Lewis Rand Part 25

"Yes, yes," she answered "I, too. Oh, home!"

He held out his hand "You'll give my compliments to Mr. Rand?"

"Yes," she said. "He is busy to-night with a client from the country. He works too hard."

"Take him soon to Roselands and tie him there. Sing him To Althea and make him forget." He bent and kissed her hand. "Good-night--good-night!"

"Good-night," she answered, and moved with him to the door. Standing there, she watched him through the hail and out of the house, then turned and, going to the window, pressed her brow against the pane and watched him down the street. The night had cleared; there was a high wind and many stars.

In Rand's dining-room the three men sat late over the wine and the questions that had brought them together, but at last the conference was somewhat stormily over. Burr and Adam Gaudylock left the house together, the hunter volunteering to guide the stranger to his inn. It was midnight, and Colonel Burr did not see his hostess. He sent her courtly messages, and he pressed Rand's hand somewhat too closely, then with his most admirable military air and frankest smile, thrust his arm through Gaudylock's and marched away. Rand closed the door, put down the candle that he held, and turned into the drawing-room.

Before the dying fire he found Jacqueline in her white gown, the amethysts about her throat, and her scarf of silver gauze fallen from her hand upon the floor. In her young face and form there should have been no hint, no fleeting breath of tragedy, but to-night there was that hint and that breath. The fire over which she bent and brooded seemed to leave her cold. The room was no longer brightly lighted, and she appeared mournfully a part of the hovering shadows. Her spirit had power to step forth and clothe the flesh. Almost always she looked the thing she felt. Now, in the half light, bent above the fading coals, she looked old. Her husband, with his hand upon the mantel-shelf, gazed down upon her. "It was wise of you to send me that note. Burr and I might have walked in here, or we might have spoken loudly. I heard Cary when he went out. How did you manage?"

"He asked for you. I told him that you were engaged with a client from the country. Oh, Lewis!"

Rand stooped and kissed her. "It was the best thing you could say. I would not have had him guess our visitor to-night. You are trembling like a leaf!"

"The best that I could say!--I don't know that. I feel like a leaf in the wind! I did not understand--but I was afraid for you. It is done, but I prefer to tell the truth!"

"I prefer it for you," said Rand. "To-night was mere unluckiness. And he suspected nothing?"

"He went without knowing who was in the dining-room. Lewis, what is there to suspect?"

He stood looking down upon her with a glow in his dark eyes and an unwonted red in his cheek. "Suspect? There is nothing to suspect. But to expect--there might be expectations, my Queen!"

"As long as you live you are my King" she said. "To-night I am afraid for my King. I do not like Colonel Burr!"

"I am sorry for that. He is said to be a favourite with women."

"Lewis!" she cried, "what does he want with you? Tell me!"

So appealing was her voice, so urgent the touch of her hand, that with a start Rand awoke from his visions to the fact of her emotion. His eye was hawklike, and his intuition unfailing. "What did Ludwell Cary say to you?" he demanded.

She took her scarf from the floor, wound her hands in it, and clasped them tightly before her. "When I told him,--Mammy Chloe let him in,--when I told him that you were busy with your client, he thought no more of it. And then we talked of Fontenoy, and he read me a letter from Uncle Edward. Much of the letter was about Colonel Burr, and--and suspicions that were aroused. Uncle Edward called him a traitor and a maker of traitors. That is an ugly name, is it not? Ludwell Cary did not think the rumour false. He said that if he were Mr. Jefferson, he would arrest Colonel Burr. He, also, called him traitor. I can tell you what he said. He said, 'But Mr. Jefferson will temporize, and Burr will make his dash for a throne. Well! he is neither Caesar nor Buonaparte; he is only Aaron Burr. The danger is that in all the motley he is enlisting there may be a Buonaparte. Then farewell to this poor schemer and any delusions he may yet nourish as to a peaceful, federated West! War and brazen clamour and the yelling eagles of a conqueror!' That is what he said."

There was a silence, then Rand spoke in a curious voice, "Saul among the prophets! In the future, let us have less of Ludwell Cary."

"Lewis, why did Colonel Burr come here to-night?"

Rand turned from the fire and began to pace the room, head bent and hand at mouth, thinking rapidly. His wife raised her hands, still wrapped in the silver scarf, to her heart, and waited. As he pa.s.sed for the third time the tall harp, he drew his hand heavily across the strings. The room vibrated to the sound. Rand came back to the hearth, took the armchair in which Cary had sat, and drew it closer to the glowing embers. "Come," he said. "Come, Jacqueline, let us look at the pictures in the fire."

