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Chapter XVII · G.T.T., or The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman

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Chapter seventeen of G. G. T Or The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman
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by Edward Hale. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter seventeen.
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When they arrived in Austin a month before they had entered Austin in the
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early morning. The ladies were then alone, and rather doubtful of the adventure
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they were essaying. The gentlemen also were alone a few days after, and
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eager to join their agreeable companions. It has been confessed already in these pages
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that of all the experiences of life in palaces, the morning hour is the
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least agreeable. There is an attentive lackey, yes, but even he is
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engaged in making sixteen beds return to their hiding places, and in making sixteen
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sofas appear in their places. There is no turbaned page with soft step to
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you a cup of coffee. There is no luxurious seat on an open veranda
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covered with honeysuckle and comochlet. There is close air without, and faintness,
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hunger, and general misery within till one can touch his mother earth, as
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Antius did, and breathe his mother air. Then one returns to the palace
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after he has breakfast to find all changed. He is ready for empire,
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and another day of monarch life begins. As all of the four whose fortunes
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we follow had first entered Austin from the east in such guise of the misery
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of early morning, it followed that there was a surprise every minute now that
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they dashed eastward, caught sight of the river and through the prairies, with
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the sights of beauty which they had not guessed at when they came. Indeed,
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indeed each of the four was now in a mood than which earth has
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little more heaven like. And because they were happy already, they were all
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the more ready to enjoy May deck the world, and Arthur filled the throne.
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Hester almost sang these words as they retired slowly from the open door at
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the rear of the car, where they had been wondering at the beauty of
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the cross lights and the cloud shadows on the prairie. All was so marvelous
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the last day of May, said Hiram Brinkerhoff. But where is this line,
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miss Hester, which drops from you so often by night and morning?
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And is there more of the same poem? Or is it perhaps the beginning
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of an unpublished epic by Miss Sutfin and mister Haydock May decked the world and
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Arthur filled the throne. Well, there is more and more as good as
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that, if you will only search wise, mister Hiram, ask Effie there,
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and she will repeat to you the whole story of two happy lovers in
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a happy valley. Only, and she stopped, only said Effie bravely,
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that the true knight had to go away to attend to his distant duty,
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and the fair lady had to stay in the valley without him. And then
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more seriously she repeated, and I might ask, how more can mortals please
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the heavens than thankful to enjoy the earth. But through its mist, my
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soul, though faintly sees where thine sweeps on beyond this mountain, girth and
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awed and dazzled, bending, I confess life may have holier ends than happiness.
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You see, she added, after a moment, this lady was a
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princess. She had always lived in palaces, and she had all was done
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as she chose, and had had her own way till Arthur came. And
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then she had to do as he chose, and let him have his own
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way, even when that way took him outside the mountain valley and far very
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far from her. All the same, said Fred, who would not come
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down from the extreme good cheer of his mood. All the same, no
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one tells me who this Arthur was. Was he in the wholesale drug business,
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traveling on account of Mandrake, Bromide and Company? And was this palace
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in which the princess lived a palace on wheels? And did he have to
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return to Caaradoc that the firm might be able to answer his orders for the
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fall trade? Or was he in the quack nostrum line I beg pardon in
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the panacea business, traveling for Rollin Crespigny and Company. And had he heard
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that another house was introducing a new nervine? He shall not be jeered at,
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said hester reproachfully, though he certainly was a traveling gentleman. She added,
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if there are any knights of this generation who have not read Bolwer's King
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Arthur, it is time they did. For rather staid, old fashioned poetry,
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A little machine built, but good in doctrine, and sometimes bubbling into
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the supreme article. It is very good traveling reading for four wandering lovers we
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will read it aloud between Saint Louis and New York, cried Hiram. And
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he took a telegraph blank from the ready rack, and to his correspondent at
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Saint Louis wrote, bring me Bolwer's King Arthur at evening train on second tell
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me, said he that King Arthur also shall not be enthroned in Golconda.
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It is all very fine, said Hester, as he can came back from
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forwarding his despatch at Hempstead. And I am sure I like to imagine that
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Effie's real name is Agel, and that mine is Elaine. But all the
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same, I do not believe that Elaine or Queen Guinevere herself ever had a
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horned frog? Had what a horned frog? Did you never see one?
