The Board Meeting

Theron

The boardroom of Wexcombe Marine stood at the top of a flight of iron stairs above the old mold loft, and it had been designed, in 1946, by a man who believed that nothing important should be decided without a view of a boat.

He had always loved it. It was a long, low, raftered room with a tide-stained plank floor, a table of black-walnut slabs that had been the keel timbers of a schooner, and a wall of salt-fogged windows facing the yard. Through them, on that last Thursday of April, under a washed and glittering sky, you could see the whole of it: the slipways running down to the bay, the cranes standing along the quay like patient herons, the long gray shed with its cedar scaffolds, and in the nearest cradle, ribbed and pale as the skeleton of a whale, the hull that would be, by September, a thirty-two-foot cutter named, on the drawings, only Hull 231. Nobody had yet had the heart to give her a name.

On a pedestal at the end of the table stood a model of the Kittiwake.

She was three feet long, planked in basswood, with brass fittings and a sail of real linen. His grandfather had commissioned her in 1961. Kit had restored her at fifteen. Someone, at some point in the last six months, had moved her from the sideboard to the head of the table, where she sat like a guest of honor, her little mast catching the light, and he had never learned who. He suspected Miss Pettibone.

"Mr. Wexcombe," said Miss Pettibone. "You're early."

"I'm told it's a character defect."

"It's a virtue, sir. You're the only director who is." She was the secretary of the board, a tiny dry woman of seventy with a bun like a doorknob and a cardigan the color of oatmeal, who had taken the minutes of every meeting since 1974 and was said to have outlasted four chairmen, two hurricanes, and an attempted coup. She was setting out agendas with the precision of a croupier. In the center of the table sat a cut-glass bowl of Werther's Originals. "The Admiral is not yet here, but his hearing aid has been seen in the car park. Dr. Cho is on the bridge. Your uncle is in the library with Mr. Kessler. They arrived at nine."

"Ah."

"They have asked for coffee. I told them it was in the pot." She tore a sheet from the pad. "I did not tell them it was last week's pot."

He looked at her.

"I have been here forty-six years, sir," said Miss Pettibone, gazing at the agenda. "I do not take sides. But I will tell you that I put your mother's chair at the head of the east side, where she can see the Kittiwake, and I've put your uncle in the one with the short leg."

"Miss Pettibone."

"It is a very small thing, sir. Nobody will notice." She squared the pad. "It rocks."

…

They filed in at ten.

It was an odd little parliament. At the far end sat Admiral Aubrey Bixby, ret., eighty-four, the senior independent director: a vast creased pink man in a blue blazer with a USN tie-pin and a hearing aid the size of a walnut, who had commanded a destroyer squadron in the Gulf of Tonkin and now spent most meetings in a state of benign suspended animation, from which he occasionally emerged to say, at full volume, "WHAT'S THE CASH POSITION?" Beside him, small, sharp and elegant, in a charcoal suit with a pearl-gray scarf, sat Dr. Marian Cho, formerly a managing director at a Boston bank, now chair of the audit committee and the only person at the table of whom Theron was, in a cheerful, uncomplicated way, afraid.

Across from them, on the long side, sat Hale.

He had taken the chair with the short leg. He had not noticed. He sat in it with his long legs crossed and his hands folded on his knee, silver-haired, tanned, sapphire-eyed, in a suit of dark-blue worsted and a tie the exact shade of his eyes, and he glanced up as Theron entered and smiled. It was a warm smile. It was a smile of unforced affection, the smile of a man welcoming his favorite nephew to a family lunch. Beside him, with a briefcase on his lap, Albert Kessler blinked through his rimless glasses like a small bald owl.

And at the head of the east side, in navy wool with the pearls at her throat, with her silver hair in its exact coil and her back like a poker, sat his mother.

She had said nothing about coming. She had telephoned on Tuesday night to say she would "attend the meeting, as is my right as a director," and had rung off before he could reply. He had not seen her since the hospital. She did not look at him. She looked at the Kittiwake.

He sat at the head of the table, under the clock, and called it to order.

"The ninth regular meeting of the Board of Directors of Wexcombe Marine Incorporated," said Miss Pettibone, in the voice of a woman reading a sentence of death. "Present: Mr. T. C. Wexcombe, Chairman and Chief Executive; Mr. H. R. Wexcombe, Vice-Chairman; Mrs. C. A. Wexcombe; Admiral A. J. Bixby; Dr. M. S. Cho. Also present, Mr. A. Pryor, as counsel to the company; Mr. A. Kessler, as counsel to Mr. H. R. Wexcombe, by leave of the chair." She turned a page. "Apologies from Mr. Dunmore. Quorum is declared."

