Footprints by Kay Cleaver Strahan

I

Thursday night, October 11, 1900.

Dear Judy: I said I'd write again to-night, so I shall, though I haven't much to add to what I wrote last night. All day I've been troubled with doubts about the wisdom of this writing. But I have started it, and you'll want the developments, and I need your help; so I'll keep at it for a while, at any rate. Particularly, I am sure, you will want news of the family.

They are all saying, now, how splendidly Grandfather is coming through. He has got the cane that Chris duded with in the East, and he totters about with it, defying any one of us to think that he needs to use it. Physically, he is a dead game sport. But, mentally, darn it, Judy, I don't know. Think this over. Is it like Grandfather to insist, in spite of everything, to insist without rhyme or reason, that someone sneaked in from the outside and killed Father, and got away again? No, sir, it is not like him. But that is what he is saying. I have decided that either Grandfather does think that I did it, and is putting up this con talk to save me, or else that, mentally, Grandfather has weakened a bit.

That brings the interesting speculation as to whether or not Grandfather would try to save me. I know this about him. He is the finest, straightest, wisest man I have ever known. (If Father had lived, he would have been as great as Grandfather, in the end. But Grandfather had an edge on Father of thirty-odd years of living, and experiencing, and acquiring knowledge and wisdom.) Giving that character to Grandfather-or to any man-would he, if he felt fairly certain that his grandson had killed his own father, even by mistake for another man, try to cover traces, shield him, and allow him to go free? I think that he would. You know, Grandfather has always been strong for the idea of usefulness connected with morality and the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. He would think that, by saving me from punishment, he was saving the entire family from worse punishment. While my punishment would be a just one, theirs would be fearfully unjust. The family name would be disgraced. You and Lucy would be known as the sisters of a murderer-a parricide. Your children-had an uncle hanged. No, Grandfather would not stick that. A few months ago he wrote for Lucy, "Be generous, rather than just. " That is what he would do. He would let justice slide for me in order to be generous to the rest of the family. He would save me in order to save our standards, our traditions, and the other Quilters' futures. And any one of us would do the same thing. I know it.

Olympe is still in bed. She quite simply lies there. I went in and talked to her a few minutes to-day. Unless the family stops this darn sentimental business of everyone trying to "spare" everyone else, we'll make a fine showing on Friday at the inquest. I asked Olympe, straight, how she supposed it had happened that Uncle Phineas's old gun was under her when the ladies picked her up from the floor.

She said that, since I was asking for suppositions, she supposed she had seized it-Olympe would never do less than "seize" a gun-and jumped from her bed before she fainted. It seems, when Uncle Phineas is away, that she always sleeps with his old gun under her pillow.

I told her that it had been unloaded. She said she knew it. She would have been afraid to sleep with the horrible, dangerous thing beneath her pillow if it were not unloaded.

Olympe's guns would always be unloaded, wouldn't they? As if her life were nothing but motions-useless things pretending usefulness; unrealities in the guise of reality. Her world is a stage, right enough, and she is more merely a player than it seems entirely moral for any living person to be.

She said she supposed it must have been the sound of the shot that frightened her, though she does not remember having heard the shot. (Dr. Joe says that is not at all unusual. That, often, when people faint from sudden fright, they do not remember the cause of their fright when they regain consciousness.) The last things that Olympe remembers are rubbing lotion on her hands, getting into bed, and blowing out the lamp on her bedside table.

I think that her prostration now is by way of being distinctive. Sorry. That is a crumby way for me to write of Olympe. I am tremendously fond of her, and she knows it.

Aunt Gracia is doing only fairly well. She looks ill. Her grief has intensified her aloofness. Grief is the first word to use; but it is grief plus horror with Aunt Gracia. She is convinced that some one of us, right here in the house now, murdered Father on Monday night. As always, she manages to be the most useful member of the family. She would die for any one of us, I believe; but she hates to live with us-excepting, of course, Grandfather and Lucy.

Lucy, poor little kid, is hit hard. She is up and around, and she helps Aunt Gracia. But she looks-frightful. You'd hardly know her. That shocked expression is still on her face, sort of stuck on it, like a mask. She was too skinny, anyway, and I'll bet she has lost ten pounds since Monday night. She doesn't cry. She slips about, working, or staying close to Grandfather. She has stopped reading. She has stopped writing. When she isn't busy with the little duties Aunt Gracia finds for her, she huddles close to Grandfather-Chris says-or, when I am in the house, to me, and sits quietly with her tiny hands in her lap, and with that expression on her face. She took a tablet early this evening and began to write to you. She wrote about half a page, and then she walked across the room and tossed the entire tablet into the fire. I know why. Lucy will not write lies. She cannot write the truth. So she has quit.