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Yesterday at noon I learned of the bitter
loss3 that has come to us all and to you more than to anyone else. I think
you will know better than I can tell you how constantly my thoughts have been with
you since then. This city, and my walking about the streets of it, seem very much
like a dream when my heart is straining over-sea to you and to her4 who loved you so well through so many years.
For I cannot bring myself to feel but that somehow she
is there near you, and that if I could go to you today I would feel her presence
even if I could not see her, as I felt it when I went to see you when she was ill first ill in the winter. When one is far away
like this one cannot realize death. Other things become shadowy and unreal, but Miss
Jewett herself remains so real that I cannot get past the vivid image of her to any
other realization. I know that something has happened only by the numbness and
inertia that have come over me. I find that everything I have been doing and
undertaking over here I havedone with a hope that it might interest her—even to some clothes I was
having made. And now all the wheels stand still and the ways of life seem very dark
and purposeless. There is only one thing that seems worth hoping or wishing for, and
that is that you and Miss Mary5 are finding
strength and comfort from some source I do not know of, for I know that Miss
Jewett's first care and anxiety would have been for you. She was always so afraid
of
losing you, so afraid, as she told me at Manchester6 last summer, "that her life might be blown away from her
without warning."
I shall sail for home some time next week, as soon as I can get a boat, and I can hardly expect to hear news of you from anyone until then. I shall let you know as soon as I land in New York7. If there is anything, little or big, that I can do, if there should be anything which I could attend to for you, or any way in which I could lighten your loneliness, it would help me more than anything else in the world could and give me deeper pleasure.
Dear Mrs. Fields, one cant speak or write what I want to say to you, for nobody's heart can ever speak. Let me love and sorrow with you, and think of me sometimes when you are thinking of Miss Jewett. I could never tell you, I cannot even tell myself, how dear you both are to me.
Willa