by John Jakes
“That’s beside the point, Julia. What I did was wrong.”
“Let me accept the blame! I led you to it. I could have pulled back—stopped it—half a dozen times. I didn’t because I—because I’ve fallen in love with you.” He caught his breath as she went on. “I know that isn’t permissible in our situation. But I wanted you to make love to me, and I arranged things so it would happen. You mustn’t take the blame on yourself.”
“I must take half of it. I wanted you, too, and I wouldn’t admit it until the very last moment. What the hell are we going to do, Julia?” Louder, then, almost angrily: “What the hell are we going to do?”
She kissed the scraped knuckles of his right hand. Then the palm, and the flesh below the thumb. He was astonished to see tears in her eyes.
Tears from one so sophisticated? That struck him as improbable. But he felt them on his skin as she pressed his hand to her lips and murmured, “I can’t tell you, my dearest. We can’t change last night.”
“I know.”
“And it may well happen again.”
“I know that, too.”
“So I can’t answer the question. My conscience wants to reply one way, my feelings another. Whichever answer I give, don’t you see—it will be wrong.”
iii
What they did was thrust the whole matter aside and let the events of the next hours carry them along, divert them from the dilemma they knew they must eventually resolve. Gideon concentrated on Thomas Courtleigh, and on what could be done to make the railroad man pay for the death of Torvald Ericsson.
From the moment he began to think about that—on Monday, when the fire was sweeping the north side after having razed the business district—he knew the Chicago police and the Chicago courts would be of no help to him. Even if the police were willing to investigate the boy’s death, he felt and Julia agreed that Courtleigh’s influence would prevent the investigation from reaching a conclusion.
But he intended to do something before he left the city. He brooded about the problem for hours, occasionally falling into such a rage that he entertained thoughts of finding Courtleigh and attacking him. Only when he remembered that Strelnik had cynically predicted he’d do exactly that did he put the fantasies out of his mind.
By Monday night the city’s exhausted fire companies had brought the conflagration under control except for a few pockets still burning at the northern city limits. In many areas there was nothing left to burn. On the entire north side, a returning servant reported, only two houses had been spared by a whim of wind.
Toward midnight a drizzling rain began to fall. When Gideon woke beside Julia on Tuesday morning, the vista from the balcony was an incredible one. A smoky pall still darkened the sky. To the north, shells of burned-out buildings stretched away like graveyard monuments. The ruins smoldered and so did the paving blocks of the main streets. A charred odor permeated furniture, clothing—even Gideon’s hair and pores.
On Tuesday Chicago’s mayor, R. B. Mason, convened the city council and issued a proclamation fixing the price of bread at eight cents per twelve-ounce loaf. To prevent profiteering, the price was to remain stabilized for the next ten days. Gideon and Julia learned that earlier proclamations had suspended the sale of liquor and appointed special police to help control looting. Little Phil Sheridan, the general who commanded the Department of the Missouri from its Chicago headquarters, had telegraphed for two companies of infantry from Fort Omaha.
That same day Gideon and all of Julia’s male servants tramped to the smoking ruin of the west side to search for Ericsson’s sister Sigrid, and for the body of the man himself. Neither could be found. When Gideon and the servants returned late in the afternoon, dirty and dispirited, they passed the Courtleigh mansion. Gideon noted a couple of derby-hatted men loitering in the drive. One turned his back when he saw Gideon studying him. Gideon couldn’t be positive but he thought the man had been in Florian’s group Sunday night.
He supposed Courtleigh had the guards on duty to protect his property from the dispossessed who were wandering the streets. Julia seemed to fear no such invasion. In fact, when he got to the house he discovered she’d posted a sign saying campers were welcome on the back part of her property. A dozen or so had already accepted the invitation, he saw.
He went inside and found the kitchen a-buzz with activity. The cook and her assistant were fixing soup, gruel, and hot drinks for the campers. Gideon learned that the head of Courtleigh’s household staff had come over while he was away and complained to Julia that granting camping privileges would draw undesirables to the neighborhood.
