“Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t all the world beautiful? Why need anybody or anything in it ever die, and why will other people make them. Oh, Champion, if I only hadn’t made Baltie!” and quick tears sprung into her eyes. During the two weeks since Baltie’s death Jean had actually lost flesh and grown pale in her sorrow and remorse for what she believed to be purely the result of her want of thought.
Hadyn put his hand on hers and, looking into her eyes, asked:
“Little sister, do you know how that hurts me? It was not your want of forethought that night, but my faithlessness which carried you out into that terrible storm, and I shall never, never forgive myself. You might have been the victim instead of old Baltie, but as it is his life paid the penalty of my lapse. True, he was very old and might not have lived a great deal longer, but his end certainly would not have been hastened, or your loving heart grieving as it now is had I done my duty. Can you ever forgive me, dear?”
As Hadyn talked a swift change swept over Jean’s expressive face; a new light sprung into her eyes, and she said:
“Why, Champion, I never for one single second blamed you. Did you think I did? Oh, you couldn’t think that, not when you know how dearly I love you, and how good you’ve always been to Baltie and me. Why, you saved his life, you know, and have always helped me look out for him; and you’ve done hundreds and hundreds of things for us both. Please, please never say that again. You didn’t know I was going to signal that night.”
“Ah, but I did know it, and it was only upon that condition that Constance consented to go upstairs to bed. She thought she could trust me to answer that signal, but you see she couldn’t, and all this is the result. You are grieving for your pet until you are almost ill from it, and I feel like—like, oh, like the most contemptible thing that ever happened. What can I do to help, little one? It hurts me to see you or yours unhappy.”
“I shall not be unhappy,” was Jean’s instant assertion. “I do miss Baltie terribly, for I loved him, and—and he seemed so much mine, and was so good and faithful—” here a little sob checked her words. Hadyn slipped his arms about her, and she leaned her head upon his shoulder. This big “brother” was a great source of strength and comfort to her. Then she resumed: “But I shall not let it make you unhappy, too. I dare say I am silly—the girls laugh at me and say I am, but I can’t help it—when I love anybody, or anything, I love them, and that’s all there is about it. Baltie knew me better than he knew anyone else, and loved me better. No one knows or believes how he understood me, or I him, and it is no use trying to make them; but I feel as if some part of me had gone without having him to love and visit and pet every day, and have him snuggle up to me. I wish horses could have monuments raised to their memory, and some record kept of their good deeds and faithfulness for people to read. My goodness, more good things could be said of Baltie this minute, and they’d be true, too, than can be said of that dreadful old Jabe Raulsbury; and yet when he died last year they put up a tombstone for him the very first thing, and what do you think they had inscribed on it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” and Hadyn smiled at the thought of any commendatory legend being placed upon the monument of the irascible Jabe, whose life had been one long series of quarrels with his neighbors, brutality to the dumb creatures which had lucklessly fallen into his hands, and whose last act had been to fly into a wild rage and beat his wife. Fortunately, it had been his last transgression, for a neighbor, hearing her screams, had rushed to her aid, and Jabe, hearing his approach, and starting to escape by a back door, had pitched headlong through an open trap-door and into his cellar. Several broken bones and some internal injuries brought him his just desserts of four months’ torture, ending in his death, and the town drew a sigh of relief. Then his widow erected a monument to his memory. It bore this memorial to the deceased Jabe:
“A loving husband, tender brother.
Never shall we find another,”
The first statement was open to doubt, also, the second, for Ned Raulsbury, who had not had the pleasure of fraternal intercourse with his brother Jabe for many years, unless a ten years’ lawsuit to secure his own share of the estate represented it, probably congratulated himself that he was not likely to “find another.”