"Ask! No! I demand it!" my father thundered. "Think of my sufferings; think of my five-and-twenty years, the best part of my life, hidden away in a secret corner of the earth, never setting eyes on my country or the home I love—a stranger to my children and a stranger to my father. What can you suffer more than this? Speak, Rupert Devereux, and quickly, or I shall kill you where you stand."
He turned around white and resolute.
"Kill me, then. I wish for nothing else. There is not a more miserable man than I on earth. You talk of your wasted years and weary exile, and yet you have not suffered as I have. You have had a clear conscience; I have had a guilty one. Everything I have won, every success, every joy I have stretched out my hand for has tasted like ashes between my teeth. Yours has been a passive sorrow—my life has been one long hell of remorse. But I will not do this thing. I will not pull down with my own hand what it has taken so many years to build up. I will not make my children hate me. Go your way, Herbert, or kill me if you like—I am indifferent."
I saw my father's arm lifted to strike him, but the blow never fell. Instead, his arm sank to his side and he turned away.
"Hugh," he said to me in a low hollow voice, "let us go. Let us go now. God keep him and me apart. I thought I saw him at that moment dead! murdered by me. I will not kill him! I will not kill him!"
José came hurrying out to us.
"Messieurs," he said anxiously, "I must ask of you for a pledge before you go. Not to a soul will you mention the presence of that gentilhomme lâ in our tents, and you will attempt no rescue, or to interfere with the ransom. You must swear this."
"Ay, I swear it," said my father, and I echoed his words.
"It is good," José declared, smiling and twirling his long black moustachios. "Messieurs will oblige me by accepting a cigarette. No? Very good. Monsieur will allow me, at any rate, to render him my most hearty thanks for having prevented us from committing an act of great folly. This ransom will be a gift from heaven. It will enable me to leave this country, and seek a more stirring life. Life here is dull—very dull."
My father nodded, and passed on.