He went into the dining-room, where the remainder of the family was still assembled. The grandmother had gone upstairs, but Amy was here, her mouth set in a hard line, her barest gestures accusing them all of combining to slay their father. They turned with a wave of eagerness as the door opened. Richard said, holding the knob in his hand, “Brand, I want you a minute,” and Brand, suddenly icy cold, then sweating as he did when sea-sick, followed him.
“I suppose he’s found out something. I made a blunder, after all.”
Richard took him into a small room behind the library, and, shutting the door, said, “I’m not questioning you about the upshot of your interview with our father yesterday. As I told Eustace at breakfast, he had as much right to make provision for you and your children as for any of the rest of us. But did he let fall anything that gave you the impression he was highly nervous of any development?”
“What kind of development?”
“Well, was he particularly troubled over anything or any person? Did he say anything?”
“He said a lot, most of it uncomplimentary.”
“To you, or did he refer to anyone else? Or the whole family collectively?”
“He thought of all of us as leeches. I fancy Eustace has stung him pretty badly.”
Richard frowned. “He never would listen to reason. Speculating may be all right for the rich man on the spot, but a man with limited means should eschew it like the devil.”
“Especially with a family like ours,” Brand agreed. “But why all these questions?”
Richard looked away. “He didn’t give any hint of taking his own life, I suppose?”
Thoughts fled through Brand’s mind. Was it possible? The open window, the fallen figure… But his reason rejected such a theory.
“No. And I’m sure he wouldn’t. A man who held on to the least of his possessions, as our father did, would never, I’m convinced, throw away anything he regarded as so valuable.”
“For heaven’s sake, Brand, be a little less cold-blooded. He’s our father, and he’s dead.”
“I know. And for his sake, supposing his life to have been worth anything to himself, I’m sorry. I’d rather be alive than dead in any circumstances. But I can’t pretend now to an affection I never felt. These death-bed hypocrisies sicken me.”
“Tell me one other thing,” said Richard. “I’m not asking for particulars of your conversation, as I said before. But—he gave you money, we know, and he’s literally not in a position to part with a sovereign—what inducement did you offer him?”
“Only what I’ve told you.”
Richard struck his hands together. “That isn’t sense, Brand. I knew my father better than you did. I know something of the position in which his faith in Eustace has placed him. He had to hold on to every penny to—well, to save himself from public disgrace.”
“You think he may have taken his life to prevent that? But I thought first it was a stroke, and next that it was violence.”
“That’s what Romford says.”
“What exactly has happened?”
“A blow—a violent blow on the temple.”
Brand looked sceptical. “It sounds a crazy way of committing suicide. Revolvers I can understand, and poison—I suppose both of them take some getting hold of, though. Or presumably one can cut one’s throat or drop out of a window. Are there any other ways of taking one’s own life, assuming that it must be at home? Outside, of course, opportunities multiply. Taxis, trains, rivers…”
Richard made a motion of intolerable disgust. “Brand, so long as you are in his house, I must beg of you to speak of our father with reasonable decency. Outside is your own affair. In any case, we are not likely to have mutual acquaintances.”
“And so I can’t smudge your estimable career. I wasn’t, let me point out, speaking of our father at all. It was a quite impersonal comment on the difficulties of suicide at home.”
“And you haven’t answered my question. I realise that I can’t, of course, compel you, but all the same—what could you say that induced him to part with so much money?”
“Oh, I fancy that was as much on your account as his own. I told him I proposed to put into practice a plan I had been considering for a long time. That bloody office is wearing me down. I’ve got to get out from it. And I must go now before it’s too late. I can’t, of course, take Sophy or the children with me, and it’s quite probable that I shan’t for some time be able to support two establishments. I asked my father to give me a chance, to let me have some money to keep them on their feet while I was working. He refused, as I’d anticipated. He was, moreover, unnecessarily abusive. But then he had no feeling for art, and so, I suppose, he isn’t precisely to be blamed.”
“Perhaps he felt he’d no reason to feel generous towards artists.”
“Think of the narrowness of the intellect that can judge art by some unsatisfactory artist—and not unsatisfactory in the artistic sense, mark you, but in the material. He knows or hears of a man who paints pictures, and also keeps a mistress or drinks, and immediately he decides that art is no use. In this case, I take it you mean he might have found it a little uncomfortable to his own pocket. However, you can’t compel a man to behave
