GENTLEMAN GER
It was the 22nd of December, the younger Ffolliots were gathered in the
schoolroom, and Ger was in disgrace.
The twins were back from school, and that afternoon they had unbent
sufficiently to take part in a representation of "Sherlock Holmes" in
the hall. The whole family, with the exception of the Kitten, had seen
the play in the Artillery Theatre at Woolwich during their last visit
to grandfather.
It is a play that not only admits of, but necessitates, varied and loud
noises.
Everything ought to have gone without a hitch, for earlier in the
afternoon Mr Ffolliot had departed in the carriage to take the chair at
a lecture in Marlehouse; and a little later Grantly had driven his
mother to the station in the dogcart to meet a guest.
Unfortunately the lecture on Carpaccio at the Literary Institute was of
unusually short duration, and Mr Ffolliot returned tired and rather
cross, just as Ger was enacting the hansom cab accident at the foot of
the staircase, by beating a deafening tattoo on the Kitten's bath with
a hair-brush.
The twins and the Kitten (who had proved a wrapt and appreciative
audience) melted away with Boojum-like stealth the moment the hall door
was opened; but Ger, absorbed in the entrancing din he was making,
noticed nothing, and his father had to shake him by the shoulders
before he would stop.
"I suppose," Ger remarked thoughtfully, "that we must look upon father
as a cross."
"He certainly _is_ jolly cross," Uz murmured. "He should hear the row
we kick up at school when we've won a match, and nobody says a
syllable."
"But I mean," Ger persisted, wriggling about on his seat as though the
problem tormented him, "that if father were as nice as mother we'd be
too happy, and it wouldn't be good for us; like the people in Fairy
stories, you know, when they're too well off, misfortunes come."
"I don't think," Buz said dryly, "that we have any cause to dread
misfortunes on that score. But cheer up, Ger, it'll soon be time for
the pater to go abroad, and then nobody will get jawed for six long
weeks."
"I shouldn't mind the jawings so much or the punishments," said Ger,
after a minute's pause, "if it wasn't for mother. She minds so, she
never seems to get used to it. I'm glad she was out this
afternoon--though we did want her to see the play--but whatever will
she say when I can't go down to meet Reggie with the rest of you? And
what'll _he_ think?"
Ger's voice broke. Punishment had followed hard on the heels of the
crime, and banishment to the schoolroom for the rest of the evening was
Ger's lot. Had Mr Ffolliot belonged to a previous generation he would
probably, when angry, have whacked his sons and whacked them hard.
They would infinitely have preferred it. But his fastidious taste
revolted from the idea of corporal punishment, and his ingenuity in
devising peculiarly disagreeable penalties in expiation of their
various offences, was the cause of much tribulation to his indignant
offspring.
"Here _is_ mother!" cried Buz, "and she's got Reggie. Come down and
see him you others, but for heaven's sake, come quietly."
The Reggie in question was a young Sapper just then stationed at
Chatham, and a "very favourite cousin."
The Ffolliot children were in the somewhat unusual position of having
no uncles and aunts, and no cousins of their own, for the sad reason
that both their parents were "onlies." Therefore did they right this
omission on the part of providence in their own fashion, by adopting as
uncles, aunts, and cousins all pleasant guests.
Reggie wasn't even a second cousin; but his people being mostly in
India, he had for many years spent nearly all his holidays, and later
on his leave, at Redmarley, and he was very popular with the whole
family. Even Mr Ffolliot unbent to a dignified urbanity in his
presence. He approved of Reggie, who had passed seventh into Woolwich
and first into the Sappers, and Grantly always thanked his lucky stars
that he was destined for Field Artillery, and was not expected to
follow in Reggie's footsteps in the matter of marks.
Ger worshipped Reggie, and it was with a heart full of bitterness, and
eyes charged with hot tears that blurred the firelight into long bands
of crimson, that he leant against the schoolroom table, alone, while
the others all trooped off on tiptoe into the hall to give rapturous
though whispered greeting to their guest.
Reggie did not whisper though; the warning cards had no sort of effect
upon him, and the forlorn little figure drooping against the table
sprang erect and shook the big drops from his cheeks as he heard his
cousin's jolly voice "Where's my friend Ger?"--a murmured
explanation--then, "O _bad_ luck! I'll go to him--No don't come with
me--not for two minutes."
How Ger blessed him for that forethought! To be found in disgrace was
bad enough; but to be seen in tears, and by his whole family! . . .
