Chapter XVIII: A Full Confession

He had scarcely unfolded his hands and laid his poor aching head back on the pillow when the door was pushed open again, and Maurice, followed by his mother, hastily re-entered the room.

"Fred, here is mother come to see you;" and Maurice's voice sounded strangely reassuring and kind, considering the confession which he had just heard, and which only a moment before had driven him from the room.

"Well, Fred, my boy," said Lady Brinsley drawing quite close to his bed, and laying her hand gently on his arm, "I am afraid you have been exciting yourself too much, and making yourself quite ill. You ought to lie still after such a severe blow, and not speak at all."

"It was I, mother, who roused him up. It was entirely my fault, but I was so knocked on a heap about the store-room business, I rushed up foolishly to tell him, and to ask him what he thought about it."

"Well, it was rather a pity to disturb him about such a matter, especially as he could not possibly make a guess about it."

Fred listened in amazement. Was it possible Maurice had not understood what he had said, and must he make the dreaded confession again? He looked piteously into his aunt's face, and turned his face quickly towards the wall.

"What is the matter, Fred dear? are you in pain?"

"Yes," moaned Fred.

"Is it your head that aches?"

"No, no; I am miserable and wretched, and I told Maurice all about it, and he--he goes on as if I had said nothing."

"Why, what did you tell him? for I am certain if there is anything or any way Maurice can help you, he will be only too glad to do it."

"No, no, I don't want help; at least I do, awfully, but--oh can't you understand what I mean?"

Maurice glanced at his mother meaningly, and her face grew more anxious as, stooping over the bed, she said kindly, "Fred, dear, do not torment yourself about fancies and worries which are only coming into your head because you are ill and tired. Try and go to sleep, and when you awake you will feel quite refreshed and comfortable."

"I cannot sleep, aunt, till I have told you all. There is no use trying," cried Fred excitedly.

"Told me what?" asked Lady Brinsley, inexpressibly pained by the cruel distress visible on her nephew's face.

"That it was I who went into the store-room. I told Maurice all about it before, and he only stared at me, and then rushed out of the room."

"You went into the store-room, Fred," cried both his aunt and his cousin at the same moment; while Lady Brinsley added almost in a whisper to her son, "It is quite impossible,--he only fancies it."

"No, no, it is no fancy. I went into it last night. I got up on the ladder in the dark, and then--then I saw a light coming round by the passage-wall, and I--I fell somehow. I don't know how it happened; and Harry and Kathleen lifted me up and carried me outside into the other passage, and then I came upstairs and went to bed, and was--oh, so miserable, you can't think."

"And what did you go into the store-room for?" asked his aunt quietly, while with a glance she checked the excited questions which she saw ready to pour from her son's lips.

"I--I wanted to get the chess-box. Maurice dared me to touch it, and I was determined that I would."

"But how did you get in?" continued Lady Brinsley in the same subdued voice.

"By the small door in the panels."

"But that was bolted on the inside also."

"There is no second door is there, mother?" asked Maurice, who could not restrain his curiosity any longer.

"There is," replied Fred hastily. "When you knocked me down in the corner, I struck against the bolt and bruised my shoulder, and that made me look round, and I saw the second door and the things that fastened it."

"And you unbolted it then; was that it?"

"No, no; I tied pieces of cord round the bolts and drew the ends out by the hinges; but I--I never meant to do all--all the terrible mischief which I--I did do, or to break the theatre or anything. I am so awfully sorry, aunt. I wish you would let me go home to-night, I am so miserable."

Fred pressed his hot fingers round his aunt's hand, and looked up imploringly into her face.

"It was all my fault," said Maurice humbly. "I was the one who began the quarrel,--I--I: mother, don't look at him so gravely; it was I who set the whole mischief agoing, besides the horrid cut which I gave him behind his ear."

"No, you have nothing to say to that; it was when I fell from the ladder."

"I thought you told me that I had done it."

"No; at least you took up what I said wrongly, and I--I had not the courage to explain."

