Chapter IV: Part I: A Reversion to Type (4)

They stared at her, Ford and Sir Thomas no less than the others.

“Anything to do with spiritualism,” said Rose Aviolet’s mother-in-law, shaking her head. “Quite against the teachings of religion, and great nonsense besides.”

Ford Aviolet looked at the doctor.

“Is it necessary to make such a mountain out of a molehill?” he inquired. “My little nephew tells lies. Excuse me, Rose, for saying so, but I think we have your word for it. It is quite a common failing amongst children. His contemporaries will teach him the disadvantages attached to fibbing in a very much more practical manner than we can. Need we discuss it any longer? Lucian, a whisky-and-soda? Mother, you must be tired.”

“Yes.” The old lady rolled up her knitting. “Think it over quietly, Rose. There’s no hurry.”

Rose’s dilated eyes were fixed upon her brother-in-law, and Lucian made one movement forward.

He felt a rush of relief when the tension snapped with a torrent of words, hurled straight at Ford Aviolet.

“You snob--you prig! You could help me--and you won’t. You only care that your nephew should do what every other boy does--so that he shall turn out a little gentleman, able to play games, and talk the right slang, and get the rotten public-school point of view. You don’t care what he’s like, so long as he never gets found out. That’s what your public-school education will teach him: that he may go on telling lies, so long as nobody catches him at it--that sex is just a dirty sort of joke--that religion is going to church in a top hat--that the only thing that matters is to conform--conform--conform to type, all along the line.”

Rose Aviolet had made her scene.

She had hurled her fury, her passionate invective, like a wave against the rock of their immoveable good breeding.

Lucian, the sharpness of his perceptions seeming doubly intensified, could view the wreckage. It was Rose that was spent and broken.

Lady Aviolet, he guessed, had been offended and alienated by Rose’s mention of sex. It was a word that she had hitherto probably only met, and then with reluctance, in literature. She had changed countenance.

The girl Diana, her mouth fallen wide open, had sidled furtively along the floor until she stood beside Ford.

Sir Thomas emitted a sharp sound of disgust.

“You’re not yourself, Rose. Be quiet,” he commanded her.

His arm swept her aside as he opened the door.

Ford moved slowly from his place at the marble mantelpiece.

As he passed Rose he said pleasantly: “You’ll feel upset about this, I’m afraid, when you come to yourself again. But pray let us have no apologies. Personally, I’ll take them as said, if you’ll spare us another dramatic display. These things, you know, really aren’t done.”

That was it: these things weren’t done.

Lucian realized it very thoroughly, as he saw the contemptuous distaste evident on the habitually inexpressive face of Sir Thomas when the women had passed out of the room.

Rose had flung down her gage with all the violence of the strong, undisciplined feeling that governed her. These people had been too well-bred to pick it up. To them, there was never anything to be angry, or noisy, or emotional, about. They were self-controlled by instinct. Their spirits knew no revolt at all. Nothing mattered to them, as almost everything mattered to Rose, the vulgar, the vehemently alive.

He made no doubt that they would not talk very much about her outburst, even amongst themselves. He, the outsider, would never hear any more of it from them. He had no right to have been present.

Prompted by the thought, he began his farewell, taking it as the measure of Lady Aviolet’s perturbation that she had only bowed a mechanical good-night to him as she left the room, forgetting that he was not a guest in the house.

“No hurry,” growled Sir Thomas. “I’m going to get a drink in the smoking-room. Come along.”

A gesture from Ford detained the doctor.

“One moment. I really should like to consult you on this absurdly magnified subject now that it has been raised.”

The doctor’s experience, both of Ford and of humanity, was too large to allow of his being greatly surprised when the consultation took the form of a very lucid résumé of Ford Aviolet’s own impressions.

“In a sense, the boy is certainly abnormal. He has never been taught the value of truth. He romances. But I refuse to regard it seriously.” Ford made his characteristic gesture, a small, elegant waving of his _pince-nez_.

“My dear mother is hyper-sensitive on the subject. She imagines that it denotes an ineradicable tendency to criminal deceit. That _was_ the old idea, I suppose. What he needs is to me perfectly obvious.”

So few things were, in the doctor’s opinion, perfectly obvious, that he waited with some curiosity to be enlightened.

“School,” said Ford. “School. A thoroughly healthy English atmosphere, where he’ll get plenty of wholesome knocking about, and be called a little liar when he deserves it.”

“A bloody little liar,” Lucian corrected, and Ford, as the doctor had expected, winced slightly.

“Boys are very brutal, no doubt. But brutality of that kind is exactly what Cecil needs. And, my dear fellow, between ourselves, it’ll be half the battle to get him away from his mother.”

“You think she spoils him?”

“No,” said Ford, in a reasonable voice. “No. In the vulgar sense of over-indulgence, she does not spoil him. But her ideas are quite horribly crude, and she is, as you must have perceived, a--an uneducated--how shall I put it? Let us say that hers is a third-rate mind. Look,” cried Ford with a slight shudder, “at her taste in literature.”

“_Tout les goûts sont respectables._ What is her taste in literature?”

“What, indeed!”

Lucian waited, a flippant desire crossing his mind to inquire whether Ford Aviolet was feeling sick.

“She weeps over the early death of a mawkish infant in a work of fiction that I believe is called ‘Misunderstood.’”

“I’ve read the book.”

The tone of the doctor’s reply implied, as indeed he meant it to imply, that he considered “Misunderstood” to be a highly respectable subject for emotion.

“Then I will say no more.”

“What are you going to do if Mrs. Aviolet still refuses to let the boy go to school?”

“She can’t refuse. Fortunately she hasn’t a penny. One hates to emphasize it, but my father gives her an allowance, and is, of course, undertaking the whole expense of Cecil’s education. Personally, I advise sending him to his preparatory school at once. It’s the very best chance of breaking him of this silly, vulgar habit of telling lies.”

“You think so?”

The eyeglasses described their graceful little curve once more.

“The only hope, I may say. He’ll get kicked out of it.”

“Unless he’s kicked further into it. What’s the alternative to school?”

“There isn’t one.”

“But what does his mother suggest?”

“Oh, a home education. A tutor. No doubt she visualizes him as Little Lord Fauntleroy on a pony riding about amongst the tenants. Very typical of her ideals, poor thing.”

Ford’s tone was tolerant in the extreme.

“So you are very much in favour of the public-school system of education, are you?” inquired the doctor.

To himself, he added:

“And yet, my fine fellow, I’m very much mistaken if your own life at school was anything but a misery and a degradation.”

“Don’t you agree with me?”

“I’m not a public-school man.”

Lucian was conscious of having evaded the question, but he did not think that Ford would remark it. Nor did he.

“It will make a gentleman of the boy, as the odious expression is. My dear man, I’m not one of those people who can see nothing admirable in the institutions of their own country. To my mind, a fine Englishman is the finest man in the world.”

As he spoke, he threw back his slender shoulders in a gesture that was evidently an unconscious one. It struck Lucian rather strangely, as though it were the almost automatic expression of a desire for reassurance.

It was as if Ford was trying to impress Ford with his own claim to be a “fine Englishman.”

“I’m sorry if I sound--er--disgustingly snobbish, but the fact remains that Rose is entirely unfitted, by birth and education, to bring up my father’s grandson. You’ve seen for yourself what she’s like.”

“Very devoted to the boy.”

“Oh, very. I’ve not a word to say against that. The maternal instinct in women and animals is generally in inverse ratio to the intellectual development. But we’re having this difficulty with her on that very account. She raves, as she did to-night, about his temperament requiring a home education and special supervision--but in reality it’s simply class-prejudice. She dreads sending him to acquire a veneer that she knows she doesn’t possess herself--it will separate them. It’s instinctive, of course.”

He shrugged his shoulders, as though dismissing a competently analyzed problem.

“That be damned for a tale,” said the doctor curtly. “You won’t make me believe that--and, what’s more, you won’t make yourself believe it. She was in dead earnest to-night, and whether her view is right or wrong, she’s sincere. She _does_ believe that child to be unfitted for school-life, and there’s a considerable chance that her view may be the right one. I tell you professionally that you’ll be taking a big risk if you disregard it.”

The doctor, under lowered brows, looked full at Ford, but Ford, as usual, was looking down.

Presently he made a low sound like a laugh, that was nevertheless singularly devoid of amusement.

“A storm in a tea-cup, isn’t it? Children have been known to tell fibs before now. Rose may, as you say, be in earnest, but surely that is only one proof the more of her utter lack of balance. If Cecil’s life were at stake, her tragedy-queen airs might be justifiable--but then Cecil’s life is not at stake.”

“I wonder,” said the doctor.

VII

Of the forces arrayed against Rose--and she found them many--the most potent was the strong desire for school that they had implanted in little Cecil himself.

He was always begging to go to Hurst.

“Don’t you want me to be friends with Lord Charlesbury’s little boy, Mummie?”

“Yes. Of course I do.”

“Well, he’s at Hurst. He’s in the Eleven there.”

“I know.”

“Shouldn’t I be in the Eleven, too?”

“No. You don’t play nearly well enough yet, darling.”

Cecil flushed and then said defiantly: “Diana thinks I would be, and she knows more about cricket than you do, Mummie--you said yourself that she does. She said--she said----”

“What did she say?”

Diana Grierson-Amberly was surely not prone to the paying of unmerited compliments, and Rose felt curious.

“She said I ought to be at Hurst and that I bowled better than that other little boy, Hugh. She did, Mummie.”

“Ces!” said Rose warningly.

“Yes, she did. That was because I bowled her out first ball, just as easy as anything. And the bails stayed on, Mummie, and only the middle stump went down, really and truly.”

She knew, necessarily, that he must be boasting, and the circumstantial details with which he amplified his story made her, from previous experience, forlornly certain that he knew himself to be inventing.

“When did this happen?”

“Last night, when we played on the lawn after tea.”

“Well, I know you did play on the lawn with Uncle Ford and Diana and Miss Wade. But she didn’t really say you bowled better than Hugh Charlesbury, now did she, Ces? You only said that for fun, didn’t you?”

Her coaxing voice pleaded with him for the admission.

“I can’t help it if you won’t believe me, Mummie,” said Cecil with dignity, “but it’s perfectly true all the same.”

Miss Wade descended upon them with her usual air of timorous determination.

“Come along, Cecil dear, it’s time to go out. You’d like me to bowl to you, wouldn’t you? Remember what Miss Grierson-Amberly said to us last night!”

“What?” Rose asked almost involuntarily.

“She said Cecil would never get into the Hurst Cricket Eleven unless he practised really hard. And she told us about Lord Charlesbury’s little boy--didn’t she, Cecil?--who bowled some other boy out first ball, and the middle stump actually went flying, although the bails stopped on.”

“I see,” said Rose dully.

Not for the world would she have exposed Cecil in Miss Wade’s presence. She would not even look at him.

“Come along,” said Miss Wade, in her voice of manufactured brightness.

Cecil had rapidly turned from white to scarlet, but when he saw that his mother had no intention of humiliating him by any spoken comment, his face cleared. He ran up to her and kissed her, and said “Good-bye, Mummie,” quite cheerfully before he went away with Miss Wade.

She felt that he would easily succeed in putting the whole incident quite out of his thoughts.

“But why--why does he do it?” reflected Rose miserably.

She was incapable of searching out the basic foundations for Cecil’s perversion of the truth. The crux of the matter, to her, lay in the bald fact that he told lies; not at all in the existence of a fundamental self-distrust and craving for the reassurance of praise and approval that provided a motive for the lies.

“I can’t make him good,” said Rose to herself desperately.

She was too unsure of the orthodoxy of her own beliefs to have made out of religion an instrument for the chastisement of Cecil’s spirit, and when he had informed her that Miss Wade said all story-tellers went to hell, she had heatedly replied: “Bosh! don’t think about hell. Think about heaven instead.”

Lady Aviolet, she knew, had suggested once or twice to Cecil, with characteristic reticence of expression, that his besetting sin should be made the subject of nightly intercession in his prayers. But Rose herself, and, she felt certain, Cecil with her, had looked upon the mechanical petitions, “Help me always to speak the truth, for Christ’s sake, Amen,” as the merest shelving of responsibility. Religious susceptibilities were no more apparent in Cecil than in herself, and Rose instinctively mistrusted resolutions rooted rather in a supine faith in Divine omnipotence than in a personal will to achieve.

A sense of utter frustration assailed her after the expenditure of nervous energy that she had flung into her “scene” on the previous evening. It had been of no use. The old people had not understood; their stupidity was as impenetrable as their good breeding. Ford, who might have interpreted her ill-chosen words to them, had chosen, malignantly, to play a little comedy of obtuseness that was never meant to deceive Rose, but only to make her angrier and more incoherent.

Thinking it all over, the tears burned in her eyes and she clenched her teeth. It seemed incredible to her that so much vehemence should have proved so completely impotent.

The conviction of defeat was ready to invade her, but her indomitable sense of the issue at stake refused to let her be overwhelmed.

“He shan’t go--he shan’t go----” she repeated to herself, half sobbing. “I know he isn’t fit for school.”

She slowly prepared to put in action a plan that she had evolved in the course of a sleepless hour of the night.

She wrote a letter.

This was to Rose a laborious undertaking at all times, since she disliked letter-writing and had had very little occasion to practise it. Her handwriting, that had an inappropriate appearance on the stamped blue notepaper of Squires, was large and painstaking, and very legible.

My dear Uncle Alfred,

It seems a long time since I wrote to you after poor Jim’s death, and I daresay you will be interested to hear that Cecil and myself are now with Jim’s people at the above address. Well, Uncle, this is to say that things are not going as I should wish with regards to Cecil, and they want very much to send him to a Preparatory School and then to a Public School. This I do not want, because it would be bad for Cecil, and _I know what I am talking about_. Well, Uncle, I cannot make them see this here, and so I write to you. Will you have Ces and me up at your place for a bit if this is not too inconvenient? I could help in the business like Mother used to, and have a talk with you about Cecil. He’s a lovely little boy, really, and I do want to do the best possible for him.

I must stop now, Uncle, hoping to hear from you before long.

Your affectionate niece,
Rose.

She sealed her letter very carefully before putting it herself into the oaken box on the hall-table. The late Mrs. Smith had imparted pessimistic views to Rose on the subject of private correspondence if left unprotected.

“It isn’t in nature not to read what isn’t meant for you, if it’s lying about,” had said Mrs. Smith, in simple explanation of her own well-informedness upon various affairs that might strictly have been regarded as the concern of her neighbours rather than her own.

Rose, not sufficiently endowed with curiosity herself to indulge in the reading of other people’s correspondence, was quite tolerantly prepared to believe that this was nevertheless the general practice.

When she had finished her letter, she felt happier. No one had said anything to her about her outburst of the preceding evening. She had come down to breakfast heavy-eyed and apprehensive, although no whit less resolved to maintain her own cause, but there had been no sign that any one remembered the existence either of a cause or of a champion.

The conversation had circled placidly round the customary subject of “plans for the day” and the necessity of sending the young man Toby to the station for the 10.39 train.

Rose had been partly relieved, partly disappointed, and wholly perplexed.

She found the Aviolets, their standards, their aims and avoidances, alike incomprehensible. She felt as though it would be an untold relief to return to Uncle Alfred and his shop, where all the pitfalls were of an obvious kind and where approval and disapproval were alike manifested on equally established and well-defined lines.

“Would you care for a walk?” said Diana Grierson-Amberly, coming upon her in the hall.

“Always walks!” thought Rose with uncomprehending resignation, but Diana’s voice had sounded friendly, and she was grateful, although she could never understand the satisfaction to be derived from walking for half an hour along a country lane, with no shop windows to look into and no given objective, and then turning round and walking along the same road for another half hour back again.

“It isn’t even as though we had anything to say to one another,” she reflected.

But it appeared that Miss Grierson-Amberly had something to say on this occasion.

She sang the praises of the Aviolet family.

“I’ve always been so awfully fond of them all, here. Cousin Catherine is such a dear.”

“Oh, yes,” said Rose, with more of uncertain interrogation than of assent in her tone.

“I used to play with the boys a lot when I was younger, and they were always so nice to me, though they were so much older. Ford and I have always been great pals.”

There was a silence.

“He did so splendidly in South Africa. You know he was wounded at Spion Kop?”

“Yes, I know.”

“They say that he went on encouraging his men and calling out to them long after he was hit.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. We never could quite understand why he didn’t get recommended for promotion, or something like that.”

Another silence.

