Gala-Days Part 4

I never walked down Broadway without seeing a dozen white trunks, and every white trunk that I saw I was fully convinced was mine, if I could only get at it. By and by mine came, and I blossomed. I arrayed myself for morning, noon, and night, and everything else that came up, and was, as the poet says,--

"Prodigious in change, And endless in range,"--

for I would have scorned not to be as good as the best. The result was, that in three days I touched bottom. But then we went away, and my reputation was saved. I don't believe anybody ever did a larger business on a smaller capital; but I put a bold face on it. I cherish the hope that n.o.body suspected I could not go on in that ruinous way all summer,--I, who in three days had mustered into service every dress and sash and ribbon and that I had had in three years or expected to have in three more. But I never will, if I can help it, hold my head down where other people are holding their heads up.

I would not be understood as decrying or depreciating dress. It is a duty as well as a delight. Mrs. Madison is reported to have said that she would never forgive a young lady who did not dress to please, or one who seemed pleased with her dress. And not only young ladies, but old ladies and old gentlemen, and everybody, ought to make their dress a concord and not a discord. But Saratoga is pitched on a perpetual falsetto, and stuns you. One becomes sated with an interminable piece de resistance of full dress. At the seaside you bathe; at the mountains you put on stout boots and coa.r.s.e frocks and go a-fis.h.i.+ng; but Saratoga never "lets up,"--if I may be pardoned the phrase.

Consequently, you see much of crinoline and little of character. You have to get at the human nature just as Th.o.r.eau used to get at bird-nature and fish-nature and turtle-nature, by sitting perfectly still in one place and waiting patiently till it comes out. You see more of the reality of people in a single day's tramp than in twenty days of guarded monotone. Now I cannot conceive of any reason why people should go to Saratoga, except to see people. True, as a general thing, they are the last objects you desire to see, when you are summering. But if one has been cooped up in the house or blocked up in the country during the nine months of our Northern winter, he may have a mighty hunger and thirst, when he is thawed out, to see human faces and hear human voices; but even then Saratoga is not the place to go to, on account of this very artificialness. By artificial I do not mean deceitful. I saw n.o.body but nice people there, smooth, kind, and polite. By artificial I mean wrought up. You don't get at the heart of things. Artificialness spreads and spans all with a crystal barrier,--invisible, but palpable. Nothing was left to grow and go at its own sweet will. The very springs were paved and pavilioned. For green fields and welling fountains and a possibility of brooks, which one expects from the name, you found a Greek temple, and a pleasure-ground, graded and gra.s.sed and pathed like a cemetery, wherein nymphs trod daintily in elaborate morning-costume. Everything took pattern and was elaborate. Nothing was left to the imagination, the taste, the curiosity. A bland, smooth, smiling surface baffled and blinded you, and threatened profanity. Now profanity is wicked and vulgar; but if you listen to the reeds next summer, I am not sure that you will not hear them whispering, under, "Thunder!"

For the restorative qualities of Saratoga I have nothing to say. I was well when I went there; nor did my experience ever furnish me with any disease that I should consider worse than an intermittent attack of her spring waters. But whatever it may do for the body, I do not believe it is for the soul. I do not believe that such places, such scenes, such a fas.h.i.+on of life ever nourishes a vigorous womanhood or manhood.

Taken homeopathically, it may be harmless; but become a habit, a necessity, it must vitiate, enervate, destroy. Men can stand it, for the sea-breezes and the mountain-breezes may have full sweep through their life; but women cannot, for they just go home and live air-tight.

If the railroad-men at Saratoga tell you that you can go straight from there to the foot of Lake George, don't you believe a word of it.

Perhaps you can, and perhaps you cannot; but you are not any more likely to "can" for their saying so. We left Saratoga for Fort-William-Henry Hotel in full faith of an afternoon ride and a sunset arrival, based on repeated and unhesitating a.s.surances to that effect. Instead of which, we went a few miles, and were then dumped into a blackberry-patch, where we were informed that we must wait seven hours. So much for the afternoon ride through summer fields and "Sunset on Lake George," from the top of a coach. But I made no unmanly laments, for we were out of Saratoga, and that was happiness.

