Part 31

“We have had a delightful Sunday!” he observed. “It is like renewing my youth to have all the children about us once more.”

He had had his breakfast and gone down-town, when we came into the dining-room next morning. At my exclamation of regretful surprise, our mother told us how he had hurried the meal for himself, pleading that he had much to attend to that forenoon. The snow was not deep, but it was sodden by the fine rain that had succeeded it toward the dawn of the gray December day, and he feared the evergreens might not be forthcoming.

“I shall send a couple of carts into the country at once,” were his parting words. “I would not have the children disappointed for ten times the worth of the evergreens.”

It was to be a busy morning with us all. As soon as breakfast was dispatched, the long table—pulled out to its utmost limit to accommodate the tribe—was cleared of dishes, plates, and cloth, and we fell to tying up parcels for the tree, sorting _bonbons_, and other light tasks. Mince-pies, concocted according to the incomparable recipe handed down from mother to daughter, in the Montrose and Olney families, for a century-and-a-half, had been baked last week, and loaded the pantry-shelves. My mother’s unsurpassable crullers, superintended by herself at Christmas, and at no other season, were packed away in stone jars; and, that no distinctive feature of Yule-tide might be missing from the morrow’s dinner, the whitest, plumpest, tenderest sucking pig the market could offer, lay at length in a platter in the store-room. Before he could go into the oven, he would be buttered from nose to toes, and coated with bread-crumbs. When he appeared on the table, he would be adorned with a necklace of sausages, cranberries would fill out the sunken eyes, and a lemon be thrust into his mouth. A mammoth gobbler, fattened for the occasion, would support him at the other end of the board.

I had offered last Friday to make pumpkin-pies—the genuine New England brand, such as my father had eaten at Thanksgiving in the Dorchester homestead.

The colored cooks could not compass the delicacy. He had sent home four bouncing pumpkins on Saturday, and two had been pared, eviscerated, and stewed. I sat at the far end of the table, beating, seasoning, and tasting. My mother was filling candy-bags at the other, when Myrtle rallied her upon not tasting the confectionery, of which she was extravagantly fond.

“Mother is saving up her appetite for the Christmas pig!” she asserted.

“I never eat sweets when I have a headache,” was the answer. “I did not sleep well last night.”

This led to her account of a “queer fright” she had had at midnight, or thereabouts. Awakened from her first sound sleep by the unaccountable thrill of alarm each of us has felt, in the impression that some one or something that has no right to be there, is in the darkened chamber, she lay still with beating heart and listened for further proof of the intrusion. In a few minutes she heard a faint rustle that ran from the farthest window toward her bed, and passed to the door leading into the hall. Thoroughly startled, she shook my father’s shoulder and whispered to him that there was some one in the room. He sprang up, lighted the gas, and made a thorough search of the chamber and the dressing-room. The door was locked, and, besides themselves, there was no occupant of the apartment. He had fallen asleep again, when she heard the same rustling noise, louder and more definite than before. There was no mistaking the direction of the movement. It began at the window, swept by the bed, and was lost at the door. The terrified wife again awoke her husband, and he made the round a second time, with the same result as before.

When the mysterious movement seemed to brush her at the third coming, she aroused her companion in an agony of nervousness:

“I am terribly ashamed of my foolishness,” she told him, shivering with nameless fears; “but there really is something here, now!” He was, as I have said in a former part of my true story, usually so intolerant of nervous whimsies that we forbore to express them in his hearing. He had mellowed and sweetened marvellously within the last few years, as rare vintages are sure to ripen. Arising now, with a good-humored laugh, he made a third exploration of the premises, and with no better result. When he lay down again, he put his hand affectionately upon my mother’s arm with a soothing word:

“I will hold _you_ fast! You are the most precious thing in the house. Neither burglar nor bogie shall get you.”

“What was it?” we asked.

