Both Lady Aviolet and Sir Thomas were insistent that Cecil should spend
his twenty-four hours’ leave before going to France, at Squires.
“People had better know that he’s coming here as--as usual,” Sir Thomas
said. “The lad’s going out to fight and there’s no need to remember
anything else.”
The violence of his wrath had subsided by degrees, with the passing
months.
“Certainly not,” his wife assented. “And we want to see him, too, Rose
my dear, and bid him Godspeed.”
With a generosity that extended far beyond the circumscribed limits
of their understanding, they tried to show that they had forgiven
him--were willing to give him another chance.
Cecil came to Squires.
He looked strong and sunburnt, and only his eyes betrayed the sickness
of the spirit within the young, healthy body.
His grandparents and Diana Aviolet treated him as usual, but he avoided
them as much as possible and spent all his moments with Rose. Ford and
he exchanged hardly a word--until seven o’clock on the last evening, an
hour before Cecil was due to drive to the junction and board his train.
They were in the large hall, and Rose, unwilling to waste an instant
of the few precious ones remaining now, was rapidly unpinning her hat
behind the heavy tapestry curtains, prepared to fling it out of sight
in the adjacent garden-room dear to Diana, sooner than spend time in
going upstairs.
As she stood with upraised arms, pushing her yellow hair away from her
forehead before the looking-glass on the wall, she heard Ford’s voice.
“So you’re off, and of course you come back with a commission--that’s
understood. But not _too_ many decorations, my boy, not _too_ many
laudatory inscriptions, I do beg, and--if you _must_ have them, do
manage something more artistically authenticated than your college
trophies, won’t you?”
In that second, a scarlet mist swam before Rose Aviolet’s eyes.
Through it, she saw the tapestry curtains torn apart by her own hand,
and Ford, in his most characteristic attitude, leaning against the high
mantelshelf on which stood the pieces of _famille verte_.
Almost simultaneously with the vision, she was driving her clenched
hand, with all her maddened strength behind it, into the middle of his
brown, elongated face, from which the sneer had not yet faded.
“God _damn_ you--and _damn_ you--and _damn_ you!” whispered Rose
Aviolet, her voice strangled in her throat.
There was a crash of splintering china as Ford reeled backwards and
as his shoulder swept the pieces of green china into the tiles of the
hearth.
“Mother!” screamed Cecil’s voice behind her.
The next moment Ford had recovered his balance and with one hand
gripped Rose’s elbow. With the other hand he pulled wildly at the cord
of his smashed _pince-nez_. Blood sprang where the glass had cut him
and his furious gestures smeared it all over his face.
Rose’s free arm swung back again and she raised it for another blow.
Ford gripped her wrist, and in an instant she was powerless.
His face, with amazed, furious eyes, was glaring into hers. “She’s
mad--mad--I could have her certified for this....”
“Mother!” cried Cecil’s voice again, on a high, sobbing note.
“She’s mad!” Ford repeated, between his teeth. “Hush--the servants. Get
her upstairs.... Ah-h--no, you don’t----”
Rose had wrenched furiously against his grasp.
“Get her upstairs, Cecil. Help me, you fool! She’s as strong as a
horse.... Take her feet!”
Rose, suddenly stock-still in his grasp, shuddered from head to foot.
She began to tremble violently.
“Take her feet!” Ford commanded.
A flicker passed across Rose’s face.
“By God, no!” shouted Cecil suddenly. “Let go of her arms. She’ll come
with me.”
Still in Ford’s grasp, Rose turned her head, her eyes, human and seeing
again, seeking Cecil’s.
With that sudden relaxation of tension she found herself, strangely,
able to smile at him; and quite suddenly, with the constricted gesture
that alone was possible to her with Ford’s hold still upon either arm,
she put out her hand to her son.
Half an hour later, incredibly, they had dinner as though nothing had
happened.
Ford had disappeared.
Servants of perfectly incurious aspect had swept up the broken china
and glass in the hall.
Diana and Sir Thomas and Lady Aviolet sat in the dining-room where Rose
and Cecil were waited upon with all the simplification of ritual that
the war had imposed upon the process of dining at Squires.
Diana and Lady Aviolet knitted.
They made spasmodic conversation.
“They say no one is allowed to write and say where they are, over
there. I daresay we shall be able to guess, though.”
“Don’t forget your letters will all have to go through the Censor’s
office, Cecil.”
“Great nonsense!” from Sir Thomas. “That’ll all stop directly you get
your commission, of course.”
“You ought to have a smooth crossing, I should say.”
“Like a mill-pond on a night like this.”
