“I wonder how it looks on paper,” said George. “I will try and go through the schedule with you myself.”
An hour later George was once more in his room. For a few moments he stood looking through the window at the old familiar brick wall and at the windows of the house beyond, but his reflections were very vague and shapeless. He could not realise his position nor his importance, as he drummed a tattoo on the glass with his nails. He was trying to think of the changes that were inevitable in the immediate future, of his life in another house, of the faces of his old acquaintances and of the expression some of them would wear. He wondered what Johnson would say. The name, passing through his mind, recalled his career, his work and the unfinished chapter that lay on the table behind him. In an instant his brain returned to the point at which he had been interrupted. Tom Craik, Sherry Trimm, the will and the millions vanished into darkness, and before he was fairly aware of it he was writing again.
The days were short and he was obliged to light the old kerosene lamp with the green shade which had served him through so many hours of labour and study. The action was purely mechanical and did not break his train of thought, nor did it suggest that in a few months he would think it strange that he should ever have been obliged to do such a thing for himself. He wrote steadily on to the end, and signed his name and dated the manuscript before he rose from his seat. Then he stretched himself, yawned and looked at his watch, returned to the table and laid the sheets neatly together in their order with the rest and put the whole into a drawer.
“That job is done,” he said aloud, in a tone of profound satisfaction. “And now, I can think of something else.”
Thereupon, without as much as thinking of resting himself after the terrible strain he had sustained during ten days, he proceeded to dress himself with a scrupulous care for the evening, and went down stairs to dinner. He found his father in his accustomed place before the fire, reading as usual, and holding his heavy book rigidly before his eyes in a way that would have made an ordinary man’s hand ache.
“I have finished my book!” cried George as he entered the room.
“Ah, I am delighted to hear it. Do you mean to say that you have been writing all the afternoon since Mr. Trimm went away?”
“Until half an hour ago.”
“Well, you have exceptionally strong nerves,” said the old gentleman, mechanically raising his book again. Then as though he were willing to make a concession to circumstances for once in his life, he closed it with a solemn clapping sound and laid it down.
“George, my boy,” he said impressively, “you are enormously wealthy. Do you realise the fact?”