We were among cows and barns and homely rail-fences, and that was comfort; so we strolled contentedly through the pasture, found a river,--I believe it was the Hudson; at any rate, Halicarna.s.sus said so, though I don't imagine he knew; but he would take oath it was Acheron rather than own up to ignorance on any point whatever,--watched the ca.n.a.l-boats and boatmen go down, marvelled at the arbor-vitae trees growing wild along the river-banks, green, hale, stately, and symmetrical, against the dismal mental background of two little consumptive shoots bolstered up in our front yard at home, and dying daily, notwithstanding persistent and affectionate nursing with "flannels and rum," and then we went back to the blackberry-station and inquired whether there was nothing celebrated in the vicinity to which visitors of received Orthodox creed should dutifully pay their respects, and were gratified to learn that we were but a few miles from Jane McCrea and her Indian murderers. Was a carriage procurable?

Well, yes, if the ladies would be willing to go in that. It wasn't very smart, but it would take 'em safe,--as if "the ladies" would have raised any objections to going in a wheelbarrow, had it been necessary, and so we bundled in. The hills were steep, and our horse, the property of an advent.i.tious by-stander, was of the Rosinante breed; we were in no hurry, seeing that the only thing awaiting us this side the sunset was a blackberry-patch without any blackberries, and we walked up hill and sc.r.a.ped down, till we got into a lane which somebody told us led to the Fort, from which the village, Fort Edward, takes its name. But, instead of a fort, the lane ran full tilt against a pair of bars.

"Now we are lost," I said, sententiously.

"A gem of countless price," pursued Halicarna.s.sus, who never quotes poetry except to destroy my equilibrium.

"How long will it be profitable to remain here?" asked Grande, when we had sat immovable and speechless for the s.p.a.ce of five minutes.

"There seems to be nowhere else to go. We have got to the end," said Halicarna.s.sus, roaming as to his eyes over into the wheat-field beyond.

"We might turn," suggested the Anakim, looking bright.

"How can you turn a horse in this knitting-needle of a lane?" I demanded.

"I don't know," replied Halicarna.s.sus, dubiously, "unless I take him up in my arms, and set him down with his head the other way,"--and immediately turned him deftly in a corner about half as large as the wagon.

The next lane we came to was the right one, and being narrow, rocky, and rough, we left our carriage and walked.

A whole volume of the peaceful and prosperous history of our beloved country could be read in the fact that the once belligerent, life-saving, death-dealing fort was represented by a hen-coop; yet I was disappointed. I was hungry for a ruin,--some visible hint of the past. Such is human nature,--ever p.r.o.ne to be more impressed by a disappointment of its own momentary gratification than by the most obvious well-being of a nation but, glad or sorry, of Fort Edward was not left one stone upon another. Several single stones lay about, promiscuous rather than belligerent. Flag-staff and palisades lived only in a few straggling bean-poles. For the heavy booming of cannon rose the "quauk!" of ducks and the cackling of hens. We went to the spot which tradition points out as the place where Jane McCrea met her death. River flowed, and raftsmen sang below; women stood at their was.h.i.+ng-tubs, and white-headed children stared at us from above; nor from the unheeding river or the forgetful weeds came or cry or faintest wail of pain.

When we were little, and geography and history were but printed words on white paper, not places and events, Jane McCrea was to us no suffering woman, but a picture of a low-necked, long-skirted, scanty dress, long hair grasped by a naked Indian, and two unnatural-looking hands raised in entreaty. It was interesting as a picture, but it excited no pity, no horror, because it was only a picture. We never saw women dressed in that style. We knew that women did not take journeys through woods without bonnet or shawl, and we spread a veil of ignorant, indifferent incredulity over the whole. But as we grow up, printed words take on new life. The latent fire in them lights up and glows. The mystic words throb with vital heat, and burn down into our souls to an answering fire. As we stand, on this soft summer day, by the old tree which tradition declares to have witnessed that fateful scene, we go back into a summer long ago, but fair, and just like this.

