early in september julia spoke in bradford and keighley, and on the following sunday she slipped away and went to haworth, not only to rest and read a number of letters forwarded by her solicitors, but to worship at the shrine of the bront?s.
she took a fly at the station in the valley, but halfway up the steep road which leads to the village she descended precipitately; the fly and the horse had executed a right angle. she walked the rest of the distance, the rough stones giving a foothold, and soon reached the long crooked street which begins with the black bull inn and finishes at the moor. short streets ending nowhere radiated from this central thoroughfare at irregular intervals. there was no business to speak of in haworth. the men worked in keighley or bradford, the young women in the worsted mills of the valley. julia, driving the day before, had watched the long procession of girls, shawls pinned about their heads, file out of the factories, and, two by two, cross the valley either to the road that led up to haworth, or to another village higher above the moor. it was the proud boast of haworth that every inhabitant had a bank book, and julia felt it would be a relief to visit one village where there was no poverty. it looked trim and prosperous, picturesque though it was, and such men and women as were to be seen had none of that pinched hopeless look which had put fire into so many of her speeches.
after she had duly admired branwell bront?’s chair, which the landlady of the inn assumed she had come to see, and had made it understood that she really intended to stay overnight, she was shown to a large room upstairs, overlooking the churchyard. the inn, in fact, formed one of its walls, and there were flat stones directly beneath her window. it was a gloomy crowded churchyard, with toppling box-tombs and heavy dusty trees, its farther boundary the low stone parsonage that had sheltered the bront?s. they, too, could read the inscriptions on the stones from their windows. small wonder they died of consumption.
from the street came the sound of children’s voices and wooden clogs. her room, with its old four-post bed, was almost sumptuous. julia would have liked to stay a month. but time pressed. she established herself comfortably and slit the large envelope containing her letters.
at sight of one she sat upright and changed color, but put it aside to read last.
the first she opened was from the duke. he wrote tersely and to the point. this was his final warning. the next time she should receive his communication through his solicitors. another was from hadji sadr? containing much advice and some approval. her mother, to whom mrs. winstone had sent numerous printed accounts of her “performances,” wrote as briefly as the duke and even more to the point. julia was a public woman and a disgrace to her blood. (it would never have occurred to mrs. edis to add that she was a disgrace to her sex.) the request for fanny had some time since been curtly refused.
then she looked at the envelope of tay’s letter, and finally opened it. to her surprise it was dated may second. it began characteristically.
“do i remember you? gee! well! rather, oh, princess of the eyes and hair. things have happened since last we met, not forgetting april sixteenth of the current year, but i can see you as plainly as i saw the chimney fall on my bed on the date just mentioned. yes, i’ve grown some, and you may imagine me, at the present moment, if you please, dressed in khaki and top-boots, with a beard of three weeks’ growth (i’m as smooth as a play-actor generally) and almost as much dirt; for water, like everything else in this now historic town, is mighty scarce. at the present moment i am stifling in the linen closet, that being the only room in my wrecked home without a window; if i lit a candle where it could be seen i’d be liable to a bullet in my devoted head, such being the stern ardors of those new to authority. i’ve not had a minute to answer your letter in the daytime. what between standing in the bread-line for hours on end (often with a chinaman in front and a nigger behind) that my poor old parents may not starve—every servant deserted on the 16th—and cooking two meals a day in the street (lucky i’ve always been a good camper), and hustling round oakland the rest of the time, trying to patch up the house of tay, besides inditing many pages of foolscap to assure the eastern and central american firms we do business with that we are still at the same old stand (so they won’t sell us out to somebody else),—well, my golden princess of the tower, you can figure out that i’m pretty busy.
“i wish you could have seen the old town, for there’ll never be a new one like it, conglomeration of weird and separate eras as it was; but on the whole i’d rather you saw it now. it makes the roman forum look like thirty cents. imagine miles of broken walls, columns, and arches, of all shades of red and brown and smoky gray, yawning cellars full of twisted débris, one heap of ruins with a dome like an immense bird-cage, still supporting something they called a statue, but never much to look at until its present chance to appear suspended in air. if it wasn’t the wreck of my town, i’d have some artistic spasms, but as it is, i’m only thinking out ways and means to get rid of these artistic ruins as quickly as possible.
“it’s rather fine, do you know, the enthusiasm of these homeless, meatless, pretty-well-cleaned-out inhabitants, for the great new city that is to be. we all feel like pioneers—and look like them!—but with this difference: we know that we are in at the making of a great new city, and the old boys never knew what was coming to them, or how soon they’d move on. here we stick, and sixty earthquakes couldn’t shake us off, or take the courage out of us. it is almost worth while.
