PART II

FIVE YEARS LATER

I

“What have they done to him, Maurice?”

“I don’t know,” said the doctor, very thoughtfully indeed. “I don’t know.”

“There’s something.”

“Yes.”

“It’s horrible—and one can never know.”

“The Aviolets won’t think that there’s anything to know.”

“She will.”

“Yes,” said the doctor again, as deliberately as before, but with the slightest possible narrowing of his eyes as he spoke. “Yes, she’ll know, all right.”

Miss Lucian put her work down and clasped one hand over the other with a curious effect of earnestness.

“I never saw anything quite like the look in that boy’s eyes when she brought him here this afternoon. And yet I—I can’t place it. What in God’s name was it?”

“I don’t know.”

A sound of impatience broke from her.

“I tell you I don’t know, Henrietta. I’m not even certain that we’re not exaggerating.”

“Maurice!”

“I don’t mean the fact, but its significance.”

“What fact?”

“The fact that something or someone, at that public school, has altered Cecil Aviolet radically, in some way that’s indefinable. It’s not the normal evolution of a type, Henrietta, nor the development of an individuality—it’s something apart from those. And I don’t know what it is.”

“Has he been—frightened?” she half whispered.

“I don’t think it’s that. He may have been frightened—but I don’t think it’s that now.”

“He wasn’t ever a coward,” Henrietta declared vehemently. “I don’t care what any one says, he was a plucky little boy enough.”

“I have never thought him a coward,” said the doctor quietly. “But for all that, he may have been frightened.”

“Bullying?”

“He’s not the sort that gets bullied, much. And I don’t think—mind you, this is only conjecture—but I don’t think he’d mind being bullied, if it only meant being knocked about.”

Henrietta looked at him without speaking. She was aware that the doctor was rather stating aloud the terms of a problem that absorbed him than addressing his sister consciously.

“Do you remember his grandfather whipping him once as a little boy, and his mother saying that he’d been so brave? And even Sir Thomas was pleased with him for that.... You see, the physical isn’t the weak link in the chain for Cecil at all. It’s other things that he minds. He’s most vulnerable where the average Englishman is most impervious.”

The doctor smiled a little, gravely. “His sensibilities—in the French sense of the word.”

“Do you mean his vanity?”

“It’s more than that, with him. It’s his self-respect that’s at stake, always and all the time. At least, that’s how I see it.”

“You mean he’s lost it at that place. Horrible!”

The doctor made a gesture of negation with both hands. “How can I say I know? I don’t know. He’s lost something—and I think he’s acquired something, too. There’s a sort of power of withdrawal about him now.”

“Withdrawal....” She pondered for a moment on the word, knowing his habit of phraseology and the value that a trained mind attaches to the exact word.

“Withdrawal—then you don’t mean a line of defence?”

“No. Or at least only in the negative sense. As far as I can see, and that, Henrietta, is a very little way indeed—the boy hasn’t put up a defence at all—or if he has it’s gone down. He reminds me of that description in one of Newbolt’s things:

‘Untroubled of hope.’ Do you see what I mean?”

“Yes. Oh, poor little Cecil—at his age!”

“I may be wrong.”

But Henrietta did not think that her brother was wrong.

They saw Cecil Aviolet several times during his holidays. He seemed to like coming to them, and Dr. Lucian encouraged his visits.

One day he said to him casually: “Most youngsters get bullied during their first term. Between ourselves, didn’t you find that?”

“No,” said Cecil, and added, a shade too promptly, “no—I think the fellows like me, rather. I’ve got heaps of friends already.”

He looked up with his disarming, ingenuous smile, and immediately afterwards looked down. The doctor had seen Cecil Aviolet do just exactly that, once before. He had been a little boy then, taxed by his grandmother with the theft of a toy. And he had denied it, with that same look.

“How do you like the games?” the doctor asked abruptly.

“Awfully. I didn’t know if I should or not, you know, but I do, most awfully.”

“That’s good.”

“Some fellows funk things, you know, their first term—House-runs especially. There was one boy who tried to get a medical exemption after his first run. He tried to pretend he had a heart, you know. But of course it was no go, and some of the fellows found out.”

“H’m. I wouldn’t give much for your friend’s popularity after that.”

“Well, it was a rotten sort of thing to do, wasn’t it?” said Cecil seriously. “I can understand it in a way, because it was my first term, too, of course, and one does find it a most awful sweat, just at first. But I just stuck it out, like other fellows. I must say I can’t understand trying to get out of anything in that sort of way.” He eyed the doctor thoughtfully.

“It seems extraordinary, somehow, to have thought of doing a thing like that,” he said. “It would never have occurred to me, anyway.”

Into the doctor’s kind, watchful eyes there came a sudden gleam, as of enlightenment. He looked at Cecil without speaking.

“Of course, I don’t set up for being braver than other people—far from it—but I do think it’s stupid to try and fake illness so as to get out of things. It only means that they don’t believe one another time, and one gets a reputation for slackness besides—and then they work one all the harder. That’s how I felt about the whole thing—it was such a stupid thing to have done.”

“To tell a lie is almost always a stupid thing to do,” said the doctor gently.

“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.

“Sour grapes, my fine fellow, I daresay,” the doctor muttered to himself. He by no means forgave Ford Aviolet his old hostility towards Cecil’s mother, and it was nothing at all to him that now-a-days Rose, and Rose’s ineradicable characteristics, were accepted at Squires with matter-of-course amiability by the old people.

She came to them as usual during Cecil’s holidays, and Dr. Lucian wondered whether her quick intuition had told her everything that her bewildered reasoning powers would be least able to explain.

But she said nothing to him, and the doctor could easily divine reasons for her silence.

Lucian, however, already uneasy, was sharply awakened to a new perception of possible vexation of spirit for Rose in the always uncongenial atmosphere at Squires.

Ford and Diana, paying to the Aviolets one of their interminable visits, tendered to him a casual invitation, and the doctor one day went with them to the house.

It was the first time that he had seen Rose for months, and he noticed with a pang that for the only time since he had known her, her glorious physique had suffered some slight deterioration. She was thinner, and her face struck him as indefinably altered.

Suddenly he understood. “Good God, she’s left off using rouge!” thought the doctor.

Luncheon was as elaborate a function as it was unlively conversationally; but the doctor became gradually aware of undercurrents.

Ford, before the angry bewilderment of Rose, and innocently seconded by the bland obtuseness of his wife’s life-long habit of “chaff,” and the entire unconsciousness of the two old people, Sir Thomas and Lady Aviolet, was baiting the boy Cecil.

“No invitations to stay away these holidays, Cecil?”

“No, Uncle Ford.”

“Ah, well, of course that’s very fortunate for us. We shall have the benefit of your society all the time, I take it.”

“You must come and stay with us, Cecil, for a bit,” said Diana kindly. “I daresay Grandmama will be able to spare you.”

“Ah, but can Cecil bear to leave home?” Ford pretended to deliberate. “But no doubt a public-school boy can do these things; they’re a strange race, public-school boys. Have you found that, Cecil?”

The boy stared at his uncle with absolutely lustreless eyes and made no answer. Ford emitted a very slight laugh.

There was an odd sense of isolation for Lucian in finding himself thus alone to estimate the strange, hidden value of their surface intercourse. Rose, as he well knew, had no inner metre for the gauging of complexities. More and more, she reminded him of some magnificent dumb animal, quick to sense enmity, turning this way and that, unable to escape the goad, and incapable of retaliation in kind, but with inarticulate, pent-up forces gathering for some long-deferred onrush that might yet send down all before it.

She spoke now from the other side of the table. “What are you laughing at, Ford?”

The aggression in her manner was quite unmistakeable, and Lucian saw Diana open astonished eyes, and Sir Thomas draw his heavy brows more closely together.

The least flicker passed across Cecil’s young face, with its new, strangely shuttered look, and without turning his head he shot a glance at his mother from the corners of his eyes.

“What are you laughing at, Ford?” said Rose contemptuously.

“At my nephew,” Ford answered very gently. “He amuses me, that’s all. His manners are so refreshing.”

“Take your elbows off the table, Cecil,” said Lady Aviolet quickly.

“Do you still make your own cheeses here, Lady Aviolet?” said the doctor. “That’s a fine one you have there.”

The old lady, gratified, began to speak of her dairy. She was very proud of it. Ford glanced at the doctor.

The doctor gave him a grim little nod. “Quite right,” he silently assured Ford, “I’m up to your game, and I’m out to stop it. And I don’t mind your knowing it, either.”

Nobody else knew it.

Diana Aviolet was listening, her lips ajar, to her mother-in-law, Sir Thomas was signing imperatively to a servant, Rose was looking at her boy, Cecil, the doctor thought, seemed impervious to everything except to some inner preoccupation that had become part of his being.

Quite suddenly, a very horrible recollection came to Dr. Lucian.

He had once seen a trapped animal that was being devoured alive by vermin.

For an instant, he sought in vain for the association with his present surroundings. The next moment the analogy had flashed upon him, sickening him momentarily.

“That boy—his soul is being slowly devoured alive——”

“And so,” said Lady Aviolet, “we always send one cheese to the show every year. It encourages the dairymaid so much.”

“Splendid!” said the doctor.

“Are you interested in cheese, Lucian?” Ford Aviolet inquired politely.

“In everything,” the doctor retorted curtly.

“How delightful! A lesson to the youth of the present day, who are interested in nothing.”

“I don’t agree.”

It was Rose, of course, who hurled the contradiction, with ill-judged weightiness, into the carefully trivial key in which Ford had set his remark.

“Nor I.” The doctor, doing his best with her ineptitude, essayed a generality. “One generation is always more or less mysterious to the other.”

“You think so? Take my young nephew now——”

“Why be personal?” the doctor inquired crisply.

“Why not?”

“I’m sure Cecil doesn’t mind,” said Diana. Her little laugh struck the doctor as singularly inane.

“Cecil will have learnt to stand a little friendly teasing by now, no doubt,” Ford observed.

The doctor did not fail to perceive the implication, and he saw that Rose also had not missed it. Cecil remained listless and indifferent.

“Cecil has his life before him, we will hope, in which to learn more interesting things than elementary accomplishments, which, so far as I am aware, he acquired in the nursery. Now you and I,” the doctor addressed himself very directly to Ford Aviolet, “you and I, my dear fellow, have left our adventurous days behind us. Achievement, romance, success—it’s all behind us, not ahead of us. The future doesn’t belong to us at all. We shall only have the privilege of watching the present generation, to which you so casually alluded just now. Our mark, if it was ever made at all, was made in the past.”

The doctor’s gaze travelled cheerfully and deliberately round the safe, solid interior that had constituted Ford’s environment for so many years, and came to rest, still cheerful, still deliberate, and wholly implacable, on Ford’s face.

“They say that history always repeats itself,” said Lady Aviolet, boredom in her voice.

Ford, returning the doctor’s look, ignored his mother’s irrelevance. “Very interesting, although I fancy you and I are not exactly contemporaries to a day, doctor. But the point? May I confess that I don’t quite understand——?”

“Oh, I think you do. I fancy you and I understand one another in all essentials.” The significance in Dr. Lucian’s tone was entirely undisguised.

Ford made a graceful little gesture of acquiescence. “You have said it.”

“Said what?” his wife inquired, laughing. “Really, you two are quite mysterious. Are you going to play billiards this afternoon?”

“No, Di,” said her husband. “Dr. Lucian is too strong for me—at billiards.”

“I am sure you play a very good game, Ford. Then what are the plans for this afternoon, I wonder?”

The inquiry came from Lady Aviolet, and her subsequent engineering of entirely unimportant projects and half-hearted suggestions continued until lunch was over.

Afterwards the doctor approached Rose.

“Henrietta hopes that you are coming to see her very soon. Her sciatica is so bad now that she gets about very little.”

“I’m so sorry.”

There was never anything perfunctory about Rose’s emotions, and her face was eloquent.

“It was very nice of Cecil to come and see us so soon. We both appreciated that,” said the doctor tentatively.

“He wanted to come. Look here, you’re not going away immediately, are you?”

“It depends on whether you can let me stay and talk to you for a little while,” the doctor answered frankly. “That’s what I came for.”

Rose looked at him with a strange mingling of pleasure and wistfulness in her brown eyes. Then she sat down and invited him by a gesture to do the same.

The odious word “coquettish” was of all others, Lucian reflected, the least applicable to her simplicity.

“What do you think of Ces?” she abruptly began.

“Not satisfactory, altogether. What was his report like?”

“Not bad. There was something about a want of keenness—but you couldn’t expect him to be very keen, his first term. His lessons are just ordinary—history, good.”

“What does he say himself?”

“He says he’s all right.”

She hesitated for a moment, then said very low: “But I don’t believe him.”

“No?”

“You don’t either?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“But why? What is it?”

“I don’t know. My dear—don’t look so frightened. It may be nothing—almost nothing. Remember, he’s only been back with you for a few days—he’s permeated with the atmosphere of the place he’s left. You’ve got his trust, in the ultimate issue, even if it’s overlaid now by God knows what. He’ll tell you what’s wrong—if anything is wrong—himself.”

Rose leant back in her armchair and he saw that she was trembling.

They were silent for a little while.

At last, as though he had silently made her aware of his anguish of sympathy for her pain, Rose turned towards him again.

“I’m glad you don’t try to pretend that it’s all right, and I’m only imagining things. But, of course, I knew you wouldn’t do that. You always understand,” she said gratefully.

“I think so, where you’re concerned,” he gravely agreed. “Tell me, have you found any other—understanding, on this particular point?”

“Oh, no! I’m sure they haven’t noticed anything at all. You know how stupid they are!”

Lucian smiled, at the very familiarity of the words and of Rose’s contemptuous tone.

“I didn’t mean here, so much as at school. Has Cecil made any friends?”

“I haven’t heard of any. There’s a master he likes, I think—a clergyman called Mr. Perriman. He’s quite young.”

“I wonder if Cecil will ‘get religion’?”

“Oh, I hope not!” cried Cecil’s mother with candid alarm. “I’ve seen enough of that with Uncle A. He’s the limit, him and his texts.”

“Cecil’s needn’t take that form. In fact I should say nothing would be less likely.”

“Well, what did you mean, then?”

“Only the sort of sudden awakening of religious susceptibilities that very often attacks young people. It’s an instinctive emotional outlet, really. They outgrow it, generally, or else it falls into its rightful place.”

“It seems to me more like a girl than a boy,” said Rose distrustfully.

“Perhaps. It was only an idea, and I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be a very good thing for Cecil. Don’t you think he wants an incentive?”

She nodded. “D’you know, I found something in a book the other day that made me think of Ces? I want to show it to you. I don’t like good poetry as a rule, you know, like Browning and all that. I never can understand it. But this came home to me, somehow, like something I’d always known but hadn’t ever thought about properly. A sort of recognizing.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to fetch it.” She paused for a moment and then said pleadingly: “Perhaps you’ll be able to say that it’s not true. I hope you will. I daresay I didn’t really understand half of it.”

But as he read the page that she put before him, Lucian marvelled only at her having understood so well.

NEURASTHENIA.[1]

“It made me think of Ces, you know,” she repeated.

He closed the book.

“He’s been different, from the time he was a tiny child. I’ve always known it, really, though he was the loveliest little boy and good, too. You do remember what a dear little boy he was when he first came here?” she entreated.

“Yes, I do,” said the doctor stoutly. “And we’ve that foundation to work upon, and the fact that the boy loves you. Your son is not going to ‘push on without a star,’ Rose.”

“That’s the very phrase that haunts me,” she half whispered.

“We’ll exorcise it, between us. Let him come down to us often, won’t you?”

“Indeed, I will. He’ll be only too glad. He doesn’t much like being here, this time. You saw how Ford behaved to him?”

“I did.”

“I could wring his beastly neck,” said Mrs. Aviolet violently.

“Will you forgive me if I tell you that you make that desire a great deal too evident? I’ve known Ford Aviolet for years, and I know him for a bully. Every time he sees that he’s hurt you, and angered you, it gives him a sense of power. And so he’ll go on doing it.”

“He can only touch me through Cecil.”

“He knows that well enough.”

“Why on earth haven’t he and Diana got any children? It’s absurd of them,” declared Rose with vehemence.

“I suppose it’s a disappointment to everyone.”

“Of course it is! They don’t want Cecil to have Squires, and I’m sure I don’t want him to have it. But he’ll have to, if Diana can’t pull herself together.”

Rose had spoken with her usual energy, and Mrs. Ford Aviolet, entering at the moment, said pleasantly:

“What’s that about me?”

“That I must say good-bye to you,” the doctor declared promptly. “I ought to go and see quite a number of patients. Thank you for a very pleasant respite.”

“Oh, must you go? Rose, Cousin Catherine sent me to find you. It’s about plans for to-morrow. She wants to know something, I’m not sure what.”

“All right,” said Rose. She picked up her book, and gave her hand to Dr. Lucian.

Almost involuntarily, he wrung it hard in his—that big, broad hand of hers, that was yet always soft and warm—but she did not wince.

“Good-bye. Give my love to Henrietta.”

She went away, and Lucian was preparing to go when Diana said suddenly:

“There was just one thing—if you can spare a moment.”

“Certainly,” said the doctor, much surprised.

Diana’s perennial smile seemed a little uncertain, wavering as though she were nervous, but she courageously kept it on her lips.

“It’s about my sister-in-law, Rose. I know Miss Lucian is a friend of hers—and you, too, of course. And I wondered if perhaps she’d been talking to you about Cecil.”

She paused, but Lucian felt no inclination to help her out. He remained unsympathetically silent.

“I do so wish that we could get her to take it more lightly.”

“It?”

“Cecil—everything to do with Cecil. I’m really awfully fond of Rose, Dr. Lucian, and it quite worries me to see her upsetting herself like this. Of course I know she is upset, any one could see it. The very way she looks at Cecil—it’s enough to make the boy hopelessly self-conscious. I daresay you noticed at lunch. Ford chaffs him the least little bit in the world, and Rose either loses her temper, or looks as though she were going to cry. It’s really wonderful that Cecil isn’t a great deal more of a spoilt child than he is.”

“Do you think that you understand Cecil, Mrs. Aviolet?”

“Is there much to understand in a boy of that age?”

“You think there isn’t?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Diana was obviously uneasy at the turn taken by the conversation. “I suppose a boy of Cecil’s age can’t be very interesting, except to his mother, but at the same time——”

“I can assure you that I find Cecil very interesting indeed, quite apart from his connection with Squires. From a psychological point of view, you know, Cecil is rather—unique.”

“Oh, medically! Do you mean that sort of thing?”

Lucian smiled at the clumsy idiom.

“Cecil can hardly be described as the normal schoolboy, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t you think so?” She seemed vaguely surprised. “I must say I’ve always thought him fairly ordinary. Quite a nice boy, of course, and school has improved him a great deal. Ford always said it would.”

“Yes. It’s supposed to improve all boys, isn’t it?”

She looked more surprised than ever.

“Don’t you think it does?”

