"To be blessed with a dear, adorable wife; to have money enough to enable me to surround her with every luxury. Yes, I long to be really rich, if only to make my father repent of his treatment of me. In his eyes a man is successful according to his proven ability to pile up money. Ah, that letter of his, how it rankles in my mind still and always will!"
"What letter is that?" said Dora; "you never spoke to me of it before. Why, what a tomb of dark secrets you are!"
Philip rose, went to a drawer, took out a letter, and returned with it in his hand.
"Here it is," he said; "listen."
"My Son,—When I opened to you the doors of the banking house which I have founded, and bade you join me as a clerk who would eventually be master of it, I did not doubt that you had sufficient good sense and filial docility to make you joyfully accept such an opening. It appears that you have neither of these qualities. Twice I have made the offer, twice you have declined it. From this day please to consider yourself free to follow art or any other road to starvation. I relinquish all right to direct your career, but I also require you to relinquish all right to call yourself the son of
"Thomas Grantham."
Philip folded the letter and replaced it in the drawer.
"Yes," said Dora, "it was a cruel letter, for, after all, your only crime had been to wish to become an artist. And yet, a father knows that out of a hundred men who take up painting as a profession, one or two perhaps get to the top of the tree. Where is the father who would advise his son to work at art, music, or literature for a livelihood? In the case of a real vocation, he may bow gracefully to the inevitable, but, as a rule, a parent does not bring up his sons with a view to making artists of them. On the contrary, he does what he can to dissuade them from choosing that course. In the case of your father, my dear Philip, I think one might allow extenuating circumstances. Where is the head of the family who would not dread for his sons these often illiberal professions? Professions, which ninety-nine times out of a hundred bring in little besides disappointments, disillusions, a miserable pittance, and often despair? Try and forget this grievance, darling. In any case you have had your revenge already. You are celebrated, and we are no longer poor."
"Ah, but we have been, and it has sometimes brought tears of rage to my eyes, and to-day we are a long, a very long way, from being rich."
"Ah, but think what an enviable lot yours is!" said Dora proudly. "Yours is the most honourable of callings. You have no poor wretches sweating for you. Your income is the fruit of your personal handiwork. You are your own master. You help to make life beautiful. You have a fame increasing every day. You enjoy the respect of everybody, the admiration of the public, the appreciation of the best critics, the company and the friendship of all the intelligence of London. A king might well envy the life of a great artist!"
Dora was excited, and Philip looked at her with eyes that thanked her for all she thought of him.