Arthur received a letter from Somers by the second post. It was still raining, and he was playing billiards with Turner when the letter arrived, so he did not open it until after tea.
Somers had written in a mood of depression. Bates, Arthur's successor at the Peckham surgery, was not a success. "The fool means well, too well," Somers wrote; "but I was wrong in anticipating that the panel patients would like him. They don't. They have taken his measure, and all his good intentions can't disguise the fact that he is pudden-headed. When are you going to Canada? If you are going? Isn't that visit of yours being amazingly protracted? I suppose you're lapped in luxury and can't tear yourself away. Or have you got a permanent job there as tame medico to the old man? Or is it a girl? I wish to God you would write and tell me in any case. I can't keep Bates (he has got on my nerves) and I should like to know for certain if there is the least hope of your coming back. I can't see you marrying for money, and if the hypothecated girl is the right sort, she would face the world with you on five hundred a year. I might make it up to that. The private practice is better than it was. Sackville, who has been here so long, is getting too old. You and I between us would get pretty nearly all the new people. And if my first guess was the right one and you've got some sort of sinecure in the Hartling household, the
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 sooner you chuck it the better, my son. For one thing you'll get soft, and for another you'll get no experience. If you were doing hospital work (which you ought to be), I should not try to tempt you away, but if you are just letting your mind rot, I shall think it is my duty to save you at any cost."
As he read, Arthur lost the sense of his surroundings. He visualised the narrow sitting-room of the little Peckham house, and heard Somers's voice telling him that he ought to be doing hospital work or getting varied experience in a general practice; that he was becoming soft, going to pieces from a professional point of view. He blushed like a student under the rebuke of the demonstrator.
Then he looked up and the illusion vanished. He saw that all his circumstances were now changed. All that advice would be sound enough if he were forced to return to such a general practice as Peckham. But if the old man left him, say £10,000, he might have a shot for his Fellowship; try for a registrarship at one of the bigger hospitals; perhaps get on the staff of one and set up in Wimpole Street. With a certain amount of capital, this would be so much easier, and the war had given him a taste for minor surgery. Indeed, it had always appealed to him more than medicine. Meanwhile, it was true that he must not let himself get rusty. He ought to go on reading, order some books from town; or at least have the Lancet sent to him every Friday. He must keep himself up to date while he was waiting. At the outside, he could not have to wait more than five years. He would only be thirty-three then....
He paused doubtfully on that thought, but just then Hubert came in, and the moment of uneasiness passed and was forgotten. It had stopped raining
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 and Hubert thought that they might put in nine holes before dinner.
It was made clear on the way up to the links, however, that golf was not Hubert's goal on this occasion. He had a wild hope that Miss Martin might be found at the Club House. He had wanted, naturally enough, to tell her at once that the engagement was to be permitted, but his grandfather had sent him up to the farm on a job that had kept him busy all the afternoon.
"Probably did it just to tantalise me a bit," Hubert complained; "teach me that I couldn't have everything my own way."
"Oh, surely not!" Arthur protested. He was offended, again, by this imputation of unworthy motives to old Mr Kenyon. "I don't believe any of you understand him," he continued warmly. "We had quite a long talk this morning and he rather came out of his shell. He may seem a bit hard and inhuman at times, you know, but underneath, I'm certain he's trying to do the best for everybody."
Hubert looked faintly surprised. "Oh! that was the way he took you, was it?" he remarked.
"There you go again," Arthur said. "You, all of you, seem to have made up your minds that—that—I don't know——"
He could not complete his sentence. He could see that they all feared the old man, but they never brought any explicit charge against him unless it were that he bullied them into staying on at Hartling. And all that had been explained. Arthur, remembering his conversation of the morning, was strongly inclined now to take the old man's side. He knew their weaknesses. They were a poor lot obviously. They lacked independence of spirit; if
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 they were allowed to go out into the world they would come awful croppers like the unfortunate, hot-headed James, Eleanor's father. The old man had learnt a lesson in the course of that affair. He was a bit of an autocrat, no doubt; but he had good reason to be, with a family that could not be trusted.
Hubert appeared either unwilling or unable to provide a definition of the family's attitude. "Oh, well," he said, "no good discussing that, is it? Here we are and we've got to put up with it. And, personally, you know, I don't care much now—partly thanks to you, old man."
Only "partly," Arthur reflected, but he made no comment on that. "That's all right, then," was all he said.
Hubert was in luck, for Miss Martin was at the Club House, drawn thither, no doubt, by the same hope that had stimulated her lover, and although they cheerfully proposed a foursome, Arthur knew that they would sooner be alone, and declined. The proposed fourth player in the case was Fergusson, the general practitioner from the village, to whom reference had been made when the post of medical attendant had been first offered to Arthur. He and Fergusson had met once or twice on the links, but their brief conversations had so far been limited to golf. The doctor was a man of sixty or so, with thick gray hair and moustache and a strong, clumsy figure. Arthur had formed the opinion that he was rather a surly fellow.
"Care to take me on for nine holes—haven't time for more?" Arthur asked him.
Fergusson nodded. "Not that I'm particularly anxious to play," he said. "The ground will be very wet, I'm thinking, after all the rain we've had to-day. I just looked in on my way home, without
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 much idea of getting a game. Indeed, to be honest, I've had a very long day and am not so anxious to exert myself."
