Daughter of Middle Border

by Garland, Hamlin

  There was no escaping my filial responsibility, however, for in the midst of this serene season, a sudden call for help came from West Salem. "Your father is ill and needs you," wrote the doctor and I went at once to his aid.

  It was a cheerless home-coming,—one that I could hardly endure the thought of, and yet I was glad that I had not followed my first impulse to delay it, for as I entered the door of the desolate lonely house I found the old soldier stretched out on a couch, piteously depressed in mind and flushed with fever. I had not arrived a minute too soon.

  What a change had come over the Homestead! It was but a shell, a mansion from which the spirit for whom it had been built was fled. Its empty, dusty rooms, so cold and silent and dead—were dreadful to me, but I did my best to fill them with cheer for my father's sake.

  As the day wore on I said to him, "It seems like Sunday to me. I have a feeling that mother and Zulime are away at church and that they may, at any moment, come in together."

  "I wish Zuleema would come," my father said, and as if in answer to his wish, she surprised us by a telegram. "I am coming home," she wired, "meet me at the station to-morrow morning," and this message made my father so happy that it troubled me, for it revealed to me how deeply he had missed her, and made plain to me also how difficult it would be for me to take her away from him thereafter.

  Her coming put such life in the house that I decided to invite a number of my father's friends and neighbors to spend the evening with us, and the thought of this party quite restored him to his natural optimism. His confidence in his new daughter's ability had become fixed. He accepted her judgments almost instantly. He bragged of her skill as a cook, as an artist and as a musician, quite shamelessly; but as this only amused her I saw no reason for interfering—I even permitted him to boast of my singing. He believed me to be one of the most remarkable ballad singers in the world, and to hear me sing "The Ninety and Nine" with all the dramatic modulations of a professional evangelist afforded him the highest satisfaction.

  At his urging we made elaborate preparations for feeding our guests, and Zulime arranged a definite program of entertainment. When conversation slackened I was to sing while she played my accompaniment, and to fill out the program I volunteered to read one of my short stories.

  The outcome of the evening was amusingly destructive of all our kindly plans. Before the women had fairly removed their wraps, Lottridge drew a box of dominoes from his pocket, saying, "I didn't know but you'd be a little short on 'bones,'" and Shane called out, "Well, now, Richard, what about tables?" In five minutes they were all—every mother's son and daughter of them—bent above a row of dominoes!

  No entertainment on the part of host or hostess was necessary till the time came to serve supper. All our literary and musical preparations went for naught!—At ten o'clock they rose as one man, thanked us for a pleasant evening and went home!

  Zulime laughed merrily over the wreck of our self-sacrificing program when we were alone. "Well, we'll know exactly what to do next time. All we need to do is to furnish dominoes and tables, our guests will do the rest."

  My young wife's presence in the Homestead almost redeemed it from its gloom, and yet I was not content. The complications in the situation defied adjustment. My father needed us, but the city was essential to me. As a writer, I should have been remorselessly selfish. I should have taken my wife back to Chicago at once, but my New England conscience would not let me forget how lonely that old man would be in this empty house, silent, yet filled with voices of the moaning, swaying branches of its bleak midwinter elms.

  My problem was, in fact, only another characteristic cruel phase of American family history. In a new land like ours, the rising generation finds itself, necessarily, almost cruelly, negligent of its progenitors. Youth moves on, away and up from the farm and the village. Age remains below and behind. The tragedy of this situation lies in the fact that there is no happy solution of the problem. Youth can not be shackled, age can not be transplanted.

  In my case, I foresaw that the situation would inevitably become more and more difficult year by year. My father could not live in any city, and for me to give up my life in Chicago and New York in order to establish a permanent home in West Salem, involved a sacrifice which I was not willing to make,—either on my own account or Zulime's. I had no right to demand such devotion from her. Like thousands of other men of my age I was snared in circumstances—forced to do that which appeared unfilial and neglectful.

