American Wives and English Husbands: a novel

Part I Chapter

I T% /TRS HAYNE'S boarding-house stood on the ■*■"-■" corner of Market Street and one of those cross streets which seem to leap down from the heights of San Francisco and empty themselves into the great central thoroughfare that roars from the sandy desert at the base of Twin Peaks to the teeming wharves on the edge of the bay. On the right of Market Street, both on the hills and in the erratic branchings of the central plain, as far as the eye can reach, climbs and swarms modern prosperous San Francisco ; of what lies beyond the less said the better. On the left, at the far south-east, the halo of ancient glory still hovers about Rincon Hill, growing dimmer with the years : few of the many who made the social laws of the Fifties cling to the old houses in the battered gardens ; and their children marry and build on the gay hills across the plain.

In the plain itself is a thick-set, low-browed, dust-coloured city; "South of Market Street" is a generic term A » for hundreds of streets in which dwell thousands of insignificant beings, some of whom promenade the democratic boundary line by gaslight, but rarely venture up the aristocratic slopes. By day or by night Market Street rarely has a moment of rest, of peace; it is a blaze of colour, a medley of sound, shrill, raucous, hollow, furious, a net-work of busy people and vehicles until midnight is over. Every phase of the city's manifold life is suggested there, every aspect of its cosmopolitanism. To a little girl of eleven, who dwelt on the third floor of Mrs Hayne's boarding-house, Market Street was a panorama of serious study and unvarying interest. She knew every shop window, in all the mutable details of the seasons, she had mingled with the throng unnumbered times, studying that strange patch-work of faces, and wondering if they had any life apart from the scene in which they seemed eternally moving.

In those days Market Street typified the world to her; although her school was some eight blocks up the hill it scarcely counted. All the world, she felt convinced, came sooner or later to Market Street, and sauntered or hurried with restless eyes, up and down, up and down. The sun rose at one end and set at the other; it climbed straight across the sky and went to bed behind the Twin Peaks. And the trade winds roared through Market Street as through a mighty canon, and the sand hills beyond the city seemed to rise bodily and whirl down the great way, making men curse and women jerk their knuckles to their eyes. On summer nights the fog came and banked there, and the lights shone through it like fallen stars, and the people looked like wraiths, lost souls condemned to wander unceasingly. When Mrs Tarlton was too ill to be left alone, Lee amused herself watching from above the crush and tangle of street cars, hacks, trucks, and drays for which the wide road should have been as wide again, holding her breath as the impatient or timid foot passengers darted into the transient rifts with bird like leaps of vision and wild deflections.

Occasionally she assumed the part of chorus for her mother, who regarded the prospect beneath her windows with horror. "Now! She's started — at last! Oh! what a silly ! Any one could have seen that truck with half an eye. She turned back — of course I Now ! Now ! she's got to the middle and there's a funeral just turned the corner ! She can't get back ! She's got to go on. Oh, she's got behind a man. I wonder if she'll catch hold of his coat-tails? There — she's safe ! I wonder if she's afraid of people like she is of Market Street?" " If I ever thought you crossed that street at the busy time of the day, honey, I should certainly faint or have hysterics," Mrs Tarlton was in the habit of remarking at the finish of these thrilling interpreta tions. To which Lee invariably replied : " I could go right across without stopping, or getting a crick in my neck either ; but I don't, because I wouldn't make you nervous for the world.

I go way up when I want to cross and then turn back. It's nothing like as bad." " It is shocking to think that you go out at all unattended ; but what cannot be cannot, and you must have air and exercise, poor child ! " Lee, who retained a blurred, albeit rosy impression of her former grandeur, was well pleased with her liberty; and Mrs Tarlton was not only satisfied that any one who could take such good care of her mother was quite able to take care of herself, but, so dependent was she on the capable child, that she was frequently oblivious to the generation they rounded. Mrs Tarlton was an invalid, and although patient, she met her acuter sufferings unresistingly. Lee was so accustomed to be roused in the middle of the night that she had learned to make a poultice or heat a kettle of water while the receding dreams were still lapping at her brain.

She dressed her mother in the morning and undressed her at night. She frequently chafed her hands and feet by the hour; and cooked many a dainty Southern dish on the stove in the corner. Miss Hayne, who had a sharp red nose and the anxious air of protracted maidenhood, but whose heart was normal, made it her duty to fetch books for the invalid from the Mercantile Library, and to look in upon her while Lee was at school. Lee brushed and mended her own clothes, "blacked" her boots with a vigorous arm, and studied her lessons when other little girls were in bed. Fortunately she raked them in with extreme rapidity, or Mrs Tarlton would have made an effort and remonstrated; but Lee declared that she must have her afternoons out of doors when her mother was well and companioned by a novel ; and Mrs Tarlton scrupulously refrained from thwarting the girl whose narrow childhood was so unlike what her own had been, so unlike what the fairies had promised when Hayward Tarlton had been the proudest and most indulgent of fathers.

