His voice was interrupted by a shrill little outburst from the sofa behind. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" cried little Geoff before Dick had ended. "Chatty, it was me that brought the first news! Chatty, are you happy now?"
Mrs. Warrender, in the act of going forward to the pair who stood before her awaiting her judgment, turned with a thrill of anxious terror. "Oh, hush, hush!" she cried, putting herself before the boy.
Theo, too, had turned round with a suppressed but passionate exclamation, clenching his hands. "Mother, I can think of nothing till that imp is out of the way."
"He shall go, Theo. Speak to them, speak to them!" cried the mother anxiously, bending over the sofa, with an indescribable tumult in her heart. She had to leave her own child's fate at its crisis to look after and protect this child who was none of hers, who was the stumbling-block in her son's way. And yet her heart condemned her son, and took part with the little intruder. Thus Chatty for the moment was left to stand alone before her husband's judge, but was not aware of it, thought nothing of it, in her confidence and joy. Warrender stood looking darkly after them till his mother had taken his stepson out of the room. The pause, perhaps, was useful in calming the excitement of all. When the door closed Theo turned round, mastering himself with an effort. Geoff had diverted the rush of hasty temper which was natural to him. He looked upon the new-comer less severely.
"We can have no interest," he said, "but that your story should be true. But it cannot rest on your word, Cavendish. You have been deceived once; you may be deceived again. My mother is no judge of points of law, and she is favourable, too favourable, to you. You had better come with us into another room, and let us see what proofs you have of what you say."
"That is quite just," said Dick. "I'd like you to kiss that little beggar for me, Chatty; he knows what it is to stand by a man in trouble. It is all right, Warrender. Of course it is the interest of all of us that there should be no mistake. Send for Wilberforce, who will be impartial; and if you could have Longstaffe too——"
Minnie came in, out of breath, at this stage of the affairs. "What does he say, Eustace,—oh, what does he say? Are you sure it is true? What has he got to say? And what does he mean about Mr. Longstaffe and Mr. Wilberforce? Aren't you good enough for him? Can't you judge without Wilberforce? Wilberforce," she cried, with professional contempt for another clergyman, "is nothing so very wonderful; and he ishisfriend and will be sure to be on his side. Why can't Eustace do?"
Mrs. Warrender, with her anxious face, had now come back again alone. She went up to Dick, holding out both her hands. "God bless you!" she said. "I believe you, dear Dick, every word you say. But everything must be made as clear as daylight both for her sake and your own."
"I know it, dear mother," he replied. "I am quite ready. I should be the first to ask for a full examination. Take care of my Chatty while I show my papers. I want to take my wife away with me. I cannot be parted from her again."
"Oh, Dick! oh, Dick!" The mother, like the daughter, could find no other words to say.
Little Geoff found himself alone in Mrs. Warrender's room. She had taken him there with much kindness and many tender words, and made a little nest for him upon the sofa. "Lie down and try to go to sleep," she said, stooping to kiss him, a caress which half pleased, half irritated, Geoff. But he obeyed, for his head was still aching and dazed with the suddenness and strangeness of all that had passed. To lie down and try to sleep was not so hard for him as for most children of his age, and for the first moment no movement of revolt was in him. He lay down in the silence, not unwilling to rest his head on a soft pillow. But the fire of excitement was in Geoff's veins, and a restlessness of energy and activity which after a minute or two forebade all possibility of rest. Something had happened to him which had never happened before. He had not been quite clear what it was at first; whether it was the wonder of Dick's return or of his own part in it,—the fact that he had been the messenger and had discharged his trust. But presently it all came to him, as he lay quietly with his aching head pressed against the cool pillow. Geoff had encountered many new experiences in the last two years of his life, but he had not known at any time what personal violence was. Everybody round him had made much of him; his delicate health had always been in the thoughts of those who were about him, and perhaps the rank to which he was so indifferent, of which he