Clayhanger Part 51

Edwin felt again the implication, first rendered by his aunt, and now emphasised by Clara and Albert, that the responsibility of the situation was upon him, and that everybody would look to him to discharge it. He was expected to act, somehow, on his own initiative, and to do something.

"But what is there to do?" he exclaimed, in answer to a question.

"Well, hadn't he better see a doctor?" Clara asked, as if saying ironically, "Hasn't it occurred to you even yet that a doctor ought to be fetched?"

Edwin protested with a movement of impatience--

"What on earth for? He's walking about all right."

They had all been surrept.i.tiously watching Darius from behind the curtains.

"Doesn't seem to be much the matter with him now! That I must say!"

agreed Albert, turning from the window.

Edwin perceived that his brother-in-law was ready to execute one of those changes of front which lent variety to his positiveness, and he addressed himself particularly to Albert, with the persuasive tone and gesture of a man to another man in a company of women--

"Of course there doesn't! No doubt he was upset last night. But he's getting over it. You don't think there's anything in it, do you, Maggie?"

"I don't," said Maggie calmly.

These two words had a great effect.

"Of course if we're going to listen to every tale that's flying about a potbank," said Edwin.

"You're right there, Teddy!" the brother-in-law heartily concurred.

"But Clary thought we'd better--"

"Certainly," said Edwin pacifically, admitting the entire propriety of the visit.

"Why's he wearing his best clothes?" Clara demanded suddenly. And Mrs Hamps showed a sympathetic appreciation of the importance of the question.

"Ask me another!" said Edwin. "But you can't send for a doctor because a man's wearing his best clothes."

Maggie smiled, scarce perceptibly. Albert gave a guffaw. Clara was slightly irritated.

"Poor little dear!" murmured Mrs Hamps, caressing the baby. "Well, I must be going," she sighed.

"We shall see how he goes on," said Edwin, in his role of responsible person.

"Perhaps it will be as well if you say nothing about us calling,"

whispered Mrs Hamps. "We'll just go quietly away. You can give a hint to Mrs Nixon. Much better he shouldn't know."

"Oh! much better!" said Clara.

Edwin could not deny this. Yet he hated the chicane. He hated to observe on the face of the young woman and of the old their instinctive impulses towards chicane, and their pleasure in it. The whole double visit was subtly offensive to him. Why should they gather like this at the first hint that his father was not well? A natural affectionate anxiety... Yes, of course, that motive could not be denied.

Nevertheless, he did not like the tones and the gestures and the whisperings and oblique glances of their gathering.

FOUR.

In the middle of a final miscellaneous conversation, Albert said--

"We'll better be off."

"Wait a moment," said Clara, with a nod to indicate the still busy infant.

Then the door opened, very slowly and cautiously, and as they all observed the movement of the door, they all fell into silence. Darius himself appeared. Un.o.bserved, he had left the garden and come into the house. He stood in the doorway, motionless, astounded, acutely apprehensive, and with an expression of the most poignant sadness on his harsh, coa.r.s.e, pimpled face. He still wore the ridiculous cap and held the newspaper. The broadcloth suit was soiled. His eye wandered among his family, and it said, terrorised, and yet feebly defiant, "What are they plotting against me? Why are they all here like this?"

Mrs Hamps spoke first--

"Well, father, we just popped in to see how you were after all that dreadful business yesterday. Of course I quite understand you didn't want to come in last night. You weren't equal to it." The guilty crude sweetness of her cajoling voice grated excruciatingly on both Edwin and Maggie. It would not have deceived even a monarch.

Darius screwed himself round, and silently went forth again.

"Where are you going, father?" asked Clara.

He stopped, but his features did not relax.

"To the shop," he muttered. His accents were of the most dreadful melancholy.

Everybody was profoundly alarmed by his mere tone and look. This was not the old Darius. Edwin felt intensely the futility and the hollowness of all those rea.s.surances which he had just been offering.

"You haven't had your breakfast, father," said Maggie quietly.

"Please, father! Please don't go like that. You aren't fit," Clara entreated, and rushed towards him, the baby in her arms, and with one hand took his sleeve. Mrs Hamps followed, adding persuasions. Albert said bluffly, "Now, dad! Now, dad!"

Edwin and Maggie were silent in the background.

Darius gazed at Clara's face, and then his glance fell, and fixed itself on her breast and on the head of the powerfully sucking infant, and then it rose to the plumes of Mrs Hamps. His expression of tragic sorrow did not alter in the slightest degree under the rain of sugared remonstrances and cajoleries that the two women directed upon him. And then, without any warning, he burst into terrible tears, and, staggering, leaned against the wall. He was half carried to the sofa, and sat there, ineffably humiliated. One after another looked reproachfully at Edwin, who had made light of his father's condition.

And Edwin was abashed and frightened.

"You or I had better fetch th' doctor," Albert muttered.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER THREE.

THE NAME.

"He mustn't go near business," said Mr Alfred Heve, the doctor, coming to Edwin, who was waiting in the drawing-room, after a long examination of Darius.

Mr Heve was not wearing that gentle and refined smile which was so important a factor in the treatment of his patients and their families, and which he seemed to have caught from his elder brother, the vicar of Saint Peter's. He was a youngish man, only a few years older than Edwin himself, and Edwin's respect for his ability had limits. There were two other doctors in the town whom Edwin would have preferred, but Mr Heve was his father's choice, notable in the successful soothing of querulous stomachs, and it was inevitably Mr Heve who had been summoned. He had arrived with an apprehensive, anxious air. There had been a most distinct nervousness in his voice when, in replying to Edwin's question, he had said, "Perhaps I'd better see him quite alone." Edwin had somehow got it into his head that he would be present at the interview.

In shutting the dining-room door upon Edwin, Mr Heve had nodded timidly in a curious way, highly self-conscious. And that dining-room door had remained shut for half an hour. And now Mr Heve had emerged with the same embarra.s.sment.

"Whether he wants to or not?" Edwin suggested, with a faint smile.

"On no account whatever!" said the doctor, not answering the smile, which died.