‘I don’t think it will be any use, Chuff,’ said Jonathan seriously. ‘But I think you are right in making your wishes known. Why not broach the matter to him tomorrow, when he’ll be at home all day? Tomorrow afternoon. After he’s had his nap, and before we have to dress to go out.’
Accordingly on the afternoon of Christmas Day Chuff nerved himself to the encounter and presented himself in Morcar’s den. The members of the Stanney Royd household had eaten a very light lunch without benefit of Mrs Jessopp, who had gone off for the day to her eldest son, because they had all been invited to Emsley Hall for Christmas dinner that evening. The invitation pleased none of them. Chuff had hoped to escape for the evening to the Mellors, whose midday family party, with many aunts, would then be over. Jonathan did not enjoy seeing his mother as Nat Armitage’s wife. Susie, though she had a delicious new white frock for the occasion which she could not help looking forward to wearing, did not enjoy seeing Jonathan with his mother. Morcar could have enjoyed dining with Nat and Jennifer well enough if the younger generation had not been about, but he guessed this generation’s reactions and knew he would be on tenterhooks all evening lest Jennifer perceive them also and be hurt. When the time for dressing arrived, therefore, everybody would probably be in an irritable mood; but for the present, in the dead of the afternoon, good humour might still be hoped to prevail.
‘Well, Chuff, what do you want?’ said Morcar, waking with a start. ‘If you’re trying to get off from your Aunt Jennifer’s tonight, it’s no use, so don’t try it.’
‘I wasn’t going to,’ said Chuff with an air of virtue.
‘What is it, then?’
‘I suppose it’s no use, either, saying I want to get married.’
‘None at all till you’ve passed your exams,’ said Morcar, not taking him seriously.
‘It’s too bad!’ cried Chuff, suddenly almost weeping.
To see his carefree, somewhat insensitive, by his own declaration ‘tough’ grandson with his face thus distorted was painful to Morcar.
‘Now, Chuff,’ he began kindly. ‘You know you’re too young to marry yet.’
‘Lots of people get married at nineteen.’
‘The more fools they,’ said Morcar briskly.
‘Why can’t I do what I want? Why should I have to do what you say? I have some money of my own now,’ blurted Chuff.
‘Don’t insult me, Chuff,’ said Morcar angrily. ‘Money has nothing to do with it. If you’re fool enough to run off and marry Ruth, I shan’t do anything to stop you and I shan’t cut you off with a penny, so don’t make yourself into a martyr about it. I shall think you a fool, that’s all.’
‘Why?’ said Chuff in a milder but still tear-filled tone.
‘If you marry Ruth now in a hurry, everyone will say you had to, for the usual reason. Do you want to expose Ruth to that slander? I hope it is a slander?’ said Morcar sternly.
‘It - is - a - slander!’ shouted Chuff, crimsoning. ‘The maddening thing is,’ he added, ‘if it weren’t you’d give your permission and we could be married in a proper way.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ said Morcar, laughing a little at this admittedly absurd paradox. ‘With great reluctance and disappointment, however.’
‘It’s no laughing matter to me,’ said Chuff, glowering.
‘Society has its rules,’ began Morcar.
‘They’re all nonsense, hopelessly out of date.’
‘Maybe. If you want to break them, you can. But in that case you can’t expect its support.’
Chuff threw himself about the room, muttering angrily. ‘You do what you like; why can’t I?’ he said.
‘Why do you want to gulp every pleasure down at once, in such a hurry? There’ll be a lot of your life left still, after you’re twenty-one.’
‘Maybe not,’ growled Chuff, sombre.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Atom bombs.’
‘Chuff, you never give a thought to atom bombs.’
‘Jonathan does, all the time.’
‘That’s Jonathan’s way. It’s not yours. It’s affectation to pretend you ever give them a thought.’
‘Why should I waste the best years of my life? I want to get married,’ said Chuff obstinately.
‘Pass your exams first.’
‘I’d get through them better if I didn’t have to go to the Mellors to see Ruth all the time. If she were at home with me, I should have more time.’
Morcar found himself unequal to a physiological discussion with his grandson - as to which in any case there might be two sides to the argument - so he put that aside, but allowed himself to see a picture of Chuff walking a bedroom at midnight with a teething baby wailing in his arms. He sighed.
‘I can’t consent, Chuff, really I can’t. You’ve two jobs on hand already, with the mill and the Tech. Marriage would be a third. Wait till you’ve finished your exams, do. It’s only eighteen months, after all,’
‘Eighteen months!’ wailed Chuff.
In a handsome dark green cardigan patterned across the shoulders in fawn (knitted for him, Morcar remembered having heard, by Ruth) Chuff looked very young. He also looked extremely unhappy. He still hung around in front of his grandfather, unable to abandon his hopes, moving uneasily from one foot to the other, his hands in his trouser pockets, his lower lip pouting. Morcar felt very sorry for him.
‘How should you like to be engaged?’ said Morcar kindly.
‘What would be the use of that?’ growled Chuff.
‘Ruth might like it - ring and all that.’
‘Well, there is that, of course,’ said Chuff thoughtfully. ‘She might like it. Girls do. It would be easier at the mill.’
‘It would,’ agreed Morcar.
The black cloud on Chuff’s face began to lift.
‘Well,’ he began again. ‘It’s not what I want. I’ve asked for bread and you’ve given me a stone, that’s what I think. But we’ll get engaged now, and I’ll pass my second exam in summer, and then,’ he concluded with triumph: ‘I shall broach the question of marriage to you again, Grandfather.’
‘I shan’t promise to give my consent,’ said Morcar, alarmed to find that he appeared to have made some concession.
‘Ha!’ snorted Chuff derisively. ‘I’II go and tell Ruth now.’
He flung joyously from the room, but returned to put his head in at the door.
‘I shall be twenty in July,’ he said consolingly.