I felt that everything worth while had been taken: Jack, my babies. Only the money remained, and that I hated, because it could not keep what I wanted. But you were splendid when you said, "make the thing you despise a blessing!" I’ve tried, Man-Andy, to make it a blessing to others, and it is becoming a blessing to me. I feel I am using it for Jack and for the babies and that they are making it sacred. I feared that in this big, empty house the ghosts would haunt me; not the strange old history ghosts of great ladies and dashing men who used to forget their homesickness for their mother-countries by revelling in this shelter in the New World. I did not think of them, for do you not remember Jack’s comical ghost hunts? How he joked about it, saying that he’d yet lure some old English or French aristocrat to stay and sanctify our presence by his sponsorship? But oh! I did fear the memories of my man’s dear, jovial ways, the pretty babble of my little babies.
And then—I know I am rambling shamefully, but I cannot sleep, the moonlight is flooding the garden—I hear Professor Revelle’s violin. Andy, he has actually recovered to the extent of music when he thinks I do not know. As I look at the dear old soul, so like a gentle wraith, I remember how you and father and Jack adored his music and how Jack grieved when illness and poverty stilled it. But you found him, Man-Andy, and you lent him to me to save, and his music at least has been given back to him. Not with its old fire and passion—I think if any demand were made upon him he might be aroused. I may take lessons myself some day. But he plays dreamily, softly when he is alone, generally in the garden and at night. He forgets his blindness then.
But to-day I had a caller. I wonder if you remember the nice Mam’selle Jo Morey that Jack and I used to talk about? You have some of her linens in your studio. You may recall the incident of the summer when we told you of her troubles; her desertion by a man of the place and the death of her imbecile sister? I had almost forgotten it myself, so much has happened since then, but it all came back to me to-day when she came with her story.
Andy, her story is quite the most tragic a woman can have; such things happen even here. She did not cringe or whine, I would have hated her if she had; you know how I feel about such things. My Mam’selle Jo does not whine!