Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/124

112 afraid, I am jealous for you, and so—cross with you! That is my way.… Can't you understand it?'

'Yes,' I said, 'I think so.'

He went on at last, I was glad, looking away from me.

'I have this presentiment in my mind, and I cannot shake it off. I shall never reach my heart's desire. God's will be done!—And I feel it so strongly that I … I am afraid I am very clumsy, beating about the bush like this! See now. Here it is out straight for you! I want you to promise me to go on and finish what I feel I shall never be able to do more than begin.—Every river, every lake of that land shall be mapped out and known!' (His voice rose and rang) 'Why, I tell you I dreamt about it as a boy at school. I have kept it by me all my life. A grand idea!—But not yet, not yet, you understand. That would be foolish. If we—if they, fail this time, I want you to come back to England and wait here four or five years, preparing for it. You will grow apace. Then try again: and when you do it!—when you do it! then … tell them of my poor old dead book: and of me, just a little, to say how I dreamt of that hour all my life!—Oh no, none of the glory! I don't want any of that! All that shall be yours! But—if I could only think that through me, if not by me, the thing had been done at last!—if I could only think that, why …

He began again deliberately! 'I want you to promise me that, in the event of anything happening to me, you will devote yourself to the Cause.—You see? Study for it: toil for it; do for it everything; forget nothing! On that condition I make you my heir.' There was a pause.

Then I said quite simply:

'I cannot!'

'Yes, yes,' he cried, 'you can do it, if anyone can; and it is to be done! I am sure you can do it! I know you better than you know yourself. You will grow old apace: a man by twenty: a—something more than a man by thirty, if God wills. I pray He may!—No, I say. Don't be afraid of that. I have no relation whom I can wrong by making you my heir: be easy on that point.'