Lady Markland came out of her room a little after, paler than usual,
with a great air of stateliness and gravity, conscious to her finger
points of the looks that met her, and putting on an aspect of severity
which was very unusual to her. Geoff seized and clung to her arm as he
was wont, and found it trembling. He had begun to pour forth his wonder
about Theo even before he made this discovery.
"Why, Theo has gone away! He wouldn't stop for lunch. I shouted to him,
but he never paid any attention. Is he ill, or is he in trouble, or
what's the---- Why, mamma! you are all trembling!"
"Nonsense, Geoff, I have been--sitting with the window open: and it is a
little cold to-day."
"Cold!" Geoff was so struck by the absurdity of the statement that he
stopped to look at her. "Ah," he said, "you have not been running up and
down to the stables or you never would think that."
"No, I have been sitting--writing."
"Oh!" said the child again, "were you writing all the time Theo was
there? I thought you were talking to Theo. He gave me a holiday because
he had something he wanted to say to you."
"I have told you a great many times, Geoff, that you should not call Mr.
Warrender Theo. It is much too familiar. You must not presume because he
is so very kind to you----"
"Oh, he doesn't mind," said Geoff lightly. "What was he saying to you,
mamma?"
By this time they were at table, that is, she was at the bar, seated
indeed as a concession to her weakness, about to be tried for her life
before those august judges, Geoff and old Soames, both of whom had their
attention fixed on her with an intentness which the whole bench could
scarcely equal. She held her head very high, but she did not dare to
lift up her eyes.
"Will you have this, or some of the chicken?" she asked, with a voice of
solemnity not quite adapted to the question.
"I say, mamma, was it about me? or was it some trouble he was in?"
"My dear Geoff, let us attend to our own business. The chicken is better
for you. And why have you been running up and down to the stables? I
thought I had said that I objected to the stables."
By dint of thus carrying the war into the enemy's country, she was able
to meet her boy's keen eyes, which were sharp with curiosity, "like
needles," as old Soames said. Soames, the other of her judges, gave
his verdict without hesitation. "She have given him the sack," he said
confidentially to the housekeeper, as soon as he could spare a moment.
"And a very good thing too." The housemaids had come to the same
conclusion, seeing Theo's hurried exit, and the rate at which he walked
down the avenue. The news ran through the house in a moment. "My lady
has given him the sack." The old servants were glad, because there would
thus be no change; and the young ones were sorry for the same reason,
and partly, too, because of their sympathy for the young lover
dismissed, whose distracted departure without his horse went to their
tender hearts.
Geoff had to enter into an explanation as to why he had sought the stables
as soon as he was dismissed from his books,--an explanation which involved
much; for it had already been pointed out to him on various occasions
that the coachman and Black were not improving society. Geoff had to
confess that it was dull when he had a holiday, that he didn't know
where to go, that Black and the coachman were more fun than--any one
else--with an expressive glance over his shoulder at old Soames, all
which pleas went like so many arrows to Lady Markland's heart. Had she
been so neglecting her boy that Black and the coachman had become his
valued allies? She who believed in her heart that up to this moment her
life had been devoted to Geoff.
The day passed to her like a day in a fever. Geoff liked it, on the
whole. There was no Theo to linger after lunch and interfere with his
possession of his mother. The long afternoon was all his, and Lady
Markland, though she was, he thought, dull, and sometimes did not hear
what he said, letting her attention stray, and her eyes go far away,
over his head, was yet very tender, more affectionate than ever, anxious
to inquire into all his wishes and to find out everything he wanted. He
talked to her more than he had done at a stretch for a long time, and
made it so apparent how completely he calculated upon her as always his
companion that Lady Markland's guilty soul was troubled within her. She
faltered once, "But, Geoff, you know you will have to go to school, they
all say, and then to Oxford, when you are a man." "Yes, and you can come
and live close by college," the boy said. "Many boys' mothers do, Mr.
Sargent told me." Her heart sank more and more as he opened up his plans
before her. It was all quite simple to Geoff. He did not dream of any
change in himself, and what change could ever come to her? Presently the
manner in which the child calculated upon her, ignoring every personal
claim of hers, awoke a little spark in Lady Markland's breast. A little
while ago she would herself have said (nay, this morning she would have
said it) that she had no life but in him, that for her there was no
future save Geoff's future. Even now it seemed guilt in her that she
should have calculations of her own.
