Lewis Rand

THE CEDAR WOOD

Jacqueline closed the door of her aunt's chamber softly behind her, passed through the Fontenoy hall, and came out upon the wide porch. There, in the peace of the September afternoon, she found Unity alone with the Lay of the Last Minstrel. "Aunt Nancy is asleep," she said. "I left Mammy Chloe beside her. Unity, I think she's better."

"So the doctor said this morning."

"I think she's beginning to remember. She looks strangely at me."

"If she does remember, she'll want you still!"

Jacqueline shook her head. "I think not. How lovely it is, this afternoon! The asters are all in bloom in the garden, and the gum tree is turning red." She threw a gauze scarf over her head. "I am going down to the old gate by the narrow road."

"I wish," said Unity, "that I had the ordering of the universe for just one hour! Then Christians would become Christian, and you wouldn't have to meet your husband outside the gates of home."

The other laughed a little. "Oh, Unity, Christians won't be Christian, and even as it is, 'tis sweet to be at home! Until you go away to Greenwood, you'll not know how dear was Fontenoy! To hear the poplars rustling and to smell the box again—Is it not strange that I should have a light heart when they look so cold upon me?"

"I have hopes of Uncle Dick, but Uncle Edward"—Unity shook her head. "I don't understand Uncle Edward."

"I do," answered Jacqueline, "and I love him most. I'll go now and leave you to the Last Minstrel. Does Fairfax Cary come to-night?"

"He may—"

Jacqueline laughed. "'He may.' Yes, indeed, I think he may! Oh, Unity, smell the roses, and look at the light upon the mountains! Good-bye! I'm for Lewis now."

She passed down the steps and through the garden toward the cedar wood which led to the old gate on the narrow road. Unity heard her singing as she went. The voice died in the distance. A door opened, Uncle Edward's step was heard in the hall, and his voice, harsh and strange, came out to his niece upon the porch: "Unity, I want you in the library a moment."

Jacqueline kept her tryst with Rand under the great oak that stood without the old gate, on land that was not the Churchills'. It was their custom to walk a little way into the wood that lay hard by, but this afternoon the narrow road, grass-grown and seldom used, was all their own. They sat upon the wayside, beneath the tree, and Selim grazed beside them. There was her full report of all that concerned them both, and there was what he chose to tell her. They talked of Fontenoy, and then of Roselands—talked freely and with clasped hands. Her head rested on his shoulder; they sat in deep accord, bathed by the golden light of the afternoon; sometimes they were silent for minutes at a time, while the light grew fairer on the hills. When an hour had passed they rose and kissed, and he watched her across the road and through the gate into the circle of Fontenoy. She turned, and waited to see him mount Selim and ride away. He spoke from the saddle, "At the same hour to-morrow," and she answered, "The same hour." Her hands were clasped upon the top-most bar of the gate. He wheeled Selim, crossed the road, half swung himself from the saddle, and pressed his lips upon them. "Come home soon!" he said, and she answered, "Soon."

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 masses 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 passed through the wood toward the light of sky and flowers, and came at the edge of the open space 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 pass 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 God 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 God!" said Cary, in a low voice; then, "This is all your assurance?"

"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 passed 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 gods 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 circumstance 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."

"Does it so much matter that you are Federalist and he Republican?"

"It matters very little."

"Or that you are a Cary, with all that that means, while he is Lewis Rand from the Three-Notched Road?"

"That matters not at all."

"Or that you are rival lawyers? Or that in politics he has defeated you? Or—Oh, my friend, now I am dealing unjustly! Forgive me—forgive me and make friends!"

"Would he," asked Cary sombrely—"would he agree? I think not. I am sure not. I think rather that he cherishes this enmity, feeds it, and fans it. Our lines in life have crossed, and now there is no force can lay them parallel. The sun is sinking, and I must see Major Edward again."

She rose from her seat beneath the cedar. "I'll hope on," she said. "Some day, if we live long enough, all clouds will break. Time withstands even the stony heart."

"Do you think," he demanded, "that mine is a stony heart? Well, be it so, since this is a game of misunderstanding! I will say this. If I could come, the next nineteenth of February, to your house on Shockoe Hill, and find him there, and find you happy with him there, then, then I think I would clasp hands—"

"Ah," she cried, "do not wait until February! We shall be there on Shockoe Hill in November."

He stooped and lifted her branch of ironweed. "You are sure?"

"Why, yes," she answered. "The house has been retaken. We go to Richmond as soon as Lewis comes back from over the mountains."

"From—"

"He has bought land in the western part of the state. He is going on a journey soon to examine it."

"Toward the Ohio?"

"Yes; toward the Ohio. How did you know?"

"And you—you will not go with him?"

"He has talked of my going. But I cannot now that my aunt is ill."

"Perhaps he will wait?"

"Yes; he says that he will. How pale you are! I am sure you are not well?"

They had stepped from out the wood into the light of the garden. She looked at him with concern, but be dismissed her question with a gesture of his hand and a laugh that sounded strangely in her ears. "It is," he said, "the fading light. Are you going in now?"

"Not yet. Daphne is ill at the quarter, and I'll walk down to her cabin first. Do you stay to supper?"

"No, not to-night. But I wish to see Major Edward again. If you'll allow me, I will go on to the library."

"Certainly," answered Jacqueline, and, when he had kissed her hand and said good-bye, watched him across the flower garden and up the steps that led to the glass doors. He passed into the room, out of her sight, but she still stood there among the asters and the box. His look was strange, she thought, and her hand had been crushed, rather than held, to his lips. She drew her scarf about her; the September evening was falling chill. The sunset light struck full upon the glass doors. She wondered why, for the second time in an afternoon, Ludwell Cary wished to see Uncle Edward, there in the library. Only once or twice, in the fortnight that she had been at Fontenoy, had she entered the library, and it was the room of all others that she loved. She thought now of the old green chair and of her father's portrait, and of every loved and dreamed-of detail, and she felt shut out in the dusk and chill. A sensation of strangeness crept over her. She thought, "If I were dead and trying to make the living hear, I should feel this way. And they would not even try to hear; they would shut the door and keep me out, all alone in the dark."

She stood for a full minute staring at the panes and the red reflected glare of the sun, then drew the scarf closer over her head, and took the path that led to the quarter.

MAJOR EDWARD

Rand rose from the supper-table and led the way into the dim, high-ceilinged room that served him as study and library. "Bring the candles," he said over his shoulder, and Tom Mocket obediently took up the heavy candelabra. With the clustered lights illuminating freckled face and sandy hair, he followed his chief. "Don't you want me to start the fire?" he asked. "These October nights are mortal cold."

"Yes," answered Rand. "Put a light to it and make the room bright. Fire is like a woman's presence."

As he spoke, he walked to the windows and drew the curtains, then took from his desk a number of papers and began to lay them in an orderly row upon the table in the middle of the room. "Mrs. Churchill is quite out of danger. My wife returns to Roselands to-morrow."

"That's fortunate," quoth Mocket, on his knees before the great fireplace. "You always did cut things mighty close, Lewis, and I must say you are cutting this one close! Adam, he goes along from day to day laughing and singing, with a face as smooth as an egg, but I'll warrant he's watching the sun, the clock, and the hourglass!"

"I know—I know," said Rand. "The sun is travelling, and the clock is striking, and the sands are running. This was a cursed check, this illness at Fontenoy. But for it I should be now upon the Ohio." He left the table and began to pace the room, his hands clasped behind him. "Two weeks from here to this island—then eight weeks for that twelve hundred miles of river, and to gather men from New Madrid and Baton Rouge and Bayou Pierre. October, November, December. Say New Orleans by the New Year. There will be some seizing there,—the banks, the shipping. If the army joins us, all will be well. But there, Tom, there! there is the 'if' in this project!"

"But you are sure of General Wilkinson!"

Rand paused to take a letter from his pocket. "Burr is. I have this to-day from him in cipher. Listen!" He unfolded the paper, brought it into the firelight, and began to read in a clear, low voice. "Burr has written to Wilkinson in substance as follows: Funds are obtained and operations commenced. The eastern detachment will rendezvous on the Ohio the first of November. Everything internal and external favours our views. The naval protection of England is secured. Final orders are given to my friends and followers. It will be a host of choice spirits. Burr proceeds westward never to return. With him go his daughter and grandson. Our project, my dear friend, is brought to a point so long desired. Burr guarantees the result with his life and honour, with the lives and honour and fortune of hundreds, the best blood of our country. Burr's plan of operation is to move down rapidly from the falls on the fifteenth of November, with the first five hundred or one thousand men, in light boats, now constructing for that purpose, to be at Natchez between the fifth and fifteenth of December, there to meet Wilkinson, there to determine whether it will be expedient in the first instance to seize on, or pass by, Baton Rouge. The people of the country to which we are going are prepared to receive us; their agents, now with Burr, say that if we will protect their religion, and will not subject them to a foreign power, then in three weeks all will be settled. The gods invite us to glory and fortune; it remains to be seen whether we deserve the boon.'"

Rand ceased to read and refolded the paper. "So Colonel Burr, with more to the same effect. If he writes thus to General Wilkinson, he is undoubtedly very sure of that gentleman and of the army which he commands. I am not of as confident a temper, and I am sure of no one save Lewis Rand."

The other blew the flames beneath the pine knots. "There's Gaudylock."

"I except Gaudylock."

Tom rose from the brick hearth and dusted his knees. "And there's me."

Rand smiled down upon his old lieutenant. "Ah, yes, there's you, Tom,—you and Vinie! Well, if we are fortunate, you shall come to me in the spring. By then we'll know if we are conquerors and founders of empire, or if we're simply to be hanged as traitors. If the fairer lot is ours, you shall have your island, my good old Panza!"

"And if it's the other?" demanded Tom, with a wry face.

Rand gave his characteristic short laugh. "It shall not be the other. The hemp is not planted that shall trouble us. There are no more astrologers now that we are grown wise,—and still a man trusts in his star! I trust in mine. Well, next week you'll open the office as usual, and to all that come you'll state that I've gone, between courts, to look at a purchase of land in Wood County. I'll bring that forgery case to an end day after to-morrow, and by Monday Adam and I will be out of Albemarle."

Mocket drew a long breath. "Monday! That's soon, but the sooner, I reckon, the better. Sometimes just any delay is fatal. For all his singing, I know that Adam is anxious—and he's weatherwise, is Adam! There's something in the air. The papers have begun to talk, and everywhere you turn there's the same damned curiosity about Aaron Burr and New Orleans and Mexico and the Washita lands! Moreover, when a man's as quiet as Mr. Jefferson is just now, I suspect that man. Best to get quite out of reach of a countermine. You've gone too far not to go a deal farther."

"Just so," agreed the other. "Many and many a league farther. Now, this paper of directions. I'll go over it carefully with you, and then I'll burn it. First, as to Roselands, the stock, and the servants. Joab and Isham go with us, starting on horseback an hour behind the chaise."

"You take no maid for Mrs. Rand?"

"It cannot be managed. When we reach this island, I can doubtless purchase a woman from Mr. Blennerhassett."

"Mrs. Rand does not know yet, does she, Lewis?"

"She does not know. She will not know until we are over the mountains and return is impossible." He turned from the fire, walked the room again, and spoke on as to himself. "When I tell her, there will be my first battle, and the one battle that I dread! But I'll win it,—I'll win because I must win. She will suffer at first, but I will make her forget,—I will love her so that I will make her forget. If all goes well and greatness is in our horoscope, she shall yet be friends with the crown upon her brow! Yes, and gracious friends with all that she has left behind, and with her Virginian kindred! When all's won, and all's at peace, and the clash and marvel an old tale, then shall her sister and her cousin visit her."

