The village was a mere cross-roads, a most unlikely place for a night’s stop, picturesque and Mexican, with low ’dobe houses, yellow and pink, the noise of a phonograph from each corner, and lighted doorways filled with slouching Mexicans and trig American doughboys from a nearby camp,—and everywhere else, Rembrantian gloom. At a new tin garage with the universal Henry’s name over the door we were relieved to learn we had done no damage. Most of the cars in town had, in fact, broken their exhaust pipes on loose stones, and ran chugging, as we had.
It is not usual for garage helpers to aid strange ladies in hunting a night’s lodging, but ours willingly let themselves be commandeered for the purpose, and the chase began. The town had a “hotel”;—which, in the South, may be a one-story café, or something less ambitious. This one, kept by a negro woman, was more than dubious looking, but when the proprietor said it was “full up,” our hearts sank. We wearily made the rounds of the village, guided by rumors of a vacant room here or there, only to find the houses, four-roomed cottages at best, filled with army wives. Our needs reduced us to Bolshevism. Passing an imposing white house, neat as wax, and two stories high, we sent our cicerone to demand for us lodging for the night. Had it been the official White House we should have done no less, and as the residence of the owner of the garage where our cripple was stored it gave us a claim on his hospitality no right-minded citizen could deny. Alas, we learned that Mr. V’s eleven hostages to fortune, rather than civic pride, accounted for the size of his house. The owner sent us a cordially regretful message that his bedrooms teemed with little V’s, but thought his brother’s daughter might take the strangers in, as her parents were away and their room vacant.
A little figure in a nightgown opened the door a crack when we knocked at their cottage.
“Who is it?” asked a Southern voice, timidly.
“Two ladies from Boston, who would like a room for the night.” We threw as much respectable matronliness as possible into our own voices. The magic word “Boston” reassured. Boston may be a dishonored prophet in Cambridge and Brookline, but to the South and West it remains autocrat of the breakfast table. I know our prospective hostess, from the respect and relief in her tones, visualized Louisa May Alcott and Julia Ward Howe waiting on her doorstep, and she hastened to throw open the door to what we saw was her bedroom, saying “Come in! You’re a long ways——”
Boston, your stay-at-homes never realize how distant, how remote and fabulous your rock-bound shores seem to the Other Half west of the Mississippi!
It was a German Lutheran household into which we stepped. Two little tow-headed boys were curled up asleep in their sister’s room, and we tip-toed past to the parents’ vacated bedroom, ours for the night, with its mottoes, its lithographed Christ on the wall, its stove and tightly shut windows. This German family had brought over old-world peasant habits, and curiously contrasted against its bareness, promiscuity and not over scrupulous cleanliness was the American daughter who needed but a little more polish to be ready for any rung in the social ladder. She was a real little lady, as hospitable as though we had been really invited.
Supperless, footsore and weary, we tumbled into the sheets vacated by the elder V’s that morning, too grateful for shelter and the softness of the feather bed to feel squeamish. We waked in the sunshine of next morning to smell coffee brewing on our bedroom stove, and hear cautious whispers of two sturdy little Deutschers tip-toeing back and forth through our room to the wash-shed beyond, stealing awed glances at the Boston ladies in their mother’s bed. In a stage whisper one called to his sister to learn where “the comb” was. She answered that Pa had taken it to San Anton’, but after some search found them “the brush” hidden near father’s notary stamp, on the bureau,—for the father was the local judge and a man much respected in the community.
When the little boys departed for school, she brought us coffee in the best china, apologizing for not offering us breakfast. She explained that she was to be married in three days, and was following her family to San Anton’ for the wedding. She showed us her ring, and her trousseau, all in pink, to her joy, and told us of her fiancé, who had been a second lieutenant in France. Though she seemed a child, she had refused to marry him when he left, because she believed haste at such times imprudent. And now she was all excitement over the great event, yet not too much to show a welcome as simple as it was beautiful to the midnight intruders from Boston.
As usual, our desire to pay for our lodging met a firm, almost shocked refusal. We only felt more nearly even when at El Paso we sent her something deliciously pink for her trousseau.