Brown on Resolution Read Online Free PDF Page A

the ferocious energy which had carried their father to such heights in the world of greengrocery, and, unlike him, they were still young and able to reach instant, Napoleonic decisions.
    “People mustn’t know about it,” said Will positively, “that’s certain. Agatha will have to go away for the—as soon as it’s necessary. We’ll have to say she’s gone to stay with friends in Edinburgh or somewhere?
    “That’s it,” chimed in Harry, “and the—the child will have to be boarded out when she comes back. It ought to be easy enough.”
    The three of them looked to Agatha for agreement, and found none. Her face was as though cut in stone. The bare thought of having her child ‘boarded out’, the child for whom she was ready, even anxious to endure so much, was like a savage blow in the face.
    “No,” she said, “I won’t have him boarded out. I’m going to be with him, always.”
    The pronoun she used displayed her silly, baseless hope that her child would be a son, but it passed unnoticed and uncommented upon.
    “Don’t be silly,” said Harry, with immense scorn. “Of course we must board the child out—if it lives.”
    The thought and the wish that fathered it tore at Agatha’s heart-strings.
    “Oh, how I hate you!” she burst out. “Of course he’s going to live. And I’m going to keep him too. Don’t you dare say anything else!”
    “Pooh!” sneered Will. “You’ll have to do what you’re told. Beggars can’t be—”
    Will’s speech broke off short as he caught sight of a flash of triumph in Agatha’s face, and was reminded by it of a forgotten factor in the argument. He met the eyes of his father and his brother with some uneasiness.
    For fifteen years ago, when Mr. Brown had just begun to be successful in business, he had followed the prudent example of thousands of others by investing his savings in house property and deeding it over to his wife. That, of course, had been in the days before limited liability, and was a wise precaution ensuring the possession of capital and the necessaries of life even if bankruptcy were to strip Mr. Brown nominally of all he possessed. Mr. Brown had seen to it that his wife made a will in his favour, and had thought no more about it. Until his wife’s death, for then, as soon as Mrs. Brown was in her grave, a wretched pettifogging lawyer from the purlieus of Deptford, had produced a will of recent date (made, in fact, as soon as Mrs. Brown was aware that she was suffering from the cancer which caused her death) by which all her property, real and personal, was left to her daughter Agatha. It had been Mrs. Brown’s one exceptional action in life (corresponding to that one of Agatha’s whose results they were just discussing) and had been undoubtedly inspired by the desire to render Agatha free of that dependence upon mankind which even Victorian ladies found so exasperating on occasion. Dad and the boys, as soon as they had recovered from their astonishment, had tried to laugh the matter off. Dad had gone on collecting the weekly rents of the six houses in Beaconsfield Terrace as usual, and as usual had devoted them to his own purposes without rendering account. But those houses were Agatha’s all the same, as was the hundred pounds a year clear which they brought in. Will and Harry and Mr. Brown looked at each other with an uneasy suspicion of defeat.
    “I’m not a beggar,” said Agatha, “so I can be a chooser if I like. And I’m going to choose. I’m going to live with my boy wherever I like. So there!”
    Will did not know when he was beaten, and he tried to continue the argument.
    “Don’t be a fool, Aggie,” he said, “you can’t do that. You can’t manage property and—and—have a baby and all that sort of thing. You’ll be cheated right and left and you’ll come whining back to us for help before the year’s out. And then—”
    His tone and expression made it unpleasantly clear what would happen then. Agatha only