Lewis Rand Part 44

On boomed the guns of the prosecution. Jacqueline listened, fascinated for a time, but the words at last grew to hurt her so that, could she have done so un.o.bserved, she would have stopped her ears with her hands.

The feverish interest of the scene still held her in its grasp, but the words were cruel and struck upon her heart. She could not free herself from the brooding thought of how poignant, how burning, how deadly poisonous they had been to her, had all things been different and she forced to sit in this place hearing them launched against another than Aaron Burr, there, there at that bar! She unlocked her hands, drew a long and tremulous breath, and, leaning a little forward, tried not to listen, and to lose herself in watching the throng below. Her eyes fell, at once, upon Ludwell Cary.

He was standing where she had before marked him, beside a window almost opposite, his arm upon the sill, his attention closely given to the District Attorney, who was now eulogising that great patriot, General James Wilkinson. Now, while Jacqueline looked, he turned his head. It was as though she had called and he had been ready with his answer.

Painfully raised in feeling and driven out of habitual citadels, tense and fevered, subtly touched by the storm in the air, she found in the moment no sense of self-consciousness, no question and no movement of aversion. She and Cary looked at each other long and fully, and with something of an old understanding; on her part a softening of pardon for the quarrel and the duel, on his a light and compa.s.sion that she could not clearly understand. She knew that he read her thoughts, but if he, too, was remembering that evening long ago in February, he must also remember that Lewis Rand gave up, that snowy night, definitely and forever, the fevered ambitions, the too-high imaginings, the conqueror's thirst for power; gave them up, and turned from the charmer into the path of right! There came into her heart a longing that Ludwell Cary should see the matter truly. He should have done so that afternoon in the cedar wood; where was the black mote that kept the vision out? She was suddenly aware--and it came to her with a dizzying strangeness--that there was in her own soul that reference of matters to the bar of Cary's idea, thought, and judgment which, that day in the cedar wood, she had told him existed in that of her husband. Were she and Lewis grown so much alike? or had her own soul always recognised, deferred to, rested upon, something in the inmost nature of the man into whose eyes she looked across this thronged and fevered s.p.a.ce--something of rare equanimity, dispa.s.sionate yet tender, calm, high, impartial, and ideal?

She did not know; she had not thought of it before. Her eyes dilated.

Suddenly she saw the drawing-room at Fontenoy, green and gold and cool, with the portraits on the wall,--Edmund Churchill, who fought with King Charles; Henry his son, who fled to Virginia and founded the family there; a second Edmund, aide-de-camp to Marlborough; two Governors of Virginia and a President of the Council; the Lely and the Kneller--both Churchill women; and the fair face and form of Grandaunt Jacqueline for whom she was named. She smelled the roses in the bowls, and she saw herself singing at her harp. It was a night in June, the night of the great thunderstorm. Lewis Rand had come down from the blue room, and Ludwell Cary entered from the darkness of the storm.

"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage."

Unity's hand touched her. "Jacqueline, are you tired? Would you like to go away?"

The spell broke. Jacqueline was most tired, and she would very much have liked to go away, but a glance at her cousin and at the lady with whom they had come determined the question. That to both it was as good as a play, colour and animation proclaimed, and Jacqueline had not the heart to ring the curtain down. She shook her head and smiled. "We'll stay it out."

Her companion leaned back, relieved, and she was left to herself again.

She knew that Cary's eyes were still upon her, but she would not turn her own that way. She made herself look at the judges upon the bench, the District Attorney, the opposing lawyers, even the prisoner. It was the heat and the thunder in the air that made her so tense and yet so tremulous. Every nerve to-day was like a harpstring tightly drawn where every wandering air must touch it. All this would soon be over--then home and quiet! The day was growing old; even now Mr. Hay was addressing the jury with an impressiveness that announced the closing periods of a speech. When he was done, would not the court adjourn until to-morrow?

It was said the trial might last two weeks. Mr. Hay sat down, but alas!

before the applause and stir had ceased, Mr. Wickham was upon his feet.

Mr. Wirt followed Mr. Wickham, and was followed in turn by Luther Martin. The firing was heavy. Boom, boom! went the guns of the Government, quick and withering came the fire from the defence. If advantage of position was with the first, the last showed the higher generalship. The duel was sharp, and it was followed by the spectators with strained interest. The Chief Justice on the bench and the prisoner at the bar, attentive though they both were, alone of almost all concerned seemed to watch the struggle calmly. It drew toward late afternoon. Luther Martin, still upon the Overt Act, after an ironic compliment or two to the Government counsel, and a statement that George Washington, the great and the good, might with a like innocency of intents have found himself in a like position with Colonel Burr, withdrew his guns for the night. The prosecution, after a glare of indignation, announced that on the morrow it would begin examination of witnesses; the Chief Justice said a few weighty words, and the court was adjourned.