"WHAT'S THE CASH POSITION?" said the Admiral.

"That's item six, sir," said Miss Pettibone.

"WHAT?"

"ITEM SIX."

"OH. RIGHT." The Admiral subsided. He took a Werther's from the bowl and unwrapped it with great deliberation, and the crackle of the cellophane filled the room like distant gunfire.

Theron looked at the agenda.

It had seven items. Three were routine. One concerned the pension fund, one the insurance renewal on the cranes, one the matter of the Bristol drydock lease. The fourth, in Miss Pettibone's precise typewriter, read:

4. Resolution proposed by the Vice-Chairman: that the Board establish an Independent Voting Trust for the Class B shares formerly held by Christopher C. Wexcombe, deceased, with Newport Trust Company and Mr. H. R. Wexcombe as co-trustees.

The fifth read:

5. Resolution proposed by the Vice-Chairman: that the Board request the resignation of the Chief Executive Officer, for cause.

He read it twice. He folded the paper, and laid it on the table, and rested his hands on the walnut, which was cool and smooth and had been a keel.

…

"I'll be brief," said Hale.

He rose. He did it slowly, with the grace that he brought to everything, buttoning his jacket, and stood at the foot of the table with one hand resting lightly on the head of the Kittiwake as though she were a favorite dog. His voice, when it came, was the voice Theron had known all his life: deep, warm, effortlessly reasonable, a voice made for toasts and eulogies and the sale of difficult things to nervous people.

"My friends. I want to begin by saying how much I loathe being here."

A small pause.

"I do. I want that clear. I have been a director of this company for thirty-four years. I sat at this table when my brother Gerard was chairman and I sat at it when he was dying and I sat at it, God help me, the week we buried my nephew. I love this family. I love this yard. I would no more harm either than I would my own hand." He turned slightly. "That is why what I am about to say has cost me a great deal of sleep."

"Come to the point," said Dr. Cho.

"I shall, Marian. Gently. You know me." He smiled at her. "On the fifth of April, my nephew, the Chief Executive, issued a statement to the press in which he accepted, I quote, 'full responsibility for each of the actions described in the petition.' Those actions include the payment of forty thousand dollars to an employee of a private clinic in exchange for confidential information. The surveillance of a private citizen. The purchase, through a concealed vehicle, of a building. And the deliberate concealment from that citizen, for eighty-two days, of a clause in the will of my late brother which, if exercised, would confer upon her the controlling vote in this company."

Admiral Bixby had stopped chewing.

"I do not say he did it from malice," said Hale. "I am quite sure he did not. I say only that he did it. And I say that a man who has done it, who has confessed to doing it, in his own words, cannot be the chief executive of a company with a thousand employees and a bank covenant. It is a question of governance. It has nothing to do with affection."

"Did he say 'confessed'?" asked the Admiral. "I thought it was a statement."

"It was both, Aubrey."

"Hm." The Admiral looked at Theron. "That so, lad?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why'd you do it?"

The room went entirely still.

It had been, Theron saw, the first plain question that had been asked in that room in a month. It was asked by a deaf old sailor with a candy in his cheek and a voice like a foghorn, and it dropped into the center of the walnut table like a stone into a well.

"Because I was afraid," said Theron.

"Of what?"

"Of losing something. I'm still not entirely sure what. I thought it was the child. I thought it was the votes. I think it was the people." He kept his eyes on the old man's face. "I think I did not know how to be near someone I loved without arranging her."

The Admiral nodded slowly.

"My wife used to say that," he said. "About me. For fifty-one years. 'Aubrey, you don't love, you deploy.'"

"Aubrey," said Hale gently.

"What?"

"The resolution."

"OH. YES. CARRY ON." The Admiral subsided, moved a sweet from one cheek to the other, and closed his eyes.

…

"I'll deal with the trust first," said Hale. "It's the more urgent matter."

He walked the length of the room as he spoke. He moved easily, with a faint swagger, like a man pacing a deck he knew. "The Class B stock formerly held by my nephew Christopher, twenty-eight percent of the voting equity, will, under Article Four of my brother's will, pass to any child of Kit's, however conceived, born within two years of his death. That child will be a minor. The shares will be held in trust to the age of twenty-five. And the voting power of those shares, the controlling power in this company, will be exercised during the child's minority by the child's guardian, in what the will describes as 'sole and unfettered discretion.'"

