“Richard, I can't bear there should be any misunderstanding between you and me! The moment you are one and twenty, ask me and I will tell you why I would not have you knowing those people. Believe me, I was right to stop it, for fear of what might follow.”
“If you are afraid of my falling in love with a girl you don't think good enough for me, you have taken the wrong way to keep me from thinking about her, mother. You remember the costermonger whose family quarrelled with him for marrying beneath him? If a girl be a good girl, she is good for me, whether she be the daughter of the cats'-meat-man or of a royal duke! I know that's not the way people who call themselves Christians think! They want, of course, to keep up the selfishness of the breed!”
It was horribly rude, and Jane burst into tears. Richard's heart softened. It is well our hearts are sometimes in advance of our consciences—we are so slow to recognize injustice in defence of the right! Richard's wrong to his mother was a lack of faith in her. Where he did not understand and she would not explain, he did not even give her the benefit of the doubt. He treated her just as many of us, calling ourselves Christians, treat the Father—not in words, perhaps, or even in definite thoughts, but in feelings and actions.
“You will be sorry for this one day, Richard!” she sobbed. “Whatever I do is from care over you!”
“To wrong another for my sake, never can be any good to me. If money wrong-got be a curse, so is any good wrong-got.”
“You won't trust me, Richard! My own father is a blacksmith: why should I look down upon a dressmaker?”
“That's just what I think, mother!—Why?”
“I don't!” returned Mrs. Tuke—and there she paused: another step might bring her to the edge of the gulf!
Richard looked at her moodily for a moment, then turned away to the workshop; where, after his ill success with his mother, he was hardly less disinclined to challenge his father than before, for he knew him inexpugnable.