Hastily scraping his cheeks with a corner of his dilapidated Norfolk
jacket--if you have ever tried to do this you'll know that it is more
or less of a test of suppleness--he went slowly to the door, and in
another minute was lifted high into the air and shaken violently by a
slight, rather plain young man, who bore with the utmost meekness a
passionate embrace highly detrimental to his immaculate collar: and the
best of it all was, that he was quite unconscious of the fact that Ger
had not met him with the others, nor seemed aware of anything unusual
beyond the pleasantness of once more sitting in the big slippery
leather-covered arm-chair beside the schoolroom fire, while the rest of
the family, having given him exactly the two minutes' start he had
demanded, came flocking back to sit all over him and shout their news
in an excited chorus.
Next morning, while his father was out in the village, Ger ensconced
himself in one of the deep-seated windows of the study, as a quiet
haven wherein he might wrestle in solitude with the perfect and
pluperfect of the verb _esse_, which he had promised his mother he
would repeat to her that morning.
Their governess had gone home for the holidays, but Ger was so backward
that his father insisted that he must do a short lesson (with Mrs
Ffolliot) every morning. Ger could not read. It was extraordinary how
difficult he found it, and how dull it appeared to him, this art that
seemed to come by nature to other people; which, once mastered,
appeared capable of giving so much pleasure.
It puzzled Ger extremely.
Mrs Ffolliot had, herself, instructed all her sons in the rudiments of
the Latin Grammar, and very well and thoroughly she did it, but so
pleasantly, that in their minds the declensions and the conjugations
were ever vaguely associated with the scent of violets. The reason for
this being, that the instructed one invariably squeezed as close as
possible to his teacher, and as there were violets at Redmarley nearly
all the year round, Mrs Ffolliot always wore a bunch tucked into her
waistband.
It was characteristic of the trust the squire had in his wife's
training that he had not the slightest objection to the children using
the library when he, himself, was not there to be disturbed, being
quite certain that as they had promised her not to touch his writing
table, the promise would be faithfully kept. Besides, like all true
book-lovers, he was generous in the matter of his books, and provided
the children treated them with due care and respect, had no objection
to their taking them out of the shelves and reading them.
For a long time there was no sound in the room but an occasional
whispered, "_fui, fuisti, fuit_." Presently Grantly and Mary came in
to discuss a fancy-dress dance to which they were bidden that evening
at a neighbour's; then, in rushed Reggie in coat and hat with a newly
arrived parcel in his hand. Ger had seen the railway van come up the
drive, but as he had promised his mother not to move until he had
mastered his verb, he did not make his presence known to anyone.
Reggie went over to Mr Ffolliot's desk, and seeing a shilling lying on
the table seized it and fled from the room. Three minutes later Ger
saw him bowling down the drive in the dog-cart, then Mr Ffolliot
returned, and Ger, feeling tolerably certain of the "perfect and
pluperfect and future perfect," went slowly upstairs to his mother to
repeat it.
All went on peacefully and quietly in the schoolroom for the next half
hour, when suddenly Grantly and Mary whirled into the room in a state
of such excited indignation as took their mother quite five minutes to
discover what all the fuss was about. When at last they had been
induced to tell their story separately, and not in a chorus almost
oratorio-like in its confusion, Mrs Ffolliot discovered to her dismay
that they were accused of meddling with a shilling which their father
had placed on the book-club collecting card, ready for the collector
when she should call.
When she _did_ call the shilling was gone, and as Grantly and Mary were
known to have been in the study, the squire came to the conclusion that
one of them must have knocked against his table and brushed it off, and
he gave it out that "unless they found it, and thus repaired the
mischief and annoyance their carelessness had caused, he would not
allow them to go to the dance that evening!"
He never suspected that any member of his family would take the
shilling, but he was ready to believe all things of their clumsiness.
In vain did Grantly and Mary protest that they had never been near his
desk; the squire might have been Sherlock Holmes himself, so certain
was he as to the exactitude of his deductions.
"The card has been pushed from where it was originally placed to the
extreme edge of the table; the shilling must have been knocked off, and
had doubtless rolled under some article of furniture; let them see to
it that it was found; they might hunt there and then if they liked, as
he would not require the room for half an hour."
The consciousness of their innocence in no way sustained Grantly and
Mary under the appalling prospect of losing the party. They had of
course hunted frantically everywhere, but naturally had found no trace
of the shilling.
