‘Mother will always have a right to say whatever she pleases, Tom.’
‘Oh, mother!’ he said. Janet shook him by the arm she held. She cried passionately—
‘I wouldn’t if it had been me. I shouldn’t have let anyone say that what was needed for a gentleman was too much for me. Oh, I would have died sooner!’ Janet said.
He shook her off with a muttered oath. ‘Much you know about gentlemen—or ladies either. I know something of you that if I were to tell mother——’
‘What?’ Janet cried, almost with a shriek.
‘Oh, I know—and if you don’t sing very small I’ll tell; but, mind, I’ll not say Oh Den! like mother. I’ll turn you out of house and home if you carry on with any fellow when you’re with me.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Janet: but her conscience was too much for her. She could not maintain a bold front. The recollection came burning to her cheeks, and brought a hot flood of tears to her eyes. ‘I only rode the pony. I meant no harm. I didn’t know it was wrong. Oh Tom! Tom, don’t tell mother,’ she cried.
‘You had better behave, then,’ said Tom, ‘and don’t think you can crow over me. I’ve done nothing at all. It’s only those old saps that cannot bear to see a young fellow having his fun.’
It was certainly a great contrast to the humiliated condition in which he came home to think of all the immense preparations that were making to do the young scapegrace honour. Very far from pointing a moral to young men of Tom’s tastes was his triumphant coming of age after the academical disgrace. No disgrace, however, can hinder a young man from attaining his twenty-first birthday, nor change the universal custom which makes that moment a period of congratulation and celebration, as if it were by any virtue of his that the boy became a man. It occurred to some of the family counsellors who had to be summoned for the great occasion that, considering his past behaviour, Tom’s majority should be passed over with as little merry-making as possible. But Beaufort once more was the young fellow’s champion. He was not the sort of man to take lightly the stigma of the University, and therefore he was listened to with all the more attention. ‘I must repeat again,’ he said, ‘that there is nothing in all this to prevent Tom from doing well enough in his natural position. It might be ruin to some boys, but not to him. I never expected him to do anything at Oxford, and I am not surprised at what has happened. But everybody is not thinking of this as we are. A great many people will never have heard of it, nor would they attach any importance to it if they did hear. I have told you before, Carry, that the best of women are unjust to boys. It is very natural that it should be so. Even now, however, there is nothing to prevent Tom from doing very well.’
‘The thing is that he seems to be getting a reward for his foolishness, instead of any punishment,’ said Edith Erskine, who was, as she thought, upholding her sister’s view. As for Carry herself, she had said nothing. To discuss her boy’s follies was more than she was capable of. She could not silence the others who spoke, but she only looked at them, she could not speak.