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Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
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Chapter 9 |
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_ CHAPTER IX The next morning the alarm over the cholera is more intense. All kinds of horrifying stories go the rounds. News has been brought by passengers on the stage that a man and his wife, living near the Illinois River, died within an hour of each other. They were well at dawn. At noon they were both under the black soil of the river's shore, buried by three stalwart sons, who carried their bodies in the bed clothing and let them down by it into hastily made graves. Something has happened here. The stage driver who silenced the rowdies last night is stricken this morning at the tavern. He is dead. By noon he is buried in the village cemetery where the ashes of my father lie. Mrs. Spurgeon thinks that Reverdy should leave the tavern and come here with the rest of us. I am to take the word to him when I go to see Mr. Brooks. She has seen the ravages of cholera before. There is nothing to do but to be careful about diet, keep cheerful, and surrender to no fears. I am not in the least alarmed. But the negroes are panic stricken. They are calling upon the Lamb to save them. They are singing and wailing. They are congregating at the hut of Aunt Leah, an aged negress, who is sanctified and gifted with supernatural power. Zoe is not in fear, and Sarah goes about the duties of the day with calm unconcern. I am off to see Mr. Brooks again. The streets are almost deserted. The faces of those I meet are white and drawn. Mr. Brooks acts as if his mind is stretched out of him in apprehension. Yet he is in his office ready to pick up what business may come his way; and he is waiting to see me. I tell Mr. Brooks at once that I want to divide the property equally with Zoe. He thinks, evidently, that I have weakened before the mere prospect of a contest; and he assures me that the estate can be settled as my father intended. Well, but can this plan of mine be carried out? As easily as the other, he says, and of course more bindingly if there can be a difference. For he had intended to have the court decree a sale of the property and divide the money under the sanction of the court. But according to my plan Zoe could get no more; and therefore no one could object to it. I am curious about my father. What is the danger of a contest, even if Zoe could be brought to make one? Mr. Brooks tells me that my father was drinking heavily toward the last; that he looked aged and worn. His hair had turned white, though he was only forty. He acted like a man who had a corroding sorrow in his heart. When he took the cold it developed rapidly into lung fever. He was dead in three days. His will was made just as he took to his bed at the tavern. There were stray scamps about Jacksonville who would swear to anything. And though Zoe was a colored girl, and notwithstanding the character of such witnesses in her behalf, a case so composed might be troublesome. Then there was the treasure at stake; and the hunger of lawyers and maintainers. Well, I had settled it. None of these wolves should have a chance. Mr. Brooks scrutinized my face with large, pensive eyes. After a silence he said: "You are the boss; but I want you to know that the will can stand. I will guarantee to win the case if there is one." "Can we see the farm?" I asked. "And my father's grave?" Mr. Brooks brought up his buggy and we were off. But first I wished to find Reverdy and give him Mrs. Spurgeon's message. He had gone out to his little farm. He was raising a crop, having returned from the war just in time to get it planted. It was only a little out of our way, and we could stop there on our return. Almost at once we came to the cemetery, a crude enclosure, fenced with rough pickets, evidently split with the ax. Mr. Brooks led me to the spot. Weeds abounded everywhere. The grasshoppers were flying before our steps. A long snake glided away from my feet as I stepped near the yellow clay which tented the body of my father ... and Zoe's father ... the husband of my lovely mother, so long dead. Here was the soldier of Waterloo, the adventurer into this Far West, the man who had died with some secret sorrow, or some sorrow for which he found no words or no confidant. Above me was the blinding sun, before me the prairie, at my feet this hillock of clay, where weeds had already begun to sprout. Mr. Brooks watched me; and seeing me move he started on; and I followed him through the broken gate to the buggy. It was two miles to the log house which my father had built on his land. We drove up and went in. A tenant named Engle was living here with his wife and numerous children. Some of them crowded around us; others ran and hid, afterwards peered around the corner, timid and wild. Engle was not there; but his wife came from her washing to tell us where he could be found, what he was doing. When Mr. Brooks revealed to her who I was she stared at me with simple wondering eyes, drying her hands the while upon her apron. She was terribly upset by the reports of the cholera. Besides ... she went on: "There's a right smart lot of lung fever this summer. I 'low the men let their lungs get full of dust in the barn or somethin'. And I never did see the like of bloody flux among the children, and the scarlet fever too. We never had nothin' like that in Kaintucky. But I says to my man this mornin', there ain't nothin' to do but to stick it out. When yer time comes I guess there ain't no use ter run. And people do die in Kaintucky, too." We proceeded to drive around the entire acreage. It took us some hours. Always the prairie, boundless and colorful. Miles of rich tall grass, sprinkled everywhere with purple, brick red, yellow, white, and blue blossoms! Billows of air drove the surface of it into waves. It was a sea of living green. We passed forests of huge oak and elm trees, which grew along the little streams. There were many fields of corn, too, tall and luxuriant; and wheat ready for harvest. We came upon Engle at last. He wanted me to come close to see the corn. I got out and stood beside it, stroked its long graceful banners, turned up the dark soil with my boot and saw how rich and friable it was. And all this was mine, mine and Zoe's. My imagination took fire. My ambition rose. I resolved to study the whole agricultural matter, and to reduce these acres in their entirety to cultivation. I would raise cattle and sheep. I would build fences. Above all I would make a house for myself. Here was my place in life and my work. No delay. I should begin to-morrow with something directed to the general end. Returning we went past Reverdy's farm. But he had finished his work and gone to town. Accordingly we speeded up. When I arrived home I found Reverdy already there. But he would not leave the tavern. He gave no reason in particular. He said he was as safe there as anywhere; and it was more convenient for him. But there was much doing. Sarah and Zoe were mixing the ingredients of a cake. A turkey was roasting; we were going to have a guest for supper. Douglas, the law student, the new school teacher, was coming; and all was delighted expectation. "For," said Mrs. Spurgeon, "I reckon we ain't never had such a young feller before around these parts. Talk! You never heard such talk. It flows just like the water down hill. And there never was a friendlier soul. I never thought they raised such people up in Yankeeland as him. You can bet he'll make his mark. He'll be a judge before he's ten years older; and they do well to get him here. And what I say is: where did he get his eddication? He is an orphan too, like you, James ... raised by an uncle so far as he had a raisin'. But the uncle fooled him. He promised him an eddication, and then went back on it. And what does young Douglas do? He busts away. He gets awful mad and comes west to make his fortune. Make a young feller mad, hurt him good and plenty, and if he has the right stuff you make a man of him. I've seen it over and over. When a young feller's mad and disappointed, if he's got the right stuff in him, he gets more energy, like a kettle blown off. They do, unless they sulk. Now there's other types. There was your poppy; he warn't mad and he didn't sulk exactly, and yet there was somethin'. He seemed to simmer and stew a little. But he left five thousand acres of land. Maybe he was one of these here big speculators like as is all over Illinois now, that has some kind of a different secret, and makes a big success some other way. You can never tell. But you see when Douglas came here he landed from Alton down here at Winchester and went right to work makin' a few dollars at a auction where he was a appraiser. And he worked at his trade too. For he's a cabinet maker. Yes, sir, he has a trade. With all the books he's read he has a trade. And now he's up here to look over the ground; for they say he's comin' here next spring to practice law, and even then he'll be only twenty-one." Surely, this was a land of haste, of easy expedients. I did not know a great deal about the legal education of an English lawyer; but enough to appreciate the difference between the slow and disciplined training there and the rapid and loose preparation which I heard Mrs. Spurgeon describe with so much pride. I went into the corner of the room to write a letter to my grandmother. _ |
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