Chapter IX: Part II: Five Years Later (2)

No, those details had occurred to him long afterwards, appropriate accessories to the act, as it might have taken place and as it had not, ever, been in the most remote danger of taking place.

And yet he had scarcely known--had certainly not felt--himself to be lying, when he had made that dramatic statement to Perriman. Cecil was neither very clever, nor profoundly analytical. He did not tell himself, but he dimly knew, that if Perriman had believed in his last lie, he would have come to believe in it himself. He would have worked himself up to something like a genuine remorse for the offence that he had not committed. There would have been flashes of realization--but such searing illuminations Cecil had long been accustomed to relegate into that nocturnal limbo that opens only at the rarest unescapable intervals, in the hour between darkness and the first faint glimmer of dawn: the hour when even youth cannot always seek and find oblivion in sleep.

But Perriman had not believed him. Perriman had thought that Cecil was making a mock of his kindness, of the helping hand that he had extended, the simple, earnest counsels that he had given.

Cecil writhed.

Perriman might forgive him, but he would never respect him, never believe in him any more.

And Cecil did not believe in himself, nor even, very profoundly, in the power of the frenzied vow that he repeated again and again, trying to hypnotize himself into attaching a supernatural potency, like that of a spell, to the form of words that he had chosen.

But when, less than a week later, he found that he had broken his vow again and again, Cecil was not surprised.

At fifteen, he had become definitely incapable of surprise at the extent of his own moral degradation.

III

To Rose Aviolet’s way of thinking, Cecil’s public-school days slid past as might a dream. They had, to her, much of the intangible quality of dream things. She went down to see him many times, in those years, but she never received, either from her visits or from Cecil, any impression of the place other than superficial ones.

There was something withdrawn, strangely colourless about the boy’s personality, that seemed to nullify any possibility of the assimilation of an atmosphere.

He and Rose for the most part spent the holidays at Squires. There Cecil was more eager and more natural, except when Ford was present.

His old, childish admiration for his uncle had entirely disappeared, but in its place was a silent hostility that rather frightened Rose, betraying as it did a depth of bitterness entirely foreign to her own outspoken, abusive dislike.

She once said to Cecil, “You don’t like Ford, do you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he’s rather a beast, I think,” said Cecil slowly. “He sneers at me.”

“I know. He’s always been like that.”

“He’s a beast to you, too, Mummie. Sometimes I want to knock him down when he looks at you with that smile of his, turning down the corners of his mouth.”

“Darling!” cried Rose impulsively.

She was acutely touched by his championship of her.

But when one day Cecil boasted to her that he “had given Uncle Ford a piece of his mind” on the same subject, Rose knew well enough that none of the story was true, and her heart sank within her.

“I simply said to him, ‘Look here, Uncle Ford, I think you forget that I’m practically a man now. You can’t speak like that to my mother in front of _me_, you know----’”

“Shut up, Ces,” she said wearily.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you think I ought to have said it?”

“You never did say it, Ces, and you know that as well as I do.”

“Mother, if you’re not going to believe what I say, you’ll put an absolute end to all confidence between us. I thought I could always depend on you, at least.”

“So you can, as you very well know,” cried Rose indignantly. “But not to swallow stories that I know perfectly well haven’t got a word of truth in them from start to finish. What’s the _sense_ of it, Cecil?”

“What I told you was perfectly true,” he said coldly.

“That you said that to your uncle? When?”

“It was yesterday, after tea. No--let me see--it was before tea, to be absolutely accurate. In the garden.”

She knew perfectly well that he was lying, but she asked herself whether Cecil knew it.

Before he went back to school for his last term there, Diana Aviolet came to stay at Squires without her husband. She looked pale and drawn, and the slim lines of her figure were sharpening into a middle-aged angularity.

“Cecil has improved a lot,” she said to Rose, soon after her arrival. “He takes so much more interest in things--seems so much keener, somehow.”

“I think he’s very well,” said Rose coolly. “Last year he was growing too fast.”

“I daresay he was. You’re lucky, Rose, to have a son.”

Rose softened in an instant. “Poor Di! It’s rotten bad luck. Have you been to a doctor to see if anything can be done?”

“Oh, my dear!” Diana coloured faintly and prudishly.

“Well, it might be worth while. They have all sorts of dodges now-a-days, I believe. There was a woman I knew--at least I only saw her about once, but she’s a friend of Uncle A.’s--well, she’d been married sixteen years and never a sign of a baby, and she wanted one most dreadfully. And at last she went to a doctor, and made her husband go as well, and he told them----”

Diana broke in hurriedly, “Please, Rose, I’d really rather you didn’t.”

“All right. But she had twin girls, the very next year, perfect ducks, and as healthy as you please, both of them.”

“It’s a boy that Ford wants, of course,” sighed Diana.

Rose, trying to imagine Ford in a paternal role, found herself obliged to maintain a careful silence upon the resultant picture.

“I think it’s very disappointing for a man, if his wife doesn’t have children, don’t you?” Diana asked wistfully.

“It’s just as disappointing for her--in fact more, very likely.”

“Of course, nearly every woman wants a baby, I suppose, but men do seem to feel they’d like someone to live on after them, to carry on the name. At least, that’s what Ford says.”

“Does he say it often?” Rose inquired drily, and felt ashamed when her sister-in-law replied simply and unresentfully:

“Yes, he does.”

“I wish you had got a child,” she said helplessly. “It’s awfully hard on you, especially if Ford----”

Rose stopped abruptly.

“Oh, Ford’s all right. He and I understand one another,” said Ford’s wife rather drearily. “Only of course children are always such a tremendous bond between married people, aren’t they? One misses that.”

“Poor Di,” said Rose gently.

She very often forgot altogether her old animosity towards Diana. In these days, for all Diana’s position as Ford’s wife, her security of moderate wealth and position, her unimpeachable ancestry, it sometimes seemed as though the maturity that had come late to Rose held a deeper significance, a greater stability of poise, than the surface serenity of breeding that had always characterized Diana. Beneath the serenity was an unacknowledged disappointment, a growing boredom, that threatened slow, but very complete, devitalization.

It was quite true that Cecil, as Diana said, had improved.

When he came home from school for the last time, it seemed as though a weight had been removed from his shoulders. He had suddenly acquired an assurance of demeanour that was in odd contrast to his previous morose habit of silence, and self-confidence was no longer lacking in his manner.

In discussing the boy’s future, old Sir Thomas Aviolet expressed himself as being better satisfied with him than he had dared to hope.

“There was a sort of hang-dog look about the lad that I didn’t like, not so very long ago. But he’s taken a turn for the better, I’m glad to see--eh, Rose? He’ll do us credit yet.”

Sir Thomas, like Uncle Alfred, was seldom enthusiastic as Rose understood the word. But she met his very modified praises half-way.

“I always said he’d buck up in time,” she triumphantly declared.

“He seems quite keen on the idea of going to the ’Varsity. I think it’s a good scheme. Completes a fellow’s education, don’t you know? And he might travel for a bit, after that. We’ll see, we’ll see.”

“Travelling is a good thing,” said Rose. “Opens one’s eyes a bit, I mean. But it costs money.”

“That’s my affair,” said Sir Thomas very curtly indeed.

His wife added more gently: “We should like our grandson to see something of the world, my dear, before he settles down to the estate. It seems fairly certain now, humanly speaking, that Cecil will come after Ford at Squires.”

She sighed gently.

“Cecil is growing into a very dear boy, but still--one can’t help feeling for poor Ford’s disappointment at not having a son of his own. I must say, I should never have thought it of Diana.”

“Well, she can’t help it, can she?”

“Give me that ball of wool, my dear, if you can reach it without disturbing yourself. Thank you.”

Rose understood that the subject of Mrs. Ford Aviolet’s ability or inability to continue the direct line of succession to Squires was not one to be pursued.

She had become very much more amenable to such hints with the passing of time.

Cecil himself was pleased and eager at the prospect of going to Cambridge. His new-born enthusiasm reminded Rose of his childish days, and she thought thankfully that the original Cecil had returned to her.

“You see, Mother, I shall make a lot of new friends there, I expect, as well as meeting fellows from school. But I like meeting new people.”

She had noticed that he did, and also, strange development of his one-time timidity, that Cecil now talked more freely and with more animation, when he was in the company of people other than his own immediate circle.

The Marchmonts were invited to lunch at Squires in the course of Diana’s stay, and Rose, at first with gratification, heard Cecil volubly replying to the General’s friendly questionings about his schooldays.

A faint anxiety was beginning to displace the gratification by the time they had entered the dining-room and she had found herself seated next to General Marchmont. Cecil was at the further end of the table.

“Your boy’s growing up very fast. A fine young fellow,” said the old man kindly.

Rose flushed deeply with pleasure and surprise. “I was afraid I heard him laying down the law, just now,” she admitted bluntly.

“No more than is natural and proper at his time of life, I assure you. He seems a clever fellow, too. What’s that he was telling me about a scholarship?”

Rose felt the happy flush ebbing from her face, and bit her lip sharply. “What?”

“Something about his having passed out of school with a fine scholarship to his credit. That’ll stand him in very good stead, you’ll find, whatever line he takes up later on. We want a few brains in the country just now, and the coming generation is where we look for ’em. There isn’t a man in the Government to-day----”

He was launched on a favourite topic, and Rose, not attempting to listen, gave herself up for a moment to her sense of utter dismay.

How could Cecil be such a fool, she asked herself furiously. The silly, boastful lie was predestined to certain contradiction. Only her own passionate instinct of safe-guarding her boy from the contempt and condemnation of others had saved her from an instant denial of the preposterous figment of the scholarship. Not one of the others--Sir Thomas, Lady Aviolet, Diana, any of them--would have either the wit or the charity to leave the old General under his deception, should it occur to him to mention it to them.

She could see, in furious imagination, the blank glance and open-mouthed repudiation with which any one of them would receive such an allusion.

Was it possible that Cecil could not see that too? Rose momentarily lacked the moral courage to face the issue involved in that question. But as time went on, she was forced to consider it.

Cecil, now-a-days voluble and ready to please and be pleased, was attractive to older people by reason of his good looks and his youthfulness. Contemporaries of his grandparents, and even of his mother, liked the boy at first sight, and showed him kindly attention, as had old General Marchmont. He always responded readily, with an evident eagerness to be liked and thought well of that seemed mysteriously to have sprung from the ashes of his schoolboy apathy and dejection. Rose knew that the Aviolets, Lady Aviolet especially, were pleased at this development. She felt sure that they did not perceive that of which she herself was becoming sharply and painfully aware, that sooner or later these kindly people seemed to lose touch with Cecil. They became indifferent, or faintly puzzled, and they no longer sought him out.

Cecil himself appeared to be oddly inured to such shifting relationships. He seemed to pass on, equally eager and hopeful, in search of other friends to whom he might present a more appealing aspect.

For he was acutely preoccupied with his own presentment of himself. Of that Rose, forced into psychological analysis as unfamiliar to her as it was difficult of achievement, had at last become conscious. He recounted imaginary achievements for his own glorification, and related unlikely experiences or future projects obviously intended to render himself interesting to his hearers.

