Phemie Frost's Experiences Part 19

"There," says I, flinging the pink silk down on the bed, "will that suit?"

"Beautifully," says she. "Now get your shawl and bonnet."

Which I did.

The carriage held four of us this time, for Cousin E. E. had brought that little girl of hers, who sat huddled up in the back seat. When her mother told her to change places, "The idea," says she, giving her head a fling, and eying me like an angry poodle-dog; then she flounced down in the front seat, so huffish and sulky, that her father said, in a milk-and-waterish way:

"My darling, don't be naughty."

And his wife told him not to interfere between her and her child. She knew how to bring up a young lady, and he mustn't attempt to break her spirit; at which the heap of sulks in the corner muttered that it wasn't in him to do it.

There isn't so very much difference between the Opera House and Mr.

Niblo's theatre; only, one is piled up sky-high with cushioned galleries; and the theatre is considerably out-of-doors, especially in the lower story. We sat right in front, for Cousin E. E. said that the "Crook" could be seen best from there. I said nothing, but waited. Some people love to ask questions, but I would rather find out things for myself--it's a saving to one's feelings in the long run.

Well, the theatre was jammed full of people, mostly with shawls, and cloaks, and bonnets on. Cousin E. E. was right. What is genteel in one place is vulgar in another--that is fashion.

That child insisted on trying all the seats, to see which she liked best; but we got settled at last, and just then up went the picture-curtain with a rush. I screamed right out, for the very first sight took away my breath. Oh! sisters, I wish you could have seen it.

Such trees, such loads of flowers, such cl.u.s.ters and streams of light!

Oh my! if Eve ever had a paradise like that, she was just the greatest goose that ever lived to be turned out of it for the sake of one little knotty apple. I've no patience with her!

While I was looking at this beautiful world, another scream burst from my lips, for, all in a moment, it was alive with women, so lovely, so graceful, so full of life, that they almost took away one's breath. At first, they all came whirling in, as figures do in a dream; but, after a minute, I just felt like sinking through the floor. Why, sisters, they might just as well have been dressed in flowers! In short, dress a full-grown girl in a double poppy, with fringed edges, and you have an idea of what I couldn't look at. I felt my cheeks glow with fire; my fingers tingled with shame. It seemed to me that every man in the house was looking straight into my eyes, to see how I bore it. I lifted my eyes, and cast one frightened look around me, ready to jump up and run from the first face turned to mine. Then I just covered my face with my open fan.

There wasn't a face turned my way. Every soul--men, women, and children--were looking at those girls, who whirled, and moved, and tangled themselves up in some sort of a wild, wicked dance, that must have been the work of Old Nick himself, for nothing less could have made me look on. My whole heart rose right up against those beautiful creatures, but somehow they seemed to hold me to my seat. Really, sisters, you have no idea how very enticing a woman can be who puffs a lot of gauze around her waist, throws a wreath of flowers over her shoulders, and dances like a whirlwind.

At first, I just covered my face with my fan, for I could not bring myself up to a straightforward look. Then, somehow, my fingers would get apart, and I found myself peeping through the slats just as shamed as could be, but yet I could not help peeping.

Mercy on me, what a whirl and rush of light! What a flashing of gold; what a crowd of women dressed in nothing, and a little gauze thrown in--it made my head whirl like a top.

I can't tell you just when my hand dropped into my lap, but before I knew it my eyes were fixed on that great whirling picture, and my sense of shame was lost in a storm of music. All these glittering women were standing in rows, regular as the pickets on a door-yard fence, while one girl, with a wreath of green leaves and red berries on her head, was whirling on one toe round and round, till she seemed to be a dozen girls whizzing round in a cloud of white muslin.

By and by all the crowd of girls joined in and began dodging about among the trees and flowers, like--well I must say it,--like runaway angels determined to have a good time of it. Then a man, covered to his knees with silver scales like a fish, came in, and he had a dance with the girl in leaves and red berries. Such a dance--they backed, they advanced, they snapped their fingers at each other, they flung up their heels, they locked arms backwards, then broke apart, and began the most lively double-shuffle at each other that ever I dreamed of. It fairly took away my breath to see them.

