"I agree with you. But when we take the last wishes of the dead, we take what is the law for us. And the law of your son was the law of honor. Suppose, my dear madam, there were a woman concerned in this matter?"
"He never wronged a woman in his life----"
"Precisely, nor in his death would he wrong one! Do you begin to see?"
"Did he ever speak to you of her?"
"It was impossible that he should; but I knew them both. I knew their secret. Were it in his power to do so, I am sure that he carried his secret with him, so that it might never be shared by any. That secret he has guarded in death as in life."
"But shall I let that stain rest on his name?" The dark eye of the old woman gleamed upon her son's friend.
"Do not I love him also? I am speaking now only of his own wish--not ours. I know that he would shield her at any cost--nay, I know he did shield her at any cost. May not we shield him--and her--no matter what the cost to us? If he laid that wish on us, ought we not to respect it? Madam, I shall frame a letter which will serve to appease the criticism of the public in regard to your son. If it be not the exact truth--and who shall tell the exact truth?--it will at least be accepted as truth, and it will forever silence any talk. What should the public know of a life such as his? There are some lives which are tragically large, and such was his. He lived with honor, and he could not die without it. What was in his heart we shall not ask to know. If ever he sinned, he is purged of any sin."
Jefferson was silent for a moment, holding the bereaved mother's hand in his own.
"He shall have a monument, madam," he went on. "It shall mark his grave in yonder wilderness. They shall name at least a county for him, and hold it his sacred grave-place--there in Tennessee, by the old Indian road. Let him lie there under the trees--that is as he would wish. He shall have some monument--yes, but how futile is all that! His greatest monument will be in the vast new country which he has brought to us. He was a man of a natural greatness not surpassed by any of his time."
* * * * * What of Theodosia Alston, loyal and lofty soul, blameless wife, devoted and pathetic adherent to the fallen fortunes of her ill-starred father?