Children of the Market Place Part 9

He was just finis.h.i.+ng. In a burst of impetuous and impa.s.sioned eloquence he was pointing to the future glory of the United States, when Great Britain would own no foot of soil from the North Pole to the Gulf.

The audience applauded tumultuously. Douglas stepped from the rude platform into the arms of bewitched admirers. He freed himself and came to me. He brought with him a Mr. DeWitt Williams who had prevailed upon Douglas to accept his hospitality for the night. As Douglas' traveling companion, I was invited to share in the entertainment.

CHAPTER XXIII

I had no opportunity now to tell Douglas that I had found Zoe. Her own injunctions to keep her whereabouts a secret appealed to me. Perhaps her going away, the changing of her name, her determination to keep her life free from mine, made for a real solution. Perhaps she could continue in this way for years, taking from me what I might send her. Perhaps I could marry Dorothy eventually. Perhaps all would be well. Perhaps!

When we were driving toward Springfield the next day I was on the point several times of telling Douglas that I had found Zoe. I wanted to discuss the possibilities with some one. Prudence, however, dictated silence--and silence I kept.

Mr. Williams was a prospering lawyer and land speculator. He had been in Chicago for two years. His household consisted of Mrs. Williams and two children, and a Miss Walker from Connecticut, a sister of Mrs. Williams.

The house was new and of some architectural pretentions, of brick, in the style of the houses I had seen in New York. It was well furnished.

There were two servants; altogether an air of elegance about the establishment.

We had a gay hour at breakfast, for Douglas was in one of his most engaging and talkative moods. Mr. Williams was a man in the middle forties, and seemed colorless and unschooled in comparison with Douglas.

He shared Douglas' political opinions, looked upon him with a certain awe; while Mrs. Williams and the children kept a reverential silence.

But Miss Walker! I saw that she was disposed to match wits with Douglas.

She was exceedingly fair of complexion, with lovely brown hair and gray-blue eyes, which had a way of fixing themselves in an expression of intense concentration. Like sudden spurts of flame they lighted quickly upon the barely suggested point of a story or an argument. She laughed freely in a musical voice that encouraged Douglas to multiply anecdotes.

Douglas enjoyed this admiration. But after all his att.i.tude toward women was wholly conventional. He did not use his gifts to win them. The idea of making conquests, even through his growing celebrity, did not enter into his speculations. He was a man's man. If he was ever to be interested in a woman it would be in the practical way of making her his wife. He could be a husband, never a lover. His genius, though fed by pa.s.sion and virility, entertained no visions of romantic ecstasy. His instinct was for the laws.

Miss Walker was to Douglas only a delightful auditor, an apt interlocutor. She looked Douglas through and through. She dropped words of dissent. She expressed her abhorrence of slavery and the South. In referring to South Carolina's attempted nullification of the tariff law, she said that if they ever attempted to secede they should be pushed out of the door and not held. I thought her critical of Douglas, in spite of the amazement which her eyes betrayed for his conversational gifts, his self-a.s.surance and brilliancy. Once she said that there was a right and wrong about everything. And when Douglas glanced up at her quickly, her eyes fixed him steadily. Douglas took up this challenge by saying: "Yes, but who is to decide what is right and what is wrong; or what is to decide it? The progress of the country or the opinions of fanatics?" "The minds of big men," retorted Miss Walker. "And since you have spoken of a great territory for the United States let me bespeak big men for it instead. Persia you know was a big country." "Why make the two inconsistent?" asked Douglas. "You can have both." "No, not where you make material progress the never-ending thought of every one."

Mr. Williams had many things on his mind, that was apparent. His haste in eating, his self-absorption showed that. Yet after breakfast he lingered for half an hour; and during this time Miss Walker, who had noticed me no more up to now than as one of the persons at the table, came to a seat near me in the living room. She was lovely to look at, but in a way half prim. The whiteness of her forehead, the fineness of her hands, her air of clear and quick intellectuality, made her a person to inspire something of deference. And yet I felt myself captivated by her. Surely in every thinking man's heart there is a biological groping toward a woman of mind. Shadowy forms rise undistinguished before him.