Ger sat quite still during the recital of their wrong's, his face
growing paler and paler, and his honest grey eyes wider and wider in
the horror of his knowledge. For he knew who had taken the shilling,
and he knew also that it was his plain duty to right his innocent
brother and sister. But at what a cost! He could not tell of Reggie,
and yet it was so unlike Reggie for it was . . . even to himself Ger
hardly liked to confess what it was--and he had gone off in such a
hurry! To Ger, a shilling seemed a very large sum, his own greatest
wealth, amassed after many weeks of hoarding, had once reached five
pence halfpenny, nearly all in farthings; and he even found himself
conjecturing the sort of monetary difficulty into which Reggie had
fallen, and from which a shilling might extricate him. He knew there
were such things as "debts," and that the army was "very expensive,"
for he had heard his grandfather say so. Like many extremely upright
people Ger was gentle in his judgments of others. Himself of the most
crystalline honesty, he could yet conceive of circumstances wherein a
like probity might be hard for somebody else: at all costs poor Reggie
must be screened, but it was equally clear to him that his brother and
sister must not lose the pleasure long looked-forward-to as the opening
joy of the holidays.
Now there was about Ger a certain loyalty and considerateness in his
dealings with others, that had earned for him the _sobriquet_ of
"Gentleman Ger." He was very proud of the title, and his mother, whom
he adored, had done all in her power to foster the feeling of _noblesse
oblige_; so Ger felt that here and now a circumstance had arisen which
would try what stuff he was made of. The excited talk raged round him
like a storm, but after the first he heard none of it. He slipped
quietly off his chair, and unnoticed by the group round his mother,
left the room and crept down the back staircase. All doubt and
questioning was at an end. His duty seemed quite clear to him: he
would take the blame of that shilling, Mary and Grantly would go to
their party, and Reggie . . . Reggie would not be back till quite
late, when he, too, was going to the fancy-dress dance. Reggie need
never know anything about it.
By this time he had reached the study door, and stood with his hand
upon the handle. And as he waited, screwing his courage to the
sticking point, there came into his mind the words of a psalm that he
had learned by heart only last Sunday to repeat to his mother. He
learned it more easily than usual because he liked it; when she read it
to him he found he could remember it, and now, just as a dark room is
transiently illumined by the falling together of the fire in sudden
flame, there came into Ger's mind the words, "He that sweareth to his
own hurt and changeth not." He turned the handle and went in.
The squire was sitting in his big armchair in front of the fire reading
_Marius the Epicurean_, and trying to compose his nerves, which still
vibrated unpleasantly after all the fuss about the shilling. He had
even quoted to himself somewhat testily something about "fugitive
things not good to treasure"; but whether he referred to the nimbly
disappearing shilling, or to the protestations of Grantly and Mary, was
not clear. He generally solaced himself with Pater when perturbed, and
he had nearly persuaded himself that he was once more nearly attuned to
"perfect tone, fresh and serenely disposed of the Roman Gentleman,"
when Ger opened the door, and walked over towards him without shutting
it--an unpardonable offence at any time.
"Gervais," exclaimed the squire, and his tone was the reverse of
serene, "Why are you not in the schoolroom? What on earth do you want?"
Ger went back and shut the door carefully and quietly, and once more
crossed the room till he stood directly in front of his father. The
squire noted with a little pang of compunction how pale the child was.
"What is it?" he said more gently.
"Father, I've come about that shilling. I took it."
"_You_ took it," exclaimed the squire in amazement. "Why?"
Here was a poser. Ger was so absolutely unused to lying that he was
quite unprepared for any such question as this, so he was silent.
"Why did you take it?" angrily reiterated his father. "And what have
you done with it? Answer at once. You know perfectly well that it is
a most shocking breach of good manners to ignore a question in this
fashion."
"I took it," repeated Ger stupidly, his large grey eyes looking into
space beyond his father.
"So I hear," said the squire, growing more and more annoyed. "But why
did you take it? and where have you put it?"
"I can't tell you, father," said Ger firmly, and this time he met his
father's eyes unflinchingly. To himself he said, "I won't tell more'n
_one_ lie for mother's sake."
The squire was dumfoundered by this obstinacy. It was unheard
of--absolutely without parallel in his domestic annals--that one of his
children should actually flout him! yes! actually flout him with such
an answer as this.
"Go and stand over there in that corner," he thundered, "and you shan't
move until you can answer my questions, if you stand there for the rest
of the day. If you children have nothing else, I am determined that
you shall have good manners."
* * * * * *
It was nearly five o'clock, and Ger still stood in the same corner of
the study watching the last streak of red fade from the chill January
sky. There was no sound in the room save only the soft "plop" of a
cinder as it fell on to the tiled hearth. The fire had burned low, and
he was very cold. Never in all his life had he gone without his dinner
before, and although he was no longer hungry, everything seemed, as he
said afterwards, "funny and misty."
