Lewis Rand Part 45

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

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 Blennerha.s.sett'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 ba.s.s:--

"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 pa.s.sed, 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 cas.e.m.e.nt, 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d! O G.o.d!" she said, but made no other prayer.

The minutes pa.s.sed. 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 s.h.i.+nes! 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 d.i.c.k 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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionately, 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 compa.s.sion 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 n.o.ble. 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.

CHAPTER XXVIII

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 gra.s.s 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. St.u.r.dy 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 partic.i.p.ants 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.