part did

Christ always take? That of the sinner--the woman taken in adultery, the Magdalen, the thief on the cross. We’re here to try and imitate our Master, not to fly in the face of everything He ever taught by despising other people. I tell you, sinners were His specialty.”

He suddenly grew calm again.

“If you came to me to-morrow, Aviolet, and said you’d told a lie as big as the house, I should only trust you the more _because_ you’d told me, and hope you’d do better next day. Well, multiply that attitude by a thousandfold, and you’ll get some faint shadow of a reflection of God’s attitude towards sinners.”

Cecil drew a long breath. “I’ll try, sir. Thanks most awfully. You’ve made everything look quite different. I--I think I was in despair pretty nearly.”

“That’s all over now,” Perriman said firmly. “Don’t think about the past any more. Now, is there anything else you want to ask me? Take your time.”

“There’s nothing else, sir. What I wanted to know was whether there was any hope of my being--put right--after so many years?”

Perriman suppressed a smile. “Every hope, Aviolet. Tell me, you’ve not found your own people any help in this business of yours?”

“No, sir. My father died when I was very young, and my mother and I have lived a good deal with my grandparents. They never seemed to look at it like you, as something serious. I can’t explain exactly.... Of course, they thought it was very wrong, but either they seemed to think it was a kind of bad habit, or just a--a sort of ill-bred thing to do. I don’t think any one has realized how it’s been--like you said just now--mucking up my whole life.”

“I can quite believe it. It’s come to loom as the over-shadowing fact in everything, I imagine, and as long as that’s so you’ll never get the best out of life, or out of yourself either. We’ve got to get this thing into proportion, Aviolet, and by George we’ll do it!”

The young clergyman struck his penitent heartily between the shoulders.

“Cut along now, or you’ll be late for call-over. Oh--just one thing more. If you think it’s a sound idea--only _if_, mind you--you might find it a help to tell me when habit has been too much for you, and you’ve fallen again. (You’re bound to, you know, so don’t let it discourage you.) But that must be exactly as you like. Think it over. Of course, I shan’t want details--just the fact, if you think it would help you to keep a check on yourself.”

“I think it would, sir.”

“Don’t decide in a hurry--but I expect you’re right. An effort of that sort is bound to strengthen the will, and that’s what you want. By the way, you understand that anything you say to me on those lines is under seal of Confession, so to speak? That’s right. Good-night, Aviolet.”

Perriman drew a long breath when the boy had left the room.

“Poor little chap! What a rotten time he must have been having with the other boys. That accounts for his unpopularity. All due to defective upbringing and a naturally weak character, of course. Though no doubt he’s exaggerated the whole thing in his own mind, till he thinks he’s a confirmed liar.... But what an opportunity to bring him nearer to a realization of God’s goodness!”

The young man’s simple face beamed, and presently he drew out of his pocket a little note-book, into which he carefully entered Cecil Aviolet’s initials, and the date.

The boy did not voluntarily seek him again at first, and Perriman said nothing to him, but rejoiced whole-heartedly in a certain lightening of Cecil’s whole aspect that had become evident.

One evening, however, meeting him, the clergyman invited him again into his room. “How are things going with you, eh?”

“Much better, thank you, sir.”

The boy’s face was radiant, and Perriman felt a glow of satisfaction, not unmixed with a little honest self-congratulation.

But two days later came the first check.

“I--I’ve done it again, sir.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Aviolet. But, of course, these things are not overcome in a minute, one knows. Tell me what happened.”

Cecil unfolded a long and piteous story: the flat denial of a piece of folly perpetrated in school.

Perriman encouraged him, exhorted him, and assured him of his own unshaken trust.

Two days later again, the whole thing was repeated.

“But it’s so _trivial_!” the young clergyman exclaimed, bewildered. “That’s what I can’t understand. Why should you tell trivial, childish fibs like that? There’s no object in it, that I can see.”

But in a little while, good Mr. Perriman became aware in himself of an uneasy suspicion. He began to cut Cecil’s confessions short.

“There, there, my dear boy, that’ll do. Leave it at that. I told you I didn’t want details. You must pull yourself together. There is something almost--_abject_--in owning freely to this lack of moral backbone, and never summing up resolution to defeat it. And although I’m always ready to give you any help in my power, I don’t want you to get into the way of looking upon your admissions to me as a sort of automatic salve to your conscience, you know.”

The light died out of Cecil’s eyes, and he went quietly away.

The young master felt thoroughly uneasy.

Against his own will, and in defiance of what he innocently thought of to himself as the laws of Nature, he was beginning to feel, rather than to know, that Cecil’s later confessions were not quite genuine ones.

“It’s--it’s almost as though he were trying to _keep it up_,” Perriman reflected, bewildered and almost disgusted.

At last he told Cecil that he thought the confessions had better cease. “If you would feel it useful to you to give me a general account of your progress, well and good. But I--I really think it would be better not to dwell on your own folly and weakness by giving me a long account of each lapse from the truth, Aviolet. Do try and be more robust about it all, won’t you?”

Cecil winced as though he had been struck, and Perriman felt that he was being brutal.

On the night before the Confirmation, Cecil once more presented himself. “I came to tell you, sir----”

“Not if it’s anything in detail, Aviolet,” the clergyman said almost pleadingly. “To-morrow is to be a new beginning for you, isn’t it? Let the dead past bury its dead. Of course,” he added unwillingly, “if you’ve anything serious on your mind, I don’t want to prevent your unburdening yourself. But if it’s some quibble of conscience, I think you’d better suppress it.”

“It’s serious,” said Cecil, his face pale and his eyes shining.

The clergyman reluctantly resigned himself.

“I--I came to tell you, sir, that I deliberately cheated over the History papers at the end of last term. I saw the questions, before we got our papers.”

“How?” rapped out the master.

“On your desk, sir, when you sent me in here to wait for you one day.”

The boy spoke more boldly and confidently than he had done yet, and there was nothing of the shrinking and stumbling manner that had been evident in his first conversation with Perriman. He faced the master steadily, looking straight up at him.

Perriman remembered that Cecil Aviolet had done well in History.

“What did you do when you saw the questions on my desk?”

“I took down the headings on my cuff.”

“Why do you tell me this now?” Perriman asked slowly.

“Because it was on my mind, and I wanted to start fresh from my Confirmation, sir. It--it seemed my one chance.”

The boy caught his breath, and his tone left no room for doubt as to his earnestness. Then he dropped his eyes and stood waiting.

Perriman spoke at last, and at the first sound of his voice, Cecil started violently, looked once at him, and then seemed almost physically to shrink into himself.

“Cecil Aviolet, if I did my duty, I believe that I should advise the Head to disqualify you altogether as a candidate for Confirmation to-morrow. Either you are mentally unsound, or, for heaven knows what reason, you wish to make me think you so. You did _not_ cheat over the terminal examinations. You did _not_ obtain any sight of the questions set for the History paper. It so happens that no questions for that particular paper were set beforehand. Owing to a press of other matters, the History paper was overlooked, and I myself set the questions, at the eleventh hour, just before the examination began. Nobody on this earth can have seen them, except the Head and myself, for the simple reason that they never left my hand from the moment they were written to the moment I brought them into the class-room and laid them on the desk.”

There was dead silence, while master and boy confronted one another.