“Oh, probably the wind blowing the shade, or making free with something else that was loose. It was a stormy night. We agreed, this morning, that it must have been that.”

She spoke carelessly, and we took the incident as little to heart. Passing through the hall, awhile later, I espied my maid Ellen, who had lived with me for five years, whispering with a mulatto woman in a corner. They fell apart at seeing me, and Ellen followed me to the sitting-room.

“Rhoda was saying that the colored people think what happened last night was a warnin’,” she observed, with affected lightness. “They are awful superstitious, ma’am, ain’t they?”

“Very superstitious and very ignorant!” I returned, severely.

The trifling episode was gone, like a vapor passing from a mirror, before my brother Herbert appeared. He had arisen at daybreak, driven to Petersburg, and taken there the train to Richmond, arriving by nine o’clock.

At the same hour our father reached his office. I have heard the story of his walk down-town so minutely described that I can trace each step. It was more than a mile from his house to the office. There were no street-cars or omnibuses in the city, at that time. Sometimes he drove to his place of business; sometimes he rode on horseback. Generally, he chose to walk. He was a fine horseman and a fearless driver, from his youth up. At sixty-eight he carried himself as erect as at thirty, and made less of tramping miles in all weathers than men of half his age thought of pacing a dozen squares on a sunny day. As he had reminded his wife, in excusing his hurried breakfast, there were errands, many and important, to be looked after. He stopped at Pizzini’s, the noted confectioner of the town, to interview that dignitary in person, anent a cake of noble proportions and brave with ornate icing—Christmas fruit-cake—of Pizzini’s own composition, for which the order was given a week ago. To the man of sweets he said that nothing must hinder the delivery of the cake beyond that evening.

“We are planning a royal, old-fashioned family Christmas,” he subjoined, “and there must be no disappointments.”

The evergreens were ordered as stringently. Two cart-loads, as he had said, and two more Christmas-trees, in case one was not satisfactory. “There must be no disappointments.”

Not far from Pizzini’s he met Doctor Haxall, also “Christmasing.” The two silver-haired men shook hands, standing in the damp snow on the corner, and exchanged the compliments of the season.

“What has come to you?” queried the doctor, eying his friend curiously. “You are renewing your youth. You have the color, the step, and the eyes of a boy!”

“Doctor!” letting his hand drop upon the other’s shoulder, “to-morrow will be the happiest day of my life! After four terrible years of war and separation, I am to have in the old home all my children and grandchildren—a united and loving family. It will be the first time in eight years! My cup runneth over!”

He strode into his office with the springing step that had brought him all the long mile and a half; spoke cheerily to two or three employees who were on hand; remarked upon the weather, and his confidence that we would have a fine day to-morrow, and laid aside his overcoat and hat. Then he stepped to the outer door to issue an order to two colored men standing there, began to speak, put his hand to his head, and fell forward. The men caught him, saved him from falling, and supported him to a chair. He pointed to the door, and spoke one word:

“Horace!”

My brother was his partner in business, and he could not be far away. The messenger met him within a short distance of the door. The dulling eyes brightened at sight of him; with an inarticulate murmur, the stricken man raised his hand to his head, to indicate the seat of pain, leaned back upon the strong young arms that held him, and closed his eyes.

He was still breathing when they brought him home. Doctor Haxall had galloped on ahead of the carriage containing him and the attendants, to prepare us measurably for what was coming. The unconscious master of the home was brought through the hall between banks of evergreens, delivered in obedience to his order issued but three hours earlier. Two tall Christmas-trees and three wagon-loads of running cedar, pine, and spruce heaped the floor, and were pushed aside hastily by the servants to make way for the mournful procession.

He did not speak or move after they laid him upon his own bed.

One more hour of anguished waiting, and we knew that he had entered upon the “happiest day of his life.”

