It was a hard task. She scribbled the date, and paused. This, strangely enough, was the first letter she had ever written to him. She did not know how to begin it. Her heart beat—her fingers trembled. To tell such news to the dearest friend and husband that ever woman had, would be a difficult and painful thing, and for her to tell it to him, as they were now! For the first letter he ever had from her to be this! And how could she write it?—she who till to-day would almost have cut off her right hand rather than have humbled herself to write to him at all. Yet now all the wrath was melting out of her, and tenderness swelling up afresh. We always feel so tender over those that are in trouble.
“Yes, I will do it,” muttered Agatha. And she wrote firmly the words—“My dear husband” They seemed at the same time to imprint themselves on her heart as a truth—invisible sometimes, yet when brought near to the fire of strong emotion or suffering, found ineffaceably written there.
The letter was a mere brief explanation and summons; but it bore the words, duty-words certainly—yet which no duty would have forced Agatha to write had they been untrue—“My dear husband”—“Your affectionate wife.”
She despatched it, and re-entered the sick-room. All was quiet there—the very hopelessness of the case produced quiet. There was nothing to be done, watched, or waited for. Doctor Mason sat by his patient, as he had declared his intention of doing through the night. He sat mournfully, for he was a kind, good man—the family doctor for thirty years.
“Let all go to bed,” he said to Agatha, seeming to understand at once that she was the moving spirit in the family. “Make the house perfectly quiet, and then”—
“I will come and sit up with you.”
Doctor Mason looked compassionately at the slight girlish figure, and the face already wan with the re-action after excitement. “My dear Mrs. Harper, would not a servant do as well?”
“No, I am his son's wife. What should I say to my husband if—if anything happened, and he not there, nor I?”
“Good. Then stay,” said the doctor, kindly grasping her hand. He was a man of few words.
It took some time and patience to quiet the house, and persuade Mary and Eulalie to retire. When all was done, and Agatha passed swiftly, lamp in hand, through the dark, solitary rooms, she felt frightened. The house seemed so silent—already so full of death.