Part 4

“I don’t see much penalty about it,” Bertha remarked with great truth. “But, of course, in a way it’s very much better to have married later in life. One has so much more to _give_ one’s children. I was over thirty when Hazel was born, and I’m simply thankful for it. All the added experience and confidence one had acquired--it’s all helped to make and form her little life. I do feel so strongly that a mother ought absolutely to _make_ her child, as it were--help it and guide its development along the lines meant for it. You know----”

“Hazel always seems to me such an extraordinarily self-contained little girl,” Nina interrupted languidly.

“So she is. She gets that from me. She’s nearly as reserved as I was at her age--except, of course, with me.”

“Oh, but Bertie dear, don’t you think she gets it from her father? Frederick always strikes me as _the_ most reserved man of my acquaintance. Though perhaps that’s only the effect of my own reserve, which I believe reacts on shy people.”

The quality popularly described as “reserve” is one to which the majority of people cling passionately. Murderer, thief, atheist if you will, but always strongly, impenetrably reserved.

“I give myself away only when I am at the piano,” Nina pursued her reflective way. “One’s art can never lie.”

“You mustn’t malign yourself, dear,” said Bertie with a hand laid fondly on her friend’s. “I assure you no one could really look upon you as reserved--for one moment. I’ve never thought you so.”

Nina gave her well-known childlike smile, and said “Dear Bertie!” with her head rather on one side.

“But you haven’t told me about Morris yet.”

“Oh, he writes from time to time--poor boy. You know--the kind of letters that tell one nothing. It’s so curious that so many many others should come to one for help or sympathy or advice and one’s own child prefer to turn elsewhere. At least I suppose he turns elsewhere. Morris is very expansive--quite unlike me,” said Nina firmly in parenthesis, “and makes every sort and kind of friend, and confides in them all without discrimination. Some day he will know, I suppose, that he has only one true friend in all the world--his mother.”

Bertha was suitably silent for a moment.

Then she asked tentatively: “What does he mean to do later on? Oxford, I suppose.”

“I suppose so. Of course, he really is most tiresome about his music, poor boy; he thinks he wants to be a professional pianist.”

“Toujours?” inquired Bertha with raised eyebrows.

“Alas, yes! Of course it’s a boyish fancy and won’t last--besides, when has Morris ever stuck to _anything_? But you know what opposition is to any boy of that age--he simply enjoys it and poses as a misunderstood genius--not that I should say so to anyone on earth but you, Bertie.”

“Nina dear, of course I know that,” warmly said her friend, who was perfectly well aware of the extensive area covered by Nina’s deepest confidence.

“My dear,” Nina Severing declared, with wide-open brown eyes, “it’s _absolute_ nonsense. As you know, I should be the very last person on earth to quench one single spark of the Divine Fire in anyone, least of all in my own nearest and dearest. But Morris has got absolutely nothing more than an inherited gift, and a certain amount of technical skill because I insisted, absolutely insisted, upon his having really good teaching from the time he was quite a little boy. He hasn’t got the temperament to get over the footlights, to begin with.”

Bertha Tregaskis, at the slight tinge of expertism discernable in Nina Severing’s tones, at once retorted firmly:

“Ah! getting over the ‘floats,’ in the slang of the profession, isn’t easy in any art, as I know from my own small dramatic experiences.”

She had some reputation as an amateur actress.

“No, is it?” agreed Nina gently. “I wish you’d talk to Morris a little, Bertie dear, you _are_ so sensible, and I know he’d listen to you. He always looks upon _me_ as too young, more like a contemporary than a mother, you know. I suppose it’s very natural.”

She sighed.

“Well,” laughed Bertha tolerantly with raised eyebrows, and contrived to insert into the monosyllable a distinct quality of scepticism with regard to Nina’s supposition.

