He got a brief sick letter from his father; a few pages, practical, concrete with her blunt pungent expression, from Eliza:
“Daisy has been here with all her tribe.
She went home two days ago, leaving Caroline and Richard.
They have all been down sick with the flu.
We’ve had a siege of it here.
Every one has had it, and you never know who’s going to be next.
It seems to get the big strong ones first.
Mr. Hanby, the Methodist minister, died last week.
Pneumonia set in.
He was a fine healthy man in the prime of life.
The doctors said he was gone from the start.
Helen has been laid up for several days.
Says it’s her old kidney trouble.
They had McGuire in Thursday night.
But they can’t fool me, no matter what they say.
Son, I hope you will never surrender to that awful craving.
It has been the curse of my life.
Your papa seems to go along about the same as usual.
He eats well, and gets lots of sleep.
I can’t notice any change in him from a year ago.
He may be here long after some of the rest of us are under the sod.
Ben is still here.
He mopes around the house all day and complains of having no appetite.
I think he needs to get to work again doing something that will take his mind off himself.
There are only a few people left in the house.
Mrs. Pert and Miss Newton hang on as usual.
The Crosbys have gone back to Miami.
If it gets much colder here I’ll just pack up and go too.
I guess I must be getting old.
I can’t stand the cold the way I could when I was young.
I want you to buy yourself a good warm overcoat before the winter sets in.
You must also eat plenty of good substantial food.
Don’t squander your money but . . .”
He heard nothing more for several weeks.
Then, one drizzling evening at six o’clock, when he returned to the room that he occupied with Heston, he found a telegram.
It read:
“Come home at once.
Ben has pneumonia.
Mother.”
35
There was no train until the next day.
Heston quieted him during the evening with a stiff drink of gin manufactured from alcohol taken from the medical laboratory.
Eugene was silent and babbled incoherently by starts: he asked the medical student a hundred questions about the progress and action of the disease.
“If it were double pneumonia she would have said so.
Doesn’t it seem that way to you?
Hey?” he demanded feverishly.
“I should think so,” said Heston.
He was a kind and quiet boy.
Eugene went to Exeter the next morning to catch the train.
All through a dreary gray afternoon it pounded across the sodden State.