The Magnificent Adventure Part 35

At seeing him still alive, his men gave a shout of joy, and Cruzatte received a parting kick from his sergeant.

There were actual tears in the eyes of some of the men as they gathered around their commander--tears which touched Meriwether Lewis deeply.

"It is all right, men!" said he. "Do not be alarmed. Do not reprove the man too much. The sight of a little blood should not trouble you.

We are all soldiers. This is only an accident of the trail, and in a short time it will be mended. See, the bone is not broken!"

They aided him back to the boats and made a bed upon which he might lie, his head propped up so that he could see what lay ahead. Other men completed the evening hunt, and the boats hurried on down the river. The next day found them fifty miles below the scene of the accident.

"Sergeant," said Meriwether Lewis, "the natural fever of my wound is coming on. Give me my little war-sack yonder--I must see if I can find some medicine."

Ga.s.s handed him his bag of leather, and Lewis sought in it for a moment. His hand encountered something that crinkled in the touch--crinkled familiarly! For one instant he stopped, his lips compressed as if in bodily pain.

It was another of the mysterious letters!

Before he opened it, he looked at it, frowning, wondering. Whence came these messages, and how, by whose hand? All of them must have been written before he left St. Louis in May of 1804. Now it was August of 1806. There was no human agency outside his own party that could have carried them. How had they reached him? What messenger had brought them? He forgot the fever of his wound in another and greater fever which arose in his blood.

He was with his men now, their eyes were on him all the time. What should he do--cast this letter from him into the river? If he did so, he felt that it would follow him mysteriously, pointing to the _corpus delicti_ of his crime, still insistent on coming to the eye!

His men, therefore, saw their leader casually open a bit of paper.

They had seen him do such things a thousand times, since journals and maps were a part of the daily business of so many of them. What he did attracted no attention.

Captain Lewis would have felt relieved had it attracted more. Before he read any of the words that lay before him, in this same delicate handwriting that he knew so well, he cast a slow and searching gaze upon the face of every man that was turned toward him. In fact, he held the letter up to view rather ostentatiously, hoping that it would evoke some sign; but he saw none.

He had not been in touch with the main party for more than a month. He had with him nine men. Which of these had secretly carried the letter?

Was it Ga.s.s, Cruzatte, Drouillard, Reuben Fields, or McNeal?

He studied their faces alternately. Not an eyelash flickered. The men who looked at him were anxious only for his comfort. There was no trace of guilty knowledge on any of these honest countenances before him, and he who sought such admitted his own failure. Meriwether Lewis lay back on his couch in the boat, as far as ever from his solution of the mystery.

After all, mere curiosity as to the nature of that mystery was a small matter. It seemed of more worth to feel, as he did, that the woman who had planned this system of surprises for him was one of no ordinary mind. And it was no ordinary woman who had written the words that he now read:

SIR AND MY FRIEND:

Almost I am in despair. This is my fifth letter; you receive it, perhaps, some months after your start. I think you would have come back before now, if that had been possible. I had no news of you, and now I dread news. Should you still be gone a year from the time I write this, then I shall know that you were dead. Dead? Yes, I have written that word!

The swift thought comes to me that you will never see this at all--that it may, it must, arrive too late. Yet I must send it, even under that chance. I must write it, though it ruin all my happiness. Shall it come to you too late, others will take it to my husband. Then this secret--the one secret of my life--will be known. Ah, I hope this may come to your eyes, your living eyes; but should it not, _none the less I must write it_.

What matter? If it should be read by any after your death, that would be too late to make difference with you, or any difference for me. After that I should not care for anything--not even that then others would know what I would none might ever know save you and my Creator, so long as we both still lived.

This wilderness which you love, the wilderness to which you fled for your comfort--what has it done for you? Have you found that lonely grave which is sometimes the reward of the adventurer thither? If so, do you sleep well? I shall envy you, if that is true. I swear I often would let that thought come to me--of the vast comfort of the plains, of the mountains--the sweep of the untiring winds, sweet in the trees and gra.s.ses--or the perpetual sound of water pa.s.sing by, was.h.i.+ng out, to the voice of its unending murmurs, all memory of our trials, of our sins.

What need now to ask you to come back? What need to reproach you any further? How could I--how can I--with this terrible thought in my soul that I am writing to a man whose eyes cannot see, whose ears cannot hear?

Still, what difference, whether or not you be living? Have not your eyes thus far been blind to me? Have not your ears been deaf to me, even when I spoke to you direct? It was the call of your country as against my call. Was ever thinking woman who could doubt what a strong man would do? I suppose I ought to have known. But oh, the longing of a woman to feel that she is something greater in a man's life even than his deeds and his ambitions--even than his labors--even than his patriotism!

It is hard for us to feel that we are but puppets in the great game of life, of so small worth to any man. How can we women read their hearts--what do we know of men? I cannot say, though I am a married woman. My husband married me. We had our honeymoon--and he went away about the business of his plantations. Does every girl dream of a continuous courts.h.i.+p and find a dull answer in the facts? I do not know.

How freely I write to you, seeing that you are blind and deaf, of that wish of a woman to be the one grand pa.s.sion of a strong man's life--above all--before even his country!

What may once have been my own dream of my capacity to evoke such emotions in the soul of any man I have flung into the sc.r.a.p-heap of my life. The man, the one man--no! What was I saying, Meriwether Lewis, to you but now, even though you were blind and deaf? I must not--I _must_ not!

