“Rablin,” he said, “as a damned fool oblige me during the next few minutes by keeping your mouth shut.”
With this he resumed his old attitude and his business of watching the covert side; removing his eyes for a moment to nod as Sir Harry rode up and passed on to join the group behind him.
He had scarcely done so when deep in the undergrowth of blackthorn a hound challenged.
“Spendigo for a fiver!—and well found, by the tune of it,” cried Sir Harry. “See that patch of grey wall, Rablin—there, in a line beyond the Master’s elbow? I lay you an even guinea that’s where my gentleman comes over.”
But honest reprobation mottled the face of Mr. Rablin, squireen; and as an honest man he spoke out. Let it go to his credit, because as a rule he was a snob and inclined to cringe.
“I did not expect”—he cleared his throat—“to see you out to-day, Sir Harry.”
Sir Harry winced, and turned on them all a grey, woeful face.
“That’s it,” he said. “I can’t bide home. I can’t bide home.”
Honoria bided home with her child and mourned for the dead. As a clever woman—far cleverer than her husband—she had seen his faults while he lived; yet had liked him enough to forgive without difficulty. But now these faults faded, and by degrees memory reared an altar to him as a man little short of divine. At the worst he had been amiable. A kinder husband never lived. She reproached herself bitterly with the half-heartedness of her response to his love; to his love while it dwelt beside her, unvarying in cheerful kindness. For (it was the truth, alas! and a worm that gnawed continually) passionate love she had never rendered him. She had been content; but how poor a thing was contentment! She had never divined his worth, had never given her worship. And all the while he had been a hero, and in the end had died as a hero. Ah, for one chance to redeem the wrong! for one moment to bow herself at his feet and acknowledge her blindness! Her prayer was ancient as widowhood, and Heaven, folding away the irreparable time, returned its first and last and only solace—a dream for the groping arms; waking and darkness, and an empty pillow for her tears.
From the first her child had been dear to her; dearer (so her memory accused her now) than his father; more demonstratively beloved, at any rate. But in those miserable months she grew to love him with a double strength. He bore George’s name, and was (as Sir Harry proclaimed) a very miniature of George; repeated his shapeliness of limb, his firm shoulders, his long lean thighs—the thighs of a born horseman; learned to walk, and lo! within a week walked with his father’s gait; had smiles for the whole of his small world, and for his mother a memory in each.