XII
A few weeks after Cecil had been taken to Hurst by Ford Aviolet, who quietly appropriated the duty, Rose came to see Miss Lucian.
She had announced it to be a farewell visit before her return to Ovington Street.
“I couldn’t possibly go on slacking about at Squires, the way they all do,” she declared. “It was bad enough, even with Ces there, but it’s been perfectly awful since he went. Nothing but Pug and the garden, and the garden and Pug, till I’m sick of the sound of them both!”
“So you’re going to London?”
“Yes. I can help Uncle Alfred, I daresay, and I’m going to try and find some work. Of course, I shall come back to Squires in the holidays, so as to be with Ces. They’ve been very decent about that, I must say.”
“And don’t they mind your going away?”
“Not a bit, I shouldn’t think. I’m no asset to them,” Mrs. Aviolet declared frankly. “And they’ll get quite enough of me in the holidays.”
“Couldn’t you come here for a few days before you go?” said Miss Lucian.
Rose was like a joyfully surprised child, in her acceptance. “Oh, I’d love to! How kind of you to want me. You’ll hardly believe it, but I haven’t once been to stay with any one, except relations, since we got to England. I have some friends, people we’d known in Ceylon, retired, with a house at Bexhill, and they always used to say I must go and stay with them when I came home, but they never asked me, after all. I wrote to Mrs. Judd, too, from Squires, but she only wrote back and said how nice it must be for me to be with Jim’s people, and wasn’t Squires quite a show place, or some rot of that kind. Not a word about me going to them.”
“Then there was Lord Charlesbury. We were supposed to go and stay with him, last year, but his boy got measles, so we didn’t go. I was frightfully disappointed, but they didn’t seem to care a bit. They never do, about anything.”
Henrietta Lucian shrugged her shoulders. “People are as they’re made, I suppose,” she said philosophically. “Our sort gets much more fun out of life than their sort—though it cuts both ways, too.”
“I’d rather Cecil was like me than like them,” said Rose with decision.
“I quite agree with you. Well, tell me about Cecil. How’s he getting on?”
Miss Lucian’s hearty interest in Cecil always roused in his mother all the passionate gratitude that the entirely unenthusiastic bestowal of material benefits from the Aviolets failed to evoke.
“I’ve had such nice letters from that kind Mrs. Lambert. She’s been so good about writing, and she says he’s getting on very well, and seems thoroughly well and happy. And his own letters say he’s happy, too.”
“I’m so glad!” Miss Lucian ejaculated, with the utmost sincerity.
“I suppose it’s much more fun for him to be with other boys. Only I wish he was better at games.”
“Isn’t he good at them?”
“No, not a bit, and the odd thing is that he really wants to be, dreadfully—and yet it’s the work of the world to get him to try.”
“He’s so active—I can’t imagine Cecil not good at games.”
Rose shook her head. “He won’t try,” she repeated. “He can’t throw a ball properly, and when we were first at Squires, his grandfather tried to show him how, but Ces just wouldn’t learn. I think he didn’t like to be seen doing it the wrong way, and so he wouldn’t ever do it at all. But to hear him talk, you’d think he was mad about cricket or anything like that, and ready to practise his bowling all day.”
“Perhaps he’ll be good at football.”
“Perhaps,” said Rose doubtfully. “Jim was good at games.”
“Yes, I remember. Far better than Ford ever was, but then Ford has always cared more for other things. He isn’t really very strong, physically, is he?”
“He looks weedy enough,” said Mrs. Aviolet contemptuously. “He never offered to teach Ces anything about games, and he never plays any himself, except tennis, and he always looks superior when people go on about golf and things—and yet he sneers at poor little Ces for being no good. It was partly him, I think, that made Ces so tiresome about not trying to learn.”
“That’ll be different, at school. He’ll do as the others do, and there are sure to be plenty of beginners. He won’t be afraid of being laughed at, when he isn’t the only one. Maurice thinks, you know, that it’s that fear of being laughed at that’s at the bottom of all Cecil’s troubles.”
“I know what you mean,” said Rose rather gloomily. “His story-telling. There hasn’t been a word about that, in any of Mrs. Lambert’s letters. I’m sure I hope there’ll never have to be.”
Mrs. Lambert, indeed, writing intimately of Cecil’s physical welfare, touched very little upon other subjects.
Rose had left Squires, and gone to pay her promised visit to the Lucians, before she received confirmation of the fear that had all the time been lurking at her heart.
At Squires, her farewells had been complicated by a slight tinge of remorse that she could make them no more cordial.
