Morris stood confounded. By such unexpected volte faces and sudden generosities, did his mother cause all his resentment to appear ungrateful and futile. He felt angry with her, and at the same time touched, and ashamed of his own anger. Perhaps most of all he felt bewildered. Then he thought of the motor-car, his ambition for the past two years. It would make all the difference to Pensevern. He saw himself, a dashing, reckless driver, yet skilled in hair-breadth escapes, leaning back in the driving-seat with his cap pulled over his eyes, and one careless hand on the wheel—negligent, cool, yet infinitely competent.
These pleasing reveries were not new to Morris, but they had never before been illuminated by any spark of probability. He was happy for some time. But presently he became once more gloomy.
No number of motor-cars would convey him to Germany or enable him to make music his career. The motor-car was his mother’s bribe to keep him at home.
Morris flushed at the thought, and tried to ignore a subconscious conviction, rapidly forcing itself upon him, that a motor-car in the garage was worth more than a career in the future.
It was, of course, absurd. Motor-cars did not alter the whole course of a man’s lifetime.
Did his mother really mean it? Morris turned to her letter again. It was explicit enough, and he was also struck by the note of appeal sounded. Inspiration came to him slowly. The appeal of a widowed mother! Might not the whole ambition of a lifetime be worthily sacrificed to that? Motor-cars might, as it were, be flung in by an admiring Providence, but they should not be allowed to affect the main issue.
The vision of the dashing young mechanic was hastily relinquished in favour of that of a morose, disappointed man, his career sacrificed to the whim of his mother, his passion for music thwarted by harsh circumstances in early youth.
“The world has lost a great musician there,” he fancied might be the sorrowful reply to inquiries about the strong, silent figure whose story would be so well known to every tenant on the estate in the long years to come.
“I will stay. I will give it all up,” declared Morris to himself, and felt a genuine pang at the renunciation.
The pang, recurring at ever-widening intervals, was destined to remain a source of satisfaction to him for a number of years.