The Dead Letter: An American Romance

by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

His grim humor was melancholy to me—but who could wonder that a man of Mr. Burton’s peculiar experience should be touched with cynicism? Besides, I felt that there was more in the inner meaning of his words than appeared upon their outer surface. I left him, sitting in a sheltered corner of the shop below, in a position where he could command the street and the entrance-hall without being himself observed, and making himself friendly with the busy little man behind the counter, of whom he had already purchased a pint of chestnuts. It would be as well that I should be out of the way. Miss Sullivan knew me, and might take alarm at some distant glimpse of me, while Mr. Burton’s person must be unknown to her, unless she had been the better detective of the two, and marked him when he was ignorant of her vicinity.

Stepping into a passing car, in a few minutes I had gone from the city of the living to the city of the dead. Beautiful and silent city! There the costly and gleaming portals, raised at the entrance of those mansions, tell us the name and age of the inhabitants, but the inhabitants themselves we never behold. Knock as loud and long as we may at those marble doors, cry, entreat, implore, they hold themselves invisible. Nevermore are they “at home” to us. We, who once were never kept waiting, must go from the threshold now, without a word of welcome. City of the dead—to which that city of the living must soon remove—who is there that can walk thy silent streets without a prescience of the time when he, too, will take up his abode in thee for ever? Strange city of solitude! where thousands whose homes are ranged side by side, know not one the other, and give no greeting to the pale new-comers.

With meditations like these, only far too solemn for words, I wandered through the lovely place, where, still, summer seemed to linger, as if loth to quit the graves she beautified. With Eleanor and Henry in my heart, I turned in the direction of the family burial-plot, wishing that Eleanor were with me on that glorious day, that she might first behold his grave under such gentle auspices of light, foliage and flowers—for I knew that she contemplated a pilgrimage to this spot, as soon as her strength would warrant the attempt.

I approached the spot by a winding path; the soft plash of a fountain sounded through a little thicket of evergreens, and I saw the gleam of the wide basin into which it fell; a solitary bird poured forth a mournful flood of lamentation from some high branch not far away. It required but little aid of fancy to hear in that “melodious madness” the cry of some broken heart, haunting, in the form of this bird, the place of the loved one’s sleep.

There were other wanderers than myself in the cemetery; a funeral train was coming through the gate as I passed in, and I met another within a few steps; but in the secluded path where I now walked I was alone. With the slow steps of one who meditates sad things, I approached Henry’s grave. Gliding away by another devious path, I saw a female figure.

“It is some other mourner, whom I have disturbed from her vigil by some of these tombs,” I thought—“or, perchance, one who was passing further on before reaching the goal of her grief,”—and with this I dismissed her from my mind, having had, at the best, only an indistinct glimpse of the woman, and the momentary flutter of her garments as she passed beyond a group of tall shrubs and was lost to view.

The next moment I knelt by the sod which covered that young and noble form. Do not think me extravagant in my emotions. I was not so—only overpowered, always, by intense sympathy with the sufferers by that calamity. I had so mused upon Eleanor’s sorrow that I had, as it were, made it mine. I bowed my head, breathing a prayer for her, then leaning against the trunk of a tree whose leaves no longer afforded shade to the carefully-cultivated family inclosure, my eyes fell upon the grave. There were beautiful flowers fading upon it, which some friendly hand had laid there within a week or two. Ten or fifteen minutes I may have passed in reverie; then, as I arose to depart, I took up a fading bud or two and a sprig of myrtle, placing them in my vest-pocket to give Eleanor on my return. As I stooped to gather them, I perceived the imprint of a child’s foot, here and there, all about the grave—a tiny imprint, in the fresh mold, as of some toddling babe whose little feet had hardly learned to steady themselves.

There were one or two marks of a woman’s slender shoe; but it was the infant feet which impressed me. It flashed upon me what female figure it was which I had seen flitting away as I approached; now that I recalled it, I even recognized the tall, slender form, with the slight stoop of the shoulders, of which I had obtained but a half-glance. I hastily pursued the path she had taken; but my haste was behind hers by at least a quarter of an hour.

I realized that I would only lose time by looking for her in those winding avenues, every one of which might be taking me from instead of toward the fugitives; so I turned back to the gate and questioned the keeper if he had seen a tall young woman with a little child pass out in the last half-hour. He had seen several children and women go out in that time; and as I could not tell how this particular one was dressed, I could not arouse his recollection to any certainty on the point.

“She was probably carrying the child,” I said; “she had a consumptive look, and was sad-looking, though her face was doubtless hidden in her vail.”