Children of the Market Place Part 23

She had other guests in the house. But they dispersed themselves gracefully. We were much alone, reading, listening to music played softly by one of her woman friends at a distance in the drawing room.

Our favorite place was the window seat in the library, heaped with pillows and overlooking lilac and rose bushes, where we could see the great elms, the fountain, the country beyond. We had many walks together; and one afternoon we came to a place on a woodland path amid hills, trees towering above us, a brook playing below us. The air was hushed with a pa.s.sionate Orpheus, and there I sensed her yearning. I heard the rhythm of her flesh singing to me. Her hands were stretched toward me, the pupils of her eyes grew wide as if a vision stood before her. For the first time I kissed Isabel upon the lips.

Hitherto we had breathed the rarefied air of the peaks, seen the white light of the upper s.p.a.ces, felt the pa.s.sionless G.o.ds about us. Now we were descending the rich valleys, to the cl.u.s.tered vines, to the places of soft sounds and voluptuous air, to havens of sleep, to the replenishment of our souls in the bridal supper.

That night we sat again in the window seat. Her other guests faded here and there. For a time there were shadowy fancies from the piano, then the house was stilled. But outside an April rain was falling. It pelted the windowpanes as softly as driven petals. It made a fairy swish as of far-off waves, and we sat together in a dim light. Isabel's eyes were closed. Her head rested partly on my shoulder, partly on a pillow. Her hand lay limp in my hand. Her whole being was relaxed. We were quite alone.

Isabel was with me body and mind. But a terror crept upon me. My very hair trembled. I pressed her hand to my breast. It seemed only an act of will, however, not of emotion. I drew her head close to my breast. All these actions arrayed themselves before my detached observation.

Paralyzing self-a.n.a.lysis preoccupied me. I kissed her upon the brow, the eyes, with pressure and strength upon the lips. I was not acting; I was thinking out these demonstrations. The consciousness that I was deceiving Isabel broke my emotional concentration. Could she sense that my heart was beating, but with terror? Where were the flames that had sung to me ethereally before? Where the song out of the flesh, but too subtle for the ears of flesh? Yet I drew her closer to me, folded her tightly against my breast. My imaginative strength was more and more absorbed in self-a.n.a.lysis, into wonder as to what weakness had taken place in me. For here was Isabel dissolved in my arms and how could I continue this futile demonstration? But why also desist? The sweat began to stand out on my forehead. What should I say? Uncle Tom no longer stood between us. Isabel was my bride. There were no barriers to break down, no protests to overcome. We were both of an age and of an experience where formalities lose their significance. The G.o.ddess had descended to me and here was I a witless fool. Finally there flashed into my mind what she had said to me in Rome: "My friend, for this once be Orpheus--Orpheus was once Dionysius. Orpheus, tranquil and inspired, touched the quiet lyre surrounded by the Muses. Orpheus had been Dionysius drinking wine, beating cymbals. Be Orpheus, my friend, and take into your being these beauties of the mind which are given us--these flowers of friendship attend and keep for our garden."

These words ran through my tortured brain. They completed my enervation.

But I could utter none of them to Isabel. What fear that hatred was budding in the heart of this woman at my side! I pressed her hands every now and then to see what was moving in her; for as my mind would not cease to a.n.a.lyze, a.n.a.lysis became keener. Always she returned the pressure. Her kisses at first given with ardent emotion were now lisped softly against my cheek. So we sat side by side. The rain pelted the window, the clock chimed. And the night was pa.s.sing. A proposal of marriage seemed belated, incongruous. Yet it came into my mind as a protective coloration to more immediate expressions of the moment.

Men have lost women because they dishonored them or betrayed them or changed for the time toward them--for a thousand reasons. But look at me. What were friendship, truth, honor, the service of all that I was, love in its highest and deepest sense, understanding, sympathy with all of Isabel's flights of the mind, if I could not come to her with a promise of the future? She was not only the revelation of all that I had desired and of all that I had missed in life, but she was the symbol of a fate that has come past the appointed hour. I was the father of Reverdy by Dorothy, whom I loved with a heart's beginning; and I was the defeated lover of the ideal whom I had found too late.

In these circ.u.mstances of myself and Isabel were symbolized the lives of all men who give their devotions to lesser loves, who find their creations and their work imperfect or worthless when the planting season has pa.s.sed.

As hollow as the words sounded, I nevertheless asked Isabel to be my wife. And Isabel without changing her position and without opening her eyes said in the quietest of voices: "You know I love you. You know I have loved you in every way a woman can. I love you as I loved Uncle Tom; for you are my friend, as he was. But what will the future be? I have been compelled all my life to center my thought upon books and music, friends, travel, and devotion to Uncle Tom. I have developed this power of concentration and self-denial; but would you bring me to live over again what I lived with Uncle Tom? Oh, my friend, no man can understand and fathom the maternal desire in a woman. It is a mystery which she alone knows."

