I long for the buoy-bell"s tolling When the north wind brings from afar The smooth, green, shining billows, To be churned into foam on the bar.
Oh! for the sea-gulls" screaming As they swoop so bold and free! Oh! for the fragrant commons, And the glorious open sea!--
For the restful great contentment, For the joy that is never known Till past the jetty and Brant Point Light The Islander comes to his own!
--MARY E. STARBUCK.
"I must send you out. I see that you cannot stand it here another month," said Jack one day; and so he bundled us onto the boat in the early spring, and took us down the river to meet the ocean steamer.
There was no question about it this time, and I well knew it.
I left my sister and her son in Ehrenberg, and I never saw my nephew again. A month later, his state of health became so alarming that my sister took him to San Francisco. He survived the long voyage, but died there a few weeks later at the home of my cousin.
At Fort Yuma we telegraphed all over the country for a nurse, but no money would tempt those Mexican women to face an ocean voyage. Jack put me on board the old "Newbern" in charge of the Captain, waited to see our vessel under way, then waved good-bye from the deck of the "Gila,"
and turned his face towards his post and duty. I met the situation as best I could, and as I have already described a voyage on this old craft, I shall not again enter into details. There was no stewardess on board, and all arrangements were of the crudest description. Both my child and I were seasick all the way, and the voyage lasted sixteen days. Our misery was very great.
The pa.s.sengers were few in number, only a couple of Mexican miners who had been prospecting, an irritable old Mexican woman, and a German doctor, who was agreeable but elusive.
The old Mexican woman sat on the deck all day, with her back against the stateroom door; she was a picturesque and indolent figure.
There was no diversion, no variety; my little boy required constant care and watching. The days seemed endless. Everbody bought great bunches of green bananas at the ports in Mexico, where we stopped for pa.s.sengers.
The old woman was irritable, and one day when she saw the agreeable German doctor pulling bananas from the bunch which she had hung in the sun to ripen, she got up muttering "Carramba," and shaking her fist in his face. He appeased her wrath by offering her, in the most fluent Spanish, some from his own bunch when they should be ripe.
Such were my surroundings on the old "Newbern." The German doctor was interesting, and I loved to talk with him, on days when I was not seasick, and to read the letters which he had received from his family, who were living on their Rittergut (or landed estates) in Prussia.
He amused me by tales of his life at a wretched little mining village somewhere about fifty miles from Ehrenberg, and I was always wondering how he came to have lived there.
He had the keenest sense of humor, and as I listened to the tales of his adventures and miraculous escapes from death at the hands of these desperate folk, I looked in his large laughing blue eyes and tried to solve the mystery.
For that he was of n.o.ble birth and of ancient family there was no doubt.
There were the letters, there was the crest, and here was the offshoot of the family. I made up my mind that he was a ne"er-do-weel and a rolling stone. He was elusive, and, beyond his adventures, told me nothing of himself. It was some time after my arrival in San Francisco that I learned more about him.
Now, after we rounded Cape St. Lucas, we were caught in the long heavy swell of the Pacific Ocean, and it was only at intervals that my little boy and I could leave our stateroom. The doctor often held him while I ran below to get something to eat, and I can never forget his kindness; and if, as I afterward heard in San Francisco, he really had entered the "Gate of a hundred sorrows," it would perhaps best explain his elusiveness, his general condition, and his sometimes dazed expression.
A gentle and kindly spirit, met by chance, known through the propinquity of a sixteen days" voyage, and never forgotten.
Everything comes to an end, however interminable it may seem, and at last the sharp and jagged outlines of the coast began to grow softer and we approached the Golden Gate.
The old "Newbern," with nothing in her but ballast, rolled and lurched along, through the bright green waters of the outer bar. I stood leaning against the great mast, steadying myself as best I could, and the tears rolled down my face; for I saw the friendly green hills, and before me lay the glorious bay of San Francisco. I had left behind me the deserts, the black rocks, the burning sun, the snakes, the scorpions, the centipedes, the Indians and the Ehrenberg graveyard; and so the tears flowed, and I did not try to stop them; they were tears of joy.
The custom officers wanted to confiscate the great bundles of Mexican cigarettes they found in my trunk, but "No," I told them, "they were for my own use." They raised their eyebrows, gave me one look, and put them back into the trunk.
My beloved California relatives met us, and took care of us for a fortnight, and when I entered a Pullman car for a nine days" journey to my old home, it seemed like the most luxurious comfort, although I had a fourteen-months-old child in my arms, and no nurse. So does everything in this life go by comparison.
Arriving in Boston, my sister Harriet met me at the train, and as she took little Harry from my arms she cried: "Where did you get that sunbonnet? Now the baby can"t wear that in Boston!"
Of course we were both thinking hard of all that had happened to me since we parted, on the morning after my wedding, two years before, and we were so overcome with the joy of meeting, that if it had not been for the baby"s white sunbonnet, I do not know what kind of a scene we might have made. That saved the situation, and after a few days of rest and necessary shopping, we started for our old home in Nantucket. Such a welcome as the baby and I had from my mother and father and all old friends!
But I saw sadness in their faces, and I heard it in their voices, for no one thought I could possibly live. I felt, however, sure it was not too late. I knew the East wind"s tonic would not fail me, its own child.
