Chapter XII: Part 12

"Then I think I had better describe how it happened, and let Major Layne judge for himself whether it was my fast riding or your fast running that caused the mischief."

"You'll tell about the peacock? It had its tail out."

"Of course I'll tell about the peacock. I shall say to Major Layne that his little boy--I don't think I have heard your name," broke off Sir Geoffry. "What is it?"

"It's Arthur. Papa's is Richard. My big brother's is Richard too; he is at King's College. Which name do you like best?"

"I think I like Arthur best. It is my own name also."

"Yours is Sir Geoffry."

"And Arthur as well."

But at this juncture old Mrs. Layne, having started up from a nod, interposed to put a summary stop to the chatter, telling Arthur crossly that Mr. Duffham and the other doctor had forbid him to talk much. And then she begged pardon of Sir Geoffry for saying it, but thought the doctors wished the child to be kept quiet and cool. Sir Geoffry took the opportunity to say adieu to the little patient.

"May I come to see the peacock when I get well, Sir Geoffry?"

"Certainly. You shall come and look at him for a whole day if grandmamma will allow you to."

Grandmamma gave no motion or word of assent, but Arthur took it for granted. "Betsy can bring me if Aunt Mary won't; Betsy's my nurse. I wish I could have him before that window to look at while I lie here to get well. I like peacocks and musical boxes better than anything in the world."

"Musical boxes!" exclaimed Sir Geoffry. "Do you care for them?"

"Oh yes; they are beautiful. Do you know the little lame boy who can't walk, down Piefinch Cut? His father comes to do grandmamma's garden. Do you know him, Sir Geoffry? His name's Reuben."

"It's Noah, the gardener's son, sir," put in Mrs. Layne aside to Sir Geoffry. "He was thrown downstairs when a baby, and has been a cripple ever since."

But the eager, intelligent eyes were still cast up, waiting for the answer. "Where _have_ I seen them?" mentally debated Sir Geoffry, alluding to the eyes.

"I know the name?" he answered.

"Well, Reuben has got a musical box, and it plays three tunes. He is older than I am: he's ten. One of them is 'The Blue Bells of Scotland.'"

Sir Geoffry nodded and went away. He crossed straight over to Mr. Duffham's, and found him writing a letter in his surgery.

"I hope the child will do well," said the baronet, when he had shaken hands. "I have just been to see him. What an intelligent, nice little fellow it is."

"Oh, he will be all right again in time, Sir Geoffry," was the doctor's reply, as he began to fold his letter.

"He is a pretty boy, too, very. His eyes are strangely like some one's I have seen, but for the life of me I cannot tell whose!"

"_Really?_--do you mean it?" cried Mr. Duffham, speaking, as it seemed, in some surprise.

"Mean what?"

"That you cannot tell."

"Indeed I can't. They puzzled me all the while I was there. Do you know? Say, if you do."

"They are like your own, Sir Geoffry."

"Like my own!"

"They are your own eyes over again. And yours--as poor Layne used to say, and as the picture in the Grange dining-room shows us also, for the matter of that--are Sir Peter's. Sir Peter's, yours, and the child's: they are all the same."

For a long space of time, as it seemed, the two gentlemen gazed at each other. Mr. Duffham with a questioning and still surprised look: Sir Geoffry in a kind of bewildered amazement.

"Duffham! you--you---- Surely it is not _that_ child!"

"Yes, it is."

He backed to a chair and stumbled into it, rather than sat down; somewhat in the same manner that Mrs. Layne had backed against the counter nearly seven years before and upset the scales. The old lady seemed to have aged since quicker than she ought to have done: but her face then had not been whiter than was Geoffry Chavasse's now.

"Good Heavens!"

The dead silence was only broken by these murmured words that fell from his lips. Mr. Duffham finished folding his note, and directed it.

"Sir Geoffry, I beg your pardon! I beg it a thousand times. If I had had the smallest notion that you were ignorant of this, I should never have spoken."

Sir Geoffry took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. Some moisture had gathered there.

"How was I to suspect it?" he asked.

"I never supposed but that you must have known it all along."

"All along from when, Duffham?"

"From--from--well, from the time you first knew that a child was over there."

Sir Geoffry cast his thoughts back. He could not remember anything about the child's coming to Church Dykely. In point of fact, the Grange had been empty at the time.

"I understood that the child was one of Captain and Mrs. Layne's," he rejoined. "Every one said it; and I never had any other thought. Even yesterday at the Grange you spoke of him as such, Duffham."

"Of course. Miss Layne was present--and Hester Picker--and the child himself. I did not speak to deceive you, Sir Geoffry. When you said what you did to me in coming away, about calling in other advice for the satisfaction of Major Layne, I thought you were merely keeping up appearances."

"And it _is_ so, then?"

"Oh dear, yes."

Another pause. Mr. Duffham affixed the stamp to his letter, and put the paper straight in his note-case. Sir Geoffry suddenly lifted his hand, as one whom some disagreeable reflection overwhelms.

"To think that I was about to write to Major Layne! To think that I should have stood there, in the old lady's presence, talking boldly with the child! She must assume that I have the impudence of Satan."

"Mrs. Layne is past that, Sir Geoffry. Her faculties are dulled: three-parts dead. _That_ need not trouble you."

The baronet put aside his handkerchief and took up his hat to leave. He began stroking its nap with his coat-sleeve.

