Book 2 - Chapter 26. A Spray Of Wild Roses

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_ CHAPTER XXVI. A Spray of Wild Roses

Although for several years my wife and children had spent four months of each year in West Salem, and notwithstanding the fact that my father was free to come down to visit us at any time, I suffered a feeling of uneasiness (almost of guilt), whenever I thought of him camping alone for the larger part of the year in that big, silent house. His love for the children and for Zulime made every day of his lonely life a reproach to me, and yet there seemed no way in which I could justly grant him more of our time. The welfare of my wife and the education of the children must be considered.

He was nearing his eighty-fourth birthday, and a realization that every week in which he did not see his granddaughters was an irreparable loss, gave me uneasiness. It was a comfort to think of him sitting in an easy chair in the blaze of a fireplace which he loved and found a solace and yet he was a lonely old man--that could not be denied. He made no complaint in his short infrequent letters although as spring came on he once or twice asked, "Why don't you come up? The best place for the children is on the lawn under the maples."

In one note to me he said, "My old legs are giving out. I don't enjoy walking any more. I don't stand the work of the garden as well as I did last year. You'd better come up and help me put in the seed."

This confession produced in me a keen pang. He who had marched so tirelessly under the lead of Grant and Thomas; he who had fearlessly cruised the pine forests of Wisconsin, and joyously explored the prairies of Iowa and Minnesota, was now uncertain of his footing. Alarmed more than I cared to confess, I hurried up to help him, and to tell him of the success of _The Middle Border_, which was in truth as much his story as mine.

The air was thick with bird songs as I walked up the street, for it was late April, and I came upon him at work in the garden, bareheaded as usual, his white hair gleaming in the sunlight like a silver crown.

Outwardly serene, without a trace of bitterness in his voice, he spoke of his growing weakness. "Oh, the old machine is wearing out, that's all." Aware of his decline he accepted it as something in the natural course of human life and was content.

Several of his comrades had dropped away during the winter and he was aware that all of his generation were nearing their end. "There's only one more migration left for us," he said composedly, yet with a note of regret. Not on the strength of any particular religious creed but by reason of a manly faith in the universe he faced death. He was a kind of primitive warrior, who, having lived honorably, was prepared to meet what was to come. "I've no complaint to make," he said, "I've had a long life and on the whole a happy life. I'm ready for the bugle."

This was the faith of a pathfinder, a philosophy born of the open spaces, courage generated by the sun and the wind. "I find it hard to keep warm on dark days," he explained. "I guess my old heart is getting tired," and as he spoke I thought of the strain which that brave heart had undergone in its eighty years of action, on the battlefield, along the river, in the logging camps, and throughout all the stern, unceasing years of labor on the farm. His tireless energy and his indomitable spirit came back, filling my mind with pictures of his swift and graceful use of axe and scythe, and when I spoke of the early days, he found it difficult to reply--they were so beautiful in retrospect.

The next day was Sunday, and Sunday afternoon was for him a period of musing, an hour of dream, and as night began to fall he turned to me and with familiar accent called out, "Come, Hamlin, sing some of the songs your mother used to love," and I complied, although I could play but a crude accompaniment to my voice. First of all I sang "Rise and Shine" and "The Sweet Story of Old" in acknowledgment of the Sabbath, then passed to "The Old Musician and His Harp," ending with "When You and I Were Young, Maggie," in which I discerned a darker significance--a deeper pathos than ever before. It had now a personal, poignant application.

Tears misted his eyes as I uttered the line, "But now we are aged and gray, Maggie, the trials of life are nearly done," and at the close he was silent with emotion. He, too, was aged and gray, his trials of life nearly done, and the one who had been his solace and his stay had passed beyond recall.

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.

"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."

He understood, and I went away feeling more at ease. I relied on Uncle Frank's interest in him.

Now, it chanced that just before the date of our return to the Homestead, Lily Morris, wife of the newly-appointed ambassador to Sweden, invited my wife and children to accompany her on a trip to the Big Horn Mountains and we were all torn between opposing duties and desires.

Eager to see "Papa's Mountains," yet loath to lose anything of dear old West Salem, Mary Isabel was pathetically perplexed. Connie was all for West Salem but Zulime who knew the charm of the West decided to go, and again I visited Father to tell him the news and to explain that we would all be with him in August. The fear of disappointing him was the only cloud on the happy prospect.

