Lewis Rand Part 36

When the bend of the road had hidden horse and rider, she left the gate and began her return to the house. Her path lay through a field, through the cedar wood, and through the flower garden. In the field beside a runlet grew ma.s.ses of purple ironweed. She broke a stately piece, half as tall as herself, and with it in her hand left the autumn-coloured field and entered the little wood where the cedars grew dark and close, with the bare, red earth beneath. At the end of the aisle of trees could be seen the bright-hued garden and a fraction of blue heaven. Holding the branch of ironweed before her, Jacqueline pa.s.sed through the wood toward the light of sky and flowers, and came at the edge of the open s.p.a.ce upon a large old tree, twisted like one of those which Dante saw.

As she stepped beneath the dark and spreading boughs a man, leaving the sunlit flower garden for the shadow of the cedars, met her face to face.

"You!" he cried, and stopped short.

The branch of ironweed dropped from her hand. "I did not know that you were at Fontenoy. I have not seen you this long while--except for that moment the other night. Is it not--is it not the loveliest day?"

"I came from the library into the flower garden and on to this wood because I wished to think, to be alone, to gain composure before I returned to the house--and you front me like a spectre in the dimness!

Once before, I entered this wood from the flower garden--and it was dark, dark as it is to-day, though the weather was June. Nor do I, either, count the other night when I came to Roselands as Colonel Churchill's messenger. It has been long, indeed, since we truly met."

"You are not well, Mr. Cary!"

"I am--I am," said Cary. "Give me a moment."

He rested his arm against the red trunk of the cedar and covered his eyes with his hand. Jacqueline stood, looking not at him but at the coloured round of garden. Her heart was fluttering, she knew not why.

The moment that he asked went by and, dropping his arm, he turned upon her a face that he had not yet schooled to calmness.

"The evening of the nineteenth of February," he said. "That was the last time we really met. Do you remember?"

"Yes, I remember. It was the day of the deep snow."

Cary regarded her mutely; then, "Yes, that was the important thing. We all remember it because of the snow. You were learning a new song that you promised to sing to me when I came again. But I never heard it--I never came again."

"I know. Why was that?"

"Do you ask?" he cried, and there was pain and anger in his voice. "I thought it not of you."

The crimson surged over Jacqueline's face and throat. She bent toward him impetuously, with a quick motion of her hands. "Ah, forgive me!" she cried. "I know--I know. I was told of the quarrel next day in the coffee house. I--I was more sorry than I can say. I understood. You could not, after that, come again to the house. Oh, more than almost anything, I wish that you and Lewis were friends! It is wrong to try to make you think that that evening does not live in my memory. It does--it does!"

"I am willing to believe as much," he returned, with a strange dryness.

"I know that you remember that evening, but I hardly think it altogether on my account--"

The colour faded from her cheek. "On whose, then? My husband's?"

"And your guest's."

"You were my guest."

"Oh," cried Cary, "I'll not have it! You shall not so perjure yourself!

He has taken much from me; if your truth is his as well, then indeed he has taken all! I know, I know who was the guest that night, the man with whom you supped, the 'client from the country.'"

She gazed at him with large eyes, her hand upon her heart, then, with an inarticulate word or two, she moved to the gnarled and protruding roots of the cedar and took her seat there facing his troubled figure and indignant eyes. "Who was the guest,--the client from the country?"

"Aaron Burr."

She drew a difficult breath. "How long have you known?"

"Since that night. No--do not be distressed! I learned it not from you,--you kept faithful guard. But when I left you, within the hour I knew it."

"And--and if he were there, what harm?"

Cary regarded her in silence; then, "The letter that I read you that night from your uncle, from one of the heads of your house, from a patriot and a man of stainless honour, that letter was, I think, sufficiently explicit! There was the harm. But Major Churchill's opinion, too, is perhaps forgot."

"No," cried Jacqueline, "no; you do not understand! Listen to me!" She rose, drawing herself to her full height, the red again in her cheek, her eyes dark and bright. "I am going to tell you the truth of this matter. Are you not my friend, whose opinion I value for me and mine?