“You have made a fool of me, Aviolet, if that was your object,” said Perriman slowly. “Heaven knows, that when I first spoke to you, I did so in all sincerity. I saw that you hadn’t many friends, and cared little for games, and seemed rather out of your element. I saw--or thought I saw--that you were interested in the Confirmation class, and seemed anxious to enter into the right spirit of it all. What you hoped to gain by your bogus confessions and self-accusations, I don’t pretend to know.”

“It wasn’t--it wasn’t--I didn’t----” The boy’s eyes were dilated as though with terror, and his lips white.

“Have you any explanation to offer?” said Perriman incredulously.

His mortification was extreme, and it made him feel sick to see Cecil Aviolet, almost gibbering, mouthing incoherent excuses and meaningless explanations.

“I didn’t--never meant to mock ... you were the only person ... kind to me.... I can’t help it ... it seems to come.... Oh, and I thought the Confirmation----”

He broke down, crying.

“Stop that,” said Perriman contemptuously. “You--you _girl_--you! Take your hysterics out of here! I’ve had enough of them.”

With hard eyes, he saw the boy creep to the door.

Then the kindly instincts, the old habit of faithful adherence to the precepts of his religion, that were the essential part of the young man’s being, asserted themselves.

“Half a second--look here--come back! I can’t let you go away like that. Aviolet, what on earth made you tell me that senseless lie, accusing yourself of something you’d never done? Was it a--a rotten kind of joke?”

“No--no, sir.... I don’t know ... I can’t help it.... I’m made like that. I told you I was----”

“I don’t know what to believe as to the things you’ve told me,” sighed Perriman. “But I don’t want to be hard on you. I set out to help you, Aviolet, but I’ve bungled badly, somehow. That’s very evident. I--I’m sorry I saw red just now. It was senseless, as well as unkind, to speak as I did. But, you see, I can’t understand you. I don’t think I can help you. I’ve been on a wrong tack altogether, I’m afraid.”

Cecil sobbed on drearily.

“Look here,” said the clergyman gently. “I’m not going to interfere with your going up for Confirmation to-morrow. If you were in earnest, Aviolet, about meaning it to be a new beginning--and I can’t, even now, believe that you weren’t--you’ve got your chance, and you can take it. I’m not going to say anything more to you. Good-night.”

He opened the door quietly and glanced outside.

“All clear--you can cut along.”

Cecil looked up at him as he went out, and the misery in his eyes sent a pang through the master’s heart.

He turned back into the empty room again and sat for a long while with his hands over his face.

* * * * *

“O God, I make Thee a solemn vow, on this day of my Confirmation, that I will never again tell a single wilful lie, so long as I live. And this I sacredly vow and promise, so help me God, for Christ’s sake, Amen.”

Cecil Aviolet, trembling in deadly earnestness, was on his knees in the school chapel. His whole being was strung up momentarily to the pitch of intensity necessary to his belief in his own vow.

When he had repeated this formula, he involuntarily relaxed the tension of mind and body in the exhalation of a long, quivering breath.

Now he knew that if he could break that oath made to God, he was damned indeed. He could never break it. He _must_ be safe, now.

In the midst of a turmoil of shame and remorse and misery, he clung to that conviction. He had no other hope to cling to.

The thought of his own self-exposure to Perriman left him utterly dazed. He felt that he did not even understand how it had happened.

Cecil’s first conversation with Perriman had brought to him the most exquisite sense of relief, proportionate to the wretchedness of a long previous spell of helpless, hopeless self-contempt. He had believed that his Confirmation would indeed prove a new beginning of life, in which the old conditions would no longer prevail any more.

Perriman knew of his degrading weakness, his perpetual breaking of a law of God and man, and yet Perriman had not despised him, had assured him again and again that he was ready to help him, that he believed in him. It had seemed, to Cecil, a very long while since any one in the world of school had been ready to believe in him. He knew that the other boys put him down as a boaster, and sometimes, more crudely, as a young liar. He knew that these things were true of him. Perriman’s interest had begun to revive his self-respect.

After the first difficult statement of fact, it had no longer cost him a great deal to make his avowals to the young clergyman. He had almost felt that they were expected of him, that they enhanced Perriman’s interest in him.

After a little while, he had diligently searched out in himself matter for self-accusation, twisting and distorting tiny incidents until they could be made to acquire some significance, exaggerating facts, sometimes misrepresenting them altogether, sometimes inventing.

And then the master’s hopefulness had seemed to flag, his friendly certainty of the boy’s ultimate conquest to slacken.

He had flicked Cecil upon the raw with that one sentence: “Do try and be more robust about it all, won’t you?”

It had been the stinging, humiliating recollection of those words that had led to the perpetration of the sorry farce that had ended it all.

Ages ago, as it seemed, Cecil Aviolet had indeed seen a pile of papers on Perriman’s own desk that he had perfectly well known to be the question-lists of the coming terminal examinations. There had even flashed across his mind the thought, “A chance for somebody to get a look at the questions now!” But no serious temptation had assailed him. For one thing, the risk of detection would have been too great. At any instant the door might have opened and Perriman have returned. Nor had he been possessed of sufficient presence of mind to think of noting the headings to the questions.

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?”

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

“Who is going to prosecute?”

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

“Then you haven’t been to him yet?”

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

“How much does she know?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ve a taxi waiting.”

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

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

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

“Will he go to prison?”

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

“Are they bound to--to try him?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you going in, sir?”

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

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

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

“Oh, yes, sir.”

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

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

“What’s that?” asked Lucian sharply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucian nodded. He dared not trust himself to speak.

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

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

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

He turned to Rose.

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

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

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

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

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

Rose whitened pitifully at the appeal.

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

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

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

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

His intentional brutality had its effect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cecil was screaming under his breath, horribly.

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

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

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

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

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

“Dr. Lucian?”

“Yes.”

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

“I’ll go.”

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

“Dr. Lucian speaking, Sir Thomas.”

The answering voice uttered painstaking shouts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She had already signed to the driver.

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

“But he’s not mad!”

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

“Ces in prison!”

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

“Yes,” she said tonelessly.

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

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

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

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

Her voice was choked.

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

“I’m afraid so.”

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

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

“You mean the war?”

He nodded.

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

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

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

“I promise.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

The doctor thought rapidly.

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

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

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

Sir Thomas emitted a sort of bark.

“What d’ye mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then he’s a lunatic.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But what for?”

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

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

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

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

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

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

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

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

The doctor could have groaned aloud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There’s Rose----”

“Rose--is she here? What for?”

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

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

Sir Thomas looked troubled and angry.

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

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

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

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

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

Rose came in.

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

“Come along,” said Sir Thomas.

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

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

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

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

VI

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

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

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

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

She heard a clear, monotonous voice from the Bench:

“Have you anything to say, Aviolet?”

Cecil’s reply was inaudible.

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

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

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

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

Cecil raised his head for the first time.

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

“Yes, sir.”

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

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

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

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

“This way----” He guided her.

“Ces?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucian took his hand and wrung it.

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

Rose nodded.

She and Cecil went away together.

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

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

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

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

“Are you going abroad?”

“No,” said the doctor baldly.

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

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

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

“You may try,” said Ford Aviolet contemptuously.

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

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

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

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

“Bad luck!”

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

“H’m!”

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

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

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

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

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

Lucian shrugged his shoulders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her eyes pleaded with him and commanded him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very unexpectedly, Cecil suddenly rallied.

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

Rose whitened.

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

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

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

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

Cecil shivered and shivered.

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

The doctor silently complied.

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

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

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

“Come,” he said.

