“Bless them for it, you mean—the boys and their mother. A man may well be impatient to get back to such treasures as are mine.”
He was a fine-looking fellow, manly in every gesture and tone, six-and-twenty years old, the son-in-law of the gentleman beside him, and had been for a year his law-partner.
“You are right. Emma is a good girl—a noble woman; her mother’s own daughter for sense, discretion, and warmth of heart. There is nothing frivolous or shallow about her. Let me see—the boys are almost three months old, are they not?”
“Just three months to-morrow. It is marvellous what strength the thought of them puts into my heart and arm. The cunning little rascals! Emma writes that they grow every day. She is sure they will recognize me on my return. I suppose you experienced papas, who have outlived the novelty of this sort of thing, amuse yourselves vastly at our expense; but it pleases me to believe what she says. They are very bright, healthy in mind and body, as the children of such a mother should be. They and I are blest beyond comparison in having her for the angel in our house. Should it please God to spare our lives”—
The sentence rested on the shocked air, incomplete, never to be finished. One terrific jar!—a crashing and splintering, and reeling, an awful sense of falling down, down, through utter darkness, over and over, then a blow that ended everything—surprise, consternation, fearful questioning—in blank, black silence.
When the débris of the telescoped cars was cleared away, the two men were found lying, as they had sat, side by side. The younger was dead. The elder moved and groaned as he was lifted from the wreck. Papers upon their persons established their identity beyond a doubt.
Early next morning a telegram was brought into a pretty dressing-room, where the sunshine, peering through the vine-leaves about the window, made dancing shadows on the floor, laughed, and leaped, and flashed in reflection from the water in a China bath, set in the middle of the chamber. In this splashed and crowed two baby-boys, one held by the mother, the other by the grandmother, and between these knelt two younger women—all four in delighted worship of the tiny cherubs. There was a breathless hush as the youngest of the party sprang up to seize the envelope, and tore it open.
“Collision!” said the missive. “Frederick Corwin killed instantly. Philip Hiller badly injured. Both will be sent on in next train.”
In this ghastly shape came disaster to the long-exempt household. Life and the world had dealt so benignly and bountifully with them heretofore, that they had insensibly learned to look upon their possession of health, love, and happiness as assured for years and years to come. Emma’s marriage had removed her from them but a couple of blocks, and all concurred in the opinion that this was a charming variety upon their former estate.
“How did we ever get along without Fred’s and Emma’s house to run into? It is as good as having two homes,” the girls often said among themselves.