I lived over all my life, but mostly now all my life with Dorothy, from
those first days in Jacksonville when I was under a cloud because of
Zoe and the killing of Lamborn, to our days in Nashville; the ecstasy
of first love, our walks and restings among the Cumberland hills, the
kindness of Mother Clayton, her joy when she learned that Dorothy had
consented to become my wife. I saw again the face of Jackson, his eyes,
his reverence when he kissed the brow of Dorothy; his tears and his
feeble step when he walked away from us. And I lived over early Chicago,
all my days with Douglas. Where was he now on that flattened, negligible
map called America? In what soil had Zoe moldered into the earth? What
had become of Fortescue? Where were Abigail and Aldington, Reverdy,
Sarah, this night? How could the millions storming over slavery and war,
territories, sugar and cotton and iron, gold and railways think of these
things if they were face to face with a reality as stark as I was, in a
boat rolled by dark water, tossing forward toward Europe and with a
burden like the dead body of Dorothy? All this night I walked the deck.
I saw the dawn come up, ragged and blue, patched with dark clouds, which
the wind drove close to the mounting waves.
The captain ordered an autopsy. Dorothy had died of heart failure.
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