‘And pray what are your daughters and baby to do, while you are galloping after Gilbert?’
‘Oh! I’ll manage. We can all do things together. Come, Maurice, I wont have Edmund teased, and I can’t bear parting with any of them, or think that any strange man can treat Gibbie as I should.’
Maurice was edified by his sister’s warm-hearted weakness, but not at all inclined to let ‘Edmund’ escape a ‘teasing.’
Mr. Kendal’s first impulse always was to find a sufficient plea for doing nothing. If Gilbert was to go to India, it was not worth while to give him a classical education.
‘Is he to go to India? Albinia had not told me so.’
‘I thought she was aware of it; but possibly I may not have mentioned it. It has been an understood thing ever since I came home. He will have a good deal of the property in this place, but he had better have seen something of the world. Bayford is no place for a man to settle down in too young.’
‘Certainly,’ said Mr. Ferrars, repressing a smile. ‘Then are you thinking of sending him to Haileybury?’
He was pronounced too young, besides, it was explained that his destination in India was unfixed. On going home it had been a kind of promise that one of the twin brothers should have an appointment in the civil service, the other should enter the bank of Kendal and Kendal, and the survivor was unconsciously suspended between these alternatives, while the doubt served as a convenient protection to his father from making up his mind to prepare him for either of these or for anything else.
The prompt Ferrars temper could bear it no longer, and Maurice spoke out. ‘I’ll tell you what, Kendal, it is time to attend to your own concerns. If you choose to let your son run to ruin, because you will not exert yourself to remove him from temptation, I shall not stand by to see my sister worn out with making efforts to save him. She is willing and devoted, she fancies she could work day and night to preserve him, and she does it with all her heart; but it is not woman’s work, she cannot do it, and it is not fit to leave it to her. When Gilbert has broken her heart as well as yours, and left an evil example to his brother, then you will feel what it is to have kept a lad whom you know to be well disposed, but weak as water, in the very midst of contamination, and to have left your young, inexperienced wife to struggle alone to save him. If you are unwarned by the experience of last autumn and winter, I could not pity you, whatever might happen.’