CHAPTER III

FIRST GLIMPSE OF JESUITRY

[AVING just left his mother in her sitting-room,

Rudd was standing in the hall wondering whether he would go for a walk or play in the garden. He was rather in favour of a walk, but there was always the risk of meeting Oran.

Oran was a lame boy who terrorized the neighbourhood. He had one very high boot with an enormous sole and heel, and a crutch, but he could get over the ground faster than most boys even of his own age, while no little boy could escape him. It was terrible to hear his crutch clattering behind you as you ran.

Oran was an incipient magnate: he took small boys' property from them-their tops, marbles, pencilsand never returned it; he teased them about their clothes; he twisted their arms, and used bad words. Rudd was not only in his person miserably afraid of Oran's powers, but his little soul was disturbed too: he had the feeling that it was doubly wrong for a lame boy to be wicked. It was long indeed before he lost this idea, and longer still before he ceased to believe that the blind were pre-eminently set apart for virtue.

Just as Rudd had decided to run the risk of an encounter with Oran, and was emptying his pockets by way of precaution, the bell rang. This was always an event, and Rudd withdrew into that convenient hiding-place, the overcoat recess, to hear who it was. In the course of a minute or so Jane tripped along the passage and opened the door.

"Is Mrs. Sergison at home?" Rudd heard a voice inquire.

"I'm sorry but she's not," Jane replied.

Nothing kept Rudd from bursting from his lair and setting right this monstrous error but the circumstance that he had been forbidden to eavesdrop, as he was now doing. But of all the whoppers! Why, Jane had but just taken up Mrs. Sergison's tea. "Are you quite sure?" the voice asked.

"Quite, ma'am," said Jane, and was not struck dead. Rudd tremblingly listened for the fall of the corpse; but it never came.

The voice murmured acquiescence, and Jane shut the door.

Rudd all unstrung and dismayed tackled her.

"Jane," he said in reproachful tones, "Jane! how could you?"

"Lor', how you made me jump!" said Jane. "How I could I what?"

"How could you tell such a story? Mother's upstairs. You know she is."

"Of course I know she is," said Jane, "but she's not at home to anyone. She told me herself."

"Mother told you?" Rudd said incredulously. "Yes, Master Inquisitive, she did," said Jane. "But she is at home," said Rudd.

"Don't you worry about things you can't understand," said Jane, and returned to her work.

But Rudd had to have this out. The whole fabric of morality was tottering.

Mrs. Sergison had little courage in facing the anomalies of life. The sum of her teaching was that Rudd should be good and kind and unselfish. With his questions as to the darker side of the world she fenced, or put him off with the remark that there were certain things we were not intended to understand. Her belief that a Providence had placed us here and watched every movement, was unshakable. Nothing in the daily papers could rub even a grain of bloom from that conviction. Rudd, therefore, had grown into the habit of laying certain difficulties before Sarah rather than his mother. Sarah at any rate made some attempt at solution.

Even when an upper floor too heavily weighted one Sunday evening by a congregation singing "The Old Hundredth" had given way, and scores of the singers were killed or injured, Mrs. Sergison had no hesitancies. To Rudd, who had heard Mr. Sergison reading about it at breakfast, it had been bewildering and outrageous.

"Why did God let it happen?" he asked and asked.

"It is not for us to understand His ways," said Mrs. Sergison. "Now have some marmalade."

But Rudd was not momentarily interested in marmalade: he was remembering the text about the sparrows, one of his mother's favourites. Not one could fall to the ground without His knowledge, and here were all these religious people singing His praises, mangled . . .

"But," he began with wide eyes

"My little boy mustn't question God's ways," said Mrs. Sergison. "Now say Grace and run upstairs." Rudd looked to his father, but he was deep in the Stock Exchange quotations. Very thoughtfully he left the room.

Upstairs he told Sarah about it.

"How is it?" he asked.

Sarah was orthodox, too, but her mind was more practical and more investigative. She liked reasons.

"The floor was weak," she said. "They ought never to have been up there at all. It wasn't safe."

"But they were allowed to go up, and they were singing, 'O Thou from whom all blessings flow,'" said Rudd.

"Well," said Sarah, "I suppose one of those blessings is common sense, and they had forgotten to use it. The floor was rotten. Even Christians have got to be sensible. It was a lesson to the rest of them."

But to-day's problem was far more serious than that. To-day's problem involved the truthfulness

of the fountain-head of truth, his mother.

It was

not academic: it was terribly intimate and vital. And Sarah was out.

"Oh, mother," he cried, bursting into Mrs. Sergison's room, "such a dreadful thing's happened."

"What is it?" Mrs. Sergison asked in alarm. "Why," said Rudd, "somebody called to see you, and Jane said you were not at home, and you are!" "Who was it?" Mrs. Sergison inquired.

"I don't know," said Rudd. "But Jane said you were not at home, and she knew that you were, and it's a story, a dreadful story. And Jane says you told her to tell it."

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Mrs. Sergison drew the boy to her. ""Not at home' means I don't want to see any callers," she said.

"But it was a story," said Rudd.

"No, not a story. It's a regular form of words meaning that."

"But if you are at home," said Rudd, "it must be a story."

"Listen," said Mrs. Sergison. "You don't think I'm a story-teller, do you?"

"No," said Rudd.

"Nor Jane?"

"N-n-no," said Rudd, with less confidence.

"And we're not. 'At home' means ready to see callers. 'Not at home' means not ready to see them. That's all. Now you understand?"

Rudd looked the picture of perplexity.