Chapter III A Morning Drive
In a city like Chicago, where events occur with phenomenal rapidity, two or three years make great changes in a neighborhood. Hyde Park, which long hung back like a rebellious child loath to yield its independence, had at last placed its reluctant hand in that of the mother city; but with the suburb’s growing population there had already come a new state of affairs. It was no longer the case that everybody in Hyde Park knew everybody else. Those families who made homes there when but two trains ran daily to and from town, felt, on the rare and rarer occasions of meeting one another in a stranger crowd, the drawing of a tie tender as that of kinship.
Mrs. Bryant belonged to this pioneer set, and so did Mr. Van Tassel. To those residents who had danced with them “long before the fire” at the parties in the old Hyde Park hotel, this was reason sufficient why the wealthy widower should manifest a continued interest in the friend of his young manhood and her fatherless children. Those long-finished polkas in the long-destroyed hostelry on the lake shore, where scattered neighbors once met with the unconventional jollity of family reunion, had left behind them a green memory in some hearts.
Florence Badger had been a fair little bud at those gatherings, and of course Richard Van Tassel, her gay young partner, was not likely to forget either her or his chum, Lewis Bryant, whom she afterward married. The children of the two families had gone to school together and carried the intimacy on to the next generation; and when Mr. Van Tassel’s wife and daughter had been taken from him, more potent to comfort than any other soul had been the gentle invalid, the friend of his youth, whose lines for many years had fallen in hard places.
So, small wonder that the fine house on the lake shore and the shabby home on the back street had kept up an interchange of civilities. These had been chiefly carried on by the young people until Jack had gone to college. After that it was to the Bryants that Richard Van Tassel liked best to carry his boy’s letters, and talk over his haps and mishaps, secure of sympathy.
Of late he had not been blind to the fact that the shabby home was growing shabbier, but it was not an easy matter to bestow gifts here. This very spring he had remarked that Clover’s eyes looked too large, and that they rested with greater anxiety on her feeble mother. He had even hinted to Mrs. Bryant a trip up into Wisconsin or across the lake; but she had parried the potential offer with gentle firmness.
Many a drive around the parks and boulevards did the invalid take with her daughters in the glistening Van Tassel equipage, greatly to the wonder of certain Hyde Parkers whose experience did not date back to “before the fire.”
The owner of the horses was away, that they knew. Jack Van Tassel graduated from Harvard this June, and his father had gone East for the great occasion. Now it was early August, and he had not returned. “It was so lovely of him,” many said, “to give poor people like the Bryants the use of his carriage while he was away. A real charity. Not many men would be so thoughtful.”
These neighbors wondered if the freedom of the fine equipage extended to the freedom of the house; but this they could not discover, for the Bryants were not talkers unless surrounded by old friends. Hard experience had taught even the young people reserve. Nevertheless it might have been a gratification to these curious ones to know that the Bryants had never taken liberties at the Van Tassel mansion. It had even been interdicted always to the girls by their careful mother to accept a general invitation to sit on the piazzas and rest, when they came home from the sailing expeditions their souls loved.
The house was fascinatingly near the water, and the level lawns about it cool with a fine mossy greenness. The hammocks and rocking chairs on the spacious piazzas gave alluring invitations to recline and study the ever-changing coloring of the illimitable fresh-water sea; and the elm-trees—not even on the boulevards were there such respectable elm-trees as had here been coaxed to endure the harshness of bleak lake-winds.
This being the case, it was hard, Clover and Mildred used to think, and their little sister thought so still, that unless Jack happened to be on hand to give them a specific invitation, they must pass this unused luxury by, and trudge around the corner up the sunny main street, and so on to the sandy roughness of the unpaved avenue they called home. Still they never thought of rebelling. The rule was as fixed as those of the Medes and Persians, and it must be a right one because mother made it.
On the very day that Clover, hard pressed by thoughts that ran in a discouraging circle, disfigured her pretty hands by doing the family washing, Mr. Van Tassel returned to Chicago.
On the following morning the sun was reflected brightly from the wheels of his buggy as he drove a pair of well-groomed horses to the Bryant house. Elsie Bryant, a girl of fourteen, saw him as he drew up before the wooden walk. With a little exclamation of delight she ran down the flight of steps to greet him.
Mr. Van Tassel gathered the reins into one hand and reached the other down to the child.
“How are you all, Elsie? Mother about the same? Oh, I’m sorry for the headache. Is Clover at home? Will you tell her I have a business errand to do this morning, and very much want her company on my drive? Tell her she must indulge me. I can’t let her off. I’ll come in later to see Mrs. Bryant.”
“Lucky Clover,” thought Elsie as she ran obediently up the steps. “I just wish he had asked me.”
