A FALSE STEP.
BREAKFAST was late next morning, for it had been nearly midnight
before the party was over and the last of the guests had gone, so Aunt
Dora had made the welcome announcement, when she said good-night,
that no one need be called before half-past eight, or be expected to
be downstairs before nine o’clock. Isobel was dressed before that,
however, and so was Vivian, and they amused themselves playing ‘touch’
round the gallery, making so much noise that at last Aunt Dora opened
her bedroom door.
‘Parties do not seem to have any power to tire you two,’ she said,
laughing. ‘I wish my bones were as free from aches; but I must have a
little less noise when Claude comes in to say his prayers, so I think
I shall set you to do something for me. It just wants five minutes
till breakfast-time, and perhaps in these five minutes you could carry
up all the things that were brought down for the charades from the
cloakroom to the schoolroom. The maids will be busy putting the hall in
order, and there will be so much dust. We can put them back in their
places after breakfast.’
The two children ran obediently downstairs, followed by Ronald, who had
just finished dressing; and by the time Anne appeared in the hall with
the breakfast-tray, bringing with her a most tempting odour of bacon
and eggs, the cloakroom was quite tidy, and the last armful of toys,
rugs, and cloaks had been carried into the schoolroom.
‘I think we had better take up our caps and greatcoats, Vivi,’ said
Ronald taking his own garments down from the peg where they were
hanging. ‘You know mother told us to keep our things all together in
our own bedroom, so that we might find them easily when we come to
pack. Your things are all over the place already; I saw your woollen
gloves in the schoolroom, and your silk neckerchief on the window-ledge
in the back hall.’
‘What a nice time you would have if Miss Ritchie were here!’ laughed
Isobel, trying to see how long she could hop on one foot without losing
her balance; ‘she always fines us a halfpenny for everything that we
leave about. She warns us once, then if we don’t put it away we have to
pay the fine.’
‘I’m afraid that I’d lose an awful lot of money if mother did that to
me,’ said Vivian. ‘Somehow I never can remember to put things in their
right places. As for Ronald, I think he must have been born tidy, for
he can always find anything he wants, even in the dark.’
‘You are much quicker, though,’ said Ronald, not to be outdone in
brotherly generosity; ‘you can do things in half the time that I take
to do them. But hurry up, old chap; run along and find your things, or
the bell will ring before you get down again.’
‘All right,’ answered Vivian; and as he spoke he threw his coat over
his arm, and ran across the front hall, and disappeared through the
swing door which separated it from the back staircase, in order to
gather together the rest of his belongings as he went upstairs.
But although Ronald had plenty of time to go upstairs and hang
everything in his wardrobe in his leisurely way, and come down again
and join the others in the dining-room before the breakfast-bell rang,
it was fully five minutes before Vivian reappeared.
‘Whatever can he be doing?’ asked Uncle Walter, as he rapidly cut
slices of bread and served out the bacon and eggs. ‘His coffee will be
quite cold.’
‘Gathering all his things together, in case mother fines him a
halfpenny for each of them,’ laughed Isobel. ‘I have frightened him by
telling him what Miss Ritchie does to us.’
‘But you are a girl, and girls have always to learn to keep the house
tidy,’ said Ralph in his lofty way. ‘It is of far more consequence for
a woman to be tidy than for a man.—Isn’t it, mother?’
‘Certainly not,’ said his mother; ‘and if those are the notions that
you are learning at St Chad’s we will have to put on the halfpenny fine
in the holidays to counteract them. I expect you to be just as tidy as
Isobel—tidier, in fact, because you are older.’
At this moment Vivian appeared, and his entrance put an end to the
discussion, for every one began laughingly to ask him if it had taken
him five minutes to hang up his coat, but he did not seem to be as
ready with an answer as he generally was, and, slipping into his place
between Ralph and Claude, he began to eat his breakfast hurriedly, as
if to make up for lost time. He kept his face bent so steadily over his
plate that no one noticed until breakfast was over that he had a big
blue bruise on one of his temples, which looked as though he had struck
his face against something sharp. It was little Claude who saw it
first, and he cried out at once, in spite of Vivian’s hurried whisper
to keep quiet.
‘Come here, mother, and see how Vivian has hurt himself; he has got a
great bump over one of his eyes. Hadn’t he better have eau de Cologne
on it?’
