I do
not know when I can ever start on a personal quest myself, for
even had I the money I could not leave home until Rodman is much
older, and fitted for greater responsibility. Oh! Waitstill, how
you have helped my poor, dear mother! Would that I were free to
tell you how I value your friendship! It is something more than
mere friendship! What you are doing is like throwing a life-line
to a sinking human being. Two or three times, of late, mother has
forgotten to set out the supper things for my father. Her ten
years' incessant waiting for him seems to have subsided a little,
and in its place she watches for you. [Ivory had written "watches
for her daughter" but carefully erased the last two words.] You
come but seldom, but her heart feeds on the sight of you. What
she needed, it seems, was the magical touch of youth and health
and strength and sympathy, the qualities you possess in such
great measure.
If I had proof of my father's death I think now, perhaps, that I
might try to break it gently to my mother, as if it were fresh
news, and see if possibly I might thus remove her principal
hallucination. You see now, do you not, how sane she is in many,
indeed in most ways,--how sweet and lovable, even how sensible?
To help you better to understand the influence that has robbed me
of both father and mother and made me and mine the subject of
town and tavern gossip for years past, I have written for you
just a sketch of the "Cochrane craze"; the romantic story of a
man who swayed the wills of his fellow-creatures in a truly
marvellous manner.
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