MY THEODOSIA (27 page)

'Do you think so?' said Theo politely. She had only one interest in the land beyond the Alleghenies, and that was not political.

'I think so,' said Aaron thoughtfully.

With his daughter he shared the feminine trait of boredom with impersonal concepts. His own idle prophecy had swung ajar a window which opened on an attractive new vista. He instinctively considered it in relation to himself. The disaffection of the West, the resentment of the Spaniards—could they not be used to advantage by an ambitious and farsighted leader? But how? To this there was for the moment no answer. The idea had after all been only a foolish fantasy. And he had no patience with impracticality.

His course for the immediate future lay clear ahead. He would continue to be an excellent Vice-President, and he would run for the governorship of New York State. In the event of his winning—and he felt confident of doing so—he would find this key position a far better political springboard than any he had as yet tried.

He now dusted a few flecks of tobacco from his black silk breeches, and rose with quick litheness. 'I'm going to bed, my dear; the highway from Philadelphia is enough to weary Apollo himself. Do you go and retire, too. I wish you fresh and shining for the President's dinner tomorrow'. He saluted her gallantly, but turned back as a thought struck him. 'By the by, do you remember the overgrown captain with whom you coquetted at Vauxhall Gardens?'

She drew a sharp breath, looked up at him, and then down at her lap.

Aaron regarded her confusion with amusement. 'I know it is cruel to taunt the sedate Mrs. Alston with the indiscretions
of her salad days. But you will meet him again tomorrow. He is secretary to the President.'

She moistened her lips, managing a brittle little laugh. 'Oh, is he indeed? I—I will try to behave myself with perfect decorum this time.'

Aaron chuckled. 'I should hope so'. A yawn caught him. 'Pleasant dreams, my dear'. He went to his room and thought no more about it.

If he had ever permitted himself retrospection, he would have been mildly ashamed of the anger and violence into which he had been betrayed on that September night in New York. The incident had been too trivial to warrant them. But he never looked back, or carried around with him the trailing ends of spent emotion. It was perhaps the secret of his youthfulness.

I
T WAS
raining when Theo awoke the next morning. She stared out the window at the drenching summer rain and thought with bitterness that it solved one problem anyway. Merne would not expect to meet her beside the river in this downpour. Yet, even had the morning been as brightly beautiful as the others, how could she have slipped away?

Aaron was already stirring. She heard his light footsteps in the room above. She shut her eyes again and tried to sleep, but she could not. A feeling of desolation enveloped her. For the first time she realized the utter hopelessness of their love, seeing the situation objectively, as Lewis had done from the beginning.

'We are now fated forever to travel on different trails,' he had said. It was the simple truth. She knew it, and yet—• He was only a mile away from her; they might still see each
other, as
they
would this evening. Somehow they would arrange to have a few more of those ecstatic hours alone together. And that was all she asked, she thought passionately, just to hear his voice for a little longer, to have him kiss her gently, and smile for her his rare slow smile.

Deep within her heart, she knew she lied. That was
not
all she wanted. Her awakened body ached for him. Her lips whispered his name with a longing that frightened her. Turning on the bed, she buried her face in her arms.

All day the rain stabbed down like silver knives, cutting at the roads until it had reduced them to a pulp of yellow mud. It was damp and cold. The baby was cross, and wailed dismally, resisting all Eleanore's and Theo's efforts to amuse him. The monotonous cries resounded everywhere through the jerry-built house; one of the many which had been run up anyhow for temporary occupancy and never properly finished.

Aaron supported the racket with his usual good-humor, finally going out into the pelting rain to scour the town for toys.

By noon Theo was exhausted. 'Darling, won't you please stop yelling?' she implored the red-faced infant. 'Could there be anything really wrong?' she asked Eleanore anxiously, as they hung over the cradle. She felt a ghastly clutch of fear. This was the critical 'second summer,' and so many things could be wrong: fevers and fluxes and convulsions.

The maid put a square knowing hand on the child's forehead. 'He's all right, Madame. It's the weather, and the little tooth that is coming. C'est tout'. Her brisk positiveness was balm.