What life remained in me sank down just as a stricken eagle falls into the thickets and is still; and breathes quietly and draws the film over its eyes. I could not answer her. The October air was mild. The house was overheated. A window was open. An entering wind began to stir my hair. I thought of how it must look to another, these beginnings of gray hair. Age had come to me. And I could see Isabel with my feelings alone, sitting beside me so pale, so tender, so sorrowful.

The clock strikes three. Isabel arouses, turns slightly from me, and gradually sits up. "That was three, wasn't it?" she asked. "Your train leaves early in the morning. You must sleep a few hours. I shall not see you at breakfast. The maid will bring it to you. Shall we have a gla.s.s of wine together?"

She poured wine for me and we drank. She handed me a lighted candle.

Then she stood and searched my face. She offered her lips to me, turned and walked away.

I stood with the candle in my hand, watching her until she pa.s.sed through the shadows and darkness of the hall. The house was without a sound. No step of her came from the hall or the stair. I still stood with the candle in that silence and fluttering darkness. Then I went to my room.

CHAPTER LVI

But I did not retire. I stood for a few moments looking through the window into the darkness. Then I placed my belongings in my satchel, stole softly out of the room, down the great stairs, opened the great door of the main hallway and walked off the porch on to the gravel road, through the iron gate and into the highway leading to the village. I looked back at Isabel's mansion, at the roof dark between the dark trees. Under that roof the most priceless heart I had found in life was beating--but was it in sleep or in wakefulness? I was numbed, stunned, hopeless. I could never return here, never see Isabel again. The Orphic metamorphosis meant a complete disappearance from her life. She had not turned me away or dismissed me; she had done no cruel thing, said no word that wounded or would grow poignant in memory. She had been in every way an angel of light--and for these reasons I could not see her again. Whatever I was in truth, rid of accidental emotions if such they were, I had filled her mind with fear and doubt. Thus our fate was made, our sorrow was born.

As I walked along in the darkness toward the village, my loneliness in the world came over me. I had not attached many to me; many of those I had won were gone. Was there a home for me? How could I return to the house in Chicago? To what there? I had come from Italy to America; from a city of memories and spiritual richnesses to the tumult of New York.

Above all I had found heaven in Isabel and lost it. My life had come to flower only to be withered. I had stepped out of heaven into h.e.l.l, and from a great light into darkness.

But the soul does not give up while there is breath. If one is ill he looks forward to health; if he is slowly dying he hopes for years of life; if one friend is lost there is another to turn to. No heart so desperate but can imagine a haven, however poor it may be, and go to it.

In this hour my mind turned to Reverdy back in Jacksonville. There could be no truer, kinder heart. There in the prairie of Illinois that I had grown up with he would be my solace. What had I to do with Rome, with art; what with a woman like Isabel? I had ventured on sacred ground and this was my punishment. A G.o.d had driven me forth. I had won my heart's desire; but before I could enjoy it a G.o.d, ironical but just, intuitive and swift to punish, had sent me down to my place in life. I would go to Reverdy, and stand before him in my familiar guise. He would not see Rome in my eyes; he would not know that I had been in Paradise; that in my heart shone a face that I had put by and should never look on again.

Every man is a temple of forsaken shrines, of altars where candles burned replenished by spirits that need open no doors--a temple whose portals are barred.

I went through Chicago, which had grown and changed in my absence so marvelously, straight to Jacksonville, regarding nothing on my way, reading nothing. Like a supernatural being which has girdled the earth in a second, it seemed that I stood before Reverdy and Sarah and their children. I stood before them, but I could hear the bells of Rome; and I saw Isabel as she handed the candle to me and walked from the room.

I supplemented what I had written to them of Dorothy's death; then I told them brokenly of Rome. Where could I begin, what words could I select to express briefly my experiences? But besides, Isabel was all my thought, and of her I could not speak. Then we had the meal. The house, the town, the surrounding country, began to a.s.semble themselves together familiarly. I was back. The old life was slipping on me as one removes his best dress for the overalls of work. Pinturicchio! What light was falling on those soft and tender cheeks in the Vatican? But where was Douglas?

Douglas! Reverdy looked at me as if he had much to say. "He's campaigning," said Reverdy; "already has made about a hundred speeches.

He has a fight on his hands. He has a tough rival to handle."

"Who is it?"

"Abraham Lincoln!"

"Who is Abraham Lincoln?"

I had never heard that name before; nor seen it in print. Reverdy went on to tell me briefly that Lincoln had been in the legislature at the same time that Douglas was in 1836; that he had been in Congress in 1847; that he was well known as a lawyer in Springfield; that for many years he had done nothing but practice law, though more active in politics since 1855 than before. That was some explanation of my ignorance of the name.

