MR. A. My poor child, if you can speak out and tell me exactly how
it is with you, I think it might be comfortable to you. If it is
the missing your mother, and blaming yourself for having allowed her
to overdo herself, I may well share with you in that. I feel most
grievously that I never perceived how much she was undertaking, nor
how she flagged under it. Unselfish people want others to think for
them, and I did not.
C. Dear grandpapa, it would not have been too much if I had come
and helped. I know that; but it is not the worst. You can't feel
as I do--that if my desertion led to her overworking herself, Aunt
Phrasie and Lucius say that what really broke her down was the
opinions I cannot help having. Say it was not, grandpapa.
MR. A. I wish I could, my dear; but I cannot conceal that
unhappiness about you, and regret for having let you expose yourself
to those unfortunate arguments, broke her spirits so that her
energies were unequal to the strain that I allowed to be laid on
her.
C. Poor dear mother! And you and she can feel in that way about
the importance of what to me seems--pardon me, grandpapa--utterly
unproved.
MR. A. You hold everything unproved that you cannot work out like a
mathematical demonstration.
C. I can't help it, grandpapa. I read and read, till all the
premises become lost in the cloud of myths that belong to all
nations. I don't want to think such things. I saw dear mother rest
on her belief, and grow peaceful. They were perfect realities to
her; but I cannot unthink. I would give anything to think that she
is in perfect happiness now, and that we shall meet again; but
nothing seems certain to me. All is extinguished.
MR. A. How do you mean?
C. They--Betty and her set, I mean--laughed at and argued one thing
after another, till they showed me that there were no positive
grounds to go on.
MR. A. No material grounds.