Lewis Rand Part 23

"Well, I'll be there to hear you speak. Lord! if I could speak like you, Lewis, and plan like you, and if whiskey would let me alone, and if I wasn't afraid of the dark, I'd make a stir in the country--I'd go higher than a Franklin kite!"

"You might manage the rest," said Rand, with good-natured scorn; "but it doesn't do to be afraid of the dark."

From the pegs behind the door he took his greatcoat and beaver. "I am going home now," he said. "I have company to supper."

"Who, then?" asked Mocket. "Adam Gaudylock? He's in town."

Rand laughed. "Who, then?' Tom, Tom, you've the manners of the West Indian skippers you consort with! No, it's not Adam Gaudylock. It is--"

He hesitated, then took up a pen and wrote two words. "That's his name--but you are to keep it dark."

Mocket's tilted chair came noisily to the floor. "What! In Richmond!--he in Richmond! When did he come? Where's he staying?"

"He came last night, and he's staying quietly at Bowler's Tavern. It isn't known that he's here, and he is not anxious that it should be known. He's here on business, and he goes to-morrow. That is all--and you're to say no word of what I tell you."

"All right," quoth Tom. "I won't blab. But I'd mightily like to see the man who shot Alexander Hamilton."

"I've told you he's not anxious for company."

"Oh, I know!" said Tom, not without humility. "I'm small fry. Well, there are curious things said about him, and you and he are strange bedfellows! How did it happen?"

"Tom, Tom," answered Rand, "you ask too many questions! It was an accident, or it was predestined and foreordained when I was dust blown about by the wind. You may take your choice according to your theology!

I'm going now. Be at the House early to-morrow."

"Are you going to take that Mathews case? Young Mathews was here yesterday, swearing that if he couldn't get you, he would hang himself."

"I've said that I would take it."

"Ludwell Cary's for the other side."

"Yes, I know. I'll win."

"Well, you're fairly pitted. Half the town backs one and half the other.

That letter signed 'Aurelius' in the Gazette--did you know 'twas his?"

Rand dropped his hand from the latch. The colour rushed to his face, then ebbed as quickly. "No, I did not know," he said, in a voice that was not quite steady. "I thought of quite another man."

"It is Ludwell Cary's, and every Black c.o.c.kade in Richmond, and not a few Republicans, are quoting it. My certie! it was a commentary in caustic--and so d.a.m.ned courteous all the time!"

"I don't care for such courtesy," answered Rand "Ludwell Cary had best look where he treads."

"Well, I thought I'd tell you," said his colleague "I don't like the Carys, either!--And so I'm not to go into that land scheme?"

"No. It's a small thing, and not honest. Some day, Tom, I'll help you to a larger thing than that."

"And honest?" said Mocket shrewdly.

The other turned upon him with anger, black as it was sudden. "Honest!

Yes, honest as this storm, honest as any struggle for any piece of earth wider than a coffin s.p.a.ce! Who are you to question me? I give you warning--"

"Gently, gently!" exclaimed the scamp, and started back. "Lord, how Gideon peeps out of you now and then!"

"You need not say that, either," retorted Rand grimly. He stood for a moment, a cloudy presence in the darkening room, then with a short laugh recovered himself. "I thought the black dog was dead," he said. "It's this gloomy day--and I did not sleep last night. Honest! We're all indifferent honest!"

"Well, well," answered the pacific Tom, "I'll sink or swim with you.

I've followed where you have led this many a day."

Outside the red brick office the snow lay deep. It was still falling steadily, in large flakes, grey in the upper air, feathery white and pure against the opposite houses and the boles of leafless trees. The day was closing in. Up and down the street merchants were putting up their shutters; customers had been few on such a snowy day. Here and there appeared a figure, booted and greatcoated, emerging from a tavern or from a law office such as Rand's. A sledge pa.s.sed, laden with pine and hickory, drawn by mules with jangling bells; and a handful of boys loosed from school threw down their bags of books and fell to s...o...b..lling. A negro shuffled by with a spade on his shoulder, singing as he went,--

"Didn't my Lawd deliber Daniel, Didn't my Lawd deliber Daniel, An' why not ebery man?