I repeated it aloud: "Abraham Lincoln. That is a great name," I said to Reverdy. "Well, he's an able lawyer, and he gives Douglas enough to do in the debates they're having." "So they are debating, are they?" I asked. "Yes," drawled Reverdy, "Lincoln was nominated for Senator by the Republicans; Douglas of course is again the nominee of the Democrats.

Lincoln challenged Douglas to a debate; and they're at it hot and heavy.

We talk of nothing else. It's funny you didn't hear of it anywhere along the way home. This part of the country is on fire, and they say the East is waking up to what is going on here in Illinois. I've got the newspapers here containing all the debates. You've got some good reading ahead of you. To-morrow's the last debate over at Alton."

"We must go," I said quickly. "I wouldn't miss that for the world. We must go." And I was thinking, what better way to forget Isabel? Reverdy was really glad to hear this debate at Alton; but it was necessary for him to attend to some things this day in preparation of being absent to-morrow. In the afternoon he had to drive out to his farm, and I went with him. And when we came within a short distance of the log cabin, where I had spent my first winter on the farm, I was seized with a desire to see it again. There was so much of Rome and Italy fresh in my mind with which to contrast my previous life. And we drove to the cabin.

The door had fallen to one side. The clay between the logs had dried, turned to dust, and fallen away. The roof had sagged. The fireplace was going to wreck. We looked in. Weeds had grown up during the summer through the crevices of the floor. The place was lonely and haunted.

"Well," said Reverdy, "this is the kind of a home that Lincoln had as a boy. He was born in a cabin like this; and he's poor now. He has never got rich like Douglas has. And Douglas will soon be as poor as Lincoln if he keeps on at the same rate spending money in this campaign. They say he has mortgaged nearly all his property in Chicago. Everybody's fighting him--the Republicans, all the Abolitionists, and half the Democrats. This campaign means his political death or life."

"You say Lincoln was born in a log cabin. Is this a campaign of the log cabin, hard cider, and war records?"

"Well, perhaps more log cabins, but no war record. Lincoln was never in any war but the Black Hawk. He was against the Mexican War; and when in Congress voted for resolutions that the war was unconst.i.tutional and improper. No, he is not old Harrison or old Zach Taylor. Still the log cabin is in the fight."

Then Reverdy went on to tell me that Lincoln was a clean man and that the Republicans had no abler man in Illinois; that he had been a good deal in politics after all, though quiet for about ten years. That while Douglas had been Senator, chairman of the committee on territories, his name on everybody's tongue, the most prominent man and the most active in the whole country, building railroads, organizing territories, battling with Great Britain, settling California and Oregon, and Kansas and Nebraska, traveling abroad into Russia and Asiatic Europe, and companioning with notables everywhere, making money almost like a millionaire, Lincoln had been over at Springfield practicing law, talking on the street corners, sitting in his office alone in reflection, sometimes reading; but all the while, in a way, resting.

"He's fresh and Douglas is tired," said Reverdy. "He has the advantage of not having committed himself much. Douglas has spoken freely on everything. He's four years older than Douglas, but he's a younger man.

He's a temperance man they say; and while I like a drink, I don't like to see a man drink as much as Douglas does. They say he's been pouring it down during this campaign. But as for Douglas' stooping to debate with Lincoln, it's no stoop. They make the fur fly when they talk. What I fear is that there's going to be trouble in this country. I hate slavery, but I hate this agitation too. I don't want to see the North keep on making war on the South. It will breed trouble sure. And this is where I stand with Douglas. He is for non-interference with slavery and his election will be a quieter."

When we got back to Reverdy's house I plunged into the newspapers containing the debates. I read until suppertime, and then late into the night. I read them all. I went to bed and a.n.a.lyzed the arguments.

A house divided against itself cannot stand! This was Seward's irrepressible conflict clothed in Biblical language. The religious revival which had swept the country gave these words a compelling acceptance. But as I read this it came over me that both Jesus and Lincoln were sophists. For a house divided against itself can stand; and irrepressible conflicts rage forever. They may change their ground, but they do not cease. I had seen this in Europe and in Italy, where in the January just past a certain Orsini had attempted the life of Louis Napoleon because he had not acceded to the labors of Cavour and thus hastened the liberty of Italy. And yet Italy was standing and France.

