MY THEODOSIA (38 page)

' We'll talk about it presently, dear. Look around you. Did you ever see such a heavenly place?'

'Heavenly!' snorted Joseph. 'Nigger's idea of heaven, maybe, ridiculous ostentation out here a thousand miles from anywhere, gimcracks, gewgaws, monstrous. I hear the man's crazy.'

Theo sighed. Joseph was going to be difficult, was apparently firmly entrenched in the typical Alston refusal to be impressed with anything that was not Carolinian.

The Blennerhassetts welcomed the Prince Consort with their usual warm-hearted Irish verve. Their cordiality, however, sagged under the chill of Joseph's heavy silences. He was ill at ease, uncertain whether he was in truth seeing the inception of a mighty coup d'etat, or whether he was being humbugged. He also had heard ugly rumors in the East, and they had made him very uncomfortable. Whatever the outcome, this was no place for Theodosia. The fever period in Carolina had passed. She must return with him to her rightful home.

For once she could not budge him. When Father talks to him, it will be all right, she thought.

But Aaron cruelly disappointed her. 'I'm afraid you must
go, my dear, though you know how much I hate to part with you. Matters are not yet matured. It would be unwise to bring Gampy until we have a settled place in which to receive him, and he needs you. Youhad better go back for a littlewhile'. Her eyes filled with tears. 'I thought I should never have to go back. I hate it there, and it is so far from you. I shall never know what is happening——'

'No tears, no nerves, no self-indulgence, my darling. You know I hate them,' said Aaron, with brisk tenderness. 'I will keep you apprised of our movements, using the same cipher we have used before. Burn the letters as soon as you read them and hold yourself in readiness to join me instantly—with Gampy.'

'I will,'she whispered. 'Oh, I will.'

Mrs. Blennerhassett was loath to part with her. During Theo's last day on the island she could scarcely let her out of her sight. 'I never knew that I could dote on a female as I do on you, Theo,' said the good lady, for she had temporarily dropped her reverence for her 'sovereign in expectancy' and felt for Theo a genuine affection. 'We shall meet soon again, though, in Mexico,' she added, her eyes beaming. 'Sure, and we must drink to that'. She clapped her hands and ordered a bottle of Madeira brought up.

She poured them each a glass, and Theo, half-laughing, half-sighing, allowed her hostess to clink it solemnly against hers. 'To Mexico,' said Theo.

' To the fairest and sweetest Princess that will ever adorn a throne,' said Mrs. Blennerhassett. Alas, that she should be fettered to such an ill-mannered boor as Alston! she thought, but this she could not say.

So, much against her inclination, but in obedience to her father's wishes, Theodosia left Blennerhassett Island and returned to the Waccamaw.

T
HEODOSIA
returned to the Oaks, but her spirit remained with Aaron. She refused to leave her plantation, fearful lest his letters might be delayed in getting to her, even by a single day. Her sleeping and her waking alike merged into a long feverish anxiety. What was he doing now? Had they started? What did the ever-mounting crop of rumors amount to? Was it true that he had been tried and acquitted in the Mississippi Territory? Was it true that General Wilkinson had suddenly turned traitor to the cause and denounced him? Or were these but the usual newspaper lies and speculations, influenced by politics and unworthy of notice?

She had received only two brief cipher letters from him, saying that all was well, and that no matter what she heard she must not be upset; for matters were progressing to his utmost satisfaction.

These calmed her for the time, but now in March it had been weeks since she had heard from him. Every day she sent the flatboat to Georgetown to await possible news there. And there was no news: even the newspapers were silent.

She had moods of wild hope. Everything must be going well. Silence was the best indication of it. The flotilla had started down the river; the Spaniards had ceded the west bank without a murmur; he was already triumphantly in possession of New Orleans. Perhaps they had crossed the Sabine on their way into Mexico. The news would be delayed, of course; Aaron would himself restrict it. He would have the power to do so. Power! Her heart swelled with exultation. She saw him already crowned, surrounded by a cheering people. 'Long live the Emperor, Aaron the First!'

'It is so. It must be so,' she whispered to herself a dozen times a day. But these moments of delicious optimism alternated with foreboding and despair. She grew thin and pale. Sleep eluded her.

Joseph spent most of his time in Columbia, acting, she thought angrily, as though his tuppenny-ha'penny office in the state legislature were of paramount importance. When he did return to the Oaks, he refused to discuss 'X'. The whole matter worried him exceedingly.

In April, her long uncertainty was ended. She was sitting on the porch in the warm afternoon sunshine with Gampy at her knee. The sturdy five-year-old was reading aloud to her, his small face puckered with concentration, his fresh little voice hardly stumbling over the long words. 'The dog is an es-estimable animal, and by reason of his fidelity merits our admir-admiration. '

'That's very good, darling,' she said, smoothing his cumbled hair, which was no longer golden red, but a rich dark auburn like her own.

'Will Gamp be pleased with me when he hears me read so well?' asked the child. Under her guidance he had come to direct every effort toward the approval of the faraway grandfather whom he still remembered and loved.

'Of course he will,' she answered, smiling. Oh, why don't I hear from him? The constant question tortured her.

Unconsciously she turned from Gampy, stared unseeing down the avenue of moss-draped live-oaks, trying by force of will to pierce through the barrier of space.

Suddenly she heard the gallop of hoofs and saw the headlong approach of a horse and rider. For one ecstatic, unreasonable moment her heart leapt with relief.

But it wasn't Aaron, of course. It was Joseph, returning from a trip to Georgetown. She had scarcely time to feel surprise at the fury with which he threw himself from his horse, yelling with even greater than normal impatience for a stable-boy to take the reins. He stamped up the steps, thrusting a newspaper at her. 'Read that!'

She stared at him stupidly. His swarthy face was purple. His whole stocky body was trembling. Gampy gave a little cry and shrank into her skirts, hiding his face from his father's scowl.

'Read it, can't you?' shouted Joseph, directing a shaking finger at the paper in her hand.

She raised the newspaper, the
Richmond Enquirer
, March 17th, 1807.

' What has a Richmond paper to do with me?' she whispered.

' Damnation take it! Look here! Can't you read?' Through his angry rudeness she heard the note of fear.

She stared at the jiggling lines of print.

Last night the traitor, Aaron Burr, arrived in Richmond to await trial. He was in the custody of Colonel Nicholas Perkins and his band of courageous men, who have conveyed him on the
perilous journey northward from Alabama where he was apprehended. He will shortly be lodged in the county gaol. Many of his fellow conspirators are also being brought to Justice. It is to be hoped that none of these will be allowed to forego their just deserts.

She raised her eyes slowly. The white porch columns tipped together, veered round and round in slow, sickening lurches. Her fingers contracted on the newspaper, crumpling it convulsively.

'It isn't true! It's another one of their lies.'

'It isn't true,' he mimicked savagely. 'Nothing is ever true for you, unless you wish it so, or your father cither. He's caught, my lady, d'ye understand that? Caught and jailed and soon to be hanged. This time he can't wriggle out as he did before.'

He raised his riding-crop and brought it down with a whistling snap onto the porch railing. Flecks of white paint exploded from the gash.

Gampy gave a cry of terror and began sobbing. Theo gently pushed him from her. 'Run away, dear. Go quickly'. As the child stumbled out, she turned on Joseph. 'How dare you speak to me like that of my father! How dare you!'

'How dare I!' he bellowed. 'How dare you try to involve me in his treasonable plots and harebrained schemes! Thank God, my judgment was never impaired by his foul machinations.'

She gasped; her eyes grew enormous. 'You
art
involved. You believed in the enterprise, heart and soul. You've given money to it. You went to Blennerhassett's Island and were part and parcel of the project there——'

His furious glare became opaque, his fists clenched, but he said, with a sudden deadly calm: 'You are mistaken, Theodosia. I have never been interested in your father's
ambitions. Nor have I ever been to Blennerhassett's Island'. Her head jerked up. For a second, stupefaction overpowered her. She thought vaguely that she could not have heard aright. 'You have never been to the island?' she repeated blankly.

