Two days later, Diana Grierson-Amberly left Squires, and Rose received
an answer to her letter.
298 Ovington Street,
London, S. W.
My dear Niece,
Yours of the 6th to hand, for which I thank you. I am willing to
receive you and the boy as you suggest, at any date convenient to
yourself, on a short visit. There will be no need for you to help in
the shop, as the time will be so limited.
I have given much anxious thought and prayer to yourself and to your
child, my dear Rose, left alone in worldly surroundings as I fear you
are. If you have discovered the _hollowness_ and _falseness_ of mere
earthly grandeur, turn your thoughts to that which _never fails_, if
sought in true humbleness of spirit. I will gladly advise you to the
best of my poor powers, but there is but _One_ true Counsellor for us
all.
Kindly advise later as to date and hour of arrival.
Yours, etc.,
Alfred Smith.
A certain lack of enthusiasm as to the projected visit, apparent in
Uncle Alfred’s letter, no less than the careful underlining of his
pietistic sentiments, recalled him with singular vividness to the mind
of his niece as she read.
“It’ll be something, to get away from here,” she consoled herself.
After all, Uncle Alfred had nearly always been kind, in his own strange
way. She and her mother had laughed at him, but Mrs. Smith had always
steadily upheld Uncle Alfred’s claim to affection and gratitude,
because for many years he had given them a home. And he had been nicer
to Rose after her mother’s death, she remembered.
“And, anyway, he won’t talk about ‘plans for the day’ at breakfast
every blessed morning, and I shall have Ces to sleep in my room again.”
She laughed out loud for very joy at the thought. There was a foolish
and inexplicable hope in her heart that if she and Cecil once got away
from Squires, they need never go back there. To herself, Rose added
in all honesty a modification of her ardent wish to cut adrift from
everything that the Aviolets stood for:
“After all, I daresay Lord Charlesbury would look us up in London. And
it would be much nicer to see him away from all of _them_.”
In spite of herself, she was nervous at the thought of making her new
plan known to Lady Aviolet, and she therefore did so in a casual and
blustering manner that gave the announcement an air of unreality.
“Oh--did I tell you I’d heard from my uncle? He’s Mr. Alfred Smith, who
has a business in Ovington Street. (Well, it’s a pawnbroking business,
really.) I haven’t seen him since I married--and thought of going up to
him.”
“Did you, my dear? The train service is very good, so you have only to
let me know which day suits you and the carriage can take you to the
station for the early train, and meet you again at the six o’clock, or
the half-past eight, if you prefer it.”
“Oh, well, thank you very much, but I meant to stay there,” Rose said
awkwardly.
“Would that be necessary?”
“I should like it,” Rose replied defiantly.
Her mother-in-law was unmoved. “As you prefer, my dear.”
“I should want to take Cecil, of course.”
“Indeed? Do you think it any real kindness to disturb him? He seems
very happy, and looks so well. Besides, he is getting on nicely at
his lessons, and it seems hard on Miss Wade that they should be
interrupted.”
“She could have a holiday for a bit.”
“She has hardly been with us long enough to expect that. 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.
Take this question of going away: you may say that you want Cecil with
you, because you can’t bear to be away from him, but don’t you see that
you’re only thinking of yourself? If you thought more of Cecil, and
less of yourself, you’d see the folly and unkindness of disturbing and
upsetting him by a change just when he is settling down to a regular
routine for the first time in his little life. And London isn’t
healthy for children like the country is. It won’t do him any good.”
Lady Aviolet’s implacable, unselfconscious certainty of the complete
rightness of her own point of view daunted Rose curiously. Through her
mind there floated, incoherently, words and phrases that should express
her resentment. Difficulties--they always made difficulties--nothing
was ever allowed to happen without these complications of argument,
disapproval, condemnation ... things that ought to be simple, made
difficult. It was tiring ... and it made one angry too. And how could
any one decide that someone else was selfish, in that arbitrary way?
But she was unable to formulate her thoughts in words, and stood
shifting her weight from one foot to the other, like a schoolgirl that
is being scolded.
At last she said in a sulky tone that might, equally, have emanated
from the schoolgirl:
“I don’t see that at all. I’ve looked after Ces ever since he was born,
and I suppose I know what’s best for him.”
She was angrily aware, as she spoke, of the futility of the assertion.
So, apparently, was Lady Aviolet.
“That is as it may be, my dear. And of course you will do as you think
best. I can only advise you. But I should have thought that for little
Cecil’s own sake, you might be willing to forget yourself. I hope I
don’t expect to find old heads on young shoulders, but I should have
thought you had seen enough of life to realize that we mothers have to
sacrifice a great deal for our children. And they very often disappoint
us at the end of it all. But at least there is the comfort of having
done all one can.”
Rose, by an unwonted effort, repressed the retort that she longed to
utter. If the self-sacrifice of their mother had been responsible for
the ultimate evolution of the personalities of Ford and Jim Aviolet,
her most ardent wish would be never to emulate such disastrous
abnegation for the benefit of Cecil.
“Well, I’m sorry you don’t like the idea, but I’m afraid I’ve made up
my mind,” she said, abruptly and ungraciously.
“Then there is no more to be said, my dear. Perhaps you will be able to
explain matters to Miss Wade so that she does not resign her situation,
but you are acting with great unfairness towards her. If Cecil is to be
taken out of her hands like this, and his whole time upset, you cannot
expect her to have any real authority over the child. I was beginning
to hope that he was improving in _every_ respect under her management.”
Lady Aviolet’s intonation made it clear that her “every” meant “one.”
“Her latest idea is that he ought to be whipped for telling a story.”
“Painful though that would be, it might be the truest kindness to the
poor little fellow himself in the end. But I hope we need not consider
the question at all. I really do hope and believe that, under Miss
Wade’s management, Cecil is losing his weakness.”
Lady Aviolet’s hope--a plant of frail and ill-supported growth--was not
destined to fulfilment.
Rose appeared in the Lucians’ drawing-room one afternoon with swollen
eyelids, and said miserably to Henrietta:
“They’ve made me punish Cecil. At least, I suppose it wasn’t them that
_made_ me, but I’ve had to do it. And yet I don’t really believe in
whipping a child--I was going dead against my own instinct, and I knew
it in a sort of way, but it seemed the only thing I hadn’t tried.”
“What happened?”
“Ces--poor darling--told a perfectly flat lie to Ford, of all people,
and that beast wanted to punish him himself, but, of course, I said I
wouldn’t allow that, and that I was the proper person to do it. But
in the end Sir Thomas did. I said he might, because I knew it would
impress Ces far more--and, besides, I knew I should howl and cry if I
had to hit his darling little body.”
Rose laughed tremulously, and openly put her handkerchief to her eyes.
“Poor lamb, how did he take it?” Henrietta Lucian asked.
“He didn’t cry,” Rose said proudly. “He’s a plucky little fellow, and
he’s proud, too. I knew he wouldn’t make a sound, and he didn’t. Even
his grandfather said he’d been brave over it. Sir Thomas was fairly
decent about the whole thing, I will say. He gave Ces a talking to
about truth and all that, but it was very short, and then he gave him
six cuts with a little cane and left him. And I didn’t go to him.”
“Very brave of you, and I should think quite right.”
“It was hard,” Rose admitted.
“I’m so sorry for you, about the whole thing. Maurice and I often talk
about it. He’s interested, you know. I’m pretty sure he thinks it isn’t
little Cecil’s fault, in a way, but more like a congenital misfortune.”
“He’s so brave about other things, it’s difficult to understand. I
suppose he’s had a rotten bringing up, poor darling, and that’s my
fault as much as any one’s. Don’t you think a marriage like mine is a
great mistake?”
“In what way?” Henrietta temporized.
“Marrying into a different class.”
“It’s apt to create difficult situations, I suppose.”
“You may say so!” Mrs. Aviolet remarked in heartfelt accents. “But
it isn’t only that--though to my dying day I don’t suppose I shall
ever see what they’re driving at, half the time--it’s the children.
Inheriting two lots of instincts, so to speak, poor little things.
I know quite well that my mother-in-law thinks poor little Cecil’s
trouble is all owing to his belonging what-you-may-call to the people,
one side of him. In a way, I suppose I agree. The high-and-mighty
Aviolets were never anything but honourable, were they?”
“In the conventional sense of the word, perhaps not,” said Miss Lucian.
“The conventional sense of the word is all they want,” said Rose
simply, quite without irony.
She was very glad when the time came for her to take Cecil to London.
He had been wildly and defiantly naughty since his punishment, but he
had not again been untruthful.
“Wilful naughtiness is one thing, and underhand ways are another,”
Miss Wade primly observed. “I can understand a child--a boy
especially--being spoilt and disobedient from time to time, but there
is something terrible about a child that is habitually untruthful. It
seems so unnatural.”
“I think little Cecil’s disgrace the other day has shown him what a
frightful thing untruth is,” Lady Aviolet said. “I hope we may never
have to repeat such a thing.”
