own, and broke into silent weeping.

"Bless my soul!" cried Uncle Edward, and started up in alarm. He had a
contemptuous horror of women's tears; but Jacqueline was different,
Jacqueline was not like other women. He could not remember having seen
Jacqueline cry since she was a child, and the sight troubled him
immensely. She wept as though she were used to weeping. He crossed to
the chair by the window and touched her bowed head with his wrinkled
hand. "What is it, child?" he asked. "Tell Uncle Edward."

But Jacqueline, it appeared, had nothing to tell. After a little she
wiped her eyes, and brokenly laughed at herself; and then, a sound
coming through the window, she started to her feet. "That is Dr. Gilmer!
I hear his horse at the gate. Joab must have met him upon the road!"

"Joab?"

"Mr. Rand's servant."

"You appear," said the Major, "to know a deal more than I do about Mr.
Rand. Where did you learn so much?"

Jacqueline, halfway to the door, turned upon him her candid eyes. "Don't
you remember?" she answered, "the month that I spent, summer before
last, at Cousin Jane Selden's, on the Three-Notched Road? I saw Mr. Rand
very often that summer. Cousin Jane liked him, and he was welcome at her
house. And when I used to stay there as a child I saw him then, and--and
was sorry for him. Don't you remember? I told you at the time."

"No, I don't remember," replied Uncle Edward grimly. "I have other
things to think of than the Rands. There should have been no
association--though I am surprised at nothing which goes on beneath Jane
Selden's roof. Jane Selden has a most erratic mind.--Don't sympathize
too much, Jacqueline, with that damned young Republican upstairs! He's
an enemy." The Major walked to the window. "It is Gilmer, sure enough,
and--ah, it is Ludwell Cary with him, riding Prince Rupert. Come look,
Jacqueline!"

Receiving no answer, he turned to find that his niece had vanished and
he was alone in the library. Presently he heard from the hail, through
the half-open door, the doctor's voice and Ludwell Cary's expressions of
concern, Jacqueline's low replies, a confusion of other voices, and
finally, from the head of the stairs, Colonel Dick's hearty "Come up,
Gilmer, come up! D'ye remember that damned place in the hill road where
my mare Nelly threw me, coming home at dawn from Maria Erskine's
wedding?"

Steps and voices died away. The evening shadows lengthened, and filled
the library where Uncle Edward sat, propping his lean old chin upon his
lean old hand, and staring at a dim old clock in the corner, as if it
could tell him more than the time of day. He heard Mr. Pincornet's
fiddle from the long parlour in the other wing. Since the doctor was
come, the younger part of the gathering at Fontenoy had cheerfully
returned to its business. The dancing class was not long neglected.
Uncle Edward disliked France, disliked even monarchical and émigré
France. And he disliked all music but Jacqueline's singing, and disliked
the fiddle because Thomas Jefferson played it. He half rose to shut the
door and so keep out Mr. Pincornet's Minuet from Ariadne, but reflected
that the door would also keep out the doctor's descending voice and
final dicta delivered at the stair-foot. Uncle Edward was as curious as
a woman, and the door remained ajar. He tried to read, but the words
conveyed no meaning to his mind, which became more and more frowningly
intent upon the fact of Jacqueline's weeping. What had the child to weep
for? He determined to send to Richmond to-morrow for a certain watch
which he had in his mind,--plain gold with J.C. upon it in pearls. He
reflected with satisfaction that Cary as well as Churchill began with a
C.

The glass door led by a flight of steps down to the flower garden. Deb
came up the steps and into the library. "Kiss me good-night, Uncle
Edward. It's mos' seven o'clock. I've had my supper at the Quarter with
Aunt Daphne. The scarlet beans over her door are in bloom, and Uncle
Mingo told me about the rabbit and the fox. Miranda is going to put me
to bed because Mammy Chloe is busy in the blue room with the doctor and
the man whose horse threw him."

Uncle Edward put his one arm around the child and drew her close to his
chair. Deb touched with her brown fingers the sleeve that was pinned
across his coat. "Does your arm that is buried at Yorktown hurt you
to-day, Uncle Edward? Tell me a story about General Washington."

"No; you tell me a story."

Deb considered. "I'll tell you a story about the man upstairs in the
blue room."

"What do you know about the man in the blue room?"

"Jacqueline told me. She knows," answered Deb. "I am going to begin now,
Uncle Edward."

"I am listening," said the Major.

"Once upon a time there lived on the Three-Notched Road a boy, a poor
boy. He lived in a log house that was not so good as an overseer's
house, and there were pine trees all around it, and wild flowers, but no
other kinds of flowers. And in the trees there were owls, and in the
bushes there were whip-poor-wills, and sometimes a mockingbird, but no
other kinds of birds, and at night the fireflies were all about. And
outside the pine trees, all around the house, the tobacco grew and grew.
It grew so broad and high that the children might have played I-spy in
it,--only there weren't any children. There was only the boy, and he
hated tobacco. He was poor, and his father was a hard man. He had no
time to play or to learn--he worked all day in the fields like a hand.
He had to work like the men at the lower Quarter, like Domingo and Cato
and Indian Jim. He worked all the time. I never saw the sun get up, but
he saw it every day. In the long afternoons when it was hot, and we make
the rooms cool and dark, and rest with a book, he was working, working
like a friendless slave. And at night, when the moon rises, and we sit
and watch it, and wonder, and remember all the battles that were ever
won and lost, and all the songs that ever were sung, he could only
stumble to his own poor corner, and sleep, and sleep, with a hot and
heavy heart, and the blisters on his poor, poor hands!"

Major Churchill sank back in his chair and stared at his niece. "Good
God, child! whose words are you using?"

"Jacqueline's," answered Deb, staring in her turn. "Jacqueline told it
to me just that way, one hot night when I could not sleep, and there was
heat lightning, and she took me in her lap and we sat by the window. Are
you tired, Uncle Edward? Does your arm hurt? Suppose I finish the story
to-morrow?"

"No, I'm not tired," said Uncle Edward. "Finish it now."

"The boy," went on Deb, using now her own and now Jacqueline's
remembered words,--"the boy did not want to work all his life long in
the tobacco-fields, working from morning to night, with his hands, at
the thing he hated. He wanted books, he wanted to learn, and to work
with his mind in the world beyond the Three-Notched Road. The older he
grew the more he wanted it. And Jacqueline said that the mind finds a
way, and that the boy got books together, and he studied hard. You see,
Jacqueline knows, for when she was a little girl, she used to stay
sometimes with Cousin Jane Selden on the Three-Notched Road. And Cousin
Jane Selden's farm was next to where the boy lived. There was just a
little stream between them. There were no children at Cousin Jane
Selden's, and Jacqueline was lonely. And she used to sit under the apple
tree on the bank of the little stream and send chip boats down it, just
as Miranda and I do. Only she didn't have Miranda, and she was all by
herself. And she could see the boy working on the other side of the
stream, and there wasn't any shade in the tobacco-field, and Jacqueline
was so sorry for him. And one day he came down to the stream for water
and they talked to each other. And Jacqueline told Cousin Jane Selden,
and Cousin Jane Selden did not mind. She said she was sorry for the boy,
and that she had given his father a piece of her mind,--only he wouldn't
take it. So Jacqueline used to see the boy often and often, for she
always played under the apple tree by the stream, and he had a little
time to rest every day at noon, and he would come down to the shade on
his side of the stream, and Jacqueline told him all about Fontenoy. And
he told Jacqueline what he was going to do when he was a man, and he
asked her if she had ever read Cæsar, and she had not, and he told her
all about it. And Jacqueline told him fairy tales, but he said they were
not true, and that a harp could not sing by itself, nor a hen lay golden
eggs, nor a beanstalk grow a mile. He said he did not like lies,--which
wasn't very polite. He was older, you see, than Jacqueline, ever so much
older. But she knew how to dance, and she was taking music lessons, and
so she seemed older, and he liked Jacqueline very much. What is the
matter, Uncle Edward?"

"Nothing. Go on, child."

"Then the summer was over, and Jacqueline came back to Fontenoy. But the
next summer, when she went to Cousin Jane Selden's, there was the boy
working in the tobacco on the other side of the stream. And Jacqueline
called to him from under the apple tree. And then the month that she was
to stay with Cousin Jane Selden went by, and she came back to Fontenoy.
And the next summer she didn't go to the Three-Notched Road, but one day
the boy came to Fontenoy."

"Ah!" said the Major.

"The boy's father sent him to pay some money that he owed to Uncle Dick.
Jacqueline says his father was an honest man, though he was so unkind.
And Uncle Dick sent for Jacqueline and said, 'Jacqueline, this is young
Lewis Rand. Take him and show him the garden while I write this
receipt!' So Jacqueline and the boy went into the flower garden, and she
showed him the roses and the peacock and the sundial. And then he went
away, and she didn't see him any more for years and years, not till she
was grown, and everything was changed. And--and that is the end of the
story. But the boy's name was Lewis Rand, and the man's name, up in the
blue room, is Mr. Lewis Rand, and I heard Mr. Fairfax Cary say that
Lewis Rand was the Devil,--but Jacqueline wouldn't have liked the Devil,
would she, Uncle Edward?"

"No, child, no, no!" exclaimed Uncle Edward, with violence. He rose so
suddenly from his chair, and he looked so grim and grey, that Deb was
almost frightened.

"Didn't you like the story, Uncle Edward? I did like it so much when
Jacqueline told it to me--only she would never tell it to me again."

"Yes, yes, I liked it, honey. Don't I like all your stories? But I don't
like Mr. Rand."

"Will he stay always upstairs in the blue room?"

"The Lord forbid!" cried Major Churchill.

The door opened wide, and Mr. Ned Hunter put in an important face. "Are
you there, Major? Here's the devil to pay. Rand's arm is broken and his
ankle wrenched and his head cut open! The doctor says he mustn't be
moved for at least a fortnight. I thought you'd like to know." He was
gone to spread the news.

Major Churchill stood still for a moment, then turned to the table,
placed with deliberation a marker between the leaves of Swift, took up
the volume, and restored it to its proper shelf.

"It is getting dark--I must go to bed," said Deb. "Uncle Edward, who
pays the devil?"

"His hosts, child," answered Uncle Edward, looking very grim and very
old.




CHAPTER VII

THE BLUE ROOM


The news of the accident to Lewis Rand spread far and wide. Both as a
lawyer and as Mr. Jefferson's adjutant he had become in two years' time
a marked man. Federalist and Republican were agreed that the recent
election was but a foot in the stirrup. Another two years might see
him--almost anywhere. He was likely to ride far and to ride fast. To the
Federalists his progress from the tobacco-fields to the Elysian Heights
of office was but another burning sign of the degeneracy of the times
and the tendencies of Jefferson. On the other hand, the Republicans
quoted the Rights of Man and the Declaration of Independence, and made
the name of Lewis Rand as symbolic as a liberty pole. He was _bon
enfant, bon Républicain_. Virginia, like Cornelia, numbered him among
her starry gems. He was of the Gracchi. He was almost anything Roman,
Revolutionary, and Patriotic that the mind of a perfervid poet could
conjure up and fix in a corner of the Argus or the Examiner. Every
newspaper in the state mentioned the accident, and in a letter from a
Gentleman of Virginia, an account of it was read by the subscribers to
the Aurora.

All this was somewhat later, when the stage-coach and the mail-rider had
distributed the slow-travelling news. In the mean time Lewis Rand lay in
the curtained bed in the blue room at Fontenoy, and wondered at that
subtle force called Chance. The blue roses upon the hangings, the blue
willows and impossible bridges of the china, the apple-cheeked moon
surmounting the face of the loud-ticking clock were not more
fantastically unnatural than that he, Lewis Rand, should be lying there
between the linen sheets, in the sunny morning stillness of the fourth
day after his fall, listening for the stir of the awakening house, for
one step upon the stair, and for one voice. He was where he had desired
to be; he was at Fontenoy; but the strangeness of his being there
weighed upon him. He would hear the step and the voice; chance had
brought him past every ward of a hostile house, and had laid him there
in the blue room to be generously pitied and lavishly cared for; chance
had given him leverage. To each the chaos of his own nature; if, with
Rand, the Spirit brooded none too closely over the face of the deep, yet
was there light enough to tread by. As he lay in the blue room, watching
the early sunlight steal through the window and lay a golden finger on
his bed, he had no sense of triumph, no smugness of satisfaction over
the attainment of his dream. He thought of how often as a boy, working
under the glare of the sun, in the shadeless tobacco-fields, he had
dreamed of the poplars of Fontenoy, the cool porches, the cool rooms,
the rest from labour, and the books, of all that the little girl named
Jacqueline had told him, sitting under the apple tree beside the stream
that flowed between a large and a small farm on the Three-Notched Road.
As a boy, he would have been puzzled to choose between "Will you go to
Heaven?" and "Will you go to Fontenoy?" The one seemed as remote, as
unattainable, and as happy as the other. The advantage was possibly with
Fontenoy, for he could picture that to himself. He could not have
described the mansions in the skies, but, thanks to Jacqueline, he knew
every room at Fontenoy. Before he was laid in it, he had known the blue
room, the roses on the curtains, and the peacock-feathered mandarin
forever climbing a dull yellow screen. The library should be below, with
the bookshelves, and the glass door opening on the snowball bushes.
Outside his window was the flower garden. He had seen the garden with
his bodily eyes, for there was the morning he had spent at Fontenoy. In
the desert of his hardly-treated, eager, and longing youth the place and
the life of which the girl who came to Mrs. Selden's had told him was
become the vision of an oasis and a paradise. The magic word was
Fontenoy. If Gideon Rand or Adam Gaudylock chanced to pronounce it, it
was as though the Captain of the Thieves had said, "Open Sesame!" The
cave door opened, and he saw strange riches.

That day at Fontenoy! He tried to recall it, but it did not stand out in
his memory; it was curiously without edge. Trying to remember was like
remembering a dream, delicious and evasive. The child named Jacqueline
had changed to a girl named Jacqueline. She had spoken to him shyly, and
he had answered with much greater shyness, with a reddening cheek and a
stumbling tongue. He remembered her dress, a soft blue stuff that he was
afraid of touching, and he remembered how burning was his consciousness
of his coarse shoes, his shirt of osnaburg, the disreputable hat upon
his sunburnt hair. Then they had walked in the garden, and sat on the
steps of a summer house, and he had been very happy after all. And then
a black boy had come to tell him that the Colonel was ready with the
receipt he was to carry back to the Three-Notched Road. He said good-bye
with great awkwardness, and went away, and he saw the girl no more for a
long, long time, for so long a time that insensibly her image faded. It
was in the October of that year that he went to Richmond with Gideon,
and met Mr. Jefferson in the bookshop by the bridge.

The years that followed that meeting! Rand, lying still upon his
pillows, with his eyes upon the yellow mandarin, passed them in
review,--well, they had not been wasted! Usually he saw the approximate
truth about himself, and he knew that these years of toil and
achievement were honourable to him. He thought of all those years, and
then he turned his head upon the pillow and faced through widely opened
windows the misty, fragrant morning. His mind turned with suddenness to
a morning two summers past. His father, who had lived to take grim pride
in the son he had been used to thwart, was six months dead, and he
himself was living alone, as he yet lived alone, in the small house upon
the Three-Notched Road. He lived there with his ambitions, which were
many. That morning he had gone, without knowing why, down through the
tobacco-field to the stream which parted his patrimony from his
neighbour's grassy orchard. And there, beneath the apple tree, across
the clear, brown water stood Jacqueline. He forgot her no more.
"Fontenoy" was again the magic word, the "Open Sesame," but Jacqueline
was the wealth of all the world. He was young, and he was a man of
strong passions who had lived, perforce, a rigid, lonely, and ascetic
life. He had dreamed of most things, and he had dreamed of love. It was
the hectic vision of a hued pool. Love, entered, proved to be the sea,
boundless and strong, salt, clean, and the nurse of life. He loved
Jacqueline to the end of his life; he never swerved from allegiance to
the sea.

For a summer month he saw her almost every day,--twice or thrice beneath
the apple tree beside the stream, and at other times in Mrs. Jane
Selden's parlour, porch, or little friendly garden. He did not tell
Jacqueline that he loved her; he had not dared so much. The fact that he
was the son of Gideon Rand while she was a Churchill mattered little to
his common sense and his Republicanism. His blood was clean. He had
never heard of a Rand in prison or a beggar. Moreover, he meant to make
his name an honoured one. But he was a poor man, though he meant also to
become a rich man, and he was a Republican, with no thought of changing
his party. Politics might not matter, perhaps, to Miss Churchill, but
they mattered decidedly to her uncles and guardians, whom she loved and
obeyed. Wealth and birth mattered too, to them. Lewis Rand set no great
store upon obedience for obedience' sake, but he divined that Miss
Churchill rarely vexed those she loved. He had an iron will, and he set
his lips, and resolved that this was not the time to speak of that ocean
on whose shore he stood. He meant that the time should come. The
probability of a rejection he looked full in the face, and found that he
did not believe in it, though when he looked as fully at his assurance,
that, too, became incredibly without foundation. Jacqueline's spirit
might dwell in the mountains, and never dream of the sea; she gave him
no sign, and he could not tell. The summer month went by; she returned
to Fontenoy, and he saw her no more for a long time. When she was gone,
he fell upon work like a bereaved lion upon his prey. As best he might,
he would make that hunting do. He worked at first with lonely fury,
though at last with zest. Only by this road, he knew, could he enter the
gates of Fontenoy. Success begets success; let him make himself a name,
and the gates might open! When he was not in court, or not most
diligently preparing a case, or not instructing Tom Mocket, who was on
the way to become his partner, or not busied with affairs of his patron,
or not keenly observant of the methods of the poor whites whom he hired
to tend his tobacco, he read. He read history: Clarendon, Gibbon, and
Hume; Aristotle, Bacon, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Voltaire,
Rousseau, and Tom Paine. His Ossian, Cæsar, and Plutarch belonged to his
younger days. A translation of the Divina Commedia fell into his hands,
and once he chanced to take up, and then read with the closest
attention, Godwin's Caleb Williams. From Monticello he received the hot
and clamorous journals of the day, Federalist and Republican. He studied
the conditions they portrayed with the intentness of a gladiator
surveying his arena. The Examiner, the Argus, the Aurora, the Gazette
gave, besides the home conflict, the foreign news. He missed no step of
Buonaparte's.

Thrice in these two years he had seen Jacqueline. Once he rode to church
at Saint Anne's that he might see her. She had been at the great race
when Major Churchill's Mustapha won over Nonpareil and Buckeye. The
third time was a month ago in Charlottesville. She was walking, and
Ludwell Cary was with her. When she bowed to Rand, Cary had looked
surprised, but his hat was instantly off. Rand bowed in return, and
passed them, going on to the Court House. He had not seen her again
until four days ago, when he opened his eyes upon her face. The golden
finger on his bed became a shining lance that struck across to the wall.
There were ivy and a climbing rose about the window through which he
looked to the shimmering poplars and the distant hills. Many birds were
singing, and from the direction of the quarters sounded the faint
blowing of a horn. A bee came droning in to the pansies in a bowl.
Rand's dark eyes made a journey through the room, from the flowered
curtains to the mandarin on the screen, from the screen to the willowed
china and the easy chair, from the chair to the picture of General
Washington on the wall, the vases on the mantel-shelf, and the green
hemlock branches masking for the summer the fireplace below. Over all
the blue room and the landscape without was a sense of home, of order
and familiar sweetness. It struck to the soul of a too lonely and too
self-reliant man. Suddenly, without warning, tears were in his eyes.
Raising his uninjured arm, he brushed them away, settled his bandaged
head upon the pillows, and stared at the clock. The half-shut door of a
small adjoining room opened very slowly and softly, and Joab entered on
tiptoe, elaborate caution surrounding him like an atmosphere.

"You, Joab," said Rand. "It's time you were in the field."

Joab's preternaturally lengthened countenance became short, broad, and
genial. He threw back his head and breathed relief. "Dar now! What I
tell em? Cyarn Selim nor no urr boss kill you, Marse Lewis! Mornin',
sah. I reckon hit is time I wuz in de field, but I reckon I got to stay
heah to tek care of you. How yo ahm, Marse Lewis?"

"It's not so bad."

"You sho wuz ressless in yo sleep--a-talkin' an' a-turnin' an' sayin'
you mustn't keep de cote waitin'. I done sit by you ter keep de kivers
on twill de cock crow. What you reckon you said to me? You said, 'Is dat
you, Gineral Buonaparte?'"

Rand laughed, "Did you say, 'Yes, sire my brother?'"

"No, sah, I say, 'Hit's Joab, Marse Lewis.' I gwine now ter git de water
to shave you ef dar's fire in de kitchen. Folks git up moughty late at
Fontenoy. I don' know when I gwine git yo breakfast."

An hour later appeared the master of the house, red and jovial,
solicitous for his guest's comfort, and prodigal of suggestions for his
ease and entertainment. Not until Rand was well and gone from Fontenoy
would Colonel Dick let his mind rest upon the indubitable fact that here
had been an upstart and an enemy. Hard upon the Colonel's steps came the
doctor. Arm and ankle and wounded head were doing well--there was no
fever to speak of--Mr. Rand had an unabused constitution and would make
a rapid recovery. For precaution's sake, best let a little blood. Rest,
gruel, and quiet, and in a few days Mr. Rand would be downstairs with
the ladies. The blood was let, and the doctor rode away. Joab and the
culprit Selim went on Rand's errands to the town and to the home on the
Three-Notched Road. Mammy Chloe, in white apron and kerchief and
coloured turban, presented herself with a curtsy, delivered kindly
messages from the ladies of the house, and sat down with her sewing in
the little adjoining room. The morning advanced, sunny and peaceful,
with vague sounds, faint laughter from distant rooms, droning of bees,
and rustling of cool poplar leaves.

Rand, lying high upon his pillows, stopped his work of writing with his
left hand to listen to a step coming up the polished stairway and along
the passage leading to his room. His ear was almost as quick and
accurate as was Adam Gaudylock's, and he rightly thought he knew the
step. A somewhat strange smile was on his lips when Ludwell Cary knocked
lightly at the blue room door. "Come in!" called Rand, and Cary,
entering, closed the door behind him and came up to the bed with an
outstretched hand and a pleasant light upon his handsome face.

"Ah, Mr. Rand," he said, smiling, "I see my revenge. I shall sit each
day by your bedside, and read you the Federalist! How is the arm? Your
right! That's bad!"

"It will heal," answered Rand. "Will you not take a chair?"

Cary pushed the easy chair nearer the bed, and sat down. "The ladies
charge me," he said pleasantly, "with more messages of sympathy and
hopes for your recovery than I can remember. Miss Dandridge vows that
you have supplanted in her affections the hero of her favourite romance.
'Twas she and my brother, you know, who found you upon the road.
Colonel Churchill and the county must mend that turn where you came to
grief. It is a dangerous place."

