Two Worlds and Their Ways (25 page)

“And I don't think they want me. I should like not to remember any of it.”

“Oh, and after all the trouble and expense,” said Maria at the door, in a tone of reproach and joy. “Why, here are a girl and boy who like their home better than school, their mother and father better than masters and mistresses, and their own nurse better than the matrons. Well, their mother likes them in the same way, and would not change them. So Aldom has come to join in the welcome. I daresay you like him better than his counterpart too. But he will not have to impersonate teachers any longer. You know them at first-hand.”

“Five more days to Christmas!” said Sefton, with a note of excitement, that he would have given much to have real.

“And we shall be a large party this year,” said Maria. “Miss Firebrace and the Cassidys are coming to-morrow. I thought I should like to discuss you with them. And now
I find I would rather not talk about them and their schools at all. I want to enjoy our home, and not think of your leaving it. I hope it will not spoil our Christmas.”

“It will not add to it,” said Clemence, with a faint hope of averting the danger. “It will bring in things that have nothing to do with home.”

“My poor child! How stupid I have been! You have had enough of them. And we ought to feel they have had enough of you. But you shall stay up there with Miss Petticott, and hardly see them. Miss Petticott, come and hear what your duty will be this Christmas. To protect these two little home-lovers from the school invaders. I promise to make it easy for you. That will be my expiation of the sin of asking them. But I do want to discuss the children's abilities and prospects. I promise not to do it in their presence, but I am looking forward to it, and I daresay you are too.”

“Well, Lady Shelley, I have had my opinion about the children for too long, to need that of people who have only just known them. It can hardly be of much value to me. There is not much that I need to be told.”

“You may find your own opinion confirmed, and that has its own satisfaction.”

“It is much too unshakable to be strengthened by argument, or weakened by the lack of it. Indeed, opinion is the wrong word. It is a case of simple knowledge. And I am afraid poor Sir Roderick will be the chief sufferer from the invasion, if I am to use your word. He will not be able to take refuge in the schoolroom.”

“Their success means a great deal to him. Only he and I know how much. Well, Aldom and I will return to our sphere, and leave you to settle down in yours.”

The children could only pretend to do this, and used an apparent excitement to veil their restlessness. Miss Petticott found them docile and affectionate, as they established themselves in a favour that would withstand the shock to come. They seemed to be playing into each other's hands,
but had no chance of a private word. It was evening when they found themselves alone.

“What is a report, Clemence?” said Sefton, as he turned a page.

“A report? A paper that comes from a school and tells about a pupil in it. I think one is sent at the end of each term.”

“And will one come for us?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Of course it will. But it will make no difference, as the people themselves are coming.”

“It is a pity we went to schools kept by relations, or we might have watched for the reports and intercepted them. That is what boys call it. It is a thing they do sometimes.”

Clemence stared at her brother at this evidence of change in him.

“Is there anything bad on your report?”

“Yes. Yes, there is,” said Sefton, with a burst of tears. “Clemence, I have cheated all through the term, and it has been found out. And it will be on the report, and Mother will mind so much, and there will be such misery. And Father will mind about cheating as much as she will.”

“So have I cheated,” said Clemence, in a tone that seemed to her strange for the words she said. “I wonder why we have both done it. It seems to be such an unusual thing, or they say it is. It is such a strange coincidence. I wonder if we are different from other people?”

“Have you cheated, Clemence? Then it will not be so bad. It will be the same for us both. The coincidence is a happy one. Coincidences are often that. It will all seem so much more ordinary. And I don't think it can be as bad as they say, if we both have done it.”

“What exactly did you do?” said his sister.

Sefton gave his account, and she gave her own, and they heard each other without question or judgment.

“It will make great trouble,” said Clemence. “We have dreadful things ahead, worse than we have ever had. We shall need great courage. We have thought such small
things were bad. And the people from the schools will make it worse. No one but us would have to face that.”