"Does my mother know of this, do you think?"

"I am sure she neither knows nor suspects it. No one does, Sir Geoffry: the secret has been entirely kept."

"The cost of this illness must be mine, you know, Duffham."

"I think not, Sir Geoffry," was the surgeon's answer. "It would not do, I fear. There's no need, besides: Miss Layne is rich now."

"Rich! How is she rich?"

And Mr. Duffham had to explain. A wealthy gentleman in India, some connection of the Laynes, had died and left money to Mary Layne. Six or seven hundred a year; and plenty of ready means. Sir Geoffry Chavasse went out, pondering upon the world's changes.

He did not call to see the invalid again; but he bought a beautiful musical box at Worcester, and sent it in to the child by Duffham. It played six tunes. The boy had never in his life been so delighted. He returned his love and thanks to Sir Geoffry; and appended several inquiries touching the welfare of the peacock.

The first news heard by Lady Chavasse and Lady Rachel on their coming home, was of the accident caused to Major Layne's little son by Sir Geoffry's horse. Hester Picker and the other servants were full of it. It happened to be the day that Sir Geoffry had gone to Worcester after the box, so he could not join in the narrative. A sweet, beautiful boy, said Hester to my ladies, and had told them he meant to be a soldier when he grew up, as brave as his papa. Lady Chavasse, having digested the news, and taken inward counsel with herself, decided to go and see him: it would be right and neighbourly, she thought. It might be that she was wishing to bestow some slight mark of her favour upon the old lady before death should claim her: and she deemed that the honour of a call would effect this. In her heart she acknowledged that the Laynes had behaved admirably in regard to the past; never to have troubled her or her son by word or deed or letter; and in her heart she felt grateful for it. Some people might have acted differently.

"I think I will go and see him too," said Lady Rachel.

"No, pray don't," dissented Lady Chavasse, hastily. "You already feel the fatigue of your journey, Rachel: do not attempt to increase it."

And as Lady Rachel really was fatigued and did not care much about it, one way or the other, she remained at home.

It was one of Mrs. Layne's worst days--one of those when she seemed three-parts childish--when Lady Chavasse was shown into the drawing-room. Mary was there. As she turned to receive her visitor, and heard the maid's announcement "Lady Chavasse," a great astonishment inwardly stirred her, but her manner remained quiet and self-possessed. Just a minute's gaze at each other. Lady Chavasse was the same good-looking woman as of yore; not changed, not aged by so much as a day. Mary _was_ changed: the shy, inexperienced girl had grown into the calm, self-contained woman; the woman who had known sorrow, who had its marks impressed on her face. She had been pretty once, she was gravely beautiful now. Perhaps Lady Chavasse had not bargained for seeing _her_; Mary had certainly never thought thus to meet Lady Chavasse: but here they were, face to face, and each must make the best of it. As they did; and with easy courtesy, both being gentlewomen. Lady Chavasse held out her hand, and Mary put hers into it.

After shaking hands with Mrs. Layne--who was too drowsy properly to respond, and shut her eyes again--my lady spoke a few pleasant words of regret for the accident, of her wish to see the little patient, of her hope that Major and Mrs. Layne might not be allowed to think any care on Sir Geoffry's part could have averted it. Mary went upstairs with her. Lady Chavasse could only be struck with the improved appearance of the house, quite suited now to be the abode of gentle-people; and with its apparently well-appointed if small household.

The child lay asleep: his nurse, Betsy, sat sewing by his side. The girl confessed that she had allowed him sometimes to run in and take a look at the peacock. Lady Chavasse would not have him awakened: she bent and kissed his cheek lightly: and talked to Mary in a whisper. It was just as though there had been no break in their acquaintanceship, just as though no painful episode, in which they were antagonistic actors, had ever occurred between them.

"I hear you have come into a fortune, Miss Layne," she said, as she shook hands with Mary again in the little hall before departure. For Hester Picker had told of this.

"Into a great deal of money," replied Mary.

"I am glad to hear it: _glad_," came the parting response, whispered emphatically in Mary's ear, and it was accompanied by a pressure of the fingers.

Mr. Duffham was standing at his door, watching my lady's exit from Mrs. Layne's house, his eyes lost in wonder. Seeing him, she crossed over, and went in, Mr. Duffham throwing open the door of his sitting-room. She began speaking of the accident to Major Layne's little son--what a pity it was, but that she hoped he would do well. Old Duffham replied that he hoped so too, and thought he would.

"Mrs. Layne seems to be growing very old," went on Lady Chavasse. "She was as drowsy as she could be this afternoon, and seemed scarcely to know me."

"Old people are apt to be sleepy after dinner," returned the doctor.

And then there was a pause. Lady Chavasse (as Duffham's diary expresses it) seemed to be particularly absent in manner, as if she were thinking to herself, instead of talking to him. Because he had nothing else to say, he asked after the health of Lady Rachel. That aroused her at once.

"She is not strong. She is not strong. I am sure of it."

"She does not seem to ail much, that I can see," returned Duffham, who often had to hear this same thing said of Lady Rachel. "She never requires medical advice."

"I don't care: she is not strong. There are no children," continued Lady Chavasse, dropping her voice to a whisper; and a kind of piteous, imploring expression darkened her eyes.

"No."

"Four years married, going on for five, and no signs of any. No signs of children, Mr. Duffham."

