A Country Gentleman and his Family Part 19

"And what am I to put on my hat for?" cried Minnie. "Let Theo explain.

How can we tell what he wants, if he won't explain?"

"I'll run," said Chatty, who had already brought her basin, and who flew forth in most illogical readiness, eager to satisfy her brother, though she did not know what he wanted. Good-will, however, is often its own reward, and in this instance it was emphatically so, for Chatty almost ran into a little group advancing through the shrubbery,--Mrs. Bagley, with her best bonnet hastily put on, and holding little Geoff Markland by the hand. The little boy was in advance, dragging his guardian forward, and Mrs. Bagley panted with the effort. "Oh, Miss Chatty," she cried, "I'm so thankful to see you! The little gentleman, he's in such a hurry.

The little gentleman----"

Geoff left go in a moment of the old lady's hand, nearly throwing her off her balance; but he was full of his own affairs, as was natural. "It is me," he said to Chatty. "I came to see Theo; but I had an accident and he had an accident. And they wanted to take me to that tall house, but I wouldn't. Has Theo come back? and where is pony? This old lady has to be paid for the bread and b.u.t.ter. She was very kind, and took care of me when I ran away."

"Oh," cried Chatty, "did you run away? And Lady Markland will be so unhappy."

No one paid attention to Mrs. Bagley declaring that she wanted no payment for her bread and b.u.t.ter; and Geoff, very full of the importance of the position, hurried Chatty back to the house. "Can I go in?" he said, breathless; "and will you send me home, and find pony for me? Oh, here is Theo. Was it the horse that tipped you on the head?" He came forward with great gravity, and watched the bathing of Warrender's head, which was going on partly against his will. Geoff approached without further ceremony, and stood by the side of the table, and looked on. "Did he catch you with his forefoot?" said the boy. "I thought it was only the back feet that were dangerous. What a lot of blood! and oh, are they going to cut off your hair? When I got a knock on the head, mamma sent for the doctor for me."

"Dear Theo, be still, and let me do it. How could you get such a blow?"

"I will tell you, Mrs. Warrender," said the little boy, drawing closer and closer, and watching everything with his little grave face. "Pony threw me, and the big bays were coming down to crush my head. I saw them waving in the air, like that, over me! and Theo laid hold of me _here_ and tore me, and they crushed him instead."

"What is all this about a pony and the bays? Theo, tell me."

"He tore me all here, look, in the back of my knickerbockers," said Geoff, putting his hand to the place; "but I'd rather have that than a knock on my head. Theo, does it hurt? Theo, what a lot you have bled!

Were you obliged to tear my knickerbockers? I say, Theo, the lady was pretty, but I didn't much like her, after all."

Theo, though his head was over the basin, put out his hand and seized the child by the shoulders. "What did you run away for, you little----?

Do you know your mother will be wretched about you?--your mother, who is worth a hundred of you." This was said through his teeth, with a twist of Geoff's shoulder which was almost savage.

"I say!" cried the child; then he added indignantly, "I never ran away, I came to see you, because you are going to be my tutor. I didn't think it was such a long way. And pony got hungry. And so was I."

"Going to be his tutor!" It was Minnie's voice that said this so sharply that the air tingled with the words: and even Mrs. Warrender started a little; but it was not a moment at which any more could be said. The bathing was done, and Theo's wound had now to be brought together by plaster and bound up. It was not very serious. A hoof had touched him, but that was all, and fortunately not on a dangerous place.

"Take him away and give him something to eat," said the patient, but not in a hospitable voice.

"I want to see it all done," said Geoff, pressing closer. "Is that how you do it? Don't you want another piece of plaster? Will you have to take it off again, or will it stay till it is all well? Oh, look, that corner isn't fast. Press it there, a little farther. Oh, Theo, she has done it so nicely. You can't see a bit of the bad place. It is all covered with plaster, like that, and then like this. I wish now it had been me, just to know how it feels."

"Take him away, mother, for Heaven's sake!" cried Warrender under his breath.

"My dear, you must not worry Theo. He is going to lie down now, and be quiet for a little. Go with Minnie, and have something to eat."

"I am not so hungry now," said the boy, "but very much interested. When you are interested you don't feel hungry: and the old woman gave me something to eat. Would you pay her, please? Won't you tie something on, Mrs. Warrender, to hide the plaster? It doesn't look very nice like that."

"Come," said Chatty, taking him by the hand. The elder sister had thrown herself into a chair at the mention of the tutorship, and seemed unable for further exertion.

"Oh yes, I am coming; but I am most interested about Theo. Theo, you have got a stain upon your cheek; and your coat is torn, too, as bad as my---- Well, but he did tear my knickerbockers. Look! I felt the cold wind, though I did not say anything; not upon the open road, but when we got among your trees. It is so dark among your trees. Theo!"

"Come, come; I want you to come with me," Chatty said, hurrying Geoff away; and perhaps the sight of the table in the dining-room, and the tray which Joseph, not without a grumble, was placing upon it, became about this time as interesting as Theo's wound.

"We ought to send and tell his mother that the child is here."

"Or send him back," said Minnie sharply, "and get rid of him. A little story-teller! Theo his tutor! If I were his mother, I should whip him, till he learned what lies mean!"

Mrs. Warrender looked with some anxiety at her son. "Children," she said, "make such strange misrepresentations of what they hear. But we should send----"

"I have sent already," said Theo. "She will probably come and fetch him: and, mother----"

"My dear, keep still, and don't disturb yourself. There might be a little fever."

"Oh, rubbish, fever! I shall not disturb myself, if you don't disturb me. Look here. It is quite true; I've offered myself to be his tutor."

"His tutor!" cried Minnie once more, in a voice which was like the report of a pistol. Mrs. Warrender said nothing, but looked at him with a boundless pity in her eyes, slightly shaking her head.

"Well! and what have you to say against it?" cried Theo, facing his sister, with a glow of anger mounting to the face which had been almost ghastly with loss of blood.

"This is not a moment for discussion. Go and see to the child, Minnie.

Theo, my dear boy, if you care so much for Geoff as that--; at another time you must tell us all about it."

"There is nothing to tell you, save that I have made up my mind to it,"

he said, looking at her with that prompt defiance which forestalls remark. "Geoff! Do you think it is for Geoff? But neither at this time nor at any other time is there more to say."

He looked at her so severely that Mrs. Warrender's eyes fell. He felt no shame, but pride, in his self-sacrifice, and determination to stand by it and uphold his right to do it in the face of all the world. But this very determination, and a consciousness of all that would be said on the subject, gave Warrender a double intolerance in respect to Geoff himself. To imagine that it was for the boy's sake was, he already felt, the most unbearable offence. For the boy's sake! The boy would have been swept away before now if thought could have done it. From the first hour he had been impatient of the boy. The way in which he clung to his mother had been a personal offence. And his mother!--ah no, she could do no wrong. Not even in this matter, which sometimes tortured him, could he blame Lady Markland. But that she or any one should imagine for a moment that he was ready to sacrifice his time, his independence, so much of his life, for the sake of Geoff! That was a misconception which Warrender could not bear. "Don't let that little---- come near me," he said to his mother, as he finally went off, somewhat feebly, to the old library, where he could be sure of quiet. "Make the girls take care of him and amuse him. She will probably come and fetch him, and I will rest--till then."--That little---- Warrender did not add any epithet; the adjective was enough.

"Till then,--till she comes! Is that all your thought?" said his mother.

"Oh, my poor boy!"

He met her eyes with a pride which scorned concealment. Yes, he would own it here, where it would be in vain to deny it. He would not disavow the secret of his heart. Mothers have keen eyes, but hers were not keen, they were pitying,--more sad than tears. She looked at him, and once more softly shook her head. The blood had rushed again to his face, dyeing it crimson for a moment, and he held his head high as he made his confession. "Yes, mother, that is all my thought." And then he walked away, tingling with the first avowal he had ever made to mortal ears.

As for Mrs. Warrender, she stood looking after him with so mingled an expression that scarcely the most delicate of casuists could have divined the meaning in her. She was so sorry for him, so proud of him.

He was so young, not more than a boy, yet man enough to give all his heart and his life--to sacrifice everything, even his pride--for the sake of the woman he loved. His mother, who had never before come within speaking distance of a pa.s.sion like this, felt her heart glow and swell with pride in him, with tender admiration beyond words. She had neither loved nor been loved after this sort; and yet it was no romance of the poets, but had a real existence, and was here, here by her side, in the monotonous little world which had never been touched by such a presence before. She said to herself that it would never come to anything but misery and pain; yet even misery was better than nothingness, and he who had loved had lived. To think that a quiet, middle-aged Englishwoman, a pattern of domestic duty, should think thus, and exult in her son's inconceivable and, as she believed, unhappy pa.s.sion, is almost too much to be credible. Yet so it was.

Geoff's absence was not discovered until two o'clock, when Lady Markland, at the end of a long and troublesome consultation over matters only partially understood, suggested luncheon to her man of business.

"Geoff will be waiting and very impatient," she said, with a smile. Mr.

Longstaffe was not anxious to see Geoff, nor disturbed that the little boy's midday meal should have been postponed to business, though this disturbed Geoff's mother, who had been in the habit of thinking his comfort the rule of her life. She was much startled not to find him in the dining-room, and to hear that he had not come back. "Not come back!

and it is two o'clock! But Black will take good care of him," she said, with a forced smile, to Mr. Longstaffe, "and I must not keep you waiting."

"If you please, my lady," said the butler, "Black's not gone with him."

At this Lady Markland stared at the man, the colour dying out of her face. "You have let him go out alone!" "I had nothing to do with it, my lady. The colt's lame, and Black----" "Oh," she cried, stamping her foot, "don't talk to me of excuses, but go, go, and look for my child!"

