The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wooden Horse, by Hugh Walpole

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Title: The Wooden Horse

Author: Hugh Walpole

Release Date: November 6, 2008 [EBook #27180]

Language: English

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[Frontispiece: Hugh Walpole.  _From a photograph by Messrs. Elliott &
Fry_]





THE

WOODEN HORSE


BY

HUGH WALPOLE




WITH A PORTRAIT




MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1919




MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

  LONDON -- BOMBAY -- CALCUTTA -- MADRAS
  MELBOURNE


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

  NEW YORK -- BOSTON -- CHICAGO
  DALLAS -- SAN FRANCISCO


THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

  TORONTO




COPYRIGHT

  _First Published April 1909
  Second Impression October 1909
  Wayfarers' Library 1914
  New Edition 1919_




TO

W. FERRIS

AFFECTIONATELY




  "_Er liebte jeden Hund, und wünschte von jedem Hund geliebt
  zu sein._"--FLEGELJAHRE (JEAN PAUL).




CHAPTER I

Robin Trojan was waiting for his father.

Through the open window of the drawing-room came, faintly, the cries of
the town--the sound of some distant bell, the shout of fishermen on the
quay, the muffled beat of the mining-stamps from Porth-Vennic, a
village that lay two miles inland.  There yet lingered in the air the
faint afterglow of the sunset, and a few stars, twinkling faintly in
the deep blue of the night sky, seemed reflections of the orange lights
of the herring-boats, flashing far out to sea.

The great drawing-room, lighted by a cluster of electric lamps hanging
from the ceiling, seemed to flaunt the dim twinkle of the stars
contemptuously; the dark blue of the walls and thick Persian carpets
sounded a quieter note, but the general effect was of something
distantly, coldly superior, something indeed that was scarcely
comfortable, but that was, nevertheless, fulfilling the exact purpose
for which it had been intended.

And that purpose was, most certainly, not comfort.  Robin himself would
have smiled contemptuously if you had pleaded for something homely,
something suggestive of roaring fires and cosy armchairs, instead of
the stiff-backed, beautifully carved Louis XIV. furniture that stood,
each chair and table rigidly in its appointed place, as though bidding
defiance to any one bold enough to attempt alterations.

The golden light in the sky shone faintly in at the open window, as
though longing to enter, but the dazzling brilliance of the room seemed
to fling it back into the blue dome of sea and sky outside.

Robin was standing by a large looking-glass in the corner of the room
trying to improve the shape of his tie; and it was characteristic of
him that, although he had not seen his father for eighteen years, he
was thinking a great deal more about his tie than about the approaching
meeting.

He was, at this time, twenty years of age.  Tall and dark, he had all
the Trojan characteristics; small, delicately shaped ears; a mouth that
gave signs of all the Trojan obstinacy, called by the Trojans
themselves family pride; a high, well-shaped forehead with hair closely
cut and of a dark brown.  He was considered by most people
handsome--but to some his eyes, of the real Trojan blue, were too cold
and impassive.  He gave you the impression of some one who watched,
rather disdainfully, the ill-considered and impulsive actions of his
fellow-men.

He was, however, exactly suited to his surroundings.  He maintained the
same position as the room with regard to the world in general--"We are
Trojans; we are very old and very expensive and very, very good, and it
behoves you to recognise this fact and give way with fitting deference."

He had not seen his father for eighteen years, and, as he had been
separated from him at the unimpressionable age of two, he may be said
never to have seen him at all.  He had no recollection of him, and the
picture that he had painted was constructed out of monthly rather
uninteresting letters concerned, for the most part, with the care and
maintenance of New Zealand sheep, and such meagre details as his Aunt
Clare and Uncle Garrett had bestowed on him from time to time.  From
the latter he gathered that his father had been, in his youth, in some
vague way, unsatisfactory, and had departed to Australia to seek his
fortune, with a clear understanding from his father that he was not to
return thence until he had found it.

Robin himself had been born in New Zealand, but his mother dying when
he was two years old, he had been sent home to be brought up, in the
proper Trojan manner, by his aunt and uncle.

On these things Robin reflected as he tried to twist his tie into a
fitting Trojan shape; but it refused to behave as a well-educated tie
should, and the obvious thing was to get another.  Robin looked at his
watch.  It was really extremely provoking; the carriage had been timed
to arrive at half-past six exactly; it was now a quarter to seven and
no one had appeared.  There was probably not time to search for another
tie.  His father would be certain to arrive at the very moment when one
tie was on and the other not yet on, which meant that Robin would be
late; and if there was one thing that a Trojan hated more than another
it was being late.  With many people unpunctuality was a fault, with a
Trojan it was a crime; it was what was known as an "odds and ends"--one
of those things, like untidiness, eating your fish with a steel knife
and wearing a white tie with a short dinner-jacket, that marked a man,
once and for all, as some one outside the pale, an impossible person.

Therefore Robin allowed his tie to remain and walked to the open window.

"At any rate," he said to himself, still thinking of his tie, "father
won't probably notice it."  He wondered how much his father _would_
notice.  "As he's a Trojan," he thought, "he'll know the sort of things
that a fellow ought to do, even though he has been out in New Zealand
all his life."

It would, Robin reflected, be a very pretty little scene.  He liked
scenes, and, if this one were properly manoeuvred, he ought to be its
very interesting and satisfactory centre.  That was why it was really a
pity about the tie.

The door from the library swung slowly open, and Sir Jeremy Trojan,
Robin's grandfather, was wheeled into the room.

He was very old indeed, and the only part of his face that seemed alive
were his eyes; they were continually darting from one end of the room
to the other, they were never still; but, for the rest, he scarcely
moved.  His skin was dried and brown like a mummy's, and even when he
spoke, his lips hardly stirred.  He was in evening dress, his legs
wrapped tightly in rugs; his chair was wheeled by a servant who was
evidently perfectly trained in all the Trojan ways of propriety and
decorum.

"Well, grandfather," said Robin, turning back from the window with the
look of annoyance still on his face, "how are you to-night?"  Robin
always shouted at his grandfather although he knew perfectly well that
he was not deaf, but could, on the other hand, hear wonderfully well
for his age.  Nothing annoyed his grandfather so much as being shouted
at, and of this Robin was continually reminded.

"Tut, tut, boy," said Sir Jeremy testily, "one would think that I was
deaf.  Better?  Yes, of course.  Close the windows!"

"I'll ring for Marchant," said Robin, moving to the bell, "he ought to
have done it before."  Sir Jeremy said nothing--it was impossible to
guess at his thoughts from his face; only his eyes moved uneasily round
the room.

He was wheeled to his accustomed corner by the big open stone
fireplace, and he lay there, motionless in his chair, without further
remark.

Marchant came in a moment later.

"The windows, Marchant," said Robin, still twisting uneasily at his
tie, "I think you had forgotten."

"I am sorry, sir," Marchant answered, "but Mr. Garrett had spoken this
morning of the room being rather close.  I had thought that perhaps----"

He moved silently across the room and shut the window, barring out the
fluttering yellow light, the sparkling silver of the stars, the orange
of the fishing-boats, the murmured distance of the town.

A few moments later Clare Trojan came in.  Although she had never been
beautiful she had always been interesting, and indeed she was (even
when in the company of women far more beautiful than herself) always
one of the first to whom men looked.  This may have been partly
accounted for by her very obvious pride, the quality that struck the
most casual observer at once, but there was also an air of
indifference, a look in the eyes that seemed to pique men's curiosity
and stir their interest.  It was not for lack of opportunity that she
was still unmarried, but she had never discovered the man who had
virtue and merit sufficient to cover the obvious disadvantages of his
not having been born a Trojan.  Middle age suited the air of almost
regal dignity with which she moved, and people who had known her for
many years said that she had never looked so well as now.  To-night, in
a closely-fitting dress of black silk relieved by a string of pearls
round her neck, and a superb white rose at her breast, she was almost
handsome.  Robin watched her with satisfaction as she moved towards him.

"Ah, it's cold," she said.  "I know Marchant left those windows open
till the last moment.  Robin, your tie is shocking.  It looks as if it
were made-up."

"I know," said Robin, still struggling with it; "but there isn't time
to get another.  Father will be here at any moment.  It's late as it
is.  Yes, I told Marchant to shut the windows, he said something about
Uncle Garrett's saying it was stuffy or something."

"Harry's late."  Clare moved across to her father and bent down and
kissed him.

"How are you to-night, father?" but she was arranging the rose at her
breast and was obviously thinking more of its position than of the
answer to her question.

"Hungry--damned hungry," said Sir Jeremy.

"Oh, we'll have to wait," said Clare.  "Harry's got to dress.  Anyhow
you've got no right to be hungry at a quarter to seven.  Nobody's ever
hungry till half-past seven at the earliest."

It was evident that she was ill at ease.  Perhaps it was the prospect
of meeting her brother after a separation of eighteen years; perhaps it
was anxiety as to how this reclaimed son of the house of Trojan would
behave in the face of the world.  It was so very important that the
house should not be in any way let down, that the dignity with which it
had invariably conducted its affairs for the last twenty years should
be, in no way, impaired.  Harry had been anything but dignified in his
early days, and sheep-farming in New Zealand--well, of course, one knew
what kind of life that was.

But, as she looked across at Robin, it was easy to see that her anxiety
was, in some way, connected with him.  How was this invasion to affect
her nephew?  For eighteen years she had been the only father and mother
that he had known, for eighteen years she had educated him in all the
Trojan laws and traditions, the things that a Trojan must speak and do
and think, and he had faithfully responded to her instruction.  He was
in every way everything that a Trojan should be; but there had been
moments, rare indeed and swiftly passing, when Clare had fancied that
there were other impulses, other ideas at work.  She was afraid of
those impulses, and she was afraid of what Henry Trojan might do with
regard to them.

It was, indeed, hard, after reigning absolutely for eighteen years, to
yield her place to another, but perhaps, after all, Robin would be true
to his early training and she would not be altogether supplanted.

"Randal comes to-morrow," said Robin suddenly, after a few minutes'
silence.  "Unfortunately he can only stop for a few days.  His paper on
'Pater' has been taken by the _National_.  He's very much pleased, of
course."

Robin spoke coldly and without any enthusiasm.  It was not considered
quite good form to be enthusiastic; it was apt to lead you into rather
uncertain company with such people as Socialists and the Salvation Army.

"I'm glad he's coming--quite a nice fellow," said Clare, looking at the
gold clock on the mantelpiece.  "The train is shockingly late.  On
'Pater' you said!  I must try and get the _National_--Miss Ponsonby
takes it, I think.  It's unusual for Garrett to be unpunctual."

He entered at the same moment--a tall, thin man of forty years of age,
clean shaven and rather bald, with a very slight squint in the right
eye.  He walked slowly, and always gave the impression that he saw
nothing of his surroundings.  For the rest, he was said to be extremely
cynical and had more than a fair share of the Trojan pride.

"The train is late," he said, addressing no one in particular.
"Father, how are you this evening?"

This third attack on Sir Jeremy was repelled by a snort, which Garrett
accepted as an answer.  "Robin, your tie is atrocious," he continued,
picking up the _Times_ and opening it slowly; "you had better change
it."

Robin was prevented from answering by the sound of carriage-wheels on
the drive.  Clare rose and stood by the fireplace near Sir Jeremy;
Garrett read to the end of the paragraph and folded the paper on his
knee; Robin fingered his watch-chain nervously and moved to his aunt's
side--only Sir Jeremy remained motionless and gave no sign that he had
heard.

Perhaps he was thinking of that day twenty years before when, after a
very heated interview, he had forbidden his son to see his face again
until he had done something that definitely justified his existence.
Harry had certainly done several things since then that justified his
existence; he had, for one thing, made a fortune, and that was not so
easily done nowadays.  Harry was five-and-forty now; he must be very
much changed; he had steadied down, of course ...  he would be well
able to take his place as head of the family when Sir Jeremy himself....

But he gave no sign.  You could not tell that he had heard the
carriage-wheels at all; he lay motionless in his chair with his eyes
half closed.

There were voices in the hall.  Beldam's superlatively courteous tones
as of one who is ready to die to serve you, and then another
voice--rather loud and sharp, but pleasant, with the sound of a laugh
in it.

"They are in the blue drawing-room, sir--Mr. Henry," Beldam's voice was
heard on the stairs, and, in a moment, Beldam himself appeared--"Mr.
Henry, Sir Jeremy."  Then he stood aside, and Henry Trojan entered the
room.

Clare made a step forward.

"Harry--old boy--at last------"

Both her hands were outstretched, but he disregarded them, and,
stepping forward, crushed her in his arms, crushed her dress, crushed
the beautiful rose at her breast, and, bending down, kissed her again
and again.

"Clare--after twenty years!"

He let her go and she stepped back, still smiling, but she touched the
rose for a moment and her hair.  He was very strong.

And then there was a little pause.  Harry Trojan turned and faced his
father.  The old man made no movement and gave no sign, but he said,
his lips stirring very slightly, "I am glad to see you here again,
Harry."

The man flushed, and with a little stammer answered, "I am gladder to
be back than you can know, father."

Sir Jeremy's wrinkled hand appeared from behind the rugs, and the two
men shook in silence.

Then Garrett came forward.  "You're not much changed, Harry," he said
with a laugh, "in spite of the twenty years."

"Why, Garrie!"  His brother stepped towards him and laid a hand on his
shoulder.  "It's splendid to see you again.  I'd almost forgotten what
you were like--I only had that old photo, you know--of us both at
Rugby."

Robin had stood aside, in a corner by the fireplace, watching his
father.  It was very much as he had expected, only he couldn't, try as
he might, think of him as his father at all.  The man there who had
kissed Aunt Clare and shaken hands with Sir Jeremy was, in some
unexplained way, a little odd and out of place.  He was big and strong;
his hair curled a little and was dark brown, like Robin's, and his eyes
were blue, but, in other respects, there was very little of the Trojan
about him.  His mouth was large, and he had a brown, slightly curling
moustache.  Indeed the general impression was brown in spite of the
blue, badly fitting suit.  He was deeply tanned by the sun and was
slightly freckled.

He would have looked splendid in New Zealand or Klondyke, or, indeed,
anywhere where you worked with your coat off and your shirt open at the
neck; but here, in that drawing-room, it was a pity, Robin thought,
that his father had not stopped for two or three days in town and gone
to a West End tailor.

But, after all, it was a very nice little scene.  It really had been
quite moving to see him kiss Clare like that, but, at the same time,
for his part, kissing...!

"And Robin?" said Harry.

"Here's the son and heir," said Garrett, laughing, and pushing Robin
forward.

Now that the moment had really come, Robin was most unpleasantly
embarrassed.  How foolish of Uncle Garrett to try and be funny at a
time like that, and what a pity it was that his tie was sticking out at
one end so much farther than at the other.  He felt his hand seized and
crushed in the grip of a giant; he murmured something about his being
pleased, and then, suddenly, his father bent down and kissed him on the
forehead.

They were both blushing, Robin furiously.  How he hated sentiment!  He
felt sure that Uncle Garrett was laughing at him.

"By Jove, you're splendid!" said Harry, holding him back with both his
hands on his shoulders.  "Pretty different from the nipper that I sent
over to England eighteen years ago.  Oh, you'll do, Robin."

"And now, Harry," said Clare, laughing, "you'll go and dress, won't
you?  Father's terribly hungry and the train was late."

"Right," said Harry; "I won't be long.  It's good to be back again."

When the door had closed behind him, there was silence.  He gave the
impression of some one filled with overwhelming, rapturous joy.  There
was a light in his eyes that told of dreams at length fulfilled, and
hopes, long and wearily postponed, at last realised.  He had filled
that stiff, solemn room with a spirit of life and strength and sheer
animal good health--it was even, as Clare afterwards privately
confessed, a little exhausting.

Now she stood by the fireplace, smiling a little.  "My poor rose," she
said, looking at some of the petals that had fallen to the ground.
"Harry is strong!"

"He is looking well," said Garrett.  It sounded almost sarcastic.

Robin went up to his room to change his tie--he had said nothing about
his father.

As Harry Trojan passed down the well-remembered passages where the
pictures hung in the same odd familiar places, past staircases
vanishing into dark abysses that had frightened him as a child, windows
deep-set in the thick stone walls, corners round which he had crept in
the dark on his way to his room, it seemed to him that those long,
dreary years of patient waiting in New Zealand were as nothing, and
that it was only yesterday that he had passed down that same way, his
heart full of rage against his father, his one longing to get out and
away to other countries where he should be his own master and win his
own freedom.  And now that he was back again, now that he had seen what
that freedom meant, now that he had tasted that same will-o'-the-wisp
liberty, how thankful he was to rest here quietly, peacefully, for the
remainder of his days; at last he knew what were the things that were
alone, in this world, worth striving for--not money, ambition, success,
but love for one's own little bit of country that one called home, the
patient resting in the heritage of all those accumulating traditions
that ancestors had been making, slowly, gradually, for centuries of
years.

He had hoped that he would have the same old rooms at the top of the
West Towers that he had had when a boy; he remembered the view of the
sea from their windows--the great sweep of the Cornish coast far out to
Land's End itself, and the gulls whirring with hoarse cries over his
head as he leant out to view the little cove nestling at the foot of
the Hall.  That view, then, had meant to him distant wonderful lands in
which he was to make his name and his fortune: now it spoke of home and
peace, and, beyond all, of Cornwall.

They had put him in one of the big spare rooms that faced inland.  As
he entered the sense of its luxury filled him with a delicious feeling
of comfort: the log-fire burning in the open brown-tiled fireplace, the
softness of the carpets, the electric light, shaded to a soft glow--ah!
these were the things for which he had waited, and they had, indeed,
been worth waiting for.

His man was laying his dress-clothes on his bed.

"What is your name?" he said, feeling almost a little shy; it was so
long since he had had things done for him.

"James Treduggan, sir," the man answered, smiling.  "You won't remember
me, sir, I expect.  I was quite a youngster when you went away.  But
I've been in service here ever since I was ten."

When Harry was left alone, he stood by the fire, thinking.  He had been
preparing for this moment for so long that now that it was actually
here he was frightened, nervous.  He had so often imagined that first
arrival in England, the first glimpse of London; then the first meeting
and the first evening at home.  Of course, all his thoughts had centred
on Robin--everything else had been secondary, but he had, in some
unaccountable way, never been able to realise exactly what Robin would
be.  He had had photographs, but they had been unsatisfactory and had
told him nothing; and now that he had seen him, he was at rest; he was
all that he had hoped--straight, strong, manly, with that clear steady
look in the eyes that meant so much; yes, there was no doubt about his
son.  He remembered Robin's mother with affectionate tenderness; she
had been the daughter of a doctor in Auckland--he had fallen in love
with her at once and married her, although his prospects had been so
bad.  They had been very happy, and then, when Robin was two years old,
she had died; the boy had been sent home, and he had been alone
again--for eighteen years he had been alone.  There had been other
women, of course; he did not pretend to have been a saint, and women
had liked him and been rather sorry for him in those early years; but
they had none of them been very much to him, only episodes--the central
fact of his existence had always been his son.  He had had a friend
there, a Colonel Durand, who had three sons of his own, and had given
him much advice as to his treatment of Robin.  He had talked a great
deal about the young generation, about its impatience of older theories
and manners, its dislike of authority and restraint; and Harry,
remembering his own early hatred of restriction and longing for
freedom, was determined that he would be no fetter on his son's
liberty, that he would be to him a friend, a companion rather than a
father.  After all, he felt no more than twenty-five--there was really
no space of years between them--he was as young to-day as he had been
twenty years ago.

