He reminded me of the foolish speech, many and many a time, in the weeks that dragged themselves by us who watched the steady ebb of vital forces and the pitiable failure of all remedial agencies. He was the finest horseman I have ever known, and, as I have already said, sat his saddle as if he were a part of the spirited animal he bestrode. “Let me once get into the saddle again, and all will be right,” had been his hopeful prognostication in every illness prior to this mysterious disorder. He mounted his horse a few times after he got home, and rode for a mile or two, but listlessly and with pain. Then he ceased to ask for the old-time tonic that had acted like a magic potion upon the exhausted body, in answer to the indomitable spirit. The spring of desire and courage was not broken, but it bent more and more visibly daily, until it was a gray wraith of the former man that lay, hour after hour, upon the library sofa, uncomplaining and patient, utterly indifferent to things that once brought light to the eyes and ring to the voice. Even his voice—a marvel up to seventy-five, for sweetness, resonance, and strength—quavered and broke when he forced himself to speak.
In this, our sore and unprecedented extremity, we who watched him took counsel together and urged him to go to the city and consult Doctor McBurney, the ablest specialist and surgeon in New York, and with no superior in America. The patient offered feeble opposition. It was easier to do as we wished, than to argue the point. Our eldest daughter was living in New York, and not far from the surgeon. We lost no time in securing an appointment, and the surgeon was prompt in decision. “The minor operation,” in which he had had no hand, was well enough as far as scalpel and probe had gone, but the seat of the malady was left untouched. There was a malignant internal growth which had already poisoned the blood. To delay a “major operation” a fortnight, would be to forfeit the one and only chance of life. It might already be too late.
In three days the almost dying man was in the Presbyterian Hospital, and under the knife.
I hasten past the month that followed. With clean blood, a temperate life, and a superb constitution as his backers, my brave husband stood once more upon his feet, and was apparently upon the highroad to recovery. When he was restored to our home-circle in season for the Christmas festivities, we rejoiced without a prevision of possible further ill from the hateful cause, now forever removed, as we fondly believed. Early in January, I had a sudden and violent hemorrhage from the lungs, superinduced, we were told by the eminent specialist summoned immediately, by the long-continued nervous strain and general weakening of the entire system.
Doctor Terhune took me to the train when I set out upon the southern trip prescribed strenuously by consulting practitioners. My dearest and faithful brother was to meet me on the last stage of my easy journey. When the late invalid waved his hat to me from the platform as the train began to move, I noted with pride and devout gratitude, how clear were his blue eyes, how healthful his complexion, and, looking back as far as I could catch sight of him, that his step had the elasticity of a boy of twenty.
He wrote daily to me, and in the old, lively fashion, for three weeks. Then a letter dictated by him to Christine told of a boil upon his wrist that hindered pen-work. I “was not to be uneasy. It was probably a wholesome working out of the virus of original sin. He would be all the better when the system was freed from it.”
I wrote at once, begging that nothing might be concealed from me, and setting a day for my return.
A telegram from my husband forbade me to stir until the time originally named as the limit of my visit. And the daily letters continued to arrive. One, I recollect, began:
“A second rising, farther up the arm, is ‘carrying on the work of purification.’ So says the poor Pater, with a rueful glance at his bandaged hand and arm. If it were only the left, and not the right hand, he would not have to put up with this unworthy amanuensis.”
Those six weeks in Richmond stand out in memory like sunlighted peaks seen between clouds that gathered below and all around it. My brother’s wife, the cherished girl-friend of our Newark life, was so far from well that we enacted the rôles of semi-invalids in company. Sometimes we breakfasted in her room, sometimes in mine, as the humor seized us. I lounged in one easy-chair, and she in another, all the forenoon, making no pretence of occupation. Had we not been straitly commanded to do nothing but get well? We drove out in company, every moderately fine day. When we tired of talking (which was seldom), we had our books. I sent to a book-store for a copy of Barrie’s Margaret Ogilvie—the matchless tribute of the brilliant son to the peasant woman from whom he drew all that was noblest and highest in himself—and gave it to my fellow-invalid to read. Then we talked it over—we two mothers—tenderly and happily, as befitted the parents of grown children who were fulfilling our best hopes for them. I repeated to her once, in the twilight of a winter afternoon, as we sat before the blazing fire of soft coal that tinted the far corners of the library a soft, dusky red—a stanza of Elizabeth Akers Allen’s Rock Me to Sleep, Mother: