Children of the Market Place Part 2

CHAPTER VIII

What were my thoughts after all? Was I ashamed of my kinship with Zoe?

With this human being who had nursed me so tenderly through my illness?

Did I begrudge her the interest which she had, of right, with me in our father's estate? She was as closely connected to him by ties of blood as I was. These things I reflected upon as I felt course through me a deep undercurrent of regret.

Was it my mother? Her face came before me as I had learned to know it from her picture. Yes, that seemed to be it. My mother had not been honored. How could my father for any ambition, for any exigency of circ.u.mstance stoop to a marriage of this sort, with the memory of my mother still fresh in mind, if not in heart? Ah! that was it! Did he keep her in his heart? My grandmother's reticence about my father began to fill in with significance of this sort. She knew that he had married the octoroon not many years after my mother's death. She resented it and she preserved silence about him, while keeping me ignorant. Thus without any preparation for the disclosure, I had encountered it at full speed in my career. Reverdy had, no doubt, alluded to this matter when he spoke with such feeling of my father in Chicago. "Poor fellow," he had said. Did my father suffer for this marriage? What was his secret? Why "poor fellow?"

With these thoughts I entered the house. I could sense that they knew that I should return with the secret which they had kept from me. Zoe was not in sight. Sarah's grandmother sat in her chair by the window and called me to her. "Come here, Jimmy," she said. "You're a nice English boy. You know we are all English. My father and mother were English ... well, to be truthful, my father was half Irish. His mother was Irish. And that makes us all friends, no matter how much we fight. We fight and get over it. My husband was in the Revolutionary War; and he's dead and gone long ago; and here I am in this new country of Illinois with Sarah and a son-in-law soon to be ... and maybe as lonely sometimes as you are. Sarah's mother was my pride and she's dead a long time too, but I don't get over that.... What's the matter, Jimmy? You've had bad news. O, yes, it had to come. You know now about Zoe. Well, remember that pretty is as pretty does. For that matter, she is pretty enough, and good enough too. Change her skin and any boy would be proud to be her brother. That's what a little color does. And yet the good Lord made us all, white as well as black. I have always liked the colored people. I liked them in Tennessee, and I hated to see them mistreated whenever they were. But I'm like a lot of others, I don't know what we are going to do with so many of them; and I say let the southern people run their own business and not try to intermeddle in the business of the Almighty.

If He hadn't wanted slavery He could have prevented it. As for me, I don't want no slaves. Every one to his own way. Reverdy's father came down from Tennessee too. He emanc.i.p.ated all his slaves before coming. He grew to hate slavery. He brought one old n.i.g.g.e.r woman with him to Illinois. She's here yet, on a farm not more than fifteen miles away.

And Reverdy's father provided for her, and left a little fortune to Reverdy ... more than $600, and that gives him a start."

The old lady talked on in this manner without a pause.

Just then Reverdy and Sarah came in. They had been for a walk. Sarah had gathered a bouquet of wild flowers. They took in the scene, evidently divined the subject of our talk. For Reverdy sat down and began with gentleness to pick up its threads. "You have been told, James, I hope, that Zoe is not trying to take anything from you. She will make no fight on your father's will." ... "Will," I echoed. "There was a will then?"

"Didn't Mr. Brooks tell you?" ... He hadn't told me. He had scarcely had the opportunity. But if Zoe had been remembered in the will what was the danger now? "No, your father was fond of Zoe ... he remembered her; but not to the same extent that he remembered you. She gets $500 of the estate and you get the rest. But the hitch is here: we have eleven lawyers in Jacksonville and another one studying to be a lawyer; this newcomer, Douglas. And they are as hungry as catfish after a hard winter. And Mr. Brooks feared that some of these fellows would try to stir up a little business by using Zoe to attack the will, and he thought it was best to get it settled. He was a good friend of your father's, liked him, and he wants to see his wishes carried out. Your father was one of the best of men. It's a great loss to the community ... his death."

But as Zoe was my sister why should she not have some of the land that my father left? Should her dark skin deprive her of that? My father had evidently thought so. But now I could settle the estate by enforcing the will, or I could divide the estate with her equally. Could I enforce the will after all? I knew nothing of such things. I hadn't asked Mr.