“Of course, very likely his Colonel did recommend him for decoration, and nothing came of it. I’m afraid there’s a certain amount of wire-pulling that one doesn’t know about,” said Diana solemnly.

Once more Rose made no answer, and once more Diana persevered.

“This world is such a queer place, isn’t it? I mean, there’s so much jealousy and pettiness to be found.”

“I suppose so.”

“Perhaps,” Diana laboriously amended, “I ought to say it’s not so much the world that’s queer, as the people in it.”

On this last subtle commentary of Miss Grierson-Amberly’s upon mankind, the silence that ensued was of so abysmal a character that it remained unbroken for nearly ten minutes. Rose, although her vocabulary hardly comprised the word platitude, was ruthlessly recognizing and condemning the quality of her companion’s conversation as “utter bunkum,” and Diana Grierson-Amberly, not without good cause, was discouraged.

Presently she tried again.

“Cousin Catherine is so fond of children, I expect she loves having Cecil here. I always think it’s such an ideal place for a child, too.”

“Do you? Why?” said Rose, interested for the first time.

Unfortunately, Miss Grierson-Amberly’s observation had been rhetorically, rather than literally, intended.

“Well, the garden, you know, and--and the house--and then Ford can teach him to shoot, later on, and he can have a jolly time in the holidays. Miss Wade is nice, too, isn’t she? I think it must be much more fun to have a young governess.”

“She’s all right, but rather an ass, don’t you think?”

“I thought she seemed a nice little thing. You know, Mrs. Aviolet, I do really think there’s heaps of good in everyone if you only look for it,” said the girl, quite earnestly.

“Well, I don’t. I don’t see one single atom of good in that precious Ford of yours, for instance,” Rose declared with sudden recklessness.

Diana’s face grew very grave and very pink. She turned and looked at Rose, with the corners of her mouth rather turned down, and when she spoke her voice was full of distress.

“Of course, to me, it sounds so dreadful to hear you say a thing like that. I simply can’t understand it. Why, Ford is really a perfect dear, when you know him.”

“What about last night?”

“Well, you know, he can’t help what he thinks, now can he, Mrs. Aviolet?” said the girl pleadingly. “You see, what I always feel, is that there are two sides to every question. I think you ought to remember that, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

The effect of reasonableness with which Diana uttered what Rose regarded as futilities was remarkable.

It even impelled Rose to reply to them as though she felt them to be worth a reply.

“I’m not angry with Ford for thinking that Ces should go to school. It’s quite natural he should think so, I suppose. He’s only mixed with two kinds of people all his life--those who go to public schools and those who go to the national schools. He evidently doesn’t know anything about the in-between people. That’s not his fault. But what puts my monkey up, is him pretending to think that I’m a fool; that I want to keep Cecil a molly-coddle, just for the sake of having him tied to my apron-strings. He’s playing up to old Sir Thomas and Lady Aviolet, that’s all, because they’re so stupid. They really do think it’s only that. _Why_ Ford hates me is more than I can tell you--but he does. He’s made things difficult for me ever since I came here.”

“May I say what I think?”

“Of course.”

Rose could not imagine why any one should ever want to do anything else.

“Well, then--I do hope you won’t think it rude of me to say this, but you’ve given me leave to--it seems to me that you take a simply terribly exaggerated view of things. Not only about Ford. (Of course, what you say about his hating you is perfectly absurd. Why, he’s your relation!) But it isn’t only about him. It struck me that you did last night, when you were talking about your little boy. You say that he--well, that he doesn’t always tell the truth. Of course I know it’s a great pity, and _the_ thing of all others that one minds most--it seems so awfully un-English, doesn’t it?--but, after all, Mrs. Aviolet, he’s only a baby, isn’t he? He’ll begin to understand, in a very little while, that he mustn’t tell stories, surely.”

“He knows that now,” said Rose wearily. “You don’t understand. Sometimes I don’t think it’s his own fault, poor darling! He can’t help it.”

“Well, that’s just what I say,” the girl argued perseveringly. “He’ll know better later on. And really and truly, it’s perfectly wonderful what school does for them. My young brother Tony was very delicate as a baby, and I’m afraid we spoilt him dreadfully, but he improved in the most marvellous way after his first term at a preparatory school. It seems to make them so much more manly and sensible, you know.”

“Ces is manly already,” cried Rose, going off at a tangent. “I don’t know what you’d say if you could see what _ordinary_ children are like, after being born and brought up in the tropics. They haven’t got a kick left in them by the time they get home, as a rule, nor for months afterwards.”

“I didn’t mean----”

“That’s all right. I know you didn’t. I suppose the whole thing’s got on my nerves, rather. It’s always Cecil this, and Cecil that, it seems to me.”

“Only because they’re so--so interested in him.”

“I daresay, but it’s a funny way of showing it. You’d think they’d have the sense to _see_, old people like them, that of course I know more about him than they do.”

“But you know, he wants to go to school himself--really he does. He says so.”

“I know,” said Rose briefly and bitterly.

“Well, then----?”

“Oh, of course, they’ve made him keen, telling him about the games and all the rest of it. He didn’t want to go to school till it was put into his head. You can make a child think it wants anything, even castor oil, if you bluff it enough.”

“But school isn’t a nasty thing, like castor oil,” said Diana, with a sort of ingenious stupidity.

“Chuck it,” Rose advised briefly. “You and me aren’t talking the same language. We shouldn’t understand one another if we went on jawring till we turned black in the face.”

No such disastrous consummation was achieved, but Miss Grierson-Amberly seemed quite unable to abandon the discussion.

