From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages
wind along the road and gradually grow vague and spectral
in the falling snow, and presently disappear.
Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back
any more. Jervis, the cousin she had played
with when they were babies together—he
and her beloved old Katy—were conducting
her to her distant childhood home, where she will
lie by her mother’s side once more, in the company
of Susy and Langdon.
December 26th. The dog came to see
me at eight o’clock this morning. He was
very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will
be his quarters hereafter.
The storm raged all night. It has raged all
the morning. The snow drives across the landscape
in vast clouds, superb, sublime—and Jean
not here to see.
2:30 P.M.—It is the time appointed.
The funeral has begun. Four hundred miles away,
but I can see it all, just as if I were there.
The scene is the library in the Langdon homestead.
Jean’s coffin stands where her mother and I
stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where
Susy’s coffin stood thirteen years ago; where
her mother’s stood five years and a half ago;
and where mine will stand after a little time.
Five o’clock.—It is all
over.
When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe,
it was hard, but I could bear it, for I had Jean left.
I said we would be a family. We said we
would be close comrades and happy—just we
two. That fair dream was in my mind when Jean
met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in my mind
when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening.
We were together; we were A family!
the dream had come true—oh, precisely true,
contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained
true two whole days.
And now? Now Jean is in her grave!
In the grave—if I can believe it.
God rest her sweet spirit!
----- 1. Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens family
for twenty-nine years.
2. Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for
appendicitis.
If I understand the idea, the Bazar invites several
of us to write upon the above text. It means
the change in my life’s course which introduced
what must be regarded by me as the most important
condition of my career. But it also implies—without
intention, perhaps—that that turning-point
itself was the creator of the new condition.
This gives it too much distinction, too much prominence,
too much credit. It is only the last link
in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned
to produce the cardinal result; it is not any more
important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors.
Each of the ten thousand did its appointed share,
