by Willa Cather
was cordial enough, but he gave me bad advice. He was very positive that
I ought to report to the Indian Commission, and gave me a letter to the
Commissioner. The Commissioner was out of town, and I wasted three days
waiting about his office, being questioned by clerks and secretaries.
They were not very busy, and seemed to find me entertaining. I thought
they were interested in my mission, and interest was what I wanted to
arouse. I didn't know how influential these people might be--they talked
as if they had great authority. I had brought along in my telescope bag
some good pieces of pottery--not the best, I was afraid of accident, but
some that were representative--and all the photographs Blake and I had
taken. We had only a small kodak, and these pictures didn't make much
show,--looked, indeed, like grubby little 'dobe ruins such as one can
find almost anywhere. They gave no idea of the beauty and vastness of
the setting. The clerks at the Indian Commission seemed very curious
about everything and made me talk a lot. I was green and didn't know any
better. But when one of the fellows there tried to get me to give him my
best bowl for his cigarette ashes, I began to suspect the nature of
their interest.
At last the Commissioner returned, but he had pressing engagements, and
I hung around several days more before he would see me. After
questioning me for about half an hour, he told me that his business was
with living Indians, not dead ones, and that his office should have
informed me of that in the beginning. He advised me to go back to our
Congressman and get a letter to the Smithsonian Institution. I packed up
my pottery and got out of the place, feeling pretty sore. The head clerk
followed me down the corridor and asked me what I'd take for that little
bowl he'd taken a fancy to. He said it had no market value, I'd find
Washington full of such things; there were cases of them in the cellar
at the Smithsonian that they'd never taken the trouble to unpack, hadn't
any place to put them.
I went back to my Congressman. This time he wasn't so friendly as
before, but he gave me a letter to the Smithsonian. There I went through
the same experience. The director couldn't be seen except by
appointment, and his secretary had to be convinced that your business
was important before he would give you an appointment with his chief.
After the first morning I found it difficult to see even the secretary.
He was always engaged. I was told to take a seat and wait, but when he
was disengaged he was hurrying off to luncheon. I would sit there all
morning with a group of unfortunate people: girls who wanted to get
typewriting to do, nice polite old men who wanted to be taken out on
surveys and expeditions next summer. The secretary would at last come
out with his overcoat on, and would hurry through the waiting-room
reading a letter or a report, without looking up.
The office assistants cheered me along, and I kept this up for some
days, sitting all morning in that room, studying the patterns of the
rugs, and the shoes of the patient waiters who came as regularly as I.
One day after the secretary had gone out, his stenographer, a nice
little Virginia girl, came and sat down in an empty chair next to mine
and began talking to me. She wasn't pretty, but her kind eyes and soft
Southern voice took hold of me at once. She wanted to know what I had in
my telescope, and why I was there, and where I came from, and all about
it. Nearly everyone else had gone out to lunch--that seemed to be the
one thing they did regularly in Washington--and we had the waiting-room
to ourselves. I talked to her a good deal. Her name was Virginia Ward.
She was a tiny little thing, but she had lovely eyes and such gentle
ways. She seemed indignant that I had been put off so long after having
come so far.
"Now you just let me fix it up for you," she said at last. "Mr. Wagner
is bothered by a great many foolish people who waste his time, and he is
suspicious. The best way will be for you to invite him to lunch with
you. I'll arrange it. I keep a list of his appointments, and I know he
is not engaged for luncheon tomorrow. I'll tell him that he is to lunch
with a nice boy who has come all the way from New Mexico to inform the
Department about an important discovery. I'll tell him to meet you at
the Shoreham, at one. That's expensive, but it would do no good to
invite him to a cheap place. And, remember, you must ask him to order
the luncheon. It will maybe cost you ten dollars, but it will get you
somewhere."
I felt grateful to the nice little thing,--she wasn't older than I. I
begged her wouldn't she please come to lunch with me herself to-day, and
talk to me.
"Oh, no!" she said, blushing red as a poppy. "Why, I'm afraid you
think--"
I told her I didn't think anything but how nice she was to me, and how
lonesome I was. She went with me, but she wouldn't go to any swell
place. She told me a great many useful things.
"If you want to get attention from anybody in Washin'ton," she said,
"ask them to lunch. People here will do almost anything for a good
lunch."
"But the Director of the Smithsonian, for instance," I said, "surely
you don't mean that the high-up ones like that--? Why would he want
to bother with a cow-puncher from New Mexico, when he can lunch with
scientists and ambassadors?"
She had a pretty little fluttery Southern laugh. "You just name a hotel
like the Shoreham to the Director, and try it! There has to be somebody
to pay for a lunch, and the scientists and ambassadors don't do that
when they can avoid it. He'd accept your invitation, and the next time
he went to dine with the Secretary of State he'd make a nice little
story of it, and paint you up so pretty you'd hardly know yourself."
When I asked her whether I'd better take my pottery--it was there under
the table between us--to the Shoreham to show Mr. Wagner, she tittered
again. "I wouldn't bother. If you show him enough of the Shoreham
pottery, that will be more effective."
The next morning, when the secretary arrived at his office, he stopped
by my chair and said he understood he had an engagement with me for one
o'clock. That was a good idea, he added: his mind was freer when he was
away from office routine.
I had been in Washington twenty-two days when I took the secretary out
to lunch. It was an excellent lunch. We had a bottle of Ch�teau d'Yquem.
I'd never heard of such a wine before, but I remember it because it cost
five dollars. I drank only one glass, and that pleased him too, for he
drank the rest. Though he was friendly and talked a great deal, my heart
sank lower, for he wouldn't let me explain my mission to him at all. He
kept telling me that he knew all about the South-west. He had been sent
by the Smithsonian to conduct parties of European archaeologists through
all the show places, Frijoles and Canyon de Chelly, and Taos, and the
Hopi pueblos. When some Austrian Archduke had gone to hunt in the Pecos
&nb
sp; range, he had been sent by his chief and the German ambassador to manage
the tour, and he had done it with such success that both he and the
Director were given decorations from the Austrian Crown, in recognition
of his services. Then I had to listen to a long story about how well he
was treated by the Archduke when he went to Vienna with his chief the
following summer. I had to hear about the balls and receptions, and the
names and titles of all the people he had met at the Duke's country
estate. I was amazed and ashamed that a man of fifty, a man of the
world, a scholar with ever so many degrees, should find it worth his
while to show off before a boy, and a boy of such humble pretensions,
who didn't know how to eat the hors d'enticons grol oelig gifvres any
more than if an assortment of cocoanuts had been set before him with no
hammer.
Imagine my astonishment when, as he was drinking his liqueur, he said
carelessly: "By the way, I was successful in arranging an interview with
the Director for you. He will see you at four o'clock on Monday."
That was Thursday. I spent the time between then and Monday trying to
find out something more about the kind of people I had come among. I
persuaded Virginia Ward to go to the theatre with me, and she told me
that it always took a long while to get anything through with the
Director, that I mustn't lose heart, and she would always be glad to
cheer me up. She lived with her mother, a widow lady, and they had me
come to dinner and were very nice to me.
All this time I was living with a young married couple who interested me
very much, for they were unlike any people I had ever known. The husband
was "in office," as they say there, he had some position in the War
Department. How it did use to depress me to see all the hundreds of
clerks come pouring out of that big building at sunset! Their lives
seemed to me so petty, so slavish. The couple I lived with gave me a
prejudice against that kind of life. I couldn't help knowing a good deal
about their affairs. They had only a small rented flat, and rented me
one room of it, so I was very much in their confidence and couldn't help
overhearing. They asked me not to mention the fact that I paid rent, as
they had told their friends I was making them a visit. It was like that
in everything; they spent their lives trying to keep up appearances, and
to make his salary do more than it could. When they weren't discussing
where she should go in the summer, they talked about the promotions in
his department; how much the other clerks got and how they spent it, how
many new dresses their wives had. And there was always a struggle going
on for an invitation to a dinner or a reception, or even a tea-party.
When once they got the invitation they had been scheming for, then came
the terrible question of what Mrs. Bixby should wear.
The Secretary of War gave a reception; there was to be dancing and a
great showing of foreign uniforms. The Bixbys were in painful suspense
until they got a card. Then for a week they talked about nothing but
what Mrs. Bixby was going to wear. They decided that for such an
occasion she must have a new dress. Bixby borrowed twenty-five dollars
from me, and took his lunch hour to go shopping with his wife and choose
the satin. That seemed to me very strange. In New Mexico the Indian boys
sometime went to trader's with their wives and bought shawls or calico,
and we thought it rather contemptible. On the night of the reception the
Bixbys set off gaily in a cab; the dress they considered a great
success. But they had bad luck. Somebody spilt claret-cup on Mrs.
Bixby's skirt before the evening was half over, and when they got home
that night I heard her weeping and reproaching him for having been so
upset about it, and looking at nothing but her ruined dress all evening.
She said he cried out when it happened. I don't doubt it.
Every cab, every party, was more than they could afford. If he lost an
umbrella, it was a real misfortune. He wasn't lazy, he wasn't a fool,
and he meant to be honest; but he was intimidated by that miserable sort
of departmental life. He didn't know anything else. He thought working
in a store or a bank not respectable. Living with the Bixbys gave me a
kind of low-spiritedness I had never known before. During my days of
waiting for appointments, I used to walk for hours around the fence that
shuts in the White House grounds, and watch the Washington monument
colour with those beautiful sunsets, until the time when all the clerks
streamed out of the treasury building and the War and Navy. Thousands of
them, all more or less like the couple I lived with. They seemed to me
like people in slavery, who ought to be free. I remember the city
chiefly by those beautiful, hazy, sad sunsets, white columns and green
shrubbery, and the monument shaft still pink while the stars were coming
out.
