The Magnificent Adventure. Emerson Hough
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did not desert my duty, mother,” said he at length.
“Oh, no, you would not do that, Merne!” returned the widow.
“Please, mother,” said he suddenly, “I want you to call me by my full name—that of your people. Am I not Meriwether, too?”
The hand on his forehead ceased its gentle movement, fell to its owner’s lap. A sigh passed his mother’s set lips.
“Yes, my son, Meriwether,” said she. “This is the last journey! I have lost you, then, it seems? You do not wish to be my boy any longer? You are a man altogether, then?”
“I am Meriwether Lewis, mother,” said he gravely, and no more.
“Yes!” She spoke absently, musingly. “Yes, you always were!”
“I went westward, clear across the Ragged Mountains,” said the youth. “These”—and he pointed with contempt to the small trophies at his belt—“will do for the darkies at the stables. I put yon old ringtail up a tree last night, on my way home, and thought it was as well to wait till dawn, till I could see the rifle-sights; and afterward—the woods were beautiful today. As to the trails, even if there is no trail, I know the way back home—you know that, mother.”
“I know that, my son, yes. You were born for the forest. I fear I shall not hold you long on this quiet farm.”
“All in time, mother! I am to stay here with you until I am fitted to go higher. You know what Mr. Jefferson has said to me. I am for Washington, mother, one of these days—for I hold it sure that Mr. Jefferson will go there in some still higher place. He was my father’s friend, and is ours still.”
“It may be that you will go to Washington, my son,” said his mother; “I do not know. But will you stay there? The forest will call to you all your life—all your life! Do I not know you, then? Can I not see your life—all your life—as plainly as if it were written? Do I not know—your mother? Why should not your mother know?”
He looked around at her rather gravely once again, unsmilingly, for he rarely smiled.
“How do you know, mother? What do you know? Tell me—about myself! Then I will tell you also. We shall see how we agree as to what I am and what I ought to do!”
“My son, it is no question of what you ought to do, for that blends too closely in fate with what you surely will do—must do—because it was written for you. Yonder forest will always call to you.” She turned now toward the sun, sinking across the red-leaved forest lands. “The wilderness is your home. You will go out into it and return—often; and then at last you will go and not come back again—not to me—not to anyone will you come back.”
The youth did not move as she sat, her hands on his head. Her voice went on, even and steady.
“You are old, Meriwether Lewis! It is time, now. You are a man. You always were a man! You were born old. You never have been a boy, and never can be one. You never were a child, but always a man. When you were a baby, you did not smile; when you were a boy, you always had your way. My boy, a long time ago I ceased to oppose that will of yours—I knew that it was useless. But, ah, how I have loved that will when I felt it was behind your promise! I knew you would do what you had set for yourself to do. I knew you would come back with deeds in your hand, my boy—gained through that will which never would bend for me or for anyone else in the world!”
He remained motionless, apparently unaffected, as his mother went on.
“You were always old, always grown up, always resolved, always your own master—always Meriwether Lewis. When you were born, you were not a child. When the old nurse brought you to me—I can see her black face grinning now—she carried you held by the feet instead of lying on her arm. You stood, you were so strong! Your hair was dark and full even then. You were old! In two weeks you turned where you heard a sound—you recognized sight and sound together, as no child usually does for months. You were beautiful, my boy, so strong, so straight—ah, yes!—but you never were a boy at all. When you should have been a baby, you did not weep and you did not smile. I never knew you to do so. From the first, you always were a man.”
She paused, but still he did not speak.
“That was well enough, for later we were left alone. But your father was in you. Do I not know well enough where you got that settled melancholy of yours, that despondency, that somber grief—call it what you like—that marked him all his life, and even in his death? That came from him, your father. I thank God I did not give you that, knowing what life must hold for you in suffering! He suffered, yes, but not as you will. And you must—you must, my son. Beyond all other men, you will suffer!”
“You were better named Cassandra, mother!” Yet the young man scarce smiled even now.
“Yes, I am a prophetess, all too sooth a prophetess, my son. I see ahead as only a mother can see—perhaps as only one of the old Highland blood can see. I am soothseer and soothsayer, because you are blood of my blood, bone of my bone, and I cannot help but know. I cannot help but know what that melancholy and that resolution, all these combined, must spell for you. You know how his heart was racked at times?”
The boy nodded now.
“Then know how your own must be racked in turn!” said she. “My son, it is no ordinary fate that will be yours. You will go forward at all costs; you will keep your word bright as the knife in your belt—you will drive yourself. What that means to you in agony—what that means when your will is set against the unalterable and the inevitable—I wish—oh, I wish I could not see it! But I do see it, now, all laid out before me—all, all! Oh, Merne—may I not call you Merne once more before I let you go?”
She let her hands fall from his head to his shoulders as she gazed steadily out beyond him, as if looking into his future; but she herself sat, her strong face composed. She might, indeed, have been a prophetess of old.
“Tragedy is yours, my son,” said she, slowly, “not happiness. No woman will ever come and lie in your arms happy and content.”
“Mother!”
He half flung off her hands, but she laid them again more firmly on his shoulders, and went on speaking, as if half in reverie, half in trance, looking down the long slope of green and gold as if it showed the vista of the years.
“You will love, my boy, but with your nature how could love mean happiness to you? Love? No man could love more terribly. You will be intent, resolved, but the firmness of your will means that much more suffering for you. You will suffer, my boy—I see that for you, my first-born boy! You will love—why should you not, a man fit to love and be loved by any woman? But that love, the stronger it grows, will but burn you the deeper. You will struggle through on your own path; but happiness does not lie at the end of that path for you. You will succeed, yes—you could not fail; but always the load on your shoulders will grow heavier and heavier. You will carry it alone, until at last it will be too much for you. Your strong heart will break. You will lie down and die. Such a fate for you, Merne, my boy—such a man as you will be!”
She sighed, shivered, and looked about her, startled, as if she had spoken aloud in some dream.
“Well, then, go on!” she said, and withdrew her hands from his shoulders. The faces of both were now gazing straight on over the gold-flecked slope before them. “Go on, you are a man. I know you will not turn back from what you undertake. You will not change, you will not turn—because you cannot. You were born to earn and not to own; to find, but not to possess. But as you have lived, so you will die.”
“You give me no long shrift, mother?” said the youth, with a twinkle in his eye.
“How can I? I can only tell you what is in the book of life. Do I not know? A mother always loves her son; so it takes all her courage to face what she knows will be his lot. Any mother can read her son’s future—if she dares to read it. She knows—she knows!”
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