In Mary’s last letter to Edwin, she writes of going to watch John and finding him more melodramatic than before. His great drawback, she says, is that he cannot transform. Her final words to Edwin are these:

The snow is falling beautifully to day: & the sleigh-ride you will miss. Babe talks of Papa—kisses his picture—& cries in her pretty half complaining style . . .

. . . write me all that you do & hear & above all things love me dearly . . .

—

Edwin’s grief is a terrible thing. It devours him. He spends the first night locked in the bedroom alone with Mary’s body, lying next to her, feeling how cold and heavy she’s become. He weeps and prays to die himself. He weeps and remembers his strange dream. He begs her for just one more of those ghostly kisses.

—

Edwin will live a good many more years. He’s far from done with tragedy and grief.

But two things he is done with. One is the Stoddards. This doesn’t happen quickly. In the aftermath of Mary’s death he depends on them completely. Richard arranges the funeral. Edwin writes daily heartbroken letters to Elizabeth, castigating himself for his sinful nature—a drunkard by eighteen, a libertine by twenty.

But then, among Mary’s things, he finds a letter. Elizabeth had written to Mary telling her that, sick or well, she must come to New York at once.

Mr. Booth has lost all restraint and hold on himself. Last night there was the grave question of ringing down the curtain before the performance was half over, lose no time. Come.

Edwin believes that worry over his drinking hastened Mary’s death. Her disappointment in him was so profound as to be fatal.

Two people are to blame for this: the man who drank and the woman who told. He sends an angry letter to Elizabeth. She responds with an equal measure of wrath. The friendship is at an end.

The other thing he’s done with is liquor. Never after February 21st, 1863, will anyone ever again see Edwin drunk. “To take a drink—it would be as if I killed Mary all over again,” he says.

Rosalie

v

Every winter seems unusually bitter in these days of war. Edwin stays in Dorchester, snow packed deep around the little house, chilled in his heart and his spirit. Mother, Sleeper, and John attend the funeral, where Mary, never to be older than twenty-two, lies like Ophelia surrounded by flowers. She wears a painted miniature of Edwin’s face on her breast.

Everyone is worried about Edwin. So Mother stays on, which means they give up the rental in Philadelphia, which means Rosalie goes back to Asia’s.