  In the midst of these perplexities I was confronted by a new and surprising problem—I had money to invest! For the serial use of The Eagle's Heart and Her Mountain Lover I had received thirty-five hundred dollars, and as each of these books had also brought in an additional five hundred dollars advance royalty, I was for the moment embarrassed with cash.

  In this extremity I turned, naturally, toward Oklahoma. I recalled the beautiful prairies I had crossed on my way to the Washitay. "Another visit to Darlington will not only furnish new material for my book of Indian stories, but enable me to survey and purchase a half-section of land," I explained to my father. "Like Henry George we both understand the value of unearned increment."

  In this plan he agreed and two days after making this decision I was at Colony, Oklahoma, where I spent nearly the entire month of May, and when I returned I was the owner of three hundred and twenty acres of land.

  My return to the Homestead found Zulime deep in the rush of the berry season. As mistress of a garden her interest in its produce was almost comical. She thought less of art, she neither modeled nor painted. She cared less and less for the Camp at Eagle's Nest, exulting more and more in the spacious rooms of her home, and in the abundance of her soil. Her love of the Homestead delighted me, but I was a little disappointed by the coolness with which she received my gift of a deed to a quarter section of Oklahoma land. She smiled and handed it back to me as if it were a make-believe deed.

  It chanced that July came in unusually dry and hot, and in the midst of a dreadful week, she fell ill, so ill that she was confined to her bed for nearly three weeks, and as I watched beside her during those cloudless days and sultry nights, my mind turned with keenest longing toward the snow-lined crests of the Colorado mountains, and especially to the glorious forests of the White River Plateau. The roar of snowy Uncompagre, the rush of the deep-flowing Gunnison, and the serrate line of The Needle Peaks, called us both, and when at last, she was strong enough to travel, we packed our trunks and fled the low country, hurrying in almost desperate desire to reach the high, cool valleys of Colorado.

  O, that torturing journey! As we neared Omaha the thermometer rose to 105 in the Pullman car, and remained there nearly all day. For twelve hours we steamed, sitting rigidly erect in our chairs, dreading to move, sweltering in silence, waiting with passionate intensity for the cool wind which we knew was certain to meet us somewhere on our upward course.

  The sun went down in murky flame and the very shadows were hot, but deep in the night I was roused by a delicious puff of mountain air, and calling to Zulime, suffering in her berth, I said, "Worry no longer about the heat. From this hour on, every moment will be joy. You can forget the weather in Colorado."

  What exquisite relief came with that change of air! What sweetness of promise! What buoyancy of expectation!—We went to sleep with the wind blowing in upon us, and when we woke the mountains were in sight.

  At the station in the Springs, our good friend Louis Ehrich again met us, and in half an hour we stood in the same room which we had occupied on our wedding trip, a room whose windows faced directly upon the Rampart range, already deep purple with the shadow of the clouds. By contrast with our torrid railway car this was Paradise itself—so clean, so cool, so sweet, so tonic was the air, and when at noon a storm hid the peaks, and lightning crashed above the foot hills, the arid burning plain over which we came was forgotten—or remembered only to make our enjoyment of the mountain air more complete.

  The splendor of tha
t mighty wall, the kiss of that wind, the memory of that majestic peak looming amid the stars, comes back to me as I write, filling me with an almost intolerable longing to recover the magic of that summer, a summer which has receded with the speed of an eagle.

  Each day we breakfasted and lunched and dined on a vine-clad porch in full view of the mountains. Each afternoon we drove or rode horseback or loitered on the lawn. Never in all my life had I come so near to flawless content, and Zulime, equally joyous, swiftly returned to perfect health. Her restoration was magical.

  Louis Ehrich, one of the gentlest men I have ever known, rejoiced in our presence. He lived but to fill our days with pleasure. He and I had been friends for ten years, and his family now took my wife into favor—I was about to say into equal favor, but that would not be true. They very properly put her above me in the scale of their affection, and to this subordination I submitted without complaint, or even question.

