With this promise safely gained, Ronald told Edward to gather up his things. It was not healthy for the boy to stay a minute longer than necessary in a household where everyone's thoughts dwelt round the corpse of the dead master. Edward went to his work listlessly and came back sniffing and weeping after the woebegone task of dismantling the room he had occupied so long. Neither the sympathetic help of his amah cheered him nor the welcome of his new home, where David, awed by the distinction of one who had lost his father, tried cautiously to say the appropriate word. Edward wanted Nancy; his heart was hungering for her even when he thought he mourned for his father.
On the third day he went with his Uncle Ronald, as already he had been taught to call his guardian, to see the sister who had become a bride.
His own eagerness, if he had known it, did not exceed Ronald's. The intervening day had been a busy one. Ronald had been to the legation to have Herrick's will admitted to probate. He found friends who had known Herrick long ago and who were avid for every last detail of Herrick's story, but they could suggest no scheme for saving Nancy. It was a rotten business, they agreed with some emphasis, but a matter which could not be helped, for Nancy, by wedding a Chinese husband, had forfeited British protection. Ronald might use pressure, and they hoped he would, to get the girl away from her husband,—there was not one of them who expected the marriage to end in any way except drastic misery,—but he had no lawful right to divert any of Herrick's estate for the purpose. The estate, through remarkably clever investments, had once been close to a fortune, but recently Herrick's intemperate withdrawals had reduced it till it was barely enough to cover the terms of his will.
So Ronald went impatiently to meet Nancy, determined that if she gave him the slightest encouragement he would break all the laws of the land to rescue her. Early though he went, the bride had arrived before him and had given way to a frenzy of sorrow beside her father's coffin. She had not yet put on mourning, for the mother-in-law had deemed it an unlucky thing to interrupt the first festal days with any mark of sadness. So she had come, oddly enough, wearing a red skirt; but any suggestion of happiness had been erased by the stains of grief which made her eyes dull in their sunken pits and her skin a bloodless white.
It was the first chance Nancy had had to yield to her passionate misery: for three days she had struggled against tears, trying to preserve some semblance of joy in a family which paid no heed to the death of her father. The rites of the wedding were dragged out till she was on the point of fainting under the cruel burden. She felt no love for the husband who had been goaded into claiming her, and suffered bridal intimacies from one who became worse than a stranger in her eyes. Beneath his treatment she felt the hostility of a youth who had not desired this foreigner for his wife, and beneath the treatment she met from her new mother she felt the exasperation over delay in the payment of her dowry, disappointment taking unkind shapes because the woman had never forgiven herself for selling her son into what was likely to prove a bad bargain. For three days the family had been most deliberately merry, trying to face out their regrets in the sight of the world; they had been reckless of how they spent money, but thrifty of a single friendly word to the girl whose heart was breaking while she pretended to smile. At last they had let her go home to weep.
When Nancy, who had comforted herself before marriage with the hope of coming back to see her father, realized that he too had deserted her and that she had not won him a single day's peace by her sacrifice, she threw herself down beside his coffin and wept till her body seemed torn apart by her grief. Edward, who in his turn was ready to break down, understood the sudden need to control himself, so that when the time came he could comfort his sister in his affectionate boyish manner and bring her away to the room where Ronald was waiting.
Nancy was dazed at seeing Ronald. She did not seem to know why he was there. Her mind still lingered with her father. She had only perfunctory words to spare for the living, while Ronald could hardly check the temptation to carry her away by force, to carry her out of sight and sound of this baneful household. Everything he wanted to say froze on his lips. He had no heart to reproach the girl for persisting in the wedding she might have stopped. With her face marred by grief, he could not ask her if she were happy, if she were contented with her new home. The words would have mocked their own meaning.
"Nancy," he did at last summon courage to say, "it is no use weeping over the dead any more. It doesn't help them at all. If your father doesn't know, then your tears are wasted; if he does know, then he will be the more unhappy to see you so sad. The living are what we have to think of—you and Edward. If you want your father to have peace, wherever he has gone, you must help him not to worry over you. You must let him know that you have peace yourself. Edward he won't worry about because he asked me to take charge of him and so Edward has come to my sister's to live, but you every one of us will worry about till we are sure that you are well and happy. That's what you must tell me: you can speak as frankly as you choose; there is no one here who dares to interrupt, but I must know how I can help you."
"You can't help me," answered Nancy.
She was quieter now, but the hysterical stillness of her manner frightened Ronald.