XLIII

TWO BRIDALS—A BIRTH AND A PASSING—“MY LITTLE LOVE”—“DRIFTING OUT”—A NONPAREIL PARISH

IN October, 1867, I had the great happiness of seeing my favorite brother married to the woman he had loved so long and so faithfully that the marriage was the fitting and only sequel the romance of the Civil War could have. From the day of our coming to Newark, she, who was now my sister, then a school-girl, had established herself in our hearts. She was my sister Alice’s most intimate friend, and, after Alice left us, glided into the vacant place naturally. With the delicacy and discretion characteristic of a fine and noble nature, she never, during those dreary years of separation and silence, alluded, in her talks with me, to the tacit “understanding” existing between herself and my brother. When he visited us immediately upon his liberation from Fort Delaware, it was evident that both of the unacknowledged lovers took up the association where it had been severed four years ago.

They were wedded on October 5th. The next day Mr. (now “Doctor”) Terhune, the three little girls, and myself, with their nurse, took the train for Richmond to assist in the preparations for the marriage of Myrtle and “Will” Robertson. The newly wedded pair returned from their bridal tour in season to witness the second marriage, on October 17th.

On February 4, 1869, my little Myrtle opened her beautiful eyes upon the world in which she was to have an abiding-place for so short a time that the fast, bright months of her sojourn are as a dream to me at this distance from that spring and summer. She was a splendid baby, finely developed, perfect in feature, as in form, and grew so rapidly in size and strength that my fashionable friends pointed to her as a lively refutation of my theory that “bottle babies” were never so strong as those who had their natural nourishment. A tedious spell of intermittent fever that laid hold of me, when she was but two months old, deprived her of her rightful nutriment. When she was four months old, we removed for the summer to Sunnybank, and set aside one cow expressly for her use. She throve gloriously until, in September, dentition sapped her vitality, and, as I had dreaded might ensue upon the system of artificial feeding, none of the various substitutes for nature’s own provision for the young of the human race, were assimilated by the digestive organs. On the last day of the month she passed into safer hands than ours.

* * * * *

I have told the story of our Alice’s wonderful life in _My Little Love_. Now that my mind and nerves have regained a more healthful tone than they could claim during the months when I found a sad solace in the portraiture of our lost darling, I cannot trust myself to dwell at length upon the rich endowments of mind and heart that made the ten-year-old girl the idol of her home, and a favorite with playmates and acquaintances. Although thirty-five years have set that beautiful life among the things of a former generation, I still meet those who recollect and speak of her as one might of a round and perfect star.

We, her parents, knew her for what she was, while she was spared to glorify our home. Once and again, we congratulated ourselves that we comprehended the value of our treasure while we held it—did not wait for the brightening of the fleeting blessing. When He who bestowed the good and perfect gift recalled her to Himself, we thanked Him, from the sincere depths of broken hearts, that He had deemed us worthy to keep it for Him for almost eleven years.

She went from us January 1, 1874.

By the time the spring opened, repeated hemorrhages from lungs I had been vain enough to believe were exceptionally strong, had reduced me to a pitiable state of weakness.

If I have not spoken, at every stage of the narrative of these late years, of the unutterable goodness of Newark friends and parishioners, it is not that this had abated in degree, or weakened in quality. In all our afflictions they bore the part of comforters to whom our losses were theirs. Strong arms and hearts in our hours of weakness were ever at our call. When it became apparent that my health was seriously impaired, the “people,” with one voice, insisted that Doctor Terhune should take a vacation of uncertain length, and go with me to the Adirondacks for as long a time as might be needed to restore me to health and vigor.

I had worked hard for the past five or six years. Besides my literary engagements, which were many, including the arrangement of material for, and publication of, _Common Sense in the Household_, I was deep in church and charitable work, and had a large visiting-list. Little account was made, at that date, of nervous prostration. I should have laughed that little to scorn had it been intimated by physician or friend that I was a victim to the disorder. I know now, to a certainty, that I was so near the “verge” that a touch would have toppled me over. My very ignorance of the peril may have saved me from the fall.

