It was the most extraordinary exhibition of youth and dash and confidence and ready wit, and knowledge and dialectic handling of difficult matter. It furnished the groundwork of my education in the history of American politics up to that time. It led into almost every possible matter of constitutional law and party policy.

Wyatt talked for an hour. He jeered at Douglas. He referred to his diminutive stature. He spoke ironically of his work as a cabinet maker, and advised Douglas to stick to it and leave the profession of the law alone. He characterized him as a strolling fellow who was trying to break into the favor of the community with an impudence as effective as burglar's tools. What did Douglas know of law? Who would trust his interests to a lawyer so inexperienced? When had Douglas had time to master its simplest principles? Who could not see through Douglas' thin scheme to attach his fortunes to the chariot of the great but misguided Jackson? Why had Douglas leaped to the defense of Jackson in this community, like a fice coming to the aid of a mastiff? Why, if not to get a bone for his own hungry stomach? Everything in the way of a taunt, a slur, a degrading image, a mockery of youth's ambition, an attack upon obscurity trying to rise, were thrown by Wyatt at Douglas. All the while Douglas sat imperturbed, his head at a slight angle, which gave him the appearance of attentive listening; and with a genial smile on his face that was lighted a little with ironic confidence. Then Wyatt sat down amid great cheering.

Reverdy thought that Wyatt had overdone himself, had forfeited to a degree the sympathy of the audience. There was no call for such rough handling of a young man. The feelings of the crowd reacted. And as Douglas arose he was given a loud reception. For there were Democrats enough in the room. But though Douglas looked like a man while seated, he seemed a boy when he stood up. His stature told against him. But as soon as he spoke the first word the silence was profound. The voice was the voice of a man, and a strong man. It rolled over our heads with orotund volume. The clearly syllabized words fell upon delighted ears. He caught the crowd at once.

Who would dare accuse him of subserviency to Jackson or to any man, for bread or for position? He differed from Jackson about the tariff, and all Jacksonville could know it. He agreed with Jackson about the bank, and the whole country would come to approve Jackson's course. Was nullification right? Perhaps Jefferson knew as much about that as Mr. Wyatt. Let the laws of the Constitution be obeyed and nullification would never be provoked. What had created nullification? The vile policies of the humbug Whig party, the old monarchist harlot masquerading in the robes of liberalism. How did these people dare to use the name of Whig, how dare to resort to such false pretenses, when it was common knowledge that the personnel of that party, having been put down as Federalists for gross usurpation and monarchist practices had, being forced to change their skin, adopted the title of the liberal party of England, remaining more Tory than the party that tried to destroy American liberty during the Revolution? And now this Whig party like a masked thief was abroad in the land to pick up what spoils it could, and to take from trusting hearts sustenance for its misbegotten existence. It was already beginning to coquette with the slavery question, hoping to deceive the people with humanitarian and moral professions. Very well! If it was the Good Samaritan it pretended to be let it give up its bank and its tariff, which took enough money out of the mouths of the poor to feed all the niggers in the world. Let the whiner about wrongs quit his own wrongs. Let the accusing sinner repent his own sin. Let the people of New England pluck the pine logs from their own eyes before talking of hickory splinters in the eyes of the South.

And then Douglas took up the history of the formation of the Union. What went into the Union? Sovereign states. Who concluded a treaty of peace with Great Britain after the Revolution? The thirteen sovereign states that had waged the war. Who formed themselves into the Confederate States, each retaining its sovereignty? The same states. Who left that union and formed the present Union? The same states. What did they do? They retained all the sovereign powers that they did not expressly grant. They never parted with their sovereignty, but only with sovereign powers. Where does sovereignty reside under our system? With the people of the states. What follows from all of this? Why, that each state is left to decide for itself all questions save those which have been expressly given over to Washington to decide. Who is trying to nullify these inestimable principles and safeguards? That is the real nullification. The humbug Whigs, who would like to centralize all authority at Washington ... "and Mr. Wyatt here in this new country, among people of plain speech and industrious lives, is the spokesman of these encroaching despotisms, which he has vainly attempted to defend to-night. He dares to assail the great name of Andrew Jackson. He would like to overcome the state sovereignty which permits Connecticut to raise cranberries and Virginia to have negro slaves, which leaves Kentucky with whisky and Maine with water, if Maine ever chooses so. He does not know that the French Revolution was waged for the great principle of the people to rule; and he fails to see that the whole world is coming to accept that doctrine. With the growing wealth and power of the North, of Illinois, it is necessary that the rights of the individual and local communities and of the small states as well as the large states should have the effectual counterbalance of state sovereignty to protect them against the ambition of centralists, who are money grabbers wrapping themselves about with the folds of the flag and with the garments of superior holiness."

He wished to see Illinois crossed by two railroads, from north to south, and from east to west. He would see the Illinois and Michigan canal completed, so that the great lake at the north of the state would be connected with the Mississippi River and with the Gulf of Mexico. What did it mean? The state would fill up with earners of wealth. Lands would increase in value. Cities would be built. As for himself, he would do his utmost to bring these benefits to the state.

By what authority was his right challenged to come to this state to make his home; and to this town to follow the profession of the law? Was there any one present who did not wish him to strive for these achievements for this western country? Perhaps Mr. Wyatt objected. No matter. He was here to stay. He had left a land walled in by hills and mountains, where the eye was deprived of its use in forming a vision of the world. Here he had found his mind liberalized, his vision quickened. Here he had found a hospitable people, inspired with hope of the future. And he was glad he had cast his lot with theirs. He had grown in this brief time to feel that they were his people. And he asked them to adopt him as their son, trusting him not to forget his filial duties.

The crowd was completely amazed at the vigor and fluency of Douglas' speech. Such applause arose that Wyatt was visibly embarrassed as he stood up for his rejoinder. He saw that Douglas had carried the day. He made a feeble attempt at reply. He tried satire; but it fell on unreceptive ears. He dropped denunciation. He dared not attempt that. He took up logical analysis. It left the audience cold. He pecked timidly at the doctrine of state sovereignty. Then voices began to question him. He shifted to Jackson. But the audience would not listen. After using one half of the hour allotted him for a conclusion, he sat down half wilted and discomfited.

A storm of cheers arose for Douglas. He was surrounded by a host of admirers. And I saw him now in a new phase. He was winning and gallant, of open heart, of genial manner. When he saw me he smiled a warm recognition. I went to where he stood to offer my congratulations. I asked him to come out and see me, and have a meal with me. He was already mingling with the young people of his own age at dances and in sports. That had been his custom at Winchester. He was glad to come, inquired the way. He was very happy. He knew that he had won his spurs this night. And from thenceforth he was a notable figure. Had anything just like this ever occurred in England? I had never heard of it. I should certainly write my grandmama of this event.



CHAPTER XIII

Russell Lamborn left the courthouse with Reverdy and me. He lingered at the gate as if he wished an invitation to go into Reverdy's house; but Reverdy did not invite him. He would have asked Douglas to come in for the remainder of the evening, such as it was, except for Sarah's condition.

Douglas had quite carried Reverdy away. And yet there lurked in him something that was not intellectually convinced and morally satisfied. I felt a little the same way. I did not know how to describe my state of mind. With Douglas' vision of the country, his hopes for it, the part he wished to play, I felt my English blood stir. But was there enough moral depth to him? Did he reckon enough with the forces which made for culture, enlightenment? Was he really high-minded? Did he not have the gesture and the touch of the magician, the abandonment of the indifferent demigod—indifferent to the higher and the deeper currents of man's life? I tried to formulate some of these nebulous ideas to Reverdy, but found myself running into denials, facts of contradiction in Douglas' attitude and thinking. Reverdy was equally unable to state the case against Douglas, which he felt a keener critic of thought would easily do. Meanwhile young Lamborn stood with us while we fumbled these doubtful things. He seemed reluctant to leave. I wondered in a vague way what kept him from going. What did he want?

And when Douglas did come to see me, which was within a few days of the night of the debate, Lamborn came with him. It was in the afternoon and they were on their way to a country dance. I could not help but observe that Lamborn had been drinking. What a strange taste—this whisky drinking! We did it in England, to be sure. But here it was done everywhere and at all hours and in all degrees of immoderation and vulgarity. Lamborn, however, was not unduly under the influence of drink; he was rather laughing and genial and humorously familiar. Douglas had doubtless taken as much as Lamborn, but he was quite equal to resisting its relaxing effects.

