HILDEGARDE
EIGHT YEARS AFTER

by Mabel Dodge Luhan

Tony and I were at Ojo Caliente thirty five miles from Taos taking the wonderful arsenic baths that relieved his arthritic knee, and watched every day the rapid improvement in him and the other people who come there from all directions, some unable to walk at first, helpless in wheeled chairs and soon walking freely to the bath houses.

One day a letter came from Isabel Wilder in New Haven from whom I hadn't heard for a long time. Among her bits of news about various friends she wrote of Hildegarde with whom I had been out of touch ever since she had left Taos. True, soon after she left Taos I had put her in touch with Dr. Brill with whom, as I recall it now, she had one conversation that did not come to anything.

Later I had heard some years ago from Thornton she was very ill and crippled with arthritis but lately nothing at all. He had been away through out the war and I had lost track of other mutual friends of ours. She had never written me nor I her.

This letter awoke old memories and startled me. Isabel wrote that she was cruelly crippled with what her doctors thought was arthritis complicated with frequent attacks of high fever whose source they could not trace though the hidden infection struck at one organ after another and brought angry red blotches about her mouth and nose and patches upon her body.

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She had had excellent medical care at home and in New York with no improvement. Later a psycho-analyst named Zieboorg had worked upon her with as little success as the medicos. Sooner or later she left them all, resisted treatment and grew yearly worse.

Of course I wrote Isabel of the surprising cures that surrounded us at Ojo Caliente where the arsenic spring assists where all other medications fail, this water with the mild taste and powerful action. They tell one there that no infection can survive in contact with it, that people with open sores go into the bathtubs and do not contaminate them, that no one need use slippers when walking about the damp floors of the bathhouses for no bacteria exists on those arsenic saturated surfaces.

I told Isabel to go and tell Hildegarde about the spring, for possibly it would succeed with her where other things had not if she would go through a cure there and not resist it.

She soon replied that Hildegarde was very much interested, wanted to come there, and wanted me to write her full information about hotel accommodations and transportation.

By this time we were back in the Tony House in Taos and from here I wrote a long realistic letter giving her the facts about the place over there across the Rio Grande behind the mountains. I told her the Inn where one stayed, called briefly "The Hotel", was very simple and not very clean due to lack of help, that the food was terrible, the medical attention nil, and all care lacking. The sole value of Ojo Caliente lay in the springs of which there were five, Lithia, Sodium Phosphate, Iron, Soda, and Arsenic. The one most frequently in use was the arsenic water taken internally throughout the day and night together with daily baths lasting a

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few minutes and followed by a sweat in blankets. I told her how the waters were being used by the Indians when the Spaniards first came into this country and were reported by the latter with a good deal of awe and amazement in their first communications back to Spain describing this new land.

I warned Hildegarde she might be bored at Ojo Caliente for the people who go there from New Mexico and other states are mostly ranchers and farmers and their wives, unsophisticated people and unlike her own circle, but very kind and good, and I told her that a very pleasant spirit prevailed there, uncomplicated, good natured and real, and that for my part I had found the company a relief from the Intelligensia!

Hildegarde dictated a reply at once saying she was going there as soon as she recovered from a current attack of fever she was down with, and that a friend would come with her. She said: "I am planning to stay quite a while." Her signature in pencil was frail but well ordered.

I was a little worried when she wrote she would be unable to come from Pueblo on a bus as she could not sit up that long, for there was no way to get there from any railroad except by bus or automobile. She must be worse off than I had realized, I thought. I was relieved when a second letter told me a friend would meet her at the Albuquerque train and bring her to Ojo in her automobile.

Though I was hoping she could be helped I did not feel glad she was coming back to New Mexico. I did not want to revive the painful days of her visit eight years before. It had all been so distasteful that I had blanked it out of mind. In all this time

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I had not written to Una until last Christmas time, though I had met them once in New York very casually. I had never forgiven Una for her attempt to kill herself up in our bath room at the Big House for it had seemed just too inconsiderate, to Robin and the boys, to Tony and me. Tony had never liked his bed since Dr. Pond had laid her in it bleeding. The whole incident had been shocking and we had never gotten over it.

A telephone call was waiting for us from Hildegarde's friend Beppie Pederson when we arrived back from our customary weekend down at our River House on the Rio Grande. The message simply said they had arrived and Hildegarde was beginning the baths.

No sooner had I read this than the telephone rang beside me and a hearty voice called me by name.

"Who is it?" I asked.

"Garth Jeffers", he answered. Garth whom I had not seen for so many years, who had been in the Pacific and in Germany! It seemed strange that a Jeffers should turn up at the same hour as Hildegarde though to be sure Garth was the least involved of any of them, with our crashing relationships.

"Where are you, Garth?"

"At the Martin Hotel with the Tevis'es from Carmel. Do you remember them? Shall I come over?"

"Of course! Right away! Through the fields behind the hotel. We are all in the Tony House."

Garth had grown into a big sturdy man, rather clumsy and thick set with an unmarked ruddy face and on his temples a brushing of grey over his crisp brown hair.

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He was taking this trip with the parents of his friend Lloyd, a last junket before he went to Washington to seek a civilian job in Germany. He hinted that he was engaged or married to a German girl and would stay near her until he could get her out of her country and bring her to America . . .

"And to Taos?" I asked him smiling, for Garth had always said in the summers long ago when he was a little boy, that when he grew up he would come and live in Taos and run our place for us. It was he who had gentled some of Tony's wild colts without "breaking" them, spending long days in the corral, gradually laying a quiet hand upon them, and gradually slipping first a halter over the wondering face, then a bridle, and finally the saddle. They are even now, old as they are, Tony's best riding horses.

"Will you bring her back to Taos and live here, Garth?"

"Maybe", he replied in the same old short clipped accent both the twins always had, and he was smiling his onesided grin.

Garth and the Tevis'es kept us busy for a couple of days and all the time I kept thinking of what Una's horror would be at Garth's plan for the future. No one had been a greater German hater than Una. Certainly all the care and training she had spent upon him would end in a split between them for one could see he was as strong and solid as a rock.and I knew nothing would sway him away from his determination.

So what with Garth, and Tony's farming and my chores too, we didn't get away to Ojo until Wednesday. That morning we packed a lunch and took Bonnie along and left for the day.

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It was a lovely drive over the old road down the canyon
and up the other side across the river, over the deserted farm lands
to Carson, to Taos Junction abandoned now -- its narrow gage rails
gone to the Burma road during the war. The road was neglected now-
always, just a wood road for truckers but as beautiful as ever.

We passed an enormous flock of sheep grazing, flowing
smoothly like grey lava over the wide flat land. More than I had
ever seen at once were gathered together, perhaps for shearing be-
fore being herded up into the mountains. We all felt very good that
morning. It is always fine to start out early in the car on a trip,
even if it is only for the day. We looked forward to our baths and
the refreshing sweat. Altogether we felt like Gertrude Stein's
opening words in the "Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curomia:
The days are pleasant and the nights are pleasant and the life is
wonderful". It was like that. I had practically forgotten I was
going to see Hildegarde.

When we arrived at The Hotel a slim pretty girl was stand-
ing in the hall talking to one of the guests. She was apparently
aware who we were for she ran over and exclaimed: "Oh I am so glad
you have come! Hildegarde is worse and her fever went up to 104°F
last night and she couldn't go to her bath this morning."

I followed her along the dark dirty corridor to the far
end and when she opened the door of the last bedroom my first glimpse
was of two white-haired women lying on two beds.

I felt a little dazed for one was as unfamiliar as the
other to me.

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"Which is Hildegarde?" I cried gaily masking my confusion.

"Oh Mabel", murmured a very weak, thick voice from the farther bed, "I am so glad . . . ." It faded out.

An emaciated figure lay there flat with waxen hands crossed on her sunken breast, hands whose fingers were bent back in unnatural shapes like oddly curled orchidaceous petals. The face above them was as unknown to me as though I had never seen it and more than that like nothing human I had ever seen before. In all my life I had never looked upon the aspect of this living death, the deadly pallor of skin, where the lips as colorless as the rest of the face, blended imperceptibly with the hollowed cheeks and the slow moving eyes were without pigment or gleam.

The hair above this spectre was white against the white pillow. The only sign of life appeared in the quick rise and fall of the bony chest and this troublous breathing caused the strange twisted hands to seem to writhe helpless and involuntarily.

I was introduced to the other old lady who lay smiling in the other bed: Margaret Mather who had met Hildegarde's train at Albuquerque and motored her and her friend to Ojo Caliente. Neither she or Mrs. Pederson appeared to be depressed or aware of the gulf that divided them from the one who was on her way out. They were evidently glad to see me for, though accustomed to her gradual decay, the new symptoms of infection evident from her temperature, her complete helplessness here in this tiny hamlet behind a range of mountains made them feel unable to cope with her. After two baths to be thrown back by a new attack of the invisible forces that ruled her! It was evidently pretty inconvenient to them. She had recently gone through a siege of urinary infection before she left home but

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there, though she resisted doctors and treatments at consultation had been possible.

