"No, we will face it out. She loves you. Why not? So do I." He got
off the bed and came over to me and rested his hands on my shoulders.
"Jack, my son, next to her I love you better than anything in the
world. We have worked together, starved together, smoked and laughed
together. There is a bond between us that no human force can separate.
The Princess, if she cannot marry you, shall not marry the Prince. I
have a vague idea that it is written. 'The moving finger writes; and,
having writ, moves on.' We cannot cancel a line of it."
"Dan, you will do nothing rash or reckless?"
"Sit down, my son; sit down. Premeditation is neither rashness nor
recklessness. Jack, life has begun with you; with me it has come to an
end. When there is nothing more to live for, it is time to die. But
how? That is the question. A war would be a God-send; but these
so-called war lords are a lazy lot, or cowardly, or both. Had I a
regiment, what a death! Jack, do you not know what it is to fight the
invisible death? Imagine yourself on the line, with the enemy
thundering toward you, sabres flashing in the sunlight, and lead
singing about your ears. It is the only place in the world to die--on
a battlefield. Fear passes away as a cloud from the face of the sun.
The enemy is bringing you glory--or death. Yes, I would give a good
deal for a regiment, and a bad moment for our side. But the regiment
non est; still, there is left--"
"Dan, what are you talking about?" I cried.
"Death; grim, gaunt and gray death, whose footstep is as noiseless as
the fall of snow; death, the silent one, as the Indian calls him."
He knocked the ash from his pipe and stuffed the briar into his pocket.
"Jack, I am weary of it all. If I cannot die artistically, I wish to
die a sudden and awful death. What! Do I look like a man to die in
bed, in the inebriates' ward? For surely I shall land there soon! I
am going to pieces like a sand house in a wind storm. I suppose I'm
talking nonsense. After all, I haven't as much to say as I thought I
had. Suppose we turn in? I'm tired. You see, those fellows moved me
around to-day."