“Oh, I daresay. I’ve uttered platitudes on the subject, like everyone else. But I think Cecil’s mother was in the right of it, years ago, when she said that a thing might be good for ninety-nine people and all wrong for the hundredth.”

“That old nonsense! I beg your pardon, Dr. Lucian, but I thought even Rose had forgotten the fuss about Cecil going to school by this time. Why, Hurst made a different child of him.”

“I daresay.”

“Even his mother saw that.”

“It cured him of telling lies?”

Diana looked rather shocked. “Oh, poor little fellow! One would rather forget that he ever did such a thing.”

“The soul never forgets,” said the doctor brusquely.

“These things can be transmuted, or they can be suppressed—but they don’t vanish into nothingness because we all agree that it’s more charitable, or more polite, to forget about them. However, please forgive me. It’s a hobby-horse of mine, and I can’t resist a canter every now and then.”

Diana’s little civil laugh assured him, if he had needed any such assurance, that his energetic diatribe had conveyed to her the minimum of significance possible.

“I mustn’t keep you any longer. But do, if possible, try and get Rose to take the whole question of Cecil less seriously. He’s really quite all right in every possible way, if she’d only believe it, poor dear!”

The doctor shook hands with Mrs. Aviolet. “But I’m afraid,” he observed in valediction, “that I can’t do as you ask. You see, I agree with your sister-in-law. The question of Cecil, to my mind, demands just exactly that.”

“What?”

“To be taken seriously,” said the doctor, his voice very grave.

FOOTNOTE:

II

There was another person, besides Rose Aviolet, who shared Dr. Lucian’s view that the question of Cecil was one to be taken seriously.

Perriman, the young master who had only recently taken Holy Orders, full of zeal and of a naturally kind heart, felt oddly sorry for the boy. He had reason to believe him unpopular in the House, and he knew that he had been mildly bullied throughout his first term.

In his second term, Cecil Aviolet was no longer bullied, so far as Perriman knew, but he seemed to be singularly isolated, and there was a dazed and hunted look about his colourless young face.

Perriman hardly knew whether the boy was cowed or sullen, but he went out of his way to show him good-will and fellowship, and Cecil’s quick response was pathetic in its eagerness.

In his second year, Cecil came up with others to Perriman’s Confirmation class. The young clergyman, of the muscular Christian type, was as robust in his religion as he was at football.

One day, after the class was over, he stopped Cecil. “If you’d like a chat, Aviolet, you can come to my study this evening. I could see you were interested in our reading.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

The boy gave his wistful, ingenuous smile.

The curate scarcely knew whether to expect him or not, and could indeed hardly have told the reason of his own unpremeditated suggestion.

He was a simple, kind-hearted fellow, ardently and naïvely convinced that the only way to God lay through Anglo-Catholicism.

“Come in!” he gladly exclaimed, when the half-expected knock came at his door. “Come in, Aviolet! Delighted to see you—sit down, do. You look cold.”

“It is cold,” said the boy, shivering.

“Are you one of those unhappy people who suffer from bad circulation? I’m one of the lucky ones myself, but I’ve been told that some poor fellows spend half the year feeling as though a jug of ice-cold water had been poured down their spines. I hope you’re not as bad as that.”

“I was born in Ceylon. I think that’s why I feel the cold so much.”

“Ah, yes, I daresay. And can you remember much about the East?”

“A good deal,” said Cecil more eagerly. “I know it was very jolly out there, and I liked it all very much. I was only a little chap when we came home, of course, but I can remember our bungalow, and a sort of Public Gardens place, with red flowers, where the ayahs used to take the children after tea every day. I think I must have had a very good time out there.”

“Ah, you know it’s an axiom that Eastern children are always spoilt. But at least you’ve made up for lost time, Aviolet. Your form-work is quite up to the average, I think.”

Cecil flushed like a girl. “Is it, sir?”

“Quite,” repeated the young clergyman. “And you were interested in what I read to the Confirmation class to-day, weren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a pause, which Perriman took care not to break. He saw that the boy was desperately nerving himself to speak.

At last Cecil said haltingly: “Is there—does—does Confirmation do anything to one, sir?”

“How do you mean, my dear boy? Confirmation is the conscious and voluntary renewal of the vow that was made for us at the time of our baptism, you know.”

“Yes, I know. But I mean, does it have any effect on one—make one any better?”

“Certainly, it’s a step in the spiritual life—it confirms us as soldiers of Christ.”

The clergyman, puzzled, felt himself to be answering almost at random.

“Look here, what’s in your mind, Aviolet? Better have it out, whatever it is.”

He felt vaguely uneasy as he saw that the boy’s hands were shaking.

“I wondered if perhaps it might—might cure one of a fault, sir.”

“Cure you of a fault!” echoed the astonished master. “What fault?”

“Any fault,” said Cecil, turning scarlet, and then white. “In the reading to-day, it said about our secret sins, and how they might go on all the time, and only—only God knows about them. And you said that He knew the strength of the temptations, and—and didn’t despise one.”

“I should think not!” ejaculated the clergyman parenthetically.

He thought that he was beginning to understand.

“How old are you, Aviolet?”

“Fifteen, sir.”

“Perhaps,” said the clergyman very kindly, and avoiding looking at the boy, “perhaps you’ve come to an age when what I may call the problems of the flesh are particularly vexatious. If that’s what’s worrying you, don’t mind saying so, quite frankly. By far the best and soundest way to tackle these things is to have them out, and you’ve done very wisely in coming to me. Don’t think of me as a master, for the time being, but just as a fellow older than yourself who’s probably been through very much what you’re going through now. Out with it, Aviolet.”

There was no response. Twice Cecil opened his mouth and then shut it again.

“Have you just been turning things over in your mind until you’ve got the whole business of sex on your nerves,” said Perriman bluntly, “or have you been getting into mischief? I’m not going to ask you to incriminate anybody else, if that’s the case, so don’t worry about that.”

“It isn’t anything like that,” said Cecil almost inaudibly.

“It isn’t? Well, so far, so good. Now supposing you tell me what it is, then?”

“When I was a little chap, I—I wasn’t taught to speak the truth.”

“That’s a pity—but you certainly came here with the intention of speaking the truth to me this evening, so I’m sure you’re going to carry out your resolution,” said the clergyman tranquilly.

“When I was at my preparatory school, I thought I’d outgrown it, like any other kid.”

“Outgrown what, Aviolet?”

“Exaggerating.”

Mr. Perriman stared at Cecil. “Tell me what you mean, my dear boy,” he said finally.

Little by little, he patiently extracted a more or less definite self-accusation from Cecil, of which almost every admission was qualified by exculpatory clauses.

At last the clergyman said to him: “You think yourself a liar, Aviolet. That’s really what it amounts to. You say that boasting of imaginary achievements has become a habit with you, and that you make perfectly false statements almost without premeditation. Now, my dear fellow, if you were really a hardened liar, you wouldn’t have come to me to-night, you may be perfectly sure of that. You were not bound to tell any one of this fault. What made you do so?”

Cecil looked dumbly at him.

“It was the wish to be rid of it, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then I solemnly assure you that you will be rid of it. Don’t you suppose that Our Lord and Saviour appreciates even the most feeble desire to amend? You’ve shown great courage in coming to me to-night,” said the young man excitedly. “And I want you to listen to me, and to believe what I’m going to tell you.”

He collected himself, and then spoke more quietly.

“To begin with, I want you to realize that you can’t do anything at all by yourself. This habit of untruth makes you miserable, is sapping away your energies, causes you to view everything in a distorted light. You see it all, you know it’s playing the mischief with you, and no doubt you make a hundred resolutions a day to break yourself of the beastly habit. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you can’t. Your resolution is broken as often as it’s made and you’re in despair. And isn’t it a very odd thing that very often it’s not until people are in despair that they think of turning to our blessed Lord for help?”

Mr. Perriman smiled at Cecil.

“They look upon Him as a sort of forlorn hope, you know.”

“The Confirmation—” muttered Cecil.

“Yes, that turned your thoughts in His direction, didn’t it? But I don’t want you to attach a sort of superstitious value to the mere fact of being Confirmed, you know. An effort has got to be made, and you’ve got to make it, but this time it’s not going to be in your own strength.”

The clergyman’s voice was strong and hopeful. Cecil gazed at him with dawning hope and comfort in his pale face.

“Can I really start fresh, sir?”

“Of course you can,” Perriman vigorously assured him. “Why, my dear boy, you’re at the very beginning of life, you’re determined to overcome this weakness, and you’ve God on your side. What more can you want?”

His frank, whole-hearted laugh rang out.

“A year from now, Aviolet, probably less—you’ll be able to look the whole world in the face, and thank God that you don’t know how to be anything but straight in word and in deed. Lying is an ugly, low-down sort of habit, you know, and there’s something in the old saying that Satan is the father of lies. If people only realized the harm that’s done in the nursery by letting children muddle up reality and pretence! A wretched kid is taught to believe in Santa Claus, and fairies, and all the rest of the pretty nonsense, then finds out that none of it’s true, and it was all ‘pretence’—and then people are surprised when their children grow up without realizing the value of truth. Tell me, what’s the attitude of your own people towards this failing of yours?”

“They think I’m all right,” said Cecil quickly. “When I was a little chap, of course they knew—I was punished for telling fibs, as a matter of fact—but after I went to Hurst, it all seemed to be over.”

The clergyman looked at him keenly. “Was it over, or did you have the same trouble at Hurst?”

“No—no—not so bad,” Cecil stammered. “I didn’t think about it, then, in a way. It’s these two terms here that have been frightful.”

