MY THEODOSIA (46 page)

The hall clock struck midnight before she dragged herself reluctantly up to her room. 'Tomorrow, then,' she told herself. 'He said mid-October and this is only the twenty-third. It is folly to expect him yet.'

She snuffed her candle. That night she dreamed of him. He was standing beside the mighty river; the sound of its rushing waters deafened her ears. As she came to him, he held out his arms, and she felt his kiss with a rapture greater than any she had ever known. 'I knew you'd come to me,' she said, laughing, and turned without surprise to see her father with them, too. He was young and smiling, as he had been in the days at Richmond Hill. 'Now I am happy,' she told them, and, though her voice was lost in the roar of the flood, she saw that they understood.

The dream dissolved into trivialities. But a springing fountain of joy remained. She awoke with it.

It's an omen, she thought, half-ashamed of the superstition. Today he will surely come.

She sang that day little snatches of popular songs. She played with Gampy, delighting the little boy with her nonsense, joining him in a picnic on the lawn. He begged to take
their lunch down the river 'to a new place,' but this she would not do. Nor leave the house a second.

She appeased him with stories, and even, careless of the giggling servants, chased the squealing, ecstatic child round and round amongst the giant live-oaks in a game of hide-and-seek.

'I didn't know old people could run so well,' observed Gampy, after she had caught him.

'I'm not really so very old,' laughed Theo, out of breath.

'I guess not,' agreed Gampy dubiously. 'Anyway, you don't look it now. You look awful pretty.'

'Do I, darling? That's because I'm happy, I guess.'

'Why are you happy?'

' Because—because——' She broke off and stared down the avenue of live-oaks. This time surely she would see Cupid come running with the news. There was no one, only the murmur of a little wind in the trees as it stirred the hanging gray fronds.

Gampy had lost interest. 'It's almost night-time, Mama; maybe we better go in. It's cold.'

'Oh, no,' she cried, ' it isn't late yet. The sun won't set for hours.'

'It has set,' he objected, astounded at this denseness. 'Look over toward the river. It's all gone. Let's have more games in the house, Mama. It's cold.'

She drew him to her, sheltering him with her arm. Silently they walked back to the house.

As the days went by, she did not laugh again or play with Gampy. Though she read to him and supervised his lessons with her usual loving care, there was no more gaiety.

On the first of November, Joseph returned from Columbia. He was glad to be home, pleased to see Theo and the boy, anxious to get out and inspect the condition of the rice fields
After he had eaten, he announced that he was going to the overseer's house to confer with him. 'Here are some of the latest newspapers from Columbia,' he said, dropping a sheaf of them on the table before her, 'though I believe there is nothing of special interest'. He went out.

Theo turned the papers over listlessly. It was thus that she came upon an item.

GOVERNOR MERIWETHER LEWIS OF THE NORTH LOUISIANA TERRITORY MOST FOULLY ASSASSINATED

The Governor on his way cast, near Nashville, was set upon by bandits and shot. Every effort is being made to apprehend the murderers.

There was more, but she did not read it. She gave a small whimper like a frightened child. She uttered no other sound, but sat rigid holding the newspaper and staring out the window into the gathering dusk.

A
ARON
spent four years in exile, years of diminishing hope and ever more stringent poverty. The first fair promises of the great in England faded into evasions, into boredom, and then into suspicion. In the end it became necessary for Lord Liverpool to write a bland note, the purport of which was that Colonel Burr's presence in England had unfortunately become embarrassing to the Government. He might have passports and free passage to any port he wished, but he must avail himself of them.

So Aaron tried Sweden, then Germany and Paris. He ingratiated himself with many, he pursued several desultory love affairs, and he oscillated between a giddy social life and actual hunger when the sale of his watch or of some coins he had bought as a present for Gampy saved him from starvation. But the plans for 'X' were at a standstill. Indeed, in
Europe, except for the initial interest of some English noblemen, they never began.

