"I can't afford to cross him," Hubert went on, as though he had finally dismissed the thought of his cousin's speculations in pathology. "I expect you'll think I'm jolly soft, but I couldn't face being chucked out of here without a penny and no prospect of getting a job."
"But surely Uncle Joe would help you," Arthur put in.
"The pater! Good Lord! what could he do?" Hubert said. "He hasn't got a red cent of his own. I don't suppose he could lay his hands on a fiver to save his life."
Once or twice in the course of the last few weeks Arthur had had a faint suspicion that ready money was rather scarce among the Kenyons, but he was shocked by this plain statement.
"Doesn't the old man allow them anything?" he asked.
"Not a bean—in cash," Hubert said. "Of course we can get anything we want in reason, but the old man pays all the bills. He isn't a bit mean that way. Never grumbles. Draws the line at jewellery, though, as you've probably noticed."
Arthur had not noticed that omission, but he instantly remembered it, and he saw now that the absence of jewellery gave some air of distinction to the Kenyon women. He approved the old man's taste in this particular. He hated to see women smothered in diamonds.
"Why's that?" he asked, passing by the admission of his failure to observe the phenomenon.
"Hates jewellery; always has," Hubert explained. "One of his fads. Says he'd as soon see women wear a ring in their nose as in their ears."
Arthur nodded. He had no inclination to enter into any discussion of the æsthetic value of jewellery as an aid to the enhancing of woman's beauty. And he was intrigued for the moment by the new aspect of Hartling that Hubert's confidences had unexpectedly revealed to him. The Kenyons seemed to be living a sort of communistic life, he reflected. They had goods, everything they wanted in reason, but no money. Well, it was an easy life—for the elderly and middle-aged. They had no responsibilities, no anxieties. He could understand now why they had all got into such slack habits. After all, why shouldn't they? They had no incentive to do anything but what they were doing. Indeed, it seemed that they had no power to alter their way of life. They were the slaves of a benevolent autocrat who demanded no service from them except respect. Hartling was a Utopia, a Thelema in which there was no necessity for work; and one soon forgot that it was also a prison.