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Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
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Chapter 8 |
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_ CHAPTER VIII What were my thoughts after all? Was I ashamed of my kinship with Zoe? With this human being who had nursed me so tenderly through my illness? Did I begrudge her the interest which she had, of right, with me in our father's estate? She was as closely connected to him by ties of blood as I was. These things I reflected upon as I felt course through me a deep undercurrent of regret. Was it my mother? Her face came before me as I had learned to know it from her picture. Yes, that seemed to be it. My mother had not been honored. How could my father for any ambition, for any exigency of circumstance stoop to a marriage of this sort, with the memory of my mother still fresh in mind, if not in heart? Ah! that was it! Did he keep her in his heart? My grandmother's reticence about my father began to fill in with significance of this sort. She knew that he had married the octoroon not many years after my mother's death. She resented it and she preserved silence about him, while keeping me ignorant. Thus without any preparation for the disclosure, I had encountered it at full speed in my career. Reverdy had, no doubt, alluded to this matter when he spoke with such feeling of my father in Chicago. "Poor fellow," he had said. Did my father suffer for this marriage? What was his secret? Why "poor fellow?" With these thoughts I entered the house. I could sense that they knew that I should return with the secret which they had kept from me. Zoe was not in sight. Sarah's grandmother sat in her chair by the window and called me to her. "Come here, Jimmy," she said. "You're a nice English boy. You know we are all English. My father and mother were English ... well, to be truthful, my father was half Irish. His mother was Irish. And that makes us all friends, no matter how much we fight. We fight and get over it. My husband was in the Revolutionary War; and he's dead and gone long ago; and here I am in this new country of Illinois with Sarah and a son-in-law soon to be ... and maybe as lonely sometimes as you are. Sarah's mother was my pride and she's dead a long time too, but I don't get over that.... What's the matter, Jimmy? You've had bad news. O, yes, it had to come. You know now about Zoe. Well, remember that pretty is as pretty does. For that matter, she is pretty enough, and good enough too. Change her skin and any boy would be proud to be her brother. That's what a little color does. And yet the good Lord made us all, white as well as black. I have always liked the colored people. I liked them in Tennessee, and I hated to see them mistreated whenever they were. But I'm like a lot of others, I don't know what we are going to do with so many of them; and I say let the southern people run their own business and not try to intermeddle in the business of the Almighty. If He hadn't wanted slavery He could have prevented it. As for me, I don't want no slaves. Every one to his own way. Reverdy's father came down from Tennessee too. He emancipated all his slaves before coming. He grew to hate slavery. He brought one old nigger woman with him to Illinois. She's here yet, on a farm not more than fifteen miles away. And Reverdy's father provided for her, and left a little fortune to Reverdy ... more than $600, and that gives him a start." The old lady talked on in this manner without a pause. Just then Reverdy and Sarah came in. They had been for a walk. Sarah had gathered a bouquet of wild flowers. They took in the scene, evidently divined the subject of our talk. For Reverdy sat down and began with gentleness to pick up its threads. "You have been told, James, I hope, that Zoe is not trying to take anything from you. She will make no fight on your father's will." ... "Will," I echoed. "There was a will then?" "Didn't Mr. Brooks tell you?" ... He hadn't told me. He had scarcely had the opportunity. But if Zoe had been remembered in the will what was the danger now? "No, your father was fond of Zoe ... he remembered her; but not to the same extent that he remembered you. She gets $500 of the estate and you get the rest. But the hitch is here: we have eleven lawyers in Jacksonville and another one studying to be a lawyer; this newcomer, Douglas. And they are as hungry as catfish after a hard winter. And Mr. Brooks feared that some of these fellows would try to stir up a little business by using Zoe to attack the will, and he thought it was best to get it settled. He was a good friend of your father's, liked him, and he wants to see his wishes carried out. Your father was one of the best of men. It's a great loss to the community ... his death." But as Zoe was my sister why should she not have some of the land that my father left? Should her dark skin deprive her of that? My father had evidently thought so. But now I could settle the estate by enforcing the will, or I could divide the estate with her equally. Could I enforce the will after all? I knew nothing of such things. I hadn't asked Mr. Brooks' advice about anything. There I sat then going over these matters in my mind, in a kind of weariness and sickness of heart. I had heard of cases where wills had been rejected for fraud or lack of mind on the part of the maker. Was it possible that my father's mind was disturbed? What fraud could have been wrought upon him? I, the chief beneficiary, had not influenced him; no one could have done so for me. What then? Zoe came in now and began to spread the table. There was only the one large room downstairs beside the kitchen. But I loved its comforts, its quaint and substantial furnishings. All brought from North Carolina originally, Mrs. Spurgeon said. There were silver spoons, hand wrought; and blue china, and thick blue spreads for the table. There were three rooms upstairs. The beds were posters, built up with feather beds in the cold weather; spread now with thick linen sheets. Mrs. Spurgeon had woven some of these things. Her loom stood yet in one of the outhouses, on occasion set up in the living room when she brought herself to the task of weaving, rarely now. She was too old for much labor. Sarah helped Zoe with the meal. Reverdy stayed to share it with us. But I had learned that he lived at the tavern, though he disliked it thoroughly. Some nights later I asked Zoe to walk out with me. She was timid about the rattlesnakes which she said were everywhere through the woods and the grass, sometimes crawling into the roads. There were wildcats and wolves too in the timber; but they were not so likely to be encountered now as in the winter time. I had a pocket pistol, and taking up a hickory stick that was in the corner, I urged Zoe to allay her fears and come. Sarah joined me in prevailing upon her. Zoe doubtless knew that I wished to talk with her about the estate; and at last she walked with me out of the house and into the road. After a few minutes of silence I asked her about my father: what were his spirits; his way of life; where did he live; did she live with him? Then Zoe told me some of the things I had learned from Mr. Brooks. And as her mother had died when Zoe was born she had been taken by Mrs. Spurgeon to raise. She said that her father, my father, had lived a part of the time at the inn, and a part of the time at his house on the farm; that during the last two years of his life she had seen more of him than formerly, though he was often in St. Louis, and even New Orleans. And she added with hesitation that he drank a good deal at the last, and was often depressed and silent. "Was he kind to you?" I asked. Zoe said that he was never anything but kindness, and that he provided her with comforts and with schooling whenever any one came along to teach the children of the community. I had already seen around the house a copy of the _Spectator_, and Pope's poems. Zoe told me that she had read these books, part of them over and over, and that she had had a teacher the year before who had helped her to understand them. I began to delimn Zoe as a girl of intelligence. Of vital spirits she had an abundance.... The night was very warm and of wonderful stillness, no breeze. We heard the cry of what Zoe called "varmints" in the woods. A night bird was singing. She told me it was the whippoorwill. I never had heard a more thrillingly melancholy note. Once Zoe stepped upon a stick in the road. Thinking it was a snake she gave a cry and leaped to one side. But I calmed her and we kept our way.... I had never seen the stars to the same advantage, not even on the ocean. They were spread above us in infinite numbers, and of remarkable brilliancy. And there was the prairie, stretching as far as the eye could penetrate into the haze of the horizon, except where a distant forest rimmed the edge of the visible landscape. Zoe took up my remark about the spaciousness of the country with telling me that young Douglas had been to supper a few nights before I had come to myself out of the fever, and that he had said that the prairie affected him as liberty would affect an eagle released from a cage; and that he looked back upon the hills of Vermont as barriers to his vision. "He is nearly your age," said Zoe; "only two years older. You will like him; every one does. No one can talk like him that I have ever heard.".... At last I brought forward the subject of our father's will. Zoe was silent for a moment, for my specific question was what she wished to have done. Then she said: "It's all foolishness. These lawyers here have been bothering me to get me to fight the will, and trying to get me to break the will because my pa drank. I know he drank, but I don't see what difference that makes. He always knew what he was doing, so far as I know; and even if he didn't I'd never say nothin' about it. I know my place; and things is gettin' worse about colored folks, and less chance for a colored girl to marry a white man even if she wanted to, 'specially if I knew he was marryin' me to get my land. I'm satisfied with the will the way it is and always have been, or any way you want it, Mr. James. I know my place, and that there is a kind of curse on me for bein' dark skinned; and I think my pa was mighty kind to make the will the way he did. This 5000 acres he left is worth a lot of money, more than $5000 Mr. Reverdy says; and if I had what the will gives me I'd have $500, and what would I do with it? For I've always got to work anyway." Suddenly we saw lights ahead in the road and heard the rattle of wheels. It was the stage coming into Jacksonville. It was upon us almost at once. The lights of the lantern made us blink our eyes. We stepped to one side. A voice called out: "Well I'll be damned if there ain't a white feller strollin' with a nigger!" "Shut your trap," said the driver, and the stage rolled rapidly away from us. My mind was suddenly made up as to the farm by the remark falling so brutally from these unknown lips. I took Zoe's hands. I drew her to me. She was weeping. Was not one half of her blood English blood? Yes, and what Englishman would not resent with tears an insult which he could neither deny nor punish? But I would punish it. Zoe should have her rightful half.... And silently we walked back. _ |
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