The sudden failure of 15/- was disastrous to my hero’s scheme of finance. His face betrayed his emotions so clearly that Theobald said he was determined “to learn the truth at once, and this time without days and days of falsehood” before he reached it. The melancholy fact was not long in coming out, namely, that the wretched Ernest added debt to the vices of idleness, falsehood and possibly—for it was not impossible—immorality.
How had he come to get into debt? Did the other boys do so? Ernest reluctantly admitted that they did.
With what shops did they get into debt?
This was asking too much, Ernest said he didn’t know!
“Oh, Ernest, Ernest,” exclaimed his mother, who was in the room, “do not so soon a second time presume upon the forbearance of the tenderest-hearted father in the world. Give time for one stab to heal before you wound him with another.”
This was all very fine, but what was Ernest to do? How could he get the school shop-keepers into trouble by owning that they let some of the boys go on tick with them? There was Mrs Cross, a good old soul, who used to sell hot rolls and butter for breakfast, or eggs and toast, or it might be the quarter of a fowl with bread sauce and mashed potatoes for which she would charge 6d. If she made a farthing out of the sixpence it was as much as she did. When the boys would come trooping into her shop after “the hounds” how often had not Ernest heard her say to her servant girls, “Now then, you wanches, git some cheers.” All the boys were fond of her, and was he, Ernest, to tell tales about her? It was horrible.
“Now look here, Ernest,” said his father with his blackest scowl, “I am going to put a stop to this nonsense once for all. Either take me fully into your confidence, as a son should take a father, and trust me to deal with this matter as a clergyman and a man of the world—or understand distinctly that I shall take the whole story to Dr Skinner, who, I imagine, will take much sterner measures than I should.”
“Oh, Ernest, Ernest,” sobbed Christina, “be wise in time, and trust those who have already shown you that they know but too well how to be forbearing.”
No genuine hero of romance should have hesitated for a moment. Nothing should have cajoled or frightened him into telling tales out of school. Ernest thought of his ideal boys: they, he well knew, would have let their tongues be cut out of them before information could have been wrung from any word of theirs. But Ernest was not an ideal boy, and he was not strong enough for his surroundings; I doubt how far any boy could withstand the moral pressure which was brought to bear upon him; at any rate he could not do so, and after a little more writhing he yielded himself a passive prey to the enemy. He consoled himself with the reflection that his papa had not played the confidence trick on him quite as often as his mamma had, and that probably it was better he should tell his father, than that his father should insist on Dr Skinner’s making an inquiry. His papa’s conscience “jabbered” a good deal, but not as much as his mamma’s. The little fool forgot that he had not given his father as many chances of betraying him as he had given to Christina.
Then it all came out. He owed this at Mrs Cross’s, and this to Mrs Jones, and this at the “Swan and Bottle” public house, to say nothing of another shilling or sixpence or two in other quarters. Nevertheless, Theobald and Christina were not satiated, but rather the more they discovered the greater grew their appetite for discovery; it was their obvious duty to find out everything, for though they might rescue their own darling from this hotbed of iniquity without getting to know more than they knew at present, were there not other papas and mammas with darlings whom also they were bound to rescue if it were yet possible? What boys, then, owed money to these harpies as well as Ernest?