THE THREE-NOTCHED ROAD
Lewis Rand and his wife dwelt that summer and autumn in the house on the
Three-Notched Road, and were happy there. If the ghost of Gideon Rand
walked, the place, renovated, clean, bright, and homely sweet, showed no
consciousness of any influence of the dark. Passers-by on the dusty road
looked curiously at the gay little yard and the feathery mimosa and the
house behind the pines. "Lewis Rand lives there," they said, and made
their horses go more slowly.
The pines hid the porch where Jacqueline sat with her work, or, hands
about her knees, dreamed the hours away. She was much alone, for after
the first week Rand rode daily to his office in Charlottesville. There
was no reconciliation with her people. All her things had been sent from
Fontenoy. Linen that had been her mother's lay with bags of lavender in
an old carved chest from Santo Domingo, and pieces of slender, inlaid
furniture stood here and there in the room they called the parlour. Her
candlesticks were upon the mantel, and her harp made the room's chief
ornament. Her fortune, which was fair, had been formally made over to
her and to Rand. She was glad it was no less; had it been vastly
greater, she would only have thought, "This will aid him the more." The
little place was very clean, very sweet, ordered, quiet, and lovable.
She was a trained housewife as well as the princess of his story, and
she made the man she loved believe in Paradise. Each afternoon when he
left the jargon and wrangling of the courtroom his mind turned at once
to his home and its genius. All the way through the town, beckoning him
past the Eagle and past every other house or office which had for him an
open door, he saw Jacqueline waiting beneath the mimosa at the gate,
clad in white, her dark hair piled high, about her throat a string of
coral or of amber. Out on the road, beneath the forest trees, in the
radiance of the evening, he rode with his head high and a smile within
his eyes. All the scheming, all the labour and strife of the day, fell
from him like rusty armour, and his spirit bathed itself in the thought
of that meeting. She did not always await him at the gate; sometimes he
found her half a mile from home, sitting in the sunset light upon a
stone beside the road. Then he dismounted, kissed her, and they walked
together back to their nest in the tree of life. Supper-time would
follow, with the lighted candles and the fragrance from Hannah's
kitchen, and the little humorous talk with the old, fond, familiar
servants, and the deeper words between husband and wife of things done
or to be done; then quiet upon the porch, long silences, broken
sentences of deep content, while the glow faded and the stars came out;
then the candles again and his books and papers, while she read or sewed
beside him. When his task was done she sang to him, and so drew on the
hour when they put out the lights and entered the quiet, spotless
chamber where the windows opened to the east.
Rand worked as he had not worked before. All the springs were running,
all the bitter wells were sweet; to breathe was to draw in fulness of
life, and all things were plastic to his touch. Love became genius, and
dreaming accomplishment. In Albemarle, in Virginia, in the country at
large, the time was one of excitement, fevered labour, and no mean
reward. The election for President was drawing on. Undoubtedly the
Republicans and Jefferson would sweep the country, but it behooved them
to sweep it clean. The Federalist point of view was as simple. "Win!
but we'll not make broad the paths before you! Winning shall be
difficult." The parties worked like Trojans, and he who could speak
spoke as often as any leader of heroic times.
At court house and at tavern banquets, at meetings here and meetings
there, barbecues, dinners, races, militia musters, gatherings at
crossroads and in the open fields, by daylight and by candlelight and by
torchlight, Republican doctrine was expounded, and Federalist doctrine
made answer. The clash of the brazen shields was loud. It was a forensic
people and a plastic time. He who could best express his thought might
well, if there were power in the thought, impress it so deeply that it
would become the hall-mark of his age. His chance was good. Something
more than fame of a day shone and beckoned before every more than able
man. To stamp a movement of the human mind, to stamp an age, to give the
design to one gold coin from the mint of Time,--what other prize worth
striving for? The design?--one thought of moderate Liberty and the head
of Washington, another thought of Liberty and the head of Jefferson,
another of License and a head like Danton's, another of Empire and a
conqueror's head.