Chapter II Marguerite Tarlton's

impression of the hour in which she found herself widowed and penniless was very vague ; she was down with brain fever in the hour that followed. The Civil War had left her family with little but the great prestige of its name and the old house in New Orleans. Nevertheless, the house slaves having refused to accept their freedom, Marguerite had "never picked up her handkerchief," when, in a gown fashioned by her mammy from one of her dead mother's, she made her de'but in a society which retained all of its pride and little of its gaiety. Her mother had been a Creole of great beauty and fascination. Marguerite inherited her impulsiveness and vivacity ; and, for the rest, was ethereally pretty, as dainty and fastidious as a young princess, and had the soft manner and the romantic heart of the convent maiden.

Hayward Tarlton captured twelve dances on this night of her triumphant d£but, and proposed a AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS 7 week later. They were married within the month : he had already planned to seek for fortune in California with what was left of his princely inheritance. When Tarlton and his bride reached San Francisco the fortune he had come to woo fairly leapt into his arms; in three years he was a rich man, and his pretty and elegant young wife a social power. It was a very happy marriage. Marguerite idolised her handsome dashing husband, and he was the slave of her lightest whim. Their baby was petted and in dulged until she ruled her adoring parents with a rod of iron, and tyrannised over the servants like a young slave-driver. But the parents saw no fault in her, and, in truth, she was an affectionate and amiable youngster, with a fund of good sense for which the servants were at a loss to account.

She had twenty six dolls at this period, a large roomful of toys, a pony, and a playhouse of three storeys in a corner of the garden. Then came the great Virginia City mining excite ment of the late Seventies. Tarlton, satiated with easy success, and longing for excitement, gambled ; at first from choice, finally from necessity. His nerves swarmed over his will and stung it to death, his reason burnt to ashes. He staggered home one day, this man who had been intrepid on the battle field for four blood-soaked and exhausting years, told his wife that he had not a dollar in the world, then went into the next room and blew out his brains. The creditors seized the house. Two hours before Mrs Tarlton had been carried to Rincon Hill to the home of Mrs Montgomery, a Southerner who had known her mother and who would have offered shelter to every stricken compatriot in San Francisco if her children had not restrained her.

Lee, who had been present when her father spoke his last words to his wife, and had heard the report of the pistol, lost all interest in dolls and picture-books for ever, and refused to leave the sick-room. She waited on her mother by day, and slept on a sofa at the foot of the bed. Mrs Montgomery exclaimed that the child was positively uncanny, she was so old-fashioned, but that she certainly was lovable. Her own young children, Tiny and Randolph, although some years older than Lee, thought her profoundedly interesting, and stole into the sick-room whenever the nurse's back was turned. Lee barely saw them ; she retained no impression of them afterward, although the children were famous for their beauty and fine manners. When Mrs Tarlton recovered, her lawyer reminded her that some years before her husband had given her a ranch for which she had expressed an impul sive wish and as quickly forgotten.

The deeds were at his office. She gave her jewels to the creditors, but decided to keep the ranch, remarking that her child was of more importance than all the creditors put together. The income was small, but she was grateful for it. Her next of kin were dead, and charity would have been insufferable. Mrs Hayne, a reduced Southerner, whom Tarlton had started in business, offered his widow a large front room on the third floor of her boarding-house at the price of a back one. In spite of Mrs Mont gomery's tears and remonstrances, Mrs Tarlton accepted the offer, and persuaded herself that she was com fortable. She never went to the table, nor paid a call. Her friends, particularly the Southerners of her immediate circle, Mrs Montgomery, Mrs Geary, Mrs Brannan, Mrs Cartright, and Colonel Belmont were faithful ; but as the years passed their visits became less frequent, and Mrs Montgomery was much abroad with her children.

Marguerite Tarlton cared little. Her interest in life had died with her husband; such energies as survived in her were centred in her child. When there was neither fog nor dust nor wind nor rain in the city, Lee dressed her per emptorily and took her for a ride in the cable-cars ; but she spent measureless monotonous days in her reclining chair, reading or #sewing. She did not com plain except when in extreme pain, and was interested in every lineament of Lee's busy little life. She never shed a tear before the child, and managed to maintain an even state of mild cheerfulness. And she was grateful for Lee's skill and readiness in small matters as in great ; her unaccustomed fingers would have made havoc with her hair and boots. " Did you never, never button your own boots, memmy ? " asked Lee one day, as she was perform ing that office.

" Never, honey. When Dinah was ill your father always buttoned them, and after she died he wouldn't have thought of letting any one else touch them ; most people pinch so. Of course he could not do my hair, but he often put me to bed, and he always cut up my meat." " Do all men do those things for their wives ? " asked Lee in a voice of awe; "I think they must be very nice." "All men who are fit to marry, and all Southern men, you may be sure. I want to live long enough to see you married to a man as nearly like your father as possible. I wonder if there are any left : America gallops so. He used to beg me to think of something new I wanted, something it would be difficult to get; and he fairly admired to button my boots ; he never failed to put a little kiss right there on my instep when he finished."

" It must be lovely to be married ! " said Lee. Mrs Tarlton closed her eyes. "Was papa perfectly perfect?" asked Lee, as she finished her task and smoothed the kid over her mother's beautiful instep. " Perfectly ! " "I heard the butler say once that he was as drunk as a lord." " Possibly, but he was perfect all the same. He got drunk like a gentleman — a Southern gentleman, I mean, of course. I always put him to bed and never alluded to it."

Chapter III Lee

had no friends of her own age. The large private school she attended was not patronised by the aristocracy of the city, and Mrs Tarlton had so thoroughly imbued her daughter with a sense of the vast superiority of the gentle-born Southerner over the mere American, that Lee found in the youthful patrons of the Chambers Institute little likeness to her ideals. The children of her mother's old friends were educated at home or at small and very expensive schools, pre paratory to a grand finish in New York and Europe. Lee had continued to meet several of these fortunate youngsters during the first two of the five years which had followed her father's death, but as she outgrew her fine clothes, and was put into ginghams for the summers and stout plaids for the winters, she was obliged to drop out of fashionable society.

Occasionally she saw her former playmates sitting in their parents' carriages before some shop in Kearney Street. They always nodded AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS 13 gaily to her with the loyalty of their caste; the magic halo of position survives poverty, scandal and exile. " When you are grown I shall put my pride in my pocket, and ask Mrs Montgomery to bring you out, and Jack Belmont to give you a party dress," said Mrs Tarlton one day. " I think you will be pretty, for your features are exactly like your father's, and you have so much expression when you are right happy, poor child ! You must remember never to frown, nor wrinkle up your forehead, nor eat hot cakes, nor too much candy, and always wear your camphor bag so you won't catch any thing ; and do stand up straight, and you must wear a veil when these horrid trade winds blow.

Beauty is the whole battle of life for a woman, honey, and if you only do grow up pretty and are properly lanc'ee, you will be sure to marry well. That is all I am trying to live for." Lee donned the veil to please her mother, although she loved to feel the wind in her hair. But she was willing to be beautiful, as beauty meant servants and the reverse of boarding-house diet. She hoped to find a husband as handsome and devoted as her father, and was quite positive that the kidney flourished within the charmed circle of society. But she sometimes regarded her sallow little visage with deep distrust. Her black hair hung in lank strands ; no amount of coaxing would make it curl, and her eyes, she decided, were altogether too light a blue for beauty ; her mother had saved Tarlton's small library of standard novels from the wreck, and Lee had dipped into them on rainy days ; the heroine's eyes when not black, were a " dark rich blue."

Her eyes looked the lighter for the short thick lashes surrounding them, and the heavy brows above. She was also very thin, and stooped slightly ; but the maternal eye was hopeful. Mrs Tarlton's delicate beauty had vanished with her happiness, but while her husband lived she had preserved and made the most of it with many little arts. These she expounded at great length to her daughter, who privately thought beauty a great bore, unless ready made and warranted to wear; and frequently permitted her mind to wander. "At least remember this," exclaimed Mrs Tarlton impatiently one day at the end of a homily, to which Lee had given scant heed, being absorbed in the adventurous throng below. " If you are beautiful you rule men ; if you are plain men rule you. If you are beautiful your husband is your slave, if you are plain you are his upper servant.

