Children of the Market Place

by Edgar Lee Masters

Having made all arrangements for Zoe and Mrs. Brown to keep the house while I was gone and having laid out the work for my men, I set forth for Vandalia, the capital of Illinois, by stage. There I took the Cumberland Road, passed through Indianapolis, a small place; arrived in good time at Cincinnati, a city of more than 30,000 people; a busy place of manufacturers, distillers, and pork packers, since Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana shipped their hogs to this market to be converted into hams and bacon and lard. I saw the town, the residence of the great Nicholas Longworth, who had grown fabulously rich by making wine. And at the hotel, this latter part of April being warm, I was treated to the spectacle of the men in the dining room taking off their coats and dining in their shirt sleeves amid the not inelegant appointments that surrounded the table. But I was becoming Americanized now and was not as sensitive as formerly to deportment of this sort.

The vastness of America came over me as I descended from Cincinnati to Nashville. Yet there was the southern territory still south of me; and beyond the Mississippi the unsettled empire of Louisiana. Cincinnati had something of the activity and the character of other northern cities; but as I passed through the domain of Kentucky and Tennessee I could not help but see that here was an agricultural country which owed its prosperity to slavery. But what was all that I saw here of industry and utilization of the resources of the land compared to what I saw growing up as a system around Jacksonville?

Yet the loveliness of the country around Nashville enchanted me. I was in a mood to be won, to be sure; for I was completely captivated by Dorothy and the delightful hospitality that was accorded me. Dorothy's mother treated me with such gentle and thoughtful attention, as if she received me not less upon the basis of my friendship to Reverdy than upon my own appeal to her. And as for Dorothy—she was as kind to me as a sister; and yet....

I loved the country and this little city of 6000 people on the hills above the Cumberland valley. Still, so many negroes. In this whole state of about 700,000 people, nearly 150,000 were slaves, so Dorothy told me. It amazed me. Negro slavery, so far as England was concerned, had never to me been a visible thing. But here in America, here in Tennessee, and in this city, it struck one at every turn. It entered into all the daily thinking and plans of every one. It was omnipresent. It touched every life.

This was the town of James K. Polk, whose name meant nothing to me; but Dorothy spoke of him as a leading man in Congress from Tennessee. Here also was the residence of President Jackson, a place called the "Hermitage," a few miles into the country. Dorothy and I drove to it. These were the places of interest to see; and everywhere the southern mansion: the upper and lower porch in front, the spacious windows, the Dorian or Ionic columns, as the case might be; the great entrance door set between mullioned panes at either side, and beneath a lunette of woodwork and glass. The Clayton house was like this, for Dorothy's father had been a man of wealth, a slave owner too in his prosperous days. He had failed and died, Reverdy had gone to the newer country of Illinois to seek his fortune, leaving Dorothy and the mother to the possession of the diminished property which Mr. Clayton had left.

But above everything in the way of delight, for the beauty of the prospect, for the opportunity it gave me to be with Dorothy, were the hills that overlooked the Cumberland valley and the river. We climbed here daily and sat beneath the lovely oaks that shaded the richness of the grass. To the west and north the river flowed to its confluence with the Ohio. Around us the hills. The valley between. The silence of nature, the intensity of unfolding life around us. Always on my mind was the thought of Dorothy as my wife. And why not speak my heart? I could not tell why. Was it Zoe; Dorothy's knowledge of Zoe? Was I investing Dorothy with my own thoughts, putting into her mouth the objections that I could make against myself? I could not tell what Zoe might bring into the life of the woman I married, as well as my own. Surely I was not very robust, very hearty in my speculations. For Dorothy had received me. There was nothing lacking in the warmth of her hospitality ... and yet I sensed at times such a temperate feeling in her glance, in her voice. Even her frankness had that character, or enhanced it perhaps.

And one afternoon as we were walking along the river I spoke what was in my heart. I had this competence. I had built the house. I could make a fortune in time. I was beginning to need some one to help me, to be with me. And no sooner had I spoken than I saw myself: Zoe was my half-sister and I was proposing marriage to a girl who had no feeling that did not bespeak to her the inferiority of the colored skin, no matter if it were lightened, no matter by whom. Dorothy's attitude was that of the high-bred and kindly southerner: the negroes must be kept in slavery as a solution of the social question and for the prosperity of the South; but at the same time the negro should be treated with kindness. And here was Zoe, the half-sister of the man who was asking her to be his companion for life. To what extent, then, the associate on a basis of equality with Zoe too? This was not all. My name had been coupled with Zoe's. Above all, I had killed a man, my rival or Zoe's hunter, as one might choose to believe.

Thus I saw myself. My very hair began to rise and to tingle. How had I dared to make this proposal to Dorothy? And as Dorothy was silent, and looked down as we walked, poking with her parasol at pebbles in the road, I was in a tense anxiety to know with what words she would break the oppressive pause between us. "I could see," she said, "that you liked me; and of course you wouldn't come so far to see me if you didn't. And you must know that Reverdy's friendship for you makes a difference. Do you know...?"

Dorothy lost her voice. The tears came out of her eyes. As she did not speak I began again, trying to say for her what she did not say for herself. "There's Zoe," I said. And then Dorothy quite lost control of herself. She wept piteously. And then she grew calmer. She had faced the reluctant fact when I spoke Zoe's name. We had stumbled up and over that roughness in the road. Any rut or obstacle in it might now be easier endured ... if worse was not to come.

Yes, these stories about me. Had Dorothy heard them? And the life I had taken for Zoe's sake. I was sure Dorothy had not heard of that. Even the first was a subject difficult to approach. I was twenty, Dorothy was nineteen. But the greatest obstacle was the age in which we lived. Women now draped themselves in mystery. There were whole realms of subjects that were not talked between the sexes. We managed things by mild indirections, by absurd circumlocutions.