“Well, good-bye, my dear. We shall expect you for the holidays, remember. I don’t want to hurry you, but Tucker is at the door, and you must allow for the hill.”
Rose had heard that information bestowed, identically worded, upon every departing guest that she had ever seen at Squires.
“Good-bye. Thanks awfully for having had me for such ages—and Ces, too. I hope I haven’t seemed cross and beastly, very often, but——”
“My dear, please! (Les domestiques!) Ah, here’s Ford.”
“Good-bye, Ford.”
Rose’s tone had involuntarily altered, and her smile, not involuntarily, had vanished.
“Good-bye, Rose. If you want any help about Cecil, don’t hesitate to apply to me.”
Had there been deliberate mockery in his manner, as he made the suggestion? Rose, at least, had felt no doubt upon the point.
Her ejaculatory reply, a sound rather than a distinct syllable, had been the “Tchah!” habitual to Mrs. Smith, as a contemptuous retort, on the rare occasions when words had failed her.
She had shaken hands with Sir Thomas, presented the side of her face for a slight and meaningless contact with that of her mother-in-law, and had thankfully been driven away from the door.
With the Lucians she was at her ease, and very happy until a letter arrived from Mrs. Lambert.
Rose read it with a deepening flush upon her face, and then went straight to Maurice Lucian.
“Look here, you’ve always known about Ces, and you’ve always said, like I do, that there’s a sort of kink in him somewhere that makes him like he is. I’m going to consult you.”
The doctor, seated before his writing-table, swung round in his revolving chair and faced her without speaking. His kind face and profound, intelligent eyes seldom showed either surprise or apprehension. Nevertheless, his expression habitually altered slightly when he spoke to Rose Aviolet. She had come by unperceived degrees to count upon that all-but-imperceptible softening of glance, that greater gentleness in the manner of his speech.
“I want you to read this. It’s from Mrs. Lambert, the schoolmaster’s wife. I told her about Ces before he ever went there.”
The letter was dated from Hurst.
My dear Mrs. Aviolet,
Your boy is very well, and has quite escaped the prevailing cold, which so many of them have had. I am still keeping him on the Extract of Malt, but only as a precaution.
I promised you to write quite fully and frankly, so I will tell you that Cecil hasn’t been quite so bright lately, and we are a little bit afraid, my husband and I, that he has been in some trouble with the other boys. There was some little want of openness over a game that, I’m afraid, almost amounted to cheating, and as it isn’t quite the first time it’s happened with poor little Cecil, he caught it “hot and strong” from the other lads. It didn’t really come to my ears, or to Will’s, in any official way, and he has thought it best not to notice it, but he said that I might write to you.
After the talk we had about Cecil the first time you came down here, I felt I’d much better write frankly, especially as it really hasn’t been what you told me about. As far as I know, he has been quite truthful, but I’m afraid he’s been caught out cheating over games more than once, and you know how dreadfully “down” English boys always are on anything of that kind. It seems such a pity, because Cecil is a dear little boy and gets on well at his lessons.
My own feeling is that, now there’s been an explosion, so to speak, poor little Cecil will have learnt his lesson, and such a thing will never happen again. But I should so much like to hear what you feel about it, and if there is anything you would advise.
Forgive me for worrying you with such a long letter.
Very sincerely yours,
Anne Lambert.
“Have you heard from Cecil?”
“Yes, but he doesn’t say a word about anything of that kind. He writes just as usual, not telling me anything, poor darling—boy’s letters never do—but nice and affectionate, and sounding quite happy.”
“Probably by this time he is quite happy again. Have you any idea what kind of thing she—Mrs. Lambert—means, about cheating at games?”
Rose coloured, but faced the doctor unflinchingly as ever.
“Oh, yes. Ces got into trouble about it at Squires once or twice. He isn’t always straight about games, round games, or anything like that, you know, with counters—I’ve seen him shove his counter along with his hand when he thought no one was looking, and the worst of it is that he doesn’t own up when he’s taxed with it. And the same at card games. That wretched little Miss Wade played Beggar-my-Neighbour, or something, with him, and swore he used to peep at the cards. I think she was probably right.”
“When you say that he doesn’t own up,” said Lucian, in his most impersonal and judicial manner, “do you mean that he flatly denies any accusation of cheating?”
“That’s it.”
“When did you first notice anything of that kind?”
“A long time ago, when he was very small, in Ceylon. But I thought then that it was his native ayah’s fault, and it didn’t seem to matter so much. Jim never found it out. He’d have been very angry if he had.”
“I daresay. Was Cecil frightened of his father?”
