“Ah, father,” he cried, with the irritability born of keen anxiety; “if you would but listen to me! Indeed you expose yourself unduly—”
“When death threatens from without, a man may smile at it. But when death knocks from within, Harry, thrice fool who does not hearken!”
“Sir, you alarm me.” Harry’s voice shook. “Oh, I have been blind! Your white hairs, your altered demeanour, are sure signs of suffering—some hidden sickness!”
“Even so, lad. Sickness incurable! A secret pain that gives no rest, night nor day. Nay, nay, Harry, no physician can avail, no remedy ease—”
“Ah,” exclaimed the son in bitter accents, “now I understand much. You have never given me your confidence, yet methinks I might have been as true to help you in your need, as wise in my devotion to advise, as old Chitterley. This sickness is the secret between you. ’Tis for physician or remedy that Chitterley journeys forth daily in such mystery while you toil. Can you not see, my lord, that to be shut out from your counsel has but added deeper grief to me? And methinks that I might have proved as true to help, as wise to counsel, as yonder old man.… But it has always been your pleasure to treat me as a child.”
Rockhurst fixed deep eyes of melancholy on his son.
“My illness is not of the body, Harry; it is of the mind. But the canker works, never ceasing, eats from soul to flesh.”
“You speak in riddles, sir.”
“Alas! you shall read my riddle soon enough. Hast ever heard—thou canst never have known it—of that sickness of the spirit which is called … remorse? In sooth, ’tis uglier than the pestilence.”
At the look of sudden fear his son cast upon him the Lord Constable laughed,—a laugh sadder than tears.