Halleck had come home in broken health, and had promised his family, with
the self-contempt that depraves, not to go away again, since the change had
done him no good. There was no talk for the present of his trying to do
anything but to get well; and for a while, under the strong excitement, he
seemed to be better. But suddenly he failed; he kept his room, and then he
kept his bed; and the weeks stretched into months before he left it.
When the spring weather came, he was able to go out again, and he spent
most of his time in the open air, feeling every day a fresh accession of
strength. At the end of one long April afternoon, he walked home with
a light heart, whose right to rejoice he would not let his conscience
question. He had met Marcia in the Public Garden, where they sat down on a
bench and talked, while her father and the little girl wandered away in the
restlessness of age and the restlessness of childhood.
“We are going home to Equity this summer,” she said, “and perhaps we shall
not come back. No, we shall not come back. _I have given up_. I have
waited, hoping--hoping. But now I know that it is no use waiting any
longer: _he is dead_.” She spoke in tearless resignation, and the peace of
accepted widowhood seemed to diffuse itself around her.
Her words repeated themselves to Halleck, as he walked homeward. He found
the postman at the door with a newspaper, which he took from him with a
smile at its veteran appearance, and its probable adventures in reaching
him. The wrapper seemed to have been several times slipped off, and then
slit up; it was tied with a string, now, and was scribbled with rejections
in the hands of various Hallocks and Halletts, one of whom had finally
indorsed upon it, “Try 97 Rumford Street.” It was originally addressed, as
he made out, to “Mr. B. Halleck, Boston, Mass.,” and he carried it to his
room before he opened it, with a careless surmise as to its interest for
him. It proved to be a flimsy, shabbily printed country newspaper, with an
advertisement marked in one corner.