My host gave a faint whistle, and remarked: “By Jove, I believe the wind’s hauling round to the north. If it does—” He moistened his finger and held it up.
I knew there was no use in theorizing with Alstrop; but I tried another tack. “What on earth has Delane done with himself all these years?” I asked. Alstrop was forty, or thereabouts, and by a good many years better able than I to cast a backward glance over the problem.
But the effort seemed beyond him. “Why—what years?”
“Well—ever since he left college.”
“Lord! How do I know? I wasn’t there. Hayley must be well past fifty.”
It sounded formidable to my youth; almost like a geological era. And that suited him, in a way—I could imagine him drifting, or silting, or something measurable by aeons, at the rate of about a millimetre a century.
“How long has he been married?” I asked.
“I don’t know that either; nearly twenty years, I should say. The kids are growing up. The boys are both at Groton. Leila doesn’t look it, I must say—not in some lights.”
“Well, then, what’s he been doing since he married?”
“Why, what should he have done? He’s always had money enough to do what he likes. He’s got his partnership in the bank, of course. They say that rascally old father-in-law, whom he refuses to see, gets a good deal of money out of him. You know he’s awfully soft-hearted. But he can swing it all, I fancy. Then he sits on lots of boards—Blind Asylum, Children’s Aid, S.P.C.A., and all the rest. And there isn’t a better sport going.”