A Daughter of the Middle Border Part 25

The day of the funeral was still more savagely cold and bleak, and I resented its pitiless gloom. The wind which blew over the open grave of my dead mother was sinister as hate, and the snow which fell, intolerably stern. I turned away. I could not see that box lowered into the merciless soil. My mother's spirit was not there--I knew that--and yet I could not bear to think of those tender lips, those loving hands going into the dark. It was a harsh bed for one so gentle and so dear.

Back to the Homestead we drove--back to an empty sh.e.l.l. The place in which Isabel Garland's wish had been law for so many years was now desolate and drear, and return would have been impossible for me had it not been for the presence of my wife, whose serene soul was my comfort and my stay. "You have done all that a son could do," she insisted, and it was a comfort to have her say this even though I knew that it was not true, her faith in me and her youth and beauty partly redeemed me from the awful emptiness of that home. Without her (and all that she represented) my father and I would have been victims of a black despair.

I had never possessed a definite belief in immortality and yet, as we gathered about our table that night, I could not rid myself of a feeling that my mother was in her room, and that she might at any moment cough, or stir, or call to me. Realizing with appalling force that so far as my philosophy went our separation was eternal, I nevertheless hoped that her spirit was with us at that moment, I did not know it--I desired it.

In the sense which would have made belief a solace and relief, I was agnostic.

"How strange it all seems!" my father exclaimed, and on his face lay such lines of dismay as I had never seen written there before. "It seems as though I ought to go and wheel her in to dinner."

I marvel now, as I marveled then, at the buoyant helpfulness, the brave patience of my wife in the presence of her stricken and bewildered household. She sorrowed but she kept her calm judgment, and set about restoring the interrupted routine of our lives. Putting away all signs of the gray intruder whose hands had scattered the ashes of ruin across our floor, she called on me to aid in uniting our broken circle. Under her influence I soon regained a certain composure. With a realization that it was not fair that she should bear all the burden of the family reorganization, I turned from death and faced the future with her. On her depended the continuation of our family. She was its hope and its saving grace.

BOOK II

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A Summer in the High Country

My first morning in the old Homestead without my mother was so poignant with its sense of loss, so rich with memories both sweet and sorrowful, that I shut myself in my study and began a little tribute to her, a sketch which I called _The Wife of a Pioneer_. Into this I poured the love I had felt but failed to express as fully as I should have done while she was alive. To make this her memorial was my definite purpose.

As I went on I found myself deep in her life on the farm in Iowa, and the cheerful heroism of her daily treadmill came back to me with such appeal that I could scarcely see the words in which I was recording her history. Visioning the long years of her drudgery, I recalled her early rising, and suffered with her the never-ending round of dish-was.h.i.+ng, churning, sewing, and cooking, realizing more fully than ever before that in all of this slavery she was but one of a million martyrs. All our neighbors' wives walked the same round. On such as they rests the heavier part of the home and city building in the West. The wives of the farm are the unnamed, unrewarded heroines of the border.

For nearly a week I lingered upon this writing, and having completed it I was moved to print it, in order that it might remind some other son of his duty to his ageing parents sitting in the light of their lonely hearth, and in doing this I again vaguely forecast the composition of an autobiographic ma.n.u.script--one which should embody minutely and simply the homely daily toil of my father's family, although I could not, at the moment, define the precise form into which the story would fall.

The completion of the memorial to my mother eased my heart of its bitter self-accusation, and a little later I returned to my accustomed routine, realizing that in my wife now lay my present incentive and my future support. She became the center of my world. In her rested my hope of happiness. My mother was a memory.

To remain longer in the old home was painful, for to me everything suggested the one for whom it had been established. The piano I had bought for her, the chair in which she had loved to sit, her spectacles on the stand--all these mute witnesses of her absence benumbed me as I walked about her room. Only in my work-shop was I able to find even momentary relief from my sense of irreparable and eternal loss.

Father, as though bewildered by the sudden change in his life, turned to Zulime with a pathetic weakness which she met with a daughter's tender patience and a woman's intuitive understanding. He talked to her of his first meeting with "Belle" and his tone was that of a lover, one who had loved long and deeply, and this I believe was true. In spite of unavoidable occasional moments of friction, he and Isabel McClintock had lived in harmony. They had been spiritually married, and now, in looking back over the long road he and she had traveled together, he recalled only its pleasant places. His memories were all of the sunlit meadows and starry nights along the way. Prairie pinks and wild roses hid the thorns and the thistles of the wayside.

