“Why not? I couldn't have resisted such a righteous chance of making her feel bad.”
“But I don't want to make her feel bad.”
“Just a little? You will never convince people that you are unworldly this way. Even Uncle Jerry wouldn't do that.”
“You and Uncle Jerry are very much alike,” cried Margaret, laughing in spite of herself—“both of you as bad as you can be.”
“But, dear, we don't pretend, do we?” asked Carmen, innocently.
To some of us at Brandon, Margaret's letter was scarcely a surprise, though it emphasized a divergence we had been conscious of. But with Miss Forsythe it was far otherwise. The coolness of Margaret's tone filled her with alarm; it was the premonition of a future which she did not dare to face.
There was a passage in the letter which she did not show; not that it was unfeeling, she told my wife afterwards, but that it exhibited a worldly-mindedness that she could not have conceived of in Margaret. She could bear separation from the girl on whom she had bestowed her tenderest affection, that she had schooled herself to expect upon her marriage—that, indeed, was only a part of her life of willing self-sacrifice—their paths must lie apart, and she could hope to see little of her. But what she could not bear was the separation in spirit, the wrenching apart of sympathy, the loss of her heart, and the thought of her going farther and farther away into that world whose cynical and materialistic view of life made her shudder. I think there are few tragedies in life comparable to this to a sensitive, trusting soul—not death itself, with its gracious healing and oblivion and pathos. Family quarrels have something sustaining in them, something of a sense of wrong and even indignation to keep up the spirits. There was no family quarrel here, no indignation, just simple, helpless grief and sense of loss. In one sense it seemed to the gentle spinster that her own life was ended, she had lived so in this girl—ever since she came to her a child, in long curls and short frocks, the sweetest, most trustful, mischievous, affectionate thing. These two then never had had any secrets, never any pleasure, never any griefs they did not share. She had seen the child's mind unfold, the girl's grace and intelligence, the woman's character. Oh, Margaret, she cried, to herself, if you only knew what you are to me!
Margaret's little chamber in the cottage was always kept ready for her, much in the condition she had left it. She might come back at any time, and be a girl again. Here were many of the things which she had cherished; indeed everything in the room spoke of the simple days of her maidenhood. It was here that Miss Forsythe sat in her loneliness the morning after she received the letter, by the window with the muslin curtain, looking out through the shrubbery to the blue hills. She must be here; she could stay nowhere else in the house, for here the little Margaret came back to her. Ah, and when she turned, would she hear the quick steps and see the smiling face, and would she put back the tangled hair and lift her up and kiss her? There in that closet still hung articles of her clothing-dresses that had been laid aside when she became a woman—kept with the sacred sentiment of New England thrift. How each one, as Miss Forsythe took them down, recalled the girl! In the inner closet was a pile of paper boxes. I do not know what impulse it was that led the heavy-hearted woman to take them down one by one, and indulge her grief in the memories enshrined in them. In one was a little bonnet, a spring bonnet; Margaret had worn it on the Easter Sunday when she took her first communion. The little thing was out of fashion now; the ribbons were all faded, but the spray of moss rose-buds on the side was almost as fresh as ever. How well she remembered it, and the girl's delight in the nodding roses!
When Mrs. Fletcher had called again and again, with no response, and finally opened the door and peeped in, there the spinster sat by the window, the pitiful little bonnet in her hand, and the tears rolling down her cheeks. God help her!