Last night Jean, all flushed with splendid health, and I the same, from the wholesome effects of my Bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from the dinner-table and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned, and discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)--until nine--which is late for us--then went upstairs, Jean's friendly German dog following.At my door Jean said, "I can't kiss you good night, father: I have a cold, and you could catch it." I bent and kissed her hand.She was moved--I saw it in her eyes--and she impulsively kissed my hand in return.Then with the usual gay "Sleep well, dear!" from both, we parted.
At half past seven this morning I woke, and heard voices outside my door.I said to myself, "Jean is starting on her usual horseback flight to the station for the mail." Then Katy [1] entered, stood quaking and gasping at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue:
"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"
Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through his heart.
In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon the floor and covered with a sheet.And looking so placid, so natural, and as if asleep.We knew what had happened.She was an epileptic: she had been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath.The doctor had to come several miles.His efforts, like our previous ones, failed to bring her back to life.
It is noon, now.How lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil! It is a noble face, and full of dignity; and that was a good heart that lies there so still.
In England, thirteen years ago, my wife and I were stabbed to the heart with a cablegram which said, "Susy was mercifully released today." I had to send a like shot to Clara, in Berlin, this morning.With the peremptory addition, "You must not come home." Clara and her husband sailed from here on the 11th of this month.How will Clara bear it? Jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of Clara.
Four days ago I came back from a month's holiday in Bermuda in perfected health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive this.Day before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from friends and strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be dangerously ill.Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my case through the Associated Press.I said it was not important enough; but she was distressed and said I must think of Clara.Clara would see the report in the German papers, and as she had been nursing her husband day and night for four months [2] and was worn out and feeble, the shock might be disastrous.
There was reason in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph by telephone to the Associated Press denying the "charge" that I was "dying," and saying "I would not do such a thing at my time of life."Jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter so lightly; but I said it was best to treat it so, for there was nothing serious about it.This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of this day's irremediable disaster to the Associated Press.Will both appear in this evening's papers?--the one so blithe, the other so tragic?
I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe; and now I have lost Jean.How poor I am, who was once so rich! Seven months ago Mr.Roger died--one of the best friends I ever had, and the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my race; within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan--old, old friends of mine.Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was forever, we never suspecting it.She lies there, and I sit here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking.
How dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery.
Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days ago.Seventy-four years old yesterday.Who can estimate my age today?
I have looked upon her again.I wonder I can bear it.She looks just as her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago.The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.
I saw her mother buried.I said I would never endure that horror again; that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me.I have kept to that.They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and bear her to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been released, but I shall not follow.
Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago.She was at the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next evening.We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called "Mark Twain." We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and she wouldn't let me look into the loggia, where she was making Christmas preparations.She said she would finish them in the morning, and then her little French friend would arrive from New York--the surprise would follow; the surprise she had been working over for days.While she was out for a moment I disloyally stole a look.The loggia floor was clothed with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and the uncompleted surprise was there: in the form of a Christmas tree that was drenched with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a table was prodigal profusion of bright things which she was going to hang upon it today.What desecrating hand will ever banish that eloquent unfinished surprise from that place? Not mine, surely.All these little matters have happened in the last four days."Little." Yes--THEN.But not now.Nothing she said or thought or did is little now.And all the lavish humor!--what is become of it? It is pathos, now.Pathos, and the thought of it brings tears.
All these little things happened such a few hours ago--and now she lies yonder.Lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more.Strange--marvelous--incredible! I have had this experience before; but it would still be incredible if I had had it a thousand times.
"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"