“I'd go with your merry humor, boy, with all my heart, if you were not about to leave us.”
Was it anything in the interests thus touched on, or was it the chance phrase, “to leave us,” that made young Heathcote become pale as death while he asked, “How is May?”
“Well,—quite well; she was here a moment back. I fancied she was in the room when you came in. I'll send for her.”
“No, no; time enough. Let us have a few more minutes together.”
In a sort of hurried and not very collected way, he now ran on to talk of his prospects and the life before him. It was easy to mark how the assumed slap-dash manner was a mere mask to the bitter pain he felt and that he knew he was causing. He talked of India as though a few days' distance,—of the campaign like a hunting-party; the whole thing was a sort of eccentric ramble, to have its requital in plenty of incident and adventure. He even assumed all the vulgar slang about “hunting down the niggers,” and coming back loaded with “loot,” when the old man threw his arm around him, and said,—
“But not to me, Charley,—not to me.”
The chord was touched at last. All the pretended careless ease was gone, and the young man sobbed aloud as he pressed his father to his breast. The secret which each wanted to keep to his own heart was out, and now they must not try any longer a deception.
“And why must it be, Charley? what is the urgent cause for deserting me? I have more need of you than ever I had. I want your counsel and your kindness; your very presence—as I feel it this moment—is worth all my doctors.”
“I think you know—I think I told you, I mean—that you are no stranger to the position I stood in here. You never taught me, father, that dependence was honorable. It was not amongst your lessons that a life of inglorious idleness was becoming.” As with a faltering and broken utterance he spoke these words, his confusion grew greater and greater, for he felt himself on the very verge of a theme that he dreaded to touch; and at last, with a great effort, he said, “And besides all this, I had no right to sacrifice another to my selfishness.”
“I don't understand you, Charley.”