Part One - FOUR

by Willa Cather

　　In pleasant weather Judge Pommeroy walked to the Forresters', buton the occasion of the dinner for the Ogdens he engaged theliveryman to take him and his nephew over in one of the townhacks,--vehicles seldom used except for funerals and weddings.They smelled strongly of the stable and contained lap-robes asheavy as lead and as slippery as oiled paper. Niel and his unclewere the only townspeople asked to the Forresters' that evening;they rolled over the creek and up the hill in state, and emergedcovered with horsehair.

　　Captain Forrester met them at the door, his burly figure buttonedup in a frock coat, a flat collar and black string tie under theheavy folds of his neck. He was always clean-shaven except for adrooping dun-coloured moustache. The company stood behind himlaughing while Niel caught up the whisk-broom and began dustingroan hairs off his uncle's broadcloth. Mrs. Forrester gave Niel abrushing in turn and then took him into the parlour and introducedhim to Mrs. Ogden and her daughter.

　　The daughter was a rather pretty girl, Niel thought, in a pale pinkevening dress which left bare her smooth arms and short, dimpledneck. Her eyes were, as Mrs. Forrester had said, a china blue,rather prominent and inexpressive. Her fleece of ashy-gold hairwas bound about her head with silver bands. In spite of her fresh,rose-like complexion, her face was not altogether agreeable. Twodissatisfied lines reached from the corners of her short nose tothe corners of her mouth. When she was displeased, even a little,these lines tightened, drew her nose back, and gave her asuspicious, injured expression. Niel sat down by her and did hisbest, but he found her hard to talk to. She seemed nervous anddistracted, kept glancing over her shoulder, and crushing herhandkerchief up in her hands. Her mind, clearly, was elsewhere.After a few moments he turned to the mother, who was more easilyinterested.

　　Mrs. Ogden was almost unpardonably homely. She had a pear-shapedface, and across her high forehead lay a row of flat, dry curls.Her bluish brown skin was almost the colour of her violet dinnerdress. A diamond necklace glittered about her wrinkled throat.Unlike Constance, she seemed thoroughly amiable, but as she talkedshe tilted her head and "used" her eyes, availing herself of thosearch glances which he had supposed only pretty women indulged in.Probably she had long been surrounded by people to whom she was animportant personage, and had acquired the manner of a spoileddarling. Niel thought her rather foolish at first, but in a fewmoments he had got used to her mannerisms and began to like her.He found himself laughing heartily and forgot the discouragement ofhis failure with the daughter.

　　Mr. Ogden, a short, weather-beaten man of fifty, with a cast in oneeye, a stiff imperial, and twisted moustaches, was noticeablyquieter and less expansive than when Niel had met him here onformer occasions. He seemed to expect his wife to do the talking.When Mrs. Forrester addressed him, or passed near him, his good eyetwinkled and followed her,--while the eye that looked askanceremained unchanged and committed itself to nothing.

　　Suddenly everyone became more lively; the air warmed, and thelamplight seemed to brighten, as a fourth member of the Denverparty came in from the dining-room with a glittering tray full ofcocktails he had been making. Frank Ellinger was a bachelor offorty, six feet two, with long straight legs, fine shoulders, and afigure that still permitted his white waistcoat to button without awrinkle under his conspicuously well-cut dinner coat. His blackhair, coarse and curly as the filling of a mattress, was grey aboutthe ears, his florid face showed little purple veins about hisbeaked nose,--a nose like the prow of a ship, with long nostrils.His chin was deeply cleft, his thick curly lips seemed verymuscular, very much under his control, and, with his strong whiteteeth, irregular and curved, gave him the look of a man who couldbite an iron rod in two with a snap of his jaws. His whole figureseemed very much alive under his clothes, with a restless, muscularenergy that had something of the cruelty of wild animals in it.Niel was very much interested in this man, the hero of manyambiguous stories. He didn't know whether he liked him or not.He knew nothing bad about him, but he felt something evil.

　　The cocktails were the signal for general conversation, the companydrew together in one group. Even Miss Constance seemed lessdissatisfied. Ellinger drank his cocktail standing beside herchair, and offered her the cherry in his glass. They were old-fashioned whiskey cocktails. Nobody drank Martinis then; gin wassupposed to be the consolation of sailors and inebriate scrub-women.

　　"Very good, Frank, very good," Captain Forrester pronounced,drawing out a fresh, cologne-scented handkerchief to wipe hismoustache. "Are encores in order?" The Captain puffed slightlywhen he talked. His eyes, always somewhat suffused and bloodshotsince his injury, blinked at his friends from under his heavy lids.

　　"One more round for everybody, Captain." Ellinger brought in fromthe sideboard a capacious shaker and refilled all the glassesexcept Miss Ogden's. At her he shook his finger, and offered herthe little dish of Maraschino cherries.

