Lewis Rand Part 43

"And the other with the sash?"

"Eaton. They are both tarred with the same brus.h.!.+ Here, coming toward us, is one of very different make! You met him yesterday, did you not?

Ha! Captain Decatur, allow me to give you anchorage!"

As he spoke, he held open the pew door. Captain Stephen Decatur smiled, bowed, and entered, and was presently greeting with a manly, frank, and engaging manner the beautiful Mrs. Rand and the equally lovely Miss Dandridge, to both of whom he had been presented at an evening entertainment. The church was now filled and the bell ceased ringing.

From the gallery came the deeper growl of the ba.s.s viol and the preliminary breath of a flute. A moment more and the minister walked up the aisle and, mounting the tall old pulpit, invoked a blessing, then gave out in a fine mellow voice with a strong Scotch accent:--

"The s.p.a.cious firmament on high, With all the blue, ethereal sky And spangled heavens, a s.h.i.+ning frame, Their great Original proclaim."

The choir in the gallery, viol, flute, and voices, took up the strain, and the congregation beneath following in their turn, there arose and floated through the windows a veritable paean, so sweet and loud that the boatmen on the river heard.

On went the service until the sermon was reached, and on went the sermon from "firstly" to "eighteenthly and last, my brethren." The sermon was upon Charity, and included no allusion to the topic of the day uppermost in men's minds, for this minister never evinced any party spirit, and thought politics not his province. The discourse ended, the plate was carried and the benediction given, whereupon, after a decorous pause, the congregation streamed forth to the green and warm churchyard.

Here it broke into groups, flowery bright on the part of the women, gallant and gay enough on the side of the attending gentlemen. The broad path was like the unfolding of a figured ribbon, and the sward on either hand like sprinkled taffeta. The sky between the large white clouds showed bluer than blue, and the leaves of the sycamores trembled in a small, refres.h.i.+ng breeze. The birds were silent, but the insect world filled with its light voice the s.p.a.ce between all other sounds. Outside the gate coaches and horses waited. There was no hurry; the ribbon unrolled but slowly, and the blossomy knots upon the taffeta as leisurely s.h.i.+fted position.

Theodosia Alston and Jacqueline came out of church together, in a cl.u.s.ter of Carringtons and Amblers. Besides her affianced, Unity had for company Captain Decatur, Mr. Irving, and Mr. Scott. The throng, pressing between, separated the cousins. Aaron Burr's daughter, though she talked and laughed with spirit and vivacity, was so evidently anxious to be away that the friend with whom she had come made haste down the path to their waiting coach. Jacqueline, meaning to tarry but a moment beside the woman for whom all, of whatever party, had only admiration and sympathy, found herself drawn along the path to the gate. The Carrington coach rolled away, and she was left almost alone in the sunny lower end of the churchyard.

The ribbon was unrolling toward her, and she waited, glad of the moment's quiet. She saw Unity's forget-me-not blue, and Charlotte Foushee's bonnet, piquant and immense, and Mrs. Randolph's lilac lutestring, and all the blue and green and wine-coloured coats of the men moving toward her as in a summer dream, gay midges in a giant shaft of sunlight. A great bee droned past her to the honeysuckle upon the wall against which she leaned. She watched the furred creature, barred and golden, and thought suddenly of the bees about the mimosa on the Three-Notched Road.

A middle-aged gentleman, of a responsible and benevolent cast of countenance, came up to her. "A very good day to you, my dear Mrs.

Rand!"

"And to you, Colonel Nicholas."

"You are of my mind. You do not care to dilly-dally after church. 'Tis as bad as a London rout, where you move an inch an hour. Well, there are men here to-day who have made some stir in the world! Do you go to-morrow to the Capitol?"

"Yes. My cousin and I have seats with Mrs. Wickham."

"It will not be such a trial as was Warren Hastings's. Yet it will have its value both to the eye and the ear. If it were possible, I would have there every young boy in town. Is Mr. Rand at home?"

"No. He is in Williamsburgh for several days."

The gentleman hesitated. "Vexatious! I have something for his own hand, and I myself go out of town after to-morrow. It may be important--"

"Cannot I give it to him?"

"It is a small packet, or letter, from the President. He sent it to me by a private messenger, with a note asking me to do him the friendly service to place it directly in Mr. Rand's hand. I have it with me, as I thought I might meet Mr. Rand here."

"He will hardly return before Wednesday. When he comes, I will give him the letter with pleasure."

