THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN—ABROAD AGAIN—HEALING AND
HEALTH—IDYLLIC WINTER IN FLORENCE
WHAT one of Doctor Terhune’s biographers has alluded to as his
“splendid vitality,” had been cruelly taxed by his professional labors
in his first charge in Brooklyn. With a strong man’s aversion to the
acknowledgment of physical weakness, he had fought, with heroic courage
and reserve, the inroads of a disease that was steadily sapping his
constitution and vigor. None except his physician and myself dreamed
of the gnawing pain that was never quiet during his waking hours, and
robbed the nights of rest. The services of Sunday left him as weak as
a child, and stretched him upon the rack all of that night. When, the
work he had assigned to himself soon after accepting the pastorate
of the Bedford Avenue Church having been accomplished, he resigned
the position, and quoted his physician’s advice that he should take a
few months of rest and change of scene—the information was couched in
terms so light that, with the exception of two or three of his chosen
and most faithful friends, his parishioners had no suspicion of his
real condition. The public press hazarded the wildest and most absurd
guesses at the causes that had stirred the nest he had builded wisely
and well during the last seven years.
Perhaps the theory that amused us most, and flew most widely from the
mark, was “that his wife—known to the public as ‘Marion Harland’—took
no interest in church-work—in fact, never attended church at all.” My
class of forty-four splendid “boys”—the youngest being twenty-one years
of age—begged to be allowed to look up the imaginative reporter and, as
the Springfield member of the Church Militant had proposed, “fire him
out.” Calmer counter-statements from older heads, and hearts as loyal,
met the assertion in print and in private. To me, it weighed less than
a grain of dust in the greater solicitude that engrossed my thoughts.
For, in a week after the formal resignation of his office, the patient
sufferer was under the surgeon’s knife.
They called it “a minor operation,” and enjoined complete rest, for
a month or so, that ought to bring recuperation of energies so sadly
depleted that those who knew him best were urgent in the entreaty that
the mandate should be obeyed. He “rested” in the blessed quiet of
Sunnybank for a couple of months; then set out for a leisurely jaunt
westward. He had been invited to preach in Omaha, and thought that he
would “take a look at the country” which he had never visited. He got
no further than Chicago, falling in love with the warm-hearted people
of a church which he agreed to supply for “a few weeks.” The weeks
grew into seven months of active and satisfying work among his new
parishioners. Our eldest daughter was with him part of the time, and I
went to him for a visit of considerable length, returning home with the
sad conviction, deep down in my soul, that to accept the offered “call”
to a permanent pastorate would be suicidal. He could never do half-way
work, and he loved the duties of his profession with a love that never
abated. By the beginning of the next summer, he was forced to admit to
himself that his physical powers were inadequate to the task laid to
his hand. Yet, on the way home, he was lured into agreeing to supply
the pulpit of a friend, a St. Louis clergyman, during the vacation of
the latter, preaching zealously and eloquently for five weeks, and
this in the heat of a Missourian summer.
It was but a wreck of his old, buoyant self that he brought back to
us. Confident in his ability to rise above “temporary weakness,” he
insisted that “Sunnybank and home-rest were all he needed to set him up
again as good as new.”
I had said once, jestingly, in his hearing, after his quick recovery
from a short and sharp attack of illness:
“It is hard to kill a Terhune. Nothing is really effectual except a
stroke of lightning, and that will paralyze but one side. None of them
die under ninety!”
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_:
“Over my heart in the days that have flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures,
Faithful unselfish, and patient like yours.”
“That is one of my husband’s favorite songs,” I said. “I often sing it
to him and to Bert in the twilights at home.” And with a little laugh,
I added: “My boy asked me once to emphasize ‘patient.’ He says that is
the strongest characteristic of the mother’s love.”
“They repay us for it all!” was the fervent reply.
And I returned as feelingly, “Yes, a thousandfold.”
She was ever the true, unselfish woman, generous in impulse and in
action, sweet and sound to the very core of her great heart. We had
loved each other without a shadow of changing for over thirty years.
In all our intercourse there is nothing upon which I dwell with such
fondness as on the days that slipped by brightly and smoothly, that
late January and early February. If I observed with regret that I
rallied from my sudden seizure more rapidly than she threw off the
languor and loss of appetite which, she assured us, over and over,
“meant next to nothing”—I was not seriously uneasy at what I saw. She
had not been strong for the last year. Time would restore her, surely.
She had just arisen on the morning of my departure, when I went into
her room to say, “Good-bye.” She smiled brightly as I put my arms
about her and bade her, “Hurry up and return my visit.”
“You will see me before long,” she said, confidently. “As soon as I
can bear the journey I shall go to Newark. My native air always brings
healing on its wings.”
My beloved friend Mrs. Waite had passed from earth, six months before.
The visit I paid at her house, on the way back to New York, was the
first I had made there since the beauty of her presence was withdrawn.
On the morning after my arrival I had a long letter from Christine. It
began ominously:
“I have a confession to make. Father has been far more
indisposed than I would let you think. Do not blame me.
I have acted under orders from him and from the doctor.
Neither would hear of your recall. Not that this relapse is
a dangerous matter. The ‘boils’ were a return of the old
trouble. He has not left his bed for a fortnight. I thought
it best to prepare you for seeing him there.”
An hour later I had a telegram from my brother:
“M. is decidedly worse. We apprehend heart-failure.”
Again I say, I would shorten the recital of how the clouds returned
after the rain which we had believed would clear the atmosphere.
I was seated at the bedside of my husband, who aroused himself with
difficulty to speak to me, as one shakes off a stupor, relapsing into
slumber with the murmured welcome on his fevered lips, when a dispatch
was brought to me from Richmond.
My sister-in-love had died that afternoon.
Five months to a day, from the beginning of my husband’s serious
illness, he was brought down-stairs in the arms of a stalwart
attendant, and lifted into a carriage for his first ride. We drove to
the neighboring Central Park, and were threading the leafy avenues
before the convalescent offered to speak. Then the tone was of one
dazed into disbelief of what was before his eyes:
“The last time I was out of doors, the ground was covered with snow. I
am like those that dream. I never knew until now what a beautiful place
the world is!”
It was glorious in July verdure when we got him back to Sunnybank.
There was no talk now of the saddle, and the briefest of drives
fatigued him to faintness. Whatever the doctors might say as to the
ultimate elimination of the hidden poison they had found so difficult
to drive out, watchers, who had more at stake in the issue of his
protracted illness, failed to see the proof that skill had effected
what they claimed. After the glow of pleasure at getting home again
subsided, he relapsed into the old lassitude and sad indifference to
what was going on about him; his eyes were dull; his tone was lifeless;
he seemed to have forgotten that he had ever had appetite for food.
At last, one day, as I sat fanning him, while he lay on the wicker
sofa on the vine-clad veranda, regarding neither lake nor mountain,
and smiling wanly at my chatter of the seven birds’-nests in the
honeysuckle, from which the last fledgling had been coaxed away by
their parents that morning—an inspiration came to me. I laid my hand on
his to make sure that he would be aroused to listen, and stooped to the
ear that shared in the deadening of the rest of the body.
“What do you say to going abroad again—and very soon?”
He opened his eyes wide, lifting his head to look directly at me.
“What did you say?”