“But I do understand you, really and truly I do. Only it seems to me, if you’ll forgive me for saying such a thing, that it would be more unselfish of you to let Cecil do what he wants, and what everybody else thinks best for him, than just to try and make him do what _you_ like. I’m afraid I’m expressing it stupidly, but I daresay you’ll understand. After all, if one loves any one, one wants the best thing for them, doesn’t one? And you know, boys learn heaps of things at school that one simply can’t give them at home--playing the game generally, and _esprit de corps_, and all that sort of thing.”

“I’ve heard every bit of this before, and I daresay it’s all quite true. But as long as Ces remains what he is, he’ll go to no school. I’d as soon send an epileptic child to school as him.”

“Oh, how can you!” The distress in Diana’s voice was most unmistakably genuine. “Indeed, indeed, I’m certain you’re exaggerating the whole thing most dreadfully. And even if he _is_ as naughty as you think, surely school would be the very----”

“Naughty!” Rose, like an explosion, repeated. “Who said he was naughty? I’ll thank you to keep your advice about my boy till you’ve got one of your own. You’ll know a bit more about it by that time, perhaps.”

For the second time, Diana coloured deeply; but after a moment she said unresentfully:

“I’m afraid I’ve vexed you, and I’m so awfully sorry. I really only said it because I’ve known the Aviolets all my life, and Cecil is such a dear little boy.”

The last words mollified Rose instantly.

“It’s all right. I’m sorry, too, if I was rude. Don’t let’s talk about it any more.”

They made spasmodic conversation upon indifferent subjects until Squires was reached. Rose, tired and out of spirits, trailing slowly upstairs, heard Diana’s voice incautiously raised in Lady Aviolet’s morning-room.

“I hope I’ve done _some_ good, Cousin Catherine. I’ve been reading the Riot Act, but of course----”

The door was closed, and Rose proceeded on her way, muttering sub-audibly, “Damn her impudence!”

Her perceptions, acute, if inarticulate, sensed in Diana Grierson-Amberly all the blind, limitless cruelty of the obtuse. She felt strangely weak and frightened at the thought of it, as though knowing that from that cruelty of the unimaginative there is no appeal.

In the nursery, she found Cecil strutting about, reciting a sort of saga, with the intensely disapproving eyes of Miss Wade fixed upon him in a horrified stare.

“An’ there was elephants there, and a tiger, and--and horses as big as lions; and they all lay down in front of me until I said, ‘Up!’ Like that I said it, very loud and grand--‘_UP!_’ I said. That was in Colombo, once.”

“Hallo, Ces,” Rose said rather wearily. She guessed, from the expression of the governess, what was coming.

“I’m glad you’ve just happened to come in, Mrs. Aviolet. There’s a little boy here who hardly seems to know the difference between pretence and reality, I’m afraid.”

“What’s the matter?” Rose demanded ungraciously. She would not even look at Miss Wade, and she kept one hand on Cecil’s forehead, stroking back his thick, soft hair.

“Oh, I hope nothing’s the _matter_,” Miss Wade declared with sudden, spurious brightness. “I’m sure Cecil will tell you himself that he’s only been talking nonsense.”

“I’m not talking nonsense----”

“If you mean that rubbish I heard as I came in, about elephants and tigers, it was nonsense, Ces, and you know it. You weren’t trying to make Miss Wade believe it was true, were you? You wouldn’t be so silly, a big boy like you.”

The appeal to Cecil’s vanity seemed to make him hesitate. At last he gave an uncertain little laugh, and said: “No, Mummie. I only said it for fun. It was just something I was inventing.”

Rose kissed him in sudden, passionate thankfulness.

“My precious! That’s a good boy!”

“It’s a pity, isn’t it, that Cecil should think it amusing to invent things that never happened,” said Miss Wade mildly, “especially as we know that he isn’t always quite as brave as he ought to be about telling the exact truth. But I’m glad he’s been straightforward this time.”

Rose did not think that she looked glad.

“If Cecil may go into the garden for a while, Mrs. Aviolet, I should be glad to speak to you.”

“All right.”

Rose made no attempt at all at displaying an amiability which she was far from feeling.

“As we’re on the subject,” said the little governess nervously, “I thought I’d really better speak to you. Cecil is a dear little boy and I’m very fond of him, but I really don’t know what to do about his want of truth. I’m sorry to have to say it, Mrs. Aviolet, but he’s untruthful--downright untruthful.”

“Have you just found it out or did his grandmother tell you so?” Rose asked truculently.

“Lady Aviolet never mentioned such a thing to me, nor did any one else. I am in the habit of forming my own opinions as to the character of my pupils. I am a student of child-psychology,” said Miss Wade with dignity. “It is a most serious fault, and one that cannot be corrected too young.”

“If you’re thinking of his nonsense just now, Miss Wade----”

The governess interrupted her firmly. “No, that has nothing to do with it. I have been meaning to speak to you for some little while. I should have thought little or nothing of his wild inventions of imaginary adventures, if I had not, more than once, found him out in a direct untruth.”

Rose groaned almost involuntarily.

“You knew of this fault already?”

“Yes, of course I did.”

“He is so young, and such a dear little boy, and so good otherwise that I feel sure he can be corrected. But I must ask you, Mrs. Aviolet, to let me have a free hand in dealing with this.”

“No.”

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Aviolet?”

“I said, ‘No.’”

Miss Wade looked quite confounded.

“Now _do_ you suppose,” Rose impatiently inquired, “that I should give anybody a free hand, as you call it, in punishing my own child? What am I his mother for, if I’m to go giving free hands to other people all over the place? But you can tell me what your idea is--unless it’s school, which, I may tell you, I’ve heard enough about--and a bit over.”