I got my interview with the Director of the Smithsonian at last. He gave
me his attention, he was interested. He told me to come again in three
days and meet Dr. Ripley, who was the authority on prehistoric Indian
remains and had excavated a lot of them. Then came an exciting and
rather encouraging time for me. Dr. Ripley asked the right sort of
questions, and evidently knew his business. He said he'd like to take
the first train down to my mesa. But it required money to excavate, and
he had none. There was a bill up before Congress for an appropriation.
We'd have to wait. I must use my influence with my Representative. He
took my pottery to study it. (I never got it back, by the way.) There
was a Dr. Fox, connected with the Smithsonian, who was also interested.
They told me a good many things I wanted to know, and kept me dangling
about the office. Of course they were very kind to take so much trouble
with a green boy. But I soon found that the Director and all his staff
had one interest which dwarfed every other. There was to be an
International Exposition of some sort in Europe the following summer,
and they were all pulling strings to get appointed on juries or sent to
international congresses--appointments that would pay their expenses
abroad, and give them a salary in addition. There was, indeed, a bill
before Congress for appropriations for the Smithsonian; but there was
also a bill for Exposition appropriations, and that was the one they
were really pushing. They kept me hanging on through March and April,
but in the end it came to nothing. Dr. Ripley told me he was sorry, but
the sum Congress had allowed the Smithsonian wouldn't cover an
expedition to the Southwest.
Virginia Ward, who had been so kind to me, went out to lunch with me
that day, and admitted I had been let down. She was almost as much
disappointed as I. She said the only thing Dr. Ripley really cared about
was getting a free trip to Europe and acting on a jury, and maybe
getting a decoration. "And that's what the Director wants, too," she
said. "They don't care much about dead and gone Indians. What they do
care about is going to Paris, and g
etting another ribbon on their
coats."
The only other person besides Virginia who was genuinely concerned about
my affair was a young Frenchman, a lieutenant attached to the French
Embassy, who came to the Smithsonian often on business connected with
this same International Exposition. He was nice and polite to Virginia,
and she introduced him to me. We used to walk down along the Potomac
together. He studied my photographs and asked me such intelligent
questions about everything that it was a pleasure to talk to him. He had
a fine attitude about it all; he was thoughtful, critical, and
respectful. I feel sure he'd have gone back to New Mexico with me if
he'd had the money. He was even poorer than I.
I was utterly ashamed to go home to Roddy, dead broke after all the
money I'd spent, and without a thing to show for it. I hung on in
Washington through May, trying to get a job of some sort, to at least
earn my fare home. My letters to Blake had been pretty blue for some
time back. If I'd been sensible, I'd have kept my troubles to myself. He
was easily discouraged, and I knew that. At last I had to write him for
money to go home. It was slow in coming, and I began to telegraph. I
left Washington at last, wiser than I came. I had no plans, I wanted
nothing but to get back to the mesa and live a free life and breathe
free air, and never, never again to see hundreds of little black-coated
men pouring out of white buildings. Queer, how much more depressing they
are than workmen coming out of a factory.
I was terribly disappointed when I got off the train at Tarpin and Roddy
wasn't at the station to meet me. It was late in the afternoon, almost
dark, and I went straight to the livery stable to talk Bill Hook for
news of Blake. Hook, you remember, had done all our hauling for us, and
had been a good friend. He gave me a glad hand and said Blake was out on
the mesa.
"I expect maybe he's had his feelings hurt here. He's been shy of this
town lately. You see, Tom, folks weren't bothered none about that mesa
so long as you fellows were playing Robinson Crusoe out there, digging
up curios. But when it leaked out that Blake had got a lot of money for
your stuff, then they begun to feel jealous--said them ruins didn't
belong to Blake any more than anybody else. It'll blow over in time;
people are always like that when money changes hands. But right now
there's a good deal of bad feeling."
I told him I didn't know what he was talking about.
"You mean you ain't heard about the German, Fechtig? Well, Rodney's got
some surprise waiting for you! Why, he's had the damnedest luck! He's
cleaned up a neat little pile on your stuff."
I begged him to tell me what stuff he meant.
"Why, your curios. This German, Fechtig, come along; he'd been buying up
a lot of Indian things out here, and he bought you whole outfit and paid
four thousand dollars down for it. The transaction made quite a stir
here in Tarpin. I'm not kicking. I made a good thing out of it. My mules
were busy three weeks packing the stuff out of there on their backs, and
I held the Dutchman up for a fancy price. He had packing cases made at
the wagon shop and took 'em up to the mesa full of straw and sawdust,
and packed the curios out there. I lost one of my mules, too. You
remember Jenny? Well, they were leading her down with a big box on her,
and right there where the trail runs so narrow around a bump in the
cliff above Black Canyon, she lost her balance and fell clean to the
bottom, her load on her. Pretty near a thousand feet, I guess. We never
went down to hold a post-mortem, but Fechtig paid for her like a
gentleman."
I remember I sat down on the sofa in Hook's office because I couldn't
stand up any longer, and the smell of the horse blankets began to make
me deathly sick. In a minute I went over, like a girl in a novel. Hook
pulled me out on the sidewalk and gave me some whisky out of his pocket