Richard’s comment on that was unprintable. When he had gone, his father, greatly shaken, did a strange thing. He sent for his second son-in-law, Miles Amery, and said, “Do you see much of Richard when you’re both in town? He strikes me as being in a very peculiar condition.”
“He’s aiming very high, sir,” returned Amery, a tall, thin, stooping man, with pleasant grey eyes behind rimless pince-nez, dressed in a pepper-and-salt suit. “It’s trying to the nerves.”
“From his manner in my room just now I should have said he was on the verge of a breakdown. Have you any influence over him at all?”
Miles shook his head. “We’re practically strangers. We have nothing in common, you see, and I doubt if we should agree on a single point.”
“He’s usually inclined to be taciturn, but to-day he’s so voluble and so wild in what he says that I feel sure he can’t be well. I haven’t seen Laura yet. How does she seem?”
“No one would ever guess from Laura that anything disquieted or distressed her. You would have to be very intimate, far more intimate than either Ruth or I am fortunate enough to be, to know what she feels or thinks. As to looks, she was always the most striking woman I’ve ever set eyes on!”
Gray said nervously, “I hope it’s all right. He struck me as being in the kind of mood when nothing would be impossible to him. And—well, between ourselves (you must hear a great many confidences, Miles, and this is strictly without prejudice)—I believe he’s developed a regular dislike of Laura. He’s actually hinting at the possibility of another marriage later on. And I’m convinced the idea of divorce hasn’t gone through his head.”
Miles looked troubled. “You seriously think it may be dangerous for Laura to remain with him? That’s a very grave charge.”
“I’m not charging him with anything. You lawyers always want to see things go wrong. That’s your livelihood.”
“We shouldn’t be human if we didn’t watch after our bread as strenuously as anyone else,” Miles pointed out tranquilly.
“I only say he seems to me unbalanced. Look at the enormous expense and trouble to which he’s going to get this title. And would he do such a thing just for Brand’s boy to inherit it later on? Richard’s usually so self-contained. I’ve never seen him like this, and in his present mood he may be capable of any enormity.”
Miles said, “Could you persuade him to see a doctor?”
“He wouldn’t listen to anything I said. You perhaps…”
Miles looked dubious and said he would try, but he had little hopes of success.
II
Richard meanwhile was furiously repeating the result of the interview to an indifferent Laura. When he had finished, she said, thoughtfully, turning the magnificent marquise ring round and round on her finger, “Do you suppose that was final?”
“I should think, whether he realised it or not, he spoke the truth when he said he hadn’t got a penny. It’s the end for him all right, if the City gossips are to be trusted. The end for Eustace too, and for us. The end of years of work and ambition. I’ve subordinated everything to my career, and this is what I reap. I lose everything—my health, position, money, security, natural tastes, liberty—all gone in a single hour.”
“It seems quite ridiculous that we failed to realise it earlier,” was Laura’s unexpected reply.
“Failed to realise…?”
“I mean, that the whole of our effort and ability to possess something can be lost so easily. If it had been something else more stable, more worth while—well, we might have failed, but we shouldn’t have to admit that we’d lost everything. There’d have been the pleasure we should have got out of the labour, and the delight of meeting sympathetic minds. As it is we’ve nothing. Except time. We’ve still, fortunately, quite a lot of that.”
“Time?” repeated Richard foolishly, staring at her.
“Yes. To begin something else. I suppose, if what you say is true, it means exposure—you’ll fall out of favour—we shall have to begin something else. Let’s choose something better next time.”
Richard seemed at length to grasp her meaning. “Exposure?” he exclaimed. “Kindly refrain from speaking as if I were a common thief. I’m not Eustace. Exposure may very well mean ruin of a criminal kind for him. I have done nothing illegal.”
“I apologise. I misunderstood you. But at all events you do admit that it means farewell to the peerage. If, as you say, l’affaire Eustace will shortly become publicity for the Sunday Press, your name is sure to be mentioned. And your father’s. You may have had nothing to do with him, but the descriptions on the hoardings won’t be satisfied with ‘Financier.’ They’ll come out in all the glory of ‘Famous M.P.’s brother-in-law,’ etc.”
“A lot you care that my hopes should be defeated,” he accused her.
“Not much,” she acknowledged calmly. “But, Richard, if only you could take a detached view, see the—the insignificance of it all. A thing that can tumble to pieces so easily is never a safe structure, or one worth wasting all one’s life on. It rests simply on money, which is an asset more liable to chance than anything I know. It takes into no account work or idealism or aspiration—it’s a mere wastage of life. I can even be glad for this opportunity to realise the truth. And there are so many things we’ve never even considered that bring satisfaction of themselves, quite apart from rewards.”
She seemed, as she turned to him with an ardour he found foreign to her and of which he could not in this connection approve, to have sprung into a new life and colour, a vivacity and gaiety with which he had not for twelve years associated her. As easily might he have expected to see a dead branch put out green buds before
