CHAPTER XXII.
THE HENS AND THE DUCKLING.
IT was still early, and Stanton, so easy-going and leisurely a house, was not yet astir when Geoff got home. Hours of sunshine and morning light are over even in August before seven o’clock, which was the earliest hour at which Lady Stanton’s servants, who were all “so kind” to her, began to stir. They kept earlier hours at Penninghame, where Geoff managed to get a dog-cart, with an inquisitive driver, who recognised, and would fain have discovered what brought him from home at that hour. The young man, however, first took leave of his little companion, whom he deposited safely at the door of the old hall, which was already open, and where they parted with mutual vows of reliance and faith in each other. These vows, however, were not exchanged by the hall-gate, but in a shady corner of the Chase, where the two young creatures paused for a moment.
“You will trust me that I will do everything for him, as if he had been my own father?” said Geoff.
Lilias, over whom some doubts had begun to steal, faltered a little, and replied with some hesitation:
“I would rather it was me; I would rather find out everything, and bring him home,” she said.
“But, Lily, what could you do? while you see I know a great deal already,” Geoff said. Now that he was about to vanish out of her sight the bargain began to feel less satisfactory to the little woman, who was thus condemned, as so many grown women have been, to wait indefinitely for the action of another, in a matter so deeply interesting to herself. Lilias looked at him wistfully, with an anxious curve over her eyebrows, and a quiver in her mouth. The tension of suspense had begun for her, which is one of the hardest burdens of a woman. Oh, if she could but have gone herself, not waiting for any one, to the old woman on the hill! It was true the mountains were very lonely, and the relief of meeting Geoff had been intense; and though she had not gone half way, or nearly so much, her limbs were aching with the unusual distance; but yet to be tired, and lonely, and frightened is nothing, as Lilias felt, to this waiting, which might never come to an end. And already the ease and comfort and sudden relief with which she had leant upon Geoff’s understanding and sympathy, had evaporated a little, leaving behind only the strange story about her father, the sudden discovery of trouble and sorrow which had startled her almost into womanhood out of childhood. She looked up into Geoff’s face very wistfully—very anxiously; her eyes dilated, and gleaming with that curve over them which once indented in young brows so seldom altogether disappears again.
“Oh, Mr. Geoff!” she said, “but papa—is not your papa: and you will perhaps have other things to do: or—perhaps—you will forget. But me, I shall be always thinking, I shall never forget,” said the little girl.
“And neither shall I forget, my little Lily!” he cried. He too was nervous and tremulous with excitement and fatigue. He stooped towards her, holding her hands. “Give me a kiss, Lily, and I will never forget.”
The day before she would not have thought much of that infantile salutation—and she put up her soft cheek readily enough, with the child’s simple habit; but when the two faces touched, a flood of colour came over both, scorching Lilias, as it seemed, with a sense of shame which bewildered her, which she did not understand. She drew back hastily, with a sudden cry. Sympathy, or some other feeling still more subtle and incomprehensible, made Geoff’s young countenance flame too. He looked at her with a tenderness that brought the tears to his eyes.
“You are only a child,” he said, hastily, apologetically; “and I suppose I am not much more, as people say,” he added, with a little broken laugh. Then, after a pause—“But, Lily, we will never forget that we have met this morning; and what one of us does will be for both of us; and you will always think of me as I shall always think of you. Is it a bargain, Lily?”
“Always!” said the little girl, very solemnly; and she gave him her hand again which she had drawn away, and her other cheek; and this time the kiss got accomplished solemnly, as if it had been a religious ceremony on both sides—which indeed, perhaps, in one way or another it was.
When Geoff felt himself carried rapidly, after this, behind a fresh country horse, with the inquisitive ruddy countenance of Robert Gill from the “Penninghame Arms” by his side, along the margin of Penninghame Water towards his home, there was a thrill and tremor in him which he could not quite account for. By the time he had got half way home, however, he had begun to believe that the tremor meant nothing more than a nervous uncertainty as to how he should get into Stanton, and in what state of abject terror he might find his mother. Even to his own unsophisticated mind, the idea of being out all night had an alarming and disreputable sound; and probably Lady Stanton had been devoured by all manner of terrors. The perfectly calm aspect of the house, however, comforted Geoff; no one seemed stirring, except in the lower regions, where the humblest of its inhabitants—the servants’ servants—were preparing for their superiors.
