Laura is dead and her children are with me, and I am their guardian and sole reliance. Who could have forecast such a fate or such a rôle for me? Three days! It is incredible! Only three days ago, I was languidly protesting because I could not take ship forthwith for Italy to examine some manuscript at the Laurentian in Florence!
No, by heavens! It was not I. It was some one else—some one I knew vaguely, in a past age, a man to be envied, serene and cheerful, blest of life, whom I shall never meet again.
The last three days! I cannot banish them and yet I cannot meet the memory of them. Was it I who faced the tragedy, or was it some one else? Nothing surely is more tragic than a young mother's death—and that young mother my own sister! Who was it that stonily passed through the ordeal of the "arrangements" and the black pantomime of the sepulture? I cannot record it even for myself, for never, I know, shall I desire to be reminded of it. At the death of my mother, I still had Laura with her practical woman's sense. But now I was alone. I say now because however remote it seems, this tragedy will always be present. My life must forever remain under its stupefying spell.
It is not credible that only three days ago I sat here in my study revolving trifles, those many shining trifles that went to make up my former life.
Three days ago the silence of this house was disturbed by the voices of children, the clatter of their feet, and for the first time in my life I heard Griselda scream.
"Oh, Mr. Randolph," she rushed in, sobbing, with the dry tearless sobs of those much acquainted with grief, "Miss Laura—she—the children are here!"
I knew. Though inwardly I sank all but lifeless under the blow, I knew clearly that Laura was dead.
"Is she very ill?" I heard myself asking faintly, with a clutching desire to shrink still from the appalling truth.
"She—oh, Mr. Randolph,'" she lamented, "don't you understand—ye know very well!" she suddenly added with a harshness that surprised me. "We shall have to put the children to bed in your bedroom."
It was as though she had suddenly revolted at the softness of the atmosphere in my environment, at any artificiality or evasion. She seemed abruptly determined to face the stark facts in the open.