My Theodosia

by Anya Seton

  The other looked and jumped. 'Gad, man! That's Meriwether Lewis!' He hissed it so loud that it brought a rap of the gavel and an angry look from the bench.

  Irving gave a surprised exclamation. 'The conquering hero, no less? I've heard much of him and his triumphant return last month from his expedition with Clark. He is Jefferson's favorite, is he not?'

  'He has been appointed Governor of the North Louisiana Territory,' returned the other significantly, but in a more cautious whisper. 'So you may judge whether Jefferson is pleased with him! The President has doubtless sent him here in his own stead to watch the trial.'

  Then, why, by all that's infernal, does Mistress Theodosia Burr Alston blaze with delight at the sight of her father's enemy? Here is something vastly peculiar. Irving mused pleasurably over this new mystery. Impossible to imagine two men more different: the one, tall, taciturn, disdainful of the recent honors and acclaim which had been heaped upon him, had risked his life to enlarge and unify his country; while the other——

  Irving glanced at the prisoner. Well, whatever the truth of these particular charges against him, it was clear that Burr cared not a rap for the future of the United States. His vision was bounded by self-interest. True he had fought brilliantly in the war for freedom—but then so had many another young man from motives no more lofty than adventure and personal advancement.

  I verily believe that Burr has not an ounce of patriotism, thought Irving, nor any deep emotions at all, except perhaps one.

  He turned instinctively to look at Theodosia and uttered an exclamation of concern. Her color had faded into a ghastly white, her upper lip glistened, and, while her head fell forward, her small body slumped.

  Irving sprang to his feet, but already a score of people had seen her plight. There was a buzz of sympathy. 'She's swooned, poor little thing,' said a voice, 'and no wonder. Such a strain, and in this heat.'

  Two men carried her outside, and Aaron, who had also started forward without thought of his confinement, was pushed down by the two guards on either side of him. He bit his lips and, flinging back his head, saw Lewis's tall form hurrying through the door opposite.

  For a moment his face contorted. His fingers clenched, they wound themselves in the ruffled white neckcloth at his throat. There was a sharp sound of tearing linen. The guards looked at their prisoner in astonishment. 'For sure he feels all this more than he lets on,' one of them whispered, and the other nodded.

  The gavel sounded, the courtroom quieted. The crossexamination of a dull witness proceeded. Aaron once more became impassive. He did not look at the empty chair where his daughter had been sitting.

  When Theodosia reached the air, her eyes opened. 'I'm all right now,' she murmured, struggling to hold her head up. 'But I think I will lie down for a little. Will somebody please call my carriage?'

  'Your carriage is here, Mrs. Alston, and I will do myself the honor of seeing you home'. Lewis took her arm, dismissing the hovering spectators with a curt gesture of his chin. The carriage door shut them in.

  'Merne,' she whispered, hardly yet daring to believe. 'Oh, Merne—I never thought to see you again.'

  She had fainted for pure joy. From the instant of seeing him in the courtroom, she had lost realization of the trial, even of Aaron. Her long-submerged love had rushed upon her like a suffocating torrent. She had felt in that moment only—Thank God, he is alive. He is near me. He will help us. Everything will now be all right.

  Lewis smiled grimly. 'I am hard to kill, Theodosia. I'm sorry I startled you so. I didn't think how unexpected my appearance would be to you.'

  She gazed at him hungrily. He was thinner, who had always been lean. His skin was weathered dark as oak. His hands were seamed, rough with calluses. She touched one softly.

  'Merne, you're so cold, so still. Are you not glad to be back? Did you not do all that you set out to? Did you find the other ocean?'

  'Yes, the other ocean and mountains and great rivers'. 'Were there savages? I never dared think of them. I have been so terrified for you.'

  He gave a short laugh. 'There were savages, and amongst them the truest, most loyal friend a man could find, Sacajawea. Without her we could have done nothing. '

  'A woman,' she said quickly. 'And were there other women, Merne?'

  He shrugged. 'Other women, of course. Lights-o'-love, a French trollop or two in St. Louis.'

  She shrank against the cushions, staring at him miserably. He had not looked at her once since they entered the carriage.

  'Oh, what is it, my dear?' she faltered after a moment. 'Why do you speak so harshly to me? You hurt me.'

  'I'm sorry for that,' he answered coldly. 'Can you expect me to be merry with a woman whose father has attempted to wrest from the Union those very territories which I have labored for four years to bring into it?'

  'That's not true!' she cried. 'He was interested only in Mexico!'

  'And anything else he could lay his hands on,' said Merne bitterly. His anger, though she could not guess it, was as much for himself as for her. Why did she still have the power to disquiet him? He had thought himself cured, their love safely relegated to the status of a vanished dream. Yet the sight of her in the courtroom had moved him profoundly.

  'You don't understand,' she said urgently, her first swift resentment passed. 'If some of the western territories should break away, it would be their own doing. They have no feeling of allegiance to Washington. They are too far away. They wish to form another nation.'

  Her flushed earnestness touched him. He turned and looked at her ruefully. How well her father had trained her! She had acquired all his dexterity for proving that black was white.

  'I trust you arc wrong about that,' he said, with a faint smile, 'since I have just been appointed Governor to those territories you assure me are ripe for revolt.'

  'Oh—!' She was startled. She glanced at him quickly. Somehow she had never pictured him as an important figure, for all her love. He had been merely a captain, a secretary, or the leader of a hopeless little expedition into the hinterland. Now he was to be Governor of a tract as large as Europe. Why should he? she thought, suddenly angry. What had he done to merit such honor, when a man like he father could be condemned to prison? But Merne was a friend of Jefferson's, Aaron's bitter enemy. In the bliss of seeing him again she had forgotten that.

  ' Why did you come to the trial, Meme?'

  He hesitated and her hope that he would answer, 'To sec you, to help you,' perished.

  Instead he pointed through the coach window, saying, ' Is this your house? The carriage has stopped'. When she nodded coldly, he added, ' May I come inside with you? I have something to say.'

  It was cooler inside. Merne stretched out his long legs and watched her seat herself stiffly across from him before the dark fireplace. Suddenly the memory of their parting engulfed them, the feel of each other's arms and lips. They could not look at each other.

  Perhaps, he thought, if we had been truly lovers, we should be sated now. This unrest and feverishness would not leap at us yet again. His jaw tightened. There must be no repetition of the rapturous and inconclusive days in Washington. Surely at last they were beyond that. He had been sure of it until he saw her. He had come to the trial at Jefferson's request, fully sharing in the President's hostility toward Aaron and prepared to proffer new evidence against him. He had encountered the ragged edge of the conspiracy as he passed through St. Louis, had talked with a handful of men, who, indiscreet in their cups, had furnished him with many details.

  'Go down there, Merne,' ordered Jefferson, 'and demand to be sworn in. I like not the shilly-shally and hair-splitting which Marshall allows. The man should have been hanged long before this. You arc in high favor with the people, and your appointment as Governor will give weight to your evidence.'

  He had consented gladly, ignoring the thought of Theo dosia. What if it hurt her? What if she hated him? He had not reached his present position without incurring enmity. Her father was a scoundrel and
a menace to the country. It had seemed simple.

  And now, alone with her, he felt himself blurred with sentimentality—with passion: his purpose blunted.

  'I came down here to give new evidence against Burr'. He flung it at her roughly.

  Her eyes widened; she shrank to a listening stillness like a wild thing scenting danger. 'What new evidence?'

  'Matters I came upon in St. Louis,' he answered briefly.

  'But you won't give it—you can't——'

  'Why not? Because you and I have known love? That is the reasoning of a fool—or a woman.'

  Have known love, she thought with anguish. Docs he mean that? Is it all past? Has he come here simply to injure us? Somehow I must check this new danger: danger from the one person I trusted to help.

  'You're a Governor now, a great man. I should not be surprised that you no longer feel—feel affection for the daughter of an impoverished prisoner. I was doubtless more attractive as the daughter of a Vice-President?'

  'Rubbish!' he exploded. 'Don't play the hypocrite with me, Theodosia.'

  She was silent. Her thoughts ran together in panic. What was this new evidence? He came from Jefferson, he had been out West. Whatever he said would be listened to avidly. The prosecution had so far been able to produce few witnesses more important than the grooms and gardeners they had heard today. This would be different. If he no longer loved her, she had no weapon. She was helpless and shamed before his cold implacability. Suddenly she looked full at him, and their eyes met. Her heart leaped with relief. She gave an inarticulate cry. 'You do still love me, Merne! You can't lie to me now! I see it! I know it! Listen——'

  She ran to the comer of the room, seating herself at the pianoforte. Her fingers stumbled a little and then grew sure; her voice throbbed with her desperate desire to reach him, to conjure the old emotions from the past by the sure magic of their music.

  Water, parted from the sea——

  He listened, at first resentful. She meant to soften him with this cheap trick. It was unworthy of her—childish. Women—always hankering for the past, refusing to let it die decently. Then gradually, as he listened, his resentment fell away. A peculiar thrill ran through him, as though his spirit trembled on the verge of discovery. It seemed that his consciousness expanded far beyond the limits of the shadowy room in Richmond. He feared to move or breathe, for behind the thinning mists revelation dwelt. 'Almost I can see, in another second I shall understand the whole——'

  Once in the Mandan country, two years back, he had stood alone at sunrise upon the summit of one of the gigantic rocky mountains which reared their mighty bulk out there across the continent, and this same feeling had come to him then. The expedition's trials and dangers had diminished to nothingness. The mountain winds had brought him peace, a momentary glimpse of the eternal cosmic verity—as her small unconscious voice did now.

  Let my heart find rest in thine——

  But she sang of love, human love, while he in that blinding instant knew—as she most mercifully would never know—that she sang also of death. Love and death intermingled, the two edges of the same sword. Tenderness and a great pity held him.

  Theo's hands fell from the keys, her brilliant eyes sought his face. He came to her and kissed her gently as he would have kissed a child.

  She caught his hand. 'Merne, promise me that you will do nothing to hurt Father—promise me.'

  He sighed, and turned from her a little. The moment of illumination was gone. Life slid back into its neat, appointed course. Love and death, foreboding and rapture, they made no sense, he thought, with faint disgust. How had he managed to read all this into a piece of sentimental music?

  'I can't promise, Theodosia. I came to Richmond for a purpose. To do—if you will forgive the cant—my duty. Our love cannot alter that.'

  'You're cruel and hard!' she blazed, flinging her head back. Then she added in a softer voice as a new hope occurred to her: 'At least, Merne, come with me and talk to Father. You scarcely know him; you are prejudiced. If you will just talk with him, you will see how you have misunderstood——'

  Poor baby! he thought. She believes her father to be some sort of wizard; that a few honeyed words from the fascinating little Burr will enslave me.

  He smiled at her sadly. 'If you like, I'll go with you. But it will do no good.'

  Already she had darted for her cloak and tied its brown ribbons beneath her chin. 'He will be back in—in the penitentiary by now. Call the carriage, please. It will be quicker. The mob knows it. They let me through.'

  He complied silently, already regretting his agreement. Together they passed the staring guards on the ground floor of the prison. The jailer, sprawling on a stool before Aaron's door, greeted her courteously: 'Good afternoon, Mrs. Alston. You're early, ain't you? He won't be expecting you yet Who's the gent?'

  'A friend of mine,' she answered quickly. 'I will vouch for him. We shan't be long.'

  The man touched his cap and unlocked the door. It swung silently open on its well-oiled hinges, disclosing Aaron in the center of the room at his writing-table as usual. But his position was not as usual. His head, that she had never seen anything but jauntily erect, was slumped on his arms. His shoulders drooped, they seemed shrunken. He looked defeated—and old.

  Theo uttered an instinctive cry of pain and his head jerked up. As he saw her companion, a greenish light flashed in his eyes. It was gone in a second, vitality flowed back into him and a subtly sneering defiance. He sprang lightly to his feet.

  'This is indeed an honor,' he purred. 'I trust you have recovered, Madam, from your indisposition in the courtroom. Though I see that you are still so weak that you need an escort.'

  She was frightened by the venom in his tone. He who could always control his feelings, when that control was to his advantage, must not give way to hostility now. She knew that he had always disliked Lewis, but she had no conception of the bitterness of his jealousy. How could she, when he did not admit it to himself?

  But Merne understood. The pattern that seemed to change had yet been inexorably laid down during their first clash in Vauxhall Gardens. It had not changed.

  Theo stood uncertainly between them, as she had stood then, and their hatred for each other crackled past her. She had been a fool to bring Meme here without first warning her father, she realized too late. How could she say to him, in the presence of that tall, quietly disdainful man: 'Father, show him your goodness, your true nobility. Make him understand that you are incapable of wrongdoing. Win him over with your golden persuasive tongue, as you have won so many people.'

  Aaron moved, and reseated himself. 'To just exactly what am I indebted for the very great honor of this visit? The pleasure, perhaps, of gaping at an interesting prisoner, or simply that you cannot tear yourself for one moment from the company of Mrs. Alston?'

  'No!' cried Theo sharply. 'Father, don't talk that way. Captain Lewis has some—some sort of evidence, or thinks he has. He felt he must testify. But I knew, if he could speak with you, you would make him realize that he must have been misinformed.'

  'I have no interest in any evidence which this gentleman may wish to proffer.'

  ' But it will injure you! He is to be Governor of Louisiana, he is Jefferson's friend. The jury will listen.'

  Aaron lashed out at her with sudden fury. 'And you, too, listen to what he says, don't you, my dear? This Governor of Louisiana, this friend of Jefferson's, he is no doubt a far more seductive subject to listen to than a disgraced traitor, an emperor without an empire, the murderer of Alexander Hamilton, the betrayer of his country. You had better attach yourself somehow to the tail of this new comet. It's unfortunate that you happen to be married, is it not? Yet, with patience and ingenuity, perhaps even that obstacle may be surmounted.'

  She shrank, clutching blindly at the back of a chair.

  Meme, white with disgust, turned on her too. 'How can you continue to idolize such a man——'

  Her eyes slid past him blankly t
o rest upon Aaron's face. How terribly hurt he must be, she thought, how desperately unhappy! He has never been unjust to me before. Can he think I would desert him, I who love him more than anything in life? She saw him again as he had been when they came into the room, slumped, defenseless—old, and a painful terror closed around her heart. He must never be vulnerable. Never! Always he must be shining, invincible. Nothing mattered compared to that.

  And now the echo of Meme's angry question reached her. Her body stiffened. She raised her chin, looking at him as though he had been an offensive stranger.

  'I had rather not live than not be the daughter of such a man,' she said quietly.

  Aaron drew a sharp breath. There was triumph in his face, a fleeting shame and gratitude. She went over to him and knelt beside him.

  Merne watched them, and his throat grew dry. This was a love that he could not understand, and its object he thought dismally unworthy. But into that bleak prison room it had brought beauty. And there are many kinds of love; who was he to judge?

  'You win, my Theodosia,' he murmured. 'Destiny shall deal with your father, as it will in any case, but I shall not meddle.'

  He rapped softly on the door to attract the jailer. The two Burrs, torn from their deep preoccupation with each other, looked up at the sound.

  'Good-bye,' said Merne. 'No, you needn't worry'. He answered the frightened question in Theo's eyes. He smiled ruefully, made her a small brief bow. 'I shall leave Richmond tonight.'

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE trial dragged on during the sweltering August days. Joseph appeared for a week, ill at ease and grumpy. He tried to persuade Theo to return with him at once, and she ignored him. Not only ignored him, but seemed, in a curious and alarming way, to be unaware of his presence. He occupied a room not far from hers in the borrowed house; they occasionally dined together when she was not with her father; but her eyes looked past him; she answered politely, chatted about the weather, even expressed some courteous appreciation of his coming—all without giving him the slightest feeling of contact. There was no hostility in this blankness. There was no emotion at all.