Elizabeth Visits America Part 8

The hall was full of pictures in the widest gold frames, all sorts: landscapes, portraits, cats, dogs, groups of still life, good, bad, and indifferent ma.s.sed together on a wall covered with large-patterned scarlet and gilt j.a.panese leather paper. Guarding the doors and staircase were imitation suits of armour on dummy men, standing under some really beautiful Toledo blades crossed above their heads. Then, through crimson plush curtains with gold applique Florentine patterned borders, we were ushered into the drawing-room.

It was so original! Think, Mamma, of a sarcophagus for a drawing-room!

Stone walls and floor, tombstone mantlepieces (mixed Gothic), really good Persian rugs, and the very most carved, brand new gilt Louis Philippe suite of furniture, helped out by mammoth armchairs and sofa, covered in gold brocade. These had the same shape and look for furniture as the men in the hotel hall had for men, so colossally stuffed out and large. The Vicomte said, "Dieu! Un salon d'Hippopotames!" It was a glorious sunny day, but from the hall onwards all daylight had been excluded, and the drawing-room was a blaze of electric light, flashing from countless gilt branches; while the guests to meet us were drawn up on the hearth rug, the women in full restaurant evening dress, a little decollete, and hats, and glittering with jewels.

Octavia and I felt miserably cheap creatures. Mr. Craik V. Purdy, simply gorgeous about waistcoat and watchchain, presented us to his wife, a short, red-haired woman (I do dislike red hair, don't you, Mamma?). She was very stout, but I don't understand why she was such a "drawback." She had the jolliest face and laugh, even if her voice was the voice of the Lusitania's siren.

The customs are so quaint! She introduced us to each guest (not the guests to us!) and they each repeated our names after her like this:

"Lady Chevenix and Lady Valmond, I want to present you to Mrs. Colonel Prodgers." Then Mrs. Colonel Prodgers repeated, "Lady Chevenix, Lady Valmond," and so on all down the line, until our poor names rang in our heads; and Tom and the Senator and the Vicomte just the same. The company were about seven women besides our hostess, and only three young, the others verging on forty; and all the men were husbands, whom the wives spoke of as "Mr." So and So when they mentioned them--just as the townspeople do when they come out to the Conservative meetings or bazaars at home; and the husbands did the same. But they do this in New York even, unless in the very highest set; no man is spoken of by his wife as "Bob" or "Charlie" or "my husband;" always "Mr." So and So.

Is it not odd, Mamma, that they who are so wonderfully quick and adaptive should not have noticed that this is a purely middle cla.s.s peculiarity? Mr. Purdy had just time to tell us he had paid $40,000 for a large Dutch picture hanging against the Gothic stone of one panel of the wall, and $50,000 for a Gainsborough on the next (yes, Mamma, a beautiful powdered lady in a white robe was smiling down with whimsical sorrow upon us). Then luncheon was announced and we went in.

The dining-room had been decorated, he told us, a year or two ago, when taste was even different to what it is now! And he was thinking of altering it and having it pure Louis XIV. At present it was composed of saddle-bag coverings, varnished mahogany and a stencilled fleur-de-lys wall with crossed battle-axes upon it, between pictures and some china plates, while the table was lit by two huge lamps from the ceiling, shaded by old gold silk shades with frills. It was as gay as possible, and the time flew. Here the implements to eat with were more varied and numerous than even at the Spleists, and the tablecloths more lacy, and quant.i.ties of gold dishes full of almonds and olives and candies and other nice things, were by one's plate, and one could eat them all through the meal. Everyone else did, so we did, too, Mamma! and I think it is a splendid idea. Our host spent his time in telling, first Octavia, then me, of his fortune and possessions, and how there was no picture in Europe he could not buy if he wished it, and he intended to start a gallery. Octavia said he was quite right, as he evidently had a most original taste; and he was delighted.

The cold in the wife's head could be heard quite plainly even where we were, and the host shouted so kindly: "Say, Anabel, be careful of that draught."

Fancy an English husband bothering to think of a draught after a catarrh had been there for fifteen years!

I admired her diamond dog collar and splendid pearls, and he replied with open-hearted pride, "They came from Tiffany's in New York, Ma'am.

I don't hold with buying foreign goods for American ladies; Mrs. Purdy has got as first-cla.s.s stones as any Princess in the world, and they are every one purchased in America!"

The man at my other hand was very young, but even so a husband. I asked him how it was all the men were married, and he said he "didn't kinder know"; it was a habit they dropped into on leaving college; but for his part he though perhaps it was a pity not to be able to have a look round a little longer. And then he said thoughtfully, "I guess you're right. I don't recollect many single men. Why, there's not one here!"

