Lady Markland gave her a sudden, alarmed, inquiring look; but Theo came forward at that moment with her cloak, and nothing could be said more.
He came back into the dining-room, expectant, defiant, fire in all his veins, and in his heart a sea of agitated bliss that had to get an outlet somewhere; not in a litany to her, for which there was no place, but at least in defence of her and of himself. It was Minnie, as usual, who stood ready to throw down the glove; Chatty being no more than a deeply interested spectator, and the mother drawing aside with that sense of impossibility which balks remonstrance, from the fray. Besides, Mrs. Warrender did not know, in the responsive excitement in herself which Theo’s passion called forth, whether she wished to remonstrate or to put any hindrance in his way.
“Well, upon my word!” said Minnie, “Mrs. Wilberforce may well say the world is coming to a pretty pass. Only six months a widow, and not a bit of crape upon her! I knew she wore no cap. Cap! why, she hasn’t even a bonnet, nor a veil, nor anything! A little bit of a hat, with a black ribbon—too light for me to wear; even Chatty would be ashamed to be seen—”
“Oh no, Minnie; in the garden, you know, we have never worn anything deeper.”
“Do you call this the garden?” cried Minnie, her voice so deep with alarm and presentiment that it sounded bass, in the silence of the night. “Six miles off, and an open carriage, and coming among people who are themselves in mourning! It ought to have given her a lesson to see my mother in her cap.”
“If you have nothing better to do than to find fault with Lady Markland—” said Theo, pale with passion.
“Oh,” cried Minnie, “don’t suppose I am going to speak about Lady Markland to you. How can you be so infatuated, Theo? You a tutor—you, that have always been made such a fuss with, as if there was not such another in the world! What was it all he was to be? A first class, and a Fellow, and I don’t know what. But tutor to a small boy, tutor to a little lord—a sort of a valet, or a sort of a nurse—”
“Minnie! your brother is at an age when he must choose for himself.”
“How much are you to have for it?” she cried—“how much a year? Or are you to be paid with presents, or only with the credit of the connection? Oh, I am glad poor papa is dead, not to hear of it. He would have known what to think of it all. He would have given you his opinion of a woman—of a woman—”
“Lady Markland is a very nice woman,” said Chatty. “Oh, Theo, don’t look as if you were going to strike her! She doesn’t know what she is saying. She has lost her temper. It is just Minnie’s way.”
“Of a woman who wears no crape for her husband,” cried Minnie, with an effort, in her bass voice.
Theo, who had looked, indeed, as if he might have knocked his sister down, here burst into an angry peal of laughter, which rang through the house; and his mother, seizing the opportunity, took him by the arm and drew him away. “Don’t take any notice,” she said. “You must not forget she is your sister, whatever she says. And, my dear boy, though Minnie exaggerates, she has reason on her side, from her point of view. No, I don’t think as she does, altogether; but, Theo, can’t you understand that it is a disappointment to us? We always made so sure you were going to do some great thing.”
“And to be of a little real use once in a way, is such a small thing!”
“Oh, Theo, you must be reasonable, and think a little. It does not want a scholar like you to teach little Geoff.”
“A scholar—like me. How do you know I am a scholar at all?”
Mrs. Warrender knew that no answer to this was necessary, and did not attempt it. She went on: “And you are not in a position to want such employment. Don’t you see that everybody will begin to inquire what your inducement was? A young man who has nothing, it is all quite natural; but you—Theo, have you ever asked yourself how you are to be repaid?”
“You are as bad as Minnie, mother,” he said, with scorn; “you think I want to be repaid.”
She clasped her hands upon his arm, looking up at him with a sort of pitying pride. “She must think of it, Theo—everybody must think of it; ah yes, and even yourself, at the last. Every mortal, everybody that is human—oh, Theo, the most generous!—looks for something, something in return.”
The young man tried to speak, but his voice died away after he had said “Mother!” To this he had no reply.
But though he could not answer the objection, he could put it aside; and as a matter of course he had his way. At the beginning of a thing, however clearly it may be apparent that embarrassment is involved, few people are clear-sighted enough to perceive how great the embarrassment may come to be. Lady Markland was not wiser than her kind. She spoke of Theo’s kindness in a rapture of gratitude, and ended always by saying that, after all, that was nothing in comparison with the fact that he had begun by saving the boy’s life. “I owe my child to him,” she said—“I owe him Geoff’s life; and now it almost seems natural, when he has done so much, that he should do anything that his kind heart prompts.” She would say this with tears in her eyes, with such an enthusiasm of gratitude that everybody was touched who heard her. But then, everybody did not hear Lady Markland’s account of the matter;
