The German dividend, of course, had failed. He must not mind if there was a certain irregularity in the payments. Everything was at sixes and sevens, and it was not at all easy to transfer money; but he could manage it. He hoped Henry had saved a little, and that the occasional inevitable delays and the necessary diminution of the total would be bearable until peace should come—for William agreed it could not be long delayed. As for the boy, he had better stay safe where he was—he was getting excellent tuition, and it would not be too late to go on to his school in England when peace came. He had seen the headmaster and it would be all right—a few months wouldn’t matter. And after all, John was barely fourteen.

Yes; Henry had saved a little, for the first time in his life (and how proud of it he was!) The lessening of income was a nuisance, but it hardly meant more than that the saving stopped, and that he had to take a little more care of his very modest expenditure. He secretly rejoiced at the suggestion that his son would not have to leave him permanently just yet, or have to attempt to rejoin him during the holidays under the very difficult conditions of war-time. Of course, John would go to school a little late, but he comforted himself by remembering that, after all, he would have the boy with him so much longer, and that was a great delight. The delay postponed for the lad one great advantage, but it gained him others. It was a very good thing for a young Englishman to have known other countries and other languages well as a boy, and things would right themselves somehow.

So it went on through the better part of ’fifteen. Remittances came sufficiently often and of sufficient amount to keep things just barely going; but no more. Victory was due almost any day—though, it’s true, it was getting late. Towards the end of the year Henry Maple began to feel he knew not what difference in his gentle vigour and in his hopefulness. It was as though the world were losing its taste.

He put it down to the war—but it was not the war. 1916 went by, and that internal enemy, whatever it was, took more and more of the man’s life. Yet he put it down to nothing but the restrictions and fatigues and anxieties of the time. The progress of the disease was slow, his son hardly noticed it. To boys of his age a man of over fifty seems very old, and that his father should now no longer be able to take the long walks he had, or to read quite so long at a time, seemed to him nothing but the natural process of age.

So it went on for two years more. Twice Henry had made the resolution to get back home to see if—late as it was—the boy couldn’t be got to his school. Twice he had abandoned that resolution. The increasing difficulties of travel appalled him, and it must be admitted that a stronger motive was his clinging to John’s companionship. His brother’s urgent appeals to him not to move, the assurance that he was better where he was, and sundry hints in the letters, hints which escaped the censorship, that England might not be quite secure confirmed his lethargy. His increasing weakness did the rest. He would wait till the war was over—still confident that it would be over “almost any time now,” and over in the right way.

*      *      *      *      *

On the 2nd May, 1918, not for the first time, but hardly for more than the second time in Henry Maple’s life, he was pulled up sharply against reality. A telegram came from Hilda, saying that William had died suddenly—a letter would follow.

The shock fell on a man much nearer death than either he or his child had imagined. He went down a further step in the descent out of this life. He had been really fond of his brother; too grateful for a generosity that had been very much more like an investment; and he was bound—as such natures are—by the common memories of childhood.

But there was a good side even to that, and it put some light into the mind of the dying man—for dying he now was, though slowly. After all, John was the heir. William had died childless.