He had no difficulty now in thinking of his children over the sea, less than no difficulty in remembering their names. The whole Canadian project came back to him, with all that it entailed, together with the memory of yesterday’s fatal promise. He could no longer hide from himself that, for him, at least, that promise had been fatal, whatever it might mean for Mattie. It was a knife set at his own throat, a pair of shears at his own roots. Even if he had not known the truth before he started on his round, he could not have helped but know it after those hours across the river.
The men were waiting for him, as he expected, and he paid them hurriedly, taking care not to look at them, and without any of the little kindly enquiries and comments which he often had for them. He had hoped that Machell, being the first paid, would be the first to go, but instead he lingered behind the others. Coming out of his office, he found him waiting for him outside, looking rather unhappy.
“If you could spare me a minute, sir ...” he began, looking more abashed than ever by Kirkby’s movement of recoil. “I just wanted to say I hope I didn’t put you about by what I mentioned to you this morning.”
“Why should it put me about?” Kirkby asked, looking, not at him, but at The Cat, which, moving tawnily between the white purity of the evening light and the warm brown of the soil, had developed an unearthly beauty of its own.
“No reason at all, I’m sure, if you’re really meaning going. But it struck me afterwards, thinking about it, that perhaps I’d been over-smart.”
“You’ve got to put in early, these days, if there’s a job going begging,” Kirkby said, wishing so earnestly that the man would go that he felt as if he were pushing him.
“Yes, sir, I know. And there’s others to think of, too.... But I should be sorry if I’d put you about. It’s seemed to me all day as you were a bit down——”
But to be told that he looked “down” was more than Kirkby could bear,—more than he could bear to know that he carried the mark of his defeat.... Waving both Machell and his consolation away, he turned on his heel.
“You’ve no call to worry yourself, my lad,” he found himself saying, both his sense of justice and his native politeness forcing him to the speech. “You get off home. If I do send in my notice, you’ll be more than welcome to the job.”
He heard Machell begin to speak again as he walked away,—broken but grateful phrases, ending bravely with: “If you’re stopping on, there’ll be nobody better pleased than me ...” followed presently by the sound of the man’s footsteps receding along the path. He turned then, and watched him walk across the gardens, noticing, as he thought, the already-possessive glance which he cast on either hand. At the gate Len stopped and looked back towards the elder man, and even at that distance their glances seemed to meet and mingle as over some prone and coveted body. When finally he had closed the gate and disappeared, there came from Kirkby’s lips a little sound that was like a cry....