THE LETTER
The windows were open to the dusky rose of the west, and their long
curtains stirred in the hot and fitful breeze. Jacqueline, waiting for
the lights, pushed the heavy hair from her forehead and panted a little
with the oppression of the night. Young Isham entered with the candles,
and Mammy Chloe brought her upon a salver a cup of coffee and a roll.
She ate and drank, then sent her old nurse away. The candles, under
their tall glass shades, were upon the centre table, and beside them lay
the letters she was to read. Her husband's own letter was slipped
beneath the ribbon that confined her dress, and lay against her heart.
It was so hot and dull a night that she stood for a while at a window,
leaning a little out, trying to fancy that there was rain in the
fantastic mass of clouds that rose on either side of the evening star.
The smell of the box at the gate was strong. She thought of Fontenoy, of
Major Edward, and of Deb. A grey moth touched her; she looked once again
at the bright star between the clouds, then, turning back into the room,
drew a chair to the table and, sitting down, took into her lap the
papers that lay beside the candles.
There had come a letter in the stage from Winchester. She opened it.
"Could Mr. Rand arrive by such a day? The case was important--the
interests large--the fee large, too. Could he come just as soon as the
jury, the press, and Mr. Jefferson hanged Aaron Burr? An early reply--"
Jacqueline rose, brought writing-materials from the escritoire to the
table, and copied rapidly, in her clear, Italian hand, the Winchester
letter, then laid it to one side to be folded with her own to Lewis for
to-morrow's stage to Williamsburgh. The next letter was, she knew, from
Albemarle, and not important. She laid it aside. The third she opened;
it was from a gentleman in Westmoreland who wished in a certain
litigation "the services, sir, of the foremost lawyer in the state."
Jacqueline smiled and laid it with the Albemarle letter. The matter
might wait until the foremost lawyer's return. There were now two
letters, and neither was from Washington. One was indeed about matters
political, a tirade from a party leader on Rand's folly in declining,
last year, the nomination for Governor, but it contained nothing to
demand his instant attention. The other, which had come by boat from
Norfolk, seemed of no consequence.
Jacqueline put both aside, and took into her hand the packet given her
by Colonel Nicholas. She sat for a moment, looking at the
superscription. "A letter from Washington," Lewis said, "outlining the
Embargo measures. Open and glance through it to see if there be any
message I should have at once." She thought no otherwise than that this
was the letter in question. Mr. Jefferson was, she knew, upon the
defensive in regard to these measures, and she was glad to believe that
he had fallen into an ancient habit and was willing, as of old, to
expatiate upon his policy to Lewis Rand.
She broke the red seals and unfolded the paper. It proved to be a letter
covering a letter. She let fall the folded, inner missive, drew a candle
nearer, and read in Jefferson's small, formal, and very clear hand:--
I have the honour to restore to you the letter which you will find
enclosed. If you ask how it came into my hands, I have but to say
that, in times of crisis and peril, rules of conduct, on the part
of a government as of an individual, have somewhat to bow to
necessity. Enough that it did come into my hands--last autumn.
Judge if I have used it against you! It is now returned to you
because I no longer conceive it necessary to hold it. I might have
burned it; I prefer that you shall do so.
I have but a word to add to our conversation of last August at
Monticello. I am a man of strong affections. Your youth and all the
eager service you did me in those years, and the great hopes I had
for you, endeared you to me. These things are present in my mind.
Were they not so, you would have heard from me in other wise! Were
they not so, that which I now enclose should not travel back to the
writer's hand; it should remain, distinct and black, upon your
Country's records, for your children's children to read with
burning cheeks! I spare you, but you are of course aware that the
affection of which I spoke is dead, dead as the trust with which I
regarded you, or as the pride with which I dwelt upon your future!
Reread and destroy that which I place in your hand.
THOMAS JEFFERSON.
Jacqueline laid down the large, blue, crackling sheet, and took from the
floor beside her, where it had fallen, the President's enclosure. Hand
and eye moved mechanically; she neither thought nor feared. Her judgment
was in suspension, and she was unconscious of herself or of her act. The
seals upon this second letter were broken. She unfolded it. On the
outside it was addressed in a hand that, had she thought, she would have
recognised for Tom Mocket's, to an undistinguished person at Marietta
upon the Ohio; within, the writing was her husband's and the address was
to Aaron Burr. The date was last August, the subject-matter the
disruption of the Republic and the conquest of Mexico, and the detail
of plans included the arrangement by which Rand was to leave Albemarle,
ostensibly to examine a purchase of land beyond the mountains He would
leave, however, not to return. Once out of the country, he with his wife
would press on rapidly to the Ohio, to Blennerhassett's island.
