Her Nunc dimittis was premature. Just before the birth of George’s second child, a healthy boy whom they had decided to name Morgan after his grandfather, Mr Condover, at the very height of his prosperity, hanged himself in an outhouse. His death revealed the fact that the money of which he had boasted at the first christening did not exist. It soon appeared that he had defrauded the Powys estate of more than eight hundred pounds, and rumour said that he had been involved with some woman in Ludlow. This was a terrible blow to Mrs Malpas, for in remote country places the shames of the fathers are visited on the children to the third generation, and never forgotten. When the baby was born she begged her daughter-in-law not to give the child his grandfather’s name; but Mary, who had loved her father, obstinately persisted, and Mrs Malpas could never hear it without feeling that it carried with it a reproach. She tried to persuade George to change it, but George did not care. He was no longer in love with his wife, who now stood to him for a symbol of the chains that his mother had imposed on him. He felt that she had cheated him out of an enjoyment of life that was his due. At any cost he meant to regain his freedom, and Mary and his mother were the sufferers. The wife, indeed, had the care of her children to console her for George’s neglect; but the mother, against whom he nursed a deep, indefinite grudge as the author of all his misfortunes, found that she must bear the responsibility of her own schemes.
The household at Wolfpits now missed the subsidies which Mr Condover had generously distributed from his masters’ money. George had drifted into an extravagant way of life that he had no intention of changing. Partly because of his expansive nature, and partly because, in truth, he had never had his fling, George found it difficult to settle to any steady work. He became a drain upon the resources of the Buffalo, and Mrs Malpas, who found it hard to refuse him anything, was forced to draw upon her savings to support him. In her irritation and despair she blamed Mary for all this, thinking of her as a feckless housewife who had been brought up in the lavish ways of her father.
‘The bad blood’s in her and is bound to come out,’ she said, airing her grievances on Mr Malpas who now cared for nothing but his food. George did not mind who was to blame as long as he got the money that he wanted. He was beginning to be interested in other women, particularly, for a little while, in Susie Hind, the daughter of the proprietor of the Pound House, an inn which Mrs Malpas had always regarded as the Buffalo’s bitterest rival. It pained her beyond words to think that her hard-earned savings should find their way into Mr Hind’s till.
‘George,’ she said, ‘if only you’ll keep away from that there place I’ll see what I can do for you. Or if only you’d settle to regular work. . .’
‘Thank you kindly!’ said George. ‘Why don’t you let me take on the licence of the Buffalo now that dad can’t do it justice? Then you and dad could go and live somewhere quiet as you’ve a right to do at your age.’
‘Never, George!’ she said intensely. ‘Never. . .’
He laughed at her. ‘Why not?’
‘I couldn’t trust you,’ she said. ‘The man that keeps a public ought to be teetotal. I know what would happen to you.’
‘You’ve never give me a chance,’ he protested.
‘What’s more, I’m not going to,’ she maintained.