Chapter VII: The Voice of Conscience

Kathleen did not venture to show her desk to Fred the following morning, especially as she could hear from the tone of his voice in speaking to his brother that he was in no pleasant frame of mind. But when breakfast was over, and Fred had gone out for a stroll, she called Harry into her room, and exhibited to him, with a mixture of pride and distress, the beautiful prize which her aunt had so generously given her.

"It's without any exception the most gorgeous thing of the kind I ever saw!" cried Harry, raising up the flaps and surveying the paper and envelopes, the pencils, pens, knives, scissors, india-rubber, sealing wax, &c., &c., with which it was filled. "It is simply A1, and I am delighted you got it!"

"Yes; but I am not quite sure whether I ought to keep it."

"Ought to humbug! I can't for the life of me see why you need feel any scruple about it. You won the prize fairly, and Fred did not."

"Yes, that's the very thing; for, don't you see, Harry, if I keep the desk, then Aunt Marian will either feel sure Fred put the stones in on purpose, or she will think I,"--here Kathleen hesitated, suddenly perceiving she had no real ground of argument to put forward.

"Well, she'll think what?" asked Harry magisterially. "You girls have as much idea of explaining things clearly as a frog has of flying. I know perfectly well what the fix is that you are in. You think it will appear greedy in you to accept a prize as well as Fred, when there was such a small difference in the weight of the two cans; and, besides, you are just shaking in your two shoes at the thought of Fred's anger when he finds out that Aunt Marian has given the first prize to you instead of to him,--now, is not that it, old girl?"

"It is; at least it's nearly that," murmured Kathleen, nervously; "only I wish,"--here a painful blush covered all her face,--"I wish, Harry, if you could see Fred, you would tell him that if he will go and put back the bow in Aunt Marian's boudoir, I will give him this desk as soon as ever we go home."

"Indeed, you'll do nothing of the kind."

"Please, please, Harry."

"Gammon! I never heard such rubbish. You won your prize as fairly as you could, and he has not the faintest right to it in any way. He crammed himself with fruit the whole time the others were hard at work. He then supplied his can out of mine, which was awfully shabby of him; and then he put five large stones into the bottom of his, so as to make it weigh more than the others. I think he was an awful sneak to do such a mean thing, and I told him so this morning; but he turns on me every time I speak to him. He says I was as bad as he was, and that I wanted to fill your can out of mine, which was quite as sneaky if not worse. I don't think it would have been quite fair of me to do it, I must say, but still there is a difference somewhere between the two things if I could put it into words."

"You wanted to help me, and he only wanted to help himself," suggested Kathleen, meditatively; "and besides, you gave up your chance of the prize in my favour. But for all that, if I had won it I should not have kept it, for I should have known it was not mine fairly, and I could never have explained it all to Aunt Marian."

"Well, you have expressed yourself clearly for once in your life. And now let us think what is best to be done, for I can't bear the idea of Fred's chousing Aunt Marian out of that splendid bow; and besides, if he lets himself do a thing like that once, he'll be ten times as likely to do the same kind of thing again, and perhaps get into a worse scrape. Suppose you and I go down and have a _parlez-vous_ with him--eh, Kathleen?"

"Very well, whatever you like; but he never minds what I say."

"Doesn't he though? I can tell you what, old lady, bad as you are, whenever you tell me a thing is not right which I'm doing, it sticks there like a bone in my throat; and though I often swallow it down in a rage, and take my own way, still I generally do turn it over in my mind, and give over whatever it was that was wrong. And Fred's just the same, only he has a way of telling himself that things aren't wrong which I don't understand; or, even supposing they are wrong, he thinks if you aren't found out it's no matter, and that to my mind is the worst of all."

"Yes," replied Kathleen, "much the worst."

"And now, what do you think he says?"

"What?" asked Kathleen.

"Why, that very likely he did put the stones in to keep down the leaves,--that he does not exactly know why he put them in. And at the beginning, you remember, he never denied that he put them in on purpose. But that's just it, he can persuade himself to think anything he likes, and then he grows to believe in what he has made himself think. But, I say, let us go out and try to find him; and if we can only catch him in a good humour, we might coax him to put back the bow. The best thing to put it on will be poor mother; for, you know, if it ever came to her ears, she'd simply never get over it."

The children found Fred strolling in the sycamore walk. He was sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, and kicking little pebbles in front of him, as he went along, with the toe of his boot; but he was neither whistling nor singing, as was his wont, and his gait had a certain air of depression about it that both Kathleen and Harry instinctively recognized.

"Well, what are you following me for?" he asked, as he turned at the sound of their footsteps, and saw them coming rather nervously forward to meet him.

"We guessed you were dodging about somewhere in these diggings," said Harry, speaking first, "and we wanted to see you before we began the jam-covering."

"What for?" asked Fred, kicking another large pebble along the walk, and his brow darkening. "I should think you and I had had enough of each other's company this morning."

"Come along, Fred, old boy, and don't be so cranky," cried Harry, taking his brother by the shoulder and thrusting his hand through his arm. "I want awfully to pal up with you, and make things straight if we can. You see Katy and I have been thinking what an awful thing it will be if mother comes to hear about this tin-can affair; and she'll be so cut up about it that I don't think she'll ever get over it, and the whole thing could be set straight so easily."

