Lewis Rand Part 52

Rand, leaning against the mantel, gazed with sombre eyes at her strained and motionless form. As he stood there, his mind began to move through the galleries where she was painted. He saw her, a child, beneath the apple tree, and in her blue gown that day in the Fontenoy garden, and then again beneath the apple tree, a child no longer, but the woman whom he loved. He saw her face above him the afternoon they laid him in the blue room, and he saw her singing to her harp in the Fontenoy drawing-room,--

"The thirst that from the soul doth rise--"

He saw the next morning--the summer-house, the box, the mockingbird in the poplar tree, the Seven Sisters rose--and then their marriage eve, and that fair first summer on the Three-Notched Road, and all the three years of their wedded life. The picture of her was everywhere, and not least in the house on Shockoe Hill. He saw her as she had been one snowy evening in February, and he saw her as she had looked the hour of his return from Williamsburgh--the pleading, the pa.s.sion, and the beauty.

And now--now--

The wind sighed again without the windows, and Jacqueline drew a shuddering breath. He spoke. "Jacqueline!"

She moved slightly. "Yes, Lewis."

"The night is quiet, after the storm. He lies at rest beside the stream.

This morning he will be found, lifted tenderly, lamented, mourned. It is not a gruesome place. I remember trees and fluttering birds. He sleeps--he sleeps--like Duncan he sleeps well at last. Is he to be so pitied?"

She moaned, "Yes--but you also, you also! Oh, break, break!"

"Listen, Jacqueline. It lacks but an hour of dawn. When it is day, you may give me up. Rouse Joab and send for the sheriff and your uncles and for Fairfax Cary. I will dress and await them in the library. Indeed, you may do it now--there's no need to wait for dawn."

She rose from her chair and went the length of the room, resting at last, with raised arms and covered face, against the farthest window. He spoke on. "If all thought alike, Jacqueline, if all saw action and consequence with one vision--but we do not so, no, not on this earth!

You and I are sundered there. Perhaps it is to my shame that it is so,--I cannot tell. What you asked for this afternoon, that confession, that decision, that accord with justice and acceptance of penalty, I cannot give freely and of conviction, Jacqueline. Why did you think I had that exaltation of mind? I have it not; no, nor one man in five hundred thousand! The man I--murdered--perhaps possessed it; indeed, I think that he did. But I--I do not own it, nor can I see matters with another's vision. I see a struggle to prevent disgrace and disaster, to retrieve and hold an endangered standing-room--a struggle determined and legitimate. I am capable of making it. But though I'll avow that another man's vision transcends mine, I'll dispute with him the power of loving!

I love you with a pa.s.sion as deep, strong, and abiding as if I, too, walked in that rarer air. I am of the earth and rooted in the earth, but I love you utterly. If you want this thing, I will give it to you. It was unmanly of me to say but now, 'You may do this, you may do that, and I will not lift a finger to prevent you.' I will not leave it to you, Jacqueline. I will awaken Joab and send him with a note to your uncles."

He moved toward the door, but before he could reach it his wife was before him, her weight thrown against him, her raised hands thrusting him back to the hearth. She shook her head, and her long hair shadowed her; she strove for utterance, but could find only a strangled "No--no"; then, still clinging to him, she slipped to her knees and so to her face, and lay there in a swoon in the red zone of the firelight.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

THE BROTHERS

At Fontenoy the deluging rain and pitchy blackness of the night sufficiently warranted Colonel d.i.c.k's a.s.sertion that it was an evening for a sensible man to stay where he was, and that a bowl of punch and wedding-talk and Unity at the harpsichord were to be preferred to a progress to Greenwood through such a downpour and a foot of mud.

Ludwell!--Ludwell wouldn't be there anyway. He was a man of sense and would be sleeping at Red Fields, if indeed he had ever left Malplaquet.

Fairfax Cary was persuaded, and after a very happy evening in the drawing-room, went to bed and to sleep in the blue room.

Dressing, next morning, he gazed around him. The room was familiar to him, and he had a liking for it, from the mandarin on the screen to General Was.h.i.+ngton on the wall. The storm had pa.s.sed away early in the night, and it was now a lovely morning, clear-washed, fresh, and fragrant. He looked out of the window toward the blue hills, and down into the garden where autumn flowers were in bloom, and as he dressed he hummed an air that Unity had sung.

"Give me pleasure, give me pain, Give me wine of life again!

Death is night without a morn, Give the rose and give the thorn."

Downstairs he found Miss Dandridge and Major Edward upon the wide porch.

