Chapter 7

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 Agnès. 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 Agnès'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 Agnès 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.

Agnès said it was too ridiculous and "_très 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 était resté c'eut été la même 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 débris 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._