Chapter XVI A Massachusetts Celebration
“I see by the paper there’s some sort o’ doin’s at the Massachusetts house to-day,” observed Miss Berry to Clover, as the two stood in the dining-room one morning after breakfast was over.
“A day when you ought to visit the Fair then, surely,” replied her companion.
“Why, yes. I don’t know but I will,” returned Miss Lovina ruminatively.
“And you ought to make an early start, Aunt Love. You are not the only loyal Yankee in town.”
“Just so,” said the housekeeper placidly. “Mrs. Van Tassel, we must have a chocolate puddin’ pretty soon. Mr. Jack was fond o’ chocolate from a child. I well remember”—
“Yes, I want to hear all about it some time; but you know how hard it is for you to get an early start for the Fair. Let me attend to your department to-day, and you go down to the Massachusetts house and have a good time.”
“My dear, I shall get there in good season. Don’t you worry a mite. Independence is won. The country’s safe and my bein’ on hand at just such a minute don’t signify. I’d rather go through my reg’lar routine. I’m happier that way.”
Thus it was that when Aunt Love stepped leisurely through the Cornell Avenue turnstile, taking her way down between Kentucky and West Virginia and around Pennsylvania’s edifice, she saw that the Massachusetts Building was surrounded by a crowd.
“That’s clever,” she murmured, in nowise disturbed by the evident fact that she could not approach near enough to hear the speeches. “There’s plenty o’ folks to show an interest.”
The wreathed façade of New York’s palatial home rose beside her, and she ascended the broad marble steps, passed through the hall, and out upon the eastern porch. A fountain plashed coolly in its centre, wicker rocking-chairs stood about, dull blue portières were looped between its pillars. Miss Berry was warm and tired from her walk. The chairs looked inviting. She sank into one of them, and listened to the lulling tone of the fountain while she looked across the street at the more energetic patriots or more curious idlers, who lined the way to the Hancock house in the hope of seeing the dignitaries of the occasion pass in and out.
A fine band stationed in the yard of the mansion began to play inspiringly. As Miss Berry grew refreshed under the influence of the silvery falling water and her comfortable chair, her anxiety to see and hear increased. Her point of view was unsatisfactory, and yet the idea of joining the crowd of spectators was not attractive.
“I wonder if they’ll let you go upstairs in this grand, big place,” she pondered. “One o’ those blue fellers’ll stop me quick enough if I can’t. They know a good deal better what a body can’t do than what she can.”
Miss Berry might be excused for grumbling. She had made her acquaintance with the Fair City at a date before the Columbian Guards had learned their points of compass; and she would have to become lighter on her feet before she could forgive them the unnecessary walking which their blundering directions had caused her to perform.
She left the shady stone porch, and, passing through the spacious apartment which led to the hall, began to ascend the stairs. No one protested, and she took courage to remark her surroundings.
“The New Yorkers seem to like any color so it’s red,” she mused, noting the Pompeian glow of the wall. Of course a Massachusetts woman on this day must not be uncritical of her neighbor’s efforts.
But when Miss Lovina entered the banquet hall she stood amazed. Only for a moment, however. It was an unrighteous place. She felt it. She refused to be dazzled by its prismatic glass and its painted cherubs. There was an unholy luxury, a theatrical suggestion about its velvet boxes. Miss Berry, looking straight before her, hastened swiftly as she dared across its polished floor and through the light room beyond, out upon an upper balcony which overlooked the festivities of her own substantial and respectable State.
Yes, Miss Berry could breathe out here. Coming from the seductive shadow of the dim hall, the sunlight seemed doubly clear. The heavenly blue of the firmament bent above snowy and golden domes, flying flags, and winding waterways, while the bewitching sparkle of Lake Michigan’s electric blues and peacock greens seemed more vital as one listened to the rhythmic harmonies poured forth on the summer air by the musicians below. It was a season of delight. The whole atmosphere seemed charged with gayety.
A man leaning his elbows on the rail of the balcony was thinking this when Miss Lovina emerged from the doorway. She glanced at him, then glanced again, then gazed.
“Of course ’t ain’t him; but if it don’t look like him!” she mused.
The more she looked, the stronger grew the resemblance of that back to one she knew. The man was interested in the celebration over the way. Why should she not stand beside him a minute?
Acting on the impulse, Aunt Love also leaned her arm on the rail, and waited a second before stealing a furtive curious look at her neighbor’s face. Their eyes met. In a moment both her hands were being shaken.
“For the land’s sake, Mr. Gorham!”
“Hurrah for us,” he answered, laughing. “To think that I should have come unexpectedly upon this celebration and you. What more could a Bostonian ask?”
“You might ask to be in the Massachusetts house instead of over here in Gotham.”
“I fancy only invited guests go in there to-day; but at any rate I have only just arrived, and this is a fine place for the general effect. So that is the old Hancock house.”
“Yes. I remember the real one very well.”
“How well the grounds look. I am anxious to get in. You have visited it, of course.”
“Yes, I have. I must say to you, Mr. Gorham, I had to laugh to see some o’ the stuff they’ve put in a glass case over there. I’ve got some things in my attic in Pearfield they could have had and welcome.”
“Perhaps they would have been glad of them,” remarked Page.
Miss Berry laughed. “I never thought before o’ puttin’ Aunt Jerushy’s old calash under glass for a show,” she said. “It would ‘a’ looked simple to me; but there’s papers in one o’ the downstairs rooms that are interestin’. There’s no doubt about it. It does make a body’s blood boil to see the old superstitions down in black and white, and think o’ the past sufferin’s of innocent folks. There’s one paper there makin’ out a case against some poor critter for havin’ dealin’s with the devil, ’way back in Salem times.”
“I want to see everything in that house,” returned Gorham, with anticipatory relish.
“Well, give an account of yourself,” said Miss Berry, after a moment’s silence. “Have you been to Mrs. Van Tassel’s?”
“No, not yet.”
“But you are comin’, ain’t you?”
“To call, certainly.”
“But you’ve been invited to stay?”
“Yes, I know; but I have taken a room at the Beach.”
“Why, what’s that for? Mrs. Van Tassel will think that’s queer.”
“She will have guests enough without me.”
“It is your Uncle Richard’s house,” persisted Miss Berry.
“Yes, that is just the trouble,” returned Page quietly.
Aunt Love sighed. “Well, I was ’lottin’ on helpin’ to make you all comfortable.”
“I haven’t a doubt of it, you dear soul. Be sure that only stern principle drives me from under your wing, and please get me an invitation to dinner soon, won’t you? How is Jack?”
“He’s lively. I heard ’em at breakfast talkin’ about all comin’ down to the illumination tonight.”
“I wonder if I might join the party.”
“Of course. Nobody knew you were comin’ out so soon.”
“I didn’t expect it myself. It was a sudden determination.”
“They are goin’ to have their supper down here at six o’clock, I heard ’em say at breakfast, at the Marine—Caffy, I think they call it. At any rate I know the house first-rate; and if ’t wan’t for the Art Buildin’ I could show it to you from here. It’s brown, and that’s queer enough in this place, and then it’s all covered with candle snuffers. Just as soon as I once sensed it that the Columbian Guards were put here to look pretty and didn’t know where anything was, I made up my mind if I didn’t learn the g’ography o’ the place I’d be a cripple; so I buckled down to it and I’m most ready to stand an examination. Miss Bryant told me when I first came down that if I’d just take the opposite direction to what a Guard told me, I’d find myself all right; and that did work pretty well, but it’s better yet to know your own way around and not have to make calculations.”
Page nodded smilingly.
“It does beat all,” Aunt Love went on, “how when you’re at this north end o’ the Fair, the Art Buildin’ is just across the street from everything. It does seem sometimes as if it hadn’t any end; and when you once get into it. My!”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Page, “but,” he added with the courage of a new-comer, “I propose to see all that’s in it; and speaking of thoroughness, have you looked over this building?”
“I just glanced as I came along,” replied Miss Berry cautiously. “It’s pretty worldly and glitterin’, just like the folks that built it. That hall in there with the slippery floor”—
“A ball-room, yes. Let us go back and examine.”
“Oh, it’s a ball-room, is it!” said Miss Berry, following the young man back into the lofty apartment where sunlight sifting through caught in the prismatic chandeliers and lay in rainbows on the floor.
They stood at the rope-guarded door of the dainty tea-room. Page pointed out to his companion the beauties of wreathed pillars and mural decorations in the lofty hall, but he observed that the light of suspicion still shone in her eyes.