was scarcely conscious. Till Theo had appeared upon the scene, Geoff had been the central figure in his own little world. Since that time, the boy had suffered with a magnanimity which few men could have equalled a gradual deposition from most of the things he prized most. He was no longer first; he had partially lost the mother who for so long had been his companion and playfellow as well as the chief object in his existence. Many humiliations had come to the keen feelings and sensitive heart of the little dethroned boy. Many a complaint and reproach had been on his lips, though none had got utterance. But now a deeper indignity still had befallen him. As Geoff lay in the room to which he had been banished to be out of Warrender's sight, all this swept across his little soul like a tempest. He remembered the suffocating sensation in his throat, the red mist in his eyes, the feeling that he had but a moment left in which to deliver his message; and then the giddy whirl of movement as he was flung away like a rag or a stone, the crash in his ears, the sharp blow which brought back his scattered faculties for a moment, only to banish them again in the momentary unconsciousness which brought all the tingling and thrilling into his ears of which he had not yet got free. How had all this come about? It was Warrender who had seized him, who had flung him upon the floor, who had—had he? tried to kill him? had he tried to kill him? Was that what Warrender meant? A wild flood of feeling, resentment, terror, desire for revenge, swept through Geoff's mind. Warrender, to whom already he owed so much; Warrender, who had taken his mother from him, and his home, and everything he cared for in the world,—Warrender now wanted to kill him! If mamma knew! Mamma had not ceased to care for her boy. Even now that the babies had come she still loved Geoff,—and if she knew! The boy jumped up from his couch. He was pale and trembling, and the cut on his forehead showed doubly from the total absence of colour in his little gray face; but he got himself a great draught of water, and, restored by that and by the rush of rage that swelled all his veins, he flew downstairs, past Joseph in the hall, who gave an outcry of astonishment, to where the gardener's boy was still holding his pony outside. Geoff, scarcely able to stand, what with the shock and what with the emotion, clambered up upon the pony, and turned its head homewards. The pony was well pleased to find himself in that way, and obeyed with enthusiasm his little master's impulse. The small steed and rider flew along the road to Markland. Geoff had no cap; he was dusty, as if he had been for days on the road; and as he flew by, the cottagers came out to the doors to look, and said to each other that the little lord must be mad, that he would have an accident like his father. He went on thus, with scarcely a pause, till he reached the gates of Markland, wrath and pain carrying him on at a swifter rate even than the pony, eager for sympathy and for revenge.
Something stayed this headlong race all at once. It was when he came within sight of the avenue, which was so bare, which had no trees except at distant intervals. There he saw a speck upon the way, a slowly moving figure which he recognised at once. It was his mother, coming down, as was her wont, to meet—whom? Her husband. Geoff's hot heart, all blazing with childish rage, sank into a shivering calm at the sight of her. In a moment he turned from heat to cold, from headlong passion to the chill of thought and self-sacrifice. Mamma! She it was now who was "delicate," as he had been all his life. It might make her ill; it would make her miserable. What! she who had been everything to him,—was he now going to seize upon her as Theo had seized him, and shake her and hurt her, he, her own boy? The child drew up his unwilling pony with a sudden force which almost carried him over its head. No, he could not do that. He would not. He would rather be shaken, strangled, thrown down, anything in the world, rather than hurt mamma. His little heart swelled with a new spring of impassioned emotion. He would bear it for her sake; he would bear anything, he did not mind what, rather. He would never, he cried to himself, with a rush of scalding tears to his eyes, hurther. He turned the pony's head round with a force of passion which that astonished animal could not resist, to give himself, after the wild rush of his flight homeward, a little time to think. And he thought, knitting his little brows, twitching his little face, his heart aching, his little body, even, all strained with the effort. No! whatever he did, whatever he had to bear, he would not hurt mamma.
