She was not noticeably changed since the doctor's death, three weeks before. Her clothes had always been black, so that she was exempt from the gruesome demands of custom to advertise her loss in her garments. The long habit of shielding Jakes from open shame had become a part of her; so that instead of abandoning her lost position, she was already in the way of canonizing him. She made reverential references to his professional skill, to his goodness, his learning, his sacrifices to duty. She looked people steadily and defiantly in the eyes as she said so, and had her own way with them. The foundations were laid of a tradition which presented poor Jakes in a form he would never have recognized. He was in his place behind the barbed wire out on the veld, sharing the bed of little Eustace, heedless that there was building for him a mausoleum of good report and loyal praise.
"Hate to see luggage in a house," remarked Mr. Samson, as they passed the pile in the hall on their way to the breakfast-room. "Nothing upsets a house like luggage. Looks so bally unsettled, don't you know."
"Things are a little unsettled," agreed Mrs. Jakes civilly. "What with the rain and everything, it doesn't seem like the same place, does it?"
She gave a tone of mild complaint to her voice, exactly as though a disturbance in the order of her life were a thing to be avoided. It would not have been consistent with the figure of the late Jakes, as she was sedulous to present it, if she had admitted that the house and its routine, its purpose, its atmosphere, its memories, the stones in its walls and the tiles on its roof, were the objects of her living hate. She was already in negotiations for the sale of it and what she called "the connection," and had called Mr. Samson and Ford into consultation over correspondence with a doctor at Port Elizabeth, who wrote with a typewriter and was inquisitive about balance-sheets. Throughout the consequent discussions she maintained an air of gentle and patient regret, an attitude of resigned sentiment, the exact manner of a lady in a story who sells the home of her ancestors to a company promoter. Even her anxiety to sell Ford and Mr. Samson along with the house did not cause her to deflect for an instant from the course of speech and action she had selected. There were yet Penfolds in Putney and Clapham Junction, and when the sale was completed she would see them again and rejoin their congenial circle; but her joy at the prospect was private, her final and transcendent secret.
Nothing is more natural to man than to pose; by a posture, he can correct the crookedness of his nature and be for himself, and sometimes for others too, the thing he would be. It is the instinct towards protective coloring showing itself through broadcloth and bombazine.
Mr. Samson accepted his coffee and let his monocle fall into it, a sign that he was discomposed to an unusual degree. He sat wiping it and frowning.
"Did I tell you," he said suddenly, "that—er—that Kafir 's going to look in just before they start?"
Mrs. Jakes looked up sharply.
"You mean—that Kamis?" she demanded. "He 's coming here?"
"Ye-es," said Mr. Samson. "Just for a minute or two. Er—Ford knows about it."