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“So much the more suitable,” said the indomitable Mr. Smith
decisively.
Rose shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m going downstairs, Uncle, to give Felix Menebees a hand with
the silver. He does work, that boy.”
“No boy who didn’t work would remain in my service,” said Uncle
Alfred simply, and, as Rose knew, quite truly.
They went downstairs, the old man to confer with Artie Millar in the
private pledge-office at the back of the shop, and Rose to put on an
apron, an old pair of gloves, and join Felix at his apparently endless
task of cleaning the stock of silver, plate, and brass.
She reflected joyously, as she took her place on a cane-bottomed
chair and smiled at the pallid Felix, astride a wooden stool:
“This is better than hanging about the hall at Squires, hearing Pug
snorting, and waiting for the next meal.”
“Chuck me over some of that stuff, Felix, will you? My, what a lot
you’ve done! I was late down, this morning.”
“I could always manage, Mrs. Aviolet,” the boy said shyly. “It’s very
good of you to do this, but there isn’t any need. The windows take a
lot of time, of course, but if I allow two hours for them and the
supports, it’s as much as I want. And then there’s practically all the
rest of the day for cleaning the stuff.”
“You do lots of other things as well, Felix—fetching the milk, for
one.”
“Oh, I enjoy that. It makes a break. Mrs. Aviolet, have you ever
wanted adventures?”
“Heaps of times,” said Rose heartily.
“So have I,” said Felix wistfully. “I often think what it’d be like, if I
went out as a cowboy, or something, to the Wild West, or even if I
went in for seeing life a bit in London, the way Mr. Millar does.”
He looked at Rose with a strange gleam in his pallid eyes.
“Have you ever read ‘Frank Belloment, the Gentleman Crook’? I don’t
suppose you have. I know ladies don’t care for that kind of reading,
but it’s great, really it is.”
“I’m fond of a good murder, myself,” Rose admitted. She had shared
with her mother, from a very early age, an impassioned interest in
the more sensational items of police-court news as reported in the
illustrated press.
“Belloment doesn’t go in for murders, only big jewel hauls, or
financial coups. As a matter of fact, the book makes out that this
Belloment, that I’m telling you about, he never took things from
poor people, but only from the rich, that have more than they want.
That’s why they call him the Gentleman Crook. And he goes into
Society, too, and that’s where he finds out about people’s jewellery.”
“Where is this book?” Rose demanded.
Felix produced from his pocket a paper volume. “There’s one comes
out every week. And sometimes they have a story about fellows
going out gold-digging, or convicts escaping from prison, and once
there was a boy ran away from a shop and went to sea, and I
couldn’t help thinking it might very well all be true. Didn’t Mr. Millar
go to sea once?”
“Yes, but I bet he doesn’t like talking about it,” said Rose shrewdly.
“He’s done well for himself, since those days.”
“I suppose so,” said Felix, but the lust for romance still lingered in
his pale face and whole attenuated person.
“Do you want to go abroad, Felix?”
“It’s the dream of my life,” Felix said earnestly.
“Where were you, before you came into the shop?”
“In an orphanage. I was brought up there. At one time, I had hopes
of making some interesting discovery regarding my birth, which was
irregular, if you’ll excuse me mentioning such a thing. But it
appeared that it was only too well known whose son I was, and
there was never any question of its being a foreign nobleman who
was responsible, or any one like that.”
Rose was breathless with entirely unfeigned interest.
“Then who was it?”
“A travelling salesman, who lodged at the house where my mother
was a servant-girl. He travelled in tombstones, I believe. It was
suitable, in a way, because she died, when I was born, at the Union.
She was only sixteen, and I believe he was turned out of the town
and never dared show his face there again.”
“Served him right! Then was Menebees your mother’s name?”
“That’s right, Mrs. Aviolet. And they had me christened Felix because
they’d come to the letter F, and Frank and Frederick, and the
common names like that, had already been given. I think I was in
luck there,” said the youth complacently.
“And how did you get out of the Union?”
“The people of the house where Mother’d been were very kind, and
the story got round in the town, and her having been so young and
all, and a good girl till this fellow came along, made people sorry,
and a subscription was got up. So I was sent to St. Olave’s
Orphanage, and brought up well. That’s where the old governor
found me, him being a director, and he wanted a boy to work in the
shop, and applied there, and I got sent. I always say I’m lucky,”
repeated Felix.
