THE IMAGE
The murderer of Ludwell Cary unlocked the green door of the office in
Charlottesville, entered, and opened the shutters of the small, square
windows. Outside was a tangle of rose-stems, but no leaf or bloom. The
January sunshine streamed palely in, whitening the deal floor and
striking against a great land map on the wall. Upon the hearth had been
thrown an armful of hickory and pine. Rand, kneeling, laid a fire,
struck a spark into the tinder, and had speedily a leap and colour of
pointed flames. He rose, opened his desk, drew papers out of
pigeon-holes and laid them in order upon the wood, then pushed before it
his accustomed chair. He did not take the latter; instead, after
standing a moment with an indescribable air of weary uncertainty, he
turned, went back to the firelit hearth, sat down, and, bending forward,
hid his face in his hands.
A cricket began to chirp upon the hearth, then the branch of a sycamore,
moved by the wind, struck violently against the low eaves of the house.
Rand arose, put his hands to his temples, and moved away.
There were law-books on the shelves, and he took down one and fell to
studying statutes that bore upon a case he had in court. He read for a
time with a frown of attention, but by degrees all interest flagged. He
turned a page, looked at it with vagueness, and turned no more. His chin
fell upon his hand, and he sat staring at the patch of sunshine on the
floor. It was like light on water--light on Indian Run.
Five minutes more and Mocket came in, soft and quick upon his feet,
sandy-haired and freckle-faced, with his quaint, twisted smile, and
watery blue eye, that glanced aslant at his friend and partner
"Good-morning, Lewis"
"Good-morning, Tom."
Mocket stood by the fire, warming his hands. "If 'twas a mild December,
'tis cold enough now! The wind is icy, and it's blowing hard."
"Is it? I thought the air was still."
As he spoke, Rand arose, replaced the book on the shelf, sat down at his
desk, and began to unfold papers. "Work!" he said presently, in a dull
voice. "Work! That is the straw at which to catch! Perhaps one might
make of it a raft to bear one's weight. I have known the day when in
work I have forgotten hunger, thirst, weariness, calamity. I have worked
at night and grudged an hour to sleep. What I have done, cannot I do
again? But I would work better, Tom, if I could get some sleep."
"I am sorry you have bad nights," said Tom; "but if you slept as deep
and innocent as a babe, you couldn't do better work. That was a praising
piece about you in the Enquirer."
"Nothing less than eulogy, Tom, nothing less! Well--get to work! Get to
work!"
"I've brought the papers on this case that old Berry has been copying."
Tom threw more wood on the fire, then moved to his own desk, dragging a
chair after him. "By the way, I stopped at the Eagle for a dram to keep
out the cold, and who should come riding by but Fairfax Cary--"
"Ah!" said Rand. "Is he home from Richmond?"
"I didn't know that he had been to Richmond."
"Yes. He went two weeks ago."
"I hadn't observed it. Well, whenever he went, he's back again. As I
say, I was coming down the steps, buttoning up my coat, and he drew
rein--he was riding his brother's horse and he looked like his
brother--and he says to me, says he, 'Mr. Mocket,--'"
Tom broke off, turned the papers in his hand, and uttered an exclamation
of disgust. "Old Berry is getting to be too poor a copyist! You'll have
to give this work somewhere else."
Rand spoke in his measured voice. "What did Fairfax Cary say, Tom?"
"Why, he didn't say much, and I'm sure I didn't get any meaning out of
what he did say! His words were, 'Mr. Mocket, I wish I could remember
all that, on several occasions, I must have said to you.' Seeing,"
continued Tom, "that I haven't spoken to him more than a dozen times in
my life, I shouldn't consider there would be much difficulty in that,
and I told him as much. 'You're mistaken,' he said. 'It is difficult. We
all have bad memories. I've been wondering, seeing that I have talked to
you of so much, if I ever talked to you of that. On the whole, I don't
think that I ever have. Cultivate your memory, Mr. Mocket. Mine is a
damnably poor one.' And so," ended Tom, "he rode away and left me
staring. I don't know whether his head is turned or not, but he looked
strong enough for anything and all a Cary. If you know what he meant, it
is more than I do. These reports are all straight enough now. Do you
want to look over them?"
"No," said his partner, and stood up, moving back his chair with a
grating sound. "I don't know why--I'm restless to-day." Walking across
the room, he stopped before the map upon the wall, and stood there a
long while in silence.
"How would it do, Tom," he asked at last, in a curiously remote
and dreamy voice,--"how would it do to find two or three great
white-covered waggons, store them with all a childless family would
need, put to them teams sound and strong, procure a horse or two
besides, a slave or two, a faithful dog,--then to take the long
road--west--south--somewhere--anywhere--past the mountains and away,
away"--His voice sank, then gathered strength and went on. "Flood and
forest, low hills and endless plains, stillness and a measure of peace!
Left behind the demon care, full before the eye the red, descending
sun--at night the camp-fire, at dawn the start, and in between mere
sleep without a dream! It is conceivable that, after much travel, in
some hollow or by some spring, after long days and after sleep, one
might stumble on new life." He struck the map with his hand. "Tom,
sometimes I think that I will remove from Virginia to the West."
"You'd be a fool to do that now," answered Tom succinctly. "But you
won't do it. I don't know what has been the matter with you this winter,
but I reckon you still love power. Next year you'll be named for
Governor of Virginia."
He fed the fire again, then, going to the window, looked down the
street. "The wind has fallen."
"I am going," said Rand's voice behind him, "to ride down the
Three-Notched Road. Mrs. Selden sends me word that old Carfax is
annoying her again."
"Can't I go for you?"
"No. I do not mind the ride. Get the papers ready for court to-morrow."
Mocket helped him on with his heavy bottle-green riding-coat. "Lewis,"
spoke the scamp, with a queer note of affection and deprecation, "why
don't you see Dr. Gilmer? You're growing thin, and do you know, you're
haunted-looking! Tell him you cannot sleep, and make him give you bark
or something. I couldn't carry on business without you, you know."
Rand looked at him with dark and sombre eyes. "Couldn't you, poor old
Tom? Well, we'll keep it on awhile together. I don't want the doctor.
Once, long ago, I might have doctored myself." He laughed. "Now there's
no bark in Peru--no balm in Gilead. Well, what we cannot have, we must
do without! Look out, will you, and see if Young Isham is there with
Selim?"
The Three-Notched Road stretched red and stark between rusty cedars and
gaunt trunks of locust trees. It was cold, and overhead the sun was
fighting with the clouds. Rand went rapidly, his powerful horse taking
the road with a long and easy stride. Few were abroad; the bare and
frozen fields stretched on either hand to the hills, the hills rose to
the mountains, grey and sullen in the changing light. That meadow,
field, and hill had once been mantled with tender verdure, and would be
so again, was hard to believe, the land lay so naked and so grim.
Mrs. Selden's small, red brick mansion appeared among the leafless
trees. Rand checked Selim slightly, gazing at the place with the weary
uncertainty he had before exhibited, then turned for the moment from the
task, irksome now as were all tasks, and rode on past Mrs. Jane Selden's
to the house in which he had lived with his father and mother, and had
lived with Jacqueline.
The place had been rented out since that summer of 1804, but the tenant,
failing to make good, was gone, and for some months the house had been
vacant. Rand and Selim moved slowly along the old, old familiar way.
Every stick, every stone, every fence-corner was known to both. The man
let his hand fall upon the brute's neck. "We're going home, Selim," he
said. "We're going home."
It was not now the small, clean place, fresh with whitewash and bright
with garden flowers, shone upon by the sun and sung about by birds, to
which he had brought Jacqueline. The tenant had been dull, and the
place was fallen into disrepair. In the winter air and without a leaf or
flower, it looked again as it had looked when he and Gideon lived there
alone. He dismounted, fastened Selim to the fence, and entered by the
gate beneath the mimosa tree.
That the mimosa had ever shown sensitive leaf and mist of rosy bloom
ranked now among other impossibilities. He stood for a moment looking at
it in silence, then walked up the narrow path, mounted the porch steps,
and tried the door. It was locked, but with an effort of all his wasted
strength he burst it open and so entered the house.
