My Theodosia Page 8

  The curtains fell on the reunited father and daughter. I would do that too, thought Theo, and she looked unconsciously to the Hamilton box. Her latent distrust of Alexander was focused suddenly by the aftermath of the play's emotion into hatred. He was her father's dangerous enemy. She knew it, and sensed that Aaron had not as yet fully realized it.

  For a second she felt herself exalted, capable of violence, of plunging the flashing dagger as the Grecian Daughter had done. Then her mood was shattered by Aaron's amused, dispassionate voice behind her. He had been discussing the play. 'Ah, but you see, my dear Count, life is not in the least like that. Certainly modem life is not. The story is preposterous.'

  Theo looked again at the Hamilton box and her sense of humor came back. Alexander, engaged in the highly unmen-acing occupation of sucking an orange, was beating time to the music with his fingers while his wife and daughter were leaning across him and whispering.

  No, life is no longer dramatic, thought Theo, deflated. We are all too civilized. Exciting things don't happen any more.

  She leaned back politely in answer to Joseph, who asked if she had ever seen the Spanish dancers who were scheduled for the entr'acte. She answered 'No,' and turned on her bench in order to talk with him more easily, when her attention was caught by the officers next to them. Or rather by one officer who sat a little way from the others leaning against the side of his box and regarding her fixedly.

  As she met his eyes, she experienced a physical sensation of explosion in her chest as though a small musket had been fired. She drew in her breath with a sharp sound. For the effect was one of recognition, of grave, intimate greeting, and yet she knew that she had never seen the man before in her life.

  The officer lowered his eyes courteously. She recalled her self with a start and babbled something to Joseph, bat she did not hear his answer.

  Joy tinged with fear flooded her. What's the matter with me? she thought wildly.'Tis but the overture to flirtation; he is some philandering officer. But she knew that he was not.

  She pulled out her fan to hide her face, made random answers, laughed at everything Joseph said. He was enchanted, thought that he must have become prodigious witty. He had never seen her so responsive.

  The officer rose, stood talking with the others, yet she felt that he was as intensely aware of her as she of him.

  He wore a blue coat with red facings, the infantry's full-dress uniform, and a gold epaulet on his right shoulder. That proclaimed him a captain. He was lean and very tall; he towered above his companions, and, despite the conventionality of his dress, there was something rough about him, a hint of the frontier. The set of his head and shoulders seemed to resent the imprisonment of his high black silk stock and the affectation of heavily powdered hair which were required of officers.

  His profile was stern; his mouth, though full-lipped, held tight and straight as an Indian's. Furrows ran from his nostrils to the point of his sharp jaw. Though he seemed young, there was gravity and an air of command about him that reminded Theo of General Washington, who must have looked much like this in his youth.

  She started as the three knocks from the stage announced the Spanish dancers. The curtains were drawn back. The captain sat down and again looked her full in the face. She saw in his intent eyes the same bewildered questioning that she felt in her own. Her cheeks, her neck grew hot, but she could not look away.

  She saw his muscles flex as he checked a quick motion to rise, and knew, because she felt the same impulse in her own body, that he had wanted to vault over the people and the railing between them and come to her. Unconsciously she shook her head, and he nodded. His lips parted in a barely perceptible smile as intimate and understanding as though they had known each other for years.

  The dreamlike quality strengthened. Her breath came rapidly. Unseeing, she watched the posturings of the blowsy Spanish dancers, who were rewarded with a shower of cabbages and rotten apples before Mr. Hallam the manager pulled them off the stage with his crook.

  '...And high time too, don't you think, Miss Prissy?' asked Aaron jocularly, leaning over her.

  She made an inarticulate murmur, unlike her, who usually responded to his lightest word with eager acquiescence. Surprised, he inspected her. Her cheeks were vivid rose. Under the brim of her tiny green hat her eyes shone abnormally bright. He realized, startled, that she looked extraordinarily beautiful, but dazed—moonstruck. His ready apprehensions about her health were aroused.

