“What is the trouble?” said Sir Roderick.
“Must it come so soon?” said Oliver. “Must it come at all? Why talk of Christmas as the season of childhood, and then forget it?”
“Oliver, if only it need not come! If only the choice were ours!”
“We all have our ordinary, human choice,” said Juliet.
“What is it all about?” said Maria. “I have heard nothing.”
“No?” said Lesbia, in gentle question, pausing as if this shed a certain light. “No? I could wish that you had, Maria, and not only because it would save myself.”
“Give us the plain tale, Lesbia,” said Sir Roderick. “Tell it simply and openly, as anyone else would tell it. Tell us the truth, and the whole truth, but also tell us nothing but the truth. Do not spare us and do not indulge yourself.”
The twofold injunction did its work, and Lesbia did neither of these things. Silence succeeded her account and Lucius’s confirmation of it, and a summons to the children followed at once. The parents could brook no delay in hearing their version of the matter, and their support or denial of Lesbia’s. They hoped for a refutation of it, hoped it too much to face the frailty of the chance.
Lesbia raised her hand.
“Stay, Maria. Do you know the questions you will ask, the answers you expect? We must not plan answers to our questions. That is not our part. The part of the questioner is to accept the replies.”
“Could you really bear to hear them?” said Oliver.
“We can have neither questions nor answers until the people concerned are here,” said Sir Roderick.
“People concerned!” said Juliet. “It seems such a callous way to refer to the young.”
“They will have to face the tribunal of seven grown people. There is no help for it.”
“Of course there is,” said Oliver. “We can all do what we can. I withdraw from the tribunal, and so do Aunt Juliet and Grandpa.”
“I am not part of it,” said Maria. “I am simply their mother.”
“And I am their father. But certain things are binding on me as that. They must face their ordeal. They cannot have their chance without it.”
“Then I am the tribunal,” said Lesbia. “I will not disclaim the part. It may be mine.”
“So a thing can be said between a smile and a sigh,” said Oliver.
“It was nearer to the sigh, Oliver,” said Lesbia, coming nearer even to it.
“I may not withdraw,” said Lucius. “My place is with Lesbia.”
“Thank you, Lucius.”
“I cannot bear the spectacle of wasted nobility,” said Oliver. “I would so much rather not see it at all. Indeed, I would always rather be spared the sight. I only admire it when it is hidden.”
“Do not be hard on us, Oliver,” said Lesbia. “We have but a thankless part.”
“When people are thanked too little, they ought to pause and think.”
“And you think we have not done so, Oliver?”
Miss Petticott led the way into the room, unaware that the summons did not include herself, and advanced at once to Lesbia.
“How are you, Miss Firebrace? There is a closer bond than ever between us, now that we actually share a pupil.”
“How do you do, Miss Petticott?” said Lesbia, simply returning the handshake.
Miss Petticott cast her eyes over her face. The children came forward as though hardly conscious what they did. The parents’ eyes sought their faces, and Sir Roderick’s fell.
“Tell the tale again, Lesbia, and we will see if the children corroborate it.”
“No, I do not think I will ‘tell the tale again’, Roderick,” said Lesbia, just moving her lips. “I did not know that I had told a tale. What I said, remains. It does not need repeating, certainly not corroboration.”
“But the children did not hear it.”
“No. We were able to spare them that. But they could have told it themselves. I hoped to hear they had done so.”
“I wonder if you did. Your own account had been prepared, and one from them would have forestalled it. It would have rendered your effort meaningless.”
“Yes, it had been prepared, Roderick. It told the truth in the fewest words, with the least possible hurt in them. I had given thought to it. It is the last thing I wish to deny. I should not approach the matter in a careless spirit, or claim to do so. It would seem to me a strange claim.”
“Have you said ‘how-do-you-do’ to the guests?” said Maria to the children, in an empty tone.
“How do you do, Clemence? How do you do, Sefton?” said Lesbia, shaking hands with them in turn.
No one else offered to do the same, and the children approached no one. Everything seemed to be centred in Lesbia, and Sir Roderick and Maria appeared to accept the view. Sefton gave a glance at Lucius, who stood aloof.
“Now let the children tell the tale in their own words,” said Sir Roderick, not shaken in his own conception.
“No, pray do not,” said Oliver. “No one could bear it, and naturally they could not. And we must not see people as culprits, and then expect them to rise to the heights.”
Lesbia looked at her nephew, and then gravely bowed her head.
“Were you going just to say nothing about it, Clemence?” said Maria.
“Well, we knew the people from the schools were coming, and that it would be on the reports. It was no good to say anything.”
“So you talked about it to each other?”
“Yes, we did that.”
Lesbia drew the reports from her bag, and held them in her hand, as though rendering them available for anyone concerned, and in a moment passed them smoothly to Miss Petticott.
“Miss Petticott may see them, Maria?” she said, in incidental question. “There are things that might interest her. The one thing is not the whole.”
Miss Petticott looked at them uncertainly, and Mr. Firebrace intercepted them, put on his glasses and scrutinised them.
