The Spread Eagle and Other Stories Part 1

The Spread Eagle and Other Stories.

by Gouverneur Morris.

_TO ELSIE, PATSIE, AND KATE_

_I had thought to sit in the ruler's chair, But three pretty girls are sitting there-- Elsie, Patsie, and Kate.

I had thought to lord it with eyes of gray, I had thought to be master, and have_ my _way; But six blue eyes vote_: nay, nay, nay!

_Elsie, Patsie, and Kate.

Of Petticoats three I am sore afraid, (Though Kate's is more like a candle-shade), Elsie, Patsie, and Kate.

And I must confess (with shame) to you That time there was when Petticoats two Were enough to govern me through and through, Elsie, Patsie, and Kate.

Oh Patsie, third of a bullying crew, And Elsie, and Kate, be it known to you-- To Elsie, Patsie, and Kate, That Elsie_ alone _was strong enough To smother a motion, or call a bluff, Or any small pitiful atom thereof-- Elsie, Patsie, and Kate.

So, though I've renounced that ruler's part To which I was born (as is writ in my heart), Elsie, Patsie, and Kate, Though I do what I'm told (yes, you_ know _I do) And am made to write stories (and sell them, too).

Still--I wish to G.o.d I had more like you, Elsie, Patsie, and Kate_.

BAR HARBOR, _August_, 1910.

THE SPREAD EAGLE

In his extreme youth the adulation of all with whom he came in contact was not a cross to Fitzhugh Williams. It was the fear of expatriation that darkened his soul. From the age of five to the age of fourteen he was dragged about Europe by the hair of his head. I use his own subsequent expression. His father wanted him to be a good American; his mother wanted him to be a polite American, And to be polite, in her mind, was to be at home in French and German, to speak English (or American) with the accent of no particular locality, to know famous pictures when you saw them, and, if little, to be bosom friends with little dukes and d.u.c.h.esses and counts of the Empire, to play in the gravel gardens of St. Germain, to know French history, and to have for exercise the mild English variations of American games--cricket instead of base-ball; instead of football, Rugby, or, in winter, lugeing above Montreux. To luge upon a sled you sit like a timid, sheltered girl, and hold the ropes in your hand as if you were playing horse, and descend inclines; whereas, as Fitzhugh Williams well knew, in America rich boys and poor take their hills head first, lying upon the democratic turn.

It wasn't always Switzerland in winter. Now and again it was Nice or Cannes. And there you were taught by a canny Scot to hit a golf ball cunningly from a pinch of sand. But you blushed with shame the while, for in America at that time golf had not yet become a manly game, the maker young of men as good as dead, the talk of cabinets But there was lawn tennis also, which you might play without losing caste "at home,"

Fitzhugh Williams never used that term but with the one meaning. He would say, for instance, to the little d.u.c.h.ess of Popinjay--or one just as good--having kissed her to make up for having pushed her into her ancestral pond, "Now I am going to the house," meaning Perth House, that Mrs. Williams had taken for the season. But if he had said, "Now I am going home," the little d.u.c.h.ess would have known that he was going to sail away in a great ship to a strange, topsy-turvy land known in her set as "the States," a kind of deep well from which people hoist gold in buckets, surrounded by Indians. Home did not mean even his father's house. Let Fitzhugh Williams but catch sight of the long, white sh.o.r.e of Long Island, or the Brooklyn Bridge, or the amazing Liberty, and the word fluttered up from his heart even if he spoke it not. Ay, let him but see the Fire Island light-ship alone upon the deep, and up leaped the word, or the sensation, which was the same thing.

One Fourth of July they were in Paris (you go to Paris for tea-gowns to wear grouse-shooting in Scotland), and when his valet, sc.r.a.ping and bowing, informed Fitzhugh Williams, aged nine, that it was time to get up, and tub, and go forth in a white sailor suit, and be of the world worldly, Fitzhugh declined. A greater personage was summoned--Aloys, "the maid of madame," a ravishing creature--to whom you and I, good Americans though we are, could have refused nothing. But Fitzhugh would not come out of his feather-bed. And when madame herself came, looking like a princess even at that early hour, he only pulled the bedclothes a little higher with an air of finality.

