THE function was arranged for a certain Wednesday in February, the day
before Dacre was to leave for school, and the children had been given
formal notice to appear in the drawing-room at three o’clock. They were
now waiting in the school-room speculating on the event. They knew it
must be something very unusual from the fact of the drawing-room, of all
places in the world, being appointed as the scene of action.
It was at the end of a dismal six weeks of holidays, mostly spent, by
reason of colds, between the nursery and the school-room. Indeed, it had
been the very flattest bout of holidays the two had ever yet endured.
Dacre’s object being attained, there was no further use for organized
“cussedness” so he had relapsed into his ordinary state of gusty
wickedness, which being natural was nothing very especial in the way of
a pastime, and quite unlike the six months’ excitement of his raid on
society. There was nothing to supply the place of this now,
nothing—neither cricket, football, nor even riding—so small wonder that
life was pretty much of a blank to the boy.
It was even worse for Gwen, the mover and the mainspring of the
enterprise. When she found herself landed victoriously on the threshold
of her goal, with her conscious triumph there got mixed other sensations
of a most unpleasant nature. The horrible feeling of flat inaction after
the whirl of action, that plays havoc with all great conquerors, seized
on her, and did the same by this little one, and then she had none of
the fêtes and the follies that follow hot on the heels of other
conquerors for their consolation. She felt the most miserable victor
breathing, her soul was brimming with bitterness, and the overflow
vented itself largely on Dacre’s luckless pate.
The children having nothing to go upon could arrive at no very
satisfactory solution to their mysterious summons. Mary’s look as she
smoothed Gwen’s hair, put Dacre’s collar straight, and kept on fussing
round when she had no more to do, made things look more mysterious
still, then she sighed like a steam-engine the whole time, which added a
presage-of-ill character to the mystery that irritated Gwen horribly.
“For goodness sake, Mary, do go!” she cried at last in despair, “go! You
are like the old turkey when her ducklings ran out into the lake the
other day.”
Mary straightened her glasses and looked at the child. “’Tis brains is
the matter with you, my dear,” she said; “however could you guess at the
very thoughts as were running in my head? I was thinking of the creature
flapping there helpless and I was lik’ning myself to her that very
minute. Master Dacre would never have guessed it, bless him!”
Gwen felt she had scored a point and continued,
“What is going to happen to us, Mary?”
Mary regarded her in silence.
“If you know you might tell us,” said the girl impatiently, “or,” she
added scornfully, “are you still more like the turkey, and are only
frightened because you know so little?—you look like that.”
“Oh Lord!” muttered the woman under her breath, feeling very hard hit,
but she replied with dignity, “My dear, it certainly ain’t my place to
tell you what your parents have thought fit not to acquaint you with.”
“They see fit to acquaint us with nothing as far as I can see. Well, as
you can’t tell us or don’t know anything to tell us, do go away, please.
You move about so and look so queer, you make one think that a horrible
new thing is coming on us, so do go, please. I’m not cross or nasty,
only I feel queer myself and frightened, I could scream and yell and
howl this minute—oh, I wish Mrs. Fellowes was here.”
“She is coming, my dear,” said Mary, looking anxiously at the girl.
“Oh, she often looks like that,” said Dacre consolingly, “I believe she
is mad—she is dying to squeal and screech and yet she is as quiet as an
old rat, I believe myself one good roar would do her good.”
Mary was a sensible body and knew when a thing was beyond her powers,
she said nothing but went down and intercepted Mrs. Fellowes on her way
to the drawing-room and carried her off.
“Is Gwen well, Mary?” she asked, as they went upstairs.
“Eats and sleeps well, ma’am, but she has an over-active brain, ma’am, I
should say, and if ’tis, ’tis only God can help her,” whispered Mary
solemnly.
Gwen had recovered by this time and she and Dacre were engaged in a
wrangle, stormy on Dacre’s side, sarcastic and calm on Gwen’s. At sight
of Mrs. Fellowes they left off.
“Oh you dear, you dear!” cried Gwen sweeping up to her, and taking her
kiss with a sort of gasp, “we feel awful, as if some new horror was
coming on.”
“You’ll stand by us, Mrs. Fellowes? Do you think they might repent of
Eton? Gwen gets mad when I say that, but, you know, no fellow knows what
they’ll do next,” he added plaintively.
