"Jim Purdy, taken the day he left for the army"
Miss Larrabee came down the lilac-bordered walk from the stately old brick house, carrying a great bouquet of sweet peas and nasturtiums and poppies and phlox, a fleeting memory of some association she had in her mind of Uncle Jimmy Purdy and Aunt Martha kept tantalising her. She could not get it out of the background of her consciousness, and yet it refused to form itself into a tangible conception. It was associated vaguely with her own grandmother, as though, infinite ages ago, her grandmother had said something that had lodged the idea in the girl's head.
When the occasion made itself, Miss Larrabee asked her grandmother the question that puzzled her, and learned that Martha Perkins and Jim Purdy were lovers before the war, and that she was wearing his ring when he went away—thinking he would be back in a few weeks with the Rebellion put down. In his first fight he was shot in the head and was in the hospital for a year, demented; when he was put back in the ranks he was captured and his name given out among the killed. In prison his dementia returned and he stayed there two years. Then for a year after his exchange he followed the Union Army like a dumb creature, and not until two years after the close of the war did the poor fellow drift home again, as one from the dead—all uncertain of the past and unfitted for the future.
And his sweetheart drank her cup alone. The old settlers say that she never flinched nor shrank, but for years, even after her marriage to the Judge, the young woman kept a little grave covered with flowers, that bore the simple words: "Martha, aged five months and three days." They say that she did not lose her courage and that she bent her head for no one. But the war brought her neighbours so many sorrows that Martha's trouble was forgotten, the years passed and only the old people of the community know about the little grave beside the Judge's and their little boy's. Jimmy Purdy grew into a smooth-faced, unwrinkled, rather blank-eyed old man, clerking in the bookstore for a time, serving as City Clerk for twenty years, and later living at the Palace Hotel on his pension. He worshipped Aunt Martha's children and her children's children, but he never saw her except when they met in some casual way. She was married when he came back from the war, and if he ever knew her agony he never spoke of it. Whenever he talked of the events before the war, his face wore a troubled, baffled look, and he did not seem to remember things clearly. He was a simple old man with a boyish face and heart who was confused by the world growing old around him.
One day they found him dead in his bed. And Miss Larrabee hurried out to Aunt Martha's to get the facts about his life for the paper. It was a bright October morning as she went up the walk to the old brick house, and she heard someone playing on the piano, rolling the chords after the grandiose manner of pianists fifty years ago. A voice seemed to be singing an old ballad. As the girl mounted the steps the voice came more distinctly to her. It was quavering and unsure, but with a moan of passion the words came forth:
"As I lay my heart on your dead heart,—Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true——"
Suddenly the voice choked in a groan. As she stood by the open door Miss Larrabee could see in the darkened room the figure of an old woman racked with sobs on a great mahogany sofa, and on the floor beside her lay a daguerreotype, glinting its gilt and glass through the gloom.
The girl tiptoed across the porch, down the steps through the garden and out of the gate.