Through all those weeks of uncertainty Jack was perpetually punished by Mr. Lane for inattention, for disobedience, for neglected tasks, for unlearnt lessons, for bad spelling, for saying that two and three made seven, and that Caractacus was Julius Cæsar’s brother. The child’s thoughts were far away on the big green rollers of the ocean on which the vessel which bore his friend homeward was rocking and panting. What sort of weather was it? were the winds kind and the waves gentle? were the hot calms he had read of very trying? did Harry suffer when the ship pitched? Those were the questions he was always asking himself, and to which he could have no answer; and he began to grow thin and pale and seemed a hopelessly naughty and unteachable little boy to Mr. Lane, who could beat nothing whatever into his head, and who, being a very conscientious person, wrote to Hurstmanceaux that he feared he should be obliged to relinquish his charge.
“Don’t encourage the duke in his fancies for Africa, Mr. Lane, or we shall have him Africa mad like them all, and running off to Cecil Rhodes,” his mother said once jestingly to his tutor; and although that gentleman was not used to smart ladies and their way of talking au bout des levres, he understood that the subject of the Black Continent was disagreeable to her. But the time came when she was forced to think about Africa herself.
One day, rather early in the forenoon, when she was alone, they brought in to her the card of Lord Inversay. She was extremely astonished and somewhat embarrassed. Harry’s father had never set foot in her house—she did not even know him to speak to; he had always obstinately avoided both her and her husband; he was poor and unfashionable, a man seldom seen in the smart world, and who lived almost all the year round on his estates on the Border.
For the moment she was inclined not to receive him, then curiosity conquered the vague apprehension which moved her. Moreover, she recollected with a chill that the newspapers had spoken of Harry as returning home; was it possible that he had sent her a message?
Inversay entered her presence without ceremony; he was a weary-looking man about sixty, and the expression of his face was cold and greatly troubled; he declined with a gesture her invitation to a seat beside her, and continued standing. She looked at him with the sense of apprehension weighing more heavily upon her.
“To what am I indebted?” she began.
“Madam,” said Inversay very coldly, though his voice was husky and almost inaudible, “I bring you a request from my son; he has come home to die.”
“To die? Harry?”
She grew very pale; there were genuine horror and emotion in the cry, if there was also some personal terror of a baser kind; dying men are so garrulous sometimes!
She was not unprepared for such a statement, but its clear and hard expression, as of an unalterable fact, gave her a great shock.