He paused.

"The guardian will be the child's mother. Ms. Odessa Rourke. A woman of thirty. An insurance adjuster. A woman of good character, by every account, and extraordinary fortitude. A woman who is, at this moment, thirty-three weeks pregnant, on bed rest, under treatment for a serious obstetrical condition, and the subject of a hostile news cycle." He turned. "Whom my nephew, by his own admission, has pursued for five months with a checkbook and a surveillance operation."

"Objection," said Ansel, mildly. "Argument."

"Withdrawn. The point is this." Hale's voice dropped. "She is a young woman, alone, under stress, and she is about to be handed the largest block of votes in a maritime company that employs a thousand people. She has no training. She has no advisers. She has, to put it bluntly, no protection. And the man who stands nearest her is the man who has already shown that he will go to extraordinary lengths to influence her."

"Is that a fact or a feeling?" said Dr. Cho.

"It's both, Marian."

"I prefer facts."

"Then here is one. The company's bank covenant was extended to the thirtieth of June. If a controlling vote is exercised capriciously by a person with no experience, in a company in that state, the consequences could be catastrophic." Hale spread his hands. "I propose that a voting trust, a neutral, institutional, professional trust, administered by Newport Trust Company and by myself, as an independent family elder, with no stake in the outcome, hold the Article Four shares in escrow until the child is eighteen. The mother retains the right to counsel. She retains a generous allowance. She is free of the burden. And the company is protected."

He sat down.

He did it with perfect ease, crossing his legs, and he looked down the table at his nephew with such a gentle, grave, regretful face that Theron had the strangest sensation: that of looking at a very good painting of a man who had once been his uncle.

"Is there a seconder?" said Miss Pettibone.

"I'll second," said Kessler, from the sideline.

"You're not a director, Mr. Kessler."

"I— no. Of course."

"There being no seconder," said Miss Pettibone, "the resolution lapses."

"A seconder is required for the motion, Miss Pettibone," said Hale smoothly. "Not for the discussion. I'd ask the chair to allow debate."

"The chair allows debate."

It was the first thing Theron had said in twenty minutes. He heard the sound of it, flat and level, in the low-raftered room, and saw his uncle's eyebrow lift a millimeter.

"May I speak?" he said.

"Of course," said Hale. "It's your meeting."

…

He had not prepared.

That was the thing he would remember. He had spent five nights, in the loft, on the cot, with a pad of paper and a pencil, writing and crossing out. He'd had a speech of nineteen paragraphs, a clear, sequential, thoroughly defensible speech, which began with the history of the company and ended with the principle of fiduciary duty. He had gone over it with Ansel. Ansel had said, "It's excellent." He had gone over it with Dell. Dell had said, "It's very long, sir."

He stood up, and it was gone.

It was gone entirely. He stood at the head of the walnut table, with his hands at his sides, and looked down the length of it: at the Admiral, with his eyes closed; at Dr. Cho, with her pen poised; at Miss Pettibone, with her little oatmeal shoulders squared; at his uncle's handsome, patient, sapphire-eyed face; and at his mother, who had turned from the Kittiwake at last and was looking at him with her colorless clear gaze.

Say it plainly, said Mrs. Aldrich, in his head, in the voice of a woman handing him a folded coat. Say it first.

"My uncle is right," he said.

Hale's eyebrow rose another millimeter.

"He is right about me. I did those things. I did all of them. I will not defend them. I confessed because they were true, and I would confess again." He drew a breath. "He is right that a woman in her situation ought not to be left alone with a thing of this size. He is right that a vote of twenty-eight percent in the hands of an inexperienced person is, in the abstract, a danger to the company."

"Then you support the resolution?"

"No."

A small silence.

"I think," said Theron, "that my uncle has described the problem very accurately, and then proposed to solve it by making it larger."

Hale smiled. "I'm sure I don't follow."

"You propose a trust of which you are co-trustee. That is a trust of which the sole independent party is a bank, and the sole interested party is the man who proposed it." Theron kept his voice level. "You say it would protect the mother from undue influence. But you propose to appoint, as her protector, the one person in this room who holds twenty-two percent of the voting stock himself. If she is not to vote, you are. If she does not vote, your block becomes the largest. Her twenty-eight percent, in your trust, is not neutralized. It is added."

"That is a slander."

"It is arithmetic." Theron turned slightly. "Dr. Cho, would you check my sum?"

Dr. Cho had already done so. She had written four numbers on her pad, drawn a line beneath them, and was regarding the total with an expression of elegant, murderous calm.

"Twenty-two plus twenty-eight," she said. "Fifty."

"And with Mr. Kessler's other client, the Newport Trust?"

"The Newport Trust holds three percent as custodian for the Wexcombe Foundation. Controlled, I believe, by the vice-chairman's family office." She did not look up. "Fifty-three."

"I vote with the trust," said Hale pleasantly. "That is not a conflict. It is a conflation. I would exercise the vote as a fiduciary, on the child's behalf, in the child's interest."

"In what interest would you vote it, Uncle? On the Halvorsen sale?"

"In the interest of the child."

"Who would receive, I think, about thirty percent less than book value?"

"There are market realities."

"There are," said Theron. "I've spent three weeks learning them." He took a sheet of paper from the table, the first of the nineteen paragraphs, and, without looking at it, folded it in half and put it in his pocket. "I wish to propose a different resolution."

"Which?"

"That the Board decline to recognize any voting trust over the Article Four shares except one whose trustees are appointed by the guardian of the child and by the child's paternal grandmother, jointly." He heard the words fall into the room, one by one, like coins. "And that I, as co-trustee under my late father's instrument, resign my trusteeship, effective today, to make way for whatever persons they choose."

There was a pause.

It was a long one. It stretched. It had texture. Somewhere at the far end of the long room a gull cried on a piling, and the clock under which he stood ticked on, and Miss Pettibone's pen, which had been moving, stopped.

"You would resign," said Hale.

"Yes."

"As trustee."

"Yes."

"Of the largest block of stock in the company."

"I would resign from it. I would take no share of it. I would not advise the guardian, unless she asked. I would not instruct the trustees. I would not appear at their meetings. I would not seek to influence them, directly or by any other means." He looked at his mother. She was looking at him very hard. "I am the only person in this family who has attempted to hold that vote. I think I should be the first to put it down."

"That is absurd."

"Is it?"

"You are handing the controlling interest in a thousand-man shipyard to a stranger."

"I am handing it to the child's mother," said Theron, "and the child's grandmother. One of whom I have known for thirty-six years, and one for five months. And I would trust either with my life."

"Theron—"

"I wish to say, for the record," he went on, and found that his voice had gone very quiet and very clear, "that I think my uncle's real objection is not to the mother. It is to the fact that she cannot be managed. I have tried. I have a long and distinguished record of failure. She cannot be bought, or arranged, or placated. She makes terms, in writing, on napkins, and they are the fairest I have ever read." A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. "I think that if you want to protect a company, you should put its fate in the hands of the one person in Rhode Island that nobody can lean on."

The Admiral's eyes had opened.

"Hm," he said. "What's her name again?"

"Rourke, sir. Odessa Rourke."

"Rourke." The old man rolled a Werther's against his teeth. "Tough name."

"She's tough."

"Insurance, you said."

"Marine and property. Senior adjuster."

"HA." The Admiral slapped the walnut with a hand like a ham. "AN ADJUSTER! GOD ALMIGHTY. I LOST A DESTROYER IN 'SIXTY-EIGHT, YOU KNOW. THE ADJUSTER GOT ME FOR EVERYTHING. HE WAS A SMALL MAN WITH A CLIPBOARD. I'D HAVE TRUSTED HIM WITH MY MOTHER." He turned to Dr. Cho. "WHERE DO I SIGN?"

"Aubrey," said Hale, wincing, "we have not yet voted."

"THEN LET'S VOTE."

"There is no seconder to the lad's resolution."

"I'll second it," said a thin clear voice from the east side.

…

Constance had not risen.

She sat at the head of the east side with her gloved hands folded on the walnut, and her back like a ruler, and she had not raised her voice. But the room turned toward her as if on a pivot, all at once, five faces in the shadowed light, and Miss Pettibone's pen scratched on the pad.

"Mrs. Wexcombe," said Hale, with perfect courtesy, "you do not have to do this."

"I am aware, Hale."

"If you would like a moment—"

"I have had a moment. I have had, in fact, the better part of five months." She did not look at him. She looked at her son. "I second the resolution. And I should like to add, for the record, an amendment."

