Their way lay down through the woods where Helen and Frank had met a month ago, and the gracious influence of springtime had gone steadily forward with the great yearly miracle of the renewal of life. The green that had then hung mist-like round the trees was now formed and definite leaf, exquisitely tender and clear, and in this early morning hour shining with the moisture and dews of night. Daffodils still lingered in sheltered places and the delicate wood-anemone flushed faintly in the thickets. Below the chalk-stream, where Martin last summer had spent that hour of self-revelation, was brimful from bank to bank of hurrying translucent water, which combed the subaqueous weeds and turned to topazes the yellow pebbles and into heaps of pearl the beds of chalk that flashed beneath the water. But this morning he was heavy-eyed and clogged of brain; he felt that somebody else was seeing these things, that somebody else was putting foot in front of foot, while he himself had dwindled to a mere pin-point set in the centre of a great lump of hot metal which filled his head. Sometimes this body that was once his felt sudden flushes of heat, sometimes it shivered for no reason. Then, after an interminable walk, so it seemed to him, they turned through the church-yard and went up the gravel path that ran to join the carriage sweep in front of the vicarage door. And, in spite of all, it was with a wonderful sense of coming home that Martin saw the grey creeper-covered walls again, the long box-hedge, and the croquet-lawn wet and shining with dew in the sun.
“I’ll wait out here while you see my father,” said he. “Perhaps you would tell Helen I am here.” And he sat down all of a heap on a garden seat.
This tired, spiritless boy was so utterly unlike Martin that his uncle felt suddenly anxious.
“Are you feeling bad, Martin?” he asked. “Do you feel faint? Hadn’t you better come indoors?”
“Oh, no. I shall be better when I’ve rested a minute. But my head aches so. Lord, it gets worse every minute.”
Lord Flintshire left him and went straight to Mr. Challoner’s study, where he was at work.
“Good-morning, Sidney,” he said. “I have come over with Martin, who wants to see you. I also want you to see him; but we can talk of that afterwards. Now, is the doctor in the house? Martin is not at all well. He looks to me very ill. He——“
But at that word there was no longer any thought of “talking of that afterwards.” All that was human and tender, all that was loving, all that there was of “father” in Mr. Challoner sprang to that call.
“Dear lad, where is he?” he said. “Yes; the doctor is with Clara now. He will be out in a minute. But where is Martin? I must go to him.”
Lord Flintshire just laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder.