Lewis Rand

by Mary Johnston

At an early hour the crowd in the Hall of the House of Delegates was very great, and as it drew toward the time when the principals in the drama would appear, the press of the people and the heat of the August day grew well-nigh intolerable. In the gallery were many women, and their diaphanous gowns and the incessant flutter of their fans imparted to this portion of the Hall a pale illusion of comfort. In the hall below, men stood upon the window-sills, choked the entrances, crowded the corridors without. Not only was there a throng where something might be heard and seen, but the portico of the Capitol had its numbers, and the green surrounding slopes a concourse avid of what news the birds might bring. Within and without, the heat was extreme, even for August in Tidewater Virginia; an atmosphere sultry and boding, tense with the feeling of an approaching storm.

In the gallery, beside Unity and Mrs. Wickham, around her women of Federalist families who were loath to believe any one guilty who was prosecuted, or persecuted, by the present Government, and women of Republican houses who asserted, while they waved their fans, that, being guilty, Aaron Burr must be, should be, would be hanged! sat Jacqueline Rand, and wondered somewhat at her weakness in coming there that day. It had been, perhaps, in the last analysis, a painful curiosity, a vague desire to see the place, the men, all the circumstance and environment, with which her husband—she thanked God with every breath—had no connection! He might have had here his part, she knew tremulously; it might have been his role to stand here beside Aaron Burr, and, with a passionately humble and grateful heart, she nursed the memory of that winter night when he had sworn to her that from that hour he and this enterprise should be strangers.

There had been days and weeks of preliminaries to the actual trial for high treason, but she had not before been in this hall. All her delicacy shrank from the thought of sitting here beside her husband, conscious of his consciousness that she knew all that might have been, and saw in fancy more prisoners at the bar than one. No man would like that. He had come often to the Capitol during the days of skirmishing prior to the general engagement; had he not done so, it would have been at once remarked. She expressed no desire to accompany him, nor did he ever ask her to do so. She was aware of the general surprise that he had no place among the Government counsel. Whether or not such place had been offered to him, pressed upon him, she did not know, but she thought it possible that this was the case. If so, he had refused as was right. Acceptance, she knew, would have been impossible.

All through these months there had been between them a silent pact, a covenant to avoid all superfluous mention of the topic which met them on every hand, from every mouth, in every letter or printed sheet. Rand was much occupied with important cases, much in demand in various portions of the state, much away from home. She was not a woman to demand as her right entrance into every chamber of another's soul. Her own had its hushed rooms, its reticences, its altars built to solitude; she was aware that beyond, below, above the fair chamber where he entertained her were other spaces in her husband's nature. Into some she looked as through open door and clear windows, but others were closed to her, and she was both too proud and too pure of thought to search for keys that had not been offered her.

She knew that her husband had not meant to be absent from Richmond that day. An unexpected turn in the case he was conducting had compelled his presence in Williamsburgh, and on the other hand, in Richmond, the labour of finding an impartial jury had been brought to a sudden end by Burr's coup de main in refusing to challenge and calmly accepting as prejudiced a twelve as perhaps, in the United States of America, ever decided whether a man should live or die. The move had hastened the day when the Government was to begin its cannonade.

Lewis was yet in Williamsburgh. Had he been present in this hail, watching events with his fellow lawyers, fellow politicians, fellow countrymen, who knew nothing of one snowy night a year ago last February, his wife, for both their sakes, would have remained away. As it was, she had been persuaded. Unity would not for much have missed the spectacle, friends had been pressing, and at last her own painful interest prevailed. She was here now, and she sat as in a waking dream, her hands idle, her eyes, wide and dark, steadily fixed upon the scene below. She saw, leaning against a window, Ludwell Cary, and, the centre of a cluster of men in hunting-shirts, Adam Gaudylock.

The Capitol clock struck twelve. As the last stroke died upon the feverish air, the Chief Justice entered the Hall and took the Speaker's chair. Beside him was Cyrus Griffin, the District Judge. Hay, the District Attorney, with his associates William Wirt and Alexander McRae, now appeared, and immediately afterward the imposing array of the prisoner's counsel, a phalanx which included no less than four sometime Attorneys-General and two subalterns of note. These took the seats reserved for them; the marshal and his deputies pressed the people back, and the jury entered and filled the jury box. Below and near them sat a medley of witnesses—important folk, and folk whom only this trial made important.

A loud murmur was now heard from without; the marshal's men, red and perspiring, cleared a thread-like path, and the prisoner, accompanied by his son-in-law, entered the Hall. He was dressed in black, with carefully powdered hair. Quiet, cool, smiling, and collected, he was brought to the bar, when, having taken his place, bowed to the judges, and greeted his counsel, he turned slightly and surveyed with his composed face and his extremely keen black eyes the throng that with intentness looked on him in turn. It was by no means their first encounter of eyes. The preliminaries of that famous trial had been many and prolonged. From the prisoner's arrival in April under military escort to the present moment, through the first arraignment at that bar, the assembling of the Grand Jury, the tedious waiting for Wilkinson's long-deferred arrival from New Orleans, the matter of the subpoena to the President with which the country rang, the adjournment from June to August, the victory gained by the defence in the exclusion of Wilkinson's evidence, and the clamour of the two camps into which the city was divided,—through all this had been manifest the prisoner's deliberate purpose and attempt to make every fibre of a personality ingratiating beyond that of most, tell in its own behalf. He had able advocates, but none more able than Aaron Burr. His day and time was, on the whole, a time astonishingly fluid and naïve, and he impressed it.

There was in this moment, therefore, no novelty of encounter between him and the stare of the opposing throng. He was not seeing them, nor they him, for the first time. Yet the situation had its high intensity. This day was the beginning of the actual trial, and only the day which brought the verdict could outweigh it in importance. This was the lighting of the lamp that was to search out mysteries; this was the bending of the bow; this was the first rung of the ladder which might lead—where? As John Marshall's voice was heard from the bench and the prisoner turned from his steadfast contemplation of the throng, a psychic wave overflowed and lifted all the great assembly. This was spectacle, this was drama! The oldest of all the first principles stirred under the stimulus, and with savage naturalness sucked in the sense of pageant.

The court was opened. Counsel on both sides brought forward and disposed of a minor point or two, then, amid a silence so great that the twittering of the martins outside the windows seemed importunate and shrill, proclamation was made, the prisoner stood up, and the indictment was read.