  'Do you feel well, Theo? You're not feverish, are you? It is close in here; shall we leave?'

  She stared at him blankly, until, as his words reached her, she managed a gay, natural laugh. 'Oh no, Papa. I feel very well. I don't wish to leave. I'm enjoying the performance tremendously.'

  Aaron was not satisfied. 'You could not possibly have enjoyed the performance to date unless your critical faculties are in complete abeyance. Nor did you seem to be attending. Of what were you thinking?'

  For the first time in her life she resented his probing of her thoughts, and for the first time since she was ten and told little fibs about the disappearance of comfits and fruit, she deliberately lied to him.

  'The Grecian Daughter reminded me of one of Horace's odes. I was trying to remember it.'

  Aaron chuckled. 'See what a little bluestocking you will have to wife, Joseph!'

  Joseph grinned fatuously. He was feeling happy, and, for him, excited. He had been comparing Theodosia with the girls in other boxes and decided that not one of them approached her for looks. She would be a wife to be proud of, and her intellectual airs and graces were charming if not carried too far. A beautiful wife who could quote Horace would be an agreeable acquisition to display in Charleston society. Daughter of the President, too, if all went well in the elections.

  He felt a sudden urge to establish physical contact with her. She had been much more approachable tonight. Her hand lay beside her on the bench. He grasped it tightly in his, pulling it over so that it was concealed by her skirt.

  Her fingers did not move; the little hand rested as passively under his as though it had been a glove.

  After a moment he began to feel self-conscious. He looked at her averted profile. She gazed with strained attention at the crimson curtains before them. Her whole attitude had an unnatural immobility, as though she were holding her breath.

  He removed his hand and sank back, disgruntled. Hers remained as before quiet on the bench.

  Theodosia had noticed Joseph's caress no more than she noticed the moths which flitted around the candle above her head.

  Her mind was in chaos. Who is he? Why do I feel like this? She had a sensation of falling apart, as though her inner essence were rushing out of her toward a point at which she dared not look again—in the box to her right. She felt this stranger's presence there with an intensity that numbed her. The call between them was so strong that she thought it must be visible: a golden flash crackling through the smoky air. Joseph, Natalie, and the Count were negligible. They would not sec it. But her father—that was terrifying.

  On the stage, Mrs. Melmoth performed again, in a farce called The Window and the Riding Horse. The audience in an uproar shouted and slapped their thighs over the broad jokes.

  Joseph roared, too, his discomfiture forgotten. Theo heard Natalie give small scandalized gasps, punctuated with 'O là, là, que c'cst risqué' to the Count. Even Aaron emitted his throaty chuckle. So she laughed, too, at the proper moments, though the speeches were meaningless jumbles and the actors as unreal as figures seen through the wrong end of her father's spyglass.

  They must meet. She had never had a desire to match this one. More than a desire, it was an ache, a hunger. But how could they meet? She was immured in the fortress of convention, and, even if she dared break out, there was still Aaron to reckon with.

  When the curtains fell on a bowing and curtsying cast, she could bear it no longer and turned abruptly under cover of the applause. He was nearer to her now, so that by reaching ou
t her arm she could have touched him. The other officers milled about in their box finding and replacing their cocked hats, guffawing as they repeated the best lines in the farce. He stood aloof in the midst of them, watching her expectantly. She knew that he would communicate with her and felt rather than saw his lips form a question, 'Where?'

  'Theo, are you ready?' Aaron's voice came from the back of the box. Desperation seized her, and with it a plan. She whirled, cried gaily at the top of her voice. 'Yes, Father—quite ready. But do not let us go home yet. Let's go to the Vauxhall Gardens. It will be delightful. They have excellent music, and we can cat ices beside the fountain.'

  She emphasized 'Vauxhall Gardens,' knowing that be listened and would understand.

  Aaron bent on her a keen look. 'What a gadabout you have become, my dear! I think it time for all respectable people to seek their homes.'

