Lewis Rand Part 31

"Yes. She was at Roselands yesterday."

"It's good news. Unity Dandridge needs a master, and there's been no woman at Greenwood this weary while. Ludwell Cary will never marry."

"I see nothing to prevent his marrying."

Mrs. Selden suspended the waving of her fan. "He won't. Don't dislike him so, Lewis. It shows in your forehead."

"Is it so plain as that?" asked Rand. "Well, I do dislike him."

"Enmities are born with us, I suppose," said his visitor thoughtfully.

"I remember a man whom, without reason, I hated. Had I been a man, I would have made it my study to quarrel with him--to force him into a duel--to make way with him secretly if need be! I wouldn't have stopped at murder. And it was all a mistake, as I found when he was dead and I didn't have to walk the same earth with him any more. It's a curious world, is the heart of man. And so you won't be Governor of Virginia?"

"Not now--some later day, perhaps. You see it takes all my time to be a great lawyer!"

"You don't deceive me," said Mrs. Selden, with great dryness. "But good or bad, your reason's your own, and I'll not ask you to satisfy an old woman's curiosity. In my day it was something to be Governor of Virginia." She waved her fan more vigorously than before, and the wind from it blew a paper from the table beside her. She was birdlike in her movements, and before Rand could stoop, she had caught the sheet. "Rows and rows of figures!" she exclaimed. "Is it a sum you're doing?"

He nodded, taking it from her. "Yes; a giant of a sum," he answered easily, and put the paper in his pocket. "Now what is old Carfax doing on your land?"

The consultation over, Mrs. Selden left the office and was handed by Rand into the pumpkin coach. When he had closed the door, he yet stood beside the lowered gla.s.s, his arm, sleeved in fine green cloth, laid along its rim, his strong face, clear cut and dark, smiling in upon his old friend. In his mind was the long and dreary stretch of his boyhood when she and Adam Gaudylock were the only beings towards whom he had a friendly thought. He was one of those men whose minds still hold communion with all the selves that they have left behind. Each in its day had been a throbbing, vital thing, and though at times he found the past obtrusive and wished to throw it off, he could never utterly do so.

There was for him no Lethe. But if he tasted the disadvantages of so compound a self, to others the array enriched the man, making him vibrant of all that had been as well as all that was. It put them, too, to speculation as to how great an army he would gather ere the end, and as to the nature of the last recruit. The visitor from the Three-Notched Road looked at him now with her keen old eyes and laid her mittened hand upon his arm. "Be a good man, Lewis Rand! Be a great one if you will, but be good. That comes first."

Rand touched her withered hand with his lips. "It is women who are good.

And you'll not come to town again until nearly Christmas! I'll ride over before then, and I'll settle Carfax for you. You are going home now?"

"Vinie Mocket is cutting watermelon rind for me. I'll stop there first and then I'll go home! Give my love to Jacqueline. I heard at the Swan that Mr. Jefferson is at Monticello. Is that true?"

"Yes, it is true."

"Humph!" said Mrs. Selden. "Then you'll be at Monticello all hours. I wish you'd ask him for a seedling of that new peach tree."

"I shall not be there all hours," said Rand, "but I'll manage to get the seedling for you. Good-bye, good-bye!"

The coach and four lumbered on down the dusty Main Street. Mrs. Selden, sitting opposite her brown paper bundles, waved her fan and looked out on the parching trees and the straggling, vine-embowered houses. For half an hour there had been a thought at the back of her head, and now it suddenly opened wings. Those strangely arranged lines of figures on that paper which had fluttered to the floor, they formed no sum that Lewis Rand was working! The paper that they covered was not a stray leaf; it had been folded like a letter. There was, she remembered, a piece of wax upon it. It was a day when men of mark often wrote to each other in cipher--there was nothing strange in Lewis Rand so corresponding with whom he chose. Most probably it was a letter from the President--though that could hardly be, seeing that the President was at Monticello! Mrs. Selden looked out of the window towards that low, green mountain which was now rising before her, and frowningly tried to remember some gossamer of speech which had been blown to her upon the Three-Notched Road. A quarrel between Rand and the President?--pshaw! it could hardly have been that! She had a sudden memory of Rand's face ere he grew to manhood, of the ardent eyes and the involuntary gesture of reverence which he used when he spoke of Mr. Jefferson. He could not even speak of him without a certain trembling of the voice. Any one could see the change in him since then, but it was hardly to be believed that the old feeling did not abide at the bottom of the well! Mrs.

Selden was annoyed. The letter might have been from Mr. Madison, or Mr.

Monroe, or Albert Gallatin, or John Randolph,--though John Randolph, too, had quarrelled with the President,--or Spencer Roane, or almost any great Democrat-Republican. It was no business of hers whom it was from.

