"By me!" cries Ollie hotly. "Hang me if she shall marry any other man!"
Then he says plaintively, "I have considered her my own for a year."
"Very well," replies Mrs. Livingston; "you had better act as if you did. Miss Travenion"s att.i.tude to you has been one of indifference. She saw no one whom she liked better. Besides, girls enjoy being made love to. Perhaps Captain Lawrence last night in Ogden in the moonlight was more of a Romeo than you have been. He looks as if he might be."
"Does he?" cries Ollie. "I"ll show him that I can play the romantic as well as he," and going out, he, for the first time in his life--for he is a good young man--says to himself, "d.a.m.n!" and then becomes frightened and soliloquizes: "Oh gracious, that is the first time I ever swore."
So going to the theatre and coming therefrom he a.s.sists Erma into the carriage with squeezes of her hand that make her wince, and little amatory ogles of the eyes that make her blush.
Coming from the theatre, they go to "Happy Jack"s," the swell restaurant of the city in 1871, where they have a very pretty little room prepared for them, and trout caught fresh in a mountain stream that day, and chickens done to a turn, and the freshest of lettuce and some lovely pears and grapes from Payson gardens and vineyards, and a bottle of champagne from sunny France, some of which gets into Mr. Ollie"s head and makes him so devoted in his attentions to the young lady who sits beside him, that, getting a chance, he surrept.i.tiously squeezes her hand under the table, which makes Erma think him tipsy with wine, not love.
From this they return to the Townsend House, where the party separating, Miss Travenion finds herself alone at the door of her own room; but just before she enters, Mr. Oliver comes along the hallway, and walking up to her, says, with eyes that have grown fiery: "Erma, how can you treat me so coldly when I love you?"
"Why, when did that love idea come into your head?" returns the young lady with a jeering laugh.
Next her voice grows haughty, and she says, coldly, "Stop!" for Ollie is about to put his arm around her fairy waist. A second after, however, she laughs again and says: "What nonsense! Good-night, Mr. Oliver," and sweeps past him into her room, where, closing the door, Miss Changeable suddenly cries: "If he had dared!" then mutters: "A few days ago I looked upon his suit complacently and indifferently;" next pants: "Now what is the matter with me? What kind of a railroad journey is it that makes a girl--" and, checking herself here, cries: "Pshaw! what nonsense!" and so goes to bed in the City of the Saints.
CHAPTER IX.
THE BALL IN SALT LAKE.
The next morning sleep leaves Erma, driven away by the singing of the birds in the trees that front the hotel. A little time after, church bells come to her ears, and she is astonished, and then remembers that it is Sunday, and that there is a little Episcopal church on First South Street that has come there with the railroad, and is permitted to exist because United States troops are at Camp Douglas, just in the shadow of the mountains, over which the sun is rising, and whose snowtops look very cool and very pleasant here in the warmer valley, five thousand feet below them.
Coming down stairs to a nine o"clock breakfast, she encounters Ferdie and Louise at the table, for Mrs. Livingston and Oliver are later risers. Over the meal, Mr. Chauncey, who has not been to the theatre with them, but has been investigating the city, points out some of the notables who are seated about the dining-room. Then he begins to run on about what he has seen the evening before, telling them he has joined the Salt Lake Billiard Club and paid twenty-five cents initiation fee to register his name as a member of the club, in order to wield a cue, which registry is kept by pasting a few sheets of paper each day upon a roller, and has gradually rolled up until it has a diameter of five feet, and contains the names of every man who has ever played a game of billiards in Salt Lake City from the time Orson Pratt first spied out the valley; for the Mormon authorities have refused to license billiard tables, and a club was the only way in which they could be circ.u.mvented.
Next the boy excitedly tells them that he has been introduced to a Mormon bishop in a barroom. At which Miss Livingston laughs: "He couldn"t have been much of a bishop to have been there."
"Wasn"t he!" rejoins Ferdie indignantly. "He has four wives, two pairs of sisters."
At which Louise gives an affrighted, "Oh!" and Miss Travenion says sternly, "No more Mormon stories, please," for Mr. Chauncey is about to run on about an apostle of the church who had married a mother and two daughters.
But now the party are joined by Mrs. Livingston and Oliver, and shortly after, the meal being finished, Mr. Livingston proposes church.
As it is a short distance, they go there on foot, the widow and Louise and Ferdie walking ahead and Mr. Livingston attaching himself to Erma and bringing up the rear.
As they walk up South Second Street and turn into East Temple, Miss Travenion, who has been listening to Ollie"s conversation in a musingly indifferent way, suddenly brightens up and says, "Excuse me, please,"
and leaving him hastily, crosses the wide main street. A moment after, Livingston, to his astonishment, sees her in earnest conversation with Mr. Kruger.
This gentleman has turned from two or three square-jawed, full-lipped Mormon friends of his, to meet her. A complacent smile is on his red and sunburnt face, which lights up with a peculiar glance, half-triumph, half something else, as the girl, radiant in her beauty, addresses him.
"Well, Sissy, I am right glad you take the trouble to run over and see me this morning," he cries genially, trying to take her patricianly gloved hand in his.
"Mr. Kruger," she says shortly, "I fear the telegram I gave you did not reach my father. Have you heard anything of him? Do you know where he is?"
"Yes," replies the complaisant Lot. "I reckon he is in one of the outlying mining camps. If so, he won"t be here for a day or two yit, though he has been communicated with."
"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es the girl; "then I shall be disappointed again?"
"Indeed! How?" says the man rather curiously, noting that the lovely blue eyes are teary as they look into his.
"I am going to the Episcopal Church. I had hoped to meet my father there."
"You expect--to meet your dad--thar?" gasps Kruger, as if the girl"s information took away his breath.
"Yes, certainly! My father has been an Episcopalian all his life. I naturally expect to meet him at the Episcopal Church."
"Oh--your--father--has--been--an Episcopal--all his life," echoes Lot, apparently a little dazed. Then he goes on genially: "Wa-all, as you are certain of not seeing your dad among the Episcopals, perhaps you"d better go up this morning to our great Tabernacle, where President Young will make an address that"ll learn you somethin"." He apparently now has no wish to conceal that he is a Latter-Day Saint.
"Thank you," replies the girl, with a little mocking smile. "I am an Episcopalian as well as my father," and she rejoins the wondering Ollie, who has by this time crossed the street; as she moves away with her escort, she thinks she hears a low chuckle from the genial Kruger.
Horror and rage would enter her, however, did she catch the remark of one of his companions: "Well, bishop, what do you think Mrs. Kruger Number Six would say to that, if she saw it? A new favorite in the household, eh?"
"Oh, no tellin"," rejoins Lot, his eyes following Miss Travenion"s light form, as do likewise those of his companions, for the girl, robed as she is in the creation of some New York milliner, makes a picture of maiden loveliness seldom seen in the streets of Salt Lake City in 1871; Mormon women, as a rule, not being over fair to look upon, and the few Gentile ladies in that town being mostly married to gentlemen whose business has brought them to Utah.
"I am simply astonished, Erma," remarks Mr. Livingston, as they get out of ear-shot, "that knowing, as you know now, that this man is a Mormon, a polygamist, you even notice him, much less address him on the public streets."
"I merely asked him where my father was," replies the girl rather haughtily. "I would ask any man that--to get one minute nearer my dear papa."
Then she walks silently by his side; Oliver sporadically attempting to keep up the conversation, until they arrive at the pretty little Episcopal church on First South Street, where they get such an edifying sermon from Bishop Tuttle, who is a.s.sisted by the Rev. Mr. Kirby in the service, that Mr. Livingston is quite delighted.
"Who would have thought it! They even have altar-boys out here. I shall leave my card on the Bishop at once," he remarks, as the congregation is dismissed.
"Why not see him immediately?" suggests Miss Travenion; which they do, and she has an opportunity of asking the Right Reverend Mr. Tuttle if her father, Mr. Ralph Travenion, is not one of his communicants, and is much surprised and disappointed to learn that the Bishop has never heard of the gentleman she names.