“And you’ve brooded over it till you’ve persuaded yourself that it’s something born with you, like a deformed hand or foot, that can’t be got rid of. Well, Aviolet, I tell you that you’ve taken to-day an enormous stride in the right direction, and I honour you for your pluck in doing so. Now then,” said the clergyman in a business-like tone, “what about the next step?”

“What shall I do, sir?”

“If you were a little older, I should say make a regular practice of Confession. But that’s hardly practicable at present. What you can do is this: make a most scrupulous daily examination of conscience and keep note of every failure in strict truth and accuracy. Keep before your mind the certainty that our Lord can and will help you to get the better of this weakness of yours. Tell yourself every day that you’re going to be absolutely straight, and open, and above-board in all your dealings. And above all, my dear boy, pray about it. Don’t wait till you’re in Chapel, on your knees, or till you’ve time to make a long prayer. It’s the fervour you put into it, not the number of words, that counts. I’m not going to give you any books to read, or anything of that kind, but if you want me, you can simply come here and find me.”

“You don’t think I’m utterly rotten, then, sir?”

“No!” roared Perriman. “Get that idea out of your head once for all. Haven’t you read your New Testament? Whose part did Christ always take? That of the sinner—the woman taken in adultery, the Magdalen, the thief on the cross. We’re here to try and imitate our Master, not to fly in the face of everything He ever taught by despising other people. I tell you, sinners were His specialty.”

He suddenly grew calm again.

“If you came to me to-morrow, Aviolet, and said you’d told a lie as big as the house, I should only trust you the more because you’d told me, and hope you’d do better next day. Well, multiply that attitude by a thousandfold, and you’ll get some faint shadow of a reflection of God’s attitude towards sinners.”

Cecil drew a long breath. “I’ll try, sir. Thanks most awfully. You’ve made everything look quite different. I—I think I was in despair pretty nearly.”

“That’s all over now,” Perriman said firmly. “Don’t think about the past any more. Now, is there anything else you want to ask me? Take your time.”

“There’s nothing else, sir. What I wanted to know was whether there was any hope of my being—put right—after so many years?”

Perriman suppressed a smile. “Every hope, Aviolet. Tell me, you’ve not found your own people any help in this business of yours?”

“No, sir. My father died when I was very young, and my mother and I have lived a good deal with my grandparents. They never seemed to look at it like you, as something serious. I can’t explain exactly.... Of course, they thought it was very wrong, but either they seemed to think it was a kind of bad habit, or just a—a sort of ill-bred thing to do. I don’t think any one has realized how it’s been—like you said just now—mucking up my whole life.”

“I can quite believe it. It’s come to loom as the over-shadowing fact in everything, I imagine, and as long as that’s so you’ll never get the best out of life, or out of yourself either. We’ve got to get this thing into proportion, Aviolet, and by George we’ll do it!”

The young clergyman struck his penitent heartily between the shoulders.

“Cut along now, or you’ll be late for call-over. Oh—just one thing more. If you think it’s a sound idea—only if, mind you—you might find it a help to tell me when habit has been too much for you, and you’ve fallen again. (You’re bound to, you know, so don’t let it discourage you.) But that must be exactly as you like. Think it over. Of course, I shan’t want details—just the fact, if you think it would help you to keep a check on yourself.”

“I think it would, sir.”

“Don’t decide in a hurry—but I expect you’re right. An effort of that sort is bound to strengthen the will, and that’s what you want. By the way, you understand that anything you say to me on those lines is under seal of Confession, so to speak? That’s right. Good-night, Aviolet.”

Perriman drew a long breath when the boy had left the room.

“Poor little chap! What a rotten time he must have been having with the other boys. That accounts for his unpopularity. All due to defective upbringing and a naturally weak character, of course. Though no doubt he’s exaggerated the whole thing in his own mind, till he thinks he’s a confirmed liar.... But what an opportunity to bring him nearer to a realization of God’s goodness!”

The young man’s simple face beamed, and presently he drew out of his pocket a little note-book, into which he carefully entered Cecil Aviolet’s initials, and the date.

The boy did not voluntarily seek him again at first, and Perriman said nothing to him, but rejoiced whole-heartedly in a certain lightening of Cecil’s whole aspect that had become evident.

One evening, however, meeting him, the clergyman invited him again into his room. “How are things going with you, eh?”

“Much better, thank you, sir.”

The boy’s face was radiant, and Perriman felt a glow of satisfaction, not unmixed with a little honest self-congratulation.

But two days later came the first check.

“I—I’ve done it again, sir.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Aviolet. But, of course, these things are not overcome in a minute, one knows. Tell me what happened.”

Cecil unfolded a long and piteous story: the flat denial of a piece of folly perpetrated in school.

Perriman encouraged him, exhorted him, and assured him of his own unshaken trust.

Two days later again, the whole thing was repeated.

“But it’s so trivial!” the young clergyman exclaimed, bewildered. “That’s what I can’t understand. Why should you tell trivial, childish fibs like that? There’s no object in it, that I can see.”

But in a little while, good Mr. Perriman became aware in himself of an uneasy suspicion. He began to cut Cecil’s confessions short.

“There, there, my dear boy, that’ll do. Leave it at that. I told you I didn’t want details. You must pull yourself together. There is something almost—abject—in owning freely to this lack of moral backbone, and never summing up resolution to defeat it. And although I’m always ready to give you any help in my power, I don’t want you to get into the way of looking upon your admissions to me as a sort of automatic salve to your conscience, you know.”

The light died out of Cecil’s eyes, and he went quietly away.

The young master felt thoroughly uneasy.

Against his own will, and in defiance of what he innocently thought of to himself as the laws of Nature, he was beginning to feel, rather than to know, that Cecil’s later confessions were not quite genuine ones.

“It’s—it’s almost as though he were trying to keep it up,” Perriman reflected, bewildered and almost disgusted.

At last he told Cecil that he thought the confessions had better cease. “If you would feel it useful to you to give me a general account of your progress, well and good. But I—I really think it would be better not to dwell on your own folly and weakness by giving me a long account of each lapse from the truth, Aviolet. Do try and be more robust about it all, won’t you?”

Cecil winced as though he had been struck, and Perriman felt that he was being brutal.

On the night before the Confirmation, Cecil once more presented himself. “I came to tell you, sir——”

“Not if it’s anything in detail, Aviolet,” the clergyman said almost pleadingly. “To-morrow is to be a new beginning for you, isn’t it? Let the dead past bury its dead. Of course,” he added unwillingly, “if you’ve anything serious on your mind, I don’t want to prevent your unburdening yourself. But if it’s some quibble of conscience, I think you’d better suppress it.”

“It’s serious,” said Cecil, his face pale and his eyes shining.

The clergyman reluctantly resigned himself.

“I—I came to tell you, sir, that I deliberately cheated over the History papers at the end of last term. I saw the questions, before we got our papers.”

“How?” rapped out the master.

“On your desk, sir, when you sent me in here to wait for you one day.”

The boy spoke more boldly and confidently than he had done yet, and there was nothing of the shrinking and stumbling manner that had been evident in his first conversation with Perriman. He faced the master steadily, looking straight up at him.

Perriman remembered that Cecil Aviolet had done well in History.

“What did you do when you saw the questions on my desk?”

“I took down the headings on my cuff.”

“Why do you tell me this now?” Perriman asked slowly.

“Because it was on my mind, and I wanted to start fresh from my Confirmation, sir. It—it seemed my one chance.”

The boy caught his breath, and his tone left no room for doubt as to his earnestness. Then he dropped his eyes and stood waiting.

Perriman spoke at last, and at the first sound of his voice, Cecil started violently, looked once at him, and then seemed almost physically to shrink into himself.

“Cecil Aviolet, if I did my duty, I believe that I should advise the Head to disqualify you altogether as a candidate for Confirmation to-morrow. Either you are mentally unsound, or, for heaven knows what reason, you wish to make me think you so. You did not cheat over the terminal examinations. You did not obtain any sight of the questions set for the History paper. It so happens that no questions for that particular paper were set beforehand. Owing to a press of other matters, the History paper was overlooked, and I myself set the questions, at the eleventh hour, just before the examination began. Nobody on this earth can have seen them, except the Head and myself, for the simple reason that they never left my hand from the moment they were written to the moment I brought them into the class-room and laid them on the desk.”

There was dead silence, while master and boy confronted one another.

“You have made a fool of me, Aviolet, if that was your object,” said Perriman slowly. “Heaven knows, that when I first spoke to you, I did so in all sincerity. I saw that you hadn’t many friends, and cared little for games, and seemed rather out of your element. I saw—or thought I saw—that you were interested in the Confirmation class, and seemed anxious to enter into the right spirit of it all. What you hoped to gain by your bogus confessions and self-accusations, I don’t pretend to know.”

“It wasn’t—it wasn’t—I didn’t——” The boy’s eyes were dilated as though with terror, and his lips white.

“Have you any explanation to offer?” said Perriman incredulously.

His mortification was extreme, and it made him feel sick to see Cecil Aviolet, almost gibbering, mouthing incoherent excuses and meaningless explanations.

“I didn’t—never meant to mock ... you were the only person ... kind to me.... I can’t help it ... it seems to come.... Oh, and I thought the Confirmation——”

He broke down, crying.

“Stop that,” said Perriman contemptuously. “You—you girl—you! Take your hysterics out of here! I’ve had enough of them.”

With hard eyes, he saw the boy creep to the door.

Then the kindly instincts, the old habit of faithful adherence to the precepts of his religion, that were the essential part of the young man’s being, asserted themselves.

