Part 15 (1/2)
Ellen at first would not hear of taking anything from him, but the coachman, who was from the north country, sided with Ernest. ”Take it, my la.s.s,” he said kindly, ”take what thou canst get whiles thou canst get it; as for Master Ernest here--he has run well after thee; therefore let him give thee what he is minded.”
Ellen did what she was told, and the two parted with many tears, the girl's last words being that she should never forget him, and that they should meet again hereafter, she was sure they should, and then she would repay him.
Then Ernest got into a field by the roadside, flung himself on the gra.s.s, and waited under the shadow of a hedge till the carriage should pa.s.s on its return from the station and pick him up, for he was dead beat.
Thoughts which had already occurred to him with some force now came more strongly before him, and he saw that he had got himself into one mess--or rather into half-a-dozen messes--the more.
In the first place he should be late for dinner, and this was one of the offences on which Theobald had no mercy. Also he should have to say where he had been, and there was a danger of being found out if he did not speak the truth. Not only this, but sooner or later it must come out that he was no longer possessed of the beautiful watch which his dear aunt had given him--and what, pray, had he done with it, or how had he lost it? The reader will know very well what he ought to have done. He should have gone straight home, and if questioned should have said, ”I have been running after the carriage to catch our housemaid Ellen, whom I am very fond of; I have given her my watch, my knife and all my pocket money, so that I have now no pocket money at all and shall probably ask you for some more sooner than I otherwise might have done, and you will also have to buy me a new watch and a knife.” But then fancy the consternation which such an announcement would have occasioned! Fancy the scowl and flas.h.i.+ng eyes of the infuriated Theobald! ”You unprincipled young scoundrel,” he would exclaim, ”do you mean to vilify your own parents by implying that they have dealt harshly by one whose profligacy has disgraced their house?”
Or he might take it with one of those sallies of sarcastic calm, of which he believed himself to be a master.
”Very well, Ernest, very well: I shall say nothing; you can please yourself; you are not yet twenty-one, but pray act as if you were your own master; your poor aunt doubtless gave you the watch that you might fling it away upon the first improper character you came across; I think I can now understand, however, why she did not leave you her money; and, after all, your G.o.dfather may just as well have it as the kind of people on whom you would lavish it if it were yours.”
Then his mother would burst into tears and implore him to repent and seek the things belonging to his peace while there was yet time, by falling on his knees to Theobald and a.s.suring him of his unfailing love for him as the kindest and tenderest father in the universe. Ernest could do all this just as well as they could, and now, as he lay on the gra.s.s, speeches, some one or other of which was as certain to come as the sun to set, kept running in his head till they confuted the idea of telling the truth by reducing it to an absurdity. Truth might be heroic, but it was not within the range of practical domestic politics.
Having settled then that he was to tell a lie, what lie should he tell?
Should he say he had been robbed? He had enough imagination to know that he had not enough imagination to carry him out here. Young as he was, his instinct told him that the best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way--who husbands it too carefully to waste it where it can be dispensed with. The simplest course would be to say that he had lost the watch, and was late for dinner because he had been looking for it. He had been out for a long walk--he chose the line across the fields that he had actually taken--and the weather being very hot, he had taken off his coat and waistcoat; in carrying them over his arm his watch, his money, and his knife had dropped out of them. He had got nearly home when he found out his loss, and had run back as fast as he could, looking along the line he had followed, till at last he had given it up; seeing the carriage coming back from the station, he had let it pick him up and bring him home.
This covered everything, the running and all; for his face still showed that he must have been running hard; the only question was whether he had been seen about the Rectory by any but the servants for a couple of hours or so before Ellen had gone, and this he was happy to believe was not the case; for he had been out except during his few minutes' interview with the cook. His father had been out in the parish; his mother had certainly not come across him, and his brother and sister had also been out with the governess. He knew he could depend upon the cook and the other servants--the coachman would see to this; on the whole, therefore, both he and the coachman thought the story as proposed by Ernest would about meet the requirements of the case.
CHAPTER XL
When Ernest got home and sneaked in through the back door, he heard his father's voice in its angriest tones, inquiring whether Master Ernest had already returned. He felt as Jack must have felt in the story of Jack and the Bean Stalk, when from the oven in which he was hidden he heard the ogre ask his wife what young children she had got for his supper.
With much courage, and, as the event proved, with not less courage than discretion, he took the bull by the horns, and announced himself at once as having just come in after having met with a terrible misfortune.
Little by little he told his story, and though Theobald stormed somewhat at his ”incredible folly and carelessness,” he got off better than he expected. Theobald and Christina had indeed at first been inclined to connect his absence from dinner with Ellen's dismissal, but on finding it clear, as Theobald said--everything was always clear with Theobald--that Ernest had not been in the house all the morning, and could therefore have known nothing of what had happened, he was acquitted on this account for once in a way, without a stain upon his character. Perhaps Theobald was in a good temper; he may have seen from the paper that morning that his stocks had been rising; it may have been this or twenty other things, but whatever it was, he did not scold so much as Ernest had expected, and, seeing the boy look exhausted and believing him to be much grieved at the loss of his watch, Theobald actually prescribed a gla.s.s of wine after his dinner, which, strange to say, did not choke him, but made him see things more cheerfully than was usual with him.
That night when he said his prayers, he inserted a few paragraphs to the effect that he might not be discovered, and that things might go well with Ellen, but he was anxious and ill at ease. His guilty conscience pointed out to him a score of weak places in his story, through any one of which detection might even yet easily enter. Next day and for many days afterwards he fled when no man was pursuing, and trembled each time he heard his father's voice calling for him. He had already so many causes of anxiety that he could stand little more, and in spite of all his endeavours to look cheerful, even his mother could see that something was preying upon his mind. Then the idea returned to her that, after all, her son might not be innocent in the Ellen matter--and this was so interesting that she felt bound to get as near the truth as she could.
”Come here, my poor, pale-faced, heavy-eyed boy,” she said to him one day in her kindest manner; ”come and sit down by me, and we will have a little quiet confidential talk together, will we not?”
The boy went mechanically to the sofa. Whenever his mother wanted what she called a confidential talk with him she always selected the sofa as the most suitable ground on which to open her campaign. All mothers do this; the sofa is to them what the dining-room is to fathers. In the present case the sofa was particularly well adapted for a strategic purpose, being an old-fas.h.i.+oned one with a high back, mattress, bolsters and cus.h.i.+ons. Once safely penned into one of its deep corners, it was like a dentist's chair, not too easy to get out of again. Here she could get at him better to pull him about, if this should seem desirable, or if she thought fit to cry she could bury her head in the sofa cus.h.i.+on and abandon herself to an agony of grief which seldom failed of its effect.
None of her favourite manoeuvres were so easily adopted in her usual seat, the arm-chair on the right hand side of the fireplace, and so well did her son know from his mother's tone that this was going to be a sofa conversation that he took his place like a lamb as soon as she began to speak and before she could reach the sofa herself.
”My dearest boy,” began his mother, taking hold of his hand and placing it within her own, ”promise me never to be afraid either of your dear papa or of me; promise me this, my dear, as you love me, promise it to me,” and she kissed him again and again and stroked his hair. But with her other hand she still kept hold of his; she had got him and she meant to keep him.
The lad hung down his head and promised. What else could he do?
”You know there is no one, dear, dear Ernest, who loves you so much as your papa and I do; no one who watches so carefully over your interests or who is so anxious to enter into all your little joys and troubles as we are; but my dearest boy, it grieves me to think sometimes that you have not that perfect love for and confidence in us which you ought to have. You know, my darling, that it would be as much our pleasure as our duty to watch over the development of your moral and spiritual nature, but alas! you will not let us see your moral and spiritual nature. At times we are almost inclined to doubt whether you have a moral and spiritual nature at all. Of your inner life, my dear, we know nothing beyond such sc.r.a.ps as we can glean in spite of you, from little things which escape you almost before you know that you have said them.”
The boy winced at this. It made him feel hot and uncomfortable all over.
He knew well how careful he ought to be, and yet, do what he could, from time to time his forgetfulness of the part betrayed him into unreserve.
His mother saw that he winced, and enjoyed the scratch she had given him.
Had she felt less confident of victory she had better have foregone the pleasure of touching as it were the eyes at the end of the snail's horns in order to enjoy seeing the snail draw them in again--but she knew that when she had got him well down into the sofa, and held his hand, she had the enemy almost absolutely at her mercy, and could do pretty much what she liked.
”Papa does not feel,” she continued, ”that you love him with that fulness and unreserve which would prompt you to have no concealment from him, and to tell him everything freely and fearlessly as your most loving earthly friend next only to your Heavenly Father. Perfect love, as we know, casteth out fear: your father loves you perfectly, my darling, but he does not feel as though you loved him perfectly in return. If you fear him it is because you do not love him as he deserves, and I know it sometimes cuts him to the very heart to think that he has earned from you a deeper and more willing sympathy than you display towards him. Oh, Ernest, Ernest, do not grieve one who is so good and n.o.ble-hearted by conduct which I can call by no other name than ingrat.i.tude.”