Brooks' advice about anything. There I sat then going over these matters in my mind, in a kind of weariness and sickness of heart. I had heard of cases where wills had been rejected for fraud or lack of mind on the part of the maker. Was it possible that my father's mind was disturbed?

What fraud could have been wrought upon him? I, the chief beneficiary, had not influenced him; no one could have done so for me. What then?

Zoe came in now and began to spread the table. There was only the one large room downstairs beside the kitchen. But I loved its comforts, its quaint and substantial furnishings. All brought from North Carolina originally, Mrs. Spurgeon said. There were silver spoons, hand wrought; and blue china, and thick blue spreads for the table. There were three rooms upstairs. The beds were posters, built up with feather beds in the cold weather; spread now with thick linen sheets. Mrs. Spurgeon had woven some of these things. Her loom stood yet in one of the outhouses, on occasion set up in the living room when she brought herself to the task of weaving, rarely now. She was too old for much labor. Sarah helped Zoe with the meal. Reverdy stayed to share it with us. But I had learned that he lived at the tavern, though he disliked it thoroughly.

Some nights later I asked Zoe to walk out with me. She was timid about the rattlesnakes which she said were everywhere through the woods and the gra.s.s, sometimes crawling into the roads. There were wildcats and wolves too in the timber; but they were not so likely to be encountered now as in the winter time. I had a pocket pistol, and taking up a hickory stick that was in the corner, I urged Zoe to allay her fears and come. Sarah joined me in prevailing upon her. Zoe doubtless knew that I wished to talk with her about the estate; and at last she walked with me out of the house and into the road.

After a few minutes of silence I asked her about my father: what were his spirits; his way of life; where did he live; did she live with him?

Then Zoe told me some of the things I had learned from Mr. Brooks. And as her mother had died when Zoe was born she had been taken by Mrs.

Spurgeon to raise. She said that her father, my father, had lived a part of the time at the inn, and a part of the time at his house on the farm; that during the last two years of his life she had seen more of him than formerly, though he was often in St. Louis, and even New Orleans. And she added with hesitation that he drank a good deal at the last, and was often depressed and silent. "Was he kind to you?" I asked. Zoe said that he was never anything but kindness, and that he provided her with comforts and with schooling whenever any one came along to teach the children of the community. I had already seen around the house a copy of the _Spectator_, and Pope's poems. Zoe told me that she had read these books, part of them over and over, and that she had had a teacher the year before who had helped her to understand them. I began to delimn Zoe as a girl of intelligence. Of vital spirits she had an abundance.... The night was very warm and of wonderful stillness, no breeze. We heard the cry of what Zoe called "varmints" in the woods. A night bird was singing. She told me it was the whippoorwill. I never had heard a more thrillingly melancholy note. Once Zoe stepped upon a stick in the road.

Thinking it was a snake she gave a cry and leaped to one side. But I calmed her and we kept our way.... I had never seen the stars to the same advantage, not even on the ocean. They were spread above us in infinite numbers, and of remarkable brilliancy. And there was the prairie, stretching as far as the eye could penetrate into the haze of the horizon, except where a distant forest rimmed the edge of the visible landscape. Zoe took up my remark about the s.p.a.ciousness of the country with telling me that young Douglas had been to supper a few nights before I had come to myself out of the fever, and that he had said that the prairie affected him as liberty would affect an eagle released from a cage; and that he looked back upon the hills of Vermont as barriers to his vision. "He is nearly your age," said Zoe; "only two years older. You will like him; every one does. No one can talk like him that I have ever heard."....

At last I brought forward the subject of our father's will. Zoe was silent for a moment, for my specific question was what she wished to have done. Then she said: "It's all foolishness. These lawyers here have been bothering me to get me to fight the will, and trying to get me to break the will because my pa drank. I know he drank, but I don't see what difference that makes. He always knew what he was doing, so far as I know; and even if he didn't I'd never say nothin' about it. I know my place; and things is gettin' worse about colored folks, and less chance for a colored girl to marry a white man even if she wanted to, 'specially if I knew he was marryin' me to get my land. I'm satisfied with the will the way it is and always have been, or any way you want it, Mr. James. I know my place, and that there is a kind of curse on me for bein' dark skinned; and I think my pa was mighty kind to make the will the way he did. This 5000 acres he left is worth a lot of money, more than $5000 Mr. Reverdy says; and if I had what the will gives me I'd have $500, and what would I do with it? For I've always got to work anyway."