"That is a splendid can-can," says that child, taking the little spy-gla.s.s from her mother's lap, and levelling it at the dancers. "Don't you think so, Miss Phmie?"

I gave her a look; it was all I could spare just then, for some new people had come into the picture. A great tall fellow, with body supporters like bean poles, had come in with a lovely creature, who was considered a queen among the girls. Just as I was looking, he seemed to stretch himself out like a piece of india-rubber, and lifting one foot, swung it over her head without touching a curl.

So this was the "Black Crook," not that I saw anything like a crook, but the burning pictures more than made up for that, and the dancing was, well--stupendous.

Every once in a while a curtain would fall and shut out the pictures.

Every time it was drawn up something more splendid than anything that had gone before came out. One picture was all in a veil of fog, through which the men and women roved like beautiful ghosts. In another, some of the cunningest little dogs you ever saw danced, and begged, and acted a play for themselves, just like human creatures. At last came a great fiery picture, all gold and glare, and flowers planted in fire, with trees that seemed to be dropping golden fruit, in which all the crowd of beautiful girls were lying on banks and under trees, and perched like splendid birds up in the air. Then the curtain came down with a thud, smothering up the fire, and hiding everything. The storm of music broke off with a crash, and the crowd began to shout and yell, and stamp their feet till the whole building shook.

Sisters, this is all I can tell you about the "Black Crook." It is splendid, and wonderfully enticing; but you might as well expect me to give you a clear idea of a burning city. It is just one picture of gorgeous confusion and confused gorgeousness.

XXVI.

LIVING APART.

Dear sisters:--There has been great tumult and trouble in New York since I wrote my last report. Something that relates to the honor of Vermont has thrilled the public mind to a fearful extent. A smart, genial, warm-hearted, dashing person, by the name of Fisk--Mr. James Fisk--born and brought up in our State, has been shot in the largest tavern in the city, where he died, I greatly fear, without a realizing sense that he was so soon to be called before his Maker.

Many of you, my sisters, can remember this man--a great, handsome, good-natured-looking fellow, with sunshiny eyes, and a mustache that curled up like a pair of horns on each side of a mouth that always seemed ready to laugh at something. There wasn't a man that ever came to Sprucehill that everybody was so sure to remember. His great wagon, painted off like a circus, with four horses a-drawing it through the village, with a splash-dash noise of whips and wheels and hoofs, was enough to make the money spring right out of one's pocket. Mercy on me!

Didn't he make the dry-goods fly! Everybody bought something of him, and I must say that everybody liked him. In the peddling line he was a sort of P. T. Barnum, only he didn't know how to stick to his trade as Barnum has. He drove his four horses; he made money like everything; he outgrew Brattleborough, which was his native place, and soon got above peddling, his native business.

The next step towards his exaltation and ruin was that he left Vermont, a man who will do that of his own accord is sure to run wild. Well, he left his native State, and set up at the Hub of the Universe, which every one knows is Boston, where he began his education as a financier and a millionaire.

Boston is a great city. I should like to hear any one dare to deny that; but, then, people here say that, in the way of financing, the Hub knows how to save, and skimp, and deposit, and get twice her share of offices out of the President of the United States; but, outside of that, she is nowhere, compared to New York. She has no idea of turning a sharp stock corner, couldn't get up a Black Friday to save her life; in fact, is only good at an old-fashioned tea-party. This is what Cousin Dempster says about Boston, and he ought to know, being a first-cla.s.s broker in Wall Street, and New England born.

Well, of course, it wasn't long before Mr. Fisk outgrew the Hub, which hadn't room for all the spokes which he wanted to carry to his wheel, and off he comes to New York, gets into the Erie Railroad, and, goodness knows how he did it! but before people knew who he was, he went smashing and crashing up that road, prowled through Wall Street like a roaring lion, or bear, or some other such animals as gore and claw each other in that neighborhood.