“Sometimes, but he’s not a cowardly child, you know. When Jim had been drinking, he used to get angry sometimes, but not often with Ces.”
“Was it fear of Jim that made Cecil say what wasn’t true?”
“I don’t think so. He did tell extra untruths, if you know what I mean, when Jim bullied him and tried to catch him out, but as a general rule, it was just the kind of stories that he told at Squires—things he invented, you know.”
“I know.”
Lucian’s voice was rather sorrowful.
“I daresay it sounds like nonsense,” Rose said, “but often and often I’ve thought that Ces couldn’t really help himself. Aren’t some people born colour-blind, so that they can’t distinguish between colours?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes it seems to me that Ces was born without any—any sense of honour at all.”
Lucian nodded, his grave, pitying eyes fixed upon her, and his implied acceptance of her view filled Rose with terror.
“What am I to do for him?” she cried despairingly.
“I wish I could tell you,” said Maurice Lucian very earnestly. “These tendencies can be pathologically treated, and more is being learnt about the right treatment of them every day, but even so, it’s still working in the dark——”
He broke off, as Rose made a violent gesture of impatience.
“I don’t even know what you mean, when you use words like patho—what’s-its-name. I wish to the Lord that I’d ever been properly educated. It’s no wonder that I’m so little use to poor Ces.”
“You’ll be of less use than ever, if you work yourself up like that,” said Lucian suddenly and sharply.
Rose stared at him, arrested mid-way in the flouncing movement that denoted the perturbation of her mind. For a moment she looked angry, and then the fundamental breadth of generosity that lay beneath all her petulance and her lack of control asserted itself.
“I expect you’re right,” she said, suddenly quiet, and smiled at him as though in remorseful atonement for her temper.
The doctor rose abruptly to his feet, and stood with his hands in his pockets, his back against the door. He was as tall a man as Ford Aviolet, but with a broad, bony frame, and the hair on his temples was already grizzled.
He looked down at Rose, who remained in her chair, gazing up at him rather surprised. Although it would not have occurred to her to make use of the words, she was singularly sensitive to atmosphere, and beneath the artificial colour upon her cheeks, there presently surged a warm blush.
Lucian immediately looked away from her. “Has it ever occurred to you that you might marry again?”
“Of course it has,” said Mrs. Aviolet defiantly. “I thought we were talking about Cecil.”
“There was nothing irrelevant in my question,” the doctor retorted caustically, “although perhaps you may reasonably look upon it as an impertinent one. Rose, I know very well that you don’t care for me at present, but isn’t there any chance for me at all?”
“I did hope you wouldn’t ask me,” said Rose piteously.
“I didn’t mean to. I’m not such a fool as to have thought you would listen to me, for a moment. But it’s more than I’d reckoned on, having you in the house like this, and—and caring for you in the way I do.”
“Do you, really?”
“Yes, dear. Almost since that very first day I saw you at Squires.”
He drew a long breath.
“Couldn’t you, Rose?”
Rose Aviolet shook her head, and he saw tears in her brown eyes.
“I shan’t ever marry again. You don’t know what my married life was like. I suppose it’s a most awful thing to own up to, but after I’d been married to Jim six months, I used to think I’d rather be a widow than anything else in the world. He was in love with me, at first anyway, but do you think I was ever anything but a convenience to him? It was what he wanted, when he wanted it, how he wanted it, first and last. Some women may like it, if they’re the door-mat kind, but I’m not. And it wasn’t only that I was very young and self-willed and spoilt, and Jim more or less of a bad lot—which he was. I know what other marriages are like, too. There isn’t any freedom for the woman, only for the man. Why, Ford told me that it’s only the father that has any legal rights over his children at all.”
“It’s true,” said Lucian. “To the shame of those who tolerate it, the law of the land only acknowledges one parent for children born in wedlock, and that is the father. But can’t you trust me, Rose? I can promise you that it wouldn’t be a case of Jim Aviolet over again,” said the doctor rather grimly.
She shook her head again. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you. I even think you’d do better than any one for Ces. But I don’t hold with second marriages.”
The doctor ignored that pronouncement, which Rose had frequently heard employed by her mother.
“I am very much interested in Cecil, altogether apart from his relationship to you, and personally I believe that I could help him. But, in any case, I want to do that. I’ve wanted to ever since I first knew the boy.”
“I know that.”
“It isn’t Cecil that’s the obstacle, then?”
“No.”
“But you don’t like me enough? I’m not asking for anything more to begin with.”
“I like you much better than most other people,” said Rose candidly. “But I don’t want to marry. I didn’t like it before, and I made a great hash of it.”
