XL
It was a dream,—nothing else—but it made a very strong impression upon me. I could not forget it, though I was much occupied the next morning and for several days afterwards. It was so like life and the picture it left behind it was so vivid.
What was the picture? Just this; but as plain to my eye as if presented to it by a motion-picture film. Orpha, standing by herself alone, staring at some object lying in her open palm. She was dressed in white, not black. This I distinctly remember. Also that her hair which I had never seen save when dressed and fastened close to her head, lay in masses on her shoulders. A picture of loveliness but of great mental perplexity also. She was intrigued by what she was looking at. Astonishment was visible on her features and what I instinctively interpreted as alarm gave a rigidity to her figure far from natural to it.
Such was my dream; such the picture which would not leave me, nor explain itself for days.
I had got well into the swing of work and was able, strange as it may seem, to hold my own in all business matters, notwithstanding the personal anxieties which devoured my mind and heart the moment I was released from present duty. I had received one or two letters from Mr. Jackson, which while encouraging in a general way, added little to my knowledge of how matters in which I was so concerned were progressing in C——. Edgar was no longer there. In fact, he was in the same city as myself, but for what purpose or where located he could not tell me. The press had ceased covering the first page with unmeaning headlines concerning a tragedy which offered no new features; and although there was a large quota of interested persons who inveighed against the police for allowing me to leave town, there were others, the number of which was rapidly growing, who ventured to state that time and effort, however aided by an inexhaustible purse, would fail to bring to light any further explanation of their leading citizen’s sudden death, for the very good reason that there was nothing further to bring out,—the doctor’s report having been a mistaken one, and the death simply natural,—that is, the result of undue excitement.
“But there remain some few things of which the public is ignorant.”
In this manner Mr. Jackson ended his last letter.