What Is Man? and Other Essays
I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother—her incomparable
mother!—five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in
Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich!
Seven months ago Mr. Rogers died—one of the best friends I ever had,
and the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my
race; within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan—old,
old friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers
under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night—and
it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit
here—writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How
dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a
mockery.
Seventy-four years old twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old
yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?
I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as
her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long
ago. The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.
I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again;
that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. I
have kept to that. They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and
bear her to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been
released, but I shall not follow.
Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. She was
at the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next
evening. We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called
“Mark Twain.” We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and
she wouldn’t let me look into the loggia, where she was making
Christmas preparations. She said she would finish them in the morning,
and then her little French friend would arrive from New York—the
surprise would follow; the surprise she had been working over for days.
While she was out for a moment I disloyally stole a look. The loggia
floor was clothed with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and
the uncompleted surprise was there: in the form of a Christmas tree
that was drenched with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a
table was a prodigal profusion of bright things which she was going to
hang upon it today. What desecrating hand will ever banish that
eloquent unfinished surprise from that place? Not mine, surely. All
these little matters have happened in the last four days. “Little.”
Yes—_then_. But not now. Nothing she said or thought or did is little
now. And all the lavish humor!—what is become of it? It is pathos, now.
Pathos, and the thought of it brings tears.
All these little things happened such a few hours ago—and now she lies
yonder. Lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more.
Strange—marvelous—incredible! I have had this experience before; but it
would still be incredible if I had had it a thousand times.
“MISS JEAN IS DEAD!”
That is what Katy said. When I heard the door open behind the bed’s
head without a preliminary knock, I supposed it was Jean coming to kiss
me good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering
without formalities.
And so—
I have been to Jean’s parlor. Such a turmoil of Christmas presents for
servants and friends! They are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the
floor—everything is occupied, and over-occupied. It is many and many a
year since I have seen the like. In that ancient day Mrs. Clemens and I
used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on Christmas Eve and
look the array of presents over. The children were little then. And now
here is Jean’s parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. The
presents are not labeled—the hands are forever idle that would have
labeled them today. Jean’s mother always worked herself down with her
Christmas preparations. Jean did the same yesterday and the preceding
days, and the fatigue has cost her her life. The fatigue caused the
convulsion that attacked her this morning. She had had no attack for
months.
Jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly in danger
of overtaxing her strength. Every morning she was in the saddle by half
past seven, and off to the station for her mail. She examined the
letters and I distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the
others to the stenographer and myself. She dispatched her share and
then mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm
and her poultry the rest of the day. Sometimes she played billiards
with me after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, and went
early to bed.
Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising
while absent in Bermuda, to lighten her burdens. We would get a
housekeeper; also we would put her share of the secretary-work into Mr.
Paine’s hands.
No—she wasn’t willing. She had been making plans herself. The matter
ended in a compromise, I submitted. I always did. She wouldn’t audit
the bills and let Paine fill out the checks—she would continue to
attend to that herself. Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and
let Katy assist. Also, she would continue to answer the letters of
personal friends for me. Such was the compromise. Both of us called it
by that name, though I was not able to see where any formidable change
had been made.
However, Jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. She was
proud of being my secretary, and I was never able to persuade her to
give up any part of her share in that unlovely work.
In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly that
if she were willing I would go back to Bermuda in February and get
blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. She was
urgent that I should do it, and said that if I would put off the trip
until March she would take Katy and go with me. We struck hands upon
that, and said it was settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by
tomorrow’s ship and secure a furnished house and servants. I meant to
write the letter this morning. But it will never be written, now.
For she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that.
Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the
sky-line of the hills.
I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and
dearer to me every day. I was getting acquainted with Jean in these
last nine months. She had been long an exile from home when she came to
us three-quarters of a year ago. She had been shut up in sanitariums,
many miles from us. How eloquently glad and grateful she was to cross
her father’s threshold again!
Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word
would do it, I would beg for strength to withhold the word. And I would
have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt,
and my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been
enriched with the most precious of all gifts—that gift which makes all
other gifts mean and poor—death. I have never wanted any released
friend of mine restored to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this
way when Susy passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr. Rogers.
When Clara met me at the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had
died suddenly that morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of
fortune—fortunate all his long and lovely life—fortunate to his latest
moment! The reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes.
True—but they were for _me_, not for him. He had suffered no loss. All
the fortunes he had ever made before were poverty compared with this
one.
Why did I build this house, two years ago? To shelter this vast
emptiness? How foolish I was! But I shall stay in it. The spirits of
the dead hallow a house, for me. It was not so with other members of my
family. Susy died in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would
never enter it again. But it made the house dearer to me. I have
entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn,
but to me it was a holy place and beautiful. It seemed to me that the
spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and
welcome me if they could: Livy, and Susy, and George, and Henry
Robinson, and Charles Dudley Warner. How good and kind they were, and
how lovable their lives! In fancy I could see them all again, I could
call the children back and hear them romp again with George—that
peerless black ex-slave and children’s idol who came one day—a flitting
stranger—to wash windows, and stayed eighteen years. Until he died.
Clara and Jean would never enter again the New York hotel which their
mother had frequented in earlier days. They could not bear it. But I
shall stay in this house. It is dearer to me tonight than ever it was
before. Jean’s spirit will make it beautiful for me always. Her lonely
and tragic death—but I will not think of that now.
Jean’s mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas shopping,
and was always physically exhausted when Christmas Eve came. Jean was
her very own child—she wore herself out present-hunting in New York
these latter days. Paine has just found on her desk a long list of
names—fifty, he thinks—people to whom she sent presents last night.
Apparently she forgot no one. And Katy found there a roll of
bank-notes, for the servants.
Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and
forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. She got him from Germany. He
has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. He was educated in
Germany, and knows no language but the German. Jean gave him no orders
save in that tongue. And so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor
at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no
German, tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. Jean
wrote me, to Bermuda, about the incident. It was the last letter I was
ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand. The dog
will not be neglected.
There was never a kinder heart than Jean’s. From her childhood up she
always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind and
another. After she became secretary and had her income doubled she
spent her money upon these things with a free hand. Mine too, I am glad
and grateful to say.
She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds,
beasts, and everything—even snakes—an inheritance from me. She knew all
the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a member of various
humane societies when she was still a little girl—both here and
abroad—and she remained an active member to the last. She founded two
or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in Europe.
She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out
of the waste-basket and answered the letters. She thought all letters
deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that
kindly error.
She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. She had but
an indifferent ear for music, but her tongue took to languages with an
easy facility. She never allowed her Italian, French, and German to get
rusty through neglect.
The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just
as they did in Italy five years and a half ago, when this child’s
mother laid down her blameless life. They cannot heal the hurt, but
they take away some of the pain. When Jean and I kissed hands and
parted at my door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two
hours the telegraph would be bringing words like these:
“From the bottom of our hearts we send our sympathy, dearest of
friends.”
For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house,
remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her. Who can count the
number of them?