That chair, were it endowed with speech, could tell volumes. The same insight which expressed itself throughout so understandingly in regard to my devotion to Toto did so again, and in so touching a way, that it is the most vivid and enduring memory I have of Mr. Saltus.
The attacks of heart irregularity increasing, it became necessary for me to feel his pulse at intervals and give him the tablets of nitroglycerin. As soon as he felt one coming on he struggled through the hall into my room, to sink into that arm-chair and put his hand out.
"Quick,—quick,—Mowgy. Feel my pulse," he said, many and many a time. "I think I'm sinking. Shall I take my medsy?" as he always called his medicine.
It was a serious responsibility for a novice. Night or day, whenever he felt an attack coming on, he went over the same route, and sank into the same chair. It seemed such a waste of effort, when with a word he could have called me to him. When I suggested as much he smiled, but continued the slow and painful journey through the hall to my room. Upon one occasion the effort to get there was such, that his hands were like ice and his lips blue when he reached me. Sinking into the chair he looked at me, but the hand he extended was not for me to feel his pulse, but to take in mine. There was no need for words to tell me that he thought he was dying, having used, as he believed, his last ounce of strength to reach his goal. With the touch of his hand came the consciousness, clear as clairvoyance, that it was his intention to die in that particular chair—if he could; and the significance of it brought the tears to my eyes. He was determined that the poignant memories of Toto, associated with the chair, should be so interwoven with his own, that her chair as well as her ashes should become indissolubly a part of himself. No touching act of his whole life so stretched out and reached the inner recesses of my being as that one. It wiped out a multitude of lesser things as the sun obliterates candle light. With unerring intuition, he knew how this would penetrate more and more with the years, till it would become indelibly stamped on my heart.
This, and one other incident, small in itself yet colossal in its significance, and showing the sweet and sympathetic side of his nature, stand in relief against his subsidiary weaknesses. Shortly before his death, my father had, at Mr. Saltus' request, given him a small canvas, a daub of daisies painted by me at the age of seven, and, crude as it was, retained by an unusually devoted parent. Mr. Saltus was particularly attached to it, and it hung in the room beside his bed. Over and over I begged him to let me destroy the hideous thing, but he was up in arms at the suggestion, replying every time:—
"After a while you can, for no one but Snipps shall have those daisies. When I die I want you to put them in my hands and have them cremated with me."
The day before his passing he referred to it again, exacting a promise that I would do so,—and it was carried out. Though the subject of death was constantly on his tongue, and he outlined the details he wanted carried out for his funeral, it was more in the way of precaution than anything else, that being a marked characteristic of his.
Sitting in the arm-chair by the window in my bed-room the month before his passing, he looked out into the splendid immensity of the June sky and chatted freely and happily about the Great Adventure.
"What a lot I must make good next life!" he exclaimed again and again. "I did not realize the verities for so long. The light came late, but I cannot lose it now, and I will build better next time."
His tortured body had become a prison to him.