"An amendment?" said Dr. Cho.

"That the trustees appointed under the resolution shall owe a duty to the child, and not to any member of the family. That they shall be nominated within sixty days of his birth. That the guardian shall have an unfettered right of veto, and that no trustee shall be appointed to whom the guardian objects." She paused, and her voice dropped, and for the first time he heard something in it that was not steel. "And that I shall be, if the guardian will have me, one of the two."

Hale said nothing.

He had gone quite still, in the chair with the short leg. His smile was in place. It had not moved. But his eyes had gone flat and sapphire-hard, and his hand, which had been resting on his knee, had closed upon it.

"Constance," he said softly.

"Yes, Hale?"

"You are not thinking."

"I am thinking very clearly. I have not thought so clearly in years." She turned at last and met his eyes. "You are quite right that the girl is young. She is. And she is alone. And I have been a widow for ten years, and a mother for thirty-six, and I find, rather to my surprise, that I am a good deal better at the first than I was told." She drew a breath. "I will be her trustee, if she asks me. And I will vote the stock exactly as she says. And I shall not, at any time, in any circumstances, be instructed by you."

"After all I've done for this family."

"Yes," said Constance. "That is rather the question."

…

They voted at ten past eleven.

Miss Pettibone called the roll in her dry small voice. The Admiral said, "AYE, AND TELL THE GIRL I SAID SO." Dr. Cho said, "Aye," and then, after a pause, "with pleasure." Constance said "Aye" in the tone of a woman laying down a card. Theron did not vote. He was the chair; he had spoken; he sat with his hands flat on the table and watched his uncle.

Hale voted against.

"Nay," he said, quietly, to the room. "I record my objection."

"Noted," said Miss Pettibone. "The resolution carries, four to one."

"Item five," said Hale.

"Item five—?"

"The resignation of the Chief Executive. I withdraw nothing."

"Of course." Miss Pettibone consulted her pad. "Is there a seconder?"

There was a long moment in which no one spoke.

Theron looked at his uncle. His uncle looked back, tranquil, cool, patient, with a faint kind smile, the smile of a man who has set a trap and is prepared to wait.

"I'll move that item five be deferred," said Dr. Cho.

"On what grounds?"

"On the grounds that I received a letter yesterday." She took a long cream envelope from her bag, with a blue lettered crest, and set it on the table. "From the Insurance Division of the State of Rhode Island. Copied to myself, to Admiral Bixby, and to Mr. Dunmore at Narragansett Mutual. The letter concerns a matter relating to a marine claim on the vessel Marguerite." She did not look at Hale. "It informs the independent directors that a protected disclosure has been filed with the Division, alleging the alteration of certain maintenance records in support of that claim. It states that the Division has opened a preliminary inquiry. It states that the Division is obliged to notify the board of the insured."

The room was silent.

"It does not name any person," said Dr. Cho. "It does state that the alleged alteration is believed to have been made by an individual with executive access to the company's records."

"Marian," said Hale.

"Yes."

"May I see it?"

"It's addressed to the independent directors."

"I am a director."

"You are not independent." She slid the letter two inches along the walnut, toward the Admiral, who picked it up, held it at arm's length, and read it in a loud and uncomprehending mutter. "I move that this board form a special committee of the independent directors to review the matter, with full access to the company's books. That the committee report within thirty days. And that, pending its report, no resolution touching the standing of any officer be taken."

"Second," said the Admiral. "WHAT AM I SECONDING?"

"The committee, Aubrey."

"OH. YES. GOOD."

Hale looked at the letter in the Admiral's hand.

He looked at it for a long moment, with that tranquil, unreadable face. He looked at the cream paper, the blue crest, the single sentence at the bottom. And Theron, watching from the head of the table, saw something happen in his uncle's face that he had never seen in thirty-six years: a flicker. A faint dimming. A stillness that was not repose but its absence, as if a lamp in a far room had been turned down.

And then the smile came back.

It came back slowly, and warmly, and a little sadly, and he turned in his chair and spread his hands in a gesture of gracious capitulation.

"Of course," he said. "I welcome it. A full review is the best thing for everyone. I shall recuse myself from any discussion of the matter. I shall instruct the staff to give the committee every assistance." He inclined his head to Dr. Cho. "I am only sorry that it should have come to this. It is a terrible thing, when a family cannot trust its own."

