Then The Don stood up, and putting out his hand to Mrs.Fairbanks, said: "Mrs.Fairbanks, I want to thank you for allowing me to come."But she drew herself away from him, refusing to touch his hand, and motioning him off.
Poor chap! He turned back to the bed, kneeled down, touched the soft brown hair with his hands, kissed the fingers again, and then without a word went out.If anyone can tell me what that woman's heart is made of, I would like to know.
The day of the funeral The Don brought me a little bunch of lilies of the valley, saying, "It is for her" I gave them to Helen, and Isaw them afterwards in the hands that lay folded across her breast.
I have not seen him since, but Hooper tells me he said he was going out to you.I hope to Heaven he will not go bad.I don't think he will.Of course, he feels very bitterly about Lloyd and Mrs.
Fairbanks.
Now, that is all my story.It makes a great difference to all our set here, but I will tell you what I have told no living soul, and that is, that the world will never be the same to me again.I am not much given to sentiment, as you know, and nobody ever suspected it.
I do not think she did herself.But I loved that little girl better than my life, and I would have given my soul for her any day.
I know you will feel this terribly.How often I have wished that you could have been with us.The best I could do was to send you this wretched, incoherent scrawl.Your friend as ever, BROWN.
P.S.--Do you know anything about the British-American Gold and Silver Mining Company, or something like that? There is a chap here, manager or director, or something.Ambherg, I think his name is.He speaks as if he knew you, or knew something about you.He is a great friend of the Fairbanks.Lots of money, and that sort of thing.Idid not like the way he spoke about you.I felt like giving him a smack.Do you know him, or anything about the company?
Your mother has not been very well since Betty's death.I think she found the strain pretty heavy.She has caught a little cold, I am afraid.B.
Brown's letter did for Shock what nothing else could have done: it turned his mind away from himself and his sorrow.Not that he was in any danger of morbid brooding over his loss, or of falling into that last and most deplorable of all human weaknesses, self-pity, but grief turns the heart in upon itself, and tends to mar the fine bloom of an unselfish spirit.
As he finished reading Brown's letter Shock's heart was filled with love and pity for his friend."Poor fellow!" he said."I wonder where he is now.His is a hard lot indeed." And as he read the letter over and over his pity for his friend deepened, for he realised that in his cup of sorrow there had mingled the gall of remorse and the bitterness of hate.
In another week two other letters came, each profoundly affecting Shock and his life.One was from Helen, giving a full account of his mother's illness and death, telling how beautifully the Superintendent had taken part in the funeral service, and preserving for her son those last precious messages of love and gratitude, of faith and hope, which become the immortal treasures of the bereaved heart.As he read Helen's letter Shock caught a glimpse of the glory of that departing.Heaven came about him, and the eternal things, that by reason of the nearness of the material world too often become shadowy, took on a reality that never quite left him.Where his mother was henceforth real things must be.
The letter closed with a few precious sentences of love and sympathy from Helen, but in these Shock, reading with his heart in his eyes, and longing for more than he could rightly find in them, thought he could detect a kind of reserve, a reserve which he could not interpret, and he laid down the letter with painful uncertainty.Was her love more than she cared to tell, or was it less than she knew he would desire?
From Helen's letter Shock turned to Mrs.Fairbanks' and read:
My Dear Mr.Macgregor:
We all deeply sympathise with you in your great loss, as I know you will with us in our grief.We can hardly speak of it yet.It is so new and so terribly sudden that we have not been able fully to realise it.My great comfort in this terrible sorrow is my daughter Helen.Mr.Lloyd, too, has proved himself a true friend.Indeed, Ido not know what we should have done without him.We are more and more coming to lean upon him.You will not have heard yet that we have been so greatly attracted by Mr.Lloyd's preaching, and influenced by our regard for him personally, that we have taken sittings in the Park Church.
