Volume Three--Chapter Thirteen.
The Journey Upstairs.
Late on another Saturday afternoon in the following March, when Darius had been ill nearly two years, he and Edwin and Albert were sitting round the remains of high tea together in the dining-room. Clara had not been able to accompany her husband on what was now the customary Saturday visit, owing to the illness of her fourth child. Mrs Hamps was fighting chronic rheumatism at home. And Maggie had left the table to cosset Mrs Nixon, who of late received more help than she gave.
Darius sat in dull silence. The younger men were talking about the Bursley Society for the Prosecution of Felons, of which Albert had just been made a member. Whatever it might have been in the past, the Society for the Prosecution of Felons was now a dining-club and little else. Its annual dinner, admitted to be the chief oratorical event of the year, was regarded as strictly exclusive, because no member, except the president, had the right to bring a guest to it. Only ‘Felons,’ as they humorously named themselves, and the reporters of the “Signal,” might listen to the eloquence of Felons. Albert Benbow, who for years had been hearing about the brilliant funniness of the American Consul at these dinners, was so flattered by his Felonry that he would have been ready to put the letters S P F after his name.
“Oh, you’ll have to join!” said he to Edwin, kindly urgent, like a man who, recently married, goes about telling all bachelors that they positively must marry at once. “You ought to get it fixed up before the next feed.”
Edwin shook his head. Though he, too, dreamed of the Felons’ Dinner as a repast really worth eating, though he wanted to be a Felon, and considered that he ought to be a Felon, and wondered why he was not already a Felon, he repeatedly assured Albert that Felonry was not for him.
“You’re a Felon, aren’t you, dad?” Albert shouted at Darius.
“Oh yes, father’s a Felon,” said Edwin. “Has been ever since I can remember.”
“Did ye ever speak there?” asked Albert, with an air of good-humoured condescension.
Darius’s elbow slipped violently off the tablecloth, and a knife fell to the floor and a plate after it. Darius went pale.