After all it was beautiful for him to die and go to heaven while flowers filled his hands. A loud cry has gone up in my soul; an echo as it were of the funereal Consummatum est, which is pronounced in church on Good Friday at the hour when the Saviour died. And all day I wring my hands helplessly and can do nought but build dungeons and dungeons in the air. I speak in an altered voice as though my instrument had lost several strings and those that remained were loosened.
Dearest—can you tell me—am I responsible for his death? All during last night I seemed to hear God's voice asking: "Cain, where is Abel?" and I wail and beseech: "Am I my brother's keeper?" My soul is guilty—guilty of loving him—guilty of his death, for had I not loved him he would never have known the Black Hills. Oh! if I could but be resigned—if I could but bind up my bleeding wounds and lose myself in immeasurable lassitude!
I have pressed his lips for the last time, my precious son is at my breast—his long lashes are pressed tightly against his cheeks as if to secure his eyes from too strong a light, or to aid an effort of his young soul to recollect and hold fast a bliss that had been perfect but fleeting. His tiny pink and white ear framed by a stray lock of his hair and outlined by a wrapping of lace from you, would make an artist, a painter, even an old man wildly in love with his perfect little being, and will, please God, restore me, a mad woman to her senses!
Come to my Black Hills, I am crushed, desolate, heart-broken—come to
The Black Hills.
July 2.
One week has passed Dear, since you left us—a strange week of readjustment and thought. All of those precious months that you have given me are but another expression of your divine friendship. The poignant grief is gone with you and my gratitude to you can but be shown by the degree of bravery that I now manifest.
Every day this week, my son and I have sat in the sunshine near the two mounds, which my remaining bronze boy has decorated with crocuses from the neighboring ravine. He spends long hours after dark, gathering wild flowers in the moonlight. His devotion to me and my dead love, is the saddest, most boundless tribute that an uncivilized mind could offer. Silently he goes about his duties; silently he grieves, and more silently he gathers flowers as a tangible evidence of his devotion.
Your letters have come each day and will come each day until I lie too, beside my love on the desolate mountain side. Such is your unfailing love and sympathy for me, all unworthy of your months of sacrifice and isolation out here in my new home. My son, bless his precious heart, tried to crawl today but the newly developed feat frightened his baby mind and he cried. Closely almost roughly, I crush him to me a thousand times a day, so fearful am I that he too may go to join infinitude.