In Albemarle, at all Republican gatherings the man most in demand was
Lewis Rand; and the surrounding counties of Fluvanna, Amherst, Augusta,
and Orange considered themselves happy if he could be drawn to this or
that mass meeting. It was not easy to attract him. He never consciously
said to himself, "Be chary of favours; they will be the more prized"; he
said instead, "I'll not waste an arrow where there's no gold to hit."
When he saw that it was worth his while to go, he went, and sent an
arrow full into the gold. Amherst and Augusta, Fluvanna and Orange,
broke into applause and prophecy, while upon each return home
Republican Albemarle welcomed him with added rapture, and Federalist
Albemarle hurled another phrase into its already comprehensive anathema.
His reputation grew amain, both in his native section and in the state
at large. Before the autumn his election to the House of Delegates,
which in April seemed so great a thing, began to assume the appearance
of a trifle in his fortunes. He would overtop that, and how highly no
man was prepared to say. Through all the clashing of shields, through
Republican attack and Federalist resistance, through the clamour over
Hamilton's death, the denunciation and upholding of Burr, the
impeachment of Chase, the situation in Louisiana, the gravitation
towards France, and the check of England, the consciousness of Pitt and
the obsession of Napoleon,--through all the commotion and fanfaronade of
that summer Rand kept a steady hand and eye, and sent his arrows into
the gold. In the law, as in politics, he was successful. A comprehensive
knowledge and an infinite painstaking, a grasp wide and firm, a somewhat
sombre eloquence, a personal magnetism virile and compelling,--these and
other attributes began to make his name resound. He won his cases, until
presently to say of a man, "He has Lewis Rand," was in effect to
conclude the matter. He had no Federalist clients; that rift widened and
deepened. Federalist Albemarle meant the Churchills and the Carys, their
kinsmen, connections, and friends. The gulf seemed fixed.
Jacqueline, keeping at home in the house on the Three-Notched Road, saw
very few from out her old life. Those who had been her girlhood friends
kept aloof. If their defection pained her, she gave no sign--she had
something of her father's pride. Among the Republican gentry she was of
course made much of, and she saw something of the plainer sort of her
husband's friends. Tom Mocket came occasionally on business with Rand,
and once he brought Vinie with him. Jacqueline liked the sandy-haired
and freckled scamp, and made friends with Vinie. In the first July days
Adam Gaudylock often sat upon her porch, but now for weeks he had been
wandering in the West. Once or twice Mr. Pincornet, straying that way,
had delicately looked his pity for a lovely woman in a desert waste.
Cousin Jane Selden remained her good neighbour and kind friend, and once
Mr. Ned Hunter brought a message from Unity. Her old minister came to
see her, and Dr. Gilmer, when illness called him in that direction,
always drew rein at her gate. Ludwell Cary was out of the county, and
Fairfax Cary never rode that way. Unity came whenever it was possible,
and thrice, between July and October, Deb and Miranda and a horsehair
trunk arrived for a blissful week. To Deb they were unshadowed days. The
log house, the pine wood and singing stream, an owl that hooted each
night, a row of tiger lilies and a thicket of blackberries, Jacqueline
to tell her stories, Mammy Chloe and Hannah, the new brother who came
home every evening riding a great bay horse and kissing Jacqueline
beneath the mimosa tree, the brother who showed her twenty unguessed
treasures and gave her the Arabian Nights,--Deb thought the week on the
Three-Notched Road a piece out of the book, and wept when she must go
back to Fontenoy.
But Colonel Churchill and Major Edward never came, never wrote, never
sent messages to Jacqueline, never, she forced Unity to tell her,
mentioned her name or would hear it mentioned at Fontenoy. Only Aunt
Nancy, lying always in the chamber, her key-basket beside her on the
white counterpane, talked of her when she chose. "But she talks as
though you were dead," acknowledged Unity; then, "Oh, Jacqueline, it
must all come right some day! And as for him, he's talked of more and
more,--everywhere one goes, one hears his name! He's head and front of
his party here. Oh, what a party! Mrs. Adams writes that at Washington
they eat soup with their fingers and still think _Ça Ira_ the latest
song! Cannot you convert him? They say the Mammoth's jealous, and that
your husband and Colonel Burr correspond in cipher. Is that so?"