And as for saying anything to him on the subject, how could she do it?
It was impossible. Had he been a young man, with some acquaintance with
life, she thought it would not have been so hard; or had he been a mere
child, to whom she could have said that Theo was to be his new papa. But
ten; a judge and a critic; a creature who knew so much and so little. Half
a dozen times she cleared her throat to begin, to lead the conversation
back to Theo, to make some attempt at disclosure: but another look at
his face chilled the words on her lips. She could not do it: how could
she ever do it? They went out and had a long drive together; they strolled
about the park afterwards before dinner, the boy hanging as was his
habit upon her arm, pressed close to her, talking--about everything
in heaven and earth: but never loosening that claim which was supreme,
that proprietorship in her which she had never contested till now,
never herself doubted. Geoff meant to be very good to his mother, her
protector, her support, as soon as he should be big enough. She was to
be his chief companion, always with him, his alone, all his, as she was
now. Any other reading of life was not possible to him. He felt sure
there was something about Theo which he had not been told, some story
which he would get mamma to tell him sooner or later, but never that
this story could interfere with himself and his mother; that was
impossible, beyond the range of the boy's wildest misgivings.
As for Lady Markland, she was more than silenced, she was overawed by
this certainty. She let him run on, her own thoughts drifting away,
pulled up now and then by an importunate, repeated question, then
wandering again, but not far, only to this impossibility of making Geoff
understand. How should she convey to him the first germ of the fact that
mother and son are not one; that they separate and part in the course of
nature; that a woman in the flower of her life does not necessarily
centre every wish in the progress of a little boy? How to tell him this,
how to find a language which could express it, in which such a horrible
fact could be told! To herself it was terrible, a thing foreign to all
her tenets, to all her principles. Even now that she had done it and
bound herself for ever, and raised this wall between herself and her
child, between herself and her past life, it was terrible to her. If she
had ever been certain of anything in her life, it had been that such a
step was impossible. Marriage, for her who was already married; a new
life to come in place of the old; a state of affairs in which Geoff
should no longer be first, in which, in fact, it would be better, an
ease to her, that Geoff should be away! Oh, horrible thought! an ease to
her to be without Geoff! She had lived for him, she had said and felt
that he was everything to her, the sole object of her love and her life.
And now he was an embarrassment, and it would be well for her if he
could be got away.
In this confusion of mind mingled with impulses to flight, with impulses
of going and throwing herself on Theo's mercy, begging him to give her
up, for she could not do it, the day passed. Geoff clung to her and
talked, talked incessantly all the day through, giving her his opinions
about Theo as well as about everything else; and she listened hearing
some things--that most distinctly as it may be believed--but not all,
nor near all; weary, was it possible? of her own child; of the ceaseless
voice in her ears. She was conscious of urging him to go to bed, as
she would not have thought of doing in other circumstances; urging him
against his will, telling him that he was getting later and later,
that it made him pale and nervous, that he must go--all because she was
anxious to escape, because she had promised to meet---- Could a woman
sink into lower humiliation, a woman, a mother, not a foolish girl? At
last she could escape breathlessly, tying a black veil over her head;
stealing out, saying a nervous word to Soames about the beautiful
moonlight. Even Soames had to see her humiliation. She had to linger,
as if she were looking at the moonlight, while Soames stood upon the
steps--and with shame and confusion to cross the space before the door,
which was all one flood of light marked only by her little shadow, small
and clinging to her feet. She could have wished that there should never
be moonlight more, so shamed and mortified and humiliated did she feel.
The darkness would have been better; the darkness would have hidden her
at least. In this condition of shame and pain she went along, gliding
into what shadow the young trees could throw, brushing against the
bushes underneath. And then suddenly, all in a moment, there was calm;
ah, more than calm, a refuge from all trouble, a sudden escape from
herself and all things that were oppressing her; without any word said,
a sudden meeting in the shade of the trees, and two where there had
been but one,--a young lover, and a woman who, Heaven help her, was
young too, and could still drop her burden off her shoulders and for a
moment forget everything, except the arm that supported her, and the
whisper close to her ear, and the melting of all her bonds, the melting
of her very being into his, the heavenly ease and forgetfulness, the
_Vita Nuova_ never known before.
