MY THEODOSIA (25 page)

Then he put her from him. God's blood! he thought savagely. That's done it, you fool! Why did you not let her go?

Her head fell against his shoulder. She clung to him in blind submission. 'Meme,' she whispered, 'I'm so happy'. She looked up at him with the sweet languorous eyes of new passion. Her face now seemed to him achingly beautiful, lit by the radiance of the woman beloved. He touched the bright smoothness of her loosened hair, but his voice was harsh.

'Happy!' He spat out the word as though it burned his
month. 'Neither of us is marked for happiness, my dear one, Wc must do without that.'

She stirred against him, scarcely understanding. 'But we can be happy for a little while; we can see each other; we can be together often. There must be ways——'

He sighed. The furrows deepened in his cheeks. 'Theodosia, we are not some John and Sally of the tavern who may make love in corners and none the wiser. Would to God we were!' He paused, and went on with a stony desperation. 'Why didn't you listen to me in New York when we met? That was our moment, but it slipped away. We are destined now to march forever on different trails. I am leaving in a fortnight to head an expedition to the West. I shall be gone for years. Very like I shall never come back.'

'Oh, no!' She twisted from him, frightened. 'What do you mean? What expedition to the West?'

'Louisiana Territory, and farther, to the Pacific Ocean. A country so vast that it staggers the imagination. It is ours now, since the little French Consul has sold it to us. Didn't you know?'

She shook her head. 'I arrived but yesterday, and news is slow to get to Carolina.'

'It is not yet generally known, and there are many to criticize, saying that Jefferson has beggared the Treasury to buy millions of worthless desert acres that will make us the laughing-stock of nations. But I don't think so. I believe that this gigantic new land holds the key to our future'. What has this to do with us? her heart cried. What do I care for the future of the nation? Let it take care of itself, as it must, anyway. It is our future that matters. Our present.

But she could not say it, for he had withdrawn from her, his eyes, grown coldly gray, gazed up the river toward the West of which he spoke.

'Why must you go, Merne?' she whispered. 'I don't want you to.'

He turned on her passionately. 'And if I stayed? What is there for us now? Shall I make you my mistress? Shall we find some hidey-hole in Alexandria or Bladensburg where we may snatch an hour together, trembling at every sound? Or shall I follow you back to your home and call out your husband——I am a fair shot with the pistols, or——'

'Don't—!' She flung her hand over his bitter mouth. 'You know I mean nothing wrong. But surely we may just sec each other, here by the river. Can't we pretend for a little while that we have just met—as it was three years ago—to be together and talk? I know so little about you. I long to know so much. Meme—please.'

He caught her by the shoulders, and, as she shivered under his touch, his hands dropped clenched to his sides. 'What a child you are, Theo!' he exclaimed with fierce tenderness. 'And what a fool I am! But it shall be as you wish. Meet me here tomorrow'. He gave a curt laugh. 'Perhaps by tomorrow the stars will have turned back in their courses, the sun have forgotten to rise, and our love will be simple and easily satisfied with talk.'

He strode from her, loosed the stallion's bridle, and jumped into the saddle with one swift motion. He did not look back.

Theo, with her hands pressed tight against her breast, stood where he had left her until the mounting sun blazed through the leaves above her head.

E
LEANORE WAS
astounded at Madame's behavior that afternoon. She laughed for no reason, she sang, she grabbed the baby and smothered him with kisses, only to put him down and pace through their rooms with a light, dancing step. She seemed unable to keep still. All the languor and lethargy which Eleanore had thought characteristic vanished like smoke.

Strangest of all, when the evening stage from Philadelphia arrived without Monsieur Burr, instead of the sharp disappointment which the maid expected, Madame said nothing at all. She scarcely seemed to understand.

What had caused this extraordinary change? The climate? thought the puzzled Eleanore. But the climate did not make one spend hours before a mirror brushing one's hair and trying new coiffures, did not make one ask with a sudden anguish:
'Am I really pretty, Eleanore? Do I look sallow or old, do you think?'

Old at twenty! The maid laughed as she gave sincere reassurance. Still, it was true that in the Carolinas Madame had looked older than her years. But today her eyes danced, her cheeks were pink, she glowed with a sort of bloom one could almost touch.

