Daughter of Middle Border

by Garland, Hamlin

  With no time to dream of love, with no thought of writing, I toiled like a slave, wet with perspiration, dusty and unkempt. With my shirt open at the throat and my sleeves rolled to the elbow, I passed from one phase of the job to another, lending a hand here and a shoulder there. In order that I might hasten the tearing down and clearing away, I plunged into the hardest and dirtiest tasks, but at night, after the men were gone, dark moods of deep depression came over me, moments in which the essential futility of my powers overwhelmed me with something like despair.

  "What right have you to ask that bright and happy girl—any girl—to share the uncertainties, the parsimony, the ineludible struggle of your disappointing life?" I demanded of myself, and to this there was but one answer: "I have no right. I have only a need."

  Nevertheless, I wrote her each day a short account of my doings, and her friendly replies were a source of encouragement, of comfort. She did not know (I was careful to conceal them) the torturing anxieties through which I was passing, and her pages were, for the most part, a pleasant reflection of the uneventful, care-free routine of the camp. In spite of her caution she conveyed to me, beneath her elliptical phrases, the fact that she missed me and that my return would not be displeasing to her. "When shall we see you?" she asked.

  In one of her letters she mentioned—casually—that on Monday she was going to Chicago with her sister, but would return to the camp at the end of the week.

  Something in this letter led me to a sudden change of plan. As mother was now quite comfortable again I said to her, "Zuleema has gone to Chicago to do some shopping. I think I'll run down and meet her and ask her to help me select the curtains and wall-paper for your new room. What do you say to that?"

  "Go along!" she said instantly, "but I expect you to bring her home with you."

  "Oh, I can't do that," I protested. "I haven't any right to do that—yet!"

  The mere idea of involving the girl in my household problem seemed exciting enough, and on my way down to the city I became a bit less confident. I decided to approach the matter of my shopping diplomatically. She might be alarmed at my precipitancy.

  She was not alarmed—on the contrary her pleased surprise and her keen interest in my mother's new chamber gave me confidence. "I want you to help me buy the furnishings for the new rooms," I said almost at once.

  "I shall be glad to help," she replied in the most natural way.

  Evidently, she saw nothing especially significant in my request, but to me it was a subtle stratagem. To have her take part in my bargain-hunting was almost as exciting as though we were furnishing OUR home, but I dared not assume that she was thinking along these dangerous lines. That she was genuinely interested in my household problems was evident, but I was not justified in asking anything further. She was distinctly closer to me that day, more tenderly intimate than she had ever been before, and her womanly understanding of my task—the deep sympathy she expressed when I told her of my mother's recent illness—all combined to give me comfort—and hope!

  A few days later we rode back to Eagle's Nest Camp together, and all through those three hours on the train a silent, subconscious, wordless adjustment went on between us. That she was secretly debating the question of accepting me was certain, and there was nothing in her manner to dishearten me; on the contrary, she seemed to enjoy playing round the perilous suggestion.

  We dined at "the Castle" as usual, and late that night, as we walked slowly over to the camp through the odorous woods, hearing the whippoorwill's cry and the owlets hoot from their dark coverts, I was made aware that my day's work had drawn her closer into my life. I had made her aware of my need.

  The day which followed our return to camp was my thirty-ninth birthday, and I celebrated it by taking a long walk and talk with her. She took some sewing with her, and as we rested under a great oak tree, we spoke of many intimate, personal things, always with the weight of our unsolved problem on our mind.

  At last, in approaching my plea for help, I stated the worst of my case. "I am poor and shall always remain poor," I said. "My talent is small and my work has only a very limited appeal. I see no great improvement in my fortunes. I have done an enormous amount of work this year (I've written three volumes), but all of them conjoined will not bring in as much cash as a good stone-mason can earn. But that isn't the worst of it! The hopeless part of it is—I like my job. I wouldn't change to a more profitable one if I could. I have only one other way of earning money, and that is by physical labor. If the worst comes to the worst, I can farm or do carpenter work."