“Yes, we shall need great courage,” said Sefton, almost with complacence. “But its being the same for us both will make a difference. Even the school people can't prevent that.”

“It may not make it so much better. Why should Mother and Father like disgrace for both of us better than only for one? In a way it will be twice as bad. I wish we could run away or die. But we should starve if we ran away, and we don't know any way to die. We are not like savages, who can die when they want to.”

“If we were, would you die?”

“Well, savages would never be in our place. It is only possible for civilised people. Miss Firebrace could not be a savage. Her way of making things worse, without seeming to want to, could not exist in one. I wonder if she knows what she is like, and what I really think of her. She seems only to think of what she thinks of me. But thoughts are possible in anyone.”

Lesbia was unconscious of this verdict on herself, as she entered the Shelleys' house, followed in the usual way by her sister and her husband.

“Christmas, the season of childhood!” she said. “We have no excuse for coming, and so will make none. So Clemence and Sefton are not here to greet us. They are properly exercising their peculiar rights.”

“Christmas is the season of everyone,” said Sir Roderick, who almost adopted at this time the beliefs he did not hold at others. “We are all here to greet and serve each other. The children will be coming to do their part.”

“I have a sense of guilt at Christmas,” said Juliet. “We have nothing but pleasure that we have done nothing to deserve.”

“A good definition of it,” said her sister, speaking just audibly. “A sense of guilt is not out of place. And our having done nothing to deserve our benefits is also true.”

“I never have such a feeling,” said Oliver. “I am a helpless vessel tossed on the waves of life.”

“I always have it,” said his grandfather. “I am not entitled to my home or my bread.”

“We all give thanks for our daily bread,” said Sir Roderick.

“No wonder people dread Christmas,” said Oliver. “Ought we to make it so much worse for each other? This is the sort of thing that gives it its name.”

Maria took no part in the talk. She moved about her duties in a dreamlike way, and her manner had a zest and hint of suspense that were new to Lesbia and told their tale. The latter rendered the dues to convention, and then looked about her with a difference.

“Maria, I have an ordeal before me. I hesitate to ask you to make it easy for me, as I cannot do the same for you. Something of an ordeal it will be to me. Christmas, we have said, is the season of childhood, and the cloud over this Christmas must be the sadder for that. Your children have been a source of joy, and must be one of sorrow too.”

“What is the trouble?” said Sir Roderick.

“Must it come so soon?” said Oliver. “Must it come at all? Why talk of Christmas as the season of childhood, and then forget it?”

“Oliver, if only it need not come! If only the choice were ours!”

“We all have our ordinary, human choice,” said Juliet.

“What is it all about?” said Maria. “I have heard nothing.”

“No?” said Lesbia, in gentle question, pausing as if this shed a certain light. “No? I could wish that you had, Maria, and not only because it would save myself.”

“Give us the plain tale, Lesbia,” said Sir Roderick. “Tell it simply and openly, as anyone else would tell it. Tell us the truth, and the whole truth, but also tell us nothing but the truth. Do not spare us and do not indulge yourself.”

The twofold injunction did its work, and Lesbia did
neither of these things. Silence succeeded her account and Lucius's confirmation of it, and a summons to the children followed at once. The parents could brook no delay in hearing their version of the matter, and their support or denial of Lesbia's. They hoped for a refutation of it, hoped it too much to face the frailty of the chance.

Lesbia raised her hand.

“Stay, Maria. Do you know the questions you will ask, the answers you expect? We must not plan answers to our questions. That is not our part. The part of the questioner is to accept the replies.”

“Could you really bear to hear them?” said Oliver.

“We can have neither questions nor answers until the people concerned are here,” said Sir Roderick.

“People concerned!” said Juliet. “It seems such a callous way to refer to the young.”

“They will have to face the tribunal of seven grown people. There is no help for it.”

“Of course there is,” said Oliver. “We can all do what we can. I withdraw from the tribunal, and so do Aunt Juliet and Grandpa.”

