But when I got to you, it was too much to bear; and when I thought I had you in my arms at last, I awoke, crying as I never cried before, not even when I found that you had left me to die without you.Oh, Andrew, what if the dream should come true! But if it should not come true! I dare not think of that, Andrew.I couldn't be happy in heaven without you.It may be very wicked, but I do not feel as if it were, and I can't help it if it is.But, dear husband, come to me again.Come back, like the prodigal in the New Testament.God will forgive you everything.Don't touch drink again, my dear love.I know it was the drink that made you do as you did.You could never have done it.It was the drink that drove you to do it.You didn't know what you were doing.And then you were ashamed, and thought I would be angry, and could not bear to come back to me.Ah, if you were to come in at the door, as Iwrite, you would see whether or not I was proud to have my Andrew again.But I would not be nice for you to look at now.You used to think me pretty--you said beautiful--so long ago.But I am so thin now, and my face so white, that I almost frighten myself when I look in the glass.And before you get this I shall be all gone to dust, either knowing nothing about you, or trying to praise God, and always forgetting where I am in my psalm, longing so for you to come.I am afraid I love you too much to be fit to go to heaven.
Then, perhaps, God will send me to the other place, all for love of you, Andrew.And I do believe I should like that better.But Idon't think he will, if he is anything like the man I saw in my dream.But I am growing so faint that I can hardly write.I never felt like this before.But that dream has given me strength to die, because I hope you will come too.Oh, my dear Andrew, do, do repent and turn to God, and he will forgive you.Believe in Jesus, and he will save you, and bring me to you across the deep place.But Imust make haste.I can hardly see.And I must not leave this letter open for anybody but you to read after I am dead.Good-bye, Andrew.I love you all the same.I am, my dearest Husband, your affectionate Wife,'H.FALCONER.'
Then followed the date.It was within a week of her death.The letter was feebly written, every stroke seeming more feeble by the contrasted strength of the words.When Falconer read it afterwards, in the midst of the emotions it aroused--the strange lovely feelings of such a bond between him and a beautiful ghost, far away somewhere in God's universe, who had carried him in her lost body, and nursed him at her breasts--in the midst of it all, he could not help wondering, he told me, to find the forms and words so like what he would have written himself.It seemed so long ago when that faded, discoloured paper, with the gilt edges, and the pale brown ink, and folded in the large sheet, and sealed with the curious wax, must have been written; and here were its words so fresh, so new! not withered like the rose-leaves that scented the paper from the work-box where he had found it, but as fresh as if just shaken from the rose-trees of the heart's garden.It was no wonder that Andrew Falconer should be sitting with his head in his hands when Robert looked in on him, for he had read this letter.
When Robert saw how he sat, he withdrew, and took his violin again, and played all the tunes of the old country he could think of, recalling Dooble Sandy's workshop, that he might recall the music he had learnt there.
