Lewis Rand Part 15

"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.

Blennerha.s.sett's island in the Ohio, but a man might be happy in a poorer spot. Home's home, as I can testify who haven't any. I've known a Cherokee to die of homesickness for a skin stretched between two saplings. How long before you are back upon the Three-Notched Road?"

Rand moved restlessly. "The doctor says I may go downstairs to-day. I shall leave Fontenoy almost immediately. They cannot want me here."

"Have you seen Mr. Ludwell Cary?"

"He and his brother left Fontenoy some time ago. But he rides over nearly every day. Usually I see him."

"He is making a fine place of Greenwood. And he has taken a law office in Charlottesville--the brick house by the Swan.

"Yes. He told me he would not be idle."

Adam rose, and took up the gun which it was his whim to carry. "I'll go talk ginseng and maple sugar to Colonel Churchill for a bit, and then I'll go back to the Eagle. As soon as you are on the Three-Notched Road again I'll come to see you there."

"Adam," said Rand, "in the woods, when chance makes an Indian your host, an Indian of a hostile tribe, an Indian whom you know the next week may see upon the war-path against you--and there is in his lodge a thing, no matter what, that you desire with all your mind and all your heart and all your soul, and he will not barter with you, and the thing is not entirely his own nor highly valued by him, while it is more than life to you, and moreover you believe it to be sought by one who is your foe--would you, Adam, having eaten that Indian's bread, go back into the forest, and leave behind, untouched, unspoken of, that precious thing your soul longed for? The trail you take may never lead again to that lodge. Would you leave it?"

"Yes," answered Adam. "But my trail _should_ lead that way again. It is a hostile tribe. I would come back, not in peace paint, but in war paint. I would fairly warn the Indian, and then I would take the bauble."

"Here is Mammy Chloe," said the other. "What have you there, mammy--a dish of red pottage?"

"No, sah," said Mammy. "Hit's a baked apple an' whipped cream an'

nutmeg. Ole Miss she say Gineral Lafayette sho' did favour baked apples wunst when he wuz laid up wid a cold at her father's house in Williamsburgh. An' de little posy, Miss Deb she done gather hit outer her square in de gyarden. De Cun'l he say de fambly gwine expect de honour of yo' company dis evenin' in de drawin'-room."

Adam said good-bye and went away. An hour later, going down the Fontenoy road, he came upon a small brown figure, seated, hands over knees, among the blackberry bushes.

"Why, you partridge!" he exclaimed. "You little brown prairie-hen, what are you doing so far from home? Blackberries aren't ripe."

"No," said Vinie. "I was just a-walking down the road, and I just walked on. I wasn't tired. I always think the country's prettier down this way.

Did you come from Fontenoy, Mr. Adam?"

"Yes," replied Adam, sitting down beside her. "I went to see Lewis Rand--not that I don't like all the people there anyway. They're always mighty nice to me."

Vinie dug the point of her dusty shoe into the dusty road.

"How ith Mr. Rand, Mr. Adam?"

"He 'ith' almost well," answered Adam. "He's going down into the parlour to-night, and pretty soon he's going home, and then he'll be riding into town to his office."

He looked kindly into the small, freckled, pretty face. The heat of the day stood in moisture on Vinie's brow, she had pushed back her sunbonnet, and the breeze stirred the damp tendrils of her hair. "Tom must miss him," said the hunter.

"Yeth, Tom does." Vinie drew toward her a blackberry branch, and studied the white bloom. "Which do you think is the prettiest, Mr. Adam,--Miss Unity or Miss Jacqueline?"

"Why, I don't know," answered Adam. "They are both mighty pretty."

"I think Miss Unity's the prettiest," said Vinie. "It's time I was walking back to Charlottesville." She rose and stood for a moment in the dusty road below the blackberry bushes, looking toward Fontenoy. "I don't suppose he asked after Tom and me, Mr. Adam?"

"Why, surely!" protested Adam, with cheerful mendacity. "He asked after you both particularly. He said he certainly would like a cup of water from your well."

"Did he?" asked Vinie, and grew pink. "That water's mighty cold."

"I'd like a cup of it myself," said Adam. "Since we are both walking to town, we might as well walk together. Don't you want me to break some cherry blossoms for your parlour?"

"Yeth, if you please," replied Vinie, and the two went up the sunny road to Charlottesville.

