by Gwen Bristow
Oliver’s hands were quite clean, but they were rough and horny like the hands of a day-laborer, and they looked as if he had had to do some furious scrubbing to get out the dirt. He had thick sandy curls, neatly cut but unruly; and his face was extremely puzzling. It was a rather handsome face, with merry brown eyes and a humorous mouth, but it looked as if it had been put together from two faces that did not match. The upper half was deeply tanned and weathered, and the laughter-crinkles around his eyes were white in the tan, as though he had spent months laughing at an almost unbearable glory of sun. But his cheeks and chin were as white as those of a lady who never went outdoors without a veil to shield her complexion. Garnet tried not to stare at him, but to save her life she could not help giving a quizzical glance now and then at that face of his. Once Oliver caught her eye as she looked at him across the table. He gave her a little private smile, and she blushed.
After dinner they were alone for a few minutes. The boys had been sent upstairs to do their lessons, Mrs. Cameron stopped to speak to the servants, and Mr. Cameron went to get the brandy for his guest. Garnet led Oliver into the parlor. As he drew a chair to the fire for her, he smiled at her again, as though they had a secret agreement about something, and the crinkles around his eyes quivered with amusement as he said,
“I had it shaved off ten days ago, in the barber shop at the Astor House.”
“Oh!” Garnet exclaimed. She put her hand to her lips, embarrassed that he had noticed her attention. But she was glad to have the matter explained. “So that’s it,” she went on. “You’ve been wearing a beard!”
He nodded. “There’s no chance to shave on the trail. I looked like Robinson Crusoe when I got here. In fact, I still do.” As he spoke he turned over his great laboring hands. “I got these,” he said, “from dragging pack-mules over the mountains.”
“Tell me about it sometime,” she begged eagerly.
“I’d like to. If I asked you to go riding with me, would you say yes?”
“I—I don’t think my mother would let me,” Garnet answered, embarrassed again when she heard how regretful her voice sounded. “She doesn’t know you well enough.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Oliver said. He was about to say more, but just then her mother came into the parlor.
Instantly, Oliver’s manner changed. He became gracious and deferential, as a gentleman should be in the presence of ladies. Though he was quite formal, he managed to be so engaging that Mrs. Cameron began to think his unusual appearance was very interesting. A man who had traveled in strange countries would be sure to enliven a dinner-party. She was giving a dinner next week, for which she needed an extra man. Just then Oliver asked her casually if she knew his aunt, Mrs. William Fortescue of Bleecker Street. Of course Mrs. Cameron knew the Fortescues; her family had lived in New York since colonial times, and she knew everybody. Before he left, Oliver had been invited to the dinner.
When he came to dinner the next week, Oliver did not get, nor even seem to want, a chance to be alone with Garnet. He made himself charming to everybody, especially the older ladies. The next morning he sent flowers to his hostess.
Garnet saw him again, at a very dull party given by that very proper aunt of his, and at other parties given by other hostesses who were glad to find so courtly a bachelor. He paid Garnet no special attention, until one day when she received a note from him, asking if she would do him the honor of riding with him the next morning.
Garnet asked her mother. By this time Mrs. Cameron had no objection. She said she wished every man were as well-bred as Oliver Hale.
They mounted their horses in front of the house, and set out for the bridle-paths uptown. As they rode away, the wind spanked Garnet’s red cheeks and blew her hair in little black locks across her forehead. With a grin of admiration, Oliver exclaimed,
“Now at last we can say something to each other. I like you. I like you very much.”
It was so different from the way other men spoke to her that she did not know what to say. Oliver laughed mischievously and added,
“Let’s be honest. You hate those damn parties as much as I do. Don’t you?”
Nobody had ever said “damn” in her presence before. Garnet began a dignified rebuke, but Oliver laughed at her, and in another minute she was astonished to find herself laughing too. She asked, “Why have you been going to those parties if you didn’t like them?”
