A reversion to type

by E. M. Delafield

VIII

Two days later, Diana Grierson-Amberly left Squires, and Rose received an answer to her letter.

298 Ovington Street,
London, S. W.

My dear Niece,

Yours of the 6th to hand, for which I thank you. I am willing to receive you and the boy as you suggest, at any date convenient to yourself, on a short visit. There will be no need for you to help in the shop, as the time will be so limited.

I have given much anxious thought and prayer to yourself and to your child, my dear Rose, left alone in worldly surroundings as I fear you are. If you have discovered the hollowness and falseness of mere earthly grandeur, turn your thoughts to that which never fails, if sought in true humbleness of spirit. I will gladly advise you to the best of my poor powers, but there is but One true Counsellor for us all.

Kindly advise later as to date and hour of arrival.

Yours, etc.,
Alfred Smith.

A certain lack of enthusiasm as to the projected visit, apparent in Uncle Alfred’s letter, no less than the careful underlining of his pietistic sentiments, recalled him with singular vividness to the mind of his niece as she read.

“It’ll be something, to get away from here,” she consoled herself.

After all, Uncle Alfred had nearly always been kind, in his own strange way. She and her mother had laughed at him, but Mrs. Smith had always steadily upheld Uncle Alfred’s claim to affection and gratitude, because for many years he had given them a home. And he had been nicer to Rose after her mother’s death, she remembered.

“And, anyway, he won’t talk about ‘plans for the day’ at breakfast every blessed morning, and I shall have Ces to sleep in my room again.” She laughed out loud for very joy at the thought. There was a foolish and inexplicable hope in her heart that if she and Cecil once got away from Squires, they need never go back there. To herself, Rose added in all honesty a modification of her ardent wish to cut adrift from everything that the Aviolets stood for:

“After all, I daresay Lord Charlesbury would look us up in London. And it would be much nicer to see him away from all of them.”

In spite of herself, she was nervous at the thought of making her new plan known to Lady Aviolet, and she therefore did so in a casual and blustering manner that gave the announcement an air of unreality.

“Oh—did I tell you I’d heard from my uncle? He’s Mr. Alfred Smith, who has a business in Ovington Street. (Well, it’s a pawnbroking business, really.) I haven’t seen him since I married—and thought of going up to him.”

“Did you, my dear? The train service is very good, so you have only to let me know which day suits you and the carriage can take you to the station for the early train, and meet you again at the six o’clock, or the half-past eight, if you prefer it.”

“Oh, well, thank you very much, but I meant to stay there,” Rose said awkwardly.

“Would that be necessary?”

“I should like it,” Rose replied defiantly.

Her mother-in-law was unmoved. “As you prefer, my dear.”

“I should want to take Cecil, of course.”

“Indeed? Do you think it any real kindness to disturb him? He seems very happy, and looks so well. Besides, he is getting on nicely at his lessons, and it seems hard on Miss Wade that they should be interrupted.”

“She could have a holiday for a bit.”

“She has hardly been with us long enough to expect that. Irregularity is so unsettling to a child, too. I hope you will be unselfish enough to leave Cecil here, Rose, while you pay your visit.”

Lady Aviolet fixed her pale eyes upon Rose as she spoke, and they expressed melancholy, in the very slight degree in which their flaccid shallows ever expressed anything.

“I am Cecil’s grandmother, my dear, and so I am going to take upon myself to tell you that you are a very selfish mother to the boy. I see that you’re very fond of him—I quite see that—but you seem to have so little idea of the tremendous sacrifices that motherhood demands. Take this question of going away: you may say that you want Cecil with you, because you can’t bear to be away from him, but don’t you see that you’re only thinking of yourself? If you thought more of Cecil, and less of yourself, you’d see the folly and unkindness of disturbing and upsetting him by a change just when he is settling down to a regular routine for the first time in his little life. And London isn’t healthy for children like the country is. It won’t do him any good.”