  Her reply to all this was not entirely disheartening. "To make money is not the most important thing in the world," she said, and then told me of her own childhood in Illinois, of the rigid economies which had always been necessary in the Taft home. "My father's salary as a professor of geology was small, and with six people to feed and clothe, and four children to be educated, my poor little mother had a very busy and anxious time of it. I know by personal experience what it is to lack money for food and clothes. The length of my stay in Paris was dependent on rigid daily economy. I hadn't an extra franc to spare."

  This confession of her own lifelong poverty should have turned me aside from my fell purpose, but it did not—it merely encouraged me to go on. In place of saying, "My dear girl, as compensation for all those years of care and humiliating poverty you deserve a spacious home, with servants and a carriage. Realizing that I can offer you only continued poverty and added anxiety, I here and now relinquish my design. I withdraw in favor of a better and richer man"—instead of uttering these noble words, what did I do? I did the exact opposite! I proceeded to press my selfish, remorseless, unwarranted demand!

  It is customary for elderly men to refer either flippantly or with gentle humor to their days of courtship, forgetting (or ignoring) the tremulous eagerness, the grave questioning and the tender solemnity of purpose with which they weighed the joys and responsibilities of married life. It is easy to be cynical or evasive or unduly sentimental in writing of our youthful love affairs, when the frosts of sixty years have whitened our heads, after years of toil and care have dimmed our eyes and thinned our blood, but I shall permit neither of these unworthy moods to color my report of this day's emotion. I shall not deny the alternating moments of hope and doubt, of bitterness and content, which made that afternoon both sweet and sad.

  The thing I was about to do was tragically destructive—I knew that. To put out a hand, to arrest this happy and tranquil girl, saying, "Come, be my wife. Come, suffer with me, starve with me," was a deed whose consequences scared me while they allured me. I felt the essential injustice of such a marriage, and I foresaw some of its accompanying perplexities, but I did not turn aside as I should have done. With no dependable source of income, with an invalid mother to care for, I asked this artist, so urban, so native to the studio, so closely knit to her joyous companions in the city, to go with me into exile, into a country town, to be the housekeeper of a commonplace cottage filled with aged people! "It is monstrous selfishness; it is wrong," I said, "but I want you."

  My philosophy, even at that time, was essentially individualistic. I believed in the largest opportunity to every human soul. Equal rights meant Equal rights in my creed. I had no intention of asking Zulime Taft to sink her individuality in mine. I wanted her to remain herself. Marriage, as I contemplated it, was to be not a condition where the woman was a subordinate but an equal partner, and yet how unequal the sacrifice! "I ask you to join your future with mine. It's a frightful risk, but I am selfish enough to wish it."

  Under no illusion about my own character, I admitted that there is no special charm in a just man. To have a sense of honor is fine, but to have a joyous and lovely disposition makes a man a great deal easier to live with. I was perfectly well aware that as a husband I would prove neither lovely nor joyous. My temper was not habitually cheerful. Like most writers, I was self-absorbed, filled with a sense of the importance of my literary designs. To be "just"
was easy, but to be charming and considerate—these were the points on which I was sure to fail, and I knew it. Did that deter me? Not at all! Bitterly unwilling to surrender Zulime to the richer and kindlier man who was, undoubtedly, waiting at that moment to receive her and cherish her, I pleaded with her to share my poverty and my hope of future fame.

  Shaken by my appeal, she asked for time in which to consider this problem. "I ought to talk with Lorado," she said.

  The mere fact that she could not decide against me at the moment gave me confidence. "Very well," I said. "Mother wants me—I shall go home for a week. Let me know when I can come again. I hope it will not be more than a week."

  In this arrangement we rested, and as we walked back to camp I cared nothing for the sly words or glances of our fellow artists. I believed I had won my case.

  My mother's demand for my presence did not arise—I soon learned—from any return of her malady, but from a desire for news of my courtship. "Where's my new daughter? Why didn't you bring her?" she demanded.