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

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

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

“Sir Thomas Aviolet?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tea,” said Lady Aviolet.

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

Lucian seconded her evident desire to gain time.

“When did you come up from Squires?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good Lord,” groaned Sir Thomas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cecil shook his head.

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

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

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

Cecil winced as though he had been struck.

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

She stressed her inconclusive conclusion with mournful perplexity.

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

The doctor made an irrepressible movement.

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

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

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

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

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

Lucian set his teeth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sir Thomas growled assent.

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

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

Sir Thomas rang the bell violently.

“Bring me the evening papers,” he demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford read aloud in a rapid undertone:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford stood stock-still, gazing at his nephew.

His lips parted, as though to speak.

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

VII

He could do nothing more to help her.

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

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

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

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

“That’s fine. What about you?”

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

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

“You tried, did you?”

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

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

“I’ll ask the servant-girl to tell him you’ve come,” said Felix.

He disappeared into the basement and then came back to say that “the servant-girl” had gone to see if Mr. Smith was able to receive him.

“It’ll buck him up like, I daresay, if you can give him the latest news. He seems to have taken a _norror_ of the idea of--prison.”

“I’ll tell him it’s all right. There’s no danger of that now, thanks to this war.”

“There didn’t ever ought to have been,” said Felix warmly. “I remember Mr. Cecil from when he was a little boy, and he never was bad. He was a--a _nice_ little boy, doctor. I remember him like it was yesterday, and how he’d play Halma, and I’d let him win, most times, just to please him, like. And he always said, ‘That was a good game, Felix. Thank you for playing with me.’ His mother taught him that, you know. And to think of sending her boy to prison--why, it’s just wicked, doctor.”

“I think it is,” said the doctor sadly.

“You’re sure he’s safe now?”

“Quite safe from that, Felix.”

The young man drew a long breath. “I’m glad and thankful to hear it, I’m sure. There was all sorts of notions going through my mind, like, at one time, though I expect you’d think it was all moonshine and madness on my part.”

“I don’t suppose I should think it anything of the sort. What were the notions?”

“I thought perhaps there’d be some way I might offer myself to serve the sentence instead of him,” said Felix, with such simplicity that Lucian scarcely saw the strange appearance that he made as protagonist of Sydney Carton. “It’s a situation that I’ve read of, and I thought there might be something in it--that it might be worked. It would have been nothing to me, doctor, to serve three months’ imprisonment for Mr. Cecil, if I could have done it for _her_. I daresay you’d laugh, if I told you the number of times I’ve planned out similar situations, as you might say, ever since I was quite a lad. The saving her from a runaway horse, or carrying her out of the building when it caught fire, or giving my life to save Mr. Cecil’s and never letting her know.

“Sometimes, though, I’ve planned out the situation so that she did know, just before the end, and was with me at the last, like.

“It’s all been nonsense, I daresay, but if the opportunity had ever really come, I’d have taken it, doctor.”

“I know you would.”

“It seems funny, in a way, that when you’d always planned dying for someone, or--or being persecuted on their account, or imprisoned, like in a revolution, you shouldn’t ever really do anything better than call cabs for them or take their letters to the post. But I let myself fancy those things, doctor, although I know it was silly like, because the way I’ve argued it is this: that if the thought’s always there, some day the opportunity may come, unexpected like, and then it’ll be a sort of second nature to act promptly, if you take my meaning.”

Felix looked wistfully at the doctor, his hair erect and his bony frame seeming to collapse upon itself from very weakness. His proportions, more especially by comparison with those of Rose Aviolet herself, added indeed an element of the grotesque to his outlined programme of action.

But Lucian felt no inclination to smile. “You’re a good fellow, Felix,” he said. “The picturesque opportunities don’t often come along in real life, as you say, but it’s the other things that really count.”

“Thank you, doctor,” said Felix, blinking his pale eyelashes rapidly. “I should never have said all this, I don’t suppose, only that I’m wrought-up like. Don’t mention it to any one else, please!”

The doctor gave his promise as a breathless young woman in cap and apron came to summon him upstairs.

“Good-night, Felix.”

“I shall be here when you come down, doctor.”

Felix, characteristically, would always be there, the doctor reflected. In all the years during which the doctor had come to Ovington Street, the many times that he had brought Rose there, or taken her away, Felix had always been there, unbolting the door for her, fetching the cab for her, breathlessly echoing her greeting or her farewell, gazing upon her with faithful adoration, and going back to his dark corner of the shop to dream his wild, cinematographic day-dreams of unlikely prowess on her behalf.

“Where is the line of demarcation?” Lucian wondered sadly to himself. “This lad’s fancies may be foolish enough, but it’s a rather sublime sort of folly, and unspeakably pathetic; and that other poor boy, who dragged his day-dreams into everyday life--it’s only a step further, after all.... And yet one’s something of a hero, and the other----”

He would not supply the word, even to himself.

On the way upstairs, a very odd sound, familiar in an elusive sort of way, perplexed him for an instant. He opened the door of the sitting-room.

The frail, fatuous, tinkling sound was intensified. It was an air, the air called “Rousseau’s Dream,” played by an old-fashioned musical box.

It stood on the round table in the middle of the room, where a space had been cleared for it beside the aspidistra and the big Bible. Over the gas-fire, Alfred Smith was sitting, looking strangely chilled and old.

“Rousseau’s Dream” died away in a little blur of sound as the mechanism ran down, and old Smith looked up.

“So you’ve come to see me. It’s kind of you. Sit down by the fire, doctor, and warm yourself.”

Lucian complied with the invitation silently.

“Well, she’s gone down to the country, has she?”

“Yes. You know Cecil has enlisted?”

“I know. They’ll--they’ll send him out there, I suppose?”

“I believe so. He’ll have to go through his training first, of course. Perhaps the whole thing will be over before he gets out there.”

“I hope not,” said the old man sombrely, “I hope not, doctor.”

The old pawnbroker seemed disinclined for conversation, and they sat in silence on either side of the hearth.

At last the old man made a gesture. “You heard that old musical box of mine, as you came in? He--the boy--used to be very fond of it, when he was little. That time when he and his mother first stayed here after they came back from abroad, he was ill once. And when he first came downstairs I let him have the musical box for a treat, and Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ to amuse him. The reason I started it playing just now, was that my heart might be softened towards him. I thought if I could think of him again as a little fellow, I might be better able to forgive him. We are all of us conceived in iniquity, but there is something about a child----”

He broke off.

“Do you remember Cecil Aviolet as a child?”

“Yes, very well indeed.”

“That it should have come to this!” said the old man.

His tone was one of amazement, rather than grief.

“A common thief.”

“_No!_” said Lucian.

“Yes, that’s all he was. A thief. How can you say he was anything else? That cup was valued at thirty pounds, and he tried to steal the honour and glory of it, too. The Aviolets tried to make out that he was mad, didn’t they? But he wasn’t. I know that very well. He’s a thief and a rogue.”

The doctor was silenced before the sheer weight of the old man’s implacable conviction. Nothing would shake him. Where the Aviolets had seen stark, incomprehensible insanity, where the law had seen wilful depravity, where he himself saw a hundred thousand subtleties of pathology, Uncle Alfred saw the crude fact of a theft.

He would never see anything else.

“It’s my duty to forgive as I hope to be forgiven,” he presently said, very earnestly and loudly. “And I _will_ forgive. I will _not_ let the sun go down upon my wrath. But it’s very hard: Father, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.”

“Amen,” said Dr. Lucian.