' I have not seen Colonel Burr since he came here, unbidden, and forced me to give him hospitality a year ago last October'. The crumpled ball of newspaper fell from her hand to the floor of the porch, where a vagrant breeze scudded it over the painted boards with a faint, scratching noise. She watched it until it disappeared over the edge of a step, then turned on Joseph a look of such concentrated contempt that it pierced his anger.

' I shall do my best not to interfere with your charming little fiction'. She walked rapidly away from him.

He clutched her by the shoulder. 'Wait, Theo. What arc you going to do?'

She removed herself from his touch, not violently, but as though he had been some inanimate object, a branch or a curtain, which interfered with her progress.

'I am going to prepare myself to go to Richmond.'

' You cannot. I forbid it. I will not have any of my family mixed up in this disgraceful affair. '

'Nevertheless, I shall go. And you need not consider me as belonging to your family if you do not wish to. I would prefer not to see you again.'

He recoiled. The bluster, the fury were sponged off his heavy face. His shoulders slumped. 'Theo, don't. You know I love you. It's for your protection, too. Your father is disgraced, worse than that.'

'My father is not disgraced,' she answered inflexibly. 'That he could never be. If he is in trouble, I wish to be with him. I suppose, in view of this account, that he is really in
Richmond. But the rest I do not believe. I'm sure that he is not under arrest. He has done nothing to merit that. Even Jefferson's hostility could not go so far.'

Joseph heard her with renewed rage. How could she be so stubbornly blind? Her insensate belief in her father infuriated him. He barely mastered an urge to strike her, shake the white, contemptuous remoteness from her small set person.

'You're a fool!' he shouted. 'You credit nothing which does not come from your precious rogue of a father. Here, perhaps you will believe his own words.'

He drew a tattered sheet of paper from his pocket. She saw the familiar small handwriting and snatched it from him. As she read, he watched her with angry satisfaction. He knew the scrawled hurried lines by heart.

F
ORT
S
TODDEILT—
March
4
^th

I am under arrest, to leave here tomorrow for the North. We will pass through Carolina in a week. My guard numbers nine. A small force can effect my release. Chester will be the best place for this.

A

'I don't understand!' she cried. 'How did this get here? It's directed to me. Why did I not receive it?'

He was silent. He did not regret having intercepted her letter, but he did regret that his anger had betrayed him into giving it to her now.

She saw his expression, and understood. 'You kept it from me,' she whispered. 'We could have rescued him, as he says, and now it is too late.'

He was frightened at the change in her. He had expected anger, a sharpening of the contempt with which she had been regarding him, but not this stony despair. She sank into a chair and fastened her gaze on a comer of the carved-wood arm. Then her head drooped.

' He must have thought I had deserted him. He must have hoped, and waited, scanning each face, looking for friends, for those who believe in him—and there was nothing. Oh, how could you do that to him—and to me?'

Joseph touched her bowed head with a clumsy hand. 'Be reasonable, Theo. What could we do? The Government has arrested him. How could I effect his release?'

'Of course, you could have. You have authority in this State. A score of men could have done it. But you're a coward. You have no loyalty. You think of nothing but your own skin. I despise you'. She spoke with a toneless lack of emphasis that stabbed him.

'You are unjust, Theo,' he stammered. 'I'm—I'm——'

He closed his lips with a gulp. He'd be damned if he'd try to justify himself. He'd acted as would any reasonable man. He turned on his heel and stamped into the house, venting his anger by administering to Cupid a lusty kick as that small black boy, who had been hovering in the hall, neglected to scamper for safety with requisite speed.

Theodosia stayed alone on the porch. She thought: Just here he sat with me, on that golden October afternoon when he first told me of it—of 'X'. She saw again his transfigured face, felt the glory and the majesty that he had made her feel. Still behind her, on the table in the drawing-room, stood the little bust of Napoleon. 'Do you dare to think that I am not at least the equal of that little Corsican peasant?'

She shut her eyes and slow tears welled from under the lids. She shook her head impatiently. He hated tears. How dared she weep and despair! 'This is only a temporary setback,' she whispered to herself. 'He will extricate himself. They cannot do anything to him. He has done no wrong'. She repeated this over and over like an incantation.