The other took from his pocket a thick letter, strongly sealed, and addressed in Jefferson's fine, precise hand. "I must be away from Richmond for a week or more, and the matter may be important. I can conceive no reason why, so that it be put directly into Mr. Rand's hand, one agent should be better than another. I'll confide it to you, Mrs.

Rand."

"I will do as the President directs, Colonel Nicholas, and will give it to my husband the moment he returns."

She put out her hand, and he laid the packet in it. Hanging from her arm by a rose-coloured ribbon was a small bag of old brocade. This she opened, and slipped into the silken depths the President's somewhat heavy missive. "He shall have it on Wednesday," she said.

The dispersing congregation touched and claimed them. Mr. Wirt and Commodore Truxtun bore off her companion, and she herself, after a moment of gay talk with all the Randolphs, rejoined Unity and her court.

Fairfax Cary called their coach, and Captain Decatur and Mr. Irving and Mr. Scott saw them in, and still talked at the lowered windows until Big Isham on the box, with a loud crack of his whip, put the greys in motion.

The coach went slowly down the hill. Unity yawned and waved her fan. "I like Captain Decatur. Think of sailing into a tropic harbour and destroying the Philadelphia on a day like this! Lend me your fan; it is larger than mine. What have you in your bag?"

"My prayer book, and something that Colonel Nicholas gave me for Lewis.

I could think only of Theodosia Alston, and of how long to-night will be to her!"

"She believes that he will be acquitted."

"She does not know, and pictures of what we fear are dreadful! Knowledge is like death sometimes, but not to know is like frightened dying! Oh, warm, warm! I shall be glad when it is all over and we leave Richmond for the mountains and the streams again, and for your wedding, dearest heart!"

"Oh, my wedding!" said Unity. "My wedding's like a dream. I don't believe I'm going to have any wedding!"

CHAPTER XXVI

THE TRIAL OF AARON BURR

At an early hour the crowd in the Hall of the House of Delegates was very great, and as it drew toward the time when the princ.i.p.als in the drama would appear, the press of the people and the heat of the August day grew well-nigh intolerable. In the gallery were many women, and their diaphanous gowns and the incessant flutter of their fans imparted to this portion of the Hall a pale illusion of comfort. In the hall below, men stood upon the window-sills, choked the entrances, crowded the corridors without. Not only was there a throng where something might be heard and seen, but the portico of the Capitol had its numbers, and the green surrounding slopes a concourse avid of what news the birds might bring. Within and without, the heat was extreme, even for August in Tidewater Virginia; an atmosphere sultry and boding, tense with the feeling of an approaching storm.

In the gallery, beside Unity and Mrs. Wickham, around her women of Federalist families who were loath to believe any one guilty who was prosecuted, or persecuted, by the present Government, and women of Republican houses who a.s.serted, while they waved their fans, that, being guilty, Aaron Burr must be, should be, would be hanged! sat Jacqueline Rand, and wondered somewhat at her weakness in coming there that day. It had been, perhaps, in the last a.n.a.lysis, a painful curiosity, a vague desire to see the place, the men, all the circ.u.mstance and environment, with which her husband--she thanked G.o.d with every breath--had no connection! He might have had here his part, she knew tremulously; it might have been his role to stand here beside Aaron Burr, and, with a pa.s.sionately humble and grateful heart, she nursed the memory of that winter night when he had sworn to her that from that hour he and this enterprise should be strangers.

There had been days and weeks of preliminaries to the actual trial for high treason, but she had not before been in this hall. All her delicacy shrank from the thought of sitting here beside her husband, conscious of his consciousness that she knew all that might have been, and saw in fancy more prisoners at the bar than one. No man would like that. He had come often to the Capitol during the days of skirmis.h.i.+ng prior to the general engagement; had he not done so, it would have been at once remarked. She expressed no desire to accompany him, nor did he ever ask her to do so. She was aware of the general surprise that he had no place among the Government counsel. Whether or not such place had been offered to him, pressed upon him, she did not know, but she thought it possible that this was the case. If so, he had refused as was right. Acceptance, she knew, would have been impossible.

