He did not guess that he had intruded on a family difference, a trouble of some standing, which the passage of weeks had but aggravated. It turned on Ovington’s offer, which Arthur, pluming himself on his success and proud of his prospects, had lost no time in conveying to his mother. He had supposed that she would see the thing with his eyes, and be as highly delighted. To become a partner so early, to share at his age in the rising fortunes of the house! Surely she would believe in him now, if she had never believed in him before.
But Mrs. Bourdillon had been imbued by her husband with one fixed idea—that whatever happened she must never touch her capital; that under no circumstances must she spend it, or transfer it or alienate it. That way lay ruin. No sooner, therefore, had Arthur come to that part of his story than she had taken fright; and nothing that he had been able to say, no assurance that he had been able to give, no gilded future that he had been able to paint, had sufficed to move the good woman from her position.
“Of course,” she said, looking at him piteously, for she hated to oppose him, “I’m not saying that it does not sound nice, dear.”
“It is nice! Very nice!”
“But I’m older than you, and oh, dear, dear, I’ve known what disappointment is! I remember when your father thought that he had the promise of the Benthall living and we bought the drawing-room carpet, though it was blue and buff and your father did not like the color—something to do with a fox, I remember, though to be sure a fox is red! Well, my dear,” drumming with her fingers on her lap in a placid way that maddened her listener, “he was just as confident as you are, and after all the Bishop gave the living to his own cousin, and the money thrown clean away, and the carpet too large for any room we had, and woven of one piece so that we couldn’t cut it! I’m sure that was a lesson to me that there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip. Believe me, a bird in the hand——”
“But this is in the hand!” Arthur cried, restraining himself with difficulty. “This is in the hand!”
“Well, I don’t know how that may be. I never was a business woman, whatever your uncle may say when he is in his tantrums. But I do know that your father told me, nine or ten times——”
“And you’ve told me a hundred times!”
“Well, and I’m sure your uncle would say the same! But, indeed, I don’t know what he wouldn’t say if he knew what we were thinking of!”
“The truth is, mother, you are afraid of the Squire.”