"It must be that she is better," Zulime said, but at nine o'clock a telegram from the doctor destroyed all hope. "Your mother is unconscious. Do not hope to find her alive," was his desolating message.
Every devoted son who reads this line will shiver as I shivered. That warning came like a wind from the dark spaces of a bleak, uncharted deep. It changed my world. For twenty years my mother had been my chief care. My daily thought ran to her. Only when deeply absorbed in my work had she been absent from my conscious mind. For her I had planned, for her I had saved, for her I had built, and now——!
That day was the longest, bitterest, I had ever known, for the reason that, mixed with my grief, my sense of remorse, was a feeling of utter helplessness. In desperate desire for haste I could only lumpishly wait. Another day of agony, another interminable night of pain must pass before I could reach the shadowed Homestead. Nothing could shorten the interval. Then, too, I realized that she whom I would comfort had already gone beyond my aid, beyond any comfort I could send.
Over and over I repeated, "If only we had started a few days sooner!" The truth is I had failed of a son's duty just when that duty was most needed, and this conviction brought an almost intolerable ache into my throat. Nothing that Zulime could do or say removed that pain. I could not eat, and I could not rest.
We reached Chicago in time to catch the night train at ten o'clock, and in almost utter mental exhaustion I fell asleep about midnight, and slept till nearly daylight.
Father met us at the train, as he had so often done before, but this time there was something in the pinched gray look of his face, something in the filmed light of his eagle eyes which denoted, movingly, the tragic experiences through which he had just passed. Before he spoke I knew that mother had passed beyond my reach.
As he gripped my hand I perceived that he was smitten but unbowed. He was taking his orders like a soldier, without complaint or question.—Only when Zulime kissed him did he give way.
As we entered the gate I perceived with a pang of dread the wheeled chair, standing empty on the porch, pathetic witness of the one who had no further need of it. Within doors, the house showed the disorder, the desolate confusion, the terror which death had brought. The furniture was disarranged—the floor muddy, and in the midst of the chill little parlor rested a sinister, flower-strewn box. In this was all that remained of Isabel McClintock, my mother.
For a few minutes I stood looking about me, a scalding blur in my eyes, a choking in my throat. The south room, her room, was empty, intolerably, accusingly empty. The gentle, gray-haired figure was no longer in its place before the window. The smiling lips which had so often touched my cheek on my return were cold. The sweet, hesitant voice was forever silent.
Her dear face I did not see. I refused to look upon her in her coffin. I wanted to remember her as she appeared when I said good-by to her that bright October evening, her white hair gleaming in the light of the lamp, while soft curves about her lips suggested a beautiful serenity. How patient and loving she had been! Even though she feared that she might never see us again she had sent us away in cheerful self-sacrifice.