“Yes. I want to do something Mother can’t forget.... You don’t need any
more fancy stunts, do you?”
She said she did not, but that she was very tired and could stay no
longer.
“Oh, don’t go!” he begged. “I’ll go with you, but I like gassing this
way.” Another characteristic phrase, she said.
After some further assurances of his frequent presence and constant
watchfulness, she said she really must go. Frederick then moved the
pencil down to the right corner again, and wrote, very clearly and
carefully, one more “upside-down” message—a touching little message of
love to “dear Dad and the girls,” which he signed, “Your boy, Frederick.”
The next day Mrs. Gaylord went home, where she immediately destroyed all
her black-bordered cards and stationery and similar symbols of mourning.
She wrote me that she felt it was false and wicked to mourn for a son as
vitally alive and happy as she now knew Frederick to be.
VI
One of my letters to Mr. Kendal had been marked “Urgent.” On the day
of Mrs. Gaylord’s departure a telegram came from him, asking that a
duplicate of this letter be sent to him at Chicago. It developed later
that all my missives, after some delay, had been forwarded from his club
to his business address in the South, where, owing to the uncertainty of
his plans, his secretary had held them, notifying him by wire of the one
evidently demanding immediate attention.
After some hesitation—reluctant to shock him by a bald and startling
announcement unaccompanied by any explanation of a situation concerning
which I was convinced he would be skeptical, if not wholly unsympathetic,
and yet impelled by his wife’s distressed insistence to reach him before
he should go South again—I telegraphed him that I had reason to believe I
had been in direct communication for several days with Mary and others,
and asked him to return _via_ New York, if possible.
Early that evening I took up a pencil, which moved at once.
“Manzie has your message.”
This could be no one but Mary Kendal. To my inquiry concerning his
reception of my telegram she replied: “He is startled. He is wiring you.”
An expression of her happiness followed, concluding, “He is thinking of
me ... and I can help him.”
“Can’t you help him unless he is thinking of you?”
Apparently this presented difficulties, but after long effort and many
false starts she achieved what I felt to be only a part of the answer she
had intended. “On power I can.”
“You mean that you can influence his work? His strength, or
accomplishment?”
“Yes, but not his heart and soul.” After assurances that he would come
soon, she thanked me touchingly.
Later in the evening she said, “Manzie is so amazed!” When I asked
whether he believed it, she returned: “He does now. He has thought....”
Details personal to him followed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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