Lewis Rand Part 59

"That is what I asked you."

"Then nothing," he replied, "nothing but the north wind. Now about Carfax--"

Advice given on the subject of all dealings with Carfax, the adviser rose to take his leave. Mrs. Selden removed her spectacles and laid them in her key-basket. It was a sign with her that she was about to speak her mind.

"Lewis," she said, "I was a good friend to you once."

"Do I not know that?" he answered. "The best friend a poor boy ever had."

"No, not quite that--except, perhaps, to help you a little with Jacqueline. Mr. Jefferson was the best friend a poor boy ever had."

Rand winced. "You say true. The best friend a boy could have. Give me another gla.s.s of wine, and then I'll go."

"A man like that during youth and a woman like Jacqueline for your manhood--you have had much to prop your life."

"Yes. Very much."

"Then," she said sharply, "don't let it fall. Grow upward, Lewis, like the vine that gave its strength to make this generous wine! If you don't, you'll disappoint your Maker, to say nothing of some poor earthly friends! Don't fall--don't run upon the earth like poison oak. You're meant for n.o.ble uses--to help your kind, and to rejoice the heart of the Maker of strong men. Don't you fail and fall, Lewis Rand!"

Rand paused before her. "How should I help my kind, now--now?"

His old friend looked at him a little wonderingly. "Do the simple right, my dear, whatever it is that you see before you."

"The simple right! And to rejoice the heart of my Maker--if I have one?"

"Do the right strongly and surely, Lewis."

"Whatever it is?"

"Whatever it is." Mrs. Jane Selden looked at him thoughtfully, her hands clasped upon her key-basket. "I'm only an old woman--just a camp-follower with an interest in the battle. I wish that you had had a friend of your own age--a man, and your equal in power and grasp.

Gaudylock and Mocket and such--they're well enough, but you're high above them, you're a sort of Emperor to them. Could you but have had such a friend, Lewis--a man like the Carys--"

"For G.o.d's sake, don't!" cried Rand hoa.r.s.ely. He poured out a gla.s.s of wine, looked at it, and pushed it away. "I will go now, for there is work waiting for me in town, and at home Do as I tell you about Carfax.

Good-bye, good-bye!"

Out upon the road, pa.s.sing through a strip of pine and withered scrub, he raised his hand, and for some moments covered his eyes. When he dropped it, he saw, in the strong purples of the winter evening, again that misty figure, riding this time, riding near him, not in the road, but apparent in the air against and between the tall trunks of pines.

"Cary," he said again, "Cary!"

There was no response from the figure in the air. "Cary," cried Rand, "I would we had been friends!"

Selim reached the open country; the pines fell away, the form was gone.

Rand touched his horse with the spur and rode fast between brown stubble-fields darkening to the hills and to the evening sky. "Friends,"

he repeated, "friends! That would be on terms of my doing the simple right--the simple right after the most complicated wrong! Terms! there are no terms."

Leaving the fields, he rode down to a stream, crossed it, and saw the shape against a pale s.p.a.ce of evening sky. "Is it to be always thus?" he thought. "I would that I had never been born."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

IN PURSUIT

January pa.s.sed and February pa.s.sed. Fairfax Cary, riding for the third time since the New Year from Malplaquet toward Greenwood, marked the blue March sky, the pale brown catkins by the brooks, and the white flowers of the bloodroot piercing the far-spread carpet of dead leaves.

He rode rapidly, but he paused at Forrest's forge and at the mill below the ford. This also he had done before. Neither the smith nor the men at the mill knew the idea that brought him there, but they may have thought--if they thought at all--that he put strange questions. It was, moreover, matter of regret to them, and of much comment when he had pa.s.sed, that Mr. Fairfax Cary had lost an old and well-liked way of making a man laugh whether he would or no. He didn't jest any more, he didn't smile and flash out something at them fit to make them hold their sides. He had aged ten years since September, he had the high look of the Carys, but he was even quieter than his brother had been--all the sparkle and play dashed out as by a violent hand. The smith and the men at the mill thought it a great pity, shook their heads as they looked after him, then fell again to work, or to mere happy lounging in the first spring airs.

