Lewis Rand. Mary Johnston
bowls beneath the locust trees.
The defeated candidate and the successful shook hands: Cary quiet and smiling, half dignified and half nonchalant; Rand with less control and certainty of himself. The one said with perfection the proper things, the other said them to the best of his ability. Young Fairfax Cary, standing by, twisting his riding-whip with angry fingers, curled his lip at the self-made man's awkwardness of phrase. Rand saw the smile, but went on with his speech. Colonel Churchill, who had been talking with Adam Gaudylock, left the hunter and came up to Cary. "Ludwell, you and Fair are not going to Greenwood to-night! I have orders from the ladies to bring you back to Fontenoy—alive or dead!"
"I find myself very much alive, Colonel!" answered Cary. "Thank you, I'll gladly spend the night at Fontenoy. Fontenoy would draw me, I think, if I were dead!"
"Dick has a middling Madeira," remarked Major Edward. "And after supper Jacqueline shall sing to us. Good-evening, Mr. Rand!"
"Good-evening to you, Major Churchill," said Rand. "Good-evening, Mr. Cary. Good-evening, gentlemen!"
"Here are Eli and Mingo with the horses," said Fairfax Cary, his back to the Republican. "Let's away, Ludwell!"
Colonel Churchill laughed. "Fontenoy draws you too, Fairfax? Well, my niece Unity is a pleasing minx—yes, by gad! Miss Dandridge is a handsome jade! Come away, come away, gentlemen!"
Federalists and Republicans exchanged the stiffest of bows, and the party for Fontenoy mounted and took the road. The Republicans whom they left behind had a few moments of laughter and jubilation, and then they also quitted the Court House yard and called to the servants for the horses.
"You'll spend the night at Edgehill, I hope, Mr. Rand?" cried one. "Mrs. Randolph expects you—she will wish to write to her father of your day—"
"No, no, come with me!" put in another. "There's all this business to talk over—and I've a letter to show you from Mr. Madison—"
"Best come to the Eagle!" cried a third. "No end of jolly fellows, and bumpers to next year—"
Rand shook his head. "Thank you, Colonel Randolph—but I am riding to Monticello. Mr. Jefferson has written for some papers from the library. Burwell will care for me to-night. Present, if you will, my humble services to Mrs. Randolph and the young ladies. By the same token I cannot go with you, Mr. Carr, nor to the Eagle, Mr. Jones.—My grateful thanks to you, one and all, gentlemen! I am a plain man—I can say no more. We will ride together as far as the creek."
The negro Joab brought his horse, a magnificent animal, the gift of Jefferson. He mounted and the party kept together as far as the creek, where their ways parted. Rand checked his horse, said good-bye, and watched the gentlemen who had given him their support ride cheerfully away toward the light of home. He himself was waiting for Adam Gaudylock, who was going with him to Monticello. After a moment's thought he decided not to wait there beside the creek, but to turn his horse and leave a message for Tom Mocket at a house which he had passed five minutes before.
CHAPTER V
MONTICELLO
The house, a low frame one, stood back from the road, in a tangle of old, old flowering shrubs. Rand drew rein before the broken gate, and a young woman in a linsey gown rose from the porch step and came down the narrow path toward him. She carried an earthenware pitcher and cup. "It's water just from the well," she said, "fresh and cool. Won't you have some?"
"Yes, I will," answered Rand. "Vinie, why don't you mend that gate?"
"I don't know, thir," said Vinie. "Tom's always going to."
Rand laughed. "Don't call me 'thir'! Vinie, I'm elected."
Vinie set down her pitcher beside a clump of white phlox and wiped her hands on the skirt of her linsey dress. "Are you going away to Richmond?" she asked.
"Not until October. When I do I'll go see the little old house you used to live in, Vinie!"
"It's torn down," remarked Vinie soberly. "Here's Tom now, and—and—"
"Adam Gaudylock. Don't you remember Adam?"
The hunter and Tom Mocket came up together. "We beat them! we beat them, hey, Lewis!" grinned the scamp; and Gaudylock cried, "Why, if here isn't the little partridge again! Don't you want to see what I've got in my pouch?"
"Yeth, thir," said Vinie.
Rand and his lieutenant talked together in a low voice, Mocket leaning against black Selim's neck, Rand stooping a little, and with earnestness laying down the law of the case. They talked for ten minutes, and then Rand gathered up the reins, asked for another cup of water, and with a friendly "Good-bye, Vinie!" rode off toward Monticello, Adam Gaudylock going with him.
Brother and sister watched the riders down the road until the gathering dark and the shadow of the trees by the creek hid them from sight. "Just wait long enough and we'll see what we see," quoth Tom. "Lewis Rand's going to be a great man!"
"How great?" asked Vinie. "Not as great as Mr. Jefferson?"
"I don't know," the scamp answered sturdily. "He might be. One thing's certain, anyhow; he's not built like Mr. Madison or Mr. Monroe. He'll not be content to travel the President's road always. He'll have a road all his own." The scamp's imagination, not usually lively, bestirred itself under the influence of the day, of wine, and the still audible sound of horses' hoofs. "By George, Vinie! it will be a Roman road, hard, paved, and fit for triumphs! He thinks it won't, but he's mistaken. He doesn't see himself!"
Vinie took the pitcher from beneath the white phlox. "It's getting dark. Tom, aren't we ever going to have that gate mended?—He's going away to Richmond in October."
The successful candidate and Adam Gaudylock, followed by Joab on a great bay horse, crossed Moore's Creek, and took the Monticello road. A red light yet burned in the west, but the trees were dark along the way, and the hollows filled with shadow. The dew was falling, the evening dank and charged with perfume.
"I asked you to come with me," said Rand, "because I wanted to talk to some one out of the old life. Mocket's out of the old life too, he and Vinie. But—" he laughed. "They're afraid of me. Vinie calls me 'thir.'"
"Well, I'm not afraid of you," Adam said placidly. "No one at home at Monticello?"
"No, but Burwell keeps a room in readiness. I am often there on errands for Mr. Jefferson. Well, how go matters west of the mountains?"
"Christmas I spent at Louisville," answered Gaudylock, "and then went down the river to New Orleans. The city's like a hive before swarming. There are more boats at its wharves than buds on yonder Judas tree. And back from the river the cotton's blooming now."
"Ah!" said Rand, "I should like to see that land! When you have done a thing, Adam, a thing that you have striven with all your might to do, does it at once seem to you a small thing to have done? It does to me—tasteless, soulless, and poor, not worth a man's while. Where lies the land of satisfaction?"
"No," answered Adam, "I don't look at things that way. But then I'm not ambitious. Last year, in New Orleans, I watched a man gaming. He won a handful of French crowns. 'Ha!' says he, 'they glittered, but they do not glitter now! Again!'—and this time he won doubloons. 'We'll double these,' says he, and so they did, and he won. 'This is a small matter,' he said. We'll play for double-eagles,' and so they did, and he won. 'Haven't you a tract of sugar-canes?' says he. 'Money's naugh. Let us play for land!' and he won the sugar-canes. 'That girl, that red-lipped Jeanne of thine, that black eye in the Street of Flowers—I'll play for her! Deal the cards!' But he never won the girl, and he lost the sugar-canes and the gold."