Mr. Robert Carlaw, remembering his sister’s affliction, felt it safe to indulge in a smile of satisfaction; but his tones when he spoke were tinged with sadness. “My dear Charlotte,” he said, “this is quite what I feared. Will you not permit me to plead for the boy, to suggest——”
“Not a word,” broke in Miss Carlaw fiercely. “I don’t know why you come here, unless you want to triumph over a lonely old woman; but I want to hear nothing more about the matter. The boy is done with, and I won’t listen to the pleading of an archangel about him. Have you anything more to say?”
Mr. Carlaw hesitated for a few moments and then began his petition lamely. “My dear sister, I will not, of course, say anything further about the unhappy matter if you do not desire to have it spoken about. Perhaps I may say that, more than anything else, my heart has been touched for you; my sympathy has gone out to you in this hour of your loneliness more than you would think possible.”
“I was lonely for a good many years, brother Bob, and it didn’t seem to affect you much. Come, deal squarely with me; what is it you want to say?”
“My dear Charlotte, you are ever impatient; but that is characteristic of you, and I think I love you for it—I’m quite sure I do. I was going to suggest, if I might be permitted to do so, that having been used for so long to young society you will naturally feel the desire for that sort of society very strongly. In a word, my dear sister, you want to be taken out of yourself, as it were.”
“Well, go on,” said Miss Carlaw, who was listening intently.
Thus encouraged, her brother proceeded more glibly: “Now, it has seemed to me that if you could receive visits from—may I say it?—from those who are interested in you, those whose society is cheerful, whose lives are fresh and sweet and unspotted from the world, it would have a beneficial effect upon you. Now, for example, my son Brian——”
She burst suddenly into a peal of bitter, scornful laughter; the man stopped and looked at her angrily. “You’re a bad pleader, brother Bob,” she said; “you don’t do the thing well at all. So this is your idea, is it? You think that as I have got rid of one who seemed all the world to me, and who seemed to take the first place in my heart—you think, because of that, you’ll suggest a substitute.” She stamped her foot and rapped her stick upon the ground. “No, a thousand times no! I tried with one; thought him the best there was on earth; I’ll try no more. Still less should I be disposed to put in his place one who comes of such a stock as you. It’s a pretty idea, brother Bob; ’pon my word, it’s a fine idea! But it won’t do; from this moment forward I’ve done with everything and every one. I thought I could find love and truth in the world; I’ve failed to find them, although God knows I’ve tried hard enough. Therefore I have the right to say that I don’t believe they exist; and I shall say it, and take my way through life accordingly. Now, I ask only one thing and I intend to have it; and that one thing is—to be left alone, to be troubled no more with any of you!”
“But, my dear sister, be reasonable; think for a moment of——”
“Think!” she echoed bitterly. “Do you imagine that I haven’t thought and thought and thought until my brain reels; until all my past days, good and bad, file before my darkened eyes like a long-drawn-out procession that never ends? Is it possible for you, I wonder, to understand all that this thing means to me? Is it possible for you to know how I wander through the empty rooms of this place and hear his voice again as I heard it when he was a child? Heavens, man! do you know what it is to have set up something to worship, to have had nothing else in all your life that was quite so fine and splendid, and then to be told quite suddenly that you’ve been dreaming; that it never existed, that you’ve been cheating yourself all the time and have got to unlearn all the pretty fable you’ve taught yourself? And then you think I could fill his place; you imagine I could start all over again with the chance of being cheated afresh? I know now what was meant when it was written that a rich man couldn’t enter into heaven; I suppose it applies equally well to a rich woman. This was my heaven, more than a paradise; and my accursed wealth has driven me out of it and closed it to me forever! If I had been poor, he might have clung to me and cared for nothing else, but the money stood in the way. Well, I ought to have known; I’m old enough to have learned my lesson before this. Now, brother Bob, let’s put an end to this; go your way and I’ll go mine. That’s my final word.”