He stood by the dirty cracked window of the bare room assigned him, and saw Theodosia, her face concealed by a dark hood, slip from a carriage and walk uncertainly to the door below. It opened silently at her approach.
'Tis like a stinking French play, he thought angrily: intrigue and shoddy gallantry: 'The Officer and the Married Lady'. Phaugh!
The room smelled of countless unwashed bodies, and from the rumpled bed there rose an odor of patchouli. The fumish ings, frankly practical, consisted only of bed, table, and slop bowl. Through the flimsy partition which separated this room from the adjoining one came excited squeals of laughter punctuated by male grunts and guffaws.
Meme opened the door at a sharp knock. The fat proprietor entered, smirking. Theodosia, shrinking into her hooded cape, followed him.
'Here's your little lady, sir. Anything more I can do for you?'
Meme drew Theo against him, encircling her with a protecting arm. 'Yes. Make me a fire,' he ordered sharply. 'This dismal hole is damper than a cellar.'
The man shook his head. 'Can't be done, sir. I ain't got no wood. Don't pay to cut none in summer. Anyways, the folks that comes here don't need no fire. They got something better to keep'em warm.'
Merne's fist clenched, as he felt Theo tremble against him. 'Get out!' he shouted violently. The man scuttled from the room. The door slammed to.
Theo stirred, looking up at him piteously. 'Oh, Meme, this is terrible. I didn't dream it would be like this.'
'I know you didn't,' he said quietly. 'It can't be helped'. He untied the ribbons of her wet cloak, laying it across the worm-eaten footboard of the bed.
She stood silent, more beautiful than he had ever seen her. She wore a plain gown of dark blue silk from which Eleanore had removed all trimming so that in case of mishap it would not be recognized. Her skin against the unrelieved blue took on the thick white luster of a dogwood petal, except on her cheekbones where excitement had tinted it pink. Her bronze hair disordered by the hood lay loose about her neck and at the temples small tendrils, curled tight by the dampness, gave her face a luminous delicacy.
The force of her beauty unnerved him. A honeyed lassitude swept over him and into his brain. His hands shook suddenly. He scowled, and, turning sharply, lit the candle on the table, consciously prolonging the small business with the flint and steel and tinder.
He came back to her and drew her gently to the bed. She shrank, with a slight embarrassed sound.
'There's nowhere else to sit, my darling,' said Merne, with grim humor.
She looked about the dingy room. The wavering candle-flame flickered to the rafters from which hung cobwebs and dust in long furry shreds. Cockroaches skittered across the floor. The couple next door who had been murmuring burst into raucous song. This was followed by the clink of bottles.
Theo sank on the lumpy bed beside him. Her eyes filled with tears. 'I wanted it to be so beautiful, Merne: our last hours together. A memory to live by, to hold it close in my heart forever. It should have been as it was before: the sun, the trees, the river that we love. I never felt shame there. But here——'
Her head drooped against him. He pressed his lips silently to her hair.
'Don't go West,' she whispered. 'I can't let you go. Stay near me, my beloved, even if we cannot see each other. You'll be safe. And sometimes we could meet.'
He raised her face so that she must see his eyes. 'Sometimes we could meet,' he repeated bitterly. 'How, Theodosia? In places like this?'
She flung away, burying her face in the corn-husk mattress. Her arms curled around her head in a gesture at once so childish and so full of despair that it turned him to water.
'I thought you loved me,' she cried, with the complete unreason of women.
He leaned over her. 'I do. There will never be anyone else. Don't you know that?'
She turned her body slowly so that she could look up at him. Her warm breath scarcely passed her parted lips. Her face was stilled by a sorrowful tenderness. 'Yes, I do know that,' she whispered. She raised her arms. He kissed her then as he had never kissed her, even on that first day by the river, with the brutality of desire long held in check. Suddenly she stiffened; he saw beneath the answering passion in her eyes an agonizing fear.
