Part 39 (1/2)
”That is final.”
There was a silence. Rand sat, chin in hand, thoughtfully regarding his visitor. Major Churchill, erect, rigid, grey, and arid, stared before him as though indeed he saw only snowy plains, fallen men, and a forlorn hope. At last he spoke in a dry and difficult voice. ”You persevere in your intention of returning to Richmond and to your house on Shockoe Hill in November?”
”It is my plan, sir, to go to Richmond in November.”
”Immediately upon your return from over the mountains?”
Rand shot a glance at his interlocutor. ”Immediately.”
”These lands that you are going to see, sir--they are not as far as the Was.h.i.+ta?”
”No; they are not as far as the Was.h.i.+ta.” Rand sat upright and let his hand fall heavily upon the arm of his chair. ”That is a curious question, Major Churchill.”
”Do you find it so?” asked the Major grimly. ”_I_ should, were it asked of me--so d.a.m.ned strange a question that it would not pa.s.s without challenge! But then, I am not declining governors.h.i.+ps nor travelling West.”
Rand rose from his chair. ”Major Churchill”--He stopped short, bit his lip, and walked away to the window. There he drew the curtain slightly aside and stood with brow pressed against a pane, gazing out into the frosty darkness. A half moon just lifted the wide landscape out of shadow, and from the interlacing boughs of trees the coloured leaves were falling. Rand looked at the distant mountains, but the eye of his mind travelled farther yet and saw all the country beyond, all the land of the To Be, all the giant valley of the Mississippi, all the rolling, endless plains, all Mexico with snowy peaks and mines of gold. The apparition did not come dazzlingly. He was no visionary. He weighed and measured and reckoned carefully with his host. But there, beyond the mountains, lay no small part of the habitable world,--and the race of conquerors had not died with Alexander or Caesar, Cortez or Pizarro!
Witness Marengo and Austerlitz and that throne at Fontainebleau! He dropped the curtain from his hand and turned to the firelit room and to the tense grey figure on the hearth. ”Major Churchill, if, softened by Jacqueline's presence there at Fontenoy, you came to-night to Roselands with the simple purpose of making friends with the man she loves, then, sir, that man would be a heartless churl indeed if he were not touched and gratified, and did not accept with eagerness such an overture. But, sir, but! There is more, I think, in your visit to-night than meets the eye. You demand that I shall become my party's candidate for the governors.h.i.+p. I answer it is not now possible. You insist that I shall busy myself with improvements here at Roselands, and to that end you offer to reinforce my purse. I answer that Roselands does very well, and that I am not in need of money. You preach to me patriotism and refer to General Was.h.i.+ngton; you speak poetically of gold _versus_ pinchbeck, and true glory _versus_ fame with drenched wings; you ask me certain questions in a voice that has hardly the ring of friends.h.i.+p--and last but not least you wish to know if a parcel of land that I have bought over the mountains is situate upon the Was.h.i.+ta! The Was.h.i.+ta, Major Churchill, is on the far side of the Mississippi, in Spanish Territory.
May I ask, sir, before I withdraw my welcome to Roselands, by what right you are ent.i.tled to put such a question to me, and what is, indeed, the purport of your visit here to-night?”
Major Edward Churchill rose, stark and grey, with narrowed eyes and deliberating, pointing hand. ”You are a villain, sir; yes, sir, a d.a.m.ned, skilled, heart-breaking villain! Bold! yes, you are bold--bold as others of your tribe of whom the mythologies tell! Arrogant as Lucifer, you are more wretched than the slave in your fields! You might have been upon the side of light; you have chosen darkness. It will swallow you up, and I, for one, shall say, 'The night hath its own.' You have chosen wrongly where you might have chosen rightly, and you have not done so in blind pa.s.sion but in cold blood, fully and freely, under whatever monstrous light it is by which you think you walk! I have warned you of the gulf, and I have warned in vain. So be it! But do not think, sir, do not think that you will be allowed to drag with you, down into the darkness, the woman whom you have married! I wish that my niece had died before she saw your face! Do you know what she thinks you, sir?
