A short-lived and tragic enough romance. It wasn't that the Dicks
were rowdy, or of evil repute. They were nobodies. In a day when
social lines were so elastic as to be nearly all-inclusive the Dicks
were miles outside the pale. In the first place, they lived out
"Hardscrabble" way. That definitely placed them. The name designated a
mean, tumble-down district southwest of town, inhabited by poor whites.
A welter of mud, curs, barefoot babies, slatternly women, shirt-sleeved
men lounging slackly against open doorways, acrid pipe in mouth.
Young Jesse Dick, sprung from this soil, still was alien to it; a
dreamer; a fawn among wallowing swine; an idler with nothing of the
villain about him and the more dangerous because of that. Isaac Thrift
and his prim wife certainly would sooner have seen their daughter
Charlotte dead than involved with one of the Dick clan. But they were
unaware of the very existence of the riffraff Dicks. The Thrifts lived
in two-story-and-basement elegance on Wabash near Madison, and kept
their own cow.
There was a fine natural forest between Clark and Pine Streets, north,
on the lake shore. Along its grassy paths lay fallen and decayed
trees. Here the two used to meet, for it came to that. Charlotte had
an Indian pony which she rode daily. Sometimes they met on the prairie
to the south of town. The picture of Charlotte in the sweeping skirt,
the stiff little hat, the caressing plume, and the rose must have
been taken at about this time. There was in her face a glow, a bloom,
a radiance such as comes to a woman--with too heavy eyebrows--who is
beloved for the first time.
It was, as it turned out, for the last time as well. Charlotte had the
courage for clandestine meetings in spite of a girlhood hedged about
with prim pickets of propriety: but when she thought of open revolt,
of appearing with Jesse Dick before the priggish mother and the flinty
father, she shrank and cowered and was afraid. To them she was little
more than a fresh young vegetable without emotions, thoughts, or
knowledge of a kind which they would have considered unmaidenly.
Charlotte was sitting in the dining room window-nook one day, sewing.
It was a pleasant room in which to sit and sew. One could see
passers-by on Madison Street as well as Wabash, and even, by screwing
around a little, get glimpses of State Street with its great trees and
its frame cottages. Mrs. Thrift, at the dining room table, was casting
up her weekly accounts. She closed the little leather-bound book now
and sat back with a sigh. There was a worried frown between her eyes.
Mrs. Thrift always wore a worried frown between her eyes. She took
wife-and-motherhood hard. She would have thought herself unwifely and
unmotherly to take them otherwise. She wore her frown about the house
as she did her cap--badge of housewifeliness.
"I declare," she said now, "with beef six cents the pound--and not a
very choice cut, either--a body dreads the weekly accounts."
"M-m-m," murmured Charlotte remotely, from the miles and miles that
separated them.
Mrs. Thrift regarded her for a moment, tapping her cheek thoughtfully
with the quill in her hand. Her frown deepened. Charlotte was wearing
a black sateen apron, very full. Her hair, drawn straight back from
her face, was gathered at the back into a chenille net. A Garibaldi
blouse completed the hideousness of her costume. There quivered about
her an aura--a glow--a roseate something--that triumphed over apron,
net, and blouse. Mrs. Thrift sensed this without understanding it. Her
puzzlement took the form of nagging.
"It seems to me, Charlotte, that you might better be employed with
your plain sewing than with fancywork such as that."
Charlotte's black sateen lap was gay with scraps of silk; cherry
satin, purple velvet, green taffetas, scarlet, blue. She was making a
patchwork silk quilt of an intricate pattern (of which work of art more
later).
"Yes, indeed," said she now, unfortunately. And hummed a little tune.
Mrs. Thrift stood up with a great rustling of account-book leaves, and
of skirts; with all the stir of outraged dignity. "Well, miss, I'll
thank you to pay the compliment of listening when I talk to you. You
sit there smiling at nothing, like a simpleton, I do declare!"
