"Will others be sufferers through this disaster?"
The answer was not so ready. The gentlemen seemed to find it necessary to look again at one another. They, however, finally admitted, to each other, that there was property enough to cover everybody's loss, if that were the wish of the family; this, without any doubt, but there would be almost nothing left.
"Very well," Claire said, "then we can bear it. We thank you, gentlemen, and you may be sure of this one thing--that no person shall lose a penny through our father's loss, if we can help it. Now, may I ask you to leave further particulars until another time? Mamma has borne as much as she can to-day."
And the gentlemen, as they went down the steps of the great brownstone front, said to each other that Benedict had left a splendid girl, with self-reliance enough to manage for herself and take care of the family.
Yet I suppose there had never been a time when Claire Benedict felt more as though all the powers which had hitherto sustained her, were about to desert, and leave her helpless, than she did when she controlled her own dismay, and helped her mother to bed, and sat beside her, and bathed her head, and steadily refused to talk, or to hear her mother talk, about this new calamity, but literally hushed her into quiet and to sleep.
Then, indeed, she took time to cry, as few girls cry; as Claire Benedict had never cried before in her life.
Her self-reliance seemed gone. As the passion of her voiceless grief swayed and fairly frightened her, there stole suddenly into her heart the memory of the last message: "Claire needs to trust less to herself, and lean on Christ."
I AM not sure that I would, even if I could, give you a detailed account of the days which followed.
What is the use of trying to live pain over again on paper? Yet some people need practice of this sort to enable them to have any idea of the sorrows of other hearts.
I wonder if you ever went through a large, elegantly furnished house, from room to room, and dismantled it? Packing away this thing as far as possible from curious eyes, soiling the velvet, or the satin, or the gilding of it, perhaps, with bitter tears while you worked; marking that thing with a ticket containing two words which had become hateful to you, "For sale;" hiding away some special treasure in haste, lest the unexpected sight of it might break a heart that was just now bearing all it could. Has such experience ever been yours? Then you know all about it, and can in imagination follow Claire Benedict from attic to basement of her father's house; and no words of mine can make the picture plainer. If it is something you have never experienced, or even remotely touched, you may think you are sympathetic, and you may gravely try to be, but nothing that printed words can say will be apt to help you much in realizing the bitterness of such hours.