ready and looking as attractive as possible all the time. It would be so wearing.
I think English people are stodgy and behind-hand about things. Why don’t they come here and take a few hints before they build any more theatres? You can’t think how infinitely better these are to see in.
The difference in the comic operas to ours is, they have no refinement or colours or subtleties to please the eye–all is gaudy and blatant. The “Merry Widow,” for instance, could make one weep, it is so vulgar and changed, especially the end. But if the people prefer it like that the managers are quite right to let them have what they want.
After the theatre we went, a huge party, to sup at such a funny place which was all mirrors; and a man at the next table, who was perhaps a little beyond “fresh,” got perfectly furious thinking another man was staring at him, and wanted to get up and fight him. The lady next him pulled his sleeve, and had to keep telling him, “Hush, Bob, hush! Can’t you see it’s yourself?” “Certainly not!” shouted the man, so loud we could not help hearing. “I’ll fight anyone who says I am that ugly mug!” and he gesticulated at the reflection and it gesticulated back at him. It was the funniest sight you can imagine, Mamma, and it was not until the lady meekly demanded if the person he saw sitting by the “ugly mug” resembled her that he could be convinced, and be got to go on quietly with his supper. And all the rest of the time he kept glancing at the glass and muttering to himself like distant thunder, just as Agnes does when things displease her.
In Paris, at the restaurants one goes to, there is only the one class–unless, of course, one is doing Montmartre, but I mean the best ones bourgeoises would not think of thrusting themselves in; and in London there is only the Ritz and Carlton where one goes, and it is the rarest thing certainly at the Ritz to see any awful people there. But here, heaps of the most ordinary are very rich and think they have the best right, which of course they have if they pay, to enter the most select places; so the conglomeration even at Sherry’s sometimes is too amusing, and at the mirror place, which society would only go to as a freak, the company is beyond description. But they all seem such kindly, jolly people, all amusing themselves, and gay and happy. I like it, and the courtesy and fatherly kindness of the men to the women is beautiful, and a lesson to the male creatures of other nations. I have not yet seen an American man who is not the cavalier servante of his wife and sisters and daughters. And what flowers they send one! Everything is generous and opulent.
The dance was such fun, a bal blanc, as only young people were asked, and they all come without chaperones, so sensible, and all seemed to have a lovely romp, and enjoy themselves in a far, far greater degree than we do. It was more like a tenants’ ball or a children’s party, they seemed so happy; and towards the end lots of the girls’ hair became untidy and their dresses torn, and the young men’s faces damp and their collars limp.
The house was a perfectly magnificent palace, far up on Fifth Avenue, which has been built so lately that the taste is faultless; but it was a rather new family gave the dance, whom Valerie has not yet received. She thinks she will next year, because the daughter is so lovely and admired, and everyone else knows them.
At the beginning of the evening some of the girls looked beautiful, but as a rule much too richly dressed, like married women; only when even the most exquisite creatures get hot and dishevelled the charm goes off–don’t you think so, Mamma? It is more like France than England, as there is very little sitting out; one just goes to the buffet. And there is always the cotillon; but the favours and flowers are much better than anyone would have in Paris. The girls must get quite rich in trinkets at the end of a season.
We are told a real ball, where the married women are, is much more range, and one does not see people get so untidy. But all the balls are over now, so we shall not be able to judge.
What struck us most was the young people seemed much more familiar with each other than we should ever allow them to be; just like playful brothers and sisters, not a bit loverish, but almost as if it could develop into what they call “rough-housing” in a minute, although it never did at the dance.
“Rough-housing” is throwing your neighbour’s bread across the table at someone else, and he throwing his table napkin back at you, and yelling and screaming with mirth; and it often ends with being mauled and pulled about, and water being poured down someone’s neck.
The Spleists had a young people’s tea last week, which I have not had time to tell you of, where they did all this. They flung themselves about, and were as natural and tiresome as baby puppies are, barking and bouncing and eating up people’s shoes.
Fancy, Mamma, when Ermyntrude grows up, my allowing her to pour water down a man’s neck, and to be mauled and fought with in consequence! But I am sure they are all as innocent and lighthearted as the young puppies whose behaviour theirs resembles; so it may be a natural outlet for high spirits, and have its good side, though we could not possibly stand it.
The whole tenue in moving, of the girls, is “fling about,” even in the street, but no other nation can compare to them in their exquisitely spruce, exquisitely soigne appearance, and their perfect feet and superlatively perfect boots, and short tailor dresses. To see Fifth Avenue on a bright day, morning or afternoon, is like a procession of glowing flowers passing. Minxes of fifteen with merry roving eyes, women of all ages, _all_ as beautifully dressed as it is possible to be, swinging along to the soda-water fountain shops where you can get candy and ice cream and lovely chocolates. No one has that draggled, too long in the back and too short in the front look, of lots of English women holding up their garments in a frightful fashion. Here they are too sensible; they have perfect short skirts for walking, and look too dainty and attractive for words. Also there are no old people much–a few old women but never any old men. I suppose they all die off with their hard life.
But isn’t human nature funny, Mamma, and how male creatures’ instincts will break out sometimes even in a country like this, where sex does not “amount to much.” We are told that now and then the most respectable father of a family will “side track,” and go off on a jaunt with a glaringly golden-haired chorus lady! But one thing is better than with us, the eldest sons don’t defy fate and marry them! When he gets to fifteen I shall begin to have nightmares in case Hurstbridge should bring me home a Gaiety daughter-in-law, though probably by then there will be such numbers of Birdie and Tottie and Rosie Peeresses, that I shall have got used to it, unless, of course, the fashion changes and goes back to the time Uncle Geoffrey talks of, when those ladies found their own world more amusing.
There is not much romance here. I don’t see how they ever get in love. How could one get in love with a young man whom one romped with and danced with, till his face became dripping, and his collar limp; whom one saw when one wanted to without any restrictions, and altogether treated like a big brother? I suppose getting “crazy” about a person is as near being in love as they know. Each country has its ways, but I like romance.
Their astounding adaptability is what strikes one–the women’s I mean. The ones who have been to Europe only on trips even, have all acquired a more reserved tone and gentler voices, while the girls who went to school in Paris or have lived in England are wonders of brilliant attraction. I do not know if any of those would make a noise and rough-house. They would be clever enough to choose their time and place if they did.
The children skate on roller skates along the streets, and on the asphalte paths of the parks. There is a delightful happy-go-lucky-way about everything. In the country trains cross the roads with no gates to keep people off the track, and in every branch of life you have to look out for yourself and learn self-reliance.
We are so amused because Octavia is considered to have “an English accent,” and mine not so strong, the papers say. What can an “English accent” be, Mamma? Since English came from England and is till spoken as we do, there would be some logic in saying “an American accent,” but what can an “English” one be! One might as sensibly remark upon a Frenchman from Paris having a French accent, or a German from Berlin.
I suppose it must be the climate which obliges people to make such disagreeable throat-clearing noises. In any public place it is absolutely distressing, and makes one creep with disgust.
At all the restaurants we have been to, the food is most excellent, and they have such delightfully original dishes and ways of serving things. There are not such quantities of “coloured gentlemen” as one supposed, about; and they don’t have them even for servants in the big hotels, but at a smaller one, where Southern people go, and we went to call on some-one, there were lots of them; and they have such gentle voices and good manners I like them.
Yesterday Octavia and I went to a “department store” to buy, among other things, some of their lovely ready-made costumes to take out West with us, and it was so amusing; the young ladies at the ribbon counter were chatting with the young ladies at the flowers, divided by a high set of drawers, so they had to climb up or speak through the passage opening. Presently after we had tried to attract their attention, one condescended to serve us, while she finished her conversation with her friend round the corner perfectly indifferent as to our wants, or if we bought or not! The friend surveyed us and chewed gum. But when we got to the costume salon, they were most polite. Two perfect dears attended to us, and were so sympathetic as to our requirements, and talked intelligently and well on outside subjects. Octavia and I felt we were leaving old friends when we went. Why should you be rude measuring off ribbons, and polite showing clothes?
To-morrow we go to Philadelphia to stay with Kitty Bond, who as you know isn’t so colossally rich as the rest, but just as nice as Valerie; and they have a house which has been there for a hundred years, so it will be interesting to see the difference.
The Vicomte has been good and docile. I have not had to keep him in order once, but he comes round all the time, and when he thinks people are looking he gazes devotedly at Octavia, and everyone thinks he is her affair. Isn’t it intelligent of him, Mamma?
I am glad you have not scolded me about Harry and our quarrel in your last letter; but there is no use your being angry with him and saying he behaved like a brute. He did not, a bit, because it really was my fault, principally; only it’s all just as well, as I should never have been allowed to come here if it had not happened, and I am enjoying myself and seeing the world.
