THE COMPLETE CLAYHANGER SERIES: Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways, These Twain & The Roll Call. Arnold BennettЧитать онлайн книгу.
they tried to remember in time that he was a victim and not a criminal; they would remember after the careless remark and after the curt gesture, when it was too late. His malady obsessed them: it was in the air of the house, omnipresent; it weighed upon them, corroding the nerve and exasperating the spirit. Now and then, when Darius had vented a burst of irrational anger, they would say to each other with casual bitterness that really he was too annoying. Once, when his demeanour towards the new servant had strongly suggested that he thought her name was Bathsheba, Mrs Nixon herself had ‘flown out’ at him, and there had been a scene which the doctor had soothed by discreet professional explanations. Maggie’s difficulty was that he was always there, always on the spot. To be free of him she must leave the house; and Maggie was not fond of leaving the house.
Edwin meant to inform him briefly of his intention to go to London, but such was the power of habit that he hesitated; he could not bring himself to announce directly this audacious and unprecedented act of freedom, though he knew that his father was as helpless as a child in his hands. Instead, he began to talk about the renewal of the lease of the premises in Duck Square, as to which it would be necessary to give notice to the landlord at the end of the month.
“I’ve been thinking I’ll have it made out in my own name,” he said. “It’ll save you signing, and so on.” This in itself was a proposal sufficiently startling, and he would not have been surprised at a violent instinctive protest from Darius; but Darius seemed not to heed.
Then both Edwin and Maggie noticed that he was trying to hold a sausage firm on his plate with his knife, and to cut it with his fork.
“No, no, father!” said Maggie gently. “Not like that!”
He looked up, puzzled, and then bent himself again to the plate. The whole of his faculties seemed to be absorbed in a great effort to resolve the complicated problem of the plate, the sausage, the knife and the fork.
“You’ve got your knife in the wrong hand,” said Edwin impatiently, as to a wilful child.
Darius stared at the knife and at the fork, and he then sighed, and his sigh meant, “This business is beyond me!” Then he endeavoured to substitute the knife for the fork, but he could not.
“See,” said Edwin, leaning over. “Like this!” He took the knife, but Darius would not loose it. “No, leave go!” he ordered. “Leave go! How can I show you if you don’t leave go?”
Darius dropped both knife and fork with a clatter. Edwin put the knife into his right hand, and the fork into his left; but in a moment they were wrong again. At first Edwin could not believe that his father was not indulging deliberately in naughtiness.
“Shall I cut it up for you, father?” Maggie asked, in a mild, persuasive tone.
Darius pushed the plate towards her.
When she had cut up the sausage, she said—
“There you are! I’ll keep the knife. Then you can’t get mixed up.”
And Darius ate the sausage with the fork alone. His intelligence had failed to master the original problem presented to it. He ate steadily for a few moments, and then the tears began to roll down his cheek, and he ate no more.
This incident, so simple, so unexpected, and so dramatic, caused the most acute distress. And its effect was disconcerting in the highest degree. It reminded everybody that what Darius suffered from was softening of the brain. For long he had been a prisoner in the house and garden. For long he had been almost mute. And now, just after a visit which usually acted upon him as a tonic, he had begun to lose the skill to feed himself. Little by little he was demonstrating, by his slow declension from it, the wonder of the standard of efficiency maintained by the normal human being.
Edwin and Maggie avoided one another, even in their glances. Each affected the philosophical, seeking to diminish the significance of the episode. But neither succeeded. Of the two years allotted to Darius, one had gone. What would the second be?
Four.
In his bedroom, after tea, Edwin fought against the gloomy influence, but uselessly. The inherent and appalling sadness of existence enveloped and chilled him. He gazed at the rows of his books. He had done no regular reading of late. Why read? He gazed at the screen in front of his bed, covered with neat memoranda. How futile! Why go to London? He would only have to come back from London! And then he said resistingly, “I will go to London.” But as he said it aloud, he knew well that he would not go. His conscience would not allow him to depart. He could not leave Maggie alone with his father. He yielded to his conscience unkindly, reluctantly, with no warm gust of unselfishness; he yielded because he could not outrage his abstract sense of justice.
From the window he perceived Maggie and Janet Orgreave talking together over the low separating wall. And he remembered a word of Janet’s to the effect that she and Maggie were becoming quite friendly and that Maggie was splendid. Suddenly he went downstairs into the garden. They were talking in attitudes of intimacy; and both were grave and mature, and both had a little cleft under the chin. Their pale frocks harmonised in the evening light. As he approached, Maggie burst into a girlish laugh. “Not really?” she murmured, with the vivacity of a young girl. He knew not what they were discussing, nor did he care. What interested him, what startled him, was the youthful gesture and tone of Maggie. It pleased and touched him to discover another Maggie in the Maggie of the household. Those two women had put on for a moment the charming, chattering silliness of schoolgirls. He joined them. On the lawn of the Orgreaves, Alicia was battling fiercely at tennis with an elegant young man whose name he did not know. Croquet was deposed; tennis reigned.
Even Alicia’s occasional shrill cry had a mournful quality in the languishing beauty of the evening.
“I wish you’d tell your father I shan’t be able to go tomorrow,” Edwin said to Janet.
“But he’s told all of us you are going!” Janet exclaimed.
“Shan’t you go?” Maggie questioned, low.
“No,” he murmured. Glancing at Janet, he added, “It won’t do for me to go.”
“What a pity!” Janet breathed.
Maggie did not say, “Oh! But you ought to! There’s no reason whatever why you shouldn’t!” By her silence she contradicted the philosophic nonchalance of her demeanour during the latter part of the meal.
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