THE CEDAR WOOD
Jacqueline closed the door of her aunt's chamber softly behind her,
passed through the Fontenoy hall, and came out upon the wide porch.
There, in the peace of the September afternoon, she found Unity alone
with the Lay of the Last Minstrel. "Aunt Nancy is asleep," she said. "I
left Mammy Chloe beside her. Unity, I think she's better."
"So the doctor said this morning."
"I think she's beginning to remember. She looks strangely at me."
"If she does remember, she'll want you still!"
Jacqueline shook her head. "I think not. How lovely it is, this
afternoon! The asters are all in bloom in the garden, and the gum tree
is turning red." She threw a gauze scarf over her head. "I am going down
to the old gate by the narrow road."
"I wish," said Unity, "that I had the ordering of the universe for just
one hour! Then Christians would become Christian, and you wouldn't have
to meet your husband outside the gates of home."
The other laughed a little. "Oh, Unity, Christians won't be Christian,
and even as it is, 'tis sweet to be at home! Until you go away to
Greenwood, you'll not know how dear was Fontenoy! To hear the poplars
rustling and to smell the box again--Is it not strange that I should
have a light heart when they look so cold upon me?"
"I have hopes of Uncle Dick, but Uncle Edward"--Unity shook her head. "I
don't understand Uncle Edward."
"I do," answered Jacqueline, "and I love him most. I'll go now and leave
you to the Last Minstrel. Does Fairfax Cary come to-night?"
"He may--"
Jacqueline laughed. "'He may.' Yes, indeed, I think he may! Oh, Unity,
smell the roses, and look at the light upon the mountains! Good-bye! I'm
for Lewis now."
She passed down the steps and through the garden toward the cedar wood
which led to the old gate on the narrow road. Unity heard her singing as
she went. The voice died in the distance. A door opened, Uncle Edward's
step was heard in the hall, and his voice, harsh and strange, came out
to his niece upon the porch: "Unity, I want you in the library a
moment."
Jacqueline kept her tryst with Rand under the great oak that stood
without the old gate, on land that was not the Churchills'. It was their
custom to walk a little way into the wood that lay hard by, but this
afternoon the narrow road, grass-grown and seldom used, was all their
own. They sat upon the wayside, beneath the tree, and Selim grazed
beside them. There was her full report of all that concerned them both,
and there was what he chose to tell her. They talked of Fontenoy, and
then of Roselands--talked freely and with clasped hands. Her head rested
on his shoulder; they sat in deep accord, bathed by the golden light of
the afternoon; sometimes they were silent for minutes at a time, while
the light grew fairer on the hills. When an hour had passed they rose
and kissed, and he watched her across the road and through the gate into
the circle of Fontenoy. She turned, and waited to see him mount Selim
and ride away. He spoke from the saddle, "At the same hour to-morrow,"
and she answered, "The same hour." Her hands were clasped upon the
top-most bar of the gate. He wheeled Selim, crossed the road, half
swung himself from the saddle, and pressed his lips upon them. "Come
home soon!" he said, and she answered, "Soon."
When the bend of the road had hidden horse and rider, she left the gate
and began her return to the house. Her path lay through a field, through
the cedar wood, and through the flower garden. In the field beside a
runlet grew masses of purple ironweed. She broke a stately piece, half
as tall as herself, and with it in her hand left the autumn-coloured
field and entered the little wood where the cedars grew dark and close,
with the bare, red earth beneath. At the end of the aisle of trees could
be seen the bright-hued garden and a fraction of blue heaven. Holding
the branch of ironweed before her, Jacqueline passed through the wood
toward the light of sky and flowers, and came at the edge of the open
space upon a large old tree, twisted like one of those which Dante saw.
As she stepped beneath the dark and spreading boughs a man, leaving the
sunlit flower garden for the shadow of the cedars, met her face to face.
"You!" he cried, and stopped short.
The branch of ironweed dropped from her hand. "I did not know that you
were at Fontenoy. I have not seen you this long while--except for that
moment the other night. Is it not--is it not the loveliest day?"
"I came from the library into the flower garden and on to this wood
because I wished to think, to be alone, to gain composure before I
returned to the house--and you front me like a spectre in the dimness!
Once before, I entered this wood from the flower garden--and it was
dark, dark as it is to-day, though the weather was June. Nor do I,
either, count the other night when I came to Roselands as Colonel
Churchill's messenger. It has been long, indeed, since we truly met."
"You are not well, Mr. Cary!"
"I am--I am," said Cary. "Give me a moment."
He rested his arm against the red trunk of the cedar and covered his
eyes with his hand. Jacqueline stood, looking not at him but at the
coloured round of garden. Her heart was fluttering, she knew not why.
The moment that he asked went by and, dropping his arm, he turned upon
her a face that he had not yet schooled to calmness.
