There came a moment when he had a little difficulty in meeting the full interest, though it was in the hands of a family lawyer who was as much a part of his life as anything else, and had jogged along comfortably enough with him. But he did at one moment in the year 1905, rather suddenly, need £1,000.

It had not occurred to him how easily his younger brother, William Maple, a London solicitor in good practice whom he saw fairly often, could meet the case, or how willing he would be to do it. It was William Maple himself who suggested the thing (how he could have heard of the embarrassment Henry was at a loss to guess, and, indeed, did not waste much time in guessing). It was after a quiet dinner which the two brothers had had together, when William was spending a week-end at Rackham, that the proposal was made, and the elder brother accepted it with real gratitude.

A second thousand followed, and a third. William came oftener—a frequent guest. He had married a handsome, rather pushing wife of a birth like his own, the daughter of the Dean of Lamborough, the grand-daughter of a large coal-owner of the Midlands; a woman who liked to know the world and whose increasing acquaintance with sundry rich people and other sundry talked-of people in London increased, very much to her husband’s content, and not a little to his advantage.

Henry Maple had no great liking for his sister-in-law. Her worldliness jarred on him and she knew nothing of the things he loved. But he never thought of her unjustly. He invited her frequently enough, and they were fairly good friends.

William Maple was what Henry would no doubt have been if Fate had compelled him (as it never did) to earn his living. But in the twenty odd years since their common boyhood the difference in habit of mind and activity had become pronounced. William was precise and methodical; not unjust, but long grown incapable of anything unbusinesslike or slack. A bargain was a bargain, and a contract a contract; and the results of it, if they were turned out to the other man’s loss, were the other man’s look-out. He could no more separate his family from the rest of the world in this general view than he could have separated one set of figures from another in the jottings of his note-books. These he kept carefully from year to year; no one saw them but himself, and they did all the work that the most elaborate keeping of accounts can do in a large business.

It was natural enough in Henry’s eyes that his brother should be easy in the matter of interest and allow it to be added to the main debt. It was natural in William’s that this attitude on his own part, which was not ungenerous, should yet be precisely regulated and never allowed to breed confusion.

The losses on all English agricultural work continued; the new habits continued with them; the slightly increased expenditure; the vague idea permeating Henry Maple’s mind that the old state of affairs was the natural and permanent one and would in due course return.

He knew roughly—after a few more years had passed—that his total indebtedness to his brother had now come to £7,000; he knew that the interest had fallen into arrears—to how much the total of the new interest on those arrears might amount he had but a very rough conception, and he did not dwell upon it.

When it had been suggested by William that the mortgages on the farms might be taken over, so as to make one simple body of all the obligations, he was more than willing—it kept things in the family. The fixed figure in his mind of £7,000 thus became £10,000; and the arrears of interest crept on. There were one or two further loans, and one fine day in 1913 William thought it only right to have a clear statement, and go into everything in detail with his brother. It was thus upon a Sunday in August, a year before the quite unimaginable war, that the critical moment came.

William had turned over in his own mind during the previous week what he would say and do. He had everything fixed, tabulated and arranged.

William Maple had prospered; he had bought one of the dignified old freehold houses on the river in Cheyne Walk, spending on it rather more than he would have done, perhaps, had not his wife urged him. The house was becoming something of a centre in London for people who wrote and painted and were talked of, for the more important people who had gone into politics, and even for a few of the very much more important people whose point was their new wealth. Mrs. William Maple had decided that the time had come for a proper house in the country as well; but her husband, for all his success, hesitated at the expense. It was Mrs. William Maple who suggested that the opportunity lay ready to hand in Rackham.

“Henry will never marry again,” she had said. “The longer he keeps that place the more it will go to pieces. I don’t believe that boy, John, will come to any good with it. He’s a nice bright child and I am as fond of him as you are; but I see what the end of it will be.”

And William, after a rather long pause, had agreed that she was right—at any rate as far as his brother’s incapacity for management was concerned, and the probability of a break - down if things continued as they were.

There was no need to do anything harsh or unpleasant, Mrs. William had said. After all, what with the capital sums advanced and the really absurd arrears of interest, and the interest on those arrears—let her husband remember that he very often had to find that himself, when he was making new investments, and depending upon the bank—the total must be getting close on £18,000.

“Not quite that,” William Maple had answered.

“Well!” Mrs. William had taken him up with a rather sharp sigh, “close on it, anyhow! And we can’t afford it—you know we can’t.