Peter looked gloomy. Gervase had hit him on a tender, anxious spot. He had now been married more than a year, and there was no sign of his hopes being fulfilled. He told himself he was an impatient fool—Jewish women were proverbially mothers of strong sons. But the very urgency of his longing made him mistrust its fulfilment—Vera was civilised out of race—she ran too much to brains. She had, to his smothered consternation, produced a small volume of poems and essays, which she had had typed and sent expectantly to a publisher. Peter was not used to women doing this sort of thing, and it alarmed him. If they did it, he could not conceive how they could also do the more ordinary and useful things that were expected of them.
His father laughed at him.
“Peter—you’re a yokel. Your conception of women is on a level with Elias’s and Lambard’s.”
“No, it isn’t, Sir—that’s just what’s the matter. I can’t feel cocksure about things most men feel cocksure about. That’s why I wish you’d realise that there’s every chance of Gervase coming into the property——”
“My dear Peter, you are the heir.”
“Yes, Sir. But if I don’t leave a son to come after me....”
“Well, I refuse to bother about what may happen forty years after I’m dead. If you live to my age—and there’s no reason you shouldn’t, as you’re a healthy man—it’ll be time to think about an heir. Gervase may be dead before that.”
“He’s almost young enough to be my son.”
“But what in God’s name do you want me to do with him? Am I to start already preparing him for his duties as Sir Gervase Alard?”
“You might keep a tighter hand on him, Sir.”