r if he had known that she would have so many years before her,
when he had so few. It was not natural. She would live fifteen or
twenty years after he was gone, and might spend a lot of money; she had
always had extravagant tastes. For all he knew she might want to buy one
of these motor-cars. Cicely and Rachel and Imogen and all the young
people--they all rode those bicycles now and went off Goodness knew
where. And now Roger was gone. He didn't know--couldn't tell! The
family was breaking up. Soames would know how much his uncle had left.
Curiously he thought of Roger as Soames' uncle not as his own brother.
Soames! It was more and more the one solid spot in a vanishing world.
Soames was careful; he was a warm man; but he had no one to leave his
money to. There it was! He didn't know! And there was that fellow
Chamberlain! For James' political principles had been fixed between '70
and '85 when 'that rascally Radical' had been the chief thorn in the side
of property and he distrusted him to this day in spite of his conversion;
he would get the country into a mess and make money go down before he had
done with it. A stormy petrel of a chap! Where was Soames? He had gone
to the funeral of course which they had tried to keep from him. He knew
that perfectly well; he had seen his son's trousers. Roger! Roger in his
coffin! He remembered how, when they came up from school together from
the West, on the box seat of the old Slowflyer in 1824, Roger had got
into the 'boot' and gone to sleep. James uttered a thin cackle. A funny
fellow--Roger--an original! He didn't know! Younger than himself, and
in his coffin! The family was breaking up. There was Val going to the
university; he never came to see him now. He would cost a pretty penny
up there. It was an extravagant age. And all the pretty pennies that
his four grandchildren would cost him danced before James' eyes. He did
not grudge them the money, but he grudged terribly the risk which the
spending of that money might bring on them; he grudged the diminution of
security. And now that Cicely had married, she might be having children
too. He didn't know--couldn't tell! Nobody thought of anything but
spending money in these days, and racing about, and having what they
called 'a good time.' A motor-car went past the window. Ugly great
lumbering thing, making all that racket! But there it was, the country
rattling to the dogs! People in such a hurr