ment resort near Lynbrook: that Owen Edwardes had a really exceptional mind: that Owen had been telling her how he was carrying out his dead father’s ideals to build real homes for middle-class families at nominal cost.
I may be an old maid (Portia has since told me that I couldn’t be an old maid if I tried, despite my unmarried state, and that the two Differdale women were typical old maids in spite of being married), but I can scent a romance while it’s still a-budding. There was more mention of “Owen” in Portia’s letters than any other one thing. It can be imagined, then, that it was like a bolt from the blue to have her write me a quiet, dignified letter without much detail, stating that owing to the neighborhood gossip (which had been strengthened by old Mrs. Differdale in her bitter jealousy of my niece’s position of vantage) Howard Differdale and she had been quietly married, so that, as she expressed it, they could carry on their work without interruption or disturbance in future.
From this time on. Portia’s letters became yet rarer. In them, too, there was no mention of Owen Edwardes, although I inquired directly about him twice. I tried to believe that Portia had misled me purposely in writing so much about the young man, in order to cover her infatuation with her employer, but I couldn’t seem to reconcile this guile with her letters.
After her marriage, her communications took on a certain dignity and aloofness. It was as if Portia had “put aside childish things.” She had suddenly grown up, had come to maturity of mind and spirit. Nevertheless, I could not disabuse my mind of the idea that there had been a close congeniality of mind and spirit between herself and the young man of whom she had written so much before her marriage.
Portia’s marriage took place in January, 1910, six months after she went to Lynbrook. Her husband’s death came very suddenly in December of the same year. She wrote me no details; merely said that he had been struck down most cruelly in the midst of his work, a victim to the evils from which he had been laboring to save humanity. She added that his death made her prouder of him, if anything, although it was of course a deep loss to her personally as well as to the world, which did not know what it had lost. She intended carrying on his work, I gathered.
I could not help being troubled at the thought of her in that lonesome spot, with no one but a Chinaman (to whom she referred as “my faithful Fu”) to look after her comfort, and very glad I was when she wrote me in March, proposing that I sell or lease my house and make my home with her.
Perhaps I was getting a bit tired of living alone in a country town. Perhaps I was just plain homesick for the girl whom I had helped bring up. I leased my house, and hurried all preparations so that I should be free to go down to Lynbrook at the earliest possible moment.
I must confess that I was also actuated by a burning curiosity as to the nature of the work which my niece admitted had been the death of her husband, and which she continued to carry on, courageously, declaring that it was for the benefit of humanity.
PART 2
My niece met me at the Center Station in Lynbrook, and we took the subway out to the Meadowlawn district.
Portia had changed very much, though very subtly, since she left me a year and a half before. Her blue eyes were dazzlingly clear and looked at one uncompromisingly: there was mystery in their depths, though. Her