When Aaron reached Paris, he made many abortive efforts to gain audience with the King of Westphalia. The former Jerome Bonaparte ignored him, no less completely than did his imperial brother. Aaron kept up his spirits as best he could. He wrote Theo determinedly cheerful letters that hid his disappointment. He kept a journal which she should see some day and laugh over, when they were together once more. He was outwardly cheerful, but his health, for the first time in his life, was poor, and he longed for home. He was, moreover, worried about Theodosia.

There had been a silence of many months in the winter of 1809, and though, when he finally received a letter, she wrote in her usual vein, telling him of her efforts to insure his reinstatement, telling him news of Gampy, telling him how desperately she missed him, yet there was a note that disturbed him. She had abandoned their carefully maintained playfulness, their fiction that all was well with him. She implored him to come home.

Risk anything, make any sacrifice, but come home. Or, if the worst comes to the worst, I will leave everything to suffer with you. The icy hand of disappointment falls upon my heart to smother every spark. Do not frown at these complaints. Oh, my guardian angel, why were you obliged to abandon me? How much I need your counsel and tenderness...

Aaron read these letters anxiously, puzzled by their extravagance. He knew that her health was none too good, but he felt in her a despair that went deeper than physical discomfort: a profound unhappiness for which he knew no source.

He determined to come home. He felt his fiber deteriorat
ing. He was aging—at last he knew it. And he longed for the two who were of his blood, Theodosia and the child. He spent many futile, miserable months in trying to obtain a passport, and when finally, in March of 1812., he obtained passage from London for Boston on the
Aurora
, war rumors were thick between the United States and England.

The British had been secretly inciting the Indians to revolt; they had attacked American ships; they had kidnaped four thousand American seamen and impressed them into the British Naval Service; besides this they had instituted a virtual blockade of American waters. The South felt that these conditions were intolerable and was clamoring for war. New England held that compromise was possible. President Madison also endeavored to stem the rising tide of public hysteria. But the old enmity and jealousy caused by the War of Independence sprang up again. Twenty-nine years had not been long enough to lay them permanently.

Aaron had little love for the America which had cast him out, but none at all for England which had done the same. He stood upon the
Aurora's
deck and watched the gray line of land fade into the horizon.

'I hope never to visit England again,' he said to the kindly captain, who had finally consented to ship this inconvenient and unpopular passenger, ' except at the head of fifty thousand men.
Insula inhospitabilis,
as it was truly called eighteen hundred years ago.'

Captain Potter grunted. 'I hope this tarnation war don't catch us in mid-ocean. The
Aurora
will be captured sure. She's none too fast.'

Aaron laughed. 'Have no fear. Our present administration will never declare war. We are totally unprepared. We have neither men nor money, and I believe but twenty warships. I treat the country's war prattle as I should that of a bevy
of boarding-school misses. Show them a bayonet or a sword and they will run and hide.'

He was wrong. War was declared between England and the United States on June eighteenth, but by that time the
Aurora
was safe in Boston Harbor.

The
Aurora
was safe, but Aaron was not. The government prosecutions still hung over him. Two of his largest creditors in New York held judgments against him: it was necessary not to be recognized until they could somehow be appeased. So Aaron borrowed an old-fashioned wig and clothes that were too large for him. A rather shabby Mr. Arnot slipped back into his country in much the same way that Mr. Edwards had sneaked out of it four years before. This was not the triumphant return they had pictured, he and Theo. But at least he was back on the same continent with her. Let him once reach New York and their meeting would not be long delayed.

Aaron hid for some weeks in Boston and then decided on a bold move. A letter from Samuel Swartwout in New York encouraged him. The Government was far too busy with its war to bother about a penniless exile. Even his creditors might be kept quiet for a time. So Aaron sold his few remaining books to Harvard College to secure passage money and sailed for New York. He took lodging on Nassau Street and hung before the door a modest tin sign bearing only his name. He inserted a line in the newspapers, saying, ' Aaron Burr has returned to this city and resumed the practice of law'. Then he settled back to await results.

These were highly gratifying at first. Clients flocked to him. People were curious; they reminded each other that, after all, he had been acquitted. Anyway, it was all years ago. Even the duel was no longer interesting, and whatever else little Burr might or might not be, no one had ever questioned his
legal ability. The creditors stayed their hands while they waited to see whether he could make some money.

