Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/181

169 looked at the end of it—Colonel James! Then I recognised the writing. I had the other letter open in a moment, (from my mother, perhaps! from my father!), and had glanced at it. Dead! I glanced on:

' Sunday night sympathy  last thing  spoke  name  reparation  heir  in all something more than £1,000  beg to enclose '

I looked up.

'Great God,' I thought, 'what's this?'

I read the letter: then re-read it, more slowly. This is what struck me in it. Colonel James had died on Saturday night: had left me his fortune, and a letter—this letter enclosed, of the sending of which to me was almost the last thing he had spoken.

I took up the foreign-papered letter from my knee and began to skim it:

' I have, after some thought, concluded that proper and seemly. Your father and mother the regiment stationed theatre in London against the advice of all married. [Pause for a moment.] Quartered  Cork  unhappiness owing to religious I  and the attentions of a  Captain Melvil  exchanged  Guards of whom I frequently warned but in vain shortly ordered to Dungarvan and subsequently Guernsey. I regret to have attentions continued, and I was compelled to speak to your father neglected warning, and next day  scene with your mother, in which common talk. I could do no more, and remained One night dining at mess with walked home togeth and silence in the house. She was gone. 1 could not have imagined that anything could have made your father, a man naturally of the most praiseworthy self restraint, and rendered doubly so by his steadfast relig sat down and cried like a child. I felt that I could not leave him in this condition, and accordingly, after having done all I could to comfort him by religi so completely prostrated by the blow that I began