“Half a second—look here—come back! I can’t let you go away like that. Aviolet, what on earth made you tell me that senseless lie, accusing yourself of something you’d never done? Was it a—a rotten kind of joke?”

“No—no, sir.... I don’t know ... I can’t help it.... I’m made like that. I told you I was——”

“I don’t know what to believe as to the things you’ve told me,” sighed Perriman. “But I don’t want to be hard on you. I set out to help you, Aviolet, but I’ve bungled badly, somehow. That’s very evident. I—I’m sorry I saw red just now. It was senseless, as well as unkind, to speak as I did. But, you see, I can’t understand you. I don’t think I can help you. I’ve been on a wrong tack altogether, I’m afraid.”

Cecil sobbed on drearily.

“Look here,” said the clergyman gently. “I’m not going to interfere with your going up for Confirmation to-morrow. If you were in earnest, Aviolet, about meaning it to be a new beginning—and I can’t, even now, believe that you weren’t—you’ve got your chance, and you can take it. I’m not going to say anything more to you. Good-night.”

He opened the door quietly and glanced outside.

“All clear—you can cut along.”

Cecil looked up at him as he went out, and the misery in his eyes sent a pang through the master’s heart.

He turned back into the empty room again and sat for a long while with his hands over his face.

“O God, I make Thee a solemn vow, on this day of my Confirmation, that I will never again tell a single wilful lie, so long as I live. And this I sacredly vow and promise, so help me God, for Christ’s sake, Amen.”

Cecil Aviolet, trembling in deadly earnestness, was on his knees in the school chapel. His whole being was strung up momentarily to the pitch of intensity necessary to his belief in his own vow.

When he had repeated this formula, he involuntarily relaxed the tension of mind and body in the exhalation of a long, quivering breath.

Now he knew that if he could break that oath made to God, he was damned indeed. He could never break it. He must be safe, now.

In the midst of a turmoil of shame and remorse and misery, he clung to that conviction. He had no other hope to cling to.

The thought of his own self-exposure to Perriman left him utterly dazed. He felt that he did not even understand how it had happened.

Cecil’s first conversation with Perriman had brought to him the most exquisite sense of relief, proportionate to the wretchedness of a long previous spell of helpless, hopeless self-contempt. He had believed that his Confirmation would indeed prove a new beginning of life, in which the old conditions would no longer prevail any more.

Perriman knew of his degrading weakness, his perpetual breaking of a law of God and man, and yet Perriman had not despised him, had assured him again and again that he was ready to help him, that he believed in him. It had seemed, to Cecil, a very long while since any one in the world of school had been ready to believe in him. He knew that the other boys put him down as a boaster, and sometimes, more crudely, as a young liar. He knew that these things were true of him. Perriman’s interest had begun to revive his self-respect.

After the first difficult statement of fact, it had no longer cost him a great deal to make his avowals to the young clergyman. He had almost felt that they were expected of him, that they enhanced Perriman’s interest in him.

After a little while, he had diligently searched out in himself matter for self-accusation, twisting and distorting tiny incidents until they could be made to acquire some significance, exaggerating facts, sometimes misrepresenting them altogether, sometimes inventing.

And then the master’s hopefulness had seemed to flag, his friendly certainty of the boy’s ultimate conquest to slacken.

He had flicked Cecil upon the raw with that one sentence: “Do try and be more robust about it all, won’t you?”

It had been the stinging, humiliating recollection of those words that had led to the perpetration of the sorry farce that had ended it all.

Ages ago, as it seemed, Cecil Aviolet had indeed seen a pile of papers on Perriman’s own desk that he had perfectly well known to be the question-lists of the coming terminal examinations. There had even flashed across his mind the thought, “A chance for somebody to get a look at the questions now!” But no serious temptation had assailed him. For one thing, the risk of detection would have been too great. At any instant the door might have opened and Perriman have returned. Nor had he been possessed of sufficient presence of mind to think of noting the headings to the questions.

No, those details had occurred to him long afterwards, appropriate accessories to the act, as it might have taken place and as it had not, ever, been in the most remote danger of taking place.

And yet he had scarcely known—had certainly not felt—himself to be lying, when he had made that dramatic statement to Perriman. Cecil was neither very clever, nor profoundly analytical. He did not tell himself, but he dimly knew, that if Perriman had believed in his last lie, he would have come to believe in it himself. He would have worked himself up to something like a genuine remorse for the offence that he had not committed. There would have been flashes of realization—but such searing illuminations Cecil had long been accustomed to relegate into that nocturnal limbo that opens only at the rarest unescapable intervals, in the hour between darkness and the first faint glimmer of dawn: the hour when even youth cannot always seek and find oblivion in sleep.

But Perriman had not believed him. Perriman had thought that Cecil was making a mock of his kindness, of the helping hand that he had extended, the simple, earnest counsels that he had given.

Cecil writhed.

Perriman might forgive him, but he would never respect him, never believe in him any more.

And Cecil did not believe in himself, nor even, very profoundly, in the power of the frenzied vow that he repeated again and again, trying to hypnotize himself into attaching a supernatural potency, like that of a spell, to the form of words that he had chosen.

But when, less than a week later, he found that he had broken his vow again and again, Cecil was not surprised.

At fifteen, he had become definitely incapable of surprise at the extent of his own moral degradation.

III

To Rose Aviolet’s way of thinking, Cecil’s public-school days slid past as might a dream. They had, to her, much of the intangible quality of dream things. She went down to see him many times, in those years, but she never received, either from her visits or from Cecil, any impression of the place other than superficial ones.

There was something withdrawn, strangely colourless about the boy’s personality, that seemed to nullify any possibility of the assimilation of an atmosphere.

He and Rose for the most part spent the holidays at Squires. There Cecil was more eager and more natural, except when Ford was present.

His old, childish admiration for his uncle had entirely disappeared, but in its place was a silent hostility that rather frightened Rose, betraying as it did a depth of bitterness entirely foreign to her own outspoken, abusive dislike.

She once said to Cecil, “You don’t like Ford, do you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he’s rather a beast, I think,” said Cecil slowly. “He sneers at me.”

“I know. He’s always been like that.”

“He’s a beast to you, too, Mummie. Sometimes I want to knock him down when he looks at you with that smile of his, turning down the corners of his mouth.”

“Darling!” cried Rose impulsively.

She was acutely touched by his championship of her.

But when one day Cecil boasted to her that he “had given Uncle Ford a piece of his mind” on the same subject, Rose knew well enough that none of the story was true, and her heart sank within her.

“I simply said to him, ‘Look here, Uncle Ford, I think you forget that I’m practically a man now. You can’t speak like that to my mother in front of me, you know——’”

“Shut up, Ces,” she said wearily.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you think I ought to have said it?”

“You never did say it, Ces, and you know that as well as I do.”

“Mother, if you’re not going to believe what I say, you’ll put an absolute end to all confidence between us. I thought I could always depend on you, at least.”

“So you can, as you very well know,” cried Rose indignantly. “But not to swallow stories that I know perfectly well haven’t got a word of truth in them from start to finish. What’s the sense of it, Cecil?”

“What I told you was perfectly true,” he said coldly.

“That you said that to your uncle? When?”

“It was yesterday, after tea. No—let me see—it was before tea, to be absolutely accurate. In the garden.”

She knew perfectly well that he was lying, but she asked herself whether Cecil knew it.

Before he went back to school for his last term there, Diana Aviolet came to stay at Squires without her husband. She looked pale and drawn, and the slim lines of her figure were sharpening into a middle-aged angularity.

“Cecil has improved a lot,” she said to Rose, soon after her arrival. “He takes so much more interest in things—seems so much keener, somehow.”

“I think he’s very well,” said Rose coolly. “Last year he was growing too fast.”

“I daresay he was. You’re lucky, Rose, to have a son.”

Rose softened in an instant. “Poor Di! It’s rotten bad luck. Have you been to a doctor to see if anything can be done?”

“Oh, my dear!” Diana coloured faintly and prudishly.

“Well, it might be worth while. They have all sorts of dodges now-a-days, I believe. There was a woman I knew—at least I only saw her about once, but she’s a friend of Uncle A.’s—well, she’d been married sixteen years and never a sign of a baby, and she wanted one most dreadfully. And at last she went to a doctor, and made her husband go as well, and he told them——”

Diana broke in hurriedly, “Please, Rose, I’d really rather you didn’t.”

“All right. But she had twin girls, the very next year, perfect ducks, and as healthy as you please, both of them.”

“It’s a boy that Ford wants, of course,” sighed Diana.

Rose, trying to imagine Ford in a paternal role, found herself obliged to maintain a careful silence upon the resultant picture.

“I think it’s very disappointing for a man, if his wife doesn’t have children, don’t you?” Diana asked wistfully.

“It’s just as disappointing for her—in fact more, very likely.”

“Of course, nearly every woman wants a baby, I suppose, but men do seem to feel they’d like someone to live on after them, to carry on the name. At least, that’s what Ford says.”

“Does he say it often?” Rose inquired drily, and felt ashamed when her sister-in-law replied simply and unresentfully:

“Yes, he does.”

“I wish you had got a child,” she said helplessly. “It’s awfully hard on you, especially if Ford——”

Rose stopped abruptly.

“Oh, Ford’s all right. He and I understand one another,” said Ford’s wife rather drearily. “Only of course children are always such a tremendous bond between married people, aren’t they? One misses that.”

“Poor Di,” said Rose gently.

She very often forgot altogether her old animosity towards Diana. In these days, for all Diana’s position as Ford’s wife, her security of moderate wealth and position, her unimpeachable ancestry, it sometimes seemed as though the maturity that had come late to Rose held a deeper significance, a greater stability of poise, than the surface serenity of breeding that had always characterized Diana. Beneath the serenity was an unacknowledged disappointment, a growing boredom, that threatened slow, but very complete, devitalization.

It was quite true that Cecil, as Diana said, had improved.

When he came home from school for the last time, it seemed as though a weight had been removed from his shoulders. He had suddenly acquired an assurance of demeanour that was in odd contrast to his previous morose habit of silence, and self-confidence was no longer lacking in his manner.

In discussing the boy’s future, old Sir Thomas Aviolet expressed himself as being better satisfied with him than he had dared to hope.

“There was a sort of hang-dog look about the lad that I didn’t like, not so very long ago. But he’s taken a turn for the better, I’m glad to see—eh, Rose? He’ll do us credit yet.”

Sir Thomas, like Uncle Alfred, was seldom enthusiastic as Rose understood the word. But she met his very modified praises half-way.

“I always said he’d buck up in time,” she triumphantly declared.

“He seems quite keen on the idea of going to the ’Varsity. I think it’s a good scheme. Completes a fellow’s education, don’t you know? And he might travel for a bit, after that. We’ll see, we’ll see.”

“Travelling is a good thing,” said Rose. “Opens one’s eyes a bit, I mean. But it costs money.”

“That’s my affair,” said Sir Thomas very curtly indeed.

His wife added more gently: “We should like our grandson to see something of the world, my dear, before he settles down to the estate. It seems fairly certain now, humanly speaking, that Cecil will come after Ford at Squires.”

She sighed gently.

“Cecil is growing into a very dear boy, but still—one can’t help feeling for poor Ford’s disappointment at not having a son of his own. I must say, I should never have thought it of Diana.”

“Well, she can’t help it, can she?”

“Give me that ball of wool, my dear, if you can reach it without disturbing yourself. Thank you.”

Rose understood that the subject of Mrs. Ford Aviolet’s ability or inability to continue the direct line of succession to Squires was not one to be pursued.

She had become very much more amenable to such hints with the passing of time.

Cecil himself was pleased and eager at the prospect of going to Cambridge. His new-born enthusiasm reminded Rose of his childish days, and she thought thankfully that the original Cecil had returned to her.

“You see, Mother, I shall make a lot of new friends there, I expect, as well as meeting fellows from school. But I like meeting new people.”

She had noticed that he did, and also, strange development of his one-time timidity, that Cecil now talked more freely and with more animation, when he was in the company of people other than his own immediate circle.

The Marchmonts were invited to lunch at Squires in the course of Diana’s stay, and Rose, at first with gratification, heard Cecil volubly replying to the General’s friendly questionings about his schooldays.

A faint anxiety was beginning to displace the gratification by the time they had entered the dining-room and she had found herself seated next to General Marchmont. Cecil was at the further end of the table.

“Your boy’s growing up very fast. A fine young fellow,” said the old man kindly.

Rose flushed deeply with pleasure and surprise. “I was afraid I heard him laying down the law, just now,” she admitted bluntly.

“No more than is natural and proper at his time of life, I assure you. He seems a clever fellow, too. What’s that he was telling me about a scholarship?”

Rose felt the happy flush ebbing from her face, and bit her lip sharply. “What?”

“Something about his having passed out of school with a fine scholarship to his credit. That’ll stand him in very good stead, you’ll find, whatever line he takes up later on. We want a few brains in the country just now, and the coming generation is where we look for ’em. There isn’t a man in the Government to-day——”

He was launched on a favourite topic, and Rose, not attempting to listen, gave herself up for a moment to her sense of utter dismay.

How could Cecil be such a fool, she asked herself furiously. The silly, boastful lie was predestined to certain contradiction. Only her own passionate instinct of safe-guarding her boy from the contempt and condemnation of others had saved her from an instant denial of the preposterous figment of the scholarship. Not one of the others—Sir Thomas, Lady Aviolet, Diana, any of them—would have either the wit or the charity to leave the old General under his deception, should it occur to him to mention it to them.

She could see, in furious imagination, the blank glance and open-mouthed repudiation with which any one of them would receive such an allusion.

Was it possible that Cecil could not see that too? Rose momentarily lacked the moral courage to face the issue involved in that question. But as time went on, she was forced to consider it.

Cecil, now-a-days voluble and ready to please and be pleased, was attractive to older people by reason of his good looks and his youthfulness. Contemporaries of his grandparents, and even of his mother, liked the boy at first sight, and showed him kindly attention, as had old General Marchmont. He always responded readily, with an evident eagerness to be liked and thought well of that seemed mysteriously to have sprung from the ashes of his schoolboy apathy and dejection. Rose knew that the Aviolets, Lady Aviolet especially, were pleased at this development. She felt sure that they did not perceive that of which she herself was becoming sharply and painfully aware, that sooner or later these kindly people seemed to lose touch with Cecil. They became indifferent, or faintly puzzled, and they no longer sought him out.

Cecil himself appeared to be oddly inured to such shifting relationships. He seemed to pass on, equally eager and hopeful, in search of other friends to whom he might present a more appealing aspect.

For he was acutely preoccupied with his own presentment of himself. Of that Rose, forced into psychological analysis as unfamiliar to her as it was difficult of achievement, had at last become conscious. He recounted imaginary achievements for his own glorification, and related unlikely experiences or future projects obviously intended to render himself interesting to his hearers.

“But everybody does that more or less,” Rose angrily assured herself.

At the back of her mind, unformulated, hung uneasily the sense that Cecil did not pose merely in the foolish, superficial manner habitual to youth. He invented—but he did not delude himself. And he appeared strangely unawakened to the probability that neither did he, at any rate for long, succeed in deluding others.

As in the case of his imaginary scholarship, exploited to General Marchmont, Rose often found that he was incredibly reckless to the certainty of detection.

“Either he doesn’t care—or he doesn’t realize,” she thought, bewildered and wretched.

It seemed to her that, of the two alternatives, one must imply moral, the other mental, deficiency.

She was glad when he went up to Cambridge, hoping against her own innermost certainties that the new environment might produce a miracle. But it produced instead a new perplexity. Cecil began to ask her for money.

He had never been extravagant before, and he received a very adequate allowance from his grandfather.

“What’s the matter? Is it bills?”

“Well, it is, and it isn’t. There are expenses at college that a lady can’t understand, quite, but——”

“Rubbish, Ces! Don’t try and come that gammon over me,” said Mrs. Aviolet forcibly. “Tell me right out what you want money for, like a good boy.”

“I’ve told you that you wouldn’t understand,” said Cecil in an offended voice.

“Then you’d better go to somebody that will,” retorted his mother.

“Mother, I didn’t mean to vex you. The fact is, I got a lot of books and prints for my room when I first went up, and—and the tradesmen are beginning to bother me a bit. They’re threatening—some of them—to write to grandfather.”

Rose had not sufficient experience of the ways of tradesmen in a university town to reject the explanation, although she instinctively doubted it.

“Give me the bills, and I’ll write a cheque—if it’s not more than I’ve got at the bank, which it very well may be.”

“I haven’t got the bills here. You’d better make the cheque out to me.”

“Cecil, do you take me for a fool?” said Rose, looking straight at him.

“If I pay in cash, there’s a considerable discount,” said Cecil with dignity. “That’s the only reason why I suggested it. But if you won’t help me, Mother, then I suppose I shall have to have it out with grandfather.”

“Yes, and I know what that means! The whole thing put into Ford’s hands, and him making a bad matter worse with his sarcasms.... I know. Ces, I’ll help you this once. How much is it?”

“Oh, Mummie darling! Twenty-five pounds. I’ll never be such an ass again....”

He kissed her.

Cecil was always affectionate.

“I wish to goodness you’d tell me, Ces, if there’s anything at the back of this. You ought to know by this time that I shouldn’t let you down, whatever it was.”

“I’ve told you all it is, Mother—on my word of honour I have,” said Cecil, lifting his eyes to hers.

She would not allow herself to disbelieve it. He did not ask her for money again, but some months later, when she had returned to London, and Cecil, at his own desire, was still at work, although the Long Vacation had already begun, she was sent for one evening by the old pawnbroker.

“What mischief has this boy of yours been getting into?” Uncle Alfred demanded, without preamble.

“What’s the matter?”

“The matter is that the lad has written to me for money. I should have thought he knew me better, but he seemed fairly desperate. I can only suppose that some lewd woman has enticed him.”

“Good gracious, Uncle A., what a way you do put things!” Rose protested in vigorous counter-attack.

“The language of Scripture is good enough for me, Rose. Let the squeamish stop up their ears like the adder that is deaf, it will not alter facts. Your son has written and asked me for what he is pleased to call a loan. Needless to say, he offers no security.”

“Well, you’ve got his word, poor child. I’m sure he means to repay it, whatever it is.”

Rose was temporizing, trying to gain command of herself in the new dismay that had come upon her.

“I have not built up a successful business to the glory of God and to the satisfaction of my old age by giving loans to ‘poor children’ on the strength of their intentions of repaying them,” observed Uncle Alfred witheringly. “I have here Cecil’s letter. Do you wish to see it?”

“Yes—no. I daresay he’d much rather I didn’t. I can guess what he says, well enough.”

“I doubt if you can,” said her uncle drily. “It may even surprise you, as much as it did me, to learn that Cecil is entirely disinterested in his request. He merely requires thirty or forty pounds to help a friend out of his difficulties.”

“What friend?”

