“As I said, we shall be lucky if we can pull fifty pounds a year out of the wreck for your grandmother.” He was silent a moment, tapping with an irritating movement on the table, in a way that enraged the half-frantic Richard. “A vindictive will,” he continued thoughtfully. “Have you any notion what your sister will elect to do? Amy, I mean. I take it that Devereux will continue to provide for his wife.”
“I’ve no idea at all,” returned Richard shortly, not at all concerned for his sister’s condition. After all, she had had the house and the control of it for a good many years, while other unmarried women had to go out and earn a living for themselves. Probably, knowing her temperament, she had a very pleasant nest-egg laid by. It was easy to read his father’s mind. He’d been brow-beaten by her for so long that it gave him pleasure to think of her eventual humiliation. Of course, as a family, they were all dog eat dog.
9
He escaped presently to his own room and achieved blessed solitude. He walked up and down in a frenzy of anticipatory despair. This news that Frobisher had, with comparative light-heartedness, disclosed to him, altered the whole purview of his position. He had agreed with Laura that it was unlikely that anyone would attempt to fasten the crime to his shoulders. Where, they would ask, was an adequate motive? But this recent revelation changed the whole situation. Suppose the Greta Hazell business became public property? Suppose someone suggested, as inevitably quite a number of people would suggest, that Gray had become possessed of the information, and had threatened his son with public exposure? In the light of Frobisher’s story, Richard had little doubt that his father would have followed that drastic course. And all Richard’s friends were aware that his career was the meaning of his life. His father’s publication of the Hazell episode would undoubtedly mean the break-up of his public career. He would not be able to remain in Parliament, and there was more than a chance—though he had never hitherto admitted so much, even to himself—that Laura would leap at this opportunity of obtaining her freedom. Panic invaded his mind. Come what might, this piece of information must be suppressed. His enemies, and he had many, would be only too eager to seize upon this excuse for hounding him into obscurity; it would mean the abrupt finish to his ambitions, and his own ruin. This financial strait that had, until this morning, seemed momentous, faded into insignificance. Another consideration entered his tormented mind. What if Greta should somehow learn of his predicament? He knew her well enough now to realise that she was incapable of compassion; she would merely see a fresh opportunity for exacting sums he was in no position to pay. Now indeed his peril loomed up before him, as a wall or some great bush will loom suddenly before the eyes of the fog-distracted traveller from the opacity of the night. He could find no direction in which he could, with safety, turn. Not to Laura, not to Frobisher, not to any friend or counsellor, dared he reveal his plight. Like Brand, he felt the burden of knowledge weigh upon him like a load intolerable to be borne; but, unlike him, he anticipated no relief when the truth was made manifest. His normally sluggish imagination stirred to unreasoning frenzy, he saw himself arraigned for every kind of crime—for murder, sedition, adultery, embezzlement, perjury—and his blood ran chill, though he knew himself innocent of four of these charges. He turned and halted and went on again. In the scheme of his days, those busy unremitting days in which he barely allowed himself a sufficiency of leisure and sleep, he found no source of solace or of strength. An immense despair fell upon him. He thought, “If it’s coming to that, let me be out of the way. I can’t face it.” But at the thought of a self-inflicted death his meagre spirit recoiled. No, not that. Not that. Nor arrest either. Nor, if he could help it, suspicion or exposure. Somehow there must be a way of ensuring silence. His thoughts whirled like a wheel of fire in his distorted brain: Greta—Father—Brand—Eustace—Exposure—Bankruptcy—Shame—Failure—Obscurity—Greta… and so on, round and round.
…Up and down, up and down, while, like the wheels of a railway carriage, beating out a monotonous rhythm, his thoughts took possession of him, expressing themselves harshly, unmusically. Up and down—down and out—no way out—out and down— And so on, until someone came seeking him, and he had to mask his terror and join the community once again.
Part V
The Verdict of You All
1
On the day of the inquest the ground was starry with frost. From both the Poplars, from Munford, from Greater and Lesser Uppington, from Rest Wythies, from Stoneford and Bringham and Leaford, the cars came crunching the keen surface of the roads, filled with people in fur jackets and warm overcoats, talking, posturing, speculating, all intent on the event, unaware of their similarity to their early Roman prototypes who gathered with the same abominable expectancy to view some young girl racked on the Little Horse or torn with the pincers. They said (one carload so nearly resembled another that the conversations might be taken as identical) that this might have been expected; that the family was about as friendly as a host of Kilkenny cats; that there were ugly rumours about a criminal charge on quite a different ground; that you couldn’t trust these smooth-tongued Jews; that the younger son had come down with unmentionable threats; that he had his father and his elder brother in his power; that there had been ferocious debates between Richard and Amy for ascendancy… Excited and pleased at this new sensation, they drove up to the door of