Well, after he had sent a good many brokers sky-high with his horns, and knocked others down with his paws, for he tackled in with both, he goes kiting off to sea by way of the Sound.

While people were wondering what he would do next, he had gone to work and fitted up great palatial steamboats, and invited the President to travel in them, which the President did, not dreaming that he was expected to build up a cattle-pen or a bear-garden in exchange for a little hospitality.

Well, it's hard satisfying a Vermonter when he once breaks loose from his native mountains. After gobbling up railroads and putting steamboats afloat, Mr. Fisk just swung back into Wall Street one day, and upset things generally in less time than any man ever did before. No shootist ever brought down more birds at a shot, than he left men in that street rich in the morning, and ruined at night. Cousin Dempster says it was awful.

Mr. Fisk didn't care, but wheeled out of the street just as he used to drive his pedler's wagon, with hoofs a-rattling and whips a-cracking, riding over ruined men everywhere in his track.

Besides all this, Mr. Fisk had a great, grand, overpowering Opera House, and carried on a theatre, in which women danced, like Black-crookers, and sang like--well, I can't tell what they did sing like, not having a comparison handy--but it was awfully interesting, Cousin Dempster said; and I believe him, for E. E. says he used to go to that Opera House alone so often, that she began to be afraid that he was getting into some business with Mr. Fisk that must be transacted in the evening--a thing she didn't like, the man being considered so overpoweringly fascinating.

I don't know whether Mr. Fisk belonged to the Woman's Righters or not, but there was a good deal of talk about him, such as would have compelled any religious society in Vermont to get up an investigation and some extra prayer-meetings, which he wouldn't have liked, being mostly given contrary-wise. But the one thing he hadn't done was to join a church, and, you see, n.o.body in particular had a right to call him to account but his wife, and she didn't.

Some people were mean enough to hint that his system of married life wasn't just the thing for a couple brought up in the purifying atmosphere of a Vermont village, and went so far as to turn up their noses because he lived about the Opera House and she in Boston, close to the very heart of the Hub, as if any woman could get further away from original sin than that.

But these slanderers knew as well as could be, that Mr. Fisk had a free pa.s.s on the telegraph and steam communication with his wife every day.

Besides, didn't the newspapers give his most private actions to an admiring public, every few hours, and couldn't she read how blameless and self-sacrificing his life was.

Besides being a great financier and seafaring man, our Vermont pedler took up social life as a specialty, and distinguished himself among the high fashionables. The moral ideas that he had brought from Down East, were just as dashing as his Wall-street corners. He still kept the telegraph wires quivering with conjugal messages, and when he took domestic ease and the fresh salt air on the Jersey sea-coast, at Long Branch, in a high-swung carriage, with four seats, and stable help in trainer's clothes, wasn't his wife at another watering-place, called Newport, with a high-swinging carriage of her own, all cushioned off with silk, and with her gold-mounted harness rattling over six horses, just as black and shiny as his?

If that isn't conjugal sympathy, such as goes down among the upper crust of New York, I don't know what is.

Just the same number of horses, just the same swing in her carriage, just the same people--no, I am a little out there. She had relations in the seats, and he hadn't always.

But then, what is all that compared to a great many fashionable, married folks in New York--so extravagantly fond of each other, that they make the Atlantic Ocean for a connecting link, year after year, and correspond tenderly in bills of exchange.

Our poor, dead pedler from Vermont wasn't the only man in New York who lived and loved by steam and telegraph.

XXVII.

MORE ABOUT FISK.

When the New England mind, which is a little apt to be troubled about the marriage relations of its emigrants, asks you about my report, you can say that this New England couple were only following the upper-crust fashion with married people in our great cities, where men and their wives find the Atlantic Ocean more convenient than a divorce court.