The Making of Mary Part 10

Will Axworthy left town in the spring. Lumber was done in our part of Michigan and he had to follow it further south. He and Mary corresponded, for I caught Belle in the act of correcting one of her letters.

"Do you think that's quite fair to Axworthy? If they become engaged, the first unedited letter he gets from Mary will be considerable of a surprise to him."

"Don't you bother your old head, Dave! I'm running this thing! He's arranging to meet us in Chicago, and hopes to have the pleasure of showing Mary the Columbian Exhibition. Something is sure to happen while we're there!"

CHAPTER VI.

ALL winter we had been talking about the Fair, reading up about the Fair, making plans for the Fair; and Belle declared that even if she never saw the Fair she would be glad it had been, on account of the amount of preparatory information she had laid up.

We did get off at last in the end of June, the whole of us, including Mary, of course--my first experience of traveling in her company. We went to Chicago by boat,--a night's crossing,--and a rare time I had securing berths for the family in the overcrowded propeller. I was thankful for an "extension," a sort of sh.e.l.l run out between two staterooms and part.i.tioned off by curtains and poles. The boys had to sleep on sofas, floor, anywhere, which to them was but the beginning of the fun.

The first of my Herculean labors at an end, I was enjoying my smoke aft in the cool of the evening, when Belle came back to me, her brow drawn up into what I had begun to call the "Mary wrinkle."

"David, I'm afraid you'll have to talk to that girl. She's sitting up in the bow there flirting with one of the waiters, and though I've sent Watty twice after her, she won't stir."

As majestically as my five feet four would permit, I moved to the front of the boat.

"Mary, Mrs. Gemmell wants you right away."

She took time to exchange a laughing farewell with the good-looking waiter, and explained to me _en route_:

"That's Bill Moreland. I knew him quite well in Lake City. I've met him at b.a.l.l.s."

In the morning before we reached Chicago, she managed to get in a long confabulation with another waiter, whom I am sure she had never met in Lake City, nor anywhere else.

"See here, Mary! If this is the way you're going to behave, you go straight back to Lake City on that boat, and don't see one bit of the Fair."

Her manners were mended till we were actually in Jackson Park, but then:

"She's a philanthropist, Belle, a lover of _man_kind--Columbian Guard, Gospel Charioteer, Turk in the bazaar. The creed or the color doesn't matter so long as he calls himself a man."

I am afraid I was cross, for it did not take one day to realize what an undertaking it was going to be to keep track of my family, who had never before seemed too numerous. Daily at 10 A. M., in the Michigan Building, did I hand over to Will Axworthy the most troublesome of the lot, and daily did I wish he would keep her for better or worse.

On the Fourth of July cannonading began at daybreak, and for once I sympathized in my mother's objection to the license accorded to young Americans. They set off firecrackers, not by the bunch but by the bushel; kerosene and dynamite were their ambrosia and nectar. What with fighting for lunch in overcrowded restaurants, and then retaliating by stealing chairs out of the same, hunting through the various booths in the Midway to collect my three younger sons when it was time to send them home, and rescuing my two little girls from an over-supply of ice cream sodas and chocolate drops, I did not specially enjoy the glorious Fourth.

Toward evening there was not a foot of Fair ground undecorated by a banana skin, a crust of bread, or a flying paper. Belle considered the signs "Keep off the Gra.s.s" quite superfluous, and pulling one up by the roots she sat down on it, thereby keeping the letter, if not the spirit of the law.

"Now, Dave," said she, "the family are all safe off the grounds, and you can go and get a gondola to come and take us for a sail before dark.

Everybody is moving toward the lake front to wait for the fireworks, and the lagoons are not so crowded as they were. Let's pretend we're on our honeymoon."

So seldom does Belle wax sentimental over me, I hailed her proposition with outward indifference but inward joy. Securing a gondola to ourselves, in it we were gently swayed through ca.n.a.l and under bridge in the mystical evening light.

The distant rumble of a train on the Intramural, or a quack from a sleepy duck among the rushes, alone broke the stillness.

