The stallion nickered impatiently. She grasped with relief this subject of talk. 'A fine animal, Captain Lewis. Do you fide much here?'
'Every morning. This is Mr. Jefferson's Wildair. In addition to my more sedentary duties I have to exercise the stallion. And you—do you often walk abroad so early?'
'No, in the South I never do. But this morning was different. I longed to be out to see the sun rise. I wanted to see the river. I love rivers——' She broke off. What nonsense!
Lewis smiled suddenly. 'So do I. Let us walk and see the river, then.'
In the midst of trying to say that it was getting late, that she must return, that no doubt she would have the pleasure of meeting him again sometime at the President's mansion, Theo found herself strolling down the road at his side, while Wildair stamped resentfully at their heels.
When they reached the riverbank, Lewis tethered the stallion, and turning quickly peered into the brush. She heard a tiny rustic.
My Theodosia 'What is it?' she asked.
'Fox. A little red vixen. Look!' She followed his pointing finger, but her untrained eyes could see nothing except a tangle of underbrush.
'Tis a pity you have no gun,' she remarked politely. Lewis frowned. 'Why so? I do not shoot animals, unless I need them for food. I don't think killing a sport.'
Her surprise at this unfamiliar viewpoint held her quiet a moment, then she said, 'But you must have killed many men. You're a soldier.'
'That's different. Men can take care of themselves. And a good part of mankind,' he added calmly, 'should be shot'. 'La, mercy on us! How fierce you sound!' cried Theo. 'I trust you do not include me in that number'. She fluttered her eyelashes. Perhaps, after all, a tone of airy flirtatiousness was the easiest to maintain.
He gave her a long, cool look. 'Don't coquet with me, Mrs. Alston. It does not become you.'
She reddened, her eyes flashed. 'You're insolent, Captain Lewis.'
He laughed grimly. 'Then-I apologize. But there is that between us that forbids coquetting or gallantry.'
Her heart gave a frightened thump. She stiffened, twisting her fingers together. 'You talk folly. There is nothing between us. I have never seen you but once in my life, nor— nor thought of you since——' She faltered, remembering the strange stab of blind pain dealt her by the sailor's flute on the Enterprise.
He shrugged. 'I believe you. For you would never admit a thought which was not approved by your father, would you?'
He spoke with a quiet matter-of-factness which robbed his words of offense But they hurt her sharply.
'You seem to forget that I have a husband and son as well as a father,' she answered coldly. 'Or perhaps you did not know that I had a son?'
He nodded. 'I had heard it.'
He was silent, staring out over the bright Potomac in front of them. He was disagreeably surprised at the emotion which the sight of her had again aroused. Women as romantic creatures had no place in his life. He had nothing but contemptuous amusement for the philandering of his brother officers, and complete boredom with the nebulous state called 'love.'
And yet this girl—for she was still a girl—affected him profoundly. She plucked at some chord in him that was deeper and richer than desire, though it contained desire. When he had suddenly come upon her again, he felt, as he had in those brief September hours, that they belonged to each other.
He had not thought about her often in the years since their single meeting. He had had no time, nor was he a man to sentimentalize over a girl who had dismissed him. Still, he had heard her mentioned now and then over the teacups and wine bowls to which his present situation as Jefferson's secretary often condemned him, and of late the mention of her name no longer brought a pang. He had been indifferent to it.
And yet the sight of her small graceful figure in the daisy field had aroused in him a troubling emotion. It was not her beauty or fragile femininity. The few women who had attracted him during his rigorous career had been tall, resplendent goddesses, forthright and frankly primitive—women of the unsettled country accustomed to hard work, quickly responsive and unshocked by man's need for mating.
Theodosia had none of these qualities, and yet he wanted her. The realization angered him. This was no time to allow himself to be upset by a woman, when at last his confined and uncongenial life in the President's mansion was nearing its end, and when he was about to embark on the dangerous enterprise for the accomplishment of which he would need the full exercise of his mental and physical qualities.
Even now, there was a pressure of work awaiting him. The President would have had breakfast and be getting impatient, yet he lounged here beside her like a gawking schoolboy, unable to leave her.
'Tell me of your life,' he said abruptly. 'Are you happily married?'
She flushed. 'Of course.'
He watched the slow color flood her neck. She averted her candid eyes from his gaze, but not before he had seen the flicker of uncertainty in their dark depths.
'I don't think you are,' he remarked calmly. 'I don't believe you know anything about true mating.'
'Your speech is offensive, Captain Lewis, and ridiculous. You forget that I have a child.'
He gave a short, hard laugh. 'Any fifty-cent doxy can have a child. Do you give yourself to your husband with rapture? Do you belong to him body and heart and mind?—Have you ever felt about him as we felt about each other that evening in New York?'
He snapped his lips closed, turned impatiently from her. What insensate impulse was driving him to these foolhardy probings? She was right, there had been and there could be nothing between them. Why, then, this desire to cut and thrust into the shimmering smooth bubble that imprisoned her. He must leave her alone. But he could not.
'You have not answered me, Theodosia?'
She swallowed, her wide, startled eyes sliding over his face. She got up. 'I don't understand you, sir. I must be going back now. The sun is high.'
He sprang to her, put a rough hand on her white arm. 'Wait!'
She stood still, trembling, staring down at his hand.
Wait for what? They neither of them knew. The myriad sounds of the awakening forest swelled around them, sounds that for Lewis each held meaning, had he heard them, but he was deaf to everything except the thick beat of blood through his temples and the voice of bitter desire for this woman who was neither of his kind nor his ken.
'"Thou alone canst give release,"' he quoted harshly, scarcely knowing that he spoke. 'Do you remember?'
She shut her eyes. 'I remember, but let me go—please—please——'
He shook his head. His grip on her arm tightened; he pulled her toward him. She felt that her whole being was dissolving into the rushing of resistless waters. They looked into each other's eyes and saw deep shadows and the call of their longing. Tears scalded her lids as she lifted her mouth to his.
In that moment of physical communion, they escaped from themselves to become another, which was both of them and yet neither in a unity beyond time or place or thought, compact with bliss.
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.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ELEANORE 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, h
er 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.'