"MY VOW"
How we reached home that night I could never exactly tell. I know that
I half carried, half supported him down the narrow path, and at last
managed to reach the door of our house. But it was no easy task, and
for some minutes I stood there panting and exhausted before I could
bring myself to summon any one. Then my mother, who had been sitting
up anxiously, heard us, and came hurrying out full of eager inquiries.
But I had no strength left to answer her, and when she saw my father's
state she ceased her questioning, for she knew at once what had
happened.
For three whole days and nights he was only partially conscious. Then
he fell into a heavy sleep, which the doctor whom we had summoned from
Minehead assured us was his salvation; and so it turned out, for on the
fourth day he recovered consciousness, and within a week he was up, and
looked much as usual, save for the worn, troubled look in his eyes, and
the deeper lines on his forehead.
On the first afternoon when he was allowed to talk, my mother was alone
with him for several hours. Then she came out, and fetched me in from
the garden and took me to him.
"Hugh, my boy," he said slowly, looking up from his desk, "we are
making our plans for the future. We are going to leave here at once."
I was not surprised, and I was certainly not displeased. For although
I loved our country home and the quaint homely people by whom we were
surrounded, I could never look upon Bossington Headland again without a
shudder, when I remembered how nearly it had witnessed a terrible
tragedy.
"Your mother and I thought of travelling abroad for a while," he went
on. "I shall never be able to settle down anywhere again. But with
you it is different. You ought to go to college and choose a
profession. Whether you do so or not must depend upon one thing. I
myself shall never resume the name which I am supposed to have
disgraced, but if you choose to do so there is nothing to prevent you.
You will have to bear a certain amount of odium, but it is not every
one who will visit my disgrace upon you. You will be poor, but
although my father will never leave either of us a penny he cannot
prevent the title coming to me, and eventually to you. The entailed
estates which go with the title are very small, and I hear that he has
purposely mortgaged them up to the hilt, so that nothing should ever
come to me from them. But if you choose to bear your rightful name you
will claim a place amongst one of the oldest and most honourable
families in the country, you can go to college, and somehow or other we
will find the money to start you in one of the professions, but not in
the army."
"And if I choose to bear still the name I have always done?"
"Then you will not be able to go to college, or to enter any of the
professions," my father answered. "You can do neither under an assumed
name."
I walked up and down the room for a minute or two thinking. My mind
was soon made up.
"I will not bear any name that you do not," I declared, firmly. "If my
grandfather thinks that you are not worthy to bear the name of
Devereux, neither will I, unless the time shall come when he and the
whole world shall know the truth, and you shall take your name again: I
will never call myself anything else but Hugh Arbuthnot."
My father stretched out his hand, and looked up at me with glistening
eyes.
"Spoken like a man, Hugh," he said. "God grant that that day may come!"
"Amen!" I added, fervently. "And come it shall!"
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.