“I think it was Uncle Alfred who was lucky, if you ask me.”
Felix blushed with gratification. “I’m sure it’s very kind of you to say
so. And when I talk about going out to look for adventures, and
travelling, and the like, it’s only in the way of a day-dream, like, Mrs.
Aviolet, because I needn’t say I wouldn’t think of leaving the
governor, without he wanted me to go. But it’s a kind of diversion, to
pretend to myself that I’m off on the Long Trail, with nothing but my
gun and my right arm between me and death.”
“I know, Felix, fast enough. I’ve played that sort of game myself,”
Rose acknowledged.
“But everything you wanted, like that, would come true, I should
think!” Felix cried, looking at her with all his naïve admiration in his
face. “And you’ve seen the world and been to the East. I suppose
you often ‘hear the East a-calling’?”
“Not I,” said Mrs. Aviolet with emphasis. “Or if I did, I shouldn’t
listen. I’m glad I went, in a way, because it opens one’s eyes a bit,
but I don’t ever want to go back. Give me old London, and the smell
of the gas, every time.”
If Felix were slightly disillusioned by this candid admission, his
loyalty did not betray the fact.
He and Rose exchanged their views indefatigably over the silver
cleaning, and Rose frequently reflected that, for all the outrageous
extravagances of fancy so innocently laid bare by Felix, he was a
very much more interesting companion than her amiable,
unimaginative, standard-bound sister-in-law, Diana.
“The fact is,” she told herself, with her usual unsparing
determination that spades should be spades, “the fact is, this is the
kind of place where I fit in. Not beautiful houses in the country, with
everybody half asleep, and only waking up to drivel about the bulbs,
or the horses, or who so-and-so was before she married somebody
else’s first cousin’s sister’s uncle. The shop’s the place for me, right
enough, only I must say, I’d like to see a few more people.”
The company of Uncle Alfred’s frequenters was not, indeed,
exhilarating.
Artie Millar, whom Rose had once found attractive, now failed to
satisfy her taste, unconsciously trained to other standards. He had
grown fat, and was inclined to arrive in the mornings with a slightly
yellow appearance, and a muttered complaint aside to Felix
Menebees as to the “head” brought on by the avocations of the
previous night.
It did not add to Rose’s admiration that she intuitively knew Artie
Millar to be a thoroughly steady-going young man, of sober and
respectable tendencies, whose wildest excesses never led to his
arriving later than nine o’clock in the morning at the Ovington Street
shop.
The pastiness of his complexion, from which the youthful tan that
had captivated her fancy had long ago faded, she matter-of-factly
attributed to his dislike of exercise and to the lack of fresh air in the
shop.
Representatives of Foreign Missions occasionally called upon Uncle
Alfred, and after short and earnest conversations with him in the
upstairs sitting-room, usually departed, with subdued elation
discernible in the tones of their farewells. They generally left on the
table, or sometimes on the counter of the front shop, sodden-
looking leaflets that bore, beneath a title that Rose described to
herself generically as “The-Good-Work-in-Far-Timbuctoo,” an
illustration of a black-coated missionary affectionately embracing the
shoulders of a sable African, who was always suitably decked in a
little vest and a pair of shorts. These pamphlets, and The
Pawnbrokers’ Gazette, formed Uncle Alfred’s evening literature. From
time to time, he received a visit from some contemporary of his own,
but no one was ever asked to supper, although Mr. Smith permitted
Rose to institute the appearance of a tea-tray, with cups and
saucers, and a brew of very black, strong tea, at half-past nine every
evening. When there was a caller, Rose added a plate of biscuits of
the variety called “Fancy” by Uncle Alfred and “Squashed-fly” by his
niece.
Further than this, Mr. Smith’s ideas of hospitality did not go.
Rose was not without doubts of her own wisdom in suggesting a
visit from Lord Charlesbury. It never occurred to her to feel ashamed
of the shop, but she did experience much vicarious wrath and
disgust at the absence of hospitality that she considered her uncle
displayed in his entertainment of a guest.
“I should have thought, Uncle A., I must say, that we could rise to a
decent set-out of coffee, and I could quite well show the girl how to
bring it in.”
“How to bring it in!” ejaculated Mr. Smith. “There’s only one way of
carrying a tray, as far as I know, unless you want her to balance it
on her head like a heathen. I can see plainly that the pomps and
vanities of this wicked world are taking a hold on your mind, Rose.
‘Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and
discontent withal.’”
His cat-like eyes gleamed upon her, and he shook his finger.
“There is something particularly displeasing to the Lord about
display, Rose,” said Uncle Alfred, with his habitual assumption of
being his Creator’s mouthpiece.
“I wonder what He thinks of the shop-window, then!” retorted Rose,
with her tolerant, unmalicious tartness of repartee. “Well, Uncle A., if
you won’t have coffee—and I suppose you won’t have whisky——”
(“I am ashamed of you,” said Uncle Alfred parenthetically.)
“—we shall have to do the best we can with tea, but I’m going to
get some decent tea myself, and not that beastly black stuff that’s all
twigs, and strangers-coming-from-overseas, and goodness knows
what all.”
“If you choose to waste your money on tea, I cannot prevent it,”
complacently said Mr. Smith.
“I suppose the Lord’ll look the other way, if it’s me and not you,
that’s doing the display,” Rose observed, giggling.
It delighted her that Uncle Alfred should be obliged to pretend not to
have heard her, in order to avoid the necessity of finding a reply.
“There’s one thing, it’s a lovely room,” said Rose to herself. “Of
course the furniture isn’t like Squires, and never will be, but it’s good
of its kind—that I will say. The upholstery is good, and I like crimson
myself. That plant would do with a scrubbing, though.”
She pounced upon the aspidistra, and sent the little maid for soap
and water and an old tooth-brush.
“I’d like it to look nice, Gladys, because a friend of mine is coming
round this evening,” she explained.
They worked together cheerfully, and Gladys told Mrs. Aviolet all
about the baker’s young man, who was becoming ever so attentive.
Rose listened and ejaculated with an absorbed and impassioned
interest, which Gladys, though pleased and flattered, obviously
regarded as entirely natural. And Rose told herself that this was a
good deal better than trying to pump interesting details about the
engagement of Ford and Diana out of her mother-in-law.
“Shall you wear your white silk blouse with the ruffle, ’m, this
evening?” Gladys inquired shyly.
“Do you think it’s pretty? Prettier than my blue?”
“It’s more stylish, ’m, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps it is,” said Rose thoughtfully.
She went upstairs that evening, tried on both the blouses, gazed at
herself critically for a long while, rubbed some additional rouge into
her face, and smeared her mouth with lip-salve, and finally went
down to supper wearing the white blouse with the ruffle and her
best navy-blue skirt.
Uncle Alfred gazed at her sharply, but Millar and Felix Menebees
were both in the room and he said nothing.
As soon as supper was over Artie Millar went away and Felix retired
to the performance of some one of the innumerable menial tasks
that he always accepted as being part of his duty.
When the bell rang, Rose went half-way downstairs.
It was Felix who opened the door, Gladys having stipulated that she
should not be required to announce Lord Charlesbury by name, as
“titles upset her,” and Rose having indignantly retorted that a
Lordship couldn’t be introduced with the customary formula of “a
gentleman to see you.”
She had finally compromised with an undertaking from Felix
Menebees to open the door himself, and usher Lord Charlesbury as
far as the staircase, where Rose was to come and meet him.
She heard his deep, pleasant voice speaking to Felix, and a
tremulous monosyllable from Felix in return, and then she ran down
to meet him.
“I’m very glad to see you again,” said Lord Charlesbury, although
Rose was only too well aware that he could hardly see her at all, in
the absence of all but absolutely necessary illumination insisted upon
by Uncle Alfred. “How are you?”
“I’m quite well, thank you,” Rose replied, in the literal formula taught
her long ago by her mother. “Won’t you come up?”
Uncle Alfred was not in the sitting-room, to the relief of his niece,
and she and her visitor sat down each in a plush-covered armchair
upon either side of the small gas-fire. A beaded footstool, with curly
legs, and a fire-screen, its dingy white-wood panel bearing a
sprawled painting of yellow and pink roses, stood between them.
Rose looked at Charlesbury.
She had not seen him very often, but she had thought about him a
great deal, and felt that strange fear, which is common to all those
who have outgrown very early youth, lest the reality of a
remembered presence should prove disappointing. He smiled at her,
his grave, attractive smile.
“How’s your boy, and how are they all at Squires?”
“Ces is very well, and he likes Hurst all right. I saw your Hugh, when
I was down there last.”