A colour crept into her withered cheek, and she tapped her black silk shoe upon the floor of the coach. "Yes; a giant of a sum," Lewis had said with great easiness, and then had put the paper out of sight. Why had he not been frank? He might have said to an old friend, "That's a cipher,--you see men will be riddlers still!" and then have laid away the letter as securely as he pleased! Mrs. Selden hated deceit in anything, great or small, and hated to find flaws in folk of whom she was fond. It was a trifle truly, but Lewis Rand had meant to give her a false impression, and that when he knew as well as she how she detested falsity! As for his reasons for concealment,--let him keep his reasons!

She angrily told herself that Jane Selden had no desire to pry into a politician's secrets. But he should have said that the letter was a letter! With which conclusion, the coach having drawn up before Vinie Mocket's door, Mrs. Selden dismissed the matter from her mind, and, descending, was met by Vinie herself at the gate.

"I've got the sweetmeats all cut, Mrs. Selden! Grapes and baskets, and hearts with arrows through them, and vases of roses. I never did any prettier. Won't you come in, ma'am? There's water just drawn from the well."

"Then I'll have a gla.s.s, and I'll just look at the sweetmeats. It is late and I must be going home. Vinie, why don't you have your gate mended?"

"It always was broken," said Vinie. "I'm always meaning to have it mended. Will you sit on the porch, ma'am? It's cooler than inside."

The short path was lined with zinnias and with prince's feather and the porch covered with a shady grapevine. Vinie brought a pitcher beaded with cool well water, and then a salver spread with fanciful shapes cut from the delicate green rind of melon and ready for preserving. Mrs.

Selden drank the well water and approved Vinie's skill; then, "Your brother's gone to North Garden," she said abruptly. "Mr. Rand's affairs must keep him busy."

"Yeth, ma'am. Tom comes and goes," said Vinie wistfully. "I wish he'd be Governor of Virginia."

"Who? Tom?"

The girl laughed. "La, no, ma'am! Mr. Rand." The tone conveyed, pleasantly enough, both the grotesque impossibility of Mr. Tom Mocket aspiring to such a post, and the eminent suitability of its lying in the fortunes of Lewis Rand. Vinie, shy and pink and faintly pretty in her sh.e.l.l calico, leaned against the wooden railing beneath the grapevine, and appealed to her visitor: "I'm always after Tom to make him say he'll run. Tom can do a great deal with him--he always could. I reckon all his friends want him to take the nomination. But Tom says he has a bigger thing in mind--"

"Who? Tom?"

"No, ma'am. Mr. Rand. I forgot! Tom said I wasn't to tell that to any one." Vinie looked distressed. "Won't you have another gla.s.s of water, ma'am? The drouth this year is something awful--all the corn burned up and the tobacco failing. Tom will be back soon from North Garden. Yeth, ma'am, he works right hard for Mr. Rand. The last time he was here he said that whether he ended in a palace or a dungeon, he'd remember Tom somewhere towards the last. Yeth, ma'am, it was a funny thing to say, but he was always mighty fond of Tom."

"Does he come here often?"

"Right often,--when there's work to be done at night, or when he wants to meet some one at a quieter place than the office. He's always known he could use this house as he pleased," Vinie ended simply. "Tom and I would go barefoot over fire for Mr. Rand."

"Well, my dear, I hope he won't ask you to," said her visitor, with dryness. She rose. "I've a long drive before me, so I'll not sit longer.

Who's that--I left my gla.s.ses in the coach--who's that speaking to Gabriel?"

"It's Mr. Gaudylock."

"Gaudylock! He's not been in Albemarle for a year! When did he come back?"

"Just the other day, ma'am." A smile crept over Vinie's face. "He brought me a comb like the Spanish women wear. He's a mighty kind man--Mr. Gaudylock."

The hunter and Mrs. Selden met at the broken gate. "I am glad to see you back, Adam," she said. "You're a rolling stone, but all the same we're fond of you in Albemarle."

"I'm surely fond of Albemarle, ma'am," answered Adam.

"When I've rolled long and far enough and the moss is ready to gather on me, I reckon I'll roll back to a hillside in the old county. I'm sorry to see the drouth so bad. We've had a power of rain over the mountains."

"Not long since, I had a letter from a kinsman of mine in Louisiana, and he spoke of you. He said that up and down the rivers you were known, that the villages made it a holiday when you came to one, and that in the forest your name was like Robin Hood's."

"Robin Hood? Who's he?" demanded Adam; then, "Oh, you mean the man in the poetry book. I reckon he never saw the Mississippi in flood, and his forest would have laid on the palm of your hand. Yes, I'm known out there." He gave his mellow laugh. "A letter of introduction from Adam Gaudylock is a pretty good letter, whether it's to the captain of an ark, or a Creek sachem, or a Natchitoches settler, or a soldier at Fort Stoddert. Let me help you in, ma'am."

