This is the telegram which I received this morning, and to-morrow I am going to poor Margaret. God grant she may not be dead! Dear sister, what would I not give if I had never written those dreadful things of her in my journal. Poor Margaret! her married life has not been very happy with all those children born so fast, and if she lives how much I will love her to make amends for the past. My trunks are packed and standing in the hall, and I am looking, for the last time it may be, on the woods and hills of Morrisville, where the moonlight is falling so softly. I can see a little of the cemetery in the distance, and I know where Anna’s grave is so well. I have been there but once since that day, and then I found Jessie with Mrs. West planting flowers over Robin. Mrs. West loves that young girl, and so do I, in spite of what the doctor said; but she does shock me with her boyish, thoughtless manners, actually whistling John Brown as she dug in the yellow dirt. Jessie is a queer compound. She and her father and Bell are going on with me to Saratoga. Oh, if Dr. West could be there too, he would cure Margaret. I have been half tempted to telegraph, but finally concluded that brother John would do so if desirable. Poor John! what will he do if he is left alone? and does Jessie remember the foolish thing she said about his second wife? I trust not, for that would be terrible, and Margaret not yet dead.
“Clarendon Hotel, Saratoga. }
August 30th. }
“My heart will surely break unless I unburden it to some one, and so I come to you, my journal, to pour out my grief. Margaret is dead; and all around, the gay world is unchanged; the song and the dance go on the same as if in No.—there were no rigid form, no pale Margaret gone forever,—no wretched husband weeping over her,—no motherless little children left alone so early.
“It was seven when we reached Saratoga, and I stepped from the car into the noisy, jostling crowd which Judge Verner pushed hither and thither in his frantic efforts to find his baggage, and secure an omnibus. How sick of fashionable life it made me, to see the throng upon the sidewalks and in front of the hotels, as we drove along the streets, and how anxiously I looked up at all the upper windows as we stopped before the Clarendon, saying to myself, ‘Is this Margaret’s room, or that?’
“I knew there was a group of men on the piazza, and remembering how curiously new-comers are inspected, I drew my veil before my face and was following Judge Verner, when Jessie suddenly exclaimed, ‘Perfectly splendid!’ and the next moment my hand was grasped by Dr. West. He was waiting for us, he said; he expected us on that train, and was staying downstairs to meet us.
“‘And Margaret?’ I asked, clinging to his arm, and throwing off my veil so I could see his face.
“‘Your sister is very sick,’ he replied, ‘but your coming will do her good. She keeps asking for you. I arrived yesterday, starting as soon as I received your brother’s telegram. Johnnie is nearly distracted, and nothing but my telling him I was sure you would prefer to have him remain at home, was of the least avail to keep him from coming with me.
“All this he told me while we waited in the reception-room for the keys to our apartments.
“‘It is very crowded here,’ he said, ‘but by a little engineering I believe you are all comfortably provided for. Your room especially,’ and he nodded to me, ‘is the most desirable in the building.’