Could this transformation come entirely from the expected joy of meeting Monsieur the Vice-President? To be sure, Madame was far more than commonly attached to her father, her devotion was beautiful. But still-

The explanation came at bedtime, as she helped Madame into a loose embroidered nightshift.

Theo twisted suddenly, saying with an embarrassed little laugh, 'Eleanore, were you ever in love?'

Aha! So it's that, thought the maid. Her plain face splintered into a grin. 'Once, Madame. With the butcher's boy in Chinon.'

'Tell me,' commanded Theo. 'Was it——How did you feel?'

'Feel?' The maid chuckled. 'I felt as though my sabots had wings and skimmed of themselves through the streets; that the black bread and soup that I shared with Pierre were changed into delicate food fit for the angels; that all the countryside smiled at me and wished me well—the birds, the river Vienne, even the pigs—all things smiled.'

'Then what happened?'

'Nothing, Madame. Pierre married the daughter of a rich farmer. The pigs and the birds ceased smiling. The wings dropped off my sabots. I came to America.'

'Oh'. Theo was deflated. She was in that state of new love which yearns for a confidant. She felt that she must speak of him. 'Eleanore, this morning I met a man—I have not
seen him in three years—but when we saw each other it was like—as you say. Only more—so much more. Not like anything I ever imagined'. Her voice trembled suddenly. 'I think I love him.'

The maid looked troubled. 'Ah, Madame, it happens like that sometimes. Will you—see him again?'

'See him again!' repeated Theodosia slowly. 'How can you asl? me that? I tell you I love him. I could not live if I didn't see him again.'

Eleanore frowned, smoothing her apron. She thought it entirely justifiable that Madame should have une petite liaison, un cavalier, if she wanted one. It was for sure hard on her to be married to that fat, whiskered planter, and no one could blame a beautiful young woman for looking elsewhere a bit. But there was that in Madame's voice and manner that was disquieting: too much intensity, too much passion.

'Madame must be very discreet, then.'

'Oh, discreet—yes. I suppose so,' murmured Theo, with a lack of conviction that Eleanore found both irritating and touching. 'I can't think beyond tomorrow morning when I'll see him again. Nothing else matters.'

A great deal else mattered, thought the maid. La pauvre petite would soon have to come down to earth, very soon. Monsieur son pere would see to that, not to speak of all the clacking tongues and curious eyes of this little town. But she held her peace and tended her mistress in silent sympathy.

For three days longer Aaron delayed his arrival. He was held in Philadelphia by business and the semi-serious pursuit of a lady called Celeste. Theodosia was relieved at his absence. Yet the relief was not sharp. Engulfed in a blur of unreasoning bliss, she had lost touch with reality. She even thought vaguely that, when her father came, she might tell him of
this thing which had happened to her. But the past and the future were cut away. She stood on a narrow pinnacle alone—except for Merne.

Each morning at sunrise they met by the river. For those few hours he allowed his clear-headed common sense to be submerged and closed his mind, as she did, to the world outside their oak-shaded riverbank. Her curiously virginal quality awakened all his idealism. It transmuted his desire for her, and they were together as young innocent lovers. For both of them it was new.

He made for her a seat of pine boughs and moss, and once, when the early morning was chill, he built a campfire, and they sat beside it joying in the sweet, resinous smoke. Sometimes they walked a little way through the forest together, and always she was startled at her own blindness and ignorance, for every broken twig, every well-nigh invisible footprint on the loamy soil had a message for him. He knew the habits of the wild creatures, the identity of each plant, even the tiny herbs which she could not discover until he picked them for her. Then sometimes he told her their Indian names and uses. When he had been stationed at Fort Pickering, he had lived much amongst the Chickasaws and come to know their ways. When a blue jay chattered at them he made her smile with a Chickasaw legend about the impudent bird, or he told her the story of the battle between red squirrel and weasel.

She listened eagerly, her eyes fixed on him with worshiping admiration. But it would have been the same had he wished to expound theology or teach her Chinese. For nature itself, beyond a romantic response to scenery, meant little to her.