Jane McCrea is no longer a myth, but a young girl, blooming and beautiful with the roses of her seventeen years. Farther back still, we see an old man's darling, little Jenny of the Manse, a light-hearted child, with st.u.r.dy Scotch blood leaping in her young veins,--then a tender orphan, sheltered by a brother's care,--then a gentle maiden, light-hearted no longer, heavy-freighted, rather, but with a priceless burden,--a happy girl, to whom love calls with stronger voice than brother's blood, stronger even than life. Yonder in the woods lurk wily and wary foes. Death with unspeakable horrors lies in ambush there; but yonder also stands the soldier lover, and possible greeting, after long, weary absence, is there. What fear can master that overpowering hope? Estrangement of families, political disagreement, a separated loyalty, all melt away, are fused together in the warmth of girlish love. Taxes, representation, what things are these to come between two hearts? No Tory, no traitor is her lover, but her own brave hero and true knight. Woe! woe! the eager dream is broken by mad war-whoops! alas! to those fierce wild men, what is love, or loveliness? Pride, and pa.s.sion, and the old accursed hunger for gold flame up in their savage b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Wrathful, loathsome fingers clutch the long, fair hair that even the fingers of love have caressed but with reverent half-touch,--and love and hope and life go out in one dread moment of horror and despair. Now, through the reverberations of more than fourscore years, through all the tempest-rage of a war more awful than that, and fraught, we hope, with a grander joy, a clear, young voice, made sharp with agony, rings through the shuddering woods, cleaves up through the summer sky, and wakens in every heart a thrill of speechless pain. Along these peaceful banks I see a bowed form walking, youth in his years, but deeper furrows in his face than can plough, stricken down from the heights of ambition and desire, all the vigor and fire of manhood crushed and quenched beneath the horror of one fearful memory.

Sweet summer sky, bending above us soft and saintly, beyond your blue depths is there not Heaven?

"We may as well give Dobbin his oats here," said Halicarna.s.sus.

We had brought a few in a bag for luncheon, thinking it might help him over the hills. So the wagon was rummaged, the bag brought to light, and I was sent to one of the nearest houses to get something for him to eat out of. I did not think to ask what particular vessel to inquire for; but after I had knocked, I decided upon a meat-platter or a pudding-dish, and with the good woman's permission finally took both, that Halicarna.s.sus might have his choice.

"Which is the best?" I asked, holding them up.

He surveyed them carefully, and then said,--

"Now run right back and get a tumbler for him to drink out of, and a teaspoon to feed him with."

I started in good faith, from a mere habit of unquestioning obedience, but with the fourth step my reason returned to me, and I returned to Halicarna.s.sus and--kicked him. That sounds very dreadful and horrible, and it is, if you are thinking of a great, brutal, brogan kick, such as a stupid farmer gives to his patient oxen; but not, if you mean only a delicate, compact, penetrative nudge with the toe of a tight-fitting gaiter,--addressed rather to the conscience than the sole, to the sensibilities rather than the senses. The kick masculine is coa.r.s.e, boorish, unmitigated, predicable only of Calibans. The kick feminine is expressive, suggestive, terse, electric,--an indispensable instrument in domestic discipline, as women will bear me witness, and not at all incompatible with beauty, grace, and amiability. But, right or wrong, after all this interval of rest and reflection, in full view of all the circ.u.mstances, my only regret is that I did not kick him harder.

"Now go and fetch your own tools!" I cried, shaking off the yoke of servitude. "I won't be your stable-boy any longer!"

Then, perforce, he gathered up the crockery, marched off in disgrace, and came back with a mola.s.ses-hogshead, or a wash-tub, or some such overgrown mastodon, to turn his sixpenny-worth of oats into.

Having fed our mettlesome steed, the next thing was to water him. The Anakim remembered to have seen a pump with a trough somewhere, and they proposed to reconnoitre while we should "wait BY the wagon" their return. No, I said we would drive on to the pump, while they walked.

"You drive!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Halicarna.s.sus, contemptuously.

