“Thank you, I would rather stand. Yes; it is not so much a favour as the indication of your duty. I do not know if you will see it in the same light as I; you have shown me before now that we do not take the same view.”
Michael felt himself bristling. His father certainly had the effect of drawing out in him all the feelings that were better suppressed.
“I think we need not talk of that now, sir,” he remarked.
“Certainly it is not the subject of my interview with you now. The fact is this. In some way your presence gives a certain serenity and content to your mother. I noticed that at Ashbridge, and, indeed, there has been some trouble with her this morning because I could not take her to come to see you with me. I ask you, therefore, for her sake, to be with us as much as you can, in short, to come and live with us.”
Michael nodded, saluting, so to speak, the signpost into the future as he passed it.
“I had already determined to do that,” he said. “I had determined, at any rate, to ask your permission to do so. It is clear that my mother wants me, and no other consideration can weigh with that.”
Lord Ashbridge still remained completely self-sufficient.
“I am glad you take that view of it,” he said. “I think that is all I have to say.”
Now Michael was an adept at giving; as indicated before, when he gave, he gave nobly, and he could not only outwardly disregard, but he inwardly cancelled the wonderful ungenerosity with which his father received. That did not concern him.
“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.”