As to the others, he had never cared very much for Clare and Garrett in
the old days; they had been stiff, cold, lacking all sense of family
affection.  But that had been twenty years ago.  There had been a time,
in New Zealand, when he had hated Garrett.  When he had been away from
home for some ten years, the longing to see his boy had grown too
strong to be resisted, and he had written to his father asking for
permission to return.  He had received a cold answer from Garrett,
saying that Sir Jeremy thought that, as he was so successful there, it
would be perhaps better if he remained there a little while longer;
that he would find little to do at home and would only weary of the
monotony--four closely written pages to the same effect.  So Harry had
remained.

But that was ten years ago.  At last, a letter had come, saying that
Sir Jeremy was now very old and feeble, that he desired to see his son
before he died, and that all the past was forgotten and forgiven.  And
now there was but one thought in his heart--love for all the world, one
overwhelming desire to take his place amongst them decently, worthily,
so that they might see that the wastrel of twenty years ago had
developed into a man, able to take his place, in due time, at the head
of the Trojan family.  Oh! how he would try to please them all! how he
would watch and study and work so that that long twenty years' exile
might be forgotten both by himself and by them.

He bathed and dressed slowly by the fire.  As he saw his clothes on the
bed he fancied, for a moment, that they might be a little worn, a
little old.  They had seemed very good and smart in Auckland, but in
England it was rather different.  He almost wished that he had stayed
in London for two days and been properly fitted by a tailor.  But then
he had been so eager to arrive, he had not thought of clothes; his one
idea had been to rush down as soon as possible and see them all, and
the place, and the town.

Then he remembered that Clare had asked him to be quick.  He finished
his dressing hurriedly, turned out the electric light, and left the
room.

He was pleased to find that he had not forgotten the turns and twists
of the house.  He threaded the dark passages easily, humming a little
tune, and smelling that same sweet scent of dried rose leaves that he
had known so well when he was a small boy.  He could see, in
imagination, the great white-and-pink china pot-pourri bowls standing
at the corner of the stairs--nothing was changed.

The blue drawing-room was deserted when he entered it--only the blaze
of the electric light, the golden flame of the log-fire in the great
open fireplace, and the solemn ticking of the gold clock that had stood
there, in the same place of honour, for the last hundred years.  He
passed over to the windows and flung them open; the hum of the town
came, with the cold night air, into the room.  The stars were brilliant
to-night and the golden haze of the lamplight hung over the streets
like a magic curtain.  Ah! how good it was!  The peace of it, the
comfort, the homeliness!

Above all, it was Cornwall--the lights of the herring fleet, the
distant rhythmical beat of the mining-stamps, that peculiar scent as of
precious spices coming with the wind of the sea, as though borne from
distant magical lands, all told him that he was, at last, again in
Cornwall.

He drank in the night air, bending his eyes on the town as though he
were saluting it again, tenderly, joyously, with the greeting of an old
familiar friend.

Robin closed the door behind him and shivered a little.  The windows
were open--how annoying when Aunt Clare had especially asked that they
should be closed.  Oh! it was his father!  Of course, he did not know!

He had not been noticed, so he coughed.  Harry turned round.

"Hullo, Robin, my boy!"  He passed his arm through his son's and drew
him to the window.  "Isn't it splendid?" he said.  "Oh!  I don't
suppose you see it now, after having been here all this time; you want
to go away for twenty years, then you'd know how much it's worth.  Oh!
it's splendid--what times we'll have here, you and I!"

"Yes," said Robin, a little coldly.  It was very chilly with the window
open, and there was something in all that enthusiasm that was almost a
little vulgar.  Of course, it was natural, after being away so long ...
but still....  Also his father's clothes were really very old--the back
of the coat was quite shiny.

Sir Jeremy entered in his chair, followed by Clare and Garrett.

Clare gave a little scream.

"Oh!  How cold!" she cried.  "Now whoever----!"

"I'm afraid I was guilty," said Harry, laughing.  "The town looked so
splendid and I hadn't seen it for so long.  I----"

"Of course, I forgot," said Clare.  "I don't suppose you notice open
windows in New Zealand, because you're always outside in the Bush or
something.  But here we're as shivery as you make them.  Dinner's
getting shivery too.  The sooner we go down the better."

She passed back through the door and down the hall.  There was no doubt
that she was a magnificent woman.

As Sir Jeremy was wheeled through the doors he gripped Harry's hand.
"I'm damned glad that you're back," he whispered.

Robin, who was the last to leave the room, closed the windows and
turned out the lights.  The room was in darkness save for the golden
light of the leaping fire.




CHAPTER II

It had been called the "House of the Flutes" since the beginning of
time.  People had said that the name was absurd, and Harry's
grandfather, a prosaic gentleman of rather violent radical opinions,
had made a definite attempt at a change--but he had failed.  Trojans
had appeared from every part of the country, angry Trojans, tearful
Trojans, indignant Trojans, important Trojans, poor-relation Trojans,
and had, one and all, demanded that the name should remain, and that
the headquarters of the Trojan tradition, of the Trojan power, should
continue to be the "House of the Flutes."

Of course, it had its origin in tradition.  In the early days when
might was right, and the stronger seized the worldly goods of the
weaker and nobody said him nay, there had been a Sir Jeremy Trojan
whose wife had been the talk of the country-side both because of her
beauty and also because of her easy morals.  Sir Jeremy having departed
on a journey, the lovely Lady Clare entertained a neighbouring baron at
her husband's bed and board, and for two days all was well.  But Sir
Jeremy unexpectedly returned, and, being a gentleman of a pleasant
fancy, walled up the room in which he had found the erring couple and
left them inside.  He then sat outside, and listened with a gentle
pleasure to their cries, and, being a musician of no mean quality,
played on the flute from time to time to prevent the hours from being
wearisome.  For three days he sat there, until there came no more
sounds from that room; then he pursued his ordinary affairs, but sought
no other wife--a grim little man with a certain sense of humour.

There are many other legends connected with the house; you will find
them in Baedeker, where it also says: "Kind permission is accorded by
Sir Henry Trojan to visitors who desire to see the rooms during the
residence of the family in London.  Special attention should be paid to
the gold Drawing-room with its magnificent carving, the Library with
its fine collection of old prints, and the Long Gallery with the family
portraits, noticing especially the Vandyke of Sir Hilary Trojan
(_temp._ Ch. I.), and a little sketch by Turner of the view from the
West Tower.  The gardens, too, are well worth a short inspection,
special mention being made of the Long Terrace with its magnificent
sea-view.

"A small charge is made by Sir Henry for admittance (adults sixpence,
children half-price), with a view to benefiting the church, a building
recently restored and sadly in need of funds."

So far Baedeker (Cornwall, new ed., 1908).  The house is astonishingly
beautiful, seen from any point of view.  Added to from time to time, it
has that air of surprise, as of a building containing endless secrets,
only some of which it intends to reveal.  It is full of corners and
angles, and at the same time preserves a symmetry and grandeur of style
that is surprising, if one considers its haphazard construction and
random additions.

Part of its beauty is undoubtedly owing to its superb position.  It
rises from the rock, over the grey town at its feet, like a protecting
deity, its two towers to west and east, raised like giant hands, its
grey walls rising sheer from the steep, shelving rock; behind it the
gentle rise of hills, bending towards the inland valleys; in front of
it an unbroken stretch of sea.

It strikes the exact note that is in harmony with its colour and
surroundings: the emblem of some wild survival from dark ages when that
spot had been one of the most uncivilised in the whole of Britain--a
land of wild, uncouth people, living in a state of perpetual watch and
guard, fearing the sea, fearing the land, cringingly superstitious
because of their crying need of supernatural defence; and, indeed,
there is nothing more curious in the Cornwall of to-day than this
perpetual reminder of past superstitions, dead gods, strange pathetic
survival of heathen ancestry.

The town of Pendragon, lying at the foot of the "House of the Flutes,"
had little of this survival of former custom about it; it was rapidly
developing into that temple of British middle-class mediocrity, a
modern watering-place.  It had, in the months of June, July, and
August, nigger minstrels, a café chantant, and a promenade, with six
bathing-machines and two donkeys; two new hotels had sprung up within
the last two years, a sufficient sign of its prosperity.  No, Pendragon
was doing its best to forget its ancient superstitions, and even seemed
to regard the "House of the Flutes" a little resentfully because of its
reminder of a time when men scaled the rocks and stormed the walls, and
fell back dying and cursing into their ships riding at anchor in the
little bay.

Very different was Cullin's Cove, the little fishing-village that lay
slightly to the right of the town.  Here traditions were carefully
guarded; a strict watch was kept on the outside world, and strangers
were none too cheerfully received.  Here, "down-along," was the old,
the true Cornwall--a land that had changed scarcely at all since those
early heathen days that to the rest of the world are dim, mysterious,
mythological, but to a Cornishman are as the events of yesterday.  High
on the moor behind the Cove stand four great rocks--wild, wind-beaten,
grimly permanent.  It is under their guardianship that the Cove lies,
and it is something more than a mere superstitious reverence that those
inhabitants of "down-along" pay to those darkly mysterious figures.
Seen in the fading light of the dying day, when Cornish mists are
winding and twisting over the breast of the moor, these four rocks seem
to take a living shape, to grow in size, and to whisper to those that
care to hear old stories of the slaughter that had stained the soil at
their feet on an earlier day.

From Harry's windows the town and the sea were hidden.  Immediately
below him lay the tennis-lawns and the rose-garden, and, gleaming in
the distance, at the end of the Long Walk, two white statues that had
fascinated him in his boyhood.

His first waking thought on the morning after his arrival was to look
for those statues, and when he saw them gleaming in the sun just as
they used to do, there swept over him a feeling of youth and vigour
such as he had never known before.  Those twenty years in New Zealand
were, after all, to go for nothing; they were to be as though they had
had no existence, and he was to be the young energetic man of
twenty-five, able to enter into his son's point of view, able to share
his life and vitality, and, at the same time, to give him the benefit
of his riper experience.

Through his open window came the faint, distant beating of the sea; a
bird flew past him, a white flash of light; some one was singing the
refrain of a Cornish "chanty"--the swing of the tune came up to him
from the garden, and some of the words beat like little bells upon his
brain, calling up endless memories of his boyhood.

He looked at his watch and found that it was nine o'clock.  He had no
idea that it was so late; he had asked to be called at seven, but he
had slept so soundly that he had not heard his man enter with his
shaving water; it was quite cold now, and his razors were terribly
blunt.  He cut himself badly, a thing that he scarcely ever did.  But
it was really unfortunate, on this first morning when he had wanted
everything to be at its best.

He came down to the breakfast-room humming.  The house seemed a palace
of gold on this wonderful September morning; the light came in floods
through the great windows at the head of the stairs, and shafts of
golden light struck the walls and the china potpourri bowls and flashed
wonderful colours out of a great Venetian vase that stood by the hall
door.

He found Garrett and Robin breakfasting alone; Clare and Sir Jeremy
always had breakfast in their own rooms.

"I'm afraid I'm awfully late," said Harry cheerfully, clapping his
brother on the back and putting his hand for a minute on Robin's
shoulder; "things all cold?"

"Oh no," said Garrett, scarcely looking up from his morning paper.
"Damned good kidneys!"

Robin said nothing.  He was watching his father curiously.  It was one
of the Trojan rules that you never talked at breakfast; it was such an
impossible meal altogether, and one was always at one's worst at that
time of the morning.  Robin wondered whether his father would recognise
this elementary rule or whether he would talk, talk, talk, as he had
done last night.  They had had rather a bad time last night; Aunt Clare
had had a headache, but his father had talked continuously--about sheep
and Maories and the Pink Terraces.  It had been just like a parish-room
magic-lantern lecture--"Some hours with our friends the Maories"--it
had been very tiring; poor Aunt Clare had grown whiter and whiter; it
was quite a relief when dinner had come to an end.

Harry helped himself to kidneys and sat down by Robin, still humming
the refrain of the Cornish song he had heard at his window.  "By Jove,
I'm late--mustard, Robin, my boy--can't think how I slept like that.
Why, in New Zealand I was always up with the lark--had to be, you know,
there was always such heaps to do--the bread, old boy, if you can get
hold of it.  I remember once getting up at three in the morning to go
and play cricket somewhere--fearful hot day it was, but I knocked up
fifty, I remember.  Probably the bowling was awfully soft, although I
remember one chap--Pulling, friend of Durand's--could fairly twist 'em
down the pitch--made you damned well jump.  Talking of cricket, I
suppose you play, Robin?  Did you get your cap or whatever they call
it--College colours, you know?"

"Oh, cricket!" said Robin indifferently.  "No, I didn't play.  The
chaps at King's who ran the games were rather outers--pretty thoroughly
barred by the decent men.  None of the 'Gracchi' went in for the
sports."

"Oh!" said Harry, considerably surprised.  "And who the deuce are the
'Gracchi'?"

"A society I was on," said Robin, a little wearily--it was so annoying
to be forced to talk at breakfast.  "A literary society--essays, with
especial attention paid to the New Literature.  We made it our boast
that we never went back further than Meredith, except, of course, when
one had to, for origins and comparisons.  Randal, who's coming to stop
for a few days, was president last year and read some awfully good
papers."

Harry stared blankly.  He had thought that every one played cricket and
football, especially when they were strong and healthy like Robin.  He
had not quite understood about the society--and who was Meredith?  "I
shall be glad to meet your friend," he said.  "Is he still at
Cambridge?"

"Oh, Randal!" said Robin.  "No, he came down the same time as I did.
He only got a second in History, although he was worth a first any day
of the week.  But he had such lots of other things to do--his papers
for the 'Gracchi' took up any amount of time--and then history rather
bored him.  He's very popular here, especially with all Fallacy Street
people."

"The Fallacy Street people!" repeated Harry, still more bewildered.
"Who are they?"

"Oh!  I suppose you've forgotten," said Robin, mildly surprised.
"They're all the people who're intellectual in Pendragon.  If you live
in Fallacy Street you're one of the wits.  It's like belonging to the
'Mermaid' used to be, you know, in Shakespeare's time.  They're really
awfully clever--some of them--the Miss Ponsonbys and Mrs. le
Terry--Aunt Clare thinks no end of Mrs. le Terry."

Robin's voice sounded a little awed.  He had a great respect for
Fallacy Street.  "Oh, they won't have any room for me," said Harry,
laughing.  "I'm an awfully stupid old duffer.  I haven't read anything
at all, except a bit of Kipling--'Barrack-room Ballads'--seems a waste
of time to read somehow."

That his father had very little interest in literature Robin had
discovered some time before, but that he should boast of it--openly,
laughingly--was really rather terrible.

Harry was silent for a few minutes; he had evidently made a blunder in
his choice of a subject, but it was really difficult.

"Where are we going this morning, Robin?" he said at last.

"Oh!  I say!" Robin looked a little unhappy.  "I'm awfully sorry,
father.  I'm really afraid I can't come out this morning.  There's a
box of books that have positively got to get off to Randal's place
to-night.  I daren't keep them any longer.  I'd do it this afternoon,
only it's Aunt Clare's at-home day and she always likes me to help her.
I'm really awfully sorry, but there are lots of other mornings, aren't
there?  I simply must get those books off this morning."

"Why, of course," said Harry cheerfully; "there's plenty of time."

He was dreadfully disappointed.  He had often thought of that first
stroll with Robin.  They would discuss the changes since Harry's day;
Robin would point out the new points of interest, and, perhaps,
introduce him to some of his friends--it had been a favourite picture
of his during some of those lonely days in New Zealand.  And now
Robin's aunt and college friend were to come before his father--it was
rather hard.

But, then, on second thoughts, how unreasonable it was of him to expect
to take up Robin's time like that.  He must fall into the ways of the
house, quietly, unobtrusively, with none of that jolting of other
people's habits and regular customs; it had been thoughtless, of him
and ridiculous.  He must be more careful.

Breakfast ended, he found himself alone.  Robin left the room with the
preoccupied air of a man of fifty; the difficulty of choosing between
Jefferies' "Story of my Heart" and Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," if
there wasn't room in the box for both, was terrible!  Of course Randal
was coming himself in a few days, and it would have been simpler to let
him choose for himself; but he had particularly asked for them to be
sent by the fourth, and to-day was the third.  Robin had quite
forgotten his father.

Harry was alone.  From the garden came the sound of doves, and, through
the window that overlooked the lawn, the sun shone into the room.
Harry lit a cigarette and went out.  The garden was changed; there was
a feeling of order and authority about it that it had never had before.
Not a weed was to be seen on the paths: flowers stretched in perfect
order and discipline; colours in harmony, shapes and patterns of a
tutored symmetry--it was the perfection of a modern gardener's art.  He
passed gardeners, grave, serious men with eyes intent on their work,
and he remembered the strange old man who had watched over the garden
when he had been a boy; an old man with a wild ragged beard and a
skinny hand like the Ancient Mariner's.  The garden had not prospered
under his care--it had been wild, undisciplined, tangled; but he had
been a teller of wonderful tales, a seer of visions--it was to him that
Harry had owed all the intimate knowledge of Cornish lore and mystery
that he possessed.

The gardeners that were there now were probably not Cornishmen at
all--strangers, Londoners perhaps.  They could watch that wonderful,
ever-changing view of sea and cliff and moor without any beating of the
heart; to them the crooked, dusky windings of the Cove, the mighty grey
rocks of Trelennan's Jump, the strange, solemn permanency of the four
grey stones on the moor, were as nothing; their hearts were probably in
Peckham.

He turned a little sadly from the ordered discipline of the garden; the
shining green of the lawns, the blazing red and gold of its flowers
almost annoyed him--it was not what he had expected.  Then, suddenly,
he came upon a little tangled wood--a strange, deserted place, with
tall grasses and wild ferns and a little brook bubbling noisily over
shining white and grey pebbles.  He remembered it; how well he
remembered it.  He had often been there in those early days.  He had
tried to make a little mill in the brook.  He had searched there for
some of those strange creatures about whom Tony Tregoth, the old
gardener, had told him--fauns and nymphs and the wild god Pan.  He had
never found anything; but its wild, disordered beauty had made a
fitting setting for Tony's wild, disordered legends.

It was still almost exactly as it had been twenty years before; no one
had attempted improvement.  He stayed there for some time, thinking,
regretting, dreaming--it was the only part of the garden that was real
to him.

He passed down the avenue and out through the white stone gates as one
in a dream.  Something was stirring within him.  It was not that during
those years in New Zealand he had forgotten.  He had longed again and
again with a passionate, burning longing for the grey cliffs and the
sea and the haunting loneliness of the moor; for the Cornwall that he
had loved from the moment of his birth--no, he had never forgotten.
But there was waking in him again that strange, half-inherited sense of
the eternal presence of ancient days and old heathen ceremonies, and
the manners of men who had lived in that place a thousand years before.
He had known it when he was a boy; when he had chased rabbits over the
moor, when he had seen the mist curling mysteriously from the sea and
wrapping land and sky in a blinding curtain of grey, when he had stood
on Trelennan's Jump and watched the white, savage tossing of the foam
hundreds of feet below; he had sometimes fancied that he saw them,
those wild bearded priests of cruelty, waiting smilingly on the silent
twilit moor for victims--they had always been cruel; something terrible
in the very vagueness of their outline.

