Lewis Rand Part 22

Thy very ego, is it not but thy president, the voice of all thy members, representative of all that thy race has made thee to be, effect of ten million causes, and cause of effects thou canst not see? Let thy ego strengthen itself, deal justly, rule wisely, that thy state fall not behind in this world-progress and be lost out of time and out of mind, in a night without a dawn. There have been such things: over against immortal gain there lies immortal loss. Work, then, while it is day, for if thou work not, the night will make no tarrying. Know thyself, and, knowing, rule that strange world of thine. Were it not a doom, were it not a frightful doom, that it should come to rule thee? ... Government from without! Government of to-day, Government abroad as we see it in every journal, in every letter that we open--how heavy, how heavy is the ball and chain the nations wear! If we alone in this land go free, if for four golden years we have moved with lightness, look to it lest a gaoler come! Government! What is the ideal government? It is a man of business, worthy and esteemed, administering his client's affairs with thoroughness, economy, and honour. It is a wise judge, holding the balances with a steadfast hand, sitting there clothed reverently, to judge uprightly and to do no more. It is a skilled council, a picked band, an honourable Legion, chosen of the mult.i.tude, to determine the line of march for an advancing civilization; to make such laws as are according to reason and necessity and to make none that are not, and to provide for the keeping of the law that is made. The careful man of affairs, the upright judge, the honest maker of honest laws must needs present an account for maintenance and for that expenditure which shall give offence neither to generosity nor to justice; and the account must be paid, yea, and ungrudgingly! Let us pay, then, each man according to his ability, the tax that is right and fitting; and let us, moreover, give due honour to the vanguard of the people. It is there that the great flag waves with all the blazonry of the race. But we want no subst.i.tuted banner, no private ensign, no conqueror's flapping eagles!

Government! Honour the instrument by which we rule ourselves; but worship not a mechanical device, and call not a means an end! Admirable means, but oh, the sorry end! Therefore we'll have no usurping Praetorian, no juggling sophist, no bailiff extravagant and unjust, no spendthrift squandering on idleness that which would pay just debts! A ruler! There's no halo about a ruler's head. The people--the people are the sacred thing, for they are the seed whence the future is to spring.

He who betrays his trust, which is to guard the seed,--what is that man--Emperor or President, Louis or George, Pharaoh or Caesar--but a traitor and a breaker of the Law? He may die by the axe, or he may die in a purple robe of a surfeit, but he dies! The people live on, and his memory pays. He has been a tyrant and a pygmy, and the ages hold him in contempt.... War! There are righteous wars, and righteous men die in them, but the righteous man does not love war. Conquest! Conquest of ignorance, superst.i.tion, and indolence, conquest of the waste and void, of the forces of earth, air, and water, and of the dying beast within us, but no other conquest! We attained Louisiana by fair trade, for the benefit of unborn generations. Standing armies! We want them not.

Navies! The sea is the mother of life; why call her that of death? Her highways are for merchant ships, for argosies carrying corn and oil, bearing travellers and the written thought of man; for voyages of discovery and happy intercourse, and all rich exchange from strand to strand. Why stain the ocean red? Is it not fairer when 'tis blue? Guard coast-line and commerce, but we need no Armada for that. Make no quarrels and enter none; so we shall be the exemplar of the nations....

Free Trade. We are citizens and merchants of the world. No man or woman but lives by trade and barter. Long ago there was a marriage between the house of Give and the house of Take, and their child is Civilization.

Sultan or Czar may say, "Buy here, sell there, and at this price. You are my slave. Obey!" But who, in this century and this land, shall say that to me--or to you? Are we free men? Then let us walk as such through the marts of the earth. "Trade where you will," saith Nature. "It was so I brought the tree to the barren isle, and scattered the life of the seas." Authority of law! Respect the law, and to that end let us have laws that are respectable. Laws are made to be kept, else we live in a house of chicane. But there is a danger that decrees may thicken until they form a dungeon grate for Freedom, until, like Gulliver, she is held down to earth by every several hair. Few laws and just, and those not lightly broken. The Contract between the States--let it be kept. It was pledged in good faith--the cup went around among equals. There is no more solemn covenant; we shall prosper but as we maintain it. Is it not for the welfare and the grandeur of the whole that each part should have its healthful life? The whole exists but by the glow within its parts.

Shall we become dead members of a sickly soul? G.o.d forbid! but sister planets revolving in their orbits about one central Idea, which is Freedom by Cooperation. To each her own life, varied, rich, complete, and her communal life, large with service rendered and received! Each bound to other and to that central Thought by primal law, but each a sovereign orb, grave mistress of her own affairs! Slavery! Ay, I will give you that though you want it not! Slavery is abominable. There is a tree that grows in the tropics which they call the upas tree. All who lie in the shadow of its branches fall asleep, and die sleeping. To-day we lie under the upas tree--would that we were awake! I have heard that--in the tropics--the sons sometimes hew down that which the fathers have planted. I would that it were so in Virginia! Freedom of thought, of speech, and of pen. I will away with this cope of lead, this Ancient Authority, which is too often an Ancient Iniquity. Did it not have once a minority? was it not once a New Thought? Is not a man's thought to-day as potent, holy, and near the right as was his great-grandfather's thought which was born in a like manner, of the brain of a man, in a modern time? I will think freely and according to reason. When it seems wise to tell my mind I will speak; and with judgment I will write down my thought; and fear no man's censure.

