“And then there would be house-furnishing, and so on,” Edwin continued.
“What about that fifty pounds?” Darius curtly inquired.
Edwin was startled. Never since the historic scene had Darius made the slightest reference to the proceeds of the Building Society share.
“I haven’t spent all of it,” Edwin muttered.
Do what he would with his brain, the project of marriage and house-tenancy and a separate existence obstinately presented itself to him as fantastic and preposterous. Who was he to ask so much from destiny? He could not feel that he was a man. In his father’s presence he never could feel that he was a man. He remained a boy, with no rights, moral or material.
“And if as ye say she’s got money of her own—” Darius remarked, and was considerably astonished when the boy walked straight out of the room and closed the door.
It was his last grain of common sense that took Edwin in silence out of the room.
Miserable, despicable baseness! Did the old devil suppose that he would be capable of asking his wife to find the resources which he himself could not bring? He was to say to his wife: “I can only supply a pound a week, but as you’ve got money it won’t matter.” The mere notion outraged him so awfully that if he had stayed in the room there would have been an altercation and perhaps a permanent estrangement.
As he stood furious and impotent in the hall, he thought, with his imagination quickened by the memory of Mr Shushions: “When you’re old, and I’ve got you”—he clenched his fists and his teeth—“when I’ve got you and you can’t help yourself, by God it’ll be my turn!”
And he meant it.