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.