Good-bye, dearest Mamma. Best love from,
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
RINGWOOD, PHILADELPHIA
RINGWOOD, PHILADELPHIA, _Wednesday._
DEAREST MAMMA,–I think you would like this place better than New York if you came to America. It is much quieter and less up-to-date, and there is the most beautiful park; only you have to get at it by going through the lowest slums of the town, which must rather put one off on a summer day, and it is dominated by a cemetery on a high cliff above it, so that as you drive you see the evidences of death always in front of you; and one of the reporters who came to interview us said it made “a cunning place to take your best girl on Sunday to do a bit of a spoon!!” Are they not an astonishing people, Mamma? So devoid of sentiment that they choose this, their best site, for a cemetery! and then spend their gayest recreation hours there!! I couldn’t have let even Harry make love to me in a cemetery. Of course it must be only the working class who go there, as a jaunt, not one’s friends; but it surprised me in any case.
Kitty’s house is the sweetest place, rather in the country, and just made of wood with a shingle roof; but so quaint, and people look at it with the same sort of reverence we look at Aikin’s Farm, which was built in fourteen hundred, you remember? This one was put up before the revolution, in Colonial days, and it has a veranda in front running up with Ionic pillars all in wood like a portico. Inside it is just an English home–do you hear, Mamma? I said _home!_ because it is the first we have seen. And it came as some new thing, and to be appreciated, to find the furniture a little shabby from having been in the same place so long; and the pictures most of them rather bad, but really ancestors; and the drawing-room and our bedrooms lovely and bright with flowery chintzes, fresh and shiny, no tapestry and wonderful brocade; and the table-cloths plain, and no lace on the sheets, nor embroideries to scratch the ear. It shows what foolish creatures of habit we are, because in the other houses there has been every possible thing one could want, and masterpieces of art and riches and often beauty; but just because Kitty’s house is like a home, and has the indescribable atmosphere of gentle owners for generations, we like it the best! It is ridiculous to be so prejudiced, isn’t it?
Jim Bond says they are too poor to go to Europe more than once in three years, and they only run over to New York to stay with Valerie now and then, and sometimes down South or camping out in the summer, so they spend all the time at Ringwood, and there is not a corner of the garden or house they do not tend and love. Jim is a great gardener, so Octavia and he became absorbed at once. He has not got much business to do, and only has to go in to Philadelphia about once a week, so his time is spent with Kitty and books and horses and the trees and flowers; and if you could see the difference it makes, Mamma, in a man! His eyes do not have a bit the look of a terrier after a rat, and he does not always answer literally to everything you say, and if you speak about books or art or anything of other countries, he is familiar with it all, and listens and isn’t bored, and hardly attending, so anxious to get his anecdote in, as lots of them were in New York. But on the other hand the Americans would never be the splendid successful nation they are if they were all peaceful and cultivated like Jim Bond; so all is as it should be, and both kinds are interesting.
Kitty is a darling, an immense sense of humour, perfectly indifferent about dress, and as lanky and unshaped a figure as any sporting Englishwoman; when she comes to stay with us at Valmond she only brings two frocks for even a big party! But she is like Octavia, a character, and everyone loves her, and would not mind if she did not wear any clothes at all. You must meet her the next time, Mamma. She did not tremendously apologize because the hot water tap in my bath-room would not run (as Mrs. Spleist did when one of the twenty electric light branches round my bed-room would not shine); she just said, “You must call Ambrosia” (a sweet darkie servant) “and she will bring you a can from the kitchen.”
She sat on the floor by the wood fire in the old-fashioned grate, and made me laugh so I was late for dinner. They had a dinner party for us, because they said it was their duty to show us their best, as we had seen a little of New York; and it was a delightful evening. Several of the men had moustaches, and they were all perfectly at ease, and not quite so kind and polite as the others, and you felt more as if they were of the same sex as Englishmen, and you quite understood that they could get in love. The one at my right hand was a pet, and has asked us to a dinner at the Squirrels Club to-night, and I am looking forward to it so. The women were charming, not so well dressed as in New York, and perhaps not so pretty, or so very bright and ready with repartee as there, but sweet all the same. And I am sure they are all as good as gold, and don’t have divorces in the family nearly so often. That was the impression they gave me. One even spoke to me of her baby, and we had quite a “young mother’s conversation,” and I was able to let myself go and talk of my two angels without feeling I should be a dreadful bore. It was, of course, while the men stayed in the dining-room, which they did here just like England.
The Squirrels Club is as old as Kitty’s house, and is such a quaint idea. All the members cook the dinner in a great kitchen, and there are no servants to wait or lay the table, or anything, only a care-taker who washes up. We are to go there about seven–it is in the country, too–and help to cook also; won’t it be too delightful, Mamma! Octavia says she feels young again at the thought. I will finish this to-morrow, and tell you all about it before the post goes.
Thursday._
I am only just awake, Mamma. We had such an enchanting evening last night, and stayed up so late I slept like a top. We drove to the club house in motors, and there were about six or seven women beside ourselves and ten or twelve men all in shirt-sleeves and aprons, and the badge of the Club, a squirrel, embroidered on their chests. I don’t know why, but I think men look attractive in shirt-sleeves. Sometimes at home in the evening, if I am dressed first, I go into Harry’s room to hurry him up, and if I find him standing brushing his hair I always want him to kiss me, when his valet isn’t there, he looks such a darling like that; and he always does, and then we are generally late. But I must not think of him, because when I do I just long for him to come back, and to rush into his arms, and of course I have got to remain angry with him for ages yet.
How I have wandered from the delightful squirrels! Well, the one who asked us was called Dick Seton, and as I told you he is a pet, and a _young man!_ That is, not elderly, like the business ones we met in New York, and not a boy like the partners at the dance, but a young man of thirty, perhaps, with such nice curly light hair and blue eyes, and actually _not married!_ Everything of this age is married in New York.
There was a huge slate in the kitchen with who was to do each course written up, and it looked so quaint to see in among the serious dishes:
“Cutting Grouts for Soup”–the Countess of Chevenix assisted by Mr. Buckle.
“Hollandaise Sauce”–The Marchioness of Valmond, Mr. Dick Seton.
And we did do ours badly, I am afraid, because there was a nice low dresser in a cool gloomy place, and we sat down on that, and my assistant whispered such lovely things that we forgot, and stirred all wrong, and the head cook came and scolded us, and said we had spoilt six eggs, and he should not give us another job; we were only fit to arrange flowers! So we went to the dining-room, and you can’t think of the fun we had. The Club house is an old place with low rooms and all cosey. Octavia was in there–the dining-room–helping to lay the cloth, as she had been rather clumsy, too, and been sent away, and her young man was as nice as mine; and we four had a superb time, as happy as children, but Tom was nothing but a drone, for he sat with Kitty in a window seat behind some curtains, and did not do a thing.
My one said he had never seen such a sweet squirrel as me in my apron, and I do wish, Mamma, we could have fun like this in England; it is so original to cook one’s dinner! And when it came in, all so well arranged, each member knowing his appointed duties, it was excellent, the best one could taste. And everybody was witty and brilliant, and nobody wanted to interrupt with their story before the other had finished his. So the time simply flew until it came to dessert, and there were speeches and toasts, and Octavia and I as the guests of honour each received a present of a box of bonbons like a huge acorn; but when we opened them, out of mine there jumped a darling little real squirrel, quite tame and gentle, and coddled up in my neck and was too attractive, so I purred to it of course and caressed it, for the rest of the time; and Mr. Dick said it was not fair to waste all that on a dumb animal, when there were so many deserving talking squirrels in the room, and especially himself. I have never had such an amusing evening. Even the quaint and rather solemn touch pleased me, of the first toast being said between two freshly lighted candles, to those members who were dead. The club dates from Colonial times, too, so there must have been a number of them, and if their spirits were there in the room they must have seen as merry a party as the old room had ever witnessed.
Dear, polite, courteous gentlemen! And I wish you had been with us, Mamma. I came a roundabout way back alone with my “partner-in-sauce” as we called him, in his automobile, an open one, and we just tore along for miles as fast as we could, and though he was driving himself, he managed to say all sorts of charming things; and when we got back to Kitty’s more people came, and we had an impromptu dance and then supper, and all the servants had gone to bed, so we had to forage for things in the pantry, and altogether I have never had such fun in my life, and Octavia, too.
To-day we go back to New York and then out West, so good-bye, dearest Mamma. I will cable you from each stopping place, and write by every mail.
Fond love to my babies.
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK
BACK IN NEW YORK, PLAZA HOTEL.
DEAREST MAMMA,–All our preparations are made, and we start for the West by Niagara Falls, which I have always wanted to see. The Vicomte is coming with us, and our charming Senator, Elias P. Arden. So I am sure we shall have an agreeable time. “Lola” and the husband have already started, and will join us at Los Angeles from San Francisco; and the Senator says he is “in touch” with Mr. Renour, and he hopes he will “be along” by the time we get to the private car.
These few days in New York have confirmed our opinion of everyone’s extraordinary kindness and hospitality. All their peculiarities are just caused by being so young a nation; they are quite natural; whatever their real feelings are come out. As children are touchy, so are they, and as children boast, so do they, and just as children’s hearts are warm and generous, so are theirs. So I think this quality of youth is a splendid one, don’t you, Mamma?
Valerie’s set are practically the same as ours at home in their tone, and way of living, and amusements, so I have not told you anything special of them, the only difference being we never worry in the least about what people think of us, and when we talk seriously it is of politics, and they of Wall Street affairs, which shows, doesn’t it, that such things are more interesting to them than the making of laws. We have not heard politics talked about in any class in New York. Attacks on the President often, because he is said to have interfered with trusts by probing their methods, which gets back to the vital point of dollars and cents. People will speak for and against him for hours, but not from a political point of view, and abstract political discussions we have never heard.
I have not yet grasped the difference between “Democrat” and “Republican,” and so I don’t know if it is just the same as at home, that whichever is Radical wants to snatch each one for his own hand and does not care a rush about the nation; while whichever is Conservative cares nothing for personal advancement–having arrived there already–so has time and experience to look ahead and think of the country.
If you had a delicate baby, Mamma, would not you rather give it into the hands of a thoroughly trained nurse than an ignorant aspiring nursery maid taking her first place, who was more likely to be thinking of the head nurse’s wages she was going to get than her duties to the child? That is how I look upon the parties at home, but here I expect it is more as the Whigs and Tories were, each equal in class and experience, only holding different views. I should like to have a peep about five hundred years ahead. I am sure the ignorant nurse-maids will have killed our baby by then, and we shall be a wretched down-trodden commune, while they will be a splendidly governed aristocratic nation under one autocratic king!
I have not told you a thing about the Park, or the general aspect of the houses; we are rushed so it is hard to write. But the Park is a perfectly charming place, as nice as the Bois, and much nicer than our attempt that way, and everyone who goes there seems to be out on a holiday. Fifth Avenue runs beside it like our Park Lane, beginning at Fifty-ninth Street, and about every five years people have to move further up, because of the encroaching shops. So it hardly seems worth while to spend millions on building white marble palaces which may be torn down or converted in so short a time. Nothing is allowed to last. Heaps of the mansions are perfectly beautiful in style, and many simple as well, which is always the prettiest; but you can meet Francois Premier Castles, and Gothic Halls, and all sorts of mixed freaks, too, in half an hour’s walk, and it seems to me a pity they can’t use their rollers and just cart these into the side streets. But if I were rebuilding Valmond House I would get an American architect to do it for me, and on the American principle, that is, I should get him to study all the best they have done and then “go one better!”
Unless you are quite in the poor parts every creature in the streets is spruce and well dressed; men and women have that look of their things being brushed and ironed to the last state of perfection. And if it is the fashion in Paris to have hats two feet across they will have them a yard; but as they all have the same, one’s eye gets accustomed to it, and it does not look ridiculous.
The longer one stays the more one admires that extraordinary quality of “go”–a mental alertness and lucidity they have immeasurably beyond European nations; very few people are intellectual, but all are intelligent and advancing. No one browses like such hundreds do at home, and all are much more amusing companions in consequence.
Last night we went to see China Town with Valerie’s brother and some other young men, and two or three women. Valerie would not come because she has done it before and it bores her, and no American woman deliberately does what she finds wearisome. They are sensible. First we dined at the Cafe Lafayette, which is almost down town, and near Washington Square, and then started in automobiles which we left in the Bowery. One always thought that was a kind of cut throat Whitechapel, did not one? But it is most quiet and respectable, so is China Town, and I am sure we need not have had the two detectives who accompanied us.
Outside there is nothing very lurid to look at. The Mayor met us at the opening of the street, a most entertaining character of what would answer to our Coster class I suppose. He spoke pure Bowery-Irish-Coster-American slang, which the detectives translated for us. It was about this: That he had seen English Lords before, and they weren’t half bad when you knew ’em, and he took a particular fancy to Octavia because he said “her Nobs” (his late wife, or one of them) had red hair, too, and “ginger for pluck.” He had several teeth missing, lost in fights, I suppose, and a perfectly delicious sense of humour. I wish we could have understood all he said, but our host insinuated it was just as well not! He led us first to “the theatre”–a den underground, with the stage still lower at one end, where a Chinese play was going on. The atmosphere was an unbelievable mixture of heat and smell. And wouldn’t you hate to be a Chinese woman, Mamma, packed away in a sort of pen at one corner with all the other women and children and not allowed to sit with the men. We went in there, too, for as long as we could stand it. The audience were too quaint, not in their national dress, but ordinary clothes and pigtails; you couldn’t have been sure they were human beings, or of what sex.
The play seemed to a thrilling one as far as we could see; they had just got to a part where the whole company were going to be beheaded. One of our party felt faint from the heat, and no wonder, so we continued our travels. We descended a kind of ladder near the door, into the bowels of the earth; and I was glad it was almost pitch dark, because Gaston was just below me and made the greatest fuss of the necessity of putting each of my feet safely on the steps for me; and once towards the bottom I am sure he kissed my instep, but as it might have been a bundle of tow which was sticking out on the last step, brushing against me, I did not like to say anything to him about it. We crossed some kind of rat hole rooms in utter darkness, and here one respectful brotherly arm, and one passionate, _entreprenant_ one came round my waist! And while in my right ear the voice of Valerie’s brother said kindly, “I’m obliged to hold on to you or you’ll have an awful fall”–in my left Gaston was whispering, “Je vous adore, vous savez; n’allez pas si vite!” So I had to be very angry with him, and clung to Valerie’s brother, who toward the end of the evening got into being quite a cousin instead of an aunt or father.
We had been burrowing under the auditorium, and presently found ourselves in a large cellar where a Chinese was cooking on a brazier an unspeakable melange of dog, fish, and rat for the actors’ supper, with not a scrap of ventilation anywhere!! Finally, up some steps, we emerged behind the scenes, and saw all the performers dressing–rows of false beards and wonderful garments hanging all around the walls; the most indescribable smell of opium, warm eastern humanity, and grease paint, and no _air_! A tiny baby was there being played with by its proud father. Their lung capacity must be quite different to ours, because if we had not quickly returned I am sure some of us would have fainted. I felt strangely excited; it had a weird, fierce effect. What a fatal mysterious nation the Chinese! Unlike any others on earth. I did not much care who held me going back. I only wanted to rush to the open air, and when we had climbed up again and got outside in the street, we all staggered a little and could not speak.
When breath returned, further down the street, we recommenced burrowing into a passage to the opium den, and this was a most wonderful and terrible sight; a room with a stove in it, not more than ten feet square and about eight feet high, no perceptible ventilation but the door, which the detective put his foot in to keep a little open; a raised platform along one side of the place, and on it four Chinamen lying in different stages of the effects of opium. The first one’s eyes were beginning to glaze, the pipe had fallen from his hand, and he was staring in front of him, and clutching some sheets of paper with Chinese writing on them in one hand, a ghastly smile of extraordinary bliss on his poor thin face. He was “happy and dreamin’,” the detective told us. I do wonder what about, don’t you, Mamma? The next had just begun to smoke, and was angry at our entrance because we let in some air! The detectives made him give us the pipe to smell, and we watched the way it was smoked, the man looking sullen and fierce and resentful, crouching like a beast ready to spring. So Valerie’s brother and Gaston both thought it their duty to take care of me. The next man was half asleep, also smoking, and the fourth what they call “quite sick.” He was the most dreadful of all, as he might have been a corpse except for the rising and falling of his chest. The Mayor told us, with the most amusing reflections upon this serious subject, that he would lie like that for forty-eight hours and then wake. A fearful looking creature crouched by the stove, cooking some more dog, or preparing something for the opium; and a glaring piece of scarlet cloth hung down from a rail at the top. There were some wicked long knives lying about, and the whole thing, lit up by the light of one lantern, was a grim picture of horror I shall never forget and hope never to see again. And this is called pleasure! What a mercy, Mamma, our idea of joy is different. I am glad to have seen these strange things, but I never want to again.
Everyone’s head swam from the smell of the opium, and Tom said he was rather sorry he had let us go there because of that; but Octavia told him not to be ridiculous; experience is what we had come to America for, and this is one of the sights.
After that we just had fun, going to a joss-house to have our fortunes told, where a quaint priest and acolyte went through all sorts of comic mysteries, and finally paired Octavia off with one of the detectives for her fate! (Tom was furious!) and me with Valerie’s brother, and Gaston looked in despair at that! Then after buying curiosities at the curio shop, we returned to the automobiles and went to Delmonico’s to supper. But the opium had got into our brains I think, for we could only tell gruesome stories, and all felt “afraid to go home in the dark!”
And now, Mamma, in case you have been worrying over us going into awful places, I may as well tell you that at the end of supper our host informed us that the whole show of the opium den had been got up for our benefit, and was not the real thing at all!!! But whether this is true or no I can’t say; if it was “got up” it was awfully well done, and I don’t want to see any realler.
We can’t get enough “drawing-rooms” on the train for everybody to-morrow, so Octavia and I shall have one, and the senator and either Tom or the Vicomte the other, and whoever is left out will have to sleep in the general place. I believe it is too odd, but I will tell you all about it when I have seen it.–If Harry writes to you and asks about me, just say I am enjoying myself awfully, and say I am thinking of becoming a naturalised American! That ought to bring him back at once. I have been dying to cable and make it up with him, but of course as I have determined not to, I can’t. I am sorry to hear Hurstbridge got under the piano and then banged the German Governess’s head as she tried to pull him out; but what can you expect, Mamma? His temper is the image of Harry’s.
Kiss the angels for me, both of them!
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
NIAGARA
NIAGARA.
DEAREST MAMMA,–We got here this morning after such a night!–The sleeping cars are too amusing. Picture to yourself the arrangement of seats I told you about going to the Spleists, with a piece put in between to make into a bed, and then another bed arranged on top, these going all down each side and just divided from the aisle by green curtains; so that if A. likes to take a top berth and B. an underneath one, they can bend over their edges, and chat together all night, and no one would know except for the bump in the curtains. But fancy having to crouch up and dress on one’s bed! And when Octavia and I peeped out of our drawing-room this morning we saw heaps of unattractive looking arms and legs protruding, while the struggle to get into clothes was going on.
A frightful thing happened to poor Agnes. Tom’s valet, who took our tickets, did not get enough, not understanding the ways, and Tom and the senator and the Vicomte had tossed up which two were to have the drawing-room, and Tom lost; so when Hopkins, who is a timid creature, found a berth did not mean a section, he of course gave up his without saying anything to Tom, and as the conductor told him there was not another on the train he wandered along and at last came to Agnes’s. She had a lower berth next our door, and was away undressing me. Hopkins says he thought it was an unoccupied one the conductor had overlooked, so he took it, and when Agnes got back and crawled in in the dark she found him there!! There was a dreadful scene!! We heard Hopkins scream, and I believe he ran for his life, and no one knows where he slept.
Agnes said it was too ridiculous and “_tres mauvais gout_” on his part to make such a fuss over “_un petit accident de voyage.” “Je puis assurer Madame la Marquise_,” she said, “_que s’il etait reste c’eut ete la meme chose. Son type ne me dit rien_!” At the same time she does not think these trains “_comme il faut_!”
We were just in time for an early breakfast when we arrived at this hotel, and the quaintest coloured gentlemen waited on us; they were rather aged, and had a shambling way of dragging their feet, but the most sympathetic manners, just suited to the four honeymoon pairs who were seated at little tables round. That was a curious coincidence, wasn’t it, Mamma, to find four pairs in one hotel in that state. None of the bridegrooms were over twenty-five, and the brides varied from about eighteen to twenty-eight; we got the senator to ask about them, and one lot had been married a week, and they each read a paper propped up against their cups, and did not speak much, and you would have thought they were quite indifferent; but from where I sat I could see their right and left hands clasped under the table! Another pair with a dour Scotch look ate an enormous meal in solemn silence, and then they went off and played tennis! Their wedding took place three days ago!! The third had been there a fortnight, and seemed very jaded and bored, while the last were mere children, and only married yesterday! She was too sweet, and got crimson when she poured out his tea, and asked him if he took sugar? I suppose up till now they had only been allowed nursery bread and milk.
I don’t believe I should like to have had my honeymoon breakfasts in public, would you, Mamma? Because I remember Harry always wanted–but I really must not let myself think of him or all my pride will vanish, and I shall not be able to resist cabling.
I find the senator too attractive. He does not speak much generally, and never boasts of anything he has done. We have to drag stories out of him, but he must have had such a life, and I am sure there is some tragedy in his past connected with his wife. He has such a whimsical sense of humour, and yet underneath there is a ring of melancholy sometimes. I know he and I are going to be the greatest friends. Gaston is getting seriously in love, which is perfectly ridiculous; he almost threatened to throw himself into the falls when we went to look at them; but fortunately I said only the very curly-haired could look well when picked up drowned, so that put him off.
I was not half so impressed with the falls as I ought to have been. They don’t seem so high as in the pictures, and the terrible buildings on one side distract one so it seems as if even the water can’t be natural, and must be just arranged by machinery. But it was fun going under them, and those oilskin coats and caps are most becoming. You go down in a lift and then walk along passages scooped out of the rock until you are underneath the volume of water, which pours over in front of you like a curtain. It was here Gaston suggested his suicide, and all because I had told the senator that he was to arrange for us to have a drive alone in the afternoon, and he overheard in the echo the place makes. I had never asked him to drive alone he said, and I said, certainly not, the senator and I would talk philosophy, whereas he would make love to me, I knew, and it would not be safe. That pacified him a good deal, and as I had been rather unsympathetic and horrid all the morning, I was lovely to him for the rest of the day; and he is really quite a dear, Mamma, as I have always told you.
Octavia says she thinks it rather hard my grabbing everybody like this, and she had wanted the senator for herself on our trip, so we have agreed to share him, and Tom says it is mean no one has been asked for him. So the senator has wired to “Lola” to bring two cousins to meet us at Los Angeles. He says they are the sweetest girls in the world, and would keep anyone alive. I am rather longing to get there and begin our fun. After the falls we did the rapids, and they impressed me far more deeply; they are rushing, wicked-looking things if you like, Mamma, and how anyone ever swam them I can’t imagine. The spring is all too beautiful, only just beginning, and some of the bends of the river and views are exquisite. I felt quite romantic on the way back, and allowed Gaston to repeat poetry to me. We are just starting to get on to Chicago, so good-bye, dear Mamma.
Love from your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
P.S.–Octavia says she thinks I am leading Gaston on, but I don’t, do you, Mamma? Considering I stop him every time he begins any long sentence about love–what more can I do, eh?
CHICAGO.
CHICAGO.
DEAREST MAMMA,–We had such an interesting dinner on the train the night we left Niagara, and here we are. A millionaire travelling also, whom the senator knew, joined us for the meal, so we sat four at one table, and Gaston and Octavia alone at the other side. He was such a wonderful person, the first of just this kind we have met yet, although we are told there are more like him in Pittsburg and Chicago.
He was thick-set everywhere, a bull neck and fierce moustache and bushy eyebrows, and gave one the impression of sledge-hammer force. The whole character seemed to be so dominated and obsessed by an immense personal laudation, that his conversation created in our minds the doubt that qualities which required so much vaunting could really be there. It was _his_ wonderful will which had won his game, _his_ wonderful diplomacy, _his_ wonderful knowledge of men, _his_ clever perception, _his_ supreme tact; in short, _his_ everything in the world. The slightest show of a contrary opinion to anything he said was instantly pounced upon and annihilated. I do wonder, Mamma, if two of his sort got together what their conversation would be about? Would they shout one another down, each saying he was perfect, and so end in thunder or silence? Or would they contradict each other immediately and come to blows, or would they realise it was no use boasting to one of their own species, and so talk business or be quiet?
We, being strangers, were splendid victims for him, and I am sure he spent a dinner of pure joy. After each speech of self appreciation he would look round the table in a triumphant challenging way, and say, “Say, senator, isn’t that so?” and the dear senator, with a twinkle in his grey eye, would reply:
“Why, certainly, Governor.” (He was a governor of some place once, the senator knew.)
Finally he got on to his marvellous cleverness in the training of the young. He had no children himself, he said, but he had “raised” two young men in his office, and as a proof of their wonderful astuteness from his teaching, “I give you my word, Ma’am,” he said, “either of them could draw a contract now for me, out of which I could slip at any moment!!!”
Isn’t that a superb idea, Mamma! And the complete frankness with which it was said! What we would call sharp practice he considered “smart,” and no doubt that is the way to get rich; for when he had gone on to the smoking car, the senator told us he was five times a millionaire, and really a good fellow underneath.
“We’ve got to have all sorts to make a nation, and he’s the kind of machine that does the rough-hewing,” he said. “He did no bragging when he was under dog; he just bottled it up and pushed on, but it was that spirit which caused him to rise. Now he’s made good, won his millions, and it bursts out.”–(It certainly did!)
The Senator always sees straight. He said also: “He rough-hews everything he handles, including his neighbours’ nerves; he has no mercy or pity or consideration for anyone serving him, and yet he’s the kindest heart towards children and animals, and the good he does to them is about the only thing he don’t brag about.”
It interested me immensely, but Tom had got so ruffled that I am sure even his sense of humour could not have kept him from contradicting Craik Purdy, his name is–Craik V. Purdy, I mean!
The Senator told us lots more about him and his methods, succeeding by sheer brute force and shouting all opposition down. Don’t you wish, Mamma, we had some like him at home to deal with the socialists? These men are the real autocrats of the world, even though America is a republic. But wouldn’t it be frightful to be married to a person like that! Octavia, who even in the noise of the train had heard some of it, asked the Senator what the wife was like, and he told us she had been a girl of his own class who had never risen with him, and was a rare exception in American women, who rise quicker than the men as a rule.
“She’s been every sort of drawback to him,” he said, “and yet he is almighty kind to her and covers her with diamonds; and she is a dullish sort of woman with a cold in her head.”
Octavia said at once that was the kind she wanted to see in Chicago. Of what use to meet more charming and refined people like in New York or Philadelphia. She wanted to sample the “rough-hewn.” And we both felt, Mamma, one must have a nice streak in one to go on being kind to a person who has a continual cold in her head.
The Senator said he would arrange a luncheon party for us in Chicago unlike anything we had had in any place yet, and it is coming off to-morrow. But first I must tell you of Detroit, where we stopped the night before last, and of our arrival here. The whole train goes over in a ferry boat from the Canadian to the American side and dinner and screaming tram cars under the window are the only distinct memories I have after our arrival, until next day, when we took a motor and went for a drive.
Detroit is really the most perfectly laid out city one could imagine, and such an enchanting park and lake,–infinitely better than any town I know in Europe. It ought to be a paradise in about fifty years when it has all matured. That is where the Americans are clever, in the beautiful laying-out of their towns; but then, as I said, they have not old debris to contend with, though I shall always think it looks queer and unfinished to see houses standing just in a mown patch unseparated from the road by any fence. I should hate the idea of strangers being able to peep into my windows.
We left about twelve, after being interviewed by several reporters in the hall of the hotel. These halls are apparently meeting places for countless men, simply crammed like one could have imagined a portico in the Roman days,–not people necessarily staying there, but herds of others from outside. The type gets thicker as one leaves New York. It reminds one of a funny man I once saw in the pantomime who put on about six suits, one after another, growing gradually larger, though no taller or fatter–just thick. All these in the hall were meaty, not one with that lean look of the pictures of “Uncle Sam,” but more like our “John Bull,” only not portly and complacent as he is, but just thick all over, at about the three coat stage; thick noses, thick hair, thick arms, thick legs, and nearly invariably clean-shaven and keen looking. The Senator said they were the ordinary business people and might any of them rise to be President of the Republic. We are perfectly overcome with admiration and respect for their enormous advancing and adaptive power, because just to look at we should not call these of the Senator’s class. But think what brains they must have, and what vitality; and those things matter a great deal more than looks to a country.
The Senator said the type would culminate in Chicago, and gradually get finer again out in the far West. And he seemed right, from the impression we got of the crowd in this hotel. It was rather like a Christmas nightmare, when everyone had turned into a plum pudding, or those gingerbread men the old woman by the Wavebeach pier used to sell. Do you remember, Mamma? Perfectly square and solid. They are ahead of Detroit, and at the six coat stage here. Probably all as good as gold, and kind and nice and full of virtues; but for strangers who don’t know all these things, just to look at, they make one think one is dreaming.
Do you suppose it is, if they have to be so much among pork and meat generally, perhaps that makes them solid? We did not know a soul to speak to, nor did the Senator either, though he said he was acquainted with many nice people in Chicago; so perhaps they were just travellers like us after all, and we have no right to judge of a place by them.
We supped–we had arrived very late–and watched the world in from the theatres. We don’t know of what class they were, or of what society, only they were not the least like New York. The women were, some of them, very wonderfully dressed, though not that exquisite Paris look of the New Yorkers, and they had larger hats and brighter colours; and numbers of them were what the Senator calls “homely.” We were very silent,–naturally, we did not like to say our thoughts aloud to the Senator, an American; but he spoke of it to us himself.
He said his eye, accustomed to the slender lean cowboys and miners, found them just as displeasing as he was sure we must. “Lordy,” he said, “they look a set of qualifying prize-fighters gorged with sausage-meat, and then soaked in cocktails.” And though that sounds frightfully coarse to write, Mamma, it is rather true. Then he added, “And yet some of the brightest brains of our country have come from Chicago. I guess they kept pretty clear of this crowd.”
One of the strangest things is that no one is old, never more than sixty and generally younger; the majority from eighteen to thirty-five, and also, something we have remarked everywhere, everyone seems happy. You do not see weary, tired, bored faces, like in Europe, and no one is shabby or dejected, and they are all talking and drinking and laughing with the same intent concentrated force they bring to everything they do, and it is simply splendid.
To-morrow we are going to drive about and see everything. The aristocracy live in fine houses just outside the town, we are told, and the Senator has arranged with Mr. Craik Purdy for us all to go and have lunch with him in his mansion. This is the party he promised us, which would be different to what we had seen before, and we are looking forward to it. And there is one thing I feel sure: even if they are odd, we shall find a generous welcome, original ideas, and kind hearts; and the more I see the more I think these qualities matter most.
Now I must go to bed, dearest Mamma.
You haven’t heard from Harry, I suppose? Because if you have you might let me know.
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
GOING WEST
_In the train going West._
DEAREST MAMMA,–Forgive this shaky writing, but I had no time before we left, and I feel I must tell you at once about our luncheon at the Purdy Castle, in case anything gets dulled in my memory. It was a unique experience. We spent the morning seeing the town, an immense busy place with colossal blocks of houses, and some really fine architecture, all giving the impression of a mighty prosperous and advancing nation, and quite the best shops one could wish for, not too crowded, and polite assistants–even at the ribbon counter!
Octavia and I made ourselves look as smart as we could in travelling dresses, because there would be no time to change after the lunch; we had to go straight to the train. I always think it is such impertinence imposing your customs upon other nations when you are travelling among them, like the English people who will go to the Paris restaurants without hats, and one Englishwoman we met at a party at Sherry’s in New York in a draggled tweed skirt and coat, when all the other women were in long afternoon dresses. One should do as one’s hosts do, but we could not help it this time and did not look at all bad considering.
However, when we got there we felt we were indeed out of it! But I must begin from the very door-step.
We drove a little way beyond the town to rows of dwelling mansions more or less important and growing in magnificence until we arrived at one inside some gates, a cross between a robber’s castle on the stage, and a Henri III. chateau, mixed with a “little English Gothic.” Huge, un-nameable animals were carved on top of the gates. Tom said the fathers of them must have been “gazeekas,” and their mothers “slithy toves,” out of “Through the Looking-glass.” They were Mr. Purdy’s crest, we suppose. Then came a short gravel path and a robber’s castle, nail-studded door. All the down-stairs windows had the shutters shut, so we were rather nervous ringing the bell in case there had been a death since our invitation came; but the door was opened immediately by a German butler–one of those people one sees at sea-side hotels, who have come over to learn English, with a slow sort of walk and stentorian breathing.
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 massed together on a wall covered with large-patterned scarlet and gilt Japanese 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 class 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 quantities 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-class 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 class 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 pass 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 nigger twenty-five dollars to make up for being roughly handled. The niece still slept on through all this noise, and Tom, who was passing 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 grass 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 passed 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 substitutes 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 passing 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 hell 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 hitting 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 hells 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 shells, 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.
San Francisco.
Dearest Mamma,–I have just got a letter from Jane Roose about having heard of Mrs. Smith’s being on the ship with Harry. Has it come to your ears, too? What on earth could a woman like that want to be going to Zanzibar for, unless she was hunting some man who was going to hunt lions? I call it most extraordinary, don’t you? And probably that is what these papers meant by saying he had gone to India with a fair haired widow, and I was so silly I never suspected a thing. Well, if he thinks it will annoy me he is very much mistaken. I don’t care in _the least_, and am amusing myself _awfully_ with Gaston, and you can tell him so; and as for cabling to him, as I think I asked you to in my last letter, don’t dream of it! Let him enjoy himself if he can. But how any man could, with that woman, old enough to be his mother! I suppose she has taken some lovely clothes. She always has that sort of attraction, and no doubt she is pouring sympathy into his ears in the moonlight about my unkindness. It makes me feel perfectly sick that anyone can be such a fool as Harry to be taken in by her;–having got away from her once, to go back again.
No doubt it was she prompted him to be so horrible to me (he behaved like a perfect brute you know, Mamma, and I never did a thing). It is only because I can’t bear him to be made a fool of that I mind in the least, otherwise I am perfectly indifferent. He can play with whom he chooses, it is nothing to me. Gaston is devoted to me, and although I should not think of divorcing Harry, No matter what he does, because of letting that odious woman become Marchioness of Valmond, still it is nice to know someone else would absolutely die for you, isn’t it, even though I don’t want to marry him–Gaston, I mean–We arrived here last night. We have come all round this way because now we are about it Octavia felt we ought to see Salt Lake City and San Francisco, and go down the coast to Los Angeles. Then we shall have done this side of America thoroughly. We only rushed through everywhere, of course, but got a general coup d’oeil. Crossing the great Salt Lake was wonderful. It seemed like being at sea on a bridge, and I could not help wondering what it would be like if the lake were rough. You can’t think of anything so intelligent as the way that Brigham Young laid out Salt Lake City, seeing far ahead; he planned splendid avenues, and planted trees, and even though lots of them still have only mud roads, and little board shanties down them, they are there all ready for the time when the splendid houses are built, and tram cars and electric light everywhere; and such green and beautiful rich looking country! No wonder, after the desert it seemed the promised land.
I should hate to be a Mormon, wouldn’t you, Mamma? Worse than being a Chinee and having to sit at the theatre penned up with only females. Think of sharing a man with six other women, and being a kind of servant. It is natural they look cowed and colourless,–the ones we saw; at least they were pointed out to us. But really it seems much honester to call them wives openly than to be like–but no, I won’t speak of it any more. Only _I_ will never share a man with another woman! Not the least little scrap of him; and if Harry thinks I will he is mistaken. To have six husbands is a much better plan; that, at least, would teach one to be awfully agreeable, and to understand the creatures’ different ways; but a man to have six wives is an impossible idea,–specially as now it is not necessary, the way they behave. I wish I had got Jane’s letter sooner, Mamma, because I could have amused myself more with Gaston than I have. I feel I have lost some opportunities, snubbing him all the time.
San Francisco is perfectly wonderful. Imagine colossal switchbacks going for miles, and other switchbacks crossing them like a chess board, and you have some idea of the way of the streets; hills as steep as staircases, and the roads straight up and down, not zigzag, just being obliged to take the land as it comes; some persons in the beginning, I suppose, having ruled the plan on flat paper without considering what the formation was like, and then insisting on its being ruthlessly carried out.
When we arrived at the station, Octavia and I were put into a two horse fly because it was very windy and cold. It always is, we are told, and the motors for hire were all open. So we started to go to Fairmount, the big hotel right up on the hill. At first it was a sort of gradual slope past such sad desolation of levelled houses, with hardly the foundations left. The results of the earthquake and the fire are so incredible that you would think I was recounting travellers’ tales if I described them, so I won’t. Presently the coachman turned his two strong fat horses to the right, up one of the perpendicular roads, to get to our destination, but they would have none of it! They backed and jibbed and got as cross as possible, and he was obliged to continue along the slope, explaining to us that there was another turning further on which they might be persuaded to face. But when we got there it was just the same, no whipping or coaxing could get them to sample it. They backed so violently that we nearly went over into the cellars of a ruin at the corner, and the man asked us to get out, as he said it was no use, none of his horses would face these streets. And to go on to a gradual hill was miles further along, and he advised us to walk, as the hotel was only about six hundred yards away!! So in the growing night Octavia and I, clutching our jewel cases, were left to our own devices. We really felt deserted, as now that nearly everything in this neighbourhood is in ruins there are no people about much, and it felt like being alone in a graveyard, or Pompeii after dark. We almost expected bandits and wolves or jackals. We started, holding on our hats and feeling very ill-tempered, but we had not got a hundred yards on our climb, when a motor tore down upon us, and Gaston and the Senator jumped out; they had been getting quite anxious at our non-arrival and come to look for us. Tom, of course, being an English husband, was sure nothing had happened; and when we got there we found him having a cocktail and smoking a cigar calmly in the hotel.
As we have come this way we have picked up Lola sooner. I must call her that, Mamma, although I dislike using peoples’ Christian names, but Mrs. Vinerhorn is so long, and everyone calls her Lola, and the Senator wished it; he wants us to be friends. He and I have been even more intimate since he told me his story. I am deeply attached to him; he is a sort of father and yet not–much nicer, really; and the best friend I have in the world, except you, Mamma, and one I would rather tell anything to. He is a perfect dear; we all love him. The two cousins, who were promised Tom, live here and came to dinner; such amusing girls, they would make any party merry, and we had the most gay and festive evening; and one of the Senator’s secretaries has joined the party also, a very nice worthy young fellow whom the girls bully. Columbia and Mercedes are the girls’ names, and they are both small and dark and pretty. They are both heiresses, and wonderfully dressed. Their two mothers were the Senator’s sisters, and “raised” somewhere down South, where he originally came from. But the girls have been educated in New York with Lola.
The crowd in this hotel are totally different looking to Chicago. Some have moustaches, and some even look like sportsmen, and as if they led an idle life and enjoyed it; and a few of the women are lovely, pure pink and white, and golden haired, and that air of breezy go-aheadness which is always so attractive. And all of them seem well dressed, though naturally one or two freaks are about, as in every country.
The food was as excellent as in all the places, and rather more varied–dishes with wonderful salads and ices; and after dinner we sat in the hall and made plans, and Gaston said such entreprenant things in my ear that I was obliged to be really angry with him. So to pay me out he sulked, and then devoted himself to Mercedes. Men are really impossible people to deal with, aren’t they, Mamma? So ridiculously vain and unreasonable. I shall be glad to see Mr. Renour again; he was quite different; respectful and yet devoted, not wanting to eat one up like Gaston, and I am _sure_ incapable of treating me like Harry has. I suppose by now they have got right up into Africa. I wonder if she is going to shoot lions, too, or be a shikari or cook his food. I am sure she would look hideous roughing it without her maid. Her hair has to be crimped with tongs, and she has to have washes for her complexion, and things. You know, Mamma, though I don’t care a bit, the whole affair has upset me so that the dear Senator noticed I was not quite myself after the post came in, and asked me if there was anything else I wanted that he could do for me. And when I told him only to teach me to be a brazen heartless creature, as hard as nails, he held my hand like I held his, and pressed it, and said we should soon be in the sunshine where the winds did not blow.
“You are too broad gauge to want things like that,” he said; “those bitter thoughts are for the puny growths.”
And I suddenly felt inclined to cry, Mamma; I can’t think why. So I came up to bed;–and I am homesick and I want Hurstbridge and Ermyntrude, and what’s the good of anything?
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
ON THE PRIVATE CAR
_On the private car_.
DEAREST MAMMA,–My spirits have quite recovered; you can’t imagine the fun we are having! We only stayed the day in San Francisco to look round at those Golden Gates and other things. The astonishing pluck of the people, reconstructing the whole town with twenty storey houses on the old sites! One would think they would be afraid of their being earthquaked again, but not a bit, and the city part is nearly all re-made. Everything being brand new is naturally not so interesting as the results of the tragedy, but you have read all about it so often there is no use my telling you. We were shown one of the “graft” buildings, and one wonders how they were able to put it up without people seeing the tricks at the time. There are numbers of ways to get rich, aren’t there?
Finally the whole party started for Los Angeles, passing down the coast. A company of ten, five drawing-rooms were naturally impossible; indeed we could only get two, so this time Octavia and I insisted upon sleeping under the green curtains and let the girls have our drawing-room, because we wanted to see what it was like. They said they often travelled like that, and did not mind a bit; but we insisted, and we felt quite excited when bed-time came! Lola and the husband had the other drawing-room, and the Senator and Tom the section next to us on one side, and the Vicomte and secretary the one on the other, so we were well guarded.
We laughed so tremendously undressing;–Lola let us take off the outside things with her and Agnes and Wilbor helping made so many remarks and fuss, we sent them off to their berths, and crept in dressing-gowns to our section, which was fortunately by the door. Of course Gaston was waiting to know if he could be of any use, because he said I would remember he could be a “tres habile” lady’s maid years ago on the Sauterelle! But we would not let him tuck us up, and so he got into his own and peeped out through the curtains while Tom and the Senator saw we were all right.
I had the top of ours, so had Gaston of theirs, and ever so many times he tapped on the division. I do hope the other people thought it was a mouse; but when he began to give terrible sighs, and at last exclaimed, “Sapristi!” they must have wondered what was the matter. He was so dreadfully tiresome and restless, the poor secretary could not get a wink of sleep, he told me to-day; and at last fearing he was ill he climbed up and offered him some brandy. He must be a very good man, the secretary said, because he found him kneeling with his forehead pressed against the division which separated him from me, evidently saying his prayers. Aren’t the French odd? And when I asked him next day how he had slept he looked at me with eyes of the deepest reproach and said I had taken care he could not sleep; just as though it was I who was troublesome and snored! Wasn’t it crazy of him, Mamma? And since he has devoted himself entirely to Mercedes, and I am perfectly thankful, as very soon at the first mining town we are expecting Mr. Renour!
We have two tables of four for meals, and whichever two have been naughty we put at a little one by themselves; and it is generally Tom and Columbia. They are getting on splendidly, and Octavia is so pleased, as she was afraid Tom might grow bored and give up the trip and go straight on to Mexico: Englishman can’t stay long without killing things, can they, Mamma, and they never think about their wives’ pleasure, as the Americans do. The dear Senator divides himself between Octavia and me, and when she has the secretary she gets him to give her information about the country, and we are all as happy as possible. Mr. Renour is bringing a friend with him, so that will make twelve. The coast is pretty, but I can’t describe scenery, especially as all of this has been done dozens of times before, and also, though it is beautiful, it is rather of a sameness; and half the time, having been so long in the train we did not look out, there are such a number of amusing things to do in a party like this.
Lola’s husband is a poor creature; how she adores him as she does is a mystery; he simply “don’t amount to anything;” only he is beautifully dressed, like an Englishman, and has as nice socks as Harry. The Senator, without asking me any questions, has soothed me so that I am not feeling as cross as I was, though I am determined not to go near Harry again for months and months. When we get back, if he is still in Africa with that creature, I shall take the children for a voyage round the world. He shall see he can’t behave like a brute to me with impunity. But yesterday morning when that silly little Vinerhorn wore a shirt of Charvet’s of exactly the same silk as I chose Harry last in Paris, a nasty feeling came in my throat, and I seemed to see his blue eyes flashing angry flames at me like when we said good-bye.
Just think, Mamma, all these years since I have been married I have never so much as looked at anyone else. He has kept me knowing hardly anything more of the world than I did then. But I am not going to _stay_ stupid I can assure you! If he can go off to Africa with Mrs. Smith, why can’t I play with Mr. Renour?
(I am tired of Gaston, really.)
The second night in the train was quite peaceful. We went to bed before they came in from smoking, and Octavia had the top berth and heard nothing, so I suppose the Vicomte said his prayers with his forehead glued against the other side. And when we arrived at Los Angeles there was the private car. It is so comfortable. The salon at the end has an observation veranda on it, and at night three berths let down in it for three of the men, and in the dining-room three others can sleep. The Senator has a tiny place to himself. The Vinerhorns, who never will be separated, have one cabin, and Tom and Octavia the other. Octavia says she likes experiences, and she had no idea Tom could be so handy, for Wilbor and Agnes and all the valets have been sent on to the Osages City in an ordinary train and he had to dress her. I am in the larger compartment with the two girls, and we have only one enormous bed for the three of us! And it does seem quaint, Mamma, sleeping with women. I felt quite shy at first; then we laughed so we could not get to sleep. They are perfect angels and do everything for me, and make me so vain admiring my hair being so long and curly. Columbia brushed it for half an hour last night, and we were just in the middle of it when we pulled up at a small station, on the beginning of the mining world, and to our surprise Mr. Renour and his friend got in. We heard the noise and the greetings and all peeped out to see, and the Senator, sans gene, brought them down the passage to say how do you do.
Mr. Renour does look a pet! He was (and still is to-day) in miner’s dress, and it is corduroy trousers tucked into high-laced boots and a grey flannel shirt with a shallow turn down collar which has been turned up again, looking like a Lord Palmerton, or someone of that date; a loose tie and a corduroy Norfolk jacket, all a sort of earth colour except the tie, which is blue. The friend is the same, and they both have queer American-looking sort of sombrero greenish felt hats, and the friend hasn’t even a tie.
We were glad to see them, at least I was. We were all in dressing-gowns, with our hair down, and the girls pretended to hide behind me and be coy, and we played the fool just like children. It was fun, Mamma, and think of the faces of Harry’s two aunts, the Duchess and Lady Archibald, if they could have seen me being so undignified. But here no one has any nasty thoughts, they are all happy and natural and innocent as kittens, and I am enjoying myself.
Gaston is frightfully jealous of the newcomers, but he is too much of a polished gentleman to be disagreeable over it; it is only the English who have remained savages in that respect, showing their tempers as plainly as a child would do. If you remember, Harry had a thunderous face before we were married, whenever I teased him, and since, my heavens! If people even look a good deal in a restaurant he is annoyed. But I don’t mind so much, because my time has always been taken up with him making love to me himself. It is the cold ones who are jealous just from vanity that are insupportable, as it is not that they love the woman so much themselves as because they think it is “dam cheek” (forgive me, Mamma) for any other man to dare to look at _their_ belongings? Now American men don’t seem jealous at all; they are so kind they are thinking of the woman’s pleasure, not their own. Really, I am sure in the long run they must be far nicer to live with–not a tenth part as vain as Englishmen.
The most jolly looking, jet-black old nigger in white duck livery brought us our coffee in the morning. His face is a full moon of laughter. No one could feel gloomy if he were near, and his voice, like a little child’s, is as sweet as a bird, and such delightful phrasing. He has been with the Senator for fifteen years and couldn’t live “way from de car.” His name is Marcus Aurelius, and I am sure he is just as great a philosopher as the Emperor was.
The girls have known him since they were babies, of course, and it is such fun to hear him talking to them, a mixture of authority, worshipping affection, and familiarity, which I believe only old niggers can have.
“A pretty sight to see dem tree young ladies as happy as birds in dar nests;” we heard him telling Gaston just outside, when he met on his way to the bath (there are two lovely bath-rooms).
So Gaston said he was sure the coffee-pot was heavy and he could not hold so many plates, and he would with pleasure help him with our breakfast. But Tom, who joined them, said Marcus Aurelius must not set fire to tinder, and that he was the only one of the party who could be considered suitable to be morning waiter, being my cousin and a married man. We were so entertained beyond the open door, and were quite surprised at Gaston’s silence, until we saw his face reflected in the looking glass, where he had been gazing at us all the time through the crack! What a mercy on a picnic of this kind that we all look so lovely in bed! We felt it our duty to scream, and then Marcus Aurelius shut the door. Are you fearfully shocked at my being so schoolgirlish, Mamma? Don’t be, I shall get old directly I get back home, and it is all the infectious gaiety of these dear merry girls.
Everybody was ready for breakfast, and we had rather a squash to get seated, and had to be very near. Mr. Renour was next me, and he is simply delightful in a party; and the friend, Octavia says, is exactly her affair, as she is past thirty, and he is a charming boy of twenty-two.
There is a nigger cook and he makes such lovely corn cakes and rolls and agreeable breakfast dishes, and we were all so hungry.
Mr. Renour had been down to this other place on business, and there waited to board us sooner.
The country seemed to grow more desolate and grim as we went on. After breakfast we sat outside in the observation car together, and he told me all about it, and the way they prospect to find the ore. And everything one hears makes one respect their pluck and endurance more. He asked me to call him Nelson; he said Mr. Renour was so “kinder stiff” and he wasn’t used to it, so I did, but the good taste which characterizes everything about him made him never suggest he should be familiar with me. He was just as gentle and dear as anyone could be, and seemed to be trying to efface the remembrance in my mind that he had ever rather made love to me.
Life had always been so kind to him, he said, even though from a child he had always had to work so hard. He said the Senator was the biggest man he had ever seen (meaning by that the biggest soul), and it was owing to his help and encouragement and splendid advice, that he had been able to stand out against the other sharks who wanted to get the shares of his mine when at one moment he was a “bit shaky”; and now all was well, and he would soon be many times a millionaire. Then I asked him what he would do with it, and he said, “I’ll just make those nearest to me happy and then those further off; and then I’ll set my brains to devise some scheme to benefit my country; and p’r’aps you’d help me,” he said. “You great ladies in England think so much of the poor and suffering. I don’t want just to put my name on big charities; p’r’aps you’d suggest something which could be of value?”
His whole face is so fine and open, Mamma, and his lithe, sinewy figure reminds me of the Ludovici Mars; not quite so slender as Harry and Tom, but just as strong, and those balanced lines of rugged strength are quite as beautiful. I wonder what one of the meaty Easterners would look beside him, if they could both have nothing on and be made in bronze!
“I think I’d like to marry an English girl,” he said at last. “Our women are very beautiful and very smart, but yours have a tenderness which appeals to me. I could do with a mighty lot of love when once I took one for my own.” Then he said he had always kept his ideal of a woman, and when he found her she should have him, “body and heart and soul.” And think, Mamma, what a fortunate woman she would be, wouldn’t she?
He is quite different here to in France or on the boat; he has a quiet dignity and ease, and that perfect calm of a man of the world on his own ground. I think there must be something Irish about him, too, for he has a strain of sentiment and melancholy which can come directly after his most brilliant burst of spirits. We stayed there talking for about an hour undisturbed, and then the Senator opened the door and joined us.
“You are as quiet as mice, my children,” he said, “what have you been doing?”
And Nelson looked up at him, his eyes full of mist.
“Just dreamin’,” he said. “All on a bright spring morning.”
And now I must stop, Mamma, for this must be posted at the next station to catch the mail.
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
OSAGES CITY
THE GRAND HOTEL,
OSAGES CITY,
_Wednesday._
Dearest Mamma,–We arrived here last night and I am still enjoying myself more than I can say, and just after I wrote yesterday such an interesting thing happened. At lunch the Senator told us about a strange character who abides in these parts–an almost outlaw who has done such wild things and gets his money from heaven knows where. He is supposed to have murdered several men, and every incredible story fit for pirates of the Spanish Main has been tacked on to him–only of the land, not the sea. He is called “Ruby Mine Bill;” isn’t that a nice name! And no one cares to “run up against him,” because he is such a wonderful shot and does not hesitate to practise a little when things annoy him.
Octavia and I said we simply longed to see him, and Nelson, who had been talking to Lola (I have not said much of Lola, because she is really so in love with her husband she is not a great deal of use to other people), joined in the conversation, and said he had heard “Ruby-Mine-Bill” was expected in the town he (Nelson) had joined us at, and it was possible we might meet him at the next station where the trains would pass each other. We were thrilled, and crowded into the observation veranda as we got near, on the chance of catching a glimpse of him. We drew up on a rough track; it is a sort of junction with several lines, and the train from Osages was drawn up on the one farthest off, and both the Senator and Nelson exclaimed, because on its observation car there he was.
They shouted out, “Say, Bill, is that you?” And from among the four or five men who were leaning over the balcony one who looked like a respectable country piano tuner, or a plumber out for Sunday, called out, “You bet!” and began to come down the steps.
“Move along, Bill, and be introduced to some English ladies,” the Senator said; so with an easy slogging stride he came over, and the Senator presented him to us. He had a moustache and was most mild looking and about thirty-four. He was dressed in ordinary clothes, with a bowler hat, only no waistcoat, and a great leather belt round his waist. He expressed himself as proud to meet us, and when he heard I was married, too, his eyebrows went up in the most comic way. “Guess they pair in the kid pens over there,” he said! He was standing below us on the track, with his hands in both his trouser pockets, while he looked up at us with gentle grey eyes.
“Will you show our ladies how you can shoot, Bill?” the Senator asked, and Octavia and I implored him to be kind and do so. “Runs rather fine,” he said, spitting slowly to some distance; “reckon she’s about levantin, but I never refuse ladies’ requests.” Nelson had rushed to the dining saloon and was back as he spoke with two empty bottles. “Bill’s” train was just going to move, already making groaning noises. He put his hand under his coat in a leisurely way and pulled out his “gun” (you can be arrested immediately for wearing one concealed)! Then his train gave a snort and got slowly in motion, so he was obliged to run. He turned his head over his shoulders and looked back as Nelson flung one bottle in the air–bang! It went into atoms on the ground, and then, as he had almost reached the steps, running at full speed now, the Senator flung the other. It was high up, the most difficult shot even facing it, but tearing as fast as one could in the opposite direction to jump on to a moving train, it was a rather remarkable feat to be able to hit it, with just a glance backwards, wasn’t it, Mamma?! And no wonder people don’t care to “run up against him!” As the scraps of the bottle fell, he bounded on the steps and was dragged in by his companions, while with cheers from both trains and waving of hats we steamed our different ways. Tom was transported with admiration. How those things please English men, don’t they? And I am sure he thought far more of “Ruby-Mine-Bill” than all the clever people we had met in New York. And certainly skill of this sort does affect one. The Senator can shoot like that. Nelson told us. “He’s had some near squeaks in his life and come off top; and everyone in this country knows him.”
The land along which we were passing, and indeed what has been ever since we entered the mining country, is the most bleak and desolate on the earth, I should think; not a living thing or blade of grass except once when we passed a stream where low bushes bordered it; only barren hills with a little scrub on them and a rough stony surface. What courage to have started exploring on such places!
We passed one or two smaller camps on the way to Osages, with board shanties and a shaft here and there sticking up from the earth. “All going on,” the Senator said. I can’t tell you, Mamma, the fun we had in the car; the party is so harmonious, and Nelson and the friend such amusing people to keep it going. The friend is too attractive, that long lean shape like Tom, and the same assurance of manner. Octavia says she has not enjoyed herself so much for years.
Towards evening we arrived at Osages, and a most wonderful wind-swept town it is. Imagine a bare plain of rubbly, stony ground, with a few not very high hills round it, with shafts piercing them, and then dotted all about on the outskirts with tents; then board houses of one story high, looking rather like sheds for gardeners’ tools, and then in the middle a few stone and frame habitations, and standing out among the rest the Nelson building, a hideous structure of grey stone making the corner of a block. We got from the train and climbed into motors; to see them seemed strange in such a wild; we ought to have been met by a Buffalo Bill stage coach;–but there they were. It was a gorgeous sunset, but a wind like a mistral cutting one in two, and such clouds of dust, that even driving to the hotel our hair all looked drab coloured. The hall was full of miners, some of them in what is as near an approach to evening dress as is permitted; that is, ordinary blue serge or flannel suits, with sometimes linen collars and ties; the others in the dress I have already told you about that Nelson wears. Nearly all were young, not twenty per cent. over forty, and none beyond fifty, and they were awfully nice-looking and strong, and couldn’t possibly have bruised if you hit them hard!
We raced through and up to our rooms, and can you believe it, Mamma, each bedroom had a splendid bath room, and all as modern as possible; there was not a sign of roughing it. The Senator said we were not really to dress as in the East–only “sort of Sunday.” He was greeted by everyone with adoring respect that yet had a casual ease in it, and when we were all bathed and combed and tidy we found he had a dinner party awaiting us–two women and about six men. The women were so nice and simple, but we naturally had not much chance to speak to them–the men were next us, superintendents of mines, and owners, and selected ones who have “made good.” They were such characters, and seemed to bring a breezy delightful atmosphere with them. The Eastern America seemed as far away as England; much farther really, because all these people have exactly the casual, perfectly sans gene manners of at home: not the “I’m as good as you, only one better,” but the sort that does not have to demonstrate because the thought has never entered its head. You know Octavia’s and Tom’s and Harry’s manner, Mamma;–well, just the same; I can’t describe it any other way. It is the real thing when you are not trying to impress anyone, just being you, and what you are. I can only say even if their words are astonishing slang and their grammar absent, they are the most perfect gentlemen, with the repose and unconsciousness of the original Clara Vere de Vere. They had all the extraordinary thoughtful kindness and chivalry which marks every American towards women, but they weren’t a bit auntish or grandmammaish. The sex is the same as in England, and as far as that quality I told you about, Mamma, you remember, they all seemed to have it; and going to Australia alone with them would have been a temptation, though I am sure they have none of them that wicked way of improving every possible occasion like Frenchmen and Englishmen; I mean, you know, some Englishmen, as I am sure, for instance, Harry is doing at the present moment over that horrible Mrs. Smith.
We had such fun at dinner. The one on my right was a lovely creature, about six foot six tall, with deep-set eyes and a scar up from one eyebrow into his thick hair, got, the Senator told us afterwards, in one of the usual shooting frays.
“We’ve been so mighty quiet, Nelson,” this man said leaning across the table to Mr. Renour, “since you went East. A garden for babes. Not a single gun handled in six months. Don’t rightly know what’s took us.” The girls at once said they would love to see some shooting and a twinkle came in one or two eyes, so I am sure they will try to get some up for us before we leave.
The restaurant was wonderful–this rough place miles in a desert and yet decent food! And think of the horrible, tasteless, pretentious mess cooking we have to put with in hotels in England anywhere except London. Whatever mood one might be in coming to America, even if it were fault finding and hostile, one would be convinced of their extraordinary go ahead ability, and be filled with respect for their energy. As for us who have grown to just love them we can’t say half what we feel.
Tom is perfectly happy. He understands every word of their slang, he says, and they understand him; and Octavia says it is because they are all sportsmen together, and have the same point of view. It won’t be us who have to make Tom stay away from the tarpons, he wants to himself now. Gaston, too, has risen to the occasion, and is being extra agreeable. I had a teeny scene with him in the lift as we came down. We were the last two. He reproached me for my caprice–years of devotion he said, did not count with me as much as “Ce Mineur with the figure of a bronze Mercury” (that is how he aptly described Nelson). He could bear it no more, and intended to cut me from his heart, and throw it at the feet of Mercedes. I said I thought it was an excellent place for it, and would please everyone, and he had my kindest blessing. He was so hurt. “Could I but have seen you minded!” he said, “my felicity would be greater,” so I promised I would bring tears somehow to my eyes, if that would satisfy him. Then, as he has really a sense of humour, Mamma, even if he is in an awkward position, between two loves, we both burst into peals of laughter; and he caught and kissed my hand, and said we would ever be friends and he adored me. So I said, “Bless you, my children,” and saw he sat by Mercedes at dinner, and all is smooth and happy, and Gaston is placed; and now I can really amuse myself with Nelson, who is more attractive than ever, to say nothing of a new one who had a roguish eye, and teeth as white as Harry’s, who peeped at me from across the table. But I must get on with the evening. Octavia and I wanted to see everything, gambling saloons, dance halls, fights, whatever was going, and as Lola has done it all before, she said she would stay with the girls, and have a little mild flutter in the saloon of the hotel at roulette while our stalwart cavaliers escorted us “around.” Gaston, too, remained behind with them; the Senator manoeuvred this, because he said, it was not wise to be with people who were quarrelsome, and Gaston is that now and then with his Latin blood.
We went first to a gambling saloon. Think of a huge room with no carpet and a horseshoe kind of bar up the middle, with every sort of drink on it; and up at the end and round the sides gambling tables of all kinds of weird games that I did not understand, and can’t explain–except roulette. There were hundreds of men in there, of all sorts, miners in their miners’ dress; team drivers, superintendents–every species. If one said “gambling hell” in Europe it would sound as if it meant a most desperate place, with people drunk, and impossible to go into, but here not at all! Naturally, Octavia and I looked remarkable, although we were dressed in the plainest clothes, and yet not a soul stared or was the least rude. The only thing that was horrid was their spitting on the floor, but we tried not to see that. Otherwise not a soul was drunk or rude or anything but courteous. And such interesting types! Massed together one could judge of them, and the remarkable thing was there was no smell, like there would have been in any other country where workmen in their ordinary clothes were grouped together;–only tobacco smoke.
They were some of them playing very high, and it looked so quaint to see a rough miner putting $500 on a single throw. We had a sheriff among our party. There was to have been a raid of the state police on this particular saloon, for some new rule which had been made, but the sheriff quietly said the law might wait a night; as they were showing round some English ladies! Now, don’t you call that exquisite courtesy, Mamma? And what a sensible sort of administration of law, knowing its suitable time like that, the essence of tact and good taste, I call it; but I can’t say in every way what darlings all these Westerners are. Our escort presented numbers of them to us, and without exception they had beautiful manners, the quiet ease of perfect breeding. It is upsetting all Octavia’s theories, and she is coming round to Mrs. Van