Her sweet spirit was about to leave its frail body, that was evident to me as I looked down at her, but she knew me and whispered, "I'm glad to have you at home." She showed no fear of death, in fact she appeared unconscious of her grave condition. She was a beautiful character and to see her lying there beneath her old-fashioned quilt, so small and helpless, so patient, lonely and sad, made speech difficult for me. She had meant much in my life. The serene dignity with which she and her mother had carried the best New England traditions into the rough front rank of the Border, was still written in the lines of her face. I had never seen her angry or bitter, and I had never heard her utter an unkind word.
Zulime took charge of the work about the house with a cheerfulness which amazed me. My mother with pathetic confidence leaned upon her daughter's strong young shoulders and the music of my stern old father's voice as he said, "Well, daughter, I'm glad you're here," was a revelation to me. He already loved her as if she were his very own, and she responded to his affection in a way which put me still more deeply in her debt. It would have been disheartening, but not at all surprising, had she found the village and my home intolerable, but she did not—she appeared content, sustained we will say, by her sense of duty.
Her situation was difficult. Imprisoned in the snowy silences of the little valley, dependent on her neighbors for entertainment, and confronted with the care of two invalids and a fretful husband, she was put to a rigid test.
Beside our base-burning stove she sat night after night playing cinch or dominoes to amuse my father, while creaking footsteps went by on the frosty board-walks and in a distant room my aunt lay waiting for the soft step of the Grim Intruder. It must have seemed a gray outlook for my bride but she never by word or look displayed uneasiness.
Without putting our conviction into words, we all realized that my aunt's departure was but a matter of a few days. "There is nothing to do," the doctor said. "She will go like a person falling asleep. All you can do is wait—" And so the days passed.
We went to bed each night at ten and quite as regularly rose at half-past six. Dinner came exactly at noon, supper precisely at six. Although my upstairs study was a kind of retreat, we spent less time in it than we had planned to do, for mother was so appealingly wistful to have us near her that neither of us had the heart to deny her. She could not endure to have us both absent. Careful not to interrupt my writing, she considered Zulime's case in different light. "You can read, or sew or knit down here just as well as up there," she said. "It is a comfort for me just to have you sit where I can look at you."
She loved to hear me read aloud, and this I often did in the evening while she sat beside Zulime and watched her fingers fly about her sewing. These were blissful hours for her, and in these after years I take a measure of comfort in remembering the part I had in making them possible.
Slowly but steadily Susan Garland's vital forces died out, and at last there came a morning when her breath faltered on her lips. She had gone away, as she had lived, with quiet dignity. Notwithstanding her almost constant suffering she had always been a calmly cheerful soul and her passing, while it left us serious did not sadden us. Her life came to its end without struggle and her face was peaceful.
She was the last of my father's immediate family, and to him was transmitted in due course of law, the estate with which her husband had left her, a dower, which though small had enabled her to live independently of her relatives and in simple comfort. It was a matter of but a few thousand dollars, but its possession now made the most fundamental change in my father's way of life. The effect of this certain income upon his character was almost magical. He took on a sense of security, a feeling of independence, a freedom from worry such as he had been trying for over sixty years, without success, to attain.
It released him from the tyranny of the skies. All his life he had been menaced by the "weather." Clouds, snows, winds, had been his unrelenting antagonists. Hardly an hour of his past had been free from a fear of disaster. The glare of the sun, the direction of the wind, the assembling of clouds at sunset,—all the minute signs of change, of storm, of destruction had been his incessant minute study. For over fifty years he had been enslaved to the seasons. His sister's blessing liberated him. He agonized no more about the fall of frost, the slash of hail, the threat of tempest. Neither chinch bugs nor drought nor army worms could break his rest. He slept in comfort and rose in confidence. He retained a general interest in crops, of course, but he no longer ate his bread in fear, and just in proportion as he realized his release from these corroding, long-endured cares, did he take on mellowness and humor. He became another man altogether. He ceased to worry and hurry. His tone, his manner became those of a citizen of substance, of genial leisure. He began to speak of travel!