“No. I drove straight to my rooms, and kept the cab while I dressed.”
What an important matter this dressing seemed to be! And there were fifteen months behind it--fifteen months which had aged one of them and sobered the other.
Jack was sitting forward in his chair with his immaculate dress-shoes on the fender--his knees apart, his elbows resting on them, his eyes still fixed on the fire. Sir John looked keenly at him beneath his frowning, lashless lids. He saw the few grey hairs over Jack's ears, the suggested wrinkles, the drawn lines about his mouth.
Joseph's letter was locked away in the top drawer of his writing-table.
“Yes, I had rather a bad time--a serious illness. My man nursed me through it, however, with marked success; and--the Gordons, with whom I was staying, were very kind.”
“I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Gordon.”
Jack's face was steady--suavely impenetrable.
Sir John moved a little, and set his empty cup upon the table.
“You are fortunate in that man of yours,” Sir John said. “A first-class man.”
Sir John blinked, and for the first time his fingers went to his mouth, as if his lips had suddenly got beyond his control.
“If I may suggest it,” he said rather indistinctly, “I think it would be well if we signified our appreciation of his devotion in some substantial way. We might well do something between us.”
“I should like to give him some substantial token of my--gratitude.”
“Thank you,” answered Jack quietly. He turned his head a little, and glanced, not at his father, but in his direction. “He will appreciate it, I know.”
Jack winced, as if he had made a mistake.
“He is not in England,” he explained. “I left him behind me in Africa. He has gone back to the Simiacine Plateau.”
The old man's face dropped rather piteously.
“I am sorry,” he said, with one of the sudden relapses into old age that Lady Cantourne dreaded. “I may not have a chance of seeing him to thank him personally. A good servant is so rare nowadays. These modern democrats seem to think that it is a nobler thing to be a bad servant than a good one. As if we were not all servants!”
He was thirsting for details. There were a thousand questions in his heart, but not one on his lips.
“Will you have the kindness to remember my desire,” he went on suavely, “when you are settling up with your man?”