“It reminds me of my young days. How the old generation passeth away, and the new generation cometh!”
“Did you cheat?” said Oliver.
“Why, yes, my boy. We could not have managed without it. Everything was in Latin and Greek, you know. And it was not thought so much of in those days, not taken so hard. And it was the masters we were outwitting, not each other.”
“Did you do it, Oliver?” said Maria, at once.
“Maria, I wish I could tell you that I did. But I did not. There was no need. You see, I had no mother. But I have a word of comfort for you. I have met a downfall.”
“What was your trouble?” said his father.
“I feel guilty in drawing attention from the children’s trouble to my own. I made a conspicuous friendship.”
“With a boy?”
“No, no, Father. You and Grandpa have your own knowledge of life; no doubt you have gained it; but there is no need to drag it in. Only with another master.”
“The young man, Oliver Spode?” said Mr. Firebrace.
“It sounds like the Bible and goes on sounding like it. The only son of his mother, and she is a widow.”
“Did your friendship attract attention?” said Sir Roderick.
“I think only that of Uncle Lucius.”
“I was afraid it might do so,” said the latter, “and lead to unfounded suggestions. I had no personal uneasiness.”
“How much less well you think of other people than of yourself!” said Oliver. “I suppose that is a tribute to anyone.”
“What did you mean by saying you had no mother?” said Maria. “What difference did that make?”
“Well, no one cared whether I was a success or not.”
“So I am the culprit. I see that the guilt is mine, and I am glad to see it. You see it too, Oliver, and I see you are glad, though I do not know your reason.”
“It is the same as yours. We are glad that no helpless person is cast for the part. We see that it is good.”
Sefton threw hi
mself into his mother’s arms and broke into weeping. She held him close and looked at Lesbia over his head. Sir Roderick beckoned to Clemence, and drew her on to the sofa at his side.
“They are ours, Maria. They owe us life, and therefore we owe them everything. Their sins and sorrows are ours. Who else are the authors of them?”
Clemence leant against her father and sank into tears, and he kept his arm about her.
“So it is all true,” said Juliet, “all that we have tried to disprove. A mother does love her erring children best, and it seems that a father does too, though no one has thought about it. We may be the first people to see an instance. And men do not have to hide their feelings, and mothers are not the last people to bring up their own children, and there is no hostility between fathers and sons, and home life is best. And keeping a school is a thing to be ashamed of. Not that people have ever thought it anything else, but their reasons were not the right ones. Schoolkeepers should be despised on quite different grounds, or anyhow on some extra ones. And cynicism has no place in life, though it will make conversation very difficult. No one will be able to be clever.”
“I think someone will be able to be,” said Lesbia, laying a hand on her sister’s arm.
“How was it? Why was it?” said Maria. “Have I urged them too much, asked more of them than they could do? Were they forced to it to satisfy me? But they knew I would rather they did nothing than sink to this.”
“But you were not prepared for them to do nothing,” said Oliver.
“But had I any reason to be? Had I any ground for thinking of them in that way? Look at their heads; look at their faces. What would any mother have thought?”
“What you did, Maria,” said Lesbia, gently. “And she would have been right in thinking it. Your children have good abilities, in some ways high ones. There was no reason for them to hide their talents in the earth, or for you to wish them to do so.”
“Oh, I should have been so pleased, so proud. If only it had not been for this! Indeed, I was pleased and proud, when I heard of their first success.”
“We went too far,” said Sir Roderick, identifying himself with his wife. “That was our mistake. We urged them beyond their bounds, and they could not cross them of themselves. We forgot their lonely position; we forgot their childhood.”
Maria was silent, facing the accusation in the only form it would be made.
“And so they looked to higher aid,” said Juliet. “Well, it was lower aid, I suppose. They looked to aid and it failed them; and that was hard on them in a school, which is a place designed to give aid. But I am glad they gave Maria pleasure. They had their reward.”
“They are getting it, poor children!” said Sir Roderick.
There was a pause.
“I am sorry, Miss Petticott,” said Lesbia, turning and putting a hand on Miss Petticott’s arm. “You will let me say it.”
“It is a great shock and trouble to me, Miss Firebrace. I was quite unprepared. There has never been anything of the kind in all the years I have taught them. It is strange that a new environment should bring about such a change.”
“It would be strange,” said Lesbia, allowing the faint smile to reach her lips. “But a new environment does not cause essential change. It can only reveal or release something that is there. Or we will say something that has grown somehow out of the earlier experience.”
“Shall we say that, Father?” said Oliver.
“The new environment supplied the conditions that led to the change,” said Sir Roderick. “That and an undue pressure from home, which we acknowledge. The fact that the result was the same with them both, shows that it came from something outside.”
“You do not allow for a possible likeness between them, arising from the same blood and the same upbringing?” said Lesbia. “How do you explain the tact that no other pupil in either school has done the same?”
“I do not explain it. It cannot be a fact.”
“Neither can it,” said Mr. Firebrace. “But do not lose hold on yourself, my boy.”
“Actually, Roderick it is very rare,” said Lesbia.