Knowledge! I was a poor boy, and I strove for learning, strove hard, and found it worth the striving. I know the hunger, and I know the rage when one asks for knowledge and asks in vain. Is it not a shameful thing that happy men, lodged warm and clear in the Interpreter's house, should hear the groping in the dark without, know that their fellows are searching, in pain and with shortness of breath, for the key which let the fortunate in, and make no stir to aid those luckless ones? Give of your abundance, or your abundance will decay in your hands and turn to that which shall cause you shuddering!

His words went on, magnetic as the man. He spoke for an hour, coming at the last to a consideration of those particular questions which hung in Virginian air. He dealt with these ably, and he subtly conciliated those of his audience who might differ with him. None could have called him flatterer, but when he ceased to speak his hearers, feeling for themselves a higher esteem, had for him a reflex glow. It was what he could always count upon, and it furthered his fortunes. Now they crowded about him, and it was late before, pleading the fatigue of his journey, he could escape from their friendly importunity. At last, it being towards midnight and the moon riding high, the neighbouring planters and their guests got to saddle and, after many and pressing offers of hospitality to Rand and his wife, galloped off to home and bed. The commonalty and the hangers-on faded too into the darkness, and the folk who were sleeping at the inn took their candles and said good-night.

All was suddenly quiet,--a moonlit crossroads in Virginia, tranquil as the shaven fields and the endless columns of the pine.

Upstairs, in the low "best room," Rand found his wife still seated by the open window, her folded arms upon the sill, her eyes raised to the stars that shone despite the moon. He crossed to her and closed the window. "The night is cold. Dearest, have you been sitting here all this time?"

She rose, turning upon him a radiant face. "All this time. I was not cold. I was warm. I am so happy that I'm frightened."

"Did you like it?" he asked. "I hoped that you would. I thought of you--my star, my happiness!"

"I used to wonder," she said; "when they would come home to Fontenoy and say, 'Lewis Rand spoke to-day,' I used to wonder if I should ever hear you speak! And when they blamed you I said to my aching heart, 'They need not tell me! He's not ambitious, self-seeking, a leveller, a demagogue and Jacobin!-he is the man I met beneath the apple tree!' And I was right--I was right!"

"Am I that man?" he asked. "I will try to be, Jacqueline. Leveller, demagogue, and Jacobin I am not; but for the rest, who knows--who knows?

Men are cloudy worlds--and I dream sometimes of a Pursuer."

The next morning the skies had changed, and Rand and Jacqueline fared forward through a sodden, grey, and windy day. The rain had ceased to fall when at twilight they came into Richmond by the Broad Street Road.

Lights gleamed from the wet houses; high overhead grey clouds were parting, and in the west was a line of red. The wind was high, and the sycamores with which the town abounded rocked their speckled arms. The river was swollen and rolled hoa.r.s.ely over the rocks beneath the red west. Rand had taken a house on Shockoe Hill, not far from the Chief Justice's, and to this he and Jacqueline came through the wet and windy freshness of the night. Smiling in the doorway were the servants--Joab and Mammy Chloe and Hannah--who had set out from Albemarle the day before their master and mistress. Rand and Jacqueline, leaving the mud-splashed chaise, were welcomed with loquacity and ushered into a cheerful room where there was a crackling fire and a loaded table.

"Mrs. Leigh's compliments, Miss Jacqueline, an' she done sont de rolls.

Mrs. Fisher's best wishes, an' she moughty glad to hab a neighbour, an'

she done sont de broiled chicken. An' Mr. Hay, he done sont de oysters wid he compliments--an' de two bottles Madeira Mr. Ritchie sont--an' Mr.

Randolph lef' de birds, an' he gwine come roun' fust thing in de mawnin'--"

"We shall have friends," said Rand. "I am glad for you, sweetheart. But I wish that one Federalist had had the grace to remember that Jacqueline Churchill came to town to-day."

"Ah, once I would have cared," answered Jacqueline. "It does not matter now."

"There's a tear on your hand--"

Jacqueline laughed. "At least, it doesn't matter much.--Is that all, Joab?"

"An' Ma.r.s.e Ludwell Cary, he ride erroun in de rain an' leave he compliments for Ma.r.s.e Lewis, an' he say will Miss Jacqueline 'cept dese yer flowers--"

"One remembered," said Rand, and watched his wife put the flowers in water.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAW OFFICE

"If you were not so d.a.m.ned particular--" said the weasel disconsolately.

"I'm not d.a.m.ned particular," answered Rand. "I've wanted wealth and I've wanted power ever since I went barefoot and suckered tobacco--as you know who know me better than almost any one else! But this"--he tapped the papers on the table before him--"this is cheating."