He jerked away from her, strode across the room. He yanked at the small crooked window. It stuck fast. He drove his fist savagely through one of the panes. There was a crash and the diminishing tinkle of broken glass. The fresh damp evening air swept by him. The jagged cut on his hand gave him a fierce pleasure. It hurt, and the hurt relieved him.
Theo lay with closed eyes where he had left her, motionless except for the sharp rise and fall of her breasts beneath the blue bodice.
'Theodosia,' he said roughly, 'there is one way: one thing we can do.'
Her eyes opened; her pale mouth formed a question.
'Come away with me: out beyond the mountains. No one asks questions there.'
'Out beyond the mountains?' she repeated slowly. 'How could we?'
He made an impatient gesture. 'We shouldn't be the first couple to run away from entanglements, take new names, and start afresh in the wilderness.'
'You mean to leave. my husband, my baby, and my father——' She frowned a little as though trying to understand. 'And you, Meme? Would you, after all, give up your expedition, forfeit the President's trust, and your honor——'
He laughed through tight lips. 'Obviously. One docs not run off with another man's wife and enjoy the blessings of the community. Yet it would be far harder for you——'
He stopped, overcome by the impossibility of this wild proposal into which his passion had betrayed him. Theodosia in a log cabin struggling to cook the game he brought her, toting water, tending the corn patch: she who expected service from underlings as unquestioningly as she expected air to breathe. Even more impossible to imagine her alone for days as she would have to be, without hope of help in case of illness or danger, dependent only upon herself.
Many gently bred women had found within them the strength to lead this hard frontier life, but much as he loved her, Lewis knew that Theodosia could never be one of these. Adversity would break her. And in this case, physical hardship was the least of it. How long could her love endure against the inevitable remorse? She might abandon her husband with no sufferings except those that sprang from outraged convention, but never her child—or her father.
I've been a fool, he thought, a mawkish fool. And he looked at her with suddenly hostile eyes.
She understood his look and smiled sadly. 'Yes, it's impossible, Merne. Soon we should hate each other. You would never forgive me if I went with you. I think you would never forgive anything that turned you from your purpose. We can't wrench the pattern of our lives as violently as that. Perhaps some day it will be different. We're both young. You'll come back from your expedition—I know you will——' Her voice wavered and broke.
He took her into his arms, holding her now with a pure tenderness, grateful for her wisdom, passionately grateful that she had understood. 'Of course I'll come back. You vastly overestimate the dangers.'
'You'll think of me, Meme: nights when you sit beside your campfire, when you hear the sound of water, the mighty new rivers that you will find out there in the far country.'
She straightened suddenly, staring past him out of the shattered window into the black night. 'What is the message of rivers? Why docs it mean something so deep, so disquieting and yet fulfilling—I can't express it. Yet it's in that song, "Water, parted from the sea ... Still it murmurs as it flows, panting for its native home." The rushing waters panting for the sea. They mean love to me, but they mean life too—and fear. What is the sea, Meme? Is it peace—or death?'
'I don't know, my darling,' he answered, smiling. 'Perhaps both at once, for death is peace, I think. You're a little pagan. The Indians have much the same feeling about rivers that you have.'
He spoke with determined lightness, but he understood her. Again she had touched th
e mysticism in his own soul. Sometimes, not often, when alone in the forests, he had felt all the manifestations of nature to be endowed with an inner meaning. He was half-ashamed of this, believing it to be puerile sentimentality. Yet he loved her best as she was now, withdrawn from him, unapproachable, her fragile face lit by a brooding beauty.
He was profoundly glad that he had not possessed her. Whether the aftermath would have been disillusionment or a compelling ecstasy which would have bound them fast—he could not tell. In either case their love would have crystallized into a new, more rigid form from which they could not have escaped. Now they were still free.
The candle sputtered suddenly and Theo turned her head. She gave a cry and jumped to her feet. 'Merne, look! The candle! It's nearly gone. It must be very late. Oh, what shall I do if Father comes home before I do! What will happen?'