Douglas and I sat under a tree by the brook. The buds were coming out. There was the balmy warmth of spring in the air. I had a chance now to revise my first impressions of him. His charm could not be denied. His frankness, the quickness of his thought, his intellectual power, his vitality, his capacity for work, the tirelessness of his energies, were manifested in his speech, his movements, the clear and rapid glances of his eyes.

At the same time I found angles to him. I sensed a ruthlessness in him. I saw him as a fearless and sleepless antagonist, but always open and fair. There was only once when his nature broke ground and revealed something of his inner self, something of a sensitiveness which suffers for subtler things and penetrates to finer understandings. This was when he was telling me of the effect of his uncle's broken promise to educate him. He had suffered deeply for this; and he was sure his whole life would be influenced by it. It had stirred all the reserve ambition and power of his nature. It had thrown him forward in a redoubled determination to overcome the default, to succeed in spite of the lost opportunity.

Hence he had read many books. He had studied the history of America, and other countries as well. His mind ran to statecraft. He thought of nothing else. He sensed men as groups—thinking, desiring, trading, building—and for these ends organized into neighborhoods, villages, cities, and states. His genius, even then, was interested in using these groups for progressive ends, such as he had in view. He was a super-man who sees empires of progress and achievement for the race through the haze of the unformed future, and who takes the responsibility of carving that future out and of forcing history into the segment that his creative imagination has opened. He would guide and make the future, while serving men.

Here he was then just past twenty-one, born on April 23d, the reputed birthday of Shakespeare; young, and yet old with a maturity with which he was invested at his entrance into the world. He was in every way a new type to me. We were mutually drawn to each other. I knew that his courage could never stoop to littleness. His integrity, even when his judgment might err, seemed to me an assured quality of nature. As for me, he doubtless thought that I was one of the coming men of the community. Whatever I was, I was dependable. If I should become attached to him he could rely upon me in case of need. This, I think, made him regard me at this early stage of our friendship as a person not to be neglected in his business of creating adherents. When I spoke to him in terms of wonder and congratulation of his defeat of Wyatt, he took it with a smile and as a matter of course. He had found it an easy thing to rout Wyatt. Wyatt had stirred his fighting blood; and everything pertinent to the discussion had come to his mind in the heat of the debate....

And now we began to hear the sound of a fiddle, scraped in a loose and erratic fashion and giving forth an occasional note of a tune. I looked around and saw Lamborn sitting in the doorway of the hut. Zoe was near him, laughing at his half-drunken attempts to manage the instrument. Douglas looked up. A quick smile shot across his face. He glanced into my eyes in a searching manner which mystified me and sent a sudden thrill through me. What was he thinking? Surely he knew of my relation to Zoe. I caught out of his expression the prejudice of the time against the social equality that I was maintaining in standing by Zoe and having her with me. I had not shirked my heritage. Perhaps Douglas admired me too much to speak what was in his mind; or perhaps he was too much of the politician to trench upon ground so personal. At all events, we were silent for a moment. And then Douglas called to Lamborn. It was time to go. Lamborn rose to his feet, swaying a little as he did so, and came to where we sat. He looked me over in a scrutinizing way, then shot forth his hand for me to take it. It was an awkward act and out of place! Yet I felt compelled to give him my hand. And with good-bys they bestrode their horses and were gone. I began to have ominous reflections.

I went to the hut and asked Zoe what Lamborn had been saying to her. She laughed and seemed reluctant to tell me. I pressed her then; and she said that he had followed her through the house and tried to kiss her; that she had come around to the front door so as to be in sight of Douglas and me; then that Lamborn had taken the fiddle down and had begun to play it.

All the possibilities of Lamborn's attitude dawned on me instantly. How dearly might I pay in some way for my father's desire to be rich! If Douglas had taken his initial hurt in life from his uncle's failure to educate him, I had begun the weaving of my destiny with these threads which my father had bequeathed to me. What would my complications be if Zoe eloped with a wild fellow like Lamborn, bringing his personality into the texture of my affairs; the matter of this land, and Zoe's interest in it? I could sense ahead an unending difficulty, an ever deepening annoyance, or even tragedy. Had I gone too far in dividing the estate with Zoe? For the first time the presence of the negro in the state, the complications that it created, were forced upon me concretely and with impressive effect. My heart registered a vague apprehension. I warned Zoe against Lamborn, and decided that he should not come about me again.

The work on my house was now progressing rapidly. I wished to move into it on my birthday, June 18th. I watched its completion day by day, and in addition I had much to do around the farm. I had made a start with a few calves toward raising cattle. In every way I was forging ahead as fast as I could. But my greatest delight was the house. I wanted to make it as beautiful as possible, and I did not need to spare expense. I decided to go to St. Louis for curtains and chairs, for beds and lounges, chests and bureaus. When the last of May came I set out for the city.



CHAPTER XIV

This June weather in Illinois! Such glorious white clouds floating in the boundless hemisphere of fresh blue! The warmth and the vitality of the air! The glistening leaves of the forest trees! The deep green shading into purples and blues of the distant woodlands! The sweet winds, bending the prairie grasses for miles and miles! Glimpses of cool water in little ponds, in small lakes, in the brook! The whispering of rushes and the song of thrushes, so varied, so melodious! The call of the plowman far afield, urging the horses ahead in the great work of bringing forth the corn! The great moon at night, and the spectacle of the stars in the hush of my forest hut!

I was superbly well. And for diversion went farther into the woods to hear a fiddler and to have him teach me the art which fled my dull fingers and the unwieldy bow. And this fiddler! His curly hair, always wet from his lustrations for the evening meal; his cud of tobacco; his racy locutions; his happy and contented spirit; and his merry wife and the many children, wild like woodland creatures, with sparkling eyes and overflowing vitality! Many evenings I spent at this fiddler's hut. And such humbleness! Only the earth for a floor! Only one room where all his family ate and slept and lived!

In going to St. Louis I took the same stage that had brought me to Jacksonville. This time I rode on the City of Alton, a better boat than the one that had brought me from La Salle to Bath; but all the conditions were the same. There was the same roistering and sprawling crowd; the same loudness and profanity; the same abundance of whisky and its intemperate indulgence; the same barbaric hilarity of negroes, driven and cursed. And now many goatees, and much talk of politics, of Whigs and Democrats.

St. Louis was languid, weary and old. The buildings had an air of decay. The stream of life moved sluggishly, not swiftly as in New York or Buffalo, or even in the village of Chicago. There were luxury here and wealth. There were slaves and a slave market. I went to it, saw the business of selling these creatures, saw a woman of thirty, no darker than Zoe, sold to a man with a goatee, evidently from further south, who took her and led her away submissively. Whatever the institution might be of necessity and even of gentleness in good hands, here no less was the vile business of the sale. What would become of Zoe, was constantly in my thought. I turned away from the slave market to continue my shopping; but I could not drive Zoe from my thoughts.

Here was I in St. Louis and necessarily withdrawn from care of Zoe. I could not always watch over her. Even if I did, what was her life to be? How could she establish herself? With whom, and where? I was glad that I had not left her at the hut during my absence, that I had taken her to Sarah. Nothing could happen to her while she was with Sarah. Sarah had need of her too. Sarah's baby was soon to be born. Dorothy Clayton, Reverdy's sister, was coming to Jacksonville from Nashville to be a part of Reverdy's household for a time; and the house had to be set in order for her arrival. Turning Zoe over to Sarah was, therefore, a great help to her at this time.

I completed my purchases, arranged for their transportation and returned to Jacksonville. I arrived in the evening and went at once to Reverdy's. I had been gone a week. All were here to greet me. But Zoe was subdued in manner. Her smile was forced. She avoided me, going in and out of the room about the work of clearing the table. She did not pause to listen to the story of my trip. Was she perhaps ill? Reverdy and Sarah prevailed upon me to stay over night. And I did; but early the next morning all of us went to the country together; for Reverdy was now pushing the house to completion.

When we arrived at the hut, as Zoe remained silent and subdued, I began to question her. She protested at first that nothing was the matter; but I knew better, and I persisted in my attempts to draw her out. She began to cry at last. She came to me and rested her head on my shoulder. "Tell me now," I urged. And she relieved herself of the secret in broken words, in half-formed phrases.

She had gone walking one night with Lamborn. He had led her into the woods in search of a rabbit's nest he said was there. He had seized her, put his hand over her mouth, threatened her with harm, with being sold down South. He had overcome her. She had returned to Reverdy's afraid to tell him what had happened. She did not know what Lamborn would do to her if Reverdy went after him. She felt that she was in the wrong for having gone walking with Lamborn, and that she would be blamed by Sarah. Therefore she had not told her secret before. She was sure that neither Sarah nor Reverdy suspected it.

What was I to do? I could not conceive of a wrong like this going unpunished. But my brain refused to plan, to think out what was best to do. I did not know the community well enough, nor enough of the laws to make a decision by myself. I decided that I must consult with Reverdy. I hurried away from Zoe, telling her on no account to leave the hut; and went to find Reverdy. He was at work on my house, looked at me wonderingly as if to question what had brought me over so soon. I drew him aside and told him what I knew.

Reverdy's blue eyes grew terribly deep. They darkened like clouds in a rapidly gathering storm. They were full of comprehending compassion. They expressed alarm, but also an inexorable sense of futility, as if there was nothing to be done. He was silent. He had fought the Indians; he was used to the rough life of the West. He did not betray fear; rather he acted as if there was nothing to be done. When he began to speak that was the tenor of his words. He revealed to me possibilities that I had never dreamed of. I could see that I was caught in unforeseen circumstances. Some of the dangers involved in the situation he only hinted at. For example, the matter of my living with Zoe. There might be people in Jacksonville who believed that my attitude toward Zoe was not of a brotherly nature. Such a suspicion seemed horrible to me. But Reverdy went on to show me why it might be entertained. This remote country, lacking in opportunity for legitimate expression, held secrets of bestial and gross departures from nature. Here was Zoe, young and beautiful. What did our kindred blood have to do with the matter of my desire? I had not grown up with her, and it would be natural enough if I did not feel toward her as a brother. Incest was common enough around here. As to Lamborn, Zoe was a nigger, and the spoil of any one who wanted her. These were some of the things that Reverdy hinted at. If I prosecuted Lamborn, the countercharge would be made that I had been intimate with Zoe myself. If she had a child I would be proclaimed its father, especially if I raised an issue, and tried to fix the paternity upon Lamborn. If I went to see the state's attorney and asked him to act, there was danger that he would not wish to do so, because the present state's attorney was about to lose the office. He would not wish to start a social hostility that would react upon himself. In fact, Douglas was now trying to supplant him. I was known as a friend of Douglas'. Perhaps I would be trying to involve the state's attorney in an unpopular prosecution. If the prosecuting attorney refused to act that refusal would be known, and credit might be given to any reports that might arise that Zoe was mine before she was Lamborn's, if she ever was his. And if I resented the prosecuting attorney's refusal to act, then I might be accused of acting with Douglas in his ambition to get the office. Above all, under the law of Illinois, Zoe could not testify against Lamborn, a white man. Thus, in any prosecution that was to be made, evidence independent of Zoe's word had to be procured. Where was such evidence? That really settled the whole matter. But I had gone through the whole range of deliberation before finding out that Zoe's word would not be received in court.

But why had Reverdy not warned me against taking Zoe to live with me? There was the matter, too, of my equal division of the estate with Zoe. I had done this with the purest of motives. Now the edge of it was turned against me. For why would I surrender so much when I did not have to?

What was I now to do? Should I send Zoe away? Should I keep her in my household and let the tongues wag, as they were doing, or clatter if Zoe should have a child? The secret would be out soon. Lamborn would be sure to betray the fact that he had captured Zoe. There seemed nothing to do then but to settle down with British tenacity to live it out, and brave whatever came to me out of the complications. I was sure of the friendship of Reverdy and Sarah.

With these reflections I went back to the hut. Zoe was still in tears. She asked me if she had not better go away. If I would give her some of her money she would leave and never come back. "No," I said. "I am going to see you through, Zoe. We will face this out together; only do you consult me about what to do, and help me to stand by you."

I sat down and began to think it all over again. Here were all the pretty things I had bought in St. Louis soon to arrive, and the house would be ready to occupy in a few days. Yet these happy events were clouded for me. There was real bitterness in my cup now.



CHAPTER XV

The house was done. My furnishings were delivered. There were curtains to make, many feminine touches were needed to settle the rooms. Sarah did all that she could, but Dorothy Clayton had come. She was just a year younger than I, and of charming appearance and manner. We had become friends almost at once. She was with me daily, as we put the house in order for occupancy. Reverdy thought that Sarah must be apprised of what had happened to Zoe. She was terribly wounded and distressed. But she approved of my course in keeping Zoe with me.

On my birthday, June 18th, we had the housewarming. I gave a party, inviting all the young people from Jacksonville and the country around: those that I knew and those that I didn't—all but Lamborn. The omission would be notable, but I could not invite him. The matter was promptly gossiped about. Lamborn himself was stirred to talk now. He made the most detestable references to Zoe and me; and I was told of them. At the party Douglas drew me aside and confided to me that Lamborn was in an ugly rage.

Douglas was quite the life of my party. He mingled freely with all the company, making himself charming to every one. He danced with every girl present, and more than once with Dorothy. His short figure gave him a certain comical appearance. But he was graceful and adept at the dances. And his wit and good humor kept every one in high spirits. Reverdy, too, participated in the joy of the occasion with generous enthusiasm. Altogether, we were a merry crowd. I had strengthened my hold upon the affections of the community. For the time I had forgotten my embarrassing troubles. They came back to my mind after the guests had departed. And there was something else to disturb me. Dorothy had gained more than my passing interest.

Work was now my salvation, and I had plenty to do. I had learned in this year a vast amount about running a farm; and I was blessed with excellent health. But meanwhile Zoe! It was not long before it was certain that she was to bear a child; and it would not be many months or even weeks when she could not walk out or go to town without betraying her secret to the world. But then what should the explanation be? Should I tell what I knew? Should I remain silent?

Except for engrossing duties, with time to think and brood, I should have been thrown into tortures with the possibilities. There was always the chance, too, that Zoe in the desperation of the moment might run away from me. She had the English blood of my father in her veins, venturesome, perhaps reckless. Perhaps it was well that she had no control of the profits of the farm which had thus far been allotted to her, nor her share of the ready money which my father had left. I had had Reverdy appointed her guardian, making myself accountable to him. I deemed this the fitting thing; and I was also brought to do it because I might be absent at times in the future when she would need money. But if Zoe should run away what would become of her? The chance of her being kidnapped and sold into slavery filled me with terror. Yet the days went on without change.

Except that Sarah's boy was born! What a father Reverdy was! So wondering and gentle. And he guarded Sarah like a lover and father in one. Zoe was wild to see Sarah's boy; but that was out of the question now. She wanted to deed some of her land to the boy, or better perhaps, to Sarah. But she would have to wait until she became of age to do this.

The birth of Sarah's boy affected Zoe profoundly. She was now about two months advanced in her own pregnancy. She was beginning to think of the ordeal herself, of the fate of the child, what it was being born to.... What, indeed? I noticed that Zoe had hours of deep depression. Would it not be best for me to have a woman in the house with Zoe? Mrs. Engle knew of a widow about fifty whose husband had been killed in the War of 1812. And I got her, a Mrs. Brown. Zoe was now free of the housework. She had a companion when I was away on my work about the farm. And I felt relieved. But my mind and heart were full of problems. There was always Zoe! There was always Lamborn, skulking in the shadows of my speculations. How would I unravel this tangle with him?

Then there was Dorothy. Some of the talk must reach her eventually. It might come to her as a smudge upon me. Then I could not expect to continue my attentions to her without explanations. How could I go into explanations with Dorothy? But even if Dorothy only knew that Zoe was my sister, what would she think of me? Could she have an interest in a man with a family relationship of this sort? Could Dorothy, bred in Tennessee, look with favor upon my attentions? Had Reverdy and Sarah kept this relationship from Dorothy? Had some one else told her? But if she had not found these circumstances a reason for turning from me could she tolerate the rest of my difficulties?

And one night I came home to find Zoe in bed. She was in great pain and very weak. She was scarcely able to talk. She took my hand and pressed it, only saying: "I have done something for you. If I die, it will be best anyway. If I live it will be all right. I could not bear to bring you such shame and trouble. Don't worry ... don't."

Mrs. Brown came in and stood by the bed. She did not speak. She looked at me as if to say that sometimes desperate things have to be done. I understood. I acquiesced. Did Mrs. Brown do it? I never asked. Zoe's sufferings were very great. All this for Lamborn's drunken madness. And then Zoe began to mend. She was out of her difficulty. She became herself in a few weeks. But her spirit had changed. She was wiser, more self-possessed. She was more a woman. A great load had been lifted from me; yet I now faced a new Zoe. What would this mature Zoe do to me?



CHAPTER XVI

There was the law against Zoe taking this step, and against any one having any part in it. Still would it be known? I was content to wait for developments and meanwhile to put the whole thing behind me. Work helped me to do this.

I had Sarah's boy to interest me too. They had named him Amos. I had taken five twenty-dollar gold pieces and tied them in a package, bound them with a ribbon, and placed them in his tiny hand. I could not foresee the time when I should touch his hand on an occasion of very different import and with Zoe standing by. Zoe had made Amos some pretty little things and sent them by me. Sarah's only regret was that her grandmother could not see the boy. Her great happiness was wholly beautiful. And Reverdy seemed impressed with a greater dignity and a more gracious heart, if that were possible. I had found Mrs. Brown well adapted to my household. She liked the place; and the prospect was that she would be long in my service. Life was moving on.

I kept in touch with affairs in England and Europe through the London Times. I was also a subscriber to Greeley's New Yorker; and I did not slight the local paper, which belabored Douglas in proportion as he increased in popularity and power. I read many books as well.

For I felt the stir of a new age. I saw the North, the country around me, growing in wealth and dominance. I saw old despotisms giving way and new ones coming to take their place. The factory system was arising, due to machinery. Weaving and spinning processes had improved. The cry of women and children crowded in the factories of Pennsylvania began to be heard. The hours of toil were long. And if the whip descended upon the back of the negro in the South, the factory overseer in Philadelphia flogged the laborer who did not work enough to suit him, or who was tardy at the task. Women and children there were feeling the lash of the whip. Just now there was talk of a machine which would cut as much grain in a day as six men could cut with scythes. I ordered two of these machines for the next year, for I was farming more and more on a big scale. But what seemed most wonderful to me was an instrument now being talked about which sent messages by electricity. It was not perfected yet. It was treated with skepticism. But if it could be! If I could get a message from St. Louis, a distance of more than a hundred miles, in a few minutes or an hour!

Douglas came out to see me one night to tell me what was on his mind. He wanted to be the prosecuting attorney. Consider the straits of a young man who must make his way and get a place in the world! Is there anything more desperate at times? What was the law business in this community, divided, as it was, by eleven lawyers, shared in by visiting lawyers? Douglas had to live. Youth is forced to push ahead or be crushed. I know he has been accused of manipulation in having the law passed by which he could be appointed to the office and supplant a rival. Well, if he had not had the gifts and the energies to do such things, how could he have served the country and maintained himself? The next February before he was twenty-two, he was state's attorney for the district. No wonder that lesser men railed at him. But what one of them would not have done the same thing if he could?

And now I was seeing much of Dorothy. What did it mean? Was she only my friend? Reverdy, her brother, was my most intimate friend. Did she receive my attentions on account of the relations between him and me? If she knew anything about Zoe she never betrayed it to me. Surely she could not be in Jacksonville so long and be ignorant that Zoe was my half-sister. At last I decided to explore Dorothy's mind. I went at it forthrightly. Did she know that Zoe and I had the same father?

She had heard it. That was a common enough thing in the South; not common there, however, for a colored mother to be the wife of a white father. "I have suffered on account of this," said Dorothy. "You knew nothing about it and had nothing to do with it. It is too bad—too bad, Jimmy!"

There remained Zoe's misadventure. How could I approach that? But if Dorothy had heard of it would she continue to receive me? If she knew about it would not the present association of ideas bring it to mind and bespeak it to me by change of color or expression? I looked at Dorothy quizzically. I discovered nothing in her face. Then I began to think of the certain probability that some one had come to her breathing rumors upon her. So I said: "Promise me something, Dorothy. If any one ever tells you anything about me, say, for example, that I haven't been perfectly fair with Zoe in every way, and honorable as far as I know how to be, will you withhold belief until you give me a chance? Do you promise me that?" And Dorothy stretched her hand to me in a warm-hearted way. "You are Reverdy's friend, aren't you, and he is yours. Well, I promise you. But it isn't necessary, for it would have to be something that I could believe you capable of. Then Reverdy would have to believe it, and then I might have a mind of my own after all. Why, how could anyone say anything about you? You have been as good to Zoe as if she were as white as I."

And so Dorothy didn't know. I left the matter where it was. I could not go on. You see I was nineteen and Dorothy was eighteen and the year was 1834.

But Lamborn. I had made an enemy of him. Rather, he had turned himself into my enemy. He was running with a gang of rough fellows called the McCall boys. They drank and fought, using clubs or stones or knives. They were suspected of trying to rob the stage when it was driven by the poor wretch who had died of the cholera two summers before. That driver was noted for his courage, his ready use of the rifle; and he had frightened the marauders off, and had wounded one of them, who limped away until the trail of his blood was obscured.

Every time I came into town I was subjected to wolfish leers from some member of this gang. Evidently they had taken up Lamborn's cause. Something was preying upon him. He was drinking more heavily. Perhaps he was tormented with the thought that I knew his secret and abided some vengeance upon him. Perhaps his conscience tortured him. At any rate he had become a skulking figure of hatred, showing his teeth and snarling when he saw me and sidling away like a wolf. He had muttered curses as he hurried to one side. "Bloody Englishman" and the like were his remarks. Something told me to watch him, to watch the McCall boys. I began to take pains to guard my house in the country, sleeping always with my rifle by my side; and I had provided my men with rifles, instructing them to shoot if trespassers approached during suspicious hours or when warned away.

The autumn was the most delicious weather I had experienced since coming to America. Enough of the summer was carried over into October, and even November, to keep the days warm and full of sunlight, while the nights were clear and frosty, and always over this boundless prairie the far scattered stars. I had bought an astronomical chart and located the constellations, in which Zoe had joined me in increasing wonder. Then I had a taste of real hunting. Reverdy and I had gone to marshes a few miles away for wild geese and ducks; and we had come back loaded with game for ourselves and friends. There were many parties and what were called "shucking bees," where the company set to to assist the host in ridding the corn of its sheath; and quilting bees; and apple parings. These were occasions of festival, the local rituals of Dionysius. Earlier in the fall I had gone to a county fair and had seen the products of the field on display; and had studied the people: the tall angular gawks, the men carrying whips, the dust, the noise, the cheap fakirs and gamblers, the fights, the drunkenness, the women tired and perspiring carrying their babies and leading a brood. To me it was more like a cattle pen befogged with dust than an assemblage of human beings. And there was no happiness, no real joy; only barbaric breaking away from hard labor and the silence of the farms; only a reeling and a howling and a war dance; and only here and there a flash of breeding and fineness, and intelligent use of the occasion for sweeter joys and fuller life.

The winter came down; but I was better prepared for it than I was the year before. My house with its walls a foot thick of solid oak and tightly plastered against the penetrating winds kept out the cold. And my fireplaces built under my very eye threw a steady heat into the rooms. I was giving parties from time to time and attending them as well. Douglas always came. He was unfailingly the life of the party. He had reenforced his political successes with a genuine hold upon the hearts of the young people and the older people. He was attacked weekly by the Whig newspaper. But he was not without defense. Almost upon arriving at Jacksonville he had written a letter of praise to the editor of a newly started journal. The editor was greatly pleased at this spontaneous expression of interest and had become Douglas' friend and stanch champion. Ah! Douglas was only manipulating. He had written this letter to win a newspaper to his support. The wily schemer! "Genius has come into our midst," wrote the editor. "No one can doubt this who heard Mr. Douglas expound Democratic doctrine in his wonderful debate with John Wyatt. This country is richer for having attracted Douglas to it. He is here to stay. And he will be one of the great men of the country as President Jackson is now the greatest figure since Washington; and Illinois will send him forth as her son to speak and to act on the great questions that are already beginning to fill the minds of the people."

Douglas often came out to stay for the night or for a day or two. He had little law business, but his energies were always employed in shaping his powers toward a participation in the politics of the country. His superhuman energy was intensified by the fact that he had been deprived of an opportunity to educate himself. It was the gadfly that drove him forward with such restless industry. I could see that he had no patience for a detailed study of the law; that he might be ignorant of the technical steps to be taken in the collection of a promissory note, but he would know something about the resources of a treaty; that if he did not know how to settle the title to a farmer's field, he had considered ways to put at rest any claim of England to the territory of the Oregon. Yet he had to live as a lawyer before he could flourish as a statesman. And he had become the prosecuting attorney. His enemies said it was by a trick; that he had had the state law changed so that the legislature could appoint him state's attorney for the district of Jacksonville. The accusation proved too much. Douglas was not quite twenty-two when he reached this office. He had been in the state but two years, not quite that. How had such a youth first won the confidence of enough people who wished to give him this office and were able to do it; and then won the legislature to do the extraordinary thing of changing the law to give him the office, while at the same time supplanting a seasoned and experienced man in the place? How? Was every one corrupt, people and legislature? But it was February and he was the prosecuting attorney for the people.