The cook grinned. “Miss Julia told him to go home or to hell, whichever he preferred.”
Tuesday evening, by lantern light, they buried Torvald Ericsson in an oak coffin one of Julia’s grooms had hammered together. Gideon helped dig the grave in a clump of apple trees ten yards from the campfire of a homeless family.
Torvald’s body had been dressed in one of Carter’s outfits because Gideon wanted the boy’s blood-covered shirt. Julia had performed the grim exchange. Then she and Gideon had laid the stiff body in the coffin, and Gideon had nailed it shut.
When Julia asked why he wanted the shirt, he said, “As a present for Courtleigh. I’m trying to decide how I’ll deliver it.”
“Do you really think you should prolong your feud with—?”
“Feud?” he exploded. “It’s a matter of justice, not a feud. Courtleigh killed that boy as surely as if he’d handled the knife himself.”
“We agreed you could never bring him to justice in this town, Gideon.”
“I know we did. But the killing isn’t going to remain a secret. I can at least make certain of that much.”
Now, among the leafless apple trees, Gideon read passages from the New Testament while Carter clutched his mother’s hand and gazed at the oak box with rounded eyes. Smoke blew in the darkness. Piles of winter coal were still smoldering throughout the city. The air was foul, bad to breathe.
Gideon found it equally bad to stand there reading from the word of God. He was unfit to do that; he’d taken Julia in adulterous fashion. And while there might be many excuses for it, none was powerful enough to absolve him of guilt. Even granting that Margaret was a wife in name only, the marriage vow still meant something. He had broken it.
Wednesday, Joseph Medill managed to publish his newspaper, though Gideon never found out how; the supposedly fireproof Tribune building had fallen victim to the flames. So had the Field and Leiter store, Potter Palmer’s hotel, and scores of other fine buildings. The business district as such was gone. Medill’s paper sounded a note of challenge:
CHEER UP
In the midst of a calamity without parallel in world history, looking upon the ashes of thirty years accumulations, the people of this once beautiful city have resolved that CHICAGO SHALL RISE AGAIN.
Gideon admired that spirit. But it was clear that the restoration would require a gigantic effort. The toll from the fire was gradually coming into focus.
Property worth more than two hundred million dollars had been destroyed. A hundred thousand people were without homes. Though only two hundred fifty bodies had been found, it was almost certain that thousands had been incinerated in the cottages and tenements, Ericsson and his sister among them.
The fire had leveled an area about a mile wide and five miles long, north to south. The destruction ran from Fullerton Avenue down to Harrison Street, and over the west side as well.
On Wednesday afternoon Julia’s grooms repaired a disused pony cart. She and Gideon took their first inspection trip downtown. What they saw was a landscape from a lunatic’s nightmare.
Piles of brick and stone rubble lay everywhere. Here and there a section of a wall still stood, some of them surrounding empty window frames. Although the entire commercial section was gone, one man was already back in business. A brand-new plank structure had been erected at Number 89 Washington Street. It belonged to a realtor and was identified by a
crude sign:
W. D. KERFOOT’S BLOCK—FIRST IN THE BURNT DISTRICT
The building hardly qualified as a business block in the accepted sense. But a lounger out in front said all the space had been rented, and the structure had in fact been up since Tuesday night! Near the door hung another sign that made Gideon laugh:
All gone but wife, children and energy!
His laughter faded when he noticed Julia staring at the sign with melancholy eyes. He suspected he knew which words had caused her reaction.
One of the reasons they’d come downtown was to locate the reopened telegraph office. Julia stayed outside the temporary tent while Gideon sent a message to Margaret saying he was safe but would be remaining in Chicago until Friday.
Abruptly he crossed out the last word. He replaced it with Sunday, then went on to explain the delay by saying that unfinished Wisconsin and Prairie business required his attention. In a way that was true. But he turned pink as he handed the completed blank to the clerk. He was no good at this business of deception.