“But everybody does that more or less,” Rose angrily assured herself.

At the back of her mind, unformulated, hung uneasily the sense that Cecil did not pose merely in the foolish, superficial manner habitual to youth. He invented--but he did not delude himself. And he appeared strangely unawakened to the probability that neither did he, at any rate for long, succeed in deluding others.

As in the case of his imaginary scholarship, exploited to General Marchmont, Rose often found that he was incredibly reckless to the certainty of detection.

“Either he doesn’t care--or he doesn’t realize,” she thought, bewildered and wretched.

It seemed to her that, of the two alternatives, one must imply moral, the other mental, deficiency.

She was glad when he went up to Cambridge, hoping against her own innermost certainties that the new environment might produce a miracle. But it produced instead a new perplexity. Cecil began to ask her for money.

He had never been extravagant before, and he received a very adequate allowance from his grandfather.

“What’s the matter? Is it bills?”

“Well, it is, and it isn’t. There are expenses at college that a lady can’t understand, quite, but----”

“Rubbish, Ces! Don’t try and come that gammon over me,” said Mrs. Aviolet forcibly. “Tell me right out what you want money for, like a good boy.”

“I’ve told you that you wouldn’t understand,” said Cecil in an offended voice.

“Then you’d better go to somebody that will,” retorted his mother.

“Mother, I didn’t mean to vex you. The fact is, I got a lot of books and prints for my room when I first went up, and--and the tradesmen are beginning to bother me a bit. They’re threatening--some of them--to write to grandfather.”

Rose had not sufficient experience of the ways of tradesmen in a university town to reject the explanation, although she instinctively doubted it.

“Give me the bills, and I’ll write a cheque--if it’s not more than I’ve got at the bank, which it very well may be.”

“I haven’t got the bills here. You’d better make the cheque out to me.”

“Cecil, do you take me for a fool?” said Rose, looking straight at him.

“If I pay in cash, there’s a considerable discount,” said Cecil with dignity. “That’s the only reason why I suggested it. But if you won’t help me, Mother, then I suppose I shall have to have it out with grandfather.”

“Yes, and I know what that means! The whole thing put into Ford’s hands, and him making a bad matter worse with his sarcasms.... _I_ know. Ces, I’ll help you this once. How much is it?”

“Oh, Mummie darling! Twenty-five pounds. I’ll never be such an ass again....”

He kissed her.

Cecil was always affectionate.

“I wish to goodness you’d tell me, Ces, if there’s anything at the back of this. You ought to know by this time that I shouldn’t let you down, whatever it was.”

“I’ve told you all it is, Mother--on my word of honour I have,” said Cecil, lifting his eyes to hers.

She would not allow herself to disbelieve it. He did not ask her for money again, but some months later, when she had returned to London, and Cecil, at his own desire, was still at work, although the Long Vacation had already begun, she was sent for one evening by the old pawnbroker.

“What mischief has this boy of yours been getting into?” Uncle Alfred demanded, without preamble.

“What’s the matter?”

“The matter is that the lad has written to me for money. I should have thought he knew me better, but he seemed fairly desperate. I can only suppose that some lewd woman has enticed him.”

“Good gracious, Uncle A., what a way you do put things!” Rose protested in vigorous counter-attack.

“The language of Scripture is good enough for me, Rose. Let the squeamish stop up their ears like the adder that is deaf, it will not alter facts. Your son has written and asked me for what he is pleased to call a loan. Needless to say, he offers no security.”

“Well, you’ve got his word, poor child. I’m sure he means to repay it, whatever it is.”

Rose was temporizing, trying to gain command of herself in the new dismay that had come upon her.

“I have not built up a successful business to the glory of God and to the satisfaction of my old age by giving loans to ‘poor children’ on the strength of their intentions of repaying them,” observed Uncle Alfred witheringly. “I have here Cecil’s letter. Do you wish to see it?”

“Yes--no. I daresay he’d much rather I didn’t. I can guess what he says, well enough.”

“I doubt if you can,” said her uncle drily. “It may even surprise you, as much as it did me, to learn that Cecil is entirely disinterested in his request. He merely requires thirty or forty pounds to help a friend out of his difficulties.”

“What friend?”

“Precisely.” Uncle Alfred’s tone was bland. “What friend? I ask myself the same question, Rose. And the answer that occurs to me is to the effect that your son’s friend is of the same family as the friends on whose behalf so many genteel souls, who never--dear me, no, never--contemplate entering a pawnbroker’s establishment on their own account, try to dispose of worthless trinkets in exchange for solid cash. Any one in my way of business gets to know those friends very well indeed. I’ve known ladies bargain quite violently on behalf of the friend. They seem to find it easier than if it was for themselves, somehow. I’m not deceived, and they know I’m not deceived, and yet they go on doing it. The human heart is deceitful, and, above all things, desperately wicked, Rose.”

Uncle Alfred seemed inclined to lose himself in the contemplation of depraved humanity. A knock at the door came to rouse him.

“May I come in?” said Dr. Lucian.

The old pawnbroker welcomed him cordially. He enjoyed the doctor’s games of backgammon, a regular institution now whenever Lucian was in London, and found him excellent company.

He was even prepared to dismiss Rose upon the instant, in the security that a masculine _tête-à-tête_ would be as welcome to his visitor as to himself.

“Don’t let me detain you any further, Rose. Backgammon is not the recreation to you that it is to me--and, moreover, you make a very poor hand at it,” he remarked candidly.

The doctor cast a glance at Rose, but he said nothing. She looked tired, and it might very well be that she was glad of any excuse that should free her from the not always easy task of entertaining Uncle A.

“I’ll go by-and-bye. I’d rather finish this business first, and Dr. Lucian can help, very likely. He knows all about Cecil.”

“What is it?” said the doctor.

“Ces has been playing the fool. I don’t know why, or how. And he’s written to Uncle Alfred to lend him money.”

“He means _give_, of course,” interjected Uncle Alfred.

“Does he give any reason for wanting money?”

Rose looked at her uncle.

“He writes that he wishes to help a friend who is in great difficulties. Presumably he supposes that I shall believe it.”

Uncle Alfred’s tone left little doubt as to the inaccuracy of the conjecture.

“Yes, I think we might discount that,” said Lucian thoughtfully. “Is this the first time he’s been hard up for money?”

There was a moment’s silence and then Rose said shortly, “No.”

“Do you know--can you guess--what he wants it for?”

“I can’t, indeed.”

“Some Jezebel, no doubt,” was Mr. Smith’s verdict.

“I was wondering about that. Will you let me speak with--er--professional plainness?”

“Of course,” said Rose, opening her brown eyes.

The doctor smiled at her. It was for the sake of Uncle Alfred’s possible susceptibilities that he thus prepared the way. Between Rose and himself, he knew well enough that no artificial barriers to fullness and sincerity of speech could exist.

“About women. Has Cecil had any experiences of that sort at all, so far as you know?”

“None,” said Rose instantly.

Uncle Alfred made a slightly derisive sound, and she turned upon him.

“Oh, I know he wouldn’t tell me about it, if he had. But there are a few things that a boy’s mother knows by instinct, and that’s one of them. And I know that Ces, so far, is as inexperienced in that particular way as any baby.”

“I think you’re probably quite right,” said Dr. Lucian.

But there was no elation in his tone, rather was there something which made Rose cry out anxiously and incoherently:

“Why--what is it?”

“It’s only that I’d rather hear anything, however discreditable, about Cecil, so long as it was normal, than something which, when all’s said and done, is slightly abnormal.”

“You take a low view of human nature, doctor,” remarked Uncle Alfred.

“A low view and a practical one are often synonymous, I find; if by low, you mean natural as opposed to idealistic,” said the doctor drily.

“The human heart is----”

“For goodness gracious’ sake, Uncle A., don’t say that again!” his niece cried.

The pawnbroker looked at her and then nodded significantly to the doctor.

“Very much overwrought,” he observed sententiously.

“And I’ll thank you to let me speak for myself,” said Mrs. Aviolet, tossing her head.

“Your mother over again, Rose. You never got this independent temper from the Smiths, let me tell you. Irreligious my poor brother may have been, and was, in consequence of which he failed in business, and went through the Bankruptcy Court--for unless the Lord buildeth the house, how shall it stand?--but there was no temper about him. And no vice either.”

“Ah, that’s interesting. You understand,” said the doctor, “that these things have a very direct bearing upon Cecil’s case.”

“Do you mean heredity?” Rose asked.

“Certainly I do.”

“The Spirit bloweth where it listeth,” Uncle Alfred automatically quoted, and at once proceeded, in his usual business-like fashion, to the point at issue. “No, my poor brother was a very quiet, well-disposed fellow. Weak, that was his only trouble. Couldn’t say ‘No.’”

“He wasn’t an imaginative, highly-strung person?”

“Nothing of the kind,” Uncle Alfred declared, with a rather offended intonation.

“Cecil is both, you know,” the doctor gently pointed out.

Rose leaned forward, looking earnestly at Dr. Lucian. “I want you to tell me something. Is Ces morally responsible for the things he does?”

Lucian hesitated for a long while before he replied. At last he said: “Honestly, I don’t think he is. Wait----” as she moved, as though uncontrollably. “I don’t mean that he’s of unsound mind. Remember that there’s a great difference between someone who doesn’t know right from wrong and someone who may know it, but has not the strength of mind to control the desire which prompts him towards wrong. The first state implies a deficiency in perception; the second, a deficiency in control. To a certain extent we all, at one time or another, unless we definitely belong to the first group, come under the second. But there are always resistances within ourselves--urgings towards the good. We can call them the promptings of conscience, or the risk of detection, or the fear of consequences. One or other of these motives will serve to deter us, quite frequently, from doing wrong. But I believe, personally, that there are certain individuals in whom those resistances are either non-existent, or else of so feeble a nature that they have no chance of acting as deterrents. Such a deficiency is congenital, for the most part.”

Rose was silent.

The old pawnbroker was gazing into the fire, his shrewd, lined face as expressionless as ever.

Rose Aviolet looked deadly tired.

“Won’t you let me take you home? You look so tired,” said Dr. Lucian gently.

“I’d rather get this settled first. What are you going to say to Cecil’s letter, Uncle?”

“I shall remind him that though his sins be as scarlet, they can be washed white as snow in the Blood of the Lamb. Also I shall point out to him that a man of my business experience is not the person to be approached with foolish and unbusiness-like suggestions of a loan, when what is really meant is a gift.”

“And you won’t send him any money?”

“Certainly not.”

“Well, you’re right,” said Rose, drawing a deep breath. “I can’t say anything else. You’re right.”

“Rose,” said the doctor, “would you like me to go to Cambridge and see the boy? I’ll try and find out what’s wrong, and I’ll come and report to you as soon as I get back.”

“That’s exactly like you! How good you are,” cried Rose, her whole face lightening.

“That’s settled, then. Come along, now, and let me see you home. I’ll come back for our game, Mr. Smith.”

“By all means. The Underground Railway will be your best way to travel.”

It was perfectly understood that by the best way Uncle Alfred invariably intended to denote the cheapest way.

Lucian took Rose downstairs.

“Good-night, Mrs. Aviolet,” said a timid voice.

“Oh, good-night, Felix.”

“Will you wait a moment, while I get a taxi?” said the doctor.

“But we can go by Underground.”

“No. You’re much too tired.”

Felix volunteered to fetch a taxi, was thanked and was heartily shaken hands with by Rose through the window, when he had shut the door of the cab upon them.

They left him gazing from the doorstep as they drove away, his eternal _feuilleton_ in his hands.

“That boy worships you, Rose.”

“Poor Felix!” she said leniently. “I shall never forget what a brick he was, years ago, when Ces was ill with croup in the middle of the night.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, rather bitterly, “that’s the way you remember all of us, by what we did, or didn’t do, for Cecil.”

It was very seldom that he allowed himself such an allusion, and the next moment he was ashamed of it.

“I’m sorry--dear.”

“I suppose it’s quite true,” said Rose simply.

When next he spoke, it was in reference to his visit to Cambridge.

“I’ll leave it to you to do whatever seems best,” Rose said. “Poor little Ces! It was a mistake, his going to a public school and university, and all that. He ought to have been put to work young, like the people he comes from.”

He noticed often that now-a-days she was no longer violent in her denunciations of those who had helped to arbitrate in Cecil’s destiny. Time was teaching Rose Aviolet to conform.

Just before they parted, she reverted to what Lucian had said earlier in the evening, as though it had been in her thoughts ever since.

“What you said about motives for not doing wrong having practically no weight at all with some people: well, a thing that’s always puzzled me with Ces is that he never seems to jib at telling a lie even when it’s absolutely certain to be found out. You’d think most people told lies for the sake of deceiving, wouldn’t you? Well--he doesn’t. He tells them when anybody in the world would know that they couldn’t deceive a cat. So it seems,” she turned to face him, and he saw that she was crying, “it seems that what you said is right: the ordinary deterrents don’t exist for Ces. But I do think it isn’t him that ought to go to hell for his sins, but those who brought him into the world what he is.”

IV

Squires, at any rate at the very beginning of the war, maintained its equilibrium. Rose was in London, but Diana and Ford Aviolet drove over from the other side of the county.

“Good Lord, it’s Armageddon!” growled Sir Thomas Aviolet. He was entirely unaware that many hundreds of other people had seized upon the phrase already, and that as many hundreds more would do so within the next few days.

“The whole of the map will have to be re-made,” remarked Lady Aviolet, and sometimes she said instead: “But it _can’t_ last long, that’s one thing. It’s on such a terrific scale that it must be over quickly. It can’t last.”

“They say Kitchener is preparing for a three years’ war.”

“I daresay he has to be on the safe side, Thomas, but it couldn’t possibly last that length of time. Not with all the Russian millions to help us. Why, they say the Russians will be in Berlin before Christmas.”

“I must say, I was frightened that first week-end,” said Diana. “There was a panic in the town, and everyone tried to get food in, for fear of a shortage, you know. And then people were so dreadful about money--one heard of them cashing simply enormous cheques, and taking the gold home with them! Of course, it was the one thing the Government said we mustn’t do--hoard gold. And I’m afraid getting the extra supplies of food wasn’t right, though I did do that myself. I made our grocer give me exactly three times the quantity of _everything_, and I got a number of tinned things, and a good deal of flour as well. There was actually a _queue_ outside his door, but I’d gone myself, in the car, so, of course, I got in first. After all, it was fair enough in a way, wasn’t it? First come first served, as they say.”

Her husband sneered. “First _car_ first served, Di. You hadn’t come there before they had; but they’d only come on foot.”

“Poor people,” said Diana placidly, although she had coloured faintly at his tone of voice. “Well, I’m sure I hope they got what they wanted, for there was plenty for everybody, as it turned out. And we know, now, that there isn’t going to be any difficulty about supplies, and that people are particularly asked not to hoard.”

“I’m sure we wouldn’t think of such a thing,” said Lady Aviolet. “Though, naturally, nobody wants to go short. _That_ wouldn’t help to end the war. But I’m afraid there’s a dreadful time ahead while it lasts. I wonder we haven’t heard from Cecil about getting a commission.”

“Boys of that age,” said Ford curtly, “won’t be wanted in a show of this kind. They haven’t the stamina, or the experience, or the physique. It’s men that are wanted, not children from school.”

“I expect he’ll want to go, Ford, and one does hear of younger boys----”

“Not of Cecil’s type, Mother. A silly, emotional lad of that kind gives more trouble than he’s worth. Besides, I doubt if he’d be able to stand fire, frankly.”

Lady Aviolet drew herself up. “My dear Ford, you don’t think what you’re saying. Cecil isn’t a _coward_. You sometimes almost talk as though he weren’t our own flesh and blood.”

“You always are down on poor Cecil, I’ve noticed it myself,” suddenly added Diana.

“I’m sure I don’t know why Ford should give that impression. He’s always been very good to poor Jim’s boy--naturally,” said Lady Aviolet.

She never allowed any one, least of all Ford’s wife, to imply any shadow of criticism of him.

“Cecil isn’t only ‘poor Jim’s’ son.”

“I know, my dear. It was a most unfortunate marriage, of course. But it was all many years ago, and she’s improved wonderfully, poor thing. One may not have very much in common with her, but, at least, she’s a genuinely devoted mother, and she hasn’t stood in the boy’s way.”

“She did her best, when she made difficulties over his going to school.”

