Elizabeth Visits America Part 11

We were allowed to dress as in New York for our dinner party, given by Octavia's friend at his shack, and to see the girls and Lola, and indeed us all, looking like Paris fashion plates in dainty clothes and feathered hats seemed so quaint; but when we got inside it was not out of place.

Such a person of refinement he must be! The outside was made of boards like the rest, but inside it had bookcases and comfortable chairs and cosey sofas, and the nice look of a man's room who is no fool and reads books and thinks thoughts. There were several more lovely creatures whom we had not met before, altogether about eighteen the party was, and as the dining-room only held ten, naturally the rest sat on boxes, and the table was elongated with a packing case. But the fun we had! As delightful as the evening with the Squirrels; each of these pets out-doing the other in remarkable Western phrases and stories, and all with that whimsical fine sense of humour that can see the fun even in themselves. I wish I could remember the sentences, but they are too difficult, only they had not to be translated or explained; they were simply the most unusual English applied in that crisp exact fashion that is an art in itself, meaning _exactly_ what is necessary to present an idea. The whole entertainment was cooked for, and waited on by, a most delightful coloured lady called Ca.s.sandra, who chewed gum and joined in the conversation.

Fancy the consternation and horror of Mrs. Spleist or Mrs. Craik V.

Purdy, if either had been the hostess of such a party! They would have apologised the whole time. It was all enchanting.

"Now, Mr. Johnson," Ca.s.sandra said (our host's name is Burke Johnson), "why yo go for to put all de peas in dat great heap on yo plate? Didn't I tell yo to be careful? Dey won't go 'round." And she looked like a reproving mother to a greedy boy, showing her splendid teeth in a grin.

We were so amused. But when the subjects interested her she would pause with a dish in the air and give her opinion in the friendliest way, not the least impertinently, but as some fond, privileged Nanny might at a children's party.

"Fact is, you spoil Mr. Johnson, Ca.s.sandra," Nelson said; "you feed him too well and keep him too snug." Then she tossed her head, "Mr. Johnson is my care, Mr. Nelson," she said; "you can talk 'bout that to some other coloured lady," and her laugh rang out like a silver bell.

I cannot give you any idea, Mamma, of how perfectly delightful all these people are.

After dinner we played a game of poker in the sitting-room, not for high stakes, only just chaff and fun, and Tom made outrageous love to Columbia, who answered him with the cleverest parries. American girls are miles ahead of us in brilliant repartee. Then someone played the piano and we all sang songs, and from the kitchen where Ca.s.sandra was washing up the dishes, came the most melodious second in that sweet perfect harmony which the negroes seem so well to understand.

Placed carelessly among some books on a table by the side of the piano were two revolvers (I must call them "guns" here, because that is their name) and I did such a silly thing without thinking, so unaccustomed are we at home to realise anything could be loaded that was casually lying about. I picked one up and examined the tracing on the barrel, never noticing that it was pointing straight up at my head, until I felt Nelson's iron grip upon my wrist, while he took it from my hand. His face was white as death. "My G.o.d!" he said, "my G.o.d, quit touching that!" Then he walked quickly to the door and opened it and looked out on the night. There was no hall, the sitting-room is straight on the street. He took a great deep breath and came back again, and then he laughed, "Guess I'm a pretty fool," he said; "I've had them pointed direct at me with the finger on the trigger, too, and never turned a hair, but, by the Lord, to see your flower face close to that grim thing makes me kind of sick." It moved me deeply, Mamma; I wonder why?

The whole company walked home with us, but I clung on to the Senator's arm and let my other be held by the one with the roguish smile of the night before; and Nelson seemed to be extraordinarily gay as he strode beside Octavia, though when we said goodnight, just outside my room, his eyes were full of mist.

I don't feel the least sleepy, and I am sitting here in the rocking-chair thinking of all our trip, and the different impressions it has made, and how deeply I admire and respect this wonderful people.

As soon as they have grown out of being touchy, and rounded off their edges, they will have no equals on earth. This great vast country we have come through seems like the great vast brains of the men from here who are the real nation builders. The successful schemers and business men are remarkable, too, but these are the ones who make for splendour and glory and n.o.ble ideas. They are like strong pure air blowing away migraines; and yet the business men also are to be respected; it requires such indomitable pluck in either case, only this kind of outdoor pluck makes male creatures turn more into the things which women love.