Suddenly we saw lights ahead in the road and heard the rattle of wheels.

It was the stage coming into Jacksonville. It was upon us almost at once. The lights of the lantern made us blink our eyes. We stepped to one side. A voice called out: "Well I'll be d.a.m.ned if there ain't a white feller strollin' with a n.i.g.g.e.r!" "Shut your trap," said the driver, and the stage rolled rapidly away from us.

My mind was suddenly made up as to the farm by the remark falling so brutally from these unknown lips. I took Zoe's hands. I drew her to me.

She was weeping. Was not one half of her blood English blood? Yes, and what Englishman would not resent with tears an insult which he could neither deny nor punish? But I would punish it. Zoe should have her rightful half.... And silently we walked back.

CHAPTER IX

The next morning the alarm over the cholera is more intense. All kinds of horrifying stories go the rounds. News has been brought by pa.s.sengers on the stage that a man and his wife, living near the Illinois River, died within an hour of each other. They were well at dawn. At noon they were both under the black soil of the river's sh.o.r.e, buried by three stalwart sons, who carried their bodies in the bed clothing and let them down by it into hastily made graves.

Something has happened here. The stage driver who silenced the rowdies last night is stricken this morning at the tavern. He is dead. By noon he is buried in the village cemetery where the ashes of my father lie.

Mrs. Spurgeon thinks that Reverdy should leave the tavern and come here with the rest of us. I am to take the word to him when I go to see Mr.

Brooks. She has seen the ravages of cholera before. There is nothing to do but to be careful about diet, keep cheerful, and surrender to no fears. I am not in the least alarmed. But the negroes are panic stricken. They are calling upon the Lamb to save them. They are singing and wailing. They are congregating at the hut of Aunt Leah, an aged negress, who is sanctified and gifted with supernatural power. Zoe is not in fear, and Sarah goes about the duties of the day with calm unconcern.

I am off to see Mr. Brooks again. The streets are almost deserted. The faces of those I meet are white and drawn. Mr. Brooks acts as if his mind is stretched out of him in apprehension. Yet he is in his office ready to pick up what business may come his way; and he is waiting to see me.

I tell Mr. Brooks at once that I want to divide the property equally with Zoe. He thinks, evidently, that I have weakened before the mere prospect of a contest; and he a.s.sures me that the estate can be settled as my father intended. Well, but can this plan of mine be carried out?

As easily as the other, he says, and of course more bindingly if there can be a difference. For he had intended to have the court decree a sale of the property and divide the money under the sanction of the court.

But according to my plan Zoe could get no more; and therefore no one could object to it.

I am curious about my father. What is the danger of a contest, even if Zoe could be brought to make one? Mr. Brooks tells me that my father was drinking heavily toward the last; that he looked aged and worn. His hair had turned white, though he was only forty. He acted like a man who had a corroding sorrow in his heart. When he took the cold it developed rapidly into lung fever. He was dead in three days. His will was made just as he took to his bed at the tavern. There were stray scamps about Jacksonville who would swear to anything. And though Zoe was a colored girl, and notwithstanding the character of such witnesses in her behalf, a case so composed might be troublesome. Then there was the treasure at stake; and the hunger of lawyers and maintainers. Well, I had settled it. None of these wolves should have a chance. Mr. Brooks scrutinized my face with large, pensive eyes. After a silence he said: "You are the boss; but I want you to know that the will can stand. I will guarantee to win the case if there is one." "Can we see the farm?" I asked. "And my father's grave?" Mr. Brooks brought up his buggy and we were off.

But first I wished to find Reverdy and give him Mrs. Spurgeon's message.

He had gone out to his little farm. He was raising a crop, having returned from the war just in time to get it planted. It was only a little out of our way, and we could stop there on our return.

Almost at once we came to the cemetery, a crude enclosure, fenced with rough pickets, evidently split with the ax. Mr. Brooks led me to the spot.