He handed her to her seat with the sure lightness and the woodsman's grace which was part of his charm, then gave her order to Gabriel. The coach turned and went back through the Main Street, and so on, in the yellow afternoon, to the Three-Notched Road. As she pa.s.sed again the green door, Mrs. Selden looked out, but the door was fast and the shutters closed behind the blush roses. "He must have gone home early,"

she said to herself, and all the way along the Three-Notched Road she thought of Lewis Rand and his career.

Rand had not gone home, but was walking down the street towards the Eagle and the post-office. Presently the stage would be in, and he carried a letter the posting of which he did not care to entrust to another. He walked lightly and firmly, in the glow before sunset, and as he approached the post-office steps he met, full face, coming from the other end of the town, Colonel Richard and Major Edward Churchill and Fairfax Cary. They were afoot, having left their horses at the Swan while they waited for the incoming stage. The post-office had a high white porch, and on this were gathered a number of planters and townsfolk, while others lounged below on the trodden gra.s.s beneath three warped mulberries. All these, suspending conversation, watched the encounter.

Rand lifted his hat, and Fairfax Cary answered the salute with cold punctilio, but the two Churchills, the one with a red, the other with a stony countenance, ignored their nephew-in-law. The four reached together the post-office steps, a somewhat long and wide flight, but not broad enough to accommodate a blood feud. Rand made no attempt at speech, conciliatory or otherwise, but with a slight gesture of courtesy stood aside for the two elder men to pa.s.s and precede him. The smile upon his lip was half bitter, half philosophic, and as they pa.s.sed, he regarded them aslant but freely. The burly, heated figure of the Colonel was trembling with anger, while Major Edward, striving for indifference, achieved only a wonderful, grey hauteur. They had been talking of the drouth, and they talked on while they went by Rand, but their voices sounded hollow like drums in a desert. They took as little outward notice of the living man whose fate entwined with theirs as if he had been a bleached bone upon the desert sands. They went on and, upon the porch above, mingled with a group of friends and neighbours.

Rand put himself in motion, and he and Fairfax Cary mounted step for step. The elder man looked aside at his companion of the moment, slender and vigorous, boyishly handsome in his dark riding-dress. He harboured no enmity towards the younger Cary, and for Unity he had only admiration and affection. His mind was full of recesses, and in one of them there hovered on bright wings a desire for the esteem of these two.

In his day-dreams he steadily conferred upon them benefits, and in day-dreams he saw their feeling for him turn from prejudice to respect and fondness. Now, after a moment's hesitation, he spoke. "_I_ have no quarrel, Mr. Cary, with a happiness that all the county is glad of. Miss Dandridge and my wife are the fondest friends. May I offer you my congratulations?"

He had ceased to move forward, and the other paused with him. The younger Cary was thinking, "Now if I were Ludwell, I'd accept this with simplicity, since, d.a.m.n him, in this the man's sincere." He looked at the toe of his boot, swallowed hard, and then faced Rand with a sudden, transfiguring brightness of mien. "I thank you, Mr. Rand. Miss Dandridge is an angel, and I'm the happiest of men. Will you tell Mrs. Rand so, with my best regards?" He hesitated a moment, then went on: "No sign of rain! This weather is calamitous! I hope that Roselands has not suffered as Greenwood has done?"

"But it has," said Rand, with a smile. "The corn is all burned, and the entire state will make but little tobacco this year. Miss Dandridge is better than an angel; she's a very n.o.ble woman--I wish you both long life and happiness!"

They said no more, but mounted the remaining steps to the level above.

Fairfax Cary joined the two Churchills and their friends, while Rand, after a just perceptible hesitation, entered the small room where the postmaster was filling, with great leisureliness, the leather mail-bag.

Besides himself there was no other there; even the window gave not upon the porch, but on a quiet, tangled garden. He took the letter from his breast pocket and stood looking at it. The postmaster, after the first word of greeting, went on with his work, whistling softly as he handled the stiffly folded, wax-splashed missives of the time. The wind was in the west, and the fitful air came in from the withered garden and breathed upon Rand's forehead. He stood for perhaps five minutes looking at the letter, then with a curious and characteristic gesture of decision he walked to the high counter and with his own hand dropped it into the mail-bag, then waited to see it covered by the drift from the postmaster's fingers. "Don't the world move, sir?" said the latter worthy. "It hasn't been so long since there wasn't any mail for the West anyhow, and now look at this bag! Kentucky, and this new Tennessee, and Mississippi, and Louisiana, and the Lord knows what besides! Letters coming thick and fast to Mr. Jefferson, and letters going out from every one who has a dollar or an acre or a son or brother in those G.o.d-forsaken parts where Adam Gaudylock says they don't speak English and you walk uphill to the river! I like things snug, Mr. Rand, and this country's too big and this mail's too heavy. You have correspondents out there yourself, sir."

"Yes," answered Rand, with indifference. "As you say, Mr. Smock, all the world writes letters nowadays. Certainly it is natural that from all over the West men should write to Mr. Jefferson."