Chapter II: Part I: A Reversion to Type (2)

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.