A Daughter of the Middle Border Part 11

Zangwill parted with me, smilingly. "I am but one of lower orders," said he, "but I shall have an eye to you during dinner."

My left-hand neighbor at the table was a short, gray, gloomy individual whose name I failed to catch, but the man on my right was Henry Norman, of the _London Chronicle_, and after we had established friendly relations I leaned to him and whispered, "Who is the self-absorbed, gloomy chieftain on my left?"

"That," said he, "is Henry M. Stanley."

"What!" I exclaimed, "not Henry M. Stanley of Africa?"

"Yes, Stanley of Uganda."

It seemed a pity to sit in silence beside this great explorer, who had been one of my boyish heroes, and I decided to break the ice of his reserve in some way. Turning to him suddenly I asked, "Sir Henry, how do you p.r.o.nounce the name of that poisonous African fly--is it t.e.e.t.sie or Tettsie?"

He brightened up at once. I was not so great a bore as he feared. After he had given me a great deal of information about this fly, and the sleeping sickness, I asked him what he thought of the future of the continent, to which he responded with growing geniality. We were off!

After a proper interval I volunteered some valuable data concerning the mosquitoes and flies I had encountered on my recent trip into the wilderness of British Columbia. He became interested in me. "Oh! You've been to the Klondike!"

This quite broke down his wall. Thereafter he listened respectfully to all that I could tell him of the black flies, the huge caribou flies, the orange-colored flies, and the mosquitoes who worked in two shifts (the little gray ones in hot sunlight, the big black ones at night), and by the time the speaking began we were on the friendliest terms. "What a bore these orators are!" I said, and in this judgment he instantly agreed.

Sitting there in the faces of hundreds of English authors, I achieved a peaceful satisfaction with my outfit. A sense of being entirely inconspicuous, a realization that I was committed to convention, produced in me an air of perfect ease. By conforming I had become as much a part of the scene as Sir Walter or the waiter who shifted my plates and filled my gla.s.s. "Zangwill is right," I said, "the clawhammer coat is in truth the most democratic of garments."

It pleased me also to dwell upon the fact that the moment of my capitulation had been made glorious by a meeting with Stanley and Hardy and Barrie, and that the dinner which marked this most important change in lifelong habits of dress was appropriately notable. That several hundred of the best known men and women of England had witnessed my fall softened the shock, and when--on the way out--Zangwill nudged my elbow and said, "Cow-boy, you wore 'em to the manner born," I smiled in lofty disregard of future comment. I faced Chicago and New York with serene and confident composure.

Although I carried this suit with me to Bernard Shaw's (on a week-end visit), I was not called upon to wear it, for he met me in snuff-colored knickerbockers and did not change to any other suit during my stay.

Sunday dinner at Conan Doyle's was a midday meal, and Barrie and Hardy and other of my literary friends I met at teas or luncheons. I took my newly-acquired uniform to Paris but as my meetings with my French friends were either teas or lunches, it so happened that--eager as I was to display it I did not put this suit on till after I reached home. My first appearance in it was in the nature of a masquerade, my second was by way of a joke to please my mother.

Knowing that she had never seen a man in evening dress I arrayed myself, one night, as if for a banquet, and suddenly descended upon her with intent to surprise and amuse her. I surprised her but I did not make her laugh in the way I had expected. On the contrary she surveyed me with a look of pride and then quietly remarked, "I like you in it. I wouldn't mind if you dressed that way every day."

This finished my opposition to the swallow-tail coat. If my mother, the daughter of a pioneer, a woman of the farm, accepted it as something appropriate to her son, its ultimate acceptance by all America was inevitable. Thereafter I lay in wait for an opportunity to display myself in all my London finery.

Two months later as I was mounting the central staircase of the Chicago Art Inst.i.tute, on my way to the Annual Reception, I met two of my fellow republicans in Prince Albert Frock suits. At sight of me they started with surprise--surprise and sorrow--exclaiming, "Look at Hamlin Garland!" a.s.suming an expression of patrician ease, I replied, "Oh, yes, I have conformed. In London one _must_ conform, you know.--The English are quite inexorable in all matters of dress, you understand."

Howells, when I saw him next, smilingly listened to my tale and heartily approved of my action, but Burroughs regarded it as a weak surrender. "A silk hat and steel-pen coat on a Whitman Democrat," he said, "seems like a make-believe," which, in a sense, it was.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Choice of the New Daughter

Although my mother met me each morning with a happy smile, she walked with slower movement, and in studying her closely, after three months'

absence, I perceived unwelcome change. She was not as alert mentally or physically as when I went away. A mysterious veil had fallen between her wistful spirit and the outer world. Her vision was dimmer and her spirit at times withdrawn, remote. She laughed in response to my jesting, but there was an absent-minded sweetness in her smile, a tremulous quality in her voice which disturbed me.

Her joy in my return, so accusing in its tenderness, led me to declare that I would never again leave her, not even for a month. "You may count on me hereafter," I said to her. "I'm going to quit traveling and settle down near you."

"I hope you mean it this time," she replied soberly, and her words stung for I recalled the many times I had disappointed her.

With a ma.s.s of work and correspondence waiting my hand I went from my breakfast to my study. My forenoons thereafter were spent at my desk, but with the understanding that if she got lonesome, mother was privileged to interrupt, and it often happened that along about eleven I would hear a softly-opened stair-door and then a call,--a timid call as if she feared to disturb me--"Haven't you done enough? Can't you come now?" There was no resisting this appeal. Dropping my pen, I went below and gave the rest of my day to her.

We possessed an ancient low-hung "Surrey," a vehicle admirably fitted for an invalid, and in this conveyance with a stout mare as motive power we often drove away into the country of a pleasant afternoon, sometimes into Gill's Coulee, sometimes to Onalaska.

On these excursions my mother rode in silence, busied with the past.

Each hill, each stream had its tender a.s.sociation. Once as we were crossing the Kinney Hill she said, "We used to pick plums along that creek." Or again as we were driving toward Mindora, she said, "When McEldowney built that house we thought it a palace."

She loved to visit her brother William's farm, and to ride past the old McClintock house in which my father had courted her. Her expression at such times was sweetly sorrowful. The past appeared so happy, so secure, her present so precarious, so full of pain. She sensed the mystery, the tragedy of human life, but was unable to express her conceptions,--and I was of no value as a comforter. I could only jest with a bitter sense of helplessness.

On other days, when she was not well enough to drive, I pushed her about the village in a wheeled chair, which I had bought at the World's Fair.

In this way she was able to make return calls upon such of her neighbors as were adjacent to side-walks. She was always in my thought,--only when Franklin took her in charge was it possible for me to concentrate on the story which I had begun before going abroad, and in which I hoped to embody some of the experiences of my trip. _Boy Life on the Prairie_ was also still incomplete, and occasionally I put aside _The Hustler_, as I called my fiction, in order to recover and record some farm custom, some pioneer incident which my mother or my brother brought to my mind as we talked of early days in Iowa.

The story (which Gilder afterward called _Her Mountain Lover_) galloped along quite in the spirit of humorous extravaganza with which it had been conceived, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it for the reason that in it I was able to relive some of the n.o.blest moments of my explorations of Colorado's peaks and streams. It was an expression of my indebtedness to the High Country.

I made the mistake, however, of not using the actual names of localities. Just why I shuffled the names of trails and towns and valleys so recklessly, I cannot now explain, for there was abundant literary precedent for their proper and exact use. Perhaps I resented the prosaic sound of "Sneffles" and "Montrose Junction." Anyhow, whatever my motive, I covered my tracks so well that it was impossible even for a resident to follow me. In _The Eagle's Heart_ I was equally elusive, but as only part of that book referred to the High Country the lack of definite nomenclature did not greatly matter.

Personally I like _Her Mountain Lover_, which is still in print, and for the benefit of the possible reader of it, I will explain that the "Wagon Wheel Gap" of the story is Ouray, and that the Grizzly Bear Trail leads off the stage road to Red Mountain.

Our red raspberries were just coming into fruit, and a few strawberries remained on the vines, therefore it happened that during the season we had a short-cake with cream and sugar almost every night for supper,--and such short-cakes!--piping hot, b.u.t.tered, smothered in berries. I fear they were not very healthful either for my mother or for her sons, but as short-cakes were an immemorial delicacy in our home I could not bring myself to forbid them.

Mother insisted on them all the more firmly when I told her that the English knew nothing of short-cake or our kind of pies, and then, more to amuse her than for any other reason, I told of a visit to my English publisher and of my bragging about her short-cake so shamelessly that he had finally declared: "I am coming to Chicago next year, and I shall journey all the way to West Salem just to test your mother's short-cake."

This made her chuckle. "Let him come," she said confidently. "We'll feed him on it."

Notwithstanding her reaction to my jesting, my anxiety concerning her deepened. The long periods of silence into which she fell alarmed me, and at times, as she sat alone, I detected on her face an expression of pain which was like that of one in despair. When I questioned her, she could not define the cause of her distress, but I feared it came from some weakening of her heart.

She was failing,--that was all too evident to me--failing faster than her years warranted, and then (just as I was becoming a little rea.s.sured) she came to me one morning, with both her hands outstretched, as if feeling her way, her face white, her eyes wide and deep and dark with terror. "I can't see! I can't see!" she wailed.

With a sense of impending tragedy I took her in my arms and led her to a chair. "Don't worry, mother!" was all I could say. "It will pa.s.s soon.

Keep perfectly quiet."

Under the influence of my words she gradually lost her fear, and by the time the doctor arrived she was quite calm and could see--a little--though in a strange way.

In answer to his question she replied with a pitiful little smile, "Yes, I can see you, but only in pieces. I can only see a part of your face,--the rest of you is all black."

This reply seemed to relieve the doctor's mind. His face lighted up. "I understand! Don't worry a mite. You will be all right in a few minutes.

It is only a temporary nerve disturbance."

This proved to be true, and as her lips resumed their placid sweetness my courage came back. In a few hours she was able to see quite clearly, or at least as clearly as was normal to her age. Nevertheless I accepted this attack as a distinct and sinister warning. It not only emphasized her dependence upon me, it made me very definitely aware of what would happen to our household if she were to become a helpless invalid. Her need of a larger bed-chamber, with a connecting bathroom was imperative.

"I know you will both suffer from the noise and confusion of the building," I said to my aunt, "but I am going to enlarge mother's room and put in water and plumbing. If she should be sick in that small bedroom it would be horrible."

Up to this time our homestead had remained simply a roomy farmhouse on the edge of a village. I now decided that it should have the conveniences of a suburban cottage, and to this end I made plans for a new dining-room, a new porch, and a bath-room.

Mother was appalled at the audacity of my designs. She wanted the larger chamber, of course, but my scheme for putting in running water appealed to her as something almost criminally extravagant. She was troubled, too, by the thought of the noise, the dirt, the change which were necessary accompaniments of the plan.

I did my best to rea.s.sure her. "It won't take long, mother, and as for the expense, you just let _me_ walk the floor."

She said no more, realizing, no doubt, that I could not be turned aside from my purpose.