He paused at the fireplace and stirred the logs with his foot. "But that's a vision of the morrow. Between now and then, and here and there, it never fails that there's an ambushed road." He stood a moment, staring at the leaping flames, then returned to the table. "Back to business, Tom! When Roselands is sold—"

"Do you know," suggested Tom, "I've been thinking that, now he is going to be married, a purchaser might be found in Fairfax Cary."

"Fairfax Cary!" exclaimed the other, and drummed upon the table. "No; they will not want it, those two. Poor old Tom! your intuitions are not very fine, are they?"

"Well, I just thought he might," said the underling. "But he may live on at Greenwood with Ludwell Cary."

Rand struck his foot against the floor. "Don't let us speak that name to-night! I am weary of it. It haunts me like a bell—Ludwell Cary! Ludwell Cary! And why it should haunt me, and why the thought of him always, for one moment, palsies my will and my arm, I know no more than you! When I shake the dust of this county from my feet, it shall go hard but I will shake this obsession from my soul! Somewhere, when this world was but a fiery cloud, all the particles of our being were whirled into collision. Well, enough of that! Whoever purchases Roselands, it will not be a Cary. What's the matter now?"

"There's a horse coming up the drive."

Rand dropped the paper in his hand and sat listening. "Unlucky! I wanted no visitor to-night. It may be but a messenger. Ring the bell, will you, for Joab."

The horse came on and stopped before the great doorstone. There was the sound of some one dismounting, Joab speaking, and then the voice of the horseman. Rand started violently. "Are we awake?" he said, rising. "That is Major Churchill's voice."

Joab appeared at the door. "Marse Lewis, Marse Edward Churchill say kin he trouble you fer a few minutes' conversation? He say he lak ter see you alone—"

"One moment, Joab," said the master, gathering the papers from the table as he spoke. "Tom, you'll go back to the dining-room and wait for me there. No; not by that door—there's no use in his meeting you. What imaginable thing has brought him here?" He replaced the papers in a drawer, closed and locked it, looked up to see that Mocket was gone, and spoke to the negro. "Show Major Churchill in here."

The Major entered, dry, withered, his empty sleeve pinned to the front of his riding-coat. "Mr. Rand, good-evening. Ha, a cheerful fire against a frosty night! I come in out of the cold to a blaze like that, sir, and straightway, by a trick of the mind that never fails, I am back at Valley Forge!"

Rand looked at him keenly. "Permit me to hope, sir, that there is nothing wrong at Fontenoy? My wife is well?"

"Fontenoy is much as usual, sir," answered his visitor, "and my niece is very well. It is natural that my appearance here should cause surprise."

Rand pushed forward a great chair. "Yes, I am surprised," he said, with a smile. "Very much surprised. But since you bring no bad news, I am also glad. Won't you sit, sir? You are welcome to Roselands."

Major Edward took the edge of the chair, and held out his long, thin fingers to the blaze. "Yes; Valley Forge," he repeated, with his dry deliberation. "Valley Forge—and starving soldiers moaning through the icy night! Washington rarely slept; he sat there in his tent, planning, planning, in the cold, by the dim light. There was a war—and there were brave men—and there was a patriot soul!"

"I learn from Jacqueline that Colonel Churchill and you too, sir, have shown her for some days past much kindness, tenderness, and consideration. She has been made happy thereby."

"My niece has never been other than dear to me, sir," said the Major, and still warmed his hand. "I believe, Mr. Rand, that your father fought bravely in the war?"

"He did his part, sir. He was a scout with General Campbell and, I have heard, fought like a berserker at King's Mountain."

"If he did his part," the Major replied, "he did well, and is to be reckoned among the patres patriæ. It is a good inheritance to derive from a patriot father."

"So I have read, sir," said Rand dryly.

There was a silence while the flames leaped and roared. The Major broke it. "You would take me, would you not, Mr. Rand, to be a man of my word?"

"I should, sir."

"It has been my reputation. The last time that I spoke to you—"

Rand smiled gravely. "That was two years and a half ago, and your speech was to the effect that never should you speak to me again. Well! opinion and will have their mutations. Men of their word, Major Churchill, know better than most how little worth are the words of men. However you come here to-night, pray believe that you are welcome, and that I would gladly be friends."

Major Edward drew a long breath, pushed back his chair somewhat from the warmth of the fire, and from under shaggy brows regarded his nephew-in-law with the eyes of an old eagle, sombre and fierce. "Be so good, then, as to conceive that I come with an olive branch."

"It is difficult," said Rand, after a pause and with a smile, "to conceive that, but if it be true, sir, then hail to the olive! This feud was not of my seeking." He leaned forward from his chair and held out his hand. "Ever since the days of the blue room and that deep draught of Fontenoy kindness, a light has dwelt for me over the place. Will you not shake hands, sir?"

The other made an irresolute movement, then drew back. "Let us wait a little," he exclaimed harshly. "Perhaps I will, sir, in the end, perhaps I will! It is in the hope that eventually we will strike hands that I sit here. But such signs of amity come with better grace at the battle's end—" He paused and glared at the fire.

"There is, then, to be a battle?"

The Major swung around from the red light of the logs. "Mr. Rand, we—my brother Dick and I—propose a lasting peace between the two houses, between Fontenoy and Roselands. My brother Henry, sir, the father of—of your wife, sir, was as near to us in love as in blood, and the honour, safety, and peace of mind of his daughter are very much our concern! You will say that by perseverance in this long estrangement we have ignored the last of these. Perhaps, sir, perhaps! Old men are obstinate, and their wounds do not heal like those of youth. Enough of that! We—my brother Dick and I—are prepared to let bygones be bygones. We have cudgelled our brains—I mean, we have talked matters over. We are prepared, Mr. Rand, to meet you halfway—"

"Thank you," said Rand. "On what specific proposition?"

