Lewis Rand Part 65

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES]

He bent over her with broken words of self-reproach. She stopped him with her hand against his lips. "No, I am not all unhappy--no, you have not broken my heart--you have not ruined my life! Don't say it--don't think it! I love you as I loved you in the garden at Fontenoy, as I loved on our wedding eve, in the house on the Three-Notched Road! I love you more deeply now than then--"

"I have come," he answered, "to be sorry for almost all my life. Even to my father I might have been a better son. The best friend a young man ever had--that was Mr. Jefferson to me! and it all ended in the letter which he wrote last August. I was a leader in a party in whose principles I believed and still believe, and I betrayed my party.

To-night I think I could give my life for one imperilled field, for one green acre of this land--and yet I was willing to bring upon it strife and dissension. Ingrate and traitor--hard words and true, hard words and true! I might have had a friend--and always I knew he was the man I would have wished to be--but, instead, I thought of him as my foe and I killed him. I have brought trouble on many, and good to very few. I have wronged you in very much. But I never wronged you in my love--never, never, Jacqueline! That is my mountain peak--that is my cleansing sea--that is that in my life which needs no repenting, that is true, that is right! Oh, my wife, my wife!"

The night wind blew against them. Fireflies shone and grey moths went by to the lighted windows; above the treetops a bat wheeled and wheeled.

The clock struck again, then from far away a whippoorwill began to call.

They sat side by side upon the doorstone, her head against his shoulder, their hands locked.

"What will you do?" he said. "What will you do? Day and night I think of that!"

"Could I stay on here? I would like to."

"I have put all affairs in order. The place and the servants are yours.

I'vee paid every debt, I think. Mocket knows--he'll show you. But to live on here alone--"

"It will be the less alone. Don't fear for me--don't think for me. I will find courage. To-morrow!"

"It is best," he said, "that I should tell you that which others may think to comfort you with. It is possible, but I do not consider it probable, that the sentence will be death. It will be, I think, the Penitentiary. I had rather it was the other."

After a time she spoke, though with difficulty. "Yes--I had rather--for you. For myself, I feel to-night that just to know you were alive would be happiness enough. Either way--either way--to have loved you has been for me my crown of life!"

"I have written to Colonel Churchill, and a line to Fairfax Cary. There was much to do at the last. Now it is all done, and I will go early in the morning. You knew that it was drawing to this end--"

"Yes, I knew--I knew. Lewis, Lewis! what will you do yonder all the days the months--the--the years to come? Oh, unendurable! O G.o.d, have mercy!"

"I will work," he answered. "It is work, Jacqueline, with me--it is work or die! I will work. That which I have brought upon myself I will try to endure. And out of effort may come at last--I know not what."

They sat still upon the stone. The wind sank, the air grew colder; near and far there gathered a feeling of the north, a sense of loneliness and untrodden s.p.a.ce. The whippoorwill called again.

Rand shuddered. "Our last night--it is our last night. Look!--a star shot over the Three-Notched Road."

Jacqueline slipped from his clasp and stood upright, with her hands over her ears. "Come indoors--come indoors! I cannot bear the whippoorwill!"

Early the next morning he rode away. Halfway down the drive he looked back and saw her standing under the beech tree. She raised her hand, her scarf fluttering back from it. It was the gesture of a princess, watching a knight ride from her tower. The green boughs came between them; he was gone, and she sank down upon the bench beneath the tree. It was there that Major Edward found her, an hour later.

Rand pa.s.sed along the old, familiar road. He travelled neither fast nor slow, and he kept a level gaze. The May morning was fresh and sweet, the land to either side ploughed earth or vernal green, the little stream laughing through the meadow. He pa.s.sed a field where negroes were transplanting tobacco, and his mind noted the height and nature of the leaf. At the Greenwood road he looked mechanically toward the distant house, but upon this morning he hardly thought of Cary. He thought of Gideon Rand, and of the great casks of tobacco which he and his father used to roll; of the old, strong horses, and of a lean and surly dog that they had owned; of the slow journeys, and of their fires at night, beneath the gum and the pine, beside wastes of broom sedge.

He came into Charlottesville and rode down Main Street to the Eagle, where he dismounted. A negro took his horse. "Put him up," directed Rand, "until he is called for." He kept his hand for a moment upon Selim's neck, then turned and walked down the street and into the Court House yard.

The shady place had always a contingent of happy idlers, men and boys lounging under the trees or upon the Court House steps. These greeted Lewis Rand with deference, and turned from their bountiful lack of occupation to watch him cross the gra.s.s and enter the Court House. "He's gone," remarked one, "straight to the sheriff's office. What's his business there?"

The next day and the next the idlers in the Court House yard knew all the business, and rolled it under their tongues. They loved a tragedy, and this curtain had gone up with promise. Had they not seen Lewis Rand walk into the yard--had they not spoken to him and he to them--had they not watched him enter the Court House? The boy who minded the sheriff's door found himself a hero, and the words treasured that fell from his tongue. It was true that he had been sent away and so had heard but little, but the increasing crowd found that little of interest. "Yes, sir, that's what he said, and just as quiet as you are! 'Is the sheriff in, Michael?' he asked. 'Tell him, please, that I want to see him.'

That's what he said, and Mr. Garrett he calls out, 'Come in, Mr. Rand, come in!'"

Other voices claimed attention. "And when they dragged Indian Run yesterday, there was the pistol at the bottom of a pool--his name upon it, just as he told them it would be--"

"Fairfax Cary was in the court room yesterday when he was committed. He and Lewis Rand spoke to each other, but no one heard what they said."

The boy came to the front again. "I didn't hear much that morning before Mr. Garrett sent me away, but I heard why he gave himself up. I thought it wasn't much of a reason--"

The crowd pressed closer, "What was it, Michael, what was it?"

"It sounds foolish," answered the boy, "but I've got it right. He said he must have sleep."