“I think someone will be able to be,” said Lesbia, laying a hand on her sister’s arm.
“How was it? Why was it?” said Maria. “Have I urged them too much, asked more of them than they could do? Were they forced to it to satisfy me? But they knew I would rather they did nothing than sink to this.”
“But you were not prepared for them to do nothing,” said Oliver.
“But had I any reason to be? Had I any ground for thinking of them in that way? Look at their heads; look at their faces. What would any mother have thought?”
“What you did, Maria,” said Lesbia, gently. “And she would have been right in thinking it. Your children have good abilities, in some ways high ones. There was no reason for them to hide their talents in the earth, or for you to wish them to do so.”
“Oh, I should have been so pleased, so proud. If only it had not been for this! Indeed, I was pleased and proud, when I heard of their first success.”
“We went too far,” said Sir Roderick, identifying himself with his wife. “That was our mistake. We urged them beyond their bounds, and they could not cross them of themselves. We forgot their lonely position; we forgot their childhood.”
Maria was silent, facing the accusation in the only form it would be made.
“And so they looked to higher aid,” said Juliet. “Well, it was lower aid, I suppose. They looked to aid and it failed them; and that was hard on them in a school, which is a place designed to give aid. But I am glad they gave Maria pleasure. They had their reward.”
“They are getting it, poor children!” said Sir Roderick.
There was a pause.
“I am sorry, Miss Petticott,” said Lesbia, turning and putting a hand on Miss Petticott’s arm. “You will let me say it.”
“It is a great shock and trouble to me, Miss Firebrace. I was quite unprepared. There has never been anything of the kind in all the years I have taught them. It is strange that a new environment should bring about such a change.”
“It would be strange,” said Lesbia, allowing the faint smile to reach her lips. “But a new environment does not cause essential change. It can only reveal or release something that is there. Or we will say something that has grown somehow out of the earlier experience.”
“Shall we say that, Father?” said Oliver.
“The new environment supplied the conditions that led to the change,” said Sir Roderick. “That and an undue pressure from home, which we acknowledge. The fact that the result was the same with them both, shows that it came from something outside.”
“You do not allow for a possible likeness between them, arising from the same blood and the same upbringing?” said Lesbia. “How do you explain the tact that no other pupil in either school has done the same?”
“I do not explain it. It cannot be a fact.”
“Neither can it,” said Mr. Firebrace. “But do not lose hold on yourself, my boy.”
“Actually, Roderick it is very rare,” said Lesbia.
“What is the truth, Lucius?” said Sir Roderick, hardly attending to Mr. Firebrace’s injunction.
“Well, ‘rare’ is scarcely the word in a general sense. But in a case of a sustained course like this, I am afraid it is.”
“Poor little boy!” said Maria.
Her husband held Clemence closer to his side, in lieu of voicing a similar sentiment.
“It is clear that the schools exercised a disruptive influence.”
“Honestly, Roderick, we considered seriously whether we could keep the children in them,” said Lesbia.
“And came to the conclusion that you could. I have considered equally seriously, and come to the conclusion that I cannot.”
“Why have so much honesty, my dear?” said Mr. Firebrace to his daughter. “It is not always the best policy. You must have found that.”
“Oh, Roderick, Roderick,” said Lesbia, shaking her head and seeming just to avoid amusement. “Will anything do for an excuse to indulge yourself?”
“This will do well enough. When I did the opposite thing, we see what came of it. And when two innocent children stumble and fall on the same path, it shows that it is too rough for them, and that it is wise to guide them to another.”
“Then they are of weaker stuff than the other children.”
“It has emerged that they are of different stuff.”
“Roderick, it is not an occasion for pride.”
“I was feeling that it was,” said Juliet.
“I have felt it all the time,” said Oliver.
There was a pause.
“You would not like them to live it down?” said Lesbia, just raising her eyes. “You have not that amount of respect — or we will say that kind of respect — for them?”
“Parents have too little respect for their children, just as the children have too much for the parents,” said Sir Roderick, stating the belief as it came to him. “But I have a father’s love for them, and that can be my guide. I could not have a better.”
“And an ordinary human love for yourself, Roderick?”
“Well, that is to say I am an ordinary human being.”
“But surely you would not say that,” said Oliver.
Sir Roderick was silent, finding that his mood of the moment did prevent his doing so.
“So it is settled that Clemence is not to return to us, Maria?” said Lesbia, making a movement of rising from her seat. “Because, if so, I must telegraph that there is a vacancy.”
“If you will draft the telegram, it will be taken for you,” said Sir Roderick.
Lesbia disengaged her skirt from her chair, and went to the door, thanking Oliver for opening it. As though at a sign, Maria turned to her children, and as though at another, Juliet followed her sister, and was followed by her husband, father and nephew.
“It seems pitiless,” said Oliver, as they gained the hall. “But they had better strike while the iron is hot, if I say what I mean. A scene in cold blood leads to the worst results, and as the blood always gets hot in the course of it, it leads to everything else as well.”
The door opened and Miss Petticott broke into the hall, suddenly aware that her presence was preventing the family solitude.
“So you are like the rest of us,” said Mr. Firebrace. “You can bear things better if you do not see them.”
“I am in such distress, Mr. Firebrace, that I hardly know what I am doing,” said Miss Petticott, smoothing her hair, as if she felt it ought to be dishevelled.
“Come along, my boy,” said Mr. Firebrace to his grandson. “The children have their years to forget the scene, and the same cannot be said of me. So I will not concern myself with it.”
“I shall not be myself until it is over,” said Oliver. “It shows what a feeling heart can beat under a polished exterior.”
“No one would be more ashamed of a rugged one,” said Lesbia, smiling at him in disregard of her own preoccupations.
“No one indeed. And it is natural for the better heart to result in the better exterior, though no one has thought of their going together. You are looking at the door, Aunt Lesbia. You are thinking what a door may hide. I wish I dared to think of it.”
“The judges and the culprits are facing each other,” said Lesbia, with a sigh.
“I dare to think of that. But the parents and children are doing so.”
This was the case, and continued to be so after the door had closed. Clemence afterwards remembered the things that had passed through her mind in those moments. It was almost a relief when Maria spoke. The extreme moment had come, must soon be actually past.