In his anger he was as swift and light as a deer. Their backs were turned towards him, and they were too much absorbed in their talk to hear his approach. He was close to them, on Lady Markland’s other side, before they heard anything. The mother and son looked up simultaneously, and started as if they were but one being. At the sight of him she gave a faint cry—“Theo!”—and he unclasped her arm and slid from her in a moment: which, though it was what he wished, made the fire burn still higher in Warrender’s heart.
“So,” he said, with the harsh laugh of excited temper, “he has been telling you his story. I knew he would.”
“He has been telling me no story, Theo,” said Lady Markland. “Oh yes, he has been telling me that Mr. Cavendish—”
“Confound Mr. Cavendish! I am speaking of your boy, Lady Markland. He has been telling you about the cut on his forehead.”
She looked from the man to the child, growing pale. “He fell,” she said faltering. “But he says it does not hurt.”
“The little liar!” cried Theo, in his excitement. “Why didn’t you tell your mother the truth?”
“Warrender!” said little Geoff, in a tone which conveyed such a warning as Theo would not have taken from any man in the excited state of his mind. The child was red with sudden indignation, but still he held fast to his part.
“Geoff, run away home!” cried his mother, trembling. “Nurse will bathe it for you: and papa,”—she had ventured to call her young husband by this name since the birth of the babies—“will give me his arm.”
“I tell you he is a little liar,” said Theo again. “He did not fall. I threw him down. He thrust himself into the midst of my family affairs, a meddling little fool, and I caught hold of him and threw him out of the way. It is best that you should know the truth.”
They stood all three in the middle of the bare road, the afternoon sun throwing its level light into their eyes—looking at each other, confronting each other, standing apart.
“Theo,” said Lady Markland, “I am sure you did not mean to hurt him. It was—an accident, after all. And Geoff, I am sure, never meant to interfere. But, indeed, you must not use such words of my boy.”
“What words would you like me to use? He is the pest of my existence. I want you to understand this once for all. I cannot go on in this way, met at every turn by a rival, an antagonist. Yes, he is my rival in your heart, he is my opponent in everything. I cannot turn round at my own table, in my own house, without his little grinning face—” Here Theo stopped, with a still harsher laugh. The startled faces of the mother and son, the glance they gave at each other like a mutual consultation, the glow of indignation that overcame Lady Markland’s paleness, were all apparent to him in a flash of meaning. “Oh, I know what you will say!” he cried. “It is not my house; it is Geoff’s. A woman has no right to subject her husband to such a humiliation. Get your things together, Frances, and come with me to my own house. I am in a false position here. I will have it no longer. Let him have what is his right. I am resolved that he and I shall not sleep again under the same roof.”
“Theo, you cannot mean what you say. You can’t be so—If Geoff has done anything wrong, he will beg your pardon. Oh, what is it, what is it?” She did not ask her son for his version of the story with her lips, but she did with her eyes, which exasperated Theo more and more.
“It does not matter what it is,” he said. “It is not any temporary business, to be got over with an apology. It is just this, that you won’t face what is inevitable. And it is inevitable. You must choose between him and me.”
Geoff had been overwhelmed by this sudden storm. He was so young to play the hero’s part. He was not above crying when such a tempest burst upon him, and had hard ado to keep back his tears. But when he met his mother’s anguished imploring look, Geoff felt in his little forlorn heart a courage which was more than man. “Warrender,” he said, biting his lips to keep them from quivering—“Warrender, I say. As soon as the holidays are over, I—I’ll go to school. I’ll—be out of the way.”
“Oh, Geoff!” Lady Markland said, with a heartrending cry.
“It’s—it’s right enough, mamma; it’s—quite right. I’m too old. I’m too—Warrender, I’ll be going back to school in about six weeks.” Alas, the holidays were just begun. “Won’t that do?” said little Geoff, with horrible twitchings of his face, intended to keep back the tears.
His mother went up to him, and kissed him passionately, and put him away with her hand. “Go,” she said. “Geoff, go, and wait for me in your room. We must talk—alone; we must talk alone. Go. Go.”
Geoff would have given much to throw himself into her arms, to support and to be supported by her: but the child was moved beyond himself. He obeyed her without a word,
