“He might as well be dead at once--why did you let him do it?” he cried. “If I had ever thought he could have been such a fool, I should have taken care to be on the spot myself,” said Sir John.
He had no curiosity about his son, where he was going--what he was doing. He might as well have been dead. To be sure when he himself was dead, Arthur must come back and reign in his state; but then Sir John felt no necessity within himself that he should ever die. It was so far off, that it was unnecessary to calculate upon that remote contingency, and in the meantime it was his son who had departed out of this life, left it altogether without possibility of return. He had spent these last few days very mournfully in the solitude of his vast house. One or two intimate friends had come to see him, but he had not cared to receive their visits. The Rector had been there for a long time that very day preaching strange doctrines: that a thing being done could not be undone, and that it would be wise now to make the best of everything that happened. The Rector was a Curtis too, Sir John’s own nephew, and though he was shocked by this domestic incident, he was aware that it would be best not to allow it to come to anything scandalous. He had ventured to suggest that, perhaps, things might turn out better than they appeared. “Better!” said Sir John, “he might as well have been dead.” He had been able to think of nothing else since he had heard of it; and his thoughts of Arthur were all of the kind which come into the minds of those who have lost their children. All the old forgotten nursery stories came back to him. What a boy he was--so active, so strong, such a good shot for his years, ready to ride at any thing, and with an opinion of his own on politics and all that. While he sat in his library pretending to read and write (and what is it that elderly gentlemen find to do when they are shut up for day after day, pretending to read and write in their libraries?) these fancies came surging up about him exactly as if Arthur had been dead. He would put down his paper suddenly to think out a little joke of his when he was five, or a school-boy prank at fifteen. What promise, what ability, a hundred times cleverer than ever I was! and all to end in this. The dull surprise in his mind was inexhaustible; how could he be such a fool--how could he commit moral suicide in this way? And why had not his mother put a stop to it? This dull misery which he was suffering did not affect Sir John’s ordinary habits; he went on, to all outward appearance, just as usual. He fulfilled every duty he had been accustomed to; ate at the usual times, took all the usual courses at dinner, and presented an imperturbable countenance to the butler and the footman who waited upon him; but his heart was heavy with the thought of his son who was lost. Though he was so glad to have his wife and daughter back again, he met them almost with reproaches.