Stories of our experiences and misfortunes were eagerly listened to, by the family, and betwixt sighs and laughter they declared they were going to fill some boxes which should contain everything necessary for comfort in those distant places. So one room in our old house was set apart for this; great boxes were brought, and day by day various articles, useful, ornamental, and comfortable, and precious heirlooms of silver and gla.s.s, were packed away in them. It was the year of 1876, the year of the great Centennial, at Philadelphia. Everybody went, but it had no attractions for me. I was happy enough, enjoying the health-giving air and the comforts of an Eastern home. I wondered that I had ever complained about anything there, or wished to leave that blissful spot.
The poorest person in that place by the sea had more to be thankful for, in my opinion, than the richest people in Arizona. I felt as if I must cry it out from the house-tops. My heart was thankful every minute of the day and night, for every breath of soft air that I breathed, for every bit of fresh fish that I ate, for fresh vegetables, and for b.u.t.ter--for gardens, for trees, for flowers, for the good firm earth beneath my feet. I wrote the man on detached service that I should never return to Ehrenberg.
After eight months, in which my health was wholly restored, I heard the good news that Captain Corliss had applied for his first lieutenant, and I decided to join him at once at Camp MacDowell.
Although I had not wholly forgotten that Camp MacDowell had been called by very bad names during our stay at Fort Whipple, at the time that Jack decided on the Ehrenberg detail, I determined to brave it, in all its unattractiveness, isolation and heat, for I knew there was a garrison and a Doctor there, and a few officers" families, I knew supplies were to be obtained and the ordinary comforts of a far-off post. Then too, in my summer in the East I had discovered that I was really a soldier"s wife and I must go back to it all. To the army with its glitter and its misery, to the post with its discomforts, to the soldiers, to the drills, to the bugle-calls, to the monotony, to the heat of Southern Arizona, to the uniform and the stalwart Captains and gay Lieutenants who wore it, I felt the call and I must go.
CHAPTER XXIII. BACK TO ARIZONA
The last nails were driven in the precious boxes, and I started overland in November with my little son, now nearly two years old.
"Overland" in those days meant nine days from New York to San Francisco.
Arriving in Chicago, I found it impossible to secure a section on the Pullman car so was obliged to content myself with a lower berth. I did not allow myself to be disappointed.
On entering the section, I saw an enormous pair of queer cow hide shoes, the very queerest shoes I had ever seen, lying on the floor, with a much used travelling bag. I speculated a good deal on the shoes, but did not see the owner of them until several hours later, when a short thick-set German with sandy close-cut beard entered and saluted me politely. "You are noticing my shoes perhaps Madame?"
"Yes" I said, involuntarily answering him in German.
His face shone with pleasure and he explained to me that they were made in Russia and he always wore them when travelling. "What have we," I thought, "an anarchist?"
But with the inexperience and fearlessness of youth, I entered into a most delightful conversation in German with him. I found him rather an extraordinarily well educated gentleman and he said he lived in Nevada, but had been over to Vienna to place his little boy at a military school, "as," he said, "there is nothing like a uniform to give a boy self-respect." He said his wife had died several months before. I congratulated myself that the occupant of the upper berth was at least a gentleman.
The next day, as we sat opposite each other chatting, always in German, he paused, and fixing his eyes rather steadily upon me he remarked: "Do you think I put on mourning when my wife died? no indeed, I put on white kid gloves and had a fiddler and danced at the grave. All this mourning that people have is utter nonsense."
I was amazed at the turn his conversation had taken and sat quite still, not knowing just what to say or to do.
After awhile, he looked at me steadily, and said, very deferentially, "Madame, the spirit of my dead wife is looking at me from out your eyes."
By this time I realized that the man was a maniac, and I had always heard that one must agree with crazy people, so I nodded, and that seemed to satisfy him, and bye and bye after some minutes which seemed like hours to me, he went off to the smoking room.
The tension was broken and I appealed to a very nice looking woman who happened to be going to some place in Nevada near which this Doctor lived, and she said, when I told her his name, "Why, yes, I heard of him before I left home, he lives in Silver City, and at the death of his wife, he went hopelessly insane, but," she added, "he is harmless, I believe."
This was a nice fix, to be sure, and I staid over in her section all day, and late that night the Doctor arrived at the junction where he was to take another train. So I slept in peace, after a considerable agitation.
There is nothing like experience to teach a young woman how to travel alone.
In San Francisco I learned that I could now go as far as Los Angeles by rail, thence by steamer to San Diego, and so on by stage to Fort Yuma, where my husband was to meet me with an ambulance and a wagon.
I was enchanted with the idea of avoiding the long sea-trip down the Pacific coast, but sent my boxes down by the Steamer "Montana," sister ship of the old "Newbern," and after a few days" rest in San Francisco, set forth by rail for Los Angeles. At San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, we embarked for San Diego. It was a heavenly night. I sat on deck enjoying the calm sea, and listening to the romantic story of Lieutenant Philip Reade, then stationed at San Diego. He was telling the story himself, and I had never read or heard of anything so mysterious or so tragic.
Then, too, aside from the story, Mr. Reade was a very good-looking and chivalrous young army officer. He was returning to his station in San Diego, and we had this pleasant opportunity to renew what had been a very slight acquaintance.
The calm waters of the Pacific, with their long and gentle swell, the pale light of the full moon, our steamer gliding so quietly along, the soft air of the California coast, the absence of noisy travellers, these made a fit setting for the story of his early love and marriage, and the tragic mystery which surrounded the death of his young bride.