During the rest of the time, the chapel was concealed by heavy curtains, and the seats turned around facing the stage.
We had a good string orchestra of twenty or more pieces, and as there were a number of active young bachelors at the post, a series of weekly dances was inaugurated. Never did I enjoy dancing more than at this time.
Then Mrs. Kautz, who was a thorough music lover and had a cultivated taste as well as a trained and exquisite voice, gave several musicales, for which much preparation was made, and which were most delightful.
These were given at the quarters of General Kautz, a long, low, rambling one-story house, arranged with that artistic taste for which Mrs. Kautz was distinguished.
Then came theatricals, all managed by Mrs. Kautz, whose talents were versatile.
We charged admission, for we needed some more scenery, and the neighboring frontier town of Valentine came riding and driving over the prairie and across the old bridge of the Niobrara River, to see our plays. We had a well-lighted stage. Our methods were primitive, as there was no gas or electricity there in those days, but the results were good, and the histrionic ability shown by some of our young men and women seemed marvellous to us.
I remember especially Bob Emmet"s acting, which moved me to tears, in a most pathetic love scene. I thought, "What has the stage lost, in this gifted man!"
But he is of a family whose talents are well known, and his personality, no doubt, added much to his natural ability as an actor.
Neither the army nor the stage can now claim this brilliant cavalry officer, as he was induced, by urgent family reasons, shortly after the period of which I am writing, to resign his commission and retire to private life, at the very height of his ambitious career.
And now the summer came on apace. A tennis-court was made, and added greatly to our amus.e.m.e.nt. We were in the saddle every day, and the country around proved very attractive at this season, both for riding and driving.
But all this gayety did not content me, for the serious question of education for our children now presented itself; the question which, sooner or later, presents itself to the minds of all the parents of army children. It is settled differently by different people. It had taken a year for us to decide.
I made up my mind that the first thing to be done was to take the children East and then decide on schools afterwards. So our plans were completed and the day of departure fixed upon. Jack was to remain at the Post.
About an hour before I was to leave I saw the members of the string orchestra filing across the parade ground, coming directly towards our quarters. My heart began to beat faster, as I realized that Mrs. Kautz had planned a serenade for me. I felt it was a great break in my army life, but I did not know I was leaving the old regiment forever, the regiment with which I had been a.s.sociated for so many years. And as I listened to the beautiful strains of the music I loved so well, my eyes were wet with tears, and after all the goodbye"s were said, to the officers and their wives, my friends who had shared all our joys and our sorrows in so many places and under so many conditions, I ran out to the stable and pressed my cheek against the soft warm noses of our two saddle horses. I felt that life was over for me, and nothing but work and care remained. I say I felt all this. It must have been premonition, for I had no idea that I was leaving the line of the army forever.
The ambulance was at the door, to take us to Valentine, where I bade Jack good bye, and took the train for the East. His last promise was to visit us once a year, or whenever he could get a leave of absence.
My husband had now worn the single bar on his shoulder-strap for eleven years or more; before that, the straps of the second lieutenant had adorned his broad shoulders for a period quite as long. Twenty-two years a lieutenant in the regular army, after fighting, in a volunteer regiment of his own state, through the four years of the Civil War! The "gallant and meritorious service" for which he had received brevets, seemed, indeed, to have been forgotten. He had grown grey in Indian campaigns, and it looked as if the frontier might always be the home of the senior lieutenant of the old Eighth. Promotion in that regiment had been at a standstill for years.
Being in Washington for a short time towards mid-winter enjoying the social side of military life at the Capital, an opportunity came to me to meet President Cleveland, and although his administration was nearing its close, and the stress of official cares was very great, he seemed to have leisure and interest to ask me about my life on the frontier; and as the conversation became quite personal, the impulse seized me, to tell him just how I felt about the education of our children, and then to tell him what I thought and what others thought about the unjust way in which the promotions and retirements in our regiment had been managed.
He listened with the greatest interest and seemed pleased with my frankness. He asked me what the soldiers and officers out there thought of "So and So." "They hate him," I said.
Whereupon he laughed outright and I knew I had committed an indiscretion, but life on the frontier does not teach one diplomacy of speech, and by that time I was nerved up to say just what I felt, regardless of results.
"Well," he said, smiling, "I am afraid I cannot interfere much with those military matters;" then, pointing with his left hand and thumb towards the War Department, "they fix them all up over there in the Adjutant General"s office," he added.
Then he asked me many more questions; if I had always stayed out there with my husband, and why I did not live in the East, as so many army women did; and all the time I could hear the dull thud of the carpenters" hammers, for they were building even then the board seats for the public who would witness the inaugural ceremonies of his successor, and with each stroke of the hammer, his face seemed to grow more sad.
I felt the greatness of the man; his desire to be just and good: his marvellous personal power, his ability to understand and to sympathize, and when I parted from him he said again laughingly, "Well, I shall not forget your husband"s regiment, and if anything turns up for those fine men you have told me about, they will hear from me." And I knew they were the words of a man, who meant what he said.
In the course of our conversation he had asked, "Who are these men? Do they ever come to Washington? I rarely have these things explained to me and I have little time to interfere with the decisions of the Adjutant General"s office."
