Lewis Rand

THE LETTER

The windows were open to the dusky rose of the west, and their long curtains stirred in the hot and fitful breeze. Jacqueline, waiting for the lights, pushed the heavy hair from her forehead and panted a little with the oppression of the night. Young Isham entered with the candles, and Mammy Chloe brought her upon a salver a cup of coffee and a roll. She ate and drank, then sent her old nurse away. The candles, under their tall glass shades, were upon the centre table, and beside them lay the letters she was to read. Her husband's own letter was slipped beneath the ribbon that confined her dress, and lay against her heart.

It was so hot and dull a night that she stood for a while at a window, leaning a little out, trying to fancy that there was rain in the fantastic mass of clouds that rose on either side of the evening star. The smell of the box at the gate was strong. She thought of Fontenoy, of Major Edward, and of Deb. A grey moth touched her; she looked once again at the bright star between the clouds, then, turning back into the room, drew a chair to the table and, sitting down, took into her lap the papers that lay beside the candles.

There had come a letter in the stage from Winchester. She opened it. "Could Mr. Rand arrive by such a day? The case was important—the interests large—the fee large, too. Could he come just as soon as the jury, the press, and Mr. Jefferson hanged Aaron Burr? An early reply—"

Jacqueline rose, brought writing-materials from the escritoire to the table, and copied rapidly, in her clear, Italian hand, the Winchester letter, then laid it to one side to be folded with her own to Lewis for to-morrow's stage to Williamsburgh. The next letter was, she knew, from Albemarle, and not important. She laid it aside. The third she opened; it was from a gentleman in Westmoreland who wished in a certain litigation "the services, sir, of the foremost lawyer in the state." Jacqueline smiled and laid it with the Albemarle letter. The matter might wait until the foremost lawyer's return. There were now two letters, and neither was from Washington. One was indeed about matters political, a tirade from a party leader on Rand's folly in declining, last year, the nomination for Governor, but it contained nothing to demand his instant attention. The other, which had come by boat from Norfolk, seemed of no consequence.

Jacqueline put both aside, and took into her hand the packet given her by Colonel Nicholas. She sat for a moment, looking at the superscription. "A letter from Washington," Lewis said, "outlining the Embargo measures. Open and glance through it to see if there be any message I should have at once." She thought no otherwise than that this was the letter in question. Mr. Jefferson was, she knew, upon the defensive in regard to these measures, and she was glad to believe that he had fallen into an ancient habit and was willing, as of old, to expatiate upon his policy to Lewis Rand.

She broke the red seals and unfolded the paper. It proved to be a letter covering a letter. She let fall the folded, inner missive, drew a candle nearer, and read in Jefferson's small, formal, and very clear hand:—

Jacqueline laid down the large, blue, crackling sheet, and took from the floor beside her, where it had fallen, the President's enclosure. Hand and eye moved mechanically; she neither thought nor feared. Her judgment was in suspension, and she was unconscious of herself or of her act. The seals upon this second letter were broken. She unfolded it. On the outside it was addressed in a hand that, had she thought, she would have recognised for Tom Mocket's, to an undistinguished person at Marietta upon the Ohio; within, the writing was her husband's and the address was to Aaron Burr. The date was last August, the subject-matter the disruption of the Republic and the conquest of Mexico, and the detail of plans included the arrangement by which Rand was to leave Albemarle, ostensibly to examine a purchase of land beyond the mountains He would leave, however, not to return. Once out of the country, he with his wife would press on rapidly to the Ohio, to Blennerhassett's island.

The summer night deepened, hot and languorous, with a sweep of moths to the candle flames, with vagrant odours of flowering vines and vagrant sounds of distant laughter, voices, footsteps down the long street. Jacqueline sat very still, the letter in her lap. The curtains at the window moved in the fitful air. Through the open doors from the kitchen in the yard behind the house came the strumming of a banjo, then Joab's deep bass:—

"Go down, go down, Moses,
Tell Pharaoh let us go!
Go down, go down, Moses,
King Pharaoh, let us go!"

There was a wave of honeysuckle, too faint and deadly sweet. A party of men, boatmen or waggoners, went by, and as they passed, broke into rough laughter.

Jacqueline rose, letting fall the letter. With her hand to her forehead she stood for a minute, then moved haltingly to the window. Her eyes were blank; she wanted air, she knew, and for the moment she knew little else. She was whelmed in deep waters, and all horizons were one. When she reached the casement, she could only cling to the sill, raise her eyes to the stars, and find nothing there to help her understand. There was in them neither calm nor sublimity; they swung and danced like insensate fireflies. The honeysuckle was too strong—and she must tell Joab she did not wish to hear his banjo to-night. The men who had passed were still laughing.

She put her hand again to her forehead, then presently withdrew it and looked over her shoulder at the paper lying upon the floor beside the table. By degrees the vagueness and the absence of sensation vanished. She had had her moments of merciful deadening, of indifference to pain; they were past, and torment now began.

Perhaps half an hour went by. She rose from the sofa upon which she had thrown herself, face down, pressed her hands to her temples, then, moving to the table, wrote there a word or two, folded and addressed the paper, and rang the bell. Young Isham appeared and she gave him the note, bidding him, in a voice that by an effort she made natural, to hasten upon his errand. When he was gone, she stooped and gathered from the floor the fallen letters—the President's and Lewis Rand's—and laid them in a drawer. The touch seemed to burn her, for she moaned a little. She wandered for a moment uncertainly, here and there in the room, then, returning to the sofa, fell upon her knees beside it, stretched out her arms along the silk, and laid her head upon them. "O God! O God!" she said, but made no other prayer.

The minutes passed. There was a step, the sound of the gate-latch, and a hand upon the knocker. She rose from her knees, and was standing by the table when, in another moment, the drawing-room door opened to admit Ludwell Cary. He came forward.

"You sent for me"—He paused, stepped back, and looked at her fully and gravely. "Something has happened. Tell me what it is."

"You know. You have known all the time. You knew last summer in the cedar wood!" Her voice broke; she raised her arms above her head, then let them fall with a cry. "You knew—you knew!"

"How have you come to know? No, don't tell me!"

"I am mad, I think. A letter came that told me. I see now how the world must look to madmen. It is a curious place where we are all strangers—and yet we think it is our safe home."

As she turned from him, she reeled. There was a great chair near, beside the window. Cary caught her by both hands, forced her to sit down, and drew the curtains apart so that the air of night came fully in. The quiet street was now deserted; the maple boughs, too, screened the place. "Look!" he said. "Look how brightly Venus shines! All the immense rack of clouds that we had at sunset has vanished. The box smells like the garden at Fontenoy, where, I make no doubt, Deb and Major Edward are walking up and down, counting the stars. Yes, I knew, that afternoon in the cedar wood—but not for happiness itself would I have robbed you of that faith, that confidence—"

She leaned forward in the great chair, her hands clasped upon its arms, her dark eyes wide upon the night without the window. "I sent for you because I wished you to tell me all. I wanted truth as I wanted air! I want it now. That day we met in the cedar wood—you and Uncle Edward talked together." She drew a difficult breath. "It was then that they—Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward—began to treat me as though—as though I had never left home! It was then—"

"They feared," said Cary gently, "for your happiness."

"I returned to Roselands, and in three days we were to travel across the mountains. Then at sunset, underneath the beech tree"—She sat for a moment perfectly still, then turned in her chair and spoke in a clear voice. "That was why you forced him to challenge you, and that was why you named a distant time and place? The truth, please."

"That was why."

She rose from the chair and leaned, panting, against the window-frame. "Was there no other way—"

"It seemed the simplest way," he answered quietly. "There was no harm done, and it answered my purpose." He paused, then went on. "My purpose was to detain Mr. Rand from so rash and so fatal a step until it was too late for him to take it."

She turned from the window. "You are generous," she said, in a stifled voice. "I ask your pardon for my hard thoughts of you. Oh, for a storm and a wind to blow! It is too hot, too heavy a night. I never wish to smell the honeysuckle again."

He followed her back to the light of the candles. "Listen to me for a moment. I do not think that you know—I am not sure that I know—the iron strength of the laws that rule an ambitious nature. Ambition becomes an atmosphere; the man whose temperament and self-training enure him to it breathes it at last as though it were his native air. It becomes that—an inner and personal clime, the source and spring of countless actions, great and small. The light, too, is refracted, and the great background of life is not seen quite truly. It is, I think, an enchanted air, into which a man drifts upon a river of dreams and imaginations—and how hard to reascend, against the current!" He paused, stood a moment with downcast eyes, measuring the table with his hand, then drew a quick breath and spoke on. "Given his parentage and descent, his unhappy and hardly-treated boyhood, the visions, the rebellions, the longings with which he must have walked the hot and rank tobacco-fields; given the upward struggle of his youth, so determined and so successful; given the courage, the hardihood, the wide outlook of a man who has neither inherited nor been granted, but has himself hewn out and built up his holding in life; given genius and sense of power, will, perseverance, and the fatal knowledge that all events and all currents habitually bend to his hand,—given all this and opportunity"—He raised his head and met her eyes. "It is not strange and it is not monstrous that Mr. Rand should have involved himself, to a greater or less degree, in this attempt upon the West. God is my witness, I would not have you think it strange and monstrous! Ambition is, perhaps, the most human of all qualities. Many and many an ambitious man has been loved, loved passionately, loved deservedly!—many a conqueror, many a one of those who failed to conquer and who were called by an ugly name! Love does not love the ambition, it loves that which is love-worthy below the iron grating and the tracery of false gold! As the world goes, Lewis Rand and I are enemies; but I could swear to you to-night that I see, that I have always seen, a greatness in him! I believe it to be distorted and darkened, but the quality of it is greatness. Were I he"—He paused for a moment, then continued, with dignity. "Were I he, I would say to the lady who, for love, had given me her hand in wedlock,—'Love me still. My land is one of storm and darkness, of rude wastes and frowning strongholds whence sometimes issue robber bands. But it is not a petty land, and side by side with all that is wrong runs not a little that is heroic and right! Love me still and help me there, even though—even though I am forsworn to you!"

"I would not have you think," she said clearly,—"I would not have you even lightly dream, that his country is not my country! I love him!"

"I know that you do."

"There is no place so dark that I would not wait for him there as for the dawn. There is no flood I would not cross to him; there is no deep pit in which I would not seek him, were he fallen there! He has done wrong, and I am unhappy for it. But never think, never dream, that, though I see the dark and broken ground, I would leave that country, or am less than wholly loyal to its King!"

"I have neither thought nor dreamed it."

"When I—when I learned this thing, it shook me so! My brain whirled, and then I thought of you and called to you."

"There is no service to which you could call me that I would not thankfully render. I am your friend and your people's friend. There is one thing more I should like to say to you. Do not fear for him. There is no reason to believe that this will ever be discovered. The lips of those who know are sealed."

"Who knows?"

