He tried to shut his mind against the things Jim had told him quietly, as though they were accepted facts, unjust things about his character and his treatment of Howard and his incapacity to see another person’s point of view. He had said, in so many words, that if the boy was to escape from the net Mrs. Spenser-Smith and his father had spun for him, it must be done on the instant, with a sudden break: he would never have been able to disentangle himself gradually from reproaches of ingratitude and that gentle bullying of which he had had too much. He would have stayed where he was rather than have struggled without dignity, but he had gone and Robert must make the best of it. It was bad now, but it would be better later on, and when the two met again they would find themselves feeling more kindly towards each other than they had ever done before.
It is difficult to quarrel with a man who refuses to be ruffled, but Robert Corder managed to do it with the man who was quietly insulting him, as the anxious listeners in the next room could tell, and at the end of this angry eloquence, Jim suggested, still mildly, that Robert might like to pay back what Mrs. Spenser-Smith had spent on Howard and, if so, he would let him have the money. He was willing to pay for his undertaking, he was glad to buy the boy what he wanted, what all the Erleys wanted, he added, and Robert, angry, resentful, in a quandary about this money business, and foreseeing his own compliance, was still curious enough to ask, unwillingly, what it was that the Erleys wanted. Uncle Jim became less articulate when his own feelings were in question. He mumbled that it was what had sent him to sea, and made his sister feel like a hen in a coop.
Robert Corder repeated these last words, slowly, as though he could not understand them, and then, realising their cruel import, he struck his desk a hard blow so that Mrs. Corder’s silver-framed photograph let out a little jingle, like laughter, and: “You can leave my house!” he cried, in a great voice. “You’re trying to take my wife from me now!”
“Don’t be a fool, Bob. I’m not saying she wasn’t fond of you, but she was cramped. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings, but I still think I’ve done right—and what she would have wanted me to do.”
He left the room but he had no intention of leaving the house immediately. In his experience, the man who shouted his commands was not the one who expected them to be obeyed, and though he had enough imagination to divine the needs of those he loved—and his sister’s children were dear to him for her sake—he could not picture the real distress of Robert Corder whose imaginative powers were concentrated on himself. His son! His wife! Mrs. Spenser-Smith and the chapel! The fellow members of his committees, who all knew he had a son at Oxford! The ingratitude and cowardliness of Howard! And how could his wife have been cramped when she shared her husband’s life? Yet he thought of her strange visits to Mr. Samson and he knew he had consistently sneered at Howard. He admitted that he was not perfect: no doubt he had made mistakes, but, where his wife was concerned, he could see none, and he felt a slight, unconfessed easing of his duty towards the dead.
His thoughts were too tumultuous, too painful and too sad for clearness. He was more unhappy than he had ever been before, and neither of his daughters had offered him a word of comfort, but already he was adapting himself to new conditions, hearing his own remarks and seeing himself as he went about his work with undiminished spirit, disappointed but tolerant, and gradually acknowledging that Howard had been right and quoting extracts from
