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THE GATES AJAR.
BY
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
A little definite happiness would be more to the purpose.”
Madame de Gasparin
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.
1873.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co.,
Cambridge.
To my father, whose life, like a perfume from beyond the Gates,penetrates every life which approaches it, the readers of this littlebook will owe whatever pleasant thing they may find within its pages.
E. S. P.
Andover, October 22, 1868.
T H E G A T E S A J A R.
Chapter I., II., II., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX., X., XI., XII., XIII., XIV., XV., XVI. |
I.
ONE week; only one week to-day, this twenty-first of February.
I have been sitting here in the dark and thinking about it, till itseems so horribly long and so horribly short; it has been such a week tolive through, and it is such a small part of the weeks that must belived through, that I could think no longer, but lighted my lamp andopened my desk to find something to do.
I was tossing my paper about,—only my own: the packages in the yellowenvelopes I have not been quite brave enough to open yet,—when I cameacross this poor little book in which I used to keep memoranda of theweather, and my lovers, when I was a school-girl. I turned the leaves,smiling to see how many blank pages were left, and took up my pen, andnow I am not smiling any more.
If it had not come exactly as it did, it seems to me as if I could bearit better. They tell{2} me that it should not have been such a shock.“Your brother had been in the army so long that you should have beenprepared for anything. Everybody knows by what a hair a soldier’s lifeis always hanging,” and a great deal more that I am afraid I have notlistened to. I suppose it is all true; but that never makes it anyeasier.
The house feels like a prison. I walk up and down and wonder that I evercalled it home. Something is the matter with the sunsets; they come andgo, and I do not