"Oh, you!" complained the scamp. "You are of the elect. What you want you'll take by main force. You are a strong man! You've taken a deal since that day we went into the bookshop by the bridge. But I'm no Samson or David--I'm just Tom Mocket--and still, why shouldn't I have my pennyworth?"

Rand paused in his walking up and down the office in Main Street. It was the late winter, a year and more from that evening when he and Jacqueline had first come to the house on Shockoe Hill. Standing by the rough deal table, he laid an authoritative hand upon the doc.u.ments with which it was strewn. "You'll never get your pennyworth here. The scheme these gentry have afoot is just a Yazoo business. If these lands exist, they're only a hunting-ground of swamp, Indians, and buffalo. The survey is paper, the cleared fields a fable, the town Manoa, the scheme a bubble, the purchasers fools, and the sellers knaves,--and there's your legal opinion in a nutsh.e.l.l!"

"I didn't ask for a legal opinion," said Mocket. "I'm a lawyer myself.

There's land there, you'll not deny, and a river, and plenty of game If a Yankee doesn't find it Paradise, he had no chance anyhow, and a Kentuck can care for himself! There's no sense in calling it a bubble, or being so d.a.m.ned scrupulous!"

Rand made a gesture of contempt. "You let Yazoo companies and the Promised Land alone! People are ceasing to be fools. To-day they demand a hair of the mammoth or a sample of the salt mountain."

Mocket ceased rustling the papers on the table, and turned to regard his chief more closely. "Lewis, I've heard you say things like that more than once lately. A year ago you were mighty respectful to Mr.

Jefferson's salt mountain and strange bones and great elk and silk gra.s.s and all the rest of it. That was a curious letter of yours in the Examiner. If't was meant to defend his neutrality doings, 'twas a d.a.m.ned lukewarm defence! If I hadn't known 'twas yours, sink me if I wouldn't have thought it a d.a.m.ned piece of Federal sarcasm!--Did you send that paper to the President?"

"No, I did not send it."

"Lewis," said the scamp slowly, "are you breaking with Mr. Jefferson?"

Rand walked to the window and stood looking out upon the winter afternoon. It was snowing hard, and through the drifting veil the trees across the way could hardly be discerned. "Yes," he said deliberately.

"Yes,--if you call it breaking with a man to have grown away from him.

If he served me once--yes, and greatly!--have I not worked for him since, hand and foot? We are quits, I think. I shall not cease to esteem him."

Mocket breathed hard with excitement. "You haven't been natural for a long time--but I didn't know 't was this--"

"I am being natural now," said Rand somewhat sternly. "I've told you, Tom, and now let it alone. Least said is soonest mended."

"But--but--" stammered the scamp, "are you going over to the other camp?"

Rand did not at once answer. From a plate on the windowsill he took a crust of bread, and, raising the sash, crumbled it upon the snow without. The sparrows came at once, alighting near his hand with a tameness that spoke of pleasing a.s.sociation with the providence above them. "No," said Rand at last, "I am not going over to the other camp--if by that you mean the Federalist camp. Must one forever sign under a captain? It is not my instinct to serve.--Now let it alone."

He closed the window and, turning again to the table, bent over an unrolled map which covered half its surface. The chart was a large one, showing the vast territory drained by the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Mississippi, and the imagination of the cartographer had made good his lack of information. Rivers and mountains appeared where nature had made no such provision, while the names, quaint and uncouth, with which Jefferson proposed to burden states yet in embryo sprawled in large letters across the yellow plain.

"a.s.senispia--Polypotamia--Chersonesus--Michigania," read Rand.

"Barbarous! I could name them better out of Ossian!" He traced with his finger the lower Ohio. "This is where Blennerha.s.set's island should be."

The finger went on down the Mississippi. "What a river! When it is in flood, it is a sea. And the rich black fields on either side! Cotton!

Our Fortunatus purse shall be spun of that. They call the creeks bayous.

All these little towns--French and Spanish. To speak to them of Washington is to speak of the moon--so distant and so cold. Here are Indians. Here are settlers from the East, and the burden of their song is, 'We are so far from the Old Thirteen that we care not if we are farther yet!'"

"Hey!" exclaimed Mocket. "That's treason!"

"Here Adam Gaudylock met Wilkinson. The river narrows here, and runs deep and strong." Rand's hand rested on the coast-line. "New Orleans,"

he said, "but capable of becoming a new Rome. Here to the westward is the Perdido that they call the boundary,--then Mexico and the City of Mexico. If not New Orleans, then Mexico!" He straightened himself with a laugh. "I am dreaming, Tom--just as I used to dream in the fields! Ugh!

I feel the hot sun, and the thick leaves draw through my hands! Let's get back to every day. To-morrow in the House I am going to carry the Albemarle Resolutions. The last debate is on. Wirt speaks first, and then I speak."

"Ludwell Cary is fighting you," said Mocket. "Fighting hard."

"Yes."