We were four months in the Adirondacks. Except that the sore lungs drew in the resinous airs more freely than they had taken in the fog-laden salt air of the lowlands, and that I slept better, I could not discern any improvement in my condition when the shortening and cooling days called us southward.

In July, a telegram from Richmond had informed me of my mother’s death. So battered and worn was I that the full import of the tidings did not reach my mind and heart, until my brother Herbert sought in the balsam forests relief from the cares of home and parish, and we talked together of our common loss in the quiet woods fringing the lake. I shall never forget the strange chill that froze my heart during one of these talks, when I bethought myself that I now belonged to the “passing generation.” My mother’s going had struck down a barrier which kept off the cold blast from the boundless Sea of Eternity. I could not shake off the fancy for many weeks. It recurred to me in wakeful midnights, and in the enforced rest succeeding toilful days, until it threatened to become an obsession. Instead of accepting this and other, to me, novel and distressing sensations, as features of confirmed invalidism, I fought them with all the might of a will that was not used to submission.

The next winter was one of ceaseless conflict. I grew insanely sensitive on the subject of my failing health. When, after walking quickly up the stairs, or climbing the hill from the lower town to our home, a fit of coughing brought the blood to my lips, I stanched it with my handkerchief and kept the incident to myself. I went into a shop, or turned a corner, to avoid meeting any one who would be likely to question me as to my health, or remark upon my pallor. At home, the routine of work knew no break; I attended and presided at charitable and parish meetings, as if nervous prostration were a figment of the hypochondriacal imagination.

So well did I play the part to the members of my own household, that my husband himself believed me to be on the low, if not the high, road to recovery. He was as busy in his line as I pretended to be in mine, and certain projects affecting the future welfare of his parish were on foot, enlisting his lively interest. How far the pious deception may have gone, was not to be tested. The active intervention of one plain-spoken woman was the pivotal point of our two lives.

I mentioned, some chapters back, the call of one of my best friends and the best neighbor I ever had, on the day of Mr. Lincoln’s death. Although we had removed, by medical advice, to the higher part of the city, and a full mile away from her home, she never relaxed her neighborly kindness. I had not been aware of her close surveillance of myself; still less did I suspect at what conclusion she had arrived. She had reasons, cogent and sad, for surveillance and conclusions. Several members of her own family had died of consumption, and she was familiar with the indications of the Great White Plague. When she came, day after day, to take me to drive at noon, when, as she phrased it, “the world was properly aired,” and, when she could not come, sent carriage and coachman with the request that I would use the conveyance at pleasure—I was touched and a little amused at what was, I conceived, exaggerated solicitude for me, whose indisposition was only temporary. Meanwhile, her quick eyes and keen wits were busy. Not a change of color, not a flutter of the breath escaped her, and in the fulness of time she opened her mouth and spoke.

My husband had a habit, of many years’ standing, of winding up a busy, harassing day by dropping into the home of our whilom neighbors, and having a tranquillizing cigar with the husband. I never expected him home before midnight when he did this, and on one particular evening, knowing that he was at the B.’s, and feeling more than usually fatigued, I went to bed at ten. Awakened, by-and-by, by the glare of a gas-burner full in my face, I unclosed my eyes upon a visage so full of anxiety, so haggard with emotion, that I started up in alarm.

“Don’t be frightened!” he said, soothingly. “Nothing has happened. But, is it true that you are so ill as Mrs. B. would have me believe? And have I been blind?”

The energetic little lady had, as she confessed to me when I charged her with it, freed her burdened mind without reserve or fear:

“It was time somebody opened his eyes, and I felt myself called to do it.”

Within twenty-four hours a consultation of physicians was held.

They, too, made no secret of their verdict. The apex of the right lung was gone, and it was doubtful whether anything could prevent the rapid waste of both. When Doctor Terhune, ever a stanch believer in the efficacy of change of air and place, declared his determination to take me abroad, without the delay of a month, two of the Galens affirmed that it would be of no use. I “had not three months of life left to me, under the most favorable circumstances.”

