All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography Part 21

"You hate him so bitterly. Why should I annoy you by speaking of him?"

"But, Robert, if talking about him, was also talking about yourself?"

"I did not say it was."

"Have you anything to do with him? Tell me truly, Robert."

"Yes, I have unavoidably found myself compelled to have a great deal to do with him."

"How?" I persisted.

"You have read 'how' in one way, Milly. He himself asked me to answer his speech. He thought that I, being an alien, would make a proper opponent. I am a fair speaker, and I think I have learned a little about American politics."

"Robert!" I said, "you have no more knowledge of American politics, than a Hindoo has of skating."

He did not contradict me; he never did that, but he changed the conversation, and I had hard work to keep my temper under control.

Perhaps I did not succeed very well; for when he bid me good night he said, "Milly, we will not be cross about nothing. I do not interfere with your scholars, and you must give me the same freedom. I have to transact business with men I do not personally like, and the man you hate so unnecessarily, has never done me any harm."

"Robert!" I answered, "listen to me this once, and I will say no more.

Remember what Peter Grey told you. He said, 'I have escaped from him, as a bird from the fowler'--furthermore, that he hated young men, and found his pleasure in their destruction--that he stalked them as a Highland Chief stalks stags for his amus.e.m.e.nt. Such a man must either be insane, or have a fiendish disposition. Are you going to be his next victim?"

"My dear Milly," he answered, "you let your imaginations and superst.i.tions rule you too much. I have often heard you say, that we only meet the people in this world, we are meant to meet." Then he kissed me, and I felt that I had done more harm than good. I had promised not to speak on this subject again, so I had virtually released him from any similar confidence. In the dark I went over and over our conversation, and wrung my hands miserably at the mistake I had made. Yet perhaps it was a fatality. Perhaps I was too imaginative and superst.i.tious. Well then, there was nothing to be had, and nothing to be saved by interfering with destiny. I tried to dismiss the subject, and to take my life day by day and be happy.

In September the school opened with a full roll, and the session was a remarkably pleasant one. On the following Christmas Day I had a third daughter whom we called Edith. After this event, all went well until the extreme heat compelled the closing of the school a few days before the usual time. Both I and my children felt it severely and Edith was very ill. She never quite recovered, but slowly withered away like a plucked flower. In August a terrible fear came into my heart, and on August the twentieth, while my dear mother was watching every mail for some word of my promised visit, I was watching my dying daughter.

But much as I suffered, Robert suffered more. He was devotedly attached to this child, for she showed from her earliest consciousness a singular love for him. She was never quite happy but in his arms.

She wept whenever he left her. How ever sick or sleepy she was if he entered the room she entreated him with smiles and little happy cries to take her in his arms; and when all was nearly over, at the last moment, she opened her eyes, looked at him, and with a smile pa.s.sed away forever.

We were broken-hearted. I know not how I endured the next few days. It was a new sorrow. I would hear of no comfort. Robert bore his grief trustfully and manfully, but I would not listen to anything he could say. I could not pray. I could only think of the little soul struggling through the nameless woe with the angel of the river, and of the mult.i.tude of little children at the same hour pa.s.sing with her,

"... as a stream across the stream, Or as visions across a dream, For as clouds of doves to their windows fly, The clouds of souls unto G.o.d flit by."

She was such a tender little soul, if she stumbled in the river who would care for her? Numberless mothers must have had such fears, and the sweetest and tenderest of singers, answered them a few years ago:

"Day and night Christ standeth, Scanning each soul as it landeth; Over the floods He bendeth, With a face that hath once been dead.

"And when the children come To pa.s.s through the dreary River, Christ stretcheth forth His hand, A gentle pierced hand, And draws them safe to Land."

To those who know nothing of this loss, my grief may seem unreasonable; but the fathers and mothers who have turned away from an open grave, blind with tears, and with heart and flesh failing them, _they_ will understand.

Yet I had not been left without intelligence of the coming sorrow.

Three nights before her death, at the midnight, as I lay thinking with the child asleep in my arms, the warning notice came. I knew then, that some of my family were called, and my thoughts went at once to my father. I either did not, or would not a.s.sociate it with my child, until the symptoms of her dissolution were at hand. If it was an inimical Presence that predicted such relentless, inexorable doom, who would carry my little child safe through the river of death, and up to the celestial city? And as I mused on these things, a sweet Spanish tradition read years before came into my memory--that an angel sat outside the gate of heaven with shoes for the barefooted babies, who came there unshod--and I remembered that Edith had been laid to rest unshod, and had a pa.s.sionate fit of weeping.

