Volume Three--Chapter Two.The Conclave.The next morning Edwin overslept himself. He seldom rose easily from his bed, and his first passage down Trafalgar Road to business was notoriously hurried; the whole thoroughfare was acquainted with its special character. Often his father arrived at the shop before him, but Edwin’s conscience would say that of course if Darius went down early for his own passion and pleasure, that was Darius’s affair. Edwin’s official time for beginning work was half-past eight. And at half-past eight, on this morning, he was barely out of the bath. His lateness, however, did not disturb him; there was an excuse for it. He hoped that his father would be in bed, and decided that he must go and see, and, if the old man was still sufficiently pliant, advise him to stay where he was until he had had some food.But, looking out of the window over a half-buttoned collar, he saw his father dressed and in the garden. Darius had resumed the suit of broadcloth, for some strange reason, and was dragging his feet with painful, heavy slowness along the gravel at the south end of the garden. He carried in his left hand the “Signal,” crumpled. A cloth cap, surmounting the ceremonious suit, gave to his head a ridiculous appearance. He was gazing at the earth with an expression of absorbed and acute melancholy. When he reached the end of the path, he looked round, at a loss, then turned, as if on an inefficient pivot, and set himself in motion again. Edwin was troubled by this singular episode. And yet his reason argued with his instinct to the effect that he ought not to be troubled. Evidently the sturdy Darius was not ill. Nothing serious could be the matter. He had been harrowed and fatigued by the funeral; no more. In another day, doubtless, he would be again the harsh employer astoundingly concentrated in affairs and impervious to the emotional appeal of aught else. Nevertheless he made a strange sight, parading his excessive sadness there in the garden.A knock at Edwin’s door! He was startled. “Hold on!” he cried, went to the door, and cautiously opened it. Maggie was on the mat.“Here’s Auntie Clara!” she said in a whisper, perturbed. “She’s come about father. Shall you be long?”“About father? What about father?”“It seems she saw him last night. He called there. And she was anxious.”“Oh! I see!” Edwin affected to be relieved. Maggie nodded, also affecting, somewhat eagerly, to be relieved. But neither of them was relieved. Auntie Clara calling at half-past eight! Auntie Clara neglecting that which she never neglected—the unalterable and divinely appointed rites for the daily cleansing and ordering of her abode!“I shall be down in ten secs,” said he. “Father’s in the garden,” he added, almost kindly. “Seems all right.”“Yes,” said Maggie, with cheerfulness, and went. He closed the door.Two.Mrs Hamps was in the drawing-room. She had gone into the drawing-room because it was more secret, better suited to conversation of an exquisite privacy than the dining-room—a public resort at that hour. Edwin perceived at once that she was savouring intensely the strangeness of the occasion, inflating its import and its importance to the largest possible.“Good morning, dear,” she greeted him in a low and significant tone. “I felt I must come up at once. I couldn’t fancy any breakfast till I’d been up, so I put on my bonnet and mantle and just came. It’s no use fighting against what you feel you must do.”“But—”“Hasn’t Maggie told you? Your father called to see me last night just after I’d gone upstairs. In fact I’d begun to get ready for bed. I heard the knocking and I came down and lit the gas in the lobby. ‘Who’s there?’ I said. There wasn’t any answer, but I made sure I heard some one crying. And when I opened the door, there was your father. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Happen you’ve gone to bed, Clara?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Come in, do!’ But he wouldn’t. And he looked so queer. I never saw him look like that before. He’s such a strong self-controlled man. I knew he’d been to poor Mr Shushions’s funeral. ‘I suppose you’ve been to the funeral, Darius,’ I said. And as soon as I said that he burst out crying, and half tumbled down the steps, and off he went! I couldn’t go after him, as I was. I didn’t knowwhatto do. If anything happened to your father, I don’t knowwhatI should do.”“What time was that?” Edwin asked, wondering what on earth she meant—“if anything happened to your father!”“Half-past ten or hardly. What time did he come home? Very, very late, wasn’t it?”“A little after twelve,” he said carelessly. He was sorry that he had inquired as to the hour of the visit to his aunt. Obviously she was ready to build vast and terrible conjectures upon the mysterious interval between half-past ten and midnight.“You’ve cut yourself, my dear,” she said, indicating with her gloved hand Edwin’s chin. “And I’m not surprised. How upsetting it is for you! Of course Maggie’s the eldest, and we think a great deal of her, but you’re the son—the only son!”“I know,” he said, meaning that he knew he had cut himself, and he pressed his handkerchief to his chin. Within, he was blasphemously fuming. The sentimental accent with which she had finally murmured ‘the only son’ irritated him extremely. What in the name of God was she driving at? The fact was that, enjoying a domestic crisis with positive sensuality, she was trying to manufacture one! That was it! He knew her. There were times when he could share all Maggie’s hatred of Mrs Hamps, and this was one of those times. The infernal woman, with her shaking plumes and her odour of black kid, was enjoying herself! In the thousandth part of a second he invented horrible and grotesque punishments for her, as that all the clothes should suddenly fall off that prim, widowed, odious modesty. Yet, amid the multitude of his sensations—the smarting of his chin, the tingling of all his body after the bath, the fresh vivacity of the morning, the increased consciousness of his own ego, due to insufficient sleep, the queerness of being in the drawing-room at such an hour in conspiratorial talk, the vague disquiet caused at midnight, and now intensified despite his angry efforts to avoid the contagion of Mrs Hamps’s mood, and above all the thought of his father gloomily wandering in the garden—amid these confusing sensations, it was precisely an idea communicated to him by his annoying aunt, an obvious idea, an idea not worth uttering, that emerged clear and dramatic: he was the only son.“There’s no need to worry,” he said as firmly as he could “The funeral got on his nerves, that’s all. He certainly did seem a bit knocked about last night, and I shouldn’t have been surprised if he’d stayed in bed to-day. But you see he’s up and about.” Both of them glanced at the window, which gave on the garden.“Yes,” murmured Mrs Hamps, unconvinced. “But what about his crying? Maggie tells me he was—”“Oh!” Edwin interrupted her almost roughly. “That’s nothing. I’ve known him cry before.”“Have you?” She seemed taken aback.“Yes. Years ago. That’s nothing fresh.”“It’s true he’s very sensitive,” Mrs Hamps reflected. “That’s what we don’t realise, maybe, sometimes. Of course if you think he’s all right—”She approached the window, and, leaning over the tripod which held a flower-pot enveloped in pink paper, she drew the white curtain aside, and gazed forth in silence. Darius was still pacing up and down the short path at the extremity of the garden; his eyes were still on the ground, and his features expressive of mournful despair, and at the end of the path he still turned his body round with slow and tedious hesitations. Edwin also could see him through the window. They both watched him; it was as if they were spying on him.Maggie entered, and said, in an unusual flutter—“Here’s Clara and Albert!”Three.Clara and her husband came immediately into the drawing-room. The wife, dressed with a certain haste and carelessness, was carrying in her arms her third child, yet unweaned, and she expected a fourth in the early autumn. Clara had matured, she had grown stronger; and despite the asperity of her pretty, pale face there was a charm in the free gestures and the large body of the young and prolific mother. Albert Benbow wore the rough, clay-dusted attire of the small earthenware manufacturer who is away from the works for half an hour. Both of them were electrically charged with importance.Amid the general self-consciousness Maggie took the baby, and Clara and Mrs Hamps kissed each other tenderly, as though saying, “Affliction is upon us.” It was impossible, in the circumstances, to proceed to minute inquiry about the health of the children, but Mrs Hamps expressed all her solicitude in a look, a tone, a lingering of lip on lip. The years were drawing together Mrs Hamps and her namesake. Edwin was often astonished at the increasing resemblance of Clara to her aunt, with whom, thanks to the unconscious intermediacy of babies, she was even indeed quite intimate. The two would discuss with indefatigable gusto all the most minute physical details of motherhood and infancy: and Auntie Clara’s presents were worthy of her reputation.As soon as the kiss was accomplished—no other greeting of any kind occurred—Clara turned sharply to Edwin—“What’s this about father?”“Oh! He’s had a bit of a shock. He’s pretty much all right to-day.”“Because Albert’s just heard—” She looked at Albert.Edwin was thunderstruck. Was the tale of his father’s indisposition spread all over the Five Towns? He had thought that the arrival of Clara and her husband must be due to Auntie Hamps having called at their house on her way up to Bleakridge. But now he could see, even from his auntie’s affrighted demeanour alone, that the Benbows’ visit was an independent affair.“Are you sure he’s all right?” Albert questioned, in his superiorly sagacious manner, which mingled honest bullying with a little good-nature.“Because Albert just heard—” Clara put in again.The company then heard what Albert had just heard. At his works before breakfast an old hollow-ware-presser, who lived at Turnhill, had casually mentioned that his father-in-law, Mr Clayhanger, had been cutting a very peculiar figure on the previous evening at Turnhill. The hollow-ware-presser had seen nothing personally; he had only been told. He could not or would not particularise. Apparently he possessed in a high degree the local talent for rousing an apprehension by the offer of food, and then under ingenious pretexts refusing the food. At any rate, Albert had been startled, and had communicated his alarm to Clara. Clara had meant to come up a little later in the morning, but she wanted Albert to come with her, and Albert, being exceedingly busy, had only the breakfast half-hour of liberty. Hence they had set out instantly, although the baby required sustenance; Albert having suggested that Clara could feed the baby just as well at her father’s as at home.Before the Benbow story was quite finished it became entangled with the story of Mrs Hamps, and then with Edwin’s story. They were all speaking at once, except Maggie, who was trying to soothe the baby.Holding forth her arms, Clara, without ceasing to talk rapidly and anxiously to Mrs Hamps, without even regarding what she did, took the infant from her sister, held it with one hand, and with the other loosed her tight bodice, and boldly exposed to the greedy mouth the magnificent source of life. As the infant gurgled itself into silence, she glanced with a fleeting ecstatic smile at Maggie, who smiled back. It was strange how Maggie, now midway between thirty and forty, a tall, large-boned, plump, mature woman, efficient, kindly, and full of common sense—it was strange how she always failed to assert herself. She listened now, not seeking notice and assuredly not receiving it.Edwin felt again the implication, first rendered by his aunt, and now emphasised by Clara and Albert, that the responsibility of the situation was upon him, and that everybody would look to him to discharge it. He was expected to act, somehow, on his own initiative, and to do something.“But what is there to do?” he exclaimed, in answer to a question.“Well, hadn’t he better see a doctor?” Clara asked, as if saying ironically, “Hasn’t it occurred to you even yet that a doctor ought to be fetched?”Edwin protested with a movement of impatience—“What on earth for? He’s walking about all right.”They had all been surreptitiously watching Darius from behind the curtains.