"This is where I belong!" exclaimed Belle. "I've seen before those Eastern-looking towers and minarets, with the sunset glow on the cloud ma.s.ses behind them. Look! there's a Turk and a Hindoo crossing the bridge. This is the region, this the soil, the clime. I always knew I wasn't meant for Western America."

"You must have been very naughty _last time_ to have been raised in Michigan this trip. Still this is only Chicago!"

"It's not Chicago! It's the world! Listen to that now--the music of the spheres!"

We approached another gondola that had withdrawn itself from the center of the channel close in to a small island. The man at the stern was doing nothing very picturesquely, but the man at the bow, a swarthy Venetian, was pouring out his soul in an aria from "Cavalleria Rusticana." His voice might not have pa.s.sed muster at Covent Garden, but in the unique stage setting, which included a group of eager listeners on abridge behind him, one could forgive a break on a high note or two.

The singer threw himself into the spirit of the composition, cast his eyes upward with hand on his heart, and bent them to earth again for the approval of his pa.s.sengers. There were but two, a young man and a young lady, and to the latter was the hero in costume directing his amorous glances.

"There's romance for you!" said I to Belle, who is notoriously on the lookout for it. I directed our gondolier to draw nearer to his enamoured compatriot. My wife replied uneasily:

"I don't know the man, or boy, for that's all he is, but if that isn't Mary's hat----"

"Mary! Phew! What's become of Axworthy?"

As we approached the comfortable-looking pair, Mary bowed to us smilingly, and called the attention of her companion to her "father and mother"--darn her impudence!

The boat ride was spoiled for Belle and me, our white elephant having arisen to haunt us once more. We landed and walked over to the lake front, where the whole slope was packed with people waiting for the fireworks to begin.

Someone started to sing "Way Down upon the Swanee Ribber," and everybody joined in. "Nearer, my G.o.d, to Thee" was also most impressive from the vast impromptu chorus. In the foreground Lake Michigan lay darkly expectant, with a large black cloud upon its horizon, though the stars shone overhead. A half-circle of boats extended from the long Exhibition Wharf on the right, round to the warship _Illinois_ on the left, and from the latter a search light, an omnipresent eye, swept the crowd with rapidly veering glance, till it concentrated its gaze on the dark balloon which rose so mysteriously from the water. Suddenly from this balloon was suspended the Stars and Stripes in colored lights. The crowd cheered like mad, the boats whistled, and sent up rockets galore.

On went the programme. Bombs tested the strength of our wearied ear-drums, fiery snakes sizzled through the air, big wheels spurted brilliant marvels, and along the very edge of the lake, to the great discomfort of the front rows of the stalls, a line of combustibles behaved like gigantic footlights on a spree.

"David, who do you suppose that was with Mary?"

I had been up in the air with George Washington, surrounded by "First in War, First in Peace, etc.," in letters of fire, and I was unwillingly recalled to earth.

"Haven't the remotest idea. Hope she hasn't given Axworthy the slip."

"I'm only hoping that he has not given her the slip. I'd never have brought her to the Fair if he hadn't agreed to look after her."

At that moment there was a surging of the mighty crowd, caused by a band of college students pushing their way through, shoulder to shoulder, singing one of their rousing ditties. Some people who had been standing on their hired rolling chairs had narrow escapes from being flung upon the shoulders of those in front. Some did not escape--Mary for instance, who landed between us as if shot from a catapult.

"I knew I was going to fall, so I just jumped to where I seen you two,"

said she, with her customary calmness, and then she turned to a.s.sure her escort of the gondola, who was anxiously elbowing his way to her, that she was entirely unhurt.

Blushing prettily, she introduced the lad as "Mr. Tom Axworthy--cousin of the Mr. Axworthy you know."

Mr. Tom talked to Mrs. Gemmell with the ease and a.s.surance of ninety rather than nineteen, while I exchanged a few words aside with the maiden:

"Where is the Mr. Axworthy that we know?"

"He had some business to do in town to-night, so he left me in charge of this cousin of his--just a lovely fellow!"

"Humph! Introduced you to any more of his relations?"

"Oh, yes--an uncle; quite an old bachelor, but lovely too!"

"And I suppose you've been round with the uncle as well."