The Magnificent Adventure - Emerson Hough (fiction books to read .txt) 📗

“You speak well! Go on.”

“England is with us, and Spain—they back my father’s plans.”

He turned now and raised a hand.

“Plans? What plans? I must warn you, I am pledged to my own country’s service.”

“Is not my father also? He is one of the highest officers in the government of this country.”

“You may tell me more or not, as you like.”

“There is little more to tell,” said she. “These gentlemen have made certain plans of which I know little. My father said to me that Thomas Jefferson himself knows that this purchase from Napoleon cannot be made under the Constitution of the United States—that, given time for reflection, Mr. Jefferson himself will admit that the Louisiana purchase was but a national folly from which this country cannot benefit. Why not turn, then, to a future which offers certainties? Why not come with us, and not attempt the impossible? That is what he said. And he asked me to implore you to pause.”

He sat motionless, looking straight ahead, as she went on.

“He only besought me to induce you, if I could, either to abandon your expedition wholly as soon as you honorably might do so, or to go on with it only to such point as will prove it unfeasible and impracticable. Not wishing you to prove traitorous to a trust, these gentlemen wish you to know that they would value your association—that they would give you splendid opportunity. With men such as these, that means a swift future of success for one—for one—whom I shall always cherish warmly in my heart.”

The color was full in her face. He turned toward her suddenly, his eye clouded.

“It is an extraordinary matter in every way which you bring for me,” he said slowly; “extraordinary that foreigners, not friends of this country, should call themselves the friends of an officer sworn to the service of the republic! I confess I do not understand it. And why send you?”

“It is difficult for me to tell you. But my father knew the antagonism between Mr. Jefferson and himself, and knew your friendship for Mr. Jefferson. He knew also the respect, the pity—oh, what shall I say?—which I have always felt for you—the regard——”

“Regard! What do you mean?”

“I did not mean regard, but the—the wish to see you succeed, to help you, if I could, to take your place among men. I told you that but yesterday.”

She was all confusion now. He seemed pitiless.

“I have listened long enough to have my curiosity aroused. I shall have somewhat to ponder—on the trail to the West.”

“Then you mean that you will go on?”

“Yes!”

“You do not understand——”

“No! I understand only that Mr. Jefferson has never abandoned a plan or a promise or a friend. Shall I, then, who have been his scholar and his friend?”

“Ah, you two! What manner of men are you that you will not listen to reason? He is high in power. Will you not also listen to the call of your own ambition? Why, in that country below, you might hold a station as proud as that of Mr. Jefferson himself. Will you throw that away, for the sake of a few dried skins and flowers? You speak of being devoted to your country. What is devotion—what is your country? You have no heart—that I know well; but I credited you with the brain and the ambition of a man!”

He sat motionless under the sting of her reproaches; and as some reflection came to her upon the savagery of her own words, she laughed bitterly.

“Think you that I would have come here for any other man?” she demanded. “Think you that I would ask of you anything to my own dishonor, or to your dishonor? But now you do not listen. You will not come back—even for me!”

In answer he simply bent and kissed her hand, stepped from the carriage, raised his hat. Yet he hesitated for half an instant and turned back.

“Theodosia,” said he, “it is hard for me not to do anything you ask of me—you do not know how hard; but surely you understand that I am a soldier and am under orders. I have no option. It seems to me that the plans of your father and his friends should be placed at once before Mr. Jefferson. It is strange they sent you, a woman, as their messenger! You have done all that a woman could. No other woman in the world could have done as much with me. But—my men are waiting for me.”

This time he did not turn back again.

Colonel Burr’s carriage returned more slowly than it had come. It was a dejected occupant who at last made her way, still at an early hour, to the door of her father’s house.

Burr met her at the door. His keen eye read the answer at once.

“You have failed!” said he.

She raised her dark eyes to his, herself silent, mournful.

“What did he say?” demanded Burr.

“Said he was under orders—said you should go to Mr. Jefferson with your plan—said Mr. Jefferson alone could stop him. Failed? Yes, I failed!”

“You failed,” said Burr, “because you did not use the right argument with him. The next time you must not fail. You must use better arguments!”

Theodosia stood motionless for an instant, looking at her father, then passed back into the house.

“Listen, my daughter,” said Burr at length, in his eye a light that she never had known before. “You must see that man again, and bring him back into our camp! We need him. Without him I cannot handle Merry, and without Merry I cannot handle Yrujo. Without them my plan is doomed. If it fails, your husband has lost fifty thousand dollars and all the moneys to which he is pledged beyond that. You and I will be bankrupt—penniless upon the streets, do you hear?—unless you bring that man back. Granted that all goes well, it means half a million dollars pledged for my future by Great Britain herself, half as much pledged by Spain, success and future honor and power for you and me—and him. He must come back! That expedition must not go beyond the Mississippi. You ask me what to tell him? Ask him no longer to return to us and opportunity. Ask him to come back to Theodosia Burr and happiness—do you understand?”

“Sir,” said his daughter, “I think—I think I do not understand!”

He seemed not to hear her—or to toss her answer aside.

“You must try again,” said he, “and with the right weapons—the old ones, my dear—the old weapons of a woman!”

Not in fifty years, said Thomas Jefferson in the last days of his life, had the sun caught him in bed. On this morning, having said good-by to the man to whose hands he had entrusted the dearest enterprise of all his life, he turned back to his desk in the little office-room, and throughout the long and heated day, following a night spent wholly without sleep, he remained engaged in his usual labors, which were the heavier in his secretary’s absence.

He was an old man now, but a giant in frame, a giant in mind, a giant in industry as well. He sat at his desk absorbed, sleepless, with that steady application which made possible the enormous total of his life’s work. He was writing in a fine, delicate hand—legible to this day—certain of those thousands of letters and papers which have been given to us as the record of his career.

In what labor was the President of the United States engaged on this particularly eventful day? It seems he found more to do with household matters than with affairs of state. He was making careful accounts of his French cook, his Irish coachman, his black servants still remaining at his country house in Virginia.

All his life Thomas Jefferson kept itemized in absolute faithfulness a list of all his personal expenses—even to the gratuities he expended in traveling and entertainment. We find, for instance, that “John Cramer is to go into the service of Mr. Jefferson at twelve dollars a month and twopence for drink, two suits of clothes and a pair of boots.” It seems that he bought a bootjack for three shillings; and the cost of countless other household items is as carefully set down.

We may learn from records of this date that in the past year Mr. Jefferson had expended in charity $1,585.60. He tells us that in the first three months of his presidency his expenses were $565.84—and he was wrong ten cents in his addition of the total! In his own hand he sets down “A View of the Consumption of Butchers’ Meat from September 6, 1801, to June 12, 1802.” He knew perfectly well, indeed, what all his household expenses were, also what it cost him to maintain his stables. He did all this bookkeeping himself, and at the end of each year was able to tell precisely where his funds had gone.

We may note one such annual statement, that of the year ended five months previous to the time when Captain Lewis set forth into the West: