FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
“Come, gentlemen,” said the father, in a lively way. “We are all
campaigners. Sit down and take a cup of tea with us. No ceremony. _A
la guerre, comme à la guerre._ I cannot give you Sèvres porcelain. I
am afraid even my delf is a little cracked; but we’ll fancy it whole
and painted with roses. Now plenty of tea, Ellen dear. Guests are too
rare not to be welcomed with our very best. Besides, I expect Brother
Sizzum, after his camp duties are over.”
It was inexpressibly dreary, this feeble conviviality. In the old
gentleman’s heart it was plain that disappointment and despondency
were the permanent tenants. His gayety seemed only a mockery,--a
vain essay to delude himself into the thought that he could be happy
even for a moment. His voice, even while he jested, was hollow and
sorrowful. There was a trepidation in his manner, half hope, half
fear, as if he dreaded that some one would presently announce to him
a desperate disaster, or fancied that some sudden piece of good luck
was about to befall him, and he must be all attention lest it pass to
another. Nothing of the anxiety of a guilty man about him,--of one who
hears pursuit in the hum of a cricket or the buzz of a bee; only the
uneasiness of one flying forever from himself, and hoping that some
chance bliss will hold his flight and give him a moment’s forgetfulness.
We of course accepted the kindly invitation. Civilization was the
novelty to us. Tea with a gentleman and lady was a privilege quite
unheard of. We should both have been ready to devote ourselves to a
woman far less charming than our hostess. But here was a pair--the
beautiful daughter, the father astray--whom we must know more of. I
felt myself taking a very tender interest in their welfare, revolving
plans in my mind to learn their history, and, if it might be done, to
persuade the father out of his delusion.
“Now, gentlemen,” said our friend, playing his part with mild
gracefulness, like an accomplished host; “sit down on the blankets. I
can not give you grand arm-chairs, as I might have done once in Old
England, and hope to do if you ever come to see me at my house in
Deseret. But really we are forgetting something very important. We have
not been formally introduced. Bless me! that will never do. Allow me
gentlemen to present myself, Mr. Hugh Clitheroe, late of Clitheroe
Hall, Clitheroe, Lancashire,--a good old name, you see. And this is my
daughter, Miss Ellen Clitheroe. These gentlemen, my dear, will take the
liberty to present themselves to you.”
“Mr. Richard Wade, late of California; Mr. John Brent, a roving Yankee.
Pray let me aid you Miss Clitheroe.”
Brent took the teakettle from her hand, and filled the teapot. This
little domestic office opened the way to other civil services.
It was like a masquerading scene. My handsome friend and the elegant
young lady bending together over four cracked cups and as many plates
of coarse earthenware, spread upon a shawl, on the dry grass. The
circle of wagons, the groups of Saints about their supper fires, the
cattle and the fort in the distance, made a strangely unreal background
to a woman whose proper place, for open air, was in the ancient avenue
of some ancestral park, or standing on the terrace to receive groups
of brilliant ladies coming up the lawn. But character is superior to
circumstance, and Miss Clitheroe’s self-possession controlled her
scenery. Her place, wherever it was, became her right place. The
prairie, and the wagons, and the rough accessories, gave force to her
refinement.
Mr. Clitheroe regarded the pair with a dreamy pleasure.
“Quite patriarchal, is it not?” said he to me. “I could fancy myself
Laban, and my daughter Rachel. There is a trace of the Oriental in her
looks. We only need camels, and this would be a scene worthy of the
times of the Eastern patriarchs and the plains of the old Holy Land.
We of the Latter Day Church think much of such associations; more I
suppose than you world’s people.”
And here the old gentleman looked at me uneasily, as if he dreaded lest
I should fling in a word to disturb his illusion, or perhaps ridicule
his faith.
“I have often been reminded here of the landscape of Palestine,” said
I, “and those bare regions of the Orient. Your friends in Utah, too,
refresh the association by their choice of Biblical names.”
“Yes; we love to recall those early days when Jehovah was near to his
people, a chosen people, who suffered for faith’s sake, as we have
done. In fact, our new faith and new revelation are only revivals and
continuations of the old. Our founder and our prophets give us the
doctrines of the earliest Church, with a larger light and a surer
confidence.”
He said this with the manner of one who is repeating for the
thousandth time a lesson, a formula which he must keep constantly
before him, or its effect will be gone. In fact, his resolute assertion
of his creed showed the weak belief. As he paused, he looked at me
again, hoping, as I thought, that I would dispute or differ, and so he
might talk against contradiction, a far less subtle enemy than doubt.
As I did not immediately take up the discussion, he passed lightly,
and with the air of one whose mind does not love to be consecutive, to
another subject.
“Hunters, are you not?” said he, turning to Brent. “I am astonished
that more of you American gentlemen do not profit by this great
buffalo-preserve and deer-park. We send you a good shot occasionally
from England.”
“Yes,” said my friend. “I had a capital shot, and capital fellow too
for comrade, this summer, in the mountains. A countryman of yours, Sir
Biron Biddulph. He was wretchedly out of sorts, poor fellow, when we
started. Fresh air and bold life quite set him up. A month’s galloping
with the buffalo, and a fortnight over the cliffs, after the big-horn,
would ‘put a soul under the ribs of death.’ Biddulph left me to go
home, a new man. I find that he has stayed in Utah, for more hunting, I
suppose.”
Brent was kneeling at Miss Clitheroe’s feet, holding a cup for her to
fill. He turned toward her father as he spoke. At the name of Biddulph,
I saw that her red lips’ promise of possible blushes was no false one.
“Ah!” thought I; “here, perhaps, is the romance of the Baronet’s
history. No wonder he found England too narrow for him, if this noble
woman would not smile! Perhaps he has stopped in Utah to renew his
suit, or volunteer his services. A strange drama! with new elements of
interest coming in.”
I could not refrain from studying Miss Clitheroe with some curiosity as
I thought thus.
She perceived my inquisitive look. She made some excuse, and stepped
into the wagon.
“Biddulph!” said the father. “Ellen dear, Mr. Brent knows our old
neighbor, Biron Biddulph. O, she has disappeared, ‘on hospitable
thoughts intent.’ I shall be delighted to meet an old friend in
Deseret. We knew him intimately at home in better days,--no! in those
days I blindly deemed better, before I was illumined with the glories
of the new faith, and saw the New Jerusalem with eyes of hope.”
Miss Clitheroe rejoined us. She had been absent only a moment, but,
as I could see, long enough for tears, and the repression of tears.
I should have pitied her more; but she seemed, in her stout-hearted
womanhood, above pity, asking no more than the sympathy the brave have
always ready for the sorrowful brave.
Evidently to change the subject, she engaged Brent again in his
tea-table offices. I looked at that passionate fellow with some
anxiety. He was putting a large share of earnestness in his manner
of holding cups and distributing hardtack. Why so much fervor and
devotion, my friend? Seems to me I have seen cavaliers before, aiding
beauties with like ardor, on the carpet, in the parlor, over the Sèvres
and the silver. And when I saw it, I thought, “O cavalier! O beauty!
beware, or do not beware, just as you deem best, but know that there is
peril!” For love can improvise out of the steam of a teapot a romance
as big and sudden and irrepressible as the Afreet that swelled from the
casket by the sea-shore in the Arabian story.
We sat down upon the grass for our picnic. I should not invite the
late Mr. Watteau, or even the extant Mr. Diaz, to paint us. The late
Mr. Watteau’s heroes and heroines were silk and satin Arcadians; they
had _valets de chambre_ and _filles de chambre_, and therefore could
be not fully heroes and heroines, if proverbs be true. The present Mr.
Diaz, too, charming and pretty as he is, has his place near parterres
and terraces, within the reach of rake and broom. Mr. Horace Vernet
is equally inadmissible, since that martial personage does not
comprehend a desert, except with a foreground of blood, smoke, baggy
red pantaloons, and _mon General_ on a white horse giving the Legion of
Honor to _mon enfant_ on his last legs. But I must wait for some artist
with the gayety of Mr. Watteau, the refinement of Mr. Diaz, and the
soldierly force of Mr. Vernet, who can perceive the poetry of American
caravan-life, and can get the heroine of our picnic at Fort Bridger
to give him a sitting. Art is unwise not to perceive the materials it
neglects in such scenes.
Mr. Clitheroe grew more and more genial as we became better acquainted.
He praised the sunshine and the climate. England had nothing like it,
so our host asserted. The atmosphere of England crushed the body, as
its moral atmosphere repressed perfect freedom of thought and action.
