CHAPTER IX
THE SUMMONS
The winter was wearing away. The wild fowl were pa.s.sing northward, landward. The game had changed its haunts. March was coming, the month between the seasons for the tribes, the time of want, the leanest period of the year.
Meriwether Lewis, alone one morning in the comfortable cabin which served as a house for himself and his friend, sat pondering on these things, as was his wont. His little Indian dog, always his steady companion, had taken its place on the top of the flatted stump which served as a desk, near the maps and papers which Lewis had pushed away. Here the small creature sat, motionless, mute, its eyes fixed adoringly upon its master.
The captain did not notice it. He did not at first hear the rap on the door, nor the footfall of the man who entered inquiringly.
"Yes, Sergeant Ordway?" said he presently, looking up.
Ordway saluted.
"Something for you, sir. It seems to be a letter."
"A letter! How could that be?"
"That is the puzzle, sir," said Ordway, extending a folded and sealed bit of paper. "We do not know how it came. Charbonneau"s wife, the Indian woman, found it in the baby"s hammock just now. She brought it to me, and I saw it was addressed to you. It must have been overlooked by you some time."
"Possibly--possibly," said Lewis. His face was growing pale. "That is all, I think, Sergeant," he added.
Now alone, he turned toward the letter, which lay upon the table. His face lighted with a wondrous smile, though none might see it save the little dog which watched his every movement. For Meriwether Lewis had received once more the thing for which every fiber of his being clamored!
He knew, without one look, that the number scratched in the wax of the seal would be the figure "4." He opened the letter slowly. There fell from it a square of stiff, white paper--all white, he thought, until he turned it over. Then he saw it looking up at him--her face indeed!
It was a little silhouette in black, done in that day before the camera, when small portraits were otherwise well-nigh impossible. The artist, skilled as were many in this curious form of portraiture, had done his work well. Lewis gazed with a sudden leap of his pulses upon the features outlined before him--the profile so cleanly cut and lofty--the hair low over the forehead, the chin round and firm, yet delicate and womanly withal. Here even the long lashes of her eyes were visible, just as in life. Yes, it was her face!
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Her face indeed!"]
And now he read the letter, which covered many closely written sheets:
Meriwether Lewis, I said to you that my face should come to you, wherever you might be. This time it has been long--I cannot tell how long. That is for my messenger to determine, not for you or me. But that it has been long I shall know, else long since there would have been no need of my adding this letter to the others.
Not one of them has served to bring you back! Since you now have this one, let it advise you that she who wrote it is grieved that you gaze upon this little portrait, and not upon the face of her whom it represents. "Tis a monstrous good likeness, they tell me; but would you not rather it were myself?
Where are you? I cannot tell. What adversities have been yours? I cannot tell that. You cannot know what grief you have caused by your long absence. You cannot know how many hearts you have made sad. You cannot know how you have delayed--destroyed--plans made for you. We are in ignorance, each of the other, now. I do not know where you are--you do not know where I may be. A great wall arises between us. A great gulf is fixed. We cannot touch hands across it.
As I know, this will not move you; but I cannot restrain this reproach. I cannot help telling you that you have made me suffer by your silence, by your absence. Do I make you suffer by looking at you with reproach in my eyes--as I do now?
You have forgotten your childhood friend! I may be dead as you read--would you care? I have been in need--yet you have not come to comfort me and to dry my tears.
Figure to yourself what has happened to all my plans and dreams for you. Even I cannot tell of that, because, as I write, it all lies in the future--that future which is the present for you as you sit reading this. All I know is that as you read it my appeal has failed.
I can but guess how or where these presents may find you; for how shall I know how wise or how faithful my messenger has been? Are you on the prairie still, Meriwether Lewis?
Is it winter? Does the snow lie deep? Are the winds keen and biting? Are you well fed? Are you warm? Have you bodily comforts? Have you physical well-being?
How can I answer all these questions? Yet they come to my mind as I write.
Are you in the mountains? Were there, after all, those great Stony Mountains of which men told fables? Have you found the great unicorn or the mammoth or the mastadon which Mr.
Jefferson said you were likely to meet? Have you found the dinosaur or the dragon or the great serpents of a foregone day? Suppose you have. What do they weigh with me--with you?
Are they so much to you as you thought they would be? Is the taste of all your triumphs so sweet as you have dreamed, Meriwether Lewis?
Have you grown savage, my friend--have you come to be just a man like the others? Tell me--no, I will not ask you! If I thought you could descend to the lawless standard of the wilderness--but no, I cannot think of that! In any case, "tis too late now. You have not come back to me.
You see, I am writing not so much to implore you to return as to reproach you for not returning. By the time this reaches you, it will be too late in our plans. We could not afford to wait months--three months, four, six--has it been so long as that since you left us? If so, it is too late now. If we have failed, why did we fail?
They told me--my father and his friends--and I told you plainly, that if your expedition went on, then our plan must fail. But now I must presume that you have succeeded, or by this time are beyond the feeling of either success or failure. If you have failed, it is too late for us to succeed. If you have succeeded, then certainly we have failed. As you read this, you may be doing so with hope. I, who wrote it, will be sitting in despair.
Meriwether Lewis, come back to me, even so! It will be too late for you to aid me. You will have ruined all our hopes.
But yours still will be the task--the duty--to look me in the face and say whether you owe aught to me. Can I forgive you? Why, yes, I could never do aught else than forgive. No matter what you did, I fear I should forgive you. Because, after all, my own wish in all this----
Ah! let me write slowly here, and think very carefully!
My greatest wish in this, greater than any ambition I had for myself or my family--_has been for you!_ See, I am writing those words--would I dare tell them to any other man in all the world? Nay, surely not. But that I trust you, the very writing itself is proof. And I write this to you, who never can be to me what man must be to woman if either is to be happy--the man to whom I can never be what woman must be if she is to mean all to any man. Apart forever! We are estranged by circ.u.mstance, sundered by that, if you please, weak as those words seem. And yet something takes your soul to mine. Does something take mine to you, across all the wilderness, across all the miles, across all the long and bitter months?
I say to you once more that in all this my demand upon you has not been for myself, nor wholly for my father. Let me be careful here.
This impa.s.sable gulf is fixed between us for all our lives.
Neither of us may cross it. But I have been desirous to see you stand among men, where you belong. Do not ask me why I wished that--you must never ask me. I am Mrs. Alston, even as I write.
And as for you? Are you in rags as you read this? Are you cold and hungry? Are you alone, aloof, deserted, perhaps suffering, with none to comfort you? I cannot aid you. Nay, I shall punish you once more, and say that it was your desire--that you brought this on yourself--that you would have it thus, in spite of all my intervention for you.
Moreover, you shall say to yourself always:
"She asked and I refused her!"
Nay, nay! I shall not be so cruel. I shall not say that at all. Let me mark that out! Because, if I write that, you will think I wish to hurt you. And, my friend, let me admit the truth--the truth I ought not to lay upon you as any secret--_I could never wish to hurt you._
They say that men far away in the wilderness sometimes long for the sight of the face of a woman. See, now you have that! I look up at you! What is your impulse? I am alone with you--I am in your hands--treat me, therefore, with honor, I pray you!
You must not raise my face to yours, must not bend yours to mine. See now, measure my trust in you, Meriwether Lewis!
Estimate the great confidence I hold in you as a gentleman because--do you not see?--a gentleman does not kiss the woman whom he has at a disadvantage--the woman who can never be his, who is another"s. Is it not true?
Happiness is not for us. We are so far apart. I am sad. Good night, Meriwether Lewis! I, too, have your picture by me--the one you gave me years ago when I was in Virginia.
And it--good night, Mr. Meriwether Lewis!
Place me apart--far from you in the room. Let my face not look at you direct. But in your heart--your hard heart of a man, intent on dreams, forgetful of all else--please, please let there linger some small memory of her who dares to write these lines--and who hopes that you never may see them!
CHAPTER X
THE ABYSS
The little Indian dog sat on the table, silent, motionless, looking at its master, whose head was bowed upon his arms. Now and then it had stooped as if it would have looked in his face, but dared not, if for very excess of love. It turned an inquiring eye to the door, which, after a time, opened.