Now the old thoughts came back to him, and he almost fancied that he
could see the strange faces in the shadows of the garden and feel their
hot breath upon his cheek.

His passage through the streets of Pendragon woke him from his dreams;
its almost startling modernity and obtrusive up-to-dateness laughed at
his fancies.  It was very much changed since he had been there
before--like the garden, it was the very apotheosis of order and modern
methods.  "The Pendragon Hotel" astonished him by its stone pillars,
its glimpse of a wonderful, cool, softly carpeted hall, its official in
gold buttons who stood solemnly magnificent on the steps, the
admiration of several small boys who looked up into his face with
wide-open eyes.

Harry remembered the old "Pendragon Hotel," a dirty, unmethodical
place, with beds that were never clean.  It had been something of a
scandal, but its landlord had been an amusing fellow and a capital
teller of stories.

The shops dazzled him by their brilliance.  The hairdresser's displayed
a wonderful assortment of wigs in the window; coloured bottles of every
size and hue glittered in the chemist's; diamonds flashed in the
jeweller's--the street seemed glorious to his colonial eyes.

The streets were not very crowded, and no one seemed to be in a hurry.
Auckland had been rather a busy little town--no one had had very much
time to spare--but here, under the mellow September sun, people
lingered and talked, and the time and place seemed to stand still with
the pleasant air of something restfully comfortable, and, above all,
containing nothing that wasn't in the very best taste.  It was this air
of polite gentility that struck Harry so strongly.  It had never been
like that in the old days; a ragged unkempt place of uncertain manners
and a very evident poverty.  He rather resented its new polish, and he
regretted once more that he had not sought a London tailor before
coming down to Cornwall.

He suddenly recognised a face--a middle-aged, stout gentleman, with a
white waistcoat and the air of one who had managed to lead a virtuous
life and, nevertheless, accumulate money; he was evidently satisfied
with both achievements.  It was Barbour, Bunny Barbour.  He had been
rather a good chap at school, with some taste for adventure.  He had
had a wider horizon than most of them; Harry remembered how Bunny had
envied him in New Zealand.  He looked prosperous and sedate now, and
the world must have treated him well.  Harry spoke to him and was
received with effusion.  "Trojan, old man!  Well, I never!  I'm damned
if I'd have recognised you.  How you've changed!  I heard you were
coming back; your boy told me--fine chap that, Trojan, you've every
reason to be proud.  Well, to be sure!  Come in and have a whisky and
see the new club-rooms!  Just been done up, and fairly knocks spots out
of the old place."

He was extremely cordial, but Harry felt that he was under criticism.
Barbour's eyes looked him up and down; there was almost a challenge in
his glance, as though he said, "We are quite ready to receive you if
you are one of us.  But you must move with the times.  It's no good for
you to be the same as in the old days.  We've all changed, and so must
you!"

The club was magnificent.  Harry stared in amazement at its luxury and
comfort.  Its wonderful armchairs and soft carpets, its decorations and
splendid space astonished him.  The old place had seemed rather fine to
him as a boy, but he saw now how bad it had really been.  He sank into
one of the armchairs with that strange sense of angry resentment that
he had felt before in the street gaining hotly upon him.

"It's good, isn't it?" said Barbour, smiling with an almost personal
satisfaction, as though he had been largely responsible for the present
improvements.  "The membership's going up like anything, and we're
thinking of raising subscriptions.  Very decent set of fellows on it,
too.  Oh! we're getting along splendidly here.  You must have noticed
the change in the place!"

"I should think I have," said Harry--the tone of his voice was a little
regretful; "but it's not only here--it's the whole town.  It's
smartened up beyond all knowing.  But I must confess that, dirty and
dingy as they were, I regret the old club-rooms.  There was something
extraordinarily homely and comfortable about them.  Do you remember
that old armchair with the hole in it?  Gone long ago, of course, but I
shall never sit in anything as nice again."

"Ah, sentiment," said Barbour, smiling; "you won't find much of it in
Pendragon nowadays.  It doesn't do.  Sentimentalists are always Tories,
you'll find; always wanting to keep the old things, and all against
progress.  We're all for progress now.  We've got some capital men on
the Town Council--Harding, Belfast, Rogers, Snaith--you won't remember
them.  There's some talk of pulling down the Cove and building new
lodging-houses there.  We're crowded out in the summer, and there are
more people every year."

"Pull down the Cove?" said Harry, aghast; "but you can't.  It's been
there for hundreds of years; it's one of the most picturesque places in
Cornwall."

"That's the only thing," said Barbour regretfully.  "It acts rather
well as a draw for painters and that sort of person, and it makes some
pretty picture postcards that are certain to sell.  Oh, I suppose
they'll keep it for a bit, but it will have to go ultimately.
Pendragon's changing."

There was no doubt that it was, and Harry left the club some quarter of
an hour later with dismay in his heart.  He had dreamed so long of the
old times, the old beauties, the old quiet spirit of unprogressive
content, that this new eagerness to be up-to-date and modern, this
obvious determination to make Pendragon a watering-place of the most
detestable kind, horrified him.

As he passed down the crooked, uneven stone steps that led to the Cove,
he felt indignant, almost unhappy.  It was as if a friend had been
insulted in his presence and he had been unable to defend him.  They
said that the Cove must go, must make way for modern jerry-built
lodging-houses, in order that middle-class families from London and
Manchester might be sufficiently accommodated.

The Cove had meant a great deal to him when a boy--mystery, romance,
pirates and smugglers, strange Cornish legends of saints and sinners,
knights and men-at-arms.  The little inn, "The Bended Thumb," with its
irregular red-brick floor and its smoke-stained oaken rafters, had been
the theatre of many a stirring drama--now it was to be pulled down.  It
was a wonderfully beautiful morning, and the little, twisting street of
the Cove seemed to dance with its white shining cobbles in the light of
the sun.  It was mysterious as ever, but colours lingered in every
corner.  Purple mists seemed to hang about the dark alleys and twisting
ways; golden shafts of light flashed through the open cottage doorways
into rooms where motes of dust danced, like sprites, in the sun; smoke
rose in little wreaths of pearl-grey blue into the cloudless sky; there
was perfect stillness in the air, and from an overflowing pail that
stood outside "The Bended Thumb," the clear drip, drip of the water
could be heard falling slowly into the white cobbles, and close at hand
was the gentle lap of the sea, as it ran up the little shingly beach
and then dragged slowly back again with a soft, reluctant hiss.

It was the Cove in its gentlest mood.  No one was about; the women were
preparing the dinner and the men were away at work.  No strange faces
peered from inhospitable doorways; there was nothing to-day that could
give the stranger a sense of outlawry, of almost savage avoidance of
ordinary customs and manners.  Harry's heart beat wildly as he walked
down the street; there was no change here; it was as he had left it.
He was at home here as he could never be in that new, strident
Pendragon with its utter disregard of tradition and beauty.

He saw that it was late and hurried back.  He had discovered a great
deal during the morning.

At lunch he spoke of the changes that he had seen.  Clare smiled.
"Why, of course," she said.  "Twenty years is a long time, and
Pendragon has made great strides.  For my part, I am very glad.  It
brings money to the shopkeepers, and the place will be quite
fashionable in a few years' time.  We're all on the side of progress up
here," she added, laughing.

"But the Cove?" said Harry.  "Barbour tells me that they are thinking
of pulling it down to make way for lodging-houses or something."

"Well, why not?" said Clare.  "It is really very much in the way where
it is, and is, I am told, extremely insanitary.  We must be practical
nowadays or we are nothing; you have to pay heavily for being romantic."

Harry felt again that sensation of personal affront as though some
close friend, bound to him by many ties, had been attacked violently in
his presence.  It was unreasonable, he knew, but it was very strong.

"And you, Robin," he said, "what do you think of it?"

"I agree with Aunt Clare," answered Robin lightly, as though it were a
matter that interested him very little.  "If the place is in the way,
it ought to go.  He's a sensible man, Barbour."

"The fact is, Harry," said Garrett, "you haven't changed quite as fast
as the place has.  You'll see the point of view in a few weeks' time."

He felt unreasonably, ridiculously angry.  They were all treating him
as a child, as some one who would grow up one day perhaps, but was, at
present at any rate, immature in thought and word; even with Robin
there was a half-implied superiority.

"But the Cove!" he cried vehemently.  "Is it nothing to any of you?
After all that it has been to us all our lives, to our people, to the
whole place, are you going to root it out and destroy it simply because
the town isn't quite big enough to put up all the trippers that burden
it in the summer?  Don't you see what you will lose if you do?  I
suppose you think that I am sentimental, romantic, but upon my word I
can't see that you have improved Pendragon very much in all these
twenty years.  It was charming once--a place with individuality,
independence; now it is like anywhere else--a miniature Brighton."

He knew that he was wasting his words.  There was a pause, and he felt
that they were all three laughing at him--yes, Robin as well.  He had
only made a fool of himself; they could not understand how much he had
expected during those weary years of waiting--how much he had expected
and how much he had missed.

Clare looked round the room and was relieved to find that only Beldam
was present.  If one of the family was bent on being absurd, it was as
well that there should only be one of the servants to hear him.

"You know that you are to be on your trial this afternoon, Harry?" she
said.

"My trial?" he repeated, bewildered.

"Yes--it's my at-home day, you know--first Thursdays--and, of course,
they'll all come to see you.  We shall have the whole town----"  She
looked at him a little anxiously; so much depended on how he behaved,
and she wasn't completely reassured by his present manner.

If he astonished them all this afternoon by saying things about the
Cove like that, it would be too terrible!

"How horrible!" he said, laughing.  "I'm very much afraid that I shan't
do you justice, Clare.  I'm no good at small conversation."

His treating it so lightly made it worse, and she wondered how she
could force him to realise the seriousness of it.

"All the nicest people in Pendragon," she said; "and they are rather
ridiculously critical, and of course they talk."

He looked at her and laughed.  "I wish they were Maories," he said, "I
shouldn't be nearly so frightened!"

She leant over the table to emphasise her words.  "But it really does
make a difference, Harry.  First impressions count a lot.  You'll be
nice to them, won't you?"

The laugh had left his eyes.  It was serious, as he knew.  He had had
no idea that he would have, so to speak, "funked" it so.  It was
partly, of course, because of Robin.  He did not want to make a fool of
himself before the boy.  He was already beginning to realise what were
the things that counted with Robin.

The real pathos of the situation lay in his terrible anxiety to do the
right thing.  If he had taken it quietly, had trusted to his natural
discretion and had left circumstances to develop of themselves, he
would have, at any rate, been less self-conscious.  But he could not
let it alone.  He had met Auckland society often enough and had,
indeed, during his later years, been something of a society man, but
there everything was straight-forward and simple.  There was no
tradition, no convention, no standard.  Because other people did a
thing was no reason why you should do it--originality was welcomed
rather than otherwise.  But here there were so many things that you
must do, and so very, very many that you mustn't; and if you were a
Trojan, matters were still more complicated.

It was after half-past four when he entered the drawing-room, and Clare
was pouring out tea.  Five or six ladies were already there, and a
clergyman of ample proportions and quite beautifully brushed hair.  He
was introduced--"Mrs. le Terry--Miss Ponsonby--Miss Lucy Ponsonby--Miss
Werrel--Miss Thisbe Werrel--Mr. Carrell--our rector, Harry."

He shook hands and was terribly embarrassed.  He was conscious at once
of that same sense of challenge that he had felt with Barbour in the
morning.  They were not obviously staring, but he knew that they were
rapidly summing him up.  He coloured foolishly, and stood for a moment
awkwardly in the middle of the room.

"Tea, Harry?" said Clare.  "Scones down by the fire.  Everybody else is
all right--so look after yourself."

He found himself by Mrs. le Terry, a small, rather pretty woman with
wide-open blue eyes, and a mass of dark brown hair hidden beneath a
large black hat that drooped over one ear.  She talked rapidly and with
few pauses.  She was, he discovered, one of those persons whose
conversation was a series of exclamation marks.  She was perpetually
astonished, delighted, and disappointed with an amount of emotion that
left her no breath and gave her hearers a small opinion of her
sincerity.  "It's too terribly funny," she said, opening her eyes very
wide indeed, "that you should have been in that amazing place, New
Zealand--all sheep and Maories, isn't it?--and if there's one thing
that I should be likely to detest more than mutton I'm sure it would be
Maories.  Too dreadful and terrible!  But you look splendidly well, Mr.
Trojan.  I never, really never, saw any one with such a magnificent
colour!  I suppose that it's that gorgeous sun, and it never rains,
does it?  Too delightful!  If there's one thing that I _do_ adore, it's
the sun!"

"Well, I don't know about that," said Harry, laughing; "we had rain
pretty often in Auckland, and----"

"Oh," she said, breaking in upon him, "that's too curious, because, do
you know, I thought you never had rain at all, and I do detest rain so.
It's too distressing when one has a new frock or must go to some stupid
place to see some one.  But I'm too awfully glad that you've come here,
Mr. Trojan.  We do want waking up a little, you know, and I'm sure
you're the very person to do it.  It would be too funny if you were to
wake us all up, you know."

Harry was pleased.  There were no difficulties here, at any rate.
Hadn't Robin mentioned Mrs. le Terry as one of the leaders of Fallacy
Street?  He suddenly lost his shyness and wanted to become
confidential.  He would tell her how glad he was to be back in England
again; how anxious he was to enter into all the fun and to take his
part in all the work.  He wondered what she felt about the Cove, and he
hoped that she would be an enemy to its proposed destruction.

But she yielded him no opportunity of speaking, and he speedily
discovered her opinion on the Cove.  "And such changes since you went
away!  Quite another place, I'm glad to say.  Pendragon is the sweetest
little town, and even the dear, dirty trippers in the summer are the
most delightful and amusing people you ever saw.  And now that they
talk of pulling down that horrid, dirty old Cove, it will be too
splendid, with lodging-houses and a bandstand; and they do talk of an
Esplanade--that would be too delightful!"

While she was speaking, he watched the room curiously.  Robin had come
in and was standing by the fireplace talking to the Miss Werrels, two
girls of the athletic type, with short skirts and their hair brushed
tightly back over their foreheads.  He was leaning with one arm on the
mantelpiece, and was looking down on the ladies with an air of languid
interest: his eyes were restless, and every now and again glanced
towards his father.  The two Miss Ponsonbys were massive ladies of any
age over fifty.  Clad in voluminous black silk, with several little
reticules and iron chains, their black hair bound in tight coils at the
back of their heads, each holding stiffly her teacup with a tenacity
that was worthy of a better cause, they were awe-inspiring and
militant.  In spite of their motionless gravity, there was something
aggressive in their frowning brows and cold, expressionless eyes.
Harry thought that he had never seen two more terrifying persons.
Clare was talking to the prosperous clergyman; he smiled continually,
and now and again laughed in reply to some remark, but it was always
something restrained and carefully guarded.  He was obviously a man who
laid great store by exterior circumstances.  That the sepulchre should
be filled with dead men's bones might cause him pain, but that it
should be unwhitened would be, to him, a thing far more terrible.

Clare turned round and addressed the room generally.

"Mr. Carrell has just been telling me of the shocking state of the
Cove," she said.  "Insanitary isn't the word, apparently.  Things have
gone too far, and the only wise measure seems to be to root the place
up completely.  It is sad, of course--it was a pretty old place, but it
has had its day."

"I've just been telling your brother about it, Miss Trojan," said Mrs.
le Terry.  "It's quite too terrible, and I'm sure it's very bad for all
of us to have anything quite so horrible so close to our houses.
There's no knowing what dreadful things we may not all of us be
catching at this very moment----"

She was interrupted by two new arrivals--Mrs. and Miss Bethel.  They
were a curious contrast.  The mother was the strangest old lady that
Harry had ever seen.  She was tiny in stature, with snow-white hair and
cheeks that were obviously rouged; she wore a dress of curious shot
silk decorated with much lace, and her fingers were thick with jewels;
a large hat with great purple feathers waved above her head.  It was a
fantastic and gaudy impression that she made, and there was something
rather pitiful in the contrast between her own obvious satisfaction
with her personal appearance and the bizarre, almost vulgar, effect of
such strangely contrasted colours.  She came mincing into the room with
her head a little on one side, but in spite of, or perhaps because of,
her rather anxious smiles, it was obvious that she was not altogether
at her ease.

The girl who followed her was very different.  Tall and very dark, she
was clothed quite simply in grey; her hair was wonderful, although it
was at present hidden to some extent by her hat, but its coal-black
darkness had something intent, almost luminous, about it, so that,
paradoxically, its very blackness held hidden lights and colours.  But
it was her manner that Harry especially noticed.  She followed her
mother with a strange upright carriage of the head and flash of the
eyes that were almost defiant.  She was evidently expecting no very
civil reception, and she seemed to face the room with hostility and no
very ready eagerness to please.

The effect on the room was marked.  Mrs. le Terry stopped speaking for
a moment and rustled her skirts with a movement of displeasure, the
Miss Ponsonbys clutched their teacups even tighter than before and
their brows became more clouded, the Miss Werrels smiled confidentially
at each other as though they shared some secret, and even Robin made a
slight instinctive movement of displeasure.

Harry felt at once an impulse of sympathy towards the girl.  It was
almost as if this sudden hostility had made them friends: he liked that
independence of her carriage, the pride in her eyes.  Mrs. le Terry's
voice broke upon his ears.

"Which must be, Mr. Trojan, extraordinarily provoking.  To go there, I
mean, and find absolutely no one in--all that way, too, and a horribly
wet night, and no train until nine o'clock."

In his endeavours to pick up the thread of the conversation he lost
sight of their meeting with Clare.

She, indeed, had greeted them with all the Trojan coldness; nothing
could have been more sternly formal than her "Ah!  Mrs. Bethel, I'm so
glad that you were able to come.  So good of you to trouble to call.
Won't you have some tea?  Do find a seat somewhere, Miss Bethel.  I
hope you won't mind our all having finished."

Harry was introduced and took them their tea.  It was obvious that, for
some reason unknown to him, their presence there was undesired by all
the company present, including Clare herself.  He also knew
instinctively that their coming there had been some act of daring
bravery, undertaken perhaps with the hope that, after all, it might not
be as they had feared.

The old lady's hand trembled as she took her teacup; the colour had
fled from her face, and she sat there white and shaking.  As Harry bent
over her with the scones, he saw to his horror that a tear was
trembling on her eyelid; her throat was moving convulsively.

At the same instant he knew that the girl's eyes were fixed upon his;
he saw them imploring, beseeching him to help them.  It was a difficult
situation, but he smiled back at the girl and turned to the old lady.

"Do try these scones, Mrs. Bethel," he said; "they are still hot and I
can recommend them strongly.  I'm so glad to meet you; my sister told
me only this morning that she hoped you would come this afternoon, as
she wanted us to become acquainted."

It was a lie, but he spoke it without hesitation, knowing that it would
reach Clare's ears.  The little lady smiled nervously and looked up at
him.

"Ah, Mr. Trojan," she said, "it's very good of you, I'm sure.  We are
only too delighted.  It's not much gaiety that we can offer you here,
but such as it is----"

She was actually making eyes at him, the preposterous old person.  It
was really a little pitiful, with her gorgeous colours, and her
trembling assumption of a coquettish youth that had left her long ago.
Her attempt to storm a difficult position by the worst of all possible
tactics made him extremely sorry for the daughter, who was forced to
look on in silence.  His thoughts, indeed, were with the girl--her
splendid hair, her eyes, something wild, almost rebellious, that found
a kindred note in himself; curiously, almost absurdly, they were to a
certain degree allies although they had not spoken.  He talked to her a
little and she mentioned the Cove.

