Читать книгу The Annes онлайн

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“Aunt!” Kit drew in his breath sharply, protesting.

“And guardian,” his aunt reminded him.

Kit flushed angrily; it was true that his prospects in life depended upon his aunt’s favour.

“It doesn’t seem decent to discuss it,” Kit said. “As if I’d nothing to do but decide to beckon Helen.”

“Between ourselves, Kit, I think Helen has already made the first signals,” said Miss Carrington. “The woman usually does; Thackeray and George Bernard Shaw are right. I should be sorry to see you giving yourself the airs of a conqueror, but as an honest working basis between us we may as well admit the truth that Helen is of the same mind as Barkis.”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Kit, helplessly. “I’m not in the least in love with her, Aunt Anne. I never could be.”

“No,” admitted Miss Carrington, judicially, “you are not. I think quite likely you never would be. I don’t recall asking you to be, my dear boy.”

Kit looked at her, his honest, rebellious young soul in his eyes.

“Christopher Carrington, listen to me with your intelligence, not merely with your ears,” began Miss Carrington, bracing herself to her task. “I rather like your feeling, which your silence announces more eloquently than words, as novelists say. Youth is the time for dreams. It is for its elders to see to it that the dreams do not become nightmares. I want, I urge you to marry Helen Abercrombie because she is preëminently suitable. She is of our class; she is handsome, highly accomplished, wealthy. She is a woman to help on a man’s career. Not only that, but she has it in her power to launch a man on his career. Her father was the best governor this state ever had. He will be nominated and reëlected this coming year. He is certain to have an important portfolio in a not-far-distant cabinet; it is more than likely that he will be his party’s presidential candidate next time. And that party is going in next time; heaven knows the country has had enough of the muddle of the past years at the other party’s hands! As Governor Abercrombie’s son-in-law you would be secure of a good diplomatic appointment. And there is nothing like such an experience to make a man, Kit! It would give you what nothing else could of dignity, of savoir faire. I will not allow you to turn aside from such opportunity. Then, if the not unlikely sequence follows, as President Abercrombie’s son-in-law——”