“Did you? I’m hoping to go and see him myself, to-morrow. They tell
me he’s a born cricketer. Is Cecil keen on that?”
“No,” said Rose baldly, unable to think of any form of phraseology
that should soften the unpleasant admission. She felt instinctively
that Charlesbury would think Cecil’s lack a regrettable one.
“I daresay it’ll come later, or more probably football absorbs all his
energies, unless he hasn’t any to spare for lessons. Hugh is far too
one-idea’d. I hope the lads have made friends?”
It struck Rose, as she heard the question, that Cecil had no
particular friends amongst his school-fellows, and the thought
roused again the never deeply dormant anxiety that lay always in
her mind.
She made no answer, because she could not think of anything to
say, but before the silence had become embarrassing to her, Lord
Charlesbury said:
“What about yourself, Mrs. Aviolet? I’m delighted to hear from Ford
that there’s every chance of meeting you at Squires in the holidays.”
“Oh, yes, they always want Ces, and I shall be there part of the
time, anyway. But I’m really by way of looking out for some sort of a
job myself up here.”
“A job?”
“I haven’t got any money, except what Jim’s people allow me, and
I’ve had to come to an arrangement with my uncle here, but I’d like
to do something besides cleaning the silver in the shop,” said Rose.
“You are, actually, living here?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I see,” said Charlesbury reflectively.
He put up his single eyeglass and gazed round the room.
“Of course, it isn’t exactly like Squires, but I’ve never been keen on
the country, myself, and I like this much better.”
“You’re not lonely?”
“Dear me, no,” said Rose, surprised. “My Uncle Alfred is very good
company in his own way, provided you don’t pay too much attention
to him when he gets on the religious tack, and that boy that opened
the door to you in the shop, Felix Menebees, he’s as nice as can be,
and a great friend of mine. The other assistant is all right—Millar—
but not exciting. And I see Dr. Lucian, too, pretty often. You
remember him, at Squires?”
“The doctor at Squires? Oh, yes, I remember him quite well.”
There was nothing at all derogatory in Charlesbury’s tone, but
neither was there any enthusiasm.
Why, indeed, should there be, Rose inquired of herself, in
resentment at a slight feeling of disappointment.
“But do forgive me,” Charlesbury smiled at her frankly, “if I ask
whether you don’t sometimes long to find yourself in a—a more
congenial setting? For instance, we know that at Squires Lady
Aviolet is really rather lonely since Ford’s marriage, and would simply
love to have you.”
“Oh, no, she wouldn’t,” said Rose.
“Are you quite sure of that?”
“Quite. But, anyway, I don’t want to go back there, except when I
can’t help it, for the sake of being with Ces. I was bored stiff at
Squires. Surely you remember that,” said Rose naïvely.
“Yes?—well, I’m sorry. After all, that was some little while ago, and
perhaps I’d hoped that time—and distance—might have softened
your prejudice.”
Rose was beginning a vigorous protest at this description of her own
attitude towards Squires when Mr. Smith came into the room.
“Uncle A., this is Lord Charlesbury—my uncle, Mr. Smith,” said Rose,
stammering a little.
Uncle Alfred bowed, Lord Charlesbury stood up and held out his
hand, and they exchanged greetings.
“How d’you do,” said Lord Charlesbury.
“Good evening, my lord. I am very well, I thank you,” said Uncle
Alfred. “Sit down again, if you please. Am I intruding?”
“In your own house, Uncle A.? Whatever next, I wonder?” muttered
his niece. She pushed forward the old man’s chair and they all three
sat down. The three-cornered conversation that ensued was
remarkable neither for smoothness nor for spontaneity.
Charlesbury alone spoke with an effect of being at his ease, and
Rose uneasily suspected that this was rather the result of the habit
of good breeding, than from any natural affinity with his present
audience. Uncle Alfred said “my lord” a great many times, but kept a
wary and distrustful eye upon his guest, and from time to time
transferred his glance to Rose, as though reviewing the two in
conjunction.
They talked about politics, and Rose was silent, from ignorance of
the subject and from a complete lack of interest in it. They tried to
talk about Squires, and Uncle Alfred became Scriptural, and alluded
to the pomps and vanities of this world, whereat Lord Charlesbury
became strangely unresponsive.
It was a relief to Mrs. Aviolet when a prolonged clatter of china and
a timid knock outside the door heralded the entrance of the little
maid Gladys.
“Tea,” said Rose, and was shocked at the blatancy of her own
extreme relief at the interruption.
She poured out the tea, glad of an occupation, and with her eyes
dared Uncle Alfred to comment upon the unusual elegance of the
white fringed tea-cloth thrown over the tray, the best cups and
saucers, and a display of Osborne biscuits in place of the “Squashed-
flies.”
“Tea is less harmful to the nerves than coffee,” said Uncle Alfred
sententiously, “but women are far too much addicted to both.”
“You’re fond of a cup of tea yourself, Uncle. We always have it after
supper,” said Rose to Lord Charlesbury.
“It used to be usual everywhere. I can’t remember those days
myself, but I can quite well remember my grandfather telling about
the times when dinner was at five or six o’clock, and tea was
brought into the drawing-room afterwards.”
“Can you?” said Rose, inwardly furious at her own inanity.
“Rose, my dear, call Felix Menebees. A cup of tea will do him good,”
said Uncle Alfred blandly.
His niece turned startled eyes upon him. The suggestion was not
quite unprecedented, but it was very nearly so, and she had
certainly never contemplated its being made on the evening of Lord
Charlesbury’s visit.
A sense of reluctance was followed by angry remorse. Why on earth
shouldn’t she want Felix?
Rose got up, flung open the door and called down the stairs for Felix
in tones that lacked none of her habitual vigour.
Then she went back and poured out a fresh cup of tea, adding
carefully the three lumps of sugar that Felix liked, with her usual
precautions against allowing Uncle Alfred to perceive the
extravagance.
The conversation was actually a little easier when Felix, self-
conscious but not embarrassed, had joined them, seating himself
upon the extreme edge of a chair, and balancing his cup and saucer
between his knees.
Lord Charlesbury talked about America, and Felix at least asked
questions, whereas Uncle Alfred confined himself to ejaculating
comments, mostly of a disparaging nature.
“Uncle A.’s taken against him, that’s clear enough,” reflected Rose.
She held a high opinion of Uncle A.’s shrewdness, and the thought
depressed her.
She looked at Charlesbury, wondering whether he reciprocated the
pawnbroker’s lack of sympathy, and was forced to the conclusion
that he did. His manner was admirable, and his courtesy quite
unforced, but there was a certain bewilderment apparent beneath
his kindly suavity, and Rose felt sure that he would be profoundly
relieved when the evening came to an end.
“Well, we all bite off more than we can chew sometimes, I suppose,”
she thought to herself with gloomy philosophy, but it was not until
she was actually preceding Charlesbury down the stairs to the front
door that it occurred to her to apply to him, as well as to herself, her
favourite descriptive idiom.
Had Charlesbury, likewise, bitten off more than he could chew? It
was a great deal more likely that he was now, perhaps for the first
time, cautiously eyeing the size of the projected bite before
attempting it.
“Won’t you let me come and take you out to dinner one night?” he
asked as they parted.
“I don’t know,” said Rose in a worried way. She was quite incapable
of coquetry, and her reply was prompted by sheerest indecision.
“Why not?” asked Charlesbury, smiling.
“Oh, lots of reasons. I haven’t got a frock, for one thing. Good-
night,” said Rose abruptly.
He did not pursue the question of his invitation, but said good-night
to her gently and cordially.
Rose went upstairs again, strangely inclined to burst into tears, and
very angry with herself for the inclination.
She bounced into the sitting-room, with a movement habitual to the
late Mrs. Smith.
Uncle Alfred was reading The Pawnbrokers’ Gazette and Felix was
tidily replacing the cups upon the tea-tray.
Rose helped him in silence, glancing out of the corners of her eyes
at the imperturbable Mr. Smith, and affecting unconcern by
humming a little tune.
When Felix had departed downstairs with the tray, Rose observed in
a detached tone of voice, with her head rather upon one side:
“Well, not one of our successes, on the whole, was it? Of course,
Uncle A., I shouldn’t think of saying a word to you, but at the same
time——”
“That will do, Rose. Say nothing in a hurry. Remember what James
has written on the subject of bridling that unruly member, the
tongue, and hold your peace. I have only one piece of advice for
you, my girl: Ask yourself whether you want to spend the rest of
your life in your natural element, or out of it?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Rose declared, knowing only too
well.