“You know as well as I do,” said Oliver. “I had to make a good impression on your mother before she’d have let me go out with you. Couldn’t you see how hard I was working?”
Garnet was not used to such candor. She said, “Why—thank you!”
“You’re welcome,” said Oliver. He laughed and sighed together. “You know, Miss Cameron, I’ve been out of the United States for eight years. I’d forgotten American girls were brought up to be such fools. But you didn’t look like a fool, even the first time I saw you.”
Much as she liked his frankness, she had no idea how to answer it. So instead of trying to answer, she asked,
“Where have you been all this time?”
“Mostly in California,” said Oliver.
Garnet frowned slightly. “Where?”
“California.” Oliver smiled with a trace of mischief.
Garnet searched her knowledge of the world. “You’re going to think I’m very ignorant, Mr. Hale,” she said after a moment. “But I never heard of that country.”
Oliver drew a long breath of relief. “Thank you,” he said.
“For what?” asked Garnet.
“For being honest enough to say you never heard of it. Most of them pretend they have. Then they call it something wrong and prove they haven’t. Don’t apologize. California is one of the most remote and least-known spots on earth. Very few people on this side ever heard of it.”
“Where is it?” she asked with interest.
“On the Pacific Ocean.”
Garnet puckered her lips, thinking. “You mean in Asia? Near China?”
“No, the Pacific Coast of North America. I’ll tell you about it some day. But not now. Let’s talk about you.”
The next thing she knew she was telling him about Miss Wayne’s Select Academy. She told him how they had taught her to stand and walk and curtsy, and how many times she had trudged up that circular staircase with a book balanced on her head. Oliver laughed and laughed, and asked how she had survived it with such a rosy healthy look about her. Garnet told him how often her red cheeks had embarrassed her. She told him about the time a new teacher had ordered her to go upstairs and wash her face, scandalized to think that a young lady should be painting herself like an actress; and how she had pressed her fingers to her cheeks and made white marks, which immediately turned red again, thus proving that no amount of soap would give her a ladylike pallor of complexion. She told him how the other girls had teased her about it. And how she had tried to drink vinegar to get pale, but the stuff made her sick. And how the teachers were always saying, “Miss Cameron, you must not walk so fast. It really does not look well. And Miss Cameron, please try not to laugh so much!”
Oliver was amused and sympathetic by turns. He told her he had a pretty good idea of what she was talking about. Young men at Harvard were not forbidden to laugh or to walk fast, but they were stuffed as full of nonsense as a Christmas turkey with chestnuts, and he hated it, and that was why he had gone out to the West.
Garnet had a sense of exhilaration. This was the sort of man she had been wanting to meet. They talked and talked, and by the time they came home—reluctantly, but she had to be prompt or her mother would have been concerned—she felt more at ease with him than she had ever felt with Henry Trellen or any of her other beaus.
She saw him again, at the opening of a new play at the Park Theater. They went riding together several times more. Garnet did not tell her mother how frankly they talked to each other. Mrs. Cameron had seen Oliver’s company manners, and liked them; Garnet did not want her to get the
idea that he was not a proper escort.
Besides their formal meetings, Oliver often had to call at her home. Outfitting a wagon train for the prairies was no simple matter. Her father was handling a good deal of Oliver’s business for him. If Oliver happened to call when her parents were not at home, naturally the servant would bring him in to be received by the young lady of the house. It was only courteous for Garnet to say, “Won’t you sit down for a few minutes, Mr. Hale, and get warm by the fire?”
He had been dropping in for several weeks before she realized that he had a mysterious genius for knowing when everybody would be out but herself. By this time she was enjoying his visits too much to comment on this to her parents. She would say, “Oh by the way, father, Mr. Hale came by today with a note for you. I put it on your desk.” She felt guilty, but not guilty enough to say that instead of stopping for five minutes Oliver had stayed an hour.