Lady Aviolet’s implacable, unselfconscious certainty of the complete rightness of her own point of view daunted Rose curiously. Through her mind there floated, incoherently, words and phrases that should express her resentment. Difficulties—they always made difficulties—nothing was ever allowed to happen without these complications of argument, disapproval, condemnation ... things that ought to be simple, made difficult. It was tiring ... and it made one angry too. And how could any one decide that someone else was selfish, in that arbitrary way? But she was unable to formulate her thoughts in words, and stood shifting her weight from one foot to the other, like a schoolgirl that is being scolded.

At last she said in a sulky tone that might, equally, have emanated from the schoolgirl:

“I don’t see that at all. I’ve looked after Ces ever since he was born, and I suppose I know what’s best for him.”

She was angrily aware, as she spoke, of the futility of the assertion.

So, apparently, was Lady Aviolet.

“That is as it may be, my dear. And of course you will do as you think best. I can only advise you. But I should have thought that for little Cecil’s own sake, you might be willing to forget yourself. I hope I don’t expect to find old heads on young shoulders, but I should have thought you had seen enough of life to realize that we mothers have to sacrifice a great deal for our children. And they very often disappoint us at the end of it all. But at least there is the comfort of having done all one can.”

Rose, by an unwonted effort, repressed the retort that she longed to utter. If the self-sacrifice of their mother had been responsible for the ultimate evolution of the personalities of Ford and Jim Aviolet, her most ardent wish would be never to emulate such disastrous abnegation for the benefit of Cecil.

“Well, I’m sorry you don’t like the idea, but I’m afraid I’ve made up my mind,” she said, abruptly and ungraciously.

“Then there is no more to be said, my dear. Perhaps you will be able to explain matters to Miss Wade so that she does not resign her situation, but you are acting with great unfairness towards her. If Cecil is to be taken out of her hands like this, and his whole time upset, you cannot expect her to have any real authority over the child. I was beginning to hope that he was improving in every respect under her management.”

Lady Aviolet’s intonation made it clear that her “every” meant “one.”

“Her latest idea is that he ought to be whipped for telling a story.”

“Painful though that would be, it might be the truest kindness to the poor little fellow himself in the end. But I hope we need not consider the question at all. I really do hope and believe that, under Miss Wade’s management, Cecil is losing his weakness.”

Lady Aviolet’s hope—a plant of frail and ill-supported growth—was not destined to fulfilment.

Rose appeared in the Lucians’ drawing-room one afternoon with swollen eyelids, and said miserably to Henrietta:

“They’ve made me punish Cecil. At least, I suppose it wasn’t them that made me, but I’ve had to do it. And yet I don’t really believe in whipping a child—I was going dead against my own instinct, and I knew it in a sort of way, but it seemed the only thing I hadn’t tried.”

“What happened?”

“Ces—poor darling—told a perfectly flat lie to Ford, of all people, and that beast wanted to punish him himself, but, of course, I said I wouldn’t allow that, and that I was the proper person to do it. But in the end Sir Thomas did. I said he might, because I knew it would impress Ces far more—and, besides, I knew I should howl and cry if I had to hit his darling little body.”

Rose laughed tremulously, and openly put her handkerchief to her eyes.

“Poor lamb, how did he take it?” Henrietta Lucian asked.

“He didn’t cry,” Rose said proudly. “He’s a plucky little fellow, and he’s proud, too. I knew he wouldn’t make a sound, and he didn’t. Even his grandfather said he’d been brave over it. Sir Thomas was fairly decent about the whole thing, I will say. He gave Ces a talking to about truth and all that, but it was very short, and then he gave him six cuts with a little cane and left him. And I didn’t go to him.”

“Very brave of you, and I should think quite right.”

“It was hard,” Rose admitted.

“I’m so sorry for you, about the whole thing. Maurice and I often talk about it. He’s interested, you know. I’m pretty sure he thinks it isn’t little Cecil’s fault, in a way, but more like a congenital misfortune.”

