“Maybe. But I tell you that life’s got a heart to it somewhere, and I’m going to find my way to it.”
“Then you’re not going back?”
“Never: neither to the old work, nor to the old kind of people.”
“Not even when I tell you that Uncle Jocelyn is dead at last and has left us each ten thousand! Doesn’t that make any difference, H. J.?”
H. J. received this intelligence almost with dismay. It took him back into the family councils, the family speculations as to Uncle Jocelyn’s will, the family squabbles over Uncle Jocelyn’s personal effects and their distribution, the family impatience at Uncle Jocelyn’s unconscionable long time in dying. And the vision of it all irritated and weighed heavily on him. Often in Thrigsby he had said to himself that when Uncle Jocelyn died he would retire. And now Uncle Jocelyn was dead and he found his legacy rather a bewilderment than a relief. It was such a large sum of money that it made him fall back into his old sense of the grotesque in his relations with Mr. Copas and his galley, just when he was congratulating himself on being able to enter on his new life with real zest and energy.
“No,” he said, “that makes no difference. I shall stay where I am.”
“If there is ever any trouble,” replied Robert, “I shall be only too glad to help.”
“Thank you.”
Robert tapped at his mustache and said:
“I suppose being married won’t interfere with your golf.”