　　"No, I don't want those. I want the one in your glass," she saidwith a pouty smile. "I like it to taste of something!"

　　"Constance!" said her mother reprovingly, rolling her eyes at Mrs.Forrester, as if to share with her the charm of such innocence.

　　"Niel," Mrs. Forrester laughed, "won't you give the child yourcherry, too?"

　　Niel promptly crossed the room and proffered the cherry in thebottom of his glass. She took it with her thumb and fore-fingerand dropped it into her own,--where, he was quick to observe, sheleft it when they went out to dinner. A stubborn piece of pinkflesh, he decided, and certainly a fool about a man quite oldenough to be her father. He sighed when he saw that he was placednext her at the dinner table.

　　Captain Forrester still made a commanding figure at the head of hisown table, with his napkin tucked under his chin and the work ofcarving well in hand. Nobody could lay bare the bones of a braceof duck or a twenty-pound turkey more deftly. "What part of theturkey do you prefer, Mrs. Ogden?" If one had a preference, it wasgratified, with all the stuffing and gravy that went with it, andthe vegetables properly placed. When a plate left CaptainForrester's hands, it was a dinner; the recipient was served, andwell served. He served Mrs. Forrester last of the ladies butbefore the men, and to her, too, he said, "Mrs. Forrester, whatpart of the turkey shall I give you this evening?" He was a manwho did not vary his formulae or his manners. He was no moremobile than his countenance. Niel and Judge Pommeroy had oftenremarked how much Captain Forrester looked like the pictures ofGrover Cleveland. His clumsy dignity covered a deep nature, and aconscience that had never been juggled with. His repose was likethat of a mountain. When he laid his fleshy thick-fingered handupon a frantic horse, an hysterical woman, an Irish workman out forblood, he brought them peace; something they could not resist.That had been the secret of his management of men. His sanityasked nothing, claimed nothing; it was so simple that it brought ahush over distracted creatures. In the old days, when he wasbuilding road in the Black Hills, trouble sometimes broke out incamp when he was absent, staying with Mrs. Forrester at ColoradoSprings. He would put down the telegram that announced aninsurrection and say to his wife, "Maidy, I must go to the men."And that was all he did,--he went to them.

　　While the Captain was intent upon his duties as host he talked verylittle, and Judge Pommeroy and Ellinger kept a lively cross-fire ofamusing stories going. Niel, sitting opposite Ellinger, watchedhim closely. He still couldn't decide whether he liked him or not.In Denver Frank was known as a prince of good fellows; tactful,generous, resourceful, though apt to trim his sails to the wind; aman who good-humouredly bowed to the inevitable, or to the almost-inevitable. He had, when he was younger, been notoriously "wild,"but that was not held against him, even by mothers with marriageabledaughters, like Mrs. Ogden. Morals were different in those days.Niel had heard his uncle refer to Ellinger's youthful infatuationwith a woman called Nell Emerald, a handsome and rather unusualwoman who conducted a house properly licensed by the Denver police.Nell Emerald had told an old club man that though she had been outbehind young Ellinger's new trotting horse, she "had no respect fora man who would go driving with a prostitute in broad daylight."This story and a dozen like it were often related of Ellinger, andthe women laughed over them as heartily as the men. All the whilethat he was making a scandalous chronicle for himself, youngEllinger had been devotedly caring for an invalid mother, and he wasdescribed to strangers as a terribly fast young man and a model son.That combination pleased the taste of the time. Nobody thought theworse of him. Now that his mother was dead, he lived at the BrownPalace hotel, though he still kept her house at Colorado Springs.

　　When the roast was well under way, Black Tom, very formal in awhite waistcoat and high collar, poured the champagne. CaptainForrester lifted his glass, the frail stem between his thickfingers, and glancing round the table at his guests and at Mrs.Forrester, said,

　　"Happy days!"

　　It was the toast he always drank at dinner, the invocation he wassure to utter when he took a glass of whiskey with an old friend.Whoever had heard him say it once, liked to hear him say it again.Nobody else could utter those two words as he did, with suchgravity and high courtesy. It seemed a solemn moment, seemed toknock at the door of Fate; behind which all days, happy andotherwise, were hidden. Niel drank his wine with a pleasantshiver, thinking that nothing else made life seem so precarious,the future so cryptic and unfathomable, as that brief toast utteredby the massive man, "Happy days!"

　　Mrs. Ogden turned to the host with her most languishing smile:"Captain Forrester, I want you to tell Constance"--(She was an EastVirginia woman, and what she really said was, "Cap'n Forrester, Ahwan' yew to tell, etc." Her vowels seemed to roll about in thesame way her eyes did.)--"I want you to tell Constance about howyou first found this lovely spot, 'way back in Indian times."