“Anyhow,” she resumed briskly, after a moment in which to allow Nina fully to appreciate the subtlety of her retort, “I really think Morris might do worse than have a talk with me. I’ve helped plenty of boys, and of girls, too, for the matter of that, in my time. When Hazel comes out, I tell her, she’ll be cut out by her old mother. My dear, young men are always telling me they adore me, but, as I say, it’s quite safe to adore an old gargoyle.”

She laughed heartily, and Nina murmured with the deprecating smile she kept for such speeches, “How ridiculous you are, Bertie. Do enrol my poor Morris into the regiment of worshippers. I’m sure you could. It would do him a lot of good to have his thoughts taken off himself.”

“That’s what one feels,” agreed Bertha. “Self-absorption is a disease with modern youth.”

“Introspection carried to the verge of mania,” returned Nina, no less psychologically. “When one thinks of what one was at that sort of age, oneself!”

Bertha, however, appeared to feel that one might think of what one was at that sort of age too frequently, and offered her friend no encouragement to pursue this retrospective path.

Instead, she rose from her low seat on the terrace and remarked matter-of-factly that it was too cold to sit still for long.

“Let’s go and have a look at the chicks.”

“Are their lessons over?” inquired Nina Severing, drawing her furs closer.

She had been wearing them loosely over one shoulder, but such is the effect of suggestion.

“Certainly, or I shouldn’t go near them. You know what a disciplinarian I am, Nina, and nothing is ever allowed to interfere with regular hours for my little people. It’s more than half the battle, in my opinion. Lessons, a good long walk twice a day in all weathers, and plenty of healthy play in the garden. Hazel thrives on it, and I mean the other two to do the same.”

She gave her ready, jovial laugh.

“Lazy little cats, both of them! Rosamund would like to sit over a story-book all day, and Frances says that walks make her legs ache. I don’t believe they ever set foot outside the garden in Monmouthshire. Their mother was half a Hungarian, which, I suppose, accounts for it.”

“My sympathies are frightfully cosmopolitan, I’m afraid,” sighed Nina, “but I do think you’re absolutely right about the children, of course. Fresh air and exercise are so important at that age.”

“At any age,” laughed her friend. “_I_ couldn’t get through my work without my daily tramp.”

Nina, with great skill, immediately assumed an appearance irresistibly recalling a fragile hothouse plant.

“As you know,” she murmured, “_my_ poor little art has always had to thrive in spite of my wretched health. I’m always trying to think myself a robust woman, but everyone always laughs at me for so much as suggesting such a thing.”

She imparted a tinge of pathos to her slight laugh.

Bertha Tregaskis, who did not for a moment suppose that Nina had ever tried to think herself a robust woman in her life, laughed also, but with a marked absence of pathos. Before she could frame a further reply, however, they saw Miss Blandflower and her three pupils.

“Who are these like stars appearing?” absently murmured Miss Blandflower, within sight of them. “Run, Hazel dear, there’s mother.”

Nobody ran, and the meeting took place with modified enthusiasm.

Nina Severing, who, in the abstract, adored children, did not find very much to say to them, but interspersed her infrequent remarks, which generally took the form of questions, with numerous ejaculatory “darlings” which gave a tone of intimacy to the proceedings.

“Do you remember Morris, darling?” she amiably inquired of Hazel. “He’s coming back very soon for his Christmas holidays. Won’t that be lovely?”

A month later this agreeable forecast was realized, and Morris Severing was causing his mother acute anxiety in the billiard-room at Pensevern.

“My dearest boy, won’t you believe that I know best?”

“Not in this case,” said her son with an implication unjustified of their joint past, of innumerable other cases in the background where he had unhesitatingly accepted his mother’s judgments.

“My poor romantic darling,” cried the unwise Nina; “because you know nothing of life, _nothing_, you think that the career of a musician would amuse you, and that it would be all easy success and triumph. But remember that I _know_, and that a far, far greater talent than yours is necessary to be of any use at all, my poor boy.”

“That isn’t the point,” retorted Morris, white with fury. “I don’t wish to be a popular success. In fact I’m not suggesting a public career at all, for the present, but simply a year or two’s study in Germany.”

