Lewis Rand Part 48

"Did Mr. Cary say which road he would take at the ford?"

"No, he didn't. The main road, though, I reckon. The river road's bad just now, and he seemed to have time before him. Thankee, Mr. Rand, and good-day to you!"

Followed by Young isham, Rand travelled on by the dusty road, between the parching elder and ironweed, blackberry and love vine. There was dust upon the wayside cedars, and the many locust trees let fall their small yellow leaves. As the sun mounted the heat increased, and with it the interminable, monotonous, and trying _zirr, zirr_, of the underworld on blade and bush. He rode with a dark face, and with lines of anger between his brows. It had come to him like a chance spark to a mine that Ludwell Cary was not at Greenwood, was yet upon the road before him. He knew day and hour when the other had left Richmond, and there had been more than time to make his journey.

Before him, on the lower ground, a belt of high and deep woods proclaimed a watercourse, and he presently arrived beside a shrunken stream. Here was a mill, and the miller and a man or two were apparent in the doorway. The ford lay a hundred yards beyond, and on the far side of the stream the river road and the main road branched. Travellers paused as a matter of course to give and take the time of day, and now the miller, dusty and white, came out into the road. "Morning, morning, Mr. Rand! From Richmond, sir? So we couldn't hang Aaron Burr, after all.

Well, he ought to have been, that's all I've got to say!"

"Give me a gourd of water, will you, Bates? This dust is choking."

"'Tis that, sir. But we'll have a storm before the day is over. There's a deal of travel just now. Mr. Cary of Greenwood pa.s.sed a short while ago."

A negro brought a dripping gourd. Rand put it to his lips and drank the cool water. "Which road," he asked, as he gave back the gourd,--"which road did Mr. Cary take? The main road or the river road?"

The miller looked over his shoulder. "Jim and Bob and Shirley, which road did Mr. Cary take?"

"I didn't notice."

"Reckon he took the main road, Bates."

"I wasn't looking, but you could hear his horse's hoofs, and that wouldn't have been so on the river road."

"'Twuz de main road, sah."

Rand and Young Isham went on, down by the mill and along the bank to the clear, brown, shallow ford, crossed, and paused beneath a guide-post upon the crest of the further bank. The trees hid the mill. Before them stretched the main road, to the right dipped between fern and under arching boughs the narrow, broken river road. "If he went this way,"

said Rand slowly, "I'll go that. Young Isham--"

"Yaas, marster."

"The mare's spent. No need to give her this rough travelling. Take the main road and take it slowly. Let her walk, and when you reach Red Fields, stop and have her fed. I'll go and go fast by the river road."

Master and slave parted, the latter keeping to the sunny thoroughfare, the former plunging into the narrow, heavily shaded track that ran through ravine and over ridge, now beside the water and now in close woods of birch and hemlock. The road was bad, but Selim and his master bent to it grimly, with no nice avoidance of rut or stone or sunken place. To the horse there was before him food and rest, to the man his home. They took at the same pace the much of rough and the little of smooth, and the miles fell behind them. The sun was high, but there were threatening ma.s.ses of clouds, with now and then a distant roll of thunder. The road was solitary, little used at any time, and to-day as lonely a woodland way as might well be conceived.

Rand rode with closed lips, and with the mark between his brows. Pa.s.sion was having its way with him, such pa.s.sion as had lived with him, now drowsing, now fiercely awake, in the days at Richmond between his return from Williamsburgh and the close of the trial. He saw Roselands and Jacqueline beneath the beech tree, but he also saw, and that with more distinctness, the face and form of the man who rode toward Greenwood. He longed for Jacqueline, but he had not forgiven her. He knew that he would when he saw her face--would forgive her with a cry for the waste of the hot, revengeful days, the sleepless nights, since they had parted. Her face swam before him, between the hemlock boughs, but he was not ready yet to forgive, not yet, not until he got to Roselands and she met him with her wistful eyes! He was not a fool; the Absolute within him knew where lay the need for forgiveness, but it was deeply overlaid with human pride and wrath. He was at the old, old trick of anger with another when the fault was all his own. As for Ludwell Cary--

