Mrs. Wornock shuddered at the mention of smart people.
"A party of that kind would be misery for me," she said. "And now tell me about yourself, and your relations. Mrs. Mornington told me that your father and mother are both living, and that you inherited Beechhurst from your uncle. I remember seeing Admiral Darnleigh years and years ago, when everything at Discombe and at Matcham was new to me. It must be sad for your mother to lose you from her own home."
"My mother is not given to sadness," Allan answered, smiling. "She is the best and kindest of mothers, and I know she loves me as dearly as any son need desire; but she is quite resigned to my having my own home and my own interests. She would argue, perhaps, that were I to marry I must have a house of my own, and that my establishment at Beechhurst is only a little premature."
"You are very much attached to your mother?"
"Very much—and to my father."
"Your tone as you say those words tell me that your father is the dearer of the two."
"You have a quick ear for shades of meaning, Mrs. Wornock."
"Pray do not think me impertinent. I am not questioning you out of idle curiosity. If we are to be friends in the future, I must know and understand something of your life and your mind. But perhaps I bore you—perhaps you think me both eccentric and impertinent."
"My dear Mrs. Wornock, I am deeply touched that you should offer to be my friend. Be assured I have no reserve, and am willing—possibly too willing—to talk of myself and my own people. I have no dark corners in my life. My history is all open country—an uninteresting landscape enough. But there is no difficult going—there are no bogs or risky bits over which the inquiring spirit need skim lightly. Your ear did not deceive you, just now. Fondly as I love my mother, I will freely confess that the bond that draws me to my father is the stronger bond. In the parrot jargon of the day, his is the more interesting 'personality.' He is a man of powerful intellect, whose mind has done nothing for the good of the world—who will die unhonoured and unremembered except by his familiar friends. There is one question I have asked myself about him ever since I was old enough to think—a question which I first asked myself when I began to read classics with him in my school vacations, and which I had not finished asking myself when his untiring help had enabled me to take a first-class in the Honour School. To me it has always been a mystery that a man of wide attainments and financial independence should have been utterly destitute of ambition. My father was a young man when he married; he is still in the prime of life; and for six and twenty years he has been content to vegetate in Suffolk, and has regarded his annual visit to London as more of an affliction than a relief. It is as if the hands of life's clock had stopped in the golden noon of youth. I have told myself again and again that my father's life must have been shadowed by some great sorrow before his marriage, young as he was when he married."
Mrs. Wornock listened intently, her head slightly bent, her clasped hands resting on her knee, her sensitive lips slightly parted.