After Serge’s escapade the carriage had to be given up, and since Mrs. Folyat could not pay calls or visit at a distance, the county soon forgot her and fewer and fewer distinguished ladies drove up to the Vicarage. On the other hand, Mrs. Folyat’s aspirations had offended the ladies on whom the county did not call, and when the carriage was disposed of and replaced by a little wicker donkey-cart they did not conceal their rejoicing, and their tattle did not fail to reach Mrs. Folyat’s ears. She was confirmed in her conviction of the vulgarity of trade, and she brooded over the situation without saying anything to Francis. He said nothing to her and they skirted the problem. His anxiety was entirely to make expenditure and income meet, and he rather welcomed than deplored the defection of the county. It meant a garden party the less and two of the servants could be dismissed.
The crisis seemed to be tided over and the financial problem adjusted when they were faced with the fact that Frederic was nineteen, of an age to leave the Lycée, and that a profession must be found for him. Mrs. Folyat decided on the Army, but Francis at once squashed that and, all unconsciously, reproduced his mother’s arguments. Frederic was a Folyat and weak. Regimental life would be too dangerous for him. The Church? Frederic, who was not a little Frenchified and rather dreadfully freeminded, scornfully rejected the suggestion. . . The Bar? Mrs. Folyat was sure Frederic would look well in a wig and gown, and besides, judges and the law officers of the Crown were always knighted. Frederic saw that this plan would take him to London, and he jumped at it greedily.
Francis went to Plymouth and saw his solicitor, who pointed out that it was a matter of great expense and meant supporting the boy until he was over thirty. Francis felt that the problem was insoluble, gave it up for the time being, and consoled himself with buying a parrot from a drunken sailor and a dog in a fancier’s shop by the docks because it was impossible to tell which was its head and which was its tail. He called the dog “Muff” and the parrot “Sailor.”
Frederic sulked when he learned that he was not to go to the Bar and went down to the village inn and came home very drunk. When he was reproved, he asked what else there was to do in such a dead-alive hole, and his father found it very difficult to reply. It was painfully forced upon his attention that Frederic also had a mind, and that it worked in a way entirely different from his own. This was distressing, because for many years Francis had done all the thinking necessary for his family, and that no great amount. He had an intolerable sense of being cooped up with an enemy, and what bewildered him most of all was to think that the enemy should be his own son. He could not explain it to his wife, or to himself, for that matter, but there it was, and he was thankful when Frederic chose to absent himself from meals.
At last, after much cogitation, he approached his wife with the suggestion that they should make Frederic a solicitor.
“An attorney!” said Martha, and Francis knew that she was thinking of the common, dusty little man in Plymouth.
Parents who have aspired to make their sons physicians and been forced to stop short at dentistry will understand what torture it was to Martha Folyat, and, in a less degree, to her husband, to descend from the higher to the lower branch of the legal profession—no wig, no gown, no access to the Bench, no prospective knighthood. It was a pill and they swallowed it, putting as brave a face on it as possible, and they were somewhat comforted when they found, upon inquiry, that a family of undoubted gentility in the county had sent their son into a solicitor’s office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London.
Martha’s ambition leaped within her, and she suggested that Frederic also should be sent to London where he was more likely, if not to meet, at least to handle the affairs of, the aristocracy. Who knows? Even the Royal Family had legal business, and there was a great case coming on to decide the succession of the collateral Folyats, somewhat complicated by a bigamous old clergyman who for his third wife had taken a negress in Africa. The case would be ripe just about the time Frederic was qualified, and Willie Folyat, a possible heir, was one of Minna’s most devoted admirers.
Martha only spoke about a hundredth of her musings, but Francis, mindful of Frederic’s recent behaviour and his plentiful lack of character, decided for Plymouth, as being more accessible in case of disaster. (He was surprised to find himself taking account of the difference in expense of the two journeys, having always hitherto had a lordly disregard of money.)
It was settled; the dusty little man in Plymouth accepted Frederic as an articled clerk, and, when he had received his premium, went into the affairs of the family, and presented the horrible truth that such inroads had been made upon capital that the income was reduced by one-third from its original dimensions.