The Magnificent Adventure, Emerson Hough [e ink epub reader TXT] 📗

and I must go. All bridges are burned behind me!”

“All bridges burned?”

The deep voice of Aaron Burr almost trembled. His keen eye searched the face of the young man before him.

“Every one,” replied the young Virginian. “I do not know how or when I may return. Perhaps Mr. Clark or myself may come back by sea—should we ever reach the sea. We can only trust to Providence.”

He was bowing and extending his own hand in farewell, with polite excuses as to his haste—relieved that his last ordeal had been spared him. He turned, as he felt rather than heard the approach of another, whose coming caused his heart almost to stop beating—the woman dreaded and demanded by every fiber of his being.

“Oh, not so fast, not so fast!” laughed Theodosia Alston as she came into the room, offering her hand. “I heard you talking, and have been hurrying to pretty myself up for Captain Lewis. What? Were you trying to run away without ever saying good-by to me? And how you are prettied up!”

Her gaze, following her light speech, resolved itself into one of admiration. Theodosia Alston, as she looked, found him a goodly picture as he stood ready for the trail.

“I was just going, yes,” stammered Meriwether Lewis. “I had hoped——” But what he had hoped he did not say.

“Why might we not walk down with you to the wharf, if you are so soon to go?” she demanded—her own self-control concealing any disappointment she may have felt at her cavalier reception.

“An excellent idea!” said Aaron Burr, backing his daughter’s hand, and trusting to her to have some plan. “A warrior must spend his last word with some woman, captain! Go you on ahead—I surrender my daughter to you, and I shall follow presently to bid you a last Godspeed. You said those other gentlemen were to join you there?”

Meriwether Lewis found himself walking down the narrow street of the frontier settlement between the lines of hollyhocks and budding roses which fronted many of the little residences. It was spring, the air was soft. He was young. The woman at his side was very beautiful. So far as he could see they were alone.

They passed along the street, turned, made their way down the rock-faced bluff to the water front; but still they were alone. All St. Louis was at the farther end of the wharf, waiting for a last look at the idol of the town.

Theodosia sighed.

“And so Captain Lewis is going to have his way as usual? And he was going—in spite of all—even without saying good-by to me!”

“Yes, I would have preferred that.”

“Captain Lewis is mad. Look at that river! They say that when the boat started last week it took them an hour to make a quarter of a mile, when they struck into the Missouri. How many thousands of hours will it take to ascend to the mountains? How will you get your boats across the mountains? What cascades and rapids lie on ahead? Your men will mutiny and destroy you. You cannot succeed—you will fail!”

“I thank you, madam!”

“Oh, you must start now, I presume—in fact, you have started; but I want you to come back before your obstinacy has driven you too far.”

“Just what do you mean?”

“Listen. You have given me no time, unkind as you are—not a moment—at an hour like this! In these unsettled times, who knows what may happen? In that very unsettlement lies the probable success of the plan which my father and I have put before you so often. We need you to help us. When are you going to come back to us, Merne?”

As she spoke, they were approaching the long wharf along the water front, lined with rude craft which plied the rivers at that time—flatboats, keel-boats, pirogues, canoes—and, far off at the extremity of the line, the boat which Lewis and his friends were to take. A party of idlers and observers stood about it even now. The gaze of the young leader was fixed in that direction. He did not make any immediate sign that he had heard her speech.

“I told Shannon, my aide, to meet me here,” he said at last. “He was to fetch my long spyglass. There are certain little articles of my equipment over yonder in the wharf shed. Would you excuse me for just a moment?”

He stooped at the low door and entered. But she followed him—followed after him unconsciously, without plan, feeling only that he must not go, that she could not let him away from her.

She saw the light floating through the door fall on his dense hair, long, loosely bagged in its cue. She saw the quality of his strong figure, in all the fittings of a frontiersman, saw his stern face, his troubled eye, saw the unconscious strength which marked his every movement as he strode about, eager, as it seemed to her, only to be done with his last errands, and away on that trail which so long had beckoned to him.

The strength of the man, the strength of his purpose—the sudden and full realization of both—this caught her like a tangible thing, and left her no more than the old, blind, unformed protest. He must not go! She could not let him go!

But the words she had spoken had caught him, after all. He had been pondering—had been trying to set them aside as if unheard.

“Coming back?” he began, and stopped short once more. They were now both within the shelter of the old building.

“Yes, Merne!” she broke out suddenly. “When are you coming back to me, Merne?”

He stood icy silent, motionless, for just a moment. It seemed to her as if he was made of stone. Then he spoke very slowly, deliberately.

“Coming back to you? And you call me by that name? Only my mother, Mr. Jefferson and Will Clark ever did so.”

“Oh, stiff-necked man! It is so hard to be kind with you! And all I have ever done—every time I have followed you in this way, each time I have humiliated myself thus—it always was only in kindness for you!”

He made no reply.

“Fate ran against us, Merne,” she went on tremblingly. “We have both accepted fate. But in a woman’s heart are many mansions. Is there none in a man’s—in yours—for me? Can’t I ask a place in a good man’s heart—an innocent, clean place? Oh, think not you have had all the unhappiness in your own heart! Is all the world’s misery yours? I don’t want you to go away, Merne, but if you do—if you must—won’t you come back? Oh, won’t you, Merne?”

Her voice was trembling, her hand half raised, her eyes sought after him. She stood partly in shadow, the flare of light from the open door falling over her face. She might have been some saint of old in pictured guise; but she was a woman, alive, beautiful, delectable, alluring—especially now, with this tone in her voice, this strangely beseeching look in her eyes.

Her hands were almost lifted to be held out to him. She stood almost inclined to him, wholly unconscious of her attitude, forgetting that her words were imploring, remembering only that he was going.

He seemed not to hear her voice as he stood there, but somewhere as if out of some savage past, a voice did speak to him, saying that when a man is sore athirst, then a man may drink—that the well-spring would not miss the draft, and would tell no tale of it!

He stood, as many another man has stood, and fought the fight many another man has fought—the fight between man the primitive and man the gentleman, chivalry contending with impulse, blood warring with breeding.