Uncle Alfred nodded his head slowly. “I hope that may be taken as it was meant,” he cryptically remarked. “How’s Rose?”

“She’s wonderful.”

“Rose is a good girl. She has her faults, but she’s a good girl. I’ve been sorry for Rose, over this business. It wasn’t her fault, the boy turning out like this. Don’t you let any one persuade her that it was, either.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“You can help it, all right. She thinks a lot of you, doctor.”

The doctor gazed into the fire.

“I wish,” said Uncle Alfred with sudden fretfulness, “that you’d take and marry her. I’ve never held with Paul on the subject of marriage. No doubt you remember his epistle on the subject? It reads to me like the writing of a disappointed man, you mark my words. People don’t lash out in that way for nothing. Marriage was ordained by God, Paul or no Paul.”

“You haven’t married yourself, Mr. Smith.”

“My loss was another man’s gain,” said Mr. Smith austerely. “And so you’ll find yours will be, my fine sir, if you don’t strike while the iron’s hot. Do you want Rose?”

“Yes.”

“Then, in my opinion, it’s now or never. You’re the person she’s turned to in all this--though I could wish she’d known better than to lean upon an arm of flesh in the day of tribulation--and it’s my belief that if you went to her now, she’d take you.”

“I wish to God I thought so too.”

“Thou shalt _not_ take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” said Uncle Alfred.

He seemed cheered by his own admonitions, and presently Dr. Lucian rose to leave him.

“Are you going to follow my advice?” the old man demanded inquisitively.

“Perhaps I shall. Anyway, I’m very grateful to you for the advice, because I hope it means that you wish me success.”

“I’ve already told you that I wish you success,” Uncle Alfred remarked testily, “but God helps those that help themselves.”

Dr. Lucian went away with the conviction strong upon him that civil speeches were wasted on Mr. Smith.

Within the next two days came the letters that he had known would come.

He opened one from Rose, in her sprawling handwriting that yet held character, and smiled a little, as he always did, at the strange stilted phraseology that he knew her to evolve with so much difficulty whenever she imposed upon herself the uncongenial task of letter-writing.

My dear Maurice,

Ces has been sent off to the barracks and he’ll be in uniform by this time.

They mean to be kind, here, but of course they don’t understand. Sir Thomas says Cecil must come here for the leave they all get before being sent off to fight. I think Ces wants to, really, because he’s always been fond of Squires, and he asked me to stay on here for a bit, till he goes out. I’ve told the hospital I’m not going back for the present. They’ll understand, knowing what’s happened.

I haven’t seen Henrietta yet, but I’ll go soon, and I’ll write and tell you how she is. I had a very nice letter from her.

It wouldn’t be any good me trying to thank you, dear Maurice, for all you did. I can’t say what I feel about it, and never can. There never was any one like you, and I’ll never forget it to my dying day. But I can’t write things, as you know.

It isn’t too bad here. Ford and Diana aren’t here, thank goodness, and I don’t mind anything except Ces, now.

Please go and see Uncle A. if not too busy. I expect he’s down on his luck, and he likes you. Give him my love, and Felix Menebees too.

Yours ever, Rose Aviolet.

The doctor carefully folded up the sheet of paper and put it into his pocket-book before he opened the other letter.

It was from Cecil, dated from the barracks.

My dear Dr. Lucian,

You will have heard from my mother, and she will thank you better than I can for all you’ve done for us both. Of course, I know that what you did for me was for her sake.

I was sent here this morning. It’s all very strange at present, but I’m thankful to be here, and all the men say we shall be sent to the trenches almost at once. I hope we will be, and I hope that I shan’t ever come back from there. This isn’t just swank, but true.

Very, very gratefully Cecil Aviolet.

And after he had read that letter, the doctor very deliberately sat down, took out his fountain pen and unscrewed it, and then and there wrote his reply:

My dear Cecil,

Thanks for writing; it was very good of you to find time. I will do everything I can for your mother, for her sake and for yours too, while you’re away, and send you a line with news of her from time to time.

I expect you’ve been through hell, in these last few weeks, and I wish there was anything one could do to help, but it’s the isolation of these things that makes them what they are. I’d like to add, if you won’t think me impertinent, that from a purely professional point of view I should say you’ve turned the corner. But it takes a good deal of pluck to go on, after that, as you’re finding.

My sister asked me in her last letter to give you her love--a message she’s chary with, as a rule, but you’re an old favourite of hers.

The doctor hesitated for some time over the subscription to his letter, and finally, he wrote:

Your old friend, Maurice Lucian.

A week later he was sent for to Ovington Street.

The small maid-servant who came for him was breathless. “Felix Menebees, ’im as is the assistant, sent me,” she explained, obedient to the fate which decreed that Felix should invariably be denied any ceremonious prefix to his peculiar name. “The old gentleman, he don’t know nothing about you being sent for.”

“Is he ill?”

“M’m,” she nodded hard.

“Do you know what’s the matter with him?”

“The influenza,” she glibly asserted.

“How long has he been bad?”

“About a week, but ’e didn’t let on.”

That Dr. Lucian could believe. He went to the familiar building over the shop at once.

Felix Menebees was at the door, watching for him, and mysteriously beckoned him inside.

“Thank you very much, Gladys. You can go downstairs,” he said to the small servant, who obediently disappeared.

“Doctor, it’s like as if it had to be,” said Felix impressively, when she was no longer within earshot.

“What?”

“More trouble for poor Mrs. Aviolet. You’d have thought she’d had enough to bear without any more being put upon her. But I’m afraid the governor is very ill.”

“Shall I go up?”

“As a friend, yes. As a physician, not on any account,” said Felix earnestly.

“So that’s it, is it? I suppose he doesn’t know you’ve sent for me?”

“I wouldn’t have him know for the world.”

“Very well.”

Dr. Lucian went upstairs.

The pawnbroker was sitting at the round table in the middle of the room, and he was reading in the very large Bible that had always lain there.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” he observed to Dr. Lucian without preamble. “I was going to send you a message.”

“I’m afraid you’re a sick man, Mr. Smith.”

“Maybe, maybe. But it’s your signature I want. I’ve made my will. I’ll tell you what’s in it, if you like.”

“That’s not necessary, unless you wish it. Do you want me to sign it now?”

“‘Work while it is day for the night cometh when no man can work.’ Unless I am greatly mistaken--and let me tell you that I am scarcely ever mistaken--that night is not very far away now. Call the lad Felix, and tell him to send the girl here. She can witness with you.”

The doctor obediently went to the head of the stairs, and after delivering his message, delayed his return into the room until all sounds resembling the careful extraction of papers from a secret place by an aged and determined person had ceased.

An immense length of foolscap lay on the table, all but a strip of which was covered with pink blotting paper.

“Here,” said Uncle Alfred to Gladys, who wrote a large, round-hand signature, and went away again looking awed.

“Now you can order me to bed if you like,” said the old man indifferently. “I doubt I shall ever rise from it again, but that boy of poor Rose’s, and this war, between them, have done for me.”

After a very brief examination, Dr. Lucian spoke: “You’re quite right, I’m going to order you into bed. And I want you to let me send round a nurse, who’ll take all trouble off your hands and do just what you tell her.”

“She’ll be the first one of her calling who ever did any such thing, then,” Uncle Alfred disbelievingly remarked. “No, no, I don’t want strange hussies at my bedside; I’ve got no money to throw away on that sort of rubbish.”

