'You have disappointed all his plans for you; thrown up the Bar, your position at St. Peter's, all your prospects in life—and for what?'
'For fun, of course, mother. I don't know what I'm fit for or what I want; it's pure idiotic recklessness, isn't it?'
'It is; but don't talk to me in that ribald tone, Mark; I have enough to bear as it is. Once for all I ask you, Is it true what my brother tells me, that you have returned to the mire like the sow in the Scriptures; that you are going to let your name be connected with—with a novel, after all you have promised?'
'Quite true,' said Mark; 'I hope to be connected with many novels.'
'Mark,' said his mother, 'you know what I think about that. I implore you to pause while there's time still, before doing what you can never recall. It's not only from worldly motives that I ask it. Surely you can sacrifice a contemptible vanity to your duty towards your mother. I may be wrong in my prejudices, but still I have a right to expect you to regard them. I ask you once more to withdraw from this. Are you going to refuse me?'
Mrs. Ashburn's harsh tones carried a very genuine feeling and concern. She truly believed that the paths of fiction would lead to her son's spiritual as well as his material ruin, and Mark had sense enough to recognise the reality of this belief of hers, and drop the levity he had assumed for defensive purposes.
His father had, as usual, taken no part in the interview; he sat looking dolefully at the fire, as if anxious to remain neutral as long as possible; he had long been a mere suzerain, and, like some other suzerains, felt a very modified resentment at a rebellion against an authority that was only nominally his own.
So Mark addressed himself to his mother only. 'I'm sorry if it grieves you, mother,' he said, gently enough; 'but you really must let me go my own way in this—it is no use at all asking me to withdraw now.... I have gone too far.... Some day you will see that I was not so very foolish after all. I promise you that. Wouldn't you rather think of me as living the life I could be happy in—being famous, perhaps, even, some day—than dragging out my days in a school or slaving at a profession I can never care for? Of course you would! And a novel isn't such an awful thing, if you could only bring yourself to think so. You never will read one, you know, so you can't be a very impartial judge.'
Mrs. Ashburn read very little of any literature; what she did read being chiefly the sermons and biographies of Dissenting divines, and she had never felt any desire to stimulate her imagination by anything much more exciting, especially by accounts of things that never happened, and were consequently untruthful. Her extreme horror of fiction was a form of bigotry now almost extinct, but she had grown up in it and retained it in all the old Puritan vigour.
She showed no signs of being at all impressed by Mark's remonstrance; her eyes were severely cold, and her voice measured and loud as she replied, without looking at him.