And lucky Clover thought herself when she received the message. She was so tired of her own depressing thoughts! The fresh air and the sight of the kind familiar face would do her good.
When Mr. Van Tassel saw her run down the steps in her blue gown a few minutes later, he descended from the buggy with middle-aged deliberation.
“Welcome back,” said Clover, trying to speak cheerily. It seemed to her that misfortune must have set an ugly visible mark upon her.
“Thank you for that. Thank you for coming,” said Mr. Van Tassel, looking at her as their hands met as though he saw nothing unlovely. He assisted her into the buggy, and following, started the horses.
“Did Jack come with you?”
“No. I thought that I might find him here. He expected to arrive about now.”
“Proud, happy Jack, I suppose,” said the girl smiling.
“Rather a homesick Jack I fear he will be for a little while, unless he has recovered already. You know the young man has a way of recovering from depression.”
“Jack and depression! What an impossible connection of ideas,” laughed Clover. It seemed wonderful to herself that she could laugh. It was so long since she had. Three days is an interminable term of misery when one is twenty. They were bowling swiftly along Drexel Boulevard, beside the rich foliage and flower-beds of the landscape gardener; the air was clear and cool, and driving was quite a different thing when Mr. Van Tassel held the reins in this light vehicle, from the same exercise by favor of his solemn coachman, in the heavy and gorgeous carriage driven at a rate suited to Mrs. Bryant’s sensitive condition.
Up Oakwood to Michigan Boulevard they sped, and soon the buggy stopped before one of the splendid stone mansions on that avenue.
“I shall be but one minute,” said Mr. Van Tassel as he dismounted, and he kept his word. When Clover saw the brevity of the message given to the servant who answered his ring at the door, a faint wonder passed through her mind that Mr. Van Tassel had thought fit to bring it in person.
She was not inclined to quarrel with the fact, however, and when her escort returned and the heads of the spirited horses were turned back to the south, she inhaled a long breath of satisfaction.
“You have not found pleasanter weather than this where you have been, I am sure,” she said.
“No,” he answered, “nor pleasanter circumstances. I have thought of you a good many times though, Clover, and wished you might be with me.”
He turned and looked into her eyes as he spoke, the innocent blue eyes that returned his gaze fully. Her pretty lips parted in her interest. “That was very good of you,” she said sincerely. “I would like to go to every interesting place, so I am sure I should have echoed your wish. Where was it? At the seashore?”
“A part of the time,—yes.”
“I wonder if I shall ever go East,” exclaimed the girl with a sigh. “New York, Boston, Philadelphia, I should like them to be something beside names to me,—but what an idea!” She broke off with a short laugh. Her thoughts had indeed, like unruly steeds, kicked over the traces by which they had been harnessed to carry her by a safe road out of a perplexing labyrinth.
“Not an absurd idea at all,” said her companion quietly.
“Our lake looks very like the ocean, I suppose,” she continued, after an involuntary sigh.
“Not very much. I don’t say it is not as beautiful,” replied Mr. Van Tassel loyally, “but the electric blues and translucent greens of Lake Michigan have little in common with the deep, strong indigo, or bottle-green, of old Ocean. There is as much variance in their complexions as in their voices; as much difference between the sweep of the fresh-water surf and the boom of the ocean’s tide, as between the tones of a tenor and a bass voice.”
“But, Mr. Van Tassel, think of the lake storms!” returned Clover, her Chicago spirit piqued. “I’ve stood on the lake shore many a time when I could lean my full weight against the wind and be supported; and how does the boom of the breakers, hammering the piers on those nights, sound at your house?”
Mr. Van Tassel smiled. “Well,” he answered, “we will say like a tenore robusto in full force. But there again comes in the difference in disposition. When Lake Michigan becomes angry, it flies into a white rage in a few minutes, and as soon as the spell is over calms down into comparative placidity; while the ocean, slow to wrath, relaxes but gradually, storming on with splendid fury under a dazzling sun.”
“A difference greatly in favor of the lake, I should say,” returned Clover.
“Ah, but think of the terrors of Michigan’s caprices. Smiling, even seeming to dream in a happy reverie one minute, rocking its little sailboats softly on its breast like a gentle mother, all at once with appalling suddenness it flies into a passion, and while the fit is on works havoc that inflicts long years of misery, though the very next hour may find it dimpling again in gay carelessness of calamity. Not so with the ocean. The sailor relies on its steady winds, and the honest signs it hangs in the heavens for all to read, giving fair warning of approaching danger.”
“Why, Mr. Van Tassel! As if you didn’t know that our sky hangs out signs too, only, as Jack says, one must be brought up right on the lake to understand them. I had no idea you were such a poet, and so disloyal.”
As the girl made her warm protest, her companion threw back his head and gave the hearty laugh that his friends liked to hear.
