“Why you?” demanded Eustace thickly. “In heaven’s name, why you?”
Brand, who had kept himself in control under considerable provocation during the morning, broke out at that. “Why the devil not? I’m not his clever financier of a son-in-law, who gets him into a mess, and I’m not the son who wants him to buy me a title. All I wanted was a chance, and now, thanks to him, I’ve got it. He knew my position was more hopeless than either of yours. I’ve no money and no influential friends. I’ve no prospects at all, except of crawling along in Higginsons, with no hope of advancement that I can see. I didn’t marry a wife with useful relations or money of her own”—his bitter sneer embraced them all—“and I have five children…”
“That’s your affair,” retorted Amy icily.
“And if it comes to that, there’s no real reason why my father shouldn’t be as ready to help one relative as another. He’s used his influence to do what you two”—he looked from Richard to Eustace—“have wanted ever since you married. You come down here when you like, and sound him for anything he may be good for. Sophy’s never so much as been in the place. She’s never had an hour’s hospitality from any of you. I work like some damned galley-slave eight hours a day for two shillings an hour, and you grudge me anything I can pull out of the pie. You’re the last person, Eustace…”
Richard broke in, “There’s nothing to be gained by a scene, Eustace; we must agree that it’s quite out of the question to cross-examine Brand like this. If my father chose to help him, it was my father’s money. It’s not that, as a matter of fact, that I’m interested in at the moment. I want to know how he seemed when you were with him last night, Brand.”
“It was a stormy interview,” Brand admitted honestly. “You know he and I were scarcely likely to meet on mutual ground. He told me that he had practically every member of the family holding out their hands for money. He asked, as Eustace did just now, what I had ever done to deserve help from him, and reminded me of every farthing he’d ever disbursed to me. He had all the sum, down to car-fare, entered in a little black note-book. However, in the end he capitulated. But he was greatly excited.”
Amy said passionately, “Richard, what is it? We have a right to know.”
He nipped that attempt at melodrama instantly in the bud. “I’m keeping no secrets. He appears to have had some kind of a stroke, I should be inclined to say.”
The grandmother pulled herself to her feet, a short, stout figure, her manner full of generalship and determination.
“Where is he? How is he?”
“He’s in the library still. There seemed little sense in having him carried upstairs—not, at all events, until the doctor had seen him.”
Old Mrs. Gray experienced that sense that comes to the least affectionate mother when she hears of the loss of a child she has borne. “You mean…”
“He’s very cold,” said Richard simply.
She came swiftly up the room, her head bent forward, her new black dress framing her generous throat. Like a little bull she seemed, thought Ruth, charging with that cool determination, that sense of futility known only to the very old and the very young.
“Why didn’t you tell me at once?” she asked gently, as with reluctance he opened the door. “Have you done anything about a doctor?”
“I’ve telephoned Romford. He’ll be along in a few minutes.”
She swept out, and Amy, small, freckled, her smooth, lustreless, carroty hair drawn tightly back from a pale forehead, followed her with the persistent obstinacy of a seeking hen.
“There’s nothing any of us can do,” expostulated Richard unhappily, closing the door behind them. “He’d opened the window; last night’s wind was bitter. It may have touched his weak heart.”
The words were a wretched kind of apology for his action. Having said them, he stood silent, with an air of profound gloom, watching the six people who remained at the table. These betrayed signs of an exquisite embarrassment. Eustace spread a piece of toast with a butterless knife, and ate it in spasmodic bites. Isobel was whispering dazedly, “Dead—but he can’t. And only last night…” Brand put his hand on her arm to strengthen her. “Pull yourself together,” he implored her. “After all,” he hesitated, then finished defiantly, “it isn’t as if we were Saul and Jonathan or any of those fancy men. There wasn’t such a lot of love lost between us.”
Isobel’s reply shocked him so much that for a time he was rendered speechless. “That’s it. It’s too late. It doesn’t matter now.”
No one else appeared to have heard her. Ruth and her husband were conferring at one end of the table; Richard’s own wife sat proud and stately, without evincing a scrap of feeling, a little further off. Eustace exclaimed, “I never heard anything about his heart before. Is it a new thing? And if it’s so bad that a gust would kill it, how is it that a company would insure him?”
Richard said coldly, “You asked me yesterday if I knew anything of his having heart trouble.”
“Because he’d been dropping hints about its condition. I thought he was developing into one of these faddists who always imagine they have something wrong. You must admit he was absurdly nervous about his health.”
“He didn’t say much about it to me,” returned Richard in the same tones, and looked enquiringly at Miles. Miles said he really had never known his father-in-law intimately, and anyway he probably wouldn’t have remembered about the heart. Richard went away, and after a moment Laura followed him. Eustace, unable to let the subject alone for an instant, began once again to cross-examine