"I can't help it, my lady," returned Duffham.

"Nobody can help it. But it is an awful misfortune. It is beginning to be a great trouble in my life. As the weeks and months and years pass on--the _years_, Mr. Duffham--and bring no hope, my very spirit seems to fail. 'Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.'"

"True."

"It has been the one great desire of my later years," continued Lady Chavasse, too much in earnest to be reticent, "and it does not come. I wonder which is the worst to be borne; some weighty misfortune that falls and crushes, or a longed-for boon that we watch and pray for in vain? The want of it, the eager daily strain of disappointment, has become to me worse than a nightmare."

* * * * *

Little Arthur Layne, attended by Betsy, spent a day at the Grange on his recovery, invited to meet the peacock. The ladies were very kind to him: they could but admire his gentle manners, his fearless bearing. Sir Geoffry played a game at ninepins with him on the lawn--which set of ninepins had been his own when a child, and had been lying by ever since. Betsy was told she might carry them home for Master Layne: Sir Geoffry gave them to him.

After that, the intercourse dropped again, and they became strangers as before. Except that Lady Chavasse would bow from her carriage if she saw Mrs. or Miss Layne, and Sir Geoffry raise his hat. The little boy had more notice: when they met him out, and were walking themselves, they would, one and all, stop and speak to him.

So this episode of the accident seemed to fade into the past, as other things had faded: and the time went on.

+Part the fourth.+

Autumn leaves were strewing the ground, autumn skies were overhead. A ray of the sun came slanting into the library, passing right across the face of Sir Geoffry Chavasse. The face had an older expression on it than his thirty years would justify. It looked worn and weary, and the bright hair, with its golden tinge, was less carefully arranged than it used to be, as if exertion were becoming a burden, or that vanity no longer troubled him; and his frame was almost painfully thin; and a low hacking cough took him at intervals. It might have been thought that Sir Geoffry was a little out of health, and wanted a change. Lady Chavasse, his mother, had begun to admit a long-repressed doubt whether any change would benefit him.

A common desk of stained walnut-wood was open on the table before him: he had been reading over and putting straight some papers it contained--notes and diaries, and so forth. Two or three of these he tore across and threw into the fire. Out of a bit of tissue paper, he took a curl of bright brown hair, recalling the day and hour when he had surreptitiously cut it off, and refused to give it up again to its blushing owner. Recalling also the happy feelings of that time--surreptitiously still, as might be said, for what business had he with them now? Holding the hair to his lips for a brief interval, he folded it up again, and took out another bit of paper. This contained a lady's ring of chased gold set with a beautiful and costly emerald. In those bygone years he had bought the ring, thinking to give it in payment of the stolen hair; but the young lady in her shyness had refused so valuable a present. Sir Geoffry held the ring so that its brightness glittered in the sun, and then wrapped it up again. Next he unfolded a diary, kept at that past period, and for a short time afterwards: then it was abruptly broken off, and had never since been written in. He smiled to himself as he read a page here and there--but the smile was full of sadness.

Lady Chavasse came into the room rather abruptly: Sir Geoffry shut up the diary, and prepared to close and lock the desk. There was a disturbed, restless, anxious look on my lady's face: there was a far more anxious and bitter pain ever making havoc with her heart.

"Why, Geoffry! have you got out _that_ old desk?"

Sir Geoffry smiled as he carried it to its obscure place in a dark corner of the library. When he was about twelve years old, and they were passing through London, he went to the Lowther Arcade and bought this desk, for which he had been saving up his shillings.

"I don't believe any lad ever had so valuable a prize as I thought I had purchased in that desk, mother," was his laughing remark.

"I dare say it has a great deal of old rubbish in it," said Lady Chavasse, slightingly.

"Not much else--for all the good it can ever be. I was only glancing over the rubbish--foolish mementoes of foolish days. These days are weary; and I hardly know how to make their hours fly."

Lady Chavasse sighed at the words. He used to go shooting in the autumn--fishing--hunting once in a way, in the later season: he had not strength for these sports now.

Opening the desk he commonly used, a very handsome one that had been Lady Chavasse's present to him, he took a small book from it and put it into his breast-pocket. Lady Chavasse, watching all his movements, as she had grown accustomed to do, saw and knew what the book was--a Bible. Perhaps nothing had struck so much on my lady's fears as the habit he had fallen into of often reading the Bible. She had come upon him doing it in all kinds of odd places. Out amidst the rocks at the seaside where they had recently been staying--and should have stayed longer but that he grew tired and wanted to come home; out in the seats of this garden, amidst the roses, or where the roses had him with this small Bible. He always slipped it away when she or any one else approached: but the habit was casting on her spirit a very ominous shadow. It seemed to show her that he knew he must be drawing near to the world that the Bible tells of, and was making ready for his journey. How her heart ached, ached always, Lady Chavasse would not have liked to avow.

"Where's Rachel?" he asked.

"On her sofa, upstairs."

Sir Geoffry stirred the fire mechanically, his thoughts elsewhere--just as he had stirred it in a memorable interview of the days gone by. Unconsciously they had taken up the same position as on that unhappy morning: he with his elbow on the mantelpiece, and his face partly turned from his mother; she in the same chair, and on the same red square of the Turkey carpet. The future had been before them then: it lay in their own hands, so to say, to choose the path for good or for ill. Sir Geoffry had pointed out which was the right one to take, and said that it would bring them happiness. But my lady had negatived it, and he could only bow to her decree. And so, the turning tide was passed, not seized upon, and they had been sailing on a sea tolerably smooth, but without depth in it or sunshine on it. What had the voyage brought forth? Not much. And it seemed, so far as one was concerned, nearly at an end now.