“Cecil is hardly fit for school until he has learnt to speak the truth.”

“That’s the first word of sense I’ve heard spoken about it yet. Well, fire ahead.”

“Mrs. Aviolet, I do not wish you to take it upon my word alone, and therefore I will refer you to my authority. Monroe on the ‘Moral Education of Children.’”

“And what has Monroe got to say about it?”

“‘There are two faults, and two only, for which corporal punishment should be inflicted: deliberate cruelty, and deliberate untruth. We need not add that it should be made perfectly clear to the child that the punishment is not given in anger, still less in revenge.’” Miss Wade relinquished the head voice by which she had denoted that she was quoting, and resumed her natural rather nasal accents.

“I am deeply distressed at having to say it, but Cecil will never realize the full gravity of this dreadful fault unless he is punished in such a way that he will remember it. I have tried reasoning with him, and coaxing him, and scolding him, and he is always sorry, but it produces no real effect at all. Indeed, Mrs. Aviolet, I dislike the idea more than I can tell you, and I have never in my life had to punish a pupil in such a manner before, but I should be failing in my duty if--if----”

Miss Wade faltered and produced her handkerchief, choked by what Rose instantly recognized as a perfectly real emotion.

“Oh, don’t cry! Anyway, you know, it wouldn’t be you who’d have to do it. You’re not nearly strong enough. Besides, you’d never go through with it. I shouldn’t myself. I should sob and howl--_roar_, in fact. But it’s a man’s job.”

Miss Wade looked at her with an air of rather resentful astonishment.

“Then you have contemplated the idea of corporal punishment already?”

“Spare the rod and spoil the child. Of course I have, Miss Wade.”

“In general, I am thoroughly opposed to the system of corporal punishment,” said Miss Wade gloomily. “I follow Dr. Monroe’s teaching, and he is quite averse to it. But, as he says himself, persistent lying and persistent cruelty are in a class apart and must be dealt with accordingly.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I hope that the occasion may not present itself, but if it does, Mrs. Aviolet, if Cecil tells a direct lie again, then I must ask you either to deal with him on the lines that I have indicated, or else to let his uncle do so.”

“Ask for something you’re a bit more likely to get, I should,” Rose advised the outraged little governess. “If Cecil tells a direct lie, as you call it, again, he shall be whipped. We’ve tried everything else, and it may as well be that. But it’ll be me who’ll settle when it’s done, and how, and who by. And another thing--I’m going to give Ces fair warning about it. Perhaps it’ll help him to be careful, poor lamb.”

She turned to go.

“One moment, Mrs. Aviolet, if you please. Has Cecil ever been--castigated--before?”

“He’s been hit by his father,” said Rose briefly. “He’s never had exactly what you might call a state whipping, so perhaps the disgrace might make an impression on him. But I hope to goodness we shan’t have to do it.”

She let the door slam on Miss Wade’s solemn reiteration of the hope, already feeling that exasperation had committed her to a course of action that her inner self disapproved.

Yet the thought of punishing little Cecil by beating him did not horrify her. Her own mother had administered hearty and impetuous slaps throughout Rose’s childhood, in moments of impatience, and afterwards, as heartily and as impetuously, had smothered her with kisses and given her slices of new bread thickly covered with jam. Rose had borne no malice for the slaps, although they had always caused her to roar lustily, for Mrs. Smith’s heavy-handed blows had never been half-hearted affairs, and she had enjoyed the kisses and the bread-and-jam.

“No bunkum from Dr. Monroe’s little books on Moral Education about Mother!” Rose reminded herself, and smiled in a loving retrospective appreciation of her parent’s thoroughness.

VIII

Two days later, Diana Grierson-Amberly left Squires, and Rose received an answer to her letter.

298 Ovington Street,
London, S. W.

My dear Niece,

Yours of the 6th to hand, for which I thank you. I am willing to receive you and the boy as you suggest, at any date convenient to yourself, on a short visit. There will be no need for you to help in the shop, as the time will be so limited.

I have given much anxious thought and prayer to yourself and to your child, my dear Rose, left alone in worldly surroundings as I fear you are. If you have discovered the _hollowness_ and _falseness_ of mere earthly grandeur, turn your thoughts to that which _never fails_, if sought in true humbleness of spirit. I will gladly advise you to the best of my poor powers, but there is but _One_ true Counsellor for us all.

Kindly advise later as to date and hour of arrival.

Yours, etc.,
Alfred Smith.

A certain lack of enthusiasm as to the projected visit, apparent in Uncle Alfred’s letter, no less than the careful underlining of his pietistic sentiments, recalled him with singular vividness to the mind of his niece as she read.

“It’ll be something, to get away from here,” she consoled herself.

After all, Uncle Alfred had nearly always been kind, in his own strange way. She and her mother had laughed at him, but Mrs. Smith had always steadily upheld Uncle Alfred’s claim to affection and gratitude, because for many years he had given them a home. And he had been nicer to Rose after her mother’s death, she remembered.

“And, anyway, he won’t talk about ‘plans for the day’ at breakfast every blessed morning, and I shall have Ces to sleep in my room again.” She laughed out loud for very joy at the thought. There was a foolish and inexplicable hope in her heart that if she and Cecil once got away from Squires, they need never go back there. To herself, Rose added in all honesty a modification of her ardent wish to cut adrift from everything that the Aviolets stood for:

“After all, I daresay Lord Charlesbury would look us up in London. And it would be much nicer to see him away from all of _them_.”

In spite of herself, she was nervous at the thought of making her new plan known to Lady Aviolet, and she therefore did so in a casual and blustering manner that gave the announcement an air of unreality.

