My step-mother took a rather sensible though worldly view of her position. She silently resolved that if abnegation were at all compulsory, and sacrifices demanded by the new tide of affairs, they would of course be practised, but not where the eye of curious pity could penetrate.
The world, that had honored and respected her as the wife of a wealthy man, should never through any fault of hers gain an insight into her reversed fortunes. This very consciousness, that she had the scrutinizing eye of society to deceive and a deep misery to veneer with smooth words and a false glitter, that a fashionable pity had to be defied and coldly rejected, lent her a heroic fortitude, schooled her to a forbearance worthy of less sordid motives and flavoured her very misfortunes with a vital determination that half-soothed the pain they naturally inflicted.
In the first sad hours of our bereavement we were comforted and consoled by many friends. I believe that my father was universally mourned as a good citizen, of sterling worth; he had been no man's enemy, and had served a goodly number of his fellow-creatures nobly and generously, without ostentation or self-glory. He was ever a careful and indulgent, though not an affectionate parent, and now that he was gone I could afford to interpret his indifference, even in this way, in a new and more partial manner. He had had no conception of what the needs of a clinging, susceptible heart may be, and transgressed entirely out of his ignorance and not through any wilful intent to make his coldness or carelessness keenly felt.
We never know what our true estimate of any one is until he or she has been removed beyond the power of our amending or repentant love. If such a one be called beyond that bourne whence there is no coming back, how soft, and hallowed, and subdued a light is shed by our tender, respectful, and sorrowing memory upon what once had been incentives to our unforgiving and deeply injured pride. If such a one be cast by accident of circumstances or fate so far away from the yearning glance of our regretful eyes, so far beyond that pass, where pleading, human voices become lost in thousand-tongued confusions, how changed the once bright picture of our lives becomes; how vain and purposeless all other aims, save that which, with the powerful strength of a hope that is half despair, pursues the object of our rash unkindness, with outstretched hands and plaintive tone, beseeching for a pardon that may never greet our mortal ears? I, who had lived an obstinate alien from the love and devotion of my parent, who never went outside the narrow, rigid circle of my unyielding pride to tempt or merit his regard, now felt a great void left within my heart which nothing on earth could ever fill again.
When the veil of my former prejudice was rent asunder, and I could only see the still white features and the folded hands of him from whose timid love I had become a voluntary exile, how I hated the sensitive young heart that had turned away in cold rebellion, when its duty was to glow with an undaunted, even servile fidelity.
Perhaps it was because I found myself so utterly alone, for this death closed up the narrow by-ways of mutual sympathy that had ever existed between the widowed Mrs. Hampden and myself. An elder brother of hers had come to attend her husband's funeral, and had evinced the deepest and most exclusive solicitude and compassion for her in her bereavement. He took an intense interest in Fred, holding him at arm's length for a flattering inspection of his physical perfections, and looked upon me as some curious outside appendage to the family pretensions.
They revelled in one another's sustaining sympathy and love, holding confidential councils by themselves for hours at a time in my late father's library. I was not intruded upon in my early grief by their condolences or companionship, they left me uninterrupted to my broodings and my tears, as if I had not the same right to the privileges of investigating our altered affairs as they.
Oh, how slow and how weary are those moments of solitary anguish, when the great tide of universal sympathy is ebbing from us in our grief! How oppressive the silence of suffering when no soothing accent of tender and comforting encouragement breaks upon our listening, impatient ears! How feeble the heart when no helping hand is nigh! How cheerless the prospect upon which the smile of a sustaining love has ceased to play!
About a fortnight after the funeral, on a gloomy October day, as I sat by the window in the privacy of my own room, looking out at falling leaves, and fading flowers, and drifting clouds, old Hannah rapped timidly at the door and informed me that "Mrs. Hampden and the gentleman would like to see me down stairs."
I arose listlessly and sauntered down to the library where they had all three been just assembled in solemn conclave. My step-mother, in her fresh black costume and stiff white cap, was seated in a rocking chair near the door, wearing a placid look of the most harmless and innocent neutrality: her solicitous brother occupied the extreme outer margin of a chair by the centre-table, on which his bony hands with their well-trimmed finger nails were modestly resting, becomingly folded. The hind legs of his sparingly patronized seat were thrust into the air by the weight of his high-bred humanity being entirely deposited upon the front ones. Fred occupied the sofa, where he was comfortably stretched at full length, with his arms thrown carelessly over his head which was resting tenderly in his palms.