“Doesn’t seem to be much the matter with him now! That I must say!” agreed Albert, turning from the window.Edwin perceived that his brother-in-law was ready to execute one of those changes of front which lent variety to his positiveness, and he addressed himself particularly to Albert, with the persuasive tone and gesture of a man to another man in a company of women—“Of course there doesn’t! No doubt he was upset last night. But he’s getting over it.Youdon’t think there’s anything in it, do you, Maggie?”“I don’t,” said Maggie calmly.These two words had a great effect.“Of course if we’re going to listen to every tale that’s flying about a potbank,” said Edwin.“You’re right there, Teddy!” the brother-in-law heartily concurred. “But Clary thought we’d better—”“Certainly,” said Edwin pacifically, admitting the entire propriety of the visit.“Why’s he wearing his best clothes?” Clara demanded suddenly. And Mrs Hamps showed a sympathetic appreciation of the importance of the question.“Ask me another!” said Edwin. “But you can’t send for a doctor because a man’s wearing his best clothes.”Maggie smiled, scarce perceptibly. Albert gave a guffaw. Clara was slightly irritated.“Poor little dear!” murmured Mrs Hamps, caressing the baby. “Well, I must be going,” she sighed.“We shall see how he goes on,” said Edwin, in his rôle of responsible person.“Perhaps it will be as well if you say nothing about us calling,” whispered Mrs Hamps. “We’ll just go quietly away. You can give a hint to Mrs Nixon. Much better he shouldn’t know.”“Oh! much better!” said Clara.Edwin could not deny this. Yet he hated the chicane. He hated to observe on the face of the young woman and of the old their instinctive impulses towards chicane, and their pleasure in it. The whole double visit was subtly offensive to him. Why should they gather like this at the first hint that his father was not well? A natural affectionate anxiety... Yes, of course, that motive could not be denied. Nevertheless, he did not like the tones and the gestures and the whisperings and oblique glances of their gathering.Four.In the middle of a final miscellaneous conversation, Albert said—“We’ll better be off.”“Wait a moment,” said Clara, with a nod to indicate the still busy infant.Then the door opened, very slowly and cautiously, and as they all observed the movement of the door, they all fell into silence. Darius himself appeared. Unobserved, he had left the garden and come into the house. He stood in the doorway, motionless, astounded, acutely apprehensive, and with an expression of the most poignant sadness on his harsh, coarse, pimpled face. He still wore the ridiculous cap and held the newspaper. The broadcloth suit was soiled. His eye wandered among his family, and it said, terrorised, and yet feebly defiant, “What are they plotting against me? Why are they all here like this?”Mrs Hamps spoke first—“Well, father, we just popped in to see how you were after all that dreadful business yesterday. Of course I quite understand you didn’t want to come in last night. You weren’t equal to it.” The guilty crude sweetness of her cajoling voice grated excruciatingly on both Edwin and Maggie. It would not have deceived even a monarch.Darius screwed himself round, and silently went forth again.“Where are you going, father?” asked Clara.He stopped, but his features did not relax.“To the shop,” he muttered. His accents were of the most dreadful melancholy.Everybody was profoundly alarmed by his mere tone and look. This was not the old Darius. Edwin felt intensely the futility and the hollowness of all those reassurances which he had just been offering.“You haven’t had your breakfast, father,” said Maggie quietly.“Please, father! Please don’t go like that. You aren’t fit,” Clara entreated, and rushed towards him, the baby in her arms, and with one hand took his sleeve. Mrs Hamps followed, adding persuasions. Albert said bluffly, “Now, dad! Now, dad!”Edwin and Maggie were silent in the background.Darius gazed at Clara’s face, and then his glance fell, and fixed itself on her breast and on the head of the powerfully sucking infant, and then it rose to the plumes of Mrs Hamps. His expression of tragic sorrow did not alter in the slightest degree under the rain of sugared remonstrances and cajoleries that the two women directed upon him. And then, without any warning, he burst into terrible tears, and, staggering, leaned against the wall. He was half carried to the sofa, and sat there, ineffably humiliated. One after another looked reproachfully at Edwin, who had made light of his father’s condition. And Edwin was abashed and frightened.“You or I had better fetch th’ doctor,” Albert muttered.
The next morning Edwin overslept himself. He seldom rose easily from his bed, and his first passage down Trafalgar Road to business was notoriously hurried; the whole thoroughfare was acquainted with its special character. Often his father arrived at the shop before him, but Edwin’s conscience would say that of course if Darius went down early for his own passion and pleasure, that was Darius’s affair. Edwin’s official time for beginning work was half-past eight. And at half-past eight, on this morning, he was barely out of the bath. His lateness, however, did not disturb him; there was an excuse for it. He hoped that his father would be in bed, and decided that he must go and see, and, if the old man was still sufficiently pliant, advise him to stay where he was until he had had some food.
But, looking out of the window over a half-buttoned collar, he saw his father dressed and in the garden. Darius had resumed the suit of broadcloth, for some strange reason, and was dragging his feet with painful, heavy slowness along the gravel at the south end of the garden. He carried in his left hand the “Signal,” crumpled. A cloth cap, surmounting the ceremonious suit, gave to his head a ridiculous appearance. He was gazing at the earth with an expression of absorbed and acute melancholy. When he reached the end of the path, he looked round, at a loss, then turned, as if on an inefficient pivot, and set himself in motion again. Edwin was troubled by this singular episode. And yet his reason argued with his instinct to the effect that he ought not to be troubled. Evidently the sturdy Darius was not ill. Nothing serious could be the matter. He had been harrowed and fatigued by the funeral; no more. In another day, doubtless, he would be again the harsh employer astoundingly concentrated in affairs and impervious to the emotional appeal of aught else. Nevertheless he made a strange sight, parading his excessive sadness there in the garden.
A knock at Edwin’s door! He was startled. “Hold on!” he cried, went to the door, and cautiously opened it. Maggie was on the mat.
“Here’s Auntie Clara!” she said in a whisper, perturbed. “She’s come about father. Shall you be long?”
“About father? What about father?”
“It seems she saw him last night. He called there. And she was anxious.”
“Oh! I see!” Edwin affected to be relieved. Maggie nodded, also affecting, somewhat eagerly, to be relieved. But neither of them was relieved. Auntie Clara calling at half-past eight! Auntie Clara neglecting that which she never neglected—the unalterable and divinely appointed rites for the daily cleansing and ordering of her abode!
“I shall be down in ten secs,” said he. “Father’s in the garden,” he added, almost kindly. “Seems all right.”
“Yes,” said Maggie, with cheerfulness, and went. He closed the door.
Mrs Hamps was in the drawing-room. She had gone into the drawing-room because it was more secret, better suited to conversation of an exquisite privacy than the dining-room—a public resort at that hour. Edwin perceived at once that she was savouring intensely the strangeness of the occasion, inflating its import and its importance to the largest possible.
“Good morning, dear,” she greeted him in a low and significant tone. “I felt I must come up at once. I couldn’t fancy any breakfast till I’d been up, so I put on my bonnet and mantle and just came. It’s no use fighting against what you feel you must do.”
“But—”
“Hasn’t Maggie told you? Your father called to see me last night just after I’d gone upstairs. In fact I’d begun to get ready for bed. I heard the knocking and I came down and lit the gas in the lobby. ‘Who’s there?’ I said. There wasn’t any answer, but I made sure I heard some one crying. And when I opened the door, there was your father. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Happen you’ve gone to bed, Clara?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Come in, do!’ But he wouldn’t. And he looked so queer. I never saw him look like that before. He’s such a strong self-controlled man. I knew he’d been to poor Mr Shushions’s funeral. ‘I suppose you’ve been to the funeral, Darius,’ I said. And as soon as I said that he burst out crying, and half tumbled down the steps, and off he went! I couldn’t go after him, as I was. I didn’t knowwhatto do. If anything happened to your father, I don’t knowwhatI should do.”
“What time was that?” Edwin asked, wondering what on earth she meant—“if anything happened to your father!”
“Half-past ten or hardly. What time did he come home? Very, very late, wasn’t it?”
“A little after twelve,” he said carelessly. He was sorry that he had inquired as to the hour of the visit to his aunt. Obviously she was ready to build vast and terrible conjectures upon the mysterious interval between half-past ten and midnight.
“You’ve cut yourself, my dear,” she said, indicating with her gloved hand Edwin’s chin. “And I’m not surprised. How upsetting it is for you! Of course Maggie’s the eldest, and we think a great deal of her, but you’re the son—the only son!”
“I know,” he said, meaning that he knew he had cut himself, and he pressed his handkerchief to his chin. Within, he was blasphemously fuming. The sentimental accent with which she had finally murmured ‘the only son’ irritated him extremely. What in the name of God was she driving at? The fact was that, enjoying a domestic crisis with positive sensuality, she was trying to manufacture one! That was it! He knew her. There were times when he could share all Maggie’s hatred of Mrs Hamps, and this was one of those times. The infernal woman, with her shaking plumes and her odour of black kid, was enjoying herself! In the thousandth part of a second he invented horrible and grotesque punishments for her, as that all the clothes should suddenly fall off that prim, widowed, odious modesty. Yet, amid the multitude of his sensations—the smarting of his chin, the tingling of all his body after the bath, the fresh vivacity of the morning, the increased consciousness of his own ego, due to insufficient sleep, the queerness of being in the drawing-room at such an hour in conspiratorial talk, the vague disquiet caused at midnight, and now intensified despite his angry efforts to avoid the contagion of Mrs Hamps’s mood, and above all the thought of his father gloomily wandering in the garden—amid these confusing sensations, it was precisely an idea communicated to him by his annoying aunt, an obvious idea, an idea not worth uttering, that emerged clear and dramatic: he was the only son.
“There’s no need to worry,” he said as firmly as he could “The funeral got on his nerves, that’s all. He certainly did seem a bit knocked about last night, and I shouldn’t have been surprised if he’d stayed in bed to-day. But you see he’s up and about.” Both of them glanced at the window, which gave on the garden.
“Yes,” murmured Mrs Hamps, unconvinced. “But what about his crying? Maggie tells me he was—”
“Oh!” Edwin interrupted her almost roughly. “That’s nothing. I’ve known him cry before.”
“Have you?” She seemed taken aback.
“Yes. Years ago. That’s nothing fresh.”
“It’s true he’s very sensitive,” Mrs Hamps reflected. “That’s what we don’t realise, maybe, sometimes. Of course if you think he’s all right—”
She approached the window, and, leaning over the tripod which held a flower-pot enveloped in pink paper, she drew the white curtain aside, and gazed forth in silence. Darius was still pacing up and down the short path at the extremity of the garden; his eyes were still on the ground, and his features expressive of mournful despair, and at the end of the path he still turned his body round with slow and tedious hesitations. Edwin also could see him through the window. They both watched him; it was as if they were spying on him.
Maggie entered, and said, in an unusual flutter—
“Here’s Clara and Albert!”
