‘Moreover,’ I went on, ‘the circumstances of your early life are so similar to those of my own childhood, that I felt interested in you as soon as I knew them. My widowed mother, like yours, wore out her life in a long struggle with poverty, and died just when I was about to cease being a burden to her. The only difference is that my mother was doubly overweighted by having to pay off debts of my father’s youth, contracted before he ever met her.’
‘Did not your father’s family take the responsibility even of those?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘My grandfather, after bringing up his son to no profession, and encouraging him in extravagance, cast him off on his marriage with a penniless girl, and left him to sink or swim as best he could. I imagine that my father cannot have been possessed of much moral courage, or he would not have submitted to live on the earnings of my mother’s music-teaching. But he had never been accustomed to work, and his health was bad. He died when I was three years old. Then my mother made an appeal to my grandfather to do something for me, if not for her, or at least take the responsibility of those few hundred pounds of debt which he could have paid without feeling himself a whit poorer, but which formed a millstone round her neck. But the rich Liverpool merchant, who was ready to subscribe lavishly to ostentatious charities, refused to help his daughter-in-law by a penny, and refused in such a letter! My mother never showed it to me, but I found it in her desk after her death. I keep it still, and to this day my blood boils if I read its insulting words.’
‘And did your grandfather never soften?’
‘He gave no sign of it; and on his death, he left all he possessed to my aunt, my father’s half-sister.’
‘And she?’
‘I confess,’ said I, ‘that she did make some advances towards me, but they came at an unlucky moment. My mother had just died; and from the letters I found after her death, I had learned for the first time with what cruelty she had been treated. Besides, I had lately obtained my first situation, and was disposed to be aggressively independent. So I declined my aunt’s invitation to visit her with a rudeness which no one would be guilty of but an inexperienced boy at the age when he is most desirous of being thought a man.’
‘I suppose that was the end of it all?’
‘Not quite. Six months later, after I had come to London, I received another letter from my aunt, in which she stated that she had intended to adopt me and make me her heir, if I had not so insolently rejected her friendly overtures; but that I need no longer hope for anything from her, as she was about to be married shortly. And she added—rather vindictively, I thought—that as her future husband was considerably younger than herself, he would probably survive her and inherit all her property. I fancy she thought to excite in me an avaricious regret for my previous coldness; but in truth my only idea was that in making her become the wife of a man much her junior, spite and loneliness were combining to lead her into a great folly; for, as she was considerably older than my father, she must by that time have been quite a middle-aged woman, and I suspected the youthful husband of fortune-hunting. That was the last I ever heard of my only surviving relative. I don’t know what name she bore after her marriage, nor even if she still lives. I stand quite alone.’
‘Poor old man!’ said the boy affectionately. ‘Rich as you are—from my point of view, for your salary is twice as large as mine—I am better off than you. I don’t stand alone; I have May.’