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Title: A reversion to type
Author: E. M. Delafield
Release date: August 1, 2024 [eBook #74166]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The MacMillan Company, 1923
Credits: Hannah Wilson, Emmanuel Ackerman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A REVERSION TO TYPE ***
A REVERSION TO TYPE
By E. M. DELAFIELD
Tension
Humbug
The Optimist
The Heel of Achilles
A REVERSION TO TYPE
BY
E. M. DELAFIELD
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1923
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Copyright, 1923,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and printed. Published September, 1923.
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
PART I
A REVERSION TO TYPE
I
If the interior of Squires was revealing, it was quite unconsciously
so. Lady Aviolet, one felt sure, was serenely unaware of the need of
self-expression that in 1905 was called “modern,” and had she been
aware of it, the necessity would not have translated itself through the
medium of artistic surroundings.
The original Squires had been burnt to the ground during the Chartist
riots, rebuilt, and added to until the square grey mass of flint showed
odd, irregular excrescences on every side.
Lower than the house, and surrounded by red brick walls that were
older, lay the square stable-yard, surmounted by a clock tower. There
had always been hunters in the Aviolet stables, and hounds had been
domiciled there two generations earlier.
The gardens lay behind the house. In the front were smooth slopes of
grass, a croquet lawn, trim gravelled paths and groups of ornamental
shrubs. A square, open space of gravel beneath twin flights of stone
steps topped by an openwork stone balustrade wound away between the
ornamental shrubs, and eventually became the avenue that ran down the
mile length of the park.
The high road lay outside the park gates, white with thick, chalky
dust. Wayfarers could see the chimneys through the screening mass of
elms, beech trees, and occasional yews.
The windows were better guarded, and could neither be overlooked, nor
overlook.
Dr. Lucian, waiting in the hall, did not look out of the windows, but
gazed round him, the familiar interior taking a new value as he gave it
an attention that he had not given it for years.
The furniture was of heavy Spanish mahogany, the large armchairs
upholstered in a blue-grey tapestry that was repeated in the long
curtains dividing the hall from the approach to the smoking-room,
library, and gun-room. The high, narrow black oak mantelshelf bore five
admirable specimens of _famille verte_.
On the panelled walls hung portraits, all of them rather bad, of
Aviolets, in heavy gilt frames. A large writing-table gleamed with
silver and dark-green leather with gilt lettering on it, and a smaller
table held newspapers and periodicals in orderly array. China stood in
glass-fronted cabinets against the walls, and pot plants were grouped
on either side of the oak staircase. There were no books, except the
four that were all bound alike in loose green leather covers: “Postal
Guide,” “Whittaker’s Almanac,” “Bradshaw,” and “A.B.C.,” standing
together in a little green stand.
Besides the tapestry curtains, a further door opened out of the hall
and Lucian amused himself by conjecturing what lay behind it. He knew
that it was Lady Aviolet’s morning-room, but he had never been inside
it.
He guessed at pink chintz, rather shabby now, and a writing-table
fitted with innumerable pigeon-holes, laden with papers, leaflets,
silver photograph frames, and little scarlet woolly garments stabbed
together by wooden knitting-needles. A feeble water-colour painting of
two young boys probably hung above the table--Ford and Jim Aviolet.
He felt sure that a great many smaller water-colours covered the walls,
and that a draped easel set across a corner supported a representation
of some such picture as Holman Hunt’s “Light of the World” or Watts’
“Love and Death.” There would be three or four little tables crowded
with silver, and silver-gilt trifles, photographs of relatives, and
a number of silver vases filled with flowers. A looking-glass would
hang over the fireplace, and on the marble mantelshelf would be an
ornamental clock, out of order, and a number of other photographs in
silver or mosaic-work frames. A revolving bookcase might possibly
stand in the middle of the room, containing books on gardening, one or
two volumes of Kipling, a work of Whyte Melville’s, and some standard
poetry.
No animal, he thought, would be allowed inside the morning-room,
although Lady Aviolet was fond of Pug, and he lay in the hall now,
panting and snorting. No one was fond of the black Persian cat, except
Ford, to whom she belonged, but the black Persian cat, with scrupulous
fairness, was also allowed to lie in the hall, like Pug.
Lady Aviolet, when she hurried in at last, even said, “Well, Puss,” as
she went past, but she said it without conviction.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Dr. Lucian. I wanted to find some
old illustrated papers to amuse my little grandson ... you know what
children are like, in bed. You’ve not seen little Cecil yet?”
“No.”
“Not a bit like poor Jim.”
She sighed--a tribute which the doctor supposed to be extorted
by convention, since no one aware of the peculiarities that had
characterized the _mauvais sujet_ of the Aviolet family could
reasonably wish to see his memory perpetuated in his boy. Perhaps,
however, the Aviolets did not wish little Cecil to resemble his
mother, either. Dr. Lucian had not seen Mrs. Jim Aviolet, but he
knew that Jim’s marriage abroad had been looked upon at the time as
the crowning folly of a career that had been thickly peppered with
follies throughout. Nor had Jim’s death redeemed Jim’s life, although
it had the effect--to the doctor’s mind wholly desirable--of causing
Sir Thomas Aviolet to offer a home to his daughter-in-law and only
grandchild.
They had arrived from Ceylon a month earlier, and, so far as Dr. Lucian
was aware, he was the first person in the neighbourhood whose curiosity
was to be gratified by an introduction.
He followed Lady Aviolet’s squat, heavy-footed figure up the stairs and
along passages so thickly carpeted that their footfalls were inaudible.
Passing through a green baize-covered door, they passed into a chillier
region of stairs covered with oil-cloth and pitch-pine cupboards
redolent of polish. A pink-sprigged paper covered the walls instead of
oak panelling.
“You’ve not seen the nurseries for many years; I think not since Ford
and Jim were up here?”
“Not since they both had measles. Jim was only ten years old.”
The doctor remembered that earlier occasion, and his own preference
for the scapegrace Jim who had flatly refused to take his medicine
while his elder brother Ford, far less ill, had lain with exemplary
patience working out chess-problems in bed, and obediently swallowing
nauseous draughts.
Lady Aviolet knocked at the door of the room that had been the night
nursery, and went in.
“Here is Dr. Lucian, Rose--my daughter-in-law.”
Mrs. Aviolet did not look more than four or five and twenty, built on
a large scale, and with something of the slouching awkwardness of an
overgrown schoolgirl. Her hair, which was untidy, was a very light
brown in front and yellow where it was turned up at the back, and
her eyes, big and brown, had beautifully upturned black lashes. Deep
dimples showed at the corners of her pretty mouth, and her teeth were
white and even. Her worst point might have been her skin, but it was
glaringly evident, even to the doctor’s masculine perceptions, that she
made lavish and unskilful use of cosmetics.
They looked, at Squires, as much out of place as did her
clothes--frilled where Lady Aviolet’s were plain, papery, in spite of
their blackness, where the other’s were heavy and substantial.
She gave Dr. Lucian a large and very capable-looking white hand,
heavily laden with rings.
“How d’you do? This is my little boy--he’s got a chill.”
The little boy sitting up in bed was very like her, with the same brown
eyes, fair hair, and deep dimples, but with a look of fragility. There
was nothing in his appearance to recall any of the Aviolets. He was not
shy, but eager to talk and to answer questions.
“We hope to get some colour into his face presently,” Lady Aviolet
observed. “You know what these Eastern children are.”
She looked at the little boy with dissatisfaction.
“He’s quite healthy,” said Mrs. Aviolet shortly.
She began to give an account of his health, speaking rather defiantly.
“Yes. Yes. I’ll just take his temperature. Put this under your tongue
and _don’t_ talk until I take it away again.”
Little Cecil opened his mouth and received the thermometer and then
began to laugh, looking round him with big, mischievous eyes.
The doctor held up a warning finger.
“Be quiet, Cecil,” said his grandmother sharply. “Didn’t you hear what
Dr. Lucian said?”
“Just you be quiet, Ces,” coaxed his mother. She looked down at him,
stroking his forehead.
Lady Aviolet moved to the window. “He’s spoilt,” she said to the
doctor, in what she evidently supposed to be an inaudible aside. “We’re
looking for a good nursery governess. Just think--seven years old and
can’t read yet!”
“When does your son get back?”
“He is back, I am glad to say. It’s difficult to know what to do----”
she broke off. “I’d like you to examine Cecil, and see if you think
he’s really delicate. I believe they were in some healthy part, up in
the hills, but of course it isn’t the same thing as being properly
brought up in England.”
The doctor went back to the bedside, made friends with the little boy,
and accomplished a very fairly general examination.
“We shall have you up and about again in a couple of days. How do you
like England?”
“Very much indeed, thank you. I like the garden, only I’m not allowed
to pick the flowers, and there are no monkeys.”
“I’ve got a monkey. Would you like to come and see it?”
“Yes, please.”
The little boy looked delighted.
“A dear little fellow,” said the doctor, as Lady Aviolet took him
downstairs again. “I don’t think there’s any need to be uneasy about
him at all.”
He repeated the assurance to Cecil’s mother, who had followed them out
of the room.
“I knew he was all right. There’s never been anything wrong with him;
and this is simply a passing chill--and no wonder, after the heat in
the Red Sea.”
“No wonder at all,” the doctor agreed. “He’ll be all right in a day or
two.”
Rose Aviolet thanked him, but it struck him that her mother-in-law was
still dissatisfied. When they were once more in the hall, and Rose had
returned to the nursery, she spoke.
“What do you think of the general health of the child?”
“Excellent, I should think. Heart, lungs, all the rest of it, in very
sound order I should say.” He felt faintly surprised at her anxiety. In
all the years that he had known her, Lady Aviolet had never struck him
as the sort of woman to indulge in foolish, maternal terrors.
“Of course, a tropical child’s first visit to England is always liable
to cause a few alarms,” he said tentatively.
“Oh, I’m not nervous. His mother has some idea of his not being fit for
school, but as Sir Thomas says, that’s all nonsense. Anyway there’s
more than a year before we need think about _that_.”
“He seems intelligent, but I suppose he’s not had the usual chances of
education, if he’s always been in the East.”
“He can’t read or write, but perhaps one couldn’t expect it. But he
never seems to have played any games, poor little chap, which is a much
more serious disadvantage. As Sir Thomas says, boys can never begin
games too young.”
The doctor was not sufficiently in sympathy with Sir Thomas’s dictum to
make any reply.
“I am afraid,” said Lady Aviolet in a hesitating way, rather as though
the words were forced from her under the compulsion of some unusually
strong feeling. “I am afraid that the little boy is going to be a
disappointment to Sir Thomas. He is so utterly unlike the Aviolets.”
Dr. Lucian wondered whether she did not rather mean he was so exactly
like his mother. The few moments that he had spent in the night nursery
had served strongly to confirm the popular verdict that the Aviolets
were not pleased with their newly seen daughter-in-law.
“You remember poor Jim, of course. Cecil isn’t in the least like him.”
The doctor inwardly congratulated Cecil on so desirable an escape.
“You were so very kind at the time of all our trouble with poor Jim
that I really do want your opinion about the boy. Of course, one hopes
that Ford may marry, but meanwhile, this little boy is the only Aviolet
of the younger generation, and it does seem so very unfortunate that he
should have had the dreadful disadvantage of being brought up abroad.”
The doctor knew that Lady Aviolet would never say what she really
meant, which was “the dreadful disadvantage of being brought up abroad
by a mother who cannot possibly be described as a lady”; but her grey,
prominent eyes, that rather resembled those of a sheep, begged him to
take into consideration the whole of the facts that perturbed her,
without requiring what she would have regarded as the impropriety of
describing them.
“If he may be allowed to come and see us, my sister will be delighted,
and it will give me an opportunity of seeing rather more of him and
judging as to his fitness for school.”
“Oh, there’s no question about that,” said Lady Aviolet rather quickly.
“I’m sure Rose will quite see reason about that, and of course Cecil
must go to school. The fact is, there’s a tendency that makes me
anxious--it’s so dreadfully un-English. The poor little fellow doesn’t
always speak the truth.”
Lucian looked at Lady Aviolet, gravely considering her troubled,
stupid, high-bred face. He could gauge accurately the weight that
she attached to the accusation by the mere fact that she had brought
herself to put it into words.
“Whatever poor Jim’s faults, he was truthful. And you can imagine what
it means to Sir Thomas--the soul of truth and honour--to find that this
unfortunate little Cecil doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the word.”
“Has he been frightened--punished too severely, or anything like that?”
“No, it’s not that sort of thing. Sad though that might be, one could
understand it. No, the fact is that he--romances. I don’t know what
else to call it. And he doesn’t seem to know when he’s doing it--that’s
the dreadful part of it.”
“He is highly imaginative, I suppose?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Lady Aviolet in a resentful voice. “I was
an imaginative child myself. My next sister and I were always playing
with dolls, and making them go through imaginary adventures--shipwrecks
and fires, and all sorts of things--but I never remember being unable
to distinguish between reality and pretence. If either of us had told a
story, we should have been whipped, but I never remember such a thing
happening.”
“I am not sure that whipping is the best method of treating a child
that doesn’t speak the truth. It may only frighten----”
“I know those are the modern ideas,” said Lady Aviolet, seeming rather
piteously eager to demonstrate her readiness to accept views that were
new to her, and which the doctor knew that she therefore distrusted
instinctively.
“It was Ford’s idea that we might consult you about it. It’s not the
way we were brought up, if you’ll forgive me saying so--a naughty child
was a naughty child, and a sick one was a sick one--but Ford says that
everyone now has this idea that the mind and the body are very closely
concerned, and react on one another. I daresay there may be something
in it.”
“Everything, I should say.”
“And Rose--my daughter-in-law--speaks of this trouble as a _kink_. She
says it’s always been there--that little Cecil’s word has never been
reliable. I don’t really know whether she quite realizes what a sad and
shocking thing it is. Of course, her own upbringing---- However, that’s
neither here nor there. Of course, she spoils him dreadfully.”
“A risk that all only children must run,” the doctor reminded her.
“I don’t know. Ford was an only child for nearly five years, and he
wasn’t spoilt.”
There was a sort of obtuse _naïveté_ about Lady Aviolet’s habit of
referring any question to her own individual experience that somehow
detracted from the glaring certainty that her experience was of a
singularly limited kind.
“It was my maid who first spoke to me about Cecil--poor Dawson. You
know how devoted she is to us all, and always has been, and I always
thought that Jim, if anything, was her favourite of the two boys. So
you can imagine that she wouldn’t be very likely to look for faults
in Jim’s boy. But she’s been looking after him till we’ve found a
governess, and almost from the very first evening he started telling
her the most wonderful stories. About things he’d done--or rather
_hadn’t_ done--in Ceylon. He told her he always rode on an elephant,
and had little native children to pick up his toys, and I don’t know
what else--all pure invention, of course.”
“That might have been in the spirit of boasting!”
“But how dreadful! Why should he boast?”
Dr. Lucian shrugged his shoulders.
“Besides, he stuck to it afterwards. _Nothing_ would make him own that
it wasn’t true. Dawson tried to make him say he’d just been inventing,
and I asked him about it myself. But he kept on saying: ‘It is true, it
is true.’ It really seemed as though the child had made himself believe
in his own invention.”
“Very imaginative children may sometimes be really incapable of
distinguishing fancy from fact.”
“Then all I can say is, they’re not normal,” said Lady Aviolet with
decision.
She looked very unhappy, and it was evident that by “normal” she really
meant sane.
“Is there anything else--besides the boasting, I mean?”
“Anything else? I don’t know what more you want,” said poor Lady
Aviolet, with a certain tartness in her manner. “He is always telling
us about things that never happened, and it’s perfectly impossible to
depend on his account of anything. And if there’s one thing Sir Thomas
finds it hard to forgive, it’s any least little want of openness. He is
dreadfully disturbed about it.”
“And your son?”
“Ford hasn’t seen as much of him as we have, besides he’s been away on
business since they came. But of course Ford will take him in hand.
It’s my one hope. But mercifully, poor Jim left the guardianship of his
boy to Ford--jointly with Rose, of course.”
“She is very young?”
“Only twenty-five. She wasn’t nineteen when this child was born. It was
the most foolish marriage poor Jim could have made, but one knows what
these sea-voyages are. She was going out to the East, and they were
engaged before they reached Colombo. Naturally, we were told nothing
about it until it was all over. Poor Jim!”
Dr. Lucian felt quite as much inclined to say, “Poor Rose!” Jim Aviolet
had been drinking hard long before he was sent out to a tea-plantation
in Ceylon, and the doctor saw no reason to suppose that the East had
improved him.
“Of course,” said Lady Aviolet, “Jim had his failings. You, of all
people, know what we went through with him. But he was never, never
anything but straight--I--I can’t imagine any Aviolet being anything
else.”
The range of Lady Aviolet’s powers of imagination had never seemed to
the doctor to be anything but restricted in the extreme, but his own
would not have included anything so unthinkable as the coupling of
any Aviolet with an absence of blatant, matter-of-fact, unsparing and
uninspired truthfulness of the most literal description. Nevertheless,
he made an exception mentally of Ford, whom he had always judged to be
capable of un-Aviolet-like subtleties. The thought made him say again:
“Is your son at home now?”
“Yes, I’m glad to say he is. Of course, being little Cecil’s guardian,
he has every right to make the child’s upbringing his own affair,
and we quite count on him for advising Rose, who is naturally
inexperienced. She is by way of being rather _clever_, don’t you know,
and of course Ford has always been clever, so I quite hope she’ll
listen to him.”
She spoke rather as though that which she termed cleverness were some
peculiarity which set its victims in a class apart from the rest of
mankind.
“In what sort of way is Mrs. Aviolet clever?” the doctor asked,
mechanically adopting Lady Aviolet’s vocabulary.
“I don’t quite know, but she tells me that she plays the piano, and she
seems fond of reading. I often see her with a book, quite early in the
day--a thing which was unheard of a few years ago, except in the case
of a regular blue-stocking, as we used to call them. If my dear mother
had seen any one of her ten children reading a book before six o’clock
at the very earliest, she would have asked if we couldn’t find anything
to do. But none of us would have thought of doing such a thing. No
Amberly has ever been clever, that I know of. In fact, Sir Thomas and
I have often wondered how Ford turned out clever, because the Aviolets
have none of them ever been in the least odd, either.”
The doctor had so often wondered exactly the same thing, that he could
not resist pursuing the subject.
“I am very much interested in problems of heredity,” he admitted, quite
aware that Lady Aviolet would see no eccentricity in such preoccupation
on the part of a member of the professional classes. “Didn’t an Aviolet
marry a Spaniard a good many generations ago?”
“Yes, indeed, not so very long after the Armada. Sir Basil Aviolet. I
believe he was in Cornwall, seeing some property the family had there
in those days, near Launceston, and he found this girl on the coast
somewhere, and fell in love with her. Of course, she must have been
English on her mother’s side, and her father a Spanish sailor. I
forget her name, but we have a painting of her.”
She indicated the portrait amongst those hanging against the wall.
“It’s difficult to see what the attraction was, but it must have been
very strong, or he could never have been so foolish as to marry her,”
said Lady Aviolet simply.
The Spanish ancestress had not been beautiful. If the presentation
was a faithful one, her long, narrow, wedge-like face had been of a
uniformly brown complexion, her dark eyes set too close together, and
her upper lip of an inordinate length.
“Some of her descendants would seem to have taken after her,” said Dr.
Lucian.
“Yes. Ford is very like this picture. But her own two sons were regular
Aviolets, as it happened. Their portraits are in the dining-room. But I
suppose foreigners are always rather apt to be clever, so perhaps Ford
is a throwback, in that sort of way.”
Widely apart though their respective standpoints for viewing this
phenomenon might be, the doctor had long ago reached the same
conclusion as had Lady Aviolet.
“A Latin mentality allied to a Saxon physique is a combination which
presents some rather interesting contradictions.”
She looked at him quite blankly, and then said with a certain dignity:
“I thoroughly believe in heredity myself. Look at the Amberly nose.”
The doctor did not take the injunction literally. He knew the long,
straight feature, slightly flattened, with small, insensitive nostrils.
He had seen it on Lady Aviolet’s own face, on those of both her sons,
and on the faces of almost all the Grierson-Amberlys living on the
other side of the county.
“Poor little Cecil isn’t in the least like the Aviolets; though,” she
added, with an obvious desire to be just, “he is a good-looking child,
I must say.”
“Very,” said the doctor emphatically.
He had taken a curious fancy to the intelligent, mischievous-looking
little boy, and he was already keenly interested in the perverseness
of imagination that so greatly distressed Cecil’s grandmother.
Abnormalities in psychology were, to the doctor’s way of thinking,
better worth studying than the majority of the books regarded with so
unsympathetic an eye by Lady Aviolet.
Sir Thomas passed through the hall, a tall, broadly-built, elderly man,
with a heavy jowl and expressionless eyes.
“Good-morning, doctor. East wind again to-day.”
“Good-morning. Yes, spring’s late in coming this year. Well, I must be
off.”
The doctor made his farewells, aware that the presence of her husband
would put an immediate end to the inarticulate confidences of Lady
Aviolet.
Driving down the avenue, however, he was overtaken by a slim,
tweed-clad figure advancing through the beech-glades.
“Hullo, Lucian! Which way are you going?”
“Whitebourne.”
“The very thing, if you’ll give me a lift.”
The doctor watched Ford Aviolet spring with great activity on to the
seat of the high dog-cart and adjust himself and his _pince-nez_ with a
series of unconscious, accustomed little gestures.
Ford Aviolet had for the past four or five years expressed at intervals
a fear that his views were daringly democratic, and the doctor, during
a corresponding period, had strongly suspected that he himself was
in use as a practical demonstration of Mr. Aviolet’s socialistic
tendencies.
The idea had never served to add any charm to their intercourse.
“I suppose you’ve been to see the hope of the house?” Ford’s tone was
pensively ironical, as who should hint at inverted commas for the
descriptive phrase of which he had made use.
“Your brother’s little boy? Yes. There’s nothing much wrong
there--he’ll be running about again in a couple of days.”
“You saw his mother?”
“I did.”
“The likeness between them is rather remarkable. The boy hasn’t
anything about him that recalls poor Jim, has he?”
“No, there’s no likeness.”
“Of course, one would have liked the boy to look like an Aviolet, at
least. It’s a disappointment to my father, especially as Cecil will no
doubt inherit Squires one of these days. At least, so poor Jim appears
to have thought.”
There was gentle scorn in Ford Aviolet’s low voice and rather distinct
enunciation.
“If he thought such a thing I wonder he didn’t send his wife and boy
home long ago,” said Dr. Lucian curtly.
“My dear Lucian, you have been in the family councils ever since you
saved Jim’s face over that horrible business of the blacksmith’s girl.
You can hardly suppose that Jim imagined my dear father and mother, to
say nothing of my humble self, would welcome a bouncing young woman
who was barely eighteen on her wedding day, rejoicing in the good old
English name of Smith. My charming sister-in-law has already informed
us with great candour that she has never set foot in a country house
before. The fact, I may add, was almost glaringly obvious.”
The doctor glanced sharply round at Ford. He knew of old that peculiar
lucidity of utterance which he had long ago qualified as a curious and
elaborate emanation of bitterness. It was as uncharacteristic of the
Aviolets as Ford himself was uncharacteristic of his caste.
Physically, he resembled his mother, but his eyes, neither grey nor
obtuse, were long and narrow, very dark-brown, and set close together
under superciliously curved eyebrows. He was clean-shaven, which added
to the youthful appearance of his slight person, standing nearly six
foot high, but narrow-shouldered, and with unusually small and delicate
hands and feet.
“I gather that Rose’s avocations in Ceylon were dancing, making her own
clothes and the child’s, and trying to wheedle money out of Jim for
their preposterous bills whenever he was sufficiently drunk to listen
to her.”
The doctor, as sincerely disgusted by these confidences as any one of
Ford’s own family might have been, continued to maintain silence.
“A man of your profession, Lucian, should be less squeamish at the
sight of other people’s dirty linen,” said Ford mockingly. Then his
tone changed.
“Of course, it’s in abominable taste to discuss my sister-in-law
at all--you’re perfectly right. You must forgive me. The fact is,
the whole business has got on my nerves, and you know the utter
impossibility of discussing any unpleasant situation with my beloved
parents. That generation has such a miraculous capacity for evading the
unpleasant. As a matter of fact, I’m really in hopes of your giving me
some advice about the boy.”
“Your mother told me. Well, get them to allow Cecil to come and have
tea with my sister, and play with the live stock, and see the monkey,
and that’ll give me a chance of having him under observation for a bit.
It’s probably a case of a lively imagination and the company of native
servants.”
“No doubt,” agreed Ford politely; “but it’s an unpleasant peculiarity,
and one would like to eradicate it before the wretched child goes to
school, if only for his own sake. Could you drop me here, Lucian? I
want to speak to the farrier fellow.”
The doctor drove off alone with a distinct sensation of relief.
He had known Ford and Jim Aviolet since their babyhood. His relations
with both had been more than merely professional, for he had covered
the graceless Jim’s tracks on more than one occasion, and Ford, of
later years, had taken pains to demonstrate that he was willing to
accept Dr. Lucian as intellectual affinity rather than as family
physician.
Nevertheless, the doctor, although he had not liked Jim, liked Ford
even less.
II
Rose Aviolet came down to breakfast late, and entered the dining-room
awkwardly. Even at her utmost self-confidence she did not possess the
art of coming into a room, and at Squires she was not self-confident at
all.
The dining-room was large and high, with heavy furniture of Spanish
mahogany, crimson curtains across the embrasures of the bow-windows
and wide, crimson-cushioned sills, and a crimson flock paper against
which hung enormous oil-portraits in gilt frames. On the sideboard
stood massive silver dishes, engraved with the Aviolet crest, each
dish with a little blue flame burning beneath it, and on other, lesser
sideboards were respectively placed the apparatus of tea and coffee,
and a selection of fruit arranged on a dessert service of intrinsically
hideous Crown Derby. A log fire burnt on the open hearth.
Lady Aviolet, squat, grey-haired, dressed in a silk shirt with a
high-boned collar, and a black tweed skirt that showed clumping boots
below it, was opening a pile of letters with deliberation.
She had her back to the windows, and faced Sir Thomas at the other end
of the square table.
“Good-morning, Rose. How is Cecil?”
“He’s much better, thank you. He can get up to-day.”
Rose moved uneasily between her own place at the table and the
sideboard. The procedure at breakfast always embarrassed her.
Was it bad manners to help oneself? _They_ all did so, but then, they
were at home, and Rose, most emphatically, was not. It seemed quite
wrong to let an old gentleman like Sir Thomas get up and wait upon
one....
She placed herself awkwardly in his way, apologised nervously and with
unnecessary laughter, and finally stumbled into her chair, full of
inchoate resentment and confusion.
Sir Thomas said to his wife, as Rose had heard him say every morning
since her own arrival:
“What are the plans for to-day, my dear?”
Lady Aviolet immediately took up a little note-book with silver corners
and a silver pencil attached, and began to flutter the leaves.
“The Marchmonts are coming to tea. Very pleasant neighbours of ours,
Rose; you will like to meet them. General Marchmont, he is, and there
are two unmarried daughters. Poor Mrs. Marchmont is dead, I’m sorry to
say. She was a Mallinson.”
Lady Aviolet paused, as though expecting Rose to say something, but
Rose had nothing to say. Neither the word “Marchmont” nor the word
“Mallinson” conveyed anything to her beyond the mere sound of the
syllables, and she hardly even realised that they could be expected to
convey anything more.
“The Marchmonts will be interested in the new bulbs,” said Lady Aviolet.
“Anything for the station?” Sir Thomas inquired. “The carriage must
meet the two-thirty. Ford is expecting the person from London who
wants to see the house.”
“What person? I hadn’t heard anything about that.”
“Some man who is publishing a book, I believe. He wrote a very civil
letter, and asked if he might see the place and take some photographs
and Ford sees no objection. Surely he asked you about it?”
“I’d forgotten.”
“So long as he looks after the fellow himself, I don’t mind. And he’ll
have to show us what he writes. You can’t trust these liter’y fellows a
yard, I’m told.”
“Why, what could he do?” Rose inquired.
“Oh, you never know. Might put in all sorts of impertinent details
about the family, if he wasn’t watched. But I daresay he’s all right.
Ford’ll look after him.”
“Well, then, the carriage to meet the two-thirty,” said Lady Aviolet.
“There’s a box from the Stores, too, to be fetched. And the Mudie box.
What about sending in the luggage-cart?”
“Yes. That will be all right.”
“Luggage-cart to go this morning, then.” Lady Aviolet wrote again.
“Rose, have you any plans?”
Rose shook her head.
“Thomas, you’re not doing anything?”
“Why, yes, my dear. The bench is sitting to-day. I must go into
Cheriton this morning.”
“Oh, dear!”
Lady Aviolet looked quite confounded.
“That means that Tucker won’t have time to get the carriage cleaned
before this afternoon. He won’t like that.”
“No, no, that would never do.”
“I might drive you in the pony-cart, Thomas.”
“You’d have to wait and I can’t tell how long I might be kept. No, the
lad must drive over, and he can put up the pony at the ‘Angel’ until
I’m ready.”
“Will Tucker be able to spare the boy?”
“He must,” said Sir Thomas firmly.
“Then the pony-cart, and the boy, to be round at ten-thirty sharp.”
“Quarter to eleven is quite time enough.”
“Quarter to eleven, then.”
Lady Aviolet read out from the little book:
“The pony-cart to take you to Cheriton at 10.45, _with_ the boy--and
lunch had better be half an hour later, in case you can get back for
it--the luggage-cart to fetch the Mudie box and the box from the Stores
this morning, and the carriage to meet the 2.30 this afternoon. And I
suppose this person will take the seven o’clock train back to town. I
must find out from Ford. Oh, and the Marchmonts to tea. That’s all, I
think.”
No one contributed any further item to the day’s programme.
Ford made an unobtrusive appearance and uttered his casual morning
greetings with a detached coolness to which Rose, sharply observant,
felt that she herself could never attain.
She could not remember feeling utterly at a loss ever before, except
perhaps on her first day at school, when she was nine years old. But
then she had never before found herself in any atmosphere in the
least like that of Squires. The conversation at meals--there was no
conversation at any other time--was unlike any that she had heard
before.
In Ceylon, Jim had grumbled about the native labour on the plantation,
had told stories circulated on the previous night at the Club, and had
listened readily enough to any items of gossip, generally scandalous,
that his wife might have assimilated from her neighbours.
At Squires, Rose had heard the plans of the coming day discussed, with
minor variations, exactly as they had been discussed that morning,
every day since her arrival.
At lunch, Sir Thomas sometimes reported indignantly that the keeper had
again complained of poachers, and sometimes, also indignantly, that his
agent had suggested that more money should be spent on repairs to farms
or cottages on the estate.
To these observations Lady Aviolet might return a trite ejaculation, to
which no one made any rejoinder.
At tea, the talk was generally of the garden, of gardens belonging to
other people, and of Pug’s taste in cakes and saucers full of milk.
Sometimes people called, but even then the subjects of conversation
did not vary. If Sir Thomas had read the _Times_ before dinner,
as sometimes happened, he would then speak disparagingly of the
Government, although in general terms rather than from the standpoint
of any specific grievance. Ford sometimes made a reply, but more often
he raised his eyebrows and said nothing.
All the evening Lady Aviolet knitted, glancing from time to time at the
clock, and at half-past ten she always said to Rose:
“Well, I daresay you’re ready for bed, my dear. I’m sure I am.”
Then they took silver candlesticks and went upstairs, Rose climbing the
additional flight that led to the night nursery in order that she might
look at the sleeping Cecil before she went to her own large bedroom on
the first floor.
She felt as though she had been for months at Squires, and her heart
sank with a feeling of dismay that was almost physical, as she thought
of remaining here for years.
As usual, she drifted into the hall after breakfast, knowing that
she was not expected to return to the night nursery until the second
housemaid had completed her duties there.
She stood beside one of the smaller inlaid tables, disconsolately
turning over papers and periodicals.
“There is a new number of the _Graphic_, I believe,” said Ford’s voice
behind her.
“Oh, thanks.”
On a sudden impulse she looked up at him, intensifying the liquid
appeal of her big brown eyes almost unconsciously because he was a man,
and young.
“I wish I had more to do, here.”
“Do you? I’m sure my mother would be glad of your help in many ways.”
“She just wouldn’t, then. How could I help her? I don’t know anything
about her sort of things. I can’t even knit.”
“My dear mother’s interests are not solely confined to her worsted
work, I believe,” Ford answered blandly. “She is, for instance, a very
keen gardener.”
“As I happen to have lived in North London till I was seventeen, and
after that in Ceylon, with a couple of trips to Australia, I’m not
awfully likely to be of use in an English garden,” said Rose with angry
sarcasm.
“Perhaps not. May I ask in what direction your tastes happen to lie?”
“I haven’t had much chance of finding out, have I? You can guess what
life was like with poor old Jim. Every time he got on the drink, Ces
and I went in fear of our lives, and----”
“Please!” Ford held up one hand.
She stared at him, abashed and yet still angry.
“I won’t say it, if you don’t want me to. I had to put up with it,
though. Look here, I want to talk to you about what we’re going to do.”
“Certainly.”
He pushed forward one of the armchairs, but she remained on her feet.
Although Ford Aviolet was tall, their eyes met on a level, and Rose’s
square shoulders were broader than his sloping ones.
“It was very kind to pay our passage home, and all that, and of course
it was more than time Ces came to England. Jim was always talking about
sending him, only we hadn’t the money--but what happens next?”
“We hope you will pay us a long visit,” said Ford in accents that were
singularly lacking in spontaneity.
“Thanks,” she said ungraciously. “But you know I’ve got Ceylon friends
we could go and stay with--awfully nice people; they live at Bexhill,
retired. And I’ve an uncle in London, too.”
Ford visibly repressed a shudder.
“He’s got a big business there--pawnbroking--and his name is Smith,”
said Rose very loudly.
Ford’s voice immediately dropped even below its usual subdued pitch.
“Please let us discuss it quietly, if you have no objection. Won’t you
sit down?”
With a flouncing movement, she flung herself into the armchair.
“Let us understand one another, Rose. You and I are joint guardians of
Jim’s son. As things stand at present, he will in all probability, one
of these days, be the owner of this place.”
“I never thought of such a thing! I don’t believe it! Why, surely
you’re going to get married and have kids yourself, one of these days?”
“Oh, please, _please_!”
Ford’s hand went up again, and this time the expression on his face was
that of one excruciated.
“There can be no need to enter into questions of that sort. Cecil is
my father’s only grandchild at present, and we should naturally wish
him to be brought up according to the family traditions. If you wish
to pay some visits--and nothing could be more natural, after your long
spell abroad--you may feel perfectly certain that Cecil will be as well
looked after here as he could possibly be anywhere.”
Ford was looking at the tips of his fingers as he spoke and missed the
lowering gaze, rather like that of an angry animal, which she turned
upon him.
“How d’you mean, if I want to pay visits? I’m not going anywhere
without Ces. He’s never been away from me for a day since he was born.”
“I am sure you would be the last person to let the boy go on being
dependent upon you to such an extent, my dear Rose, when you realize
how very much harder it will make the inevitable separation between
you when it does come. Cecil will be going to school.”
She opened her mouth as though about to speak, checked herself, and
then said slowly:
“He’s only seven years old.”
“Oh, certainly, there’s time before us.” Ford smiled. “It was only a
word of warning. Cecil’s education is entirely in your department for
the time being. I shall not consider that my responsibility really
begins until he is of school age.”
“No,” said Rose slowly.
“You will find my mother a little bit--prejudiced, shall we say?--along
certain lines of her own, but otherwise you will have no difficulty
in making your own arrangements regarding Cecil. I take it you are in
favour of a good nursery governess?”
“Oh, I suppose so. It all sounds rather rot to me, you know,” she said
ungraciously. “It seems so silly to pay another woman to take care of
him, when his own mother has nothing else on earth to do. I could teach
him myself, really.”
“I doubt your finding it satisfactory. Not that I should venture to
question your attainments for a moment, but teaching is an art which
requires peculiar qualifications, I believe.”
“I don’t know any Latin or Greek, if that’s what you mean, but I went
to a decent school in North London up to the time I was sixteen, and
some of the things I learnt there have stuck. Besides, Life teaches
one.”
Ford smiled again. “How true! ‘Life teaches one.’ It has been said
before, I believe, but, of course, it’s none the less true on that
account.”
Rose flushed scarlet and looked straight at him. “You can sneer if you
want to. I don’t suppose you’ve learnt much from Life yourself. You’ve
sat here comfortably and eaten your meals and strolled about round your
father’s property, and all the time Jim was sweating on the plantation,
and drinking worse every day, and me not knowing which way to turn for
money to pay the monthly books.”
Her voice had risen to virago pitch.
“There’s no need to raise your voice,” said Ford. His colour came and
went in patches, and his breathing was uneven.
“I might remind you that I went through the South African War, and was
severely wounded at Spion Kop. I might also point out to you that a
man of my age is likely to have had a number of experiences that would
scarcely come within the range of your understanding. But on the other
hand, I have no taste for scenes. Indeed, for your own sake, I strongly
advise you to bear in mind that at Squires people don’t make scenes. It
isn’t done, my dear Rose, it really isn’t done.”
He picked up a newspaper and opened it leisurely.
Rose understood that the conversation was over, and that the onus of a
retreat had, skilfully enough, been relegated to her.
She turned her back and went upstairs, conscious that her withdrawal
lacked dignity. She hated her brother-in-law with the simple,
undisciplined intensity that characterised all her emotions.
Her not very long life had, indeed, run altogether upon emotional
lines. Her earliest remembrance was of her widowed mother crying
piteously because they were being “sold up,” and she had insisted upon
attending the sale, only to break down ignominiously. The six-year-old
Rose had roared sympathetically, and Uncle Alfred Smith, very angry,
had taken them both away.
They had lived with him in London after that, and Rose’s mother had
helped in the business, and Rose had gone to school, enjoying violent
and ephemeral friendships with other girls, giggling and idling and
whispering just as they did, and working by fits and starts when
Uncle Alfred wrote her a severe letter or her mother came to see
her. The keenest happiness she knew--and it was so intense as to be
almost pain--was connected with those occasional visits, when her
mother’s big, blowsy person, always dressed in some vivid colour with
a fluttering accompaniment of scarf-ends, veil, ribbons, and feathers,
would be inducted into the dingy school-parlour to which Rose would
rush--hurling herself rapturously against that substantial form, in a
mutually enthusiastic exchange of hugs and kisses.
“Shall I take you out, lovey?”
“Oh, do, Mother.”
They had gone out together, very often hand-in-hand, even after Rose
was quite a big girl, and looked into the drapers’ shop windows, for
which both had exactly the same passion, and planned all the fine
things that they would buy when Rose was grown up and married to a
millionaire.
“Only mind, you’ll have to love him, ducky. He must be awfully rich,
but you must be awfully in love with him, too, or you won’t get any of
the best out of life.”
“All right. I’d like to be in love with him, too.”
The afternoon generally finished with tea in a tea-shop.
“Eat up all the cakes you want, my precious. I expect you get enough
bread-and-scrape at that school of yours. Can’t you manage another?
That little pink one isn’t very large.”
“Well, I’ll try.”
Parting, at the end of the afternoon, was a choky affair on both sides.
“Not so long now till the holidays, pet. Be a good girl and get a
prize, to please Uncle Alfred.”
“I really _will_ try, Mother darling. Is he making much fuss about the
school-bills?”
“Not a lot. He wants you to be well educated. See here, Rose, he gave
me some money the other day. I can give you _this_.”
“Oh, Mother! It’s too much.”
“Not a bit of it, lovey. Get some chocs, or something good. By-bye.”
Rose would stand on the doorstep and wave, receiving vigorous waves in
return, till her mother, still walking backwards, either collided with
a passer-by or disappeared round the corner of the street.
The holidays, when they came, had always been blissful, owing to the
companionship of that adored mother. They had both of them enjoyed
their cramped quarters in one small bedroom over the shop, both
disregarded Uncle Alfred’s severe commands as to the consumption of gas
with cheerful impunity, turning up the flame as high as it would go,
so that both could judge of the effect upon Rose’s mother’s complexion
of the new creams and powders with which she was always trying
experiments, sometimes with disastrous results.
“I don’t like that brunette powder, one bit. It makes you look sort of
green.”
“It’ll match my hair, then,” had been the substance of Mrs. Smith’s
reply to her daughter’s criticism, given with a certain grim humour.
“However that girl in the hair-dresser’s could have recommended it the
way she did, beats me. To hear her, you’d have thought there wasn’t a
thing to touch it in heaven or earth. Not a dye, she said, but just a
tonic to brighten the colour and clean the scalp. And look at me!”
The effect achieved by the tonic had indeed been remarkable.
“Don’t you ever have a thing to do with hair-dyes, dearie. You’ve
got lovely hair, just exactly the colour mine was before I started
monkeying with it.”
But Rose’s mother had shown no objection to her daughter’s
semi-surreptitious use of the stick of lip-salve that lay in a drawer
of the dressing-chest, amid a tangle of veils, hair-nets, twists of
paper containing sweets, biscuit-crumbs, hair-pins, belts, stockings,
old envelopes, gloves, powder-boxes, and a dozen other accumulated
futilities.
Rose could never remember that her mother had given her more than two
pieces of advice, besides that which related to her use of hair-dyes.
“Put on clean under-things when you’re going on a journey. You never
know if there mayn’t be an accident, nor who’ll pick you up and save
you. You don’t want to be taken unawares, is what I say.”
And the other:
“Know your own mind, Rose, and when you’ve found out what you want,
you go for it. There’s nothing like Life, when all’s said and done, and
if Life isn’t wanting, then I don’t know what it is. And your Mammy’ll
help you to get what you want, if she can do it, my pretty.”
But Rose’s mother had been killed in a street accident, two days before
Rose was to leave school for good.
For many years afterwards she had been unable to bear the thought of
the months that followed. Her grief had been a kind of frenzy, coming
upon her in gusts of overwhelming misery when she could barely force
down rising screams for Mother, Mother, _Mother_, crouched upon the
floor, biting at the bed-clothes, with clenched hands and streaming
eyes.
For months she had dreaded going to sleep in anticipation of the
frightful, sick pang that waking, with its renewal of realization,
brought her.
Uncle Alfred had been extraordinarily and unexpectedly kind.
He had given her pocket-money, and occasional presents, and had said
nothing about the innumerable novels from the circulating library with
which she had sought to drug her misery, although he had long ago
denounced all fiction as “trash inspired by the Devil.” (Uncle Alfred
had “found religion” some years earlier but had never succeeded in
imparting the discovery either to his sister-in-law or to his niece.)
It had been, however, without any such altruistic design at all that
Uncle Alfred had accidentally provided Rose with the first real
distraction from her sorrow.
He had engaged an assistant.
The youth, who helped in the shop all day and slept under the counter
at night, and had meals with them in the living-room, fell in love with
Rose.
Immediately, and with no false modesty as to showing it, Rose had
fallen in love with Artie Millar in return.
It had been a very young, rapid and essentially physical affair, but it
had served, to a certain extent, to reveal to Rose the possibilities
in herself. She had been partly frightened, and partly exultant. At
school she had acquired a garbled knowledge of sex, supplemented by her
mother’s crudely worded reassurance.
“Don’t you worry your pretty head, my poppet. It stands to reason
you’ve got a body as well as a heart, doesn’t it? And if you ask me,
the one wouldn’t be much fun without the other. You’ll find the whole
thing sort of works in together, when you fall in love, and nothing to
be ashamed of either. It’s all Nature.”
It had been with this comfortable justification at the back of her mind
that Rose had let herself go whole-heartedly to the violent mutual
attraction that had overtaken herself and the good-looking assistant--a
lad of nineteen, with blue eyes and very white teeth flashing from a
singularly brown face. He had been at sea for two years before drifting
into the pawnbroker’s shop, and the fact held a fascination for the
London-bred Rose.
At first they had given one another long, semi-surreptitious looks,
then they had tentatively begun an exchange of jokes and personalities,
until the day when Artie had suddenly failed in repartee and, when
derided by Rose, had replied, flushing deeply:
“_You_ can say anything you jolly well please to me. I--I like it.”
For days after that she had avoided him, while a new delicious
consciousness was awakened between them, enhanced by the necessity of
behaving as usual in front of Uncle Alfred.
At last one evening, just as Artie was putting up the shutters for
the night, Rose, having watched Uncle Alfred leave the house by the
side-door, had slipped into the shop and pretended to be very much
surprised at Artie’s presence.
“Hallo! Haven’t you finished yet?”
“Just. I say----”
“Well?”
“I say, are you offended with me about anything?”
“What makes you ask?”
“You’ve seemed different, somehow, lately. More stand-off, like.”
These, and other such time-worn phrases, had passed between them, and
in the end Rose had simulated anger, strangely curious all the time to
see what Artie, provoked, would do.
What he had done, as both had subconsciously intended from the first,
had been to catch hold of her and kiss her roughly and suddenly.
It had been Rose’s first kiss, and had been followed by others, given
and exchanged in the semi-obscurity of the shop at closing-time and
later on, as they grew bolder, in the public parks to which they had
repaired secretly on the rare afternoons when Artie was free.
Perhaps a fortnight had elapsed before the discovery by Uncle Alfred of
the idyll so rapidly progressing beneath his roof.
Another crisis of the emotions had followed, for Uncle Alfred had
denounced Rose to her face, in his strangely passionless, old-fashioned
invective, as a “lewd hussy.” But his wrath had not blinded him to the
relative value to himself and his business of an intelligent assistant
and an idle niece.
It was Rose for whom he had found a post that would take her away from
home, that would, in fact, take her out of England, since she was to
look after two children travelling with their parents to Ceylon, remain
there for a year, and return to England with them.
“A most wonderful opportunity for any young woman,” Uncle Alfred had
pointed out.
It had certainly provided wonderful opportunities for Rose.
In spite of a tearful parting and promise of weekly letters, she had
forgotten Artie Millar within twenty-four hours of leaving him. The new
excitements had been so many and so varied!
Her employers had been kind to her--Mr. Jones-Pryce had attempted to
kiss her, but had left off when she protested--and the children had
played on deck and given her no trouble.
Rose, enchanted with her new life, had found aboard ship to afford the
most delightful opportunities for flirtation, and several young men,
Jim Aviolet amongst them, had been ready to flirt.
The emotional climaxes had then come thick and fast, one upon another.
There had been Mrs. Jones-Pryce’s rather tardy awakening to her duties
of chaperonage, and her crudely worded rebuke to Rose, the ready tears
and loud protests of Rose in return, and Jim Aviolet’s eager and
indiscreet consolations.
“Give the old hag notice. You’ll easily find another job of the same
kind at Colombo, to get you home again.”
“But I don’t want to go home! Uncle Alfred doesn’t want me--and
besides, he’d be so angry.”
“You poor little girl! I say, don’t cry, Rose. I may call you Rose,
mayn’t I?”
Oh, yes, he might do anything he liked.
She had not been exactly in love with Jim, but pleased and flattered
because he was a “real” gentleman (not like Mr. Jones-Pryce) and full
of romantic compassion when he had confided to her that he was the “bad
hat” of his family.
“It’s drink, mostly. I suppose you think that awful?”
Rose had not thought it nearly so “awful” as a girl of Jim Aviolet’s
own class would have thought it. Drink was a not uncommon misfortune
amongst her mother’s friends, and amongst Uncle Alfred’s clientèle. She
had been fired with enthusiasm at the idea of reforming him, taking
care of him.
“I know I could keep straight with a girl like you, Rose,” had been Jim
Aviolet’s declaration.
The end of it had been a precipitated parting at Colombo between Rose
and her employers, and her marriage to Jim Aviolet.
It was there that romance had ended, and although the emotional
climaxes had still come at intervals, they had almost all been painful
ones.
Jim had been violently in love with his young wife for a short while,
but from the first week of their marriage they had quarrelled, loudly
and angrily. Neither had known the meaning of restraint.
Cecil had been a small bone of contention between them almost from the
day of his birth.
If there had been emotion over Jim’s death--and Rose was incapable of
viewing any personal equation from any but the emotional standpoint--it
had been strangely mixed. There had been grief and shame and anger and
remorse, but there had also been untold relief.
III
“I am very glad that Rose should form _any_ friendship,” said Lady
Aviolet, in a tone which savoured rather of resentment than of gladness.
The friendship in question had risen, with un-Aviolet-like rapidity,
between Rose and the Lucians.
She had taken Cecil to tea there, and had been asked again.
“Please have the carriage at whatever time suits you, my dear,” said
Lady Aviolet, who had frequently met the doctor’s sister, but had never
called upon her, and would never have contemplated the possibility of
doing so.
Rose and Cecil departed joyfully.
“Mummie, when are we going back to Ceylon?”
“I don’t suppose we shall go back at all, darling. I told you we were
coming to live in England.”
“But I don’t think I like it much,” said Cecil, opening his brown eyes
with a piteous look.
“That fine maid Dawson is kind to you all right, isn’t she?” his mother
asked sharply.
The corners of Cecil’s mouth turned down. “She says I tell stories.”
“Well, so you do sometimes, as you very well know. Not that you aren’t
going to break yourself of it, because of course you are. Aren’t you,
my precious?”
Rose looked at him rather anxiously, and squeezed his little hand
tightly in hers.
“Yes, Mummie,” said Cecil confidingly.
He leant against her, playing with her rings. He was an affectionate
little boy.
“Here we are. Don’t you want to see the monkey again?”
“Yes. _And_ Miss Lucian,” said Cecil politely.
Miss Lucian had been very kind to him on their first visit, and had
thereby won Rose’s confidence as well as Cecil’s.
“He’s been longing to come again,” she cried, as she shook hands with
her hostess.
Dr. Lucian’s sister was a small, slight person, not young, but looking
so because of the rapidity of her movements and the mobility of her
small face.
“Would you like to look at pictures in the drawing-room or go and play
in the garden?” she asked Cecil.
“The garden, please.”
“Then we’ll call you when it’s tea-time.”
Rose looked at her gratefully.
“That’s just what he enjoys--being let alone to play out of doors. It’s
all new to him, you see.”
“There’s a lovely garden for him at Squires.”
“Oh, yes--and a lady’s maid turned on to trot behind him so as to see
that he doesn’t do any damage!” Rose interjected scornfully.
“Why, he seems such a good little boy.”
“So he is.”
“I never heard such nonsense,” exclaimed Miss Lucian, with a warmth
equal to Rose’s own.
It needed nothing more to inflame Rose’s ardour, never greatly tempered
by discretion.
“The whole thing seems nonsense to me,” she remarked vehemently. “Him
being put into a nursery and having his breakfast and supper upstairs
and that ridiculous old maid Dawson putting him to bed, and not so much
as knowing if his little pyjamas fastened in front or behind--honestly,
she didn’t, silly old ass! In Ceylon, I had him with me all the time.”
“And can’t you do that at Squires?”
“Oh, Lord, no. They’re always at me about not spoiling him, and making
him manly. It’s quite right, I daresay.”
She threw a sudden odd glance round, as though afraid of being
overheard, and then said in a lowered voice:
“I’m going to let them have their own way about all the things that
don’t matter much. When it comes to something that _does_, it’ll be
time enough to make a fuss. I think it’s rather good of them, really,
to put up with me, considering they think Jim was a fool to marry me,
and they don’t like me much, either. But they want Cecil to be brought
up just like all the Aviolets.”
“That’s natural.”
“I daresay it is. They seem very stupid people, though,” said Rose
reflectively. “I say, will you tell me something?”
“Certainly, if I can.”
“Is living in the country, in England, always like this? I mean, do you
always potter about all day without doing anything, and look at the
papers while you’re waiting for the next meal, and take the dogs for
exercise, and never--never--never talk about anything but the rotten
old garden, and whether it rained in the night and if the carriage
can go to meet the four-thirty train? Don’t you ever, any of you, do
anything?”
“You mustn’t ask me, you know. My brother and I are not like the
Aviolets--not like county people. He’s a doctor, and works harder than
most people, and I run his house, and we’ve only one servant, so that
I’m busy, too.”
“Oh----” said Rose Aviolet.
Relief was detectable in her voice.
“Oh, I didn’t know that. I thought you were just like them,” she said
naïvely.
“But don’t you like it at all, being at that big house, and never
having to think about expenses or anything of that sort?” asked the
doctor’s sister.
“I do like it in a way,” Rose admitted grudgingly. “It feels so safe,
after the scrambling way that poor Jim and I lived. I like to see Ces
having roast chicken, and rice puddings, and all that good milk to
drink--as much as ever he wants it. And, of course, I like the comforts
and luxuries for myself. Why, I’d never even _seen_ a room like the
room I’ve got there--not even at big hotels. But I think the life’s
awful, all the same--and the people.”
“Don’t they ever have any one to stay?”
“Not with me and them being in such deep mourning. I think later on
they will--Ford said something about it. A man came the other day to
take some photographs of the house for a book he’s writing, and I
talked to him, but I could see they didn’t like it. Snobs, I call them.”
Rose’s candour was checked only by the doctor’s entrance into the room
with Cecil.
“Can we have some tea, Henrietta?”
They had tea in the dining-room, and afterwards Miss Lucian earned
Rose’s warm, effusively expressed gratitude for her kindly display of
treasures and curiosities on Cecil’s behalf.
The little boy, intelligent and enthusiastic, was delighted with
everything, and especially with a little snuff-box of carved cornelian
that played a tiny tinkling tune when the lid was opened.
“That belonged to my great-grandfather, Cecil.”
“I _do_ like it,” said Cecil longingly.
His mother interposed hastily, circumventing his evident intention
of suggesting that the ownership of the red cornelian box should be
transferred.
“It’s awfully pretty. I’ve never seen one quite like it before. It’s
worth ten pounds any day.”
Miss Lucian laughed.
“We should put a much higher value than that upon it, I’m afraid.”
“People always do, but you wouldn’t get more than ten from a dealer,”
said Rose simply. “My uncle that I used to live with is Alfred Smith
the pawnbroker, so I know. Why, I daresay I could price everything in
the room for you.”
Miss Lucian appeared to be more diverted than gratified by her guest’s
surprising faculty, but the doctor laughed outright.
“Have you offered to do that at Squires?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “_They_ wouldn’t say thank you. Besides,
the stuff there isn’t the sort you ever get hold of. I shouldn’t know
about any of it, much, except perhaps the china. The bits on the
mantelpiece in the hall are good--_famille verte_.” Her accent was
atrocious.
“Lady Aviolet’s particularly fond of them, I believe.”
“Yes. She dusts them herself, and the servants aren’t supposed to touch
them. One day I offered to do them for her, but she wouldn’t let me. I
only did it to see what she’d say.”
Rose laughed rather drearily, as though the exercise of experimenting
with her mother-in-law’s susceptibilities were lacking in charm.
Indeed, as she was leaving the house she remarked with her almost
alarming frankness:
“I must say I loathe going back there. It’s been much more fun here.
Thank you so much for having us.”
“Like a nice child remembering her good manners,” said the doctor
pityingly, after he had put her into the carriage.
“God help her in-laws, is what I say,” Miss Lucian returned crisply.
“Now why, Henrietta? Don’t you like her?”
“Yes, I do, but they don’t, and never will. However, she’ll certainly
marry again and then it’ll be all right.”
The doctor was silenced, somehow not enchanted by the proposed solution
for the difficulties of the Aviolet establishment.
“Maurice! Where’s the little musical snuff-box?”
“You must have put it down somewhere.”
They looked at one another doubtfully, and then, with silent
thoroughness, searched.
The cornelian snuff-box was gone.
It was the outspoken Miss Lucian who finally voiced the thought that
had been in both their minds from the beginning.
“Little Cecil was so much taken with it--you don’t think he could have
kept it, do you?”
“Surely not. If he’s got it, poor little chap, it must be by mistake.”
“He’d be welcome to anything else, but _not_ to great-grandpapa’s
snuff-box,” said Miss Lucian with decision.
“Certainly not. But he’ll probably be brought in tears to-morrow to
apologize for taking it away with him.”
“I ought to have put it away at the time,” said Miss Lucian
remorsefully. “It was all my fault.”
“Whatever happens, Henrietta, don’t let him be frightened of us and
think we’re going to despise him, even if he took it out of naughtiness
pure and simple.”
“Do you take me for a fool?” said his sister indignantly.
The doctor was so far from taking her for anything of the sort, that
he was inclined to accept the view which she obviously held, that
Cecil had purposely, in a fit of baby covetousness, taken the little
cornelian box.
It caused him to make his way to Squires next morning, on the pretext
of an ailing servant, in the vague hope of seeing Rose Aviolet and
avoiding the problem of direct inquiry such as he feared that his
sister meditated.
His first sight of Lady Aviolet put the suspicion in his mind beyond
question at once.
“I’m so glad to see you. My naughty little grandson seems to have taken
advantage of Miss Lucian’s kindness to him yesterday. He picked up a
most charming little box, and I’m sorry to say, brought it home with
him. One of the housemaids found it under his little pillow, when she
made his bed, and took it to my maid, who of course told me.”
“Children are like magpies--they pick things up and hide them.”
“Of course he knew nothing of its value, but it does seem very odd
that a child of that age shouldn’t have been better taught. However,
I believe he told the truth when his mother taxed him with it, which
I was most thankful for. I’m bound to say that she generally gets the
truth out of him eventually, though why he couldn’t have been brought
up to speak it in the first place, as a matter of course, I can’t
imagine. However, Rose tells me he owned at once that he took the
little box, meaning to play with it at home, and then take it back. I’m
so sorry, Dr. Lucian.”
The doctor laughed.
“Not at all. It was very natural. If I may take the thing away with me,
no one will think any more about it.”
“Oh, but that wouldn’t do at all,” said Lady Aviolet, unsmiling. “I
don’t mean to punish him, as he spoke the truth, but he must certainly
be made to remember that he has done a very wrong thing. He must give
you back the box himself, and say that he is sorry.”
The doctor, profoundly averse as he felt himself to be to the proposed
scene of restitution, knew that it would be useless to protest against
it.
He waited, unresignedly, while Lady Aviolet rang the bell and asked for
Mrs. Aviolet and Master Cecil.
Rose Aviolet came downstairs, leading the little boy by the hand.
“Cecil, come here,” said his grandmother directly.
“Good-morning, Grandmama.”
“Good-morning, my dear. Now listen to me. You know that Dr. Lucian and
his sister, who were so kind to you yesterday, have lost something?”
“No,” said Cecil guilelessly.
“Ces!” his mother exclaimed sharply.
He stared up at her with big, innocent brown eyes.
“Rose, I thought you told me----”
“So I did. Ces, you know you were a naughty boy, and took----”
“Leave him to me, if you please, Rose. I should like to get to the
bottom of this. If the child confessed his naughtiness to you this
morning, there’s no reason he shouldn’t own to it again now, in front
of Dr. Lucian. Now, Cecil, did you take away anything that didn’t
belong to you, when you went to this gentleman’s house yesterday?”
“No, Grandmama.”
Rose Aviolet shrugged her shoulders and made as though to speak.
“One minute, please, Rose. Grandmama won’t be angry, Cecil, if you
speak the truth. You know you’ve already told your mother that you were
sorry for doing such a naughty thing.”
“Mayn’t we leave it at that?” said the doctor, low.
“I don’t understand it,” Lady Aviolet said, with obvious truth. “He
knows that we know already. It’s only saying what he’s already said
once. He _did_ own up to you, didn’t he, Rose?”
“Yes, he did. Come on, darling, tell Dr. Lucian you’re sorry you took
what wasn’t yours.”
“And that you will never be so wicked as to steal again,” Lady Aviolet
supplemented impressively.
“I didn’t,” said Cecil, looking frightened.
His grandmother looked utterly confounded. “Cecil!”
“Don’t!” cried Rose sharply. “Don’t frighten him!”
The doctor leaned forward and took the little boy’s hand, speaking very
gently.
“Never mind, little fellow. You know we all do wrong and foolish things
sometimes, and then the only way out is to tell the truth and try and
undo the mischief. I think I understand how it happened. You thought it
would be nice to have the box to play tunes whenever you wanted to, and
so you slipped it out of sight and afterwards you were afraid of being
seen putting it back. Wasn’t it something like that?”
Rose’s ardent eyes flashed gratitude at him; but her mother-in-law
seemed to be more distressed than ever.
“It’s very kind of you--but please don’t make excuses for him. He ought
to be made to understand how naughty he’s been. Cecil, are you, or are
you not, sorry for having deliberately acted like a thief?”
“I didn’t, Grandmama.”
“Didn’t what?” Her voice had risen slightly.
“Didn’t take the little music-box.”
The little boy’s face was so innocent, his voice so assured, that
Lucian glanced at him sharply. He had been staring straight up at Lady
Aviolet with his great brown eyes whilst he spoke, but immediately
afterwards he dropped them.
The doctor, trained to observation, sighed involuntarily.
A sound like a gasp echoed him, from Lady Aviolet.
“Now, Ces, what’s the good of saying that,” Rose broke out, “when we
know already that you _did_ do it? Why, this morning you told me so
yourself.”
“No one is going to punish you, Cecil, if you tell the truth. It’s
little boys who tell lies that are punished. You shall have one more
chance, the last one. Will you tell Dr. Lucian how sorry you are that
you took his musical box?”
He gazed at her dumbly, with suddenly scared eyes.
“You are an obstinate and untruthful little boy, Cecil,” said Lady
Aviolet in great agitation.
“He’s _not_,” Rose cried passionately. “For goodness’ sake, Ces, tell
the truth. They shan’t do anything to you.”
“I didn’t take it,” said Cecil.
“A flat lie,” said Lady Aviolet, her face grey with consternation.
Rose stamped her foot. Her arm shot out round the child’s shoulders,
gripping him tightly to her.
“Rose, don’t attempt to coax and spoil him. He has told two absolutely
direct lies at least, and nothing can alter it.”
Little Cecil’s eyes dilated, and his mouth shut.
“I’m dreadfully, dreadfully shocked and sorry, Cecil. This isn’t the
first time you’ve said what isn’t true, you know, and now we can none
of us ever trust you again.”
Rose Aviolet shot a look of fury at the elder woman.
“Please don’t tell him that. Ces darling, Mummie trusts you. I know you
want to tell the truth really, and you can if you only will. Now out
with it, and it’ll be all over.”
“How can it be over, when he has lied? There is nothing more terrible
than a liar, and Cecil has proved himself one over and over again. If
he did tell the truth now, it would only be because he knows he’s been
found out.”
At her indictment, Cecil at last burst into tears.
“I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it,” he sobbed abjectly.
Rose put her hand over his mouth.
“You’ve told him that you’ll never trust him again and that he’s a liar
even if he does own up,” she said bitterly. “That’s enough.”
“How can you defend him?”
“I don’t defend him. Of course he took the box.”
“That is not the point. Taking the box was mischievous and ill-bred,
even dishonest, if he has been taught the commandments, as I suppose he
has,” said Lady Aviolet, rather as though supposing the reverse. “But
to own to you that he’d taken it, and then deny it flatly to us, is
simply pointless falsehood for the sake of falsehood. I told him no one
would be angry if he told the truth.”
“Well, he won’t now,” said Rose Aviolet, and she took the little boy
away.
He was still crying, and they could hear him, as Rose pulled him up the
stairs, repeating like an automaton: “I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t!”
Lady Aviolet looked terribly distressed, but she turned with a rather
pathetic politeness to her visitor. “I’m sorry to have inflicted a
nursery court-martial upon you. I never dreamt of this. The boy had
confessed to his mother. His lies just now were not only wicked, but
utterly pointless. I couldn’t have believed it.”
“The child is vain and sensitive. I can imagine that when he saw what
he had done looked upon as a--an act of dishonesty, it may have become
extraordinarily difficult to him to own to it in front of other people.
His denials struck me as being instinctive, rather than based on any
idea of deceiving.”
Lady Aviolet looked utterly at a loss.
“But how terrible, if he is to tell lies by instinct,” she said
helplessly. “It seems like some frightful taint. Heaven knows, he never
got it from the Aviolets.”
She caught herself up, almost upon the words, with the implication they
carried.
“I will fetch your little box, Dr. Lucian.” She went away, leaving the
doctor thoughtful and strangely saddened.
“I hope they won’t tell Ford,” was the outcome of his reflections.
His sister said the same thing that evening.
“The fuss must have frightened the poor little thing until he didn’t
know what he was saying. I hope they’ll leave it alone now, and not
drag the high-and-mighty Mr. Ford into it. If they frighten the child,
they’ll never teach him to speak the truth. I should have thought Lady
Aviolet would have known _that_ much.”
“I tried to tell her so.”
“What did Rose do?”
In common with everybody else, the doctor’s sister made a liberal use
of Christian names in the absence of their owners.
“She seems sensible--though I think she spoils him, in a way. But she’s
hopeless with her mother-in-law, and doesn’t seem to know the meaning
of tact. I should imagine that they get upon one another’s nerves the
whole time. She’s a different creature, at Squires, to what she was
down here.”
“Poor thing! I hope she’ll come here again.”
“She’ll come fast enough if she can bring the boy. He’s her one thought
in life, I can see that.”
“Of course she can bring him,” Miss Lucian declared vigorously. “What
do I care how many fibs he tells, poor little chap!”
The doctor was too well used to his sister’s trenchant methods of
expressing herself to protest at such singularly perverted tolerance of
spirit.
Rose Aviolet came to see them again, but this time she did not bring
Cecil with her. She arrived on foot and with something of the aspect
of one who has embarked upon an illicit expedition and is anxious to
forestall comment on the proceedings.
“I can’t stay, but I wanted a walk, and so I--I came this way. I wanted
to tell you how awfully sorry I was about my little boy having taken
your musical box--but _indeed_ he didn’t understand what he was doing.”
“My dear, of course he didn’t. Don’t let’s say any more about it.”
“You _are_ good!” Rose informed her hostess with ardent thankfulness in
her voice. “And your brother was awfully kind that morning he came up
to Squires, too. I wanted to thank him.”
She turned her liquid brown eyes upon Maurice Lucian.
“You know, he’d have owned up, I think, if it had only been you and me
there. He didn’t make any fuss at all about telling me, when they first
found out about it.”
“You think he’s afraid of Lady Aviolet, then?”
She hesitated.
“He is, and he isn’t. She doesn’t ever punish him, you know. I
shouldn’t let any one but me punish him--but she and that Ford have
such a way of making one feel as if they despised one for doing
anything wrong.”
Lucian nodded.
“Is little Cecil afraid of being despised?”
“Well, of course he is. Who isn’t, I should like to know?”
The doctor answered her indignant inquiry as though she had meant it
literally.
“The very obtuse are not, nor the essentially self-satisfied. Neither,
I think, are the absolutely sincere--but then, they are seldom the very
young. It is the weak, and the sensitive, and those who are unsure of
themselves, who are afraid of the contempt of their mental inferiors.
And so they degrade themselves by lying.”
He spoke so simply and earnestly that the protest died away on Rose’s
lips.
“Mrs. Aviolet, I’m intensely interested in your boy. May I ask you
something?”
She nodded, her eyes full of tears.
“Can you analyse this weakness of his? I mean, what do his untruths
spring from?”
“I don’t know.” She looked puzzled. “He invents things that never
happened, sometimes--that never could have happened--and then when I
try to make him say that it’s all pretending, he won’t. Sometimes I
think he doesn’t know whether he’s inventing or speaking the truth.”
The doctor nodded, reflective.
“Is he generally the hero of his own stories?”
“I suppose he is. He tells me about things that he says happened to
him, and he really and truly describes it all just as if he’d seen it.”
“I daresay. Has the tendency always been there?”
“Pretty well always. He used to hear Jim boasting very often, and I
know I exaggerate myself, when I talk, and always did, though God knows
I’m trying all I know to get out of it now. But Jim used to make Ces
worse by frightening him. He’d ask him questions, just as if he was
laying a trap for him, and then Ces would fib, and his father would
whip him. So next time he’d be scared, and not know what he was saying,
and contradict himself because he’d see Jim didn’t believe him.”
“Poor little fellow!”
She threw him a very expressive look of gratitude.
“That’s awfully decent of you. Everybody up there is shocked at him,
poor little boy. They haven’t the imagination to be sorry for him. I
wish I could get him right away with me somewhere.”
“Can’t you?” said Miss Lucian.
“Well, I haven’t got a penny. Jim left nothing but debts, and his
father gives me an allowance. I’d rather earn my own living, but of
course they wouldn’t hear of that, because of Cecil--besides, I’m sure
I don’t know what I could do that would bring in anything worth having.
Their plan is to keep us hanging on at Squires till Ces goes to school,
and then I suppose they’d let me go off on my own, and bring him there
just for the holidays. But that’s exactly where me and them will come
to loggerheads, one of these days.”
The doctor looked at her attentively. He was extremely interested in
Rose Aviolet.
Underneath the paint and the white powder, he could see that she had
flushed deeply.
“About sending my Ces to school. That’s what they want to do, of
course. Well, I wouldn’t say a word if he was like other boys, but he
isn’t. You’ve seen that for yourself--and besides they talk enough
about it, goodness knows. You know what’s wrong with Cecil. Well, I
think school will make that worse. He’s not fit for school.”
She spoke with extraordinary vehemence, and both her hearers were
silent. Presently Henrietta Lucian said:
“There’s never been an Aviolet yet, I suppose, who hasn’t been a
public-school boy?”
“Never, and there’s never been an Aviolet like Ces is, either. But he
can be put right, I know he can. Why, I always get the truth out of him
in the end. But if he goes to school, and gets told he’s a liar and
finds nobody trusts him--why, he’ll lie himself black in the face to
try and make himself seem what he isn’t. I’m his mother, and I _know_.
But he isn’t going to school.”
“Isn’t his uncle his guardian?”
“Yes. A bit of poor Jim’s tomfoolery that was, too. Of course I never
knew about it. I suppose he thought it’d make them take more interest.
But even Ford won’t make me give in about this school business.”
“Are you quite sure it mightn’t be a good thing for your boy?” the
doctor asked.
“Quite,” she said fiercely. “I’ve seen what a public-school education
made of Jim, and though I don’t say I wouldn’t have let Cecil go if
he’d been an ordinary child, I won’t, as things are. A thing may be all
right for ninety-nine people and wrong for the hundredth. Ces is the
hundredth.”
“You’ve got a fight before you,” Lucian told her plainly.
“I don’t care,” said Rose Aviolet, and laughed defiantly. “I’m rather
good at a row.”
The doctor quite believed her. But he did not believe that at Squires
there ever would be, any more than there ever had been, a “row.”
IV
Maurice Lucian was entirely right in supposing that there were no such
things as “rows” at Squires, but the absence of them was not accepted
as a matter of course by Rose Aviolet.
A great deal of her intercourse with her dead mother had consisted in
descriptions--perhaps vehement rather than accurate--on Mrs. Smith’s
part of “a real old hullabaloo between her and me, and I gave it her
straight, _I_ can tell you, with her silly old letter about putting it
into the hands of her solicitors if I didn’t pay up then and there,”
and on Rose’s part of “Well, Mother, I wasn’t going to stand that from
a girl like Esther Moses, needless to say, and I said, Mother, I just
said, ‘Yes, you may be very good at arithmetic,’ I said, ‘and good
reason why,’ I said, ‘_Jewess!_’”
Rose and her mother, however indignant, had always rather enjoyed their
scenes at the moment of occurrence, and still more in the retrospect.
Scenes with Jim, later on, Rose had enjoyed less, but she had entirely
accepted them as part of everyday life, although her pride had not
allowed her the satisfaction of retailing them afterwards. At Squires,
for the first time in her life, she was in an atmosphere in which
scenes could not exist.
To her perceptions, nothing vital could exist at Squires at all, except
her own vehement emotions, and these were deprived of the only outlet
that she knew--unrestrained speech.
The weeks and even the months slid by in a deadly monotony.
“I’m afraid it’s dull for you, Rose,” said her mother-in-law, after the
first anniversary of Rose’s widowhood had passed, and she had discarded
as much as she dared of her conventional mourning.
“Well, it is, in a way. Of course there was always a lot going on in
Ceylon.”
“I believe these Indian hill-stations are very gay,” Lady Aviolet
assented. Nothing had ever succeeded in making her remember that
“India” could not cover the whole of the East.
“Ceylon isn’t India,” said Rose bluntly.
She thought Lady Aviolet a fool, and her tone said as much.
“Gaieties are naturally out of the question, but we thought of asking
one or two people here for the shooting. I don’t think you’ve met Diana
Grierson-Amberly, a young cousin of mine. Her father has a nice old
place on the far side of the county. She generally pays us a visit in
the autumn.”
Rose, utterly inexperienced in the catch-words used in polite society,
could think of no reply, and therefore said blankly: “Oh!”
Lady Aviolet sighed, and went on knitting. Rose’s hands lay idle in
her lap. She knew how to make her own underclothes, and how to darn
stockings, but considered the practice of either art unfitted to the
Squires’ drawing-room. She did not knit, because she did not know
what to make, and had often speculated as to the destination of Lady
Aviolet’s innumerable woolly garments.
“Diana is wonderfully musical, and plays the violin a great deal.”
“Oh, does she?”
“She was always a great friend of the boys, although she is a good many
years younger. She is so good at games.”
“Oh, is she?”
“She has been brought up with her brothers, and has even been allowed
to go out with the guns. I believe she is an excellent shot.”
“What does she shoot?” Rose enquired with the first spark of interest
that Miss Grierson-Amberly had succeeded in rousing within her.
Lady Aviolet looked rather astonished. “Just what they all do, my
dear--rabbits, or partridges, or pheasants, as the case may be. No
big-game shooting, or anything like that, of course. She is only about
your own age.”
“Oh,” said Rose.
“Is there any one whom you would care to ask here for a day or two’s
shooting, perhaps?”
Lady Aviolet’s tone held not the slightest hint that she had debated
the propriety of this rather rash invitation for several days before
giving it, and had finally done so against the advice of her husband.
Rose was astonished and grateful.
“Thank you very much. It’s very kind of you. But there isn’t anybody. I
don’t know anybody, you see. My uncle couldn’t leave his business, and
besides, I don’t suppose he can shoot. Besides, him and me had rather
a row before I left England, and I haven’t seen him since, although
we’ve sort of made it up by letter.”
“Perhaps he will come another time, when the guns are not busy,” said
Lady Aviolet impassively.
She was completely unaware that Rose was surprised, and rather
disappointed, at not being asked for details of the “row.”
“We are hoping to secure a friend of Ford’s, Lord Charlesbury, and one
or two other men. Lord Charlesbury is a widower, poor fellow, and has
a boy rather older than Cecil. He lost his wife when the boy was born,
and has never married since.”
“Poor little boy, without a mother!” said Rose. “What do they do with
him?”
“Oh, of course, he’s at school now, very happy indeed. In fact,
Ford thought you and he might talk about a good preparatory school
for little Cecil with Lord Charlesbury, who has been into it all so
recently.”
“I see,” said Rose.
The question of school had been in abeyance lately.
A nursery governess was installed at Squires, and Rose, to the surprise
of her mother-in-law, had submitted to having Cecil less with her, and
had refrained from interference on the few occasions when he fell into
disgrace, and was punished, very mildly, by little Miss Wade.
“We thought of asking him for the First,” Lady Aviolet said.
“The first what?”
“The First of September, my dear.”
And Rose, no wiser than before, for the fifth time could think of no
more brilliant rejoinder than “Oh!”
She was, however, pleased at the thought of a party, and went to
London and bought two new dresses and a new hat, wishing regretfully
that she dared buy coloured things instead of black ones.
On the last day of August Diana Grierson-Amberly arrived. Rose, at
first sight of her, sweepingly decided that she was neither smart nor
pretty, and, even more rashly, that in the absence of either of these
attributes, she could not be very interesting. She willingly conceded,
however, that Diana was “nice” when she heard her speak pleasantly
to little Cecil, who was allowed to have tea in the hall with his
governess.
The attraction that Miss Grierson-Amberly possessed for a small
proportion of her fellow-countrymen, although unappreciated by Rose
Aviolet, was very far from being non-existent.
Tall and fair, with a typically English face and figure, she looked
exactly what Lady Aviolet had said that she was--very good at games.
Her chest was as flat as her back, her feet and hands rather large,
her face pleasantly vacant, with a beautiful fresh complexion,
blue eyes, and a soft mouth that was always slightly open. Rose
envied her the perfect self-possession with which she answered Lady
Aviolet’s questions, patting and fondling Pug--but not feeding him
from the table, a practice that invariably annoyed Sir Thomas when
surreptitiously attempted by Cecil’s governess--and returning Ford’s
greeting with pleasant, cousinly calm.
“How d’ye do, Diana.”
“How are you, Ford.”
They shook hands, with a momentary exchange of smiles.
“Are you coming out with us to-morrow?”
“Oh, no. I’m not allowed to go out with a gun, really, except with
father and the boys.”
“I hear you do great execution, Diana,” said Sir Thomas. “What do you
shoot with?”
“A twenty-bore. I couldn’t carry a twelve-bore all day long, I’m sure.”
She turned good-naturedly to Rose, who was staring at her with enormous
brown eyes.
“Do you shoot, Mrs. Aviolet?”
“Gracious, no.”
The expletive, savouring rather of Rose’s early surroundings than of
her present ones, fell strangely across the atmosphere of the hall at
Squires.
“You didn’t get any big-game shooting in the East, then. That’s what
made me ask----” Diana said, as though feeling that an apology was
perhaps required for the suggestion that had called forth so energetic
a declaimer.
“Oh, Lord, no,” said Rose.
Ford coughed very gently.
“You’ve brought your fiddle, Diana, I hope,” said Lady Aviolet.
“I have. I’m afraid I’m dreadfully out of practice, though. One gets so
little time.”
“We must have some music after dinner to-night. I know Rose is fond
of music, though we do not often hear her play.” Lady Aviolet glanced
amiably at her daughter-in-law.
“I can play to-night, if you like,” said Rose abruptly, impelled by an
unrecognized instinct of self-assertion, born of her own consciousness
that she was out of place amongst these people.
“I can play _her_ accompaniments.” She nodded at Diana, not knowing
whether or not she was expected to use the girl’s Christian name.
“How nice of you,” said Diana lightly. “I’ve heaps of music and we’re
sure to find something you know.”
The conversation drifted on easily enough. Cecil and Miss Wade went
away into the garden, and Rose looked after them with longing eyes,
wishing that she could go and play with the little boy, and yet staunch
to her resolution that “they” should have their own way in all the
things that didn’t matter.
She thought that politeness required her to remain at the tea-table,
leaning back in an uncomfortable upright chair, but it did not occur
to her to simulate any interest in a conversation which bored her
profoundly, and she was as nearly as possible unconscious that every
now and then she stifled a half-checked yawn with the back of her hand.
“I hear you have some new neighbours at Bolestone, Diana.”
“Yes, Cousin Catherine. The Frederick Ollertons--such nice people.”
“Let me see, who was she?”
“Wasn’t she a Trevor?” said Ford.
“No, no. You’re thinking of the _Arthur_ Ollertons, in Surrey. _He_
married a Trevor.”
“Ah, that’s it,” Sir Thomas agreed.
“Then who was Mrs. Fred Ollerton? A Bannister?”
“No, that wasn’t it.” Diana’s open brow was corrugated. “No, not a
Bannister, though there’s some connection--I think the present Lord
Bannister is her uncle.”
“Then she must have been a Saunderson,” Lady Aviolet decided.
“Yes, she was.” Diana’s face relaxed as she agreed almost with
enthusiasm. “She was, Cousin Catherine. How stupid of me to forget! Her
sister was with them last Christmas--Miss Saunderson.”
“That must have been Connie Saunderson, then--she’s the only unmarried
one. The eldest one married Lord Everleach, Connie is unmarried, and
Mrs. Frederick Ollerton must be the youngest of them. So disappointing
for the Saundersons that there should have been no son in that family.”
“It all goes to a nephew, I believe,” Sir Thomas said.
“Young Verulam, yes. Have you met him, Diana?” Ford enquired.
“I’ve danced with him. He was at the Hunt Ball this year.” She turned
amiably to Rose. “Do you know him?”
Rose, startled from the vacancy of thought into which she had drifted
in her complete inattention to a conversation that she considered
futile, replied brusquely “No,” and there was a sudden silence.
Then Diana, with the super-evident tact of the kind-hearted, remarked
rather lamely, “Oh, of course, you’ve been abroad, haven’t you? I
forgot that.”
Ford rose, smiling gently after his wont, his mouth curving slightly,
his narrow eyes opaque and sombre.
“I hear the carriage, Mother. I hope that’s Charlesbury.”
Diana said, “Oh, good,” in a placid way and Rose straightened herself
in her chair, and from long habit, fluffed up a straight end of hair on
her temple between her first and second fingers.
Lord Charlesbury was tall, with a kind, thin, sunburnt face, rather
good-looking in spite of approaching baldness, and wearing an eyeglass
to which Rose, inwardly, after her usual trenchant fashion, immediately
applied the epithet of “la-di-dah.”
He greeted Diana Grierson-Amberly by her Christian name, and appeared
to be on intimate terms with his hosts.
“How’s the boy, Laurence?”
“Going strong, thanks. He’s as happy as the day is long at Hurst, and
they tell me he’s going to be a cricketer.”
“Oh, good,” said Diana again, this time with rather more enthusiasm in
her tone.
“He can bowl a very good overarm ball already, and funnily enough he’s
a natural left-hand bowler. Don’t know where he gets it from.”
“Very disconcerting thing, to stand up to a left-hand bowler, I always
think,” said Sir Thomas.
“Has your boy begun cricket yet?” Lord Charlesbury asked Rose, to her
surprise.
She was astonished, but gratified and pleased at any friendly allusion
to Cecil.
“How did you know I’d got a little boy?” she asked naïvely.
Lady Aviolet looked disturbed, but Charlesbury laughed low and
pleasantly.
“Of course I knew. He and my little fellow must be much about the same
age. We must arrange a meeting these holidays.”
“He would like another boy to play with. He’s never had anybody.”
“Ah, well, school will put that right. Hugh is an only child, too. But
he’s found his level all right. Hurst is a good place.”
“Is that his school?”
“Preparatory school--yes. I’ve got his name down for Eton and
Winchester, at present.”
Rose wondered why any one’s name should be down for two different
places, but the subject was not one that she wanted to pursue.
“Cecil’s not quite eight, yet, and he’s backward too, from being
brought up in Ceylon.”
“You’ve not been back from the East so very long, have you?”
“It seems ages.”
Charlesbury was looking at her with such evident interest and
admiration that Rose rapidly felt at her ease with him, and began to
talk in the manner--and also at the pitch--natural to her.
“Heaps of people at home seem to think that Ceylon is the same as
India, but it isn’t, in the least,” she told him. “Ceylon is an island
that has nothing to do with India, really. It’s not half a bad place,
especially up in the hills. We were in a place called Newara Eliya most
of the time, and it was as cool as anything. Colombo is sweltering, of
course, and as damp as can be. It’s on the sea, you know.”
“Rose,” said Ford’s very quiet and distinct voice at her elbow,
“as Lord Charlesbury happens to be a distinguished member of the
Geographical Society and the author of several books about the East
may I suggest that you are, in the vulgar phrase, importing coals to
Newcastle?”
Rose flushed scarlet, rather from anger than from confusion, but
before she could speak Charlesbury had interposed quickly and
courteously:
“Indeed, I cannot claim anything like Mrs. Aviolet’s acquaintance with
Ceylon. I have never had a stay of more than twenty-four hours there,
much as I should have liked it. Like the wretched traveller of the song
‘From place to place they hurry me--and think that I forget,’ which is
only too true. It takes years in a place to retain any real impression
of it. Now you, Mrs. Aviolet, are young, and I am sure have a most
excellent memory. Your description of life in the East would have the
true, authentic ring about it, whereas mine could only be an imperfect
hash of muddled recollections.”
His speech gave Rose time to collect herself. But it was her vivid
recognition of the kindliness that had prompted it, which made her
conscious of an ardent rush of intense gratitude at the restoration of
her self-esteem.
With candid rudeness, she deliberately moved her chair round so that
her back was turned to Ford.
No flicker of expression betrayed whether or not Lord Charlesbury took
note of this unusual form of social repartee.
He continued to talk in his low, cultivated tones, every now and then
appealing to Rose’s judgment and always listening, interested and
deferential, to her replies.
She found him delightful, and was entirely undisturbed by any
realization of the fact that she was monopolizing the principal guest
present.
Her inexperience did not even perceive that it was he who presently
contrived to include their hostess in the conversation.
She went up to her room to dress for dinner with the pleasant
consciousness, strange to her since she had come to Squires, of having
been a success.
“It’s only Ford that always tries to make a fool of me,” was her
self-consolatory _résumé_ of the unfortunate moment when she had been
abruptly arrested in her description of Ceylon.
As soon as she was dressed, Rose went upstairs, two steps at a time as
she always did, to wish Cecil good-night.
“Mummie, Miss Wade says there’s a gentleman staying here who has a
little boy the same age as me, and he’s at school and can play cricket.”
“He’s not the same age as you, he’s older,” said Rose sharply.
“When am I going to school?”
“I don’t know. Don’t you like doing lessons with Miss Wade?”
“No. I want to go to school and play cricket. Grandpapa says all boys
play cricket.”
“Well, you can play cricket here.”
“Who with?” Cecil not unnaturally demanded.
“We’ll see. Now say your prayers.”
Cecil knelt up in bed, folding his hands and closing his eyes, and
repeated rapidly:
“Pray God bless Mummie, an’ Grandpapa an’ Grandmama an’ everybody an’
make me a good boy for Chrissakeamen. An’ let me go to school and play
cricket best of all the boys.”
At the last unexpected petition he slyly peeped through his long lashes
at Rose, as though to see how the innovation would strike her. She
said nothing, but inwardly she was both frightened and angered.
“Good-night, precious. Sleep well.”
“Good-night, Mummie.”
She kissed him and went away.
At the door of the nursery she paused.
“Miss Wade.”
“Yes, Mrs. Aviolet?”
The little governess was meek and inoffensive. She generally wore a
conciliatory smile and coloured up to her spectacles with nervousness
when she was spoken to unexpectedly.
“Has Ces been having ideas put into his head about going to school?”
Miss Wade looked very much astonished.
“I don’t think I quite understand what you mean, Mrs. Aviolet.”
She looked so frightened that Rose burst out laughing.
“He said something about it just now, that’s all, and you know,
nothing’s settled yet, and he’s very backward about lessons.”
“I am doing my best to get him on as fast as possible,” replied Miss
Wade, now obviously rather offended, “but of course if you’re not
satisfied with his progress, Mrs. Aviolet, I’d much rather be told so.
I quite understand----”
“Oh, my Lord!” was the exasperated exclamation of Rose Aviolet. “I
don’t mean that at all. He’s getting on like a house on fire. I only
mean that it isn’t any good, him or anybody else, thinking that he’s
going dashing off to school as a matter of course, just because it’s
supposed to be the proper thing to do.”
Rose’s explanation did not appear to afford any illumination to little
Miss Wade.
“Lady Aviolet distinctly informed me that I was preparing Cecil for
school,” she said. “If he were not so behindhand in English--though I’m
sure it’s very natural that he should be so, after India--I should have
started him in Latin by this time.”
“Ceylon isn’t India,” said Rose, infuriated, and walked out of the
nursery.
Half-way downstairs again, remorse suddenly overtook her.
“What a pig I am! Worse than the Pryce-Jones woman was to me, and,
after all, it might just as well be _me_ sitting stuffed up in that old
nursery mending Cecil’s clothes and _her_ prancing down to dinner in a
low frock. I’d better----”
She turned round and dashed upstairs once more, and burst open the
nursery door.
“I’m sorry I seemed cross. It wasn’t anything to do with you, really,
and I think Ces is getting on first-rate, truly I do. ’Night-night.”
Late for dinner and stumbling over her long dress as she hastened
downstairs, Rose felt better satisfied with herself.
Miss Wade, who had perceived from the first moment of her arrival
that Mrs. Aviolet was no lady, felt her opinion to have received
confirmation good and strong, and from that moment she despised Cecil’s
mother from the bottom of her little soul.
Dinner that evening was the most amusing gathering at which Rose had
assisted since coming to Squires, although she was disappointed not to
find herself placed next to Lord Charlesbury.
She sat between Sir Thomas and a young fox-hunting squire, the only
other guest staying in the house, whom everyone excepting herself
seemed to call Toby. As soon as she had discovered that he liked
playing cards, they discussed whisky-poker, made very familiar to Rose
both in Ceylon and on board ship.
On the other side of the table, Lord Charlesbury listened to Miss
Grierson-Amberly’s flat, pleasant tones with exactly the same
appearance of intense interest that he had accorded to Rose’s monologue
earlier in the day. But every now and then he adjusted his single
eyeglass and glanced across the glittering expanse of white cloth,
crystal, and silver.
The conversation only became general when Rose’s neighbour spoke
animatedly upon the subject of billiards.
“We might have a game after dinner,” said Sir Thomas. “Though I’m
afraid we don’t muster very strong here.”
He paused a moment.
Jim Aviolet had played billiards.
“I’m a very poor performer,” said Ford. “Toby could give me fifty in a
hundred and a beating, easily. Are you an expert, Diana?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know one end of a cue from the other,” she
confessed, and then discounted the admission by adding: “but I can mark
for you.”
“I can play,” said Rose, “but I’m awfully bad.”
“I’m afraid that Toby is ‘awfully’ good,” Ford told her, stressing the
slang qualification. “If you want a foe worthy of your steel, Toby, we
might ask Dr. Lucian up one evening. He’s a local worthy--and a very
fine player at that.”
Something in the patronizing inflection of the words, no less than the
implied rebuke to herself, roused Rose’s never very deeply dormant
pugnacity.
“Dr. Lucian is most awfully nice,” she proclaimed very loudly. “I like
him and his sister. They’re--they’re awfully nice.”
She coloured and unconsciously tossed her head as she bore her
haltingly worded testimony. There was a moment’s silence.
“I remember Lucian,” said Lord Charlesbury. “A clever fellow, too. I
should like to meet him again.”
“Perhaps he could dine here one night, and you might have some good
billiards,” said Lady Aviolet.
She looked at Diana Grierson-Amberly and they both rose.
In the drawing-room, Lady Aviolet turned to Diana.
“I hope your violin is down here, Di.”
“It’s upstairs, but I’ll fetch it.”
“Your coffee, my dear....”
“Mother doesn’t let me have it, Cousin Catherine, because of my
complexion.”
“Ah, well, you can’t be too careful,” the elder lady acquiesced.
When the girl had gone upstairs, she said to her daughter-in-law:
“I should like to ask Dr. Lucian to dinner, Rose, since he is a friend
of yours. But I am afraid that I have never called upon his sister.”
Rose could think of no reply to the last half of the announcement, and
therefore ignored it.
“I hope he’ll come,” she said. “He’s very nice and he’s awf--very
interested in Cecil.”
“He knew Cecil’s father many years ago, and in fact he has known all
of us for many years--ever since he first came down here from London.
I believe he’s very highly thought of in his profession. A clever man,
Ford calls him.”
She was complacently secure that Ford’s judgment must be infallible,
but in this instance Rose felt no desire to dispute it.
“Won’t you look through my pieces, Mrs. Aviolet?” Diana’s voice
inquired behind her.
The girl had returned with her violin-case and a neat pile of music.
She opened the grand piano that Rose had never dared to touch, as she
spoke. Her pieces, as she had called them, were thoroughly deserving of
the name. There was Thomé’s “Simple Aveu” and somebody’s “Variations in
F,” and some Operatic Selections, and a good deal of French music.
Already Rose was regretting the rash impulse that had moved her to
volunteer the accompaniments.
“I’m more used to songs than to violin pieces,” she answered nervously.
“We’ll have a practice together to-morrow morning, before we perform in
public,” Diana good-naturedly suggested.
But when the men came into the drawing-room, the youth Toby was
clamorous for some music, and Sir Thomas politely seconded his urgent
requests.
“Try this,” Diana said to Rose again and again. “It’s so very easy,
really.”
And Rose, giggling nervously, repeated loudly: “No, I couldn’t--really,
I couldn’t,” a great many times.
At last she agreed to attempt the “Variations” and sat down at the
piano, endeavouring to give herself confidence by the preliminary
sketchy “run” that had been the orthodox prelude to all piano solos at
school.
Her fingers, stiff from absence of practice, bungled it badly, but she
regained courage at the first bars of the very simple music.
“One, two and three, four,” murmured Rose under her breath, violently
stressing the first beat in every bar, regardless of phrasing, and
vaguely hopeful that the application of the loud pedal would drown any
false notes.
If Diana’s playing was mediocre, that of Rose was definitely
vulgar, although she possessed a real ability to read at sight, and
considerable muscular power and agility.
“Oh, thanks awfully!” cried Toby, when it was over. “Have you got that
ripping waltz out of ‘The Strawberry Girl’?”
“Well played, well played,” muttered Sir Thomas, not looking up from
his _Times_.
Charlesbury said nothing at all, and Ford, going over to the piano,
silently assisted Rose to close it, with an air which plainly implied
that there remained nothing else to be done.
“I suppose I made a fool of myself,” she observed with an angry laugh.
He made no reply.
“She--your cousin--doesn’t play awfully well herself, does she? On her
fiddle, I mean.”
“She has had some very good teaching, I believe.”
“Of course, she was miles better than I was,” Rose added with belated
generosity. “Not that that’s saying much. I’m awfully out of practice.”
Ford made no reply at all, and Rose, in her desire for reassurance,
found temerity to cross the length of the room and sit down beside
Charlesbury.
He stood up, as she dropped into her armchair with the flouncing
movement of a schoolgirl, but to her relief sat down again almost at
once and looked at her with his kind, interested smile.
“I am sure you love music,” he said to her.
“Yes, I do. Not that you’d have thought so, from the row I made just
now. I don’t know why I ever said I’d play her accompaniments. I’ve
never accompanied a violin before, only songs.”
“You husband didn’t care for music, did he?” said Charlesbury, rather
as though stating a fact.
“Not a bit. Did you know Jim?”
“I knew him a little. I’ve known them all for years. But Ford is the
one I’ve seen the most of, although he is younger than I am by several
years.”
“They told me you were his friend, and I was so surprised, after I’d
seen you.”
Charlesbury smiled a little.
“Why were you surprised?”
“Well, you know, I think he’s odious,” said Rose.
Even Lord Charlesbury’s calm wavered slightly before the singular
candour of this unvarnished revelation.
“H’sh--his mother may hear you ...” he indicated Lady Aviolet, knitting
placidly.
“I daresay she knows quite well what I think,” said Rose gloomily, her
voice obediently lowered.
“I hope not.”
He looked down at the monocle, idle between his fingers.
“I’m so sorry you feel like that, Mrs. Aviolet. It must make it so
extraordinarily lonely for you here.”
She felt a rush of warm gratitude for the sympathy in his voice.
“Oh, it does. I’m a--a fish out of water, altogether, and I’d go away
to-morrow if it wasn’t for little Ces. It isn’t only Ford--though I
hate him the worst--it’s the whole life--everything.”
“I’m so sorry for you,” he repeated gently.
“Thank you,” said Rose Aviolet, her honest, child-like brown eyes
gazing at him, and her rouged mouth trembling a little with the
sincerity of her feelings.
V
“What do they want to start off so early for?” said Rose
disconsolately, when the men of the party went away the next morning
with their guns as soon as breakfast was over.
She envisaged without enthusiasm the prospect of a morning spent
_tête-à-tête_ with Miss Grierson-Amberly.
“Where’s Cecil?” Diana asked. “Couldn’t we take him out?”
Rose’s face lightened immediately.
“That’d be lovely, and it’s simply sweet of you to think of it. He has
lessons in the morning, but I should think he could come with us at
lunch time.”
They were to meet the guns for luncheon.
“He’d enjoy that, wouldn’t he, and it would be great fun to have him,”
Diana said in her placid voice.
Rose wondered whether she ever spoke vehemently or with passion. It did
not seem likely.
Lady Aviolet was in her own room, and Rose felt, uneasily, that upon
her devolved the entertainment of the visitor.
“What would you like to do?” she demanded abruptly, far too unsure of
her ground to make any suggestion, and completely convinced that Diana
would be at no loss.
“Please don’t let me be a bother, I’m sure you’re very busy. I’d love
to go round the garden, if I may.”
The garden, of course!
Rose never could remember that a garden was interesting.
“I’ll come with you,” she volunteered.
She did not like to ask Miss Grierson-Amberly to wait while she
went upstairs and changed her shoes, so she went out in her thin
house-slippers and inappropriate openwork stockings. The girl, she
noticed, had come down to breakfast wearing thick, heavy shoes with
fringed tongues and woollen stockings.
“How’s the rock-garden?” Diana inquired.
“Oh, it’s all right.”
“Lady Aviolet always has such nice things. Are you keen on gardening
too?”
“I don’t really know anything about it.”
“Neither do I,” Diana assured her, but Rose felt that their disclaimers
were based upon the radically differing foundations of modesty and
truthfulness respectively.
Their progress round the garden was punctuated by interested
exclamations and inquiries from Diana, to which Rose made but
inadequate rejoinders.
“What _is_ that? I know I ought to know, we’ve got some at home, but I
can’t remember.”
“It’s a lily,” said Rose, surprised.
“Yes. I meant what sort,” Diana explained gently.
They went into the hothouses.
“It reminds me of Colombo,” Rose said, of the moist, hot atmosphere.
An odd wave of nostalgia came over her, less for the East than for the
sense of something familiar, well known to her, and holding none of the
pitfalls that she felt to be everywhere in the strange surroundings of
her new life.
“Why, I’ve only this minute thought of it, but of course you must have
known the Powerfields in Colombo!” Diana’s tone of pleased discovery
interrupted her thoughts.
“The Powerfields?”
“Betty Powerfield was a friend of mine before she married. I haven’t
seen her since she married Sir William.”
“We were up-country most of the time, we didn’t know any of the
Government House people; of course I’ve seen them at the Races, and
places like that, but that’s all.”
“How stupid of me! I forgot you were up-country. Of course, one forgets
the distances out there.”
Rose swallowed audibly.
“We were in Colombo quite a lot, as well as up-country but we didn’t
know the Government House people anyway. Jim didn’t even put our names
down in the book, so of course we didn’t get asked to even the official
parties. It wouldn’t have been any use.”
Diana did not try to elucidate this cryptic remark.
She talked about gardening again.
“Are you very fond of the country?” Rose said to her at last.
“I like it better than London, I think, really.”
It seemed as though superlatives were for ever outside the range of
Miss Grierson-Amberly’s vocabulary.
“London is great fun, of course, though I always think it’s rather a
pity to go there just when the country is nicest--May and June, you
know. But, of course, in the winter, there’s the hunting. Do you hunt,
Mrs. Aviolet?”
“Oh, Lord, no!”
“I suppose your little boy will want to start. All the Aviolets ride so
well.”
“Ces can ride,” said Rose proudly. “He took to it quite naturally and
wasn’t a bit afraid.”
“Oh, good. Shall you let him hunt this winter?”
“Yes, if they want him to.”
Rose was quite steady and resolved upon that point. She herself was
afraid of horses, knowing nothing about them. Her stock comment, at
the Sunday after-church progress of inspection round the stables, was
always: “That horse is a pretty colour, isn’t it?” But she was eager
that Cecil should be less ignorant than she was herself, and proud that
he should have learnt to ride. She began to tell Miss Grierson-Amberly
of his prowess, boasting freely, and almost unheeding of the civil
sounds of interest and attention that her companion from time to time
emitted. Indeed, as they returned to the house, Rose was inwardly
congratulating herself naïvely on having found a congenial topic that
had caused the time to pass so quickly.
In the hall she stopped dead, and jerked her head in the direction of
Lady Aviolet’s morning-room, of which the door stood ajar, revealing a
glimpse of the grey-headed, square-shouldered figure at the table.
“I say--_you_ ask her, won’t you?”
“Ask her--who? What?”
“If Ces may come out to lunch with us,” whispered Rose, like a
schoolgirl. “I don’t like to, and besides she’ll be more likely to say
Yes if you ask.”
Diana laughed rather uncertainly, as though slightly disconcerted by
the manner of the request, but she obligingly made her suggestion to
Lady Aviolet.
“A very good idea, if Rose will allow it, and there is no objection
on the score of lessons. Rose, will you arrange it with Miss Wade, my
dear?”
Lady Aviolet always deferred to Cecil’s mother in all such minor
questions, and yet Rose never doubted for a moment that the older woman
deplored her upbringing of little Cecil, and looked forward to his
schooldays as to a time of regeneration.
As she thought of it, Rose’s young face assumed slowly a look of almost
mule-like stubbornness. It was as though, like an animal, she was
unable to formulate the terms of her problem rationally, and sought
refuge in blind, unassailable instinct.
“Ces isn’t going to school,” she muttered. “They’ll make him worse
there.”
She often thought of Cecil’s boyish untruthfulness as a disease, just
as Lady Aviolet viewed it as the result of a lack of education, Sir
Thomas as a vulgar form of childish naughtiness, and Ford----?
It was not so easy to penetrate to Ford’s convictions, but he had
hinted that a mixed heredity led to strange results, and Rose knew that
his family pride was outraged by the infusion of Smith blood in Cecil’s
veins. She even had a certain tolerant understanding of his feelings,
though none for his unpleasing manifestations of them.
It annoyed her, secretly, to see that little Cecil admired his uncle,
even although he sometimes seemed to be afraid of him.
Cecil was joyful and excited at the prospect of lunch out of doors. In
the pony-cart, he chattered incessantly, and Lady Aviolet responded
with great patience, until he suddenly said:
“I can carry the partridges for them. I always carry the rabbits when
Uncle Ford shoots. Sometimes they’re all bleeding, but I don’t mind a
bit. I always carry them.”
“Cecil,” said his grandmother sharply, “don’t boast! How many times
have you carried the shot rabbits for Uncle Ford?”
There was just that suggestion of a trap for inaccuracy in her tone
that always scared Cecil, and Rose hastily answered for him.
“Only once, wasn’t it, Cecil?”
“Then why does he say ‘always’?” said Lady Aviolet.
She had long ago told Rose that they must be very particular never to
let any mis-statement from Cecil pass unchallenged. It was their one
hope, she explained, of inculcating the habit of truthfulness. Cecil
now looked confused and alarmed, and as his grandmother fixed her eyes
upon him severely he said: “I meant once, Grandmama.”
“Try and always say what you mean, my dear,” she told him.
Cecil was silent for the rest of the drive, but when they reached the
keeper’s lodge in the wood he pulled Rose into a corner:
“Are you angry, Mummie?”
“No, of course not.” She kissed him resoundingly.
“I did, really and truly, carry the rabbits for Uncle Ford.”
“But not lots of times, Ces.”
“Three times,” he said, nodding his head. “That first time of all, when
Dr. Lucian was there too, and once the day that Miss Wade came, and the
day before yesterday. That makes three.”
Rose suddenly remembered. It was true that Cecil had performed the
office three times for Ford.
“But then--you told Grandmama just now that you meant only once!”
“I thought that was what she wanted me to say,” explained Cecil
piteously.
“Oh, _good_ Lord!” said Rose.
A sort of blank terror invaded her spirit, as the total lack of any
apprehension of truth now and then betrayed by Cecil confronted her
again.
For a moment she could not speak.
“Come and unwrap the potatoes, Cecil,” called Diana gaily, arriving on
foot with Miss Wade, and he ran off quite happily.
The men came in soon afterwards, and Diana asked suitable questions,
and made suitable comments on their replies.
Rose remained silent until they were all seated at the long table that
had been put up in the patch of ground surrounding the cottage. Even
in the perturbation of her spirit, she had noticed with relief and
pleasure that Charlesbury had chosen the seat next to hers. Cecil was
on her other side, interested in his Irish stew.
“I hope you are coming out with us presently,” said Lord Charlesbury.
“We’re shooting over the home farm.”
“It’s all on our way back. I’d like to walk there. But I won’t watch
the poor things being killed--I think it’s cruel.”
“It does seem a barbaric form of amusement, doesn’t it?” He smiled at
her gently, and changed the subject, on which Rose had been prepared to
uphold her views vehemently. She talked to him freely throughout the
meal and looked forward as a matter of course to walking with him after
it was over.
Deliberately, she slackened her pace until they were well behind the
others.
“Lord Charlesbury, I want to ask you something.”
She was looking full at him as she spoke, and for an instant caught a
fleeting glimpse of something like apprehension in his face. Even as
her perceptions registered the look, it vanished, so that she was not
even sure if it had really been there.
“I’m sure you have influence with my brother-in-law, with Ford. Will
you try and make him leave Cecil to me?”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“You see it’s like this,” she spoke breathlessly. “Ford is Cecil’s
guardian. Poor Jim arranged that--he was always doing tiresome things.
And, of course, the Aviolets have got the money. I’ve nothing at all,
and Jim--naturally--only left debts. So here we are on charity.”
“You can’t call it that--your boy’s own people.”
“Oh, I don’t mind a bit.” Rose assured him hastily. “At least hardly at
all. I wouldn’t mind anything, if it were good for Ces, and of course
he’s having splendid advantages here. Isn’t he?”
She looked at him wistfully, as though in sudden needed of reassurance.
“Yes, certainly. He looks such a jolly, happy little chap, too.”
“Well, I think he is. But I--Lord Charlesbury, I don’t want him sent to
school.”
He gave a low whistle.
Rose watched him anxiously.
“It would be a dreadful wrench for you--I understand absolutely. It
isn’t so very long since I sent my Hugh off, looking such a little
fellow too--and, of course, for a mother----”
“Oh, it’s not that!” cried Rose. “You don’t suppose that I’d stand in
his way for one moment, if I thought school was going to be the best
thing for him! But you see, I don’t.”
“But why not?”
“He’s not like other children. He--he’s got a fault. Poor darling! He
doesn’t speak the truth.”
“That is a great pity,” said Charlesbury gravely. “But unfortunately
it’s not a very uncommon failing. Children outgrow it.”
Rose suddenly felt that she and this kind, well-bred man, whom she
liked so much, were not really talking the same language. He did not
despise or condemn, as did the Aviolets, but neither did he understand.
“I don’t think Cecil knows what truth is,” she faltered despondently.
“It’s something lacking in him--I don’t even believe that it’s his
fault. But it’s dreadful!”
“Poor little fellow! But indeed, if I may say so, I’m quite sure that
you’re taking it a great deal too seriously, Mrs. Aviolet. How old is
he?”
“Not quite eight.”
“Why, he’s only a baby. You know they say that the age of reason is
seven years old, not before. You’ll have broken him of his bad habit
long before he has to go to school.”
“If I thought it was only a bad habit--I can’t explain properly, but
it seems to me more than that. I can’t get anybody to understand what
I mean,” she said confusedly. “It’s like a sort of kink in his mind.
And while that’s there, I don’t think he’s fit for school--not any more
than if he was physically deformed. They won’t understand him there--I
know they won’t.”
“Masters are necessarily men with a wide experience, you know. They are
accustomed to deal with every type of boy, after all. Perhaps they may
be more understanding than you imagine.”
“Then you think Cecil ought to go to school? You won’t speak to Ford
about it?”
There was a sound of pitiful disappointment in her voice. Charlesbury,
loyal to the traditions of his caste, yet spoke with quick and sincere
compassion.
“Don’t--don’t think that I can’t sympathize with you. I can and do,
intensely. Only forgive me if I ask whether you quite realize what a
frightful handicap it is for any boy, any English boy, to miss that
magnificent public-school training of ours? It’s like nothing else, you
know--I mean, there’s no substitute.”
“I suppose not. Most of the men I’ve known haven’t been public-school
boys, except, of course, my husband.”
The silence that fell between them made rather too clear their
mutual conviction that Jim Aviolet, at least, had been a singularly
unfavourable advertisement for the system of education that had
produced him.
“What did Jim want, himself, for the boy?”
“I don’t know. He talked about Sir Thomas perhaps offering to pay for
his education, but I don’t think he really expected it. In fact I
don’t suppose they’d have done it, if Jim had lived. They were pretty
well fed up with him,” said Mrs. Aviolet, with her usual inexorable
determination that spades should be spades. “Tell me, did Ford hate
poor old Jim?”
“They were on very unfriendly terms,” said Lord Charlesbury. “I am
afraid there was much jealousy between them. It was never a happy
relation.”
“I daresay that’s one reason why Ford is so beastly to me. He always
is, you know. He sneers at me, and if I make mistakes--well, _when_ I
made mistakes, I suppose I ought to say--he always tries to make it out
worse than it is. Oh, he’s hateful!”
“Ford Aviolet always strikes me as a disappointed man,” Lord
Charlesbury said reflectively. “He has always just missed things.
Although he was not brought up in an intellectual _milieu_, by any
means, he has only just missed being a very clever man. And he has
missed a certain popularity that Jim, if I may say so, always obtained
whenever he chose to ask for it--especially amongst women. I sometimes
think that Ford has resented that. He did well in South Africa,
too, but somehow he was passed over, when it came to promotion or
decorations. One affects not to care about these things, but I don’t
know--I don’t know.”
“I can’t feel a bit sorry for him,” Rose declared. “He’s somehow too
contemptuous to seem like a person who has, as you say, just failed.
Why doesn’t he marry, and have a son, and then they wouldn’t bother so
much about my Cecil.”
Charlesbury turned upon her a gaze that, for all its kindliness, was
exceedingly penetrating.
“Do you really wish that?”
She stared back at him.
“Of course. Oh, I see what you mean! But I should hate to think that
Cecil would ever have Squires, and be obliged to live there, and do
just what the other Aviolets have done before him. I’d rather he made a
life for himself.”
“Well done!” He laughed softly.
“Are you laughing at me?” said Rose, offended.
“Indeed I’m not--or only in the way one is allowed to laugh, between
friends. I hope you and I are to be friends?”
“Yes,” Rose said directly. “I’d like to be. I haven’t found anybody, in
England, that I wanted to be friends with--except Dr. Lucian and his
sister. They’ve been very kind to me. As for that Diana creature, that
they all talk of as if she was so wonderful, I think she’s too deadly
for words. Quite nice, you know, but dull, and extraordinarily stupid.”
Lord Charlesbury carefully displaced his eyeglass before speaking,
polished it with a silk handkerchief, and then replaced it.
“As I am to have the pleasure of your friendship, will you allow me to
say something very frankly?”
“Yes,” said Rose, wide-eyed.
“I want you to let me have the honour of being the only person to whom
you express yourself so very outspokenly about people whom you don’t
like. It would be--well, at least unwise, to give your opinion of
Diana Grierson-Amberly in quite those words, to someone who might very
possibly resent them. You see, English society is quite a small clan,
really, isn’t it? And perhaps especially so in the country. It’s a pity
to make enemies, after all.”
“Oh!”
“You forgive me for talking like a prig? I’m so much older than you
are, and, if you’ll let me say it, so much interested--and so sorry for
you.”
“You may well be that,” said Rose Aviolet, with tears in her eyes. “I
seem to be always making a fool of myself--if it isn’t one thing, it’s
another. But I don’t mind being told by you, because you’re so kind.
I’ll try and remember what you said about talking about people.”
“That will be very nice of you. Perhaps you’ll take me for another
walk, some day. I should like it very much if you would.”
“I’d like it, too,” said Rose. “You aren’t going away for a few days,
are you?”
“I’m afraid I must be off to-morrow. My boy will be home, and I don’t
want to miss too much of his holidays. He and I are very great friends,
I’m glad to say.”
“Is he like you?”
“No, I don’t think so. One of these days I hope you’ll see him, Mrs.
Aviolet. I should like you to bring Cecil over to Charlesbury, and let
the two little lads make friends.”
“Thank you very much. I often wish Ces had more to do with other
children. I think it would be good for him.”
“One does feel that, with an only child. Hugh has improved in every
possible way since he’s been with other boys.”
“At school, you mean?”
“Yes.”
Rose received the reply in silence. She was far too grateful for
Charlesbury’s evident liking and sympathy for herself to retort with
her habitual assertion that generalities which might apply to other
children did not apply to Cecil. Moreover, her shrewdness had quite
well perceived that Lord Charlesbury had avoided committing himself to
any promise of interference between herself and Ford. After all, he
was Ford’s friend, Rose reflected, liking him none the less on that
account, although still marvelling somewhat that it should be so.
She was sorry when they came into the home farm and her walk with
Charlesbury was over.
The men, spread out in a thin line, began to walk up the steep slope of
the first field, Diana Grierson-Amberly walking beside Ford, looking
very trim and efficient in her short, brown tweed coat and skirt and
close-fitting hat.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to walk with them, Rose?” her
mother-in-law asked her, from the pony-carriage in the lane.
“Quite sure, thank you,” Rose said, shuddering, and as a bird rose
suddenly and the first shot went off, she uttered a loud and startling
scream.
Ford’s head was turned, for a searing moment, in her direction.
“Get in quickly,” said Lady Aviolet.
Her tone was one of forbearance.
“Where’s Ces?”
“He is walking home with Miss Wade. I hope you don’t think it will be
too far for him?”
“Oh, no, it won’t hurt him.”
They often deferred thus, politely, to one another’s judgment in
matters concerning Cecil, Lady Aviolet from a conscientious desire
to respect the rights of motherhood, and Rose from some strange,
elementary idea of diplomacy.
“Laurence Charlesbury is a particularly charming person, don’t you
think?”
“Yes, I do.” Rose’s reply was emphatic, after her fashion.
“We have known him for many years, and I am particularly fond of him.”
“What was his wife like?”
“She had a good deal of foreign blood in her, I believe, but otherwise
she was delightful. She was only twenty-four when she died. Such a
pretty creature, too.”
“What was her name?” Rose asked abruptly. She was conscious of an
impelling curiosity.
“Mona le Breton. Her father was the well-known polo-player, you know.”
Rose, of course, did not know, and was a good deal more interested in
trying to obtain some glimpse of the personality that had lain behind
the romantic name.
Lady Aviolet, however, possessed no talent for transmitting such
impressions.
“They were only married two years. She died when her baby was born,
poor thing!”
“Were they very happy together?”
“I believe it was a very happy marriage. He was devoted to her, poor
man. Everyone thought he was sure to marry again, if only for the poor
little boy’s sake, but he has never shown any signs of doing so.”
“It must have been dreadful for him, losing her. What was she _like_?”
“She was very pretty,” repeated Lady Aviolet, a little helplessly.
“Tall and slim, with brown, curly hair and very dark blue eyes. Quite
an unusual type, in fact.”
“What else?”
“How do you mean, my dear? She wasn’t clever, or anything like that, so
far as I know. Lady Cowderham was her aunt, and used to take her about
before she married. She was the same age as Lady Cowderham’s own girl,
who afterwards married one of the Troyles of Lawley--the second son, I
think it was.”
They had got back to names and categories again. Rose ceased to feel
any interest in what her companion was saying, and therefore, after her
wont, ceased to pay any attention to it. Lady Aviolet, naturally, was
not thereby encouraged to proceed with her observations and they drove
on for a time in silence.
Rose felt pleased and excited by the idea of her friendship with
Laurence Charlesbury. She found him attractive, and she had been long
enough removed from admiration to welcome it with passionate eagerness.
She heartily wished that Lord Charlesbury were not going away on the
morrow, to leave Squires once more intolerable to her.
“Is Lord Charlesbury _obliged_ to go away to-morrow?” she suddenly
demanded with great abruptness.
“I suppose so. It’s certainly a pity, but I hope we shall see him again
one of these days. He generally comes over once or twice every year.”
“It’s been a very short visit,” said Rose disconsolately.
“It’s not been like a regular shooting-party at all, I’m afraid, my
dear. Another year we shall do rather more entertaining, I hope, but,
naturally, it was out of the question for us all, just now. However,
Diana is staying on for a day or two, I’m glad to say. She’s always so
bright.”
“Is she?” said Rose, and then remembered her conversation with
Charlesbury, and added in a determined sort of way: “She’s nice and
_willing_, isn’t she? Does she enjoy herself a lot in London?”
“Her mother is very strict about only allowing her a certain number of
late nights in the week. But she has a good deal of going out, on the
whole, and I’m told that she is a great success everywhere. Men always
like her so much.”
Rose felt very much surprised to hear it, but hoped that her
silence might be taken as a tribute to the indisputability of Miss
Grierson-Amberly’s charms.
“I hope you and she will make friends, my dear. I feel that you have
very little companionship of your own age, amongst us all.”
Rose was acutely touched, as she always was by any kindness.
“It is very good of you. I’m afraid you think I’m an ungrateful pig,
sometimes----”
Alarm was latent in Lady Aviolet’s grey, obtuse eyes. It crept
there, slowly, because all her reactions were slow, but always quite
unmistakably, at the introduction of a personal note in conversation.
Emotional outbursts, such as Rose was addicted to, she very evidently
viewed as indiscretions that only too surely classified their
perpetrators.
“My dear--please.... Hark! Can you hear the guns? They must be doing
very well.”
“Damn the guns,” said Rose without malice, only resenting her rebuff.
Lady Aviolet slightly drew down her already lengthy upper lip and said
nothing whatever.
“I didn’t mean it! It was frightfully rude of me--please forgive me!”
“Don’t, my dear, don’t upset yourself, please. That expression doesn’t
sound nice on any one’s lips, but especially not on those of a woman.
The use of it is a bad habit, and I’m told it’s very much on the
increase--a pity, I think. One knows that no irreverence is intended,
but one dislikes hearing such a word at all.”
The fastidious distaste in the elder lady’s voice was quite impersonal,
and caused Rose to feel herself relegated to some more than ever remote
distance from the world in which the Aviolet standards prevailed.
Her mother-in-law, with deliberate obviousness, changed the subject.
“Ford has probably told you that he is going to talk to Laurence
Charlesbury about Hurst, Hugh’s preparatory school. He thinks it might
do very well for Cecil, and it would be nice to feel that the little
chap would find a friend there. Hugh is a particularly nice boy.”
“And where do I come in?”
Lady Aviolet looked her interrogation at the truculence that had
suddenly sprung into Rose’s voice.
“Ford this, and Ford that. Ces is _my_ kid, and I think I ought to be
consulted, if there’s going to be talk about where he’s going to, and
all the rest of it.”
“I don’t know what you mean, my dear. Ford will talk it all over with
you before anything is settled, naturally. Here we are! Now do go and
rest quietly in your own room till tea-time. I’m sure you’re tired.”
Rose understood only too well that this forbearing epithet was applied
to what she herself ruefully stigmatized as her own crossness. She felt
herself, indeed, to be in a strangely restless mood, and disinclined
in the extreme to follow Lady Aviolet’s advice and rest.
Instead, she threw off her hat, with its detested little black veil,
the moment she reached her room, and stared earnestly at herself in the
glass.
Even to her own perceptions, it was an innocent, almost child-like face
that gazed back at her, in spite of her big frame and the very patent
artificial colour on her full lips.
“I certainly don’t look twenty-five,” she reflected with satisfaction.
Her yellow hair fell in loose strands across her forehead and temples,
and she pushed it back impatiently. That unusual corn-colour was an
asset, especially with brown eyes and dark lashes, but she had always
longed for curly hair. To-day, she thought that she would like to have
had brown curly hair, and dark blue eyes, and to have been slim, as
well as tall.
“I bet I weigh all of eleven stone,” she murmured disgustedly, her eyes
travelling across the square breadth of her fine shoulders and the
deep, full curves of her breast.
“And my weight’ll go up every day in this place, with the meals they
have and never anything to do worth doing!”
She revolved in her own mind, as often before, foolish and unpractical
plans for maintaining herself and Cecil independently of Aviolet
assistance. But she knew too much of poverty to take her own flights of
fancy seriously. Cecil should have all that the Aviolets could give him.
She held, however, the gifts of their bestowal to be confined within
the limits of the material. For the things of the spirit, she was
convinced that Cecil had only herself to look to, and the thought added
weight to her blind determination of trusting to her own instinct
rather than to Ford’s specious logic.
“Perhaps, after all, Lord Charlesbury will say something to Ford,” she
thought. “I believe he’d help me if he could.”
The dimple deepened at the corner of her mouth and she smiled, with a
curious pleasure at the thought.
Lord Charlesbury did not tell her whether he had spoken to Ford, but
he talked to her most of the evening, and the exhilarating conviction
of his liking increased in her. She even became rather exuberant in
her triumphant consciousness of success, and her manner to Diana
Grierson-Amberly took on an unconstraint that hitherto she had been
unable to afford.
But at the foot of the stairs, when Charlesbury handed her a lighted
candle, he said: “Good-night, and good-bye, I’m afraid. I shall be off
early to-morrow morning.”
“Oh, I _am_ sorry.”
He smiled at her.
“So am I. You won’t forget that you’re coming to visit Charlesbury and
bringing the boy?”
“Oh, no, I shan’t forget,” she assured him seriously.
Shaking hands, he detained hers in his for a moment before releasing
it.
VI
Maurice Lucian could only remember having dined at Squires once or
twice before, although he had sometimes played billiards with the young
men there. It was, he imagined, in order to afford another game of
billiards, that he had been invited there now.
It interested him to see the drawing-room at Squires, when he entered
it at a quarter past eight that evening.
The pictures on the walls, nearly all of them rather old-fashioned
water-colour copies “from the flat,” were carefully lit up by candles
in sconces grouped amongst them.
Very beautiful hot-house plants were arranged here and there in stiff
groups.
Also arranged in stiff groups, and very much less beautiful than the
hot-house plants, were the inmates.
He saw Rose Aviolet, of whom he was thinking most, directly.
Whereas the square neck of Lady Aviolet’s black velvet gown was
carefully filled in with equally black net, and Miss Grierson-Amberly’s
plain white satin displayed only a tiny triangular patch of fair,
sunburnt red neck, Rose Aviolet’s evening dress was cut low, showing
her fine neck and shoulders to great advantage. There was a great deal
of jet about it, that jingled when she moved, and the doctor noticed
that she wore a ring on her middle finger, and that the other women
did not, and that instead of a pearl necklace, she had on a string of
carved black wooden beads.
Her lips were not more heavily rouged than he had previously seen them,
and the powder on her face was, on the whole, less conspicuous than
that which lay in rather ineffectual patches on the red splotches of
sunburn on Diana Grierson-Amberly’s delicate, mottled skin.
But Miss Grierson-Amberly sat erect on her chair, and her clear blue
eyes looked out politely and interestedly from the smooth vacuity of
her young face, and her voice was very low, and distinct, and well-bred.
Perhaps Rose Aviolet’s voice----?
It certainly rang out above any other voice in the room.
“I always think it’s an awfully difficult name to pronounce if you’ve
only seen it written,” came over audibly from Rose. “Someone in Colombo
once read out a letter from me, and she said the signature as if it was
Rosa-Violet!”
Diana Grierson-Amberly smiled, looking at Sir Thomas. He remained
entirely grave, and Lucian surmised that he saw no cause to be anything
but pained at the idea that people should exist who did not know how
his name should be pronounced. Moreover, the personal note, never long
absent from Rose’s conversation, had sounded oddly out of place.
The others, collectively, were saying:
“There was certainly a touch of frost the other night--not a doubt of
it.”
And: “You must take a cutting next time you’re in the garden.”
And from Sir Thomas: “What do you think of the chances of this
bye-election?”
