There was a long silence, and his fingers clenched and unclenched themselves as he sat staring dismally out of the window. All her life, as he had said with absolute honesty, he had tried to bring Helen up in the knowledge and fear of God, and this decision of hers, from which he now realised he was powerless to move her, was like some overwhelming blow struck at him from the dark. He could not understand, he could not even conjecture in the vaguest way, what it meant or how he was meant to take it. In sorrow, renunciation, bereavement, it was, at any rate, possible to acquiesce in there being a design. But that his child should do this was inexplicable. It could not be the will of God. Something of this Helen read in his face, and she saw, for the first time fully, how the blow had staggered him. His strength had given way under it; all vehemence and anger was dead; and dead, too, was the hope that she would come round to him. He was helpless. And the strangeness of that in one so certain, so accustomed to go without hinderance or obstacle along the straight road of his God-fearing life touched her with a profound pity, so that for a moment, had he but known it, her decision flickered and wavered like a candle-flame blown about in a draught. She questioned herself whether such suffering could be right, whether that which caused it could be justifiable, whether at whatever cost to herself or another she could permit it to be. It was like the suffering of some animal,—blind, uncomprehending, a thing intolerable. And the animal that suffered was a strong man and a wise, and her father.
She sat down on the edge of the table beside him.
“Oh, poor father, poor father!” she said.
He looked at her with a wretched semblance of a smile.
“Ah, that is not the point, Helen,” he said. “What I feel, all my pain, is nothing, nothing. Why I feel it is everything, dear. Oh, you poor girl, blind, blind.”
Then, at last, that tie between father and daughter or mother and son, one of the immutable and indestructible things of the world, stirred, vibrated, made music, and for a moment across the infinite gulf between them their spirits and their hands met.
“Dear girl,” he said, “it will be delightful to have you at home. I was afraid that those happy days of work, you and I, side by side in this home, were over. I thank you for that, Helen; your father blesses you for that. Stop with me as long as you can. How long you—and he must settle. And, my dear, I am so selfish as to take your offer fully. Do not see him or write to him. Perhaps——“
He paused a moment, stroking her hand.
“And try to make allowance for me,” he went on, “when I am hard or gloomy or out of spirits. But I am so utterly at sea: my landmarks have gone. I don’t understand. I can only pray that you and I may have light. God bless you, my dear, now and always.”
Helen wrote the same day to Frank: