THE GREEN DOOR
The coach of Mrs. Jane Selden entered Charlottesville at nine in the
morning, and did not turn homeward again until the afternoon stood at
four. The intermediate hours were diligently used by the small and
withered lady in plum-coloured silk and straw bonnet, scarf of striped,
apple-green gauze, and turkey-feather fan. She came to town but once in
three months, and made of each visit a field day. Every store was called
at, for buying must be done for herself and her plantation to last until
Christmas-tide. Lutestring, calico, chintz and prunella, linsey and
osnaburg; gilt-edged paper, sticks of wax, and fine black ink; drugs of
sorts, bohea, spice, and china were bought and bestowed in brown paper
parcels in corners of a vehicle ample as Cinderella's pumpkin coach,
while Jamaica sugar and Java coffee, old rum, molasses, salt and
vinegar, hardware, kitchen things, needs of the quarter, and all heavy
matters were left to be called for by her wagon next day. Shopping over,
she took dinner with an ancient friend, and afterwards called upon the
doctor and the minister. The post-office came next in order, and then
the blacksmith, for one of her four sleepy coach horses had cast a shoe.
The fault remedied, she looked at her watch. "Half-past three. Stop at
the green door, Gabriel."
Coach and four made a wide turn, swung drowsily down the main street,
and drew up before a one-story brick building with a green door and a
black lettered sign above, "Lewis Rand, Attorney-at-Law."
Mrs. Selden, putting her head out of the window, directed a small negro,
lounging near, to raise the knocker below the sign; but before she could
be obeyed, the door opened and Rand himself came quickly down the steps.
"Come, come!" he said; "I knew it was your day in town, and I was
wondering if you were going by without a word."
"Don't I always stop? A habit is a habit. We are all miserable sinners,
and the world can't get on without lawyers. I want to ask you how I'm to
keep old Tom Carfax off my land. There is no one with you?"
"No one. Mocket has ridden over to North Garden, and I've just dismissed
a deputation from Milton." As he spoke, he opened the coach door and
assisted his old friend to alight.
Together they went into the office, which was a cool little place, with
a climbing rose at the windows, a bare floor, and a dim fragrance of
law-books. The shade was grateful after the August heat and glare. Mrs.
Selden, seated in a capacious wooden chair, wielded her turkey fan and
looked about her at the crowded book-shelves, the mass of papers held
down on desk and deal table by pieces of iron ore, the land maps on the
wall, the corner ledger and high stool, the cupboard whose opened door
disclosed bottles and glasses, and the blush roses just without the two
small windows. "I like the law," she remarked. "There's a deal of
villainy in it, no doubt, but that's a complaint to which all ways of
making a living are liable. Even a shoemaker may be a villain. How does
it feel to be a great lawyer, Lewis?"
He smiled. "Am I a great one?"
"You should know best, but it's what men call you. What was your
deputation from Milton? About the governorship?"
"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I thanked them for the honour they did me, and told them that I had
declined the nomination."
"You have declined it! Why?"
He smiled again. "You used to preach contentment when I was a boy and
you heard me rage out against my father. Well--shall I not rest content
with being a great lawyer?"
His old neighbour regarded him keenly above her turkey-feather fan.
"Lewis Rand, Lewis Rand," she said at last, "I wish I knew your end."
He laughed. "Do you mean my aim in life, or my last hour?"
"The one," said his visitor sharply, "will be according to the other. We
all wander through a wood into some curious place at last. You're the
kind of person one thinks of as coming into a stranger place than
common. Have you heard the news about Unity Dandridge and Fairfax Cary?"
"Yes. She was at Roselands yesterday."
"It's good news. Unity Dandridge needs a master, and there's been no
woman at Greenwood this weary while. Ludwell Cary will never marry."
"I see nothing to prevent his marrying."
Mrs. Selden suspended the waving of her fan. "He won't. Don't dislike
him so, Lewis. It shows in your forehead."
"Is it so plain as that?" asked Rand. "Well, I do dislike him."
"Enmities are born with us, I suppose," said his visitor thoughtfully.
"I remember a man whom, without reason, I hated. Had I been a man, I
would have made it my study to quarrel with him--to force him into a
duel--to make way with him secretly if need be! I wouldn't have stopped
at murder. And it was all a mistake, as I found when he was dead and I
didn't have to walk the same earth with him any more. It's a curious
world, is the heart of man. And so you won't be Governor of Virginia?"
"Not now--some later day, perhaps. You see it takes all my time to be a
great lawyer!"
"You don't deceive me," said Mrs. Selden, with great dryness. "But good
or bad, your reason's your own, and I'll not ask you to satisfy an old
woman's curiosity. In my day it was something to be Governor of
Virginia." She waved her fan more vigorously than before, and the wind
from it blew a paper from the table beside her. She was birdlike in her
movements, and before Rand could stoop, she had caught the sheet. "Rows
and rows of figures!" she exclaimed. "Is it a sum you're doing?"
He nodded, taking it from her. "Yes; a giant of a sum," he answered
easily, and put the paper in his pocket. "Now what is old Carfax doing
on your land?"
The consultation over, Mrs. Selden left the office and was handed by
Rand into the pumpkin coach. When he had closed the door, he yet stood
beside the lowered glass, his arm, sleeved in fine green cloth, laid
along its rim, his strong face, clear cut and dark, smiling in upon his
old friend. In his mind was the long and dreary stretch of his boyhood
when she and Adam Gaudylock were the only beings towards whom he had a
friendly thought. He was one of those men whose minds still hold
communion with all the selves that they have left behind. Each in its
day had been a throbbing, vital thing, and though at times he found the
past obtrusive and wished to throw it off, he could never utterly do so.
There was for him no Lethe. But if he tasted the disadvantages of so
compound a self, to others the array enriched the man, making him
vibrant of all that had been as well as all that was. It put them, too,
to speculation as to how great an army he would gather ere the end, and
as to the nature of the last recruit. The visitor from the
Three-Notched Road looked at him now with her keen old eyes and laid her
mittened hand upon his arm. "Be a good man, Lewis Rand! Be a great one
if you will, but be good. That comes first."
Rand touched her withered hand with his lips. "It is women who are good.
And you'll not come to town again until nearly Christmas! I'll ride over
before then, and I'll settle Carfax for you. You are going home now?"
"Vinie Mocket is cutting watermelon rind for me. I'll stop there first
and then I'll go home! Give my love to Jacqueline. I heard at the Swan
that Mr. Jefferson is at Monticello. Is that true?"
"Yes, it is true."
"Humph!" said Mrs. Selden. "Then you'll be at Monticello all hours. I
wish you'd ask him for a seedling of that new peach tree."
"I shall not be there all hours," said Rand, "but I'll manage to get the
seedling for you. Good-bye, good-bye!"
The coach and four lumbered on down the dusty Main Street. Mrs. Selden,
sitting opposite her brown paper bundles, waved her fan and looked out
on the parching trees and the straggling, vine-embowered houses. For
half an hour there had been a thought at the back of her head, and now
it suddenly opened wings. Those strangely arranged lines of figures on
that paper which had fluttered to the floor, they formed no sum that
Lewis Rand was working! The paper that they covered was not a stray
leaf; it had been folded like a letter. There was, she remembered, a
piece of wax upon it. It was a day when men of mark often wrote to each
other in cipher--there was nothing strange in Lewis Rand so
corresponding with whom he chose. Most probably it was a letter from the
President--though that could hardly be, seeing that the President was
at Monticello! Mrs. Selden looked out of the window towards that low,
green mountain which was now rising before her, and frowningly tried to
remember some gossamer of speech which had been blown to her upon the
Three-Notched Road. A quarrel between Rand and the President?--pshaw! it
could hardly have been that! She had a sudden memory of Rand's face ere
he grew to manhood, of the ardent eyes and the involuntary gesture of
reverence which he used when he spoke of Mr. Jefferson. He could not
even speak of him without a certain trembling of the voice. Any one
could see the change in him since then, but it was hardly to be believed
that the old feeling did not abide at the bottom of the well! Mrs.
Selden was annoyed. The letter might have been from Mr. Madison, or Mr.
