Darius shook his head furiously. “I want him—” Sobs choked him.
“I know what he wants,” said Auntie Hamps. “He wants to give dear Edwin the watch, because Edwin’s been so kind to him, helping him to dress every day, and looking after him just like a professional nurse—don’t you, dear?”
Edwin secretly cursed her in the most horrible fashion. But she was right.
“Ye–hes,” Darius confirmed her, on a sob.
“He wants to show his gratitude,” said Auntie Hamps.
“Ye–hes,” Darius repeated, and wiped his eyes.
Edwin stood foolishly holding the watch with its massive Albert chain. He was very genuinely astonished, and he was profoundly moved. His father’s emotion concerning him must have been gathering force for months and months, increasing a little and a little every day in those daily, intimate contacts, until at length gratitude had become, as it were, a spirit that possessed him, a monstrous demon whose wild eagerness to escape defeated itself. And Edwin had never guessed, for Darius had mastered the spirit till the moment when the spirit mastered him. It was out now, and Darius, delivered, breathed more freely. Edwin was proud, but his humiliation was greater than his pride. He suffered humiliation for his father. He would have preferred that Darius should never have felt gratitude, or, at any rate, that he should never have shown it. He would have preferred that Darius should have accepted his help nonchalantly, grimly, thanklessly, as a right. And if through disease, the old man could not cease to be a tyrant with dignity, could not become human without this appalling ceremonial abasement—better that he should have exercised harshness and oppression to the very end! There was probably no phenomenon of human nature that offended Edwin’s instincts more than an open conversion.
Maggie turned nervously away and busied herself with the grate.
“You must put it on,” said Auntie Hamps sweetly. “Mustn’t he, father?”
Darius nodded.