“Let us try the roof, Aunt Love,” he remarked. “You can see the Hancock house again from there, and I’m sure you will be more comfortable.”
“Oh, I know this is all elegant, Mr. Gorham, and it’s a great thing to have such riches opened up for everybody to see. Why, downstairs there’s a gold piano, and velvet and silk curtains; but folks don’t want to set their hearts on gold pianos and diamond chandeliers. You ain’t goin’ to take that elevator, are you?” she added, dropping her virtuously impersonal tone for one of anxiety.
“Certainly. You must have learned the importance of economizing steps here.”
“Better get lame from walkin’ than break your leg in a fallin’ elevator,” remarked Miss Berry. “Accidents in the papers do scare a body.” But she consented to run the risk, and soon was standing beside Page in one of the square towers on the roof, with the Fair City spread out around them.
“I suppose you have visited the Midway,” remarked Page, looking over to where the Ferris wheel revolved, slowly and steadily.
Miss Berry threw up both her hands. “Yes, all I want to,” she returned sonorously.
“Don’t say that. I expect you to pilot me to all the shows.”
“You’ll be disappointed, then. Civilization’s good enough for me. If I’d had a call to minister to naked savages, I s’pose I’d ‘a’ been given grace to conquer; but to listen to ’em yell, and see ’em dance, is a mighty queer thing for Christians to seek for entertainment, it seems to me. If I could go into that Pleasance with plenty o’ hot water and Castile soap, and some sensible clothes, and could help those poor critters to a more godly way o’ livin’ that would be a different thing; but when I want a good time I ain’t goin’ to try to get it bein’ trod on by camels and yelled at by Turks, all the time smellin’ smells I don’t know the name of and would be afraid to. No, sir.”
Page laughed. Miss Berry looked as though Michigan’s breezes were powerless to cool her.
“Perhaps the Midway Plaisance is an acquired taste,” he said. “You may like it better, later.”
“No, I’ve seen enough of it if I can’t be a missionary, but I’m glad all the natives have got it warm at last, anyway.”
“Which natives?”
“Oh, all those foreign folks. They’re all natives of some place, I s’pose, and they do say when ’t was rainy and cold and muddy they had a forlorn time of it in the Pleasance.”
“Yes; we used to read about it, and my brother Robert nicknamed the street then the Mudway Nuisance. We all laughed at the joke but Jack. It is against Jack’s principles to jest at sacred things like Chicago and her Fair. I shall have to get him to show me the fine points of the Midway. He won’t refuse me.”
“No, indeed. There’s plenty that like it. The place gets more crowded every day. Why, Mr. Gorham,” Miss Berry dropped her rather sad, musing tone, and spoke feelingly. “That Midway is just a representation of matter, and this great White City is an emblem of mind. In the Midway it’s some dirty and all barbaric. It deafens you with noise; the worst folks in there are avaricious and bad, and the best are just children in their ignorance, and when you’re feelin’ bewildered with the smells and sounds and sights, always changin’ like one o’ these kaleidoscopes, and when you come out o’ that mile-long babel where you’ve been elbowed and cheated, you pass under a bridge—and all of a sudden you are in a great, beautiful silence. The angels on the Woman’s Buildin’ smile down and bless you, and you know that in what seemed like one step, you’ve passed out o’ darkness into light.” Aunt Love paused thoughtfully. “It’s come to me, Mr. Gorham, that perhaps dyin’ is goin’ to be somethin’ like crossin’ the dividin’ line that separates the Midway from the White City. I’ve asked myself when I’ve passed under that bridge and felt the difference down so deep, what did make it so strong? ’T ain’t only the quiet and the grandeur o’ those buildin’s compared with the fantastic things you’ve left behind; I believe it’s just the fact that the makers o’ the Fair believed in God and put Him and their enlightenment from Him into what they did; and we feel it some like we’d feel an electric shock.”
Page nodded. “You make me more interested than ever in my prospect of sightseeing,” he said. “Now I propose that you show me the way to that café where you say the others will come this evening, and we will take lunch together there. Not a word of objection, Aunt Love. This is a great day. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us charge on the café under the candle-snuffers.”
