Home > Authors Index > Edgar Lee Masters > Children of the Market Place > This page
Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
||
Chapter 18 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ 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. _ |
||