"I was not attentive," said Rand, "and my horse is a masterful brute.
Pray assure Miss Dandridge and your brother of my gratitude. I am under
deep obligation to all at Fontenoy."

"It is a kindly place," said Cary simply. He looked about him. "The blue
room! When I was a boy and came a-visiting, they always put me here.
That screen would set me dreaming--and the blue roses and the moon
clock. I used to lie in that bed and send myself to sleep with more
tales than are in the Arabian Nights. There's a rift in the poplars
through which you can see a very bright star--Sirius, I believe. May you
have pleasant dreams, Mr. Rand, in my old bed!" He glanced from Rand's
flushed face to the papers strewn upon the counterpane. "You have been
writing? Would Dr. Gilmer approve?"

Rand looked somewhat ruefully at the scrawled sheets and the ink upon
his fingers. "It is a necessary paper of instructions," he said. "I was
retained by the State for the North Garden murder case. It is to be
tried next week--and here am I, laid by the heels! My associate must
handle it." He made a movement of impatience. "He's skilful enough, but
he's not the sort to convince a jury--especially in Albemarle, where
they don't like to hang people. If he's left to himself, Fitch may go
free."

"The murderer?"

"Yes, the murderer. These," he laid his hand upon the papers, "are the
points that must be made. If Mocket follows instructions, the State will
win. But I wish that Selim had not chosen to break my right arm--it is
difficult to write with the left hand."

"Could not Mr. Mocket take his instructions directly from you?"

Rand moved again impatiently, and with a quick sigh. "I sent him word
not to come. I will not bring a friend or ally where I myself must seem
an intruder and a most unwelcome guest. There's a fine irony in human
affairs! Selim might have thrown me before Edgehill or Dunlora--but to
choose Fontenoy!" He looked at Cary with a certain appeal. "I shall, of
course, remove myself as soon as possible. In the meantime, if you could
assure me that Colonel Churchill and his family understand--"

"Set your mind at rest," said Cary at once. "Colonel Churchill is the
soul of kindness and hospitality, and the ladies of Fontenoy are all
angels. You must not think yourself an unwelcome guest." He glanced
again at the papers. "I am sure you should not try to write. Will you
not accept me as amanuensis? The matter is not private?"

Not at all: but--"

"Then let me write from your dictation. I have nothing at all to do for
the next two hours,--I am staying in the house, you know,--and it will
give me genuine pleasure to help you. You have no business with such
labour. Dr. Gilmer, I know, must have forbidden it. Come! I write a very
fair clerkly hand."

"You don't know the imposition," said Rand, with an answering smile. "It
is nothing less than a Treatise on Murder."

"I shall be glad," replied Cary, "to hear what you have to say on the
subject. Come! here are blank sheets and a new quill and an attentive
secretary!"

Rand smiled. "It's the strangest post for you!--but all life's a dream
just now. I confess that writing is uphill work! Well--since you are so
good."

He began to dictate. At first his words came slowly, with some stiffness
and self-consciousness. This passed; he forgot himself, thought only of
his subject, and utterance became quiet, grave, and fluent. He did not
speak as though he were addressing a jury. Gesture was impossible, and
his voice must not carry beyond the blue room. He spoke as to himself,
as giving reasons to a high intelligence for the invalidity of murder.
For an infusion of sentiment and rhetoric he knew he might trust
Mocket's unaided powers, but the basis of the matter he would furnish.
He spoke of murder as the check the savage gives to social order, as the
costliest error, the last injustice, the monstrousness beyond the brute,
the debt without surety, the destruction by a fool of that which he
knows not how to create. He spoke for society, without animus and
without sentiment; in a level voice marshalling fact and example, and
moving unfalteringly toward the doom of the transgressor. Turning to the
case in hand, he wove strand by strand a rope for the guilty wretch in
question; then laid it for the nonce aside and spoke of murder more
deeply with a sombre force and a red glow of imagery. Then followed
three minutes of slow words which laid the finished and tested rope in
the sheriff's hand. Rand's voice ceased, and he lay staring at the
poplar leaves without the window.

Cary laid the pen softly down, sat still and upright in his chair for a
minute, then leaned back with a long breath. "The poor wretch!" he said.

"Poor enough," assented Rand abruptly. "But Nature does not, and Society
must not, think of that. As he brewed, so let him drink, and the measure
that he meted, let it be meted to him again. There is on earth no place
for him." He fell silent again, his eyes upon the dancing leaves.

"You will make your mark," said Cary slowly. "This is more than able
work. You have before you a great future."

Rand looked at him half eagerly, half wistfully. "Do you really think
that?"

"I cannot think otherwise," Cary answered. "I saw it plainly in the
courtroom the other day." He smiled. "I deplore your political
principles, Mr. Rand, but I rejoice that my conqueror is no lesser man.
I must to work against the next time we encounter."

"You have been long out of the county," said Rand. "I had the start of
you, that is all. You were trained to the law. Will you practise it, or
will Greenwood take all your time?"

"I shall practise. A man's life is larger than a few acres, a house, and
slaves. But first I must put Greenwood in order, and I must--" He did
not finish the sentence, but sat looking about the blue room. "The old
moon clock! I used to listen to it in the night and dream of twenty
thousand things, and never once of what I dream of now! What a strange
young savage is a boy!" He gathered the written sheets together. "You
will want to look these over? I shall be very glad to see that they
reach Mr. Mocket safely, or to serve you in any way. Just now I am very
idle, and I will be your secretary every day with pleasure." He rose.
"And now you must rest, or we will have a rating from Dr. Gilmer. Is
there any message I may take for you?"

"My devotion and my thanks to the ladies of the house," replied
Rand--"to Mrs. Churchill and Miss Dandridge and to Miss Churchill. For
these"--he put his hand upon the papers--"I shall look them over, and
Joab will take them to Charlottesville to Mocket. I cannot sufficiently
thank you for your aid and for your kindness."

Cary went, and Rand lay back upon his pillows, weary enough, though with
a smile upon his lips. He valued Cary's visit, valued the opinion of
his fellow lawyer and fellow thinker. He valued praise from almost any
source, though this was a hidden thirst. Where he loved, there he valued
good opinion most; but also he strongly desired that his enemies should
think highly of him. To be justly feared was one thing, to be contemned
quite another. Apparently Ludwell Cary neither feared nor contemned. As,
a few days before on the Justice's Bench, Rand had wondered if he were
going to hate Cary, so now, lying in the quiet blue room, weakened by
pain and loss of blood, softened by exquisite kindness, and touched by
approbation, he wondered if he were going to like Cary. Something of the
old charm, the old appeal, the old recognition, with no mean envy, of a
golden nature moving in harmonious circumstance, stirred in Lewis Rand's
breast. He sighed and lay still, his eyes upon the pansies on the table
beside his bed. The moon clock ticked; the sunshine entered softly
through the veil of poplar leaves; upon the bough that brushed the
window, a cicada shrilled of the approaching summer. Rand put out his
uninjured arm and took a pansy from the bowl. The little face, brave and
friendly, looked at him from the white counterpane where he laid it. He
studied it for a while, touching it gently, with the thought in his mind
that Jacqueline might have gathered the pansies, and then he left it
there, took up his papers, and turned to the argument which must hang
Fitch.




CHAPTER VIII

CARY AND JACQUELINE


At supper table that evening at Fontenoy, Ludwell Cary said something
complimentary to the prisoner in the blue room. Fairfax Cary fired up.
"You are too easy, Ludwell! Lewis Rand, I warn you, is a dangerous man!
Serve him once, and you serve him once too often!--begging your pardon,
Colonel Churchill!"

"We could hardly have left him, you know," reasoned his host
good-naturedly, "on the roadside, and Dick Wood's the nearest house! And
once within a man's doors, every attention, of course, must be shown.
But, as you say, he is a dangerous fellow."

"Dangerous fiddlesticks!" growled Major Churchill from the other side of
the table, where he sat at Jacqueline's right hand. "I would have as
soon called old Gideon Rand dangerous! Like father, like son. You may be
sure that this fellow's spirit rolls tobacco. Maybe now and then it
breaks a colt.

"Dangerous' implies power to be dangerous," said Cary, "and conversely
power to be humane. A turn, and all the strength of the man may flow
toward good."

"A fool and his doctrine!" snapped Major Edward. "I do not expect grapes
from thistles, or a silk purse from a sow's ear."

"Tut, tut, Ned! The man who carries this county may be a damned
Republican, but he is not a fool," pronounced Colonel Dick. "Jacqueline,
my dear, another cup of coffee."

"If we were all as good as gold," said Unity pensively, "and as wise
as--as Socrates, and wore black cockades, and cared only for the
Washington March, and hated Buonaparte, and the Devil, how tiresome life
would be!--Myself, I like variety and the Marseillaise!"

"Then you differ from the other rogues only in liking the Rogue's
March," said Uncle Edward. "Jacqueline, more sugar!"

The younger Cary rushed to Miss Dandridge's defence. "Well, sir, in
itself the Marseillaise is a very noble air. It is better than
Jefferson's March!"

"Oh, a very good air to go to the gallows by!" snapped Uncle Edward.
"Jacqueline, some cream!"

"Well, well," said his brother amicably, from the head of the table, "we
must care for a man when he's wounded at our door, friend or foe,
Federalist or damned Republican. Noblesse oblige. I was glad enough the
night my mare Nelly threw me, coming home from Maria Erskine's wedding,
to hear Bob Carter's voice behind me! And if Gideon Rand was a surly old
heathen, he broke colts well, and he rolled tobacco well. We'll treat
his son like a Christian."

"And he'll repay you like a Turk!" broke out Major Edward. "I tell you
it is bred in the bone--"

"Mr. Rand is our guest," said Jacqueline, in a clear voice, from her
place behind the coffee urn. Her hands made a little noise amid the
rosebud china. "Mr. Cary, may I not pour you another cup?--Caleb, Mr.
Cary's cup.--Bring more waffles, Scipio."

"The work at Greenwood is nearly finished, sir," remarked Ludwell Cary,
addressing his host. "I rode over this afternoon, and the men assure me
that the house will soon be habitable. Fair and I have no excuse for
staying longer."

"Then stay without excuse," answered Colonel Dick heartily. "Fontenoy
will miss you--eh, Unity, eh, Jacqueline?"

"It will indeed," said Jacqueline, with a smile; and Unity, "Will I have
time to order a black scarf from Baltimore? Will you leave us mourning
rings?"

"If Miss Dandridge would accept another fashion of ring!" cried Fairfax
Cary, and all at table laughed. Scipio took away the rosebud china, and
laid the purple dessert service for the strawberries and floating island
and Betty Custis cake. Caleb placed the decanters of claret and Madeira,
and the Fontenoy men began to talk of horse-racing, of Mustapha,
Nonpareil, York, and Victor.

Jacqueline and Unity, leaving the gentlemen at their wine, came out into
the broad hall and stood at the front door looking out at the coloured
clouds above the hills. They supped early at Fontenoy, and the evening
was yet rosy.

"He is going to speak to-night," said Unity, with conviction. "It is
written in his eye."

"If you mean Mr. Cary--"

"Whom else should I mean? What are you going to say to him, Jacqueline?
I want you to say Yes, and I want you to say No."

"Don't, Unity--"

"If you say Yes, you will have Greenwood and the most charming husband
in the world, and be envied of every girl in the county; and if you say
No, I'll have you still--"

"I shall say No."

"What ails you, Jacqueline? I could swear that you're in love, and yet I
don't believe you are in love with Ludwell Cary!--though I am sure you
ought to be. It's not Mr. Lee, nor Mr. Page, nor Jack Martin,
nor--you're never in love with Fairfax Cary?"

Jacqueline laughed, "How absurd, Unity!--though may be some day I shall
love him as a cousin!"

Unity regarded her with a puzzled gathering of black brows. "There's no
one else that by any stretch of imagination I can believe you in love
with--unless it's Mr. Pincornet!"

"Oh, now you certainly have it!" cried Jacqueline, with another
tremulous laugh. She released herself from her cousin's arm. "I am going
to tell Deb good-night. And Unity--I don't want Mr. Cary to speak
to-night, nor to-morrow night, nor any other night! I'll stay at
Fontenoy--I'll stay at Fontenoy and care for Aunt Nancy and Deb and
Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward. I'll dance at your wedding, Unity, but
you'll not dance at mine!"

She was gone. Unity sat down upon the porch steps and began to name upon
her fingers the eligible young men of three counties. In her anxiety to
account for Jacqueline's pallor and the dark beneath her eyes, she went
far afield, but she met with no success. "It's not one of them!" she
sighed at last. "And yet, she's changed--"

Jacqueline went slowly upstairs, a slender figure in white, touching
with her hand the polished balustrade. When she reached the long and
wide upper hall, she passed steadily along it, but she turned her eyes
upon a door at the far end, the door of the blue room. Arrived in her
own cool and fragrant chamber, she found Deb already asleep in the small
bed, her yellow hair spread upon the pillow, her gown open at the
throat, a rag doll in the hollow of her arm. Upon the floor, with her
head against the bed, sat Miranda, as fast asleep as her mistress. At
Jacqueline's touch she awoke, smiled widely, and was on her feet with a
spring. "Yaas, Miss Jacqueline, I done put Miss Deb to bed. Mammy Chloe
say dat niggah Joab don' know nothin' 'bout er broken ahm, an' she too
busy in de blue room. Yaas'm, I done mek Miss Deb wash her face an' say
her prayers. Kin I go now?"

Alone, Jacqueline stood for a minute beside the sleeping child, then
bent and kissed Deb's brown neck. Moving to a window, she sat down
before it, resting her arm upon the sill and her head upon her arm.
Outside the window grew a giant fir tree, shading the room, and giving
it at times an aspect too cold and northern. But Jacqueline loved the
tree, and loved and fed the birds that in winter perched upon the dark
boughs. Now, between the needles, the eastern sky looked blue and cold.
Jacqueline, sitting idle, felt her eyes fill with slow tears. They did
not fall. She was not lacking in self-control, and she told herself that
of late she had wept too often. She sat very still, her head bowed upon
her listless arm, while the moments passed, bearing with them pictures
seen through unshed tears. She was living over the days of the
Three-Notched Road, and she beheld each shifting scene by the light of a
passion that she believed to be unreasonable, unnatural, secret, and
without hope. Her uncle's voice came to her from the hall below.
"Jacqueline, Jacqueline!" She arose, bathed her eyes, and went
downstairs.

It was the custom of the family to gather after supper upon the great
white pillared porch, and to sit through the twilight. The men smoked
slowly and reflectively, the women sat with folded hands, watching the
last glow upon the hills, and the brightening of the evening star;
dreamily listening to the choir of frogs, the faint tinkle of cowbells,
the bleating of folded lambs, and the continual rustle of the poplar
leaves.

Jacqueline took her seat beside Unity. Colonel Churchill, in his
especial chair, was smoking like a benevolent volcano; at a small table
Major Edward was playing Patience. On the broad porch steps below
Jacqueline and Unity half sat, half lay, the two Carys. The fireflies
were beginning to show, and out of the distance came a plaintive
_Whip-poor-will--Whip-poor-will!_

"I shall have," said Ludwell Cary, "the vines at Greenwood trained like
these. There could be no better way."