The two friends descended to the street, and Page, submitting to Miss Berry’s guidance, was led through the archway running beneath the eastern corridor of the Art Building. “I won’t attempt to take you through the buildin’ itself,” said Miss Berry, “’cause I know well enough I shouldn’t get you through before the middle o’ the afternoon; partly ’cause you’d stop to look at the statuary, and partly ’cause the first thing I always do when I get in there is to lose myself. I’ve thought, up to this summer, that I had a pretty good bump o’ locality; but land! let me turn around in that place a few times and all those signs, ‘East Wall,’ ‘North Wall,’ and the rest, don’t mean any more to me than Greek would. You’ll see how ’t is when you try it.”
Page was only half listening. He paused by the brink of the water, fascinated by the sparkling, shining, noonday beauty before him. Gondolas were stealing from beneath the bridges, and electric launches passing and repassing silently and smoothly over the changing waves.
“We must get into one of those boats, Aunt Love,” he said with enthusiasm.
“You can’t sail to the restaurant. That’s right over yonder,” observed Miss Berry practically, indicating with her parasol the many-towered roof of the Marine Café.
Page sighed. “Do what you like with me,” he answered resignedly. “I can see already that the summer will be too short.”
“If your breath ain’t, that’s all you need fret about,” returned Miss Lovina, as they started eastward, along the bank of the pond. “Many’s the time in the last weeks I’ve wished I only weighed one hundred. Don’t those ducks and swans have it comfortable?”
Page watched the undulating motions of the pretty birds that eyed them as they passed.
“No, I didn’t bring my lunch; hadn’t the least notion o’ stayin’,” replied Miss Berry over her shoulder, to the graceful followers who soon veered away, secure of dining sumptuously every day.
“These here steps,” remarked Aunt Love, as she climbed up to Costa Rica’s entrance and down on the other side, “do seem an awful aggravation when you’re tired, which I ain’t now, of course. There’s no gettin’ out of ’em except by walkin’ all around Robin Hood’s barn.”
Page found his companion surprisingly intelligent as to the names of the buildings they passed lingeringly on the way to the café, and once arrived at that haven, they proceeded to take a leisurely lunch, after which Miss Berry allowed herself to be easily persuaded to ride around the lagoon in an electric launch.
Page found so much to interest him in this initial trip, the quiet gliding motion, cool air, and constantly stimulating panorama were so charming, that he scarcely knew when to abandon this certain good for one more doubtful. At last, however, he and Miss Berry found themselves roaming beneath the gilded towers of the Electricity Building. Miss Lovina gazed benevolently and uncomprehendingly upon one and another evidence of marvelous achievement, waiting patiently whenever Page paused to examine and question.
“There’s one place here,” she volunteered at last, “where I will say for ’em they’ve done a cute thing. They’ve harnessed chain lightnin’ so it pulls up and down a zigzag path just as tame as my cow’ll go to pasture. Come and see it, Mr. Gorham.”
So Page was piloted through the spectacular southeast portion of the building, where color and movement thrilled through every phase of intensity, from the steady glow of the living green pillars of the Egyptian temple, to the various whirling globes and wheels, and the racing bubbles of changing light which sped along their irregular tracks.
“Ah, here are the telephones,” remarked Page.
“Yes; do you know, Mr. Gorham, till I came to Chicago I’d never seen a telephone? I find folks don’t make anything of ’em here. Mrs. Van Tassel ain’t any more afraid of her telephone than she is of her sewin’ machine. When I first came I used to jump a foot every time that sharp little bell rung; but I made up my mind that I was havin’ advantages, and that I wasn’t goin’ to slight ’em. I made up my mind I was goin’ to speak into that box, no matter how fast the chills traveled up my back, and I did it; it makes me as weak as a kitten yet, but I just will be up with the times I live in if I get a chance; and ain’t a telephone a perfect wonder now?”
“It is, indeed, and they are improving them all the time. I see there is a long-distance telephone. How should you like to talk to New York?”
“I shouldn’t like to make a fool o’ myself that way or any other, Gorham Page.”
“But really, Aunt Love”—
“Save your breath, Mr. Gorham. I know this buildin’s full o’ queer doin’s and it’s a good place to play jokes on a body, but there’s limits to even a greenhorn’s credulity.”
“I was never more in earnest, I assure you. It is possible to talk to New York.”
