Produced by Ted Garvin, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
1914
The beginning of all this difficult business was a little speech whichMrs. Thresk fell into a habit of making to her son. She spoke it thefirst time on the spur of the moment without thought or intention. Butshe saw that it hurt. So she used it again—to keep Henry in hisproper place.
"You have no right to talk, Henry," she would say in the hard practicalvoice which so completed her self-sufficiency. "You are not earning yourliving. You are still dependent upon us;" and she would add with a noteof triumph: "Remember, if anything were to happen to your dear father youwould have to shift for yourself, for everything has been left to me."
Mrs. Thresk meant no harm. She was utterly without imagination and had nospecial delicacy of taste to supply its place—that was all. People andwords—she was at pains to interpret neither the one nor the other andshe used both at random. She no more contemplated anything happening toher husband, to quote her phrase, than she understood the effect herbarbarous little speech would have on a rather reserved schoolboy.
Nor did Henry himself help to enlighten her. He was shrewd enough torecognise the futility of any attempt. No! He just looked at hercuriously and held his tongue. But the words were not forgotten. Theyroused in him a sense of injustice. For in the ordinary well-to-docircle, in which the Thresks lived, boys were expected to be an expenseto their parents; and after all, as he argued, he had not asked to beborn. And so after much brooding, there sprang up in him an antagonism tohis family and a fierce determination to owe to it as little as he could.
There was a full share of vanity no doubt in the boy's resolve, but theantagonism had struck roots deeper than his vanity; and