“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!”