“and, oh, lord, how we do love one another. (or did.) no ‘society.’ all socialists (accidental and temporary but real). it’s a good object-lesson of what the world would be if there was no money in it. but alas! over in oakland—where there is a little business doing—the phrase ‘earthquake love’ is now heard, and carries its own subtle meaning. i don’t fancy the original man in us has altered much. he just got a jolt out of the saddle, but the saddle is still there and so is the man.
“it seemed odd to get your letter, fairly reeking with the old world, in the midst of all this chaos, and for at least half an hour i was transported, hypnotized. you’re some writer, dear lady, and in those all too brief paragraphs i saw considerably more of england than i have recalled during the past ten years—to say nothing of what you call the east. what an experience of life you have had, you dainty princess that should be kept in a glass case. but thank god you’ve shut him up. by jove, i believe if this hadn’t happened i’d have taken the first train east (our east), and the first boat over to renew my former distinguished offer. i’ve never been hit so hard, and i’ve known some corking girls, too. i don’t say i haven’t been hit, but not all the way through; at all events you have the honor of having received my one proposal. perhaps i’ve worked too hard to think seriously of getting married, and i’ve gone little into society—sometimes one party a winter. yes, i was well on the road to making my everlasting pile when the old city went to pot, but this fire (the earthquake wouldn’t have stopped business twenty-four hours, bad as it was) has set us all back ten years. but i’ll get there all the same, and i rather like the prospect of the fight.
“so! you’re in sympathy with the suffragettes? i can’t see you in any such r?le, and hope you’ll have a new fad by the time you get this—heaven knows when that will be, for our post-office is stuck in the mud, and those across the bay are so congested with mail that it will take another earthquake to turn them inside out. i got your letter by a miracle.
“to go back to your suffragettes, i haven’t heard a word about them since april 16th; or any other outside news, for the matter of that. the newspapers set up at once in oakland, but nobody is interested in any news outside of this afflicted district, and the newspapers don’t print any. all europe might be at war and we wouldn’t be any the wiser. nor would we care a five-cent piece if we were.
“but i hope they’ve been suppressed, and that when i get over—as i will the moment i dare leave—they will be as dead as william jennings bryan. at all events i hope you will be well out of it. i don’t like the idea one little bit. why don’t you come here? to a traveller like you that would be but a nice little jaunt. the railroads are going to advertise our poor old city as the greatest ruin in the world, and we hope the tourist will swallow the bait and drop a few thousands in our lonesome pockets. this house will be patched up as soon as the great american working-man can be induced to work, but at present he is camping on the hills and eating out of the hand of the government. until that paternal hand is withdrawn not a stroke will he do. but we could put you up somehow, and maybe you’d enjoy it.
“poor cherry lost her house on nob hill, and all that was in it—except her jewels. she put those in a pillow-case and hiked for the presidio—her machines were commandeered at once to carry hospital patients to safety, to say nothing of dynamite. now, she’s camping with us and does the house work, and pares potatoes, while i fry them—on a stove we’ve rigged up just off the sidewalk, and surrounded with inside window-blinds. she’s game, like all the women, doesn’t kick about anything, and only screams when we have one of our numerous little imitations of the grand shake. emily, luckily for her, had married and gone to new york to live, but her personal income will be nil for some time to come. her name is morison, if you ever happen to run across her.
“well, dear little princess, my candle is guttering, and i can’t buy another to-night. no stores in s. f., and it’s a toss-up if i remember to get another to-morrow in oakland. the moment two men are gathered together—well, you have imagination—we talked nothing but earthquake and fire for a week after april 16th, and now we talk nothing but insurance. what’s more, i’ve had architects at work for the last three weeks drawing plans for our new business house, and when i can induce the great american working-man to clean out the débris, i’ll get to work and do something besides talk. but what a letter from a pioneer and busted capitalist! yes, please write to me and tell me the story of your life—perhaps i should explain that that is slang. but you couldn’t write enough to satisfy me, and the minute i’m free (as free as an american man ever is) i’ll make tracks for little old london—unless you come here. why not? do. you shall have your daily tub if i have to haul water from the bay. and i can cook. if i’ve got any imagination, you’ve a lien on it all right. perhaps you think this is what you call chaff. just you wait. i’m not what you call reckless, either, but—oh, hang it! i’m in no position to write a love letter.
“yes, i’m twenty-six, but i can tell you there are times i feel forty. i’ve worked like a dog these last five years, and not only at business. we—a few of us have been trying to clean up the politics of this abandoned town. well, it’s all to do.
“really, no more; i’m writing in the dark.
“but always your devoted
“daniel tay.”
