Markham did not find that his mother divined what he wanted to say with her usual promptitude. “I am afraid Winterbourn is in a bad way,” he said at length, moving uneasily from one foot to the other, and avoiding her eye.
“Do you mean that there is anything serious—dangerous? Good heavens!” cried Lady Markham, now fully roused, “I hope she is not going to bring that man to die here.”
“That’s just what I have been thinking. It would be decidedly awkward.”
“Oh, awkward is not the word,” cried Lady Markham, with a sudden vision of all the inconveniences: her pretty house turned upside down—though it was not hers, but his—a stop put to everything—the flight of her guests in every direction—herself detained and separated from all her social duties. “You take it very coolly,” she said. “You must write and say it is impossible in the circumstances.”
“Can’t,” said Markham. “They must have started by this time. They are to travel slowly—to husband his strength.”
“To husband——! Telegraph, then! Good heavens! Markham, don’t you see what a dreadful nuisance—how impossible in every point of view.”
“Come,” he said, with a return of his more familiar tone. “There’s no evidence that he means to die here. I daresay he won’t, if he can help it, poor beggar! The telegraph is as impossible as the post. We are in for it, mammy. Let’s hope he’ll pull through.”
“And if he doesn’t, Markham!”
“That will be—more awkward still,” he said. Markham was not himself: he shuffled from one foot to another, and looked straight before him, never glancing aside with those keen looks of understanding which made his insignificant countenance interesting. His mother was, what mothers too seldom are, his most intimate friend; but he did not meet her eye. His hands were thrust into his pockets, his shoulders up to his ears. At last a faint and doubtful gleam broke over his face. He burst into a sudden chuckle—one of those hoarse brief notes of laughter which were peculiar to him. “By Jove! it would be poetic justice,” he said.
Lady Markham showed no inclination to laughter. “Is there nothing we can do?” she cried.