Geoff dismissed his dog-cart outside the gates, leaving upon the mind of Robert Gill a very strong certainty that the young lord was “a wild one, like them that went before him,” and had been upon “no good gait.” “Folks don’t stay out all night, and creep into th’ house through a side door as quiet as pussy, for good,” said the rural sage, with perfect reasonableness.
As for Geoff, he stole up through the shrubberies to reconnoitre the house and see where he could most easily make an entrance, with a half-comic sense of vagabondism; a man who behaved so ought to be guilty. But he was greatly surprised to see the library window through which he had come out on the previous night wide open; and yet more surprised to hear, at the sound of his own cautious footstep on the gravel, a still more cautious movement within, and to descry the kindly countenance of Mr. Tritton, his tutor, with a red nose and red eyes as from want of sleep, looking out with great precaution.
Mr. Tritton’s anxious countenance lighted up at the sight of him. He came to the window very softly, but with great eagerness, to admit Geoff, and threw himself upon his pupil. “Where have you been—where have you been? But thank God you have come back,” he cried, in a voice which was broken by agitation.
Geoff could not but laugh, serious as he had been before. Good Mr. Tritton had a dressing-gown thrown over his evening toilet of the previous night; his white tie was all rumpled and disreputable. He had caught a cold, poor good man, with the open window, and sneezed even as he received his prodigal; his nose was red, and so were his eyes, which watered, half with cold, half with emotion.
“Oh, my dear Geoff,” he cried, with a shiver: “what is the cause of this? I have spent a most unhappy night. What can be the cause of it! But thank God you have come back; and if I can keep it from the knowledge of her ladyship, I will.” Then, though he was so tired and so serious, Geoff could not but laugh.
“Have you been sitting up for me? How good of you! and what a cold you have got!” he said, struggling between mirth and gratitude. “Have you kept it from my mother? But I have been doing no harm, master. You need not look at me so anxiously. I have been walking almost all the night, and doing no harm.”
“My dear Geoff? I have been very uneasy, of course. You never did anything of the kind before. Walking all night? you must be dead tired; but that is secondary, quite secondary: if you can really assure me, on your honour—— ” said the anxious tutor, looking at him, with his little white whiskers framing his little red face, more like a good little old woman than ever, and with a look of the most anxious scrutiny in his watery eyes. Mr. Tritton was very virtuous and very particular in his own bachelorly person, and there had crept upon him besides something of the feminine fervour of anxiety about his charge, which was in the air of this feminine and motherly house.
“On my honour!” said Geoff, meeting his gaze with laughing eyes.
And a pang of relief filled Mr. Tritton’s mind. He was almost overcome by it, and could have cried but for his dignity—and, indeed, did cry for his cold. He said, faltering, “Thank Heaven, Geoff! I have been very anxious, my dear boy. Your mother does not know anything about it. I found the window open, and then I found your room vacant. I thought you might have—stepped out—perhaps gone to smoke a cigar. A cigar in the fresh air after dinner is perhaps the least objectionable form of the indulgence, as you have often heard me say. So I waited, especially as I had something to say to you. Then as I found you did not come in, I became anxious—yes, very anxious as the night went on. You never did anything of the kind before; and when the morning came and awoke me—for I suppose I must have dozed, though I was too miserable to sleep, in a draught—— ”
“Yes, I see, you have caught cold. Go to bed now, master, and so shall I,” said Geoff. “I am dead tired. What a sneeze! and all on my account; and you have such bad colds.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Tritton, blowing his nose vehemently, “I have very bad colds. They last so long. I have sneezed so I really did fear the house would be roused, but servants fortunately sleep through anything. Geoff! I don’t want to force confidence, but it really would be right that you should confide in me: otherwise how can I be sure that her ladyship—ought not,” said the good man with a fresh sneeze, “to know—?”
“You ought to be in bed, and so ought I,” said Geoff. “I will tell my mother, don’t fear; but perhaps it will be as well not to say anything more just at present. Master, you must really go this moment and take care of yourself. Come, and I will see you to your room—— ”
“Ah! it is my part to look after you, Geoff,” said good Mr. Tritton. “It might be supposed—her ladyship might think—that I had neglected—— ”
“Come along,” said Geoff, arbitrarily, “to bed.” And how glad he was to stretch out his own young limbs and forget everything in the profound sleep of his age! Mr. Tritton had very much the worst of it. He did nothing but sneeze for the next two hours, waking himself up every time he went to sleep; and his head ached, and his eyes watered, and the good man felt thoroughly wretched.