Monroe, or Albert Gallatin, or John Randolph,--though John Randolph,
too, had quarrelled with the President,--or Spencer Roane, or almost any
great Democrat-Republican. It was no business of hers whom it was from.
A colour crept into her withered cheek, and she tapped her black silk
shoe upon the floor of the coach. "Yes; a giant of a sum," Lewis had
said with great easiness, and then had put the paper out of sight. Why
had he not been frank? He might have said to an old friend, "That's a
cipher,--you see men will be riddlers still!" and then have laid away
the letter as securely as he pleased! Mrs. Selden hated deceit in
anything, great or small, and hated to find flaws in folk of whom she
was fond. It was a trifle truly, but Lewis Rand had meant to give her a
false impression, and that when he knew as well as she how she detested
falsity! As for his reasons for concealment,--let him keep his reasons!
She angrily told herself that Jane Selden had no desire to pry into a
politician's secrets. But he should have said that the letter was a
letter! With which conclusion, the coach having drawn up before Vinie
Mocket's door, Mrs. Selden dismissed the matter from her mind, and,
descending, was met by Vinie herself at the gate.
"I've got the sweetmeats all cut, Mrs. Selden! Grapes and baskets, and
hearts with arrows through them, and vases of roses. I never did any
prettier. Won't you come in, ma'am? There's water just drawn from the
well."
"Then I'll have a glass, and I'll just look at the sweetmeats. It is
late and I must be going home. Vinie, why don't you have your gate
mended?"
"It always was broken," said Vinie. "I'm always meaning to have it
mended. Will you sit on the porch, ma'am? It's cooler than inside."
The short path was lined with zinnias and with prince's feather and the
porch covered with a shady grapevine. Vinie brought a pitcher beaded
with cool well water, and then a salver spread with fanciful shapes cut
from the delicate green rind of melon and ready for preserving. Mrs.
Selden drank the well water and approved Vinie's skill; then, "Your
brother's gone to North Garden," she said abruptly. "Mr. Rand's affairs
must keep him busy."
"Yeth, ma'am. Tom comes and goes," said Vinie wistfully. "I wish he'd be
Governor of Virginia."
"Who? Tom?"
The girl laughed. "La, no, ma'am! Mr. Rand." The tone conveyed,
pleasantly enough, both the grotesque impossibility of Mr. Tom Mocket
aspiring to such a post, and the eminent suitability of its lying in the
fortunes of Lewis Rand. Vinie, shy and pink and faintly pretty in her
shell calico, leaned against the wooden railing beneath the grapevine,
and appealed to her visitor: "I'm always after Tom to make him say he'll
run. Tom can do a great deal with him--he always could. I reckon all his
friends want him to take the nomination. But Tom says he has a bigger
thing in mind--"
"Who? Tom?"
"No, ma'am. Mr. Rand. I forgot! Tom said I wasn't to tell that to any
one." Vinie looked distressed. "Won't you have another glass of water,
ma'am? The drouth this year is something awful--all the corn burned up
and the tobacco failing. Tom will be back soon from North Garden. Yeth,
ma'am, he works right hard for Mr. Rand. The last time he was here he
said that whether he ended in a palace or a dungeon, he'd remember Tom
somewhere towards the last. Yeth, ma'am, it was a funny thing to say,
but he was always mighty fond of Tom."
"Does he come here often?"
"Right often,--when there's work to be done at night, or when he wants
to meet some one at a quieter place than the office. He's always known
he could use this house as he pleased," Vinie ended simply. "Tom and I
would go barefoot over fire for Mr. Rand."
"Well, my dear, I hope he won't ask you to," said her visitor, with
dryness. She rose. "I've a long drive before me, so I'll not sit longer.
Who's that--I left my glasses in the coach--who's that speaking to
Gabriel?"
"It's Mr. Gaudylock."
"Gaudylock! He's not been in Albemarle for a year! When did he come
back?"
"Just the other day, ma'am." A smile crept over Vinie's face. "He
brought me a comb like the Spanish women wear. He's a mighty kind
man--Mr. Gaudylock."
The hunter and Mrs. Selden met at the broken gate. "I am glad to see you
back, Adam," she said. "You're a rolling stone, but all the same we're
fond of you in Albemarle."
"I'm surely fond of Albemarle, ma'am," answered Adam.
"When I've rolled long and far enough and the moss is ready to gather on
me, I reckon I'll roll back to a hillside in the old county. I'm sorry
to see the drouth so bad. We've had a power of rain over the mountains."
"Not long since, I had a letter from a kinsman of mine in Louisiana, and
he spoke of you. He said that up and down the rivers you were known,
that the villages made it a holiday when you came to one, and that in
the forest your name was like Robin Hood's."
"Robin Hood? Who's he?" demanded Adam; then, "Oh, you mean the man in
the poetry book. I reckon he never saw the Mississippi in flood, and his
forest would have laid on the palm of your hand. Yes, I'm known out
there." He gave his mellow laugh. "A letter of introduction from Adam
Gaudylock is a pretty good letter, whether it's to the captain of an
ark, or a Creek sachem, or a Natchitoches settler, or a soldier at Fort
Stoddert. Let me help you in, ma'am."
He handed her to her seat with the sure lightness and the woodsman's
grace which was part of his charm, then gave her order to Gabriel. The
coach turned and went back through the Main Street, and so on, in the
yellow afternoon, to the Three-Notched Road. As she passed again the
green door, Mrs. Selden looked out, but the door was fast and the
shutters closed behind the blush roses. "He must have gone home early,"
she said to herself, and all the way along the Three-Notched Road she
thought of Lewis Rand and his career.
Rand had not gone home, but was walking down the street towards the
Eagle and the post-office. Presently the stage would be in, and he
carried a letter the posting of which he did not care to entrust to
another. He walked lightly and firmly, in the glow before sunset, and as
he approached the post-office steps he met, full face, coming from the
other end of the town, Colonel Richard and Major Edward Churchill and
Fairfax Cary. They were afoot, having left their horses at the Swan
while they waited for the incoming stage. The post-office had a high
white porch, and on this were gathered a number of planters and
townsfolk, while others lounged below on the trodden grass beneath three
warped mulberries. All these, suspending conversation, watched the
encounter.
Rand lifted his hat, and Fairfax Cary answered the salute with cold
punctilio, but the two Churchills, the one with a red, the other with a
stony countenance, ignored their nephew-in-law. The four reached
together the post-office steps, a somewhat long and wide flight, but not
broad enough to accommodate a blood feud. Rand made no attempt at
speech, conciliatory or otherwise, but with a slight gesture of courtesy
stood aside for the two elder men to pass and precede him. The smile
upon his lip was half bitter, half philosophic, and as they passed, he
regarded them aslant but freely. The burly, heated figure of the Colonel
was trembling with anger, while Major Edward, striving for indifference,
achieved only a wonderful, grey hauteur. They had been talking of the
drouth, and they talked on while they went by Rand, but their voices
sounded hollow like drums in a desert. They took as little outward
notice of the living man whose fate entwined with theirs as if he had
been a bleached bone upon the desert sands. They went on and, upon the
porch above, mingled with a group of friends and neighbours.
Rand put himself in motion, and he and Fairfax Cary mounted step for
step. The elder man looked aside at his companion of the moment, slender
and vigorous, boyishly handsome in his dark riding-dress. He harboured
no enmity towards the younger Cary, and for Unity he had only
admiration and affection. His mind was full of recesses, and in one of
them there hovered on bright wings a desire for the esteem of these two.
In his day-dreams he steadily conferred upon them benefits, and in
day-dreams he saw their feeling for him turn from prejudice to respect
and fondness. Now, after a moment's hesitation, he spoke. "_I_ have no
quarrel, Mr. Cary, with a happiness that all the county is glad of. Miss
Dandridge and my wife are the fondest friends. May I offer you my
congratulations?"
He had ceased to move forward, and the other paused with him. The
younger Cary was thinking, "Now if I were Ludwell, I'd accept this with
simplicity, since, damn him, in this the man's sincere." He looked at
the toe of his boot, swallowed hard, and then faced Rand with a sudden,
transfiguring brightness of mien. "I thank you, Mr. Rand. Miss Dandridge
is an angel, and I'm the happiest of men. Will you tell Mrs. Rand so,
with my best regards?" He hesitated a moment, then went on: "No sign of
rain! This weather is calamitous! I hope that Roselands has not suffered
as Greenwood has done?"
"But it has," said Rand, with a smile. "The corn is all burned, and the
entire state will make but little tobacco this year. Miss Dandridge is
better than an angel; she's a very noble woman--I wish you both long
life and happiness!"
They said no more, but mounted the remaining steps to the level above.
Fairfax Cary joined the two Churchills and their friends, while Rand,
after a just perceptible hesitation, entered the small room where the
postmaster was filling, with great leisureliness, the leather mail-bag.
Besides himself there was no other there; even the window gave not upon
the porch, but on a quiet, tangled garden. He took the letter from his
breast pocket and stood looking at it. The postmaster, after the first
word of greeting, went on with his work, whistling softly as he handled
the stiffly folded, wax-splashed missives of the time. The wind was in
the west, and the fitful air came in from the withered garden and
breathed upon Rand's forehead. He stood for perhaps five minutes looking
at the letter, then with a curious and characteristic gesture of
decision he walked to the high counter and with his own hand dropped it
into the mail-bag, then waited to see it covered by the drift from the
postmaster's fingers. "Don't the world move, sir?" said the latter
worthy. "It hasn't been so long since there wasn't any mail for the West
anyhow, and now look at this bag! Kentucky, and this new Tennessee, and
Mississippi, and Louisiana, and the Lord knows what besides! Letters
coming thick and fast to Mr. Jefferson, and letters going out from every
one who has a dollar or an acre or a son or brother in those
God-forsaken parts where Adam Gaudylock says they don't speak English
and you walk uphill to the river! I like things snug, Mr. Rand, and this
country's too big and this mail's too heavy. You have correspondents out
there yourself, sir."
"Yes," answered Rand, with indifference. "As you say, Mr. Smock, all the
world writes letters nowadays. Certainly it is natural that from all
over the West men should write to Mr. Jefferson."
"Natural or not, they do it," quoth Mr. Smock doggedly. "I thought I
heard the stage horn?"
Rand looked at his watch. "Not yet. It lacks some minutes of its time,"
he said, and, leaning on the counter, waited until he saw the mail-bag
filled and securely fastened. Lounging there, he took occasion to ask
after the health of Mr. Smock's wife, and to commiserate the burnt
garden without the window. If the expression of interest was
calculated, the interest itself was genuine enough. A shrewd observer
might have said that in dealing with the voters of his county Rand
exhibited a fine fusion of the subtle politician with the well-wishing
neighbour. The facts that he was quite simply and sincerely sorry for
the postmaster's ailing wife, and that he had the yeoman's love for
fresh and springing green instead of withered leaf and stalk, in no wise
militated against that other fact that it was his cue to conciliate, as
far as might be, the minds of men. He almost never neglected his cue;
when he did so, it was because uncontrollable passion had intervened.
Now the postmaster, too, shook his head over the ruined garden, entered
with particularity into the doctor's last report, and by the time that
Rand, with a nod of farewell, left the room, had voted him into the
Governor's chair, or any other seat of honour to which he might aspire.
"Brains, brains!" thought Mr. Smock. "And a plain man despite his fine
marriage! If there were more like him, the country would be safer than
it is to-day. There is the horn!"
The stage with its four horses and flapping leather hanging, its heated,
red-coated driver and guard, and its dusty passengers swung into town
with great cracking of a whip and blowing of a horn, drew up at the
post-office just long enough to deliver a plethoric mail-bag, and then
rolled on in a pillar of dust to the Eagle. The crowd about the
post-office increased, men gathering on the steps as well as upon the
porch above and on the parched turf beneath the mulberries. There was a
principle of division. The Federalists, who were in the minority, held
one end of the porch; the more prominent Republicans the other, while
the steps were free to both, and the space below was given over to a
rabble almost entirely Republican. Rand, with several associates,
lawyers or planters, stood near the head of the steps;--all waited for
the sorting and distribution of the mail. The sun was low over the
Ragged Mountains, and after the breathless heat of the day, a wind had
arisen that refreshed like wine.
Rand, his back to the light, and paying grave attention to a colleague's
low-voiced exposition of a point in law, did not at first observe a
movement of the throng, coupled with the utterance of a well-known name,
but presently, as though an unseen hand had tapped him on the shoulder,
he turned abruptly, and looked with all the rest. Mr. Jefferson was
coming up the street, riding slowly on a big, black horse and followed
by a negro groom. The tall, spare form sat very upright, the reins
loosely held in the sinewy hand. Above the lawn neckcloth the face,
sanguine in complexion and with deep-set eyes, looking smilingly from
side to side of the village street. He came on to the post-office amid a
buzz of voices, and the more prominent men of his party started down the
steps to greet him. The few Federalists stiffly held their places, but
they, too, as he rode up, lifted their hats to their ancient neighbour
and the country's Chief Magistrate. A dozen hands were ready to help him
dismount, but he shook his head with a smile. "Thank you, gentlemen, but
I will keep my seat. I have but ridden down to get my mail.--Mr. Coles,
if you will be so good!--It is a pity, is it not, to see this drouth?
There has been nothing like it these fifty years.--Mr. Holliday, I have
news of Meriwether Lewis. He has seen the Pacific.
"Tiphysque novos
Detegat orbes; nec sit terris
Ultima Thule.
"Mr. Massie, I want some apples from Spring Valley for my guest, the Abbé
Correa.--Mr. Cocke, my Merinos are prospering despite the burned
pastures."
Mr. Coles came down the steps with a great handful of letters and
newspapers. The President took them from him, and, without running them
over, deposited all together in a small cotton bag which hung from his
saddle-bow. This done, he raised his head and let his glance travel from
one end to the other of the porch above him. Of the men standing there
many were his bitter political enemies, but also they were his old
neighbours, lovers, like himself, of Albemarle and Virginia, and once,
in the old days when all were English, as in the later time when all
were patriots, his friends and comrades. He bowed to them, and they
returned his salute, not genially, but with the respect due to his fame
and office. His eye travelled on. "Mr. Rand, may I have a word with
you?"
Rand left the pillar against which he had leaned and came down the steps
to the waiting horseman. He moved neither fast nor slow, but yet with
proper alacrity, and his dark face was imperturbable. The fact of some
disagreement, some misunderstanding between Mr. Jefferson and the man
who had entered the public arena as his protégé, had been for some time
in the air of Albemarle. What it was, and whether great or small,
Albemarle was not prepared to say. There was a chill in the air, it
thought, but the cloud might well prove the merest passing mist, if,
indeed, Rumour was not entirely mistaken, and the coolness a
misapprehension. The President's voice had been quiet and friendly, and
Rand himself moved with a most care-free aspect. He was of those who
draw observation, and all eyes followed him down the steps. He crossed
the yard or two of turf to the black horse, and stood beside the rider.
"You wished me, sir?"
"I wish to know if you will be so good as to come to Monticello
to-night? After nine the house will be quiet."
"Certainly I will come, sir."
"I will look for you then." He bowed slightly and gathered up his
reins. Rand stood back, and with a "Good-afternoon to you all,
gentlemen," the President wheeled his horse and rode down the street
towards his mountain home. The crowd about the post-office received its
mail and melted away to town house and country house, to supper at both,
and to a review, cheerful or acrimonious, of the events of the day,
including the fact that, as far as appearances went, Lewis Rand was yet
the President's staff and confidant. The Churchills and Fairfax Cary
rode away together. In passing, the latter just bent his head to Rand,
but Colonel Dick and Major Edward sat like adamant. Rand took the
letters doled out to him by Mr. Smock, glanced at the superscriptions,
and put them in his pocket, then walked to the Eagle and spoke to the
hostler there, and finally, as the big red ball of the sun dipped behind
the mountains, betook himself to Tom Mocket's small house on the edge of
town.
He found Vinie on the porch. "Is Adam here?" he asked. She nodded.
"That's well," he said. "I want a talk with him--a long talk. And,
Vinie, can you give me a bit of supper? I won't go home until late
to-night;--I have sent my wife word. Tell Adam, will you? that I am
here, and let us have the porch to ourselves."