“I shan’t bear you a grudge, if you take the chance of bettering
yourself, and it might be a very good thing for your boy. But it’ll be
the parting of the ways for you and me, and for you and any other
friends you may have in your own walk of life; so if you go into it,
you must go into it with your eyes open, that’s all. That titled friend
of yours is all very well—I haven’t a word to say against him—but
you mark my words, Rose, he’s not a mixer, and he never will be.
Now if it was that doctor friend of yours, it would be another thing
altogether——”
“Oh,” Rose became suddenly reflective.
“Is Dr. Lucian what you’d call a good mixer, Uncle?”
“Certainly. Both by nature and in consequence of his profession. And
though I’m not saying you’d not be doing very well for yourself in
marrying him, it wouldn’t be the same thing as taking upon yourself
the responsibilities of joining up with titled folk, Rose.”
“Jim was Lord Charlesbury’s class, you know.”
“I do know, indeed. And a deplorable business you and he made of
your marriage, from all accounts. His death was a merciful release
for you.”
“Well, he was a bad lot,” Rose pointed out, without acrimony.
“And this Lord Charlesbury is not. But you have many times
complained to me of your inability to feel at home with the Aviolets
and their friends, and your disinclination for their mode of life. Ask
yourself, therefore, whether you would find it any easier to do
yourself credit as the wife of Lord Charlesbury, or any other lord?”
Rose did indeed ask herself this question in the days that ensued.
She saw Lord Charlesbury again, a few days later, when he asked
her to lunch with him at a very quiet little restaurant, of which Rose
had never heard before, in a quarter of London which she had
always supposed to be an unfashionable one. On that occasion he
made no reference whatever to his visit to Ovington Street, but
again suggested indirectly that Mrs. Aviolet should seek more
congenial surroundings for herself.
“But you don’t understand,” said Rose at last. “It’s at Squires, and
places like that, that I’m such a fish out of water. The shop, and all
that, is my home.”
She looked at him as she spoke, and a horrible sense of finality
came over her, although not a muscle of his face had altered.
“I’ve got a headache,” said Rose abruptly. “I’m going home.”
He took her back to Ovington Street.
Rose had neither the training nor the temperament conducive to
self-command. In the taxi, to her own unutterable dismay, she
began to cry.
“It is my headache,” she lied desperately, the tears streaming down
her face. “I often get like this—the pain is dreadful!”
“I’m so sorry,” said Charlesbury. His face and his voice alike showed
a deep concern.
At the door he looked at her rather wistfully, holding her hand in
farewell. “Are you quite, quite certain that you don’t need a change
—that you’re all right here?”
Rose nodded.
Her gaze took in the mean little street and the door leading into the
dark shop, and the angle of the wall which discreetly hid the three
golden balls that protruded behind.
Rose Aviolet mopped at her wet eyes with a screwed-up
handkerchief and then spoke, clearly enough in spite of the choke in
her voice.
“I’m quite, quite certain that this is the right place for me, except
just when I’ve got to be at Squires for the sake of Ces. Uncle Alfred
is my relation, and him and me understand one another all right. It
was me and the Aviolets that didn’t. And it would always be the
same, with anybody of their sort, and anybody of mine.”
Felix Menebees opened the door.
“Good-bye,” said Rose, and went into the shop.

Rose Aviolet shed no more tears over her abortive romance. “No use
crying over spilt milk” had been a favourite aphorism of Mrs. Smith’s,
and it was one which had always recommended itself to Rose.
She did not allow Uncle Alfred any opportunity of remarking that his
advice had been taken, but wrote to Dr. Lucian with a request for
work.
“And it seems fair to tell you that what I once hinted about myself
won’t ever come off now. And I’m not going to marry anybody ever.
I’ve got enough to do thinking about Ces, and if there’s any spare
time, I can put it in over the job you’re going to get me.”
He found her a job, in connection with a large children’s hospital,
and after a few weeks, Rose was invited to occupy a room there.
“I’ll do it,” she decided; “it’s better than Squires, and I’ve got to
make some sort of a life for myself. And it’s not long till the holidays
anyway.”
At the thought of Cecil her heart lightened again.
“Hurst does seem to be doing him good,” she thought. “It was worth
meeting Lord Charlesbury, after all, if only because he told me about
Hurst for Cecil.”
 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:

‘All night long, in a dream untroubled of hope

He brooded, clasping his knees.’

‘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