"The evening of the nineteenth of February," he said. "That was the last
time we really met. Do you remember?"
"Yes, I remember. It was the day of the deep snow."
Cary regarded her mutely; then, "Yes, that was the important thing. We
all remember it because of the snow. You were learning a new song that
you promised to sing to me when I came again. But I never heard it--I
never came again."
"I know. Why was that?"
"Do you ask?" he cried, and there was pain and anger in his voice. "I
thought it not of you."
The crimson surged over Jacqueline's face and throat. She bent toward
him impetuously, with a quick motion of her hands. "Ah, forgive me!" she
cried. "I know--I know. I was told of the quarrel next day in the coffee
house. I--I was more sorry than I can say. I understood. You could not,
after that, come again to the house. Oh, more than almost anything, I
wish that you and Lewis were friends! It is wrong to try to make you
think that that evening does not live in my memory. It does--it does!"
"I am willing to believe as much," he returned, with a strange dryness.
"I know that you remember that evening, but I hardly think it altogether
on my account--"
The colour faded from her cheek. "On whose, then? My husband's?"
"And your guest's."
"You were my guest."
"Oh," cried Cary, "I'll not have it! You shall not so perjure yourself!
He has taken much from me; if your truth is his as well, then indeed he
has taken all! I know, I know who was the guest that night, the man with
whom you supped, the 'client from the country.'"
She gazed at him with large eyes, her hand upon her heart, then, with an
inarticulate word or two, she moved to the gnarled and protruding roots
of the cedar and took her seat there facing his troubled figure and
indignant eyes. "Who was the guest,--the client from the country?"
"Aaron Burr."
She drew a difficult breath. "How long have you known?"
"Since that night. No--do not be distressed! I learned it not from
you,--you kept faithful guard. But when I left you, within the hour I
knew it."
"And--and if he were there, what harm?"
Cary regarded her in silence; then, "The letter that I read you that
night from your uncle, from one of the heads of your house, from a
patriot and a man of stainless honour, that letter was, I think,
sufficiently explicit! There was the harm. But Major Churchill's
opinion, too, is perhaps forgot."
"No," cried Jacqueline, "no; you do not understand! Listen to me!" She
rose, drawing herself to her full height, the red again in her cheek,
her eyes dark and bright. "I am going to tell you the truth of this
matter. Are you not my friend, whose opinion I value for me and mine?
You are a true and honourable gentleman--I speak with no fear that what
I say will ever pass beyond this wood! Uncle Edward's letter! You think
that what was said in Uncle Edward's letter--ay, and what you, too, said
in comment--was already known to me that night! Well, it was not. Oh,
it is true that Colonel Burr had supped with us, and it is also true
that I was most heartily sorry for it! At table, while he talked, I saw
only that green field so far away, and General Hamilton bleeding to his
death,--yes, and I thought, 'Oh me, what would they say to me at
Fontenoy?' But I knew no worse of Colonel Burr than that one deed, and I
bore myself toward him as any woman must toward her husband's guest! I
am telling you all. He was Lewis's guest, Lewis's correspondent, and
this was an arranged meeting. I knew that and I knew no more. After
supper they talked together, and I sat alone by the fire in the empty
drawing-room. I was bidden--yes, I will tell you this!--I was bidden to
keep all visitors out, since it must not be known that Colonel Burr was
then in Richmond! You came, and by mistake you were admitted. I was
lonely at heart and hungry for news from home, I let you stay, and you
read to me what my uncle had to say of the man who was at that instant
beneath my roof, engaged in talk with my husband! You read, and then
you, too, took up the tale! 'Traitor--treason.... A man whom, had you
the power, you would arrest at once.... False to his honour, false to
his country.... Traitor and maker of traitors.... And where is your
husband to-night?' Well, I did not choose to tell you where was my
husband that night--and, since I was frightened, and cold at heart, and
knew not what to say, and--and was frightened, I _lied_ to you! But as
for that which I now see that you have thought of me--you are much
mistaken there! Until you read me Uncle Edward's letter, I did not know
what men said of Aaron Burr!"
"I wronged you," said Cary, with emotion. "I doubted you, and I have
been most wretched in the doubting. Forgive me!"
"You wronged me, yes!" she cried. "But am I the only one you've
wronged? Oh, I see, I see what since that night you have thought of
Lewis! It was the next day that you quarrelled in the coffee house! Oh,
all these months, have you been mistrusting Lewis Rand, believing him
concerned with that man, suspecting him of--of--of _treason_? There,
too, you are mistaken. Listen!"
