Adrian was silent, obviously uneasy, and it was evident enough that it was the strong revulsion from that anxiety which prompted his next sudden outburst.
“I’m so awfully thankful that I had the strength to make that promise about leaving Hale. It’ll always be a comfort to me to feel that I made a sacrifice for the dear old man, and that he—went—the happier for it. Mind you, I don’t agree with him about Hale and Hale’s crowd. Father had the old-fashioned ideas of his generation, you know, and of course all progress seemed a sort of vandalism to him. I daresay if he’d ever met Hale he’d have had his eyes opened a bit, and seen things quite differently. Hale was always jolly decent about him, too—he’d read some of his stuff, and had quite a sort of admiration for it, in a way. Said it was reactionary, and all that, but perfectly sound in its own way, you know—scholarly, and all that kind of muck.”
“Have you written to Hale?”
“No. Of course, in a way it’s an awfully awkward situation for me, having to tell him why I’m not coming back to him, and so on. I thought I’d pop up and see him as soon as it could be managed. Of course there are arrangements to be made——”
The boy broke off, in a fresh access of bewilderment and grief.
“I simply can’t realize he’s gone, Owen. I say—you do think he was happy, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“That promise of mine meant a lot to him. I’m so thankful that I’ve got that to remember. You might say, in a way, considering how much he always thought of us, that some of his children had rather let him down, in a way. I mean, Lucilla and I were the only two there, out of the five of us. Of course, David, poor chap, had gone already, and Val and Flossie couldn’t very well help themselves—and yet there it was! Do you suppose that when he said—that—about ‘all safe, all happy’—he was thinking of us?”
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s a comfort to know his mind was at rest. He wouldn’t have said that if I hadn’t made that promise, you know,” said Adrian.