But comfort was at hand. The thought of the _gate of heaven_ made me remember that heaven had twelve gates, and that they were _always open_. So then, when G.o.d took from us our beloved, He did not shut them up in the heavenly city. Its twelve gates stand open, and the angels ascend and descend; and go in and out on their heavenly messages. Jacob saw them; weeping mothers and good and suffering souls have seen them. No doubt, the child would be safely carried home. And I blessed G.o.d for the smile with which she went. Surely

"The Shepherd from His Fold, Had smiled and drawn her unto Him."

It was this thought which enabled me to dry my eyes, and to set my hands to the duty they had to perform. For the school was to meet late in September, and I had not done anything, as yet, towards the welfare of the next session. Yet I knew that if it was to be successful, I must set the key-note of enthusiasm and delight in the work, or all would be done with the left hand only; knew that if I went into the school room alert, and smiling, and with the air of a teacher expecting great things, I would have cheerful, busy, ardent girls around me; while if I showed depression and indifference, my att.i.tude would have the same effect upon their spirits and ardor, that the putting down of the soft pedal has on the tones of a piano. For it is not what a teacher does, it is what _she makes her scholars do_, that is of lasting value.

Knowing these things well, because taught by experience, I tried to give myself to my duties with all my heart, and

"So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is G.o.d to man, When Duty whispers low, '_Thou must_,'

The Soul replies, '_I can_.'"

The school opened well, so well, that the proprietor of the house we rented, asked me if I would like him to build a larger house with suitable school room attached. And this question revealed to me my innermost and as yet unacknowledged feeling--_that we should not remain much longer in Chicago_. I told myself that the climate was too cruel, the summer heat and the winter cold were alike dangerous. Croup lurked in the nursery all the time; I never went to bed without its remedies at hand; and again the school had unavoidably out-stripped its limits. At present it was too large; its demands exhausted even my young, fresh faculties, and physical strength. If I increased it, I should require more room and more a.s.sistance. I told myself these were my reasons for desiring a change, but down in my soul I knew they were only the reasons I should a.s.sign to the world at large--the deep, underlying motive beyond all others, and above all others, was Robert's evident and constant anxiety. He came home every night mentally exhausted. It was not his grief for Edith's loss; no, he sought me in that trouble, and we comforted each other. It was no G.o.d-sent trouble of any kind, or he would have done the same thing and I thought, and feared, but knew nothing certain.

One day about the middle of November, he returned home in such evident distress, that I could no longer keep silence. "Are you ill, dear Robert?" I asked.

"No, Milly," he replied. "I am as well as a man can be, who is worried to death nearly."

He was lying on the sofa, and I went close to him, and with kisses and sweet words begged to share his worry.

"Is it business?" I asked.

"Yes, and no. I could manage the business end, if it was not for that man. You know who I mean?"

"Yes, I know. What is the matter now? Tell me, dear."

"I must. You will have to know, for in that quarter it is now kill, or be killed. He has made life too intolerable--and I struck him today.

He promised me full payment, and he is able to keep his promise."

"Then you must go away. He provoked that blow, _because his revenge is ready_. You must go at once--tonight--do not wait for the morning."

"I have no money. I cannot go. I will not be driven away by him."

"You do not want that creature to spill your life in the dust of Chicago! You do not want to commit murder! That part of the subject is settled. Where then will you go? You must have thought of this necessity as certain."

"I have. I will say I am going to Kansas City, and go a little way in that direction--then cross to a line by which I can reach Cairo, and at Cairo take a boat down the Mississippi to some southern town. There I will wait for you, and we will go forward to Texas."

"Wait at Memphis," I said.

"Why Memphis?"

"I do not know, Robert. The word came inadvertently to my lips. It is therefore a word from Intelligence beyond mine. Say Memphis, Robert."

"Very well."

"Go tomorrow night," I urged, "at the latest."

"I will try. I must see Peter Grey in the morning, and leave my affairs with him."

"Do you trust him?"

"Not much. As for money----"

"I have one thousand dollars saved, Robert. Take half of it. With the rest I will close up the house and school affairs, and come to you. Be ready for Texas when I come."