Lewis Rand Part 20

"It is there where the smoke rises beyond that tobacco-field," answered Rand. "All the tobacco shall be changed into wheat."

They came in sight of the house,--a long storey-and-a-half structure of logs, with two small porches and a great earthen chimney. Pine trees gave a scanty shade. House and outbuildings and fencing had all been freshly whitewashed; over the porches flourished morning-glory and Madeira vines, and the little yard was bright with hollyhock and larkspur. Jacqueline put her hand in her husband's. Rand bent and kissed it with something in touch and manner formal and chivalrous. "It is a poor house for you. Very soon I shall build you a better."

"I want no better," she answered. "Have you not lived here all these years?"

"Adam called you Queen. You should have a palace--"

"If I am Queen, then you must be a King. I think it is a lovely palace.

What is that tree by the gate--all feathery pink?"

"A mimosa. Mr. Jefferson gave it to me. It is like you--it does not belong on the Three-Notched Road. It should stand in a palace garden with dim alleys, fountains, and orange groves." He ended in a deeper tone, "Why not? One day we may plant a mimosa in such a garden, and smile and say, 'Do you remember the tree--do you remember our wedding day?' Who knows--who knows?"

"You shall stay in that palace all alone," said Jacqueline. "I like this one best."

The house stood back from the road in its clump of pines. The coach stopped, and Rand and Jacqueline, descending, crossed a strip of short gra.s.s tufted with fennel and velvet mullein to the gate beneath the mimosa, entered the gay little yard, and moved up the path to the larger of the two porches. They were at home. On the porch to welcome them they found the white man who worked on shares and oversaw the farm, Joab and three other slaves of Rand's, Mammy Chloe, Hannah, and the negro men who belonged to Jacqueline. These gave a noisy greeting. Rand put money into the hands of the slaves and sent them away happy to the tumble-down quarter behind the house. The white man took his leave, and Mammy Chloe and Hannah retired to the kitchen, where supper was in preparation. Rand and Jacqueline entered together the clean, bare rooms.

Later, when Hannah's supper had been praised and barely touched, the two came again to the porch, and presently, hand in hand, moved down the steps, and over the dry summer gra.s.s to the mimosa at the gate. Here they turned, and in the gathering dusk looked back at the house, the sleeping pines, and all the shadowy surrounding landscape.

"Hear the frogs in the marsh!" said Rand. "They are excited to-night.

They know I have brought a princess home."

"Listen to the cow-bells," she said. "I love to hear them, faint and far like that. I love to think of you, a little barefoot boy, bringing home the cows--and never, never dreaming once of me!"

"When could that have been?" he asked. "I have always dreamed of you--even when 'twas pain to dream!--There is the first whip-poor-will.

_Whip-poor-will!_ Once it had the loneliest sound! The moon is growing brighter. The dark has come."

"I love you, Lewis."

"Darling, darling! Listen! that is the night horn. The lights are out in the quarter. Do you hear the stream--our stream--hurrying past the apple tree? It is hurrying to the sea--the great sea. We've put out to sea together--you and I, just you and I!"

"Just you and I!" she echoed. "Oh, bliss to be together!"

"Let us go," he whispered. "Let us go back to the house," and with his arm around her, they moved up the path between the flowers that had closed with the night.

CHAPTER XIII

THE THREE-NOTCHED ROAD

Lewis Rand and his wife dwelt that summer and autumn in the house on the Three-Notched Road, and were happy there. If the ghost of Gideon Rand walked, the place, renovated, clean, bright, and homely sweet, showed no consciousness of any influence of the dark. Pa.s.sers-by on the dusty road looked curiously at the gay little yard and the feathery mimosa and the house behind the pines. "Lewis Rand lives there," they said, and made their horses go more slowly.

The pines hid the porch where Jacqueline sat with her work, or, hands about her knees, dreamed the hours away. She was much alone, for after the first week Rand rode daily to his office in Charlottesville. There was no reconciliation with her people. All her things had been sent from Fontenoy. Linen that had been her mother's lay with bags of lavender in an old carved chest from Santo Domingo, and pieces of slender, inlaid furniture stood here and there in the room they called the parlour. Her candlesticks were upon the mantel, and her harp made the room's chief ornament. Her fortune, which was fair, had been formally made over to her and to Rand. She was glad it was no less; had it been vastly greater, she would only have thought, "This will aid him the more." The little place was very clean, very sweet, ordered, quiet, and lovable.

