His mother has settled to a mood of sullen indignation. Why could not Floyd have become guardian for this girl, and between them all they might have brought about a marriage with Eugene, who needs the fortune? If the patent should prove a success, the interest of these two young people would become identical. Floyd has made himself his brother's greatest rival, instead of best friend. Through Violet he has a quarter-share of the business and control of the patent. She is sure this must have been the deciding weight in the scale, for he is not romantic, and not easily caught by woman's wiles. She understands self-interest, but a generous denial of self for another person is quite beyond her appreciation.
Yet she knows in her secret heart that if Floyd gave up, they would go to ruin, and Wilmarth would be possessor of all. She does not fly out in a temper now, but makes the interview unpleasant to her son, though she is really afraid to confess her true view of the matter, little imagining how soon he could have resolved her doubts. She hints at other steps which might have been taken, and he supposes it refers to his marriage with Madame Lepelletier. Tired at length of skirmishing about with no decisive result, Floyd boldly makes a proposal. It is best perhaps that he should be master in his own house, since of course he must provide for all expenses. The furniture he would like to keep as it is, if his mother chooses to sell it to him, and the money would be better for her. He would like her to remain and take charge, since Violet is so young, and he wants her to feel that her home is always here, that he considers her and his sisters a part of the heritage bequeathed by his father, and that independent of the business he shall have enough for all. "Do not forget," he cries, "that I am your son!"
He is her son, but she would like to be entirely independent. The most bitter thing, she tells herself, is to ask favors of children. And yet she cannot say that Floyd has taken the family substance; he has cost his father nothing since early boyhood. They have had his beautiful house, and since his return he has spent his own money freely. She wishes, or thinks she does, that she could pay back every penny of it, and yet she is not willing to give of that which costs her nothing,—tenderness, appreciation. She takes because she must, and nurses her defiant pride which has been aroused by no fault of his.
"I shall expect the girls to make their home with me until they are married," he continues. "I think that old English custom of having one home centre is right, and as I am the elder it is my place to provide it. I do not know as I shall be able to keep up the lavish scale of my father's day," and he sighs.
Mrs. Grandon remembers well that there was a great complaint of bills in her husband's time, and that Eugene has been frightfully extravagant since. He is off pleasuring, and the other is here planning and toiling. There is a small sense of injustice, but she salves her conscience with the idea that it is an executor's bounden duty, and that Floyd has had nothing but pleasure and idleness in his time.
It is late when he goes to his room to toss and tumble about restlessly, and feel dissatisfied with the result of his work. Has he been unfilial, unbrotherly? Surely every man has some rights in his own life, his own aims. But has he done the best with his? Was it wise to marry Violet? In a certain way she is dear to him; she has saved his child for him,—his whole heart swells in gratitude. As for the love, the love that is talked of and written about, or the overmastering passion a man might experience for Madame Lepelletier, neither tempts him. A quiet, friendly regard that will allow him to go his own way, choose his own pursuits, command his own time, if a man must have a wife; and he knows in his secret heart of hearts that he really does not care to have a wife, that it will not materially add to his happiness.
"I ought not to have married her," he admits to himself in a conscience-stricken way, "but there was nothing else to do. And I surely can make her happy, she is satisfied with such a little."
His conscience pricks him there. Is he to turn niggard and dole out to her a few crumbs of regard and tenderness? to let her take from the child what the husband ought to give? If there were no contrasting memory, no secret sense of weariness amid kisses and caresses and caprices pretty enough for occasional use, the dessert of love's feasts, but never really touching the man's deeper life.
"It must be that some important elements have been left out of my composition," he ruminates, grimly. Could even madame have moved him to a headlong passion? Would there not come satiety even with her? Certainly Cecil's welfare was to be considered in a second marriage, and he has done that. If he has blundered again for himself he will make the best of it in the certainty that there is now another and absorbing interest to his life.