Aaron's spirits soared at once. On the strength ot two thousand dollars in fees he wrote exultantly to Theodosia. They would buy back Richmond Hill. Everything should be as it used to be. 'These dark hours through which we have passed will be all forgot, ' he wrote. 'They are forgot already. You and Gampy and I will yet realize our glorious future. I await your arrival with the utmost impatience. Kiss the boy for me and tell him that I have many little gifts with which to amuse him. As for you, hussy, I have bought you some topaz earrings. You will be a veritable houri in them.'

He mailed this letter on June thirtieth and walked buoyantly back to his dingy little law office.

The letter reached Theo two weeks later at Debordieu Island. She lay on the bed in the octagonal back room of the beach cottage. She lay utterly still, her unwinking gaze fixed upon the boards which formed the ceiling.

Joseph brought the letter to her. He knelt down beside the bed and put it gently in her hand. Her fingers did not move and it slipped to the sheet.

' It's from your father, Theo. 'His voice held a new softness, his heavy face was drawn and haggard.

'From Father?' she questioned vaguely. 'Read it to me'. She turned her head painfully on the pillow. Her eyes, no longer swollen with weeping, but expressionless as black glass, rested on him quietly.

'I don't want to read it,' he cried hoarsely. 'He doesn't know.'

She reached for the letter, holding it between her fingers. 'No, poor Father. He doesn't know about Gampy. He doesn't know Gampy's dead'. She gave a small high laugh.
'I didn't think I'd ever be able to say that. It doesn't seem to mean anything any more. Isn't that queer?'

Joseph got up and poured a glassful of medicine from the bottle by the bed. He held it to her docile lips and she drank unquestioningly. Then he called Eleanore.

The maid ran in, her black wool dress hanging slack upon her once ample body, her eyes rimmed with red. 'Elle est pire, monsieur?' she whispered.

He nodded. 'She is more feverish.'

He walked through the house onto the porch. The ocean lay there in front of him, quiet and gray-blue in the twilight. He dropped down on a step and stared at it dully.

There must be someone who could help her. He could not reach her. During the first ghastly days after the little boy died, the women of his family had been there—Mrs. Alston and Sally and Polly. She had refused to see them, as she refused to leave the room where the child had died.

Gampy was buried at the Oaks in the family burying ground. Joseph had understood her anguished refusal to be present when the small coffin was placed, but he had tried to persuade her to go to the burial service with the family. All Saints' Parish Church had been beautiful with flowers, and the words of the service had given him a little comfort. They might have helped her too. But she would not go.

There had been wild grief at first, an agony of tears, far less terrifying than this devastating quiet that had now settled on her. Day after day she lay on the bed, gently answering when spoken to, but without will or life of her own. Sometimes, when Joseph tried to rouse her, she gathered herself together as though she listened. But not to him—straining for some voice he could not hear, when all that broke the silence was the monotonous crash of the surf.

Gampy's illness had been so cruelly short. He came into
the house from playing on the sands and his teeth were chattering, his small body shaking with chill.

'It is the ague again,' said Theo, troubled but not really anxious. 'He should not have ridden back to the plantation with you last week. Even in the daytime, there is fever about. '

'Give him the Peruvian bark,' said Joseph.

'I think not'. She put her hand on the child's head, frowning. 'I don't believe that bitter concoction does any good, and he hates it. I shall try calomel.'

'The bark is better,' argued Joseph irritably. 'All the family use it for chills and fever. '

'And does it stop them?' she asked. 'The agues go for a while, but they come back. I believe that stuff is useless.'

He did not persist. It was true that the swamp fever came and went. Gampy had had it before. This time it did not go. The fever rose higher until the child's body was like a red coal to the touch. The chills became ever more violent and the lull after them brought no respite. And now Theo in a frenzy of fear used all the remedies she had ever heard of. They dispatched servants to Georgetown for a doctor. He came too late, and if he had not, thought Joseph, what more could he have done?