[Letter on cream correspondence paper, monogrammed "A.T.C." A single sheet, doubled. Augusta's hand. Posted with a two-cent stamp.]
411 The Crescent, Port Hume, Monday the Sixth of October, 1919.
Dearest Evangeline,
Thank you for coming yesterday. You did not ask me anything and you did not tell me anything and I found that so much kinder than the other people who have come. Please give Edmund my thanks also. He sent the roses that are on the hall table. They are the only white flowers in this house now that are not wreath flowers, and I look at them when I go past and feel that somebody living sent them.
I want to tell you something I have observed in myself, because you are the only person I can tell it to.
When Russell was killed I was broken for a year. I was broken publicly. I threw myself at Mama when the telegram came and I wept in the street on the way back from the cable office. When Bennet's letter came — you remember, Mama had it before any of us because the officer wrote to her — we wept together for two days. When Papa died on the twelfth, I sat in the library and drank a cup of tea that Mrs. Pomfret had poured before the doctor came, and I have not wept once. Not once, Evangeline. I have not been able to.
I think Mama has not wept either. I cannot tell, because she is Mama. But she has a contained grief, the kind I do not recognize. I think sometimes she is grieving for something that is not precisely my father. I do not know what I mean by that. Perhaps I mean that she is grieving for him in a language I was not given the key to.
Mama has said to me that I should go on Thursday to the Orpheus Society. There is a lady there called Madame Laforge who is said to be gifted in the things of the other life. Mama went herself in the spring, after we had the news of Bennet. She would not speak afterwards of what she had heard. I have declined Mama's suggestion twice. I do not think I will decline it a third time. I am so tired, dear friend. I do not know how to mourn Papa in the absence of the other mournings that came first. I would like, if it is possible, to feel his death at all.
Please write to me when you are able. You need not say anything of substance. I find I can bear small sentences about the weather and your correspondence; I cannot yet bear condolence. Forgive me.
I remain, as ever, your loving
Augusta
P.S. — Mama asked me today whether I had heard from Matteo Cadenza this past year, and whether he had ever written to me particularly about Bennet. I found this odd — Mama has never cared about the Cadenza family. I told her I had one letter from him, the one about Bennet, which I keep with the others. She did not ask to see it. I think she was merely speaking to speak. — A.