There was a little table by the side of Mr. Carey's chair, and on it were a Bible and the large volume of the Common Prayer from which for so many years he had been accustomed to read to his household.
He stretched out now his shaking hand and took his Bible.
"Those old patriarchs lived to a jolly good old age, didn't they?" he said, with a queer little laugh in which Philip read a sort of timid appeal.
The old man clung to life. Yet he believed implicitly all that his religion taught him.
He had no doubt in the immortality of the soul, and he felt that he had conducted himself well enough, according to his capacities, to make it very likely that he would go to heaven.
In his long career to how many dying persons must he have administered the consolations of religion!
Perhaps he was like the doctor who could get no benefit from his own prescriptions.
Philip was puzzled and shocked by that eager cleaving to the earth.
He wondered what nameless horror was at the back of the old man's mind.
He would have liked to probe into his soul so that he might see in its nakedness the dreadful dismay of the unknown which he suspected.
The fortnight passed quickly and Philip returned to London.
He passed a sweltering August behind his screen in the costumes department, drawing in his shirt sleeves.
The assistants in relays went for their holidays.
In the evening Philip generally went into Hyde Park and listened to the band.
Growing more accustomed to his work it tired him less, and his mind, recovering from its long stagnation, sought for fresh activity.
His whole desire now was set on his uncle's death.
He kept on dreaming the same dream: a telegram was handed to him one morning, early, which announced the Vicar's sudden demise, and freedom was in his grasp.
When he awoke and found it was nothing but a dream he was filled with sombre rage.
He occupied himself, now that the event seemed likely to happen at any time, with elaborate plans for the future.
In these he passed rapidly over the year which he must spend before it was possible for him to be qualified and dwelt on the journey to Spain on which his heart was set.
He read books about that country, which he borrowed from the free library, and already he knew from photographs exactly what each city looked like.
He saw himself lingering in Cordova on the bridge that spanned the Gaudalquivir; he wandered through tortuous streets in Toledo and sat in churches where he wrung from El Greco the secret which he felt the mysterious painter held for him.
Athelny entered into his humour, and on Sunday afternoons they made out elaborate itineraries so that Philip should miss nothing that was noteworthy.
To cheat his impatience Philip began to teach himself Spanish, and in the deserted sitting-room in Harrington Street he spent an hour every evening doing Spanish exercises and puzzling out with an English translation by his side the magnificent phrases of Don Quixote.
Athelny gave him a lesson once a week, and Philip learned a few sentences to help him on his journey.
Mrs. Athelny laughed at them.
"You two and your Spanish!" she said. "Why don't you do something useful?"
But Sally, who was growing up and was to put up her hair at Christmas, stood by sometimes and listened in her grave way while her father and Philip exchanged remarks in a language she did not understand.
She thought her father the most wonderful man who had ever existed, and she expressed her opinion of Philip only through her father's commendations.
"Father thinks a rare lot of your Uncle Philip," she remarked to her brothers and sisters.
Thorpe, the eldest boy, was old enough to go on the Arethusa, and Athelny regaled his family with magnificent descriptions of the appearance the lad would make when he came back in uniform for his holidays.
As soon as Sally was seventeen she was to be apprenticed to a dressmaker.
Athelny in his rhetorical way talked of the birds, strong enough to fly now, who were leaving the parental nest, and with tears in his eyes told them that the nest would be there still if ever they wished to return to it.
A shakedown and a dinner would always be theirs, and the heart of a father would never be closed to the troubles of his children.
"You do talk, Athelny," said his wife. "I don't know what trouble they're likely to get into so long as they're steady.
So long as you're honest and not afraid of work you'll never be out of a job, that's what I think, and I can tell you I shan't be sorry when I see the last of them earning their own living."
Child-bearing, hard work, and constant anxiety were beginning to tell on Mrs. Athelny; and sometimes her back ached in the evening so that she had to sit down and rest herself.
Her ideal of happiness was to have a girl to do the rough work so that she need not herself get up before seven.
Athelny waved his beautiful white hand.
"Ah, my Betty, we've deserved well of the state, you and I.
We've reared nine healthy children, and the boys shall serve their king; the girls shall cook and sew and in their turn breed healthy children." He turned to Sally, and to comfort her for the anti-climax of the contrast added grandiloquently: "They also serve who only stand and wait."
Athelny had lately added socialism to the other contradictory theories he vehemently believed in, and he stated now:
"In a socialist state we should be richly pensioned, you and I, Betty."
"Oh, don't talk to me about your socialists, I've got no patience with them," she cried.
"It only means that another lot of lazy loafers will make a good thing out of the working classes.
My motto is, leave me alone; I don't want anyone interfering with me; I'll make the best of a bad job, and the devil take the hindmost."
"D'you call life a bad job?" said Athelny. "Never!
We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children."
"You do talk, Athelny," she said, looking at him, not with anger but with scornful calm. "You've had the pleasant part of the children, I've had the bearing of them, and the bearing with them.
I don't say that I'm not fond of them, now they're there, but if I had my time over again I'd remain single.