But I did not tell him then the resolve which I had grafted into my heart, I did not tell him then that I had sworn to myself that I would roll this cloud away from his name, even if I wrung the confession from my uncle's dying lips, and if success should be denied to me, I would, at least, find some means of bringing down retribution on the head of the man who had wrecked and embittered my father's life. By fair means or foul I would gain my end. At eighteen years old I devoted and consecrated my life to this purpose.
CHAPTER IX
AN UNEXPECTED VISIT
During the next four years of my life there happened to me not one single incident worth recording. Our home had been broken up, and we had left Devonshire for ever. My father and mother were living abroad at a small country town in the south of France, Marian was at a boarding-school at Weymouth, and I—I was articled clerk to a very respectable firm of land agents and surveyors in Exeter.
To say that I was contented would be false, but, on the other hand, I was not absolutely miserable. The out-of-door life suited me, and I did not find the work unpleasant. But apart from that I was by no means satisfied. Day and night I carried with me the pale, unhappy face of my poor father, his proud spirit continually being lashed and mortified by the disgrace which falsely rested upon him. I thought of him wandering about in a foreign country, exiled from his proper place in the world, from the society of his fellows, from all things which men of his kind most esteem. I thought of him bearing always in his mind those cruel words of his father's, "Out of my house and out of my heart," and it seemed to me a disgrace that I should be leading a humdrum life in a quiet country town, instead of throwing all my heart and energies into the task which I had placed before me as a sacred mission. But how was I to commence it? The combined income of my father and mother was barely four hundred a year, out of which I received one hundred, besides a trifling salary, which, however, was soon to be increased. Out of this I had been able to save a little, but not much. Nothing which would be of the slightest service to me in commencing such a task as I had in view. And so I did not see what move I could possibly make in the matter which was nearest to my heart, although my present inaction was irksome, at times almost unbearably irksome, to me.
One night I was working late in my little sitting-room copying some plans, when I heard steps on the stairs and the door was quietly opened. I looked up in some surprise, for I never had visitors, and my landlady would scarcely have entered without knocking. But when I saw who it was standing on the threshold I dropped my compasses and sprang up with an eager, welcoming cry.
"Hugh, my boy!" and our hands were locked in a close grasp. Then all of a sudden the joy of this unexpected meeting was dispelled, and my heart sank cold within me. For from head to foot he was clothed in the deepest mourning, and the tears were standing in his hollow eyes.
"Something has happened!" I exclaimed, in a low voice. "Tell me! Mother——"
"Is dead!"
Then he sank down upon my hard little horsehair sofa, and covered his face with his hands, and I waited patiently, though with an aching heart, for surely his sorrow was greater than mine.