“Oh--did I tell you I’d heard from my uncle? He’s Mr. Alfred Smith, who has a business in Ovington Street. (Well, it’s a pawnbroking business, really.) I haven’t seen him since I married--and thought of going up to him.”

“Did you, my dear? The train service is very good, so you have only to let me know which day suits you and the carriage can take you to the station for the early train, and meet you again at the six o’clock, or the half-past eight, if you prefer it.”

“Oh, well, thank you very much, but I meant to stay there,” Rose said awkwardly.

“Would that be necessary?”

“I should like it,” Rose replied defiantly.

Her mother-in-law was unmoved. “As you prefer, my dear.”

“I should want to take Cecil, of course.”

“Indeed? Do you think it any real kindness to disturb him? He seems very happy, and looks so well. Besides, he is getting on nicely at his lessons, and it seems hard on Miss Wade that they should be interrupted.”

“She could have a holiday for a bit.”

“She has hardly been with us long enough to expect that. Irregularity is so unsettling to a child, too. I hope you will be unselfish enough to leave Cecil here, Rose, while you pay your visit.”

Lady Aviolet fixed her pale eyes upon Rose as she spoke, and they expressed melancholy, in the very slight degree in which their flaccid shallows ever expressed anything.

“I am Cecil’s grandmother, my dear, and so I am going to take upon myself to tell you that you are a very selfish mother to the boy. I see that you’re very fond of him--I quite see that--but you seem to have so little idea of the tremendous sacrifices that motherhood demands. Take this question of going away: you may say that you want Cecil with you, because you can’t bear to be away from him, but don’t you see that you’re only thinking of yourself? If you thought more of Cecil, and less of yourself, you’d see the folly and unkindness of disturbing and upsetting him by a change just when he is settling down to a regular routine for the first time in his little life. And London isn’t healthy for children like the country is. It won’t do him any good.”

Lady Aviolet’s implacable, unselfconscious certainty of the complete rightness of her own point of view daunted Rose curiously. Through her mind there floated, incoherently, words and phrases that should express her resentment. Difficulties--they always made difficulties--nothing was ever allowed to happen without these complications of argument, disapproval, condemnation ... things that ought to be simple, made difficult. It was tiring ... and it made one angry too. And how could any one decide that someone else was selfish, in that arbitrary way? But she was unable to formulate her thoughts in words, and stood shifting her weight from one foot to the other, like a schoolgirl that is being scolded.

At last she said in a sulky tone that might, equally, have emanated from the schoolgirl:

“I don’t see that at all. I’ve looked after Ces ever since he was born, and I suppose I know what’s best for him.”

She was angrily aware, as she spoke, of the futility of the assertion.

So, apparently, was Lady Aviolet.

“That is as it may be, my dear. And of course you will do as you think best. I can only advise you. But I should have thought that for little Cecil’s own sake, you might be willing to forget yourself. I hope I don’t expect to find old heads on young shoulders, but I should have thought you had seen enough of life to realize that we mothers have to sacrifice a great deal for our children. And they very often disappoint us at the end of it all. But at least there is the comfort of having done all one can.”

Rose, by an unwonted effort, repressed the retort that she longed to utter. If the self-sacrifice of their mother had been responsible for the ultimate evolution of the personalities of Ford and Jim Aviolet, her most ardent wish would be never to emulate such disastrous abnegation for the benefit of Cecil.

“Well, I’m sorry you don’t like the idea, but I’m afraid I’ve made up my mind,” she said, abruptly and ungraciously.

“Then there is no more to be said, my dear. Perhaps you will be able to explain matters to Miss Wade so that she does not resign her situation, but you are acting with great unfairness towards her. If Cecil is to be taken out of her hands like this, and his whole time upset, you cannot expect her to have any real authority over the child. I was beginning to hope that he was improving in _every_ respect under her management.”

Lady Aviolet’s intonation made it clear that her “every” meant “one.”

“Her latest idea is that he ought to be whipped for telling a story.”

“Painful though that would be, it might be the truest kindness to the poor little fellow himself in the end. But I hope we need not consider the question at all. I really do hope and believe that, under Miss Wade’s management, Cecil is losing his weakness.”

Lady Aviolet’s hope--a plant of frail and ill-supported growth--was not destined to fulfilment.

Rose appeared in the Lucians’ drawing-room one afternoon with swollen eyelids, and said miserably to Henrietta:

“They’ve made me punish Cecil. At least, I suppose it wasn’t them that _made_ me, but I’ve had to do it. And yet I don’t really believe in whipping a child--I was going dead against my own instinct, and I knew it in a sort of way, but it seemed the only thing I hadn’t tried.”

“What happened?”

“Ces--poor darling--told a perfectly flat lie to Ford, of all people, and that beast wanted to punish him himself, but, of course, I said I wouldn’t allow that, and that I was the proper person to do it. But in the end Sir Thomas did. I said he might, because I knew it would impress Ces far more--and, besides, I knew I should howl and cry if I had to hit his darling little body.”

Rose laughed tremulously, and openly put her handkerchief to her eyes.

“Poor lamb, how did he take it?” Henrietta Lucian asked.

“He didn’t cry,” Rose said proudly. “He’s a plucky little fellow, and he’s proud, too. I knew he wouldn’t make a sound, and he didn’t. Even his grandfather said he’d been brave over it. Sir Thomas was fairly decent about the whole thing, I will say. He gave Ces a talking to about truth and all that, but it was very short, and then he gave him six cuts with a little cane and left him. And I didn’t go to him.”

“Very brave of you, and I should think quite right.”

“It was hard,” Rose admitted.