Suddenly Hildegarde gasped faintly: "Wa-ter", and Mrs. Pederson, very pretty in her long muslin housecoat, took an untidy glass half filled, from the bed table and guided a glass tube between the stiff lips. A horrid sound filled the room as her teeth chattered and rattled against it and obviously she could scarcely swallow.

I was really amazed at the complete lack of expression on her face. It was impossible to read anything there - whether she suffered or not or whether anything mattered. She had such a queer dead pan look. So it was queer when she suddenly gasped: "Mabel - - I think - - Una - put - a - spell on me." The other women laughed gaily as at the badinage of a small social gathering and they made me understand what a loss of awareness and realization people arrive at from long daily association with horror.

Hildegarde went on, sucking in her breath painfully: "If she - saw - me-now - - I think she - would - chuckle!"

Margaret Mather was nibbling a rubbery looking sugar coated bun and Bonnie sitting beside me on the foot of her bed looked at it hungrily.

"Do you want a bit, dear?" asked the old lady and broke off a piece. "After I have my bath I feel hungry", she explained and a sound of munching went on cheerfully. It was hard for me to get into this situation. I felt constrained and didn't know what to say so I didn't say anything. I just sat there and looked. I was beginning, gradually, to feel mad. I was not sure at whom -

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whether at Hildegarde for coming to New Mexico in that condition
or at her family for allowing her to come. I felt it was all on top
of me. Had I not written her about the Hot Springs? But I hadn't
urged her to come, I had only told her about it. Just the same I
had become responsible for her and here she was.

"Sometimes, though, I think - I - am poisoning - myself. All this hatred - - " Hildegarde continued in her toneless murmur, evidently going on with her own internal analysis.

"You see," Margaret Mather contributed in her elegant, unalarmed voice, "We are not _sure_ now that Hildegarde should _take_ the baths since the second one yesterday precipitated this new attack of fever. She had 10⁴° last night and this morning."

"Yes, and I heard things _do happen_ here sometimes."

Mrs. Pederson laughed. "Two weeks ago a man was found dead in one of the cabins!"

"What _happened_ to him?" I demanded. I had not heard of any catastrophes here. It always seemed so safe and simple and favorable when Tony and I spent our three weeks.

"Oh. I believe it was a combination of alcoholism, arsenic water, and a bottle of gin," she giggled.

"I - _think_," Hildegarde panted, going on with her own affairs, "perhaps - after a while - I should have - a blood count ... the fever, you - know, burns me - out. No hurry - but - sometime ... "

"Yes," I agreed feeling impotent.

"How is - Dr. Pond? Is he there - now? I would - love - to see him - again."

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The two other women looked at each other in surprise and raised their eyebrows. As for me I thought, "Ha! An opening!"

"Yes," I told her, "He's there now. He's been away for four years."

Mabel, I, -- I have had - such a yearning - for Taos. - - Like a great - nostalgia - for years."

"Well," I exclaimed, "Why didn't you come bounding out before? Anytime?" Though I knew why, of course. Had I not cut myself off?

"Oh - I don't - - know. So much - to consider - and Normy so - dependent . . . ."

Almost at once I made an excuse and left the room and hurried to the telephone for it was the hour I might find Ash. He was there and I tried to give him a picture of Hildegarde.

"She asked for you - couldn't you drive over and see her? I don't believe she can possibly take these baths like this . . ."

"But she hates hospital treatments - - doctors as doctors. They wrote me that from New Haven. Of course she did ask for you right away . . . but how can I get her over there even if she agrees?"

"I'll send the ambulance for her."

"Well alright. I'll try and persuade her. If you don't hear from me in fifteen minutes you order it and have them try and be here at three o'clock. Have them come over by way of the canyon, the short, rough way but back by San Juan which is twice as long but a smooth road. She is awfully weak - she couldn't stand that canyon road. If they leave here soon after three, they should be

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at the hospital by five o'clock and you could see her then -- will you?

"Yes."

"Alright. I'll go and see how she takes it. If you don't hear from me in a few minutes -- go ahead and order the ambulance."

I returned to the dismal disordered bedroom and Hildegarde and I was full of misgiving but I went in and said without any soft tactfulness: "Hildegarde, I've just been talking to Dr. Pond on the telephone. He wants to see you before you take any more baths, and he's going to send a little ambulance over for you and it will be here at three o'clock. Will you go?" I held my breath.

