Page 28 of Because I Could Not Stop for Death

I changed out of my day dress, which I had worn on our walk to the stables and while cleaning and cooking the rest of the day for the family, and put on my nightgown. I was about to blow out the candle for the night when I remembered the letter that Mr.Milner had given to me.

I would worry about it in the morning, I told myself. I blew out the candle, rolled over, and put my feather pillow over my head as if it would block out my thoughts of the letter.

Tossing and turning for a few minutes, I realized I wouldn’t be able to rest until I knew who had written to me and what the letter had to say.

I sat up and fumbled with the matchbox and candle on the small table beside my bed. Finally, the scent of sulfur stung my nostrils as the match ignited. I lit the candle. My bare feet hit the cold wooden boards, and I hurried over to my cloak hanging on a peg on the wall. I found the letter by feel and scurried back to my bed as the air around me chilled me through.

I slid back under the quilt and pressed my back to the wall. I studied the envelope again, and there was no indication of who or where it was from. Other than the postmark being Amherst. That was just as well. I didn’t know a soul who lived outside of the town, so there was no reason for anyone outside of Amherst to write to me.

I opened it carefully, wanting to preserve the envelope as much as possible. Why I wanted to do this, I wasn’t sure, since there was nothing telling on the envelope.

I unfolded the letter. The writing was the same utilitarian print that had been on the outer envelope.

Tell your brother to stop poking his nose where it doesn’t belong. If he keeps at it, he will come to a bad end and so will you.

That was all it said. That terrifying message was there right in the center of the page, written in those printed heavy-handed letters. The only other writing on the page was the date. “January 23, 1855.”

“He will come to a bad end and so will you.” That line burned the inside of my head.

My hands shook. The date on the letter was three weeks ago. It had been sent shortly after I left Mrs.Patten’s Boarding House. Had I still been at the boardinghouse, I would have received this letter not long after it was sent... and Henry might still be alive.

Was it my fault that Henry died because I received this letter late and I hadn’t been able to warn him?

I didn’t know what to do with all of this. I couldn’t carry it alone. I needed to show Emily, and I needed to show her now.

My heart sank. It was in the middle of the night. Now wasn’t the time to bother her. But then, maybe she would still be awake and willing to listen to me. I knew there was no possible way that I would be able to sleep with the contents of this letter weighing on my mind.

She was interested in Henry’s death. She would want to hear about this sooner rather than later, I told myself. If she was asleep, then I would return to my room and try my very best to rest. But if she was awake, I needed to tell her about the contents of the letter now.

As quickly as I could, I put my dress back on. If I was stopped in the hallway by Miss O’Brien or the cook, I wanted to have some sort of plausible story to share as to why I was wandering the Dickinson home in the middle of the night. Maybe I was up to check the fireplace. It was my job to snuff out the fire in the family room after the family retired. I would tell Miss O’Brien that I couldn’t remember if I did that.

I opened my door into the hallway, and the hinges gave the most terrible screech. I froze and waited a full minute before I slipped through the open door. At any moment I expected Emily’s bear of a dog to come barreling down the corridor, barking in response to the noise I made. It was a small miracle Carlo didn’t appear.

I tiptoed down the hallway. It was drafty, like the winter wind had found a way to penetrate the cozy house.

At the top of the stairs, I looked behind me again at the door to Miss O’Brien’s room. There was no sign of movement. She must be asleep. I wasn’t surprised that the housekeeper was a sound sleeper. She was one of the hardest-working people I’d ever met. She kept the Dickinson household running. I had on occasion even seen her give Emily and Miss Lavinia directions in the kitchen. I can’t say that Emily had put much stock in Miss O’Brien’s advice when it came to her baking, but Miss Lavinia seemed to take the housekeeper’s words to heart.

The house was like a maze, and I knew it was nowhere as large as the home that Mr.Dickinson was in the process of renovating for the family. I hadn’t heard when we were moving to the second house. I only knew it was the house that Mr.Dickinson had grown up in, where the three Dickinson children were born, and had been lost due to some financial troubles in the family.

Finally, I came to Emily’s door. I stood outside of it, afraid to knock. I was even afraid to breathe. Who was I to disturb her? I was a servant. I wasn’t her friend. Had I thought we were friends? That was a mistake servants made, and it could only lead to trouble for them.

Before I could knock or change my mind and leave, the door opened. Emily stood on the other side of it. Her hair was plaited into a long braid, and her fingertips were stained with pencil. There were pencil marks on her nightgown as well. There were scraps of paper all over the floor. She stared at me like she was a person who was in a very deep hole and was wondering where I had come from.

She blinked at me like she was struggling to focus. “Willa, what are you doing here at this time of night?” She shielded her eyes from my candle as if the light pained her in some way.

“Emily, I’m so sorry to bother you this late. I—I just read the letter that Mr.Milner gave me at the post office. I think you need to see it. It’s about Henry.”

Her mouth fell open, and her eyes came back into focus as if she was returning from whatever thoughtful place her mind had wandered to. I was starting to recognize the times when Emily was thinking. She thought so much more deeply than any other person I had ever known, that her outward self appeared blank.

But now when I mentioned Henry, she was fully back with me.

“Come in,” she whispered. “I am curious to see this letter. Perhaps it can shed some light onto our investigation.”

I stepped into the room before Emily closed the door, and from somewhere behind me, I heard another bedroom door’s latch click closed. I shook my head. I must have imagined the sound, or so I told myself. Had anyone seen us this late at night, certainly they would have asked what we were up to.

Emily’s room was very fine by my standard. There was a bed, a dresser, and a writing desk. All around the desk there were paper and broken pencils. Emily didn’t make any apologies for the mess. It was hard for me not to start cleaning it up, but I suspected that she would find that offensive in some way.

The wallpaper had flowers all over it to the point it appeared that the blossoms would burst right off of the walls.

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