“I’m so sorry for you, about the whole thing. Maurice and I often talk about it. He’s interested, you know. I’m pretty sure he thinks it isn’t little Cecil’s fault, in a way, but more like a congenital misfortune.”

“He’s so brave about other things, it’s difficult to understand. I suppose he’s had a rotten bringing up, poor darling, and that’s my fault as much as any one’s. Don’t you think a marriage like mine is a great mistake?”

“In what way?” Henrietta temporized.

“Marrying into a different class.”

“It’s apt to create difficult situations, I suppose.”

“You may say so!” Mrs. Aviolet remarked in heartfelt accents. “But it isn’t only that--though to my dying day I don’t suppose I shall ever see what they’re driving at, half the time--it’s the children. Inheriting two lots of instincts, so to speak, poor little things. I know quite well that my mother-in-law thinks poor little Cecil’s trouble is all owing to his belonging what-you-may-call to the people, one side of him. In a way, I suppose I agree. The high-and-mighty Aviolets were never anything but honourable, were they?”

“In the conventional sense of the word, perhaps not,” said Miss Lucian.

“The conventional sense of the word is all they want,” said Rose simply, quite without irony.

She was very glad when the time came for her to take Cecil to London. He had been wildly and defiantly naughty since his punishment, but he had not again been untruthful.

“Wilful naughtiness is one thing, and underhand ways are another,” Miss Wade primly observed. “I can understand a child--a boy especially--being spoilt and disobedient from time to time, but there is something terrible about a child that is habitually untruthful. It seems so unnatural.”

“I think little Cecil’s disgrace the other day has shown him what a frightful thing untruth is,” Lady Aviolet said. “I hope we may never have to repeat such a thing.”

“It was evidently what the boy needed,” Sir Thomas said curtly.

It struck Rose that all of them unconsciously relied upon their own powers of observation to tell them what effect the experiment in discipline had had upon Cecil.

Hardly aware of the elementary psychological instinct that prompted her, Rose trusted neither to their perceptions nor to her own. She tried to find out from the little boy, himself, what their punishment had meant to him.

“You won’t let them say ever again that you tell stories, will you, darling? If one does slip out, come and tell Mother, and I promise no one shall be angry or punish you. Only tell me about it.”

“Yes, Mummie.”

He was not looking at her.

“I _had_ to ask Grandpa to whip you the other day, Ces, but it made me very unhappy.”

“I’m so sorry, Mummie.” He had put his arms round her neck and was kissing her eagerly. She hugged him.

“Sweetheart! You know we had to do something to make you remember, and you will remember now, won’t you?”

“Yes. I didn’t cry when Grandpa hit me with his cane.”

“I know you didn’t, my own brave little man.”

“I wanted to scream out loud--it hurt so.”

She involuntarily tightened her hold round him.

“I was brave, wasn’t I, Mummie?” he asked her wistfully.

“Very brave, my darling.”

She could not deny him the acknowledgment, and it was only afterwards that she realized herself to have been dimly puzzled by his insistence.

Rose told Miss Wade that she was to have a holiday, and the governess was quite as much offended as Lady Aviolet had predicted that she would be, and offered to resign her situation. Rose only wished that she possessed the courage to accept the offer.

The night before they went to London, she spoke to Ford, who had detained her, with his air of suave autocracy, as she was following Lady Aviolet upstairs.

“One moment, Rose. I want to know how soon you are likely to bring Cecil back from town?”

Rose opened her brown eyes very widely, and spoke with a purposely exaggerated astonishment.

“Why?”

“Because Cecil’s movements concern me, as his guardian,” said Ford calmly.

“I’m his mother, thank you.”

Ford smiled very pleasantly.

“Oh, yes, you have equal rights of guardianship, of course. I had no intention of implying anything else.”

“Equal!” Her voice held unbounded scorn.

“Quite equal.”

She swung round and faced him, her hands on her hips in an attitude that had been frequently characteristic of her mother, her head a little thrust forward.

“What utter nonsense you talk, Ford! You may call yourself Cecil’s guardian till the cows come home, but a child belongs to its mother, I’d have you know.”

“Ladies know so little about the English law,” Ford murmured. “Are you really not aware, Rose, that in law a child has only one parent--its father? If Jim were alive, he would have, strictly speaking, the right to take Cecil away from you altogether, if he pleased. I’m not for an instant suggesting that he would have thought of such a thing--naturally--but I see you altogether fail to realize your position. It has been ruled, very wisely, I think, that the _father_ of a child can appoint a guardian to act with the surviving parent, after his own death. Now a mother has no such power. She can only appoint a guardian after the death of both herself and the father. So you see that your ownership of Cecil is very limited.”

Rose had turned white.

“If that’s the law of the land, it’s enough to make one sick. But I don’t believe it.”

She did believe it, however. Ford was invariably accurate, and his manner had carried conviction with it.

“Then I strongly advise you to inform yourself on the matter. It has really seemed quite necessary for me to mention these facts that you find so unpleasant, owing to your very persistently hostile attitude to me, Rose. You appear to imagine that my attempts at directing matters in which Cecil is concerned, rank as interference pure and simple. So it seems to me better that I should state my case frankly, and make you understand that I have quite a substantial claim behind me.”

“Cecil’s grandparents----” Her voice shook so much from anger and dismay that she could not go on.

“Have nothing to do with it, strictly speaking. The issue lies between you and me, whilst Cecil is under sixteen, and I feel sure that we shall work together more amicably after my little explanation. All I ask you to remember is that our rights of guardianship”--his pause stressed the words--“are equal. Yours and mine.”

“_Damn_ Jim!” said Rose passionately. “And damn the laws of this country, too, if they’re as unjust as all that.”