And at that, something seemed to melt in the poor locked heart of the son.
"Father!" said Samuel Wright passionately. He stooped and took the helpless fingers, and held them hard in his own trembling hand. For a moment he could not speak. Then he said some vague thing about getting stronger. He did not know what he said; he was sorry, as one is sorry for a suffering child. The figure in the bed looked at him with scared eyes. One of the pillows slipped a little, and Samuel pulled it up, clumsily to be sure, but with the decided touch of pity and purpose, the touch of the superior. That fixing the pillow behind the shaking helpless head, swept away the last traces of the quarrel. He sat down by the gloomy catafalque of a bed, and when Benjamin Wright began to say again, "M-m-my f—" he stopped him with a gesture.
"No, father; not at all. He would have gone away anyhow, whether you had given him the money or not. No; it was my fault," the poor man said, dropping back into his own misery. "I was hard on him. Even that last night, I spoke harshly to him. Sometimes I think that possibly I didn't entirely understand him."
He dropped his head in his hand, and stared blankly at the floor. He did not see the dim flash of humor in the old eyes.
CHAPTER XXVI
The day that Sam Wright was buried Helena had written to Lloyd Pryor. She must see him at once, she said. He must let her know when he would come to Old Chester—or she would come to him, if he preferred. "It is most important," she ended, "most important." She did not say why; she could not write of this dreadful thing that had happened. Still less could she put down on paper that sense of guilt, so alarming in its newness and so bewildering in its complexity. She was afraid of it, she was even ashamed of it; she and Lloyd had never talked about—things like that. So she made no explanation. She only summoned him with a peremptoriness which had been absent from their relations for many years. His answer, expected and despaired of, came three weeks later.
It was early in October one rainy Friday afternoon. Helena and David were in the dining-room. She had helped him with his lessons,—for it was Dr. Lavendar's rule that Monday's lessons were to be learned on Friday; and now they had come in here because the old mahogany table was so large that David could have a fine clutter of gilt-edged saucers from his paint-box spread all around. He had a dauby tumbler of water beside him, and two or three Godey's Lady's Books awaiting his eager brush. He was very busy putting gamboge on the curls of a lady whose petticoats, by a discreet mixture of gamboge and Prussian blue, were a most beautiful green.
"Don't you think crimson-lake is pretty red for her lips?" Helena asked, resting her cheek on his thatch of yellow hair.
"No, ma'am," David said briefly; and rubbed on another brushful. Helena put an eager arm about him and touched his ear with her lips; David sighed, and moved his head. "No; I wasn't going to," she reassured him humbly; it was a long time since she had dared to offer the "forty kisses." It was then that Sarah laid the mail down on the table; a newspaper and—Lloyd Pryor's letter.
Helena's start and gasp of astonishment were a physical pang. For a long time afterwards she could not bear the smell of David's water-colors; gamboge, Chinese white and Prussian blue made her feel almost faint. She took up the letter and turned it over and over, her pallor changing into a violent rush of color; then she fled up-stairs to her own room, tearing the letter open as she ran.