You are a true and honourable gentleman--I speak with no fear that what I say will ever pa.s.s beyond this wood! Uncle Edward's letter! You think that what was said in Uncle Edward's letter--ay, and what you, too, said in comment--was already known to me that night! Well, it was not. Oh, it is true that Colonel Burr had supped with us, and it is also true that I was most heartily sorry for it! At table, while he talked, I saw only that green field so far away, and General Hamilton bleeding to his death,--yes, and I thought, 'Oh me, what would they say to me at Fontenoy?' But I knew no worse of Colonel Burr than that one deed, and I bore myself toward him as any woman must toward her husband's guest! I am telling you all. He was Lewis's guest, Lewis's correspondent, and this was an arranged meeting. I knew that and I knew no more. After supper they talked together, and I sat alone by the fire in the empty drawing-room. I was bidden--yes, I will tell you this!--I was bidden to keep all visitors out, since it must not be known that Colonel Burr was then in Richmond! You came, and by mistake you were admitted. I was lonely at heart and hungry for news from home, I let you stay, and you read to me what my uncle had to say of the man who was at that instant beneath my roof, engaged in talk with my husband! You read, and then you, too, took up the tale! 'Traitor--treason.... A man whom, had you the power, you would arrest at once.... False to his honour, false to his country.... Traitor and maker of traitors.... And where is your husband to-night?' Well, I did not choose to tell you where was my husband that night--and, since I was frightened, and cold at heart, and knew not what to say, and--and was frightened, I _lied_ to you! But as for that which I now see that you have thought of me--you are much mistaken there! Until you read me Uncle Edward's letter, I did not know what men said of Aaron Burr!"

"I wronged you," said Cary, with emotion. "I doubted you, and I have been most wretched in the doubting. Forgive me!"

"You wronged me, yes!" she cried. "But am I the only one you've wronged? Oh, I see, I see what since that night you have thought of Lewis! It was the next day that you quarrelled in the coffee house! Oh, all these months, have you been mistrusting Lewis Rand, believing him concerned with that man, suspecting him of--of--of _treason_? There, too, you are mistaken. Listen!"

She came closer to him, all colour, light, and fire against the dark cedars. "I am going to tell you. You are generous, open-minded, candid, fair--you will understand, and you will know him better, and you and he may yet be friends! I have that at heart--you would hardly believe how much I have that at heart. Have you been dreaming of Lewis Rand as the aider and abetter of Colonel Burr's designs, whatever they may be! as a conspirator with him against the peace of the country, against Virginia, against the Republic? You have, you have,--I read it in your face! Well, you are wrong. Oh, I will tell you the clean truth! He was tempted--he saw below him the kingdoms of the earth--and oh, remember that around him are not the friendly arms, the old things, the counsel of the past, the watchword in the blood, the voice that cries to you or to my uncles and so surely points to you the road! I will tell the whole truth. I will not say that his mind sees always by the light by which we rest. He has come another way and through another world. How should he think our thoughts, see just with our eyes? He has come through night and hurrying clouds; his way has been steep, and there are stains upon his nature. I that love him will not deny them! He was tempted as Ludwell Cary would not have been. Oh, perhaps if I had not been there, he would have made his compact. But I was there! and I besought him--and that night he swore to me--"

Cary threw out his arm with a cry. "Stop, stop! I take G.o.d to witness that I never thought of this!"

She went on, unheeding. "He swore to me that whatever in that world of his he had thought of Aaron Burr and of his projects, however keenly he had seen the dazzling fortune that lay in that western country, yet, as I had left my world for his, so would he leave that night, in this, his world for mine! And he did so--he did so that night before the dawn!"

She raised her hand to her eyes and dashed away the bright drops. "You have done an injustice. All this time you have thought him what that night you called Aaron Burr. I know not where Colonel Burr is now, but since the night of the nineteenth of February, he and my husband have had no dealings."

"My G.o.d!" said Cary, in a low voice; then, "This is all your a.s.surance?"

"All?" she echoed proudly. "It is enough."

He turned away and, walking to the edge of the wood, stood there, striving for some measure of self-command. His hands opened and shut.

Lewis Rand was a perjured traitor, and it only remained to tell Jacqueline as much.

