“Does he write himself?” Arnold asked. He was fond of Hugh Datcherd.
“Yes—oh, he doesn’t say he’s ill, he never will, but I know it by his writing—I must go by the next train, I’m afraid”; she remembered to turn to Mrs. Oliver and speak apologetically. “I’m very sorry to be so sudden.”
“We are so sorry for the cause,” said Mrs. Oliver, courteously. “Is it your brother?” (Surely it wouldn’t be her husband, in the circumstances?)
“It is not,” said Eileen, still abstracted. “It’s a friend. He’s alone, and consumptive, and if he’s not looked after he destroys himself doing quite mad things. His wife’s gone away.”
Mrs. Oliver became a shade less sympathetic. It was a pity it was not a brother, which would have been more natural. However, Mrs. Le Moine was, of course, a married woman, though under curious circumstances. She began to discuss trains, and the pony-carriage, and sandwiches.
Eddy explained afterwards while Eileen was upstairs.
“It’s Hugh Datcherd, a great friend of hers; poor chap, his lungs are frightfully gone, I’m afraid. He’s an extraordinarily interesting and capable man; runs an enormous settlement in North-East London, and has any number of different social schemes all over the place. He edits Further—do you ever see it, father?”
“Further? Yes, it’s been brought to my notice once or twice. It goes a good way ‘further’ than even our poor heretical deans, doesn’t it?”
It went in a quite different direction, Eddy thought. Our heretical deans do not always go very far along the road which leads to social betterment and slum-destroying; they are often too busy improving theology to have much time to improve houses.
“An able man, I daresay,” said the Dean. “Like all the Datcherds. Most of them have been Parliamentary, of course. Two Datcherds were at Cambridge with me—Roger and Stephen; this man’s uncles, I suppose; his father would be before my time. They were both very brilliant fellows, and fine speakers at the Union, and have become capable Parliamentary speakers now. A family of hereditary Whigs; but this man’s the only out and out Radical, I should say. A pity he’s so bitter against Christianity.”