She was a trained housewife as well as the princess of his story, and she made the man she loved believe in Paradise. Each afternoon when he left the jargon and wrangling of the courtroom his mind turned at once to his home and its genius. All the way through the town, beckoning him past the Eagle and past every other house or office which had for him an open door, he saw Jacqueline waiting beneath the mimosa at the gate, clad in white, her dark hair piled high, about her throat a string of coral or of amber. Out on the road, beneath the forest trees, in the radiance of the evening, he rode with his head high and a smile within his eyes. All the scheming, all the labour and strife of the day, fell from him like rusty armour, and his spirit bathed itself in the thought of that meeting. She did not always await him at the gate; sometimes he found her half a mile from home, sitting in the sunset light upon a stone beside the road. Then he dismounted, kissed her, and they walked together back to their nest in the tree of life. Supper-time would follow, with the lighted candles and the fragrance from Hannah's kitchen, and the little humorous talk with the old, fond, familiar servants, and the deeper words between husband and wife of things done or to be done; then quiet upon the porch, long silences, broken sentences of deep content, while the glow faded and the stars came out; then the candles again and his books and papers, while she read or sewed beside him. When his task was done she sang to him, and so drew on the hour when they put out the lights and entered the quiet, spotless chamber where the windows opened to the east.

Rand worked as he had not worked before. All the springs were running, all the bitter wells were sweet; to breathe was to draw in fulness of life, and all things were plastic to his touch. Love became genius, and dreaming accomplishment. In Albemarle, in Virginia, in the country at large, the time was one of excitement, fevered labour, and no mean reward. The election for President was drawing on. Undoubtedly the Republicans and Jefferson would sweep the country, but it behooved them to sweep it clean. The Federalist point of view was as simple. "Win!

but we'll not make broad the paths before you! Winning shall be difficult." The parties worked like Trojans, and he who could speak spoke as often as any leader of heroic times.

At court house and at tavern banquets, at meetings here and meetings there, barbecues, dinners, races, militia musters, gatherings at crossroads and in the open fields, by daylight and by candlelight and by torchlight, Republican doctrine was expounded, and Federalist doctrine made answer. The clash of the brazen shields was loud. It was a forensic people and a plastic time. He who could best express his thought might well, if there were power in the thought, impress it so deeply that it would become the hall-mark of his age. His chance was good. Something more than fame of a day shone and beckoned before every more than able man. To stamp a movement of the human mind, to stamp an age, to give the design to one gold coin from the mint of Time,--what other prize worth striving for? The design?--one thought of moderate Liberty and the head of Washington, another thought of Liberty and the head of Jefferson, another of License and a head like Danton's, another of Empire and a conqueror's head.

In Albemarle, at all Republican gatherings the man most in demand was Lewis Rand; and the surrounding counties of Fluvanna, Amherst, Augusta, and Orange considered themselves happy if he could be drawn to this or that ma.s.s meeting. It was not easy to attract him. He never consciously said to himself, "Be chary of favours; they will be the more prized"; he said instead, "I'll not waste an arrow where there's no gold to hit."

When he saw that it was worth his while to go, he went, and sent an arrow full into the gold. Amherst and Augusta, Fluvanna and Orange, broke into applause and prophecy, while upon each return home Republican Albemarle welcomed him with added rapture, and Federalist Albemarle hurled another phrase into its already comprehensive anathema.

His reputation grew amain, both in his native section and in the state at large. Before the autumn his election to the House of Delegates, which in April seemed so great a thing, began to a.s.sume the appearance of a trifle in his fortunes. He would overtop that, and how highly no man was prepared to say. Through all the clashing of shields, through Republican attack and Federalist resistance, through the clamour over Hamilton's death, the denunciation and upholding of Burr, the impeachment of Chase, the situation in Louisiana, the gravitation towards France, and the check of England, the consciousness of Pitt and the obsession of Napoleon,--through all the commotion and fanfaronade of that summer Rand kept a steady hand and eye, and sent his arrows into the gold. In the law, as in politics, he was successful. A comprehensive knowledge and an infinite painstaking, a grasp wide and firm, a somewhat sombre eloquence, a personal magnetism virile and compelling,--these and other attributes began to make his name resound. He won his cases, until presently to say of a man, "He has Lewis Rand," was in effect to conclude the matter. He had no Federalist clients; that rift widened and deepened. Federalist Albemarle meant the Churchills and the Carys, their kinsmen, connections, and friends. The gulf seemed fixed.

