The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor
she used to take him up on the mountains, above their shack, to look down at the camps, and watch the stars, and she always used to see things in the future--how they would be very rich, and he would be a great man. "And this is where blood tells," he said. "She was nothing but the love-child of some young English lord, drifted out to our land with her servant-girl mother. And she'd spent all her life in gambling hells among rogues, but her soul was the daintiest lady angel that ever walked this earth, though she could hardly read or write, and all the stars were her friends, and even a rattlesnake wouldn't have wounded her." Mustn't she have been a darling, Mamma? She had hair like gold, and little ears, pink as sea shells, and big blue eyes and a flower for a mouth. No wonder he loved her so. He said her baby was even more pleasure to her than the pansy had been, and they both were "just kind of foolish over it." Well, when Lola was about three months old a gang of desperadoes came to the camp, and among them the man the Senator had wounded for his wife. Before the Senator came in from the mine Hearts-ease heard the other miners' wives talking of this, and how this man had boasted he would kill him. She knew her husband was unarmed, having left his gun behind him that day because his second one was broken, and he would not leave her with none in the shack; quite unsuspiciously he returned with his comrades, and went into a bar to have a drink on his way back, as he often did to hear the news of the day. And when Hearts-ease could not find him on the road, she ran down there, carrying the gun and the baby, to warn him and give him his weapon, and got into the saloon just as the desperado and his following entered by another door.
The enemy called out to the Senator that he meant to "do for him this time," and as Hearts-ease rushed up to her husband with no fear for herself, holding out the gun, the brute fired and shot her through the heart, and she fell forward with Lola, dead in the Senator's arms. "And then the heavens turned to blood," he said, "and I took the gun out of her dead clasp and killed him like a dog." But by this time, Mamma, I really was crying so I could hardly hear what he said. No wonder his eyes have a sad look sometimes, or his hair is gray.
We neither of us spoke for a while. I could only press his strong kind hand. Then he recovered his voice, and went on as if dreaming: "It all came true what she prophesied. I am rich beyond her uttermost fancyings, and I've sampled pretty well most all the world, but I've always tried to do the things she would have liked me to do. I guess you've wondered at my dandy clothes, and shiny finger nails. Well, it's just to please her--if she's looking on." Wasn't he a man worth loving, Mamma! And of course she did not mind dying for him, and how happy and glad she must be now, if she is "looking on." Somehow the whole story has made me so long for Harry, that I have been perfectly miserable all the evening, and if you think you could cable to him and tell him to come back I think perhaps you might, and I will say I am sorry.
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
SAN FRANCISCO.
San Francisco.
Dearest Mamma,--I have just got a letter from Jane Roose about having heard of Mrs. Smith's being on the ship with Harry. Has it come to your ears, too? What on earth could a woman like that want to be going to Zanzibar for, unless she was hunting some man who was going to hunt lions? I call it most extraordinary, don't you? And probably that is what these papers meant by saying he had gone to India with a fair haired widow, and I was so silly I never suspected a thing. Well, if he thinks it will annoy me he is very much mistaken. I don't care in _the least_, and am amusing myself _awfully_ with Gaston, and you can tell him so; and as for cabling to him, as I think I asked you to in my last letter, don't dream of it! Let him enjoy himself if he can. But how any man could, with that woman, old enough to be his mother! I suppose she has taken some lovely clothes. She always has that sort of attraction, and no doubt she is pouring sympathy into his ears in the moonlight about my unkindness. It makes me feel perfectly sick that anyone can be such a fool as Harry to be taken in by her;--having got away from her once, to go back again.
No doubt it was she prompted him to be so horrible to me (he behaved like a perfect brute you know, Mamma, and I never did a thing). It is only because I can't bear him to be made a fool of that I mind in the least, otherwise I am perfectly indifferent. He can play with whom he chooses, it is nothing to me. Gaston is devoted to me, and although I should not think of divorcing Harry, No matter what he does, because of letting that odious woman become Marchioness of Valmond, still it is nice to know someone else would absolutely die for you, isn't it, even though I don't want to marry him--Gaston, I mean--We arrived here last night. We have come all round this way because now we are about it Octavia felt we ought to see Salt Lake City and San Francisco, and go down the coast to Los Angeles. Then we shall have done this side of America thoroughly. We only rushed through everywhere, of course, but got a general coup d'oeil. Crossing the great Salt Lake was wonderful. It seemed like being at sea on a bridge, and I could not help wondering what it would be like if the lake were rough. You can't think of anything so intelligent as the way that Brigham Young laid out Salt Lake City, seeing far ahead; he planned splendid avenues, and planted trees, and even though lots of them still have only mud roads, and little board shanties down them, they are there all ready for the time when the splendid houses are built, and tram cars and electric light everywhere; and such green and beautiful rich looking country! No wonder, after the desert it seemed the promised land.
I should hate to be a Mormon, wouldn't you, Mamma? Worse than being a Chinee and having to sit at the theatre penned up with only females. Think of sharing a man with six other women, and being a kind of servant. It is natural they look cowed and colourless,--the ones we saw; at least they were pointed out to us. But really it seems much honester to call them wives openly than to be like--but no, I won't speak of it any more. Only _I_ will never share a man with another woman! Not the least little scrap of him; and if Harry thinks I will he is mistaken. To have six husbands is a much better plan; that, at least, would teach one to be awfully agreeable, and to understand the creatures' different ways; but a man to have six wives is an impossible idea,--specially as now it is not necessary, the way they behave. I wish I had got Jane's letter sooner, Mamma, because I could have amused myself more with Gaston than I have. I feel I have lost some opportunities, snubbing him all the time.
San Francisco is perfectly wonderful. Imagine colossal switchbacks going for miles, and other switchbacks crossing them like a chess board, and you have some idea of the way of the streets; hills as steep as staircases, and the roads straight up and down, not zigzag, just being obliged to take the land as it comes; some persons in the beginning, I suppose, having ruled the plan on flat paper without considering what the formation was like, and then insisting on its being ruthlessly carried out.
When we arrived at the station, Octavia and I were put into a two horse fly because it was very windy and cold. It always is, we are told, and the motors for hire were all open. So we started to go to Fairmount, the big hotel right up on the hill. At first it was a sort of gradual slope past such sad desolation of levelled houses, with hardly the foundations left. The results of the earthquake and the fire are so incredible that you would think I was recounting travellers' tales if I described them, so I won't. Presently the coachman turned his two strong fat horses to the right, up one of the perpendicular roads, to get to our destination, but they would have none of it! They backed and jibbed and got as cross as possible, and he was obliged to continue along the slope, explaining to us that there was another turning further on which they might be persuaded to face. But when we got there it was just the same, no whipping or coaxing could get them to sample it. They backed so violently that we nearly went over into the cellars of a ruin at the corner, and the man asked us to get out, as he said it was no use, none of his horses would face these streets. And to go on to a gradual hill was miles further along, and he advised us to walk, as the hotel was only about six hundred yards away!! So in the growing night Octavia and I, clutching our jewel cases, were left to our own devices. We really felt deserted, as now that nearly everything in this neighbourhood is in ruins there are no people about much, and it felt like being alone in a graveyard, or Pompeii after dark. We almost expected bandits and wolves or jackals. We started, holding on our hats and feeling very ill-tempered, but we had not got a hundred yards on our climb, when a motor tore down upon us, and Gaston and the Senator jumped out; they had been getting quite anxious at our non-arrival and come to look for us. Tom, of course, being an English husband, was