Geoffrey made meteoric appearances at Discombe during those quiet summer months, and his presence seemed to make everybody uncomfortable. There was a restlessness—a suppressed fever about him which made sensitive people nervous. Dearly though his mother loved him, and gladly as she welcomed his reappearance upon the scene of her life, she was always fluttered and anxious while he was under her roof.
His leave expired early in July, but instead of joining his regiment, which had returned to England, and was now quartered at York, he sent in his papers, without telling his mother or anybody else what he was doing, and he would not reconsider his decision when asked to do so by his colonel. He told his mother one morning at breakfast, in quite a casual way, that he had left the army.
"Oh, Geoffrey!" she exclaimed, with a shocked look.
"I hope you are not sorry. I thought it would please you for me to be my own master, able to spend more of my life with you."
"Dear Geoffrey, I am very glad on that account; but I'm afraid it is a selfish gladness. It was better for you to have a profession. Everybody told me so years ago, when I was so grieved at your going into the army."
"That is a way everybody has of saying smooth things. Well, mother, I am no longer a soldier. India was pleasant enough—there was a smack of adventure, a possibility of fighting—but I could not have endured garrison life in an English town. I would rather mope at home."
"Why should you mope, Geoff?"
"Yes, why? I am free to go east, west, north, and south. I suppose there need be no moping now?"
"But you will be often at home, won't you, dear? Or else I shall be no gainer by your leaving the army."
"Yes, I will be here as often, and as much as—as I can bear it."