It seemed not herself all laden with shame, but another woman, who
raised her head, and said to him, shaking as it were her bondage from
her: "This is not becoming for you and me. Let us go in. Whatever we
have to encounter together, we must not do it in secret. I must not
linger about here, Theo, like one of my maids."
"Yet stay a moment," he said. Perhaps the maids have the best of it. The
sweet air of the night, the magical light so near them, the contact and
close vicinity, almost unseen of each other, added an ethereal atmosphere
to the everlasting, always continued tale.
'Twas partly love and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel than see
The swelling of her heart.
After a time, they emerged into the moonlight, slowly moving towards
the house, she leaning upon his arm, he stooping over her, a suggestive
posture. Soames upon the doorsteps could not believe his eyes. He would
have shut up before now, if he had not seen my lady go out. To admire
the moonlight! it did not seem to Soames a very sensible occupation; but
when he saw her coming back, not alone, wonder and horror crept over
him. He watched them with his mouth open, as well as his eyes, and when
he went downstairs and told Black, who had made the horses comfortable
for the night, to go and bring out Mr. Warrender's horse, a shock ran
through the entire house. After all! but then it was possible that he
had always intended to come back and ride his horse home.
Black walked about (very unwillingly and altogether indifferent to
the beauty of the moonlight) for nearly an hour before Warrender came
out. The young man's aspect then was very unlike that of the morning.
Happiness beamed from him as he walked, and Lady Markland came out to
the door to see him start, and called good-night as he rode away.
"Good-night, till to-morrow," he said, turning back as long as he could
see her, which was a tempting of providence on the part of a man who was
not a great rider, and with a big horse like the black, and so fresh,
and irritated to be taken out of the stable at that hour of the night.
The servants exchanged looks as my lady walked back with eyes that shone
as they had never shone before, and something of that glory about her,
that dazzling and mist of self-absorption which belongs to no other
condition of the mind. She went back into the room and shut the door,
and sat down where she had been sitting, and delivered herself over to
those visions which are more enthralling than the reality; those mingled
recollections and anticipations which are the elixir of love. She had
forgotten all about herself; herself as she was before that last meeting.
Her age, her gravity, the falseness of the position, the terrible Geoff,
all floated away from her thoughts. They were filled only with what _he_
had been saying and doing, as if she had been that "fresh girl" of whom
she had spoken to him. She forgot that she was not that girl. She forgot
that she was four years (magnified this morning into a hundred) and a
whole life in advance of Theo. She thought only--nay, poor lady, assailed
after her time by this love-fever, taking it late and not lightly! she
thought not at all, but surrendered herself to that overwhelming wave of
emotion which, more than almost anything else, has the power of filling
up all the vacant places of life. Her troublous thoughts, her shame,
her sense of all the difficulties in her way, went from her in that new
existence. They were all there unchanged, but for the moment she thought
of them no more.
It was some time after this, when she went upstairs with her candle
through the stilled and darkened house, the light in her hand showing
still that confused sweet shining in her eyes, the smile that lurked
about the corners of her mouth. A faint sound made her look up as she
went towards the gallery upon which all the bedrooms opened. Standing by
the banister, looking down into the dark hall, was Geoff, a little white
figure, his colourless hair ruffled by much tossing on his bed, his eyes
dazzled by the light. "Geoff!" She stood still and her heart seemed to
stop beating. To see him there was as if a curtain had suddenly fallen,
shutting out all the sweet prospects before her, showing nothing but
darkness and danger instead.
"Geoff! Is it you out of bed at this hour?"
"Yes, it is me," he said, in a querulous tone; "there is no one else so
little in the house; of course it is me."
"You are shivering with cold; have you----" Her breath seemed to go from
her as she came up to him and put her arm round him. "Have you been here
long, Geoff?"
"I couldn't sleep," said the child, "and I heard a noise. I saw Theo. Has
Theo been back here with you? What did Theo want here so late at night?"
He did not look at her, but stared into the candle with eyes opened to
twice their size.
"Come into my room," she said. "You are so cold; you are shivering. Oh,
Geoff! if you make yourself ill, what shall I do?"
He let her lead him into her room, wrap him in a fur cloak, and kneel
down beside him to chafe his feet with her hands; this helped her in the
dreadful crisis which had come so suddenly, which she had feared beyond
anything else in the world. "You must have been about a long time or you
could not have got so cold, Geoff."
"Yes, I have been about a long time. I thought you would come up directly,
after Theo went away." He looked at her very gravely as she knelt
with her face on a level with his. He had filled the place of a judge
before, without knowing it; but now Geoff was consciously a judge, and
interrogating--one who was too much like a criminal, who avoided the
looks of that representative of offended law. "Theo stayed a long time,"
he said, "and then he rode away. I suppose he came to get his horse."
How he looked at her! Her eyes were upon his feet, stretched out on the
sofa, which she was rubbing; but his eyes burned into her, through her
downcast eyelids, making punctures in her very brain.
"He did come for his horse." She could hardly hear the words she was
saying, for the tumult of her heart in her ears; "but that was not all,
Geoff."
For a long minute no more was said; it seemed like an hour. The mother
went on rubbing the child's feet mechanically, then bent down upon them
and kissed them. No Magdalen was ever more bowed with shame and trouble.
Her voice was choked; she could not speak a word in her own defence. It
had been happiness, but oh, what a price to pay!
At last Geoff said, with great gravity, "Theo was always very fond of
you."
"I think so, Geoff," she answered, faltering.
"And now you are fond of him."
She could say nothing. She put her head down upon the little white feet
and kissed them, with what humility, with what compunction! her eyes dry
and her cheeks blazing with shame.
"It's not anything wrong, mamma?"
"No, Geoff, oh no, my darling! they say not: if only you don't mind."
The brave little eyes blinked and twinkled to get rid of unwelcome
tears. He put his hand upon her head and stroked it, as if it had been
she that was the child. "I do mind," he said. She thought, as she felt
the little hand upon her head, that the boy was about to call upon
her for a supreme sacrifice; but for a moment there was nothing more.
Afterwards he repulsed her a little, very slightly, but yet it was a
repulse. "I suppose," he said, "it cannot be helped, mamma? My feet are
quite warm now, and I'll go to bed."
"Geoff, is that all you have got to say to me? It can make no difference,
my darling, no difference. Oh, Geoff, my own boy, you will always be my
first----"
Would he, could he be her first thought? She paused, conscience-stricken,
raising for the first time her eyes to his. But a child does not catch
such an unconscious admission. He took no notice of it. His chief object,
for the moment, was not to cry, which he felt would be beneath his
dignity. His little heart was all forlorn. He had no clear idea of what
it was, or of what was going to happen, but only a vague certainty that
mamma and Theo were to stand more and more together, and that he was
"out of it." He could not talk of grown-up things like them; he would
be sent to play as he had been this morning. He who had been companion,
counsellor, everything to her, he would be sent to play. The dreary
future seemed all summed up in that. He slid out of her arms with his
little bare feet on the carpet, flinging the fur cloak from him. "I was
a little cold because the door was open, but I'm quite warm now, and I'm
sleepy too. And it's long, long past bedtime, don't you think, mamma? I
wonder if I was ever as late before?"
He looked at her when he asked that question, and suddenly before them
both, a little vague and confused to the child, to her clear as if
yesterday, came the picture of that night when Geoff and she had watched
together, he at her feet, curled into her dress, while his father lay
dying. Oh, _he_ had no right to reproach her, no right! and yet the
pale, awful face on the pillow, living, yet already wrapt in the majesty
of death, rose up before her. She gave a great cry and clasped Geoff in
her arms. She was still kneeling, and his slight little white figure
swayed and trembled with the sudden weight. To have that face like a
spectre rise up before her, and Geoff's countenance averted, his little
eyes twitching to keep in the tears, was there anything in the world
worth that? Magdalen! ah, worse than Magdalen! for she poured out her
tears for what was past, whereas all this shame was the price at which
she was going to buy happiness to come.
And yet it was nothing wrong.