In the High Valley Part 5

The weather was favorable when the first rough days were past, and after they rounded the curve of the wide sea hemisphere and began to near the American coast it became beautiful, with high-arching skies and very bright sunsets. Accustomed to the low-hung grays and struggling sunbeams of southern England, Imogen could not get used to these novelties. Her surprise over the dazzle of the day and the clear, vivid blue of the heavens was a continual amus.e.m.e.nt and joy to Mrs. Ashe, who took a patriotic pride in her own climate, and, as it were, made herself responsible for it.

Then came the eventful morning, when, rousing to the first glow of dawn, they found the screw motionless, and the steamer lying off a green island, with a big barrack-building on it, over which waved the American flag. The health officer made his visit, and before long they were steaming up the wide bay of New York, between green, flowery sh.o.r.es, under the colossal Liberty, whose outstretched arm seemed to point to the dim rich ma.s.s of roofs and towers and spires of the city which lay beyond. Then they neared the landing-stage, where a black ma.s.s of people stood waiting them, and Amy gave a cry of delight as she saw a gold-banded cap among them, and recognized her Uncle Ned.

The little Anglo-Belgian had been more or less ill all the way over, and looked pale and wan, though still very pretty, as she stood with the rest, gazing at the crowd of faces, all of whose eyes were turned toward the steamer. Imogen, who had helped her to dress, remained protectingly by her side.

"What shall you do if he doesn't happen to be there?" she asked, smitten with a sudden fear. "Something might detain him, you know."

"I--I--am not sure," turning pale. "Oh, yes, I am," rallying. "He have aunt in Howbokken. I go there and wait. But he not fail; he will be here." Then her eyes suddenly lit up, and she exclaimed with a little shriek of joy, "He _are_ here! That is he standing by the big timber. My Karl! my Karl! He are here!"

There indeed he was, foremost in the throng, a tall, brown, handsome fellow, with a nice, strong face, and such a look of love and expectation in his eyes that prosaic Imogen suddenly felt that it might be worth while, after all, to cross half the world to meet a look and a husband like that,--a fact which she had disbelieved till now, demurring also in her private mind as to the propriety of such a thing. It was pretty to see the tender happiness in the girl's face, and the answering expression of her lover's. It seemed to put poetry and pathos into an otherwise commonplace scene. The gang-plank was lowered, a crowd of people surged ash.o.r.e, to be met by a corresponding surge from the on-lookers, and in the midst of it Lieutenant Worthington leaped aboard and hastened to where his sister stood waiting him.

"You're coming up to Newport with me at five-thirty," were his first words. "Katy's all ready, and means to sit up till the boat gets in at two-thirty, keeping a little supper hot and hot for you. The Torpedo Station is in its glory just now, and there's going to be a great explosion on Thursday, which Amy will enjoy."

"How lovely!" cried Amy, clinging to her uncle's arm. "I love explosions. Why didn't Tanta come too?--I'm in such a hurry to see her."

Then Mr. Worthington asked to be introduced to Imogen and Lionel, and explained that acting on a request from Geoffrey Templestowe, he had taken rooms for them at a hotel, and secured their tickets and sleeping sections in the "limited" train for the next day.

"And I told them to save two seats for Rip Van Winkle to-night till you got there," he added. "If you're not too tired I advise you to go.

Jefferson is an experience which you ought not to miss, and you may never have another chance."

"How awfully kind your brother is," said the surprised Imogen to Mrs.

Ashe; "all this trouble, and he never saw either of us before! It's very good of him."

"Oh, that's nothing. That's the way American men do. They _are_ perfect dears, there's no doubt as to that, and they don't consider anything a trouble which helps along a friend or a friend's friend. It's a matter of course over here."

"Well, I don't consider it a matter of course at all. I think it extraordinary, and it was so very nice in Geoff to send word to Lion."

Then they parted. Meanwhile the little room-mate had been having a private conference with her "young man." She now joined Imogen.

"Karl says we shall be married directly, in a church, in half an hour,"

she told her. "And oh, won't you and Mr. Young come to be with us? It is so sad not to have one friend when one is married."

