A Daughter of the Middle Border Part 13

That I was aware in some degree of the idyllic, evanescent charm of those days is made certain in a note which I find in my diary, the record of a walk in the woods with Zulime. Her delight in the tender loveliness of leaf and vine, in the dapple of sunlight on the path, I fully shared. Another page tells of a horseback excursion which we made across the river. She rode well, very well, indeed, and her elation, her joy in the motion of the horse, as well as her keen delight in the landscape, added to my own pleasure. We stayed to supper at the Heckmans' that night, and walked back to the camp at nine, loitering through the most magical light of the Harvest Moon.

As she manifested a delightful interest in what I was writing, I fell into the habit of reading to her some pages out of my new ma.n.u.script, in order that I might have the value of her comment on it. Of course I expected comment to be favorable, and it was. That this was an unfair advantage to take of a nice girl, I was aware, even then, but as she seemed willing to listen I was in a mood to be encouraged by her smiles and her words of praise.

My growing confidence led to an enlargement of my plans concerning the homestead. "You are right," I wrote to my mother. "A new daughter will make other improvements in the house absolutely necessary. Not merely a new dining-room, but an extra story must be added to the wing--" And in the glow of this design I reluctantly cut short my visit and returned to West Salem, to apprise the carpenters of the radical changes in my design.

Jestingly, and more by way of reconciling my mother to the renewed noise and confusion of the building, I described the walks and rides I had taken with Zulime, warning her at the same time not to enlarge upon these facts. "Miss Taft's interest may be only friendliness," I added.

My words had precisely an opposite effect: thereafter she spoke of my hopes as if they were certainties, and insisted on knowing all about "Zuleema," as she persisted in calling Miss Taft.

"Now, Mother," I again protested, "you must not talk that way to _any_ of your callers, for if you do you'll get me into a most embarra.s.sing situation. You'll make it very hard for me to explain in case of failure."

"You mustn't fail," she responded wistfully. "I can't afford to wait much longer."

It was incredible to her that any sane girl would reject such an alliance, but I was very far from her proud confidence.

In this doubt of success, I was entirely honest. I had never presumed on any manly charm, I made no claim to beauty--on the contrary, I had always been keenly aware of my rude frame and clumsy hands. I realized also my lack of nice courtesy and genial humor. Power I had (and relied upon), but of the lover's grace--nothing. That I was a bear was quite as evident to me as to my friends. "If I win this girl it must be on some other score than that of beauty," I admitted.

In the midst of the bustle and cheer of this week another swift and sinister cloud descended upon me. One evening, as mother and I were sitting together, she fell into a terrifying death-like trance from which I could not rouse her, a condition which alarmed me so deeply that I telegraphed to my father in Dakota and to my brother in Chicago, telling them to come at once. It seemed to me that the final moment of our parting was at hand.

All through that night, one of the longest I had ever known (a time of agony and remorse as well as of fear), I blamed myself for bringing on the wild disorder of the building. "If I had not gone away, if I had not enlarged my plan, the house would now be in order," was the thought which tortured me.

The sufferer's speech had failed, and her pitiful attempts to make her wishes known wrung my heart with helpless pity. Her eyes, wide, dark and beautiful, pleaded with me for help, and yet I could only kneel by her side and press her hand and repeat the doctor's words of comfort. "It will pa.s.s away, mother, just as your other attacks have done. I am sure of it. Don't try to talk. Don't worry."

As the night deepened, dark and sultry, distant flashes of silent lightning added to the lurid character of my midnight vigil. It seemed that all my plans and all my hopes had gone awry. Helpless, longing for light, I wore out the lagging hours beside my mother's bed, with very little change in her condition to relieve the strain of my anxiety.

"Will she ever speak again? Have I heard her voice for the last time?"

These questions came again and again to my mind.

Dawn crept into the room at last, and Franklin came on the early train.

With his coming, mother regained some part of her lost courage. She grew rapidly stronger before night came again, and was able to falter a few words in greeting and to ask for father.

During the following day she steadily improved, and in the afternoon was able to sit up in her bed. One of the first of her interests was a desire to show my brother a new bonnet which I had recently purchased for her in the city, and at her request I put it into her hands.

Her love and grat.i.tude moved us both to tears. Her action had the intolerable pathos of a child's weakness united with a kind of delirium.

To watch her feeble hands exhibiting a head-dress which I feared she would never again wear--displaying it with a pitiful smile of pride and joy--was almost more than I could bear. Her face shone with happiness as she strove to tell my brother of the building I was doing to make her more comfortable. "Zuleema is coming," she said. "My new daughter--is coming."

