The Magnificent Adventure Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman — Reading Notes

There was a long silence; then the widow continued.

"Listen, Merne," she said. "You call me a prophetess of evil. I am not that. Do you think I speak only in despair, my boy? No, there is something larger than mere happiness. Listen, and believe me, for now I could not fail to know. I tell you that your great desire, the great wish of your life, shall be yours! You never will relinquish it, you always will possess it, and at last it will be yours."

Again silence fell between them before she went on, her hand again resting on her son's dark hair.

"Your great desire will cost me my son. Be it so! We breed men for the world, we women, and we give them up. Out of the agony of our hearts, we do and must always give them up. That is the price I must pay. But I give you up to the great hope, the great thing of your life. Should I complain? Am I not your mother, and therefore a woman? And should a woman complain? But, Oh, Merne, Merne, my son, my boy!"

She drew his head back, so that she could see deep into his eyes. Her dark brows half frowning, she gazed down upon him, not so much in tenderness as in intentness. For the first time in many months--for the last time in his life--she kissed him on the forehead; and then she let him go.

He rose now, and, silently as he had come, passed around the end of the wide gallery.

Her gaze did not follow him. She sat still looking down the golden-green slope where the leaves were dropping silently. She sat, her chin in her hand, her elbows upon her knees, facing that future, somber but splendid, to which she had devoted her son, and which in later years he so singularly fulfilled.

That was the time when the mother of Meriwether Lewis gave him to his fate--his fate, so closely linked with yours and mine.

MERIWETHER AND THEODOSIA

Soft is the sun in the summer season at Washington, softer at times than any old Dan Chaucer ever knew; but again so ardent that anyone who would ride abroad would best do so in the early morning. This is true today, and it was true when the capital city lay in the heart of a sweeping forest at the edge of a yet unconquered morass.

The young man who now rode into this forest, leaving behind him the open streets of the straggling city--then but beginning to lighten under the rays of the morning sun--was one who evidently knew his Washington. He knew his own mind as well, for he rode steadily, as if with some definite purpose, to some definite point, looking between his horse's ears.

Sitting as erect and as easily as any cavalier of the world's best, he was tall in his saddle seat, his legs were long and straight. His boots were neatly varnished, his coat well cut, his gloves of good pattern for that time. His hat swept over a mass of dark hair, which fell deep in its loose cue upon his neck. His cravat was immaculate and well tied. He was a good figure of a man, a fine example of the young manhood of America as he rode, his light, firm hand half unconsciously curbing the antics of the splendid animal beneath him--a horse deep bay in color, high-mettled, a mount fit for a monarch--or for a young gentleman of Virginia a little more than one hundred years ago.

If it was not the horse of a monarch the young man bestrode, none the less it was the horse of one who insisted that his stables should be as good as those of any king--none less, if you please, than Mr. Thomas Jefferson, then President of the United States of America.

This particular animal was none other than Arcturus, Mr. Jefferson's favorite saddler. It was the duty as well as the delight of Mr. Jefferson's private secretary to give Arcturus and his stable-mate, Wildair, their exercise on alternate days. On this summer morning Arcturus was enjoying his turn beneath his rider--who forsooth was more often in the saddle than Mr. Jefferson himself.

Horse and rider made a picture in perfect keeping as they fared on toward the little-used forest road which led out Rock Creek way. Yonder, a few miles distant, was a stone mill owned by an old German, who sometimes would offer a cup of coffee to an early horseman. Perhaps this rider knew the way from earlier wanderings thither on other summer mornings.

Arcturus curveted along and tossed his head, mincing daintily, and making all manner of pretense at being dangerous, with sudden gusts of speed and shakings of his head and blowing out of his nostrils--though all the time the noble bay was as gentle as a dog. Whether or not he really were dangerous would have made small difference to the young man who bestrode him, for his seat was that of the born horseman.

They advanced comfortably enough, the rider seemingly less alive to the joys of the morning than was the animal beneath him. The young man's face was grave, his mouth unsmiling--a mouth of half Indian lines, broken in its down-sweeping curve merely by the point of a bow which spoke of gentleness as well as strength. His head was that of the new man, the American, the new man of a new world, young and strong, a continent that had lain fallow from the birth of time.

What burdened the mind of a man like this, of years which should have left him yet in full attunement with the morning of life and with the dawn of a country? Why should he pay so little heed to the playful advances of Arcturus, inviting him for a run along the shady road?

Arcturus could not tell. He could but prance insinuatingly, his ears forward, his head tossed, his eye now and again turned about, inquiring.

But though the young man, moody and abstracted, still looked on ahead, some of his senses seemed yet on guard. His head turned at the slightest sound of the forest life that came to him. If a twig cracked, he heard it. If a green nut cut by some early squirrel clattered softly on the leaves, that was not lost to him.

A bevy of partridges, feeding at dawn along the edge of the forest path, whirled up in his horse's face; and though he held the startled animal close, he followed the flight of the birds with the trained eye of the fowler, and marked well where they pitched again. He did these things unconsciously as one well used to the woods, even though his eye turned again straight down the road and the look of intentness, of sadness, almost of melancholy, once more settled upon his features.