“He’s so brave about other things, it’s difficult to understand. I suppose he’s had a rotten bringing up, poor darling, and that’s my fault as much as any one’s. Don’t you think a marriage like mine is a great mistake?”

“In what way?” Henrietta temporized.

“Marrying into a different class.”

“It’s apt to create difficult situations, I suppose.”

“You may say so!” Mrs. Aviolet remarked in heartfelt accents. “But it isn’t only that—though to my dying day I don’t suppose I shall ever see what they’re driving at, half the time—it’s the children. Inheriting two lots of instincts, so to speak, poor little things. I know quite well that my mother-in-law thinks poor little Cecil’s trouble is all owing to his belonging what-you-may-call to the people, one side of him. In a way, I suppose I agree. The high-and-mighty Aviolets were never anything but honourable, were they?”

“In the conventional sense of the word, perhaps not,” said Miss Lucian.

“The conventional sense of the word is all they want,” said Rose simply, quite without irony.

She was very glad when the time came for her to take Cecil to London. He had been wildly and defiantly naughty since his punishment, but he had not again been untruthful.

“Wilful naughtiness is one thing, and underhand ways are another,” Miss Wade primly observed. “I can understand a child—a boy especially—being spoilt and disobedient from time to time, but there is something terrible about a child that is habitually untruthful. It seems so unnatural.”

“I think little Cecil’s disgrace the other day has shown him what a frightful thing untruth is,” Lady Aviolet said. “I hope we may never have to repeat such a thing.”

“It was evidently what the boy needed,” Sir Thomas said curtly.

It struck Rose that all of them unconsciously relied upon their own powers of observation to tell them what effect the experiment in discipline had had upon Cecil.

Hardly aware of the elementary psychological instinct that prompted her, Rose trusted neither to their perceptions nor to her own. She tried to find out from the little boy, himself, what their punishment had meant to him.

“You won’t let them say ever again that you tell stories, will you, darling? If one does slip out, come and tell Mother, and I promise no one shall be angry or punish you. Only tell me about it.”

“Yes, Mummie.”

He was not looking at her.

“I had to ask Grandpa to whip you the other day, Ces, but it made me very unhappy.”

“I’m so sorry, Mummie.” He had put his arms round her neck and was kissing her eagerly. She hugged him.

“Sweetheart! You know we had to do something to make you remember, and you will remember now, won’t you?”

“Yes. I didn’t cry when Grandpa hit me with his cane.”

“I know you didn’t, my own brave little man.”

“I wanted to scream out loud—it hurt so.”

She involuntarily tightened her hold round him.

“I was brave, wasn’t I, Mummie?” he asked her wistfully.

“Very brave, my darling.”

She could not deny him the acknowledgment, and it was only afterwards that she realized herself to have been dimly puzzled by his insistence.

Rose told Miss Wade that she was to have a holiday, and the governess was quite as much offended as Lady Aviolet had predicted that she would be, and offered to resign her situation. Rose only wished that she possessed the courage to accept the offer.

The night before they went to London, she spoke to Ford, who had detained her, with his air of suave autocracy, as she was following Lady Aviolet upstairs.

“One moment, Rose. I want to know how soon you are likely to bring Cecil back from town?”

Rose opened her brown eyes very widely, and spoke with a purposely exaggerated astonishment.

“Why?”

“Because Cecil’s movements concern me, as his guardian,” said Ford calmly.

“I’m his mother, thank you.”

Ford smiled very pleasantly.

“Oh, yes, you have equal rights of guardianship, of course. I had no intention of implying anything else.”

“Equal!” Her voice held unbounded scorn.

“Quite equal.”

She swung round and faced him, her hands on her hips in an attitude that had been frequently characteristic of her mother, her head a little thrust forward.

“What utter nonsense you talk, Ford! You may call yourself Cecil’s guardian till the cows come home, but a child belongs to its mother, I’d have you know.”

