None of them were gay and yet each took a poignant pleasure in sharing the rhythm of the column, and my father voiced this emotion when he murmured, "I ought to be down there with my company."
To touch elbows just once more, to be a part of the file would have been at once profoundly sad and sadly sweet, and he wiped the tears from his cheeks in a silence which was more expressive than any words could have been.
To me each passing phalanx was composed of piteous old men—to my sire they were fragments of a colossal dream—an epic of song and steel. "In ten years he and they will all be at rest in 'fame's eternal camping ground,'" I thought with a benumbing realization of the swift, inexorable rush of time—a tragedy which no fluttering of bright flags, no flare of brave bugles could lighten or conceal. It was not an army in review, it was an epoch passing to its grave.
After the parade was over, as we were going home in the car, tired, silent and sad, I perceived my father as others saw him, a white-haired veteran whose days of marching, of exploration were over. His powerful figure, so resilient and so brave was stooping to its end. His restless feet were weary.
However, this was only a mood with him. A night's sleep brought back his courage, and his energy to a most amazing degree, and I was again called upon to show him the "sights" of the city—that is to say, we once more viewed the Stock Yards, the Masonic Temple and Lincoln Park. He also asked me to go with him for a sail across the Lake, but at this point I rebelled. "I am willing to climb tall buildings or visit the Zoo, but I draw the line at a trip to Muskegon."
With guilty conscience I watched him start off for the dock alone, but this sentiment on my part was wasted. A score of "comrades" on the boat more than made up for my absence, and at sunset he returned beaming, triumphant, perfectly satisfied with his day's sail. "Now, I'm ready to go home," he announced.
After putting him on the train next day I opened my desk in my quiet room on Elm Street, with a feeling of being half-in and half-out of the state of matrimony. In some ways I liked being alone. A greater power of concentration resulted. With no disturbing household influences, no distracting interests, I wrote all the morning, but at night, when my work was done, my mind went out toward my young wife. To have her moving about the room would have been pleasant. To walk with her to the studio would have been a joy. As a novelist, I bitterly resented all the minute domestic worries, but as a human being I rejoiced in my new relationship. "Can I combine the two activities? Will being a husband and a householder cramp and defeat me as a novelist?"
These questions every writer who is ambitious to excel, must answer for himself. So far as I was concerned, the decision had been made. Having elected myself into the ranks of those who were carrying forward the immemorial traditions of the race, there was no turning back for me. I ended the week by going out to Eagle's Nest Camp, where Zulime met me to renew the delight of our days of courtship.
Even here, I did not neglect my task. Wallace Heckman gave me a desk in the attic and there each morning I hammered away, eager to get my material "roughed out" while it was hot in my memory. I often wrote four thousand words between breakfast and luncheon. One story took shape as a brief prose epic of the Sioux, a special pleading from the standpoint of a young educated red man, to whom Sitting Bull was a kind of Themistocles. Though based on accurate information, I intended it to be not so much a history as an interpretation. It interested me at the time and so—I wasted a week!
Life at camp was very pleasant, but as my brother wrote me that he must return to New York I felt it my duty to go home and see that my mother "attended" the County Fair, which was a most important event to her. "Mother's life retains so few interests," I explained to Zulime, "that to miss the Fair would be to her a great deprivation. You can stay here but I must go home and take her down to the old settlers' picnic in Floral Hall."