And I said we had found it like that everywhere; they all seemed married except in Philadelphia.

"But you see we can quit if we want to," he added, "though we don't start out with that idea." And probably they don't, but I think it must give an underneath, comforting sort of feeling to know, when you are trotting up the aisle, or walking across the drawing-room to a lovely rigged-up altar to swear fidelity to the person who is waiting for you there, that if he annoys you in a fortnight, you can get free; and all the experience gained, and not a stain upon your character. I do wish we were half as sensible in England.

Just think of it, Mamma! I could have divorced Harry by now for quarrelling with me. I might then marry someone else, divorce him, and then presently make up with Harry and have the fun of getting married all over again. Just imagine what stories we could then tell one another! I could say "My intermediate husband never did such and such,"

or, "Jack would not have spoken in that tone; he made love quite differently;" and so on, and Harry could say, "You are far sweeter than Clara; I am glad we have returned to one another." Don't you think it is a splendid plan? Or are you ridiculously old fashioned like most English people, who think their worn out old laws the only ones in the universe?

I hope I am not being impertinent, Mamma, to you, but really, after being in America for a while, where everything is so progressive, I get impatient with our solidity of thought. It is quite as wearisome to contemplate, as the Chicago solid body is unattractive to look at.

When we got back the Senator told us that the very young man I had been talking to had had a quarrel with his wife, and they were actually settling the divorce proceedings when Mr. Purdy's invitation to meet the English travellers came the evening before, and they had sent off the lawyers and made it up to be able to come, and now they may go on happily for another two years, he says!

Our host told us all sorts of interesting things of his greatness, and how acquired. He is really a wonderful person, almost a socialist in politics, and a complete autocrat in his life and methods. Tom and the Vicomte sat at each side of the hostess, of course, and they told us she practically did not hear a word they said, she was so anxious that the servants should do their duty and ply them with food.

"Mr. Purdy would never forgive me if you didn't get just what you fancy," she said; and however quaint the idea, the spirit which prompted it was so kind; they said they just gorged everything which was put in front of them, to please her.

"An admirable woman, and first cla.s.s wife," Tom told Octavia afterwards; so she said she would ask Mr. Purdy to arrange a divorce and they would have an exchange, she becoming Mrs. Purdy and Mrs. Purdy Countess of Chevenix for a while; but Tom would not agree to that. Men are selfish, aren't they, Mamma?

After lunch we were taken to see the pictures in the hall and different rooms, and some of them were really beautiful, and I have no doubt in a few years' time, when Mr. Purdy has travelled more, and educated his eye, he really will collect a gallery worth having, and eliminate the atrocities. His feeling was more to have a better collection than anyone else in Chicago, or indeed America, rather than the joy of the possession of the exquisite pictures themselves. But even this spirit gets together lovely things, which will benefit future, and more highly cultured people; so it all has good in it.

They were so kind we could hardly get away to catch our train, and we have promised to go again if ever we pa.s.s this way. The women after lunch talked among themselves, and were deeply intent and confidential when we got back to the drawing-room after seeing the pictures; but they made way for us and were most agreeable. All of them had set views on every subject, not any hesitation or indecision, and they all used each other's names in every sentence. They were full of practical common sense, and rigid virtue; and did not worry about intellectual conversation.

At this moment the Vicomte has peeped in to call Octavia and me to dinner; we were resting in our drawing-room. So I must stop. I will post this to-morrow when we get to a big station.

Your affectionate daughter,

ELIZABETH.

_Morning._

P.S.--These sleeping cars are really wonderful. Such a thing happened last night! But it shows how comfortable the beds are, and how soundly people can sleep. At the station where we stopped after dinner, two couples got in, an uncle and nephew, married to an aunt and niece; only the uncle's wife was the niece, and the nephew's the aunt, a plain elderly person with a fierce commanding glance and a mole on her upper lip, while he was a nice-looking boy with droopy grey eyes. The train was very crowded, and they could only get two single berths--lower ones, but they are quite wide enough for two people to sleep in at a pinch. It appears the husbands went off to smoke while the wives undressed and got into bed, and when they returned the coloured conductor showed them to their places, naturally thinking, as they were the same name, the old ones were a pair and the young ones another. And fancy, Mamma, they never found out till the morning, when the whole car was awakened by the old lady's yells! And the old gentleman flew out like Hopkins and wanted to nearly murder the conductor. But it was not the least his fault, was it? And the nephew, such a nice, generous fellow, gave the poor n.i.g.g.e.r twenty-five dollars to make up for being roughly handled. The niece still slept on through all this noise, and Tom, who was pa.s.sing at the time the old gentleman lifted the curtains to climb in there, said she looked the sweetest thing possible with her long eyelashes on her cheek.