“Ladies know so little about the English law,” Ford murmured. “Are you really not aware, Rose, that in law a child has only one parent—its father? If Jim were alive, he would have, strictly speaking, the right to take Cecil away from you altogether, if he pleased. I’m not for an instant suggesting that he would have thought of such a thing—naturally—but I see you altogether fail to realize your position. It has been ruled, very wisely, I think, that the father of a child can appoint a guardian to act with the surviving parent, after his own death. Now a mother has no such power. She can only appoint a guardian after the death of both herself and the father. So you see that your ownership of Cecil is very limited.”

Rose had turned white.

“If that’s the law of the land, it’s enough to make one sick. But I don’t believe it.”

She did believe it, however. Ford was invariably accurate, and his manner had carried conviction with it.

“Then I strongly advise you to inform yourself on the matter. It has really seemed quite necessary for me to mention these facts that you find so unpleasant, owing to your very persistently hostile attitude to me, Rose. You appear to imagine that my attempts at directing matters in which Cecil is concerned, rank as interference pure and simple. So it seems to me better that I should state my case frankly, and make you understand that I have quite a substantial claim behind me.”

“Cecil’s grandparents——” Her voice shook so much from anger and dismay that she could not go on.

“Have nothing to do with it, strictly speaking. The issue lies between you and me, whilst Cecil is under sixteen, and I feel sure that we shall work together more amicably after my little explanation. All I ask you to remember is that our rights of guardianship”—his pause stressed the words—“are equal. Yours and mine.”

“Damn Jim!” said Rose passionately. “And damn the laws of this country, too, if they’re as unjust as all that.”

“H’sh—h’sh—h’sh——” He raised a slim hand authoritatively. “Forgive me if I say that you yourself have done, and are doing, more than any one to convince me of poor Jim’s wisdom in having appointed me joint guardian with you to his son. No woman is fit to bring up a boy entirely unaided, in my humble opinion.”

“She can bring him into the world unaided, though,” said Rose bitterly. “It looks to me like all kicks and no halfpence, for the woman, according to you.”

“Spare me a discussion on Woman’s Rights, Rose, I beg of you. The subject holds not the least interest for me, and, moreover, I feel convinced that we should differ widely in our views. All I ask you to do is to let me know when Cecil is to return to his usual routine.”

“When I please, and not a day or a minute sooner,” said Mrs. Aviolet with unconcealed temper blazing in her eyes and heightening the pitch of her always high-pitched voice.

Ford shrugged his shoulders at the ill-breeding and turned away.

They exchanged no farewells on the following day.

In Rose’s mind was an unspecified determination that she and her child would not return to Squires on the same terms as before, and vague dreams of independence and freedom possessed her as the train carried them towards London.

Cecil was openly delighted at the prospect of holidays and new surroundings. He had only once before been taken by her to London from Squires, for the purpose of visiting the dentist, and his reminiscences of the occasion, his continual questions and exclamations, pleased Rose as much as they did himself, in her sudden exhilaration of spirits.

At the terminus, they engaged a hansom cab, symbolical to Rose of “treats” that her mother had given her during her schooldays. In spite of the excited little boy beside her, she could almost have believed herself a schoolgirl again, her married life, Ceylon, and the months spent at Squires, had all become equally misty and unreal.

She wondered if Uncle Alfred would have changed, and could hardly realize that it was years since she had seen him.

“Mummie,” said Cecil, “will Uncle Alfred be nice? Will he like me?”

“If you’re good,” Rose made the traditional reply.

“Has he got a nice house?”

A faint misgiving assailed her. “It won’t be like Squires, you know, darling. Not a big house.”

“But there’ll be a garden?”

“Well—no. But I’ll take you to the park sometimes.”

“Shall I be able to play cricket there?”

“Perhaps. Look, Ces, this is the Brompton Road.”

He looked eagerly out at the lighted thoroughfare. “Isn’t it noisy, Mummie?”