Now I do not, as a general thing, have an overweening respect for female teamsters. There is but one woman in the world to whose hands I confide the reins and my bones with entire equanimity; and she says, that, when she is driving, she dreads of all things to meet a driving woman. If a man said this, it might be set down to prejudice. I don't make any account of Halicarna.s.sus's a.s.sertion, that, if two women walking in the road on a muddy day meet a carriage, they never keep together, but invariably one runs to the right and one to the left, so that the driver cannot favor them at all, but has to crowd between them, and drive both into the mud. That is palpably interested false witness. He thinks it is fine fun to push women into the mud, and frames such flimsy excuses. But as a woman's thoughts about women, this woman's utterances are deserving of attention; and she says that women are not to be depended upon. She is never sure that they will not turn out on the wrong side. They are nervous; they are timid; they are unreasoning; they are reckless. They will give a horse a disconnected, an utterly inconsequent "cut," making him spring, to the jeopardy of their own and others' safety. They are not concentrative, and they are not infallibly courteous, as men are. I remember I was driving with her once between Newburyport and Boston. It was getting late, and we were very desirous to reach our destination before nightfall. Ahead of us a woman and a girl were jogging along in a country wagon. As we wished to go much faster than they, we turned aside to pa.s.s them; but just as we were well abreast, the woman started up her horse, and he skimmed over the ground like a bird. We laughed, and followed, well content. But after he had gone perhaps an eighth of a mile, his speed slackened down to the former jog-trot. Three times we attempted to pa.s.s before we really comprehended the fact that that infamous woman was deliberately detaining and annoying us. The third time, when we had so nearly pa.s.sed them that our horse was turning into the road again, she struck hers up so suddenly and unexpectedly that her wheels almost grazed ours. Of course, understanding her game, we ceased the attempt, having no taste for horse-racing; and nearly all the way from Newburyport to Rowley, she kept up that brigandry, jogging on, and forcing us to jog on, neither going ahead herself nor suffering us to do so,--a perfect and most provoking dog in a manger. Her girl-a.s.sociate would look behind every now and then to take observations, and I mentally hoped that the frisky Bucephalus would frisk his mistress out of the cart and break her ne--arm, or at least put her shoulder out of joint. If he did, I had fully determined in my own mind to hasten to her a.s.sistance, and shame her to death with delicate and a.s.siduous kindness. But fate lingered like all the rest of us. She reached Rowley in safety, and there our roads separated.

Whether she stopped there, or drove into Ethiopian wastes beyond, I cannot say; but have no doubt that the milk which she carried into Newburyport to market was blue, the b.u.t.ter frowy, and the potatoes exceedingly small.

Now do you mean to tell me that any man would have been guilty of such a thing? I don't mean, would have committed such discourtesy to a woman? Of course not; but would a man ever do it to a man? Never. He might try it once or twice, just for fun, just to show off his horse, but he never would have persisted in it till a joke became an insult, not to say a possible injury.

Still, as I was about to say, when that Rowley jade interrupted me, though I have small faith in Di-Vernonism generally, and no large faith in my own personal prowess, I did feel myself equal to the task of holding the reins while our Rosinante walked along an open road to a pump. I therefore resented Halicarna.s.sus's contemptuous tones, mounted the wagon with as much dignity as wagons allow, sat straight as an arrow on the driver's seat, took the reins in both hands,--as they used to tell me I must not, when I was a little girl, because that was women's way, but I find now that men have adopted it, so I suppose it is all right,--and proceeded to show, like Sam Patch, that some things can be done as well as others. Halicarna.s.sus and the Anakim took up their position in line on the other side of the road, hat in hand, watching.

"Go fast, and shame them," whispered Grande, from the back-seat, and the suggestion jumped with my own mood. It was a moment of intense excitement. To be or not to be. I jerked the lines. Pegasus did not start.

"C-l-k-l-k!" No forward movement.

"Huddup!" Still waiting for reinforcements.

"H-w-e." (Attempt at a whistle. Dead failure.)

(Sotto voce.) "O you beast!" (Piania.s.simo.) "Gee! Haw! haw! haw!"

with a terrible jerking of the reins.

A voice over the way, distinctly audible, utters the cabalistic words, "Two forty." Another voice, as audible, asks, "Which'll you bet on?"

It was not soothing. It did seem as if the imp of the perverse had taken possession of that terrible nag to go and make such a display at such a moment. But as his will rose, so did mine, and my will went up, my whip went with it; but before it came down, Halicarna.s.sus made s.h.i.+ft to drone out, "Wouldn't Flora go faster, if she was untied?"