They are the children that such a woman can bear. He does not know that this is the urge; but nature knows. On Miss Walker's part, I saw her appraising me. She had come west where life was luxuriant and the accidents of fortune abundant and men were strong. She had now overstayed her visit with Mrs. Williams. Was to-day her day of destiny?

Here before her were the rising statesman of Illinois and a man who had increased a fortune.

She was coming to Springfield shortly to visit. Would I be there? Did I know the Ridgeway family there, of which Edward Ridgeway, the founder, had been prominent in the affairs of Illinois, now dead some five years?

If I came to Springfield she would be glad to have me call upon her.

Well, perhaps she liked me and did not like Douglas after all. Was I drawn to her? I felt some definite interest in her, that was sure. But I was not forgetting Dorothy. Dorothy could not be obscured by a light as white as Miss Walker's. And yet I had to confess that I was thinking of Miss Walker in a half serious way.

CHAPTER XXIV

Douglas' hard campaign was ended when we arrived in Springfield. His humorous remark was that he had the const.i.tution 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.sification 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 a.s.sured 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 circ.u.mstances 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 s.h.i.+pped 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 att.i.tude. 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 att.i.tude was founded in an innate prejudice against the relations.h.i.+p 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 relations.h.i.+p, 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 relations.h.i.+p 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.

CHAPTER XXV

The truth was that the loneliness in my life was depressing me; it was in a sense work without hope--only the hope of being rich. While I could not doubt Abigail's fitness as a mate for me, and though I was in desperate need of a companion, Dorothy would not out of my mind and my heart. My indomitable will had a.s.serted itself in the pursuit of Dorothy. Even if my judgment had favored Abigail I could not have given up Dorothy. To surrender the hope of Dorothy was to leave something in my life unfinished; and that was contrary to my tenacious purpose. I could not hear Abigail's voice without comparing it to the softer modulations of Dorothy's. I could not be in the presence of Abigail without feeling that there was something more kindred to me in the personality of Dorothy. And yet I had to confess on reflection that I was not sure of this. Dorothy wrote to me on occasion, but there was really nothing in her letters to keep hope alive. All the while my life was going on in labor, in planning, in building, with Mrs. Brown to keep my house. Even Zoe did not write to me. I knew that she was receiving the monthly allowance from the fact that my letters were not returned.

However, at last one was sent back to me.

Then in the late winter I was surprised one day by the visit of a stranger--and a strange character he was too. He introduced himself to me as Henry Fortescue of Chicago--and as Zoe's husband! I remembered; he was the voice teacher with whom Zoe was sitting on the lake front. He began by saying that he had come with very unwelcome news and upon a sorrowful mission. Zoe was dead! Zoe had met her death by foul play. She had been found strangled to death in her bed.

I glanced in horror at this unknown character. He went on to tell me that suspicion had fastened itself upon a half-breed who came to the house where Zoe lived. He had been arrested, was soon to be tried. As to Fortescue's visit here, he had come to see about Zoe's land and interests. He had married Zoe some weeks before her death. Without knowing much about such matters I went at once to the point.

I asked Fortescue what proof he had of the marriage. I began to suspect Fortescue of being the murderer himself. So many desperate deeds were done in this country; so many dishonest expedients resorted to for money, for land. My question gave Fortescue embarra.s.sment. He stammered, colored a little, then went on to say that he had witnesses to the marriage; that the ceremony was not performed by a minister, but that he and Zoe had entered into a common-law marriage. I did not know exactly what this was and at once determined to see Douglas about it.

Meanwhile I was compelled to suffer Fortescue to wander over the farm.

He took it upon himself to do so; and I scarcely knew how to forbid him.