　　The Captain looked down the table between the candles at Mrs.Forrester, as if to consult her. She smiled and nodded, and herbeautiful earrings swung beside her pale cheeks. She was wearingher diamonds tonight, and a black velvet gown. Her husband hadarchaic ideas about jewels; a man bought them for his wife inacknowledgment of things he could not gracefully utter. They mustbe costly; they must show that he was able to buy them, and thatshe was worthy to wear them.

　　With her approval the Captain began his narrative: a conciseaccount of how he came West a young boy, after serving in the CivilWar, and took a job as driver for a freighting company that carriedsupplies across the plains from Nebraska City to Cherry Creek, asDenver was then called. The freighters, after embarking in thatsea of grass six hundred miles in width, lost all count of the daysof the week and the month. One day was like another, and all wereglorious; good hunting, plenty of antelope and buffalo, boundlesssunny sky, boundless plains of waving grass, long fresh-waterlagoons yellow with lagoon flowers, where the bison in theirperiodic migrations stopped to drink and bathe and wallow.

　　"An ideal life for a young man," the Captain pronounced. Once,when he was driven out of the trail by a wash-out, he rode south onhis horse to explore, and found an Indian encampment near the SweetWater, on this very hill where his house now stood. He was, hesaid, "greatly taken with the location," and made up his mind thathe would one day have a house there. He cut down a young willowtree and drove the stake into the ground to mark the spot where hewished to build. He went away and did not come back for manyyears; he was helping to lay the first railroad across the plains.

　　"There were those that were dependent on me," he said. "I hadsickness to contend with, and responsibilities. But in all thoseyears I expect there was hardly a day passed that I did notremember the Sweet Water and this hill. When I came here a youngman, I had planned it in my mind, pretty much as it is today; whereI would dig my well, and where I would plant my grove and myorchard. I planned to build a house that my friends could come to,with a wife like Mrs. Forrester to make it attractive to them. Iused to promise myself that some day I would manage it." This partof the story the Captain told not with embarrassment, but withreserve, choosing his words slowly, absently cracking Englishwalnuts with his strong fingers and heaping a little hoard ofkernels beside his plate. His friends understood that he wasreferring to his first marriage, to the poor invalid wife who hadnever been happy and who had kept his nose to the grindstone.

　　"When things looked most discouraging," he went on, "I came backhere once and bought the place from the railroad company. Theytook my note. I found my willow stake,--it had rooted and growninto a tree,--and I planted three more to mark the corners of myhouse. Twelve years later Mrs. Forrester came here with me,shortly after our marriage, and we built our house." CaptainForrester puffed from time to time, but his clear account commandedattention. Something in the way he uttered his unornamentedphrases gave them the impressiveness of inscriptions cut in stone.

　　Mrs. Forrester nodded at him from her end of the table. "And now,tell us your philosophy of life,--this is where it comes in," shelaughed teasingly.

　　The Captain coughed and looked abashed. "I was intending to omitthat tonight. Some of our guests have already heard it."

　　"No, no. It belongs at the end of the story, and if some of ushave heard it, we can hear it again. Go on!"

　　"Well, then, my philosophy is that what you think of and plan forday by day, in spite of yourself, so to speak--you will get. Youwill get it more or less. That is, unless you are one of thepeople who get nothing in this world. There are such people. Ihave lived too much in mining works and construction camps not toknow that." He paused as if, though this was too dark a chapter tobe gone into, it must have its place, its moment of silentrecognition. "If you are not one of those, Constance and Niel, youwill accomplish what you dream of most."

　　"And why? That's the interesting part of it," his wife promptedhim.

　　"Because," he roused himself from his abstraction and looked aboutat the company, "because a thing that is dreamed of in the way Imean, is already an accomplished fact. All our great West has beendeveloped from such dreams; the homesteader's and the prospector'sand the contractor's. We dreamed the railroads across themountains, just as I dreamed my place on the Sweet Water. Allthese things will be everyday facts to the coming generation, butto us--" Captain Forrester ended with a sort of grunt. Somethingforbidding had come into his voice, the lonely, defiant note thatis so often heard in the voices of old Indians.

　　Mrs. Ogden had listened to the story with such sympathy that Nielliked her better than ever, and even the preoccupied Constanceseemed able to give it her attention. They rose from the dessertand went into the parlour to arrange the card tables. The Captainstill played whist as well as ever. As he brought out a box of hisbest cigars, he paused before Mrs. Ogden and said, "Is smokeoffensive to you, Mrs. Ogden?" When she protested that it was not,he crossed the room to where Constance was talking with Ellingerand asked with the same grave courtesy, "Is smoke offensive to you,Constance?" Had there been half a dozen women present, he wouldhave asked that question of each, probably, and in the same words.It did not bother him to repeat a phrase. If an expressionanswered his purpose, he saw no reason for varying it.

　　Mrs. Forrester and Mr. Ogden were to play against Mrs. Ogden andthe Captain. "Constance," said Mrs. Forrester as she sat down,"will you play with Niel? I'm told he's very good."

　　Miss Ogden's short nose flickered up, the lines on either side ofit deepened, and she again looked injured. Niel was sure shedetested him. He was not going to be done in by her.

　　"Miss Ogden," he said as he stood beside his chair, deliberatelyshuffling a pack of cards, "my uncle and I are used to playingtogether, and probably you are used to playing with Mr. Ellinger.Suppose we try that combination?"

　　She gave him a quick, suspicious glance from under her yelloweyelashes and flung herself into a chair without so much asanswering him. Frank Ellinger came in from the dining-room, wherehe had been sampling the Captain's French brandy, and took thevacant seat opposite Miss Ogden. "So it's you and me, Connie?Good enough!" he exclaimed, cutting the pack Niel pushed towardhim.

　　Just before midnight Black Tom opened the door and announced thatthe egg-nog was ready. The card players went into the dining-room,where the punchbowl stood smoking on the table.

　　"Constance," said Captain Forrester, "do you sing? I like to hearone of the old songs with the egg-nog."

　　"Ah'm sorry, Cap'n Forrester. Ah really haven't any voice."

　　Niel noticed that whenever Constance spoke to the Captain shestrained her throat, though he wasn't in the least deaf. He brokein over her refusal. "Uncle can start a song if you coax him,sir."

　　Judge Pommeroy, after smoothing his silver whiskers and coughing,began "Auld Lang Syne." The others joined in, but they hadn't gotto the end of it when a hollow rumbling down on the bridge madethem laugh, and everyone ran to the front windows to see theJudge's funeral coach come lurching up the hill, with only one ofthe side lanterns lit. Mrs. Forrester sent Tom out with a drinkfor the driver. While Niel and his uncle were putting on theirovercoats in the hall, she came up to them and whispered coaxinglyto the boy, "Remember, you are coming over tomorrow, at two? I amplanning a drive, and I want you to amuse Constance for me."

　　Niel bit his lip and looked down into Mrs. Forrester's laughing,persuasive eyes. "I'll do it for you, but that's the only reason,"he said threateningly.

　　"I understand, for me! I'll credit it to your account."

　　The Judge and his nephew rolled away on swaying springs. TheOgdens retired to their rooms upstairs. Mrs. Forrester went tohelp the Captain divest himself of his frock coat, and put it awayfor him. Ever since he was hurt he had to be propped high onpillows at night, and he slept in a narrow iron bed, in the alcovewhich had formerly been his wife's dressing-room. While he wasundressing he breathed heavily and sighed, as if he were verytired. He fumbled with his studs, then blew on his fingers andtried again. His wife came to his aid and quickly unbuttonedeverything. He did not thank her in words, but submittedgratefully.

　　When the iron bed creaked at receiving his heavy figure, she calledfrom the big bedroom, "Good-night, Mr. Forrester," and drew theheavy curtains that shut off the alcove. She took off her ringsand earrings and was beginning to unfasten her black velvet bodicewhen, at a tinkle of glass from without, she stopped short. Re-hooking the shoulder of her gown, she went to the dining-room, nowfaintly lit by the coal fire in the back parlour. Frank Ellingerwas standing at the sideboard, taking a nightcap. The ForresterFrench brandy was old, and heavy like a cordial.

　　"Be careful," she murmured as she approached him, "I have adistinct impression that there is someone on the enclosed stairway.There is a wide crack in the door. Ah, but kittens have claws,these days! Pour me just a little. Thank you. I'll have mine inby the fire."

　　He followed her into the next room, where she stood by the grate,looking at him in the light of the pale blue flames that ran overthe fresh coal, put on to keep the fire.

　　"You've had a good many brandies, Frank," she said, studying hisflushed, masterful face.

　　"Not too many. I'll need them . . . to-night," he repliedmeaningly.

　　She nervously brushed back a lock of hair that had come down alittle. "It's not to-night. It's morning. Go to bed and sleep aslate as you please. Take care, I heard silk stockings on thestairs. Good-night." She put her hand on the sleeve of his coat;the white fingers clung to the black cloth as bits of paper clingto magnetized iron. Her touch, soft as it was, went through theman, all the feet and inches of him. His broad shoulders lifted ona deep breath. He looked down at her.

　　Her eyes fell. "Good-night," she said faintly. As she turnedquickly away, the train of her velvet dress caught the leg of hisbroadcloth trousers and dragged with a friction that crackled andthrew sparks. Both started. They stood looking at each other fora moment before she actually slipped through the door. Ellingerremained by the hearth, his arms folded tight over his chest, hiscurly lips compressed, frowning into the fire.