With a tremendous effort, Darius mastered his sobs, and began once more, “I want ye—”
He tried several times, but his emotion overcame him each time before he could force the message out. It was always too quick for him. Silent, he could control it, but he could not simultaneously control it and speak.
“Never mind,” said Edwin. “We’ll see about that tomorrow.” And he wondered what bizarre project affecting the watch had entered his father’s mind. Perhaps he wanted it set a quarter of an hour fast.
Darius dropped the watch on the eider-down, and sighed in despair, and fell back on the pillow and shut his eyes. Edwin restored the watch to the night-table.
Later, he crept into the dim room. Darius was snoring under the twilight of the gas. Like an unhappy child, he had found refuge in sleep from the enormous, infantile problems of his existence. And it was so pathetic, so distressing, that Edwin, as he gazed at that beard and those gold teeth, could have sobbed too.
Volume Three--Chapter Fourteen.
The Watch.
When Edwin the next morning, rather earlier than usual on Sundays, came forth from his bedroom to go into the bathroom, he was startled by a voice from his father’s bedroom calling him. It was Maggie’s. She had heard him open his door, and she joined him on the landing.