"I was listening, mother."
"What did I last say?"
"Why--beef--six--"
"Humph! What with patchwork quilts and nonsense like that, and out on
your pony every day, fine or not, I sometimes wonder, miss, what you
think yourself. Beef indeed!"
She gathered up her books and papers. It was on her tongue's tip to
forbid the afternoon's ride. Something occult in Charlotte sensed this.
She leaned forward. "Oh, mother, Mrs. Perry's passing on Madison and
looking at the house. I do believe she's coming in. Wait. Yes, she's
turning in. I think I'll just----"
"Stay where you are," commanded Mrs. Thrift. Charlotte subsided. She
bent over her work again, half hidden by the curtains that hung stiffly
before the entrance to the window-nook. You could hear Mrs. Perry's
high sharp voice in speech with Cassie, the servant. "If she's in the
dining room I'll go right in. Don't bother about the parlor." She came
sweeping down the hall. It was evident that news was on her tongue's
tip. Her bonnet was slightly askew. Her hoops swayed like a hill in
a quake. Mrs. Thrift advanced to meet her. They shook hands at arm's
length across the billows of their outstanding skirts.
"Such news, Mrs. Thrift! What do you think! After all these years Mrs.
Holcomb's going to have a ba----"
"My _dear_!" interrupted Mrs. Thrift, hastily; and raised a
significant eyebrow in the direction of the slim figure bent over her
sewing in the window-nook.
Mrs. Perry coughed apologetically. "Oh! I didn't see----"
"Charlotte dear, leave the room."
Charlotte gathered up the bits of silk in her apron. Anxious as she was
to be gone, there was still something in the manner of her dismissal
that offended her new sense of her own importance. She swooped and
stooped for bits of silk and satin, thrusting them into her apron
and work-bag. Though she seemed to be making haste her progress
was maddeningly slow. The two ladies, eying her with ill-concealed
impatience, made polite and innocuous conversation meanwhile.
"And have you heard that the Empress Eugénie has decided to put aside
her crinoline?"
Mrs. Thrift made a sound that amounted to a sniff. "So the newspapers
said last year. You remember she appeared at a court ball without a
crinoline? Yes. Well, fancy how ridiculous she must have looked! She
put them on again fast enough, I imagine, after that."
"Ah, but they do say she didn't. I have a letter from New York written
by my friend Mrs. Hollister who comes straight from Paris and she says
that the new skirts are quite flat about the--below the waist, to the
knees----"
Charlotte fled the room dutifully now, with a little curtsey for Mrs.
Perry. In the dark passageway she stamped an unfilial foot. Then, it
is to be regretted, she screwed her features into one of those unadult
contortions known as making a face. Turning, she saw regarding her from
the second-story balustrade her eight-year-old sister Carrie. Carrie,
ten years her sister's junior, never had been late to school; never
had fallen into the Chicago River, nor off a high wooden sidewalk;
always turned her toes out; held her shoulders like a Hessian.
"_I_ saw you!" cried this true daughter of her mother.
Charlotte, mounting the stairs to her own room, swept past this
paragon with such a disdainful swishing of skirts, apron, and squares
of bright-colored silk stuff as to create quite a breeze. She even
dropped one of the gay silken bits, saw it flutter to the ground at her
tormentor's feet, and did not deign to pick it up. Carrie swooped for
it. "You dropped a piece." She looked at it. "It's the orange-colored
silk one!" (Destined to be the quilt's high note of color.) "Finding's
keeping." She tucked it into her apron pocket. Charlotte entered her
own room. "_I_ saw you, miss." Charlotte slammed her chamber door
and locked it.
She was not as magnificently aloof and unconcerned as she seemed. She
knew the threat in the impish Carrie's "_I_ saw you." In the
Thrift household a daughter who had stamped a foot and screwed up a
face in contempt of maternal authority did not go unpunished. Once
informed, an explanation would be demanded. How could Charlotte explain
that one who has been told almost daily for three weeks that she is the
most enchanting, witty, beauteous, and intelligent woman in the world
naturally resents being ignominiously dismissed from a room, like a
chit.
