V
“Well,” said Irene, the day after Kemp’s funeral, “I hope Tommy knows all the fine things that have been said about him. I cried when I read about the poor people who went to his house just to look at him again—people he’d helped in their troubles for years, and you can be sure he always did it with a smile. I met Ward as I was coming down this morning. He was on his way to Judge Sanders’s office and didn’t see me till I spoke to him. You’d think he’d lost his own brother! He asked about you and said to tell you not to worry about anything. And he smiled in that wistful way he has. He said he might be kept here some time.”
“Oh, I hope not!” Grace cried, and her eyes filled with tears.
She was already trying to accustom herself to the idea that they were never to meet again and the prospect of encountering him filled her with mingled hope and dismay. A few days later when Kemp’s will was published her heart bounded as she read that the testator had appointed Trenton the managing trustee of Kemp’s industrial enterprises, and that he would in all likelihood become a resident of Indianapolis. His picture was published, with a laudatory account of his career. The purchase of the Cummings concern, which was consummated on the day of Kemp’s death, greatly increased the responsibilities of the trustee, who was to serve for a period of ten years.
It was with confused sensations of happy pride and poignant heartache that Grace read all this. At home it was necessary constantly to play a part, to feign indifference as to Trenton’s suddenly attained prominence, while her mother and Ethel reviewed daily all the potentialities of the situation as it affected Stephen Durland, who stolidly refrained from expressing any opinion as to what bearing Kemp’s death might have on his personal affairs.
The complexities of her life seemed to Grace enormously multiplied. Trenton was there—in town—no doubt walking at times the streets she traversed going to and from her work, and she could not see him—must never see him again! If only the family affairs were less perplexing—Roy’s future, clouded by his marriage, dominated all the domestic councils—she could leave; go where the remembrance of him would be less an hourly torture.
In combating her longing to see him she sought comfort in the thought that his new duties would help him to forget; and she wanted him to forget. With his nature he was sure to be profoundly affected by his friend’s death and the confidence Kemp had reposed in him even from the grave. She found a certain luxury of sorrow in these thoughts; she wanted him to be happy, even if his happiness were to be won only by forgetting her.