The summer night deepened, hot and languorous, with a sweep of moths to
the candle flames, with vagrant odours of flowering vines and vagrant
sounds of distant laughter, voices, footsteps down the long street.
Jacqueline sat very still, the letter in her lap. The curtains at the
window moved in the fitful air. Through the open doors from the kitchen
in the yard behind the house came the strumming of a banjo, then Joab's
deep bass:--
"Go down, go down, Moses,
Tell Pharaoh let us go!
Go down, go down, Moses,
King Pharaoh, let us go!"
There was a wave of honeysuckle, too faint and deadly sweet. A party of
men, boatmen or waggoners, went by, and as they passed, broke into rough
laughter.
Jacqueline rose, letting fall the letter. With her hand to her forehead
she stood for a minute, then moved haltingly to the window. Her eyes
were blank; she wanted air, she knew, and for the moment she knew little
else. She was whelmed in deep waters, and all horizons were one. When
she reached the casement, she could only cling to the sill, raise her
eyes to the stars, and find nothing there to help her understand. There
was in them neither calm nor sublimity; they swung and danced like
insensate fireflies. The honeysuckle was too strong--and she must tell
Joab she did not wish to hear his banjo to-night. The men who had passed
were still laughing.
She put her hand again to her forehead, then presently withdrew it and
looked over her shoulder at the paper lying upon the floor beside the
table. By degrees the vagueness and the absence of sensation vanished.
She had had her moments of merciful deadening, of indifference to pain;
they were past, and torment now began.
Perhaps half an hour went by. She rose from the sofa upon which she had
thrown herself, face down, pressed her hands to her temples, then,
moving to the table, wrote there a word or two, folded and addressed the
paper, and rang the bell. Young Isham appeared and she gave him the
note, bidding him, in a voice that by an effort she made natural, to
hasten upon his errand. When he was gone, she stooped and gathered from
the floor the fallen letters--the President's and Lewis Rand's--and laid
them in a drawer. The touch seemed to burn her, for she moaned a little.
She wandered for a moment uncertainly, here and there in the room, then,
returning to the sofa, fell upon her knees beside it, stretched out her
arms along the silk, and laid her head upon them. "O God! O God!" she
said, but made no other prayer.
The minutes passed. There was a step, the sound of the gate-latch, and a
hand upon the knocker. She rose from her knees, and was standing by the
table when, in another moment, the drawing-room door opened to admit
Ludwell Cary. He came forward.
"You sent for me"--He paused, stepped back, and looked at her fully and
gravely. "Something has happened. Tell me what it is."
"You know. You have known all the time. You knew last summer in the
cedar wood!" Her voice broke; she raised her arms above her head, then
let them fall with a cry. "You knew--you knew!"
"How have you come to know? No, don't tell me!"
"I am mad, I think. A letter came that told me. I see now how the world
must look to madmen. It is a curious place where we are all
strangers--and yet we think it is our safe home."
As she turned from him, she reeled. There was a great chair near, beside
the window. Cary caught her by both hands, forced her to sit down, and
drew the curtains apart so that the air of night came fully in. The
quiet street was now deserted; the maple boughs, too, screened the
place. "Look!" he said. "Look how brightly Venus shines! All the immense
rack of clouds that we had at sunset has vanished. The box smells like
the garden at Fontenoy, where, I make no doubt, Deb and Major Edward are
walking up and down, counting the stars. Yes, I knew, that afternoon in
the cedar wood--but not for happiness itself would I have robbed you of
that faith, that confidence--"
She leaned forward in the great chair, her hands clasped upon its arms,
her dark eyes wide upon the night without the window. "I sent for you
because I wished you to tell me all. I wanted truth as I wanted air! I
want it now. That day we met in the cedar wood--you and Uncle Edward
talked together." She drew a difficult breath. "It was then that
they--Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward--began to treat me as though--as
though I had never left home! It was then--"
"They feared," said Cary gently, "for your happiness."
"I returned to Roselands, and in three days we were to travel across the
mountains. Then at sunset, underneath the beech tree"--She sat for a
moment perfectly still, then turned in her chair and spoke in a clear
voice. "That was why you forced him to challenge you, and that was why
you named a distant time and place? The truth, please."
"That was why."
She rose from the chair and leaned, panting, against the window-frame.
"Was there no other way--"
"It seemed the simplest way," he answered quietly. "There was no harm
done, and it answered my purpose." He paused, then went on. "My purpose
was to detain Mr. Rand from so rash and so fatal a step until it was too
late for him to take it."
She turned from the window. "You are generous," she said, in a stifled
voice. "I ask your pardon for my hard thoughts of you. Oh, for a storm
and a wind to blow! It is too hot, too heavy a night. I never wish to
smell the honeysuckle again."