“Precisely.” Uncle Alfred’s tone was bland. “What friend? I ask myself the same question, Rose. And the answer that occurs to me is to the effect that your son’s friend is of the same family as the friends on whose behalf so many genteel souls, who never—dear me, no, never—contemplate entering a pawnbroker’s establishment on their own account, try to dispose of worthless trinkets in exchange for solid cash. Any one in my way of business gets to know those friends very well indeed. I’ve known ladies bargain quite violently on behalf of the friend. They seem to find it easier than if it was for themselves, somehow. I’m not deceived, and they know I’m not deceived, and yet they go on doing it. The human heart is deceitful, and, above all things, desperately wicked, Rose.”

Uncle Alfred seemed inclined to lose himself in the contemplation of depraved humanity. A knock at the door came to rouse him.

“May I come in?” said Dr. Lucian.

The old pawnbroker welcomed him cordially. He enjoyed the doctor’s games of backgammon, a regular institution now whenever Lucian was in London, and found him excellent company.

He was even prepared to dismiss Rose upon the instant, in the security that a masculine tête-à-tête would be as welcome to his visitor as to himself.

“Don’t let me detain you any further, Rose. Backgammon is not the recreation to you that it is to me—and, moreover, you make a very poor hand at it,” he remarked candidly.

The doctor cast a glance at Rose, but he said nothing. She looked tired, and it might very well be that she was glad of any excuse that should free her from the not always easy task of entertaining Uncle A.

“I’ll go by-and-bye. I’d rather finish this business first, and Dr. Lucian can help, very likely. He knows all about Cecil.”

“What is it?” said the doctor.

“Ces has been playing the fool. I don’t know why, or how. And he’s written to Uncle Alfred to lend him money.”

“He means give, of course,” interjected Uncle Alfred.

“Does he give any reason for wanting money?”

Rose looked at her uncle.

“He writes that he wishes to help a friend who is in great difficulties. Presumably he supposes that I shall believe it.”

Uncle Alfred’s tone left little doubt as to the inaccuracy of the conjecture.

“Yes, I think we might discount that,” said Lucian thoughtfully. “Is this the first time he’s been hard up for money?”

There was a moment’s silence and then Rose said shortly, “No.”

“Do you know—can you guess—what he wants it for?”

“I can’t, indeed.”

“Some Jezebel, no doubt,” was Mr. Smith’s verdict.

“I was wondering about that. Will you let me speak with—er—professional plainness?”

“Of course,” said Rose, opening her brown eyes.

The doctor smiled at her. It was for the sake of Uncle Alfred’s possible susceptibilities that he thus prepared the way. Between Rose and himself, he knew well enough that no artificial barriers to fullness and sincerity of speech could exist.

“About women. Has Cecil had any experiences of that sort at all, so far as you know?”

“None,” said Rose instantly.

Uncle Alfred made a slightly derisive sound, and she turned upon him.

“Oh, I know he wouldn’t tell me about it, if he had. But there are a few things that a boy’s mother knows by instinct, and that’s one of them. And I know that Ces, so far, is as inexperienced in that particular way as any baby.”

“I think you’re probably quite right,” said Dr. Lucian.

But there was no elation in his tone, rather was there something which made Rose cry out anxiously and incoherently:

“Why—what is it?”

“It’s only that I’d rather hear anything, however discreditable, about Cecil, so long as it was normal, than something which, when all’s said and done, is slightly abnormal.”

“You take a low view of human nature, doctor,” remarked Uncle Alfred.

“A low view and a practical one are often synonymous, I find; if by low, you mean natural as opposed to idealistic,” said the doctor drily.

“The human heart is——”

“For goodness gracious’ sake, Uncle A., don’t say that again!” his niece cried.

The pawnbroker looked at her and then nodded significantly to the doctor.

“Very much overwrought,” he observed sententiously.

“And I’ll thank you to let me speak for myself,” said Mrs. Aviolet, tossing her head.

“Your mother over again, Rose. You never got this independent temper from the Smiths, let me tell you. Irreligious my poor brother may have been, and was, in consequence of which he failed in business, and went through the Bankruptcy Court—for unless the Lord buildeth the house, how shall it stand?—but there was no temper about him. And no vice either.”

“Ah, that’s interesting. You understand,” said the doctor, “that these things have a very direct bearing upon Cecil’s case.”

“Do you mean heredity?” Rose asked.

“Certainly I do.”

“The Spirit bloweth where it listeth,” Uncle Alfred automatically quoted, and at once proceeded, in his usual business-like fashion, to the point at issue. “No, my poor brother was a very quiet, well-disposed fellow. Weak, that was his only trouble. Couldn’t say ‘No.’”

“He wasn’t an imaginative, highly-strung person?”

“Nothing of the kind,” Uncle Alfred declared, with a rather offended intonation.

“Cecil is both, you know,” the doctor gently pointed out.

Rose leaned forward, looking earnestly at Dr. Lucian. “I want you to tell me something. Is Ces morally responsible for the things he does?”

Lucian hesitated for a long while before he replied. At last he said: “Honestly, I don’t think he is. Wait——” as she moved, as though uncontrollably. “I don’t mean that he’s of unsound mind. Remember that there’s a great difference between someone who doesn’t know right from wrong and someone who may know it, but has not the strength of mind to control the desire which prompts him towards wrong. The first state implies a deficiency in perception; the second, a deficiency in control. To a certain extent we all, at one time or another, unless we definitely belong to the first group, come under the second. But there are always resistances within ourselves—urgings towards the good. We can call them the promptings of conscience, or the risk of detection, or the fear of consequences. One or other of these motives will serve to deter us, quite frequently, from doing wrong. But I believe, personally, that there are certain individuals in whom those resistances are either non-existent, or else of so feeble a nature that they have no chance of acting as deterrents. Such a deficiency is congenital, for the most part.”

Rose was silent.

The old pawnbroker was gazing into the fire, his shrewd, lined face as expressionless as ever.

Rose Aviolet looked deadly tired.

“Won’t you let me take you home? You look so tired,” said Dr. Lucian gently.

“I’d rather get this settled first. What are you going to say to Cecil’s letter, Uncle?”

“I shall remind him that though his sins be as scarlet, they can be washed white as snow in the Blood of the Lamb. Also I shall point out to him that a man of my business experience is not the person to be approached with foolish and unbusiness-like suggestions of a loan, when what is really meant is a gift.”

“And you won’t send him any money?”

“Certainly not.”

“Well, you’re right,” said Rose, drawing a deep breath. “I can’t say anything else. You’re right.”

“Rose,” said the doctor, “would you like me to go to Cambridge and see the boy? I’ll try and find out what’s wrong, and I’ll come and report to you as soon as I get back.”

“That’s exactly like you! How good you are,” cried Rose, her whole face lightening.

“That’s settled, then. Come along, now, and let me see you home. I’ll come back for our game, Mr. Smith.”

“By all means. The Underground Railway will be your best way to travel.”

It was perfectly understood that by the best way Uncle Alfred invariably intended to denote the cheapest way.

Lucian took Rose downstairs.

“Good-night, Mrs. Aviolet,” said a timid voice.

“Oh, good-night, Felix.”

“Will you wait a moment, while I get a taxi?” said the doctor.

“But we can go by Underground.”

“No. You’re much too tired.”

Felix volunteered to fetch a taxi, was thanked and was heartily shaken hands with by Rose through the window, when he had shut the door of the cab upon them.

They left him gazing from the doorstep as they drove away, his eternal feuilleton in his hands.

“That boy worships you, Rose.”

“Poor Felix!” she said leniently. “I shall never forget what a brick he was, years ago, when Ces was ill with croup in the middle of the night.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, rather bitterly, “that’s the way you remember all of us, by what we did, or didn’t do, for Cecil.”

It was very seldom that he allowed himself such an allusion, and the next moment he was ashamed of it.

“I’m sorry—dear.”

“I suppose it’s quite true,” said Rose simply.

When next he spoke, it was in reference to his visit to Cambridge.

“I’ll leave it to you to do whatever seems best,” Rose said. “Poor little Ces! It was a mistake, his going to a public school and university, and all that. He ought to have been put to work young, like the people he comes from.”

He noticed often that now-a-days she was no longer violent in her denunciations of those who had helped to arbitrate in Cecil’s destiny. Time was teaching Rose Aviolet to conform.

Just before they parted, she reverted to what Lucian had said earlier in the evening, as though it had been in her thoughts ever since.

“What you said about motives for not doing wrong having practically no weight at all with some people: well, a thing that’s always puzzled me with Ces is that he never seems to jib at telling a lie even when it’s absolutely certain to be found out. You’d think most people told lies for the sake of deceiving, wouldn’t you? Well—he doesn’t. He tells them when anybody in the world would know that they couldn’t deceive a cat. So it seems,” she turned to face him, and he saw that she was crying, “it seems that what you said is right: the ordinary deterrents don’t exist for Ces. But I do think it isn’t him that ought to go to hell for his sins, but those who brought him into the world what he is.”

IV

Squires, at any rate at the very beginning of the war, maintained its equilibrium. Rose was in London, but Diana and Ford Aviolet drove over from the other side of the county.

“Good Lord, it’s Armageddon!” growled Sir Thomas Aviolet. He was entirely unaware that many hundreds of other people had seized upon the phrase already, and that as many hundreds more would do so within the next few days.

“The whole of the map will have to be re-made,” remarked Lady Aviolet, and sometimes she said instead: “But it can’t last long, that’s one thing. It’s on such a terrific scale that it must be over quickly. It can’t last.”

“They say Kitchener is preparing for a three years’ war.”

“I daresay he has to be on the safe side, Thomas, but it couldn’t possibly last that length of time. Not with all the Russian millions to help us. Why, they say the Russians will be in Berlin before Christmas.”