“Because you think that it may lead to your becoming a professional. If you weren’t absolutely breaking my heart, Morris, I could laugh at the futility of such an idea, positively laugh,” cried Nina tragically.

“Mother, how can you talk about it’s breaking your heart? What _can_ it matter to you if I choose to make music my career instead of some rotten profession for which I have no aptitude?”

“Aptitude! What can you know of the meaning of the word, at your age? Even I, after all these years of study and toil and experience,” said Nina pathetically, “should not dare to boast about an ‘aptitude’ as you do, my poor Morris. The daring of ignorance indeed!”

By these and similar taunts, she always reduced him, in their frequent disputes, to bitter, inarticulate rage and mortification. He stood and looked at her, with his angry young face set. He was a good-looking stripling, with his mother’s light tawny hair, and blue eyes set in a sunburnt face. His straight gaze and squarely-shaped jaw would have denoted strength to a writer of fiction. His mouth, as surely, would have typified weakness to an acute observer.

“What’s the use of being melodramatic?” cried Nina, gazing at him coldly.

Each knew by intuition the other’s vulnerable spot. Morris winced in spite of himself.

“You think that I mind that sort of accusation,” he said; “but as a matter of fact, I should only mind it if it were true. I am a great deal too much in earnest to be melodramatic, or to be turned from my purpose by any sneers, mother. I’ve wanted all my life to be a musician, and you are the last person in the world who ought to discourage me.”

“When you talk about ‘all your life,’ my poor darling, it makes one smile. The life of a child of seventeen! You will want something absolutely different in a year’s time. When have you ever been known to stick to anything?”

“I’ve stuck to this, and I mean to stick to it. Why, mother, you haven’t any reasonable grounds for opposing it even. You only say that I haven’t got enough talent to make a success of music.”

“Well, and who is better qualified to judge? I’ve had years of experience as a composer, and I’ve seen as much of the professional life as though I’d belonged to it, as you very well know. People whom I hardly know, and perfect strangers, come to me for advice, and even musicians of experience, because they are wise enough to know that one _can_ help them. But you, my own son, and a mere boy, think that you know better than I do. I tell you it’s preposterous, Morris!”

He stood silent, glaring at her. “It’s my own life,” he said at last, sullenly.

“That’s a very old argument. But is nothing owing to the mother who gave you that life, took care of your babyhood and childhood, had you educated and taught everything you know, from whom, my poor boy, you even derive what talent you may possess? Why, everything you have in the world is owing to your mother and father.”

Morris, furiously conscious that his mother was taking her stand upon false ground yet found no answer to that which he had heard a hundred times before.

“Do you suppose,” cried Nina, pursuing her advantage, “that you have a single _real_ friend in the world, besides your mother? I know you boast as though you had always been popular wherever you went--you know best how much truth there is in it--but the people who flatter you and say they like you, have all been bought with my money. _I’ve_ sent you to expensive schools, and allowed you to stay with anybody who asked you, and God knows I’m glad you should have friends and enjoy your youth. You can never say that I’ve grudged you anything, Morris.”

“Oh, I know very well you’ve given me every sort of thing,” he muttered. “I’ve never been ungrateful.”

“As though I wanted gratitude!” she cried in a sort of holy scorn. “You know very well, Morris, that I love you better than anyone else in the world--you are all I have left--and for seventeen years you’ve been my only thought, day or night. It’s very, very little I ask of you in return--only a little affection and unselfishness. Youth is very hard and ignorant, and one doesn’t ask much in return for all one gives.”

She suddenly pitched her voice three semitones lower.

“But the day will come, my poor Morris, when you will look back with wonder and bitter, bitter regret, to think that you refused to do the very little asked of you. And it will be too late then.”

As a little boy she had always worked on his feelings, since he was impressionable and highly-strung, but custom had dulled his sensibilities. But still he could not do more than look at her with anger and distrust in his young tragic gaze.

