The chaise conveying Mr. Grenville from Oxford to Compton was, unknown to Tristram, but a few miles in advance of him as he trotted along the frosty Berkshire lanes that afternoon, revolving in his mind the points in his tract on "The Church the Home of the Poor," of which he had left the proofs with Horatia—proofs which he was going to reclaim before he left next week for a "missionary tour" in Northamptonshire on business connected with the Tracts.
Last Christmas, when he had come to think over his afternoon at Compton, he knew that he would rather not see Horatia often. And a gradual abstention would have been possible, though a little awkward, but the Rector had insisted so much on the cheering effect of his visits, and the necessity for Horatia of some outside interest that, as always where she was concerned, he allowed his own feelings to be overridden. This was not the time to consider himself, when she was in a situation so poignantly pathetic, and when, for the first time in his life, he was really able to be of some use to her. That there should be any talk in the neighbourhood about his going to the Rectory seemed very unlikely, seeing that it had been a second home to him since boyhood. Had he suddenly kept away, there might have been something to talk about. And that there should be any wrong impression left upon her mind was quite unthinkable after he had once seen her. Never, in her teasing days, had she seemed so remote as now in her kindness, and her sadness and her motherhood. Nearly always, when he got back to Oxford, one or other of the different strands of pain would ache almost unbearably, but since the call to arms in July, and still more since the forging of weapons was begun in September, this great interest which she shared with him had made things easier for him. His going out there was no longer an emotional strain, but almost a soldier's visit to a comrade at an outpost, woman though she was. And this was indeed the spirit in which he rode out to her to-day to reclaim his proofs.
But Mr. Grenville, blowing his nose very hard, met him in the hall. "Horatia is greatly distressed," he said huskily. "She has had sad news from France. I've only just got back myself and heard it. That child—but there, I think you had better go in to her."
In the dining-room, her head on the table, which was strewn with sewing materials, Horatia was crying as if her heart would break.
"It is poor little Claude-Edmond," she said between her sobs. "He's dead ... poor darling ... poor dear little boy..." And she broke into fresh weeping.
"Dead!" exclaimed Tristram horrified. "Emmanuel's son—that little fellow! How..."
She could give him no answer for a moment, and in that pause, rent with sobbing, he knew without acknowledging it that the sight of her grief meant immeasurably more to him than its cause. He could not bear to see her cry!
After a moment she raised her head and dabbed at her eyes, and lifted them, all reddened and swollen, to his.
"You remember him, Tristram—such a dear little boy, so solemn and polite? He was riding in the Bois de Boulogne a few days ago when his horse took fright, and he was thrown—against a tree ... He only lived a few hours.... O Tristram, when I think ... and he was such a comfort to me once ... and they say he asked for me ... I can't bear it!"
And during this short recital of that almost intolerable tragedy, a child's death, every vestige of colour ebbed from Tristram's face. Before she had ended he had turned it from her.