Lewis Rand

THE BLUE ROOM

The news of the accident to Lewis Rand spread far and wide. Both as a lawyer and as Mr. Jefferson's adjutant he had become in two years' time a marked man. Federalist and Republican were agreed that the recent election was but a foot in the stirrup. Another two years might see him—almost anywhere. He was likely to ride far and to ride fast. To the Federalists his progress from the tobacco-fields to the Elysian Heights of office was but another burning sign of the degeneracy of the times and the tendencies of Jefferson. On the other hand, the Republicans quoted the Rights of Man and the Declaration of Independence, and made the name of Lewis Rand as symbolic as a liberty pole. He was bon enfant, bon Républicain. Virginia, like Cornelia, numbered him among her starry gems. He was of the Gracchi. He was almost anything Roman, Revolutionary, and Patriotic that the mind of a perfervid poet could conjure up and fix in a corner of the Argus or the Examiner. Every newspaper in the state mentioned the accident, and in a letter from a Gentleman of Virginia, an account of it was read by the subscribers to the Aurora.

All this was somewhat later, when the stage-coach and the mail-rider had distributed the slow-travelling news. In the mean time Lewis Rand lay in the curtained bed in the blue room at Fontenoy, and wondered at that subtle force called Chance. The blue roses upon the hangings, the blue willows and impossible bridges of the china, the apple-cheeked moon surmounting the face of the loud-ticking clock were not more fantastically unnatural than that he, Lewis Rand, should be lying there between the linen sheets, in the sunny morning stillness of the fourth day after his fall, listening for the stir of the awakening house, for one step upon the stair, and for one voice. He was where he had desired to be; he was at Fontenoy; but the strangeness of his being there weighed upon him. He would hear the step and the voice; chance had brought him past every ward of a hostile house, and had laid him there in the blue room to be generously pitied and lavishly cared for; chance had given him leverage. To each the chaos of his own nature; if, with Rand, the Spirit brooded none too closely over the face of the deep, yet was there light enough to tread by. As he lay in the blue room, watching the early sunlight steal through the window and lay a golden finger on his bed, he had no sense of triumph, no smugness of satisfaction over the attainment of his dream. He thought of how often as a boy, working under the glare of the sun, in the shadeless tobacco-fields, he had dreamed of the poplars of Fontenoy, the cool porches, the cool rooms, the rest from labour, and the books, of all that the little girl named Jacqueline had told him, sitting under the apple tree beside the stream that flowed between a large and a small farm on the Three-Notched Road. As a boy, he would have been puzzled to choose between "Will you go to Heaven?" and "Will you go to Fontenoy?" The one seemed as remote, as unattainable, and as happy as the other. The advantage was possibly with Fontenoy, for he could picture that to himself. He could not have described the mansions in the skies, but, thanks to Jacqueline, he knew every room at Fontenoy. Before he was laid in it, he had known the blue room, the roses on the curtains, and the peacock-feathered mandarin forever climbing a dull yellow screen. The library should be below, with the bookshelves, and the glass door opening on the snowball bushes. Outside his window was the flower garden. He had seen the garden with his bodily eyes, for there was the morning he had spent at Fontenoy. In the desert of his hardly-treated, eager, and longing youth the place and the life of which the girl who came to Mrs. Selden's had told him was become the vision of an oasis and a paradise. The magic word was Fontenoy. If Gideon Rand or Adam Gaudylock chanced to pronounce it, it was as though the Captain of the Thieves had said, "Open Sesame!" The cave door opened, and he saw strange riches.

That day at Fontenoy! He tried to recall it, but it did not stand out in his memory; it was curiously without edge. Trying to remember was like remembering a dream, delicious and evasive. The child named Jacqueline had changed to a girl named Jacqueline. She had spoken to him shyly, and he had answered with much greater shyness, with a reddening cheek and a stumbling tongue. He remembered her dress, a soft blue stuff that he was afraid of touching, and he remembered how burning was his consciousness of his coarse shoes, his shirt of osnaburg, the disreputable hat upon his sunburnt hair. Then they had walked in the garden, and sat on the steps of a summer house, and he had been very happy after all. And then a black boy had come to tell him that the Colonel was ready with the receipt he was to carry back to the Three-Notched Road. He said good-bye with great awkwardness, and went away, and he saw the girl no more for a long, long time, for so long a time that insensibly her image faded. It was in the October of that year that he went to Richmond with Gideon, and met Mr. Jefferson in the bookshop by the bridge.

The years that followed that meeting! Rand, lying still upon his pillows, with his eyes upon the yellow mandarin, passed them in review,—well, they had not been wasted! Usually he saw the approximate truth about himself, and he knew that these years of toil and achievement were honourable to him. He thought of all those years, and then he turned his head upon the pillow and faced through widely opened windows the misty, fragrant morning. His mind turned with suddenness to a morning two summers past. His father, who had lived to take grim pride in the son he had been used to thwart, was six months dead, and he himself was living alone, as he yet lived alone, in the small house upon the Three-Notched Road. He lived there with his ambitions, which were many. That morning he had gone, without knowing why, down through the tobacco-field to the stream which parted his patrimony from his neighbour's grassy orchard. And there, beneath the apple tree, across the clear, brown water stood Jacqueline. He forgot her no more. "Fontenoy" was again the magic word, the "Open Sesame," but Jacqueline was the wealth of all the world. He was young, and he was a man of strong passions who had lived, perforce, a rigid, lonely, and ascetic life. He had dreamed of most things, and he had dreamed of love. It was the hectic vision of a hued pool. Love, entered, proved to be the sea, boundless and strong, salt, clean, and the nurse of life. He loved Jacqueline to the end of his life; he never swerved from allegiance to the sea.

For a summer month he saw her almost every day,—twice or thrice beneath the apple tree beside the stream, and at other times in Mrs. Jane Selden's parlour, porch, or little friendly garden. He did not tell Jacqueline that he loved her; he had not dared so much. The fact that he was the son of Gideon Rand while she was a Churchill mattered little to his common sense and his Republicanism. His blood was clean. He had never heard of a Rand in prison or a beggar. Moreover, he meant to make his name an honoured one. But he was a poor man, though he meant also to become a rich man, and he was a Republican, with no thought of changing his party. Politics might not matter, perhaps, to Miss Churchill, but they mattered decidedly to her uncles and guardians, whom she loved and obeyed. Wealth and birth mattered too, to them. Lewis Rand set no great store upon obedience for obedience' sake, but he divined that Miss Churchill rarely vexed those she loved. He had an iron will, and he set his lips, and resolved that this was not the time to speak of that ocean on whose shore he stood. He meant that the time should come. The probability of a rejection he looked full in the face, and found that he did not believe in it, though when he looked as fully at his assurance, that, too, became incredibly without foundation. Jacqueline's spirit might dwell in the mountains, and never dream of the sea; she gave him no sign, and he could not tell. The summer month went by; she returned to Fontenoy, and he saw her no more for a long time. When she was gone, he fell upon work like a bereaved lion upon his prey. As best he might, he would make that hunting do. He worked at first with lonely fury, though at last with zest. Only by this road, he knew, could he enter the gates of Fontenoy. Success begets success; let him make himself a name, and the gates might open! When he was not in court, or not most diligently preparing a case, or not instructing Tom Mocket, who was on the way to become his partner, or not busied with affairs of his patron, or not keenly observant of the methods of the poor whites whom he hired to tend his tobacco, he read. He read history: Clarendon, Gibbon, and Hume; Aristotle, Bacon, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Voltaire, Rousseau, and Tom Paine. His Ossian, Cæsar, and Plutarch belonged to his younger days. A translation of the Divina Commedia fell into his hands, and once he chanced to take up, and then read with the closest attention, Godwin's Caleb Williams. From Monticello he received the hot and clamorous journals of the day, Federalist and Republican. He studied the conditions they portrayed with the intentness of a gladiator surveying his arena. The Examiner, the Argus, the Aurora, the Gazette gave, besides the home conflict, the foreign news. He missed no step of Buonaparte's.