“Oh, there is that poor Mr. Tritton with one of his bad colds again,” Lady Stanton said, who was disturbed by the sound; and, though she was a good woman, the pity in her face was not unmixed by other sentiments. “We shall have nothing but sneezing for the next month,” she said to herself in an undertone. And doubtless still less favourable judgments were pronounced down-stairs. A glass was found on the table of the library in which Mr. Tritton, good man, had taken some camphor by way of staving off his cold while he sat and watched. Harris the butler, perversely and unkindly (for who could mistake the smell of camphor?) declared that “old Tritton had been making a night of it. He don’t surprise me with his bad colds,” said that functionary; “look at the colour of his nose!” And indeed it could not be denied that this was red, as the nose of a man subject to fits of sneezing is apt to be.
When Geoff woke in the broad sunshine, and found that it was nearly noon, his first feeling of consternation was soon lost in the strange realization of all that had happened since his last waking, which suddenly came upon his mind like something new, and more real than before. The perspective even of a few hours’ sleep makes any new fact or discovery more distinct. So many emotions had followed each other through his mind, that such an interval was necessary to make him feel the real importance of all that he had heard and seen. ’Lizabeth Bampfylde had said what there was to say in few words, but the facts alone were sufficient to make the strange story clear. The chief difficulty was that Geoff had never heard of the elder son, whom the vagrant called his gentleman brother, and to whom the family and more than the family seemed to have been sacrificed. He did not remember any mention of the Bampfyldes except of the mother and daughter who had helped John Musgrave to escape, and one of whom had disappeared with him, and the mystery which surrounded this other individual, who seemed really the chief actor in the tragedy, had yet to be made out. His mind was full of this as he dressed hastily, with sundry interruptions. The household had not quite made out the events of the past night, but that there had been something “out of the common” was evident to the meanest capacity. The library window had been open all night, which was the fault of Mr. Tritton, who had undertaken to close it, begging Harris to go to bed, and not to mind. Mr. Tritton himself had been seen by an early scullion in his white tie, very much ruffled, at six o’clock; and the volleys of sneezing which had disturbed the house at seven had been distinctly heard moving about like musketry on a march, now at one point, now another, of the corridor and stairs. To crown all these strange commotions was the fact that the young master of the house, instead of obeying Harris’s call at half-past seven, did not budge (and then with reluctance) till eleven o’clock. If all these occurrences meant nothing, why then Mr. Harris pronounced himself a Dutchman; and the wonder breathed upwards from the kitchen and housekeeper’s room to my lady’s chamber, where her maid did all a maid could do (and this is not little, as most heads of a family know) to awaken suspicion. It was suggested to her ladyship that it was very strange that Mr. Tritton should have been walking about the house at six in the morning, waking up my lady with his sneezings—and it was a mercy there had not been a robbery, with the library window “open to the ground,” left open all night: and then for my lord to be in bed at eleven was a thing that had never happened before since his lordship had the measles. “I hope he is not sickening for one of these fevers,” Lady Stanton’s attendant said.
This made Geoff’s mother start, and give a suppressed scream of apprehension, and inquire anxiously whether there was any fever about. She had already in her cool drawing-room, over her needlework, felt a vague uneasiness. Geoff had never, since those days of the measles, missed breakfast and prayers before; he had sent her word that he had overslept himself, that he had been sitting up late on the previous night—but altogether it was odd. Lady Stanton, however, subdued her panic, and sat still and dismissed her maid, waiting with many tremors in her soul till Geoff should come to account for himself. He had been the best boy in the world, and had never given her any anxiety; but all Lady Stanton’s neighbours had predicted the coming of a time when Geoff would “break out,” and when the goodness of his earlier days would but increase the riot of the inevitable sowing of wild oats. Lady Stanton had smiled at this, but with a smouldering sense of insecurity in her heart; alarmed, though she knew there was no cause. Mothers are an order of beings peculiarly constituted, full of certainties and doubts, which moment by moment give each other the lie. Ah, no, Geoff would not “break out,” would not “go wrong;” it was not in him. He was too true, too honourable, too pure—did not she know every thought in his mind, and feeling in his heart? But oh, the anguish if Geoff should not be so true and so pure—if he should be weak, be tempted and fall, and stain the whiteness which his mother so deeply trusted in, yet so trembled for! Who can understand such paradoxes? She would have believed no harm of her boy—and yet in her horror of harm for him the very name of evil gave her a panic. Nothing wonderful in that. She sat and trembled to the very tyings of her shoe, and yet was sure, certain, ready to answer to the whole world for her son, who had done no evil. Other women who have sons know what Lady Stanton felt. She sat nervously still, listening to every sound, till he should come and explain himself. Why was he so late? What had happened last night to make the house uneasy? Lady Stanton would not allow herself to think that she was alarmed. It was true that pulses beat in her ears, and her heart mounted to her throat, but she sat still as a statue, and went on with her knitting. “One may not be able to help being foolish, but one can always help showing it,” she said to herself.