The squire had fulfilled his threat. After sending the culprit away to
wash his tear-stained face and hands, and to procure a clean
handkerchief, he bade him return to stand in the same corner till he
should arrive at a proper sense of the respect due to a parent. He had
locked the door upon Ger when he went to lunch, and forbade any member
of the family, including his wife, to hold any sort of communication
with the culprit. Parker the fox-terrier, however, did not obey the
squire, and remained in the study with Ger regardless of the fact that
the servants' dinner bell had rung, which was also the signal for his
own. And to Parker Ger confided the whole story, and very puzzled and
unhappy it made him, for he ran between Ger and the door snuffing and
whining till the squire came back and turned him out, when he remained
upon the mat outside uneasily barking at intervals.
Mrs Ffolliot was almost beside herself with grief and consternation.
It was such an inexplicable piece of obstinacy on Ger's part, and he
was not usually obstinate.
Grantly and Mary, while relieved that they would still have the
opportunity of wearing the dresses which had been the object of so much
thought, were really concerned about Ger; it seemed so senseless of
him, "why couldn't he say why he wanted the beastly shilling and have
done with it?"
The squire himself was very seriously disturbed. He had stormed and
raged, he had argued, he had even spoken very kindly and eloquently on
the subject of dishonesty, and the necessity there was for full
confession before forgiveness could be obtained (this last appeal
sorely trying Ger's fortitude), but all to no avail. As the needle
points ever to the north, so all the squire's exhortations ended with
the same question, to be met with the same answer, growing fainter in
tone as the hours wore on, but no less firm in substance. "I can't
tell you, father."
Mr Ffolliot could no longer bear the little white-faced figure standing
so silently in the corner of the room. He went forth and walked about
the garden. He really was a much tried man just then. Only last night
Buz, lying in wait for Reggie as he came to bed, had concealed himself
in an angle of the staircase, and when his cousin, as he thought,
reached his hiding-place, pounced out upon him, blowing out his lighted
candle, and exclaiming in a sepulchral voice, "Out, out, damned
candle!" (Buz was doing _Macbeth_ at school and had a genius for inept,
and generally inaccurate quotation)--then flew up the dark staircase
two steps at a time fully expecting hot pursuit, but none came. Dead
silence, followed by explosive bursts of smothered laughter from Reggie
and Grantly who had followed the squire upstairs. It did not comfort
Mr Ffolliot at the present moment to reflect that Buz had had to write
out the whole scene in which the "germ," as his father called it, of
his misquotation occurred. At present his mind was full of Ger, and
ever and anon like the refrain of a song, there thrust into his
thoughts a sentence he had been reading when the little boy had
interrupted him that morning, "and towards such a full and complete
life, a life of various yet select sensation, the most direct and
effective auxiliary must be, in a word, insight." "Could it be
possible?" he asked himself, "that he was in some way lacking in this
quality?"
He turned somewhat hastily and went back into the house. Once more Ger
heard the key turn in the lock, and his father came in, followed by
Fusby, bearing tea upon a tray.
The front door banged, and Ger's heart positively hammered against his
ribs, for no one but Reggie ever dared to bang the Manor House front
door. In another minute he had come in, and was standing on the
hearth-rug beside Mr Ffolliot, bringing with him a savour of frosty
freshness into the warm, still room.
"I got through sooner than I expected," said Reggie, in his big cheery
voice, "and caught the two twenty-five, so I walked out. I've been to
the stables to tell Heaven he needn't drive in for me after all. O
tea! That's good,--where's Aunt Marjory? By the way, uncle, I owe you
a shilling. A parcel came for me just as I was starting, and there was
a shilling to pay on it. I had no change and was in a tearing hurry,
so I took one I saw lying on your desk--hope it was all right."
There was a little soft thud in the far corner of the room, as Ger fell
forward on his face, worn out by his long watch, and the rapture of
this immense relief.
When things grew clear again the room was full of light and he was
lying in his mother's arms. Reggie was kneeling beside him trying to
force something in a spoon between his lips, something that smelt, so
Ger said, "like a shop in Woolwich" and tasted very queer and hot.
"Lap it up, old chap," whispered Reggie, and Ger wondered why he seemed
to have lost his voice. "There now, that's all right. You'll be as
fit as possible directly," and Reggie scrambled up from his knees and
bolted from the room.
Ger sat up and looked at his father who was standing beside him. The
lamp shone full on the squire's face, and he, too, like Reggie, seemed
to have got a cold in his eyes; but in spite of this peculiarity, there
was that in their expression which told Ger that everything was all
right again, and that in this instance absolution without confession
had been fully and freely granted.
So Ger, from the safe shelter of his mother's arms, explained, "I
couldn't tell more'n one lie because of mother, you know, and I thought
he wanted it for debts or something. Is those sangwidges anchovy or
jam, do you think?"