The rooms were unfurnished and forlorn. He went from one to another,
pausing in each in the middle of the floor, and gazing around as if to
replace in that empty square the objects of the past. This progress
made, he looked for a place to rest, but there was neither chair nor
bench. All was bare, unswept, and desolate. He went into the kitchen,
for he remembered the old settle there upon the enormous hearth. That
they could not have removed, it was too heavy. He found it, took off his
riding-coat and made a pillow for his head, then lay down full length
upon the time-darkened wood. He had lain so, often and often, a little
boy, a larger boy, a long-limbed, brooding youth. It had been his refuge
from the fields, though hardly a refuge from his father. Gideon had
been always there, lounging in his chair on the other side of the
hearth, black pipe in hand, heavy stick beside him, revolving in
his slow-moving mind, there in the dusk after the day's work,
tobacco--tobacco--tobacco--and how he should keep Lewis from learning.
"It had been better if he had succeeded," said Rand aloud.
With Gideon still before his eyes he fell asleep. Grim as was that
figure, there was in the vision of it a strange sense of protection. It
was his father, and, giddy from want of sleep, he sank slowly into
oblivion, much as before now he had travelled there in the other's
presence,--travelled with a gloomy mind and a body sore from the latest
beating. Now the mind was full of scorpions, and the body stood in
deadly need of sleep. It took it with a strange reversion to long
gone-by conditions. The thought of Gideon's stick, the feel of his heavy
hand upon his shoulder, were with him as of yore. The difference was
that the man was comforted by what had been the boy's leaden cross.
Exhausted as he was, he slept at first heavily, and without a dream.
This state lasted for some time, but eventually the brain took up its
work, and the visions that plagued him recommenced. He turned, flung out
his arm, moaned once or twice, lay quiet, then presently gave a cry and
started up, pale and trembling, the sweat upon his brow. He wiped it
off, drew a long, shuddering breath, and sat staring.
The kitchen windows were small, and half darkened by their wooden
shutters. While he slept, the day had rounded into an afternoon, with
more of sunshine than the morning had contained. The gold entered the
room uncertainly, dimly, filtering in by the small apertures and
striking across to the cavernous fireplace.
Rand knew it was but a trick of the light touching here and there in
mote-filled shafts,--a trick of the light aiding the vagaries of an
overwrought brain. He put forth his arm and found that it was so--there
was no chair there and no figure seated in the chair. It was a trick of
the light and an effect of imagination, an imagination that was hounded,
day by day, from depth to pinnacle, from pinnacle to depth, back and
forth like a shuttlecock in giant hands. No chair was there and no
seated figure. He sank back on the settle and found that he saw them
both.
The first sick leap of the heart was past. What he saw, he knew, was a
mere effect of light and shadow and tragically heightened fancy: when he
moved in a certain direction, the dim picture faded, broke into pieces,
was gone; but lean far back in the settle, look out with eyes of one
awakened from a maze of fearful dreams, and there it was again! He had
no terror of it; what was it at last but the projection of a face and
form with which his mind had long--had long been occupied? It had ousted
the vision of his father; and that, too, was not strange, seeing that,
day by day, the thought of the one--the one--the one had grown more and
yet more insistent. "Cary," said Rand, in a hollow voice, "Cary!"
The light and shadow made no answer. Rand waited, gazing with some
fixedness, and imagination at white heat saw the head, the face, the
form, the quiet dress, the whole air of the man, the look within his
eyes and the smile upon his lips. The figure sat at ease, as of old it
had sat upon the Justice's Bench the day of the election, as it had sat
beside the bed in the blue room at Fontenoy. Imagination laid Lewis Rand
again in that room, showed him the mandarin screen, the sunny, happy
morning, the pansies in the bowl. "If," he cried,--"if I had died then,
I had not died a wicked man. Cary--Cary--Cary! I am in torment!"
There came no reply. Rand bowed his head. Without, in the afternoon sky,
a cloud hid the sun. When the solitary man in the deserted house looked
again, there were no shafts of light, no dark between to create
illusion; all was even dusk, forbidding, grey, and cold. He rose from
the settle and left the room and the house. Selim whinnied at the gate,
and his master, coming swiftly down the path and out of the enclosure,
unknotted the reins, mounted, and rode off at speed.