“Well, yes,” Lady Aviolet conceded. “She was certainly very tiresome about that, I remember. She had some very odd ideas about his being different to other boys. As though all mothers didn’t think their own children quite different to all other children!”

“But Cecil really was a little bit different, Cousin Catherine,” said Diana. “It seems a shame to say so, but it really was rather dreadful when he was quite little, and wouldn’t speak the truth, or play games without cheating.”

“Little bounder,” muttered Ford between his teeth.

“It’s certainly a very horrid fault,” Diana admitted gravely.

“The streak of bad blood is bound to come out sooner or later. It’s all very well to talk of his being one of ourselves, Mother, but you must admit that there have been times when young Master Cecil showed very decided signs of his Smith ancestry.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t say such things, Ford,” returned Lady Aviolet very placidly.

Her son smiled slightly, raised his eyebrows, and went out of the room.

Diana Aviolet, her face still grave as it had been when she was discussing Cecil, and with a slight additional tinge of colour in it, said to her mother-in-law with an effect of considerable effort:

“You know, I’m afraid that one reason why Ford speaks so bitterly about poor Cecil, is because he feels it so, that he hasn’t got a son himself.”

Lady Aviolet’s own face lengthened--her nearest approach to a change of expression. “Yes, that’s a great disappointment for you both, my dear, and, in fact, for all of us. However, these things are not in our hands, and one can only suppose that Providence has its own inscrutable reasons.”

Diana did not seem to be in any way consoled by the contemplation of such ambiguous wisdom. “Farmers’ wives, and people who really don’t matter a bit, always seem to me to have large families,” she said resentfully. “I don’t know why I can’t have even one child, when it’s so important. I mean, of course, that Ford would like it, and one couldn’t help feeling----”

She broke off, but Lady Aviolet appeared to have understood her meaning.

“Of course, my dear, one had hoped that Ford’s child--and yours--might come after us at Squires, one of these days. After all, he _is_ our eldest son and he’s always been such a good son, too. Poor Jim was very different. Wild, you know. We never say very much about it, but it was his own fault that we were obliged to send him out to the East. And even then, I always think he would have steadied down if only it hadn’t been for that senseless marriage.”

“Of course, it was a pity to marry her, but I quite see--I can understand--I’ve often thought,” said Diana courageously, “that Rose is rather nice, in her own way. What I mean to say is, that in her own way, Rose really is rather nice. Sometimes, anyway.”

“She has improved a great deal,” repeated Lady Aviolet, in very modified approval.

“And she’s good-looking.”

“Men think so, certainly. Laurence Charlesbury admired her. I used sometimes to wonder--however, it would have been very unsuitable, and I imagine he quite realized that. Poor Rose, she was a great deal more impossible in those days than she is now, or else it was that people were so much more particular then. I remember how very much it used to distress me to see her with paint on her face.”

“Bad form,” said Diana judicially.

“Oh, very. And she had a very vehement and emphatic way of talking, that one rather disliked. However, as I say, she has improved very much since then.”

“I wonder what she’ll do now?”

“There’s no reason why she shouldn’t train as a Red Cross nurse, I suppose,” said Lady Aviolet rather doubtfully. “I believe the most unlikely people succeed in passing the examinations, and get their certificates, so I suppose it isn’t very difficult.”

“I’m getting up some ambulance classes at home, of course. If Ford gets a commission, I shall try and arrange to go abroad.”

“Ford, my dear! He’s over the age limit.”

“I know, but, of course, he’s going to move heaven and earth. But I don’t really think he’d ever pass, medically.”

“Does his heart still trouble him?”

“Only sometimes.”

“That was the South African war, poor Ford! Well, he need never feel that he hasn’t done something for his country.”

Lady Aviolet rested in this comfortable conviction.

Diana was less at ease, feeling daily the deepening nervous strain beneath which Ford lived.

When a letter came from Cecil, announcing his intention of at once applying for a commission, Sir Thomas loudly proclaimed the fact, looking Ford in the face fairly and squarely as he spoke. Sir Thomas was much more capable than was Lady Aviolet, of thinking Ford and his criticisms something less than infallible.

“Shall I write to Cecil, Father?”

“No thank ’ee. I’ll write myself. He’s shown a very proper spirit,” said Sir Thomas, “and he’s wanted out there. I shall be proud to let him go.”

Sir Thomas had never before spoken with so much cordiality of his grandson.

“Ford may say what he pleases,” he remarked later to his wife, “but that was a very good letter young Cecil wrote me. He may have his faults, but I must say I like a boy of his age to show the right spirit.”

“He’s very young, Thomas.”

“He’ll mend of that in a month or two, as I said to Ford.”

“Oh, I hope it may be all over before then. It _can’t_ last long.”

“Of course, I know very well what’s upsetting Ford,” pursued Sir Thomas with an air of perspicacity. “He can’t get out himself, and he’s got no son to send.”

“His son would be far too young to go, even if he’d got one,” said Lady Aviolet literally. “Why, he’d be still in the nursery.”

“I daresay, I daresay--but that’s what’s upsettin’ him all the same.”

Lady Aviolet did not deny it.

In the course of the next few days, however, it was Sir Thomas who betrayed vexation of spirit, and Ford who was quietly triumphant.

Cecil wrote another letter to his grandfather, in which he did not mention a commission at all, and earnestly asked for money.

“What’s he want money for? He has a very good allowance, and this is no time for lashin’ out. You can write and tell him so, Ford.”

This time Sir Thomas showed no objection to letting Ford act as his secretary. He also bade his wife write to Rose, in London.

“Ask her if she knows what the young ass is up to, and if she doesn’t, she’d better go and see him. Or Ford. Ford would be the best person. Write to her to-night, Catherine.”

