I wonder if all brothers and sisters keep up the baby-names as we did. I
wonder if I shall ever become used to living without them.
I read the letter over a great many times, and stopped to tell Mrs.
Bland the news in it, and wondered what had kept it so long on the way,
and wondered if it could be true that he would have a furlough in May.
It seemed too good to be true. If I had been fourteen instead of
twenty-four, I should have jumped up and down and clapped my hands there
in the street. The sky was so bright that I could scarcely turn up my
eyes to look at it. The sunshine was shivered into little lances all
over the glaring white crust. There was a snow-bird chirping and pecking
on the maple-tree as I came in.
I went up and opened my window; sat down by it and drew a long breath,
and began to count the days till May. I must have sat there as much as
half an hour. I was so happy counting the days that I did not hear the
front gate, and when I looked down a man stood there,--a great, rough
man,--who shouted up that he was in a hurry, and wanted seventy-five
cents for a telegram that he had brought over from East Homer. I believe
I went down and paid him, sent him away, came up here and locked the
door before I read it.
Phœbe found me here at dinner-time.
If I could have gone to him, could have busied myself with packing and
journeying, could have been forced to think and plan, could have had the
shadow of a hope of one more look, one word, I suppose I should have
taken it differently. Those two words--“Shot dead”--shut me up and
walled me in, as I think people must feel shut up and walled in, in
Hell. I write the words most solemnly, for I know that there has been
Hell in my heart.
It is all over now. He came back, and they brought him up the steps, and
I listened to their feet,--so many feet; he used to come bounding in.
They let me see him for a minute, and there was a funeral, and Mrs.
Bland came over, and she and Phœbe attended to everything, I suppose.
I did not notice nor think till we had left him out there in the cold
and had come back. The windows of his room were opened, and the bitter
wind swept in. The house was still and damp. Nobody was there to welcome
me. Nobody would ever be * * * *
Poor old Phœbe! I had forgotten her. She was waiting at the kitchen
window in her black bonnet; she took off my things and made me a cup of
tea, and kept at work near me for a little while, wiping her eyes. She
came in just now, when I had left my unfinished sentence to dry, sitting
here with my face in my hands.
“Laws now, Miss Mary, my dear! This won’t never do,--a rebellin’ agin
Providence, and singein’ your hair on the lamp chimney this way! The
dining-room fire’s goin’ beautiful, and the salmon is toasted to a
brown. Put away them papers and come right along!”