“I must say, I was frightened that first week-end,” said Diana. “There was a panic in the town, and everyone tried to get food in, for fear of a shortage, you know. And then people were so dreadful about money—one heard of them cashing simply enormous cheques, and taking the gold home with them! Of course, it was the one thing the Government said we mustn’t do—hoard gold. And I’m afraid getting the extra supplies of food wasn’t right, though I did do that myself. I made our grocer give me exactly three times the quantity of everything, and I got a number of tinned things, and a good deal of flour as well. There was actually a queue outside his door, but I’d gone myself, in the car, so, of course, I got in first. After all, it was fair enough in a way, wasn’t it? First come first served, as they say.”

Her husband sneered. “First car first served, Di. You hadn’t come there before they had; but they’d only come on foot.”

“Poor people,” said Diana placidly, although she had coloured faintly at his tone of voice. “Well, I’m sure I hope they got what they wanted, for there was plenty for everybody, as it turned out. And we know, now, that there isn’t going to be any difficulty about supplies, and that people are particularly asked not to hoard.”

“I’m sure we wouldn’t think of such a thing,” said Lady Aviolet. “Though, naturally, nobody wants to go short. That wouldn’t help to end the war. But I’m afraid there’s a dreadful time ahead while it lasts. I wonder we haven’t heard from Cecil about getting a commission.”

“Boys of that age,” said Ford curtly, “won’t be wanted in a show of this kind. They haven’t the stamina, or the experience, or the physique. It’s men that are wanted, not children from school.”

“I expect he’ll want to go, Ford, and one does hear of younger boys——”

“Not of Cecil’s type, Mother. A silly, emotional lad of that kind gives more trouble than he’s worth. Besides, I doubt if he’d be able to stand fire, frankly.”

Lady Aviolet drew herself up. “My dear Ford, you don’t think what you’re saying. Cecil isn’t a coward. You sometimes almost talk as though he weren’t our own flesh and blood.”

“You always are down on poor Cecil, I’ve noticed it myself,” suddenly added Diana.

“I’m sure I don’t know why Ford should give that impression. He’s always been very good to poor Jim’s boy—naturally,” said Lady Aviolet.

She never allowed any one, least of all Ford’s wife, to imply any shadow of criticism of him.

“Cecil isn’t only ‘poor Jim’s’ son.”

“I know, my dear. It was a most unfortunate marriage, of course. But it was all many years ago, and she’s improved wonderfully, poor thing. One may not have very much in common with her, but, at least, she’s a genuinely devoted mother, and she hasn’t stood in the boy’s way.”

“She did her best, when she made difficulties over his going to school.”

“Well, yes,” Lady Aviolet conceded. “She was certainly very tiresome about that, I remember. She had some very odd ideas about his being different to other boys. As though all mothers didn’t think their own children quite different to all other children!”

“But Cecil really was a little bit different, Cousin Catherine,” said Diana. “It seems a shame to say so, but it really was rather dreadful when he was quite little, and wouldn’t speak the truth, or play games without cheating.”

“Little bounder,” muttered Ford between his teeth.

“It’s certainly a very horrid fault,” Diana admitted gravely.

“The streak of bad blood is bound to come out sooner or later. It’s all very well to talk of his being one of ourselves, Mother, but you must admit that there have been times when young Master Cecil showed very decided signs of his Smith ancestry.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t say such things, Ford,” returned Lady Aviolet very placidly.

Her son smiled slightly, raised his eyebrows, and went out of the room.

Diana Aviolet, her face still grave as it had been when she was discussing Cecil, and with a slight additional tinge of colour in it, said to her mother-in-law with an effect of considerable effort:

“You know, I’m afraid that one reason why Ford speaks so bitterly about poor Cecil, is because he feels it so, that he hasn’t got a son himself.”

Lady Aviolet’s own face lengthened—her nearest approach to a change of expression. “Yes, that’s a great disappointment for you both, my dear, and, in fact, for all of us. However, these things are not in our hands, and one can only suppose that Providence has its own inscrutable reasons.”

Diana did not seem to be in any way consoled by the contemplation of such ambiguous wisdom. “Farmers’ wives, and people who really don’t matter a bit, always seem to me to have large families,” she said resentfully. “I don’t know why I can’t have even one child, when it’s so important. I mean, of course, that Ford would like it, and one couldn’t help feeling——”

She broke off, but Lady Aviolet appeared to have understood her meaning.

“Of course, my dear, one had hoped that Ford’s child—and yours—might come after us at Squires, one of these days. After all, he is our eldest son and he’s always been such a good son, too. Poor Jim was very different. Wild, you know. We never say very much about it, but it was his own fault that we were obliged to send him out to the East. And even then, I always think he would have steadied down if only it hadn’t been for that senseless marriage.”

“Of course, it was a pity to marry her, but I quite see—I can understand—I’ve often thought,” said Diana courageously, “that Rose is rather nice, in her own way. What I mean to say is, that in her own way, Rose really is rather nice. Sometimes, anyway.”

“She has improved a great deal,” repeated Lady Aviolet, in very modified approval.

“And she’s good-looking.”

“Men think so, certainly. Laurence Charlesbury admired her. I used sometimes to wonder—however, it would have been very unsuitable, and I imagine he quite realized that. Poor Rose, she was a great deal more impossible in those days than she is now, or else it was that people were so much more particular then. I remember how very much it used to distress me to see her with paint on her face.”

“Bad form,” said Diana judicially.

“Oh, very. And she had a very vehement and emphatic way of talking, that one rather disliked. However, as I say, she has improved very much since then.”

“I wonder what she’ll do now?”

“There’s no reason why she shouldn’t train as a Red Cross nurse, I suppose,” said Lady Aviolet rather doubtfully. “I believe the most unlikely people succeed in passing the examinations, and get their certificates, so I suppose it isn’t very difficult.”

“I’m getting up some ambulance classes at home, of course. If Ford gets a commission, I shall try and arrange to go abroad.”

“Ford, my dear! He’s over the age limit.”

“I know, but, of course, he’s going to move heaven and earth. But I don’t really think he’d ever pass, medically.”

“Does his heart still trouble him?”

“Only sometimes.”

“That was the South African war, poor Ford! Well, he need never feel that he hasn’t done something for his country.”

Lady Aviolet rested in this comfortable conviction.

Diana was less at ease, feeling daily the deepening nervous strain beneath which Ford lived.

When a letter came from Cecil, announcing his intention of at once applying for a commission, Sir Thomas loudly proclaimed the fact, looking Ford in the face fairly and squarely as he spoke. Sir Thomas was much more capable than was Lady Aviolet, of thinking Ford and his criticisms something less than infallible.

“Shall I write to Cecil, Father?”

“No thank ’ee. I’ll write myself. He’s shown a very proper spirit,” said Sir Thomas, “and he’s wanted out there. I shall be proud to let him go.”

Sir Thomas had never before spoken with so much cordiality of his grandson.

“Ford may say what he pleases,” he remarked later to his wife, “but that was a very good letter young Cecil wrote me. He may have his faults, but I must say I like a boy of his age to show the right spirit.”

“He’s very young, Thomas.”

“He’ll mend of that in a month or two, as I said to Ford.”

“Oh, I hope it may be all over before then. It can’t last long.”

“Of course, I know very well what’s upsetting Ford,” pursued Sir Thomas with an air of perspicacity. “He can’t get out himself, and he’s got no son to send.”

“His son would be far too young to go, even if he’d got one,” said Lady Aviolet literally. “Why, he’d be still in the nursery.”

“I daresay, I daresay—but that’s what’s upsettin’ him all the same.”

Lady Aviolet did not deny it.

In the course of the next few days, however, it was Sir Thomas who betrayed vexation of spirit, and Ford who was quietly triumphant.

Cecil wrote another letter to his grandfather, in which he did not mention a commission at all, and earnestly asked for money.

“What’s he want money for? He has a very good allowance, and this is no time for lashin’ out. You can write and tell him so, Ford.”

This time Sir Thomas showed no objection to letting Ford act as his secretary. He also bade his wife write to Rose, in London.

“Ask her if she knows what the young ass is up to, and if she doesn’t, she’d better go and see him. Or Ford. Ford would be the best person. Write to her to-night, Catherine.”

Lady Aviolet obediently did so.

My dear Rose,

I wonder if you get more war news in London than we do here. Of course, the papers can only tell what they are allowed to tell, and I am sure that a great deal is being kept from us. What a dreadful time it all is! Like a nightmare, as I say.

I should like to hear if you know how Cecil’s plans stand. Of course, it was very natural he should be eager to join the Army at once, and Sir Thomas was pleased with his letter. But we should like to hear what steps he has taken. We have felt a little bit anxious at his asking for money, especially as he doesn’t say what he wants it for. His allowance is a very good one, more than either Ford or poor Jim ever had at his age. Sir Thomas suggests that Ford should go up and see him, and perhaps he had better, unless you have anything else to suggest.

I daresay it is all very unsettling for him just now, and perhaps he would like to come straight to us, in which case I hope we shall see you as well.

Diana sends her love. She goes home to-morrow to resume Red Cross classes, etc.

Yours affecly., Catherine Aviolet.

Rose’s reply, when it came, was not a source of gratification.

Dear Lady Aviolet,

Thanks for yours of last Thursday. I knew Ces would want to go to the war, and of course he’ll have to go.

I’ve been worried, too, about him asking for money, but I can’t get any sense out of him by letter, though I expect I shall when I see him. I shouldn’t think Ford had better go to see him. In fact, I’d already got Dr. Lucian to say that he’d go, only since the war began he’s been head over ears. I’ve now asked him again, and he’ll be off in a couple of days.