"I will make arrangements to come at once," he said, "if you can receive me to-day.""That will hardly be worth while, will it? I am taking your mother back to Ashbridge tomorrow."Michael got up in silence. After all, this gift of himself, of his time, of his liberty, of all that constituted life to him, was made not to his father, but to his mother. It was made, as his heart knew, not ungrudgingly only, but eagerly, and if it had been recommended by the doctor that she should go to Ashbridge, he would have entirely disregarded the large additional sacrifice on himself which it entailed. Thus it was not owing to any retraction of his gift, or reconsideration of it, that he demurred.
"I hope you will--will meet me half-way about this, sir," he said.
"You must remember that all my work lies in London. I want, naturally, to continue that as far as I can. If you go to Ashbridge it is completely interrupted. My friends are here too;everything I have is here."
His father seemed to swell a little; he appeared to fill the room.
"And all my duties lie at Ashbridge," he said. "As you know, I am not of the type of absentee landlords. It is quite impossible that I should spend these months in idleness in town. I have never done such a thing yet, nor, I may say, would our class hold the position they do if we did. We shall come up to town after Easter, should your mother's health permit it, but till then I could not dream of neglecting my duties in the country."Now Michael knew perfectly well what his father's duties on that excellently managed estate were. They consisted of a bi-weekly interview in the "business-room" (an abode of files and stags'
heads, in which Lord Ashbridge received various reports of building schemes and repairs), of a round of golf every afternoon, and of reading the lessons and handing the offertory-box on Sunday. That, at least, was the sum-total as it presented itself to him, and on which he framed his conclusions. But he left out altogether the moral effect of the big landlord living on his own land, and being surrounded by his own dependents, which his father, on the other hand, so vastly over-estimated. It was clear that there was not likely to be much accord between them on this subject.
"But could you not go down there perhaps once or twice a week, and get Bailey to come and consult you here?" he asked.
Lord Ashbridge held his head very high.
"That would be completely out of the question," he said.
All this, Michael felt, had nothing to do with the problem of his mother and himself. It was outside it altogether, and concerned only his father's convenience. He was willing to press this point as far as possible.
"I had imagined you would stop in London," he said. "Supposing under these circumstances I refuse to live with you?""I should draw my own conclusion as to the sincerity of your profession of duty towards your mother.""And practically what would you do?" asked Michael.
"Your mother and I would go to Ashbridge tomorrow all the same."Another alternative suddenly suggested itself to Michael which he was almost ashamed of proposing, for it implied that his father put his own convenience as outweighing any other consideration. But he saw that if only Lord Ashbridge was selfish enough to consent to it, it had manifest merits. His mother would be alone with him, free of the presence that so disconcerted her.
"I propose, then," he said, "that she and I should remain in town, as you want to be at Ashbridge."He had been almost ashamed of suggesting it, but no such shame was reflected in his father's mind. This would relieve him of the perpetual embarrassment of his wife's presence, and the perpetual irritation of Michael's. He had persuaded himself that he was making a tremendous personal sacrifice in proposing that Michael should live with them, and this relieved him of the necessity.
"Upon my word, Michael," he said, with the first hint of cordiality that he had displayed, "that is very well thought of. Let us consider; it is certainly the case that this derangement in your poor mother's mind has caused her to take what I might almost call a dislike to me. I mentioned that to Sir James, though it was very painful for me to do so, and he said that it was a common and most distressing symptom of brain disease, that the sufferer often turned against those he loved best. Your plan would have the effect of removing that."He paused a moment, and became even more sublimely fatuous.
