"Yes, and of course through a woman. They get us into it. Your mother was a good woman, I've nothing to say against her. I fell in love with her, that wasn't her fault, nor mine either.... But 'twas she led me to the priest, and then over to this country. She was of better family than me, you see, her father was a squire; and she had a great ambition to get on in the world and be genteel. When she saw I couldn't do it, she got bitter to me. Oh, it was all natural, she wanted her children to be well off, educated. You can remember how we lived, nobody could blame your mother, I didn't myself, but she made it hell to me. I wanted to be my own master and have time to think.... So I cut loose from it."
Laurence nodded brusquely, but frowned, gazing at the neat, gentle-voiced old man.
"'Twas wrong, of course," old Timothy went on reflectively. "From the usual point of view. But I can't say I'm sorry I did it. I've had time to look about me and to learn some things. I always had a thirst for learning—books and ideas—"
"Yes, no doubt! But perhaps you don't know how my mother lived!" said Laurence bitingly.
"I couldn't have bettered it," the old man replied tranquilly. "I couldn't really, Laurence. The drink had got hold of me, I'd have gone from bad to worse. I couldn't help it ... 'twas because my life was miserable, I was only a dumb brute, like an ox, just living to work, feed and sleep. 'Twas no life for a man."
"It wasn't a life for my mother, either, was it?"
"No, but women can stand it better than we can, they don't like it but it doesn't kill their souls.... I'd have drunk myself to death in a few years. 'Tis they get us into it anyway—they're bound to the wheel, and they draw us in. They think of food and clothing and being respectable. A man has got other things to think of—he can't spend his life feeding a lot of hungry mouths.... Nine we had, but they mostly died when babies, the better for them."
The old man leaned forward to shake the ashes out of his pipe, and smiling, he added:
"Of course I don't expect you to think anything but ill of me. You always took your mother's part, and 'twas right.... And now you've got a family of your own and done well by them, and you've got up in the world—you'll feel accordingly and look down on me, naturally."