She thinks you a lover so devoted that at her pleading you put forever from you a gilded lure; a gentleman so absolutely of your word that for her to doubt it would be the blackest treason; a statesman and a patriot who will yet n.o.bly serve Virginia and the country! G.o.d knows what she doesn't think you--the misguided child! She's happy to-night, at Fontenoy, because she's coming home to you to-morrow. That I should have lived to say such a thing of Henry Churchill's daughter! When I rode away to-night, she was singing.” He burst into spasmodic and grating laughter. ”It was that song of Lovelace's! By G.o.d, sir, she must have had you in mind.
”I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.
”Yes, by G.o.d, she was thinking of you! Ha ha, ha ha!”
”You are an old man,” said Rand. ”It is well for you that you are. I wish to know who is responsible for these conjectures, suspicions, charges--whatever term you choose, sir, for all are alike indifferent to me--which brought you here to-night? Who, sir, is the princ.i.p.al in this affair? You are an old man, and you are my wife's kinsman; doubly are you behind cover; but who, who, Major Churchill, set you on to speak of towering ambition and blood-drenched wings and broken vows and deceived innocence, and all the rest of this night's farrago? Who, I say--who?”
”Ask on, sir,” answered the Major grimly. ”There is no law against asking, as there is none to compel an answer. Sir, I am about to remove myself from a house that I shall not trouble again, and I have but three words to say before I bid you good-night. I warn you not to proceed with your Luciferian schemes, whatever they may be, sir, whatever they may be! I warn you that it is ill travelling over the mountains at this season of the year, and I solemnly protest to you that my niece shall not travel with you!”
”And who,” asked Rand calmly,--”and who will prevent that?”
”Sir,” answered the other, ”a grain of sand or a blade of gra.s.s, if rightly placed.” He shook his long forefinger at the younger man. ”You have been fortunate for a long turn in the game, Lewis Rand, and you have grown to think the revolving earth but a pin-wheel for your turning. You will awake some day, and since there is that in you which charity might call perverted greatness, I think that you will suffer when you awake. In which hope, sir, I take my leave. Mr. Rand, I have the honour to bid you a very good-night.”
The master of Roselands rang the bell. ”Good-night, Major Churchill. I am sorry that we part no better friends, and I regret that you will not tell me what gatherer up of rumour and discoverer of mares' nests was at the pains to procure me the honour of this visit. I might hazard a guess--but no matter. Joab, Major Churchill's horse. Good-night, sir.”
He bowed formally. Major Churchill stood for a moment looking straight before him with a somewhat gla.s.sy stare, then, ”Good-night, Mr. Rand,”
he said, in a voice like a wind through November reeds, made a bow as low and as studied as that with which he had once honoured Rand in the Fontenoy drawing-room, turned with martial precision, and stalked from the room.
Lewis Rand stood long upon the hearth, staring down into the fire. He heard Major Edward's horse go down the drive and out upon the highroad with a swiftness that spoke of a rider in a pa.s.sion. The sound of hoofs died away, and he still stood looking into the red hollows, but at last with a short and angry laugh he turned away and opened the door which led to the dining-room. ”Are you still there, Tom? Come in, man! The accusing angel has gone.”
Tom appeared, and the two went back to the great table in the centre of the room. Rand unlocked the drawer and took out the papers in the perusal of which they had been interrupted. Mocket snuffed the candles and tossed another log of hickory upon the fire. ”It falls in with what Gaudylock suspected,” said Rand's measured voice behind him, ”and it all dates back to the nineteenth of February. When he left the house that night, he must have known--”
”Of whom are you talking?” asked Tom at the fire. ”Major Edward?”
”No, not Major Edward. And now he is using his knowledge. She told me to-day that he was often at Fontenoy. Too often, too often, Ludwell Cary!”
”Now, after stopping my mouth, you have spoken his name yourself!”
remarked Tom. ”You and he are over against each other in that case to-morrow, aren't you?”