When Franklin and I were alone for a moment, I said: "She must not die.

_I won't let her die._ She must live a little longer to enjoy the new rooms I am building for her."

It would appear that the intensity of my desire, the power of my resolve to bring her back to life, strengthened her, wrought upon her with inexplicable magic, for by the time my father arrived she was able to speak and to sit once more in her wheeled chair. She even joked with me about "Zuleema."

"You'd better hurry," she said, and then the shadow came back upon me with bitter chill. How insecure her hold on life had become!

Haste on the building was now imperative--so much, at least, I could control. With one crew of carpenters, another of painters, and a third of tinners, all working at the same time, I rushed the construction forward. At times my action presented itself to me as a race against death, or at least with death's messenger. What I feared, most of all, was a sudden decline to helpless invalidism on my mother's part, a condition in which a trained nurse would be absolutely necessary. To get the rooms in order while yet our invalid was able to move about the house, was now my all-absorbing interest.

With no time to dream of love, with no thought of writing, I toiled like a slave, wet with perspiration, dusty and unkempt. With my s.h.i.+rt open at the throat and my sleeves rolled to the elbow, I pa.s.sed from one phase of the job to another, lending a hand here and a shoulder there.

In order that I might hasten the tearing down and clearing away, I plunged into the hardest and dirtiest tasks, but at night, after the men were gone, dark moods of deep depression came over me, moments in which the essential futility of my powers overwhelmed me with something like despair.

"What right have you to ask that bright and happy girl--any girl--to share the uncertainties, the parsimony, the ineludible struggle of your disappointing life?" I demanded of myself, and to this there was but one answer: "I have no right. I have only a need."

Nevertheless, I wrote her each day a short account of my doings, and her friendly replies were a source of encouragement, of comfort. She did not know (I was careful to conceal them) the torturing anxieties through which I was pa.s.sing, and her pages were, for the most part, a pleasant reflection of the uneventful, care-free routine of the camp. In spite of her caution she conveyed to me, beneath her elliptical phrases, the fact that she missed me and that my return would not be displeasing to her.

"When shall we see you?" she asked.

In one of her letters she mentioned--casually--that on Monday she was going to Chicago with her sister, but would return to the camp at the end of the week.

Something in this letter led me to a sudden change of plan. As mother was now quite comfortable again I said to her, "Zuleema has gone to Chicago to do some shopping. I think I'll run down and meet her and ask her to help me select the curtains and wall-paper for your new room.

What do you say to that?"

"Go along!" she said instantly, "but I expect you to bring her home with you."

"Oh, I can't do that," I protested. "I haven't any right to do that--yet!"

The mere idea of involving the girl in my household problem seemed exciting enough, and on my way down to the city I became a bit less confident. I decided to approach the matter of my shopping diplomatically. She might be alarmed at my precipitancy.

She was not alarmed--on the contrary her pleased surprise and her keen interest in my mother's new chamber gave me confidence. "I want you to help me buy the furnis.h.i.+ngs for the new rooms," I said almost at once.

"I shall be glad to help," she replied in the most natural way.

Evidently, _she_ saw nothing especially significant in my request, but to me it was a subtle stratagem. To have her take part in my bargain-hunting was almost as exciting as though we were furnis.h.i.+ng OUR home, but I dared not a.s.sume that she was thinking along these dangerous lines. That she was genuinely interested in my household problems was evident, but I was not justified in asking anything further. She was distinctly closer to me that day, more tenderly intimate than she had ever been before, and her womanly understanding of my task--the deep sympathy she expressed when I told her of my mother's recent illness--all combined to give me comfort--and hope!

A few days later we rode back to Eagle's Nest Camp together, and all through those three hours on the train a silent, subconscious, wordless adjustment went on between us. That she was secretly debating the question of accepting me was certain, and there was nothing in her manner to dishearten me; on the contrary, she seemed to enjoy playing round the perilous suggestion.

We dined at "the Castle" as usual, and late that night, as we walked slowly over to the camp through the odorous woods, hearing the whippoorwill's cry and the owlets hoot from their dark coverts, I was made aware that my day's work had drawn her closer into my life. I had made her aware of my need.

The day which followed our return to camp was my thirty-ninth birthday, and I celebrated it by taking a long walk and talk with her. She took some sewing with her, and as we rested under a great oak tree, we spoke of many intimate, personal things, always with the weight of our unsolved problem on our mind.