All the brains the blue stockings will ever pile up will not be worth one com plexion. (I do hope you are not going to be a blue, honey.) Why are American women the most successful in the world ? Because they know how to be beautiful. I have seen many beautiful American women who had no beauty at all. What they want they will have, and the will to be beautiful is like yeast to dough. If women are flap-jacks it is their own fault. Only cultivate a complexion, and learn how to dress and walk as if you were used to the homage of princes, and the world will call you beautiful. Above all get a complexion ! " " I will ! I will ! " responded Lee fervently. She pinned her veil all round her hat, squared her shoulders like a young grenadier, and went forth for air. Although debarred from the society of her equals, she had friends of another sort.

It was her private ambi tion at this period to keep a little shop, one half of which should be gay and fragrant with candies, the other sober and imposing with books. This ambition she wisely secluded from her aristocratic parent, but she gratified it vicariously. Some distance up Market Street she had discovered a book shop, scarcely wider than its door and about eight feet deep. Its presiding deity was a blonde young man, out-at-elbows, consumptive and vague. Lee never knew his name; she always alluded to him as " Soft-head." He never asked hers ; but he welcomed her with a slight access of expression, and made a place for her on the counter. There she sat and swung her legs for hours together, confiding her ambitions and plans, and recapitulating her lessons for the intellectual benefit of her host.

In return he told her the histories of the queer people who patronised him and permitted her to "tend shop." He thought her a prodigy, and made her little presents of paper and coloured pencils. Not to be under obligations, she crocheted him a huge woollen scarf, which he assured her greatly improved his health. She also had a warm friend in a girl who presided over a candy store, but her bosom friend and confidante was a pale weary-looking young woman who suddenly appeared in a second-hand book shop in lowTly Fourth Street, on the wrong side of Market. Lee was examining the dirty and disease-haunted volumes on the stand in front of the shop one day, when she glanced through the window and met the eager eyes and smile of a stranger. She entered the shop at once, and planting her elbows on the counter, told the newcomer hospitably that she was delighted to welcome her to that part of the city, and would call every afternoon if she would be permitted to tend shop occasionally.

If the stranger was amused she did not betray herself; she accepted the overture with every appearance of gratitude, and begged Lee to regard the premises as her own. For six months the friendship flourished. The young woman, whose name was Stainers, helped Lee with her sums, and had a keenly sympathetic ear for the troubles of little girls. Of herself she never spoke. Then she gave up her own battle, and was carried to the county hospital to die. Lee visited her twice, and one afternoon her mother told her that the notice of Miss Stainer's death had been in the newspaper that morning. Lee wept long and heavily for the gentle friend who had carried her secrets into a pauper's grave. "You are so young and you have had so much trouble," said Mrs Tarlton with a sigh, that night. " But perhaps it will give you more character than I ever had.

And nothing can break your spirits. They are your grandmother's all over ; you even gesticulate like her sometimes and then you look just like a little creole. She was a wonderful woman, honey, and had forty-nine offers of marriage." " I hope men are nicer than boys," remarked Lee, not unwilling to be diverted. " The boys in this house are horrid. Bertie Reynolds pulls my hair every time I pass him, and calls me ' Squaw ; ' and Tom Wilson throws bread balls at me at the table and calls me 'Broken-down aristocracy.' I'm sure they'll never kiss a girl's slipper." " A few years from now some girl will be leading them round by the nose. You never can tell how a boy will turn out; it all depends upon whether girls take an interest in him or not. These are probably scrubs." " There's a new one and he's rather shy.

They say he's English. He and his father came last night. The boy's name is Cecil ; I heard his father speak to him at the table to-night. The father has a funny name ; I can't remember it. Mrs Hayne says he is very distingue. B AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS and she's sure he's a lord in disguise, but I think he's very thin and ugly. He has the deepest lines on each side of his month, and a big thin nose, and a droop at the corner of his eyes. He's the stuck-uppest looking thing I ever saw. The boy is about twelve, I reckon, and looks as if he wasn't afraid of anything but girls. He has the curliest hair and the loveliest complexion, and his eyes laugh. They're hazel, and his hair is brown. He looks much nicer than any boy I ever saw." " He is the son of a gentleman — and English gentlemen are the only ones that can compare with Southerners, honey.

If you make friends with him you may bring him up here." " Goodness gracious ! " exclaimed Lee. Her mother had encouraged her to ignore boys, and disliked visitors of any kind. " I feel sure he is going to be your next friend, and you are so lonely, honey, now that poor Miss Stainers is gone. So ask him up if you like. It makes me very sad to think that you have no playmates." Lee climbed up on her mother's lap. Once in a great while she laid aside the dignity of her superior position in the family, and demanded a petting. Mrs Tarlton held her close and shut her eyes, and strove to imagine that the child in her arms was five years younger, and that both were listening for a step which so often smote her memory with agonising distinctness.

Chapter IV

T EE sat limply on the edge of her cot wishing she ■*— 4 had a husband to button her boots. Mrs Tarlton had been very ill during the night, and her daughter's brain and eyes were heavy. Lee had no desire for school, for anything but bed; but it was eight o'clock, examinations were approaching, and to school she must go. She glared resentfully at the long row of buttons, half inclined to wear her slippers, and finally com promised by fastening every third button. The rest of her toilette was accomplished with a like disregard for fashion. She was not pleased with her appearance and was disposed to regard life as a failure. At breakfast she received a severe reprimand from Mrs Hayne, who informed her and the table inclusively that her hair looked as if it had been combed by a rake, and re buttoned her frock there and then with no regard for the pride of eleven.

Altogether, Lee, between her recent affliction, her tired head, and her wounded dignity, started for school in a very depressed frame of mind. ia As she descended the long stair leading from the first floor of the boarding-house to the street she saw the English lad standing in the door. They had exchanged glances of curiosity and interest across the table, and once he had offered her radishes, with a lively blush. That morning she had decided that he must be very nice indeed, for he had turned scarlet during Mrs Hayne's scolding and had scowled quite fiercely at the autocrat. He did not look up nor move until she asked him to let her pass ; he was apparently absorbed in the loud voluntary of Market Street, his cap on the back of his head, his hands in his pockets, his feet well apart. When Lee spoke, he turned swiftly and grabbed at her school-bag.

" You'retired," he said, with so desperate an assumption of ease that he was brutally abrupt, and Lee jumped backward a foot. " I beg pardon," he stammered, his eyes full of nervous tears. "But — but — you looked so tired at breakfast, and you didn't eat; I thought I'd like to carry your books." Lee's face beamed with delight, and its fatigue vanished, but she said primly : " You're very good, I'm sure, and I like boys that do things for girls." " I don't usually," he replied hastily, as if fearful that his dignity had been compromised. "But, let's come along. You're late." They walked in silence for a few moments. The lad's courage appeared exhausted, and Lee was casting about for a brilliant remark ; she was the cleverest girl in her class and careful of her reputation. But her brain would not work this morning, and fearing that her new friend would bolt, she said precipitately : " I'm eleven.

How old are you ? " " Fourteen and eleven months." " My name's Lee Tarlton. What's yours ? " " Cecil Edward Basil Maundrell. I've got two more than you have." " Well, you're a boy, anyhow, and bigger, aren't you ? I'm named after a famous man — second cousin, General Lee. Lee was my father's mother's family name." " Who was General Lee ? " " You'd better study United States history." " What for ? " The question puzzled Lee, her eagle being yet in the shell. She replied rather lamely, " Well, Southern history, because my mother says we are descended from the English, and some French. It's the last makes us Creoles." "Oh ! I'll ask father." "Is he a lord?" asked Lee, with deep curiosity. "No." The boy answered so abruptly that Lee stood still and stared at him. He had set his lips tightly; it would almost seem he feared something might leap from them.

" Oh— h— h ! Your father has forbidden you to tell." The clumsy male looked helplessly at the astute female. " He isn't a lord," he asserted doggedly. " You arn't telling me all, though." " Perhaps I'm not. But," impulsively, " perhaps I will some day. I hate being locked up like a tin box with papers in it. We've been here two weeks — at the Palace Hotel before we came to Mrs Hayne's — and my head fairly aches thinking of everything I say before I say it. I hate this old California. Father won't present any letters, and the boys I've met are cads. But I like you ! " " Oh, tell me ! " cried Lee. Her eyes blazed and she hopped excitedly on one foot. " It's like a real story. Tell me ! " " I'll have to know you better. I must be sure I can trust you." He had all at once assumed a darkly mysterious air.

" I'll walk every morning to school with you, and in the afternoons we'll sit in the drawing-room and talk." " I never tell secrets. I know lots I " "I'll wait a week." " Well ; but I think it's horrid of you. And I can't come down this afternoon ; my mother is ill. But to morrow I have a holiday, and if you like you can come up and see me at two o'clock ; and you shall carry my bag every morning to school." " Indeed ! " He threw up his head like a young race horse. " You must," — firmly. " Else you can't come. I'll let some other boy carry it." Lee fibbed with a qualm, but not upon barren soil had the maternal counsel fallen. " Oh — well — I'll do it ; but I ought to have offered. Girls ought not to tell boys what to do." " My mother always told her husband and brothers and cousins to do everything she wanted, and they always did it."