Andy was stunned for a moment, and sat staring blankly at the motionless
figure of his brother; then, as the terrible calamity began to impress
itself fully upon him, intense pity for Richard became uppermost in his
mind, and stooping over the crushed man, he laid his arm across his
neck, and, tender as a sorrowing, loving mother, kissed and fondled the
damp brown hair, and dropped great tears upon it, and murmured words of
sympathy, incoherent at first, for the anguish choking his own
utterance, but gradually gathering force and sound as his quivering lips
kept trying to articulate: "Dick, poor old Dick, dear old Dick, don't
keep so still and look so white and stony. She'll come back again, Ethie
will. I feel it, I feel it, I know it, I shall pray for her every hour
until she comes. Prayer will reach her where nothing else can find her.
Poor Dick, I am so sorry. Don't look at me so; you scare me. Try to cry;
try to make a fuss; try to do anything rather than that dreadful look.
Lay your head on me, so," and lifting up the bowed head, which offered
no resistance, Andy laid it gently on his arm, and smoothing back the
hair from the pallid forehead, went on: "Now cry, old boy, cry with all
your might;" and with his hand Andy brushed away the scalding tears
which began to fall like rain from Richard's eyes.
"Better so, a great deal better than the other way. Don't hold up till
you've had it out," he kept repeating, while Richard wept, until the
fountain was dry and the tears refused to flow.
"I've been a brute, Andy," he said, when at last he could speak. "The
fault was all my own. I did not understand her in the least. I ought
never to have married her. She was not of my make at all."
Andy would hear nothing derogatory of Richard any more than of Ethelyn,
and he answered promptly: "But, Dick, Ethie was some to blame. She
didn't or'to marry you feelin' as she did. That was where the
wrong began."
This was the most and the worst Andy ever said against Ethelyn, and he
repented of that the moment the words were out of his mouth. It was mean
to speak ill of the absent, especially when the absent one was Ethie,
who had written, "In fancy I put my arms around your neck and kiss your
dear, kind face." Andy deemed himself a monster of ingratitude when he
recalled these lines and remembered that of her who penned them he had
said, "She was some to blame." He took it all back to himself, and tried
to exonerate Ethie entirely, though it was hard work to do so where he
saw how broken, and stunned, and crushed his brother was, and how little
he realized what was passing around him.