He came out to see me, and we drank his health and fortune. It was on this occasion that Douglas talked to me with the greatest freedom about my own affairs. His frankness and sincerity, his friendship for me, relieved this broaching of my intimate interests of intrusiveness. I felt no inclination to resent it. He had glanced at Zoe who had come into the room once or twice, remarking that she was an unusual young woman. Then he said: "Your father must have been much of a man. I think his marriage worked upon his feelings ... and Zoe. Don't let this get on your imagination. You are handling it in the right way ... just go on. Let me warn you. The McCall gang is a desperate one. Do not on any account come to an issue with them. There are too many of them. They will sneak up upon you. They carry grudges ... and another thing, there's Lamborn ... as bad as the McCalls. He's been talking too, making threats against you. I tell you this for your own good. He has been boasting of Zoe's interest in him ... to speak euphemistically of the matter ... but just be careful." Whatever else he had in his mind he communicated it to me by the look of his speaking eyes, keen and blue. Then he arose and went.

Dorothy had returned to Nashville for the winter. She expected to take her place again in Reverdy's household in the spring. And we were writing. I had thought of proposing marriage to her the night before she left. But I could not bring myself to do so. I needed some one in my life. But I was just twenty, and Dorothy seemed so much more mature and wise than I. Then always there was this matter of Zoe. I lived in the expectation that something would come out of Zoe's misfortune; and if it did my name was bound to be connected with it. What would Dorothy say if in the midst of our engagement, if she engaged herself to me, the word should be brought to her that I was the father of Zoe's aborted child and that by some one, perhaps Mrs. Brown, Zoe had been saved the open shame of giving birth to the child and while an inmate of my house? I could see the probative force of these facts against me. This is what kept me from speaking to Dorothy on the subject of becoming my wife and having it settled before she went to Nashville. And then something happened that made my situation infinitely worse before it was any better.

The spring had come on early and I had much to do. I was buying machinery. The mowers that I had ordered were soon to be delivered and I had need to be in town almost daily. There were always loafers about the streets; and among them, not infrequently, the McCall boys or Lamborn. Reverdy had told me that Lamborn had been talking in the barber shop, saying that I was living in a state of adultery with my nigger sister. At the same time I knew, and Reverdy knew, that Lamborn was trying to get Zoe to meet him. He had sent her a note to that effect, which Zoe had turned over to me. Once he had accosted Zoe as she was coming from Reverdy's to join me at the courthouse preparatory to starting home. Reverdy thought that the fellow was eaten up with insane jealousy and had brought himself to the belief that I had taken Zoe from him, if he could be said ever to have had a right to her.

It is an April day and I have come into town and am rushing from place to place attending to many things. Reverdy has met me at the bank to tell me of another opportunity to buy a team of horses and some oxen; for we use the latter mostly to draw the plows that turn up the heavy sod of the prairie. Reverdy has just told me of Lamborn's threat to come to my farm and take Zoe: that when a girl was once his she was always his. He had said these things at the barber shop. Something came over me. I resolved that this intolerable state of affairs, of anxiety for Zoe, of misunderstanding for myself, of dread of the future, of a sort of brake on my life as of something holding me back and impeding my happiness and peace of mind ... all this had to end somehow and soon. I could not live and go on with things as they were.

We stepped from the bank. And there, not ten feet away, stood Lamborn. His mouth became a scrawl, he uttered a growl, he swayed with passion, he moved his hands at his side in a sort of twisting motion. And I thought: there are Zoe and Dorothy, and I may create a feud against me that will follow me for years ... yet this man must die. And I drew my pistol and fired ... Lamborn sank to the ground without a groan. Some of the McCall boys ran out. I fired at them. They fled. I walked forward a step or two. Then I asked Reverdy if he had seen Lamborn reach for his pistol. Reverdy had seen this. I had not. In fact, Lamborn did nothing of the sort. But if Reverdy saw this he could swear to it and help me. The excitement of the precise moment was now over. I felt weak and anxious. I wanted to see Douglas. As state's attorney he could help me. Douglas was soon on the scene. He had heard what I had done. I wanted to talk with him. He waved me off saying: "You must have counsel of your own. You must not talk to me. I would be compelled in the discharge of my duty to use against you anything you might tell me." With that he walked away.

He could not be my friend in this hour of need! What was I to do? Yes, there was Reverdy. But when it came to the matter of locking me up Douglas said: "If Mr. Clayton signs the bond ... make the bond $1000 ... don't lock him up. Get a coroner's jury."

There was not a member of this jury who had not been exposed to some of this vile talk about Zoe and me, in the general contagion of the village gossip. How should this examination be managed? Of course the single question, they told me, was the manner of Lamborn's meeting his death. But the coroner's jury had the power to bind me to the grand jury for an indictment, and that I wished to escape. Well, I had been threatened, to be sure. But why? If Lamborn wanted Zoe and I had her in my house and kept him from seeing her, was it for a good or a selfish reason? Were we not rivals for the same favor? Did one have her and one lose her? Had I killed Lamborn for jealousy, or in self-defense? The single fact that I had shot him stood against the background of all this gossip and village understanding, and was necessarily read into it for my undoing or my freedom.

There was the note that Lamborn had written Zoe! That proved that Lamborn was seeking her; but it might be used to prove that I resented his pursuit. And why? As Zoe's brother, or as her unnatural lover? My brain was in a whirl. I could not think for myself. I talked these subjects over with Reverdy and with Mr. Brooks, who was my counsel. All these things were done the day of the killing. The next morning, with the body of Lamborn lying in the room, I mounted the witness chair in my own behalf, after Reverdy had testified that he had seen Lamborn reach to his pocket, and that it was not until then that I drew my pistol and fired.

Was Douglas turned against me? He plunged into the matter of Zoe almost at once in his cross examination of me. And at last I told the whole story ... with but two exceptions: I did not produce Lamborn's note to Zoe and I did not tell of Zoe's illness and its cause; of returning from St. Louis and finding Zoe in tears, of what she had told me, of the embarrassment I then found myself in, of my perplexity, of my failure to invite Lamborn to my housewarming and the reason for it, of Lamborn's attitude toward me after that, his menacing looks, his growling insults when he saw me ... of all these things I told with full circumstantiality under the examination of the new state's attorney, and with the whole of the countryside looking on, Whigs and Democrats, and with the audience permeated with slavery and with slavery feeling, at least so far as the present case was concerned. What would Douglas now do? He rose and in his deep voice, with perfect command of himself, looking over the audience as if it was a great instrument whose keys he knew, he spoke these brief words: "Gentlemen, it makes no difference to me whether this girl is white or black; if you bind this young man over to the grand jury, I will do what I can to prevent an indictment; and if the grand jury indicts him I will do what I can to have him acquitted. This dead man here met his just fate."

The audience cheered. The jury acquitted me without leaving their seats. I walked a free man into the soft air of April. Douglas came out. His manner was changed. He spoke to me in freedom and in the old tone of friendship. "The boil is now open," he said. "The cut place will heal."

And he walked with me down the street followed by a cheering crowd. Douglas had won the people; and I was free!



CHAPTER XVII

I began to see myself as boring through opposition with lowered head and indomitable will. I was strengthened by the fact that I had never swerved from my duty to Zoe. And now that the beast was out of the way who had caused her so much agony, my whole life seemed cleared. The McCall gang might cause me trouble, but they would need to come prepared, or to catch me off my guard. The opening up of the whole case had had a wholesome effect upon my reputation. The brotherly innocence of my relation to Zoe was the generally accepted one. Reverdy assured me of this. Douglas was a valiant friend to me in this clarification of my nature and my character before the community. The whole atmosphere of my life was now freer; but it had cost Lamborn his life to make it so. It seemed best, however, that I should leave town for a while. I decided to go to Cincinnati and then to Nashville. I wanted to see Dorothy. I felt that I must make myself clear to her, and face to face.