One morning in January, 1845, Garnet was at home practicing her music. It was a cold, bright day, and when she glanced up from the piano she could see ice flashing on the trees outside. As the sun struck the ice it sent little rainbows skittering among the branches. Garnet enjoyed watching it. She loved exciting weather, and she loved sun and rain and crackly trees and the way things grew.
Garnet’s piano was in the small parlor. This was the room they used every day, to spare the big formal parlor on the other side of the hall. The small parlor was not a luxurious room, but it was a very pleasant one, with bookcases and good pictures, and deep cushioned chairs. On the table lay this morning’s New York Herald and New York Sun, and the January issues of Graham’s Magazine and Godey’s Lady’s Book. After a walk the other day, Garnet’s father had brought in some pine-twigs with cones, which he had arranged on the mantel over the fireplace. He liked having green things indoors in bitter weather. Like every other room in the house, the small parlor had a look of good taste and simple comfort.
As Garnet played the piano, the light struck blue flashes from her black hair and danced up and down the folds of her dress. It was a charming dress, made of sheer white wool printed with little sprigs of red flowers. The bodice was closed in front with a row of red silk buttons, and the skirt spread from her slim waistline and rippled on the floor around her. Her fingers were busy on the keys. Nobody would have guessed that she had declined her mother’s invitation to go shopping because she had a secret hope in her mind.
She was hoping Oliver would call again this morning. The excuse she had given her mother was that she had such a lot of practicing to do. Her nineteenth birthday had occurred this month—such a little while after Christmas—and on Christmas and her birthday both she had received a lot of new music among her presents. It was important to learn the pieces, so when her friends called she would be ready to entertain them with the music they had given her. Mrs. Cameron was upstairs now, putting on her bonnet and shawl. She approved of Garnet’s decision to stay at home. She was glad Garnet was so careful about showing appreciation for gifts.
Garnet’s conscience pinched her slightly. It had not been really a lie, for she did have to practice. But though her mother was a darling, much more reasonable than most people, she certainly would not have approved of Garnet’s being alone with any young man as much as she had been alone with Oliver this winter. She would have thought it forward and unladylike, and dangerous. And while Mrs. Cameron would have begged mercy for a forger or a thief, she had no patience with girls who were forward and unladylike.
Garnet finished the waltz she was playing, and put a new quadrille in its place. As she began to play the quadrille she heard the door open. Glancing around, she saw her mother in the doorway.
Mrs. Cameron was thirty-eight years old. She was not a beauty and never had been, but she was a striking woman, tall and dark, with a figure nearly as slim as Garnet’s. Ready now for the street in a costume of blending shades of green, with a camel’s hair shawl and a bonnet with a sweeping plume, she was smiling happily. She loved shopping, and meeting her friends among the gorgeous displays at Stewart’s.
As she saw her mother, Garnet turned on the piano-stool and stood up. Mrs. Cameron smiled. She was proud of Garnet’s beautiful manners.
“I’m going now, my dear,” said Mrs. Cameron. “Is there anything I can get for you?”
“Could I have some new pink ribbon for my white cashmere?” asked Garnet. “The old ribbon got streaked. I think the iron was too hot.”
“Why yes, I’ll look for some. Good heavens,” Mrs. Cameron exclaimed, coming toward the fireplace, “have the boys scratched up that easy-chair again?” She bent to look at some unmistakable scuffs on the mahogany, shook her head and sighed. “The way those little Hessians tumble about, you’d think we ran a gymnasium.” She slapped the chair playfully, as though annoyed with it for being unable to resist the games of her two healthy young sons. “Well, it’s got to be revarnished. I’ll stop in at Osgood’s this morning and tell them to send for it.”
She started for the door, but turned around.
“Oh dear, I’m almost forgetting what I came to tell you.” Quite unaware that she was bringing great news, she took a thick folded sheaf of paper from her muff. “Here’s a list of goods your father left for Mr. Hale. He’ll call for it some time this morning.”
Garnet felt a tingle down her backbone. As she took the papers she tried to look politely interested, as though this was no more important than a scuffed chair. “Yes, Mother,” she said, “I’ll give it to Mr. Hale when he comes by.”