The ghastly truth was withheld from me at the time. I was told that I must not spend another winter in Newark, and that we would, if possible, go to the south of Europe for the winter. “To go abroad” had been the dream of my life. Yet, under the anticipation of the labor and bustle of closing the house, perhaps breaking up our home for good, and going forth into a new world, my strength failed utterly. Now that my husband knew the worst, there was no more need of keeping up appearances. I became aware that I had, all along, been holding on to life with will-power that had no physical underpinning. Each day found me weaker and more spiritless. The idea that I was clinging to a shred of existence by a thinning thread, seized upon me like a nightmare. And I was tired! _tired!_ TIRED!

There came a day when I resolved to let go and drift out.

That was the way I put it to my husband when he approached my bed, from which I never arose until nine or ten o’clock, and inquired how I felt.

“I am worn out, holding on!” I informed him. “I shall not get up to-day. All that is needed to end the useless fight is to let go and drift out. I shall drift!”

He sat down on the side of the bed and looked at me. Not gloomily, but thoughtfully. There was not a suspicion of sentimentality in the gaze, or in the tone in which he remarked, reflectively:

“I appreciate fully what you mean, and how hard it is for you to keep on living. And I say nothing of the inconvenience it would cause your girls and myself were you to die. It is asking a great deal of you—” (bringing out the words slowly and with seeming reluctance). “But if you _could_ bring yourself to live until Bert is through college, it would be a great kindness all around. The boy will go to the devil without his mother. Think of it—won’t you? Just hold on until your boy is safely launched in life.”

With that he left me to “think of it.”

My boy! My baby! Just four years old, on my last birthday! The man-child, of whom I was wont to say proudly that he was the handsomest birthday gift I ever had, and that no young man could ever pay his mother a more delicate and gracious compliment than he had paid me in timing his advent upon December 21st. The baby that had Alice’s eyes and brunette coloring! I lay still, staring up at the ceiling, and doing the fastest thinking I had ever accomplished. I saw the motherless boy, sensitive and high-spirited, affectionate and clever, the butt of rude lads, and misinterpreted by brutish teachers; exposed to fiery temptations at school and in college, and yielding to them for the lack of a mother’s training and the ægis of a mother’s love.

“The boy will go to the devil without his mother!”

Hard words those, and curtly uttered, but they struck home as coaxings and arguments and pettings could not have done.

In half an hour my husband looked in upon me again. I intercepted remark or query by saying:

“Will you ring the bell for Rose to help me dress? I have made up my mind to hold on for a while longer.”

The tactful ruse had given me a new lease of life.

One more circumstance connected with our first foreign trip may be worth mentioning here.

During the summer of 1855, which I spent in Boston and the vicinity, I consulted Ossian Ashley with regard to a project that had engaged my mind for some months—_viz._, indulging my long-cherished desire to visit Europe, and to spend a year there. There was no reason, that I could see, why I should wait longer to put the plan into execution. My parents were living, and were in the prime of healthy maturity; I had plenty of money of my own, and, if I had not, my father would cheerfully defray the expenses of the trip. We discussed the scheme at length, and with growing zest. Then he made the proposition that his wife should accompany me, taking her boy and girl along (she had but two children then), and that he would join us in time to journey with us for a few months, and bring us home.

With this well-digested scheme in my mind, I returned to Richmond. There I met with strenuous opposition from an unexpected quarter:

“If you will stay at home and marry me, I guarantee to take you abroad within seven years,” was one of the few promises the speaker ever broke to me.

Just twenty-one years from the day in which Ossian Ashley and I blocked out the route his wife and I would take on the other side, I looked into his New York office to say that we had engaged passage for Liverpool for October 15th, and that we expected to be absent for two years at the least.