She came closer to him, all colour, light, and fire against the dark
cedars. "I am going to tell you. You are generous, open-minded, candid,
fair--you will understand, and you will know him better, and you and he
may yet be friends! I have that at heart--you would hardly believe how
much I have that at heart. Have you been dreaming of Lewis Rand as the
aider and abetter of Colonel Burr's designs, whatever they may be! as a
conspirator with him against the peace of the country, against Virginia,
against the Republic? You have, you have,--I read it in your face! Well,
you are wrong. Oh, I will tell you the clean truth! He was tempted--he
saw below him the kingdoms of the earth--and oh, remember that around
him are not the friendly arms, the old things, the counsel of the past,
the watchword in the blood, the voice that cries to you or to my uncles
and so surely points to you the road! I will tell the whole truth. I
will not say that his mind sees always by the light by which we rest. He
has come another way and through another world. How should he think our
thoughts, see just with our eyes? He has come through night and hurrying
clouds; his way has been steep, and there are stains upon his nature. I
that love him will not deny them! He was tempted as Ludwell Cary would
not have been. Oh, perhaps if I had not been there, he would have made
his compact. But I was there! and I besought him--and that night he
swore to me--"
Cary threw out his arm with a cry. "Stop, stop! I take God to witness
that I never thought of this!"
She went on, unheeding. "He swore to me that whatever in that world of
his he had thought of Aaron Burr and of his projects, however keenly he
had seen the dazzling fortune that lay in that western country, yet, as
I had left my world for his, so would he leave that night, in this, his
world for mine! And he did so--he did so that night before the dawn!"
She raised her hand to her eyes and dashed away the bright drops. "You
have done an injustice. All this time you have thought him what that
night you called Aaron Burr. I know not where Colonel Burr is now, but
since the night of the nineteenth of February, he and my husband have
had no dealings."
"My God!" said Cary, in a low voice; then, "This is all your assurance?"
"All?" she echoed proudly. "It is enough."
He turned away and, walking to the edge of the wood, stood there,
striving for some measure of self-command. His hands opened and shut.
Lewis Rand was a perjured traitor, and it only remained to tell
Jacqueline as much.
The garden swam before his eyes, then the mist passed and he saw with
distinctness. There was a path before him that led away between walls of
box to the green and flowery heart of the place, and at the heart was a
summer-house. He saw it all again. There was the morning in June, there
was the blowing rose, there was the sudden vision--Rand and Jacqueline,
hand in hand, with mingled breath! It was into this path that he had
turned--it was to this wood that he had stumbled, leaving them there. He
felt again the icy shock, the death and wormwood in his soul. They had
had the gold, they had loved and embraced while, with his face to the
earth, he had lain there beneath that tree where now she stood. Well,
Time's globe was turning--there were shadows now for the lovers'
country! Their land, too, would have its night; perhaps an endless
night. He entertained the fierce, triumphant thought, but not for long.
He had loved Jacqueline Churchill truly, and her happiness was more to
him than his own. When, presently, he reached the consideration of her
in that darkened country, moving forever over ash and cinder beneath an
empty, leaden heaven, he found the contemplation intolerable. A
tenderness crept into his heart, divine enough as things go in the heart
of man. The summer-house mocked him still, and the image of Rand walked
with armed foot through every chamber of his brain, but he wished no
worse for Jacqueline than unending light and love. After the first red
moment, it was not possible to him to put out one lamp, to break one
flower, in her paradise. It hung like a garden in Babylon over the dust
and sorrow of the common way, over the gulf of broken gods and rent
illusions. To jar that rainbow tenure by the raising of his voice, to
bring that phantom bliss whirling down to the trodden street, lay not
within the quality of the man. He closed his eyes and fought with the
memory of that June morning when he and Colonel Churchill had come upon
the summer-house; fought with that and with a hundred memories besides,
then looked again, and quietly, at the autumn place, bright with late
flowers and breathed over by the haunting fragrance of the box. Another
moment and he turned back to the wood and the great tree.
Jacqueline sat beneath the cedar, the branch of ironweed again within
her hand. She had found it natural that Ludwell Cary should turn away.
It was not easy to struggle against a misconception, to re-marshal facts
and revise judgments--often it was hard. She waited quietly, fingering
the tufts of purple bloom, her eyes upon the clear sky between the cedar
boughs. When at last she heard his step and looked up, it was with an
exquisite kindness in her large, dark eyes. "It was a natural mistake,"
she said. "Do not think that I blame you. It is hard to believe in good
when we think we see evil."
"I am thankful," he answered, "that you are back in your shrine. Forgive
me my error."
She looked at him fixedly. "But concerning Lewis--there, too, was error.
Why should you continue enemies?"
There was a silence, then Cary spoke, sadly and bitterly. "You must
leave me that. There are men who are born to be antagonists. When that
is so, they find each other out over half the world, and circumstance
may be trusted to square for them a battle-ground. Mr. Rand and I, I
fear, will still be enemies."