All through these months there had been between them a silent pact, a covenant to avoid all superfluous mention of the topic which met them on every hand, from every mouth, in every letter or printed sheet. Rand was much occupied with important cases, much in demand in various portions of the state, much away from home. She was not a woman to demand as her right entrance into every chamber of another's soul. Her own had its hushed rooms, its reticences, its altars built to solitude; she was aware that beyond, below, above the fair chamber where he entertained her were other s.p.a.ces in her husband's nature. Into some she looked as through open door and clear windows, but others were closed to her, and she was both too proud and too pure of thought to search for keys that had not been offered her.

She knew that her husband had not meant to be absent from Richmond that day. An unexpected turn in the case he was conducting had compelled his presence in Williamsburgh, and on the other hand, in Richmond, the labour of finding an impartial jury had been brought to a sudden end by Burr's _coup de main_ in refusing to challenge and calmly accepting as prejudiced a twelve as perhaps, in the United States of America, ever decided whether a man should live or die. The move had hastened the day when the Government was to begin its cannonade.

Lewis was yet in Williamsburgh. Had he been present in this hail, watching events with his fellow lawyers, fellow politicians, fellow countrymen, who knew nothing of one snowy night a year ago last February, his wife, for both their sakes, would have remained away. As it was, she had been persuaded. Unity would not for much have missed the spectacle, friends had been pressing, and at last her own painful interest prevailed. She was here now, and she sat as in a waking dream, her hands idle, her eyes, wide and dark, steadily fixed upon the scene below. She saw, leaning against a window, Ludwell Cary, and, the centre of a cl.u.s.ter of men in hunting-s.h.i.+rts, Adam Gaudylock.

The Capitol clock struck twelve. As the last stroke died upon the feverish air, the Chief Justice entered the Hall and took the Speaker's chair. Beside him was Cyrus Griffin, the District Judge. Hay, the District Attorney, with his a.s.sociates William Wirt and Alexander McRae, now appeared, and immediately afterward the imposing array of the prisoner's counsel, a phalanx which included no less than four sometime Attorneys-General and two subalterns of note. These took the seats reserved for them; the marshal and his deputies pressed the people back, and the jury entered and filled the jury box. Below and near them sat a medley of witnesses--important folk, and folk whom only this trial made important.

A loud murmur was now heard from without; the marshal's men, red and perspiring, cleared a thread-like path, and the prisoner, accompanied by his son-in-law, entered the Hall. He was dressed in black, with carefully powdered hair. Quiet, cool, smiling, and collected, he was brought to the bar, when, having taken his place, bowed to the judges, and greeted his counsel, he turned slightly and surveyed with his composed face and his extremely keen black eyes the throng that with intentness looked on him in turn. It was by no means their first encounter of eyes. The preliminaries of that famous trial had been many and prolonged. From the prisoner's arrival in April under military escort to the present moment, through the first arraignment at that bar, the a.s.sembling of the Grand Jury, the tedious waiting for Wilkinson's long-deferred arrival from New Orleans, the matter of the subpoena to the President with which the country rang, the adjournment from June to August, the victory gained by the defence in the exclusion of Wilkinson's evidence, and the clamour of the two camps into which the city was divided,--through all this had been manifest the prisoner's deliberate purpose and attempt to make every fibre of a personality ingratiating beyond that of most, tell in its own behalf. He had able advocates, but none more able than Aaron Burr. His day and time was, on the whole, a time astonis.h.i.+ngly fluid and nave, and he impressed it.

There was in this moment, therefore, no novelty of encounter between him and the stare of the opposing throng. He was not seeing them, nor they him, for the first time. Yet the situation had its high intensity. This day was the beginning of the actual trial, and only the day which brought the verdict could outweigh it in importance. This was the lighting of the lamp that was to search out mysteries; this was the bending of the bow; this was the first rung of the ladder which might lead--where? As John Marshall's voice was heard from the bench and the prisoner turned from his steadfast contemplation of the throng, a psychic wave overflowed and lifted all the great a.s.sembly. This was spectacle, this was drama! The oldest of all the first principles stirred under the stimulus, and with savage naturalness sucked in the sense of pageant.

The court was opened. Counsel on both sides brought forward and disposed of a minor point or two, then, amid a silence so great that the twittering of the martins outside the windows seemed importunate and shrill, proclamation was made, the prisoner stood up, and the indictment was read.

