Chapter X: Part II: Five Years Later (3)

“At the police station, I tell you--in a cell at the police station. They searched his rooms this morning--the police did--and they found these blasted cups and things all over the place. They arrested him then and there. They said he was green with funk--he would be, the little cad--and whimpered out at once that he’d stolen the things. God knows what he’s been doing. Got into a mess, I suppose, and thought he’d turn the stuff into cash somehow. I’d sooner he’d taken money, upon my soul I would, than gone and sneaked the pots and things that other decent fellows had won for straight riding and rowing and the rest of it. I’ll pay up--of course I will--I’d pay up ten times over for the sake of the name--but it’ll come out--it’s bound to.”

“Who is going to prosecute?”

“One of the shops--some silversmith’s. It seems there was a big silver thing that hadn’t even been paid for--one of the men had it up to look at it and order the inscription. And the young thief took it out of his room. That’s what put them on the track. Someone saw him, or suspected him, or something. Anyhow, the police came with a search warrant. They’d taken him away by the time I got here, and I tell you, Lucian, I’m glad of it. I couldn’t answer for myself.”

“Then you haven’t been to him yet?”

“Not I. That’s his poor mother’s job. You know what women are. She’ll go to him fast enough, and believe all the lies he may choose to tell her, just as she always has done.”

“How much does she know?”

“Nothing, practically. I telegraphed to her ‘Come at once to Cecil, very urgent.’ She’ll know the rest soon enough.”

The doctor inwardly cursed the cruelty of the unimaginative. He dared not think of the interpretations that Rose would have had time to put upon that summons during her journey.

“I could meet her at the station and tell her.”

“We don’t know what train she’s coming by,” said Sir Thomas helplessly.

“She’ll come by whatever train left London soonest after your telegram reached her,” said the doctor grimly.

“I’ve got a time-table here.” Sir Thomas fumbled interminably, pulled out a little paper book at last, and began to flutter the leaves.

The doctor took it out of his hands, consulted it, shut it to again, and took his hat.

“I’ve just time. I’ll meet the train, take her straight to see the boy, and then meet you here again.”

He reached the station as the train drew up at the platform.

He saw her at once, her tall figure swinging itself from the carriage before the train had stopped moving.

Staring at him, she gripped his arm in both hands and said in a voice, toneless, as though she had rehearsed the sentence over and over again:

“Is he dead? Don’t break it to me, but tell me at once.”

“He’s alive and well. But he’s got into trouble and they’ve arrested him for theft.”

“Nothing else? You swear you’re not keeping anything back--there isn’t anything else to tell me?”

“I swear it, Rose. There’s nothing else.”

Her grasp on his arm relaxed, and the set lines of her white face broke.

“Thank God you’re here,” said Rose Aviolet. “I wouldn’t have believed anybody else. Can you take me to Ces?”

“I’ve a taxi waiting.”

She listened to him in unbroken silence while he told her the little that he had learnt from Sir Thomas. He could see from the strained attitude in which she leant forward on the seat, her hands gripping the sides of it, that unconsciously her every muscle was tightened in an instinctive, desperate desire to speed their progress.

“Could they make it out as kleptomania?” she asked once.

“I doubt it. You see, they’d want medical evidence for that, and it would be very difficult to furnish.”

“Will he go to prison?”

“I don’t think so. Not if we can help it, I promise you. Sir Thomas will offer to make full restitution, of course, and we haven’t heard what Cecil’s got to say yet. There may be mitigating circumstances that we don’t yet know of.”

“Are they bound to--to try him?”

“I don’t know, but I’m afraid so. He’ll probably go before the magistrates, and they’ll remand him for a week. They’re sure to accept bail for him, all right, and he’ll be with you till--till his trial. We’ll get the very best legal advice, Rose, directly you’ve seen the boy. Don’t lose heart.”

He purposely kept the immediate practical issue before them both. Both knew that a darker abyss of thought lay in wait, but neither could envisage it yet.

At the police station, Lucian obtained leave from the Inspector-in-Charge for Mrs. Aviolet to see her son.

They were conducted along whitewashed passages, Rose, looking neither to right nor left of her, but walking with her head well up, gazing straight in front of her.

The doctor let her enter the cell alone, and followed the Inspector to the end of the passage, where the man paused.

“Are you going in, sir?”

“I don’t think so. Not unless they call me. What do you make of this business, Inspector?”

“Very sad for the young gentleman’s people, I’m afraid, sir,” said the official, non-committally.

“I’ve known the boy all his life, and his people before him. You know who they are, of course. He could have applied to them for money, if he’d been in difficulties.”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Has he got any excuse--any reason, for what he did?”

The man hesitated, looked at Lucian, and then spoke less guardedly. “It’s my opinion, sir, that young gentlemen in this sort of position don’t have any valid excuse to offer, unless it’s unsound mind. It isn’t the want of money makes them do it. When it’s money they’re after, we get a forgery or an embezzlement, something like that--not just theft. And there’s some very peculiar features about this case, too. Most peculiar.”

“What’s that?” asked Lucian sharply.

“Sir Thomas Aviolet hasn’t been told this. It’ll come out before the magistrates, of course, but we didn’t tell him this morning. In fact, the man who saw him didn’t rightly know about it. But it’s like this: some of those cups that was found in young Mr. Aviolet’s rooms had got inscriptions on them.”

The Inspector paused, as though expecting a comment, but the doctor, professionally impersonal, did not move a muscle.

“Inscriptions to say that they’d been won by C. J. Aviolet, racing, or the like, or presented to Cecil Aviolet, Esq. The big one, that came from the shop--the one valued at thirty pounds, sir--that one had nothing engraved on it. But there was a document found--a rather remarkable document.”