Nay, let me dream no more! It is too late now. Living or dead, you are deaf and blind to all that I could ever do for you. But if you be still living, if this shall meet your living eyes, however cold and clear they may be, please, please remember it was not for myself alone that I took on the large ambitions of which I have spoken to you, the large risks engaged with them. Nay, do not reproach me; leave me my woman's right to make all the reproaches. I only wanted to do something for you.

I have not written so freely to any man in all my life. I could not do so now did I not feel in some strange way that by this time--perhaps at this very time--you are either dead or in some extreme of peril. If I _knew_ that you would see this, I could not write it. As it is, it gives me some relief--it is my confessional. How often does a woman ever confess her own, her inner and real heart? Never, I think, to any man--certainly not to any living, present man.

I married; yes. It seemed the ordinary and natural thing to do, a useful, necessary, desirable thing to do. I should not complain--I did that with my eyes well opened and with full counsel of my father. My eyes well opened, but my heart well closed! I took on my duties as one of the species human, my duties as wife, as head of a household, as lady of a certain rank. I did all that, for it is what most women would do. It is the system of society. My husband is content.

What am I writing now? Arguing, justifying, defending? Ah, were it possible that you would read this and come back to me, never, never, though it killed me, would I open my heart to you! I write only to a dead man, I say--to one who can never hear. I write once more to a man who set other things above all that I could have done. Deeds, deeds, what you call your country--your own impulses--these were the things you placed above me. You placed above me this adventuring into the wilderness. Yes, I know what are the real impulses in your man's life. I know what you valued above me.

But you are dead! While you lived, I hoped your conscience was clean. I hope that never once have you descended to any conduct not belonging to Meriwether Lewis of Virginia. I know that no matter what temptation was yours, you would remember that I was Mrs. Alston--and that you were Meriwether Lewis of Virginia.

Nay, I _cannot_ stop! How can you mind my garrulous pen--my vain pen--my wicked, wicked, wicked, shameful pen--since you cannot see what it says?

Ah, I had so hoped once more to see you before it was too late! Should this not reach you, and should it reach others, why, let it go to all the world that Theodosia Burr that was, Mrs. Alston of Carolina that is, once ardently importuned a man to join her in certain plans for the betterment of his fortunes as well as her own; and that you did not care to share in those plans! So I failed. And further--let that also go out to the world--I glory in the truth _that I have failed_!

Yes, that at last is the truth at the bottom of my heart! I have searched it to the bottom, and I have found the truth.

I glory in the truth that you have _not_ come back to me.

There--have I not said all that a woman could say to a man, living or dead?

Just as strongly as I have urged you to return, just as strongly I have hoped that you would not return! In my soul I wanted to see you go on in your own fas.h.i.+on, following your own dreams and caring not for mine. That was the Meriwether Lewis I had pictured to myself. I shall glory in my own undoing, if it has meant your success.

Holding to your own ambition, keeping your own loyalty, holding your own counsel and your own speech to the end--pus.h.i.+ng on through everything to what you have set out to do--that is the man I could have loved! Deeds, deeds, high accomplishments--these in truth are the things which are to prevail. The selfish love of success as success--the love of ease, of money, of power--these are the things women covet _from_ a man--yes, but they are not the things a woman _loves in_ a man. No; it is the stiff-necked man, bound in his own ambition, whom women love, even as they swear they do not.

_Therefore, do not come back to me_, Meriwether Lewis! Do not come--forget all that I have said to you before--do not return until you have done your work! Do not come back to me until you can come content. Do not come to me with your splendid will broken. Let it triumph even over the will of a Burr, not used to yielding, not easily giving up anything desired.

This is almost the last letter I shall ever write to any man in all my life. I wonder who will read it--you, or all the world, perhaps! I wish it might rest with you at the last.

Oh, let this thought lie with you as you sleep--you did not come back to me, _and I rejoiced that you did not_!

Tell me, why is it that I think of you lying where the wind is sweet in the trees? Why is it that I think of myself, too, lying at last, with all my doubts composed, all my restless ambitions ended, all my foolish dreams answered--in some place where the sound of the unceasing waters shall wash out from the memory of the world all my secrets and all my sins? Always I hear myself crying:

"I hope I shall not be unhappy, for I do not feel that I have been bad."

Adieu, Meriwether Lewis, adieu! I am glad you can never read this. I am glad that you have not come back. I am glad that I have failed!

CHAPTER XI

THE BEE

"Captain, dear," said honest Patrick Ga.s.s, putting an arm under his wounded commander's shoulders as he eased his position in the boat, "ye are not the man ye was when ye hit me that punch back yonder on the Ohio, three years ago. Since ye're so weak now, I have a good mind to return it to ye, with me compliments. 'Tis safer now!"

Ga.s.s chuckled at his own jest as his leader looked up at him.

The boiling current of the great Missouri, bend after bend, vista after vista, had carried them down until at length they had reached the mouth of the Yellowstone, and had seen on ahead the curl of blue smoke on the beach--the encampment of their companions, who were waiting for them here. These wonderful young men, these extraordinary wilderness travelers, had performed one more miracle. Separated by leagues of wild and unknown land, they met now casually, as though it were only what should be expected. Their feat would be difficult even today.

William Clark, walking up and down along the bank, looking ever upstream for some sign of his friend, hurried down to meet the boats, and gazed anxiously at the figure lifted in the arms of the men.

"What's wrong, Merne?" he exclaimed. "Tell me!"