To Claude, the idea of being petted by mother, and having nice-smelling
stuff put on his knocks and bruises, quite compensated for the pain of
them, and he could not understand why Vivian tried to escape upstairs
before his aunt came hurriedly from the kitchen, where she had gone to
have an interview with cook.
‘Why, Vivi, boy,’ she said, drawing him to the light, and pressing her
fingers gently over the ugly mark, ‘why did you not tell me of this,
and have it seen to, when you came downstairs? However did you manage
to do it?’
‘I slipped, and knocked it against the corner of the washstand in
our room, Aunt Dora; and I am very sorry, but I broke the glass for
drinking water out of. I knocked it on to the floor.’
‘Yes, and you must have upset the ewer too,’ said Ralph, who had been
upstairs for a book, ‘for I heard Mary tell Anne that your carpet was
soaking, and that you had scrubbed it up with one of mother’s best
damask towels.’
Vivian’s face turned scarlet.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he stammered; ‘but the ewer got upset as well, and I
did not know what to do. I never thought about the towel. But the ewer
isn’t broken, Aunt Dora.’
Mrs Osbourne felt a little troubled. She had always tried to impress
upon her own children that the straightforward way, when any mishap
occurred, was to come to her at once, and tell her about it; and she
could not help wishing that her little nephew had done this instead of
saying nothing about the accident until it was found out, and he was
compelled to do so, and then try to shrink from inquiries.
But, after all, it was rather an ordeal for a little boy to come down
in a strange house and publicly own to having nearly swamped his
bedroom, besides having broken a glass; so she contented herself by
saying, as she bathed the wounded head, ‘It would have been better if
you had told me at once, dear, and then I could have sent Mary to dry
up the water; and, perhaps, if your head had been bathed at once there
would not have been such a bump.’
She kissed him and sent him away, little dreaming how miserable the
poor boy really was, or what a battle was going on in his heart.
In a moment of temptation he had taken a false step, a terribly false
one, and that better self which dwells within us all was urging him to
retrace it while yet there was time, and it was easy to do so. As he
went upstairs to the schoolroom his mother’s words of the Sunday before
came into his mind: ‘You have not got the courage to confess when you
have done something wrong;’ and, child as he was, he felt the truth of
them, and he wished he could make up his mind now to confess everything
to Aunt Dora.
Not that it need seem like a confession at all, for he had only to
tell her that he had found a parcel in his greatcoat-pocket which was
not his, and which must have been put there by some one in mistake.
If he ran into his bedroom for a moment, and took the parcel from its
hiding-place and put it back in his coat-pocket, he need not tell her
that he had intended to keep it, and had hidden it on the top of the
wardrobe, and in so doing had tipped over the chair he was standing on
and overturned the ewer.
For five long minutes he stood at the top of the stairs debating with
himself. He even went the length of going into his room with the
half-formed intention in his mind of getting down the parcel; but Mary
the housemaid was in possession, and she spoke to him rather tartly.
‘Now, Master Vivian,’ she began, ‘be a good boy, and don’t go messing
all over the place again just when I’ve got it all cleaned up.’
Colouring at the sharp words, and at the sight of the dark, wet patch
on the carpet, Vivian drew back and went into the schoolroom.
There every one was busy, and took little notice of him. Ralph and
Ronald were curled up in two basket-chairs by the fire, deep in books,
while Isobel was writing a letter, and Claude was playing happily on
the floor with his man-of-war.
‘Come into the bathroom and see how well she sails,’ he cried; but
Vivian was in no mood to attend to him. The conflicting voices were too
strong in his heart, and he went out and wandered restlessly downstairs
again.
Aunt Dora had finished her business with the cook, and was now seated
at her desk in the study, making out lists for the stores. Looking up,
she caught sight of her little nephew’s white, anxious face.
‘Do you feel sick, dearie?’ she asked kindly, laying down her pen. ‘A
bump like that is a nasty thing, and if you like you can lie down for a
while. Come, and I will tuck you up on the couch, and we will not let
any of the others in to make a noise until lunch-time.’
‘I’m not sick, thank you,’ said Vivian, drawing pictures slowly with
his fingers on the window-pane; ‘but I want to tell you something,
auntie.’
‘Yes, dearie?’
