"You don't deceive me," said Mrs. Selden, with great dryness. "But good or bad, your reason's your own, and I'll not ask you to satisfy an old woman's curiosity. In my day it was something to be Governor of Virginia." She waved her fan more vigorously than before, and the wind from it blew a paper from the table beside her. She was birdlike in her movements, and before Rand could stoop, she had caught the sheet. "Rows and rows of figures!" she exclaimed. "Is it a sum you're doing?"
He nodded, taking it from her. "Yes; a giant of a sum," he answered easily, and put the paper in his pocket. "Now what is old Carfax doing on your land?"
The consultation over, Mrs. Selden left the office and was handed by Rand into the pumpkin coach. When he had closed the door, he yet stood beside the lowered glass, his arm, sleeved in fine green cloth, laid along its rim, his strong face, clear cut and dark, smiling in upon his old friend. In his mind was the long and dreary stretch of his boyhood when she and Adam Gaudylock were the only beings towards whom he had a friendly thought. He was one of those men whose minds still hold communion with all the selves that they have left behind. Each in its day had been a throbbing, vital thing, and though at times he found the past obtrusive and wished to throw it off, he could never utterly do so. There was for him no Lethe. But if he tasted the disadvantages of so compound a self, to others the array enriched the man, making him vibrant of all that had been as well as all that was. It put them, too, to speculation as to how great an army he would gather ere the end, and as to the nature of the last recruit. The visitor from the Three-Notched Road looked at him now with her keen old eyes and laid her mittened hand upon his arm. "Be a good man, Lewis Rand! Be a great one if you will, but be good. That comes first."
Rand touched her withered hand with his lips. "It is women who are good. And you'll not come to town again until nearly Christmas! I'll ride over before then, and I'll settle Carfax for you. You are going home now?"
"Vinie Mocket is cutting watermelon rind for me. I'll stop there first and then I'll go home! Give my love to Jacqueline. I heard at the Swan that Mr. Jefferson is at Monticello. Is that true?"
"Yes, it is true."
"Humph!" said Mrs. Selden. "Then you'll be at Monticello all hours. I wish you'd ask him for a seedling of that new peach tree."
"I shall not be there all hours," said Rand, "but I'll manage to get the seedling for you. Good-bye, good-bye!"
The coach and four lumbered on down the dusty Main Street. Mrs. Selden, sitting opposite her brown paper bundles, waved her fan and looked out on the parching trees and the straggling, vine-embowered houses. For half an hour there had been a thought at the back of her head, and now it suddenly opened wings. Those strangely arranged lines of figures on that paper which had fluttered to the floor, they formed no sum that Lewis Rand was working! The paper that they covered was not a stray leaf; it had been folded like a letter. There was, she remembered, a piece of wax upon it. It was a day when men of mark often wrote to each other in cipher—there was nothing strange in Lewis Rand so corresponding with whom he chose. Most probably it was a letter from the President—though that could hardly be, seeing that the President was at Monticello! Mrs. Selden looked out of the window towards that low, green mountain which was now rising before her, and frowningly tried to remember some gossamer of speech which had been blown to her upon the Three-Notched Road. A quarrel between Rand and the President?—pshaw! it could hardly have been that! She had a sudden memory of Rand's face ere he grew to manhood, of the ardent eyes and the involuntary gesture of reverence which he used when he spoke of Mr. Jefferson. He could not even speak of him without a certain trembling of the voice. Any one could see the change in him since then, but it was hardly to be believed that the old feeling did not abide at the bottom of the well! Mrs. Selden was annoyed. The letter might have been from Mr. Madison, or Mr. Monroe, or Albert Gallatin, or John Randolph,—though John Randolph, too, had quarrelled with the President,—or Spencer Roane, or almost any great Democrat-Republican. It was no business of hers whom it was from. A colour crept into her withered cheek, and she tapped her black silk shoe upon the floor of the coach. "Yes; a giant of a sum," Lewis had said with great easiness, and then had put the paper out of sight. Why had he not been frank? He might have said to an old friend, "That's a cipher,—you see men will be riddlers still!" and then have laid away the letter as securely as he pleased! Mrs. Selden hated deceit in anything, great or small, and hated to find flaws in folk of whom she was fond. It was a trifle truly, but Lewis Rand had meant to give her a false impression, and that when he knew as well as she how she detested falsity! As for his reasons for concealment,—let him keep his reasons! She angrily told herself that Jane Selden had no desire to pry into a politician's secrets. But he should have said that the letter was a letter! With which conclusion, the coach having drawn up before Vinie Mocket's door, Mrs. Selden dismissed the matter from her mind, and, descending, was met by Vinie herself at the gate.
"I've got the sweetmeats all cut, Mrs. Selden! Grapes and baskets, and hearts with arrows through them, and vases of roses. I never did any prettier. Won't you come in, ma'am? There's water just drawn from the well."