Horace could scarcely resist a smile, for he thought that if there was any fighting to be done he would be of considerably more use than his father.
“Well, I suppose the next thing, Horace, will be to go up to town to inquire about arms. My Greek friends there will advise me as to their purchase, and so on.”
“Yes, father,” Horace said a little doubtfully; “but as it is late now I think, if you don’t mind, I will get some supper and turn in. I will think it over. I think we had better talk it over quietly and quite make up our minds what is best to be done before we set about anything; a few hours won’t make any difference.”
“Quite so, Horace; it is no use our beginning by making mistakes. It is a great comfort to me, my boy, to have you with me. At any rate I will write to-night to your headmaster and say that circumstances will prevent your return to Eton this term.”
Horace went into the next room, had some supper, and then went thoughtfully up to bed. The idea of going out to fight for the independence of Greece was one which at any other time he would have regarded with enthusiasm, but under the present circumstances he felt depressed rather than excited. He admired his father for his great learning, and loved him for the kindness of his intentions towards him; but he had during the last two or three years been more and more impressed with the fact that in everything unconnected with his favourite subject his father was, as he said himself, utterly unpractical. He left the management of his estate to the steward, the management of the house to Zaimes, both happily, as it chanced, honest and capable men; but had they been rogues they could have victimized him to any extent. That his father, who lived in his library and who was absorbed in the past, should plunge into the turmoil of an insurrection was an almost bewildering idea. He would be plundered right and left, and would believe every story told him; while as for his fighting, the thing seemed absolutely absurd. Horace felt that the whole responsibility would be on his shoulders, and this seemed altogether too much for him. Then the admission of his father that abominable massacres had been perpetrated by the Greeks shook his enthusiasm in the Cause.
“I should be glad to see them free and independent, and all that,” he said, “but I don’t want to be fighting side by side with murderers. Among such fellows as these, my father, who is a great deal more Greek than any Greek of the present day, I should say, would be made utterly miserable. He admits that the upper class are untrustworthy and avaricious. Now he says that the lower class have massacred people in cold blood. It does not affect him much in the distance, but if he were in the middle of it all it would be such a shock to him that I believe it would kill him. Besides, fancy his going long marches in the mountains, sleeping in the wet, and all that sort of thing, when he has never walked half a mile as far back as I can remember.”
He lay tossing about for a couple of hours, and then sat suddenly up in bed. “That’s it,” he exclaimed, “that is a splendid idea. What a fool I was not to think of it before! If William Martyn is but at home that would be the thing above all.”
Then he lay down, thought the matter over for another half-hour, and then went quietly off to sleep.
“Well, Horace, have you been turning the matter over in your mind?” his father asked as soon as they sat down to breakfast.
“I have, father, and I have hit upon a plan that seems to me the very best thing possible in all ways.”