“Yes, gentlemen,” said he, “I have escaped at last into the region I
have longed for. I mean to renew my youth in the Promised Land,--to
have my life over again, with a store of the wisdom of age.”
Then he talked pleasantly of the incidents of his journey,--an
impressible being, taking easily the color of the moment, like a child.
He liked travel, he said; it was dramatic action and scene-shifting,
without the tragedy or the over-absorbing interest of dramatic plot.
He liked to have facts come to him without being laboriously sought
for, as they do in travel. The eye, without trouble, took in whatever
appeared, and at the end of the day a traveller found himself expanded
and educated without knowing it. There was a fine luxury in this, for a
mature man to learn again, just as a child does, and find his lessons
play. He liked this novel, adventurous life.
“Think of it, sir,” he said, “I have seen real Indians, splendid
fellows, all in their war-paint; just such as I used to read of with
delight in your Mr. Fenimore’s tales. And these prairies too,--I
seem to have visited them already in the works of your charming Mr.
Irving,--a very pleasant author, very pleasant indeed, and quite
reminding me of our best essayists; though he has an American savor
too. Mr. Irving, I think, did not come out so far as this. This region
has never been described by any one with a poetic eye. My brethren in
the Church of the Latter Day have their duties of stern apostleship;
they cannot turn aside to the right hand nor to the left. But when the
Saints are gathered in, they will begin to see the artistic features
of their land. Those Wind River Mountains--fine name, by the way--that
I saw from the South Pass,--they seem to me quite an ideal Sierra.
Their blue edges and gleaming snow-peaks were great society for us as
we came by. We are very fond of scenery, sir, my daughter and I, and
this breadth of effect is very impressive after England. England, you
know, sir, is tame,--a snug little place, but quite a prison for people
of scope. Lancashire, my old home, is very pretty, but not grand;
quite the contrary. I have grown really quite tired of green grass,
and well-kept lawns, and the shaved, beardless, effeminate look of my
native country. This rough nature is masculine. It reminds me of the
youth of the world. I like to be in the presence of strong forces. I am
not afraid of the Orson feeling. Besides, in Lancashire, particularly,
we never see the sun; we see smoke; we breathe smoke; smoke spoils the
fragrance and darkens the hue of all our life. I hate chimneys, sir; I
have seen great fortunes go up them. I might perhaps tell you something
of my own experience in looking up a certain tall chimney not a hundred
miles from Clitheroe, and seeing ancestral acres fly up it, and
ancestral pictures and a splendid old mansion all going off in smoke.
But you are a stranger, and do not care about hearing my old gossip.
Besides, what is the loss of houses and lands, if one finds the pearl
of great price, and wins the prophet’s crown and the saint’s throne?”
And here the gray-haired, pale, dreamy old gentleman paused, and a
half-quenched fire glimmered in his eye. His childish, fanatical
ambition stirred him, and he smiled with a look of triumph.
I was silent in speechless pity.
His daughter turned, and smiled with almost tearful tenderness upon her
father.
“I have not heard you so animated for a long time, dear father,” she
said. “Mr. Wade seems quite to inspire you.”
“Yes, my dear, he has been talking on many very interesting topics.”
I had really done nothing except to bow, and utter those civil
monosyllables which are the “Hear! hear!” of conversation.
If I had been silent, Brent had not. While the garrulous old gentleman
was prattling on at full speed, I had heard all the time my friend’s
low, melodious voice, as he talked to the lady. He was a trained
artist in the fine art of sympathy. His own early sorrows had made him
infinitely tender with all that suffer. To their hearts he came as
one that had a right to enter, as one that knew their malady, and was
commanded to lay a gentle touch of soothing there. It is a great power
to have known the worst and bitterest that can befall the human life,
and yet not be hardened. No sufferer can resist the fine magnetism
of a wise and unintrusive pity. It is as mild and healing as music by
night to fevered sleeplessness.
The lady’s protective armor of sternness was presently thrown aside.
She perceived that she need not wear it against a man who was brother
to every desolate soul,--sisterly indeed, so delicate was his
comprehension of the wants of a woman’s nature. In fact, both father
and daughter, as soon as they discovered that we were ready to be
their friends, met us frankly. It was easy to see, poor souls! that it
was long since they had found any one fit company for them, any one
whose presence could excite the care-beguiling exhilaration of worthy
society. They savored the aroma of good-breeding with appetite.