Out to the air, the gra.s.s and the trees, the gleam of the distant James, and a tremendous and fantastic show of clouds, piled along the horizon and flushed by the declining sun, streamed the crowd. Excited and voluble, lavish of opinions that had been pent up for hours, and drinking in greedily the fresher air, it made no haste to quit the Capitol portico or the Capitol Square. There were friends and acquaintances to greet, noted people to speak to, or to hear and see others speak to, the lawyers to congratulate and the judges to bow to--and last but not least, there was the prisoner to mark enter, with the marshal, a plain coach and drive away to the house opposite the Swan, to which he had been removed from his rooms in the Penitentiary.

The women who had observed the first day of the great trial from the gallery made, of course, no such tarrying. They left the building and the square at once, and the men of their families present saw them into their carriages, or, if the distance home was not great, watched them walk away in little groups with a servant or two behind them.

At the head of the Capitol steps Jacqueline and Unity found Fairfax Cary awaiting them, and upon the gra.s.s below they were joined by Mr.

Washington Irving. Mrs. Wickham was with them, Mrs. Carrington, Mrs.

Ambler, and Miss Mayo. All the women lived within a short distance of one another, and all, escorted by the two gentlemen, would walk the little way across Capitol and Broad to Marshall Street. Unity was to take supper with Mrs. Carrington and to spend the night with Mrs.

Ambler, and she would not go home first, unless--She looked at Jacqueline. "Did the fireworks frighten you, honey? Would you rather that I stayed with you?"

Jacqueline laughed. "The fireworks were alarming, weren't they, Mrs.

Wickham? No, no; go with Mrs. Carrington, Unity. To-night I'm going to write to Deb and read a novel." They were now opposite the Chief Justice's house, and as she spoke, she paused and made a slight curtsy to the elder ladies. "Our ways part here."

"I will walk with you to your door," said Fairfax Cary.

She shook her head. "No, do not. I am almost there." Then, as his intention still held, she continued in a lower voice, "I had rather be alone. Obey me, please."

The small discussion ended in the group of ladies and their two escorts giving Jacqueline Rand her way, and with laughing good-byes keeping to their course down the street that was now bathed in the glow of sunset.

She watched them for a moment, then turned her face toward her own house. The distance was short, and she traversed it lightly and rapidly, glad to be alone, glad to feel upon her brow the sunset wind, and glad at the prospect of her solitary evening. She was conscious of a strong revulsion of feeling. The sights and the sounds of the past hours were still in mind, but all the air had changed, and was no longer fevered and boding. She had thought too much and made too much, she told herself, of that vague and dark "It might have been." It was not; thank G.o.d, it was not! And Lewis, there in Williamsburgh, walking now, perhaps, down Duke of Gloucester Street, or sitting in the Apollo room at the Raleigh,--would she have had Lewis read her mind that day?

Generous! had she been generous--or just? The colour flowed over her face and throat. "Neither just nor generous!" she cried to herself, in a pa.s.sion of relief. "I'll go no more to that place!"

She reached her own gate, entered between the two box bushes, and mounted the steps to the honeysuckle-covered porch. The door before her was open, and the hall, wide and cool, with the tall clock and the long sofa, the portraits on the wall and a great bowl of stock and gillyflower, brought to her senses a blissful feeling of home, of fixedness and peace.

Mammy Chloe came from the back of the house, and in her mistress's chamber took from her her straw bonnet, gauze scarf, and filmy gloves, then brought her slippers of morocco and a thin, flowered house-dress, narrow and fine as an infant's robe.

"Has Joab gone to the post-office?" asked Jacqueline.

"Yaas'm. De Williamsbu'gh stage done come, fer I heah de horn more'n an hour ago. Dar Joab now!"

Mammy Chloe put down the blue china ewer, left the room, and returned with a letter in her hand. "Dar, now! Ma.r.s.e Lewis ain' neber gwine fergit you! Ef de sun shine, or ef hit don' shine, heah come de letter jes' de same!"

Jacqueline took the letter from her. "Yes, Mammy, yes," she said, with a sweet and tremulous laugh. "He's a good master, isn't he?"

"Lawd knows I ain' neber had a better," a.s.sented Mammy Chloe. "He powerful stric' to mek you min', is Ma.r.s.e Lewis, but he am' de kin' what licks he lips ober de fac' dat you is a-mindin'! I ain' gwine say, honey, an' I neber is gwine say, dat he's wuth what de Churchills is wuth, but I's ready to survigerate dat he's got he own wuth. An' ef hit's enough fer you, chile, hit's enough fer yo' ole mammy. Read yo'

letter while I puts on yo' slippers."

Jacqueline broke the seal and read:--

JACQUELINE:--I am kept here for an uncertain time--worse luck, dear heart! Do not send what letters may have come for me, as I may leave sooner than I think for, and so would pa.s.s them on the road.

