The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort Dearborn

“I thought, Grandmother, maybe you’d let me open the ‘Barrack’ again. That would do for the boys, and there’s surely room enough in this great house for all the girls who’d care to stay.”

A shadow passed over the Sun Maid’s face, but it —passed. In a moment she looked up brightly and answered as, a few hours later, she was to be most thankful she had done:

“Very well. After the war was over and I closed it I felt as if I could never reopen the place. Though Gaspar and my boys never saw it, somehow it seemed always theirs. I suppose because it had been built for the benefit of those who had fought and suffered with them. Now I see that this was morbid; and I am glad I have never torn the building down, as I have sometimes thought I would. You may have it for your friends and should set about airing and preparing it at once. Also, if you are to give so many invitations, you would better start upon them.”

“Couldn’t I just put an advertisement in the papers? That’s so easy and short.”

“And – rude!”

“Rude?”

“Yes. There would be no compliment in a newspaper invitation. Would you fancy one for yourself?”

“No, indeed, I should not. That rule of yours, to ‘put yourself in his place,’ is a pretty good one, after all, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Now order the carriage and I’ll go with you on your rounds and make a list as we do so of how many will need to be provided for. We shall have a busy week before us.”

“But a happy one, Grandmother. Your face is shining already, even more than usual. I believe in your heart of hearts you love girls better than anything else in this world.”

“Maybe. Except – boys.”

“And flowers, and animals. How they will enjoy the conservatories! And it wouldn’t be wrong, would it, to have out the horses between times on Sunday and let these young things, who’d never had a chance, see how glorious a feeling it is to ride a fine horse? Just around the park, you know.”

“Which would be quite as far as most of them would care to ride, I fancy, for there are very few people who call their first experience on horseback a ‘glorious’ one.”

It was a busy week indeed, but a joyful one, full of anticipation concerning the coming festivities. Never had the Sun Maid appeared younger or gayer or entered more heartily into the preparations for entertainment. A dozen times, maybe, during those mornings of shopping and ordering and superintending, did she exclaim with fervor:

“Thank God for Gaspar’s money, that makes us able to give others pleasure!”

“Grandmother, even for a foreign nobleman you wouldn’t do half so much!”

“Foreign? No, indeed. To all their due; and to our own young Americans, these toilers who are the glory of our nation, let every deference be paid. Did you write about the orchestra? That was to play during Saturday’s supper?”

“Yes, indeed. I believe nothing is forgotten.”

To the guests, who came at the appointed time, it certainly did not seem so; and almost every one was there who had been asked.

“I did not believe that there could be found so many working girls in Chicago who are just sixteen,” cried the gay young hostess, standing upon the great stair and looking down across the wide parlor, crowded with bright, graceful figures.

“I did. My Chicago is a wonderful city, child. But I do not believe that in any other city in the world could be gathered another such assemblage. Typical American girls, every one. May God bless them! Their beauty, their bearing, even their attire, would compare most favorably with any company of young women who are far more richly dowered by dollars. And the boys; even with their greater shyness, how did they ever learn to be so courteous, so – ”

“Oh, my Sun Maid! Answer yourself, in your own words. ‘It’s in the air. It’s just – Chicago!’”

When the fun was at the highest, there came a belated guest who brought news that greatly disquieted the elder hostess, though none of the merrymakers about her seemed to think it a matter half as important as the next game on the list.

“A fire, broken out in the city? That is serious. The season is so dry and there are many buildings in Chicago that would burn like kindlings. However, let us hope it will soon be subdued; and there is somebody calling you, I think.”

Although anything which menaced the prosperity of the town she loved so well always disturbed the Sun Maid, she put this present matter from her almost as easily as she dismissed the youth who had brought the bad tidings. The housing and entertaining of Kitty’s guests was an engrossing affair; and all Sunday was occupied in these duties; but on Sunday night came a time of leisure.

It was then, while resting among her girls and discussing their early departure in the morning – which their lives of labor rendered necessary – that a second messenger arrived with a second message of disaster.

“There’s another fire downtown, and it’s burning like a whirlwind!”