Clara and her husband came immediately into the drawing-room. The wife, dressed with a certain haste and carelessness, was carrying in her arms her third child, yet unweaned, and she expected a fourth in the early autumn. Clara had matured, she had grown stronger; and despite the asperity of her pretty, pale face there was a charm in the free gestures and the large body of the young and prolific mother. Albert Benbow wore the rough, clay-dusted attire of the small earthenware manufacturer who is away from the works for half an hour. Both of them were electrically charged with importance.
Amid the general self-consciousness Maggie took the baby, and Clara and Mrs Hamps kissed each other tenderly, as though saying, “Affliction is upon us.” It was impossible, in the circumstances, to proceed to minute inquiry about the health of the children, but Mrs Hamps expressed all her solicitude in a look, a tone, a lingering of lip on lip. The years were drawing together Mrs Hamps and her namesake. Edwin was often astonished at the increasing resemblance of Clara to her aunt, with whom, thanks to the unconscious intermediacy of babies, she was even indeed quite intimate. The two would discuss with indefatigable gusto all the most minute physical details of motherhood and infancy: and Auntie Clara’s presents were worthy of her reputation.
As soon as the kiss was accomplished—no other greeting of any kind occurred—Clara turned sharply to Edwin—
“What’s this about father?”
“Oh! He’s had a bit of a shock. He’s pretty much all right to-day.”
“Because Albert’s just heard—” She looked at Albert.
Edwin was thunderstruck. Was the tale of his father’s indisposition spread all over the Five Towns? He had thought that the arrival of Clara and her husband must be due to Auntie Hamps having called at their house on her way up to Bleakridge. But now he could see, even from his auntie’s affrighted demeanour alone, that the Benbows’ visit was an independent affair.
“Are you sure he’s all right?” Albert questioned, in his superiorly sagacious manner, which mingled honest bullying with a little good-nature.
“Because Albert just heard—” Clara put in again.
The company then heard what Albert had just heard. At his works before breakfast an old hollow-ware-presser, who lived at Turnhill, had casually mentioned that his father-in-law, Mr Clayhanger, had been cutting a very peculiar figure on the previous evening at Turnhill. The hollow-ware-presser had seen nothing personally; he had only been told. He could not or would not particularise. Apparently he possessed in a high degree the local talent for rousing an apprehension by the offer of food, and then under ingenious pretexts refusing the food. At any rate, Albert had been startled, and had communicated his alarm to Clara. Clara had meant to come up a little later in the morning, but she wanted Albert to come with her, and Albert, being exceedingly busy, had only the breakfast half-hour of liberty. Hence they had set out instantly, although the baby required sustenance; Albert having suggested that Clara could feed the baby just as well at her father’s as at home.
Before the Benbow story was quite finished it became entangled with the story of Mrs Hamps, and then with Edwin’s story. They were all speaking at once, except Maggie, who was trying to soothe the baby.
Holding forth her arms, Clara, without ceasing to talk rapidly and anxiously to Mrs Hamps, without even regarding what she did, took the infant from her sister, held it with one hand, and with the other loosed her tight bodice, and boldly exposed to the greedy mouth the magnificent source of life. As the infant gurgled itself into silence, she glanced with a fleeting ecstatic smile at Maggie, who smiled back. It was strange how Maggie, now midway between thirty and forty, a tall, large-boned, plump, mature woman, efficient, kindly, and full of common sense—it was strange how she always failed to assert herself. She listened now, not seeking notice and assuredly not receiving it.
Edwin felt again the implication, first rendered by his aunt, and now emphasised by Clara and Albert, that the responsibility of the situation was upon him, and that everybody would look to him to discharge it. He was expected to act, somehow, on his own initiative, and to do something.
“But what is there to do?” he exclaimed, in answer to a question.
“Well, hadn’t he better see a doctor?” Clara asked, as if saying ironically, “Hasn’t it occurred to you even yet that a doctor ought to be fetched?”
Edwin protested with a movement of impatience—
“What on earth for? He’s walking about all right.”
They had all been surreptitiously watching Darius from behind the curtains.
“Doesn’t seem to be much the matter with him now! That I must say!” agreed Albert, turning from the window.
Edwin perceived that his brother-in-law was ready to execute one of those changes of front which lent variety to his positiveness, and he addressed himself particularly to Albert, with the persuasive tone and gesture of a man to another man in a company of women—
“Of course there doesn’t! No doubt he was upset last night. But he’s getting over it.Youdon’t think there’s anything in it, do you, Maggie?”
“I don’t,” said Maggie calmly.
These two words had a great effect.
“Of course if we’re going to listen to every tale that’s flying about a potbank,” said Edwin.
“You’re right there, Teddy!” the brother-in-law heartily concurred. “But Clary thought we’d better—”
“Certainly,” said Edwin pacifically, admitting the entire propriety of the visit.
“Why’s he wearing his best clothes?” Clara demanded suddenly. And Mrs Hamps showed a sympathetic appreciation of the importance of the question.
“Ask me another!” said Edwin. “But you can’t send for a doctor because a man’s wearing his best clothes.”
Maggie smiled, scarce perceptibly. Albert gave a guffaw. Clara was slightly irritated.
“Poor little dear!” murmured Mrs Hamps, caressing the baby. “Well, I must be going,” she sighed.
“We shall see how he goes on,” said Edwin, in his rôle of responsible person.
“Perhaps it will be as well if you say nothing about us calling,” whispered Mrs Hamps. “We’ll just go quietly away. You can give a hint to Mrs Nixon. Much better he shouldn’t know.”
“Oh! much better!” said Clara.
Edwin could not deny this. Yet he hated the chicane. He hated to observe on the face of the young woman and of the old their instinctive impulses towards chicane, and their pleasure in it. The whole double visit was subtly offensive to him. Why should they gather like this at the first hint that his father was not well? A natural affectionate anxiety... Yes, of course, that motive could not be denied. Nevertheless, he did not like the tones and the gestures and the whisperings and oblique glances of their gathering.
In the middle of a final miscellaneous conversation, Albert said—
“We’ll better be off.”
“Wait a moment,” said Clara, with a nod to indicate the still busy infant.
Then the door opened, very slowly and cautiously, and as they all observed the movement of the door, they all fell into silence. Darius himself appeared. Unobserved, he had left the garden and come into the house. He stood in the doorway, motionless, astounded, acutely apprehensive, and with an expression of the most poignant sadness on his harsh, coarse, pimpled face. He still wore the ridiculous cap and held the newspaper. The broadcloth suit was soiled. His eye wandered among his family, and it said, terrorised, and yet feebly defiant, “What are they plotting against me? Why are they all here like this?”
Mrs Hamps spoke first—
“Well, father, we just popped in to see how you were after all that dreadful business yesterday. Of course I quite understand you didn’t want to come in last night. You weren’t equal to it.” The guilty crude sweetness of her cajoling voice grated excruciatingly on both Edwin and Maggie. It would not have deceived even a monarch.
Darius screwed himself round, and silently went forth again.
“Where are you going, father?” asked Clara.
He stopped, but his features did not relax.
“To the shop,” he muttered. His accents were of the most dreadful melancholy.
Everybody was profoundly alarmed by his mere tone and look. This was not the old Darius. Edwin felt intensely the futility and the hollowness of all those reassurances which he had just been offering.
“You haven’t had your breakfast, father,” said Maggie quietly.
“Please, father! Please don’t go like that. You aren’t fit,” Clara entreated, and rushed towards him, the baby in her arms, and with one hand took his sleeve. Mrs Hamps followed, adding persuasions. Albert said bluffly, “Now, dad! Now, dad!”
Edwin and Maggie were silent in the background.
Darius gazed at Clara’s face, and then his glance fell, and fixed itself on her breast and on the head of the powerfully sucking infant, and then it rose to the plumes of Mrs Hamps. His expression of tragic sorrow did not alter in the slightest degree under the rain of sugared remonstrances and cajoleries that the two women directed upon him. And then, without any warning, he burst into terrible tears, and, staggering, leaned against the wall. He was half carried to the sofa, and sat there, ineffably humiliated. One after another looked reproachfully at Edwin, who had made light of his father’s condition. And Edwin was abashed and frightened.
“You or I had better fetch th’ doctor,” Albert muttered.
Volume Three--Chapter Three.The Name.“He mustn’t go near business,” said Mr Alfred Heve, the doctor, coming to Edwin, who was waiting in the drawing-room, after a long examination of Darius.Mr Heve was not wearing that gentle and refined smile which was so important a factor in the treatment of his patients and their families, and which he seemed to have caught from his elder brother, the vicar of Saint Peter’s. He was a youngish man, only a few years older than Edwin himself, and Edwin’s respect for his ability had limits. There were two other doctors in the town whom Edwin would have preferred, but Mr Heve was his father’s choice, notable in the successful soothing of querulous stomachs, and it was inevitably Mr Heve who had been summoned. He had arrived with an apprehensive, anxious air. There had been a most distinct nervousness in his voice when, in replying to Edwin’s question, he had said, “Perhaps I’d better see him quite alone.” Edwin had somehow got it into his head that he would be present at the interview. In shutting the dining-room door upon Edwin, Mr Heve had nodded timidly in a curious way, highly self-conscious. And that dining-room door had remained shut for half an hour. And now Mr Heve had emerged with the same embarrassment.“Whether he wants to or not?” Edwin suggested, with a faint smile.“On no account whatever!” said the doctor, not answering the smile, which died.They were standing together near the door. Edwin had his fingers on the handle. He wondered how he would prevent his father from going to business, if his father should decide to go.“But I don’t think he’ll be very keen on business,” the doctor added.“You don’t?”Mr Heve slowly shook his head. One of Mr Heve’s qualities that slightly annoyed Edwin was his extraordinary discretion. But then Edwin had always regarded the discreetness of doctors as exaggerated. Why could not Heve tell him at once fully and candidly what was in his mind? He had surely the right to be told! ... Curious! And yet far more curious than Mr Heve’s unwillingness to tell, was Edwin’s unwillingness to ask. He could not bring himself to demand bluntly of Heve: “Well, what’s the matter with him?”“I suppose it’s shock,” Edwin adventured.Mr Heve lifted his chin. “Shock may have had a little to do with it,” he answered doubtfully.“And how long must he be kept off business?”“I’m afraid there’s not much chance of him doing any more business,” said Mr Heve.“Really!” Edwin murmured. “Are you sure?”“Quite.”Edwin did not feel the full impact of this prophecy at the moment. Indeed, it appeared to him that he had known since the previous midnight of his father’s sudden doom; it appeared to him that the first glimpse of his father after the funeral had informed him of it positively. What impressed him at the moment was the unusual dignity which characterised Mr Heve’s embarrassment. He was beginning to respect Mr Heve.“I wouldn’t care to give him more than two years,” said Mr Heve, gazing at the carpet, and then lifting his eyes to Edwin’s.Edwin flushed. And this time his ‘Really!’ was startled.“Of course you may care to get other advice,” the doctor went on. “I shall be delighted to meet a specialist. But I tell you at once my opinion.” This with a gesture of candour.“Oh!” said Edwin. “If you’re sure—”Strange that the doctor would not give a name to the disease! Most strange that Edwin even now could not demand the name.“I suppose he’s in his rightmind?” said Edwin.“Yes,” said the doctor. “He’s in his rightmind.” But he gave the reply in a tone so peculiar that the affirmative was almost as disconcerting as a negative would have been.“Just rest he wants?” said Edwin.“Just rest. And looking after. I’ll send up some medicine. He’ll like it.” Mr Heve glanced absently at his watch. “I must be going.”“Well—” Edwin opened the door.Then with a sudden movement Mr Heve put out his hand.“You’ll come in again soon?”“Oh yes.”In the hall they saw Maggie about to enter the dining-room with a steaming basin.“I’m going to give him this,” she said simply in a low voice. “It’s so long to dinner-time.”“By all means,” said Mr Heve, with his little formal bow.“You’ve finished seeing him then, doctor?”He nodded.“I’ll be back soon,” said Edwin to Maggie, taking his hat from the rack. “Tell father if he asks I’ve run down to the shop.”She nodded and disappeared.“I’ll walk down a bit of the way with you,” said Mr Heve.His trap, which was waiting at the corner, followed them down the road. Edwin could not begin to talk. And Mr Heve kept silence. Behind him, Edwin could hear the jingling of metal on Mr Heve’s sprightly horse. After a couple of hundred yards the doctor stopped at a house-door.“Well—” He shook hands again, and at last smiled with sad sweetness.“He’ll be a bit difficult to manage, you know,” said Edwin.“I don’t think so,” said the doctor.“I’ll let you know about the specialist. But if you’re sure—”The doctor waved a deprecating hand. It might have been the hand of his brother, the Vicar.Two.Edwin proceeded towards the town, absorbed in a vision of his father seated in the dining-room, inexpressibly melancholy, and Maggie with her white apron bending over him to offer some nice soup. It was a desolating vision—and yet he wondered why it should be! Whenever he reasoned he was always inimical to his father. His reason asked harshly why he should be desolated, as he undoubtedly was. The prospect of freedom, of release from a horrible and humiliating servitude—this prospect ought to have dazzled and uplifted him, in the safe, inviolable privacy of his own heart. But it did not... What a chump the doctor was, to be so uncommunicative! And he himself! ... By the way, he had not told Maggie. It was like her to manifest no immediate curiosity, to be content to wait... He supposed he must call at his aunt’s, and even at Clara’s. But what should he say when they asked him why he had not asked the doctor for a name?Suddenly an approaching man whose face was vaguely familiar but with whom he had no acquaintance whatever, swerved across the footpath and stopped him.“What’s amiss with th’ old gentleman?” It was astounding how news flew in the town!“He’s not very well. Doctor’s ordered him a rest.”“Not in bed, is he?”“Oh no!” Edwin lightly scorned the suggestion.“Well, I do hope it’s nothing serious. Good morning.”Three.Edwin was detained a long time in the shop by a sub-manager from Bostocks in Hanbridge who was waiting, and who had come about an estimate for a rather considerable order. This man desired a decrease of the estimate and an increased speed in execution. He was curt. He was one business firm offering an ultimatum to another business firm. He asked Edwin whether Edwin could decide at once. Edwin said ‘Certainly,’ using a tone that he had never used before. He decided. The man departed, and Edwin saw him spring on to the Hanbridge car as it swept down the hill. The man would not have been interested in the news that Darius Clayhanger had been to business for the last time. Edwin was glad of the incident because it had preserved him from embarrassed conversation with Stifford. Two hours earlier he had called for a few moments at the shop, and even then, ere Edwin had spoken, Stifford’s face showed that he knew something sinister had occurred. With a few words of instruction to Stifford, he now went through towards the workshops to speak with Big James about the Bostock order.All the workmen and apprentices were self-conscious. And Edwin could not speak naturally to Big James. When he had come to an agreement with Big James as to the execution of the order, the latter said—“Would you step below a minute, Mr Edwin?”Edwin shuffled. But Big James’s majestic politeness gave to his expressed wish the force of a command. Edwin preceded Big James down the rough wooden stair to the ground floor, which was still pillared with supporting beams. Big James, with deliberate, careful movements, drew the trap-door horizontal as he descended.“Might I ask, sir, if Master’s in a bad way?” he inquired, with solemn and delicate calm. But he would have inquired about the weather in the same fashion.“I’m afraid he is,” said Edwin, glancing nervously about at the litter, and the cobwebs, and the naked wood, and the naked earth. The vibration of a treadle-machine above them put the place in a throb.Astounding! Everybody knew or guessed everything! How?Big James wagged his head and his grandiose beard, now more grey than black, and he fingered his apron.“I believe in herbs myself,” said Big James. “But this here softening of the brain—well—”That was it! Softening of the brain! What the doctor had not told him he had learned from Big James. How it happened that Big James was in a position to tell him he could not comprehend. But he was ready now to believe that the whole town had acquired by magic the information which fate or original stupidity had kept from him alone... Softening of the brain!“Perhaps I’m making too bold, sir,” Big James went on. “Perhaps it’s not so bad as that. But I did hear—”Edwin nodded confirmingly.“You needn’t talk about it,” he murmured, indicating the first floor by an upward movement of the head.“That I shall not, sir,” Big James smoothly replied, and proceeded in the same bland tone: “And what’s more, never will I raise my voice in song again! James Yarlett has sung his last song.”There was silence. Edwin, accustomed though he was to the mildness of Big James’s deportment, did not on the instant grasp that the man was seriously announcing a solemn resolve made under deep emotion. But as he understood, tears came into Edwin’s eyes, and he thrilled at the swift and dramatic revelation of the compositor’s feeling for his employer. Its impressiveness was overwhelming and it was humbling. Why this excess of devotion?“I don’t say but what he had his faults like other folk,” said Big James. “And far be it from me to say that you, Mr Edwin, will not be a better master than your esteemed father. But for over twenty years I’ve worked for him, and now he’s gone, never will I lift my voice in song again!”Edwin could not reply.“I know what it is,” said Big James, after a pause.“What what is?”“This ce-re-bral softening. You’ll have trouble, Mr Edwin.”“The doctor says not.”“You’ll have trouble, if you’ll excuse me saying so. But it’s a good thing he’s got you. It’s a good thing for Miss Maggie as she isn’t alone with him. It’s a providence, Mr Edwin, as you’re not a married man.”“I very nearlywasmarried once!” Edwin cried, with a sudden uncontrollable outburst of feeling which staggered while it satisfied him. Why should he make such a confidence to Big James? Between his pleasure in the relief, and his extreme astonishment at the confession, he felt as it were lost and desperate, as if he did not care what might occur.“Were you now!” Big James commented, with an ever intensified blandness. “Well, sir, I thank you.”
“He mustn’t go near business,” said Mr Alfred Heve, the doctor, coming to Edwin, who was waiting in the drawing-room, after a long examination of Darius.
Mr Heve was not wearing that gentle and refined smile which was so important a factor in the treatment of his patients and their families, and which he seemed to have caught from his elder brother, the vicar of Saint Peter’s. He was a youngish man, only a few years older than Edwin himself, and Edwin’s respect for his ability had limits. There were two other doctors in the town whom Edwin would have preferred, but Mr Heve was his father’s choice, notable in the successful soothing of querulous stomachs, and it was inevitably Mr Heve who had been summoned. He had arrived with an apprehensive, anxious air. There had been a most distinct nervousness in his voice when, in replying to Edwin’s question, he had said, “Perhaps I’d better see him quite alone.” Edwin had somehow got it into his head that he would be present at the interview. In shutting the dining-room door upon Edwin, Mr Heve had nodded timidly in a curious way, highly self-conscious. And that dining-room door had remained shut for half an hour. And now Mr Heve had emerged with the same embarrassment.
“Whether he wants to or not?” Edwin suggested, with a faint smile.
“On no account whatever!” said the doctor, not answering the smile, which died.
They were standing together near the door. Edwin had his fingers on the handle. He wondered how he would prevent his father from going to business, if his father should decide to go.
“But I don’t think he’ll be very keen on business,” the doctor added.
“You don’t?”
Mr Heve slowly shook his head. One of Mr Heve’s qualities that slightly annoyed Edwin was his extraordinary discretion. But then Edwin had always regarded the discreetness of doctors as exaggerated. Why could not Heve tell him at once fully and candidly what was in his mind? He had surely the right to be told! ... Curious! And yet far more curious than Mr Heve’s unwillingness to tell, was Edwin’s unwillingness to ask. He could not bring himself to demand bluntly of Heve: “Well, what’s the matter with him?”
“I suppose it’s shock,” Edwin adventured.
Mr Heve lifted his chin. “Shock may have had a little to do with it,” he answered doubtfully.
“And how long must he be kept off business?”
“I’m afraid there’s not much chance of him doing any more business,” said Mr Heve.
“Really!” Edwin murmured. “Are you sure?”
“Quite.”
Edwin did not feel the full impact of this prophecy at the moment. Indeed, it appeared to him that he had known since the previous midnight of his father’s sudden doom; it appeared to him that the first glimpse of his father after the funeral had informed him of it positively. What impressed him at the moment was the unusual dignity which characterised Mr Heve’s embarrassment. He was beginning to respect Mr Heve.
“I wouldn’t care to give him more than two years,” said Mr Heve, gazing at the carpet, and then lifting his eyes to Edwin’s.
Edwin flushed. And this time his ‘Really!’ was startled.
“Of course you may care to get other advice,” the doctor went on. “I shall be delighted to meet a specialist. But I tell you at once my opinion.” This with a gesture of candour.
“Oh!” said Edwin. “If you’re sure—”
Strange that the doctor would not give a name to the disease! Most strange that Edwin even now could not demand the name.
“I suppose he’s in his rightmind?” said Edwin.
“Yes,” said the doctor. “He’s in his rightmind.” But he gave the reply in a tone so peculiar that the affirmative was almost as disconcerting as a negative would have been.
“Just rest he wants?” said Edwin.
“Just rest. And looking after. I’ll send up some medicine. He’ll like it.” Mr Heve glanced absently at his watch. “I must be going.”
“Well—” Edwin opened the door.
Then with a sudden movement Mr Heve put out his hand.
“You’ll come in again soon?”
“Oh yes.”
In the hall they saw Maggie about to enter the dining-room with a steaming basin.
“I’m going to give him this,” she said simply in a low voice. “It’s so long to dinner-time.”
“By all means,” said Mr Heve, with his little formal bow.
“You’ve finished seeing him then, doctor?”
He nodded.
“I’ll be back soon,” said Edwin to Maggie, taking his hat from the rack. “Tell father if he asks I’ve run down to the shop.”
She nodded and disappeared.
“I’ll walk down a bit of the way with you,” said Mr Heve.
