The Magnificent Adventure Part 21

Meriwether Lewis found himself walking down the narrow street of the frontier settlement between the lines of hollyhocks and budding roses which fronted many of the little residences. It was spring, the air was soft. He was young. The woman at his side was very beautiful. So far as he could see they were alone.

They pa.s.sed along the street, turned, made their way down the rock-faced bluff to the water front; but still they were alone. All St. Louis was at the farther end of the wharf, waiting for a last look at the idol of the town.

Theodosia sighed.

"And so Captain Lewis is going to have his way as usual? And he was going--in spite of all--even without saying good-by to me!"

"Yes, I would have preferred that."

"Captain Lewis is mad. Look at that river! They say that when the boat started last week it took them an hour to make a quarter of a mile, when they struck into the Missouri. How many thousands of hours will it take to ascend to the mountains? How will you get your boats across the mountains? What cascades and rapids lie on ahead? Your men will mutiny and destroy you. You cannot succeed--you will fail!"

"I thank you, madam!"

"Oh, you must start now, I presume--in fact, you have started; but I want you to come back before your obstinacy has driven you too far."

"Just what do you mean?"

"Listen. You have given me no time, unkind as you are--not a moment--at an hour like this! In these unsettled times, who knows what may happen? In that very unsettlement lies the probable success of the plan which my father and I have put before you so often. We need you to help us. When are you going to come back to us, Merne?"

As she spoke, they were approaching the long wharf along the water front, lined with rude craft which plied the rivers at that time--flatboats, keel-boats, pirogues, canoes--and, far off at the extremity of the line, the boat which Lewis and his friends were to take. A party of idlers and observers stood about it even now. The gaze of the young leader was fixed in that direction. He did not make any immediate sign that he had heard her speech.

"I told Shannon, my aide, to meet me here," he said at last. "He was to fetch my long spygla.s.s. There are certain little articles of my equipment over yonder in the wharf shed. Would you excuse me for just a moment?"

He stooped at the low door and entered. But she followed him--followed after him unconsciously, without plan, feeling only that he must not go, that she could not let him away from her.

She saw the light floating through the door fall on his dense hair, long, loosely bagged in its cue. She saw the quality of his strong figure, in all the fittings of a frontiersman, saw his stern face, his troubled eye, saw the unconscious strength which marked his every movement as he strode about, eager, as it seemed to her, only to be done with his last errands, and away on that trail which so long had beckoned to him.

The strength of the man, the strength of his purpose--the sudden and full realization of both--this caught her like a tangible thing, and left her no more than the old, blind, unformed protest. He must not go! She could not let him go!

But the words she had spoken had caught him, after all. He had been pondering--had been trying to set them aside as if unheard.

"Coming back?" he began, and stopped short once more. They were now both within the shelter of the old building.

"Yes, Merne!" she broke out suddenly. "When are you coming back to me, Merne?"

He stood icy silent, motionless, for just a moment. It seemed to her as if he was made of stone. Then he spoke very slowly, deliberately.

"Coming back to _you_? And you call me by that name? Only my mother, Mr. Jefferson and Will Clark ever did so."

"Oh, stiff-necked man! It is so hard to be kind with you! And all I have ever done--every time I have followed you in this way, each time I have humiliated myself thus--it always was only in kindness for you!"

He made no reply.

"Fate ran against us, Merne," she went on tremblingly. "We have both accepted fate. But in a woman's heart are many mansions. Is there none in a man's--in yours--for me? Can't I ask a place in a good man's heart--an innocent, clean place? Oh, think not you have had all the unhappiness in your own heart! Is all the world's misery yours? I don't want you to go away, Merne, but if you do--if you must--won't you come back? Oh, won't you, Merne?"

Her voice was trembling, her hand half raised, her eyes sought after him. She stood partly in shadow, the flare of light from the open door falling over her face. She might have been some saint of old in pictured guise; but she was a woman, alive, beautiful, delectable, alluring--especially now, with this tone in her voice, this strangely beseeching look in her eyes.

Her hands were almost lifted to be held out to him. She stood almost inclined to him, wholly unconscious of her att.i.tude, forgetting that her words were imploring, remembering only that he was going.

He seemed not to hear her voice as he stood there, but somewhere as if out of some savage past, a voice did speak to him, saying that when a man is sore athirst, then a man may drink--that the well-spring would not miss the draft, and would tell no tale of it!