Still, he couldn’t have gotten out of Chicago without a good deal of effort. Those railroad lines still operating were offering free passage to anyone who wanted to leave.
Departing trains were packed to capacity, he’d heard.
Outside the telegraph tent, two men were arguing. One pounded his palm as he shouted, “Damn it, Jessie, it is bigger than London in 1666—a feller from the fire department told me!”
Gideon smiled. The scope of the destruction had become a matter of civic pride. He supposed that was healthier than letting the sights and sounds of the ruined city cause depression. He was having firsthand experience with depression today. The telegraph message to Margaret, and the mention of departure, had forced a realization. He must say goodbye to Julia soon and never see her again.
The smoky streets teemed with sightseers. Gideon maneuvered the pony cart through them to the site of the courthouse. There Julia pinned a notice to one of several large message boards erected for government and public use. She’d listed the names of the nine children she’d taken in, and noted the address where their parents could claim them.
Miraculously, four of the children were called for by ten that night. As Gideon and Julia prepared for bed, she told him she intended to care for the rest until their parents appeared. If the parents had died in the fire, she’d work with Chicago’s Relief and Aid Society to see that the children were placed in good foster homes.
Gideon was moved to say, “Do you know my late father thought you were a very cold and ambitious person? And now you watch out for stray children as if they were your own.”
“Well, my dear, I suspect that when your father made his remark about me, it was correct. I hope I’ve changed a little. I still plead guilty to being ambitious, although I’ve changed the objects of my ambition. Once I used to chase after invitations to the best society balls. Now I chase after the franchise.”
He laughed. “I’d say that’s a considerable change. You’re a remarkable woman, Julia. A very strong woman—”
She bussed his cheek in a wifely way. “Kind of you, sir. May I return the compliment and say the same about you? Anyone must be strong if they have ambition to change the world even a little. The ambition itself is a strength, I’ve always believed.”
He made a face. “I’m afraid my wife considers that kind of ambition to be a weakness—” He realized he’d inadvertently stumbled on one of the reasons he responded so strongly to Julia’s personality and intellect.
He patted her derrière and forced a smile. “Permit me to say, madam, that you’re sounding like a proper Kent at last.”
She laughed and embraced him. “No, I’m just a selfish, shameless lady who wants her ambition fulfilled.”
“Which ambition? To vote?”
She put her lips against his ear. “To be taken to bed by a proper Kent—as soon as he can get busy and remove his trousers.”
Their lovemaking was intense, yet with a quality of good humor new to their relationship. It added a dimension of comfortable familiarity he’d never experienced before.
But afterward, his conscience tormented him. He was unable to sleep. Finally he touched her shoulder and expressed it in the only way he could—straightforwardly.
“Julia, you must know something. I can never leave her.”
“Your wife?”
“Yes. I couldn’t hurt her that much.”
“I understand. It’s just one more reason I admire you. Still—it’s difficult for me to curb my hopes completely. You did say yesterday that she’s given you cause to think of separating.”
“She has. That doesn’t give me the right to abandon my children.”
An insistent note crept into her voice. “Let’s take them, then. They can live with us—”
“No, Julia.”
It closed a door. She realized it, and sighed.
“You’re a decent man, Gideon. Louis would never have agonized this way. It’s always the decent ones who suffer.”
Decent? Hardly, he thought.
“That said, Julia, I must also say I can’t see you again once I leave Chicago.”