Returning from church, after dinner Ferdie, who is anxious, as he expresses it, to see Mormonism in its glory, induces them to go to afternoon services in the Tabernacle. Under its vast dome, many thousands of the elect of Utah listen to a discourse from one high up in the Mormon priesthood, who tells them that women who bear not children are accursed, and goes so into the details of the "Breeding of the Righteous," that Mrs. Livingston whispers to Louise and Erma to close their ears, and goes out of the place to the pealing of its great organ and the singing of its vast choir, feeling a loathing horror of these Saints of Latter Days.
As for Ferdie, he remarks, "Isn"t this a Tower of Babel crowd?" for it is Conference time, and Northern Utah has sent its Swedes and Scandinavians, and Southern Utah its Huns and Bohemians, and there are Welsh from Spanish Fork, and Cornish men from Springville, and all are jabbering in their native tongues, English being less heard than the others; and the men have, generally, red faces, scaly from weather exposure, and the women have often a hopeless look in their eyes, and the children are mostly tow-headed in this Mormon Conference crowd of 1871.
After a time the Livingstons get to their carriage and drive up to Camp Douglas, to the dress parade which takes place every Sunday, having been invited there by Captain Ellison, of the Thirteenth Infantry, who has been introduced to Louise the evening before, and has been very much caught by her piquant graces. Then, the parade being dismissed, this gentleman brings up several of his brother officers to the Livingstons"
carriage, and introduces Lamar, a dandy, dashing lieutenant fresh from West Point, and Johnson, of the Fifth Cavalry, and several other of his brother officers, and these, looking for the first time upon the New York beauties as they sit in their carriage, offer them a hundred pleasant excursions and courtesies; all insisting that the whole party must come to Mr. Bussey"s ball, as it will be a great affair in Salt Lake society, both Mormon and Gentile; for the banker aims for popularity, and has invited every one in the city who has a bank account or has any chance of having one.
Then they drive away, and looking at the stars and stripes which float from the flag-staff of this camp bristling with cannon and Gatling guns--for Douglas, in those days, was held rather in the manner of a beleaguered fortress than in the easy method of a local garrison--the girl cannot help contrasting the columns of blue infantry she has just seen, and the vast and motley a.s.semblage of men in the Tabernacle, who, at the word of their president, would turn upon and a.s.sault this camp and make war upon these United States of America. For the danger of Mormonism has been and will be, not in the feeling of animosity that its ma.s.ses hold to this government, for they have but little, but in their blind, unthinking allegiance to a power they hold superior to it--that of their priesthood and the officers of their Church.
Then they come down the hill into the city again for supper at the Townsend House, which takes place in the evening, dinner in that primitive country being the midday meal. Finishing this, they are called upon by Mrs. Bussey, who insists upon their not omitting her ball.
During her visit she introduces to the Livingstons a number of Gentile ladies in the hotel and a few of the gentlemen engaged in speculation in the neighboring mines, who are quartered at the house, and they pa.s.s a quiet evening in the parlor, in conversation with their new-made acquaintances, whom Miss Travenion charms with a song or two.
These are mostly plaintive melodies, for thoughts of her father will run in the girl"s brain and somehow make her sad. Being full of the subject now, she questions the mining operators that she meets if they know Ralph Travenion, and receives the usual answer that they have never heard of him; and her anxiety for tidings of him increases and would now be desperate, did not a few words she catches from one mining operator to another set her thinking of the man who has gone to Tintic.
"I am afraid Harry Lawrence has a hard row to hoe," remarks Jackson of the Bully Boy to Thomas of the Neptune. "He has got Tranyon and the Mormons against him. They will stop his sale to the English company if they do not get a goodly portion of his Mineral Hill."
"He has got one chance, however," says the other.
"Indeed! What is that?"
"Why, don"t you know," replies Thomas of the Neptune, "that the prophet up there," he nods his head in the direction of Brigham Young"s private residence, "and some of the other leaders of the Church are beginning to be afraid of Tranyon?"