Lady Aviolet obediently did so.

My dear Rose,

I wonder if you get more war news in London than we do here. Of course, the papers can only tell what they are _allowed_ to tell, and I am sure that a great deal is being kept from us. What a dreadful time it all is! Like a nightmare, as I say.

I should like to hear if you know how Cecil’s plans stand. Of course, it was very natural he should be eager to join the Army at once, and Sir Thomas was pleased with his letter. But we should like to hear what steps he has taken. We have felt a little bit anxious at his asking for money, especially as he doesn’t say what he wants it for. His allowance is a very good one, more than either Ford or poor Jim ever had at his age. Sir Thomas suggests that Ford should go up and see him, and perhaps he had better, unless you have anything else to suggest.

I daresay it is all very unsettling for him just now, and perhaps he would like to come straight to us, in which case I hope we shall see you as well.

Diana sends her love. She goes home to-morrow to resume Red Cross classes, etc.

Yours affecly.,
Catherine Aviolet.

Rose’s reply, when it came, was not a source of gratification.

Dear Lady Aviolet,

Thanks for yours of last Thursday. I knew Ces would want to go to the war, and of course he’ll have to go.

I’ve been worried, too, about him asking for money, but I can’t get any sense out of him by letter, though I expect I shall when I see him. I shouldn’t think Ford had better go to see him. In fact, I’d already got Dr. Lucian to say that he’d go, only since the war began he’s been head over ears. I’ve now asked him again, and he’ll be off in a couple of days.

I’ll write again when I hear.

Please give Diana my love.

Yours affly.,
Rose Aviolet.

“It really is very unsatisfactory,” said Rose Aviolet’s mother-in-law.

“What’s all this about Lucian?” Sir Thomas demanded with corrugated brows. “I don’t want Lucian interfering with my family affairs. What the devil have they got to do with Lucian?”

“You’d better ask Rose. She’s always had some fancy that Dr. Lucian understands Cecil better than the rest of us.”

“Understands him?”

Sir Thomas was scornful of any such necessity. “Lucian is the family doctor, that’s all he is. He ain’t my man of business. What does Rose want him poking about with Cecil’s bills for, eh? I suppose bills are at the bottom of it, young fool. Tell Ford he can go up to Cambridge to-morrow, and write to Rose and tell her I don’t want any meddling from Lucian.”

Thus did Sir Thomas command: prepared to overrule any protests. But he was not destined to settle matters with so high a hand.

“I really can’t write to Rose again, dear,” said Lady Aviolet. “I’m sure you don’t realize how much I’ve got to do just now, with the war and everything. Dr. Lucian is quite a sensible man, and if he was going to presume in any way, he’d have done so long ago when we had to take him so completely into our confidence over poor Jim’s affairs. After all, he _is_ a gentleman. I can’t imagine why we don’t hear from Cecil to say what he’s doing about his commission, but very likely he’s made some silly muddle of things through sheer ignorance, and he doesn’t like to say so. Dr. Lucian can see about that quite as well as anybody else.”

“But there’s evidently some trouble about money, the boy writing and asking for it like that. And Rose’s letter reads a bit as though he’d been worrying her in the same way.”

“I hope he isn’t in debt,” said Lady Aviolet vaguely. “But isn’t there this moratorium, or whatever they call it, of the Government, that wipes out all that kind of thing?”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Sir Thomas curtly. “Women don’t understand, my dear. Better leave it alone.”

Lady Aviolet was only too ready to do so, and to return to her knitting, which now took up more of her time than ever.

Ford, to his father’s peremptory injunctions to proceed immediately to Cambridge, politely and coldly presented a refusal.

“I’m not in the least in sympathy with young Cecil, and never have been. I told you at the time that I thought his first letter a piece of emotional bravado. If he seriously intended to join up at once, he only had to ask you, or myself, how to set about it. There wasn’t a single practical suggestion on the subject in the whole letter--mere rodomontade copied from _The Daily Mail_ patriotic flourishes. I daresay he thought himself quite sincere at the time he wrote, but he’s a boaster, and always has been.”

The heavy face of Sir Thomas was gradually becoming suffused, and his dull eyes looked angrier and angrier.

“I don’t believe it,” he said obstinately. “He can’t be playing the fool _now_, Ford. I don’t know what all this nonsense is about wanting money, but we’d better get to the bottom of it, that’s all I can say. His fool of a mother wants Lucian to go and see to him. Much more sense if the boy came down here, or you went up there.”

“I’m sorry, it’s quite out of the question. I have a good deal to see to on my own account, at present. If Cecil descends from heroics to practical details, I am quite at his disposal. Otherwise, I think he’d better be left to his mother, who plays up to him, and to Lucian--who plays up to her.”

The next day Ford and Diana left Squires.

* * * * *

“I can’t think why Cecil doesn’t _come_. Of course, I thought he’d come to London. I knew he’d want to join the Army--not like those people at Squires, who write as if they were quite astonished at his suggesting such a thing,” said Rose scornfully.

“But he hasn’t written any more to me, and I’m terribly afraid he’s written to _them_ for money, like he did to Uncle Alfred, only that was before the war had started, so it seems like years and years ago.”

She caught her breath in a deep sigh.

“I’d go to him myself, only I swore when he first went to school that I wouldn’t be for ever trailing after him in the maddening way that widowed mothers always do. I expect he’d much rather see you, Maurice.”

“I can get up there to-morrow, if you really want me to go.”

“You’re a brick,” said Rose simply. “Maurice, you’re the only person I know who doesn’t think he knows what one wants better than one does oneself. Most people would have said, ‘Hadn’t you better telegraph to Cecil to come here?’ or ‘Hadn’t you better go yourself?’ or other rot of that kind. They always make everything as difficult as they can, it seems to me.”

