Lewis Rand Part 2

"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 pa.s.sion, 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 c.o.ke, 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 c.o.ke. 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 c.o.ke. 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 c.o.ke" 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 a.s.signed 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 gra.s.sy 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, pa.s.sed 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 sa.s.safras, 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 gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce beside a river.

Joab tethered the horses and made the fire, and fried the bacon and baked the hoecake. As he worked he sang:--