"On our side your uncles, my brother and I,—and your cousin, I think, guesses. The President, also, is aware—"

She reddened deeply. "I know," she said, in a stifled voice. "The President, too, is generous—"

"On his—on Mr. Rand's side, certain men whom we need not name. That he has secured their silence, events have proved, and I take it for granted that he has been careful to recall and to destroy any writing that might incriminate. He is, I think, quite safe."

She turned from him and, sitting down by the table, laid her head upon her arms. He regarded her for a moment with compassion and understanding, chivalrous and deep, then, moving to the window, stood there with his face to the evening star. At last she spoke in a broken and tremulous voice "Mr. Cary—"

He came to her side. "It is a peaceful night, still and bright. You will sleep, will you not? Leave all this to Time and to the power of steadfast love! You may yet see in this land the grandeur of the dawn."

"I know that I shall," she answered. "And when I see it, I shall think reverently of you. It was like you to come, like you to help me so. Now, good-night!"

She took his hand, and before he could prevent her, raised it to her lips. "No,—let me! You are generous and you are noble. I acknowledge it from my heart. Good-night—good-bye!"

He showed for a moment his pent emotion, then strove with and conquered it. "I will go. Your cousin is from home, and you are alone to-night. Would you prefer that she should return?"

"No. I had rather be alone."

He took the hand that she gave him, kissed it, and said good-night. When he was gone and his step had died from the street, she stood for some moments as he had left her, then, with a sobbing breath, turned to the table and took the letters from the drawer.

RAND AND MOCKET

Tom Mocket, returning to Richmond twenty-four hours after his friend and patron, found it too late that evening to see Lewis and to report the happy winding up of all matters in Williamsburgh. The next morning he was at the office betimes, but though he waited long, no Lewis appeared. At last Tom sent a boy to the house on Shockoe, who returned with the statement that Mr. Rand was gone to the Capitol. "Then I'll go too," thought Tom. "I've got nerve as well as he!"

It was the fourth day of the actual trial, and interest was at white heat. Tom whistled to himself as he crossed the Capitol Square where men blocked the paths or, on the grass beneath the trees, recounted, disputed, and prophesied. When he reached the building, it was with much difficulty that he effected an entrance, and with more that he at last edged himself into the Hall of the House of Delegates. Sturdy perseverance and an acquaintance with a doorkeeper, however, can accomplish much, and these finally placed Mocket where, by dint of balancing himself upon an advantageous ledge of masonry, he had a fair view of both participants and spectators.

General William Eaton was being examined. The throng sat or stood silently attentive, swayed forward as by a wind. Marshall upon the bench, long and loose-jointed, with a quiet, plain face, was listening with intentness; the opposing counsel sat alert, gathered for the pounce; the prisoner, with a contemptuous smile, regarded the witness, who indeed cut but a poor figure. The District Attorney's voice, deliberate and full, asked a question, and General Eaton proceeded to give in detail Colonel Burr's expression of treasonable intentions.

Mocket, who had at first looked and listened with a thumping heart and a strong feeling that, visible to all, the letter T might be somewhere sewn or branded upon his own person, by degrees grew bolder. There wasn't any letter there, that was certain, and a slight sense of personal danger might even become a welcome sauce to such a great affair as this! His fright vanished, and his ferret eyes began to rove.

There was Adam Gaudylock, still with his musket. It was a day when men habitually journeyed with pistols in their holsters or a dirk somewhere about them, but Adam carried that musket merely because he loved it—like a dog or a woman! Tawny and blue-eyed, light and lithe, indifferent and pleased to see the show, the hunter listened to General Eaton and laughed behind his hand to a fellow woodsman. "My certie, he's trained!" thought Tom. "It's not much they'll get from him!"

His eyes left Adam and travelled in search of Lewis Rand, finding him at last where he sat at no great distance from the group of central importance. His face was turned in Mocket's direction, and the light from a high window fell upon it. "He doesn't see me," thought Tom to himself. "Who's he looking at like that?"

The witness's voice, raised by suggestion of counsel to a higher note, came athwart Mocket's speculations. "I listened to Colonel Burr's mode of indemnity; and as I had by this time begun to suspect that the military expedition he had on foot was unlawful, I permitted him to believe myself resigned to his influence, that I might understand the extent and motive of his arrangements. Colonel Burr now laid open his project of revolutionizing the territory west of the Alleghany; establishing an independent empire there; New Orleans to be the capital, and he himself to be the chief; organizing a military force on the waters of the Mississippi, and carrying conquest to Mexico—"

On went Eaton's disclosures, punctuated by heated objections from Wickham and Luther Martin, and once or twice by a scornful question from Burr himself. It was damning testimony, and the throng hung breathless on the various voices. Mocket listened also, but listened with his eyes upon his chief, and when there arose some interruption and dispute over technicalities, his freed mind proceeded to deal with Rand's change of aspect. It occurred to him to wonder if the light which showed it to him could be falling through a veil of storm cloud, but when he glanced at the high window, there was only the blue August heaven. What, then, gave Lewis so dark a look? "The black dog he talks of has got him sure," thought Tom. "What's happened to anger him like that?"

