AS Gervase left the house Mr Thursley came in, and they exchanged a few words on the stairs, to the distant sound of which Madeline listened with considerable anxiety. Her father had a position in the matter which her lover had not thought of. But she, who knew him better, was very well aware that he would permit no such rash marriage as Gervase suggested. Mr Thursley, like his class, believed in money. He had no confidence in the vague hopes of romantic youth; and how his opinion of Gervase would be affected by the young man’s new resolution, his daughter scarcely liked to inquire. He had not at any time entertained a high opinion of Gervase, so far as sense and stability went. He had disapproved his education wholly, though he had himself given a sort of parallel education to his own child. It was his opinion that it did not matter about a woman, but that a man should be brought up to his business, without any nonsense about it. In all likelihood, had he possessed a son, he would have yielded like Mr Burton to the temptation of giving that son the best of everything, and himself the pride of knowing that no gentleman’s son in England was more highly trained. But Mr Thursley had not been exposed to this temptation, and he thought he would have been superior to it. It was only half-a-dozen words which passed between him and his intended son-in-law, and then Madeline, breathless, listened to his heavy step coming up-stairs. She would have to tell him everything that had been told to her—and how would he take it? Would he put his veto immediately upon the union? Would he forbid her to think of Gervase more? This was quite possible, Madeline knew. Being herself, however, a young woman of the nineteenth century, and quite indisposed to give up the will which had been so carefully developed and cultivated, she also knew that if prohibition was possible, obedience was not, and that some means of reconciling matters must be the present aim of all her thoughts. She was far from having any rebellious inclination to defy her father. It would be painful to her even to disobey him; but to give up her own life and future, was entirely out of any reckoning which this girl of the period had ever made. At the same time, she neither meant to defy nor to vex her father if she could help it. This is an age of compromises, and she did not fear that some practicable arrangement, some way of managing matters, might be attained.
He came in with nothing in his face from which his mind could be divined, looking just as usual, having come back from that “look-in” at his club, which was one of the habits of his widowed life, formed before Madeline had grown up to bear him company. He said the night was cold, and gave a quite unnecessary poke to the blazing fire, and sat down in his usual chair. Not till he had gone through all these manœuvres and stretched out his long limbs for a minute or two in enjoyment of the blaze, did he speak. “You have had young Burton with you again, I see,” was his utterance when at last he spoke.
“Of course, papa. I had no more than a peep of him before.”
“Well,” said Mr Thursley, with a laugh, “a peep of him would have sufficed for me. I suppose he was telling you all about America?”
“Yes, papa.”
“Every young man nowadays thinks he can fathom a new country with a glance. And what did he think of the Yankees, your young man?”
“Oh, of course, papa, he gives a very different account from that of the old rough time when we thought all Americans Yankees. Of course he likes some things and dislikes others—as one does in every new place.”
“You’re all so deuced philosophical nowadays—not so much as a good honest prejudice to be met with,” said the father. “Well, and any more? How did he like their business ways?”
“From what I could glean, not at all, papa; but we had other things to talk about.”
“Oh, to be sure; other things before which the aspect of a great country dwindles into nothing.”
“Not that,” said Madeline, faltering a little, “but of course more important personally to ourselves.”
“That is quite true, my dear; and I oughtn’t to say a word. Of course it’s not so pleasant to me as to you; I needn’t say I’ll miss you,—neither need I say that nothing could make me stand in your way. I suppose you’ve been settling everything?”
“We should not have been so hasty in any circumstances,” she said, with a blush. “But as it happens, we couldn’t—settle anything.”
“Ah! how’s that?”
“I don’t know what you will think,” said Madeline, doubtfully. “I am a little disturbed myself. Gervase has had a great deal of time to think it all over.”
Her father, who had been lying back in his chair, the embodiment of luxurious repose, in the glow of the firelight, here sat up abruptly, with a start of indignation. “What!” he cried; “do you mean to tell me that the fellow—has thought better of——”
“No, no, no!” cried Madeline, with a flush of mingled shyness and laughter,—“papa, don’t be ridiculous, please. What could possibly come between Gervase and me?”
He grumbled, and growled a little, half internally, inarticulately, over the imagined and yet scarcely imagined insult. “I never had your confidence in him, Maddie. Too soft, too soft altogether—no backbone. Not half good enough, not half. Well—what had he got to say?”
“He has had, as I think, papa, too much time to think it all over; and the conclusion he has come to is—— I don’t think it will please you; and naturally it has not pleased his father.”
“Out with it, child!”
“He can’t make up his mind—he can’t satisfy his conscience—to go into the business, papa.”
Mr Thursley’s answer was a long whistle of astonishment. Words seemed to fail him. He got up and stood before the fire till the glare scorched him. Then he threw himself down into his chair again; and then, finally, in tones half of laughter, half of consternation, “Not go into the business! And what objection has he to the business?” he said.
Madeline made no reply. She had not yet found words in which to excuse her lover, and though her heart rebelled against the laugh, she could oppose nothing to the astonishment, the half dismay, half irritation, with which her father spoke.
“The young idiot,” said Mr Thursley; “this is quarrelling with his bread and butter with a vengeance. And what does Burton say?”
“Mr Burton,” said Madeline, in subdued tones, “is very angry, and perhaps that’s not wonderful——”
“Wonderful! Why, what else could he be?”
“And says, I believe, that except his present allowance, Gervase is to expect nothing more from him.”
“I wonder he stops at that! I’d leave him, if he were mine, to try how he liked it—without any allowance at all.”
“No, papa; I am sure you would not—after training him—in a way that was sure to end like this.”
“Well, there’s something in that,” said Mr Thursley. “Eton is all very well—and so, no doubt, is Oxford—for scholars or schoolmasters, or people who have nothing to do: but it has always been my maxim, as you know, that a man should be brought up for his business. It’s old Burton that is the biggest fool after all.”
“Still,” said Madeline, with a little impatience, “you brought me up in as nearly as possible the same way.”
“You! A girl is quite a different matter. I know what you are going to say, my dear; that girls don’t count. That’s not what I mean at all. You’re a very great luxury, Maddie, the greatest luxury a man like me can have. Even to hear you discharge your little arrows at business men, and scorn business ways——”
“I never do that,” she cried, hastily. “I have always taught myself to think that a British merchant—should be the highest, the most honourable kind of man.”
Her father laughed. “Perhaps, on the other hand, that’s a little bit high-flown,” he said. “A British merchant—as you say—is no better and no worse than other people. But even your high-falutin—and even your little sniffs and scorns—are a luxury to me. Not in a man, though—that sort of thing won’t do in a man. A man must stick to his business, make the most of it, earn money enough to indulge his wife and his daughters to the top of their bent, to have them as fine as they can be made, little savantes, critics of everything, as grand in their way as princesses. The women like you, my dear; and the men, stiff old remorseless business fellows like myself, letting nothing stand between us and a good profit.”
“Papa, nothing but honour and justice, and even mercy.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Well, I don’t say by fair means or foul, as some do; but as for mercy, that’s not a business-like quality, my dear.”
“Oh, don’t say so, papa. I am sure you would always be kind. Gervase says that the methods are what he cannot bear—that he always thought, as I did, everything was high-minded and honourable, but—I suppose he must have found out things: and then he says that, on the other side, profit, mere profit, is the god. He means in America, of course—and to make money the only end; not in your way, but by fair means—or foul, which you said some people—— It might have been different with Gervase if he had known only your methods, papa.”
This Madeline said, partly out of a true and genuine faith in her father, which indeed was beyond question; but partly also to propitiate him, to make him believe that in his dealings her lover would have found nothing but honour.
“Well,” he said, “there’s truth in that. I don’t know all the outs and ins of Burton’s business. There may be things in it which a fanciful young man—— I’ve pointed out to you before, Maddie, that Gervase was a very fanciful young man, with no end of whims in his head.”
“Whatever he is, papa,” said Madeline, with a blush, yet a proud erection of the head, “it is certain that he is the only man in the world for me.”
“Well, well,” said Mr Thursley, “well, well. I had nothing to say against it before, and I don’t know that I have anything now. But he must change his mind, you know. He’s done it frequently before. He must just have to do it again. My daughter is not going to marry a man with five hundred a-year.”
To this Madeline made absolutely no reply.
“You understand,” said Mr Thursley, getting up, “that about that there’s nothing to be said. You don’t leave this house but for a house as good. You don’t go from having everything your own way here, to pinching and scraping and counting your pence in another man’s house. Come, Maddie, you are a girl of sense, and you must talk sense to him. What would the pair of you luxurious highly bred young people, wanting everything of the best, what could you do on five hundred a-year?”
“I should have something of my own, papa,” she said, with downcast eyes.
“Not from me, Madeline. I should not encourage any such venture by the gift of a sixpence. You would have that ten thousand pounds of course, which your wise aunt left you to make ducks and drakes with—if you have not made ducks and drakes of it already.”
“I have done only what Mr Mentore has advised me to do.”
“You’re safe enough in old Mentore’s hands; but—granted you have that—it would not double your husband’s large income. Nine hundred a-year. My dear, what would you do upon that, Gervase and you?”
“I suppose, papa,” said Madeline, “there are thousands to whom it would be wealth, in comparison with those to whom it is poverty.”
“What does that matter?” he cried. “What does any general rule matter? You are individuals, Gervase and you; and to you it would be poverty. I will not consent to marry my daughter to a man who has only five hundred a-year, and no prospect of any more.”
“Papa,” said Madeline, timidly, “his father—would not shut him out for ever. He must be his heir.”
“And so must you be my heir,” said Mr Thursley. “Do you think it safe to calculate on that? I may not die for the next twenty years.”
“Papa!” cried Madeline. “Father!” with quick-springing tears in her eyes.
“Yes, yes, I know. You wouldn’t grudge me a day of it. But Burton is no older than I am; and to wait twenty years for dead men’s shoes is not enlivening. Perhaps, by the way, there is something else your young man means to do,” he added, pausing on his way to the door. “Perhaps he has other plans. He may be going to make his fortune in some other way?”
“I don’t know,” said Madeline, with some embarrassment. She would not pour forth the full measure of Gervase’s iniquity all at once. His conclusion that it was his duty, for the sake of others, to do nothing, had been bewildering enough to herself. She did not feel strong enough to lay bare before her father that strange determination, which was so exceedingly confusing even to her own intelligence.
“He may mean to paint a great picture like Millais, or get a £20,000 cheque for a book like Macaulay,” said Mr Thursley, with contempt in his voice.
“You may be sure,” cried Madeline, “that even if he were bent upon writing books or painting pictures, he would never say that. Papa,” she added after a moment’s silence, “you have so much sense and understanding——”
“Thank you, my dear. I am glad to have your good opinion.”
“Oh, don’t laugh at me. Papa, if you were to speak to Gervase.”
“I don’t believe in speaking, Madeline—especially to young men.”
“To his father then—to Mr Burton. If you were to speak to him—to suggest something. Surely there are more ways than one way. If Gervase were made to consider; if he were shown things as they are; if Mr Burton would perhaps find some means—— Papa, I don’t know what to suggest; but you know. All might be set right, I am sure, if you would but find a compromise.”
“Well, my dear, I can’t have you cry, that’s clear,” he said, kissing her. “Good night, Madeline, and go to bed. I’ll think what I can do. It can’t just rest here.”