第35章

JAMES SEES VISIONS

The butler himself opened the door,and closing it softly,detained Soames on the inner mat.

"The master's poorly,sir,"he murmured."He wouldn't go to bed till you came in.He's still in the diningroom.

Soames responded in the hushed tone to which the house was now accustomed.

"What's the matter with him,Warmson?"

"Nervous,sir,I think.Might be the funeral;might be Mrs.

Dartie's comin'round this afternoon.I think he overheard something.I've took him in a negus.The mistress has just gone up."Soames hung his hat on a mahogany stag's-horn.

"All right,Warmson,you can go to bed;I'll take him up myself."And he passed into the dining-room.

James was sitting before the fire,in a big armchair,with a camel-hair shawl,very light and warm,over his frock-coated shoulders,on to which his long white whiskers drooped.His white hair,still fairly thick,glistened in the lamplight;a little moisture from his fixed,light-grey eyes stained the cheeks,still quite well coloured,and the long deep furrows running to the corners of the clean-shaven lips,which moved as if mumbling thoughts.His long legs,thin as a crow's,in shepherd's plaid trousers,were bent at less than a right angle,and on one knee a spindly hand moved continually,with fingers wide apart and glistening tapered nails.Beside him,on a low stool,stood a half-finished glass of negus,bedewed with beads of heat.There he had been sitting,with intervals for meals,all day.At eighty-eight he was still organically sound,but suffering terribly from the thought that no one ever told him anything.It is,indeed,doubtful how he had become aware that Roger was being buried that day,for Emily had kept it from him.She was always keeping things from him.Emily was only seventy!James had a grudge against his wife's youth.He felt sometimes that he would never have married her if he had known that she would have so many years before her,when he had so few.It was not natural.She would live fifteen or twenty years after he was gone,and might spend a lot of money;she had always had extravagant tastes.For all he knew she might want to buy one of these motor-cars.Cicely and Rachel and Imogen and all the young people--they all rode those bicycles now and went off Goodness knew where.And now Roger was gone.He didn't know--couldn't tell!The family was breaking up.Soames would know how much his uncle had left.Curiously he thought of Roger as Soames'uncle not as his own brother.Soames!It was more and more the one solid spot in a vanishing world.Soames was careful;he was a warm man;but he had no one to leave his money to.There it was!

He didn't know!And there was that fellow Chamberlain!For James'political principles had been fixed between '70and '85when 'that rascally Radical'had been the chief thorn in the side of property and he distrusted him to this day in spite of his conversion;he would get the country into a mess and make money go down before he had done with it.A stormy petrel of a chap!Where was Soames?

He had gone to the funeral of course which they had tried to keep from him.He knew that perfectly well;he had seen his son's trousers.Roger!Roger in his coffin!He remembered how,when they came up from school together from the West,on the box seat of the old Slowflyer in 1824,Roger had got into the 'boot'and gone to sleep.James uttered a thin cackle.A funny fellow--Roger--an original!He didn't know!Younger than himself,and in his coffin!The family was breaking up.There was Val going to the university;he never came to see him now.He would cost a pretty penny up there.It was an extravagant age.And all the pretty pennies that his four grandchildren would cost him danced before James'eyes.He did not grudge them the money,but he grudged terribly the risk which the spending of that money might bring on them;he grudged the diminution of security.And now that Cicely had married,she might be having children too.He didn't know--couldn't tell!Nobody thought of anything but spending money in these days,and racing about,and having what they called 'a good time.'A motor-car went past the window.Ugly great lumbering thing,making all that racket!But there it was,the country rattling to the dogs!People in such a hurry that they couldn't even care for style--a neat turnout like his barouche and bays was worth all those new-fangled things.And consols at 116!There must be a lot of money in the country.And now there was this old Kruger!They had tried to keep old Kruger from him.But he knew better;there would be a pretty kettle of fish out there!He had known how it would be when that fellow Gladstone--dead now,thank God!made such a mess of it after that dreadful business at Majuba.

He shouldn't wonder if the Empire split up and went to pot.And this vision of the Empire going to pot filled a full quarter of an hour with qualms of the most serious character.He had eaten a poor lunch because of them.But it was after lunch that the real disaster to his nerves occurred.He had been dozing when he became aware of voices--low voices.Ah!they never told him anything!

Winifred's and her mother's."Monty!"That fellow Dartie--always that fellow Dartie!The voices had receded;and James had been left alone,with his ears standing up like a hare's,and fear creeping about his inwards.Why did they leave him alone?Why didn't they come and tell him?And an awful thought,which through long years had haunted him,concreted again swiftly in his brain.