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;
and blue china, and thick blue spreads for the table. There were three
rooms upstairs. The beds were posters, built up with feather beds in the
cold weather; spread now with thick linen sheets. Mrs. Spurgeon had
woven some of these things. Her loom stood yet in one of the outhouses,
on occasion set up in the living room when she brought herself to the
task of weaving, rarely now. She was too old for much labor. Sarah
helped Zoe with the meal. Reverdy stayed to share it with us. But I had
learned that he lived at the tavern, though he disliked it thoroughly.
Some nights later I asked Zoe to walk out with me. She was timid about
the rattlesnakes which she said were everywhere through the woods and
the grass, sometimes crawling into the roads. There were wildcats and
wolves too in the timber; but they were not so likely to be encountered
now as in the winter time. I had a pocket pistol, and taking up a
hickory stick that was in the corner, I urged Zoe to allay her fears and
come. Sarah joined me in prevailing upon her. Zoe doubtless knew that I
wished to talk with her about the estate; and at last she walked with me
out of the house and into the road.
After a few minutes of silence I asked her about my father: what were
his spirits; his way of life; where did he live; did she live with him?
Then Zoe told me some of the things I had learned from Mr. Brooks. And
as her mother had died when Zoe was born she had been taken by Mrs.
Spurgeon to raise. She said that her father, my father, had lived a part
of the time at the inn, and a part of the time at his house on the farm;
that during the last two years of his life she had seen more of him than
formerly, though he was often in St. Louis, and even New Orleans. And
she added with hesitation that he drank a good deal at the last, and was
often depressed and silent. "Was he kind to you?" I asked. Zoe said that
he was never anything but kindness, and that he provided her with
comforts and with schooling whenever any one came along to teach the
children of the community. I had already seen around the house a copy of
the _Spectator_, and Pope's poems. Zoe told me that she had read these
books, part of them over and over, and that she had had a teacher the
year before who had helped her to understand them. I began to delimn Zoe
as a girl of intelligence. Of vital spirits she had an abundance.... The
night was very warm and of wonderful stillness, no breeze. We heard the
cry of what Zoe called "varmints" in the woods. A night bird was
singing. She told me it was the whippoorwill. I never had heard a more
thrillingly melancholy note. Once Zoe stepped upon a stick in the road.
Thinking it was a snake she gave a cry and leaped to one side. But I
calmed her and we kept our way.... I had never seen the stars to the
same advantage, not even on the ocean. They were spread above us in
infinite numbers, and of remarkable brilliancy. And there was the
prairie, stretching as far as the eye could penetrate into the haze of
the horizon, except where a distant forest rimmed the edge of the
visible landscape. Zoe took up my remark about the spaciousness of the
country with telling me that young Douglas had been to supper a few
nights before I had come to myself out of the fever, and that he had
said that the prairie affected him as liberty would affect an eagle
released from a cage; and that he looked back upon the hills of Vermont
as barriers to his vision. "He is nearly your age," said Zoe; "only two
years older. You will like him; every one does. No one can talk like him
that I have ever heard."....
At last I brought forward the subject of our father's will. Zoe was
silent for a moment, for my specific question was what she wished to
have done. Then she said: "It's all foolishness. These lawyers here have
been bothering me to get me to fight the will, and trying to get me to
break the will because my pa drank. I know he drank, but I don't see
what difference that makes. He always knew what he was doing, so far as
I know; and even if he didn't I'd never say nothin' about it. I know my
place; and things is gettin' worse about colored folks, and less chance
for a colored girl to marry a white man even if she wanted to,
'specially if I knew he was marryin' me to get my land. I'm satisfied
with the will the way it is and always have been, or any way you want
it, Mr. James. I know my place, and that there is a kind of curse on me
for bein' dark skinned; and I think my pa was mighty kind to make the
will the way he did. This 5000 acres he left is worth a lot of money,
more than $5000 Mr. Reverdy says; and if I had what the will gives me
I'd have $500, and what would I do with it? For I've always got to work
anyway."
Suddenly we saw lights ahead in the road and heard the rattle of wheels.
It was the stage coming into Jacksonville. It was upon us almost at
once. The lights of the lantern made us blink our eyes. We stepped to
one side. A voice called out: "Well I'll be damned if there ain't a
white feller strollin' with a nigger!" "Shut your trap," said the
driver, and the stage rolled rapidly away from us.
My mind was suddenly made up as to the farm by the remark falling so
brutally from these unknown lips. I took Zoe's hands. I drew her to me.
She was weeping. Was not one half of her blood English blood? Yes, and
what Englishman would not resent with tears an insult which he could
neither deny nor punish? But I would punish it. Zoe should have her
rightful half.... And silently we walked back.