“I’d risk that.”
“But I wouldn’t,” said Rose.
They looked at one another rather helplessly.
“If I loved you,” she said at last, “it would be different. I do trust you, and I think you’d be good to my Ces. But it wouldn’t be worth doing, unless I really did care.”
“Mayn’t I try to make you care?”
“I don’t think so,” said Rose slowly.
“Is there somebody else? No, don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”
But his face had altered.
“It’s like this. I don’t hold with second marriages, like I said before, and I had a rotten time the first time, and if any one had told me, when Jim died, that I’d ever run the risk of putting my head through the same noose a second time, I’d have called them a liar. Neither more nor less. But there’s a—person that I’m sort of attracted by, in a way, though I don’t know that there’s much sense in it, because he’s never said a syllable of that sort to me, and so,” said Rose, very much flushed and implacably straightforward, “if I ever did do anything in that line, I suppose I should want it to be him. But, mind you, I haven’t got any reason to think it ever will be, and I should have to be a long sight surer of myself than I am now.”
“I see,” said the doctor slowly.
“I—I’m sorry,” said Rose.
“Don’t let it make any difference, my dear. I don’t give up hope, but I shan’t worry you. Honestly, I think you and I could find happiness together, but these things aren’t lightly come by. Will you go on just as before and let me see you very often, even if you do leave Squires? And, above all, let me be of use to you whenever I can?”
“You’ve been the best friend I’ve had, ever since I came to England.” Rose stood up and gave him both her hands in an impetuous gesture. “I like you much too much ever to let it be anything but the real thing—Maurice.”
She had never called him so before.
“Thank you,” said Dr. Lucian.
She stood for a moment, hesitating, and then said with a sort of rush: “And for goodness’ sake, don’t think too much about what I said. It seemed fairer to tell you, but I don’t suppose there’s anything in it, for a moment, and it would take a lot to make me marry again, especially out of my own class. Once bit twice shy,” concluded Mrs. Aviolet.
Neither she nor Maurice Lucian referred again to their conversation during the remaining days of Rose’s visit.
If there were a certain consciousness latent between them, Rose forgot it speedily enough, in her preoccupation with the question of Cecil.
“I think I shall go down to Hurst,” she said.
The Lucians, unlike the Aviolets, never proffered advice.
Consequently, Rose felt desirous of it.
“Don’t you think I’d better?”
“For your own sake, or for Cecil’s?”
“Both, I suppose. I can’t bear to think of him unhappy.”
“He wrote you quite a happy letter; and I don’t really think you could help him by going there and bringing the whole thing up again,” said Lucian.
“It’s so very hard to do nothing.”
“The hardest thing there is,” agreed the doctor gravely.
She looked at him anxiously.
“Poor little Cecil,” said Henrietta. “Don’t you think he’s probably learnt his lesson, Rose, if the other boys have found him out in some trick or other, and have been horrid to him? If you go down there, it’ll make it all assume enormous proportions to him, and, after all, even Mr. and Mrs. Lambert aren’t supposed to know about it officially, as she said in her letter.”
“Then I’d better not go?” Rose repeated slowly, as though she could hardly believe in the necessity for the discipline, so alien to her, of inaction.
“I should think, better not.”
Rose, from indignation at the suggestion, passed to unwilling consideration of it, and still more unwilling conversion to it.
But she made up her mind, at last, that Cecil should be allowed to weather the storm alone.
It was perhaps the first time that she had deliberately denied herself the luxury of acting upon impulse.
The next day she went to London.
“We shall see you in the holidays,” Henrietta Lucian said to her affectionately, “and Maurice says he’s going to be in London a good deal now—research-work, he calls it—and he wants to go and see you.”
“Oh, yes. He can come to Ovington Street whenever he likes. I’m going to stay with my uncle there—for a bit—he’s a pawnbroker.”
Rose had come to add that piece of information, which was by no means new to Miss Lucian, almost automatically, in her determination not to risk gratifying Ford Aviolet by suppressing it.
She was very much pleased when she found herself in London again.
“I declare, I like the good old smell of the gas upstairs,” she emphatically announced to Felix Menebees, who carried her box up to her bedroom.
The gaunt youth, panting, and paler than ever from the ascent, smiled at her rapturously.
“Yes, Mrs. Aviolet, I’m sure we’re all delighted that you’ve come back again, if I may be allowed to say so.”
