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Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
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Chapter 24 |
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_ CHAPTER XXIV Douglas' hard campaign was ended when we arrived in Springfield. His humorous remark was that he had the constitution of the United States. He was never so wholly fatigued that a drink or a meal would not pull him up to a zest and a capacity for a further task. A little sleep restored him to a new exuberance. Truly, he was one of the most vital men who come into the world for a restless career. On the way back we noted how rapidly the country was changing. The influx of settlers was very great. Villages, towns were springing up everywhere. Farmhouses were multiplying. Douglas was enthusiastic over the great prosperity which was evident. As an empire builder his imagination was stirred. If he was not elected to Congress he would have to go back to the practice of law. At this period of his life he was the eager and ambitious youth pressed in the matter of money. I saw his career influenced, if not largely shaped, by material necessity. And as it turned out in the election in August he was defeated by thirty-five votes in a total poll of 36,000. We did not know the result of the election until several weeks later, due to the tardy facilities for communicating news. He had fought against an able and experienced campaigner. He had the handicap of extreme youth. He had to meet the slurs of "interloper," and the charge of being a pushing newcomer. And yet he was almost elected. There were discrepancies in the count, too. He was urged to contest the election. But the expense was too great. He was poor. There was much about Douglas to remind one of Napoleon: drive, will, resourcefulness, exhaustless energy. Too bad to remit such a man to the business of getting clients. He was not a plodder. He was a mind who saw men in large aggregations bound to each other by policies and interests. He knew how to handle them as material in empire building. On that ride back to Springfield he talked to me of many things that gave me an insight into the workings of his mind. For the dreamer, the visionary, he had no patience; he felt contempt for the agitator and the radical. In a theory preoccupying the human mind he saw something akin to madness. Mormonism, abolitionism, all the various forms of propaganda which made American life so clamorous, found a common classification in his tabulation of men. What was really before the country? Truly, the conquest of the wilderness, the production of wealth, the development of national power; but always the rule of the people too. "There are two things in my life," he said to me. "One is the fact that I got mad at my uncle, and the other is the inspiration that I get out of these prairies. Add to these what mind I have, and the sum is myself." When we parted in Springfield, and I was about to return to my farm in Jacksonville, he could not thank me enough for what I had done for him. But I was his friend, and why not? I saw him later when a dinner was given at Quincy in honor of the Democratic governor-elect whose success Douglas had done so much to bring about. All the speakers paid tribute to Douglas amid storms of applause. They assured him that his firm integrity, the high order of his talent had endeared him to the people; and that he would be remembered in two years with another nomination. As soon as I saw Reverdy I told him that I had found Zoe and all the circumstances and about Fortescue. Reverdy thought that I should send Zoe money for living expenses on the first of each month; and so I began. But neither Reverdy nor myself could work out any permanent program for Zoe. After all, what was humanly possible? Zoe was now about nineteen. If she was dealt with justly as to her property what more could I do? If there was danger from Fortescue, or any one else, I was powerless to prevent it. Since she did not wish to live with me, I had no power to make her do so. In November Reverdy and I went to Meredosia to see the locomotive which had been shipped from Pittsburgh for Illinois' first railroad. All of the horses and oxen of the neighborhood were required to pull the huge iron thing up the banks of the river; and scores of men in ant-like activity worked about it to place it upon the rails. Douglas was in the crowd, happy and enthusiastic. He joined the party, headed by Governor Duncan, in the first journey that a steam train ever made in the state. He tried to make a place for Reverdy and me; but the Governor had filled all the seats with his friends: so we stood as spectators, while the new wonder moved on its way, pulled by the queer locomotive, amid the shouts of the crowd, responded to by the calls of those on board. Going back to Jacksonville I ventured to talk to Reverdy about Dorothy. He knew well enough what my feeling was for her. He knew the story; he knew her attitude. He did not share in her fears, in her feeling about Zoe. He was frank to say that Zoe could do nothing, could be nothing that need affect my life in any way more serious than if her skin was white. But he explained that Dorothy had the southern view; and if I wished to wait and see if she could work herself out of doubts, well and good; and if I could not further hope he could understand that too. I wanted to write to Dorothy to tell her that Zoe was still away and that I thought she would never return. But perhaps after all Dorothy's attitude was founded in an innate prejudice against the relationship to which she would make herself a party by marrying me. Was this not perfectly unreasonable? It made me distrust Dorothy's nature at times. What was she after all? Finally, however, I wrote to Dorothy as best I could and after many ineffectual trials at expressing myself. Promptly enough a letter came back. It was not lacking in kindness, but it offered no hope. Hurt and listless I tried to turn my thoughts to other things. There were always my growing enterprises--and yet to what end? To be rich, to be richer. When December came I had a letter from Miss Walker. She was in Springfield at the Ridgeway mansion for a visit through the holidays. There were to be parties and dances. Why did I not come over? And I went. I looked up Douglas at once. He was making some headway at the practice of law, but his energies, for the most part, were absorbed in perfecting the organization of his party. He was putting together a compact machine. He was on the very edge of being the leader of the Illinois Democracy. What infinite details there are to any given end! If it is the building of a house, tools must be bought, trees felled, foundations dug. A carpenter's finger must be bandaged so that he can go on with the work. Cloth must be found for the bandage and a string with which to tie it. And so Douglas was engaged in infinite talks on the corners, at the newspaper office; he was making short trips; he was writing dozens of letters, he was inserting editorials in the newspapers. But he had time for the gayeties of the season. He was always the gallant, the amusing wit, the ready raconteur. We were such friends! Again Miss Walker had both of us for attendants; but upon such widely different footing. I was a suitor with many doubts. Douglas was not a suitor at all. He came to her to enjoy the keenness of her mind. But as I was English, and as Miss Walker thought herself the next thing to it, she took me aside as an understanding confidant as to the life around us. Springfield was almost a mudhole. She was offended by it, but also she found much in it to make her laugh. There were the gawks; the sprawling ill-bred men; the illiterate young women; the mushroom life; the haste, the crudities of living; the ugliness and the disorder; the unsettled, ever restless, patchy catch as catch can existence; the attempt, in a word, to make life, to build a town, a capital. All this shocked or amused her. Did I not see it with English eyes used to tranquillity and order? She wondered why Douglas had left the East. He could have risen there in time; and when he should have done so it would have been an eminence. Had he not acquired brusqueness, vulgarity since coming west? A man of undoubted gifts, she conceded--yet. Perhaps I was her favorite after all. To test her out, I put my own story around the life of a friend, telling her of a man who had married an octoroon, leaving a daughter of color and a son by a previous marriage with a white woman; also describing the consequences that had ensued. Miss Walker heard me with interested attention. She admitted that the complications were serious. Undoubtedly, many women in the West would care nothing about such a relationship, there was so much indifference here to form and breeding; anything for a husband, anything to get along in the world. Well, if Miss Walker from Connecticut could see my relationship to Zoe in such a light, could I blame Dorothy from Tennessee for judging it more seriously? Perhaps after all this was a woman's reaction to my story. Later I had a party at my house, inviting all the young crowd of Springfield to come over. Douglas came too, and Reverdy and Sarah and Mr. and Mrs. Sturtevant. It was just after Christmas. We had a roaring fire in the fireplace. We popped corn and pulled candy. I brought in my old fiddler from the woods to play for us. We danced. These festivities were in honor of Miss Walker, and she entered into the fun with great zest. Day by day we were better friends. When she came to go back to Springfield she was no longer Miss Walker to me, she was Abigail. I was not in love with her--there was Dorothy still in my heart. Yet I was very fond of her. I thought she approved of me. As we parted she asked me why I did not come to Chicago. It was fast growing into a city. What better field for making money? Vaguely the idea entered my mind and began to mature. _ |
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