Very much the same topics, so far as Lucian could hear, seemed to
prevail at the dinner table. He sat next to Lady Aviolet, and she
talked about the housing of the poor.
“They want more fresh air. I hardly ever see an open window when I go
into a cottage,” she said impressively.
The doctor had often heard her say the same thing before, and he
replied mechanically, having long since outgrown the delusion that
to reiterate words of pain and indignation at a regrettable state of
affairs, is a step towards redressing it.
The sound of Rose Aviolet’s voice reached him very often, and he
detected in it presently a new note that caused him to bestow at least
half of his attention upon her, instead of the whole of it upon his
hostess.
Already she had turned most of the contents of a glassful of sherry
into her soup plate, and she was now freely drinking glass after glass
of Sir Thomas’s admirable hock.
Lucian could see that her colour had deepened, and could hear that her
voice and her laughter were rising steadily. She exchanged loud and
rather elementary pleasantries with her partner, the youth Toby. By
the time that Lady Aviolet rose from the table, Lucian felt tolerably
certain that although Rose Aviolet was not intoxicated, neither was she
entirely sober.
Except for his attentive, and far from unkindly, interest in watching
her, Lucian would have found his evening very dull.
The four men sat round the dinner table for some time, and their slow
talk was confined almost entirely to matters of agriculture.
When they adjourned to the billiard-room, Rose and Lady Aviolet had
already taken places on the raised red leather-cushioned seats against
the wall. The elder lady, knitting, sat upright. Rose lounged back, her
knees crossed, and polished the nails of one hand against the palm of
the other.
Diana offered to mark for the players.
Ford stood beside her, ostensibly watching the game, but every now and
then, as though by stealth, he turned his eyes and fixed them upon her
smooth fair hair and pleasantly serious face, with its slightly open
mouth.
From against the wall, Rose’s voice and her laughter cut across the
room all too frequently, with an effect of stridency.
Lucian saw that Sir Thomas glanced at her once or twice, frowningly.
“You’re too good for me, doctor,” said Toby good-humouredly.
It was undeniably true.
“Shall we come back into the drawing-room?”
Lady Aviolet led the way, talking to her guest.
“Curiously enough, Lord Charlesbury, who does everything else so well,
is not a billiard-player. He left us this morning, I’m sorry to say.
Such a delightful man.”
“A short visit,” said Ford curtly, “and I saw less of him than I should
have liked. However, he and I had some instructive conversation on the
subject of preparatory schools.”
He laughed softly as though at some amusing thought.
Something in the doctor’s mind seemed to leap to attention. As he held
open the drawing-room door, he glanced sharply at Rose.
“We’re all interested in the subject of schools just now,” said Lady
Aviolet very placidly, “on little Cecil’s account, you know.”
Rose stared rather stupidly at her mother-in-law out of her big brown
eyes, and after an instant Diana Grierson-Amberly broke the awkward
little silence.
“But of course----”
The inane little civility seemed to rouse Rose Aviolet.
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” she remarked, still in that
over-loud voice. “I told Lord Charlesbury that Cecil wasn’t going to be
sent to school at all, and what’s more, I’ll tell all of you the same.
You needn’t trouble to talk to any more people about it, Ford. It won’t
be any use.”
As soon as they had rallied their perceptions--and none of them, the
doctor saw, except Ford Aviolet, did so within the first second or two
of amazement--the atmosphere became electric as though charged with the
force that lay behind Rose’s trenchant syllables.
The boy Toby, with the instincts of his kind, stifled a whistle as it
left his lips, and swiftly retreated from the threshold of the room
where emotion threatened. Lucian, acutely interested, unconsciously
took two steps forward and shut the door.
He saw that Rose Aviolet, taken unawares, was about to force an issue.
Was there to be a scene at Squires after all? His quick glance took in
the setting of the odd little drama.
Lady Aviolet, elderly, squat, and ugly, yet strangely dignified, sat
back in an armchair, her dress, in weighty folds, falling about her
feet on the parquet floor. Behind her stood Sir Thomas, frowning
heavily. His shirt-front bulged a little, and his heavy shoulders were
bowed.
Ford stood upon the hearthrug, one arm resting on the marble carving
of the mantel. His eyebrows were moving slightly up and down, but
otherwise his finely chiselled face, like and yet so unlike his
mother’s, was expressionless. One hand held his eyeglasses.
Opposite to Lady Aviolet sat the girl Diana. Her hands were folded in
her lap. She looked perplexed, but not at all perturbed. Her lax mouth,
with its narrow formation of palate, and two prominent, white front
teeth, looked quite ready either to smile, or to droop slightly in
dismay.
Rose Aviolet was standing. She looked big and heavy, with her square
shoulders almost bare, her large proportions contrasting with Lady
Aviolet’s shortness, Ford’s narrowness of shoulder, and Diana
Grierson-Amberly’s flat-chested figure and slender neck and arms.
One strand of hair lay loose across her forehead, and she kept on
pushing it back into place again angrily. Her whole appearance was
untidy, lacking entirely the repose that kept Lady Aviolet unmoved, and
the girl Diana trim and well-groomed-looking at the end of the evening.
Her condition, that barely verged upon insobriety, was perfectly
evident to Lucian and, he felt sure, to Sir Thomas also. Lady Aviolet
and Diana, he was equally convinced, had noticed nothing. Whether or
not Ford had a suspicion, Lucian could not tell. But at least it seemed
certain that they must all realize that Rose Aviolet was on the brink
of making the “row” that she had threatened. Her high voice, pitched
higher than usual, broke upon the big, echoing room once more.
“I may just as well say this now, mayn’t I? Ces isn’t going to be sent
to any school.”
The challenge was flung at her brother-in-law, but it was Lady Aviolet
who replied in a quiet, unruffled voice:
“We can talk about it later, my dear. There’s no hurry.”
“Yes, there is.” Rose contradicted the elder lady flatly, making Ford
wince at the crudity.
“There’s this amount of hurry, that I’m not going to stand being
badgered about it any longer. Cecil’s my child, and I won’t have him
sent to school.”
“We can think about it when the time comes. He won’t be ready for
another five or six months, perhaps not even then.”
Lady Aviolet spoke with the same perfect placidity.
“I’ll never consent.”
“Indeed, my dear? We must talk it over and see if we can persuade you
to alter your views. Meanwhile, I think we’d better go to bed.”
The anti-climax seemed to madden Rose.
“I’ll discuss it now, while you’re all here. I’m not going on day after
day with this hanging over me. We’ll have it out now, and have done
with it.”
Whether by accident or design, she was standing in a direct line with
the big double-doors that Lucian had closed, so that no one could
easily go out.
“I don’t think there’s anything to discuss,” said Lady Aviolet. “But
if you propose to keep us all out of our beds, Rose, perhaps someone
will be good enough to reach me my knitting. It’s on the little table.
Thank you, Diana.”
The girl was hesitating, as though wondering whether to leave the room,
but the elder woman invited her, with an amiable gesture, to remain
beside her.
She took up the scarlet mass of wool and began unhurriedly to ply the
wooden needles. From time to time she counted stitches, half under her
breath.
Then Sir Thomas spoke, also unhurried, but with his coarse grey
eyebrows drawn close together and coming down well over his wrinkled
lids.
“What’s all this nonsense about? Of course the boy goes to school--all
boys go to school.”
“It’ll ruin Ces,” said Rose, panting. “Look here, I’d not say a word if
he was like other boys. But he isn’t, and he’ll get worse and worse if
he’s put with people who don’t understand him. There’s a kink in him
somewhere, and he’s not fit for the sort of treatment that runs all
boys into a mould and turns them out to pattern.”
“Your opinions of the English public-school system are extremely
interesting, Rose,” said Ford with great suavity, “but perhaps you’ll
allow me to ask what experience you have had on the subject. Your
father was not a public-school man, I believe?”
“He was a bankrupt North London tradesman, and you know it.”
“Quite so. Your other relations?”
“We needn’t go into all that, my boy. Rose has a very natural objection
to parting from her only child, but I hope we can make her realize that
it’s all for the boy’s own good in the end.”
Sir Thomas’s intention was obviously conciliatory, but Lucian
realized, and saw that Ford realized, that his implication of amiable
maternal weakness was infuriating to Rose Aviolet’s vanity.
“I’m not a fool,” she cried out. “I’ve told you before that if Ces
was an ordinary child, I’d be the first person to say he should go to
school.”
Ford’s low, slight laugh jarred on the doctor with a sudden intensity
that surprised himself.
“It’s extremely easy to say ‘if,’ isn’t it?”
“Thirty-four--thirty-five--” came softly from his mother. Then she
raised her eyes.
“Children never seem ordinary to their parents,” she remarked
comfortably. “I had to part with both my boys, Rose, my dear, and
you’ll find that poor little Cecil will be much easier to manage after
he’s seen something of other boys.”
Rose clenched both hands, as though the sense of being at
cross-purposes might drive her to physical violence.
It was evident enough to Lucian that her fierce arguments had conveyed
no slightest sense of her meaning to any one in the room save to
himself and to Ford Aviolet.
It was again to Ford that she addressed herself, although the light in
her eyes as she faced him held something very like hatred.
“You know what I mean. You know perfectly well. I’m not just a fool of
a mother saying that she won’t let her little darling go and rough it.
I’d let Ces go to school to-morrow, if he wasn’t what he is. You all
know what’s wrong with him. He can’t tell the truth. How do you suppose
they’ll deal with that at a big school?”
“Successfully, I hope,” said Ford, with an emphasis on the first word.
“On your own showing, a home education hasn’t cured the boy of an
extremely unpleasant trick. It’s a very good argument for trying a
new system.” He looked round, very quietly triumphant, and as his eye
caught that of Diana Grierson-Amberly, he smiled slightly.
Then the girl spoke, suddenly and rather breathlessly, turning with a
little air of pleading, to Rose Aviolet.
“You know, my brothers are awfully happy at school. Tony’s at Eton
still, and he simply loves it. The games and things, you know.”
Now that she, who was, though not in the same sense of the word as
himself, an outsider, had made her small, inefficient contribution of
words, Lucian felt that he, also, might speak. He, like Rose, chose to
address Ford Aviolet, as the only possible interpreter between Rose’s
vehemence and the unimaginative, unruffled obtuseness of the old people.
“As I understand it, Mrs. Aviolet’s contention is that her boy,
individually, is unsuited for the system of education that the average
English boy profits by. Is there no possible alternative?”
His glance involuntarily shifted, almost pleadingly, to Lady Aviolet.
“Do you think little Cecil delicate?” she said in a surprised way.
“Some boys are too delicate for school-life, but it always seems such a
pity.”
The doctor was silent.
“Pray let us know, Lucian, if the boy looks to you physically unfit?”
said Ford. The irony in his tone was most delicate.
The doctor understood perfectly that his interference was being
punished. He knew, and Ford Aviolet knew that he knew, that Cecil was a
strong and a healthy child.
“Physically, he seems perfectly sound as far as I can tell.”
Rose Aviolet snatched at the cue he had given her.
“His little body’s all right. It’s his mind, or his soul--whatever you
like to call it.”
Sir Thomas abruptly emitted a sound which appeared to imply that his
grandson had no business to possess anything but a body.
“If he were a hunchback, you wouldn’t send him to school. Why should a
mental deformity receive less consideration than a physical one?”
“What’s the use of talking like that, Rose?” said her mother-in-law.
“(Fifty--fifty-one--fifty-two) Cecil isn’t a hunchback, or anything in
the least like it, thank Heaven!”
Ford Aviolet smiled again.
“Tell them what I mean!” Rose hurled at him, with an intensity that
made the girl Diana shrink back, looking bewildered.
Ford’s eyeglasses swung gently to and fro. His eyebrows were raised.
“Plead your own cause, my dear Rose,” he said easily. “You know I
don’t see with you. In my humble opinion, school is exactly what Cecil
requires.”
“All boys go to school,” Sir Thomas again reiterated. “It’s the
greatest disadvantage in the world to a boy to be brought up in any
other way. I used to know an unfortunate Roman Catholic fellow who’d
been brought up by monks--put him at the greatest disadvantage with
other fellows all his life. Of course, a delicate lad may have to be
educated at home, but it’s a great disadvantage. I couldn’t allow it
for my grandson.”
“You heard Dr. Lucian say Cecil wasn’t delicate, Rose,” said Lady
Aviolet.
They were imperturbable in their lack of comprehension.
Rose Aviolet’s breast was rising and falling as though she breathed
with difficulty.
“Why don’t you sit down, my dear?” inquired Lady Aviolet.
Rose turned to Lucian as though she had not heard.
“You say Cecil’s bodily health is good, as far as you know. Can you say
the same of his soul?”
Her eyes challenged him.
“Rose, Rose--(sixty-eight--nine--and seventy)----Please!----”
The doctor made his voice expressionless as he replied: “You must
remember that I’ve only hearsay--except for one instance that might
happen with any child--on which to form an opinion. But if the boy,
as you say, seems incapable of speaking the truth, then, certainly,
morally, he’s unsound!”
“But oh!----” The gasp came from Diana Grierson-Amberly.
“Wouldn’t--wouldn’t school be the very thing to cure him of that?”
“I can’t tell.”
“No,” said Rose Aviolet swiftly, “you can’t tell. You’ve studied the
subject, and you’re an expert, but you can’t tell off-hand. It’s only
people who think in a rut and never get out of it, that don’t know
there are two sides to every question. I’m Cecil’s mother, and I’m
not a fool about things that really matter, but my opinion goes for
nothing!”
“There’s no need to raise your voice, my dear,” said Lady Aviolet. “Of
course you’re Cecil’s mother, and we shouldn’t think of doing anything
inconsiderate by you, I hope, but you know, poor Jim did leave his boy
to Ford’s guardianship. That shows that he wanted him brought up as
he’d been brought up himself; now, doesn’t it?”
Jim Aviolet, however brought up, had, the doctor well knew, barely
escaped expulsion from school on at least two occasions. He thought
Rose Aviolet capable of voicing the fact then and there, and spoke
before she could do so.
“Given time, isn’t there the possibility that this tendency may be
eradicated?”
Rose looked at him eagerly.
“The study of psychology is taking immense strides, especially on the
Continent. Have you ever heard of treatment by auto-suggestion?”
Lady Aviolet made a low sound, something between a cluck and an
inarticulate ejaculation.
“I could never approve of that,” she said firmly.
They stared at her, Ford and Sir Thomas no less than the others.
“Anything to do with spiritualism,” said Rose Aviolet’s mother-in-law,
shaking her head. “Quite against the teachings of religion, and great
nonsense besides.”
Ford Aviolet looked at the doctor.
“Is it necessary to make such a mountain out of a molehill?” he
inquired. “My little nephew tells lies. Excuse me, Rose, for saying so,
but I think we have your word for it. It is quite a common failing
amongst children. His contemporaries will teach him the disadvantages
attached to fibbing in a very much more practical manner than we can.
Need we discuss it any longer? Lucian, a whisky-and-soda? Mother, you
must be tired.”
“Yes.” The old lady rolled up her knitting. “Think it over quietly,
Rose. There’s no hurry.”
Rose’s dilated eyes were fixed upon her brother-in-law, and Lucian made
one movement forward.
He felt a rush of relief when the tension snapped with a torrent of
words, hurled straight at Ford Aviolet.
“You snob--you prig! You could help me--and you won’t. You only care
that your nephew should do what every other boy does--so that he shall
turn out a little gentleman, able to play games, and talk the right
slang, and get the rotten public-school point of view. You don’t care
what he’s like, so long as he never gets found out. That’s what your
public-school education will teach him: that he may go on telling lies,
so long as nobody catches him at it--that sex is just a dirty sort of
joke--that religion is going to church in a top hat--that the only
thing that matters is to conform--conform--conform to type, all along
the line.”
Rose Aviolet had made her scene.
She had hurled her fury, her passionate invective, like a wave against
the rock of their immoveable good breeding.
Lucian, the sharpness of his perceptions seeming doubly intensified,
could view the wreckage. It was Rose that was spent and broken.
Lady Aviolet, he guessed, had been offended and alienated by Rose’s
mention of sex. It was a word that she had hitherto probably only met,
and then with reluctance, in literature. She had changed countenance.
The girl Diana, her mouth fallen wide open, had sidled furtively along
the floor until she stood beside Ford.
Sir Thomas emitted a sharp sound of disgust.
“You’re not yourself, Rose. Be quiet,” he commanded her.
His arm swept her aside as he opened the door.
Ford moved slowly from his place at the marble mantelpiece.
As he passed Rose he said pleasantly: “You’ll feel upset about this,
I’m afraid, when you come to yourself again. But pray let us have no
apologies. Personally, I’ll take them as said, if you’ll spare us
another dramatic display. These things, you know, really aren’t done.”
That was it: these things weren’t done.
Lucian realized it very thoroughly, as he saw the contemptuous distaste
evident on the habitually inexpressive face of Sir Thomas when the
women had passed out of the room.
Rose had flung down her gage with all the violence of the strong,
undisciplined feeling that governed her. These people had been too
well-bred to pick it up. To them, there was never anything to be angry,
or noisy, or emotional, about. They were self-controlled by instinct.
Their spirits knew no revolt at all. Nothing mattered to them, as
almost everything mattered to Rose, the vulgar, the vehemently alive.
He made no doubt that they would not talk very much about her outburst,
even amongst themselves. He, the outsider, would never hear any more of
it from them. He had no right to have been present.
Prompted by the thought, he began his farewell, taking it as the
measure of Lady Aviolet’s perturbation that she had only bowed a
mechanical good-night to him as she left the room, forgetting that he
was not a guest in the house.
“No hurry,” growled Sir Thomas. “I’m going to get a drink in the
smoking-room. Come along.”
A gesture from Ford detained the doctor.
“One moment. I really should like to consult you on this absurdly
magnified subject now that it has been raised.”
The doctor’s experience, both of Ford and of humanity, was too large
to allow of his being greatly surprised when the consultation took the
form of a very lucid résumé of Ford Aviolet’s own impressions.
“In a sense, the boy is certainly abnormal. He has never been taught
the value of truth. He romances. But I refuse to regard it seriously.”
Ford made his characteristic gesture, a small, elegant waving of his
_pince-nez_.
“My dear mother is hyper-sensitive on the subject. She imagines that it
denotes an ineradicable tendency to criminal deceit. That _was_ the old
idea, I suppose. What he needs is to me perfectly obvious.”
So few things were, in the doctor’s opinion, perfectly obvious, that he
waited with some curiosity to be enlightened.
“School,” said Ford. “School. A thoroughly healthy English atmosphere,
where he’ll get plenty of wholesome knocking about, and be called a
little liar when he deserves it.”
“A bloody little liar,” Lucian corrected, and Ford, as the doctor had
expected, winced slightly.
“Boys are very brutal, no doubt. But brutality of that kind is exactly
what Cecil needs. And, my dear fellow, between ourselves, it’ll be half
the battle to get him away from his mother.”
“You think she spoils him?”
“No,” said Ford, in a reasonable voice. “No. In the vulgar sense of
over-indulgence, she does not spoil him. But her ideas are quite
horribly crude, and she is, as you must have perceived, a--an
uneducated--how shall I put it? Let us say that hers is a third-rate
mind. Look,” cried Ford with a slight shudder, “at her taste in
literature.”
“_Tout les goûts sont respectables._ What is her taste in literature?”
“What, indeed!”
Lucian waited, a flippant desire crossing his mind to inquire whether
Ford Aviolet was feeling sick.
“She weeps over the early death of a mawkish infant in a work of
fiction that I believe is called ‘Misunderstood.’”
“I’ve read the book.”
The tone of the doctor’s reply implied, as indeed he meant it to imply,
that he considered “Misunderstood” to be a highly respectable subject
for emotion.
“Then I will say no more.”
“What are you going to do if Mrs. Aviolet still refuses to let the boy
go to school?”
“She can’t refuse. Fortunately she hasn’t a penny. One hates to
emphasize it, but my father gives her an allowance, and is, of course,
undertaking the whole expense of Cecil’s education. Personally, I
advise sending him to his preparatory school at once. It’s the very
best chance of breaking him of this silly, vulgar habit of telling
lies.”
“You think so?”
The eyeglasses described their graceful little curve once more.
“The only hope, I may say. He’ll get kicked out of it.”
“Unless he’s kicked further into it. What’s the alternative to school?”
“There isn’t one.”
“But what does his mother suggest?”
“Oh, a home education. A tutor. No doubt she visualizes him as Little
Lord Fauntleroy on a pony riding about amongst the tenants. Very
typical of her ideals, poor thing.”
Ford’s tone was tolerant in the extreme.
“So you are very much in favour of the public-school system of
education, are you?” inquired the doctor.
To himself, he added:
“And yet, my fine fellow, I’m very much mistaken if your own life at
school was anything but a misery and a degradation.”
“Don’t you agree with me?”
“I’m not a public-school man.”
Lucian was conscious of having evaded the question, but he did not
think that Ford would remark it. Nor did he.
“It will make a gentleman of the boy, as the odious expression is. My
dear man, I’m not one of those people who can see nothing admirable in
the institutions of their own country. To my mind, a fine Englishman is
the finest man in the world.”
As he spoke, he threw back his slender shoulders in a gesture that
was evidently an unconscious one. It struck Lucian rather strangely,
as though it were the almost automatic expression of a desire for
reassurance.
It was as if Ford was trying to impress Ford with his own claim to be a
“fine Englishman.”
“I’m sorry if I sound--er--disgustingly snobbish, but the fact remains
that Rose is entirely unfitted, by birth and education, to bring up my
father’s grandson. You’ve seen for yourself what she’s like.”
“Very devoted to the boy.”
“Oh, very. I’ve not a word to say against that. The maternal instinct
in women and animals is generally in inverse ratio to the intellectual
development. But we’re having this difficulty with her on that very
account. She raves, as she did to-night, about his temperament
requiring a home education and special supervision--but in reality it’s
simply class-prejudice. She dreads sending him to acquire a veneer that
she knows she doesn’t possess herself--it will separate them. It’s
instinctive, of course.”
He shrugged his shoulders, as though dismissing a competently analyzed
problem.
“That be damned for a tale,” said the doctor curtly. “You won’t make
me believe that--and, what’s more, you won’t make yourself believe it.
She was in dead earnest to-night, and whether her view is right or
wrong, she’s sincere. She _does_ believe that child to be unfitted for
school-life, and there’s a considerable chance that her view may be
the right one. I tell you professionally that you’ll be taking a big
risk if you disregard it.”
The doctor, under lowered brows, looked full at Ford, but Ford, as
usual, was looking down.
Presently he made a low sound like a laugh, that was nevertheless
singularly devoid of amusement.
“A storm in a tea-cup, isn’t it? Children have been known to tell fibs
before now. Rose may, as you say, be in earnest, but surely that is
only one proof the more of her utter lack of balance. If Cecil’s life
were at stake, her tragedy-queen airs might be justifiable--but then
Cecil’s life is not at stake.”
“I wonder,” said the doctor.
VII
Of the forces arrayed against Rose--and she found them many--the most
potent was the strong desire for school that they had implanted in
little Cecil himself.
He was always begging to go to Hurst.
“Don’t you want me to be friends with Lord Charlesbury’s little boy,
Mummie?”
“Yes. Of course I do.”
“Well, he’s at Hurst. He’s in the Eleven there.”
“I know.”
“Shouldn’t I be in the Eleven, too?”
“No. You don’t play nearly well enough yet, darling.”
Cecil flushed and then said defiantly: “Diana thinks I would be, and
she knows more about cricket than you do, Mummie--you said yourself
that she does. She said--she said----”
“What did she say?”
Diana Grierson-Amberly was surely not prone to the paying of unmerited
compliments, and Rose felt curious.
“She said I ought to be at Hurst and that I bowled better than that
other little boy, Hugh. She did, Mummie.”
“Ces!” said Rose warningly.
“Yes, she did. That was because I bowled her out first ball, just as
easy as anything. And the bails stayed on, Mummie, and only the middle
stump went down, really and truly.”
She knew, necessarily, that he must be boasting, and the circumstantial
details with which he amplified his story made her, from previous
experience, forlornly certain that he knew himself to be inventing.
“When did this happen?”
“Last night, when we played on the lawn after tea.”
“Well, I know you did play on the lawn with Uncle Ford and Diana and
Miss Wade. But she didn’t really say you bowled better than Hugh
Charlesbury, now did she, Ces? You only said that for fun, didn’t you?”
Her coaxing voice pleaded with him for the admission.
“I can’t help it if you won’t believe me, Mummie,” said Cecil with
dignity, “but it’s perfectly true all the same.”
Miss Wade descended upon them with her usual air of timorous
determination.
“Come along, Cecil dear, it’s time to go out. You’d like me to bowl to
you, wouldn’t you? Remember what Miss Grierson-Amberly said to us last
night!”
“What?” Rose asked almost involuntarily.
“She said Cecil would never get into the Hurst Cricket Eleven unless he
practised really hard. And she told us about Lord Charlesbury’s little
boy--didn’t she, Cecil?--who bowled some other boy out first ball, and
the middle stump actually went flying, although the bails stopped on.”
“I see,” said Rose dully.
Not for the world would she have exposed Cecil in Miss Wade’s
presence. She would not even look at him.
“Come along,” said Miss Wade, in her voice of manufactured brightness.
Cecil had rapidly turned from white to scarlet, but when he saw that
his mother had no intention of humiliating him by any spoken comment,
his face cleared. He ran up to her and kissed her, and said “Good-bye,
Mummie,” quite cheerfully before he went away with Miss Wade.
She felt that he would easily succeed in putting the whole incident
quite out of his thoughts.
“But why--why does he do it?” reflected Rose miserably.
She was incapable of searching out the basic foundations for Cecil’s
perversion of the truth. The crux of the matter, to her, lay in
the bald fact that he told lies; not at all in the existence of a
fundamental self-distrust and craving for the reassurance of praise and
approval that provided a motive for the lies.
“I can’t make him good,” said Rose to herself desperately.
She was too unsure of the orthodoxy of her own beliefs to have made out
of religion an instrument for the chastisement of Cecil’s spirit, and
when he had informed her that Miss Wade said all story-tellers went to
hell, she had heatedly replied: “Bosh! don’t think about hell. Think
about heaven instead.”
Lady Aviolet, she knew, had suggested once or twice to Cecil, with
characteristic reticence of expression, that his besetting sin should
be made the subject of nightly intercession in his prayers. But Rose
herself, and, she felt certain, Cecil with her, had looked upon the
mechanical petitions, “Help me always to speak the truth, for Christ’s
sake, Amen,” as the merest shelving of responsibility. Religious
susceptibilities were no more apparent in Cecil than in herself, and
Rose instinctively mistrusted resolutions rooted rather in a supine
faith in Divine omnipotence than in a personal will to achieve.
A sense of utter frustration assailed her after the expenditure of
nervous energy that she had flung into her “scene” on the previous
evening. It had been of no use. The old people had not understood;
their stupidity was as impenetrable as their good breeding. Ford,
who might have interpreted her ill-chosen words to them, had chosen,
malignantly, to play a little comedy of obtuseness that was never meant
to deceive Rose, but only to make her angrier and more incoherent.
Thinking it all over, the tears burned in her eyes and she clenched her
teeth. It seemed incredible to her that so much vehemence should have
proved so completely impotent.
The conviction of defeat was ready to invade her, but her indomitable
sense of the issue at stake refused to let her be overwhelmed.
“He shan’t go--he shan’t go----” she repeated to herself, half sobbing.
“I know he isn’t fit for school.”
She slowly prepared to put in action a plan that she had evolved in the
course of a sleepless hour of the night.
She wrote a letter.
This was to Rose a laborious undertaking at all times, since she
disliked letter-writing and had had very little occasion to practise
it. Her handwriting, that had an inappropriate appearance on the
stamped blue notepaper of Squires, was large and painstaking, and very
legible.
My dear Uncle Alfred,
It seems a long time since I wrote to you after poor Jim’s death, and
I daresay you will be interested to hear that Cecil and myself are now
with Jim’s people at the above address. Well, Uncle, this is to say
that things are not going as I should wish with regards to Cecil, and
they want very much to send him to a Preparatory School and then to a
Public School. This I do not want, because it would be bad for Cecil,
and _I know what I am talking about_. Well, Uncle, I cannot make them
see this here, and so I write to you. Will you have Ces and me up at
your place for a bit if this is not too inconvenient? I could help
in the business like Mother used to, and have a talk with you about
Cecil. He’s a lovely little boy, really, and I do want to do the best
possible for him.
I must stop now, Uncle, hoping to hear from you before long.
Your affectionate niece,
Rose.
She sealed her letter very carefully before putting it herself into
the oaken box on the hall-table. The late Mrs. Smith had imparted
pessimistic views to Rose on the subject of private correspondence if
left unprotected.
“It isn’t in nature not to read what isn’t meant for you, if it’s
lying about,” had said Mrs. Smith, in simple explanation of her own
well-informedness upon various affairs that might strictly have been
regarded as the concern of her neighbours rather than her own.
Rose, not sufficiently endowed with curiosity herself to indulge in
the reading of other people’s correspondence, was quite tolerantly
prepared to believe that this was nevertheless the general practice.
When she had finished her letter, she felt happier. No one had said
anything to her about her outburst of the preceding evening. She
had come down to breakfast heavy-eyed and apprehensive, although no
whit less resolved to maintain her own cause, but there had been no
sign that any one remembered the existence either of a cause or of a
champion.
The conversation had circled placidly round the customary subject of
“plans for the day” and the necessity of sending the young man Toby to
the station for the 10.39 train.
Rose had been partly relieved, partly disappointed, and wholly
perplexed.
She found the Aviolets, their standards, their aims and avoidances,
alike incomprehensible. She felt as though it would be an untold
relief to return to Uncle Alfred and his shop, where all the pitfalls
were of an obvious kind and where approval and disapproval were alike
manifested on equally established and well-defined lines.
“Would you care for a walk?” said Diana Grierson-Amberly, coming upon
her in the hall.
“Always walks!” thought Rose with uncomprehending resignation, but
Diana’s voice had sounded friendly, and she was grateful, although she
could never understand the satisfaction to be derived from walking for
half an hour along a country lane, with no shop windows to look into
and no given objective, and then turning round and walking along the
same road for another half hour back again.
“It isn’t even as though we had anything to say to one another,” she
reflected.
But it appeared that Miss Grierson-Amberly had something to say on this
occasion.
She sang the praises of the Aviolet family.
“I’ve always been so awfully fond of them all, here. Cousin Catherine
is such a dear.”
“Oh, yes,” said Rose, with more of uncertain interrogation than of
assent in her tone.
“I used to play with the boys a lot when I was younger, and they were
always so nice to me, though they were so much older. Ford and I have
always been great pals.”
There was a silence.
“He did so splendidly in South Africa. You know he was wounded at Spion
Kop?”
“Yes, I know.”
“They say that he went on encouraging his men and calling out to them
long after he was hit.”
“Did he?”
“Yes. We never could quite understand why he didn’t get recommended for
promotion, or something like that.”
Another silence.
“Of course, very likely his Colonel did recommend him for decoration,
and nothing came of it. I’m afraid there’s a certain amount of
wire-pulling that one doesn’t know about,” said Diana solemnly.
Once more Rose made no answer, and once more Diana persevered.
“This world is such a queer place, isn’t it? I mean, there’s so much
jealousy and pettiness to be found.”
“I suppose so.”
“Perhaps,” Diana laboriously amended, “I ought to say it’s not so much
the world that’s queer, as the people in it.”
On this last subtle commentary of Miss Grierson-Amberly’s upon mankind,
the silence that ensued was of so abysmal a character that it remained
unbroken for nearly ten minutes. Rose, although her vocabulary hardly
comprised the word platitude, was ruthlessly recognizing and condemning
the quality of her companion’s conversation as “utter bunkum,” and
Diana Grierson-Amberly, not without good cause, was discouraged.
Presently she tried again.
“Cousin Catherine is so fond of children, I expect she loves having
Cecil here. I always think it’s such an ideal place for a child, too.”
“Do you? Why?” said Rose, interested for the first time.
Unfortunately, Miss Grierson-Amberly’s observation had been
rhetorically, rather than literally, intended.
“Well, the garden, you know, and--and the house--and then Ford can
teach him to shoot, later on, and he can have a jolly time in the
holidays. Miss Wade is nice, too, isn’t she? I think it must be much
more fun to have a young governess.”
“She’s all right, but rather an ass, don’t you think?”
“I thought she seemed a nice little thing. You know, Mrs. Aviolet, I
do really think there’s heaps of good in everyone if you only look for
it,” said the girl, quite earnestly.
“Well, I don’t. I don’t see one single atom of good in that precious
Ford of yours, for instance,” Rose declared with sudden recklessness.
Diana’s face grew very grave and very pink. She turned and looked at
Rose, with the corners of her mouth rather turned down, and when she
spoke her voice was full of distress.
“Of course, to me, it sounds so dreadful to hear you say a thing like
that. I simply can’t understand it. Why, Ford is really a perfect dear,
when you know him.”
“What about last night?”
“Well, you know, he can’t help what he thinks, now can he, Mrs.
Aviolet?” said the girl pleadingly. “You see, what I always feel,
is that there are two sides to every question. I think you ought to
remember that, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
The effect of reasonableness with which Diana uttered what Rose
regarded as futilities was remarkable.
It even impelled Rose to reply to them as though she felt them to be
worth a reply.
“I’m not angry with Ford for thinking that Ces should go to school.
It’s quite natural he should think so, I suppose. He’s only mixed
with two kinds of people all his life--those who go to public schools
and those who go to the national schools. He evidently doesn’t know
anything about the in-between people. That’s not his fault. But what
puts my monkey up, is him pretending to think that I’m a fool; that
I want to keep Cecil a molly-coddle, just for the sake of having him
tied to my apron-strings. He’s playing up to old Sir Thomas and Lady
Aviolet, that’s all, because they’re so stupid. They really do think
it’s only that. _Why_ Ford hates me is more than I can tell you--but
he does. He’s made things difficult for me ever since I came here.”
“May I say what I think?”
“Of course.”
Rose could not imagine why any one should ever want to do anything else.
“Well, then--I do hope you won’t think it rude of me to say this,
but you’ve given me leave to--it seems to me that you take a simply
terribly exaggerated view of things. Not only about Ford. (Of course,
what you say about his hating you is perfectly absurd. Why, he’s your
relation!) But it isn’t only about him. It struck me that you did
last night, when you were talking about your little boy. You say that
he--well, that he doesn’t always tell the truth. Of course I know it’s
a great pity, and _the_ thing of all others that one minds most--it
seems so awfully un-English, doesn’t it?--but, after all, Mrs. Aviolet,
he’s only a baby, isn’t he? He’ll begin to understand, in a very little
while, that he mustn’t tell stories, surely.”
“He knows that now,” said Rose wearily. “You don’t understand.
Sometimes I don’t think it’s his own fault, poor darling! He can’t help
it.”
“Well, that’s just what I say,” the girl argued perseveringly. “He’ll
know better later on. And really and truly, it’s perfectly wonderful
what school does for them. My young brother Tony was very delicate as a
baby, and I’m afraid we spoilt him dreadfully, but he improved in the
most marvellous way after his first term at a preparatory school. It
seems to make them so much more manly and sensible, you know.”
“Ces is manly already,” cried Rose, going off at a tangent. “I don’t
know what you’d say if you could see what _ordinary_ children are
like, after being born and brought up in the tropics. They haven’t
got a kick left in them by the time they get home, as a rule, nor for
months afterwards.”
“I didn’t mean----”
“That’s all right. I know you didn’t. I suppose the whole thing’s got
on my nerves, rather. It’s always Cecil this, and Cecil that, it seems
to me.”
“Only because they’re so--so interested in him.”
“I daresay, but it’s a funny way of showing it. You’d think they’d have
the sense to _see_, old people like them, that of course I know more
about him than they do.”
“But you know, he wants to go to school himself--really he does. He
says so.”
“I know,” said Rose briefly and bitterly.
“Well, then----?”
“Oh, of course, they’ve made him keen, telling him about the games and
all the rest of it. He didn’t want to go to school till it was put into
his head. You can make a child think it wants anything, even castor
oil, if you bluff it enough.”
“But school isn’t a nasty thing, like castor oil,” said Diana, with a
sort of ingenious stupidity.
“Chuck it,” Rose advised briefly. “You and me aren’t talking the same
language. We shouldn’t understand one another if we went on jawring
till we turned black in the face.”
No such disastrous consummation was achieved, but Miss Grierson-Amberly
seemed quite unable to abandon the discussion.
“But I do understand you, really and truly I do. Only it seems to me,
if you’ll forgive me for saying such a thing, that it would be more
unselfish of you to let Cecil do what he wants, and what everybody else
thinks best for him, than just to try and make him do what _you_ like.
I’m afraid I’m expressing it stupidly, but I daresay you’ll understand.
After all, if one loves any one, one wants the best thing for them,
doesn’t one? And you know, boys learn heaps of things at school that
one simply can’t give them at home--playing the game generally, and
_esprit de corps_, and all that sort of thing.”
“I’ve heard every bit of this before, and I daresay it’s all quite
true. But as long as Ces remains what he is, he’ll go to no school. I’d
as soon send an epileptic child to school as him.”
“Oh, how can you!” The distress in Diana’s voice was most unmistakably
genuine. “Indeed, indeed, I’m certain you’re exaggerating the whole
thing most dreadfully. And even if he _is_ as naughty as you think,
surely school would be the very----”
“Naughty!” Rose, like an explosion, repeated. “Who said he was naughty?
I’ll thank you to keep your advice about my boy till you’ve got one of
your own. You’ll know a bit more about it by that time, perhaps.”
For the second time, Diana coloured deeply; but after a moment she said
unresentfully:
“I’m afraid I’ve vexed you, and I’m so awfully sorry. I really only
said it because I’ve known the Aviolets all my life, and Cecil is such
a dear little boy.”
The last words mollified Rose instantly.
“It’s all right. I’m sorry, too, if I was rude. Don’t let’s talk about
it any more.”
They made spasmodic conversation upon indifferent subjects until
Squires was reached. Rose, tired and out of spirits, trailing slowly
upstairs, heard Diana’s voice incautiously raised in Lady Aviolet’s
morning-room.
“I hope I’ve done _some_ good, Cousin Catherine. I’ve been reading the
Riot Act, but of course----”
The door was closed, and Rose proceeded on her way, muttering
sub-audibly, “Damn her impudence!”
Her perceptions, acute, if inarticulate, sensed in Diana
Grierson-Amberly all the blind, limitless cruelty of the obtuse. She
felt strangely weak and frightened at the thought of it, as though
knowing that from that cruelty of the unimaginative there is no appeal.
In the nursery, she found Cecil strutting about, reciting a sort of
saga, with the intensely disapproving eyes of Miss Wade fixed upon him
in a horrified stare.
“An’ there was elephants there, and a tiger, and--and horses as big
as lions; and they all lay down in front of me until I said, ‘Up!’
Like that I said it, very loud and grand--‘_UP!_’ I said. That was in
Colombo, once.”
“Hallo, Ces,” Rose said rather wearily. She guessed, from the
expression of the governess, what was coming.
“I’m glad you’ve just happened to come in, Mrs. Aviolet. There’s
a little boy here who hardly seems to know the difference between
pretence and reality, I’m afraid.”
“What’s the matter?” Rose demanded ungraciously. She would not even
look at Miss Wade, and she kept one hand on Cecil’s forehead, stroking
back his thick, soft hair.
“Oh, I hope nothing’s the _matter_,” Miss Wade declared with sudden,
spurious brightness. “I’m sure Cecil will tell you himself that he’s
only been talking nonsense.”
“I’m not talking nonsense----”
“If you mean that rubbish I heard as I came in, about elephants and
tigers, it was nonsense, Ces, and you know it. You weren’t trying to
make Miss Wade believe it was true, were you? You wouldn’t be so silly,
a big boy like you.”
The appeal to Cecil’s vanity seemed to make him hesitate. At last he
gave an uncertain little laugh, and said: “No, Mummie. I only said it
for fun. It was just something I was inventing.”
Rose kissed him in sudden, passionate thankfulness.
“My precious! That’s a good boy!”
“It’s a pity, isn’t it, that Cecil should think it amusing to invent
things that never happened,” said Miss Wade mildly, “especially as
we know that he isn’t always quite as brave as he ought to be about
telling the exact truth. But I’m glad he’s been straightforward this
time.”
Rose did not think that she looked glad.
“If Cecil may go into the garden for a while, Mrs. Aviolet, I should be
glad to speak to you.”
“All right.”
Rose made no attempt at all at displaying an amiability which she was
far from feeling.
“As we’re on the subject,” said the little governess nervously, “I
thought I’d really better speak to you. Cecil is a dear little boy and
I’m very fond of him, but I really don’t know what to do about his
want of truth. I’m sorry to have to say it, Mrs. Aviolet, but he’s
untruthful--downright untruthful.”
“Have you just found it out or did his grandmother tell you so?” Rose
asked truculently.
“Lady Aviolet never mentioned such a thing to me, nor did any one else.
I am in the habit of forming my own opinions as to the character of
my pupils. I am a student of child-psychology,” said Miss Wade with
dignity. “It is a most serious fault, and one that cannot be corrected
too young.”
“If you’re thinking of his nonsense just now, Miss Wade----”
The governess interrupted her firmly. “No, that has nothing to do with
it. I have been meaning to speak to you for some little while. I should
have thought little or nothing of his wild inventions of imaginary
adventures, if I had not, more than once, found him out in a direct
untruth.”
Rose groaned almost involuntarily.
“You knew of this fault already?”
“Yes, of course I did.”
“He is so young, and such a dear little boy, and so good otherwise that
I feel sure he can be corrected. But I must ask you, Mrs. Aviolet, to
let me have a free hand in dealing with this.”
“No.”
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Aviolet?”
“I said, ‘No.’”
Miss Wade looked quite confounded.
“Now _do_ you suppose,” Rose impatiently inquired, “that I should give
anybody a free hand, as you call it, in punishing my own child? What
am I his mother for, if I’m to go giving free hands to other people
all over the place? But you can tell me what your idea is--unless it’s
school, which, I may tell you, I’ve heard enough about--and a bit over.”
“Cecil is hardly fit for school until he has learnt to speak the truth.”
“That’s the first word of sense I’ve heard spoken about it yet. Well,
fire ahead.”
“Mrs. Aviolet, I do not wish you to take it upon my word alone, and
therefore I will refer you to my authority. Monroe on the ‘Moral
Education of Children.’”
“And what has Monroe got to say about it?”
“‘There are two faults, and two only, for which corporal punishment
should be inflicted: deliberate cruelty, and deliberate untruth. We
need not add that it should be made perfectly clear to the child that
the punishment is not given in anger, still less in revenge.’” Miss
Wade relinquished the head voice by which she had denoted that she was
quoting, and resumed her natural rather nasal accents.
“I am deeply distressed at having to say it, but Cecil will never
realize the full gravity of this dreadful fault unless he is punished
in such a way that he will remember it. I have tried reasoning with
him, and coaxing him, and scolding him, and he is always sorry, but
it produces no real effect at all. Indeed, Mrs. Aviolet, I dislike
the idea more than I can tell you, and I have never in my life had to
punish a pupil in such a manner before, but I should be failing in my
duty if--if----”
Miss Wade faltered and produced her handkerchief, choked by what Rose
instantly recognized as a perfectly real emotion.
“Oh, don’t cry! Anyway, you know, it wouldn’t be you who’d have to do
it. You’re not nearly strong enough. Besides, you’d never go through
with it. I shouldn’t myself. I should sob and howl--_roar_, in fact.
But it’s a man’s job.”
Miss Wade looked at her with an air of rather resentful astonishment.
“Then you have contemplated the idea of corporal punishment already?”
“Spare the rod and spoil the child. Of course I have, Miss Wade.”
“In general, I am thoroughly opposed to the system of corporal
punishment,” said Miss Wade gloomily. “I follow Dr. Monroe’s teaching,
and he is quite averse to it. But, as he says himself, persistent lying
and persistent cruelty are in a class apart and must be dealt with
accordingly.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I hope that the occasion may not present itself, but if it does, Mrs.
Aviolet, if Cecil tells a direct lie again, then I must ask you either
to deal with him on the lines that I have indicated, or else to let his
uncle do so.”
“Ask for something you’re a bit more likely to get, I should,” Rose
advised the outraged little governess. “If Cecil tells a direct lie, as
you call it, again, he shall be whipped. We’ve tried everything else,
and it may as well be that. But it’ll be me who’ll settle when it’s
done, and how, and who by. And another thing--I’m going to give Ces
fair warning about it. Perhaps it’ll help him to be careful, poor lamb.”
She turned to go.
“One moment, Mrs. Aviolet, if you please. Has Cecil ever
been--castigated--before?”
“He’s been hit by his father,” said Rose briefly. “He’s never had
exactly what you might call a state whipping, so perhaps the disgrace
might make an impression on him. But I hope to goodness we shan’t have
to do it.”
She let the door slam on Miss Wade’s solemn reiteration of the hope,
already feeling that exasperation had committed her to a course of
action that her inner self disapproved.
Yet the thought of punishing little Cecil by beating him did not
horrify her. Her own mother had administered hearty and impetuous
slaps throughout Rose’s childhood, in moments of impatience, and
afterwards, as heartily and as impetuously, had smothered her with
kisses and given her slices of new bread thickly covered with jam. Rose
had borne no malice for the slaps, although they had always caused
her to roar lustily, for Mrs. Smith’s heavy-handed blows had never
been half-hearted affairs, and she had enjoyed the kisses and the
bread-and-jam.
“No bunkum from Dr. Monroe’s little books on Moral Education about
Mother!” Rose reminded herself, and smiled in a loving retrospective
appreciation of her parent’s thoroughness.
VIII
Two days later, Diana Grierson-Amberly left Squires, and Rose received
an answer to her letter.
298 Ovington Street,
London, S. W.
My dear Niece,
Yours of the 6th to hand, for which I thank you. I am willing to
receive you and the boy as you suggest, at any date convenient to
yourself, on a short visit. There will be no need for you to help in
the shop, as the time will be so limited.
I have given much anxious thought and prayer to yourself and to your
child, my dear Rose, left alone in worldly surroundings as I fear you
are. If you have discovered the _hollowness_ and _falseness_ of mere
earthly grandeur, turn your thoughts to that which _never fails_, if
sought in true humbleness of spirit. I will gladly advise you to the
best of my poor powers, but there is but _One_ true Counsellor for us
all.
Kindly advise later as to date and hour of arrival.
Yours, etc.,
Alfred Smith.
A certain lack of enthusiasm as to the projected visit, apparent in
Uncle Alfred’s letter, no less than the careful underlining of his
pietistic sentiments, recalled him with singular vividness to the mind
of his niece as she read.
“It’ll be something, to get away from here,” she consoled herself.
After all, Uncle Alfred had nearly always been kind, in his own strange
way. She and her mother had laughed at him, but Mrs. Smith had always
steadily upheld Uncle Alfred’s claim to affection and gratitude,
because for many years he had given them a home. And he had been nicer
to Rose after her mother’s death, she remembered.
“And, anyway, he won’t talk about ‘plans for the day’ at breakfast
every blessed morning, and I shall have Ces to sleep in my room again.”
She laughed out loud for very joy at the thought. There was a foolish
and inexplicable hope in her heart that if she and Cecil once got away
from Squires, they need never go back there. To herself, Rose added
in all honesty a modification of her ardent wish to cut adrift from
everything that the Aviolets stood for:
“After all, I daresay Lord Charlesbury would look us up in London. And
it would be much nicer to see him away from all of _them_.”
In spite of herself, she was nervous at the thought of making her new
plan known to Lady Aviolet, and she therefore did so in a casual and
blustering manner that gave the announcement an air of unreality.
“Oh--did I tell you I’d heard from my uncle? He’s Mr. Alfred Smith, who
has a business in Ovington Street. (Well, it’s a pawnbroking business,
really.) I haven’t seen him since I married--and thought of going up to
him.”
“Did you, my dear? The train service is very good, so you have only to
let me know which day suits you and the carriage can take you to the
station for the early train, and meet you again at the six o’clock, or
the half-past eight, if you prefer it.”
“Oh, well, thank you very much, but I meant to stay there,” Rose said
awkwardly.
“Would that be necessary?”
“I should like it,” Rose replied defiantly.
Her mother-in-law was unmoved. “As you prefer, my dear.”
“I should want to take Cecil, of course.”
“Indeed? Do you think it any real kindness to disturb him? He seems
very happy, and looks so well. Besides, he is getting on nicely at
his lessons, and it seems hard on Miss Wade that they should be
interrupted.”
“She could have a holiday for a bit.”
“She has hardly been with us long enough to expect that. Irregularity
is so unsettling to a child, too. I hope you will be unselfish enough
to leave Cecil here, Rose, while you pay your visit.”
Lady Aviolet fixed her pale eyes upon Rose as she spoke, and they
expressed melancholy, in the very slight degree in which their flaccid
shallows ever expressed anything.
“I am Cecil’s grandmother, my dear, and so I am going to take upon
myself to tell you that you are a very selfish mother to the boy. I see
that you’re very fond of him--I quite see that--but you seem to have
so little idea of the tremendous sacrifices that motherhood demands.
Take this question of going away: you may say that you want Cecil with
you, because you can’t bear to be away from him, but don’t you see that
you’re only thinking of yourself? If you thought more of Cecil, and
less of yourself, you’d see the folly and unkindness of disturbing and
upsetting him by a change just when he is settling down to a regular
routine for the first time in his little life. And London isn’t
healthy for children like the country is. It won’t do him any good.”
Lady Aviolet’s implacable, unselfconscious certainty of the complete
rightness of her own point of view daunted Rose curiously. Through her
mind there floated, incoherently, words and phrases that should express
her resentment. Difficulties--they always made difficulties--nothing
was ever allowed to happen without these complications of argument,
disapproval, condemnation ... things that ought to be simple, made
difficult. It was tiring ... and it made one angry too. And how could
any one decide that someone else was selfish, in that arbitrary way?
But she was unable to formulate her thoughts in words, and stood
shifting her weight from one foot to the other, like a schoolgirl that
is being scolded.
At last she said in a sulky tone that might, equally, have emanated
from the schoolgirl:
“I don’t see that at all. I’ve looked after Ces ever since he was born,
and I suppose I know what’s best for him.”
She was angrily aware, as she spoke, of the futility of the assertion.
So, apparently, was Lady Aviolet.
“That is as it may be, my dear. And of course you will do as you think
best. I can only advise you. But I should have thought that for little
Cecil’s own sake, you might be willing to forget yourself. I hope I
don’t expect to find old heads on young shoulders, but I should have
thought you had seen enough of life to realize that we mothers have to
sacrifice a great deal for our children. And they very often disappoint
us at the end of it all. But at least there is the comfort of having
done all one can.”
Rose, by an unwonted effort, repressed the retort that she longed to
utter. If the self-sacrifice of their mother had been responsible for
the ultimate evolution of the personalities of Ford and Jim Aviolet,
her most ardent wish would be never to emulate such disastrous
abnegation for the benefit of Cecil.
“Well, I’m sorry you don’t like the idea, but I’m afraid I’ve made up
my mind,” she said, abruptly and ungraciously.
“Then there is no more to be said, my dear. Perhaps you will be able to
explain matters to Miss Wade so that she does not resign her situation,
but you are acting with great unfairness towards her. If Cecil is to be
taken out of her hands like this, and his whole time upset, you cannot
expect her to have any real authority over the child. I was beginning
to hope that he was improving in _every_ respect under her management.”
Lady Aviolet’s intonation made it clear that her “every” meant “one.”
“Her latest idea is that he ought to be whipped for telling a story.”
“Painful though that would be, it might be the truest kindness to the
poor little fellow himself in the end. But I hope we need not consider
the question at all. I really do hope and believe that, under Miss
Wade’s management, Cecil is losing his weakness.”
Lady Aviolet’s hope--a plant of frail and ill-supported growth--was not
destined to fulfilment.
Rose appeared in the Lucians’ drawing-room one afternoon with swollen
eyelids, and said miserably to Henrietta:
“They’ve made me punish Cecil. At least, I suppose it wasn’t them that
_made_ me, but I’ve had to do it. And yet I don’t really believe in
whipping a child--I was going dead against my own instinct, and I knew
it in a sort of way, but it seemed the only thing I hadn’t tried.”
“What happened?”
“Ces--poor darling--told a perfectly flat lie to Ford, of all people,
and that beast wanted to punish him himself, but, of course, I said I
wouldn’t allow that, and that I was the proper person to do it. But
in the end Sir Thomas did. I said he might, because I knew it would
impress Ces far more--and, besides, I knew I should howl and cry if I
had to hit his darling little body.”
Rose laughed tremulously, and openly put her handkerchief to her eyes.
“Poor lamb, how did he take it?” Henrietta Lucian asked.
“He didn’t cry,” Rose said proudly. “He’s a plucky little fellow, and
he’s proud, too. I knew he wouldn’t make a sound, and he didn’t. Even
his grandfather said he’d been brave over it. Sir Thomas was fairly
decent about the whole thing, I will say. He gave Ces a talking to
about truth and all that, but it was very short, and then he gave him
six cuts with a little cane and left him. And I didn’t go to him.”
“Very brave of you, and I should think quite right.”
“It was hard,” Rose admitted.
“I’m so sorry for you, about the whole thing. Maurice and I often talk
about it. He’s interested, you know. I’m pretty sure he thinks it isn’t
little Cecil’s fault, in a way, but more like a congenital misfortune.”
“He’s so brave about other things, it’s difficult to understand. I
suppose he’s had a rotten bringing up, poor darling, and that’s my
fault as much as any one’s. Don’t you think a marriage like mine is a
great mistake?”
“In what way?” Henrietta temporized.
“Marrying into a different class.”
“It’s apt to create difficult situations, I suppose.”
“You may say so!” Mrs. Aviolet remarked in heartfelt accents. “But
it isn’t only that--though to my dying day I don’t suppose I shall
ever see what they’re driving at, half the time--it’s the children.
Inheriting two lots of instincts, so to speak, poor little things.
I know quite well that my mother-in-law thinks poor little Cecil’s
trouble is all owing to his belonging what-you-may-call to the people,
one side of him. In a way, I suppose I agree. The high-and-mighty
Aviolets were never anything but honourable, were they?”
“In the conventional sense of the word, perhaps not,” said Miss Lucian.
“The conventional sense of the word is all they want,” said Rose
simply, quite without irony.
She was very glad when the time came for her to take Cecil to London.
He had been wildly and defiantly naughty since his punishment, but he
had not again been untruthful.
“Wilful naughtiness is one thing, and underhand ways are another,”
Miss Wade primly observed. “I can understand a child--a boy
especially--being spoilt and disobedient from time to time, but there
is something terrible about a child that is habitually untruthful. It
seems so unnatural.”
“I think little Cecil’s disgrace the other day has shown him what a
frightful thing untruth is,” Lady Aviolet said. “I hope we may never
have to repeat such a thing.”
“It was evidently what the boy needed,” Sir Thomas said curtly.
It struck Rose that all of them unconsciously relied upon their own
powers of observation to tell them what effect the experiment in
discipline had had upon Cecil.
Hardly aware of the elementary psychological instinct that prompted
her, Rose trusted neither to their perceptions nor to her own. She
tried to find out from the little boy, himself, what their punishment
had meant to him.
“You won’t let them say ever again that you tell stories, will you,
darling? If one does slip out, come and tell Mother, and I promise no
one shall be angry or punish you. Only tell me about it.”
“Yes, Mummie.”
He was not looking at her.
“I _had_ to ask Grandpa to whip you the other day, Ces, but it made me
very unhappy.”
“I’m so sorry, Mummie.” He had put his arms round her neck and was
kissing her eagerly. She hugged him.
“Sweetheart! You know we had to do something to make you remember, and
you will remember now, won’t you?”
“Yes. I didn’t cry when Grandpa hit me with his cane.”
“I know you didn’t, my own brave little man.”
“I wanted to scream out loud--it hurt so.”
She involuntarily tightened her hold round him.
“I was brave, wasn’t I, Mummie?” he asked her wistfully.
“Very brave, my darling.”
She could not deny him the acknowledgment, and it was only afterwards
that she realized herself to have been dimly puzzled by his insistence.
Rose told Miss Wade that she was to have a holiday, and the governess
was quite as much offended as Lady Aviolet had predicted that she would
be, and offered to resign her situation. Rose only wished that she
possessed the courage to accept the offer.
The night before they went to London, she spoke to Ford, who had
detained her, with his air of suave autocracy, as she was following
Lady Aviolet upstairs.
“One moment, Rose. I want to know how soon you are likely to bring
Cecil back from town?”
Rose opened her brown eyes very widely, and spoke with a purposely
exaggerated astonishment.
“Why?”
“Because Cecil’s movements concern me, as his guardian,” said Ford
calmly.
“I’m his mother, thank you.”
Ford smiled very pleasantly.
“Oh, yes, you have equal rights of guardianship, of course. I had no
intention of implying anything else.”
“Equal!” Her voice held unbounded scorn.
“Quite equal.”
She swung round and faced him, her hands on her hips in an attitude
that had been frequently characteristic of her mother, her head a
little thrust forward.
“What utter nonsense you talk, Ford! You may call yourself Cecil’s
guardian till the cows come home, but a child belongs to its mother,
I’d have you know.”
“Ladies know so little about the English law,” Ford murmured. “Are you
really not aware, Rose, that in law a child has only one parent--its
father? If Jim were alive, he would have, strictly speaking, the
right to take Cecil away from you altogether, if he pleased. I’m
not for an instant suggesting that he would have thought of such
a thing--naturally--but I see you altogether fail to realize your
position. It has been ruled, very wisely, I think, that the _father_ of
a child can appoint a guardian to act with the surviving parent, after
his own death. Now a mother has no such power. She can only appoint a
guardian after the death of both herself and the father. So you see
that your ownership of Cecil is very limited.”
Rose had turned white.
“If that’s the law of the land, it’s enough to make one sick. But I
don’t believe it.”
She did believe it, however. Ford was invariably accurate, and his
manner had carried conviction with it.
“Then I strongly advise you to inform yourself on the matter. It has
really seemed quite necessary for me to mention these facts that you
find so unpleasant, owing to your very persistently hostile attitude to
me, Rose. You appear to imagine that my attempts at directing matters
in which Cecil is concerned, rank as interference pure and simple. So
it seems to me better that I should state my case frankly, and make you
understand that I have quite a substantial claim behind me.”
“Cecil’s grandparents----” Her voice shook so much from anger and
dismay that she could not go on.
“Have nothing to do with it, strictly speaking. The issue lies between
you and me, whilst Cecil is under sixteen, and I feel sure that we
shall work together more amicably after my little explanation. All I
ask you to remember is that our rights of guardianship”--his pause
stressed the words--“are equal. Yours and mine.”
“_Damn_ Jim!” said Rose passionately. “And damn the laws of this
country, too, if they’re as unjust as all that.”
“H’sh--h’sh--h’sh----” He raised a slim hand authoritatively. “Forgive
me if I say that you yourself have done, and are doing, more than
any one to convince me of poor Jim’s wisdom in having appointed me
joint guardian with you to his son. No woman is fit to bring up a boy
entirely unaided, in my humble opinion.”
“She can bring him into the world unaided, though,” said Rose bitterly.
“It looks to me like all kicks and no halfpence, for the woman,
according to you.”
“Spare me a discussion on Woman’s Rights, Rose, I beg of you. The
subject holds not the least interest for me, and, moreover, I feel
convinced that we should differ widely in our views. All I ask you to
do is to let me know when Cecil is to return to his usual routine.”
“When I please, and not a day or a minute sooner,” said Mrs. Aviolet
with unconcealed temper blazing in her eyes and heightening the pitch
of her always high-pitched voice.
Ford shrugged his shoulders at the ill-breeding and turned away.
They exchanged no farewells on the following day.
In Rose’s mind was an unspecified determination that she and her child
would not return to Squires on the same terms as before, and vague
dreams of independence and freedom possessed her as the train carried
them towards London.
Cecil was openly delighted at the prospect of holidays and new
surroundings. He had only once before been taken by her to London from
Squires, for the purpose of visiting the dentist, and his reminiscences
of the occasion, his continual questions and exclamations, pleased Rose
as much as they did himself, in her sudden exhilaration of spirits.
At the terminus, they engaged a hansom cab, symbolical to Rose of
“treats” that her mother had given her during her schooldays. In spite
of the excited little boy beside her, she could almost have believed
herself a schoolgirl again, her married life, Ceylon, and the months
spent at Squires, had all become equally misty and unreal.
She wondered if Uncle Alfred would have changed, and could hardly
realize that it was years since she had seen him.
“Mummie,” said Cecil, “will Uncle Alfred be nice? Will he like me?”
“If you’re good,” Rose made the traditional reply.
“Has he got a nice house?”
A faint misgiving assailed her. “It won’t be like Squires, you know,
darling. Not a big house.”
“But there’ll be a garden?”
“Well--no. But I’ll take you to the park sometimes.”
“Shall I be able to play cricket there?”
“Perhaps. Look, Ces, this is the Brompton Road.”
He looked eagerly out at the lighted thoroughfare. “Isn’t it noisy,
Mummie?”
“I suppose it is. I don’t know. One gets used to it pretty quickly. But
Uncle Alfred lives in a smaller street than this, and it’ll be quieter
there.”
The cab turned into a side street, then entered a narrower road again,
and finally drew up before a corner house at the furthest end of the
street.
“Goodness! Here we are!” said Rose. She fumbled excitedly for her
purse. “Get out, Ces. No, wait--let me get out first, and I’ll help
you. Hold the umbrella, like a good boy.”
“It’s raining, Mummie.”
“Never mind, we’ll be indoors in a minute. I’ll ring the area bell,
Cabby, and someone’ll give you a hand with the trunk.”
Rose pulled vigorously at the bell handle on the iron railings that
surmounted the area, but before the jangling reverberations had ceased,
a man had hurried out on to the pavement, now glistening with wet.
“Mrs. Aviolet?”
“Hullo--why, it’s never Artie Millar! How are you?”
“I’m quite well, thank you, Mrs. Aviolet.”
They shook hands, and Rose said, “This is my kid--Cecil. Makes you feel
time’s gone on a bit, doesn’t it?”
“I should never have guessed it but for this young gentleman,” Mr.
Millar declared gallantly. “You haven’t altered in the very least.”
“Gammon!” said Mrs. Aviolet with a jovial heartiness that she had
seldom permitted herself at Squires. “Give the cabby a hand with the
box, will you? Is Uncle A. in the shop?”
“Upstairs. There’s a sitting-room on the first floor, now-a-days.
Here’s the girl, she’ll show you the way.”
“A girl too! Whatever next?” murmured Rose.
She paid the cabman, took Cecil’s hand, and followed the small maid
into the house. Cecil’s eyes widened as they went through the shop,
with a counter down one side of it, glass show-cases on the other, an
iron safe beyond the counter, and a match-board partition across one
half of the room. Beyond this, again, was a dark and steep staircase,
which they ascended.
“Why is it so dark, Mummie?”
“Hush! There’s Uncle Alfred.”
A short, stout figure loomed at the top of the stairs, and a small
white imperial scrubbed Rose’s face. With Cecil, Uncle Alfred only
shook hands.
“Come in, come in!”
His plump, curiously white hand, with a very large signet ring gleaming
on the little finger, waved them into the room. It was not at all like
any room at Squires. It was hung with a blue paper powdered all over by
large silver stars, and there was a round table bearing an aspidistra
in a pot on a ruffled lace mat, several books, and an enormous Bible.
A lighted gas-jet hung from the middle of the ceiling and illuminated
the only two pictures, one above the mantelpiece, and the other one at
the far end of the room.
Both were coloured lithographs, framed alike in black-and-gilt wood,
one representing a fleshly Jewish woman drawing water at a well, the
other one depicting the prophet Daniel, erect and haughty, amongst a
crouching company of innocuous-looking lions.
“You haven’t changed, Uncle Alfred, not one bit.”
“Unless it’s to put on flesh, I daresay not. Well, I can’t say as much
for you, Rose. You look fully your age,” said Uncle Alfred cheerfully.
“Well, I’ve been through a lot, one way and another. And my age is only
twenty-five, so I don’t mind if I _do_ look it.”
Mrs. Smith had early impressed upon Rose the advisability of “standing
up to” Uncle Alfred, and her exhortation had fallen upon receptive
ears. Quite instinctively, the old habit of years ago resumed its sway.
Uncle Alfred turned his attentive, shrewd eyes, light green, like a
cat’s, upon little Cecil. His teeth were so prominent that the front
ones jutted out far beyond his lower lip. Even when he was serious,
as he usually was, and when, as now, he smiled--a rather slow, wary
smile--almost the whole row was exposed.
“How old are you, young sir?”
“I’m nearly eight.” Cecil always preferred this form to the more direct
declaration that he was seven years old.
“And do you know your catechism?”
“Some of it.”
“Very good. I shall examine you one of these days.”
Cecil looked rather alarmed. Miss Wade had taught him the meaning of
“examination.”
“No, not now. We are going to have supper now.”
“Do you still have supper in the old basement, Uncle A.?”
“No, Rose,” said Uncle Alfred with dignity. “My servant inhabits
the basement, and meals are served to me and my assistants in the
dining-room.”
“Assistants?”
“I have two assistants--Artie Millar, who has served me very well
indeed, and is now my salesman, and a young lad, who does the work that
Artie used to do when he first came here.”
“You must have done well with the business,” said Rose, impressed.
“The Lord has prospered me--to a certain extent,” Uncle Alfred
admitted. “If you will go upstairs to the room next to the store-room
you will find it ready for yourself and your child. What is his name?”
“Cecil, Uncle.”
“Neither Scriptural nor historical,” said Uncle Alfred sweepingly.
“Take him upstairs and wash his hands, and then we can sit at table
together.”
Rose obeyed, feeling fifteen years old again.
“Oh, Ces, it’s the very room mother and I had. There’s the old picture
of ‘The Soul’s Awakening’--look, Ces, isn’t it pretty?--but he’s got
new furniture. I wonder who’s been in here since I slept here last.”
“Where’s the nursery, Mummie?”
“Where--oh, well, darling, you’re going to sleep in here with Mummie,
you know. Won’t that be fun?”
“Yes,” said Cecil rather doubtfully. “And where shall I play, and do my
lessons?”
“You’ll see to-morrow. Now wash your hands quickly--never mind a
sponge; I’ll unpack afterwards, and there’s a towel here.”
“It’s a very _thick_ towel,” said Cecil, examining the coarse cotton
fibre, “and there’s no hot water.”
“Cold will do,” said Rose curtly.
For the first time it occurred to her that the months Cecil had spent
at Squires were as a lifetime to his childishness. He had come to take
the material comforts, to which Rose was naturally indifferent, for
granted. And it appeared that to him they were not indifferent.
He was very good during supper, but the cold mutton and salad did not
attract him, and the cheese that concluded the meal, Rose would not let
him eat. She remembered with a pang of remorse his mug of fresh milk
and his plate of biscuits, brought on a tray to the nursery at Squires
every evening.
“But I’ll be able to fix it all up with Uncle A. to-morrow,” she
thought.
For her own part, she felt herself to have come home again. There had
hardly been a moment at Squires when she had not known constraint of
spirit, and her dependence upon entertainers whom she whole-heartedly
disliked had galled her incessantly.
Both Millar and the young assistant, a pale-faced youth introduced to
her as Felix Menebees, had supper with them.
As soon as the meal was over, Rose took Cecil upstairs and put him to
bed.
He was quiet, and seemed rather inclined to cry, but Rose effectually
checked this by a promise of the Zoo, and by undertaking to come to bed
herself in a very short time.
He had become accustomed to a night-light and she was obliged to
leave the gas lighted--the electric light was confined to the shop
downstairs--after making him promise that he would not touch it.
“I hope Uncle A. won’t find out,” Rose thought, with the old,
apprehensive feeling of half-amused guilt.
In the sitting-room, Uncle Alfred was reading _The Pawnbrokers’
Gazette_. The boy Felix had already gone downstairs, presumably to
Artie Millar’s old sleeping quarters in the shop beside the safe,
and Millar himself, the pawnbroker informed his niece, now lived in
lodgings at Wimbledon and only came in to business daily.
“Is he married?” Rose inquired. Certain old recollections, that did not
amount to emotions, had stirred within her at the sight of her first
fancy.
“He is a very God-fearing youth,” said Uncle Alfred, and after a pause
sufficient to mark the significance of the word, he added solemnly,
“now-a-days. He is not married.”
They exchanged hardly any other conversation, but Rose felt, with a
relief as profound as it was inexplicit, that she and her strange,
undemonstrative relative were mutually gratified at resuming a tie
that, however severely strained by incongruities of temperament, was
yet securely founded upon some essential similarity of outlook.
“Whatever else Uncle Alfred is, he’s alive,” Rose reflected. “And those
Aviolets at Squires are as dead as mutton--every blessed one of them.”
IX
It appeared paradoxical that, whereas Rose had resented Squires largely
on Cecil’s account, she found the familiar life in Ovington Street,
agreeable to herself, resented by her little boy.
After the novelty of the first two days, he fretted and was
discontented. Rose took him for walks, but when it rained he was
obliged to remain in the sitting-room, with no amusement beyond a small
musical box that played “Rousseau’s Dream” over and over again, and
some old bound numbers of _The Quiver_.
He missed the garden at Squires, the animals, the rides and drives
to which he had become accustomed. As his mother ruefully perceived,
he even missed his governess, little Miss Wade. He was not exactly
naughty, but lifeless and fretful, and Rose began to see, at first
dimly and unwillingly, that her fanciful plan of resuming existence
over the pawnbroker’s shop was not destined to mature.
The routine of that life was little changed from the days when she
remembered it first.
Breakfast was at eight, and by nine o’clock, Millar had arrived and
Felix Menebees had taken the steel door of the shop off its hinges,
pushed up the steel blinds, and taken away their grooved supports to
the yard at the back of the house. Every day Felix cleaned the windows,
threw sawdust on the floor, and swept it up again. The endless task of
cleaning and polishing the plate and silver in stock was also his, and
Rose gave him the assistance that she had sometimes, in the past, given
to Artie Millar. Dinner was at mid-day, and the afternoon work was
almost a repetition of the morning’s. At seven the pledge-office shut,
and at eight the shop.
It seemed to Rose that even Uncle Alfred’s clients were identical with
those she had known years ago. The same shabby women seemed to come
in, with the same small pieces of jewellery, faithfully put into pawn
every Thursday morning and redeemed every Saturday afternoon. The same
depressed and earnest-looking Jews brought in praying-shawls, brass
candlesticks, and small brass mortars and pestles, the latter to be
redeemed only in time for the Passover. Even the self-same arguments,
that had once taken place between Uncle Alfred and various of his
clientèle, now took place between them and Artie Millar.
“How much?”
“Thirty bob.”
“Just a moment.”
The moment was the one, or frequently the four or five, during which
Millar would examine the gold ring brought by the customer, and find
it, in the majority of cases, just below the market weight required for
the sum asked.
“Is twenty-five shillings any good to you?”
“No. I want thirty shillings badly. The fact is, the lady friend I’m
lodging with is laid up, and I’ve had to get in one or two little
things, and there’s been a trouble, like, with the landlord....”
The assistant always ruthlessly cut short these interpolations that as
invariably awoke in Rose an eager thrill of interested curiosity.
“Sorry, can’t let you have more than twenty-five shillings; it’s not
heavy enough.”
“Could you make it twenty-seven and six?”
Impossible, to Rose, to disappoint that last humble attempt at a
compromise. But Artie Millar never seemed to find any difficulty in
disassociating sentiment from business.
“Can’t be done. Twenty-five is all I can manage.”
“Very well, let’s have it.”
The client always succumbed, and Artie Millar always concluded by
calling out impassively:
“Felix, make out this ticket.”
He seldom asked whether or no the penny for the ticket were
forthcoming. His experienced eye told him, apparently, whether it would
be produced, or, without words, must be deducted from the money handed
over the counter in exchange for the trinket.
Rose felt a little surprised sometimes, recalling her early affair with
Millar. Her view of him was now singularly devoid of glamour, and she
wondered at the complete absence of the magnetic attraction that each
had once had for the other.
“It was youth, I suppose,” she told herself rather wistfully.
It had been youth, also, that had caused her to fall in love with
graceless Jim Aviolet, and give herself to him in marriage.
“As bad a day’s work as ever I did in my life,” Rose now summed up that
episode to herself with a sigh, adding always with remorseful loyalty,
“except for Ces.”
She had Cecil with her all day now, and at night he slept in a cot
drawn across the foot of her bed. She felt him to be hers again, as she
had never felt him so at Squires, and rejoiced fiercely.
Nevertheless it dawned upon her slowly, but certainly, that Cecil was
neither as well nor as happy as he had been at Squires.
Healthy he had always been, but he was not a robust child, and
in rather less than a week the difference in diet, the cramped
accommodation, and, perhaps, most of all, the absence of country air
and exercise, had taken some of the colour from his face and drawn dark
lines beneath his eyes.
“Grandmama would say I was selfish, fast enough, if she saw him now,
and I’m not sure she’d be so far out as she generally is, either,” Rose
reflected desperately.
She consulted Uncle Alfred.
“About how I’m to live, Uncle,” she began abruptly. “What would you say
would be a good way for me making money?”
“I thought your husband’s family were providing for you?”
“I mean, supposing I didn’t want them to go on providing for me.”
“Why should I suppose you wishful of casting aside that which the Lord
has raised up for the widow and the orphan? Be thankful for their
assistance, and do nothing to forfeit it, is my advice to you.”
The Scriptural turns of phrase employed by Mr. Smith rarely interfered
with the eminent practicalness of his point of view.
“You don’t _know_ what the life is like, at that place. I’d go mad if I
had to go on there year after year. They never do anything but go for
walks in the mud and talk about their beastly gardens and their horrid
animals.”
“Fashionable folk are very godless, I understand,” said Uncle Alfred.
“I wouldn’t so much mind their being godless--and they aren’t, all--my
mother-in-law is as ‘pi’ as can be--but they all seem to me to be half
alive. There’s a girl there that they all seem dotty about--I daresay
she’ll marry Ford one of these days. Well, I give you my word, Uncle,
she’s a perfect _fool_. She can mess about with dogs and things, and
shoot, and they all think she’s clever, just because of that. It shows
you what they’re like, doesn’t it?”
“You need not adapt yourself to their standards,” Uncle Alfred said,
uncompromising rather than tactful. “But I presume that when your boy
once goes to school you will make your home elsewhere.”
“I haven’t made up my mind about Cecil going to school.”
“It is your duty to ensure the advantages of a good education for him,
Rose. Did I understand that there is a governess engaged especially for
him?”
“Yes. The best of everything is their motto, I will say that for them.”
“H’m. Are they interested in antiques--china and the like?”
“They’ve got more antiques in the house, and have had for about a
thousand years, than goes through the shop in a twelvemonth,” returned
Rose with candour.
“You can take some catalogues with you when you go back,” said her
uncle, unmoved.
“All right. If I do go back.”
“If?”
“Uncle, I do want to bring up Cecil my own way, and I’ve been wondering
if him and me need go back to Squires at all.”
“My dear niece, listen to me. You are flying in the face of Providence
when you suggest quarrelling with those who are prepared to give
your child all the advantages to which he is entitled, but which you
yourself are not in a position to bestow upon him. Wealth is dross
compared to the riches of the Spirit, and the highest in the land are
but as the beasts of the field that perish, if they know not Christ,”
said Uncle Alfred with great rapidity, “but you should look upon all
these things as being means to an end. You can do a great deal for
others with riches at your command.”
His eyes glistened covetously, and Rose remembered her mother’s
tolerant verdict that Uncle Alfred was always on the near side, unless
it was for a Foreign Mission.
“Haven’t they offered to send Cecil to a good school?”
“Not so much offered, as taken it for granted that I’d want him to go.”
“It is most handsome--most handsome. I consider you a very fortunate
woman, Rose. And if, when the boy has gone to school, you wish to
return to your old quarters here, I am perfectly prepared to come to an
arrangement with you.”
“I’m sure it’s very kind of you, Uncle Alfred, but the fact is, I’m not
keen on Ces going to any of their precious schools. What I’m wondering
is if him and me couldn’t get off somewhere on our own, and if the
Aviolets get their monkey up and cut off my allowance, what I can do to
earn enough money for us both.”
“Nothing,” said Uncle Alfred crisply. “Nothing. Untrained young women
with no especial aptitude can only earn their living in one profession,
and that is not one which I could pollute your ears by mentioning.”
“Goodness, Uncle A., you do pass the most far-fetched remarks,” his
niece exclaimed, stifling a laugh.
“Let me hear no more nonsense as to your husband’s relations. God is
not mocked, and it would be neither more nor less than deliberate
mockery to reject the provision that He has obviously made for you and
your child. You must bow to His decrees, and let me tell you that the
task, in your case, should be a particularly easy one.”
There was a tone of finality about Uncle Alfred’s delivery of his
exordium that Rose knew of old.
His verdict, once given, would never be recalled.
“However, thank goodness, I know Uncle A.,” his niece reflected. “His
bark’s worse than his bite, and he’d keep us here, worst come to the
worst, if I could scrape up money for our board. Only what can I do
with Cecil?”
When she had been away for nearly a fortnight, a letter came from
Squires. The sight of the thick blue-grey notepaper, with the stamped
address on the corner, brought the atmosphere of the place for an
instant into the crowded, untidy bedroom, full of cheap and ugly
furniture, where Rose stood and read it.
My dear Rose,
I had hoped to hear from you before this. Could you let me know what
day you and Cecil are returning, as I must write to Miss Wade?
I hope the boy is well, and not giving you too much trouble, with
no one to relieve you of him. We quite miss him here, and I do not
like to think of him in London fogs, which I see by the papers are
beginning now. Quite fine weather here since you left, though not much
sun, and the poor garden is beginning to look dull.
Yours affectionately,
Catherine Aviolet.
P. S. Ford has been down to Hurst, the preparatory school we thought
of for Cecil, and was very favourably impressed. He is anxious to talk
it all over with you.
Rose was roused to one of her sudden, vehement furies.
“That settles it! I _won’t_ go back there, nor let Cecil either.”
She dashed into the shop, where Felix Menebees had just put up the
shutters.
“Is Mr. Millar there?”
“Here, Mrs. Aviolet.”
“I say, I want to ask you something. Is it true that a person--a
child’s guardian--has equal rights with the child’s mother?”
“In what respect, Mrs. Aviolet?”
“Any respect,” said Rose impatiently. “If he’s appointed by the child’s
father’s will, I mean.”
“Felix, bring me Whittaker’s Almanac,” commanded Millar.
“Oh, will it be there? I never thought of that. It might tell me a lot
of things. May I have it?”
“Certainly. If I can be of any assistance----?”
“No, no, I know you’re busy.”
Rose snatched the volume from the hands of Felix Menebees and took it
away.
That night she asked Cecil, who was awake and restless when she came to
bed:
“Wouldn’t you like to come right away with Mummie somewhere?”
“Away from here?” Cecil asked eagerly. “I’d like to, Mummie. It’s dull
here, isn’t it?”
“Poor darling! But you did enjoy the Zoo, and going on the tops of the
’buses, you know.”
“Those were treats,” Cecil observed shrewdly. “Treats are always fun,
but when it isn’t a treat day, I don’t like London, Mummie. I’d rather
be at home again.”
She realized that by “home” he meant Squires, and that Squires, though
she felt it hostile, herself, had been home to his forbears for many
generations. She stifled within herself a lurking remorsefulness.
“Wouldn’t it be fun if you and I went in a ship together, to a very
nice country place--real country--and stayed there for a bit?”
“Ceylon?” inquired Cecil in a puzzled voice.
“No, no, not as far as that. Perhaps France, or somewhere like that.”
“But aren’t we going back to Squires?”
“I don’t know, lovey.”
“But I want to ride again, and to play cricket. And I want to go to
school, where that little boy is who bowls so well.”
Rose realized with dismay the odd tenacity of a child’s memory.
Cecil had begun to cry.
“I don’t like London any more.”
“I’m going to take you away from London, my precious ducky, truly I am.”
“Back to Squires?” sobbed Cecil.
“I don’t know. Don’t cry, lovey. Don’t you feel well?”
She kissed and petted him with vehement affection and secret anxiety at
his unwonted fretfulness.
Long after he had fallen asleep, Rose lay wide awake, revolving in her
own mind _Family Herald_ schemes for taking Cecil abroad and living
there with him under her maiden name, while she earned money for them
both by some unspecified means that refused persistently to materialize
into a concrete probability.
She could not make up her mind to answer Lady Aviolet’s letter next
day, and instead of doing so, took Cecil to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Works.
The little boy was wildly excited, and Rose, herself childishly
delighted at his pleasure, let him remain there until it was almost
closing time.
“We shall be late for supper, Ces. I hope we get a ’bus quickly.”
Mrs. Smith’s training had not led Rose to look lightly upon the taking
of cabs.
They came out into Baker Street to find that a thick London fog had
enveloped everything.
“Lord! Catch hold of my hand, Ces,” said his mother, dismayed. “This is
the pea-soup variety and no mistake. You could cut it with a knife.”
“Why are there no lights? Oh, doesn’t it smell funny! What’s that
bell?” chattered Cecil.
Rose paid scant attention to his excitement, beyond gripping him more
firmly by the hand.
“I _know_ there’s a policeman at the crossing,” she muttered.
It took them ten minutes to reach the policeman, and a very great
deal longer to obey his injunctions and return to Ovington Street by
Underground Railway.
Cecil was coughing before they arrived, and that night, for the first
time, had a mild attack of croup.
Rose was terrified.
She had never seen croup before, had not the least idea of what to do,
and frantically tore downstairs in her dressing-gown in search of Uncle
Alfred’s old-fashioned volume of “The Doctor in the Home.”
It was Felix Menebees who turned up the page for her, as soon as he
understood why Mrs. Aviolet was in the shop in the middle of the night.
“I’ll find it, and I’ll get what’s wanted. You go back to him,” said
the boy, vigorously licking his thumb in order to turn the pages faster.
He heated water for her, and carried it upstairs, and together they
plunged little, gasping Cecil into the bath, and watched his terrified
face slowly lose its blueish tinge and his laboured breathing gradually
become natural.
“He’s better now, Mrs. Aviolet,” said Felix consolingly. “I’ll run out
and get the doctor for you, though, if you like.”
“You _are_ a brick. I’ll never forget it, never! Look, he’ll be asleep
directly. I don’t think we need have the doctor now, though I’ll have
to send for him to-morrow. Go back and get some sleep, Felix. You’ve
been so kind and such a help.”
“Don’t mention it, Mrs. Aviolet,” said Felix politely.
He went back to his mattress beside the safe.
Rose sat by the side of the cot where Cecil, still rolled in his
dressing-gown under the sheet and blankets, lay asleep against his
pillow.
Her yellow hair, thick and straight, kept on falling across her
forehead, and she pushed it back, absently, again and again.
Her eyes were fixed upon the child, her thoughts, in her inexperience,
full of the terror of losing him.
“He wasn’t ever ill at Squires ... and if he had been, there’d have
been Dr. Lucian, and no difficulty about hot water, either, whatever
time of night.... Felix _was_ good! The idea of a lad like him getting
the mustard for the bath, and helping me, and everything. But if he
hadn’t been there, I’d have been properly done--I bet Uncle A. wouldn’t
be any more use than a poke in the eye with a dirty stick, and I
suppose the girl sleeps like the dead, the same as all servants. That
old Dawson would have come, though, at Squires ... and they’d have had
ipecacuanha in the house, for certain, and anything one wanted. A fire
in his room, most likely, on a night like this. And Cecil was happier
there than he is here!”
Tears filled her eyes.
“If I go back, they’ll send him to one of their schools, and he isn’t
fit for it--he isn’t fit for it.”
That impassioned conviction was still there, as vehemently as on the
night when she had confronted the Aviolets in the drawing-room after
dinner, and had made her scene. But Cecil’s illness, and his wistful
and unconscious resignation to the lack of those material comforts of
which Squires was so prodigal, caused Rose to suffer a new misery of
uncertainty.
In the morning, she asked Felix to go for the doctor.
“I’ll stop on my way to fetch the milk, Mrs. Aviolet. How is he?”
“All right, thank goodness. Only just a little bit hoarse, and coughing
the tiniest bit. It was all that rotten fog; he isn’t a bit delicate
really, and he’s never had croup in his life before.”
She repeated this to the doctor when he came, a common, overworked
little man, who barely listened to her.
“All right, all right. He may get another attack about the same time
to-night--or he may not. If he does, make him sick--that’ll cut it
short. Croup isn’t dangerous, so you needn’t be frightened. Keep him
indoors while this weather lasts.”
“In bed?”
“What for? He’s all right, you know. These attacks are nasty while
they last, but there’s nothing to make a fuss about. Good-morning,
Mrs.--er--H’m.”
The doctor hurried away, leaving Rose to assimilate the difference
between Mrs. Jim Aviolet sending for the doctor to come to Squires,
and Mrs.--er--H’m summoning medical assistance to the bedroom over the
pawnbroker’s shop in Ovington Street.
“I’ve told the girl that she may light the gas-fire in the
sitting-room,” Uncle Alfred announced to her later, “so the little chap
can go down there; and I’ve put out Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ to amuse
him.”
“Thank you very much, Uncle,” said Rose, sincerely grateful.
It was Wednesday, when the shop closed early, and Felix Menebees came
upstairs after dinner and said that he would play Halma with Cecil.
He blushed all over his pale, spectacled face when Rose thanked him
ardently.
“It’s nothing, Mrs. Aviolet. Pleased to do it, I’m sure,” he murmured.
“Well, I’ll go out for a bit. I want some things from the chemist. That
doctor seemed to think the croup might come on again to-night, and I’m
not going to be taken unawares again, if I know it.”
She went out into the damp, foggy afternoon, very raw and cold.
Her mind misgave her more and more as she thought of writing to Lady
Aviolet, announcing that she and Cecil would not return to Squires. How
could she cope with the economic problem that might ensue?
The streets seemed to be crowded with shoppers, hurrying, as she
herself was hurrying, many of the women holding muffs against their
cold faces, as though to protect themselves from the foulness of the
atmosphere.
“Mrs. Aviolet!”
Rose turned her head sharply and confronted Lord Charlesbury.
“Oh, I _am_ surprised to see you!” she cried, loudly and naïvely. “I
didn’t know you were in London.”
“Then I had the advantage of you, for I saw your brother-in-law
yesterday, and he told me you were here. Which way are you going?”
“Only as far as the chemist at the corner there, and then straight back
home.”
“It’s beastly weather, isn’t it?” he agreed. “May I come with you?”
“Oh, do,” said Rose.
She was rather surprised at the extent of her own pleasure in the
meeting. But he, also, had looked pleased.
Besides, it was nice to walk beside a man again, and have the
swing-door of the chemist’s shop pushed open for one, and one’s parcel
taken charge of as a matter of course.
“Won’t you let me take you somewhere for some tea? It’s such a dismal
afternoon, do take pity on me and cheer me up.”
“Aren’t you busy?”
“My business is done, and I have an hour or more before I need think of
catching my train. If you’ve no other engagement yourself----”
“Oh, no. I want to get back to Cecil, but he’ll be all right for a
little while. I’d like to come.”
“I’m so glad.” His voice really did sound glad. “Now, where would you
like to go?”
“There’s an A.B.C. shop not far from here,” Rose suggested.
“That would be very nice. Or suppose we go to that place in Bond
Street--Verreys? Do you know it?”
“No.”
“Then do let me take you there. It’s really quite a nice place.”
He raised his stick for an instant, and a hansom drew up beside the
kerb. Rose involuntarily recollected the impassioned gesticulations and
shrill whistling with which cabs, when rendered inevitable on account
of luggage, were summoned to the door by Uncle Alfred.
“Have you heard from Squires lately?”
“I had a letter from my mother-in-law a few days ago, asking when me
and Ces were going back there. And I haven’t answered it yet, either.”
A sigh lifted her breast as she remembered the necessity for answering
that letter.
Lord Charlesbury’s kind, grave eyes looked at her with their interested
gaze. She suddenly felt that it would be a relief to tell him of her
perplexity.
When they were seated at the small table in the warm, lighted
restaurant, she did so.
“Look here, I want to tell you something. I’ve practically made up my
mind--at least I had till yesterday--not to go back to Squires at all.”
Charlesbury put up his eyeglass with a quick gesture that seemed to
indicate that he was startled, but made no reply.
“You’ve seen me there, me and Ces--you know very well we don’t fit in
there,” she said defiantly.
“Forgive me if I say that I think that could be put right easily
enough, if you were willing to try,” he said gently. “And I’m sure your
boy is happy there.”
Rose winced. “You’ve hit the nail on the head,” she curtly admitted.
“That’s just what’s threatening to upset my apple-cart. Ces was happy
there, in spite of that silly ass of a Wade, and he was well and strong
there. He’s been ill since I’ve had him up here. Not really ill, you
know, but he had croup last night and he doesn’t look like the same
kid.”
“Poor little chap! I’m sorry to hear that. I hope he’s getting better.”
“The croup is better--at least, unless he gets it again to-night. But I
don’t think London suits him like the country.”
“Probably not. The country is the place for kiddies, isn’t it, and
London is no great catch for any one at this time of year.”
Their tea was brought to them, and Rose poured it out, carefully
putting milk into the bottom of each cup first.
“Sugar?”
“No, thanks.”
She dropped two lumps into her own cup and stirred them round and round
with her teaspoon, absently, while she went on talking.
“I did think of perhaps taking Ces abroad with me somewhere. One can
live awfully cheaply at some of those French places, I believe.”
Lord Charlesbury reflectively answered, “I see,” but it was obvious
enough that he was puzzled. At last he said:
“D’you know, I can’t help feeling that there’s something at the back
of your mind that I haven’t quite grasped. I’m a stupid fellow, Mrs.
Aviolet, and you must help me. What’s the idea of leaving England?”
“I didn’t mean to give any one my address. I don’t want Ford to have
anything to do with Cecil’s bringing up.”
“But isn’t he his guardian?”
“Yes,” said Rose viciously. “Thanks to Jim’s absurd will, he is. But
isn’t there something called the Law of Extradition--I found it in
Whittaker’s Almanac--that would prevent him doing anything in a foreign
country? I didn’t understand it all, but it gave me the idea of going
abroad.”
“I see,” said Charlesbury again, and passed his hand across his mouth.
“No, I don’t think the Laws of Extradition would really help you very
much. For one thing, the legal guardian of a minor has a certain right
to determine the minor’s place of residence, and I don’t think Ford
Aviolet would care about having your little boy brought up in France.
In fact, if you think it over I’m almost sure you won’t really care
about the idea yourself, you know. Cecil is English, after all. Don’t
you really think it would be better for him to grow up in his own
country?”
“Of course I do!” she cried. “But I’ve told you before--and I’ve told
them, too--that Cecil isn’t fit for the ordinary English public-school
education.”
“I remember.”
Charlesbury remained silent, his face reflective.
Rose stared at him hopefully, half expecting that he would present some
hitherto undreamed-of solution to her problem.
“Is there any reason to decide that question of the public school at
all, at present? You told me at Squires that it wasn’t the general
principles of the public-school system that you disliked, but its
application in Cecil’s particular case. Isn’t that so?”
She nodded vehemently.
“Why not wait and see how the boy gets on? Why, it’s at least four
years and a half before he could enter any public school. Let Ford
put his name down for half a dozen places if he likes, and reserve to
yourself the right of re-opening the whole question by the time the boy
is old enough for it to be thought of seriously. He may have altered in
all sorts of respects by that time.”
“And meanwhile?”
“Meanwhile,” said Charlesbury, smiling at her, “let him go back to
Squires and get thoroughly strong and healthy. A sound mind in a sound
body, you know.... I know you’ll put up with a possibly uncongenial
atmosphere for yourself, if it’s for his sake.”
“But that Wade woman won’t stay on for ever. She thinks she’s getting
him ready for school, as it is.”
“I hope she is.”
Rose made a quick, protesting movement.
“Don’t be vexed with me,” he said, smiling. “I know you won’t think me
impertinent, if I say that I do so want you to go and have a look at
Hurst for yourself, one day. Where my boy Hugh is, you know. I think
you’d like the headmaster’s wife, Mrs. Lambert. A visit won’t commit
you to anything at all, and I think you’d be struck by the amount of
individual attention that each boy gets. They’re only little fellows,
there, after all, and not more than fifty of them, all told. Mr.
Lambert makes a point of their manners and morals, as well as their
health. His own boy is in the school, too.”
“I might perhaps go and see the place,” said Rose slowly. “But don’t
think for a minute that I’m likely to change about my Cecil. I’m not.
As long as he’s what he is, I’m certain he isn’t fit for school.”
“He’s such a little fellow, and they alter so quickly. The faults that
trouble you so much now will probably disappear as he grows older and
wiser. And do, please, realize that they do really want to do the
best thing for him at Squires. Even if they are rather slow, and very
conservative.”
“Perhaps the old people do. It isn’t their fault if they’re stupid. But
Ford--oh, he’s different!”
Charlesbury smiled at her.
“I don’t think you’ll find Ford nearly so difficult when you get back
to Squires.”
She noticed that he was taking her return for granted, but it did not
vex her.
“The fact is, I heard a piece of news from him yesterday. They’re
probably waiting to tell you till they see you--but I’m going to
forestall them, as I’m an old friend, and they must forgive me. Ford
Aviolet is going to be married.”
X
Rose opened her brown eyes very wide. “The great Ford! I can guess who
it is, can’t I?”
“I expect so,” said Charlesbury, smiling.
“The Grierson-Amberly girl? I thought so. Aren’t the Aviolets delighted
about it?”
“I think they are. She’s a distant cousin, you know, and it’s very
suitable in every way. I know Lady Aviolet has been hoping for
something of the kind; I believe they’ve been rather afraid that Ford
would never marry.”
“I suppose they thought no one would ever be good enough for him. I’m
certain he thought so himself.”
Lord Charlesbury shook his head. “I wish I knew why you’re so hard on
my friend Ford. I grant you that he’s been spoilt, and he has some
irritating mannerisms, but he’s all right if you take him the right
way. And he has brains, too, which ought to appeal to you.”
Rose smiled frankly at the implied compliment to herself.
“I’m not sure, though, that that isn’t the most sickening thing of all,
about Ford. He has got brains. Time and again he could have explained
what I really meant about Cecil, for instance, to the old people--and
he just didn’t. He could have made them understand things--he’s
educated, and I know very well I’m not,” said Rose calmly, “but he
never helped me out--not once. The night after you left Squires, them
and me had a bit of a flare-up. At least, I was frantic. They were
as calm as could be, just thinking what a pity it was I should be so
common. I was trying to tell them why I wouldn’t let Ces go to school,
but they hadn’t the faintest idea of what I was driving at. They
couldn’t understand that a thing which had always been a success in a
general way might fail in a particular case. When I tried to explain,
they just thought it was because I didn’t know anything about public
schools, or because I spoilt Ces, and thought him delicate. Talking to
them was like trying to describe a colour to people who’ve been born
blind. But not Ford. _He_ understood. He could have made the others see
what I meant, even if they hadn’t agreed with me. But he didn’t. Ford
hates me.”
“Why should he hate you?”
“I think,” said Rose Aviolet slowly, “that it’s because I’m alive,
and Ford isn’t. He can’t get away from traditions. I think he tried
to, especially when he went out to South Africa to fight, but he just
couldn’t.”
Charlesbury looked keenly at her. “Do you know that you’re something of
a psychologist, Mrs. Aviolet?”
“I don’t think I know what a psychologist is, exactly. But that’s what
I think about Ford. He just doesn’t fit in. He is a tiny bit different,
if you come to think of it--he’s clever, and he likes books, and china,
and he reads. And doesn’t he say he’s a Socialist? He breaks away from
the Aviolet tradition in those sort of ways, doesn’t he? But what I
feel is, that he’s holding on to it with the other hand all the time
too. He wants to be alive, but he wants to belong to Squires as well.”
“And the two don’t square. I see,” said Charlesbury reflectively.
“Some people could make them square. _You_ could,” she returned
crudely. “But it wants somebody stronger than Ford to do it, and I
think he knows it. He’s sort of afraid, isn’t he?”
“That’s, as you say, tradition--holding him back all the time. Perhaps
you’re right, and he hasn’t the courage of his emotions.”
“That’s just what I meant,” Rose assented admiringly, “only I couldn’t
have described it like that. He hasn’t got the courage of his emotions.
And I think, myself, that he’s jealous, downright jealous, because he
knows that I have.”
“The things that matter, to you, do matter so very much?”
She nodded. “Ford knows that he doesn’t care about anything in the
world one quarter as much as I care about Cecil’s little finger. And I
think he wants to care--he wants to come alive.”
“Won’t Diana Grierson-Amberly help him to come alive, now?”
Rose looked at him, as though to see if he were really in earnest, and
then uttered a derisive laugh.
“He’ll go down among the dead men for ever and ever now,” she asserted
sweepingly. “But they’ll have Aviolet babies, and one of them will cut
out my Cecil, thank goodness, and carry on the Squires traditions.”
“You don’t want Squires for your boy?”
“Part of me does, perhaps,” she confessed. “When I see how safe and
solid it all is, you know, and when I think of what it means to be
poor, and always hard up, and more or less in debt. But I know all the
time, really, that Ces would never belong. Not altogether. After all,
he’s half Smith. And if you don’t belong, well, it’s like Ford. You’re
shamming and struggling and captive, all at the same time. And that’s
awful.”
“You are very wise,” said Charlesbury slowly.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Indeed, I’m not. But I do want you, very much, to be wiser still.
Won’t you, for Cecil’s sake, compromise, and come back to Squires for a
little while?”
“And have them badger me about school again?”
“I don’t think they will. Besides, you know,” he smiled at her,
“I’m still secretly hoping that Hurst and Mrs. Lambert will make a
difference to your views. You see, supposing Cecil went there for a
term or two, it would be simply experiment. It need not commit you
to sending him to a public school later on. It may, even, prove to
the Aviolets that your idea is correct, and Cecil is unsuited to
school-life altogether. Hurst would be the test.”
“It sounds to me like the thin end of the wedge,” said Rose bluntly.
“But, at least, you do see my point of view, and don’t talk as if I
were a fool that just couldn’t face parting with her darling.”
“I know very well that you only want what will be best for the boy in
the long run,” said Charlesbury gravely.
“That’s all. And it isn’t only the long run. It’s now, too. He isn’t
well and happy like he was there. I never realized the difference that
fresh air, and plenty of room, and the best of everything can make to
a kid.”
“It does make a difference,” Charlesbury said levelly. “And moral
fitness depends a great deal on physical fitness, doesn’t it, so that
one wants to keep them up to the mark, from every point of view.”
Rose gazed at him, her honest, startled eyes full of a new apprehension.
“You mean that it mayn’t even be the best thing for his--his character,
to take him away from Squires? Oh, I never thought of that.”
Charlesbury let her assimilate it in silence, her strong, capable hand
twisting the wedding-ring on her big, straight-cut finger.
At last she lifted her head. “Perhaps you’re right. And, anyway, I
don’t know how I can stand him being ill, and not comfortable. Though
mind you,” she added with sudden warmth, “my Uncle Alfred that I’m
with, he’s as kind as ever he can be, and had a fire lit on purpose for
Ces--and he’s on the near side, is Uncle A., so it means something,
coming from him. But, of course, his house isn’t run like Squires is,
not by long chalks, and there’s no use pretending it is.”
“Very few houses are as comfortable as Squires. And I know Lady Aviolet
looks forward to having Cecil there again. She told me so.”
“They think I’m coming back all right?”
“Certainly they do. I don’t think it’s ever entered their minds that
you should do anything else.”
Rose laughed in a rather shame-faced manner. “Perhaps that’s as well.
No one likes eating humble pie, now, do they? I’d just as soon they
didn’t know I thought of not coming back at all--if I _do_ go back,
that is.”
“I think you mean ‘_When_ I do go back,’ don’t you?” said Charlesbury
with his friendly smile. “Why not let me send off a telegram for you,
saying you’ll be back by the three o’clock train to-morrow? I don’t
mind betting you’ll find sunshine in the country.”
“Wouldn’t that be good for Ces!” she murmured aloud wistfully. “Well,
I suppose I’ll do it. One thing is, they’ll be too busy about Ford to
think much about me.”
“Of course they will. A wedding is always an excitement.”
“I shouldn’t think my in-laws could ever get excited about anything,
any more than a couple of old cod-fish,” said Mrs. Aviolet
nonchalantly. “But it’ll be something to talk about, besides Cecil’s
going to school and that everlasting old garden. I must get back now to
Cecil,” she added abruptly.
Lord Charlesbury asked for his bill, and paid it, in spite of an
ungracefully worded attempt from Rose to make herself responsible for
her own share.
He took her to Ovington Street in a hansom, and they sent a telegram,
on the way, to Lady Aviolet, to announce Rose’s return.
“Good-bye,” said Rose, at the door of the pawnshop. “It’s early closing
to-day. I’m going in by the area. Thank you for the tea.”
“I’m so glad to have seen you. Thank you for giving me one of the
pleasantest afternoons that I’ve spent for a long while.”
“I haven’t made you late for your train, have I?” she cried in sudden
alarm.
“No, there’s plenty of time. I shall keep this fellow on and go
straight to the station. I hope the little chap will be all right
to-night, and I shall think of you both in the country to-morrow.
Good-bye.”
Rose ran upstairs, astonished at finding herself committed to an
immediate return to Squires, and yet surprisingly unperturbed at the
prospect.
She found Cecil entertaining Felix Menebees with stories of his life in
Ceylon, to which she did not allow herself to pay conscious attention.
The little boy was not coughing, but he looked pale and languid, and
her heart contracted strangely at his sudden flush of joy when she told
him that they would go back to the country next day.
“Oh, Mrs. Aviolet!” said Felix Menebees, and looked at her in dismay
through his spectacles.
“It’ll be the best thing to put him right, won’t it?” Rose said. “And
we’re really only supposed to be here on a visit, you know. But we
shall be back again one of these days, I expect.”
She had only the vaguest of projects in her mind, besides the desire
to cheer the disconsolate Felix, but Cecil, with one of the sudden,
uncanny intuitions of childhood, put the idea into words for her.
“Mummie’ll come here when I’ve been sent to school, Felix. And perhaps
I’ll spend some of my holidays here, and tell you all about my school.”
“You know nothing about it,” cried his mother abruptly. “Come on,
lovey, say good-night to Felix and thank him for being so kind to you.”
She hurried him upstairs to bed.
At supper, Uncle Alfred learned that his guests were proposing to leave
him on the morrow.
“You are very impetuous, Rose,” he remarked with displeasure. “Why
not have warned me of your intentions earlier? The girl, by my
instructions, has ordered butcher’s meat for to-morrow, entirely on
your child’s account.”
Rose entered whole-heartedly into this practical objection to her
scheme.
“If it hasn’t been delivered yet, couldn’t we stop it?”
“I will speak to the girl.”
“It isn’t that we haven’t been happy, as you very well know, Uncle
Alfred. But I daresay the country will get rid of Cecil’s cough before
it’s got a hold on him, so to speak, and they’re expecting us back at
Squires.”
“If you’ve told them you’re coming to-morrow, you must abide by it,”
Uncle Alfred declared gloomily. “It’s worse than useless to have extra
food ordered in twice over. Are they expecting you?”
“Yes, they are.”
Rose dared not admit to the telegram. The sight of a telegram was not
infrequent at Squires, but in Ovington Street, a telegram signified a
first cause of considerable magnitude. She knew that Uncle Alfred would
have considered that a post-card could sufficiently announce the date
and hour of her arrival, and in her heart, Rose agreed with him. The
telegram had been Lord Charlesbury’s doing, like so much else.
Cecil had no return of croup, and the next day they left the rooms over
the pawnshop.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Aviolet,” said Felix Menebees wistfully. “I hope the
country will do Cecil a great deal of good.”
“Good-bye, Felix. Thank you for what you did that night he was ill.
I’ll never forget it. I expect you’ll see us here one of these days
again.”
Rose heartily shook the pale youth’s hand.
Her farewell to Artie Millar, in whom she had long ceased to be
interested, was tepid by comparison. Uncle Alfred addressed his parting
speech to his guests from the top of the stairs, where he had received
them a fortnight earlier.
“Good-bye to you, Rose, good-bye to you, my little fellow. You are
extremely fortunate in having one of the stately homes of England, as
the poet calls them, thus thrown open to you. I feel sure,” said Uncle
Alfred, with a doubting eye fixed upon his niece, “I feel _certain_
that you appreciate your good fortune to the full. And I am equally
sure, my dear niece, if you will allow an old man to speak a word in
season, that you will remember from Whom all blessings flow. Take no
credit unto yourself for those things which are Cæsar’s. And remember
that I am prepared to enter into an arrangement with you, Rose, at any
time, should you wish to return here when your boy has gone to school.”
Rose quite understood that this was the nearest approach to a cordial
invitation that Uncle Alfred would permit himself, and enough of his
blood ran in her own veins for her to take the suggested “arrangement”
in the matter-of-course spirit in which he proposed it.
She said, “Thanks very much indeed, Uncle,” in an affectionate way,
kissed him resoundingly, and ran downstairs.
Cecil was in high spirits. “Shall I ride the pony again, Mummie,
and will Uncle Ford let me carry the rabbits for him when he’s been
shooting?”
“I daresay, darling.”
“Will Miss Wade be there?”
“Yes. Are you glad?”
“I’ll be able to tell her all about London,” said Cecil reflectively.
“I don’t think she knows much about London, Mummie.”
As the train took them further away from the city, the air lightened,
and they presently ran into clear autumn sunshine.
At the end of the journey, the carriage from Squires was awaiting them.
Their return, which Rose looked upon as a milestone, roused no
excitement at Squires.
“How are you, my dear?” said Lady Aviolet placidly, and gently bumped
Rose’s face with her own. She kissed her grandson with more cordiality,
remarked that he was looking pale, and told him that Miss Wade was
returning from her holiday the next day.
“And you’ll have to work hard at your lessons, Cecil, to make up for
your time away.”
“I went to Madam Tussawds in London,” Cecil announced.
“Mme. _Tussaud_,” said Lady Aviolet.
“Mummie says Tussawd.”
“Don’t answer back, Cecil, it’s a bad habit. Ring the bell for the hot
water, and we’ll have tea.”
The silver kettle and the hot scones, the cut bread-and-butter and the
various cakes, seemed oddly elaborate after Ovington Street.
“What a good tea!” said little Cecil.
Neither Ford nor Sir Thomas was present.
“We have a piece of news for you, Rose,” her mother-in-law presently
said, when Cecil had been sent away in Dawson’s charge to the nursery.
“I think I know already.”
“Indeed?”
“I met Lord Charlesbury yesterday, and he told me--about Ford, isn’t
it?”
“Did you meet Laurence Charlesbury?”
“Yes. I had tea with him.”
To her own disgust, Rose suddenly heard her voice becoming loud and
defiant.
“Oh, yes--how nice! Where did you meet?”
“In the Brompton Road, and we went to a place in Bond Street. He told
me that Ford is engaged to be married.”
“Yes, my dear, to Diana. Sir Thomas and I are very pleased about it.
Let me give you another cup of tea?”
“No, thanks. Do tell me how it all happened.”
Rose, however much she might dislike Ford, and however cheaply she
might hold Diana, was quite incapable of being anything but thrilled
and excited over every detail concerning an engagement.
“How it happened?” Lady Aviolet repeated with a certain blankness.
“When did he propose to her and where, and has he given her a ring
yet?” Rose earnestly inquired.
Lady Aviolet laughed gently. “How very nice of you to be so much
interested in them!”
Her voice held the intonation that generally accompanies the words,
“How very foolish of you ...” but she looked at Rose with her usual
bleakly kind obtuseness of gaze.
“I believe, since you want so much to hear details, that they settled
it in the train, last Saturday. Ford had been to see a man on business,
and on his way back he met Diana at the Junction. She was travelling
home--with her maid, of course--from some visit or other, and they got
into the same train.”
“Is she--are they--does she--are they very much in love?” Rose blurted
out, intensely curious.
“They’ve known one another all their lives, you know. Ford has always
been very devoted to her, and I’m sure she is to him. Diana is such a
thoroughly nice girl.”
“Has he been in love with her long?”
“I really couldn’t tell you, my dear. One always felt that if Ford did
ask any girl to marry him, it would probably be Diana. But two or three
men have very much wanted to marry her, and I’ve sometimes been afraid
that Ford might delay too long.”
“Have they _really_?”
Rose’s voice held all the astonishment that she invariably experienced
at each allusion to the attractions of Miss Grierson-Amberly.
“She could have made a most excellent marriage the year she came out.
But her mother, of course, would never have dreamt of persuading her in
any way, though I believe she was disappointed at the time. But they’re
delighted about this, now, and so all is very well.”
“When are they going to be married?”
“Well, that’s hardly settled yet. Diana is coming to stay here for a
little while, we hope, next month, and no doubt they’ll arrange it
then. I hope it may be some time in the spring or early summer.”
“I do love weddings,” said Rose emphatically.
“Do you, my dear?” Lady Aviolet’s voice, though amiable, displayed not
the least interest in Rose’s gushing enthusiasms.
“There will be a good deal of business to be settled before their
wedding takes place, quite apart from Diana’s preparations, and her
trousseau and things. Of course, in a sense, this alters your little
Cecil’s prospects, but I think you can trust Ford to see that his
interests are considered in every possible way.”
“I only hope to goodness,” said Rose fervently, “that Ford and Diana
will have half a dozen kids of their own.”
A certain quality of taken-abackness in the silence that ensued
conveyed to Rose that her aspirations might be open to the accusation
of a lack of delicacy.
With unwonted discretion, she did not endeavour to rectify the mistake
by volubly explaining it.
She found, to her surprise, that her stay in London had the effect
of rendering Squires more bearable to her. She appreciated anew the
material comfort of the big, luxurious house, and was happy when she
saw Cecil regaining his colour and his appetite.
Ford was very often away, sometimes in London on business connected
with his marriage, and sometimes at Diana’s home on the other side of
the county.
He received Rose’s congratulations, which were curt, with his habitual
equanimity, and added, after thanking her:
“You need not be afraid that Cecil’s interests will be allowed to
suffer by this, Rose.”
“I wasn’t.”
“His welfare still remains one of my first responsibilities,” said her
brother-in-law suavely.
She made no answer.
A little later on, Diana Grierson-Amberly came to stay at Squires.
She was friendly to Rose, very kind to Cecil, deferentially
affectionate to Sir Thomas and Lady Aviolet--but then she had been all
of these things before. Equally, her manner towards Ford was almost
unaltered.
Her nearest approach to an endearment was “My dear old boy,” and she
displayed neither blush nor tremor at the mild, stereotyped jokes about
engaged couples in which her future father-in-law occasionally indulged.
To Diana, it was evidently all relegated to the same class as that
which she cheerfully and pleasantly hailed as “chaff.”
She seemed amused, if also faintly gratified, by Rose’s schoolgirl
excitement.
“What’s your ring? Oh, it’s lovely! What an enormous diamond! Are
diamonds your favourite stones?”
“Yes, I think they are. Ford had several down from Hunt’s for me to
choose from. He’s given me a beautiful pendant too, but I shan’t wear
that till I’m married.”
She uttered the words most matter-of-factly, and Rose remembered her
own brief, delirious engagement to Jim, and the glamour of romance that
had surrounded every token of their hastily plighted troth.
“But then,” she reflected, “I was much younger than Diana, and I’d
never had a proposal before, and apparently she’s had dozens--God knows
why, or what any one can see in her. And she’s known Ford all her life,
and I’d only known Jim three weeks, and come to that, I’d have done
better never to have set eyes on him--except for my Ces.”
But although her habit of facing facts refused to allow Rose the
sentimental luxury of a slurred retrospect, she felt very certain that
her short-lived and exceedingly ill-starred love-affair had given her
such moments of bliss as Diana, in her decorous betrothal, had never
known, and never would know. Diana, however, in place of these, had a
number of very substantial satisfactions.
She was much absorbed in her trousseau, a great part of which was being
made for her at one of the many charitable institutions in which Lady
Aviolet was interested, and she received an enormous number of wedding
presents, testifying to her own popularity as well as to the good-will
of her friends and relations.
There was also, to occupy her, the question of her new home.
“Naturally, we want to live in the country and to stick to these
parts,” said Diana.
“I suppose so.” Rose’s acquiescence was dubious.
“I don’t really think it would be a good plan to start at Squires, do
you?”
“Rotten.”
“I’m very fond of Cousin Catherine, and all of them, and they’ve been
perfectly sweet to me, always, but Mother says, and I must say I agree
with her--that those arrangements are always rather a risk.”
“I should _think_ so.”
“I’ve got heaps of ideas for furnishing. You must help me choose the
chintzes and things, won’t you?”
“I’d love to,” said Rose, gratified.
She was ready to take an eager interest in their selection, and in fact
did so, but the violent blues and purples that she admired accorded
ill with the blended art-shades preferred by Diana. They agreed better
over the furniture, for Rose had imbibed from Uncle Alfred a genuine
respect for what she termed “the antiques line” and Diana shared Ford’s
fondness for picking up possible bargains in second-hand shops.
Once or twice Rose accompanied the bride-elect on such expeditions when
Ford was not available. She felt herself to have done Diana a service
by arguing so violently with the old proprietor of the curiosity-shop
they visited that he at last parted with the Empire gilt mirror
selected by Diana for a price that was very little above its intrinsic
value.
Diana, however, seemed more embarrassed than obliged, and did not again
invite Rose to shop with her.
It was finally arranged that the wedding should take place early in
June, and Diana lost herself in a maze of letter-writing, consulting of
catalogues, and trying-on of clothes.
She paid another visit to Squires three weeks before the date of her
wedding, and declared her intention of having a thorough rest.
Rose thought her indeed looking tired and with something less than her
usual well-bred security of manner.
“Isn’t all this preliminary fuss rather awful?” she one day abruptly
inquired.
“How do you mean, Rose?”
Rose had no aptitude for definitions. “I know _I_ should hate it,
that’s all,” she said vaguely. “But I was only engaged a week.”
“But why?” Diana inquired, politely puzzled.
“Oh, it all happened on board ship, and I had a row with the woman I
was travelling with, and I didn’t know anybody out there, so Jim just
had to fix things up as quickly as he possibly could, and we were
married two days after we landed. A woman who’d been on the boat was
kind to me, and had me to stay with her till the wedding----”
“But how dreadful for you--and you must have been so very young, too!”
“Seventeen, I was.”
“I’m very glad I wasn’t married at seventeen,” said Diana, with an
unaccustomed wistfulness that robbed the words of any offensive
intention. “I think one’s so romantic at seventeen, don’t you? I mean,
one expects so much.”
“So one ought to, in marriage,” Rose declared stoutly. “I daresay you
know that I made rather a hash of things myself, but I do believe one
can be most frightfully happy in this world, whatever any one says. It
_can_ be more glorious than one’s maddest dreams----”
She stopped short. Diana had attempted her usual rather meaningless
little laugh, but had broken down half-way.
“What’s the matter?” said Rose. She put out her hand rather timidly,
but Diana did not repulse it--rather did she appear to cling to the
big, warm, enveloping grasp.
“Are you frightened?” asked Rose wonderingly.
“I’m tired and--and silly, I daresay. You see, it’s such a tremendous
step in one’s life, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” said Rose energetically. “And it lasts for ever, too.
At least, unless they die, like mine did, but you can’t marry on the
off-chance of that, after all.”
“Oh, don’t!”
“I didn’t mean that I thought you meant that,” Rose explained, with
habitual lucidity. “I suppose you wouldn’t be marrying him, unless you
felt sure?”
“No,” said Diana faintly.
Rose looked at her. “You know, it’s still not too late, if you _don’t_
feel perfectly certain. I know how awful it would be, after all those
good, expensive presents, and all the money that’s been spent on
furnishing the house, too--but, if I were you, I’d chuck it all up now,
sooner than do it when you don’t really feel like it. I don’t suppose
I’d have married Jim, you know, if I’d been a bit older, but I did
have a certain amount of run for my money, because I was in love with
him--at first. Just enough to show me that if one really cared, and the
man did too--it would simply be heaven.”
“That’s what they say in books.”
“Well, I suppose that the people who write the books _know_,” said Rose
simply.
Diana began to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief.
“I don’t know why I’m so silly and unlike myself. Of course, I’ve known
him all my life, and we’ve always been fond of one another. It’s only
that being married to a man is--is rather frightening, in a way, don’t
you think?”
“It wouldn’t be, if you loved him.” Rose was staunch to her creed.
“When I was a schoolgirl my mother used to tell me that when one really
cared about a man, one cared with one’s body as well as one’s soul. And
nothing to be ashamed of, either, she used to say.”
That Diana did not share Mrs. Smith’s opinion was evident. Her fair
face and neck crimsoned.
“Oh, please----” she said hurriedly, and burst into tears.
“You poor kid! I’m awfully sorry--I didn’t mean to upset you!”
“It’s all right--I’ll go to my room. I don’t think I can be very well.
Do forgive me for being so stupid.”
She hastened to the door, but Rose caught her hand again and said very
earnestly:
“Look here, just half a minute. Listen: if you do really feel that you
can’t carry on with this Ford business, will you tell me, and I swear
I’ll stand all the racket for you--tell him myself, even if it’s only
five minutes before he starts for the wedding--and--and----”
Diana wrenched her hand away. “I know you mean to be kind, but you
mustn’t talk like that. I’m tired, and silly, and I’ve made you think
all sorts of nonsense. Please, please forget it--and don’t let’s ever
speak about it again.”
Her voice broke once more, and she hurried upstairs, leaving Rose
staring blankly after her.
XI
The wedding duly took place in June.
Ford and Diana went to the Channel Islands, and Lady Aviolet, in
a quiet, relentless manner, began to urge upon Rose once more the
question of school for Cecil.
“He’s improving very much in every way, under Miss Wade, but it’s time
he saw something of other boys. It is such a handicap to be an only
child. I don’t say it’s urgent--but I do say, go and look at various
places. There’s Hurst, now----”
It was not Lady Aviolet’s arguments that prevailed upon Rose at last,
but the recollection of her conversation in London with Charlesbury,
and--still more--a renewal of nursery tragedy.
Rose, persisting in a habit that was silently, but intensely,
disapproved of by Miss Wade, and entering the nursery unexpectedly,
discovered the governess in fits of spasmodic laughter before a paper
that she held in her hand.
Cecil, his back turned to her, appeared to be absorbed in gazing out
of the window. He did not turn round at his mother’s entrance. Rose’s
intuition, far more developed than her reasoning powers, warned her of
tension in the atmosphere.
“What’s up?”
“I think this will amuse you, Mrs. Aviolet,” tittered the governess.
She handed to Rose the paper, that bore a strange, pencilled outline,
resembling a depressed fox rather than anything else, with the words,
“This is Puge,” printed underneath in Cecil’s straggling round-hand.
“That is Cecil’s idea of poor Pug,” Miss Wade remarked, in a tone that
exploited the comical inadequacy of the conception. “I tell him that
he must learn the rules of drawing before he tries anything quite so
ambitious as a portrait again.”
Rose gazed at the drawing. It was very poor, indeed, even for eight
years old, but she experienced no particular amusement at the sight of
it.
“Cecil’s like me--can’t draw a straight line,” she said. “Come here,
lovey.”
She had felt dimly afraid that Cecil was resentful of Miss Wade’s
tactless ridicule, but she was not prepared for the furious little face
that he turned upon her.
“You’re not to look at my drawing--Miss Wade isn’t to look at my
drawing!” he cried angrily. “I didn’t say she might look at it!”
The little boy made an ineffectual dash at the paper held above his
grasp by the governess.
“Cecil! That’s not at all the way to speak. Just because you can’t
stand a little chaff.”
“Don’t, Ces--stop that!” Rose caught hold of him.
“You’re _not_ to laugh at my drawing!” he shrieked.
“I’m not laughing at it. Be quiet this instant.” Rose gave him a hearty
shaking, and Cecil burst into tears.
“Good gracious me, what a fuss about nothing! Miss Wade didn’t mean to
hurt your feelings,” Rose rashly asserted.
“Cecil must learn to take a little friendly chaff good-humouredly,”
said Miss Wade in a rather vicious-sounding voice. “I’ve noticed before
that he’s very touchy--absurdly touchy. What will you do at school,
I should like to know, Cecil? To fly out like that just because one
doesn’t think everything that you do is perfect. Silly little boy!”
Cecil, who had been sobbing comparatively calmly after his mother’s
brief and vigorous ministrations, was screaming, quivering, and
stamping with renewed passion by the end of Miss Wade’s speech.
“I never said you might look at my picture! It isn’t fair--you’ve no
right to--pig, pig--I hate you.... It _isn’t_ badly drawn; I drew it
like that on purpose. I spelt ‘Pug’ wrong on purpose.... I----”
“Cecil, you know that’s not true----”
“Oh, shut up,” cried Rose with sudden anger, turning on the governess.
“Mrs. Aviolet!”
“Well, can’t you see he doesn’t know what he’s saying?”
But this was as disastrous as any inspiration of Miss Wade’s.
“I _do_ know what I’m saying.... It is true.... I drew it badly for
fun.... I can draw much better than any one.... I can----”
The nursery door opened again and Lady Aviolet came in.
“What’s this disgraceful noise? I heard you from the garden, Cecil.”
“He’s a very naughty boy indeed, I’m sorry to say.”
Rose picked up the struggling, sobbing Cecil in her strong arms and
carried him bodily into the next room, where she threw him on the bed.
“Don’t you stir from there, now,” she panted.
She stood for a moment by the door, and saw him rolling round, his head
buried in the pillow, before she left him, closing the door behind her.
“I’ve never seen him like that before,” she helplessly declared.
“Neither have I,” Miss Wade admitted. “I’ve never thought him a
passionate child. And all about nothing, as you might say!”
“Is this ridiculous drawing business the only thing that’s gone wrong?
Was there really nothing else?” Rose demanded.
“Nothing.”
They looked at one another in a common dismay.
“I should like to hear the whole story,” said Lady Aviolet,
determination evident in her deliberate selection of a chair for
herself.
Miss Wade repeated the trivial episode, and its totally disproportionate
climax.
“He was just angry because you laughed at him?”
“I suppose so. Not that I should think so much of that, Lady Aviolet,
in a child that isn’t used to other children and has never learnt to
give and take, or to tease and be teased--but the temper! The rage!!
The expressions he used!!! And worst of all, the readiness to say what
isn’t true. It’s the old, old failing, you know. Declaring that he’d
done it badly on purpose, you know--his mother heard him.”
“He didn’t know what he was saying,” Rose repeated roughly.
“That makes it so much the worse, my dear,” her mother-in-law
unexpectedly remarked. “It’s almost as though the poor child lied by
instinct, not caring what nonsense he may be talking.”
“I thought him nearly cured, too,” said Miss Wade mournfully. “I’m
afraid--I really am afraid, Lady Aviolet--that I’ve failed with Cecil.
It’s the first time I’ve ever had to say such a thing of a pupil, but I
do certainly feel that, except as regards mere book-learning, he’s made
little or no progress since I’ve had him. The truth is, there have been
too many interruptions--a divided authority--” she glanced resentfully
at Cecil’s mother.
Rose, with her arms akimbo, stood staring back at her with brooding,
lowering gaze.
“I’m sure it’s very honest of you, Miss Wade, to tell us what you feel,
like that,” said Lady Aviolet. “It’s not your fault, I feel sure. It’s
just what I’ve always said: Cecil is a spoilt little boy--yes, my dear
Rose, he _is_--and school is what he requires. He doesn’t know how to
stand being laughed at, he doesn’t speak the truth, and now he’s flying
into these naughty rages. It’s more than time that he left home.”
“Sorry though I am to say it, I quite agree with you, Lady Aviolet. I
should like to look out for another situation at the end of the month,
if you please.”
Thus Miss Wade, very red, and with compressed lips.
“Well, well”--Lady Aviolet rose--“we’re in no hurry to settle that,
Miss Wade, if you’re not. But I certainly do think, after this, that
there can be no question about delaying school any longer. We shall see
what Ford says.”
“Seeing what Ford said” was with Lady Aviolet the inevitable
concomitant to any suggestion. Before he came home again, however, Rose
took the law into her own hands.
She announced abruptly that she was going down to Hurst.
“But, my dear, Ford has already been there. He can tell you all about
it.”
Why on earth couldn’t one be allowed to take any step without this
eternal, relentless, and yet bloodless, opposition, Rose thought
angrily.
“Well, I’m going just the same. I want to see it for myself.”
“Very well, my dear. I suppose you will make an appointment with
the headmaster--I think his name is Lambert. I believe he has a
particularly charming wife, who does a great deal for the boys.”
“Yes.”
“I will come with you, if you like. I should like to see the place.”
Rose looked at her mother-in-law with candid disapproval. “I’d rather
not, thank you. I hope you won’t think me a pig,” she added with an
effort.
Lady Aviolet did not say that she thought Rose a pig. She made an
unsmiling gesture of submission.
“Just as you prefer. I shall get plenty of opportunities later on, I
hope, when the little chap is settled there.”
“I thought Henrietta Lucian could come with me,” said Rose.
“The doctor’s sister? If you wish it, my dear, no doubt she will be
quite ready to do so.”
“I like her very much,” said Mrs. Aviolet aggressively.
“Do you, my dear? Let me know when you want to go, so as not to clash
with any plans. The Marchmonts are coming over to lunch one day next
week, I hope.”
Rose gloomily undertook not to interfere with the visit of the
Marchmonts, inexpressibly dull as she had always felt them to be.
She made an appointment with the headmaster at Hurst, and obtained
the companionship of Miss Lucian on her expedition. She was fond of
Henrietta Lucian, both for a certain terse humour that was entirely
lacking in the society of Squires, and for her matter-of-fact
acceptance of little Cecil’s foible, and robust affection for him. Rose
found it a relief to have her intention of visiting Hurst taken for
granted, without reference to its entailing any future decision. She
felt able to put into words a fact that had hitherto vexed her spirit
almost too deeply for utterance.
“You know they’ve managed to make Ces perfectly wild to come to this
place.”
Rose’s “they” was always unmistakable.
“It’s natural.”
“Of him? I know it is. But it makes it much harder for me to stick to
what I’ve said about his not going.”
“Do you mean to stick to it, then?”
“Well, honestly, I don’t know. I’ll see what this blooming place is
like. If you’d told me a year ago that I’d ever even think of school
for him, after all I’ve said against it, I’d have called you no better
than a liar. But I’ve had to own that I don’t seem to be making a
great hand of keeping him away. I thought at first that if I had him
to myself, it’d be better, but when we were in London, him and me, it
wasn’t really a great success. He wasn’t well, for one thing, and he
was always talking about the games and animals and things at Squires,
poor lamb. And that governess, that Miss Wade, hasn’t done him any
good, for all her rotten little books on education. She hasn’t cured
him of telling fibs.”
“Poor little man!”
“Nothing seems to do him any good, that way. I know they’ve told him
a whole lot about God, and how He hates lies, and always knows when
people aren’t speaking the truth, and so on and so forth. I never could
stuff him up with all that, myself, not knowing much about it, or
caring either.”
“It might be an incentive to Cecil to speak the truth. I shouldn’t
discourage any motive that might help him.”
“I wouldn’t for the world,” said Rose. “Only it doesn’t, you see.
Make any difference, I mean. I can’t see that he cares a hang whether
God minds his telling lies or not. I don’t believe he knows when he’s
telling them.”
“It’s probably a bad habit, like any other. He’ll either grow out of
it, or leave it off when he finds out for himself that the game isn’t
worth the candle. School might teach him that, you know.”
Miss Lucian’s arguments might not be original, but Rose received them
thankfully enough in her new perplexity.
The pleasant, spacious building called Hurst made a favourable
impression on her, and she met Mr. Lambert without any of the
repressed hostility that the mere mention of his name had always roused
in her at Squires.
He was a tall, curly-haired man with an agreeable manner, much younger
than Rose had expected him to be. She was naïvely pleased and flattered
because he spoke to her almost at once of “Cecil,” as though he felt an
interest in the boy sufficiently great to have remembered his name.
They were shown the class-rooms, dining-room, dormitories, gymnasium,
the Chapel, and the playing-fields, and finally taken through a red
baize door beyond which Mrs. Lambert had her drawing-room.
“Let me introduce my wife, Mrs. Aviolet and Miss Lucian.”
Mrs. Lambert also looked younger than Rose had expected her to look,
and her round, freckled face was pretty and good-humoured, with big
blue eyes glowing like dark jewels under an open forehead and curling
brown hair.
She talked very freely and enthusiastically about the school, and her
warmth of manner drew Rose towards her very strongly. She listened
eagerly to Mrs. Lambert’s practical assurances.
“They really do get enough to eat, you know. I can so well understand
any mother feeling dreadful about letting her boy go all by himself to
a strange place--but truly, Mrs. Aviolet, I promise you they’re well
looked after. My own little boy is in the school, you know. You shall
see him, and then you can tell whether he’s a good advertisement.” Her
gay, jolly laugh was justified by the appearance of the boy, a healthy,
happy-looking specimen, who ran into the room, shook hands, and then
burst out with some eager petition to his father.
“Stuff for marking the tennis-court? Of course you can, old chap. Come
along and we’ll find it--if Mrs. Aviolet will excuse us? But I daresay
you’d like a talk with my wife.”
Mrs. Lambert nodded. “Please do let’s, Mrs. Aviolet. I find it’s such
a help with the boys if I can say that I know their mummies a little
bit. And from the other point of view, too, of course it helps one to
understand a boy if one has a talk with the parents.”
“May I come and see the tennis-court?” said Miss Lucian, and she rose
and went out with Mr. Lambert and his son.
Mrs. Lambert sat silent for a moment, looking expectantly at Rose.
At last she said gently: “If you do settle to trust us with your boy,
I do want you to feel happy about him. I’ll write to you myself every
few days, just at first, and tell you how he’s settling down. It’s
wonderful how quickly they get accustomed to it all. Is Cecil fond of
games?”
“Yes, but he’s not good at them, yet.”
“That’s sure to come later. He’s an only child, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“So’s mine. I do feel it’s a drawback to them, poor darlings, but at
least it’s better for a boy than for a girl. They do get to school.”
Rose, preoccupied with a newly born impulse, according to her usual
policy, made no effort to disguise her wandering attention.
Mrs. Lambert looked slightly perplexed.
“Won’t you ask me anything you like?” she said at last. “Please don’t
think I shan’t understand. I shall, really. It always seems to me _so_
hard for the mothers.”
Rose roused herself suddenly, her decision taken at the same moment.
“You _are_ kind. I never imagined you’d be in the least like this. The
fact is I’ve always been dead against school for Cecil, at all. He’s
not like other children, in a way. I don’t mean that he’s _wanting_,
you know,” she added hastily.
“I never supposed you did! But what is it, exactly?”
“He doesn’t speak the truth,” said Rose curtly.
There was a pause.
Then Mrs. Lambert nodded her head. Her expression, though graver, still
remained sympathetic and full of optimistic cheerfulness.
“Well, that’s a bad fault, of course, and one’s always sorry to see it.
But, of course, we’ve had boys like that before. It’s quite a common
thing, in fact.”
“You won’t tell your husband, will you? It doesn’t seem fair to Cecil,
somehow.”
“Very well. But I can’t help being glad you’ve told me, Mrs. Aviolet.
It makes it so much easier to help the poor little fellow if one knows
where the weak spot is. My husband will find it out, of course, but I
promise not to tell him a word beforehand, though--honestly--I think it
would be much the best thing if you’d tell him yourself.”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. I’ve been worried to death about the whole
thing,” said Rose with violence. “Everybody talking as though Ces was
the worst and most wicked child in England, just because his father
married _me_.”
Mrs. Lambert ignored the embarrassing personality. “But heaps of
children tell fibs--some of them go on till they’re quite big. I’ve
known cases, myself----”
“Yes,” Rose said doubtfully. “It isn’t absolutely an unheard of thing,
after all. And they do get cured, don’t they?”
“Oh, but of course. It’s just a fault, like any other. I’m sure it can
be overcome, if one’s patient and hopeful. And especially in the case
of such a young child as your Cecil.”
“And what do you think about school for him? Have you had boys like
that before?”
“Yes,” declared Mrs. Lambert stoutly. “Lots of little boys tell
stories, if they’re constitutionally timid, or if they’ve been left
to servants too much. And Will--my husband--would never be hard on a
boy, you know. He thoroughly disbelieves, and so do I, in frightening
children.”
“What would he do, then, with a boy who didn’t speak the truth?”
“Well, I don’t ever interfere in matters of school discipline, you
know, but I’m pretty sure he’d do every single thing to try and make it
easy for the boy to own up. And if he’d actually told a lie, and Will
had to punish him, he’d talk to him and tell him why it was. Even quite
untruthful children cure themselves in a very short time if they’re put
on their honour, and trusted, we’ve always found. It’s a horrid fault,
but they outgrow it fairly young, as a rule.”
There was an almost casual assurance about Mrs. Lambert’s point of view
that brought a sense of relief, a conviction of having monstrously
exaggerated her problem, to Rose.
“They always _do_ outgrow it, in the end?”
Mrs. Lambert laughed a little, gently. “Oh, I think so, don’t you?
The moral sense develops, later on ... and, besides, to put it on the
lowest ground, they soon find that fibbing isn’t worth while. They
always get found out, bless their hearts, most of them do it so badly!”
“Cecil’s stories are often very silly ones--things that no one could be
taken in by, seriously.”
“That’s just it!” the schoolmaster’s wife declared briskly. “It shows
they aren’t really deceitful, doesn’t it? And I do honestly think the
school atmosphere is a thoroughly healthy one, you know. They spend a
tremendous amount of time in the open air and they get keen about the
games, and they really haven’t much time for naughtiness!”
In a vague way, that she did not seek to analyze, it comforted Rose to
hear the reiteration of that trivial adjective, “naughty.”
In Mrs. Lambert’s smiling mouth, it seemed to denude Cecil’s
characteristic of some sinister significance that Rose was not able to
specify.
“I’ve been worried to death about him,” she again admitted. “Have you
truly known boys like that before?”
“My dear Mrs. Aviolet--but of course! I think, between ourselves,
that an exaggerated view is taken of that sort of thing. I don’t
mean for a minute that truth isn’t the most important thing in the
world--of course it is--but quite a lot of children really don’t seem
to understand the value of truth while they’re quite little. It all
comes later, and I do think boys are so good for one another in that
way--the code of honour being so strict, you know, and so much _esprit
de corps_ amongst themselves. We had a boy here once--quite a little
fellow--with exactly your Cecil’s failing. As a matter of fact, he was
half Portuguese, and we don’t take any foreigners at all now--this was
before my husband had the school--so perhaps you couldn’t expect quite
the same training.... But he was much worse than your little boy can
possibly be, I’m sure. He was deceitful, poor little chap--what one
could only describe as an artful child.”
“Cecil isn’t that,” Rose interjected. “Go on.”
“Well, he came very near to being expelled in disgrace. Two or three of
the boys had been up to some mischief or other--something rather worse
than usual--but they’d all have got off lightly if it hadn’t been that
this little chap told lie upon lie, trying to cover up his own traces,
you know, and incriminating others right and left. We only got at the
truth after endless difficulty, when he’d betrayed himself by half a
dozen contradictions. (After all, he was only eleven years old.) Well,
to cut a long story short, he’d have been sent away if it hadn’t been
for my husband. Will was his form-master, and he begged the Head to
give him another chance, and said he’d be personally responsible for
the boy’s future good behaviour. You understand, it was the lies he’d
told that made one so anxious--not the mischief, which was nothing very
bad in itself. His parents were in Brazil, and he was in charge of an
uncle who was very strict, and altogether one felt dreadfully sorry for
the boy. So he was allowed to stay on.”
“And it answered?” said Rose breathlessly.
“It answered. Of course, he went through a very rough time, poor little
lad. You see, the other boys necessarily knew what had happened, more
or less, and boys aren’t very merciful to that sort of thing, I’m
afraid. They practically sent him to Coventry for the rest of the
term--one couldn’t wonder, altogether. But it was the turning point in
that boy’s life, I do honestly believe. Will kept an eye on him, and
he told me it was piteous to see the poor child trying to redeem his
character, and prove himself trustworthy. You see, it was a practical
demonstration of the fact that a liar is something hateful to his
fellow beings. It might not have been the very highest grounds for
reformation, but, honestly, it succeeded where pretty nearly everything
else had failed.”
“What happened to him afterwards?”
“He got a scholarship, went to Eton, and did extremely well. And I can
answer for it, out of my personal knowledge, that even before he left
Hurst, he’d overcome that tendency absolutely. He was as truthful as
any other boy. Will talked the whole thing out with him in the end,
and traced it to his father having frightened him with punishments and
threats as a mere baby, till the poor child had absolutely got into the
habit of fibbing whenever he thought any one was going to be angry with
him. I’ve made a long story of it, I’m afraid, but that was far and
away the worst case I’ve ever known, and I’m quite sure Cecil’s mere
bad habit isn’t anything like that now, is it?”
“No, it isn’t. It’s more like a--a sort of trick, with Ces. Quite
meaningless, sometimes--and silly. He isn’t what I’d call deceitful, a
bit. I can’t explain----”
“But, Mrs. Aviolet, I don’t think you need explain any further. I
understand--truly I do. I’ve had heaps of experience with boys, after
all, and I know the kind of thing you mean quite well. Just silly
story-telling--in fact, a bad habit, as I said. I know it must be
worrying for you--dreadfully--but, really and truly, it isn’t very
uncommon. He’ll get out of it. They all do.”
She spoke with breezy certainty.
“You’ve bucked me up,” said Rose simply. “Thank you very much. I
daresay I’ve exaggerated the whole thing in my mind, a bit. Somehow
I hadn’t realized that there was any one else with exactly the same
trouble.”
“Why, of course there is! It’s a thing we’ve had to contend with again
and again. And it always comes right in the end, Mrs. Aviolet.”
The obviously sincere assertion, delivered with Mrs. Lambert’s honest,
friendly blue eyes fixed candidly upon Rose’s, brought a sudden warmth
to her heart.
“Oh, you are kind! I am glad I’ve seen you,” she cried suddenly. “I’ve
been so wretched about the whole thing, and not known what to do.
They--my husband’s people--are determined that Ces ought to go through
the usual mill--preparatory school, public school, university, and the
rest of it. And I’m dead against it. At least I was. But I’m not so
sure now about the preparatory school.”
Mrs. Lambert smiled. “Why not try it, as an experiment, and see how it
answers before you decide about the rest?”
“That’s just what a great friend of mine said--Lord Charlesbury. You’ve
got his boy here, and you know him, don’t you?”
“Yes, he’s charming, isn’t he? So is the boy.”
Easily enough, the schoolmaster’s wife shifted the conversation to less
personal topics, Rose obediently following her lead.
They said not another word in direct relation to little Cecil until the
moment when Rose and Miss Lucian went away.
Then Mrs. Aviolet squeezed the hand of her hostess in her strong,
enveloping grasp and murmured haltingly:
“If he does go anywhere, it’ll be here. I simply can’t tell you what
a relief it’s been, seeing you. I hadn’t any idea that you’d be
so--_human_!”
Rose laughed slightly as she said it, with an apologetic note in her
laughter, but her brown eyes were oddly misted over. Afterwards she
said to Henrietta Lucian:
“I liked that woman--awfully. You don’t know how encouraging she was
about Ces. So different to that fool of a Ford, talking about Ces being
bullied into telling the truth and kicked into line. I tell you, Ford
makes me sick.”
It was not the first time that Mrs. Aviolet had thus heartily
apostrophized her absent brother-in-law, and it did not embarrass her
to be left without a reply. Her invective, entirely without malice as
it was, was always uttered in a tone that assumed complete acquiescence
on the part of her hearer.
Henrietta Lucian showed no signs of anything else but acquiescence.
“Have you made up your mind?”
“I suppose I have, really. I don’t know that I shall let on to _them_,
right away. They’re quite aggravating enough without me giving them
the chance of saying ‘I told you so.’ But Ces isn’t getting any
better with me, and that seems to dish the idea of my taking him away
somewhere, and he’s wild to go to school--and I do believe Mrs. Lambert
really would do him good.”
She paused for a moment, then spoke with an effort:
“I say, I don’t believe I ought to have said that about them saying ‘I
told you so.’ God knows they’re trying enough, but I don’t believe they
would mock at me for changing. The old people really do want what they
think is best for Cecil, and that’s all they think of. Besides, they
never have said ‘I told you so’--although goodness knows I’ve given
them every opportunity, the number of times I’ve had to eat humble pie.”
“I see. No, I’m sure they wouldn’t say anything like ‘I told you so.’
For one thing,” Miss Lucian observed drily, “they might think it rather
bad form.”
They both laughed.
The Aviolets did not say “I told you so” when Rose at last, in tones
truculent rather than submissive, informed them that she approved of
Hurst as a preparatory school for Cecil. They calmly and agreeably
accepted the announcement as a matter of course.
“And what about yourself, my dear? Have you any plans?” amiably
inquired Lady Aviolet. “Can you put up with the dullness of the
country, while Cecil is away?”
“It isn’t so much the dullness----” began Rose, and then checked
herself.
Lady Aviolet overlooked the obvious implication. “We hope, Sir Thomas
and I, that you’ll still look upon this as your headquarters, and of
course spend the holidays here with dear little Cecil.”
“Thank you,” said Rose gloomily.
To herself, she thought that the Aviolets could well afford to be
gracious. She, the boy’s mother, had failed, and they were to be
allowed their own way in the bringing up of Cecil.
XII
A few weeks after Cecil had been taken to Hurst by Ford Aviolet, who
quietly appropriated the duty, Rose came to see Miss Lucian.
She had announced it to be a farewell visit before her return to
Ovington Street.
“I couldn’t possibly go on slacking about at Squires, the way they all
do,” she declared. “It was bad enough, even with Ces there, but it’s
been perfectly awful since he went. Nothing but Pug and the garden, and
the garden and Pug, till I’m sick of the sound of them both!”
“So you’re going to London?”
“Yes. I can help Uncle Alfred, I daresay, and I’m going to try and find
some work. Of course, I shall come back to Squires in the holidays, so
as to be with Ces. They’ve been very decent about that, I must say.”
“And don’t they mind your going away?”
“Not a bit, I shouldn’t think. I’m no asset to them,” Mrs. Aviolet
declared frankly. “And they’ll get quite enough of me in the holidays.”
“Couldn’t you come here for a few days before you go?” said Miss Lucian.
Rose was like a joyfully surprised child, in her acceptance. “Oh, I’d
love to! How kind of you to want me. You’ll hardly believe it, but I
haven’t once been to stay with any one, except relations, since we got
to England. I have some friends, people we’d known in Ceylon, retired,
with a house at Bexhill, and they always used to say I must go and
stay with them when I came home, but they never asked me, after all. I
wrote to Mrs. Judd, too, from Squires, but she only wrote back and said
how nice it must be for me to be with Jim’s people, and wasn’t Squires
quite a show place, or some rot of that kind. Not a word about me going
to them.”
“Then there was Lord Charlesbury. We were supposed to go and stay
with him, last year, but his boy got measles, so we didn’t go. I was
frightfully disappointed, but _they_ didn’t seem to care a bit. They
never do, about anything.”
Henrietta Lucian shrugged her shoulders. “People are as they’re made, I
suppose,” she said philosophically. “Our sort gets much more fun out of
life than their sort--though it cuts both ways, too.”
“I’d rather Cecil was like me than like them,” said Rose with decision.
“I quite agree with you. Well, tell me about Cecil. How’s he getting
on?”
Miss Lucian’s hearty interest in Cecil always roused in his mother all
the passionate gratitude that the entirely unenthusiastic bestowal of
material benefits from the Aviolets failed to evoke.
“I’ve had such nice letters from that kind Mrs. Lambert. She’s been so
good about writing, and she says he’s getting on very well, and seems
thoroughly well and happy. And his own letters say he’s happy, too.”
“I’m so glad!” Miss Lucian ejaculated, with the utmost sincerity.
“I suppose it’s much more fun for him to be with other boys. Only I
wish he was better at games.”
“Isn’t he good at them?”
“No, not a bit, and the odd thing is that he really wants to be,
dreadfully--and yet it’s the work of the world to get him to try.”
“He’s so active--I can’t imagine Cecil not good at games.”
Rose shook her head. “He won’t try,” she repeated. “He can’t throw a
ball properly, and when we were first at Squires, his grandfather tried
to show him how, but Ces just wouldn’t learn. I think he didn’t like to
be seen doing it the wrong way, and so he wouldn’t ever do it at all.
But to hear him talk, you’d think he was mad about cricket or anything
like that, and ready to practise his bowling all day.”
“Perhaps he’ll be good at football.”
“Perhaps,” said Rose doubtfully. “Jim was good at games.”
“Yes, I remember. Far better than Ford ever was, but then Ford has
always cared more for other things. He isn’t really very strong,
physically, is he?”
“He looks weedy enough,” said Mrs. Aviolet contemptuously. “He never
offered to teach Ces anything about games, and he never plays any
himself, except tennis, and he always looks superior when people go on
about golf and things--and yet he sneers at poor little Ces for being
no good. It was partly him, I think, that made Ces so tiresome about
not trying to learn.”
“That’ll be different, at school. He’ll do as the others do, and there
are sure to be plenty of beginners. He won’t be afraid of being laughed
at, when he isn’t the only one. Maurice thinks, you know, that it’s
that fear of being laughed at that’s at the bottom of all Cecil’s
troubles.”
“I know what you mean,” said Rose rather gloomily. “His story-telling.
There hasn’t been a word about that, in any of Mrs. Lambert’s letters.
I’m sure I hope there’ll never have to be.”
Mrs. Lambert, indeed, writing intimately of Cecil’s physical welfare,
touched very little upon other subjects.
Rose had left Squires, and gone to pay her promised visit to the
Lucians, before she received confirmation of the fear that had all the
time been lurking at her heart.
At Squires, her farewells had been complicated by a slight tinge of
remorse that she could make them no more cordial.
“Well, good-bye, my dear. We shall expect you for the holidays,
remember. I don’t want to hurry you, but Tucker is at the door, and you
must allow for the hill.”
Rose had heard that information bestowed, identically worded, upon
every departing guest that she had ever seen at Squires.
“Good-bye. Thanks awfully for having had me for such ages--and Ces,
too. I hope I haven’t seemed cross and beastly, very often, but----”
“My dear, please! (_Les domestiques!_) Ah, here’s Ford.”
“Good-bye, Ford.”
Rose’s tone had involuntarily altered, and her smile, not
involuntarily, had vanished.
“Good-bye, Rose. If you want any help about Cecil, don’t hesitate to
apply to me.”
Had there been deliberate mockery in his manner, as he made the
suggestion? Rose, at least, had felt no doubt upon the point.
Her ejaculatory reply, a sound rather than a distinct syllable, had
been the “Tchah!” habitual to Mrs. Smith, as a contemptuous retort, on
the rare occasions when words had failed her.
She had shaken hands with Sir Thomas, presented the side of her face
for a slight and meaningless contact with that of her mother-in-law,
and had thankfully been driven away from the door.
With the Lucians she was at her ease, and very happy until a letter
arrived from Mrs. Lambert.
Rose read it with a deepening flush upon her face, and then went
straight to Maurice Lucian.
“Look here, you’ve always known about Ces, and you’ve always said, like
I do, that there’s a sort of kink in him somewhere that makes him like
he is. I’m going to consult you.”
The doctor, seated before his writing-table, swung round in his
revolving chair and faced her without speaking. His kind face
and profound, intelligent eyes seldom showed either surprise or
apprehension. Nevertheless, his expression habitually altered slightly
when he spoke to Rose Aviolet. She had come by unperceived degrees to
count upon that all-but-imperceptible softening of glance, that greater
gentleness in the manner of his speech.
“I want you to read this. It’s from Mrs. Lambert, the schoolmaster’s
wife. I told her about Ces before he ever went there.”
The letter was dated from Hurst.
My dear Mrs. Aviolet,
Your boy is very well, and has quite escaped the prevailing cold,
which so many of them have had. I am still keeping him on the Extract
of Malt, but only as a precaution.
I promised you to write quite fully and frankly, so I will tell you
that Cecil hasn’t been quite so bright lately, and we are a little bit
afraid, my husband and I, that he has been in some trouble with the
other boys. There was some little want of openness over a game that,
I’m afraid, almost amounted to cheating, and as it isn’t quite the
first time it’s happened with poor little Cecil, he caught it “hot and
strong” from the other lads. It didn’t really come to my ears, or to
Will’s, in any official way, and he has thought it best not to notice
it, but he said that I might write to you.
After the talk we had about Cecil the first time you came down here, I
felt I’d _much_ better write frankly, especially as it really hasn’t
been what you told me about. As far as I know, he has been quite
truthful, but I’m afraid he’s been caught out cheating over games more
than once, and you know how dreadfully “down” English boys always are
on anything of that kind. It seems such a pity, because Cecil is a
dear little boy and gets on well at his lessons.
My own feeling is that, now there’s been an explosion, so to speak,
poor little Cecil will have learnt his lesson, and such a thing will
never happen again. But I should so much like to hear what you feel
about it, and if there is anything you would advise.
Forgive me for worrying you with such a long letter.
Very sincerely yours,
Anne Lambert.
“Have you heard from Cecil?”
“Yes, but he doesn’t say a word about anything of that kind. He writes
just as usual, not telling me anything, poor darling--boy’s letters
never do--but nice and affectionate, and sounding quite happy.”
“Probably by this time he _is_ quite happy again. Have you any idea
what kind of thing she--Mrs. Lambert--means, about cheating at games?”
Rose coloured, but faced the doctor unflinchingly as ever.
“Oh, yes. Ces got into trouble about it at Squires once or twice. He
isn’t always straight about games, round games, or anything like that,
you know, with counters--I’ve seen him shove his counter along with
his hand when he thought no one was looking, and the worst of it is
that he doesn’t own up when he’s taxed with it. And the same at card
games. That wretched little Miss Wade played Beggar-my-Neighbour, or
something, with him, and swore he used to peep at the cards. I think
she was probably right.”
“When you say that he doesn’t own up,” said Lucian, in his most
impersonal and judicial manner, “do you mean that he flatly denies any
accusation of cheating?”
“That’s it.”
“When did you first notice anything of that kind?”
“A long time ago, when he was very small, in Ceylon. But I thought then
that it was his native ayah’s fault, and it didn’t seem to matter so
much. Jim never found it out. He’d have been very angry if he had.”
“I daresay. Was Cecil frightened of his father?”
“Sometimes, but he’s not a cowardly child, you know. When Jim had been
drinking, he used to get angry sometimes, but not often with Ces.”
“Was it fear of Jim that made Cecil say what wasn’t true?”
“I don’t think so. He did tell _extra_ untruths, if you know what I
mean, when Jim bullied him and tried to catch him out, but as a general
rule, it was just the kind of stories that he told at Squires--things
he invented, you know.”
“I know.”
Lucian’s voice was rather sorrowful.
“I daresay it sounds like nonsense,” Rose said, “but often and often
I’ve thought that Ces couldn’t really help himself. Aren’t some people
born colour-blind, so that they can’t distinguish between colours?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes it seems to me that Ces was born without any--any sense of
honour at all.”
Lucian nodded, his grave, pitying eyes fixed upon her, and his implied
acceptance of her view filled Rose with terror.
“What am I to do for him?” she cried despairingly.
“I wish I could tell you,” said Maurice Lucian very earnestly. “These
tendencies can be pathologically treated, and more is being learnt
about the right treatment of them every day, but even so, it’s still
working in the dark----”
He broke off, as Rose made a violent gesture of impatience.
“I don’t even know what you mean, when you use words like
patho--what’s-its-name. I wish to the Lord that I’d ever been properly
educated. It’s no wonder that I’m so little use to poor Ces.”
“You’ll be of less use than ever, if you work yourself up like that,”
said Lucian suddenly and sharply.
Rose stared at him, arrested mid-way in the flouncing movement that
denoted the perturbation of her mind. For a moment she looked angry,
and then the fundamental breadth of generosity that lay beneath all her
petulance and her lack of control asserted itself.
“I expect you’re right,” she said, suddenly quiet, and smiled at him as
though in remorseful atonement for her temper.
The doctor rose abruptly to his feet, and stood with his hands in
his pockets, his back against the door. He was as tall a man as Ford
Aviolet, but with a broad, bony frame, and the hair on his temples was
already grizzled.
He looked down at Rose, who remained in her chair, gazing up at him
rather surprised. Although it would not have occurred to her to make
use of the words, she was singularly sensitive to atmosphere, and
beneath the artificial colour upon her cheeks, there presently surged a
warm blush.
Lucian immediately looked away from her. “Has it ever occurred to you
that you might marry again?”
“Of course it has,” said Mrs. Aviolet defiantly. “I thought we were
talking about Cecil.”
“There was nothing irrelevant in my question,” the doctor retorted
caustically, “although perhaps you may reasonably look upon it as an
impertinent one. Rose, I know very well that you don’t care for me at
present, but isn’t there any chance for me at all?”
“I did hope you wouldn’t ask me,” said Rose piteously.
“I didn’t mean to. I’m not such a fool as to have thought you would
listen to me, for a moment. But it’s more than I’d reckoned on, having
you in the house like this, and--and caring for you in the way I do.”
“Do you, _really_?”
“Yes, dear. Almost since that very first day I saw you at Squires.”
He drew a long breath.
“Couldn’t you, Rose?”
Rose Aviolet shook her head, and he saw tears in her brown eyes.
“I shan’t ever marry again. You don’t know what my married life was
like. I suppose it’s a most awful thing to own up to, but after I’d
been married to Jim six months, I used to think I’d rather be a widow
than anything else in the world. He was in love with me, at first
anyway, but do you think I was ever anything but a convenience to him?
It was what _he_ wanted, _when_ he wanted it, _how_ he wanted it, first
and last. Some women may like it, if they’re the door-mat kind, but
I’m not. And it wasn’t only that I was very young and self-willed and
spoilt, and Jim more or less of a bad lot--which he _was_. I know what
other marriages are like, too. There isn’t any freedom for the woman,
only for the man. Why, Ford told me that it’s only the father that has
any legal rights over his children at all.”
“It’s true,” said Lucian. “To the shame of those who tolerate it, the
law of the land only acknowledges one parent for children born in
wedlock, and that is the father. But can’t you trust me, Rose? I can
promise you that it wouldn’t be a case of Jim Aviolet over again,” said
the doctor rather grimly.
She shook her head again. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you. I even
think you’d do better than any one for Ces. But I don’t hold with
second marriages.”
The doctor ignored that pronouncement, which Rose had frequently heard
employed by her mother.
“I am very much interested in Cecil, altogether apart from his
relationship to you, and personally I believe that I could help him.
But, in any case, I want to do that. I’ve wanted to ever since I first
knew the boy.”
“I know that.”
“It isn’t Cecil that’s the obstacle, then?”
“No.”
“But you don’t like me enough? I’m not asking for anything more to
begin with.”
“I like you much better than most other people,” said Rose candidly.
“But I don’t want to marry. I didn’t like it before, and I made a great
hash of it.”
“I’d risk that.”
“But I wouldn’t,” said Rose.
They looked at one another rather helplessly.
“If I loved you,” she said at last, “it would be different. I _do_
trust you, and I think you’d be good to my Ces. But it wouldn’t be
worth doing, unless I really did care.”
“Mayn’t I try to make you care?”
“I don’t think so,” said Rose slowly.
“Is there somebody else? No, don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”
But his face had altered.
“It’s like this. I don’t hold with second marriages, like I said
before, and I had a rotten time the first time, and if any one had
told me, when Jim died, that I’d ever run the risk of putting my head
through the same noose a second time, I’d have called them a liar.
Neither more nor less. But there’s a--person that I’m sort of attracted
by, in a way, though I don’t know that there’s much sense in it,
because he’s never said a syllable of that sort to me, and so,” said
Rose, very much flushed and implacably straightforward, “if I ever did
do anything in that line, I suppose I should want it to be him. But,
mind you, I haven’t got any reason to think it ever will be, and I
should have to be a long sight surer of myself than I am now.”
“I see,” said the doctor slowly.
“I--I’m sorry,” said Rose.
“Don’t let it make any difference, my dear. I don’t give up hope, but
I shan’t worry you. Honestly, I think you and I could find happiness
together, but these things aren’t lightly come by. Will you go on just
as before and let me see you very often, even if you do leave Squires?
And, above all, let me be of use to you whenever I can?”
“You’ve been the best friend I’ve had, ever since I came to England.”
Rose stood up and gave him both her hands in an impetuous gesture.
“I like you much too much ever to let it be anything but the real
thing--Maurice.”
She had never called him so before.
“Thank you,” said Dr. Lucian.
She stood for a moment, hesitating, and then said with a sort of rush:
“And for goodness’ sake, don’t think too much about what I said. It
seemed fairer to tell you, but I don’t suppose there’s anything in
it, for a moment, and it would take a lot to make me marry again,
especially out of my own class. Once bit twice shy,” concluded Mrs.
Aviolet.
Neither she nor Maurice Lucian referred again to their conversation
during the remaining days of Rose’s visit.
If there were a certain consciousness latent between them, Rose forgot
it speedily enough, in her preoccupation with the question of Cecil.
“I think I shall go down to Hurst,” she said.
The Lucians, unlike the Aviolets, never proffered advice.
Consequently, Rose felt desirous of it.
“Don’t you think I’d better?”
“For your own sake, or for Cecil’s?”
“Both, I suppose. I can’t bear to think of him unhappy.”
“He wrote you quite a happy letter; and I don’t really think you could
help him by going there and bringing the whole thing up again,” said
Lucian.
“It’s so very hard to do nothing.”
“The hardest thing there is,” agreed the doctor gravely.
She looked at him anxiously.
“Poor little Cecil,” said Henrietta. “Don’t you think he’s probably
learnt his lesson, Rose, if the other boys have found him out in some
trick or other, and have been horrid to him? If you go down there,
it’ll make it all assume enormous proportions to him, and, after all,
even Mr. and Mrs. Lambert aren’t supposed to know about it officially,
as she said in her letter.”
“Then I’d better not go?” Rose repeated slowly, as though she could
hardly believe in the necessity for the discipline, so alien to her, of
inaction.
“I should think, better not.”
Rose, from indignation at the suggestion, passed to unwilling
consideration of it, and still more unwilling conversion to it.
But she made up her mind, at last, that Cecil should be allowed to
weather the storm alone.
It was perhaps the first time that she had deliberately denied herself
the luxury of acting upon impulse.
The next day she went to London.
“We shall see you in the holidays,” Henrietta Lucian said to her
affectionately, “and Maurice says he’s going to be in London a good
deal now--research-work, he calls it--and he wants to go and see you.”
“Oh, yes. He can come to Ovington Street whenever he likes. I’m going
to stay with my uncle there--for a bit--he’s a pawnbroker.”
Rose had come to add that piece of information, which was by no means
new to Miss Lucian, almost automatically, in her determination not to
risk gratifying Ford Aviolet by suppressing it.
She was very much pleased when she found herself in London again.
“I declare, I like the good old smell of the gas upstairs,” she
emphatically announced to Felix Menebees, who carried her box up to her
bedroom.
The gaunt youth, panting, and paler than ever from the ascent, smiled
at her rapturously.
“Yes, Mrs. Aviolet, I’m sure we’re all delighted that you’ve come back
again, if I may be allowed to say so.”
It was very evident, indeed, that Felix spoke truth at least as
regarded himself, and Rose, with characteristic catholicity of outlook,
welcomed his obvious admiration with exactly the same indiscriminate
gratification that she had accorded to Charlesbury’s. But for all
her transparent vanity, the daughter of the late Mrs. Smith did not
lack shrewdness. She was perfectly aware that she might very well find
herself falling in love with Lord Charlesbury, and she knew equally
well that, although he had admired her at Squires, it was scarcely
probable that he would ask her to marry him.
“And I don’t know that I’d accept him if he did,” Rose told herself
stoutly. “It would be biting off a good deal more than I could chew, it
seems to me. A place bigger than Squires, and a title, and another boy
as well as Cecil, and perhaps babies of my own as well! There’d be more
sense in taking Maurice Lucian than that!”
She thought very little of the advantages to be derived from
marriage with a man in Charlesbury’s position. Her experience of “a
gentleman” in the person of Jim Aviolet had been calculated to destroy
conventional illusions on that score, and the once magic words,
“my lady,” had lost romantic value in her ears, since hearing them
habitually applied to her mother-in-law.
She resumed her old life over the pawnshop very easily.
In the phraseology of Mr. Smith, an arrangement had been come to
between himself and his niece with no display of false delicacy upon
either side.
“They do give me an allowance,” Rose admitted, “but I can’t say I
enjoy taking it, though well I know they can spare it. However, that’s
neither here nor there. I don’t want you to be out of pocket, Uncle A.,
I’m sure, by having me here.”
“That’s common honesty, Rose,” her relative answered simply.
“At the same time, I suppose you don’t want to _make_ out of me?” Rose
suggested, not altogether without a hint of doubtfulness.
“I wish to do what is fair and proper by all parties, myself included,”
said Uncle Alfred with dignity. “The room that you occupy could very
well let at seven-and-sixpence a week, exclusive of light and heating.”
“There is no heating, Uncle A., as you very well know. I’m not likely
to ask for a fire, and the girl wouldn’t carry the coals up all those
stairs if I did, most likely. As for the light, I can buy my own
candles, and I’ll pay one-fourth of the gas-bill. That’s fair enough, I
should hope.”
“Very well,” her uncle agreed without enthusiasm.
“And if you’ll let me manage the housekeeping, I’ll undertake to bring
the weekly books down and feed myself into the bargain. It doesn’t cost
more to feed five than to feed four.”
“Yes, it does,” said Uncle Alfred.
It was such a long while since Rose had heard any one, herself
excepted, utter a flat contradiction, that she felt quite surprised,
and she admitted to herself in that moment that such a form of
intercourse was, after all, lacking in charm.
“Call it ten shillings a week, Uncle Alfred, and let’s be done with it.”
“Half a guinea, Rose.”
“Oh, well, half a guinea then.”
“And I shall be very glad of your company, my dear niece,” said the old
man, suddenly affable. “The Lord loveth a cheerful giver, and I trust
that you will never find me anything else. Of course, you’ll be ready
to lend Felix a hand with the silver cleaning in the mornings?”
“Yes--well--all right. But one of these days, quite soon, Dr. Lucian,
that I told you about, is going to try and find me some work during the
term-time, that I can do.”
“Charity begins at home,” said Uncle Alfred.
Rose laughed, her ready, easy laughter. She was quite willing to help
Felix in cleaning the silver from the shop, and although she sincerely
intended to undertake any work which Lucian might suggest to her, there
was at the back of her mind an unformulated idea that circumstances
might arise which would render such a course unnecessary.
When she had paid a visit to Hurst, at Mrs. Lambert’s cordial
suggestion, and found Cecil stronger-looking and more animated than she
had ever seen him, Rose realized herself to be happier than she had
been for many years.
The deepest anxiety in her heart was momentarily quelled, when Mrs.
Lambert had told her that there had been no further signs of a lack of
truthfulness in Cecil.
He seemed to be happy, and although he told Rose that he did not like
games, she could see no mental reservations behind the ingenuous,
uplifted gaze of his brown eyes.
Maurice Lucian was frequently in London, and always came to see her.
She received him in the sitting-room above the shop, introduced him to
the old pawnbroker and to Felix Menebees, and was pleased when Uncle
Alfred chose to annex him as a player of backgammon.
“A sensible, likeable fellow, and I have no doubt that he will be
brought to a knowledge of the Word in due season,” pronounced Uncle
Alfred, who never took for granted the status of any fellow-creature as
a Christian.
Cecil and Rose spent his short Christmas holidays at Squires, and she
received the placid congratulations of his grandparents on the great
improvement which they alleged to have taken place in the little boy.
Ford and Diana were at their own house, and Rose did not see them at
all.
She took Cecil back to Hurst herself, and returned to Ovington Street.
There, two days later, she received a letter from Lord Charlesbury, to
tell her that he was just returned from Paris and to ask whether he
might call upon her.
His letter was dated from a London club.
XIII
“Uncle A., there’s a friend of mine wants to come and see me. Can I ask
him to look in, one evening?”
“Say about nine o’clock--after supper.” Uncle Alfred did not stress the
point, but Rose perfectly understood his reservation. “Yes, if you want
to. Who is the young man?”
“It’s not a young man. It’s Lord Charlesbury. He’s a friend of the
Aviolets.”
“You needn’t tell me that. You didn’t pick up a lord off your own bat,
my girl, and it wouldn’t speak any the better for you if you had. What
are his intentions?”
“Uncle! You don’t understand. It isn’t that sort of thing at all. I
never _heard_ any one so old-fashioned as you are. He just wants to
call on me.”
“Rose, you know what the Apostle Paul says as to the conduct of widows.
At the same time, I should be the first person to rejoice if you were
to find a good husband, and a man who would be a father--and a better
father--to your boy. And the aristocracy of this country are such----”
“Don’t fly off like that, Uncle,” Rose besought him. She was not
embarrassed, only mildly anxious to restrain the pawnbroker’s
imaginative flights.
“I’m not thinking of marrying anybody--if you remember, poor Jim wasn’t
the sort of husband that would make me want another of the same kind in
a hurry--and I don’t believe Lord Charlesbury is, either.”
“Has he been married?”
“Yes. He’s a widower.”
“So much the more suitable,” said the indomitable Mr. Smith decisively.
Rose shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m going downstairs, Uncle, to give Felix Menebees a hand with the
silver. He does work, that boy.”
“No boy who didn’t work would remain in my service,” said Uncle Alfred
simply, and, as Rose knew, quite truly.
They went downstairs, the old man to confer with Artie Millar in the
private pledge-office at the back of the shop, and Rose to put on an
apron, an old pair of gloves, and join Felix at his apparently endless
task of cleaning the stock of silver, plate, and brass.
She reflected joyously, as she took her place on a cane-bottomed chair
and smiled at the pallid Felix, astride a wooden stool:
“This is better than hanging about the hall at Squires, hearing Pug
snorting, and waiting for the next meal.”
“Chuck me over some of that stuff, Felix, will you? My, what a lot
you’ve done! I was late down, this morning.”
“I could always manage, Mrs. Aviolet,” the boy said shyly. “It’s very
good of you to do this, but there isn’t any need. The windows take
a lot of time, of course, but if I allow two hours for them and the
supports, it’s as much as I want. And then there’s practically all the
rest of the day for cleaning the stuff.”
“You do lots of other things as well, Felix--fetching the milk, for
one.”
“Oh, I enjoy that. It makes a break. Mrs. Aviolet, have you ever wanted
adventures?”
“Heaps of times,” said Rose heartily.
“So have I,” said Felix wistfully. “I often think what it’d be like, if
I went out as a cowboy, or something, to the Wild West, or even if I
went in for seeing life a bit in London, the way Mr. Millar does.”
He looked at Rose with a strange gleam in his pallid eyes.
“Have you ever read ‘Frank Belloment, the Gentleman Crook’? I don’t
suppose you have. I know ladies don’t care for that kind of reading,
but it’s great, really it is.”
“I’m fond of a good murder, myself,” Rose admitted. She had shared with
her mother, from a very early age, an impassioned interest in the more
sensational items of police-court news as reported in the illustrated
press.
“Belloment doesn’t go in for murders, only big jewel hauls, or
financial _coups_. As a matter of fact, the book makes out that this
Belloment, that I’m telling you about, he never took things from poor
people, but only from the rich, that have more than they want. That’s
why they call him the Gentleman Crook. And he goes into Society, too,
and that’s where he finds out about people’s jewellery.”
“Where is this book?” Rose demanded.
Felix produced from his pocket a paper volume. “There’s one comes out
every week. And sometimes they have a story about fellows going out
gold-digging, or convicts escaping from prison, and once there was a
boy ran away from a shop and went to sea, and I couldn’t help thinking
it might very well all be true. Didn’t Mr. Millar go to sea once?”
“Yes, but I bet he doesn’t like talking about it,” said Rose shrewdly.
“He’s done well for himself, since those days.”
“I suppose so,” said Felix, but the lust for romance still lingered in
his pale face and whole attenuated person.
“Do you want to go abroad, Felix?”
“It’s the dream of my life,” Felix said earnestly.
“Where were you, before you came into the shop?”
“In an orphanage. I was brought up there. At one time, I had hopes
of making some interesting discovery regarding my birth, which was
irregular, if you’ll excuse me mentioning such a thing. But it appeared
that it was only too well known whose son I was, and there was never
any question of its being a foreign nobleman who was responsible, or
any one like that.”
Rose was breathless with entirely unfeigned interest.
“Then who was it?”
“A travelling salesman, who lodged at the house where my mother was a
servant-girl. He travelled in tombstones, I believe. It was suitable,
in a way, because she died, when I was born, at the Union. She was only
sixteen, and I believe he was turned out of the town and never dared
show his face there again.”
“Served him right! Then was Menebees your mother’s name?”
“That’s right, Mrs. Aviolet. And they had me christened Felix because
they’d come to the letter F, and Frank and Frederick, and the common
names like that, had already been given. I think I was in luck there,”
said the youth complacently.
“And how did you get out of the Union?”
“The people of the house where Mother’d been were very kind, and the
story got round in the town, and her having been so young and all,
and a good girl till this fellow came along, made people sorry, and a
subscription was got up. So I was sent to St. Olave’s Orphanage, and
brought up well. That’s where the old governor found me, him being a
director, and he wanted a boy to work in the shop, and applied there,
and I got sent. I always say I’m lucky,” repeated Felix.
“I think it was Uncle Alfred who was lucky, if you ask me.”
Felix blushed with gratification. “I’m sure it’s very kind of you to
say so. And when I talk about going out to look for adventures, and
travelling, and the like, it’s only in the way of a day-dream, like,
Mrs. Aviolet, because I needn’t say I wouldn’t think of leaving the
governor, without he wanted me to go. But it’s a kind of diversion, to
pretend to myself that I’m off on the Long Trail, with nothing but my
gun and my right arm between me and death.”
“I know, Felix, fast enough. I’ve played that sort of game myself,”
Rose acknowledged.
“But everything you wanted, like that, would come true, I should
think!” Felix cried, looking at her with all his naïve admiration in
his face. “And you’ve seen the world and been to the East. I suppose
you often ‘hear the East a-calling’?”
“Not I,” said Mrs. Aviolet with emphasis. “Or if I did, I shouldn’t
listen. I’m glad I went, in a way, because it opens one’s eyes a bit,
but I don’t ever want to go back. Give me old London, and the smell of
the gas, every time.”
If Felix were slightly disillusioned by this candid admission, his
loyalty did not betray the fact.
He and Rose exchanged their views indefatigably over the silver
cleaning, and Rose frequently reflected that, for all the outrageous
extravagances of fancy so innocently laid bare by Felix, he was a
very much more interesting companion than her amiable, unimaginative,
standard-bound sister-in-law, Diana.
“The fact is,” she told herself, with her usual unsparing determination
that spades should be spades, “the fact is, this is the kind of place
where I fit in. Not beautiful houses in the country, with everybody
half asleep, and only waking up to drivel about the bulbs, or the
horses, or who so-and-so was before she married somebody else’s first
cousin’s sister’s uncle. The shop’s the place for me, right enough,
only I must say, I’d like to see a few more people.”
The company of Uncle Alfred’s frequenters was not, indeed, exhilarating.
Artie Millar, whom Rose had once found attractive, now failed to
satisfy her taste, unconsciously trained to other standards. He had
grown fat, and was inclined to arrive in the mornings with a slightly
yellow appearance, and a muttered complaint aside to Felix Menebees as
to the “head” brought on by the avocations of the previous night.
It did not add to Rose’s admiration that she intuitively knew Artie
Millar to be a thoroughly steady-going young man, of sober and
respectable tendencies, whose wildest excesses never led to his
arriving later than nine o’clock in the morning at the Ovington Street
shop.
The pastiness of his complexion, from which the youthful tan that
had captivated her fancy had long ago faded, she matter-of-factly
attributed to his dislike of exercise and to the lack of fresh air in
the shop.
Representatives of Foreign Missions occasionally called upon Uncle
Alfred, and after short and earnest conversations with him in the
upstairs sitting-room, usually departed, with subdued elation
discernible in the tones of their farewells. They generally left on the
table, or sometimes on the counter of the front shop, sodden-looking
leaflets that bore, beneath a title that Rose described to herself
generically as “The-Good-Work-in-Far-Timbuctoo,” an illustration of a
black-coated missionary affectionately embracing the shoulders of a
sable African, who was always suitably decked in a little vest and a
pair of shorts. These pamphlets, and _The Pawnbrokers’ Gazette_, formed
Uncle Alfred’s evening literature. From time to time, he received a
visit from some contemporary of his own, but no one was ever asked to
supper, although Mr. Smith permitted Rose to institute the appearance
of a tea-tray, with cups and saucers, and a brew of very black, strong
tea, at half-past nine every evening. When there was a caller, Rose
added a plate of biscuits of the variety called “Fancy” by Uncle Alfred
and “Squashed-fly” by his niece.
Further than this, Mr. Smith’s ideas of hospitality did not go.
Rose was not without doubts of her own wisdom in suggesting a visit
from Lord Charlesbury. It never occurred to her to feel ashamed of the
shop, but she did experience much vicarious wrath and disgust at the
absence of hospitality that she considered her uncle displayed in his
entertainment of a guest.
“I should have thought, Uncle A., I must say, that we could rise to a
decent set-out of coffee, and I could quite well show the girl how to
bring it in.”
“How to bring it in!” ejaculated Mr. Smith. “There’s only one way of
carrying a tray, as far as I know, unless you want her to balance it on
her head like a heathen. I can see plainly that the pomps and vanities
of this wicked world are taking a hold on your mind, Rose. ‘Better
a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and discontent
withal.’”
His cat-like eyes gleamed upon her, and he shook his finger.
“There is something particularly displeasing to the Lord about display,
Rose,” said Uncle Alfred, with his habitual assumption of being his
Creator’s mouthpiece.
“I wonder what He thinks of the shop-window, then!” retorted Rose, with
her tolerant, unmalicious tartness of repartee. “Well, Uncle A., if you
won’t have coffee--and I suppose you won’t have whisky----”
(“I am ashamed of you,” said Uncle Alfred parenthetically.)
“--we shall have to do the best we can with tea, but I’m going to get
some decent tea myself, and not that beastly black stuff that’s all
twigs, and strangers-coming-from-overseas, and goodness knows what all.”
“If you choose to waste your money on tea, I cannot prevent it,”
complacently said Mr. Smith.
“I suppose the Lord’ll look the other way, if it’s me and not you,
that’s doing the display,” Rose observed, giggling.
It delighted her that Uncle Alfred should be obliged to pretend not to
have heard her, in order to avoid the necessity of finding a reply.
“There’s one thing, it’s a lovely room,” said Rose to herself. “Of
course the furniture isn’t like Squires, and never will be, but it’s
good of its kind--that I will say. The upholstery is good, and I like
crimson myself. That plant would do with a scrubbing, though.”
She pounced upon the aspidistra, and sent the little maid for soap and
water and an old tooth-brush.
“I’d like it to look nice, Gladys, because a friend of mine is coming
round this evening,” she explained.
They worked together cheerfully, and Gladys told Mrs. Aviolet all
about the baker’s young man, who was becoming ever so attentive. Rose
listened and ejaculated with an absorbed and impassioned interest,
which Gladys, though pleased and flattered, obviously regarded as
entirely natural. And Rose told herself that this was a good deal
better than trying to pump interesting details about the engagement of
Ford and Diana out of her mother-in-law.
“Shall you wear your white silk blouse with the ruffle, ’m, this
evening?” Gladys inquired shyly.
“Do you think it’s pretty? Prettier than my blue?”
“It’s more stylish, ’m, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps it is,” said Rose thoughtfully.
She went upstairs that evening, tried on both the blouses, gazed at
herself critically for a long while, rubbed some additional rouge into
her face, and smeared her mouth with lip-salve, and finally went
down to supper wearing the white blouse with the ruffle and her best
navy-blue skirt.
Uncle Alfred gazed at her sharply, but Millar and Felix Menebees were
both in the room and he said nothing.
As soon as supper was over Artie Millar went away and Felix retired to
the performance of some one of the innumerable menial tasks that he
always accepted as being part of his duty.
When the bell rang, Rose went half-way downstairs.
It was Felix who opened the door, Gladys having stipulated that she
should not be required to announce Lord Charlesbury by name, as “titles
upset her,” and Rose having indignantly retorted that a Lordship
couldn’t be introduced with the customary formula of “a gentleman to
see you.”
She had finally compromised with an undertaking from Felix Menebees
to open the door himself, and usher Lord Charlesbury as far as the
staircase, where Rose was to come and meet him.
She heard his deep, pleasant voice speaking to Felix, and a tremulous
monosyllable from Felix in return, and then she ran down to meet him.
“I’m very glad to see you again,” said Lord Charlesbury, although Rose
was only too well aware that he could hardly see her at all, in the
absence of all but absolutely necessary illumination insisted upon by
Uncle Alfred. “How are you?”
“I’m quite well, thank you,” Rose replied, in the literal formula
taught her long ago by her mother. “Won’t you come up?”
Uncle Alfred was not in the sitting-room, to the relief of his niece,
and she and her visitor sat down each in a plush-covered armchair upon
either side of the small gas-fire. A beaded footstool, with curly
legs, and a fire-screen, its dingy white-wood panel bearing a sprawled
painting of yellow and pink roses, stood between them.
Rose looked at Charlesbury.
She had not seen him very often, but she had thought about him a great
deal, and felt that strange fear, which is common to all those who have
outgrown very early youth, lest the reality of a remembered presence
should prove disappointing. He smiled at her, his grave, attractive
smile.
“How’s your boy, and how are they all at Squires?”
“Ces is very well, and he likes Hurst all right. I saw your Hugh, when
I was down there last.”
“Did you? I’m hoping to go and see him myself, to-morrow. They tell me
he’s a born cricketer. Is Cecil keen on that?”
“No,” said Rose baldly, unable to think of any form of phraseology that
should soften the unpleasant admission. She felt instinctively that
Charlesbury would think Cecil’s lack a regrettable one.
“I daresay it’ll come later, or more probably football absorbs all his
energies, unless he hasn’t any to spare for lessons. Hugh is far too
one-idea’d. I hope the lads have made friends?”
It struck Rose, as she heard the question, that Cecil had no particular
friends amongst his school-fellows, and the thought roused again the
never deeply dormant anxiety that lay always in her mind.
She made no answer, because she could not think of anything to say,
but before the silence had become embarrassing to her, Lord Charlesbury
said:
“What about yourself, Mrs. Aviolet? I’m delighted to hear from Ford
that there’s every chance of meeting you at Squires in the holidays.”
“Oh, yes, they always want Ces, and I shall be there part of the time,
anyway. But I’m really by way of looking out for some sort of a job
myself up here.”
“A job?”
“I haven’t got any money, except what Jim’s people allow me, and I’ve
had to come to an arrangement with my uncle here, but I’d like to do
something besides cleaning the silver in the shop,” said Rose.
“You are, actually, living here?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I see,” said Charlesbury reflectively.
He put up his single eyeglass and gazed round the room.
“Of course, it isn’t exactly like Squires, but I’ve never been keen on
the country, myself, and I like this much better.”
“You’re not lonely?”
“Dear me, no,” said Rose, surprised. “My Uncle Alfred is very good
company in his own way, provided you don’t pay too much attention to
him when he gets on the religious tack, and that boy that opened the
door to you in the shop, Felix Menebees, he’s as nice as can be, and a
great friend of mine. The other assistant is all right--Millar--but not
exciting. And I see Dr. Lucian, too, pretty often. You remember him, at
Squires?”
“The doctor at Squires? Oh, yes, I remember him quite well.”
There was nothing at all derogatory in Charlesbury’s tone, but neither
was there any enthusiasm.
Why, indeed, should there be, Rose inquired of herself, in resentment
at a slight feeling of disappointment.
“But do forgive me,” Charlesbury smiled at her frankly, “if I ask
whether you don’t sometimes long to find yourself in a--a more
congenial setting? For instance, we know that at Squires Lady Aviolet
is really rather lonely since Ford’s marriage, and would simply love to
have you.”
“Oh, no, she wouldn’t,” said Rose.
“Are you quite sure of that?”
“Quite. But, anyway, I don’t want to go back there, except when I can’t
help it, for the sake of being with Ces. I was bored stiff at Squires.
Surely you remember that,” said Rose naïvely.
“Yes?--well, I’m sorry. After all, that was some little while ago, and
perhaps I’d hoped that time--and distance--might have softened your
prejudice.”
Rose was beginning a vigorous protest at this description of her own
attitude towards Squires when Mr. Smith came into the room.
“Uncle A., this is Lord Charlesbury--my uncle, Mr. Smith,” said Rose,
stammering a little.
Uncle Alfred bowed, Lord Charlesbury stood up and held out his hand,
and they exchanged greetings.
“How d’you do,” said Lord Charlesbury.
“Good evening, my lord. I am very well, I thank you,” said Uncle
Alfred. “Sit down again, if you please. Am I intruding?”
“In your own house, Uncle A.? Whatever next, I wonder?” muttered
his niece. She pushed forward the old man’s chair and they all three
sat down. The three-cornered conversation that ensued was remarkable
neither for smoothness nor for spontaneity.
Charlesbury alone spoke with an effect of being at his ease, and Rose
uneasily suspected that this was rather the result of the habit of good
breeding, than from any natural affinity with his present audience.
Uncle Alfred said “my lord” a great many times, but kept a wary and
distrustful eye upon his guest, and from time to time transferred his
glance to Rose, as though reviewing the two in conjunction.
They talked about politics, and Rose was silent, from ignorance of
the subject and from a complete lack of interest in it. They tried to
talk about Squires, and Uncle Alfred became Scriptural, and alluded to
the pomps and vanities of this world, whereat Lord Charlesbury became
strangely unresponsive.
It was a relief to Mrs. Aviolet when a prolonged clatter of china and a
timid knock outside the door heralded the entrance of the little maid
Gladys.
“Tea,” said Rose, and was shocked at the blatancy of her own extreme
relief at the interruption.
She poured out the tea, glad of an occupation, and with her eyes dared
Uncle Alfred to comment upon the unusual elegance of the white fringed
tea-cloth thrown over the tray, the best cups and saucers, and a
display of Osborne biscuits in place of the “Squashed-flies.”
“Tea is less harmful to the nerves than coffee,” said Uncle Alfred
sententiously, “but women are far too much addicted to both.”
“You’re fond of a cup of tea yourself, Uncle. We always have it after
supper,” said Rose to Lord Charlesbury.
“It used to be usual everywhere. I can’t remember those days myself,
but I can quite well remember my grandfather telling about the times
when dinner was at five or six o’clock, and tea was brought into the
drawing-room afterwards.”
“Can you?” said Rose, inwardly furious at her own inanity.
“Rose, my dear, call Felix Menebees. A cup of tea will do him good,”
said Uncle Alfred blandly.
His niece turned startled eyes upon him. The suggestion was not quite
unprecedented, but it was very nearly so, and she had certainly never
contemplated its being made on the evening of Lord Charlesbury’s visit.
A sense of reluctance was followed by angry remorse. Why on _earth_
shouldn’t she want Felix?
Rose got up, flung open the door and called down the stairs for Felix
in tones that lacked none of her habitual vigour.
Then she went back and poured out a fresh cup of tea, adding carefully
the three lumps of sugar that Felix liked, with her usual precautions
against allowing Uncle Alfred to perceive the extravagance.
The conversation was actually a little easier when Felix,
self-conscious but not embarrassed, had joined them, seating himself
upon the extreme edge of a chair, and balancing his cup and saucer
between his knees.
Lord Charlesbury talked about America, and Felix at least asked
questions, whereas Uncle Alfred confined himself to ejaculating
comments, mostly of a disparaging nature.
“Uncle A.’s taken against him, that’s clear enough,” reflected Rose.
She held a high opinion of Uncle A.’s shrewdness, and the thought
depressed her.
She looked at Charlesbury, wondering whether he reciprocated the
pawnbroker’s lack of sympathy, and was forced to the conclusion that
he did. His manner was admirable, and his courtesy quite unforced, but
there was a certain bewilderment apparent beneath his kindly suavity,
and Rose felt sure that he would be profoundly relieved when the
evening came to an end.
“Well, we all bite off more than we can chew sometimes, I suppose,” she
thought to herself with gloomy philosophy, but it was not until she
was actually preceding Charlesbury down the stairs to the front door
that it occurred to her to apply to him, as well as to herself, her
favourite descriptive idiom.
Had Charlesbury, likewise, bitten off more than he could chew? It was
a great deal more likely that he was now, perhaps for the first time,
cautiously eyeing the size of the projected bite before attempting it.
“Won’t you let me come and take you out to dinner one night?” he asked
as they parted.
“I don’t know,” said Rose in a worried way. She was quite incapable of
coquetry, and her reply was prompted by sheerest indecision.
“Why not?” asked Charlesbury, smiling.
“Oh, lots of reasons. I haven’t got a frock, for one thing.
Good-night,” said Rose abruptly.
He did not pursue the question of his invitation, but said good-night
to her gently and cordially.
Rose went upstairs again, strangely inclined to burst into tears, and
very angry with herself for the inclination.
She bounced into the sitting-room, with a movement habitual to the late
Mrs. Smith.
Uncle Alfred was reading _The Pawnbrokers’ Gazette_ and Felix was
tidily replacing the cups upon the tea-tray.
Rose helped him in silence, glancing out of the corners of her eyes
at the imperturbable Mr. Smith, and affecting unconcern by humming a
little tune.
When Felix had departed downstairs with the tray, Rose observed in a
detached tone of voice, with her head rather upon one side:
“Well, not one of our successes, on the whole, was it? Of course, Uncle
A., I shouldn’t think of saying a word to you, but at the same time----”
“That will do, Rose. Say nothing in a hurry. Remember what James has
written on the subject of bridling that unruly member, the tongue, and
hold your peace. I have only one piece of advice for you, my girl:
Ask yourself whether you want to spend the rest of your life in your
natural element, or out of it?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Rose declared, knowing only too well.
“I shan’t bear you a grudge, if you take the chance of bettering
yourself, and it might be a very good thing for your boy. But it’ll
be the parting of the ways for you and me, and for you and any other
friends you may have in your own walk of life; so if you go into it,
you must go into it with your eyes open, that’s all. That titled friend
of yours is all very well--I haven’t a word to say against him--but
you mark my words, Rose, he’s not a mixer, and he never will be. Now
if it was that doctor friend of yours, it would be another thing
altogether----”
“Oh,” Rose became suddenly reflective.
“Is Dr. Lucian what you’d call a good mixer, Uncle?”
“Certainly. Both by nature and in consequence of his profession. And
though I’m not saying you’d not be doing very well for yourself in
marrying him, it wouldn’t be the same thing as taking upon yourself the
responsibilities of joining up with titled folk, Rose.”
“Jim was Lord Charlesbury’s class, you know.”
“I do know, indeed. And a deplorable business you and he made of your
marriage, from all accounts. His death was a merciful release for you.”
“Well, he was a bad lot,” Rose pointed out, without acrimony.
“And this Lord Charlesbury is not. But you have many times complained
to me of your inability to feel at home with the Aviolets and their
friends, and your disinclination for their mode of life. Ask yourself,
therefore, whether you would find it any easier to do yourself credit
as the wife of Lord Charlesbury, or any other lord?”
Rose did indeed ask herself this question in the days that ensued.
She saw Lord Charlesbury again, a few days later, when he asked her
to lunch with him at a very quiet little restaurant, of which Rose
had never heard before, in a quarter of London which she had always
supposed to be an unfashionable one. On that occasion he made no
reference whatever to his visit to Ovington Street, but again suggested
indirectly that Mrs. Aviolet should seek more congenial surroundings
for herself.
“But you don’t understand,” said Rose at last. “It’s at Squires, and
places like that, that I’m such a fish out of water. The shop, and all
that, is my home.”
She looked at him as she spoke, and a horrible sense of finality came
over her, although not a muscle of his face had altered.
“I’ve got a headache,” said Rose abruptly. “I’m going home.”
He took her back to Ovington Street.
Rose had neither the training nor the temperament conducive to
self-command. In the taxi, to her own unutterable dismay, she began to
cry.
“It is my headache,” she lied desperately, the tears streaming down her
face. “I often get like this--the pain is _dreadful_!”
“I’m so sorry,” said Charlesbury. His face and his voice alike showed a
deep concern.
At the door he looked at her rather wistfully, holding her hand
in farewell. “Are you quite, quite certain that you don’t need a
change--that you’re all right here?”
Rose nodded.
Her gaze took in the mean little street and the door leading into the
dark shop, and the angle of the wall which discreetly hid the three
golden balls that protruded behind.
Rose Aviolet mopped at her wet eyes with a screwed-up handkerchief and
then spoke, clearly enough in spite of the choke in her voice.
“I’m quite, quite certain that this is the right place for me, except
just when I’ve got to be at Squires for the sake of Ces. Uncle Alfred
is my relation, and him and me understand one another all right. It was
me and the Aviolets that didn’t. And it would always be the same, with
anybody of their sort, and anybody of mine.”
Felix Menebees opened the door.
“Good-bye,” said Rose, and went into the shop.
* * * * *
Rose Aviolet shed no more tears over her abortive romance. “No use
crying over spilt milk” had been a favourite aphorism of Mrs. Smith’s,
and it was one which had always recommended itself to Rose.
She did not allow Uncle Alfred any opportunity of remarking that his
advice had been taken, but wrote to Dr. Lucian with a request for work.
“And it seems fair to tell you that what I once hinted about myself
won’t ever come off now. And I’m not going to marry anybody ever. I’ve
got enough to do thinking about Ces, and if there’s any spare time, I
can put it in over the job you’re going to get me.”
He found her a job, in connection with a large children’s hospital, and
after a few weeks, Rose was invited to occupy a room there.
“I’ll do it,” she decided; “it’s better than Squires, and I’ve got
to make some sort of a life for myself. And it’s not long till the
holidays anyway.”
At the thought of Cecil her heart lightened again.
“Hurst does seem to be doing him good,” she thought. “It was worth
meeting Lord Charlesbury, after all, if only because he told me about
Hurst for Cecil.”
PART II
FIVE YEARS LATER
I
“What have they done to him, Maurice?”
“I don’t know,” said the doctor, very thoughtfully indeed. “I don’t
know.”
“There’s something.”
“Yes.”
“It’s horrible--and one can never know.”
“The Aviolets won’t think that there’s anything to know.”
“_She_ will.”
“Yes,” said the doctor again, as deliberately as before, but with the
slightest possible narrowing of his eyes as he spoke. “Yes, she’ll
know, all right.”
Miss Lucian put her work down and clasped one hand over the other with
a curious effect of earnestness.
“I never saw anything quite like the look in that boy’s eyes when she
brought him here this afternoon. And yet I--I can’t place it. What in
God’s name was it?”
“I don’t know.”
A sound of impatience broke from her.
“I tell you I don’t know, Henrietta. I’m not even certain that we’re
not exaggerating.”
“Maurice!”
“I don’t mean the fact, but its significance.”
“_What_ fact?”
“The fact that something or someone, at that public school, has altered
Cecil Aviolet radically, in some way that’s indefinable. It’s not
the normal evolution of a type, Henrietta, nor the development of an
individuality--it’s something apart from those. And I don’t know what
it is.”
“Has he been--frightened?” she half whispered.
“I don’t think it’s that. He may have been frightened--but I don’t
think it’s that now.”
“He wasn’t ever a coward,” Henrietta declared vehemently. “I don’t care
what any one says, he was a plucky little boy enough.”
“I have never thought him a coward,” said the doctor quietly. “But for
all that, he may have been frightened.”
“Bullying?”
“He’s not the sort that gets bullied, much. And I don’t think--mind
you, this is only conjecture--but I don’t think he’d mind being
bullied, if it only meant being knocked about.”
Henrietta looked at him without speaking. She was aware that the doctor
was rather stating aloud the terms of a problem that absorbed him than
addressing his sister consciously.
“Do you remember his grandfather whipping him once as a little boy,
and his mother saying that he’d been so brave? And even Sir Thomas was
pleased with him for that.... You see, the physical isn’t the weak link
in the chain for Cecil at all. It’s other things that he minds. He’s
most vulnerable where the average Englishman is most impervious.”
The doctor smiled a little, gravely. “His sensibilities--in the French
sense of the word.”
“Do you mean his vanity?”
“It’s more than that, with him. It’s his self-respect that’s at stake,
always and all the time. At least, that’s how I see it.”
“You mean he’s lost it at that place. Horrible!”
The doctor made a gesture of negation with both hands. “How can I say
I know? I _don’t_ know. He’s lost something--and I think he’s acquired
something, too. There’s a sort of power of withdrawal about him now.”
“Withdrawal....” She pondered for a moment on the word, knowing his
habit of phraseology and the value that a trained mind attaches to the
exact word.
“Withdrawal--then you don’t mean a line of defence?”
“No. Or at least only in the negative sense. As far as I can see, and
that, Henrietta, is a very little way indeed--the boy hasn’t put up
a defence at all--or if he has it’s gone down. He reminds me of that
description in one of Newbolt’s things:
‘All night long, in a dream untroubled of hope
He brooded, clasping his knees.’
‘_Untroubled of hope._’ Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes. Oh, poor little Cecil--at his age!”
“I may be wrong.”
But Henrietta did not think that her brother was wrong.
They saw Cecil Aviolet several times during his holidays. He seemed to
like coming to them, and Dr. Lucian encouraged his visits.
One day he said to him casually: “Most youngsters get bullied during
their first term. Between ourselves, didn’t you find that?”
“No,” said Cecil, and added, a shade too promptly, “no--I think the
fellows like me, rather. I’ve got heaps of friends already.”
He looked up with his disarming, ingenuous smile, and immediately
afterwards looked down. The doctor had seen Cecil Aviolet do just
exactly that, once before. He had been a little boy then, taxed by his
grandmother with the theft of a toy. And he had denied it, with that
same look.
“How do you like the games?” the doctor asked abruptly.
“Awfully. I didn’t know if I should or not, you know, but I do, most
awfully.”
“That’s good.”
“Some fellows funk things, you know, their first term--House-runs
especially. There was one boy who tried to get a medical exemption
after his first run. He tried to pretend he had a heart, you know. But
of course it was no go, and some of the fellows found out.”
“H’m. I wouldn’t give much for your friend’s popularity after that.”
“Well, it was a rotten sort of thing to do, wasn’t it?” said Cecil
seriously. “I can understand it in a way, because it was my first
term, too, of course, and one does find it a most awful sweat, just at
first. But I just stuck it out, like other fellows. I must say I can’t
understand trying to get out of anything in that sort of way.” He eyed
the doctor thoughtfully.
“It seems extraordinary, somehow, to have thought of doing a thing like
that,” he said. “It would never have occurred to _me_, anyway.”
Into the doctor’s kind, watchful eyes there came a sudden gleam, as of
enlightenment. He looked at Cecil without speaking.
“Of course, I don’t set up for being braver than other people--far from
it--but I do think it’s stupid to try and fake illness so as to get out
of things. It only means that they don’t believe one another time, and
one gets a reputation for slackness besides--and then they work one
all the harder. That’s how I felt about the whole thing--it was such a
stupid thing to have done.”
“To tell a lie is almost always a stupid thing to do,” said the doctor
gently.
“I suppose so. Do you remember I used to tell crackers when I was a
kid, doctor?”
The doctor, continuing to look at Cecil, remained silent.
The test of silence is one which singularly few people can stand. Dr.
Lucian was not surprised that Cecil should break forth volubly after
one uneasy second.
“School cured me of that, practically--Hurst, I mean. But still, I
suppose, having been like that makes it easier for me to understand
another fellow not being absolutely straight. I wasn’t so tremendously
down on him as some of them were.”
“Was it the funking or the lie that they objected to most?”
“Oh, the funking, of course. But I was rather sorry for him,
personally. I couldn’t ever have done what he did myself, but I was
sorry for him,” repeated Cecil.
“I see,” said Dr. Lucian, and felt that he did indeed see.
“Absolutely typical,” he reflected, when Cecil had gone. “The pitiful
attempt at bluff--telling me about ‘another fellow’--himself, of
course, poor lad--and thinking he’s disarmed suspicion forevermore
because he’s alluded to his own past habit of lying. They all argue
the same way, God help them: ‘They’ll think: “He’d never have gone out
of his way to tell us about that, if it had had anything to do with
_him_.”’ What can one do for him? Nothing. Whatever’s wrong with him
was dormant while he was at Hurst, but this place has played him some
devil’s trick. He’s done for, unless something or someone gets hold of
him and shoves some self-respect into him. Half his time he doesn’t
really know what he’s saying--he’s in a fog--only that blind instinct
left, to hide what he thinks his real self for fear of being despised.
And he would be despised--that’s the devil of it--ninety-nine per cent
of that wretched lad’s fellow-creatures would actually dare to despise
and condemn him for a congenital misfortune that’s about as much within
his own control as an inheritance of tuberculosis!”
The doctor groaned aloud at the thought.
As he had surmised, the Aviolets were perfectly well satisfied with
Cecil on his return from that first term spent at his public school.
They spoke of him now with a certain complacence, excepting always
Ford, who seldom mentioned the boy save with semi-contempt.
“Sour grapes, my fine fellow, I daresay,” the doctor muttered to
himself. He by no means forgave Ford Aviolet his old hostility towards
Cecil’s mother, and it was nothing at all to him that now-a-days Rose,
and Rose’s ineradicable characteristics, were accepted at Squires with
matter-of-course amiability by the old people.
She came to them as usual during Cecil’s holidays, and Dr. Lucian
wondered whether her quick intuition had told her everything that her
bewildered reasoning powers would be least able to explain.
But she said nothing to him, and the doctor could easily divine reasons
for her silence.
Lucian, however, already uneasy, was sharply awakened to a new
perception of possible vexation of spirit for Rose in the always
uncongenial atmosphere at Squires.
Ford and Diana, paying to the Aviolets one of their interminable
visits, tendered to him a casual invitation, and the doctor one day
went with them to the house.
It was the first time that he had seen Rose for months, and he noticed
with a pang that for the only time since he had known her, her glorious
physique had suffered some slight deterioration. She was thinner, and
her face struck him as indefinably altered.
Suddenly he understood. “Good God, she’s left off using rouge!” thought
the doctor.
Luncheon was as elaborate a function as it was unlively conversationally;
but the doctor became gradually aware of undercurrents.
Ford, before the angry bewilderment of Rose, and innocently seconded
by the bland obtuseness of his wife’s life-long habit of “chaff,” and
the entire unconsciousness of the two old people, Sir Thomas and Lady
Aviolet, was baiting the boy Cecil.
“No invitations to stay away these holidays, Cecil?”
“No, Uncle Ford.”
“Ah, well, of course that’s very fortunate for us. We shall have the
benefit of your society all the time, I take it.”
“You must come and stay with us, Cecil, for a bit,” said Diana kindly.
“I daresay Grandmama will be able to spare you.”
“Ah, but can Cecil bear to leave home?” Ford pretended to deliberate.
“But no doubt a public-school boy can do these things; they’re a
strange race, public-school boys. Have you found that, Cecil?”
The boy stared at his uncle with absolutely lustreless eyes and made no
answer. Ford emitted a very slight laugh.
There was an odd sense of isolation for Lucian in finding himself
thus alone to estimate the strange, hidden value of their surface
intercourse. Rose, as he well knew, had no inner metre for the gauging
of complexities. More and more, she reminded him of some magnificent
dumb animal, quick to sense enmity, turning this way and that, unable
to escape the goad, and incapable of retaliation in kind, but with
inarticulate, pent-up forces gathering for some long-deferred onrush
that might yet send down all before it.
She spoke now from the other side of the table. “What are you laughing
at, Ford?”
The aggression in her manner was quite unmistakeable, and Lucian saw
Diana open astonished eyes, and Sir Thomas draw his heavy brows more
closely together.
The least flicker passed across Cecil’s young face, with its new,
strangely shuttered look, and without turning his head he shot a glance
at his mother from the corners of his eyes.
“What are you laughing at, Ford?” said Rose contemptuously.
“At my nephew,” Ford answered very gently. “He amuses me, that’s all.
His manners are so refreshing.”
“Take your elbows off the table, Cecil,” said Lady Aviolet quickly.
“Do you still make your own cheeses here, Lady Aviolet?” said the
doctor. “That’s a fine one you have there.”
The old lady, gratified, began to speak of her dairy. She was very
proud of it. Ford glanced at the doctor.
The doctor gave him a grim little nod. “Quite right,” he silently
assured Ford, “I’m up to your game, and I’m out to stop it. And I don’t
mind your knowing it, either.”
Nobody else knew it.
Diana Aviolet was listening, her lips ajar, to her mother-in-law, Sir
Thomas was signing imperatively to a servant, Rose was looking at her
boy, Cecil, the doctor thought, seemed impervious to everything except
to some inner preoccupation that had become part of his being.
Quite suddenly, a very horrible recollection came to Dr. Lucian.
He had once seen a trapped animal that was being devoured alive by
vermin.
For an instant, he sought in vain for the association with his present
surroundings. The next moment the analogy had flashed upon him,
sickening him momentarily.
“That boy--his soul is being slowly devoured alive----”
“And so,” said Lady Aviolet, “we always send one cheese to the show
every year. It encourages the dairymaid so much.”
“Splendid!” said the doctor.
“Are you interested in cheese, Lucian?” Ford Aviolet inquired politely.
“In everything,” the doctor retorted curtly.
“How delightful! A lesson to the youth of the present day, who are
interested in nothing.”
“I don’t agree.”
It was Rose, of course, who hurled the contradiction, with ill-judged
weightiness, into the carefully trivial key in which Ford had set his
remark.
“Nor I.” The doctor, doing his best with her ineptitude, essayed a
generality. “One generation is always more or less mysterious to the
other.”
“You think so? Take my young nephew now----”
“Why be personal?” the doctor inquired crisply.
“Why not?”
“I’m sure Cecil doesn’t mind,” said Diana. Her little laugh struck the
doctor as singularly inane.
“Cecil will have learnt to stand a little friendly teasing by now, no
doubt,” Ford observed.
The doctor did not fail to perceive the implication, and he saw that
Rose also had not missed it. Cecil remained listless and indifferent.
“Cecil has his life before him, we will hope, in which to learn more
interesting things than elementary accomplishments, which, so far as
I am aware, he acquired in the nursery. Now you and I,” the doctor
addressed himself very directly to Ford Aviolet, “you and I, my dear
fellow, have left our adventurous days behind us. Achievement, romance,
success--it’s all behind us, not ahead of us. The future doesn’t belong
to us at all. We shall only have the privilege of watching the present
generation, to which you so casually alluded just now. Our mark, if it
was ever made at all, was made in the past.”
The doctor’s gaze travelled cheerfully and deliberately round the safe,
solid interior that had constituted Ford’s environment for so many
years, and came to rest, still cheerful, still deliberate, and wholly
implacable, on Ford’s face.
“They say that history always repeats itself,” said Lady Aviolet,
boredom in her voice.
Ford, returning the doctor’s look, ignored his mother’s irrelevance.
“Very interesting, although I fancy you and I are not exactly
contemporaries to a day, doctor. But the point? May I confess that I
don’t quite understand----?”
“Oh, I think you do. I fancy you and I understand one another in
all essentials.” The significance in Dr. Lucian’s tone was entirely
undisguised.
Ford made a graceful little gesture of acquiescence. “You have said it.”
“Said what?” his wife inquired, laughing. “Really, you two are quite
mysterious. Are you going to play billiards this afternoon?”
“No, Di,” said her husband. “Dr. Lucian is too strong for me--at
billiards.”
“I am sure you play a very good game, Ford. Then what are the plans for
this afternoon, I wonder?”
The inquiry came from Lady Aviolet, and her subsequent engineering of
entirely unimportant projects and half-hearted suggestions continued
until lunch was over.
Afterwards the doctor approached Rose.
“Henrietta hopes that you are coming to see her very soon. Her sciatica
is so bad now that she gets about very little.”
“I’m _so_ sorry.”
There was never anything perfunctory about Rose’s emotions, and her
face was eloquent.
“It was very nice of Cecil to come and see us so soon. We both
appreciated that,” said the doctor tentatively.
“He wanted to come. Look here, you’re not going away immediately, are
you?”
“It depends on whether you can let me stay and talk to you for a little
while,” the doctor answered frankly. “That’s what I came for.”
Rose looked at him with a strange mingling of pleasure and wistfulness
in her brown eyes. Then she sat down and invited him by a gesture to do
the same.
The odious word “coquettish” was of all others, Lucian reflected, the
least applicable to her simplicity.
“What do you think of Ces?” she abruptly began.
“Not satisfactory, altogether. What was his report like?”
“Not bad. There was something about a want of keenness--but you
couldn’t expect him to be very keen, his first term. His lessons are
just ordinary--history, good.”
“What does he say himself?”
“He says he’s all right.”
She hesitated for a moment, then said very low: “But I don’t believe
him.”
“No?”
“You don’t either?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“But why? What is it?”
“I don’t know. My dear--don’t look so frightened. It may be
nothing--almost nothing. Remember, he’s only been back with you for a
few days--he’s permeated with the atmosphere of the place he’s left.
You’ve got his trust, in the ultimate issue, even if it’s overlaid
now by God knows what. He’ll tell you what’s wrong--if anything is
wrong--himself.”
Rose leant back in her armchair and he saw that she was trembling.
They were silent for a little while.
At last, as though he had silently made her aware of his anguish of
sympathy for her pain, Rose turned towards him again.
“I’m glad you don’t try to pretend that it’s all right, and I’m only
imagining things. But, of course, I knew you wouldn’t do that. You
always understand,” she said gratefully.
“I think so, where you’re concerned,” he gravely agreed. “Tell me, have
you found any other--understanding, on this particular point?”
“Oh, no! I’m sure they haven’t noticed anything at all. You know how
stupid they are!”
Lucian smiled, at the very familiarity of the words and of Rose’s
contemptuous tone.
“I didn’t mean here, so much as at school. Has Cecil made any friends?”
“I haven’t heard of any. There’s a master he likes, I think--a
clergyman called Mr. Perriman. He’s quite young.”
“I wonder if Cecil will ‘get religion’?”
“Oh, I hope not!” cried Cecil’s mother with candid alarm. “I’ve seen
enough of that with Uncle A. He’s the limit, him and his texts.”
“Cecil’s needn’t take that form. In fact I should say nothing would be
less likely.”
“Well, what did you mean, then?”
“Only the sort of sudden awakening of religious susceptibilities that
very often attacks young people. It’s an instinctive emotional outlet,
really. They outgrow it, generally, or else it falls into its rightful
place.”
“It seems to me more like a girl than a boy,” said Rose distrustfully.
“Perhaps. It was only an idea, and I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be a
very good thing for Cecil. Don’t you think he wants an incentive?”
She nodded. “D’you know, I found something in a book the other day
that made me think of Ces? I want to show it to you. I don’t like
good poetry as a rule, you know, like Browning and all that. I never
can understand it. But this came home to me, somehow, like something
I’d always known but hadn’t ever thought about properly. A sort of
_recognizing_.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to fetch it.” She paused for a moment and then said
pleadingly: “Perhaps you’ll be able to say that it’s not true. I hope
you will. I daresay I didn’t really understand half of it.”
But as he read the page that she put before him, Lucian marvelled only
at her having understood so well.
NEURASTHENIA.[1]
Curs’d from the cradle and awry they come,
Masking their torment from a world at ease;
On eyes of dark entreaty, vague and dumb,
They bear the stigma of their souls’ disease.
Bewildered by the shadowy ban of birth
They learn that they are not as others are,
Till some go mad, and some sink prone to earth,
And some push stumbling on without a star.
“It made me think of Ces, you know,” she repeated.
He closed the book.
“He’s been different, from the time he was a tiny child. I’ve always
known it, really, though he was the loveliest little boy and good, too.
You do remember what a dear little boy he was when he first came here?”
she entreated.
“Yes, I do,” said the doctor stoutly. “And we’ve that foundation to
work upon, and the fact that the boy loves you. _Your_ son is not going
to ‘push on without a star,’ Rose.”
“That’s the very phrase that haunts me,” she half whispered.
“We’ll exorcise it, between us. Let him come down to us often, won’t
you?”
“Indeed, I will. He’ll be only too glad. He doesn’t much like being
here, this time. You saw how Ford behaved to him?”
“I did.”
“I could wring his beastly neck,” said Mrs. Aviolet violently.
“Will you forgive me if I tell you that you make that desire a great
deal too evident? I’ve known Ford Aviolet for years, and I know him for
a bully. Every time he sees that he’s hurt you, and angered you, it
gives him a sense of power. And so he’ll go on doing it.”
“He can only touch me through Cecil.”
“He knows that well enough.”
“Why on earth haven’t he and Diana got any children? It’s absurd of
them,” declared Rose with vehemence.
“I suppose it’s a disappointment to everyone.”
“Of course it is! They don’t want Cecil to have Squires, and I’m sure
I don’t want him to have it. But he’ll have to, if Diana can’t pull
herself together.”
Rose had spoken with her usual energy, and Mrs. Ford Aviolet, entering
at the moment, said pleasantly:
“What’s that about me?”
“That I must say good-bye to you,” the doctor declared promptly. “I
ought to go and see quite a number of patients. Thank you for a very
pleasant respite.”
“Oh, must you go? Rose, Cousin Catherine sent me to find you. It’s
about plans for to-morrow. She wants to know something, I’m not sure
what.”
“All right,” said Rose. She picked up her book, and gave her hand to
Dr. Lucian.
Almost involuntarily, he wrung it hard in his--that big, broad hand of
hers, that was yet always soft and warm--but she did not wince.
“Good-bye. Give my love to Henrietta.”
She went away, and Lucian was preparing to go when Diana said suddenly:
“There was just one thing--if you can spare a moment.”
“Certainly,” said the doctor, much surprised.
Diana’s perennial smile seemed a little uncertain, wavering as though
she were nervous, but she courageously kept it on her lips.
“It’s about my sister-in-law, Rose. I know Miss Lucian is a friend of
hers--and you, too, of course. And I wondered if perhaps she’d been
talking to you about Cecil.”
She paused, but Lucian felt no inclination to help her out. He remained
unsympathetically silent.
“I do so wish that we could get her to take it more lightly.”
“It?”
“Cecil--everything to do with Cecil. I’m really awfully fond of Rose,
Dr. Lucian, and it quite worries me to see her upsetting herself like
this. Of course I know she _is_ upset, any one could see it. The
very way she looks at Cecil--it’s enough to make the boy hopelessly
self-conscious. I daresay you noticed at lunch. Ford chaffs him the
least little bit in the world, and Rose either loses her temper, or
looks as though she were going to cry. It’s really wonderful that Cecil
isn’t a great deal more of a spoilt child than he is.”
“Do you think that you understand Cecil, Mrs. Aviolet?”
“Is there much to understand in a boy of that age?”
“You think there isn’t?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Diana was obviously uneasy at the turn taken by
the conversation. “I suppose a boy of Cecil’s age can’t be very
interesting, except to his mother, but at the same time----”
“I can assure you that I find Cecil very interesting indeed, quite
apart from his connection with Squires. From a psychological point of
view, you know, Cecil is rather--unique.”
“Oh, medically! Do you mean that sort of thing?”
Lucian smiled at the clumsy idiom.
“Cecil can hardly be described as the normal schoolboy, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t you think so?” She seemed vaguely surprised. “I must say I’ve
always thought him fairly ordinary. Quite a nice boy, of course, and
school has improved him a great deal. Ford always said it would.”
“Yes. It’s supposed to improve all boys, isn’t it?”
She looked more surprised than ever.
“Don’t you think it does?”
“Oh, I daresay. I’ve uttered platitudes on the subject, like everyone
else. But I think Cecil’s mother was in the right of it, years ago,
when she said that a thing might be good for ninety-nine people and all
wrong for the hundredth.”
“That old nonsense! I beg your pardon, Dr. Lucian, but I thought even
Rose had forgotten the fuss about Cecil going to school by this time.
Why, Hurst made a different child of him.”
“I daresay.”
“Even his mother saw that.”
“It cured him of telling lies?”
Diana looked rather shocked. “Oh, poor little fellow! One would rather
forget that he ever did such a thing.”
“The soul never forgets,” said the doctor brusquely.
“These things can be transmuted, or they can be suppressed--but they
don’t vanish into nothingness because we all agree that it’s more
charitable, or more polite, to forget about them. However, please
forgive me. It’s a hobby-horse of mine, and I can’t resist a canter
every now and then.”
Diana’s little civil laugh assured him, if he had needed any such
assurance, that his energetic diatribe had conveyed to her the minimum
of significance possible.
“I mustn’t keep you any longer. But do, if possible, try and get Rose
to take the whole question of Cecil less seriously. He’s really quite
all right in every possible way, if she’d only believe it, poor dear!”
The doctor shook hands with Mrs. Aviolet. “But I’m afraid,” he observed
in valediction, “that I can’t do as you ask. You see, I agree with your
sister-in-law. The question of Cecil, to my mind, demands just exactly
that.”
“What?”
“To be taken seriously,” said the doctor, his voice very grave.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] _Edmund Gosse._
II
There was another person, besides Rose Aviolet, who shared Dr. Lucian’s
view that the question of Cecil was one to be taken seriously.
Perriman, the young master who had only recently taken Holy Orders,
full of zeal and of a naturally kind heart, felt oddly sorry for the
boy. He had reason to believe him unpopular in the House, and he knew
that he had been mildly bullied throughout his first term.
In his second term, Cecil Aviolet was no longer bullied, so far as
Perriman knew, but he seemed to be singularly isolated, and there was a
dazed and hunted look about his colourless young face.
Perriman hardly knew whether the boy was cowed or sullen, but he went
out of his way to show him good-will and fellowship, and Cecil’s quick
response was pathetic in its eagerness.
In his second year, Cecil came up with others to Perriman’s
Confirmation class. The young clergyman, of the muscular Christian
type, was as robust in his religion as he was at football.
One day, after the class was over, he stopped Cecil. “If you’d like a
chat, Aviolet, you can come to my study this evening. I could see you
were interested in our reading.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
The boy gave his wistful, ingenuous smile.
The curate scarcely knew whether to expect him or not, and could indeed
hardly have told the reason of his own unpremeditated suggestion.
He was a simple, kind-hearted fellow, ardently and naïvely convinced
that the only way to God lay through Anglo-Catholicism.
“Come in!” he gladly exclaimed, when the half-expected knock came at
his door. “Come in, Aviolet! Delighted to see you--sit down, do. You
look cold.”
“It is cold,” said the boy, shivering.
“Are you one of those unhappy people who suffer from bad circulation?
I’m one of the lucky ones myself, but I’ve been told that some poor
fellows spend half the year feeling as though a jug of ice-cold water
had been poured down their spines. I hope you’re not as bad as that.”
“I was born in Ceylon. I think that’s why I feel the cold so much.”
“Ah, yes, I daresay. And can you remember much about the East?”
“A good deal,” said Cecil more eagerly. “I know it was very jolly out
there, and I liked it all very much. I was only a little chap when we
came home, of course, but I can remember our bungalow, and a sort of
Public Gardens place, with red flowers, where the ayahs used to take
the children after tea every day. I think I must have had a very good
time out there.”
“Ah, you know it’s an axiom that Eastern children are always spoilt.
But at least you’ve made up for lost time, Aviolet. Your form-work is
quite up to the average, I think.”
Cecil flushed like a girl. “Is it, sir?”
“Quite,” repeated the young clergyman. “And you were interested in what
I read to the Confirmation class to-day, weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a pause, which Perriman took care not to break. He saw that
the boy was desperately nerving himself to speak.
At last Cecil said haltingly: “Is there--does--does Confirmation _do_
anything to one, sir?”
“How do you mean, my dear boy? Confirmation is the conscious and
voluntary renewal of the vow that was made for us at the time of our
baptism, you know.”
“Yes, I know. But I mean, does it have any effect on one--make one any
better?”
“Certainly, it’s a step in the spiritual life--it _confirms_ us as
soldiers of Christ.”
The clergyman, puzzled, felt himself to be answering almost at random.
“Look here, what’s in your mind, Aviolet? Better have it out, whatever
it is.”
He felt vaguely uneasy as he saw that the boy’s hands were shaking.
“I wondered if perhaps it might--might cure one of a fault, sir.”
“Cure you of a fault!” echoed the astonished master. “What fault?”
“Any fault,” said Cecil, turning scarlet, and then white. “In the
reading to-day, it said about our secret sins, and how they might go on
all the time, and only--only God knows about them. And you said that He
knew the strength of the temptations, and--and didn’t despise one.”
“I should think not!” ejaculated the clergyman parenthetically.
He thought that he was beginning to understand.
“How old are you, Aviolet?”
“Fifteen, sir.”
“Perhaps,” said the clergyman very kindly, and avoiding looking at the
boy, “perhaps you’ve come to an age when what I may call the problems
of the flesh are particularly vexatious. If that’s what’s worrying you,
don’t mind saying so, quite frankly. By far the best and soundest way
to tackle these things is to have them out, and you’ve done very wisely
in coming to me. Don’t think of me as a master, for the time being, but
just as a fellow older than yourself who’s probably been through very
much what you’re going through now. Out with it, Aviolet.”
There was no response. Twice Cecil opened his mouth and then shut it
again.
“Have you just been turning things over in your mind until you’ve got
the whole business of sex on your nerves,” said Perriman bluntly,
“or have you been getting into mischief? I’m not going to ask you to
incriminate anybody else, if that’s the case, so don’t worry about
that.”
“It isn’t anything like that,” said Cecil almost inaudibly.
“It isn’t? Well, so far, so good. Now supposing you tell me what it is,
then?”
“When I was a little chap, I--I wasn’t taught to speak the truth.”
“That’s a pity--but you certainly came here with the intention of
speaking the truth to me this evening, so I’m sure you’re going to
carry out your resolution,” said the clergyman tranquilly.
“When I was at my preparatory school, I thought I’d outgrown it, like
any other kid.”
“Outgrown _what_, Aviolet?”
“Exaggerating.”
Mr. Perriman stared at Cecil. “Tell me what you mean, my dear boy,” he
said finally.
Little by little, he patiently extracted a more or less definite
self-accusation from Cecil, of which almost every admission was
qualified by exculpatory clauses.
At last the clergyman said to him: “You think yourself a liar, Aviolet.
That’s really what it amounts to. You say that boasting of imaginary
achievements has become a habit with you, and that you make perfectly
false statements almost without premeditation. Now, my dear fellow, if
you were really a hardened liar, you wouldn’t have come to me to-night,
you may be perfectly sure of that. You were not bound to tell any one
of this fault. What made you do so?”
Cecil looked dumbly at him.
“It was the wish to be rid of it, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I solemnly assure you that you _will_ be rid of it. Don’t you
suppose that Our Lord and Saviour appreciates even the most feeble
desire to amend? You’ve shown great courage in coming to me to-night,”
said the young man excitedly. “And I want you to listen to me, and to
believe what I’m going to tell you.”
He collected himself, and then spoke more quietly.
“To begin with, I want you to realize that you can’t do anything at all
by yourself. This habit of untruth makes you miserable, is sapping away
your energies, causes you to view everything in a distorted light. You
see it all, you know it’s playing the mischief with you, and no doubt
you make a hundred resolutions a day to break yourself of the beastly
habit. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you can’t. Your resolution is broken as often as it’s made and
you’re in despair. And isn’t it a very odd thing that very often it’s
not until people are in despair that they think of turning to our
blessed Lord for help?”
Mr. Perriman smiled at Cecil.
“They look upon Him as a sort of forlorn hope, you know.”
“The Confirmation--” muttered Cecil.
“Yes, that turned your thoughts in His direction, didn’t it? But I
don’t want you to attach a sort of superstitious value to the mere
fact of being Confirmed, you know. An effort has got to be made, and
you’ve got to make it, but this time it’s not going to be in your own
strength.”
The clergyman’s voice was strong and hopeful. Cecil gazed at him with
dawning hope and comfort in his pale face.
“Can I really start fresh, sir?”
“Of course you can,” Perriman vigorously assured him. “Why, my dear
boy, you’re at the very beginning of life, you’re determined to
overcome this weakness, and you’ve God on your side. What more can you
want?”
His frank, whole-hearted laugh rang out.
“A year from now, Aviolet, probably less--you’ll be able to look the
whole world in the face, and thank God that you don’t know how to be
anything but straight in word and in deed. Lying is an ugly, low-down
sort of habit, you know, and there’s something in the old saying that
Satan is the father of lies. If people only realized the harm that’s
done in the nursery by letting children muddle up reality and pretence!
A wretched kid is taught to believe in Santa Claus, and fairies, and
all the rest of the pretty nonsense, then finds out that none of it’s
true, and it was all ‘pretence’--and then people are surprised when
their children grow up without realizing the value of truth. Tell me,
what’s the attitude of your own people towards this failing of yours?”
“They think I’m all right,” said Cecil quickly. “When I was a little
chap, of course they knew--I was punished for telling fibs, as a matter
of fact--but after I went to Hurst, it all seemed to be over.”
The clergyman looked at him keenly. “_Was_ it over, or did you have the
same trouble at Hurst?”
“No--no--not so bad,” Cecil stammered. “I didn’t think about it, then,
in a way. It’s these two terms here that have been frightful.”
“And you’ve brooded over it till you’ve persuaded yourself that it’s
something born with you, like a deformed hand or foot, that can’t be
got rid of. Well, Aviolet, I tell you that you’ve taken to-day an
enormous stride in the right direction, and I honour you for your
pluck in doing so. Now then,” said the clergyman in a business-like
tone, “what about the next step?”
“What shall I do, sir?”
“If you were a little older, I should say make a regular practice of
Confession. But that’s hardly practicable at present. What you can do
is this: make a most scrupulous daily examination of conscience and
keep note of every failure in strict truth and accuracy. Keep before
your mind the _certainty_ that our Lord can and will help you to get
the better of this weakness of yours. Tell yourself every day that
you’re going to be absolutely straight, and open, and above-board in
all your dealings. And above all, my dear boy, pray about it. Don’t
wait till you’re in Chapel, on your knees, or till you’ve time to make
a long prayer. It’s the fervour you put into it, not the number of
words, that counts. I’m not going to give you any books to read, or
anything of that kind, but if you want me, you can simply come here and
find me.”
“You don’t think I’m utterly rotten, then, sir?”
“_No!_” roared Perriman. “Get that idea out of your head once for all.
Haven’t you read your New Testament? Whose part did Christ always take?
That of the sinner--the woman taken in adultery, the Magdalen, the
thief on the cross. We’re here to try and imitate our Master, not to
fly in the face of everything He ever taught by despising other people.
I tell you, sinners were His specialty.”
He suddenly grew calm again.
“If you came to me to-morrow, Aviolet, and said you’d told a lie as big
as the house, I should only trust you the more _because_ you’d told me,
and hope you’d do better next day. Well, multiply that attitude by a
thousandfold, and you’ll get some faint shadow of a reflection of God’s
attitude towards sinners.”
Cecil drew a long breath. “I’ll try, sir. Thanks most awfully. You’ve
made everything look quite different. I--I think I was in despair
pretty nearly.”
“That’s all over now,” Perriman said firmly. “Don’t think about the
past any more. Now, is there anything else you want to ask me? Take
your time.”
“There’s nothing else, sir. What I wanted to know was whether there was
any hope of my being--put right--after so many years?”
Perriman suppressed a smile. “Every hope, Aviolet. Tell me, you’ve not
found your own people any help in this business of yours?”
“No, sir. My father died when I was very young, and my mother and I
have lived a good deal with my grandparents. They never seemed to look
at it like you, as something serious. I can’t explain exactly.... Of
course, they thought it was very wrong, but either they seemed to think
it was a kind of bad habit, or just a--a sort of ill-bred thing to do.
I don’t think any one has realized how it’s been--like you said just
now--mucking up my whole life.”
“I can quite believe it. It’s come to loom as the over-shadowing fact
in everything, I imagine, and as long as that’s so you’ll never get
the best out of life, or out of yourself either. We’ve got to get this
thing into proportion, Aviolet, and by George we’ll do it!”
The young clergyman struck his penitent heartily between the shoulders.
“Cut along now, or you’ll be late for call-over. Oh--just one thing
more. If you think it’s a sound idea--only _if_, mind you--you might
find it a help to tell me when habit has been too much for you, and
you’ve fallen again. (You’re bound to, you know, so don’t let it
discourage you.) But that must be exactly as you like. Think it over.
Of course, I shan’t want details--just the fact, if you think it would
help you to keep a check on yourself.”
“I think it would, sir.”
“Don’t decide in a hurry--but I expect you’re right. An effort of that
sort is bound to strengthen the will, and that’s what you want. By the
way, you understand that anything you say to me on those lines is under
seal of Confession, so to speak? That’s right. Good-night, Aviolet.”
Perriman drew a long breath when the boy had left the room.
“Poor little chap! What a rotten time he must have been having with the
other boys. That accounts for his unpopularity. All due to defective
upbringing and a naturally weak character, of course. Though no doubt
he’s exaggerated the whole thing in his own mind, till he thinks he’s
a confirmed liar.... But what an opportunity to bring him nearer to a
realization of God’s goodness!”
The young man’s simple face beamed, and presently he drew out of his
pocket a little note-book, into which he carefully entered Cecil
Aviolet’s initials, and the date.
The boy did not voluntarily seek him again at first, and Perriman said
nothing to him, but rejoiced whole-heartedly in a certain lightening of
Cecil’s whole aspect that had become evident.
One evening, however, meeting him, the clergyman invited him again into
his room. “How are things going with you, eh?”
“Much better, thank you, sir.”
The boy’s face was radiant, and Perriman felt a glow of satisfaction,
not unmixed with a little honest self-congratulation.
But two days later came the first check.
“I--I’ve done it again, sir.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Aviolet. But, of course, these things are not
overcome in a minute, one knows. Tell me what happened.”
Cecil unfolded a long and piteous story: the flat denial of a piece of
folly perpetrated in school.
Perriman encouraged him, exhorted him, and assured him of his own
unshaken trust.
Two days later again, the whole thing was repeated.
“But it’s so _trivial_!” the young clergyman exclaimed, bewildered.
“That’s what I can’t understand. Why should you tell trivial, childish
fibs like that? There’s no object in it, that I can see.”
But in a little while, good Mr. Perriman became aware in himself of an
uneasy suspicion. He began to cut Cecil’s confessions short.
“There, there, my dear boy, that’ll do. Leave it at that. I told you
I didn’t want details. You must pull yourself together. There is
something almost--_abject_--in owning freely to this lack of moral
backbone, and never summing up resolution to defeat it. And although
I’m always ready to give you any help in my power, I don’t want you to
get into the way of looking upon your admissions to me as a sort of
automatic salve to your conscience, you know.”
The light died out of Cecil’s eyes, and he went quietly away.
The young master felt thoroughly uneasy.
Against his own will, and in defiance of what he innocently thought of
to himself as the laws of Nature, he was beginning to feel, rather than
to know, that Cecil’s later confessions were not quite genuine ones.
“It’s--it’s almost as though he were trying to _keep it up_,” Perriman
reflected, bewildered and almost disgusted.
At last he told Cecil that he thought the confessions had better cease.
“If you would feel it useful to you to give me a general account of
your progress, well and good. But I--I really think it would be better
not to dwell on your own folly and weakness by giving me a long account
of each lapse from the truth, Aviolet. Do try and be more robust about
it all, won’t you?”
Cecil winced as though he had been struck, and Perriman felt that he
was being brutal.
On the night before the Confirmation, Cecil once more presented
himself. “I came to tell you, sir----”
“Not if it’s anything in detail, Aviolet,” the clergyman said almost
pleadingly. “To-morrow is to be a new beginning for you, isn’t it? Let
the dead past bury its dead. Of course,” he added unwillingly, “if
you’ve anything serious on your mind, I don’t want to prevent your
unburdening yourself. But if it’s some quibble of conscience, I think
you’d better suppress it.”
“It’s serious,” said Cecil, his face pale and his eyes shining.
The clergyman reluctantly resigned himself.
“I--I came to tell you, sir, that I deliberately cheated over the
History papers at the end of last term. I saw the questions, before we
got our papers.”
“How?” rapped out the master.
“On your desk, sir, when you sent me in here to wait for you one day.”
The boy spoke more boldly and confidently than he had done yet, and
there was nothing of the shrinking and stumbling manner that had been
evident in his first conversation with Perriman. He faced the master
steadily, looking straight up at him.
Perriman remembered that Cecil Aviolet had done well in History.
“What did you do when you saw the questions on my desk?”
“I took down the headings on my cuff.”
“Why do you tell me this now?” Perriman asked slowly.
“Because it was on my mind, and I wanted to start fresh from my
Confirmation, sir. It--it seemed my one chance.”
The boy caught his breath, and his tone left no room for doubt as to
his earnestness. Then he dropped his eyes and stood waiting.
Perriman spoke at last, and at the first sound of his voice, Cecil
started violently, looked once at him, and then seemed almost
physically to shrink into himself.
“Cecil Aviolet, if I did my duty, I believe that I should advise the
Head to disqualify you altogether as a candidate for Confirmation
to-morrow. Either you are mentally unsound, or, for heaven knows what
reason, you wish to make me think you so. You did _not_ cheat over
the terminal examinations. You did _not_ obtain any sight of the
questions set for the History paper. It so happens that no questions
for that particular paper were set beforehand. Owing to a press of
other matters, the History paper was overlooked, and I myself set the
questions, at the eleventh hour, just before the examination began.
Nobody on this earth can have seen them, except the Head and myself,
for the simple reason that they never left my hand from the moment they
were written to the moment I brought them into the class-room and laid
them on the desk.”
There was dead silence, while master and boy confronted one another.
“You have made a fool of me, Aviolet, if that was your object,” said
Perriman slowly. “Heaven knows, that when I first spoke to you, I did
so in all sincerity. I saw that you hadn’t many friends, and cared
little for games, and seemed rather out of your element. I saw--or
thought I saw--that you were interested in the Confirmation class, and
seemed anxious to enter into the right spirit of it all. What you hoped
to gain by your bogus confessions and self-accusations, I don’t pretend
to know.”
“It wasn’t--it wasn’t--I didn’t----” The boy’s eyes were dilated as
though with terror, and his lips white.
“Have you any explanation to offer?” said Perriman incredulously.
His mortification was extreme, and it made him feel sick to see Cecil
Aviolet, almost gibbering, mouthing incoherent excuses and meaningless
explanations.
“I didn’t--never meant to mock ... you were the only person ... kind to
me.... I can’t help it ... it seems to come.... Oh, and I thought the
Confirmation----”
He broke down, crying.
“Stop that,” said Perriman contemptuously. “You--you _girl_--you! Take
your hysterics out of here! I’ve had enough of them.”
With hard eyes, he saw the boy creep to the door.
Then the kindly instincts, the old habit of faithful adherence to the
precepts of his religion, that were the essential part of the young
man’s being, asserted themselves.
“Half a second--look here--come back! I can’t let you go away like
that. Aviolet, what on earth made you tell me that senseless lie,
accusing yourself of something you’d never done? Was it a--a rotten
kind of joke?”
“No--no, sir.... I don’t know ... I can’t help it.... I’m made like
that. I told you I was----”
“I don’t know what to believe as to the things you’ve told me,” sighed
Perriman. “But I don’t want to be hard on you. I set out to help you,
Aviolet, but I’ve bungled badly, somehow. That’s very evident. I--I’m
sorry I saw red just now. It was senseless, as well as unkind, to speak
as I did. But, you see, I can’t understand you. I don’t think I can
help you. I’ve been on a wrong tack altogether, I’m afraid.”
Cecil sobbed on drearily.
“Look here,” said the clergyman gently. “I’m not going to interfere
with your going up for Confirmation to-morrow. If you were in earnest,
Aviolet, about meaning it to be a new beginning--and I can’t, even now,
believe that you weren’t--you’ve got your chance, and you can take it.
I’m not going to say anything more to you. Good-night.”
He opened the door quietly and glanced outside.
“All clear--you can cut along.”
Cecil looked up at him as he went out, and the misery in his eyes sent
a pang through the master’s heart.
He turned back into the empty room again and sat for a long while with
his hands over his face.
* * * * *
“O God, I make Thee a solemn vow, on this day of my Confirmation, that
I will never again tell a single wilful lie, so long as I live. And
this I sacredly vow and promise, so help me God, for Christ’s sake,
Amen.”
Cecil Aviolet, trembling in deadly earnestness, was on his knees in the
school chapel. His whole being was strung up momentarily to the pitch
of intensity necessary to his belief in his own vow.
When he had repeated this formula, he involuntarily relaxed the tension
of mind and body in the exhalation of a long, quivering breath.
Now he knew that if he could break that oath made to God, he was damned
indeed. He could never break it. He _must_ be safe, now.
In the midst of a turmoil of shame and remorse and misery, he clung to
that conviction. He had no other hope to cling to.
The thought of his own self-exposure to Perriman left him utterly
dazed. He felt that he did not even understand how it had happened.
Cecil’s first conversation with Perriman had brought to him the most
exquisite sense of relief, proportionate to the wretchedness of a long
previous spell of helpless, hopeless self-contempt. He had believed
that his Confirmation would indeed prove a new beginning of life, in
which the old conditions would no longer prevail any more.
Perriman knew of his degrading weakness, his perpetual breaking of a
law of God and man, and yet Perriman had not despised him, had assured
him again and again that he was ready to help him, that he believed
in him. It had seemed, to Cecil, a very long while since any one in
the world of school had been ready to believe in him. He knew that the
other boys put him down as a boaster, and sometimes, more crudely, as
a young liar. He knew that these things were true of him. Perriman’s
interest had begun to revive his self-respect.
After the first difficult statement of fact, it had no longer cost him
a great deal to make his avowals to the young clergyman. He had almost
felt that they were expected of him, that they enhanced Perriman’s
interest in him.
After a little while, he had diligently searched out in himself matter
for self-accusation, twisting and distorting tiny incidents until
they could be made to acquire some significance, exaggerating facts,
sometimes misrepresenting them altogether, sometimes inventing.
And then the master’s hopefulness had seemed to flag, his friendly
certainty of the boy’s ultimate conquest to slacken.
He had flicked Cecil upon the raw with that one sentence: “Do try and
be more robust about it all, won’t you?”
It had been the stinging, humiliating recollection of those words that
had led to the perpetration of the sorry farce that had ended it all.
Ages ago, as it seemed, Cecil Aviolet had indeed seen a pile of papers
on Perriman’s own desk that he had perfectly well known to be the
question-lists of the coming terminal examinations. There had even
flashed across his mind the thought, “A chance for somebody to get a
look at the questions now!” But no serious temptation had assailed him.
For one thing, the risk of detection would have been too great. At any
instant the door might have opened and Perriman have returned. Nor had
he been possessed of sufficient presence of mind to think of noting the
headings to the questions.
No, those details had occurred to him long afterwards, appropriate
accessories to the act, as it might have taken place and as it had not,
ever, been in the most remote danger of taking place.
And yet he had scarcely known--had certainly not felt--himself to be
lying, when he had made that dramatic statement to Perriman. Cecil
was neither very clever, nor profoundly analytical. He did not tell
himself, but he dimly knew, that if Perriman had believed in his last
lie, he would have come to believe in it himself. He would have worked
himself up to something like a genuine remorse for the offence that he
had not committed. There would have been flashes of realization--but
such searing illuminations Cecil had long been accustomed to relegate
into that nocturnal limbo that opens only at the rarest unescapable
intervals, in the hour between darkness and the first faint glimmer of
dawn: the hour when even youth cannot always seek and find oblivion in
sleep.
But Perriman had not believed him. Perriman had thought that Cecil
was making a mock of his kindness, of the helping hand that he had
extended, the simple, earnest counsels that he had given.
Cecil writhed.
Perriman might forgive him, but he would never respect him, never
believe in him any more.
And Cecil did not believe in himself, nor even, very profoundly, in the
power of the frenzied vow that he repeated again and again, trying to
hypnotize himself into attaching a supernatural potency, like that of a
spell, to the form of words that he had chosen.
But when, less than a week later, he found that he had broken his vow
again and again, Cecil was not surprised.
At fifteen, he had become definitely incapable of surprise at the
extent of his own moral degradation.
III
To Rose Aviolet’s way of thinking, Cecil’s public-school days slid past
as might a dream. They had, to her, much of the intangible quality of
dream things. She went down to see him many times, in those years,
but she never received, either from her visits or from Cecil, any
impression of the place other than superficial ones.
There was something withdrawn, strangely colourless about the boy’s
personality, that seemed to nullify any possibility of the assimilation
of an atmosphere.
He and Rose for the most part spent the holidays at Squires. There
Cecil was more eager and more natural, except when Ford was present.
His old, childish admiration for his uncle had entirely disappeared,
but in its place was a silent hostility that rather frightened Rose,
betraying as it did a depth of bitterness entirely foreign to her own
outspoken, abusive dislike.
She once said to Cecil, “You don’t like Ford, do you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Well, he’s rather a beast, I think,” said Cecil slowly. “He sneers at
me.”
“I know. He’s always been like that.”
“He’s a beast to you, too, Mummie. Sometimes I want to knock him down
when he looks at you with that smile of his, turning down the corners
of his mouth.”
“Darling!” cried Rose impulsively.
She was acutely touched by his championship of her.
But when one day Cecil boasted to her that he “had given Uncle Ford a
piece of his mind” on the same subject, Rose knew well enough that none
of the story was true, and her heart sank within her.
“I simply said to him, ‘Look here, Uncle Ford, I think you forget that
I’m practically a man now. You can’t speak like that to my mother in
front of _me_, you know----’”
“Shut up, Ces,” she said wearily.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you think I ought to have said it?”
“You never did say it, Ces, and you know that as well as I do.”
“Mother, if you’re not going to believe what I say, you’ll put an
absolute end to all confidence between us. I thought I could always
depend on you, at least.”
“So you can, as you very well know,” cried Rose indignantly. “But not
to swallow stories that I know perfectly well haven’t got a word of
truth in them from start to finish. What’s the _sense_ of it, Cecil?”
“What I told you was perfectly true,” he said coldly.
“That you said that to your uncle? When?”
“It was yesterday, after tea. No--let me see--it was before tea, to be
absolutely accurate. In the garden.”
She knew perfectly well that he was lying, but she asked herself
whether Cecil knew it.
Before he went back to school for his last term there, Diana Aviolet
came to stay at Squires without her husband. She looked pale and drawn,
and the slim lines of her figure were sharpening into a middle-aged
angularity.
“Cecil has improved a lot,” she said to Rose, soon after her arrival.
“He takes so much more interest in things--seems so much keener,
somehow.”
“I think he’s very well,” said Rose coolly. “Last year he was growing
too fast.”
“I daresay he was. You’re lucky, Rose, to have a son.”
Rose softened in an instant. “Poor Di! It’s rotten bad luck. Have you
been to a doctor to see if anything can be done?”
“Oh, my dear!” Diana coloured faintly and prudishly.
“Well, it might be worth while. They have all sorts of dodges
now-a-days, I believe. There was a woman I knew--at least I only saw
her about once, but she’s a friend of Uncle A.’s--well, she’d been
married sixteen years and never a sign of a baby, and she wanted one
most dreadfully. And at last she went to a doctor, and made her husband
go as well, and he told them----”
Diana broke in hurriedly, “Please, Rose, I’d really rather you didn’t.”
“All right. But she had twin girls, the very next year, perfect ducks,
and as healthy as you please, both of them.”
“It’s a boy that Ford wants, of course,” sighed Diana.
Rose, trying to imagine Ford in a paternal role, found herself obliged
to maintain a careful silence upon the resultant picture.
“I think it’s very disappointing for a man, if his wife doesn’t have
children, don’t you?” Diana asked wistfully.
“It’s just as disappointing for her--in fact more, very likely.”
“Of course, nearly every woman wants a baby, I suppose, but men do seem
to feel they’d like someone to live on after them, to carry on the
name. At least, that’s what Ford says.”
“Does he say it often?” Rose inquired drily, and felt ashamed when her
sister-in-law replied simply and unresentfully:
“Yes, he does.”
“I wish you had got a child,” she said helplessly. “It’s awfully hard
on you, especially if Ford----”
Rose stopped abruptly.
“Oh, Ford’s all right. He and I understand one another,” said Ford’s
wife rather drearily. “Only of course children are always such a
tremendous bond between married people, aren’t they? One misses that.”
“Poor Di,” said Rose gently.
She very often forgot altogether her old animosity towards Diana. In
these days, for all Diana’s position as Ford’s wife, her security of
moderate wealth and position, her unimpeachable ancestry, it sometimes
seemed as though the maturity that had come late to Rose held a
deeper significance, a greater stability of poise, than the surface
serenity of breeding that had always characterized Diana. Beneath the
serenity was an unacknowledged disappointment, a growing boredom, that
threatened slow, but very complete, devitalization.
It was quite true that Cecil, as Diana said, had improved.
When he came home from school for the last time, it seemed as though a
weight had been removed from his shoulders. He had suddenly acquired an
assurance of demeanour that was in odd contrast to his previous morose
habit of silence, and self-confidence was no longer lacking in his
manner.
In discussing the boy’s future, old Sir Thomas Aviolet expressed
himself as being better satisfied with him than he had dared to hope.
“There was a sort of hang-dog look about the lad that I didn’t like,
not so very long ago. But he’s taken a turn for the better, I’m glad to
see--eh, Rose? He’ll do us credit yet.”
Sir Thomas, like Uncle Alfred, was seldom enthusiastic as Rose
understood the word. But she met his very modified praises half-way.
“I always said he’d buck up in time,” she triumphantly declared.
“He seems quite keen on the idea of going to the ’Varsity. I think it’s
a good scheme. Completes a fellow’s education, don’t you know? And he
might travel for a bit, after that. We’ll see, we’ll see.”
“Travelling is a good thing,” said Rose. “Opens one’s eyes a bit, I
mean. But it costs money.”
“That’s my affair,” said Sir Thomas very curtly indeed.
His wife added more gently: “We should like our grandson to see
something of the world, my dear, before he settles down to the estate.
It seems fairly certain now, humanly speaking, that Cecil will come
after Ford at Squires.”
She sighed gently.
“Cecil is growing into a very dear boy, but still--one can’t help
feeling for poor Ford’s disappointment at not having a son of his own.
I must say, I should never have thought it of Diana.”
“Well, she can’t help it, can she?”
“Give me that ball of wool, my dear, if you can reach it without
disturbing yourself. Thank you.”
Rose understood that the subject of Mrs. Ford Aviolet’s ability or
inability to continue the direct line of succession to Squires was not
one to be pursued.
She had become very much more amenable to such hints with the passing
of time.
Cecil himself was pleased and eager at the prospect of going to
Cambridge. His new-born enthusiasm reminded Rose of his childish days,
and she thought thankfully that the original Cecil had returned to her.
“You see, Mother, I shall make a lot of new friends there, I expect, as
well as meeting fellows from school. But I like meeting new people.”
She had noticed that he did, and also, strange development of his
one-time timidity, that Cecil now talked more freely and with more
animation, when he was in the company of people other than his own
immediate circle.
The Marchmonts were invited to lunch at Squires in the course of
Diana’s stay, and Rose, at first with gratification, heard Cecil
volubly replying to the General’s friendly questionings about his
schooldays.
A faint anxiety was beginning to displace the gratification by the time
they had entered the dining-room and she had found herself seated next
to General Marchmont. Cecil was at the further end of the table.
“Your boy’s growing up very fast. A fine young fellow,” said the old
man kindly.
Rose flushed deeply with pleasure and surprise. “I was afraid I heard
him laying down the law, just now,” she admitted bluntly.
“No more than is natural and proper at his time of life, I assure you.
He seems a clever fellow, too. What’s that he was telling me about a
scholarship?”
Rose felt the happy flush ebbing from her face, and bit her lip
sharply. “What?”
“Something about his having passed out of school with a fine
scholarship to his credit. That’ll stand him in very good stead, you’ll
find, whatever line he takes up later on. We want a few brains in the
country just now, and the coming generation is where we look for ’em.
There isn’t a man in the Government to-day----”
He was launched on a favourite topic, and Rose, not attempting to
listen, gave herself up for a moment to her sense of utter dismay.
How could Cecil be such a fool, she asked herself furiously. The silly,
boastful lie was predestined to certain contradiction. Only her own
passionate instinct of safe-guarding her boy from the contempt and
condemnation of others had saved her from an instant denial of the
preposterous figment of the scholarship. Not one of the others--Sir
Thomas, Lady Aviolet, Diana, any of them--would have either the wit or
the charity to leave the old General under his deception, should it
occur to him to mention it to them.
She could see, in furious imagination, the blank glance and
open-mouthed repudiation with which any one of them would receive such
an allusion.
Was it possible that Cecil could not see that too? Rose momentarily
lacked the moral courage to face the issue involved in that question.
But as time went on, she was forced to consider it.
Cecil, now-a-days voluble and ready to please and be pleased, was
attractive to older people by reason of his good looks and his
youthfulness. Contemporaries of his grandparents, and even of his
mother, liked the boy at first sight, and showed him kindly attention,
as had old General Marchmont. He always responded readily, with
an evident eagerness to be liked and thought well of that seemed
mysteriously to have sprung from the ashes of his schoolboy apathy and
dejection. Rose knew that the Aviolets, Lady Aviolet especially, were
pleased at this development. She felt sure that they did not perceive
that of which she herself was becoming sharply and painfully aware,
that sooner or later these kindly people seemed to lose touch with
Cecil. They became indifferent, or faintly puzzled, and they no longer
sought him out.
Cecil himself appeared to be oddly inured to such shifting
relationships. He seemed to pass on, equally eager and hopeful, in
search of other friends to whom he might present a more appealing
aspect.
For he was acutely preoccupied with his own presentment of himself.
Of that Rose, forced into psychological analysis as unfamiliar to her
as it was difficult of achievement, had at last become conscious. He
recounted imaginary achievements for his own glorification, and related
unlikely experiences or future projects obviously intended to render
himself interesting to his hearers.
“But everybody does that more or less,” Rose angrily assured herself.
At the back of her mind, unformulated, hung uneasily the sense that
Cecil did not pose merely in the foolish, superficial manner habitual
to youth. He invented--but he did not delude himself. And he appeared
strangely unawakened to the probability that neither did he, at any
rate for long, succeed in deluding others.
As in the case of his imaginary scholarship, exploited to General
Marchmont, Rose often found that he was incredibly reckless to the
certainty of detection.
“Either he doesn’t care--or he doesn’t realize,” she thought,
bewildered and wretched.
It seemed to her that, of the two alternatives, one must imply moral,
the other mental, deficiency.
She was glad when he went up to Cambridge, hoping against her own
innermost certainties that the new environment might produce a miracle.
But it produced instead a new perplexity. Cecil began to ask her for
money.
He had never been extravagant before, and he received a very adequate
allowance from his grandfather.
“What’s the matter? Is it bills?”
“Well, it is, and it isn’t. There are expenses at college that a lady
can’t understand, quite, but----”
“Rubbish, Ces! Don’t try and come that gammon over me,” said Mrs.
Aviolet forcibly. “Tell me right out what you want money for, like a
good boy.”
“I’ve told you that you wouldn’t understand,” said Cecil in an offended
voice.
“Then you’d better go to somebody that will,” retorted his mother.
“Mother, I didn’t mean to vex you. The fact is, I got a lot of books
and prints for my room when I first went up, and--and the tradesmen are
beginning to bother me a bit. They’re threatening--some of them--to
write to grandfather.”
Rose had not sufficient experience of the ways of tradesmen in a
university town to reject the explanation, although she instinctively
doubted it.
“Give me the bills, and I’ll write a cheque--if it’s not more than I’ve
got at the bank, which it very well may be.”
“I haven’t got the bills here. You’d better make the cheque out to me.”
“Cecil, do you take me for a fool?” said Rose, looking straight at him.
“If I pay in cash, there’s a considerable discount,” said Cecil with
dignity. “That’s the only reason why I suggested it. But if you won’t
help me, Mother, then I suppose I shall have to have it out with
grandfather.”
“Yes, and I know what that means! The whole thing put into Ford’s
hands, and him making a bad matter worse with his sarcasms.... _I_
know. Ces, I’ll help you this once. How much is it?”
“Oh, Mummie darling! Twenty-five pounds. I’ll never be such an ass
again....”
He kissed her.
Cecil was always affectionate.
“I wish to goodness you’d tell me, Ces, if there’s anything at the
back of this. You ought to know by this time that I shouldn’t let you
down, whatever it was.”
“I’ve told you all it is, Mother--on my word of honour I have,” said
Cecil, lifting his eyes to hers.
She would not allow herself to disbelieve it. He did not ask her for
money again, but some months later, when she had returned to London,
and Cecil, at his own desire, was still at work, although the Long
Vacation had already begun, she was sent for one evening by the old
pawnbroker.
“What mischief has this boy of yours been getting into?” Uncle Alfred
demanded, without preamble.
“What’s the matter?”
“The matter is that the lad has written to me for money. I should have
thought he knew me better, but he seemed fairly desperate. I can only
suppose that some lewd woman has enticed him.”
“Good gracious, Uncle A., what a way you do put things!” Rose protested
in vigorous counter-attack.
“The language of Scripture is good enough for me, Rose. Let the
squeamish stop up their ears like the adder that is deaf, it will not
alter facts. Your son has written and asked me for what he is pleased
to call a loan. Needless to say, he offers no security.”
“Well, you’ve got his word, poor child. I’m sure he means to repay it,
whatever it is.”
Rose was temporizing, trying to gain command of herself in the new
dismay that had come upon her.
“I have not built up a successful business to the glory of God and to
the satisfaction of my old age by giving loans to ‘poor children’ on
the strength of their intentions of repaying them,” observed Uncle
Alfred witheringly. “I have here Cecil’s letter. Do you wish to see it?”
“Yes--no. I daresay he’d much rather I didn’t. I can guess what he
says, well enough.”
“I doubt if you can,” said her uncle drily. “It may even surprise you,
as much as it did me, to learn that Cecil is entirely disinterested in
his request. He merely requires thirty or forty pounds to help a friend
out of his difficulties.”
“What friend?”
“Precisely.” Uncle Alfred’s tone was bland. “What friend? I ask
myself the same question, Rose. And the answer that occurs to me is
to the effect that your son’s friend is of the same family as the
friends on whose behalf so many genteel souls, who never--dear me, no,
never--contemplate entering a pawnbroker’s establishment on their own
account, try to dispose of worthless trinkets in exchange for solid
cash. Any one in my way of business gets to know those friends very
well indeed. I’ve known ladies bargain quite violently on behalf of
the friend. They seem to find it easier than if it was for themselves,
somehow. I’m not deceived, and they know I’m not deceived, and yet they
go on doing it. The human heart is deceitful, and, above all things,
desperately wicked, Rose.”
Uncle Alfred seemed inclined to lose himself in the contemplation of
depraved humanity. A knock at the door came to rouse him.
“May I come in?” said Dr. Lucian.
The old pawnbroker welcomed him cordially. He enjoyed the doctor’s
games of backgammon, a regular institution now whenever Lucian was in
London, and found him excellent company.
He was even prepared to dismiss Rose upon the instant, in the security
that a masculine _tête-à-tête_ would be as welcome to his visitor as to
himself.
“Don’t let me detain you any further, Rose. Backgammon is not the
recreation to you that it is to me--and, moreover, you make a very poor
hand at it,” he remarked candidly.
The doctor cast a glance at Rose, but he said nothing. She looked
tired, and it might very well be that she was glad of any excuse that
should free her from the not always easy task of entertaining Uncle A.
“I’ll go by-and-bye. I’d rather finish this business first, and Dr.
Lucian can help, very likely. He knows all about Cecil.”
“What is it?” said the doctor.
“Ces has been playing the fool. I don’t know why, or how. And he’s
written to Uncle Alfred to lend him money.”
“He means _give_, of course,” interjected Uncle Alfred.
“Does he give any reason for wanting money?”
Rose looked at her uncle.
“He writes that he wishes to help a friend who is in great
difficulties. Presumably he supposes that I shall believe it.”
Uncle Alfred’s tone left little doubt as to the inaccuracy of the
conjecture.
“Yes, I think we might discount that,” said Lucian thoughtfully. “Is
this the first time he’s been hard up for money?”
There was a moment’s silence and then Rose said shortly, “No.”
“Do you know--can you guess--what he wants it for?”
“I can’t, indeed.”
“Some Jezebel, no doubt,” was Mr. Smith’s verdict.
“I was wondering about that. Will you let me speak with--er--professional
plainness?”
“Of course,” said Rose, opening her brown eyes.
The doctor smiled at her. It was for the sake of Uncle Alfred’s
possible susceptibilities that he thus prepared the way. Between
Rose and himself, he knew well enough that no artificial barriers to
fullness and sincerity of speech could exist.
“About women. Has Cecil had any experiences of that sort at all, so far
as you know?”
“None,” said Rose instantly.
Uncle Alfred made a slightly derisive sound, and she turned upon him.
“Oh, I know he wouldn’t tell me about it, if he had. But there are
a few things that a boy’s mother knows by instinct, and that’s one
of them. And I know that Ces, so far, is as inexperienced in that
particular way as any baby.”
“I think you’re probably quite right,” said Dr. Lucian.
But there was no elation in his tone, rather was there something which
made Rose cry out anxiously and incoherently:
“Why--what is it?”
“It’s only that I’d rather hear anything, however discreditable, about
Cecil, so long as it was normal, than something which, when all’s said
and done, is slightly abnormal.”
“You take a low view of human nature, doctor,” remarked Uncle Alfred.
“A low view and a practical one are often synonymous, I find; if by
low, you mean natural as opposed to idealistic,” said the doctor drily.
“The human heart is----”
“For goodness gracious’ sake, Uncle A., don’t say that again!” his
niece cried.
The pawnbroker looked at her and then nodded significantly to the
doctor.
“Very much overwrought,” he observed sententiously.
“And I’ll thank you to let me speak for myself,” said Mrs. Aviolet,
tossing her head.
“Your mother over again, Rose. You never got this independent temper
from the Smiths, let me tell you. Irreligious my poor brother may have
been, and was, in consequence of which he failed in business, and went
through the Bankruptcy Court--for unless the Lord buildeth the house,
how shall it stand?--but there was no temper about him. And no vice
either.”
“Ah, that’s interesting. You understand,” said the doctor, “that these
things have a very direct bearing upon Cecil’s case.”
“Do you mean heredity?” Rose asked.
“Certainly I do.”
“The Spirit bloweth where it listeth,” Uncle Alfred automatically
quoted, and at once proceeded, in his usual business-like fashion,
to the point at issue. “No, my poor brother was a very quiet,
well-disposed fellow. Weak, that was his only trouble. Couldn’t say
‘No.’”
“He wasn’t an imaginative, highly-strung person?”
“Nothing of the kind,” Uncle Alfred declared, with a rather offended
intonation.
“Cecil is both, you know,” the doctor gently pointed out.
Rose leaned forward, looking earnestly at Dr. Lucian. “I want you to
tell me something. Is Ces morally responsible for the things he does?”
Lucian hesitated for a long while before he replied. At last he said:
“Honestly, I don’t think he is. Wait----” as she moved, as though
uncontrollably. “I don’t mean that he’s of unsound mind. Remember that
there’s a great difference between someone who doesn’t know right
from wrong and someone who may know it, but has not the strength of
mind to control the desire which prompts him towards wrong. The first
state implies a deficiency in perception; the second, a deficiency in
control. To a certain extent we all, at one time or another, unless
we definitely belong to the first group, come under the second. But
there are always resistances within ourselves--urgings towards the
good. We can call them the promptings of conscience, or the risk of
detection, or the fear of consequences. One or other of these motives
will serve to deter us, quite frequently, from doing wrong. But I
believe, personally, that there are certain individuals in whom those
resistances are either non-existent, or else of so feeble a nature that
they have no chance of acting as deterrents. Such a deficiency is
congenital, for the most part.”
Rose was silent.
The old pawnbroker was gazing into the fire, his shrewd, lined face as
expressionless as ever.
Rose Aviolet looked deadly tired.
“Won’t you let me take you home? You look so tired,” said Dr. Lucian
gently.
“I’d rather get this settled first. What are you going to say to
Cecil’s letter, Uncle?”
“I shall remind him that though his sins be as scarlet, they can be
washed white as snow in the Blood of the Lamb. Also I shall point out
to him that a man of my business experience is not the person to be
approached with foolish and unbusiness-like suggestions of a loan, when
what is really meant is a gift.”
“And you won’t send him any money?”
“Certainly not.”
“Well, you’re right,” said Rose, drawing a deep breath. “I can’t say
anything else. You’re right.”
“Rose,” said the doctor, “would you like me to go to Cambridge and see
the boy? I’ll try and find out what’s wrong, and I’ll come and report
to you as soon as I get back.”
“That’s exactly like you! How good you are,” cried Rose, her whole face
lightening.
“That’s settled, then. Come along, now, and let me see you home. I’ll
come back for our game, Mr. Smith.”
“By all means. The Underground Railway will be your best way to travel.”
It was perfectly understood that by the best way Uncle Alfred
invariably intended to denote the cheapest way.
Lucian took Rose downstairs.
“Good-night, Mrs. Aviolet,” said a timid voice.
“Oh, good-night, Felix.”
“Will you wait a moment, while I get a taxi?” said the doctor.
“But we can go by Underground.”
“No. You’re much too tired.”
Felix volunteered to fetch a taxi, was thanked and was heartily shaken
hands with by Rose through the window, when he had shut the door of the
cab upon them.
They left him gazing from the doorstep as they drove away, his eternal
_feuilleton_ in his hands.
“That boy worships you, Rose.”
“Poor Felix!” she said leniently. “I shall never forget what a brick he
was, years ago, when Ces was ill with croup in the middle of the night.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, rather bitterly, “that’s the way you remember
all of us, by what we did, or didn’t do, for Cecil.”
It was very seldom that he allowed himself such an allusion, and the
next moment he was ashamed of it.
“I’m sorry--dear.”
“I suppose it’s quite true,” said Rose simply.
When next he spoke, it was in reference to his visit to Cambridge.
“I’ll leave it to you to do whatever seems best,” Rose said. “Poor
little Ces! It was a mistake, his going to a public school and
university, and all that. He ought to have been put to work young, like
the people he comes from.”
He noticed often that now-a-days she was no longer violent in her
denunciations of those who had helped to arbitrate in Cecil’s destiny.
Time was teaching Rose Aviolet to conform.
Just before they parted, she reverted to what Lucian had said earlier
in the evening, as though it had been in her thoughts ever since.
“What you said about motives for not doing wrong having practically no
weight at all with some people: well, a thing that’s always puzzled me
with Ces is that he never seems to jib at telling a lie even when it’s
absolutely certain to be found out. You’d think most people told lies
for the sake of deceiving, wouldn’t you? Well--he doesn’t. He tells
them when anybody in the world would know that they couldn’t deceive
a cat. So it seems,” she turned to face him, and he saw that she was
crying, “it seems that what you said is right: the ordinary deterrents
don’t exist for Ces. But I do think it isn’t him that ought to go to
hell for his sins, but those who brought him into the world what he
is.”
IV
Squires, at any rate at the very beginning of the war, maintained its
equilibrium. Rose was in London, but Diana and Ford Aviolet drove over
from the other side of the county.
“Good Lord, it’s Armageddon!” growled Sir Thomas Aviolet. He was
entirely unaware that many hundreds of other people had seized upon the
phrase already, and that as many hundreds more would do so within the
next few days.
“The whole of the map will have to be re-made,” remarked Lady Aviolet,
and sometimes she said instead: “But it _can’t_ last long, that’s one
thing. It’s on such a terrific scale that it must be over quickly. It
can’t last.”
“They say Kitchener is preparing for a three years’ war.”
“I daresay he has to be on the safe side, Thomas, but it couldn’t
possibly last that length of time. Not with all the Russian millions to
help us. Why, they say the Russians will be in Berlin before Christmas.”
“I must say, I was frightened that first week-end,” said Diana. “There
was a panic in the town, and everyone tried to get food in, for fear of
a shortage, you know. And then people were so dreadful about money--one
heard of them cashing simply enormous cheques, and taking the gold home
with them! Of course, it was the one thing the Government said we
mustn’t do--hoard gold. And I’m afraid getting the extra supplies of
food wasn’t right, though I did do that myself. I made our grocer give
me exactly three times the quantity of _everything_, and I got a number
of tinned things, and a good deal of flour as well. There was actually
a _queue_ outside his door, but I’d gone myself, in the car, so, of
course, I got in first. After all, it was fair enough in a way, wasn’t
it? First come first served, as they say.”
Her husband sneered. “First _car_ first served, Di. You hadn’t come
there before they had; but they’d only come on foot.”
“Poor people,” said Diana placidly, although she had coloured faintly
at his tone of voice. “Well, I’m sure I hope they got what they wanted,
for there was plenty for everybody, as it turned out. And we know, now,
that there isn’t going to be any difficulty about supplies, and that
people are particularly asked not to hoard.”
“I’m sure we wouldn’t think of such a thing,” said Lady Aviolet.
“Though, naturally, nobody wants to go short. _That_ wouldn’t help to
end the war. But I’m afraid there’s a dreadful time ahead while it
lasts. I wonder we haven’t heard from Cecil about getting a commission.”
“Boys of that age,” said Ford curtly, “won’t be wanted in a show
of this kind. They haven’t the stamina, or the experience, or the
physique. It’s men that are wanted, not children from school.”
“I expect he’ll want to go, Ford, and one does hear of younger boys----”
“Not of Cecil’s type, Mother. A silly, emotional lad of that kind
gives more trouble than he’s worth. Besides, I doubt if he’d be able to
stand fire, frankly.”
Lady Aviolet drew herself up. “My dear Ford, you don’t think what
you’re saying. Cecil isn’t a _coward_. You sometimes almost talk as
though he weren’t our own flesh and blood.”
“You always are down on poor Cecil, I’ve noticed it myself,” suddenly
added Diana.
“I’m sure I don’t know why Ford should give that impression. He’s
always been very good to poor Jim’s boy--naturally,” said Lady Aviolet.
She never allowed any one, least of all Ford’s wife, to imply any
shadow of criticism of him.
“Cecil isn’t only ‘poor Jim’s’ son.”
“I know, my dear. It was a most unfortunate marriage, of course. But
it was all many years ago, and she’s improved wonderfully, poor thing.
One may not have very much in common with her, but, at least, she’s a
genuinely devoted mother, and she hasn’t stood in the boy’s way.”
“She did her best, when she made difficulties over his going to school.”
“Well, yes,” Lady Aviolet conceded. “She was certainly very tiresome
about that, I remember. She had some very odd ideas about his being
different to other boys. As though all mothers didn’t think their own
children quite different to all other children!”
“But Cecil really was a little bit different, Cousin Catherine,” said
Diana. “It seems a shame to say so, but it really was rather dreadful
when he was quite little, and wouldn’t speak the truth, or play games
without cheating.”
“Little bounder,” muttered Ford between his teeth.
“It’s certainly a very horrid fault,” Diana admitted gravely.
“The streak of bad blood is bound to come out sooner or later. It’s all
very well to talk of his being one of ourselves, Mother, but you must
admit that there have been times when young Master Cecil showed very
decided signs of his Smith ancestry.”
“I’d really rather you didn’t say such things, Ford,” returned Lady
Aviolet very placidly.
Her son smiled slightly, raised his eyebrows, and went out of the room.
Diana Aviolet, her face still grave as it had been when she was
discussing Cecil, and with a slight additional tinge of colour in it,
said to her mother-in-law with an effect of considerable effort:
“You know, I’m afraid that one reason why Ford speaks so bitterly
about poor Cecil, is because he feels it so, that he hasn’t got a son
himself.”
Lady Aviolet’s own face lengthened--her nearest approach to a change
of expression. “Yes, that’s a great disappointment for you both, my
dear, and, in fact, for all of us. However, these things are not in our
hands, and one can only suppose that Providence has its own inscrutable
reasons.”
Diana did not seem to be in any way consoled by the contemplation of
such ambiguous wisdom. “Farmers’ wives, and people who really don’t
matter a bit, always seem to me to have large families,” she said
resentfully. “I don’t know why I can’t have even one child, when it’s
so important. I mean, of course, that Ford would like it, and one
couldn’t help feeling----”
She broke off, but Lady Aviolet appeared to have understood her meaning.
“Of course, my dear, one had hoped that Ford’s child--and yours--might
come after us at Squires, one of these days. After all, he _is_ our
eldest son and he’s always been such a good son, too. Poor Jim was very
different. Wild, you know. We never say very much about it, but it was
his own fault that we were obliged to send him out to the East. And
even then, I always think he would have steadied down if only it hadn’t
been for that senseless marriage.”
“Of course, it was a pity to marry her, but I quite see--I can
understand--I’ve often thought,” said Diana courageously, “that Rose
is rather nice, in her own way. What I mean to say is, that in her own
way, Rose really is rather nice. Sometimes, anyway.”
“She has improved a great deal,” repeated Lady Aviolet, in very
modified approval.
“And she’s good-looking.”
“Men think so, certainly. Laurence Charlesbury admired her. I used
sometimes to wonder--however, it would have been very unsuitable, and
I imagine he quite realized that. Poor Rose, she was a great deal more
impossible in those days than she is now, or else it was that people
were so much more particular then. I remember how very much it used to
distress me to see her with paint on her face.”
“Bad form,” said Diana judicially.
“Oh, very. And she had a very vehement and emphatic way of talking,
that one rather disliked. However, as I say, she has improved very much
since then.”
“I wonder what she’ll do now?”
“There’s no reason why she shouldn’t train as a Red Cross nurse, I
suppose,” said Lady Aviolet rather doubtfully. “I believe the most
unlikely people succeed in passing the examinations, and get their
certificates, so I suppose it isn’t very difficult.”
“I’m getting up some ambulance classes at home, of course. If Ford gets
a commission, I shall try and arrange to go abroad.”
“Ford, my dear! He’s over the age limit.”
“I know, but, of course, he’s going to move heaven and earth. But I
don’t really think he’d ever pass, medically.”
“Does his heart still trouble him?”
“Only sometimes.”
“That was the South African war, poor Ford! Well, he need never feel
that he hasn’t done something for his country.”
Lady Aviolet rested in this comfortable conviction.
Diana was less at ease, feeling daily the deepening nervous strain
beneath which Ford lived.
When a letter came from Cecil, announcing his intention of at once
applying for a commission, Sir Thomas loudly proclaimed the fact,
looking Ford in the face fairly and squarely as he spoke. Sir Thomas
was much more capable than was Lady Aviolet, of thinking Ford and his
criticisms something less than infallible.
“Shall I write to Cecil, Father?”
“No thank ’ee. I’ll write myself. He’s shown a very proper spirit,”
said Sir Thomas, “and he’s wanted out there. I shall be proud to let
him go.”
Sir Thomas had never before spoken with so much cordiality of his
grandson.
“Ford may say what he pleases,” he remarked later to his wife, “but
that was a very good letter young Cecil wrote me. He may have his
faults, but I must say I like a boy of his age to show the right
spirit.”
“He’s very young, Thomas.”
“He’ll mend of that in a month or two, as I said to Ford.”
“Oh, I hope it may be all over before then. It _can’t_ last long.”
“Of course, I know very well what’s upsetting Ford,” pursued Sir Thomas
with an air of perspicacity. “He can’t get out himself, and he’s got no
son to send.”
“His son would be far too young to go, even if he’d got one,” said Lady
Aviolet literally. “Why, he’d be still in the nursery.”
“I daresay, I daresay--but that’s what’s upsettin’ him all the same.”
Lady Aviolet did not deny it.
In the course of the next few days, however, it was Sir Thomas who
betrayed vexation of spirit, and Ford who was quietly triumphant.
Cecil wrote another letter to his grandfather, in which he did not
mention a commission at all, and earnestly asked for money.
“What’s he want money for? He has a very good allowance, and this is no
time for lashin’ out. You can write and tell him so, Ford.”
This time Sir Thomas showed no objection to letting Ford act as his
secretary. He also bade his wife write to Rose, in London.
“Ask her if she knows what the young ass is up to, and if she doesn’t,
she’d better go and see him. Or Ford. Ford would be the best person.
Write to her to-night, Catherine.”
Lady Aviolet obediently did so.
My dear Rose,
I wonder if you get more war news in London than we do here. Of
course, the papers can only tell what they are _allowed_ to tell, and
I am sure that a great deal is being kept from us. What a dreadful
time it all is! Like a nightmare, as I say.
I should like to hear if you know how Cecil’s plans stand. Of course,
it was very natural he should be eager to join the Army at once, and
Sir Thomas was pleased with his letter. But we should like to hear
what steps he has taken. We have felt a little bit anxious at his
asking for money, especially as he doesn’t say what he wants it for.
His allowance is a very good one, more than either Ford or poor Jim
ever had at his age. Sir Thomas suggests that Ford should go up and
see him, and perhaps he had better, unless you have anything else to
suggest.
I daresay it is all very unsettling for him just now, and perhaps he
would like to come straight to us, in which case I hope we shall see
you as well.
Diana sends her love. She goes home to-morrow to resume Red Cross
classes, etc.
Yours affecly.,
Catherine Aviolet.
Rose’s reply, when it came, was not a source of gratification.
Dear Lady Aviolet,
Thanks for yours of last Thursday. I knew Ces would want to go to the
war, and of course he’ll have to go.
I’ve been worried, too, about him asking for money, but I can’t get
any sense out of him by letter, though I expect I shall when I see
him. I shouldn’t think Ford had better go to see him. In fact, I’d
already got Dr. Lucian to say that he’d go, only since the war began
he’s been head over ears. I’ve now asked him again, and he’ll be off
in a couple of days.
I’ll write again when I hear.
Please give Diana my love.
Yours affly.,
Rose Aviolet.
“It really is very unsatisfactory,” said Rose Aviolet’s mother-in-law.
“What’s all this about Lucian?” Sir Thomas demanded with corrugated
brows. “I don’t want Lucian interfering with my family affairs. What
the devil have they got to do with Lucian?”
“You’d better ask Rose. She’s always had some fancy that Dr. Lucian
understands Cecil better than the rest of us.”
“Understands him?”
Sir Thomas was scornful of any such necessity. “Lucian is the family
doctor, that’s all he is. He ain’t my man of business. What does Rose
want him poking about with Cecil’s bills for, eh? I suppose bills are
at the bottom of it, young fool. Tell Ford he can go up to Cambridge
to-morrow, and write to Rose and tell her I don’t want any meddling
from Lucian.”
Thus did Sir Thomas command: prepared to overrule any protests. But he
was not destined to settle matters with so high a hand.
“I really can’t write to Rose again, dear,” said Lady Aviolet. “I’m
sure you don’t realize how much I’ve got to do just now, with the war
and everything. Dr. Lucian is quite a sensible man, and if he was going
to presume in any way, he’d have done so long ago when we had to take
him so completely into our confidence over poor Jim’s affairs. After
all, he _is_ a gentleman. I can’t imagine why we don’t hear from Cecil
to say what he’s doing about his commission, but very likely he’s made
some silly muddle of things through sheer ignorance, and he doesn’t
like to say so. Dr. Lucian can see about that quite as well as anybody
else.”
“But there’s evidently some trouble about money, the boy writing and
asking for it like that. And Rose’s letter reads a bit as though he’d
been worrying her in the same way.”
“I hope he isn’t in debt,” said Lady Aviolet vaguely. “But isn’t there
this moratorium, or whatever they call it, of the Government, that
wipes out all that kind of thing?”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Sir Thomas curtly. “Women don’t understand, my
dear. Better leave it alone.”
Lady Aviolet was only too ready to do so, and to return to her
knitting, which now took up more of her time than ever.
Ford, to his father’s peremptory injunctions to proceed immediately to
Cambridge, politely and coldly presented a refusal.
“I’m not in the least in sympathy with young Cecil, and never have
been. I told you at the time that I thought his first letter a piece
of emotional bravado. If he seriously intended to join up at once, he
only had to ask you, or myself, how to set about it. There wasn’t a
single practical suggestion on the subject in the whole letter--mere
rodomontade copied from _The Daily Mail_ patriotic flourishes. I
daresay he thought himself quite sincere at the time he wrote, but he’s
a boaster, and always has been.”
The heavy face of Sir Thomas was gradually becoming suffused, and his
dull eyes looked angrier and angrier.
“I don’t believe it,” he said obstinately. “He can’t be playing the
fool _now_, Ford. I don’t know what all this nonsense is about wanting
money, but we’d better get to the bottom of it, that’s all I can say.
His fool of a mother wants Lucian to go and see to him. Much more sense
if the boy came down here, or you went up there.”
“I’m sorry, it’s quite out of the question. I have a good deal to see
to on my own account, at present. If Cecil descends from heroics to
practical details, I am quite at his disposal. Otherwise, I think he’d
better be left to his mother, who plays up to him, and to Lucian--who
plays up to her.”
The next day Ford and Diana left Squires.
* * * * *
“I can’t think why Cecil doesn’t _come_. Of course, I thought he’d come
to London. I knew he’d want to join the Army--not like those people at
Squires, who write as if they were quite astonished at his suggesting
such a thing,” said Rose scornfully.
“But he hasn’t written any more to me, and I’m terribly afraid he’s
written to _them_ for money, like he did to Uncle Alfred, only that was
before the war had started, so it seems like years and years ago.”
She caught her breath in a deep sigh.
“I’d go to him myself, only I swore when he first went to school that
I wouldn’t be for ever trailing after him in the maddening way that
widowed mothers always do. I expect he’d much rather see you, Maurice.”
“I can get up there to-morrow, if you really want me to go.”
“You’re a brick,” said Rose simply. “Maurice, you’re the only person
I know who doesn’t think he knows what one wants better than one does
oneself. Most people would have said, ‘Hadn’t you better telegraph to
Cecil to come here?’ or ‘Hadn’t you better go yourself?’ or other rot
of that kind. They always make everything as difficult as they can, it
seems to me.”
“I suppose that by ‘they’ you mean, as usual, Cecil’s relatives.”
“I suppose I do.”
They both laughed.
“Mind you, Rose, I think the Army would be a very good thing for Cecil,
at least in some respects.”
Her eyes widened. “Why?”
“Because it would give him a chance of feeling that he was really doing
a fine thing. I think Cecil has been very much absorbed in imaginary
achievements.”
“I know he has.”
“Well, I’ve an idea that he wouldn’t depend on his--fancies--nearly so
much if his need of cutting a figure, so to speak, could be gratified
in real flesh and blood terms. You see, he’s not good at games, he’s
never been particularly clever, he hasn’t even got the personality that
would enable him to stand out from the crowd. But that’s what he wants,
all the time. That’s what he’s looking for--a chance to distinguish
himself.”
“Aren’t we all looking for that, more or less?” Her tone was rather
defiant, and she had coloured deeply.
“I suppose we are. Only with Cecil, the instinct has always been out of
all proportion.”
“He’s much better than he used to be.”
“I’m glad.”
“You don’t believe it!” she cried swiftly.
“My dear, how do I know?” he protested. “I’ve only had glimpses of him
in the last year or two, as you know.”
“He’s much better than he used to be,” she repeated wistfully. Then her
essential capacity for facing facts asserted itself.
“But it’s never really possible to know the whole truth about what goes
on inside other people’s minds, is it, unless they choose to tell one?”
“Not always then,” said the doctor.
Inwardly, he wondered whether Cecil had impulsively enlisted already,
but he saw that the possibility had not occurred to Rose.
“I’ll go to-morrow,” he promised her, “and if Cecil takes my advice,
he’ll tell Sir Thomas exactly why he wants money, and how much. He’ll
probably get it, and his commission into the bargain. You are prepared
for that, Rose?”
“Of course I am.”
She spoke proudly, and Lucian’s heart ached for her.
“What are you going to do yourself, Rose?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ve been waiting to hear from Cecil. As soon as
it’s settled about him, I can find something to do. It won’t be sitting
about at Squires, knitting, anyway. I suppose that’s what poor Diana
will end by doing, though Lady Aviolet did write something about Red
Cross classes.”
Lucian was rather surprised.
“On the contrary, I should have thought she’d be the very person to go
abroad. She has no children, and plenty of money, and let me tell you
that she’s an extremely energetic person, and very fairly capable.”
“I know all that,” said Rose calmly, “but you’ll see, Ford won’t let
her go. He won’t be able to go himself, because he’s over the age and
he’s got a heart or something, and nothing will induce him to let Di
go, if he can’t.”
Lucian looked at her reflectively for an instant before he said: “How
very much you do dislike Ford!”
“Yes.”
There was a finality in her tone that admitted of no rejoinder.
The doctor, not for the first time, reflected upon the singular
un-complexity of Rose Aviolet’s emotions. Her dislikes, to use no
more violent term in describing them, were as whole-hearted as were
her affections, once given. Either paled to insignificance before the
steady, unswerving flame of her passion for her son.
“I’ll go and see Cecil to-morrow,” the doctor repeated, when he said
good-bye to her. “Though I don’t suppose the Aviolets will thank me for
interfering with their grandson’s affairs, you know.”
“Oh, _them_,” said Mrs. Aviolet negligently. “Don’t worry about
them--they don’t matter.”
V
The doctor, at Cambridge, found Cecil Aviolet under arrest.
Sir Thomas, summoned by telegram, received him.
“Have you come up about this abominable business?”
“I’m here by chance, come up to give the boy a message from his mother.
What’s happened?”
The doctor, consternation at his heart, rapped out his questions as
one who had the right to information. But Sir Thomas resented nothing,
observed nothing. He was nearly beside himself with fury.
“This--this boy, this young blackguard, has been had up--arrested
for theft. By God, if I saw him now I believe I’d kill him. A rotter
through and through, that’s what he is. My grandson! He’s a dirty,
common thief, the young swine! He’s stolen--_stolen_!”
The old man’s voice was hoarse with passion, and the veins on his face
and neck swelled dangerously.
“Stolen what? Money?”
“The same thing--silver. Silver cups and trophies, from other fellows.
The young brute----”
Sir Thomas bellowed invectives and curses aloud.
“It’s impossible. There’s a mistake somewhere.”
“That’s what I said, at first. But it’s true. He owned to it.”
Lucian, utterly sick with dismay, could speak no word.
“You’ll have to tell his mother,” said Sir Thomas brutally. “She’ll be
here any minute. She’s always spoilt the lad, from the time he was a
little boy, and you couldn’t get a straight answer out of him at any
price. I could have told her how it would be. You’ll have to tell her,
Lucian,” he repeated inexorably. “You’re used to telling women bad
news, and she’ll take it better from you. My wife would have come, but
it’s knocked her up utterly. By bad luck, she opened the telegram while
I was out. We’ve sent for Diana to be with her, and I shall go back as
soon as Ford can get here.”
“Is he coming?”
“Of course he’s coming. We’ve got to do the best we can to save the
lad from prison, for the sake of the name. My God, to think this young
blackguard of Jim’s ’ll be my only grandchild!” raved Sir Thomas.
Lucian paid small attention to the old man’s violence. In earlier years
he had seen Sir Thomas Aviolet moved to a like frenzy of savage and
irrational fury over the more scandalous episodes in the ill-starred
existence of Cecil’s father. He knew that the very violence of the old
man’s display of wrath was shortening its duration and exhausting his
never very profound capabilities of emotion.
He was thinking, clearly and swiftly.
“Where’s Cecil now?”
“At the police station, I tell you--in a cell at the police station.
They searched his rooms this morning--the police did--and they found
these blasted cups and things all over the place. They arrested him
then and there. They said he was green with funk--he would be, the
little cad--and whimpered out at once that he’d stolen the things. God
knows what he’s been doing. Got into a mess, I suppose, and thought
he’d turn the stuff into cash somehow. I’d sooner he’d taken money,
upon my soul I would, than gone and sneaked the pots and things that
other decent fellows had won for straight riding and rowing and the
rest of it. I’ll pay up--of course I will--I’d pay up ten times over
for the sake of the name--but it’ll come out--it’s bound to.”
“Who is going to prosecute?”
“One of the shops--some silversmith’s. It seems there was a big silver
thing that hadn’t even been paid for--one of the men had it up to look
at it and order the inscription. And the young thief took it out of his
room. That’s what put them on the track. Someone saw him, or suspected
him, or something. Anyhow, the police came with a search warrant.
They’d taken him away by the time I got here, and I tell you, Lucian,
I’m glad of it. I couldn’t answer for myself.”
“Then you haven’t been to him yet?”
“Not I. That’s his poor mother’s job. You know what women are. She’ll
go to him fast enough, and believe all the lies he may choose to tell
her, just as she always has done.”
“How much does she know?”
“Nothing, practically. I telegraphed to her ‘Come at once to Cecil,
very urgent.’ She’ll know the rest soon enough.”
The doctor inwardly cursed the cruelty of the unimaginative. He dared
not think of the interpretations that Rose would have had time to put
upon that summons during her journey.
“I could meet her at the station and tell her.”
“We don’t know what train she’s coming by,” said Sir Thomas helplessly.
“She’ll come by whatever train left London soonest after your telegram
reached her,” said the doctor grimly.
“I’ve got a time-table here.” Sir Thomas fumbled interminably, pulled
out a little paper book at last, and began to flutter the leaves.
The doctor took it out of his hands, consulted it, shut it to again,
and took his hat.
“I’ve just time. I’ll meet the train, take her straight to see the boy,
and then meet you here again.”
He reached the station as the train drew up at the platform.
He saw her at once, her tall figure swinging itself from the carriage
before the train had stopped moving.
Staring at him, she gripped his arm in both hands and said in a voice,
toneless, as though she had rehearsed the sentence over and over again:
“Is he dead? Don’t break it to me, but tell me at once.”
“He’s alive and well. But he’s got into trouble and they’ve arrested
him for theft.”
“Nothing else? You swear you’re not keeping anything back--there isn’t
anything else to tell me?”
“I swear it, Rose. There’s nothing else.”
Her grasp on his arm relaxed, and the set lines of her white face broke.
“Thank God you’re here,” said Rose Aviolet. “I wouldn’t have believed
anybody else. Can you take me to Ces?”
“I’ve a taxi waiting.”
She listened to him in unbroken silence while he told her the little
that he had learnt from Sir Thomas. He could see from the strained
attitude in which she leant forward on the seat, her hands gripping the
sides of it, that unconsciously her every muscle was tightened in an
instinctive, desperate desire to speed their progress.
“Could they make it out as kleptomania?” she asked once.
“I doubt it. You see, they’d want medical evidence for that, and it
would be very difficult to furnish.”
“Will he go to prison?”
“I don’t think so. Not if we can help it, I promise you. Sir Thomas
will offer to make full restitution, of course, and we haven’t heard
what Cecil’s got to say yet. There may be mitigating circumstances that
we don’t yet know of.”
“Are they bound to--to try him?”
“I don’t know, but I’m afraid so. He’ll probably go before the
magistrates, and they’ll remand him for a week. They’re sure to accept
bail for him, all right, and he’ll be with you till--till his trial.
We’ll get the very best legal advice, Rose, directly you’ve seen the
boy. Don’t lose heart.”
He purposely kept the immediate practical issue before them both. Both
knew that a darker abyss of thought lay in wait, but neither could
envisage it yet.
At the police station, Lucian obtained leave from the Inspector-in-Charge
for Mrs. Aviolet to see her son.
They were conducted along whitewashed passages, Rose, looking neither
to right nor left of her, but walking with her head well up, gazing
straight in front of her.
The doctor let her enter the cell alone, and followed the Inspector to
the end of the passage, where the man paused.
“Are you going in, sir?”
“I don’t think so. Not unless they call me. What do you make of this
business, Inspector?”
“Very sad for the young gentleman’s people, I’m afraid, sir,” said the
official, non-committally.
“I’ve known the boy all his life, and his people before him. You know
who they are, of course. He could have applied to them for money, if
he’d been in difficulties.”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Has he got any excuse--any reason, for what he did?”
The man hesitated, looked at Lucian, and then spoke less guardedly.
“It’s my opinion, sir, that young gentlemen in this sort of position
don’t have any valid excuse to offer, unless it’s unsound mind. It
isn’t the want of money makes them do it. When it’s money they’re
after, we get a forgery or an embezzlement, something like that--not
just theft. And there’s some very peculiar features about this case,
too. Most peculiar.”
“What’s that?” asked Lucian sharply.
“Sir Thomas Aviolet hasn’t been told this. It’ll come out before the
magistrates, of course, but we didn’t tell him this morning. In fact,
the man who saw him didn’t rightly know about it. But it’s like this:
some of those cups that was found in young Mr. Aviolet’s rooms had got
inscriptions on them.”
The Inspector paused, as though expecting a comment, but the doctor,
professionally impersonal, did not move a muscle.
“Inscriptions to say that they’d been won by C. J. Aviolet, racing,
or the like, or presented to Cecil Aviolet, Esq. The big one, that
came from the shop--the one valued at thirty pounds, sir--that one
had nothing engraved on it. But there was a document found--a rather
remarkable document.”
The Inspector drew out a note-book and read from it:
“_To Cecil Aviolet, Esq., in most grateful recognition of his daring
achievements, splendid leadership, and indomitable courage and devotion
to duty, this cup is presented in grateful admiration by the members of
the School Cadet Corps._”
“There you are, sir. That was found in the handwriting of the accused,
and no doubt it was meant to be engraved on the cup at his own expense,
just as the other smaller cups had been engraved. There were some
flowery inscriptions on the other ones, too, all about his prowess at
games, and his pluck as a horseman, sir. He’d had them all engraved
himself. Some of the cups he’d bought himself, and some of them he’d
just taken from other people. In my opinion, the poor young gentleman’s
insane.”
The man’s voice was unemotional, giving no hint of any but the most
perfunctory compassion.
“No doubt his defence will take that line, sir.”
Lucian nodded. He dared not trust himself to speak.
“The lady’s signing to you, sir,” said the Inspector, and Lucian, in
obedience to a gesture from Rose, standing at the door, went in.
Cecil, flushed, his eyes brilliant, leant against one of the
whitewashed walls. His hands were in his pockets and he did not remove
them at the doctor’s entrance.
Lucian, in an instant, took in the boy’s pose, the tense, hysterical
excitement in his bearing, the fictitious defiance that was momentarily
nerving him.
He turned to Rose.
“He denies the whole thing,” said Rose, her face ravaged.
“I can explain it all,” Cecil asseverated, wide eyes fixed upon his
mother. “The whole thing was a put-up job, a sort of joke. I never
thought of its ending like this, and frightening you, Mother. It’s a
shame.”
Lucian took two steps forward. “Stop that, Cecil, it’s no good.
Remember that you owned up when you were arrested.”
The boy winced at the word, as Lucian had expected.
“I didn’t know--I was frightened then,” he stammered. “Any one would
have been frightened. I said the first thing that came into my head.
Mother, you believe me, don’t you?”
Rose whitened pitifully at the appeal.
“Stop it, Cecil,” said the doctor again. “If you want to be helped out
of this mess, you’ve got to be absolutely open. Be a man. You’ve made
a bad mistake, but you can retrieve it, I hope and believe, if you’ll
speak the whole truth. Would you rather have it out with me, or with
your mother?”
“I’ve told my mother the truth,” said Cecil quietly. “I didn’t do what
they think. I’m not a thief.”
“Ces!” wailed Rose. For the first time, tearing sobs shook her.
Dr. Lucian caught his breath. “You don’t understand, Cecil. They know
you took the cups, and they know that you had them engraved, at your
own expense, with laudatory inscriptions that you had done nothing
whatever to deserve, and with imaginary accounts of exploits that you
never performed.”
His intentional brutality had its effect.
The boy’s flimsy defence broke down, he turned white and hid his face
against his arm.
“Oh, no, no!” said Rose under her breath, her imploring eyes on the
doctor.
“My dear, I’m afraid it’s true,” he said steadily. “Ah----”
The boy had suddenly thrown himself on the ground, writhing and sobbing.
Rose was beside him in an instant, her arms round him, her own tears
driven back.
“It’ll be all right, Ces. Don’t--don’t. I understand, truly I do. Don’t
tell me any more.”
Cecil was screaming under his breath, horribly.
Rose, still kneeling on the stone floor, looked up at Lucian.
“Let him have it out,” the doctor said gently. “Call me, if you want me
for anything.”
He stepped outside into the passage once more, closing the door behind
him.
He was conscious of a veritable sickness of dismay. It seemed to him,
momentarily, that it was himself that was invaded by overwhelming
humiliation, that he was openly convicted of that ignoble attempted
imposture.
The distant whirr of a telephone struck upon his hearing without
penetrating to his consciousness, but in a few moments he was
approached by a uniformed figure.
“Dr. Lucian?”
“Yes.”
“Sir Thomas Aviolet has rung up on the telephone, sir. He wishes to
speak to you or to Mrs. Aviolet.”
“I’ll go.”
He was taken to a small waiting-room, where yet another uniformed
official sat at a table writing, and where a telephone, with receiver
unfastened, hung against the wall.
“Dr. Lucian speaking, Sir Thomas.”
The answering voice uttered painstaking shouts.
“I can’t hear. Could you speak lower?”
“... hate these instruments ... what? ... think where you’d got to ...
What? Rose come yet...? at once ... solicitor ... best man in ...
_what_?”
“Mrs. Aviolet is with the boy. Do you want me to take any message?”
“... can’t hear a word ... What? ... buzzing going on all the time ...
tell Rose ... come here as quickly as possible ... solicitor ... no
time to lose.”
“Tell Mrs. Aviolet to come and meet the solicitor who is advising you
on the case? Is that right?”
“No time to lose ... hours finding you ...” shouted the angry,
inarticulate voice.
“She shall come,” said the doctor, ringing off.
He did not, however, summon Rose, but waited until she came to find him.
“Sir Thomas has telephoned,” he told her. “He’s found a solicitor, the
best man available probably. He wants you to come as soon as possible.”
“I’m ready now. They’ll let me come to Ces again.”
As they walked along the street, the doctor eyeing every taxi that
passed, Rose said in a choked voice:
“It’s like a nightmare. I keep on thinking I shall wake up out of it
all. At first, when you told me what it was, it seemed less awful than
all the things I’d been imagining. You see, the telegram only said
‘come at once,’ so I didn’t know.... But prison--oh, it’s awful! Is Sir
Thomas frightfully angry?”
“He was very angry when I saw him first, but he’ll have had time to
cool down. There’s nothing to be gained by being angry, and I think
by-and-bye he’ll see that. He’s sent for Ford.”
“Oh, _Ford_! What can he do, except jeer and sneer? He won’t even be
angry. I believe Ces will go clean off his head, if Ford’s allowed near
him.”
“Can you tell me anything about Cecil? Did he give you any sort of
explanation at all?”
“He doesn’t deny it any more. That was the worst of all, almost, before
you came in, when he kept on saying it was all a mistake, and he hadn’t
done it, and wouldn’t I believe him. It was like when he was a little
boy, and used to cheat at games, and look up at me with his great soft
eyes, with his little hand actually on the counter that he’d moved, and
say, ‘But I didn’t, Mummie. I didn’t touch it, truly.’”
She put her handkerchief to her mouth, stifling a sob.
“He can’t help it, you know. It isn’t the same for him as it is for
other people--I know it isn’t. I can’t explain it, but I know he’s
different, somehow. Jim was bad, and then I suppose marrying someone
like me, who wasn’t the same class--Oh, stop that cab quickly!”
She had already signed to the driver.
“Listen, Rose. I want to ask you something. I don’t know, but I
imagine, that this solicitor fellow will want to put up a defence of
instability of mind. I don’t see what other line he can take. The theft
is proved up to the hilt, and the boy will have to plead guilty. If
they want medical testimony, are you prepared to hear me take up the
line that Cecil is more or less mentally unbalanced?”
“But he’s not mad!”
“I know he isn’t. But the alternative, in the eyes of a jury, will be
that he’s a criminal. That would mean--imprisonment.”
“Ces in prison!”
“I know. It would break him, utterly. We’ve got to keep him out of
that, somehow.”
“Yes,” she said tonelessly.
“Did Cecil tell you anything? Could he say why he did it?”
“I asked him if it had anything to do with his writing to Uncle A.
for money, and he said he wanted the money to pay for the--the silver
trophies. He’s had some of them for weeks. I couldn’t ask him about the
inscriptions--I _couldn’t_----”
“No, I see. You know, I think that was part of the same thing as the
way he used to talk about imaginary adventures when he was a little
fellow. I don’t think he wanted to deceive other people--only himself.
He must have had those inscriptions done to try and convince himself
that he was something that he wasn’t, and never could be.”
“What were they?” said Rose. “_No_--don’t tell me. I couldn’t bear it.”
Her voice was choked.
Presently she said: “I suppose, even if we--get him out of this--it’s
the end of Cambridge and all that stuff, for Ces?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“We’d better go to the Colonies, he and I. There’s one thing, we can be
together. He’s always happy with me, and he’s always loved me best,”
she said proudly. “No thanks to them at Squires, either.”
“There’s a pretty considerable chance, Rose, of a job for him when he’s
a very little older.”
“You mean the war?”
He nodded.
“I haven’t been able to realize about the war, yet,” she said
thoughtfully, and by-and-bye added, with her curious directness: “I
suppose a good many people might say that it would be the best thing
for Cecil to be killed in the war, before he’d had time to make a worse
hash of things.”
The drive appeared to have steadied her, and when the taxi stopped she
got out at once, only saying earnestly to Lucian:
“Promise not to go. You won’t leave me?”
“I promise.”
They found Sir Thomas alone. Lucian noted with relief that he seemed
to be calmer, as though his fury had spent itself in shouts and
denunciations.
“How d’ye do, Rose. This is a dreadful business. I’ve had Calvert on
the telephone--first-class man, very clever fellow, I’m told. We’ve got
an appointment with him at his office in an hour’s time. Did you keep
your cab?”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “It’ll wait. We’ve come from the police
station, Sir Thomas.”
The old man groaned. “Sit down, Rose, you look done up,” he said not
unkindly. “No wonder, either. What d’you make of this affair?”
Rose sank heavily into a chair. “Ces is broken up,” she said piteously.
“The young----” Sir Thomas caught himself up. “It’s a hard thing to
say, perhaps, but I’m afraid he’s a hardened young scamp. Either that
or he’s off his head. Upon my soul, I don’t know which is worst.”
The doctor thought rapidly.
Beyond the sweeping alternatives that he had just suggested, Sir Thomas
was incapable of seeing. The insidious mergings of the psychical into
the physical, the encroaching of the nervous system into the domain of
moral control, would for ever remain utterly unapprehended by him. He
would not only fail to understand; he would never, even dimly, perceive.
Lucian took his decision. Sir Thomas must be approached upon his own
plane of reasonings. But he did not look at Rose as he spoke.
“Better face it, Sir Thomas. The boy has never been wholly normal. We
shall have to tell this lawyer so.”
Sir Thomas emitted a sort of bark.
“What d’ye mean?”
“I know what he means,” said Rose, her face rigid. “I don’t suppose
we’ve any of us forgotten all the trouble there’s been with Ces, one
time and another, because he couldn’t speak the truth.”
Lucian inwardly paid passionate homage to her courage and her
directness.
“But that’s nothing to do with his being wrong in the head,” said Sir
Thomas, bewildered; “if he is.”
“It’s not far off it,” the doctor assured him grimly. “It would go a
very long way towards proving that the boy has never possessed the
average stability of mind.”
“I suppose you medical men understand your own jargon,” Sir Thomas
ungraciously conceded. “But to a plain man of ordinary horse-sense,
which is all I’ve ever pretended to be, a liar is a liar and a thief is
a thief.”
“Even a so-called criminal may not be morally responsible for his own
acts.”
“Then he’s a lunatic.”
Sir Thomas made his assertion with all the positiveness of essential
ignorance and stupidity combined.
“It amounts to this,” Rose said suddenly, “either Ces will be proved a
thief and sent to prison, or they’ll say he’s mad.”
“Good God!” Sir Thomas groaned. “I only hope he is mad. In fact, I’m
inclined to think he must be.”
The doctor glanced swiftly at Rose, seeking to convey to her that
Sir Thomas, under the obsession of Cecil’s insanity, would be rather
less impracticable than when infuriated by the conviction of Cecil’s
depravity. She nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Call me when it’s time to start. I’m going to telephone for a room at
the hotel.”
The doctor let her go. He had something else to say to Sir Thomas
Aviolet.
“I learnt an additional fact at the police station--rather a painful
one, I’m afraid.”
“Everything about the whole damned business is painful. What was it?”
“One or two of the cups had been inscribed as having been won by poor
Cecil for his successes at various games----”
“Never won a cup in his life. The boy’s a perfect fool at any kind of
sport. Always has been.”
“Yes. And he hadn’t really won them. But he’d had them inscribed
himself.”
“But they couldn’t have been,” Sir Thomas repeated obtusely. “He wasn’t
any _good_ at games.”
“It was he who’d had them engraved at his own expense, Sir Thomas.
He--he invented the inscriptions.”
“But what for?”
The old man’s utter lack of comprehension was baffling in its
completeness.
The doctor told him of the document that the Inspector had read to
him, and which they had thought to be the draft for an inscription on
the big thirty-pound cup. Sir Thomas listened, his heavy face more and
more deeply discoloured, his mouth half opened, his eyes startled and
incredulous-looking.
At last he appeared to take in the meaning of the doctor’s carefully
chosen words.
“But then--the feller’s mad. He paid for having his own name engraved
on cups and things that he’d stolen--he went and _bought_ cups, and
then had them engraved? Is that what you mean?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“Then that settles it,” said Sir Thomas simply. “He’s mad. It’s a
ghastly thing but I suppose one ought to be thankful that he can’t be
held responsible. God knows where he gets it from! Not the Aviolets,
nor yet the Amberlys. I’ll go bail on that. The wretched feller’s mad.”
He was now as deeply convinced of Cecil’s madness as he had previously
been convinced of his deliberate wickedness.
“We must get the lawyer man on to that,” he repeated, with an almost
child-like pride in his own astuteness. “That’s the line for him to
take, d’you see, Lucian? He must tell them the wretched boy’s mad.
I--I’m even willing to undertake that he shall be placed under proper
restraint. But, for God’s sake, don’t let his mother know that. You
know what women are.”
The doctor could have groaned aloud.
Just before they were due to start for the solicitor’s office, Ford
arrived.
His sallow face was a shade sallower than usual, his breathing very
slightly hurried. He shook hands with his father, and said, “Ha,
Lucian?” to the doctor with an interrogative inflexion and raised
eyebrows.
“You’ve been quick,” grunted Sir Thomas. “How’s your mother?”
“Di telephoned me that she’s all right, only a bit shaken. Very anxious
for news, of course.”
“There’s only one piece of news they can get, can’t they see that? The
boy’ll be tried for theft. He’s in custody now.”
“What steps have you taken?” said Ford coolly.
“I’ve got an appointment now with a man called Calvert. I’m told he’s
the best feller to go to.”
Sir Thomas seemed eager to convince his son that he had taken prompt
and efficient action.
“We’d better go to him at once, then,” said Ford.
“There’s Rose----”
“Rose--is she here? What for?”
“Damn it, Ford, she’s the boy’s mother.”
“All the more reason she should keep out of it. She can’t do the
slightest good, and we don’t want melodramatic scenes.”
Sir Thomas looked troubled and angry.
“Well, she’s here now, and behaved perfectly well, poor thing. She’s
been to see him.”
“She has also got a full confession out of him,” Dr. Lucian interposed.
“Until she’d been with him for a bit, the poor boy was persisting in
senseless denials of the whole thing. He owned up, when he was with
her.”
“I imagine that the hysterical confessions or denials of a person of
Cecil’s mental calibre will hardly affect the point at issue,” said
Ford drily.
Sir Thomas fastened upon the wording, rather than the meaning, of the
speech.
“Mental, yes. That’s it, Ford. He’s deficient, you know. Not
responsible. I saw directly that was the line to take.”
Rose came in.
There was an interchange of looks between her and Ford Aviolet. No more.
“Come along,” said Sir Thomas.
Ford, opening the door for his sister-in-law, nodded at Lucian.
“We’ll let you know if there’s anything to be done. Very much obliged
to you, Lucian, and all that.”
Rose looked over her shoulder, her wide, scornful eyes passing over
Ford and seeking Lucian only.
Walking past the stiff, narrow-chested figure at the door, he answered
the wordless summons, and came.
VI
Rose, her hands tightly locked together, heard her son, a prisoner in
the dock, plead Guilty on three counts to stealing goods to the total
value of £60 from various college rooms.
She heard Maurice Lucian, his voice and his bearing alike schooled to
professional impassivity, give testimony as to the boy’s instability of
mind.
She heard Ford Aviolet, far less unmoved than the doctor, his slightly
nasal voice low and indistinct, undertake on his father’s behalf that
full restitution should be made, and the culprit “placed under proper
restraint.”
At that Rose started forward, her hands clenched, but she made no sound.
She heard a clear, monotonous voice from the Bench:
“Have you anything to say, Aviolet?”
Cecil’s reply was inaudible.
There was a moment’s pause, and then the clear, monotonous voice was
raised again.
“Your crime has been great, Aviolet, and of a very determined
character. You have brought shame on to the old and honoured name of
your family, and you cannot possibly plead either ignorance or poverty
to excuse your actions. Every advantage of education and upbringing
has been yours, and yet you have committed a dastardly theft for which
in ordinary circumstances I should probably sentence you to three
months’ imprisonment in the Second Division. Not content with theft,
you have also had the almost incredible baseness and folly to try and
pass yourself off as a subject for admiration on account of your skill
and strength at games, your popularity with your fellows, and the like,
by means of entirely fictitious inscriptions, composed by yourself, and
engraved at your own expense on your stolen trophies. A more senseless,
pointless, and idiotic fraud was never perpetrated, and I can only hope
that your present humiliation and shame may cure you for ever of what
seems to be a form of megalomania.
“For the sake of your unhappy relatives, Aviolet, who have undertaken
to make the fullest restitution possible on your behalf, and because of
the plea so earnestly put forward, that you are not wholly responsible
for your actions, I am prepared to deal with you very leniently.
“You are young, and you have friends to help you. This is a moment when
every man in England has a chance of proving his worth. My advice to
you is to enlist at once. Are you prepared to do so, if I allow you to
leave this Court a free man?”
Cecil raised his head for the first time.
Ford made a movement as though to intervene and Rose saw the doctor
lean forward and grip him by the arm. In the lightning interval during
which the eyes of the two men met, Cecil spoke:
“Yes, sir.”
The tears rushed to Rose’s eyes, blinding her.
“Very well. Try and redeem your character in the Army. You have been
dealt with very mercifully, as I hope you fully realize, but you
have also got to realize that you are now, to a certain extent, a
marked man. If you fail to make good, if your name comes before the
authorities again in the same capacity--then you need not hope for
anything but the very strictest justice. And that, let me tell you,
will be neither more nor less than prison.
“Now go, and I hope that your future record may wipe out your past.”
Cecil turned away, and at the same moment the doctor was beside Rose.
“This way----” He guided her.
“Ces?”
“Coming at once. You’ll want to go back to your rooms.”
“And pack up and leave the place for ever,” said Rose, recovering her
wonted energy.
“It’s largely thanks to you, Lucian, that the boy is free to come with
us,” said Ford’s cool tones behind them. “Frankly, I thought this
morning that we should leave this place without him.”
“I suppose it would have been possible, in all good faith, to condemn
Cecil to prison, but if actions were to be judged by results--which,
mercifully, they are not--then it would be a poor look-out for human
justice. Prison would be just about the surest way in the world to
break the boy for good and all. Thank the Lord, that fellow had the
sense to see it.”
“Better luck than the boy deserved,” muttered Ford between his teeth.
“Will you look after my sister-in-law, while I go and send a telegram
to them at home? I’ll join you at the hotel.”
“Don’t bother,” said Rose, suddenly facing round. “We can manage, Ces
and I. There’s nothing to be done, after all, except pack up and go
away, and I did most of the packing last night.”
“I’m afraid the situation can hardly be dealt with so off-handedly,
Rose,” said her brother-in-law. “The present relief is enormous, I
grant you, but we still have to consider the future. I’ve no doubt my
father will wish to meet us in London and discuss what is to be done
next.”
Rose was neither hearing nor heeding. Her eyes were fixed on Cecil,
advancing towards them.
The boy’s face was white and blind, horrible to see.
Lucian took his hand and wrung it.
“It’s over now, Cecil. There’s a car waiting. Take your mother to the
hotel, and I order you, as your medical adviser, to have a stiff drink
directly you arrive there. Rose, you’ll see he carries that out. We’ll
meet at the station in time for the two o’clock train to town.”
Rose nodded.
She and Cecil went away together.
Ford Aviolet, who had viewed Maurice Lucian’s initiative with his
habitual faint air of supercilious detachment, seemed nevertheless to
be waiting, indifferently rather than of conscious volition, for the
doctor’s next move.
“Are you going to find a telegraph office?” said Lucian abruptly.
“I suppose so. If you’ve nothing else to do, perhaps you’ll come
my way. Between us, we may think of some pretty way of wording the
pleasing intelligence that my nephew has escaped the three months’
imprisonment that he so richly deserves, and is to be hustled into
the uniform of a private soldier. No doubt the news will be extremely
gratifying to the local postal authorities at home.”
“Nobody is thinking of anything but this war, here or anywhere else.”
“Are you going abroad?”
“No,” said the doctor baldly.
He felt no inclination whatever to put before Ford Aviolet his reasons
for the decision.
“I should have thought that a knight-errant like yourself would be----”
Lucian stopped dead. “Look here, I make all allowance for the strain
you’ve been under over this wretched business, and the rest of it. But
one word more of this, and I swear I’ll kick you into the gutter.”
“You may try,” said Ford Aviolet contemptuously.
The doctor looked at him, and laughed shortly, regaining his temper.
“That was an uncivilized speech of mine, I’ll admit. It’s the Jingo
atmosphere we’re living in, now-a-days.”
“You know I’m supposed to have an unsound heart? Half a dozen damned
doctors have refused me already,” said Ford bitterly.
The doctor understood why he had been asked whether he meant to go
abroad.
“Bad luck!”
“A friend of mine has sworn to get me a job in the War Office, but that
isn’t what one wants. The whole thing is a farce--boys like this young
rotter of a nephew of mine sent out, and men with experience--fellows
who went through the Boer war, like myself--left at home.”
“H’m!”
The sound emitted by the doctor was intended to convey a certain
sympathy, but for the life of him he could have found no genial words.
Nothing surprised him more than the unexplained tendency that Ford
Aviolet had at intervals evinced for years, to expose his soul in
short, embittered glimpses to a man by whom he certainly knew himself
to be disliked. It threw light, the doctor cynically reflected, on the
limitations of Ford Aviolet’s habitual surroundings.
At the post-office, Ford savagely chewed at the end of his silver
pencil. Finally he scribbled a message, and handed it silently to the
doctor. It was addressed to Lady Aviolet.
“Cecil with us; joining father in London to-day; probably return home
to-morrow.”
“I should add two words to that: ‘All well.’”
“I object to _clichés_,” coldly said Ford. “Nor do I consider that such
an expression would be in any way justified by the circumstances.”
Lucian shrugged his shoulders.
Forded handed in his telegram, together with a still more laconically
worded one to his father, and the doctor solaced himself with a small
retaliation.
