All wrong! For the true reading of his character one has to
go back to the day when he was a ragged boy and the liveried coachman of
the "bad Lord Raa" lashed at his mother on the road, and he swore that
when he was a man she should have a carriage of her own, and then
"nobody should never lash her."
He found Gessler's cap in the market-place and was no more willing than
Tell to bend the knee to it.
My poor father! He did wrong to use another life, another soul, for
either his pride or his revenge. But God knows best how it will be with
him, and if he was the first cause of making my life what it has been, I
send after him (I almost tremble to say it) if not my love, my
forgiveness.
* * * * *
JULY 26. I begin to realise that after all I was not romancing when I
told the old dears that Martin and his schemes would collapse if I
failed him. Poor boy, he is always talking as it everything depended
upon me. It is utterly frightening to think what would happen to the
Expedition if he thought I could not sail with him on the sixteenth.
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