With a feeling of guilt I met him with the news of our change of plan, softening the blow as best I could. He bore it composedly, though sadly, while I explained that I could not possibly have shown the children the mountains of my own accord. "I have some lectures in Colorado," I explained, "but I shall not be gone long."

"I had counted on seeing Zulime and the children next week," was all he said.

Just before my return to the city, he sent for a team, and together we drove down to the little Neshonoc burying ground. "I want to inspect your mother's grave," he explained.

On the way, as we were passing a clump of wild roses, he asked me to stop and cut some of them. "Your mother was fond of wild roses," he said, "I'd like to put a handful on her grave."

The penetrating odor of those exquisite blooms brought to my mind vistas of the glorious sunlit, odorous prairies of Iowa, and to gather and put into his hand a spray of them, was like taking part in a poem--a poignant threnody of age, for he received them in silence, and held them with tender care, his mind far away in the past.

Silently we entered the gate of the burial ground, and slowly approached the mound under which my mother's body rested, and as I studied the thin form and bending head of my intrepid sire, I realized that he was in very truth treading the edge of his own grave. My eyes grew dim with tears and my throat ached with a sense of impending loss, and a pity for him which I could conceal only by looking away at the hills.

Nevertheless, he was calmer than I. "Here is where I want to lie," he said quietly and stooping, softly spread his sprays of roses above the mound. "She loved all the prairie flowers," he said, "but she specially liked wild roses. I always used to bring them to her from the fields. We had oceans of them in Dakota in those days."

It was a commonplace little burial ground with a few trees and here and there a bed of lilies or phlox, yet it had charm. It was a sunny and friendly place, a silent acre whose name and history went back to the beginning of the first white settlement in the valley. On its monuments were chiseled the familiar names of pioneers, and it was characteristic of the time and deeply characteristic of the McClintocks, to be told, by my father, that in some way the exact location of my grandmother's grave had been lost and that no stone marked the spot where my grandfather was buried.

We wandered around among the graves for half an hour while Father spoke of the men and women whose names were on the low and leaning stones. "They were American," he said. "These German neighbors of ours are all right in their way, but it isn't our way. They are good citizens as far as they know how to be, but they don't think in our words. Soon there won't be any of the old families left. My world is just about gone, and so I don't mind going myself, only I want to go quick. I don't want to be bedridden for months as Vance McKinley was. If I could have my wish, I'd go out like a candle in a puff of wind,--and I believe that's the way I shall go."

It was a radiant June afternoon and as we drove back along the familiar lane toward the hills softened by the mist, we looked away over a valley throbbing with life and rich with the shining abundance of growing grain--a rich and peaceful and lovely valley to me--but how much more it all meant to my father! Every hill had its memories, every turn in the road opened a vista into the past. The mill, the covered bridge, the lonely pine by the river's bank,--all, all spoke to him of those he had loved and lost.

With guilty reluctance I confessed that the return of the children had again been postponed. "Mrs. Morris cannot tell just when she will return--I fear not before the first of September. It is a wonderful opportunity for the children to see the mountains. I could not afford to take them on such a trip--much as I should like to do so--and there is no telling when such another opportunity will offer. Mary Isabel is just at the right age to remember all she sees and a summer in the mountains will mean much to her in after life. Even Constance will be profoundly changed by it. Zulime is sorry to disappoint you but she feels that it would be wrong to refuse such an opportunity."

He made no complaint, offered no further opposition, he only said gently and sadly, "Don't let them stay away too long. I want them here part of the summer. I miss them terribly--and you must remember my time on earth is nearly ended."

"We shall all be here in August," I assured him, "and I may return late in July."

This was the twelfth of June and as I left the house for the train the picture of that lonely, white-haired man, sitting at the window, took away all the anticipation of pleasure with which our expedition had filled my mind. I was minded to decline the wondrous opportunity and send the children to the old Homestead and their grandsire. _

Read next: Book 2: Chapter 27. A Soldier Of The Union Mustered Out

Read previous: Book 2: Chapter 25. Darkness Just Before The Dawn

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