Warrender went off very quickly upon his long walk. He could not but
feel, notwithstanding his little bravado of indifference, that it
was a very important decision, which he had made irrevocable by thus
publishing it. For some time it had been a certainty in his mind; but
nothing seems a certainty until it has been said, and now that it had
been said, the thought that he had absolutely delivered himself over
into the nameless crowd, that he had renounced all further thought of
distinction in the only way he knew of for acquiring it, was somewhat
awful to him. The unimaginable difference which exists between a man
within whose reach a first class is still dangling and him who has no
hope but to be "gulfed," is little comprehensible by the unacademical
mind; but it is one not to be contemplated without a shudder. When he
thought of what he was resigning, when he thought of what he must drop
into, the blood seemed to boil in Theo's veins and to ring in his ears.
To be a passman; to descend among the crowd; to consort with those who
had "pulled through," perhaps with difficulty, who had gone through all
sorts of dull workings and struggles, and to whom their books were
mere necessary instruments of torture, to be got done with as soon as
possible,--these were things terrible to contemplate. And in the silence
of his own soul, it was difficult to console himself with those theories
about the trade-mark, and the merely professional use of academic
distinction. It was all true enough, and yet it was not true. Even now
he thought of his tutor with a pang; not the tutor at college, who had
dropped him for Brunson, but the genial old tutor at school, who had
hoped such great things for him. He said, "Poor old Boreas!" to himself,
sympathising in the disappointment with which the news would be received.
Warrender a passman! Warrender "gulfed"! Nobody would believe it. This
gave him many pangs as he set out upon his walk. He had sacrificed his
early glories to the fastidious fancy of youth; but he had never really
intended to be distanced by Brunson, to fall out of the ranks at the
end.
Softer thoughts began to steal over him as he pursued his way, as he
began to draw near the other country in which she abode. Half-way
between the houses was a little wood, through which the road passed, and
which was like a vestibule to the smiling place where her throne and
empire was. To other eyes it was no more smiling than the other side,
but as soon as Theo became conscious, in the distance, of the bare
height, all denuded of trees, on which Markland stood, the landscape
seemed to change for him. There was sunshine in it which was nowhere
else, more quiet skies and warmer light. He threw down the burden of his
thoughts among the autumn leaves that strewed the brook in that bit of
woodland, and, on the other side, remembered with an elation that went
to his head, that he had this sacrifice, though she might never know it,
to lay at her feet; the flower of his life, the garland of honour, the
violet crown, all to scatter on her path. He would rather she should put
her foot on them than that they should decorate his brow,--even if she
never knew.
With these thoughts, he sped along the country road, which no longer was
so green, so warm with sunshine, as before. Markland looked already cold
in its bareness against the distant sky, all flushed with flying clouds,
the young saplings about, bending before the wind, as if they supplicated
for shelter and a little warmth, and the old tottering cedar behind the
house, looking as if the next blast would bring it down with a crash.
There had been a great deal of planting going on, but this only added
to the straggling lines of weak-kneed, uncomfortable younglings, who
fluttered their handful of leaves, and shivered in every wind that blew.
Lady Markland no longer sat on the terrace. She received her familiar
visitor where only intimate friends were allowed to come, in the
morning-room, to which its new distinction gave something of the
barrenness and rigidity of a room of business. The big writing-table
filled up the centre, and nothing remained of its old aspect except
Geoff's little settlement within the round of the window; a low table
for his few lesson books, where less lawful publications, in the shape
of stories, were but too apt to appear, and a low, but virtuously hard
chair, on which he was supposed to sit, and--work; but there was not
much work done, as everybody knew.
Lady Markland did not rise to receive her visitor. She had a book in her
right hand, which she did not even disturb herself to put down. It was
her left hand which she held out to Warrender, with a smile: and this
mark of a friendship which had gone beyond all ceremony made his heart
overflow. By an unusual chance, Geoff was not there, staring with his
little sharp eyes, and this made everything sweeter. He had her to
himself at last.
"Do I disturb you? Are you busy?" he said.
"Not at all. At least, if I am busy, it is nothing that requires
immediate attention. I am a little stupid about those drainages, and
what is the landlord's part. I wonder if you know any better? You must
have the same sort of things to do?"
"I am ashamed to say I don't, now; but I'll get it all up," he said
eagerly,--"that must be perfectly easy,--and give you the result."
"You will cram me, in short," said Lady Markland, with a smile. "You
ought to be somebody's private secretary. How well you would do it! That
was all right about the lease. Mr. Longstaffe was very much astonished
that I should know so much. I did not tell him it was you."
"It was not me!" cried Warrender. "I had only the facts, and you supplied
the understanding. I suppose that is to be my trade too; it will be
something to think that you have trained me for it."
"That we have studied together," she said, "with most of the ignorance
on my side, and most of the knowledge on yours. Oh, I am not too humble.
I allow that I sometimes see my way out of a difficulty, with a jump,
before you have reasoned it out. That sort of thing is conceded to a
woman. I am 'not without intelligence,' Mr. Longstaffe himself says. But
what do you mean to imply by that tone of regret--you suppose it is to
be your trade?"
"I don't mean anything,--to make you ask, perhaps. I have no doubt I
mean that finding out what was the exact pound of flesh the farmers
could demand, and how much on our side we could exact, did not seem very
lofty work: until I remembered that you were doing it too."
"My doing it makes no difference," said Lady Markland. "You ought to know
better than to make me those little compliments. But for all that, it is
a fine trade. Looking after the land is the best of trades. Everything
must have begun with it, and it will go on for ever. And the pleasure of
thinking one can improve, and hand it over richer and better for the
expenditure of a little brains upon it, as well as other condiments--"
she said, with a laugh. "Guano, you will say, is of more use perhaps
than the brains."
She carried off a little enthusiasm, which had lit up her eyes, with
this laugh at the end.
"I don't think so," said Warrender. "Do you think I meant any compliment?
but to see you giving yourself up to this, you, who--and to remember
that I had been perhaps grumbling, thinking of the schools, and other
such paltry honours."
"Oh, not paltry,--not paltry at all; very, very much the reverse. I am
sure no one interested in you can think so."
"I think so myself," he said. "I must tell you my little experiences on
that subject." And with this he told her all his little story about the
devotion of the Dons; about their discovery of his pursuits, and the
slackening of their approbation; and about how Brunson (a very good
fellow, and quite aware of their real meaning) had taken his place. Lady
Markland was duly interested, amused, and indignant; interested enough
to be quite sincere in her expressions, and yet independent enough to
smile a little at the conflict between wounded feeling and philosophy
on Warrender's part.
"But," she added, with a woman's liking for a practicable medium, "you
might have postponed your deeper reading till you had done what was
necessary, and so pleased both them and yourself."
"I thought one could not serve two masters," said Theo; "and that is why
I encourage myself, by your example, to take to the land and its duties,
and give up the other poor little bubble of reputation."
"Don't talk of my example," she said. "I am not disinterested. I am
making no choice. What I am doing is for the only object I have in life,
the only thing I have in the world."
He did not ask any question, but he fixed her with intent, inquiring
eyes.
"You need not look as if you had any doubt what it was. It is Geoff, of
course. I don't care very much for anything else. But to hand back his
inheritance unburdened, to make a man of my poor little Geoff----" Her
bright eyes moistened with quick-springing tears. She smiled, and her
face looked to Theo like the face of an angel; though he was impatient of
the motive, he adored her for it. And she gave her head a little toss,
as if to shake off this undue emotion. "I need not talk any high-flown
nonsense about such a simple duty, need I?" she said, once more with a
soft laugh. Instead of making the most of her pathetic position, she
would always ignore the claims she had upon sympathy. Her simple
duty,--that was all.
"We must not discuss that question," he said; "for if I were to say what
I thought---- And this brings me to what I wanted to talk to you about,
Lady Markland. Geoff----"
She looked at him, with a sudden catching of her breath. She had no
expectation of a sudden invasion of the practical into the vague
satisfaction of the pause, which kept Geoff still by his mother's side.
And yet she knew that it was her duty to listen, to accept any
reasonable suggestion that might be made.
"There was that question,--between a school and a tutor," he said. "I
have been thinking a great deal about it. We settled, you remember, that
to send him away to school would be too much; not good for himself, as
he is delicate: and for you it would be hard. You would miss him
dreadfully."
"Miss him!" she said. As if these common words could express the
vacancy, the blank solitude, into which her life without Geoff would
settle down!
"But it seems to me now that there is another side to the question," he
continued, with what seemed to Lady Markland a pitiless persistency. "A
tutor here would be too much in your way. You would not like to let
him live by himself altogether. His presence would be a constant
embarrassment. You could not have him with you, nor could you, for
Geoff's sake, keep him quite at a distance."
She held out her hands to stop this too clear exposition. "Don't!" she
cried. "Do you think I have not considered all that? You only make me
see the difficulties more and more clearly, and I see them so clearly
already. But what am I to do?"
"Dear Lady Markland," he said, rising from his chair, "I want to propose
something to you." The young man had grown so pale, yet by moments
flushed so suddenly, and had altogether such an air of agitation and
passionate earnestness, that a certain alarm flashed into her mind. The
word had an ominous sound. Could he be thinking--was it possible---- She
felt a hot flush of shame and a cold shiver of horror and fear at the
thought, which after all was not a thought, but only a sharp pang of
fright, which went through her like an arrow. He saw that she looked
nervously at him, but that was easily explained by what had gone before.
"It is this," he said. "It is quite simple; it will cost nobody anything,
and give a great deal of pleasure to me. I want you to let _me_ be
Geoff's tutor. Wait a moment before you answer. It will be no trouble.
I have absolutely nothing to do. My father left all his affairs in
complete order; all my farms are let, everything going on quite smoothly.
And you must remember our little bit of a place is very different from
all you have to think of. No, I don't want to thrust myself upon you. I
will ride over, or drive over, or walk over, every day. The distance is
nothing; it will do me all the good in the world. And, honours or no
honours, I have plenty of scholarship for Geoff. Ah, don't refuse me; it
will be such a pleasure. I have set my heart on being tutor to Geoff."
She had listened to him with a great many endeavours to break in. She
stopped him at last almost by force, putting out her hand and taking his
when he came to a little pause for breath. "Mr. Warrender," she said,
almost as breathless as he, tears in her eyes, her voice almost choked,
"how can I thank you for the thought! God bless you for the thought.
Oh, how good, how kind, how full of feeling! I hope if you are ever in
trouble you will have as good a friend as you have been to me."
"If you will be my friend, Lady Markland--"
"That I will," she cried, "all my life; but never be able to make up to
you for this." She had put out both her hands, which he held trembling,
but dared not stoop to kiss lest he should betray himself. After a
moment, half laughing, half sobbing, she bade him sit down again beside
her. "You are very, very good," she said; "but there are a few things to
be talked over. First, you are going back to Oxford in a week or two."
"I am not going up this term; that is settled already."
"Not going up! But I thought you must go up. You have not taken your
degree."
"Oh, that is not till next year," he said lightly, confident in her
ignorance of details. "There is no reason why I should hurry; and, in
fact, I had made up my mind some time since, so there is no difficulty
so far as that goes."
She looked at him with keen scrutiny; her mind in a moment flashing over
the whole course of their conversation like a light over a landscape, yet
seeing it imperfectly, as a landscape under a sudden flash can only be
seen with a perception of its chief features, but nothing more. The young
man had been tenderly kind to her all through. Since the moment when he
came into this very room to tell her of her husband's accident he had
never forsaken her. She had not thought that such chivalrous kindness
existed in the world, but she was yet young enough and inexperienced
enough to believe in it and in its complete disinterestedness; for what
return could she ever make for all he had done? And now, was this a
crowning service, an offer of brotherly kindness which was almost sublime,
or--what was it? She looked at him as if she could see into his soul.
"Oh," she said, "I know your generosity. I feel as if I could not trust
you when you say it doesn't matter. How could I ever forgive myself if
you were injuring your own prospects for Geoff!--if it was for Geoff."
For Geoff! Warrender laughed aloud, almost roughly, in a way which half
offended her. Could anybody suppose for a moment that for that ugly,
precocious little boy--? "You need not distress yourself on that account,
Lady Markland," he said. "It is not for Geoff,--I had made up my mind on
that question long ago,--but by way of occupying my idle time--And if
you think me good enough----"
"Oh, good enough!" she said. But she was too much alarmed and startled
to make any definite reply. Almost for the first time she became conscious
that Theo was neither a boy nor a visionary young hero of the Sir
Galahad kind, but a man like other men. The further discovery which
awaited her, that she herself was not a dignified recluse from life, a
queen mother ruling the affairs of her son's kingdom for him and not for
herself: but in other people's eyes, at least, a young woman, still open
to other thoughts, was still far from Lady Markland's mind.