Jacqueline, keeping at home in the house on the Three-Notched Road, saw very few from out her old life. Those who had been her girlhood friends kept aloof. If their defection pained her, she gave no sign--she had something of her father's pride. Among the Republican gentry she was of course made much of, and she saw something of the plainer sort of her husband's friends. Tom Mocket came occasionally on business with Rand, and once he brought Vinie with him. Jacqueline liked the sandy-haired and freckled scamp, and made friends with Vinie. In the first July days Adam Gaudylock often sat upon her porch, but now for weeks he had been wandering in the West. Once or twice Mr. Pincornet, straying that way, had delicately looked his pity for a lovely woman in a desert waste.

Cousin Jane Selden remained her good neighbour and kind friend, and once Mr. Ned Hunter brought a message from Unity. Her old minister came to see her, and Dr. Gilmer, when illness called him in that direction, always drew rein at her gate. Ludwell Cary was out of the county, and Fairfax Cary never rode that way. Unity came whenever it was possible, and thrice, between July and October, Deb and Miranda and a horsehair trunk arrived for a blissful week. To Deb they were unshadowed days. The log house, the pine wood and singing stream, an owl that hooted each night, a row of tiger lilies and a thicket of blackberries, Jacqueline to tell her stories, Mammy Chloe and Hannah, the new brother who came home every evening riding a great bay horse and kissing Jacqueline beneath the mimosa tree, the brother who showed her twenty unguessed treasures and gave her the Arabian Nights,--Deb thought the week on the Three-Notched Road a piece out of the book, and wept when she must go back to Fontenoy.

But Colonel Churchill and Major Edward never came, never wrote, never sent messages to Jacqueline, never, she forced Unity to tell her, mentioned her name or would hear it mentioned at Fontenoy. Only Aunt Nancy, lying always in the chamber, her key-basket beside her on the white counterpane, talked of her when she chose. "But she talks as though you were dead," acknowledged Unity; then, "Oh, Jacqueline, it must all come right some day! And as for him, he's talked of more and more,--everywhere one goes, one hears his name! He's head and front of his party here. Oh, what a party! Mrs. Adams writes that at Washington they eat soup with their fingers and still think _ca Ira_ the latest song! Cannot you convert him? They say the Mammoth's jealous, and that your husband and Colonel Burr correspond in cipher. Is that so?"

"I don't know," said Jacqueline. "I shall not try to convert him. I would have a man loyal to his beliefs--so would you, Unity! Suppose yourself of another party--would you change Fairfax Cary? You would wish him to stay always the Federalist that he is! So with me. I love my great Republican."

"I love you," said Unity. "Kiss me. Now, when do you go to Richmond?"

"Next month. Oh, Unity, if Uncle d.i.c.k and Uncle Edward would but make friends before we go!"

Unity, stopping for an hour at Cousin Jane Selden's, remarked to that lady, "Ah, she is happy! She does not know and she does not care what is said of Lewis Rand. They say dreadful things. The last Gazette--"

"She doesn't hear a Federalist upon the subject," replied Cousin Jane.

"The last Gazette! Pooh! who believes what a Federalist paper says of a Republican, or a Republican paper says of a Federalist? Most men and all newspapers are liars."

"It says that he is a Buonaparte ready to break the sh.e.l.l."

"Buonaparte's a great man, my dear."

"And that the Mammoth's alarmed--"

"Like the hen that hatched the eaglet--"

"And that Lewis Rand's no more Republican at heart than he is Federalist. He's just for Lewis Rand."

"Hm-m-m!"

"And that his name's known as far west as the Mississippi."

"There's no law against a man's name spreading. It's what every man strives for. One succeeds, and the birds that carried the news are indignant."

"And that he's an Atheist."

"Lewis Rand's no saint, child, but he's no fool either. You'll be telling me next that he mistreats his wife."

"Ah, he does not do that!" exclaimed Unity. "She's deep in love. He can't be so very bad, can he, Cousin Jane?"

"He's not a monster, child: he's just a man.--And now, Unity, I am making damson preserves to-day."

"I'll go," said Unity, rising. "But they believe these things at Fontenoy."

"Do they believe them at Greenwood?"