She dreaded our going. Clinging to us both as though she feared we might never return she pleadingly said, "Wait till your father comes," and her distress of mind caused me to put off our departure until father could arrive.
These moods of depression, these periods of suffering which she could not explain, were usually transitory, and this one soon passed. In a day or two she was free from pain, and quite cheerful. "You may go," she said at last, but warningly added, "Don't stay away too long!"
In spite of her smiling face, I kissed her good-by with a sense of uneasiness, almost of guilt. "It seems a selfish act to leave her at this time," I confessed to Zulime, "and yet if we are to get away at all, it is safer to go now."
In order to save time for our eastern trip, we went through Chicago almost without stopping, and upon reaching New York, took the same suite of rooms on Fifteenth Street in which we had lived the previous year. In an hour we were settled.
My brother, who was playing an engagement in the city, came at once to inquire about the old folks and I gave a good report. "Mother has her ups and downs," I explained, "but she is very comfortable in her new rooms. Of course she misses her sons and her new daughter—I am not sure, but she misses the new daughter more than she misses you and me, but we shall soon return to her."
The Eagle's Heart, which had been running with favor as a serial, was just being published in book form, and we were in high hopes of it.
At the same time the Century Company was preparing to issue Her Mountain Lover, which had already been printed in the magazine. Altogether my presence in New York seemed opportune, if not actually necessary, a fact which I made much of in writing to the old folks in the West.
Gilder, who met me on the street soon after our arrival in New York, spoke to me in praise of Her Mountain Lover. "I predict a great success for it. It has beauty——" here he smiled. "I am always preaching 'beauty' to you, but you need it! You should remember that the writing which is beautiful is the writing which lasts."
He was looking thin and bent and gray, and I experienced a keen pang of fear. "Gilder is growing old," I thought, and this feeling of change was deepened a few days later by the death of Charles Dudley Warner.
"The older literary men, the Writers who have been my guides and my exemplars, are dropping away! I am no longer 'a young and promising novelist.' It is time I delivered my message—if I have any," I reminded myself, with a realization that I was now in the mid-ranks, pushed on by younger and more vigorous authors. Frank Norris and Stewart Edward White were crowding close upon my lagging heels. With this in my thought I got out my manuscript and set to work.