"I was her only son; and she was a widow. I owed her more than most sons owe their mothers. I did not stand as number four or five in a family circle, taking my share in the rough and tumble of family life. My mother had been all in all to me; and I had been all in all to her. I had been her friend and companion from the time I was able to understand the English language, the recipient of all her ideas, her likes and dislikes—from the early stage when the childish mind unconsciously takes shape and bent from the mind of the parent the child loves best. From my seventh year I was fatherless, and all that is sacred and sweet in home life began and ended for me with the word mother.
"My mother was what Gerald Standish called 'a masterful woman,' a woman to whom it was natural to direct and initiate the whole business of life. My father was her opposite in temperament,—irresolute, lymphatic; and I think he must have handed her the reins of home government before their honeymoon was over. I remember him just well enough to remember that he left the direction of his life wholly to her; that he deferred to her judgment, and studied her feelings in every detail of his existence; and that he obviously adored her. I don't think he cared very much for me, his only child. I can recall no indication of warmth of feeling on his part, only a placid indifference, as of one whose affection was concentrated upon a single object, and whose heart had no room for any other image. He spoke of me as 'the boy,' and looked at me occasionally with an air of mild wonder, as if I were somebody else's son, whose growth took him by surprise. I never remember his expressing any opinion about me, except that I had grown since he looked at me last.
"His feeling about me being thus tepid, it was hardly surprising that he should make what many people have called an unjust will. I have never disputed its justice, for I loved my mother too much to complain of the advantages of power and status which that will gave her.
"She was an heiress, and her money had cleared my father's estate from heavy encumbrances, and no doubt he remembered this when providing for her future. He was her senior by five and twenty years, and foresaw a long widowhood for her.
"The entail ended in his own person, so he was free to dispose of his property as he liked. He left my mother tenant for life; and he left me five hundred a year, chargeable upon the estate, which income was only to begin when I came of age. Till my one-and-twentieth birthday I was dependent upon my mother for everything.
"I told myself that I had to cut my own path in life, and that I must be the architect of my own fortune.
"My mother's income, under her marriage settlement, was considerable, and this, in addition to a rent-roll of between two and three thousand a year, made her a rich woman.
"Assuredly I was not in a position to make an imprudent marriage, since my power to maintain a wife and family in accord with my own ideas of a gentleman's surroundings must depend for a considerable time upon my mother's liberality. I had made up my mind to go to the Bar, and I knew how slow and arduous is the road to success in that branch of the legal profession; but far nearer than mere questions of interest was the obligation which filial love laid upon me. My mother had given me the devotion of years, had made me the chief object of her thoughts and her hopes, and I should be an ungrateful wretch if I were to disappoint her. I knew, alas! that upon this very question of marriage she cherished a project that it would distress her to forego, and that there was a certain Lady Emily whom I was intended to marry, the daughter of a nobleman who had been my father's most intimate friend, and for whom my mother had a greater regard than for any of our neighbours.
"Knowing this, and wishing with all my heart to do my duty as a son to the best of mothers, I could but echo Martha's solemn words—
"'It would never do.'