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, someone 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
