wait for Fanny-Rosa.'
'I am sure she is fond of you,' said Jane, 'I have seen her looking at you. But she is so lovely, you see, and rather spoilt by that absurd father and all the young men she has met abroad, that she must have time to make up her mind about you. Marriage is a serious thing for a woman.'
For a moment John wondered whether he should tell her his doubts about Fanny-Rosa and Henry, and the old misgivings he had tried to bury in his mind, and then he decided that he could not, even to Jane. The subject was too personal and intimate, too deeply painful to be probed and pondered at this late hour, with poor Jane distressed, and himself rather drunk.
'You know,' said Jane softly, her large brown eyes full of wisdom, 'what I am going to say is very improper, and I hardly know how to say it, but I do think that Fanny-Rosa has a very warm, passionate nature, and that if you were possibly a little bolder towards her perhaps she would-would do what you want, and be obliged to marry you.'
John felt himself grow hot under his collar. Good heavens, that Jane, his demure, youthful sister, should have the same thought that had so often entered his own head.
'And you,' he murmured, watching her under half-closed lids, 'not eighteen for three more weeks.'
'I have not shocked you, have I?' she asked, doubtfully.
'Shocked me? No, my Jane, you have not. I was just thinking how ignorant a brother and sister can be of each other, and how many years we have wasted when we might have talked of these things. Bless you. I should not forget your advice, but I doubt if it would be any good.'
Jane rose from his knee, and smoothed back his hair.
'Don't worry any more,' she said. 'I think everything will come all right. I have a premonition that it will, and you know my premonitions are generally true.'
Then she slipped out of the room and ran upstairs to join her sisters. John helped himself to the rest of the port, and tried to prepare for his interview with his father.
He knew that he must apologise, and the sooner it was done the better. The only possible way to do it was to be well fortified first, stammer a few words, promise to make amends in future, and then leave the library as quickly as possible. Thomas had already looked twice into the room, wishing to clear-he would not be able to delay much longer. And he wondered what he should say to his father, and how he should frame his apology without sounding stiff and awkward and altogether an incredible fool. He got up from his chair and walked carefully from the dining-room across the hall to the library. The door, of course, was closed. He knocked upon it, feeling as Thomas must do when he brought in the letters, and on hearing his father's curt reply to enter, opened the door and went into the room.
His father was seated at his desk, engaged in correspondence, and John was reminded of the old schoolboy days when he had committed some fault and must expect a beating. His father did not even look up as he entered.
'Well, what is it?' he said shortly, intent upon some file or other and turning the pages in search of a document.
'I'm afraid I spoke rather hastily at dinner, sir,' said John. 'I very much regret if I have said anything to offend you.'
Copper John did not answer for a moment. Then he pushed aside his papers, and turning in his chair stared up at his son, in much the same way, it struck John, that his house-master used to do at Eton.
'You have not offended me, John,' he said, 'you have disappointed me. Somehow, after Henry died, I had hoped that you and I would draw closer together. We have not done so, and I do not think the fault lies with me.'
He paused, and John realised that he was expected to make an answer.
'I am sorry, sir,' he said.
'Your brother showed a keen interest in everything connected with the mines,' continued Copper John, 'and before his serious illness would accompany me very often to Nicholson's office, where the three of us would discuss matters, and he would now and again make suggestions that both Nicholson and myself found helpful. I think I am right in saying that not once since you returned home have you offered to ride up to the mine with me. Here, at Clonmere, you show much the same spirit of lassitude. There is plenty to be done on the estate, Ned Brodrick would be glad of your assistance, but he tells me he has seen little or nothing of you. It is a source of bewilderment to me, who have every minute of the day filled with work of some sort, to know how you manage to get through your long and, if I may say so, incorrigibly idle day.'
The house-master over again, thought John. How many times, at Eton, had he heard those same words?
And the old feeling of stubborn exasperation came upon him, as it used to do whenever mention was made of his idleness.
'Even when you were in Lincoln's Inn,' went on his father, 'the work you got through in six months I could have done in six days, at your age.'
'We are very different, sir,' said John. 'You have a natural capacity for work. I have not. Since we are speaking plainly I may as well confess that I dislike intensely doing anything for which I have no ability.'
Copper John stared at him without comprehension.
Then he shrugged his shoulders, as though further discussion was useless.
'You are now twenty-eight, John,' he said, 'and your character is formed, and I can say no more. Eton, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn have done very little for you.
I cannot but be disappointed when I see my only surviving son throw to the winds the fine education and the wide opportunities he has had for becoming a responsible member of the community, and take upon himself, instead, all the faults and failings that are so marked a national characteristic of this unfortunate country of ours. I can only hope that you never sink so low as our neighbour Simon Flower.'
If only, thought John, you would have something of Simon Flower's tolerance, something of his natural charm of manner and generosity, something of his understanding that young men like to be left alone to their own devices, we should be getting on rather better than we are doing now.
'This country,' said Copper John, 'could be a great one, and a fine one, if the people in it had initiative and a sense of responsibility. They unfortunately lack both these qualities, and so, I fear, do you.'
'Perhaps,' said John, 'they have no desire to see their country either great or fine.'
'Well then, what, in God's name, do they want?' cried Copper John in sudden anger.
'Since you are one of them, perhaps you can enlighten me?
I have been trying to find out for nearly forty years.'
John was filled with sudden pity for this father of his, with whom he had so little in common, and whom he saw now, for the first time, not as a great success, not as the Director of the rich copper mines and landlord of a fine estate, but as a lonely widower, who had lost his favourite son and was deeply disappointed in his second, and who, in spite of all his hard work and toil and concentration, had failed to understand or to please his fellow- countrymen.
'Speaking for myself, sir,' said John, 'I would say that I desire nothing so much as to be left alone. Whether the people of the country feel this too I cannot say.'
Once again his father shrugged his shoulders. It was obvious that the two of them would never talk the same language.
'Tell me,' he said, 'do you ever think of anything else in life but your greyhounds?'
And supposing, thought his son, that I told him the truth, supposing that I made a confession of all the thoughts that fill my waking hours: how I hate the mines for the ugliness they have brought upon Doonhaven, because they stand for progress and prosperity, and how I cannot walk about the estate while he still lives and owns it, because I take no interest in a thing that I do not possess, and which is not mine alone, and how I am at present ill-tempered, ill-mannered, and more than a little drunk because my mind and my body have need of Fanny-Rosa, the daughter of a man he despises, and the only thing that concerns me at this moment is whether she will belong to me or not, and, if she should, whether she also belonged to my brother who is dead; supposing I make confession of all these things, what would he do but stare at me aghast and bid me leave the room, and possibly the house also? It was better to keep silence.
'Occasionally, sir,' he said, 'I think of the killigs in the creek and the hares on Hungry Hill, but mostly I
