"You are a viper!" said Leonard, "and you always were a viper. Tell my wife—when she is well enough to hear reason—that I am not going to be sat upon by her, or her toady; and that as she is going to spend her winter dissolved in tears for Mr. Hamleigh's death, I shall spend mine in South America, with Jack Vandeleur."
Three days later his arrangements were all made for leaving Cornwall. Captain Vandeleur was very glad to go with him, upon what he, Jack, pleasantly called "reciprocal terms," Mr. Tregonell paying all expenses as a set-off against his friend's cheerful society. There was no false pride about Poker Vandeleur; no narrow-minded dislike to being paid for. He was so thoroughly assured as to the perfect equitableness of the transaction.
On the morning he left Mount Royal, Mr. Tregonell went into the nursery to bid his son good-bye. He contrived, by some mild artifice, to send the nurse on an errand; and while she was away, strained the child to his breast, and hugged and kissed him with a rough fervour which he had never before shown. The boy quavered a little, and his lip drooped under that rough caress—and then the clear blue eyes looked up and saw that this vehemence meant love, and the chubby arms clung closely round the father's neck.
"Poor little beggar!" muttered Leonard, his eyes clouded with tears. "I wonder whether I shall ever see him again. He might die—or I—there is no telling. Hard lines to leave him for six months on end—but"—with a suppressed shudder—"I should go mad if I stayed here."
The nurse came back, and Leonard put the child on his rocking-horse, which he had left reluctantly at the father's entrance, and left the nursery without another word. In the corridor he lingered for some minutes—now staring absently at the family portraits—now looking at the door of his wife's room. He had been occupying a bachelor room at the other end of the house since her illness.
Should he force an entrance to that closed chamber—defy Jessie Bridgeman, and take leave of his wife?—the wife whom, after the bent of his own nature, he had passionately loved. What could he say to her? Very little, in his present mood. What would she say to him? There was the rub. From that pale face—from those uplifted eyes—almost as innocent as the eyes that had looked at him just now—he shrank in absolute fear.
At the last moment, after he had put on his overcoat, and when the dog-cart stood waiting for him at the door, he sat down and scribbled a few hasty lines of farewell.
"I am told you are too ill to see me, but cannot go without one word of good-bye. If I thought you cared a rap for me, I should stay; but I believe you have set yourself against me because of this man's death, and that you will get well all the sooner for my being far away. Perhaps six months hence, when I come back again—if I don't get killed out yonder, which is always on the cards—you may have learnt to feel more kindly towards me. God knows I have loved you as well as ever man loved woman—too well for my own happiness. Good-bye. Take care of the boy; and don't let that little viper, Jessie Bridgeman, poison your mind against me."
"Leonard! are you coming to-day or to-morrow?" cried Jack Vandeleur's stentorian voice from the hall. "We shall lose the train at Launceston, if you don't look sharp."
Thus summoned, Leonard thrust his letter into an envelope, directed it to his wife, and gave it to Daniel, who was hovering about to do due honour to his master's departure—the master for whose infantine sports he had made his middle-aged back as the back of a horse, and perambulated the passages on all-fours, twenty years ago—the master who seemed but too likely to bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, judging by the pace at which he now appeared to be travelling along the road to ruin.