Helmar made no answer, either of denial or assent. Then, after a little while, “Does Jack know?” he asked.
“Not yet,” the doctor answered. “There seemed nothing to be gained by telephoning. I told Henry Carleton I’d go up at once myself.”
Helmar reached for his hat. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “let me go instead,” and Doctor Morrison, spent and weary, readily enough nodded assent.
Carleton, as Helmar entered the door of his room at the Mayflower, turned with some surprise to greet his friend. “Why, hello, Franz,” he cried. “What the devil brings you here?” Then noticing the look on Helmar’s face, he added quickly, and in a very different tone, “What is it? Anything wrong?”
Helmar nodded. Between man and man, he was no believer in striving to break bad news gently. “It’s your father, Jack,” he said. “He died this morning. It was very sudden. Doctor Morrison was there. It was his heart. There was nothing that could be done. And he didn’t suffer, Jack; and that means a great deal.”
He stopped, making no empty protestations of sympathy. Carleton, turning on his heel, stepped quickly to the window, and stood, with his back to Helmar, gazing blankly out into the street. Presently he turned again; his eyes were moist; and his voice, when he spoke, was pitched low. “The poor old Governor,” he said. “He was awfully good to me. I never thought—I wish now—I wish somehow I’d been different with him.”
With the vast freemasonry of experience Helmar divined his thoughts. “I know, Jack,” he said, “I know how I felt when my father died. I’ve known since, a hundred times, what sons and daughters might be to their parents, but somehow we’re not. It’s just the fact of being young, I suppose. We don’t understand; we don’t appreciate—until it’s too late; and then we never can repay; only remember, I suppose, when we have children of our own, that we’ve got to make allowances, too—”
He broke off abruptly, and for a moment there was silence. Then, with evident constraint, he spoke again. “Doctor Morrison was coming up here himself, Jack,” he said, “but I asked him to let me come instead. There was something I wanted to tell you especially—about the estate. Henry has told Doctor Morrison that in the panic your father lost about everything he had, so that practically there’s nothing left. I wanted to tell you first—”
Carleton nodded, but the expression on his face showed no new emotion. “Thank you, Franz,” he said, “I understand, and I appreciate; you’ve always been a good friend to me. But I don’t care about the money; it isn’t that; I only wish—”
In spite of himself his voice faltered and broke, and he again turned hastily away, while Helmar waited in silence, scarce knowing what to do or say. At length Carleton turned to him once more, speaking as one speaks only to a tried friend, his voice steady enough now, yet hardly sounding like his own. “Memory’s a queer thing, Franz,” he said. “Of all that I remember about my father, what do you suppose comes back to me now? Something that happened almost twenty years ago, when we used to spend our summers down at the shore. A little trivial thing, too, I suppose any one would say. I was just a youngster then—nine or ten, maybe—and we had two little sail-boats that were the apple of my eye. Poor enough craft I guess they were, looking back at them now, but no two cup defenders to-day could look to me as those two boats did then.