"Is the drawing-room finished?" asked Unity.

"Almost finished. The paper came to-day from Baltimore. The ground is
silver, and there are garlands of roses and a host of piping shepherds."

"Oh, lovely!" cried Unity. "But no shepherdesses?"

"Yes, in among the roses. It is quite Arcadian. When will the princesses
come to see the shepherdesses?"

He looked at them both. "The Princess and her waiting-maid," said Unity
demurely, "will come very soon." She rose from the green bench. "The
waiting-maid is going now to her harpsichord!" Her eyes rested upon the
younger Cary. "Will you be so very good as to turn the leaves for me?"

Fairfax Cary embracing with alacrity the chance of goodness, the two
went into the house. The dusk deepened; the odour of honeysuckle and
syringa grew heavier, and white moths sailed by on their way to the
lighted windows.

     "Since love--since love is blissful sorrow,
     Then bid the lad--then bid the lad--
     Then bid the lad a fair good morrow!"

flowed in soprano from the parlour.

Colonel Churchill laid down his pipe and lifted his burly figure from
the great chair. "I forgot," he remarked to Jacqueline, "to tell your
Aunt Nancy that Charles Carter is going to marry Miss Lewis," and he
left the porch. The rose in the sky turned to pearl, the fireflies grew
brilliant, and the wind brought the murmur of streams and the louder
rustling of the poplar leaves. "It is too dark to see the cards," said
Major Edward. "I'll go read what the Gazette has to say of Burr and the
Massachusetts secession fools. Don't move, Cary!" He deftly gathered up
the cards, and went indoors.

     "When I was green in years, and every month was May"--sang Unity.

     "With Phyllis and with Chloe made I holiday!"

"It is dark night," said Jacqueline. "Shall we not go in?"

Cary put out an appealing hand. "Don't rise! May we not stay like this a
little longer?--Miss Churchill, there is something that I ardently wish
to say to you."

"Yes, Mr. Cary?"

"It is too soon to speak, I know,--it must seem too soon to you. But
to-day I said, 'The spring is flying--I'll put my fortune to the touch!'
I think that you must guess the thing I wish to say--"

"Yes, I know. I wish that you would leave it unsaid."

"I love you. On the day, three months ago, when I saw you after my
return and found the lovely child I remembered changed into the
loveliest of all women, I loved you. If then, what now, when I have seen
you, day by day?--I love you, and I shall never cease to love you."

"Oh, with all my heart I wish that you did not!"

"I ask you to be my wife. I beg you to let me prove throughout my life
the depth of my love, of my solicitude for your happiness--"

"Ah, happiness!" cried Jacqueline sharply. "I do not see it in my life.
The best that you can do is to forget me quite."

"I will remember you when I draw my dying breath. And if we remember
after death, I will remember you then. With all my strength I love
you."

"I am sorry--I am sorry!" she cried. "Oh, I hoped 'twas but a fancy, and
that you would not speak! I do not love you--"

"Let me wait," said Cary, after a pause. "I said that I was speaking too
soon. Let me wait--let me prove to you. Your heart may turn."

She shook her head. "It will not change."

"Is there," asked Cary, in a low voice, "is there another before me?"

She looked at him strangely. "You have no right to question me. I do not
think that I shall ever marry. For you, you will live long and be happy.
You deserve happiness. If I have wounded you, may it soon heal! Forget
this night, and me."

"Forget!" said Cary. "I am not so lightly made! But neither will I
despair. I will wait. If there is no man before me, I will win you yet!
There is little reason, God knows, why you should care for me, but I
shall strive to make that reason greater!"

"There is reason," answered Jacqueline. "I think highly, highly of you!
You would make a woman happy;--all her life she would travel a sunny
road! I prize your friendship--I am loth to lose it. But as for
me,"--she locked her hands against her breast,--"there is that within me
that cries, _The shadowed road!--the shadowed road!"_

She rose, and Cary rose with her. "Forgive me," she said. "Is it not
cruel that we hurt each other so? Forgive--forget."

"I would forgive you," he answered, with emotion, "the suffering and the
sorrow of a thousand lives. But forget you--never! I'll love you well
and I'll love you long. Nor will I despair. To-night is dark, but the
sun may shine to-morrow. Think of me as of one who will love you to the
end." He took her hand and kissed it, then stood aside, saying, "I will
not face the lights quite yet." She passed into the hail and up the
stairway, and he turned and went down the porch steps into the May
night.




CHAPTER IX

EXPOSTULATION


The next morning Ludwell Cary rose early, ordered his horse, and opened
the door of his brother's room. "Fair," he said, as the younger Cary sat
up in bed, with a nightcap wonderfully askew upon his handsome head, "I
am off for Greenwood. Make my excuses, will you, to Colonel Churchill
and the ladies? I will not be back till supper-time." He turned to leave
the room. "And Fair--if you have anything to say to Miss Dandridge, this
is the shepherd's hour. We go home to-morrow."

"What the Devil?"--began the younger Cary.

"No, not the Devil," said the other, with a twist of the lip half
humorous, half piteous. "Just woman."

He was gone. Fairfax Cary looked at his watch, then rose from his bed
and looked out of the window at the rose and dew of the dawn. "What the
Devil!" he said again to himself; and then, with a forehead of
perplexity, "He was up late last night--out in the garden alone. He
rides off to Greenwood with the dawn, and we go home to-morrow. She
can't have refused him--that's not possible!" He went back to bed to
study matters over. At last, "The jade!" he exclaimed with conviction,
and two hours later, when he came down to breakfast, wished Miss
Churchill good-morning with glacial courtesy.

Jacqueline, behind the coffee urn, had heavy-lidded eyes, and her smile
was tremulous. Unity, brilliant and watchful, regarded the universe and
the hauteur of young Mr. Cary with lifted brows. Major Churchill, when
he appeared, shot one glance at the place that was Ludwell Cary's,
another at his niece, then sat heavily down, and in a querulous voice
demanded coffee. Colonel Dick wore a frown. Deb, who before breakfast
had visited a new foal in the long pasture, kept for a time the ball of
conversation rolling; but the dulness and the chill in the air presently
enwrapped her also. The meal came to an end with only one hazard as to
what could have taken Ludwell Cary to Greenwood for the entire day. That
was Unity's, who remarked that pains must be bestowed upon the hanging
of a drawing-room paper, else the shepherds and the shepherdesses would
not match.

Fairfax Cary asked after Lewis Rand and his broken arm, and Colonel Dick
responded with absent-mindedness that the arm did very well, and that
its owner would soon be going about his business with all the rest of
the damned Republican mischief-makers: then, "Scipio, did you take that
julep and bird up to the blue room?"

"Yaas, marster," answered Scipio. "The gent'man say tell you 'Thank
you.' He say he ain't gwine trouble you much longer, an' he cyarn never
forgit what Fontenoy's done fer him."

"Deb!" said Uncle Edward, with great sharpness, "you are spilling that
cup of milk. Look what you are doing, child!"

The uncomfortable meal came to an end. Outside the dining-room door
Uncle Dick mentioned to Unity that her aunt wanted her in the chamber to
cut off linsey gowns for the house servants, and Uncle Edward inquired
if it would be troublesome to Fairfax Cary to ride over to Tom Wood's
and take a look at that black stallion Tom bragged of. Unity went to her
aunt's chamber; the younger Cary walked away somewhat stiffly to the
stables; Uncle Edward sent Deb to her lessons, and Uncle Dick told
Jacqueline to come in half an hour to the library. Edward and he wanted
to speak to her.

Jacqueline gave her directions, or her aunt's directions, to Scipio,
then crossed the paved way to the kitchen and talked of dinner and
supper with the turbaned cook; opened with her keys the smokehouse door,
and in the storeroom superintended the weighing of flour and sugar and
the measuring of Java coffee, and finally saw that the drawing-room was
properly darkened against the sunny morning, and that the water was
fresh in the bowls of flowers. She leaned for a moment against her harp,
one hand upon its strings, her forehead resting upon her bare arm; then
she turned from the room and entered the library, where she found her
uncles waiting for her, Uncle Dick upon the hearth rug and Uncle Edward
at the table.

"Jacqueline," began the first, then, "Edward, I never could talk to a
woman! Ask her what all this damned nonsense means!"

"Your uncle doesn't mean that it is all damned nonsense, Jacqueline,"
said Uncle Edward, with gentleness. "Not perhaps from your point of
view, my dear. But both he and I are greatly grieved and disappointed--"

"It was all arranged ages ago!" broke in the elder brother. "Fauquier
Cary and your dear father, my brother Henry, settled it when you were
born and Fauquier's son was a lad at Maury's school! When Henry died,
and Fauquier Cary died, my brother Edward here and I said to each other
that we would see the matter out! So we will, by God!"

"Gently, Dick! Jacqueline, child, you know how dear you are to us, and
how the future and the happiness of you and of Unity and of Deb is our
jealous care--"

"Fauquier Cary was as noble a man as ever breathed," cried the other,
"and his son's his image! There's no better blood in Virginia--and the
land beside--"

"It does not matter about the land, Jacqueline," said Uncle Edward,
"though God forbid that I should depreciate good land--"

"Land's land," quoth Colonel Dick, "and good blood's gospel truth!"

"Bah! it's nature's truth!" said Uncle Edward. "Jacqueline, my dear, our
hearts are set on this match. Mr. Ludwell Cary asked your uncle's
permission to speak to you, and your uncle gave it gladly, and neither
he nor I ever dreamed--"

"Of course we didn't," broke in the other. "We didn't dream that
Jacqueline could be unreasonable or ungrateful, and we don't dream it
now! Nor blind. Ludwell Cary's a man and a gentleman, and the woman who
gets him is lucky!"

"We approved his suit, Jacqueline, and we hoped to be happy to-day in
your happiness--"

"And in he comes at midnight last night, with his father's own look on
his face, and what does he say to Edward and me, sitting here, waiting,
with a thousand fancies in our heads? 'Miss Churchill will not have me,'
says he, 'and you who have been so good to me, are to be good still, and
not by word or look reproach her or distress her. The heart goes its own
way, and loves where it must. She is an angel, and to-night I am a poor
beaten and weary mortal. I thank you again, both of you, and wish you
good-night.' And off he goes before a man could say Jack Robinson! Those
were his very words, weren't they, Edward?"

"Yes," answered Edward. "He is a brave and gallant gentleman,
Jacqueline. I love you, child, more than my old tongue can say. My
Castle in Spain is Greenwood with you and Ludwell Cary and the children
of you both."

"Oh, cruel!" cried Jacqueline. "He is brave and good--He is all that you
say. But I shall never live at Greenwood!"

"It was your father's dearest wish," said the Major. "It is
ours--Richard's and mine. We are not men who give up easily. God forbid,
child, that I should hint to you, who are the darling of us all, of
obligation--and yet I put it to you if obedience is not owed--"

"Yes, yes," answered Jacqueline. "It is owed. I am not ungrateful--I am
mad--perhaps I am wicked! I wish that I were dead!"

"The Churchills," said Uncle Edward, "have never in their marriages set
vulgar store by money. Blood we ask, of course, and honourable position,
and the right way of thinking. Individually I am a stickler for mind. To
his wealth and to his name and his great personal advantages Ludwell
Cary adds intellect. He may become a power in his country and his time.
You would so aid him, child! I am called a woman-hater, but once,
Jacqueline, I loved too well. For all that I am a sorry old bachelor, I
know whereof I speak. With a man, a woman to fight for is not half the
battle--it is all the battle."

"He is all that you say," answered Jacqueline. "But I do not love him."

"You like him. You admire him."

"Yes, yes. That is not love."

"It is mighty near kin," said Uncle Dick. "No end of happy folk begin
with esteem and go on like turtle doves. My little Jack, you shall have
the prettiest wedding gown! It's all a mistake and a misunderstanding,
and the good Lord knows there's too much of both in this old world!
You'll think better of it all, and you'll find that you didn't know your
own mind,--and there'll be a smile for poor Cary when he comes riding
back to-night?"

"No, no," cried Jacqueline. "There is no mistake and no
misunderstanding. Love cannot be forced, and I'll not marry where I do
not love!"

"You don't," said Colonel Churchill slowly, "you don't by any chance
love some one else? What does that colour mean, Jacqueline? Don't
stammer! Speak out!"

But Jacqueline, standing by the old leather chair, bowed her head upon
its high green back, and neither could nor would "speak out." The two
men, grey and withered, obstinate and imperious in a day and generation
that subordinated youth to the councils of the old, gazed at their niece
with perplexity and anger. With the simpler of the two the perplexity
was the greater, with the other anger. A fear was knocking at Major
Churchill's heart. He would not admit it, strove not to listen to it, or
to listen with contemptuous incredulity. "It's not possible," he said to
himself. "Not a thousand summers at Jane Selden's would make her so
forget herself! Jacqueline in love with that damned Jacobin demagogue
upstairs! Pshaw!" But the fear knocked on.

Jacqueline lifted her head. "Be good to me, Uncle Dick! If I could love,
if I could marry Mr. Cary, I would--I would indeed! But I cannot. Please
let me go!"

"Not till I know more than I know now," said Colonel Churchill. "If it's
George Lee, Jacqueline, I'll not say a word, sorry as I am for Cary. But
if it's Will Allen, I'll see you dead before I give my consent! He's a
spendthrift and a Republican!"

"I care neither for Mr. Lee nor Mr. Allen," said Jacqueline, with a
burning cheek. "Oh, Uncle Edward, make Uncle Dick let me go!"

"It is not wise," Major Churchill considered within himself, "to push a
woman too far. I'm a suspicious fool to think this thing of Jacqueline.
It's all some girl's fancy or other, and if we go easily Cary will yet
win--by God, he shall win! This damned Yahoo upstairs is neither here
nor there!"

He spoke aloud to his brother. "Best let the child go think it over,
Dick. She knows her duty--and that we expect her compliance. She doesn't
want to wound us cruelly, to make us unhappy, to prove herself blind and
ingrate. Give her a kiss and let her go."

"You come down and sing to us to-night, my little Jack, in your blue
gown," quoth Uncle Dick. "Don't you ever let a time come when your
singing won't be the sweetest sound in the world to me! Now go, and
think of what we have said, and of poor Cary, ridden off to Greenwood!"

Jacqueline gazed at the two for a moment, and made as if to speak, but
the words died in her throat. She uttered a broken cry, turned, groped a
little for the door, found and opened it, and was gone. They heard the
click of her slippers upon the stairs, and presently the closing of a
blind in the room that was hers.

The brothers sat heavily on in the sunshine-flooded library, the elder
red and fuming, the younger silent and saturnine. At last Colonel Dick
broke out, "What the devil ails her, Edward? Every decent young fellow
in the county comes to Fontenoy straight as a bee to the honey-pot! I've
heard them sighing for her and Unity, but I never could see that she
favoured one man more than another,--and she's no coquette like Unity!
Except for that fine blush of hers, I'd never have thought. What do you
think, Edward?"

