Lebanon House
Brigham.
May 31st, 1889.
Dear Bram,
Your father is dead. He was humbly presenting a loyal address to the Duke of Edinburgh and having always had, as you know, a wretched crop of hair, he caught a cold which developed into pneumonia, and that’s the end of my son Joshua. I understand that Caleb is the sole heir subject to certain annuities payable to your aunts and an injunction not to let his mother starve. You are not mentioned in the will. However, since Caleb won’t come of age for a month or two, the executors (neither of whom are Peculiars) think that, if you were to return home immediately, pressure could be brought to bear on your brother to come to an equitable arrangement by which, if you consented to devote yourself to the business, you should be made a partner in the firm. It lies with you, my dear boy. Is it worth while to make yourself pleasant to that sleek Jacob for the sake of perhaps a thousand pounds a year (I don’t think you’d get more out of it), or would you prefer to remain poor, free, and honest? I know which I should choose if I were you. You know that I would like to see you before I die, though I’m bound to say that at the present there is no sign of my dying. More’s the pity, for I am heartily sick of this life, and though I admit I am now faced with the dread of another much longer one hereafter, I’m hoping that the rumour prevalent about eternity has been grossly exaggerated. I rarely leave my own room nowadays, and my eyes have been giving me a good deal of trouble, so that I find it almost impossible to read. However, luckily I have unearthed in Brigham a pleasant young woman with a respect for commas and colons who reads aloud to me in a not quite intolerable French. She winces at Zola, but then so do I, for he’s such a rank bad writer. Nevertheless, I cannot resist the rascal just as once upon a time I could never resist staring into shop windows. How your grandfather hated that habit of mine! He never knew what it might lead to. People feel the same about Zola, I suppose. Strange your father dying abruptly like this. I had figured him as a perpetual phenomenon like the smoke of the Brigham chimneys. If you do decide to come home, you should come quickly.
Your loving
Grandmother.
Bram contemplated the sheets of sprawling spidery handwriting and wondered what he ought to do. His grandmother did not know what a problem she was putting before him. It was not so easy to laugh at the idea of a thousand pounds a year, now that he was engaged to Nancy. A settled prospect was likely to make her father take another view of their marriage. It would be deuced hard to eat humble-pie to Caleb, but with Nancy as a reward he could achieve even that. And life in Brigham? Ugh! Well, even life in Brigham with Nancy laughing beside him would be sweeter and lovelier than life in Paradise without her.
He showed the letter to his sweetheart and asked her advice. Afterwards, he used to wonder how he could ever have doubted for a moment what her answer would be.
“Go home?” she exclaimed. “Why, Bram darling, you must be mad to think of such a thing. What’s a thousand a year compared with your self-respect?”
“I thought your father might take a more reasonable view of our marriage, if I could be doing something more solid than acting in the provinces.”