Jubilee Trail (2 page)

Around the park, Broadway roared and clattered. But as you crossed Chambers Street on your way uptown, you noticed that things were getting less noisy. For here you were passing the great stores of fashion, the greatest of which was the store of Mr. Alexander Stewart. As you went by Stewart’s you heard the clop-clop of highbred horses and the voices of ladies; you passed windows full of cut glass and silver, furs and velvets and silks, fine gauzes that tumbled in the sunshine like waterfalls. As you went on uptown, Broadway grew shy and respectful, minding its manners. By the time you reached Union Square you could hardly hear the downtown noise at all.

Garnet had shopped on Broadway with her mother; she had been to concerts and to plays that were suitable for young ladies. But she knew this was only a fraction of New York. She would have loved to investigate those exciting places around City Hall Park, and those streets that led mysteriously away from it. Of course she never said so. Her parents would have been amazed, and hurt. Even if she said yes to one of the eligible young gentlemen and became a married woman, she was sure she would never go inside a gambling palace or a naughty theater. The whole town was full of things that ladies were not supposed to be interested in. Well-bred young men took it for granted that Garnet was not interested in things like that. They took it for granted that she was not interested in anything except getting one of them for a husband. Good manners kept Garnet from telling them she had turned down Henry Trellen, who was the greatest catch of them all. But she often wished she could.

From June to October, Garnet wondered if nothing was ever going to happen to her. And then, one day in October, something happened. A young man named Oliver Hale came to town. And though neither her father nor her mother knew it, Oliver started the most enchanting ripples on the smooth white surface of her life.

Things took place so strangely. It was very odd to think that if there hadn’t been that scandalous murder last summer she never would have met Oliver at all.

The murder had occurred in August, while Garnet and her mother were at Rockaway Beach. Two men were shot in a brawl at a gambling palace in New York. One of the men was an ex-convict of uncertain origin; his death had interested nobody. At least, it had not interested any of Garnet’s friends. If the other victim had been like him she would never have heard of the murder.

But the other victim was Mr. Francis Selkirk, aged forty-six, a wealthy man who had lived in Washington Square. Mr. Selkirk was a gentleman of imprudent habits, used to frequenting haunts of sin. But he was also rich and well connected, and he had recently married a high-born lady about half his age. His death in a gambling-house brawl started a buzz of talk at the summer hotel. Garnet was immensely interested, but nobody would tell her anything about it. The older ladies stopped whispering as soon as she came near, and her mother told her positively that she must not show indecent curiosity by asking questions. So Garnet knew almost nothing about the Selkirk murder, except that it had happened, and that the police seemed unable to fix upon the guilty person.

Mr. Selkirk’s relatives made angry demands that his murderer be brought to justice. But this was very difficult. There were many witnesses, for the gambling house had been full of people that evening. But most of them had been patronizing the bar, and their stories were not to be trusted. The weeks went by, nobody was put on trial for the Selkirk murder, and people began to talk of other things.

This was all Garnet knew. Except that she always had an unbecoming curiosity about things that did not concern young ladies, she did not dream that the Selkirk scandal was of any importance to her.

But it happened that Mr. Selkirk had died without making a will. His estate was put into the hands of his bank. Garnet’s father was Mr. Horace Cameron, vice-president of the bank, in charge of settling estates. One item of the Selkirk property was a store dealing in cloth and household goods. Mr. Cameron sold the building, and since Mr. Selkirk’s widow was willing to take a loss in order to have the business done quickly, he advertised the merchandise for sale at a low price.

This was the reason Oliver Hale came to the bank one day in October, and asked for Mr. Cameron. Oliver had just arrived in New York. He had never heard of Mr. Selkirk and was not interested in the manner of that gentleman’s death; but he had seen the advertisement of cloth and household goods at a bargain. Since these were the staples of his trade, he told Mr. Cameron he would be glad to have a look at the lot.

