A reversion to type

by E. M. Delafield

II

There was another person, besides Rose Aviolet, who shared Dr. Lucian’s view that the question of Cecil was one to be taken seriously.

Perriman, the young master who had only recently taken Holy Orders, full of zeal and of a naturally kind heart, felt oddly sorry for the boy. He had reason to believe him unpopular in the House, and he knew that he had been mildly bullied throughout his first term.

In his second term, Cecil Aviolet was no longer bullied, so far as Perriman knew, but he seemed to be singularly isolated, and there was a dazed and hunted look about his colourless young face.

Perriman hardly knew whether the boy was cowed or sullen, but he went out of his way to show him good-will and fellowship, and Cecil’s quick response was pathetic in its eagerness.

In his second year, Cecil came up with others to Perriman’s Confirmation class. The young clergyman, of the muscular Christian type, was as robust in his religion as he was at football.

One day, after the class was over, he stopped Cecil. “If you’d like a chat, Aviolet, you can come to my study this evening. I could see you were interested in our reading.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

The boy gave his wistful, ingenuous smile.

The curate scarcely knew whether to expect him or not, and could indeed hardly have told the reason of his own unpremeditated suggestion.

He was a simple, kind-hearted fellow, ardently and naïvely convinced that the only way to God lay through Anglo-Catholicism.

“Come in!” he gladly exclaimed, when the half-expected knock came at his door. “Come in, Aviolet! Delighted to see you—sit down, do. You look cold.”

“It is cold,” said the boy, shivering.

“Are you one of those unhappy people who suffer from bad circulation? I’m one of the lucky ones myself, but I’ve been told that some poor fellows spend half the year feeling as though a jug of ice-cold water had been poured down their spines. I hope you’re not as bad as that.”

“I was born in Ceylon. I think that’s why I feel the cold so much.”

“Ah, yes, I daresay. And can you remember much about the East?”

“A good deal,” said Cecil more eagerly. “I know it was very jolly out there, and I liked it all very much. I was only a little chap when we came home, of course, but I can remember our bungalow, and a sort of Public Gardens place, with red flowers, where the ayahs used to take the children after tea every day. I think I must have had a very good time out there.”

“Ah, you know it’s an axiom that Eastern children are always spoilt. But at least you’ve made up for lost time, Aviolet. Your form-work is quite up to the average, I think.”

Cecil flushed like a girl. “Is it, sir?”

“Quite,” repeated the young clergyman. “And you were interested in what I read to the Confirmation class to-day, weren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a pause, which Perriman took care not to break. He saw that the boy was desperately nerving himself to speak.

At last Cecil said haltingly: “Is there—does—does Confirmation do anything to one, sir?”

“How do you mean, my dear boy? Confirmation is the conscious and voluntary renewal of the vow that was made for us at the time of our baptism, you know.”

“Yes, I know. But I mean, does it have any effect on one—make one any better?”

“Certainly, it’s a step in the spiritual life—it confirms us as soldiers of Christ.”

The clergyman, puzzled, felt himself to be answering almost at random.

“Look here, what’s in your mind, Aviolet? Better have it out, whatever it is.”

He felt vaguely uneasy as he saw that the boy’s hands were shaking.

“I wondered if perhaps it might—might cure one of a fault, sir.”

“Cure you of a fault!” echoed the astonished master. “What fault?”

“Any fault,” said Cecil, turning scarlet, and then white. “In the reading to-day, it said about our secret sins, and how they might go on all the time, and only—only God knows about them. And you said that He knew the strength of the temptations, and—and didn’t despise one.”

“I should think not!” ejaculated the clergyman parenthetically.

He thought that he was beginning to understand.

“How old are you, Aviolet?”

“Fifteen, sir.”

“Perhaps,” said the clergyman very kindly, and avoiding looking at the boy, “perhaps you’ve come to an age when what I may call the problems of the flesh are particularly vexatious. If that’s what’s worrying you, don’t mind saying so, quite frankly. By far the best and soundest way to tackle these things is to have them out, and you’ve done very wisely in coming to me. Don’t think of me as a master, for the time being, but just as a fellow older than yourself who’s probably been through very much what you’re going through now. Out with it, Aviolet.”

There was no response. Twice Cecil opened his mouth and then shut it again.

“Have you just been turning things over in your mind until you’ve got the whole business of sex on your nerves,” said Perriman bluntly, “or have you been getting into mischief? I’m not going to ask you to incriminate anybody else, if that’s the case, so don’t worry about that.”

“It isn’t anything like that,” said Cecil almost inaudibly.

“It isn’t? Well, so far, so good. Now supposing you tell me what it is, then?”

“When I was a little chap, I—I wasn’t taught to speak the truth.”

