THE LAW OFFICE
"If you were not so damned particular--" said the weasel disconsolately.
"I'm not damned particular," answered Rand. "I've wanted wealth and I've
wanted power ever since I went barefoot and suckered tobacco--as you
know who know me better than almost any one else! But this"--he tapped
the papers on the table before him--"this is cheating."
"Oh, you!" complained the scamp. "You are of the elect. What you want
you'll take by main force. You are a strong man! You've taken a deal
since that day we went into the bookshop by the bridge. But I'm no
Samson or David--I'm just Tom Mocket--and still, why shouldn't I have my
pennyworth?"
Rand paused in his walking up and down the office in Main Street. It was
the late winter, a year and more from that evening when he and
Jacqueline had first come to the house on Shockoe Hill. Standing by the
rough deal table, he laid an authoritative hand upon the documents with
which it was strewn. "You'll never get your pennyworth here. The scheme
these gentry have afoot is just a Yazoo business. If these lands exist,
they're only a hunting-ground of swamp, Indians, and buffalo. The survey
is paper, the cleared fields a fable, the town Manoa, the scheme a
bubble, the purchasers fools, and the sellers knaves,--and there's your
legal opinion in a nutshell!"
"I didn't ask for a legal opinion," said Mocket. "I'm a lawyer myself.
There's land there, you'll not deny, and a river, and plenty of game If
a Yankee doesn't find it Paradise, he had no chance anyhow, and a
Kentuck can care for himself! There's no sense in calling it a bubble,
or being so damned scrupulous!"
Rand made a gesture of contempt. "You let Yazoo companies and the
Promised Land alone! People are ceasing to be fools. To-day they demand
a hair of the mammoth or a sample of the salt mountain."
Mocket ceased rustling the papers on the table, and turned to regard his
chief more closely. "Lewis, I've heard you say things like that more
than once lately. A year ago you were mighty respectful to Mr.
Jefferson's salt mountain and strange bones and great elk and silk grass
and all the rest of it. That was a curious letter of yours in the
Examiner. If't was meant to defend his neutrality doings, 'twas a damned
lukewarm defence! If I hadn't known 'twas yours, sink me if I wouldn't
have thought it a damned piece of Federal sarcasm!--Did you send that
paper to the President?"
"No, I did not send it."
"Lewis," said the scamp slowly, "are you breaking with Mr. Jefferson?"
Rand walked to the window and stood looking out upon the winter
afternoon. It was snowing hard, and through the drifting veil the trees
across the way could hardly be discerned. "Yes," he said deliberately.
"Yes,--if you call it breaking with a man to have grown away from him.
If he served me once--yes, and greatly!--have I not worked for him
since, hand and foot? We are quits, I think. I shall not cease to esteem
him."
Mocket breathed hard with excitement. "You haven't been natural for a
long time--but I didn't know 't was this--"
"I am being natural now," said Rand somewhat sternly. "I've told you,
Tom, and now let it alone. Least said is soonest mended."
"But--but--" stammered the scamp, "are you going over to the other
camp?"
Rand did not at once answer. From a plate on the windowsill he took a
crust of bread, and, raising the sash, crumbled it upon the snow
without. The sparrows came at once, alighting near his hand with a
tameness that spoke of pleasing association with the providence above
them. "No," said Rand at last, "I am not going over to the other
camp--if by that you mean the Federalist camp. Must one forever sign
under a captain? It is not my instinct to serve.--Now let it alone."
He closed the window and, turning again to the table, bent over an
unrolled map which covered half its surface. The chart was a large
one, showing the vast territory drained by the Ohio, the Missouri,
and the Mississippi, and the imagination of the cartographer had
made good his lack of information. Rivers and mountains appeared
where nature had made no such provision, while the names, quaint
and uncouth, with which Jefferson proposed to burden states yet
in embryo sprawled in large letters across the yellow plain.
"Assenispia--Polypotamia--Chersonesus--Michigania," read Rand.
"Barbarous! I could name them better out of Ossian!" He traced with his
finger the lower Ohio. "This is where Blennerhasset's island should be."
The finger went on down the Mississippi. "What a river! When it is in
flood, it is a sea. And the rich black fields on either side! Cotton!
Our Fortunatus purse shall be spun of that. They call the creeks bayous.
All these little towns--French and Spanish. To speak to them of
Washington is to speak of the moon--so distant and so cold. Here are
Indians. Here are settlers from the East, and the burden of their song
is, 'We are so far from the Old Thirteen that we care not if we are
farther yet!'"
"Hey!" exclaimed Mocket. "That's treason!"
"Here Adam Gaudylock met Wilkinson. The river narrows here, and runs
deep and strong." Rand's hand rested on the coast-line. "New Orleans,"
he said, "but capable of becoming a new Rome. Here to the westward is
the Perdido that they call the boundary,--then Mexico and the City of
Mexico. If not New Orleans, then Mexico!" He straightened himself with a
laugh. "I am dreaming, Tom--just as I used to dream in the fields! Ugh!
I feel the hot sun, and the thick leaves draw through my hands! Let's
get back to every day. To-morrow in the House I am going to carry the
Albemarle Resolutions. The last debate is on. Wirt speaks first, and
then I speak."
"Ludwell Cary is fighting you," said Mocket. "Fighting hard."
"Yes."
"Well, I'll be there to hear you speak. Lord! if I could speak like you,
Lewis, and plan like you, and if whiskey would let me alone, and if I
wasn't afraid of the dark, I'd make a stir in the country--I'd go higher
than a Franklin kite!"
"You might manage the rest," said Rand, with good-natured scorn; "but it
doesn't do to be afraid of the dark."
From the pegs behind the door he took his greatcoat and beaver. "I am
going home now," he said. "I have company to supper."
"Who, then?" asked Mocket. "Adam Gaudylock? He's in town."
Rand laughed. "Who, then?' Tom, Tom, you've the manners of the West
Indian skippers you consort with! No, it's not Adam Gaudylock. It is--"
He hesitated, then took up a pen and wrote two words. "That's his
name--but you are to keep it dark."
Mocket's tilted chair came noisily to the floor. "What! In Richmond!--he
in Richmond! When did he come? Where's he staying?"
"He came last night, and he's staying quietly at Bowler's Tavern. It
isn't known that he's here, and he is not anxious that it should be
known. He's here on business, and he goes to-morrow. That is all--and
you're to say no word of what I tell you."
"All right," quoth Tom. "I won't blab. But I'd mightily like to see the
man who shot Alexander Hamilton."
"I've told you he's not anxious for company."
"Oh, I know!" said Tom, not without humility. "I'm small fry. Well,
there are curious things said about him, and you and he are strange
bedfellows! How did it happen?"
"Tom, Tom," answered Rand, "you ask too many questions! It was an
accident, or it was predestined and foreordained when I was dust blown
about by the wind. You may take your choice according to your theology!
I'm going now. Be at the House early to-morrow."
"Are you going to take that Mathews case? Young Mathews was here
yesterday, swearing that if he couldn't get you, he would hang himself."
"I've said that I would take it."
"Ludwell Cary's for the other side."
"Yes, I know. I'll win."
"Well, you're fairly pitted. Half the town backs one and half the other.
That letter signed 'Aurelius' in the Gazette--did you know 'twas his?"
Rand dropped his hand from the latch. The colour rushed to his face,
then ebbed as quickly. "No, I did not know," he said, in a voice that
was not quite steady. "I thought of quite another man."
"It is Ludwell Cary's, and every Black Cockade in Richmond, and not a
few Republicans, are quoting it. My certie! it was a commentary in
caustic--and so damned courteous all the time!"
"I don't care for such courtesy," answered Rand "Ludwell Cary had best
look where he treads."
"Well, I thought I'd tell you," said his colleague "I don't like the
Carys, either!--And so I'm not to go into that land scheme?"
"No. It's a small thing, and not honest. Some day, Tom, I'll help you to
a larger thing than that."