"I fancy Rachel cannot be well, mother," observed Sir Geoffry, "She would not lie down so much if she were."

"A little inertness, Geoffry, nothing more. About Christmas?" continued Lady Chavasse. "Shall you be well enough to go to the Derrestons', do you think?"

"I think we had better let Christmas draw nearer before laying out any plans for it," he answered.

"Yes, that's all very well: but I am going to write to Lady Derreston to-day, and she will expect me to mention it. Shall you like to go?"

A moment's pause, and then he turned to her: his clear, dark-blue eyes, ever kind and gentle, looking straight into hers; his voice low and tender.

"I do not suppose I shall ever go away from the Grange again."

She turned quite white. Was it coming so near as that? A kind of terror took possession of her.

"Geoffry! _Geoffry!_"

"My darling mother, I will stay with you if I can; you know that. But the fiat does not lie with you or with me."

Sir Geoffry went behind her chair, and put his arms round her playfully, kissing her with a strange tenderness of heart that he sought to hide.

"It may be all well yet, mother. Don't let it trouble you before the time."

She could not make any rejoinder, could not speak, and quitted the room to hide her emotion.

In the after-part of the day the surgeon, Duffham, bustled in. His visit was later than usual.

"And how are you, Sir Geoffry?" he asked, as they sat alone, facing each other between the table and the fire.

"Much the same, Duffham."

"Look here, Sir Geoffry--you should rally both yourself and your spirits. It's of no use _giving way_ to illness. There's a certain listlessness upon you; I've seen it for some time. Shake it off."

"Willingly--if you will give me the power to do so," was Sir Geoffry's reply. "The listlessness you speak of proceeds from the fact that my health and energies fail me. As to my spirits, there's nothing the matter with them."

Mr. Duffham turned over with his fingers a glass paper-weight that happened to lie on the table, as if he wanted to see the fishing-boats on the sea that its landscape represented, and then he glanced at Sir Geoffry.

"Of course you wish to get well?"--with a slight emphasis on the "wish."

"Most certainly I wish to get well. For my mother's sake--and of course also for my wife's, as well as for my own. I don't expect to, though, Duffham."

"Well, that's saying a great deal," retorted Duffham, pretending to make a mockery of it.

"I've not been strong for some time--as you may have seen, perhaps: but since the beginning of May, when the intensely hot weather came in, I have felt as--as----"

"As what, Sir Geoffry?"

"As though I should never live to see another May, hot or cold."

"Unreasonable heat has that effect on some people, Sir Geoffry. Tries their nerves."

"I am not aware that it tries mine. My nerves are as sound as need be. The insurance offices won't take my life at any price, Duffham," he resumed.

"Have you tried them?"

"Two of the best in London. When I began to grow somewhat doubtful about myself in the spring, I thought of the future of those near and dear to me, and would have insured my life for their benefit. The doctors refused to certify. Since then I have felt nearly sure in my own mind that what must be will be. And, day by day, I have watched the shadow drawing nearer."

The doctor leaned forward and spoke a few earnest words of encouragement, before departing. Sir Geoffry was only too willing to receive them--in spite of the inward conviction that lay upon him, Lady Rachel Chavasse entered the library in the course of the afternoon. She wore a sweeping silk, the colour of lilac, and gold ornaments. Her face had not changed: with its classically-carved contour and its pale coldness.

"Does Duffham think you are better, Geoffry?"

"Not much, I fancy."

"Suppose we were to try another change--Germany, or somewhere?" she calmly suggested.

"I would rather be here than anywhere, Rachel."

"I should like you to get well, you know, Geoffry."

"I should like it too, my dear."

"Mamma has written to ask us to go into Somersetshire for Christmas," continued Lady Rachel, putting her foot, encased in its black satin shoe and white silk stocking, on the fender.

"Ay. My mother was talking about it just now. Well, we shall see between now and Christmas, Rachel. Perhaps they can come to us instead."

Lady Rachel turned her very light eyes upon her husband: eyes in which there often sat a peevish expression. It was not discernible at the present moment: they were coldly calm.

"Don't you think you shall be quite well by Christmas?"

"I cannot speak with any certainty, Rachel."

She stood a minute or two longer, and then walked round the room before the shelves, in search of some entertaining book. It was quite evident that the state of her husband did not bring real trouble to her heart. Was the heart too naturally cold?--or was it that as yet no suspicion of the seriousness of the case had penetrated to her? Something of both, perhaps.

Selecting a book, she was leaving the library with it when Sir Geoffry asked if she would not rather stay by the fire to read. But she said she preferred to go to her sofa.

"Are you well, Rachel?" he asked.

"My back feels tired, always. I suppose we are something alike, Geoffry--not over-strong," she concluded, with a smile.

That night Duffham made the annexed entry in his journal.

* * * * *

He does know the critical state he is in. Has known it, it seems, for some time. I suspected he did. Sir Geoffry's one that you may read as a book in his open candour. He would "get well if he could," he says, for his mother's sake. As of course he would, were the result under his own control: a fine young fellow of the upper ten, with every substantial good to make life pleasant, and no evil habits or thoughts to draw him backward, would not close his eyes on this world without a pang, and a struggle to remain a while longer in it.

I cannot do more for him than I am doing. All the faculty combined could not. Neither do I say, as he does, that he will not get better: on the contrary, I think there's just a chance that he _will_: and I honestly told him so. It's just a toss-up. He was always delicate until he grew to manhood: then he seemed to become thoroughly healthy and strong. Query: would this delicacy have come back again had his life been made as happy as it might have been? My lady can debate that point with herself in after-years: it may be that she'll have plenty of time to do it in. Sir Geoffry's is one of those sensitive natures where the mind seems almost wholly to influence the body; and that past trouble was a sharp blow to him. Upright and honourable, he could not well bear the remorse that fell upon him--it has been keenly felt, ay, I verily believe, until this hour: another's life was blighted that his might be aggrandized. _My own opinion is, that had he been allowed to do as he wished, and make reparation, thereby securing his own happiness, he might have thrown off the tendency to delicacy still and always; and lived to be as old as his father, Sir Peter._ Should my lady ever speak to me upon the subject, I shall tell her this. Geoffry Chavasse has lived with a weight upon him. It was not so much that his own hopes were gone and his love-dream wrecked, as that he had brought far worse than this upon another. Yes; my lady may thank herself that his life seems to have been wasted. Had there been children he might, in a degree, have forgotten what went before, and the mind would no longer have preyed upon the body. Has the finger of Heaven been in this? My pen ought to have written "_specially_ in this:" for that Finger is in all things.

I hope he will get better. Yes, I _do_, in spite of a nasty doubt that crops up in my mind as I say it. I love him as I did in the old days, and respect him more. _Qui vivra verra_--to borrow a French phrase from young Master Arthur over the way. And now I put up my diary for the night.

* * * * *

Mrs. Layne was dead. Mary lived alone in her house now, with her servants and Arthur.

Never a woman so respected as she; never a lady, high or low, so revered and looked up to as Mary Layne. All the village would fly to her on an emergency; and she had both counsel and help to give. The poor idolized her. A noble, tender, good gentlewoman, with the characteristic humility in her bearing that had been observable of late years, and the gentle gravity on her thoughtful face. My lady, with all her rank and her show and her condescension, had never been half so much respected as this. The little boy--in knickerbockers now, and nine years old--was a great favourite; he also got some honour reflected on him through Colonel Layne. There had been a time of trouble in India, and Major Layne had grandly distinguished himself and gained honour and promotion. The public papers proclaimed his bravery and renown; and Arthur received his share of reflected glory. As the boy passed on his pony, the blacksmith, Dobbs, would shoot out from his forge to look after him, and say to the stranger whose horse had cast a shoe, "There goes the little son of the brave Colonel Layne: maybe you've heerd of his deeds over in Ingee." Perhaps the blacksmith considered he had acquired a sort of right in Arthur, since the pony--a sure-footed Welsh animal--was kept in the stable that belonged to his forge, and was groomed by himself or son. Miss Layne paid him for it; but, as the blacksmith said, it went again' the grain; he'd ha' been proud to do aught for her and the little gentleman without pay.

And somehow, what with one thing and another, my lady grew to think that if anything removed her from Chavasse Grange, Mary would take her place as best and chiefest in Church Dykely, and she herself would not be missed. But it was odd the thought should dawn upon her. Previsions of coming events steal into the minds of a great many of us; we know not whence they arise, and at first look on them only as idle thoughts, never recognizing them for what they are--advance shadows of the things to be.

One sunshiny afternoon, close upon winter, Arthur and Mr. Duffham went out riding. Mary watched them start; the doctor on his old grey horse (that had been her father's), and Arthur on his well-groomed pony. The lad sat well; as brave-looking a little gentleman, with his upright carriage, open face, and nice attire--for Mary was particular there--as had ever gratified a fond aunt's eye, or a blacksmith's heart.

Close by the gates of Chavasse Grange, they met Sir Geoffry and his mother strolling forth. Mr. Duffham's hopes had not been fulfilled. Outwardly there was not much change in the baronet, certainly none for the better; inwardly there was a great deal. He _knew_ now how very certain his fate was, and that it might not be delayed for any great length of time; a few weeks, a few months: as God should will.

"Lady Rachel is not well," observed Sir Geoffry to the surgeon. "You must see her, Duffham. I suppose you can't come in now?"

"Yes, I can: I'm in no hurry," was the doctor's answer.

"May I come too, and see the peacock, Sir Geoffry? I'll wait here, though, if Mr. Duffham thinks I ought."

Of course the boy was told that the peacock would take it as a slight if he did not pay him a visit, and they all turned up the avenue. Arthur got off his pony and led it, and talked with Lady Chavasse.

"Why did you get off yet?" asked Sir Geoffry, turning to him.

"Lady Chavasse is walking," answered the boy, simply.

It spoke volumes for his innate sense of politeness. Sir Geoffry remembered that _he_ had possessed the same when a child.

"Have you heard what papa has done?" asked Arthur, putting the question generally. "It has been in all the newspapers, and he is full colonel now. Did you read it, Sir Geoffry?"

"Yes, I read it, Arthur."

