A Daughter of the Middle Border Part 24

Even here, I did not neglect my task. Wallace Heckman gave me a desk in the attic and there each morning I hammered away, eager to get my material "roughed out" while it was hot in my memory. I often wrote four thousand words between breakfast and luncheon. One story took shape as a brief prose epic of the Sioux, a special pleading from the standpoint of a young educated red man, to whom Sitting Bull was a kind of Themistocles. Though based on accurate information, I intended it to be not so much a history as an interpretation. It interested me at the time and so--I wasted a week!

Life at camp was very pleasant, but as my brother wrote me that he must return to New York I felt it my duty to go home and see that my mother "attended" the County Fair, which was a most important event to her.

"Mother's life retains so few interests," I explained to Zulime, "that to miss the Fair would be to her a great deprivation. You can stay here but I must go home and take her down to the old settlers' picnic in Floral Hall."

Zulime understood. Loyally cutting short her pleasant companions.h.i.+p with her fellow artists she returned with me to West Salem a few days before the fair opened.

Fuller, who timed his visit to be with us during the exhibition, professed a keen interest in every department of it. His att.i.tude was comically that of a serious-minded European tourist. He not only purchased a catalogue, he treated it precisely as if it were the hand-book of the Autumn Salon in Paris. Carrying it in his hand, he spent busy hours minutely studying "Spatter Work," and carefully inspecting decorated bedspreads. He tasted the prize bread, sampled the honey, and twirled the contesting apples. Nothing escaped his notice. He was as alert, and (apparently) as vitally concerned as any of the "judges," but I, knowing his highly-critical mind, could only smile at his reports.

He was a constant joy, not only to Zulime and to me, but to our friends, the Eastons. One day as we were digging potatoes he gave me a lecture on my duty as a Wisconsin novelist. "You should do for this country what Thomas Hardy has done for Wess.e.x," he said. "You have made a good start in _Main Traveled Roads_, and _Rose of Dutcher's Coolly_, but you should do more with it. It is a n.o.ble background."

"Why not do something with it yourself?" I retorted.

"You are almost as much a part of Wisconsin as I am. I've done my part and moved on. My keenest interests now are in the Mountain West--a larger field. There's no use saying 'Make more of this material!' I can only do what I feel. Just now I am full of Montana. Why don't you celebrate Eagle's Nest? If you weren't so myopic you'd perceive in that little artist colony something quite as literary as the life which Hawthorne lived at Brook Farm."

"I'm no Hawthorne," he replied. "I'm not even Margaret Fuller. I don't want to write about Camp--in fact I don't want to write about anything.

I'd rather drive nails or superintend a tinner."

In this way our discussion usually ended--with each of us going his own gait. In this instance his way led back to Chicago. "I must return to my plumbing," he protested. "I've got some renters who are complaining of their furnaces," and that was the end of his visit. We knew better than to argue for delay. He was as inflexible as New England granite.

His going left a gap. We both liked to have him about. Never in the way, never interfering with my work, he was always a stimulant. His judgment (second only to Howells' in my estimation) kept me to my highest level.

He was the only man with whom I could discuss all my perplexities and be enlightened.

As October came on my mother's condition called for increasing care. She could not walk across the road and her outings were all taken in a wheeled chair, which I pushed about the village each afternoon. She was very happy when we were at home, but as she could neither sew nor read she was piteously dependent upon the members of her household for diversion. Life's walls were narrowing for her, that was sorrowfully evident to me; and yet I did not--I would not consider the possibility of her early pa.s.sing. I thought of her as living on for many years longer. It was her growing inability to employ her time which troubled me and I gave the most of my afternoons to her amus.e.m.e.nt.

As my father wrote from Dakota early in October setting November 1st as the date for his return, I began to plan another trip to New York, feeling that it was better to go in the early autumn than to wait till winter. "Winters are very hard on old folks in our valley," I remarked to Zulime. To mother I said, "Our absence will not be long. We'll be back in time for Thanksgiving," I a.s.sured her.

She dreaded our going. Clinging to us both as though she feared we might never return she pleadingly said, "Wait till your father comes," and her distress of mind caused me to put off our departure until father could arrive.

