Late on another Saturday afternoon in the following March, when Darius
had been ill nearly two years, he and Edwin and Albert were sitting
round the remains of high tea together in the dining-room. Clara had
not been able to accompany her husband on what was now the customary
Saturday visit, owing to the illness of her fourth child. Mrs Hamps
was fighting chronic rheumatism at home. And Maggie had left the table
to cosset Mrs Nixon, who of late received more help than she gave.
Darius sat in dull silence. The younger men were talking about the
Bursley Society for the Prosecution of Felons, of which Albert had just
been made a member. Whatever it might have been in the past, the
Society for the Prosecution of Felons was now a dining-club and little
else. Its annual dinner, admitted to be the chief oratorical event of
the year, was regarded as strictly exclusive, because no member, except
the president, had the right to bring a guest to it. Only `Felons,' as
they humorously named themselves, and the reporters of the "Signal,"
might listen to the eloquence of Felons. Albert Benbow, who for years
had been hearing about the brilliant funniness of the American Consul at
these dinners, was so flattered by his Felonry that he would have been
ready to put the letters S P F after his name.
"Oh, you'll have to join!" said he to Edwin, kindly urgent, like a man
who, recently married, goes about telling all bachelors that they
positively must marry at once. "You ought to get it fixed up before the
next feed."
Edwin shook his head. Though he, too, dreamed of the Felons' Dinner as
a repast really worth eating, though he wanted to be a Felon, and
considered that he ought to be a Felon, and wondered why he was not
already a Felon, he repeatedly assured Albert that Felonry was not for
him.
"You're a Felon, aren't you, dad?" Albert shouted at Darius.
"Oh yes, father's a Felon," said Edwin. "Has been ever since I can
remember."
"Did ye ever speak there?" asked Albert, with an air of good-humoured
condescension.
Darius's elbow slipped violently off the tablecloth, and a knife fell to
the floor and a plate after it. Darius went pale.
"All right! All right! Don't be alarmed, dad!" Albert reassured him,
picking up the things. "I was asking ye, did ye ever speak there--make
a speech?"
"Yes," said Darius heavily.
"Did you now!" Albert murmured, staring at Darius. And it was exactly
as if he had said, "Well, it's extraordinary that a foolish physical and
mental wreck such as you are now, should ever have had wit and courage
enough to rise and address the glorious Felons!"
Darius glanced up at the gas, with a gesture that was among Edwin's
earliest recollections, and then he fixed his eyes dully on the fire,
with head bent and muscles lax.
"Have a cigarette--that'll cheer ye up," said Albert.
Darius made a negative sign.
"He's very tired, seemingly," Albert remarked to Edwin, as if Darius had
not been present.
"Yes," Edwin muttered, examining his father. Darius appeared ten years
older than his age. His thin hair was white, though the straggling
beard that had been allowed to grow was only grey. His face was sunken
and pale, but even more striking was the extreme pallor of the hands
with their long clean fingernails, those hands that had been red and
rough, tools of all work. His clothes hung somewhat loosely on him, and
a shawl round his shoulders was awry. The comatose melancholy in his
eyes was acutely painful to see--so much so that Edwin could not bear to
look long at them. "Father," Edwin asked him suddenly, "wouldn't you
like to go to bed?"