To be sure, I had forgotten to unfasten him, and there those two men had stood and known it all the time! I was in the wagon, so they were secure from personal violence, but I have a vague impression of some "pet names" flying wildly about in the air in that vicinity. Then we trundled safely down the lane. We were to go in the direction leading away from home,--the horse's. I don't think he perceived it at first, but as soon he did snuff the fact, which happened when he had gone perhaps three rods, he quietly turned around and headed the other way, paying no more attention to my reins or my terrific "whoas!" than if I were a sleeping babe. A horse is none of your woman's-rights men. He is Pauline. He suffers not the woman to usurp authority over him. He never says anything nor votes anything, but declares himself unequivocally by taking things into his own hands, whenever he knows there is n.o.body but a woman behind him,--and somehow he always does know. After Halicarna.s.sus had turned him back and set him going the right way, I took on a gruff, manny voice, to deceive. Nonsense! I could almost see him snap his fingers at me. He minded my whip no more than he did a fly,--not so much as he did some flies. Grande said she supposed his back was all callous. I acted upon the suggestion, knelt down in the bottom of the wagon, and leaned over the dasher to whip him on his belly, then climbed out on the shafts and snapped about his ears; but he stood it much better than I. Finally I found that by taking the small end of the wooden whip-handle, and sticking it into him, I could elicit a faint flash of light; so I did it with a.s.siduity, but the moderate trot which even that produced was not enough to accomplish my design, which was to outstrip the two men and make them run or beg. The opposing forces arrived at the pump about the same time.

Halicarna.s.sus took the handle, and gave about five jerks. Then the Anakim took it and gave five more. Then they both stopped and wiped their faces.

"What do you suppose this pump was put here for?" asked Halicarna.s.sus.

"A milestone, probably," replied the Anakim.

Then they resumed their Herculean efforts till the water came, and then they got into the wagon, and we drove into the blackberries once more, where we arrived just in season to escape a thunder-shower, and pile merrily into one of several coaches waiting to convey pa.s.sengers in various directions as soon as the train should come.

It is very selfish, but fine fun, to have secured your own chosen seat and bestowed your own luggage, and have nothing to do but witness the anxieties and efforts of other people. The exquisite pleasure we enjoyed for fifteen minutes, edified at the last by hearing one of our coachmen call out, "Here, Rosey, this way!"--whereupon a manly voice, in the darkness, near us, soliloquized, "Respectful way of addressing a judge of the Supreme Court!" and, being interrogated, the voice informed us that "Rosey" was the vulgate for Judge Rosecranz; whereupon Halicarna.s.sus over the rampant democracy by remarking that the diminutive was probably a term of endearment rather than familiarity; whereupon the manly voice--if I might say it--snickered audibly in the darkness, and we all relapsed into silence. But could anything be more characteristic of a certain phase of the manners of our great and glorious country? Where are the Trollopes? Where is d.i.c.kens? Where is Basil Hall?

It is but a dreary ride to Lake George on a dark and rainy evening, unless people like riding for its own sake, as I do. If there are suns and stars and skies, very well. If there are not, very well too: I like to ride all the same. I like everything in this world but Saratoga. Once or twice our monotony was broken up by short halts before country inns. At one an excitement was going on. "Had a casualty here this afternoon," remarked a fresh pa.s.senger, as soon as he was fairly seated. A casualty is a windfall to a country village.

It is really worth while to have a head broken occasionally, for the wholesome stirring-up it gives to the heads that are not broken. On the whole, I question whether collisions and collusions do not cause as much good as harm. Certainly, people seem to take the most lively satisfaction in receiving and imparting all the details concerning them. Our pa.s.senger-friend opened his budget with as much complacence as ever did Mr. Gladstone or Disraeli, and with a confident air of knowing that he was going not only to enjoy a piece of good-fortune himself, but to administer a great gratification to us. Our "casualty"

turned out to be the affair of a Catholic priest, of which our informer spoke only in dark hints and with significant shoulder-shrugs and eyebrow-elevations, because it was "not exactly the thing to get out, you know"; but if it wasn't to get out, why did he let it out? and so from my dark corner I watched him as a cat does a mouse, and the lamp-light shone full upon him, and I understood every word and shrug, and I am going to tell it all to the world. I translated that the holy father had been "skylarking" in a boat, and in gay society had forgotten his vows of frugality and abstinence and general mortification of the flesh, and had become, not very drunk, but drunk enough to be dangerous, when he came ash.o.r.e and took a horse in his hands, and so upset his carriage, and gashed his temporal artery, and came to grief, which is such a casualty as does not happen every day, and I don't blame people for making the most of it. Then the moral was pointed, the tale adorned, and the impression deepened, solemnized, and struck home by the fact that the very horse concerned in the "casualty"

was to be fastened behind our coach, and the whole population came out with interns and umbrellas to tie him on,--all but one man, who was deaf, and stood on the piazza, anxious and eager to know everything that had been and was still occurring, and yet sorry to give trouble, and so compromising the matter and making it worse, as compromisers generally do, by questioning everybody with a deprecating, fawning air.