There are certain people who take a bland and solemn pleasure in the details of death and disaster,—who are glad to assume an air of what they call “Christian resignation,” and who delight in funerals and black-edged note-paper. Regular church-goers are very frequently most particular about this last outward sign and token of the heart’s incurable sorrow; some choose a narrow black edge as being less obtrusive but more subtle,—others a broad, as emblematic of utter hopelessness. The present writer once happened on a cynical stationer, who had his own fixed ideas on this particular department of mourning which was so closely connected with his trade.
“The broader the edge, the less the grief,” he assured me. “Just as I say of widows, the longer the veil, the sooner the second wedding,—and the more wreaths there are on a hearse, the fewer the friends of the deceased. That’s my experience.”
But no one should accept these remarks as anything but the cynical view of a small tradesman whose opinion of his clients was somewhat embittered.
A letter with a black border which was neither broad nor narrow, but discreetly medium, appeared among Sophy Lansing’s daily pile of correspondence the morning after Diana’s arrival at her flat, and, recognising the handwriting on the envelope, she at once selected it from the rest, and ran into her friend’s room, waving it aloft triumphantly.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “From your poor, afflicted Pa! To announce the sad news!”
Diana, fresh from her bath, her hair hanging about her and the faint pink of her cheeks contrasting becomingly with the pale blue of her dressing-gown, looked up rather wistfully.
“Do open it!” she said. “I’m sure it will be a beautiful letter! Pa can express himself quite eloquently when he thinks it worth while. I remember he wrote a most charming ‘gush’ of sympathy to a woman who had lost her husband suddenly,—she was a titled person, and Pa worships titles,—and when he had posted it he said: ‘Thank God that’s done with! It’s bad enough to write a letter of condolence at all, but when you have to express sorrow for the death of an old fool who is better out of the world than in it, it’s a positive curse!’”
She laughed, adding: “I know he isn’t really sorry for my supposed ‘death’; if the real, bare, brutal truth were told, he’s glad!”
Sophy Lansing paused in the act of opening the letter.
“Diana!” she exclaimed in a tone of thrilling indignation. “If he’s such an old brute as that——”