The Peace of Yesterdays
It was a wet, unpleasant evening in February, and little Miss Hicks, hurrying homeward with her chop for to-morrow's dinner, felt wet and unpleasant, too. Her jacket was too thin for such weather, and her worn shoes, splashing over the muddy pavement, made her dread the twinges of rheumatism which would surely follow. She paused a moment for breath beneath the sheltering awning of a book-store, and, as she shook her dripping skirts, she glanced into the gaily lighted windows. It happened to be the evening before Valentine's day, and the windows of the shop were filled with the usual "tokens of affection"; riotous cupids with garlands of roses and forget-me-nots, reposing on beds of celluloid; lovely scrolls in delicate pinks and blues with amorous, gilded verses inscribed on them; wonderful creations in silks of brilliant hue, at which all the small girls of the neighborhood gazed covetously. On one side lay a heap of comic valentines in ugly, staring reds and yellows, but Miss Hicks never noticed them, for she had eyes only for the gorgeous visions on the other side. As she looked at them, a flood of suddenly-released memories came into her head which made her cheeks for a moment grow youthfully pink and her faded eyes glow like stars.
The door of the shop closed with a final bang, and the lights went out suddenly. But Miss Hicks only smiled happily to herself, as she hurried through the remaining squares to her own dingy little house in dingy little Lombard street. The dim street lamp showed a sign, battered and discolored, of "Miss M. Hicks, Fashionable Milliner," and as the owner of the shop opened the creaking door, stepped inside, and lighted a lamp, a few old-fashioned hats and bonnets could be faintly discerned on the narrow counter, while in the one small showcase were sundry faded ribbons and drooping birds.
"It's a wonder to me," her nearest neighbors would often say, "how that Miss Hicks manages to get along; kith nor kin she don't seem to have none, and the customers she's got ain't enough to keep body and soul together. But I've heard as how she gets an annuity from some dead relatives and that probably helps her out, if she's real good at scrimping and saving."
But in spite Of the solicitude of her neighbors, they never found out any certain facts about the little woman in rusty black, who was always either sitting at her window, sewing on the hats of her few customers, or else taking a solitary stroll through the dingy, narrow streets. She went walking usually when the daylight was nearly gone, for in a timid, childish way she shrank from observation, and preferred to commune with herself rather than join her neighbors in friendly gossip.
Generally she liked to be slow about preparing and eating her meals, for in this way they took up quite a part of the long, lonely day; but to-night she was in such a hurry about her few preparations and did everything with such an air of abstraction that she nearly amputated a finger while cutting bread, and entirety forgot to put anything in the tea-pot except hot water. When at last the dishes had been washed and carefully put away, each in its own proper place, when the sleek white cat had been given a generous saucer of milk, then Miss Hicks, with an air of trembling and hesitating eagerness, placed a chair against the old-fashioned cupboard in the living-room, and reaching up, to the peril of life and limb, drew forth from its inmost recesses a square pasteboard box. She carefully wiped off the dust on its surface—it was probably the only dusty article in her whole establishment—and, carrying the box to the kitchen table, deposited it there with a loving little pat.
But now, when her intentions seemed practically accomplished, something held her back; it seemed an though invisible fingers were closing over her own to keep her from opening the box, from prying into the things which she had not had the courage to look at for such long, long years. She thought, with a shiver, of these years. Fifteen of them! And so clear does memory sometimes become that Miss Hicks could distinctly remember when she had placed the last letter in the box—her "Treasure Box" she had often called it lovingly—and as she thought of all that had happened since she had put that letter in, of all the loneliness and desolation of those fifteen years, she bent her head on the little green box and cried softly.
After a while she raised her head, and with a quick flash of determination in her grey eyes, took the lid from the box and turned the contents out on the table. On top of the heap lay several yellowed envelopes, quaintly embossed, with "Miss Mary Ellen Hicks" written on them in faded, boyish writing. With a caressing touch Miss Hicks put these aside and picked up a bent tintype of a boy with laughing eyes and a tender, pleasant mouth. At this she looked a long time, at first with a little answering smile for the smile in the picture, then with misty reminiscent eyes. More modern valentines came next in the pile; much more elaborate, too, these were, and the verses seemed chosen by a more discriminating eye. She put them all aside, with a sigh and a loving look for each, and picked up the one at the very bottom; the envelope bore a western postmark and was not elaborate nor fanciful as the others had been, nor were the contents anything more than a sheet of paper folded around the picture of a man—a man who, in spite of the lines of weariness in his face, had still the boyish eyes and kind mouth of the other picture. On the paper was written, in a strong, angular hand:
"Dear heart, try to think of me and remember me to-day, even though I am so far away from home and you. I am sorry that I have no other valentine to send you, but there is more love in this scrap of paper than in all the valentines in creation. I am thinking just now how, a year ago, you and I were sitting in the dear old home parlor, making valentines for the neighbors' children, and when I think of the difference between then and now, I feel as sad and depressed as the wailing pines around me. I have had such strange premonitions to-day, too; I seem to see such a long vista of years before me and you do not seem to have a share in any of them. Dear heart, I want you to promise me that you will never forget me, no matter where I may be, whether I am living or dead. If I know this it will take away, in part at least, my loneliness and my feeling of desertion on this desolate ranch. Good-bye, dear, and God bless you.
Your Dan."