HOMEWARD
The frightened birds rose in numbers from the forest trees. Cary's
horse, with a snort of terror, reared and turned. Rand flung himself
from Selim and dashed forward to the black's bridle, but he was too
late. The horse clattered down the little strand, plunged into the
flashing water, and in another moment reached the opposite bank and tore
away along the river road.
The sound of hoofs died away. All sound seemed to die, that of the
stream, of the birds, of the air in the trees. It was as still as the
desert. Very quietly and subtly the outward world put itself in accord
with the inward; never again would sky or earth, tree or leaf or crystal
water, be what it was an hour ago. Life and the scenery of life had a
new aspect.
The murderer moved to the side of the murdered, knelt stiffly, and laid
his hand upon the heart. It, too, was still. Rand stood up. The pistol
was yet in his clasp; he swung his arm above his head and hurled the
weapon into the stream. A pace or two away was a smooth and rounded rock
like a giant pebble. He sat down upon it, locked his hands, and looked
about him. The sky was blue, the leaves were green, the sun shone hot,
the water was at its ancient song--whence, then, came the noxious
change, and what was the matter with the universe? Cary lay among the
stones, with head thrown back and one arm stretched out as though the
hand were pointing. The face was quiet, set in the icy beauty of death,
and young. There came a roll of thunder. Rand looked at his clasped
hands, opened them, and moved the right one slightly to and fro. There
was blood upon his coatsleeve--a great smear. He drew a sighing breath.
He felt as a voyager might who awakened on a planet not his own and at
midnight saw the faint star where once he lived. As yet the wonder
numbed. The complete cessation of anger, too, was confusing. There was
only the plane of existence, grey and featureless. This lasted some
moments, then the lights began to play.
He rose from the stone and, going to the water's edge, knelt and tried
to wash the blood from his sleeve, but without success. He stood up with
a frown. The clouds were high above the treetops, though the sun yet
shone. At a little distance Selim was quietly grazing, the birds had
returned to their song, the squirrels to their play along the leafy
boughs. Rand looked at his watch. "Twelve o'clock--twelve o'clock."
Suddenly a thought struck him. "The pistol, with my name engraved on
it--"
He had flung the weapon far into the water. The stream was hardly more
than a wide brook, but its bed was broken, and above and below the
little ford the water fell over ledges into small, deep pools. Where had
the pistol fallen? If into one of these, he could not find it again. He
had no time to sound them one by one. He moved along the bank, his keen
eyes searching the water. The pistol was nowhere visible; it must have
gone into midstream, into a pool below a cascade. If so, it might lie
there, undiscovered, a thousand years. He stood irresolute. Could he
have done so, he would have dragged the stream, but there was now no
time to squander. Once more he made certain that it lay nowhere in clear
water or near the shore, then abruptly left the search.
He stood in thought for another moment, then with deliberation moved to
his victim's side and looked down upon him with a face almost as blank
and still as the dead man's own. Presently he spoke: "Good-bye, Cary."
The sound of his own voice, strained and strange, hardly raised above a
whisper and yet, in the silence of this new world, more loud than
thunder, broke the spell. He uttered a strangled cry, dashed up the
strand to the grazing horse, flung himself into the saddle, and applied
the spur.
He and Selim did not cross the stream. His mind worked automatically,
but it was a trained mind, and knew what the emergency demanded. He
retraced the river road to a point beyond the rock and the mountain ash,
and there left it. Once in the burned herbage under the trees, he looked
back to the road. There was rock and there was black leaf-mould. If in
the latter any hoof-prints showed confusedly, the coming storm held
promise of a pelting and obliterating rain. He pushed into a thick-set
wood, and began a desperate ride across country. It was necessary to
strike the main road below Red Fields.
Their way was now dangerous enough, but he and Selim made no stay for
that. They went at speed over stock and stone, between resinous pines,
through sumach and sassafras. Lightnings were beginning to play, and the
thunder to roll more loudly. The sunbeams were gone, the trees without
motion, the air hot and laden. Horse and man panted on. Rand's mind made
swift calculation. He had ordered Young Isham to walk the mare. For all
that time had seemed to stop, there at the stream behind him, the
minutes were no longer than other minutes, and there had passed of them
no great number. He had ridden from the ford to the stream at speed, and
now he was going as rapidly. He would presently reach the main road, and
Young Isham would not have passed.
It fell as he had foreseen. One last burst through brush and vine and
scrub and they reached the edge of the wood. Before them through the
trees he saw the main road. Rand checked the horse. "Stand a bit, Selim,
while I play the scout."