"The ways of women are past my finding out," said Edward. "Let it rest
for a while, Dick." He rose from his chair stiffly, like an old man.
"Let Cary go home to-morrow as he intends. 'Absence makes the heart grow
fonder,' they say. She may find that she misses him, and may look for
him when he comes riding over. Never fear but he'll ride over often! He
mustn't guess, of course, that you have spoken to her. And that's all we
can do, Dick, except--" Major Edward walked stiffly across the floor and
paused before the portrait of his brother Henry, dead and gone these
many years. The face looked imperiously down upon him. Henry had stood
for something before he died,--for grace and manly beauty, pride and
fire. The Major's eyes suddenly smarted. "Poor white trash," he said
between his teeth, "and Henry's daughter!" He turned and came back to
the table. "Dick! just as soon as you can, you clear the house of old
Gideon Rand's son!"

"What's he got to do with it?" asked Colonel Dick.

"I don't know," said the other. "But I want him out of the blue room,
and out of Fontenoy! and now, Dick, I've got a piece to write this
morning on the designs of Aaron Burr."

At five in the afternoon Cary returned, quiet and handsome, ready with
his account of matters at Greenwood, from the stable, upon which Major
Churchill must pronounce, to the drawing-room paper, which awaited Miss
Dandridge's sentence. His behaviour was perfection, but "He's hard hit,"
said his brother to himself. "What, pray, would Miss Churchill have?"
And Unity, "The shepherds and shepherdesses don't match. How can she
have the heart?" And Major Churchill, "Are women blind? This is Hyperion
to a satyr." And Jacqueline, "Oh, miserable me! Is he writing or
reading, or is he lying thinking, there in the blue room?"




CHAPTER X

TO ALTHEA


Adam Gaudylock came, when his leisure served him, to Fontenoy as he went
everywhere, by virtue of his quality of free lance and golden-tongued
narrator of western news. The stress of thought at the moment was to the
West and the empire that had been purchased there; and a man from beyond
Kentucky, with tales to tell of the Mississippi Territory, brought his
own welcome to town, tavern, and plantation. If this were true of all,
it was trebly true of Adam, who had been born open-eyed. As the magnet
draws the filings, so he drew all manner of tidings. News came to him as
by a thousand carrier pigeons. He took toll of the solitary in the brown
and pathless woods, of the boatmen upon fifty rivers, of the Indian
braves about the council-fire, of hunters, trappers, traders, and long
lines of Conestoga wagons, of soldiers on frontier posts, Jesuit
missionaries upon the Ohio, camp-meeting orators by the Kentucky and the
upper James, martial emissaries of three governments, village lawyers,
gamblers, dealers in lotteries, and militia colonels, Spanish
intendants, French agents, American settlers, wild Irish, thrifty
Germans, Creoles, Indians, Mestizos, Quadroons, Congo blacks,--from the
hunter in the forest to the slave in the fields, and from the Governor
of the vast new territory to the boatman upon a Mississippi ark, not a
type of the restless time but imparted to Adam something of its view of
life and of the winds that vexed its sea. He was a skilful compounder,
and when, forever wandering, he wandered back by wood and stream to the
sunny, settled lands east of the Blue Ridge, he gave to the thirsty in
plantation and town bright globules of hard fact in a heady elixir of
fancy. While he talked all men were adventurers, and all women admired
him. Adam liked this life and this world; asked nothing better than to
journey through a hundred such.

Now, sitting at his ease in the blue room, a fortnight after Rand's
accident, he delivered a score of messages from the Republicans of the
county, gentle and simple, whom he had chanced to encounter since the
accident to their representative.

"Colonel Randolph says the President has bad luck with the horses he
gives--young Mr. Carr was thrown by a bay mare from Shadwell. Old Jowett
swears that a trooper of Tarleton's broke his neck at that identical
place--says you can hear him any dark night swearing like the Hessian he
was. They drank your health at the Eagle, the night they heard of the
accident, with bumpers--drank it just after Mr. Jefferson's and before
the memory of Washington. 'Congress next!' they said. 'Hurrah! He'll
scatter the Black Cockades--he'll make the Well-born cry King's Cruse!
Hip, hip, hurrah! What's he doing at Fontenoy? They'll put poison in his
cup! Hurrah!'"

"Fontenoy will not put poison in my cup," said Rand. "I hope some one
was there to say as much."

"I said it," answered Adam. "They are a noisy lot. Tom Mocket made a
speech and compared you to Moses. He wept when he made it, and they had
to hold him steady on his feet. When they broke up, I took him home to
the Partridge. I'll tell you one speech that he never made by himself,
and that's the speech that's going to hang Fitch."

"No," said Rand. "I wrote it. You were at the trial?"

"Ay. It would have hung Abel, so poor Cain had no chance. Mr. Eppes says
Mr. Jefferson counts upon your becoming a power in the state. I don't
know--but it seems to me there's power enough in these regions! It's
getting crowded. First thing you know, you'll be jealous of Mr.
Jefferson, or he'll be jealous of you. If I were you, I'd look to the
West."

"The old song!" exclaimed Rand. "What should I do in the West?"

"Rule it," said Adam.

Rand shot a glance at the hunter where he lounged against the window, a
figure straight and lithe as an Indian, not tall, but gifted with a
pantherish grace, and breathing a certain tawny brightness as of
sunshine through pine needles. "You're daft!" he said; then after a
moment, "Are you serious?"

"Why should I not be serious?" asked Adam. "My faith! it's a restless
land, the West, and it's a far cry from the Mississippi to the Potomac.
The West doesn't like the East anyhow. But it wants a picked man from
the East. It will get one too! The wind's blowing hard from the full to
the empty, from the parcelled-out to the virgin land!"

"Yes," said Rand.

"Why shouldn't you be the man?" demanded Gaudylock. "Just as well you as
Claiborne--Wilkinson's naught, I don't count him--or any one still East,
like--like--Aaron Burr."

"Aaron Burr?"

"Well, I just instance him. He's ambitious enough, and there doesn't
seem much room for him back here. If Adam Gaudylock was ambitious and
was anything but just an uneducated hunter with a taste for danger--I
tell you, Lewis, I can see the blazed trees, I can see them with my eyes
shut, stretching clean from anywhere--stretching from this room,
say--beyond the Ohio, and beyond the Mississippi, and beyond Mexico to
where the sun strikes the water! It's a trail for fine treading and a
strong man, but it leads--it leads--"

"It might lead," said Rand, "to the Tarpeian Rock."

"Where's that?"

"It's where they put to death a sort of folk called traitors--Benedict
Arnolds and such."

"Pshaw!" exclaimed Adam. "Traitors! Benedict Arnold _was_ a traitor.
This is not like that. America's large enough for a mort of countries.
All the states are countries--federated countries. Say some man is big
enough to _make_ a country west of the Mississippi--Well, one day we may
federate too. Eh, Lewis, 'twould be a powerful country--great as Rome, I
reckon! And we'd smoke the calumet with old Virginia--and she'd rule
East and we'd rule West. D'you think it's a dream?--Well, men make
dreams come true."

"Yes: Corsicans," answered Rand. "Aaron Burr is not a Corsican." He
looked at his left hand, lying upon the arm of his chair, raised it,
shut and opened it, gazing curiously at its vein and sinew. "You are
talking midsummer madness," he said at last. "Let's leave the blazed
trees for a while--though we'll talk of them again some time. Have you
been along the Three-Notched Road?"

"Yes," replied Adam, turning easily. "Your tobacco's prime, the wheat,
too, and the fencing is all mended and white-washed. It's not the
tumble-down place it was in Gideon's time--you've done wonders with it.
The morning-glories were blooming over the porch, and your white cat
washing itself in the sun."

"It's but a poor home," said Rand, and he said it wistfully. He wished
for a splendid house, a home so splendid that any woman must love it.

"It's not so fine as Fontenoy," quoth Adam, "nor Monticello, nor Mr.
Blennerhassett's island in the Ohio, but a man might be happy in a
poorer spot. Home's home, as I 

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