His trap, which was waiting at the corner, followed them down the road. Edwin could not begin to talk. And Mr Heve kept silence. Behind him, Edwin could hear the jingling of metal on Mr Heve’s sprightly horse. After a couple of hundred yards the doctor stopped at a house-door.
“Well—” He shook hands again, and at last smiled with sad sweetness.
“He’ll be a bit difficult to manage, you know,” said Edwin.
“I don’t think so,” said the doctor.
“I’ll let you know about the specialist. But if you’re sure—”
The doctor waved a deprecating hand. It might have been the hand of his brother, the Vicar.
Edwin proceeded towards the town, absorbed in a vision of his father seated in the dining-room, inexpressibly melancholy, and Maggie with her white apron bending over him to offer some nice soup. It was a desolating vision—and yet he wondered why it should be! Whenever he reasoned he was always inimical to his father. His reason asked harshly why he should be desolated, as he undoubtedly was. The prospect of freedom, of release from a horrible and humiliating servitude—this prospect ought to have dazzled and uplifted him, in the safe, inviolable privacy of his own heart. But it did not... What a chump the doctor was, to be so uncommunicative! And he himself! ... By the way, he had not told Maggie. It was like her to manifest no immediate curiosity, to be content to wait... He supposed he must call at his aunt’s, and even at Clara’s. But what should he say when they asked him why he had not asked the doctor for a name?
Suddenly an approaching man whose face was vaguely familiar but with whom he had no acquaintance whatever, swerved across the footpath and stopped him.
“What’s amiss with th’ old gentleman?” It was astounding how news flew in the town!
“He’s not very well. Doctor’s ordered him a rest.”
“Not in bed, is he?”
“Oh no!” Edwin lightly scorned the suggestion.
“Well, I do hope it’s nothing serious. Good morning.”
Edwin was detained a long time in the shop by a sub-manager from Bostocks in Hanbridge who was waiting, and who had come about an estimate for a rather considerable order. This man desired a decrease of the estimate and an increased speed in execution. He was curt. He was one business firm offering an ultimatum to another business firm. He asked Edwin whether Edwin could decide at once. Edwin said ‘Certainly,’ using a tone that he had never used before. He decided. The man departed, and Edwin saw him spring on to the Hanbridge car as it swept down the hill. The man would not have been interested in the news that Darius Clayhanger had been to business for the last time. Edwin was glad of the incident because it had preserved him from embarrassed conversation with Stifford. Two hours earlier he had called for a few moments at the shop, and even then, ere Edwin had spoken, Stifford’s face showed that he knew something sinister had occurred. With a few words of instruction to Stifford, he now went through towards the workshops to speak with Big James about the Bostock order.
All the workmen and apprentices were self-conscious. And Edwin could not speak naturally to Big James. When he had come to an agreement with Big James as to the execution of the order, the latter said—
“Would you step below a minute, Mr Edwin?”
Edwin shuffled. But Big James’s majestic politeness gave to his expressed wish the force of a command. Edwin preceded Big James down the rough wooden stair to the ground floor, which was still pillared with supporting beams. Big James, with deliberate, careful movements, drew the trap-door horizontal as he descended.
“Might I ask, sir, if Master’s in a bad way?” he inquired, with solemn and delicate calm. But he would have inquired about the weather in the same fashion.
“I’m afraid he is,” said Edwin, glancing nervously about at the litter, and the cobwebs, and the naked wood, and the naked earth. The vibration of a treadle-machine above them put the place in a throb.
Astounding! Everybody knew or guessed everything! How?
Big James wagged his head and his grandiose beard, now more grey than black, and he fingered his apron.
“I believe in herbs myself,” said Big James. “But this here softening of the brain—well—”
That was it! Softening of the brain! What the doctor had not told him he had learned from Big James. How it happened that Big James was in a position to tell him he could not comprehend. But he was ready now to believe that the whole town had acquired by magic the information which fate or original stupidity had kept from him alone... Softening of the brain!
“Perhaps I’m making too bold, sir,” Big James went on. “Perhaps it’s not so bad as that. But I did hear—”
Edwin nodded confirmingly.
“You needn’t talk about it,” he murmured, indicating the first floor by an upward movement of the head.
“That I shall not, sir,” Big James smoothly replied, and proceeded in the same bland tone: “And what’s more, never will I raise my voice in song again! James Yarlett has sung his last song.”
There was silence. Edwin, accustomed though he was to the mildness of Big James’s deportment, did not on the instant grasp that the man was seriously announcing a solemn resolve made under deep emotion. But as he understood, tears came into Edwin’s eyes, and he thrilled at the swift and dramatic revelation of the compositor’s feeling for his employer. Its impressiveness was overwhelming and it was humbling. Why this excess of devotion?
“I don’t say but what he had his faults like other folk,” said Big James. “And far be it from me to say that you, Mr Edwin, will not be a better master than your esteemed father. But for over twenty years I’ve worked for him, and now he’s gone, never will I lift my voice in song again!”
Edwin could not reply.
“I know what it is,” said Big James, after a pause.
“What what is?”
“This ce-re-bral softening. You’ll have trouble, Mr Edwin.”
“The doctor says not.”
“You’ll have trouble, if you’ll excuse me saying so. But it’s a good thing he’s got you. It’s a good thing for Miss Maggie as she isn’t alone with him. It’s a providence, Mr Edwin, as you’re not a married man.”
“I very nearlywasmarried once!” Edwin cried, with a sudden uncontrollable outburst of feeling which staggered while it satisfied him. Why should he make such a confidence to Big James? Between his pleasure in the relief, and his extreme astonishment at the confession, he felt as it were lost and desperate, as if he did not care what might occur.
“Were you now!” Big James commented, with an ever intensified blandness. “Well, sir, I thank you.”
Volume Three--Chapter Four.The Victim of Sympathy.On the same evening, Edwin, Albert Benbow, and Darius were smoking Albert’s cigarettes in the dining-room. Edwin sat at the end of a disordered supper-table, Albert was standing, hat in hand, near the sideboard, and Darius leaned against the mantelpiece. Nobody could have supposed from his appearance that a doctor had responsibly prophesied this man’s death within two years. Except for a shade of sadness upon his face, he looked the same as he had looked for a decade. Though regarded by his children as an old man, he was not old, being in fact still under sixty. His grey hair was sparse; his spectacles were set upon his nose with the negligence characteristic of age; but the down-pointing moustache, which, abetted by his irregular teeth, gave him that curious facial resemblance to a seal, showed great force, and the whole of his stiff and sturdy frame showed force. His voice, if not his mouth, had largely recovered from the weakness of the morning. Moreover, the fashion in which he smoked a cigarette had somehow the effect of rejuvenating him. It was Albert who had induced him to smoke cigarettes occasionally. He was not an habitual smoker, consuming perhaps half an ounce a week of pipe-tobacco: and assuredly he would never of his own accord have tried a cigarette. For Darius cigarettes were aristocratic and finicking; they were an affectation. He smoked a cigarette with the self-consciousness which usually marks the consumption of champagne in certain strata of society. His gestures, as he examined from time to time the end of the cigarette, or audibly blew forth spreading clouds, seemed to signify that in his opinion he was going the pace, cutting a dash, and seeing life. Thisnaïvetéhad its charm.The three men, left alone by their women, were discussing politics, which then meant nothing but the subject of Home Rule. Darius agreed almost eagerly with everything that Albert Benbow said. Albert was a calm and utterly sound Conservative. He was one of those politicians whose conviction of rightness is so strong that they cannot help condescending towards an opponent. Albert would say persuasively to Liberal acquaintances: “Now justthinka moment!” apparently sure that the only explanation of their misguided views was that they never had thought for a moment. Or he would say: “Surely all patriotic Liberals—” But one day when Edwin had said to him with a peculiar accent: “Surely all patriotic Conservatives—” he had been politely offended for the rest of the evening, and Edwin and he had not mentioned politics to each other for a long time. Albert had had much influence over his father-in-law. And now Albert said, after Darius had concurred and concurred—“You’re one of the right sort, after all, old gentleman.”Throughout the evening he had spoken to Darius in an unusually loud voice, as though it was necessary to shout to a man who had only two years to live.“All I say is,” said Darius, “country before party!”“Why, of course!” Albert smiled, confident and superior. “Haven’t I been telling you for years you’re one of us?”Edwin, too, smiled, as superiorly as he could, but unhappily not with sufficient superiority to wither Albert’s smile. He said nothing, partly from timid discretion, but partly because he was preoccupied with the thought of the malignant and subtle power working secretly in his father’s brain. How could the doctor tell? What was the process of softening? Did his father know, in that sick brain of his, that he was condemned; or did he hope to recover? Now, as he leaned against the mantelpiece, protruding his body in an easy posture, he might have been any ordinary man, and not a victim; he might have been a man of business relaxing after a long day of hard and successful cerebral activity.It seemed strange to Edwin that Albert could talk as he did to one whom destiny had set apart, to one whose being was the theatre of a drama so mysterious and tragic. Yet it was the proper thing for Albert to do, and Albert did it perfectly, better than anybody, except possibly Maggie.“Those women take a deuce of a time putting their bonnets on!” Albert exclaimed.Two.The women came downstairs at last. At last, to Edwin’s intense relief, every one was going. Albert went into the hall to meet the women. Edwin rose and followed him. And Darius came as far as the door of the dining-room. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since Edwin had begun even to suspect any sort of disaster to his father. But the previous night seemed an age away. The day had been interminable, and the evening exasperating in the highest degree. What an evening! Why had Albert and Clara and Auntie Hamps all of them come up just at supper-time? At first they would not be persuaded! No! They had just called—sheer accident!