"I don't know," said Jacqueline. "I shall not try to convert him. I
would have a man loyal to his beliefs--so would you, Unity! Suppose
yourself of another party--would you change Fairfax Cary? You would wish
him to stay always the Federalist that he is! So with me. I love my
great Republican."
"I love you," said Unity. "Kiss me. Now, when do you go to Richmond?"
"Next month. Oh, Unity, if Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward would but make
friends before we go!"
Unity, stopping for an hour at Cousin Jane Selden's, remarked to that
lady, "Ah, she is happy! She does not know and she does not care what is
said of Lewis Rand. They say dreadful things. The last Gazette--"
"She doesn't hear a Federalist upon the subject," replied Cousin Jane.
"The last Gazette! Pooh! who believes what a Federalist paper says of a
Republican, or a Republican paper says of a Federalist? Most men and all
newspapers are liars."
"It says that he is a Buonaparte ready to break the shell."
"Buonaparte's a great man, my dear."
"And that the Mammoth's alarmed--"
"Like the hen that hatched the eaglet--"
"And that Lewis Rand's no more Republican at heart than he is
Federalist. He's just for Lewis Rand."
"Hm-m-m!"
"And that his name's known as far west as the Mississippi."
"There's no law against a man's name spreading. It's what every man
strives for. One succeeds, and the birds that carried the news are
indignant."
"And that he's an Atheist."
"Lewis Rand's no saint, child, but he's no fool either. You'll be
telling me next that he mistreats his wife."
"Ah, he does not do that!" exclaimed Unity. "She's deep in love. He
can't be so very bad, can he, Cousin Jane?"
"He's not a monster, child: he's just a man.--And now, Unity, I am
making damson preserves to-day."
"I'll go," said Unity, rising. "But they believe these things at
Fontenoy."
"Do they believe them at Greenwood?"
"I don't know. Ludwell Cary is still away--"
"When are you going to marry his brother?"
"Why, I don't know that I am going to marry his brother at all,"
answered Unity, her foot upon the coach step. "Good-bye, Cousin Jane. I
wish I could make pot-pourri like yours."
"You must know what spices to use, and when to gather the roses," said
Cousin Jane. "Good-bye, child! You read too many romances, but you're a
loyal soul and one of your gowns is prettier than another. Don't you
believe all the world says of Lewis Rand. It's mighty prone to make
mistakes. The man's just a sinner like the rest of us."
At Fontenoy, that September afternoon, Fairfax Cary, riding over from
Greenwood, found Miss Dandridge seated upon the steps which ran down to
the garden from the glass doors of the library. Her chin was in her
hands, and her black eyes were suspiciously bright. "You were crying,"
exclaimed the younger Cary. "Why?"
"I've been reading about the Capulets and the Montagues."
"You are not one to cry for the dead," said the young man. "Tell me
truly."
"No; I'm crying for the living. I've been talking to the Capulets. I've
been giving Uncle Edward a piece of my mind."
"Which he would not take?"
"Just so. Oh, it was a battle royal! But I lost--I always lose. He is
sitting there in triumphant misery, reading Swift. I brought my defeat
out here. Now and then I am glad I am a woman."
"I'm glad all the time," said Fairfax Cary. "Don't dwell on lost
battles. Unity, when are you going to let me fight all your battles?"
"I don't know," answered Miss Dandridge promptly. "I don't even know
that I would like to have all my battles fought for me. I'm not lazy,
and I believe my ancestors fought their own. Besides--would you fight
this one?"
There was a pause; then, "Do you love your cousin so?" asked the young
man.
"Love Jacqueline? Jacqueline is like my sister. If she is not happy,
then neither am I!"
"But she is happy. She loved Lewis Rand, and she married him."
"Yes, yes. But a woman may marry her lover and yet be unhappy. If he
takes her to a strange country, she may perish of homesickness."
"Has he taken her to a strange country?"
"Yes," cried Unity, with fire. "How can it but be a strange country?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "Why, why did she not love your brother!"
"That," said the younger Cary grimly, "is what I do not profess to
understand. And I would fight for your cousin, but I will not fight for
Lewis Rand. My brother's enemies are mine."