Oliver was a prairie trader. He had come to New York to buy merchandise, which he would pack into covered wagons and take to the Mexican provinces that lay west of the United States. He was twenty-six years old. That was young for such an arduous enterprise, Mr. Cameron said. Oliver laughed and replied that he had been in the prairie trade since he was eighteen. Most of the men in the trade were under thirty, he added; when they got older, they usually settled down to an easier way of living.

Oliver was a genial young fellow, his talk of frontier commerce was interesting, and one day Mr. Cameron brought him home to dinner. Mrs. Cameron, who had rather expected anybody from the frontier to be uncertain about forks, was agreeably surprised at Oliver’s polished manners. To her adroit questions, Oliver replied that he had grown up in Boston. He laughed as he told them how he had left Harvard in the middle of his college course, because frontier adventures were more to his liking than Latin and Greek.

Garnet listened with interest, but she was not at all sure that she liked this Mr. Hale. She thought he was the oddest-looking man she had ever seen. He gave her such an impression of size and strength that she was surprised to notice that his height was only average. He had big thick muscles, knotty under his clothes. And though he was well dressed, in a black broadcloth suit and a brocaded vest and a linen shirt with a high stock about his neck, he wore his clothes as though he felt silly in them. He made her think of an actor dressed up in a fancy costume and trying to pretend he was used to it.

Oliver’s hands were quite clean, but they were rough and horny like the hands of a day-laborer, and they looked as if he had had to do some furious scrubbing to get out the dirt. He had thick sandy curls, neatly cut but unruly; and his face was extremely puzzling. It was a rather handsome face, with merry brown eyes and a humorous mouth, but it looked as if it had been put together from two faces that did not match. The upper half was deeply tanned and weathered, and the laughter-crinkles around his eyes were white in the tan, as though he had spent months laughing at an almost unbearable glory of sun. But his cheeks and chin were as white as those of a lady who never went outdoors without a veil to shield her complexion. Garnet tried not to stare at him, but to save her life she could not help giving a quizzical glance now and then at that face of his. Once Oliver caught her eye as she looked at him across the table. He gave her a little private smile, and she blushed.

After dinner they were alone for a few minutes. The boys had been sent upstairs to do their lessons, Mrs. Cameron stopped to speak to the servants, and Mr. Cameron went to get the brandy for his guest. Garnet led Oliver into the parlor. As he drew a chair to the fire for her, he smiled at her again, as though they had a secret agreement about something, and the crinkles around his eyes quivered with amusement as he said,

“I had it shaved off ten days ago, in the barber shop at the Astor House.”

“Oh!” Garnet exclaimed. She put her hand to her lips, embarrassed that he had noticed her attention. But she was glad to have the matter explained. “So that’s it,” she went on. “You’ve been wearing a beard!”

He nodded. “There’s no chance to shave on the trail. I looked like Robinson Crusoe when I got here. In fact, I still do.” As he spoke he turned over his great laboring hands. “I got these,” he said, “from dragging pack-mules over the mountains.”

“Tell me about it sometime,” she begged eagerly.

“I’d like to. If I asked you to go riding with me, would you say yes?”

“I—I don’t think my mother would let me,” Garnet answered, embarrassed again when she heard how regretful her voice sounded. “She doesn’t know you well enough.”

“I’ll take care of that,” Oliver said. He was about to say more, but just then her mother came into the parlor.

Instantly, Oliver’s manner changed. He became gracious and deferential, as a gentleman should be in the presence of ladies. Though he was quite formal, he managed to be so engaging that Mrs. Cameron began to think his unusual appearance was very interesting. A man who had traveled in strange countries would be sure to enliven a dinner-party. She was giving a dinner next week, for which she needed an extra man. Just then Oliver asked her casually if she knew his aunt, Mrs. William Fortescue of Bleecker Street. Of course Mrs. Cameron knew the Fortescues; her family had lived in New York since colonial times, and she knew everybody. Before he left, Oliver had been invited to the dinner.

When he came to dinner the next week, Oliver did not get, nor even seem to want, a chance to be alone with Garnet. He made himself charming to everybody, especially the older ladies. The next morning he sent flowers to his hostess.

Garnet saw him again, at a very dull party given by that very proper aunt of his, and at other parties given by other hostesses who were glad to find so courtly a bachelor. He paid Garnet no special attention, until one day when she received a note from him, asking if she would do him the honor of riding with him the next morning.

Garnet asked her mother. By this time Mrs. Cameron had no objection. She said she wished every man were as well-bred as Oliver Hale.

They mounted their horses in front of the house, and set out for the bridle-paths uptown. As they rode away, the wind spanked Garnet’s red cheeks and blew her hair in little black locks across her forehead. With a grin of admiration, Oliver exclaimed,

“Now at last we can say something to each other. I like you. I like you very much.”

It was so different from the way other men spoke to her that she did not know what to say. Oliver laughed mischievously and added,

“Let’s be honest. You hate those damn parties as much as I do. Don’t you?”

Nobody had ever said “damn” in her presence before. Garnet began a dignified rebuke, but Oliver laughed at her, and in another minute she was astonished to find herself laughing too. She asked, “Why have you been going to those parties if you didn’t like them?”

“You know as well as I do,” said Oliver. “I had to make a good impression on your mother before she’d have let me go out with you. Couldn’t you see how hard I was working?”

Garnet was not used to such candor. She said, “Why—thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” said Oliver. He laughed and sighed together. “You know, Miss Cameron, I’ve been out of the United States for eight years. I’d forgotten American girls were brought up to be such fools. But you didn’t look like a fool, even the first time I saw you.”

Much as she liked his frankness, she had no idea how to answer it. So instead of trying to answer, she asked,

“Where have you been all this time?”

“Mostly in California,” said Oliver.

Garnet frowned slightly. “Where?”

“California.” Oliver smiled with a trace of mischief.

Garnet searched her knowledge of the world. “You’re going to think I’m very ignorant, Mr. Hale,” she said after a moment. “But I never heard of that country.”

Oliver drew a long breath of relief. “Thank you,” he said.

“For what?” asked Garnet.

“For being honest enough to say you never heard of it. Most of them pretend they have. Then they call it something wrong and prove they haven’t. Don’t apologize. California is one of the most remote and least-known spots on earth. Very few people on this side ever heard of it.”

“Where is it?” she asked with interest.

“On the Pacific Ocean.”

Garnet puckered her lips, thinking. “You mean in Asia? Near China?”

“No, the Pacific Coast of North America. I’ll tell you about it some day. But not now. Let’s talk about you.”

The next thing she knew she was telling him about Miss Wayne’s Select Academy. She told him how they had taught her to stand and walk and curtsy, and how many times she had trudged up that circular staircase with a book balanced on her head. Oliver laughed and laughed, and asked how she had survived it with such a rosy healthy look about her. Garnet told him how often her red cheeks had embarrassed her. She told him about the time a new teacher had ordered her to go upstairs and wash her face, scandalized to think that a young lady should be painting herself like an actress; and how she had pressed her fingers to her cheeks and made white marks, which immediately turned red again, thus proving that no amount of soap would give her a ladylike pallor of complexion. She told him how the other girls had teased her about it. And how she had tried to drink vinegar to get pale, but the stuff made her sick. And how the teachers were always saying, “Miss Cameron, you must not walk so fast. It really does not look well. And Miss Cameron,
please
try not to laugh so much!”

Oliver was amused and sympathetic by turns. He told her he had a pretty good idea of what she was talking about. Young men at Harvard were not forbidden to laugh or to walk fast, but they were stuffed as full of nonsense as a Christmas turkey with chestnuts, and he hated it, and that was why he had gone out to the West.

Garnet had a sense of exhilaration. This was the sort of man she had been wanting to meet. They talked and talked, and by the time they came home—reluctantly, but she had to be prompt or her mother would have been concerned—she felt more at ease with him than she had ever felt with Henry Trellen or any of her other beaus.

She saw him again, at the opening of a new play at the Park Theater. They went riding together several times more. Garnet did not tell her mother how frankly they talked to each other. Mrs. Cameron had seen Oliver’s company manners, and liked them; Garnet did not want her to get the idea that he was not a proper escort.