—nothing abnormal! And yet the whole of the demeanour of Auntie Hamps and Clara was abnormal. Maggie herself, catching the infection, had transformed the meal into a kind of abnormal horrible feast by serving cold beef and pickles—flesh-meat being unknown to the suppers of the Clayhangers save occasionally on Sundays.Edwin could not comprehend why the visitors had come. That is to say, he understood the reason quite well, but hated to admit it. They had come from a mere gluttony of curiosity. They knew all that could be known—but still they must come and gaze and indulge their lamentable hearts, and repeat the same things again and again, ten million times! Auntie Hamps, indeed, probably knew more than Edwin did, for she had thought fit to summon Dr Heve that very afternoon for an ailment of her own, and Clara, with an infant or so, had by a remarkable coincidence called at Mrs Hamps’s house just after the doctor left. “Odious,” thought Edwin.These two had openly treated Darius as a martyr, speaking to him in soft and pitiful voices, urging him to eat, urging him to drink, caressing him, soothing him, humouring him; pretending to be brave and cheerful and optimistic, but with a pretence so poor, so wilfully poor, that it became an insult. When they said fulsomely, “You’ll be perfectly all right soon if only you’ll take care and do as the doctor says,” Edwin could have risen and killed them both with hearty pleasure. They might just as well have said, “You’re practically in your grave.” And assuredly they were not without influence on Maggie’s deportment. The curious thing was that it was impossible to decide whether Darius loathed, or whether he liked, to be so treated. His face was an enigma. However, he was less gloomy.Then also the evening had necessarily been full of secret conferences. What would you? Each had to relate privately the things that he or she knew or had heard or had imagined. And there were questions of urgency to be discussed. For example the question of the specialist. They were all positively agreed, Edwin found, that a specialist was unnecessary. Darius was condemned beyond hope or argument. There he sat, eating and talking, in the large, fine house that he had created out of naught, looking not at all like a corpse; but he was condemned. The doctor had convinced them. Besides, did not everybody know what softening of the brain was? “Of course, if he thinks he would prefer to have a specialist, if he has the slightest wish—” This from Auntie Hamps. There was the question, further, of domestic service. Mrs Nixon’s niece had committed the folly of marriage, and for many months Maggie and the old servant had been ‘managing;’ but with a crotchety invalid always in the house, more help would be indispensable. And still further—should Darius be taken away for a period to the sea, or Buxton, or somewhere? Maggie said that nothing would make him go, and Clara agreed with her. All these matters, and others, had to be kept away from the central figure; they were all full of passionate interest, and they had to be debated, in tones hushed but excited, in the hall, in the kitchen, upstairs, or anywhere except in the dining-room. The excuses invented by the conspiring women for quitting and entering the dining-room, their fatuous air of innocent simplicity, disgusted Edwin. And he became curter and curter, as he noticed the new deference which even Clara practised towards him.Three.The adieux were distressing. Clara, with her pale sharp face and troubled eyes, clasped Darius round the neck, and almost hung on it. And Edwin thought: “Why doesn’t she tell him straight out he’s done for?” Then she retired and sought her husband’s arm with the conscious pride of a wife fruitful up to the limits set by nature. And then Auntie Hamps shook hands with the victim. These two of course did not kiss. Auntie Hamps bore herself bravely. “Nowdodo as the doctor advises!” she said, patting Darius on the shoulder. “Anddobe guided by these dear children!”Edwin caught Maggie’s eye, and held it grimly.“And you, my pet,” said Auntie Hamps, turning to Clara, who with Albert was now at the door. “You must be getting back to your babies! It’s a wonder how you manage to get away! But you’re a wonderful arranger! ... Only don’t overdo it. Don’t overdo it!”Clara gave a fatigued smile, as of one whom circumstances often forced to overdo it.They departed, Albert whistling to the night. Edwin observed again, in their final glances, the queer, new, ingratiating deference for himself. He bolted the door savagely.Darius was still standing at the entrance to the dining-room. And as he looked at him Edwin thought of Big James’s vow never to lift his voice in song again. Strange! It was the idea of the secret strangeness of life that was uppermost in his mind: not grief, not expectancy. In the afternoon he had been talking again to Big James, who, it appeared, had known intimately a case of softening of the brain. He did not identify the case—it was characteristic of him to name no names—but clearly he was familiar with the course of the disease.He had begun revelations which disconcerted Edwin, and had then stopped. And now as Edwin furtively examined his father, he asked himself: “Willthathappen to him, andthat, and those still worse things that Big James did not reveal?” Incredible! There he was, smoking a cigarette, and the clock striking ten in its daily, matter-of-fact way.Darius let fall the cigarette, which Edwin picked up from the mat, and offered to him.“Throw it away,” said Darius, with a deep sigh.“Going to bed?” Edwin asked.Darius shook his head, and Edwin debated what he should do. A moment later, Maggie came from the kitchen and asked—“Going to bed, father?”Again Darius shook his head. He then went slowly into the drawing-room and lit the gas there.“What shall you do? Leave him?” Maggie whispered to Edwin in the dining-room, as she helped Mrs Nixon to clear the table.“I don’t know,” said Edwin. “I shall see.”In ten minutes both Maggie and Mrs Nixon had gone to bed. Edwin hesitated in the dining-room. Then he extinguished the gas there, and went into the drawing-room. Darius, not having lowered the blinds, was gazing out of the black window.“You needn’t wait down here for me,” said he, a little sharply. And his tone was so sane, controlled, firm, and ordinary that Edwin could do nothing but submit to it.“I’m not going to,” he answered quietly.Impossible to treat a man of such demeanour like a child.
On the same evening, Edwin, Albert Benbow, and Darius were smoking Albert’s cigarettes in the dining-room. Edwin sat at the end of a disordered supper-table, Albert was standing, hat in hand, near the sideboard, and Darius leaned against the mantelpiece. Nobody could have supposed from his appearance that a doctor had responsibly prophesied this man’s death within two years. Except for a shade of sadness upon his face, he looked the same as he had looked for a decade. Though regarded by his children as an old man, he was not old, being in fact still under sixty. His grey hair was sparse; his spectacles were set upon his nose with the negligence characteristic of age; but the down-pointing moustache, which, abetted by his irregular teeth, gave him that curious facial resemblance to a seal, showed great force, and the whole of his stiff and sturdy frame showed force. His voice, if not his mouth, had largely recovered from the weakness of the morning. Moreover, the fashion in which he smoked a cigarette had somehow the effect of rejuvenating him. It was Albert who had induced him to smoke cigarettes occasionally. He was not an habitual smoker, consuming perhaps half an ounce a week of pipe-tobacco: and assuredly he would never of his own accord have tried a cigarette. For Darius cigarettes were aristocratic and finicking; they were an affectation. He smoked a cigarette with the self-consciousness which usually marks the consumption of champagne in certain strata of society. His gestures, as he examined from time to time the end of the cigarette, or audibly blew forth spreading clouds, seemed to signify that in his opinion he was going the pace, cutting a dash, and seeing life. Thisnaïvetéhad its charm.
The three men, left alone by their women, were discussing politics, which then meant nothing but the subject of Home Rule. Darius agreed almost eagerly with everything that Albert Benbow said. Albert was a calm and utterly sound Conservative. He was one of those politicians whose conviction of rightness is so strong that they cannot help condescending towards an opponent. Albert would say persuasively to Liberal acquaintances: “Now justthinka moment!” apparently sure that the only explanation of their misguided views was that they never had thought for a moment. Or he would say: “Surely all patriotic Liberals—” But one day when Edwin had said to him with a peculiar accent: “Surely all patriotic Conservatives—” he had been politely offended for the rest of the evening, and Edwin and he had not mentioned politics to each other for a long time. Albert had had much influence over his father-in-law. And now Albert said, after Darius had concurred and concurred—
“You’re one of the right sort, after all, old gentleman.”
Throughout the evening he had spoken to Darius in an unusually loud voice, as though it was necessary to shout to a man who had only two years to live.
“All I say is,” said Darius, “country before party!”
“Why, of course!” Albert smiled, confident and superior. “Haven’t I been telling you for years you’re one of us?”
Edwin, too, smiled, as superiorly as he could, but unhappily not with sufficient superiority to wither Albert’s smile. He said nothing, partly from timid discretion, but partly because he was preoccupied with the thought of the malignant and subtle power working secretly in his father’s brain. How could the doctor tell? What was the process of softening? Did his father know, in that sick brain of his, that he was condemned; or did he hope to recover? Now, as he leaned against the mantelpiece, protruding his body in an easy posture, he might have been any ordinary man, and not a victim; he might have been a man of business relaxing after a long day of hard and successful cerebral activity.
It seemed strange to Edwin that Albert could talk as he did to one whom destiny had set apart, to one whose being was the theatre of a drama so mysterious and tragic. Yet it was the proper thing for Albert to do, and Albert did it perfectly, better than anybody, except possibly Maggie.
“Those women take a deuce of a time putting their bonnets on!” Albert exclaimed.
The women came downstairs at last. At last, to Edwin’s intense relief, every one was going. Albert went into the hall to meet the women. Edwin rose and followed him. And Darius came as far as the door of the dining-room. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since Edwin had begun even to suspect any sort of disaster to his father. But the previous night seemed an age away. The day had been interminable, and the evening exasperating in the highest degree. What an evening! Why had Albert and Clara and Auntie Hamps all of them come up just at supper-time? At first they would not be persuaded! No! They had just called—sheer accident!—nothing abnormal! And yet the whole of the demeanour of Auntie Hamps and Clara was abnormal. Maggie herself, catching the infection, had transformed the meal into a kind of abnormal horrible feast by serving cold beef and pickles—flesh-meat being unknown to the suppers of the Clayhangers save occasionally on Sundays.
Edwin could not comprehend why the visitors had come. That is to say, he understood the reason quite well, but hated to admit it. They had come from a mere gluttony of curiosity. They knew all that could be known—but still they must come and gaze and indulge their lamentable hearts, and repeat the same things again and again, ten million times! Auntie Hamps, indeed, probably knew more than Edwin did, for she had thought fit to summon Dr Heve that very afternoon for an ailment of her own, and Clara, with an infant or so, had by a remarkable coincidence called at Mrs Hamps’s house just after the doctor left. “Odious,” thought Edwin.
These two had openly treated Darius as a martyr, speaking to him in soft and pitiful voices, urging him to eat, urging him to drink, caressing him, soothing him, humouring him; pretending to be brave and cheerful and optimistic, but with a pretence so poor, so wilfully poor, that it became an insult. When they said fulsomely, “You’ll be perfectly all right soon if only you’ll take care and do as the doctor says,” Edwin could have risen and killed them both with hearty pleasure. They might just as well have said, “You’re practically in your grave.” And assuredly they were not without influence on Maggie’s deportment. The curious thing was that it was impossible to decide whether Darius loathed, or whether he liked, to be so treated. His face was an enigma. However, he was less gloomy.
Then also the evening had necessarily been full of secret conferences. What would you? Each had to relate privately the things that he or she knew or had heard or had imagined. And there were questions of urgency to be discussed. For example the question of the specialist. They were all positively agreed, Edwin found, that a specialist was unnecessary. Darius was condemned beyond hope or argument. There he sat, eating and talking, in the large, fine house that he had created out of naught, looking not at all like a corpse; but he was condemned. The doctor had convinced them. Besides, did not everybody know what softening of the brain was? “Of course, if he thinks he would prefer to have a specialist, if he has the slightest wish—” This from Auntie Hamps. There was the question, further, of domestic service. Mrs Nixon’s niece had committed the folly of marriage, and for many months Maggie and the old servant had been ‘managing;’ but with a crotchety invalid always in the house, more help would be indispensable. And still further—should Darius be taken away for a period to the sea, or Buxton, or somewhere? Maggie said that nothing would make him go, and Clara agreed with her. All these matters, and others, had to be kept away from the central figure; they were all full of passionate interest, and they had to be debated, in tones hushed but excited, in the hall, in the kitchen, upstairs, or anywhere except in the dining-room. The excuses invented by the conspiring women for quitting and entering the dining-room, their fatuous air of innocent simplicity, disgusted Edwin. And he became curter and curter, as he noticed the new deference which even Clara practised towards him.
The adieux were distressing. Clara, with her pale sharp face and troubled eyes, clasped Darius round the neck, and almost hung on it. And Edwin thought: “Why doesn’t she tell him straight out he’s done for?” Then she retired and sought her husband’s arm with the conscious pride of a wife fruitful up to the limits set by nature. And then Auntie Hamps shook hands with the victim. These two of course did not kiss. Auntie Hamps bore herself bravely. “Nowdodo as the doctor advises!” she said, patting Darius on the shoulder. “Anddobe guided by these dear children!”
Edwin caught Maggie’s eye, and held it grimly.
“And you, my pet,” said Auntie Hamps, turning to Clara, who with Albert was now at the door. “You must be getting back to your babies! It’s a wonder how you manage to get away! But you’re a wonderful arranger! ... Only don’t overdo it. Don’t overdo it!”
Clara gave a fatigued smile, as of one whom circumstances often forced to overdo it.
They departed, Albert whistling to the night. Edwin observed again, in their final glances, the queer, new, ingratiating deference for himself. He bolted the door savagely.
Darius was still standing at the entrance to the dining-room. And as he looked at him Edwin thought of Big James’s vow never to lift his voice in song again. Strange! It was the idea of the secret strangeness of life that was uppermost in his mind: not grief, not expectancy. In the afternoon he had been talking again to Big James, who, it appeared, had known intimately a case of softening of the brain. He did not identify the case—it was characteristic of him to name no names—but clearly he was familiar with the course of the disease.
He had begun revelations which disconcerted Edwin, and had then stopped. And now as Edwin furtively examined his father, he asked himself: “Willthathappen to him, andthat, and those still worse things that Big James did not reveal?” Incredible! There he was, smoking a cigarette, and the clock striking ten in its daily, matter-of-fact way.
Darius let fall the cigarette, which Edwin picked up from the mat, and offered to him.
“Throw it away,” said Darius, with a deep sigh.
“Going to bed?” Edwin asked.
Darius shook his head, and Edwin debated what he should do. A moment later, Maggie came from the kitchen and asked—
“Going to bed, father?”
Again Darius shook his head. He then went slowly into the drawing-room and lit the gas there.
“What shall you do? Leave him?” Maggie whispered to Edwin in the dining-room, as she helped Mrs Nixon to clear the table.
“I don’t know,” said Edwin. “I shall see.”
In ten minutes both Maggie and Mrs Nixon had gone to bed. Edwin hesitated in the dining-room. Then he extinguished the gas there, and went into the drawing-room. Darius, not having lowered the blinds, was gazing out of the black window.
“You needn’t wait down here for me,” said he, a little sharply. And his tone was so sane, controlled, firm, and ordinary that Edwin could do nothing but submit to it.
“I’m not going to,” he answered quietly.
Impossible to treat a man of such demeanour like a child.
Volume Three--Chapter Five.The Slave’s Fear.Edwin closed the door of his bedroom with a sense of relief and of pleasure far greater than he would have admitted; or indeed could honestly have admitted, for it surpassed his consciousness. The feeling recurred that he was separated from the previous evening by a tremendous expanse of time. He had been flung out of his daily habits. He had forgotten to worry over the execution of his private programmes. He had forgotten even that the solemn thirtieth birthday was close upon him. It seemed to him as if his own egoism was lying about in scattered pieces, which he must collect in the calm of this cloister, and reconstruct. He wanted to resume possession of himself, very slowly, without violent effort. He wound up his watch; the hour was not yet half-past ten. The whole exquisite night was his.He had brought with him from the shop, almost mechanically, a copy of “Harper’s Magazine,” not the copy which regularly once a month he kept from a customer during the space of twenty-four hours for his own uses, but a second copy which had been sent down by the wholesale agents in mistake, and which he could return when he chose. He had already seen the number, but he could not miss the chance of carefully going through it at leisure. Despite his genuine aspirations, despite his taste which was growing more and more fastidious, he found it exceedingly difficult to proceed with his regular plan of reading while there was an illustrated magazine unexplored. Besides, the name of “Harper’s” was august. To read “Harper’s” was to acquire merit; even the pictures in “Harper’s” were too subtle for the uncultivated.He turned over the pages, and they all appeared to promise new and strange joys. Such preliminary moments were the most ecstatic in his life, as in the lives of many readers. He had not lost sight of the situation created by his father’s illness, but he could only see it very dimly through the semi-transparent pages.Two.The latch clicked and the door opened slightly. He jumped, supposing that his father had crept upstairs. And the first thought of the slave in him was that his father had never seen the gas-stove and would now infallibly notice it. But Maggie’s face showed. She came in very quietly—she too had caught the conspiratorial manner.“I thought you wouldn’t be ready for bed just yet,” she said, in mild excuse of her entry. “I didn’t knock, for fear he might be wandering about and hear.”“Oh!” muttered Edwin. “What’s up?” Instinctively he resented the invasion, and was alarmed for the privacy of his sacred room, although he knew that Maggie, and Mrs Nixon also, had it at their mercy every day. Nobody ever came into that room while he was in it.Maggie approached the hearth.“I think I ought to have a stove too,” she said pleasantly.“Well, why don’t you?” he replied. “I can get it for you any time.” If Clara had envied his stove, she would have envied it with scoffing rancour, and he would have used sarcasm in response.“Oh no!” said Maggie quickly. “I don’t really want one.”“What’s up?” he repeated. He could see she was hesitating.“Do you know what Clara and auntie are saying?”“No! What now? I should have thought they’d both said enough to last them for a few days at any rate.”“Did Albert say anything to you?”“What about?”“Well—both Clara and auntie said I must tell you. Albert says he ought to make his will—they all think so.”Edwin’s lips curled.“How do they know he hasn’t made it?”“Has he made it?”“How do I know? You don’t suppose he ever talks to me about his affairs, do you? Not much!”“Well—they meant he ought to be asked.”“Well, let ’em ask him, then. I shan’t.”“Of course what they say is—you’re the—”“What do I care for that?” he interrupted her. “So that’s what you were yarning so long about in your room!”“I can tell you,” said Maggie, “they’re both of them very serious about it. So’s Albert, it seems.”“They disgust me,” he said briefly. “Here the thing isn’t a day old, and they begin worrying about his will! They go slobbering all over him downstairs, and upstairs it’s nothing but his will they think about... You can’t rush at a man and talk to him about his will like that. At least, I can’t—it’s altogether too thick! I expect some people could. But I can’t. Damn it, you must have some sense of decency!”Maggie remained calm and benevolent. After a pause she said—“You see—their point is that later on he mayn’t be able to make a will.”“Look here,” he questioned amicably, meeting her eyes, “what do you think? What do you think yourself?”“Oh!” she said, “I should never dream of bothering about it. I’m only telling you what—”“Of course you wouldn’t!” he exclaimed. “No decent person would. Later on, perhaps, if one could put in a word casually! But not now! ... If he doesn’t make a will he doesn’t make one—that’s all.”Maggie leaned against the mantelpiece.“Mind your skirt doesn’t catch fire,” he warned her, in a murmur.“I told them what you’d say,” she answered his outburst, perfectly unmoved. “I knew what you’d say. But what they say is—it’s all very well foryou. You’re the son, and it seems that if there isn’t a will, if it’s left too late—”This aspect of the case had absolutely not presented itself to Edwin.“If they think,” he muttered, with cold acrimony—“if they think I’m the sort of person to take the slightest advantage of being the son—well, they must think it—that’s all! Besides, they can always talk to him themselves—if they’re so desperately anxious.”“You have charge of everything.”“Have I! ... And I should like to know what it’s got to do with auntie!”Maggie lifted her head. “Oh, auntie and Clara, you know—you can’t separate them... Well, I’ve told you.”She moved to leave.“I say,” he stopped her, with a confidential appeal. “Don’t you agree with me?”“Yes,” she replied simply. “I think it ought to be left for a bit. Perhaps he’s made it, after all. Let’s hope so. I’m sure it will save a lot of trouble if he has.”“Naturally it ought to be left for a bit! Why—just look at him! ... He might be on his blooming dying bed, to hear the way some people talk! Let ’em mention it to me, and I’ll tell ’em a thing or two!”Maggie raised her eyebrows. She scarcely recognised Edwin.“I suppose he’ll be all right, downstairs?”“Right? Of course he’ll be all right!” Then he added, in a tone less pugnacious—for, after all, it was not Maggie who had outraged his delicacy, “Don’t latch the door. Pull it to. I’ll listen out.”She went silently away.Three.Searching with his body for the most comfortable deeps of the easy-chair, he set himself to savour “Harper’s.” This monthly reassurance that nearly all was well with the world, and that what was wrong was not seriously wrong, waited on his knees to be accepted and to do its office. Unlike the magazines of his youth, its aim was to soothe and flatter, not to disconcert and impeach. He looked at the refined illustrations of South American capitals and of picturesque corners in Provence, and at the smooth or the rugged portraits of great statesmen and great bridges; all just as true to reality as the brilliant letterpress; and he tried to slip into the rectified and softened world offered by the magazine. He did not criticise the presentment. He did nothing so subtle as to ask himself whether if he encountered the reality he would recognise it from the presentment. He wanted the illusions of “Harper’s.” He desired the comfort, the distraction, and the pleasant ideal longings which they aroused. But they were a medicine which he discovered he was not in a condition to absorb, a medicine therefore useless. There was no effective medicine for his trouble.His trouble was that he objected to being disturbed. At first he had been pleasantly excited, but now he shrank away at the call to freedom, to action, to responsibility. All the slave in him protested against the knocking off of irons, and the imperative kick into the open air. He saw suddenly that in the calm of regular habit and of subjection, he had arrived at something that closely resembled happiness. He wished not to lose it, knowing that it was already gone. Actually, for his own sake, and quite apart from his father, he would have been ready, were it possible, to cancel the previous twenty-four hours. Everything was ominous, and he wandering about, lost, amid menaces... Why, even his cherished programmes of reading were smashed... Hallam! ... True, to-night was not a night appointed for reading, but to-morrow night was. And would he be able to read to-morrow night? No, a hundred new complications would have arisen to harass him and to dispossess him of his tranquillity!Destiny was demanding from him a huge effort, unexpected and formidable, and the whole of his being weakly complained, asking to be exempted, but asking without any hope of success; for all his faculties and his desires knew that his conscience was ultimately their master.Talk to his father about making a will, eh! Besides being disgusting, it was laughable. Those people did not know his father as he did. He foresaw that, even in conducting the routine of business, he would have difficulties with his father over the simplest details. In particular there was one indispensable preliminary to the old man’s complete repose, and his first duty on the morrow would be to endeavour to arrange this preliminary with his father; but he scarcely hoped to succeed.On the portion of the mantelpiece reserved for books in actual use lay the “Tale of a Tub,” last night so enchanting. And now he had positively forgotten it. He yawned, and prepared for bed. If he could not read “Harper’s,” perhaps he could read Swift.Four.He lay in bed. The gas was out, the stove was out, and according to his custom he was reading himself to sleep by the light of a candle in a sconce attached to the bed’s head. His eyes ran along line after line and down page after page, and transmitted nothing coherent to his brain.Then there were steps on the stair. His father was at last coming to bed. He was a little relieved, though he had been quite prepared to go to sleep and leave his father below. Why not? The steps died at the top of the stair, but an irregular creaking continued. After a pause the door was pushed open; and after another pause the figure of his father came into view, breathing loudly.“Edwin, are you asleep?” Darius asked anxiously. Edwin wondered what could be the matter, but he answered with lightness, “Nearly.”“I’ve not put th’ light out down yon! Happen you’d better put it out.” There was in his father’s voice a note of dependence upon him, of appeal to him.“Funny!” he thought, and said aloud, “All right.”He jumped up. His father thudded off deliberately to his own room, apparently relieved of a fearful oppression, but still fixed in sadness.On the previous night Edwin had extinguished the hall-gas and come last to bed; and again to-night. But to-night with what a different sentiment of genuine, permanent responsibility! The appealing feebleness of his father’s attitude seemed to give him strength. Surely a man so weak and fallen from tyranny could not cause much trouble! Edwin now had some hope that the unavoidable preliminary to the invalid’s retirement might be achieved without too much difficulty. He braced himself.