"You see. You wouldn't fight this battle, after all."
"Would Miss Dandridge wish me to?"
Unity regarded the sunset beyond the snowball bushes. "No," she said at
last, with a sigh and a shake of her head, "no, I wouldn't. I had rather
a man behaved like a man than like an angel."
"You are the angel. At least your cousin will not live much longer in
that log house, with the pines and the tobacco and the ghost of old
Gideon. Lewis Rand has bought Roselands."
"Roselands!"
"You knew it was for sale. Well, he's bought it. I had the news from the
agent. It's to be put in order this winter, and in the spring Rand will
come back from Richmond and take possession. It is strange to think of a
Rand owning Roselands!"
"A Churchill will own it, too! It will have been bought with Churchill
money. I am so glad! It can be made a lovely place. Jacqueline will have
the garden and the old, long drawing-room! Deb and I can go there
easily. It is all more fitting--I am glad!"
"It is too near Greenwood," said the other gloomily. "I think that
Ludwell will stay in Richmond."
"I'm sorry," said Unity softly and brightly. "I wish, I wish--but what's
the use in wishing? There! the sun has gone, and it is growing cold. I
have sat here until I'm no longer angry with Uncle Edward. Poor man! to
be reading Swift all this time!--I'll walk with you to the front porch."
"I thought," ventured the young man, "I thought that perhaps you might
ask me to stay to supper. It's so lonely at Greenwood."
"You stayed to supper last night," said Miss Dandridge pensively, "and
you were here to dinner the day before, and you rode over the preceding
afternoon, and the morning before that you read me Vathek.--Oh, stay to
supper by all means!"
Cary picked up her scarf and handed her down the steps to the
path that was beginning to be strewn with autumn leaves. "Miss
Dandridge--Unity--it has been fourteen mortal days since I last asked
you to marry me! You said I might ask you once a month--"
"I didn't," said Unity serenely. "I said once a month was too often."
"Aren't you ever going to love me?"
"Why, some day, yes!" replied Miss Dandridge. "When you've swum the
Hellespont like Leander, or picked a glove out of the lion's den like
the French knight, or battered down a haunted castle like Rinaldo, or
taken the ring from a murderer's hand like Onofrio, or set free the
Magician's daughter like Julio--perhaps--perhaps--"
"I must cast about to win my spurs!" said the younger Cary. "In the mean
time I'll ask you again, come fourteen days."
Late September passed into October. The nuts ripened, the forests grew
yellow and red, and the corn was stacked in the long, sere fields, above
which, each morning, lay a white mist. Goldenrod and farewell-summer
faded, but sumach and alder-berry still held the fence corners. The air
was fragrant with wood smoke; all sound was softened, thin, and far
away. A frost fell and the persimmons grew red gold. The song birds had
gone south, but there were creatures enough left in the trees.
Sometimes, through the thin forest, in the blue distance, deer were
seen; bears began to approach the corn-cribs, and in the unbroken
wilderness wolves were heard at night. Early and late the air struck
cold, but each midday was a halcyon time. In the last of October, on a
still and coloured morning, Rand and Jacqueline, having shaken hands
with the overseer and the slaves they were leaving, caressed the dogs,
and said good-bye to the cat, quitted the house on the Three-Notched
Road. At the gate they turned, and, standing beneath the mimosa, looked
back across the yard where the flowers had been touched by the frost, to
the house and the sombre pines. They stood in silence. Jacqueline
thought of the first evening beneath the mimosa, of the July dusk, and
the cry of the whip-poor-will. Rand thought, suddenly and
inconsequently, of his father and mother, standing here at the gate as
he had often seen them stand. There was no mimosa then.--Jacqueline
turned, caught his hand, and pressed it to her lips. He strained her in
his arms and kissed her, and they entered the chaise which was to carry
them to Richmond. Before them lay a hundred miles of sunny road, three
days' companionship in the blue, autumnal weather. A few moments, and
the house, the pines, and the hurrying stream were lost to view. "A long
good-bye!" said Rand. "In the spring we'll enter Roselands!"
"You value it more than I," answered Jacqueline. "I loved the house
behind us. Loved! I am speaking as though it were a thing of the long
past. Farewells are always sad."
