The weather was like October and for several days we walked about the streets without thinking of outside wraps. We went at once to the Capitol from whose beautiful terraces we could look across the city, back and upward along our trail, above the snows of Illinois soaring on and up into the far cañons of the San Juan Divide, retracing in memory the first half of our wedding journey with a sense of satisfaction, a joy which now took on double value by reason of its contrast to the marble terrace on which we stood. From the luxury of our city surroundings the flaming splendors of the Needle Range appeared almost mystical.
We ate our Christmas dinner in royal isolation, attended by negroes whose dusky countenances shone with holiday desire to make us happy. With no visitors and no duties we gave ourselves to the business of seeing the Capitol and enjoying the gorgeous sunlight. Zulime, who looked at everything in the spirit of a youthful tourist, was enchanted and I played guide with such enthusiasm as a man of forty could bring to bear. It was a new and pleasant schooling for me, a time which I look back upon with wistful satisfaction, after more than twenty years.
Philadelphia, our next stop, had an especial significance to me (something quite apart from its historical significance). Outwardly professing a keen interest in the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other objects which enthralled my young wife, I was secretly planning to offer Lorimer of The Post, the serial rights of my novel The Eagle's Heart, and I had an engagement to talk with Edward Bok about a novelette.
Bok, a friend of several years' standing, received us most cordially, and Mrs. Bok, who came in next day to meet us, not only instantly and heartily approved of my wife, but quite openly said so, a fact which added another quality to the triumphal character of our progress. I was certain that all of my other Eastern friends would find her admirable.
We reached New York on New Year's Eve, and the streets were roaring with the customary riot of youth, but in our rooms at the Westminster we were as remote from the tumult as if we had been at the bottom of a Colorado mine. We would have heard nothing of the horns and hootings of the throngs had not Zulime expressed a wish to go forth and mix with them. With a feeling of disgust of the hoodlums who filled Broadway, I took her as far north as Forty-second Street, but she soon tired of the rude men and their senseless clamor, and gladly returned to our hotel willing to forget it all.
In my diary I find these words, "I am beginning the New Year with two thousand dollars in the bank, and a pending sale which will bring in as much more. I feel pretty confident of a living during the year 1900."
Evidently the disposal of my serial to Lorimer, the results of my deal with Brett, and the growing interest of other publishers in my work had engendered a confidence in the future which I had never before attained—and yet I must admit that most of my prosperity was expected rather than secured, a promise, rather than a fulfillment, and the fact that I permitted Zulime to settle upon a three-room suite in an obscure Hotel on Fifteenth Street, is proof of my secret doubts. Eighteen dollars per week seemed a good deal of money to pay for an apartment.
As I think back to this transaction I am bitten by a kind of remorseful shame. It was such a shabby little lodging for my artist bride, and yet, at the moment, it seemed all that we could safely afford, and she cheerfully made the best of it. Never by word or sign did she hint that its tiny hall and its dingy and unfashionable furnishings were unworthy of us both, on the contrary she went ahead with shining face.
One extravagance I did commit, one that I linger upon with satisfaction—I forced her to choose a handsome coat instead of a plain one. It was a long graceful garment of a rich brown color, an "Individual model" the saleslady called it. It was very becoming to my wife—at any rate I found it so—but the price was sixty-five dollars—"marked down from eighty-five" the saleslady said. Neither of us had ever worn a coat costing more than twenty-five dollars and to pay almost three times as much even for a beautiful "creation" like this was out of the question—and my considerate young wife decided against it with a sigh.
I was in reckless mood. "We will take it," I said to the saleswoman.