She sat bolt upright in the chair on the other side of the desk, gripping her handbag between her nervous hands. “It’s about Clay!” she said breathlessly.
The look of uneasiness on Cliffs face deepened. He carefully rearranged various small objects in front of him, and replied: “About Clay! Oh, yes! Quite! As a matter of fact, Uncle Adam sent for me a couple of days ago to talk to me about him.”
“I know,” she interrupted. “He told me today. Cliff, you mustn’t take him! Please say you won’t consent!”
He perceived that this was going to be an extremely difficult interview. “Well, but, Faith —”
“I suppose Adam is going to pay you to take him, but I know that wouldn’t weigh with you! I don’t know how these things are arranged, but-’
“It simply means that he’ll be articled to me,” he explained, glad of the opportunity afforded to lead her away from the main point at issue. “I’ve no doubt he’ll-’
“He’d hate it!” she declared vehemently. “Adam’s only doing it because he’s never liked Clay, and he delights in upsetting me! Clay is going to write!”
“Well, well, I don’t know any reason why he shouldn’t write, if he has a bent that way. In his spare time, you know.”
She said impatiently: “You don’t understand. It would be death to Clay to be cooped up in a stuffy office, slaving over a lot of horrible deeds and things. He isn’t cut out for it.”
He looked a little startled. He was not very well acquainted with Clay Penhallow, the boy being twenty years his junior, but he had not supposed, from the little he’d seen of him, that he was made of such fiery metal as could not endure to be confined within four walls. He said feebly: “Oh, well, you know, it’s not such a bad life! Not like a London practice, you know. I mean; I see that the lad reared as he has been it would be a bit trying for him to be obliged to live in London all the year round. But you take my life! Of course, I can’t spare the time my cousins can, but I manage to hunt once a week, and sometimes twice, and I get quite a bit of fishing, besides...”
“It isn’t that! Clay isn’t interested in sport. He would like to live in London! But he’s artistic! It would simply kill him to be tied to a desk!”
If Clifford felt that a young gentleman of this character would scarcely be an asset to the firm of Blazey, Blazey, Hastings, and Wembury, he concealed it, merely remarking: “I see. Quite!”
“Besides, I don’t want him to be a solicitor,” continued Faith. “Or even a barrister. I mean, it isn’t in the least his line for one thing, and for another, I should simply hate a son of mine to spend his time defending people whom he knew to be guilty.”
This ill-formed view of the activities of barristers-at law made Clifford blink, but since Clay was not destined for the Bar there seemed to be little point in disabusing his mother’s mind of its feminine belief that every barrister spent his life defending blood-stained criminals. He did indeed wonder vaguely why a barrister should be almost invariably credited, first, with a criminal practice, and second, with a prescience which made it possible for him to feel certain of his client’s guilt or innocence, but this thought he also kept to himself. He said: “I quite understand your point of view, but it isn’t really such a bad life, Faith. In any case, Uncle Adam—”
“Adam’s only doing it to hurt me!” declared Faith, on a rising note which made Clifford stir uneasily in his chair, and hope that she was not going to treat him to a fit of hysterics. “I had it out with him this morning. I can’t tell you the things he said: sometimes I think he’s absolutely insane! He told me he’d arranged it all with you, so I thought my only hope was to come at once to see you, and explain that I don’t want you to let Clay be articled to you, or whatever it is! After all, Adam hasn’t any hold over you, Cliff? He can’t do anything to you if you refuse, and you can easily keep out of his way, if he flies into one of his awful rages!”
Clifford went on fidgeting with the lid of the ink-pot. His face now wore an extremely thoughtful expression. Faith’s artless exposition of her son’s character inspired him with a strong desire to be exempt from the necessity of admitting Clay into his firm, but there were reasons which made it extremely difficult, not to say impossible, for him to refuse to oblige his uncle in the matter. It was almost equally impossible for him to explain to Faith that fond as he was of his widowed mother, he would find it very awkward indeed if she were to be ejected from Trevellin, and thus (for her private means were of the slenderest) thrown upon his hands. It was not that he was an undutiful or an unaffectionate son, but he was married to a lady who would certainly not welcome to her home anyone so eccentric as her mother-in-law. Nor, he knew, would she feel at all inclined to retrench her household expenditure so as to enable him to make Clara a suitable allowance. Indeed, he scarcely knew how he would be able to manage such a thing, considering the difficulty of the times, and the increasing demands made on his purse by his three daughters, damsels aged twelve, ten, and seven years respectively, whose careers, he was assured, would inevitably be blighted by any failure on his part to provide them with riding, dancing, and music lessons. His father having died when he had been a boy at school, and his mother having then returned to the house which was her birthplace, it had never fallen to Clifford’s lot to support her. He had spent his holidays at Trevellin, and was indebted to his uncle for his present position in a respectable firm of country solicitors. This circumstance alone made him very unwilling to disoblige his uncle; when, to ordinary feelings of gratitude, a lively dread of having to add another member to his household was added, there could be no question of his doing such a thing. He wished very much that he had not admitted Faith into his office, for although she would probably understand his reluctance to take the support of his mother upon his shoulders, he really did not see how he could put such a delicate matter into plain words without appearing to her in the guise of a most unnatural, not to say callous, son.
He cleared his throat, and began to draw patterns on the blotter with one of the pencils scattered over the table. “Well, but after all, Faith!” he said. “Clay must do something, mustn’t he? You’ll have him living at home, too, if he comes to me. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “If everything were different! Not as things are. He hates it at home. He doesn’t get on with Adam, and his stepbrothers are horrid to him. They don’t understand how anyone can be more sensitive than themselves. I’ve suffered from their absolute unfeelingness all my life, and I’m determined Clay shan’t be sacrificed as I was!”
The conversation seemed to Clifford to be soaring towards an elevated plane which he, a plain man, could not aspire to. He said in a soothing way: “Well, if he finds he doesn’t like law, after he’s given it a fair trial, we shall have to think of something else.”
“If you think that Adam would ever let him leave the firm, once he’d got him into it, you don’t know him!” exclaimed Faith.
“Well, well, a great many things may happen to alter circumstances, after all! Really, Faith, I don’t think you need...”
“You mean Adam might die,” she said. “He won’t. I know he won’t. He’ll go on for years and years, making us all miserable! Look at his grandfather! He lived to be over eighty, and had all sorts of things the matter with him.”
“Really, Faith!” expostulated Clifford, quite shocked.
She burst into tears. “Oh, I know I ought not to say so, even to you, but if you only knew what I have to put up with, Cliff, you wouldn’t be surprised at my having reached the end of my tether! I could bear it while Clay was safe from Adam’s tyranny, but if he’s to be forced into doing something he doesn’t want to do, and kept down here at the back of beyond, when he’d rather be in London, I simply can’t go on!”