The Inspector drew out a note-book and read from it:

“_To Cecil Aviolet, Esq., in most grateful recognition of his daring achievements, splendid leadership, and indomitable courage and devotion to duty, this cup is presented in grateful admiration by the members of the School Cadet Corps._”

“There you are, sir. That was found in the handwriting of the accused, and no doubt it was meant to be engraved on the cup at his own expense, just as the other smaller cups had been engraved. There were some flowery inscriptions on the other ones, too, all about his prowess at games, and his pluck as a horseman, sir. He’d had them all engraved himself. Some of the cups he’d bought himself, and some of them he’d just taken from other people. In my opinion, the poor young gentleman’s insane.”

The man’s voice was unemotional, giving no hint of any but the most perfunctory compassion.

“No doubt his defence will take that line, sir.”

Lucian nodded. He dared not trust himself to speak.

“The lady’s signing to you, sir,” said the Inspector, and Lucian, in obedience to a gesture from Rose, standing at the door, went in.

Cecil, flushed, his eyes brilliant, leant against one of the whitewashed walls. His hands were in his pockets and he did not remove them at the doctor’s entrance.

Lucian, in an instant, took in the boy’s pose, the tense, hysterical excitement in his bearing, the fictitious defiance that was momentarily nerving him.

He turned to Rose.

“He denies the whole thing,” said Rose, her face ravaged.

“I can explain it all,” Cecil asseverated, wide eyes fixed upon his mother. “The whole thing was a put-up job, a sort of joke. I never thought of its ending like this, and frightening you, Mother. It’s a shame.”

Lucian took two steps forward. “Stop that, Cecil, it’s no good. Remember that you owned up when you were arrested.”

The boy winced at the word, as Lucian had expected.

“I didn’t know--I was frightened then,” he stammered. “Any one would have been frightened. I said the first thing that came into my head. Mother, you believe me, don’t you?”

Rose whitened pitifully at the appeal.

“Stop it, Cecil,” said the doctor again. “If you want to be helped out of this mess, you’ve got to be absolutely open. Be a man. You’ve made a bad mistake, but you can retrieve it, I hope and believe, if you’ll speak the whole truth. Would you rather have it out with me, or with your mother?”

“I’ve told my mother the truth,” said Cecil quietly. “I didn’t do what they think. I’m not a thief.”

“Ces!” wailed Rose. For the first time, tearing sobs shook her.

Dr. Lucian caught his breath. “You don’t understand, Cecil. They know you took the cups, and they know that you had them engraved, at your own expense, with laudatory inscriptions that you had done nothing whatever to deserve, and with imaginary accounts of exploits that you never performed.”

His intentional brutality had its effect.

The boy’s flimsy defence broke down, he turned white and hid his face against his arm.

“Oh, no, no!” said Rose under her breath, her imploring eyes on the doctor.

“My dear, I’m afraid it’s true,” he said steadily. “Ah----”

The boy had suddenly thrown himself on the ground, writhing and sobbing.

Rose was beside him in an instant, her arms round him, her own tears driven back.

“It’ll be all right, Ces. Don’t--don’t. I understand, truly I do. Don’t tell me any more.”

Cecil was screaming under his breath, horribly.

Rose, still kneeling on the stone floor, looked up at Lucian.

“Let him have it out,” the doctor said gently. “Call me, if you want me for anything.”

He stepped outside into the passage once more, closing the door behind him.

He was conscious of a veritable sickness of dismay. It seemed to him, momentarily, that it was himself that was invaded by overwhelming humiliation, that he was openly convicted of that ignoble attempted imposture.

The distant whirr of a telephone struck upon his hearing without penetrating to his consciousness, but in a few moments he was approached by a uniformed figure.

“Dr. Lucian?”

“Yes.”

“Sir Thomas Aviolet has rung up on the telephone, sir. He wishes to speak to you or to Mrs. Aviolet.”

“I’ll go.”

He was taken to a small waiting-room, where yet another uniformed official sat at a table writing, and where a telephone, with receiver unfastened, hung against the wall.

“Dr. Lucian speaking, Sir Thomas.”

The answering voice uttered painstaking shouts.

“I can’t hear. Could you speak lower?”

“... hate these instruments ... what? ... think where you’d got to ... What? Rose come yet...? at once ... solicitor ... best man in ... _what_?”

“Mrs. Aviolet is with the boy. Do you want me to take any message?”

“... can’t hear a word ... What? ... buzzing going on all the time ... tell Rose ... come here as quickly as possible ... solicitor ... no time to lose.”

“Tell Mrs. Aviolet to come and meet the solicitor who is advising you on the case? Is that right?”

“No time to lose ... hours finding you ...” shouted the angry, inarticulate voice.

“She shall come,” said the doctor, ringing off.

He did not, however, summon Rose, but waited until she came to find him.

“Sir Thomas has telephoned,” he told her. “He’s found a solicitor, the best man available probably. He wants you to come as soon as possible.”

“I’m ready now. They’ll let me come to Ces again.”

As they walked along the street, the doctor eyeing every taxi that passed, Rose said in a choked voice:

“It’s like a nightmare. I keep on thinking I shall wake up out of it all. At first, when you told me what it was, it seemed less awful than all the things I’d been imagining. You see, the telegram only said ‘come at once,’ so I didn’t know.... But prison--oh, it’s awful! Is Sir Thomas frightfully angry?”

“He was very angry when I saw him first, but he’ll have had time to cool down. There’s nothing to be gained by being angry, and I think by-and-bye he’ll see that. He’s sent for Ford.”

“Oh, _Ford_! What can he do, except jeer and sneer? He won’t even be angry. I believe Ces will go clean off his head, if Ford’s allowed near him.”

“Can you tell me anything about Cecil? Did he give you any sort of explanation at all?”

