Part 3, Chapter IV.
The Family Face.
Mrs John Palmer replied by a handsome subscription to the letter informing her of the condition of Waynflete church. “Miss S.J. Palmer” sent fifty pounds as a tribute to her dear aunt’s memory, from the Riviera, where she had gone with her mother; and others of the family and neighbours came forward liberally enough to put Mr Clifton in very high spirits. Miss Florella Vyner offered a modest five pounds, and, finally, Constancy sent fifteen, being the entire fruit of the story that had come into being at Moorhead. She sent it to Guy, and stated that it was a token of affection for dear Mrs Waynflete; but it was, perhaps, something of a sin-offering as well.
Godfrey beheld her contribution with strange thrills. He was pleased, and yet life was harder after he had read, and secreted her little note, on the loss of which Guy did not comment.
Life could not be very easy. Apart from his own troubles, there was a strain in living with any one in such a state of nervous tension as Guy, carefully as the elder brother controlled himself. His very reticence began to have an effect on Godfrey, and though he himself felt more and more the blessing of comparative inward peace, he could not but suffer much from the outward trial, and once his carefully maintained caution gave way, and he made a great mistake.
“Look here,” he said one morning in the early spring, as he studied his letters, “I asked Clifton to get this done for me.”
“What?” said Godfrey, looking. “A photo graph? Oh, that picture. What did you want it for?”
“You don’t mind? I wanted really to see it.”
“It’s not much like you now,” said Godfrey. Guy got up, and, unlocking a drawer, he laid a row of small objects on the table, setting the photograph of the Waynflete picture beside them.
These were the old likenesses of their father and grandfather, a handsome, well-set-up photograph of himself taken at Oxford, and another more recent one.