At that moment Anne appeared in the doorway. ‘If you please, mum,
there’s a young gentleman in the hall who wishes to speak to you. It is
one of the young gentlemen who were here last night, and I think he has
lost something.’
Mrs Osbourne rose and left the room, and Vivian followed her, sick and
miserable. He would fain not have gone at all, for he knew too well who
it was, and what he wanted; but something within him compelled him to
go and hear what was said.
As he expected, Basil Gray stood outside, a look of anxiety on his
boyish face.
‘Good-morning, Mrs Osbourne. I’ve come very early, but mother sent me
round. The fact is, I’m afraid that I have lost that parcel which you
gave me to take home to Vivian—the pistol and caps, you know. It was
awfully careless of me, and yet I can’t think how I lost it. I put it
in my greatcoat-pocket in the cloakroom, as you told me, and I never
thought anything more about it until I got home, and ran upstairs to
give it to Vivian, and when I put my hand in my pocket it wasn’t there.
Of course it may have fallen out on the way home, but it doesn’t seem
likely; my pocket is too deep, and mother thinks that I may have put
it in some one else’s pocket. There were some coats hanging in the
cloakroom just like mine, almost the same, made of gray tweed. This is
the coat I had on last night,’ and he unbuttoned it to let Mrs Osbourne
see it better.
‘Why, it is almost exactly the same as those that Ronald and you have,
Vivian,’ she said, stooping down to examine it. ‘It is just possible
that Basil may have put it in one of your pockets. Run into the
cloakroom, like a good boy, and see, and we will go upstairs, and send
Ralph to search his coat, although I hardly think that you could put it
there, Basil, for he has a dark-brown coat, quite different from this.’
Clearly Aunt Dora had forgotten that the coats had been carried
upstairs in the morning, but Vivian did not remind her of the fact.
He crept away into the cloakroom and waited there, feeling as he had
never felt in his life before. He realised that he had lost the chance
of retrieving that first wrong step, for he knew only too well that
he would never have the courage now to confess that the pistol had
been put in the wrong pocket, and that when he had found it there, as
he was carrying his coat upstairs, the sudden temptation had been too
strong for him, and that, almost without intending to keep it, he had
hidden it where no one would dream of looking for it. At least he hoped
so; but supposing Mary took it into her head to dust the top of the
wardrobe? The very idea made him shiver; and, in case Aunt Dora might
wonder why he was lingering downstairs, he started and ran out of the
cloakroom so suddenly that he knocked up against Anne, who was dusting
in the hall, and, muttering an apology, hurried up into the schoolroom.
‘We took our coats upstairs in the morning, Aunt Dora,’ he said
breathlessly, ‘and I don’t see any parcel lying about.’
‘No,’ said his aunt; ‘if it had been downstairs the maids must have
noticed it, and Ronald has just been searching his own pockets and
yours, and it is not there.—So, I am afraid, Basil, you must either
have dropped it on your way home, or else you have put it in some
other boy’s coat. I will write and ask if any of them have found it,
although I think if they have, they will be honourable enough to bring
it back.’
‘Honourable enough!’ The words fell on Vivian’s ears like burning drops
of lead, reminding him of some words which his father had once spoken
when Ronald and he had been discussing what they meant to be when they
were men.
‘Well, boys,’ Dr Armitage had said, putting his hands on their
shoulders, ‘I may not have much money to leave you, but I will give
you a good education, and after that you shall choose a calling for
yourselves. I do not much mind what you are, as long as you grow up
God-fearing, honourable men.’
Ronald, always slow to speak, had merely answered, ‘Yes, father, we’ll
try to be that;’ but Vivian had hugged the Doctor in his impulsive way,
and had promised readily what seemed to him an easy task.
Alas! what claim had he to the word ‘honourable’ now?
The thought stung him to the quick, and yet he had not the courage to
slip downstairs to the study, after Basil had gone, and his aunt had
resumed her writing, and finish the confession which Anne’s entrance
had interrupted.
In spite of his self-loathing, it was a relief to him to think that the
risk of discovery was averted in the meantime, for every one seemed
satisfied that the pistol had not been lost in the house; so he tried
recklessly to stifle his conscience, and presently, when they went
out to play hide-and-seek in the garden, his voice was so loud and
merry that Aunt Dora, watching them from the study window, wondered at
the buoyancy of childhood, and thought with a smile of the miserable
white-faced little lad of an hour ago.