Warrender had a long conference with Dick Cavendish in the old library at the Warren. Mr. Wilberforce, who had been sent for, came at once, full of curiosity and excitement; and though Mr. Longstaffe could not be had, the experience of the two clergymen, who knew all about marriage registers and the proofs that were necessary, was of use in this curious family crisis. It was all very important both to Chatty and to the family in general, and Theo did his utmost to keep his attention to it, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was glad to be released, when all was done that could be done by the little family commission. The result was a kind of compromise. No one had any moral doubt that Dick was right, but some higher sanction seemed to be necessary before he could be allowed to take Chatty away. The ladies had to be called in to soothe and subdue his impetuosity, to get him to consent to delay. Warrender scarcely waited to see how it was settled. The impatience within him was not to be controlled. His heart was at Markland, hot with anger and anxiety, while he was forced to remain here and talk of other things. Yes, to be sure, Chatty's good name, her happiness,—if she considered that her happiness lay in that,—were important. It was important for Cavendish too, if any one cared what was important for Cavendish: but good heavens! not so important,—could any one suppose so for a moment?—as what had happened, what might be happening, elsewhere. Old Joseph had stopped him as he went through the hall to tell him that the little lord had run off and got on his pony, and had gone home. He had gone home. It was a relief for one thing, for Theo had felt that it would be impossible for him to carry that little demon back with him in the dog-cart, as it would have been his duty to do. But in another—how could he tell what might be happening while he was kept there, amid maddening delays and hesitations, looking over Dick Cavendish's papers? What could Dick Cavendish's papers matter? A few days sooner or later, what could it matter to Dick Cavendish? Whereas to himself— That boy might be lying senseless on the road, for anything he knew; or, what was worse, he might have got home and told his story. And the sting was that he had a story to tell.
Warrender knew that he had done what he ought not to have done. He had treated the child with a violence which he knew to be unmanly. He had thrown him down, and stunned, and might have killed him. He did not deny to himself what he had done. He would not deny it to her,—and he fully expected that she would meet him with upbraidings, with anger. With anger! when it was he who was the injured person,—he, her husband, whose privacy was constantly disturbed and all his rights invaded by her son. He turned this over and over in his mind, adding to the accumulation of his wrongs, till they mounted to a height which was beyond bearing. The fire blazed higher and higher as he kept on throwing in fuel to the flames. It must come to some decision, he said to himself. It was contrary not only to his happiness, but to his dignity, his just position, to let it go on, to be tormented perpetually by this little Mordecai at the gate, this child who was made of more importance than he was, who had to be thought of, and have his wishes consulted, and the supposed necessities of his delicate health made so much of. Geoff's generosities, the constant sacrifices of which he was conscious, were all lost upon his stepfather. He knew nothing of the restraint the child put on himself, or of the wistful pain with which Lady Markland looked on, divining more than she knew. All that was a sealed book to Theo. From his side of the question Geoff was an offence on every point. Why should he be called upon to endure that interloper always in sight,—never to feel master in his own house? To be sure, Markland was not his house, but Geoff's; but that was only a grievance the more, for he had not wished to live in Markland, while his own house stood ready for his own family, with plenty of room for his wife and children. There grew upon Warrender's mind a great resolution, or, rather, there started up in his thoughts, like the prophet's gourd, a determination, that this unendurable condition of affairs should exist no longer. Why should he be bound to Geoff, in whose presence he felt he was not capable of doing himself justice, who turned him the wrong way invariably, and made him look like a hot-tempered fool, which he was not? No, he would not endure it longer. Frances must be brought to see that for the sake of her son her husband was not always to be sacrificed. It should not continue. The little girls must not grow up to see their father put in the second place, to think him an irritable tyrant. No, it must not continue, not for a day.
And there occurred to Theo, when he approached the gate of Markland, something like the same experience which had befallen Geoff. He saw going slowly along the bare avenue two figures, clinging closely together,—as he had seen them a hundred times, though never without jealousy, when he had no right to interfere. For a long time these walks had been intermitted, and he had almost forgotten the irritation of the past in this respect. But now it all surged back with an exasperation entirely out of proportion to the offence. For the offence was no more than this: that Lady Markland was walking slowly along, with Geoff clinging with both hands to her arm, clasping it, with his head almost on her shoulder, with a sort of proprietorship which made the spectator frantic. He stopped the dog-cart and sprang down, flinging the reins to the groom outside of the gate. The sight brought his resolution, his rage, the fierce passion within him, to a climax. Yes, he had been anticipated; that was clear. The story of all that had passed had been poured into his wife's ear. She would meet him with reproaches, perhaps with tears, pointing to the cut on her son's forehead. There came into Theo's mind a maddening recollection that he himself had been cut on the forehead for Geoff; but no one, notsheat least, would remember that now. She would meet him furious, like a tigress for her cub; or, worse, she would meet him magnanimous, forgiving him, telling him that she knew it must have been an accident—whereas it was no accident. He would make no pretence; he would allow that he had done it, he would allow that he had meant to do it; he would make no further pretences, and tolerate no pretences from this day.
