My Theodosia Page 9

  'Hark!' he said. 'What is that song? It's beautiful, part of this—and us.'

  She bent her head and listened. It was a recent popular song; she had heard it many times, but it had meant nothing to her. Now, standing beside him, each plaintive tone of the low contralto voice sped to her heart.

  Water, parted from the sea, may increase the river's tide,

  To the bubbling fount may flee, or through fertile valleys glide;

  Tho' in search of lost repose, through the land'tis free to roam,

  Still it murmurs as it flows, panting for its native home.

  Heart of mine, away from thee, sever'd from its only rest,

  Tosses as a troubled sea, bound within my aching breast.

  Thou alone canst give release, sprayed my burning eyes with brine.

  Swelling e'er with love's increase, let my heart find rest in thine.

  The soft notes died away to a distant spatter of hand-clapping.

  'Let my heart find rest in thine,' he quoted slowly. 'Do you understand that—my dear?'

  She looked up at him, and her eyes were filled with tears.

  'Yes, I understand, but——' She broke off with a cry of fear. She heard the light footsteps behind them, even before she heard the voice she knew best in the world, tense with anger.

  'Indeed, a most charming little scene,' said Aaron. He stood beside them, his face rigid.

  'And just who is this individual with whom I find you philandering in corners like a street wench?'

  The Captain grew white as the marble urn behind him; his hand flew to his sword hilt, but he said evenly, 'I am Meriwether Lewis of the First Regiment of Infantry'. He stepped forward, and, presenting his back to Aaron as though he were non-existent, added gently to Theo, 'There are two people who call me Meme, persons for whom I care. Will you, also?'

  She dared not answer him; indeed, she no longer saw him clearly; her vision was blurred with fear by the fury she saw in her father's face.

  'Father—no—please——' She heard her own hysterical cry and bit her lip. That was wrong, that was not the way. There must be a meeting-point somewhere between these two men. Aaron loved her; somehow she must make him understand.

  She summoned all her control and forced a nearly natural laugh. 'You have no cause to be angry, Papa,' she said swiftly. 'The Captain and I met here by chance. He doesn't even know my name——'

  'So? Then I shall be pleased to inform him. Sir, I am Aaron Burr, and this my daughter, Theodosia. She is betrothed to Mr. Alston. She has, therefore, two men who will be delighted to defend the honor and fair name which she herself seems to hold so light.'

  Captain Lewis bowed. 'At your service,' he said coldly. 'But your daughter's honor and fair name are not in question. True, I did not know that she was betrothed, yet had I known it would have made no difference; I still would have sought any opportunity to talk with her.'

  Aaron saw Theo's sharp intake of breath and her terrified eyes. His anger vanished. He was ashamed of the rage which had shaken him; he had long ago learned that one is never master of a situation when possessed by anger. This long cool fellow had so far had the advantage.

  He performed one of his bewildering voltes-face, turning on the full force of his magnetism as though from a spigot.

  'Come, Captain Lewis, perhaps I've been overhasty. You must in fairness admit that the situation was startling. Still, I'm willing to make allowances for young blood. It is but natural that a soldier should wish to dally with a pretty face'. Lewis did not relax; he threw Aaron a look of contempt. 'Ask your daughter if that is all it was.'

  Aaron went on quickly: 'I do not need to ask my daughter. I know very well that she is already regretting whatever moment of folly her youth and the September evening have betrayed her into.'

  'Colonel Burr, I've heard much of you. I am a friend of Jefferson's. I have heard that you arc totally unscrupulous and obsessed by self-interest. I have not liked your reputation, nor the rumors of underhanded conniving which reached me even out beyond the mountains at Fort Wheeling, but I am willing to hope that I was misinformed about you, because you are possessed of such a daughter.'

  Theo gasped. The incredible words repeated themselves senselessly in her mind: 'underhanded, conniving, unscrupulous'. That anyone should dare to speak like this to her father! Suddenly she saw Lewis with hostile eyes. Her own behavior became shameful. She moved to Aaron's side, touched his arm timidly, and he, seeing this, laughed with maddening calm.

  'My dear, it seems that this backwoods captain sets himself up to be my critic. I think we need scarcely bother with his opinion. Good night to you, Captain Lewis.'

  Meriwether Lewis did not move. He was sick at heart; he cursed his bluntness and lack of polished manner. He saw the girl's face averted, closed against him, she who had responded so deeply to him for the space of a few hours.

  He was a lonely and reserved man, outwardly cold. He had spent most of his twenty-six years in the open, leading the rough life of a frontier officer. His men respected his courage and resourcefulness, but they thought him hard, unsympathetic. And so he was, except in the wilderness, alone. Rivers, trees, and mountains had been his friends. He knew as much of woodcraft and the ways of beasts as an Indian.

  No woman had ever before touched his soul. Yet he had told her the simple truth when he said that he had dreamed of her. Deep hidden in him there ran a strain of mysticism, inherited from his Gaelic forefathers.

  When he had seen her there in the theater, he had felt his formless yearning satisfied. They had looked at each other and he had seen, beneath her pretty face, the unawakened passion and fire of her spirit. He had not thought of anything so banal as love in the conventional sense. He did not do so now. But he knew that they belonged together; that in each the other would find completion. She had felt it, too, yet now he could no longer reach her. Her betrothal of itself would not have deterred him: he was accustomed to a simpler society, a lawless country where a man takes the woman he wants. It was the change in the girl herself.

  He saw her as a prisoner, a willing, eager prisoner who had escaped her chains for a little while, and now rushed back to them bewildered, clinging to the dear familiarity of her confinement.

  Yet he could not believe his dismissal. He used the name which he had just learned was hers. 'Theodosia——' It was a call so intense and fraught with emotion that Aaron was astounded. How in Heaven's name had all this come about in so short a time? His arm tightened around his daughter. 'My dear girl, really—will you be good enough to bid this insistent gentleman good night and Godspeed?'

  Theo raised her heavy lashes. Her dark eyes were veiled. They met Lewis's pleading despair, and a hot pain went through her breast. But the sureness and the vision were gone. The pattern of her life could not so quickly be unraveled. Aaron was right, as always. Soldiers did dally with pretty faces, and this backwoods captain had dared to criticize her father.

  'Good-bye, Captain Lewis,' she said slowly, and turned her head away.

  The corners of his mouth bent in a bitter smile. We are not done with each other yet, Theodosia, he thought. Some day we shall meet again. But it will not be the same: our lives will have curved too far apart. He made her a short bow, and walked rapidly off without looking back.

  There was nothing to tell her that she had made the most important decision of her life, nothing except a weight of dullness and disappointment. The Gardens which had been so brightly beautiful seemed tawdry. She noticed for the first time that the path was littered with crumpled paper and orange peel. Moreover, it was muddy and had stained the hem of her yellow dress.

  'Will you be so good as to tell me the meaning of this extraordinary scene?' Aaron spoke quietly, but his authority, which he knew had for a moment been shaken, sharpened his tone.

  She drooped against his shoulder. 'I don't know. I'm so tired, Papa, please don't question me.'

  'No nervous vapors if you please. I am at a loss to understand your conduct. Am I right
in conjecturing that you saw this—this fellow for the first time tonight at the theater? And that he was one of the officers in the next box?'

  She inclined her head.

  '—And that he made sheep's eyes at you, and you were seized with some inexplicable impulse and made them back?' 'Don't please. It wasn't like that.'

  'Like what, then? Do you expect me to mince words when I find that my daughter has made a vulgar assignation in front of her father and her betrothed? You got rid of Joseph very neatly, did you not? I met him at the gate hunting for your pearl ring, which I now see rests in its usual place on your finger. You have disgusted me!'

  His scorn shriveled her. She could no longer recapture the glowing beauty of those moments of communion and realization. She felt blank and terribly tired.

  'I'm sorry, Papa,' she whispered. 'Please don't be angry with me any more. It's finished.

  Aaron patted her hand. He had been more upset and hurt by her behavior than he wished to remember. He realized that, despite the apparent impossibility of the thing, this lanky captain had fallen in love with Theo, and that she had not been unresponsive. He would have liked to feel contempt for him; such a display of feeling as the fellow had put into that crying of her name was better suited to effeminate dolts like poets than to a soldier. Still, Aaron seldom underestimated an opponent and he was an accomplished judge of character. He knew that this tuppenny-ha'penny captain, for all his rough speech and rustic air, was nobody's fool. While he doubted the danger of another meeting between the two, for Theo had come to her senses and Lewis had accepted his dismissal, nevertheless he intended to make sure.

  In the meantime, they must be getting back to their party who would think this prolonged absence exceedingly strange.

  'We will forget the whole matter, my dear, and we will not disturb Joseph about your momentary vagary. There is no need for him to know. I told him to wait with the others when I saw him at the gate, for I preferred to find you myself. I am very glad I did. We will let him assume that wc have been hunting for your ring and at last recovered it.'

  'Yes, Papa,' she said. She shivered suddenly.

  Aaron hastened to pull her little fringed shawl about her shoulders. 'You do look tired, child. We will have a glass of wine before we go home'. He took her arm and led her briskly back to the tables.

  It was late when they got home. Joseph could scarcely stifle prodigious yawns and took Theo's silence as a matter of course. They bade each other sleepy good nights. Candlesticks waited in a row upon a polished table. They each took one and lit themselves wearily up to bed.

  All but Aaron. He kissed Theo on her hot forehead, bowed to the others, and vanished into the library. He placed his candle on the writing-desk and sharpened his quill. He then wrote a letter to the commanding officer of the New York garrison, and in it he requested that a certain Captain Meriwether Lewis should have his leave curtailed at once and that he be returned to his frontier post on the morrow.

  Aaron reinforced this request with a delicately worded hint: 'Matters of army preferment are often brought to my notice, not only because of my official capacity, but because of my friendship with General Wilkinson, your commander-in-chief. I think you will not find me unmindful of favors.'

  He sanded and sealed this missive. One of the stable boys should speed with it to Fort George at sunrise.

  Upstairs in the white bedroom, Theo undressed listlessly. Her head ached. She leaned against the west window, pressing her face on one of the cool panes. The Hudson was gray and shadowy in the half-light. Her heavy eyes rested on it languidly, but presently it brought to her its eternal message of inevitability and peace. He would understand that, she thought suddenly. 'Water, parted from the sea, may increase the river's tide.'

  She thought of him as someone that she had met long ago, a memory of the past. She could not even remember his face.

  She put her fingers to her cheeks and found them wet with tears. This surprised her a little. She had not felt them come.

  She turned from the window and climbed into her high bed She sank at once into a heavy sleep, motionless, scarcely breathing for the few remaining hours in that night.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JOSEPH was to leave soon by fast packet for Charleston. He had hoped that the imminence of his parting from Theodosia would bring them closer together. She would shed a few tears, perhaps, and cling to him. She might even nestle close and look up at him with as much affection as she showed to her father. It would be delightful to comfort her, promising a speedy return, and settling on the date for their wedding.

  Joseph was slated for disappointment. On the morning after the theater party, Theodosia awoke with a painful headache which confined her to bed and made it impossible to see Joseph at all. Besides the headache, she had a slight rise in temperature and a total loss of appetite. Doctor Eustis, hastily summoned by Aaron, assured them that the indisposition was not serious—none of the malignant fevers.

  As the headache continued, day after day, neither improving nor getting worse, the doctor frankly confessed that its origin baffled him. When calomel failed, he prescribed hemlock and applied leeches to her feet. The purpose of these last was to draw the irritating blood from her head. Theo regarded the slimy black slugs with disgust, but she submitted passively to the treatment.

  She hated confinement in bed, and during brief childish illnesses had always chafed against it. Yet now she lay white and quiet, accepting Natalie's anxious nursing with docility.

  On the day before Joseph's departure, Aaron decided that perhaps she had had enough coddling and tried bracing tactic.

  He entered her room briskly, exuding his usual aura of keen, disciplined fitness. 'Good morning, my dear. You look rosier today. Head better?'

  She opened her shadowed eyes slowly. 'A little better, perhaps,' she whispered, trying to smile.

  'See what I've brought you.'

  She turned her head painfully.

  He was carrying a cage made of woven reeds, containing a small yellow bird. It cheeped hoarsely, then burst into a cascade of trills.

  'Doesn't it sing sweetly?' said Aaron, delighted with his gift. 'I bought it off a Portuguese schooner. It comes from the Canary Islands and will cure you by its cheerful music.'

  'Thank you, Papa. It sounds charming'. Not for anything would she have hurt him or let him guess that the bird's shrill singing crashed through her head like cymbals.

  Aaron placed the birdcage on a table by the window and came over to the bed. 'Now I want you to do something for me.'

  'Of course, if I can.'

  'Get up, then, ay dear. Just for a few minutes, if necessary. You will feel better—oh yes, you will. I insist. There is nothing really wrong with you, you know. Eustis has made a thorough examination. You will not get well by losing strength. One must make an effort.'

  Ignoring her protests he placed his arm under her linen-clad shoulders and lifted her up. The room spun around her.

  'I get so giddy, Papa—I can't.'

  But he would not be checked. She slid her bare feet from the bed, feeling blindly for the wooden stool which stood beside it. The bed, nearly four feet from the floor, made the stool a necessity for getting in and out. She touched the edge with her toes, lurched forward, and, despite his support, the stool slid sideways along the polished boards, throwing her to the floor with her left ankle twisted under her. She gave a cry of pain.

  ' What is it?' he said sharply, trying to lift her.

  'My ankle—oh, it hurts!'

  The ankle was badly sprained, Doctor Eustis announced when he arrived post-haste. Complete rest was imperative. There could be no thought of leaving her bed for some time.

  When the physician had gone and the bustle of preparing hot compresses and herb tea had died away, Theo was surprised to discover that the headache had vanished, quite suddenly and unnoticed. She felt weak, but hungry and peaceful, except for the ache in her ankle.

  Aaron was full of compunction, and, thoug
h he never reproached himself—or others—once an unfortunate circumstance had passed, he redoubled his tenderness toward Theodosia. That afternoon he made a special trip into town, where he stripped the shops along the waterfront of their latest imported delicacies. He bought French comfits made of marzi pan, a basket of dried dates and figs from Smyrna, and a large fuzzy coconut from the Spanish Main. The sea captain who sold it assured him that the liquid inside was considered most wholesome and would surely strengthen Miss Burr.

  Aaron also procured a small packet of China tea perfumed with jasmine, and he had been unable to resist a pair of gilded kid slippers embroidered with white silk butterflies and reputed to have been made for a French marquise.

  As he re-entered the house, followed by a servant with his bundles, he encountered Joseph gloomily descending the stairs. Joseph had been excluded from the sickroom and allowed only an occasional peck at Theo through the partly opened door. Always her eyes had been closed, and she had been unconscious of the glimpse which was all that Natalie's ideas of propriety would allow him. Even a fiancé may not enter a young girl's bedroom! 'Cc n'est pas convenable,' she told him, and though he never quite understood her French, her meaning was made plain enough.

  He had, therefore, spent the last days of his stay wandering disconsolate around the house and grounds, neglected even by Aaron, who had been busy with upstate political leaders when not engaged in worrying about Theo.

  Aaron was recalled to his duty as he saw the young man's air of sulky dejection.

  'You look a bit mopish, Alston,' he said kindly. 'But you mustn't worry about the girl. She'll be right as a trivet once this ankle heals.'

  'Can't I even see her to say good-bye before I go?' said Joseph, with resentment.

  'Of course you can. I will go and prepare her, then take you to her at once.'

  Joseph's face cleared. 'I hate to leave her for so long'. During his stay at Richmond Hill he had grown side whiskers, glossy black tufts on his checks. He was proud of the dignity they gave him and very conscious of them. In moments of embarrassment he fingered them absently, tugging and smoothing. He did so now. 'She may forget all about me.'