His hand closed with force upon the bridle and his eyes narrowed. "From the first, from that day upon the Justice's Bench, from that day when we gathered nuts together, I must have hated. Now it is warp and woof, warp and woof!" He touched Selim with the spur. "If there were truly a heaven and truly a h.e.l.l, and I, in flames myself, saw him in Abraham's bosom, not to escape from that torment would I call to him, 'Once we were neighbours, once it seemed that we might have been friends--come down, come down and help me, Cary!'"

He laughed, a harsh sound that came back from the rock above him. By no means always, far from even often, a hardened or an evil man, to-day the stream of thought was stirred and sullied from every black pool and weedy depth, and there came floating up folly, waste, and sin. His reason slept. Had he, by some Inquisitor not to be disobeyed, been suddenly obliged to give why and wherefore for his hatred, the trained intellect must have agreed with the questioner. "These causes fail of sufficiency." That was true, but the truth was sophistry. He dealt now with the fact that he hated, and in his mind, as he rode at speed along the river road, he did not even review the past which had given birth to this present. He hated, and his hand closed upon the rein within it as though there was there, in addition, another thread.

A hemlock bough brushed violently against his face. He struck it aside, and, coming to the rocky top of a little rise, checked Selim for a moment of the fresher air. It came like a sigh from the darkening clouds. Rand looked out over field and forest to the ma.s.sed horizon, then shook the reins, and Selim picked his way down the ridge to a woodland bottom through which flowed a stream. Rand heard the ripple of the water. A jutting boulder, crowned by a mountain ash, hid the road before him; he turned it and saw the stream, some yards away, flowing over mossed rocks and beneath a dark fringe of laurel. He saw more than the stream, for a horseman had paused upon the little rocky strand, and, hearing hoofs behind him, had partly turned his own steed. Rand's hand dragged at the bridle-rein and Selim stood still.

For a moment the two men, so suddenly confronted, sat their horses and stared at each other. Between them was a narrow rocky s.p.a.ce, about Rand a heavy frame of leaves, behind Cary the clear flowing stream. Above the treetops the mounting clouds were dark, but the sun rode hot and high in a round of unflecked azure. The silence held for a heartbeat, then Rand spoke thickly: "So you, too, took the river road?"

"Yes. It is rough but short. When did you leave Richmond?"

"As soon as I could. You would have been better pleased, would you not, had I never left it? In your opinion, I should be in durance there, laid by the heels with Aaron Burr!"

"You are not yourself, Mr. Rand."

"Do not push innocence upon the board! When did it begin, your deep interest in my concerns? Before the world was made, I think, for always we have been at odds. But this--this especial matter, Ludwell Cary, this began with the letter which you wrote and signed 'Aurelius'!"

"A letter that told the truth, Mr. Rand."

"That is as may be. Telling the truth is at times an occupation full of danger."

"Is it?"

"The nineteenth of February--ah, I have you there! Was it not--was it not a pleasant employment for a snowy night to sit by the fire and learn news of an enemy--news the more piquant for the lips that gave it!"

"You are speaking, sir, both madly and falsely!"

They pressed their horses more closely together. Cary was pale with anger, but upon Rand's face was a curious darkness. Men had seen Gideon look so, and in old Stephen Rand the peculiarity had been marked. When he spoke, it was in a voice that matched his aspect. "Last October in the Charlottesville court room--even that insult was not insult merely, but a trap as well! It is to be acknowledged that yours was the master mind. I walked into your trap."

"That which I did is not to be called a trap. Your ambition enmeshed you then, as your pa.s.sion blinds you now."

Rand's voice darkened and fell. "Who gave you--who gave you the right of inquisition? What has your soul or your way of thinking to do with mine?

You are not my keeper. I would not take salvation at your hands--by G.o.d, no! Why should the thought of you lie at the bottom of each day? It shall not lie at the bottom of this one! I do not know where first we met, but now we'll part. You have laid your finger here and you have laid it there, now take your hand away!"

"Do you well, and I will," said Cary sternly.

The other drew a labouring breath. "Two weeks ago I was in Williamsburgh, in the Apollo, listening in the heat to idle talk--and you in Richmond, you came at her call! You came down the quiet street, and in between the box bushes, and up the steps under the honeysuckle.

What did you say to her there in the dusk, by the window? You were a Cary--you were part and parcel of the loved past--you had all the shibboleths--you could comfort, commiserate, and counsel! Ha! I wish I might have heard. 'Aurelius' dealing with the forsworn and the absent!

'Here the blot, and there the stain, and yon a rent that's hard to mend.

If there's salvation, I see it not at present.' So you resolved all her doubts, and laid within her hand every link of a long chain. You have my thanks."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARY SAW AND FLUNG OUT HIS ARM, SWERVING HIS HORSE, BUT TOO LATE]

"I will not," said Cary, after a silence,--"I will not be moved by you now, and I will not talk with you now. You are beside yourself. I will say good-day to you, Mr. Rand, and in a less pa.s.sionate hour I will tell you that you have judged me wrongly."

He gathered up his reins and slightly turned his horse. It had been wiser to break into violent speech, or even to deal the other a blow. As it was, the very restraint of his action was spark to gunpowder. Rand's hand fell to a holster, drew and raised a pistol. Cary saw and flung out his arm, swerving his horse, but too late. There was a flash and a report. The reins dropped from Cary's grasp; he sank forward upon his horse's neck, then, while the terrified animal reared and plunged, fell heavily to earth and lay beside the stream with a ball through his heart.

CHAPTER x.x.x

HOMEWARD

The frightened birds rose in numbers from the forest trees. Cary's horse, with a snort of terror, reared and turned. Rand flung himself from Selim and dashed forward to the black's bridle, but he was too late. The horse clattered down the little strand, plunged into the flashing water, and in another moment reached the opposite bank and tore away along the river road.

The sound of hoofs died away. All sound seemed to die, that of the stream, of the birds, of the air in the trees. It was as still as the desert. Very quietly and subtly the outward world put itself in accord with the inward; never again would sky or earth, tree or leaf or crystal water, be what it was an hour ago. Life and the scenery of life had a new aspect.

The murderer moved to the side of the murdered, knelt stiffly, and laid his hand upon the heart. It, too, was still. Rand stood up. The pistol was yet in his clasp; he swung his arm above his head and hurled the weapon into the stream. A pace or two away was a smooth and rounded rock like a giant pebble. He sat down upon it, locked his hands, and looked about him. The sky was blue, the leaves were green, the sun shone hot, the water was at its ancient song--whence, then, came the noxious change, and what was the matter with the universe? Cary lay among the stones, with head thrown back and one arm stretched out as though the hand were pointing. The face was quiet, set in the icy beauty of death, and young. There came a roll of thunder. Rand looked at his clasped hands, opened them, and moved the right one slightly to and fro. There was blood upon his coatsleeve--a great smear. He drew a sighing breath.

He felt as a voyager might who awakened on a planet not his own and at midnight saw the faint star where once he lived. As yet the wonder numbed. The complete cessation of anger, too, was confusing. There was only the plane of existence, grey and featureless. This lasted some moments, then the lights began to play.

He rose from the stone and, going to the water's edge, knelt and tried to wash the blood from his sleeve, but without success. He stood up with a frown. The clouds were high above the treetops, though the sun yet shone. At a little distance Selim was quietly grazing, the birds had returned to their song, the squirrels to their play along the leafy boughs. Rand looked at his watch. "Twelve o'clock--twelve o'clock."

Suddenly a thought struck him. "The pistol, with my name engraved on it--"