"The motion carries," said Miss Pettibone, writing.

"Good," said Hale. "Then I think the meeting may adjourn."

He stood.

He did it with perfect composure, buttoning his jacket, collecting his hat, nodding to the Admiral. He passed Constance's chair without a glance. He paused at the foot of the table by the pedestal, and touched, with one long forefinger, the mast of the model Kittiwake, a delicate, almost tender gesture, and the little brass fitting shivered.

"Theron," he said.

"Uncle."

"A word, if you would. On the stairs."

…

The iron stairs rang under their feet.

They went down in silence, side by side, past the pattern shop, past the long gray shed with its scent of cedar and pitch. It was cool in the stairwell. Daylight fell in slats through the louvers and lay across the treads. Somewhere a hammer was tapping.

At the bottom, in the shadow beside the door, Hale stopped.

"That was very well done," he said.

"Thank you."

"I mean it. It was the best speech I have heard you give. It was spontaneous. It was sincere." He took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his hands, finger by finger. "Your father would have been appalled. And Kit would have been delighted. I find that I am a little of both."

"I did not do it to impress you."

"I know. That is why it was good." Hale folded the handkerchief. "You are aware, I suppose, that you have just made yourself an enemy."

"I rather thought I already was."

"No. Until today, you were a nephew who had behaved badly. I could forgive that. I could manage that." He put the handkerchief away. "Today you have thrown in your lot with a woman who is going to be examined by a court in July. You have given away the only card you had. You have invited a stranger into the family's affairs. And you have, I regret to say, made it impossible for me to protect you."

"From what?"

"From what comes next."

He spoke it gently. It was a very gentle voice. It made the hair rise on Theron's neck.

"Uncle," said Theron. "I will ask you a question. You need not answer it."

"Ask."

"Did you change the date?"

For an instant, in the dim stairwell, with the slats of light lying across his face, Hale did not move. He stood with his hat in one hand and his gloves in the other, as tall as Theron, as handsome, as composed, and looked down at his nephew with a gaze so calm and so complete that it seemed to hold no thought at all.

"I think," he said at last, "that you ought to ask your mother."

"What?"

"I think you ought to ask her what she knew. About Article Four. And about the date." He smiled. "She will tell you. Not today. She is not ready. But she will tell you. And when she does, Theron, I hope you will remember that it was I who suggested it."

He put on his hat.

"Goodbye, my dear boy," said Hale. "Do give my love to the girl."

And he went out through the door, into the bright afternoon, and across the quay in the sun, with the cranes standing round him like herons and the white gulls wheeling, a tall silver-haired figure walking at an unhurried pace toward a cream-colored sedan with a gray-capped driver, who was holding the door.

Theron stood in the doorway and watched him go.

He was aware of a sensation in his chest that he could not at first identify. It was cold, and light, and enormous, and it had a name. He had known it as a boy, in the winter of the hurricane, when his father had locked the study door and he had stood in the hall for three hours with his ear against the wood.

It was the sensation of a floor giving way.

The date.

What did she know about the date?

"Theron."

He turned.

His mother stood on the iron stairs behind him, one gloved hand on the rail. She had come down quietly. She had been, he realized, standing there for some time, in the slatted light, listening. She was very pale. The pearls at her throat rose and fell with her breath. But her eyes, in the dimness, were clear, and dry, and resolved, like the eyes of someone who has finally reached the end of a long road and can see the door.

"I should like to go to Providence," said Constance.

"Now?"

"Today." She descended the last two steps and stood before him. "I should like to see Miss Rourke. I should like to tell her what I know. And I should like," her voice cracked, very slightly, and steadied, "to do it before I lose my nerve."

"Mother—"

"You are not to come."

"I wasn't going to."

"Good." She drew on her other glove. "I'll take Dell. I shall not be long. I shall be, I think, a good deal longer than I intend."

She put a hand to his cheek.

It was cool, dry, light, and for a moment it simply lay there, a small gloved palm against the rough of his jaw. He thought: she is going to say something. She did not. She searched his face for what seemed a long time, with her pale clear eyes, and found, apparently, what she was looking for.

"You stood up," she said.

"Yes."

"Your father never did."

"I know."

"I am proud of you," said Constance. "I have not said it often. I shall try to say it more." She took her hand away. "Now go and tell Mr. Pryor to ring the girl's lawyer. I should like it done properly. With a table."