E. M. Delafield

“ Sir Thomas violently banged the table with his open hand, making his wife start.
“That’s what you’ve got to explain, you boy, you. That senseless, idiotic game of pretence ... making a fool of yourself——”
“Hush, Thomas,” pleaded Lady Aviolet, as his voice rose almost to a shout.
Ford’s was in marked contrast, as he interposed. “You were always a braggart, Cecil, even as a small boy. I remember the imaginary stories about yourself that you used to tell, by way of boasting. It’s a common failing, of course, but most people outgrow it after seven or eight years old.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ You lads are all the same—prating of Death and Glory before you’ve learnt how to hold a rifle.”
Cecil turned his head and glanced at Ford. There was neither resentment nor surprise in his look, but cowed, bewildered misery, like that of a tortured animal.
Lucian set his teeth.
“There’s no question of glory,” said Sir Thomas heavily. “If you do enlist, the circumstances are not such that we need boast about it.”
“If!” cried Rose. “He’d have gone anyway. I know that.”
“That’s neither here nor there, my dear, is it?” said Lady Aviolet mildly. ”

“ Rose, persisting in a habit that was silently, but intensely, disapproved of by Miss Wade, and entering the nursery unexpectedly, discovered the governess in fits of spasmodic laughter before a paper that she held in her hand.
Cecil, his back turned to her, appeared to be absorbed in gazing out of the window. He did not turn round at his mother’s entrance. Rose’s intuition, far more developed than her reasoning powers, warned her of tension in the atmosphere. ”

“ I’m not angry with Ford for thinking that Ces should go to school. It’s quite natural he should think so, I suppose. He’s only mixed with two kinds of people all his life—those who go to public schools and those who go to the national schools. He evidently doesn’t know anything about the in-between people. That’s not his fault. But what puts my monkey up, is him pretending to think that I’m a fool; that I want to keep Cecil a molly-coddle, just for the sake of having him tied to my apron-strings. He’s playing up to old Sir Thomas and Lady Aviolet, that’s all, because they’re so stupid. ”

“ He could see himself as a fine fellow, then—the little self that grovelled within him from very weakness. And in both of them, both Ford and Cecil, it was the same taint of corruption, the decadence that came from the Aviolets. Not from you, my dear. You must never think that any more. You’re alive, as the Aviolet stock can never be alive again, and it’s what you’ve given to your boy that’s going to pull him through.”
She was crying again, passionately, and he gripped both her hands and held them tightly in his.
“Never give up hope, Rose. Whatever happens, I believe his soul will come through. ”

“ Lord Charlesbury carefully displaced his eyeglass before speaking, polished it with a silk handkerchief, and then replaced it.
“As I am to have the pleasure of your friendship, will you allow me to say something very frankly?”
“Yes,” said Rose, wide-eyed.
“I want you to let me have the honour of being the only person to whom you express yourself so very outspokenly about people whom you don’t like. It would be—well, at least unwise, to give your opinion of Diana Grierson-Amberly in quite those words, to someone who might very possibly resent them. ”

“ He, like Rose, chose to address Ford Aviolet, as the only possible interpreter between Rose’s vehemence and the unimaginative, unruffled obtuseness of the old people.
“As I understand it, Mrs. Aviolet’s contention is that her boy, individually, is unsuited for the system of education that the average English boy profits by. Is there no possible alternative?”
His glance involuntarily shifted, almost pleadingly, to Lady Aviolet.
“Do you think little Cecil delicate?” she said in a surprised way. “Some boys are too delicate for school-life, but it always seems such a pity.” ”

“ I feel sure,” said Uncle Alfred, with a doubting eye fixed upon his niece, “I feel certain that you appreciate your good fortune to the full. And I am equally sure, my dear niece, if you will allow an old man to speak a word in season, that you will remember from Whom all blessings flow. Take no credit unto yourself for those things which are Cæsar’s. And remember that I am prepared to enter into an arrangement with you, Rose, at any time, should you wish to return here when your boy has gone to school.” ”

“ Lucian nodded.
“Is little Cecil afraid of being despised?”
“Well, of course he is. Who isn’t, I should like to know?”
The doctor answered her indignant inquiry as though she had meant it literally.
“The very obtuse are not, nor the essentially self-satisfied. Neither, I think, are the absolutely sincere—but then, they are seldom the very young. It is the weak, and the sensitive, and those who are unsure of themselves, who are afraid of the contempt of their mental inferiors. And so they degrade themselves by lying.”
He spoke so simply and earnestly that the protest died away on Rose’s lips. ”

“ Ford murmured. “Are you really not aware, Rose, that in law a child has only one parent—its father? If Jim were alive, he would have, strictly speaking, the right to take Cecil away from you altogether, if he pleased. I’m not for an instant suggesting that he would have thought of such a thing—naturally—but I see you altogether fail to realize your position. It has been ruled, very wisely, I think, that the father of a child can appoint a guardian to act with the surviving parent, after his own death. Now a mother has no such power. ”