It was impossible to refuse this request; so it happened that the very first thing Imogen did in America was to attend a wedding. It took place in an old church, pretty far down town; and she always afterward carried in her mind the picture of it, dim and sombre in coloring, with the afternoon sun pouring in through a rich rose window and throwing blue and red reflections on the little group of five at the altar, while from outside came the din of wheels and the unceasing tread of busy feet. The service was soon over, the signatures were made, and the little bride went down the chancel on her husband's arm, with her face appropriately turned to the west, and with such a look of secure and unfearing happiness upon it as was good to see. It was an unusual and typical scene with which to begin life in a new country, and Imogen liked to think afterward that she had been there.

Then followed a long drive up town over rough ill-laid pavements, through dirty streets, varied by dirtier streets, and farther up, by those that were less dirty. Imogen had never seen anything so shabby as the poorest of the buildings that they pa.s.sed, and certainly never anything quite so fine as the best of them. Squalor and splendor jostled each other side by side; everywhere there was the same endless throng of hurrying people, and everywhere the same abundance of flowers for sale, in pots, in baskets, in bunches, making the whole air of the streets sweet. Then they came to the hotel, and were shown to their rooms,--high up, airy, and nicely furnished, though Imogen was at first disposed to cavil at the absence of bed-curtains.

"It looks so bare," she complained. "At home such a thing would be considered very odd, very odd indeed. Fancy a bed without curtains!"

"After you've spent one hot night in America you'll be glad enough to fancy it," replied her brother. "Stuffy old things. It's only in cold weather that one could endure them over here."

The first few hours on sh.o.r.e after a voyage have a delightfulness all their own. It is so pleasant to bathe and dress without having to hold on and guard against lurches and tips. Imogen went about her toilet well-pleased; and her pleasure was presently increased when she found on her dressing-table a beautiful bunch of summer roses, with "Mrs.

Geoffrey Templestowe's love and welcome" on a card lying beside it.

Thoughtful Clover had written to Ned Worthington to see to this little attention, and the pleasure it gave went even farther than she had hoped.

"I declare," said Imogen, sitting down with the flowers before her, "I never knew anybody so kind as they all are. I don't feel half so home-sick as I expected. I must write mamma about these roses. Of course Mrs. Geoff does it for Isabel's sake; but all the same it is awfully nice of her, and I shall try not to forget it."

Then, when, after finis.h.i.+ng her dressing, she drew the blinds up and looked from the windows, she gave a cry of sheer pleasure, for there beneath was spread out a beautiful wide distance of Park with feathery trees and belts of shrubs, behind which the sun was making ready to set in a crimson sky. There was a balcony outside the windows, and Imogen pulled a chair out on it to enjoy the view. Carriages were rolling in at the Park gates, looking exactly like the equipages one sees in London, with fat coachmen, glossy horses, and jingling silvered harness. Girls and young men were cantering along the bridle-paths, and throngs of well-dressed people filled the walks. Beyond was a fairy lake, where gondolas shot to and fro; a band was playing; from still farther away came a peal of chimes from a church tower.

"And this is New York!" thought Imogen. Then her thoughts reverted to Miss Opd.y.k.e and her tale of the Tammany Indians, and she flushed with sudden vexation.

"What an idiot she must have considered me!" she reflected.

But her insular prejudices revived in full force as a knock was heard, and a colored boy, entering with a tinkling pitcher, inquired, "Did you ring for ice-water, lady?"

"No!" said Imogen sharply; "I never drink iced water. I rang for hot water, but I got it more than an hour ago."

"Beg pardon, lady."

"Why on earth does he call me 'lady'?" she murmured--"so tiresome and vulgar!"

Then Lionel came for her, and they went down to dinner,--a wonderful repast, with soups and fishes and vegetables quite unknown to her; a bewildering succession of meats and entrees, strawberries such as she had supposed did not grow outside of England, raspberries and currants such as England never knew, and wonderful blackberries, of great size and sweetness, bursting with purple juice. There were ices too, served in the shapes of apples, pears, and stalks of asparagus, which dazzled her country eyes not a little, while the whole was a terror and astonishment to her thrifty English mind.

"Lionel, don't keep on ordering things so," she protested. "We are eating our heads off as it is, I am sure."

"My dear young friend, you are come to the Land of Fat Things," he replied. "Dinner costs just the same, once you sit down to it, whether you have a biscuit and a gla.s.s of water, or all these things."

"I call it a sinful waste, then," she retorted. "But all the same, since it is so, I'll take another ice."

"'First endure, then pity, then embrace,'" quoted her brother. "That's right, Moggy; pitch in, spoil the Egyptians. It doesn't hurt them, and it will do you lots of good."

