Chapter VI: Part I: A Reversion to Type (6)

“Good-bye, Mrs. Aviolet,” said Felix Menebees wistfully. “I hope the country will do Cecil a great deal of good.”

“Good-bye, Felix. Thank you for what you did that night he was ill. I’ll never forget it. I expect you’ll see us here one of these days again.”

Rose heartily shook the pale youth’s hand.

Her farewell to Artie Millar, in whom she had long ceased to be interested, was tepid by comparison. Uncle Alfred addressed his parting speech to his guests from the top of the stairs, where he had received them a fortnight earlier.

“Good-bye to you, Rose, good-bye to you, my little fellow. You are extremely fortunate in having one of the stately homes of England, as the poet calls them, thus thrown open to you. I feel sure,” said Uncle Alfred, with a doubting eye fixed upon his niece, “I feel _certain_ that you appreciate your good fortune to the full. And I am equally sure, my dear niece, if you will allow an old man to speak a word in season, that you will remember from Whom all blessings flow. Take no credit unto yourself for those things which are Cæsar’s. And remember that I am prepared to enter into an arrangement with you, Rose, at any time, should you wish to return here when your boy has gone to school.”

Rose quite understood that this was the nearest approach to a cordial invitation that Uncle Alfred would permit himself, and enough of his blood ran in her own veins for her to take the suggested “arrangement” in the matter-of-course spirit in which he proposed it.

She said, “Thanks very much indeed, Uncle,” in an affectionate way, kissed him resoundingly, and ran downstairs.

Cecil was in high spirits. “Shall I ride the pony again, Mummie, and will Uncle Ford let me carry the rabbits for him when he’s been shooting?”

“I daresay, darling.”

“Will Miss Wade be there?”

“Yes. Are you glad?”

“I’ll be able to tell her all about London,” said Cecil reflectively. “I don’t think she knows much about London, Mummie.”

As the train took them further away from the city, the air lightened, and they presently ran into clear autumn sunshine.

At the end of the journey, the carriage from Squires was awaiting them.

Their return, which Rose looked upon as a milestone, roused no excitement at Squires.

“How are you, my dear?” said Lady Aviolet placidly, and gently bumped Rose’s face with her own. She kissed her grandson with more cordiality, remarked that he was looking pale, and told him that Miss Wade was returning from her holiday the next day.

“And you’ll have to work hard at your lessons, Cecil, to make up for your time away.”

“I went to Madam Tussawds in London,” Cecil announced.

“Mme. _Tussaud_,” said Lady Aviolet.

“Mummie says Tussawd.”

“Don’t answer back, Cecil, it’s a bad habit. Ring the bell for the hot water, and we’ll have tea.”

The silver kettle and the hot scones, the cut bread-and-butter and the various cakes, seemed oddly elaborate after Ovington Street.

“What a good tea!” said little Cecil.

Neither Ford nor Sir Thomas was present.

“We have a piece of news for you, Rose,” her mother-in-law presently said, when Cecil had been sent away in Dawson’s charge to the nursery.

“I think I know already.”

“Indeed?”

“I met Lord Charlesbury yesterday, and he told me--about Ford, isn’t it?”

“Did you meet Laurence Charlesbury?”

“Yes. I had tea with him.”

To her own disgust, Rose suddenly heard her voice becoming loud and defiant.

“Oh, yes--how nice! Where did you meet?”

“In the Brompton Road, and we went to a place in Bond Street. He told me that Ford is engaged to be married.”

“Yes, my dear, to Diana. Sir Thomas and I are very pleased about it. Let me give you another cup of tea?”

“No, thanks. Do tell me how it all happened.”

Rose, however much she might dislike Ford, and however cheaply she might hold Diana, was quite incapable of being anything but thrilled and excited over every detail concerning an engagement.

“How it happened?” Lady Aviolet repeated with a certain blankness.

“When did he propose to her and where, and has he given her a ring yet?” Rose earnestly inquired.

Lady Aviolet laughed gently. “How very nice of you to be so much interested in them!”

Her voice held the intonation that generally accompanies the words, “How very foolish of you ...” but she looked at Rose with her usual bleakly kind obtuseness of gaze.

“I believe, since you want so much to hear details, that they settled it in the train, last Saturday. Ford had been to see a man on business, and on his way back he met Diana at the Junction. She was travelling home--with her maid, of course--from some visit or other, and they got into the same train.”

“Is she--are they--does she--are they very much in love?” Rose blurted out, intensely curious.

“They’ve known one another all their lives, you know. Ford has always been very devoted to her, and I’m sure she is to him. Diana is such a thoroughly nice girl.”

“Has he been in love with her long?”

“I really couldn’t tell you, my dear. One always felt that if Ford did ask any girl to marry him, it would probably be Diana. But two or three men have very much wanted to marry her, and I’ve sometimes been afraid that Ford might delay too long.”

“Have they _really_?”

Rose’s voice held all the astonishment that she invariably experienced at each allusion to the attractions of Miss Grierson-Amberly.

“She could have made a most excellent marriage the year she came out. But her mother, of course, would never have dreamt of persuading her in any way, though I believe she was disappointed at the time. But they’re delighted about this, now, and so all is very well.”

“When are they going to be married?”

“Well, that’s hardly settled yet. Diana is coming to stay here for a little while, we hope, next month, and no doubt they’ll arrange it then. I hope it may be some time in the spring or early summer.”

“I do love weddings,” said Rose emphatically.

“Do you, my dear?” Lady Aviolet’s voice, though amiable, displayed not the least interest in Rose’s gushing enthusiasms.