Major Edward rose, took a short turn in the room, and came back to his chair. "Mr. Rand, in the matter of the nomination for Governor, is it too late to recall your refusal? I think not, sir. Your party has named no other candidate. As a Federalist, I know, sir, but little of that party's inner working, but I am told that you would sweep the state. Far be it from me to say that I wish to see a Democrat-Republican Governor of Virginia! I do not. But since the gentleman for whom I myself, sir, shall vote, is undoubtedly destined to defeat, we—my brother Dick and I—consider that that post may as well be filled by you, sir, as by any other of your Jacobinical party. No one doubts your ability—you are diabolically able! But, sir, I would bury this arm where a damned cutthroat barber surgeon buried the other before I would cry on to such a post any man who did not enter the race with heart and hands washed clean of all but honour, plain intents, and loyalty! In the past he may have been tempted—he may have listened to the charmer, charming never so wisely—there is in man an iron capacity for going wrong. He may have done this, planned that—I know not; we all err. It is not too late; he may yet put behind him all this—"

"I do not think that I understand," said Rand. "All what, sir?"

The Major faced around from the fire with a jerk. "All this. I am explicit, sir. All this."

"Ah!" answered Rand. "I am dull, I suppose. All this. Well, sir?"

"I should," continued the Major, with emphasis, "regard the acceptance of the nomination as proof positive of the laying aside of all conflicting ideas, uneasy dreams, and fallacious reasoning, of all intents and purposes that might war with a sober and honourable discharge of exalted public duties. They are exalted, sir, and they may be so highly discharged, so ably and so loftily, as to infinitely dignify the office that has already great traditions. A Governor of Virginia may be the theme, sir, of many a far distant panegyric—"

Again he rose and stalked across the room, then, returning to the hearth, stood before Rand, his high, thin features somewhat flushed and his deep old eyes alight. "Mr. Rand, it would be idle to deny to you that I have had for you both dislike and mistrust. You may, if you choose, even strengthen these terms and say that I have regarded you with hatred and contempt. I am a man of strong feelings, sir, and you outraged them—you outraged them! Well, I am prepared to bury all that. Become a great Governor of Virginia, serve your land truly, according to the lights vouchsafed to a Republican, and, though we may not vote for you, sir, yet we—my brother Dick and I—we will watch your career with interest—yes, damn me, sir! with interest, pride, and affection!" He broke off to stare moodily into the fire and, with his foot, to thrust farther in a burning log.

"An olive branch!" exclaimed Rand, smiling. "This is a whole grove of olives! I am sorry about the governorship—"

"I have made enquiries," interrupted the other harshly. "You have but to signify your change of mind to your committee, and your name is up. The governorship—the governorship is not all! It is but a step from Richmond to Washington. There's field enough for even a towering ambition." He looked around him. "And Roselands. This place has always had a charm. In the old days it was famed for hospitality—for hospitality and for the beauty of its women."

"In neither respect, sir, has it lost its reputation."

Major Edward made a gesture of acquiescence. "I dare say not, sir, I dare say not. I am told that Republicans flock here. And Jacqueline is a beautiful woman. Well, sir, why should not pilgrimages be made to Roselands as to Monticello? You have begun to improve it. Continue, and make the place a Garden of Eden, a Farm of Cincinnatus, a—a—what you will! Dick thinks that you may not be in funds to plant and build as you desire. If that is so, sir, either he or I might with ease accommodate you—" He paused.

"I take your offer as it is meant," said Rand, "and thank you both. But my affairs are in order, and I am not straitened for money."

The Major made a courteous gesture. "It was but a supposition. Well, Mr. Rand, why not? Why not make the picture real that we are painting? Eminent in public affairs—eminent in the law—ay, there, sir, I will praise you unreservedly. You are a great lawyer—worshipped by your party and in the line of succession to its highest gift, fixed in your state and county and happy in your home, rounding out your life with all that makes life worthy to be lived,—

"Honour, love, obedience, troops of friends.

"Is not the picture fair enough, sir? There is in it no mirage, no Fata Morgana, no marsh fire. You are a man of great abilities, with ample power to direct those inner forces to outward ends that shall truly gild your name. Truly, sir, not falsely. Gold, not pinchbeck. Clear glory of duty highly done, not a cloudy fame whose wings are drenched with blood and tears. Come, sir, come—make an old man happy!" He dragged his chair nearer to Rand and held out his hand.

"I cannot accept the nomination for Governor, sir," said Rand. "There are various considerations which put it out of the question. I cannot go into these with you. You must take it from me that it is impossible."

The Major drew back. "That is final, sir?"

"That is final."

There was a silence. Rand sat, chin in hand, thoughtfully regarding his visitor. Major Churchill, erect, rigid, grey, and arid, stared before him as though indeed he saw only snowy plains, fallen men, and a forlorn hope. At last he spoke in a dry and difficult voice. "You persevere in your intention of returning to Richmond and to your house on Shockoe Hill in November?"

"It is my plan, sir, to go to Richmond in November."

"Immediately upon your return from over the mountains?"

Rand shot a glance at his interlocutor. "Immediately."

"These lands that you are going to see, sir—they are not as far as the Washita?"

"No; they are not as far as the Washita." Rand sat upright and let his hand fall heavily upon the arm of his chair. "That is a curious question, Major Churchill."

"Do you find it so?" asked the Major grimly. "I should, were it asked of me—so damned strange a question that it would not pass without challenge! But then, I am not declining governorships nor travelling West."

