And at the same time he was extremely sad, only less sad than his
father. When he allowed his thoughts to rest for an instant on his
father he was so moved that he could almost have burst into a sob--just
one terrific sob. And he would say in his mind, "What a damned shame!
What a damned shame!" Meaning that destiny had behaved ignobly to his
father, after all. Destiny had no right to deal with a man so
faithlessly. Destiny should do either one thing or the other. It
seemed to him that he was leading his father by a string to his
humiliation. And he was ashamed: ashamed of his own dominance and of
his father's craven submissiveness. Twice they were stopped by hearty
and curious burgesses, and at each encounter Edwin, far more than
Darius, was anxious to pretend that the harsh hand of Darius still
firmly held the sceptre.
When they entered the shining mahogany interior of the richest Bank in
the Five Towns, hushed save for a discreet shovelling of coins, Edwin
waited for his father to speak, and Darius said not a word, but stood
glumly quiescent, like a victim in a halter. The little wiry dancing
cashier looked; every clerk in the place looked; from behind the third
counter, in the far recesses of the Bank, clerks looked over their
ledgers; and they all looked in the same annoying way, as at a victim in
a halter; in their glance was all the pitiful gloating baseness of human
nature, mingled with a little of its compassion.
Everybody of course knew that `something had happened' to the successful
steam-printer.
"Can we see Mr Lovatt?" Edwin demanded curtly. He was abashed and he
was resentful.
The cashier jumped on all his springs into a sudden activity of
deference.
Presently the manager emerged from the glazed door of his room, pulling
his long whiskers.
"Oh, Mr Lovatt," Edwin began nervously. "Father's just come along--"
They were swallowed up into the manager's parlour. It might have been a
court of justice, or a dentist's surgery, or the cabinet of an insurance
doctor, or the room at Fontainebleau where Napoleon signed his
abdication--anything but the thing it was. Happily Mr Lovatt had a
manner which never varied; he had only one manner for all men and all
occasions. So that Edwin was not distressed either by the deficiencies
of amateur acting or by the exhibition of another's self-conscious
awkwardness. Nevertheless when his father took the pen to write he was
obliged to look studiously at the window and inaudibly hum an air. Had
he not done so, that threatening sob might have burst its way out of
him.
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