But there it is all the same!" And he was darkly resentful against Hilda on account of the entire phenomenon.... He foresaw, too, a period of upset and discomfort in his house. Would there, indeed, ever be any real tranquillity in his house, with that strange, primeval cave-woman in charge of it?

As he descended the stairs, Hilda came out of the dining-room with an empty tray.

She said:

"I wish you'd go out and look for George."

Imagine it--going out into the Five Towns to look for one boy!

"Oh! He'll be all right. I suppose you haven't forgotten Ingpen's coming to-night."

"Of course I haven't. But I want you to go out and look for George."

He knew what was in her mind,--namely an absurd vision of George and his new bicycle crushed under a tramcar somewhere between Bleakridge and Hanbridge. In that year everybody with any pretension to youthfulness and modernity rode a bicycle. Both Edwin and Hilda rode occasionally--such was the power of fashion. Maternal apprehensions had not sufficed to keep George from having a bicycle, nor from riding on it unprotected up and down the greasy slopes of Trafalgar Road to and from school. Edwin himself had bought the bicycle, pooh-poohing danger, and a.s.serting that anyhow normal risks must always be accepted with an even mind.

He was about to declare that he would certainly not do anything so silly as to go out and look for George,--and then all of a sudden he had the queer sensation of being alone with Hilda in the house made strange and romantic by a domestic calamity. He gazed at Hilda with her ap.r.o.n, and the calamity had made her strange and romantic also. He was vexed, annoyed, despondent, gloomy, fearful of the immediate future; he had immense grievances; he hated Hilda, he loathed giving way to her. He thought: "What is it binds me to this incomprehensible woman? I will not be bound!" But he felt that he would be compelled (not by her but by something in himself) to commit the folly of going out to look for George. And he felt that though his existence was an exasperating adventure, still it was an adventure.

"Oh! d.a.m.n!" he exploded, and reached for a cap.

And then George came into the hall through the kitchen. The boy often preferred to enter by the back, the stalking Indian way.

IV

George wore spectacles. He had grown considerably. He was now between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and he had begun to look his age.

His mental outlook and conversation were on the whole in advance of his age. Even when he was younger he had frequently an adult manner of wise talking, but it had appeared unreal, nave,--it was amusing rather than convincing. Now he imposed himself even on his family as a genuine adolescent, though the idiom he employed was often schoolboyish and his gestures were immaturely rough. The fact was he was not the same boy.

Everybody noticed it. His old charm and delicacy seemed to have gone, and his voice was going. He had become harsh, defiant, somewhat brutal, and egotistic if not conceited. He held a very low opinion of all his school-fellows, and did not conceal it. Yet he was not very high in his form (the lower fifth); his reports were mediocre; and he cut no figure in the playfield. In the home he was charged with idleness, selfishness, and irresolution. It was pointed out to him that he was not making the best of his gifts, and that if he only chose to make the best of them he might easily, etc., etc. Apparently he did not care a bit. He had marked facility on the piano, but he had insisted on giving up his piano lessons and would not open the piano for a fortnight at a time. He still maintained his intention of being an architect, but he had ceased to show any interest in architecture. He would, however, still paint in water-colours; and he read a lot, but gluttonously, without taste. Edwin and Hilda, and especially Hilda, did not hide their discontent. Hilda had outbursts against him. In regard to Hilda he was disobedient. Edwin always spoke quietly to him, and was seldom seriously disobeyed. When disobeyed Edwin would show a taciturn resentment against the boy, who would sulk and then melt.

"Oh! He'll grow out of it," Edwin would say to Hilda, yet Edwin, like Hilda, thought that the boy was deliberately naughty, and they held themselves towards him as grieved persons of superior righteousness towards a person of inferior righteousness. Not even Edwin reflected that profound molecular changes might be proceeding in George's brain, for which changes he was in no way responsible. Nevertheless, despite the blighting disappointment of George's evolution, the home was by no means deeply engloomed. No! George had an appealing smile, a mere gawky boyishness, a peculiar way of existing, that somehow made joy in the home. Also he was a centre of intense and continual interest, and of this he was very well aware.

In pa.s.sing through the kitchen George had of course been struck by the astounding absence of the cook; he had noticed further a fancy ap.r.o.n and a cap lying on the window sill therein. And when he came into the hall, the strange aspect of his mother (in a servant's ap.r.o.n) and his uncle proved to him that something marvellously unusual, exciting, and uplifting was afoot. He was pleased, agog, and he had the additional satisfaction that great events would conveniently divert attention from his lateness. Still he must be discreet, for the adults were evidently at loggerheads, and therefore touchy. He slipped between Edwin and Hilda with a fairly good imitation of innocent casualness, as if saying: "Whatever has occurred, I am guiltless, and going on just as usual."

"Ooh! Bags I!" he exclaimed loudly, at the hall-table, and seized the indiarubber, which Edwin had promised him. His school vocabulary comprised an extraordinary number of words ending in _gs_. He would never, for example, say "first," but "foggs"; and never "second," but "seggs." That very morning, for example, meeting Hilda on the mat at the foot of the stairs, he had shocked her by saying: "You go up foggs, mother, and I'll go seggs."

"George!" Hilda severely protested. Her anxiety concerning him was now turned into resentment. "Have you had an accident?"