Back at Fontenoy, in the blue room, Rand, resting in the easy chair beside the window, left the consideration of Adam and Adam's talk, and gave his mind to the approaching hour in the Fontenoy drawing-room. He both desired and dreaded that encounter. Would Miss Churchill be there?

Aided by the homely friendliness of her cousin's house on the Three-Notched Road, he had met her and conversed with her without being greatly conscious of any circ.u.mstance other than that she was altogether beautiful, and that he loved her. But this was not Mrs. Selden's, this was Fontenoy. He had stood here hat in hand, within Miss Churchill's memory--certainly within the memory of the men of her family. Well! He was, thank G.o.d! an American citizen. The hat was now out of his hand and upon his head. The conditions of his boyhood might, he thought, be forgotten in the conditions of his manhood. But--they would all be gathered in the drawing-room. Should he speak first to Colonel Churchill as his host, or first to the ladies of the house, to Miss Churchill and Miss Dandridge? If Miss Churchill or Miss Dandridge were at the harpsichord, should he wait at the door until the piece was ended? He had a vision of a great s.p.a.ce of polished floor reflecting candlelight, and of himself crossing that trackless desert beneath the eyes of G.o.ddesses and men. The colour came into his face. There were twenty things he might have asked Mr. Pincornet that night at Monticello. He turned with hot impatience from the consideration of the usages of society, and fell to building with large and strong timbers the edifice of his future. He built on while the dusk gathered, and he built while Joab helped him to dress, and he was yet busy with beam and rafter when at eight o'clock, with some help from the negro, he descended the stairs and crossed the hall to the parlour door. How was he dressed? He was dressed in a high-collared coat of blue cloth with eagle b.u.t.tons, in cloth breeches and silk stockings, in shoes with silver buckles, and a lawn neckcloth of many folds. His hair was innocent of powder, and cut short in what the period supposed to be the high Roman fashion. It was his chief touch of the Republican. In the matter of dress he had not his leader's courage. Abhorring slovenliness and the Jacobin motley, he would not affect them. He was dressed in his best for this evening; and if his attire was not chosen as Ludwell Cary would have chosen, it was yet the dress of a gentleman, and it was worn with dignity.

Music was playing, as he paused at the half-open door,--he could see Miss Dandridge at the harpsichord. The room seemed very light. For a moment he ceased to be the master-builder and sank to the estate of the apprentice, awkward and eaten with self-distrust; the next, with a characteristic abrupt motion of head and hand, he recovered himself, waved Joab aside, and boldly crossed the threshold.

Unity, at the harpsichord, was playing over, very rapidly, one after another, reels, hornpipes, jigs, and Congos, and looking, meanwhile, slyly out of velvet eyes at Fairfax Cary, who had asked for a particularly tender serenade. He stood beside her, and strove for injured dignity. It was a day of open courtship, and polite Albemarle watched with admiration the younger Cary's suit to Miss Dandridge. He had ridden alone to Fontenoy; his brother, who had business in Charlottesville, promising to join him later in the evening. Mr. Ned Hunter, too, was at Fontenoy, and he also would have been leaning over the harpsichord but for the fact that Colonel d.i.c.k had fastened upon him and was demonstrating with an impressive forefinger the feasibility of widening into a highway fit for a mail-coach a certain forest track running over the mountains and through the adjoining county. They stood upon the hearth, and Mr. Hunter could see Miss Dandridge only by much craning of the neck. "Yes, yes," he said vaguely, "it can easily be widened, sir."

Major Churchill, playing Patience at the small table, raised his head like a war-horse. "Nonsense! widen on one side and you will fall into the river; on the other, and a pretty cliff you'll have to climb! You could as well widen the way between Scylla and Charybdis--or Mahomet's Bridge to Paradise--or Thomas Jefferson's Natural Bridge! Pshaw!" He began to build from the five of clubs.

"A detour can be made," said Colonel d.i.c.k.

"Around the Blue Ridge?" asked the Major scornfully. "Pshaw! And it pa.s.ses my comprehension what a stage-coach would do in that country.

There are not ten houses on that cart track."

"Nonsense! there are fifty."

"Fifty-three, I a.s.sure you, sir."

The Major laid down his cards and turned in his chair. "I counted every structure the last time I was on that road. Taking in f.a.gg's Mill and Brown's Ferry and the Mountain Schoolhouse, there are just ten houses.

It is my habit, sir, to reckon accurately."

Mr. Hunter grew red. "But, sir, the count was taken before the last election, and fifty-three--"