  "She couldn't come this time. The question is still unsettled."

  "Go right back and settle it," she urged. "Go quick, before some one else gets her. Write to her. Tell her to come right up. Send her a telegram. Seems as though I can't wait another week."

  Her urgency made me laugh, even while I perceived the pathos of it. "I can't bring her to you, mother, till she is willing to come as a bride—but she's thinking about it, and I am going back next week to get my answer. Be patient a little while longer. I promise you the whole question will be settled soon, and I hope it will be settled our way. Zulime seems to like me."

  Dear old mother! Her stammering, tremulous utterance made me smile and it made me weep. She was growing old prematurely, and the need of haste was urgent. "If I can possibly persuade her to come," I added very gravely, "I'll fetch her home to eat Thanksgiving dinner with you."

  My tone, rather than my words, silenced her, and gave her a measure of content, although she was childishly impatient of even a day's delay.

  All that week I alternately hoped and doubted, assembling all the items on the credit side of my ledger, and at last a letter came in which Zulime indicated that she wished to see me. "I am still undecided," she said, "but you may come." I left at once for the camp, feeling that her confession of indecision was in my favor.

  Lorado was not markedly favorable to me as a brother-in-law. He liked me and respected me as a friend, but as a suitor for the hand of his sister—well, that was another and far more serious matter.

  The camp "Equipage" met me at the station, and I consented to ride in it as far as the Heckman gate, hoping that Zulime would be there to welcome me. In this I was not disappointed, and something in her face and the firm clasp of her hand reassured me.

  For nearly a week, in the midst of the most glorious October landscape, surrounded by the scarlet and gold and crimson branches of the maples and the deep-reds and bronze-greens of the oaks, she and I walked and rode and boated in almost constant companionship. Idyllic days! Days of a quality I had lost all hope of ever again reliving. Days of quiet happiness and almost perfect content, for on an afternoon of dreamlike beauty, in a glade radiant with hazy golden sunshine and odorous with the ripening leaves, she spoke the all-important words which joined her future life with mine.

  We were seated at the moment on our favorite bank, under a tall oak tree, gorgeous as a sunset cloud, and as silent. I had been reading to her, and she was busy with some delicate embroidery. The crickets were chirping sleepily in the grass at our feet, and the jays calling harshly seemed warning us of the passing of summer and the coming on of frost.

  "Let the wedding day be soon," I pleaded as we rose to return to camp. "I am nearing the dead-line. I am almost forty years old—I can't afford to wait. I want you to come to me now—at once. The old folks are waiting for you. They want you for Thanksgiving Day. Your presence would make them happier than any other good fortune in this world."

  She understood my way of putting the argument. She knew that I was veiling my own eagerness under my mother's need, and after a little reflection she said, "I am going out to my father's home in Kansas. You may come for me there on the twenty-third of November. That is—if you still want me at that time."

  The end of the camp season was at hand; everybody was packing up, and so my girl and I turned with deep regret from the golden halls of our sylvan meeting-place. "This is my Indian summer," I said to her, "and that you may never have cause to regret the decision which this day has brought to you, is my earnest hope."

  More than twenty years have gone over our heads, and as I write these lines our silver wedding is not far off. Our lives have not been all sunshine, but Zulime has met all storms with a brave sweetness, which I cannot overpraise. If she has regrets, she does not permit me to know them. My poverty—which persists—has not embittered her or caused her, so far as I know, a single mood of self-commiseration.

  * * *

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Judicial Wedding

  On reaching my Elm Street home the next day, I was surprised and deeply gratified to find on my desk a letter from William Dean Howells, in which he said: "I am at the Palmer House. I hope you will come to see me soon, for I start for Kansas on a lecture trip in a few days."

  Although I had long been urging that he should come to Chicago, he had steadfastly declined to accept a lecture engagement west of Ohio, and I could not quite understand what had led him so far afield as Kansas. I hastened to call upon him, and, at the first appropriate pause in the conversation, I spoke to him of my engagement. "Miss Taft loves your books and would keenly appreciate the honor of meeting you."

