The hands of the grandfather's clock pointed to ten minutes to five. Antony, remembering the box of wood in the scullery, bethought himself of a cup of tea. His bag contained all the requirements. Long practice had taught him to provide himself with necessities, and also, on occasions, to substitute lemon for milk, as a complement to tea.
He was just about to go and fetch a handful of sticks, preparatory to lighting a fire, when he heard the click of his garden gate. Turning, and looking through the window, he saw a big man coming up the path.
Doctor Hilary was returning from his rounds. His state of mind was nearly as grey as the atmosphere.
It is one thing to agree to a mad-brained scheme in the first amused interest of its propounding, even to mould it further, and bring it into shape. It is quite another to be actually confronted with the finished scheme, to realize that, though you may not be its veritable parent, you have at all events foster-fathered it quite considerably, and that, moreover, you cannot now, in conscience, cast off responsibility in its behalf.
The fact that you had excellent reasons for adopting the scheme in the first place, will doubtless be of comfort to your soul, but that particular species of comfort and ordinary everyday common sense are not always as closely united as you might desire. In fact they are occasionally apt to pull in entirely opposite directions, a method of procedure which is far from consoling.
Doctor Hilary found it far from consoling.
Conscience told him quite plainly that his real and innermost reason for foster-fathering the scheme was simply and solely for the sake of snatching at any mortal thing that would, or could, bring interest into an old man's life. Common sense demanded why on earth he had not suggested an alternative idea, something a trifle less mad. And it was mad. There did not now appear one single reasonable point in it, though very assuredly there were quite a vast number of unreasonable ones.
In the first place, and it seemed to him nearly, if not quite, the most unreasonable point, Nicholas had known nothing whatever about the young man he had elected to make his heir,--nothing, that is, beyond the fact that he had known the young man's father, and had once seen Antony himself when Antony was a child. There had even been very considerable difficulty in obtaining knowledge of his whereabouts.