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They took their cups but said nothing and drank none, as he sipped his own and said:
“My friend called to admit he had revealed my address. This whole week has made me incredibly sad.”
“How do you think I feel?” Emily exclaimed. “You are the one, then, who stole my mail and sent it back?”
“I am that one, yes.”
“Well then, make your demands!”
“Demands? No, no! Did you fear blackm
ail? How stupid of me not to guess you might think so. No, no. Are those the letters there?”
“They are!”
“The letter on the top, the first one, dated June fourth, 1921. Would you mind opening it? Just hold it where I can’t read it, and let me speak, yes?”
Emily fumbled the letter out on her lap.
“Well?” she said.
“Just this,” he said, and shut his eyes and began to recite in a voice they could hardly hear:
“My dearest dear Emily—”
Emily sucked in her breath.
The old man waited, eyes shut, and then repeated the words signed across the inside of his eyelids:
“My dearest dear Emily. I know not how to address you or pour out all that is in my heart—”
Emily let her breath out.
The old man whispered:
“—I have admired you for so many months and years, and yet when I have seen you, when we have danced or shared picnics with your friends at the lake, I had found myself unable to speak—but now at last I must speak my tenderest thoughts or find myself mad beyond salvation—”
Rose took out her handkerchief and applied it to her nose. Emily took out hers and applied it to her eyes.
His voice was soft and then loud and then soft again:
“—and the thought of anything more than that, the merest kiss, shakes me that I dare to put it in words—”
He finished, whispering:
“—until that hour and day, I send you my affections and kindest thoughts for your future life and existence. Signed William Ross Fielding. Now. Second letter.”
Emily opened the second letter and held it where he could not see it.
“Dearest dear one,” he said. “You have not answered my first letter which means one or several things: you did not receive it, it was kept from you, or you received, destroyed it, or hid it away. If I have offended you, forgive— Everywhere I go, your name is spoken. Young men speak of you. Young women tell rumors that soon you may travel away by ocean liner …”
“They did that, in those days,” said Emily, almost to herself. “Young women, sometimes young men, sent off for a year to forget.”
“Even if there was nothing to forget?” said the old man, reading his own palms spread out on his knees.
“Even that. I have another letter here. Can you tell me what it says?”
She opened it and her eyes grew wet as she read the lines and heard him, head down, speak them quietly, from remembrance.