That night at supper she tried unsuccessfully to appear indifferent and
at ease under Carrie's round unblinking stare of malice. Carrie began:
"Mama, what did Mrs. Perry have to tell you when she came calling this
afternoon?"
"Nothing that would interest you, my pet. You haven't touched your
potato."
"Would it interest Charlotte?"
"No."
"Is that why you sent her out of the room?"
"Yes. Now eat your p----"
"Charlotte didn't like being sent out of the room, did she? H'm, mama?"
"Isaac, will you speak to that child. I don't know what----"
Charlotte's face was scarlet. She knew. Her father would speak sternly
to the too inquisitive Carrie. That crafty one would thrust out a moist
and quivering nether lip and, with tears dropping into her uneaten
potato, snivel, "But I only wanted to know because Charlotte--" and out
would come the tale of Charlotte's foot-stamping and face-making.
But Isaac Thrift never framed the first chiding sentence; and Carrie
got no further than the thrusting out of the lip. For the second time
that day news appeared in the form of a neighbor. A man this time, one
Abner Rathburn. His news was no mere old-wives' gossip of births and
babies. He told it, white-faced. Fort Sumter had been fired on. War!
Chicago's interest in the soldiery, up to now, had been confined
to that ornamental and gayly caparisoned group known as Colonel
Ellsworth's Zouaves. In their brilliant uniforms these gave exhibition
drills, flashing through marvelous evolutions learned during evenings
of practice in a vacant hall above a little brick store near Rush
Street bridge. They had gone on grand tours through the East, as
well. The illustrated papers had had their pictures. Now their absurd
baggy trousers and their pert little jackets and their brilliant-hued
sashes took on a new, grim meaning. Off they trotted, double-quick,
to Donelson and death, most of them. Off went the boys of that
socially elect group belonging to the Fire Engine Company. Off went
brothers, sons, fathers. Off went Jesse Dick from out Hardscrabble
way, and fought his brief fight, too, at Donelson, with weapons so
unfit and ineffectual as to be little better than toys; and lost. But
just before he left, Charlotte, frantic with fear, apprehension and
thwarted love publicly did that which branded her forever in the eyes
of her straitlaced little world. Or perhaps her little world would
have understood and forgiven her had her parents shown any trace of
understanding or forgiveness.
In all their meetings these two young things--the prim girl with the
dash of daring in her and the boy who wrote verses to her and read them
with telling effect, quite as though they had not sprung from the mire
of Hardscrabble--had never once kissed or even shyly embraced. Their
hands had met and clung. Touching subterfuges. "That's a funny ring you
wear. Let's see it. My, how little! It won't go on any of my--no, sir!
Not even this one." Their eyes had spoken. His fingers sometimes softly
touched the plume that drooped from her stiff little hat. When he
helped her mount the Indian pony perhaps he pressed closer in farewell
than that fiery little steed's hoof quite warranted. But that was
all. He was over-conscious of his social inferiority. Years of narrow
nagging bound her with bands of steel riveted with turn-your-toes-out,
hold-your-shoulders-back, you-mustn't-play-with-them, ladylike,
ladylike.
A week after Sumter, "I've enlisted," he told her.
"Of course," Charlotte had replied, dazedly. Then, in sudden
realization, "When? When?"
He knew what she meant. "Right away I reckon. They said--right away."
She looked at him mutely. "Charlotte, I wish you'd--I wish your father
and mother--I'd like to speak to them--I mean about us--me." There was
little of Hardscrabble about him as he said it.
"Oh, I couldn't. I'm afraid! I'm afraid!"