“What is the truth, Lucius?” said Sir Roderick, hardly attending to Mr. Firebrace’s injunction.
“Well, ‘rare’ is scarcely the word in a general sense. But in a case of a sustained course like this, I am afraid it is.”
“Poor little boy!” said Maria.
Her husband held Clemence closer to his side, in lieu of voicing a similar sentiment.
“It is clear that the schools exercised a disruptive influence.”
“Honestly, Roderick, we considered seriously whether we could keep the children in them,” said Lesbia.
“And came to the conclusion that you could. I have considered equally seriously, and come to the conclusion that I cannot.”
“Why have so much honesty, my dear?” said Mr. Firebrace to his daughter. “It is not always the best policy. You must have found that.”
“Oh, Roderick, Roderick,” said Lesbia, shaking her head and seeming just to avoid amusement. “Will anything do for an excuse to indulge yourself?”
“This will do well enough. When I did the opposite thing, we see what came of it. And when two innocent children stumble and fall on the same path, it shows that it is too rough for them, and that it is wise to guide them to another.”
“Then they are of weaker stuff than the other children.”
“It has emerged that they are of different stuff.”
“Roderick, it is not an occasion for pride.”
“I was feeling that it was,” said Juliet.
“I have felt it all the time,” said Oliver.
There was a pause.
“You would not like them to live it down?” said Lesbia, just raising her eyes. “You have not that amount of respect—or we will say that kind of respect—for them?”
“Parents have too little respect for their children, just as the children have too much for the parents,” said Sir Roderick, stating the belief as it came to him. “But I have a father’s love for them, and that can be my guide. I could not have a better.”
“And an ordinary human love for yourself, Roderick?”
“Well, that is to say I am an ordinary human being.”
“But surely you would not say that,” said Oliver.
Sir Roderick was silent, finding that his mood of the moment did prevent his doing so.
“So it is settled that Clemence is not to return to us, Maria?” said Lesbia, making a movement of rising from her seat. “Because, if so, I must telegraph that there is a vacancy.”
“If you will draft the telegram, it will be taken for you,” said Sir Roderick.
Lesbia disengaged her skirt from her chair, and went to the door, thanking Oliver for opening it. As though at a sign, Maria turned to her children, and as though at another, Juliet followed her sister, and was followed by her husband, father and nephew.
“It seems pitiless,” said Oliver, as they gained the hall. “But they had better strike while the iron is hot, if I say what I mean. A scene in cold blood leads to the worst results, and as the blood always gets hot in the course of it, it leads to everything else as well.”
The door opened and Miss Petticott broke into the hall, suddenly aware that her presence was preventing the family solitude.
“So you are like the rest of us,” said Mr. Firebrace. “You can bear things better if you do not see them.”
“I am in such distress, Mr. Firebrace, that I hardly know what I am doing,” said Miss Petticott, smoothing her hair, as if she felt it ought to be dishevelled.
“Come along, my boy,” said Mr. Firebrace to his grandson. “The children have their years to forget the scene, and the same cannot be said of me. So I will not concern myself with it.”
“I shall not be myself until it is over,” said Oliver. “It shows what a feeling heart can beat under a polished exterior.”
“No one would be more ashamed of a rugged one,” said L
esbia, smiling at him in disregard of her own preoccupations.
“No one indeed. And it is natural for the better heart to result in the better exterior, though no one has thought of their going together. You are looking at the door, Aunt Lesbia. You are thinking what a door may hide. I wish I dared to think of it.”
“The judges and the culprits are facing each other,” said Lesbia, with a sigh.
“I dare to think of that. But the parents and children are doing so.”
This was the case, and continued to be so after the door had closed. Clemence afterwards remembered the things that had passed through her mind in those moments. It was almost a relief when Maria spoke. The extreme moment had come, must soon be actually past.
“Now, Clemence, tell me it all from the beginning. We took your part before outsiders. We are your parents, and owe you our help in any kind of need. But we do not know how to face such a thing, hardly how to listen to it.”
“I expect they wish that was the case,” said Sir Roderick, tightening his arm round his daughter. “And I think we have done our listening. I do not expect that Lesbia left out anything.”
“There was nothing more than she said,” said Clemence.
“And surely it is enough,” said her mother. “How did you come to do what you did? You had been taught the difference between right and wrong. You could not have thought there was any meaning in a false success. You could not have taken any satisfaction in it.”
“We thought you would be pleased. We did not know you would ever come to know the truth.”
“The truth! The thing I have taught you comes first in life! What mistake have I made? Would you have been better if you had had another mother?”
Maria seemed to hear her own words, and to be seeking an answer to them from herself.
“They would in a sense,” said Sir Roderick. “They would not have been urged to a point beyond their scope, and forced to things not natural to them. That is what it was. That was your—that was our mistake.”
“But I thought they were children above the average, and would naturally go beyond the others.”
“My dear, good wife, there you are again! We must accept what they do, not plan it ourselves beforehand. That is how the trouble came.”
Two Worlds and Their Ways Page 20