The voice of the witness again made itself heard. "Colonel Burr stated that he had secured to his interests and attached to his person the most distinguished citizens of Tennessee, Kentucky, and the territory of Orleans; that the army of the United States would act with him; that it would be reinforced by ten or twelve thousand men from the above states and territories, and that he had powerful agents in the Spanish territory. He proposed to give me a distinguished command in his army; I understood him to say the second in command. I asked him who would command in chief. He said, General Wilkinson. I said that General Wilkinson would act as lieutenant to no man in existence. 'You are in error,' said Mr. Burr. 'Wilkinson will act as lieutenant to me—'"

Mocket moved with care along the ledge until he had brought within his view another portion of the Hall. "That look of his isn't fixed on nothing! Now we'll see." He stood on tiptoe, craned his neck, and surveyed the crowded floor. "Humph!" he remarked at last. "I might have known without looking. If I were Ludwell Cary—"

The counsel for the prisoner and the prisoner himself were subjecting the witness to a riddling fire of cross-questions. Mocket, on his coign of vantage, was caught again by the more apparent drama, and looked and listened greedily. Eaton at last retired, much damaged, and Commodore Truxtun was sworn. This was a man of different calibre, and from side to side of the long room occurred a subtle intensification of respect, interest, and attention. On went the examination, this time favourable, on the whole, to Burr. "The prisoner frequently, in conversation with me, mentioned the subject of speculations in western lands, opening a canal and building a bridge. Colonel Burr also said to me that the government was weak, and that he wished me to get the navy of the United States out of my head; that it would dwindle to nothing; and that he had something to propose to me that was both honourable and profitable; but I considered this nothing more than an interest in his land speculations—"

The August heat was maddening. Now and then a puff of wind entered from the parched out-of-doors, but it hardly refreshed. The flutter of the women's fans in the gallery made a far away and ineffectual sound. "All his conversations respecting military and naval subjects and the Mexican expedition," went on Truxtun's voice, "were in event of a war with Spain. I told him my opinion was, there would be no war, but he was sanguine of it. He said that after the Mexican expedition he intended to provide a formidable navy; that he meant to establish an independent government and give liberty to an enslaved world. I declined his propositions to me because the President was not privy to the project. He asked me the best mode of attacking the Havana, Carthagena, and La Vera Cruz—"

The day wore on. Truxtun was released, and the Attorney for the United States called Blennerhassett's servants to prove the array at the island and the embarkment upon the Ohio. They did their best with a deal of verbiage, of "Colonel Burr said" and "Mr. Blennerhassett said," and with no little bewilderment under cross-examination. "Yes, sir; I'm telling you, sir. Mr. Blennerhassett allowed that Colonel Burr and he and a few friends had bought eight hundred thousand acres of land, and they wanted young men to settle it. He said he would give any young man who would go down the river one hundred acres of land, plenty of grog and victuals while going down the river, and three months' provision after they got to the end; every young man must have his rifle and blanket. When I got home, I began to think, and I asked him what kind of seed we should carry with us. He said we did not want any, the people had seeds where we were going—"

"Of what occupation were you upon the island?" demanded Mr. Wirt.

"A gardener, sir. And then Mr. Blennerhassett said to me, 'I'll tell you what, Peter, we're going to take Mexico, one of the finest and richest places in the world!' He said that Colonel Burr would be King of Mexico, and that Mrs. Alston, daughter of Colonel Burr, was to be the Queen of Mexico whenever Colonel Burr died. He said that Colonel Burr had made fortunes for many in his time, but none for himself, and now he was going to make something for himself. He said that he had a great many friends in the Spanish territory; that the Spaniards, like the French, had got dissatisfied with their government, and wanted to swap it. He told me that the British also were friends in this piece of business. I told him that the people had got it into their heads that Colonel Burr wanted to divide the Union. He sent me to Mason County with a letter, but I wasn't to deliver it until I had the promise that it should be burned before me as soon as 't was read, for, says he, it contains high treason."

"Gad!" thought Mocket to himself, "I'm glad that some one else's letters are burned as well! If I were as cool as Aaron Burr looks—"

Mr. McRae questioned the witness: "Well, who went off this December night?"

"Mr. Blennerhassett, sir, and the whole of the party."

"At what time of the night?"

"About one o'clock."

"Did all that came down to the island go away?"

"All but one, who was sick."

"Had they any guns?"

"Some of them had. Some of the people went a-shooting; but I do not know how many there were."

"What kind of guns; rifles or muskets?"

"I can't tell whether rifles or muskets. I saw no pistols but what belonged to Mr. Blennerhassett himself."

"Was there any powder or lead?"

"They had powder and they had lead. I saw some powder in a long, small barrel like a churn. Some of the men were engaged in running bullets."

"What induced them to leave the island at that hour of the night?"

"Because they were informed that the Kenawha militia were coming down."

The cross-examination of this witness and some desultory firing by the opposed counsel ended the day's proceedings. The court adjourned, and the crowd streamed forth to the open air. Mocket, among the first to leave the hail, waited for his chief beside the outer doors. Townspeople, country neighbours, and strangers poured by, and he spoke to this one or to that. A group of Federalists approached; among them Ludwell Cary. They were talking, and as they passed Mocket heard the words, "When I return to Albemarle next week—" They went on down the steps; others streamed by, and presently Rand appeared. His lieutenant joined him, and together they left the Capitol and struck down the parched slopes to Governor Street.

"Things are all right at Williamsburgh," ventured Mocket, finding the silence oppressive. "I got in too late to see you last night. Were you at the Capitol yesterday also?"

"Yes."

"A man told me they had Adam on the stand. They got nothing from him?"

"Nothing."

"I've the papers all straight for the Winchester case. What do you want me to do—"

"I want you to be silent."

The other glanced aslant, with a lift of his brows and a twist of his lip. "That's a black rage," he thought; "Gideon and old Stephen and the Lord knows who beside all speaking together!"