“Then send for your niece.” The doctor neatly made the point at which he had been aiming.

“That would be less expensive, by a great deal. Only her keep, though Rose always did have a very hearty appetite. But she’s a good girl--I’m fond of Rose. She can come if she likes. It’ll give her something to think about, now the boy’s gone.”

The doctor wrote that night to Rose. When he came the following evening to see his patient, she met him on the threshold of Uncle Alfred’s room. He took her hand in silence, looking at the tiny lines round her mouth that the last few weeks had traced there.

“Is he very bad?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Going to die?” Rose whispered. “He says himself that he won’t get well again.”

“I’m afraid he won’t, my dear. Shall you be able to stay?”

“Oh, yes. Cecil and I can’t be together now, and I’d rather be here than at Squires, though they’re kind enough in their way. If Ces is sent abroad, he’ll get leave first, and I should have to be free for that, but it won’t be yet.”

Lucian thought, although he did not say so, that she would be free before that.

The old pawnbroker sank very gradually.

The day before his death he remarked to his niece: “Flowers are a very foolish and extravagant custom. You will be so good as to put ‘No flowers, by request.’”

Rose knew better than to protest at the implication. “Very well, Uncle A.”

Presently he said: “You may tell your son that I am not the man to allow the sun to go down upon my wrath. I know my duty as a Christian, and I forgive him. But if you had brought him up in the fear of the Lord, this would never have come to pass.”

That night a change came over him that even to Rose’s eyes was unmistakable, and she sent a message to Lucian early in the following day.

Alfred Smith, his face very grey, lay propped up against his pillows, his fingers plucking at the sheet, his mouth oddly fallen in, and only his shrewd, indomitable old eyes seeming strangely alive still.

“It’s getting very dark,” he said.

The clear light of morning filled the room.

“Now don’t go lighting the gas, Rose,” said Uncle Alfred sharply. “That’s you all over, that is: always in a hurry. There’ll be no need of the light yet awhile. Where’s Felix?”

“In the shop. Do you want him?”

“Certainly not. He’s there to look after the business, not to come upstairs. But mind, there’s to be no philandering with young Millar, my girl. I know you.”

Rose looked pitifully down at the shrunken form. Her strong white fingers closed over his restless ones. Uncle Alfred looked down at their joined hands with a faint, detached air of surprise.

“Is Lucian there?”

“Yes,” said the doctor, low and clearly.

“I am obliged to you for all the attention that you have shown me. Human skill can avail little against ... against the Lord. The Lord----”

His voice wandered into a maze of garbled texts and devotional phrases. But the last words that were wholly intelligible Uncle Alfred spoke with his unfaltering gaze fixed upon Rose.

“You’ll find I’ve remembered you. But you can’t touch the capital.” His tone was triumphant. “I’ve done well, with the Lord’s help, and a good business training. There’s nothing like sound investments to build upon--and unless the Lord build the house, how shall it stand?”

Then he shut his eyes, and, late in the day, passed imperceptibly from sleep into the greater repose.

“He was always kind to Mother and me, in his way, and it meant more coming from him, having always been on the near side, poor Uncle A.,” said Rose, child-like, effortless tears running down her face.

But she wept no more when Felix Menebees, having taken his last leave of his old employer, broke down pitifully, after a night and two days spent upon his feet. Instead, she put a kettle on to the gas-ring and boiled water and made tea and then prosaically said to the doctor and to Felix:

“Let’s have tea. I’m sure it’s much the best thing we can do.”

“Let me....” said Felix incoherently. “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Aviolet----”

“Why? I’m sure if any one is entitled to cry, Felix, it’s you, after being on the go a whole night and all you’ve done in the day-time as well. I cry myself, when I’m tired--I _roar_. I’m sure it does one good sometimes,” said Mrs. Aviolet reflectively.

The funeral was a large one, with few relatives and personal friends present, but many representatives of minor public bodies, and charities. Young Millar had obtained leave for attendance, and afterwards came back to Ovington Street with Rose and Felix.

It was found that Uncle Alfred’s will, a lengthy and elaborately worded document, appointed Artie Millar as his successor in the pawnbroking business, which was left to him outright, together with a capital sum of three thousand pounds. Innumerable small legacies went to as many mission societies, one thousand pounds to Felix Menebees, and Uncle A.’s savings, amounting to nearly five thousand pounds, and invested in gilt-edged securities, was charged with a life-interest for Rose’s benefit, to revert eventually to the business.

“He’s cut Cecil out,” was Rose’s first thought.

Her next, inevitably, was that of the new freedom conferred upon her.

Both she and Lucian congratulated Felix Menebees.

“Thank you very much,” said the youth, in a dazed way. “It was a great surprise to me. It was very good of him.”

Long afterwards he said to the doctor: “I wish Mr. Cecil had had it, doctor--I do indeed.”

“I know what you mean, Felix, but you know Cecil Aviolet will be a rich man one of these days. He’ll be glad that you’ve got some recognition of your loyal service to the old man.”

“It’s a fortune, you know,” Felix said simply. “I’ve no parents, and I’m not clever. I should never have had any money at all, except I earned it, and I’m not clever or strong or educated, to be fit for much.”

“It’s not too late, with this money behind you, to do something in the way of training. What do you fancy?”

Felix gave a curious, shy smile. “I’m going to learn to drive a car, first thing. I’ve arranged about the lessons already.”

“Why, Felix?”

“So as to get to the war. I want to drive a field ambulance.”

The doctor was silent from sheer astonishment.

“Me and Mr. Millar have talked it over. He was most kind. He might have put on airs, in a manner of speaking, seeing as he’s the boss now, but he didn’t at all. He has a relative who’s going to keep the business going for him while he’s at the war, and he offered to make me acting manager at once. It was most gratifying, doctor. But I said that, much as I appreciated the compliment, I must beg to decline owing to other calls. And then I told him what I’d planned. And he’s going to keep the offer open against the time I come back again. Though, of course, as I pointed out, I may never come back again at all, but die fighting my country’s foe, the same as another.”

“Of course you must come back,” said Dr. Lucian vigorously. “We can’t spare your sort, Felix. Good luck to you. Come and see me before you go.”

When Felix Menebees eventually took advantage of the invitation he was in blue uniform, with a Red Cross brassard. His face was radiant.

“We’re off on Monday, doctor. I can’t hardly believe in my own good luck. Me that thought I should never have any adventures at all as long as I lived, but only stand behind a counter all my days! Not that I wouldn’t have done it gladly, for the old gentleman’s sake, and of course for Mrs. Aviolet’s.”

“Have you seen her?”

The pallid face of Felix became even more suffused and transfigured. “Doctor, if you’ll believe me, I wrote and told her how it was my great wish to be allowed to say good-bye to her before I went, and she asked me to take her out to luncheon! She did, indeed. Of course I know, it’s all different when a chap’s in uniform, but I looked upon it, and I always shall, as the very proudest moment of my life. And she’s going to write to me. And I had a note from Mr. Cecil, doctor, to wish me good luck--ever such a nice note. I wish I could have seen him again.”

“You may meet out there.”

“You’d laugh if you knew how often I’d planned getting some chance of saving Mr. Cecil’s life under fire,” said Felix wistfully. “I’d like to do something for _her_, you know. But the way I look at it, doctor, is that I can be doing my job as though it was for her, like. I daresay you’ve guessed, doctor, knowing both her and me as you do--I daresay you’ve guessed,” said Felix Menebees with a _naïveté_ almost superb, “that I think the whole world, and more, of Mrs. Aviolet.”

