Definitely abandoning all intention of farming, he put his Dakota land on sale and bought several small cottages in West Salem. As a landlord in a modest way, he rejoiced in the fact that his income was almost entirely free from the results of harvest. It irked him (when he thought of it) to admit that all his pioneering had been a failure, that all his early rising, and his ceaseless labor had availed so little, but the respect in which he was now held as householder, and as President of the village, compensated him in such degree that he was able to ignore his ill success as a wheat raiser.
"This legacy proves once again the magic of money," I remarked to Zulime. "Father can now grow old with dignity and confidence. His living is assured."
It remains to say that this inheritance also lifted indirectly a part of my own burden. It took from me something of the financial responsibility concerning the household whose upkeep I had shared for ten years or more. Mother was still my care, but not in the same sense as before, for my father with vast pride volunteered to pay all the household expenses. He even insisted upon paying for an extra maid and gardener. Now that he no longer needed the cash returns from the garden, he began to express a pleasure in it. He was content with making it an esthetic or at most a household enterprise.
CHAPTER TWELVE
We Tour the Oklahoma Prairie
One of the disadvantages of being a fictionist lies in the fact that the history of one's imaginary people halts just in proportion as one's mind is burdened with the sorrowful realities of one's own life. A troubled bank clerk can (I believe) cast up a column of figures, an actor can declaim while his heart is breaking, but a novelist can't—or at any rate I can't—write stories while some friend or relative is in pain and calling for relief. Composition is dependent in my case upon a delicately adjusted mood, and a very small pebble is sufficient to turn the currents of my mind into a dry channel.
My aunt's death was a sad shock to my mother and until she regained something of her cheerful temper, I was unable to take up and continue the action of my novel. I kept up the habit of going to my study, but for a week or more I could not write anything but letters.
By the tenth of March we were all longing with deepest hunger for the coming of spring. According to the old almanac's saying we had a right to expect on the twenty-first a relenting of the rigors of the north, but it did not come. "March the twenty-first is spring and little birds begin to sing" was not true of the Valley this year. For two weeks longer, the icy winds continued to sweep with Arctic severity across the crests of the hills, and clouds of snow almost daily sifted down through the bare branches of the elms. At times the landscape, mockingly beautiful, was white and bleak as January. Drafts filled the lanes and sleigh-bells jingled mockingly.