Clayhanger

"Of course what they say is--you're the--"

"What do I care for that?" he interrupted her. "So that's what you were yarning so long about in your room!"

"I can tell you," said Maggie, "they're both of them very serious about it. So's Albert, it seems."

"They disgust me," he said briefly. "Here the thing isn't a day old, and they begin worrying about his will! They go s...o...b..ring all over him downstairs, and upstairs it's nothing but his will they think about...

You can't rush at a man and talk to him about his will like that. At least, I can't--it's altogether too thick! I expect some people could.

But I can't. d.a.m.n it, you must have some sense of decency!"

Maggie remained calm and benevolent. After a pause she said--

"You see--their point is that later on he mayn't be able to make a will."

"Look here," he questioned amicably, meeting her eyes, "what do you think? What do you think yourself?"

"Oh!" she said, "I should never dream of bothering about it. I'm only telling you what--"

"Of course you wouldn't!" he exclaimed. "No decent person would. Later on, perhaps, if one could put in a word casually! But not now!... If he doesn't make a will he doesn't make one--that's all."

Maggie leaned against the mantelpiece.

"Mind your skirt doesn't catch fire," he warned her, in a murmur.

"I told them what you'd say," she answered his outburst, perfectly unmoved. "I knew what you'd say. But what they say is--it's all very well for you. You're the son, and it seems that if there isn't a will, if it's left too late--"

This aspect of the case had absolutely not presented itself to Edwin.

"If they think," he muttered, with cold acrimony--"if they think I'm the sort of person to take the slightest advantage of being the son--well, they must think it--that's all! Besides, they can always talk to him themselves--if they're so desperately anxious."

"You have charge of everything."

"Have I!... And I should like to know what it's got to do with auntie!"

Maggie lifted her head. "Oh, auntie and Clara, you know--you can't separate them... Well, I've told you."

She moved to leave.

"I say," he stopped her, with a confidential appeal. "Don't you agree with me?"

"Yes," she replied simply. "I think it ought to be left for a bit.

Perhaps he's made it, after all. Let's hope so. I'm sure it will save a lot of trouble if he has."

"Naturally it ought to be left for a bit! Why--just look at him!...

He might be on his blooming dying bed, to hear the way some people talk!

Let 'em mention it to me, and I'll tell 'em a thing or two!"

Maggie raised her eyebrows. She scarcely recognised Edwin.

"I suppose he'll be all right, downstairs?"

"Right? Of course he'll be all right!" Then he added, in a tone less pugnacious--for, after all, it was not Maggie who had outraged his delicacy, "Don't latch the door. Pull it to. I'll listen out."

She went silently away.

THREE.

Searching with his body for the most comfortable deeps of the easy-chair, he set himself to savour "Harper's." This monthly rea.s.surance that nearly all was well with the world, and that what was wrong was not seriously wrong, waited on his knees to be accepted and to do its office. Unlike the magazines of his youth, its aim was to soothe and flatter,

His trouble was that he objected to being disturbed. At first he had been pleasantly excited, but now he shrank away at the call to freedom, to action, to responsibility. All the slave in him protested against the knocking off of irons, and the imperative kick into the open air.

He saw suddenly that in the calm of regular habit and of subjection, he had arrived at something that closely resembled happiness. He wished not to lose it, knowing that it was already gone. Actually, for his own sake, and quite apart from his father, he would have been ready, were it possible, to cancel the previous twenty-four hours. Everything was ominous, and he wandering about, lost, amid menaces... Why, even his cherished programmes of reading were smashed... Hallam!... True, to-night was not a night appointed for reading, but to-morrow night was.

And would he be able to read to-morrow night? No, a hundred new complications would have arisen to hara.s.s him and to dispossess him of his tranquillity!

Destiny was demanding from him a huge effort, unexpected and formidable, and the whole of his being weakly complained, asking to be exempted, but asking without any hope of success; for all his faculties and his desires knew that his conscience was ultimately their master.

Talk to his father about making a will, eh! Besides being disgusting, it was laughable. Those people did not know his father as he did. He foresaw that, even in conducting the routine of business, he would have difficulties with his father over the simplest details. In particular there was one indispensable preliminary to the old man's complete repose, and his first duty on the morrow would be to endeavour to arrange this preliminary with his father; but he scarcely hoped to succeed.

On the portion of the mantelpiece reserved for books in actual use lay the "Tale of a Tub," last night so enchanting. And now he had positively forgotten it. He yawned, and prepared for bed. If he could not read "Harper's," perhaps he could read Swift.

FOUR.

He lay in bed. The gas was out, the stove was out, and according to his custom he was reading himself to sleep by the light of a candle in a sconce attached to the bed's head. His eyes ran along line after line and down page after page, and transmitted nothing coherent to his brain.

Then there were steps on the stair. His father was at last coming to bed. He was a little relieved, though he had been quite prepared to go to sleep and leave his father below. Why not? The steps died at the top of the stair, but an irregular creaking continued. After a pause the door was pushed open; and after another pause the figure of his father came into view, breathing loudly.

"Edwin, are you asleep?" Darius asked anxiously. Edwin wondered what could be the matter, but he answered with lightness, "Nearly."

"I've not put th' light out down yon! Happen you'd better put it out."

There was in his father's voice a note of dependence upon him, of appeal to him.

"Funny!" he thought, and said aloud, "All right."

He jumped up. His father thudded off deliberately to his own room, apparently relieved of a fearful oppression, but still fixed in sadness.

On the previous night Edwin had extinguished the hall-gas and come last to bed; and again to-night. But to-night with what a different sentiment of genuine, permanent responsibility! The appealing feebleness of his father's att.i.tude seemed to give him strength. Surely a man so weak and fallen from tyranny could not cause much trouble!

Edwin now had some hope that the unavoidable preliminary to the invalid's retirement might be achieved without too much difficulty. He braced himself.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER SIX.

KEYS AND CHEQUES.

Coming up Trafalgar Road at twenty minutes past nine in the bright, astringent morning, Edwin carried by a string a little round parcel which for him contained the inspiring symbol of his new life. By mere accident he had wakened and had risen early, arriving at the shop before half-past seven. He had deliberately lifted on to his shoulders the whole burden of the shop and the printing business, and as soon as he felt its weight securely lodged he became extraordinarily animated and vigorous; even gay. He had worked with a most agreeable sense of energy until nearly nine o'clock; and then, having first called at the ironmonger's, had stepped into the bank at the top of Saint Luke's Square a moment after its doors opened, and had five minutes' exciting conversation with the manager. After which, with righteous hunger in his belly and the symbol in his hand, he had come home to breakfast.

The symbol was such as could be obtained at any ironmonger's: an alarm clock. Mrs Nixon had grown less reliable than formerly as an alarm clock; machinery was now supplanting her.