  With instant perception of my wish to have him know my future wife, he replied, "My dear fellow, I am eager to meet her. Perhaps my gray hairs will excuse your bringing her to call upon me."

  "At your convenience," I replied eagerly. "I want you to know her. She is very much worth while."

  "I am sure of that," he smilingly retorted.

  He was billed to speak that night, and as he was leaving for Rock Island the following day he arranged that I should bring Zulime to the hotel just before he started for his lecture.

  After telling her of his wish to see her, I explained the significance of it. "You must understand that Mr. Howells is a kind of literary father confessor to me. He is a man of most delicate courtesy. Once you have seen him, once you have looked into his face, you will love him."

  She was as ready as I was to take her, and promptly on the minute we sent up our names and took seats in the Ladies' Parlor. It had been years since I had entered the Palmer House, and as we waited we compared memories of its old-time splendor. "My father still regards it as the grandest hotel in the West, and it is probable that Mr. Howells knew of no other. So far as I know he has never been in Chicago before, unless possibly for a few days during the World's Fair."

  Zulime was much excited at the thought of meeting the great novelist, but when he came, she took his hand with graceful composure, expressing just the right mingling of reserve and pleasure. I was proud of her, and the fact that Howells instantly and plainly approved of her, added to my satisfaction.

  "I congratulate you both," he said as we were leaving. "You see," he added, addressing himself to Zulime, "your husband-elect is one of my boys. I am particularly concerned with his good fortune. I like his bringing you to see me, and I hope we shall see you both in New York."

  In a literary sense this was my paternal blessing, for "Mr. Howells" had been a kind of spiritual progenitor and guide ever since my first meeting with him in '87. His wisdom, his humor, his exquisite art, had been of incalculable assistance to me, as they had been to Clemens, Burroughs, and many others of my fellow-craftsmen, and his commendation of me to my intended wife almost convinced me, for the moment, of my worthiness. How delightful he was! How delicate—how understanding! We both went away, rich in the honor of his approval of our prospective union.

  Ri
ch in his friendship, I was but poorly furnished in other respects. I recall with shame the shopping tour which I made along State Street, searching for an engagement ring, a gauge which Zulime, knowing my poverty, stoutly insisted that she did not need—a statement which I was simple enough to believe until her sister enlightened me. "That's only Zuhl's way. Of course she wants a ring—every girl does. Don't fail to get her one—a nice one!"

  I found one at last that Zulime thought I could afford. It was a small gold band with five opals, surrounded by several very minute diamonds, all of which could be had for the sum of thirty-eight dollars. As I bought this ring Zulime's girlish delight in it touched as well as instructed me. Each time she held her finger up for me to see (she had a beautiful hand) I regretted that I had not purchased a better ring. Why did I take a ring at thirty-eight dollars! Why not fifty dollars? But what could be expected of a man who never before had spent so much as one dollar on a piece of jewelry, a man whose chief way of earning money was to save it? Whenever I look at that poor little jewel now I experience a curious mingling of shame and regret. I had so little money at that time, and the future was so uncertain!

  Zulime was living with her sister, and there I spent most of my evenings and some of my afternoons during the following week, scarcely able to realize my change of fortune except when alone with her, discussing our future. She agreed at last to a date for the wedding which would enable us to spend Thanksgiving at West Salem, and then for some reason, not clear to me now, I suddenly took the train for Gallup, New Mexico, with the Navajo Indian Agency for final destination.

  Just why I should have chosen to visit Ganado at this precise time is inexplicable, but there is no mystery in my leaving Chicago. My future sister-in-law bluntly informed me that my absence from the city would greatly facilitate the necessary dressmaking. Although an obtuse person in some ways, I know when I am bumped. Three days after Fuller's luncheon to Howells, I reached the town of Gallup, which is the point of departure for the Navajo Agency, some twenty-five or thirty miles north of the Santa Fé railway.