"It is a test of your Cornish ancestry," she said--"if you care for it,
I mean.  So many people here look on it as a kind of
rubbish-heap--picturesque but untidy--and it is the most beautiful
place in the world."

"I am glad that you feel like that," he said quietly; "it meant a lot
to me as a boy.  I have been sorry to find how unpopular it is now; but
I see that it still has its supporters."

"Ah, you must talk to father," she said.  "He is always there.  We are
a little old-fashioned, I'm afraid."

There was in her voice, in her smile, something that stirred him
strangely.  He felt as though he had met her before--a long while ago.
He recognised little characteristics, the way that she pushed back her
hair when she was excited, the beautiful curve of her neck when she
raised her eyes to his, the rise and fall of her bosom--it was all
strangely, individually familiar, as though he had often watched her do
the same things in the same way before, in some other place....

He had forgotten the others--Clare, Robin, the Miss Ponsonbys, Mrs. le
Terry; and when they had all gone, he did not realise that he had in
any way neglected them.

After Miss Bethel had left the room, followed by the preposterous old
mother, he stood at the window watching the lights of the town shining
mistily through the black network of trees in the drive.  He must meet
her again.

Clare spoke to him and he turned round.  "I'm afraid you have made the
Miss Ponsonbys enemies for life," she said; "you never spoke to them
once.  I warned you that they were the most important people in the
place."

"Oh! the Miss Ponsonbys!" said Harry carelessly, and Robin stood amazed.




CHAPTER III

Robin's rooms, charming as they were, with their wide windows opening
on to tossing sea and the sharp bend of the grey cliffs stretching to
distant horizons, suffered from overcrowding.

His sitting-room, with its dark red wallpaper and several good prints
framed in dark oak--Burne-Jones' "Study for Cupid's Masque," Hunt's
"Hireling Shepherd," and Whistler's "Battersea Bridge" were the
best--might have been delightful had he learned to select; but at the
present stage in his development he hated rejecting anything as long as
it reached a certain standard.  His appreciations were wide and
generous, and his knowledge was just now too superficial to permit of
discerning criticism.  The room, again, suffered from a rather
effeminate prettiness.  There were too many essentially trivial
knick-knacks--some fans, silver ornaments, a charming little ebony
clock, and a generous assortment of gay, elegantly worked cushions.
The books, too, were all in handsome editions--Meredith in green
leather with a gold-worked monogram, Pater in red half-morocco,
Swinburne in light-blue with red and gold tooling--rich and to some
extent unobtrusive, but reiterating unmistakably the first impression
that the room had given, the mark of something superficial.

Robin was there now, dressing for dinner.  He often dressed in his
sitting-room, because his books were there.  He liked to open a book
for a moment before fitting his studs into his shirt, and how charming
to read a verse of Swinburne before brushing his hair--not so much
because of the Swinburne, but rather because one went down to dinner
with a pleasant feeling of culture and education.  To-night he was in a
hurry.  People had stayed so late for tea (it was still the day after
his father's arrival), and he had to be at the other end of the town by
half-past seven.  What a nuisance going out to dinner was, and how he
wished he wasn't going to-night.

The fact that the dinner promised, in all probability, to afford
something of a situation did not, as was often the case, give him very
much satisfaction.  Indeed it was the reverse.  The situation was going
to be extremely unpleasant, and there was every likelihood that Robin
would look a fool.  Robin's education had been a continuous insistence
on the importance of superficiality.  It had been enforced while he was
still in the cradle, when a desire to kick and fight had been always
checked by the quiet reiteration that it was not a thing that a Trojan
did.  Temper was not a fault of itself, but an exhibition of it was;
simply because self-control was a Trojan virtue.  At his private school
he was taught the great code of brushing one's hair and leaving the
bottom button of one's waistcoat undone.  Robbery, murder, rape--well,
they had all played their part in the Trojan history; but the art of
shaking hands and the correct method of snubbing a poor relation, if
properly acquired, covered the crimes of the Decalogue.

It was not that Robin, either then or afterwards, was a snob.  He
thought no more of a duke or a viscount than of a plain commoner, but
he learnt at once the lesson of "Us--and the Others."  If you were one
of the others--if there was a hesitation about your aspirates, if you
wore a tail-coat and brown boots--then you were non-existent, you
simply did not count.

When he left Eton for Cambridge, this Code of the Quite Correct Thing
advanced beyond the art of Perfect Manners; it extended to literature
and politics, and, in fact, everything of any importance.  He soon
discovered what were the things for "Us" to read, whom were the
painters for "Us" to admire, and what were the politics for "Us" to
applaud.  He read Pater and Swinburne and Meredith, Bernard Shaw and
Galsworthy and Joseph Conrad, and had quite definite ideas about all of
them.  He admired Rickett's stage effects, and thought Sholto Douglas's
portraits awfully clever, and, of course, Max's Caricatures were
masterly.  I'm not saying that he did not really admire these
things--in many things his appreciation was genuine enough--but if it
should happen that he cared for "The Christian" or "God's Good Man," he
speedily smothered his admiration and wondered how he could be such a
fool.  To do him justice, he never had any doubt that those whose
judgment he followed were absolutely right; but he followed them
blindly, often praising books or pictures that he had never read or
seen because it was the thing to do.  He read quite clever papers to
"The Gracchi" at Cambridge, but the most successful of all, "The
Philosophy of Nine-pins according to Bernard Shaw," was written before
he had either seen or read any of that gentleman's plays.  He was, in
fact, in great danger of developing into a kind of walking _Rapid
Review_ of other people's judgments and opinions.  He examined nothing
for himself; his standard of the things to be attained in this world
was fixed and unalterable; to have an unalterable standard at
twenty-one is to condemn oneself to folly for life.

And now, as he was dressing for dinner, two things occupied his mind:
firstly, his father; in the second place, the situation that he was to
face in half-an-hour's time.

With regard to his father, Robin was terribly afraid that he was one of
the Others.  He had had his suspicions from the first--that violent
entry, the loud voice and the hearty laugh, the bad-fitting clothes,
and the perpetual chatter at dinner; it had all been noisy, unusual,
even a little vulgar.  But his behaviour at tea that afternoon had
grieved Robin very much.  How could he be so rude to the light and
leading of Fallacy Street?  It could only have been through ignorance;
it could only have been because he really did not know how truly great
the Miss Ponsonbys were.  But then, to spend all his time with the
Bethels, strange, odd people, with the queerest manners and an
uncertain history, whom Fallacy Street had decided to cut!

No, Robin was very much afraid that his father must be ranked with the
Others.  He had not expected very much after all; New Zealand must be a
strange place on all accounts; but his father seemed to show no desire
to improve, he seemed quite happy and contented, and scarcely realised,
apparently, the seriousness of his mistakes.

But, after all, the question of his father was a very minor affair as
compared with the real problem that he must answer that evening.  Robin
had met Dahlia Feverel in the summer of the preceding year at
Cambridge.  He had thought her extremely beautiful and very
fascinating.  Most of his college friends had ladies whom they adored;
it was considered quite a thing to do--and so Robin adored Dahlia.

No one knew anything about the Feverels.  The mother was kept in the
background and the father was dead--there was really only Dahlia; and
when Robin was with her he never thought of questioning her as to
antecedents of earlier history.  For two months he loved her
passionately, chiefly because he saw her very seldom.  When he went
down at the end of the summer term he felt that she was the only thing
in the world worth living for.  He became Byronic, scowled at Aunt
Clare, and treated Garrett's cynicism with contempt.  He wrote letters
to her every day full of the deepest sentiments and a great deal of
amazingly bad poetry.  Clare wondered what was the matter, but asked no
questions, and was indeed far too firmly convinced of the efficacy of
the Trojan system to have any fears of mental or moral danger.

Then Miss Feverel made a mistake; she came with her mother to stay at
Pendragon.  For the first week Robin was blissfully happy--then he
began to wonder.  The best people in Pendragon would have nothing to do
with the Feverels.  Aunt Clare, unaware that they were friends of
Robin's, pronounced them "commonly vulgar."  The mother was more in
evidence than she had been at Cambridge, and Robin passed from dislike
to horror and from horror to hatred.  Dahlia, too, seemed to have
changed.  Robin had loved her too passionately hitherto to think of the
great Division.  But soon he began to wonder.  There were certain
things--little unimportant trifles, of course--that made him rather
uneasy; he began to have a horrible suspicion that she was one of the
Others; and then, once the suspicion was admitted, proof after proof
came forward to turn it into certainty.

How horrible, and what an escape!  His visits to the little
lodging-house overlooking the sea where Dahlia played the piano so
enchantingly, and Mrs. Feverel, a solemn, rather menacing figure,
played silently and mournfully continuous Patience, were less and less
frequent.  He was determined to break the matter off; it haunted his
dreams, it troubled him all day; he was forced to keep his
acquaintanceship with them secret, and was in perpetual terror lest
Aunt Clare should discover it.  He had that most depressing of
unwished-for possessions, a skeleton; its cupboard-door swung
creakingly in the wind, and its bones rattled in his ears.

No, the thing must come to an end at once, and completely.  They had
invited him to dinner and he had accepted, meaning to use the occasion
for the contemplated separation.  He had thought often enough of what
he would say--words that had served others many times before in similar
situations.  He would refer to their youth, the affair should be a
midsummer episode, pleasant to look back upon when they were both older
and married to more worthy partners; he would be a brother to her and
she should be a sister to him--but, thank God for his escape!

He believed that the Trojan traditions would carry him through.  He was
not quite sure what she would do--cry probably, and remonstrate; but it
would soon be over and he would be at peace once more.

He dressed slowly and with his usual care.  It would be easier to speak
with authority if there was no doubt about his appearance.  He decided
to walk, and he passed through the garden into the town, his head a
buzzing repetition of the words that he meant to say.  It was a
beautiful evening; a soft mist hid the moon's sharper outline, but she
shone, a vague circlet of light through a little fleet of fleecy white
cloud.  Although it was early in September, some of the trees were
beginning to change their dark green into faint gold, and the sharp
outline of their leaves stood out against the grey pearl light of the
sky.  As he passed into the principal street of Pendragon, Robin drew
his coat closer about him, like some ancient conspirator.  He had no
wish to be stopped by an inquisitive friend; his destination demanded
secrecy.  Soon the lights and asphalt of the High Street gave place to
dark, twisting paths and cobbled stones.  These obscure and narrow ways
were rather pathetic survivals of the old Pendragon.  At night they had
an almost sinister appearance; the lamps were at very long intervals
and the old houses leaned over the road with a certain crazy
picturesqueness that was, at the same time, exceedingly dangerous.
There were few lights in the windows and very few pedestrians on the
cobbles; the muffled roar of the sea sounded close at hand.  And,
indeed, it sprang upon you quite magnificently at a turn of the road.
To-night it scarcely moved; a ripple as the waves licked the sand, a
gentle rustle as of trees in the wind when the pebbles were dragged
back with the ebb--that was all.  It seemed strangely mysterious under
the misty, uncertain light of the moon.

The houses facing the sea loomed up darkly against the horizon--a black
contrast with the grey of sea and sky.  It was No. 4 where the Feverels
lived.  There was a light in the upper window and some one was playing
the piano.  Robin hesitated for some minutes before ringing the bell.
When it had rung he heard the piano stop.  For a few seconds there was
no sound; then there were steps in the passage and the door was opened
by the very dowdy little maid-of-all-work whose hands were always dirty
and whose eyes were always red, as though with perpetual weeping.

With what different eyes he saw the house now!  On his first visit, the
sun had dazzled his eyes; there had been flowers in the drawing-room
and she had come to meet him in some charming dress; he had stood
enraptured at the foot of the stairs, deeming it Paradise.  Now the
lamp in the hall flared with the wind from the door, and he was acutely
conscious of a large rent in the dirty, faded carpet.  The house was
perfectly still--it might have been a place of ghosts, with the moon
shining mistily through the window on the stairs and the strange,
insistent murmur of the sea beating mysteriously through the closed
doors!

There was no one in the drawing-room, and its appalling bad taste
struck him as it had never done before.  How could he have been blind
to it?  The glaring yellow carpet, the bright purple lamp-shades, the
gilt looking-glass over the fireplace, and, above all, dusty, drooping
paper flowers in bright china vases ranged in a row by the window.  Of
course, it might be merely the lodgings.  Lodgings always were like
that--but to live with them for months!  To attempt no change, to leave
the flowers, and the terrible oil-painting "Lost in the Snow"--an
obvious British Public appeal to a pathos that simply shrieked at you,
with its hideous colours and very material snow-storm.  No, Robin could
only repeat once more, What an escape!

But had he, after all, escaped?  He was not quite sure, as he stood by
the window waiting.  It might be difficult, and he was unmistakably
nervous.

Dahlia closed the door, and stood there for a moment before coming
forward.

"Robin--at last!" and she held out both hands to him.  They were the
same words that his aunt had used to his father last night, he
remembered foolishly, and at once they seemed strained, false,
ridiculous!

He took her hand and said something about being in time; then, as she
seemed to expect it, he bent down and kissed her.

She was pretty in a rather obvious way.  If there had been less
artificiality there would have been more charm; of middle height, she
was slim and dark, and her hair, parted in the middle, fell in waves
over her temples.  She affected a rather simple, aesthetic manner that
suited her dark eyes and rather pale complexion.  You said that she was
intense until you knew her.  To-night she wore a rather pretty dress of
some dark-brown stuff, cut low at the neck, and with her long white
arms bare.  She had obviously taken a good deal of trouble this
evening, and had undoubtedly succeeded.

"And so Sir Robert has deigned to come and see his humble dependants at
last!" she said, laughing.  "A whole fortnight, Robin, and you've not
been near us."

"I'm dreadfully sorry," he said, "but I've really been too terribly
busy.  The Governor coming home and one thing and another----"

He felt gauche and awkward, the consciousness of what he must say after
dinner weighed on him heavily.  He could hardly believe that there had
ever been a time when he had talked eagerly, passionately--he cursed
himself for a fool.

"Yes, we've been very lonely and you're a naughty boy," said Dahlia.
"But now you are here I won't scold you if you promise to tell me
everything you've done since last time----"

"Oh! done?" said Robin vaguely; "I really don't know--the usual sort of
thing, I suppose--not much to do in Pendragon at any time."

She had been looking at him curiously while he was speaking.  Now she
suddenly changed her voice.  "I've been so lonely without you, dear,"
she said, speaking almost in a whisper; "I fancied--of course it was
silly of me--that perhaps there was some one else--that you were
getting a little tired of me.  I was--very unhappy.  I nearly wrote,
but I was afraid that--some one might see it.  Letters are always
dangerous.  But it's very lonely here all day--with only mother.  If
you could come a little oftener, dear--it means everything to me."

Her voice was a little husky as though tears were not far away, and she
spoke in little short sentences--she seemed to find it hard to say the
words.

Robin suddenly felt a brute.  How could he ever tell her of what was in
his mind?  If it was really so much to her he could never leave
her--not at once like that; he must do it gradually.

She was sitting by him on the sofa and looked rather delightful.  She
had the pathetic expression that always attracted him, and he felt very
sorry indeed.  How blank her days would be without him!  Part of the
romance had always been his rôle of King Cophetua, and tears sprang to
his eyes as he thought of the poor beggar-maid, alone, forlornly
weeping, when he had finally withdrawn his presence.

"I think it is partly the sea," she said, putting her hand gently on
his sleeve.  "When one is sitting quite alone here in the evening with
nothing to do and no one to talk to, one hears it so plainly--it is
almost frightening.  You know, Robin, old boy, I don't care for
Pendragon very much.  I only came here because of you--and now--if you
never come to see us----"

She stopped with a little catch in her voice.  Her hand fastened on his
sleeve; their heads were very close together and her hair almost
brushed his cheek.

He really was an awful brute, but at the same time it was rather
nice--that she should care so much.  It would be terrible for her when
he told her what was in his mind.  She might even get very ill--he had
read of broken hearts often enough; and she was extraordinarily nice
just now--he didn't want to hurt her.  But still a fellow must think of
his career, his future, and that sort of thing.

Mrs. Feverel entered--ponderous, solemn, dressed in a black silk that
trails behind her in funereal folds.  Her hands were clammy to the
touch and her voice was a deep bass.  She said very little, but sat
down silently by the window, forming, as she always did, a dark and
extremely solid background.  Robin hated and feared her.  There was
something sinister in her silence--something ominous in her perpetual
black.  He had never heard her laugh.

Dahlia was laughing now.  "I'm a selfish brute, Bobby," she said, "to
bother you with my silly little complaints when we want to be cheerful.
We'll have a good time this evening, won't we?  We'll sing some of
those Rubinstein's duets after dinner, and I've got a new song that
I've been learning especially for you.  And then there's your father; I
do want to hear all about him so much--he must be so interesting,
coming from New Zealand.  Mother and I saw a gentleman in the town this
morning that we thought must be him.  Tall and brown, with a light
brown moustache and a dark blue suit.  It must be splendid to have a
father again after twenty years without him."

Her voice dropped a little, as though to refer gently to her own
fatherless condition.

Mrs. Feverel, a dark shadow in the window, sighed heavily.

"Oh! the Governor!" said Robin, a little irritably.  "No!  It's rather
difficult--he doesn't seem to know what to do and say.  I suppose it's
being in New Zealand so long!  It makes it rather difficult for me."

He spoke as one suffering under an unjust accusation.  It was bad luck,
and he wondered vaguely why Dahlia had been so interested; why should
she care, unless, and the idea struck him with horror, she already
regarded him as a prospective father-in-law?

Dinner was announced by the grimy little maid.  Robin took the dark
figure of Mrs. Feverel on his arm and made some hesitating remark about
the weather--but he had the curious and unpleasant sensation of her
seeing through him most thoroughly and clearly.  He felt ridiculously
like a captive, and his doubts as to his immediate escape increased.
The gaudy drawing-room, the dingy stairs, the gas hissing in the hall,
had been, in all conscience, depressing enough, but now this heavy,
mute, ominous woman, trailing her black robes so funereally behind her,
seemed, to his excited fancy, some implacable Frankenstein created by
his own thrice-cursed folly.

The dinner was not a success.  The food was bad, but that Robin had
expected.  As he faced the depression of it, he was more than ever
determined to end it, conclusively, that evening, but Mrs. Feverel's
gloom and Dahlia's little attempts at coquettish gaiety frightened him.
The conversation, supported mainly by Dahlia, fell into terrible
lapses, and the attempts to start it again had the unhappy air of
desperate remedies doomed to failure.  Dahlia's pathetic glances failed
of their intent.  Robin was too deeply engaged in his own gloomy
reflections to notice them, but her eyes filled with tears, and at last
her efforts ceased and a horrible, gloomy silence fell like a choking
fog upon them.

"Will you smoke, Robin?" she said, when at last the dessert, in the
shape of some melancholy oranges and one very attenuated banana, was on
the table.  "Egyptian or Turkish--or will you have a pipe?"

