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 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?" |