'Eleanore will think of some excuse for you. Don't be frightened, my dear one'. He kissed a strand of her long shining hair. But in truth he thought that she had better go. Their hour was rounded and finished. Since it must be, it was time for them to take up again their separate lives.
She bundled her hair under the hood, fastened the ribbons on her cloak. Her fingers shook with haste. When she stood ready, they looked silently at each other.
These things, she thought, I must remember. The silver-gold of his hair, as it springs back in just that little whorl from his forehead. The way his gray eyes soften when they look at me and yet arc cold as slate to others. The brown leanness of his hands with their strength to bruise and their gentleness to caress.
'Good-bye, my love,' she whispered. 'O Merne—I——' Her voice cracked and she ran from him, slipping through the door like a dark wraith. He heard the soft patter of her feet descending the stairs. From the window he saw her run to the waiting carriage. Its heavy door slammed.
As he came slowly back from the window, the candle guttered and died. A devastating sense of loss and loneliness seemed to fill the sour, darkened room. He flung himself out of it and from the house in headlong strides. It was a tavern he wanted, a tankard of cold, tingling ale, the companionship of males, forthright masculine talk. There, perhaps he would find surcease and forgetfulness.
He reached the Washington Tavern just as Aaron returned to his lodgings on Independence Street to find Theodosia wanfaced in her white dressing-gown and about to retire. The headache was still bad, she said, as she quickly kissed him good night. He sent her to bed without suspicion.
For the only time in her life Theo had successfully deceived her father. She felt neither triumph nor compunction nor shame any more: nothing except a physical weariness so overwhelming that her legs ached and her brain was stupefied.
Meriwether Lewis left Washington before the sun had risen on July the fifth. He left alone, and as quietly as though he were setting out on one of his early morning rides. He was to meet William Clark at Harper's Ferry, and for the two of them there were to be long months of preparation while they trained men, built boats, and waited for the winter to pass in St. Louis, before they could actually start up the Missouri.
Meme checked his horse as they came to the ford over Rock Creek. He turned in his saddle to look back at the sleeping town. The unpainted dome of the Capitol glimmered through the early morning mist, and behind it, invisible to him, was the house where Theodosia slept. He gazed long in that direction. Farewell, my dear, he thought, and sighed, yet his mood was a mingling of sadness and relief. For it was not only to her that he said good-bye, but to a whole way of living. Luxuries and refinements, subtleties and intrigue, he left them behind now.
He tautened the reins, and the horse darted forward, eager for speed. 'Not so fast, my friend,' said Meme, pulling him down. 'We have a long way to go'. Then, struck by the aptness of his words, he laughed grimly. A long way to go: thousands upon thousands of miles ending very like in death. He thought with sudden amusement of Dolly Madison's romantic flutters about the expedition. She had persisted in regarding him as a hero: mighty little romance about it. For the hundredth time he ran over figures in his head. So many pounds of provisions, so many of ammunition, the capacity of the flatboats, the canoes.
He pulled out a leather-bound notebook and began to figure in it with a piece of sharpened charcoal. The horse, accustomed now to a slower gait, jogged on unguided. The trail beside the Potomac ran up the river and westward—steadily westward. And westward Meme would continue to face for three harsh years.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
JOSEPH arrived in due course, and with him, to Theo's dismay, he brought his father and brother William Algernon. They all left Washington at once, Aaron to go on necessary journeys which ranged from Philadelphia to Providence, while the Alston family repaired to Ballston Spa to drink the waters.
In this atmosphere of anxious health-seeking, Theodosia found her own health deteriorating again. Aaron wrote worried letters of advice, Joseph consulted the resident physicians and personally supervised her visits to the springs, where she drank gallons of the salty, sulphurous liquid.
Eleanore watched these proceedings sympathetically. When one is unhappy and bored, one is apt to be sick, and who could help being unhappy and bored in the company of those three stupid men? Particularly now that the fine lover was gone; and le père too, with his gaiety and good-humor. No wonder Madame was like a small snuffed candle: there was nc fire around to kindle her. The Alstons were invariably solemn and repressive. En masse they were enough to make anyone sick.