The garden swam before his eyes, then the mist pa.s.sed and he saw with distinctness. There was a path before him that led away between walls of box to the green and flowery heart of the place, and at the heart was a summer-house. He saw it all again. There was the morning in June, there was the blowing rose, there was the sudden vision--Rand and Jacqueline, hand in hand, with mingled breath! It was into this path that he had turned--it was to this wood that he had stumbled, leaving them there. He felt again the icy shock, the death and wormwood in his soul. They had had the gold, they had loved and embraced while, with his face to the earth, he had lain there beneath that tree where now she stood. Well, Time's globe was turning--there were shadows now for the lovers'

country! Their land, too, would have its night; perhaps an endless night. He entertained the fierce, triumphant thought, but not for long.

He had loved Jacqueline Churchill truly, and her happiness was more to him than his own. When, presently, he reached the consideration of her in that darkened country, moving forever over ash and cinder beneath an empty, leaden heaven, he found the contemplation intolerable. A tenderness crept into his heart, divine enough as things go in the heart of man. The summer-house mocked him still, and the image of Rand walked with armed foot through every chamber of his brain, but he wished no worse for Jacqueline than unending light and love. After the first red moment, it was not possible to him to put out one lamp, to break one flower, in her paradise. It hung like a garden in Babylon over the dust and sorrow of the common way, over the gulf of broken G.o.ds and rent illusions. To jar that rainbow tenure by the raising of his voice, to bring that phantom bliss whirling down to the trodden street, lay not within the quality of the man. He closed his eyes and fought with the memory of that June morning when he and Colonel Churchill had come upon the summer-house; fought with that and with a hundred memories besides, then looked again, and quietly, at the autumn place, bright with late flowers and breathed over by the haunting fragrance of the box. Another moment and he turned back to the wood and the great tree.

Jacqueline sat beneath the cedar, the branch of ironweed again within her hand. She had found it natural that Ludwell Cary should turn away.

It was not easy to struggle against a misconception, to re-marshal facts and revise judgments--often it was hard. She waited quietly, fingering the tufts of purple bloom, her eyes upon the clear sky between the cedar boughs. When at last she heard his step and looked up, it was with an exquisite kindness in her large, dark eyes. "It was a natural mistake,"

she said. "Do not think that I blame you. It is hard to believe in good when we think we see evil."

"I am thankful," he answered, "that you are back in your shrine. Forgive me my error."

She looked at him fixedly. "But concerning Lewis--there, too, was error.

Why should you continue enemies?"

There was a silence, then Cary spoke, sadly and bitterly. "You must leave me that. There are men who are born to be antagonists. When that is so, they find each other out over half the world, and circ.u.mstance may be trusted to square for them a battle-ground. Mr. Rand and I, I fear, will still be enemies."

"Then what I have told you makes no difference--"

"You are mistaken there. What you have told me shall have its weight."

"Why, then," cried Jacqueline, "you cannot judge him as you have been judging throughout a spring and summer! You are just and generous--will you not try to be friends? Ere this men have left off being foes, and many and many a battlefield is now thick with wild flowers. I should be happy if you and Lewis would clasp hands."

Her voice was persuasion's own, and there was a tremulous smile upon her red lips, and a soft light in her dark eyes. "There is a thing that I have long divined," she said, "and that is the strange regard for what you think and what you are that exists deep, deep down in his mind. It lies so deep that he is mainly ignorant that it is there. He thinks that you and he are all inimical. But it is there like an ancient treasure far down in the ocean depths, far below the surface storm. There is in him a preoccupation with you. Often and often, when questions of right and wrong arise, I know that his thought descends to that secret place where he keeps an image of you! I know that he interrogates that image, 'Is it thus or so that you would do?' And if, at times, scornfully or sullenly or with indifference, he does the opposite to what the image says, yet none the less at the next decision will his thought fly to that same judgment bar! It is an attraction that he fights against, a habit of the mind that he would break if he could--but it is there--indeed, indeed it is there! It is despotic--I do not think that he can escape. Ah, if you and he were friends, you would be friends indeed!" She looked at him pleadingly, with her hand outstretched.

Cary shook his head. "You are mistaken," he said harshly. "I am conscious of no place where my spirit and that of Mr. Rand may touch. I cannot explain; we are enemies: you must let us fight it out."