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

young lady for you—the power which, all things considered, she might be supposed to possess with you. I knew the depth of your regard for her, the deeper for its hopelessness. And more than all, I knew the intentness and resolution of your character. It was one motive against the other! Which was the stronger? You were a young man—the hot blood of youth was yours, and I know its power. Had the woman not been married, I should have lost! You would have sold a crown for her. It was honor saved you—your personal honor—that was what brought us success. No country is bigger than the personal honor of its gentlemen.”

The bowed head of Meriwether Lewis was his only answer. The keen-faced old man went on:

“I knew that before you had left the mouth of the Ohio River he would do his best to stop you—I knew it before you had left Harper’s Ferry; but I placed the issue in the lap of the gods. I applied to you all the tests—the severest tests—that one man can to another. I let you alone! For a year, two years, three years, I did not know. But now I do know; and the answer is yonder flag which you have carried from one ocean to the other. The answer is in this map, all these hides scrawled in coal—all those new thousands of miles of land—our land. God keep it safe for us always! And may the people one day know who really secured it for them! It was not so much Thomas Jefferson as it was Meriwether Lewis.

“Each time I dreamed that my subtle enemies were tempting you, I prayed in my own soul that you would be strong; that you would go on; that you would be loyal to your duty, no matter what the cost. God answered those prayers, my boy! Whatever was your need, whatever price you paid, you did what I prayed you would do. When the months passed and you did not come back, I knew that not even the woman you loved could have called you back. I knew that you had learned the priceless lesson of renunciation, of sacrifice, through which alone the great deeds of the world always have been done.”

Meriwether Lewis stood before his chief, cold and pale, unable to complete much speech. Thomas Jefferson looked at him for a moment before he went on.

“My boy, you are so simple that you will not understand. You do not understand how well I understand you! These things are not done without cost. If there was punishment for you, you took that punishment—or you will! You kept your oath as an officer and your unwritten oath as a gentleman. It is a great thing for a man to have his honor altogether unsullied.”

“Mr. Jefferson!” The young man before him lifted a hand. His face was ghastly pale. “Do not,” said he. “Do not, I beg of you!”

“What is it, Merne?” exclaimed the old man. “What have I done?”

“You speak of my honor. Do not! Indeed, you touch me deep.”

Thomas Jefferson, wise old man, raised a hand.

“I shall never listen, my son,” said he. “I will accord to you the right of hot blood to run hot—you would not be a man worth knowing were it not so. All I know or will know is that whatever the price, you have paid it—or will pay it! But tell me, Merne, can you not tear her from your soul? It will ruin you, this hopeless attachment which you cherish. Is it always to remain with you? I bid you find some other woman. The best in the land are waiting for you.”

“Mr. Jefferson, I shall never marry.”

The two sat looking into each other’s eyes for just a moment. Said Thomas Jefferson at length, slowly:

“So! You have come back with all happiness, all success, for me and for others—but not for yourself! Such proving as you have had has fallen to the lot of but few men. I know now how great has been the cost—I see it in your face. The fifteen millions I paid for yonder lands was nothing. We have bought them with the happiness of a human soul! The transient gratitude of this republic—the honor of that little paper—bah, they are nothing! But perhaps it may be something for you to know that at least one friend understands.”

Lewis did not speak.

“What is lost is lost,” the President began again after a time. “What is broken is broken. But see how clearly I look into your soul. You are not thinking now of what you can do for yourself. You are not thinking of your new rank, your honors. You are asking now, at this moment, what you can do for her! Is it not so?”

The smile that came upon the young man’s face was a beautiful, a wonderful thing to see. It made the wise old man sad to see it—but thoughtful, too.

“She is at Richmond, Merne?” said Mr. Jefferson a moment later.

The young man nodded.

“And the greatest boon she could ask would be her father’s freedom—the freedom of the man who sought to ruin this country—the man whom I scarcely dare release.”

The thin lips compressed for a moment. It was not in implacable, vengeful zeal—it was but in thought.

“Now, then,” said Thomas Jefferson sharply, “there comes a veil, a curtain, between you and me and all the world. No record must show that either of us raised a hand against the full action of the law, or planned that Colonel Burr should not suffer the full penalty of the code. Yes, for him that is true—but not for his daughter!”

“Mr. Jefferson!” The face of Meriwether Lewis was strangely moved. “I see the actual greatness of your soul; but I ask nothing.”

“Why, in my heart I feel like flinging open every prison door in the world. If you have gained an empire for your country, and paid for it as you have, could not a great and rich country afford to pay to the extent of a woman’s happiness? When a king is crowned, he sets free the criminals. And this day I feel as proud and happy as if I were a king—and king of the greatest empire of all the world! I know well who assured that kingdom. Let me be, then”—he raised his long hand—“say nothing, do nothing. And let this end all talk between us of these matters. I know you can keep your own counsel.”

Lewis bowed silently.

“Go to Richmond, Merne. You will find there a broken conspirator and his unhappy daughter. Both are ostracized. None is so poor as to do either of them reverence. She has no door opened to her now, though but lately she was daughter of the Vice-President, the rich Mrs. Alston, wife of the Governor of her State. Go to them now. Tell Colonel Burr that the President will not ask mercy for him. John Marshall is on the bench there; but before him is a jury—John Randolph is foreman of that jury. It is there that case will be tried—in the jury room; and politics will try it! Go to Theodosia, Merne, in her desperate need.”

“But what can I do, Mr. Jefferson?” broke out his listener.

“Do precisely what I tell you. Go to that social outcast. Take her on your arm before all the world—and before that jury! Sit there, before all Richmond—and that jury. An hour or so will do. Do that, and then, as I did when I trusted you, ask no questions, but leave it on the knees of the gods. If you can call me chief in other matters,” the President concluded, “and can call me chief in that fashion of thought which men call religion as well, let me give you unction and absolution, my son. It is all that I have to give to one whom I have always loved as if he were my own son. This is all I can do for you. It may fail; but I would rather trust that jury to be right than trust myself today; because, I repeat, I feel like flinging open every prison door in all the world, and telling every erring, stumbling man to try once more to do what his soul tells him he ought to do!”

CHAPTER XVI THE QUALITY OF MERCY

In Richmond jail lay Aaron Burr, the great conspirator, the ruins of his ambition fallen about him. He had found a prison instead of a palace. He was eager no longer to gain a scepter, but only to escape a noose.

The great conspiracy was at an end. The only question was of the punishment the accused should have—for in the general belief he was certain of conviction. That he never was convicted has always been one of the most mysterious facts of a mysterious chapter in our national development.

So crowded were the hostelries of Richmond that a stranger would have had difficulty in finding lodging there during the six months of the Burr trial. Not so with Meriwether Lewis, now one of the country’s famous men. A score of homes opened their doors to him. The town buzzed over his appearance. He had once been the friend of Burr, always the friend of Jefferson. To which side now would he lean.

Luther Martin, chief of Burr’s counsel, was eager above all to have a word with Meriwether Lewis, so close to affairs in Washington, possibly so useful to himself. Washington Irving, too, assistant to Martin in the great trial, would gladly have had talk with him. All asked what his errand might be. What was the leaning of the Governor of the new Territory, a man closer to the administration at Washington than any other?

Meriwether Lewis kept his own counsel. He arranged first to see Burr himself. The meagerly furnished anteroom of the Federal prison in Richmond was the discredited adventurer’s reception-hall in those days.

Burr advanced to meet his visitor with something of his own old haughtiness of mien, a little of the former brilliance of his eye.

“Governor, I am delighted to see you, back safe and sound from your journey. My congratulations, sir!”

Meriwether Lewis made no reply, but gazed at him steadily, well aware of the stinging sarcasm of his words.

“I have few friends now,” said Aaron Burr. “You have many. You are on the flood tide—it ebbs for me. When one loses, what mercy is shown to him? That scoundrel Merry—he promised everything and gave nothing! Yrujo—he is worse yet in his treachery. Even the French minister, Turreau—who surely might listen to the wishes of the great French population of the Mississippi Valley—pays no attention to their petitions whatever, and none to mine. These were my former friends! I promised them a country.”

“You promised them a country, Colonel Burr—from what?”

“From that great ownerless land yonder, the West. But they waited and waited, until your success was sure. Why, that scoundrel Merry is here this very day—the effrontery of him! He wants nothing more to do with me. No, he is here to undertake to recoup himself in his own losses by reasons of moneys he advanced to me some time ago. He is importuning my son-in-law, Mr. Alston, to pay him back those funds—which once he was so ready to furnish to us. But Mr. Alston is ruined—I am ruined—we are all ruined. No, they waited too long!”

“They waited until it was too late, yes,” Lewis returned. “That country is American now, not British or Spanish or French. Our men are passing across the river in thousands. They will never loose their hold on the West. It was treason to the future that you planned—but