Having made all arrangements for Zoe and Mrs. Brown to keep the house while I was gone and having laid out the work for my men, I set forth for Vandalia, the capital of Illinois, by stage. There I took the Cumberland Road, passed through Indianapolis, a small place; arrived in good time at Cincinnati, a city of more than 30,000 people; a busy place of manufacturers, distillers, and pork packers, since Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana shipped their hogs to this market to be converted into hams and bacon and lard. I saw the town, the residence of the great Nicholas Longworth, who had grown fabulously rich by making wine. And at the hotel, this latter part of April being warm, I was treated to the spectacle of the men in the dining room taking off their coats and dining in their shirt sleeves amid the not inelegant appointments that surrounded the table. But I was becoming Americanized now and was not as sensitive as formerly to deportment of this sort.

The vastness of America came over me as I descended from Cincinnati to Nashville. Yet there was the southern territory still south of me; and beyond the Mississippi the unsettled empire of Louisiana. Cincinnati had something of the activity and the character of other northern cities; but as I passed through the domain of Kentucky and Tennessee I could not help but see that here was an agricultural country which owed its prosperity to slavery. But what was all that I saw here of industry and utilization of the resources of the land compared to what I saw growing up as a system around Jacksonville?

Yet the loveliness of the country around Nashville enchanted me. I was in a mood to be won, to be sure; for I was completely captivated by Dorothy and the delightful hospitality that was accorded me. Dorothy's mother treated me with such gentle and thoughtful attention, as if she received me not less upon the basis of my friendship to Reverdy than upon my own appeal to her. And as for Dorothy—she was as kind to me as a sister; and yet....

I loved the country and this little city of 6000 people on the hills above the Cumberland valley. Still, so many negroes. In this whole state of about 700,000 people, nearly 150,000 were slaves, so Dorothy told me. It amazed me. Negro slavery, so far as England was concerned, had never to me been a visible thing. But here in America, here in Tennessee, and in this city, it struck one at every turn. It entered into all the daily thinking and plans of every one. It was omnipresent. It touched every life.

This was the town of James K. Polk, whose name meant nothing to me; but Dorothy spoke of him as a leading man in Congress from Tennessee. Here also was the residence of President Jackson, a place called the "Hermitage," a few miles into the country. Dorothy and I drove to it. These were the places of interest to see; and everywhere the southern mansion: the upper and lower porch in front, the spacious windows, the Dorian or Ionic columns, as the case might be; the great entrance door set between mullioned panes at either side, and beneath a lunette of woodwork and glass. The Clayton house was like this, for Dorothy's father had been a man of wealth, a slave owner too in his prosperous days. He had failed and died, Reverdy had gone to the newer country of Illinois to seek his fortune, leaving Dorothy and the mother to the possession of the diminished property which Mr. Clayton had left.

But above everything in the way of delight, for the beauty of the prospect, for the opportunity it gave me to be with Dorothy, were the hills that overlooked the Cumberland valley and the river. We climbed here daily and sat beneath the lovely oaks that shaded the richness of the grass. To the west and north the river flowed to its confluence with the Ohio. Around us the hills. The valley between. The silence of nature, the intensity of unfolding life around us. Always on my mind was the thought of Dorothy as my wife. And why not speak my heart? I could not tell why. Was it Zoe; Dorothy's knowledge of Zoe? Was I investing Dorothy with my own thoughts, putting into her mouth the objections that I could make against myself? I could not tell what Zoe might bring into the life of the woman I married, as well as my own. Surely I was not very robust, very hearty in my speculations. For Dorothy had received me. There was nothing lacking in the warmth of her hospitality ... and yet I sensed at times such a temperate feeling in her glance, in her voice. Even her frankness had that character, or enhanced it perhaps.

And one afternoon as we were walking along the river I spoke what was in my heart. I had this competence. I had built the house. I could make a fortune in time. I was beginning to need some one to help me, to be with me. And no sooner had I spoken than I saw myself: Zoe was my half-sister and I was proposing marriage to a girl who had no feeling that did not bespeak to her the inferiority of the colored skin, no matter if it were lightened, no matter by whom. Dorothy's attitude was that of the high-bred and kindly southerner: the negroes must be kept in slavery as a solution of the social question and for the prosperity of the South; but at the same time the negro should be treated with kindness. And here was Zoe, the half-sister of the man who was asking her to be his companion for life. To what extent, then, the associate on a basis of equality with Zoe too? This was not all. My name had been coupled with Zoe's. Above all, I had killed a man, my rival or Zoe's hunter, as one might choose to believe.

Thus I saw myself. My very hair began to rise and to tingle. How had I dared to make this proposal to Dorothy? And as Dorothy was silent, and looked down as we walked, poking with her parasol at pebbles in the road, I was in a tense anxiety to know with what words she would break the oppressive pause between us. "I could see," she said, "that you liked me; and of course you wouldn't come so far to see me if you didn't. And you must know that Reverdy's friendship for you makes a difference. Do you know...?"

Dorothy lost her voice. The tears came out of her eyes. As she did not speak I began again, trying to say for her what she did not say for herself. "There's Zoe," I said. And then Dorothy quite lost control of herself. She wept piteously. And then she grew calmer. She had faced the reluctant fact when I spoke Zoe's name. We had stumbled up and over that roughness in the road. Any rut or obstacle in it might now be easier endured ... if worse was not to come.

Yes, these stories about me. Had Dorothy heard them? And the life I had taken for Zoe's sake. I was sure Dorothy had not heard of that. Even the first was a subject difficult to approach. I was twenty, Dorothy was nineteen. But the greatest obstacle was the age in which we lived. Women now draped themselves in mystery. There were whole realms of subjects that were not talked between the sexes. We managed things by mild indirections, by absurd circumlocutions.

I began to think of the letter that Lamborn had written Zoe. I was carrying it in my pocket. Did it not prove Lamborn's interest in Zoe? I handed it to Dorothy, thinking that it would disprove my interest in Zoe, of which I had been made self-conscious by the accusations; and not realizing that Dorothy probably knew nothing of all these charges. "Read this," I said, handing it to Dorothy.

Dorothy took it in at a glance, for it was only a few lines beginning "Dear Zoe." It was an invitation to Zoe to meet Lamborn again at the same place. Dorothy's face turned crimson. She handed the note back to me without a word. I had to struggle with the tough materials of the revelation that I wished to make. And I went on to tell Dorothy that the author of the note was Lamborn. "You remember him?" I asked. Dorothy nodded her head. "Well," I continued, "he is dead, thank God. I killed him."

Dorothy was overcome. She reeled. After a moment, in which she found her breath again, she faced about and began to walk toward the town.

I followed, hurt and crushed; for Dorothy had suddenly changed her whole manner. Her face was impenetrable; and it had paralyzed my hope with its expression of self-withdrawal, something almost of anger. I could not go on now and tell my story: that I had killed Lamborn because of his offense against Zoe, because of his menacing attitude toward me, because of the vile things he had said about Zoe. No! nothing I could say now would be in place. I had blundered, perhaps. We walked to the house, silent all the way.

Dorothy went to her room, leaving me in the hands of her mother. Mrs. Clayton, thinking that we had had a lovers' quarrel, endeavored by extra attention to me to overcome Dorothy's absence, and to say to me in this way that she did not share in Dorothy's attitude.

And so it was that Mrs. Clayton and I dined together; and I now had opportunity to tell her of little Amos, of my life in England, of my farm, my new house, my plans for the future. Mrs. Clayton was outspoken enough. She said that Reverdy admired my father for many things, and did not particularly censure his marriage. As for that it was a common enough thing in the South for the planters to have children by negro women, or by the prettier quadroons and octoroons. For herself she hated slavery, but did not know what would be done if the negroes were free.

Dorothy did not appear. We rose from the table and went out to sit under one of the great trees in the yard. I thought I saw an opportunity. Why not talk to Mrs. Clayton? She could tell Dorothy what I was unable to say to her. I set my will to the task.