He took a cigarette clumsily from the box and his fingers trembled as
he lit first hers and then his own--he was so terribly afraid of
cutting a ridiculous figure.  He sat down again and beat a tattoo on
the tablecloth.  Mrs. Feverel, with some grimly muttered excuse, left
the room.  She watched him a moment from the other side of the table
and then she came over to him.  She bent over his chair, leaning her
hands on his shoulders.

"Robin, what is it?" she said.  "What's happened?"

"Nothing," he said gloomily.  "It's all right----"

"Oh! do you suppose I haven't seen?"  She bent closer to him and
pressed her cheek against his.  "Robin, old boy--you're not getting
tired of me?  You're tired or cross to-night--I don't know.  I've been
very patient all this time--waiting for you--hoping that you would
come--longing for you--and you never came--all these many weeks.  Then
I thought that, perhaps, you were too busy or were afraid of people
talking--but, at last, there was to be to-night; and I've looked
forward to it--oh! so much!--and now you're like this!"

She was nearly crying, and there was that miserable little catch in her
voice.  He did feel an awful cad--he hadn't thought that she would
really care so much as this; but still it had to be done some time, and
this seemed a very good opportunity.

He cleared his throat, and, beating the carpet with his foot, tried to
speak with dignity as well as feeling--but he only succeeded in being
patronising.

"You know," he said quickly, and without daring to look at her, "one's
had time to think.  I don't mean that I'm sorry it's all been as it
has--we've had a ripping time--but I'm not sure--one can't be
certain--that it's best for it to go on--quite like this.  You see, old
girl, it's so damned serious.  Of course my people have ideas about my
marrying--of course the Trojans have always had to be careful.  People
expect it of them----"

He stopped for a moment.

"You mean that I'm not good enough?"

She had stepped back from his chair and was standing with her back to
the wall.  He got up from his chair and turned round and faced her,
leaning with his hands on the table.  But he could not face her for
long; his eyes dropped before the fury in hers.

"No, no, Dahlia--how stupid of you!--of course it's not that.  It's
really rather unkind of you to make it harder for me.  It's difficult
enough to explain.  You're good enough for any one, but I'm not quite
sure, dear, whether we'd be quite the people to marry!  We'd be
splendid friends, of course--we'll always be that--but we're both very
young, and, after all, it's rather hard for one to know.  It was
splendid at Cambridge, but I don't think we quite realised----"

"You mean you didn't," she broke in quickly.  "I know well enough.
Some one's been speaking to you, Robin."

"No--nobody."  He looked at her fiercely.  She had hurt his pride.  "As
if I'd be weak enough to let that make any difference.  No one has said
a word--only----"

"Only--you've been thinking that we're not quite good enough for
you--that we'd soil your Trojan carpets and chairs--that we'd stain
your Trojan relations.  I--I know--I----"

And then she broke down altogether.  She was kneeling by the table with
her head in her arms, sobbing as though her heart would break.

"Oh, I say, Dahlia, don't!  I can't bear to see you cry--it will be all
right, old girl, to-morrow--it will really--and then you will see that
it was wiser.  You will thank me for speaking about it.  Of course
we'll always be good friends.  I----"

"Robin, you don't mean it.  You can't!"  She had risen from her knees
and now stood by him, timidly, with one hand on his arm.  "You have
forgotten all those splendid times at Cambridge.  Don't you remember
that evening on the Backs?  Just you and I alone when there was that
man singing on the other side of the water, when you said that we would
be like that always--together.  Oh, Robin dear, it can't have been all
nothing to you."

She looked very charming with her eyes a little wet and her hair a
little dishevelled.  But his resolution must not weaken--now that he
had progressed so far, he must not go back.  But he put his arm round
her.

"Really, old girl, it is better--for both of us.  We can wait.  Perhaps
in a few years' time it will seem different again.  We can think about
it then.  I don't want to seem selfish, but you must think about me a
little.  You must see how hard it has been for me to say this, and that
it has only been with the greatest difficulty that I've been strong
enough.  Believe me, dear, it is harder for me than it is for you--much
harder."

He was really getting on very well.  He had had no idea that he would
do it so nicely.  Poor girl! it was hard luck--perhaps he had led her
to expect rather too much--those letters of his had been rather too
warm, a little indiscreet.  But no doubt she would marry some excellent
man of her own class--in a few years she would look back and wonder how
she had ever had the fortune to know so intimately a man of Robin's
rank!  Meanwhile, the scene had better end as soon as possible.

She had let him keep his arm round her waist, and now she suddenly
leant back and looked up in his face.

"Robin, darling," she whispered, "you can't mean it--not that we should
part like this.  Why, think of the times that we have had--the
splendid, glorious times--and all that we're going to have.  Think of
all that you've said to me, over and over again----"

She crept closer to him.  "You love me really, dear, all the same.
It's only that some one's been talking to you and telling you that it's
foolish.  But that mustn't make any difference.  We're strong enough to
face all the world.  You know that you said you were in the summer, and
I'm sure that you are now.  Wait till to-morrow, dear, and you'll see
it all differently."

"I tell you nobody's been talking," he said, drawing his arm away.
"Besides, if they did, it wouldn't make any difference.  No, Dahlia,
it's got to stop.  We're too young to know, and besides, it would be
absurd anyway.  I know it's bad luck on you.  Perhaps I said rather too
much in the summer.  But of course we'll always be good friends.  I
know you'll see it as I do in a little time.  We've both been
indiscreet, and it's better to draw back now than later--really it is."

"Do you mean it, Robin?"

She stood facing him with her hands clenched; her face was white and
her eyes were blazing with fury.

"Yes, of course," he said.  "I think it's time this ended----"

"Not before I've told you what I think of you," she cried.  "You're a
thief and a coward--you've stolen a girl's love and then you're afraid
to face the world--you're afraid of what people will say.  If you don't
love me, you're tied to me, over and over again.  You've made me
promises--you made me love you--and now when your summer amusement is
over you fling me aside--you and your fine relations!  Oh! you
gentlemen!  It would be a good thing for the world if we were rid of
the whole lot of you!  You coward!  You coward!"

He was taken aback by her fury.

"I say--Dahlia--" he stammered, "it's unfair----"

"Oh! yes!" she broke in, "unfair, of course, to you! but nothing to
me--nothing to me that you stole my love--robbed me of it like a common
thief--pretended to love me, promised to marry me, and now--now--Oh!
unfair! yes, always for the man, never for the girl--she doesn't count!
She doesn't matter at all.  Break her heart and fling it away and
nobody minds--it's as good as a play!"

She burst into tears, and stood with her head in her hands, sobbing as
though her heart would break.  It was a most distressing scene!

"Really, really, Dahlia," said Robin, feeling extremely uncomfortable
(it was such a very good thing, he thought, that none of his friends
could see him), "it's no use your taking it like this.  I had better
go--we can't do any good by talking about it now.  To-morrow, when we
can look at it calmly, it will seem different."

He moved to the door, but she made another attempt and put her hand
timidly on his arm to stop him.

"No, no, Robin, I didn't mean what I said--not like that.  I didn't
know what I was saying.  Oh, I love you, dear, I love you!  I can't let
you go like that.  You don't know what it means to me.  You are taking
everything from me--when you rob a girl of her love, of her heart, you
leave her nothing.  If you go now, I don't care what happens to
me--death--or worse, That's how you make a bad woman, Robin.  Taking
her love from her and then letting her go.  You are taking her soul!"

But he placed her gently aside.  "Nonsense, Dahlia," he said.  "You are
excited to-night.  You exaggerate.  You will meet a man much worthier
than myself, and then you will see that I was right."

He opened the door and was gone.

She sat down at the table.  She heard him open and shut the hall door,
and then his steps echoed down the street, and at last there was
silence.  She sat at the table with her head bent, her eyes gazing at
the oranges and the bananas.  The house was perfectly silent, and her
very heart seemed to have ceased to beat.  Of course she did not
realise it; it seemed to her still as though he would come back in a
moment and put his arms round her and tell her that it was all a
game--just to see if she had really cared.  But the silence of the
street and the house was terrible.  It choked her, and she pulled at
her frock to loosen the tightness about her throat.  It was cruel of
him to have gone away like that--but of course he would come back.
Only why was that cold misery at her heart?  Why did she feel as if
some one had placed a hand on her and drawn all her life away, and left
her with no emotion or feeling--only a dull, blank, despair, like a
cold fog through which no sun shone?

For she was beginning to realise it slowly.  He had gone away, after
telling her, brutally, frankly, that he was tired of her--that he had,
indeed, never really cared for her.  That was it--he had never cared
for her--all those things that he had promised in the summer had been
false, words without any meaning.  All that idyll had been hollow, a
sham, and she had made it the centre of her world.

She got up from the table and swayed a little as she stood.  She
pressed her hands against her forehead as though she would drive into
her brain the fact that there would be no one now--no one at all--it
was all a lie, a lie, a lie!

The door opened softly and Mrs. Feverel stole in.  "Dahlia--what has he
done?"

She looked at her as though she could not see her.

"Oh, nothing," she said slowly.  "He did nothing.  Only it's all
over--there is not going to be any more."

And then, as though the full realisation of it had only just been borne
in upon her, she sat down at the table again and burst into passionate
crying.

Mrs. Feverel watched her.  "I knew it was coming, my dear--weeks ago.
You know I told you, only you wouldn't listen.  Lord! it was plain
enough.  He'd only been playing the same game as all the rest of them."

Dahlia dried her eyes fiercely.  "I'm a fool to make so much of it,"
she said.  "I wasn't good enough--he said--not good enough.  His people
wouldn't like it and the rest--Oh!  I've been a fool, a fool!"

Her mood changed to anger again.  Even now she did not grasp it fully,
but he had insulted her.  He had flung back in her face all that she
had given him.  Injured pride was at work now, and for a moment she
hated him so that she could have killed him gladly had he been there.
But it was no good--she could not think about it clearly; she was
tired, terribly tired.

"I'm tired to death, mother," she said.  "I can't think to-night."

She stumbled a little as she turned to the door.

"At least," said Mrs. Feverel, "there are the letters."

But Dahlia had scarcely heard.

"The letters?" she said.

"That he wrote in the summer.  You have them safe enough?"

But the girl did not reply.  She only climbed heavily up the dark
stairs.




CHAPTER IV

Clare Trojan was having her breakfast in her own room.  It was ten
o'clock, and a glorious September morning, and the sparrows were
twittering on the terrace outside as though they considered it highly
improper for any one to have breakfast between four walls when Nature
had provided such a splendid feast on the lawn.

Clare was reading a violent article in the _National Review_ concerning
the inadequacy of our present solution of the housing problem; but it
did not interest her.

If the world had only been one large Trojan family there would have
been no problem.  The trouble was that there were Greeks.  She did
dimly realise their existence, but the very thought of them terrified
her.  Troy must be defended, and there were moments when Clare was
afraid that its defenders were few; but she blinded herself to the
dangers of attack.  "There are no Greeks, there _are_ no Greeks."
Clare stood alone on the Trojan walls and defied that world of
superstition and pagan creeds.  With the armour of tradition and an
implicit belief in the watchword of all true Trojan leaders, "Qui dort
garde," she warded the sacred hearths; but there were moments when her
eyes were opened and signs were revealed to her of another
world--something in which Troy could have no place; and then she was
afraid.

She was considering Harry, his coming, and his probable bearing on
present conditions, and she knew that once again the Trojan walls were
in danger.  It seemed to her, as she sat there, cruelly unfair that the
son of the House, the man who in a little while would stand before the
world as the head of the Trojan tradition, should be the chief
instrument in the attempted destruction of the same.  She had not liked
Harry in the old days.  She had always, even as a girl, a very stern
idea of the dignity of the House.  Harry had never fulfilled this idea,
had never even attempted to.  He had been wild, careless,
undisciplined, accompanying strange uncouth persons on strange uncouth
adventures; he had been almost a byword in the place.  No, she had not
liked him; she had almost hated him at one time.  And then after he had
gone away she had deliberately forgotten him; she had erased his name
from the fair sheet of the Trojan record, and had hoped that the House
would never more be burdened by his undisciplined history.  Then she
had heard that there was a son and heir, and her one thought had been
of capture, deliverance of the new son of the House from his father's
influence.  She was not deliberately cruel in her determination; she
saw that the separation must hurt the father, but she herself was ready
to make sacrifice for the good of the House and she expected the same
self-denial in others.  Harry made no difficulties.  New Zealand was no
place for a lonely widower to bring up his boy, and Robin was sent
home.  From that moment he was the centre of Clare's world; much
self-denial can make a woman good, only maternity can make her divine.
To bring the boy up for the House, to tutor him in all the little and
big things that a Trojan must know and do, to fit him to take his place
at the head of the family on a later day; all these things she laboured
for, day and night without ceasing, and without divided interests.  She
loved the boy, too, passionately, with more than a mother's love, and
now she looked back over what had been her life-work with pride and
satisfaction.  She had tried to forget Harry.  She hoped, although she
never dared to face the thought in her heart, that he would die there,
away in that foreign country, without coming back to them again.  Robin
was hers now; she had educated him, loved him, scolded him--he was all
hers, she would brook no division.  Then, when she had heard that Harry
was to come home, it had been at first more than she could bear.  She
had burst into wild incoherent protests; she had prayed that an
accident might happen to him and that he might never reach home.  And
then the Trojan pride and restraint had come to her aid.  She was
ashamed, bewildered, that she could have sunk to such depths; she
prepared to meet him calmly and quietly; she even hoped that, perhaps,
he might be so changed that she would welcome him.  And, after all, he
would in a little time be head of the House.  Robin, too, was strongly
under her influence, and it was unlikely that he would leave her for a
man whom he had never known, for whom he could not possibly care.

It was this older claim of hers with regard to Robin that did, she
felt, so obviously strengthen her position, and now that Harry had
really returned, she thought that her fears need not trouble her much
longer--he did all the things that Robin disliked most.  His
boisterousness, heartiness, and good-fellowship, dislike of everyday
conventionality, would all, she knew, count against him with Robin.
She had seen him shrink on several occasions, and each time she had
been triumphantly glad.  For she was frightened, terribly frightened.
Harry was threatening to take from her the one great thing around which
her life was centred; if he robbed her of Robin he robbed her of
everything, and she must fight to keep him.  That it would come to a
duel between them she had long foreseen, she had governed for so long
that she would not easily yield her place now; but she had not known
that she would feel as she did about Robin, she had not known that she
would be jealous--jealous of every look and word and motion.  She had
never known what jealousy was before, but now in the silence of the
golden, sunlit room, with only the twittering of the birds on the lawn
to disturb her thoughts, she faced the facts honestly without
shrinking, and she knew that she hated her brother.  Oh! why couldn't
he go back again to his sheep-shearing!  Why had he come to disturb
them!  It was not his environment, it was not his life at all!  She
felt that they could never lead again that same quiet, ordered
existence; like a gale of wind he had burst their doors and broken
their windows, and now the house was open, desolate, to the world.

She went up to her father's room, as was her custom every morning after
breakfast.  He was lying at his open window, watching, with those
strange, restless eyes of his, the great expanse of sea and sky
stretching before him.  His room was full of light and air.  Its white
walls and ceiling, great bowls of some of the last of the summer's
roses, made it seem young and vigorous and alive.  It was almost a
shock to see that huddled, dying old man with his bent head and
trembling hands--but his eyes were young, and his heart.

As she looked at him, she wondered why she had never really cared for
him.  At first she had been afraid; then, as she grew older and a
passionate love for and pride in the family as a conservative and
ancient institution developed in her, that fear became respect, and she
looked up to her father from a distance, admiring his reserve and pride
but never loving him; and now that respect had become pity, and above
all a great longing that he might live for many, many years, securing
the household gods from shame and tending the fire on the Trojan
hearth.  For at the moment of his death would come the crisis--the
question of the new rule.  At one time it had seemed certain that Robin
would be king, with herself a very vigilant queen-regent.  But now that
was all changed.  Harry had come home, and it was into his hands that
the power would fall.

She had often wondered that she knew her father so little.  He had
always been difficult to understand; a man of two moods strongly
opposed--strangely taciturn for days together, and then brilliantly
conversational, amusing, and a splendid companion.  She had never known
which of these attitudes was the real one, and now that he was old she
had abandoned all hope of ever answering the question.  His moods were
more strongly contrasted than ever.  He often passed quickly from one
to the other.  If she had only known which was the real one; she felt
at times that his garrulity was a blind--that he watched her almost
satirically whilst he talked.  She feared his silences terribly, and
she used often to feel that a moment was approaching when he would
reveal to her definitely and finally some plot that he had during those
many watchful years been forming.  She knew that he had never let her
see his heart--he had never taken her into his confidence.  She had
tried to establish some more intimate relationship, but she had failed;
and now, for many years, she had left it at that.

But she wanted to know what he thought of Harry.  She had waited for a
sign, but he had given none; and although she had watched him carefully
she had discovered nothing.  He had not mentioned his son--a stranger
might have thought that he had not noticed him.  But Clare knew him too
well to doubt that he had come to some definite conclusion in the
matter.

She bustled cheerfully about the room, humming a little tune and
talking to him, lightly and with no apparent purpose.  He watched the
gulls fly past the open window, his eyes rested on a golden flash of
sun that struck some shining roof in the Cove, but his mind was back in
the early days when he had played his game with the best and had seen
the bright side of the world.

"He was a rake, Jack Crayle"--he seemed scarcely conscious that Clare
was in the room--"a rake but a good heart, and an amusing fellow too.
I remember meeting old Rendle and Hawdon Sallust--Hawdon of the
eighties, you know--not the old man--he kept at home--all three of them
at White's, Rendle and Sallust and Crayle; Jack bet Rendle he wouldn't
stop the next man he met in the street and claim him as an old friend
and bring him in--and, by Jove, he took it and brought him in,
too--sort of tramp chap he was, too--dirty, untidy fellow--but Rendle
was game serious--by Gad, he was.  Said he was an old friend that had
fallen on evil times--gave him a drink and won the bet--'63 that
was--the year Bailey won that polo match against old Tom Radley--all
the town was talking of it.  By Gad, he could ride, Bailey could.
Why----"

"It's time for your medicine, father," said Clare, breaking ruthlessly
in upon the reminiscences.

"Eh, dear, yes," he said, looking at her curiously.  "You're never
late, Clare, always up to time.  Yes, yes, well, well; in '63 that was.
I remember it like yesterday--old Tom--particular friend he was of mine
then, although we broke afterwards--my fault too, probably, about a
horse it was.  I----"

But Clare gave him his medicine, first tying a napkin round his neck
lest she should spill the drops.  He looked at her, smiling, over the
napkin.

"You were always a girl for method," he said again; "not like Harry."

She looked at him quickly, but could guess nothing; she was suddenly
frightened, as she so often was when he laughed like that.  She always
expected that some announcement would follow.  It was almost as if he
had threatened her.

"Harry?" she said.  "No.  But he is very like he used to be in some
ways.  It is nice to have him back again--but--well, he will find
Pendragon rather different from Auckland, I'm afraid."

Sir Jeremy said nothing.  He lay there without moving; Clare untied the
napkin, and put back the medicine, and wheeled the chair into a sunnier
part of the room and away from the window.

"You must get on with Harry, Clare," he said suddenly, sharply.

"Why, yes," she answered, laughing a little uneasily.  "Of course we
get on.  Only his way of looking at things was always a little
different--even, perhaps, a little difficult to understand"; and then,
after a little pause, "I am stupid, I know.  It was always hard for me
to see like other people."

