THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR
Rand closed the heavy ledger. "It is all straight," he said.
"It's as straight as if 'twas a winding-up forever," answered Tom. "Are
you going home now?"
"Yes."
"There's almost nothing on the docket. I've seen no such general
clearance since you began to practise and took me in. You say you're
going to refuse the Amherst case?"
"I have refused it."
"Then," quoth Tom, "I might as well go fishing. The weather's right, and
every affair of yours is so cleaned and oiled and put to rights that
there's nothing here for a man to do. One might suppose you were going a
long journey. If you don't want me to-morrow, I'll call on old Mat
Green--"
"Don't go fishing to-morrow, Tom," said Rand from the desk, "but don't
come here either. Stay at home with Vinie."
"You won't be coming in from Roselands?"
"I won't be coming here." Rand left the desk and stood at the small
window where the roses were now in bloom. "I shall send you a note, Tom,
to-morrow morning. It will tell you what"--He paused for a moment. "What
comes next," he finished. "There will be a message in it for Vinie." He
turned from the window. "I am going home now."
"It's a good time for a holiday," remarked Tom, "and you needn't tell me
that you don't need it, Lewis! I'll lock up and go to the Eagle for a
while. What are you looking for?"
"Nothing," answered the other. "I was looking at the room itself. I
always liked this office, Tom."
As he passed, he touched his subaltern upon the shoulder. There was
fondness in the gesture. "Good-bye," he said, and was gone before Tom
could answer.
Outside, in the bloom and glow of the May evening, he mounted Selim and
rode out of the town. The people whom he met he greeted slightly, but
with no change of manner which they afterwards could report. It was
sunset when he passed the last houses, and turned toward the west and
his own home. He rode slowly, with his eyes upon a great sea of vivid
gold. By degrees the brightness faded, changing to an amethyst, out of
which suddenly swam the evening star. The land rose into hills, the
summits of the highest far and dark against the cold violet of the sky.
From the road to Roselands branched the road to Greenwood. It was dusk
when horse and rider reached this opening. Selim had come to know the
altered grasp upon the rein just here, and now, according to wont, he
fell into the slower pace. Rand turned in his saddle and looked across
the darkening fields to the low hill, crowned with oaks, from which
arose the Greenwood house. He gazed for a full minute, then spoke to his
horse and they went on at speed. A little longer and he was at the gates
of home.
His wife met him upon the doorstone. "I heard you at the gate--"
He put his arm around her. "What have you been doing all the long day?"
"I worked," she answered, "and saw to the house, and read to Hagar at
the quarter. She's going fast. How tired your voice sounds! Come into
the light. Supper is ready--and Mammy Chloe has said a charm to make you
sleep to-night."
They went indoors to the lighted rooms. "You are wearing your
amethysts," said Rand, "and the ribbon in your hair--"
She turned upon him a face exquisite in expression. "They are the jewels
that you like--the ribbon as I wore it long ago. Come in--come in to
supper."
The brief meal ended, they returned to the drawing-room. Rand stood
irresolutely. "I have yet a line to write," he told her. "I will do it
here at your desk. When I have finished, Jacqueline, then there is
something I must say."
He sat down and began to write. She moved to the window, then restlessly
back to the lighted room and sat down before the hearth, but in a moment
she left this, too, and moved again through the room. She passed her
harp, and as she did so, she drew her hand across the strings. The sweet
and liquid sound ran through the room. Rand turned. "I have not heard,"
he said, in a low voice,--"I have not heard that sound since--since last
August. Will you sing to me now?"
She touched the harp again. "Yes, Lewis. What shall I sing?"
He rose, walked to the window, and stood with his face to the night.
"Sing those verses you sang that night at Fontenoy"; then, as she struck
a chord, "No, not To Althea--the other."
She sang. The noble contralto, pure, rich, and deep, swelled through the
room.
"The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine"--
Her voice broke and her hands dropped from the strings. She rose quickly
and left the harp. "I cannot--I cannot sing to-night. The air is
faint--the flowers are too heavy. Come out--come out to the wind and the
stars!"
Without the house the evening wind blew cool, moving the long branches
of the beech tree, and rustling through the grass. To the west the
mountains showed faintly, in the valley a pale streak marked the river.
The sky was thick with stars. Behind them, through the open door, they
heard the tall clock strike. "I did not tell you," said Jacqueline, "of
all my day. Unity was here this afternoon."
"Unity!"
"Yes. For an hour. She came with--with messages. My uncles send me word
that they love me, and that Fontenoy is my home always--as it used to
be. Whenever I wish, I am to come home."
"What did you answer?"
"I answered that they were all dear to me, but that my home was here
with you. I told Unity to tell them that--and to tell it, too, to
Fairfax Cary."
There was a silence; then, "It does not matter," said Rand slowly.
"Whether it is done my way, or whether it is done his way, Fairfax Cary
will not care. He is concerned only that it shall be done. You
understood the message, Jacqueline?"
She answered almost inaudibly. "Yes, I understood."
"Seven months--and Ludwell Cary lies unavenged. I have been slow. But I
had to break a strong chain, Jacqueline. I had fastened it, link by
link, around my soul. It was not easy to break--it was not easy! And I
had to find a path in a desert place."
She bowed her head upon her arms. "Do I not know what it was? I have
seen--I have seen. O Lewis, Lewis!"
"It is broken," he said, "and though the desert is yet around me, my
feet have found the path. To-morrow, Jacqueline, I give myself up."
She uttered a cry, turned, and threw herself into his arms. "To-morrow!
O Love!"