Theo turned wearily. Her head ached. The day was interminable. Matters were not improved by the receipt of a letter from Joseph. She had no wish just now to think of Joseph, and this letter was unusually affectionate, even passionate,
beneath its pompous and weighty verbiage. He missed her, it seemed, immoderately. And he had arranged his affairs sc as to join her up North 'very soon'. He thought that he might catch the next packet.

She sat perfectly still, staring at the thick ink-scrawled paper. If he had caught the next packet, he would arrive in a week or so. She saw him suddenly as though he stood in the low room beside her: his glossy whiskers framing the dark heavy face, his thick-barreled body stuffed into his favorite indigo-blue coat, his truculent eyes, suspicious as those of a maltreated dog. She saw details which she had never consciously noted: the black hairs in his nostrils, the pudginess of his hands with their blunt, insensitive fingers. But he was her husband, and he loved her. She knew that she and the baby were the only things he loved. As always she felt a remote pity for him. Poor Joseph. They said pity was akin to love. Sometimes she had very nearly come to believe it. She would never believe it again. Passionate love between man and woman was not compounded of pity. It was storm and lightning and beauty and desire, not pity, with its implicit condescension and superiority.

'Aha,' said Aaron, coming into the room, his greatcoat streaming, his arms full of sodden packages. 'A letter from the South, I see.'

She nodded. 'Joseph is coming North to join us.'

His quick black eyes glanced at her curiously. She did not look the picture of an eager wife about to be joyously reunited with her husband. Nor for that matter did Joseph's advent fill him with any elation. The grumpy young man bored him, and was at present not particularly useful. Still, one must make the best of things.

'Capital!' he exclaimed heartily. 'Look, Theo, I found a Swiss music-box for Gampy. Though I see that the young
gentleman has at last mercifully ceased to roar. I think, by the by, that you're not feeding him right. All that pap, and porridge, and sugar teats. He needs goat's milk. I bought a goat, just now; the stable boy is tethering it in back. Give the baby goat's milk twice a day.'

'Oh, Father!' she exclaimed, half-laughing. 'You'll be telling me how to diaper and physic him next.'

'No doubt I shall if I think you are not doing it properly. I think you will admit that my ideas are usually sound'. 'Indeed they are,' she agreed sincerely.

Aaron unwrapped the Swiss music-box. It was an intricate affair of trilling birds and dancing peasants and from underneath issued the pleasing tinkle of folksongs.

'It's delightful!' she cried; 'but wasn't it very dear?'

'It was,' agreed Aaron cheerfully. 'It cost twenty-five dollars, and I haven't a sou left. I bought also a volume of Burke's
Vindication of Natural Society
for you. It's high time you did some more serious reading, lazy baggage. I was scandalized to see a silly romance like
Castle Rackrent
on your table. I'll wager you haven't construed a line of Latin since I saw you last.'

She shook her head. 'It's so hot down there, and I—I never feel very well, somehow. It seems an effort to open a book. The days slide by—one into the other——'

'Why don't you make your husband take a place up in the mountains?' he interrupted, frowning. 'That unhealthy swampland is suicide for you; only the niggers can stand it.'

Theo sighed. 'We've talked about it, you know. But it never happens. We have three estates already, and, besides, Joseph must be on the Waccamaw, unless he's in Columbia or Charleston.'

Aaron snorted. 'You are the two most spiritless young persons I ever knew. I believe you never muster up enough en
ergy to do anything but lie on a sofa with a nigger wench waving a peacock's tail over you. I'm ashamed of you.'

She smiled at him sadly. 'Don't be angry with me, Papa'. He bent over and pinched her cheek. 'You're a worthless hussy, but I forgive you. Mind you sparkle tonight with your old liveliness. I wish you to do me credit before the brilliant assemblage of disgruntled diplomats and unkempt statesmen'. 'Not unkempt,' she protested, 'surely.'

Aaron gave a short laugh. 'Wait until you see our magnificent President.'

At four o'clock that afternoon Theo and Aaron in a hired coach bounced and splashed through puddles down Pennsylvania Avenue to the President's mansion. This house built of reddish-gray freestone was large and of pleasing proportions, but it was still unfinished. It stuck up crude and naked from a sea of mud dotted with piles of lumber and brick. The grounds were unembellished by either tree or shrub, and their desolate rainswept expanse was enclosed by a weathered post-and-rail fence that awaited an appropriation from the reluctant Congress before it could be replaced by a more dignified stone wall. For the same reason the entrance steps were still of rough planking, the east rooms were unplastered, and the slate roof leaked dismally. On a wet day such as this one visitors were assailed in the vestibule by an odor of damp mixed with more unpleasant effluvia of which the hearty smell of boiling cabbage and the stench of a garbage pile beneath the kitchen windows were the least disagreeable.