  It chanced that on the second day of our stay the Ehrichs were due at a garden party in "Glen Eyrie," General Palmer's palatial home in the foot hills, and kindly obtained permission to bring us with them. That drive across the mesa was like a journey into some far country—passage to a land which was neither America nor England, neither East nor West. To reach the Castle we entered a gate at the mouth of a narrow, wooded cañon and drove for nearly a mile toward the west through a most beautiful garden in which all the native shrubs and wild flowers had been assembled and planted with exquisite art.

  People were streaming in over the mountain roads, some on horseback, some on bicycles, some in glittering, gayly-painted wagons, and when we reached the lawn before the great stone mansion, we found a very curious and interesting throng of guests, and in the midst of them, the General, tall, soldierly, clothed in immaculate linen and wearing a broad white western hat, was receiving his friends, assisted by his three pretty young daughters.

  The house was a veritable chateau—the garden a wonderland of Colorado plants and flowers, skilfully disposed among the native ledges and scattered along the bases of the cliffs whose rugged sides enclosed the mansion grounds. The towers (of gray stone) were English, but the plants and blooms were native to the Rampart foot hills. In a very real fashion "Glen Eyrie" bodied forth the singular and powerful character of its owner, who was at once an English squire, a Pennsylvania civil war veteran, and a western railway engineer.

  Food and drink and ices of various kinds were being served under the trees with lavish hospitality, and groups of young people were wandering about the spacious grounds—grounds so beautiful by reason of nature's adjustment, as well as by way of the landscape gardener's art, that they made the senses ache with a knowledge of their exquisite impermanency. It was a kind of poem expressed in green and gold and scarlet.

  Zulime greatly interested the Palmer girls, and the General, who remembered me pleasantly, was most amiable to us both. "You must come again," he said, and to me he added, "You must come over some day and ride my trails with me."

  As I mingled with that throng of joyous folk, I lost myself. I became an actor in a prodigious and picturesque American social comedy. For stage we had the lawn, banks of flowers, and the massive towers of the castle. For background rose the rugged hills!—Nothing could have been farther from our home in Neshonoc. Glowing with esthetic delight in the remote and singular beauty of the place, Zulime took an artist's keen interest in alien loveliness. It threw our life into commonplace drab. And yet it was factitious. It had the transient quality of a dream in which we were but masqueraders.

  Two days later, at the invitation of General Palmer, we joined his party in a trip over the short-line railway to Cripple Creek, traveling in his private car, and the luxury of this novel experience made my wife's eyes shine with girlish delight.—I professed alarm, "I don't know where all this glory is going to land us," I warned, "after this Aladdin's-lamp luxury and leisure, how can I get you back into washing dishes and canning fruit in West Salem?"

  She laughed at this, as she did at most of my fears. Serene acceptance of what came was her dominant characteristic. Her faith in the future was so perfect that she was willing to make the fullest use of the present.

  The day was gloriously clear, with great white clouds piled high above the peaks, and as the train crept steadily upward, feeling its way across the mountain's shoulder, we were able to look back and down and far out upon the plain which was a shoreless sea of liquid opal. At ten thousand feet the foot hills (flat as a rug) were so rich in color, so alluring in their spread that we could scarcely believe them to be composed of rocks and earth.

  After a day of sight-seeing we returned, at sunset, to the Springs, with all of the pomp of railway magnates en tour, and as we were about to part at the railway station, the General in curt, off-hand way, asked, "Why not join my camping party at Sierra Blanca? We're going down there for a week or two, and I shall be very glad to have you with us. Come, and stay as long as you can. We shall probably move on to Wagon Wheel Gap later. Wagon Wheel ought to interest you."

  He said this with a quizzical smile, for he had been reading my novel of Colorado, and recognized in my scene the splendors of the San Juan country. "Your friend Ehrich is coming," he added, "and I expect Sterling Morton for a day or two. Why not all come down together?"

  "Would you like me to bring my bed and tent?" I asked.

  "As you please, although I have plenty of room in my own outfit."