“That’s a pity—but you certainly came here with the intention of speaking the truth to me this evening, so I’m sure you’re going to carry out your resolution,” said the clergyman tranquilly.

“When I was at my preparatory school, I thought I’d outgrown it, like any other kid.”

“Outgrown what, Aviolet?”

“Exaggerating.”

Mr. Perriman stared at Cecil. “Tell me what you mean, my dear boy,” he said finally.

Little by little, he patiently extracted a more or less definite self-accusation from Cecil, of which almost every admission was qualified by exculpatory clauses.

At last the clergyman said to him: “You think yourself a liar, Aviolet. That’s really what it amounts to. You say that boasting of imaginary achievements has become a habit with you, and that you make perfectly false statements almost without premeditation. Now, my dear fellow, if you were really a hardened liar, you wouldn’t have come to me to-night, you may be perfectly sure of that. You were not bound to tell any one of this fault. What made you do so?”

Cecil looked dumbly at him.

“It was the wish to be rid of it, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then I solemnly assure you that you will be rid of it. Don’t you suppose that Our Lord and Saviour appreciates even the most feeble desire to amend? You’ve shown great courage in coming to me to-night,” said the young man excitedly. “And I want you to listen to me, and to believe what I’m going to tell you.”

He collected himself, and then spoke more quietly.

“To begin with, I want you to realize that you can’t do anything at all by yourself. This habit of untruth makes you miserable, is sapping away your energies, causes you to view everything in a distorted light. You see it all, you know it’s playing the mischief with you, and no doubt you make a hundred resolutions a day to break yourself of the beastly habit. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you can’t. Your resolution is broken as often as it’s made and you’re in despair. And isn’t it a very odd thing that very often it’s not until people are in despair that they think of turning to our blessed Lord for help?”

Mr. Perriman smiled at Cecil.

“They look upon Him as a sort of forlorn hope, you know.”

“The Confirmation—” muttered Cecil.

“Yes, that turned your thoughts in His direction, didn’t it? But I don’t want you to attach a sort of superstitious value to the mere fact of being Confirmed, you know. An effort has got to be made, and you’ve got to make it, but this time it’s not going to be in your own strength.”

The clergyman’s voice was strong and hopeful. Cecil gazed at him with dawning hope and comfort in his pale face.

“Can I really start fresh, sir?”

“Of course you can,” Perriman vigorously assured him. “Why, my dear boy, you’re at the very beginning of life, you’re determined to overcome this weakness, and you’ve God on your side. What more can you want?”

His frank, whole-hearted laugh rang out.

“A year from now, Aviolet, probably less—you’ll be able to look the whole world in the face, and thank God that you don’t know how to be anything but straight in word and in deed. Lying is an ugly, low-down sort of habit, you know, and there’s something in the old saying that Satan is the father of lies. If people only realized the harm that’s done in the nursery by letting children muddle up reality and pretence! A wretched kid is taught to believe in Santa Claus, and fairies, and all the rest of the pretty nonsense, then finds out that none of it’s true, and it was all ‘pretence’—and then people are surprised when their children grow up without realizing the value of truth. Tell me, what’s the attitude of your own people towards this failing of yours?”

“They think I’m all right,” said Cecil quickly. “When I was a little chap, of course they knew—I was punished for telling fibs, as a matter of fact—but after I went to Hurst, it all seemed to be over.”

The clergyman looked at him keenly. “Was it over, or did you have the same trouble at Hurst?”

“No—no—not so bad,” Cecil stammered. “I didn’t think about it, then, in a way. It’s these two terms here that have been frightful.”

“And you’ve brooded over it till you’ve persuaded yourself that it’s something born with you, like a deformed hand or foot, that can’t be got rid of. Well, Aviolet, I tell you that you’ve taken to-day an enormous stride in the right direction, and I honour you for your pluck in doing so. Now then,” said the clergyman in a business-like tone, “what about the next step?”

“What shall I do, sir?”

“If you were a little older, I should say make a regular practice of Confession. But that’s hardly practicable at present. What you can do is this: make a most scrupulous daily examination of conscience and keep note of every failure in strict truth and accuracy. Keep before your mind the certainty that our Lord can and will help you to get the better of this weakness of yours. Tell yourself every day that you’re going to be absolutely straight, and open, and above-board in all your dealings. And above all, my dear boy, pray about it. Don’t wait till you’re in Chapel, on your knees, or till you’ve time to make a long prayer. It’s the fervour you put into it, not the number of words, that counts. I’m not going to give you any books to read, or anything of that kind, but if you want me, you can simply come here and find me.”

“You don’t think I’m utterly rotten, then, sir?”

“No!” roared Perriman. “Get that idea out of your head once for all. Haven’t you read your New Testament? Whose 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.