"I do hate meeting people," he protested.
"Seraph," I said, "I'm an unworthy vessel, but on your own showing I shall be submerged in politics if there isn't some one to create a diversion. Come to oblige me."
He hesitated for several moments, alternately crushing his opera hat and jerking it out straight.
"All right," he said at last.
"You will be my salvation."
"You deserve it, for what it's worth."
"God forbid!" I cried in modest disclaimer.
"You're the only one that isn't quite sure I'm mad," he answered, turning away in the direction of Adelphi Terrace.
For the next two days I had little time to spare for the Seraph's premonitions or Joyce Davenant's conspiracies. My brother sailed from Tilbury on the Friday, I was due the following day at the Rodens, and in the interval there were incredibly numerous formalities to be concluded before Gladys was finally entrusted to my care. The scene of reconciliation between her father and myself was most affecting. In the old days when Brian toiled at his briefs and I sauntered away the careless happy years of my youth, there is little doubt that I was held out as an example not to be followed. We need not go into the question which of us made the better bargain with life, but I know my brother largely supported himself in the early days of struggle by reflecting that a more than ordinarily hideous retribution was in store for me. Do I wrong him in fancying he must have suffered occasional pangs of disappointment?
Perhaps I do; there was really no time for him to be disappointed. Almost before retribution could be expected to have her slings and arrows in readiness, my ramblings in the diamond fields of South Africa had made me richer than he could ever hope to become by playing the Industrious Apprentice at the English Common Law Bar. More charitable than the Psalmist—from whom indeed he differs in all material respects—Brian could not bring himself to believe that any one who flourished like the green bay tree was fundamentally wicked. At our meeting he was almost cordial. Any slight reserve may be attributed to reasonable vexation that he had grown old and scarred in the battle of life while time with me had apparently stood still.