"Are you sick, Fitzhugh?"

"No, mamma."

"Why won't you get up?"

His mother at least was ent.i.tled to an explanation.

"I won't get up," said he, "because I'm an American."

"But, my dear, it's the glorious Fourth. All good Americans are up."

"All good Americans," said Fitzhugh, "are at home letting off fire-crackers."

"Still," said his mother, "I think I'd get up if I were you. It's lovely out. Not hot."

"I won't get up," said Fitzhugh, "because it's the Fourth, because I'm an American, and because I have nothing but English clothes to put on."

His mother, who was the best sort in the world, though obstinate about bringing-up, and much the prettiest woman, sat down on the bed and laughed till the tears came to her eyes. Fitzhugh laughed, too. His mind being made up, it was pleasanter to laugh than to sulk.

"But," said his mother, "what's the difference? Your pajamas are English, too."

Fitzhugh's beautiful brown eyes sparkled with mischief.

"What!" exclaimed his mother. "You wretched boy, do you mean to tell me that you haven't your pajamas on?"

Fitzhugh giggled, having worsted his mother in argument, and pushed down the bedclothes a few inches, disclosing the neck and shoulders of that satiny American suit in which he had been born.

Mrs. Williams surrendered at once.

"My dear," she exclaimed, "if you feel so strongly about it I will send your man out at once to buy you some French things. They were our allies, you know."

"Thank you, mamma," said Fitz, "and if you'll give me the pad and pencil on the table I'll write to granny."

Thus compromise was met with compromise, as is right. Fitz wrote a very short letter to granny, and drew a very long picture of crossing the Delaware, with Nathan Hale being hanged from a gallows on the bank; and Mrs. Williams sent Benton for clothes, and wrote out a cable to her husband, a daily cable being the one thing that he who loved others to have a good time was wont to exact "Dear Jim," ran the cable, at I forget what the rates were then per word, "I wish you were here. It's bright and beautiful; not too hot. Fitz would not get up and put on English clothes, being too patriotic. You will run over soon if you can, won't you, if only for a minute," etc., etc.

I know one thing of which the reader has not as yet got an inkling, The Williamses were rich. They were rich, pa.s.sing knowledge, pa.s.sing belief.

Sums of which you and I dream in moments of supreme excitement would not have paid one of Mrs. Williams's cable bills; would not have supported Granny Williams's hot-houses and Angora cat farm through a late spring frost. James Williams and his father before him were as magnets where money was concerned. And it is a fact of family history that once James, returning from a walk in the mud, found a dime sticking to the heel of his right boot.

Fitzhugh was the heir of all this, and that was why it was necessary for him to be superior in other ways as well. But Europeanize him as she would, he remained the son of his fathers. French history was drummed in through his ears by learned tutors, and could be made for the next few days to come out of his mouth. But he absorbed American history through the back of his head, even when there was none about to be absorbed, and that came out often, I am afraid, when people didn't especially want it to. Neither could any amount of aristocratic training and a.s.sociation turn the blood in his veins blue. If one had taken the trouble to look at a specimen of it under a microscope I believe one would have discovered a resemblance between the corpuscles thereof and the eagles that are the tails of coins; and the color of it was red--bright red. And this was proven, that time when little Lord Percy Pumps ran at Fitz, head down like a Barbadoes n.i.g.g.e.r, and b.u.t.ted him in the nose. The Honorable Fifi Grey, about whom the quarrel arose, was witness to the color of that which flowed from the aforementioned nose; and witness also to the fact that during the ensuing cataclysm no blood whatever, neither blue nor red, came from Lord Percy Pumps--nothing but howls. But, alas! we may not now call upon the Honorable Fifi Grey for testimony. She is no longer the Honorable Fifi. Quite the reverse. I had her pointed out to me last summer (she is Lady Khorset now), and my informant wriggled with pleasure and said, "Now, there _is_ somebody."

"You mean that slim hedge-fence in lavender?" I asked.

"By jove, yes!" said he. "That's Lady Khorset, the wickedest woman in London, with the possible exception of Lady Virginia Pure--the Bicyclyste, you know."

