“I—I did my duty by her; I denied her nothing. I scarcely ever had a word with her, and I did my best to make her happy,” interposed the Colonel.
“I know, but your heart was with the other. So is mine. It’s fatal; it runs in the family, father.”
The boy looked so ineffably wretched that the father’s heart melted still more. “I did my best, Clive,” the Colonel gasped out. “I went to that villain Barnes and offered him to settle every shilling I was worth on you—I did—you didn’t know that—I’d kill myself for your sake, Clivy. What’s an old fellow worth living for? I can live upon a crust and a cigar. I don’t care about a carriage, and only go in it to please Rosey. I wanted to give up all for you, but he played me false, that scoundrel cheated us both; he did, and so did Ethel.”
“No, sir; I may have thought so in my rage once, but I know better now. She was the victim and not the agent. Did Madame de Florac play you false when she married her husband? It was her fate, and she underwent it. We all bow to it, we are in the track and the car passes over us. You know it does, father.” The Colonel was a fatalist: he had often advanced this Oriental creed in his simple discourses with his son and Clive’s friends.
“Besides,” Clive went on, “Ethel does not care for me. She received me to-day quite coldly, and held her hand out as if we had only parted last year. I suppose she likes that marquis who jilted her—God bless her! How shall we know what wins the hearts of women? She has mine. There was my Fate. Praise be to Allah! It is over.”
“But there’s that villain who injured you. His isn’t over yet,” cried the Colonel, clenching his trembling hand.
“Ah, father! Let us leave him to Allah too! Suppose Madame de Florac had a brother who insulted you. You know you wouldn’t have revenged yourself. You would have wounded her in striking him.”
“You called out Barnes yourself, boy,” cried the father.
“That was for another cause, and not for my quarrel. And how do you know I intended to fire? By Jove, I was so miserable then that an ounce of lead would have done me little harm!”
The father saw the son’s mind more clearly than he had ever done hitherto. They had scarcely ever talked upon that subject which the Colonel found was so deeply fixed in Clive’s heart. He thought of his own early days, and how he had suffered, and beheld his son before him racked with the same cruel pangs of enduring grief. And he began to own that he had pressed him too hastily in his marriage; and to make an allowance for an unhappiness of which he had in part been the cause.