A Proper Pursuit

by Lynn Austin

  “Beautiful doesn’t seem descriptive enough.”

  “You should see it at night, all lit up with electric lights.” I recalled Nelson Kent saying the same thing.

  Silas paid my admission fee of fifty cents, but I thought it odd that our chaperones paid their own fare. As soon as we entered the gates, Josephine and Robert took the lead, walking briskly ahead of us as if they had an appointment to keep. Silas and I hurried to stay apace.

  “That’s the Transportation Building,” he said, pointing to our left. “And that enormous one across the water is Manufactures and Liberal Arts. It has a walkway up on top, if you want to go up for a good view later on. And look—we can ride around the lagoon in a gondola.”

  “Oh, I would love to go for a gondola ride!” It was like a scene from a travel book with the gondolier in his brightly colored costume, propelling his passengers across the tranquil waters. The pristine white buildings in the background had arches and pillars and graceful statues. “This is amazing, Silas! It’s like another world. I’ve always wanted to travel to faraway places.”

  “You name any country or state you want and they have a pavilion or a display here. You can see the world for only two bits—Japan, Egypt, Africa … They even have an Eskimo village with reindeer.”

  Silas’ childlike excitement was contagious. I didn’t know which way to look or where I wanted to go first. I wanted to see it all, but Josephine and Robert had raced so far ahead of us that Silas and I had to hurry down the path or risk losing them.

  “Why are they in such a hurry?” I panted.

  “Josephine wants to see the Woman’s Pavilion.”

  “I do too. My Aunt Matilda has been singing its praises.”

  Silas and I finally paused to rest once we arrived in front of the stately pavilion. “That’s the Wooded Isle in the middle of the lagoon,” he told me. “And that’s the Swedish Pavilion on the other side with the thatched towers. That castlelike one is the Fisheries Building. They have the most amazing aquariums inside, with the strangest and most beautiful underwater creatures you could ever imagine.”

  “Where did our chaperones go?” I asked, glancing around.

  “I think they went inside already.”

  “Without us? Shouldn’t we go in with them?”

  “You don’t really want to see the Woman’s Pavilion, do you? It’s boring, Violet. The Midway is a lot more fun.”

  “I don’t know … um … I guess—” “We can meet up with them later. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the big wheel, of course! You said you wanted to ride Mr.

  Ferris’ wonderful wheel, remember? I thought we’d go there first.”

  “Alone?”

  “Look—there it is.” He took my shoulders and swung me around, pointing into the distance.

  “Wow!” The moment I saw the huge mechanical wheel poking into the sky I no longer cared about Josephine and Robert. We hurried toward the broad Midway Plaisance and plunged into the buzzing crowd of people.

  “I guess we really don’t need chaperones in a crowd this big,” I said.

  “I don’t understand why you need them at all. It’s almost the twentieth century, you know? All this fuss over manners and things— that’s from the olden days, isn’t it?”

  I couldn’t seem to compose a reply. “I … um … I guess the assumption is that women should be protected.”

  “From what? People say women are helpless, but I don’t buy it. You strike me as a sensible, intelligent woman. I’ll wager you’re quite capable of taking care of yourself. In fact, you’ve been gripping that parasol like it’s a weapon ever since we left home. I’d sure hate to come between you and that thing.” I had to laugh at his words. I also eased my grip on the umbrella handle.

  The wild, chaotic Midway seemed like an entirely different world from the symmetry and beauty of the White City. Even the crowds seemed different. These were boisterous, commonplace folk, unlike the more genteel crowd I’d seen strolling past the lagoons.

  Here was another example of the many contrasts I’d encountered since coming to Chicago: Nelson Kent’s luxurious life compared to Irina’s desolate one. Louis Decker’s passion for God versus the religious indifference I’d grown up with. The narrow roles I had assumed all women must play contrasted with the opportunities that Aunt Matt and her friends foresaw for women. And the strict manners and rules I’d learned from Madame Beauchamps, which couldn’t compare with the delicious freedom I felt walking down the Midway with Silas McClure—without a chaperone.

  Silas stood a head taller than me, and it was hard to hold on to his arm in the crowded streets. I lost my grip momentarily when someone jostled us, and Silas reached for my hand as naturally as if we were children. Once again, the moment his strong, warm palm touched mine, the sensation was like gripping the wrong end of a flat iron.

  “I would hate to lose you in this mob,” he said when he saw my reaction. He lifted our entwined hands slightly and said, “This is so we don’t get separated.”

  It was highly improper—wasn’t it? But hadn’t I held Nelson Kent’s hand when we’d danced together? What was the difference?

  I quickly forgot about propriety as we passed all sorts of fascinating displays—the Libby Glass Works, a Colorado gold mine, a rustic log cabin, the Hagenbeck Animal Show, an Irish village, a Japanese bazaar. The accompanying smells of woodsmoke and animals and exotic spices entranced me.

  “What are those drums?” I asked. I hoped it wasn’t the sound of my heart pounding for all to hear.

  “There’s a Javanese village on the right. We can go there later, if you want.” The comfortable way he said “we” both frightened and thrilled me.

  “I wish I had the freedom to go places on my own and make my own decisions,” I said. “I’ve had my father hovering over me all my life when I wasn’t in school. And my school was very strict. They told us that rules and chaperones were there to protect women. But you’re right—who says I need to be protected?”

  “I’ll wager those rules will be out-of-date in a few years.”

  “Do you think so? That’s what my Aunt Matt thinks too. She’s a suffragette. What do you think of women voting?”

  “I don’t know. Why do they want to vote?”

  I tried to recall what Aunt Matt had told me. “They want to be able to elect people who will represent their interests—women’s interests.”

  “That makes sense to me.” Silas McClure seemed to have very modern views as far as women were concerned. I decided to probe further as we walked past a genuine Bedouin Arab with his camel.

  “What if you were ill and the only physician available was a woman. Would you let her care for you?”

  “Sure, why not? But I can’t say as I’ve ever met a woman doctor. I’ll wager there aren’t too many of them, are there?”

  “My aunt spoke as if there were at least a few.”

  We arrived at the base of the wheel, and it was even more amazing up close than from a distance. The intricate spokes were enormous and graceful—but they looked quite insufficient to bear the weight of dozens of passenger carriages the size of streetcars. I had to look up and up to see the very top of the wheel—as high as the clouds, or so it seemed to me. My knees trembled as Silas paid our fares and we joined the line of waiting passengers.

  “That’s the Algerian Village over there,” he said. “Maybe we can come back and get something to eat there later. They have amazing food with flavors like you’ve never tasted before.”

  “I hear that people in foreign countries eat all manner of interesting things.”

  “Yeah, like monkey meat and alligator and water buffalo,” he said excitedly.

  “What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever eaten?”

  “Rattlesnake.”

  “You didn’t!Where?Were you stranded in the desert for days and days with nothing to eat after bandits attacked your train, and you had to kill the snake with your bare
hands and eat it raw?”

  “No,” Silas laughed, “but I think I’ll tell your version of the story from now on. It was in a saloon in Texas cattle country. They served pretty decent food for a saloon, so when I saw rattlesnake on the menu I figured I had to try it.”

  “You’re very adventurous, Silas. What did it taste like?”

  “A little bit like chicken. Only chewier.” The line moved forward as the group in front of us boarded the wheel. We would board next. I wondered if Silas could feel my hand trembling as he held it in his.

  “I read somewhere that the wheel is 265 feet high and can carry a total of 2,160 passengers at a time,” he said.

  “How can you remember all that?”

  “I’m pretty good with numbers and things.”

  Finally it was our turn to step into the enormous car. Silas quickly pulled me over to the front window. “So we’ll have the best view,” he said.

  The wheel operator closed the door and bolted it shut.

  “Hang on!” Silas said.

  His warning came too late. The car lurched as it began to ascend, and I fell forward against him. His arms encircled me, and he held me against his chest for a moment until I adjusted to the motion and regained my balance. He smelled good, like the barbershop in Lockport that I used to visit with my father on Saturday mornings. Silas had strong arms and a rock-hard chest.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes. Thank you.” I pulled away reluctantly. “I lost my footing for a moment.”

  I had danced with Nelson and other gentlemen, but never before had I been held so closely by any of them. Hugging a man felt wonderfully different from hugging a woman’s pillow-soft body. The only man I could recall embracing was my father, who had an ample bellycushion in front. I envied Aunt Birdie’s simple freedom of embracing everyone. Madame B. would wag her finger at me, but I began to hope that the car would lurch again so I could fall back into Silas’ arms.

  He gently took my hand in his again on the long, slow ride to the top. “Isn’t this something?” he breathed.

  “It sure is!” I gripped his hand tightly in return. In fact, our hands might have been glued together.

  I risked looking down as we climbed and had the peculiar sensation that my stomach was sinking toward my toes. I had never been up this high before—and certainly had never dangled from such a spindly structure before. The sensation was dizzying. We were hanging over empty air, suspended from the slowly turning wheel. I tried to take it all in at once, watching the intricate steel supports drifting past, then gazing down at the ground, then at the distant view of the fairgrounds and the lake and the smoky city on the horizon.

  “Wow! This is frightening—but fun!”

  “I knew you would like it.”

  “I wish I could fly!”

  “I know what you mean. I want to go for a ride in a balloon someday. They have a tethered one here at the fair that you can go up in, but I doubt it’s as exciting as a real balloon ride.”

  “Tell me about your family, Silas. Where did you grow up? Is your family as adventurous as you are?”

  “I was raised on a farm in Ohio outside a town you probably never heard of. I’m the fourth of seven kids. I left home after high school for the excitement of the city and never looked back. I’d see the whole world if I could afford it.”

  I hadn’t thought of Silas as a thief all morning, but I suddenly had an idea how I could find out if he was one.

  “If you could choose, would you rather be the captain of a pirate ship or the captain of a warship?”

  “A pirate ship. No question about it.” Somehow I knew that would be his choice.

  “You have to tell me why.”