He stood, as many another man has stood, and fought the fight many another man has fought--the fight between man the primitive and man the gentleman, chivalry contending with impulse, blood warring with breeding.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Oh, Theo, what have I done?'"]

"Yes!" so said the voice in his ear. "Why should the spring grudge a draft to a soul aflame with an undying thirst? Vows? What have vows to do with this? Duty? What is duty to a man peris.h.i.+ng?--I know not what it was. I heard it. I felt it. Forgive me, it was not I myself! Oh, Theo, what have I done?"

She could not speak, could not even sob. Neither horror nor resentment was possible for her, nor any protest, save the tears which welled silently, terribly.

Unable longer to endure this, Meriwether Lewis turned to leave behind him his last hope of happiness, and to face alone what he now felt to be the impenetrable night of his own destiny. He never knew when his hands fell from Theodosia Alston's face, or when he turned away; but at last he felt himself walking, forcing his head upright, his face forward.

He pa.s.sed, a tall, proud man in his half-savage trappings--a man in full owners.h.i.+p of splendid physical powers; but as he walked his feet were lead, his heart was worse than lead. And though his face was turned away from her, he knew that always he would see what he had left--this picture of Theodosia weeping--this picture of a saint mocked, of an altar desecrated. She wept, and it was because of him!

The dumb cry of his remorse, his despair, must have struck back to where she still stood, her hands on her bosom, staring at him as he pa.s.sed:

"Theo! Theo! What have I done? What have I done?"

PART II

CHAPTER I

UNDER ONE FLAG

What do you bring, oh, mighty river--and what tidings do you carry from the great mountains yonder in the unknown lands? In what region grew this great pine which swims with you to the sea? What fat lands reared this heavy trunk, which sinks at last, to be buried in the sands?

What jewels lie under your flood? What rich minerals float impalpably in your tawny waters? Across what wide prairies did you come--among what hills--through what vast forests? How long, great river, was your journey, sufficient to afford so tremendous a gathering of the waters?

A hundred years ago the great Missouri made no answer to these questions. It was open highway only for those who dared. The man who asked its secrets must read them for himself. What a time and place for adventure! What a time and place for men!

From sea to sea, across an unknown, fabled mountain range, lay our wilderness, now swiftly trebled by a miracle in statecraft. The flag which floated over the last stockade of Spain, the furthest outpost of France, now was advancing step by step, inch by inch, up the giant flood of the Missouri, borne on the flags.h.i.+p of a flotilla consisting of one flatboat and two skiffs, carrying an army whose guns were one swivel piece and thirty rifles.

Not without toil and danger was this enterprise to advance. When at length the last smoke of a settler's cabin had died away over the lowland forest, the great river began in earnest to exact its toll.

Continually the boats, heavily laden as they were, ran upon s.h.i.+fting bars of sand, or made long detours to avoid some _chevaux de frise_ of white-headed snags sunk in the current with giant uptossing limbs.

Floating trees came down resistlessly on the spring rise, demanding that all craft should beware of them; caving banks, in turn, warned the boats to keep off; and always the mad current of the stream, never relaxing in vehemence, laid on the laboring boats the added weight of its mountain of waters, gaining in volume for nearly three thousand miles.

The square sail at times aided the great bateau when the wind came upstream, but no sail could serve for long on so tortuous a water. The great oars, twenty-two in all, did their work in l.u.s.ty hands, hour after hour, but sometimes they could hardly hold the boats against the power of the June rise. The setting poles could not always find good bottom, but sometimes the men used these in the old keel boat fas.h.i.+on, traveling along the walking-boards on the sides of the craft, head down, bowed over the setting-poles--the same manner of locomotion that had conquered the Mississippi.

When sail and oar and setting-pole proved unavailing, the men were out and overboard, running the banks with the cordelle. As they labored thus on the line, like so many yoked cattle, using each ounce of weight and straining muscle to hold the heavy boat against the current, snags would catch the line, stumps would foul it, trees growing close to the bank's edge would arrest it. Sometimes the great boat, swung sidewise in the current in spite of the last art of the steersmen, would tauten the line like a tense fiddle-string, flipping the men, like so many insects, from their footing, and casting them into the river, to emerge as best they might.

Cruzatte, Lab.i.+.c.he, Drouillard--all the French voyageurs--with the infinite French patience smiled and sweated their way through. The New Englanders grew grim; the Kentuckians fumed and swore. But little by little, inch by inch, creeping, creeping, paying the toll exacted, they went on day by day, leaving the old world behind them, morning by morning advancing farther into the new.