“All right, tomorrow, old boy. With milk teeth and whistle and spade and pail and all the rest of it. Come up to Selambshof and have an afternoon whiskey and soda and then you’ll see him.”
Peter rose. He stood there like a lump of dough, massive and swaying to and fro, and would not let Herman’s hand go:
“Tomorrow, old boy, tomorrow. Welcome!”
Then Peter the Boss walked home to Selambshof.
But Herman swept bottle and glass on to the floor and then sat motionless as a statue and stared into the night and thought of his son.
There are men who are fat for slaughter and there are those who are fattened by the slaughter of others. Peter the Boss certainly belonged to the latter category. But heavy and sluggish blood may still leave you a victim of softer feelings. And Peter had, as we have seen, his weaknesses. But the strange thing is that somehow when it came to the point they always served his purpose. He could yield to any excess of feelings because the real Peter the Boss remained safely behind on guard. Whilst others awoke with remorse and a splitting head, he realised through the lifting mists that he was on the point of doing a fine stroke of business.
Big and good-tempered, he now stood in his soiled flannels and wide-brimmed sombrero by the corner of his house and looked at the touching group on the terrace. He was confoundedly fond both of the fair little thing between the sand moulds and of that tall unhappy Herman who had—God help him—dressed up in morning coat to meet his son. Perhaps it was because they were both equally helpless.
Herman sat there rigid and pale, torn by conflicting emotions. He did not try to explain who he was. He did not even dare to take the boy on his lap, he only looked silently at the vivacious open face and the chubby little eager hands. A living memory of the past! There they had mixed their blood, he and the woman from whom he would never escape as long as he lived.
There was a sighing of the wind in the old maple above the rusty signalling guns. Here Laura had sat, and there up the avenue he had come—always with that strange anxiety in his inmost heart, Herman leant back on the bench. A feeling of resignation stole over him. Here at Selambshof he had met his fate—and here he would still find it. Here were beings against whom it was no use fighting.