Then she was told that Black had gone some time since, and was scouring all the roads about; that he had come back once, having seen nothing; and that now the coachman and gardener were gone too. From this time until the hasty messenger arrived with Theo's hurried note, Lady Markland spent the time in such distraction as only mothers know, representing to herself a hundred dangers, which reason told her were unlikely, but which imagination, more strong than reason, placed again and again before her eyes, till she felt a certainty that they were true. All those stories of kidnapping, which people in their senses laugh at, Lady Markland as much as any, being when in her right mind a very sensible woman--came before her now as possible, likely, almost certain. And she saw Geoff, with his little foot caught in the stirrup, dragged at the pony's frightened heels, the stones on the road tearing him, his head knocking against every obstacle; and she saw him lying by the roadside, white and lifeless. She saw everything that could and could not happen, and accused herself for not having sent him to school, out of danger,--for not having kept him by her side night and day.

Mr. Longstaffe naturally looked on at all this anguish with a mixture of contempt and pity. He was not at all alarmed for Geoff. "The young gentleman will have gone to visit one of his friends; he will have gone farther than he intended. He may, if he doesn't know the country very well, have missed his way: but we don't live in a country of brigands and bandits, my dear lady; somebody will be sure to direct him safely back." He managed to eat his luncheon by himself, after she had begged him not to mind her absence, and had left him undisturbed to confide to the butler his regret that Lady Markland should be so much upset, and his conviction that the little boy was quite safe. "He'll be all right, sir," the butler said. "He is as sharp as a needle, is Mr. Geoff. I did ought to say his little lordship, but it's hard to get into new ways."

They said this, each with an indulgent smile at her weakness, in Lady Markland's absence. The lawyer had a great respect for her, and the butler venerated his mistress who was very capable in her own house, but they smiled at her womanish exaggeration, all the same.

Warrender had been quite right in thinking she would come at once for Geoff. She had almost harnessed the horses herself, so eager was she, and they flew along the country roads at a pace very unlike their ordinary calm. Evening had fallen when she rushed into the hall at the Warren, in her garden hat, with a shawl wrapped about her shoulders, the first she had found. Terrible recollections of the former occasion when she had been summoned to this house were in her mind, and it was with a fantastic terror which she could scarcely overcome that she found herself once more, by the same waning light, in the place where she had been sent for to see her husband die. If she had been deceived. If the child should be gone, like his father! She had not, however, a second moment in which to indulge this panic, for Geoff's voice, somewhat raised, met her ears at once. Geoff was in very great feather, seated among the ladies, expounding to them his views on things in general.

"Our trees at Markland are not like your trees," he was saying. "They are just as young as me, mamma says. When I am as old as you are, or as Theo, perhaps they will be grown. But I should not like them so big as yours. When Theo is my tutor I shall tell him what I think; it will be a fine opportunity. Why, mamma!"

She had him in her arms, kissing and sobbing over him for a moment, till she could overcome that hysterical impulse. Theo had come from his room at the sound of the wheels, and the party was all collected in the drawing-room, the door of which stood open. There was little light, so that they could scarcely see each other, but Minnie had full time to remark with horror that Lady Markland did not even wear a widow's bonnet, or a c.r.a.pe veil, for decency, but had on a mere _hat_,--a straw hat, with a black ribbon. She put her hand on her heart in the pang of this discovery, but n.o.body else took any notice. And, indeed, in the outburst of the poor lady's thanks and questions, there was no room for any one else to speak.

"Oh, it was all right," said Geoff, who was in high excitement, the chief spokesman, and extremely eager to tell his own story before any one could interfere. "I knew the way quite well. I wanted to see Theo, you know, to ask him if he really meant it. I wanted to speak to him all by himself; for Theo is never the same, mamma, when you are there. I knew which turn to take as well as any one. I wasn't in a hurry; it was such a nice day. But pony was not interested about Theo, like me, and he remembered that it was dinner-time. That was all about it. And then those people in the phaeton gave him a start. It was nothing. I just popped over his head. There was no danger except that the bays might have given me a kick; but horses never kick with their forefeet."

Here Lady Markland gave a shriek, and clutched her boy again. "You fell off, Geoff, among the horses' feet!"

"Oh, it didn't matter, mamma; it didn't matter a bit, Theo caught me, and tore my knickerbockers (but they're mended now). He bled a great deal, and I helped Mrs. Warrender to plaster up the cut; but I wasn't hurt,--not a bit; and my knickerbockers----"

It was Geoff's turn now to pause in surprise, for his mother left him, and flew to Theo, and, taking his hands, tried to kiss them, and, between laughing and crying, said, "G.o.d bless you! G.o.d bless you! You have saved my boy's life!"

Geoff was confounded by this desertion, by the interruption, by the sudden cry. He put his hand up to the place where Warrender's cut was, dimly realising that it might have been in his own head but for Theo.