Dismounting, he moved with caution through a mass of dogwood and laurel
to the bank. At a distance beneath him lay the road, bare under the
storm clouds. Above and below where he stood it was visible for some
rods, and upon it appeared neither man nor beast. He went back to Selim,
mounted, and together they made shift to descend the red bank. As, with
a noise of breaking twigs and falling earth and stone, they reached the
road, a man, hitherto hidden by the giant bole of the oak beneath which
he had sat down to rest, rose and came round his tree to see what made
the commotion. Between the cause and the investigator was perhaps fifty
feet of road. Rand muttered an oath, then, with a characteristic cool
resolve, rode up to M. Achille Pincornet and wished him good-day.
"Good-day, Mr. Rand," echoed the dancing master, and stared at the bank.
"Parbleu, sir! Why did you come that way?"
"I left my servant a little way down the road and struck into the woods
after a doe I started. I'll gallop back and meet him now. Are you for
Charlottesville, Mr. Pincornet?"
"Not to-day, sir. I have a dancing class at Red Fields." Mr. Pincornet
still stared. "I would say, sir, that the chase had been long and hard."
Rand laughed. "Am I so torn and breathless? No, no; it was short but
rough--a few minutes and perhaps half a mile! Well, I will rejoin my
negro and we'll make for town before the storm breaks."
"Wait here and your negro will come to you."
"Mahomet to the mountain? No; he is a sleepy-head, and I shall find him
loitering. Good-day, good-day!"
With a wave of his hand he left the dancing master still staring and
turned Selim's head to the east. He rode quickly, but no longer
headlong, and he scanned with deliberation the long stretch of the main
road. When at last he saw that which he sought, he backed his horse into
the shadow of a great wayside walnut, drew rein, and awaited Young
Isham's approach.
The boy and the mare came steadily on, moving at quickened speed under
the lowering skies. Young Isham did not see his master until he was
almost beneath the walnut tree; when he did so, he uttered a cry and
well-nigh fell from the mare.
"Gawd-a-moughty, marster!"
Rand spoke without moving. "Get down, Young Isham, and come here."
The negro obeyed, though with shaking knees. "Lawd hab mercy, marster,
whar you come f'om? I done lef' you at de ford."
"I'll speak to you of that presently. Whom have you passed on the road
since you left the ford? How many people and what kind of people? Think
now."
"I ain' pass skeerce a soul, sah. Eberybody skurryin' in f'om de storm.
Jes' some niggahs wid mules, an' a passel ob chillern, an' a man I don'
know. Dey ain' stop ter speak ter me, an I ain' stop ter speak ter dem."
Rand leaned from his saddle and laid the butt of his riding-whip upon
the boy's shoulder. "Look at me, Young Isham."
"Yaas, marster."
"You did not leave me at the ford. We took the main road together, and
we've been travelling together ever since, except that perhaps ten
minutes ago I rode on ahead and waited for you beneath this tree." He
raised the whip handle and brought it down heavily. "Look at me, Young
Isham,--in the eyes."
The boy whimpered. "Yaas, marster."
"We crossed the ford at the mill."
"Yaas, marster."
"And we kept on together by the main road."
"We--Yaas, marster."
"We have travelled together all the way from Richmond, and we have
travelled by the main road. Now say what I have said."
"Marster--"
"Say it!"
"Don', marster, don'! I'll say jes' what you say! We done cross de ford
an' tek de main road--"
"Yes."
"An' we done keep de main road, jes' lak dis."
"That's enough. If you forget and say the wrong thing, Young Isham,--"
"Don', marster! Fer de Lawd's sake, don' look at me lak dat! I ain'
gwine fergit, sah,--de Lawd Jesus know I ain'!"
Rand lifted the whip handle from his shoulder. "Mount, then, and come
on. There's no good in idling here."
A few moments later they overtook and passed Mr. Pincornet, now briskly
walking, kit under arm, toward his dancing class. They bowed in passing,
and Rand, turning in his saddle, looked back at the figure in faded
finery. "There's danger there," he thought. "Where isn't it now?" As he
faced again toward Charlottesville, his glance fell upon Young Isham,
and he saw that the boy was looking fixedly at his sleeve.
The master made no movement of avoidance. "The mare's going well
enough," he said quietly. "We'll draw rein at Red Fields, and then
hurry home. Use your whip and bring her on."
They paused at Red Fields, then went on to the edge of town. The forked
lightnings were playing and the trees beginning to sway. "We'll stop a
moment," Rand said over his shoulder, "at Mr. Mocket's."
Door and window of the small house where Tom and Vinie lived were shut
against the storm. Tom was yet in Richmond, and Vinie was afraid of
lightning. In the darkened atmosphere the zinnias and marigolds up and
down the path struck a brave note of red and yellow. The grapevine on
the porch was laden with purple bunches that the rising wind bade fair
to break and scatter. Rand dismounted, with a gesture bidding the boy to
await him, entered the broken gate, and, walking up the path between the
marigolds, knocked upon the closed door.
