The Watchers: A Novel

by A. E. W. Mason

"'I see what is amiss,' he said, wearily, and took away the brandy bottle from his father's elbow. He went to the window, and opening it, emptied the bottle on to the grass beneath the sill. Then he came back to his seat and said suavely to Mr. Glen: 'My father cannot get the better of his old habits; he is drunk very early on Sundays--an unregenerate old put of a fellow as ever I came across.'

"The quarrel followed close upon the heels of that sentence, and occupied the afternoon and was renewed at supper. Adam very violent and blustering; Cullen very cool and composed, and only betraying his passion by the whiteness of his face. He used no oaths; he sat staring at his father with his dark sleepy eyes, and languidly accused him of every crime in the Newgate Calendar, with a great deal of detail as to time and place, and adding any horrible detail which came into his mind. The old man was routed at the last. About the middle of supper he got up from his chair, and going up the stairs shut himself into a room which he had fitted up as a cabin, and where he was used to sit of an evening.

"We were all, as you may guess, inexpressibly relieved when Adam left the parlour, for here it seemed was the quarrel ended. We counted, however, without Cullen. He looked for a moment or two at his father's empty chair, and stood up in his turn.

"'Here's an old rogue for you,' he said in a gentle voice. 'He has no more manners than a nasty pig. I'll teach him some,' and he followed his father up the stairs and into the cabin above. What was said between them we never heard, but we gathered at the foot of the stairs in the hall and listened to their voices. The old man bellowed as though he was in pain, and shook the windows with his noise; Cullen's voice came to us only as a smooth, continuous murmur. For half an hour perhaps we stood thus in the hall--interference would have only made matters worse--and I own that this half hour was not wholly unpleasant to me. Helen, in a word, was afraid, and more than once her hand was laid upon my coat-sleeve, and, touching it, ceased to tremble. She turned to me, it seemed, in that half hour of fear; I was fool enough to think it.

"At length we heard a door opening. Cullen negligently came down the stairs; Adam rushed out after him as far as the head of the stairs, where he stopped.

"'Open the door, one of you!' he bawled. 'Kick him out, Clutterbuck, and we'll see what damned muck-heap his fine manners will lead him to.'

"The outcry brought the servants scurrying into the hall. Adam repeated his order and one of the servants threw open the door.

"'Will you fetch me my boots?' said Cullen, and sitting down in a chair he kicked off his shoes. Then he pulled on his boots deliberately, stood up and felt in his pockets. From one pocket he drew out five guineas, from a second two, from a third four. These eleven guineas he held in his open hand.

"'They belong to you, I think,' he said, softly, poising them in his palm; and before any one could move a step or indeed guess at his intention, he raised his arm and flung them with all his force to where his father stood at the head of the stairs. Two of the guineas cut the old man in the forehead, and the blood ran down his face; the rest sparkled and clattered against the panels behind his head, whence they fell on to the stairs and rolled one by one down into the hall. No one spoke; no one moved. The brutal violence of the action for the moment paralysed every one; even Adam stood shaking at the stair head with his wits wandering. One by one the guineas rolled down the staircase, leaping from step to step, rattling as they leaped; and for a long time it seemed, one whirred and sang in a corner as it span round and settled down upon the boards; and when the coin had ceased to spin, still no one moved, no one spoke. A murmur of waves breaking lazily upon the sand, a breath of air stirring a shrub in the garden, the infinitesimal trumpeting of a gnat, came through the window, bringing as it were tales of things which lived into a room of statues.

"Cullen himself was the first to break the enchantment. He took his watch from his fob and holding it by the ribbon twirled it backwards and forwards. It was a big silver watch, and as he twirled it this way and that, it caught the light, seemed to throw out little sparks of fire, and flashed with a dazzling brightness. The eyes of the company were caught by it; they watched it with a keen attention, not knowing why they watched it; they watched it as it shone and glittered in its revolutions, almost with a sense of expectation, as though something of great consequence was to happen from the twirling of that watch.