But he was not listening to her.  He was smiling at the sun, and the
birds on the lawn, and the flashing gold of the distant sand.

"No, you never saw like Harry," he said at last.  "You want to be old
to understand," and he would say no more.

He talked to her no more that morning, and she was vaguely uneasy.
What was he thinking about Harry, and how did his opinion influence the
situation?

She fancied that she saw signs of rebellion.  For many years he had
allowed her to do what she would, and although she had sometimes
wondered whether he was quite as passive as she had fancied, she had
had no fear of any disturbance.  Now there was something vaguely
menacing in his very silences.  And, in some undefined way, the
pleasure that he took in the cries of birds, the plunge and chatter of
the sea as it rose and fell on the southern shore, the glint of the sun
on the gold and green distances of rock and moor was alarming.  She
herself did not understand those things; indeed, she scarcely saw them,
and was inclined to despise any one who loved any unpractical beauty,
anything that was not at least traditional.  And now this was a bond
between her father and Harry.  They had both loved wild, uncivilised
things, and it was this very trait in their character that had made
division between them before.  But now what had been in those early
years the cause of trouble was their common ground of sympathy.

They shared some secret of which she knew nothing, and she was afraid
lest Robin should learn it too.

She went about her housekeeping duties that morning with an uneasy
mind.  The discipline below stairs was excellent because she was
feared.  It was not that she was hasty-tempered or unjust; indeed the
cook, who had been there for many years, said that she had never seen
Miss Clare angry, and her justice was a thing to marvel at.  She always
gave people their due, and exactly their due; she never over-praised or
blamed, and that was why people said that she was cold; it was also,
incidentally, responsible for her excellent discipline.

She was, as Sir Jeremy had said, a woman of amazing method.  But the
attitude of her actual household helped her; they were all, by
education and environment, Trojans.  Whatever they had been before they
entered service at "The Flutes"--Radicals, Socialists, Dissenters, or
Tones--at the moment of passing the threshold they were transformed
into Trojans.  Other things fell from them like a mantle, and in their
serious devotion to traditional Conservatism they were examples of the
true spirit of Feudalism.  Beldam, the butler, had long ago graduated
as Professor in the system.  Coming as page-boy in earlier years, he
had acquired the by no means easy art of Trojan diplomacy.  It was now
his duty to overhaul, as it were, every servant that passed the gates;
an overhauling, moreover, done seriously and with much searching of the
heart.  Were you a Trojan?  That is, do you consider that you are
exceptionally fortunate in being chosen to perform menial but necessary
duties in the Trojan household?  Will you spend the rest of your days,
not only in performing your duties worthily, but also in preaching to a
blind and misguided world the doctrine of Trojan perfection and
superiority?  If the answer were honestly affirmative, you were
accepted; otherwise, you were expelled with a fortnight's wages and
eternal contempt.

Even the scullerymaid was not spared, but had to pass an examination in
rites and rituals so severe that one unfortunate, Annie Grace Marks,
after Beldam had spoken to her severely for half-an-hour, burst out
with an impetuous, "Thank Gawd, she was a Marks, which was as good as
the High and Mighty any day of the week, and better, for there wasn't
no pride in the Marks and never 'ad been."

She received her dismissal that same evening.

But the case of Annie Marks was an isolated one.  Rebellion was very
occasional, and, for the most, the servants stayed at "The
Flutes"--partly because the pay was good, and partly because the very
reiteration of Trojan supremacy gave them a feeling of elevation very
pleasant to their pride.  In accordance with all true feudal law, you
lost your own sense of birth and ancestry and became in a moment a
Trojan; for Smith, Jones, and Robinson this was very comforting.

So Clare had very little trouble, and this morning she was able to
finish her duties speedily, and devote her whole attention to the
crisis that threatened the family.

She decided to see Garrett, and made her way to his room.  He was
writing, and seemed disturbed by her entry.  He had been working for
some years on a book to be entitled, "Our Aristocracy: its Threatened
Supremacy."  He was still engaged on the preliminary chapter, "Some
aspects of historical aristocracy," and it had developed into a
somewhat minute account of Trojan past history.  He had no expectations
of ever concluding the work, but it gave him a pleasant sense of
importance and seemed in some vague way to be of value to the Trojan
family.

He was always happy when at work, although he effected very little;
but, after all, the great stylists always worked slowly.  His style
was, it is true, somewhat commonplace; but his rather minute output
allowed him to rank, in his own estimation, with Pater and Omar
Khayyám, and disdain the voluminous facility of Thackeray and Dickens.
He was, he felt, one of the "precious" writers, and so long as no one
saw his work he was able both to comfort himself and to impress others
with the illusion.

It was said vaguely in Pendragon that "Garrett Trojan was a clever
fellow--was writing a book--said to be brilliant, of great promise--no,
he hadn't seen it, but----" etc.

So Garrett looked at his sister a little resentfully.

"I hope it's important, Clare," he said, "because--well, you know, the
morning's one's time for work, and once one gets off the track it's
difficult to get back; not that I've done much, you know, only half a
page--but this kind of thing can't move quickly."

"I'm sorry, Garrie," she answered, "but you've got to talk to me.
There are things about which I want your advice."

She did not really want it; she had decided on her line of conduct, and
nothing that he could say would alter her decision--but it flattered
him, and she needed his help.

"Well, of course," he said, pushing his chair back and coming to the
fire, "if it's anything I can do--  What is it, Clare?  Household or
something in the town?"

"Oh, nothing," she laughed at him.  "Don't be worried, Garrie; I know
it's horrid to disturb you, and there's really nothing--only--well,
after all, there is only us, isn't there?  for acting together I
mean--and I want to know what line you're going on."

"Oh! about Harry?"  He looked at her sharply for a moment.  "You know
that I object to lines, Clare.  They are dangerous things."  He implied
that he was above them.  "Of course there are times when it is
necessary to--well, to be decisive; but at present it seems to me that
we must wait for the situation to develop--it will, of course."

"I knew that you would say that," she said impatiently.  "But it won't
do; the situation _has_ developed.  You always preferred to look on--it
is, as you say, less dangerous; but here I must have your help.  Harry
has been back a week; he is, for you and me, unchanged.  The situation,
as far as we go, is the same as it was twenty years ago.  He is not one
of us, he never was, and, to do him justice, never pretended to be.
We, or at any rate I, imagined that he would be different now, after
all that time.  He is exactly the same."  She paused.

"Well?" he said.  "All that for granted, it's true enough.  What's the
trouble?"

"Things aren't the same though, now.  There is father, and Robin.
Father has taken to Harry strongly.  He told me so just now.  And for
Robin----"

"Scarcely captivated," said Garrett drily.  "Have you seen them
together?  Hardly domestic----"

Then he looked at her again and laughed.  "And that pleases you, Clare."

"Of course," she answered him firmly.  "There is no good in hedging.
He is no brother of ours, Garrett.  He is, what is more important
still, no Trojan, and after all family counts for something.  We don't
like him, Garrett.  Why be sentimental about it?  He will follow
father--and it will be soon--_après, le déluge_.  For ourselves, it
does not matter.  It is hard, of course, but we have had our time, and
there are other things and places.  It is about Robin.  I cannot bear
to think what it would mean if he were alone here with Harry, after all
these years."

"He would not stay."

"You think that?" Clare said eagerly.  "It is so hard to know.  He is
still only a boy.  Of course Harry shocks him now, shocks
everything--his sense of decency, his culture, his pride--but that will
wear off; he will get used to it--and then----"

It had been inevitable that the discussion should come, and Garrett had
been waiting.  He had no intention of going to find her, he would wait
until she came to him, but he had been anxious to know her opinion.
For himself the possibility of Harry's return had never presented
itself.  After all those years he would surely remain where he was.  In
yielding his son he had seemed to abandon all claim to any rights of
inheritance, and Garrett had thought of him as one comfortably dead.
He had contemplated his own ultimate succession with the pleasurable
certainty that it was absolutely the right thing.  In his love for a
rather superficial tradition he was a perfect Trojan, and might be
relied on to continue existing conditions without any attempt at
radical changes.  Clare, too, would be of great use.

But in a moment what had been, in his mind, certainty was changed into
impossibility; instead of a certain successor he had become some one
whose very existence was imperilled--his existence, that is, on the
only terms that were in the least comfortable.  Everything that made
life worth living was threatened.  Not that his brother would turn him
out; he granted Harry the very un-Trojan virtues of generosity and
affection for humanity in general--a rather foolish, gregarious
open-handedness opposed obviously to all decent economy.  But Harry
would keep him--and the very thought stirred Garrett to a degree of
anger that his sluggish nature seldom permitted him.  Kept! and by
Harry!  Harry the outlaw!  Harry the rebel!  Harry the Greek!  Garrett
scarcely loved his brother when he thought of it.

But it was necessary that some line of action should be adopted, and he
was glad that Clare had taken the first step.

"You don't think," he said doubtfully, "that he could be induced to go
back?"

"What!" cried Clare, "after these years and the way he has waited!
Why, remember that first evening!  He will never leave this again.  He
has been dreaming about it too long!"

"I don't know," said Garrett.  "He'll be at loggerheads with the town
very soon.  He has been saying curious things to a good many people.
He objects to all improvement and says so.  The place will soon be too
hot for him."

But Clare shook her head.  "No," she said.  "He will soon find out
about things--and then, in a little, when he takes father's place, what
people think odd and unpleasant now will be original and strong.
Besides, he would never go, whatever might happen, because of Robin."

"Ah, yes, there is Robin.  It will be curious to watch developments
there.  Randal comes to-day, doesn't he?"

"Yes, this afternoon.  A most delightful boy.  I'm afraid that he may
find Harry tiresome."

"We must wait," Garrett said finally; "in a week's time we shall see
better.  But, Clare, don't be rash.  There is father--and, besides, it
will scarcely help Robin."

"Oh! no melodrama," she said, laughing and moving towards the door.
"Only, we understand each other, Garrie.  Things won't do as they
are--or, as they promise to be."

Garrett returned, with a sigh of relief, to his papers.

For Harry the week had been a series of bitter disappointments.  He
woke gradually from his dreams and saw that everything was changed.  He
was in a new world and he was out of place.  Those dreams had been
coloured, fantastically, beautifully.  In the white pebbles, the golden
sand, the curling grey smoke of the Cove, he had formed pictures that
had lightened many dreary and lonely hours in Auckland.  He was to come
back; away from that huge unwieldy life in which comfort had no place
and rest was impossible, back to all the old things, the wonderful
glorious things that meant home and tradition and, above all, love.  He
was a sentimentalist, he knew that now.  It had not been so in those
old days; the life had been too adventurous and exciting, and he had
despised the quiet comforts of a stay-at-home existence.  But now he
knew its value; he would come home and take his place as head of the
family, as father, as citizen--he had learnt his lesson, and at last it
was time for the reward.

But now that he had come home he found that the lesson was not learnt,
or, perhaps, that the learning had been wasted; he must begin all over
again.  Garrett and Clare had not changed; they had made no advances
and had shown him quite plainly, in the courteous Trojan fashion, that
they considered his presence an intrusion, that they had no place in
their ranks that he could fill.  He was, he saw it plainly, no more in
line with them than he had been twenty years before.  Indeed, matters
were worse.  There was no possibility of agreement--they were poles
apart.

With the town, too, he was an "outsider."  The men at the Club thought
him a bore--a person of strange enthusiasms and alarming heresies.  By
the ladies he was considered rough: as Mrs. le Terry had put it to Miss
Ponsonby, he was a kind of too terrible bushranger without the romance!
He was gauche, he knew, and he hated the tea-parties.  They talked
about things of which he knew nothing; he was too sincere to cover his
convictions with the fatuous chatter that passed, in Fallacy Street
society, for brilliant wit.  That it was fatuous he was convinced, but
his conviction made matters no easier for him.

But his attitude to the town had been, it must be confessed, from the
very first a challenge.  He had expected things that were not there; he
had thought that his dreams were realities, and when he had demanded
golden colours and had been shown stuff of sombre grey, there had been
wild rebellion and impatient discontent with the world.  He had thought
Pendragon amazing in its utter disregard of the things that were to him
necessities, but he had forgotten that he himself despised so
completely things that were to Pendragon essentials.  He had asked for
beauty and they had given him an Esplanade; he had searched for romance
and had discovered the new hotel; he dreamed of the sand and blue water
of the Cove and had awaked to find the place despised and contemned--a
site for future boarding-houses.

The town had thought him at first entertaining; they had made
allowances for a certain rather picturesque absurdity consequent on
backwoods and the friendship of Maories--men had laughed at the Club
and detailed Harry Trojan's latest with added circumstances and
incident, and for a while this was amusing.  But his vehemence knew no
pause, and he stated his disgust at the practical spirit of the new
Pendragon with what seemed to the choice spirits at the Club
effrontery.  They smiled and then they sneered, and at last they left
him alone.

So Harry found himself, at the end of the first week after his return,
alone in Pendragon.

He had not, perhaps, cared for their rejection.  He had come, like
Gottwalt in _Flegejahre_, "loving every dog, and wishing that every dog
should love him"--but he had seen, at once, that his way must be apart
from theirs, and in that knowledge he had tried to find the comfort of
a minority certain of its own strength and disdainful of common
opinion.  He had marvelled at their narrow vision and was unaware that
his own point of view was equally narrow.

And, after all, there was Robin.  Robin and he would defy Pendragon and
laugh at its stupid little theories and short-sighted plans.  And then,
slowly, irresistibly, he had seen that he was alone--that Robin was on
the side of Pendragon.  He refused to admit it even now, and told
himself again and again that the boy was naturally a little awkward at
first--careless perhaps--certainly constrained.  But gradually a wall
had been built up between them; they were greater strangers now than
they had been on that first evening of the return.  Ah! how he had
tried!  He had thought that, perhaps, the boy hated sentiment and he
had held himself back, watching eagerly for any sign of affection,
ready humbly to take part in anything, to help in any difficulty, to
laugh, to sympathise, to take his place as he had been waiting to do
for so many years.

But Robin had made no advances, showed no sign.  He had almost repulsed
him--had at least been absolutely indifferent.  They had had a walk
together, and Harry had tried his best--but the attempt had been
obvious, and at last there had come a terrible silence; they had walked
back through the streets of Pendragon without a word.

Everything that Harry had said had been unfortunate.  He had praised
the Cove enthusiastically, and Robin had been contemptuous.  He had
never heard of Pater and had confounded Ibsen with Jerome K. Jerome.
He had praised cricket and met with no reply.  Twice he had seen
Robin's mouth curl contemptuously, and it had cut him to the heart.

Poor Harry! he was very lonely.  During the last two days he had been
down in the Cove; he had found his way into the little inn and got in
touch with some of the fishermen.  But they scarcely solaced his
loneliness.  He had met Mary Bethel on the downs, and for a moment they
had talked.  There was no stiffness there; she had looked at him simply
as a friend, with no hostility, and he had been grateful.

At last he had begun to look forward to the coming of Robin's friend,
Randal.  He was, evidently, a person to whom Robin looked up with great
admiration.  Perhaps he would form in some way a link, would understand
the difficulties of both, and would help them.  Harry waited, eagerly,
and formed a picture of Randal in his mind that gave him much
encouragement.

He was in his room now; it was half-past four, and the carriage had
just passed up the drive.  He looked anxiously at his ties and
hesitated between light green, brown, and black.  He had learnt the
importance of these things in his son's eyes.  He was going next week
to London to buy clothes; meanwhile he must not offend their sense of
decency, and he hesitated in front of his tie-box like a girl before
her first dance.  The green was terribly light.  It was a good tie, but
perhaps not quite the thing.  Nothing seemed to go properly with his
blue suit--the brown was dull and uninteresting--it lacked character;
any one might have worn it, and he flung it back almost scornfully into
the box.  The black was really best, but how dismal!  He seemed to see
all his miserable loneliness and disappointment in its dark, sombre
colour.  No, that would never do!  He must be bright, amusing,
cheerful--anything but dull and dismal.  So he put on the green again,
and went down to the drawing-room.  Randal was a young man of
twenty-four--dark, tall, and slight, with a rather weary look in the
eyes, as of one who had discovered the hollow mockery of the world and
wondered at the pleasures of simple people.  He was perfectly dressed,
and had arrived, after much thought and a University education, at that
excellent result when everything is right, as it were, by accident--as
though no thought had been taken at all.  As soon as a man appears to
have laboured for effect, then he is badly dressed.  Randal was
good-looking.  He had very dark eyes and thin, rather curling lips, and
hair brushed straight back from his forehead.

The room was in twilight.  It was Clare's morning-room, chosen because
it was cosy and favoured intimacy.  She was fond of Randal and liked to
mother him; she also respected his opinions.  The windows looked over
the sea and the blinds were not drawn.  The twilight, like a floating
veil, hovered over sea and land; the last faint colours of the sunset,
gold and rose and grey, trembled over the town.

Harry was introduced.  Randal smiled, but his hand was limp; Harry felt
a little ashamed of his own hearty grasp and wished that he had been
less effusive.  Randal's suit was dark blue and he wore a black tie;
Harry became suddenly conscious of his daring green and, taking his
tea, went and sat in the window and watched the town.  The first white
colours of the young moon, slipping from the rosy-grey cloud, touched
faintly the towers of the ruined church on the moor; he fancied that he
could just see the four stones shining darkly grey against the horizon,
but it was difficult to tell in that mysterious half-light.  Robin was
sitting under the lamp by the door.  The light caught his hair, but his
face was in shadow.  Harry watched him eagerly, hungrily.  Oh! how he
loved him, his son!

Randal was discussing some people with whom he had been staying--a
little languidly and without any very active interest.  "Rather a nice
girl, though," he said.  "Only such a dreadful mother.  Young
Page-Rellison would have had a shot, I do believe, if it hadn't been
for the mother--wore a wig and talked Cockney, and fairly grabbed the
shekels in bridge."

"And what about the book?" Clare asked.

"Oh! going on," said Randal.  "I showed Cressel a chapter the other
day--you know the New Argus man; and he was very nice about it.  Of
course, some of the older men won't like it, you know.  It fairly goes
for their methods, and I flatter myself hits them pretty hard once or
twice.  You know, Miss Trojan, it's the young school you've got to look
to nowadays; it's no use going back to those mid-Victorians--all very
well for the schoolroom--cause and effect and all that kind of
thing--but we must look ahead--be modern and you will be progressive,
Miss Trojan."

"That's just what I'm always saying, Mr. Randal," said Clare, smiling.
"We're fighting a regular battle over it down here, but I think we will
win the day."

Randal turned to Harry.  "And you, sir," he said, "are with us, too?"

Harry laughed.  He knew that Robin was looking at him.  "I have been
away," he said, "and perhaps I have been a little surprised at the
strides that things have made.  Twenty years is a long time, and I was
romantic and perhaps foolish enough to expect that Pendragon would be
very much the same when I came back.  It has changed greatly, and I am
a little disappointed."

Clare looked up.  "My brother has lost touch a little, Mr. Randal," she
said, "and I don't think quite sees what is good for the place--indeed,
necessary.  At any rate, he scarcely thinks with us."

