CHAPTER XXXIX
"MY FATHER'S RESOLUTION"
The whole of the following morning my father spent with Mr. Leigh, who arrived in answer to his invitation soon after nine o'clock. When I returned to lunch he was still there, and it was not until evening that I found myself alone with my father.
"Hugh, I have something to say to you," he began gravely, "something important."
I waited in silence, preparing to do battle with a sinking heart. But as I looked into his worn, sad face, I saw there was a change in it which favoured little the chances of my opposition. The vacuity of hopeless weariness had gone, and in its place shone the light of a great resolution. How should I hope to bend it!
"Hugh, my boy," my father began, "I owe to you a greater debt than father ever owed son."
I would have interrupted him, but he held up his hand with an imperative gesture, which I could not choose but to obey. And so I listened in silence.
"I am not going to speak of this black cloud, which fate seems to have decreed should never be rolled away from my head," he went on. "What would be the use? Twelve months ago I tasted the very bottom-most depths of misery. It seemed to me then that I must either go mad or take my life. It was your letter, Hugh, which saved me from either fate. God bless you for it!"
He turned away as though to watch the sun shoot down its parting rays on the brown hillside. But I knew that he had another reason for looking away, and a womanish longing came over me to seize his hands and breathe out fond words. But somehow I could not. I don't know how others find it, but it always seems to me to be as difficult for a man to give vent to his feelings as it is for women to conceal them. Between man and man there is always a curious shrinking from the displayal of any emotion, more especially when it takes the form of affection. To me, at any rate, it has always seemed so, and, though my heart was full of a wild sympathy, and there was a great lump in my throat, I said nothing.
"From the moment when you came to me, Hugh," my father proceeded, "life began to be endurable. The months which we have spent together here have been by far the brightest I have ever known since we were all together in Devonshire. But we cannot go on for ever like this."
"Why not?" I dissented. "Life is very pleasant here to me, at any rate. Where could we find a better dwelling-place?"