"You may remember saying to me once--no; a hundred times over--that I
should never get anywhere so long as I kept my boy with me--never find
success--or happiness--never marry--all that sort of rot. It was rot. I
always knew it was. I've proved it. She would have come to me in any
case. And as for success--it doesn't depend on things of that sort. I've
proved that too. But he--Jack--got hold of the same infernal parrot-cry.
Oh, I'm sorry, sir," he glanced upwards for a second with working lips.
"I can't dress this up in polite language. Jack said to my boy Robin what
you had said to me. And he--believed it--and so--made an end."
He drew his breath hard between his teeth and straightened himself,
putting Fielding's arm quietly from his.
"Good God!" said Fielding. "But the boy was mad! He never was normal. You
can't say--"
"Oh, no, sir." With grim bitterness Dick interrupted. "He just took the
shortest way out, that's all. He wasn't mad."
"Committed suicide!" ejaculated the squire.
Dick's hands were clenched. "Do you call it that," he said, "when a man
lays down his life for his friends?"
He turned away with the words as if he could endure no more, and walked
to the end of the room.
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