To me, came the insistent thought, "Soon he must go to join Mother in the little plot under the pines beyond Neshonoc." In spite of my philosophy, I imagined their reunion somehow, somewhere.
Tender and sweet were the scenes which the words of my songs evoked—pictures which had nothing to do with the music except by association, forms and faces of far-off days, of Dry Run Prairie and its neighbors, and of the still farther and dimmer and more magical experiences of Green's Coulee, before the call to war.
I sang the song my uncle Bailey loved. A song which took him back to his boyhood's home in Maine.
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"The river's running just the same, The willows on its side Are larger than they were, dear Tom, The stream appears less wide, And stooping down to take a drink, Dear Heart, I started so, To see how sadly I was changed Since forty years ago!" |
His songs, his friends, his thoughts were all of the past except when they dwelt on his grandchildren—and they, after six months' absence, were shadowy, fairy-like forms in his memory. He found it difficult to recall them precisely. He longed for them but his longing was for something vaguely bright and cheerful and tender. David and William and Susan and Belle were much more vividly real to him than Constance or Mary Isabel.
* * * * * *
On Monday morning he was up early. "Now let's get to work," he said. "I can't hoe as I used to do, and the weeds are getting the start of me." To him the garden was a battlefield, a contest with purslane and he hated to be worsted.
"Don't worry about the garden," I said. "It is not very important. What does it matter if the 'pussley' does cover the ground?"
He would not have this. "It matters a good deal," he replied with hot resentment, "and it won't happen so long as I can stand up and shove a hoe."
To relieve his anxiety and to be sure that he did not overwork, I hired Uncle Frank McClintock to come down for two or three days a week to help kill the weeds. "The crop is not important to me," I said to him privately, "but it is important that you should keep a close watch on Father while I am away. He is getting feeble and forgetful. See him every day, and wire me if he is in need of anything. I must go back to the city for a few weeks. If you need me send word and I'll come at once."