Rand's haste did not hold. Remorse does not necessarily break habit, and
the habit of his lifetime was attention to detail, system in matters of
business, scrupulous response to the call where he acknowledged the
right. He drew rein at Mrs. Selden's, dismounted, and lifted the
knocker.
Cousin Jane Selden herself met him in the hail. "Lewis! I'm as glad to
see you as if you brought the south wind! Come in to the fire, and I'll
ring for cake and wine. It is bitter weather even for January. All's
well at Roselands?"
"All's well."
They entered the small parlour and sat down before the fire. "I saw
Jacqueline," continued Mrs. Selden, "at church last Sunday. I thought
her looking very badly pale and absent. I know, Lewis Rand, that you
love each other dearly. There has been no quarrel?"
"No quarrel."
"I don't know," quoth Mrs. Selden, "of which I'm most sensible when it's
in the air--an east wind or something amiss. The wind's in the north
to-day, but the latter's on my mind. What is wrong, Lewis?"
"My dear old friend, what should be wrong?"
"That is what I asked you."
"Then nothing," he replied, "nothing but the north wind. Now about
Carfax--"
Advice given on the subject of all dealings with Carfax, the adviser
rose to take his leave. Mrs. Selden removed her spectacles and laid them
in her key-basket. It was a sign with her that she was about to speak
her mind.
"Lewis," she said, "I was a good friend to you once."
"Do I not know that?" he answered. "The best friend a poor boy ever
had."
"No, not quite that--except, perhaps, to help you a little with
Jacqueline. Mr. Jefferson was the best friend a poor boy ever had."
Rand winced. "You say true. The best friend a boy could have. Give me
another glass of wine, and then I'll go."
"A man like that during youth and a woman like Jacqueline for your
manhood--you have had much to prop your life."
"Yes. Very much."
"Then," she said sharply, "don't let it fall. Grow upward, Lewis, like
the vine that gave its strength to make this generous wine! If you
don't, you'll disappoint your Maker, to say nothing of some poor earthly
friends! Don't fall--don't run upon the earth like poison oak. You're
meant for noble uses--to help your kind, and to rejoice the heart of the
Maker of strong men. Don't you fail and fall, Lewis Rand!"
Rand paused before her. "How should I help my kind, now--now?"
His old friend looked at him a little wonderingly. "Do the simple right,
my dear, whatever it is that you see before you."
"The simple right! And to rejoice the heart of my Maker--if I have one?"
"Do the right strongly and surely, Lewis."
"Whatever it is?"
"Whatever it is." Mrs. Jane Selden looked at him thoughtfully, her hands
clasped upon her key-basket. "I'm only an old woman--just a
camp-follower with an interest in the battle. I wish that you had had a
friend of your own age--a man, and your equal in power and grasp.
Gaudylock and Mocket and such--they're well enough, but you're high
above them, you're a sort of Emperor to them. Could you but have had
such a friend, Lewis--a man like the Carys--"
"For God's sake, don't!" cried Rand hoarsely. He poured out a glass of
wine, looked at it, and pushed it away. "I will go now, for there is
work waiting for me in town, and at home Do as I tell you about Carfax.
Good-bye, good-bye!"
Out upon the road, passing through a strip of pine and withered scrub,
he raised his hand, and for some moments covered his eyes. When he
dropped it, he saw, in the strong purples of the winter evening, again
that misty figure, riding this time, riding near him, not in the road,
but apparent in the air against and between the tall trunks of pines.
"Cary," he said again, "Cary!"
There was no response from the figure in the air. "Cary," cried Rand, "I
would we had been friends!"
Selim reached the open country; the pines fell away, the form was gone.
Rand touched his horse with the spur and rode fast between brown
stubble-fields darkening to the hills and to the evening sky. "Friends,"
he repeated, "friends! That would be on terms of my doing the simple
right--the simple right after the most complicated wrong! Terms! there
are no terms."
Leaving the fields, he rode down to a stream, crossed it, and saw the
shape against a pale space of evening sky. "Is it to be always thus?" he
thought. "I would that I had never been born."