THE ATONEMENT OF RUPERT
‘I do wonder what has happened,’ Charlotte whispered. ‘I suppose the
Murdstone man was coming to tell Rupert he had been spell-changed into
being nice now. And he must have met Rupert on the way.’
‘But he could have said that in the road and then gone home. There must
be some reason for his coming home with Rupert. He can’t,’ said Charles
hopefully, ‘be going to tell _us_ that he’s changed? That would be
ripping.’
‘I expect he’s telling the Uncle,’ said Caroline. ‘When the wicked
Magician takes off his spell and the wicked Prince turns good, he
always tells everybody at once.’
‘Then he’ll come and tell _us_,’ said Charles. ‘We’re part of
everybody, the same as grown-up people are.’
The three C.’s had come slowly back to the house, and, seeing no sign
of Rupert and the changed Murdstone man, had, with great tact, chiefly
Caroline’s, refrained from going in search of Rupert or of information.
They had just shut themselves into the dining-room, and waited. For
it was quite plain that something more must happen. The once-hated
Murdstone man could not just come to the house and go away again and
the matter end there. But waiting is tiresome work, however proud you
may be feeling of your tact and delicacy, and you are so interested and
anxious that it is idle even to pretend to read. The three C.’s were
very glad indeed when at last they heard footsteps in the hall, and
voices.
‘Now!’ said Caroline. ‘Now they’re coming. We’ll be most awfully nice
to him, won’t we. Now he’s sorry and he’s owned up.’
‘Of course,’ said Charles. ‘Do you think I could ask him to let me have
the wax image of him to keep in memorio?’
‘No,’ said Caroline, ‘of course you couldn’t. Hush! for goodness’ sake,
hush!’
But there seemed to be no urgent need for hushing. The footsteps and
the voices went past the dining-room towards the front door, which
was at the side, as you know. No one listened, yet no one could help
hearing, through the open window, the parting words of Rupert and the
Murdstone man:
‘I’ll do it now. That’ll be the last. Thank you, sir. Good-bye!’
Then came the sound of retreating boots on gravel. The front door
banged, and next moment Rupert came in. His eyes were very bright and
his face very pale. He came in, shut the door, leaned against it, and
seemed to swallow nothing, twice. Then he said, looking straight in
front of him, and Charlotte noticed that his hands were clenched:
‘Look here, I’ve got something to tell you. I don’t suppose you’ll want
to speak to me again after it.’
‘Yes, we shall,’ said Charles, ‘whatever it is.’
Rupert took no notice. He went on, after a moment’s silence:
‘I told a lie about Mr. Macpherson, a beastly lie. He didn’t hit me
like I said he did. I didn’t mean to say it, I just said it, and then I
couldn’t take it back. I’ve been most awfully wretched. That’s all.’
‘But you’ve owned up now,’ was the only comforting thing even Caroline
could think of in that terrible moment. Charles, as pale as Rupert,
with his eyes quite round, said:
‘You _couldn’t_ have!’
Charlotte said nothing.
‘I’d like you to understand,’ said Rupert miserably, ‘before I go away.’
‘Go away?’ said Charlotte quite as miserably. ‘Where?’
‘Back to Mr. Macpherson, of course. Your uncle won’t keep me after
this.’
‘Did he say so?’
‘No, he said I was to come back to him when I’d taken Mr. Macpherson
to the door. But I feel I must tell you first, in case he sends me off
right away.’
‘Oh, Rupert,’ said Caroline, ‘I _am_ so sorry!’ And then she did
something rather heroic. She saw that Rupert wanted to say more, wanted
it desperately, and that he could not possibly say it to all three of
them together, though he could have told it to one of them, either to
her or to Charlotte, if they had been alone. So Caroline got up and
said:
‘Charles, come outside. I want to say something’; and when she got him
outside the door, ‘come out,’ she said earnestly. ‘Yes, you shall.
Rupert doesn’t want the lot of us. Let him talk to Charlotte. He can’t
stand a crowd.’
‘Isn’t it dreadful,’ said Charles in very shocked tones, ‘Rupert
turning out a liar like this?’
‘Oh, _don’t_,’ said Caroline hotly; ‘it must have been awful for him,
all this time. And now he’s sorry and he’s owned up. We’ve got to try
and forget about it. Let’s talk about something else.’
But it was very difficult to talk about something else.
Rupert, left with Charlotte, saw the others go past the window.
‘I wanted to tell you before,’ he said; ‘that day when you talked about
being disagreeable. Only I couldn’t.’