"And honest?" said Mocket shrewdly.
The other turned upon him with anger, black as it was sudden. "Honest!
Yes, honest as this storm, honest as any struggle for any piece of earth
wider than a coffin space! Who are you to question me? I give you
warning--"
"Gently, gently!" exclaimed the scamp, and started back. "Lord, how
Gideon peeps out of you now and then!"
"You need not say that, either," retorted Rand grimly. He stood for a
moment, a cloudy presence in the darkening room, then with a short laugh
recovered himself. "I thought the black dog was dead," he said. "It's
this gloomy day--and I did not sleep last night. Honest! We're all
indifferent honest!"
"Well, well," answered the pacific Tom, "I'll sink or swim with you.
I've followed where you have led this many a day."
Outside the red brick office the snow lay deep. It was still falling
steadily, in large flakes, grey in the upper air, feathery white and
pure against the opposite houses and the boles of leafless trees. The
day was closing in. Up and down the street merchants were putting up
their shutters; customers had been few on such a snowy day. Here and
there appeared a figure, booted and greatcoated, emerging from a tavern
or from a law office such as Rand's. A sledge passed, laden with pine
and hickory, drawn by mules with jangling bells; and a handful of boys
loosed from school threw down their bags of books and fell to
snowballing. A negro shuffled by with a spade on his shoulder, singing
as he went,--
"Didn't my Lawd deliber Daniel,
Didn't my Lawd deliber Daniel,
An' why not ebery man?
He delibered Daniel from de lions' den,
An' de Hebrew Chillern from de furnace,
He delibered David from de han' of Saul,
An' why not ebery man?"
Rand turned into Governor Street, climbed its white ascent, and struck
across the Capitol Square. Above him every bough had its weight of snow,
and seen through the drifting veil the pillared Capitol looked remote as
that building of which it was a copy. He walked quickly, with a light
and determined step, a handsome figure in a many-caped coat of bottle
green, striding through the snow toward the cheer of home. In his outer
man, at least, the eighteen months since his marriage had wrought a
change. What was striking then was more striking now,--his ease and
might of frame, the admirable poise of his head, and the force expressed
in every feature, the air of power that was about him like an emanation.
The difference was that what had been rude strength was now strength
polished and restrained. The deeps might hide abrupt and violent things,
but the surface had assumed a fine amenity. Where he wished to learn he
was the aptest pupil, and from the days of the tobacco-field he had
longed for this smooth lustre. Not Gideon, but the mother, spoke in the
appreciation and the facility. Manner counted for much in Lewis Rand's
day; the critical point was not what you did, but the way you did it.
Rand set himself to learn from his wife all the passwords of the region
native to her, but into which he had broken. She taught him that code
with a courtesy and simplicity exquisitely high-minded and sweet, and
he learned with quickness, gratitude, and lack of any false shame. What
else he might have learned of her he dimly felt, but he had not
covenanted with existence for qualities that would war with a hundred
purposes of his brain and will. He and Jacqueline were lovers yet. At
the sight of each other the delicate fire ran through their veins; in
absence the mind felt along the wall and dreamed of the gardens within.
If the woman who had given all was the more constant lover; if the man,
while his passion sweetened all his life, yet bowed before his great
idol and fought and slaved for Power, it was according to the nature of
the two, and there was perhaps no help.
He left the Capitol Square and went on toward the house he had retaken
for the second winter in Richmond. Few were afoot, though now and then a
sleigh went by. Rand's mind as he walked was busy, not with the debate
of to-morrow or the visitor of to-night, the Mathews trial or Tom
Mocket's puerile schemes, but with the letter in the Gazette signed
"Aurelius." It had been an attack, able beyond the common, certainly not
upon Lewis Rand, but upon the party which, in the eyes of the
generality, he yet most markedly represented. In the inflamed condition
of public sentiment such attacks were of weekly occurrence; the wise man
was he who put them by unmoved. For the most part Rand was wise. Federal
diatribes upon the Tripoli war, the Florida purchase, the quarrel with
Spain, Santo Domingo, Neutral Trade, and Jefferson's leanings toward
France left him cold. This letter in the Gazette had not done so. It had
gone to the sources of things, analyzing with a coolness and naming with
a propriety the more remarkable that it acknowledged, on certain sides,
a community of thought with the party attacked. The result was that, as
in civil war, the quarrel, through understanding, was the more
determined. The man who signed "Aurelius" had not spared to point out,
with a certain melancholy sternness, the plague spots, the defenceless
places. Moreover, throughout his exposition there ran a harsh and sombre
thread, now felt in denunciation and now in ironic praise. There was
more than unveiling of the weakness of any human policy or party; the
letter was in part a commination of individual conduct. No name was
used, no direct reference given or example quoted; but one with acumen
might guess there was a man in mind when the writer sat in judgment. The
writer himself was perhaps not aware of the fulness of this betrayal,
but Lewis Rand was aware. The paper had angered him, and he had not
lacked intention of discovering at whose door it was to be laid. He had
enemies enough--but this one was a close observer. The subtlety of the
rebuke shook him. How had the writer who signed "Aurelius" known or
divined? He thought of Major Edward Churchill, but certain reasons made
him sure the letter was not his. And now it seemed that it was Ludwell
Cary's.
Rand's lips set closely. Ludwell Cary might not know where all his
shafts were striking, but Rand felt the sting. Fair fight in the
courtroom,--that was one thing,--but this paper was wrought of sterner
stuff. There was in it even a solemnity of warning. Rand's soul, that
was in the grasp of Giant Two-Ways, writhed for a moment, then lay still
again. With his characteristic short laugh, he shook off the feeling
that he mistook for weakness, dismissed the momentary abashment, and
pursued his way through the snowy streets. The question now in his mind
was whether or no he should make his resentment plain to Ludwell Cary.
At long intervals, three or four times in the winter, perhaps, it was
the latter's custom to lift the knocker of Rand's door, and to sit for
an hour in Jacqueline's drawing-room. Sometimes Rand was there,
sometimes not; Cary's coming had grown to be a habit of the house,
quiet, ordered, and urbane as all its habits were. Its master now
determined, after a moment's sharp debate, to say nothing that he might
not have said before he knew the identity of that writer to the Gazette.
He was conscious of no desire for immediate retaliation; these things
settled themselves in the long run. He did not intend speaking of the
matter to Jacqueline. Pride forbade his giving Cary reason to surmise
that he had hit the truth. Rand was willing to believe that many of the
shafts were chance-sent. The reflection hardly lessened his anger, but
it enabled him to thrust the matter behind him to the limbo of old
scores.
He was crossing Broad Street when the door of a house before him opened,
and a young man, with a gay word of farewell to some one in the doorway,
ran down the steps and into the snowy street. It was Fairfax Cary. Rand
and he, passing, lifted their hats, but they did not speak. Had it been
the elder Cary, there would have been a moment's tarrying, an exchange
of courteous speech. But Fairfax Cary made no secret of his enmity. If
he did not offensively publish it, if he was, indeed, for so young a
man, somewhat grimly silent upon those frequent occasions when Rand was
talked of, the hostility was defined, and at times frank. He went on now
with his handsome head held high. Rand looked after him with a curious,
even a wistful smile upon his lips. He was himself a man young in years
and strength of passion, but older far in experience and in thought. He
did not dislike Fairfax Cary; he thought indeed that the young man's
spirit, bearing, and partisanship were admirable. His smile was for the
thought that had lightened through his mind: "If in after years I could
have a son like that!" He wanted children; he wanted a son. Rand sighed.
The day had been vexatious, and there were heavy questions yet to settle
before the evening closed. After all, what was the use, since
Jacqueline cared nothing for baubles, and there was no child! Better
live out his days at Roselands, a farmer and a country lawyer! He shook
off the weight, summoned all his household troop of thoughts, and went
on homewards through the falling snow.