第60章 X(4)

When I reached my friend's bedside one glance at her face showed me the end was near; and from that time until it came, almost a week later, I re- m ained with her; while again, as always, she talked of the Cause, and of the life-work she must now lay down. The first thing she spoke of was her will, which she had made several years before, and in which she had left the small property she possessed to her sister Mary, her niece Lucy, and myself, with instructions as to the use we three were to make of it. Now she told me we were to pay no attention to these instructions, but to give every dollar of her money to the $60,000 fund Miss Thomas and Miss Garrett were trying to raise. She was vitally in- t erested in this fund, as its success meant that for five years the active officers of the National Ameri- c an Woman Suffrage Association, including myself as president, would for the first time receive salaries for our work. When she had given her instructions on this point she still seemed depressed.

``I wish I could live on,'' she said, wistfully.

``But I cannot. My spirit is eager and my heart is as young as it ever was, but my poor old body is worn out. Before I go I want you to give me a promise: Promise me that you will keep the presi- d ency of the association as long as you are well enough to do the work.''

``But how can I promise that?'' I asked. ``I can keep it only as long as others wish me to keep it.''

``Promise to make them wish you to keep it,'' s he urged. ``Just as I wish you to keep it.''

I would have promised her anything then. So, though I knew that to hold the presidency would tie me to a position that brought in no living income, and though for several years past I had already drawn alarmingly upon my small financial reserve, I promised her that I would hold the office as long as the majority of the women in the association wished me to do so. ``But,'' I added, ``if the time comes when I believe that some one else can do better work in the presidency than I, then let me feel at liberty to resign it.''

This did not satisfy her.

``No, no,'' she objected. ``You cannot be the judge of that. Promise me you will remain until the friends you most trust tell you it is time to with- d raw, or make you understand that it is time.

Promise me that.''

I made the promise. She seemed content, and again began to talk of the future.

``You will not have an easy path,'' she warned me. ``In some ways it will be harder for you than it has ever been for me. I was so much older than the rest of you, and I had been president so long, that you girls have all been willing to listen to me. It will be different with you. Other women of your own age have been in the work almost as long as you have been; you do not stand out from them by age or length of service, as I did. There will be inevi- t able jealousies and misunderstandings; there will be all sorts of criticism and misrepresentation. My last word to you is this: No matter what is done or is not done, how you are criticized or misunder- s tood, or what efforts are made to block your path, remember that the only fear you need have is the fear of not standing by the thing you believe to be right. Take your stand and hold it; then let come what will, and receive blows like a good soldier.''

I was too much overcome to answer her; and after a moment of silence she, in her turn, made me a promise.

``I do not know anything about what comes to us after this life ends,'' she said. ``But if there is a continuance of life beyond it, and if I have any conscious knowledge of this world and of what you are doing, I shall not be far away from you; and in times of need I will help you all I can. Who knows?

Perhaps I may be able to do more for the Cause after I am gone than while I am here.''

Nine years have passed since then, and in each day of them all it seems to me, in looking back, I h ave had some occasion to recall her words. When they were uttered I did not fully comprehend all they meant, or the clearness of the vision that had suggested them. It seemed to me that no position I could hold would be of sufficient importance to attract jealousy or personal attacks. The years have brought more wisdom; I have learned that any one who assumes leadership, or who, like myself, has had leadership forced upon her, must expect to bear many things of which the world knows nothing.

But with this knowledge, too, has come the memory of ``Aunt Susan's'' last promise, and again and yet again in hours of discouragement and despair I have been helped by the blessed conviction that she was keeping it.

During the last forty-eight hours of her life she was unwilling that I should leave her side. So day and night I knelt by her bed, holding her hand and watching the flame of her wonderful spirit grow dim.

At times, even then, it blazed up with startling sud- d enness. On the last afternoon of her life, when she had lain quiet for hours, she suddenly began to utter the names of the women who had worked with her, as if in a final roll-call. Many of them had preceded her into the next world; others were still splendidly active in the work she was laying down. But young or old, living or dead, they all seemed to file past her dying eyes that day in an endless, shadowy re- v iew, and as they went by she spoke to each of them.

Not all the names she mentioned were known in suffrage ranks; some of these women lived only in the heart of Susan B. Anthony, and now, for the last time, she was thanking them for what they had done. Here was one who, at a moment of special need, had given her small savings; here was another who had won valuable recruits to the Cause; this one had written a strong editorial; that one had made a stirring speech. In these final hours it seemed that not a single sacrifice or service, however small, had been forgotten by the dying leader. Last of all, she spoke to the women who had been on her board and had stood by her loyally so long--Rachel Foster Avery, Alice Stone Blackwell, Carrie Chap- m an Catt, Mrs. Upton, Laura Clay, and others.