“There will be a good deal of business to be settled before their wedding takes place, quite apart from Diana’s preparations, and her trousseau and things. Of course, in a sense, this alters your little Cecil’s prospects, but I think you can trust Ford to see that his interests are considered in every possible way.”

“I only hope to goodness,” said Rose fervently, “that Ford and Diana will have half a dozen kids of their own.”

A certain quality of taken-abackness in the silence that ensued conveyed to Rose that her aspirations might be open to the accusation of a lack of delicacy.

With unwonted discretion, she did not endeavour to rectify the mistake by volubly explaining it.

She found, to her surprise, that her stay in London had the effect of rendering Squires more bearable to her. She appreciated anew the material comfort of the big, luxurious house, and was happy when she saw Cecil regaining his colour and his appetite.

Ford was very often away, sometimes in London on business connected with his marriage, and sometimes at Diana’s home on the other side of the county.

He received Rose’s congratulations, which were curt, with his habitual equanimity, and added, after thanking her:

“You need not be afraid that Cecil’s interests will be allowed to suffer by this, Rose.”

“I wasn’t.”

“His welfare still remains one of my first responsibilities,” said her brother-in-law suavely.

She made no answer.

A little later on, Diana Grierson-Amberly came to stay at Squires.

She was friendly to Rose, very kind to Cecil, deferentially affectionate to Sir Thomas and Lady Aviolet--but then she had been all of these things before. Equally, her manner towards Ford was almost unaltered.

Her nearest approach to an endearment was “My dear old boy,” and she displayed neither blush nor tremor at the mild, stereotyped jokes about engaged couples in which her future father-in-law occasionally indulged.

To Diana, it was evidently all relegated to the same class as that which she cheerfully and pleasantly hailed as “chaff.”

She seemed amused, if also faintly gratified, by Rose’s schoolgirl excitement.

“What’s your ring? Oh, it’s lovely! What an enormous diamond! Are diamonds your favourite stones?”

“Yes, I think they are. Ford had several down from Hunt’s for me to choose from. He’s given me a beautiful pendant too, but I shan’t wear that till I’m married.”

She uttered the words most matter-of-factly, and Rose remembered her own brief, delirious engagement to Jim, and the glamour of romance that had surrounded every token of their hastily plighted troth.

“But then,” she reflected, “I was much younger than Diana, and I’d never had a proposal before, and apparently she’s had dozens--God knows why, or what any one can see in her. And she’s known Ford all her life, and I’d only known Jim three weeks, and come to that, I’d have done better never to have set eyes on him--except for my Ces.”

But although her habit of facing facts refused to allow Rose the sentimental luxury of a slurred retrospect, she felt very certain that her short-lived and exceedingly ill-starred love-affair had given her such moments of bliss as Diana, in her decorous betrothal, had never known, and never would know. Diana, however, in place of these, had a number of very substantial satisfactions.

She was much absorbed in her trousseau, a great part of which was being made for her at one of the many charitable institutions in which Lady Aviolet was interested, and she received an enormous number of wedding presents, testifying to her own popularity as well as to the good-will of her friends and relations.

There was also, to occupy her, the question of her new home.

“Naturally, we want to live in the country and to stick to these parts,” said Diana.

“I suppose so.” Rose’s acquiescence was dubious.

“I don’t really think it would be a good plan to start at Squires, do you?”

“Rotten.”

“I’m very fond of Cousin Catherine, and all of them, and they’ve been perfectly sweet to me, always, but Mother says, and I must say I agree with her--that those arrangements are always rather a risk.”

“I should _think_ so.”

“I’ve got heaps of ideas for furnishing. You must help me choose the chintzes and things, won’t you?”

“I’d love to,” said Rose, gratified.

She was ready to take an eager interest in their selection, and in fact did so, but the violent blues and purples that she admired accorded ill with the blended art-shades preferred by Diana. They agreed better over the furniture, for Rose had imbibed from Uncle Alfred a genuine respect for what she termed “the antiques line” and Diana shared Ford’s fondness for picking up possible bargains in second-hand shops.

Once or twice Rose accompanied the bride-elect on such expeditions when Ford was not available. She felt herself to have done Diana a service by arguing so violently with the old proprietor of the curiosity-shop they visited that he at last parted with the Empire gilt mirror selected by Diana for a price that was very little above its intrinsic value.

Diana, however, seemed more embarrassed than obliged, and did not again invite Rose to shop with her.

It was finally arranged that the wedding should take place early in June, and Diana lost herself in a maze of letter-writing, consulting of catalogues, and trying-on of clothes.

She paid another visit to Squires three weeks before the date of her wedding, and declared her intention of having a thorough rest.

Rose thought her indeed looking tired and with something less than her usual well-bred security of manner.

“Isn’t all this preliminary fuss rather awful?” she one day abruptly inquired.

“How do you mean, Rose?”

Rose had no aptitude for definitions. “I know _I_ should hate it, that’s all,” she said vaguely. “But I was only engaged a week.”

“But why?” Diana inquired, politely puzzled.

“Oh, it all happened on board ship, and I had a row with the woman I was travelling with, and I didn’t know anybody out there, so Jim just had to fix things up as quickly as he possibly could, and we were married two days after we landed. A woman who’d been on the boat was kind to me, and had me to stay with her till the wedding----”

“But how dreadful for you--and you must have been so very young, too!”

“Seventeen, I was.”

“I’m very glad I wasn’t married at seventeen,” said Diana, with an unaccustomed wistfulness that robbed the words of any offensive intention. “I think one’s so romantic at seventeen, don’t you? I mean, one expects so much.”

“So one ought to, in marriage,” Rose declared stoutly. “I daresay you know that I made rather a hash of things myself, but I do believe one can be most frightfully happy in this world, whatever any one says. It _can_ be more glorious than one’s maddest dreams----”

She stopped short. Diana had attempted her usual rather meaningless little laugh, but had broken down half-way.