Edwin closed the door of his bedroom with a sense of relief and of pleasure far greater than he would have admitted; or indeed could honestly have admitted, for it surpassed his consciousness. The feeling recurred that he was separated from the previous evening by a tremendous expanse of time. He had been flung out of his daily habits. He had forgotten to worry over the execution of his private programmes. He had forgotten even that the solemn thirtieth birthday was close upon him. It seemed to him as if his own egoism was lying about in scattered pieces, which he must collect in the calm of this cloister, and reconstruct. He wanted to resume possession of himself, very slowly, without violent effort. He wound up his watch; the hour was not yet half-past ten. The whole exquisite night was his.
He had brought with him from the shop, almost mechanically, a copy of “Harper’s Magazine,” not the copy which regularly once a month he kept from a customer during the space of twenty-four hours for his own uses, but a second copy which had been sent down by the wholesale agents in mistake, and which he could return when he chose. He had already seen the number, but he could not miss the chance of carefully going through it at leisure. Despite his genuine aspirations, despite his taste which was growing more and more fastidious, he found it exceedingly difficult to proceed with his regular plan of reading while there was an illustrated magazine unexplored. Besides, the name of “Harper’s” was august. To read “Harper’s” was to acquire merit; even the pictures in “Harper’s” were too subtle for the uncultivated.
He turned over the pages, and they all appeared to promise new and strange joys. Such preliminary moments were the most ecstatic in his life, as in the lives of many readers. He had not lost sight of the situation created by his father’s illness, but he could only see it very dimly through the semi-transparent pages.
The latch clicked and the door opened slightly. He jumped, supposing that his father had crept upstairs. And the first thought of the slave in him was that his father had never seen the gas-stove and would now infallibly notice it. But Maggie’s face showed. She came in very quietly—she too had caught the conspiratorial manner.
“I thought you wouldn’t be ready for bed just yet,” she said, in mild excuse of her entry. “I didn’t knock, for fear he might be wandering about and hear.”
“Oh!” muttered Edwin. “What’s up?” Instinctively he resented the invasion, and was alarmed for the privacy of his sacred room, although he knew that Maggie, and Mrs Nixon also, had it at their mercy every day. Nobody ever came into that room while he was in it.
Maggie approached the hearth.
“I think I ought to have a stove too,” she said pleasantly.
“Well, why don’t you?” he replied. “I can get it for you any time.” If Clara had envied his stove, she would have envied it with scoffing rancour, and he would have used sarcasm in response.
“Oh no!” said Maggie quickly. “I don’t really want one.”
“What’s up?” he repeated. He could see she was hesitating.
“Do you know what Clara and auntie are saying?”
“No! What now? I should have thought they’d both said enough to last them for a few days at any rate.”
“Did Albert say anything to you?”
“What about?”
“Well—both Clara and auntie said I must tell you. Albert says he ought to make his will—they all think so.”
Edwin’s lips curled.
“How do they know he hasn’t made it?”
“Has he made it?”
“How do I know? You don’t suppose he ever talks to me about his affairs, do you? Not much!”
“Well—they meant he ought to be asked.”
“Well, let ’em ask him, then. I shan’t.”
“Of course what they say is—you’re the—”
“What do I care for that?” he interrupted her. “So that’s what you were yarning so long about in your room!”
“I can tell you,” said Maggie, “they’re both of them very serious about it. So’s Albert, it seems.”
“They disgust me,” he said briefly. “Here the thing isn’t a day old, and they begin worrying about his will! They go slobbering all over him downstairs, and upstairs it’s nothing but his will they think about... You can’t rush at a man and talk to him about his will like that. At least, I can’t—it’s altogether too thick! I expect some people could. But I can’t. Damn it, you must have some sense of decency!”
Maggie remained calm and benevolent. After a pause she said—
“You see—their point is that later on he mayn’t be able to make a will.”
“Look here,” he questioned amicably, meeting her eyes, “what do you think? What do you think yourself?”
“Oh!” she said, “I should never dream of bothering about it. I’m only telling you what—”
“Of course you wouldn’t!” he exclaimed. “No decent person would. Later on, perhaps, if one could put in a word casually! But not now! ... If he doesn’t make a will he doesn’t make one—that’s all.”
Maggie leaned against the mantelpiece.
“Mind your skirt doesn’t catch fire,” he warned her, in a murmur.
“I told them what you’d say,” she answered his outburst, perfectly unmoved. “I knew what you’d say. But what they say is—it’s all very well foryou. You’re the son, and it seems that if there isn’t a will, if it’s left too late—”
This aspect of the case had absolutely not presented itself to Edwin.
“If they think,” he muttered, with cold acrimony—“if they think I’m the sort of person to take the slightest advantage of being the son—well, they must think it—that’s all! Besides, they can always talk to him themselves—if they’re so desperately anxious.”
“You have charge of everything.”
“Have I! ... And I should like to know what it’s got to do with auntie!”
Maggie lifted her head. “Oh, auntie and Clara, you know—you can’t separate them... Well, I’ve told you.”
She moved to leave.
“I say,” he stopped her, with a confidential appeal. “Don’t you agree with me?”
“Yes,” she replied simply. “I think it ought to be left for a bit. Perhaps he’s made it, after all. Let’s hope so. I’m sure it will save a lot of trouble if he has.”
“Naturally it ought to be left for a bit! Why—just look at him! ... He might be on his blooming dying bed, to hear the way some people talk! Let ’em mention it to me, and I’ll tell ’em a thing or two!”
Maggie raised her eyebrows. She scarcely recognised Edwin.
“I suppose he’ll be all right, downstairs?”
“Right? Of course he’ll be all right!” Then he added, in a tone less pugnacious—for, after all, it was not Maggie who had outraged his delicacy, “Don’t latch the door. Pull it to. I’ll listen out.”
She went silently away.
Searching with his body for the most comfortable deeps of the easy-chair, he set himself to savour “Harper’s.” This monthly reassurance that nearly all was well with the world, and that what was wrong was not seriously wrong, waited on his knees to be accepted and to do its office. Unlike the magazines of his youth, its aim was to soothe and flatter, not to disconcert and impeach. He looked at the refined illustrations of South American capitals and of picturesque corners in Provence, and at the smooth or the rugged portraits of great statesmen and great bridges; all just as true to reality as the brilliant letterpress; and he tried to slip into the rectified and softened world offered by the magazine. He did not criticise the presentment. He did nothing so subtle as to ask himself whether if he encountered the reality he would recognise it from the presentment. He wanted the illusions of “Harper’s.” He desired the comfort, the distraction, and the pleasant ideal longings which they aroused. But they were a medicine which he discovered he was not in a condition to absorb, a medicine therefore useless. There was no effective medicine for his trouble.
His trouble was that he objected to being disturbed. At first he had been pleasantly excited, but now he shrank away at the call to freedom, to action, to responsibility. All the slave in him protested against the knocking off of irons, and the imperative kick into the open air. He saw suddenly that in the calm of regular habit and of subjection, he had arrived at something that closely resembled happiness. He wished not to lose it, knowing that it was already gone. Actually, for his own sake, and quite apart from his father, he would have been ready, were it possible, to cancel the previous twenty-four hours. Everything was ominous, and he wandering about, lost, amid menaces... Why, even his cherished programmes of reading were smashed... Hallam! ... True, to-night was not a night appointed for reading, but to-morrow night was. And would he be able to read to-morrow night? No, a hundred new complications would have arisen to harass him and to dispossess him of his tranquillity!
Destiny was demanding from him a huge effort, unexpected and formidable, and the whole of his being weakly complained, asking to be exempted, but asking without any hope of success; for all his faculties and his desires knew that his conscience was ultimately their master.
Talk to his father about making a will, eh! Besides being disgusting, it was laughable. Those people did not know his father as he did. He foresaw that, even in conducting the routine of business, he would have difficulties with his father over the simplest details. In particular there was one indispensable preliminary to the old man’s complete repose, and his first duty on the morrow would be to endeavour to arrange this preliminary with his father; but he scarcely hoped to succeed.
On the portion of the mantelpiece reserved for books in actual use lay the “Tale of a Tub,” last night so enchanting. And now he had positively forgotten it. He yawned, and prepared for bed. If he could not read “Harper’s,” perhaps he could read Swift.
He lay in bed. The gas was out, the stove was out, and according to his custom he was reading himself to sleep by the light of a candle in a sconce attached to the bed’s head. His eyes ran along line after line and down page after page, and transmitted nothing coherent to his brain.
Then there were steps on the stair. His father was at last coming to bed. He was a little relieved, though he had been quite prepared to go to sleep and leave his father below. Why not? The steps died at the top of the stair, but an irregular creaking continued. After a pause the door was pushed open; and after another pause the figure of his father came into view, breathing loudly.
“Edwin, are you asleep?” Darius asked anxiously. Edwin wondered what could be the matter, but he answered with lightness, “Nearly.”
“I’ve not put th’ light out down yon! Happen you’d better put it out.” There was in his father’s voice a note of dependence upon him, of appeal to him.
“Funny!” he thought, and said aloud, “All right.”
He jumped up. His father thudded off deliberately to his own room, apparently relieved of a fearful oppression, but still fixed in sadness.
On the previous night Edwin had extinguished the hall-gas and come last to bed; and again to-night. But to-night with what a different sentiment of genuine, permanent responsibility! The appealing feebleness of his father’s attitude seemed to give him strength. Surely a man so weak and fallen from tyranny could not cause much trouble! Edwin now had some hope that the unavoidable preliminary to the invalid’s retirement might be achieved without too much difficulty. He braced himself.