"Oh ay, I daresay it's an awfully easy thing, is it not, to go and say, 'I did cheat, and you found me out, and so I can't help making a clean breast of it'? I tell you now, Harry, once for all, if you and Kathleen have come down here to wheedle me into putting the bow back, I'll see you further first before I'll do it, and that's an end of it."

"But, Fred, only think."

"Think! I've thought until I'm blue in the face with thinking, and the more I think the more certain I am I did nothing but what was quite fair, or, at least, no worse than any one else; so if you've no more to say you had better cut off about your business."

"You'll come in for the jam-covering, won't you?" asked Kathleen anxiously.

"Not I. I've just as much idea of pasting on old jam covers as I have of putting a cover on myself. Besides, I am not going to run the risk of another affectionate note from my aunt, telling me that I cheated, or, perhaps, accusing me of taking a little out of each pot I covered. No, no; once is enough for that kind of thing."

"If you don't come in, Aunt Marian will think you are afraid, or ashamed."

"Afraid! If you think there is any danger of that, I'll go in this very instant and give them such a piece of my mind that I'll pull the whole house down about their ears. Afraid, indeed!" and Fred pushed on before them with great strides of anger.

"We had better leave him alone," whispered Harry. "He's in a stunner of a temper."

"But he won't go in and say anything to Aunt Marian, will he?"

"Not he; he has just as much idea of doing so as I have. He is just blustering all round the compass because he knows he's in the wrong. Oh, how I wish mother were here. Two words from her would set him as right as a trivet; but I'm such an ass, I always manage to make things worse. See, he has turned in exactly the opposite direction to the Hall. I would not be inside his jacket for a great deal."

Harry was quite correct in all his surmises. Fred had not the smallest intention of going to beard his aunt in her own home; on the contrary, his own desire was to escape from her sight. Although he tried to force his conscience into the belief that he had not acted dishonestly, or at least not more dishonestly than Harry had also tried to do, still he felt a guilty tremor rush all over and through every fibre of his body when he thought of coming face to face with his aunt, and foresaw the conversation which would most probably ensue; and thus he bad brought himself to the cowardly determination to absent himself altogether from the afternoon's employment. But oh the longing he had that he could see his mother,--that he could have just a few moments' conversation with her, and tell her all. She was so kind, so easy to speak to, he could confess all to her without trouble or fear, and could ask her for help and advice. She would explain to Aunt Marian how all had happened, and return the bow to the boudoir, which he had not the courage to do, and which he was too proud to allow his brother or sister to do for him; and Fred, when well out of sight of the others, in the sombre shade of the close-growing pines, threw himself down on the grass and cried, bitterly exclaiming between every sob, "Oh, mother, why are you not here; why, why are you not here, and then all would be well?"

In his grief and utter misery of mind Fred's heart rushed out spontaneously to the mother who had been all to him in his life. He had been in his childhood a delicate boy, and therefore of necessity his mother had watched over him with a peculiar care, and had shielded him from the troubles and sorrows of boyhood with a zealous watchfulness; and now that he had outgrown his former delicacy, and had to push his way through the rough world like the others, he turned at every rude breath to the shelter of her side, and still tried to draw the strength of his character from hers.

But those who choose willingly to lean all their weight on a human friend, must some time or other come to find that the reed, though it may bend and bow almost to the ground with its willingness to endure and be leaned upon, must give way some time, and then the fall is all the more helpless and hopeless. And this Fred's mother had many a time pointed out to her son, imploring of him in his troubles, which were many, to go to a higher and more certain Friend, and to draw help and succour from Him. She knew how frail her own life was, and she knew equally well the weakness of Fred's nature,--a nature keenly susceptible to pain and terribly open to the attacks of temptation,--and she had hesitated long and long before she consented to accept the invitation to Jubilee Hall; but in the end she and her husband had felt that it was well to give Fred the opportunity of acting and thinking for himself, and for testing how far his strength of character could be relied on.

Could Fred only have listened to the pleading voice that had been urging him on to the easy and silent confession of his guilt demanded from him by his aunt, how immeasurably better it would have been for him: for conscience, once rudely thrust aside with a resolute hand, lies often silent and crushed, and allows perhaps a worse error to creep in unnoticed and unopposed; the truth of which terrible danger Fred was also but too soon to experience. But for the present, blind as he was to the future and the temptation creeping silently at his heels, he only thought of the trouble which oppressed him, and not of the guilt which stood as yet unrepented of and unforgiven before the throne of God.

Fred, with his face on the grass and his hands pressed on his ears, did not hear in his trouble the sound of footsteps approaching slowly and lightly over the moss-covered ground, nor did the fear of any one's stumbling accidentally upon his retreat enter into his calculations for a moment. It was therefore in no low or suppressed accents of pain or entreaty that he called on his mother for help and assistance, and sobbed out his grief into the ferns and creeping ivy leaves.

