“Race you?” screamed one Randolph to his sisters.
“No, no—start fair!” they shrieked in protest.
Jefferson called a halt. “Line up. Smallest one three paces ahead of the next. You here, Cornelia.”
“I’m Ellen, Grandfather.”
“All right. Some day I shall hang labels around all your necks. No inching forward now! You—big fellow, three paces to the rear. Now, when I drop my handkerchief—go!”
Small feet flew, braids flopped, hats fell off, and happy squeals and shouts made pandemonium. Flushed and hot and breathless they straggled back to the dreariness of lessons, the older ones knowing that they must learn history and Latin verbs well, for inevitably before the day ended their grandfather would be catechizing them and putting on a sober, disappointed look if they missed the correct answers.
There were letters waiting for replies and papers to be gone over and sorted in his study, but Jefferson discovered a reluctance in himself to begin these tasks. Pacing the long terrace to the south he came to the door of a little one-room building. This was what had always been called Honeymoon Cottage, the first room built at Monticello. He had lived a bachelor’s life in that one room in ’71 and, when Shadwell, his mother’s home, had burned, it had become his only and permanent home.
He took from his pocket the big iron key he had carried for so many years, turned the stiff lock slowly lest some rusted part should snap, and opened the door. Long unused, as it had been for years, the room still held a fresh, sweetish smell of femininity. Patsy had obviously kept it aired and cleaned, knowing that it was still the secret abode of his tired old heart. At the windows the dimity curtains were fresh and starched, the valance and tester of the bed still bright with old-fashioned wool embroidery. His own mother had worked those many-hued flowers and curious fruits, coloring the wool in her own dye pots with homemade dyes set with alum and vinegar.
The slender posts of the bed were polished, as was the brass fender of the fireplace. An armchair stood on the hearth rug and Jefferson sank into it, relaxing his long legs, staring into the cold fireplace where three dry logs rested on the andirons.
His mind whet, far back in time, thirty-six years back, to a snowy January night in ’72, when he had brought his bride, Martha Wayles Skelton, to this room, the only home he had to offer her.