"_The grand inquest of the United States of America for the Virginia District upon their oath do present that Aaron Burr, late of the city of New York, and State of New York, attorney-at-law, being an inhabitant of and residing within the United States, and under the protection of the laws of the United States, and owing allegiance and fidelity to the same United States, not having the fear of G.o.d before his eyes, nor weighing the duty of his said allegiance, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil, wickedly devising and intending the peace and tranquillity of the said United States to disturb, and to stir, move, and excite insurrection, rebellion, and war against the said United States, on the tenth day of December, in the year of Christ one thousand, eight hundred and six, at a certain place called and known by the name of Blennerha.s.sett's Island, in the county of Wood and District of Virginia aforesaid, and within the jurisdiction of this court, with force and arms, unlawfully, falsely, maliciously, and traitorously did compa.s.s, imagine, and intend to raise and levy war, insurrection, and rebellion against the said United States_--"

And so on through much thunderous repet.i.tion to the final,--

"_And the said Aaron Burr with the said persons as aforesaid traitorously a.s.sembled and armed and arranged in manner aforesaid, most wickedly, maliciously, and traitorously did ordain, prepare, and levy war against the said United States, and further to fulfil and carry into effect the said traitorous compa.s.sings, imaginings, and intentions of him the said Aaron Burr, and to carry on the war thus levied as aforesaid against the United States, the said Aaron Burr with the mult.i.tude last mentioned, at the island aforesaid, in the said county of Wood within the Virginia District aforesaid, and within the jurisdiction of this court, did array themselves in a warlike manner, with guns and other weapons, offensive and defensive, and did proceed from the said island down the river Ohio in the county aforesaid, within the Virginia District, and within the jurisdiction of this court, on the said eleventh day of December, in the year one thousand, eight hundred and six aforesaid, with the wicked and traitorous intention to descend the said river and the river Mississippi, and by force and arms traitorously to take possession of the city commonly called New Orleans, in the territory of Orleans, belonging to the United States, contrary to the duty of their said allegiance and fidelity, against the Const.i.tution, peace, and dignity of the United States and against the form of the Act of Congress of the United States in such case made and provided_."

The clerk ceased to read. When the last sonorous word had died upon the air, the audience yet sat or stood in silence, bent a little forward, in the att.i.tude of listeners. This lasted an appreciable moment, then the tension snapped. Marshall moved slightly in his great chair, Judge Griffin coughed, a rustling sound and a deep breath ran through the Hall. The prisoner, who had faced with the most perfect composure the indictment's long thunder, now slightly inclined his head to the Judges and took his seat. His counsel, ostentatiously easy and smiling, gathered about him, and the District Attorney rose to open for the Government in a lengthy and able speech.

In the gallery, among the fluttering fans, Jacqueline asked herself if her rising and quitting the place would disturb those about her. She was in the very front, beside the gallery rail, there was a great crowd behind, she must stay it out. She bit her lip, forced back emotion, strove with resolution to conquer the too visionary aspect of all things before her. It had been foolish, she knew now, to come. She had not dreamed with what strong and feverish grasp such a scene could take prisoner the imagination. She saw too plainly much that was not there; she brought other figures into the Hall; abstractions and realities, they thronged the place. The place itself widened until to her inner sense it was as wide as her world and her life. Fontenoy was there and the house on the Three-Notched Road; Roselands, and much besides. For all the heat, and the fluttering of the fans, and the roll of declamation from the District Attorney, who was now upon the definition of treason, one night in February was there as well, the night that had seen so much imperilled, the night that had seen, thank G.o.d! the cloud go by. Of all the images that thronged upon her, creating a strange tumult of the soul, darkening her eyes and driving the faint colour from her cheek, the image of that evening was the most insistent. It was, perhaps, aided by her fancy that in that cool survey of the Hall in which the prisoner indulged himself, his eyes, keen and darting as a snake's, had rested for a moment upon her face. She could have said that there was in them a curious light of recognition, even a cool amus.e.m.e.nt, a sarcasm,--the very memory of the look made for her a trouble vague, but deep! Had he, too, given a thought to that evening, to the man whom he did not secure, and to the woman with whom he had talked of black lace and Spanish songs? She wondered. But why should Colonel Burr be amused, and why sarcastic? She abandoned the enquiry and listened to the heavy lumbering up of Government cannon. "Courts of Great Britain--Foster's Crown Laws--Demaree and Purchase--Vaughan--Lord George Gordon--Throgmorton--United States _vs._ Fries--Opinion of Judge Chase--Of Judge Iredell--Overt Act--Overt Act proven--Arms, array and treasonable purpose; here is bellum levatum if not bellum percussum-Treason and traitors, not potential but actual--their discovery and their punishment--"