Theo and Aaron, after waiting some time in the rain, were ushered in by a black butler whose greeting seemed to Theo astonishingly unceremonious. 'Good day, Mistah VicePresident. Howdy, ma'am. Nice weather for frogs,' he said chattily. 'You'm a mite early. Massa Jefferson he still fig-gerin' in his study. You all wanta go there or you wanta wait?'

'We'll wait, Henry,' said Aaron. 'Kindly announce us to the President—Mrs. Alston and myself.'

'Sho'I will, sir. Sho''. He shuffled away, leaving them to stand by the door.

Aaron laughed at Theo's astounded face. 'Just a taste of Jefferson's perfect democracy, my dear. You will see more of it before the evening is out.'

She drew her shawl around her and shivered. Her nose wrinkled. 'What a malodorous bam! I should think it hardly worth while being President if one must live here'. 'Ah,' said Aaron softly, placing his hat on a frayed red damask chair for want of any other place. 'If I were President, this would not be a malodorous bam. Nor, I assure you, would I make a cult of rudeness and boorishness in an endeavor to impress people with my democracy.'

'It is indeed very rude to leave us standing here like this,' cried Theo with sudden indignation, as it occurred to her that this cavalier treatment might be an intended slight directed at her father.

Aaron shrugged, taking a delicate pinch of snuff from his snuffbox. 'You look charming, my dear,' he observed with satisfaction. 'Eleanore did wonders to that gown. The green touches become you mightily.'

Eleanore's clever fingers had refurbished a last year's ball dress with scraps of green silk from an old negligee. The white tunic was edged with it, and emerald bows chased each other like butterflies down the front. She had wound a strip of the green silk in amongst Theo's hair, which was closely twisted about her head à l'orientale. On her bosom sparkled the diamond necklace. She had not worn it since Venus's desecration, and before donning it tonight she had scrubbed it viciously with soapy water. From this it emerged all the brighter.

And still they waited, and Theodosia's nervousness grew. Where was Merne? She longed and yet dreaded to see him.

Shouts and rumbles and stampings outside announced the arrival of other guests. The door opened and Dolly Madison swept in, laughing. Her spare little husband followed in her wake like a sparrow pursuing a bird of paradise. On her dark hair she wore a yellow satin turban, with ostrich feathers, and a topaz brooch. Her pleasantly buxom figure was encased in white satin trimmed with swansdown and she exuded a strong odor of musk. Her kind blue eyes widened as she discovered the Burrs.

'Why, Colonel!' she cried, rushing forward. 'And Theodosia, how do you do, my child! How pretty you look! Whatever arc you two doing out here, and with your wraps on?'

Aaron kissed the bejeweled hand that was held out to him. 'We haven't been invited to go anywhere else, as yet, ma'am,' he said dryly.

'La!' She favored them all with her charming smile, not excepting her husband. 'Isn't Jefferson wicked! He has no manners at all, I vow. But'tis my fault. As official hostess, I should have been here sooner. Jemmy—you know Mrs. Alston?'

Madison bowed stiffly and gave her a tight smile as Theo dropped a curtsy. His wizened face seldom changed expression except when he looked at his wife, when it assumed an expression of tender admiration which illumined it.

'Come, let us all go up to the drawing-room,' cried the lady. 'The President may find us there.'

She shepherded them upstairs, deftly avoiding a puddle on the landing, summoning a maidservant from somewhere to take their wraps, and drew Theo beside her to the sulky little fire that smoked at one end of the huge and meanly furnished room.

''Tis four years or more since I've seen you, child. Tell me all about yourself You have a husband, I know, and a baby. I do not need to ask whether he is an intelligent and beautiful child. He could not help it, with such a mother'. She rattled on, dimpling and laughing with so much spontaneity and kindliness that the sprightliness, which might have seemed unbecoming to a buxom middle-aged matron, became completely endearing.