Miss Berry regarded her companion severely. “Then it’s blasphemous. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
“Why, I don’t see that.”
“Do you s’pose the Lord would have put New York a thousand miles away from Chicago if he’d expected ’em to talk to each other?”
Page laughed. “I never thought of that before as a reason for the antagonism between the two cities. Nonsense, Aunt Love; the world moves, and you must move with it. You shall speak to New York and be proud of yourself ever afterward. You know it is to be expected that science will do everything possible toward annihilating space.”
Page ascended the steps toward a silk-curtained cabinet; a uniformed boy opened its glass door.
After remaining in the closet a minute and speaking a few sentences into the telephone, he beckoned to Miss Berry who had remained standing at the foot of the steps looking very apprehensive.
“Now, Aunt Love,” he said encouragingly, as she slowly approached, a do-or-die expression on her face. Had Miss Berry been of the Romish church instead of being a “Con’regationalist in good and regular standing,” she would assuredly have crossed herself before entering that tasteful little apartment.
Page smiled into his mustache as he placed the receiver in her hand, fervently wishing that he might hear both sides of the impending dialogue.
“Mr. Gorham,” said Miss Berry, addressing him over her shoulder impressively, “think of the miles, the hours, I traveled; the rivers and lakes I crossed; the mountains I tunneled”—
“Yes, yes, Aunt Love; but don’t keep our New York friend waiting.”
“I feel prickly, Gorham. I think I’m goin’ to faint.”
“Oh no, you’re not. Just say Hello,” returned Page cheerily, his eyes twinkling.
“Hello,” quavered Miss Lovina, and promptly the answer came:—
New York. Is this Miss Berry?
Miss Berry. How did you know my name?
New York. A gentleman just told me to expect you. I am happy to meet you, or to hear you, all the way from New York.
Miss Berry. Go away!
New York. Aren’t you a little unreasonable, madam? I’m a good way off already.
Miss Berry. How am I to be sure you ain’t in the next room, sir?
New York. Do you hear me so distinctly?
Miss Berry. It is the most wonderful thing in the world if you are real.
New York. Oh, I am real, I assure you, madam. I see you have been making trips to the Midway, and your confidence in human nature is shaken.
Miss Berry. You’re just right there. I should like to talk to you about the Midway. Have you been to the Fair yet?
New York. No; and alas, I’m afraid I’m not coming; but if I do, I’m going to the Midway the first thing.
Miss Berry. Now, young man, you just stand there a minute, and I’ll convince you—“Hey?” for Gorham was pulling her sleeve.
“There are some more people waiting to speak, Aunt Love.”
“What? Oh,” Miss Berry looked dazed, relinquished the receiver, and moved like a somnambulist out of the cabinet.
“You might have said good-by to your new friend,” suggested Page.
“Mr. Gorham, tell me,” spoke Aunt Love beseechingly. “If I was ever good to you, if you ever liked my cookies, tell me the truth. Was that all hocus-pocus, or was it genuine?”
“Why, it was genuine, Aunt Love. It is done every day in business.”
“Well,” Miss Berry stepped off energetically. “All is, then, I’ve capped the climax o’ my life. I don’t calc’late to ever call anything wonderful again.”
But she did. Page took her upstairs to the gallery where a door opened by magic when her foot touched the threshold; where the tel-autograph reproduced a writer’s chirography while transmitting his thoughts; where a metal rod, passing along a person’s spine, caused blue flames to leap forth, crackling and spitting in Mephistophelean fashion, a cure which Miss Berry thought worse than any known disease. She saw there, too, the smallest steam-engine in the world, reposing its miniature perfection in a walnut shell, and displaying its exquisite mechanism only beneath a magnifying glass.
But the cooking of food and the hatching of chickens by electricity appealed to Aunt Love so engrossingly that, after repeated vain efforts to woo her away from both these attractions, Page finally took his leave of her there, and his parting view showed Miss Berry gazing through the side of an incubator where chicks were in every stage of existence, from the first thrust of a yellow beak through the eggshell, to the freed and bedraggled little wretch whose sole aim in life seemed to be to half hop and half tumble across the incubator until its wet body rested directly upon an incandescent light. These eventful journeys, with their apparently suicidal goal, so absorbed Miss Berry that she could do little more than wave her hand after Page as he set briskly off for pastures new.