She knelt beside him on the braided rug. "Show me true pictures! Home in Virginia, and honourable life, and n.o.ble service, and my King a King indeed, and this Colonel Burr gone like a shadow and an ugly dream!--that is the picture I want to see."

For a moment there was silence before the white ash and the dying heart of the wood, then Rand with the tongs squared a flaky bed and drew from top to bottom a jagged line. "This," he said, "is the great artery; this is the Mississippi River." He drew another line. "Here to the southwest is Mexico, and that is a country for great dreams. There the plantain and the orange grow and there are silver and gold--and the warm gulf is on this side, and the South Sea far, far away, and down here is South America. The Aztecs lived in Mexico, and Cortez conquered them. He burned his ships so that he and his Spaniards might not retreat. Here is the land west of the Mississippi, unknown and far away. There are gra.s.sy plains that seem to roll into the sun, and there are great herds of game, and warlike Indians, and beyond the range of any vision there are vast mountains white with snow. Gold, too, may be there. It is a country enormous, grandiose, rich, and silent,--a desert waiting dumbly for the strong man's tread." He turned a little and drew another line. "To this side, away, away to the east, here where you and I are sitting, watching, watching, here are the Old Thirteen,--the Thirteen that the English took from the Indians, that the children of the English took from England. It is the law of us all, Jacqueline, the law of the Three Kingdoms: the battle is to the strong and the race to the swift. The Old Thirteen are stable; let them rest! Together they make a great country, and they will be greater yet But here is the Ohio--la belle Riviere, the Frenchmen call it. And beyond and below the Ohio, through all the gigantic valley of a river so great that it seems a fable, south to New Orleans, and westward to the undiscovered lies the country that is to be! And Napoleon, in order that he may brandish over England one thunderbolt the more, sells it for a song!--and we buy it for a song--and not one man in fifty guesses that we have bought the song of the future! The man who bought it knows its value--but Mr. Jefferson cares only for Done lays. He'll not have the Phrygian. He dreams of cotton and olives, of flocks and herds, rock salt and peaceful mines, and the manors of the Golden Age,--all gathered, tended, worked, administered by farmers, school-teachers, and philosophers! The ploughshare (improved) and the pruning-hook, a pulpit for Dr. Priestley, and a statue of Tom Paine, a gla.s.s house where the study of the mastodon may lead to a knowledge of man, slavery abolished, and war abhorred, the lion and the lamb to lie down together and Rousseau to come true--all the old mirage--perfectibility in plain sight! That is his dream, and it is a n.o.ble one. There is no room in it for the wicked man. In the mean time he proposes to govern this land of milk and honey, this bought-and-paid-for Paradise, very much as an eastern Despot might govern a conquered province. The inconsistencies of man must disconcert even the Thinker up in the skies. Well--it happens that the West and this great new city of ours, there at the mouth of the river, with her levees and her ships, her merchants, priests, and lawyers, do not want government by a satrap. They want an Imperial City and a Caesar of their own. Throughout the length and breadth of this vast territory there is deep dissatisfaction--within and without, for Spain is yet arrogant upon its borders. The Floridas--Mexico--fret and fever everywhere! It is so before all changes, Jacqueline. The very wind sighs uneasily. Then one comes, bolder than the rest, sees and takes his advantage. So empires and great names are made."

"So good names are lost!" she cried. "It is not thus that you spoke one October evening on our way from Albemarle!"

Rand dropped the iron from his hand. "That was a year and a half ago, and all things move with rapidity. A man's mind changes. That evening!--I was in Utopia. And yet, if we reigned,--if we two reigned, Jacqueline,--we might reign like that. We might make a kingdom wise and great."

"And Mr. Jefferson, and all that you owe to him? And your letter to him every month with all the public news?"

"That was before this winter," he answered. "We have almost ceased to write. I am not like James Madison or James Monroe. I cannot follow always. Mr. Jefferson is a great man--but it is hungry dwelling in the shadow of another."

"Better dwell in the shadow forever," cried Jacqueline, with pa.s.sion, "than to reign with faithlessness in the sun!"

"I am not faithless--"

"So Benedict Arnold thought! Oh, Lewis!"

