March 18th. If the outward pressure of necessity for self-control be great enough to balance the inward pressure of pain, one can keep fairly steady. But a week after the Peon left on one of those long western trips something came up that made it necessary for David to drop everything and go to Atlanta. He was detained there beyond his expectations, and then wrote me he must go to New York before returning home. He begged me again, as when he first left, to send for Grace; but I did not want her. At first it was a relief to be alone, with no need for effort or concealment. Afterwards, I did not want her because her sympathy would have been more than I could bear.
It wasn’t just the day’s pain, or the night’s—one can usually manage that somehow. What Grumpy did was to set today’s pain by that of yesterday, and the day before that; to add last week’s to last year’s, to the pain of ten years, twenty years, back. He applied his recollections like a mustard plaster, and rubbed them in like a liniment. Then he took tomorrow, and next year, and the year after that, and built them all into one long via dolorosa—a life-time path of pain. I might have stood that; I have before. But beside the pain he set the idleness—this horrible, useless idleness. That is the killing part! He set it all before me, as plain in the black and sleepless nights as in the day: and while I cowered, he gibed and threatened till I feared to look ahead and dared not hope. And when I tried to run away to Make-Believe, for the first time in all my life I could not find the way! That finished everything.
So I lay still and silent one age-long night, shut fast in my body at last, the slow tears dripping on my pillow on either side. Suddenly, in the dawning, a purpose leaped within me; Ella should come to me—here, in this very room, from which I could no longer escape. If Make-Believe were closed to me, I would command her here. I would tell her everything: I could not bear it in silence any more.
Since we first went to the city I had loved her. And after Great-aunt Letitia died, until she went North to live, she had been constantly in my home. And after that—oh, we knew the way to Make-Believe, we two! Never a day but we met there, for many a year. She knew all about the pain, though we never spoke of it. It wasn’t merely that words were unnecessary, but that pain, in her presence, seemed so small a part of life. Nothing really mattered but love and kindness and happy human laughter.
Yet she had never had a real home, nor even a care-free childhood. Her life had been one long sacrifice for those who took her bounty as their right. But the laughing blue eyes, the heart of kindness, the sturdy, sensible, joyous spirit of her, blended of love and humor and common sense! The children in the streets ran after her, and tired faces brightened as she passed.
For three years and a half now I had not seen her, even in Make-Believe, where I met every one else I love, both living and dead. Somehow I could not pretend about her any more, after that strange day when my letter came back unopened—the happy letter I had written to tell her I was going to a sanitarium to be made over new, so that I could come and pay her a “really truly” visit on my way home. She never saw the letter. They sent it back unopened; and I could not play about her any more.
But now, if I must stay shut in my body, she must come. She should never leave me. I would tell her every day just how hard life was. And she would be sorry for me; she would understand. I reached out with all the life left in me to draw her out of Make-Believe, now shut against me, and bring her to share my prison, and to hear my complaints.
I turned my head upon the pillow and lifted my heavy lids. She was coming toward the bed. I raised my arms feebly, and her own were round me. My head fell on her breast, and I lay there, drawing long, sobbing breaths, while she stroked my hair with firm and gentle fingers. There was no need for speech: her touch was always plainer than other people’s words.
But presently I was aware of a difference in her touch, a something new and strange. I whispered weakly, without opening my eyes.