VIII

Both Lady Aviolet and Sir Thomas were insistent that Cecil should spend his twenty-four hours’ leave before going to France, at Squires.

“People had better know that he’s coming here as--as usual,” Sir Thomas said. “The lad’s going out to fight and there’s no need to remember anything else.”

The violence of his wrath had subsided by degrees, with the passing months.

“Certainly not,” his wife assented. “And we want to see him, too, Rose my dear, and bid him Godspeed.”

With a generosity that extended far beyond the circumscribed limits of their understanding, they tried to show that they had forgiven him--were willing to give him another chance.

Cecil came to Squires.

He looked strong and sunburnt, and only his eyes betrayed the sickness of the spirit within the young, healthy body.

His grandparents and Diana Aviolet treated him as usual, but he avoided them as much as possible and spent all his moments with Rose. Ford and he exchanged hardly a word--until seven o’clock on the last evening, an hour before Cecil was due to drive to the junction and board his train.

They were in the large hall, and Rose, unwilling to waste an instant of the few precious ones remaining now, was rapidly unpinning her hat behind the heavy tapestry curtains, prepared to fling it out of sight in the adjacent garden-room dear to Diana, sooner than spend time in going upstairs.

As she stood with upraised arms, pushing her yellow hair away from her forehead before the looking-glass on the wall, she heard Ford’s voice.

“So you’re off, and of course you come back with a commission--that’s understood. But not _too_ many decorations, my boy, not _too_ many laudatory inscriptions, I do beg, and--if you _must_ have them, do manage something more artistically authenticated than your college trophies, won’t you?”

In that second, a scarlet mist swam before Rose Aviolet’s eyes.

Through it, she saw the tapestry curtains torn apart by her own hand, and Ford, in his most characteristic attitude, leaning against the high mantelshelf on which stood the pieces of _famille verte_.

Almost simultaneously with the vision, she was driving her clenched hand, with all her maddened strength behind it, into the middle of his brown, elongated face, from which the sneer had not yet faded.

“God _damn_ you--and _damn_ you--and _damn_ you!” whispered Rose Aviolet, her voice strangled in her throat.

There was a crash of splintering china as Ford reeled backwards and as his shoulder swept the pieces of green china into the tiles of the hearth.

“Mother!” screamed Cecil’s voice behind her.

The next moment Ford had recovered his balance and with one hand gripped Rose’s elbow. With the other hand he pulled wildly at the cord of his smashed _pince-nez_. Blood sprang where the glass had cut him and his furious gestures smeared it all over his face.

Rose’s free arm swung back again and she raised it for another blow.

Ford gripped her wrist, and in an instant she was powerless.

His face, with amazed, furious eyes, was glaring into hers. “She’s mad--mad--I could have her certified for this....”

“Mother!” cried Cecil’s voice again, on a high, sobbing note.

“She’s mad!” Ford repeated, between his teeth. “Hush--the servants. Get her upstairs.... Ah-h--no, you don’t----”

Rose had wrenched furiously against his grasp.

“Get her upstairs, Cecil. Help me, you fool! She’s as strong as a horse.... Take her feet!”

Rose, suddenly stock-still in his grasp, shuddered from head to foot. She began to tremble violently.

“Take her feet!” Ford commanded.

A flicker passed across Rose’s face.

“By God, no!” shouted Cecil suddenly. “Let go of her arms. She’ll come with me.”

Still in Ford’s grasp, Rose turned her head, her eyes, human and seeing again, seeking Cecil’s.

With that sudden relaxation of tension she found herself, strangely, able to smile at him; and quite suddenly, with the constricted gesture that alone was possible to her with Ford’s hold still upon either arm, she put out her hand to her son.

Half an hour later, incredibly, they had dinner as though nothing had happened.

Ford had disappeared.

Servants of perfectly incurious aspect had swept up the broken china and glass in the hall.

Diana and Sir Thomas and Lady Aviolet sat in the dining-room where Rose and Cecil were waited upon with all the simplification of ritual that the war had imposed upon the process of dining at Squires.

Diana and Lady Aviolet knitted.

They made spasmodic conversation.

“They say no one is allowed to write and say where they are, over there. I daresay we shall be able to guess, though.”

“Don’t forget your letters will all have to go through the Censor’s office, Cecil.”

“Great nonsense!” from Sir Thomas. “That’ll all stop directly you get your commission, of course.”

“You ought to have a smooth crossing, I should say.”

“Like a mill-pond on a night like this.”

“Is your flask filled, Cecil?”

“Yes, grandmama.”

“If you find you’ve forgotten anything, or there’s any little thing you want, we can send it, of course.”

“Thanks, Aunt Di.”

“Rose, my dear, you must really eat something. You’ve had nothing. There’s no use in making yourself ill, you know. _That_ won’t help any of us.”

Lady Aviolet anxiously pressed food upon her daughter-in-law.

“A glass of port, then?”

Rose shook her head.

“Wait a minute,” said Sir Thomas. He pulled himself up from his chair, gouty and corpulent, and going to the sideboard, grasped one of the decanters there with his big, shaking old hand, where the blue veins stood out in knots.

“We’re going to drink the boy’s health before he goes, and--and to a speedy and victorious return. From Berlin, eh, Cecil?”

He poured out the wine himself, grasping the backs of the chairs as he went heavily and laboriously round the great mahogany table.

Then, regaining his own place, the old man drew himself up with difficulty to his full height, and raised a brimming glass.

“Here’s to your very good health, Cecil, and a safe and speedy return.”

Lady Aviolet sipped at her glass, but the next moment she had raised her handkerchief to her eyes.

“A safe and speedy return, Cecil,” echoed Diana, very white.

But Rose Aviolet lifted her glass with a steady hand and looked full at Cecil, her brown eyes shining: “Here’s luck, Ces!”

Then she turned to Sir Thomas and said softly: “Thank you.”

The old man had spilt half the port from his glass on to the front of his shirt, and he was gazing down at the spreading stain, grumbling and muttering.

“Hand so infernally unsteady, now-a-days; no doing anything.”

“The carriage is at the door, m’Lady.”

“Oh, dear, where’s Ford?” cried Diana. “You must say good-bye to Uncle Ford, Cecil.”

She pushed back her chair from the table, and Lady Aviolet rose too, replacing the handkerchief somewhere in the rustling folds of her dress.

“Good-byes are always trying,” she said. Her choked voice, pathetic in its striving after a dignified composure, gave utterance to the excusatory _cliché_ almost automatically.

She moved into the hall.

“Plenty of time, but one must allow for the hill.”

Lady Aviolet had always, from the days of her first carriage and pair, allowed for the hill.

It was part of the Squires tradition.

“I _must_ find Ford,” said Diana. She hurried upstairs.

Sir Thomas put out his hand to his grandson. “Good-bye, my boy. Good luck to you. I--I wish I was going with you.”

Cecil wrung his grandfather’s hand. His big brown eyes, with their look of dumb, helpless torment, sought the old man’s as though to convey a message that could never be spoken.

“There, there,” said Sir Thomas. “Good lad, aren’t you? Do your best and we’ll be proud of you yet.”

From an immense distance, across an impassable gulf, it was the answer to the message.

“Good-bye,” said Cecil, in a half-whisper. He turned to his grandmother.

“God bless you,” said Lady Aviolet, crying.

She kissed him, and hurried back into the familiar, unemotional shelter of the morning-room.