“It was evidently what the boy needed,” 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. Only tell me about it.”
“Yes, Mummie.”
He was not looking at her.
“I _had_ to ask Grandpa to whip you the other day, Ces, but it made me
very unhappy.”
“I’m so sorry, Mummie.” He had put his arms round her neck and was
kissing her eagerly. She hugged him.
“Sweetheart! You know we had to do something to make you remember, and
you will remember now, won’t you?”
“Yes. I didn’t cry when Grandpa hit me with his cane.”
“I know you didn’t, my own brave little man.”
“I wanted to scream out loud--it hurt so.”
She involuntarily tightened her hold round him.
“I was brave, wasn’t I, Mummie?” he asked her wistfully.
“Very brave, my darling.”
She could not deny him the acknowledgment, and it was only afterwards
that she realized herself to have been dimly puzzled by his insistence.
Rose told Miss Wade that she was to have a holiday, and the governess
was quite as much offended as Lady Aviolet had predicted that she would
be, and offered to resign her situation. Rose only wished that she
possessed the courage to accept the offer.
The night before they went to London, she spoke to Ford, who had
detained her, with his air of suave autocracy, as she was following
Lady Aviolet upstairs.
“One moment, Rose. I want to know how soon you are likely to bring
Cecil back from town?”
Rose opened her brown eyes very widely, and spoke with a purposely
exaggerated astonishment.
“Why?”
“Because Cecil’s movements concern me, as his guardian,” said Ford
calmly.
“I’m his mother, thank you.”
Ford smiled very pleasantly.
“Oh, yes, you have equal rights of guardianship, of course. I had no
intention of implying anything else.”
“Equal!” Her voice held unbounded scorn.
“Quite equal.”
She swung round and faced him, her hands on her hips in an attitude
that had been frequently characteristic of her mother, her head a
little thrust forward.
“What utter nonsense you talk, Ford! You may call yourself Cecil’s
guardian till the cows come home, but a child belongs to its mother,
I’d have you know.”
“Ladies know so little about the English law,” 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 can only appoint a
guardian after the death of both herself and the father. So you see
that your ownership of Cecil is very limited.”
Rose had turned white.
“If that’s the law of the land, it’s enough to make one sick. But I
don’t believe it.”
She did believe it, however. Ford was invariably accurate, and his
manner had carried conviction with it.
“Then I strongly advise you to inform yourself on the matter. It has
really seemed quite necessary for me to mention these facts that you
find so unpleasant, owing to your very persistently hostile attitude to
me, Rose. You appear to imagine that my attempts at directing matters
in which Cecil is concerned, rank as interference pure and simple. So
it seems to me better that I should state my case frankly, and make you
understand that I have quite a substantial claim behind me.”
“Cecil’s grandparents----” Her voice shook so much from anger and
dismay that she could not go on.
“Have nothing to do with it, strictly speaking. The issue lies between
you and me, whilst Cecil is under sixteen, and I feel sure that we
shall work together more amicably after my little explanation. All I
ask you to remember is that our rights of guardianship”--his pause
stressed the words--“are equal. Yours and mine.”
“_Damn_ Jim!” said Rose passionately. “And damn the laws of this
country, too, if they’re as unjust as all that.”
“H’sh--h’sh--h’sh----” He raised a slim hand authoritatively. “Forgive
me if I say that you yourself have done, and are doing, more than
any one to convince me of poor Jim’s wisdom in having appointed me
joint guardian with you to his son. No woman is fit to bring up a boy
entirely unaided, in my humble opinion.”
“She can bring him into the world unaided, though,” said Rose bitterly.
“It looks to me like all kicks and no halfpence, for the woman,
according to you.”
“Spare me a discussion on Woman’s Rights, Rose, I beg of you. The
subject holds not the least interest for me, and, moreover, I feel
convinced that we should differ widely in our views. All I ask you to
do is to let me know when Cecil is to return to his usual routine.”
“When I please, and not a day or a minute sooner,” said Mrs. Aviolet
with unconcealed temper blazing in her eyes and heightening the pitch
of her always high-pitched voice.
Ford shrugged his shoulders at the ill-breeding and turned away.
They exchanged no farewells on the following day.
In Rose’s mind was an unspecified determination that she and her child
would not return to Squires on the same terms as before, and vague
dreams of independence and freedom possessed her as the train carried
them towards London.
Cecil was openly delighted at the prospect of holidays and new
surroundings. He had only once before been taken by her to London from
Squires, for the purpose of visiting the dentist, and his reminiscences
of the occasion, his continual questions and exclamations, pleased Rose
as much as they did himself, in her sudden exhilaration of spirits.