“He doesn’t deny it any more. That was the worst of all, almost, before you came in, when he kept on saying it was all a mistake, and he hadn’t done it, and wouldn’t I believe him. It was like when he was a little boy, and used to cheat at games, and look up at me with his great soft eyes, with his little hand actually on the counter that he’d moved, and say, ‘But I didn’t, Mummie. I didn’t touch it, truly.’”

She put her handkerchief to her mouth, stifling a sob.

“He can’t help it, you know. It isn’t the same for him as it is for other people--I know it isn’t. I can’t explain it, but I know he’s different, somehow. Jim was bad, and then I suppose marrying someone like me, who wasn’t the same class--Oh, stop that cab quickly!”

She had already signed to the driver.

“Listen, Rose. I want to ask you something. I don’t know, but I imagine, that this solicitor fellow will want to put up a defence of instability of mind. I don’t see what other line he can take. The theft is proved up to the hilt, and the boy will have to plead guilty. If they want medical testimony, are you prepared to hear me take up the line that Cecil is more or less mentally unbalanced?”

“But he’s not mad!”

“I know he isn’t. But the alternative, in the eyes of a jury, will be that he’s a criminal. That would mean--imprisonment.”

“Ces in prison!”

“I know. It would break him, utterly. We’ve got to keep him out of that, somehow.”

“Yes,” she said tonelessly.

“Did Cecil tell you anything? Could he say why he did it?”

“I asked him if it had anything to do with his writing to Uncle A. for money, and he said he wanted the money to pay for the--the silver trophies. He’s had some of them for weeks. I couldn’t ask him about the inscriptions--I _couldn’t_----”

“No, I see. You know, I think that was part of the same thing as the way he used to talk about imaginary adventures when he was a little fellow. I don’t think he wanted to deceive other people--only himself. He must have had those inscriptions done to try and convince himself that he was something that he wasn’t, and never could be.”

“What were they?” said Rose. “_No_--don’t tell me. I couldn’t bear it.”

Her voice was choked.

Presently she said: “I suppose, even if we--get him out of this--it’s the end of Cambridge and all that stuff, for Ces?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“We’d better go to the Colonies, he and I. There’s one thing, we can be together. He’s always happy with me, and he’s always loved me best,” she said proudly. “No thanks to them at Squires, either.”

“There’s a pretty considerable chance, Rose, of a job for him when he’s a very little older.”

“You mean the war?”

He nodded.

“I haven’t been able to realize about the war, yet,” she said thoughtfully, and by-and-bye added, with her curious directness: “I suppose a good many people might say that it would be the best thing for Cecil to be killed in the war, before he’d had time to make a worse hash of things.”

The drive appeared to have steadied her, and when the taxi stopped she got out at once, only saying earnestly to Lucian:

“Promise not to go. You won’t leave me?”

“I promise.”

They found Sir Thomas alone. Lucian noted with relief that he seemed to be calmer, as though his fury had spent itself in shouts and denunciations.

“How d’ye do, Rose. This is a dreadful business. I’ve had Calvert on the telephone--first-class man, very clever fellow, I’m told. We’ve got an appointment with him at his office in an hour’s time. Did you keep your cab?”

“Yes,” said the doctor. “It’ll wait. We’ve come from the police station, Sir Thomas.”

The old man groaned. “Sit down, Rose, you look done up,” he said not unkindly. “No wonder, either. What d’you make of this affair?”

Rose sank heavily into a chair. “Ces is broken up,” she said piteously.

“The young----” Sir Thomas caught himself up. “It’s a hard thing to say, perhaps, but I’m afraid he’s a hardened young scamp. Either that or he’s off his head. Upon my soul, I don’t know which is worst.”

The doctor thought rapidly.

Beyond the sweeping alternatives that he had just suggested, Sir Thomas was incapable of seeing. The insidious mergings of the psychical into the physical, the encroaching of the nervous system into the domain of moral control, would for ever remain utterly unapprehended by him. He would not only fail to understand; he would never, even dimly, perceive.

Lucian took his decision. Sir Thomas must be approached upon his own plane of reasonings. But he did not look at Rose as he spoke.

“Better face it, Sir Thomas. The boy has never been wholly normal. We shall have to tell this lawyer so.”

Sir Thomas emitted a sort of bark.

“What d’ye mean?”

“I know what he means,” said Rose, her face rigid. “I don’t suppose we’ve any of us forgotten all the trouble there’s been with Ces, one time and another, because he couldn’t speak the truth.”

Lucian inwardly paid passionate homage to her courage and her directness.

“But that’s nothing to do with his being wrong in the head,” said Sir Thomas, bewildered; “if he is.”

“It’s not far off it,” the doctor assured him grimly. “It would go a very long way towards proving that the boy has never possessed the average stability of mind.”

“I suppose you medical men understand your own jargon,” Sir Thomas ungraciously conceded. “But to a plain man of ordinary horse-sense, which is all I’ve ever pretended to be, a liar is a liar and a thief is a thief.”

“Even a so-called criminal may not be morally responsible for his own acts.”

“Then he’s a lunatic.”

Sir Thomas made his assertion with all the positiveness of essential ignorance and stupidity combined.

“It amounts to this,” Rose said suddenly, “either Ces will be proved a thief and sent to prison, or they’ll say he’s mad.”

“Good God!” Sir Thomas groaned. “I only hope he is mad. In fact, I’m inclined to think he must be.”

The doctor glanced swiftly at Rose, seeking to convey to her that Sir Thomas, under the obsession of Cecil’s insanity, would be rather less impracticable than when infuriated by the conviction of Cecil’s depravity. She nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Call me when it’s time to start. I’m going to telephone for a room at the hotel.”

The doctor let her go. He had something else to say to Sir Thomas Aviolet.

“I learnt an additional fact at the police station--rather a painful one, I’m afraid.”

“Everything about the whole damned business is painful. What was it?”

“One or two of the cups had been inscribed as having been won by poor Cecil for his successes at various games----”

“Never won a cup in his life. The boy’s a perfect fool at any kind of sport. Always has been.”

“Yes. And he hadn’t really won them. But he’d had them inscribed himself.”

“But they couldn’t have been,” Sir Thomas repeated obtusely. “He wasn’t any _good_ at games.”

“It was he who’d had them engraved at his own expense, Sir Thomas. He--he invented the inscriptions.”

“But what for?”

The old man’s utter lack of comprehension was baffling in its completeness.

The doctor told him of the document that the Inspector had read to him, and which they had thought to be the draft for an inscription on the big thirty-pound cup. Sir Thomas listened, his heavy face more and more deeply discoloured, his mouth half opened, his eyes startled and incredulous-looking.

At last he appeared to take in the meaning of the doctor’s carefully chosen words.

“But then--the feller’s mad. He paid for having his own name engraved on cups and things that he’d stolen--he went and _bought_ cups, and then had them engraved? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“Then that settles it,” said Sir Thomas simply. “He’s mad. It’s a ghastly thing but I suppose one ought to be thankful that he can’t be held responsible. God knows where he gets it from! Not the Aviolets, nor yet the Amberlys. I’ll go bail on that. The wretched feller’s mad.”

He was now as deeply convinced of Cecil’s madness as he had previously been convinced of his deliberate wickedness.

“We must get the lawyer man on to that,” he repeated, with an almost child-like pride in his own astuteness. “That’s the line for him to take, d’you see, Lucian? He must tell them the wretched boy’s mad. I--I’m even willing to undertake that he shall be placed under proper restraint. But, for God’s sake, don’t let his mother know that. You know what women are.”

The doctor could have groaned aloud.

Just before they were due to start for the solicitor’s office, Ford arrived.

His sallow face was a shade sallower than usual, his breathing very slightly hurried. He shook hands with his father, and said, “Ha, Lucian?” to the doctor with an interrogative inflexion and raised eyebrows.

“You’ve been quick,” grunted Sir Thomas. “How’s your mother?”

“Di telephoned me that she’s all right, only a bit shaken. Very anxious for news, of course.”

“There’s only one piece of news they can get, can’t they see that? The boy’ll be tried for theft. He’s in custody now.”

“What steps have you taken?” said Ford coolly.

“I’ve got an appointment now with a man called Calvert. I’m told he’s the best feller to go to.”

Sir Thomas seemed eager to convince his son that he had taken prompt and efficient action.

“We’d better go to him at once, then,” said Ford.

“There’s Rose----”

“Rose--is she here? What for?”

“Damn it, Ford, she’s the boy’s mother.”

“All the more reason she should keep out of it. She can’t do the slightest good, and we don’t want melodramatic scenes.”

Sir Thomas looked troubled and angry.

“Well, she’s here now, and behaved perfectly well, poor thing. She’s been to see him.”

“She has also got a full confession out of him,” Dr. Lucian interposed. “Until she’d been with him for a bit, the poor boy was persisting in senseless denials of the whole thing. He owned up, when he was with her.”

“I imagine that the hysterical confessions or denials of a person of Cecil’s mental calibre will hardly affect the point at issue,” said Ford drily.

Sir Thomas fastened upon the wording, rather than the meaning, of the speech.

“Mental, yes. That’s it, Ford. He’s deficient, you know. Not responsible. I saw directly that was the line to take.”

Rose came in.

There was an interchange of looks between her and Ford Aviolet. No more.

“Come along,” said Sir Thomas.

Ford, opening the door for his sister-in-law, nodded at Lucian.

“We’ll let you know if there’s anything to be done. Very much obliged to you, Lucian, and all that.”

Rose looked over her shoulder, her wide, scornful eyes passing over Ford and seeking Lucian only.

Walking past the stiff, narrow-chested figure at the door, he answered the wordless summons, and came.

VI

Rose, her hands tightly locked together, heard her son, a prisoner in the dock, plead Guilty on three counts to stealing goods to the total value of £60 from various college rooms.

She heard Maurice Lucian, his voice and his bearing alike schooled to professional impassivity, give testimony as to the boy’s instability of mind.

She heard Ford Aviolet, far less unmoved than the doctor, his slightly nasal voice low and indistinct, undertake on his father’s behalf that full restitution should be made, and the culprit “placed under proper restraint.”

At that Rose started forward, her hands clenched, but she made no sound.

She heard a clear, monotonous voice from the Bench:

“Have you anything to say, Aviolet?”

Cecil’s reply was inaudible.

There was a moment’s pause, and then the clear, monotonous voice was raised again.

“Your crime has been great, Aviolet, and of a very determined character. You have brought shame on to the old and honoured name of your family, and you cannot possibly plead either ignorance or poverty to excuse your actions. Every advantage of education and upbringing has been yours, and yet you have committed a dastardly theft for which in ordinary circumstances I should probably sentence you to three months’ imprisonment in the Second Division. Not content with theft, you have also had the almost incredible baseness and folly to try and pass yourself off as a subject for admiration on account of your skill and strength at games, your popularity with your fellows, and the like, by means of entirely fictitious inscriptions, composed by yourself, and engraved at your own expense on your stolen trophies. A more senseless, pointless, and idiotic fraud was never perpetrated, and I can only hope that your present humiliation and shame may cure you for ever of what seems to be a form of megalomania.

“For the sake of your unhappy relatives, Aviolet, who have undertaken to make the fullest restitution possible on your behalf, and because of the plea so earnestly put forward, that you are not wholly responsible for your actions, I am prepared to deal with you very leniently.

“You are young, and you have friends to help you. This is a moment when every man in England has a chance of proving his worth. My advice to you is to enlist at once. Are you prepared to do so, if I allow you to leave this Court a free man?”

Cecil raised his head for the first time.

Ford made a movement as though to intervene and Rose saw the doctor lean forward and grip him by the arm. In the lightning interval during which the eyes of the two men met, Cecil spoke:

“Yes, sir.”

The tears rushed to Rose’s eyes, blinding her.

“Very well. Try and redeem your character in the Army. You have been dealt with very mercifully, as I hope you fully realize, but you have also got to realize that you are now, to a certain extent, a marked man. If you fail to make good, if your name comes before the authorities again in the same capacity--then you need not hope for anything but the very strictest justice. And that, let me tell you, will be neither more nor less than prison.

“Now go, and I hope that your future record may wipe out your past.”

Cecil turned away, and at the same moment the doctor was beside Rose.

“This way----” He guided her.

“Ces?”

“Coming at once. You’ll want to go back to your rooms.”

“And pack up and leave the place for ever,” said Rose, recovering her wonted energy.

“It’s largely thanks to you, Lucian, that the boy is free to come with us,” said Ford’s cool tones behind them. “Frankly, I thought this morning that we should leave this place without him.”

“I suppose it would have been possible, in all good faith, to condemn Cecil to prison, but if actions were to be judged by results--which, mercifully, they are not--then it would be a poor look-out for human justice. Prison would be just about the surest way in the world to break the boy for good and all. Thank the Lord, that fellow had the sense to see it.”

“Better luck than the boy deserved,” muttered Ford between his teeth. “Will you look after my sister-in-law, while I go and send a telegram to them at home? I’ll join you at the hotel.”

“Don’t bother,” said Rose, suddenly facing round. “We can manage, Ces and I. There’s nothing to be done, after all, except pack up and go away, and I did most of the packing last night.”

“I’m afraid the situation can hardly be dealt with so off-handedly, Rose,” said her brother-in-law. “The present relief is enormous, I grant you, but we still have to consider the future. I’ve no doubt my father will wish to meet us in London and discuss what is to be done next.”

Rose was neither hearing nor heeding. Her eyes were fixed on Cecil, advancing towards them.

The boy’s face was white and blind, horrible to see.

Lucian took his hand and wrung it.

“It’s over now, Cecil. There’s a car waiting. Take your mother to the hotel, and I order you, as your medical adviser, to have a stiff drink directly you arrive there. Rose, you’ll see he carries that out. We’ll meet at the station in time for the two o’clock train to town.”

Rose nodded.

She and Cecil went away together.

Ford Aviolet, who had viewed Maurice Lucian’s initiative with his habitual faint air of supercilious detachment, seemed nevertheless to be waiting, indifferently rather than of conscious volition, for the doctor’s next move.

“Are you going to find a telegraph office?” said Lucian abruptly.

“I suppose so. If you’ve nothing else to do, perhaps you’ll come my way. Between us, we may think of some pretty way of wording the pleasing intelligence that my nephew has escaped the three months’ imprisonment that he so richly deserves, and is to be hustled into the uniform of a private soldier. No doubt the news will be extremely gratifying to the local postal authorities at home.”

“Nobody is thinking of anything but this war, here or anywhere else.”

“Are you going abroad?”

“No,” said the doctor baldly.

He felt no inclination whatever to put before Ford Aviolet his reasons for the decision.

“I should have thought that a knight-errant like yourself would be----”

Lucian stopped dead. “Look here, I make all allowance for the strain you’ve been under over this wretched business, and the rest of it. But one word more of this, and I swear I’ll kick you into the gutter.”

“You may try,” said Ford Aviolet contemptuously.

The doctor looked at him, and laughed shortly, regaining his temper.

“That was an uncivilized speech of mine, I’ll admit. It’s the Jingo atmosphere we’re living in, now-a-days.”

“You know I’m supposed to have an unsound heart? Half a dozen damned doctors have refused me already,” said Ford bitterly.

The doctor understood why he had been asked whether he meant to go abroad.

“Bad luck!”

“A friend of mine has sworn to get me a job in the War Office, but that isn’t what one wants. The whole thing is a farce--boys like this young rotter of a nephew of mine sent out, and men with experience--fellows who went through the Boer war, like myself--left at home.”

“H’m!”

The sound emitted by the doctor was intended to convey a certain sympathy, but for the life of him he could have found no genial words. Nothing surprised him more than the unexplained tendency that Ford Aviolet had at intervals evinced for years, to expose his soul in short, embittered glimpses to a man by whom he certainly knew himself to be disliked. It threw light, the doctor cynically reflected, on the limitations of Ford Aviolet’s habitual surroundings.

At the post-office, Ford savagely chewed at the end of his silver pencil. Finally he scribbled a message, and handed it silently to the doctor. It was addressed to Lady Aviolet.

“Cecil with us; joining father in London to-day; probably return home to-morrow.”

“I should add two words to that: ‘All well.’”

“I object to _clichés_,” coldly said Ford. “Nor do I consider that such an expression would be in any way justified by the circumstances.”

Lucian shrugged his shoulders.

Forded handed in his telegram, together with a still more laconically worded one to his father, and the doctor solaced himself with a small retaliation.

He wrote out a lengthy telegram, pushed it across the counter without showing it to Ford, and only remarked, as they left the office:

“I know my sister will want to know what’s happened, and I have not your scruples in regard to _clichés_ in the present case.”

Lucian never forgot that afternoon’s journey to London. Cecil, dazed and white and speechless, sat in a corner seat of the railway carriage, his hands hanging loosely between his knees, his eyes, with the look in them that the doctor had most dreaded to see there, fixed vacantly on space.

Rose, who looked utterly tired out, seemed unable to sit still and moved restlessly in her seat, first opening the window and then shutting it, shifting her dressing-bag from one place to another, and occasionally pulling articles down from the rack apparently for the mere purpose of replacing them.

No one spoke, but the atmosphere was charged with misery until the very air seemed to rock with it, and beneath all, the doctor, at least, was acutely conscious of the steady, relentless undercurrent of cold, passionless hostility and contempt that was soundlessly sent forth by Ford Aviolet. He thought that Rose, too, was aware of it.

At the terminus it was raining, and very cold. Cecil’s teeth were chattering. It seemed the crowning touch to the utter forlornness encompassing him.

“A bag is missing,” said Ford. “Mine, of course. It’s of no account, but I shall have to make the usual fuss. Curse these fellows.”

His face was livid, and he looked angrier than Lucian had ever seen him.

“We’d better go on,” said Rose drearily.

Ford turned round upon her and very nearly snarled: “No! Wait where you are. I shall be back presently.”

Hardly had he turned his back before the doctor felt Rose’s clutch upon his arm.

“Get a taxi,” she urged breathlessly. “Never mind _him_. He can go to Sir Thomas. I shall take Ces home to Ovington Street. He can’t see his grandfather now, he isn’t fit for it. You can _see_ he isn’t fit for it.”

Her eyes pleaded with him and commanded him.

“Wait a minute. Hadn’t he better get it over, Rose, my dear? He’ll have to see his grandfather sooner or later, and it’s due to the old man, too. Ask the boy what he thinks, Rose.”

She stamped her foot with impatience, her great eyes blazing.

“Can’t you see for yourself that he’s stunned? He doesn’t know what’s happening to him, hardly.”

“I know,” said the doctor gently. “And that’s one reason why it would be better for him to go to Sir Thomas now. There’s bound to be a reaction, later on. Let him get it over.”

She flung herself round, but when she spoke to Cecil her voice was full and soft and gentle.

“Shall we go to the Langham now, to meet Grandpapa, Ces, or would you rather come to Uncle A.’s? You needn’t see any one there unless you want to.”

The boy’s bewildered eyes stared piteously, first at his mother and then at Lucian.

“I’m so cold,” he stammered. “Can’t we go where there’s a fire?”

“_I told you so_,” Rose flashed at the doctor.

“Cecil,” said the doctor, “will you come and meet your grandfather at once? It’ll be over then, and I don’t fancy it will be very bad. He wants to settle with you what had better be done next.”

Very unexpectedly, Cecil suddenly rallied.

“I’m going to the recruiting office to-morrow,” he suddenly said.

Rose whitened.

At the same moment they saw Ford’s tall figure making its way towards them through the groups of people and the hurrying porters on the platform. His lean, brown face was pinched with cold and drawn with vexation. He was speaking in short, clipped sentences to an argumentative station official at his side.

It was almost incredible that the tiny incident of the mislaid portmanteau should so immensely add to the wretchedness of them all.

To Ford, it was quite evidently the last and culminating exasperation, destroying his habitual control of manner and temper.

The official resented his satirical comments, and was baffling in meaningless and unhelpful replies.

Cecil shivered and shivered.

“Get a cab, for the Lord’s sake, and put us into it,” scolded Rose.

The doctor silently complied.

“Are you coming with us?” she demanded fiercely.

“Do you want me to come or not?” he retorted with equal abruptness.

Cecil looked out from the gloomy depths of the closed taxi.

“Come,” he said.

Ford, with a last, cutting observation to the contemptuous-looking official, directed the driver to the Langham Hotel, and took his place beside Cecil.

They drove in absolute silence through streets that seemed singularly cheerless, with rain beating wildly against the windows, so that they were obliged to close them both.

The warmth and artificial lighting in the big hotel came as a sudden, intense relief.

“Sir Thomas Aviolet?”

“Yes, sir, in a private sitting-room. This way, if you please.”

“Don’t leave me,” Rose whispered to Lucian. “I’m sorry I was so cross at the station.”

Sir Thomas, waiting for them in the ugly, airless room, was not alone. Lady Aviolet sat by the fireless grate, her knitting in her hands.

“Was your train late?” said Sir Thomas, seeming to find an outlet for nervousness in partly-simulated anger.

“How do you do, Rose my dear?” said Lady Aviolet.

She very gently bumped her face against her daughter-in-law’s, in bestowal of her usual perfunctory greeting.

Then she shook Cecil’s hand, without looking at him.

“Ford, my dear boy, how cold you look! Shall I have the fire lit?”

Lady Aviolet rang the bell, ordered the lighting of the fire, and asked that tea should be brought.

Lucian noticed the heavy lines beneath her eyes, the sodden pallor of her face, and the weary, aged look that told of sleepless nights and corroding grief. It was astonishing to him to feel the tense apprehension, the seething emotions of the others, steadied by the mere weight of her composure.

Even Sir Thomas’s bluster died away into a muttered inquiry as to the delay in arrival.

“My luggage has been lost--a gross piece of carelessness. It was properly labelled, and I saw it put in myself. Either it was deliberately taken out again--stolen, in fact--or someone was allowed to walk away with it on arrival. In any case, I shall hold the railway company responsible, as I told them.”

“Scandalous mismanagement,” said Sir Thomas, making use of a phrase which Lucian had very often heard him apply to the minor inconveniences of life.

“Tea,” said Lady Aviolet.

She sat at the round table in the middle of the small room and poured out the tea, and they all, almost automatically, drew chairs to the table and sat down also.

It was Lady Aviolet who held emotion at bay. She made inquiries regarding milk and sugar, and complained gently of the blackness of hotel tea, and desired Ford to ring the bell for more hot water.

“They never bring a proper supply in these places--never.”

She asked about the journey, carefully addressing herself to the doctor.

“It’s turned so very chilly, all of a sudden. You must have found it quite cold.”

“Yes.”

