Geoff's heart was full. He pondered all the way home, neglecting all
the blandishments of Black's conversation, who had visited a friend or
two in Highcombe, and was full of cheerfulness and very loquacious.
Geoff let him talk, but paid no attention. He himself had gone to Mrs.
Warrender, whom he liked, with the hope of disburdening from his little
bosom some of the perilous stuff which weighed upon his soul. He had
wanted to _sfogarsi_, as the Italians say, to relieve a heart too full
to go on any longer: but Geoff found, as so many others have found
before him, that the relief thus obtained but made continued silence
more intolerable. He could not shut up the doors again which had thus
been forced open. The sensation which overwhelmed him was one which most
people at one time or another have felt,--that the circumstances amid
which he was placed had become insupportable, that life could no longer
go on, under such conditions,--a situation terrible to the maturest man
or woman, but what word can describe it in the heart of a child? In his
mother was summed up all love and reliance, all faith and admiration for
Geoff. She had been as the sun to him. She had been as God, the only
known and visible representative of all love and authority, the one
unchangeable, ever right, ever true. And now she had changed, and all
life was out of gear. His heart was sick, not because he was wronged,
but because everything had gone wrong. He did not doubt his mother's
love, he was not clear enough in his thoughts to doubt anything, or to
put the case into any arrangement of words. He felt only that he could
not bear it, that anything would be better than the present condition of
affairs. Geoff's heart filled and his eyes, and there came a constriction
of his throat when he realised the little picture of himself wandering
about with nobody to care for him, no lessons; for the first time in his
life forbidden to dart into his mother's room at any moment, with a rush
against the door, in full certainty that there could never be a time
when she did not want him. Self-pity is very strong and very simple in a
child, and to see, as it were, a little picture in his mind of a little
boy, shut out from his mother, and wanted by no one, was more poignant
still than the reality. The world was out of joint: and Geoff felt with
Hamlet that there was nobody but he to set it right. The water came
into his eyes, as he rode along, but except what he could get rid of by
winking violently, he left it to the breeze to dry, no hand brushing it
off, not even a little knuckle piteously unabsorbent, would he employ
to show to Black that he was crying. Crying! no, he would not cry, what
could that do for him? But something would have to be done, or said;
once the little floodgates had been burst open they could not close any
more.
Geoff pondered long, though with much confusion in his thoughts. He
was very magnanimous: not even in his inmost soul did he blame his
mother, being still young enough to believe that unhappy events come of
themselves and not by anybody's fault. To think that she liked Theo
better than himself made his heart swell, but rather with a dreadful
sense of fatality than with blame. And then he was a little backward
boy, not knowing things like Theo, whom, by the way, he no longer called
Theo, having shrunk involuntarily, unawares, out of that familiarity as
soon as matters had grown serious. As he thought it all over, Geoff's
very heart was rent. His mother had cried when she took him into her
arms, he remembered that she had kissed his cold feet, that she had
looked as if she were begging his pardon, kneeling by his side on that
terrible night when he had come dimly to an understanding of what it
all meant. Geoff, like Hamlet, in his little way felt that nothing that
could be done could ever undo that night. It was there, a fact which no
after resolution could change. No vengeance could have put back the world
to what it was before Hamlet's mother had married her brother-in-law, and
the soft Ophelia turned into an innocent traitor, and all grown false:
neither could anything undo to little Geoff the dreadful revolution of
heaven and earth through which his little life had gone. All the world
was out of joint, and what could he do to mend it, a little boy of ten--a
backward little boy, not knowing half so much as many at his age? His
little bosom swelled, his eyes grew wet, and that strange sensation came
in his throat. But he kept on riding a little in front of Black so that
nothing could be seen.
Lady Markland was in the avenue as he rode up to the gate. Geoff knew
very well that she had walked as far as the gate with Warrender, whom he
had seen taking the road to the right, the short way across the fields.
But when he saw his mother he got down from his pony, and walked home
with her. "Where have you been?" she cried. "I was getting very anxious;
you must not go those long rides by yourself."
"I had Black," said Geoff, "and you said I should have to be independent,
to be able to take care of myself."
"Did I say so, dear? Perhaps it is true: but still you know how nervous
I am, how anxious I grow."
Geoff looked his mother in the face like an accusing angel, not severely,
but with all the angelic regret and tenderness of one who cannot be
deceived, yet would fain blot out the fault with a tear. "Poor mamma!"
he said, clasping her arm in his old childish way.
"Why do you call me poor mamma? Geoff, some one has been saying something
to you, your face is not like the face of my own boy."
She was seized with sudden alarm, with a wild desire to justify herself,
and the sudden wrath with which a conscious culprit takes advantage of
the suggestion that ill tongues alone or evil representations have come
between her and those whom she has wronged. The child on his side took
no notice of this. He had gone so much further; beyond the sphere in
which there are accusations or defences--indeed he was too young for
anything of the kind. "Mamma," he said clasping her arm, "I think I
should like to go to school. Don't you think it would be better for me
to go to school?"
"To school!" she cried, "do you want to leave me, Geoff?" in a tone of
sudden dismay.
"They say a boy ought to go to school, and they say it's very jolly at
Eton, and I'm very backward, don't you know--Warrender says so."
"Geoff! he has never said it to me."
"But if it is true, mamma! There is no difference between me and a girl
staying at home: and there I should have other fellows to play with. You
had better send me. I should like it."
She gave him an anxious look, which Geoff did not lift his eyes to meet,
then with a sigh, "If you think you would like it, Geoff. To be sure
it is what would have to be sooner or later." Here she made a hurried
breathless pause, as if her thoughts went quicker than she could follow.
"But now it is July, and you could not go before Michaelmas," she said.
Was she sorry he could not go at once, though she had exclaimed at the
first suggestion that he wanted to leave her? Geoff was too young to ask
himself this question, but there was a vague sensation in his mind of
something like it, and of a mingled satisfaction and disappointment in
his mother's tone.
"Warrender says there are fellows who prepare you for Eton," the boy
said, holding his breath hard that he might not betray himself. "He is
sure to know somebody. Send me now."
"You are very anxious to leave me," she cried in a tone of piteous
excitement and misery. "Why, why should you wish it so much?" Then she
paused and cried suddenly, "Is it Mr. Warrender who has put this in your
mind?"
"I don't know nothing about Warrender," said Geoff, blinking his eyes to
keep the tears away. "I never spoke to Warrender. He said that when he
was not thinking about me."
And then she clasped her arms about him suddenly in a transport of pain
and trouble and relief. "Oh, Geoff, Geoff," she cried, "why, why do you
want to leave me?" The boy could not but sob, pressed closely against
her, feeling her heart swell as his own was doing, but neither did he
make any attempt to answer, nor did she look for any reply.