“We have an excellent fire department,” answered the hostess, with confident pride.

“It can’t make much show against this blaze. I think those of us who can should get home at once.”

The Sun Maid’s heart sank. The coming event had cast its shadow upon her and, foreseeing evil, she replied instantly:

“Those who must go shall be conveyed at once; but I urge all who will to remain. Keith House is as safe as any place can be if this fire continues to spread. It is not probable, even at the best, that any of you will be wanted at your employers’ in the morning. The excitement will not be over, even if the conflagration is.”

The company divided. There were many who were anxious about home friends and hastened away in the vehicles so hastily summoned; but there were also many whose only home was a boarding-house and who were thankful for the shelter and hospitality offered. Among these last were some of the young men, and the Sun Maid summoned them to her own office and discussed with them some plans of usefulness to others.

“We shall none of us be able to sleep to-night. I have a feeling that we ought not. I wish, therefore, you would go out and engage all the teams you possibly can from this neighborhood; and go with them and their drivers to the threatened districts, as well as those already destroyed. Our great house and grounds are open to all. Bring any who wish, and assure them that they will be cared for.”

“But there may be thieves among them,” objected one lad, who had a keener judgment of what might occur.

“There is always evil amid the good; but not for that reason should any poor creature suffer. Remember I am able to help liberally in money, and never so thankful as now that this is so. Go and do your best.”

They scattered, proud to serve her, and thrilled with the excitement of that awful hour; but many were amazed to find that after a brief time she had followed them herself.

The younger Kitty pleaded, though vainly, to prevent her grandmother’s departure, for the Sun Maid answered firmly:

“You are to take my place as mistress here. I will have the old coachman drive me in the phaeton to the nearest point advisable. I must be on the spot, but I will not recklessly risk myself. Only, my dear, it is our city, Gaspar’s and mine; almost a personal belonging, since we two watched its growth from a tiny village to the great town it has become. Gaspar would be there with his aid and counsel. I must take his place.”

There were many who saw her, and will forever remember the noble woman, standing upright in the low vehicle at a point where two ways met; with the light of the burning city falling over her wonderful hair, that had long since turned snowy white, and bringing out the beauty of a face whose loveliness neither age nor sorrow could dim.

The sadness in her tender eyes deepened as she could see the cruel blaze sweeping on and on, wiping out home after home and hurling to destruction the mighty structures of which she had been so personally proud.

“Oh, I have loved it, I have loved it! Its very paving-stones have been dear to me, and it is as if all these fleeing, homeless ones were my own children. Well, it is – Chicago, – a city with a mission. It cannot die. Let the fire do its worst; not all shall perish. There are things which cannot burn. Again and again and again I have thanked God for the wealth he led my Gaspar, the penniless and homeless, to gain – for His own glory. Let the flames destroy unto the limit He has set. Out of their ruins shall rise another city, fairer and lovelier than this has been; richer because of this purification and far more tender in its broad welcome to humanity.”

Hour after hour she waited there, directing, comforting, assisting; giving shelter and sustenance, and, best of all, the influence of her high faith and indomitable courage. As it had done before, her clear sight gazed into the future and beheld the glory that should be; and, like every prophecy her tongue had ever uttered, this, spoken there in the very light of her desolation, as it were, has already been more than verified.

This all who knew the Beautiful City as it was and now know it as it is will cheerfully attest; and some there are among these who deem it their highest privilege to go sometimes to a stately mansion, set among old trees, where in a sunshiny chamber sits an old, old lady, who yet seems perennially young. Her noble head still keeps its heavy crown of silver, her eye is yet bright, her intellect keen, and her interest in her fellow-men but deepens with the years.

Very like her is the younger Kitty, who is never far away; who has grown to be a person of influence in all her city’s beneficence; and who believes that there was never another woman in all the world like her grandmother.

“Yes,” she assures you earnestly, “she is the Sun Maid indeed, – a fountain of delight to all who know her. She has still the heart of a child and a child’s perfect health. I confidently expect to see her round her century.”

notes

1

Pacific Ocean.