He blamed himself for not having remembered earlier that Maurice was at home—for not having asked his father about him. He went to look for him, could not find him in any of the sitting-rooms, and finally mounted to the second-floor bedroom which had always been his brother's.
"Maurice!" He knocked. No answer. But there was a hurried movement inside, and something that sounded like the opening of a drawer.
He called again, and tried the door. It was locked. But after further shuffling inside, as though some one were handling papers, it was thrown open.
"Well, Maurice, I hope I haven't disturbed you in anything very important. I thought I must come and have a look at you. Are you all right?"
"Come in, old fellow," said Maurice with affected warmth—"I was only writing a few letters. No room for anybody downstairs but the pater and Theresa, so I have to retreat up here."
"And lock yourself in?" said Stephen, laughing. "Any secrets going?" And as he took a seat on the edge of the bed, while Maurice returned to his chair, he could not prevent himself from looking with a certain keen scrutiny both at the room and his younger brother.
He and Maurice had never been friends. There was a gap of nearly ten years between them, and certain radical and profound differences of temperament. And these differences nature had expressed, with an entire absence of subtlety, in their physique—in the slender fairness and wholesomeness of Stephen, as contrasted with the sallowness, the stoop, the thin black hair, the furtive, excitable look of Maurice.
"Getting on well with your new work?" he asked, as he took unwilling note of the half-consumed brandy and soda on the table, of the saucer of cigarette ends beside it, and the general untidiness and stuffiness of the room.
"Not bad," said Maurice, resuming his cigarette.
"What is it?"