"I know it's boring," his mother went on, "very boring to have a mother who tries to interfere with a young man's natural amusements. I don't a bit want to be a spoil-sport, but you know how horrified father would be if he thought you were gambling. Luckily I was able to help you out with that money. But I shan't always be able to help you, and I do so want you to help yourself."
Mary had tried not to bring Richard into the conversation in order to make a comparison. But before she could stop herself the comparison was made.
"Richard!" Geoffrey echoed, flushing. "I've never pretended to compete with him. And anyway you wouldn't expect a soldier on active service to have the temptations I have at the 'Varsity."
"What a mean remark! Unworthy of a brother!"
Geoffrey shifted back from his left leg to his right.
"Whatever I do and whatever I say is sure to be wrong," he muttered.
Mary turned away with a sigh. It was not thus she had pictured her second son at eighteen when ten years ago she had sat in the shade of the mulberry tree at High Corner, during that first delicious summer of their possession, and watched him turning somersaults on the bright lawn. Then her only fear for Geoffrey was that the blood might rush to his head from the energy of his exercise. How foolish an apprehension that seemed compared with the present dread for Geoffrey's future!
Later in that month Queen Victoria died, and on the gray February morning when the funeral procession crossed London Mary found herself kept by the press of people from reaching Grosvenor Place, where Jemmie had been lent a window to watch with his family the passing of a great period, the end of a mighty reign, the obsequies of an august and noble woman. She turned aside into Hyde Park, vexed with herself for making a muddle of the occasion; but when she was out of the crowd and walking in comfort under the bare trees she was glad that she had not succeeded in reaching Grosvenor Place, for out of the gray air beyond the fume of gray boughs sounded the lament of Chopin's Funeral March, not as if it was being played by mortal instruments, but like a coronach wailed by remote winds, a threnody uttered by unimaginable waves.
Mary looked round her. There was no longer a human being in sight; there was only tree after tree in audience of that melodious lamentation. For a while her fancy was caught by the picture of that grave pageant moving across London to the music of those poignant cadences. Her mind went back to a year or two ago when she had seen the Queen driving along Kensington High Street, a little old woman in black nodding to right and left in acknowledgment of her subjects' welcome. Now that little old woman in black was being borne on a gun-carriage, nothing left of her domination save the orb and scepter upon the coffin in which she lay dead. The funeral strains of Chopin died away, and their place was taken by the heavier grief of Handel's Dead March, so solemn that one seemed to hear above the crash of cymbals the tread of mourning emperors and kings. Mary felt it was wrong of her not to have made certain of beholding the procession, that she had no business to be standing here alone among the trees. She started to hurry forward in the direction of the music, so that above the crowd she might catch a glimpse of the plumes and helmets and perhaps even of the white pall itself. It began to seem of the greatest importance that she should have this glimpse, for she was thinking that without it she should miss the most important public event in her time. To-day would surely be a landmark in time to which everything in contemporary life would be referred. She must hurry. Already Handel's solemn beat was becoming muffled and dying into silence beyond the Marble Arch. This silence was tremendous. She hurried on, panting for breath. There at last was that endless mourning edge of black spectators, and there above them the plumes and the helmets of the cavalry flashing and rippling. Had the coffin passed? Once more the silence was rent by the plangent strains of Chopin.
Mary turned away from the people and the procession; with all the air behind her melodious with grief, she sought again the holy quiet of the bare trees. A little child, too young for the pomps of death, was running after a gay ball, while a Dandie Dinmont jumped in circles round her barking. In a moment Mary was walking under these very trees, herself of twenty years ago! How little they had changed, but herself how much. The melody in which at first she had found the expression of a world's sorrow for the death of a Queen, now rose with its yearning and fell with its despair upon her own life. It was identified with herself and so much the more poignant in consequence. It no longer expressed a nation's grief, but voiced instead all the regrets for what might have befallen herself. She was back again among these trees twenty-one years ago with Mac. It was a month later than this, she reminded herself, and although the trees were just as bare, the crocuses were in full bloom then. Yes, Mac was barking there beside her, and children were running after brightly painted balls. Still that wailing of the Funeral March! What did twenty years ago matter now? What did they count for now? More sharply sad, more passionately wistful in one supreme melodious sigh the refrain, seeking to express an incommunicable grief, died away into silence. If only Richard had not been ordered abroad! He would have been with her to-day. He would have waited for her this morning. Richard was not like Geoffrey and Muriel, not so forgetful of his mother as they were. Yet perhaps she was unfair to her younger children. Perhaps, in her devotion to Richard, she had let them understand too well that she cared more deeply for him than for them. It might be her own fault if they were forgetful. And ten years ago she had not been fair to Jemmie. She had a great deal for which to blame herself. From to-day onward she would think more about other people and not be so ready to blame them, when it was she herself who was at fault. This was a solemn day in the history of England. She would try to make it a solemn day in the history of herself.