There was one point I did not remember to tell you about in its place, and that was the rather pathetic spectacle the boys are, in numbers of families in the East,--tied to their mothers' ap.r.o.n strings, treated like girls and taken constantly to Europe with or without a tutor; little, blase grandfathers driving motor cars and dressing in grown up clothes. I longed to send them all to Eton and let them get flogged and have to f.a.g and be turned into children first, and then men. I asked the fourteen year old Spleist boy to get me down a branch of blossom far up on an apple tree, and for the world he wouldn't have rubbed his patent leather boots, even if he had known how to hold on to reach so high. All the children are old, more or less, and wearied with expensive toys and every wish gratified. Only that they are more surrounded with servants and governesses or go to school, numbers and numbers are like "Matilda"

on the ship. Out here there don't seem to be any children, or hardly any, but those there are, I expect, are like everything else in the West, free and growing. But there is one quality which seems exclusively American, West or East, unbounded hospitality and kindly feeling, and ever and always I shall think of them all as dear friends.

Perhaps I shall not be able to post a letter again for some days, Mamma, but good-night now, and fond love from,

Your affectionate daughter,

ELIZABETH.

CAMP OF MOONBEAMS

NEVADA HOTEL,

CAMP OF MOONBEAMS.

DEAREST MAMMA,--When you hear of all I have to tell you you will wonder I can write so quietly. But I will make myself, and keep everything in its place, so that you get a clear picture.

We started early yesterday morning in the private car, for a junction, or terminus (I am not sure which) called Hot Creek,--everyone in the best of spirits after a send off from all our friends. Marcus Aurelius's face to welcome us on board was enough to rejuvenate anyone, simply a full moon of black and white smiles, and I am sure he is the first person Merecdes has confided her love affair to, for he seems to watch over her and Gaston like a deus ex machina.

Nelson and I sat out on the observation veranda again, and he told me many things of all this land, and how often the poor adventurers coming out West will climb on to the irons under the trains, and then cling for countless miles, chancing hideous death to be carried along; and how, sometimes, they will get lost and die of starvation. And just then, in the grimmest country of absolutely arid desert valley, between highish barren hills, we saw a beautiful lake of blue water with green trees reflected in it, and when I looked at Nelson his eyes were sad. Nothing could have seemed more cool or refreshing; it made one long to jump out of the train and go and bathe, for now, though still early in the spring, it is getting very hot. "It is nothing but a mirage," Nelson said. "There is no water there and no trees. It comes and goes in this part of the desert according to the state of the atmosphere, and it has been the cause of many a poor fellow's end." How treacherous, Mamma! How cruel of Nature to treat her children so! And then he put his head back and pulled his hat over his eyes.

"A mirage," he said, like one dreaming. "Guess it's often like life." And then he told me of the curious effect it had had upon his imagination the first time he had seen it, when alone with his burros, prospecting; how it seemed to say to him to make a reality of green and prosperity out of the parched world, and how his thoughts always returned there when he had successes, and he dreamed of a day when he should rest a little by just such a lake. "To rest my soul," he said, "if I have any; to rest it with someone I should love."

And, as once before, the Senator broke in upon us with his cheery, charming voice, "Guess you two are talking like high-flown poet c.o.o.ns,"

he said, "and there is breakfast to be thought of, and happy things like that." And then as Nelson went in front he stepped back and put his kind hand under my chin, and raised it and looked straight into my eyes.

"Little daughter," he said, "little friend, p'raps your heart's aching for someone over the sea, but don't make his heart ache, too, now.

Promise me." And of course I won't, Mamma, and of course I promised.

Isn't it a queer world? And all mirage, as Nelson said. Well, now let us get on and laugh and be gay. An eleven o'clock breakfast was our usual fun; you can't imagine such a well arranged party, never a jar or disagreement, like, I am sure, we should be having if there were Englishwomen. In a flock Americans are infinitely more agreeable to deal with. I expect it is in the blood, having had to spend such quant.i.ties of time, all women together, while the men are away.

The moment we finished our food we drew up at our destination, and in this wilderness there was a telegraph station and a few shanties, but it could all be lit by electric light! The most strong, paintless, hardy looking automobiles were awaiting us, into which we climbed, a very close pack. The maids and valets had all been left behind at Osages--think of asking Agnes to really rough it, even if there had been room! So we had all to attend to the luggage, and were only allowed a teeny hand bag each, with a nighty and comb and brush in it. Our hair and faces were already grey with dust, and all sense of appearance had been forgotten.

I sat between Lola and Nelson, with the little Vinerhorn and the secretary in front of us, while the Senator was next our chauffeur, whom they addressed as "Bob"--a friend, not an employe. The rest of the party squashed into the other motors and so we started, ours leading over a track, not a road; the sage brush had been removed, that was all, and there were deep ruts to guide us. We flew along with a brilliant blue sky overhead, high hills which presently grew mountainous on either side, and what seemed an endless sea of greenish drab scrub before. Once or twice we pa.s.sed tired, weary-looking men plodding on foot, and I did wish we could have picked them up and helped them along; but there was not an inch of room. The ruts were so extremely deep that I certainly should have been pitched out but that Nelson held me tight. Mr.

Vinerhorn frowned so when he held Lola, too, that he was obliged to leave her alone, and I am sure she must have had a most uncomfortable journey. I suppose this little Randolph has picked up that selfish jealous trait in England with his clothes, only thinking of _his_ emotions, not his wife's comfort, quite unlike kind Americans. After about an hour we began to go up the steepest hills on the winding track, and got among pine trees and great boulders, up and up until the air grew quite chill; and then as we turned a sharp corner the most unique scene met our view. I told you before I can't describe scenery, Mamma, but I must try this, because it was so wonderful, and reminded me of the pictures in Paradise Lost ill.u.s.trated by Dore, when the Devil looks down on that weird world.

A grey-sand, flat place far below us, about fifty miles across, surrounded by mountains turning blue in their shadows in the afternoon light--it might have been a supremely vast Circus Maximus or giants'

race course, and there was the giant towering above the rest, with a snow cap on his head, peeping from between the lower mountains. It seemed it could not be possible we could descend to there, but we did, the track getting more primitive as we went on, and once on the edge of a precipice we met a waggon and team of eight mules driven by a Mexican with a cracking whip, and getting past might have tried your nerves, but no one notices such things in a country of this sort!

Every atom of food for Moonbeams has to be drawn over this ninety miles of desert by waggons or mule carts, and every drop of water comes in six miles from the camp. What splendid pluck and daring to wrest gold from the earth under such circ.u.mstances! What general would fight an enemy so far from his food supply?

We seemed to be no time being raced and shaken over the flat sand basin, meeting and pa.s.sing more teams on the way, and twice a petrol and drink station of one board shed, and a man with a jolly Irish face and a gun openly in his belt, to attend to it. We had no breakdowns, and just at sunset got into the one and only street of Moonbeams. But there were no stone houses or anything but sheds of one storey, generally, and more often rows of tents. The Moonbeams is not three months old! So quickly do these places grow when a rush for newly discovered rich gold is made.

We had pa.s.sed quant.i.ties of "claims" on the way; piles of stones like little cairns marking their four corners; and I wonder if in five hundred years the socialists of that day will scream and try to demonstrate that the descendants of those brave adventurers have no right to their bit of land, but should give it up to them, who only talk and fume and do no work upon it.

Everyone was in from the mines, which are all close, shafts sticking up from every hill and heaps of broken rock and earth rising like mole hills. The straggling street was full of men, and I should not think in the world there can be a collection of more splendid looking humanity--all young and strong and wholesome. The Senator says life is so impossibly difficult here that only those in the best of health can stand it, and to face such chances requires the buoyancy and hope of youth. Whatever the cause they were all lovely creatures, just like our guardsmen, numbers tall and slender and thin through, and many of them might have been the Eton eleven or Oxford eight, and all with the insouciance and careless grace I have already told you of.

You know what I mean by "thin through," Mamma: that lovely look of narrow hips and slender waist and fine shoulders, not padded and not too square, and looked at sideways not a bit thick; the chest, not the tummy, the most sticking out part, and the general expression of race horses. You would have to melt off layers of hips and other bits of most of the Eastern American, and then alter the set of their bones to get them to resemble any of these. And yet I suppose they are all Americans, too, drifted here from other States; but they look so absolutely different; I expect they are not the conglomeration of all nations who have emigrated, like in New York, but the original pure stock. Or can it be the life after all? In any case it is too attractive, and I wish you could see them, Mamma?

They welcomed the Senator and his party as friends, and as we went at walking pace they conducted us to the hotel. And it was a hotel!!! Think of one long, long board barn of two storeys high, not finished quite, being built, with kind of little rabbit hole rooms off each side of a long pa.s.sage on both floors, in some the boards not meeting, so that you can see into the next person's apartment, or into the open air as the case may be, and in all, if a knot is out of the wood, a peep hole! The flimsiest door not fitting, with the number of each room printed on a bit of paper and fastened on with a tack; furniture consisting of a rickety iron bed, a box that has been a packing case for a table, another for a washstand, a rough single chair, sometimes a rocking chair, and all crowned by a looking-gla.s.s that makes half your nose in one part of your face, and one eye up in your forehead--too deliciously comic. It was all very clean, except the bed clothes, but we won't speak of them; their recollection shivers me.

Octavia and Tom had one room at the very end, and the rest of our party had to scatter where we could, as numbers were taken, and it was difficult to get even enough to go round. Mine was a very grand one, because it had newspapers pasted on the boards part.i.tion, but it was very deceptive, because one could not at once discern the knots and cracks, and anyone might surprise one by poking a finger through in unexpected places. Gaston had the next on my right, and Mercedes and Columbia the one beyond him, and I did wonder, under the circ.u.mstances, which of us he would peep at. I felt it would be me, because Mercedes and Columbia being jeune filles, and he being a Frenchman, they would be sacred. Nelson and the Senator together had a rather larger one on my left, and that side my newspapers were torn, but I felt no apprehension.

The chivalry of American men is temptation proof.

Downstairs there was a bar and gambling saloon in one, with a sort of hall place, a few feet square, but no dining room or any place for food.

It was merely a shelter from outside air. One had to trot along the street to another shed called a restaurant, for meals.

How we laughed and the fun we had over it all! Nothing has delighted us so much. Only Randolph Vinerhorn doesn't like it, but he is afraid to say it before the Senator, though I heard him grumbling from across the pa.s.sage to Lola because he has not got his valet to shave him! Tom, of course, is just as happy as we are. How I _love_ an adventure, Mamma!

Did you ever? And if you could see Tom in his flannel shirt and his shabbiest old grey suit, and a felt slouch hat, you could not tell him from one of these lovely miners. Octavia says she is getting in love with him again on account of it. Her one unfortunately had to stay in Osages, but the one with the beautiful teeth has come in his place.

We couldn't wash or brush up much because we had only each either a cracked pudding dish or an old cake tin to wash in, but we did our best and started off for our dinner. Three of the most prominent young mine owners had invited us to a feast, and when we got to the tent in which it was held we found that was the chief restaurant, and lots of miners were already there at different tables.

Ours was a long one in the middle and much grander than the rest, because it had a bit of marbled white oil cloth on it for a cloth. The dears all the people were, and the kind generous spirit to ask us to a feast when food was so scarce and expensive! And fancy, Mamma, in the middle was a bouquet of yellow daisies, and they were worth their weight in gold--yellow daisies brought over ninety miles of desert, and how many hundred miles of train!

None of the people at the other tables took the slightest notice of our party; beyond a friendly greeting to those they knew, they did not even glance our way; think of the beautiful manners, and the difference, too, if these had been rough men of any other country in an eating house. I tell you these Westerners are a thing apart for courtesy and respect to women--a lesson to all the world; and the food was not at all awful, and we had the best of champagne! while the tent was lit by electric light, and had a board floor and benches for seats. We were so gay at dinner, and while we were finishing, news came, I do not know how, that the desperado, Curly Grainger, and his comrades, were in the camp. The man next me told me, and I never thought to tell Nelson, who was at my other side, which was foolish, as events proved.

After it, when they had made some speeches to bid us all welcome, we went out to see the sights--princ.i.p.ally a private gambling saloon where they were playing extremely high, about seven men intent on poker, some with green shades over their eyes of talc, which gave the strangest livid glow on their faces, and made them look like dead men. After each round a felt-slippered bar-tender would slip in and give them all drinks in small gla.s.ses--rum and milk and different things--and I am sure one of the desperadoes was playing, his villainous face was in such contrast to the others.

Their revolvers were all up on a shelf, because, as the proprietor told us, "They so often got to shootin' one another when they played as high as that," he found it "more conducive to a peaceable evenin' if their guns were handed out before they began!" How such things must add to the excitement of a game, Mamma!

The lowest stake was one thousand dollars and some had twenty-five thousand dollars in front of them. There was a queer intent ominous hush, and we watched in silence for a while, and then went to a most quaint sort of theatrical entertainment--songs and dances going on, the most primitive stage at one end, while a bar and drinks were at the other. We only stayed about five minutes, because it did not seem quite the place for girls, although everyone treated us with the most scrupulous respect, instantly hushing their jokes as we approached, and making way for us like courtiers for foreign royalties in a drawing-room. And when we got out in the street there appeared to be some excitement in the air. Hundreds of men were loitering about or talking in groups, and the Senator, much to our disappointment, made us go back to the hotel. It was only about half past nine o'clock, and we thought to go to bed an extremely dull proceeding. But we did not like to question or argue, and obediently went upstairs. And when the Senator and Nelson saw us safely in our rooms, with the secretary and Mr.

Vinerhorn left to be a sort of guard to us, they all went out again to show Tom more sights.