“Dacre, I wonder if you know how horribly impertinent you are? If you
belonged to me and spoke of me like that, I’d cut you for a week!”
“Oh, but you’re quite different, of course no one would speak of you
like that—Oh, come in!”
A new footman, a tall awkward creature, who found his brains softening
in this astonishing family, had been giving a succession of small knocks
for the last five minutes, at last he supplemented them by a choking
cough.
“There is that giraffe,” said Gwen impatiently, “I suppose we are
wanted! Mrs. Fellowes, look at him,” she whispered, “everybody who comes
to this house looks like that in a week, and as for Mary, she is awful,
going about in a muttering way and glaring at me as if I was a penny
show. The tutors are the same, even that great leggy gawk—oh dear,
what’s the matter with us all?
“And another thing—oh, wait just a moment, they’ll never know if we’re
one minute late or twenty, they don’t want us a bit, oh no, they never
do, I tell you, they are quite happy and oh, so busy, so appallingly
busy—I want to tell you another horrible habit the people here have. I
must tell you all this,” she added seeing Dacre’s rather astonished
face, “it has all just come up to the surface of me. The people in this
place always whisper in the most diabolical way, there is never a single
sound in these corridors, never, and that’s why I often nearly—burst to
howl and screech. Dacre is an idiot as everyone knows, and he says I’m
mad.”
“Hush, child!”
“Oh well, come on then, but there’s not an atom of hurry, they don’t
want us.”
“Mrs. Fellowes isn’t such an ass as not to know that,” said Dacre
scornfully, “but I want to know what’s on in there, so does she, so come
on.”
“It’s nothing nice, you may be quite sure, it’s probably got something
to do with lessons. Perhaps they want to examine you before you go to
school,” she added with a fiendish laugh.
Her mouth was terrible in its hardness. Mrs. Fellowes stooped down
quickly and kissed her on it.
“Gwen, love, you don’t know, something very nice may be going to happen
to you, the very nicest thing that has ever yet happened.”
Gwen looked up at her astonished, some tone in her soft voice touched
her.
“I wonder—” she said slowly, “I wish——”
“What dear?”
“Oh, I don’t think I know,” said she, with a short laugh. “Come on! Gru!
Look at the table covered with books and things! I knew it was an exam!
Look, Dacre!”
When her greetings to her host and hostess were over, Mrs. Fellowes went
over to her husband, who was standing by the table of books.
“One of the evidences of Christianity to be placed before the infant
mind,” he said softly, pointing to _Lord Amberley_. “Another!” and he
put his finger on Renan’s _Life of Jesus_.
“Good gracious! you’ll stop that?”
“If I can—what’s wrong with Gwen?”
“I don’t know, I put my foot in it just now by pressing for an
explanation.”
Dacre, meanwhile, was feeling less than a worm under the concentrated
gaze of his parents. After the first remarks concerning health addressed
to both children, with a casual allusion to his projected departure for
school for Dacre’s benefit, and an earnest request from his mother to
consider his teeth and his stomach and to eschew sweet-stuff, “the great
temptation of public schools,” she observed sadly, and when some supine
observations with regard to things in general had been turned on Gwen,
Mr. and Mrs. Waring looked appealingly at each other and subsided into a
silent and curious inspection of their son.
The dumb endurance of the boy showed a good deal of pluck; he merely
wriggled spasmodically from time to time. But he had come to the
extremest end of his tether and was on the point of some outbreak, when
deliverance reached him in a low swift sigh from his mother, and a queer
sudden movement on his father’s part, who pushed back his chair, loosed
his wife’s hand with a deprecating “Pray, my love!” and began to speak
in a general inoffensive way, fixing his gaze on no one in particular,
to Dacre’s infinite relief.
“There are subjects that are usually comprised in the education of young
children,” said he, “which we, after deep and anxious thought, have seen
fit to omit from the curriculum of our son and daughter. We have taken
special pains to impress upon their various instructors, as also upon
the persons appointed to their personal service, that a certain part of
their minds should be kept free, entirely clear and free from certain
impressions, that they should remain, so to speak, a blank as far as
regards this form of knowledge. The form of knowledge I allude to—” he
continued, his eye falling once more on the luckless Dacre who was
drinking in his words with open-eyed wonder, and, finding the boy useful
as a target, he fixed him inexorably until the end of the discourse.
