The Blotting Book | Page 4

By the terms of your father's will, your marriage, provided it takes place with your mother's consent, and after your twenty-second birthday, puts you in complete control and possession of your fortune. Otherwise, as of course you know, you come of age, legally speaking, on your twenty-fifth birthday."
Morris lit another cigarette rather impatiently.
"Yes, I knew I was a minor till I was twenty-five," he said, "and I suppose I have known that if I married after the age of twenty-two, I became a major, or whatever you call it. But what then? Do let us go and play billiards, I'll give you twenty-five in a hundred, because I've been playing a lot lately, and I'll bet half a crown."
Mr. Taynton's fist gently tapped the table.
"Done," he said, "and we will play in five minutes. But I have something to say to you first. Your mother, as you know, enjoys the income of the bulk of your father's property for her lifetime. Outside that, he left this much smaller capital of which, as also of her money, my partner and I are trustees. The sum he left you was thirty thousand pounds. It is now rather over forty thousand pounds, since we have changed the investments from time to time, and always, I am glad to say, with satisfactory results. The value of her property has gone up also in a corresponding degree. That, however, does not concern you. But since you are now twenty-two, and your marriage would put the whole of this smaller sum into your hands, would it not be well for you to look through our books, to see for yourself the account we render of our stewardship?"
Morris laughed.
"But for what reason?" he asked. "You tell me that my portion has increased in value by ten thousand pounds. I am delighted to hear it. And I thank you very much. And as for--"
He broke off short, and Mr. Taynton let a perceptible pause follow before he interrupted.
"As for the possibility of your marrying?" he suggested.
Morris gave him a quick, eager, glance.
"Yes, I think there is that possibility," he said. "I hope--I hope it is not far distant."
"My dear boy--" said the lawyer.
"Ah, not a word. I don't know--"
Morris pushed his chair back quickly, and stood up--his tall slim figure outlined against the sober red of the dining-room wall. A plume of black hair had escaped from his well-brushed head and hung over his forehead, and his sun-tanned vivid face looked extraordinarily handsome. His mother's clear-cut energetic features were there, with the glow and buoyancy of youth kindling them. Violent vitality was his also; his was the hot blood that could do any deed when the life-instinct commanded it. He looked like one of those who could give their body to be burned in the pursuit of an idea, or could as easily steal, or kill, provided only the deed was vitally done in the heat of his blood. Violence was clearly his mode of life: the motor had to go sixty miles an hour; he might be one of those who bathed in the Serpentine in mid-winter; he would clearly dance all night, and ride all day, and go on till he dropped in the pursuit of what he cared for. Mr. Taynton, looking at him as he stood smiling there, in his splendid health and vigour felt all this. He felt, too, that if Morris intended to be married to-morrow morning, matrimony would probably take place.
But Morris's pause, after he pushed his chair back and stood up, was only momentary.
"Good God, yes; I'm in love," he said. "And she probably thinks me a stupid barbarian, who likes only to drive golfballs and motorcars. She--oh, it's hopeless. She would have let me come over to see them to-morrow otherwise."
He paused again.
"And now I've given the whole show away," he said.
Mr. Taynton made a comfortable sort of noise. It was compounded of laughter, sympathy, and comprehension.
"You gave it away long ago, my dear Morris," he said.
"You had guessed?" asked Morris, sitting down again with the same quickness and violence of movement, and putting both his elbows on the table.
"No, my dear boy, you had told me, as you have told everybody, without mentioning it. And I most heartily congratulate you. I never saw a more delightful girl. Professionally also, I feel bound to add that it seems to me a most proper alliance--heirs should always marry heiresses. It"--Mr. Taynton drank off the rest of his port--"it keeps properties together."
Hot blood again dictated to Morris: it seemed dreadful to him that any thought of money or of property could be mentioned in the same breath as that which he longed for. He rose again as abruptly and violently as he had sat down.
"Well, let's play billiards," he said. "I--I