Theodosia gradually improved. Time dimmed her first desperate longing for Meme. She once more accepted the pattern of her life and tried to make the best of it. But she was a trifle less compliant and had more trouble hiding her impatience.
The Alstons went back to South Carolina by land, and the long uncomfortable trip produced constant friction. Day after day the five of them were shut into the heavy family coach, while it rocked and rumbled southward. Colonel Alston and William Algernon sat with their backs to the horses. Joseph, Theo, and the fretful baby rode on the opposite seat. Little Gampy at a year and a half was as active and restless as arc other children of that age, and Theo exhausted herself trying to quiet him. Moreover, he was teething and his resentful wailing was difficult to bear. Frequent drizzles made it impossible to give him to Eleanore, who rode behind in the open spring wagon, so the four adults in the coach endured the child according to their various natures. The Colonel and William Algernon talked horse-racing when they could hear each other above the din; when they could not, they said nothing, but their long faces were set in heavy disapproval. Joseph occasionally dandled his son irritably until his scanty patience was exhausted. Then he dumped him back onto Theo, who soothed and rocked him, racking her brain for new stories and songs with which to quiet him.
From Lumberton, South Carolina, she wrote to Aaron on October twenty-ninth: 'Thank Heaven, my dear father, I am at Lumberton, and within a few days of rest. 1 am sick, fatigued, out of patience, and on the very brink of being out of temper....We travel in company with the two Alstons.
Pray teach me how to write two A's without producing something like an ASS.'
This state of irritation was hardly lessened by Joseph's belated admission that they were not bound for the Oaks, which was being plastered and would not be ready for them. 'We will spend a few days at Clifton with the family, then visit John Ashe and Sally at Hagley, before we go to Charleston,' said Joseph.
'I think you might have told me sooner,' snapped Theo. 'Why is our own plantation never ready? You know very well that the baby and I need rest. A round of family visits is scarcely conducive to that.'
'I don't see why not,' retorted Joseph. 'You've been away all summer and can now do as I wish for a change.'
Her sense of justice silenced her. According to his lights Joseph was an exceptionally indulgent husband. After a bit she smiled at him apologetically. 'I'm sorry I was cross. This trip has been hard on all our tempers'. She sighed, and to change the subject brought out the f
irst topic which occurred to her. 'I suppose you have never heard anything of Venus?'
A long silence followed this chance remark. Theo looked up at her husband, surprised. They had been sitting together in their room at the little tavern in Lumberton. Gampy slept in a trundle bed beneath theirs, her father and brother-in-law had already retired.
'Have you found Venus?' she repeated, increasingly amazed at his expression.
Joseph looked both triumphant and sheepish. 'Venus came back of her own accord, poor girl,' he said at last. 'She was painfully thin and ill. She had spent a year hiding in the savannas. I don't know how she managed to exist. She implored me to take her back.'
Theo, remembering his violence when Venus ran away, his threats, his vow to sell her to the Spaniards, said wonderingly: 'And you've taken her back? Didn't you even punish her?' 'She's learned her lesson,' said Joseph quickly. 'She's suffered much. You should have seen her kissing my hands in gratitude, heard her heartbroken cries. She says she wishes for nothing in life but to serve me—and my family, of course'. Theo opened her lips to protest, but thought better of it. She would not disturb Joseph's picture of himself as kind, compassionate master. Perhaps the girl had suffered, perhaps she was contrite and would behave. Yet the thought of that sleek golden-brown trouble-maker once more ensconced in the quarters made her angry and unhappy.
'I know you have a prejudice against Venus, but I thought you would be pleased at my forgiving her. You are always preaching tolerance in the treatment of the other slaves'. Though Joseph scowled, there was a note of genuine hurt in his voice. He tugged at his whiskers, and, turning a little so that she could not see his face, he added slowly, 'Sometimes I feel that nothing I do pleases you.'