"You speak," said Rand slowly, "too much like the Churchills and the Carys."

In the silence that followed, Jacqueline rose and stood over against him, the scarf trailing from her hand and the amethysts rising and falling with her laboured breathing. He glanced at her and then went on: "Burr leaves Richmond to-morrow. He does not go West till summer, and all his schemes may come to naught. What he does or does not do will depend on many things, chiefly on whether or not we go to war with Spain. I am not going West with him--not yet. I have let him talk. I have brought him and Adam Gaudylock together; I have put a little money in this land purchase of his upon the Was.h.i.ta, and I have given him some advice. That is all there is of rebellion, treason, and sedition,--all the c.o.c.k-a-hoop story! Ludwell Cary may keep his own breath to cool his own porridge. And you, Jacqueline, you who married me, you have not a soul to be frighted with big words! You and I shall walk side by side."

"Shall we?" she said. "That will depend. I'll not walk with you over the dead--dead faith, dead hope, dead honour!"

"I shall not ask you to," he answered. "You are not yourself. You are using words without thought. It is the cold, the lateness, and this dying fire--Ludwell Cary's arrogance as well. Dead faith, hope, honour!--is this your trust, your faith?"

"Lewis, Lewis!"

He rose, crossed the shadowy s.p.a.ce between them, and took her hands.

"Don't fear--don't fear! We two will always love. Jacqueline, there is that within me that will not rest, that cries for power, and that overrides obstacles! See what I have overridden since the days beneath the apple tree! I am not idly dreaming. Conditions such as exist to-day will not arise again. Upon this continent it is the time of times for the bold--the wisely bold. This that beckons is no mirage in the West; it is palpable fact. Say that I follow Burr--follow! overtake and pa.s.s him! He has a tarnished name and fifty years,--a supple rapier but a shrunken arm. He's daring; but I can be that and more. He plans; I can achieve. I am no dreamer and no braggart when I say that in the West I can play the Corsican. What can I do here? Become, perhaps, Governor of Virginia; wait until Mr. Jefferson is dead, and Mr. Madison is dead, and Mr. Monroe is dead, and then, if the world is yet Republican, become President? The governorship I do not want; the presidency is but a chance, and half a lifetime off! But this--this, Jacqueline, is real and at hand. Say that I go, say that I gain a throne where you and I may sit and rule, wise and great and sovereign, holding kingdoms for our children--"

"Oh!" exclaimed Jacqueline.

Rand drew her to him. "Don't fear--don't fear! The child will come--we want him so!"

"Promise me," she cried,--"promise me that you will see Colonel Burr no more, write to him no more! Promise me that you will put all this away, forever, forever! Oh, Lewis, give me your word!"

"I will do nothing rash," he said. "We will go back to Roselands,--we will watch and wait awhile. Burr himself does not go West until the summer. Ere then I will persuade you. That first July evening, under the mimosa at the gate, even then this thing was vaguely, vaguely in my mind."

"Was it?" she cried. "Oh me, oh me!"

"You are wearied," he said, "chilled and trembling. I wish that Ludwell Cary had aired his views elsewhere to-night! Put it all from your mind and come to rest--"

"Lewis, if ever you loved me--if ever you said that you would give me proof--"

"You know that I love you."

"Then, as I gave up friends and home for you, give up this thing for me!

No, no, I'll not cease to beg"--She slipped from his arm to her knees.

"Lewis, Lewis, this is not the road--this is not the way to freedom, goodness, happiness Promise me! Oh, Lewis, if ever you loved me, promise me!"

From Rand's house on Shockoe Hill Ludwell Cary walked quickly homeward to the Eagle, where he and his brother lodged. As he walked he thought at first, hotly and bitterly enough, of Lewis Rand and painfully of himself, but at length the solemnity of the white night and the high glitter of the stars made him impatient of his own mood. He looked at the stars, and at the ivory and black of the tall trees, and his mind calmed itself and turned to think of Jacqueline.

In the Eagle's best bedroom, before a blazing fire and a bottle of port, he found Fairfax Cary deep in a winged chair and a volume of Fielding.

"Well, Fair?" he said, with his arm upon the mantel-shelf and his booted foot upon the fender.

The younger Cary closed his book and hospitably poured wine for his brother. "Were you at the Amblers'?" he asked. "It's a night for one's own fireside. I went to the Mayos', but the fair Maria is out of town.