Yet what had happened did not come as a complete surprise. Sam knew Travers’ habits and knew that men of his habits are liable to die suddenly. Travers had died in the night, and Sam was very angry.
He told himself that he had no luck with people’s deaths. His father had died too soon for Sam, and now Travers was dead just when Sam had become engaged, and when he had undertaken a speculation which, however high his hopes of it, was after all speculative.
An estate agent’s business is largely personal and, if there is no obvious successor, no heir apparent already in training for the succession, is apt to fall to pieces when its head dies. The process of disintegration in this case had set in long ago; drink had begun what death now ended; and there was no heir. Lance Travers had decided for medicine and was, on the material side, little affected by his father’s death, since Travers had bought him a practice a year earlier somewhere in the South, and the neighbourhood was proving healthily valetudinarian.
The office was not a cheerful place that day. Men estimated their savings and balanced them against the probable weeks of unemployment before they found new places. A few of them, no doubt, might hope to “go with” the business to whomever bought it; and they wondered who would buy and which of them would be engaged by the purchaser.
They fancied Branstone’s chances, and so, in fact, did Sam, but it was all in the air and exceedingly disturbing just when he had given himself so much else to think about. Even if he did move with the business, it could only be as a clerk. He lost the advantage of Travers’ friendliness and, besides, he was not sure that anybody would think the business worth buying. Travers had no right to die.
Then the thought struck him that he was taking it lying down. He, a lad of mettle, was whining like these gutless clerks in the office. He was betraying his lucky star. Death, even Tom Branstone’s, had not been forbiddingly unkind to him. Tom’s death had led him indirectly to the office, to Minnifie, the Concentrics, Ada, and he began to see in Travers’ death the possibilities of good. It might be the finger of fate, pointing him away from the office which had served its turn to a new dispensation to be arranged by the collaborators, Sam and Providence, upon the rock of Adams’ paper.
They carried on the routine work of the office as men under sentence of death do little, ordinary things and find a solace in them. Then, late that afternoon, Lance Travers came. He had travelled since early morning, had been home, seen his father’s doctor and his father’s solicitor and was now come to see Sam. They sat in Travers’ private office, where the blinds were drawn, and in the presence of Travers’ son, who owed his life to him, Sam was conscious of a deeper feeling than he had ever known before, he was no longer angry because Travers had died, but mourned him honestly.
“By the way,” said Lance presently, “did my father ever tell you about his will?”
“His will!” said Sam. “No. Why should he?”
“I thought he might have done,” said Lance. “He made it last year after he bought me my practice. He thought then that he ought to do something for you, but he didn’t expect to live long and he put it in his will. There’s a thousand pounds for you.”