“Dottiness,” said Colin at once. “You discovered she was dotty weeks ago. And just now, you remember, she thought that you were me as a boy again. That wasn’t very clear-headed, was it? And all the rest was just as muddled. Don’t think anything more about it, Dennis.”
That cloud did not clear away at once from Dennis’s forehead. His father had clearly wanted to tell him something last night, and, by an unerring instinct, he divined that this same something lurked behind what he had just stopped old Lady Yardley from saying. It concerned the legend, clearly; some practical personal application of the legend....
“Dennis, you’re not doing what I told you,” said Colin sharply. “You’re thinking of Grannie’s dottiness.”
Dennis pulled in that sail of his mind which was still catching that mysterious breeze.
“Come and sit next me then, you exclusive brute,” said Colin, “instead of sitting at the other side of the table.... And you’ve liked your last day, have you, Dennis?”
“Oh, Father, it has been lovely,” said Dennis, drawing a chair quite close to him. “Why, they all went away at eleven, and I’ve been with you ever since except when I had my bath, and even then you came in in the middle. Ten solid hours with you. Not bad.”
“No, not very bad. You’ve made an elderly gent like me play golf and tennis and shoot pigeons. I shall have a rest-cure after you’ve gone.”
“Do. Come and have it at Eton. There’s a nursing home somewhere in the town. Elderly gent!”
“Well, don’t rub it in,” said Colin. “Come on, Dennis. We must go and play whist. You and I will rook your mother and Granny. And then, after being up till nearly four last night, you shall go softly and silently to bed like the Snark.”
“Not silent. You’ll come and talk, won’t you?”
“Perhaps I’ll look in, but I don’t promise. I must sit up and do some jobs.”
“Because you’ve prevented my doing them all day.”
Colin smiled to himself as he said that. It was most emphatically true: he would concentrate on his jobs to-night.
Violet went upstairs with Dennis at bed-time, relieved of her immediate fear, for Colin made no move to detain the boy, and whatever he had planned for himself, he did not look for Dennis’s partnership. Colin sat in his room when the others had gone up, and for half an hour, while he was waiting for midnight, he read and mused over the Memoirs of his ancestor. How symmetrical and consistent he had been till that senile ague of terror palsied him in the last year of his life! Never once in those fascinating pages was there a hint of any struggle in his soul, any stirrings of compassion or love which disturbed the poise of his undivided allegiance. Nor even at the end, did he waver in spirit, for it was easy to see that his belated pieties, his formal acts of pity and charity, sprang not from any turning of him in spirit towards God, but from the mere physical terror of his approaching doom. He only added cowardice, in fact, to his other sins, and went forth with a blacker load than ever.... So early, too, must he have initiated his two sons into the doctrines of the gospel, for long before the time came for their choice they were ripe and ready.