"Then what I have told you makes no difference--"
"You are mistaken there. What you have told me shall have its weight."
"Why, then," cried Jacqueline, "you cannot judge him as you have been
judging throughout a spring and summer! You are just and generous--will
you not try to be friends? Ere this men have left off being foes, and
many and many a battlefield is now thick with wild flowers. I should be
happy if you and Lewis would clasp hands."
Her voice was persuasion's own, and there was a tremulous smile upon her
red lips, and a soft light in her dark eyes. "There is a thing that I
have long divined," she said, "and that is the strange regard for what
you think and what you are that exists deep, deep down in his mind. It
lies so deep that he is mainly ignorant that it is there. He thinks that
you and he are all inimical. But it is there like an ancient treasure
far down in the ocean depths, far below the surface storm. There is in
him a preoccupation with you. Often and often, when questions of right
and wrong arise, I know that his thought descends to that secret place
where he keeps an image of you! I know that he interrogates that image,
'Is it thus or so that you would do?' And if, at times, scornfully or
sullenly or with indifference, he does the opposite to what the image
says, yet none the less at the next decision will his thought fly to
that same judgment bar! It is an attraction that he fights against, a
habit of the mind that he would break if he could--but it is
there--indeed, indeed it is there! It is despotic--I do not think that
he can escape. Ah, if you and he were friends, you would be friends
indeed!" She looked at him pleadingly, with her hand outstretched.
Cary shook his head. "You are mistaken," he said harshly. "I am
conscious of no place where my spirit and that of Mr. Rand may touch. I
cannot explain; we are enemies: you must let us fight it out."
"Does it so much matter that you are Federalist and he Republican?"
"It matters very little."
"Or that you are a Cary, with all that that means, while he is Lewis
Rand from the Three-Notched Road?"
"That matters not at all."
"Or that you are rival lawyers? Or that in politics he has defeated you?
Or--Oh, my friend, now I am dealing unjustly! Forgive me--forgive me and
make friends!"
"Would he," asked Cary sombrely--"would he agree? I think not. I am sure
not. I think rather that he cherishes this enmity, feeds it, and fans
it. Our lines in life have crossed, and now there is no force can lay
them parallel. The sun is sinking, and I must see Major Edward again."
She rose from her seat beneath the cedar. "I'll hope on," she said.
"Some day, if we live long enough, all clouds will break. Time
withstands even the stony heart."
"Do you think," he demanded, "that mine is a stony heart? Well, be it
so, since this is a game of misunderstanding! I will say this. If I
could come, the next nineteenth of February, to your house on Shockoe
Hill, and find him there, and find you happy with him there, then, then
I think I would clasp hands--"
"Ah," she cried, "do not wait until February! We shall be there on
Shockoe Hill in November."
He stooped and lifted her branch of ironweed. "You are sure?"
"Why, yes," she answered. "The house has been retaken. We go to Richmond
as soon as Lewis comes back from over the mountains."
"From--"
"He has bought land in the western part of the state. He is going on a
journey soon to examine it."
"Toward the Ohio?"
"Yes; toward the Ohio. How did you know?"
"And you--you will not go with him?"
"He has talked of my going. But I cannot now that my aunt is ill."
"Perhaps he will wait?"
"Yes; he says that he will. How pale you are! I am sure you are not
well?"
They had stepped from out the wood into the light of the garden. She
looked at him with concern, but be dismissed her question with a gesture
of his hand and a laugh that sounded strangely in her ears. "It is," he
said, "the fading light. Are you going in now?"
"Not yet. Daphne is ill at the quarter, and I'll walk down to her cabin
first. Do you stay to supper?"
"No, not to-night. But I wish to see Major Edward again. If you'll allow
me, I will go on to the library."
"Certainly," answered Jacqueline, and, when he had kissed her hand and
said good-bye, watched him across the flower garden and up the steps
that led to the glass doors. He passed into the room, out of her sight,
but she still stood there among the asters and the box. His look was
strange, she thought, and her hand had been crushed, rather than held,
to his lips. She drew her scarf about her; the September evening was
falling chill. The sunset light struck full upon the glass doors. She
wondered why, for the second time in an afternoon, Ludwell Cary wished
to see Uncle Edward, there in the library. Only once or twice, in the
fortnight that she had been at Fontenoy, had she entered the library,
and it was the room of all others that she loved. She thought now of the
old green chair and of her father's portrait, and of every loved and
dreamed-of detail, and she felt shut out in the dusk and chill. A
sensation of strangeness crept over her. She thought, "If I were dead
and trying to make the living hear, I should feel this way. And they
would not even try to hear; they would shut the door and keep me out,
all alone in the dark."
She stood for a full minute staring at the panes and the red reflected
glare of the sun, then drew the scarf closer over her head, and took the
path that led to the quarter.