In all his demeanour there was not the least indication of weakness. He
might never have sat down on the stairs and cried! He might never have
submitted feebly and perhaps gladly to the caresses of Clara and the
soothings of Auntie Hamps! Impossible to convince him that he was cut
off from the world! Impossible even to believe it! Was this the man
that Edwin and the Bank manager and the doctor and all the others had
been disposing of as though he were an automaton accurately responsive
to external suggestion?
"Look here," Edwin knew that he ought to say. "Let it be clearly
understood once for all--I'm the boss now! I have the authority in my
pocket and you must sign it, and quick too! I shall do my best for you,
but I don't mean to be bullied while I'm doing it!"
But he could not say it. Nor could his heart emotionally feel it.
He turned away sheepishly, and then he faced his father again, with a
distressed, apologetic smile.
"Well then," he asked, "who _is_ going to sign cheques?"
"I am," said Darius.
"But you know what the doctor said! You know what you promised him!"
"What did the doctor say?"
"He said you weren't to do anything at all. And you said you wouldn't.
What's more, you said you didn't want to."
Darius sneered.
"I reckon I can sign cheques," he said. "And I reckon I can endorse
cheques... So it's got to that! I can't sign my own name now. I shall
show some of you whether I can't sign my own name!"
"You know it isn't simply signing them. You know if I bring cheques up
for you to sign you'll begin worrying about them at once, and--and
there'll be no end to it. You'd much better--"
"Shut up!" It was like a clap of thunder.
Edwin hesitated an instant and then went towards the house. He could
hear his father muttering "Whipper-snapper!"
"And I'll tell you another thing," Darius bawled across the garden--
assuredly his voice would reach the street. "It was like your impudence
to go to the Bank like that without asking me first! `They tell you at
the Bank!' `They tell you at the Bank!' Anything else they told you at
the Bank?" Then a snort.
Edwin was humiliated and baffled. He knew not what he could do. The
situation became impossible immediately it was faced. He felt also very
resentful, and resentment was capturing him, when suddenly an idea
seemed to pull him by the sleeve: "All this is part of his disease.
It's part of his disease that he can't see the point of a thing." And
the idea was insistent, and under its insistence Edwin's resentment
changed to melancholy. He said to himself that he must think of his
father as a child. He blamed himself, in a sort of pleasurable luxury
of remorse, for all the anger which during all his life he had felt
against his father. His father's unreasonableness had not been a fault,
but a misfortune. His father had been not a tyrant, but a victim. His
brain must always have been wrong! And now he was doomed, and the worst
part of his doom was that he was unaware of it. And in the thought of
Darius ignorantly blustering within the walled garden, in the spring
sunshine, condemned, cut off, helpless at the last, pitiable at the
last, there was something inexpressibly poignant. And the sunshine
seemed a shame; and Edwin's youth and mental vigour seemed a shame.
Nevertheless Edwin knew not what to do.
"Master Edwin," said Mrs Nixon, who was rubbing the balustrade of the
stairs, "you munna' cross him like that." She jerked her head in the
direction of the garden. The garden door stood open.
If he had not felt solemn and superior, he could have snapped off that
head of hers.
"Is my breakfast ready?" he asked. He hung up his hat, and absently
took the little parcel which he had left on the marble ledge of the
umbrella-stand.