Houses are divided everywhere and they stand. Beelzebub is crafty enough to cast out devils here and there in order to confound his kingdom with the Kingdom of Heaven. Of course he does not cast all the devils out--if he did he would lose his kingdom--only enough to make himself appear as one of the divine wonder-workers. A house divided against itself can stand, even as the world can stand with both good and evil in it, with both G.o.d and Satan in divided authority over it; and even as man has good and evil in his own nature and still lives and works without becoming wholly good or wholly evil. So could this country stand divided into free and slave states as it was formed at the beginning. There was not the slightest chance that it would ever become all slave, as Lincoln had presented one of the alternatives of a divided house. There was great chance that it would become all free by natural processes, as Douglas had indicated over and over again before the time of these debates.

Here I found that the debaters had split hairs on what the fathers had done. "Why can't these agitators leave the states as they were made by the fathers, slave and free?" asked Douglas. "They were not made,"

retorted Lincoln, "they were found; slavery was found and was let be as it was." "No," said Douglas, "the fathers organized a republic, adopted a Const.i.tution; and when they made it, instead of abolishing slavery, making it free, they kept slavery and made it slave by the votes of states pa.s.sing upon and acceding to an instrument of government. And besides, this instrument of government provided for the importation of more slaves from Africa; and provided for the capture and return of fugitive slaves now in the country or thereafter to be imported into the country."

Douglas had attacked the doctrine of a divided house with all possible power and brilliancy. He had insisted that there was no more reason for the house of America to be divided because there was negro slavery in some states and no slavery in others, than because there was prohibition in Maine and whisky in Kentucky. And that there would be disunion if some states warred on other states about the purely domestic affairs of the latter. This was the only sense in which the house could be divided, and caused to fall. That disparate interests in the states should not make hostility between them; and that hostility arising from attacks and agitation should be put down. He went on to denounce the Republican party for holding and preaching a faith that arrayed one section of the country against another; and with great satire and invective he showed that the Republicans stood upon sectional principles which could not be preached in the South and not everywhere in the North. "But now you have a sectional organization," he had said to a theocratic audience at Galesburg, "a party which appeals to the northern section of the Union against the southern, a party which appeals to northern pa.s.sion, northern pride, northern ambition, and northern prejudices, against southern people, the southern states, and southern inst.i.tutions. The leaders of that party hope to be able to unite the northern states in one great sectional party; and inasmuch as the North is the strongest section they will thus be enabled to outvote, conquer, and control the South. Is there a Republican in Galesburg who can travel into Kentucky and carry his principles with him across the Ohio?"

Douglas had even shown that Lincoln did not utter the same sentiments in all parts of Illinois. In Chicago where there was a large alien vote Lincoln had said: "I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why may not another man say it does not mean another man?

If the Declaration is not the truth let us get the statute books in which we find it and tear it out. Who is so bold as to do it?... Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position, discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things and unite as one people throughout this land until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal."

Douglas had driven Lincoln hard upon this application of the Declaration of Independence with the result that in the southern part of Illinois, at Charleston, Lincoln had uttered these words of a very different tenor:

"I will say then that I am not nor never have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not nor never have been in favor of making free voters of the negroes or jurors or qualifying them to hold office or having them marry with white people. I will say in addition that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I suppose will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality; and inasmuch as they cannot so live that while they do remain together there must be the position of the superior and the inferior; that I, as much as any other man, am in favor of the superior position a.s.signed to the white man."

Lincoln and Douglas were therefore at one on this. But how about slavery? Lincoln looked forward to a time when slavery would be abolished. How could that be? By not admitting any more slave states?

No! For Lincoln confessed that he would as a Senator vote to admit a slave state, if it as a territory had had a free chance to have slavery or freedom as it chose, and if in becoming a state it freely adopted a slave const.i.tution. As to these opinions Lincoln and Douglas were agreed; for Douglas had fought the Kansas const.i.tution because it forced slavery on Kansas; and now the whole Buchanan administration in Illinois was arrayed against Douglas for his att.i.tude on Kansas, and Lincoln was profiting by that.

How would Lincoln abolish slavery? By starving it, girding it about gradually with freedom, keeping it where it was. That was all. What would Douglas do? Referring to Lincoln's looking forward to a time when slavery would be abolished everywhere Douglas said: "I look forward to a time when each state shall be allowed to do as it pleases. If it chooses to keep slavery forever, it is not my business but its own; if it chooses to abolish slavery, it is its own business not mine. I care more for the great principles of self-government, the right of the people to rule, than I do for all the negroes in Christendom. I would not endanger the perpetuity of this Const.i.tution, I would not blot out the great inalienable rights of the white men for all the negroes that ever existed."

What would Lincoln do about the fugitive-slave law? Douglas had denounced attempts to evade it and actual violations of it. Even the Whigs frowned on its nullification. What would Lincoln do? He was not in favor of its repeal. He had said at Freeport: "I think under the Const.i.tution of the United States, the people of the Southern States are ent.i.tled to a Congressional fugitive-slave law.... As we are now in no agitation in regard to an alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general question of slavery."