Lewis Rand Part 54

"Upon the main road, sir?"

"The main road, of course. As I did not do so, I concluded that the approaching storm had caused him to hasten. It was very threatening, and the few that my boy and I pa.s.sed were hurrying to shelter. At Red Fields I paused for a moment"--He looked toward a well-known planter, standing near. "Certainly, Mr. Rand," said the latter promptly. "We tried to make you stay out the storm, but you would be getting home."

"From Red Fields my boy and I rode on into town. I stopped at my partner's house to tell his sister when to expect him home from Richmond, and at the Eagle I drew rein for a moment and exchanged greetings with two or three gentlemen upon the porch. The rain was close at hand, and my boy and I pushed on to Roselands--where, next morning, a neighbour brought the news of this murder. I corroborate, sir, as I have been called to do, the statements of Mr. Forrest and Mr. Bates that it was the impression of all who greeted him as he pa.s.sed that Mr. Cary was riding home by the usual road--the main road. I have nothing further to offer, sir."

"Thank you, Mr. Rand," said the coroner, and the witness left the stand.

He was followed by the keeper of a small ordinary upon the main road, halfway between the ford and Red Fields. "No, sir, Mr. Ludwell Cary didn't travel by the main road. I sat in my door with my gla.s.s and my pipe almost the whole day--until after the storm broke, anyhow. There wasn't any custom--folk seemed to know it was going to rain like Noah's flood. There was hardly anybody on the road after about ten. Yes, I might have shut my eyes now and then, though I don't doze over my pipe and gla.s.s half as much as some people say I do. Anyhow, Mr. Ludwell Cary didn't ride that way--events prove that, don't they, sir? Yes, I remember well enough when Mr. Rand pa.s.sed. I wasn't dozing then, for the negro boy spoke to me, said there was going to be a big storm. It must have been after midday, Mr. Rand?"

"Yes, something after midday."

The witness knew, for he always had his gla.s.s at noon. He might have been dozing when the negro spoke to him, but he spoke plain enough.

"'It's going to be an awful storm,' he said, and then I believe you said something, sir, though I don't remember what it was, and you both rode on. I wasn't that sleepy that I couldn't see straight. That's all that I know, Mr. Galt."

Two or three other witnesses were called, but they were of the main road, and the main road had nothing to show further than that it had been travelled upon by Lewis Rand and his negro boy. They had not seen Mr. Ludwell Cary since he rode to Richmond early in the summer. Yes, they were sure they had seen Mr. Rand and his negro boy--but the clouds were dark, and the dust blowing so that you had to hold your head down, and people were thinking of getting indoors. The boy was riding a mare with a white foot.

"I think we can leave the main road, gentlemen," declared the coroner.

"Now the river road and the stream where this thing was done--"

Indian Run--where did Indian Run come from or lead to, and who might have been upon that lonely road, or lurking in the laurel and hemlock that clothed the banks of the stream? Three miles up the water was a camping-ground used by gypsies; at a greater distance down the stream a straggling settlement of poor whites, long looked at askance by the county. It might be that some wandering gypsy, some Ishmaelite with a grudge--The enquiry turned again to Fairfax Cary.

"When you went on, Mr. Cary, from Elm Tree, you too supposed that your brother would follow by the same road? You thought--"

"I did not think at all," answered Cary harshly. "I was lost in my own self and my own concerns. I was a selfish and heedless wretch, and I hurried away without a thought or care. What he told me I forgot at the time. But I have remembered it since. He told me that he would take the river road."

"And on your own way home you repeated that to no one?"

"To no one. I never spoke of him, I do not know that I ever thought of him from Elm Tree to Greenwood. Oh, my brother!"

A sigh like the wind over corn went through the room. The coroner bent forward. "Mr. Cary, can you think of any one who bore him ill-will--a runaway negro, perhaps, or some vagrant who might have been along that stream?"

"No. His slaves loved him. We had no runaways. I do not believe there is a man on Indian Run who would have touched him."

"Mr. Cary, had he any enemy?"

"He had one. He sits yonder. You have heard his testimony."

