“I suppose so. Do you remember I used to tell crackers when I was a kid, doctor?”
The doctor, continuing to look at Cecil, remained silent.
The test of silence is one which singularly few people can stand. Dr. Lucian was not surprised that Cecil should break forth volubly after one uneasy second.
“School cured me of that, practically—Hurst, I mean. But still, I suppose, having been like that makes it easier for me to understand another fellow not being absolutely straight. I wasn’t so tremendously down on him as some of them were.”
“Was it the funking or the lie that they objected to most?”
“Oh, the funking, of course. But I was rather sorry for him, personally. I couldn’t ever have done what he did myself, but I was sorry for him,” repeated Cecil.
“I see,” said Dr. Lucian, and felt that he did indeed see.
“Absolutely typical,” he reflected, when Cecil had gone. “The pitiful attempt at bluff—telling me about ‘another fellow’—himself, of course, poor lad—and thinking he’s disarmed suspicion forevermore because he’s alluded to his own past habit of lying. They all argue the same way, God help them: ‘They’ll think: “He’d never have gone out of his way to tell us about that, if it had had anything to do with him.”’ What can one do for him? Nothing. Whatever’s wrong with him was dormant while he was at Hurst, but this place has played him some devil’s trick. He’s done for, unless something or someone gets hold of him and shoves some self-respect into him. Half his time he doesn’t really know what he’s saying—he’s in a fog—only that blind instinct left, to hide what he thinks his real self for fear of being despised. And he would be despised—that’s the devil of it—ninety-nine per cent of that wretched lad’s fellow-creatures would actually dare to despise and condemn him for a congenital misfortune that’s about as much within his own control as an inheritance of tuberculosis!”
The doctor groaned aloud at the thought.
As he had surmised, the Aviolets were perfectly well satisfied with Cecil on his return from that first term spent at his public school. They spoke of him now with a certain complacence, excepting always Ford, who seldom mentioned the boy save with semi-contempt.