Hildegarde's mouth twisted open in the only semblance of a grin she had attempted. It disclosed two front teeth missing.

"I'd -- love to!" she whispered.

The other women exchanged looks again and Margaret Mather rose up and smacked me on the shoulder, exclaiming: "Well, bless you!" By that time I felt my bath was due. Tony was already having his so Bonnie and I started over to the bath-house.

Mrs. Pederson came along the hall with us and I said furiously: "How on earth did her family ever let her come? She's awfully sick!"

The girl nodded. "She would come. She has a terribly strong will. Ambulances all the way from house to train and from train to train! It has been pretty strenuous. I'll certainly be glad to get to a doctor. But you know she has resisted doctors completely lately. I guess she got tired of their experiments. They have tried everything and no one can diagnose what the trouble

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is, and whenever they started a new treatment Hildegarde refused to go on with it. Lately she hasn't been seeing any doctors. Midge has been living at home (she had to give up her work, you know) and she has given her mother shots and things."

"But she asked for Dr. Pond, didn't she?"

"I was flabbergasted by that!" she agreed.

Well, I felt pretty grim. I had a conviction now that Hildegarde had intended to come to Taos all the time. By the way of Ojo Caliente she had headed for Taos. I felt in my bones that that was going to be pretty hard for everybody and I was good and mad. I really wasn't made for responsibility and yet I'm never without it. The mistakes I make through a lack of vocation for responsibilities are simply appalling.

Bonnie and I ate our picnic lunch on the porch, glad that we didn't have to eat in the dining room where one had to pass up every dish. The army cook gave one a complete idea of how the soldiers had eaten! However I was able to buy twenty four rolls of toilet paper in the little shop behind the hotel office and that was a compensation for there was none in Taos.

I didn't linger for more than a moment with Hildegarde. She lay on her bed turned the other way about. The saucer of rhubarb that had been beside her on the table in the earlier part of the day was still there untouched, apparently she did not eat at all.

We drove home the short rough route as we had come over and at two o'clock we met the little ambulance careening along manned by two youths. As a matter of fact this was the village

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hearse when it was needed for a trip like Hildegarde's, a small sign hung on the wind shield that read "Ambulance": I thought they would soon be at Ojo and Hildegarde would easily be in the hospital before five. Not so. At five o'clock I called over and one of the sisters told me there was no sign of her yet but that they were all ready for her. She was to go into my mother's memorial room she said.

I called every hour after that but I did not have any success until after eight when I got Beppie Pederson on the telephone.

"Oh! We had a dreadful time!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "Those boys were absolutely inexperienced and new to the country. They came back that short way you told us about, with Margaret Mather and I following in her car. They got lost twice and went nearly to Tres Piedras up the river before we discovered it - - then they had a puncture and didn't know how to change the tire so we had to do it! They left all their own blankets at Ojo Caliente and have to go back for them and they left their flat tire in Margaret's car which Margaret has driven over to Sage Brush Inn at the moment. She is worn out from the last five hours of horrors!"

"How is Hildegarde?" I asked.

"Why she stood the trip perfectly. She just lay and looked out of the windows and never complained. Now she's in bed in that lovely room and loves it! I'm going to stay here all night with her because there are no special nurses and she won't stay alone a minute!"

"Gosh!" I said.

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"Dr. Pond has seen her just had a few moments talk with her alone but he didn't order anything for her tonight but rest and water. She is to have some tests tomorrow morning. This is a darling little hospital!" she added cheerfully.

The next day Lou Pond told me that Ash had said to Hildegarde, "You are afraid to live and you're afraid to die. You have to decide which it will be. I will do all I can but you have to co-operate with me."

"What did she say?"

"She said: "'I will have to think that over."', answered Lou.

I saw Ash in the hospital corridor the next morning and undertook to give him my opinion.

"She has been sick ever since she left here," I told him. "Tony says it's from shock. Anyway it's emotional, I bet. If you could get her to talk and empty all that hatred and disillusion out of her system it might help her."

"Well, right now what she needs is some care and physical relief. She's so <u>dry</u>: She has burned up all her fluids and we're trying to get some back into her," he said.

"Have you any idea what's the <u>matter</u> with her? What to name it? Arthritis or <u>what?</u>"

"Everything," Ash answered shortly. From that time on in the days to come all I heard about her was from various spies who got glimpses of her chart. Apparently it had many suggestive items on it: Undulant fever, cirrhosis of the liver, anemia, Addison's Disease and the constant violent fluctuating curves of fever.