Once a sound had startled him, and he had raised his head in terror, but it was only a cock pheasant calling to his mate; and in the intense stillness of all around him the rabbits were eating peacefully close by, or stroking the muffled down on their faces with their velvety and heathery paws.

But beyond this wild copse, where in the autumn the gun of the gamekeeper often made sad havoc, ay Aunt Marian's dairy-farm, in which she took a warm interest, and which, when time allowed, she personally superintended. This morning she had gone down to see the calves fed, and to doctor a poor heifer which had leaped a wire fence and hurt itself severely, and the time had glided so quickly by that she had not noticed it was nearly luncheon time until the farmyard bell had sounded for the workmen's dinner, and she knew that only ten minutes intervened between this bell and the gong which announced to the assembled guests that luncheon was on the table. She chose, therefore, the short cut through the wood, walking quickly though lightly, and arousing at every footstep some wild inhabitant of the copse; but when she had traversed about half the way she paused for a moment, hearing a cry of pain which seemed to come somewhere from the ground close by. She fancied at first that it was a wounded cat which had crawled somewhere among the ferns to die; for the gamekeeper had no compassion on these semi-wild animals, which ate his young rabbits and rifled the nests of the young game fledgelings, and from many a branch in the wood depended the dead bodies of three or four of these marauders. But as she paused, Aunt Marian caught distinctly the sound of a human voice, and approaching a few steps nearer heard, with pain and self-reproach, Fred's piteous lamentations and the cry for his mother's help, which brought quick and hot tears to her eyes, and for a moment made her irresolute whether to pass on noiselessly, or to stop and proffer her assistance and comfort to the boy.

Aunt Marian had a very soft heart, especially towards boys, and boys' tears could move her into an almost foolish weakness; and now Fred's sobbing appeal for his mother's love suddenly and effectually melted her heart from a kind of growing dislike and distrust of her nephew to a feeling of tender sympathy and compassion.

She paused, however, a moment before making known her presence, to settle in what manner she should address him. She feared increasing his distress, and her whole anxiety at the moment was how but to reassure and encourage him.

"Fred," she said presently, in a somewhat low but very cordial voice as she advanced to meet him, "I am so glad I have met you."

Fred started up, his cheeks blotched with tears and his eyes dazed and misty; but the moment he recognized his aunt a rush of crimson blood covered every inch of his face, and the expression of shame and alarmed surprise seemed to intensify the confusion and awkwardness of the meeting.

But Aunt Marian had looked for confusion and awkwardness of manner at so unexpected a rencounter, and in her sudden flow of sympathy she did not recognize the look of guilt and shame.

"Fred," she continued kindly, stretching out her hand to the boy, who now stood embarrassed and blushing before her, "I have just found you in the nick of time, for the workmen's bell has rung, and I shall certainly be late for luncheon, unless you can take this heavy basket from my hand and allow me to walk free."

"Of course I will, aunt," said Fred, his natural politeness of manner coming to his aid, though he shrank nervously from the thought of the long _tête à tête_ walk home together to the Hall.

"May I take your arm," she continued in a peculiarly soft and pleasing voice; "for I have been standing so long in the dairy fields I am quite tired. I always make my own boys my walking-sticks," she added, with a short laugh, "and as they are not here, I must enlist you in my service."

"Certainly, aunt," replied Fred, growing much more at ease under the healing influence of Lady Brinsley's kindness.

She took his arm, and they walked on through the copse, Aunt Marian keeping the conversation going with descriptions of the wild cats and their thieving propensities, and telling him the quaint sayings of the head gamekeeper, an Irishman, who was quite a character and full of genuine wit and humour. She also promised him a day's shooting with the same gamekeeper, if his father had no objection to his handling a gun; and Fred, by the time they had come within sight of the Hall, felt comparatively at his ease and very grateful for his aunt's kindness and good-natured tact.

It was not until they were within a few paces of the massive oak door of the Hall that the dreaded topic was touched on, and Fred was so comparatively off his guard, that his aunt was in the thick of the subject before he almost understood what she was saying.

"You'll come, of course, and give a helping hand in the jam-covering this afternoon," she said, taking the basket from his arm and moving a little forward.

"Oh yes, of course." Fred felt so much at his ease with his aunt now, that he had no fear or dislike to the occupation, and he answered without hesitation or reserve.

"I'm glad of that," she said quickly and without looking round; "for I'm afraid,"--here feeling her own cowardice she turned and looked Fred full in the face,---"for I fear I have acted very ungenerously towards you, and accused you of a fault which I fully believe now you had no intention of committing. We all of us," she added kindly, tears springing up into her eyes, "make mistakes sometimes, and judge hastily and without sufficient grounds; but I know, Fred, you will believe me when I say how truly sorry I am for having given you so much pain, and that I beg of you not to think of the subject any more."

"Oh, Aunt Marian, please don't, don't say such things," cried Fred, his heart leaping up into his throat and his eyes also filling with impetuous tears. "You, you--Aunt Marian, don't go into the house, please; I--I--"

But Aunt Marian had said what she had been struggling to gather courage for during the last ten minutes; and she was now inside the doorway and hurrying up the stairs to take off her out-door clothes before the gong should summon the guests to luncheon.