Rand rose from his chair. "Major Churchill"—He stopped short, bit his lip, and walked away to the window. There he drew the curtain slightly aside and stood with brow pressed against a pane, gazing out into the frosty darkness. A half moon just lifted the wide landscape out of shadow, and from the interlacing boughs of trees the coloured leaves were falling. Rand looked at the distant mountains, but the eye of his mind travelled farther yet and saw all the country beyond, all the land of the To Be, all the giant valley of the Mississippi, all the rolling, endless plains, all Mexico with snowy peaks and mines of gold. The apparition did not come dazzlingly. He was no visionary. He weighed and measured and reckoned carefully with his host. But there, beyond the mountains, lay no small part of the habitable world,—and the race of conquerors had not died with Alexander or Cæsar, Cortez or Pizarro! Witness Marengo and Austerlitz and that throne at Fontainebleau! He dropped the curtain from his hand and turned to the firelit room and to the tense grey figure on the hearth. "Major Churchill, if, softened by Jacqueline's presence there at Fontenoy, you came to-night to Roselands with the simple purpose of making friends with the man she loves, then, sir, that man would be a heartless churl indeed if he were not touched and gratified, and did not accept with eagerness such an overture. But, sir, but! There is more, I think, in your visit to-night than meets the eye. You demand that I shall become my party's candidate for the governorship. I answer it is not now possible. You insist that I shall busy myself with improvements here at Roselands, and to that end you offer to reinforce my purse. I answer that Roselands does very well, and that I am not in need of money. You preach to me patriotism and refer to General Washington; you speak poetically of gold versus pinchbeck, and true glory versus fame with drenched wings; you ask me certain questions in a voice that has hardly the ring of friendship—and last but not least you wish to know if a parcel of land that I have bought over the mountains is situate upon the Washita! The Washita, Major Churchill, is on the far side of the Mississippi, in Spanish Territory. May I ask, sir, before I withdraw my welcome to Roselands, by what right you are entitled to put such a question to me, and what is, indeed, the purport of your visit here to-night?"

Major Edward Churchill rose, stark and grey, with narrowed eyes and deliberating, pointing hand. "You are a villain, sir; yes, sir, a damned, skilled, heart-breaking villain! Bold! yes, you are bold—bold as others of your tribe of whom the mythologies tell! Arrogant as Lucifer, you are more wretched than the slave in your fields! You might have been upon the side of light; you have chosen darkness. It will swallow you up, and I, for one, shall say, 'The night hath its own.' You have chosen wrongly where you might have chosen rightly, and you have not done so in blind passion but in cold blood, fully and freely, under whatever monstrous light it is by which you think you walk! I have warned you of the gulf, and I have warned in vain. So be it! But do not think, sir, do not think that you will be allowed to drag with you, down into the darkness, the woman whom you have married! I wish that my niece had died before she saw your face! Do you know what she thinks you, sir? She thinks you a lover so devoted that at her pleading you put forever from you a gilded lure; a gentleman so absolutely of your word that for her to doubt it would be the blackest treason; a statesman and a patriot who will yet nobly serve Virginia and the country! God knows what she doesn't think you—the misguided child! She's happy to-night, at Fontenoy, because she's coming home to you to-morrow. That I should have lived to say such a thing of Henry Churchill's daughter! When I rode away to-night, she was singing." He burst into spasmodic and grating laughter. "It was that song of Lovelace's! By God, sir, she must have had you in mind.

"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.

"Yes, by God, she was thinking of you! Ha ha, ha ha!"

"You are an old man," said Rand. "It is well for you that you are. I wish to know who is responsible for these conjectures, suspicions, charges—whatever term you choose, sir, for all are alike indifferent to me—which brought you here to-night? Who, sir, is the principal in this affair? You are an old man, and you are my wife's kinsman; doubly are you behind cover; but who, who, Major Churchill, set you on to speak of towering ambition and blood-drenched wings and broken vows and deceived innocence, and all the rest of this night's farrago? Who, I say—who?"

"Ask on, sir," answered the Major grimly. "There is no law against asking, as there is none to compel an answer. Sir, I am about to remove myself from a house that I shall not trouble again, and I have but three words to say before I bid you good-night. I warn you not to proceed with your Luciferian schemes, whatever they may be, sir, whatever they may be! I warn you that it is ill travelling over the mountains at this season of the year, and I solemnly protest to you that my niece shall not travel with you!"

"And who," asked Rand calmly,—"and who will prevent that?"

"Sir," answered the other, "a grain of sand or a blade of grass, if rightly placed." He shook his long forefinger at the younger man. "You have been fortunate for a long turn in the game, Lewis Rand, and you have grown to think the revolving earth but a pin-wheel for your turning. You will awake some day, and since there is that in you which charity might call perverted greatness, I think that you will suffer when you awake. In which hope, sir, I take my leave. Mr. Rand, I have the honour to bid you a very good-night."

The master of Roselands rang the bell. "Good-night, Major Churchill. I am sorry that we part no better friends, and I regret that you will not tell me what gatherer up of rumour and discoverer of mares' nests was at the pains to procure me the honour of this visit. I might hazard a guess—but no matter. Joab, Major Churchill's horse. Good-night, sir."

He bowed formally. Major Churchill stood for a moment looking straight before him with a somewhat glassy stare, then, "Good-night, Mr. Rand," he said, in a voice like a wind through November reeds, made a bow as low and as studied as that with which he had once honoured Rand in the Fontenoy drawing-room, turned with martial precision, and stalked from the room.

Lewis Rand stood long upon the hearth, staring down into the fire. He heard Major Edward's horse go down the drive and out upon the highroad with a swiftness that spoke of a rider in a passion. The sound of hoofs died away, and he still stood looking into the red hollows, but at last with a short and angry laugh he turned away and opened the door which led to the dining-room. "Are you still there, Tom? Come in, man! The accusing angel has gone."

Tom appeared, and the two went back to the great table in the centre of the room. Rand unlocked the drawer and took out the papers in the perusal of which they had been interrupted. Mocket snuffed the candles and tossed another log of hickory upon the fire. "It falls in with what Gaudylock suspected," said Rand's measured voice behind him, "and it all dates back to the nineteenth of February. When he left the house that night, he must have known—"

"Of whom are you talking?" asked Tom at the fire. "Major Edward?"

"No, not Major Edward. And now he is using his knowledge. She told me to-day that he was often at Fontenoy. Too often, too often, Ludwell Cary!"

"Now, after stopping my mouth, you have spoken his name yourself!" remarked Tom. "You and he are over against each other in that case to-morrow, aren't you?"

"In every case we are over against each other," said the other abruptly. "And we shall be so until Judgment Day. Come, man, come! we have all these to go through with before cockcrow."