He followed her back to the light of the candles. "Listen to me for a
moment. I do not think that you know--I am not sure that I know--the
iron strength of the laws that rule an ambitious nature. Ambition
becomes an atmosphere; the man whose temperament and self-training enure
him to it breathes it at last as though it were his native air. It
becomes that--an inner and personal clime, the source and spring of
countless actions, great and small. The light, too, is refracted, and
the great background of life is not seen quite truly. It is, I think, an
enchanted air, into which a man drifts upon a river of dreams and
imaginations--and how hard to reascend, against the current!" He paused,
stood a moment with downcast eyes, measuring the table with his hand,
then drew a quick breath and spoke on. "Given his parentage and descent,
his unhappy and hardly-treated boyhood, the visions, the rebellions, the
longings with which he must have walked the hot and rank tobacco-fields;
given the upward struggle of his youth, so determined and so successful;
given the courage, the hardihood, the wide outlook of a man who has
neither inherited nor been granted, but has himself hewn out and built
up his holding in life; given genius and sense of power, will,
perseverance, and the fatal knowledge that all events and all currents
habitually bend to his hand,--given all this and opportunity"--He
raised his head and met her eyes. "It is not strange and it is not
monstrous that Mr. Rand should have involved himself, to a greater or
less degree, in this attempt upon the West. God is my witness, I would
not have you think it strange and monstrous! Ambition is, perhaps, the
most human of all qualities. Many and many an ambitious man has been
loved, loved passionately, loved deservedly!--many a conqueror, many a
one of those who failed to conquer and who were called by an ugly name!
Love does not love the ambition, it loves that which is love-worthy
below the iron grating and the tracery of false gold! As the world goes,
Lewis Rand and I are enemies; but I could swear to you to-night that I
see, that I have always seen, a greatness in him! I believe it to be
distorted and darkened, but the quality of it is greatness. Were I
he"--He paused for a moment, then continued, with dignity. "Were I he, I
would say to the lady who, for love, had given me her hand in
wedlock,--'Love me still. My land is one of storm and darkness, of rude
wastes and frowning strongholds whence sometimes issue robber bands. But
it is not a petty land, and side by side with all that is wrong runs not
a little that is heroic and right! Love me still and help me there, even
though--even though I am forsworn to you!"
"I would not have you think," she said clearly,--"I would not have you
even lightly dream, that his country is not my country! I love him!"
"I know that you do."
"There is no place so dark that I would not wait for him there as for
the dawn. There is no flood I would not cross to him; there is no deep
pit in which I would not seek him, were he fallen there! He has done
wrong, and I am unhappy for it. But never think, never dream, that,
though I see the dark and broken ground, I would leave that country, or
am less than wholly loyal to its King!"
"I have neither thought nor dreamed it."
"When I--when I learned this thing, it shook me so! My brain whirled,
and then I thought of you and called to you."
"There is no service to which you could call me that I would not
thankfully render. I am your friend and your people's friend. There is
one thing more I should like to say to you. Do not fear for him. There
is no reason to believe that this will ever be discovered. The lips of
those who know are sealed."
"Who knows?"
"On our side your uncles, my brother and I,--and your cousin, I think,
guesses. The President, also, is aware--"
She reddened deeply. "I know," she said, in a stifled voice. "The
President, too, is generous--"
"On his--on Mr. Rand's side, certain men whom we need not name. That he
has secured their silence, events have proved, and I take it for granted
that he has been careful to recall and to destroy any writing that might
incriminate. He is, I think, quite safe."
She turned from him and, sitting down by the table, laid her head upon
her arms. He regarded her for a moment with compassion and
understanding, chivalrous and deep, then, moving to the window, stood
there with his face to the evening star. At last she spoke in a broken
and tremulous voice "Mr. Cary--"
He came to her side. "It is a peaceful night, still and bright. You will
sleep, will you not? Leave all this to Time and to the power of
steadfast love! You may yet see in this land the grandeur of the dawn."
"I know that I shall," she answered. "And when I see it, I shall think
reverently of you. It was like you to come, like you to help me so. Now,
good-night!"
She took his hand, and before he could prevent her, raised it to her
lips. "No,--let me! You are generous and you are noble. I acknowledge it
from my heart. Good-night--good-bye!"
He showed for a moment his pent emotion, then strove with and conquered
it. "I will go. Your cousin is from home, and you are alone to-night.
Would you prefer that she should return?"
"No. I had rather be alone."
He took the hand that she gave him, kissed it, and said good-night. When
he was gone and his step had died from the street, she stood for some
moments as he had left her, then, with a sobbing breath, turned to the
table and took the letters from the drawer.