‘Dear old Rupert!’ said Charlotte. ‘I’m so jolly glad you’ve got rid of
it. _That_ was the black dog. I knew there was something. Do tell me,
old chap, unless you’d rather not. The others are off down the avenue.’
Rupert left the door and came to the table, and, half-sitting on it,
with his face turned away, and twisting the table-cloth into pleats, he
said:
‘You know I always thought I was going to be an extra honourable sort
of chap. Father used to say things. I never did anything like it
before. You see I was awfully sick at having to go with Mr. Macpherson
at all. He treated me as if I was a baby. At least that’s what I
thought. He says now he meant to be kind and he thought I was younger
than I am. And the bread and milk. Everything else I told you was true
except hitting me. And he did say there were ways of dealing with sulky
boys. And I decided I would run away. And I hurt my hand on a gate. And
I was so angry, it seemed the only thing to do.’
‘I know,’ said Charlotte.
‘And then, when I was explaining to you, somehow I couldn’t find the
proper words to explain how hateful it was, and I thought you’d think
I’d run away just for nothing. And then my hand hurt, and I thought you
thought something more ought to have happened. And then I said that.
Mean beast!’
‘I do _wish_ you hadn’t,’ said Charlotte.
‘It didn’t seem to matter just at first. I can’t think why. I thought
he meant to hit me next day, and, anyhow, you didn’t know him. And
then I got ill and nothing mattered. But when I got better, it kept on
getting worse and worse and worse, like a corkscrew worming into you
harder and harder and harder all the time.’
‘But why didn’t you own up before?’ Charlotte asked.
‘I couldn’t. I never should have if it hadn’t been for this.’
He pulled his handkerchief with some difficulty from his pocket.
Something was wrapped in it. Rupert, his face still turned away,
unfolded and held out the waxen man.
‘I came back through the woods yesterday, and then I saw you’d been
trying that beastly spell I told you with the pins.’
‘Oh!’ said Charlotte.
‘And I knew it was because I’d told that beastly lie.’
‘Oh, it _wasn’t_,’ said Charlotte. ‘We did everything nice for him, to
make him sorry he was hateful and to make him friends with you. And oh,
Rupert, the spell _did_ work! We did it to make him friends with you.
_And he is._’
‘He’s been jolly decent about it, anyhow,’ said Rupert. ‘I found the
wax thing as I came home from Mr. Penfold’s last night, and I took it
away and put it at the back of my collar-drawer. And this morning I
took it down to Mr. Penfold’s. It made it easier to tell, somehow. And
_he_ was jolly decent too. He took me over to Tonbridge to tell Mr.
Macpherson. And he said a lot of things. He said he’d known all along
I’d got something I wanted to get off my chest. And he said things
about repentance and things. I do like him.’
‘I’m glad we made the image,’ said Charlotte, because it seemed unkind
to say nothing, and she could think of nothing else to say.
‘And I’m going to stick it, whatever it is. Mr. Macpherson is all
right, but it will be hateful leaving here. Only I suppose you’ll all
be glad I’m going.’
‘Rupert!’
‘Well, then, I know _you_ won’t really. I say, Charlotte, you might
tell the others. And tell them I know I’ve been a grumpy brute, but it
was _that_ going on all the time inside me like a beastly Spartan fox.
It’s been like waiting at the dentist’s all the time, and this is like
having all your teeth out at once, twenty times over.’
He tried to laugh, but he did not succeed very well. Charlotte also
tried, and burst into tears.
‘Don’t!’ said Rupert awkwardly. Charlotte came close to him and rubbed
her wet face against his coat sleeve.
‘You’re sorry,’ she said, ‘and you’ve owned up and you’ll never do it
again.’
‘You bet I won’t,’ said Rupert. ‘I say, don’t! It makes it ever so much
worse. Now I’ve got to go back to your uncle and get the kick-out. And
I jolly well deserve it.’
‘Just wait a minute,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’m going to get something I
want to give you before you go. Wait here, won’t you?’
‘Don’t be long then,’ said Rupert in calm wretchedness.
Charlotte dried her eyes and went out, went to her own room and got her
favourite _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_. She wrote Rupert’s name in
it and then marched straight to her uncle’s room, opened the door, and
went in.
Uncle Charles, for once, was not reading or writing. He was sitting
by his table drumming on it with his fingers and looking both sad and
angry.
‘Uncle!’ said Charlotte.
‘Where is Rupert?’ said the Uncle, frowning.
‘He doesn’t know I’m here,’ said Charlotte, answering her uncle’s
thoughts rather than his words. ‘I asked him to wait while I got
something to give him. Uncle, you aren’t going to send him away, are
you?’
‘I feel it only due to Mr. Macpherson to send Rupert back,’ said the
Uncle, ‘to show that we regret the aspersions’—the Uncle spoke as to
a grown-up equal—‘the aspersions cast on him by my abetting Rupert in
his flight and removing him from Mr. Macpherson’s care. If it is a
punishment to Rupert, it is not an undeserved one.’
‘Yes,’ said Charlotte, who hadn’t thought of this, ‘but Rupert’s been
punished—all the time he has. No one else knows but me. He’s been
perfectly miserable. Only he just _couldn’t_ tell. And now he has, has
told everybody, honourably everybody. Oh, dear uncle, don’t; I _am_ so
mizzy!’
‘Come here,’ said the Uncle, and Charlotte found a thin black-coated
shoulder a very good place to cry on.
‘But you see,’ he said, ‘it’s only fair to Mr. Macpherson to send
Rupert back. I am willing to believe that he has been punished enough.’
‘You don’t know,’ said Charlotte; ‘he’s been simply as unbearable as a
bear, he’s been so unhappy.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said the Uncle slowly; ‘but no, it’s not fair to
that man. Rupert must go.’
Then Charlotte had one of her bright ideas, and its brightness dried
her tears.
‘Look here, uncle,’ she said, ‘I’ve got it—I really have. Wouldn’t it
make up to Mr. Macpherson and show your confidence just the same if you
asked him to come here on a visit?’
‘I _couldn’t_,’ said the Uncle, and it was plain he spoke from
the heart; ‘my work would all go—to pieces. I simply _can’t_
have visitors, grown-up ones, I mean. The books you’ve found,
they’ve revolutionised the whole scheme of my work. Yet,’ he added
thoughtfully, ‘I owe you something for that.’
[Illustration: Charlotte found a thin black-coated shoulder a very good
place to cry on.]
‘Then pay us with Rupert,’ said Charlotte eagerly. ‘Couldn’t you bear
Mr. Macpherson just for one week-end? Then everybody would know you
were friends with him. Oh, uncle, poor Rupert, he is so sorry. And he
did own up.’
‘What was that about a waxen image?’ asked the Uncle. Charlotte told
him, and he nodded now and then and said, ‘Yes, yes!’ and ‘Exactly!’
And at the end he said:
‘Well, you have attained your end. You have reconciled them. The charm
seemed to have worked.’
‘They’ve all worked,’ said Charlotte, ‘every single charm we’ve tried.
Have yours, uncle?’
‘I wish they had,’ he answered, sighing. ‘Charlotte, I wish I could do
what you wish. Don’t try spells to make me, because I can’t. Rupert
must go back to-morrow, for a fortnight at least. But he shall come
back then till the end of the holidays. Will that do? And I’ll explain
to him that it’s not punishment, but just the _consequences_ of what
he did. If he hadn’t told that lie he wouldn’t have had to go back.’
‘But would you have kept him at first, if he hadn’t told it?’ Charlotte
asked.
‘He was unhappy there. That would have been enough,’ said the
Uncle—‘that and your spells.’
* * * * *
‘It’s all right,’ said Rupert to Charlotte later. ‘Your uncle’s
forgiven me and I’m to come back. And he explained why I must go. And I
see it. And I can stick it all right. And I’d rather suffer it up and
start fair. I’d rather pay something. I shall have to write and tell my
father. That’s worse than anything.’
‘And when you come back,’ said Charlotte, ‘we shall think it was all a
bad dream.’
He went next day. The three C.’s saw him off at the station, all
wearing arbor vitæ in their button-holes to signify ‘unchanging
friendship,’ and Charlotte at the last moment pressed the _Scottish
Cavaliers_ into his hand.
‘I say, though, wasn’t it _dreadful_, him telling that lie,’ said
Charles as they turned away from the platform. It was a public place,
but one of his sisters shook him, then and there, and the other said,
‘Look here, Charles, if you ever say another word about it, we’ll
never speak to you again. See?’
And Charles saw. ‘I don’t mean I don’t like him and all that,’ he tried
to explain, ‘but you wouldn’t like me not to think lying was wrong,
would you?’
Then the girls saw.
‘You needn’t think we think _anything_,’ said Caroline. ‘You just shut
up, Charles. We’re two to one.’