"And what made you tell me all about it now, Fred?" asked his aunt in a sad but not unkind voice.

"I don't know. I thought, and Harry said I was a coward,--or no, he said I should be a coward to hide it; and besides, he told me it was awfully wrong, and that--that--but then Harry is quite different to me; he never does sneaky things, and I am always doing them."

"Harry is a noble boy," said Lady Brinsley warmly. "I have noticed his honesty of character ever since he came into the house."

"Yes," cried Fred enthusiastically, "he is a regular brick. Mother always said she could trust him as well as her own self;" and Fred's cheeks as he mentioned his mother's name burned with a sudden access of shame and misery, and the tears which he had held back till now rushed into his eyes.

"I am going to drive over to your own home this afternoon; do you wish me to tell your mother all?"

"Oh yes, yes, do. Tell her everything, please; and oh! ask her to come and take me home. I could never bear to stay on here after all that has happened."

"Nonsense, Fred; of course you will stay here. If you go home I shall be perfectly wretched, for I--I am just as bad as you, and worse;" and even Maurice's eyes clouded with tears at the misery which had arisen so unexpectedly to darken his happy holidays.

"I think we must be guided by what Fred and his mother wish," said Lady Brinsley kindly. "I shall be truly grieved if our pleasant party is broken up, and especially as the quarrel arose out of Maurice's hasty temper."

"No, that is quite untrue, for--for--" Fred paused, while a fresh access of misery and shame seemed to overwhelm him. "For, for,--oh, aunt, I had forgotten to tell you all. I did put the stones in the can; and besides, I--I filled my can out of Harry's; and when he told me to put back the bow, I--I found your note on the pincushion, and I was ashamed, and then I kept it."

Lady Brinsley could not but look and feel sorrowful at the confession of so much sin and the sight of the misery it was causing her nephew.

"I am sure you will be happier by-and-by; Fred, for having made up your mind to tell me all," she said in a low voice full of undisguised emotion; "and I am only very, very sorry that you had not the courage at first to tell the whole truth, as it would have averted all this trouble and saved both you and me the great pain which we are each of us suffering. If, at the very beginning of all this trouble, you had asked God's help, He would have given you the strength to make the necessary confession; and the remembrance of His forgiveness and love would have shielded you from the fresh snares into which you have now fallen."

"I wish I had," sobbed Fred. "I know I never, never--" But here a knock at the bedroom door interrupted what he would have said, and the footman appeared in the entrance with a serious and deprecating air carrying some dark clothes in his hand.

"I came to tell Master Malcomson, my lady," he observed, bowing to Lady Brinsley, "that I have tried in vain to clean his evening suit of clothes. When I took them down this morning to brush, I found them all saturated with honey; and though I have done all in my power, I cannot make them fit to wear."

"Thank you, John; you may put them away on the table over there," said Lady Brinsley quietly, ignoring the cause of the disaster. "Master Fred is not well at present, and will not require to wear his evening suit for some little time."

The footman laid the clothes on the table without another word, and left the room silently. He knew as well as Fred did how it had all occurred: for the servants, when they heard of the catastrophe in the store-room and the broken dish of honey, had not been long in putting two and two together; and what with the sticky footprints leading right up to Fred's door, and the fact of his remaining immured up in his own room all the morning, they had come to no foolish conclusion, that Fred had been at least a partner in the mysterious midnight raid on the store-room, and that the cat was in no way to blame.

To Fred, too, it was a blessed relief to know that he had made his confession before the guilt had been literally brought home to his own door; and when at length Lady Brinsley and her son sorrowfully left the room, he lay back on his pillow and thanked God with his whole heart that He had answered his prayer and given him the strength necessary to overcome his weakness and cowardice; and when Maurice turned back from the door and whispered hurriedly into his ear, "Fred, you'll forgive me, won't you?" he only replied with a burst of sobs, "Yes, yes; but oh! I want so badly to be forgiven myself." And then turning suddenly round in the bed, he covered his face with the clothes and was silent.