“ She nodded. “Ford knows that he doesn’t care about anything in the world one quarter as much as I care about Cecil’s little finger. And I think he wants to care—he wants to come alive.”
“Won’t Diana Grierson-Amberly help him to come alive, now?”
Rose looked at him, as though to see if he were really in earnest, and then uttered a derisive laugh.
“He’ll go down among the dead men for ever and ever now,” she asserted sweepingly. “But they’ll have Aviolet babies, and one of them will cut out my Cecil, thank goodness, and carry on the Squires traditions.” ”

“ There was just that suggestion of a trap for inaccuracy in her tone that always scared Cecil, and Rose hastily answered for him.
“Only once, wasn’t it, Cecil?”
“Then why does he say ‘always’?” said Lady Aviolet.
She had long ago told Rose that they must be very particular never to let any mis-statement from Cecil pass unchallenged. It was their one hope, she explained, of inculcating the habit of truthfulness. Cecil now looked confused and alarmed, and as his grandmother fixed her eyes upon him severely he said: “I meant once, Grandmama.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To my mind, a fine Englishman is the finest man in the world.”
As he spoke, he threw back his slender shoulders in a gesture that was evidently an unconscious one. It struck Lucian rather strangely, as though it were the almost automatic expression of a desire for reassurance.
It was as if Ford was trying to impress Ford with his own claim to be a “fine Englishman.”
“I’m sorry if I sound—er—disgustingly snobbish, but the fact remains that Rose is entirely unfitted, by birth and education, to bring up my father’s grandson. You’ve seen for yourself what she’s like.” ”

“ I shall not consider that my responsibility really begins until he is of school age.”
“No,” said Rose slowly.
“You will find my mother a little bit—prejudiced, shall we say?—along certain lines of her own, but otherwise you will have no difficulty in making your own arrangements regarding Cecil. I take it you are in favour of a good nursery governess?”
“Oh, I suppose so. It all sounds rather rot to me, you know,” she said ungraciously. “It seems so silly to pay another woman to take care of him, when his own mother has nothing else on earth to do. I could teach him myself, really.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Irregularity is so unsettling to a child, too. I hope you will be unselfish enough to leave Cecil here, Rose, while you pay your visit.”
Lady Aviolet fixed her pale eyes upon Rose as she spoke, and they expressed melancholy, in the very slight degree in which their flaccid shallows ever expressed anything.
“I am Cecil’s grandmother, my dear, and so I am going to take upon myself to tell you that you are a very selfish mother to the boy. I see that you’re very fond of him—I quite see that—but you seem to have so little idea of the tremendous sacrifices that motherhood demands. ”

“ Sir Thomas said curtly.
It struck Rose that all of them unconsciously relied upon their own powers of observation to tell them what effect the experiment in discipline had had upon Cecil.
Hardly aware of the elementary psychological instinct that prompted her, Rose trusted neither to their perceptions nor to her own. She tried to find out from the little boy, himself, what their punishment had meant to him.
“You won’t let them say ever again that you tell stories, will you, darling? If one does slip out, come and tell Mother, and I promise no one shall be angry or punish you. ”

“ But the last words that were wholly intelligible Uncle Alfred spoke with his unfaltering gaze fixed upon Rose.
“You’ll find I’ve remembered you. But you can’t touch the capital.” His tone was triumphant. “I’ve done well, with the Lord’s help, and a good business training. There’s nothing like sound investments to build upon—and unless the Lord build the house, how shall it stand?” ”

“ Cecil and Miss Wade went away into the garden, and Rose looked after them with longing eyes, wishing that she could go and play with the little boy, and yet staunch to her resolution that “they” should have their own way in all the things that didn’t matter. ”

“ Rose’s dilated eyes were fixed upon her brother-in-law, and Lucian made one movement forward.
He felt a rush of relief when the tension snapped with a torrent of words, hurled straight at Ford Aviolet.
“You snob—you prig! You could help me—and you won’t. You only care that your nephew should do what every other boy does—so that he shall turn out a little gentleman, able to play games, and talk the right slang, and get the rotten public-school point of view. You don’t care what he’s like, so long as he never gets found out. ”

“ As soon as they had rallied their perceptions—and none of them, the doctor saw, except Ford Aviolet, did so within the first second or two of amazement—the atmosphere became electric as though charged with the force that lay behind Rose’s trenchant syllables. ”

“ Rose admitted grudgingly. “It feels so safe, after the scrambling way that poor Jim and I lived. I like to see Ces having roast chicken, and rice puddings, and all that good milk to drink—as much as ever he wants it. And, of course, I like the comforts and luxuries for myself. Why, I’d never even seen a room like the room I’ve got there—not even at big hotels. But I think the life’s awful, all the same—and the people.” ”