"Scattered sort of practice, I expect," Arthur commented. "Have a cigar."
Fergusson accepted the cigar with a nod of thanks. "One of your perquisites?" he asked, smiling rather grimly.
Arthur stiffened. "Never thought of it like that," he said. "They're all over the shop up there. You just take 'em as you want 'em."
"No need to get ruffled," Fergusson replied quietly. "I know. I used to be up there once a week or so before you came. Nice little sinecure."
"But I say, look here," Arthur said, suddenly conscious for the first time that he might have been guilty of a breach of medical etiquette, "you don't mean to tell me that I've taken away one of your cases?"
Fergusson laughed dryly. "Well, you have and you haven't," he said. "But your conscience is no doubt clear enough and everything was done in proper form. The old man wrote to me and explained, and I went up and talked it all over with him. You were playing golf on that occasion, I'm thinking. However, it'll be a soft job for you."
Arthur still looked uneasy. "I never once thought about you in that connection, you know," he said. "I ought, anyhow, to have come and seen you."
"Oh, no need to fash yourself," Fergusson returned. "Mr Kenyon was very considerate about the affair. I'm not complaining."
"Yes, he is very considerate," Arthur agreed, automatically. Had Fergusson been promised a place in that untidy will as compensation? was the
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 thought that flashed across his mind, a thought that was in some indefinable way unpleasant. He did not grudge the doctor his possible legacy, he sincerely hoped that it might be a big one, but he had a feeling of vague distaste for the principle involved. Why should the old man trade on these rather equivocal promises of future reward? He had given convincing reasons with regard to his own family, but they did not apply to Fergusson, nor to Scurr, the chauffeur, and the other servants. Arthur decided to try a "feeler."
"But hang it," he said, "I've done you out of a certain amount of income. All the consideration in the world doesn't make up for that."
Fergusson, looking slightly self-conscious, studied the ash of his cigar. "He's a queer old customer in some respects," he remarked illusively.
Arthur chose to overlook that comment. "I think you ought to know," he said, "that I'm not being paid any salary for my job. There's my keep, of course, but in a house like that one person more or less can't make any difference."
"Eh! Is that so?" Fergusson said. "And are you staying on indefinitely?"
"Well ..." Arthur explained, with a wave of his hand.
"I take you," Fergusson acknowledged. "I was on much the same terms. And how d'you think the old man's looking? I've known him for twenty-five years, and he has hardly changed a hairsbreadth in that time. He'll be ninety-two this year, I'm told; but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he was seventy or a hundred and ten. Indeed, it's come to me lately that I'd have been better advised to have sent him in a whacking account when he turned me off, for it's likely enough that he'll outlive
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 me. However, you stand a better chance than I do, for I presume you can give me thirty years."
Arthur shivered slightly. His suspicion had been fully confirmed, and the thought of it troubled him. Still, from one point of view, it was reasonable enough that Mr Kenyon should have this particular eccentricity. All his life he had been wrestling with a family that could not be trusted with money, and the habit had possibly grown into an obsession. He looked at Fergusson, who was somewhat grimly enjoying his cigar. He had all the appearance of an honest man. "Known him twenty-five years, have you?" he commented.
"Ay!" Fergusson said. "I came to this damned place when I was thirty-seven, and I thought I was in luck to get hold of a rich patient like Kenyon. Well, as you can judge from what I told you, he looked an oldish man then. Not so withered naturally, but if he was only sixty-six at that time I should say that he looked more than his age. But there you are. I knew an old chap of the name of Simon—he has been dead God knows how long—who was a contemporary of Kenyon's, used to do business with him in the 'sixties, and he has told me that Kenyon was always a dry stick—one of those men who look old at forty and never change afterwards.
"And there's another queer thing he told me," Fergusson went on, after a slight pause, "a thing you'll be disinclined to credit, which is, that Kenyon was never a good business man—not really able or far-sighted, that is."
"But he made a pile of money," Arthur put in.
"He did," Fergusson said, "but Simon used to say that he got it by sheer luck; that he never touched an investment that didn't go right by some fluke
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 or another, though by all the laws of probability, it ought to have gone just the other way. Maybe Simon was a bit jealous, but he had a mighty poor opinion of Kenyon as a business man—though begob, I'm inclined to differ from him, myself."
"He has been most frightfully decent to me," Arthur commented uneasily; and remembered that he had made the same remark to Turner a few hours earlier.
"Ay, he would be that," Fergusson said. "There have been times when I have liked him very well myself; but I always had the feeling that there was something queer about him—a trifle uncanny, if you know what I mean."
"Oh, well! Perhaps. I don't know," Arthur said. "He seems sometimes to be extraordinarily detached; as if he were living a sort of life of his own."
"Hm! Likely enough," Fergusson agreed. "Simon told me that Kenyon had a hell of a time when he was a young man. His father, who was in the business before him, was one of your old-fashioned bullies. Used to treat his son like a dog, Simon said. So no doubt Kenyon got the habit of keeping things to himself then, and it stuck to him after his father was dead."
"Yes, that might account for it, in a way," Arthur admitted.
Arthur's ............