"And the Queen's going to thank papa when he comes to England, and to make him Sir Richard. Everybody says so. Dobbs thinks papa will be made general before he dies."

Dobbs was the blacksmith. They smiled at this. Not at the possibility for Colonel Layne, but at Dobbs.

"And, with it all, Aunt Mary does not want me to be a soldier!" went on the boy in rather an aggrieved tone. "Richard's enough, she says. Dick gets on well at King's College: he is to go to Woolwich next. I don't see the peacock!"

They had neared the house, but the gay plumaged bird, for which Arthur retained his full admiration, was nowhere in sight. Servants came forward and led the horses away. Mr. Duffham went on to see Lady Rachel: Arthur was taken into the garden-parlour by Sir Geoffry.

"And so you would like to be a soldier:" he said, holding the boy before him, and looking down at his bright, happy face.

"Oh, I should: very much. If papa says I'm not to be--or mamma--or Aunt Mary--if they should tell me 'No, no, you _shall not_,' why, it would be at an end, and I'd try and like something else."

"Listen, Arthur," said Sir Geoffry, in a low, earnest tone. "What you are to be, and what you are not to be, lie alike in the will of God. He will direct you aright, no doubt, when the time of choice shall come----"

"And that's what Aunt Mary says," interrupted the lad. "She says---- There's the peacock!"

He had come round the corner, his tail trailing; the poor peahen following humbly behind him, as usual. Arthur went outside the window. The peacock had a most unsociable habit of stalking away with a harsh scream if approached; Arthur knew this, and stayed where he was, talking still with Sir Geoffry. When Lady Chavasse entered, he was deep in a story of the musical box.

"Yes, a wicked boy went into Reuben Noah's, and broke his box for the purpose. Aunt Mary is letting me get it mended for him with some sixpences I had saved up. Reuben is very ill just now--in great pain; and Aunt Mary has let me lend him mine--he says when he can hear the music, his hip does not hurt him so much. You are not angry with me for lending it, are you, Sir Geoffry?"

"My boy, I am pleased."

"Why should Sir Geoffry be angry--what is it to him?" cried Lady Chavasse, amused with the chatter.

"Sir Geoffry gave it to me," said Arthur, looking at her with wide-open eyes, in which the great wonder that any one should be ignorant of that fact was expressed. "Reuben wishes he could get here to see the peacock: but he can't walk, you know. I painted a beautiful one on paper and took it to him. Aunt Mary said it was not much like a real peacock; it was too yellow. Reuben liked it, and hung it up on his wall. Oh!"

For the stately peacock, stepping past the window as if the world belonged to him, suddenly threw wide his tail in an access of vanity. The tail had not long been renewed, and was in full feather. Arthur's face went into a radiant glow. Lady Chavasse, smiling at the childish delight, produced some biscuit that the peacock was inordinately fond of, and bade him go and feed it.

"Oh, Geoffry," she exclaimed in the impulse of the moment, as the boy vaulted away, "if you only had such a son and heir as that!"

"Ay. It might have been, mother. That child himself might have been Sir Arthur after me, had you so willed it."

"Been Sir Arthur after you!" she exclaimed. "Are you in a dream, Geoffry? _That_ child!"

"I have thought you did not know him, but I never felt quite sure. He passes to the world for the son of Colonel Layne--as I trust he may so pass always. Don't you understand?"

It was so comical a thing, bringing up thoughts so astounding, and the more especially because she had never had the remotest suspicion of it, that Lady Chavasse simply stared at her son in silence. All in a moment a fiery resentment rose up in her heart: she could not have told at whom or what.

"I will never believe it, Geoffry. It _cannot be_."

"It _is_, mother."

He was leaning against the embrasure of the window as he stood, watching the boy in the distance throwing morsels of biscuit right into the peacock's mouth, condescendingly held wide to receive them. Lady Chavasse caught the strange sadness glistening in her son's eyes, and somehow a portion of her hot anger died away.

"Yes: there was nothing to prevent it," sighed Sir Geoffry. "Had you allowed it, mother, the boy might have been born my lawful son, my veritable heir. Other sons might have followed him: the probability is, there would have been half-a-dozen of them feeding the peacock now, instead of--of--I was going to say--of worse than none."

Lady Chavasse looked out at the boy with eager, devouring eyes: and whether there was more of longing in their depths, or of haughty anger, a spectator could not have told. In that same moment a vision, so vivid as to be almost like reality, stole before her mental sight--of the half-dozen brave boys crowding round the peacock, instead of only that one on whose birth so cruel a blight had been cast.

"A noble heir he would have made us, mother; one of whom our free land might have been proud," spoke Sir Geoffry, in a low tone of yearning that was mixed with hopeless despair. "He bears my name, Arthur. I would give my right hand--ay, and the left too--if he could be Sir Arthur after me!"

Arthur turned round. His cap was on the grass, his blue eyes were shining.

"He is frightfully greedy and selfish, Lady Chavasse. He will not let the peahen have a bit."

"A beautiful face," murmured Sir Geoffry. "And a little like what mine must have been at his age, I fancy. Sometimes I have thought that you would see the likeness, and that it might impart its clue."

"Since when have you known him?--known this?"

"Since the day after the accident, when my horse threw him down. Duffham dropped an unintentional word, and it enlightened me. Some nights ago I dreamt that the little lad was my true heir," added Sir Geoffry. "I saw you kiss him in the dream."

"You must have been letting your thoughts run on it very much," retorted Lady Chavasse, rather sharply.

"They are often running on it, mother: the regret for what might have been and for what is, never seems to leave me," was his reply. "For some moments after I awoke from that dream I thought it was reality: I believe I called out 'Arthur.' Rachel started, and inquired between sleeping and waking what the matter was. To find it was only a dream--to remember that what _is_ can never be changed or redeemed in this world, was the worst pain of all."

"You may have children yet," said Lady Chavasse, after a pause. "It is not impossible."

"Well, I suppose not impossible," was the hesitating rejoinder. "But----"

"But you don't think it. Say it out, Geoffry."

"I do not think it. My darling mother, don't you see how it is with me?" he added, in an impulse of emotion--"that I am not to live. A very short time now, and I shall be lying with my father."

A piteous cry broke from her. It had to be suppressed. The ungrateful peacock, seeing no more dainty biscuit in store, had fluttered off with a scream, putting his tail down into the smallest possible compass; and Arthur came running back to the room. Mr. Duffham next appeared; his face grave, his account of Lady Rachel evasive. He suspected some latent disease of the spine, but did not wish to say so just yet.

The horse and pony were brought round. Arthur and the doctor mounted; Arthur turning round to lift his cap to Lady Chavasse and Sir Geoffry as he rode away. A noble boy in all his actions; sitting his pony like the young chieftain he ought to have been but for my lady's adverse will.

But Mr. Duffham was by no means prepared for an inroad on his privacy made that evening by my lady. She surprised him in his shabbiest parlour, when he was taking his tea: the old tin teapot on the Japan tray, and the bread-and-butter plate cracked across. Zuby Noah, Duffham's factotum, was of a saving turn, and never would bring in the best things except on Sundays. He had a battle with her over it sometimes, but it did no good. Duffham thought Lady Chavasse had come to hear about Lady Rachel, but he was mistaken.

She began with a despairing cry, by way of introduction to the interview; Zuby might have heard it as she went along the kitchen passage, but for her clanking pattens. The man-servant was out that evening, and Zuby was in waiting. Duffham, standing on the old hearthrug, found his arm seized by Lady Chavasse. He had never seen her in agitation like this.

"Is it to be so really? Mr. Duffham, can _nothing_ be done? Is my son to die before my very eyes, and not be saved?"

"Sit down, pray, Lady Chavasse!" cried Duffham, trying to hand her into the chair that had the best-looking cushion on it, and wishing he had been in the other room and had not slipped on his worn, old pepper-and-salt coat.

"He ought not to die--to die and leave no children!" she went on, as if she were a lunatic. "If there were but one little son--but one--to be the heir! _Can't_ you keep him in life? there may be children yet, if he only lives."

Her eyes were looking wildly into his; her fingers entwined themselves about the old grey cuffs as lovingly as though they were of silk velvet. No: neither Duffham nor any one else had ever seen her like this. It was as though she thought it lay with Duffham to keep Sir Geoffry in life and to endow Chavasse Grange with heirs.

"Lady Chavasse, I am not in the place of God."

"Don't you care for my trouble? Don't you _care_ for it?"

"I do care. I wish I could cure Sir Geoffry."

Down sat my lady in front of the fire, in dire tribulation. By the way she stared at it, Duffham thought she must see in it a vision of the future.

"We shall have to quit the Grange, you know, if he should die: I and Lady Rachel. Better that I quitted it in my young life; that I had never had a male child to keep me in it. I thought that would have been a hardship: but oh, it would have been nothing to this."

"You shall take a cup of tea, Lady Chavasse--if you don't mind its being poured out of this homely tea-pot," said Duffham. "Confound that Zuby!" he cried, under his breath.

"Yes, I will take the tea--put nothing in it. My lips and throat are dry with fever and pain. I wish I could die instead of Geoffry! I wish he could have left a little child behind to bless me!"

Duffham, standing up whilst she took the tea, thought it was well that these trials of awful pain did not fall often in a lifetime, or they would wear out alike the frame and the spirit. She grew calm again. As if ashamed of the agitation betrayed, her manner gradually took a sort of hard composure, her face a defiant expression. She turned it on him.

"So, Mr. Duffham! It has been well done of you, to unite with Sir Geoffry in deceiving me! That child over the way has never been Colonel Layne's."

And then she went on in a style that put Duffham's back up. It was not his place to tell her, he answered. At the same time he had had no motive to keep it from her, and if she had ever put the question to him, he should readily have answered it. Unsolicited, unspoken to, of course he had held his peace. As to uniting with Sir Geoffry to deceive her, she deceived herself if she thought anything of the kind. Since the first moment they had spoken together, when the fact had become known to Sir Geoffry, never a syllable relating to it had been mentioned between them. And then, after digesting this for a few minutes in silence, she went back to Sir Geoffry's illness.

"It is just as though a blight had fallen on him," she piteously exclaimed, lifting her hand and letting it drop again. "A blight."

"Well, Lady Chavasse, I suppose something of the kind did fall upon him," was Duffham's answer.

And _that_ displeased her. She turned her offended face to the doctor, and inquired what he meant by saying it.

So Duffham set himself to speak out. He had said he would, if ever the opportunity came. Reverting to what had happened some nine or more years ago, he told her that in his opinion Sir Geoffry had never recovered it: that the trouble had so fixed itself upon him as to have worked insensibly upon his bodily health.

"Self-reproach and disappointment were combined, Lady Chavasse; for there's no doubt that the young lady was very dear to him," concluded Duffham. "And there are some natures that cannot pick up again after such a blow."

She was staring at Duffham with open eyes, not understanding.

"You do not mean to say that--that the disappointment about _her_ has killed Sir Geoffry?"

"My goodness, no!" cried Duffham, nearly laughing. "Men are made of tougher stuff than to die of the thing called love, Lady Chavasse. What is it Shakespeare says? 'Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' There is no question but that Sir Geoffry has always had an inherent tendency to delicacy of constitution," he continued more seriously: "my partner Layne told me so. It was warded off for a time, and he grew into a strong, hearty man: it might perhaps have been warded off for good. But the blight--as you aptly express it, Lady Chavasse--came: and perhaps since then the spirit has not been able to maintain its own proper struggle for existence--in which lies a great deal, mind you; and now that the original weakness has shown itself again, he cannot shake it off."

"But--according to that--he _is_ dying of the blight?"

"Well--in a sense, yes. If you like to put it so."

Her lips grew white. There rose before her mind that one hour of bitter agony in her lifetime and her son's, when he had clasped his pleading hands on hers, and told her in a voice hoarse with its bitter pain and emotion that if she decided against him he could never know happiness again in this world: that to part from one to whom he was bound by sweet endearment, by every tie that ought to bind man to woman, would be like parting with life. Entrenched in her pride, she had turned a deaf ear, and rejected his prayer: and now there had come of it what had come. Yes, as Lady Chavasse sat there, she had the satisfaction of knowing that the work was hers.

"A warmer climate?--would it restore him?" she exclaimed, turning her hot eyes on Mr. Duffham.

"Had it been likely to do so, Lady Chavasse, I should have sent him to one long ago."

She gathered her mantle of purple velvet about her as she rose up, and went out of the room in silence, giving Duffham her hand in token of friendship.

Duffham opened the front-door, and was confronted by a tall footman--with a gold-headed cane and big white silk calves--who had been waiting in the air for his lady. She took the way to the Grange; the man and his protecting cane stepping grandly after her.

* * * * *

"Sir Geoffry Chavasse."

Buried in her own reflections by the drawing-room fire, in the coming dusk of the winter's evening, Miss Layne thought her ears must have deceived her. But no. It was Sir Geoffry who advanced as the servant made the announcement; and she rose to meet him. Strangely her heart fluttered: but she had been learning a lesson in calmness for many years; he had too, perhaps; and they shook hands quietly as other people do. Sir Geoffry threw back his overcoat from his wasted form as he sat down.

Wasted more than ever now. Some weeks have gone on since my lady's impromptu visit to Mr. Duffham's tea-table; winter is merging into spring; and the most sanguine could no longer indulge hope for Sir Geoffry.

"You have heard how it is with me?" he began, looking at Mary, after recovering his short breath.

"Yes," she faintly answered.

"I could not die without seeing you, Mary, and speaking a word of farewell. It was in my mind to ask you to come to the Grange for half-an-hour's interview; but I scarcely saw how to accomplish it: it might have raised some speculation. So as the day has been fine and mild, I came to you."

"You should have come earlier," she murmured. "It is getting late and cold."

"I did come out earlier. But I have been with Duffham."

Moving his chair a little nearer to hers, he spoke to her long and earnestly. In all that was said there seemed to be a solemn meaning--as is often the case when the speaker is drawing to the confines of this world and about to enter on the next. He referred a little to the past, and there was some mutual explanation. But it seemed to be of the future that Sir Geoffry had come chiefly to speak--the future of Baby Arthur.

"You will take care of him, Mary?--of his best interests?" And the tears came into Mary Layne's eyes at the words. He could not really think it necessary to ask it.

"Yes. To the very utmost of my power."

"I am not able to leave him anything. You know how things are with us at the Grange. My wish would have been good----"

"It is not necessary," she interrupted. "All I have will be his, Sir Geoffry."

"_Sir_ Geoffry! Need you keep up that farce, Mary, in this our last hour? He seems to wish to be a soldier: and I cannot think but that the profession will be as good for him as any other, provided you can _like_ it for him. You will see when the time comes: all that lies in the future. Our lives have been blighted, Mary: and I pray God daily and hourly that, being so, it may have served to expiate the sin--my sin, my love, it was never yours--and that no shame may fall on him."

"I think it will not," she softly said, the painful tears dropping fast. "He will always be regarded as Colonel Layne's son: the very few who know otherwise--Mr. Duffham, Colonel and Mrs. Layne, and Lady Chavasse now--will all be true to the end."

"Ay. I believe it too. I think the boy may have a bright and honourable career before him: as much so perhaps as though he had been born my heir. I think the regret that he was not--when he so easily might have been--has latterly helped to wear me out, Mary."

"I wish you could have lived, Geoffry!" she cried from between her blinding tears.

"I have wished it also," he answered, his tone full of pain. "But it was not to be. When the days shall come that my mother is alone, except for Lady Rachel, and grieving for me, I want you to promise that you will sometimes see her and give her consolation. Something tells me that you can do this, Mary, that she will take it from you--and I know that she will need it sadly. Be kind to her when I am gone."

"Yes. I promise it."