All very difficult! Yes. Bertram, going home, wondered whether Janet Welford had more than a whimsical affection for Christy. How old Christy had fired up! He never suspected him of passion—and at forty-five! Time for the fires to burn out. . . . He also wondered whether Joyce understood the meaning of love. Something would have to be done to make her understand, or his life, and hers, would be utterly spoilt.
XXIII
Bertram had just read his first newspaper article, entitled “The Mind of the Men”—Bernard Hall’s title—in that week’s issue of The New World, when he heard his name called from the next room by Joyce. There was a note of emotion in the sound of that call, and he went to her quickly, wondering if she had hurt herself.
She was standing by the side of her writing desk, holding an illustrated paper—Country Life—with a look of amazement and alarm.
“What’s the matter, Joyce?”
She pointed to a photograph, and said, “It can’t be true!” He saw at a glance that it was a view of Holme Ottery from the west wing, with its stone, ivy-covered terraces, and broad flight of steps leading down to the tennis lawn and rose-garden. It was just there, coming up from the tennis court, that he had heard of Rudy’s death, when Ottery had handed the telegram to his wife, fingering his red beard and staring across the grounds with watery eyes. There was the Venus with her broken nose, and the copy of the Goose Boy of Pompeii.
“Holme Ottery,” said Bertram. “Why not?”
It was always being photographed for the magazines.
Joyce pointed to some words above the picture, and said, “Can’t you see?”
The words were—“Historic House for Sale.”