“And do keep up the fires, Garnet. It’s very cold.” Mrs. Cameron kissed her prettily gloved fingertips and went out.
Left alone, Garnet laid the folded sheaf of paper on the table. She went to the piano and played through a few more bars of music. When she heard the front door close, her hands dropped into her lap. She went back to the table, unfolded the papers, and looked at the writing.
It was a list of merchandise, of the sort Oliver was buying from the estate of the late Mr. Selkirk. Two thousand bolts of calico, six hundred bolts of white muslin, four hundred frying pans, one thousand packages of needles, and so forth. Garnet put the list back on the table. Cloth and frying pans and needles she could understand. But there was a great deal about Oliver’s trade that she did not understand.
She had asked him a lot of questions, and he had done his best to answer them. But she knew so little about the prairie country that she could hardly follow him. She had studied geography at school. Her teachers had taught her about the states along the Atlantic Ocean, and a few important places on the Mississippi River, such as New Orleans and St. Louis. But about what lay west of the Mississippi River they had told her nothing at all.
But now, Garnet reflected eagerly, she had a chance to understand. Her father had just ordered a globe of the world for her little brothers to use when they studied their lessons. The globe had arrived yesterday. It was now up in the boys’ room.
The boys were at school. Garnet went up to their room and got the globe. It was heavier than she had thought, but she lugged it downstairs to the small parlor. Bending over the globe, she turned it and then held it still.
Her right hand lay on the Atlantic Ocean and her left on the Pacific. Between her hands was the continent of North America. Garnet studied the map, a frown of concentration between her black eyebrows.
On the east side of the continent were the twenty-five states of the Union, and several territories. Beyond them was the heavy black line of the Mississippi River. West of the Mississippi she saw the Missouri River, and south of that was another river, the Arkansas. Both of these flowed into the Mississippi. The river-lines were clear on the map.
Garnet knew the settled part of the United States ended at the Missouri River. She had heard Oliver say that the little towns on the Missouri marked the American frontier. Beyond this river was still some United States territory, but no white people lived in that region. On the map, she found that it was labeled only with the names of the Indian tribes
who hunted there.
South of the Missouri, the Arkansas River flowed east. The land belonging to the United States ended finally at a line drawn from the Arkansas. Beyond this line, everything was foreign. Down to the south lay the Republic of Texas. Below Texas was Mexico. Mexico was a big country; on the map the name started south of Texas and stretched all the way up the Pacific Coast till it reached a big square in the northwest, which was called the Oregon Territory.
The map gave her plenty of information about the eastern half of the continent. But it told her very little about the rest. Except for the letters along the Pacific Coast saying “Mexico,” and the other letters higher up saying “Oregon Territory,” the whole western half of the continent was nothing but a big ivory space. The space was blank but for capital letters spread out to say, “GREAT AMERICAN DESERT.”
At school, they had not taught her anything about the western half of North America. Until Oliver came to town, she had never thought about it. Everybody knew, or thought they knew, that there was nothing out there but a lot of useless plains with some buffaloes and Indians rambling around.
But Oliver said there was a great deal more than this. Oliver said that this ivory space, trackless on the map, was not really trackless. Across it lay a long thin line, the mark made by the turning of wagon-wheels. Every spring, as soon as the snow had melted on the prairies, merchant caravans went winding into the West.
Until Oliver told her about them, Garnet had never heard of those intrepid men who carried their goods out beyond the American frontier. But Oliver knew, because Oliver was himself a prairie trader. Oliver had been out there. Oliver had been to that country with the strange beautiful name, California.
Garnet scowled at the globe. This was the best globe that could be bought. It was new and up-to-date for the study of geography in this year 1845. But she could not find a country called California.
She looked along the Missouri River, along the Arkansas, and through Mexico and the Republic of Texas. She looked at the Great American Desert. She looked all the way up into western Canada. She could not find it.
