When those we love are dead, our friends dread to mention them, though to us who are bereaved no subject would be so pleasant as their names. But we rarely understand how to treat our own sorrow or those of others.
There was once a people in some land—and they may be still there, for what I know—who thought it sacrilegious to stay the course of a raging fire. If a house were being burned, burn it must, even though there were facilities for saving it; for who would dare to interfere with the course of the god? Our idea of sorrow is much the same. We think it wicked, or, at any rate, heartless to put it out. If a man's wife be dead, he should go about lugubrious, with long face, for at least two years, or perhaps with full length for eighteen months, decreasing gradually during the other six. If he be a man who can quench his sorrow—put out his fire, as it were—in less time than that, let him, at any rate, not show his power!
"Yes, I remember him," continued Lord Lufton. "He came twice to Framley while I was a boy, consulting with my mother about Mark and myself—whether the Eton floggings were not more efficacious than those at Harrow. He was very kind to me, foreboding all manner of good things on my behalf."
"He was very kind to every one," said Lucy.
"I should think he would have been—a kind, good, genial man—just the man to be adored by his own family."
"Exactly; and so he was. I do not remember that I ever heard an unkind word from him. There was not a harsh tone in his voice. And he was generous as the day." Lucy, we have said, was not generally demonstrative, but now, on this subject, and with this absolute stranger, she became almost eloquent.
"I do not wonder that you should feel his loss, Miss Robarts."
"Oh, I do feel it. Mark is the best of brothers, and as for Fanny, she is too kind and too good to me. But I had always been specially my father's friend. For the last year or two we had lived so much together!"
"He was an old man when he died, was he not?"
"Just seventy, my lord."
"Ah! then he was old. My mother is only fifty, and we sometimes call her the old woman. Do you think she looks older than that? We all say that she makes herself out to be so much more ancient than she need do."
