Chapter III: Part I: A Reversion to Type (3)

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.