Nina slowly allowed the tears to well into her enormous eyes. They were always obedient to her summons, as are the tears of most physically delicate women, and, moreover, she was really agitated at the thought that Morris would not accept her judgment as infallible.

“Morris, darling, don’t go away from me. I have only you, now, whom Geoffrey left to be my comfort sixteen years ago. If you went to Germany I should not be able to come with you”--Morris looked his consternation at the possibility of such a proceeding--“whereas if you go to Oxford, which is what your beloved father wished for you, you can come back here after a year or two, and we can decide together what you would care to go in for.”

“There’s nothing for me to do here.”

“The place wants looking after. Mr. Bartlett is very good, but he’s only the agent. You’re too young to understand how very very difficult it has been for me to cope with all the business ever since your father died. I’ve done it all for your sake, Morris, looking forward to the time when you would be able to take it off my hands yourself. Don’t disappoint me.”

“I don’t want to disappoint you, mother. But you know yourself what it is to care about music. Surely you wouldn’t grudge me a few years’ study?”

“That could come later, if you still wish it. The idea of your being a professional is absurd, and I will never hear of it, but I don’t say I shouldn’t let you go to Germany for a while _after_ Oxford, though it is naturally very bitter to me that my only son should wish to leave home, and his widowed mother, when there is absolutely no reason for it. It isn’t as though you had to earn your own living. Everything I have will be yours one day.”

“I can’t live on you for ever,” said Morris angrily. His father’s will, made before Morris was born, had left everything unreservedly to Nina.

“There’s no question of your living on me. You are my only child, and everything that is mine is yours,” tearfully exclaimed Nina, who gave her son a fixed moderate allowance, and had never allowed him to know the extent either of her fortune or her income, still less to infringe in the slightest degree upon her absolute power as mistress of the estate.

“Besides, I want your help.”

A servant opened the door.

“If you please, madam, Mr. Bartlett is here, and would like to speak to you a moment.”

Decidedly, the stars were fighting for Nina Severing. She rose, with a gentle, sorrowful glance at her son.

“More business,” she sighed wearily, and left the room with her tardy, trailing step.

Morris, left alone, became instantly inspired with a number of conclusive arguments and dignified retorts which should have left his parent defenceless. He went through several imaginary conversations, with eloquence and reason on his side. But imaginary victories are but poor consolation for a defeat. Presently Morris groaned, ran his fingers through his thick hair, and muttered half aloud:

“Thwarted at every step. It’s enough to make one take the law into one’s own hands and _go_.”

He was always slightly dramatic, even when alone. “What is there for a man to do down here? Mother won’t even get a car.”

He reflected gloomily that few other chaps of his acquaintance were unable so much as to drive a motor-car, and then rebounded hastily on to the more exalted plane.

“Besides--music! It’s the only thing on earth. I shall go mad if I can’t take it up properly.”

His eyes lighted up, very much as he meant them to do, with the fire of the enthusiast, and he paced the room rapidly.

Presently a note in his mother’s handwriting was brought to him. His brow clouded. Nina’s written appeals, of which she was, like most weak natures, prodigal, never failed to irritate Morris, who had not yet learnt to be eloquent on paper.

“Darling,” she wrote with many dashes and splashes of her pen, “do not wait for luncheon. I shall be some time with Mr. Bartlett, and cannot interrupt business. Do think over our talk. I had a little surprise for you these holidays, which I meant to tell you later, but perhaps it may cheer you up. I am going to get the car you wanted so much, and Mr. Bartlett tells me he knows of a very good place in Bodmin. We might go in to-morrow and see, and perhaps arrange for some driving lessons for you. It will help you to get at some good music, too, and lessons, if you want them, later.”

