“Stop,” said Roland; “have a little consideration, sir. There is no question of any victim.”
“You are just a monomaniac, Rowley, my old man,” said Mrs. Morgan.
“I know everything you can say,” said the old captain. “All that jargon about watching the market, and keeping a cool head, and running no unnecessary risks—I know it all. You think you can turn over your money, as you call it, always to your advantage, and keep risk at arm’s length.”
“I do not say so much as that; but risk may be reduced to a minimum, and profit be the rule, when one gives one’s mind to it—which it is my business to do.”
“Oh, I know everything you can say,” said the old man. “Give your mind to it! Give your mind to an honest trade, that’s my advice to you. What is it at the best but making money out of the follies of your fellow-creatures? They take a panic and you buy from them, to their certain loss, and then they take a freak of enthusiasm and you sell to them, to their certain loss. Somebody must always lose in order that you should gain. It is a devilish trade—I said so when I heard you had gone into it; but for God’s sake, Roland Ashton, keep that for the outside world, and don’t bring ruin and misery here.”
“What can I say?” said the young man. He rose up from the table where he had been taking his last meal with the old people. He kept his temper beautifully, Mrs. Morgan thought, with great pride in him. He grew pale and a little excited, as was natural, but never forgot his respect for his grandfather, who, besides that venerable relationship, was an old man. “What can I say? To tell you that I consider my profession an honourable one would be superfluous, for you can’t imagine I should have taken it up had I thought otherwise.”
“Rowley, my old man,” said Mrs. Morgan, “you are just as hotheaded as when you were a boy. But, Roland, you must remember that we have suffered from it; and everybody says when you begin to gamble in business, it is worse than any other kind of gambling.”
“When you begin; but there is no need ever to begin, that I can see.”
“And then, my dear—I am not taking up your grandfather’s view, but just telling you what he means—then, my dear, Catherine Vernon has been very kind to him and me. She is fond of us, I really believe. She trusts us, which to her great hurt, poor thing, she does to few—”
“Catherine Vernon is a noble character. She has a fine nature. She has a scorn of meanness and everything that is little—”
The old lady shook her head, “That is true,” she said; “but it is her misfortune, poor thing, that she gets her amusement out of all that, and she believes in few. You must not, Roland,” she said, laying her hand upon his arm, “you must not, my dear lad—Oh, listen to what my old man says! You must not be the means of leading into imprudence or danger anyone she is fond of—she that has been so kind to him and to me!”
The old hand was heavy on his arm, bending him down towards her with an imperative clasp, and this sudden appeal was so unexpected from the placid old woman, who seemed to have outgrown all impassioned feeling and lived only to soothe and reconcile opposing influences, that both the young man and the old were impressed by it. Roland Ashton stooped, and kissed his grandmother’s forehead. He had a great power in him of response to every call of emotion.
“Dear old mother,” he said, “if I were a villain and meant harm, I don’t see how I could carry on with it after that. But I want you to believe that I am not a villain,” he said, with a half-laugh of feeling.
Old Captain Morgan was so touched by the scene that in the weakness of old age and the unexpectedness of this interposition the tears stood in his eyes.
“When you do put your shoulder to the wheel, Mary,” he said, with a half-laugh too, and holding out a hand to Roland, with whom for the first time he found himself in perfect sympathy, “you do it like a hero. I’ll add nothing to what she has said, my boy. Even at the risk of losing a profit, or failing in a stroke of business, respect the house that has sheltered your family. That’s what we both say.”
“And I have answered, sir,” said Roland, “that even if I were bent on mischief I could not persist after such an appeal—and I am not bent on mischief,” he added, this time with a smile; and so fell into easy conversation about his sister, and the good it would do her to pay the old people a visit. “I am out all day, and she is left to herself. It is dull for her in a little house at Kilburn, all alone—though she says she likes it,” he went on, glad, as indeed they all were, to get down to a milder level of conversation.
The old captain had not taken kindly to the idea of having Emma; but after the moment of sympathetic emotion which they had all passed through, there was no rejecting so very reasonable a petition. And on the whole, looking back upon it, now that the young man’s portmanteau stood packed in the hall, and he himself was on the eve of departure, even the captain could not deny that there had been on the whole more pleasure in Roland’s visit than he had at all expected. However he might modify the account of his own sensations, it had certainly been agreeable to meet a young fellow of his own blood, his descendant, a man among the many
