And now it seemed marvellous that he had ever had the legs to get to
Hillport and to Toft End. He existed in a stupor of dull reflection,
from pride pretending to read and not reading, or pretending to listen
and not listening, and occasionally making a remark which was inapposite
but which had to be humoured. And as the weeks passed his children's
manner of humouring him became increasingly perfunctory, and their
movements in putting right the negligence of his attire increasingly
brusque. Vainly they tried to remember in time that he was a victim and
not a criminal; they would remember after the careless remark and after
the curt gesture, when it was too late. His malady obsessed them: it
was in the air of the house, omnipresent; it weighed upon them,
corroding the nerve and exasperating the spirit. Now and then, when
Darius had vented a burst of irrational anger, they would say to each
other with casual bitterness that really he was too annoying. Once,
when his demeanour towards the new servant had strongly suggested that
he thought her name was Bathsheba, Mrs Nixon herself had `flown out' at
him, and there had been a scene which the doctor had soothed by discreet
professional explanations. Maggie's difficulty was that he was always
there, always on the spot. To be free of him she must leave the house;
and Maggie was not fond of leaving the house.

Edwin meant to inform him briefly of his intention to go to London, but
such was the power of habit that he hesitated; he could not bring
himself to announce directly this audacious and unprecedented act of
freedom, though he knew that his father was as helpless as a child in
his hands. Instead, he began to talk about the renewal of the lease of
the premises in Duck Square, as to which it would be necessary to give
notice to the landlord at the end of the month.

"I've been thinking I'll have it made out in my own name," he said.
"It'll save you signing, and so on." This in itself was a proposal
sufficiently startling, and he would not have been surprised at a
violent instinctive protest from Darius; but Darius seemed not to heed.

Then both Edwin and Maggie noticed that he was trying to hold a sausage
firm on his plate with his knife, and to cut it with his fork.

"No, no, father!" said Maggie gently. "Not like that!"

He looked up, puzzled, and then bent himself again to the plate. The
whole of his faculties seemed to be absorbed in a great effort to
r