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And she opened her handkerchief and gently stroked one of the weird little monsters,
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which, while the gentlemen were absent, she had bought of a boy at
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the car window. They both affected horror at sight of the little wretch.
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He is a hundred thousand million billion years old, cried Haydok. He was
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made before evolution began. The evening and the morning were the first day Ago
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was stroking him when Arthur bade her good bye in the happy valley, said
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Hiram. He carries you back behind all the babbles. Some merits he has
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which later times have lost, said Hester. For he needs no food and
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I believe no water. With temperance, he both eats and drinks, and
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gives the poor the whole. He is no more a frog than I am,
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cried Effie, with her naturalist skill. He is a lizard of the
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genus Phrynosoma, whatever that may mean. He is Phrynosoma orbiculaar, because if
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you please, his body is so orbicular, and dear old Phil will be
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glad to have him to catch flies in the greenhouse and to amuse the boys.
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They have all seen him in the iconographic cyclopedia. I am not sure,
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but he is cornuta and not orbiculare. Do you say he eats nothing?
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Oh, not for a week or two. If his keepers are on
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their last green backs as we are, he looks as if he had eaten
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nothing since this fair world first rounded to the view. You will never tell
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me that Texas is a new country again? Can anybody tell me? Said
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Effie. As the train moved away from the station and they began their northward
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way. Why Texas was left out to the very end of time, when
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such crags and deserts as those of Tommy's Rock in Roxbury and the marshes of
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Cambridgeport have been peopled. Why has this lovely Texas, with these enameled plains
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so far extending, been left desert and without any people but these anti creationals.
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Philip the second, my dear, said Hester, Fred has been coaching
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me. Pope Alexander the sixth, said Fred, Higram has been lecturing to
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me. Laziness and greed, said Brinkerhoff. There was never such a horrible
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illustration of bad government. Poor Lesalle, he continued, after he had discovered
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the course of the Mississippi, came out here with a colony, and here
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they killed him. He must have crossed our line. I fancy not so
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very far from where we are. That gave France a right here, if
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there were any right, and that made Spain afraid that France would come near
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her silver mines yonder, and so, as Hester says, Spain enacted that
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neither oil, olive, nor luscious grape, neither wheat nor maize, nor
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sugar nor cotton should grow on these thousands upon thousands of thousands of acres.
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Better they should lie waste forever than that the most Catholic king's people and the
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most Christian king's people should come too nearer together. What broke all that down?
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To answer in very short meter, Philip Nolan broke it down? So
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Judge Harford here says, I could make you stop two days longer. We
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would go over to Waco Yonder and find his grave and plant lilies upon it,
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and I might liberate my frog there. But there was not much more
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talk. A sharp thunder storm struck them as it grew dark, and there
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was little for it but to look at this fork of the flames of the
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lightning, and to wonder at that crash, till Aurelius changed the day palace
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into a night palace. And when they woke again, they were crossing the
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Red River, more than two hundred miles higher up than they had left it
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at Shreeveport. And how red it is almost Vermilion. And this country too,
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the garden of Texas, as they were assured, was laughing with beauty.
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And then not long after they bade Texas good bye, And now they
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were in the Indian territory, and all that day, stopping not once an
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hour, they were speeding north with this same eager flight through the rich green
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of the prairie, land of wealth which cannot be told, and for an
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hour at a time there would be no sign of man but the track of
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the railway. Oh dear, oh dear, sighed Effie. If my poor
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Chaise and Donovan's and Missus Murphy and the Holden boys were only here instead of
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starving in Lucas Street and in Oswego Street, instead of drinking in Sand's Court
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and dying of cholera infantum in Sweat Street. Do you know why they are
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not here and why they cannot be here? Do you know why Rothschild,
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with all his wealth cannot buy an acre of this land? This was Hiram's
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question. Cannot? I thought money could do everything it could at Fort Sill
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Yonder and Hester pointed over her shoulder westward. Cannot, said Fred Haydock,
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laughing. Unless Baron rothscha Child married a Cherokee lady, then he might buy
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till he were tired, or indeed have without buying, I believe. Then
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Hirem explained that the United States government had bound itself by treaty with the Cherokees
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and the Chickasaws, and the Choctaws, and the Creeks, and the Seminoles
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and the Muscogees, never to sell any of this land, as long as
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the winds should blow or the waters flow. He explained that all told,
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there were not a hundred thousand of these Indians, but that such as the
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force of treaties, these hundred thousand Indians, who are not hunters, generally
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speaking, but have settled down to farming, have a matchless territory, a
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third part of the size of France given to them, which is acre for
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acre, far more productive than France's. He explained that no one, not
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an Indian of another tribe might enter here, because the United States had made
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these treaties with these people. Will anyone explain to me, said Effie,
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in what this policy differs from that of Philip the second? But nobody explained
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all the same the train dashed on. There is something almost weird and uncanny
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in this sailing through oceans of green, only broken by pretty copses of wood,
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or gentle swells of land, without a fence, a house, a
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barn, a road beside that you travel on without cow or horse or sheep,
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only an unused fertile world waiting for men. But at every station house
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there would be one or two men waiting, and sometimes a passenger. They
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must have come from somewhere, and once there was a college after they came
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into the Cherokee country. But Hester confesses that in her journal it is not
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the political economy that is noted, nor the advance of the Cherokees in education,
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but that good supper at Muskogee. On and on conundrums as it grew
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dark in the evening, an effort to talk with the reticent half breed lady
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who came into the car on her way northward, where she had a daughter
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at school in Ohio. And then all the light melts away. Though we
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are in June, and as they begin to be drowsy, even the substantial
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fabric of the palace melts away. The sofas are gone, the people are
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gone, and six and seven have been made up by the faithful Aurelius.
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And the tired travelers turn in asleep and unconscious. They passed through Kansas,
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where in old times their own brothers had fought and conquered. They wake to
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another climate and another vegetation. They are in the South. No longer they
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are in a desert. No longer. They are forging on and on down
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the valleys that lead to the Missouri, with here a town and there a
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town, and all the first scars of man's conflict with nature. What seems
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strangest of all in such a journey is the setting back of the orchards and
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farmlands, some three weeks between your night and your morning, when you pass
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in a day a beautiful desert like the Indian territory, so as to leave,
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as these people had done, the gardens of northern Texas on Tuesday morning,
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to come into those of central Missouri on Wednesday morning, with no fine
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gradation by the way, but by one sudden leap. It is all the
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more strange. They had a Sunday school picnic, tumbled in on the train
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somewhere a strawberry party or some such entertainment. And when at Jefferson Hiram rushed
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out to forage, he was led away by the throng, for he acted
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on Jacob Abbot's direction to rollow for traveling go where the rest go. But
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as he soon found that if he went to hear the Reverend Abner Goosh make
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a few remarks to the children he should not rejoin his own party. He
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was seen by them rushing wildly back to the station house, only in time
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to seize from a licensed dealer a loaf of bread, to wave it in
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the air over the head of a deacon, so as to attract the licensed
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dealer's attention, and to deposit, as probable pay two nicholls on the counter.
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Even with these abridgments of the process of bargaining, Hiram returned to the
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golconda only as she began to move. It was, he said, as
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Miles Standish took the corn and left in its place a leather jerkin, though
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he saw no salvages. So this large loaf was to be their lunch,
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for they had voted not to dine till they came to Saint Louis. Then
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was it that the innate hospitality appeared of those who live in palaces. The
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Russian gentleman from Alaska, who had come in in the night, offered caviare.
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The Mexican gentleman, who had been a fellow passenger all the way from
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Austin, offered chocolate. The half breed lady offered butter, which was of
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all the sweeter taste because it was Cherokee butter from a Cherokee cow knives,
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forks, spoons, vodka if they would have it, Nay, probably saki
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from Japan. So our friends made a merry picnic from a table served by
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half the world. Do you remember in the evenings at home a Presbyterian offered
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her smelling bottle, and a Quaker ran for the doctor? Do I remember
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it? It comes down like a forgotten prophecy of the kingdom coming. But
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I can see now the broad brimmed man in the picture the only time I
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think I that I ever saw a Quaker run, always excepting O but Macy
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when we played football in college. And now they were by the southern side
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of the Missouri. The great rampage was not over on which they had all
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four floated two months before. Since we met, I have been reading Lessalle's
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account of this very muddy river PECCATINOI they called it, which meant muddy men
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change, but rivers do not. But think I suppose he was half a
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year coming here from Canada. And when shall we cross the Niagara before we
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wake on Thursday morning, that is flying indeed, and at Saint Louis,
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the faithful and hospitable Jabez Cottenham appeared with the needed King Arthur. Surely they
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would stop for a few days. No, not they They were homeward bound,
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and they could only stop for the sun, which was their dinner,
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and then on again in the Golconda. For the good fortune of this particular
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visit had ordered her back to New York again. So they crossed as day
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paled the wonderful bridge. But of Illinois they can tell little, for they
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slept as they swept through Illinois, said Hiram. Means men, the natives
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here would not acknowledge that there were any others. And when they breakfast in
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that weird many landish breakfast room at Chicago, he told. Where that word
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Chicago appears first in literature, It was at a great council which Tonty held
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in sixteen fifty nine, when chiefs from Chicago were made to give in their
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fealty to le Grand Monarch Louis the fourteenth. Does some Chicago, king of
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corn and Corners think of that some day? As he walks through the battle
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gallery of Republican Versailles on and on forever on. We oil the wheels,
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we feed the men and women, we water the engine, and that is
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all. And we rush through Michigan for another day. See Kwaiis Peninsula,
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Amoynam Kirkumspica. This is the droll motto of the state dro but very true
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names, all mixed together from all the eras of history. Niles, Kalamazoo,
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Homer, Jackson, Ann Arbor, Ipsilante and Detroit. A well read
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man, he profound in the philosophy of history. Who will weave together in
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the damask web of a day's story, the threads which are spun out by
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the associations of those names. And at Detroit, such a sunset and such
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a supper. It is your last of Western profusion. Hester and Effie Hiram
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and Fred Night drops a curtain over Canada. But still we rush on.
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Yes, we do not even wake to see Niagara in the morning. We
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do not really wake till we breakfast at Rochester. And all that day,
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as our little party were whirled on in their palace over that New York Central
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Road which mister Howells has made classical for lovers and for travelers, they had
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to wonder at the agriculture of the North, as if they had come from
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another world. Two cows only together, or at most ten or twelve,
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How lonely they must be, and how small these fields, how narrow all
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these measures to people who had forgotten fences, and felt as if all men
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owned if they would take it all the world. And if they felt this
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in New York, how much more when they came to the gardens farms,
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no longer of their dear Massachuse. But how delicious home was. How they
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rushed from window to window to see a mountain or cascade. How they sympathized
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with the little boy from Illinois when he called his mother to show to her
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the marvel which he saw for the first time, a Yankee stone wall.
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On and on nights settled on them at Palmer. Still it was on and
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on, and when at last they swept into the sight of Charles River by
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the arsenal in Watertown, as it lay there, beautiful under the moon so
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nearly full, the tenor a saluto of the party sang the last song of
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the Palace journey. At Springfield, they had lost most of their companions.
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With eager good byes and promises of mutual visits at Wooster, that nice Australian
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lady with her five boys, who had come through from San Francisco by palace,
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left them that she might go on to Hellax by the route which leaves
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Boston out in the cold. So was it that our friends were all alone
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between Wooster and Boston. For the Golconda did not regularly belong on that line,
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nor do I know how it came there. As they swept by the
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arsenal at Watertown, and the moon shone brightly on the river, high room
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broke out as of old on the Juniata into singing. I sang in the
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daylight, I sing in the dark. I sing by Charles River, I
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sang by San Mark. I sang in the mesquite, until the woods rang
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by the blue Juniata. I rode and I sang from the land of the
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olive, the orange and vine. The mesquite sent love to the cedar and
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pine, the land of the jasmine, the myrtle and rose. Has sent
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my true love to the land of the snows, the land of the sunset
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that's glowing Afar has sent my true love to the cold northern star. But
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at this moment, all romance ceased. A belated baggage agent came into the
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palace for orders baggage taken to any part of the city. What hotel,
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Sir, and the glamour of the Orange and Vine left them. And as
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they saw the gas lights of the Western Avenue and Beacon Street, they knew
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that the journey of the dear Golconda was ended. Dear dear Philip, And
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are the children all well well? And hardy? And you all well?
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We are all well. This is Hiram, I mean, this is mister
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Brinkerhoff, and this is mister Haydock. And Philip had kissed Hester supp and
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already the end end of G T. T Or The Wonderful Adventures of a
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Pullman by Edward Hale read by John Greenman