“I suppose that by ‘they’ you mean, as usual, Cecil’s relatives.”

“I suppose I do.”

They both laughed.

“Mind you, Rose, I think the Army would be a very good thing for Cecil, at least in some respects.”

Her eyes widened. “Why?”

“Because it would give him a chance of feeling that he was really doing a fine thing. I think Cecil has been very much absorbed in imaginary achievements.”

“I know he has.”

“Well, I’ve an idea that he wouldn’t depend on his--fancies--nearly so much if his need of cutting a figure, so to speak, could be gratified in real flesh and blood terms. You see, he’s not good at games, he’s never been particularly clever, he hasn’t even got the personality that would enable him to stand out from the crowd. But that’s what he wants, all the time. That’s what he’s looking for--a chance to distinguish himself.”

“Aren’t we all looking for that, more or less?” Her tone was rather defiant, and she had coloured deeply.

“I suppose we are. Only with Cecil, the instinct has always been out of all proportion.”

“He’s much better than he used to be.”

“I’m glad.”

“You don’t believe it!” she cried swiftly.

“My dear, how do I know?” he protested. “I’ve only had glimpses of him in the last year or two, as you know.”

“He’s much better than he used to be,” she repeated wistfully. Then her essential capacity for facing facts asserted itself.

“But it’s never really possible to know the whole truth about what goes on inside other people’s minds, is it, unless they choose to tell one?”

“Not always then,” said the doctor.

Inwardly, he wondered whether Cecil had impulsively enlisted already, but he saw that the possibility had not occurred to Rose.

“I’ll go to-morrow,” he promised her, “and if Cecil takes my advice, he’ll tell Sir Thomas exactly why he wants money, and how much. He’ll probably get it, and his commission into the bargain. You are prepared for that, Rose?”

“Of course I am.”

She spoke proudly, and Lucian’s heart ached for her.

“What are you going to do yourself, Rose?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ve been waiting to hear from Cecil. As soon as it’s settled about him, I can find something to do. It won’t be sitting about at Squires, knitting, anyway. I suppose that’s what poor Diana will end by doing, though Lady Aviolet did write something about Red Cross classes.”

Lucian was rather surprised.

“On the contrary, I should have thought she’d be the very person to go abroad. She has no children, and plenty of money, and let me tell you that she’s an extremely energetic person, and very fairly capable.”

“I know all that,” said Rose calmly, “but you’ll see, Ford won’t let her go. He won’t be able to go himself, because he’s over the age and he’s got a heart or something, and nothing will induce him to let Di go, if he can’t.”

Lucian looked at her reflectively for an instant before he said: “How very much you do dislike Ford!”

“Yes.”

There was a finality in her tone that admitted of no rejoinder.

The doctor, not for the first time, reflected upon the singular un-complexity of Rose Aviolet’s emotions. Her dislikes, to use no more violent term in describing them, were as whole-hearted as were her affections, once given. Either paled to insignificance before the steady, unswerving flame of her passion for her son.

“I’ll go and see Cecil to-morrow,” the doctor repeated, when he said good-bye to her. “Though I don’t suppose the Aviolets will thank me for interfering with their grandson’s affairs, you know.”

“Oh, _them_,” said Mrs. Aviolet negligently. “Don’t worry about them--they don’t matter.”

V

The doctor, at Cambridge, found Cecil Aviolet under arrest.

Sir Thomas, summoned by telegram, received him.

“Have you come up about this abominable business?”

“I’m here by chance, come up to give the boy a message from his mother. What’s happened?”

The doctor, consternation at his heart, rapped out his questions as one who had the right to information. But Sir Thomas resented nothing, observed nothing. He was nearly beside himself with fury.

“This--this boy, this young blackguard, has been had up--arrested for theft. By God, if I saw him now I believe I’d kill him. A rotter through and through, that’s what he is. My grandson! He’s a dirty, common thief, the young swine! He’s stolen--_stolen_!”

The old man’s voice was hoarse with passion, and the veins on his face and neck swelled dangerously.

“Stolen what? Money?”

“The same thing--silver. Silver cups and trophies, from other fellows. The young brute----”

Sir Thomas bellowed invectives and curses aloud.

“It’s impossible. There’s a mistake somewhere.”

“That’s what I said, at first. But it’s true. He owned to it.”

Lucian, utterly sick with dismay, could speak no word.

“You’ll have to tell his mother,” said Sir Thomas brutally. “She’ll be here any minute. She’s always spoilt the lad, from the time he was a little boy, and you couldn’t get a straight answer out of him at any price. I could have told her how it would be. You’ll have to tell her, Lucian,” he repeated inexorably. “You’re used to telling women bad news, and she’ll take it better from you. My wife would have come, but it’s knocked her up utterly. By bad luck, she opened the telegram while I was out. We’ve sent for Diana to be with her, and I shall go back as soon as Ford can get here.”

“Is he coming?”

“Of course he’s coming. We’ve got to do the best we can to save the lad from prison, for the sake of the name. My God, to think this young blackguard of Jim’s ’ll be my only grandchild!” raved Sir Thomas.

Lucian paid small attention to the old man’s violence. In earlier years he had seen Sir Thomas Aviolet moved to a like frenzy of savage and irrational fury over the more scandalous episodes in the ill-starred existence of Cecil’s father. He knew that the very violence of the old man’s display of wrath was shortening its duration and exhausting his never very profound capabilities of emotion.

He was thinking, clearly and swiftly.

“Where’s Cecil now?”