“The form of knowledge I allude to is that known as the knowledge of
religion. It is sometimes called a sense, and has in a manner become so
by heredity, but I doubt much whether it was innate in the race in the
beginning. This point of view has of course powerful advocates, as we
all know, at least—” he added coughing nervously, “as Mr. Fellowes and
his wife know. However, this question though most interesting is not
necessary to my explanation.”
Here his eye which had swerved for a moment, again caught Dacre’s. “The
reasons why we have insisted upon the denial of this knowledge to our
children are many. Firstly, my wife and I consider that it is hardly
fair to any human creature, with normal brain power in its young
receptive condition, to give this brain power a distinct bias with
regard to the fundamental points of any science. I speak of it not in
the common but in the original application of the word, which is merely
empiric and can certainly not be looked upon as proven in any
part,—however great its ethical value as a factor of culture may be,” he
added with an apologetic glance at the rector. “For the same reason we
have withheld geology and the advanced parts of several of the natural
sciences, wherein is evolved the doctrine of evolution. But of these
later.
“We have been more stringent in our regulations with regard to religion
and its most advanced and refined development—that known as
Christianity—because it enters so largely into all current questions,
and entrenches, or at least the arguments of its exponents do, on so
many of our more exact sciences. Another reason for withholding this
knowledge was the strange methods so many of its disciples have of
apprehending and applying it—even of considering its literature. The
process of exclusion by which we have striven to our goal has, I fear,
seemed to our dear friends here to-day an unwise one, but we have taken
deep thought concerning this matter and have taken no step lightly. We
have awaited a state of consciousness in our children capable of
receiving and judging the evidences of religion—more especially of that
form of it known as Christianity—in an unprejudiced and reasonable
manner, without bias, and with no early half-true half-false impressions
to confuse and mislead.
“Mr. Fellowes,” he concluded with solemnity, “we have done, as we
consider, our duty, and in the best way we know of. Heredity and other
inner influences will no doubt in some measure nullify our efforts, as
will also the possible impressions—no doubt of a low order—which our
children, in that period of mere physical development before the culture
of their higher parts began, may have received from outside; but with
these exceptions, I feel confident that, as regards all knowledge of
religion, the minds of our children are a blank.”
He was silent for a moment and regarded the blanks with supreme
satisfaction.
“Mr. Fellowes,” he began again, “my wife and I are most anxious that our
children should receive all the facts and arguments in favour of
Christianity before the counter arguments are put before them, and in
the most reasonable and enlightened manner. We have therefore invited
you to be present to-day and would feel ourselves under still one more
obligation to you—” here he looked from Mr. Fellowes to his wife and so
made one of them, “you who are so eminently fitted for the task—if you
would make our children acquainted with the leading points in the
history of religion. Would you also be so good as to direct them in
their course of reading—our daughter at least, for Dacre, I believe,
goes to Eton to-morrow? My wife and I have, as you know, been
reluctantly obliged to relinquish our plans in this instance, owing to
the pressure of strong ancestral bias which will, I fear, also compel us
to allow the boy to devote himself to brutal pursuits, and finally to
enter the army. His ordinary culture then in religious matters must be
entrusted to the tutors of his school, who, no doubt, will fill his mind
with strange vagaries. However,” he went on with a fixed melancholy look
at the boy, “Dacre’s intellect is not of a high order, it matters
little; but with Gwen very specially we desire your aid. We have
discovered in her an unusual power of applying knowledge, and we would
be glad if you would examine her from time to time, that she may have a
sound and reasonable knowledge of the arguments on the one side of this
very interesting question, before she considers those on the other; we
may be accused,” he continued with a sigh, “and perhaps justly, of an
unfair attempt to bias the girl’s mind by not arranging that the study
of the opposed facts and arguments should run side by side with these.
But in this matter, I fancy,” he said, with a little smile at his wife,
“I fancy both my wife’s and my hereditary tendencies have rather
handicapped our intelligence, I do trust with no ill-results to our
children,” he added, embracing them both in one perturbed glance and
sitting down rather wearily.