I sent no word to Bermuda that I was coming, and when I arrived he was not expecting me.
"Why," he said, holding out his hand, "you did not tell us you were coming?"
"No," I said, "it is rather sudden. I didn't quite like the sound of your last letters."
"But those were not serious. You shouldn't have come on my account."
I said then that I had come on my own account, that I had felt the need of recreation, and had decided to run down and come home with him.
"That's—very—good," he said, in his slow, gentle fashion. "Wow I'm glad to see you."
His breakfast came in and he ate with appetite. I had thought him thin and pale, at first sight, but his color had come back now, and his eyes were bright. He told me of the fierce attacks of the pain, and how he had been given hypodermic injections which he amusingly termed "hypnotic injunctions" and "the sub-cutaneous." From Mr. and Mrs. Allen I learned how slender had been his chances, and how uncertain were the days ahead. Mr. Allen had already engaged passage home for April 12th.
He seemed so little like a man whose days were numbered. On the afternoon of my arrival we drove out, as we had done on our former visit, and he discussed some of the old subjects in quite the old way. I had sold for him, for six thousand dollars, the farm where Jean had kept her animals, and he wished to use the money in erecting for her some sort of memorial. He agreed that a building to hold the library which he had already donated to the town of Redding would be appropriate and useful. He asked me to write at once to his lawyer and have the matter arranged.
We did not drive out again. The pains held off for several days, and he was gay and went out on the lawn, but most of the time he sat propped up in bed, reading and smoking. When I looked at him there, so full of vigor and the joy of life, I could not persuade myself that he would not outlive us all.
He had written very little in Bermuda—his last work being a chapter of amusing "Advice"—for me, as he confessed—what I was to do upon reaching the gate of which St. Peter is said to keep the key. As it is the last writing he ever did, and because it is characteristic, one or two paragraphs may be admitted here: