Ann!” he exclaimed. “Why, I came out here purposely to tell you about
Mary Ellen. This thing,” indicating the clipping, “is away behind the
time with its news. The picture it tells about is at my house this very
minute, and another one in the bargain. The first chance you get, come
down home and look at ’em. If you don’t open your eyes I’ll never sign
my name S. B. Blasengame again.” He walked up and down the room in a
restless way. “What do you reckon that gyurl did?” he asked, stopping
before me and stretching out his right arm. “Why, she sent a man with
the pictures—a right nice fellow he was, too. He said it cost a pile of
money to git ’em through the custom-house at New York; he had to hang
around there a week. When I asked him for his bill he raised his hands
and laughed. Everything was paid.”
The colonel continued to walk up and down the room. He was always
restless when anything interested him, unless it happened to be a matter
of life and death, and then he was calmness itself.
“Did Aunt Minervy Ann—blame her old hide!—I wanted to tell you the
whole story myself—did she tell you about a letter Mary Ellen wrote me
when”—the colonel paused and cleared his throat—“about a letter Mary
Ellen wrote me in the seventies?”
“She did,” I replied.
“Well, here’s the letter,” he said, after fumbling in his big pocketbook.
“It’s not a matter to be showing around, but you seem almost like one of
the family, and you’ll know better how to appreciate the pictures when
you read that.”
He turned and went out of the room into the hallway and then to the
veranda, where I heard his firm and measured step pacing back and forth.
The letter was not a very long one, but there was something in it—a vague
undertone of loneliness, a muffled cry for sympathy, which, as I knew all
the facts of the case, almost took my breath away.
The letter was dated “Boston, September 8th, 1878,” and was as follows:
“COLONEL BLASENGAME—Two days ago the home paper came to me
bringing the news of the great loss which has come to your
household, and to me. I feel most keenly that a letter from me
is an unwarranted intrusion, but I must speak out my thoughts
to someone. Miss Sallie was almost the only friend I had when
she and I were children together—almost the only person that
I ever cared for. I loved her while she lived, and I shall
cherish her memory to the day of my death.
“You do not know me, and you will not recognize the name signed
to this. It is better, far better that this should be so. It
is enough for you to know that a stranger in a strange land
will lie awake many and many a long night, weeping for the dear
young lady who is dead.
“MARY ELLEN TATUM.”
What has become of Mary Ellen? the reader may ask. I have asked the same
question hundreds of times and received no reply to it. So far as we
provincials are concerned, she has disappeared utterly from the face of
the earth.