  'Oh no, Papa, please. It's too early to go home, and Joseph has never been there. He would enjoy the Gardens so much'. She cast on that young man a look so compelling and unexpected that his head whirled.

  'By all means let us go if Theo wishes it,' he stammered. Aaron's eyebrows shot up. He turned to Natalie. 'Are you also interested in this singular little expedition?'

  Theo held her breath while Natalie considered the question carefully from all angles before she said: 'Why not? It would be amusing, no doubt, and many vairy nice people go there, I think.'

  Aaron bowed. 'I give way to the ladies' wishes as always. But I cannot accompany you. I have business to attend to at home. You four may take the chaise, and I will hire a carriage to drive me back to Richmond Hill.'

  He waited for Theo's protest, knowing that his absence always diminished her pleasure in any undertaking. There was no protest. She lowered her lashes quickly, but not before he had seen a flash of unconcealed relief. Not by the flicker of a muscle did he show the dismay this caused him. But, as he stood on the paving blocks and helped the girls into the chaise with his customary courtesy, his active brain collected all the scattered incidents of the evening, searching for a clue to Theo's behavior.

  At dinner and during the ride to town she had been her normal self, clinging close to him, turning to him for approval or understanding even when she spoke to others, diffusing the atmosphere to which he was accustomed, that he was the only object of importance to her. Something had happened in the theater, then. But what? How was it possible for anything so transforming to have happened in the narrow confines of their box and under his eyes? And yet it had. He had seen hostility in her and a desire to escape from him. Even her looks had changed, burst suddenly into an unearthly glow.

  In any other woman he would have understood this. Only one thing produced this effect: the awakening of passion: a lover. Yet that was impossible in this case. Theo had seen no men but those of her own party.

  He considered the possibility that she might have suddenly discovered in herself a response to Joseph. Rejected it impatiently. He knew her, and he knew women far too well for that. But then what—who?

  When he reached Richmond Hill and shut himself in the library, he found that for once his disciplined mind refused to obey him. He could not work. Dozens of letters demanded careful answer. A communication in cipher from Timothy Green in South Carolina awaited decoding. It was important. It would tell him how nearly the South had been won over by the work he had required from Joseph, how much remained to be done when Joseph went home next week, ostensibly to prepare his family and plantation for the reception of a bride, but also to further the campaign.

  Rhode Island and Vermont, too, needed careful handling. They had satisfactorily growing groups of Burrites, but they needed guidance, one of those subtle yet tersely frank letters that he knew so well how to write. Usually he flung himself into these matters, savoring the secret pleasure of manipulat ing factions, admiring as though it were a separate entity the smooth power of his brain.

  And tonight it would not function. He paced up and down the library, his light steps soundless on the ingrain carpet, his fingers twined behind his back. At last he stopped before Theo's portrait, consulting the sweet candid face which looked down on him. His lips tightened. With sudden decision, he went to the bell-pull.

  Alexis finally appeared, sleepy and astonished. Colonel Burr, ever considerate of servants, never summoned them at a late hour.

  'Yes, sir, master?'

  'Wake up Dick and tell him to saddle Selim quickly. I wish to go out.'

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens had recently been moved from town to Bayard's Mount on upper Broadway near Spring Street. Delacroix, the owner, had bought the old Bayard homestead and planted the former farmland with a profusion of ornamental shrubs threaded by brick paths. In the center, dominating the gardens, stood a colossal equestrian statue of General Washington. Around its base were scattered small wooden refreshment tables.

  The orchestra and singers were grouped on a high platform romantically erected in a grove of maples, so that their music might give the effect of floating disembodied from amongst the rustling leaves.

  Two small fountains plashed into granite basins and sparkled with prismatic lights from fireworks and colored flares that were much admired features of the entertainment.

  One of these illuminations was in progress as Theodosia and the others entered the gates. A rocket whizzed up across the black sky, exploded with a deafening bang, and showered the trees with red, white, and blue stars.