"With _us_."  There was emphasis on the word.  That meant Robin too.
Randal glanced at him for a moment and then he turned to Robin--father
and son!  A swift drawing of contrasts, perhaps with an inevitable
conclusion in favour of his own kind.  It was suddenly as though the
elder man was shut out of the conversation; they had, in a moment,
forgotten his very presence.  He sat in the dusk by the window, his
head in his hands, and terrible loneliness at his heart; it hurt as he
had never known before that anything could hurt.  He had never known
that he was sensitive; in Auckland it had not been so.  He had never
felt things then, and had a little despised people that had minded.
But there had been ever, in the back of his mind, the thought of those
days that were coming when, with his son at his side, he could face all
things.  Well, now he had his son--there, with him in the room.  The
irony of it made him clench his hands, there in the dark, whilst they
talked in the lighted room behind him.

"Oh!  King's is going to pot," Randal was saying.  "I was down in the
Mays and they were actually running with the boats--they seemed quite
keen on going up.  The decent men seem to have all gone."

Robin was paying very little attention.  He was looking worried, and
Clare watched him a little anxiously.  "I hope you will be able to stay
with us some days, Mr. Randal," she said.  "There are several new
people in Pendragon whom I should like you to meet."

Randal was charmed.  He would love to stop, but he must get back to
London almost immediately.  He was going over to Germany next week and
there were many arrangements to be made.

"Germany!"  It was Robin who spoke, but the voice was not his usual
one.  It was alive, vibrating, startling.  "Germany!  By Jove!
Randal--are you really going?"

"Why, of course," a little wearily; "I have been before, you know.
Rather a bore, but the Rainers--you remember them, Miss Trojan--are
going over to the Beethoven Festival at Bonn and are keen on my going
with them.  I wasn't especially anxious, but one must do these things,
you know."

"Robin was there a year ago--Germany, I mean--and loved it.  Didn't
you, Robin?"

"Germany?  It was Paradise, Heaven--what you will.  Rügen, the Harz,
Heidelberg, Worms----"  He stopped and his voice broke.  "I'm a little
absurd about it still," he said, as though in apology for such
unnecessary enthusiasm.

"Oh! you're young, Robin," said Randal, laughing.  "When you've seen as
much as I have you'll be blasé.  Not that one ought to be, but
Germany--well, it hardly lasts, I think.  Rügen--why, it rained and
there were mists round the Studenkammer, and how those people eat at
the Jagdschloss!  Heidelberg! picture postcards and shocking
hotels--Oh!  No, Robin, you'll see all that later.  I wish you were
going instead of me, though."

Harry had looked up at the sound of Robin's voice.  It had been a new
note.  There had been an eagerness, an enthusiasm, that meant life and
something genuine.

Hope that had been slowly dying revived again.  If Robin really cared
for Germany like that, then they had something in common.  With that
spark a fire might be kindled.  A red-gold haze as of fire burnt in the
night sky, over the town.  Stars danced overhead, a little wind,
beating fitfully at the window, seemed to carry the light of the moon
in its tempestuous track, blowing it lightly in silver mists and clouds
over the moor.  The Wise Men were there, strong and dark and sombre,
watching over the lighted town and listening patiently to the ripple
and murmur and life of the sea at their feet.  In the little inn at the
Cove men were sitting over the roaring fire, telling tales--strange,
weird stories of a life that these others did not know.  Harry had
heard them when he was a boy--those stories--and he had felt the spell
and the magic.  There had been life in them and romance.

Perhaps they were there again to-night, just as they had been twenty
years before.  The stars called to him, the lighted town, the dusky,
softly breathing sea, the loneliness of the moor.  He must get out and
away.  He must have sympathy and warmth and friendship; he had come
back to his own people with open arms and they had no place for him.
His own son had repulsed him.  But Cornwall, the country of his dreams,
the mother of his faith, the guardian of his honour, was there--the
same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.  He would search for her and
would find her--even though it were on the red-brick floor of the
tavern in the Cove.

He turned round and found that the room was empty.  They had forgotten
him and left him--without a word.  The light of the lamp caught the
silver of the tea-things, and flashed and sparkled like a flame.

Harry Trojan softly opened the door, passed into the dim twilight of
the hall, picked up his hat, and stepped into the garden.




CHAPTER V

As he felt the crunch of the gravel beneath his feet he was possessed
with the spirit of adventure.  The dark house behind him had been
holding him captive.  It had held him against his will, imprisoning
him, tormenting him, and the tortures that he had endured were many and
severe.  He had not known that he could have felt it so much--that
absolute rejection of him by everything in which he had trusted; but he
would mind these things no longer--he would even try not to mind Robin!
That would be hard, and as he thought of it even now for a moment tears
had filled his eyes.  That, however, was cowardice.  He must fling away
the hopes of twenty years and start afresh, with the knowledge won of
his experience and the strength that he had snatched from his wounds.

And after all a man was a fool to mope and whine when that wind from
the sea was beating in his ears and the sea scents of clover and
poppies and salt stinging foam were brought to his nostrils, and the
trees rustled like the beating of birds' wings in the velvety
star-lighted sky.

A garden was wonderful at night--a place of strange silences and yet
stranger sound: trees darkly guarding mysterious paths that ran into
caverns of darkness; the scents of flowers rising from damp earth heavy
with dew; flowers that were weary with the dust and noise of the day
and slept gently, gratefully, with their heads drooping to the soil,
their petals closed by the tender hands of the spirits of the garden.
The night-sounds were strangely musical.  Cries that were discordant in
the day mingled now with the running of distant water, the last notes
of some bird before it slept, the measured harmony of a far-away bell,
the gentle rustle of some arrival in the thickets; the voice that could
not be heard in the noisy chatter of the day rose softly now in a
little song of the night and the dark trees and the silver firelight of
the stars.

And it was all very romantic, of course.  Harry Trojan had flung his
cares behind him and stepped over the soft turf of the lawns, a free
adventurer.  It was not really very late, and there was an hour before
dinner; but he was not sure that he minded about that--they would be
glad to dine without him.  There crossed his mind the memory of a night
in New Zealand.  He had been walking down to the harbour in Auckland,
and the moon had shone in the crooked water-side streets, its white,
cold light crossed with dark black shadows of roofs and gables.
Suddenly a woman's voice called for help across the silence, and he had
turned and listened.  It had called again, and, thinking that he might
help some one in distress, he had burst a dark, silent door, stumbled
up crooked wooden stairs, and entered an empty room.  As he passed the
door there was a sound of skirts, and a door at the other end of the
room had closed.  There was no one there, only a candle guttering on
the table, the remains of a meal, a woman's hat on the back of a chair;
he had waited for some time in silence, he had called and asked if
there was any one there, he had tried the farther door and found it
shut--and so, cursing himself for a fool, he had passed down into the
street again and the episode had ended.  There was really nothing in
it--nothing at all; but it was the atmosphere, the atmosphere of
romantic adventure shot suddenly across a rather drab and colourless
existence, and he had liked to dwell on the possibilities of the affair
and ask himself about it.  Who was the woman, and why had she cried
out?  Why was there no one in the room?  And why had no one answered
him?

He did not know and really he did not care, and, indeed, it was better
that the affair should be left in vague and incomplete outline.  It was
probably commonplace enough, had one only known, and sordid too,
perhaps.  But to-night was just such a night as that other.  He would
go to the Cove and find his romance where he had left it twenty years
ago.  It was the hour in Pendragon when shops are closing and young men
and maidens walk out.  There were a great many people in the street;
girls with white, tired faces, young men with bright ties and a
self-assertive air--a type of person new to Pendragon since Harry's
day.  The young man who served you respectfully, almost timidly, behind
the counter was now self-assertive, taking the middle of the street
with a flourish of his cane.  Fragments of conversation came to Harry's
ears--

"Mother being out I thought as 'ow I might venture--not but what she'd
kick up a rare old fuss----"

"So I told 'er it weren't no business of 'ers and the sooner she caught
on to the idea the better for all parties, seein' as 'ow----"

"Well, I never did! and you told 'im that, did yer?  I always said
you'd some pluck if you really wanted to----"

A gramophone from an open window up the street shrieked the alluring
refrain of "She's a different girl again," and a man who had
established himself at the corner under the protecting glare of two
hissing gas-jets urged on the company present an immediate acceptance
of his stupendous offer.  "Gold watches for 'alf a crown--positively
for one evening in order to clear--all above board.  Solid gold and
cheap at a sovereign."

The plunge into the cool depths of the winding little path that led
down to the Cove was delicious.  Oh! the contrast of it!  The noise and
ugly self-assertion of the town, flinging its gas-jets against the moon
and covering the roll of the sea with the shriek of the gramophone.  He
crossed through the turnstile at the bend of the road and passed up the
hill that led to the Cove.  At a bend the view of the sea came to him,
the white moonlight lying, a path of dancing shining silver, on the
grey sweep of the sea.  A wind was blowing, turning the grey into
sudden points of white--like ghostly hands rising for a moment suddenly
from immensity and then sinking silently again, their prayers
unanswered.

As he passed up the hill he was aware of something pattering beside
him; at first it was a little uncanny in that dim, uncertain light, and
he stopped and bent down to the road.  It was a dog, a fox-terrier of a
kind, dirty, and even in that light most obviously a mongrel.  But it
jumped up at him and put its paws on his knee.

"Well, company's company," he said with a laugh.  "I don't know where
you've sprung from, but we'll travel together for a bit."  The dog ran
up the hill, and for a moment stood out against the moon--a shaggy,
disreputable dog with a humorous stump of a tail.  He stood there with
one ear flapping back and the other cocked up--a most ridiculous figure.

Harry laughed again and the dog barked; they walked down the hill
together.

The Cove was dark, but from behind shuttered windows lamps twinkled
mysteriously, and the red glow from the inn flung a circle of light
down the little cobbled street.  The beat of the sea came solemnly like
the tramp of invisible armies from the distance.  There was no other
sound save the tremble of the wind in the trees.

Harry pushed open the door of the inn and entered, followed by the dog.
The place was the same; nothing had been changed.  There was the old
wooden gallery where the fiddle had played such merry tunes.  The rough
uneven floor had the same holes, the same hills and dales.  The great
settle by the fire was marked, as in former years, with mysterious
crosses and initials cut by jack-knives in olden days.  The two lamps
shone in their accustomed places--one over the fire, another by the
window.  The door leading to the bar was half open, and in the distance
voices could be heard, but the room itself seemed to be empty.

A great fire leapt in the fireplace and the gold light of it danced on
the red-brick floor.  The peculiar scent as of tobacco and ale and the
salt of the sea, and, faintly, the breath of mignonette and geraniums,
struck out the long intervals since Harry had been there before.
Twenty years ago he had breathed the same air; and now he was back
there again and nothing was changed.  The dog had run to the fire and
sat in front of it now, wagging his stump of a tail, his ear cocked.
Harry laughed and sat down in the settle; the burden of the last week
was flung off and he was a free man.

A long, lean man with a straggling beard stood in the doorway and
watched him; then he came forward.  "Mr. Harry," he said, and held out
his hand.

Harry started up.  "I'm sorry," he said, stammering, "I don't remember."

"We were wonderin'," said the long, thin man slowly, "when you was
comin' down.  Not that you'd remember faces--that's not to be
expected--especially in foreign parts which is confusing and difficult
for a man--but I'm Bill Tregarvis what have had you out fishin' many's
the time--not that you'd remember faces," he said again, looking a
little timidly at him.

But he did!  Harry remembered him perfectly!  Bill Tregarvis!  Why, of
course--many was the time they had seen life together--he had had a
wife and two boys.

Harry wrung his hand and laughed.

"Remember, Bill!  Why, of course!  It was only for a moment.  I had got
the face all right but not the name.  Yes, I have, as a matter of fact,
come before, but there were things that have made it difficult at
first, and of course there was a lot to do up there.  But it's good to
be down here!  The other place is changed; I had been a bit
disappointed, but here it is just the same--the same old lights and
smells and sea, and the same old friends----"

"Yer think that?" Tregarvis looked at him.  "Because we'd been fearing
that all your travelling and sight-seeing might have harmed you--that
you'd be thinking a bit like the folk up-along with their cars and gas
and filth.  Aye, it's a changed world up there, Mr. Harry; but
down-along there's no difference.  It's the sea keeps us steady."

And then they talked about the old adventurous days when Harry had been
eighteen and the world had been a very wonderful place: the herring
fishing, the bathing, the adventures on the moor, the tales at night by
candlelight, the fun of it all.  The room began to fill, and one after
another men came forward and claimed friendship on the score of old
days and perils shared.  They received him quite simply--he was "Mr.
Harry," but still one of themselves, taking his place with them,
telling tales and hearing them in return.

There were nine or ten of them, and a wild company they made, crowding
round the fire, with the flames leaping and flinging gigantic shadows
on the walls.  The landlord, a short, ruddy-faced man with white hair
and a merry twinkle of the eye, was one of the best men that Harry had
ever known.

He was a man whose modesty was only equalled by his charity; a man of
great humour, wide knowledge of the most varied subjects, and above all
a passionate faith in the country of his birth, Cornwall.  He was, like
most Cornishmen, superstitious, but his belief in Nature as a wise and
beneficent mother, stern but never unjust, controlled his will and
justified his actions.  In those early days Harry had worshipped him
with that whole-hearted adoration bestowed at times by young
hero-worshippers on those that have travelled a little way along the
path and have learnt their lesson wisely.  Tony Newsome's influence had
done more for Harry in those early years than he had realised, but he
knew now what he owed to him as he sat by his side and recalled those
other days.  They had written once or twice, but Tony was no
correspondent and hated to have a pen between his fingers.

"Drive a horse, pull a boat, shoot a gun, mind a net--but God help me
if I write," he had said.  Not that he objected to books; he had read a
good deal and cared for it--but "God's air in the day and a merry fire
at night leaves little room for pen and ink" was his justification.

He treated Harry now as his boy of twenty years ago, and laughed at him
and scolded him as of old.  He did not question him very closely on the
incidents of those twenty years, and indeed, with them all, Harry
noticed that there was very little curiosity as to those other
countries.  They welcomed him quietly, simply.  They were glad that he
was there again, sitting with them, taking his place naturally and
easily--and again the twenty years seemed as nothing.

He sat with the dog at his feet.  Newsome's hand was on his knee, and
every once and again he gave a smothered chuckle.  "I knew you'd come
back, Mr. Harry," he said.  "I just waited.  Once the sea has got hold
of you it doesn't loosen its grip so quick.  I knew you'd come back."

They told wild stories as they had been telling them for many years at
the same hour in the same place--strange things seen at sea, the lights
and mists of the moor, survivals of smuggling days and fights on the
beach under the moon; and it always was the sea.  They might leave it
for a moment perhaps, but they came back to it--the terror of it, the
joy of it, the cruelty of it; the mistress that held them chained, that
called their children and would not be denied, the god that they served.

They spoke of her softly with lowered voices and a strange reverence.
They had learnt her moods and her dangers; they knew that she could
caress them, and then, of a sudden, strike them down--but they loved
her.

And she had claimed Harry again.  Everything for which he had been
longing during that past week had come to him at last; their
friendship, their faith in an old god, and above all that sense of a
great adventure, for the spirit of which he had so diligently been
searching.  "Up-along" life was an affair of measured rules and things
foreseen.  "Down-along" it was a game of unending surprises and a
gossamer web shot with the golden light of romance.  High-falutin
perhaps, but to Harry, as he sat before the fire with the strange dog
and those ten wild men, words and pictures came too speedily to admit
of a sense of the absurd.

An old man, with a long white beard and a shaking hand, knew strange
tales of the moor.  When the mists creep up and blot out the land, then
the four grey stones take life and are the giants of old, and strange
sacrifices are grimly performed.  Talse Carlyon had seen things late on
a moonlit night with the mists swimming white and silvery-grey over the
moor.  He had lost his way and had met a man of mighty size who had led
him by the hand.  There had been spirits about, and at the foot of the
grey stone a pool of blood--he had never been the same man since.

"There are spirits and spirits," said the old man solemnly, "and there
'm some good and some bad, for the proper edification of us mortals,
and, for my part, it's not for the like of us to meddle."

He stroked his beard--a very gloomy old man with a blind eye.  Harry
remembered that he had had a wife twenty years before, so he inquired
about her.

"Dead," said the old man fiercely, "dead--and, thank God, she went out
like a candle."

He muttered this so fiercely that Harry said no more, and the white
beard shone in the light of the fire, and his blind eye opened and shut
like a box, and his wrinkled hand shook on his knee.  The fishing had
been bad of late, and here again they spoke as if some personal power
had been at work.  There were few there who had not lost some one
during the years that they had served her, and the memory of what this
had been and the foreshadowing of the dangerous future hung over them
in the room.  Songs were sung, jokes were made, but they were the songs
and laughter of men on guard, with the enemy to be encountered,
perhaps, in the morning.

Harry sat in his corner of the great seat, watching the leaping of the
flames, his hand on Newsome's shoulder, listening to the murmuring
voices at his side.  He scarcely knew whether he were awake or
sleeping; their laughter came to him dimly, and it seemed that he was
alone there with only Newsome by his side and the dog sleeping at his
feet.  The tobacco smoke hung in grey-blue wreaths above his head and
the gold light of the two lamps shone mistily, without shape or form.
Perhaps it was really a dream.  The old man with the white beard and
the blind eye was sleeping, his head on his breast.  A man with a
vacant expression was telling a tale, heavily, slowly, gazing at the
fire.  The others were not listening--or at any rate not obviously so.
They, too, gazed at the fire--it had, as it were, become personal and
mesmerised the room.  Perhaps it was a dream.  He would wake and find
himself at "The Flutes."  There would be Clare and Garrett and--Robin!
He would put all that away now; he would forget it for a moment, at
least.  He had failed them; they had not wanted him and had told him
so,--but here they had known him and loved him; they had welcomed him
back as though there had been no intervening space of years.  They at
least had known what life was.  They had not played with it, like those
others.  They had not surrounded themselves with barricades of
artificiality, and glanced through distorting mirrors at their own
exaggerated reflection; they had seen life simply, fearlessly,
accepting their peril like men and enjoying their fate with the
greatness of soul that simplicity had given them.  They were not like
those others; those on the hill had invaded the sea with noisy clamour,
had greeted her familiarly and offered her bathing-machines and
boarding-houses; these others had reverenced her and learnt to know
her, alone on the downs in the first grey of the dawn, or secretly,
when the breakers had rolled in over the sand, carrying with them the
red and gold of some gorgeous sunset.

He contrasted them in his mind--the Trojans and the Greeks.  He turned
round a little in his seat and listened to the story: "It were a man--a
strange man with horns and hoofs, so he said--and a merry, deceiving
eye; but he couldn't see him clear because of the mist that hung there,
with the moon pushing through like a candle, he said.  The man was
laughing to himself and playing with leaves that danced at his feet
under the wind.  It can't have been far from the town, because Joe
heard St. Elmo's bell ringin' and he could hear the sea quite plain.
He ..."

The voice seemed to trail off again into the distance; Harry's thoughts
were with his future.  What was he to do?  It seemed to him that his
crisis had come and was now facing him.  Should he stay or should he
flee?  Why should he not escape--away into the country, where he could
live his life without fear, where there would be no contempt, no
hampering family traditions?  Should he stay and wait while Robin
learnt to hate him?  At the thought his face grew white and he clenched
his hands.  Robin ... Robin ... Robin ... it always came back to
that--and there seemed no answer.  That dream of love between father
and son, the dream that he had cherished for twenty years, was
shattered, and the bubble had burst....