The court room murmured again. The old rivalry between Lewis Rand and Ludwell Cary, the antagonism of years, and the fact of a duel were sufficiently in men's minds--but what of it all? The duel was a year gone by; political animosities in Virginia might be, and often were, bitter enough, but they led no further than to such a meeting. The coroner looked disturbed. The murmur was followed by a curious hush; but if for an instant an idea was poised in the air of the court room, it did not descend, it was banished as preposterous. The moment's silence was broken by Lewis Rand. From his place at the side of the room he spoke with a grave simplicity and straightforwardness, characteristic and impressive, familiar to most there who had heard him before now, in this court room, on questions of life and death. "Everything is to be pardoned to Mr. Fairfax Cary's most natural grief. My testimony, sir, is as I gave it."

The coroner's voice broke in upon a deep murmur of a.s.sent. "I presume, Mr. Cary, that you bring no accusation against Mr. Rand?"

Fairfax Cary looked from under the hand with which, as he sat, he shaded his brow. "I have, here and now, no sufficient proof whereon to base accusation of any man. I will only say that I shall seek such proof."

A little longer, and the proceedings were over. The crowd dispersed, unsatisfied, hungry for further details and hazardous of solutions. The better cla.s.s went home, but others hung long about the Court House yard, reading the notices pasted upon the Court House doors, the "WHEREAS upon the seventh day of September and on the river road where it is crossed by Indian Run"--commenting upon the rewards offered, relating this or that story of the Greenwood Carys, and recalling every murder in Albemarle since the Revolution. "Dole was shot down like that, three years ago, in North Garden--but then, Fitch was suspected from the first. Fitch had been heard to swear he'd do it, and they knew, too, it was his gun, and a child had seen him come and go. Lewis Rand was for the State. Don't you remember the speech he made? No; Tom Mocket made it, but Mr. Rand wrote it! Either way it hung Fitch. Curious, wasn't it, that pa.s.sage between Mr. Rand and Fairfax Cary? D'ye suppose he thought--d'ye suppose Fairfax Cary thought--"

"It isn't what a man thinks," stated a surly farmer. "It's what a man can prove."

"Well, he couldn't prove that if he tried till doomsday!" cried another.

"That's not Lewis Rand's trade!"

"You're right there, Jim," a.s.sented the group. "WHEREAS upon the seventh day of September and on the river road where it is crossed by Indian Run--"

Upon a September afternoon, clear and fair, full of the ripeness and strength of the year, the body of Ludwell Cary was given back to the earth. There was a service at Saint Anne's, after which, carried by faithful slaves and followed by high and low of the county, he was borne to the Cary burial-ground at Greenwood. It crowned a low hill at no great distance from the oaks about the house--a place of peace and quietness, with bird-haunted trees and a tangle of old flowers. Ludwell Cary was laid beside Fauquier Cary, the "Dust to dust" was spoken, and the grave filled in. All mourned who heard the falling earth, and the negroes wailed aloud, but Fairfax Cary stood like a rock. It was over.

The throng melted away, leaving only the house servants, two or three old and privileged friends, and the living Cary. The last spoke to the first, thanked them, and sent them away; then, addressing himself to the two Churchills and the old minister, asked that he be left alone. They went, Major Edward turning at once, the others following more slowly He watched them below the hill-top, then sat down beside the grave that was so raw and red for all the masking flowers.

At sunset Eli and Major Edward, grey and anxious, watching from the shadow of the oaks, saw him leave the burying-ground, look back once as he closed the gate, and come slowly down the hill. When he reached the house, and, after going to his own room, came down into the library, it was to find Major Churchill ensconced in an old chair by the western window, with a book in his hand. He looked up with eyes yet keen and dark beneath their s.h.a.ggybrows. "If you'll allow me, Fair, I'll borrow this Hobbes of yours. It is printed larger than mine, and it has no d.a.m.ned annotation!"

Major Edward spent the night at Greenwood, and the two played chess until very late. The next morning, coming stiffly down at an early hour, he found no host. Fairfax Cary, he discovered on enquiry, had ordered his horse the night before, and as soon as it was light, had ridden off alone. Major Churchill pa.s.sed the morning as best he might. He looked once from the windows toward the little graveyard on the hill, and thought of going there, then shook his head and pressed his lips together. He was old, and now, when he could, he evaded woe. The young had fibre and nerve to squander; brittle folk must walk lightly. The Major stared at the feathery trees that marked the place. The green became a blur; he stamped his foot upon the floor with violence, said something between his teeth, and turned from the window to a desolate contemplation of the backs of books.

It was after midday when Fairfax Cary returned. He came in, white and steady, apologized for his absence, and ordered dinner. The two ate little, hardly spoke, but drank their wine. As they pa.s.sed out of the dining-room, the elder said, "You have been--"

"Yes. The river road."

They reentered the library and, at Cary's suggestion, sat down again at the chess-table. They played one game, then fell idle, the young man staring straight before him at some invisible object, the elder watching him covertly but keenly.

"When," said the Major at last,--"when will you come with me, Fair, to Fontenoy?"

The other shook his head. "I do not know. Not now. I must not keep you here, sir."

"I have little to occupy me at home. You will tell me when I can do nothing for you here. You must remember, Fair, that d.i.c.k and Nancy and Unity and I and even little Deb want you, very heartily and lovingly want you, with us there. Unity--"

The young man took from his breast a folded note. "I have this from Unity. Read it. It is like her."

He unfolded it and gave it to the Major, who read the line it contained.

FAIRFAX,--I will marry you to-morrow if you wish. I know--I know it is lonely at Greenwood. UNITY.

Major Churchill cleared his throat. "Yes, it is like her. And why not, Fair? Upon my soul, I do advise it! I advise it strongly. Not to-morrow, perhaps, but next day or the next. It can be quietly arranged--there could have been no wiser suggestion! Take her at her word, Fair."

Cary shook his head, thrust the note back in its place, and, rising with a quivering sigh, walked to the window. He stood there for some moments, his brow pressed to the pane, then returned to the table and, standing before the Major, spoke with harsh pa.s.sion "Is marriage, sir, a thing for me to think of now? No! not even marriage with Unity Dandridge. To marry now--to forget with all possible haste--to lie close and warm and happy and leave him there, cold, alone, and unavenged! No. I'll not do that. Wedding-bells, even slowly rung, would sound strangely, I think, to his ears. And as for that murderer, he might say when he heard them, 'Are the dead so soon forgot? Then up, heart! for this bridegroom will not trouble me.' Major Churchill, I will live alone at Greenwood until I have proof which will convince a judge and jury that my brother was not the only man who spurred from that ford by the river road! Lewis Rand may wind and double, but I'll scotch him yet, there by Indian Run! I'll transfix him there, there on that very strand, and call the world to see the man who murdered Ludwell Cary! When that's done, I'll rest, maybe, and think of happiness."

Major Churchill sat back in the deep old armchair and rested his head upon his hand. The hand was a trembling hand; the old soldier, grey and stark, with his pinned-up sleeve, looked suddenly a beaten soldier, conquered and fugitive. The young man saw the shaking hand. "You need no proof, sir," he said harshly. "I know that you know. You knew there beside the stream, the day we found him."

"Yes, Fair."

"And did you not know that I knew?"

"I have not been perfectly certain, but--yes, I believed you to know."

"I will not say that, knowing me,--for until now I have hardly known myself,--but knowing my father, sir, could you look for another course from his son? My brother's blood cries from the ground. There is no rest and no peace for me until his murderer pays!"

"Yes, Fair."

"I cannot tell you what my brother was to me. Brother of the flesh and of the spirit too--David--Jonathan. His friends mine and his enemies mine, his honour mine--"

"Yes, Fair. It was so I loved Henry Churchill."

The young man checked his speech, gazed at his guest a moment in silence, and turned away. The quiet held in the old room where bygone Carys looked from the walls, but at last the Major spoke with violence.

"Don't think that I do not hate that man! Spare him, in himself, one iota of the penalty--not I! Cheat justice, see the law futile to protect an outraged people, stay the hangman's hand--am I one to will that? No man can accuse me of a forgiving spirit! I, too, loved your brother; I, too, believe in the blood debt! Ask me of this man himself, and I say, 'Right! Let him have it to the hilt--death and shame!' But--but--"