Darius combined the slip with the book and made a total.
"Petty cash," he muttered shortly.
Edwin produced the petty cash-book, a volume of very trifling
importance.
"Now bring me the till."
Edwin went out of the cubicle and brought the till, which was a large
and battered japanned cash-box with a lid in two independent parts, from
its well-concealed drawer behind the fancy-counter. Darius counted the
coins in it and made calculations on blotting-paper, breathing
stertorously all the time.
"What on earth are you trying to get at?" Edwin asked, with innocent
familiarity. He thought that the Club-share crisis had been postponed
by one of his father's swift strange caprices.
Darius turned on him glaring: "I'm trying to get at where ye got the
brass from to buy them there books as I saw last night. Where _did_ ye
get it from? There's nowt wrong here, unless ye're a mighty lot
cleverer than I take ye for. Where did ye get it from? Ye don't mean
to tell me as ye saved it up!"
Edwin had had some shocks in his life. This was the greatest. He could
feel his cheeks and his hands growing dully hot, and his eyes smarting;
and he was suddenly animated by an almost murderous hatred and an
inexpressible disgust for his father, who in the grossness of his
perceptions and his notions had imagined his son to be a thief.
"Loathsome beast!" he thought savagely.
"I'm waiting," said his father.
"I've drawn my Club money," said Edwin.
For an instant the old man was at a loss; then he understood. He had
entirely forgotten the maturing of the Club share, and assuredly he had
not dreamed that Edwin would accept and secrete so vast a sum as fifty
pounds without uttering a word. Darius had made a mistake, and a bad
one; but in those days fathers were never wrong; above all they never
apologised. In Edwin's wicked act of concealment Darius could choose
new and effective ground, and he did so.
"And what dost mean by doing that and saying nowt? Sneaking--"
"What do you mean by calling me a thief?" Edwin and Darius were equally
startled by this speech. Edwin knew not what had come over him, and
Darius, never having been addressed in such a dangerous tone by his son,
was at a loss.
"I never called ye a thief."
"Yes, you did! Yes, you did!" Edwin nearly shouted now. "You starve
me for money, until I haven't got sixpence to bless myself with. You
couldn't get a man to do what I do for twice what you pay me. And then
you call me a thief. And then you jump down my throat because I spend a
bit of money of my own." He snorted. He knew that he was quite mad,
but there was a strange drunken pleasure in this madness.
"Hold yer tongue, lad!" said Darius, as stiffly as he could. But
Darius, having been unprepared, was intimidated. Darius vaguely
comprehended that a new and disturbing factor had come into his life.
"Make a less row!" he went on more strongly. "D'ye want all th' street
to hear ye?"
"I won't make a less row. You make as much noise as you want, and I'll
make as much noise as I want!" Edwin cried louder and louder. And then
in bitter scorn, "Thief, indeed!"
"I never called ye a--"
"Let me come out!" Edwin shouted. They were very close together.
Darius saw that his son's face was all drawn. Edwin snatched his hat
off its hook, pushed violently past his father and, sticking his hands
deep in his pockets, strode into the street.
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