I replied: "No, Mr. President, they are not the men you see around Washington. Our regiment stays on the frontier, and these men are the ones who do the fighting, and you people here in Washington are apt to forget all about them."
"What have they ever done? Were they in the Civil War?" he asked.
"Their records stand in black and white in the War Department," I replied, "if you have the interest to learn more about them."
"Women"s opinions are influenced by their feelings," he said.
"Mine are based upon what I know, and I am prepared to stand by my convictions," I replied.
Soon after this interview, I returned to New York and I did not give the matter very much further thought, but my impression of the greatness of Mr. Cleveland and of his powerful personality has remained with me to this day.
A vacancy occurred about this time in the Quartermaster"s Department, and the appointment was eagerly sought for by many Lieutenants of the army. President Cleveland saw fit to give the appointment to Lieutenant Summerhayes, making him a Captain and Quartermaster, and then, another vacancy occurring shortly after, he appointed Lieutenant John McEwen Hyde to be also a Captain and Quartermaster.
Lieutenant Hyde stood next in rank to my husband and had grown grey in the old Eighth Infantry. So the regiment came in for its honor at last, and General Kautz, when the news of the second appointment reached him, exclaimed, "Well! well! does the President think my regiment a nursery for the Staff?"
The Eighth Foot and the Ninth Horse at Niobrara gave the new Captain and Quartermaster a rousing farewell, for now my husband was leaving his old regiment forever; and, while he appreciated fully the honor of his new staff position, he felt a sadness at breaking off the a.s.sociations of so many years--a sadness which can scarcely be understood by the young officers of the present day, who are promoted from one regiment to another, and rarely remain long enough with one organization to know even the men of their own Company.
There were many champagne suppers, dinners and card-parties given for him, to make the good-bye something to be remembered, and at the end of a week"s festivities, he departed by a night train from Valentine, thus eluding the hospitality of those generous but wild frontiersmen, who were waiting to give him what they call out there a "send-off."
For Valentine was like all frontier towns; a row of stores and saloons.
The men who kept them were generous, if somewhat rough. One of the officers of the post, having occasion to go to the railroad station one day at Valentine, saw the body of a man hanging to a telegraph pole a short distance up the track. He said to the station man: "What does that mean?" (nodding his head in the direction of the telegraph pole).
"Why, it means just this," said the station man, "the people who hung that man last night had the nerve to put him right in front of this place, by G--. What would the pa.s.sengers think of this town, sir, as they went by? Why, the reputation of Valentine would be ruined! Yes, sir, we cut him down and moved him up a pole or two. He was a hard case, though," he added.
CHAPTER x.x.xI. SANTA FE
I made haste to present Captain Summerhayes with the shoulder-straps of his new rank, when he joined me in New York.
The orders for Santa Fe reached us in mid-summer at Nantucket. I knew about as much of Santa Fe as the average American knows, and that was nothing; but I did know that the Staff appointment solved the problem of education for us (for Staff officers are usually stationed in cities), and I knew that our frontier life was over. I welcomed the change, for our children were getting older, and we were ourselves approaching the age when comfort means more to one than it heretofore has.
Jack obeyed his sudden orders, and I followed him as soon as possible.
Arriving at Santa Fe in the mellow sunlight of an October day, we were met by my husband and an officer of the Tenth Infantry, and as we drove into the town, its appearance of placid content, its ancient buildings, its great trees, its clear air, its friendly, indolent-looking inhabitants, gave me a delightful feeling of home. A mysterious charm seemed to possess me. It was the spell which that old town loves to throw over the strangers who venture off the beaten track to come within her walls.
Lying only eighteen miles away, over a small branch road from Llamy (a station on the Atchison and Topeka Railroad), few people take the trouble to stop over to visit it. "Dead old town," says the commercial traveller, "nothing doing there."
And it is true.
But no spot that I have visited in this country has thrown around me the spell of enchantment which held me fast in that sleepy and historic town.
The Governor"s Palace, the old plaza, the ancient churches, the antiquated customs, the Sisters" Hospital, the old Convent of Our Lady of Loretto, the soft music of the Spanish tongue, I loved them all.
There were no factories; no noise was ever heard; the sun shone peacefully on, through winter and summer alike. There was no cold, no heat, but a delightful year-around climate. Why the place was not crowded with health seekers, was a puzzle to me. I had thought that the bay of San Francisco offered the most agreeable climate in America, but, in the Territory of New Mexico, Santa Fe was the perfection of all climates combined.
The old city lies in the broad valley of the Santa Fe Creek, but the valley of the Santa Fe Creek lies seven thousand feet above the sea level. I should never have known that we were living at a great alt.i.tude, if I had not been told, for the equable climate made us forget to inquire about height or depth or distance.
I listened to old Father de Fourri preach his short sermons in English to the few Americans who sat on one side of the aisle, in the church of Our Lady of Guadaloupe; then, turning with an easy gesture towards his Mexican congregation, who sat or knelt near the sanctuary, and saying, "Hermanos mios," he gave the same discourse in good Spanish. I felt comfortable in the thought that I was improving my Spanish as well as profiting by Father de Fourri"s sound logic. This good priest had grown old at Santa Fe in the service of his church.
The Mexican women, with their black ribosos wound around their heads and concealing their faces, knelt during the entire ma.s.s, and made many long responses in Latin.