She does not take up the jeer, though it makes her stingingly hot, as if she herself were its object.
“Rupert thought that perhaps you might show it to me?” she suggests.
“I have no objection to your seeing it!” returns he, with significant emphasis; “that is to say, if I can find it.”
With a repetition of that poor parade of carelessness, he feigns to search in all his pockets, as of one that has mislaid something too valueless to be hoarded, and ends by bringing out from—where she had never doubted its resting—the one nearest his heart the narrative of his son’s death, penned by that dead boy’s comrade. Lavinia unfolds it, and, with head reverently bowed, begins to read. It is written in pencil, evidently by one to whom pens and stationery are non-existent, and in parts it is hard to decipher. There is absolute stillness in the room. Country Life has fallen upon the carpet, but Sir George forgets to pick it up. Lavinia pauses at last; for the excellent reason that her eyes are too thick with tears to do her any service.
“Oh, what a tribute!” she says, in a suffocated whisper. “You must never—never”—catching his hand, and raining salt drops upon it—“never again be so selfish as to grudge him such a glorious death! Oh, which of us does not envy him? which of us would not change with him?”
She breaks off suddenly, memory pouring upon the furnace of her passion the cold stream of her fiancé’s cynical question, “Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday.” It was only talk, only said to tease her; but why does it recur to her now, like a blasphemy hissed into a believer’s ear in a sanctuary? In a groundless terror lest her thought should be read, she dashes her handkerchief across her eyes, and resumes reading. But every sentence, unstudied, unliterary, plain and crude in its direct passage from heart to heart, blurs her voice afresh—
“What a tribute!” she repeats, trying to steady her broken voice so as to read aloud intelligibly snatches from the letter before her: “‘Never saw anything to equal his pluck, except his patience—his colonel quite broke down when he bid him good-bye—so cheerful—and making jokes even up to——” Again she breaks off, stayed by weeping.
“He was a promising lad!” says the father, in an iron voice. Then against his will the mask falls for a moment: “And this,” he cries, striking the table beside him with his clenched fist, in a sort of rage—“these,” pointing to the little relics tragic in their insignificance—“these are all that is left of him and his career! These are all that I have left to live on!”
With what but the awe and pity of her silence can Lavinia answer an outburst so heart-rending? Several minutes elapse before she dares to hesitate her small attempt at solace.
“Do we go quite for nothing? You have us left! We may not be much, but we are something!”