"I value it for you," said Rand. "Have I not chafed, ever since July, to
see you in so poor a place? Roselands is not ideal, but it is a fairer
nest for my bird than that we've left!"
Jacqueline laughed. "'Roselands is not ideal!' I think Roselands quite
grand enough! Oh, Lewis, Lewis, how high you build! Take care of the
upper winds!"
"I'll build firmly," he answered. "The winds may do their worst. Here is
the old road to Greenwood. Now that the trees are bare, you can see the
house."
They drove all day by field and woodland. At noon they paused for
luncheon beside a bubbling spring in a dell strewn with red leaves, then
drove on through the haze of afternoon. There were few leaves left upon
the boughs. In the fields that they passed the stacked corn had the
seeming of silent encampments, deserted tents of a vanished army, russet
and empty wigwams drawn against a deep blue sky. Now and then, in the
darker woods, there was a scurry of partridges, the red gleam of a fox,
or a vision of antlers, and once a wild turkey, bronze and stately,
crossed the road before the chaise. When they passed a smithy or a mill,
the clink of iron, the rush of water, came to them faintly in the smoky
air. That night they slept at the house of a wealthy planter and good
Republican, where, after supper, all sat around a great fire, the
children on footstools between the elders, and stories were told of
hunting, of Indian warfare, and of Tarleton's raid. At ten they made a
hall and danced for an hour to a negro's fiddling, then a bowl of punch
was brought and the bedroom candles lighted.
In the morning Rand and Jacqueline went on towards Richmond, and at
sunset they found themselves before a country tavern, not over clean or
comfortable, but famous for good company. The centre of a large
neighbourhood, it had been that day the scene of some Republican
anniversary, and a number of gentlemen, sober and otherwise, had
remained for supper and a ride home through the frosty moonlight. Among
them were several lawyers of note, and a writer and thinker whose
opinion Rand valued. Besides all these there were at the inn a group of
small farmers, a party of boatmen from the James, the local schoolmaster
and the parson, a Scotch merchant or two, and the usual idle that a
tavern draws. All were Republicans, and all knew their party's men. Rand
descended from the chaise amidst a buzz of recognition, and after supper
came a demand that he should speak from the tavern porch to an
increasing crowd. He did not refuse. To his iron frame the fatigue of
the day was as naught, and there were men in the throng whom he was
willing to move. It came to him suddenly, also, that Jacqueline had
never heard him speak. Well, he would speak to her to-night.
His was an universal mind. On occasion he could stoop to praise one
party and vituperate another, but that was his tongue serving his
worldly interest. The man himself dealt with humanity, wherever found
and in whatever time, however differentiated, however allied, with its
ancestry of the brute and its destiny of the spirit; with the root of
the tree and the far-off flower and every intermediate development of
stem and leaf; with the soil that sustained the marvellous growth, and
with the unknown Gardener who for an unfathomable purpose had set the
inexplicable seed in an unthinkable universe. From the ephemera to the
star he accepted and conjectured, and while he often thought ill of the
living, he had never yet thought ill of life. He had long been allied
with a thinker who, with a low estimate of at least so much of human
nature as ran counter to his purposes, yet believed with devoutness in
the perfectibility of his species, and had of the future a large, calm,
and noble vision. If Lewis Rand had not Jefferson's equanimity, his sane
and wise belief in the satisfying power of common daylight, common
pleasures, all the common relations of daily life; if some strangeness
in his nature thrilled to the meteor's flight, craved the exotic,
responded to clashing and barbaric music, yet the two preached the same
doctrine. He believed in the doctrine, though he also believed that
great men are not mastered by doctrine. They made doctrine their
servant, their useful slave of the lamp. He knew--none better--that the
genie might turn and rend; that there was always one last, one fatal
thing that must not be asked. But his mind was supple, and he thought
that he could fence with the genie. Usually, when he spoke, he believed
all that he said, believed it with all the strength of his reason, and
yet--he saw the kingdoms of the world. To-night, in the autumn air, pure
and cold beneath the autumn stars, with the feeling and the fragrance of
the forest day about him, in sympathy with his audience, and conscious
in every fibre of the presence of the woman whom he loved, he saw no
other kingdom than that of high and tranquil thought.