“I suppose it is. I don’t know. One gets used to it pretty quickly. But Uncle Alfred lives in a smaller street than this, and it’ll be quieter there.”

The cab turned into a side street, then entered a narrower road again, and finally drew up before a corner house at the furthest end of the street.

“Goodness! Here we are!” said Rose. She fumbled excitedly for her purse. “Get out, Ces. No, wait—let me get out first, and I’ll help you. Hold the umbrella, like a good boy.”

“It’s raining, Mummie.”

“Never mind, we’ll be indoors in a minute. I’ll ring the area bell, Cabby, and someone’ll give you a hand with the trunk.”

Rose pulled vigorously at the bell handle on the iron railings that surmounted the area, but before the jangling reverberations had ceased, a man had hurried out on to the pavement, now glistening with wet.

“Mrs. Aviolet?”

“Hullo—why, it’s never Artie Millar! How are you?”

“I’m quite well, thank you, Mrs. Aviolet.”

They shook hands, and Rose said, “This is my kid—Cecil. Makes you feel time’s gone on a bit, doesn’t it?”

“I should never have guessed it but for this young gentleman,” Mr. Millar declared gallantly. “You haven’t altered in the very least.”

“Gammon!” said Mrs. Aviolet with a jovial heartiness that she had seldom permitted herself at Squires. “Give the cabby a hand with the box, will you? Is Uncle A. in the shop?”

“Upstairs. There’s a sitting-room on the first floor, now-a-days. Here’s the girl, she’ll show you the way.”

“A girl too! Whatever next?” murmured Rose.

She paid the cabman, took Cecil’s hand, and followed the small maid into the house. Cecil’s eyes widened as they went through the shop, with a counter down one side of it, glass show-cases on the other, an iron safe beyond the counter, and a match-board partition across one half of the room. Beyond this, again, was a dark and steep staircase, which they ascended.

“Why is it so dark, Mummie?”

“Hush! There’s Uncle Alfred.”

A short, stout figure loomed at the top of the stairs, and a small white imperial scrubbed Rose’s face. With Cecil, Uncle Alfred only shook hands.

“Come in, come in!”

His plump, curiously white hand, with a very large signet ring gleaming on the little finger, waved them into the room. It was not at all like any room at Squires. It was hung with a blue paper powdered all over by large silver stars, and there was a round table bearing an aspidistra in a pot on a ruffled lace mat, several books, and an enormous Bible.

A lighted gas-jet hung from the middle of the ceiling and illuminated the only two pictures, one above the mantelpiece, and the other one at the far end of the room.

Both were coloured lithographs, framed alike in black-and-gilt wood, one representing a fleshly Jewish woman drawing water at a well, the other one depicting the prophet Daniel, erect and haughty, amongst a crouching company of innocuous-looking lions.

“You haven’t changed, Uncle Alfred, not one bit.”

“Unless it’s to put on flesh, I daresay not. Well, I can’t say as much for you, Rose. You look fully your age,” said Uncle Alfred cheerfully.

“Well, I’ve been through a lot, one way and another. And my age is only twenty-five, so I don’t mind if I do look it.”

Mrs. Smith had early impressed upon Rose the advisability of “standing up to” Uncle Alfred, and her exhortation had fallen upon receptive ears. Quite instinctively, the old habit of years ago resumed its sway.

Uncle Alfred turned his attentive, shrewd eyes, light green, like a cat’s, upon little Cecil. His teeth were so prominent that the front ones jutted out far beyond his lower lip. Even when he was serious, as he usually was, and when, as now, he smiled—a rather slow, wary smile—almost the whole row was exposed.

“How old are you, young sir?”

“I’m nearly eight.” Cecil always preferred this form to the more direct declaration that he was seven years old.

“And do you know your catechism?”

“Some of it.”

“Very good. I shall examine you one of these days.”

Cecil looked rather alarmed. Miss Wade had taught him the meaning of “examination.”

“No, not now. We are going to have supper now.”