  'Tiens, c'est joli,' remarked Natalie. The Count and Joseph murmured agreement. Theo said nothing. For despite the fitful light of pine torches and candles, she had seen the captain at once. He sat alone at a table near one of the fountains, his long legs crossed, his arms folded, scanning the face of each passer-by. Theo felt as if the rocket had exploded in her own breast.

  She saw him start as he recognized her. Her fingers tightened around her fan until one of the sandalwood sticks snapped. They were no nearer meeting each other here than they had been at the theater. Miss Burr of Richmond Hill, hemmed in by a fiancé, a count, and the conventional Natalie, could not make overtures to an unknown captain. She still retained enough reason to realize that she had somehow been precipitated into an unknown country whose laws to her companions would seem incredible.

  Though totally unaccustomed to guile, again her desperation furnished her with a scheme. It would never have worked had Aaron been there, but he—oh, most fortunately—was not.

  'Shall we walk around a bit?' she asked Joseph.

  'By all means,' said Natalie. 'It will be agreeable.'

  Theo pouted. 'But Joseph and I want to be by ourselves. You and the Count have an ice here, and wait for us.'

  Natalie laughed and obediently sat down. It was good to see Theo acting a bit amoureuse, and after all with one's fiancé——

  Theo felt a flick of shame at Joseph's pleased smile, at the possessive way in which he pulled her hand through his arm and led her down one of the shadowed paths. But she was caught up beyond shame or pity, or any emotion she had ever known.

  They walked some distance, as far as she dared, when she clutched her hands together and cried 'Oh!' in tragic tones.

  'What is it, Theo?' said Joseph anxiously.

  'My seed-pearl ring. I've lost it! It's gone from my finger.

  Oh, Joseph, go quickly and see if it is in the chaise. Please—— Yes, I'll be all right here. I'll go back to the others. Hurry, do.'

  Joseph lumbered away.

  She stood alone on the path, around a bend which hid her from the main part of the gardens. Music drifted through the windless air and mingled with the call of a whippoorwill from the meadows outside. Above her head from its iron bracket, a torch guttered, shedding orange light on marble urns filled with geraniums and the fragrant white spikes of flowering privet. And these seemed to her like fairy flowers, indescribably lovely.

  She waited quietly, without embarrassment, knowing that he would come to her. But when he stood before her,
so tall, his black cocked hat in his hand, his powdered hair shining in the torchlight, she could not speak.

  'I didn't think I'd ever find you,' he said, and his voice was the one she had expected, grave, a little harsh, yet softened now by wonder. She knew what he meant, and that he did not refer to this moment.

  'What happened to us?' she said simply. 'I don't understand. When I saw you back there in the theater, I felt that I had always known you, that I knew what you were thinking. I had to talk to you. You do not think me common or vulgar that I meet you this way?'

  'You know that I don't.'

  She looked up at him and smiled. 'This is passing strange,' she said softly.

  He nodded. The grim lines about his mouth had vanished so that he seemed young, almost as young as she.

  'I've seen you many times before tonight: in the embers of campfires, on the snow-tops of the Alleghenies, reflected in the waters of unnamed rivers. Not your face, perhaps, but you'. His words seemed to her exquisitely fantastic, part of the enchanted borderland in which they wandered together. Louder and more insistent came the wailing of the violins through the trees. A pair of lovers pushed past them and disappeared down the path.

  'There is time aplenty to dream in the wilderness,' he added, as though she had questioned.

  Wilderness. The thought was alien to her and yet beautiful. She repeated it slowly. 'Wilderness. And what have you to do with the wilderness?'

  He raised his head. She saw his eyes darken. 'It has been my mistress, my life. It is where I belong.'

  He stepped nearer, but he did not touch her.

  'I know nothing of women,' he said, with roughness. 'I do not even think of you as a woman—yet.'

  'As what, then?' she whispered.

  'As a dream made into flesh: the fulfillment of a longing'. Theo thought, the fulfillment of a longing—yes. This moment, this second, is happiness. Nothing must touch it, I must not think or it will dissolve.