A WEEK later the telegram was brought to her telling her that he had been killed in action.
It was a beautiful spring day, just such a day as that on which she and Jack had first seen Dorrington, and she had been working in the garden. When she had read, she turned and walked down the path that led to the hazel-copse. She hardly knew what had happened to her; there was only an instinct for flight, concealment, secrecy; but, as she walked, there rose in her, without sound, as if in a nightmare, the terrible cry of her loneliness. The dark wet earth that covered him seemed heaped upon her heart.
The hazel-copse was tasselled thickly with golden-green, and as she entered it she saw that the hepaticas were in flower. They seemed to shine with their own celestial whiteness, set in their melancholy green among the fallen leaves. She had never seen them look so beautiful.
She followed the path, looking down at them, and she seemed to feel Jack’s little hand in hers and to see, at her side, his nut-brown head. It had been on just such a morning. She came to the stone bench; but the impulse that had led her here was altered. She did not sink down and cover her face, but stood looking around her at the flowers, the telegram still open in her hand; and slowly, with stealing calm, the sense of sanctuary fell about her.
She had lost him, and with him went all her life. He was dead, his youth and strength and beauty. Yet what was this strange up-welling of relief, deep, deep relief, for Jack; this gladness, poignant and celestial, like that of the hepaticas? He was dead and the dark earth covered him; yet he was here, with her, safe in his youth and strength and beauty, forever. He had died the glorious death, and no future, tangled, perplexed, fretful with its foolish burden, lay before him. There was no loss for Jack; no fading, no waste. The burden was for her and he was free.
Later when pain should have dissolved thought her agony would come to her unalleviated; but this hour was hers and his. She heard the river and the soft whisperings of spring. A bird dropped lightly unafraid from branch to branch of a tree near by. From the woods came the rapid insistent tapping of a woodpecker; and as in so many springs she seemed to hear Jack say, “Hark, mummy,” and his little hand was always held in hers. And everywhere telling of irreparable loss, of a possession unalterable, the tragic, the celestial hepaticas.
She sat down on the stone bench now and closed her eyes for a little while so holding them more closely—Jack and the hepaticas—together.
