Oh, it was so true that we packed into ten years the happiness that could normally be considered to last a lifetime—a long lifetime. Sometimes it seems almost as if we must have guessed it was to end so soon, and lived so as to crowd in all the joy we could while our time together was given us. I say so often that I stand right now the richest woman in the world—why talk of sympathy? I have our three precious, marvelously healthy children, I have perfect health myself, I have all and more than I can handle of big ambitious maturing plans, with a chance to see them carried out, I have enough to live on, and, greatest of all, fifteen years of perfect memories—And yet, to hear a snatch of a tune and know that the last time you heard it you were together—perhaps it was the very music they played as you left the theatre arm-in-arm that last night; to put on a dress you have not worn for some time and remember that, when you last had it on, it was the night you went, just the two of you, to Blanc's for dinner; to meet unexpectedly some friend, and recall that the last time you saw him it was that night you two, strolling with hands clasped, met him on Second Avenue accidentally, and chatted on the corner; to come across a necktie in a trunk, to read a book he had marked, to see his handwriting—perhaps just the address on an old baggage-check—Oh, one can sound so much braver than one feels! And then, because you have tried so hard to live up to the pride and faith he had in you, to be told: "You know I am surprised that you haven't taken Carl's death harder. You seem to be just the same exactly."
What is seeming? Time and time again, these months, I have thought, what do any of us know about what another person feels? A smile—a laugh—I used to think of course they stood for happiness. There can be many smiles, much laughter, and it means—nothing. But surely anything is kinder for a friend to see than tears!
When Carl returned from the East in January, he was more rushed than ever—his time more filled than ever with strike mediations, street-car arbitrations, cost of living surveys for the Government, conferences on lumber production. In all, he had mediated thirty-two strikes, sat on two arbitration boards, made three cost-of-living surveys for the Government. (Mediations did gall him—he grew intellectually impatient over this eternal patching up of what he was wont to call "a rotten system." Of course he saw the war-emergency need of it just then, but what he wanted to work on was, why were mediations ever necessary? what social and economic order would best ensure absence of friction?)
On the campus work piled up. He had promised to give a course on Employment Management, especially to train men to go into the lumber industries with a new vision. (Each big company east of the mountains was to send a representative.) It was also open to seniors in college, and a splendid group it was, almost every one pledged to take up employment management as their vocation on graduation—no fear that they would take it up with a capitalist bias. Then—his friends and I had to laugh, it was so like him—the afternoon of the morning he arrived, he was in the thick of a scrap on the campus over a principle he held to tenaciously—the abolition of the one-year modern-language requirement for students in his college. To use his own expression, he "went to the bat on it," and at a faculty meeting that afternoon it carried. He had been working his little campaign for a couple of months, but in his absence in the East the other side had been busy. He returned just in time for the fray. Every one knows what a farce one year of a modern language is at college; even several of the language teachers themselves were frank enough to admit it. But it was an academic tradition! I think the two words that upset Carl most were "efficiency" and "tradition"—both being used too often as an excuse for practices that did more harm than good.
And then came one Tuesday, the fifth of March. He had his hands full all morning with the continued threatened upheavals of the longshoremen. About noon the telephone rang—threatened strike in all the flour-mills; Dr. Parker must come at once. (I am reminded of a description which was published of Carl as a mediator. "He thought of himself as a physician and of an industry on strike as the patient. And he did not merely ease the patient's pain with opiates. He used the knife and tried for permanent cures.") I finally reached him by telephone; his voice sounded tired, for he had had a very hard morning. By one o'clock he was working on the flour-mill situation. He could not get home for dinner. About midnight he appeared, having sat almost twelve hours steadily on the new flour-difficulty. He was "all in," he said.
The next morning, one of the rare instances in our years together, he claimed that he did not feel like getting up. But there were four important conferences that day to attend to, besides his work at college. He dressed, ate breakfast, then said he felt feverish. His temperature was 102. I made him get back into bed—let all the conferences on earth explode. The next day his temperature was 105. "This has taught us our lesson—no more living at this pace. I don't need two reminders that I ought to call a halt." Thursday, Friday, and Saturday he lay there, too weary to talk, not able to sleep at all nights; the doctor coming regularly, but unable to tell just what the trouble was, other than a "breakdown."
Saturday afternoon he felt a little better; we planned then what we would do when he got well. The doctor had said that he should allow himself at least a month before going back to college. One month given to us! "Just think of the writing I can get done, being around home with my family!" There was an article for Taussig half done to appear in the "Quarterly Journal of Economics," a more technical analysis of the I.W.W. than had appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly"; he had just begun a review for the "American Journal of Economics" of Hoxie's "Trade-Unionism." Then he was full of ideas for a second article he had promised the "Atlantic"—"Is the United States a Nation?"—"And think of being able to see all I want of the June-Bug!"
Since he had not slept for three nights, the doctor left powders which I was to give him for Saturday night. Still he could not sleep. He thought that, if I read aloud to him in a monotonous tone of voice, he could perhaps drop off. I got a high-school copy of "From Milton to Tennyson," and read every sing-songy poem I could find—"The Ancient Mariner" twice, hardly pronouncing the words as I droned along. Then he began to get delirious.
It is a very terrifying experience—to see for the first time a person in a delirium, and that person the one you love most on earth. All night long I sat there trying to quiet him—it was always some mediation, some committee of employers he was attending. He would say: "I am so tired—can't you people come to some agreement, so that I can go home and sleep?"