The sight of Geoff when he appeared, fresh and blooming, made all the throbbings subside at once. She even made a fine effort to laugh. “What does this mean, Geoff? I never knew you so late. The servants have been trying to frighten me, and I hear Mr. Tritton has got a very bad cold,” she said, getting the words out hurriedly, afraid lest she might break down or betray herself. She eyed him very curiously over her knitting, but she made believe not to be looking at him at all.
“Yes; poor old Tritton,” he said; “it is my fault; he sat up for me. I went out—— ” he made a little pause; for Geoff reflected that other people’s secrets were not his to confide, even to his mother—“with wild Bampfylde, who came, I suppose, out of gratitude for what little I did for him.”
“You went out—with that poacher fellow, Geoff?”
“Yes:” he nodded, meeting her horrified eyes quite calmly and with a smile; “why not, mother? You did not think I should be afraid of him, I hope?”
“Oh how very imprudent, Geoff! You, whose life is of so much value!—who are so very important to me and everybody!”
“Most fellows are important who have mothers to make a fuss,” he said, smiling. “I don’t think there is much more in me than the rest. But he has not harmed me much, you can see. I have all my limbs as usual; I am none the worse.”
“Thank God for that!” said Lady Stanton; “but you must not do the like again. Indeed, indeed, Geoff, you are too bold; you must not put yourself in the way of trouble. Think of your poor brother. Oh, my dear, what an example! You must not be so rash again.”
“I will not be rash—in that way,” he said. “But, mother, I want you to tell me something. You remember all about it: did you ever know of any more Bampfyldes? There was the mother, and this fellow. Did you ever know of any other?”
“You are missing out the chief one, Geoff—Lily, the girl.”
“Yes, yes; I know about her. I did not mean the girl. But think! Were those three all? Were there more—another——?”
Lady Stanton shook her head. “I do not remember any other. I think three were quite enough. There is mischief in one even, of that kind.”
“What do you mean by that kind? You did not know them. I hope my mother is not one of the kind who, not knowing people, are unjust to them.”
“Geoff!” Lady Stanton was bewildered by this grand tone. She looked up at him with sudden curiosity, and this curiosity was mixed inevitably with some anxiety too; for, when your son betrays an unjustifiable partisanship, what so natural as to feel that he must have “some motive”? “Of course I did not mean to be unjust. But I do not pretend to remember everything that came out on the trial. It was the mother and daughter that interested me. You should ask your cousin Mary; she recollects better than I do. But have you heard anything about another? What did the poacher say? Had you a great deal of conversation with him? And don’t you think it was rash to put yourself in the power of such a lawless sort of fellow? Thank God! you are safe and sound.”
“What do you mean about putting myself in his power? Do you think I am not a match for him? He is not such a giant, mother. Yes, I am quite safe and sound. And we had a great deal of talk. I never met with anybody so interesting. He talked about everything; chiefly about ‘the creatures,’ as he calls them.”
“What creatures?” said Lady Stanton, wondering and alarmed. There were “creatures” in the world, this innocent lady knew, about whom a vagabond was very likely to talk, but who could not be mentioned between her and her boy.
“The wild things in the woods, birds and mice, and such small deer, and all their ways, and what they mean, and how to make acquaintance with them. I don’t suppose he knows very much out of books,” said young Geoff; “but the bit of dark moor grew quite different with that wild fellow in it—like the hill in the Lady of the Lake, when all Clan Alpine got up from behind the rocks and the bushes. Don’t you remember, mother? One could hear ‘the creatures’ rustling and moving, and multitudes of living things one never gave a thought to. It felt like poetry, too, though I don’t know any poem like it. It was very strange and interesting. That pleases me more than your clever people,” said Geoff.
“Oh, my dear, I beg your pardon,” said Lady Stanton, suddenly getting up and kissing her boy’s cheek as she passed him. She went away to hide the penitence in her eyes. As for Geoff, he took this very easily and simply. He thought it was natural she should apologize to Bampfylde for not thinking well of him. He had not a notion of the shame of evil-thinking thus brought home to her, which scorched Lady Stanton’s cheeks.