CHAPTER III
FONTENOY
In the springtime of the year 1804 the spectacle of human conduct ranged from grave to gay, from gay to grave again much as it had done in any other springtime of any other year. In France the consular chrysalis was about to develop imperial wings. The British Lion and the Russian Bear were cheek by jowl, and every Englishman turned his spyglass toward Boulogne, where was gathered Buonaparte's army of invasion. In the New World Spanish troops were reluctantly withdrawing from the vast territory sold by a Corsican to a Virginian, while to the eastward of that movement seventeen of the United States of America pursued the uneven tenor of their way. Washington had been dead five years. Alexander Hamilton was yet the leading spirit of the Federalist party, while Thomas Jefferson was the idol of the Democrat-Republicans.
In the sovereign State of Virginia politics was the staple of conversation as tobacco was the staple of trade. Party feeling ran high. The President of the Union was a Virginian and a Republican; the Chief Justice was a Virginian and a Federalist. Old friends looked askance, or crossed the road to avoid a meeting, and hot bloods went a-duelling. The note of the time was Ambition; the noun most in use the name of Napoleon Buonaparte. It seemed written across the firmament; to some in letters of light and to others in hell fire. With that sign in the skies, men might shudder and turn to a private hearth, or they might give loosest rein to desire for Fame. In the columns of the newspapers, above the name of every Roman patriot, each party found voice. From a lurid background of Moreau's conspiracy and d'Enghien's death, of a moribund English King and Premier, of Hayti aflame, and Tripoli insolent, they thundered, like Cassandra, of home woes. To the Federalist, reverencing the dead Washington, still looking for leadership to Hamilton, now so near that fatal Field of Honour, unconsciously nourishing love for that mother country from which he had righteously torn himself, the name of Democrat-Republican and all that it implied was a stench in the nostrils. On the other hand, the lover of Jefferson, the believer in the French Revolution and that rider of the whirlwind whom it had bred, the far-sighted iconoclast, and the poor bawler for simplicity and red breeches, all found the Federalist a mete burnished fly in the country's pot of ointment. Nowhere might be found a man so sober or so dull as to cry, "A plague o' both your houses!"
In the county of Albemarle April was blending with May. The days were soft and sunshiny, apt to be broken by a hurry of clouds, of slanting trees, and silver rain. When the sun came out again, it painted a great bow in the heavens. Beneath that bright token bloomed a thousand orchards; and the wheat and the young corn waved in the wet breeze. The land was rolling and red in colour, with beautiful trees and narrow rivers. Eastward it descended to misty plains, westward the mountains rose, bounding a noble landscape of field and forest. For many years the axe had swung and trees had fallen, but the forest yet descended to the narrow roads, observed itself in winding streams, gloomed upon the sunlit clearings where negroes sang as they tilled the soil. In the all-surrounding green the plantations showed like intaglios. From pleasant hillsides, shady groves, and hamlets of offices and quarters, the sedate red-brick, white-porticoed "great houses" looked easily forth upon a world which interested them mightily.
Upon a morning in late April of the year 1804, the early sunshine, overflowing such a plantation, dipped at last into a hollow halfway between the house and the lower gates, and overtook two young creatures playing at make-believe, their drama of the moment being that of the runaway servant.
"Oh, the sun!" wailed Deb. "We can't pretend it's dark any longer! God has gone and made another day! We'll see you running away,—all of us white folk, and the overseer and Mammy Chloe! If you climb this willow, the dogs will tree you like they did Aunt Dinah's Jim! Lie down and I'll cover you with leaves like the babes in the wood!"
Miranda, a slim black limb of Satan in a blue cotton gown, flung herself with promptitude upon the ground. "Heap de beech leaves an' de oak leaves upon dis heah po' los' niggah. Oh, my lan'! don' you heah 'um comin'?"
Dead leaves fell upon her in a shower, and her accomplice gathered more with frantic haste. "Oh, it's the ghost in the tobacco-house! it's a rock rolling down the mountain! it's—it's something splashing in the swamp!"
"Is I a-hidin' in de swamp? Den don' th'ow no oak leaves on dis niggah, for dey don' grow dyar. Gawd A'moughty, lis'en to de river roarin'! I's hidin' by de river—I's hidin' by de river! I's hidin' by de river Jordan!"