The momentary glow which had come to him, with the sudden resurrection
of hope and of pride, faded utterly as he slowly read and re-read the
lines of the journal on the broken terraces of the hill-side, where
the great fig trees spread their fantastic shadows, and through a rocky
channel a russet stream of shallow waters threaded its downward path
under the reeds, and no living thing was near him save some quiet
browsing herds far off, and their Arab shepherd-lad that an artist might
have sketched as Ishmael. What his future might have been rose before
his thoughts; what it must be rose also, bitterly, blackly, drearily in
contrast. A noble without even a name; a chief of his race without
even the power to claim kinship with that race; owner by law of three
thousand broad English acres, yet an exile without freedom to set foot
on his native land; by heritage one among the aristocracy of England, by
circumstances, now and forever, till an Arab bullet should cut in twain
his thread of life, a soldier of the African legions, bound to obey the
commonest and coarsest boor that had risen to a rank above him: this was
what he knew himself to be, and knew that he must continue to be without
one appeal against it, without once stretching out his hand toward his
right of birth and station.
There was a passionate revolt, a bitter heart-sickness on him; all the
old freedom and peace and luxury and pleasure of the life he had left so
long allured him with a terrible temptation; the honors of the rank that
he should now have filled were not what he remembered.
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