The wind had torn away a great bough from one of the poplars, and Colonel d.i.c.k and Deb upon the drive below were superintending its removal. Birds were singing, delicate airs astir. "It's going to be the divinest day!" said Unity, and led the way to the dining-room.

Breakfast went happily on with talk of politics, county affairs, and now and then from Colonel d.i.c.k a sly allusion to the approaching marriage.

The meal was nearly over when old Cato, coming in from the hail, said something in a low voice to his master. Colonel Churchill pushed back his chair. "Excuse me a moment, Unity, my dear. There's a man wants to see me."

He left the room. Fairfax Cary and Major Edward continued a discussion of the latest Napoleonic victory; Unity played with her spoon and thought of her wedding-gown; Deb drank her gla.s.s of milk and planned a visit with Miranda to a blasted pine tree, lived in, all the quarter agreed, by a ha'nt that came out at night, like a ring of smoke out of a great black pipe!

Colonel d.i.c.k's figure appeared for an instant in the doorway. "Edward, come here a moment, will you?"

"A thousand hussars, and the thing went off like flaming tinder,"

finished Major Edward. He laid down his napkin and arose. "Excuse me, Unity. Very well, d.i.c.k," and left the room.

"Unity," enquired Deb. "Are there any ha'nts?"

"No, honey, no!"

"Just make believe?"

"Just make believe."

"Oh!" exclaimed Deb, and fell to wondering if the ha'nt would come out if only she and Miranda sat long enough before the tree. It might get hungry.

"Will you have another cup?" asked Unity of the guest, her hand upon the coffee-urn. "No? Then let us go and see what is the matter. They are not coming back."

"I want," whispered Fairfax Cary, as they left the table, "to talk to you about--about two weeks from now. Don't you think it would be sweet and shady this morning, under the catalpa tree?"

He managed to touch her hand, and she turned her velvety eyes upon him with both laughter and moisture in their black depths. "I've chosen the place for Unity Dandridge's grave. Would you like to see it? It's underneath the flowering almond."

Fairfax Cary glanced behind him. The servants were out of the room; Deb was gathering crumbs for the birds. "Give me one kiss! If you knew how much I love you! The world's tuned to-day just to that."

"Such an old tune! The world has other things to think of and other airs than that!"

They went out into the hail. It was empty, but through the open doors voices sounded from the porch at the back of the house. Another moment and Major Edward appeared, stood still at the sight of Cary, then came on up the hall to meet the two. He looked intensely grey and meagre, and his thin lips twitched. "Fairfax," he said,--"Fairfax, look here--"

The other, who had been laughing, grew suddenly grave. "I have never heard you, sir, use a voice like that. Has anything happened?"

Major Edward made a little noise in his throat, then stiffened himself as if on parade. "There may have been an accident. It looks that way, Fair. It was Eli who came."

"Eli! What has happened at Greenwood? Ludwell's home?

"Unity, my dear," said the Major, "let him come with me. Let's go into the library, Fair."

But Fairfax Cary was halfway down the hail. The Major hastened after him, and at the porch door laid a thin old hand upon the other's arm.

"Fair, my boy, you are going to need all a man's courage. Think of d.i.c.k and me as of Fauquier Cary's--as of your father's--old, old friend Come, now."

They found on the square porch at the back of the house, Colonel Churchill, the negro Eli, and a white man, roughly dressed. The first, seated on the steps, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, looked up with a gasp. "Fair, Fair--"

Cary spoke with steadiness "What has brought you here, Eli? Mr. Ludwell came home last night?"

Eli, trembling violently, and of the ashen hue that a negro takes in terror, tried to answer, but at first there came only jabbered and meaningless words. He fell on his knees, and finally became coherent.

"Ma.r.s.e Fair--Ma.r.s.e Fair--ain' I done lif' you bofe in dese ahms w'en you wuz jes' little fellers--he er lot de oldes' an' you nuttin' but er baby, toddlin' after him eberywhar he went! Ain' I done ride behin' you bofe dese yeahs an' yeahs? Oh, Gawd-a-moughty! O Lawd, hab mercy--"

Cary took him by the shoulder. "Eli, stop that crying out and tell me at once what is the matter! What has happened to Mr. Ludwell?"

"I'll tell you, Fair," answered the Major, in a shaking voice. "The negro can't do it. Ludwell did not come home last night, and this morning James Wilson, here, found Saladin--"

"Far up the river road, near my house," said the man upon the steps.

"'Twas just about daybreak. I didn't know, sir, whose horse he was, so I put him in my stable. Then my son and me and Joe White, a neighbour of mine, we set out down the river road."