CHAPTER IX
JIM IS LEFT OUT
The sun shone on the terrace at Dryholm, the house kept off the wind, and a creeper made a glowing background for the group about the tea-table. A row of dahlias close by hung their heads after a night's frost, a gardener was sweeping dead leaves from the grass, and the beeches round the tarn were nearly bare.
Bernard took a cup from Mrs. Halliday and glancing at the long shadows that stretched across the lawn, indicated a sundial on a pillar.
"In another few minutes its usefulness will be gone and it warns me that mine is going," he said, and quoted a tag of Latin.
"I wonder why they carve such melancholy lines on sundials," somebody remarked.
"Perhaps there is a certain futility about the custom. You, for whom the sun is rising, don't heed the warning, and we others in the shadow know our day is done. I do not think I am a sentimentalist, but the news we got this morning proves the Latin motto true. Then it is hardly possible we shall have tea outside again, and we cannot tell if all will gather round the table when summer comes back."
Mrs. Halliday began to talk about a neighbor who had died the day before. "Alan Raine will be missed; he was a good and useful English type," she said. "Conscientious and public-spirited. One could depend on him for a subscription and a graceful speech. I have not known his equal for opening a village club or a flower show. Then the hunt ball was always a success since he managed it, and we have not had so good a master of otter-hounds."
"It is something to be remembered for these things. Alan will be missed," Bernard agreed and turned to Carrie. "You have heard our notion of an English gentleman's duty. What do you think about it?"
"It is not my notion. If I were a man, and rich, I should like to leave a deeper mark."