u can't understand the circumstances without a
chapter of statements, I'm sorry for you. A great deal is due to you, I
know; but I can't pay a jot of it while you go on rating my father like
a madman.'

'Harry!' either my aunt or Janet breathed a warning.

I replied that I was past mincing phrases. The folly of giving the
tongue an airing was upon me: I was in fact invited to continue, and
animated to do it thoroughly, by the old man's expression of face, which
was that of one who says, 'I give you rope,' and I dealt him a liberal
amount of stock irony not worth repeating; things that any cultivated
man in anger can drill and sting the Boeotian with, under the delusion
that he has not lost a particle of his self-command because of his
coolness. I spoke very deliberately, and therefore supposed that the
words of composure were those of prudent sense. The error was manifest.
The women saw it. One who has indulged his soul in invective will not,
if he has power in his hand, be robbed of his climax with impunity by a
cool response that seems to trifle, and scourges.

I wound up by thanking my father for his devotion to me: I deemed it, I
said, excessive and mistaken in the recent instance, but it was for me.

Upon this he awoke from his dreamy-looking stupefaction.

'Richie does me justice. He is my dear boy. He loves me: I love him.
None can cheat us of that. He loves his wreck of a father. You have
struck me to your feet, Mr. Beltham.'

'I don't want to see you there, sir; I want to see you go, and not
stand rapping your breast-bone, sounding like a burst drum, as you are,'
retorted the unappeasable old man.

I begged him in exasperation to keep his similes to himself.

Janet and my aunt Dorothy raised their voices.

My father said: 'I am broken.'

He put out a swimming hand that trembled when it rested, like that of an
aged man grasping a staff. I feared for a moment he was acting, he spoke
so like himself, miserable though he appeared: but it was his well-known
native old style in a state of decrepitude.

'I am broken,' he repeated. 'I am like the ancient figure of mortality
entering the mouth of the tomb on a sepulchral monument, somewhere, by
a celebrated sculptor: I have seen it: I forget the city. I shall
presently forget names of men. It is not your abuse, Mr. Beltham. I
should have bowed my head to it till the storm passed. Your facts... Oh!
Miss Beltham, this last privilege to call you dearest of huma