"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.