A CHALLENGE

The Charlottesville Robbery Case was one of no great importance save to those directly concerned. It had to do with a forged note, a robbery by night, and an absconding trusted clerk of a company of British Merchants. When the case came up for trial on this October day, the Court House was well filled indeed, but rather on account of the lawyers engaged than because of the matter's intrinsic interest. The British Merchants had retained Mr. Ludwell Cary. The side of the prisoner, mentioning that fact in a pitiful scrawl addressed to the law office of Messrs. Rand and Mocket, found to its somewhat pathetic surprise that Mr. Rand himself would take the case and oppose Mr. Cary.

The two had fought it with a determination apparent to every bystander, and now, on the last day of the trial, the counsel for the prosecution rose to sum up his case. He was listened to with attention, and his speech was effective. The theme was the individual who, after forgery and embezzlement, had taken French leave, quitting a post of trust and credit for regions where he hoped to enjoy his ill-gotten gains in peace and quietness. The regions had proved inhospitable, and a sheriff had escorted the unlucky adventurer with that which was not his own back to the spot whence he had started. His transgression was now to be traced from the moment—day or night, or sunrise or sunset; what mattered the moment?—when the thought passed through his brain, "Why should I plod on like other men?"

"'Passed through,' did I say?—nay, it tarried; at first like a visitor who will one day take his leave, then a cherished inmate, and at last lord and master of every crevice of that petty mansion! It dwelled there, and day by day it fed itself with remembered examples. 'There was Tom, over on the Eastern Shore, grew tired, too, of working for his employers,—and he robbed the till one night, and got off on a sloop to the Havana, and now they say he has a pirate ship of his very own! And Dick. Dick got tired, too, in a tan-yard in Alexandria, and when his master sent him on a mission to Washington, he took his foot in his hand and went farther. He had his expenses in his pocket, so why not? He's prospering now in a bigger and gayer town than Alexandria! And Harry. Harry was more trusted than them all, but he, too, got tired—in a warehouse at Rocket's—of plod, plod, plod! serve, serve, serve! So he forged a name, and took the gold that lay beneath his hand, tore up his indentures, and fled in the night-time—over the hills and far away! He's a rich man now, somewhere near the sunset, rich and great, with clerks of his own. He had the advantage of education, had Harry! Examples! Examples thick as hops! What's Buonaparte himself but a poor Corsican lieutenant that stole an empire? I'll be bold, too. I'll steal, and then I'll steal away!'

"So scullion soul to pliant body. His thought is father to his deed, and there is the usual resemblance between son and parent. What matters it that he has lived in his employer's house, and has found him no Egyptian taskmaster, but a benefactor, lavish of favours? What matters it that he has in charge things of trust and moment which, by miscarrying, will work distress to many? What matters it that others are about him, engaged in this same drudgery of doing one's duty, to whom, should he succeed in villainy as he trusts to do, his example will remain, a wrecker's light to entice the storm-tossed upon a rocky shore? What matters it,—I am told, gentlemen, that the prisoner has a good and industrious sister,—what matters it that rarely, rarely, is there ill-doing without, somewhere in the shadowed background, some bruised and broken heart? What does it matter that he betrays his trust, breaks his oath, blackens his name, slurs his friends, and recruits the army, wan and sinister, of all the fallen since time began? To him, apparently, it matters less than a drifting leaf in the wind of this October day. He remembers all that he should forget, and forgets all that should be remembered. There pass by him in long parade Tom and Dick and Harry and others of their ilk. He sees them, and he sees little else. It is a host of choice spirits, and they have banners flying. His courage mounts. Brave emulation! noble rivalry! He, too, will be bold; he, too, will join their regiment! For him, too, the spoils of opportunity and a daughter of the game! He feels the summer in the air, and all Brummagem rises upon his horizon. Farewell to patient drudgery and the slow playing over of the tune of life! He's for a brisker air, he's for 'Over the hills and far away.'

"His little plans are laid. I say 'little,' gentlemen, advisedly, for in all this there is no greatness. We speak of a self-seeker here, and all the ends of such an one are small, and he himself has not attained the full stature of a man. The ambitious soul before us! By stealth he practises until he can sign his employer's name, more lifelike almost than life! By stealth he gains impressions of the keys. By stealth he eyes the only wealth that his mole mind can value! By stealth he makes his preparations, and by stealth he cons the miles and the post-houses between him and the country to which he means to carry himself and his stolen goods! He is assiduous at his desk; his employers nod approval, praise him for a lad of parts, and hold him up for emulation. In his brain one air continues,—'Over the hills and far away.'

"The day approaches. The forgery is done, the accustomed hand slips easily in and out of the golden drawer, and all the roads are got by heart. We have the loan of a horse—before another dawn we will be gone. O Fortune of great thieves, stand pat! and kindly tune run on! 'Over the hills and far away.'

"We have been told by the worthy gentlemen, his employers, that so trustworthy did they consider the prisoner at the bar, so able in their affairs and assiduous in their service, that this very day it was in their minds to increase his pay and to raise him quite above his fellow clerks to an honourable post indeed. He did not give them time, gentlemen, he did not give them time! The hour is here, the notes are sewn within the lining of our well-brushed riding-coat, the master key is in our itching palm! We'll lurk until midnight, then in the dark room we will unlock the drawer. If we are heard, softly as we step in the silence of the night—if a watchman come—the worse for the watchman! We carry pistols, and the butt of one against his forehead will do the work. For we are bold, gentlemen, we are as bold as Cæsar or Buonaparte! We won't be stopped—we won't! We're for 'Over the hills and far away.'"