“I suspected that, too. There’s a selfish little girl inside me who’s screaming and stamping because of it—” Sadness tinged the feeble joke. She drew a deep breath, collected herself. “Well—this is one time when little Miss Julia won’t get what she wants. And she’s never wanted anything more than you. Oh, Gideon—I’m hopelessly in love with you, damn fool that I am. You’d better kiss me before I break down and bawl.”
iv
While Gideon and Julia slept in each other’s arms, Carter was awake and having an illegal pillow fight with two of the homeless boys still living in the mansion. Carter thought his mother and their visitor, Mr. Kent, made a lot of calf’s eyes at one another, but beyond that, he didn’t concern himself with their relationship. It never entered his head that Mr. Kent could be romantically involved with his mother. Mr. Kent was married, and that automatically ruled him out as a potential suitor. Besides; Carter had never known his mother to be interested in anything except her work. He never kept track of his mother’s whereabouts. That plus Mr. Kent’s marital status and the presence of new friends all conspired to keep Carter unaware of what was happening just three doors down the long hallway.
v
Mayor Mason had reluctantly concluded that policing the ruined city was beyond the powers of his regular and special officers. Earlier that day he’d voluntarily placed Chicago in the hands of the commander of the Department of the Missouri. General Sheridan in charge meant, in effect, martial law. During the night, telegraph messages summoned troops to Chicago.
Next day the first of the soldiers arrived. Ultimately the city was patrolled by ten regular companies of U.S. infantry, seven companies of Illinois militia, and a specially formed unit of citizens called the First Chicago Volunteers.
With the aid of bayonets, regulated bread prices, and rising spirits, Chicago began to return to normal.
vi
“The hypocritical son of a bitch!”
Gideon flung Thursday’s Tribune against the wall six feet from the long, polished dining table.
“My,” Julia said. “I’m glad Carter’s left the room.”
The teasing was lost on Gideon. “Murder by night and pronouncements about his own generosity by day—by God that’s intolerable!”
His outbursts so rattled the serving girl removing the breakfast things, she almost dropped a tray of dishes as she left. At the other end of the table, Julia refilled her silver-edged cup from an elaborate silver coffeepot. Gideon scowled and slumped in his chair. His eye patch was slightly askew and the nightshirt and old robe borrowed from one of the grooms were much too large.
“What on earth are you talking about?” Julia wanted to know.
“Your neighbor! Florian told me Courtleigh was planning a ball for his fiancée—”
Julia nodded with distaste. “Gwendolyn Strothe
r. Her father’s a chum of Philip Armour, the fellow who’s getting rich off the meatpacking business. Miss Strother’s wealthy in her own right, and reasonably well connected socially. But she’s about as robust as a dried thistle. I’ve heard she has a distinctly nervous disposition. Courtleigh certainly can’t be marrying her for her beauty and stamina. Do you suppose he needs more capital?”
Gideon’s mouth quirked. “You’re a cynic.” He was recalling the pale, hysterical face he’d glimpsed in the brougham last Sunday evening.
“A realist,” she replied. “I still don’t see why you’re so exercised.”
“Because the paper says he’s going ahead with the ball. Tomorrow night!”
“This soon after the fire? That’s disgusting.”
“Oh, you haven’t heard all of it.” He jabbed a finger at the fallen newspaper. “Now the guests will be charged a thousand dollars per card of admission, and everything will be donated to fire relief. The bastard!” he shouted, slamming his fist down so hard, his cup danced in its saucer. “He can send men to murder a boy one night and pose as a philanthropist the next!”
“I believe I told you he was like that—” She gasped suddenly. He’d bolted up in his chair.
“I think I’ll go to that ball,” he said. “It’s the very place to say what I’ve been wanting to say to, and about, Mr. Courtleigh.”
“That’s insanity, Gideon! You wouldn’t dare accuse him in front of—”
“No?” he interrupted. “You watch.”
The furious set of his features told her further protest was futile. She shook her head, her eyes full of wonder and admiration that was tempered by a cold knot of fear forming in her stomach.
Chapter X
Uninvited Guest
i
ON FRIDAY EVENING, Courtleigh’s mansion glowed with scores of oil lamps in lieu of the still disrupted gas service. Splendid carriages began to arrive around nine. Soon the smoky October air carried the scrape of fiddlers tuning up and the sweet sound of a harpist practicing runs.