Weeds abounded everywhere. The gra.s.shoppers were flying before our steps. A long snake glided away from my feet as I stepped near the yellow clay which tented the body of my father ... and Zoe's father ... the husband of my lovely mother, so long dead. Here was the soldier of Waterloo, the adventurer into this Far West, the man who had died with some secret sorrow, or some sorrow for which he found no words or no confidant. Above me was the blinding sun, before me the prairie, at my feet this hillock of clay, where weeds had already begun to sprout.

Mr. Brooks watched me; and seeing me move he started on; and I followed him through the broken gate to the buggy.

It was two miles to the log house which my father had built on his land.

We drove up and went in. A tenant named Engle was living here with his wife and numerous children. Some of them crowded around us; others ran and hid, afterwards peered around the corner, timid and wild. Engle was not there; but his wife came from her washing to tell us where he could be found, what he was doing. When Mr. Brooks revealed to her who I was she stared at me with simple wondering eyes, drying her hands the while upon her ap.r.o.n. She was terribly upset by the reports of the cholera.

Besides ... she went on: "There's a right smart lot of lung fever this summer. I 'low the men let their lungs get full of dust in the barn or somethin'. And I never did see the like of b.l.o.o.d.y flux among the children, and the scarlet fever too. We never had nothin' like that in Kaintucky. But I says to my man this mornin', there ain't nothin' to do but to stick it out. When yer time comes I guess there ain't no use ter run. And people do die in Kaintucky, too."

We proceeded to drive around the entire acreage. It took us some hours.

Always the prairie, boundless and colorful. Miles of rich tall gra.s.s, sprinkled everywhere with purple, brick red, yellow, white, and blue blossoms! Billows of air drove the surface of it into waves. It was a sea of living green.

We pa.s.sed forests of huge oak and elm trees, which grew along the little streams. There were many fields of corn, too, tall and luxuriant; and wheat ready for harvest. We came upon Engle at last. He wanted me to come close to see the corn. I got out and stood beside it, stroked its long graceful banners, turned up the dark soil with my boot and saw how rich and friable it was. And all this was mine, mine and Zoe's.

My imagination took fire. My ambition rose. I resolved to study the whole agricultural matter, and to reduce these acres in their entirety to cultivation. I would raise cattle and sheep. I would build fences.

Above all I would make a house for myself. Here was my place in life and my work. No delay. I should begin to-morrow with something directed to the general end.

Returning we went past Reverdy's farm. But he had finished his work and gone to town. Accordingly we speeded up. When I arrived home I found Reverdy already there. But he would not leave the tavern. He gave no reason in particular. He said he was as safe there as anywhere; and it was more convenient for him.

But there was much doing. Sarah and Zoe were mixing the ingredients of a cake. A turkey was roasting; we were going to have a guest for supper.

Douglas, the law student, the new school teacher, was coming; and all was delighted expectation. "For," said Mrs. Spurgeon, "I reckon we ain't never had such a young feller before around these parts. Talk! You never heard such talk. It flows just like the water down hill. And there never was a friendlier soul. I never thought they raised such people up in Yankeeland as him. You can bet he'll make his mark. He'll be a judge before he's ten years older; and they do well to get him here. And what I say is: where did he get his eddication? He is an orphan too, like you, James ... raised by an uncle so far as he had a raisin'. But the uncle fooled him. He promised him an eddication, and then went back on it. And what does young Douglas do? He busts away. He gets awful mad and comes west to make his fortune. Make a young feller mad, hurt him good and plenty, and if he has the right stuff you make a man of him. I've seen it over and over. When a young feller's mad and disappointed, if he's got the right stuff in him, he gets more energy, like a kettle blown off. They do, unless they sulk. Now there's other types. There was your poppy; he warn't mad and he didn't sulk exactly, and yet there was somethin'. He seemed to simmer and stew a little. But he left five thousand acres of land. Maybe he was one of these here big speculators like as is all over Illinois now, that has some kind of a different secret, and makes a big success some other way. You can never tell. But you see when Douglas came here he landed from Alton down here at Winchester and went right to work makin' a few dollars at a auction where he was a appraiser. And he worked at his trade too. For he's a cabinet maker. Yes, sir, he has a trade. With all the books he's read he has a trade. And now he's up here to look over the ground; for they say he's comin' here next spring to practice law, and even then he'll be only twenty-one."

Surely, this was a land of haste, of easy expedients. I did not know a great deal about the legal education of an English lawyer; but enough to appreciate the difference between the slow and disciplined training there and the rapid and loose preparation which I heard Mrs. Spurgeon describe with so much pride. I went into the corner of the room to write a letter to my grandmother.

CHAPTER X

This is the letter that I wrote:

"Dear Grandmama: I cannot describe to you the conditions that surround me. The boundless extent of the country, the wildness and beauty of the prairies, the roughness of this frontier town, above all the people themselves. The house I am living in is unlike anything you ever saw; but yet it is very comfortable. And my hostess, Mrs. Spurgeon, as well as her granddaughter, have treated me with all the consideration that my own kindred could do. I was very dangerously ill and they took care of me with wonderful solicitude; particularly Zoe, who nursed me and scarcely left my side. Now I am well, or nearly so, and they insist on my living with them. I pay two dollars a week, or about eight shillings.

And everything is clean and nice; the food very good, delicious bacon smoked with hickory wood; but altogether the diet is unlike what I was accustomed to in England. It all seems like a story, first that I should meet Reverdy Clayton when I landed in Chicago from the steamboat which had brought me from Buffalo. He offered to bring me here on his Indian pony. But I was afraid to risk so long a ride, especially as at that time I was beginning to feel very badly. Then it is strange that I should get here and awake from an illness so serious in the house of Mrs. Spurgeon, whose granddaughter Sarah is going to marry Reverdy ... one never knows whether to attribute these things to Providence or to the accidents of life.... Perhaps you were right never to tell me about my father's marriage to the octoroon girl; but you must have known that I would find it out on arriving here. It has caused me much thought, if not disturbance of mind; but I have worked out my problems, perhaps impulsively, but still to my own satisfaction. Zoe is about the color of an Indian from Bombay. She is a beautiful girl, and shows her English blood in her manner and her active mind. I do not believe that there was the slightest danger that she would have attacked the will; but many considerations moved me to divide the estate with her equally. She took care of me with the most affectionate interest when I was ill. Besides, the land is not worth so very much, and one half of it will give her no fortune to mention. She is in danger even now, and the future for her is not rea.s.suring. Illinois is supposed to be free territory, but it is not so many years ago that a vote was taken in Illinois to have slavery here, and it was defeated by no very great majority. And now the Illinois laws are rather strict as to colored people. The country is beginning to be feverish about the slavery question. I saw evidence of this in New York and on the way here; though just in this place the matter is not so much agitated. Yet the other day a copy of a periodical arrived here called _The Liberator_, and it made much angry talk. I will not tire you with this subject, dear grandmama, but only say that the effort here and everywhere in America seems to be directed toward hushing the matter up. But to return to Zoe: if her mother's father wished to secure the mother against misfortune by bringing her north and marrying her to a white man (my father, as it turned out) why should not I, her half-brother, try to protect her against the future that her mother might have incurred? I reason that I have taken the place of Zoe's grandfather, and must do for her what he tried to do for Zoe's mother. This inheritance of duty comes to me as the land comes to me, without my will. Zoe's grandfather gave my father his start, gave him the $2500 bonus to marry Zoe's mother. I think, in considering what share of the estate Zoe should have, these things cannot be ignored. Of course I don't know exactly how much of the $2500 went into this land. From things I have heard I think my father spent money freely; he went about a good deal and was not as temperate as he should have been for his own health and prosperity. Something was evidently preying upon his mind. Anyway, I have decided the matter, and I hope you will approve of me. I went to father's grave this morning, and it made me sad. Afterwards Mr. Brooks, the lawyer, drove me to the farm and around most of it. I am going to take hold of it at once. This country is growing rapidly, and I mean to do what my father didn't exactly. I am going to be rich; that is my ambition. And I must think and work. I am well again, or nearly so, and full of hope and plans, though sometimes lonely for you and for England. Some day I shall come back to see you. My love to you, dear grandmama. And do write me as often as you can.