“Father,” cried Nathanael, detaining him, “I would do much rather than try you thus; but it cannot be helped. I must work.”
“I do not see the necessity.”
“But if there be a necessity; if my own feelings, my conscience—other reasons, which here I cannot urge”—and involuntarily his eye glanced towards his wife.
An instinct of delicacy brightened the old man's perceptions. He bowed to Agatha. “We need not apologise for these discussions before a lady who has done my son the honour of uniting her fortune to his ancient family.” (And he evidently thought the honour bestowed was quite as much on the Harper side.) “She, I am sure, will agree with me that this proceeding is not necessary.”
Agatha hesitated. Much as she longed to do it, a sense of right prevented her from openly siding against her husband. She kept silence; Nathanael answered with the tone of one who sets a strong guard upon his lips, almost stronger than he can bear:
“I have already told my wife all the reasons I have just given you, that, since I am resolved to be independent, there is no way but this. I have been brought up abroad, and have learnt no profession; my health is not robust enough for a town life, or for hard study. Many, almost all the usual modes in which a man, born a gentleman, can earn his living are thus shut out from me. What Anne Valery offers me I can do, and should be content in doing. Father, do not stand in the way of my winning for myself a little comfort—a little peace.”
Through his entreaty, earnest and manly as it was, there ran a sort of melancholy which surprised and grieved Agatha. Could this be the lover on whom, in giving him herself, she believed she had bestowed entire felicity? Had he too, like herself, found a something wanting in marriage, a something to fill up which he must needs resort to an active career of worldly toil? Would she never be able to make either him or herself truly happy? and if so, what was the cause?
The Squire keenly regarded his son, who stood before him in an attitude so respectful yet so firm. Something seemed to strike him in the pale, delicate, womanish features; perhaps he saw therein the wife who had died when Nathanael was born, and whose death, people said, had chilled the father's heart strangely against the poor babe.
“My son,” he said, “you have been away from me nearly all your life—and where I have given little, I can require little. But I am an old man. Do not let me feel that you too are setting yourself against my grey hairs.”
“God knows, father, I would not for worlds! But what can I do? Anne, what can I do?”