The doctor glanced at Cecil, who still looked chilled through and through.

“Drink some hot tea, Cecil,” said his grandmother.

Her voice was always so utterly inexpressive that it was impossible to say whether or not it denoted constraint, but again she avoided looking at the boy.

“Look here, Ford, I want to know----” began Sir Thomas.

“Just one moment, dear. I want a piece of plain bread and butter. This sort of cake is always poisonous. Dear me, how glad I shall be to get home again!”

Lucian seconded her evident desire to gain time.

“When did you come up from Squires?”

“Yesterday.” She lowered her voice. “Sir Thomas’s letters made me rather uneasy about him, and I thought I should prefer to be with him. He has felt the--the anxiety most terribly.”

“The worst of it may be safely called over, now.”

“I suppose so,” said Lady Aviolet, her face in no way relaxing.

The voice of Sir Thomas, stubborn and inflexible, broke out loudly from the other side of the table.

“Now look here, Catherine, it’s no good shirking the point; we’ve got to settle what’s to be done next. Cecil, I don’t want to say more to you than I need. I daresay--and I may say I--I _hope_--you’ve gone through something already, in the way of shame and sorrow, for the disgrace you’ve brought upon yourself and upon us all.”

“He was leniently dealt with,” said Ford. “We owe a good deal to Lucian’s evidence, in one sense. I can go into that with you some other time, Father, if you prefer it.” He glanced at Rose.

“But the gist of the matter is this. Cecil, not to put too fine a point upon it, ought to have got six months in prison. Instead of that he was told to go to the nearest recruiting office and enlist. The advice was seasoned with some very pungent observations which I will spare you.”

“Good Lord,” groaned Sir Thomas.

“I presume you haven’t got my telegram, Mother,” said Ford. “I sent one to Squires, having no idea you were up here.”

“Diana will have opened it. She’s there, you know. She waited on, most kindly, to see what the plans would be.”

“You’ll be able to go home to-morrow.”

“Yes,” said Lady Aviolet doubtfully. “If no one will have any more tea, shall we ring and have the things taken away?”

With each postponement of the inevitable crisis, Lucian saw that all of them, except perhaps Cecil, were regaining a measure of poise. Lady Aviolet, indeed, had never lost hers. The avoidance of display had, with her, become an instinct.

The table was cleared, and the formal circle of chairs broken up. Cecil was next to his mother, staring into the fire, and the tragic, fatigued gaze of Rose never left him.

“Now, Cecil, you’ve got out of this--this mess, a good deal more easily than you had any right to expect. But I don’t want you to think that the whole thing ends here. We’ve a right to some sort of explanation, and if you’ve anything to say, now’s your time,” said Sir Thomas.

Cecil, for the first time, looked up, and his white lips moved, but he said nothing at all.

“What made you do it?” asked Ford. His tone was one of utter detachment.

Cecil shook his head.

“Speak up!” ordered his grandfather, with sudden wrath.

“It isn’t fair,” cried Rose passionately. “Why do you torment him with questions now? It can’t undo what’s happened, to talk about it.”

“It can be of very material assistance in preventing its ever happening again, however,” retorted Ford swiftly.

Cecil winced as though he had been struck.

“You know the Ten Commandments, Cecil,” said his grandmother in her slow fashion. “You have heard them often enough in church, I’m sure, and you were taught them as a little boy. ‘_Have mercy upon us, O Lord, and incline our hearts to keep this law._’ I’m sure you’ve said those words many a time, with all the rest of us. And if there’s one Commandment more plainly worded than another, surely it is: ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ I could understand it, if you’d never been taught right from wrong. But you _have_.”

She stressed her inconclusive conclusion with mournful perplexity.

“Well, well, I suppose we none of us think much about church unless we’re inside one,” said Sir Thomas simply. “We don’t want to bring religion into the thing, you can talk about that with your grandmother or your mother later on. But there are certain things that a decent feller doesn’t do, you know--things that put him beyond the pale. Cheating at cards, and that sort of thing, for instance. There have been fellers who’ve blown their brains out for less than what you’ve done, I can tell you.”

The doctor made an irrepressible movement.

“A coward’s form of reparation,” said he. His detestation of generalities was as intense as is that of most precisians in thought, but he was intent only upon Cecil Aviolet, and his possible reactions to the peculiar form of penalization that he was being made to undergo.

“I hope,” said Cecil in a low voice, “that someone else will blow my brains out for me, when I’m sent to fight.”

A sound, just short of open scoffing, came from Ford.

“Heroics are terribly easy, my dear boy. You’ve not gone yet, and, in any case, it’s a pretty nearly certain thing that the fighting will be all over long before you’ve been taught how to hold yourself on parade. You lads are all the same--prating of Death and Glory before you’ve learnt how to hold a rifle.”

Cecil turned his head and glanced at Ford. There was neither resentment nor surprise in his look, but cowed, bewildered misery, like that of a tortured animal.

Lucian set his teeth.

“There’s no question of glory,” said Sir Thomas heavily. “If you do enlist, the circumstances are not such that we need boast about it.”

“If!” cried Rose. “He’d have gone anyway. I know that.”

“That’s neither here nor there, my dear, is it?” said Lady Aviolet mildly.

“If I may make a suggestion,” said Lucian, “it would be that Cecil should find out the nearest recruiting office to-morrow morning, and enlist in a London regiment. That will avoid local gossip best.”

“You might have had a commission in our own Yeomanry, Cecil. All the young men in the county have joined up, practically,” said Lady Aviolet.

“There aren’t nearly enough commissions to go round,” said Rose rather wildly. “Some of them have got to be private soldiers, and everyone knows it’s much harder than just being an officer. And I agree with Dr. Lucian about a London regiment being the best for Ces, as things are.”

Sir Thomas growled assent.

