“Do you mean, then, to show that letter to my mother?”
“Ay; I have written it with that object Scanlan asked me to be his interpreter, and I have kept my pledge.--And did she go alone,--unaccompanied?”
“I fancy so; but, in truth, I never asked. The doctors were here, and all that fuss and confusion going on, so that I had really little head for anything. After all, I suspect she's a girl might be able to take care of herself,--should n't you say so?”
Massingbred was silent for a while, and then said: “You 'll have to be on the alert about this business of yours, Martin; and if I can be of service to you, command me. I mean to start for London immediately.”
“I 'll see my mother at once, then,” said he, taking up Massingbred's letter.
“Shall I meet you in about an hour, in the Lichtenthal Avenue?”
We have no need, nor have we any right, to follow Massingbred as he strolled out to walk alone in an alley of the wood. Irresolution is an intense suffering to men of action; and such was the present condition of his mind. Week after week, month after month, had he lingered on in companionship with the Martins, till such had become the intimacy between them that they scrupled not to discuss before him the most confidential circumstances, and ask his counsel on the most private concerns. He fancied that he was “of them;” he grew to think that he was, somehow, part and parcel of the family, little suspecting the while that Kate Henderson was the link that bound him to them, and that without her presence they resolved themselves into three individuals for whom he felt wonderfully little of interest or affection. “She is gone, and what have I to stay for?” was the question he put to himself; and for answer he could only repeat it.
There are many who think that our law of primogeniture is a sad hardener of the heart,--estranging the father from the son, widening petty misunderstandings to the breadth of grievances, engendering suspicions where there should be trustfulness, and opening two roads in life to those who should rightfully have trod one path together. If one half of this be the price we pay for our “great houses,” the bargain is a bad one! But even taking a wide margin for exaggeration,--allowing much for the prejudices of those who assail this institution,--there is that which revolts against one's better nature, in the ever-present question of money, between the father and his heir. The very fact that separate rights suggest separate interests is a source of discord; while the inevitable law of succession is a stern defiance to that sense of protection on one side, and dependence on the other, that should mark their relations to each other.