Darius nodded, quite benevolently. He seemed to have forgotten his deep grievance against Edwin in the matter of cheque-signing.
“Duncalf’s got it,” he murmured after a moment. Duncalf was the town clerk and a solicitor.
So the will was made! And he had submissively signed away all control over all monetary transactions. What more could he do, except expire with the minimum of fuss? Truly Darius, in the local phrase, was now ‘laid aside’! And of all the symptoms of his decay the most striking and the most tragic, to Edwin, was that he showed no curiosity whatever about business. Not one single word of inquiry had he uttered.
“You’ll want shaving,” said Edwin, in a friendly way.
Darius passed a hand over his face. He had ceased years ago to shave himself, and had a subscription at Dick Jones’s in Aboukir Street, close by the shop.
“Aye!”
“Shall I send the barber up, or shall you let it grow?”
“What do you think?”
“Oh!” Edwin drawled, characteristically hesitating. Then he remembered that he was the responsible head of the family of Clayhanger. “I think you might let it grow,” he decided.
And when he had issued the verdict, it seemed to him like a sentence of sequestration and death on his father... ‘Let it grow! What does it matter?’ Such was the innuendo.