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Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
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Chapter 13 |
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_ 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. _ |
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