Lewis Rand. Mary Johnston

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СКАЧАТЬ do you know about the man in the blue room?"

      "Jacqueline told me. She knows," answered Deb. "I am going to begin now, Uncle Edward."

      "I am listening," said the Major.

      "Once upon a time there lived on the Three-Notched Road a boy, a poor boy. He lived in a log house that was not so good as an overseer's house, and there were pine trees all around it, and wild flowers, but no other kinds of flowers. And in the trees there were owls, and in the bushes there were whip-poor-wills, and sometimes a mockingbird, but no other kinds of birds, and at night the fireflies were all about. And outside the pine trees, all around the house, the tobacco grew and grew. It grew so broad and high that the children might have played I-spy in it—only there weren't any children. There was only the boy, and he hated tobacco. He was poor, and his father was a hard man. He had no time to play or to learn—he worked all day in the fields like a hand. He had to work like the men at the lower Quarter, like Domingo and Cato and Indian Jim. He worked all the time. I never saw the sun get up, but he saw it every day. In the long afternoons when it was hot, and we make the rooms cool and dark, and rest with a book, he was working, working like a friendless slave. And at night, when the moon rises, and we sit and watch it, and wonder, and remember all the battles that were ever won and lost, and all the songs that ever were sung, he could only stumble to his own poor corner, and sleep, and sleep, with a hot and heavy heart, and the blisters on his poor, poor hands!"

      Major Churchill sank back in his chair and stared at his niece. "Good God, child! whose words are you using?"

      "Jacqueline's," answered Deb, staring in her turn. "Jacqueline told it to me just that way, one hot night when I could not sleep, and there was heat lightning, and she took me in her lap and we sat by the window. Are you tired, Uncle Edward? Does your arm hurt? Suppose I finish the story to-morrow?"

      "No, I'm not tired," said Uncle Edward. "Finish it now."

      "The boy," went on Deb, using now her own and now Jacqueline's remembered words—"the boy did not want to work all his life long in the tobacco-fields, working from morning to night, with his hands, at the thing he hated. He wanted books, he wanted to learn, and to work with his mind in the world beyond the Three-Notched Road. The older he grew the more he wanted it. And Jacqueline said that the mind finds a way, and that the boy got books together, and he studied hard. You see, Jacqueline knows, for when she was a little girl, she used to stay sometimes with Cousin Jane Selden on the Three-Notched Road. And Cousin Jane Selden's farm was next to where the boy lived. There was just a little stream between them. There were no children at Cousin Jane Selden's, and Jacqueline was lonely. And she used to sit under the apple tree on the bank of the little stream and send chip boats down it, just as Miranda and I do. Only she didn't have Miranda, and she was all by herself. And she could see the boy working on the other side of the stream, and there wasn't any shade in the tobacco-field, and Jacqueline was so sorry for him. And one day he came down to the stream for water and they talked to each other. And Jacqueline told Cousin Jane Selden, and Cousin Jane Selden did not mind. She said she was sorry for the boy, and that she had given his father a piece of her mind—only he wouldn't take it. So Jacqueline used to see the boy often and often, for she always played under the apple tree by the stream, and he had a little time to rest every day at noon, and he would come down to the shade on his side of the stream, and Jacqueline told him all about Fontenoy. And he told Jacqueline what he was going to do when he was a man, and he asked her if she had ever read Cæsar, and she had not, and he told her all about it. And Jacqueline told him fairy tales, but he said they were not true, and that a harp could not sing by itself, nor a hen lay golden eggs, nor a beanstalk grow a mile. He said he did not like lies—which wasn't very polite. He was older, you see, than Jacqueline, ever so much older. But she knew how to dance, and she was taking music lessons, and so she seemed older, and he liked Jacqueline very much. What is the matter, Uncle Edward?"

      "Nothing. Go on, child."

      "Then the summer was over, and Jacqueline came back to Fontenoy. But the next summer, when she went to Cousin Jane Selden's, there was the boy working in the tobacco on the other side of the stream. And Jacqueline called to him from under the apple tree. And then the month that she was to stay with Cousin Jane Selden went by, and she came back to Fontenoy. And the next summer she didn't go to the Three-Notched Road, but one day the boy came to Fontenoy."

      "Ah!" said the Major.

      "The boy's father sent him to pay some money that he owed to Uncle Dick. Jacqueline says his father was an honest man, though he was so unkind. And Uncle Dick sent for Jacqueline and said, 'Jacqueline, this is young Lewis Rand. Take him and show him the garden while I write this receipt!' So Jacqueline and the boy went into the flower garden, and she showed him the roses and the peacock and the sundial. And then he went away, and she didn't see him any more for years and years, not till she was grown, and everything was changed. And—and that is the end of the story. But the boy's name was Lewis Rand, and the man's name, up in the blue room, is Mr. Lewis Rand, and I heard Mr. Fairfax Cary say that Lewis Rand was the Devil—but Jacqueline wouldn't have liked the Devil, would she, Uncle Edward?"

      "No, child, no, no!" exclaimed Uncle Edward, with violence. He rose so suddenly from his chair, and he looked so grim and grey, that Deb was almost frightened.

      "Didn't you like the story, Uncle Edward? I did like it so much when Jacqueline told it to me—only she would never tell it to me again."

      "Yes, yes, I liked it, honey. Don't I like all your stories? But I don't like Mr. Rand."

      "Will he stay always upstairs in the blue room?"

      "The Lord forbid!" cried Major Churchill.

      The door opened wide, and Mr. Ned Hunter put in an important face. "Are you there, Major? Here's the devil to pay. Rand's arm is broken and his ankle wrenched and his head cut open! The doctor says he mustn't be moved for at least a fortnight. I thought you'd like to know." He was gone to spread the news.

      Major Churchill stood still for a moment, then turned to the table, placed with deliberation a marker between the leaves of Swift, took up the volume, and restored it to its proper shelf.

      "It is getting dark—I must go to bed," said Deb. "Uncle Edward, who pays the devil?"

      "His hosts, child," answered Uncle Edward, looking very grim and very old.

CHAPTER VII

       Table of Contents

THE BLUE ROOM

       Table of Contents

      The news of the accident to Lewis Rand spread far and wide. Both as a lawyer and as Mr. Jefferson's adjutant he had become in two years' time a marked man. Federalist and Republican were agreed that the recent election was but a foot in the stirrup. Another two years might see him—almost anywhere. He was likely to ride far and to ride fast. To the Federalists his progress from the tobacco-fields to the Elysian Heights of office was but another burning sign of the degeneracy of the times and the tendencies of Jefferson. On the other hand, the Republicans quoted the Rights of Man and the Declaration of Independence, and made the name of Lewis Rand as symbolic as a liberty pole. He was bon enfant, bon Républicain. Virginia, like Cornelia, numbered him among her starry gems. He was of the Gracchi. He was almost anything Roman, Revolutionary, and Patriotic that the mind of a perfervid poet could conjure up and fix in a corner of the Argus or the Examiner. Every newspaper in the state mentioned СКАЧАТЬ