Clayhanger

"Go to yer dinner, I tell ye."

Stifford had three-quarters of an hour for his dinner.

TWO.

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 j.a.panned 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 bra.s.s 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 a.s.suredly 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

"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 s.n.a.t.c.hed his hat off its hook, pushed violently past his father and, sticking his hands deep in his pockets, strode into the street.

THREE.

In four minutes he was hammering on the front door of the new house.

Maggie opened, in alarm. Edwin did not see how alarmed she was by his appearance.

"What--"

"Father thinks I've been stealing his d.a.m.ned money!" Edwin snapped, in a breaking voice. The statement was not quite accurate, but it suited his boiling anger to put it in the present tense instead of in the past.

He hesitated an instant in the hall, throwing a look behind at Maggie, who stood entranced with her hand on the latch of the open door. Then he bounded upstairs, and shut himself in his room with a tremendous bang that shook the house. He wanted to cry, but he would not.

n.o.body disturbed him till about two o'clock, when Maggie knocked at the door, and opened it, without entering.

"Edwin, I've kept your dinner hot."

"No, thanks." He was standing with his legs wide apart on the hearth rug.

"Father's had his dinner and gone."

"No, thanks."

She closed the door again.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

THE SEQUEL.

"I say, Edwin," Maggie called through the door.

"Well, come in, come in," he replied gruffly. And as he spoke he sped from the window, where he was drumming on the pane, to the hearthrug, so that he should have the air of not having moved since Maggie's previous visit. He knew not why he made this manoeuvre, unless it was that he thought vaguely that Maggie's impression of the seriousness of the crisis might thereby be intensified.

She stood in the doorway, evidently placatory and sympathetic, and behind her stood Mrs Nixon, in a condition of great mental turmoil.

"I think you'd better come and have your tea," said Maggie firmly, and yet gently. She was soft and stout, and incapable of a.s.serting herself with dignity; but she was his elder, and there were moments when an unusual, scarce-perceptible quality in her voice would demand from him a particular attention.

He shook his head, and looked sternly at his watch, in the manner of one who could be adamant. He was astonished to see that the hour was a quarter past six.

"Where is he?" he asked.

"Father? He's had his tea and gone back to the shop. Come along."

"I must wash myself first," said Edwin gloomily. He did not wish to yield, but he was undeniably very hungry indeed.

Mrs Nixon could not leave him alone at tea, worrying him with offers of specialities to tempt him. He wondered who had told the old thing about the affair. Then he reflected that she had probably heard his outburst when he entered the house. Possibly the pert, nice niece also had heard it. Maggie remained sewing at the bow-window of the dining-room while he ate a plenteous tea.

"Father said I could tell you that you could pay yourself an extra half-crown a week wages from next Sat.u.r.day," said Maggie suddenly, when she saw he had finished. It was always Edwin who paid wages in the Clayhanger establishment.