But Sir Thomas stood sturdily at the door while Cecil shook hands with the two old servants and he remained there, looking after them as they drove away. His chin dropped heavily on to his breast when at last he turned indoors.

“They were decent, weren’t they?” said Cecil.

“Yes, very.”

“They don’t know about--about what happened in the hall, with Uncle Ford?”

“No, not yet. And I shan’t be there when they do know, Ces. I’m going to the Lucians. They won’t want me at Squires, with _him_ and Diana there--besides, I couldn’t.”

Cecil was silent.

Presently he put his hand into hers, as he had so often done as a little boy, and they sat there, without speaking, until the junction was reached.

“Mummie, I’m so glad you’re going to the Lucians. May I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Has Dr. Lucian asked you to marry him?”

“Yes, heaps of times,” said Rose, without elation as without embarrassment.

“Couldn’t you?”

“Would you like me to?” she asked, surprised.

“Yes, I think I should, especially if it would make you happier. I wouldn’t feel then--I wouldn’t feel so much as if it all depended on a rotter like me--all your happiness.”

“Ces!”

Sobs tore at her throat.

The clear, prolonged whistle of the engine came to them shrilly. He put his arms round her and laid his wet face against hers.

“I love you. I’ll try.”

He was gone.

Rose clung to the wooden barrier of the little station until long after the last red spark from the vanishing train had died in the air.

“Home, Madam?”

The voice of the old man-servant was very patient and pitying, as though he had spoken to her before, and understood why she had neither heard, nor answered.

“I am going to Dr. Lucian’s house,” said Rose Aviolet.

A blinding fatigue possessed her. She discovered that her arms, where Ford had gripped and held her, earlier in the evening, were aching and bruised.

On the threshold of Henrietta Lucian’s room, she stumbled and nearly fell.

“Rose, dear! Come in.”

Henrietta, hobbling stiffly to meet her, pushed her gently into a deep chair, beside the low table where the friendly, homely lamplight shone.

“Don’t say anything--I know. He’s gone. Will you stay here to-night?”

“Yes,” said Rose.

Presently she murmured, “I’m not ever going back to Squires.”

Miss Lucian accepted it quietly.

She left Rose alone whilst a room was prepared for her, and then took her upstairs, pulling herself up each step by the aid of the balusters.

“Oh, your poor knees! I forgot. Don’t climb the stairs,” Rose cried suddenly.

“That’s all right,” said Miss Lucian stoically.

But it had broken the spell.

Rose smiled, thanked her, and broke into a flood of tears.

“That’s better,” said Henrietta, the tears in her own eyes. “Just let me see you in bed, Rose, and then I’ll leave you alone in the dark. It’s all one can do, I suppose.”

When she came downstairs again, she wrote a letter to her brother in London.

“I don’t think Rose will go back to the Aviolets, though I don’t know what happened, exactly. Probably something to do with Cecil. But when this bad bit is over, she’ll want something to do, and I daresay you can help her about it. Anyway, come, if you can.”

Dr. Lucian came.

It was characteristic of the fine and delicate relationship between the brother and sister, that his first inquiry was for Henrietta’s own increasingly frail health. Afterwards, he asked her about Rose.

“She’s heard from Cecil--one of those field post-cards. And she’s talking about work, just as I said she would. She’ll ask you about it.”

“I’ve a suggestion to make to her.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Henrietta significantly.

If any number of implications lay between them in the silence that ensued, neither chose to stress the knowledge of them by word or look.

“You’re wanting to go out there yourself, of course.”

“Blunt is going. He’s a younger man than I am, and wild to go. As a matter of fact, we tossed for it. There’ll be work enough here, before it’s over. And it’s in my own special line--neurology--that I think the Government is going to make use of me.”

“In London, I suppose?”

“Principally.”

“Can you find work for Rose?”

“Yes.”

“Tell her soon. She’s so terribly sad, though she’s so brave.”

That Rose’s sadness was not to impair Rose’s bravery, Lucian felt more certain than ever when she came to him downstairs. The valorous spirit that he had always loved in her was undimmed by her many tears; only the defiance of her early days was gone.

She told him what had happened in the hall at Squires before Cecil went away.

“So you see, I shall never go back there. That’s the end, between them and me, isn’t it? I can’t ever be sorry I did it, you know. Except because of the _famille verte_. It was such glorious china, and I don’t suppose they’ll ever replace it. Uncle A. said it was very hard to get genuine pieces now-a-days. But one curious thing has happened.”

She paused.

“What is it?”

“I’ve had a letter from Diana. Ford _must_ have told her what I did--his face looked as though he’d been fighting with the cat----” Rose interpolated, with her habitual graceless colloquialism. “But I’ll show you what she says.”

He took the letter, in the square, thick, blue-grey envelope. Diana’s handwriting was as well-bred, unindividual, and unformed as was her mentality.

My dear Rose,

Your things are all packed, and will be sent by the carrier to-morrow.

I hope you will let me know later on what your plans are. It has been a dreadful time for you, I know, and I have felt so awfully sorry for you, only it is so difficult to put things into words, and after all, there isn’t really anything that one can _say_, is there? Only I do want to say that I’ll do anything I can for you, any time, and I wish we could have seen more of one another.

I was very sorry not to have said good-bye properly to Cecil, you must please give him my love and best wishes when you write. This awful war!

Don’t worry about anything, as you’ve left Squires now and whatever things have happened, this dreadful war makes everything else look tiny. I hope you’ll sometimes write to me, though this letter doesn’t need any answer.

If I get through my Red Cross exams all right, I shall try and go abroad. I’ll let you know.

Yours affectionately, Diana Aviolet.

“She must know what happened,” Rose repeated thoughtfully.

“Yes. Poor thing!”

Rose shuddered. “Poor thing, married to Ford! It’s nice of her to have written, and to say that about Ces. I daresay,” said Rose gently, “that she’s unhappier than I am.”

“She hasn’t your courage, my dear.” The doctor dismissed Diana Aviolet.

Rose’s brown eyes, that looked as though she had cried and cried, sought his, and even now they were vivid and lambent, the eyes of a woman who still lived her life, for joy or grief, with ardour.

“What am I going to do?” she asked him. “Henrietta said you would have some work for me. Is it at the new place you’re going to start?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you about it, all there is to tell, later. But meanwhile, Rose, there’s just this: that work is going to touch the side of life that caught and broke Cecil. I want you to help me to help people who, in one way or another, are like Cecil.”

“Thank you,” said Rose.

They were silent for a while, and then Rose said:

“Of course, you knew that was exactly what I should want most. You always understand. You see, the worst part of it all to me, almost, is to feel that I am partly responsible for Ces being what he is.”

Lucian frowned. “What, exactly, do you mean?”

Rose, cupping her face, now-a-days so innocent of rouge, in her hands, looked earnestly at him from where she sat on the low window-seat.

“Of course, I wasn’t educated, and I was much too young when I married Jim to know about eugenics and heredity and things,” she told him, “but that doesn’t really make me less responsible, does it? The Aviolets have always been all right--you’d expect them to be, of course--but Lord only knows what the Smith blood may have done for my poor Ces. You see, there wasn’t any tradition behind us, was there? Even Uncle A. did things in business that I expect you’d think pretty fishy, from an Aviolet point of view. And, somehow, Ces got born with just that Aviolet instinct left out of him.”

Lucian, walking up and down the long room, came to a sudden standstill before her. “Have they really made you believe that?”

“What?” She looked at him with wide eyes, as he resumed his pacing.

“Have they really made you believe that it’s the strain of your blood in Cecil’s veins that’s made him as he is? My dear, don’t you understand? It’s the Aviolet blood, not yours, that’s responsible. They’re decadent--rotten ... look at Ford. It’s the way, with these old, old families. They intermarry, always with other old, old families, reproducing the same type again and again. You’ve seen the picture of the Spanish ancestress, that Ford is so like? She was probably the saving of them, in her day. They must have died out, or become hopelessly degenerate, but for that one lapse of Sir Basil Aviolet that brought a fresh stock. You can tell that it was a vigorous strain--the physical type that’s persisted to this very day in Ford. But she couldn’t do more than give him her physical characteristics, and a twist to his mentality that’s Latin--nearly the lowest type of Latin, mind you--a middle-class Spaniard. She couldn’t save him, or any of them, altogether. Look at those two boys--Ford and Jim. Poor Jim drank, and did other things as well--I needn’t tell _you_. But Ford--Ford’s rotten all through. Decadent. Don’t you understand why Ford’s hated you all along? It’s the hatred of the sick for the whole, of the neurotic for the sane.

“Whatever they thought you, Rose, however short you fell of their little, inherited standards, you were alive, all the time, and they knew it. And the Aviolets, they’re dead. Dead limbs on a diseased tree. Ford, poor devil, has the Spanish woman’s brain, such as it is, and so he understands--he can see the difference between you and them. The vital spark. You’ve got it, and they haven’t. They’ll never have it any more. That girl that Ford married is healthy enough, a normal woman, if she is a bit of a fool. But he hasn’t been able to give her a child.”

“She may thank God for it, then,” Rose interposed swiftly, “if it’s as bad as you say.”

“You’re right. She may thank God for it, poor thing. She couldn’t have saved her child from the Aviolet taint, as you’re going to save yours, Rose. It’s what he’s got from you that’s all along held Cecil back from being what Ford is.”

A sound escaped her.

“Don’t you understand?” he asked again, very gently. “Ford understood. In a way, Cecil _was_ Ford. It was the same for both of them. Fundamentally, each of them was aware of that paralysis, that ghastly moral decay, in himself. You and I, my dear, can hardly guess at the meaning of that--the utter, deadly lack, not only of self-confidence, but of self-respect, that it must have engendered. Do you remember that line that you quoted to me once, a long time ago?

‘_And some push stumbling on, without a star._’

Don’t cry, Rose, my beautiful, don’t cry any more.”

He knelt beside her, and she wiped away the tears that blinded her and, with the old familiar gesture, pushed the strands of yellow hair away from her brow.

“Is that why Ford hated Cecil?” she asked.

“I think so. Ford saw himself in Cecil all the time. Cecil used to say what wasn’t true so as to make himself believe in himself, so as to see himself as a fine fellow. It wasn’t any one else he wanted to deceive, really. But he had nothing to fall back upon, no inner security, and so he tried to find the courage we all of us need to meet life with, by an imaginary picture of himself as he longed to be. Oh, my God, Rose, which of us hasn’t done it? Only that poor boy got lost, between the two worlds of reality and pretence.”

The doctor paused, and then resumed very gently:

“Ford Aviolet knew exactly the same panic that poor Cecil knows, I’m certain of it. He lacked the inner security, too. But he didn’t take refuge in illusion--couldn’t perhaps. He had other methods of reassuring himself. When he could sneer at, or bully, or hurt something weaker than himself, it gave him a sense of power. He could see himself as a fine fellow, then--the little self that grovelled within him from very weakness. And in both of them, both Ford and Cecil, it was the same taint of corruption, the decadence that came from the Aviolets. Not from you, my dear. You must never think that any more. You’re alive, as the Aviolet stock can never be alive again, and it’s what you’ve given to your boy that’s going to pull him through.”

She was crying again, passionately, and he gripped both her hands and held them tightly in his.

“Never give up hope, Rose. Whatever happens, I believe his soul will come through. You saved that in the earliest days of all, when he was little, once and for ever.”

“We did it together,” said Rose. “You’ve always been there, backing me, ever since we first came to Squires, Ces and I, and they were so angry because he took your little musical snuff-box. Do you remember?”

He nodded.

“How many years ago?”

“Nearly twelve years ago, Rose. And it’s over ten since I first asked you to marry me.”

She gave him a long look, and the ghost of a smile, the shy, mirthful smile that was also Cecil’s. “Well,” said Rose Aviolet, “I think you need only ask me one more time.”

“Really, Rose?”

“Really.”

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” said Rose, drawing a long breath.

Still kneeling beside her, still holding both her hands in his, Lucian looked her squarely in the eyes.

“Remember, you and I agreed long ago not to take any chances over this thing. It’s going to mean too much to both of us. You’re--you’re not acting on impulse, Rose?”

Into her face there flooded a colour that reminded him of the old days, when Mrs. Jim Aviolet had horrified Squires by her liberal use of rouge.

But as there had been no reality of artifice about her then, so there was no reservation now, in the candour of Rose’s surrender. Both had risen to their feet, and their eyes met on a level.

“Rose.”

He took her into his arms, and it was with all the ardour of her generous temperament that Rose Aviolet, giving herself at last, frankly raised her mouth to his.

“Will you marry me at once, Rose?” he asked her presently. “And we’ll start our work together.”

“Yes. Do you know, Ces wanted this to happen. He told me so, the night he went away.”

“I’m glad,” said Dr. Lucian gently.

Her face thanked him. “Uncle A. would have been glad, too.”

“I think he would,” said the doctor. “He told me some time ago to go in and win, only he didn’t put it that way.”

“I suppose he made it sound as if it had come bang out of the middle of the Bible. He always did. He was very good to me, really, and I was very fond of him. Besides, he gave mother a home.”

The doctor was silent, realizing the inevitable memories that would always throng the faithful heart of Rose, and in which he could never share. As though she had guessed at the faint pang that the thought brought with it, her next words allayed it.

“I wish you’d known her. It’s so difficult to realize that there was ever a time when you weren’t there. Ceylon, and my life with Jim, is the only part that doesn’t seem real to me--not counting Ces, of course. But sometimes, sitting sewing, or anything like that, I’ve thought myself back into those old days over the shop, with mother, when we shared the top bedroom. Sometimes I can hardly believe we’re not there still. It’s funny.”

He listened, as she spoke her thoughts aloud, as Rose had always done.

“I’m glad you’ve got some work for me, and that it’s what you said--helping you to help people who are like _him_.”

“You see, you’ll understand,” he said. “It’s not only that you won’t condemn, as so many do. You’ll understand. And because you understand, you’ll hope, and you’ll make them hope, too, believe that somehow, somewhere, there’s light ahead. So that there’ll be some, my Rose, who’ll no more ‘push stumbling on without a star.’ Will you make that your work, till Cecil comes home again?”

“Till....” Rose Aviolet paused, and into her brown eyes came the sweetest, strangest look that Lucian had ever seen there; a deep, divided look, that told of inextinguishable love, of enduring grief, of eternal, illimitable hope.

“If Cecil comes home again,” she said, courageous.

Transcriber’s Notes

Fixed minor punctuation errors. Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Page 45: changed ‘coveteousness’ to ‘covetousness’.

Page 207: changed ‘so sure’ to ‘not so sure’.

Page 323: changed ‘episode’ to ‘episodes’.

Page 353: changed ‘her’ to ‘him’.