Part 29 (1/2)
”Your freedom? What freedom is there in being poor?” Lady Agnes fiercely demanded. ”Talk of that when Julia puts everything she possesses at your feet!”
”I can't talk of it, mother--it's too terrible an idea. And I can't talk of _her_, nor of what I think of her. You must leave that to me. I do her perfect justice.”
”You don't or you'd marry her to-morrow,” she pa.s.sionately argued.
”You'd feel the opportunity so beautifully rare, with everything in the world to make it perfect. Your father would have valued it for you beyond everything. Think a little what would have given _him_ pleasure.
That's what I meant when I spoke just now of us all. It wasn't of Grace and Biddy I was thinking--fancy!--it was of him. He's with you always; he takes with you, at your side, every step you take yourself. He'd bless devoutly your marriage to Julia; he'd feel what it would be for you and for us all. I ask for no sacrifice and he'd ask for none. We only ask that you don't commit the crime----!”
Nick Dormer stopped her with another kiss; he murmured ”Mother, mother, mother!” as he bent over her. He wished her not to go on, to let him off; but the deep deprecation in his voice didn't prevent her saying:
”You know it--you know it perfectly. All and more than all that I can tell you you know.” He drew her closer, kissed her again, held her as he would have held a child in a paroxysm, soothing her silently till it could abate. Her vehemence had brought with it tears; she dried them as she disengaged herself. The next moment, however, she resumed, attacking him again: ”For a public man she'd be the perfect companion. She's made for public life--she's made to s.h.i.+ne, to be concerned in great things, to occupy a high position and to help him on. She'd back you up in everything as she has backed you in this. Together there's nothing you couldn't do. You can have the first house in England--yes, the very first! What freedom _is_ there in being poor? How can you do anything without money, and what money can you make for yourself--what money will ever come to you? That's the crime--to throw away such an instrument of power, such a blessed instrument of good.”
”It isn't everything to be rich, mother,” said Nick, looking at the floor with a particular patience--that is with a provisional docility and his hands in his pockets. ”And it isn't so fearful to be poor.”
”It's vile--it's abject. Don't I know?”
”Are you in such acute want?” he smiled.
”Ah don't make me explain what you've only to look at to see!” his mother returned as if with a richness of allusion to dark elements in her fate.
”Besides,” he easily went on, ”there's other money in the world than Julia's. I might come by some of that.”
”Do you mean Mr. Carteret's?” The question made him laugh as her feeble reference five minutes before to the House of Lords had done. But she pursued, too full of her idea to take account of such a poor subst.i.tute for an answer: ”Let me tell you one thing, for I've known Charles Carteret much longer than you and I understand him better. There's nothing you could do that would do you more good with him than to marry Julia. I know the way he looks at things and I know exactly how that would strike him. It would please him, it would charm him; it would be the thing that would most prove to him that you're in earnest. You need, you know, to do something of that sort,” she said as for plain speaking.
”Haven't I come in for Harsh?” asked Nick.
”Oh he's very canny. He likes to see people rich. _Then_ he believes in them--then he's likely to believe more. He's kind to you because you're your father's son; but I'm sure your being poor takes just so much off.”
”He can remedy that so easily,” said Nick, smiling still. ”Is my being kept by Julia what you call my making an effort for myself?”
Lady Agnes hesitated; then ”You needn't insult Julia!” she replied.
”Moreover, if I've _her_ money I shan't want his,” Nick unheedingly remarked.
Again his mother waited before answering; after which she produced: ”And pray wouldn't you wish to be independent?”
”You're delightful, dear mother--you're very delightful! I particularly like your conception of independence. Doesn't it occur to you that at a pinch I might improve my fortune by some other means than by making a mercenary marriage or by currying favour with a rich old gentleman?
Doesn't it occur to you that I might work?”
”Work at politics? How does that make money, honourably?”
”I don't mean at politics.”
”What do you mean then?”--and she seemed to challenge him to phrase it if he dared. This demonstration of her face and voice might have affected him, for he remained silent and she continued: ”Are you elected or not?”
”It seems a dream,” he rather flatly returned.
”If you are, act accordingly and don't mix up things that are as wide asunder as the poles!” She spoke with sternness and his silence appeared again to represent an admission that her sternness counted for him.
Possibly she was touched by it; after a few moments, at any rate, during which nothing more pa.s.sed between them, she appealed to him in a gentler and more anxious key, which had this virtue to touch him that he knew it was absolutely the first time in her life she had really begged for anything. She had never been obliged to beg; she had got on without it and most things had come to her. He might judge therefore in what a light she regarded this boon for which in her bereft old age she humbled herself to be a suitor. There was such a pride in her that he could feel what it cost her to go on her knees even to her son. He did judge how it was in his power to gratify her; and as he was generous and imaginative he was stirred and shaken as it came over him in a wave of figurative suggestion that he might make up to her for many things. He scarcely needed to hear her ask with a pleading wail that was almost tragic: ”Don't you see how things have turned out for us? Don't you know how unhappy I am, don't you know what a bitterness----?” She stopped with a sob in her voice and he recognised vividly this last tribulation, the unhealed wound of her change of life and her lapse from eminence to flatness. ”You know what Percival is and the comfort I have of him. You know the property and what he's doing with it and what comfort I get from _that_! Everything's dreary but what you can do for us.
Everything's odious, down to living in a hole with one's girls who don't marry. Grace is impossible--I don't know what's the matter with her; no one will look at her, and she's so conceited with it--sometimes I feel as if I could beat her! And Biddy will never marry, and we're three dismal women in a filthy house, and what are three dismal women, more or less, in London?”