He advanced into the wood until all sight of the city was quite cut off from him, until the light grew yet dimmer along the forest road, in places almost half covered with a leafy canopy, until at length he came to the valley of the little stream. He followed the trail as it rambled along the bank toward the mill, through scenes apparently familiar to him.

Abstracted as he was he must have been alert, alive, for now, suddenly, he broke his moody reverie at some sound which he heard on ahead. He reined in for just an instant, then loosed the bridle and leaned forward. The horse under him sprang forward in giant strides.

It was the sound of a voice that the young cavalier had heard--the voice of a woman--apparently a woman in some distress. What cavalier at any time of the world has not instinctively leaped forward at such sound? In less than half a moment the rider was around the turn of the leafy trail.

She was there, the woman who had cried out, herself mounted, and now upon the point of trying conclusions with her mount. Whether dissatisfaction with the latter or some fear of her own had caused her to cry out might have been less certain, had it not been sure that her eye was at the moment fastened, not upon the fractious steed, but upon the cause of his unwonted misbehavior.

The keen eye of the young man looked with hers, and found the reason for the sudden scene. A serpent, some feet in length--one of the mottled, harmless species sometimes locally called the blow-snake--obviously had come out into the morning sun to warm himself, and his yellow body, lying loose and uncoiled, had been invisible to horse and rider until they were almost upon it. Then, naturally, the serpent had moved his head, and both horse and rider had seen him, to the dismay of both.

This the young man saw and understood in a second, even as he spurred forward alongside the plunging animal. His firm hand on the bridle brought both horses back to their haunches. An instant later both had control of their mounts again, and had set them down to their paces in workmanlike fashion.

There was color in the young woman's face, but it was the color of courage, of resolution. There was breeding in every line of her. Class and lineage marked her as she sat easily, her supple young body accommodating itself handsomely to the restrained restiveness of the steed beneath her. She rode with perfect confidence, as an experienced horsewoman, and was well turned out in a close habit, neither old nor new.

Her dark hair--cut rather squarely across her forehead after an individual fashion of her own--was surmounted by a slashed hat, decorated with a wide-flung plume of smoky color, caught with a jewel at the side. Both jewel and plume had come, no doubt, in some ship from across seas. Her hands were small, and gloved as well as might be at that day of the world. There was small ornament about her; nor did this young woman need ornament beyond the color of her cheek and hair and eye, and perhaps the touch of a bold ribbon at her throat, which held a white collar closer to a neck almost as white.

An aristocrat, you must have called her, had you seen her in any chance company. And had you been a young man such as this, and had you met her alone, in some sort of agitation, and had consent been given you--or had you taken consent--surely you would have been loath to part company with one so fair, and would have ridden on with her as he did now.

But at first they did not speak. A quick, startled look came into the face of the young woman. A deeper shade glowed upon the cheek of the cavalier, reddening under the skin--a flush which shamed him, but which he could not master. He only kept his eyes straight between his horse's ears as he rode--after he had raised his hat and bowed at the close of the episode.

"I am to thank Captain Lewis once more," began the young woman, in a voice vibrant and clear--the sweetest, kindest voice in the world. "It is good fortune that you rode abroad so early this morning. You always come at need!"

He turned upon her, mute for a time, yet looking full into her face. It was sadness, not boldness, not any gay challenge, that marked his own.

"Can you then call it good fortune?" His own voice was low, suppressed.

"You did not need me. A moment, and you would have been in command again--there was no real need of me. Ah, you never need me!"

"Yet you come. You were here, had the need been worse. And, indeed, I was quite off my guard--I must have been thinking of something else."

"And there was the serpent."

"Madam, there was the serpent! And why not? Is this not Eden? I swear it is paradise enough for me. Tell me, why is it that in the glimpses the sages give us of paradise they no more than lift the curtain--and let it fall again?"

"Captain Meriwether Lewis is singularly gloomy this morning!"

"Not more than I have been always. How brief was my little hour! Yet for that time I knew paradise--as I do now. We should part here, madam, now, forever. Yon serpent spelled danger for both of us."

"No, forgive me! None the less, I could not help my thoughts--cannot help them now. I ride here every morning. I saw your horse's hoof-marks some two miles back. Do you suppose I did not know whose they were?"

"And you followed me? Ah!"

"I suppose I did, and yet I did not. If I did I knew I was riding to my fate."

She would have spoken--her lips half parted--but what she might have said none heard.

"I have ridden here since first I saw you turn this way one morning. I guessed this might be your haunt at dawn. I have ridden here often--and feared each time that I might meet you. Perhaps I came this morning in the same way, not knowing that you were near, but hoping that you might be. You see, madam, I speak the absolute truth with you."

"You have never spoken aught else to any human soul. That I know."

"And yet you try to evade the truth? Why deceive your heart about it, since I have not deceived my own? I have faced it out in my own heart, and I have, I trust, come off the victor. At some cost!"

Her face was troubled. She looked aside as she replied in a voice low, but firm:

"Any woman would be glad to hear such words from Captain Lewis, and I am glad. But--the honest wife never lived who could listen to them often."