He was silent for a long time, poking about with a dried stick in
the leaves and loam and grass at their feet as they sat on a fallen
tree-trunk, just as for years and years despairing lovers have poked in
absent-minded frenzy; digging a fork's prong into the white defenceless
surface of a tablecloth; prodding the sand with a cane; rooting into
the ground with an umbrella ferrule; making meaningless marks on gravel
paths.
At last: "I don't suppose it makes any real difference; but the Dicks
came from Holland. I mean a long time ago. With Hendrik Hudson. And my
great-great-grandmother was a Pomroy. You wouldn't believe, would you?
that a shiftless lot like us could come from stock like that. I guess
it's run thin. Of course my mother----" he stopped. She put a timid
hand on his arm then, and he made as though to cover it with his own,
but did not. He went on picking at the ground with his bit of stick.
"Sometimes when my father's--if he's been drinking too much--imagines
he's one of his own ancestors. Sometimes it's a Dutch ancestor and
sometimes it's an English one, but he's always very magnificent about
it, and when he's like that even my mother can't--can't scream him
down. You should hear then what he thinks of all you people who live
in fine brick houses on Wabash and on Michigan, and over on the North
Side. My brother Pom says----"
"Pom?"
"Pomroy. Pomroy Dick, you see. Both the.... I've been thinking that
perhaps if your father and mother knew about--I mean we're not--that is
my father----"
She shook her head gently. "It isn't that. You see, it's business men.
Those who have stores or real estate and are successful. Or young
lawyers. That's the kind father and mother----"
They were not finishing their sentences. Groping for words. Fearful of
hurting each other.
He laughed. "I guess there won't be much choice among the lot of us
when this is over."
"Why, Jesse, it'll only last a few months--two or three. Father says
it'll only last a few months.
"It doesn't take that long to----"
"To what?"
"Nothing."
He was whisked away after that. Charlotte saw him but once again. That
once was her undoing. She did not even know the time set for his going.
He had tried to get word to her, and had failed, somehow. With her
father and mother, Charlotte was one of the crowd gathered about the
Court House steps to hear Jules Lombard sing The Battle Cry of Freedom.
George Root, of Chicago, George, whom they all knew, had written it.
The ink was scarcely dry on the manuscript. The crowds gathered in the
street before the Court House. Soon they were all singing it. Suddenly,
through the singing, like a dull throb, throb, came the sound of
thudding feet. Soldiers. With a great surge the crowd turned its face
toward the street. Still singing. Here they came. In marching order.
Their uniforms belied the name. Had they been less comic they would
have been less tragic. They were equipped with muskets altered from
flintlocks; with Harper's Ferry and Deneger rifles; with horse pistols
and musketoons--deadly sounding but ridiculous. With these they faced
Donelson. They were hardly more than boys. After them, trailed women,
running alongside, dropping back breathless. Old women, mothers. Young
women, sweethearts, wives. This was no time for the proprieties, for
reticence.
They were passing. The first of them had passed. Then Charlotte saw
him. His face flashed out at her from among the lines. His face,
under the absurd pancake hat, was white, set. And oh, how young! He
was at the end of his line. Charlotte watched him coming. She felt
a queer tingling in her fingertips, in the skin around her eyes, in
her throat. Then a great surge of fear, horror, fright, and love
shook her. He was passing. Someone, herself and yet not herself, was
battling a way through the crowd, was pushing, thrusting with elbows,
shoulders. She gained the roadway. She ran, stumblingly. She grasped
his arm. "You didn't let me know! You didn't let me know!" Someone
took hold of her elbow--someone in the crowd on the sidewalk--but she
shook them off. She ran on at his side. Came the double-quick command.
With a little cry she threw her arms about him and kissed him. Her
lips were parted like a child's. Her face was distorted with weeping.
There was something terrible about her not caring; not covering it.
"You didn't let me know! You didn't let me know!" The ranks broke into
double-quick. She ran with them a short minute, breathlessly, sobbing.