So Duffham set himself to speak out. He had said he would, if ever the opportunity came. Reverting to what had happened some nine or more years ago, he told her that in his opinion Sir Geoffry had never recovered it: that the trouble had so fixed itself upon him as to have worked insensibly upon his bodily health.
“Self-reproach and disappointment were combined, Lady Chavasse; for there’s no doubt that the young lady was very dear to him,” concluded Duffham. “And there are some natures that cannot pick up again after such a blow.”
She was staring at Duffham with open eyes, not understanding.
“You do not mean to say that—that the disappointment about her has killed Sir Geoffry?”
“My goodness, no!” cried Duffham, nearly laughing. “Men are made of tougher stuff than to die of the thing called love, Lady Chavasse. What is it Shakespeare says? ‘Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.’ There is no question but that Sir Geoffry has always had an inherent tendency to delicacy of constitution,” he continued more seriously: “my partner Layne told me so. It was warded off for a time, and he grew into a strong, hearty man: it might perhaps have been warded off for good. But the blight—as you aptly express it, Lady Chavasse—came: and perhaps since then the spirit has not been able to maintain its own proper struggle for existence—in which lies a great deal, mind you; and now that the original weakness has shown itself again, he cannot shake it off.”
“But—according to that—he is dying of the blight?”
“Well—in a sense, yes. If you like to put it so.”
Her lips grew white. There rose before her mind that one hour of bitter agony in her lifetime and her son’s, when he had clasped his pleading hands on hers, and told her in a voice hoarse with its bitter pain and emotion that if she decided against him he could never know happiness again in this world: that to part from one to whom he was bound by sweet endearment, by every tie that ought to bind man to woman, would be like parting with life. Entrenched in her pride, she had turned a deaf ear, and rejected his prayer: and now there had come of it what had come. Yes, as Lady Chavasse sat there, she had the satisfaction of knowing that the work was hers.
“A warmer climate?—would it restore him?” she exclaimed, turning her hot eyes on Mr. Duffham.
“Had it been likely to do so, Lady Chavasse, I should have sent him to one long ago.”