“Oh, I don't blame Mr. Lindau; I don't blame the policeman; he was as much a mere instrument as his club was. I am only trying to find out how much I am to blame myself. I had no thought of Mr. Dryfoos's going there—of his attempting to talk with the strikers and keep them quiet; I was only thinking, as women do, of what I should try to do if I were a man.
“But perhaps he understood me to ask him to go—perhaps my words sent him to his death.”
She had a sort of calm in her courage to know the worst truth as to her responsibility that forbade any wish to flatter her out of it. “I'm afraid,” said March, “that is what can never be known now.” After a moment he added: “But why should you wish to know? If he went there as a peacemaker, he died in a good cause, in such a way as he would wish to die, I believe.”
“Yes,” said the girl; “I have thought of that. But death is awful; we must not think patiently, forgivingly of sending any one to their death in the best cause.”—“I fancy life was an awful thing to Conrad Dryfoos,” March replied. “He was thwarted and disappointed, without even pleasing the ambition that thwarted and disappointed him. That poor old man, his father, warped him from his simple, lifelong wish to be a minister, and was trying to make a business man of him. If it will be any consolation to you to know it, Miss Vance, I can assure you that he was very unhappy, and I don't see how he could ever have been happy here.”
“It won't,” said the girl, steadily. “If people are born into this world, it's because they were meant to live in it. It isn't a question of being happy here; no one is happy, in that old, selfish way, or can be; but he could have been of great use.”
“Perhaps he was of use in dying. Who knows? He may have been trying to silence Lindau.”
“Oh, Lindau wasn't worth it!” cried Mrs. March.
Miss Vance looked at her as if she did not quite understand. Then she turned to March. “He might have been unhappy, as we all are; but I know that his life here would have had a higher happiness than we wish for or aim for.” The tears began to run silently down her cheeks.
“He looked strangely happy that day when he left me. He had hurt himself somehow, and his face was bleeding from a scratch; he kept his handkerchief up; he was pale, but such a light came into his face when he shook hands—ah, I know he went to try and do what I said!” They were all silent, while she dried her eyes and then put her handkerchief back into the pocket from which she had suddenly pulled it, with a series of vivid, young-ladyish gestures, which struck March by their incongruity with the occasion of their talk, and yet by their harmony with the rest of her elegance. “I am sorry, Miss Vance,” he began, “that I can't really tell you anything more—”
“You are very kind,” she said, controlling herself and rising quickly. “I thank you—thank you both very much.” She turned to Mrs. March and shook hands with her and then with him. “I might have known—I did know that there wasn't anything more for you to tell. But at least I've found out from you that there was nothing, and now I can begin to bear what I must. How are those poor creatures—his mother and father, his sisters? Some day, I hope, I shall be ashamed to have postponed them to the thought of myself; but I can't pretend to be yet. I could not come to the funeral; I wanted to.”