HELEN FLINGS THE VIOLIN AT MRS. DESMOND'S FEET
"Take it," cried the excited girl, "take it. You have robbed me of my father, now you rob me of that. I hate you."
Not waiting for a reply, she rushed wildly from the room, and a moment later the sound of a banging door, adding a last torture to Mrs. Desmond's sorely-tried nerves, informed all whom it might concern that Helen was safe in her own chamber.
Colonel Desmond sighed deeply and turned away. His wife, always careful and orderly, stooped and picked up the violin.
"I hope it has not suffered," she said, placing it on a table. "It must go back to-morrow."
"Don't be hard on the child, Margaret," said the colonel, not noticing the foregoing remark.
"Am I ever hard on her, John?"
As Mrs. Desmond spoke she crossed the room and reseated herself in her easy-chair, leaning back wearily and wiping her eyes with her delicate lace handkerchief.
"No, my dear, of course not," returned the colonel. "But—"
"But what?"
"She needs patience. It is perhaps hard on her—"
"Hard on her! It is hard on me, I think."
"Yes, yes, my dear, I know that. I only mean—"
Colonel Desmond scarcely knew what he meant. His heart was bleeding for the wounds inflicted by that little termagant upstairs upon this gentle woman who continued to sit with her handkerchief to her eyes. He was longing to reconcile them, and yet he was dimly conscious that in his blundering man fashion he was but setting them farther apart.
"It is hard, I confess," murmured Mrs. Desmond after a pause. "If Helen were my own child could I care more for her welfare? I sacrifice my leisure, my inclinations—" her voice broke here, and once more the handkerchief was applied.
"My dear wife," began the colonel; but she motioned him to be silent.
"You little know what I have to endure from that child," she went on. "I do not wish you to know. She is your child, and I shall do my duty by her. But to be blamed by you is more than I can bear."
"I blame you, my dear Margaret! Come, you cannot mean that. Do you think that I don't feel grateful to you for your patience and for your goodness to me, to—to us every day. Why, you have only been away four-and-twenty hours, and the house felt like a wilderness. That was what drove me out, I think."
The colonel knelt down beside his wife and took her hand. She suffered herself to be consoled, and presently withdrew her handkerchief from her eyes and smiled.
"You are foolish to spoil Helen, dear John," she said. "With careful training I don't despair of making a good woman of her yet. But you must leave her to me, and her caprices must not be gratified."
"I thought her desire to learn the violin was innocent enough."
"Nonsense, John! you know nothing about children and their training. Girls were content with the piano in my young days; and I consider the modern girl's craze for violin playing extremely unfeminine. No; that violin must go back to-morrow. Helen's notions are far too fantastic already."
There was a suspicion of returning sharpness in Mrs. Desmond's tone, and her husband wisely forbore to press the subject further. On his way to dress for dinner he lingered for a few moments wistfully outside Helen's closed door. But neither then nor later, when (after Mrs. Desmond had retired on the plea of a headache, leaving the colonel free to follow his own devices), he returned, and knocking gently, called Helen, did any success reward his efforts to bring a crumb of consolation to the poor child. Judging by her silence that she must have fallen asleep, Colonel Desmond retired to his smoking-room and comforted himself by reflecting that Helen had certainly been naughty and probably deserved whatever punishment might be meted out to her. Then he recalled his wife's angelic goodness and smiled, thinking that such a woman could not possibly be very severe. Finally, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe before going to bed, he decided that only women could understand girls, and that Helen would thank him some day for having given her such a mother. But these comforting reflections did not prevent a wistful face, not unlike Helen's own, from peering out at him from amongst the dark shadows on the staircase, dimly lit by his solitary candle, a face that had looked up into his once and had whispered with failing voice, "Take care of the child and bring her safe to me." For our responsibilities are our own, and we cannot safely delegate them even to persons of angelic goodness.