The lonely horseman crossed the ford below the mill, drew rein beneath the guide-post, and halted there for some minutes, deep in thought. At last, with a shake of the head and an impatient sigh, he spoke to Saladin, and once again they took the main road. "It is the third time,"

thought the rider. "There is luck in the third time."

The quiet highroad, wide and sunny, seemed to mock him, and the torn white clouds sailing before the March wind might have been a beaten navy, carrying with it a wreck of hope. The gusty air brought a swirl of sere leaves across his path, and the dust rose chokingly. "Caw! caw!"

sounded the crows from a nearby field. The dust fell, the wind pa.s.sed, the road lay quiet and bright. "Never!" said Cary between his teeth. "I will never give up!"

Half an hour's riding, and he came in sight of a small ordinary, its low porch flush with the road, a tall gum tree standing sentinel at the back, and on the porch steps a figure which, on nearer approach, he recognized as that of the innkeeper. He rode up, dismounted, and fastened Saladin to the horse-rack, then walked up to and greeted a weight of drowsy flesh, centre to a cloud of tobacco smoke, and wedded for life to the squat bottle and deep gla.s.s adorning the step beside it.

"Good-morning, Mr. Cross."

The innkeeper stirred, removed his pipe, steadied himself by a hand upon the step, and turned a dull red face upon the speaker. "Morning, Mr.--Mr. Cary! Which way did you come, sir? I never heard you."

"I came up from the ford. You were asleep, I think."

Mr. Cross denied the imputation. "Not at this hour, sir, never at this hour--not at ten o'clock in the morning, sir! Later, maybe, when I've had my grog, I'll take my forty winks--"

"It is not ten o'clock. It is nearly twelve, Mr. Cross."

"Well, well!" returned Mr. Cross, whose face, blus.h.i.+ng all the time, showed at no particular instant any particular discomfiture. "I must just have dropped off a bit. There's little business nowadays, and a man had better sleep than do worse! What'll you have, sir? I'll call my girl Sally to serve you.

"Nothing at the moment, Mr. Cross." Cary sat down upon the step beside the other. "I stopped here a month ago--"

"You did," answered the innkeeper. "You stopped in January, too, didn't you?"

"Yes. In January."

"I remember plain. You wanted to know this and you wanted to know that, but you certainly treated me handsome, sir, and I'm far from grudging you any information Joe Cross can give!"

"We will go back to the same subject," said Cary. "Any recompense in my power to make I should consider but your due, Mr. Cross, could you tell me--could you tell me what I want to know."

He had spoken at first guardedly, but at last with an irresistible burst of feeling. The innkeeper looked at him with dull wonder. "I'd do anything to oblige ye, Mr. Cary, I certainly would! But when we come to talking about the road, and who goes by, and who doesn't go by, and about the seventh of September, and wasn't I asleep and dreaming just before the big storm broke?--why, I say, sir, No! I don't think I was.

'Tween man and man, Mr. Cary, I don't mind telling your father's son, sir, that 'tis possible I might ha' had a drop more than usual, and ha'

been asleep earlier! But I wasn't asleep when the negro spoke to me.

'Hit's gwine ter be an awful storm,' says he, just that way, just as if he were lonesome and frightened. His voice came to me as plain as my hand, and I know the mare he was riding. 'Hit's gwine ter be an awful storm,' says he--"

"The other--the other!" exclaimed Cary impatiently. "It is the other I would know of!"

"I told you before, and I tell you now," replied Mr Cross, "that I don't seem somehow clearly to remember what the other said. I'll take my oath that he said something, for he's one that don't miss speaking to a voter when he finds him! It's just slipped my mind--things act sometimes as though there was a fog, but I wasn't drunk and I wasn't asleep. No, sir!

no more than I was just now when you come up and spoke to me--and it don't stand to reason, sir, that I could ha' seen two horses instead of one!"

Cary, sitting moodily attentive, chin in hand, and his eyes upon the sunny road, started violently. "Two horses instead of one," he repeated, with a catch of the breath. In a moment he was upon his feet, and the innkeeper, had he looked up and had he been less blear-eyed and dull, might have seen an approach to the old Fairfax Cary--colour in cheek and light in eye.