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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 crape 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 nobody 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, "God bless you! God 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. "Was that what it was?" he said, wondering and unobserved in the midst of the new commotion, which for the moment left Geoff altogether, and rose around Warrender, as if he had been the hero of the day.

CHAPTER XXIII

They all sat round the table and took their evening meal together before Lady Markland went back. It was not a ceremonious, grand dinner, as if there had been a party. Old Joseph pottered about, and put the dishes on the table, and handed the potatoes now and then when they were not wanted, and sometimes leaned across between the young ladies to regulate the lamp, explaining why as he did so. "Excuse me, Miss Chatty, but it's a-going to smoke," he said; and in the meantime the family helped each other. But Lady Markland was not conscious of the defects in the service. She sat by Theo's side, talking to him, looking at him in a kind of soft ecstasy. They had been friends before, but it seemed that she had now for the first time discovered what he was, and could not conceal her pleasure, her gratitude, her admiration. She made him tell her how it all happened, a dozen times over, while the others talked of other things, and poured out her thanks, her happiness, her ascriptions of praise, as if he had been more than mortal, devoting herself to him alone. Lady Markland had never been the kind of woman who allows herself in society to be engrossed by a man. It was entirely unlike her, unlike her character, a new thing. She was quite unconscious of Minnie's sharp eyes upon her, of the remarks which were being made. All she was aware of, in that rapture of safety after danger and relief from pain, was Geoff, blinking with eyes half sleepy, half excited, by the side of Mrs. Warrender, nothing hurt in him but his knickerbockers; and the young man by her side, with the wound upon his head, who had saved her child's life. Theo, for his part, was wrapped in a mist of delight for which there was no name. He saw only her, thought only of her; and for the first time began to imagine what life might be if it should ever come to mean a state in which this rapture should be permanent, – when she would always look at him so, always devote herself, eyes and lips and all her being, to make him happy.

The room lay in darkness beyond the steady light of the white lamp, shining on the circle of faces. There was not much conversation. Minnie was sternly silent, on the watch; Chatty sympathetically on the alert, too, though she scarcely knew why, because her sister was; Mrs. Warrender listening with a faint smile to Geoff's little chatter, occasionally casting a glance at the other end of the table, which she could see but imperfectly. Lady Markland spoke low, addressing Theo only, so that Geoff, as before, held the chief place. He was never weary of going over the adventures of the day.

"It is that tall house before you come to the village, – a tall, tall house, with a wall all round, as if to keep prisoners in. I know there are no prisoners now. Of course not! There are people all about in the fields and everywhere, who would soon tell the policeman and set you free. I was not afraid. Still, if the gates had been shut, and they refused to open, I don't know what one would do. The lady was like a picture in the Pilgrim's Progress, – that one, you know – I thought her pretty at first. But then she held me in her arm as if I had been a baby."

"Oh, it would be Those People!" said Minnie, moved to a passing exclamation of horror.

"Never mind that now. You must not venture out again without the groom, for it makes your mother unhappy – Theo," said Mrs. Warrender, with a smile and a sigh, "when he was a little fellow like you, never did anything to make me unhappy."

"Didn't he?" said Geoff seriously. "But I didn't know. How could I tell pony would so soon get hungry? He hasn't a regular dinner-time, as we have; only munches and munches all day. But I was telling you about the tall house."

"You must tell me another time, Geoff. Theo must bring you back with him sometimes for a holiday."

"Yes," said Geoff, "that would do better. Pony would go splendid by the side of Theo's big black. I shall come often – when I do my lessons well. I have never done any lessons except with mamma. Does Theo like teaching boys?"

"I don't know, my dear. I don't think he has ever tried."

"Then why is he coming to teach me? That, at the very bottom of it, you know, is what I wanted him to tell me; for he would not tell straight out, the real truth, before mamma."

"I hope he always tells the real truth," said Mrs. Warrender gently. "I suppose, my little Geoff, it is because he is fond of you."

Upon this Geoff shook his little head for a long time, twisting his face and blinking his keen little eyes. "He is not fond of me – oh no, it is not that. I can do with Theo very well, – as well as with any one; but he is not fond of me."

"I am glad to hear that you can do with Theo," said the mother, much amused.

"Yes. I don't mind him at all: but he is not fond of me; and he is sure not to teach mamma's way, and that is the only way I know. If he were to want to punish me, Mrs. Warrender – "

"I hope, my dear, there will be no question of that."

"I shouldn't mind," said the boy, "but mamma wouldn't like it. It might be very awkward for Theo. You are flogged when you go to school, aren't you? At least, all the books say so. Mamma," he went on, raising his voice, "here is a difficulty, – a great difficulty. If Theo should want to flog me, what should you do?"

Lady Markland did not hear him for the moment. She was absorbed! – this was the remark made by Minnie, who watched with the intensest observation. Then Geoff, in defiance of good manners, drummed on the table to attract his mother's attention, and elevated his voice: "Can't you hear what I am saying, mamma? If I were to be stupid with my lessons, and Theo were to flog me – " ("It is only putting a case, for I am not stupid," he added, for Mrs. Warrender's instruction, in an undertone.)

"You must not suggest anything so dreadful," said Lady Markland from the other end of the table. "But now you must thank Mrs. Warrender, Geoff, and Mr. Theo, and every one; for the carriage has come round, and it is growing late, and we must go away."

Then Mrs. Warrender rose, as in duty bound, and the whole party with her. "I will not ask you to stay; it is late for him, and he has had too much excitement," said the mistress of the house.

"And to think I might never have brought him home at all, never heard his voice again, but for your dear son, your good son!" cried Lady Markland, taking both her hands, putting forward her head, with its smooth silken locks in which the light shone, and the soft round of her uplifted face, to the elder woman, with an emotion and tenderness which went to Mrs. Warrender's heart. She gave the necessary kiss, but though she was touched there was no enthusiasm in her reply.

"You must not think too much of that, Lady Markland. I hope he would have done it for any child in danger."

This, of course, is always perfectly true; but it chills the effusion of individual gratitude. Lady Markland raised her head, but she still held Mrs. Warrender's hands. "I wish," she said, "oh, I wish you would tell me frankly! Does it vex you that he should be so good to me? This kind, kind offer about Geoff, – is it too much? Yes, yes, I know it is too much; but how can I refuse what he is so good, so charitable, as to offer, when it is such a boon to us? Oh, if you would tell me! Is it displeasing, is it distasteful to you?"

"I don't know how to answer you," Mrs. Warrender said.

"Ah! but that is an answer. Dear Mrs. Warrender, help me to refuse it without wounding his feelings. I have always felt it was too much."

"Lady Markland, I cannot interfere. He is old enough to judge for himself. He will not accept guidance from me, – ah, nor from you either, except in the one way." She returned the pressure of her visitor's hand, which had relaxed, with one that was as significant. "It is not so easy to lay spirits when they are once raised," she said.

Lady Markland gave her a sudden, alarmed, inquiring look; but Theo came forward at that moment with her cloak, and nothing could be said more.

He came back into the dining-room, expectant, defiant, fire in all his veins, and in his heart a sea of agitated bliss that had to get an outlet somewhere; not in a litany to her, for which there was no place, but at least in defence of her and of himself. It was Minnie, as usual, who stood ready to throw down the glove; Chatty being no more than a deeply interested spectator, and the mother drawing aside with that sense of impossibility which balks remonstrance, from the fray. Besides, Mrs. Warrender did not know, in the responsive excitement in herself which Theo's passion called forth, whether she wished to remonstrate or to put any hindrance in his way.

"Well, upon my word!" said Minnie, "Mrs. Wilberforce may well say the world is coming to a pretty pass. Only six months a widow, and not a bit of crape upon her! I knew she wore no cap. Cap! why, she hasn't even a bonnet, nor a veil, nor anything! A little bit of a hat, with a black ribbon, – too light for me to wear; even Chatty would be ashamed to be seen – "

"Oh no, Minnie; in the garden, you know, we have never worn anything deeper."

"Do you call this the garden?" cried Minnie, her voice so deep with alarm and presentiment that it sounded bass, in the silence of the night. "Six miles off, and an open carriage, and coming among people who are themselves in mourning! It ought to have given her a lesson to see my mother in her cap."

"If you have nothing better to do than to find fault with Lady Markland – " said Theo, pale with passion.

"Oh," cried Minnie, "don't suppose I am going to speak about Lady Markland to you. How can you be so infatuated, Theo? You a tutor, – you, that have always been made such a fuss with, as if there was not such another in the world! What was it all he was to be? A first class, and a Fellow, and I don't know what. But tutor to a small boy, tutor to a little lord, – a sort of a valet, or a sort of a nurse – "

"Minnie! your brother is at an age when he must choose for himself."

"How much are you to have for it?" she cried, – "how much a year? Or are you to be paid with presents, or only with the credit of the connection? Oh, I am glad poor papa is dead, not to hear of it. He would have known what to think of it all. He would have given you his opinion of a woman – of a woman – "

"Lady Markland is a very nice woman," said Chatty. "Oh, Theo, don't look as if you were going to strike her! She doesn't know what she is saying. She has lost her temper. It is just Minnie's way."

"Of a woman who wears no crape for her husband," cried Minnie, with an effort, in her bass voice.

Theo, who had looked, indeed, as if he might have knocked his sister down, here burst into an angry peal of laughter, which rang through the house; and his mother, seizing the opportunity, took him by the arm and drew him away. "Don't take any notice," she said. "You must not forget she is your sister, whatever she says. And, my dear boy, though Minnie exaggerates, she has reason on her side, from her point of view. No, I don't think as she does, altogether; but, Theo, can't you understand that it is a disappointment to us? We always made so sure you were going to do some great thing."

"And to be of a little real use once in a way, is such a small thing!"

"Oh, Theo, you must be reasonable, and think a little. It does not want a scholar like you to teach little Geoff."

"A scholar – like me. How do you know I am a scholar at all?"

Mrs. Warrender knew that no answer to this was necessary, and did not attempt it. She went on: "And you are not in a position to want such employment. Don't you see that everybody will begin to inquire what your inducement was? A young man who has nothing, it is all quite natural; but you – Theo, have you ever asked yourself how you are to be repaid?"

"You are as bad as Minnie, mother," he said, with scorn; "you think I want to be repaid."

She clasped her hands upon his arm, looking up at him with a sort of pitying pride. "She must think of it, Theo – everybody must think of it; ah yes, and even yourself, at the last. Every mortal, everybody that is human, – oh, Theo, the most generous! – looks for something, something in return."

The young man tried to speak, but his voice died away after he had said "Mother!" To this he had no reply.

But though he could not answer the objection, he could put it aside; and as a matter of course he had his way. At the beginning of a thing, however clearly it may be apparent that embarrassment is involved, few people are clear-sighted enough to perceive how great the embarrassment may come to be. Lady Markland was not wiser than her kind. She spoke of Theo's kindness in a rapture of gratitude, and ended always by saying that, after all, that was nothing in comparison with the fact that he had begun by saving the boy's life. "I owe my child to him," she said, – "I owe him Geoff's life; and now it almost seems natural, when he has done so much, that he should do anything that his kind heart prompts." She would say this with tears in her eyes, with such an enthusiasm of gratitude that everybody was touched who heard her. But then, everybody did not hear Lady Markland's account of the matter; and the common mass, the spectators who observe such domestic dramas with always a lively desire to get as much amusement as possible out of them, made remarks of a very different kind. The men thought that Warrender was a fool, but that the widow was consoling herself; the ladies said that it was sad to see a young man so infatuated, but that Lady Markland could not live without an adviser; and there were some, even, who began to lament "poor dear young Markland," as if he had been an injured saint. The people who heard least of these universal comments were, however, the persons most concerned: Lady Markland, because she saw few people, and disarmed, as has been said, those whom she did see; and Warrender, because he was not the sort of man, young though he was, whom other men cared to approach with uncalled-for advice. There was but one person, indeed, after his sister, who lifted up a faithful testimony to Theo. Mrs. Wilberforce, as his parish clergyman's wife, felt that, if the rector would not do it, it was her duty to speak. She took advantage of the opportunity one evening after Christmas, when Warrender was dining at the Rectory. "Are you still going to Markland every day?" she said. "Isn't it a great tie? I should think by the time you have ridden there and back you can't have much time for any business of your own."

"It is a good thing, then," said Theo, "that I have so little business of my own."

"You say so," said the rector's wife, "but most gentlemen make fuss enough about it, I am sure. There seems always something to be doing when you have an estate in your hands. And now that you are a magistrate – though I know you did not go to Quarter Sessions," she said severely.

"There are always enough of men who like to play at law, without me."

"Oh, Theo, how can you speak so? when it is one of a gentleman's highest functions, as everybody knows! And then there are the improvements. So much was to be done. The girls could talk of nothing else. They were in a panic about their trees. There is no stauncher Conservative than I am," said Mrs. Wilberforce, "but I do think Minnie went too far. She would have everything remain exactly as it is. Now I can't help seeing that those trees – But you have no time to think of trees or anything else," she added briskly, fixing upon him her keen eyes.

"I confess," said Theo, "I never thought of the trees from a political point of view."

"There, that is just like a man!" cried Mrs. Wilberforce. "You seize upon something one says that can be turned into ridicule; but you never will meet the real question. Oh, is that you, Herbert? Have you got rid of your churchwarden so soon?" – for this was the pretext upon which the rector had been got out of the way.

"He did not want much, – a mere question. Indeed," said the rector, remembering that fibs are not permitted to the clergy any more than to the mere laic, and perceiving that he must expect his punishment all the same – with that courage which springs from the conviction that it is as well to be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, "it was not the churchwarden at all; it was only a mistake of John."

"Well," said his wife significantly, "it was a mistake that was quickly rectified, one can see, as you have come back so soon. And here is Theo talking already of going home. Of course he has his lessons to prepare for to-morrow; he is not a mere idle gentleman now."

Little gibes and allusions like these rained upon the young man from all quarters during the first six months, but no one ventured to speak to him with the faithfulness used by Mrs. Wilberforce; and after a time even these irritating if not very harmful weapons dropped, and the whole matter sank into the region of the ordinary. He rode, or, if the weather was bad, drove, five days in the week to his little pupil, who in himself was not to Theo's mind an attractive pupil, and who kept the temper of the tutor on a constant strain. It ought, according to all moral rules, to have been very good for Warrender to be thus forced to self-control, and to exercise a continual restraint over his extremely impatient temper and fastidious, almost capricious temperament. But there are circumstances in which such self-restraint is rather an aggravating than a softening process. During this period, however, Theo was scarcely to be accounted for by the ordinary rules of human nature. His mind was altogether absorbed by one of, if not by the most powerful influence of human life. He was carried away by a tide of passion which was stronger than life itself.