There was a sound within as of some one rising hastily, an exclamation,
and Vinie opened the door. "I knew 'twas you! I just said to myself,
'That ith Mr. Rand's knock,' and it was! Wait, thir, and I'll make the
room light."
She threw open the closed shutters. "I'm jutht afraid of lightning when
I'm by myself. How are you, thir?"
"Very well. Vinie, I want a basin of warm water and soap."
"Yeth, thir. The kettle's on. I'll fix it in Tom's room."
In the bare little chamber Rand washed the blood from his coat-sleeve.
It was not easy to do, but at last the cloth was clean. He came out of
the room with the basin in his hands. Vinie, waiting in the little hall,
started forward. "Open the back door," he said, "and let me throw this
out." Vinie tried to take the basin. "I'll empty it, thir." Her eyes
fell upon the water. "You've hurt yourself!"
"No," answered Rand. "I have not. It is nothing--a bit of a cut that I
gave myself."
He pushed the door open and poured out the stained water upon the
ground, then took fresh from a bucket standing by and rinsed the basin
before he set it down upon the table. "Vinie--"
"Yeth, thir."
"I want a promise from you."
"Yeth, Mr. Rand."
"You've always been my good friend, ever since long ago when you came
from the little house in Richmond to this little house in
Charlottesville, and I was reading law with Mr. Henning. Why, I don't
know what I should do without you and Tom!"
Vinie's eyes filled. "I couldn't--Tom and me couldn't--do without you,
Mr. Rand. You're our best friend, and we'd die for you, and you know it.
I'll promise you anything, and I'll keep my promise."
"I know that you will. It's nothing more than this. Vinie, I don't want
it known that I stopped here to-day, and I want you to forget--look at
me, Vinie."
"Yeth, thir."
"I want you to forget what I asked you for, and what I did in Tom's
room.
"Yeth, thir," said Vinie, with large eyes. "And that you cut yourself?"
"That, too. Everything, Vinie, except that, coming along the main road,
I stopped a moment at the gate to say how d'ye do, and to tell you that
Tom would be at home in two or three days. That is all, and my coming
into the house and the rest of it never was. Do you understand?"
"I won't say anything at all, thir."
"It's a promise?"
"Yeth, thir. I promise."
They went out into the porch together. "Ithn't there anything else?"
Rand, studying in silence the clouds and the whirling dust, had started
down the step or two to the path between the marigolds. He paused. "I
can't think of anything, Vinie"; then, after a moment, and very oddly,
"Would you give me, once more, a cup of cool water?"
Vinie brought it in her hand. "You always thaid this water washed the
dust off clean."
Rand drank, and gave back the cup. "Thank you. I'll go on now. How your
vine has borne this year!"
"Yeth. I'm going to make some wine this week. Good-bye."
Her visitor passed through the little yard, between the vivid flowers.
At the gate he turned his head. "Tom is really coming, Vinie, in two or
three days."
"Yeth, thir," said Vinie. "I'll be mighty glad to see him."
Rand mounted, and he and Young Isham rode away. Vinie stood upon the
porch and watched them as far as the turn in the road. A gust of hot
wind blew against her, ruffling her calico dress and lifting light
tendrils of hair from her forehead and neck. In the southwest the
lightning flashed fiercely and there came a crash of thunder. Vinie
uttered a startled cry, clapped her hands to her ears, and ran into the
house.
Rand rode through a portion of the main street of Charlottesville. He
kept the pace of a man who wishes to be at home before the rain falls,
but his manner of going showed no undue haste and no trepidation. Faces
at doors and windows, men gathered before the Eagle and the post-office,
greeted him. He answered each salute in kind, and at the Eagle drew rein
long enough to reply to the inevitable questions as to Richmond and the
trial, and to agree that the rain was needed, since the main road, from
Bates's Mill on, was nothing but a trough of dust.
"That's so," chimed in one. "If it wasn't so rough, the river road would
be pleasanter travelling. There's the first drop!"
Rand looked up at the clouds. "I'll gallop on, gentlemen. A rain is
coming that will lay the dust."
Once upon the road to Roselands, neither horse nor mare was spared. Rand
travelled at speed beneath an inky sky. At the turn to Greenwood he
looked once toward the distant house, half hidden by mighty oaks. It was
no more than once. He had a vision of a riderless horse, tearing away
from a stream, through the woods, and he thought, "How soon?" He drew a
difficult breath, and he put for a moment his hand before his eyes, then
spurred Selim on, and in a little while came within sight of his own
gates.