They talked of people they had known, and so the talk came naturally to Margaret. He listened unmoved to the news of her marriage, and found that nothing more than conventional phrases came from his lips when Hamblin told him of her death. Somehow, it seemed to him so natural. He had been away seventeen years, and Easterham had lost its hold upon him now. The death of his father ... the new face at the window of their house.... The death of Margaret seemed to come as a natural sequence to things.
Hamblin went on talking about people. "She married Mr Quain, one of the College schoolmasters.... I expect he was after your time ... a good deal older than you, Mr Ferrol.... They had one child, a boy ... living with his aunt now. All her people left Easterham years ago...." And so on.
It was in the afternoon that Ferrol came back to London, feeling that he had been prodding at wet moss-grown stones in some old decayed ruin, turning them over to see what he could find, and having them crumble apart in his hands. He never went back again.
That was thirteen years ago. Ferrol's memories ended abruptly. He touched a button, and a young man, with a shiny, pink face and fair hair parted in the middle, came in with a notebook and pencil in his hand. He looked as if he spent every moment of his spare time in washing his face. There was a quiet, nervous air about him--the air of one who is never certain of what is going to happen next. Ferrol's abrupt sentences always unnerved him.
"Trinder," he said, "there was a letter among the lot to-day. Quain. Written on _Easterham Gazette_ notepaper. Asking for editorial employment."
"Yes, sir." Trinder had long ceased to marvel at Ferrol's memory for details.
"Write to him the usual letter asking him to call. Wednesday at twelve."
Ferrol wondered what Margaret's boy was like.
At the age of twenty Humphrey Quain found himself on the threshold of a world of promise. It seemed to him that if, out of all the years of time, he could have chosen the period in which he would live, he would have picked out the dawn of this twentieth century of grace. England was just then in the throes of casting from herself the burden of old traditions. The closing years of the nineties had been years of preparation and development--years of broadening minds and new ideas, until quite suddenly, it seemed, the century turned the corner, and yesterday became old-fashioned in a day, and all eyes were fixed on the glorious sunrise of the twentieth century--the wonderful century.