Children of the Market Place. Edgar Lee Masters
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acre."
I began to wonder why these Americans talk so much. I had observed it everywhere. Here I was come on a matter of business, of my father's estate; and the lawyer with whom I was forced to deal was talking to me interminably of things that had nothing to do with it. But I was young and strange, and not very strong; and it did not occur to me to show impatience with him. And so he went on.
"This man was fine to look at, prepossessing and engaging. He looked like a driver, a man of his word too. And one day when he was standing on the street here he was approached by a stranger who began to get him into conversation. You see, we don't have slavery here as a regular thing. The negroes are sort o' apprenticed—free but apprenticed. But under pretty severe laws, have to be registered, can't testify, and so forth. This state is part of the Northwest Territory which was made free by the old Confederate States in 1787; but we actually had an election here eleven years ago to make it slave. And the people voted it free. Anyhow we have negroes here; and the people are from Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and the Carolinas where they do have slavery, and we're all beginnin' to be scared over the agitation. Now this stranger was a Southerner and any one could see he was; but of course didn't look different from some of our own people. So this stranger began to talk to this man and ask him if he was married, and he wasn't; and asked him if he would like to make some money, which of course he did.
"And finally the stranger said that he had a daughter that he would like to introduce, and asked this man to come with him a mile or so, and if he liked the girl he would pay him to marry her. They started off and found the girl. She was a mulatto or octoroon as they say, and as pretty as a red wagon. You see the stranger was pure white and from New Orleans; but the mother of the girl was a slave and they say kind of coffee colored. And the upshot of it was that the stranger offered this man $2500 to marry the octoroon. What he wanted to do was to place her well. He didn't want her to run the chance of ever being a slave, as she might be in the South. He was her father and he naturally had a father's feeling for her, even if she was an octoroon. And this stranger said that he had been around town and the country for some days looking at prospective husbands and making some inquiry, and that he had found no one to equal this man. The man liked the octoroon, the octoroon liked the man. And they struck a bargain. The man got his $2500; he married the girl on the spot. The stranger disappeared, and was never seen or heard of again. It all happened right there. The man bought land, he got rich. He was one of the best men I ever knew, and one of my best friends. The octoroon died in childbirth, leaving a daughter still living and in this town. The man died recently. His name was James Miles. He was your father. And Zoe is your half-sister, and wants to share in the estate, and that's why I sent for you."
The flies began a louder buzzing at the window. The heat had increased. I looked through the open door and saw a man fall over, whether from heat or cholera I could not tell. I was by now weary and faint. I said: "I do not know what to say now. If we can agree, I mean if we are allowed to agree, Zoe and I will have no trouble. I am getting faint. And I shall come again." With that I arose and walked weakly from the room.
CHAPTER VIII
What were my thoughts after all? Was I ashamed of my kinship with Zoe? With this human being who had nursed me so tenderly through my illness? Did I begrudge her the interest which she had, of right, with me in our father's estate? She was as closely connected to him by ties of blood as I was. These things I reflected upon as I felt course through me a deep undercurrent of regret.
Was it my mother? Her face came before me as I had learned to know it from her picture. Yes, that seemed to be it. My mother had not been honored. How could my father for any ambition, for any exigency of circumstance stoop to a marriage of this sort, with the memory of my mother still fresh in mind, if not in heart? Ah! that was it! Did he keep her in his heart? My grandmother's reticence about my father began to fill in with significance of this sort. She knew that he had married the octoroon not many years after my mother's death. She resented it and she preserved silence about him, while keeping me ignorant. Thus without any preparation for the disclosure, I had encountered it at full speed in my career. Reverdy had, no doubt, alluded to this matter when he spoke with such feeling of my father in Chicago. "Poor fellow," he had said. Did my father suffer for this marriage? What was his secret? Why "poor fellow?"
With these thoughts I entered the house. I could sense that they knew that I should return with the secret which they had kept from me. Zoe was not in sight. Sarah's grandmother sat in her chair by the window and called me to her. "Come here, Jimmy," she said. "You're a nice English boy. You know we are all English. My father and mother were English … well, to be truthful, my father was half Irish. His mother was Irish. And that makes us all friends, no matter how much we fight. We fight and get over it. My husband was in the Revolutionary War; and he's dead and gone long ago; and here I am in this new country of Illinois with Sarah and a son-in-law soon to be … and maybe as lonely sometimes as you are. Sarah's mother was my pride and she's dead a long time too, but I don't get over that. … What's the matter, Jimmy? You've had bad news. O, yes, it had to come. You know now about Zoe. Well, remember that pretty is as pretty does. For that matter, she is pretty enough, and good enough too. Change her skin and any boy would be proud to be her brother. That's what a little color does. And yet the good Lord made us all, white as well as black. I have always liked the colored people. I liked them in Tennessee, and I hated to see them mistreated whenever they were. But I'm like a lot of others, I don't know what we are going to do with so many of them; and I say let the southern people run their own business and not try to intermeddle in the business of the Almighty. If He hadn't wanted slavery He could have prevented it. As for me, I don't want no slaves. Every one to his own way. Reverdy's father came down from Tennessee too. He emancipated all his slaves before coming. He grew to hate slavery. He brought one old nigger woman with him to Illinois. She's here yet, on a farm not more than fifteen miles away. And Reverdy's father provided for her, and left a little fortune to Reverdy … more than $600, and that gives him a start."
The old lady talked on in this manner without a pause.
Just then Reverdy and Sarah came in. They had been for a walk. Sarah had gathered a bouquet of wild flowers. They took in the scene, evidently divined the subject of our talk. For Reverdy sat down and began with gentleness to pick up its threads. "You have been told, James, I hope, that Zoe is not trying to take anything from you. She will make no fight on your father's will." … "Will," I echoed. "There was a will then?" "Didn't Mr. Brooks tell you?" … He hadn't told me. He had scarcely had the opportunity. But if Zoe had been remembered in the will what was the danger now? "No, your father was fond of Zoe … he remembered her; but not to the same extent that he remembered you. She gets $500 of the estate and you get the rest. But the hitch is here: we have eleven lawyers in Jacksonville and another one studying to be a lawyer; this newcomer, Douglas. And they are as hungry as catfish after a hard winter. And Mr. Brooks feared that some of these fellows would try to stir up a little business by using Zoe to attack the will, and he thought it was best to get it settled. He was a good friend of your father's, liked him, and he wants to see his wishes carried out. Your father was one of the best of men. It's a great loss to the community … his death."
But as Zoe was my sister why should she not have some of the land that my father left? Should her dark skin deprive her of that? My father had evidently thought so. But now I could settle the estate by enforcing the will, or I could divide the estate with her equally. Could I enforce the will after all? I knew nothing of such things. I hadn't asked Mr. Brooks' advice about anything. There I sat then going over these matters in my mind, in a kind of weariness and sickness of heart. I had heard of cases where wills had been rejected for fraud or lack of mind on the part of the maker. Was it possible that my father's mind was disturbed? What fraud could have been wrought upon him? I, the chief beneficiary, had not influenced him; no one could have done so for me. What then?
Zoe came in now and began to spread the table. There was only the one large room downstairs beside the kitchen. But I loved its comforts, its quaint and substantial furnishings. All brought from North Carolina originally, Mrs. Spurgeon said. There were silver spoons, hand wrought;