Jacqueline, seated at her open window, listened for the first time to
any public utterance of her husband's. He was not a man who often spoke
of the processes of his thought. Sometimes, in the house on the
Three-Notched Road, he told her, briefly, his conclusions on such and
such a matter, but he rarely described the road by which he travelled.
She knew the conservative, the British, the Federal side of most
questions. That was the cleared country, familiar, safe, and smiling;
her husband's side was the strange forest which she had entered and must
travel through. She was yet afraid of the forest, of its lights and its
shadows, the rough places and the smooth, the stir of its air and the
possibility of wild beasts. To her it was night-time there, and where
the ground seemed fair and the light to play, she thought of the marsh
and the will-o'-the-wisp. She could not but be loyal to the old, trodden
ways. She had married Lewis Rand, not his party or its principles. But
to-night, as she listened, the light seemed to grow until it was dawn in
the forest, and the air to blow so cold, strong, and pure that she
thought of mountain peaks and of the ocean which she had never seen.
She was no longer afraid of the country in which she found herself.
Rand, standing in the red torchlight above the attentive crowd, preached
a high doctrine, preached it austerely, boldly, and well. He did not
speak to-night of the hundred party words, the flaunting banners,
systems, expedients, and policies fit for this turn of the spiral, born
to be disavowed, discarded, and thrown down by a higher, freer whorl;
but he gave his voice for the larger Republicanism, for the undying
battle-cry, and the ever-streaming battle-flag. He had no less a text
than the Liberty and Happiness of the human race, and he made no
straying from the subject.
Freedom! Happiness! What is freedom? What is happiness? Freedom is the
maximum of self-government finally becoming automatic, and the minimum
of government from without finally reduced to the vanishing-point.
Happiness is the ultimate bourne, the Olympian goal, the intense and
burning star towards which we travel. Does not its light even now fall
upon us? even now we are palely happy. And how shall we know the road?
and what if, in the night-time, we turn irremediably aside? How are they
to be attained, true Liberty and true Happiness? Learn! Light the lamp,
and the shadows will flee.--Self-government. Teach thyself temperance,
foresight, and wise memory of the past. Thou thyself, in thine own body,
art a community. See, then, that thy communal life is clean, that thy
will is in right operation, and thy minds divide thee not to disaster.
Thy very ego, is it not but thy president, the voice of all thy members,
representative of all that thy race has made thee to be, effect of ten
million causes, and cause of effects thou canst not see? Let thy ego
strengthen itself, deal justly, rule wisely, that thy state fall not
behind in this world-progress and be lost out of time and out of mind,
in a night without a dawn. There have been such things: over against
immortal gain there lies immortal loss. Work, then, while it is day, for
if thou work not, the night will make no tarrying. Know thyself, and,
knowing, rule that strange world of thine. Were it not a doom, were it
not a frightful doom, that it should come to rule thee? ... Government
from without! Government of to-day, Government abroad as we see it in
every journal, in every letter that we open--how heavy, how heavy is the
ball and chain the nations wear! If we alone in this land go free, if
for four golden years we have moved with lightness, look to it lest a
gaoler come! Government! What is the ideal government? It is a man of
business, worthy and esteemed, administering his client's affairs with
thoroughness, economy, and honour. It is a wise judge, holding the
balances with a steadfast hand, sitting there clothed reverently, to
judge uprightly and to do no more. It is a skilled council, a picked
band, an honourable Legion, chosen of the multitude, to determine the
line of march for an advancing civilization; to make such laws as are
according to reason and necessity and to make none that are not, and to
provide for the keeping of the law that is made. The careful man of
affairs, the upright judge, the honest maker of honest laws must needs
present an account for maintenance and for that expenditure which shall
give offence neither to generosity nor to justice; and the account must
be paid, yea, and ungrudgingly! Let us pay, then, each man according to
his ability, the tax that is right and fitting; and let us, moreover,
give due honour to the vanguard of the people. It is there that the
great flag waves with all the blazonry of the race. But we want no
substituted banner, no private ensign, no conqueror's flapping eagles!