At last, in approaching my plea for help, I stated the worst of my case.

"I am poor and shall always remain poor," I said. "My talent is small and my work has only a very limited appeal. I see no great improvement in my fortunes. I have done an enormous amount of work this year (I've written three volumes), but all of them conjoined will not bring in as much cash as a good stone-mason can earn. But that isn't the worst of it! The hopeless part of it is--I _like_ my job. I wouldn't change to a more profitable one if I could. I have only one other way of earning money, and that is by physical labor. If the worst comes to the worst, I can farm or do carpenter work."

Her reply to all this was not entirely disheartening. "To make money is not the most important thing in the world," she said, and then told me of her own childhood in Illinois, of the rigid economies which had always been necessary in the Taft home. "My father's salary as a professor of geology was small, and with six people to feed and clothe, and four children to be educated, my poor little mother had a very busy and anxious time of it. I know by personal experience what it is to lack money for food and clothes. The length of my stay in Paris was dependent on rigid daily economy. I hadn't an extra franc to spare."

This confession of her own lifelong poverty should have turned me aside from my fell purpose, but it did not--it merely encouraged me to go on.

In place of saying, "My dear girl, as compensation for all those years of care and humiliating poverty you deserve a s.p.a.cious home, with servants and a carriage. Realizing that I can offer you only continued poverty and added anxiety, I here and now relinquish my design. I withdraw in favor of a better and richer man"--instead of uttering these n.o.ble words, what did I do? I did the exact opposite! I proceeded to press my selfish, remorseless, unwarranted demand!

It is customary for elderly men to refer either flippantly or with gentle humor to their days of courts.h.i.+p, forgetting (or ignoring) the tremulous eagerness, the grave questioning and the tender solemnity of purpose with which they weighed the joys and responsibilities of married life. It is easy to be cynical or evasive or unduly sentimental in writing of our youthful love affairs, when the frosts of sixty years have whitened our heads, after years of toil and care have dimmed our eyes and thinned our blood, but I shall permit neither of these unworthy moods to color my report of this day's emotion. I shall not deny the alternating moments of hope and doubt, of bitterness and content, which made that afternoon both sweet and sad.

The thing I was about to do was tragically destructive--I knew that. To put out a hand, to arrest this happy and tranquil girl, saying, "Come, be my wife. Come, suffer with me, starve with me," was a deed whose consequences scared me while they allured me. I felt the essential injustice of such a marriage, and I foresaw some of its accompanying perplexities, but I did not turn aside as I should have done. With no dependable source of income, with an invalid mother to care for, I asked this artist, so urban, so native to the studio, so closely knit to her joyous companions in the city, to go with me into exile, into a country town, to be the housekeeper of a commonplace cottage filled with aged people! "It is monstrous selfishness; it is wrong," I said, "but I want you."

My philosophy, even at that time, was essentially individualistic. I believed in the largest opportunity to every human soul. Equal rights _meant_ Equal rights in my creed. I had no intention of asking Zulime Taft to sink her individuality in mine. I wanted her to remain herself.

Marriage, as I contemplated it, was to be not a condition where the woman was a subordinate but an equal partner, and yet how unequal the sacrifice! "I ask you to join your future with mine. It's a frightful risk, but I am selfish enough to wish it."

Under no illusion about my own character, I admitted that there is no special charm in a just man. To have a sense of honor is fine, but to have a joyous and lovely disposition makes a man a great deal easier to live with. I was perfectly well aware that as a husband I would prove neither lovely nor joyous. My temper was not habitually cheerful. Like most writers, I was self-absorbed, filled with a sense of the importance of my literary designs. To be "just" was easy, but to be charming and considerate--these were the points on which I was sure to fail, and I knew it. Did that deter me? Not at all! Bitterly unwilling to surrender Zulime to the richer and kindlier man who was, undoubtedly, waiting at that moment to receive her and cherish her, I pleaded with her to share my poverty and my hope of future fame.

Shaken by my appeal, she asked for time in which to consider this problem. "I ought to talk with Lorado," she said.

The mere fact that she could not decide against me at the moment gave me confidence. "Very well," I said. "Mother wants me--I shall go home for a week. Let me know when I can come again. I hope it will not be more than a week."

In this arrangement we rested, and as we walked back to camp I cared nothing for the sly words or glances of our fellow artists. I believed I had won my case.

My mother's demand for my presence did not arise--I soon learned--from any return of her malady, but from a desire for news of my courts.h.i.+p.