These moods of depression, these periods of suffering which she could not explain, were usually transitory, and this one soon pa.s.sed. In a day or two she was free from pain, and quite cheerful. "You may go," she said at last, but warningly added, "Don't stay away too long!"

In spite of her smiling face, I kissed her good-by with a sense of uneasiness, almost of guilt. "It seems a selfish act to leave her at this time," I confessed to Zulime, "and yet if we are to get away at all, it is safer to go now."

In order to save time for our eastern trip, we went through Chicago almost without stopping, and upon reaching New York, took the same suite of rooms on Fifteenth Street in which we had lived the previous year. In an hour we were settled.

My brother, who was playing an engagement in the city, came at once to inquire about the old folks and I gave a good report. "Mother has her ups and downs," I explained, "but she is very comfortable in her new rooms. Of course she misses her sons and her new daughter--I am not sure, but she misses the new daughter more than she misses you and me, but we shall soon return to her."

_The Eagle's Heart_, which had been running with favor as a serial, was just being published in book form, and we were in high hopes of it.

At the same time the Century Company was preparing to issue _Her Mountain Lover_, which had already been printed in the magazine.

Altogether my presence in New York seemed opportune, if not actually necessary, a fact which I made much of in writing to the old folks in the West.

Gilder, who met me on the street soon after our arrival in New York, spoke to me in praise of _Her Mountain Lover_. "I predict a great success for it. It has beauty----" here he smiled. "I am always preaching 'beauty' to you, but you need it! You should remember that the writing which is beautiful is the writing which lasts."

He was looking thin and bent and gray, and I experienced a keen pang of fear. "Gilder is growing old," I thought, and this feeling of change was deepened a few days later by the death of Charles Dudley Warner.

"The older literary men, the Writers who have been my guides and my exemplars, are dropping away! I am no longer 'a young and promising novelist.' It is time I delivered my message--if I have any," I reminded myself, with a realization that I was now in the mid-ranks, pushed on by younger and more vigorous authors. Frank Norris and Stewart Edward White were crowding close upon my lagging heels. With this in my thought I got out my ma.n.u.script and set to work.

I would have been entirely happy in the midst of many delightful meetings with my fellow craftsmen had it not been for a growing sense of anxiety concerning my mother's condition. Father's brief notes were not rea.s.suring. "Your mother needs you," he said, in effect, and I began to plan our return. "We have a few engagements," I wrote, "but you may expect us for our usual Thanksgiving Dinner."

I will not say that I had a definite premonition of trouble, I was just uneasy. I felt inclined to drop all our social engagements and start for home but I did not carry out the impulse.

On Sunday, the twenty-fifth of November, after a delightful dinner with Augustus Thomas in his home at New Roch.e.l.le, Zulime and I returned to our apartment in happiest humor, to be met by a telegram which went to my heart like the thrust of a bayonet. It was from my father. "_Your mother is very low. Come at once._"

For a few moments I remained standing, like a man stunned by a savage blow. Then I awoke to the need of haste in getting away to the West. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and the last train which would enable us to connect with the Milwaukee train from Chicago to West Salem, left at half-past six. "We must make that train," I said to Zulime with a desperate realization of the need of haste.

The rush of packing, the excitement of getting to the station kept me from the sinking of spirit, the agony of self-accusation which set in the moment we were safely in the sleeping car, and speeding on our homeward way. "If only we can reach her before it is too late," was my prayer. "I shall never forgive myself for leaving her. I knew she was not well," I confessed to Zulime, whose serene optimism comforted me, or at least dulled the edge of my self-reproach. Again I telegraphed that we were coming, giving the name and number of our train, hoping to have an encouraging reply from father or the doctor during the evening, but none came.

The long agonizing hours wore on. A hundred times I accused myself, "I should not have left her."

At all points where I attacked myself, my wife defended me, excused me, and yet I could not clear myself--could not rest. In imagination I pictured that dear, sweet face turned toward the door, and heard that faint voice asking for me.

