The letter, closely, beautifully written, lay before him.  It was a fine document, clear, masterly, detailed, nothing slurred, nothing concealed, nothing omitted; a complete review of the company’s position; it ended with the words:  “Your humble servant, Richard Pippin.”

Scorrier took possession of it.  He dimly understood that with those last words a wire had snapped.  The border-line had been overpassed; the point reached where that sense of proportion, which alone makes life possible, is lost.  He was certain that at the moment of his death Pippin could have discussed bimetallism, or any intellectual problem, except the one problem of his own heart; that, for some mysterious reason, had been too much for him.  His death had been the work of a moment of supreme revolt—­a single instant of madness on a single subject!  He found on the blotting-paper, scrawled across the impress of the signature, “Can’t stand it!” The completion of that letter had been to him a struggle ungraspable by Scorrier.  Slavery?  Defeat?  A violation of Nature?  The death of justice?  It were better not to think of it!  Pippin could have told—­but he would never speak again.  Nature, at whom, unaided, he had dealt so many blows, had taken her revenge...!

In the night Scorrier stole down, and, with an ashamed face, cut off a lock of the fine grey hair.  ‘His daughter might like it!’ he thought....

He waited till Pippin was buried, then, with the letter in his pocket, started for England.

He arrived at Liverpool on a Thursday morning, and travelling to town, drove straight to the office of the company.  The Board were sitting.  Pippin’s successor was already being interviewed.  He passed out as Scorrier came in, a middle-aged man with a large, red beard, and a foxy, compromising face.  He also was a Cornishman.  Scorrier wished him luck with a very heavy heart.

As an unsentimental man, who had a proper horror of emotion, whose living depended on his good sense, to look back on that interview with the Board was painful.  It had excited in him a rage of which he was now heartily ashamed.  Old Jolyon Forsyte, the chairman, was not there for once, guessing perhaps that the Board’s view of this death would be too small for him; and little Mr. Booker sat in his place.  Every one had risen, shaken hands with Scorrier, and expressed themselves indebted for his coming.  Scorrier placed Pippin’s letter on the table, and gravely the secretary read out to his Board the last words of their superintendent.  When he had finished, a director said, “That’s not the letter of a madman!” Another answered:  “Mad as a hatter; nobody but a madman would have thrown up such a post.”  Scorrier suddenly withdrew.  He heard Hemmings calling after him.  “Aren’t you well, Mr. Scorrier? aren’t you well, sir?”

He shouted back:  “Quite sane, I thank you....”

The Naples “express” rolled round the outskirts of the town.  Vesuvius shone in the sun, uncrowned by smoke.  But even as Scorrier looked, a white puff went soaring up.  It was the footnote to his memories.