"I know that," he said simply.

"No!" Her voice was very low now; her eyes soft and cast down as they fell upon a ring under her glove. "We must not meet, Captain Meriwether Lewis. At least, we must not meet thus alone in the woods. It might cause talk. The administration has enemies enough, as you know--and never was a woman who did not have enemies, no matter how clean her life has been."

"Clean as the snow, yours! I have never asked you to be aught else, and never will. I sought you once, when I rode from Virginia to New York--when I first had my captain's pay, before Mr. Jefferson asked me to join his family. Before that time I had too little to offer you; but then, with my hopes and my ambitions, I ventured. I made that journey to offer you my hand. I was two weeks late--you were already wedded to Mr. Alston. Then I learned that happiness never could be mine.... Yes, we must part! You are the only thing in life I fear. And I fear as well for you. One wagging tongue in this hotbed of gossip--and there is harm for you, whom all good men should wish to shield."

As he rode, speaking thus, his were the features of a man of tremendous emotions, a resolute man, a man of strength, of passions not easily put down.

She turned aside her own face for an instant. At last her little hand went to him in a simple gesture of farewell. Meriwether Lewis leaned and kissed it reverently as he rode.

"Good-by!" said he. "Now we may go on for the brief space that remains for us," he added a moment later. "No one is likely to ride this way this morning. Let us go on to the old mill. May I give you a cup of coffee there?"

"I trust Captain Meriwether Lewis," she replied.

They advanced silently, and presently came in sight of a little cascade above a rocky shallowing of the stream. Below this, after they had splashed through the ford, they saw the gray stone walls of Rock Creek Mill.

The miller was a plain man, and silent. Other folk, younger or older, married or single, had come hither of a morning, and he spoke the name of none. He welcomed these two after his fashion. Under the shade of a great tree, which flung an arm out to the rivulet, he pulled out a little table spread in white and departed to tell his wife of the company. She, busy and smiling, came out presently with her best in old china and linen and wherewith to go with both.

They sat now, face to face across the little table, their horses cropping the dewy grass near by. Lewis's riding crop and gloves lay on his knee. He cast his hat upon the grass. Little birds hopped about on the ground and flitted here and there in the trees, twittering. A mocker, trilling in sudden ecstacy of life, spread a larger melody through all the wood.

The sun drew gently up in the heavens, screened by the waving trees. The ripple of the stream was very sweet.

"Theodosia, look!" said the young man, suddenly swinging a gesture about him. "Did I not say right? It is Eden! Ah, what a pity it is that Eden must ever be the same--a serpent--repentance--and farewell! Yet it was so beautiful."

"A sinless Eden, sir."

"No! I will not lie--I will not say that I do not love you more than ever. That is my sin; so I must go away. This must be our last meeting--I am fortunate that it came by chance today."

"Going away--where, then, my friend?"

"Into the West. It always has called me. Ah, if only I had remained in the Indian country yonder, where I belonged, and never made my ride to New York--to learn that I had come too late! But the West still is there--the wilderness still exists to welcome such as me!"

"But you will--you will come back again?"

"It is in the lap of the gods. I do not know or care. But my plans are all arranged. Mr. Jefferson and I have agreed that it is almost time to start. You see, Theodosia, I am now back from my schooling. You behold in me, madam, a scientist! At least I am competent to read by the sun and stars, can reckon longitude and latitude--as one must, to journey into the desert yonder. If only I dared orient my soul as well!"

"You would never doubt my faith in my husband."

"No! Of course, you love your husband. I could not look at you a second time if you did not."

"You are a good man, Meriwether Lewis!"

"Do not say it! I am a man accursed of evil passions--the most unhappy of all men. There is nothing else, I say, in all the world that I fear but my love for you. Tell me it will not last--tell me it will change--tell me that I shall forget! I should not believe you--but tell me that. Does a man never forget? Success--for others; happiness--for someone else. My mother said that was to be my fate. What did she mean?"

"She meant, Meriwether Lewis, that you were a great man, a great soul! Only a man of noble soul could speak as you have spoken to me. We women, in our souls, love something noble and good and strong. Then we imagine someone like that. We believe, or try to believe, or say that we believe; but always----"

"And a woman may divide not love, only love of love itself?"

"I shall love your future, and shall watch it always," she replied, coloring. "You will be a great man, and there will be a great place for you."

"Do not ask what then. You ask if men never change. Alas, they do, all too frequently! Do not deny the imperious way of nature. Only--remember me as long as you can, Meriwether Lewis."

She spoke softly, and the color of her cheek, still rising, told of her self-reproof.

He turned suddenly at this, a wonderfully sweet smile now upon his face.

"Yes. Let your own mind run on the ambitions of a proud man, a strong man. Ambition--power--place--these things will all be yours in the coming years. They belong to any man of ability such as yours, and I covet them for you. I shall pray always for your success; but success makes men forget."

He still sat looking at her unmoved, with thoughts in his heart that he would not have cared to let her know. She went on still, half tremblingly: