“It is not folly, father; it is not a caprice,” the young man protested, with sudden earnestness. “For God’s sake don’t think me ungrateful, or that I would willingly turn my back upon my duty to you. Only—young people have troubles of their own, don’t you know?—and of late I have not been altogether happy. I have not prospered in my love-dream; and so I have set up a new idol, that idol so many men worship with more or less reward—Success. I want to spread my wings, and see if they will carry me on a longer flight than I have taken yet.”
“Well, it would be selfish of me to baulk you, even if your loss were to cripple me altogether. And it won’t do that. I am strong enough to work on for a few years longer than I intended.”
“Oh, my dear father, I hope it won’t come to that. I hope my change of plan won’t shorten your years of leisure.”
“I am afraid that’s inevitable, Theo. I can’t transfer a fine practice to my son till I’ve made him a good lawyer—and God knows how long that will take in Harrington’s case. Judging by my present estimation of him, I should say half a century. But don’t be downhearted, Theo. You shall eat your dinners. You shall qualify for the Woolsack. After all, I don’t know how a life of leisure might suit me. It would be a change from the known to the unknown, almost as stupendous as the change from life to death.”
Perhaps Matthew Dalbrook had fathomed that secret woe at which Theodore had hinted darkly; in any case he took his elder son’s defection more easily than might have been hoped, and bore patiently with some preliminary fatuity from the younger son, who accepted the gift of his articles, an allowance of two hundred pounds per annum, and the promise of a junior partnership in the near future, with the languid politeness of one who felt that he was renouncing a mitre.
Everything was settled off-hand, and Theodore was to go to London at the end of September to select and furnish his modest chambers in one of those grave old courts of the Temple, and be ready to begin his new life with the beginning of term.
He had not seen Juanita since the funeral, and she had been told nothing of this sudden reconstruction of his life; but he determined to see her before he left Dorchester, and he considered that he had a right, as her kinsman, to bid her good-bye. Perhaps in his heart-weariness he was inclined to exaggerate the solemnity of that leave-taking, somewhat as if he had been starting for Australia.
He drove over to the Priory on a dull, grey afternoon, his last day in Dorchester. His portmanteaus were packed, and all things were ready for an early departure next morning. Sorely as he had sickened of the good old town which was his birth-place, he felt a shade of melancholy at the idea of cutting himself adrift altogether from that quiet haven; and the love of those open stretches of barren heath and those swampy meadows and grazing cattle on the way to Milbrook, was engrained in him deeper than he knew. It was a landscape which took a peculiar charm from the grey dimness of an autumnal atmosphere, and it seemed to Theodore Dalbrook that those level pastures and winding waters had never looked fairer than they looked to-day.
He had written to his cousin a day before to tell her of his intended visit. It was too solemn a matter in his own mind for him to leave the finding her at home to chance. His groom took the dog-cart round to the stables, while he was ushered at once to the drawing-room where Lady Carmichael was sitting at her work-table in the bow window, with Styx stretched on a lion-skin at her feet.
The silence of the house struck Theodore Dalbrook painfully as he followed the footman across the hall and along a corridor which led to the drawing-room—that death-like silence of a roomy old mansion in which there are neither children nor guests, only one lonely inhabitant waited upon by solemn-visaged servants, drilled to a phenomenal quietness, and keeping all their good spirits for the remoteness of the servants’ hall, shut off by double doors and long passages. Saddened by that atmosphere of gloom, he entered his cousin’s presence, and stood with her small cold hand in his, looking at the face which had changed so sorely from that vivid beauty which had shone upon him in the low light of the sinking sun on that summer evening not three months ago.