They left Governor Street and presently arrived in silence before Rand's office. Mocket unlocked the door and they went in together. The senior partner dragged a chair before the empty fireplace and, sitting down, stared at the discoloured bricks as though he saw vistas through the wail. Tom worked among the papers on his desk, moving his fingers noiselessly, and now and then glancing over his shoulder. The clock on the wall ticked loudly.

Rand spoke at last His voice had a curious suppressed tone, and upon his forehead, between the eyes, was displayed the horseshoe frown of extreme anger. Mocket had seen it earlier in the day, and it was now distinct as a brand. "I am not going," he said, "to take the Winchester case. This damned business here will soon be over. I shall wait to hear the verdict, and then I'm going to Albemarle."

"What d'ye think the verdict will be?"

"They'll acquit him. Barring Wirt, he has all the talent on his side. I'll leave you here to clear up things."

"Does Mrs. Rand wait here for you?"

"No. She leaves Richmond with Miss Dandridge to-morrow."

Tom took out his knife and began to whittle, an occupation that in him denoted sustained mental exertion. The other sat on before the empty fireplace, the mark upon his forehead, his hand twitching where it lay upon the arm of his chair. The clock ticked loudly; the sun, now low in the heavens, sent its gold shafts through the window; outside, the locusts shrilled in a dusty sycamore. Rand rose and, going to the cupboard, took from it a bottle and a glass, poured out brandy for himself, and drank it. In an age of hard drinking he was accounted puritanically abstemious. Mocket, glancing after him, knew that the draught meant disturbance so deep that the organism needed, rather than craved, the strength within the glass. Rand came back to the fireplace.

"Do you remember when, in November, I burned here, or thought I burned here, all papers, all letters—"

"Do I?" asked Mocket, with emphasis. "There's nothing happened to make me forget."

"A man cannot weave a net so fine that some minnow will not slip through and become leviathan! It escaped and has grown. Well, that too was in the nature of things." He took the ash-stick from the corner of the hearth and handled it as though he were again holding down burning papers. "So things are all right at Williamsburgh? I had a happy home-coming."

"You always have that," said Tom simply. "You've had a wonderful fortune, and more there than anywhere. I'm always telling Vinie—"

"Vinie!" answered the other. "Vinie would always blindly worship on. The sun might darken and go out, but where's the odds since she would never know it! Faith like a dog's or a child's or Vinie's—there's comfort there! But the awakened mind, and Judgment side by side upon the throne with Love—Oh, there's verjuice in the world!" He broke into harsh laughter.

"I wish I knew what ailed you," thought Mocket. "I'll try another tack." He stopped whittling and turned from his desk. "Coming out of the Capitol, I heard Ludwell Cary say that he goes next week to Albemarle."

"It is indifferent to me," replied the other, "whether he goes or stays." His hands closed upon the ash-stick until his nails were white. Suddenly he spoke without apparent relevance. "He is one of those men who are summoned in time of trouble—when the mind is tossed and the heart is wavering. They always answer—they come down the street at night, between the box bushes, up the steps beneath the honeysuckle—on such an errand they would not fear the lion's den! They are magnanimous, they are generous, they are out of our old life, they can tell us what we ought to do!" He struck the ash-stick violently against the hearth. "Honeysuckle and box and the quiet of the night, and 'Yes, I knew, I knew. 'Twas thus and so, and I would counsel you—' Oh, world's end and hell-fire! forgiveness itself grows worthless on such terms!"

He threw the stick from him, rose abruptly, and walked to the window.

"The clouds pile up, but they do not break, and the heat and fever of this August air grow intolerable. To abstract the mind—to abstract the mind"—He stood listening to the locusts and all the indefinable hum of the downward-drawing afternoon, then turned to Tom. "Give me those Winchester papers. Now what, exactly, did you do in Williamsburgh?"

THE RIVER ROAD

The days of speeches, for the Government and for Aaron Burr,—Hay, Wirt, and McRae against Edmund Randolph, Wickham, Botts, Lee, and Luther Martin,—went crackling by with bursts of heavy artillery and with running fire of musketry. It was a day of orators, and eloquence was spilled like water. At last the case rested. The Chief Justice summed up, exhaustively, with extraordinary ability, and with all the impartiality humanly possible to a Federalist Chief Justice dealing with a Republican prosecution. The jury, as is known, brought in a Scotch verdict, whereupon the prisoner was immediately upon his feet with a vehement protest. Finally the "Not proven" was expunged from the record, and Aaron Burr stood "Acquitted." The famous trial for treason was over.

As, throughout the summer, all roads led to Richmond, now, in the fierce heat and dust of early autumn, there was an exodus which left the town extremely dull after all the stir and fascination of the Government's proceedings. Burr, indeed, discharged for treason, was still held in bail to answer for the misdemeanor, judges and lawyers were still occupied, and many witnesses yet detained. But the result of the matter was a foregone conclusion. Here, too, there would be a "Not proven," with a demand on the part of the accused for a "Not guilty," and a final direction by the judges to the jury to return a verdict in the usual form. The trial of a man for a misdemeanor in levying war with Spain—a misdemeanor which, if proved, could entail only imprisonment—was an infinitely less affair than a prosecution for high treason, with the penalty of an ignominious death suspended like a sword of Damocles. The little world in Richmond felt the subsidence of excitement, realized how warm and dusty was the town, and began to think of its plantations and of country business. Witnesses and visitors of note took the homeward road. The Swan, the Eagle, the Bell, the Indian Queen, crowded all the summer, saw their patrons depart by stage, by boat, in coach and chaise, and on horseback. Many private houses were closed, and the quiet of the doldrums fell upon the place.

