A Country Gentleman and His Family · Chapter 26 (2/2)

“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 face which had been so pale, “I’ll⁠—go and explain to Lady Markland.”

“Oh, if you’re in a hurry to go, never mind, Theo! I’ll tell mamma.”

Warrender looked at Geoff with a blank but angry gaze. “I told you to run out and play,” he said, his voice sounding harsh and strange. “It’s very bright out of doors. It will be better for you.”

“And, Theo! what shall I learn for tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow!” The child was really frightened by the look Theo gave him: the sudden fading out of the flush, the hollow look in his eyes. Then he flung down the book which all the time he had been holding mechanically in his hand. “Damn tomorrow!” he said.

Geoff’s eyes opened wide with amazement and horror. Was Theo going mad? was that what it meant after all?