With a heavy sigh he began to lament the great unhappiness that had come upon one so formed for light and sunshine. Edgar and Lance had always been of the same temperament and tastes, and yet they had been the two arrows, shot by the same hand, but of such different course.
'A very sinister blast came on one!' said Clement.
'Yet, change their places,' said Felix. 'Lance would at fifteen have stood the foreign college, and I doubt if the Minsterham choir would have been good for Edgar!'
'The real key lies in those words that haunted poor Edgar. The sacrifice must be to One or to the other—the Rood, or the heavier weight,' said Clement.
'Heavy indeed!' sighed Felix, as if the severity cut him, giving way to a sobbing groan. 'Such a life, and such a death! Our father's pride—the flower of us all! O Edgar, our nursery king, that it should have come to this! What would not I give to have been where Travis was, if only to cry, Alas! my brother!'
And as the beautiful features, gallant bearing, and winning speech, so affectionate when most blameworthy, came over him, his enfeebled state broke down his ordinary reserve, and sorrow had its course.
Then came a long stillness while Clement wrote to Lance; but when the bell rang, Felix rose to accompany his brother; and when Clement, perceiving how painfully he moved, would have dissuaded him, he made his usual answer, that 'After a time, there is no use in favouring a strain.'
His management of himself was right, for after the quiet little service, almost a duet between the brothers, in which both could afford to falter or choke when the De Profundis came among the Psalms, Clement found him standing under the willow-tree, quite himself again, as he looked at Theodore's little green bed, with Stella's wreath of white roses. No doubt his thoughts were on the lone unhallowed grave parted from them by half the world; but he would not risk his self-control again, and took Clement's arm without speaking.
The twilight of the July evening was falling when the waggonette came to the door with rippling laughter and merry voices, calling to the two brothers who stood in the porch.
Clement went forward and lifted Cherry out, then left her to Felix. It was too dark to see faces; but silence was already taking effect, and when she found herself beckoned into the study, she knew her brother was strongly moved, and was too sure of the cause by intuition to utter her former cry, 'Is it Edgar?' only she trembled as Felix made her sit down on the sofa, and placing himself beside her, said, 'My Cherry, our long waiting is over;' and then while her fingers closed on the hand that held them, he calmly told her the facts.