CHAPTER XVI
There was the law against Zoe taking this step, and against any one having any part in it. Still would it be known? I was content to wait for developments and meanwhile to put the whole thing behind me. Work helped me to do this.
I had Sarah's boy to interest me too. They had named him Amos. I had taken five twenty-dollar gold pieces and tied them in a package, bound them with a ribbon, and placed them in his tiny hand. I could not foresee the time when I should touch his hand on an occasion of very different import and with Zoe standing by. Zoe had made Amos some pretty little things and sent them by me. Sarah's only regret was that her grandmother could not see the boy. Her great happiness was wholly beautiful. And Reverdy seemed impressed with a greater dignity and a more gracious heart, if that were possible. I had found Mrs. Brown well adapted to my household. She liked the place; and the prospect was that she would be long in my service. Life was moving on.
I kept in touch with affairs in England and Europe through the London Times. I was also a subscriber to Greeley's New Yorker; and I did not slight the local paper, which belabored Douglas in proportion as he increased in popularity and power. I read many books as well.
For I felt the stir of a new age. I saw the North, the country around me, growing in wealth and dominance. I saw old despotisms giving way and new ones coming to take their place. The factory system was arising, due to machinery. Weaving and spinning processes had improved. The cry of women and children crowded in the factories of Pennsylvania began to be heard. The hours of toil were long. And if the whip descended upon the back of the negro in the South, the factory overseer in Philadelphia flogged the laborer who did not work enough to suit him, or who was tardy at the task. Women and children there were feeling the lash of the whip. Just now there was talk of a machine which would cut as much grain in a day as six men could cut with scythes. I ordered two of these machines for the next year, for I was farming more and more on a big scale. But what seemed most wonderful to me was an instrument now being talked about which sent messages by electricity. It was not perfected yet. It was treated with skepticism. But if it could be! If I could get a message from St. Louis, a distance of more than a hundred miles, in a few minutes or an hour!
Douglas came out to see me one night to tell me what was on his mind. He wanted to be the prosecuting attorney. Consider the straits of a young man who must make his way and get a place in the world! Is there anything more desperate at times? What was the law business in this community, divided, as it was, by eleven lawyers, shared in by visiting lawyers? Douglas had to live. Youth is forced to push ahead or be crushed. I know he has been accused of manipulation in having the law passed by which he could be appointed to the office and supplant a rival. Well, if he had not had the gifts and the energies to do such things, how could he have served the country and maintained himself? The next February before he was twenty-two, he was state's attorney for the district. No wonder that lesser men railed at him. But what one of them would not have done the same thing if he could?
And now I was seeing much of Dorothy. What did it mean? Was she only my friend? Reverdy, her brother, was my most intimate friend. Did she receive my attentions on account of the relations between him and me? If she knew anything about Zoe she never betrayed it to me. Surely she could not be in Jacksonville so long and be ignorant that Zoe was my half-sister. At last I decided to explore Dorothy's mind. I went at it forthrightly. Did she know that Zoe and I had the same father?
She had heard it. That was a common enough thing in the South; not common there, however, for a colored mother to be the wife of a white father. "I have suffered on account of this," said Dorothy. "You knew nothing about it and had nothing to do with it. It is too bad—too bad, Jimmy!"
There remained Zoe's misadventure. How could I approach that? But if Dorothy had heard of it would she continue to receive me? If she knew about it would not the present association of ideas bring it to mind and bespeak it to me by change of color or expression? I looked at Dorothy quizzically. I discovered nothing in her face. Then I began to think of the certain probability that some one had come to her breathing rumors upon her. So I said: "Promise me something, Dorothy. If any one ever tells you anything about me, say, for example, that I haven't been perfectly fair with Zoe in every way, and honorable as far as I know how to be, will you withhold belief until you give me a chance? Do you promise me that?" And Dorothy stretched her hand to me in a warm-hearted way. "You are Reverdy's friend, aren't you, and he is yours. Well, I promise you. But it isn't necessary, for it would have to be something that I could believe you capable of. Then Reverdy would have to believe it, and then I might have a mind of my own after all. Why, how could anyone say anything about you? You have been as good to Zoe as if she were as white as I."