“What’s the matter?” said Rose. She put out her hand rather timidly, but Diana did not repulse it--rather did she appear to cling to the big, warm, enveloping grasp.

“Are you frightened?” asked Rose wonderingly.

“I’m tired and--and silly, I daresay. You see, it’s such a tremendous step in one’s life, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” said Rose energetically. “And it lasts for ever, too. At least, unless they die, like mine did, but you can’t marry on the off-chance of that, after all.”

“Oh, don’t!”

“I didn’t mean that I thought you meant that,” Rose explained, with habitual lucidity. “I suppose you wouldn’t be marrying him, unless you felt sure?”

“No,” said Diana faintly.

Rose looked at her. “You know, it’s still not too late, if you _don’t_ feel perfectly certain. I know how awful it would be, after all those good, expensive presents, and all the money that’s been spent on furnishing the house, too--but, if I were you, I’d chuck it all up now, sooner than do it when you don’t really feel like it. I don’t suppose I’d have married Jim, you know, if I’d been a bit older, but I did have a certain amount of run for my money, because I was in love with him--at first. Just enough to show me that if one really cared, and the man did too--it would simply be heaven.”

“That’s what they say in books.”

“Well, I suppose that the people who write the books _know_,” said Rose simply.

Diana began to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“I don’t know why I’m so silly and unlike myself. Of course, I’ve known him all my life, and we’ve always been fond of one another. It’s only that being married to a man is--is rather frightening, in a way, don’t you think?”

“It wouldn’t be, if you loved him.” Rose was staunch to her creed. “When I was a schoolgirl my mother used to tell me that when one really cared about a man, one cared with one’s body as well as one’s soul. And nothing to be ashamed of, either, she used to say.”

That Diana did not share Mrs. Smith’s opinion was evident. Her fair face and neck crimsoned.

“Oh, please----” she said hurriedly, and burst into tears.

“You poor kid! I’m awfully sorry--I didn’t mean to upset you!”

“It’s all right--I’ll go to my room. I don’t think I can be very well. Do forgive me for being so stupid.”

She hastened to the door, but Rose caught her hand again and said very earnestly:

“Look here, just half a minute. Listen: if you do really feel that you can’t carry on with this Ford business, will you tell me, and I swear I’ll stand all the racket for you--tell him myself, even if it’s only five minutes before he starts for the wedding--and--and----”

Diana wrenched her hand away. “I know you mean to be kind, but you mustn’t talk like that. I’m tired, and silly, and I’ve made you think all sorts of nonsense. Please, please forget it--and don’t let’s ever speak about it again.”

Her voice broke once more, and she hurried upstairs, leaving Rose staring blankly after her.

XI

The wedding duly took place in June.

Ford and Diana went to the Channel Islands, and Lady Aviolet, in a quiet, relentless manner, began to urge upon Rose once more the question of school for Cecil.

“He’s improving very much in every way, under Miss Wade, but it’s time he saw something of other boys. It is such a handicap to be an only child. I don’t say it’s urgent--but I do say, go and look at various places. There’s Hurst, now----”

It was not Lady Aviolet’s arguments that prevailed upon Rose at last, but the recollection of her conversation in London with Charlesbury, and--still more--a renewal of nursery tragedy.

Rose, persisting in a habit that was silently, but intensely, disapproved of by Miss Wade, and entering the nursery unexpectedly, discovered the governess in fits of spasmodic laughter before a paper that she held in her hand.

Cecil, his back turned to her, appeared to be absorbed in gazing out of the window. He did not turn round at his mother’s entrance. Rose’s intuition, far more developed than her reasoning powers, warned her of tension in the atmosphere.

“What’s up?”

“I think this will amuse you, Mrs. Aviolet,” tittered the governess.

She handed to Rose the paper, that bore a strange, pencilled outline, resembling a depressed fox rather than anything else, with the words, “This is Puge,” printed underneath in Cecil’s straggling round-hand.

“That is Cecil’s idea of poor Pug,” Miss Wade remarked, in a tone that exploited the comical inadequacy of the conception. “I tell him that he must learn the rules of drawing before he tries anything quite so ambitious as a portrait again.”

Rose gazed at the drawing. It was very poor, indeed, even for eight years old, but she experienced no particular amusement at the sight of it.

“Cecil’s like me--can’t draw a straight line,” she said. “Come here, lovey.”

She had felt dimly afraid that Cecil was resentful of Miss Wade’s tactless ridicule, but she was not prepared for the furious little face that he turned upon her.

“You’re not to look at my drawing--Miss Wade isn’t to look at my drawing!” he cried angrily. “I didn’t say she might look at it!”

The little boy made an ineffectual dash at the paper held above his grasp by the governess.

“Cecil! That’s not at all the way to speak. Just because you can’t stand a little chaff.”

“Don’t, Ces--stop that!” Rose caught hold of him.

“You’re _not_ to laugh at my drawing!” he shrieked.

“I’m not laughing at it. Be quiet this instant.” Rose gave him a hearty shaking, and Cecil burst into tears.

“Good gracious me, what a fuss about nothing! Miss Wade didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Rose rashly asserted.

“Cecil must learn to take a little friendly chaff good-humouredly,” said Miss Wade in a rather vicious-sounding voice. “I’ve noticed before that he’s very touchy--absurdly touchy. What will you do at school, I should like to know, Cecil? To fly out like that just because one doesn’t think everything that you do is perfect. Silly little boy!”

Cecil, who had been sobbing comparatively calmly after his mother’s brief and vigorous ministrations, was screaming, quivering, and stamping with renewed passion by the end of Miss Wade’s speech.

“I never said you might look at my picture! It isn’t fair--you’ve no right to--pig, pig--I hate you.... It _isn’t_ badly drawn; I drew it like that on purpose. I spelt ‘Pug’ wrong on purpose.... I----”

“Cecil, you know that’s not true----”

“Oh, shut up,” cried Rose with sudden anger, turning on the governess.

“Mrs. Aviolet!”

“Well, can’t you see he doesn’t know what he’s saying?”

But this was as disastrous as any inspiration of Miss Wade’s.

“I _do_ know what I’m saying.... It is true.... I drew it badly for fun.... I can draw much better than any one.... I can----”

The nursery door opened again and Lady Aviolet came in.

“What’s this disgraceful noise? I heard you from the garden, Cecil.”

“He’s a very naughty boy indeed, I’m sorry to say.”

Rose picked up the struggling, sobbing Cecil in her strong arms and carried him bodily into the next room, where she threw him on the bed.

“Don’t you stir from there, now,” she panted.

She stood for a moment by the door, and saw him rolling round, his head buried in the pillow, before she left him, closing the door behind her.

“I’ve never seen him like that before,” she helplessly declared.

“Neither have I,” Miss Wade admitted. “I’ve never thought him a passionate child. And all about nothing, as you might say!”

“Is this ridiculous drawing business the only thing that’s gone wrong? Was there really nothing else?” Rose demanded.

“Nothing.”

They looked at one another in a common dismay.

“I should like to hear the whole story,” said Lady Aviolet, determination evident in her deliberate selection of a chair for herself.

Miss Wade repeated the trivial episode, and its totally disproportionate climax.

“He was just angry because you laughed at him?”

“I suppose so. Not that I should think so much of that, Lady Aviolet, in a child that isn’t used to other children and has never learnt to give and take, or to tease and be teased--but the temper! The rage!! The expressions he used!!! And worst of all, the readiness to say what isn’t true. It’s the old, old failing, you know. Declaring that he’d done it badly on purpose, you know--his mother heard him.”

“He didn’t know what he was saying,” Rose repeated roughly.

“That makes it so much the worse, my dear,” her mother-in-law unexpectedly remarked. “It’s almost as though the poor child lied by instinct, not caring what nonsense he may be talking.”

“I thought him nearly cured, too,” said Miss Wade mournfully. “I’m afraid--I really am afraid, Lady Aviolet--that I’ve failed with Cecil. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to say such a thing of a pupil, but I do certainly feel that, except as regards mere book-learning, he’s made little or no progress since I’ve had him. The truth is, there have been too many interruptions--a divided authority--” she glanced resentfully at Cecil’s mother.

Rose, with her arms akimbo, stood staring back at her with brooding, lowering gaze.

“I’m sure it’s very honest of you, Miss Wade, to tell us what you feel, like that,” said Lady Aviolet. “It’s not your fault, I feel sure. It’s just what I’ve always said: Cecil is a spoilt little boy--yes, my dear Rose, he _is_--and school is what he requires. He doesn’t know how to stand being laughed at, he doesn’t speak the truth, and now he’s flying into these naughty rages. It’s more than time that he left home.”

“Sorry though I am to say it, I quite agree with you, Lady Aviolet. I should like to look out for another situation at the end of the month, if you please.”

Thus Miss Wade, very red, and with compressed lips.

“Well, well”--Lady Aviolet rose--“we’re in no hurry to settle that, Miss Wade, if you’re not. But I certainly do think, after this, that there can be no question about delaying school any longer. We shall see what Ford says.”

“Seeing what Ford said” was with Lady Aviolet the inevitable concomitant to any suggestion. Before he came home again, however, Rose took the law into her own hands.

She announced abruptly that she was going down to Hurst.

“But, my dear, Ford has already been there. He can tell you all about it.”

Why on earth couldn’t one be allowed to take any step without this eternal, relentless, and yet bloodless, opposition, Rose thought angrily.

“Well, I’m going just the same. I want to see it for myself.”

“Very well, my dear. I suppose you will make an appointment with the headmaster--I think his name is Lambert. I believe he has a particularly charming wife, who does a great deal for the boys.”

“Yes.”

“I will come with you, if you like. I should like to see the place.”

Rose looked at her mother-in-law with candid disapproval. “I’d rather not, thank you. I hope you won’t think me a pig,” she added with an effort.

Lady Aviolet did not say that she thought Rose a pig. She made an unsmiling gesture of submission.

“Just as you prefer. I shall get plenty of opportunities later on, I hope, when the little chap is settled there.”

“I thought Henrietta Lucian could come with me,” said Rose.

“The doctor’s sister? If you wish it, my dear, no doubt she will be quite ready to do so.”

“I like her very much,” said Mrs. Aviolet aggressively.

“Do you, my dear? Let me know when you want to go, so as not to clash with any plans. The Marchmonts are coming over to lunch one day next week, I hope.”

Rose gloomily undertook not to interfere with the visit of the Marchmonts, inexpressibly dull as she had always felt them to be. She made an appointment with the headmaster at Hurst, and obtained the companionship of Miss Lucian on her expedition. She was fond of Henrietta Lucian, both for a certain terse humour that was entirely lacking in the society of Squires, and for her matter-of-fact acceptance of little Cecil’s foible, and robust affection for him. Rose found it a relief to have her intention of visiting Hurst taken for granted, without reference to its entailing any future decision. She felt able to put into words a fact that had hitherto vexed her spirit almost too deeply for utterance.

“You know they’ve managed to make Ces perfectly wild to come to this place.”

Rose’s “they” was always unmistakable.

“It’s natural.”

“Of him? I know it is. But it makes it much harder for me to stick to what I’ve said about his not going.”

“Do you mean to stick to it, then?”

“Well, honestly, I don’t know. I’ll see what this blooming place is like. If you’d told me a year ago that I’d ever even think of school for him, after all I’ve said against it, I’d have called you no better than a liar. But I’ve had to own that I don’t seem to be making a great hand of keeping him away. I thought at first that if I had him to myself, it’d be better, but when we were in London, him and me, it wasn’t really a great success. He wasn’t well, for one thing, and he was always talking about the games and animals and things at Squires, poor lamb. And that governess, that Miss Wade, hasn’t done him any good, for all her rotten little books on education. She hasn’t cured him of telling fibs.”

“Poor little man!”

“Nothing seems to do him any good, that way. I know they’ve told him a whole lot about God, and how He hates lies, and always knows when people aren’t speaking the truth, and so on and so forth. I never could stuff him up with all that, myself, not knowing much about it, or caring either.”

“It might be an incentive to Cecil to speak the truth. I shouldn’t discourage any motive that might help him.”

“I wouldn’t for the world,” said Rose. “Only it doesn’t, you see. Make any difference, I mean. I can’t see that he cares a hang whether God minds his telling lies or not. I don’t believe he knows when he’s telling them.”

“It’s probably a bad habit, like any other. He’ll either grow out of it, or leave it off when he finds out for himself that the game isn’t worth the candle. School might teach him that, you know.”

Miss Lucian’s arguments might not be original, but Rose received them thankfully enough in her new perplexity.

The pleasant, spacious building called Hurst made a favourable impression on her, and she met Mr. Lambert without any of the repressed hostility that the mere mention of his name had always roused in her at Squires.

He was a tall, curly-haired man with an agreeable manner, much younger than Rose had expected him to be. She was naïvely pleased and flattered because he spoke to her almost at once of “Cecil,” as though he felt an interest in the boy sufficiently great to have remembered his name.

They were shown the class-rooms, dining-room, dormitories, gymnasium, the Chapel, and the playing-fields, and finally taken through a red baize door beyond which Mrs. Lambert had her drawing-room.

“Let me introduce my wife, Mrs. Aviolet and Miss Lucian.”

Mrs. Lambert also looked younger than Rose had expected her to look, and her round, freckled face was pretty and good-humoured, with big blue eyes glowing like dark jewels under an open forehead and curling brown hair.

She talked very freely and enthusiastically about the school, and her warmth of manner drew Rose towards her very strongly. She listened eagerly to Mrs. Lambert’s practical assurances.

“They really do get enough to eat, you know. I can so well understand any mother feeling dreadful about letting her boy go all by himself to a strange place--but truly, Mrs. Aviolet, I promise you they’re well looked after. My own little boy is in the school, you know. You shall see him, and then you can tell whether he’s a good advertisement.” Her gay, jolly laugh was justified by the appearance of the boy, a healthy, happy-looking specimen, who ran into the room, shook hands, and then burst out with some eager petition to his father.

“Stuff for marking the tennis-court? Of course you can, old chap. Come along and we’ll find it--if Mrs. Aviolet will excuse us? But I daresay you’d like a talk with my wife.”

Mrs. Lambert nodded. “Please do let’s, Mrs. Aviolet. I find it’s such a help with the boys if I can say that I know their mummies a little bit. And from the other point of view, too, of course it helps one to understand a boy if one has a talk with the parents.”

“May I come and see the tennis-court?” said Miss Lucian, and she rose and went out with Mr. Lambert and his son.

Mrs. Lambert sat silent for a moment, looking expectantly at Rose.

At last she said gently: “If you do settle to trust us with your boy, I do want you to feel happy about him. I’ll write to you myself every few days, just at first, and tell you how he’s settling down. It’s wonderful how quickly they get accustomed to it all. Is Cecil fond of games?”

“Yes, but he’s not good at them, yet.”

“That’s sure to come later. He’s an only child, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So’s mine. I do feel it’s a drawback to them, poor darlings, but at least it’s better for a boy than for a girl. They do get to school.”

Rose, preoccupied with a newly born impulse, according to her usual policy, made no effort to disguise her wandering attention.

Mrs. Lambert looked slightly perplexed.

“Won’t you ask me anything you like?” she said at last. “Please don’t think I shan’t understand. I shall, really. It always seems to me _so_ hard for the mothers.”

Rose roused herself suddenly, her decision taken at the same moment.

“You _are_ kind. I never imagined you’d be in the least like this. The fact is I’ve always been dead against school for Cecil, at all. He’s not like other children, in a way. I don’t mean that he’s _wanting_, you know,” she added hastily.

“I never supposed you did! But what is it, exactly?”

“He doesn’t speak the truth,” said Rose curtly.

There was a pause.

Then Mrs. Lambert nodded her head. Her expression, though graver, still remained sympathetic and full of optimistic cheerfulness.

“Well, that’s a bad fault, of course, and one’s always sorry to see it. But, of course, we’ve had boys like that before. It’s quite a common thing, in fact.”

“You won’t tell your husband, will you? It doesn’t seem fair to Cecil, somehow.”

“Very well. But I can’t help being glad you’ve told me, Mrs. Aviolet. It makes it so much easier to help the poor little fellow if one knows where the weak spot is. My husband will find it out, of course, but I promise not to tell him a word beforehand, though--honestly--I think it would be much the best thing if you’d tell him yourself.”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. I’ve been worried to death about the whole thing,” said Rose with violence. “Everybody talking as though Ces was the worst and most wicked child in England, just because his father married _me_.”