"You seem to know about my father, Mrs. Clayton. And I want you to know about me. I want Dorothy for my wife. We had a kind of a flare-up this afternoon. I was trying to make my case clear, and Dorothy fell to crying. That's all. You see I came to America in ignorance of everything. No one had told me about my father's marriage; and I blame my grandmother that she did not tell me. Well, I got to Jacksonville and was terribly ill, almost died. Zoe took care of me. And that won me. But in addition to that she is as much my father's child as I am. I found that out as soon as I got up. Then I took her to live with me, to help me with the house, without thinking that there would be talk, not only by those who didn't know that she was my sister as well as by those who did know it. I went to St. Louis to buy furnishings for my new house. While I was gone a man named Lamborn wronged her. This made great trouble for me. And one thing led to another. He was saying vile things about me and about Zoe. And my life was getting more and more unendurable day by day on account of this fellow. And at last I was coming down the street with Reverdy one day, and this Lamborn suddenly confronted me. I drew and killed him. The state's attorney, Mr. Douglas, brought out all the facts before the coroner's jury. The jury acquitted me before leaving their seats. Mr. Douglas told the jury that he would not prosecute me if an indictment was found against me. And so..." I was about to say that I had come to Nashville to get away from the circumstances. But I caught myself and forebore.

Mrs. Clayton had followed me with rapt attention, leaning more and more toward me as my story progressed. She put out her hand to take mine. I could not tell whether it was the hand of pity or admiration. Her eyes were kindly, but they searched me. She seemed to say: "What difficulty in this boy's life is he trying to mingle with my daughter's life?" She spoke. "It is too bad. You are too young to have such tragedy." That was all. Then we went in.

As I arose the next morning I began to wonder what reception would be accorded me by Mrs. Clayton, not to say Dorothy. No one was astir but the colored butler and the maids. Yes, slavery was very well for them. I could see that all that was said in favor of the benevolence of the institution had verification in them and perhaps in all slaves doing like service. But what of the field hands, the heavier workers? I was thinking of these things, but mostly of the desperate situation I was in and of this day ahead of me. Would Dorothy see me again? Would I be the honored guest of yesterday? This silence of the mansion made me feel that its hospitality had cooled toward me. But in a little while Mrs. Clayton appeared on the stair and descended to find me rather restlessly pacing the room.

I could not specify any change in her manner. Perhaps as a matter of breeding I was to be bowed out with all possible courtesy. She smiled me a "Good morning," said that Dorothy would not be down until later. We two went in to breakfast.

I began to feel embarrassed. I could not be at ease. Mrs. Clayton sensed my diffidence. We managed the conversation in broken sentences and forced remarks. My pride asserted itself. I had done nothing myself for which I could be blamed. For the rest, if I was not wanted I should go my way. I asked Mrs. Clayton when I could get a boat to St. Louis. She did not know, but one ran almost every day either directly, or I could change boats at a place called Freesland on the Ohio River. Accordingly, after breakfast, I went to the steamboat landing to make inquiries ... and without seeing Dorothy.

A kind of rebellion and resentment were rising in me. Dorothy was Reverdy's sister; but surely she was of a different spirit if she disapproved of me for what I had done. Perhaps it would be well to be free of my love for Dorothy, to be once more without any feeling that my life needed completion by uniting it with a woman's life. I had offered myself. I was not accepted. My dignity, and place in the world, as I saw them, were dishonored.

When I returned to the house Dorothy had appeared. She smiled gently in recognition of me. I broke the silence by telling her that I could get a boat the next day, and that I must be off. She made no reply.

Later we went to the yard, under one of the great trees. Dorothy was evidently tortured in her mind and did not know what to say to me. She looked worn and as if she had not slept. I searched her face. A tear stole down her cheek. She averted her eyes and clasped her hands together nervously. I could endure the suspense no longer.

"It is best for me to go," I said. She made no reply. "I am sorry that I have made you suffer. Let me erase everything by withdrawing what I have said to you." "You can't," said Dorothy. "You are Reverdy's friend; you know how I love him. You couldn't suppose that anything that has affected you so deeply would not affect him and therefore me. I never believed that I could be so unhappy. You are going and that leaves me to think and think."

My heart took fire again. I stretched my hand to take Dorothy's. She removed hers gently out of reach. "Go your way, my friend," she said. "Later I may write you. You are only a boy yet ... and many things may happen. But be sure that I suffer, and that I remember and that I need help."

She arose and preceded me back to the house. Mrs. Clayton seemed to direct her influence toward smoothing our way. But nothing could be done. I had met defeat and I wished to depart.

The next day I was on the Ohio but not bound for St. Louis. I had decided to see New Orleans. Change of scene might allay my thoughts.



CHAPTER XVIII

I did not tell Dorothy where I was going. I left her to suppose that I was returning to Jacksonville.

In passing to the boat landing I stumbled and fell, bruising myself painfully. I was hurrying to get away and in my haste and sorrow I was oblivious of my surroundings. As I limped along on the deck, I was approached by a kindly man who offered me some ointment which he said was made from the oil that escaped over the surface of the water in the salt wells of Kentucky and elsewhere, in spite of anything that could be done and much to the inconvenience of the business of getting salt. This man said that the oil was being subjected to experiments for use in illumination. As an ointment it was magical, and in a few days my lameness disappeared.

Both on the Ohio and the Mississippi we saw flatboats tied together heaped with coal, which had been loaded into them from the sides of the hills of the Alleghanies and elsewhere. They were being floated down to New Orleans. I had found coal in several places on my land in Illinois. Sometimes one could dig it out of the surface of the ground. But no expeditious means were yet in use in Illinois in mining it.

The Mississippi is a wonder scene to me. The river is full of islands and the boat winds about in endless turns of the stream. There are swamps, and melancholy cypress and funereal live oaks. There are the solitary huts of the woodcutters, and bars of sand covered with cane brake, and impenetrable forests, and the forbidding depths of the jungle. Farther on there are the sugar plantations, and the levees, and the great houses of the planters, and the huts of the negroes, and the vivid greens of fields of sugar cane standing many feet high; and around these the cypress swamp. And on every side in the midst of each plantation the tall white towers of the sugar mills. It is all novel and wonderful to me; and it helps me to forget my insistent thoughts of Dorothy.

The steamer stopped to get wood. It was at a creole plantation. There was a procession of carts here, each drawn by a team of mules, driven by negroes, laughing and joking with each other. They were slaves hauling wood to the sugar mills. We were soon off again on the silent river, which had now broadened to the dimensions of a great lake.

Then we saw steeples, a dome; then the masts of numerous vessels, and steamboats, and tall chimneys. Then we reached the levee of the city. The boat was fastened, and I walked upon the streets of New Orleans. The heat was no greater than I had felt in Illinois. And at night a breeze stirred briskly from the harbor and the gulf beyond. This city of 50,000 people had immediate fascination for me.

In the evening I went to the Place d'Armes where a military band was playing. There were races during the day just out of town. The cafes were filled with people smoking and drinking, playing billiards and dominoes. Ladies in gay costumes sat in the balconies, making observations on the scene, the players, the passersby. French was spoken everywhere. And everywhere was the creole beauty, with black eyes and long silken lashes, and light skin faintly suffused with rose. I plunged into these festivities in order to forget Dorothy.

I went to the Spanish Cathedral the next day, and saw on the porch groups of gray-haired negroes waiting for alms. There were candles on the altar, paintings of the stations of the cross on the pillars, and confessional closets near the door. And here the lovely creole knelt side by side with pure black descendants of the African negro.

Not anywhere did I see the negro treated worse than in Illinois, except on one occasion. I was loitering on the dock looking at the steamboats being loaded by slaves. A negro driving a wagon almost collided with a wagon being driven by a white man. I saw the whole of it. The white man was at fault. Yet he began to curse the negro, who laughingly spoke the truth, that the white man had suddenly veered. With that a man, apparently an officer of some sort, stepped from a patrol box carrying a rifle and with an oath and a vile epithet commanded the negro to drive on. And he did quickly and without returning a word. There was something about the injustice of this that aroused my resentment. It was a partiality that had nothing to do with the circumstances, but only with the persons.

I visited the slave market and again saw the auctioning of human beings, some as light of color as Zoe and of as much breeding. Again I began to speculate on Zoe's future. What would become of her? How would her fate tangle itself with mine? If Douglas had taken an impetus in life from his uncle's failure to educate him, what direction had my life been given by my father's marriage and Zoe? Already I had killed a man for Zoe's sake; and I had been rejected by Dorothy because of Zoe, or because of the circumstances which Zoe had created around my life.

Wherever I wandered on Canal Street, on the wharves, in the French quarter, out to the battlefield where Jackson had won a victory over Packenham, Dorothy was habitually in my thoughts. But always a door closed against any communication with her; anything to be done for her as a remembrance of her generosity; any step to be taken toward making whole what I conceived to be our wounded friendship. Should I write Dorothy? But what? So many exquisite things in the shop windows: jewels, artistries of silver and gold. How I longed to select something for Dorothy! But the door was closed against it. In the antique shops lovely tables, chests, writing desks! If I could only buy many of such things for our home—Dorothy's and mine. But was that home to be? The door softly closed.

And thus I went about the city. It was so colorful, so gay, so continental, so unlike anything I had ever dreamed of. And all the while I was trying to order my thoughts, wondering what I should do. And if ever Douglas in his political ambitions got entangled, to his own undoing, with this mass of human beings, white and black, moving about the carcass of life, what was to be my fate, both on the score of my individual lot, and as one of the units in this racial hostility, and the political and economic forces that generated it?

I tried several times to write a letter to Dorothy. I could not find the exact thing I wanted to say, or the words with which to express it. What should I say? Should I urge Dorothy to a marriage with me? Should I attempt to argue down her misgivings? Should I tell her that I would return to Jacksonville and send Zoe away? Should I write Dorothy that I relinquished any hope of making her my wife? I wrote letters of these various imports and then destroyed them. A kind of paralysis was upon my thinking. And then I would leave my room and wander into the streets, visit the cafes, and find temporary forgetfulness in lively scenes and gay faces.

And one night when I was in the French quarter at dinner I became alert to the conversation of two men sitting at a near table. They spoke familiarly to each other, almost as brothers. But I sensed that they had been separated for some time. At last one of them made references to France and England, and I concluded that he had been abroad. Both were typical planters, with goatees and broad hats, coats of elegant material but widely and loosely tailored. As I followed their words almost the whole condition of America unfolded itself to my understanding.

The tenor of the talk was concerning cotton, the demand for it abroad and at home, and the effect that that demand had upon the South and the whole social and political life of America. Within thirty years past all the Northern States but Delaware had abolished slavery. What would have kept slavery alive after all except for the cotton gin and Eli Whitney, what but England's great machinery development for spinning and weaving, which made the demand for cotton more and more?

The demand! Where there is a demand it must be supplied, and everything must give way to the processes of furnishing that supply: land, slavery, what not. Then there are general references to life and to labor. After all, all labor is slavery they say. Apprentices, farm hands, factory workers are slaves. All this struggling mass of toilers must, in the fate of life, be consumed in the great drama of furnishing clothes and food and roofs for those who can pay. But cotton needs more land. And is not the territory of the United States, the great commons and domains of all the states, North and South, to be used by them for their several and common benefit, for the intromission of property: slaves or cattle or utensils? It seems to me, now that I hear these men talk, that I am compelled to listen everywhere in America to schemes of trade, material progress, the accumulation of money. These planters go on to ask why lines should be drawn across the territory of the United States forbidding slavery north of the line and permitting it south of the line. This territory had been paid for equally by the treasure and blood of all the states. Blood for land! Then slavery on the land to raise cotton! And was not Jefferson prophetic when he wrote that the extension of this divisional line in 1820 alarmed him like a fire bell at midnight? It betokened sectional strife: the North against the South. And about trade! For as the Southern States grew richer they would have more political power, could dominate the North. Some one must dominate. There must be a supremacy. And what would this growing hostility lead to? What would future inventions do to exacerbate it? What of the steam engine, what of machinery, what of unknown developments?

I could not help but think of the bearing that all of this had on my own life.

But finally as they paid for their dinner, lighted cigars, and became less energetic of mood, one asked the other: "Have you ever heard from the girl?" The reply was: "Not a word. How could I? I didn't leave my name. It was best to close the matter by leaving no trace of myself." And the first asked: "Wasn't your name on the draft?" "I had gold, a bag of gold. I simply turned it over to the new husband and went my way."

I was all ears now, studying, too, the face of the man who was confessing to the bag of gold. Was there a trace of Zoe in him? I could not be sure. I seemed to see something about the eyes, but it faded under my scrutiny. At best this man was only Zoe's grandfather; and my father's blood was nearer to Zoe than his.

They started to arise from the table. I wished to follow them. But I had not paid for my meal. I beckoned to a waiter. While he was coming the two planters strolled leisurely from the cafe arm in arm and in intimate conversation.

I was hurrying to be away and to follow them—I scarcely knew why. They were gone when my waiter came. I asked him who the planters were. He didn't know their names; only knew them as rich planters who often visited the cafe. I left the cafe and tried to find them, but they had disappeared. And I stood on the curb watching the iridescent ooze of the sewage in a runnel of the street seep along like a sick snake.

Creole beauties, negroes, planters, roughs, gamblers, passed me. The streets were noisy with trucks. The air was hot and lifeless. The scene about me suspired like the brilliant and deadly scales of a poisonous reptile. I was sick at heart. I was overcome with terrible loneliness. I was in love with Dorothy and I was Zoe's brother. I was caught in this great dramatic ordeal of America without any fault on my part. What should I do? Yes, my ambition. To get rich. That was labor enough. And there was my farm back in Illinois. Why was I here after all? Was it some dream? I would wake myself. I would return to my place, my duty. What else could I do? I went to the wharf to find a boat to St. Louis.



CHAPTER XIX

I was listless all the way home. Passing through Jacksonville I seemed to sense a coldness in the manner of some of the people. Even where there was a smile and a bow, to which I could take no exception, I interpreted an attitude which said: "The Englishman: the fellow who killed Lamborn."

Was the town dividing as to me? I was sure of Reverdy and Sarah, and Douglas, and the president of the college and his wife, and some others; but for the rest I suspected that envy had seized upon a pretext for its exercise. For I was rich; I had availed myself of mowers and all the new machinery for farming and I was a competitor, a man possibly growing more and more in the way. My reception in many quarters seemed distant.

I went directly to the farm. There was my house which I had built with many hopes. There was the hearth to which I longed to bring a wife. But here it was, only for me, for my habitation and rest from labors in the ambition to be rich! Mrs. Brown opened the door and welcomed me with a diffidence. "Where is Zoe?" I asked. Mrs. Brown replied quickly: "Zoe has not been seen nor heard of for more than a week. I got up one morning, and as she didn't appear I went and called her. She was gone. I saw Mr. Clayton about it. The last I heard no one had seen her."

My feelings were mixed of regret and relief. I was fond of Zoe. My sense of justice was enlisted in her behalf. I was fearful for her future, both for the misfortune that might befall her and for the complications that might accrue to me in her living away from my guidance. For there was Zoe's property. But on the other hand, if Zoe were completely out of my life I might win Dorothy.

I walked reflectively toward the fireplace. Should I not write to Dorothy and tell her of Zoe's disappearance? For surely Zoe would not go away unless she meant to stay. She had roving, adventurous blood in her, and an English will. Could I rely upon the hope of her staying away, and that she would not figure in my life in the future except as to the land, the money? Yes, here my hands were stuck as in honey. And when could they be freed and cleaned of it? While I was reflecting upon these things Mrs. Brown walked to the mantle and taking a letter from it handed it to me. It was from Dorothy.

"Dear James," the letter read, "I was never more depressed in my life than I was after your departure; you must know that I would be. In the first place, Reverdy is so very fond of you and esteems you so much, and that counts with me. For he is the best and truest man I have ever known. And I am sure that you are honorable and kind; and you have asked me to be your wife, and any woman worth noticing is moved by a request like that if she has any respect for the man whatever. But this seems to me the most terrible situation that a girl could be placed in. I have thought it over until my mind goes around in a circle, and I cannot relate things clearly any more. And of course I have talked it all over with mother. You can be sure I would not take the pains to do this, nor the pains to write you in detail, if you had not entered my mind in a serious way. Frankly the only misgivings I have of you, and I beg you to forgive me for saying this, is the fact that your father would do such a thing. I cannot understand it, my mother can't. What was he that he could do such a thing with the prospect that he would injure you, his son by another marriage, in so many ways and so deeply? He could not have overlooked these things; nor the feeling that exists in America, particularly in the South, against such an alliance. But putting these things out of mind, you cannot possibly assure me, or any other woman, against the future. There are the property interests; but if these were out of the way there is the relationship. And I blame myself deeply, for I knew that Zoe was your sister almost as soon as I first came to Jacksonville. With this knowledge I should not have come to your parties or put myself in a way to be liked by you. I should have only been polite to you when you came to Reverdy's house. For any other association, I ask you to forgive me. I have written you many letters, and then torn them up. Perhaps I shall send this one. It is as good as I can do. It says everything now except that I am profoundly unhappy, that I shall never see you again—and to wish you happiness under the circumstances fills my throat with a kind of suffocation. And so I write farewell—and can hardly mean it—and yet it must be farewell."