"You cannot mean that, sir?" I said.
"I am not in the habit of saying what I do not mean, and I do not speak hastily. Your presence here, Mr. Erskine, may have given my brave son the courage to speak to his father, although I have my own opinion about your good taste in coming here to support him; but it doesn't alter my opinions and determinations in the slightest degree, and I presume that, since he has chosen to defy me, he has made his own plans for the future. Anyhow, I have no more to do with him."
"Dad, you don't mean that!" and Hugh's voice was hoarse and trembling.
"I do not think I need detain you any longer," and Josiah Lethbridge rose from his chair as he spoke. "I have many things to attend to."
Perhaps I was foolish, but I could not bear the idea of the young fellow being turned out of his home without making protest. I knew it was no business of mine, and that I was taking an unpardonable liberty in interfering in any way, but I could not help myself.
"Mr. Lethbridge," I said, "you will live to repent this. That your son may have been foolish in making a hurried marriage I do not deny; but that he has done wrong in joining the Army at such a time as this I do deny, and it seems to me that no father should treat his son as you are treating yours. He, at least, is offering his life, while you, without a thought of sacrifice and without care for your country's need, coldly turn him out of the house."
"Sacrifice!" and for the first time there was a touch of passion in his voice. "We are dragged into this ghastly war through the bungling of our statesmen; we are made the puppets and playthings of political hacks!" he cried. "The whole country is being dragged to ruin because of the mad bungling of those at the head of affairs, and then, because some of us are sane and do not wish to see the country bled to death, we are told that we are making no sacrifice. Sacrifice! I have within the last week lost a fortune through this madness. My business will be ruined; we shall be all bled white with taxation; England will never be the same again; and my own son—or he who was my son," he added in bitter parenthesis—"offers himself as a legalized murderer! And then you talk about sacrifice! But remember this," he added, looking towards Hugh, "it will be no use your coming to me in days to come, or expecting help in any way. I wash my hands of your whole future. As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it."
Hugh Lethbridge stood in the middle of the room, looking at his father in a dazed kind of way, as though he had failed to comprehend his words.
"You—you surely don't mean that, dad!"
Josiah Lethbridge stood, resting one hand on the back of his chair, his face hard and immovable, no word passing his lips.