Chapter 25

Part 2. Sawston
Chapter XXV

"I am afraid," said Agnes, unfolding a letter that she had received in the morning, "that things go far from satisfactorily at Cadover."

The three were alone at supper. It was the June of Rickie's second year at Sawston.

"Indeed?" said Herbert, who took a friendly interest. "In what way?

"Do you remember us talking of Stephen--Stephen Wonham, who by an odd coincidence--"

"Yes. Who wrote last year to that miserable failure Varden. I do."

"It is about him."

"I did not like the tone of his letter."

Agnes had made her first move. She waited for her husband to reply to it. But he, though full of a painful curiosity, would not speak. She moved again.

"I don't think, Herbert, that Aunt Emily, much as I like her, is the kind of person to bring a young man up. At all events the results have been disastrous this time."

"What has happened?"

"A tangle of things." She lowered her voice. "Drink."

"Dear! Really! Was Mrs. Failing fond of him?"

"She used to be. She let him live at Cadover ever since he was a little boy. Naturally that cannot continue."

Rickie never spoke.

"And now he has taken to be violent and rude," she went on.

"In short, a beggar on horseback. Who is he? Has he got relatives?"

"She has always been both father and mother to him. Now it must all come to an end. I blame her--and she blames herself--for not being severe enough. He has grown up without fixed principles. He has always followed his inclinations, and one knows the result of that"

Herbert assented. "To me Mrs. Failing's course is perfectly plain. She has a certain responsibility. She must pay the youth's passage to one of the colonies, start him handsomely in some business, and then break off all communications."

"How funny! It is exactly what she is going to do."

"I shall then consider that she has behaved in a thoroughly honourable manner." He held out his plate for gooseberries. "His letter to Varden was neither helpful nor sympathetic, and, if written at all, it ought to have been both. I am not in the least surprised to learn that he has turned out badly. When you write next, would you tell her how sorry I am?"

"Indeed I will. Two years ago, when she was already a little anxious, she did so wish you could undertake him.

"I could not alter a grown man." But in his heart he thought he could, and smiled at his sister amiably. "Terrible, isn't it?" he remarked to Rickie. Rickie, who was trying not to mind anything, assented. And an onlooker would have supposed them a dispassionate trio, who were sorry both for Mrs. Failing and for the beggar who would bestride her horses' backs no longer. A new topic was introduced by the arrival of the evening post

Herbert took up all the letters, as he often did.