Lewis Rand Part 10

Jacqueline coloured. "Uncle d.i.c.k--"

"Uncle d.i.c.k," interrupted the Major, "is the best of fellows, but he is not perspicacious. I am, and I say again, why the deuce did this d.a.m.ned 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 p.r.o.noun '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 att.i.tude, and Uncle Edward read on with growing satisfaction, finding that he was upon a pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sociation--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 d.a.m.ned 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 d.i.c.k's hearty "Come up, Gilmer, come up! D'ye remember that d.a.m.ned 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 cla.s.s was not long neglected.

Uncle Edward disliked France, disliked even monarchical and emigre 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 gla.s.s 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 G.o.d, 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 Caesar, 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 d.i.c.k.

Jacqueline says his father was an honest man, though he was so unkind.

And Uncle d.i.c.k 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 peac.o.c.k 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.