  “Wars are so long and drawn out and pointless. Nobody really wins them, do they? I don’t hate anyone badly enough to fight them in a war. Besides, the captain of a warship has to follow orders. But the captain of a pirate ship, now he’s his own boss. That’s the life for me. Sailing the seas, seeking adventure. Finding buried treasure …”

  “But pirates are outlaws.”

  “I know,” he said with a grin. “And they get to hijack sailing vessels and carry off gold doubloons and beautiful maidens.”

  “You must have read the same adventure stories that I did.”

  “Which ship would you choose, Violet?”

  He was gazing into my eyes, and it was so romantic to be climbing above the fairgrounds with an exciting, adventurous man that I lost my train of thought altogether. It took me a moment to remember the question.

  “Well … I don’t think women get to be ship captains.”

  “But what if you could be one?”

  “If I could? … I guess I would want to be the captain a pirate ship too.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been taught to follow the rules all my life. It might be fun to see what it was like to break a few.”

  “You’re the most interesting woman I’ve ever met.”

  My heart was booming like a bass drum. I turned away to look at the view and to remind myself why I had agreed to come with him. Silas was going to help me find my mother on the way home. Winning his affections had not been part of my plan.

  “I love your questions, Violet. Ask me another one.”

  “All right …” It took me a moment to think of one. “If you had to choose between going blind and never seeing the face of your beloved again, or becoming permanently deaf, so that you could never hear music or a child’s voice, which would you choose?”

  “I’d choose to be deaf. I think I would miss seeing beautiful things more than hearing them. Besides, people don’t really need to talk, do they? They can say so much more with their eyes … don’t you think?”

  I made the mistake of looking up into his eyes, which were as blue as the distant lake. I felt breathless, as if I were treading water, trying not to drown. I quickly turned away and looked back out at the lake.

  “Is that a boat out there?” I asked, pointing.

  “It looks like one… . But tell me how you would answer that question, Violet. Would you rather be blind or deaf?”

  “The same as you, I think. The world is much too beautiful to miss. Just look at that view.”

  We had been stopping to let passengers on and off as we’d slowly ascended, but now the wheel paused at the very top, swaying slightly in the breeze. The sounds from the Midway had grown faint, and a hush seemed to fall over the other passengers in our car as we gazed down from the dizzying height. But the view was wasted on Silas McClure. He never took his eyes off me.

  “We’ve stopped,” I murmured.

  “To tell you the truth,” Silas said softly, “I hope we get stuck up here for a few days.”

  “Me too.” I didn’t want the ride to end either. But a moment later I felt the sinking sensation in my stomach as our car started down again.

  “Ask me one more question, Violet.”

  I decided to ask the same one I’d asked Nelson Kent—the one neither of us had been able to answer.

  “If you had to choose between being desperately poor but in love, or being enormously wealthy but alone, which would you choose?”

  “I’d choose love. A thousand times over. Life wouldn’t be worth living without it.”

  “But you would be poor, remember?”

  “I don’t care. People get along fine without money all the time. But money can’t buy the happiness that love brings.”

  I thought of how sad Nelson had seemed after Katya had disappeared through the servants’ door, and I wondered if Silas was right.

  “You believe in love, then?” I asked.

  “Absolutely! Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I was told that my parents married for love, yet somehow it died. I don’t know why. Now they’re divorced.”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “My Aunt Birdie was madly in love with her husband, but as you’ve probably guessed, he died in the war. Now she’s so
lost and lonely without him.”

  “I know it seems very sad. But I’ll wager that if you asked her, she would gladly trade her house and all of her money to have him back.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “But you haven’t answered the question, Violet. You and your grandmother and your aunts seem pretty well off. Would you give it all up for love?”

  “I’m not sure. My grandmother does charity work among the immigrants, and she took me with her the other day. I saw the terrible living conditions in those tenements, and I’m afraid my love might wear thin if I had to live in a place like that and struggle every day just to get enough to eat.”

  “But you said that the other choice was to be rich but alone, right?”

  “I know. And I wouldn’t like that either.”

  “Have you ever been in love, Violet?”

  “No.”

  “Then maybe it’s not fair to try to answer that question until you’ve experienced it.”

  Something about the way he was smiling made me wonder. “Have you been in love, Mr. McClure?”

  “Yes, Miss Hayes. I have felt myself falling in love—just once. That’s why I know I’d give up everything else for it.”

  He was gazing at me as if I was the one! I couldn’t breathe. He was like a magician, dangling a shining object in front of me—back and forth—until I was hypnotized by him.

  Suddenly the car lurched as it came to a halt at the bottom. This time I stumbled backward, away from him instead of into his arms, and my good sense returned. Silas McClure was a snake charmer, a salesman, and he’d been performing his trade on me. That’s what thieves and con artists like him did, feeding their phony lines to weak-willed women and spinning their charms. He was obviously a master at this trade and I had nearly fallen for it. Fortunately the ride ended so I could come to reality.

  “Wasn’t that wonderful?” Silas asked. “I could ride all day.”

  “Yes, me too.” I needed to let go of his hand and break the spell completely, so I slowly slid my hand from his and took his elbow again. I kept a safe distance between us as we walked.

  “What shall we see now?” Silas asked. “You want to see the Street in Cairo, or the African dancers, or—”