In his anger he was as swift and light as a deer. Their backs were turned towards him, and they were too much absorbed in their talk to hear his approach. He was close to them, on Lady Markland's other side, before they heard anything. The mother and son looked up simultaneously, and started as if they were but one being. At the sight of him she gave a faint cry,—"Theo!"—and he unclasped her arm and slid from her in a moment: which, though it was what he wished, made the fire burn still higher in Warrender's heart.
"So," he said, with the harsh laugh of excited temper, "he has been telling you his story. I knew he would."
"He has been telling me no story, Theo," said Lady Markland. "Oh yes, he has been telling me that Mr. Cavendish——"
"Confound Mr. Cavendish! I am speaking of your boy, Lady Markland. He has been telling you about the cut on his forehead."
She looked from the man to the child, growing pale. "He fell," she said faltering. "But he says it does not hurt."
"The little liar!" cried Theo, in his excitement. "Why didn't you tell your mother the truth?"
"Warrender!" said little Geoff, in a tone which conveyed such a warning as Theo would not have taken from any man in the excited state of his mind. The child was red with sudden indignation, but still he held fast to his part.
"Geoff, run away home!" cried his mother, trembling. "Nurse will bathe it for you: and papa,"—she had ventured to call her young husband by this name since the birth of the babies,—"will give me his arm."
"I tell you he is a little liar," said Theo again. "He did not fall. I threw him down. He thrust himself into the midst of my family affairs, a meddling little fool, and I caught hold of him and threw him out of the way. It is best that you should know the truth."
They stood all three in the middle of the bare road, the afternoon sun throwing its level light into their eyes,—looking at each other, confronting each other, standing apart.
"Theo," said Lady Markland, "I am sure you did not mean to hurt him. It was—an accident, after all. And Geoff, I am sure, never meant to interfere. But, indeed, you must not use such words of my boy."
"What words would you like me to use? He is the pest of my existence. I want you to understand this once for all. I cannot go on in this way, met at every turn by a rival, an antagonist. Yes, he is my rival in your heart, he is my opponent in everything. I cannot turn round at my own table, in my own house, without his little grinning face——" Here Theo stopped, with a still harsher laugh. The startled faces of the mother and son, the glance they gave at each other like a mutual consultation, the glow of indignation that overcame Lady Markland's paleness, were all apparent to him in a flash of meaning. "Oh, I know what you will say!" he cried. "It is not my house; it is Geoff's. A woman has no right to subject her husband to such a humiliation. Get your things together, Frances, and come with me to my own house. I am in a false position here. I will have it no longer. Let him have what is his right. I am resolved that he and I shall not sleep again under the same roof."
"Theo, you cannot mean what you say. You can't be so—— If Geoff has done anything wrong, he will beg your pardon. Oh, what is it, what is it?" She did not ask her son for his version of the story with her lips, but she did with her eyes, which exasperated Theo more and more.
"It does not matter what it is," he said. "It is not any temporary business, to be got over with an apology. It is just this, that you won't face what is inevitable. And it is inevitable. You must choose between him and me."
Geoff had been overwhelmed by this sudden storm. He was so young to play the hero's part. He was not above crying when such a tempest burst upon him, and had hard ado to keep back his tears. But when he met his mother's anguished imploring look, Geoff felt in his little forlorn heart a courage which was more than man. "Warrender," he said, biting his lips to keep them from quivering,—"Warrender, I say. As soon as the holidays are over, I—I'll go to school. I'll—be out of the way."