It was very evident, indeed, that Felix spoke truth at least as regarded himself, and Rose, with characteristic catholicity of outlook, welcomed his obvious admiration with exactly the same indiscriminate gratification that she had accorded to Charlesbury’s. But for all her transparent vanity, the daughter of the late Mrs. Smith did not lack shrewdness. She was perfectly aware that she might very well find herself falling in love with Lord Charlesbury, and she knew equally well that, although he had admired her at Squires, it was scarcely probable that he would ask her to marry him.
“And I don’t know that I’d accept him if he did,” Rose told herself stoutly. “It would be biting off a good deal more than I could chew, it seems to me. A place bigger than Squires, and a title, and another boy as well as Cecil, and perhaps babies of my own as well! There’d be more sense in taking Maurice Lucian than that!”
She thought very little of the advantages to be derived from marriage with a man in Charlesbury’s position. Her experience of “a gentleman” in the person of Jim Aviolet had been calculated to destroy conventional illusions on that score, and the once magic words, “my lady,” had lost romantic value in her ears, since hearing them habitually applied to her mother-in-law.
She resumed her old life over the pawnshop very easily.
In the phraseology of Mr. Smith, an arrangement had been come to between himself and his niece with no display of false delicacy upon either side.
“They do give me an allowance,” Rose admitted, “but I can’t say I enjoy taking it, though well I know they can spare it. However, that’s neither here nor there. I don’t want you to be out of pocket, Uncle A., I’m sure, by having me here.”
“That’s common honesty, Rose,” her relative answered simply.
“At the same time, I suppose you don’t want to make out of me?” Rose suggested, not altogether without a hint of doubtfulness.
“I wish to do what is fair and proper by all parties, myself included,” said Uncle Alfred with dignity. “The room that you occupy could very well let at seven-and-sixpence a week, exclusive of light and heating.”
“There is no heating, Uncle A., as you very well know. I’m not likely to ask for a fire, and the girl wouldn’t carry the coals up all those stairs if I did, most likely. As for the light, I can buy my own candles, and I’ll pay one-fourth of the gas-bill. That’s fair enough, I should hope.”
“Very well,” her uncle agreed without enthusiasm.
“And if you’ll let me manage the housekeeping, I’ll undertake to bring the weekly books down and feed myself into the bargain. It doesn’t cost more to feed five than to feed four.”
“Yes, it does,” said Uncle Alfred.
It was such a long while since Rose had heard any one, herself excepted, utter a flat contradiction, that she felt quite surprised, and she admitted to herself in that moment that such a form of intercourse was, after all, lacking in charm.
“Call it ten shillings a week, Uncle Alfred, and let’s be done with it.”
“Half a guinea, Rose.”
“Oh, well, half a guinea then.”
“And I shall be very glad of your company, my dear niece,” said the old man, suddenly affable. “The Lord loveth a cheerful giver, and I trust that you will never find me anything else. Of course, you’ll be ready to lend Felix a hand with the silver cleaning in the mornings?”
“Yes—well—all right. But one of these days, quite soon, Dr. Lucian, that I told you about, is going to try and find me some work during the term-time, that I can do.”
“Charity begins at home,” said Uncle Alfred.
Rose laughed, her ready, easy laughter. She was quite willing to help Felix in cleaning the silver from the shop, and although she sincerely intended to undertake any work which Lucian might suggest to her, there was at the back of her mind an unformulated idea that circumstances might arise which would render such a course unnecessary.
When she had paid a visit to Hurst, at Mrs. Lambert’s cordial suggestion, and found Cecil stronger-looking and more animated than she had ever seen him, Rose realized herself to be happier than she had been for many years.
The deepest anxiety in her heart was momentarily quelled, when Mrs. Lambert had told her that there had been no further signs of a lack of truthfulness in Cecil.
He seemed to be happy, and although he told Rose that he did not like games, she could see no mental reservations behind the ingenuous, uplifted gaze of his brown eyes.
Maurice Lucian was frequently in London, and always came to see her. She received him in the sitting-room above the shop, introduced him to the old pawnbroker and to Felix Menebees, and was pleased when Uncle Alfred chose to annex him as a player of backgammon.
“A sensible, likeable fellow, and I have no doubt that he will be brought to a knowledge of the Word in due season,” pronounced Uncle Alfred, who never took for granted the status of any fellow-creature as a Christian.
Cecil and Rose spent his short Christmas holidays at Squires, and she received the placid congratulations of his grandparents on the great improvement which they alleged to have taken place in the little boy.
Ford and Diana were at their own house, and Rose did not see them at all.
She took Cecil back to Hurst herself, and returned to Ovington Street.
There, two days later, she received a letter from Lord Charlesbury, to tell her that he was just returned from Paris and to ask whether he might call upon her.
His letter was dated from a London club.