Morris stood confounded. By such unexpected _volte faces_ and sudden generosities, did his mother cause all his resentment to appear ungrateful and futile. He felt angry with her, and at the same time touched, and ashamed of his own anger. Perhaps most of all he felt bewildered. Then he thought of the motor-car, his ambition for the past two years. It would make all the difference to Pensevern. He saw himself, a dashing, reckless driver, yet skilled in hair-breadth escapes, leaning back in the driving-seat with his cap pulled over his eyes, and one careless hand on the wheel--negligent, cool, yet infinitely competent.

These pleasing reveries were not new to Morris, but they had never before been illuminated by any spark of probability. He was happy for some time. But presently he became once more gloomy.

No number of motor-cars would convey him to Germany or enable him to make music his career. The motor-car was his mother’s bribe to keep him at home.

Morris flushed at the thought, and tried to ignore a subconscious conviction, rapidly forcing itself upon him, that a motor-car in the garage was worth more than a career in the future.

It was, of course, absurd. Motor-cars did not alter the whole course of a man’s lifetime.

Did his mother really mean it? Morris turned to her letter again. It was explicit enough, and he was also struck by the note of appeal sounded. Inspiration came to him slowly. The appeal of a widowed mother! Might not the whole ambition of a lifetime be worthily sacrificed to _that_? Motor-cars might, as it were, be flung in by an admiring Providence, but they should not be allowed to affect the main issue.

The vision of the dashing young mechanic was hastily relinquished in favour of that of a morose, disappointed man, his career sacrificed to the whim of his mother, his passion for music thwarted by harsh circumstances in early youth.

“The world has lost a great musician there,” he fancied might be the sorrowful reply to inquiries about the strong, silent figure whose story would be so well known to every tenant on the estate in the long years to come.

“I will stay. I will give it all up,” declared Morris to himself, and felt a genuine pang at the renunciation.

The pang, recurring at ever-widening intervals, was destined to remain a source of satisfaction to him for a number of years.

V

Morris Severing reappears in these pages, after an indifferently successful but lighthearted career at Oxford, not as a disappointed genius, but as an extremely good-looking young man, in love with life, with his own universal popularity, and with the goddess of music.

That he should seriously fall in love with a more earthly divinity was at once Nina’s hope and her terror. She watched the three little girls at Porthlew growing up rapidly, and spent the long vacations with her son abroad or in London. He was very little at Pensevern until the summer when Mrs. Tregaskis took Hazel and Rosamund to London.

Frances Grantham, only sixteen, and delicate, remained at Porthlew with Miss Blandflower “to keep Cousin Frederick company,” Mrs. Tregaskis told her.

Nina was not very much afraid that her son would fall in love with Frances. She was pretty, in a slender, classical style, but lacking in vitality, and though she came up to Pensevern and played tennis and, occasionally, golf, with Morris, she did so with the curious lack of conviction that was characteristic of her dealings with the material world.

From a psychological point of view Frances was infinitely more mature than Rosamund, passionate and unbalanced, or than Hazel, possessed of a sense of humour (which both sisters lacked almost completely), and charming withal; but Nina Severing, with great acumen, decided that only Frances could safely be promoted to the rank of “my little favourite.”

Her little favourite, being idealistic and impressionable, conceived a youthful adoration for Nina’s gentle tones, appealing prettiness, and tuneful graces, and refrained, with a completeness which spoke highly for Nina’s judgment, from transferring any of that adoration to Nina’s son.

As for Morris, it was enough that he once heard Frances Grantham, with transparent sincerity, observe that the modern music she liked best was Mrs. Severing’s highly successful setting of half a dozen _nouveau genre_ lyrics, entitled “Underworld.”

“It’s rather odd that only one of them should have inherited the mother’s gift,” observed Nina thoughtfully, after this. “Of course she’s no performer, but that curious instinct for _the right thing_ is absolutely inborn.”

“I didn’t know Rosamund was musical,” said Morris, purposely and viciously misunderstanding his parent, and moreover making it perfectly clear to that parent’s acute perceptions why he did so. She set her lips together and assumed the look of pale self-control that habitually prefaced her most bitter shafts.