I thought he referred to the legend about the curse and assured him that I would be careful, but he did not seem satisfied.
"Beware of——" he said, and seemed to hesitate before pronouncing the word that would make the sentence complete. He looked round the room until his eyes rested on the place where my mother and Wilfred stood, then he sighed deeply.
"I will beware of everything wrong," I said, in trying to lead his mind from difficulty or doubt. "You are sure everything is well with you. No vestige of the curse remains with you."
He looked at me strangely, then a smile lit up his face and a new light beamed from his eyes.
"There is no curse," he said. "God is love."
These were his last words. Soon after his soul took its flight into the unseen.
Then I went out into the night alone. One by one the events of the day flashed through my mind, until I was sick and dizzy.
I was terribly excited; but beneath the excitement was a dull, aching pain. For hours I walked the headland and tried to realise that my father was dead, that I should hear his voice no more; but realisation was impossible. I had seen him ride away in the morning, a handsome, robust, man in the prime of life, and now——.
In my grief for him everything else had for the time been forgotten. Everything had been dispelled by this great calamity, and what was hardest of all to bear was that I was not sure that my father was—somewhere. I could not think of him as being in hell. I could not think of God, father, and hell at the same time, but was he anywhere?
"Father," I cried, "let me know that you are somewhere! Let me hear you speak, if only a word; only to know that all is well."