From the dinner-table they went straight to the theatre, having decided to follow Lieut. Worthington's advice and see "Rip Van Winkle." And then they straightway fell under the spell of a magician who has enchanted many thousands before them, and for the s.p.a.ce of two hours forgot themselves, their hopes and fears and expectations, while they followed the fortunes of the idle, lovable, unpractical Rip, up the mountain to his sleep of years, and down again, white-haired and tottering, to find himself forgotten by his kin and a stranger in his own home. People about them were weeping on relays of pocket-handkerchiefs, hanging them up one by one as they became soaked, and beginning on others. Imogen had but one handkerchief, but she cried with that till she had to borrow Lionel's; and he, though he professed to be very stoical, could not quite command his voice as he tried to chaff her in a whisper on her emotions, and begged her to "dry up" and remember that it was only a play after all, and that presently Jefferson would discard his white hair and wrinkles, go home to a good supper, and make a jolly end to the evening.

It was almost too exciting for a first night on sh.o.r.e, and if Imogen had not been so tired, and if her uncurtained bed had not proved so deliciously comfortable, she would scarcely have slept as she did till half-past seven the next morning, so that they had to scramble through breakfast not to lose their train. Once started in the "Limited," with a library and a lady's-maid, a bath and a bed at her disposal, and just beyond a daintily appointed dinner-table adorned with fresh flowers,--all at forty miles an hour,--she had leisure to review her situation and be astonished. Bustling cities shot past them,--or seemed to shoot,--beautifully kept country-seats, shabby suburbs where goats and pigs mounted guard over shanties and cabbage-beds, great tracts of wild forest, factory towns black with smoke, rivers winding between blue hill ridges, prairie-like expanses so overgrown with wild-flowers that they looked all pink or all blue,--everything by turns and nothing long.

It seemed the sequence of the unexpected, a succession of rapidly changing surprises, for which it was impossible to prepare beforehand.

"I shall never learn to understand it," thought poor perplexed Imogen.

CHAPTER IV.

IN THE HIGH VALLEY.

MEANWHILE, as the "Limited" bore the young English travellers on their western way, a good deal of preparation was going on for their benefit in that special nook of the Rocky mountains toward which their course was directed. It was one of those clear-cut, jewel-like mornings which seem peculiar to Colorado, with dazzling gold suns.h.i.+ne, a cloudless sky of deep sapphire blue, and air which had touched the mountain snows somewhere in its nightly blowing, and still carried on its wings the cool pure zest of the contact.

Hours were generally early in the High Valley, but to-day they were a little earlier than usual, for every one had a sense of much to be done.

Clover Templestowe did not always get up to administer to her husband and brother-in-law their "stirrup-cup" of coffee; but this morning she was prompt at her post, and after watching them ride up the valley, and standing for a moment at the open door for a breath of the scented wind, she seated herself at her sewing-machine. A steady whirring hum presently filled the room, rising to the floor above and quickening the movements there. Elsie, running rapidly downstairs half an hour later, found her sister with quite a pile of little cheese-cloth squares and oblongs folded on the table near her.

"Dear me! are those the Youngs' curtains you are doing?" she asked. "I fully meant to get down early and finish my half. That wretched little Phillida elected to wake up and demand ''tories' from one o'clock till a quarter past two. 'Hence these tears.' I overslept myself without knowing it."

Phillida was Elsie's little girl, two years and a half old now, and Dr.

Carr's namesake.

"How bad of her!" said Clover, smiling. "I wish children could be born with a sense of the fitness of times and seasons. Jeffy is pretty good as to sleeping, but he is dreadful about eating. Half the time he doesn't want anything at dinner; and then at half-past three, or a quarter to eight, or ten minutes after twelve, or some such uncanonical hour, he is so ragingly hungry that he can scarcely wait till I fetch him something. He is so tiresome about his bath too. Fancy a young semi-Britain objecting to 'tub.' I've circ.u.mvented him to-day, however, for Geoff has promised to wash him while you and I go up to set the new house in order. Baby is always good with Geoff."

"So he is," remarked Elsie as she moved about giving little tidying touches here and there to books and furniture. "I never knew a father and child who suited each other so perfectly. Phil flirts with Clarence and he is very proud of her notice, but I think they are mutually rather shy; and he always touches her as though she were a bit of eggsh.e.l.l china, that he was afraid of breaking."