“I am not part of it,” said Maria. “I am simply their mother.”

“And I am their father. But certain things are binding on me as that. They must face their ordeal. They cannot have their chance without it.”

“Then I am the tribunal,” said Lesbia. “I will not disclaim the part. It may be mine.”

“So a thing can be said between a smile and a sigh,” said Oliver.

“It was nearer to the sigh, Oliver,” said Lesbia, coming nearer even to it.

“I may not withdraw,” said Lucius. “My place is with Lesbia.”

“Thank you, Lucius.”

“I cannot bear the spectacle of wasted nobility,” said Oliver. “I would so much rather not see it at all. Indeed, I
would always rather be spared the sight. I only admire it when it is hidden.”

“Do not be hard on us, Oliver,” said Lesbia. “We have but a thankless part.”

“When people are thanked too little, they ought to pause and think.”

“And you think we have not done so, Oliver?”

Miss Petticott led the way into the room, unaware that the summons did not include herself, and advanced at once to Lesbia.

“How are you, Miss Firebrace? There is a closer bond than ever between us, now that we actually share a pupil.”

“How do you do, Miss Petticott?” said Lesbia, simply returning the handshake.

Miss Petticott cast her eyes over her face. The children came forward as though hardly conscious what they did. The parents' eyes sought their faces, and Sir Roderick's fell.

“Tell the tale again, Lesbia, and we will see if the children corroborate it.”

“No, I do not think I will ‘tell the tale again', Roderick,” said Lesbia, just moving her lips. “I did not know that I had told a tale. What I said, remains. It does not need repeating, certainly not corroboration.”

“But the children did not hear it.”

“No. We were able to spare them that. But they could have told it themselves. I hoped to hear they had done so.”

“I wonder if you did. Your own account had been prepared, and one from them would have forestalled it. It would have rendered your effort meaningless.”

“Yes, it had been prepared, Roderick. It told the truth in the fewest words, with the least possible hurt in them. I had given thought to it. It is the last thing I wish to deny. I should not approach the matter in a careless spirit, or claim to do so. It would seem to me a strange claim.”

“Have you said ‘how-do-you-do' to the guests?” said Maria to the children, in an empty tone.

“How do you do, Clemence? How do you do, Sefton?” said Lesbia, shaking hands with them in turn.

No one else offered to do the same, and the children approached no one. Everything seemed to be centred in Lesbia, and Sir Roderick and Maria appeared to accept the view. Sefton gave a glance at Lucius, who stood aloof.

“Now let the children tell the tale in their own words,” said Sir Roderick, not shaken in his own conception.

“No, pray do not,” said Oliver. “No one could bear it, and naturally they could not. And we must not see people as culprits, and then expect them to rise to the heights.”

Lesbia looked at her nephew, and then gravely bowed her head.

“Were you going just to say nothing about it, Clemence?” said Maria.

“Well, we knew the people from the schools were coming, and that it would be on the reports. It was no good to say anything.”

“So you talked about it to each other?”

“Yes, we did that.”

Lesbia drew the reports from her bag, and held them in her hand, as though rendering them available for anyone concerned, and in a moment passed them smoothly to Miss Petticott.

“Miss Petticott may see them, Maria?” she said, in incidental question. “There are things that might interest her. The one thing is not the whole.”

Miss Petticott looked at them uncertainly, and Mr. Firebrace intercepted them, put on his glasses and scrutinised them.

“It reminds me of my young days. How the old generation passeth away, and the new generation cometh!”

“Did you cheat?” said Oliver.

“Why, yes, my boy. We could not have managed without it. Everything was in Latin and Greek, you know. And it was not thought so much of in those days, not taken so hard. And it was the masters we were outwitting, not each other.”

“Did you do it, Oliver?” said Maria, at once.

“Maria, I wish I could tell you that I did. But I did not. There was no need. You see, I had no mother. But I have a word of comfort for you. I have met a downfall.”