I would have been entirely happy in the midst of many delightful meetings with my fellow craftsmen had it not been for a growing sense of anxiety concerning my mother's condition. Father's brief notes were not reassuring. "Your mother needs you," he said, in effect, and I began to plan our return. "We have a few engagements," I wrote, "but you may expect us for our usual Thanksgiving Dinner."
I will not say that I had a definite premonition of trouble, I was just uneasy. I felt inclined to drop all our social engagements and start for home but I did not carry out the impulse.
On Sunday, the twenty-fifth of November, after a delightful dinner with Augustus Thomas in his home at New Rochelle, Zulime and I returned to our apartment in happiest humor, to be met by a telegram which went to my heart like the thrust of a bayonet. It was from my father. "Your mother is very low. Come at once."
For a few moments I remained standing, like a man stunned by a savage blow. Then I awoke to the need of haste in getting away to the West. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and the last train which would enable us to connect with the Milwaukee train from Chicago to West Salem, left at half-past six. "We must make that train," I said to Zulime with a desperate realization of the need of haste.
The rush of packing, the excitement of getting to the station kept me from the sinking of spirit, the agony of self-accusation which set in the moment we were safely in the sleeping car, and speeding on our homeward way. "If only we can reach her before it is too late," was my prayer. "I shall never forgive myself for leaving her. I knew she was not well," I confessed to Zulime, whose serene optimism comforted me, or at least dulled the edge of my self-reproach. Again I telegraphed that we were coming, giving the name and number of our train, hoping to have an encouraging reply from father or the doctor during the evening, but none came.
The long agonizing hours wore on. A hundred times I accused myself, "I should not have left her."
At all points where I attacked myself, my wife defended me, excused me, and yet I could not clear myself—could not rest. In imagination I pictured that dear, sweet face turned toward the door, and heard that faint voice asking for me.
It is true I had done many considerate things for her, but I had not done enough. Money I had given her, and a home, but I had not given her as much of my time, my service, as I might have done,—as I should have done. My going away to the city at the very moment when my presence was most necessary seemed base desertion. While she had been suffering, longing and lonely, I had been feasting. All my honors, all my writing, seemed at this moment too slight, too trivial to counter-balance my mother's need, my mother's love.
Midnight came without a message, and I went to bed, slightly comforted, hoping that a turn for the better had taken place. I slept fitfully, waking again and again to the bleak possibilities of the day. A persistent vision of a gray-haired mother watching and waiting for her sons filled my brain. That she was also longing for Zulime I knew, for she loved her, and thought of her as a daughter.
In this agony of remorse and fear I wore out the night, and as no word came in the morning, I ate my breakfast in half-recovered tranquillity.