The four had the next table to us at lunch, and they seemed all at sixes and sevens with one another, the elderly lady glaring at her young husband, and the uncle frowning at the niece, while the nephew had just the look of Hurstbridge when Mademoiselle scolds him unjustly.

It was dreadful for them, wasn't it, Mamma? and not a soul to blame.

_Still in the train._

DEAREST MAMMA,--You can't think what interesting country we are going through. We woke yesterday morning and peeped out about five to see the most perfect desolation one could imagine,--much more grim than the Egyptian desert: vast unending plains of uneven ground, with a rough dried drab gra.s.s in splodges, and high scrub. Not a bird or animal in all these hundreds of miles, only desolation; generally perfectly flat, but here and there rising ground and rough hills. The Senator says it is the end of the ranch country, but we have seen no sign of cattle or any beast, and what could they eat? At long intervals we have pa.s.sed a few board shanties like card houses grouped together near the track; just fancy living there, Mamma! Even with the nicest young man in the world it would be a trial, wouldn't it? And those Mormons crossed it all in waggons! And we are finding it quite long in a train! It is still going on, and now the surface is a little different; low hills are sticking up just like elephants' backs, and the same colour; no ranches are here or any living thing. We get into our drawing-room, all of us, and the Senator tells us stories of his young days, too exciting, they must have been, when he came through here before all the railway was built. No wonder he is so splendid a character now, having had to be so strong and fearless all his life. Every word he says is interesting, and perfectly vivid and true; and his views on every subject that is discussed are common-sense and exact. He has no prejudices, and is not touchy. He can see his own nation's faults as well as ours, and his first thought is to appreciate the good qualities.

He says there is a very grave danger to the country in the liberty of the press, which has a most debasing influence by printing all the sensational news, and encouraging the interest in these things in the youthful mind. It must bring a paltry taint into the glorious freedom of the true American spirit, but that will right itself. He says: "They are too darned sane to suffer a scourge when once they begin to see its fruits." And while the rest were in the observation car after tea he talked to me of happiness. Happiness, he said, was the main and chief object in life, and yet nine-tenths of the people of the world throw it away for such imitation pleasure; and you can't often catch it again once you have lost it.

I asked him what the greatest was, and he said perfect happiness was to be close to the woman you loved. If that was impossible there were several subst.i.tutes of a secondary sort--your children, ambition, success, and even rest. Then his eyes grew all misty and sad, and he looked out on the desert, and at that moment we were pa.s.sing a group of a few shanties close to the rails. They were tumbled down and deserted, and nearby lay the skeleton of a horse. "It was in just such a place as that, only a good bit farther west, I first saw my Hearts-ease," he said. "The boys called her 'Hearts-ease' because she was the sweetest English flower, drifted out to the mines with the people who had adopted her." He paused, and I slipped my hand into his, he looked so sad, and then he told me all the story, Mamma, and it has touched me so, I tell it to you.

He had gone to this small rough camp, about thirty miles short of the Great Eagles, with only ten cents in his pocket, from the ranch where he had been a cowboy. He had ridden for days, and there his horse had died. He crept up half dead, carrying his saddle bags, and these people, "human devils," he called them, who owned Hearts-ease, let him come in and lie in a shed. They kept a sort of a gambling den, all of the most primitive, and the worst rogues of the world congregated there in the evenings.

Hearts-ease was about sixteen, and they looked upon her as a promising decoy-duck, but she was "just the purest flower of the prairies," he said, and so they beat and starved her in consequence, for not falling in with their views.

That night when he lay in the straw, she crept out of some corner where she slept, and warned him not to remain, if he had gold in the bags, or they would certainly murder him before morning; and she gave him some water, and half her wretched supper, because he had been too tired to eat when he arrived. Then he told her he was only a poor cowboy, hoping to get on to the Great Eagles Camp and make his fortune; and they stayed there talking till dawn, and she bathed his poor feet, all bleeding from his long tramp, and must have been too sweet and adorable, Mamma. And when the morning came and her adopted parents found he was still there and had only ten cents to pay with, they tried to make him leave, and beat Hearts-ease before his eyes, which made him so mad he got out his gun (that means revolver) and would have shot the man, only Hearts-ease clung to him, and begged him not to. Then they called in some more brutes, who had been drinking and gambling all night in the bar, and overpowered him, and threw him out, and the girl, too, and said he might take her to h.e.l.l with him, they would shelter her no more. And one of the brutes said he would fight him for her, and they made a ring and the brute tried to get his pistol off first; but it hit another man, and before he could shoot again, the Senator fired and wounded him in the side; and as he fell, and the others, angry at his. .h.i.tting one of them, all began to quarrel together, the Senator and the girl slipped away, and ran and hid in the scrub. If you could have heard him telling all this, Mamma, in the dying light, his strong face and quiet voice so impressive! I shall never forget it. Well, the girl had brought some bread in a handkerchief, which he had not eaten, and they shared that together, and when it was dark they slept under the stars; and "by then I'd just grown to love her," he said, and "we were quite content to die together if we couldn't push on to the big camp; but we meant to make an almighty try."

They did get there, finally, and the sheriff married them, and here his voice broke a little and was so low I could hardly hear him. There were no two people ever so happy, he said. He built a little shack of boards not twelve feet long, "way up on the mountain," and she kept it like a new pin, and was dainty and sweet and loving, and when he came in from the mines she would run to meet him "as gentle as a fawn," and he never wanted to go to the saloons or drink like the other men, "though I was always pretty handy with my gun," he said, "and had been through the whole ugly show."

And presently he began to make a little money and would contrive to give her small things for the house; it gave her more pleasure than anything in the world to make it pretty, so that the little shed was the admiration of all the other miners' wives. And once he was able to buy some flower seeds, and she grew a pansy in a pot because there is no green thing in that barren land, and she tended it and watched it as it came through the earth, and no one was so joyous as she. "It hurts me to look at pansies even now," he said; and I was glad, Mamma, it was getting dark, because I felt the tears coming in my eyes. They were perfectly happy like this for about three years, and then Lola was born and they were happier still; but before that she used to take him up on the mountains, above their shack, to look down at the camps, and watch the stars, and she always used to see things in the future--how they would be very rich, and he would be a great man. "And this is where blood tells," he said. "She was nothing but the love-child of some young English lord, drifted out to our land with her servant-girl mother. And she'd spent all her life in gambling h.e.l.ls among rogues, but her soul was the daintiest lady angel that ever walked this earth, though she could hardly read or write, and all the stars were her friends, and even a rattlesnake wouldn't have wounded her." Mustn't she have been a darling, Mamma? She had hair like gold, and little ears, pink as sea sh.e.l.ls, and big blue eyes and a flower for a mouth. No wonder he loved her so. He said her baby was even more pleasure to her than the pansy had been, and they both were "just kind of foolish over it." Well, when Lola was about three months old a gang of desperadoes came to the camp, and among them the man the Senator had wounded for his wife. Before the Senator came in from the mine Hearts-ease heard the other miners' wives talking of this, and how this man had boasted he would kill him. She knew her husband was unarmed, having left his gun behind him that day because his second one was broken, and he would not leave her with none in the shack; quite unsuspiciously he returned with his comrades, and went into a bar to have a drink on his way back, as he often did to hear the news of the day. And when Hearts-ease could not find him on the road, she ran down there, carrying the gun and the baby, to warn him and give him his weapon, and got into the saloon just as the desperado and his following entered by another door.

The enemy called out to the Senator that he meant to "do for him this time," and as Hearts-ease rushed up to her husband with no fear for herself, holding out the gun, the brute fired and shot her through the heart, and she fell forward with Lola, dead in the Senator's arms. "And then the heavens turned to blood," he said, "and I took the gun out of her dead clasp and killed him like a dog." But by this time, Mamma, I really was crying so I could hardly hear what he said. No wonder his eyes have a sad look sometimes, or his hair is gray.

We neither of us spoke for a while. I could only press his strong kind hand. Then he recovered his voice, and went on as if dreaming: "It all came true what she prophesied. I am rich beyond her uttermost fancyings, and I've sampled pretty well most all the world, but I've always tried to do the things she would have liked me to do. I guess you've wondered at my dandy clothes, and shiny finger nails. Well, it's just to please her--if she's looking on." Wasn't he a man worth loving, Mamma! And of course she did not mind dying for him, and how happy and glad she must be now, if she is "looking on." Somehow the whole story has made me so long for Harry, that I have been perfectly miserable all the evening, and if you think you could cable to him and tell him to come back I think perhaps you might, and I will say I am sorry.

Your affectionate daughter,

ELIZABETH.

SAN FRANCISCO.