Bit by bit she drew him on to tell her of his life. And this was hard for him. He had never talked about himself. Yet his taciturnity melted under her fascinated interest.

He had been born in Albemarle County, Virginia, twenty-eight years ago in a log house that clung sturdily to the lower slopes of the Blue Ridges. The wilderness pressed around them, and his earliest memories were of the heart-cracking struggle to maintain their little plantation against its encroachments. His people were gentry, had owned slaves and been fairly prosperous, until his father died when Meme was four. Then the widow Lewis had had a hard time. They grew very poor.

'One winter, I remember, we had naught to eat except the rabbits and'possums that I snared. We got so lean, Mother and I, that our bones were like to rattle together.'

He gave one of his rare laughs at Theo's expression of horror.

'There are worse things than an empty belly, my dear one. You would know nothing of that, though.'

He paused, struck by his own words. How wide was the gap between them! She knew nothing of struggle or hardship. She had never felt hunger, thirst, or the clean, wit-sharpening fear of tangible danger. Impossible to imagine her raising a musket against looters, or braving a mountain blizzard as his mother had done many times.

'Yes—and what happened then? Did your circumstances not improve?' she urged.

'For a while they did. When I was ten, Mother married John Marks, a fine man. I liked him well enough, and our situation was much better, and yet there were matters——'

He stopped again, frowning, then added: 'I escaped often into the forest. Always I found peace there.'

Later he told her of his struggles with learning. His indomitable Scottish mother had sent him daily on a ten-mile walk to the cabin of an old preacher, turned hermit. 'I had no liking for books, no mind for spelling or fine speech. But
I was quick at figuring, and the study of maps came easy. In a few months I learned all the geography and arithmetic the old man could teach me, and I would not go back to him. Mother soon found she could not force me for all her scoldings and switchings. So she let me be.'

'I think no one could force you to do anything, Meme,' said Theo softly.

He shrugged. 'Maybe not. I've always gone my own way.'

He told her of his one close friend, Billy Clark, a lad four years older and yet the gentler and more biddable of the two. So that it was Meme who commanded and Billy who followed. They were separated awhile, when Billy went to soldiering, then, as soon as his age permitted, Meme followed his friend into the army. They fought together in the Whiskey Rebellion in '94. After that for a few years Meme acted as regimental paymaster. The life had suited him. It gave him travel, danger, constant opportunity to exercise his alert, resourceful brain.

The safe transporting of the gold was no easy task. With his saddle-bags bulging with gold eagles, he rode regularly from Philadelphia to the forts at Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Cincinnati, and even on to the rough new blockhouse at Detroit. Often he was without escort and had many a brush with marauders both white and Indian. Yet his record was unstained. Not only did he safely deliver the government gold, but, far more remarkable in a soldier, he never made a mistake in accounting or apportioning. His books balanced to the last ha'penny.

Jefferson had known him as a boy, for Monticello was not far from the Lewis homestead. After Meme received his captaincy, Jefferson kept in close touch with him, until two years ago, when he had offered him the post of presidential secretary.

'Tis not much in my line,' said Meme, with a wry smile, 'crouching over a desk, smoothing down touchy ministers, handing teacups to the ladies. I cannot say I do it well or find it congenial. But it has pleasured me mightily to be near Jefferson in any capacity. He's a great man, and a good one.'

'Father doesn't think so. He thinks him a dolt and overfond of shilly-shallying'. She spoke without thinking, repeating words she had heard many times from Aaron.

Meme's face darkened. 'Colonel Burr——' he began roughly, but checked himself. 'We do not see alike on a great many matters.'

Lewis fully shared Jefferson's distrust of the insinuating little man who had all but intrigued himself into the Presidency, and was even now beckoning to the discomfited Federalists with one hand, while he flourished the Republican standard with the other. That Burr was a trouble-maker, Jefferson was convinced. Small puffs of intrigue and disloyalty arose from his vicinity, wherever he might be, like smoke
from
a smothered campfire. A situation all the more annoying because there was nothing tangible. He discharged his official duties with dignified efficiency, and presided well over the Senate, as even his enemies were forced to admit.