WHITEST ASHES.
What is the mood of fate? Must strong men die illogically? What does
it all mean, anyhow? About this I am but blind and reasonless. I wish
I knew! The world is more than hollow to me, yet I have a hope, I'll
say that. There was some one very like Jean, one whom I loved and who
loved me, thirty years ago. Will she and I meet some day, I wonder?
And what will she be to me then? I suppose I have the philosophy and
endurance of the average man; but this is, with any doubt, a black
world at times, and one in which there is no good. The breaking of
heart-strings mars all music. I am alone and dull and wondering, and
in a blind revolt. Why should all things change so, and what is this
death which comes? There must be some future world. If there be not,
what a failure is all the brutal material scheme.
One day Grant was clear of head, but weaker, and talked with me long of
his affairs.
"I'm afraid I can't fight it out after all," he said, "though you
mustn't let Jean and the children know that yet."
We talked more of what I should do if the worst came, and then he sent
for the children. He addressed himself to the Ape first, the brave
boy's eyes full of tears and his whole body trembling as he listened:
"My boy, you are hardly a man yet, but I know your manliness. If I
cannot stay with you, you will become the practical head of the family.
Make them all proud of you. And care for your mother always as you
would for your own life or whatever is greatest." Then he called the
others to him:
"You heard what I just said. I spoke to the Ape only because he is
oldest. Remember that I have said this thing to all of you. I needn't
say it, I know--my blessed boys and girls--you understand. But live
for your little mother always."
I cannot describe what those young people said or did. It was most
pitiful. It was brave and sweet, too. But they would not let their
father die. He must not! They could not face the fact.
Jean came then, and we three were left alone for a time. She sat
beside the bed, for he wanted his hand in hers when possible, and he
spoke slowly:
"Jean, I don't know. There must be another world, as we have trusted.
The great Power that fitted us to each other so will surely bring us
together again. Let us look at it that way. We'll imagine that I'm
only going to the country, and that you are to join me. That is all.
I know it. God knows. He will adjust it somehow."
Jean did not answer. She but clasped his hand and looked into his
face. I feared she would die of a bursting heart. From that time till
the end she never left his bedside.
Murderous Death has certain kindnesses in his killings. Just before
the end is peace. The struggles of this strong man became something
fearful as the lungs congested, and the most powerful of anti-pyretics
ceased to have effect, and then came the peace which follows nature's
virtual surrender, the armistice of the moment. What trick of
reversion to first impressions comes, and what causes it, none have yet
explained, but long before the time of Falstaff men, dying, had babbled
o' green fields. Grant Harlson, now, was surely dying. The physicians
had warned us all, and we were all about his bedside. As for me, thank
God, the tears could come as they did to the children. But there were
none upon the cheeks of Jean. Her sweet face was as if of stone;
whiter than that of the man in the bed.
The convulsions had ceased, but his mind was wandering and his speech
was rambling. It was easy to tell of what he was thinking. He was a
little boy in the woodland home with his mother again, and was telling
her delightedly of what he had seen and found, and of the yellow
mandrake apples he had stored in a hollow log. She should help him eat
them. And then the scene would shift, and he was older, and we were
together in the fields. He called to me excitedly to take the dog to
the other side of the brush-heap, for the woodchuck was slipping
through that way! There was the old merry ring in his voice, and I
knew where he was and how there came to him, in fancy, the sweet
perfumes of the fields, and how his eyes, which were opened wide but
saw us not, were blessed with all the greenness and the glory of the
summer of long ago. Then his manner changed, and the word "Jean" came
softly to his lips, and again I knew they were camping out together,
and he was teaching to his wife the pleasant mysteries of the forest,
and all woodcraft. There was love in his tones and in his features.
The breast of the woman holding his hand heaved, and the pallor on her
face grew more.
There was another struggle for breath, then a desperate one, and with
its end came consciousness. Grant smiled and spoke faintly:
"It must he pretty near the end. I am very tired. Jean, darling, get
closer to me. Kiss me."
She leaned over and kissed him passionately. He smiled again, then
feebly took one of her little hands in each of his and lifted them to
his face and kissed them; then held them down upon his eyes. There was
a single heave of his great chest, and he was dead.
And the woman who fell to the floor was, apparently, as lifeless as the
silent figure on the bed.
She was not dead. We carried her to her own room--hers and his, with
the dressing-rooms attached--and she woke at last to a consciousness of
her world bereft of one human being who had been to her nearly all
there was. She was not as we had imagined she would be when she
recovered. She was not hysterical, nor did she weep. She was
singularly quiet. But that set, thoughtful look had never left her
face. She seemed some other person. I talked to her of what was to be
done. What a task that was, for I could scarcely utter words myself.
She suddenly brightened when I spoke of the crematory and what Grant's
wishes were.
"It must be as he wished," she said--"as he wished, in each small
detail." Then she said no more, and all the rest was left to me.
She was quiet and grave at the funeral of her husband and my friend.
She shed no tears; she uttered not a word. She listened quietly while
I told her how I had arranged to carry out all his wishes about
himself, or, rather, about his tenement. She did not accompany me.
There came with me on that journey only the Ape, who was red of eye and
vainly trying to conceal it all. How the youth was suffering!
I came to the home one day with an urn of bronze. There were only
ashes in it, clean and white. Jean looked at them and asked me to go
away. The urn was put, at her request, in her own apartments. It was
sealed and stood upon a mantel of the room in which she slept. I do
not believe she thought much of the ashes as representing the man who
had gone away from her. She may have thought of them as precious, just
as she did of a pair of gloves she had mended for him just before his
illness, and which she kept always with her, but I believe that of the
ashes, as of the gloves, she thought only of what her love had used in
life and left behind. That was the total of it. It was the heart, the
soul, the knowing of her that was gone.
How the Ape, how all the children cared for the small mother now!
Never was woman more watched, and guarded and waited upon. She
recognized it all, too, but said very little. Her soft hands would
stroke the forehead of her first-born, or of her eldest daughter, or of
any of the offspring of the two, the product of their love, and she
would tell them that she was glad they were so good, but, gentle and
thoughtful as she was, there was something lacking. She seemed in
another world.
I talked to Jean. I tried to be a philosopher, to tell her of the
children and of the broadness of life, and that she must drift into it
again. She was kind and courteous as of old with me, but it was
somehow not the same. And she grew weaker day by day, and would lie
for hours, the children told me, in the room where Grant and she had
been together all those years.
How can I tell of it! Jean, who had become my sister, who was part of
Grant Harlson, drifted away before my eyes! It was harder, almost, for
us than the fierce fight with death of the one who had been the
mainstay of us all. Somehow, we knew she was going to leave us, and
the grief of the children was something terrible. She listened to them
and was kind to them, wildly affectionate at times, but she lapsed ever
into the same strange apathy. We had the best physicians again. I
talked with one of them. "What shall we do?" I asked.
He was a great man, a successful one, a man above the rut, and he
answered simply:
"I cannot advise. The mind governs the body beyond us sometimes,--very
often, I imagine. She does not want to live. That is all I can say.
Drugs are not in the treatment of the case."
She grew thinner and thinner and more listless, and finally, one day,
the Ape came to my office and said his mother had not left her room for
a day or two. I went with him to the home which had been almost as my
own.
I was admitted to Jean's room as a matter of course. I was one of the
household. She was lying upon a great sofa, one Grant had liked. I
asked her to tell me what to do.
She was calm and quiet as she answered. "There is nothing," she said.
Then suddenly she seemed to be the Jean I had known one time. She
raised herself up: "Alf, you were very close to us. Cannot you see?"
She began another sentence, then stopped suddenly, and only smiled at
me and said I was the nest friend ever two people had in all this
world. She still spoke of two people. As if Grant were with us still!
How can one tell of the fading of a lily. No one ever told of it all.
One day they sent for me, and when I came the sweetest woman lay upon
her couch! She had talked with her children much that day, and told
them many things--of plannings for their futures. She had, for the
first time, told them of all their father had designed, or hoped, or
guessed for each of them. And they had been very happy, and thought
she would recover. And she had slept peacefully, and had not awakened.
I looked upon her face, and the smile upon it was something wonderful.
It was one of the things which makes me believe there is some great
story to it. There was none with her but her youngest daughter when
she left us, and the child could not tell when worlds were touching.
But upon that face was the expression which tells of what is all
beyond. I do believe that, even before she quitted her earthly frame,
dear Jean knew that she had found Grant again.
Why have I told this story of two people, which is no story at all, but
only what I know of what has happened to those closest to me? There is
no more of it. It ends with the deaths of them, and yet I do not know
that it is sad. They lived and loved and died. They had more
happiness than comes to one-half humanity. Their life was of the gold
of what is the inner life of the better ones of this great new nation
of a new continent. They lived and loved, and their children live, and
will be good men and women.
* * * * * *
I cannot understand the problem. No learning clears it. I only know
that there were Grant and I, that there were bees and perfumes, and
wild, boyish delights, and the older life, and the feverish life of a
city, and the rare, great love I looked upon.