University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

“Come, gentlemen,” said the father, in a lively
way. “We are all campaigners. Sit down and
take a cup of tea with us. No ceremony. A
la guerre, comme à la guerre. I cannot give
you Sèvres porcelain. I am afraid even my
delf is a little cracked; but we 'll fancy it whole
and painted with roses. Now plenty of tea, Ellen
dear. Guests are too rare not to be welcomed
with our very best. Besides, I expect Brother
Sizzum, after his camp duties are over.”

It was inexpressibly dreary, this feeble conviviality.
In the old gentleman's heart it was
plain that disappointment and despondency were
the permanent tenants. His gayety seemed only
a mockery, — a vain essay to delude himself
into the thought that he could be happy even
for a moment. His voice, even while he jested,
was hollow and sorrowful. There was a trepidation
in his manner, half hope, half fear, as
if he dreaded that some one would presently
announce to him a desperate disaster, or fancied

that some sudden piece of good luck was about
to befall him, and he must be all attention lest
it pass to another. Nothing of the anxiety of
a guilty man about him, — of one who hears
pursuit in the hum of a cricket or the buzz of
a bee; only the uneasiness of one flying forever
from himself, and hoping that some chance
bliss will hold his flight and give him a moment's
forgetfulness.

We of course accepted the kindly invitation.
Civilization was the novelty to us. Tea with a
gentleman and lady was a privilege quite unheard
of. We should both have been ready to
devote ourselves to a woman far less charming
than our hostess. But here was a pair — the
beautiful daughter, the father astray — whom we
must know more of. I felt myself taking a very
tender interest in their welfare, revolving plans
in my mind to learn their history, and, if it might
be done, to persuade the father out of his delusion.

“Now, gentlemen,” said our friend, playing
his part with mild gracefulness, like an accomplished
host; “sit down on the blankets. I cannot
give you grand arm-chairs, as I might have
done once in Old England, and hope to do if you
ever come to see me at my house in Deseret.
But really we are forgetting something very important.
We have not been formally introduced.

Bless me! that will never do. Allow me gentlemen
to present myself, Mr. Hugh Clitheroe,
late of Clitheroe Hall, Clitheroe, Lancashire, —
a good old name, you see. And this is my daughter,
Miss Ellen Clitheroe. These gentlemen, my
dear, will take the liberty to present themselves
to you.”

“Mr. Richard Wade, late of California; Mr.
John Brent, a roving Yankee. Pray let me aid
you Miss Clitheroe.”

Brent took the teakettle from her hand, and
filled the teapot. This little domestic office
opened the way to other civil services.

It was like a masquerading scene. My handsome
friend and the elegant young lady bending
together over four cracked cups and as many
plates of coarse earthenware, spread upon a
shawl, on the dry grass. The circle of wagons,
the groups of Saints about their supper fires,
the cattle and the fort in the distance, made a
strangely unreal background to a woman whose
proper place, for open air, was in the ancient
avenue of some ancestral park, or standing on
the terrace to receive groups of brilliant ladies
coming up the lawn. But character is superior
to circumstance, and Miss Clitheroe's self-possession
controlled her scenery. Her place, wherever
it was, became her right place. The prairie,
and the wagons, and the rough accessories, gave
force to her refinement.

Mr. Clitheroe regarded the pair with a dreamy
pleasure.

“Quite patriarchal, is it not?” said he to me.
“I could fancy myself Laban, and my daughter
Rachel. There is a trace of the Oriental in her
looks. We only need camels, and this would be
a scene worthy of the times of the Eastern patriarchs
and the plains of the old Holy Land. We
of the Latter Day Church think much of such
associations; more I suppose than you world's
people.”

And here the old gentleman looked at me
uneasily, as if he dreaded lest I should fling
in a word to disturb his illusion, or perhaps ridicule
his faith.

“I have often been reminded here of the landscape
of Palestine,” said I, “and those bare regions
of the Orient. Your friends in Utah, too,
refresh the association by their choice of Biblical
names.”

“Yes; we love to recall those early days when
Jehovah was near to his people, a chosen people,
who suffered for faith's sake, as we have
done. In fact, our new faith and new revelation
are only revivals and continuations of the old.
Our founder and our prophets give us the doctrines
of the earliest Church, with a larger light
and a surer confidence.”

He said this with the manner of one who is

repeating for the thousandth time a lesson, a
formula which he must keep constantly before
him, or its effect will be gone. In fact, his
resolute assertion of his creed showed the weak
belief. As he paused, he looked at me again,
hoping, as I thought, that I would dispute or
differ, and so he might talk against contradiction,
a far less subtle enemy than doubt. As I
did not immediately take up the discussion, he
passed lightly, and with the air of one whose
mind does not love to be consecutive, to another
subject.

“Hunters, are you not?” said he, turning to
Brent. “I am astonished that more of you
American gentlemen do not profit by this great
buffalo-preserve and deer-park. We send you
a good shot occasionally from England.”

“Yes,” said my friend. “I had a capital shot,
and capital fellow too for comrade, this summer,
in the mountains. A countryman of yours, Sir
Biron Biddulph. He was wretchedly out of
sorts, poor fellow, when we started. Fresh air
and bold life quite set him up. A month's
galloping with the buffalo, and a fortnight over
the cliffs, after the big-horn, would `put a soul
under the ribs of death.' Biddulph left me to go
home, a new man. I find that he has stayed in
Utah, for more hunting, I suppose.”

Brent was kneeling at Miss Clitheroe's feet,

holding a cup for her to fill. He turned toward
her father as he spoke. At the name of Biddulph,
I saw that her red lips' promise of possible
blushes was no false one.

“Ah!” thought I; “here, perhaps, is the romance
of the Baronet's history. No wonder he
found England too narrow for him, if this noble
woman would not smile! Perhaps he has stopped
in Utah to renew his suit, or volunteer his services.
A strange drama! with new elements of
interest coming in.”

I could not refrain from studying Miss Clitheroe
with some curiosity as I thought thus.

She perceived my inquisitive look. She made
some excuse, and stepped into the wagon.

“Biddulph!” said the father. “Ellen dear,
Mr. Brent knows our old neighbor, Biron Biddulph.
O, she has disappeared, `on hospitable
thoughts intent.' I shall be delighted to meet
an old friend in Deseret. We knew him intimately
at home in better days, — no! in those
days I blindly deemed better, before I was illumined
with the glories of the new faith, and saw
the New Jerusalem with eyes of hope.”

Miss Clitheroe rejoined us. She had been absent
only a moment, but, as I could see, long
enough for tears, and the repression of tears. I
should have pitied her more; but she seemed, in
her stout-hearted womanhood, above pity, asking

no more than the sympathy the brave have always
ready for the sorrowful brave.

Evidently to change the subject, she engaged
Brent again in his tea-table offices. I looked at
that passionate fellow with some anxiety. He
was putting a large share of earnestness in his
manner of holding cups and distributing hardtack.
Why so much fervor and devotion, my
friend? Seems to me I have seen cavaliers before,
aiding beauties with like ardor, on the carpet,
in the parlor, over the Sèvres and the silver-And
when I saw it, I thought, “O cavalier! O
beauty! beware, or do not beware, just as you
deem best, but know that there is peril! For
love can improvise out of the steam of a teapot
a romance as big and sudden and irrepressible as
the Afreet that swelled from the casket by the
sea-shore in the Arabian story.

We sat down upon the grass for our picnic.
I should not invite the late Mr. Watteau, or even
the extant Mr. Diaz, to paint us. The late Mr.
Watteau's heroes and heroines were silk and
satin Arcadians; they had valets de chambre
and filles de chambre, and therefore could be
not fully heroes and heroines, if proverbs be
true. The present Mr. Diaz, too, charming and
pretty as he is, has his place near parterres and
terraces, within the reach of rake and broom.
Mr. Horace Vernet is equally inadmissible, since

that martial personage does not comprehend a
desert, except with a foreground of blood, smoke,
baggy red pantaloons, and mon General on a
white horse giving the Legion of Honor to mon
enfant on his last legs. But I must wait for
some artist with the gayety of Mr. Watteau, the
refinement of Mr. Diaz, and the soldierly force
of Mr. Vernet, who can perceive the poetry of
American caravan-life, and can get the heroine
of our picnic at Fort Bridger to give him a sitting.
Art is unwise not to perceive the materials
it neglects in such scenes.

Mr. Clitheroe grew more and more genial as
we became better acquainted. He praised the
sunshine and the climate. England had nothing
like it, so our host asserted. The atmosphere of
England crushed the body, as its moral atmosphere
repressed perfect freedom of thought and
action.

“Yes, gentlemen,” said he, “I have escaped
at last into the region I have longed for. I mean
to renew my youth in the Promised Land, — to
have my life over again, with a store of the wisdom
of age.”

Then he talked pleasantly of the incidents of
his journey, — an impressible being, taking easily
the color of the moment, like a child. He liked
travel, he said; it was dramatic action and scene-shifting,
without the tragedy or the over-absorbing

interest of dramatic plot. He liked to have
facts come to him without being laboriously
sought for, as they do in travel. The eye, without
trouble, took in whatever appeared, and at
the end of the day a traveller found himself
expanded and educated without knowing it.
There was a fine luxury in this, for a mature
man to learn again, just as a child does, and
find his lessons play. He liked this novel, adventurous
life.

“Think of it, sir,” he said, “I have seen real
Indians, splendid fellows, all in their war-paint;
just such as I used to read of with delight in
your Mr. Fenimore's tales. And these prairies
too, — I seem to have visited them already
in the works of your charming Mr. Irving, — a
very pleasant author, very pleasant indeed, and
quite reminding me of our best essayists; though
he has an American savor too. Mr. Irving, I
think, did not come out so far as this. This
region has never been described by any one
with a poetic eye. My brethren in the Church
of the Latter Day have their duties of stern
apostleship; they cannot turn aside to the right
hand nor to the left. But when the Saints are
gathered in, they will begin to see the artistic
features of their land. Those Wind River Mountains
— fine name, by the way — that I saw from
the South Pass, — they seem to me quite an

ideal Sierra. Their blue edges and gleaming
snow-peaks were great society for us as we
came by. We are very fond of scenery, sir, my
daughter and I, and this breadth of effect is very
impressive after England. England, you know,
sir, is tame, — a snug little place, but quite a
prison for people of scope. Lancashire, my old
home, is very pretty, but not grand; quite the
contrary. I have grown really quite tired of
green grass, and well-kept lawns, and the shaved,
beardless, effeminate look of my native country.
This rough nature is masculine. It reminds
me of the youth of the world. I like to be in
the presence of strong forces. I am not afraid
of the Orson feeling. Besides, in Lancashire,
particularly, we never see the sun; we see
smoke; we breathe smoke; smoke spoils the fragrance
and darkens the hue of all our life. I
hate chimneys, sir; I have seen great fortunes
go up them. I might perhaps tell you something
of my own experience in looking up a
certain tall chimney not a hundred miles from
Clitheroe, and seeing ancestral acres fly up it,
and ancestral pictures and a splendid old mansion
all going off in smoke. But you are a
stranger, and do not care about hearing my old
gossip. Besides, what is the loss of houses and
lands, if one finds the pearl of great price,
and wins the prophet's crown and the saint's
throne?”

And here the gray-haired, pale, dreamy old
gentleman paused, and a half-quenched fire glimmered
in his eye. His childish, fanatical ambition
stirred him, and he smiled with a look
of triumph.

I was silent in speechless pity.

His daughter turned, and smiled with almost
tearful tenderness upon her father.

“I have not heard you so animated for a long
time, dear father,” she said. “Mr. Wade seems
quite to inspire you.”

“Yes, my dear, he has been talking on many
very interesting topics.”

I had really done nothing except to bow, and
utter those civil monosyllables which are the
“Hear! hear!” of conversation.

If I had been silent, Brent had not. While
the garrulous old gentleman was prattling on at
full speed, I had heard all the time my friend's
low, melodious voice, as he talked to the lady.
He was a trained artist in the fine art of sympathy.
His own early sorrows had made him
infinitely tender with all that suffer. To their
hearts he came as one that had a right to enter,
as one that knew their malady, and was commanded
to lay a gentle touch of soothing there.
It is a great power to have known the worst
and bitterest that can befall the human life, and
yet not be hardened. No sufferer can resist

the fine magnetism of a wise and unintrusive pity.
It is as mild and healing as music by night
to fevered sleeplessness.

The lady's protective armor of sternness was
presently thrown aside. She perceived that she
need not wear it against a man who was brother
to every desolate soul, — sisterly indeed, so delicate
was his comprehension of the wants of a
woman's nature. In fact, both father and daughter,
as soon as they discovered that we were
ready to be their friends, met us frankly. It was
easy to see, poor souls! that it was long since
they had found any one fit company for them,
any one whose presence could excite the care-beguiling
exhilaration of worthy society. They
savored the aroma of good-breeding with appetite.