"He objects to helping him to go. I told him I should ask Dick."
"What did he say?"
"He said he should wash his hands of it."
"Oh, then, that's all right. Here is the cheque; we'll go and find Gotch, and give it him, and wish him joy. There is just time before dinner."
"Virginia," said Humphrey devoutly, "you are an angel."
That night Humphrey and his father sat up late together.
The Squire had gone through a terrible time since Humphrey had left him to go down to the Dower House, with the words, "Whatever you do, or don't do, I'm going to fight hard to save our name." All the usual outlets through which he was accustomed to relieve the pressure of an offence were denied him. Irritability would cause remark. And this was too deep and dreadful an offence to create irritability. High words would not assuage it; cries raised to heaven about the ingratitude of mankind, and his own liability to suffer from it, had been used too often over small matters to make them anything but a mockery as applied to this great one. He was stricken dumb by it.
The night was black all around him. There was no light to guide his steps. Even the one he had already taken he was in doubt about, now he had taken it. He did not question his own action in refusing to cut the knot. He had simply felt unable to do it, and had followed that light, as far as it had led him. But when Humphrey had gone away to find Dick, and ask him to provide money for Gotch, without telling him why it must be found, somewhere or other, he had hoped that Dick would consent; and this troubled him.
When he went upstairs to dress for dinner, after sitting motionless in the library for over an hour, he locked the door and knelt down by the bed in his dressing-room and prayed to God for help in his trouble and guidance in his difficulties. He had felt increasingly, as he sat and thought downstairs, that prayer was the only thing that would help him; but he could not kneel down in the library, and it was dishonouring to God Almighty not to kneel down when you prayed. So he went upstairs, earlier than his wont, to the bedside at which he had said his daily and nightly prayers for over forty years. He never slept in this bed; it was the altar of his private devotions, which were never pretermitted, although by lapse of time they had slid into a kind of home-made liturgy, which demanded small effort of spirit, and less of mind. But now he prayed earnestly, with bowed head and broken words, repeating the Lord's Prayer at the close of his petitions, and rising from his knees purged somewhat of his fears, and supported in his deep trouble.
At dinner he was a good deal silent, but not perceptibly brooding over disclosures made to him, as Humphrey had feared of him. He even smiled once or twice, and spoke courteously to his wife and affectionately to Joan. He took Joan's hand in his as she passed him to go out of the room with her mother, and she gave him a hug, and a kiss, which he returned. She thought that Humphrey had told him about Bobby Trench's engagement, and this was his way of showing that she was finally forgiven for rejecting that fickle suit. But it was his desire to find contact with innocence, and the tranquillity of his home, that had prompted the caress.