The counsel for the prisoner addressed the Judge. "Your Honour, no watchman, dead or alive, being among the witnesses, and there being no capable proof of what were or were not my client's thoughts upon the night in question, I indignantly protest—"

The objection was sustained. The interruption over, the attorney for the British Merchants went evenly on. "We have Mr. Rand's word for it that the prisoner had no thought of the watchman, and no intention of using, even in case of need, the weapons with which it has been proved he was provided. Mr. Rand must know. As a rule, gentlemen bearing arms about their persons may be considered the potential users of said arms, whether the antiquated rapier or the modern pistol—but then, I bethink me, we are not speaking of men of honour. We are speaking of a small criminal in a small way, and Mr. Rand assures us that his thoughts matched his estate—they were humble, they were creeping. Headstrong, proud, and bold are words too swelling for this low and narrow case. To wear a weapon with intent to use is one thing, to buckle it on as a mere trivial, harmless, modish ornament and gewgaw is quite another! We have Mr. Rand's word for it that it was so worn. Gentlemen, the prisoner, armed, indeed, as has been proved, was absolutely innocent of even the remotest intent to use under any provocation beneath high heaven the pistols—oiled, primed, and duelling type—with which, by chance or for the merest whim of ornament, he had decked his person upon this eventful night. Mr. Rand tells us so, and doubtless he knows whereof he speaks.

"So armed and so harmless, gentlemen, the prisoner, having committed forgery, does now his second crime—the pitiful robbery. The key that he has forged with care is true to him, the gold lies at his mercy, underneath his hand; he lifts it up, the shining thing; he bears it away. The hour has struck, the deed is done; irrevocable, it takes its place upon the inexpugnable record. He has stolen, and there is no power in heaven or earth to change that little fact. We are grown squeamish in these modern days, and no longer brand a thief with heated iron. No letter will appear, seared on his shoulder or his hand, but is he less the thief for that? He himself has done the branding, and Eternity cannot wear out the mark. He goes. With his stolen gold he steals away. It is night. There are only the stars to watch his flight, and he cares not for the stars—they never tell. Have they not, time out of mind, stood the friend of all gentlemen of the road? He quits the house that has seen his crime; he leaves dull and honest men asleep; he bestows no parting glance upon the dim, familiar ways. His native land is naught—he's for green fields and pastures new—he's for Tom and Dick and Harry, and all their goodly company—he's for 'Over the hills and far away.'"

The counsel for the prosecution finished his speech. The judge summed up the case, the jury retired, and very shortly returned with the expected verdict of Guilty. The chalk-white and shaking prisoner stood up, was sentenced and removed, and, the business of the day being over, the court adjourned.

Good-naturedly, laughing and talking after the morning's restraint, the crowd, gentle and simple, from the lower part of the room, was in the course of jostling toward the door, when there came a sudden check coupled with exclamations from those nearest the bar, and with a general turning of heads and bodies in that direction.

The lawyer for the prosecution and the lawyer for the defence stood opposed, a yard of court-room floor between them, and around them a ring of excited friends and acquaintances. There had been high voices, but now a silence fell, and the throng held its breath in cheerful expectation of the bursting of a long predicted storm.

"This," said Cary's clear and even voice, not raised, but smoothly distinct,—"this is a challenge, sir. I take it rightly, Mr. Rand?"

"You take it rightly, Mr. Cary. I shall presently send a friend to wait upon you."

"He will find me, sir, at the Swan. As the challenged party, it is my prerogative to name hour and place. You shall shortly be advised of both."

"I am going to my office, sir, where I will await your messenger. You cannot name an hour too soon, a place too near for me."

"Of that I am aware, Mr. Rand. I will make no delay that I conceive to be unnecessary. I am, sir, your very humble servant."

"I am yours, Mr. Cary."

The two bowed profoundly and parted company, making their several ways through the throng to the Swan and to the office with the green door. With them went their immediate friends and backers. The crowd of spectators, talking loud or talking low, conjecturing, explaining, and laying down the law, jesting, disputing, hotly partisan, and on the whole very agreeably excited, finally got itself out of the Court House and the Court-House yard, and the autumn stillness settled down upon the place.

At Roselands, in the late afternoon, Jacqueline came out upon the doorstone and sat there, listening for Selim's hoofs upon the road. The weather was Indian summer, balmy, mild, and blue with haze. On the great ring of grass before the stone yellow beech leaves were lying thick, and the grey limbs of the gigantic, solitary tree rose bare against the blue. Jacqueline sat with her chin in her hand, watching the mountains, more visible now that the leaves were gone. She saw the cleft through which ran the western road, and she thought with pleasure of the days before her. She loved the journeys to Richmond, and this one would be more beautiful, and new. They would be gone ten days, perhaps,—ten days of slow, bright travel through sumptuous woods, of talk close and dear. She was exquisitely happy as she sat there with her eyes upon the Blue Ridge. The last fortnight of her stay at Fontenoy had been almost a blissful time. Her uncles changed, and no longer passed her with averted eyes, or, when they spoke, used so cold a ceremony as to chill her heart. They grew almost natural, they seemed even tender of her. Uncle Dick had once again called her "My little Jack," though he groaned immediately afterwards and, getting up, looked out of the window, and Uncle Edward left the library door ajar. Jacqueline laid her head upon her arm and laughed. It was coming right—it was coming right!—and next year they would all dance at Fontenoy with light hearts, at Unity's wedding. It had begun to come right the evening of the day that she had met Ludwell Cary in the cedar wood. She wondered, slightly, at that coincidence, and then she fell again to dreaming.

Lewis was coming; he had passed through the gate—and she started up. He rode on to the back of the house, left his horse there, and, striding through the hall and down the three stone steps, joined her where she stood upon the greensward, among the fallen leaves. "Good-evening to you!" she said, touched his shoulder with her hand, and raised her face to his. He drew her to him, kissed her with fierce passion, and let her go, then walked to the beech tree and stood with his back to the house, staring at the long wall of the mountains, dark now against a pale gold sky. She followed him. "Lewis! what is the matter?"

He answered without turning, "We are not going, quite yet awhile, over the mountains. Man proposes, and Ludwell Cary disposes. Well! we will stay merrily at home. But he shall pay the score!"

"What do you mean?"

