A Daughter of the Middle Border Part 27

What a vacation it had been! Pike's Peak, Cripple Creek, Glen Eyrie, our camp beside the singing stream at Baldy, Sierra Blanca, Wagon Wheel Gap, Creede, Red Mountain, Lake City, Slumgullion, Tennessee Pa.s.s, n.o.ble dinners on the car, trail-side lunches of goose-liver and sandwiches and jam, iced watermelon and champagne in hot camps on the mesas--all these scenes and experiences came back accompanied by memories of the good talk, the cosmopolitan humor, of the Palmers and their guests.

From this royal ease, this incessant s.h.i.+ft of scene and personality, we returned to our shabby old homestead brooding patiently beneath its maples, reflecting upon the glittering panorama which our magic lamp and flying carpet had wrought so potently to display. As I had started out to educate my wife in Western Life, it must be admitted that this summer had been singularly successful in bringing to her a knowledge of the splendors of Colorado and a perception of the varied character of its population.--Best of all she returned in perfect health and happy as a girl.

"This being married to a poor novelist isn't so bad after all," I remarked with an air of self-congratulation. "True, our rewards come without reason, but they sometimes rhyme with joy and pride."

Strange to say, I got nothing out of this summer, in a literary way, except the story which I called _The Steadfast Widow Delaney_, a conception which came to me on my solitary ascent of Sierra Blanca. All the beauty and drama, all the humor and contrast of the trip with the Palmers, had no direct fictional value to me. It is hard to explain why, but so it was. I did not so much as write a poem based on that gorgeous experience.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The White House Musicale

The Homestead on the day of our return, was not only a violent contrast to the castle in Glen Eyrie, but its eaves were dripping with water and its rooms damp and musty. It was sodden with loneliness. Father was in Dakota and mother was away never to return, and the situation would have been quite disheartening to me had it not been for Zulime who did not share my melancholy, or if she did she concealed it under that smiling stoicism which she derived from her deeply philosophic father. She pretended to be glad of the peace of our plain reality.

Life with her was not lacking in variety. From the splendors of Colorado and the luxury of private cars and palatial chambers, she now dropped, with a suddenness which should have been disconcerting, to the level of scouring pots and cooking her own meals. It was several days before we succeeded in finding a cook. "This is what it means to be the wife of an unpopular novelist," I said to her.

"I'm not complaining. It's fun," she replied.

The house was soon in order and when my brother arrived later in the week, she greeted him with the composure of a leisured hostess. In such wise she met every demand upon her.

It was Franklin's first night at home since mother went away, and I labored to cheer him with the fiction that she was "on a visit" to some of her old friends and would soon return.

The Junior as I called him, was in a serious mood for another reason.

After more than twelve years of life as an actor, he had decided to quit the stage, something the player is traditionally supposed to be incapable of doing, and he had come to me for aid and encouragement. "I have a good opportunity to go into the management of a rubber plantation," he explained, "and I'd like to have you buy out my share in the Homestead in order to give me a little money to work on."

To this I agreed, although I had grave doubts of the rubber business. To have him give up the stage I considered a gain, for while he was a capable player of middle-aged character parts, I saw no lasting success ahead of him--on the contrary I imagined him getting into a more and more precarious condition. Nothing is more hopeless than an elderly actor out of a job and subject to the curt dismissals of contemptuous managers. Frank had always been gayly unconcerned about the future and he was not greatly troubled now; he was merely desirous of a fixed home and a place to vote. With the promise of my cash for his share of the Homestead, and my support in his Mexican venture, he cheered up markedly and went away almost as carefree as a boy.

In the quiet of the days which followed I worked each morning, sometimes on _The Steadfast Widow Delaney_, and sometimes on a revision of the novel which I had variously and from time to time called _On Special Duty_, and _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_. Having been accepted by Lorimer, this story was about to be printed under this latter t.i.tle as a serial in the _Post_.

