“It is very good of you, Mr St. John,” she said, “to make Baby such a handsome offer. But you are wrong in thinking that a mother’s love is selfish; it is not where it is real; and it is entirely in my baby’s interests that I am going to regard your proposal.”
“Going to refuse it you mean,” he snapped.
Jill smiled.
“Going to refuse it if you like to put it that way,” she said. “Of course it would be splendid for Baby in one sense, but I don’t think it would be kind. I have never approved of bringing children up in a different position to their parents. My boy, no matter how good-hearted he turned out, would grow to look down upon his father, and the poor little shop with its poorer photographs, and upon the kind old man who stood Godfather to him, and drops his h’s, but loves the child almost as though he were his own. I have heard of such things before. Children who are exalted to very different positions to their parents learn to despise them, and feel ashamed of them, and then, of course, they despise themselves for doing so; and altogether it is very hopeless, and rather cruel, I think.
“Don’t fancy me ungrateful; it is not that. It isn’t that I wouldn’t spare my boy if I considered it all for the best; but I don’t I think he will be a much happier, and a better little boy if he is brought up just as well as we can manage, with no more brilliant prospect than the knowledge that he has to make his own way in the world as his father did before him.”
“So you are going to make an independent beggar of him as you did of his father, eh? Well, I would have made him an independent gentleman. But no matter. You possess the right unfortunately of ruining both their futures. Perhaps one day you will remember my offer with regret, but understand, please that I shall not renew it; neither will you or yours benefit from me in any way.”
“I had never expected that we should,” Jill answered with proud simplicity. “I have not been accustomed to luxury and so don’t feel the need of it. It is harder for my husband than for me, harder for him than it will be for the boy; but I don’t fancy that Jack minds it much.”
“Jack is a fool,” his father answered bitterly. “He could have been anything almost if he had followed out my wishes.”
St. John smiled faintly. He did not resent the slighting epithet applied to himself; he understood in a way, the old man’s keen disappointment, and felt more sorry than chagrined at his unrelenting harshness.
“Don’t think too much about it, sir,” he said; “I should have been bound to fail you somehow. I was never one of those brainy ambitious fellows, you know; it takes more than money to make a great career.”