At the terminus, they engaged a hansom cab, symbolical to Rose of
“treats” that her mother had given her during her schooldays. In spite
of the excited little boy beside her, she could almost have believed
herself a schoolgirl again, her married life, Ceylon, and the months
spent at Squires, had all become equally misty and unreal.
She wondered if Uncle Alfred would have changed, and could hardly
realize that it was years since she had seen him.
“Mummie,” said Cecil, “will Uncle Alfred be nice? Will he like me?”
“If you’re good,” Rose made the traditional reply.
“Has he got a nice house?”
A faint misgiving assailed her. “It won’t be like Squires, you know,
darling. Not a big house.”
“But there’ll be a garden?”
“Well--no. But I’ll take you to the park sometimes.”
“Shall I be able to play cricket there?”
“Perhaps. Look, Ces, this is the Brompton Road.”
He looked eagerly out at the lighted thoroughfare. “Isn’t it noisy,
Mummie?”
“I suppose it is. I don’t know. One gets used to it pretty quickly. But
Uncle Alfred lives in a smaller street than this, and it’ll be quieter
there.”
The cab turned into a side street, then entered a narrower road again,
and finally drew up before a corner house at the furthest end of the
street.
“Goodness! Here we are!” said Rose. She fumbled excitedly for her
purse. “Get out, Ces. No, wait--let me get out first, and I’ll help
you. Hold the umbrella, like a good boy.”
“It’s raining, Mummie.”
“Never mind, we’ll be indoors in a minute. I’ll ring the area bell,
Cabby, and someone’ll give you a hand with the trunk.”
Rose pulled vigorously at the bell handle on the iron railings that
surmounted the area, but before the jangling reverberations had ceased,
a man had hurried out on to the pavement, now glistening with wet.
“Mrs. Aviolet?”
“Hullo--why, it’s never Artie Millar! How are you?”
“I’m quite well, thank you, Mrs. Aviolet.”
They shook hands, and Rose said, “This is my kid--Cecil. Makes you feel
time’s gone on a bit, doesn’t it?”
“I should never have guessed it but for this young gentleman,” Mr.
Millar declared gallantly. “You haven’t altered in the very least.”
“Gammon!” said Mrs. Aviolet with a jovial heartiness that she had
seldom permitted herself at Squires. “Give the cabby a hand with the
box, will you? Is Uncle A. in the shop?”
“Upstairs. There’s a sitting-room on the first floor, now-a-days.
Here’s the girl, she’ll show you the way.”
“A girl too! Whatever next?” murmured Rose.
She paid the cabman, took Cecil’s hand, and followed the small maid
into the house. Cecil’s eyes widened as they went through the shop,
with a counter down one side of it, glass show-cases on the other, an
iron safe beyond the counter, and a match-board partition across one
half of the room. Beyond this, again, was a dark and steep staircase,
which they ascended.
“Why is it so dark, Mummie?”
“Hush! There’s Uncle Alfred.”
A short, stout figure loomed at the top of the stairs, and a small
white imperial scrubbed Rose’s face. With Cecil, Uncle Alfred only
shook hands.
“Come in, come in!”
His plump, curiously white hand, with a very large signet ring gleaming
on the little finger, waved them into the room. It was not at all like
any room at Squires. It was hung with a blue paper powdered all over by
large silver stars, and there was a round table bearing an aspidistra
in a pot on a ruffled lace mat, several books, and an enormous Bible.
A lighted gas-jet hung from the middle of the ceiling and illuminated
the only two pictures, one above the mantelpiece, and the other one at
the far end of the room.
Both were coloured lithographs, framed alike in black-and-gilt wood,
one representing a fleshly Jewish woman drawing water at a well, the
other one depicting the prophet Daniel, erect and haughty, amongst a
crouching company of innocuous-looking lions.
“You haven’t changed, Uncle Alfred, not one bit.”
“Unless it’s to put on flesh, I daresay not. Well, I can’t say as much
for you, Rose. You look fully your age,” said Uncle Alfred cheerfully.
“Well, I’ve been through a lot, one way and another. And my age is only
twenty-five, so I don’t mind if I _do_ look it.”
Mrs. Smith had early impressed upon Rose the advisability of “standing
up to” Uncle Alfred, and her exhortation had fallen upon receptive
ears. Quite instinctively, the old habit of years ago resumed its sway.
