I want to ask you,’ Mr. Lord proceeded, ‘whether you consider Miss. French a suitable wife for your brother? Just give me a plain yes or no.’
‘I certainly don’t,’ replied the girl, barely subduing the tremor of her voice.
‘Both my children are not fools, thank Heaven! Now tell me, if you can, what fault you have to find with the “young lady,” as your brother calls her?’
‘For one thing, I don’t think her Horace’s equal. She can’t really be called a lady.’
‘You are listening?’
Horace bit his lip in mortification, and again his head swung doggedly from side to side.
‘We might pass over that,’ added Mr. Lord. ‘What about her character? Is there any good point in her?’
‘I don’t think she means any harm. But she’s silly, and I’ve often thought her selfish.’
‘You are listening?’
Horace lost patience.
‘Then why do you pretend to be friends with her?’ he demanded almost fiercely.
‘I don’t,’ replied his sister, with a note of disdain. ‘We knew each other at school, and we haven’t altogether broken off, that’s all.’
‘It isn’t all!’ shouted the young man on a high key. ‘If you’re not friendly with her and her sisters, you’ve been a great hypocrite. It’s only just lately you have begun to think yourself too good for them. They used to come here, and you went to them; and you talked just like friends would do. It’s abominable to turn round like this, for the sake of taking father’s side against me!’
Mr. Lord regarded his son contemptuously. There was a rather long silence; he spoke at length with severe deliberation.
‘When you are ten years older, you’ll know a good deal more about young women as they’re turned out in these times. You’ll have heard the talk of men who have been fools enough to marry choice specimens. When common sense has a chance of getting in a word with you, you’ll understand what I now tell you. Wherever you look now-a-days there’s sham and rottenness; but the most worthless creature living is one of these trashy, flashy girls—the kind of girl you see everywhere, high and low—calling themselves “ladies,”—thinking themselves too good for any honest, womanly work. Town and country, it’s all the same. They’re educated; oh yes, they’re educated! What sort of wives do they make, with their education? What sort of mothers are they? Before long, there’ll be no such thing as a home. They don’t know what the word means. They’d like to live in hotels, and trollop about the streets day and night. There won’t be any servants much longer; you’re lucky if you find one of the old sort, who knows how to light a fire or wash a dish. Go into the houses of men with small incomes; what do you find but filth and disorder, quarrelling and misery? Young men are bad enough, I know that; they want to begin where their fathers left off, and if they can’t do it honestly, they’ll embezzle or forge. But you’ll often find there’s a worthless wife at the bottom of it—worrying and nagging because she has a smaller house than some other woman, because she can’t get silks and furs, and wants to ride in a cab instead of an omnibus. It is astounding to me that they don’t get their necks wrung. Only wait a bit; we shall come to that presently!’
It was a rare thing for Stephen Lord to talk at such length. He ceased with a bitter laugh, and sat down again in his chair. Horace and his sister waited.
‘I’ve no more to say,’ fell from their father at length. ‘Go and talk about it together, if you like.’
Horace moved sullenly towards the door, and with a glance at his sister went out. Nancy, after lingering for a moment, spoke.
‘I don’t think you need have any fear of it, father.’
‘Perhaps not. But if it isn’t that one, it’ll be another like her. There’s not much choice for a lad like Horace.’
Nancy changed her purpose of leaving the room, and drew a step nearer.
‘Don’t you think there might have been?’
Mr. Lord turned to look at her.
‘How? What do you mean?’
‘I don’t want to make you angry with me—’
‘Say what you’ve got to say,’ broke in her father impatiently.
‘It isn’t easy, when you so soon lose your temper.’
‘My girl,’—for once he gazed at her directly—‘if you knew all I have gone through in life, you wouldn’t wonder at my temper being spoilt.—What do you mean? What could I have done?’
She stood before him, and spoke with diffidence.
‘Don’t you think that if we had lived in a different way, Horace and I might have had friends of a better kind?’
‘A different way?—I understand. You mean I ought to have had a big house, and made a show. Isn’t that it?’
‘You gave us a good education,’ replied Nancy, still in the same tone, ‘and we might have associated with very different people from those you have been speaking of; but education alone isn’t enough. One must live as the better people do.’
‘Exactly. That’s your way of thinking. And how do you know that I could afford it, to begin with?’
‘Perhaps I oughtn’t to have taken that for granted.’
‘Perhaps not. Young women take a good deal for granted now a-days. But supposing you were right, are you silly enough to think that richer people are better people, as a matter of course?’
‘Not as a matter of course,’ said Nancy. ‘But I’m quite sure—I know from what I’ve seen—that there’s more chance of meeting nice people among them.’
‘What do you mean by “nice”?’ Mr. Lord was lying back in his chair, and spoke thickly, as if wearied. ‘People who can talk so that you forget they’re only using words they’ve learnt like parrots?’
‘No. Just the contrary. People who have something to say worth listening to.’
‘If you take my advice, you’ll pay less attention to what people say, and more to what they do. What’s the good of a friend who won’t come to see you because you live in a small house? That’s the plain English of it. If I had done as I thought right, I should never have sent you to school at all. I should have had you taught at home all that’s necessary to make a good girl and an honest woman, and have done my best to keep you away from the kind of life that I hate. But I hadn’t the courage to act as I believed. I knew how the times were changing, and I was weak enough to be afraid I might do you an injustice. I did give you the chance of making friends among better people than your father. Didn’t I use to talk to you about your school friends, and encourage you when they seemed of the right kind? And now you tell me that they don’t care for your society because you live in a decent, unpretending way. I should think you’re better without such friends.’
Nancy reflected, seemed about to prolong the argument, but spoke at length in another voice.
‘Well, I will say good-night, father.’
It was not usual for them to see each other after dinner, so that a good-night could seldom be exchanged. The girl, drawing away, expected a response; she saw her father nod, but he said nothing.
‘Good-night, father,’ she repeated from a distance.
‘Good-night, Nancy, good-night,’ came in impatient reply.
CHAPTER 6