My Mortal Enemy/Part 2/Chapter 7
VII
Although she had returned so ardently to the faith of her childhood, Myra Henshawe never changed the clause in her will, which requested that her body should be cremated, and her ashes buried “in some lonely and unfrequented place in the mountains, or in the sea.”
After it was all over, and her ashes sealed up in a little steel box, Henshawe called me into her room one morning, where he was packing her things, and told me he was going to Alaska.
“Oh, not to seek my fortune,” he said, smiling. “That is for young men. But the steamship company have a place for me in their office there. I have always wanted to go, and now there is nothing to hold me. This poor little box goes with me; I shall scatter her ashes somewhere in those vast waters. And this I want you to keep for remembrance.” He dropped into my hands the necklace of carved amethysts she had worn on the night I first saw her.
“And, Nellie” He paused before me with his arms folded, standing exactly as he stood behind Modjeska’s chair in the moonlight on that New Year’s night; standing like a statue, or a sentinel, I had said then, not knowing what it was I felt in his attitude; but now I knew it meant indestructible constancy . . . almost indestructible youth. “Nellie,” he said, “I don’t want you to remember her as she was here. Remember her as she was when you were with us on Madison Square, when she was herself, and we were happy. Yes, happier than it falls to the lot of most mortals to be. After she was stricken, her recollection of those things darkened. Life was hard for her, but it was glorious, too; she had such beautiful friendships. Of course, she was absolutely unreasonable when she was jealous. Her suspicions were sometimes—almost fantastic.” He smiled and brushed his forehead with the tips of his fingers, as if the memory of her jealousy was pleasant still, and perplexing still. “But that was just Molly Driscoll! I’d rather have been clawed by her, as she used to say, than petted by any other woman I’ve ever known. These last years it’s seemed to me that I was nursing the mother of the girl who ran away with me. Nothing ever took that girl from me. She was a wild, lovely creature, Nellie. I wish you could have seen her then.”
Several years after I said good-bye to him, Oswald Henshawe died in Alaska. I have still the string of amethysts, but they are unlucky. If I take them out of their box and wear them, I feel all evening a chill over my heart. Sometimes, when I have watched the bright beginning of a love story, when I have seen a common feeling exalted into beauty by imagination, generosity, and the flaming courage of youth, I have heard again that strange complaint breathed by a dying woman into the stillness of night, like a confession of the soul: “Why must I die like this, alone with my mortal enemy!”
This book is set in a type called Scotch. There is a divergence of opinion regarding the origin of this face, some authorities holding that it was first cut by Alexander Wilson & Son of Glasgow in 1833. Whatever its origin, it is certain that the type was widely used in Scotland where it was called Modern Roman, and since its introduction into America has been known as Scotch.
THE FORMAT, decorations and illustrations were made by W. A. Dwiggins and the book manufactured under the supervision of the Pynson Printers of New York. The press work and binding were done by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass., and the paper made by the H. C. Chalfant Mill.