The cold bath, the early excursion into the oblong of meadow that was
beginning to be a garden, the brisk stimulating walk down Trafalgar Road
to business,--all these novel experiences, which for a year Edwin had
been anticipating with joyous eagerness as bliss final and sure, had
lost their savour on the following morning. He had been ingenuous
enough to believe that he would be happy in the new house--that the new
house somehow meant the rebirth of himself and his family. Strange
delusion! The bath-splashings and the other things gave him no
pleasure, because he was saying to himself all the time, "There's going
to be a row this morning. There's going to be a regular shindy this
morning!" Yet he was accustomed to his father's scenes... Not a word
at breakfast, for which indeed Darius was very late. But a thick cloud
over the breakfast-table! Maggie showed that she felt the cloud. So
did even Mrs Nixon. The niece alone, unskilled in the science of
meteorology, did not notice it, and was pertly bright. Edwin departed
before his father, hurrying. He knew that his father, starting from the
luxurious books, would ask him brutally what he meant by daring to draw
out his share from the Club without mentioning the affair, and
particularly without confiding to his safe custody the whole sum
withdrawn. He knew that his father would persist in regarding the fifty
pounds as sacred, as the ark of the covenant, and on the basis of the
alleged outrage would build one of those cold furies that seemed to give
him so perverse a delight. On the other hand, despite his father's
peculiar intonation of the names of Edwin's authors--Voltaire and
Byron--he did not fear to be upbraided for possessing himself of loose
and poisonous literature. It was a point to his father's credit that he
never attempted any kind of censorship. Edwin never knew whether this
attitude was the result of indifference or due to a grim sporting
instinct.
There was no sign of trouble in the shop until noon. Darius was very
busy superintending the transformation of the former living-rooms
upstairs into supplementary workshops, and also the jobbing builder was
at work according to the plans of Osmond Orgreave. But at five minutes
past twelve--just before Stifford went out to his dinner--Darius entered
the ebonised cubicle, and said curtly to Edwin, who was writing there--
"Show me your book."
This demand surprised Edwin. `His' book was the shop-sales book. He
was responsible for it, and for the petty cash-book, and for the shop
till. His father's private cash-book was utterly unknown to him, and he
had no trustworthy idea of the financial totality of the business; but
the management of the shop till gave him the air of being in his
father's confidence accustomed him to the discipline of anxiety, and
also somewhat flattered him.
He produced the book. The last complete page had not been added up.
"Add this," said his father.
Darius himself added up the few lines on the incomplete page.
"Stiff;" he shouted, "bring me the sales-slip."
The amounts of sales conducted by Stifford himself were written on a
slip of paper from which Edwin transferred the items at frequent
intervals to the book.
"Go to yer dinner," said Darius to Stifford, when he appeared at the
door of the cubicle with the slip.
"It's not quite time yet, sir."
"Go to yer dinner, I tell ye."
Stifford had three-quarters of an hour for his dinner.
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