Government! Honour the instrument by which we rule ourselves; but
worship not a mechanical device, and call not a means an end! Admirable
means, but oh, the sorry end! Therefore we'll have no usurping
Prætorian, no juggling sophist, no bailiff extravagant and unjust, no
spendthrift squandering on idleness that which would pay just debts! A
ruler! There's no halo about a ruler's head. The people--the people are
the sacred thing, for they are the seed whence the future is to spring.
He who betrays his trust, which is to guard the seed,--what is that
man--Emperor or President, Louis or George, Pharaoh or Cæsar--but a
traitor and a breaker of the Law? He may die by the axe, or he may die
in a purple robe of a surfeit, but he dies! The people live on, and his
memory pays. He has been a tyrant and a pygmy, and the ages hold him in
contempt.... War! There are righteous wars, and righteous men die in
them, but the righteous man does not love war. Conquest! Conquest of
ignorance, superstition, and indolence, conquest of the waste and void,
of the forces of earth, air, and water, and of the dying beast within
us, but no other conquest! We attained Louisiana by fair trade, for the
benefit of unborn generations. Standing armies! We want them not.
Navies! The sea is the mother of life; why call her that of death? Her
highways are for merchant ships, for argosies carrying corn and oil,
bearing travellers and the written thought of man; for voyages of
discovery and happy intercourse, and all rich exchange from strand to
strand. Why stain the ocean red? Is it not fairer when 'tis blue? Guard
coast-line and commerce, but we need no Armada for that. Make no
quarrels and enter none; so we shall be the exemplar of the nations....
Free Trade. We are citizens and merchants of the world. No man or woman
but lives by trade and barter. Long ago there was a marriage between the
house of Give and the house of Take, and their child is Civilization.
Sultan or Czar may say, "Buy here, sell there, and at this price. You
are my slave. Obey!" But who, in this century and this land, shall say
that to me--or to you? Are we free men? Then let us walk as such through
the marts of the earth. "Trade where you will," saith Nature. "It was so
I brought the tree to the barren isle, and scattered the life of the
seas." Authority of law! Respect the law, and to that end let us have
laws that are respectable. Laws are made to be kept, else we live in a
house of chicane. But there is a danger that decrees may thicken until
they form a dungeon grate for Freedom, until, like Gulliver, she is held
down to earth by every several hair. Few laws and just, and those not
lightly broken. The Contract between the States--let it be kept. It was
pledged in good faith--the cup went around among equals. There is no
more solemn covenant; we shall prosper but as we maintain it. Is it not
for the welfare and the grandeur of the whole that each part should have
its healthful life? The whole exists but by the glow within its parts.
Shall we become dead members of a sickly soul? God forbid! but sister
planets revolving in their orbits about one central Idea, which is
Freedom by Coöperation. To each her own life, varied, rich, complete,
and her communal life, large with service rendered and received! Each
bound to other and to that central Thought by primal law, but each a
sovereign orb, grave mistress of her own affairs! Slavery! Ay, I will
give you that though you want it not! Slavery is abominable. There is a
tree that grows in the tropics which they call the upas tree. All who
lie in the shadow of its branches fall asleep, and die sleeping. To-day
we lie under the upas tree--would that we were awake! I have heard
that--in the tropics--the sons sometimes hew down that which the fathers
have planted. I would that it were so in Virginia! Freedom of thought,
of speech, and of pen. I will away with this cope of lead, this Ancient
Authority, which is too often an Ancient Iniquity. Did it not have
once a minority? was it not once a New Thought? Is not a man's
thought to-day as potent, holy, and near the right as was his
great-grandfather's thought which was born in a like manner, of the
brain of a man, in a modern time? I will think freely and according to
reason. When it seems wise to tell my mind I will speak; and with
judgment I will write down my thought; and fear no man's censure.
Knowledge! I was a poor boy, and I strove for learning, strove hard, and
found it worth the striving. I know the hunger, and I know the rage when
one asks for knowledge and asks in vain. Is it not a shameful thing that
happy men, lodged warm and clear in the Interpreter's house, should hear
the groping in the dark without, know that their fellows are searching,
in pain and with shortness of breath, for the key which let the
fortunate in, and make no stir to aid those luckless ones? Give of your
abundance, or your abundance will decay in your hands and turn to that
which shall cause you shuddering!