It is true I had done many considerate things for her, but I had not done enough. Money I had given her, and a home, but I had not given her as much of my time, my service, as I might have done,--as I should have done. My going away to the city at the very moment when my presence was most necessary seemed base desertion. While she had been suffering, longing and lonely, I had been feasting. All my honors, all my writing, seemed at this moment too slight, too trivial to counter-balance my mother's need, my mother's love.

Midnight came without a message, and I went to bed, slightly comforted, hoping that a turn for the better had taken place. I slept fitfully, waking again and again to the bleak possibilities of the day. A persistent vision of a gray-haired mother watching and waiting for her sons filled my brain. That she was also longing for Zulime I knew, for she loved her, and thought of her as a daughter.

In this agony of remorse and fear I wore out the night, and as no word came in the morning, I ate my breakfast in half-recovered tranquillity.

"It must be that she is better," Zulime said, but at nine o'clock a telegram from the doctor destroyed all hope. "Your mother is unconscious. Do not hope to find her alive," was his desolating message.

Every devoted son who reads this line will s.h.i.+ver as I s.h.i.+vered. That warning came like a wind from the dark s.p.a.ces of a bleak, uncharted deep. It changed my world. For twenty years my mother had been my chief care. My daily thought ran to her. Only when deeply absorbed in my work had she been absent from my conscious mind. For her I had planned, for her I had saved, for her I had built, and now----!

That day was the longest, bitterest, I had ever known, for the reason that, mixed with my grief, my sense of remorse, was a feeling of utter helplessness. In desperate desire for haste I could only lumpishly wait.

Another day of agony, another interminable night of pain must pa.s.s before I could reach the shadowed Homestead. Nothing could shorten the interval. Then, too, I realized that she whom I would comfort had already gone beyond my aid, beyond any comfort I could send.

Over and over I repeated, "If only we had started a few days sooner!"

The truth is I had failed of a son's duty just when that duty was most needed, and this conviction brought an almost intolerable ache into my throat. Nothing that Zulime could do or say removed that pain. I could not eat, and I could not rest.

We reached Chicago in time to catch the night train at ten o'clock, and in almost utter mental exhaustion I fell asleep about midnight, and slept till nearly daylight.

Father met us at the train, as he had so often done before, but this time there was something in the pinched gray look of his face, something in the filmed light of his eagle eyes which denoted, movingly, the tragic experiences through which he had just pa.s.sed. Before he spoke I knew that mother had pa.s.sed beyond my reach.

As he gripped my hand I perceived that he was smitten but unbowed. He was taking his orders like a soldier, without complaint or question.--Only when Zulime kissed him did he give way.

As we entered the gate I perceived with a pang of dread the wheeled chair, standing empty on the porch, pathetic witness of the one who had no further need of it. Within doors, the house showed the disorder, the desolate confusion, the terror which death had brought. The furniture was disarranged--the floor muddy, and in the midst of the chill little parlor rested a sinister, flower-strewn box. In this was all that remained of Isabel McClintock, my mother.

For a few minutes I stood looking about me, a scalding blur in my eyes, a choking in my throat. The south room, _her_ room, was empty, intolerably, accusingly empty. The gentle, gray-haired figure was no longer in its place before the window. The smiling lips which had so often touched my cheek on my return were cold. The sweet, hesitant voice was forever silent.

Her dear face I did not see. I refused to look upon her in her coffin. I wanted to remember her as she appeared when I said good-by to her that bright October evening, her white hair gleaming in the light of the lamp, while soft curves about her lips suggested a beautiful serenity.

How patient and loving she had been! Even though she feared that she might never see us again she had sent us away in cheerful self-sacrifice.

Father was composed but tense. He went about his duties with solemn resignation, and, an hour or two later, he said to me, "You and I must go down and select a burial lot, a place for your mother and me."

It was a desolate November morning, raw and gloomy, but the gray sky and the patient, bare-limbed elms were curiously medicinal to my sore heart.

In some strange way they comforted me. Snow was in the air and father mechanically weather-wise, said, without thinking of the bitter irony of his words--"Regular Thanksgiving weather."

Thanksgiving weather! Yes, but what Thanksgiving could there be for him or for me, now?