“I’ve never heard from her since the day she went back to you. That was twenty-six years ago last May.”
“The fourteenth.”
“Why should she have written me now?”
“She’s dying.” The man’s voice sounded in a softer timbre. “A month ago the doctor from the moonlight school told her that she had only a little while to live. She’s been pining ever since, not about dying, for she’s brave as any man, but for something I couldn’t guess until she told me. She wants to see you. She wrote you a letter, but she was afraid you might not get it, and so she sent me. ‘Tell him,’ she said, ‘that I won’t rest easy in my grave over there on the side of Big Stony, if he don’t come to me before I die. He told me once,’ she said, ‘that he’d come when I’d call. I’m calling now.’ That’s her message.” His tone lifted from its softer depth. “Are you coming to her?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve a thousand duties. I’ve—— It’s ridiculous.”
“Then you’re not coming?”
“How can I, Martin? I’m not my own man. I’m here for my state, for my country. I have work to do. I can’t let any personal obligation interfere with it. Besides——”
“It couldn’t hurt your wife, not even if she knew it. And Dell’s dying.”