"I was not the right man for the job," he said. "You should have sent somebody else. I—stopped it."
"I hope when you are dying, Roger, that your son will carry out your last wishes more effectively than my nephew has carried out mine."
"But, Aunt Louisa, upon my honour he wasn't——"
"Good-night. Ask Janey to send up Nurse to me as soon as she returns."
Roger left the room clumsily, but yet with a certain dignity. His upright soul was shocked to the very core. He marched heavily downstairs to the library, where Janey was keeping his coffee hot for him over a little spirit-lamp. There was indignation in his clear grey eyes. And over his coffee and his cigarette he recounted to her exactly how everything had been, and how Dick wasn't fit, he really wasn't. And Janey thought that when he had quite finished she would tell him of the pressure her mother was bringing to bear on her to promise to make a home for Harry after her death. But when at last Roger got off the subject, and his cigarette had soothed him, he went on to tell Janey about a man he had met on the boat, who oddly enough turned out to be a cousin of a land agent he knew in Kent. This surprising incident took so long, the approaches having been both gradual and circuitous, and primarily connected with the proffer of a paper, that when it also had been adequately dealt with and disposed of, it was getting late.
"I must be off," he said, rising. "Good-night, Janey. Keep a brave heart, old girl." He nodded slightly to the room above, which was his aunt's. "Rough on you sometimes, I'm afraid."
"You always cheer me up," she said, with perfect truthfulness. He had cheered her. It would be a sad world for most of us if it were by our conversational talents that we could comfort those we loved. But Roger believed it was so in his case, and complacently felt that he had broached a number of interesting Parisian subjects, and had refreshed Janey, whom Lady Louisa led a dog's life and no mistake. He was fond of her, and sorry for her beyond measure, and his voice and eyes were very kindly as he bade her good-night. She went to the door with him, and they stood a moment together in the moonlight under the clustering stars of the clematis. He took his hat and stick and repeated his words: "Keep a brave heart."
She said in a voice which she tried, and failed, to make as tranquil as usual—
"I had been so afraid you weren't coming, that you had missed your train."
"Oh no! I didn't miss it. But just as I got to the gate at eight o'clock I met Miss Georges coming out of the churchyard, and it was pretty dark—moon wasn't up—and I thought I ought to see her home first. That was why I was late."