To James, more than to any of the others, was "the family" significant
and dear. There had always been something primitive and cosy in his
attitude towards life; he loved the family hearth, he loved gossip, and
he loved grumbling. All his decisions were formed of a cream which he
skimmed off the family mind; and, through that family, off the minds
of thousands of other families of similar fibre. Year after year,
week after week, he went to Timothy's, and in his brother's front
drawing-room--his legs twisted, his long white whiskers framing his
clean-shaven mouth--would sit watching the family pot simmer, the cream
rising to the top; and he would go away sheltered, refreshed, comforted,
with an indefinable sense of comfort.
Beneath the adamant of his self-preserving instinct there was much real
softness in James; a visit to Timothy's was like an hour spent in the
lap of a mother; and the deep craving he himself had for the protection
of the family wing reacted in turn on his feelings towards his own
children; it was a nightmare to him to think of them exposed to the
treatment of the world, in money, health, or reputation. When his old
friend John Street's son volunteered for special service, he shook his
head querulously, and wondered what John Street was about to allow it;
and when young Street was assagaied, he took it so much to heart that he
made a point of calling everywhere with the special object of saying: He
knew how it would be--he'd no patience with them!
When his son-in-law Dartie had that financial crisis, due to speculation
in Oil Shares, James made himself ill worrying over it; the knell of all
prosperity seemed to have sounded. It took him three months and a visit
to Baden-Baden to get better; there was something terrible in the idea
that but for his, James's, money, Dartie's name might have appeared in
the Bankruptcy List.
Composed of a physiological mixture so sound that if he had an earache
he thought he was dying, he regarded the occasional ailments of his
wife and children as in the nature of personal grievances, special
interventions of Providence for the purpose of destroying his peace of
mind; but he did not believe at all in the ailments of people outside
his own immediate family, affirming them in every case to be due to
neglected liver.
His universal comment was: "What can they expect? I have it myself, if
I'm not careful!"
When he went to Soames's that evening he felt that life was hard on him:
There was Emily with a bad toe, and Rachel gadding about in the country;
he got no sympathy from anybody; and Ann, she was ill--he did not
believe she would last through the summer; he had called there three
times now without her being able to see him! And this idea of Soames's,
building a house, that would have to be looked into. As to the trouble
with Irene, he didn't know what was to come of that--anything might come
of it!