"Two weeks! What may not happen over there in two weeks? And I bound here, hard and fast, hand and foot! By what?—by the plaything code of a plaything honour! Now, if he were any other man under the canopy, I would not stay! The question is, is it imaginable that all this was of set purpose?"

"Lewis, what is the matter?"

Rand turned. "The matter, child? The matter is that you may unpack, and that we will give a dinner party! We do not travel to-morrow; no, nor the next day, nor the next! I have to await a gentleman's leisure."

She hung upon his arm. "Lewis, Lewis, what is it? You are trembling—"

He laughed. "Do you think it is with fear?"

"Don't, don't!" she cried. "Don't be so angry—don't look so black! I am afraid of you. What is it, dearest, dearest?"

"Wait," he said harshly. "Wait, Jacqueline, a moment."

He put her abruptly from him, walked to the doorstone, and, sitting down, bowed his face upon his hands. For some moments he remained thus, while she stood under the beech tree, her hand upon her heart, watching him. At last he lifted his head, rose, and came back to her. "To-day, in the court room, I challenged Ludwell Cary. He has named, as is his right, time and place of our meeting. The time, something more than two weeks from to-day; the place, five miles from Richmond. I confess that I was taken by surprise. I had expected to-morrow morning and the wood beyond the race-course. If I thought—what, by all the gods, I do think!—that he had dared—that he had done this deliberately, with intent to keep me here, I—Jacqueline! why, Jacqueline!"

"I'm—I'm not going to swoon," said Jacqueline, with difficulty. "Air, that is all—let me sit down a moment on the grass. A duel—you and Ludwell Cary."

"I and Ludwell Cary." Rand uttered his short laugh. "How steadily have we been coming just to this! I think I knew it long ago. I have in me so much of the ancient Roman that I prize him, now that we are at grips, and think him a fair enemy. If I did not hate him, I would love him. But it is the first, and I'll not forgive this pretty trap he's laid! What does he think will come after these two weeks he has me shackled? Does he think that he can always keep me here?—or only until—until it is too late to go?" He struck his hand against the beech tree. "Well, well, mine enemy, we will try conclusions."

Jacqueline rose from the grass, came to him, and laid her head upon his breast. "Lewis, is there no way out with honour? Must it be? He is my friend and you my husband whom I love. Will you face each other there like—like General Hamilton and Aaron Burr? Oh, break, my heart!"

Rand kissed her. "There is no way out. He means me to stay, and I will do it—for this while, Cary, for this while! Look, Jacqueline; the sun is setting over the road we should have gone! I have been a fool. Six weeks ago should have seen us far, far upon that shining track! Now the world is spinning from me, the glory rolling under, and I feel the dark. Adam is right; once started on this trail, I should have gone like the strong arrow's flight. I knew the warriors were behind me, and yet I idled,—waited first to break with my old chief,—as if my going would not have done that work, as short, as clean!—and waited last because of a sick woman's whim! If I had not let you go to Fontenoy, we might to-day have heard the rushing of a mightier river than the Rivanna yonder! Delay, delay, where haste itself should have felt the spur!"

"If I had not gone to Fontenoy," cried Jacqueline, "my aunt might have died with her last wish ungratified! If I had not gone, oh, what would they not have thought of me, most rightly, most justly! Now we are almost friends again,—the thing I've prayed for, longed for, wept for, since that June! Was this not worth the waiting? There is something here that I do not understand. Why should you so greatly care to see these lands? Say that there is some money lost and some vexation—what does that count against this nearing home—this making friends?" She struck her hands together. "And yet—and yet if we had gone, there would not have been this day, this quarrel, and this challenge! There would not be this day to come, when I shall hear what, from now till then I'll dream I hear! O Christ, I heard them then, the pistol shots! Why did we not go, Lewis, days ago?"

"Now you are weeping," said Rand, "and that will ease your heart. Could I have helped it, I would not have told you of this quarrel. You could not, however, have failed to hear; it was a public thing, and the town is buzzing with it. See, Jacqueline, I am no longer passionate. The dog is down. The mistake, if mistake it was, is made; we are not over the mountains; we are here in Albemarle, at Roselands, underneath the beech tree. I was never one to weep for spilt milk. This way is stopped, and this moment foreclosed. Well, there are other moments and other ways! The sun is down and the night falls dark and cold. Come, dry your eyes!"

"That is soon done. The thorn is in my heart."

"I will draw it out," he answered. "I'll draw it out with love. Don't think that Ludwell Cary can hurt me; it's not within his kingdom. Do not grieve that men are enemies; smile and say, 'It will be so a few years longer!' I am glad with all my heart that you are friends again with all at Fontenoy. As for this journey, I stayed for you, Jacqueline. It was needful for me to go, but I stayed that you might part friends with your kindred. Remember it one day."

"Why," she cried,—"why did you not go without me? You would not have been long gone, and I should have waited your return there at Fontenoy! Then this day and this quarrel would not have come! Ludwell Cary and you to meet—O God!"

"I did not wish to go without you. You do not understand—but trust me, Jacqueline; trust me, trust me!" He took her in his arms. "Come, now! It is twilight, and there's a dreariness in these fallen leaves. Come indoors to the fire and the light, and the books and the harp. Deb arrived to-day, did she not?"

"Yes; she is somewhere with Miranda. They have been playing dolls with the last flowers."

He stopped a moment as they were moving over the grassy ring. "Flower dolls! They were playing flower dolls that morning in June when I came down from the blue room and out into the garden. There they sat, on the red earth in the little cedar wood, with their bright ladies. Deb told me all their names. She told me more than that—she told me you were reading in the arbour. Jacqueline, are you sorry that I found you there?"

"No, I am not sorry; I am glad. You could make me wretched, but you could not make me repentant. Oh, Lewis! I shall hear those shots to-night—"

"No, you will not—I shall read you to sleep. Why, if you were a soldier's wife, would you hear all the bullets flying? There, the last red has faded, and I hear the children's voices! Come in; come in out of the dark."