  It happened that Colorado Springs was holding a Quarto-Centenary, a kind of Carnival and Wild-West Pageant, to which Vice-President Roosevelt was coming as the chief guest of honor, and as soon as he arrived I called upon him at his hotel. Almost at once he asked, "Where is your wife? I want to see her. Is she here?"

  "Yes, she is staying with some friends," I replied.

  "I am very glad to know it. I shall call upon her tomorrow afternoon as soon as my duties at the carnival are ended."

  The thought of having the Vice-President of the United States go out of his way to make a call upon my wife gave me a great deal of pleasure for I realized how much it would mean to Zulime, but I replied, "We shall be very glad to call upon you."

  "No," he replied in his decisive fashion—"I shall call to-morrow at four o'clock—if that is convenient to you. Meanwhile I want you and Mr. Ehrich to breakfast with me here, at the hotel. I shall have some hunters and rough riders at my table whom you will be interested to meet."

  Of course I accepted this invitation instantly, and hurried home to tell my wife that "royalty" was about to call upon her.

  The Vice-President's breakfast party turned out to be a very curious collection of mutually repellent, but highly-developed individualities. There was John Goff, well known as guide and hunter in western Colorado, and Marshall Davidson, a rough-rider from New Mexico, Lieutenant Llewellyn of the Rough Riders, Sterling Morton (former Secretary of Agriculture), a big impassive Nebraska pioneer; Louis Ehrich (humanist and art lover), and myself—I cannot say that I in any way reduced the high average of singularity, but I was at least in the picture—Morton and Ehrich were not; they remained curious rather than sympathetic listeners. While no longer a hunter I was a trailer and was able to understand and keenly enjoy the spirit of these hardy men of the open.

  True to his word, Roosevelt called at the Ehrich's that afternoon, and no one could have been more charming, more neighborly than he. He told of our first meeting, smilingly called me "a Henry George crank," and referred to other differences which existed between us. "Differences which do not in the least interfere with our friendship," he assured Zulime. "Your husband, for example, doesn't believe in hunting, and has always stood out against my shooting," here he became quite serious—"However, I've given up shooting deer and elk. I kill only 'varmints' now."

  After half an hour of lively conversation, he rose to go and as I went with him to the gate, where his carriage was waiting, he said with earnest emphasis, "I congratulate you most heartily, my dear fellow. Your wife is fine! fine!"r />
  As Morton and Ehrich had accepted General Palmer's invitation to camp with him, we all took train for Fort Garland, a mysterious little town in Southern Colorado, near which the General was encamped. This expedition particularly pleased me for it carried me into the shadow of Sierra Blanca, one of the noblest of Colorado's peaks, and also into the edge of the Mexican settlement. It all seemed very remote and splendid to me that day.

  We were met at the station by one of the General's retainers and ten minutes later found ourselves in a mountain wagon and on our way toward Old Baldy, the mountain which stands just north of Sierra Blanca, which forms the majestic southern bastion of the Crestones.

  Mexican huts lined the way, and dark-skinned farmers working in the fields and about the corrals, gave evidence of the fact that this "land grant" had been, at one time, a part of Old Mexico.

  "It contains nearly seven hundred thousand acres," Ehrich explained, "and is the property of General Palmer."

  This statement aroused a sense of wonder in my mind. "Think of being proprietor of one-half of Sierra Blanca?" I said to Morton. "Has any individual a right to such a privilege?"

  In a lovely grove on the bank of a rushing glorious stream, we found the Lord of this Demesne and his three daughters encamped, attended by a platoon of cooks, valets, maids, and hostlers. A "camp" which highly amused Sterling Morton, although he had moments of resenting its luxury. "Now this is the kind of 'roughing it' I believe in," he declared with a smile. "It is suited to elderly old parties like Ehrich and myself, but you, Garland, a youngster, a trailer—should have no part in it. It's too corrupting."

  Our luncheon, which contained five courses, came on with the plenitude and precision of a meal at Glen Eyrie. The rusticity of the function was altogether confined to the benches on which we sat and the tables from which we ate—the butlering was for the most part urban.