Jacqueline and Unity had been ten days in Albemarle. The two Carys, a servant behind them with their portmanteaus, rode away from the Swan on the first day of September. It was understood between the brothers that they were to make all haste to Greenwood. But there were houses on the way where kinsmen and friends might be trusted to do what they could to detain the two. Both were anxious to be at home—Fairfax the more eager, as was natural. The marriage was set for the middle of the month. As they rode out of town he had begun with, "I'll see her in four days," and the next morning, passing through the gates of the plantation where they had slept, he had irrelevantly remarked, "Now it is but three." The elder brother laughed and wished him Houssain's carpet.

Throughout the day they rode as rapidly as the heat permitted, but when at dusk they were captured by a kinsman with a charming wife and a bevy of pretty daughters, it was evident that they would not resume the road at dawn. It was noon, indeed, before they unclasped all these tendrils and pursued their journey, and at sunset another plantation put out a detaining hand. Fairfax Cary swore with impatience. The other laughed again, but when, late next morning, they got away with a message called to them from the porch, "You'll be at Elm Tree this afternoon. Tell Cousin William—" he looked kindly at his junior's vexed face and proposed a division of forces.

"We can't neglect Elm Tree, and then there's Cherry Hill and Malplaquet still before us. Why shouldn't you just speak to them at Elm Tree, then ride on to the inn at Deer Lick and sleep there to-night? You could start with the first light, ride around Cherry Hill, and give Malplaquet the slip. I'll make your excuses everywhere. It's hard if a man can't be forgiven something—when he's on the eve of marrying Unity Dandridge! You'll be at Greenwood to-morrow night, and I dare say they'll ask you to breakfast at Fontenoy. Come, there's a solution!"

"You're the best fellow! And what will you do?"

"I'll sleep to-night at Elm Tree and ride soberly on to-morrow, take dinner at Cherry Hill, and sleep again at Malplaquet. They'll all be disappointed at not seeing the prospective bridegroom, but I'll make them understand that a man in love can't travel like a tortoise! I'll ride from Malplaquet by the river road and be at home that afternoon. You had better take Eli with you."

They rode together to Elm Tree, and parted under these conditions.

Lewis Rand left Richmond on the third of September. He travelled rapidly. There were no kinsmen to detain him on the road, and while he had hot partisans and was not without friends, there was not within him the Virginian instinct to loiter among these last, finding the flower in the moment, and resolutely putting off the morrow. His quest was for the morrow.

He rode now in the hot September weather, by field and forest, hill and dale and stream, and rested only when he would spare the horses. Young Isham was with him; Joab had been sent on with Jacqueline. When night fell, he drew rein at the nearest house. If he knew the people, well; if he did not know them, well still; on both sides acquaintance would be enlarged. Hospitality was a Virginian virtue; no one ever dreamed of being unwelcome because he was a stranger. In the morning, after thanks and proffers of all possible service, he took the road again. It was his purpose to make the journey, despite the heat, in three days.

The last night upon the road he spent at a small tavern hard by an important crossroads. It was twilight when he dismounted, the fireflies thick in the oak scrub and up and down the pale roads, a crescent moon in the sky, and from somewhere the sound of wind in the pine-tops. Young Isham and the hostler took away the horses, and Rand, mounting the steps to the porch, found lounging there the inn's usual half-dozen haphazard guests. To most of these he was known by sight, to all by name, and as, with a "Good-evening, gentlemen!" he passed into the low, whitewashed main room, he left behind him more animation than he had found. When, a little later, he went into the supper-room, he discovered at table, making heavy inroads upon the bacon and waffles, an old acquaintance—Mr. Ned Hunter.

"Mr. Hunter, good-evening."

"Hey—what—the Devil! Good-evening to you, Mr. Rand. So, after all, your party, sir, didn't hang Colonel Burr!"

The two ate supper with the long table between them, and with no great amiability of feeling in presence. The Republican was the first to end the meal, and the Federalist answered his short bow with an even more abbreviated salute. Rand went out into the porch, where there were now only one or two lounging figures, and sat down at the head of the steps. Mr. Hunter came presently, too, into the air, and leaned against the railing, whistling to the dogs in the yard.

"You are going on in the morning, Mr. Rand?"

"Yes. At dawn."

"You'll be in Charlottesville, then, by two o'clock. Earlier, if you take the river road."

"I shall take the river road."

"It is broken riding, but it is the quickest way. Well, I won't be many hours behind you! My humble regards, if you please, to Mrs. Rand. There's nothing now at Fontenoy but wedding talk. I am sure I hope Miss Dandridge may be happy! Here, Di! here, Rover! here, Vixen!"

Rand arose. "I've had a long day and I make an early start. Good-night to you, gentlemen!"

When, in the morning, Young Isham came to his door with the first light, the boy found his master already up and partly dressed. Rand stood by the window looking out at the pink sky. "A bad night, Young Isham," he said, without turning. "Sleep's a commodity that has somehow run short with me. Are the horses ready?"

"Yaas, marster."

"Have you had your breakfast?"

"Yaas, marster."

"Help me here, then, and let's away. Roselands by one!"

Young Isham held the gilt-buttoned waistcoat, then took from the dresser the extravagant neckcloth of the period, and wound it with care around his master's throat. Rand knotted the muslin in front, put on his green riding-coat, and took from the dresser his watch and seals. "Bah! there's a chill in these September dawns! Close the portmanteau. Where did you put the holsters?"

"Dar dey is, sah, under yo' han'."

The boy, on his knees, worked at the straps of the portmanteau. Rand, waiting for him to finish, drew out a pistol from its leather case, looked it over and replaced it, then did the same with its fellow. "Are you done?" he said at last. "Bring everything and come on. I'll swallow a cup of coffee and then we'll be gone. We should pass Malplaquet by nine."

They rode away from the half-awakened inn. A mist was over the fields, and when they presently came to a stretch of forest, the leaves on either hand were wet. The grey filled arcades and hollows, and the note of the birds was as yet sleepy and without joyousness. They left the woods and, mounting a hill, saw from its summit the sun rise in splendour, then dipped again into fields where from moment to moment the gold encroached. They rode rapidly in the freshness of the morning, by wood and field and stream, so rapidly that it was hardly nine when they passed a brick house with pillars set on a hill-top in a grove of oaks. Rand looked at it fixedly as he rode by. Malplaquet was a Cary place, and it had an air of Greenwood.

Three miles further on, sunk in elder and pokeberry and shaded by a ragged willow, there appeared a wayside forge. The blacksmith was at work, and the clink, clink of iron made a cheerful sound. Rand drew rein. "Good-morning, Jack Forrest. Have a look, will you, at this shoe of Selim's."

The smith stooped and looked. "I'll give him a new one in a twinkling, Mr. Rand! From Richmond, sir?"

"Yes; from Richmond."

"Burr got off, didn't he? If the jury'd been from this county, we'd have hanged him sure! Splitting the country into kindling wood, and stirring up a yellow jacket's nest of Spaniards, and corrupting honest men! If they won't hang him, then tar and feathers, say I! Soh, Selim! You've been riding hard, sir."

"Yes. I wanted to be at home."

"'Tis mortal weather. When September's hot, it lays over July. We'll have a storm this afternoon, I'm thinking. There's a deal of travel despite the heat, and I'm not complaining of business. Mr. Cary of Greenwood is just ahead of you. There, sir, that's done!"

The smith arose, patted Selim on the shoulder, and stood back. "You've got a fine horse, Mr. Rand, and that's certain. By Meteor, ain't he, out of Fatima?"

"Yes. Which of the Carys did you say—"

"Ludwell Cary. He came from Malplaquet and rode by an hour ago. The other passed yesterday—"

"Did Mr. Cary say which road he would take at the ford?"

"No, he didn't. The main road, though, I reckon. The river road's bad just now, and he seemed to have time before him. Thankee, Mr. Rand, and good-day to you!"

Followed by Young isham, Rand travelled on by the dusty road, between the parching elder and ironweed, blackberry and love vine. There was dust upon the wayside cedars, and the many locust trees let fall their small yellow leaves. As the sun mounted the heat increased, and with it the interminable, monotonous, and trying zirr, zirr, of the underworld on blade and bush. He rode with a dark face, and with lines of anger between his brows. It had come to him like a chance spark to a mine that Ludwell Cary was not at Greenwood, was yet upon the road before him. He knew day and hour when the other had left Richmond, and there had been more than time to make his journey.

Before him, on the lower ground, a belt of high and deep woods proclaimed a watercourse, and he presently arrived beside a shrunken stream. Here was a mill, and the miller and a man or two were apparent in the doorway. The ford lay a hundred yards beyond, and on the far side of the stream the river road and the main road branched. Travellers paused as a matter of course to give and take the time of day, and now the miller, dusty and white, came out into the road. "Morning, morning, Mr. Rand! From Richmond, sir? So we couldn't hang Aaron Burr, after all. Well, he ought to have been, that's all I've got to say!"

"Give me a gourd of water, will you, Bates? This dust is choking."

"'Tis that, sir. But we'll have a storm before the day is over. There's a deal of travel just now. Mr. Cary of Greenwood passed a short while ago."

A negro brought a dripping gourd. Rand put it to his lips and drank the cool water. "Which road," he asked, as he gave back the gourd,—"which road did Mr. Cary take? The main road or the river road?"

The miller looked over his shoulder. "Jim and Bob and Shirley, which road did Mr. Cary take?"

"I didn't notice."

"Reckon he took the main road, Bates."

"I wasn't looking, but you could hear his horse's hoofs, and that wouldn't have been so on the river road."

"'Twuz de main road, sah."

Rand and Young Isham went on, down by the mill and along the bank to the clear, brown, shallow ford, crossed, and paused beneath a guide-post upon the crest of the further bank. The trees hid the mill. Before them stretched the main road, to the right dipped between fern and under arching boughs the narrow, broken river road. "If he went this way," said Rand slowly, "I'll go that. Young Isham—"

"Yaas, marster."

"The mare's spent. No need to give her this rough travelling. Take the main road and take it slowly. Let her walk, and when you reach Red Fields, stop and have her fed. I'll go and go fast by the river road."

Master and slave parted, the latter keeping to the sunny thoroughfare, the former plunging into the narrow, heavily shaded track that ran through ravine and over ridge, now beside the water and now in close woods of birch and hemlock. The road was bad, but Selim and his master bent to it grimly, with no nice avoidance of rut or stone or sunken place. To the horse there was before him food and rest, to the man his home. They took at the same pace the much of rough and the little of smooth, and the miles fell behind them. The sun was high, but there were threatening masses of clouds, with now and then a distant roll of thunder. The road was solitary, little used at any time, and to-day as lonely a woodland way as might well be conceived.