“Do you still have supper in the old basement, Uncle A.?”

“No, Rose,” said Uncle Alfred with dignity. “My servant inhabits the basement, and meals are served to me and my assistants in the dining-room.”

“Assistants?”

“I have two assistants—Artie Millar, who has served me very well indeed, and is now my salesman, and a young lad, who does the work that Artie used to do when he first came here.”

“You must have done well with the business,” said Rose, impressed.

“The Lord has prospered me—to a certain extent,” Uncle Alfred admitted. “If you will go upstairs to the room next to the store-room you will find it ready for yourself and your child. What is his name?”

“Cecil, Uncle.”

“Neither Scriptural nor historical,” said Uncle Alfred sweepingly. “Take him upstairs and wash his hands, and then we can sit at table together.”

Rose obeyed, feeling fifteen years old again.

“Oh, Ces, it’s the very room mother and I had. There’s the old picture of ‘The Soul’s Awakening’—look, Ces, isn’t it pretty?—but he’s got new furniture. I wonder who’s been in here since I slept here last.”

“Where’s the nursery, Mummie?”

“Where—oh, well, darling, you’re going to sleep in here with Mummie, you know. Won’t that be fun?”

“Yes,” said Cecil rather doubtfully. “And where shall I play, and do my lessons?”

“You’ll see to-morrow. Now wash your hands quickly—never mind a sponge; I’ll unpack afterwards, and there’s a towel here.”

“It’s a very thick towel,” said Cecil, examining the coarse cotton fibre, “and there’s no hot water.”

“Cold will do,” said Rose curtly.

For the first time it occurred to her that the months Cecil had spent at Squires were as a lifetime to his childishness. He had come to take the material comforts, to which Rose was naturally indifferent, for granted. And it appeared that to him they were not indifferent.

He was very good during supper, but the cold mutton and salad did not attract him, and the cheese that concluded the meal, Rose would not let him eat. She remembered with a pang of remorse his mug of fresh milk and his plate of biscuits, brought on a tray to the nursery at Squires every evening.

“But I’ll be able to fix it all up with Uncle A. to-morrow,” she thought.

For her own part, she felt herself to have come home again. There had hardly been a moment at Squires when she had not known constraint of spirit, and her dependence upon entertainers whom she whole-heartedly disliked had galled her incessantly.

Both Millar and the young assistant, a pale-faced youth introduced to her as Felix Menebees, had supper with them.

As soon as the meal was over, Rose took Cecil upstairs and put him to bed.

He was quiet, and seemed rather inclined to cry, but Rose effectually checked this by a promise of the Zoo, and by undertaking to come to bed herself in a very short time.

He had become accustomed to a night-light and she was obliged to leave the gas lighted—the electric light was confined to the shop downstairs—after making him promise that he would not touch it.

“I hope Uncle A. won’t find out,” Rose thought, with the old, apprehensive feeling of half-amused guilt.

In the sitting-room, Uncle Alfred was reading The Pawnbrokers’ Gazette. The boy Felix had already gone downstairs, presumably to Artie Millar’s old sleeping quarters in the shop beside the safe, and Millar himself, the pawnbroker informed his niece, now lived in lodgings at Wimbledon and only came in to business daily.

“Is he married?” Rose inquired. Certain old recollections, that did not amount to emotions, had stirred within her at the sight of her first fancy.

“He is a very God-fearing youth,” said Uncle Alfred, and after a pause sufficient to mark the significance of the word, he added solemnly, “now-a-days. He is not married.”

They exchanged hardly any other conversation, but Rose felt, with a relief as profound as it was inexplicit, that she and her strange, undemonstrative relative were mutually gratified at resuming a tie that, however severely strained by incongruities of temperament, was yet securely founded upon some essential similarity of outlook.

“Whatever else Uncle Alfred is, he’s alive,” Rose reflected. “And those Aviolets at Squires are as dead as mutton—every blessed one of them.”