In York Harbor. Ⓐtextual note

York HarborⒶtextual note consists of a widelyⒶtextual note scattered cluster of independent little villages called York, York Harbor, York Village,Ⓐtextual note York CentreⒶtextual note, WestⒶtextual note York, East York, South York—I think those are the names, but I am not certain, and it is not important. The whole of them together are bunched under one simple, rational name, York. About the 6th of August a celebration broke out among these hives—a celebration in commemoration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the institution of municipal self-constitutedⒶtextual note government on the continent of AmericaⒺexplanatory note. For two or three days there were quaint back-settlement processions, mass meetings, orations, and so on, by day, and fireworks by night.

Mrs. Clemens was always young, and these things had a strong interest for her. She even took more interest in my speeches than I took in them myself. During three days she went about behind horses in the daytime, and by boat at night, seeing and hearing and enjoying all that was going on. She was over-exerting herself, overtaxing her strength, and she began to show it. With difficulty I persuaded her to forego the grand performances of the closing night, and we observed their firework effects from the piazza, across the intervening distance of two or three miles. But my interference had come too late. The overtaxing of her strength had already been over-sufficient.

The next afternoon was the last she ever spent in this life as a person personally and intimately connected with this world’sⒶtextual note affairs. It was the last time she was to receive and entertain a visitor. This visit promised to be commonplace, and instantly and easily forgetable, but by grace of my native talent for making innocent and discomforting blunders, it wasn’t. The visitor was a lady. She had forwarded to us a letter of introduction and now she wasⒶtextual note come, upon our invitation, to spend the afternoon and dine with us. She was a beautiful creature. She said she was thirty years old and had been married fifteen years. Her manner, and her English, would have convicted her of being of foreign origin, and if any evidence were needed to clinch the conviction and justify the verdict, it was present in her alien and unpronounceable name, which no inexperienced Christian might try to pronounce and live. Yet she was not a foreigner at all. She was American born, of native American parents. Her tongue had never known any language but the American language until she married that unpronounceable foreigner, at fifteen, in Paris. Her English was quaint and pretty, graceful, and understandable, but it was not English.

The letter of introduction which she had forwarded to me was one of those formidable great missives which are the specialty of royalty, and it was from the Queen of Rumania. It said that the bearer and her husband, who was a Rumanian nobleman, had resided at [begin page 98] the Rumanian court for fifteen years, where the husband had held an important post under the Government. The letter spoke affectionately of the wife. It also said that she was a highly accomplished musician and competent to teach, and that she was returning to her own country in the hope of being able to earn a living there by teachingⒺexplanatory note. Her Majesty thought that perhaps I could be useful in findingⒶtextual note classes for this exiled friend of hers. Carmen Sylva’s letter was in English, a language of which she is a master, and the letter explained why these people, so comfortably nested in her court and in her affections for fifteen years, were suddenly become exiles, wanderers in the earth, friendless, forlorn, and driven to earn their bread by the sweat of their accomplishments. But just as we were going to find out what it was that had caused this disaster—if it was a disaster—just as my wife and I had reached the summit of eagerness to get at the kernel of that interesting secret, the Queen delivered that kernel in French Ⓐtextual note. It was a single phrase—two or three words—but they made a combination which we had never encountered before and which we were not able to cipher out the meaning of. The Queen said in substance—I have forgotten the exact words—that the husband had been obliged to resign his post, or posts, and retire from the court on account of—then followed that fiendish French sentence. For a moment I was so exasperated that I wished I never had learned the French language—plainly a language likely to fail a person at the crucial moment.

At mid-afternoon Mrs. Clemens, the beautiful American foreigner, and I, sat grouped together and chatting on the piazza. I had in my hand the current North American Review, fresh, enticing, inviting, with the fragrance of the printer’s ink still breathing from its pages and making me long to open it and see what was in it. That court-bredⒶtextual note creature had her eyes about her. She was accustomed to reading people’s concealed feelings and desires by help of treacherous exterior indications such as attitude, fidgets, and so on. She saw what was the matter with me, and she most winningly and beseechingly asked me to open the magazine and read aloud. I was most cordially grateful. I opened the magazine, and the first thing that attracted me was an article by an Austrian prince on Dueling in Court and Military circles on the Continent of EuropeⒺexplanatory note. It profoundly interested me, and I read along with vigor and emphasis. The Prince was hostile to the dueling system. He told of the measures which were being taken by generals and great nobles in Austria—particularly in Austria, I think—to abolish the system. In the course of his uncompromising indictment of the system he remarked upon the fact that no importantⒶtextual note official on the continentⒶtextual note of Europe could decline a challenge, from any motive whatever, and not by that act cover himself and his family with shame and disgrace and be thenceforth spurned and ignored by the society in which they moved, and even by their friends.

I happened to lift my eyes—that poor woman’s face was as white as marble! The French phrase stood translatedⒺexplanatory note!Ⓐtextual note I did not read any more, and we hurriedly changed to some other topic.

As I have said, this was the last incident in Mrs. Clemens’s social life—a life in which she had been active and which she had enjoyed with all her heart from the days of her young girlhood. It was the last incident—it closed that volume. It prefaced the next and final volume of her existence in this earth.Ⓐtextual note

At seven the next morning (August the 11thⒶtextual note) I was wakened by a cry. I saw Mrs. Clemens standing on the opposite side of the room, leaning against the wall for support, and panting. She said “I am dying.”

I helped her back to the bed and sent for Dr. Leonard, a New York physician. He said it was a nervous break down, and that nothing but absolute rest, seclusion, and careful nursing, could help her. That was the beginning. During the twenty-two succeeding months she had for society,Ⓐtextual note physicians and trained nurses only, broadly speaking.Ⓐtextual note

The next sixty days were anxious ones for usⒺexplanatory note. When we entered the month of October, it was a question if we could get her back to Riverdale. We could not venture transportation by Mr. Rogers’s yacht. She would not be able to endure the sea effect. At last we resolved to try the rather poor contrivance called an invalid’s car. I call it a poor contrivance because while it is spacious, andⒶtextual note has plenty of room in it for all the friends and nurses and physicians you need, it has one very great defect—the invalid’s bed is stationary and immovable, and responds to every jump and jerk and whirl of the train, whereas if it were suspended from the roof by elastic ropes, hammock fashion, the invalid would never feel a jolt or a quiver. We secured a special train to take this car to Boston and around Boston. Then we hitched it to a regular express train which delivered us in the Grand Central Station in New York on time. A locomotive stood ready and waiting, and in fifteen minutes it delivered us at our home, RiverdaleⒺexplanatory note.

The Siege and Season of Unveracity. Ⓐtextual note

The burly English butler carried Mrs. Clemens up stairsⒶtextual note to her bed and left her there with the trained nurse. When he closed that bedroom door he shut the truth out from that bed-chamberⒶtextual note forever more. The physician, Dr. Moffat, came once or twice a day and remained a few minutes. If any doctor-liesⒶtextual note were needed he faithfully furnished them. When the trained nurseⒺexplanatory note was on duty she furnished such lies as were needful. Clara stood a daily watch of three or four hours, and hers was a hard office indeed. Daily she sealed up in her heart a dozen dangerous truths, and thusⒶtextual note saved her mother’s life and hope and happiness with holy lies. She had never told her mother a lie in her life before, and I may almost say that she never told her a truth afterward. It was fortunate for us all that Clara’s reputation for truthfulness was so well established in her mother’s mind. It was our daily protection from disaster. The mother never doubted Clara’s word. Clara could tell her large improbabilities without exciting any suspicion, whereas if I had tried to market even a small and simple one the case would have been different. I was never able to get a reputation like Clara’s. It would have been useful to me now, but it was too late to begin the labor of securing it, and I furnished no information in the bed-chamber.Ⓐtextual note But my protection lay in the fact that I was allowed in the bed-chamberⒶtextual note only once a day, then for only two minutes. The nurse stood at the door with her watch in her hand and turned me outⒶtextual note when the time was up.

My room was next to Mrs. Clemens’s, with a large bath-roomⒶtextual note between. I could not talk with her, but I could correspond by writing. Every night I slipped a letter under the [begin page 100] bath-roomⒶtextual note door that opened near her bed—a letter which contained no information about current events, and could do no harm. She responded, with pencil, once or twice a day—at first at some length, but as the months dragged along and her strength grew feebler, she put her daily message of love in trembling characters upon little scraps of paper, and this she continued until the day she died.

I have mentioned that Clara’s post was difficult, and indeed it was.