Thrice in these two years he had seen Jacqueline. Once he rode to church at Saint Anne's that he might see her. She had been at the great race when Major Churchill's Mustapha won over Nonpareil and Buckeye. The third time was a month ago in Charlottesville. She was walking, and Ludwell Cary was with her. When she bowed to Rand, Cary had looked surprised, but his hat was instantly off. Rand bowed in return, and passed them, going on to the Court House. He had not seen her again until four days ago, when he opened his eyes upon her face. The golden finger on his bed became a shining lance that struck across to the wall. There were ivy and a climbing rose about the window through which he looked to the shimmering poplars and the distant hills. Many birds were singing, and from the direction of the quarters sounded the faint blowing of a horn. A bee came droning in to the pansies in a bowl. Rand's dark eyes made a journey through the room, from the flowered curtains to the mandarin on the screen, from the screen to the willowed china and the easy chair, from the chair to the picture of General Washington on the wall, the vases on the mantel-shelf, and the green hemlock branches masking for the summer the fireplace below. Over all the blue room and the landscape without was a sense of home, of order and familiar sweetness. It struck to the soul of a too lonely and too self-reliant man. Suddenly, without warning, tears were in his eyes. Raising his uninjured arm, he brushed them away, settled his bandaged head upon the pillows, and stared at the clock. The half-shut door of a small adjoining room opened very slowly and softly, and Joab entered on tiptoe, elaborate caution surrounding him like an atmosphere.

"You, Joab," said Rand. "It's time you were in the field."

Joab's preternaturally lengthened countenance became short, broad, and genial. He threw back his head and breathed relief. "Dar now! What I tell em? Cyarn Selim nor no urr boss kill you, Marse Lewis! Mornin', sah. I reckon hit is time I wuz in de field, but I reckon I got to stay heah to tek care of you. How yo ahm, Marse Lewis?"

"It's not so bad."

"You sho wuz ressless in yo sleep—a-talkin' an' a-turnin' an' sayin' you mustn't keep de cote waitin'. I done sit by you ter keep de kivers on twill de cock crow. What you reckon you said to me? You said, 'Is dat you, Gineral Buonaparte?'"

Rand laughed, "Did you say, 'Yes, sire my brother?'"

"No, sah, I say, 'Hit's Joab, Marse Lewis.' I gwine now ter git de water to shave you ef dar's fire in de kitchen. Folks git up moughty late at Fontenoy. I don' know when I gwine git yo breakfast."

An hour later appeared the master of the house, red and jovial, solicitous for his guest's comfort, and prodigal of suggestions for his ease and entertainment. Not until Rand was well and gone from Fontenoy would Colonel Dick let his mind rest upon the indubitable fact that here had been an upstart and an enemy. Hard upon the Colonel's steps came the doctor. Arm and ankle and wounded head were doing well—there was no fever to speak of—Mr. Rand had an unabused constitution and would make a rapid recovery. For precaution's sake, best let a little blood. Rest, gruel, and quiet, and in a few days Mr. Rand would be downstairs with the ladies. The blood was let, and the doctor rode away. Joab and the culprit Selim went on Rand's errands to the town and to the home on the Three-Notched Road. Mammy Chloe, in white apron and kerchief and coloured turban, presented herself with a curtsy, delivered kindly messages from the ladies of the house, and sat down with her sewing in the little adjoining room. The morning advanced, sunny and peaceful, with vague sounds, faint laughter from distant rooms, droning of bees, and rustling of cool poplar leaves.

Rand, lying high upon his pillows, stopped his work of writing with his left hand to listen to a step coming up the polished stairway and along the passage leading to his room. His ear was almost as quick and accurate as was Adam Gaudylock's, and he rightly thought he knew the step. A somewhat strange smile was on his lips when Ludwell Cary knocked lightly at the blue room door. "Come in!" called Rand, and Cary, entering, closed the door behind him and came up to the bed with an outstretched hand and a pleasant light upon his handsome face.

"Ah, Mr. Rand," he said, smiling, "I see my revenge. I shall sit each day by your bedside, and read you the Federalist! How is the arm? Your right! That's bad!"

"It will heal," answered Rand. "Will you not take a chair?"

Cary pushed the easy chair nearer the bed, and sat down. "The ladies charge me," he said pleasantly, "with more messages of sympathy and hopes for your recovery than I can remember. Miss Dandridge vows that you have supplanted in her affections the hero of her favourite romance. 'Twas she and my brother, you know, who found you upon the road. Colonel Churchill and the county must mend that turn where you came to grief. It is a dangerous place."

"I was not attentive," said Rand, "and my horse is a masterful brute. Pray assure Miss Dandridge and your brother of my gratitude. I am under deep obligation to all at Fontenoy."

"It is a kindly place," said Cary simply. He looked about him. "The blue room! When I was a boy and came a-visiting, they always put me here. That screen would set me dreaming—and the blue roses and the moon clock. I used to lie in that bed and send myself to sleep with more tales than are in the Arabian Nights. There's a rift in the poplars through which you can see a very bright star—Sirius, I believe. May you have pleasant dreams, Mr. Rand, in my old bed!" He glanced from Rand's flushed face to the papers strewn upon the counterpane. "You have been writing? Would Dr. Gilmer approve?"

Rand looked somewhat ruefully at the scrawled sheets and the ink upon his fingers. "It is a necessary paper of instructions," he said. "I was retained by the State for the North Garden murder case. It is to be tried next week—and here am I, laid by the heels! My associate must handle it." He made a movement of impatience. "He's skilful enough, but he's not the sort to convince a jury—especially in Albemarle, where they don't like to hang people. If he's left to himself, Fitch may go free."

"The murderer?"

"Yes, the murderer. These," he laid his hand upon the papers, "are the points that must be made. If Mocket follows instructions, the State will win. But I wish that Selim had not chosen to break my right arm—it is difficult to write with the left hand."

"Could not Mr. Mocket take his instructions directly from you?"

Rand moved again impatiently, and with a quick sigh. "I sent him word not to come. I will not bring a friend or ally where I myself must seem an intruder and a most unwelcome guest. There's a fine irony in human affairs! Selim might have thrown me before Edgehill or Dunlora—but to choose Fontenoy!" He looked at Cary with a certain appeal. "I shall, of course, remove myself as soon as possible. In the meantime, if you could assure me that Colonel Churchill and his family understand—"

"Set your mind at rest," said Cary at once. "Colonel Churchill is the soul of kindness and hospitality, and the ladies of Fontenoy are all angels. You must not think yourself an unwelcome guest." He glanced again at the papers. "I am sure you should not try to write. Will you not accept me as amanuensis? The matter is not private?"

Not at all: but—"

"Then let me write from your dictation. I have nothing at all to do for the next two hours,—I am staying in the house, you know,—and it will give me genuine pleasure to help you. You have no business with such labour. Dr. Gilmer, I know, must have forbidden it. Come! I write a very fair clerkly hand."

"You don't know the imposition," said Rand, with an answering smile. "It is nothing less than a Treatise on Murder."

"I shall be glad," replied Cary, "to hear what you have to say on the subject. Come! here are blank sheets and a new quill and an attentive secretary!"

Rand smiled. "It's the strangest post for you!—but all life's a dream just now. I confess that writing is uphill work! Well—since you are so good."

He began to dictate. At first his words came slowly, with some stiffness and self-consciousness. This passed; he forgot himself, thought only of his subject, and utterance became quiet, grave, and fluent. He did not speak as though he were addressing a jury. Gesture was impossible, and his voice must not carry beyond the blue room. He spoke as to himself, as giving reasons to a high intelligence for the invalidity of murder. For an infusion of sentiment and rhetoric he knew he might trust Mocket's unaided powers, but the basis of the matter he would furnish. He spoke of murder as the check the savage gives to social order, as the costliest error, the last injustice, the monstrousness beyond the brute, the debt without surety, the destruction by a fool of that which he knows not how to create. He spoke for society, without animus and without sentiment; in a level voice marshalling fact and example, and moving unfalteringly toward the doom of the transgressor. Turning to the case in hand, he wove strand by strand a rope for the guilty wretch in question; then laid it for the nonce aside and spoke of murder more deeply with a sombre force and a red glow of imagery. Then followed three minutes of slow words which laid the finished and tested rope in the sheriff's hand. Rand's voice ceased, and he lay staring at the poplar leaves without the window.

Cary laid the pen softly down, sat still and upright in his chair for a minute, then leaned back with a long breath. "The poor wretch!" he said.

"Poor enough," assented Rand abruptly. "But Nature does not, and Society must not, think of that. As he brewed, so let him drink, and the measure that he meted, let it be meted to him again. There is on earth no place for him." He fell silent again, his eyes upon the dancing leaves.

"You will make your mark," said Cary slowly. "This is more than able work. You have before you a great future."

Rand looked at him half eagerly, half wistfully. "Do you really think that?"

"I cannot think otherwise," Cary answered. "I saw it plainly in the courtroom the other day." He smiled. "I deplore your political principles, Mr. Rand, but I rejoice that my conqueror is no lesser man. I must to work against the next time we encounter."

"You have been long out of the county," said Rand. "I had the start of you, that is all. You were trained to the law. Will you practise it, or will Greenwood take all your time?"

"I shall practise. A man's life is larger than a few acres, a house, and slaves. But first I must put Greenwood in order, and I must—" He did not finish the sentence, but sat looking about the blue room. "The old moon clock! I used to listen to it in the night and dream of twenty thousand things, and never once of what I dream of now! What a strange young savage is a boy!" He gathered the written sheets together. "You will want to look these over? I shall be very glad to see that they reach Mr. Mocket safely, or to serve you in any way. Just now I am very idle, and I will be your secretary every day with pleasure." He rose. "And now you must rest, or we will have a rating from Dr. Gilmer. Is there any message I may take for you?"

"My devotion and my thanks to the ladies of the house," replied Rand—"to Mrs. Churchill and Miss Dandridge and to Miss Churchill. For these"—he put his hand upon the papers—"I shall look them over, and Joab will take them to Charlottesville to Mocket. I cannot sufficiently thank you for your aid and for your kindness."

Cary went, and Rand lay back upon his pillows, weary enough, though with a smile upon his lips. He valued Cary's visit, valued the opinion of his fellow lawyer and fellow thinker. He valued praise from almost any source, though this was a hidden thirst. Where he loved, there he valued good opinion most; but also he strongly desired that his enemies should think highly of him. To be justly feared was one thing, to be contemned quite another. Apparently Ludwell Cary neither feared nor contemned. As, a few days before on the Justice's Bench, Rand had wondered if he were going to hate Cary, so now, lying in the quiet blue room, weakened by pain and loss of blood, softened by exquisite kindness, and touched by approbation, he wondered if he were going to like Cary. Something of the old charm, the old appeal, the old recognition, with no mean envy, of a golden nature moving in harmonious circumstance, stirred in Lewis Rand's breast. He sighed and lay still, his eyes upon the pansies on the table beside his bed. The moon clock ticked; the sunshine entered softly through the veil of poplar leaves; upon the bough that brushed the window, a cicada shrilled of the approaching summer. Rand put out his uninjured arm and took a pansy from the bowl. The little face, brave and friendly, looked at him from the white counterpane where he laid it. He studied it for a while, touching it gently, with the thought in his mind that Jacqueline might have gathered the pansies, and then he left it there, took up his papers, and turned to the argument which must hang Fitch.

CARY AND JACQUELINE

At supper table that evening at Fontenoy, Ludwell Cary said something complimentary to the prisoner in the blue room. Fairfax Cary fired up. "You are too easy, Ludwell! Lewis Rand, I warn you, is a dangerous man! Serve him once, and you serve him once too often!—begging your pardon, Colonel Churchill!"

"We could hardly have left him, you know," reasoned his host good-naturedly, "on the roadside, and Dick Wood's the nearest house! And once within a man's doors, every attention, of course, must be shown. But, as you say, he is a dangerous fellow."

"Dangerous fiddlesticks!" growled Major Churchill from the other side of the table, where he sat at Jacqueline's right hand. "I would have as soon called old Gideon Rand dangerous! Like father, like son. You may be sure that this fellow's spirit rolls tobacco. Maybe now and then it breaks a colt.

"Dangerous' implies power to be dangerous," said Cary, "and conversely power to be humane. A turn, and all the strength of the man may flow toward good."

"A fool and his doctrine!" snapped Major Edward. "I do not expect grapes from thistles, or a silk purse from a sow's ear."

"Tut, tut, Ned! The man who carries this county may be a damned Republican, but he is not a fool," pronounced Colonel Dick. "Jacqueline, my dear, another cup of coffee."

"If we were all as good as gold," said Unity pensively, "and as wise as—as Socrates, and wore black cockades, and cared only for the Washington March, and hated Buonaparte, and the Devil, how tiresome life would be!—Myself, I like variety and the Marseillaise!"

"Then you differ from the other rogues only in liking the Rogue's March," said Uncle Edward. "Jacqueline, more sugar!"

The younger Cary rushed to Miss Dandridge's defence. "Well, sir, in itself the Marseillaise is a very noble air. It is better than Jefferson's March!"

"Oh, a very good air to go to the gallows by!" snapped Uncle Edward. "Jacqueline, some cream!"

"Well, well," said his brother amicably, from the head of the table, "we must care for a man when he's wounded at our door, friend or foe, Federalist or damned Republican. Noblesse oblige. I was glad enough the night my mare Nelly threw me, coming home from Maria Erskine's wedding, to hear Bob Carter's voice behind me! And if Gideon Rand was a surly old heathen, he broke colts well, and he rolled tobacco well. We'll treat his son like a Christian."

"And he'll repay you like a Turk!" broke out Major Edward. "I tell you it is bred in the bone—"

"Mr. Rand is our guest," said Jacqueline, in a clear voice, from her place behind the coffee urn. Her hands made a little noise amid the rosebud china. "Mr. Cary, may I not pour you another cup?—Caleb, Mr. Cary's cup.—Bring more waffles, Scipio."

"The work at Greenwood is nearly finished, sir," remarked Ludwell Cary, addressing his host. "I rode over this afternoon, and the men assure me that the house will soon be habitable. Fair and I have no excuse for staying longer."

"Then stay without excuse," answered Colonel Dick heartily. "Fontenoy will miss you—eh, Unity, eh, Jacqueline?"

"It will indeed," said Jacqueline, with a smile; and Unity, "Will I have time to order a black scarf from Baltimore? Will you leave us mourning rings?"

"If Miss Dandridge would accept another fashion of ring!" cried Fairfax Cary, and all at table laughed. Scipio took away the rosebud china, and laid the purple dessert service for the strawberries and floating island and Betty Custis cake. Caleb placed the decanters of claret and Madeira, and the Fontenoy men began to talk of horse-racing, of Mustapha, Nonpareil, York, and Victor.

Jacqueline and Unity, leaving the gentlemen at their wine, came out into the broad hall and stood at the front door looking out at the coloured clouds above the hills. They supped early at Fontenoy, and the evening was yet rosy.

"He is going to speak to-night," said Unity, with conviction. "It is written in his eye."

"If you mean Mr. Cary—"

"Whom else should I mean? What are you going to say to him, Jacqueline? I want you to say Yes, and I want you to say No."

"Don't, Unity—"

"If you say Yes, you will have Greenwood and the most charming husband in the world, and be envied of every girl in the county; and if you say No, I'll have you still—"

"I shall say No."

"What ails you, Jacqueline? I could swear that you're in love, and yet I don't believe you are in love with Ludwell Cary!—though I am sure you ought to be. It's not Mr. Lee, nor Mr. Page, nor Jack Martin, nor—you're never in love with Fairfax Cary?"

Jacqueline laughed, "How absurd, Unity!—though may be some day I shall love him as a cousin!"

Unity regarded her with a puzzled gathering of black brows. "There's no one else that by any stretch of imagination I can believe you in love with—unless it's Mr. Pincornet!"

"Oh, now you certainly have it!" cried Jacqueline, with another tremulous laugh. She released herself from her cousin's arm. "I am going to tell Deb good-night. And Unity—I don't want Mr. Cary to speak to-night, nor to-morrow night, nor any other night! I'll stay at Fontenoy—I'll stay at Fontenoy and care for Aunt Nancy and Deb and Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward. I'll dance at your wedding, Unity, but you'll not dance at mine!"

She was gone. Unity sat down upon the porch steps and began to name upon her fingers the eligible young men of three counties. In her anxiety to account for Jacqueline's pallor and the dark beneath her eyes, she went far afield, but she met with no success. "It's not one of them!" she sighed at last. "And yet, she's changed—"

Jacqueline went slowly upstairs, a slender figure in white, touching with her hand the polished balustrade. When she reached the long and wide upper hall, she passed steadily along it, but she turned her eyes upon a door at the far end, the door of the blue room. Arrived in her own cool and fragrant chamber, she found Deb already asleep in the small bed, her yellow hair spread upon the pillow, her gown open at the throat, a rag doll in the hollow of her arm. Upon the floor, with her head against the bed, sat Miranda, as fast asleep as her mistress. At Jacqueline's touch she awoke, smiled widely, and was on her feet with a spring. "Yaas, Miss Jacqueline, I done put Miss Deb to bed. Mammy Chloe say dat niggah Joab don' know nothin' 'bout er broken ahm, an' she too busy in de blue room. Yaas'm, I done mek Miss Deb wash her face an' say her prayers. Kin I go now?"

Alone, Jacqueline stood for a minute beside the sleeping child, then bent and kissed Deb's brown neck. Moving to a window, she sat down before it, resting her arm upon the sill and her head upon her arm. Outside the window grew a giant fir tree, shading the room, and giving it at times an aspect too cold and northern. But Jacqueline loved the tree, and loved and fed the birds that in winter perched upon the dark boughs. Now, between the needles, the eastern sky looked blue and cold. Jacqueline, sitting idle, felt her eyes fill with slow tears. They did not fall. She was not lacking in self-control, and she told herself that of late she had wept too often. She sat very still, her head bowed upon her listless arm, while the moments passed, bearing with them pictures seen through unshed tears. She was living over the days of the Three-Notched Road, and she beheld each shifting scene by the light of a passion that she believed to be unreasonable, unnatural, secret, and without hope. Her uncle's voice came to her from the hall below. "Jacqueline, Jacqueline!" She arose, bathed her eyes, and went downstairs.

It was the custom of the family to gather after supper upon the great white pillared porch, and to sit through the twilight. The men smoked slowly and reflectively, the women sat with folded hands, watching the last glow upon the hills, and the brightening of the evening star; dreamily listening to the choir of frogs, the faint tinkle of cowbells, the bleating of folded lambs, and the continual rustle of the poplar leaves.

Jacqueline took her seat beside Unity. Colonel Churchill, in his especial chair, was smoking like a benevolent volcano; at a small table Major Edward was playing Patience. On the broad porch steps below Jacqueline and Unity half sat, half lay, the two Carys. The fireflies were beginning to show, and out of the distance came a plaintive Whip-poor-will—Whip-poor-will!

"I shall have," said Ludwell Cary, "the vines at Greenwood trained like these. There could be no better way."

"Is the drawing-room finished?" asked Unity.

"Almost finished. The paper came to-day from Baltimore. The ground is silver, and there are garlands of roses and a host of piping shepherds."

"Oh, lovely!" cried Unity. "But no shepherdesses?"

"Yes, in among the roses. It is quite Arcadian. When will the princesses come to see the shepherdesses?"

He looked at them both. "The Princess and her waiting-maid," said Unity demurely, "will come very soon." She rose from the green bench. "The waiting-maid is going now to her harpsichord!" Her eyes rested upon the younger Cary. "Will you be so very good as to turn the leaves for me?"

Fairfax Cary embracing with alacrity the chance of goodness, the two went into the house. The dusk deepened; the odour of honeysuckle and syringa grew heavier, and white moths sailed by on their way to the lighted windows.

"Since love—since love is blissful sorrow,
Then bid the lad—then bid the lad—
Then bid the lad a fair good morrow!"

flowed in soprano from the parlour.

Colonel Churchill laid down his pipe and lifted his burly figure from the great chair. "I forgot," he remarked to Jacqueline, "to tell your Aunt Nancy that Charles Carter is going to marry Miss Lewis," and he left the porch. The rose in the sky turned to pearl, the fireflies grew brilliant, and the wind brought the murmur of streams and the louder rustling of the poplar leaves. "It is too dark to see the cards," said Major Edward. "I'll go read what the Gazette has to say of Burr and the Massachusetts secession fools. Don't move, Cary!" He deftly gathered up the cards, and went indoors.

"It is dark night," said Jacqueline. "Shall we not go in?"

Cary put out an appealing hand. "Don't rise! May we not stay like this a little longer?—Miss Churchill, there is something that I ardently wish to say to you."

"Yes, Mr. Cary?"

"It is too soon to speak, I know,—it must seem too soon to you. But to-day I said, 'The spring is flying—I'll put my fortune to the touch!' I think that you must guess the thing I wish to say—"

"Yes, I know. I wish that you would leave it unsaid."

"I love you. On the day, three months ago, when I saw you after my return and found the lovely child I remembered changed into the loveliest of all women, I loved you. If then, what now, when I have seen you, day by day?—I love you, and I shall never cease to love you."

"Oh, with all my heart I wish that you did not!"

"I ask you to be my wife. I beg you to let me prove throughout my life the depth of my love, of my solicitude for your happiness—"

"Ah, happiness!" cried Jacqueline sharply. "I do not see it in my life. The best that you can do is to forget me quite."

"I will remember you when I draw my dying breath. And if we remember after death, I will remember you then. With all my strength I love you."

"I am sorry—I am sorry!" she cried. "Oh, I hoped 'twas but a fancy, and that you would not speak! I do not love you—"

"Let me wait," said Cary, after a pause. "I said that I was speaking too soon. Let me wait—let me prove to you. Your heart may turn."

She shook her head. "It will not change."

"Is there," asked Cary, in a low voice, "is there another before me?"

She looked at him strangely. "You have no right to question me. I do not think that I shall ever marry. For you, you will live long and be happy. You deserve happiness. If I have wounded you, may it soon heal! Forget this night, and me."

"Forget!" said Cary. "I am not so lightly made! But neither will I despair. I will wait. If there is no man before me, I will win you yet! There is little reason, God knows, why you should care for me, but I shall strive to make that reason greater!"

"There is reason," answered Jacqueline. "I think highly, highly of you! You would make a woman happy;—all her life she would travel a sunny road! I prize your friendship—I am loth to lose it. But as for me,"—she locked her hands against her breast,—"there is that within me that cries, The shadowed road!—the shadowed road!"

She rose, and Cary rose with her. "Forgive me," she said. "Is it not cruel that we hurt each other so? Forgive—forget."

"I would forgive you," he answered, with emotion, "the suffering and the sorrow of a thousand lives. But forget you—never! I'll love you well and I'll love you long. Nor will I despair. To-night is dark, but the sun may shine to-morrow. Think of me as of one who will love you to the end." He took her hand and kissed it, then stood aside, saying, "I will not face the lights quite yet." She passed into the hail and up the stairway, and he turned and went down the porch steps into the May night.

EXPOSTULATION

The next morning Ludwell Cary rose early, ordered his horse, and opened the door of his brother's room. "Fair," he said, as the younger Cary sat up in bed, with a nightcap wonderfully askew upon his handsome head, "I am off for Greenwood. Make my excuses, will you, to Colonel Churchill and the ladies? I will not be back till supper-time." He turned to leave the room. "And Fair—if you have anything to say to Miss Dandridge, this is the shepherd's hour. We go home to-morrow."

"What the Devil?"—began the younger Cary.

"No, not the Devil," said the other, with a twist of the lip half humorous, half piteous. "Just woman."

He was gone. Fairfax Cary looked at his watch, then rose from his bed and looked out of the window at the rose and dew of the dawn. "What the Devil!" he said again to himself; and then, with a forehead of perplexity, "He was up late last night—out in the garden alone. He rides off to Greenwood with the dawn, and we go home to-morrow. She can't have refused him—that's not possible!" He went back to bed to study matters over. At last, "The jade!" he exclaimed with conviction, and two hours later, when he came down to breakfast, wished Miss Churchill good-morning with glacial courtesy.

Jacqueline, behind the coffee urn, had heavy-lidded eyes, and her smile was tremulous. Unity, brilliant and watchful, regarded the universe and the hauteur of young Mr. Cary with lifted brows. Major Churchill, when he appeared, shot one glance at the place that was Ludwell Cary's, another at his niece, then sat heavily down, and in a querulous voice demanded coffee. Colonel Dick wore a frown. Deb, who before breakfast had visited a new foal in the long pasture, kept for a time the ball of conversation rolling; but the dulness and the chill in the air presently enwrapped her also. The meal came to an end with only one hazard as to what could have taken Ludwell Cary to Greenwood for the entire day. That was Unity's, who remarked that pains must be bestowed upon the hanging of a drawing-room paper, else the shepherds and the shepherdesses would not match.

Fairfax Cary asked after Lewis Rand and his broken arm, and Colonel Dick responded with absent-mindedness that the arm did very well, and that its owner would soon be going about his business with all the rest of the damned Republican mischief-makers: then, "Scipio, did you take that julep and bird up to the blue room?"

"Yaas, marster," answered Scipio. "The gent'man say tell you 'Thank you.' He say he ain't gwine trouble you much longer, an' he cyarn never forgit what Fontenoy's done fer him."

"Deb!" said Uncle Edward, with great sharpness, "you are spilling that cup of milk. Look what you are doing, child!"

The uncomfortable meal came to an end. Outside the dining-room door Uncle Dick mentioned to Unity that her aunt wanted her in the chamber to cut off linsey gowns for the house servants, and Uncle Edward inquired if it would be troublesome to Fairfax Cary to ride over to Tom Wood's and take a look at that black stallion Tom bragged of. Unity went to her aunt's chamber; the younger Cary walked away somewhat stiffly to the stables; Uncle Edward sent Deb to her lessons, and Uncle Dick told Jacqueline to come in half an hour to the library. Edward and he wanted to speak to her.

Jacqueline gave her directions, or her aunt's directions, to Scipio, then crossed the paved way to the kitchen and talked of dinner and supper with the turbaned cook; opened with her keys the smokehouse door, and in the storeroom superintended the weighing of flour and sugar and the measuring of Java coffee, and finally saw that the drawing-room was properly darkened against the sunny morning, and that the water was fresh in the bowls of flowers. She leaned for a moment against her harp, one hand upon its strings, her forehead resting upon her bare arm; then she turned from the room and entered the library, where she found her uncles waiting for her, Uncle Dick upon the hearth rug and Uncle Edward at the table.

"Jacqueline," began the first, then, "Edward, I never could talk to a woman! Ask her what all this damned nonsense means!"

"Your uncle doesn't mean that it is all damned nonsense, Jacqueline," said Uncle Edward, with gentleness. "Not perhaps from your point of view, my dear. But both he and I are greatly grieved and disappointed—"

"It was all arranged ages ago!" broke in the elder brother. "Fauquier Cary and your dear father, my brother Henry, settled it when you were born and Fauquier's son was a lad at Maury's school! When Henry died, and Fauquier Cary died, my brother Edward here and I said to each other that we would see the matter out! So we will, by God!"

"Gently, Dick! Jacqueline, child, you know how dear you are to us, and how the future and the happiness of you and of Unity and of Deb is our jealous care—"

"Fauquier Cary was as noble a man as ever breathed," cried the other, "and his son's his image! There's no better blood in Virginia—and the land beside—"

"It does not matter about the land, Jacqueline," said Uncle Edward, "though God forbid that I should depreciate good land—"

"Land's land," quoth Colonel Dick, "and good blood's gospel truth!"

"Bah! it's nature's truth!" said Uncle Edward. "Jacqueline, my dear, our hearts are set on this match. Mr. Ludwell Cary asked your uncle's permission to speak to you, and your uncle gave it gladly, and neither he nor I ever dreamed—"

"Of course we didn't," broke in the other. "We didn't dream that Jacqueline could be unreasonable or ungrateful, and we don't dream it now! Nor blind. Ludwell Cary's a man and a gentleman, and the woman who gets him is lucky!"

"We approved his suit, Jacqueline, and we hoped to be happy to-day in your happiness—"

"And in he comes at midnight last night, with his father's own look on his face, and what does he say to Edward and me, sitting here, waiting, with a thousand fancies in our heads? 'Miss Churchill will not have me,' says he, 'and you who have been so good to me, are to be good still, and not by word or look reproach her or distress her. The heart goes its own way, and loves where it must. She is an angel, and to-night I am a poor beaten and weary mortal. I thank you again, both of you, and wish you good-night.' And off he goes before a man could say Jack Robinson! Those were his very words, weren't they, Edward?"

"Yes," answered Edward. "He is a brave and gallant gentleman, Jacqueline. I love you, child, more than my old tongue can say. My Castle in Spain is Greenwood with you and Ludwell Cary and the children of you both."

"Oh, cruel!" cried Jacqueline. "He is brave and good—He is all that you say. But I shall never live at Greenwood!"

"It was your father's dearest wish," said the Major. "It is ours—Richard's and mine. We are not men who give up easily. God forbid, child, that I should hint to you, who are the darling of us all, of obligation—and yet I put it to you if obedience is not owed—"

"Yes, yes," answered Jacqueline. "It is owed. I am not ungrateful—I am mad—perhaps I am wicked! I wish that I were dead!"

"The Churchills," said Uncle Edward, "have never in their marriages set vulgar store by money. Blood we ask, of course, and honourable position, and the right way of thinking. Individually I am a stickler for mind. To his wealth and to his name and his great personal advantages Ludwell Cary adds intellect. He may become a power in his country and his time. You would so aid him, child! I am called a woman-hater, but once, Jacqueline, I loved too well. For all that I am a sorry old bachelor, I know whereof I speak. With a man, a woman to fight for is not half the battle—it is all the battle."

"He is all that you say," answered Jacqueline. "But I do not love him."

"You like him. You admire him."

"Yes, yes. That is not love."

"It is mighty near kin," said Uncle Dick. "No end of happy folk begin with esteem and go on like turtle doves. My little Jack, you shall have the prettiest wedding gown! It's all a mistake and a misunderstanding, and the good Lord knows there's too much of both in this old world! You'll think better of it all, and you'll find that you didn't know your own mind,—and there'll be a smile for poor Cary when he comes riding back to-night?"

"No, no," cried Jacqueline. "There is no mistake and no misunderstanding. Love cannot be forced, and I'll not marry where I do not love!"

"You don't," said Colonel Churchill slowly, "you don't by any chance love some one else? What does that colour mean, Jacqueline? Don't stammer! Speak out!"

But Jacqueline, standing by the old leather chair, bowed her head upon its high green back, and neither could nor would "speak out." The two men, grey and withered, obstinate and imperious in a day and generation that subordinated youth to the councils of the old, gazed at their niece with perplexity and anger. With the simpler of the two the perplexity was the greater, with the other anger. A fear was knocking at Major Churchill's heart. He would not admit it, strove not to listen to it, or to listen with contemptuous incredulity. "It's not possible," he said to himself. "Not a thousand summers at Jane Selden's would make her so forget herself! Jacqueline in love with that damned Jacobin demagogue upstairs! Pshaw!" But the fear knocked on.

Jacqueline lifted her head. "Be good to me, Uncle Dick! If I could love, if I could marry Mr. Cary, I would—I would indeed! But I cannot. Please let me go!"

"Not till I know more than I know now," said Colonel Churchill. "If it's George Lee, Jacqueline, I'll not say a word, sorry as I am for Cary. But if it's Will Allen, I'll see you dead before I give my consent! He's a spendthrift and a Republican!"

"I care neither for Mr. Lee nor Mr. Allen," said Jacqueline, with a burning cheek. "Oh, Uncle Edward, make Uncle Dick let me go!"

"It is not wise," Major Churchill considered within himself, "to push a woman too far. I'm a suspicious fool to think this thing of Jacqueline. It's all some girl's fancy or other, and if we go easily Cary will yet win—by God, he shall win! This damned Yahoo upstairs is neither here nor there!"

He spoke aloud to his brother. "Best let the child go think it over, Dick. She knows her duty—and that we expect her compliance. She doesn't want to wound us cruelly, to make us unhappy, to prove herself blind and ingrate. Give her a kiss and let her go."

"You come down and sing to us to-night, my little Jack, in your blue gown," quoth Uncle Dick. "Don't you ever let a time come when your singing won't be the sweetest sound in the world to me! Now go, and think of what we have said, and of poor Cary, ridden off to Greenwood!"

Jacqueline gazed at the two for a moment, and made as if to speak, but the words died in her throat. She uttered a broken cry, turned, groped a little for the door, found and opened it, and was gone. They heard the click of her slippers upon the stairs, and presently the closing of a blind in the room that was hers.

The brothers sat heavily on in the sunshine-flooded library, the elder red and fuming, the younger silent and saturnine. At last Colonel Dick broke out, "What the devil ails her, Edward? Every decent young fellow in the county comes to Fontenoy straight as a bee to the honey-pot! I've heard them sighing for her and Unity, but I never could see that she favoured one man more than another,—and she's no coquette like Unity! Except for that fine blush of hers, I'd never have thought. What do you think, Edward?"

"The ways of women are past my finding out," said Edward. "Let it rest for a while, Dick." He rose from his chair stiffly, like an old man. "Let Cary go home to-morrow as he intends. 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder,' they say. She may find that she misses him, and may look for him when he comes riding over. Never fear but he'll ride over often! He mustn't guess, of course, that you have spoken to her. And that's all we can do, Dick, except—" Major Edward walked stiffly across the floor and paused before the portrait of his brother Henry, dead and gone these many years. The face looked imperiously down upon him. Henry had stood for something before he died,—for grace and manly beauty, pride and fire. The Major's eyes suddenly smarted. "Poor white trash," he said between his teeth, "and Henry's daughter!" He turned and came back to the table. "Dick! just as soon as you can, you clear the house of old Gideon Rand's son!"

"What's he got to do with it?" asked Colonel Dick.

"I don't know," said the other. "But I want him out of the blue room, and out of Fontenoy! and now, Dick, I've got a piece to write this morning on the designs of Aaron Burr."

At five in the afternoon Cary returned, quiet and handsome, ready with his account of matters at Greenwood, from the stable, upon which Major Churchill must pronounce, to the drawing-room paper, which awaited Miss Dandridge's sentence. His behaviour was perfection, but "He's hard hit," said his brother to himself. "What, pray, would Miss Churchill have?" And Unity, "The shepherds and shepherdesses don't match. How can she have the heart?" And Major Churchill, "Are women blind? This is Hyperion to a satyr." And Jacqueline, "Oh, miserable me! Is he writing or reading, or is he lying thinking, there in the blue room?"

TO ALTHEA

Adam Gaudylock came, when his leisure served him, to Fontenoy as he went everywhere, by virtue of his quality of free lance and golden-tongued narrator of western news. The stress of thought at the moment was to the West and the empire that had been purchased there; and a man from beyond Kentucky, with tales to tell of the Mississippi Territory, brought his own welcome to town, tavern, and plantation. If this were true of all, it was trebly true of Adam, who had been born open-eyed. As the magnet draws the filings, so he drew all manner of tidings. News came to him as by a thousand carrier pigeons. He took toll of the solitary in the brown and pathless woods, of the boatmen upon fifty rivers, of the Indian braves about the council-fire, of hunters, trappers, traders, and long lines of Conestoga wagons, of soldiers on frontier posts, Jesuit missionaries upon the Ohio, camp-meeting orators by the Kentucky and the upper James, martial emissaries of three governments, village lawyers, gamblers, dealers in lotteries, and militia colonels, Spanish intendants, French agents, American settlers, wild Irish, thrifty Germans, Creoles, Indians, Mestizos, Quadroons, Congo blacks,—from the hunter in the forest to the slave in the fields, and from the Governor of the vast new territory to the boatman upon a Mississippi ark, not a type of the restless time but imparted to Adam something of its view of life and of the winds that vexed its sea. He was a skilful compounder, and when, forever wandering, he wandered back by wood and stream to the sunny, settled lands east of the Blue Ridge, he gave to the thirsty in plantation and town bright globules of hard fact in a heady elixir of fancy. While he talked all men were adventurers, and all women admired him. Adam liked this life and this world; asked nothing better than to journey through a hundred such.

Now, sitting at his ease in the blue room, a fortnight after Rand's accident, he delivered a score of messages from the Republicans of the county, gentle and simple, whom he had chanced to encounter since the accident to their representative.

"Colonel Randolph says the President has bad luck with the horses he gives—young Mr. Carr was thrown by a bay mare from Shadwell. Old Jowett swears that a trooper of Tarleton's broke his neck at that identical place—says you can hear him any dark night swearing like the Hessian he was. They drank your health at the Eagle, the night they heard of the accident, with bumpers—drank it just after Mr. Jefferson's and before the memory of Washington. 'Congress next!' they said. 'Hurrah! He'll scatter the Black Cockades—he'll make the Well-born cry King's Cruse! Hip, hip, hurrah! What's he doing at Fontenoy? They'll put poison in his cup! Hurrah!'"

"Fontenoy will not put poison in my cup," said Rand. "I hope some one was there to say as much."

"I said it," answered Adam. "They are a noisy lot. Tom Mocket made a speech and compared you to Moses. He wept when he made it, and they had to hold him steady on his feet. When they broke up, I took him home to the Partridge. I'll tell you one speech that he never made by himself, and that's the speech that's going to hang Fitch."

"No," said Rand. "I wrote it. You were at the trial?"

"Ay. It would have hung Abel, so poor Cain had no chance. Mr. Eppes says Mr. Jefferson counts upon your becoming a power in the state. I don't know—but it seems to me there's power enough in these regions! It's getting crowded. First thing you know, you'll be jealous of Mr. Jefferson, or he'll be jealous of you. If I were you, I'd look to the West."

"The old song!" exclaimed Rand. "What should I do in the West?"

"Rule it," said Adam.

Rand shot a glance at the hunter where he lounged against the window, a figure straight and lithe as an Indian, not tall, but gifted with a pantherish grace, and breathing a certain tawny brightness as of sunshine through pine needles. "You're daft!" he said; then after a moment, "Are you serious?"

"Why should I not be serious?" asked Adam. "My faith! it's a restless land, the West, and it's a far cry from the Mississippi to the Potomac. The West doesn't like the East anyhow. But it wants a picked man from the East. It will get one too! The wind's blowing hard from the full to the empty, from the parcelled-out to the virgin land!"

"Yes," said Rand.

"Why shouldn't you be the man?" demanded Gaudylock. "Just as well you as Claiborne—Wilkinson's naught, I don't count him—or any one still East, like—like—Aaron Burr."

"Aaron Burr?"

"Well, I just instance him. He's ambitious enough, and there doesn't seem much room for him back here. If Adam Gaudylock was ambitious and was anything but just an uneducated hunter with a taste for danger—I tell you, Lewis, I can see the blazed trees, I can see them with my eyes shut, stretching clean from anywhere—stretching from this room, say—beyond the Ohio, and beyond the Mississippi, and beyond Mexico to where the sun strikes the water! It's a trail for fine treading and a strong man, but it leads—it leads—"

"It might lead," said Rand, "to the Tarpeian Rock."

"Where's that?"

"It's where they put to death a sort of folk called traitors—Benedict Arnolds and such."

"Pshaw!" exclaimed Adam. "Traitors! Benedict Arnold was a traitor. This is not like that. America's large enough for a mort of countries. All the states are countries—federated countries. Say some man is big enough to make a country west of the Mississippi—Well, one day we may federate too. Eh, Lewis, 'twould be a powerful country—great as Rome, I reckon! And we'd smoke the calumet with old Virginia—and she'd rule East and we'd rule West. D'you think it's a dream?—Well, men make dreams come true."