His joy in the songs she had sung came back, intensified now by tender a.s.sociation with her face and voice. The knowledge that she who had voiced them so often, could voice them no more, gave to some of the words an almost overpowering pathos, and when he asked me to sing them, I could not immediately comply. To him they brought grateful tears and a consoling sadness, to me they came with tragic significance.

"But that mother she is gone Calm she sleeps beneath the stone"

was not a song but a reality.

More and more he dwelt upon the time when she was young, and as the weeks went by his sorrow took on a wistful, vague longing for the past.

Through the gate of memory he reentered the world of his youth and walked once more with William and David and Luke. The mists which filled his eyes had nothing hot or withering in their touch--they comforted him. Whether he hoped to meet his love in some other world or not I do not know--but I think he did.

In the midst of these deep emotional personal experiences, I began to write (almost as if in self-defense), a novel which I called _The Gray Horse Troop_, a story which had been slowly forming in my mind ever since my visit to Lame Deer in 1897. This was my first actual start upon its composition and I was soon in full drive again, and just in proportion as I took on these fictional troubles did my own lose their power. To Zulime, with a feeling of confidence in myself, I now said, "You need not remain here any longer. Go down to Chicago and wait for me. I'll come as soon as father feels like letting me go. I am all right now. I am at work."

She smiled but replied with firm decision, "I shall stay right here until you can go with me. Father needs me more than he needs you."

This was true. She would have been deserting two men instead of one--and so she stayed while I worked away at my story, finding comfort in the realization of her presence.

At last my father said, "You mustn't stay here on my account; I can take care of myself."

Here spoke the stark spirit of the man. Accustomed to provide for himself in camp and on the trail, he saw no reason why he should not contrive to live here in the sheltered village, surrounded by his friends; but Zulime insisted upon his retaining our housekeeper, and to this he consented, although he argued against it. "I've been keeping house alone for six years out there in Dakota; I guess I can do as well here."

"All right, father," I said, "we'll go, but if you need me let me know."

A return to the city did not interrupt my writing. My new novel now had entire possession of me. So far as my mornings were concerned I was forgetful of everything else--and yet, often, as I put aside my work for the day, I caught myself saying, "_Now I must write to mother_,"--and a painful clutch came into my throat as I realized, once again, that I no longer had a mother waiting for a letter. For twenty years no matter where I had been or what I had been doing I had written to her an almost daily message and now she was no longer in my reach!--Was she near me on some other plane?

The good friends.h.i.+p of the Eagles' Nest Campers was of the highest value to me at this time. Without them Chicago would have been a desert. Henry Fuller's gay spirit, Lorado's swift wit and the good fraternal companions.h.i.+p of Charles Francis Browne were of daily comfort; but above all others I depended upon my wife whose serenely optimistic spirit carried me over many a deep slough of despond. How I leaned upon her! Her patience with me was angelic.

A writer, like an artist, is apt to be a selfish brute, tending to ignore everything which does not make for the progress of his beloved ma.n.u.script. He resents every interruption every hindering distraction, as a h.e.l.lish contrivance, maliciously designed to worry or obstruct him--At least I am that way. That I was a burden, an intolerable burden to my wife, at times--many times--I must admit--but she understood and was charitable. She defended me as best she could from interruption and smoothed my daily course with deft hand. Slowly my novel began to take shape and as I drew farther away from the remorseful days which made my work seem selfish and vain, I recovered an illogical cheerfulness.

We saw very few Chicago people and in contrast with our previous "season" in New York our daily walk was uneventful, almost rural, in its quiet round. Christmas came to us without special meaning but 1900 went out with _The Eagle's Heart_ on the market, and _Her Mountain Lover_ going to press. Aside from my sense of bereavement, and a certain anxiety concerning my lonely old father, I was at peace and Zulime seemed happy and confident.

There was no escaping my filial responsibility, however, for in the midst of this serene season, a sudden call for help came from West Salem. "Your father is ill and needs you," wrote the doctor and I went at once to his aid.

It was a cheerless home-coming,--one that I could hardly endure the thought of, and yet I was glad that I had not followed my first impulse to delay it, for as I entered the door of the desolate lonely house I found the old soldier stretched out on a couch, piteously depressed in mind and flushed with fever. I had not arrived a minute too soon.

What a change had come over the Homestead! It was but a sh.e.l.l, a mansion from which the spirit for whom it had been built was fled. Its empty, dusty rooms, so cold and silent and dead--were dreadful to me, but I did my best to fill them with cheer for my father's sake.

As the day wore on I said to him, "It seems like Sunday to me. I have a feeling that mother and Zulime are away at church and that they may, at any moment, come in together."

"I wish Zuleema would come," my father said, and as if in answer to his wish, she surprised us by a telegram. "I am coming home," she wired, "meet me at the station to-morrow morning," and this message made my father so happy that it troubled me, for it revealed to me how deeply he had missed her, and made plain to me also how difficult it would be for me to take her away from him thereafter.

Her coming put such life in the house that I decided to invite a number of my father's friends and neighbors to spend the evening with us, and the thought of this party quite restored him to his natural optimism.

His confidence in his new daughter's ability had become fixed. He accepted her judgments almost instantly. He bragged of her skill as a cook, as an artist and as a musician, quite shamelessly; but as this only amused her I saw no reason for interfering--I even permitted him to boast of my singing. He believed me to be one of the most remarkable ballad singers in the world, and to hear me sing "The Ninety and Nine"

with all the dramatic modulations of a professional evangelist afforded him the highest satisfaction.

At his urging we made elaborate preparations for feeding our guests, and Zulime arranged a definite program of entertainment. When conversation slackened I was to sing while she played my accompaniment, and to fill out the program I volunteered to read one of my short stories.

The outcome of the evening was amusingly destructive of all our kindly plans. Before the women had fairly removed their wraps, Lottridge drew a box of dominoes from his pocket, saying, "I didn't know but you'd be a little short on 'bones,'" and Shane called out, "Well, now, Richard, what about tables?" In five minutes they were all--every mother's son and daughter of them--bent above a row of dominoes!

No entertainment on the part of host or hostess was necessary till the time came to serve supper. All our literary and musical preparations went for naught!--At ten o'clock they rose as one man, thanked us for a pleasant evening and went home!

Zulime laughed merrily over the wreck of our self-sacrificing program when we were alone. "Well, we'll know exactly what to do next time. All we need to do is to furnish dominoes and tables, our guests will do the rest."

My young wife's presence in the Homestead almost redeemed it from its gloom, and yet I was not content. The complications in the situation defied adjustment. My father needed us, but the city was essential to me. As a writer, I should have been remorselessly selfish. I should have taken my wife back to Chicago at once, but my New England conscience would not let me forget how lonely that old man would be in this empty house, silent, yet filled with voices of the moaning, swaying branches of its bleak midwinter elms.

My problem was, in fact, only another characteristic cruel phase of American family history. In a new land like ours, the rising generation finds itself, necessarily, almost cruelly, negligent of its progenitors.

Youth moves on, away and up from the farm and the village. Age remains below and behind. The tragedy of this situation lies in the fact that there is no happy solution of the problem. Youth can not be shackled, age can not be transplanted.

In my case, I foresaw that the situation would inevitably become more and more difficult year by year. My father could not live in any city, and for me to give up my life in Chicago and New York in order to establish a permanent home in West Salem, involved a sacrifice which I was not willing to make,--either on my own account or Zulime's. I had no right to demand such devotion from her. Like thousands of other men of my age I was snared in circ.u.mstances--forced to do that which appeared unfilial and neglectful.

In the midst of these perplexities I was confronted by a new and surprising problem--I had money to invest! For the serial use of _The Eagle's Heart_ and _Her Mountain Lover_ I had received thirty-five hundred dollars, and as each of these books had also brought in an additional five hundred dollars advance royalty, I was for the moment embarra.s.sed with cash.

In this extremity I turned, naturally, toward Oklahoma. I recalled the beautiful prairies I had crossed on my way to the Was.h.i.+tay. "Another visit to Darlington will not only furnish new material for my book of Indian stories, but enable me to survey and purchase a half-section of land," I explained to my father. "Like Henry George we both understand the value of unearned increment."

In this plan he agreed and two days after making this decision I was at Colony, Oklahoma, where I spent nearly the entire month of May, and when I returned I was the owner of three hundred and twenty acres of land.

My return to the Homestead found Zulime deep in the rush of the berry season. As mistress of a garden her interest in its produce was almost comical. She thought less of art, she neither modeled nor painted. She cared less and less for the Camp at Eagle's Nest, exulting more and more in the s.p.a.cious rooms of her home, and in the abundance of her soil. Her love of the Homestead delighted me, but I was a little disappointed by the coolness with which she received my gift of a deed to a quarter section of Oklahoma land. She smiled and handed it back to me as if it were a make-believe deed.