‘But, Polly—Polly—my own lad, my only lad—you’re all I’ve got to live for. What are you going to do?’
‘I shall take the Queen’s shilling, and try my luck in the Crimea.’
And before his father could answer him he was gone.
CHAPTER V
Polson was gone, so far, only to his own room, but so swiftly that it was impossible to intercept him, and the snick of the bolt in the lock arrested his father before he had set a single foot upon the stair.
Grim and pale, Polson lit his candles and began to range about the apartment, drawing out from one recess a pair of heavy walking boots, and from another a well-worn suit of velveteens which had seen him through a year or two of sport in the spinny and at the river side. He cast off the clothes he wore, hastily assumed these stouter garments, and having encased his legs in a pair of strong leather leggings, he opened his bedroom door, blew out his candle, and went swiftly down the stairs into the hall. There the wreckage-of an hour or two ago was all piled together in one corner, but groping amongst it in the darkness with both hands, he found a long waterproof overcoat, and after more search a sealskin shooting cap; appropriating both of these he strode to the rear of the house, opened the door by which his father had entered on that night of evil omen, and walked out into the roaring darkness.
He was on the sheltered side of the building and did not as yet feel the force of the wind. For half a minute he stood with his heart in his throat, and his hand upon the hasp of the door, straining his ears to listen. He heard nothing but the insane noises of the night. Suddenly, he drew the door towards him violently, and it closed with a slam and a snap. He was outside, and the thing he had purposed was accomplished. He had said good-bye to the house in which he had learned to walk and talk—the house which had been his home for the whole of his life, except for a year or two of earliest infancy, and the sound of the closing door seemed as if it cut his life in two.
He walked rapidly until he reached the ridge before he encountered the full violence of the storm, for the wind had shifted within the last hour or two. Then, stalwart as he was, it caught and whirled him and sent him running willy-nilly for a hundred yards or more. But there was not a nail in his boots which was not familiar with every acre of that country-side for a mile or two, and he found the path with ease and certainty, and ploughed along it as surely as if it had been broad daylight, though the night was black as a wolf’s mouth. The bitter wind and driving rain were welcome to his hot eyes and scalded face, and he walked with a swift resolution until he had reached the spot from which in daylight the last view of the house would have been possible. There he turned, the waterproof coat whipping about his ankles like a torn sail, and the rain pattering its own music on his broad shoulders. Dimly, very dimly, he could see—or perhaps he only thought he saw—the chimneys of the old home rising against a little clearing in the distant lift of the sky.
So very brief a while ago he had been happy there. Only an hour or two since he was meditating, between the moves of the game, on the very words he meant to use in telling Irene that he loved her. Only an hour or two since every thought was full of hope and ambition, since the path of honour stood wide open with a vague bright figure beckoning in its far distance.