"Then tell him not to drive so furiously, so we can hear each other."
"I would avoid useless discussion, mother, but you force it." An instant he paused, and his teeth ground together and his jaw set rigidly, then he continued with a savage force that appalled her, throwing out short sentences like daggers. "Lord H—— brings home an American wife. His family are well pleased. She is every where received. Her father is a rich brewer. Her brother has turned out his millions from the business of pork packing. The stench from his establishment pollutes miles of country, but does not reach England—why? Because of the disinfectant process of transmuting their greasy American dollars into golden English sovereigns. There's justice."
"Be reasonable, David. Their estates were involved to the last degree and those sovereigns saved the family. Without them they would have passed out of their possession utterly, and been divided among our rich tradespeople, and the family would have descended rapidly to the undergrades. It goes to show the value of birth, what is more, and how those Americans, who made a pretence long ago of scorning birth and title and casting it all off, are glad enough now to buy their way back again, if not for themselves, for their children. But, David, for a man to voluntarily degrade his family by marrying beneath him, with no such need as that of Lord H——, of ultimately by that very means lifting it up is—is—inexpressible—why—! In the case of Lord H—— there was a certain nobility in marrying beneath him."
"Beneath him! For me, I married above me, over all of us, when I took my sweet, clean mountain girl. The nobility of Lord H—— is unique. Lady H—— made a poor bargain when she left the mingled stenches of brewing and butchering to step into the moral stench which depleted the Stonebreck estates."
"You are not like my son, David. You are violent."
"Your son has been a cad. Now he is a man, and must either be violent or weep." He looked away from her out at the flying hedgerows, then took up the fruitless discussion again, striving with more patience to arouse in his mother a sense of the utter worldliness of her stand. She met him at every point with the obtuse and age-long arguments of her class. When at last he cried out, "But what of my son, mother, my little son, and the heir to all this grandeur which means so much to you?" Her eyelids quivered and she looked down, merely saying, "His mother has offered you a solution to that difficulty which seems to me the only wise one. You say she proposes to keep him a year or two and then send him to us."
"Ah, you are like steel, mother." David spoke pleadingly, "You thought him a beautiful child?"
"I did, and a wholesome one, which goes to show that you may safely trust him with her for a time. Moreover, his mother has a right to him and the comfort she may find in him for a few years. You see I would be quite just to her. I do not accuse her of being designing in marrying you. No doubt it was quite your own fault. It is a position you two young people rushed into romantically and most foolishly, and you must both suffer the consequences. It is sad, but it must be regarded in the light of hard common sense, and my ungrateful task seems to be to place it in that light for both your sakes."
Still David watched the hedgerows with averted face.