He heard his father's heavy and clumsy footstep on the landing. The old
man seemed to wander uncertainly a little, and then he pushed open
Edwin's door with a brusque movement and entered the room. The two
exchanged a look. They seldom addressed each other, save for an
immediate practical purpose, and they did not address each other now.
But Darius ejaculated "Um!" as he glanced around. They had no intimacy.
Darius never showed any interest in his son as an independent human
being with a developing personality, though he might have felt such an
interest; and Edwin was never conscious of a desire to share any of his
ideas or ideals with his father, whom he was content to accept as a
creature of inscrutable motives. Now, he resented his father's
incursion. He considered his room as his castle, whereof his rightful
exclusive dominion ran as far as the door-mat; and to placate his pride
Darius should have indicated by some gesture or word that he admitted
being a visitor on sufferance. It was nothing to Edwin that Darius
owned the room and nearly everything in it. He was generally nervous in
his father's presence, and his submissiveness only hid a spiritual
independence that was not less fierce for being restrained. He thought
Darius a gross fleshly organism, as he indeed was, and he privately
objected to many paternal mannerisms, of eating, drinking, breathing,
eructation, speech, deportment, and garb. Further, he had noted, and
felt, the increasing moroseness of his father's demeanour. He could
remember a period when Darius had moods of grim gaiety, displaying rough
humour; these moods had long ceased to occur.
"So this is how ye've fixed yerself up!" Darius observed.
"Yes," Edwin smiled, not moving from the hearthrug, and not ceasing to
oscillate on heels and toes.
"Well, I'll say this. Ye've got a goodish notion of looking after
yerself. When ye can spare a few minutes to do a bit downstairs--" This
sentence was sarcastic and required no finishing.
"I was just coming," said Edwin. And to himself, "What on earth does he
want here, making his noises?"
With youthful lack of imagination and of sympathy, he quite failed to
perceive the patent fact that his father had been drawn into the room by
the very same instinct which had caused Edwin to stand on the hearthrug
in an idle bliss of contemplation. It did not cross his mind that his
father too was during those days going through wondrous mental
experiences, that his father too had begun a new life, that his father
too was intensely proud of the house and found pleasure in merely
looking at it, and looking at it again, and at every corner of it.
A glint of gold attracted the eye of Darius to the second shelf of the
left-hand bookcase, and he went towards it with the arrogance of an
autocrat whose authority recognises no limit. Fourteen fine calf-backed
volumes stood on that shelf in a row; twelve of them were uniform, the
other two odd. These books were taller and more distinguished than any
of their neighbours. Their sole possible rivals were half a dozen
garishly bound Middle School prizes, machine-tooled, and to be mistaken
for treasures only at a distance of several yards.
Edwin trembled, and loathed himself for trembling. He walked to the
window.
"What be these?" Darius inquired.
"Oh! Some books I've been picking up."
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