They had sped down Grand Boulevard, through Washington Park, and now entered the Midway Plaisance.
What that name suggested to Chicagoans up to a short time ago was the loneliest, most rural drive of their park system. It even wound through the woods at one point, making the refreshing variety of a curve in the city of straight lines.
On this morning of the summer of ’89, when Mr. Van Tassel’s horses turned into the broad avenue, their hoofs rang out in unbroken stillness. Not another vehicle or human being was in sight. Birds glided noiselessly among the trees that lined each side of the driveway. Grassy fields stretched away in level, tranquil monotony in all directions. It was the Midway Plaisance: but with no dull rhythmic beat of drum to be the first greeting of each new arrival, no shadowing forth of the scenes in the near future, when this unknown plot of ground should become the rendezvous and rallying place of the civilized, half-civilized, and savage nations of the earth.
It was the Midway Plaisance. What’s in a name? The words now signify to millions a babel of tongues, a baffling concatenation of noises and odors, a dizzying throng of sensations and emotions, a wondrous collection of novel sights. Yet, a little while ago it was the Midway Plaisance, and Richard Van Tassel chose to drive through it with this young girl because he wished for solitude, and he could find no more secluded and unfrequented spot.
“You must be introduced to the charms of the sea before you decide on the question of my loyalty,” he said.
“That will never be, I fear,” she answered soberly.
“Never is a long time. Hope for the best,” said her companion cheerily.
“I do try to, but I haven’t Jack’s cork-like disposition.” A sadness had crept into the girl’s tone in spite of herself.
“She is thinking of Mrs. Breckinridge’s invitation,” decided Van Tassel.
“Your day will come. Every man and woman has his opportunity,” he suggested.
“I hope you are right,” answered Clover rather dispiritedly.
Her companion looked around at her tenderly, but her large eyes were gazing between the horses’ heads. “My poor little girl,” he said, and at his tone Clover glanced at him in surprise. “Is the mother not so well?” he asked. “Something depresses you.”
“I do not think she is worse,” answered the girl slowly, but her eyes moistened, and she looked away.
“I understand. It is hard for you to be the head of the family. You will grow old before your time.”
Clover became afraid that she should cry. She looked resolutely at the antics of a gopher on the fence.
“I have been growing young ever since we started,” she answered lightly at last. “I did feel haggard with age early this morning.”
She might have added, and at every hour of the night; for her novel problems would not let her sleep.
“I hope you mean to tell me your troubles always,” said Mr. Van Tassel.
“That is very good of you,” returned the girl, turning her head and giving her companion a faint April smile, “and very tempting too. Even though I am nearly certain that you cannot help me, I am weak enough to wish to talk to you of what I must repress at home.”
“I am glad to hear that,” returned the other gravely, “gladder than I can express.”
So Clover told him of her uncle’s debt to Mr. Bryant, of the small allowance he had consequently made her mother, and of the fact of its cessation; and while she still talked, their swift horses left the Midway Plaisance and entered Jackson Park, quiet and refreshing at this hour of the morning. The broad green field in its centre was studded with haystacks whose perfume filled the air. Robins, thrushes, and catbirds lurked in the quiet groves, and swans sailed majestically on the lakelets where soon the Eskimo canoes would be equally at home.
Adjoining the field of new-mown hay, ducks paddled along the still green banks of another sheet of water, as contentedly as later in the same spot their brothers would swim in the shadow of the white columns of a treasure-house of painting and sculpture.
Mr. Van Tassel drove his horses through the site of future State buildings, down past the pavilion which afterward the people of Iowa beautified with their ingenious decorations. Here, close to its gray stones, he drew rein, and watched with his companion the gentle waves break upon the sea wall.
Clover’s recital had drawn to a close, and now that it was over she became for the first time embarrassed in the silence that followed, and doubtful of her own wisdom in having accepted the relief of speech. Her companion was her mother’s best and oldest friend. He had urged her to confide in him. His present silence was doubtless owing to a deep consideration as to how he might be helpful to her; but he was a rich man. Clover had not thought of that till now. Her only hope, so far as her vague thoughts were formulated, had been that he might communicate with Uncle Adolph more effectively than she herself. Her cheeks grew slowly, richly crimson. He turned, and she dreaded what he might be going to say. When her timid eyes found his kind gaze, he extended his hand to her.
“Do you trust me entirely, Clover?” he asked.
She was mystified, but as he evidently wished for her hand she placed it in his.
“Yes, I—I”—she began incoherently, possessed by the suspicion that she had been indelicate, and torn between the keen feeling of her mother’s needs and her repugnance to receiving a gift she might seem to have requested.
“Don’t be afraid, dear,” he continued very kindly and quietly. “If we are both honest, we shall not hurt each other. You have been frank. Now it is my turn.”