His words went on, magnetic as the man. He spoke for an hour, coming at
the last to a consideration of those particular questions which hung in
Virginian air. He dealt with these ably, and he subtly conciliated those
of his audience who might differ with him. None could have called him
flatterer, but when he ceased to speak his hearers, feeling for
themselves a higher esteem, had for him a reflex glow. It was what he
could always count upon, and it furthered his fortunes. Now they crowded
about him, and it was late before, pleading the fatigue of his journey,
he could escape from their friendly importunity. At last, it being
towards midnight and the moon riding high, the neighbouring planters and
their guests got to saddle and, after many and pressing offers of
hospitality to Rand and his wife, galloped off to home and bed. The
commonalty and the hangers-on faded too into the darkness, and the folk
who were sleeping at the inn took their candles and said good-night.
All was suddenly quiet,--a moonlit crossroads in Virginia, tranquil as
the shaven fields and the endless columns of the pine.
Upstairs, in the low "best room," Rand found his wife still seated by
the open window, her folded arms upon the sill, her eyes raised to the
stars that shone despite the moon. He crossed to her and closed the
window. "The night is cold. Dearest, have you been sitting here all this
time?"
She rose, turning upon him a radiant face. "All this time. I was not
cold. I was warm. I am so happy that I'm frightened."
"Did you like it?" he asked. "I hoped that you would. I thought of
you--my star, my happiness!"
"I used to wonder," she said; "when they would come home to Fontenoy and
say, 'Lewis Rand spoke to-day,' I used to wonder if I should ever hear
you speak! And when they blamed you I said to my aching heart, 'They
need not tell me! He's not ambitious, self-seeking, a leveller, a
demagogue and Jacobin!-he is the man I met beneath the apple tree!' And
I was right--I was right!"
"Am I that man?" he asked. "I will try to be, Jacqueline. Leveller,
demagogue, and Jacobin I am not; but for the rest, who knows--who knows?
Men are cloudy worlds--and I dream sometimes of a Pursuer."
The next morning the skies had changed, and Rand and Jacqueline fared
forward through a sodden, grey, and windy day. The rain had ceased to
fall when at twilight they came into Richmond by the Broad Street Road.
Lights gleamed from the wet houses; high overhead grey clouds were
parting, and in the west was a line of red. The wind was high, and the
sycamores with which the town abounded rocked their speckled arms. The
river was swollen and rolled hoarsely over the rocks beneath the red
west. Rand had taken a house on Shockoe Hill, not far from the Chief
Justice's, and to this he and Jacqueline came through the wet and windy
freshness of the night. Smiling in the doorway were the servants--Joab
and Mammy Chloe and Hannah--who had set out from Albemarle the day
before their master and mistress. Rand and Jacqueline, leaving the
mud-splashed chaise, were welcomed with loquacity and ushered into a
cheerful room where there was a crackling fire and a loaded table.
"Mrs. Leigh's compliments, Miss Jacqueline, an' she done sont de rolls.
Mrs. Fisher's best wishes, an' she moughty glad to hab a neighbour, an'
she done sont de broiled chicken. An' Mr. Hay, he done sont de oysters
wid he compliments--an' de two bottles Madeira Mr. Ritchie sont--an' Mr.
Randolph lef' de birds, an' he gwine come roun' fust thing in de
mawnin'--"
"We shall have friends," said Rand. "I am glad for you, sweetheart. But
I wish that one Federalist had had the grace to remember that Jacqueline
Churchill came to town to-day."
"Ah, once I would have cared," answered Jacqueline. "It does not matter
now."
"There's a tear on your hand--"
Jacqueline laughed. "At least, it doesn't matter much.--Is that all,
Joab?"
"An' Marse Ludwell Cary, he ride erroun in de rain an' leave he
compliments for Marse Lewis, an' he say will Miss Jacqueline 'cept dese
yer flowers--"
"One remembered," said Rand, and watched his wife put the flowers in
water.