“Is your flask filled, Cecil?”
“Yes, grandmama.”
“If you find you’ve forgotten anything, or there’s any little thing you
want, we can send it, of course.”
“Thanks, Aunt Di.”
“Rose, my dear, you must really eat something. You’ve had nothing.
There’s no use in making yourself ill, you know. _That_ won’t help any
of us.”
Lady Aviolet anxiously pressed food upon her daughter-in-law.
“A glass of port, then?”
Rose shook her head.
“Wait a minute,” said Sir Thomas. He pulled himself up from his chair,
gouty and corpulent, and going to the sideboard, grasped one of the
decanters there with his big, shaking old hand, where the blue veins
stood out in knots.
“We’re going to drink the boy’s health before he goes, and--and to a
speedy and victorious return. From Berlin, eh, Cecil?”
He poured out the wine himself, grasping the backs of the chairs as he
went heavily and laboriously round the great mahogany table.
Then, regaining his own place, the old man drew himself up with
difficulty to his full height, and raised a brimming glass.
“Here’s to your very good health, Cecil, and a safe and speedy return.”
Lady Aviolet sipped at her glass, but the next moment she had raised
her handkerchief to her eyes.
“A safe and speedy return, Cecil,” echoed Diana, very white.
But Rose Aviolet lifted her glass with a steady hand and looked full at
Cecil, her brown eyes shining: “Here’s luck, Ces!”
Then she turned to Sir Thomas and said softly: “Thank you.”
The old man had spilt half the port from his glass on to the front of
his shirt, and he was gazing down at the spreading stain, grumbling and
muttering.
“Hand so infernally unsteady, now-a-days; no doing anything.”
“The carriage is at the door, m’Lady.”
“Oh, dear, where’s Ford?” cried Diana. “You must say good-bye to Uncle
Ford, Cecil.”
She pushed back her chair from the table, and Lady Aviolet rose too,
replacing the handkerchief somewhere in the rustling folds of her dress.
“Good-byes are always trying,” she said. Her choked voice, pathetic
in its striving after a dignified composure, gave utterance to the
excusatory _cliché_ almost automatically.
She moved into the hall.
“Plenty of time, but one must allow for the hill.”
Lady Aviolet had always, from the days of her first carriage and pair,
allowed for the hill.
It was part of the Squires tradition.
“I _must_ find Ford,” said Diana. She hurried upstairs.
Sir Thomas put out his hand to his grandson. “Good-bye, my boy. Good
luck to you. I--I wish I was going with you.”
Cecil wrung his grandfather’s hand. His big brown eyes, with their look
of dumb, helpless torment, sought the old man’s as though to convey a
message that could never be spoken.
“There, there,” said Sir Thomas. “Good lad, aren’t you? Do your best
and we’ll be proud of you yet.”
From an immense distance, across an impassable gulf, it was the answer
to the message.
“Good-bye,” said Cecil, in a half-whisper. He turned to his grandmother.
“God bless you,” said Lady Aviolet, crying.
She kissed him, and hurried back into the familiar, unemotional shelter
of the morning-room.
But Sir Thomas stood sturdily at the door while Cecil shook hands with
the two old servants and he remained there, looking after them as they
drove away. His chin dropped heavily on to his breast when at last he
turned indoors.
“They were decent, weren’t they?” said Cecil.
“Yes, very.”
“They don’t know about--about what happened in the hall, with Uncle
Ford?”
“No, not yet. And I shan’t be there when they do know, Ces. I’m going
to the Lucians. They won’t want me at Squires, with _him_ and Diana
there--besides, I couldn’t.”
Cecil was silent.
Presently he put his hand into hers, as he had so often done as a
little boy, and they sat there, without speaking, until the junction
was reached.
“Mummie, I’m so glad you’re going to the Lucians. May I ask you
something?”
“Anything.”
“Has Dr. Lucian asked you to marry him?”
“Yes, heaps of times,” said Rose, without elation as without
embarrassment.
“Couldn’t you?”
“Would you like me to?” she asked, surprised.
“Yes, I think I should, especially if it would make you happier. I
wouldn’t feel then--I wouldn’t feel so much as if it all depended on a
rotter like me--all your happiness.”
“Ces!”
Sobs tore at her throat.
The clear, prolonged whistle of the engine came to them shrilly. He put
his arms round her and laid his wet face against hers.
“I love you. I’ll try.”
He was gone.
Rose clung to the wooden barrier of the little station until long after
the last red spark from the vanishing train had died in the air.
“Home, Madam?”
The voice of the old man-servant was very patient and pitying, as
though he had spoken to her before, and understood why she had neither
heard, nor answered.
“I am going to Dr. Lucian’s house,” said Rose Aviolet.
A blinding fatigue possessed her. She discovered that her arms, where
Ford had gripped and held her, earlier in the evening, were aching and
bruised.
On the threshold of Henrietta Lucian’s room, she stumbled and nearly
fell.
“Rose, dear! Come in.”
Henrietta, hobbling stiffly to meet her, pushed her gently into a deep
chair, beside the low table where the friendly, homely lamplight shone.
“Don’t say anything--I know. He’s gone. Will you stay here to-night?”
“Yes,” said Rose.
Presently she murmured, “I’m not ever going back to Squires.”
Miss Lucian accepted it quietly.
She left Rose alone whilst a room was prepared for her, and then took
her upstairs, pulling herself up each step by the aid of the balusters.
“Oh, your poor knees! I forgot. Don’t climb the stairs,” Rose cried
suddenly.
“That’s all right,” said Miss Lucian stoically.
But it had broken the spell.
Rose smiled, thanked her, and broke into a flood of tears.
“That’s better,” said Henrietta, the tears in her own eyes. “Just let
me see you in bed, Rose, and then I’ll leave you alone in the dark.
It’s all one can do, I suppose.”
When she came downstairs again, she wrote a letter to her brother in
London.
“I don’t think Rose will go back to the Aviolets, though I don’t know
what happened, exactly. Probably something to do with Cecil. But when
this bad bit is over, she’ll want something to do, and I daresay you
can help her about it. Anyway, come, if you can.”
Dr. Lucian came.
It was characteristic of the fine and delicate relationship between
the brother and sister, that his first inquiry was for Henrietta’s own
increasingly frail health. Afterwards, he asked her about Rose.
“She’s heard from Cecil--one of those field post-cards. And she’s
talking about work, just as I said she would. She’ll ask you about it.”
“I’ve a suggestion to make to her.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Henrietta significantly.
If any number of implications lay between them in the silence that
ensued, neither chose to stress the knowledge of them by word or look.
“You’re wanting to go out there yourself, of course.”
“Blunt is going. He’s a younger man than I am, and wild to go. As a
matter of fact, we tossed for it. There’ll be work enough here, before
it’s over. And it’s in my own special line--neurology--that I think
the Government is going to make use of me.”
“In London, I suppose?”
“Principally.”
“Can you find work for Rose?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her soon. She’s so terribly sad, though she’s so brave.”
That Rose’s sadness was not to impair Rose’s bravery, Lucian felt more
certain than ever when she came to him downstairs. The valorous spirit
that he had always loved in her was undimmed by her many tears; only
the defiance of her early days was gone.
She told him what had happened in the hall at Squires before Cecil went
away.
“So you see, I shall never go back there. That’s the end, between them
and me, isn’t it? I can’t ever be sorry I did it, you know. Except
because of the _famille verte_. It was such glorious china, and I don’t
suppose they’ll ever replace it. Uncle A. said it was very hard to get
genuine pieces now-a-days. But one curious thing has happened.”
She paused.
“What is it?”
“I’ve had a letter from Diana. Ford _must_ have told her what I
did--his face looked as though he’d been fighting with the cat----”
Rose interpolated, with her habitual graceless colloquialism. “But I’ll
show you what she says.”
He took the letter, in the square, thick, blue-grey envelope. Diana’s
handwriting was as well-bred, unindividual, and unformed as was her
mentality.
My dear Rose,
Your things are all packed, and will be sent by the carrier to-morrow.
I hope you will let me know later on what your plans are. It has been
a dreadful time for you, I know, and I have felt so awfully sorry for
you, only it is so difficult to put things into words, and after all,
there isn’t really anything that one can _say_, is there? Only I do
want to say that I’ll do anything I can for you, any time, and I wish
we could have seen more of one another.
I was very sorry not to have said good-bye properly to Cecil, you must
please give him my love and best wishes when you write. This awful war!
Don’t worry about anything, as you’ve left Squires now and whatever
things have happened, this dreadful war makes everything else look
tiny. I hope you’ll sometimes write to me, though this letter doesn’t
need any answer.
If I get through my Red Cross exams all right, I shall try and go
abroad. I’ll let you know.
Yours affectionately,
Diana Aviolet.
“She must know what happened,” Rose repeated thoughtfully.
“Yes. Poor thing!”
Rose shuddered. “Poor thing, married to Ford! It’s nice of her to have
written, and to say that about Ces. I daresay,” said Rose gently, “that
she’s unhappier than I am.”
“She hasn’t your courage, my dear.” The doctor dismissed Diana Aviolet.
Rose’s brown eyes, that looked as though she had cried and cried,
sought his, and even now they were vivid and lambent, the eyes of a
woman who still lived her life, for joy or grief, with ardour.
“What am I going to do?” she asked him. “Henrietta said you would have
some work for me. Is it at the new place you’re going to start?”
“Yes. I’ll tell you about it, all there is to tell, later. But
meanwhile, Rose, there’s just this: that work is going to touch the
side of life that caught and broke Cecil. I want you to help me to help
people who, in one way or another, are like Cecil.”
“Thank you,” said Rose.
They were silent for a while, and then Rose said:
“Of course, you knew that was exactly what I should want most. You
always understand. You see, the worst part of it all to me, almost, is
to feel that I am partly responsible for Ces being what he is.”
Lucian frowned. “What, exactly, do you mean?”
Rose, cupping her face, now-a-days so innocent of rouge, in her hands,
looked earnestly at him from where she sat on the low window-seat.
“Of course, I wasn’t educated, and I was much too young when I married
Jim to know about eugenics and heredity and things,” she told him, “but
that doesn’t really make me less responsible, does it? The Aviolets
have always been all right--you’d expect them to be, of course--but
Lord only knows what the Smith blood may have done for my poor Ces.
You see, there wasn’t any tradition behind us, was there? Even Uncle
A. did things in business that I expect you’d think pretty fishy, from
an Aviolet point of view. And, somehow, Ces got born with just that
Aviolet instinct left out of him.”
Lucian, walking up and down the long room, came to a sudden standstill
before her. “Have they really made you believe that?”
“What?” She looked at him with wide eyes, as he resumed his pacing.
“Have they really made you believe that it’s the strain of your
blood in Cecil’s veins that’s made him as he is? My dear, don’t you
understand? It’s the Aviolet blood, not yours, that’s responsible.
They’re decadent--rotten ... look at Ford. It’s the way, with these
old, old families. They intermarry, always with other old, old
families, reproducing the same type again and again. You’ve seen the
picture of the Spanish ancestress, that Ford is so like? She was
probably the saving of them, in her day. They must have died out, or
become hopelessly degenerate, but for that one lapse of Sir Basil
Aviolet that brought a fresh stock. You can tell that it was a vigorous
strain--the physical type that’s persisted to this very day in Ford.
But she couldn’t do more than give him her physical characteristics,
and a twist to his mentality that’s Latin--nearly the lowest type of
Latin, mind you--a middle-class Spaniard. She couldn’t save him, or
any of them, altogether. Look at those two boys--Ford and Jim. Poor
Jim drank, and did other things as well--I needn’t tell _you_. But
Ford--Ford’s rotten all through. Decadent. Don’t you understand why
Ford’s hated you all along? It’s the hatred of the sick for the whole,
of the neurotic for the sane.
“Whatever they thought you, Rose, however short you fell of their
little, inherited standards, you were alive, all the time, and they
knew it. And the Aviolets, they’re dead. Dead limbs on a diseased tree.
Ford, poor devil, has the Spanish woman’s brain, such as it is, and
so he understands--he can see the difference between you and them.
The vital spark. You’ve got it, and they haven’t. They’ll never have
it any more. That girl that Ford married is healthy enough, a normal
woman, if she is a bit of a fool. But he hasn’t been able to give her a
child.”
“She may thank God for it, then,” Rose interposed swiftly, “if it’s as
bad as you say.”
“You’re right. She may thank God for it, poor thing. She couldn’t have
saved her child from the Aviolet taint, as you’re going to save yours,
Rose. It’s what he’s got from you that’s all along held Cecil back from
being what Ford is.”
A sound escaped her.
“Don’t you understand?” he asked again, very gently. “Ford understood.
In a way, Cecil _was_ Ford. It was the same for both of them.
Fundamentally, each of them was aware of that paralysis, that ghastly
moral decay, in himself. You and I, my dear, can hardly guess at the
meaning of that--the utter, deadly lack, not only of self-confidence,
but of self-respect, that it must have engendered. Do you remember that
line that you quoted to me once, a long time ago?
‘_And some push stumbling on, without a star._’
Don’t cry, Rose, my beautiful, don’t cry any more.”
He knelt beside her, and she wiped away the tears that blinded her and,
with the old familiar gesture, pushed the strands of yellow hair away
from her brow.
“Is that why Ford hated Cecil?” she asked.