Rand rode with closed lips, and with the mark between his brows. Passion was having its way with him, such passion as had lived with him, now drowsing, now fiercely awake, in the days at Richmond between his return from Williamsburgh and the close of the trial. He saw Roselands and Jacqueline beneath the beech tree, but he also saw, and that with more distinctness, the face and form of the man who rode toward Greenwood. He longed for Jacqueline, but he had not forgiven her. He knew that he would when he saw her face—would forgive her with a cry for the waste of the hot, revengeful days, the sleepless nights, since they had parted. Her face swam before him, between the hemlock boughs, but he was not ready yet to forgive, not yet, not until he got to Roselands and she met him with her wistful eyes! He was not a fool; the Absolute within him knew where lay the need for forgiveness, but it was deeply overlaid with human pride and wrath. He was at the old, old trick of anger with another when the fault was all his own. As for Ludwell Cary—

His hand closed with force upon the bridle and his eyes narrowed. "From the first, from that day upon the Justice's Bench, from that day when we gathered nuts together, I must have hated. Now it is warp and woof, warp and woof!" He touched Selim with the spur. "If there were truly a heaven and truly a hell, and I, in flames myself, saw him in Abraham's bosom, not to escape from that torment would I call to him, 'Once we were neighbours, once it seemed that we might have been friends—come down, come down and help me, Cary!'"

He laughed, a harsh sound that came back from the rock above him. By no means always, far from even often, a hardened or an evil man, to-day the stream of thought was stirred and sullied from every black pool and weedy depth, and there came floating up folly, waste, and sin. His reason slept. Had he, by some Inquisitor not to be disobeyed, been suddenly obliged to give why and wherefore for his hatred, the trained intellect must have agreed with the questioner. "These causes fail of sufficiency." That was true, but the truth was sophistry. He dealt now with the fact that he hated, and in his mind, as he rode at speed along the river road, he did not even review the past which had given birth to this present. He hated, and his hand closed upon the rein within it as though there was there, in addition, another thread.

A hemlock bough brushed violently against his face. He struck it aside, and, coming to the rocky top of a little rise, checked Selim for a moment of the fresher air. It came like a sigh from the darkening clouds. Rand looked out over field and forest to the massed horizon, then shook the reins, and Selim picked his way down the ridge to a woodland bottom through which flowed a stream. Rand heard the ripple of the water. A jutting boulder, crowned by a mountain ash, hid the road before him; he turned it and saw the stream, some yards away, flowing over mossed rocks and beneath a dark fringe of laurel. He saw more than the stream, for a horseman had paused upon the little rocky strand, and, hearing hoofs behind him, had partly turned his own steed. Rand's hand dragged at the bridle-rein and Selim stood still.

For a moment the two men, so suddenly confronted, sat their horses and stared at each other. Between them was a narrow rocky space, about Rand a heavy frame of leaves, behind Cary the clear flowing stream. Above the treetops the mounting clouds were dark, but the sun rode hot and high in a round of unflecked azure. The silence held for a heartbeat, then Rand spoke thickly: "So you, too, took the river road?"

"Yes. It is rough but short. When did you leave Richmond?"

"As soon as I could. You would have been better pleased, would you not, had I never left it? In your opinion, I should be in durance there, laid by the heels with Aaron Burr!"

"You are not yourself, Mr. Rand."

"Do not push innocence upon the board! When did it begin, your deep interest in my concerns? Before the world was made, I think, for always we have been at odds. But this—this especial matter, Ludwell Cary, this began with the letter which you wrote and signed 'Aurelius'!"

"A letter that told the truth, Mr. Rand."

"That is as may be. Telling the truth is at times an occupation full of danger."

"Is it?"

"The nineteenth of February—ah, I have you there! Was it not—was it not a pleasant employment for a snowy night to sit by the fire and learn news of an enemy—news the more piquant for the lips that gave it!"

"You are speaking, sir, both madly and falsely!"

They pressed their horses more closely together. Cary was pale with anger, but upon Rand's face was a curious darkness. Men had seen Gideon look so, and in old Stephen Rand the peculiarity had been marked. When he spoke, it was in a voice that matched his aspect. "Last October in the Charlottesville court room—even that insult was not insult merely, but a trap as well! It is to be acknowledged that yours was the master mind. I walked into your trap."

"That which I did is not to be called a trap. Your ambition enmeshed you then, as your passion blinds you now."

Rand's voice darkened and fell. "Who gave you—who gave you the right of inquisition? What has your soul or your way of thinking to do with mine? You are not my keeper. I would not take salvation at your hands—by God, no! Why should the thought of you lie at the bottom of each day? It shall not lie at the bottom of this one! I do not know where first we met, but now we'll part. You have laid your finger here and you have laid it there, now take your hand away!"

"Do you well, and I will," said Cary sternly.

The other drew a labouring breath. "Two weeks ago I was in Williamsburgh, in the Apollo, listening in the heat to idle talk—and you in Richmond, you came at her call! You came down the quiet street, and in between the box bushes, and up the steps under the honeysuckle. What did you say to her there in the dusk, by the window? You were a Cary—you were part and parcel of the loved past—you had all the shibboleths—you could comfort, commiserate, and counsel! Ha! I wish I might have heard. 'Aurelius' dealing with the forsworn and the absent! 'Here the blot, and there the stain, and yon a rent that's hard to mend. If there's salvation, I see it not at present.' So you resolved all her doubts, and laid within her hand every link of a long chain. You have my thanks."