A Country Gentleman and His Family

as the maids and old Soames; he did not know what he was afraid of. He had never formulated to himself any exact danger; and naturally he knew nothing of the seductions of that way upon which Warrender had been drawn without intending it; without meaning any breach of Geoff’s peace or of his own. Geoff did not know at all what he feared. He felt that there was something going on which was against him; and he had a kind of consciousness, like all the rest, that it was coming to a climax today. But he did not know what it was, nor what danger was impending over him. Perhaps Theo intended to stay longer; to come to Markland altogether; to interfere with the boy’s evenings as he had done with his mornings. Or perhaps⁠—but when he for a moment asked himself what he feared, his thoughts all fled away into vague alarms, infinitesimal in comparison with the reality, which was far too big, too terrible, for his mind to grasp. Mamma was afraid of it too, he had thought, this morning. She had looked, as the sky looks sometimes when the clouds are flying over it, and the wind is high and a storm is getting up: sometimes her face would be all overcast, and then her eyes had the look of a shower falling (though she did not shed any tears), and then there would be a clearing. She was afraid too. It was something that Theo was going to propose: some change that he wanted to carry out: and mamma was afraid of it too. This was in one way comforting, but in another more alarming: for it must be very serious indeed, if she, too, was afraid.

He roused himself from these uncomfortable thoughts, and began to pull his books about, and put his exercise upon the desk which Theo used, when he heard the sound of Theo’s arrival; the heavy hoofs of the big black horse; the voice of Soames in the hall; the quick steady step coming in. The time had been when Geoff had thrown all his books on the table, and rushed out to witness the arrival, with an eager “Oh, Theo, you’re five minutes late!” or “Oh, Theo, I haven’t done yet!” For some time, however, he had left off doing this. Things were too serious for such vanities; he lifted his head and held his breath, listening to the approaching footstep. A kind of alarm lest it should not be coming here at all, but straight to Lady Markland’s room, made him pale for the moment. That would be too bad, to come here professedly for Geoff and to go instead to mamma! it would be just like Theo; but fortunately things were not quite so bad as that. The steps came straight to Geoff’s door. Warrender entered looking⁠—the boy could not tell how⁠—flushed, weary-eyed: something as he had seen his father look in the morning after a late night. Excitement simulates many recollections, and this was the first thought that leaped to Geoff’s little mind, with its little bit of painful experience. “I say, Theo!” the boy cried; and then stared and said no more.

“Well! what is it you say? I hope you are prepared today, not like last time.”

“Last time! but I was very well prepared! It is you who forget. I knew all my lessons.”

“You had better teach me, then, Geoff, for I don’t know all: no, nor half what I want to know. Oh, is this your exercise?” Warrender said, sitting down. He looked it over and corrected it with his pencil, hanging over it, seeming to forget the boy’s presence. When that was done he opened the book carelessly, anywhere, not at the place, as Geoff, who watched with keen eyes everything the young man was doing, perceived instantly. “Where did you leave off last time? Go on,” he said. Geoff began; but he was far too intent on watching Theo to know what he was doing; and as he construed with his eyes only, and not all of them, for he had to keep his companion’s movements in sight all the time, it is needless to say that Geoff made sad work of his Caesar. And his little faculties were more and more sharpened with alarm, and more and more blunted in Latin, when he found that, stumble as he liked, Theo did not correct him nor say a word. He sat with his head propped on his hands, and when Geoff paused said, “Go on.” Either this meant something very awful in the shape of faultfinding when the culprit had come to the end of the lesson, the exemption now meaning dire retribution then, or else⁠—there was something very wrong with Theo. Geoff’s little sharp eyes seemed to leap out of their sockets with excitement and suspense.

At last Warrender suddenly, in the midst of a dreadfully boggled sentence, after Geoff had beaten himself on every side of these walls of words in bewildering endeavours to find a nominative, suddenly sprang up to his feet. “Look here,” he said, “I think I’ll give you a holiday today.”

Geoff, much startled, closed his book upon his hand. “I had a holiday yesterday.”

“Oh yes, to be sure! what has that to do with it? You can put away your books for today. As for being prepared, my boy, if my head had not been so bad⁠—”

“Is your head bad, Theo?” Geoff put on a hypocritical look of solicitude to divert attention from his own delinquencies.

“I think it will split in two,” said Warrender, pressing his hands upon his temples, in which indeed the blood was so swelling in every vein that they seemed ready to burst. He added a minute after, “You can run out and get a little air; and⁠—” here he paused, and the boy stopped and looked up, knowing and fearing what was coming. “And,” repeated Warrender, a crimson flush coming to his