“You’re wonderful,” he cried enthusiastically. “I never would have thought of that!”
She met his look of admiration demurely.
“Oh no, it is really a very simple idea. I’ll go and get some notepaper and you had better write it yourself, so that your mother can be sure that the letter is absolutely genuine.”
Acting as curb to his impetuosity and anger, she helped him to concoct one of the strangest letters that a mother ever received. Such a glacial letter, in spite of her own compassionate tempering, that at the end Anne was loath to send it at all.
“It will break her heart,” she said sorrowfully.
But he laughed at her with bitter emphasis.
“Heart? She doesn’t possess one! All she cares about is what she can get out of me, not only in money, but in vicarious fame, as the fond mother of a musical prodigy!”
Shocked and pitiful, Anne regarded him. His flushed cheeks and gleaming eyes warned of the ever-present danger of recurring fever. She spoke kindly as if to a sick child.
“I’m sure you’re exciting yourself unnecessarily. This will never do. You’re not at all well, and things appear exaggeratedly awful. I’m sure your mother loves you, how could she help it?”
“Loves me? That is good! Why, she has bled me since I was seven years old. She has sometimes kept me at my violin until I have fainted from exhaustion. She has purposely isolated me from all friends and interests so that I might have no outside influences to distract me. Because of her, my life has been as narrow and as bleak as that of a Trappist Monk. We have never had any home, any ties. We have traveled from city to city, like a couple of strolling players, and lived almost as poorly, although ever since my twelfth year I have brought in thousands. But she wanted to hoard. It is her passion. She’s very greedy. In fact, she’s insatiable. She has always insisted upon being my business manager, and it wasn’t until a couple of years ago when I was twenty-one that I was allowed the use of some of my own money. And then it was only because the doctors frightened her!”