“It’s a most shameful, unhappy business, and we must do the best we can with it. I suppose some of those damned Press fellows were in court?”

“They were,” said Ford. “We shall have the pleasure of seeing the whole thing reported in the evening papers, I’ve no doubt.”

Sir Thomas rang the bell violently.

“Bring me the evening papers,” he demanded.

“Oh, my dear Thomas, _please_----” Lady Aviolet’s remonstrance was almost emphatic.

“I’d rather know,” said her husband gruffly.

The others sat silent while he scanned the printed sheets. Two he threw aside with a sort of mutter that might have denoted relief. The third one was in Ford’s hands.

“Here you are,” he said quietly, and adjusted his _pince-nez_.

“‘Undergraduate’s Thefts.... Baronet’s heir pleads guilty.... False inscriptions on stolen goods....’ Oh, Lord, have they got hold of _that_?”

“What?” said his mother, distressed and obtuse.

Ford read aloud in a rapid undertone:

Some extraordinary inscriptions had been engraved upon the stolen trophies, setting forth the prisoner’s wonderful prowess at games and sport. These were totally untrue and had been engraved at the accused’s own expense. It was stated that a document, in the prisoner’s own handwriting, was found, purporting to represent an inscription: “To Cecil Aviolet, Esq., in most grateful recognition of his daring achievements, splendid leadership, and indomitable courage and devotion to duty, this cup is presented in grateful admiration by the members of the School Cadet Corps.” This was entirely false, and was no doubt destined to take place eventually amongst the other fictitious engravings devised and paid for by the accused.

Sir Thomas violently banged the table with his open hand, making his wife start.

“That’s what you’ve got to explain, you boy, you. That senseless, idiotic game of pretence ... making a fool of yourself----”

“Hush, Thomas,” pleaded Lady Aviolet, as his voice rose almost to a shout.

Ford’s was in marked contrast, as he interposed. “You were always a braggart, Cecil, even as a small boy. I remember the imaginary stories about yourself that you used to tell, by way of boasting. It’s a common failing, of course, but most people outgrow it after seven or eight years old.”

“Stop it,” said Rose suddenly. “If you’ve any more to say, any of you, say it to me. I’m Cecil’s mother, I brought him up, and if he’s got this failing, as Ford says he has, that other boys outgrow, then it’s because I’ve not dealt rightly with him.”

Dr. Lucian, never taking his eyes off Cecil, saw that his lips formed the word “No.” Searching desperately for whatever should break through the boy’s utter despair, he recollected the child at Squires, many years ago, who had been punished by his grandfather’s heavy hand, and had made no sound. The doctor had long gauged the depths of the vanity that had made that endurance not only possible, but almost inevitable, to Cecil. Bending forward, he eagerly sought to appeal to that vanity now.

“Cecil, be a man! You’ve plenty of pluck. Don’t let your mother face the music for you. Any one may make a false step. The fellow who’s respected is the one who fights his way up again.”

Cecil turned and looked at him, with frightened, lack-lustre eyes.

The atmosphere vibrated oddly to Maurice Lucian’s tense, impassioned earnestness. “Tell them you’re going to live it down. You’ve got a splendid chance before you. Every man-jack will be wanted before this war’s over, it’s my belief, and you’re going to be one of the very first to go. No one ever had a better chance of wiping out old scores. Tell them you’re going to make the most of it.”

“Yes, I am,” said Cecil, his voice shaking. His face had suddenly begun to work.

Rose was on her feet, standing between her son and the others. “There isn’t anything more to talk about. He’ll go to the recruiting office to-morrow.”

“Then, my dear, you must come down to Squires with us. We are willing enough to give Cecil another chance, and it’s _most_ important he should spend any leave he may get with us. People will know, then, that there’s no question of casting him off or anything dreadful of that kind. I am sure Sir Thomas agrees with me.”

The doctor saw Rose turn to her son, with a question in her face.

“Please go to Squires, Mummie,” he said to her, still in that uncontrollably quavering voice.

On his last word, the childish name that he did not now very often pronounce, Cecil Aviolet’s stunned apathy suddenly gave way, and he began to cry, in loud, gulping sobs.

“Oh!” cried Lady Aviolet, shocked and disturbed. Instinctively she moved to the door, as though to escape proximity with all that most contravened her every instinct.

Sir Thomas’s exclamation held more of disgust, and less of distress. He, too, moved to the door, and after a second of hesitation, opened it for his wife. The two old people passed out together.

Ford stood stock-still, gazing at his nephew.

His lips parted, as though to speak.

Dr. Lucian laid a most unfaltering grip upon his either shoulder, pushed Ford Aviolet out of the room, and turned the key in the lock.

VII

He could do nothing more to help her.

In the restless preoccupation that filled him, forty-eight hours later, Lucian went round to see the old pawnbroker in Ovington Street.

Felix Menebees opened the door, his face paler than ever and his hair all standing up on end. “How is _she_, doctor?” he inquired hoarsely.

“Very brave, Felix,” said the doctor kindly. “She’s gone to the country--to Squires, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Please to come in, doctor. The old man--Mr. Smith, I mean--he’s in a terrible way. It seems to have all broken him up, like. This and the war, coming together, like. Mr. Millar’s gone, doctor. He’s enlisted.”

“That’s fine. What about you?”

“They wouldn’t pass me,” said Felix, his face suffused by a strange, yellowish blush.

The doctor, looking at the slender, narrow-shouldered youth with his prominent eyes and pallid face, was not surprised to hear it.

“You tried, did you?”

“Oh, yes, doctor. I tried a good many places, but they all turned me down. One gentleman was very kind and said they’d very likely be glad of me later on, if the war lasts.”

“Meanwhile,” said Lucian, “they’re very glad of you here, no doubt. Shall I go up to Mr. Smith?”