Mamma and Miss Churchill soothed and tried to comfort. Each took a few orders on leaving.
“My objection to mourning is just this,” said Miss Churchill, when they were seated in her basket phaeton. “In the midst of your grief you have to stop and think wherewithal you shall be clothed. Dress-makers and milliners are your constant care for the first month.”
“The fashion of this world;” mamma replied a little sadly.
That afternoon Louis received a telegram from his cousin. He would meet him the next noon at the station in a through train, that there might be no lost time. He only packed a valise, as his trunk would be sent to Wilburton. We said our good-byes in quite a friendly fashion. He appeared really grateful and sorry to leave us. Papa went to the station with him and returned in an unusually grave mood.
We kept up to the tense point of excitement until after Mr. Fairlie’s funeral. It was largely attended, and very solemn and affecting. Indeed, nearly every heart ached for Kate and her mother.
“But I do believe Dick suffers the most;” Fanny said. “I never saw any one so changed in a few days.”
Afterward the will was read. The farm was bequeathed to Richard. Stocks, bonds and mortgages were divided between Mrs. Fairlie and Kate, who were thus made quite rich women. They could go to Europe now.
I found myself wondering a little what Mr. Fairlie’s life would have been with different surroundings. The Fairlies in their way were as old and as good a family as the Churchills, only they did not happen to settle at the West Side, and had gone a little more into active business. But they did not lay claim to any special position or grandeur. This had always seemed to mortify Mrs. Fairlie somewhat. “Mr. Fairlie is so old-fashioned,” she would say complainingly. “There was no getting him out of the one groove.” She wanted to make a show, to have people admit that she was somebody.—She went to church regularly and would have been much offended not to have been considered an important member. She gave to the Christmas and Easter feasts and adornings, but for the poor or the needy sick she rarely evinced any sympathy. Her duty stopped at a certain point, the rest of her time, money, and interest was distinctly her own. So the husband and wife lived separate lives, as it were.
Would Richard’s fate repeat the same confused and tangled story? No doubt his mother would desire him to marry well in worldly point of view. She might even object to Fan on the score of money. Would he have the courage to suit himself? For what he needed was a sweet, domestic woman with the culture that did not disdain every day matters. His tastes were simple and homelike, yet he was by no means dull. He wanted a woman to honor him, to put him in his true position as head of the family.
Would Providence bring him happiness, or discipline only?