“I should look well,” Arthur said in an agony of dejection, “among the chickens.”
Bannerman made another gesture of impatience. “Might I ask what your instructions are, then?”
“Haven’t I told you to sell?” The words came with a terrible disillusionment, and Arthur rose abruptly as though to terminate the whole affair. “Sell the Law too. Gowlan wants that as well. Let him take the whole damn lot. He can have me as underviewer too, for all I care.”
Outside the door, sprawling on his knees, Richard Barras gaped and stared. Richard’s face was very red now, and terribly confused. He did not fully gauge what was happening within. But he grasped with his poor muddled brain that there was trouble at the Neptune which he alone could readjust. Moreover, they had all forgotten about him and his power to achieve the impossible. It was splendid. He sat back on his haunches on the tiled floor of the hall. They were not talking any more inside now and he was a little tired from sprawling and he wanted greater comfort to enable him to think.
Suddenly, as he squatted there, the door of the dining-room opened and they all came out. The unexpectedness of it slumped Richard over upon his back. His dressing-gown flew up exposing his lean shanks, his underwear, his very person. The whole pitiful travesty of the man was there, shrunken yet distorted, cunning yet inane. But Richard did not mind. He sat there, as he was, on the cold tiles of the vestibule, and he looked very sly and he laughed. He sniggered.
Every face expressed concern and Hilda ran forward crying:
“My poor father!”
Teasdale and Hilda helped him to his feet and assisted him upstairs to his room. Bannerman, one eyebrow lifted, shrugged his shoulders and took a formal good-bye of Arthur.
Arthur remained standing in the hall, his eyes fixed on the yellowish eyes of Adam Todd who, all those years before, had implored him not to swim against the stream. He said suddenly:
“Let’s go into Tynecastle, Todd. I think I want to get drunk.”
SEVENTEEN
For the next few days Richard lay very low. After the incident entered in his writing-book as Discovery at Observation No. 2, Hilda had spoken gravely upon the advisability of keeping him in bed. He was so feeble now and so uncertain upon his legs that Hilda insisted, before she left for London, he must at least remain in his bedroom. That alarmed Richard for Richard was aware that he could not conduct operations from his bedroom. So he feigned most exemplary behaviour, was good and docile and did whatever Aunt Carrie told him.
All his thoughts were now concentrated upon his great new idea for regenerating his Neptune pit. The whole of that Friday forenoon he was so excited by his idea he could not contain himself. As he sat in his room a hammer kept beating in his head, and his scalp was tight like the skin of a drum. Once he almost thought the electricity had got him but he lay back and closed his eyes until at last they turned it off.
When he came round he found Arthur in the room standing before him.
“Are you all right, father?” Arthur asked and he looked at his father with sadness filmed over the fixity of his face. Arthur could not behold this poor shrunken silly old man, nor feel that sly and bloodshot eye wavering across his, without sadness. He said:
“I thought I’d come up and have a word with you, father. Can you understand what I say?”
Could he understand! — the insolence sent the blood bursting again through Richard’s head. He drew within himself at once.
“Not now.”
“I’d like to straighten things out for you, father,” Arthur said. “It might make it easier for you. You’re restless and so excited. You do not realise that you’re not well.”
“I am well,” Richard said angrily. “I was never better in my life.”
“It struck me, father,” Arthur went on, wishing to break as gently as he could the impending disruption, “that it mightn’t be a bad thing if we gave up the Law and took a smaller place. You see—”
“Not now,” Richard interrupted. “To-morrow, perhaps. I won’t listen. Some other time. I simply won’t listen. Not now.” He lay back again in his chair with closed eyes and would not listen to Arthur until Arthur at last gave up and went out of the room. It was not his intention to talk to Arthur yet. No, indeed! He would dictate his terms to Arthur later, when the regeneration of the Neptune was complete. Here he opened his eyes with a start, his remote yet feverish stare transfixing the blank ceiling vacantly. What was it? Ah, he remembered. The vacancy left his face, the dull eye watered and gleamed; why had he not thought of it before, why not, why? The pit, of course, his Neptune pit! It was superb, his terrible yet brilliant idea. He must defy them all by going to the Neptune in person.
Tremulous with agitation and excitement, he rose and went downstairs. So far so good. There was no one about; everyone was occupied and worried and distressed. He slunk into the hall, where, hurriedly, he took his hard hat and pressed it upon his head. His hair had not been cut for some time and it stuck out behind his hard hat in a tangled fringe. But Richard did not mind. With great secrecy he let himself out by the front door and stood balancing upon the steps. The drive lay before him with the gate open and unguarded beyond. It was all forbidden ground, dangerous ground, far away from the lawn and the laburnum tree. Both Hilda and Dr. Lewis had made it seriously forbidden and dangerous. The whole thing was a terrible undertaking. But Richard did not mind that either. He compassed the steps and the drive in one stuttering rush and was out, at last, and free. He staggered, it is true, and almost fell; but what did that matter, his staggering, when he was so soon to be rid of it, staggering, hammering, electricity, the whole horrible conspiracy against him?
He walked up the drive towards the top of Sluice Dene. He was much too clever to take the ordinary road to the Neptune, for that road would certainly be watched and he would be intercepted. No, no! he knew better than that. He took the long way round, the way which went behind the woods of Sluice Dene and across the fields and the Snook and into the Neptune from the back. He exulted in the brilliance of his counterstroke. Wonderful, wonderful!
But it had been raining heavily and the road he took was muddy and bad. The heavy rain had left big puddles in the ruts and Richard could not lift his feet. Soon he was splashed with water and mud. He floundered along through the water and the mud with his little starts and staggers until he reached the stile at the top of Sluice Dene.
At the stile he drew up. The stile presented an unconsidered difficulty. Richard saw that he would have to climb the stile. But Richard could not raise his foot more than six inches at the utmost and the height of the step upon the stile was at least eighteen. Richard could not climb the stile and tears came trembling into his old dazed eyes.
Tears and fury; oh, a terrible fury. He was not defeated, he was not. The stile was merely part of the conspiracy; he must defeat it too, the stile, the conspiring stile. Trembling with rage Richard raised his arms and fell upon the stile. His belly hit the top bar of the stile, for a second he was balanced, as though swimming, upon the top bar of the stile, then he toppled and was over. Wonderful, wonderful, he was over! He fell heavily on his face and head into a puddle of slush and he lay panting and stunned and slobbering while the hammer and electricity worked at him through the slush and the mud.
He lay quite a long time there, for the big hammer seemed to have burst something inside his head, and the mud was cool against the outside of the burst place in his head. But he got up at last, oh yes, he got up, elbow, knees and a dreadful clamber to his feet. The earth swayed slightly and he had lost his hat and his face and clothes and hands were terribly daubed with mud. But never mind, never mind all that. He was up again and walking. He was walking to the Neptune.