I did know. Had I not that very morning seen in a Piccadilly window a photograph of almost all of her?

Fortunately for Fitzhugh Williams's health and sanity, little children are pretty much the same all the world over, dwelling in the n.o.ble democracy of mumps, measles, and whooping-cough. Little newsboys, tiny grandees, infinitesimal sons of coachmen, picayune archdukes, honorableines, marquisettes, they are all pretty much alike under their skins. And so are their sisters. Naturally your free-born American child despises a nation that does not fight with its fists. But he changes his mind when some l.u.s.ty French child of his own size has given him a good beating in fair fight. And the English games have their beauties (I dare say), and we do know that they can fight--or can make the Irish and the Scots fight for them, which is just as good. And it isn't race and blue blood that keeps little Lady Clara Vere de Vere's stockings from coming down. It's garters. And _they_ don't always do it. Point the finger of scorn at little Archibald Jamison Purdue Fitzwilliams Upd.y.k.e Wrennfeather, who will be Duke of Chepstow one day; for only last night his lordship's n.o.ble mother rubbed his hollow chest with goose grease and tied a red flannel round his neck, and this morning his gerfalcon nose is running, as the British would have run at Waterloo had not "would-to-G.o.d-Blucher-would-come" come up.

Peace, little bootblack; others bite their nails. See yonder night garment laid out for the heir of a kingdom. It is of Canton flannel, a plain, homely thing, in one piece, b.u.t.toning ignominiously down the back, and having no apertures for the august hands and feet to come through. In vain the little king-to-be may mumble the Canton flannel with his mouth. He cannot bite his royal nails; and, hush! in the next crib a princess asleep. Why that cruel, tight cap down over her ears?

It's because she _will_ double them forward and lie on them, so that if something isn't done about it they will stick straight out.

So Fitzhugh Williams was brought up among and by children, fashionable children, if you like. Sn.o.bs, many of them, but children all the same.

Some good, some bad, some rough, some gentle, some loving and faithful with whom he is friends to this day, some loving and not faithful.

The dangers that he ran were not from the foreign children with whom he played, fought, loved, and dreamed dreams; but from foreign customs, foreign ways of doing things, foreign comfort, foreign take-the-world-easiness, and all. For they _do_ live well abroad; they do have amusing things to do. They eat well, drink well, smoke well, are better waited on than we are and have more time. So Fitzhugh was in danger of these things which have hurt the Americanism of more than one American to the death, but he ran the dangerous gauntlet and came out at the other end unscathed--into the open.

He could rattle off French and German like a native; he could imitate an Englishman's intonation to perfection; and yet he came to manhood with his own honest Ohio accent untouched. And where had he learned it? Not in Ohio, surely. He had been about as much in Ohio as I have in the moon. It was in his red blood, I suppose, to speak as the men of his family spoke--less so, for his vocabulary was bigger, but plainly, straightly, honestly, and with some regard for the way in which words are spelled. So speak the men who are the backbone of liberty, each with the honest accent that he is born to. Don't you suppose that Washington himself held forth in the molten, golden tones of Virginia? Do you think Adams said _bought_ and _caught_? He said _bot_ and _cot_. Did Lincoln use the broad A at Gettysburg? I think that in the words he there spoke the A's were narrow as heaven's gate. I think some of them struck against the base of his nose before they came out to strengthen the hearts of men, to rejoice G.o.d, and to thunder forever down the ages.

It is, of course, more elegant to speak as we New Yorkers do. Everybody knows that. And I should advise all men to cultivate the accent and intonation--all men who are at leisure to perfect themselves. But honesty compels me to state that there has never been a truly great American who spoke any speech but his own--except that superlatively great Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin--of Boston. He didn't talk Philadelphianese. And you may cotton to that!

II

We must go back to the Fourth of July. When Benton returned with the French clothes Fitzhugh Williams rose from his downy couch and bathed in cold water. He was even an eager bather in France, rejoicing in the feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain of it. But in England, where everybody bathed--or at any rate had water in their rooms and splashed and said ah! ah! and oh! oh!--he regarded the morning bath as commonplace, and had often to be bribed into it.