"Yes: Corsicans," answered Rand. "Aaron Burr is not a Corsican." He looked at his left hand, lying upon the arm of his chair, raised it, shut and opened it, gazing curiously at its vein and sinew. "You are talking midsummer madness," he said at last. "Let's leave the blazed trees for a while—though we'll talk of them again some time. Have you been along the Three-Notched Road?"

"Yes," replied Adam, turning easily. "Your tobacco's prime, the wheat, too, and the fencing is all mended and white-washed. It's not the tumble-down place it was in Gideon's time—you've done wonders with it. The morning-glories were blooming over the porch, and your white cat washing itself in the sun."

"It's but a poor home," said Rand, and he said it wistfully. He wished for a splendid house, a home so splendid that any woman must love it.

"It's not so fine as Fontenoy," quoth Adam, "nor Monticello, nor Mr. Blennerhassett's island in the Ohio, but a man might be happy in a poorer spot. Home's home, as I can testify who haven't any. I've known a Cherokee to die of homesickness for a skin stretched between two saplings. How long before you are back upon the Three-Notched Road?"

Rand moved restlessly. "The doctor says I may go downstairs to-day. I shall leave Fontenoy almost immediately. They cannot want me here."

"Have you seen Mr. Ludwell Cary?"

"He and his brother left Fontenoy some time ago. But he rides over nearly every day. Usually I see him."

"He is making a fine place of Greenwood. And he has taken a law office in Charlottesville—the brick house by the Swan.

"Yes. He told me he would not be idle."

Adam rose, and took up the gun which it was his whim to carry. "I'll go talk ginseng and maple sugar to Colonel Churchill for a bit, and then I'll go back to the Eagle. As soon as you are on the Three-Notched Road again I'll come to see you there."

"Adam," said Rand, "in the woods, when chance makes an Indian your host, an Indian of a hostile tribe, an Indian whom you know the next week may see upon the war-path against you—and there is in his lodge a thing, no matter what, that you desire with all your mind and all your heart and all your soul, and he will not barter with you, and the thing is not entirely his own nor highly valued by him, while it is more than life to you, and moreover you believe it to be sought by one who is your foe—would you, Adam, having eaten that Indian's bread, go back into the forest, and leave behind, untouched, unspoken of, that precious thing your soul longed for? The trail you take may never lead again to that lodge. Would you leave it?"

"Yes," answered Adam. "But my trail should lead that way again. It is a hostile tribe. I would come back, not in peace paint, but in war paint. I would fairly warn the Indian, and then I would take the bauble."

"Here is Mammy Chloe," said the other. "What have you there, mammy—a dish of red pottage?"

"No, sah," said Mammy. "Hit's a baked apple an' whipped cream an' nutmeg. Ole Miss she say Gineral Lafayette sho' did favour baked apples wunst when he wuz laid up wid a cold at her father's house in Williamsburgh. An' de little posy, Miss Deb she done gather hit outer her square in de gyarden. De Cun'l he say de fambly gwine expect de honour of yo' company dis evenin' in de drawin'-room."

Adam said good-bye and went away. An hour later, going down the Fontenoy road, he came upon a small brown figure, seated, hands over knees, among the blackberry bushes.

"Why, you partridge!" he exclaimed. "You little brown prairie-hen, what are you doing so far from home? Blackberries aren't ripe."

"No," said Vinie. "I was just a-walking down the road, and I just walked on. I wasn't tired. I always think the country's prettier down this way. Did you come from Fontenoy, Mr. Adam?"

"Yes," replied Adam, sitting down beside her. "I went to see Lewis Rand—not that I don't like all the people there anyway. They're always mighty nice to me."

Vinie dug the point of her dusty shoe into the dusty road.

"How ith Mr. Rand, Mr. Adam?"

"He 'ith' almost well," answered Adam. "He's going down into the parlour to-night, and pretty soon he's going home, and then he'll be riding into town to his office."

He looked kindly into the small, freckled, pretty face. The heat of the day stood in moisture on Vinie's brow, she had pushed back her sunbonnet, and the breeze stirred the damp tendrils of her hair. "Tom must miss him," said the hunter.

"Yeth, Tom does." Vinie drew toward her a blackberry branch, and studied the white bloom. "Which do you think is the prettiest, Mr. Adam,—Miss Unity or Miss Jacqueline?"

"Why, I don't know," answered Adam. "They are both mighty pretty."

"I think Miss Unity's the prettiest," said Vinie. "It's time I was walking back to Charlottesville." She rose and stood for a moment in the dusty road below the blackberry bushes, looking toward Fontenoy. "I don't suppose he asked after Tom and me, Mr. Adam?"

"Why, surely!" protested Adam, with cheerful mendacity. "He asked after you both particularly. He said he certainly would like a cup of water from your well."

"Did he?" asked Vinie, and grew pink. "That water's mighty cold."

"I'd like a cup of it myself," said Adam. "Since we are both walking to town, we might as well walk together. Don't you want me to break some cherry blossoms for your parlour?"

"Yeth, if you please," replied Vinie, and the two went up the sunny road to Charlottesville.

Back at Fontenoy, in the blue room, Rand, resting in the easy chair beside the window, left the consideration of Adam and Adam's talk, and gave his mind to the approaching hour in the Fontenoy drawing-room. He both desired and dreaded that encounter. Would Miss Churchill be there? Aided by the homely friendliness of her cousin's house on the Three-Notched Road, he had met her and conversed with her without being greatly conscious of any circumstance other than that she was altogether beautiful, and that he loved her. But this was not Mrs. Selden's, this was Fontenoy. He had stood here hat in hand, within Miss Churchill's memory—certainly within the memory of the men of her family. Well! He was, thank God! an American citizen. The hat was now out of his hand and upon his head. The conditions of his boyhood might, he thought, be forgotten in the conditions of his manhood. But—they would all be gathered in the drawing-room. Should he speak first to Colonel Churchill as his host, or first to the ladies of the house, to Miss Churchill and Miss Dandridge? If Miss Churchill or Miss Dandridge were at the harpsichord, should he wait at the door until the piece was ended? He had a vision of a great space of polished floor reflecting candlelight, and of himself crossing that trackless desert beneath the eyes of goddesses and men. The colour came into his face. There were twenty things he might have asked Mr. Pincornet that night at Monticello. He turned with hot impatience from the consideration of the usages of society, and fell to building with large and strong timbers the edifice of his future. He built on while the dusk gathered, and he built while Joab helped him to dress, and he was yet busy with beam and rafter when at eight o'clock, with some help from the negro, he descended the stairs and crossed the hall to the parlour door. How was he dressed? He was dressed in a high-collared coat of blue cloth with eagle buttons, in cloth breeches and silk stockings, in shoes with silver buckles, and a lawn neckcloth of many folds. His hair was innocent of powder, and cut short in what the period supposed to be the high Roman fashion. It was his chief touch of the Republican. In the matter of dress he had not his leader's courage. Abhorring slovenliness and the Jacobin motley, he would not affect them. He was dressed in his best for this evening; and if his attire was not chosen as Ludwell Cary would have chosen, it was yet the dress of a gentleman, and it was worn with dignity.