Lewis Rand | Page 5

beauty faded and her wit grew
biting, he learned to hate her, and to hate learning because she had it,
and the refinements of life because she practised them, and law because
she came of a family of lawyers. She was dead and he was glad of
it,--and now her son was always at a book, and wanted to be a lawyer!
"I'll see him a slave-driver first!" said Gideon Rand to himself, and
flecked his whip.
On the other side of the cask Adam Gaudylock whistled along the road.
He, too, had business in Richmond, and problems not a few to solve,
but as he was a man who never sacrificed the present to the past, and
rarely to the future, he alone of the three really drank the wine of the
morning air, saw how blue was the sky, and admired the crimson
trailers that the dewberry spread across the road. When his gaze
followed the floating down from a milkweed pod, or marked the scurry
of a chipmunk at a white oak's root, or dwelt upon the fox-grape's
swinging curtain, he would have said, if questioned, that life in the
woods and in an Indian country taught a man the use of his eyes. "Love
of Nature" was a phrase at which he would have looked blank, and a
talisman which he did not know he possessed, and it may be doubted if
he could have defined the word "Romance." He whistled as he rode,
and presently, the sun rising higher and the clear wind blowing with
force, he began to sing,--
"From the Walnut Hills to the Silver Lake, Row, boatmen, row! Danger
in the levee, danger in the brake, Row, boatmen, row! Yellow water
rising, Indians on the shore!"
Lewis Rand, perched upon the platform before the cask, his feet
dangling, his head thrown back against the wood, and his eyes upon the
floating clouds, pursued inwardly and with a swelling heart the

oft-broken, oft-renewed argument with his father. "I do not want to go
to the fields. I want to go to school. Every chance I've had, I've learned,
and I want to learn more and more. I do not want to be like you, nor
your father, nor his father, and I do not want to be like Adam
Gaudylock. I want to be like my mother's folk. You've no right to keep
me planting and suckering and cutting and firing and planting again, as
though I were a negro! Negroes don't care, but I care! I'm not your
slave. Tobacco! I hate the sight of it, and the smell of it! There's too
much tobacco raised in Virginia. You fought the old King because he
was a tyrant, but you would make me spend my life in the tobacco-field!
You are a tyrant, too. I'm to be a man just as you're a man. You went
your way; well, I'm going mine! I'm going to be a lawyer, like--like
Ludwell Cary at Greenwood. I'm not afraid of your horse-whip. Strike,
and be damned to you! You can break every colt in the country, but you
can't break me! I've seen you strike my mother, too!"
"Way down in New Orleans, Beneath an orange tree, Beside the
lapping water, Upon the old levee, A-laughing in the moonlight, There
sits the girl for me!"
sang Gaudylock.
"She's sweeter than the jasmine, Her name it is Delphine."
The day wore on, the land grew level, and the clearings more frequent.
Stretches of stacked corn appeared like tented plains, brown and silent
encampments of the autumn; and tobacco-houses rose from the fields
whence the weed had been cut. Blue smoke hung in wreaths above the
high roofs, for it was firing-time. Now and then they saw, far back from
the road and shaded by noble trees, dwelling-houses of brick or wood.
Behind the larger sort of these appeared barns and stables and negro
quarters, all very cheerful in the sunny October weather. Once they
passed a schoolhouse and a church, and twice they halted at cross-road
taverns. The road was no longer solitary. Other slow-rolling casks of
tobacco with retinue of men and boys were on their way to Richmond,
and there were white-roofed wagons from the country beyond Staunton.
Four strong horses drew each wagon, manes and tails tied with bright
galloon, and harness hung with jingling bells. Whatever things the

mountain folk might trade with were in the wagons,--butter, flour, and
dried meat, skins of deer and bear, hemp, flaxseed, wax, ginseng, and
maple sugar. Other vehicles used the road, growing more numerous as
the day wore into the afternoon, and Richmond was no longer far away.
Coach and chaise, curricle and stick-chair, were encountered, and
horsemen were frequent.
In 1790 men spoke when they passed;