Open any from the court in Winchester, where I have a case pending--if the matter seems pressing, take a copy, and send copy or original to me by to-morrow's stage. I am expecting a letter from Washington--an important one, outlining the Embargo measures.

I looked for it before I left Richmond. If it has arrived, open it, dear heart, and glance through it to see if there be any message or enquiry which I should have at once. It is very hot, very dusty, very tiresome in the court room. I will leave Tom Mocket here to wind things up, and will get home as soon as I can. Then, as soon as the hurly-burly's over, we'll go to Roselands for a little while--to the calm, the peace, bright days and white nights! While I write here in the Apollo, you are at church in Saint John's.

Shall I say, "Pray for me, sweet saint?" You'll do that without my asking. So I'll say instead, "Think of me, dear wife, and love me still."

Thine, LEWIS.

Jacqueline stood up in her faintly coloured gown, all rich light and rose bloom. From her dressing-table she took her keys, and, opening her mother's desk of rosewood and mother-of-pearl, lifted from it several letters and the packet which Colonel Nicholas had given her the day before. With these in her hands she left her chamber and went into the drawing-room. "Bring the candles," she said over her shoulder to Mammy Chloe. "It is growing too dark to see to read."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE LETTER

The windows were open to the dusky rose of the west, and their long curtains stirred in the hot and fitful breeze. Jacqueline, waiting for the lights, pushed the heavy hair from her forehead and panted a little with the oppression of the night. Young Isham entered with the candles, and Mammy Chloe brought her upon a salver a cup of coffee and a roll.

She ate and drank, then sent her old nurse away. The candles, under their tall gla.s.s shades, were upon the centre table, and beside them lay the letters she was to read. Her husband's own letter was slipped beneath the ribbon that confined her dress, and lay against her heart.

It was so hot and dull a night that she stood for a while at a window, leaning a little out, trying to fancy that there was rain in the fantastic ma.s.s of clouds that rose on either side of the evening star.

The smell of the box at the gate was strong. She thought of Fontenoy, of Major Edward, and of Deb. A grey moth touched her; she looked once again at the bright star between the clouds, then, turning back into the room, drew a chair to the table and, sitting down, took into her lap the papers that lay beside the candles.

There had come a letter in the stage from Winchester. She opened it.

"Could Mr. Rand arrive by such a day? The case was important--the interests large--the fee large, too. Could he come just as soon as the jury, the press, and Mr. Jefferson hanged Aaron Burr? An early reply--"

Jacqueline rose, brought writing-materials from the escritoire to the table, and copied rapidly, in her clear, Italian hand, the Winchester letter, then laid it to one side to be folded with her own to Lewis for to-morrow's stage to Williamsburgh. The next letter was, she knew, from Albemarle, and not important. She laid it aside. The third she opened; it was from a gentleman in Westmoreland who wished in a certain litigation "the services, sir, of the foremost lawyer in the state."

Jacqueline smiled and laid it with the Albemarle letter. The matter might wait until the foremost lawyer's return. There were now two letters, and neither was from Washington. One was indeed about matters political, a tirade from a party leader on Rand's folly in declining, last year, the nomination for Governor, but it contained nothing to demand his instant attention. The other, which had come by boat from Norfolk, seemed of no consequence.

Jacqueline put both aside, and took into her hand the packet given her by Colonel Nicholas. She sat for a moment, looking at the superscription. "A letter from Washington," Lewis said, "outlining the Embargo measures. Open and glance through it to see if there be any message I should have at once." She thought no otherwise than that this was the letter in question. Mr. Jefferson was, she knew, upon the defensive in regard to these measures, and she was glad to believe that he had fallen into an ancient habit and was willing, as of old, to expatiate upon his policy to Lewis Rand.

She broke the red seals and unfolded the paper. It proved to be a letter covering a letter. She let fall the folded, inner missive, drew a candle nearer, and read in Jefferson's small, formal, and very clear hand:--

I have the honour to restore to you the letter which you will find enclosed. If you ask how it came into my hands, I have but to say that, in times of crisis and peril, rules of conduct, on the part of a government as of an individual, have somewhat to bow to necessity. Enough that it did come into my hands--last autumn.

Judge if I have used it against you! It is now returned to you because I no longer conceive it necessary to hold it. I might have burned it; I prefer that you shall do so.

I have but a word to add to our conversation of last August at Monticello. I am a man of strong affections. Your youth and all the eager service you did me in those years, and the great hopes I had for you, endeared you to me. These things are present in my mind.

Were they not so, you would have heard from me in other wise! Were they not so, that which I now enclose should not travel back to the writer's hand; it should remain, distinct and black, upon your Country's records, for your children's children to read with burning cheeks! I spare you, but you are of course aware that the affection of which I spoke is dead, dead as the trust with which I regarded you, or as the pride with which I dwelt upon your future!

Reread and destroy that which I place in your hand.