He wrote out a lengthy telegram, pushed it across the counter without
showing it to Ford, and only remarked, as they left the office:
“I know my sister will want to know what’s happened, and I have not
your scruples in regard to _clichés_ in the present case.”
Lucian never forgot that afternoon’s journey to London. Cecil, dazed
and white and speechless, sat in a corner seat of the railway carriage,
his hands hanging loosely between his knees, his eyes, with the look in
them that the doctor had most dreaded to see there, fixed vacantly on
space.
Rose, who looked utterly tired out, seemed unable to sit still and
moved restlessly in her seat, first opening the window and then
shutting it, shifting her dressing-bag from one place to another, and
occasionally pulling articles down from the rack apparently for the
mere purpose of replacing them.
No one spoke, but the atmosphere was charged with misery until the very
air seemed to rock with it, and beneath all, the doctor, at least,
was acutely conscious of the steady, relentless undercurrent of cold,
passionless hostility and contempt that was soundlessly sent forth by
Ford Aviolet. He thought that Rose, too, was aware of it.
At the terminus it was raining, and very cold. Cecil’s teeth were
chattering. It seemed the crowning touch to the utter forlornness
encompassing him.
“A bag is missing,” said Ford. “Mine, of course. It’s of no account,
but I shall have to make the usual fuss. Curse these fellows.”
His face was livid, and he looked angrier than Lucian had ever seen him.
“We’d better go on,” said Rose drearily.
Ford turned round upon her and very nearly snarled: “No! Wait where you
are. I shall be back presently.”
Hardly had he turned his back before the doctor felt Rose’s clutch upon
his arm.
“Get a taxi,” she urged breathlessly. “Never mind _him_. He can go to
Sir Thomas. I shall take Ces home to Ovington Street. He can’t see his
grandfather now, he isn’t fit for it. You can _see_ he isn’t fit for
it.”
Her eyes pleaded with him and commanded him.
“Wait a minute. Hadn’t he better get it over, Rose, my dear? He’ll have
to see his grandfather sooner or later, and it’s due to the old man,
too. Ask the boy what he thinks, Rose.”
She stamped her foot with impatience, her great eyes blazing.
“Can’t you see for yourself that he’s stunned? He doesn’t know what’s
happening to him, hardly.”
“I know,” said the doctor gently. “And that’s one reason why it would
be better for him to go to Sir Thomas now. There’s bound to be a
reaction, later on. Let him get it over.”
She flung herself round, but when she spoke to Cecil her voice was full
and soft and gentle.
“Shall we go to the Langham now, to meet Grandpapa, Ces, or would you
rather come to Uncle A.’s? You needn’t see any one there unless you
want to.”
The boy’s bewildered eyes stared piteously, first at his mother and
then at Lucian.
“I’m so cold,” he stammered. “Can’t we go where there’s a fire?”
“_I told you so_,” Rose flashed at the doctor.
“Cecil,” said the doctor, “will you come and meet your grandfather at
once? It’ll be over then, and I don’t fancy it will be very bad. He
wants to settle with you what had better be done next.”
Very unexpectedly, Cecil suddenly rallied.
“I’m going to the recruiting office to-morrow,” he suddenly said.
Rose whitened.
At the same moment they saw Ford’s tall figure making its way towards
them through the groups of people and the hurrying porters on the
platform. His lean, brown face was pinched with cold and drawn
with vexation. He was speaking in short, clipped sentences to an
argumentative station official at his side.
It was almost incredible that the tiny incident of the mislaid
portmanteau should so immensely add to the wretchedness of them all.
To Ford, it was quite evidently the last and culminating exasperation,
destroying his habitual control of manner and temper.
The official resented his satirical comments, and was baffling in
meaningless and unhelpful replies.
Cecil shivered and shivered.
“Get a cab, for the Lord’s sake, and put us into it,” scolded Rose.
The doctor silently complied.
“Are you coming with us?” she demanded fiercely.
“Do you want me to come or not?” he retorted with equal abruptness.
Cecil looked out from the gloomy depths of the closed taxi.
“Come,” he said.
Ford, with a last, cutting observation to the contemptuous-looking
official, directed the driver to the Langham Hotel, and took his place
beside Cecil.
They drove in absolute silence through streets that seemed singularly
cheerless, with rain beating wildly against the windows, so that they
were obliged to close them both.
The warmth and artificial lighting in the big hotel came as a sudden,
intense relief.
“Sir Thomas Aviolet?”
“Yes, sir, in a private sitting-room. This way, if you please.”
“Don’t leave me,” Rose whispered to Lucian. “I’m sorry I was so cross
at the station.”
Sir Thomas, waiting for them in the ugly, airless room, was not alone.
Lady Aviolet sat by the fireless grate, her knitting in her hands.
“Was your train late?” said Sir Thomas, seeming to find an outlet for
nervousness in partly-simulated anger.
“How do you do, Rose my dear?” said Lady Aviolet.
She very gently bumped her face against her daughter-in-law’s, in
bestowal of her usual perfunctory greeting.
Then she shook Cecil’s hand, without looking at him.
“Ford, my dear boy, how cold you look! Shall I have the fire lit?”
Lady Aviolet rang the bell, ordered the lighting of the fire, and asked
that tea should be brought.
Lucian noticed the heavy lines beneath her eyes, the sodden pallor
of her face, and the weary, aged look that told of sleepless nights
and corroding grief. It was astonishing to him to feel the tense
apprehension, the seething emotions of the others, steadied by the mere
weight of her composure.
Even Sir Thomas’s bluster died away into a muttered inquiry as to the
delay in arrival.
“My luggage has been lost--a gross piece of carelessness. It was
properly labelled, and I saw it put in myself. Either it was
deliberately taken out again--stolen, in fact--or someone was allowed
to walk away with it on arrival. In any case, I shall hold the railway
company responsible, as I told them.”
“Scandalous mismanagement,” said Sir Thomas, making use of a phrase
which Lucian had very often heard him apply to the minor inconveniences
of life.
“Tea,” said Lady Aviolet.
She sat at the round table in the middle of the small room and poured
out the tea, and they all, almost automatically, drew chairs to the
table and sat down also.
It was Lady Aviolet who held emotion at bay. She made inquiries
regarding milk and sugar, and complained gently of the blackness of
hotel tea, and desired Ford to ring the bell for more hot water.
“They never bring a proper supply in these places--never.”
She asked about the journey, carefully addressing herself to the doctor.
“It’s turned so very chilly, all of a sudden. You must have found it
quite cold.”
“Yes.”
The doctor glanced at Cecil, who still looked chilled through and
through.
“Drink some hot tea, Cecil,” said his grandmother.
Her voice was always so utterly inexpressive that it was impossible to
say whether or not it denoted constraint, but again she avoided looking
at the boy.
“Look here, Ford, I want to know----” began Sir Thomas.
“Just one moment, dear. I want a piece of plain bread and butter. This
sort of cake is always poisonous. Dear me, how glad I shall be to get
home again!”
Lucian seconded her evident desire to gain time.
“When did you come up from Squires?”
“Yesterday.” She lowered her voice. “Sir Thomas’s letters made me
rather uneasy about him, and I thought I should prefer to be with him.
He has felt the--the anxiety most terribly.”
“The worst of it may be safely called over, now.”
“I suppose so,” said Lady Aviolet, her face in no way relaxing.
The voice of Sir Thomas, stubborn and inflexible, broke out loudly from
the other side of the table.
“Now look here, Catherine, it’s no good shirking the point; we’ve got
to settle what’s to be done next. Cecil, I don’t want to say more to
you than I need. I daresay--and I may say I--I _hope_--you’ve gone
through something already, in the way of shame and sorrow, for the
disgrace you’ve brought upon yourself and upon us all.”
“He was leniently dealt with,” said Ford. “We owe a good deal to
Lucian’s evidence, in one sense. I can go into that with you some other
time, Father, if you prefer it.” He glanced at Rose.
“But the gist of the matter is this. Cecil, not to put too fine a point
upon it, ought to have got six months in prison. Instead of that he was
told to go to the nearest recruiting office and enlist. The advice was
seasoned with some very pungent observations which I will spare you.”
“Good Lord,” groaned Sir Thomas.
“I presume you haven’t got my telegram, Mother,” said Ford. “I sent one
to Squires, having no idea you were up here.”
“Diana will have opened it. She’s there, you know. She waited on, most
kindly, to see what the plans would be.”
“You’ll be able to go home to-morrow.”
“Yes,” said Lady Aviolet doubtfully. “If no one will have any more tea,
shall we ring and have the things taken away?”
With each postponement of the inevitable crisis, Lucian saw that all
of them, except perhaps Cecil, were regaining a measure of poise. Lady
Aviolet, indeed, had never lost hers. The avoidance of display had,
with her, become an instinct.
The table was cleared, and the formal circle of chairs broken up. Cecil
was next to his mother, staring into the fire, and the tragic, fatigued
gaze of Rose never left him.
“Now, Cecil, you’ve got out of this--this mess, a good deal more easily
than you had any right to expect. But I don’t want you to think that
the whole thing ends here. We’ve a right to some sort of explanation,
and if you’ve anything to say, now’s your time,” said Sir Thomas.
Cecil, for the first time, looked up, and his white lips moved, but he
said nothing at all.
“What made you do it?” asked Ford. His tone was one of utter detachment.
Cecil shook his head.
“Speak up!” ordered his grandfather, with sudden wrath.
“It isn’t fair,” cried Rose passionately. “Why do you torment him with
questions now? It can’t undo what’s happened, to talk about it.”
“It can be of very material assistance in preventing its ever
happening again, however,” retorted Ford swiftly.
Cecil winced as though he had been struck.
“You know the Ten Commandments, Cecil,” said his grandmother in her
slow fashion. “You have heard them often enough in church, I’m sure,
and you were taught them as a little boy. ‘_Have mercy upon us, O
Lord, and incline our hearts to keep this law._’ I’m sure you’ve said
those words many a time, with all the rest of us. And if there’s one
Commandment more plainly worded than another, surely it is: ‘Thou shalt
not steal.’ I could understand it, if you’d never been taught right
from wrong. But you _have_.”
She stressed her inconclusive conclusion with mournful perplexity.
“Well, well, I suppose we none of us think much about church unless
we’re inside one,” said Sir Thomas simply. “We don’t want to bring
religion into the thing, you can talk about that with your grandmother
or your mother later on. But there are certain things that a decent
feller doesn’t do, you know--things that put him beyond the pale.
Cheating at cards, and that sort of thing, for instance. There have
been fellers who’ve blown their brains out for less than what you’ve
done, I can tell you.”
The doctor made an irrepressible movement.
“A coward’s form of reparation,” said he. His detestation of
generalities was as intense as is that of most precisians in thought,
but he was intent only upon Cecil Aviolet, and his possible reactions
to the peculiar form of penalization that he was being made to undergo.
“I hope,” said Cecil in a low voice, “that someone else will blow my
brains out for me, when I’m sent to fight.”
A sound, just short of open scoffing, came from Ford.
“Heroics are terribly easy, my dear boy. You’ve not gone yet, and, in
any case, it’s a pretty nearly certain thing that the fighting will be
all over long before you’ve been taught how to hold yourself on parade.
You lads are all the same--prating of Death and Glory before you’ve
learnt how to hold a rifle.”
Cecil turned his head and glanced at Ford. There was neither resentment
nor surprise in his look, but cowed, bewildered misery, like that of a
tortured animal.
Lucian set his teeth.
“There’s no question of glory,” said Sir Thomas heavily. “If you do
enlist, the circumstances are not such that we need boast about it.”
“If!” cried Rose. “He’d have gone anyway. I know that.”
“That’s neither here nor there, my dear, is it?” said Lady Aviolet
mildly.
“If I may make a suggestion,” said Lucian, “it would be that Cecil
should find out the nearest recruiting office to-morrow morning, and
enlist in a London regiment. That will avoid local gossip best.”
“You might have had a commission in our own Yeomanry, Cecil. All the
young men in the county have joined up, practically,” said Lady Aviolet.
“There aren’t nearly enough commissions to go round,” said Rose rather
wildly. “Some of them have got to be private soldiers, and everyone
knows it’s much harder than just being an officer. And I agree with
Dr. Lucian about a London regiment being the best for Ces, as things
are.”
Sir Thomas growled assent.
“It’s a most shameful, unhappy business, and we must do the best we can
with it. I suppose some of those damned Press fellows were in court?”
“They were,” said Ford. “We shall have the pleasure of seeing the whole
thing reported in the evening papers, I’ve no doubt.”
Sir Thomas rang the bell violently.
“Bring me the evening papers,” he demanded.
“Oh, my dear Thomas, _please_----” Lady Aviolet’s remonstrance was
almost emphatic.
“I’d rather know,” said her husband gruffly.
The others sat silent while he scanned the printed sheets. Two he threw
aside with a sort of mutter that might have denoted relief. The third
one was in Ford’s hands.
“Here you are,” he said quietly, and adjusted his _pince-nez_.
“‘Undergraduate’s Thefts.... Baronet’s heir pleads guilty.... False
inscriptions on stolen goods....’ Oh, Lord, have they got hold of
_that_?”
“What?” said his mother, distressed and obtuse.
Ford read aloud in a rapid undertone:
Some extraordinary inscriptions had been engraved upon the stolen
trophies, setting forth the prisoner’s wonderful prowess at games
and sport. These were totally untrue and had been engraved at
the accused’s own expense. It was stated that a document, in the
prisoner’s own handwriting, was found, purporting to represent an
inscription: “To Cecil Aviolet, Esq., in most grateful recognition of
his daring achievements, splendid leadership, and indomitable courage
and devotion to duty, this cup is presented in grateful admiration
by the members of the School Cadet Corps.” This was entirely false,
and was no doubt destined to take place eventually amongst the other
fictitious engravings devised and paid for by the accused.
Sir Thomas violently banged the table with his open hand, making his
wife start.
“That’s what you’ve got to explain, you boy, you. That senseless,
idiotic game of pretence ... making a fool of yourself----”
“Hush, Thomas,” pleaded Lady Aviolet, as his voice rose almost to a
shout.
Ford’s was in marked contrast, as he interposed. “You were always a
braggart, Cecil, even as a small boy. I remember the imaginary stories
about yourself that you used to tell, by way of boasting. It’s a common
failing, of course, but most people outgrow it after seven or eight
years old.”
“Stop it,” said Rose suddenly. “If you’ve any more to say, any of you,
say it to me. I’m Cecil’s mother, I brought him up, and if he’s got
this failing, as Ford says he has, that other boys outgrow, then it’s
because I’ve not dealt rightly with him.”
Dr. Lucian, never taking his eyes off Cecil, saw that his lips formed
the word “No.” Searching desperately for whatever should break through
the boy’s utter despair, he recollected the child at Squires, many
years ago, who had been punished by his grandfather’s heavy hand, and
had made no sound. The doctor had long gauged the depths of the vanity
that had made that endurance not only possible, but almost inevitable,
to Cecil. Bending forward, he eagerly sought to appeal to that vanity
now.
“Cecil, be a man! You’ve plenty of pluck. Don’t let your mother face
the music for you. Any one may make a false step. The fellow who’s
respected is the one who fights his way up again.”
Cecil turned and looked at him, with frightened, lack-lustre eyes.
The atmosphere vibrated oddly to Maurice Lucian’s tense, impassioned
earnestness. “Tell them you’re going to live it down. You’ve got a
splendid chance before you. Every man-jack will be wanted before this
war’s over, it’s my belief, and you’re going to be one of the very
first to go. No one ever had a better chance of wiping out old scores.
Tell them you’re going to make the most of it.”
“Yes, I am,” said Cecil, his voice shaking. His face had suddenly begun
to work.
Rose was on her feet, standing between her son and the others. “There
isn’t anything more to talk about. He’ll go to the recruiting office
to-morrow.”
“Then, my dear, you must come down to Squires with us. We are willing
enough to give Cecil another chance, and it’s _most_ important he
should spend any leave he may get with us. People will know, then, that
there’s no question of casting him off or anything dreadful of that
kind. I am sure Sir Thomas agrees with me.”
The doctor saw Rose turn to her son, with a question in her face.
“Please go to Squires, Mummie,” he said to her, still in that
uncontrollably quavering voice.
On his last word, the childish name that he did not now very often
pronounce, Cecil Aviolet’s stunned apathy suddenly gave way, and he
began to cry, in loud, gulping sobs.
“Oh!” cried Lady Aviolet, shocked and disturbed. Instinctively she
moved to the door, as though to escape proximity with all that most
contravened her every instinct.
Sir Thomas’s exclamation held more of disgust, and less of distress.
He, too, moved to the door, and after a second of hesitation, opened it
for his wife. The two old people passed out together.
Ford stood stock-still, gazing at his nephew.
His lips parted, as though to speak.
Dr. Lucian laid a most unfaltering grip upon his either shoulder,
pushed Ford Aviolet out of the room, and turned the key in the lock.
VII
He could do nothing more to help her.
In the restless preoccupation that filled him, forty-eight hours later,
Lucian went round to see the old pawnbroker in Ovington Street.
Felix Menebees opened the door, his face paler than ever and his hair
all standing up on end. “How is _she_, doctor?” he inquired hoarsely.
“Very brave, Felix,” said the doctor kindly. “She’s gone to the
country--to Squires, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Please to come in, doctor. The old man--Mr. Smith, I
mean--he’s in a terrible way. It seems to have all broken him up, like.
This and the war, coming together, like. Mr. Millar’s gone, doctor.
He’s enlisted.”
“That’s fine. What about you?”
“They wouldn’t pass me,” said Felix, his face suffused by a strange,
yellowish blush.
The doctor, looking at the slender, narrow-shouldered youth with his
prominent eyes and pallid face, was not surprised to hear it.
“You tried, did you?”
“Oh, yes, doctor. I tried a good many places, but they all turned me
down. One gentleman was very kind and said they’d very likely be glad
of me later on, if the war lasts.”
“Meanwhile,” said Lucian, “they’re very glad of you here, no doubt.
Shall I go up to Mr. Smith?”
“I’ll ask the servant-girl to tell him you’ve come,” said Felix.
He disappeared into the basement and then came back to say that “the
servant-girl” had gone to see if Mr. Smith was able to receive him.
“It’ll buck him up like, I daresay, if you can give him the latest
news. He seems to have taken a _norror_ of the idea of--prison.”
“I’ll tell him it’s all right. There’s no danger of that now, thanks to
this war.”
“There didn’t ever ought to have been,” said Felix warmly. “I remember
Mr. Cecil from when he was a little boy, and he never was bad. He was
a--a _nice_ little boy, doctor. I remember him like it was yesterday,
and how he’d play Halma, and I’d let him win, most times, just to
please him, like. And he always said, ‘That was a good game, Felix.
Thank you for playing with me.’ His mother taught him that, you know.
And to think of sending her boy to prison--why, it’s just wicked,
doctor.”
“I think it is,” said the doctor sadly.
“You’re sure he’s safe now?”
“Quite safe from that, Felix.”
The young man drew a long breath. “I’m glad and thankful to hear it,
I’m sure. There was all sorts of notions going through my mind, like,
at one time, though I expect you’d think it was all moonshine and
madness on my part.”
“I don’t suppose I should think it anything of the sort. What were the
notions?”
“I thought perhaps there’d be some way I might offer myself to serve
the sentence instead of him,” said Felix, with such simplicity that
Lucian scarcely saw the strange appearance that he made as protagonist
of Sydney Carton. “It’s a situation that I’ve read of, and I thought
there might be something in it--that it might be worked. It would have
been nothing to me, doctor, to serve three months’ imprisonment for
Mr. Cecil, if I could have done it for _her_. I daresay you’d laugh,
if I told you the number of times I’ve planned out similar situations,
as you might say, ever since I was quite a lad. The saving her from a
runaway horse, or carrying her out of the building when it caught fire,
or giving my life to save Mr. Cecil’s and never letting her know.
“Sometimes, though, I’ve planned out the situation so that she did
know, just before the end, and was with me at the last, like.
“It’s all been nonsense, I daresay, but if the opportunity had ever
really come, I’d have taken it, doctor.”
“I know you would.”
“It seems funny, in a way, that when you’d always planned dying for
someone, or--or being persecuted on their account, or imprisoned, like
in a revolution, you shouldn’t ever really do anything better than call
cabs for them or take their letters to the post. But I let myself fancy
those things, doctor, although I know it was silly like, because the
way I’ve argued it is this: that if the thought’s always there, some
day the opportunity may come, unexpected like, and then it’ll be a sort
of second nature to act promptly, if you take my meaning.”
Felix looked wistfully at the doctor, his hair erect and his bony frame
seeming to collapse upon itself from very weakness. His proportions,
more especially by comparison with those of Rose Aviolet herself,
added indeed an element of the grotesque to his outlined programme of
action.
But Lucian felt no inclination to smile. “You’re a good fellow, Felix,”
he said. “The picturesque opportunities don’t often come along in real
life, as you say, but it’s the other things that really count.”
“Thank you, doctor,” said Felix, blinking his pale eyelashes rapidly.
“I should never have said all this, I don’t suppose, only that I’m
wrought-up like. Don’t mention it to any one else, please!”
The doctor gave his promise as a breathless young woman in cap and
apron came to summon him upstairs.
“Good-night, Felix.”
“I shall be here when you come down, doctor.”
Felix, characteristically, would always be there, the doctor reflected.
In all the years during which the doctor had come to Ovington Street,
the many times that he had brought Rose there, or taken her away, Felix
had always been there, unbolting the door for her, fetching the cab for
her, breathlessly echoing her greeting or her farewell, gazing upon her
with faithful adoration, and going back to his dark corner of the shop
to dream his wild, cinematographic day-dreams of unlikely prowess on
her behalf.
“Where is the line of demarcation?” Lucian wondered sadly to himself.
“This lad’s fancies may be foolish enough, but it’s a rather sublime
sort of folly, and unspeakably pathetic; and that other poor boy, who
dragged his day-dreams into everyday life--it’s only a step further,
after all.... And yet one’s something of a hero, and the other----”
He would not supply the word, even to himself.
On the way upstairs, a very odd sound, familiar in an elusive sort
of way, perplexed him for an instant. He opened the door of the
sitting-room.
The frail, fatuous, tinkling sound was intensified. It was an air, the
air called “Rousseau’s Dream,” played by an old-fashioned musical box.
It stood on the round table in the middle of the room, where a space
had been cleared for it beside the aspidistra and the big Bible. Over
the gas-fire, Alfred Smith was sitting, looking strangely chilled and
old.
“Rousseau’s Dream” died away in a little blur of sound as the mechanism
ran down, and old Smith looked up.
“So you’ve come to see me. It’s kind of you. Sit down by the fire,
doctor, and warm yourself.”
Lucian complied with the invitation silently.
“Well, she’s gone down to the country, has she?”
“Yes. You know Cecil has enlisted?”
“I know. They’ll--they’ll send him out there, I suppose?”
“I believe so. He’ll have to go through his training first, of course.
Perhaps the whole thing will be over before he gets out there.”
“I hope not,” said the old man sombrely, “I hope not, doctor.”
The old pawnbroker seemed disinclined for conversation, and they sat in
silence on either side of the hearth.
At last the old man made a gesture. “You heard that old musical box of
mine, as you came in? He--the boy--used to be very fond of it, when he
was little. That time when he and his mother first stayed here after
they came back from abroad, he was ill once. And when he first came
downstairs I let him have the musical box for a treat, and Foxe’s ‘Book
of Martyrs’ to amuse him. The reason I started it playing just now, was
that my heart might be softened towards him. I thought if I could think
of him again as a little fellow, I might be better able to forgive him.
We are all of us conceived in iniquity, but there is something about a
child----”
He broke off.
“Do you remember Cecil Aviolet as a child?”
“Yes, very well indeed.”
“That it should have come to this!” said the old man.
His tone was one of amazement, rather than grief.
“A common thief.”
“_No!_” said Lucian.
“Yes, that’s all he was. A thief. How can you say he was anything else?
That cup was valued at thirty pounds, and he tried to steal the honour
and glory of it, too. The Aviolets tried to make out that he was mad,
didn’t they? But he wasn’t. I know that very well. He’s a thief and a
rogue.”
The doctor was silenced before the sheer weight of the old man’s
implacable conviction. Nothing would shake him. Where the Aviolets had
seen stark, incomprehensible insanity, where the law had seen wilful
depravity, where he himself saw a hundred thousand subtleties of
pathology, Uncle Alfred saw the crude fact of a theft.
He would never see anything else.
“It’s my duty to forgive as I hope to be forgiven,” he presently said,
very earnestly and loudly. “And I _will_ forgive. I will _not_ let the
sun go down upon my wrath. But it’s very hard: Father, forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.”
“Amen,” said Dr. Lucian.
Uncle Alfred nodded his head slowly. “I hope that may be taken as it
was meant,” he cryptically remarked. “How’s Rose?”
“She’s wonderful.”
“Rose is a good girl. She has her faults, but she’s a good girl. I’ve
been sorry for Rose, over this business. It wasn’t her fault, the boy
turning out like this. Don’t you let any one persuade her that it was,
either.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“You can help it, all right. She thinks a lot of you, doctor.”
The doctor gazed into the fire.
“I wish,” said Uncle Alfred with sudden fretfulness, “that you’d take
and marry her. I’ve never held with Paul on the subject of marriage. No
doubt you remember his epistle on the subject? It reads to me like the
writing of a disappointed man, you mark my words. People don’t lash out
in that way for nothing. Marriage was ordained by God, Paul or no Paul.”
“You haven’t married yourself, Mr. Smith.”
“My loss was another man’s gain,” said Mr. Smith austerely. “And so
you’ll find yours will be, my fine sir, if you don’t strike while the
iron’s hot. Do you want Rose?”
“Yes.”
“Then, in my opinion, it’s now or never. You’re the person she’s turned
to in all this--though I could wish she’d known better than to lean
upon an arm of flesh in the day of tribulation--and it’s my belief
that if you went to her now, she’d take you.”
“I wish to God I thought so too.”
“Thou shalt _not_ take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” said
Uncle Alfred.
He seemed cheered by his own admonitions, and presently Dr. Lucian rose
to leave him.
“Are you going to follow my advice?” the old man demanded inquisitively.
“Perhaps I shall. Anyway, I’m very grateful to you for the advice,
because I hope it means that you wish me success.”
“I’ve already told you that I wish you success,” Uncle Alfred remarked
testily, “but God helps those that help themselves.”
Dr. Lucian went away with the conviction strong upon him that civil
speeches were wasted on Mr. Smith.
Within the next two days came the letters that he had known would come.
He opened one from Rose, in her sprawling handwriting that yet
held character, and smiled a little, as he always did, at the
strange stilted phraseology that he knew her to evolve with so much
difficulty whenever she imposed upon herself the uncongenial task of
letter-writing.
My dear Maurice,
Ces has been sent off to the barracks and he’ll be in uniform by this
time.
They mean to be kind, here, but of course they don’t understand. Sir
Thomas says Cecil must come here for the leave they all get before
being sent off to fight. I think Ces wants to, really, because he’s
always been fond of Squires, and he asked me to stay on here for a
bit, till he goes out. I’ve told the hospital I’m not going back for
the present. They’ll understand, knowing what’s happened.
I haven’t seen Henrietta yet, but I’ll go soon, and I’ll write and
tell you how she is. I had a very nice letter from her.
It wouldn’t be any good me trying to thank you, dear Maurice, for all
you did. I can’t say what I feel about it, and never can. There never
was any one like you, and I’ll never forget it to my dying day. But I
can’t write things, as you know.
It isn’t too bad here. Ford and Diana aren’t here, thank goodness, and
I don’t mind anything except Ces, now.
Please go and see Uncle A. if not too busy. I expect he’s down on his
luck, and he likes you. Give him my love, and Felix Menebees too.
Yours ever,
Rose Aviolet.
The doctor carefully folded up the sheet of paper and put it into his
pocket-book before he opened the other letter.
It was from Cecil, dated from the barracks.
My dear Dr. Lucian,
You will have heard from my mother, and she will thank you better than
I can for all you’ve done for us both. Of course, I know that what you
did for me was for her sake.
I was sent here this morning. It’s all very strange at present, but
I’m thankful to be here, and all the men say we shall be sent to the
trenches almost at once. I hope we will be, and I hope that I shan’t
ever come back from there. This isn’t just swank, but true.
Very, very gratefully
Cecil Aviolet.
And after he had read that letter, the doctor very deliberately sat
down, took out his fountain pen and unscrewed it, and then and there
wrote his reply:
My dear Cecil,
Thanks for writing; it was very good of you to find time. I will do
everything I can for your mother, for her sake and for yours too,
while you’re away, and send you a line with news of her from time to
time.
I expect you’ve been through hell, in these last few weeks, and I wish
there was anything one could do to help, but it’s the isolation of
these things that makes them what they are. I’d like to add, if you
won’t think me impertinent, that from a purely professional point of
view I should say you’ve turned the corner. But it takes a good deal
of pluck to go on, after that, as you’re finding.
My sister asked me in her last letter to give you her love--a message
she’s chary with, as a rule, but you’re an old favourite of hers.
The doctor hesitated for some time over the subscription to his letter,
and finally, he wrote:
Your old friend,
Maurice Lucian.
A week later he was sent for to Ovington Street.
The small maid-servant who came for him was breathless. “Felix
Menebees, ’im as is the assistant, sent me,” she explained, obedient
to the fate which decreed that Felix should invariably be denied any
ceremonious prefix to his peculiar name. “The old gentleman, he don’t
know nothing about you being sent for.”
“Is he ill?”
“M’m,” she nodded hard.
“Do you know what’s the matter with him?”
“The influenza,” she glibly asserted.
“How long has he been bad?”
“About a week, but ’e didn’t let on.”
That Dr. Lucian could believe. He went to the familiar building over
the shop at once.
Felix Menebees was at the door, watching for him, and mysteriously
beckoned him inside.
“Thank you very much, Gladys. You can go downstairs,” he said to the
small servant, who obediently disappeared.
“Doctor, it’s like as if it had to be,” said Felix impressively, when
she was no longer within earshot.
“What?”
“More trouble for poor Mrs. Aviolet. You’d have thought she’d had
enough to bear without any more being put upon her. But I’m afraid the
governor is very ill.”
“Shall I go up?”
“As a friend, yes. As a physician, not on any account,” said Felix
earnestly.
“So that’s it, is it? I suppose he doesn’t know you’ve sent for me?”
“I wouldn’t have him know for the world.”
“Very well.”
Dr. Lucian went upstairs.
The pawnbroker was sitting at the round table in the middle of the
room, and he was reading in the very large Bible that had always lain
there.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” he observed to Dr. Lucian without preamble. “I
was going to send you a message.”
“I’m afraid you’re a sick man, Mr. Smith.”
“Maybe, maybe. But it’s your signature I want. I’ve made my will. I’ll
tell you what’s in it, if you like.”
“That’s not necessary, unless you wish it. Do you want me to sign it
now?”
“‘Work while it is day for the night cometh when no man can work.’
Unless I am greatly mistaken--and let me tell you that I am scarcely
ever mistaken--that night is not very far away now. Call the lad Felix,
and tell him to send the girl here. She can witness with you.”
The doctor obediently went to the head of the stairs, and after
delivering his message, delayed his return into the room until all
sounds resembling the careful extraction of papers from a secret place
by an aged and determined person had ceased.
An immense length of foolscap lay on the table, all but a strip of
which was covered with pink blotting paper.
“Here,” said Uncle Alfred to Gladys, who wrote a large, round-hand
signature, and went away again looking awed.
“Now you can order me to bed if you like,” said the old man
indifferently. “I doubt I shall ever rise from it again, but that boy
of poor Rose’s, and this war, between them, have done for me.”
After a very brief examination, Dr. Lucian spoke: “You’re quite right,
I’m going to order you into bed. And I want you to let me send round a
nurse, who’ll take all trouble off your hands and do just what you tell
her.”
“She’ll be the first one of her calling who ever did any such thing,
then,” Uncle Alfred disbelievingly remarked. “No, no, I don’t want
strange hussies at my bedside; I’ve got no money to throw away on that
sort of rubbish.”
“Then send for your niece.” The doctor neatly made the point at which
he had been aiming.
“That would be less expensive, by a great deal. Only her keep, though
Rose always did have a very hearty appetite. But she’s a good girl--I’m
fond of Rose. She can come if she likes. It’ll give her something to
think about, now the boy’s gone.”
The doctor wrote that night to Rose. When he came the following evening
to see his patient, she met him on the threshold of Uncle Alfred’s
room. He took her hand in silence, looking at the tiny lines round her
mouth that the last few weeks had traced there.
“Is he very bad?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Going to die?” Rose whispered. “He says himself that he won’t get well
again.”
“I’m afraid he won’t, my dear. Shall you be able to stay?”
“Oh, yes. Cecil and I can’t be together now, and I’d rather be here
than at Squires, though they’re kind enough in their way. If Ces is
sent abroad, he’ll get leave first, and I should have to be free for
that, but it won’t be yet.”
Lucian thought, although he did not say so, that she would be free
before that.
The old pawnbroker sank very gradually.
The day before his death he remarked to his niece: “Flowers are a very
foolish and extravagant custom. You will be so good as to put ‘No
flowers, by request.’”
Rose knew better than to protest at the implication. “Very well, Uncle
A.”
Presently he said: “You may tell your son that I am not the man to
allow the sun to go down upon my wrath. I know my duty as a Christian,
and I forgive him. But if you had brought him up in the fear of the
Lord, this would never have come to pass.”
That night a change came over him that even to Rose’s eyes was
unmistakable, and she sent a message to Lucian early in the following
day.
Alfred Smith, his face very grey, lay propped up against his pillows,
his fingers plucking at the sheet, his mouth oddly fallen in, and only
his shrewd, indomitable old eyes seeming strangely alive still.
“It’s getting very dark,” he said.
The clear light of morning filled the room.
“Now don’t go lighting the gas, Rose,” said Uncle Alfred sharply.
“That’s you all over, that is: always in a hurry. There’ll be no need
of the light yet awhile. Where’s Felix?”
“In the shop. Do you want him?”
“Certainly not. He’s there to look after the business, not to come
upstairs. But mind, there’s to be no philandering with young Millar, my
girl. I know you.”
Rose looked pitifully down at the shrunken form. Her strong white
fingers closed over his restless ones. Uncle Alfred looked down at
their joined hands with a faint, detached air of surprise.
“Is Lucian there?”
“Yes,” said the doctor, low and clearly.
“I am obliged to you for all the attention that you have shown me.
Human skill can avail little against ... against the Lord. The Lord----”
His voice wandered into a maze of garbled texts and devotional phrases.
But the last words that were wholly intelligible Uncle Alfred spoke
with his unfaltering gaze fixed upon Rose.
“You’ll find I’ve remembered you. But you can’t touch the capital.”
His tone was triumphant. “I’ve done well, with the Lord’s help, and a
good business training. There’s nothing like sound investments to build
upon--and unless the Lord build the house, how shall it stand?”
Then he shut his eyes, and, late in the day, passed imperceptibly from
sleep into the greater repose.
“He was always kind to Mother and me, in his way, and it meant more
coming from him, having always been on the near side, poor Uncle A.,”
said Rose, child-like, effortless tears running down her face.
But she wept no more when Felix Menebees, having taken his last leave
of his old employer, broke down pitifully, after a night and two days
spent upon his feet. Instead, she put a kettle on to the gas-ring and
boiled water and made tea and then prosaically said to the doctor and
to Felix:
“Let’s have tea. I’m sure it’s much the best thing we can do.”
“Let me....” said Felix incoherently. “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs.
Aviolet----”
“Why? I’m sure if any one is entitled to cry, Felix, it’s you, after
being on the go a whole night and all you’ve done in the day-time as
well. I cry myself, when I’m tired--I _roar_. I’m sure it does one good
sometimes,” said Mrs. Aviolet reflectively.
The funeral was a large one, with few relatives and personal
friends present, but many representatives of minor public bodies,
and charities. Young Millar had obtained leave for attendance, and
afterwards came back to Ovington Street with Rose and Felix.
It was found that Uncle Alfred’s will, a lengthy and elaborately worded
document, appointed Artie Millar as his successor in the pawnbroking
business, which was left to him outright, together with a capital sum
of three thousand pounds. Innumerable small legacies went to as many
mission societies, one thousand pounds to Felix Menebees, and Uncle
A.’s savings, amounting to nearly five thousand pounds, and invested
in gilt-edged securities, was charged with a life-interest for Rose’s
benefit, to revert eventually to the business.
“He’s cut Cecil out,” was Rose’s first thought.
Her next, inevitably, was that of the new freedom conferred upon her.
Both she and Lucian congratulated Felix Menebees.
“Thank you very much,” said the youth, in a dazed way. “It was a great
surprise to me. It was very good of him.”
Long afterwards he said to the doctor: “I wish Mr. Cecil had had it,
doctor--I do indeed.”
“I know what you mean, Felix, but you know Cecil Aviolet will be a rich
man one of these days. He’ll be glad that you’ve got some recognition
of your loyal service to the old man.”
“It’s a fortune, you know,” Felix said simply. “I’ve no parents, and
I’m not clever. I should never have had any money at all, except I
earned it, and I’m not clever or strong or educated, to be fit for
much.”
“It’s not too late, with this money behind you, to do something in the
way of training. What do you fancy?”
Felix gave a curious, shy smile. “I’m going to learn to drive a car,
first thing. I’ve arranged about the lessons already.”
“Why, Felix?”
“So as to get to the war. I want to drive a field ambulance.”
The doctor was silent from sheer astonishment.
“Me and Mr. Millar have talked it over. He was most kind. He might have
put on airs, in a manner of speaking, seeing as he’s the boss now, but
he didn’t at all. He has a relative who’s going to keep the business
going for him while he’s at the war, and he offered to make me acting
manager at once. It was most gratifying, doctor. But I said that, much
as I appreciated the compliment, I must beg to decline owing to other
calls. And then I told him what I’d planned. And he’s going to keep the
offer open against the time I come back again. Though, of course, as I
pointed out, I may never come back again at all, but die fighting my
country’s foe, the same as another.”
“Of course you must come back,” said Dr. Lucian vigorously. “We can’t
spare your sort, Felix. Good luck to you. Come and see me before you
go.”
When Felix Menebees eventually took advantage of the invitation he was
in blue uniform, with a Red Cross brassard. His face was radiant.
“We’re off on Monday, doctor. I can’t hardly believe in my own good
luck. Me that thought I should never have any adventures at all as
long as I lived, but only stand behind a counter all my days! Not that
I wouldn’t have done it gladly, for the old gentleman’s sake, and of
course for Mrs. Aviolet’s.”
“Have you seen her?”
The pallid face of Felix became even more suffused and transfigured.
“Doctor, if you’ll believe me, I wrote and told her how it was my great
wish to be allowed to say good-bye to her before I went, and she asked
me to take her out to luncheon! She did, indeed. Of course I know, it’s
all different when a chap’s in uniform, but I looked upon it, and I
always shall, as the very proudest moment of my life. And she’s going
to write to me. And I had a note from Mr. Cecil, doctor, to wish me
good luck--ever such a nice note. I wish I could have seen him again.”
“You may meet out there.”
“You’d laugh if you knew how often I’d planned getting some chance of
saving Mr. Cecil’s life under fire,” said Felix wistfully. “I’d like to
do something for _her_, you know. But the way I look at it, doctor, is
that I can be doing my job as though it was for her, like. I daresay
you’ve guessed, doctor, knowing both her and me as you do--I daresay
you’ve guessed,” said Felix Menebees with a _naïveté_ almost superb,
“that I think the whole world, and more, of Mrs. Aviolet.”
VIII
Both Lady Aviolet and Sir Thomas were insistent that Cecil should spend
his twenty-four hours’ leave before going to France, at Squires.
“People had better know that he’s coming here as--as usual,” Sir Thomas
said. “The lad’s going out to fight and there’s no need to remember
anything else.”
The violence of his wrath had subsided by degrees, with the passing
months.
“Certainly not,” his wife assented. “And we want to see him, too, Rose
my dear, and bid him Godspeed.”
With a generosity that extended far beyond the circumscribed limits
of their understanding, they tried to show that they had forgiven
him--were willing to give him another chance.
Cecil came to Squires.
He looked strong and sunburnt, and only his eyes betrayed the sickness
of the spirit within the young, healthy body.
His grandparents and Diana Aviolet treated him as usual, but he avoided
them as much as possible and spent all his moments with Rose. Ford and
he exchanged hardly a word--until seven o’clock on the last evening, an
hour before Cecil was due to drive to the junction and board his train.
They were in the large hall, and Rose, unwilling to waste an instant
of the few precious ones remaining now, was rapidly unpinning her hat
behind the heavy tapestry curtains, prepared to fling it out of sight
in the adjacent garden-room dear to Diana, sooner than spend time in
going upstairs.
As she stood with upraised arms, pushing her yellow hair away from her
forehead before the looking-glass on the wall, she heard Ford’s voice.
“So you’re off, and of course you come back with a commission--that’s
understood. But not _too_ many decorations, my boy, not _too_ many
laudatory inscriptions, I do beg, and--if you _must_ have them, do
manage something more artistically authenticated than your college
trophies, won’t you?”
In that second, a scarlet mist swam before Rose Aviolet’s eyes.
Through it, she saw the tapestry curtains torn apart by her own hand,
and Ford, in his most characteristic attitude, leaning against the high
mantelshelf on which stood the pieces of _famille verte_.
Almost simultaneously with the vision, she was driving her clenched
hand, with all her maddened strength behind it, into the middle of his
brown, elongated face, from which the sneer had not yet faded.
“God _damn_ you--and _damn_ you--and _damn_ you!” whispered Rose
Aviolet, her voice strangled in her throat.
There was a crash of splintering china as Ford reeled backwards and
as his shoulder swept the pieces of green china into the tiles of the
hearth.
“Mother!” screamed Cecil’s voice behind her.
The next moment Ford had recovered his balance and with one hand
gripped Rose’s elbow. With the other hand he pulled wildly at the cord
of his smashed _pince-nez_. Blood sprang where the glass had cut him
and his furious gestures smeared it all over his face.
Rose’s free arm swung back again and she raised it for another blow.
Ford gripped her wrist, and in an instant she was powerless.
His face, with amazed, furious eyes, was glaring into hers. “She’s
mad--mad--I could have her certified for this....”
“Mother!” cried Cecil’s voice again, on a high, sobbing note.
“She’s mad!” Ford repeated, between his teeth. “Hush--the servants. Get
her upstairs.... Ah-h--no, you don’t----”
Rose had wrenched furiously against his grasp.
“Get her upstairs, Cecil. Help me, you fool! She’s as strong as a
horse.... Take her feet!”
Rose, suddenly stock-still in his grasp, shuddered from head to foot.
She began to tremble violently.
“Take her feet!” Ford commanded.
A flicker passed across Rose’s face.
“By God, no!” shouted Cecil suddenly. “Let go of her arms. She’ll come
with me.”
Still in Ford’s grasp, Rose turned her head, her eyes, human and seeing
again, seeking Cecil’s.
With that sudden relaxation of tension she found herself, strangely,
able to smile at him; and quite suddenly, with the constricted gesture
that alone was possible to her with Ford’s hold still upon either arm,
she put out her hand to her son.
Half an hour later, incredibly, they had dinner as though nothing had
happened.
Ford had disappeared.
Servants of perfectly incurious aspect had swept up the broken china
and glass in the hall.
Diana and Sir Thomas and Lady Aviolet sat in the dining-room where Rose
and Cecil were waited upon with all the simplification of ritual that
the war had imposed upon the process of dining at Squires.
Diana and Lady Aviolet knitted.
They made spasmodic conversation.
“They say no one is allowed to write and say where they are, over
there. I daresay we shall be able to guess, though.”
“Don’t forget your letters will all have to go through the Censor’s
office, Cecil.”
“Great nonsense!” from Sir Thomas. “That’ll all stop directly you get
your commission, of course.”
“You ought to have a smooth crossing, I should say.”
“Like a mill-pond on a night like this.”
“Is your flask filled, Cecil?”
“Yes, grandmama.”
“If you find you’ve forgotten anything, or there’s any little thing you
want, we can send it, of course.”
“Thanks, Aunt Di.”
“Rose, my dear, you must really eat something. You’ve had nothing.
There’s no use in making yourself ill, you know. _That_ won’t help any
of us.”
Lady Aviolet anxiously pressed food upon her daughter-in-law.
“A glass of port, then?”
Rose shook her head.
“Wait a minute,” said Sir Thomas. He pulled himself up from his chair,
gouty and corpulent, and going to the sideboard, grasped one of the
decanters there with his big, shaking old hand, where the blue veins
stood out in knots.
“We’re going to drink the boy’s health before he goes, and--and to a
speedy and victorious return. From Berlin, eh, Cecil?”
He poured out the wine himself, grasping the backs of the chairs as he
went heavily and laboriously round the great mahogany table.
Then, regaining his own place, the old man drew himself up with
difficulty to his full height, and raised a brimming glass.
“Here’s to your very good health, Cecil, and a safe and speedy return.”
Lady Aviolet sipped at her glass, but the next moment she had raised
her handkerchief to her eyes.
“A safe and speedy return, Cecil,” echoed Diana, very white.
But Rose Aviolet lifted her glass with a steady hand and looked full at
Cecil, her brown eyes shining: “Here’s luck, Ces!”
Then she turned to Sir Thomas and said softly: “Thank you.”
The old man had spilt half the port from his glass on to the front of
his shirt, and he was gazing down at the spreading stain, grumbling and
muttering.
“Hand so infernally unsteady, now-a-days; no doing anything.”
“The carriage is at the door, m’Lady.”
“Oh, dear, where’s Ford?” cried Diana. “You must say good-bye to Uncle
Ford, Cecil.”
She pushed back her chair from the table, and Lady Aviolet rose too,
replacing the handkerchief somewhere in the rustling folds of her dress.
“Good-byes are always trying,” she said. Her choked voice, pathetic
in its striving after a dignified composure, gave utterance to the
excusatory _cliché_ almost automatically.
She moved into the hall.
“Plenty of time, but one must allow for the hill.”
Lady Aviolet had always, from the days of her first carriage and pair,
allowed for the hill.
It was part of the Squires tradition.
“I _must_ find Ford,” said Diana. She hurried upstairs.
Sir Thomas put out his hand to his grandson. “Good-bye, my boy. Good
luck to you. I--I wish I was going with you.”
Cecil wrung his grandfather’s hand. His big brown eyes, with their look
of dumb, helpless torment, sought the old man’s as though to convey a
message that could never be spoken.
“There, there,” said Sir Thomas. “Good lad, aren’t you? Do your best
and we’ll be proud of you yet.”
From an immense distance, across an impassable gulf, it was the answer
to the message.
“Good-bye,” said Cecil, in a half-whisper. He turned to his grandmother.
“God bless you,” said Lady Aviolet, crying.
She kissed him, and hurried back into the familiar, unemotional shelter
of the morning-room.
But Sir Thomas stood sturdily at the door while Cecil shook hands with
the two old servants and he remained there, looking after them as they
drove away. His chin dropped heavily on to his breast when at last he
turned indoors.
“They were decent, weren’t they?” said Cecil.
“Yes, very.”
“They don’t know about--about what happened in the hall, with Uncle
Ford?”
“No, not yet. And I shan’t be there when they do know, Ces. I’m going
to the Lucians. They won’t want me at Squires, with _him_ and Diana
there--besides, I couldn’t.”
Cecil was silent.
Presently he put his hand into hers, as he had so often done as a
little boy, and they sat there, without speaking, until the junction
was reached.
“Mummie, I’m so glad you’re going to the Lucians. May I ask you
something?”
“Anything.”
“Has Dr. Lucian asked you to marry him?”
“Yes, heaps of times,” said Rose, without elation as without
embarrassment.
“Couldn’t you?”
“Would you like me to?” she asked, surprised.
“Yes, I think I should, especially if it would make you happier. I
wouldn’t feel then--I wouldn’t feel so much as if it all depended on a
rotter like me--all your happiness.”
“Ces!”
Sobs tore at her throat.
The clear, prolonged whistle of the engine came to them shrilly. He put
his arms round her and laid his wet face against hers.
“I love you. I’ll try.”
He was gone.
Rose clung to the wooden barrier of the little station until long after
the last red spark from the vanishing train had died in the air.
“Home, Madam?”
The voice of the old man-servant was very patient and pitying, as
though he had spoken to her before, and understood why she had neither
heard, nor answered.
“I am going to Dr. Lucian’s house,” said Rose Aviolet.
A blinding fatigue possessed her. She discovered that her arms, where
Ford had gripped and held her, earlier in the evening, were aching and
bruised.
On the threshold of Henrietta Lucian’s room, she stumbled and nearly
fell.
“Rose, dear! Come in.”
Henrietta, hobbling stiffly to meet her, pushed her gently into a deep
chair, beside the low table where the friendly, homely lamplight shone.
“Don’t say anything--I know. He’s gone. Will you stay here to-night?”
“Yes,” said Rose.
Presently she murmured, “I’m not ever going back to Squires.”
Miss Lucian accepted it quietly.
She left Rose alone whilst a room was prepared for her, and then took
her upstairs, pulling herself up each step by the aid of the balusters.
“Oh, your poor knees! I forgot. Don’t climb the stairs,” Rose cried
suddenly.
“That’s all right,” said Miss Lucian stoically.
But it had broken the spell.
Rose smiled, thanked her, and broke into a flood of tears.
“That’s better,” said Henrietta, the tears in her own eyes. “Just let
me see you in bed, Rose, and then I’ll leave you alone in the dark.
It’s all one can do, I suppose.”
When she came downstairs again, she wrote a letter to her brother in
London.
“I don’t think Rose will go back to the Aviolets, though I don’t know
what happened, exactly. Probably something to do with Cecil. But when
this bad bit is over, she’ll want something to do, and I daresay you
can help her about it. Anyway, come, if you can.”
Dr. Lucian came.
It was characteristic of the fine and delicate relationship between
the brother and sister, that his first inquiry was for Henrietta’s own
increasingly frail health. Afterwards, he asked her about Rose.
“She’s heard from Cecil--one of those field post-cards. And she’s
talking about work, just as I said she would. She’ll ask you about it.”
“I’ve a suggestion to make to her.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Henrietta significantly.
If any number of implications lay between them in the silence that
ensued, neither chose to stress the knowledge of them by word or look.
“You’re wanting to go out there yourself, of course.”
“Blunt is going. He’s a younger man than I am, and wild to go. As a
matter of fact, we tossed for it. There’ll be work enough here, before
it’s over. And it’s in my own special line--neurology--that I think
the Government is going to make use of me.”
“In London, I suppose?”
“Principally.”
“Can you find work for Rose?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her soon. She’s so terribly sad, though she’s so brave.”
That Rose’s sadness was not to impair Rose’s bravery, Lucian felt more
certain than ever when she came to him downstairs. The valorous spirit
that he had always loved in her was undimmed by her many tears; only
the defiance of her early days was gone.
She told him what had happened in the hall at Squires before Cecil went
away.
“So you see, I shall never go back there. That’s the end, between them
and me, isn’t it? I can’t ever be sorry I did it, you know. Except
because of the _famille verte_. It was such glorious china, and I don’t
suppose they’ll ever replace it. Uncle A. said it was very hard to get
genuine pieces now-a-days. But one curious thing has happened.”
She paused.
“What is it?”
“I’ve had a letter from Diana. Ford _must_ have told her what I
did--his face looked as though he’d been fighting with the cat----”
Rose interpolated, with her habitual graceless colloquialism. “But I’ll
show you what she says.”
He took the letter, in the square, thick, blue-grey envelope. Diana’s
handwriting was as well-bred, unindividual, and unformed as was her
mentality.
My dear Rose,
Your things are all packed, and will be sent by the carrier to-morrow.
I hope you will let me know later on what your plans are. It has been
a dreadful time for you, I know, and I have felt so awfully sorry for
you, only it is so difficult to put things into words, and after all,
there isn’t really anything that one can _say_, is there? Only I do
want to say that I’ll do anything I can for you, any time, and I wish
we could have seen more of one another.
I was very sorry not to have said good-bye properly to Cecil, you must
please give him my love and best wishes when you write. This awful war!
Don’t worry about anything, as you’ve left Squires now and whatever
things have happened, this dreadful war makes everything else look
tiny. I hope you’ll sometimes write to me, though this letter doesn’t
need any answer.
If I get through my Red Cross exams all right, I shall try and go
abroad. I’ll let you know.
Yours affectionately,
Diana Aviolet.
“She must know what happened,” Rose repeated thoughtfully.
“Yes. Poor thing!”
Rose shuddered. “Poor thing, married to Ford! It’s nice of her to have
written, and to say that about Ces. I daresay,” said Rose gently, “that
she’s unhappier than I am.”
“She hasn’t your courage, my dear.” The doctor dismissed Diana Aviolet.
Rose’s brown eyes, that looked as though she had cried and cried,
sought his, and even now they were vivid and lambent, the eyes of a
woman who still lived her life, for joy or grief, with ardour.
“What am I going to do?” she asked him. “Henrietta said you would have
some work for me. Is it at the new place you’re going to start?”
“Yes. I’ll tell you about it, all there is to tell, later. But
meanwhile, Rose, there’s just this: that work is going to touch the
side of life that caught and broke Cecil. I want you to help me to help
people who, in one way or another, are like Cecil.”
“Thank you,” said Rose.
They were silent for a while, and then Rose said:
“Of course, you knew that was exactly what I should want most. You
always understand. You see, the worst part of it all to me, almost, is
to feel that I am partly responsible for Ces being what he is.”
Lucian frowned. “What, exactly, do you mean?”
Rose, cupping her face, now-a-days so innocent of rouge, in her hands,
looked earnestly at him from where she sat on the low window-seat.
“Of course, I wasn’t educated, and I was much too young when I married
Jim to know about eugenics and heredity and things,” she told him, “but
that doesn’t really make me less responsible, does it? The Aviolets
have always been all right--you’d expect them to be, of course--but
Lord only knows what the Smith blood may have done for my poor Ces.
You see, there wasn’t any tradition behind us, was there? Even Uncle
A. did things in business that I expect you’d think pretty fishy, from
an Aviolet point of view. And, somehow, Ces got born with just that
Aviolet instinct left out of him.”
Lucian, walking up and down the long room, came to a sudden standstill
before her. “Have they really made you believe that?”
“What?” She looked at him with wide eyes, as he resumed his pacing.
“Have they really made you believe that it’s the strain of your
blood in Cecil’s veins that’s made him as he is? My dear, don’t you
understand? It’s the Aviolet blood, not yours, that’s responsible.
They’re decadent--rotten ... look at Ford. It’s the way, with these
old, old families. They intermarry, always with other old, old
families, reproducing the same type again and again. You’ve seen the
picture of the Spanish ancestress, that Ford is so like? She was
probably the saving of them, in her day. They must have died out, or
become hopelessly degenerate, but for that one lapse of Sir Basil
Aviolet that brought a fresh stock. You can tell that it was a vigorous
strain--the physical type that’s persisted to this very day in Ford.
But she couldn’t do more than give him her physical characteristics,
and a twist to his mentality that’s Latin--nearly the lowest type of
Latin, mind you--a middle-class Spaniard. She couldn’t save him, or
any of them, altogether. Look at those two boys--Ford and Jim. Poor
Jim drank, and did other things as well--I needn’t tell _you_. But
Ford--Ford’s rotten all through. Decadent. Don’t you understand why
Ford’s hated you all along? It’s the hatred of the sick for the whole,
of the neurotic for the sane.
“Whatever they thought you, Rose, however short you fell of their
little, inherited standards, you were alive, all the time, and they
knew it. And the Aviolets, they’re dead. Dead limbs on a diseased tree.
Ford, poor devil, has the Spanish woman’s brain, such as it is, and
so he understands--he can see the difference between you and them.
The vital spark. You’ve got it, and they haven’t. They’ll never have
it any more. That girl that Ford married is healthy enough, a normal
woman, if she is a bit of a fool. But he hasn’t been able to give her a
child.”
“She may thank God for it, then,” Rose interposed swiftly, “if it’s as
bad as you say.”
“You’re right. She may thank God for it, poor thing. She couldn’t have
saved her child from the Aviolet taint, as you’re going to save yours,
Rose. It’s what he’s got from you that’s all along held Cecil back from
being what Ford is.”
A sound escaped her.
“Don’t you understand?” he asked again, very gently. “Ford understood.
In a way, Cecil _was_ Ford. It was the same for both of them.
Fundamentally, each of them was aware of that paralysis, that ghastly
moral decay, in himself. You and I, my dear, can hardly guess at the
meaning of that--the utter, deadly lack, not only of self-confidence,
but of self-respect, that it must have engendered. Do you remember that
line that you quoted to me once, a long time ago?
‘_And some push stumbling on, without a star._’
Don’t cry, Rose, my beautiful, don’t cry any more.”
He knelt beside her, and she wiped away the tears that blinded her and,
with the old familiar gesture, pushed the strands of yellow hair away
from her brow.
“Is that why Ford hated Cecil?” she asked.
“I think so. Ford saw himself in Cecil all the time. Cecil used to say
what wasn’t true so as to make himself believe in himself, so as to see
himself as a fine fellow. It wasn’t any one else he wanted to deceive,
really. But he had nothing to fall back upon, no inner security, and so
he tried to find the courage we all of us need to meet life with, by
an imaginary picture of himself as he longed to be. Oh, my God, Rose,
which of us hasn’t done it? Only that poor boy got lost, between the
two worlds of reality and pretence.”
The doctor paused, and then resumed very gently:
“Ford Aviolet knew exactly the same panic that poor Cecil knows,
I’m certain of it. He lacked the inner security, too. But he didn’t
take refuge in illusion--couldn’t perhaps. He had other methods of
reassuring himself. When he could sneer at, or bully, or hurt something
weaker than himself, it gave him a sense of power. He could see himself
as a fine fellow, then--the little self that grovelled within him from
very weakness. And in both of them, both Ford and Cecil, it was the
same taint of corruption, the decadence that came from the Aviolets.
Not from you, my dear. You must never think that any more. You’re
alive, as the Aviolet stock can never be alive again, and it’s what
you’ve given to your boy that’s going to pull him through.”
She was crying again, passionately, and he gripped both her hands and
held them tightly in his.
“Never give up hope, Rose. Whatever happens, I believe his soul will
come through. You saved that in the earliest days of all, when he was
little, once and for ever.”
“We did it together,” said Rose. “You’ve always been there, backing me,
ever since we first came to Squires, Ces and I, and they were so angry
because he took your little musical snuff-box. Do you remember?”
He nodded.
“How many years ago?”
“Nearly twelve years ago, Rose. And it’s over ten since I first asked
you to marry me.”
She gave him a long look, and the ghost of a smile, the shy, mirthful
smile that was also Cecil’s. “Well,” said Rose Aviolet, “I think you
need only ask me one more time.”
“Really, Rose?”
“Really.”
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” said Rose, drawing a long breath.
Still kneeling beside her, still holding both her hands in his, Lucian
looked her squarely in the eyes.
“Remember, you and I agreed long ago not to take any chances over this
thing. It’s going to mean too much to both of us. You’re--you’re not
acting on impulse, Rose?”
Into her face there flooded a colour that reminded him of the old days,
when Mrs. Jim Aviolet had horrified Squires by her liberal use of rouge.
But as there had been no reality of artifice about her then, so there
was no reservation now, in the candour of Rose’s surrender. Both had
risen to their feet, and their eyes met on a level.
“Rose.”
He took her into his arms, and it was with all the ardour of her
generous temperament that Rose Aviolet, giving herself at last, frankly
raised her mouth to his.
“Will you marry me at once, Rose?” he asked her presently. “And we’ll
start our work together.”
“Yes. Do you know, Ces wanted this to happen. He told me so, the night
he went away.”
“I’m glad,” said Dr. Lucian gently.
Her face thanked him. “Uncle A. would have been glad, too.”
“I think he would,” said the doctor. “He told me some time ago to go in
and win, only he didn’t put it that way.”
“I suppose he made it sound as if it had come bang out of the middle
of the Bible. He always did. He was very good to me, really, and I was
very fond of him. Besides, he gave mother a home.”
The doctor was silent, realizing the inevitable memories that would
always throng the faithful heart of Rose, and in which he could never
share. As though she had guessed at the faint pang that the thought
brought with it, her next words allayed it.
“I wish you’d known her. It’s so difficult to realize that there was
ever a time when you weren’t there. Ceylon, and my life with Jim,
is the only part that doesn’t seem real to me--not counting Ces, of
course. But sometimes, sitting sewing, or anything like that, I’ve
thought myself back into those old days over the shop, with mother,
when we shared the top bedroom. Sometimes I can hardly believe we’re
not there still. It’s funny.”
He listened, as she spoke her thoughts aloud, as Rose had always done.
“I’m glad you’ve got some work for me, and that it’s what you
said--helping you to help people who are like _him_.”
“You see, you’ll understand,” he said. “It’s not only that you won’t
condemn, as so many do. You’ll understand. And because you understand,
you’ll hope, and you’ll make them hope, too, believe that somehow,
somewhere, there’s light ahead. So that there’ll be some, my Rose,
who’ll no more ‘push stumbling on without a star.’ Will you make that
your work, till Cecil comes home again?”
“Till....” Rose Aviolet paused, and into her brown eyes came the
sweetest, strangest look that Lucian had ever seen there; a deep,
divided look, that told of inextinguishable love, of enduring grief, of
eternal, illimitable hope.
“If Cecil comes home again,” she said, courageous.
Transcriber’s Notes
Fixed minor punctuation errors. Inconsistencies in hyphenation have
been standardized.
Page 45: changed ‘coveteousness’ to ‘covetousness’.
Page 207: changed ‘so sure’ to ‘not so sure’.
Page 323: changed ‘episode’ to ‘episodes’.
Page 353: changed ‘her’ to ‘him’.
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