"An accident?" said George, as though at a loss. Yet he knew perfectly that his mother was referring to the bicycle.

Edwin said curtly:

"Now, don't play the fool. Have you fallen off your bike? Look at your overcoat. Don't leave that satchel there, and hang your coat up properly."

The overcoat was in a grievous state. A few days earlier it had been new. Besides money, it had cost an enormous amount of deliberation and discussion, like everything else connected with George. Against his will, Edwin himself had been compelled to conduct George to Shillitoe's, the tailor's, and superintend a third trying-on, for further alterations, after the overcoat was supposed to be finished. And lo, now it had no quality left but warmth! Efforts in regard to George were always thus out of proportion to the trifling results obtained. At George's age Edwin doubtless had an overcoat, but he positively could not remember having one, and he was quite sure that no schoolboy overcoat of his had ever preoccupied a whole household for two minutes, to say nothing of a week.

George's face expressed a sense of injury, and his face hardened.

"Mother made me take my overcoat. You know I can't cycle in my overcoat. I've not been on my bicycle all day. Also my lamp's broken,"

he said, with gloomy defiance.

His curiosity about wondrous events in the house was quenched.

And Edwin felt angry with Hilda for having quite unjustifiably a.s.sumed that George had gone to school on his bicycle. Ought she not to have had the ordinary gumption to a.s.sure herself, before worrying, that the lad's bicycle was not in the shed? Incredible thoughtlessness! All these alarms for nothing!

"Then why are you so late?" Hilda demanded, diverting to George her indignation at Edwin's unuttered but yet conveyed criticism of herself.

"Kept in."

"All this time?" Hilda questioned, suspiciously.

George sullenly nodded.

"What for?"

"Latin."

"Homework? Again?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Edwin. "Why hadn't you done it properly?"

"I had a headache last night. And I've got one to-day."

"Another of your Latin headaches!" said Edwin sarcastically. There was nothing, except possibly cod liver oil, that George detested more than Edwin's serious sarcasm.

The elders glanced at one another and glanced away. Both had the same fear--the dreadful fear that George might be developing the worse characteristics of his father. Both had vividly in mind the fact that this boy was the son of George Cannon. They never mentioned to each other either the fear or the fact; they dared not. But each knew the thoughts of the other. The boy was undoubtedly crafty; he could conceal subtle designs under a simple exterior; he was also undoubtedly secretive. The recent changes in his disposition had put Edwin and Hilda on their guard, and every time young George displayed cunning, or economised the truth, or lied, the fear visited them. "I hope he'll turn out all right!" Hilda had said once. Edwin had nearly replied: "What are you worrying about? The sons of honest men are often rascals. Why on earth shouldn't the son of a rascal be an honest man?" But he had only said, with good-humoured impatience: "Of course he'll turn out all right!" Not that he himself was convinced.

Edwin now attacked the boy gloomily:

"You didn't seem to have much of a headache when you came in just now."

It was true.

But George suddenly burst into tears. His headaches were absolutely genuine. The emptiness of the kitchen and the general queer look of things in the house had, however, by their promise of adventurous happenings, caused him to forget his headache altogether, and the discovery of the new indiarubber had been like a tonic to a convalescent. The menacing att.i.tude of the elders had now brought about a relapse. The headache established itself as his chief physical sensation. His chief moral sensation was that of a terrible grievance.

He did not often cry; he had not indeed cried for about a year. But to-night there was something nervous in the very air, and the sob took him unawares. The first sob having prostrated all resistance, others followed victoriously, and there was no stopping them. He did not quite know why he should have been more liable to cry on this particular occasion than on certain others, and he was rather ashamed; on the other hand it was with an almost malicious satisfaction that he perceived the troubling effect of his tears on the elders. They were obviously in a quandary. Serve them right!

"It's my eyes," he blubbered. "I told you these specs would never suit me. But you wouldn't believe me, and the headmaster won't believe me."

The discovery that George's eyesight was defective, about two months earlier, had led to a desperate but of course hopeless struggle on his part against the wearing of spectacles. It was curious that in the struggle he had never even mentioned his strongest objection to spectacles,--namely, the fact that Bert Benbow wore spectacles.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Edwin demanded.

Between sobs George replied with overwhelming disillusioned disgust:

"What's the good of telling you anything? You only think I'm codding."

And he pa.s.sed upstairs, apparently the broken victim of fate and parents, but in reality triumphant. His triumph was such that neither Edwin nor Hilda dared even to protest against the use of such an inexcusable word as 'codding.'

Hilda went into the kitchen, and Edwin rather aimlessly followed her.

He felt incompetent. He could do nothing except carry trays, and he had no desire to carry trays. Neither spoke. Hilda was bending over the fire, then she arranged the grid in front of the fire to hold a tin, and she greased the tin. He thought she looked very wistful, for all the somewhat bitter st.u.r.diness of her demeanour. Tertius Ingpen was due for the evening; she had no servants--through her own fault; and now a new phase had arrived in the unending responsibility for George's welfare.

He knew that she was blaming him on account of George. He knew that she believed in the sincerity of George's outburst; he believed in it himself. The spectacles were wrong; the headache was genuine. And he, Edwin, was guilty of the spectacles because he had forced Hilda, by his calm bantering commonsense, to consult a small local optician of good reputation.