Mrs. Lambert ignored the embarrassing personality. “But heaps of children tell fibs--some of them go on till they’re quite big. I’ve known cases, myself----”

“Yes,” Rose said doubtfully. “It isn’t absolutely an unheard of thing, after all. And they do get cured, don’t they?”

“Oh, but of course. It’s just a fault, like any other. I’m sure it can be overcome, if one’s patient and hopeful. And especially in the case of such a young child as your Cecil.”

“And what do you think about school for him? Have you had boys like that before?”

“Yes,” declared Mrs. Lambert stoutly. “Lots of little boys tell stories, if they’re constitutionally timid, or if they’ve been left to servants too much. And Will--my husband--would never be hard on a boy, you know. He thoroughly disbelieves, and so do I, in frightening children.”

“What would he do, then, with a boy who didn’t speak the truth?”

“Well, I don’t ever interfere in matters of school discipline, you know, but I’m pretty sure he’d do every single thing to try and make it easy for the boy to own up. And if he’d actually told a lie, and Will had to punish him, he’d talk to him and tell him why it was. Even quite untruthful children cure themselves in a very short time if they’re put on their honour, and trusted, we’ve always found. It’s a horrid fault, but they outgrow it fairly young, as a rule.”

There was an almost casual assurance about Mrs. Lambert’s point of view that brought a sense of relief, a conviction of having monstrously exaggerated her problem, to Rose.

“They always _do_ outgrow it, in the end?”

Mrs. Lambert laughed a little, gently. “Oh, I think so, don’t you? The moral sense develops, later on ... and, besides, to put it on the lowest ground, they soon find that fibbing isn’t worth while. They always get found out, bless their hearts, most of them do it so badly!”

“Cecil’s stories are often very silly ones--things that no one could be taken in by, seriously.”

“That’s just it!” the schoolmaster’s wife declared briskly. “It shows they aren’t really deceitful, doesn’t it? And I do honestly think the school atmosphere is a thoroughly healthy one, you know. They spend a tremendous amount of time in the open air and they get keen about the games, and they really haven’t much time for naughtiness!”

In a vague way, that she did not seek to analyze, it comforted Rose to hear the reiteration of that trivial adjective, “naughty.”

In Mrs. Lambert’s smiling mouth, it seemed to denude Cecil’s characteristic of some sinister significance that Rose was not able to specify.

“I’ve been worried to death about him,” she again admitted. “Have you truly known boys like that before?”

“My dear Mrs. Aviolet--but of course! I think, between ourselves, that an exaggerated view is taken of that sort of thing. I don’t mean for a minute that truth isn’t the most important thing in the world--of course it is--but quite a lot of children really don’t seem to understand the value of truth while they’re quite little. It all comes later, and I do think boys are so good for one another in that way--the code of honour being so strict, you know, and so much _esprit de corps_ amongst themselves. We had a boy here once--quite a little fellow--with exactly your Cecil’s failing. As a matter of fact, he was half Portuguese, and we don’t take any foreigners at all now--this was before my husband had the school--so perhaps you couldn’t expect quite the same training.... But he was much worse than your little boy can possibly be, I’m sure. He was deceitful, poor little chap--what one could only describe as an artful child.”

“Cecil isn’t that,” Rose interjected. “Go on.”

“Well, he came very near to being expelled in disgrace. Two or three of the boys had been up to some mischief or other--something rather worse than usual--but they’d all have got off lightly if it hadn’t been that this little chap told lie upon lie, trying to cover up his own traces, you know, and incriminating others right and left. We only got at the truth after endless difficulty, when he’d betrayed himself by half a dozen contradictions. (After all, he was only eleven years old.) Well, to cut a long story short, he’d have been sent away if it hadn’t been for my husband. Will was his form-master, and he begged the Head to give him another chance, and said he’d be personally responsible for the boy’s future good behaviour. You understand, it was the lies he’d told that made one so anxious--not the mischief, which was nothing very bad in itself. His parents were in Brazil, and he was in charge of an uncle who was very strict, and altogether one felt dreadfully sorry for the boy. So he was allowed to stay on.”

“And it answered?” said Rose breathlessly.

“It answered. Of course, he went through a very rough time, poor little lad. You see, the other boys necessarily knew what had happened, more or less, and boys aren’t very merciful to that sort of thing, I’m afraid. They practically sent him to Coventry for the rest of the term--one couldn’t wonder, altogether. But it was the turning point in that boy’s life, I do honestly believe. Will kept an eye on him, and he told me it was piteous to see the poor child trying to redeem his character, and prove himself trustworthy. You see, it was a practical demonstration of the fact that a liar is something hateful to his fellow beings. It might not have been the very highest grounds for reformation, but, honestly, it succeeded where pretty nearly everything else had failed.”

“What happened to him afterwards?”

“He got a scholarship, went to Eton, and did extremely well. And I can answer for it, out of my personal knowledge, that even before he left Hurst, he’d overcome that tendency absolutely. He was as truthful as any other boy. Will talked the whole thing out with him in the end, and traced it to his father having frightened him with punishments and threats as a mere baby, till the poor child had absolutely got into the habit of fibbing whenever he thought any one was going to be angry with him. I’ve made a long story of it, I’m afraid, but that was far and away the worst case I’ve ever known, and I’m quite sure Cecil’s mere bad habit isn’t anything like that now, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. It’s more like a--a sort of trick, with Ces. Quite meaningless, sometimes--and silly. He isn’t what I’d call deceitful, a bit. I can’t explain----”

“But, Mrs. Aviolet, I don’t think you need explain any further. I understand--truly I do. I’ve had heaps of experience with boys, after all, and I know the kind of thing you mean quite well. Just silly story-telling--in fact, a bad habit, as I said. I know it must be worrying for you--dreadfully--but, really and truly, it isn’t very uncommon. He’ll get out of it. They all do.”

She spoke with breezy certainty.

“You’ve bucked me up,” said Rose simply. “Thank you very much. I daresay I’ve exaggerated the whole thing in my mind, a bit. Somehow I hadn’t realized that there was any one else with exactly the same trouble.”

“Why, of course there is! It’s a thing we’ve had to contend with again and again. And it always comes right in the end, Mrs. Aviolet.”

The obviously sincere assertion, delivered with Mrs. Lambert’s honest, friendly blue eyes fixed candidly upon Rose’s, brought a sudden warmth to her heart.

“Oh, you are kind! I am glad I’ve seen you,” she cried suddenly. “I’ve been so wretched about the whole thing, and not known what to do. They--my husband’s people--are determined that Ces ought to go through the usual mill--preparatory school, public school, university, and the rest of it. And I’m dead against it. At least I was. But I’m not so sure now about the preparatory school.”

Mrs. Lambert smiled. “Why not try it, as an experiment, and see how it answers before you decide about the rest?”

“That’s just what a great friend of mine said--Lord Charlesbury. You’ve got his boy here, and you know him, don’t you?”

“Yes, he’s charming, isn’t he? So is the boy.”

Easily enough, the schoolmaster’s wife shifted the conversation to less personal topics, Rose obediently following her lead.

They said not another word in direct relation to little Cecil until the moment when Rose and Miss Lucian went away.

Then Mrs. Aviolet squeezed the hand of her hostess in her strong, enveloping grasp and murmured haltingly:

“If he does go anywhere, it’ll be here. I simply can’t tell you what a relief it’s been, seeing you. I hadn’t any idea that you’d be so--_human_!”

Rose laughed slightly as she said it, with an apologetic note in her laughter, but her brown eyes were oddly misted over. Afterwards she said to Henrietta Lucian:

“I liked that woman--awfully. You don’t know how encouraging she was about Ces. So different to that fool of a Ford, talking about Ces being bullied into telling the truth and kicked into line. I tell you, Ford makes me sick.”

It was not the first time that Mrs. Aviolet had thus heartily apostrophized her absent brother-in-law, and it did not embarrass her to be left without a reply. Her invective, entirely without malice as it was, was always uttered in a tone that assumed complete acquiescence on the part of her hearer.

Henrietta Lucian showed no signs of anything else but acquiescence.

“Have you made up your mind?”

“I suppose I have, really. I don’t know that I shall let on to _them_, right away. They’re quite aggravating enough without me giving them the chance of saying ‘I told you so.’ But Ces isn’t getting any better with me, and that seems to dish the idea of my taking him away somewhere, and he’s wild to go to school--and I do believe Mrs. Lambert really would do him good.”

She paused for a moment, then spoke with an effort:

“I say, I don’t believe I ought to have said that about them saying ‘I told you so.’ God knows they’re trying enough, but I don’t believe they would mock at me for changing. The old people really do want what they think is best for Cecil, and that’s all they think of. Besides, they never have said ‘I told you so’--although goodness knows I’ve given them every opportunity, the number of times I’ve had to eat humble pie.”

“I see. No, I’m sure they wouldn’t say anything like ‘I told you so.’ For one thing,” Miss Lucian observed drily, “they might think it rather bad form.”

They both laughed.

The Aviolets did not say “I told you so” when Rose at last, in tones truculent rather than submissive, informed them that she approved of Hurst as a preparatory school for Cecil. They calmly and agreeably accepted the announcement as a matter of course.

“And what about yourself, my dear? Have you any plans?” amiably inquired Lady Aviolet. “Can you put up with the dullness of the country, while Cecil is away?”

“It isn’t so much the dullness----” began Rose, and then checked herself.

Lady Aviolet overlooked the obvious implication. “We hope, Sir Thomas and I, that you’ll still look upon this as your headquarters, and of course spend the holidays here with dear little Cecil.”

“Thank you,” said Rose gloomily.

To herself, she thought that the Aviolets could well afford to be gracious. She, the boy’s mother, had failed, and they were to be allowed their own way in the bringing up of Cecil.

XII

A few weeks after Cecil had been taken to Hurst by Ford Aviolet, who quietly appropriated the duty, Rose came to see Miss Lucian.

She had announced it to be a farewell visit before her return to Ovington Street.

“I couldn’t possibly go on slacking about at Squires, the way they all do,” she declared. “It was bad enough, even with Ces there, but it’s been perfectly awful since he went. Nothing but Pug and the garden, and the garden and Pug, till I’m sick of the sound of them both!”

“So you’re going to London?”

“Yes. I can help Uncle Alfred, I daresay, and I’m going to try and find some work. Of course, I shall come back to Squires in the holidays, so as to be with Ces. They’ve been very decent about that, I must say.”

“And don’t they mind your going away?”

“Not a bit, I shouldn’t think. I’m no asset to them,” Mrs. Aviolet declared frankly. “And they’ll get quite enough of me in the holidays.”

“Couldn’t you come here for a few days before you go?” said Miss Lucian.

Rose was like a joyfully surprised child, in her acceptance. “Oh, I’d love to! How kind of you to want me. You’ll hardly believe it, but I haven’t once been to stay with any one, except relations, since we got to England. I have some friends, people we’d known in Ceylon, retired, with a house at Bexhill, and they always used to say I must go and stay with them when I came home, but they never asked me, after all. I wrote to Mrs. Judd, too, from Squires, but she only wrote back and said how nice it must be for me to be with Jim’s people, and wasn’t Squires quite a show place, or some rot of that kind. Not a word about me going to them.”

“Then there was Lord Charlesbury. We were supposed to go and stay with him, last year, but his boy got measles, so we didn’t go. I was frightfully disappointed, but _they_ didn’t seem to care a bit. They never do, about anything.”

Henrietta Lucian shrugged her shoulders. “People are as they’re made, I suppose,” she said philosophically. “Our sort gets much more fun out of life than their sort--though it cuts both ways, too.”

“I’d rather Cecil was like me than like them,” said Rose with decision.

“I quite agree with you. Well, tell me about Cecil. How’s he getting on?”

Miss Lucian’s hearty interest in Cecil always roused in his mother all the passionate gratitude that the entirely unenthusiastic bestowal of material benefits from the Aviolets failed to evoke.

“I’ve had such nice letters from that kind Mrs. Lambert. She’s been so good about writing, and she says he’s getting on very well, and seems thoroughly well and happy. And his own letters say he’s happy, too.”

“I’m so glad!” Miss Lucian ejaculated, with the utmost sincerity.

“I suppose it’s much more fun for him to be with other boys. Only I wish he was better at games.”

“Isn’t he good at them?”

“No, not a bit, and the odd thing is that he really wants to be, dreadfully--and yet it’s the work of the world to get him to try.”

“He’s so active--I can’t imagine Cecil not good at games.”

Rose shook her head. “He won’t try,” she repeated. “He can’t throw a ball properly, and when we were first at Squires, his grandfather tried to show him how, but Ces just wouldn’t learn. I think he didn’t like to be seen doing it the wrong way, and so he wouldn’t ever do it at all. But to hear him talk, you’d think he was mad about cricket or anything like that, and ready to practise his bowling all day.”

“Perhaps he’ll be good at football.”

“Perhaps,” said Rose doubtfully. “Jim was good at games.”

“Yes, I remember. Far better than Ford ever was, but then Ford has always cared more for other things. He isn’t really very strong, physically, is he?”

“He looks weedy enough,” said Mrs. Aviolet contemptuously. “He never offered to teach Ces anything about games, and he never plays any himself, except tennis, and he always looks superior when people go on about golf and things--and yet he sneers at poor little Ces for being no good. It was partly him, I think, that made Ces so tiresome about not trying to learn.”

“That’ll be different, at school. He’ll do as the others do, and there are sure to be plenty of beginners. He won’t be afraid of being laughed at, when he isn’t the only one. Maurice thinks, you know, that it’s that fear of being laughed at that’s at the bottom of all Cecil’s troubles.”

“I know what you mean,” said Rose rather gloomily. “His story-telling. There hasn’t been a word about that, in any of Mrs. Lambert’s letters. I’m sure I hope there’ll never have to be.”

Mrs. Lambert, indeed, writing intimately of Cecil’s physical welfare, touched very little upon other subjects.

Rose had left Squires, and gone to pay her promised visit to the Lucians, before she received confirmation of the fear that had all the time been lurking at her heart.

At Squires, her farewells had been complicated by a slight tinge of remorse that she could make them no more cordial.

“Well, good-bye, my dear. We shall expect you for the holidays, remember. I don’t want to hurry you, but Tucker is at the door, and you must allow for the hill.”

Rose had heard that information bestowed, identically worded, upon every departing guest that she had ever seen at Squires.

“Good-bye. Thanks awfully for having had me for such ages--and Ces, too. I hope I haven’t seemed cross and beastly, very often, but----”

“My dear, please! (_Les domestiques!_) Ah, here’s Ford.”

“Good-bye, Ford.”

Rose’s tone had involuntarily altered, and her smile, not involuntarily, had vanished.

“Good-bye, Rose. If you want any help about Cecil, don’t hesitate to apply to me.”

Had there been deliberate mockery in his manner, as he made the suggestion? Rose, at least, had felt no doubt upon the point.

Her ejaculatory reply, a sound rather than a distinct syllable, had been the “Tchah!” habitual to Mrs. Smith, as a contemptuous retort, on the rare occasions when words had failed her.

She had shaken hands with Sir Thomas, presented the side of her face for a slight and meaningless contact with that of her mother-in-law, and had thankfully been driven away from the door.

With the Lucians she was at her ease, and very happy until a letter arrived from Mrs. Lambert.

Rose read it with a deepening flush upon her face, and then went straight to Maurice Lucian.

“Look here, you’ve always known about Ces, and you’ve always said, like I do, that there’s a sort of kink in him somewhere that makes him like he is. I’m going to consult you.”

The doctor, seated before his writing-table, swung round in his revolving chair and faced her without speaking. His kind face and profound, intelligent eyes seldom showed either surprise or apprehension. Nevertheless, his expression habitually altered slightly when he spoke to Rose Aviolet. She had come by unperceived degrees to count upon that all-but-imperceptible softening of glance, that greater gentleness in the manner of his speech.

“I want you to read this. It’s from Mrs. Lambert, the schoolmaster’s wife. I told her about Ces before he ever went there.”

The letter was dated from Hurst.

My dear Mrs. Aviolet,

Your boy is very well, and has quite escaped the prevailing cold, which so many of them have had. I am still keeping him on the Extract of Malt, but only as a precaution.

I promised you to write quite fully and frankly, so I will tell you that Cecil hasn’t been quite so bright lately, and we are a little bit afraid, my husband and I, that he has been in some trouble with the other boys. There was some little want of openness over a game that, I’m afraid, almost amounted to cheating, and as it isn’t quite the first time it’s happened with poor little Cecil, he caught it “hot and strong” from the other lads. It didn’t really come to my ears, or to Will’s, in any official way, and he has thought it best not to notice it, but he said that I might write to you.