"Oh, Geoff!" Lady Markland said, with a heartrending cry.
"It's—it's right enough, mamma; it's—quite right. I'm too old. I'm too—Warrender, I'll be going back to school in about six weeks." Alas, the holidays were just begun. "Won't that do?" said little Geoff, with horrible twitchings of his face, intended to keep back the tears.
His mother went up to him, and kissed him passionately, and put him away with her hand. "Go," she said. "Geoff, go, and wait for me in your room. We must talk—alone; we must talk alone. Go. Go."
Geoff would have given much to throw himself into her arms, to support and to be supported by her: but the child was moved beyond himself. He obeyed her without a word, turning his back upon the combat, though he would fain have stood by her in it. Warrender had taken no part in this; he had made no response to Geoff's appeal. He was walking up and down with all the signs of impatience, pale with passion and opposition. He paused, however, as the boy went away, a solitary forlorn little figure stealing along the avenue in silence, too dutiful even to look back. Lady Markland stood, too, and looked after him, with a pang of compunction, of compassion, of heart-yearning, which it would be impossible to put into words. Her boy! who had been her chief, almost only companion for years; who was more dear—was he more dear?—than any one; who was her very own, all her own, with no feeling in his mind or experience in his little consciousness that was not all hers,—and this man bade her send him away, separate from her child: this—man. It is not safe for a union when one of the parties thinks of the other as that man. All at once a light had flashed up in Lady Markland's heart. She had been made very soft, very submissive, by her marriage. She had married a young man, younger than herself. She had seemed to herself ever since to be asking pardon of him and of the world for doing so. But now his violence had called her back to herself. She had not been too soft or submissive in the old days. She had been a woman with a marked character, not always yielding. The temporary seemed suddenly to disappear out of her life, and the original came back. She stood for a moment looking after her child, and then, being feeble of body, though waking up to such force of mind, she went to a bench which stood on the edge of the road, and sat down there. "If this is as you say, it is better that we should understand each other," she said.
Her tone had changed. From the anxiety to soften and smooth everything, the constant strain of deprecation and apology which had become habitual to her, she had suddenly emerged into a composure which was ominous, which was almost tragic. Even the act of sitting down, which was due to her weakness, made her appear as if taking a high position, assuming an almost judicial place. She did not intend it so, but this was the effect it produced upon Warrender, stinging him more deeply still. He felt that he was judged, that his wife had thrown off the yoke which he had made so heavy, and that his chance of bringing her back to her subjection, and of forcing her into the new and sudden decision which he called for, was small. This conviction increased his fury, but it also made him restrain the outward signs of it. He went after her, and stood in front of the bench of which she had made a sort of judicial throne.
"You are right in that," he said. "Things have gone too far to return to their old level. I must have my house to myself, and for that reason it must be my own. I wish you to come with me to the Warren,—the children and you."
"Your mother and your sisters are there," she said, fixing upon him a steady look.
"What does that matter? There is room, I hope, at all times for the master of the house."
"You ask me," she said, "to turn all my life upside down, to change my habits and arrangements, at a moment's notice. But you have not told me why. Have you told me? You have said that my little boy of twelve has offended you, and that you knocked him down. Is that why I must change my house, and all my life?"
The slow steadiness of her tone made him frantic; that, more than the deliberate way in which she was putting him in the wrong.
"I have told you," he cried, "that I am in a false position altogether, and that I will not bear it any longer! You ought to see that I am in a false position. As for your little boy—of twelve——"
"What of him?" she asked, growing very pale, and rising again from her seat.
"Only this one thing, Frances: that you can't serve God and mammon, you know; you can't keep both. You must choose between him and me."
"Choose!" She sat down again suddenly, as if her strength had failed her. "Choose! between Geoff, my little Geoff—my boy—my baby—Geoff——"
There was a kind of ridicule in her voice, a ridicule which was tragic, which was full of passion, which sounded like a scoff at something preposterous, as well as an indignant protest.
"Your scorn does not make it different. Yes, Geoff, who is all that: and me—between him and me."
For a moment they gazed at each other, having arrived at that decisive point, in a duel of the kind, when neither antagonist can find a word more to say. Lady Markland was very pale. She had been brought in a moment from her ease and quiet, when she expected no harm, to what might be the most momentous decision. She was still feeble, her nerves strained and weak from the long tension at which they had been held. She had clasped her hands together, and the fingers quivered. Her eyes seemed to grow larger and more luminous as she looked at him. "Theo," she said with a long breath. "Theo! do you know—what you are saying? Do you mean—all that—all that?"
He thought he was going to get an easy, an unlooked-for victory; he congratulated himself with a swift flash of premature triumph that he had pushed matters to a crisis, that he had been so firm. "Yes," he cried, "I mean it all! We can't go on longer as we are. You must choose between him and me."
She kept looking at him, still without relaxing from that fixed gaze. "Do you know what you are asking?" she said again. "That I should give up my child,—my first-born child, my little delicate boy, who has never been parted from me. Was it ever heard of that a mother was asked to give up her child?"
"They have done it," he said,—"you must know that,—when a higher claim came in."
"Is there any higher claim? Every other is at our own choice, but this is nature. God made it. It cannot change. There may be other—other"—she faltered, her voice grew choked,—"but only one mother," she said.
"Other—other?" he cried. "What? To me there has been but one, as you know. I have put all my chances in one. God made it? Has not God made you and me one?—whom God has joined together—"
"Oh, Theo." She got up and came towards him, holding out her hands. "One, to bear each other's burdens, to help each other; not to go against nature, to abandon what is the first of duties. Theo! oh, help me; do not make it impossible, do not rend me in two! What can I say to you? Theo!" She tottered in her weakness; her limbs were not strong enough to support her. But Warrender made no forward step. He did not take the hands she held out to him. He had to be firm. It was now or never, he said to himself.
"If we are ever to live happily together the sacrifice must be made. I don't want to hurt you, Frances. If I seem harsh, it is for our good, the good of both of us. Make up your mind. Can any one doubt what is your first duty? It is to me. It is I that must settle what our life is to be. It is you who must yield and obey. Are you not my wife? Spare yourself farther pain, and me," he went on, with all the absolute and cruel sincerity of youth. He made it up in his own mind that this was the right thing to do, and steeled himself to resist the appeal of her weakness, to see her flutter back to the hard bench, and drop down there, unsupported, unaided. It was for the best, it was for her good, to put things on a right footing at once and for always. After this, never a harsh word, never an opposition, more.
Her husband thus having her to himself, standing before her, magisterial, coldly setting down what her duty was, enforcing obedience,—he who little more than a year ago—— She wavered back to her bare seat alone, and sat there, looking up at him till his peroration came to an end. In these few minutes many things flew through Lady Markland's thoughts,—unspeakable offence, revolt against the unlovely duty presented to her, a sudden fierce indignation against him who had thus thrust himself into her life and claimed to command it. At that moment, after all the agitation he had made her suffer, and before the sacrifice he thus demanded of her, she could scarcely believe that she too had loved him, that she had been happy in his love. It seemed to her that he had forced himself upon her, taken advantage of her loneliness, compelled her to put herself in his power. It had been all adoration, boundless devotion, help, and service. And now it was command. Oh, had he but said this before! Had he bidden her then choose between her child and him, before— And as she looked at him a wild ridicule added itself to these other thoughts. To see him standing making his speech, thinking he could coerce like that a woman like herself, thinking in his youthfulness that he could sway any woman's heart like that, and cut off the ties that vexed him, and settle everything for the good of both! Heaven! to see him lifting up his authoritative head, making his decision, expecting her to obey! Spare yourself, and me! That she should refuse did not enter into his mind. She might struggle for a time, but to what use? Spare yourself, and me! She could not help a faint smile, painful enough, bitter enough, curving her lips.
"You speak at your ease," she cried, when his voice stopped. "It is easy to make up your mind for another. What if I should refuse—to obey, as you say? A wife's obedience, since you appeal to that, is not like a servant's obedience or a child's. It must be within reason and within nature. Suppose that I should refuse."
He had grown cool and calm in the force of his authority. The crimson flushed to his face and the fire to his eye at her words. "Refuse—and I have my alternative!" he cried. "I will never enter your house again nor interfere in your concerns more."
Again they contemplated each other in a deadly pause, like antagonists before they close for the last struggle. Then Lady Markland spoke.
"Theo, I have done all that a woman could do to please you, and satisfy you,—all, and more than all. I will not desert my little boy."
"You prefer Geoff to me?"
"There is no preferring; it is altogether different. I will not give up my child."
"Then you give up your husband?"
They looked at each other again,—she deadly pale, he crimson with passion, both quivering with the strain of this struggle; her eyes mutely refusing to yield, accepting the alternative, though she said no more. And not another word was said. He turned on his heel, and walked back down the avenue, with quick, swinging steps, without ever turning his head. She watched him till he was out of sight, till he was out of hearing, till the gate swung behind him, and he was gone. She did not know how she was to get back to the house, over that long stretch of road, without any one to help her, and thought with a sickening and failing of her heart of the long way. But in this great, sudden, unlooked-for revolution of her life she felt no weakness nor failing. The revulsion was all the greater after the long self-restraint. For the first time after so long an interval she was again herself.
That night Lady Markland did not close her eyes. The strength of resistance, of indignation, of self-assertion, failed her, as was inevitable in the long and slow hours, during which she looked out, at first with a certainty, then with a hope, that Theo would come back. He must come back, she said to herself, even if all were over, which seemed impossible, impossible!—all in an hour or two, in one afternoon, when she thought no evil. Still the most prosaic of considerations, the least important, his clothes, if nothing more, must bring him back. She went on saying this to herself, till from a half scorn which was in it at first it came to a kind of despair. He must come back, at all events, for his clothes! She could scarcely bear Geoff all the afternoon, though it was for him all this misery was. She never could, nor would, give up her child: but his society was intolerable to her for the moment; and she felt that if Theo came and found them together he might think—he would have a certain right to think. It was a relief to her when at last Geoff went to bed, silenced in all his questions, chilled, terrified, yet still heroically restraining himself, and making up his mind that he was to be sent away. After this she felt a kind of relief, a freedom in being left to herself, in wandering about the rooms and looking out in succession at every window that commanded the avenue. When the hour came to shut up the house she gave the butler an elaborate explanation; how Mr. Warrender had been obliged to return to the Warren about some business, how it was possible that he might not come back that night; in fact, she did not expect him that night, but still he might return. It was not necessary that any one should sit up, oh no, not necessary at all. She would hear him if he came, or he could let himself in. "But I really do not expect him to-night. He has—business," she said, with a smile, which the butler thought not at all like my lady. She was not given to explanations in an ordinary way. She was very kind and considerate; but she was always a great lady, and not expansive to her servants. She smiled in a strange conciliatory way, as if begging him to believe her, and explained, to make it all right. The butler was not deceived. When was any butler ever deceived by such pretences? He knew better,—he knew that something had happened. He told the company downstairs that he made no doubt there had been a row, and most likely about Master Geoff, and that they might make up their minds to see rare changes. They were all making their comments upon this in the servants' hall, while Lady Markland, standing at the window, looked out with a sort of desperation, shaping the figure of Theo a hundred times in the distance, scarcely able to restrain the impulse to go out and look for him; saying to herself, no longer scornfully, but with the profoundest tragic gravity, that he must come back, if only for his clothes! It was a dim summer night, the sky veiled with clouds, and after midnight fitfully lit by the gleam of a waning moon. She went from window to window noiselessly, thinking that now one, now another, had the most perfect command of the avenue; hearing a hundred sounds of footsteps, even of distant wheels and horses' hoofs, which seemed to beat upon the ground far off, and never came to anything; then when the dawn began to be blue in the sky, threw herself upon her bed and hid her face, knowing that all was over, and that he would come back no more.
Scarcely less was the consternation in the Warren when Theo, pale and silent, wrapped in silence as in a cloak, making no reply to the questions asked, ordering his old room to be made ready without any explanation, came back to the already excited house. Dick and Chatty and all their affairs were forgotten in the extraordinary new event. "Oh, Theo, what has happened," Mrs. Warrender cried, "what has happened? Are you not going home?"
"This is my home, I suppose," he said, "unless you have any objections," which closed her mouth. She thought there must have been a quarrel, and that Lady Markland had resented Theo's treatment of Geoff, which his mother immediately began to justify to herself; saying that of course he did not mean to hurt the child, but that a person put in charge of the children of another, in any case, must have some power of correcting them when they wanted correction, and with great wonder and indignation at his wife had yet a wondering question in her mind—what would she herself have done if any one had corrected Theo so when he was a boy? She did all she could to urge him to return, sitting up till very late, keeping the groom awake for possible orders. "Frances will be very anxious," she said to her son. "She has no reason to be anxious; she knows where I am." "Oh, Theo, don't let it come to a quarrel," Mrs. Warrender urged imploringly, with tears in her eyes. Her attitude put him in mind of his wife's attitude as she stood holding out her hands, and was intolerable to him. "Good-night, mother. I am going to bed," he said. Mrs. Warrender was as restless as Lady Markland. She had come and listened to his breathing outside his door, and seen that his light was out, and that he had actually gone to bed, as he said, before she would allow herself to be convinced. It was a quarrel, then; and what was to come of it,—what was to come of it? Lady Markland was very yielding and gentle, but Theo! Theo was not yielding. Mrs. Warrender, too, lay down when it was nearly morning, as miserable as could be.
And yet none of them, not even the chief actors, who were both at the pitch of desperation, really believed that what this meant was a breach which should last for years. Even they would not have believed it had it been put to them. That it should not all come right was incredible. But as a matter of fact it did not come right. Lady Markland was not by nature the yielding and anxious woman whom for this year of troubled wedlock she had appeared; and everybody knew that Theo was neither persuadable nor reasonable, but had the hottest temper, the most rigid will, of his own, and that ingenuity in finding himself in the right which gives a fatal character to every quarrel. Lady Markland was willing to make any concession but the one which he required, the abandonment of Geoff. But he would make no concession; he stood upon his rights. With all the fervour and absolutism of inexperience he stood fast. No, nothing less than everything, nothing but entire submission, nothing but obedience. Alarmed and anxious friends gathered to the fray, as was inevitable, and everything was made worse. The result was that within a few weeks Theo Warrender had gone off with a burning sense of injury and wrong, to travel he did not much care where, to forget himself he did not much care how; and Lady Markland, feeling as if she had awakened suddenly from a strange dream, a dream full of fever and unrest, of fugitive happiness but lasting trouble, came to herself all alone with the two little babies, in a strange solitude which was no longer natural, and with Geoff. She had chosen, who could say wrongly?—and yet in a way which set wrong all the circumstances of her life.
This was how for the moment her second venture came to an end. Theo went forth upon the world for that Wanderyear in which so much of the superfluous vigour of life is so often expended, which it would have been so well for everybody he had taken before: and stormed about the world for a time, no one knowing what volcanoes were exploding in his soul. How much he gathered of better wisdom it is not within the limits of this history to say.
The happy ones were Dick and Chatty, who began their life together as if there had been no cloud upon it. He had fully lived out his Wanderyear, and had paid dearly for the follies, which had been done with no evil meaning on his part, but in all honour and good intention, bitterly foolish though they were. And perhaps he never was very wise, nor rose above the possibility of being taken in, which is a peculiarity of many generous spirits. But why should we say they were the happy ones? The really happy ones were Minnie and her Eustace, who never felt themselves to be in the wrong, or were anything less than the regulators of everybody's life and manners wherever they went. It was Mrs. Eustace Thynne's conviction to the last that all the misfortunes which temporarily befell her sister were owing to the fact that she herself was not on the spot to regulate affairs; and that Theo, if he had taken her advice, would never have placed himself in the way of the trouble which had overwhelmed his life.
THE END.
THE END.