He delibered Daniel from de lions' den, An' de Hebrew Chillern from de furnace, He delibered David from de han' of Saul, An' why not ebery man?"

Rand turned into Governor Street, climbed its white ascent, and struck across the Capitol Square. Above him every bough had its weight of snow, and seen through the drifting veil the pillared Capitol looked remote as that building of which it was a copy. He walked quickly, with a light and determined step, a handsome figure in a many-caped coat of bottle green, striding through the snow toward the cheer of home. In his outer man, at least, the eighteen months since his marriage had wrought a change. What was striking then was more striking now,--his ease and might of frame, the admirable poise of his head, and the force expressed in every feature, the air of power that was about him like an emanation.

The difference was that what had been rude strength was now strength polished and restrained. The deeps might hide abrupt and violent things, but the surface had a.s.sumed a fine amenity. Where he wished to learn he was the aptest pupil, and from the days of the tobacco-field he had longed for this smooth l.u.s.tre. Not Gideon, but the mother, spoke in the appreciation and the facility. Manner counted for much in Lewis Rand's day; the critical point was not what you did, but the way you did it.

Rand set himself to learn from his wife all the pa.s.swords of the region native to her, but into which he had broken. She taught him that code with a courtesy and simplicity exquisitely high-minded and sweet, and he learned with quickness, grat.i.tude, and lack of any false shame. What else he might have learned of her he dimly felt, but he had not covenanted with existence for qualities that would war with a hundred purposes of his brain and will. He and Jacqueline were lovers yet. At the sight of each other the delicate fire ran through their veins; in absence the mind felt along the wall and dreamed of the gardens within.

If the woman who had given all was the more constant lover; if the man, while his pa.s.sion sweetened all his life, yet bowed before his great idol and fought and slaved for Power, it was according to the nature of the two, and there was perhaps no help.

He left the Capitol Square and went on toward the house he had retaken for the second winter in Richmond. Few were afoot, though now and then a sleigh went by. Rand's mind as he walked was busy, not with the debate of to-morrow or the visitor of to-night, the Mathews trial or Tom Mocket's puerile schemes, but with the letter in the Gazette signed "Aurelius." It had been an attack, able beyond the common, certainly not upon Lewis Rand, but upon the party which, in the eyes of the generality, he yet most markedly represented. In the inflamed condition of public sentiment such attacks were of weekly occurrence; the wise man was he who put them by unmoved. For the most part Rand was wise. Federal diatribes upon the Tripoli war, the Florida purchase, the quarrel with Spain, Santo Domingo, Neutral Trade, and Jefferson's leanings toward France left him cold. This letter in the Gazette had not done so. It had gone to the sources of things, a.n.a.lyzing with a coolness and naming with a propriety the more remarkable that it acknowledged, on certain sides, a community of thought with the party attacked. The result was that, as in civil war, the quarrel, through understanding, was the more determined. The man who signed "Aurelius" had not spared to point out, with a certain melancholy sternness, the plague spots, the defenceless places. Moreover, throughout his exposition there ran a harsh and sombre thread, now felt in denunciation and now in ironic praise. There was more than unveiling of the weakness of any human policy or party; the letter was in part a commination of individual conduct. No name was used, no direct reference given or example quoted; but one with ac.u.men might guess there was a man in mind when the writer sat in judgment. The writer himself was perhaps not aware of the fulness of this betrayal, but Lewis Rand was aware. The paper had angered him, and he had not lacked intention of discovering at whose door it was to be laid. He had enemies enough--but this one was a close observer. The subtlety of the rebuke shook him. How had the writer who signed "Aurelius" known or divined? He thought of Major Edward Churchill, but certain reasons made him sure the letter was not his. And now it seemed that it was Ludwell Cary's.

Rand's lips set closely. Ludwell Cary might not know where all his shafts were striking, but Rand felt the sting. Fair fight in the courtroom,--that was one thing,--but this paper was wrought of sterner stuff. There was in it even a solemnity of warning. Rand's soul, that was in the grasp of Giant Two-Ways, writhed for a moment, then lay still again. With his characteristic short laugh, he shook off the feeling that he mistook for weakness, dismissed the momentary abashment, and pursued his way through the snowy streets. The question now in his mind was whether or no he should make his resentment plain to Ludwell Cary.

At long intervals, three or four times in the winter, perhaps, it was the latter's custom to lift the knocker of Rand's door, and to sit for an hour in Jacqueline's drawing-room. Sometimes Rand was there, sometimes not; Cary's coming had grown to be a habit of the house, quiet, ordered, and urbane as all its habits were. Its master now determined, after a moment's sharp debate, to say nothing that he might not have said before he knew the ident.i.ty of that writer to the Gazette.

He was conscious of no desire for immediate retaliation; these things settled themselves in the long run. He did not intend speaking of the matter to Jacqueline. Pride forbade his giving Cary reason to surmise that he had hit the truth. Rand was willing to believe that many of the shafts were chance-sent. The reflection hardly lessened his anger, but it enabled him to thrust the matter behind him to the limbo of old scores.

He was crossing Broad Street when the door of a house before him opened, and a young man, with a gay word of farewell to some one in the doorway, ran down the steps and into the snowy street. It was Fairfax Cary. Rand and he, pa.s.sing, lifted their hats, but they did not speak. Had it been the elder Cary, there would have been a moment's tarrying, an exchange of courteous speech. But Fairfax Cary made no secret of his enmity. If he did not offensively publish it, if he was, indeed, for so young a man, somewhat grimly silent upon those frequent occasions when Rand was talked of, the hostility was defined, and at times frank. He went on now with his handsome head held high. Rand looked after him with a curious, even a wistful smile upon his lips. He was himself a man young in years and strength of pa.s.sion, but older far in experience and in thought. He did not dislike Fairfax Cary; he thought indeed that the young man's spirit, bearing, and partisanship were admirable. His smile was for the thought that had lightened through his mind: "If in after years I could have a son like that!" He wanted children; he wanted a son. Rand sighed.

The day had been vexatious, and there were heavy questions yet to settle before the evening closed. After all, what was the use, since Jacqueline cared nothing for baubles, and there was no child! Better live out his days at Roselands, a farmer and a country lawyer! He shook off the weight, summoned all his household troop of thoughts, and went on homewards through the falling snow.

CHAPTER XV

COMPANY TO SUPPER

Jacqueline arranged the flowers, cut from her window stand, in the porcelain vase, and set the vase with care in the centre of the polished table. All was in order, from the heavy damask napkins and the Chelsea plates to the silver candlesticks and the old cut-gla.s.s. She turned her graceful head, and called to her husband, whose step she heard in the adjoining room. He came, and, standing beside her, surveyed the mahogany field. "Is there anything lacking?" she asked.

He turned and kissed her. "Only that you should be happy!" he said.

"If I am not," she answered, "he will never find it out! But when I see him, I shall hear that fatal shot!"

"He will make you quite forget it. All women like him."

"Then I shall be the exception. General Hamilton was Uncle Edward's friend. At Fontenoy they'll call it insult that I have talked with this man!"

"They will not know," Rand replied. "It was an honest duel fought nigh two years ago. Forget--forget! There's so much one must forget. Besides, others are forgiving. There is not now the old enmity between him and the Federalists." "No?" said Jacqueline. "Why is that?"

"I cannot tell you, but old differences are being smoothed over. It is rather the Republicans who are out with him."

"I know that he is no friend to Mr. Jefferson."