“I could not live if you parted me from my work now.”
And he looked so determined, his eyes glowed with such a strange inward fire, while there was such indomitable will expressed in his whole being, that I was not fool enough to pursue my point.
“Look here, Hugh,” I said, “I don’t want, of course, to interfere in your secrets. You have never thought fit to tell me what this all-absorbing work is that you pursue at risk of physical damage to yourself. But I want you to remember, Girlie, that I have independent means, that my time is my own, and that your father often used to tell me, when I was a great many years younger, of some of his labours, and of his work; once I helped him—do you remember?—over some…”
“My father was too fond of talking about his work,” he interrupted. “I don’t mean to offend you by saying this, old chap, but you must remember the purport of most of the obituary notices written about one of the most scientific men that ever lived. He toiled all his life, contracted the illness of which he died, wore himself out, body and soul, in pursuit of one great object: when he died, with that great object unattained, the world shrugged its shoulders and called him a fool for his pains. But I am here now. I am still young. What he could not complete I have already almost accomplished. Give me two years, old chap, and the world will stand gaping round in speechless amazement at the tearing asunder of its own veil of ignorance, torn by me from before its eyes, by me, and by my father: ‘mad Tankerville’ they called him! Then it will bow and fawn at my feet, place laurel wreaths on my father’s tomb, and confer all the honours it can upon his memory; and I…”
“You will be sadly in need of laurel wreaths too, Girlie, by then,” I said half crossly, half in grudging admiration at his enthusiasm, “for you will have worked yourself into your grave long before that halcyon time.”
He pulled himself together as if he were half-ashamed of his outburst, and said, with a mirthless laugh:
“You are talking just like your Aunt Charlotte, old Mark.”
I suppose my flippancy had jarred on him in his present highly nervous state. Before I finally went, I said to him:
“Promise me one thing, Girlie.”
“What is it?”