“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.”