“I think so. Ford saw himself in Cecil all the time. Cecil used to say
what wasn’t true so as to make himself believe in himself, so as to see
himself as a fine fellow. It wasn’t any one else he wanted to deceive,
really. But he had nothing to fall back upon, no inner security, and so
he tried to find the courage we all of us need to meet life with, by
an imaginary picture of himself as he longed to be. Oh, my God, Rose,
which of us hasn’t done it? Only that poor boy got lost, between the
two worlds of reality and pretence.”
The doctor paused, and then resumed very gently:
“Ford Aviolet knew exactly the same panic that poor Cecil knows,
I’m certain of it. He lacked the inner security, too. But he didn’t
take refuge in illusion--couldn’t perhaps. He had other methods of
reassuring himself. When he could sneer at, or bully, or hurt something
weaker than himself, it gave him a sense of power. He could see himself
as a fine fellow, then--the little self that grovelled within him from
very weakness. And in both of them, both Ford and Cecil, it was the
same taint of corruption, the decadence that came from the Aviolets.
Not from you, my dear. You must never think that any more. You’re
alive, as the Aviolet stock can never be alive again, and it’s what
you’ve given to your boy that’s going to pull him through.”
She was crying again, passionately, and he gripped both her hands and
held them tightly in his.
“Never give up hope, Rose. Whatever happens, I believe his soul will
come through. You saved that in the earliest days of all, when he was
little, once and for ever.”
“We did it together,” said Rose. “You’ve always been there, backing me,
ever since we first came to Squires, Ces and I, and they were so angry
because he took your little musical snuff-box. Do you remember?”
He nodded.
“How many years ago?”
“Nearly twelve years ago, Rose. And it’s over ten since I first asked
you to marry me.”
She gave him a long look, and the ghost of a smile, the shy, mirthful
smile that was also Cecil’s. “Well,” said Rose Aviolet, “I think you
need only ask me one more time.”
“Really, Rose?”
“Really.”
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” said Rose, drawing a long breath.
Still kneeling beside her, still holding both her hands in his, Lucian
looked her squarely in the eyes.
“Remember, you and I agreed long ago not to take any chances over this
thing. It’s going to mean too much to both of us. You’re--you’re not
acting on impulse, Rose?”
Into her face there flooded a colour that reminded him of the old days,
when Mrs. Jim Aviolet had horrified Squires by her liberal use of rouge.
But as there had been no reality of artifice about her then, so there
was no reservation now, in the candour of Rose’s surrender. Both had
risen to their feet, and their eyes met on a level.
“Rose.”
He took her into his arms, and it was with all the ardour of her
generous temperament that Rose Aviolet, giving herself at last, frankly
raised her mouth to his.
“Will you marry me at once, Rose?” he asked her presently. “And we’ll
start our work together.”
“Yes. Do you know, Ces wanted this to happen. He told me so, the night
he went away.”
“I’m glad,” said Dr. Lucian gently.
Her face thanked him. “Uncle A. would have been glad, too.”
“I think he would,” said the doctor. “He told me some time ago to go in
and win, only he didn’t put it that way.”
“I suppose he made it sound as if it had come bang out of the middle
of the Bible. He always did. He was very good to me, really, and I was
very fond of him. Besides, he gave mother a home.”
The doctor was silent, realizing the inevitable memories that would
always throng the faithful heart of Rose, and in which he could never
share. As though she had guessed at the faint pang that the thought
brought with it, her next words allayed it.
“I wish you’d known her. It’s so difficult to realize that there was
ever a time when you weren’t there. Ceylon, and my life with Jim,
is the only part that doesn’t seem real to me--not counting Ces, of
course. But sometimes, sitting sewing, or anything like that, I’ve
thought myself back into those old days over the shop, with mother,
when we shared the top bedroom. Sometimes I can hardly believe we’re
not there still. It’s funny.”
He listened, as she spoke her thoughts aloud, as Rose had always done.
“I’m glad you’ve got some work for me, and that it’s what you
said--helping you to help people who are like _him_.”
“You see, you’ll understand,” he said. “It’s not only that you won’t
condemn, as so many do. You’ll understand. And because you understand,
you’ll hope, and you’ll make them hope, too, believe that somehow,
somewhere, there’s light ahead. So that there’ll be some, my Rose,
who’ll no more ‘push stumbling on without a star.’ Will you make that
your work, till Cecil comes home again?”
“Till....” Rose Aviolet paused, and into her brown eyes came the
sweetest, strangest look that Lucian had ever seen there; a deep,
divided look, that told of inextinguishable love, of enduring grief, of
eternal, illimitable hope.
“If Cecil comes home again,” she said, courageous.