PART II
CHAPTER I
It was on a windy March morning three years after his summarily ended visit to Ireland, that James Milbanke stood in the bedroom of his London flat. A perturbed frown puckered his forehead and he held an open letter in his hand.
Outside, the dark sky and cold searching breeze proclaimed the raw English spring; inside, the partly dismantled walls of the room, the emptied drawers and wardrobe, the trunks, bags, and rugs standing ready strapped, all suggested another and more inviting climate. Milbanke was bound for the south.
Three months earlier he had come to the momentous conclusion that a solitary life in London—spent no matter how comfortably—becomes a colourless and somewhat empty thing after a thirty-three years' experience. He had his club and his friends, but he was not a clubman born, and friends must be very intimate to be all-sufficing. The restlessness that sometimes unexpectedly attacks the middle-aged bachelor had fallen upon him. The suggestion that he craved new surroundings and new fields of interest had been slow in coming, and his acceptance of it had been slow. But steadily and inevitably it had grown into his consciousness, maturing almost against his will, until at last the day had dawned on which he had admitted to himself that a change was indispensable. The subsequent events had followed in natural order. His hobby had urged him to leave his own country for one richer in association; the damp cold of the English winter, coupled with the chilled blood of advancing age, had inclined him to the idea of Southern Europe. The result of his triple suggestion was that he stood in his room on that spring morning in the last stages of preparation for a journey to Italy.
He stood there, with the discomfort of packing pleasantly accomplished, and his belongings neatly surrounding him; yet his attitude and expression were those of a man who is faced by an unlooked-for difficulty. With a nervous gesture, he shook out the letter that he held, and began to read it hastily for the fourth time. It was a long letter, written in a careless, almost boyish hand on thin paper, and bore the address of "Orristown, Ireland." It was dated two days earlier, and began:
"Dear Mr. Milbanke,—
"You will be very much surprised to get this, but I write for father, not for myself. He had a bad accident yesterday while out riding, and is terribly hurt and ill. The doctor from Carrigmore is with him all the time, and my aunt—as well as Nance and I; so he is well cared for. But he seems to get worse instead of better, and we are dreadfully frightened about him.
"There is one thing he constantly craves for—and that is to see you. Ever since that night, three years ago, when you and he quarrelled and you went away, I think he has been fretting about you. Of course, he has never spoken of it, but I don't think he has ever forgotten that he treated you badly.
"This morning he talked a great deal about the time when you and he were young together; so much so, that I asked him if he would like to see you. The moment I spoke his face lighted up, but then at once it clouded over again, and he muttered something about never giving any man the chance of refusing him a favour.