Meantime, Roger returned from three weeks of aimless wanderings on a bicycle or in a motor, and from visits to bankers, tailors, and the Foreign Office in London, to spend a few days with Maurice at Englefield Lodge.
The first question he put to his brother was, "Where on earth is Sibyl?"
Maurice: "I didn't like to tell you before, Sibyl is rather under the weather, as Geoffrey would say. Silchester—Clithy, as she always will call him—came of age last year, as you know. Sibyl seemed a bit off colour then, and began really to look somewhere near her age—at last. But she carried off things well. Gave fêtes on all the different properties and attended most of them.... Gave political dinner parties in London to introduce her son to such great pots as she could get to come to them, before he took his seat in the House of Lords. She was present at the Trustees' meetings to give an account of her stewardship. They congratulated her—and me—and you, in retrospect—on the way in which the Estate had been managed during the long minority; and told Master Clithy he was remarkably lucky to have such a mother and such Agents. He took it all with a certain amount of pompous acquiescence.... He has grown into an awful prig, you will find, and thinks a tremendous lot of himself. Whether I shall stay on with him I hardly know. I've saved a bit, haven't spent any of my share in Dad's money, and I could always go back to the Bar. P'raps if you returned to Africa I'd go with you if you'd let me? I'm rather fed up with England and office work....
"However, about Sib.... She came down here last summer and didn't have a house party. Lived quite alone with your kids. They've come to look upon Engledene as quite their home. Of course, when she couldn't put 'em up I had them here. Well, as I say, she seemed 'under the weather.' Once or twice when I rather bounced in on Estate business, I thought she'd been crying. Wasn't my business to ask what for. She wasn't an easy person to question and could lay you out with her tongue if you seemed to be meddling with what didn't concern you. Then all at once last October I had a note from her to say that she had gone into a nursing home to have an operation, that I wasn't to fuss about it or come to inquire, that if she was away at Christmas time your children were to come here from school just the same and I was to represent her as host...."
Roger: "What was the operation for? All this is news to me."
Maurice: "So I guessed. She made me promise not to write and tell you or Lucy ... said it would be all over, long before you were back, and turn out to be a fuss about nothing. As to what it was, why I suppose she had reached a certain stage in life when most women have complications and ten per cent. of 'em are operated on—glands, cysts, tumours....
"The operation took place—she was jolly careful to keep it out of the papers—I doubt if even Clithy knew anything till it was well over. He was travelling in Russia to study the Russian theatres and their arrangements about scenery.... After she recovered the doctors sent her to Aix and then to St. Tropez on the Riviera.... Clithy joined her there. I sent her the telegram about ... about ... Lucy's death. I dare say you noticed the perfectly magnificent wreaths they both sent for the funeral. Clithy's came down from some place in Regent Street and had a card on it 'To my dear Aunt Lucy.' ... Only human touch about him ... awfully fond of your wife ... always said he liked her much more than his mother.... But he needn't have said it so often, though Sibyl only used to laugh. Her wreath was made here from the very best things we had got in the hot-houses ... only because Sibyl wrote that Lucy so loved to walk in these houses and fancy she was back in Africa.... However, I had a letter from her three days ago...." (Takes it out and reads: "Tell Roger not to dream of coming out here, because I am just going away. I am writing him in a few days.") "There! Now she'll soon tell you everything about herself...."
"What about you? Have you made any plans as yet?"
Roger: "Lucy's death has cut my life in two; I shall have to alter all the programme we used, to plan out together, she and I and Maud. Of course there are the children to think about.... Where are the matches? I'll light a pipe and tell you my ideas...." (A silence ... puffs ...) ... "I've not done badly out of this Happy Valley Concession. I've sold my shares in it—all but five hundred, kept them just to retain an interest, don't you know, get the Company's reports from time to time—I've sold my shares at two pounds a share to the Schräders' group. That brings me in close upon £75,000. I haven't saved much besides ... purposely lived well out there and entertained a good deal, and gave ... Lucy ... and Maud all they wanted, and had to pay for the little 'uns' schooling at home. However, there I am at this moment with about £75,000 at my bank on deposit and twelve hundred or so outstanding to my current account.... I'm going first of all to give ten thousand pounds down to Maud. I consider she has earned it.
"And then I must make a new will ... and I want to ask you, old chap, to be one of the executors. Will you? And p'raps Geoff the other. After all, it isn't Geoff we dislike, it's that confounded, pious doe-rabbit of a wife of his. However....