Each afternoon I saddled my Klondike horse who was in need of exercise, and galloped about over the hills for an hour or two. We were familiar figures by this time, and the farmers when they saw me leaping a pasture fence or climbing a hill, would smile (I a.s.sume that they smiled), and say, there goes that literary cuss, or words to that general effect. I took a boyish delight in showing that Ladrone would walk a log or leap a ditch at the mere touch of my heel.

Occasionally I went to LaCrosse with Zulime to visit our good friends the Eastons, and it was on one of these visits that I had my first long ride in an automobile. Incredible as it may seem now, there were very few motor cars in the county in 1901, and Easton's machine would excite laughter to-day. It was dumpy of form and noisy and uncertain of temper, but it made the trip to Winona and _almost_ home again. It broke down helplessly in the last mile, a treachery which caused its owner the deepest chagrin, although it gave me the final touch for a humorous story of our outing, a sketch which I sold to _Harper's Weekly_. The editor had a fine ill.u.s.tration made for it, one which gave further force to my description of the terrific speed with which we whirled through the landscape. As I recall it we rose to nearly seventeen miles an hour!

As _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, actually began to appear in _The Post_, I became sharply concerned with the question of preparing it for book publication. I decided to go to New York and look the ground over very carefully before making selection of another publisher.

My life in the Homestead was comfortable, almost too comfortable. It lacked stimulus. Riding my horse, gathering hickory nuts, and playing tennis or "rummy," were all very well in their way, but they left me dissatisfied, and after the cold winds began to blow and my afternoons were confined to the house, I stagnated. Like Prudden, Grinnell and other of my trailer friends, I was disposed to pitch my winter camp somewhere on Manhattan Island. The Rocky Mountains for four months in summer and the rest of the year in New York City appeared an ideal division of my life for a western novelist.

I had some reason to think this arrangement was also satisfactory to my wife. To her the Wilderness was a strange and wonderful place in which to try her powers of endurance, but the trail had none of the charms of a.s.sociation which it possessed for me. She was quite ready to accompany me to the city although she professed to be content with Neshonoc. She was entirely urban whereas I was an absurd mixture of pioneer and trailer, fictionist and farmer.

We left West Salem in late October and in less than three days were settled in the little hotel in Fifteenth Street where we had lived during two previous winters. My confidence in my new novel was not sufficient to warrant me in paying more than twenty dollars per week for our little apartment, and as for Zulime--she professed to wonder how I dared to pay as much as seventeen.

One by one and two by two our faithful friends called, Burroughs, Gilder, Howells, Marion and Edward MacDowell, the Pages, Juliet Tompkins--no one appeared to think ill of us because we returned to our shabby little suite. We dined at Katherine Herne's, finding James A., "away," and with Frank Norris and his wife who were (like ourselves), just beginning to feel a little more secure of a living, while from Seton and Bach.e.l.ler who were pa.s.sing from glory to glory, we had kindly invitations to visit their new houses, for both of them were building, Bach.e.l.ler at Sound Beach and Seton at Coscob.

Seton admitted to me that he had already acquired five times the amount he had once named as the summit of his hopes, and Bach.e.l.ler awed me by the quiet ease of his way of life. In the opulent presence of these men, I sang a very meek and slender song. I hated to admit my poverty, but what was the use of making any concealment?

It remains to say that neither Bach.e.l.ler nor Seton expressed in the slightest degree the sense of superiority which their larger royalties might have warranted. I am quite sure they never went so far as to feel sorry for me although they very naturally rejoiced in their own triumphant progress. In some ways I envied them, but I begrudged them nothing.

It chanced that the Setons were far enough along with their building to announce a House Warming, and on New Year's Day, Zulime and I were fortunate enough to be included in the list of their guests. On the Sat.u.r.day train we found Lloyd Osbourne, Richard Le Gallienne and several others whom we knew and on arrival at the new house on its rocky ledge above the lake, we found that the party also included Mary Fanton, Carl Lumholz, Emery Pottle and Gertrude Lynch.

Seton and I spent part of the afternoon fixing up a teepee which we constructed out of an old Sibley tent, while the other guests skated on the pond. What a dinner we enjoyed that night! What youthful spirits we brought to it! Afterward we sang and danced--we all danced, even Zulime danced for the first time in her life--so she said.

No one had gray hair, no one doubted the future, no one acknowledged impending cloud. We toasted the longevity of "Wyndygoul" and the continued success of its builder. We pledged eternal allegiance to our hostess, and so without a care of the future, watched the New Year dawn.

At two in the morning when I crept away to my bed, the tom-tom and the piano were both sounding out with almost undiminished vigor. It was a night to remember and I do remember it with the pleasure an old man has in the days of his early manhood--not so very early either for I was on the hither side of forty!

Upon our return to the city I found a letter from Bok with a check for eight hundred dollars in it. This was in response to a note of mine respecting an offer of seven hundred and fifty. "Better make it eight hundred," I wrote, and so, in my triumph, I led Zulime to Vantine's and there purchased for her a carved gold ring set with three rose diamonds, the handsomest present I had ever dared to buy for her. "This is to make amends for the measly little engagement ring you were forced to accept,"

I remarked by way of explanation.

She protested at my reckless waste of money (as she had done with regard to the brown cloak), but to no avail, and thereafter if she occasionally brought the conversation round to Oriental jewelry, I am sure she is not to be blamed. She is still wearing that ring, though she no longer finds the same girlish pleasure in displaying it.

The actual making of my serial into book form began soon after New Years, for I find records of my contract with Harper and Bros., and the arrival of bundles of proof. By the end of February the book was substantially made and ready for distribution, and a handsome book it was--to me. Whatever it had started out to be, it had ended as a fictional study of the red man in his attempt to walk the white man's road, and as a concept of his tragic outlook I still think it worth while.

The three men in control of the reorganized firm of Harper and Bros., George Harvey, Frederick Duneka and Frank Leigh, all professed a firm belief in _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, and promised me such a boost as I had never had. This promise they set about to fulfill.

As the day of publication came on they took generous squares of s.p.a.ce in the daily papers, and whole pages in the magazines. They astonished and somewhat daunted me by putting an almost life-size portrait on the bill boards of all the elevated roads, and then to the consternation of my wife, _The Weekly_ published a full page reproduction of her photograph, a portrait which they had obtained from me to use, as I supposed, in the ordinary way in the literary column of the Sunday papers. I had no idea of its being a full page ill.u.s.tration. I was troubled and uneasy about this for a day or two, but realizing that the firm was doing its best to make my book known to the public, I could not with justice complain. In truth the use of the portrait seemed not to make any difference one way or the other. It certainly did Zulime no harm.

At my request the firm made up a very handsome special copy of the novel which I sent to President Roosevelt, with a word of explanation concerning the purpose which underlaid the writing of the tale.

Early in March the book appeared with everything in its favor. True there was opportunity for controversy in its delineation of aggressive cattlemen, but those who had so bitterly criticized my pictures of the prairie life in _Main Traveled Roads_, were off their guard with respect of the mountains. My reviewers quite generally accepted the novel as a truthful presentation of life on an Indian reservation in the nineties.

Furthermore my sympathetic interpretation of the Army's att.i.tude toward the red men caused the story to be quite generally commended by the officers. This surprised and delighted me, but I was especially gratified by Roosevelt's hearty praise of it. "It is your best work so far," he wrote me, "and I am in full sympathy with your position."

Requests for stories, interviews, articles and biographical notes, flowed in upon me. It really looked like a late second arrival of Hamlin Garland. Not since the excitement of putting _Main Traveled Roads_ on the market had I been so hopeful and in the midst of my other honors came a note from the President, inviting me to visit him, and with it a card to a musicale at the White House.

Life in the East as the reader can see, was very alluring to Zulime as well as to me, and though as April came on, we both felt the call of the West, I am not sure whether we would have wrought our courage to the point of deserting our little apartment on Fifteenth Street, had it not been for the President's invitation, which was in effect a command, an honor as well as a pleasure, which we did not think of disregarding.

As I had not voted the Republican ticket and had no political standing with the Administration, this invitation was personal. It came from Roosevelt as a friend and fellow-trailer--a fact which enhanced its value to me. We began at once to plan our return to Chicago in such wise that it would include a week in Was.h.i.+ngton, which we had not visited since our wedding journey.

It must have been about this time that the Annual Meeting of the Inst.i.tute took place. I recall Howells presiding with timidity and very evident embarra.s.sment when it came to the duty of putting certain resolutions to vote. He seemed sad and old that night--indeed as I looked around the table, I was startled to find how many of the men I had considered "among the younger writers" were gray and haggard. Mabie, Page, Hopkinson Smith, Gilder and Stedman--all were older than I had remembered them. Edward MacDowell, who was sitting beside me, remarked upon the change, and I replied, "Yes, you and I are young only by contrast. To Frank Norris and Stewart White, we are already veterans."

[That was twenty years ago, and I am three score years and more, and most of those who dined with me that night are in their graves, only Page, of all the group, is left. Another generation altogether is on the stage whilst I and Stewart White are grouped together as "older men." I am seeing literary history made whether I am credited with making any of it, myself, or not. At times I have an appalling sense of the onward sweep of the years. Are they carrying us to higher grounds in fiction and in other arts, or are they descending to lower levels of motive and workmans.h.i.+p?]

It was glorious spring when we reached Was.h.i.+ngton, and in the glow of my momentary sense of triumph we went to one of the best hotels and enjoyed for the moment the sense of being successful and luxurious folk.

In calling on the President the following day I was a little taken aback by his frankness in speaking of my changing point of view. "You have pictured the reverse side of the pioneer," he said with a gleam of mischief in his eyes. "In your study of the Indian's case you have discovered the fact that the borderer is often the aggressor and sometimes the thief." He repeated his praise of the book and then said, "I shall make use of your knowledge of the conditions on the Western reservations. You and George Bird Grinnell know what is going on out there and I intend to use you both--unofficially."

To this I agreed, and when he gave me a card to the Secretary of the Interior and told me to take up with the Commissioner certain reforms which I had suggested, I put the card in my pocket and set about the task. It was only a small card, a visiting card, and when, in my ignorance of official life, I walked in on the Secretary with that tiny slip of pasteboard in my hand, I had no idea of its explosive power. The Secretary who was lounging at his desk like a tired and discouraged old man, did not think me important enough to warrant a rise out of his chair, until he read the card which I handed to him. After that I owned the office! That card made me the personal representative of the President--for the moment.

On the following day Roosevelt allowed me to sit in at some of the meetings in the Executive Chamber, and it was at one of these that I met for the first time the most engaging Chief of the Forestry Bureau, Gifford Pinchot. At night Zulime and I dined with William Dudley Foulke and at nine o'clock we went to the White House Musicale.

That musicale at the White House is one of the starry nights in Zulime's life, as well as in my own, for not only did we meet the President and Mrs. Roosevelt and many of the best known figures in American art, letters, politics, and statesmans.h.i.+p, we also heard Paderewski play as we had never heard him play before.

We were seated close to the piano and when that potent, shock-haired Pole spread his great hands above the keys I fancied something of the tiger in the lithe grace of his body, and in his face a singular and sultry solemnity was expressed. Inspired no doubt by the realization that he was playing before a mighty ruler--a ruler by the divine right of brain power,--he played with magnetic intensity. Something mysterious, something grandly moving went out from his fingers. No other living musician could, at that moment have equaled him.