Uncle Alfred turned his attentive, shrewd eyes, light green, like a
cat’s, upon little Cecil. His teeth were so prominent that the front
ones jutted out far beyond his lower lip. Even when he was serious,
as he usually was, and when, as now, he smiled--a rather slow, wary
smile--almost the whole row was exposed.
“How old are you, young sir?”
“I’m nearly eight.” Cecil always preferred this form to the more direct
declaration that he was seven years old.
“And do you know your catechism?”
“Some of it.”
“Very good. I shall examine you one of these days.”
Cecil looked rather alarmed. Miss Wade had taught him the meaning of
“examination.”
“No, not now. We are going to have supper now.”
“Do you still have supper in the old basement, Uncle A.?”
“No, Rose,” said Uncle Alfred with dignity. “My servant inhabits
the basement, and meals are served to me and my assistants in the
dining-room.”
“Assistants?”
“I have two assistants--Artie Millar, who has served me very well
indeed, and is now my salesman, and a young lad, who does the work that
Artie used to do when he first came here.”
“You must have done well with the business,” said Rose, impressed.
“The Lord has prospered me--to a certain extent,” Uncle Alfred
admitted. “If you will go upstairs to the room next to the store-room
you will find it ready for yourself and your child. What is his name?”
“Cecil, Uncle.”
“Neither Scriptural nor historical,” said Uncle Alfred sweepingly.
“Take him upstairs and wash his hands, and then we can sit at table
together.”
Rose obeyed, feeling fifteen years old again.
“Oh, Ces, it’s the very room mother and I had. There’s the old picture
of ‘The Soul’s Awakening’--look, Ces, isn’t it pretty?--but he’s got
new furniture. I wonder who’s been in here since I slept here last.”
“Where’s the nursery, Mummie?”
“Where--oh, well, darling, you’re going to sleep in here with Mummie,
you know. Won’t that be fun?”
“Yes,” said Cecil rather doubtfully. “And where shall I play, and do my
lessons?”
“You’ll see to-morrow. Now wash your hands quickly--never mind a
sponge; I’ll unpack afterwards, and there’s a towel here.”
“It’s a very _thick_ towel,” said Cecil, examining the coarse cotton
fibre, “and there’s no hot water.”
“Cold will do,” said Rose curtly.
For the first time it occurred to her that the months Cecil had spent
at Squires were as a lifetime to his childishness. He had come to take
the material comforts, to which Rose was naturally indifferent, for
granted. And it appeared that to him they were not indifferent.
He was very good during supper, but the cold mutton and salad did not
attract him, and the cheese that concluded the meal, Rose would not let
him eat. She remembered with a pang of remorse his mug of fresh milk
and his plate of biscuits, brought on a tray to the nursery at Squires
every evening.
“But I’ll be able to fix it all up with Uncle A. to-morrow,” she
thought.
For her own part, she felt herself to have come home again. There had
hardly been a moment at Squires when she had not known constraint of
spirit, and her dependence upon entertainers whom she whole-heartedly
disliked had galled her incessantly.
Both Millar and the young assistant, a pale-faced youth introduced to
her as Felix Menebees, had supper with them.
As soon as the meal was over, Rose took Cecil upstairs and put him to
bed.
He was quiet, and seemed rather inclined to cry, but Rose effectually
checked this by a promise of the Zoo, and by undertaking to come to bed
herself in a very short time.
He had become accustomed to a night-light and she was obliged to
leave the gas lighted--the electric light was confined to the shop
downstairs--after making him promise that he would not touch it.
“I hope Uncle A. won’t find out,” Rose thought, with the old,
apprehensive feeling of half-amused guilt.
In the sitting-room, Uncle Alfred was reading _The Pawnbrokers’
Gazette_. The boy Felix had already gone downstairs, presumably to
Artie Millar’s old sleeping quarters in the shop beside the safe,
and Millar himself, the pawnbroker informed his niece, now lived in
lodgings at Wimbledon and only came in to business daily.
“Is he married?” Rose inquired. Certain old recollections, that did not
amount to emotions, had stirred within her at the sight of her first
fancy.
“He is a very God-fearing youth,” said Uncle Alfred, and after a pause
sufficient to mark the significance of the word, he added solemnly,
“now-a-days. He is not married.”
They exchanged hardly any other conversation, but Rose felt, with a
relief as profound as it was inexplicit, that she and her strange,
undemonstrative relative were mutually gratified at resuming a tie
that, however severely strained by incongruities of temperament, was
yet securely founded upon some essential similarity of outlook.
“Whatever else Uncle Alfred is, he’s alive,” Rose reflected. “And those
Aviolets at Squires are as dead as mutton--every blessed one of them.”