"'Yes, sir, when it can be done honestly, and with a little help; every one aims at their own maintenance.'
"And then he promised me right down a free room and kitchen in one of the houses up in the manufacturing part of the town for a whole year!"
As mother and son sat opposite to one another, they were not without a certain similarity; but where the leading of fate had turned the features of his broad, intelligent face into muscle and energy, it had in Barbara relaxed all the springs into dull, ponderous fat.
It was not, however, without a certain amount of enthusiasm that she now unfolded her plans for the little business, and how she should procure credit, a little at each place; she still had acquaintances at the shops in the neighbourhood, from the time she was at the Veyergangs'. Afterwards it was only to sell out, pay for the old, get new again; it all went round like a winch!
But she must have a little more ready money, for hers would not go far enough. Now, if Nikolai could help her with a little; it would all lie in the goods, so that, for that matter, it was the same whether he put his pence there or in his pocket—the same to a T!
Could he tell her where she could buy a counter cheap! Or rather, get it on credit; if there was anything she was hard up for now, it was ready money. Perhaps she might as well try to take out a little more at the carpenter's at once, only a fair-sized folding-table, two beds, and a few chairs. She had thought that when once she had got it started and into order, Nikolai might live with her. If she prepared all his meals for him besides, the one thing might be set off against the other, and part of his wages go towards it—he must himself reckon up and say how much he thought.
Barbara continued more eagerly to build up in her own mind, and emphasising now and then with a smack of her hand, how everything was to be.
But as she waxed warmer and more elated over her visions of the future, Nikolai sat doubtful, and softly beating a measure with his foot. All this about the shop might be right enough. His mother must surely understand it, she who had been at the Veyergangs', and had now, moreover, talked to the Consul himself. But the more she initiated him into her plans, and in them appropriated him entirely to herself, and talked away as if there could be no obstacle in any corner of the heavens, the wider did the gulf between their wills and interests open before him. She came with a mother's long-dispensed-with right, and just now he knew in his heart that he belonged still more to another, and must go his own way.
She could not know that she was coming upon nails the whole time in the wall, so he would have to speak out.
"Well, you see, mother"—he looked down at the floor—"you're welcome to my money, if only it's certain I get it back again by the new year, so there's nothing to hinder that. But, you know, why I must have it again is—is because I and Mrs. Holman's Silla have agreed to marry and settle down. And I'm quite determined about it, for I've worked and toiled for that, ever since Holman died; and it would be ill for me if I had to be without her."