[Illustration: DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES]
He bent over her with broken words of self-reproach. She stopped him
with her hand against his lips. "No, I am not all unhappy--no, you
have not broken my heart--you have not ruined my life! Don't say
it--don't think it! I love you as I loved you in the garden at Fontenoy,
as I loved on our wedding eve, in the house on the Three-Notched Road! I
love you more deeply now than then--"
"I have come," he answered, "to be sorry for almost all my life. Even to
my father I might have been a better son. The best friend a young man
ever had--that was Mr. Jefferson to me! and it all ended in the letter
which he wrote last August. I was a leader in a party in whose
principles I believed and still believe, and I betrayed my party.
To-night I think I could give my life for one imperilled field, for one
green acre of this land--and yet I was willing to bring upon it strife
and dissension. Ingrate and traitor--hard words and true, hard words and
true! I might have had a friend--and always I knew he was the man I
would have wished to be--but, instead, I thought of him as my foe and I
killed him. I have brought trouble on many, and good to very few. I have
wronged you in very much. But I never wronged you in my love--never,
never, Jacqueline! That is my mountain peak--that is my cleansing
sea--that is that in my life which needs no repenting, that is true,
that is right! Oh, my wife, my wife!"
The night wind blew against them. Fireflies shone and grey moths went by
to the lighted windows; above the treetops a bat wheeled and wheeled.
The clock struck again, then from far away a whippoorwill began to call.
They sat side by side upon the doorstone, her head against his shoulder,
their hands locked.
"What will you do?" he said. "What will you do? Day and night I think of
that!"
"Could I stay on here? I would like to."
"I have put all affairs in order. The place and the servants are yours.
I'vee paid every debt, I think. Mocket knows--he'll show you. But to
live on here alone--"
"It will be the less alone. Don't fear for me--don't think for me. I
will find courage. To-morrow!"
"It is best," he said, "that I should tell you that which others may
think to comfort you with. It is possible, but I do not consider it
probable, that the sentence will be death. It will be, I think, the
Penitentiary. I had rather it was the other."
After a time she spoke, though with difficulty. "Yes--I had rather--for
you. For myself, I feel to-night that just to know you were alive would
be happiness enough. Either way--either way--to have loved you has been
for me my crown of life!"
"I have written to Colonel Churchill, and a line to Fairfax Cary. There
was much to do at the last. Now it is all done, and I will go early in
the morning. You knew that it was drawing to this end--"
"Yes, I knew--I knew. Lewis, Lewis! what will you do yonder all the days
the months--the--the years to come? Oh, unendurable! O God, have mercy!"
"I will work," he answered. "It is work, Jacqueline, with me--it is work
or die! I will work. That which I have brought upon myself I will try to
endure. And out of effort may come at last--I know not what."
They sat still upon the stone. The wind sank, the air grew colder; near
and far there gathered a feeling of the north, a sense of loneliness and
untrodden space. The whippoorwill called again.
Rand shuddered. "Our last night--it is our last night. Look!--a star
shot over the Three-Notched Road."
Jacqueline slipped from his clasp and stood upright, with her hands over
her ears. "Come indoors--come indoors! I cannot bear the whippoorwill!"
Early the next morning he rode away. Halfway down the drive he looked
back and saw her standing under the beech tree. She raised her hand, her
scarf fluttering back from it. It was the gesture of a princess,
watching a knight ride from her tower. The green boughs came between
them; he was gone, and she sank down upon the bench beneath the tree. It
was there that Major Edward found her, an hour later.
Rand passed along the old, familiar road. He travelled neither fast nor
slow, and he kept a level gaze. The May morning was fresh and sweet, the
land to either side ploughed earth or vernal green, the little stream
laughing through the meadow. He passed a field where negroes were
transplanting tobacco, and his mind noted the height and nature of the
leaf. At the Greenwood road he looked mechanically toward the distant
house, but upon this morning he hardly thought of Cary. He thought of
Gideon Rand, and of the great casks of tobacco which he and his father
used to roll; of the old, strong horses, and of a lean and surly dog
that they had owned; of the slow journeys, and of their fires at night,
beneath the gum and the pine, beside wastes of broom sedge.
He came into Charlottesville and rode down Main Street to the Eagle,
where he dismounted. A negro took his horse. "Put him up," directed
Rand, "until he is called for." He kept his hand for a moment upon
Selim's neck, then turned and walked down the street and into the Court
House yard.
The shady place had always a contingent of happy idlers, men and boys
lounging under the trees or upon the Court House steps. These greeted
Lewis Rand with deference, and turned from their bountiful lack of
occupation to watch him cross the grass and enter the Court House. "He's
gone," remarked one, "straight to the sheriff's office. What's his
business there?"
The next day and the next the idlers in the Court House yard knew all
the business, and rolled it under their tongues. They loved a tragedy,
and this curtain had gone up with promise. Had they not seen Lewis Rand
walk into the yard--had they not spoken to him and he to them--had they
not watched him enter the Court House? The boy who minded the sheriff's
door found himself a hero, and the words treasured that fell from his
tongue. It was true that he had been sent away and so had heard but
little, but the increasing crowd found that little of interest. "Yes,
sir, that's what he said, and just as quiet as you are! 'Is the sheriff
in, Michael?' he asked. 'Tell him, please, that I want to see him.'
That's what he said, and Mr. Garrett he calls out, 'Come in, Mr. Rand,
come in!'"
Other voices claimed attention. "And when they dragged Indian Run
yesterday, there was the pistol at the bottom of a pool--his name upon
it, just as he told them it would be--"
"Fairfax Cary was in the court room yesterday when he was committed. He
and Lewis Rand spoke to each other, but no one heard what they said."
The boy came to the front again. "I didn't hear much that morning before
Mr. Garrett sent me away, but I heard why he gave himself up. I thought
it wasn't much of a reason--"
The crowd pressed closer, "What was it, Michael, what was it?"
"It sounds foolish," answered the boy, "but I've got it right. He said
he must have sleep."