Long before Ernest reached the dining-room his ill-divining soul had told him that his sin had found him out. What head of a family ever sends for any of its members into the dining-room if his intentions are honourable?
When he reached it he found it empty--his father having been called away for a few minutes unexpectedly upon some parish business--and he was left in the same kind of suspense as people are in after they have been ushered into their dentist's ante-room.
Of all the rooms in the house he hated the dining-room worst. It was here that he had had to do his Latin and Greek lessons with his father. It had a smell of some particular kind of polish or varnish which was used in polishing the furniture, and neither I nor Ernest can even now come within range of the smell of this kind of varnish without our hearts failing us.
Over the chimney-piece there was a veritable old master, one of the few original pictures which Mr George Pontifex had brought from Italy. It was supposed to be a Salvator Rosa, and had been bought as a great bargain. The subject was Elijah or Elisha (whichever it was) being fed by the ravens in the desert. There were the ravens in the upper right-hand corner with bread and meat in their beaks and claws, and there was the prophet in question in the lower left- hand corner looking longingly up towards them. When Ernest was a very small boy it had been a constant matter of regret to him that the food which the ravens carried never actually reached the prophet; he did not understand the limitation of the painter's art, and wanted the meat and the prophet to be brought into direct contact. One day, with the help of some steps which had been left in the room, he had clambered up to the picture and with a piece of bread and butter traced a greasy line right across it from the ravens to Elisha's mouth, after which he had felt more comfortable.
Ernest's mind was drifting back to this youthful escapade when he heard his father's hand on the door, and in another second Theobald entered.
"Oh, Ernest," said he, in an off-hand, rather cheery manner, "there's a little matter which I should like you to explain to me, as I have no doubt you very easily can." Thump, thump, thump, went Ernest's heart against his ribs; but his father's manner was so much nicer than usual that he began to think it might be after all only another false alarm.
"It had occurred to your mother and myself that we should like to set you up with a watch again before you went back to school" ("Oh, that's all," said Ernest to himself quite relieved), "and I have been to-day to look out for a second-hand one which should answer every purpose so long as you're at school."
Theobald spoke as if watches had half-a-dozen purposes besides time- keeping, but he could hardly open his mouth without using one or other of his tags, and "answering every purpose" was one of them.
Ernest was breaking out into the usual expressions of gratitude, when Theobald continued, "You are interrupting me," and Ernest's heart thumped again.
"You are interrupting me, Ernest. I have not yet done." Ernest was instantly dumb.
"I passed several shops with second-hand watches for sale, but I saw none of a description and price which pleased me, till at last I was shown one which had, so the shopman said, been left with him recently for sale, and which I at once recognised as the one which had been given you by your Aunt Alethea. Even if I had failed to recognise it, as perhaps I might have done, I should have identified it directly it reached my hands, inasmuch as it had 'E. P., a present from A. P.' engraved upon the inside. I need say no more to show that this was the very watch which you told your mother and me that you had dropped out of your pocket."
Up to this time Theobald's manner had been studiously calm, and his words had been uttered slowly, but here he suddenly quickened and flung off the mask as he added the words, "or some such cock and bull story, which your mother and I were too truthful to disbelieve.
You can guess what must be our feelings now."
Ernest felt that this last home-thrust was just. In his less anxious moments he had thought his papa and mamma "green" for the readiness with which they believed him, but he could not deny that their credulity was a proof of their habitual truthfulness of mind.
In common justice he must own that it was very dreadful for two such truthful people to have a son as untruthful as he knew himself to be.
"Believing that a son of your mother and myself would be incapable of falsehood I at once assumed that some tramp had picked the watch up and was now trying to dispose of it."
This to the best of my belief was not accurate. Theobald's first assumption had been that it was Ernest who was trying to sell the watch, and it was an inspiration of the moment to say that his magnanimous mind had at once conceived the idea of a tramp.
"You may imagine how shocked I was when I discovered that the watch had been brought for sale by that miserable woman Ellen"--here Ernest's heart hardened a little, and he felt as near an approach to an instinct to turn as one so defenceless could be expected to feel; his father quickly perceived this and continued, "who was turned out of this house in circumstances which I will not pollute your ears by more particularly describing.
"I put aside the horrid conviction which was beginning to dawn upon me, and assumed that in the interval between her dismissal and her leaving this house, she had added theft to her other sin, and having found your watch in your bedroom had purloined it. It even occurred to me that you might have missed your watch after the woman was gone, and, suspecting who had taken it, had run after the carriage in order to recover it; but when I told the shopman of my suspicions he assured me that the person who left it with him had declared most solemnly that it had been given her by her master's son, whose property it was, and who had a perfect right to dispose of it.