"So Joe said he didn't know but he thought it was to the left and down
through the Cove--to the old church he meant; and the man laughed and
danced with the leaves through the mist; and once Joe thought he was
gone, and there he was back again, laughin'."

No, he would face it.  He would take his place as he had intended--he
would show them of what stuff he was made--and Robin would see, at
last.  The boy was young, it would of course take time----

The door of the inn opened and some one came in.  The lamps flared in
the wind, and there was a cry from the fireplace.  "Mr. Bethel!  Well,
I'm right glad!"

Harry started.  Bethel--that had been the name of his friend--the girl
who had come to tea.  The new-comer was a large man, over six feet in
height, and correspondingly broad.  His head was bare, and his hair was
a little long and curly.  His eyes were blue and twinkled, and his face
was pleasantly humorous and, in the mouth and chin, strong and
determined.  He wore a grey flannel suit with a flannel collar, and he
was smoking a pipe of great size.  Newsome, starting to his feet, went
forward to meet him.  Bethel came to the fire and talked to them all;
there was obviously a free companionship between them that told of long
acquaintance.  He was introduced to Harry.

"I've heard of you, Mr. Trojan," he said, "and have been expecting to
meet you.  I think that we have interests in common--at least an
affection for Cornwall."

Harry liked him.  He looked at him frankly between the eyes--there was
no hesitation or disguise; there had been no barrier or division; and
Harry was grateful.

Bethel sat down by the fire, and a discussion followed about matters of
which Harry knew nothing.  There was talk of the fishing prospects,
which were bad; a gloom fell upon them all, and they cursed the new
Pendragon--the race had grown too fast for them and competition was too
keen.  But Harry noticed that they did not yet seem to have heard of
the proposed destruction of the Cove.  Then he got up to go.  They
asked him to come again, and he promised that he would.  Bethel rose
too.

"If you don't object, Mr. Trojan," he said, "I'll make one with you.  I
had only looked in for a moment and had never intended to stay.  I was
on my way back to the town."

They went out into the street together, and Harry shivered for a moment
as the wind from the sea met them.

"Ah, that's good," Bethel said; "your fires are well enough, but that
wind is worth a bag of gold."

They walked for a little in silence, and then Harry said: "Those are a
fine lot of men.  They know what life really is."

Bethel laughed.  "I know what you feel about them.  You are glad that
there's no change.  Twenty years has made little difference there.  It
is twenty years, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Harry.  "One thinks that it is nothing until one comes
back, and then one thinks that it's more than it really is."

"Yes, you're disappointed," Bethel said.  "I know.  Pendragon has
become popular, and to your mind that has destroyed its beauty--or, at
any rate, some of it."

"Well, I hate it," Harry said fiercely, "all this noise and show.  Why
couldn't they have left Pendragon alone?  I don't hate it for big
places that are, as it were, in the line of march.  I suppose that they
must move with the day.  That is inevitable.  But Pendragon!  Why--when
I was a boy, it was simply a little town by the sea.  No one thought
about it or worried about it: it was a place wonderfully quiet and
simple.  It was too quiet for me then; I should worship it now.  But I
have come back and it has no room for me."

"I haven't known it as long as you," Bethel answered, "but I confess
that the very charm of it lies in its contrast.  It is invasion, if you
like, but for that very reason exciting--two forces at work and a
battle in progress."

"With no doubt as to the ultimate victory," said Harry gloomily.  "Yes,
I see what you mean by the contrast.  But I cannot stand there and see
them dispassionately--you see I am bound up with so much of it.  Those
men to-night were my friends when I was a boy.  Newsome is the best man
that I have ever known, and there is the place; I love every stone of
it, and they would pull it down."

They had left the Cove and were pressing up a steep path to the moor.
The moon was struggling through a bank of clouds; the wind was
whistling over their heads.

Bethel suddenly stopped and turned towards Harry.  "Mr. Trojan," he
said, "I'm going to be impulsive and perhaps imprudent.  There's
nothing an Englishman fears so much as impulse, and he is terribly
ashamed of imprudence.  But, after all, there is no time to waste, and
if you think me impertinent you have only to say so, and the matter
ends."

Harry laughed.  "I am delighted," he began, but the other stopped him.

"No, wait a moment.  You don't know.  I'm afraid you'll think that I'm
absurd--most people will tell you that I am worse.  I want you to try
to be a friend of mine, at any rate to give me a chance.  I scarcely
know you--you don't know me at all--but; one goes on first impressions,
and I believe that you would understand a little better than most of
these people here--for one thing you have gone farther and seen
more----"

There was a little pause.  Harry was surprised.  Here was what he had
been wanting--friendship; a week ago he would have seized it with both
hands; now he was a little distrustful; a week ago it would have been
natural, delightful; now it was unusual, even a little absurd.

"I should be very glad," he said gravely.  "I--scarcely----"

"Oh," Bethel broke in, "we shall come together naturally--there's no
fear of that.  I could see at once that you know the mysteries of this
place just as I do.  Those others here are blind.  I've been waiting
for some one who would understand.  But I don't want you to listen to
those other people about me; they will tell you a good deal--and most
of it's true.  I don't blame 'em, but I'm curiously anxious for you not
to think with them.  It's ridiculous, I know, when I had never seen you
before.  If you only knew how long I'd been waiting--to talk to some
one--about--all this."

He waved his hand and they stopped.  They were standing on the moor.
Above their head mighty grey clouds were driving like fleets before the
wind, and the moon, a cold, lifeless thing, a moon of chiselled marble,
appeared, and then, as though frightened at the wild flight of the
clouds, vanished.  The sea, pearl grey, lay like mist on the horizon,
and its voice was gentle and tired, as though it were slowly dying into
sleep.  They were near the Four Stones--gaunt, grey, and old.  The dog
had followed Harry from the inn and now ran, a white shadow, in front
of him.

"Let me tell you," Bethel said, "about myself.  You know I was born in
London--the son of a doctor with a very considerable practice.  I
received an excellent education, Rugby and Cambridge, and was trained
for the law.  I was, I believe, a rather ordinary person with a rather
more than ordinary power of concentration, and I got on.  I built up a
business and was extremely and very conventionally happy.  I married
and we had a little girl.  And then, one summer, we came down to
Cornwall for our holiday.  It was St. Ives.  I remember that first
morning as though it were yesterday.  It was grey with the sea flinging
great breakers.  There was a smell of clover and cornflowers in the
air, and great sheets of flaming poppies in the cornfields.  But there
was more than that.  It was Cornwall, something magical, and that
strange sense of old history and customs that you get nowhere else in
quite the same way.  Ah! but why analyse it?--you know as well as I do
what I mean.  A new man was born in me that day.  I had been sociable
and fond of little quite ordinary pleasures that came my way, now I
wanted to be alone.  Their conversation worried me; it seemed to be
pointless and concerned with things that did not matter at all.  I had
done things like other men--now it was all to no purpose.  I used to
lie for hours on the cliffs watching the sea.  I was often out all day,
and I met all sorts of people, tramps, wasters, vagabonds, and they
seemed the only people worth talking to.  I met some strange fellows
but excellent company--and they knew, all of them, the things that I
knew; they had been out all night and seen the moon and the stars
change and the first light of the dawn, and the little breeze that
comes in those early hours from the sea, bringing the winds of other
countries with it.  And they were merry, they had a philosophy--they
knew Cornwall and believed in her.

"Well--the holiday came to an end, and I had to go back!  London.  My
God!  After that I struggled--I went to my work every day with the
sound of that sea in my ears and the vision of those moors always there
with me.  And the freedom!  If you have tasted that once, if you have
ever got really close so that you can hear strange voices and see
beauties of which you had never dreamt, well, you will never get back
to your old routine again.  I don't care how strong you are--you can't
do it, man.  Once she's got hold of you, nothing counts.  That was
eighteen years ago.  I kept my work for a year, but it was killing me.
I got ill--I nearly died; once I ran away at night and tried to get to
the sea.  But I came back--there were my wife and girl.  We had a
little money, and I gave it all up and we came to live down here.  I
have done nothing since; rather shameful, isn't it, for a strong man?
They have thought that here; they think that I am a waster--by their
lights I am.  But the things I have learnt!  I didn't know what living
was until I came here!  I knew nothing, I did nothing, I was a dead
man.  What do I care for their thoughts of me!  They are in the dark!"

He had spoken eagerly, almost breathlessly.  He was defending his
position, and Harry knew that he had been waiting for years to say
these things to some one of his own kind who would understand.  And he
understood only too well!  Had he not himself that very evening been
tempted to escape, to flee his duty?  He had resisted, but the
temptation had been very strong--that very voice of Cornwall of which
Bethel had spoken--and if it were to return he did not know what answer
he might give.  But he was not thinking of Bethel; his thoughts were
with the wife and daughter.  That poor pathetic little woman--and the
girl----

"And your wife and daughter?" he said.  "What of them?"

"They are happy," Bethel said eagerly.  "They are indeed.  I don't see
them very often, but they have their own interests--and friends.  My
wife and I never had very much in common--Ah! you're going to scold,"
he said, laughing, "and say just what all these other horrid people
say.  But I know.  I grant it you all.  I'm a waster--through and
through; it's damnably selfish--worst of all, in this energetic and
pushing age, it's idle.  Oh!  I know and I'm sorry--but, do you know,
I'm not ashamed.  I can't see it seriously.  I wouldn't harm a fly.
Why can't they let me alone?  At least I am happy."

They had reached the outskirts of the town by this time and Bethel
stopped before a little dark house with red shutters and a tiny strip
of garden.

"Here we are!" said he.  "This is my place.  Come in and smoke!  It
must be past your dinner hour up at 'The Flutes.'  Come and have
something with me."

Harry laughed.  "They have already ceased wondering at my erratic
habits," he said.  "New Zealand is a bad place for method."

He followed Bethel in.  It was a tiny hall, and on entering he stumbled
over an umbrella-stand that lounged forward in a rickety position.
Bethel apologised.  "We're in a bit of a mess," he said.  "In fact, to
tell the truth, we always are!"  He hung his coat in the hall and led
the way into the dining-room.  Mrs. Bethel and her daughter came
forward.  The little woman was amazing in a dress of bright red silk
and an absurd little yellow lace cap.  Only half the table was laid;
for the rest a shabby green cloth, spotted with ink, formed a
background for an incoherent litter of papers and needlework.  The
walls were lined with books and there were some piled on the floor.

A cold shoulder of mutton, baked potatoes in their skins, a melancholy
glass dish containing celery, and a salad bowl startlingly empty, lay
waiting on the table.

"Anne," said Bethel, "I've brought a guest--up with the family port and
let's be festive."

His great body seemed to fill the room, and he brought with him the
breath of the sea and the wind.  He began to carve the mutton like
Siegfried making battle with Fafner, and indeed again and again during
the evening he reminded Harry of Siegfried's impetuous humour and
rejoicing animal spirits.

Mrs. Bethel was delighted.  Her little eyes twinkled with excitement,
her yellow cap was pushed awry, and her hands trembled with pleasure.
It was obvious that a visitor was an unusual event.  Miss Bethel had
said very little, but she had given Harry that same smile that he had
seen before.  She busied herself now with the salad, and he watched her
white fingers shine under the lamplight and the white curve of her neck
as she bent over the bowl.  She was dressed in some dark stuff--quite
simple and unassuming, but he thought that he had never seen anything
so beautiful.

He said very little, but he was quietly happy.  Bethel did not talk
very much; he was eating furiously--not greedily, but with great
pleasure and satisfaction.  Mrs. Bethel talked continuously.  Her eyes
shone and her cap bobbed on her head like a live thing.

"I said, Mr. Trojan, after our meeting the other day, that you would be
a friend.  I said so to Mary coming back.  I felt sure that first day.
It is so nice to have some one new in Pendragon--one gets used, you
know, to the same faces and tired of them.  In my old home, Penlicott
in Surrey, near Marlwood Beeches--you change at Grayling Junction--or
you used to; I think you go straight through now.  But _there_ you know
we knew everybody.  You really couldn't help it.  There was really only
the Vicar and the Doctor, and he was so old.  Of course there were the
Draytons; you must have heard of Mr. Herbert Drayton--he paints
things--I forget quite what, but I know he's good.  They all lived
there--such a lot of them and most peculiar in their habits; but one
gets used to anything.  They all lived together for some time, about
fifteen there were.  Mother and I dined there once or twice, and they
had the funniest dining-room with pictures of Job all round the room
that were most queer and rather disagreeable; and they all liked
different things to drink, so they each had a bottle--of
something--separately.  It looked quite funny to see the fifteen
bottles, and then 'Job' on the wall, you know."

But he really hadn't paid very much attention to her.  He had been
thinking and wondering.  How was it that a man like Bethel had married
such a wife?  He supposed that things had been different twenty years
ago, with them as with him.  It was strange to think of the difference
that twenty years could make.  She had been, perhaps, a little pretty,
dainty thing then--the style of girl that a strong man like Bethel
would fall in love with.  Then he thought of Miss Bethel--what was her
life with a mother like that and a father who never thought about her
at all?  She must, he thought, be lonely.  He almost hoped that she
was.  It gave them kinship, because he was lonely too.  The
conversation was not very animated; Mrs. Bethel was suddenly
silent--she seemed to have collapsed with the effort, and sat huddled
up in her chair, with her hands in her lap.

He realised that he had said nothing to Miss Bethel, and he turned to
her.  "You know London?" he said.  He wondered whether she longed for
it sometimes--its excitement and life.

"Oh yes," she said quickly; "we were there, you know, a long while ago,
and I've been up once or twice since.  But it makes one feel so
dreadfully small, as if one simply didn't count, and no woman likes
that."

"Pendragon makes one feel smaller," Harry said.  "When one is of no
account even in a small place, then one is small indeed."

He had not intended to speak bitterly, but she had caught the sound of
it in his voice and she was suddenly sorry for him.  She had been a
little afraid of him before--even on that terrible afternoon at "The
Flutes"; but now she saw that he was disappointed--he had expected
something and it had failed him.

She said nothing then, and the meal came to an end.  Bethel dragged
Harry into his study to see the books.  There was the same untidiness
here.  The table was littered with papers and pens, tobacco jars,
numerous pipes, some photographs.  From the floor to the ceiling were
books--rows on rows--flung apparently into the shelves with no order or
method.

"I'm no good as far as books go," said Harry, laughing.  "There never
was such a heathen.  There have always been other things to do, and I
must confess it is a mystery to me how men get time to read at all.  If
I do get time I'm generally done up, and a novel's the only thing I'm
fit for."

"Ah, then, you don't know the book craze," Bethel Said.  "It's worse
than drink.  I've seen it absolutely ruin a man.  You can't stop--if
you see a book you must get it, whether you really want it or no.  You
go on buying and buying and buying.  You get far more than you can ever
read.  But you're a miser and you hate even lending them.  You sit in
your room and count the covers, and you're no fit company for man or
beast."

Harry looked at him--"You've known it?"

"Oh yes!  I've known it.  I'm a bit better now--I'm out such a lot.
But even now there's a great deal here that I've never read, and I add
to it continually.  The worst of it is," he said, laughing, "that we
can't afford it.  It's very hard on Mary and the wife, but I'm a rotten
loafer, and that's the end of it."

He said it so gaily and with so little sense of responsibility that you
couldn't possibly think that it weighed on him.  But he looked such a
boy, standing there with his hands in his pockets and that
half-penitent, half-humorous look in his eyes, that you couldn't be
angry.  Harry laughed.

"Upon my word, you're amazing!"

"Oh! you'll get sick of me.  It's all so selfish and slack, I know.
But I struggled once--I'm in the grip now."  He talked about Borrow and
displayed a little grey-bound "Walden" with pride.  He spoke of Richard
Jefferies with an intimate affection as though he had known the man.

He gave Harry some of his enthusiasm, and he lent him "Lavengro."  He
described it and Harry compared mentally Isobel Berners with Mary
Bethel.

Then they went up to the little drawing-room--an ugly room, but
redeemed by a great window overlooking the sea, and a large photograph
of Mary on the mantelpiece.  Under the light of the lamp the silver
frame glittered and sparkled.

He sat by the window and talked to her, and again he had that same
curious sense of having known her before: he spoke of it.

"I expect it's in another existence then," she said; "as I've never
been into New Zealand and you've never been out of it--at least, since
I've been born.  But, of course, I've talked about you to Robin.  We
speculated, you know.  We hadn't any photographs much to help us, and
it was quite a good game."

"Ah!  Robin!"

"I want to speak to you about him," she said, turning round to him.
"You won't think me interfering, will you? but I've meant to speak ever
since the other day.  I was afraid that, perhaps--don't think it
dreadfully rude of me--you hadn't quite understood Robin.  He's at a
difficult age, you know, and there are a lot of things about him that
are quite absurd.  And I have been afraid that you might take those
absurdities for the real things and fancy that that was all that was
there.  Cambridge--and other things--have made him think that a certain
sort of attitude is essential if you're to get on.  I don't think he
even sincerely believes in it.  But they have taught him that he must,
at least, seem to believe.  The other things are there all right, but
he hides them--he is almost ashamed of any one suspecting their
existence."

"Thank you!" Harry said quietly.  "It is very kind of you and I'm
deeply grateful.  It's quite true that Robin and I haven't seemed to
hit it off properly.  I expect that it is my fault.  I have tried to
see his point of view and have the same interests, but every effort
that I've made has seemed to make things worse.  He distrusts me, I
think, and--well--of course, that hurts.  All the things in which I had
hoped we would share have no interest for him."

"Don't you think, perhaps," she said, "that you've been a little too
anxious--perhaps, a little too affectionate?  I am speaking like this
because I care for Robin so much.  We have been such good friends for
years now, and I think he has let me see a side of him that he has
hidden from most people.  He is curiously sensitive, and really, I
think, very shy; and most of all, he has a perfect horror of being
absurd.  That is what I meant about your being affectionate.  He would
think, perhaps, that the rest were laughing at him.  It's as if you
were dragging something that was very sacred and precious out into the
light before all those others.  Boys are like that; they are terrified
lest any one should know what good there is in them--it isn't quite
good form."

They were silent for some time.  Harry was throwing her words like a
searchlight on the events of the past week, and they revealed much that
had been very dark and confused.  But he was thinking of her.  Their
acquaintance seemed to have grown into intimacy already.

"I can't thank you enough," he said again.

"It is so nice of you," she said laughing, "not to have thought it
presumptuous of me.  But Robin is a very good friend of mine.  Of
course you will find out what a sterling fellow he is--under all that
superficiality.  He is one of my best friends here!"

He got up to go.  As he held out his hand, he said: "I will tell you
frankly, Miss Bethel, that Pendragon hasn't received me with open arms.
I don't know why it should--and twenty years in New Zealand knocks the
polish off.  But it has been delightful this evening--more than you
know."

"It has been nice for us too," Mary answered.  "I don't know that
Pendragon is exactly thronging our door night and day--and a new friend
is worth having.  You see I've claimed you as a friend because you
listened so patiently to my sermon--that's a sure test."

She had spoken lightly but he had felt the bitterness in her voice.
Life was hard for her too, then?  He knew that he was glad.

"I shall come back," he said.

"Please," she answered.

He said good-bye to Mrs. Bethel and she pressed his hand very warmly.
"You are very kind to take pity on us," she said, ogling him under the
gas in the hall; "I hope you will come often."

Bethel said very little.  He walked with him to the gate and laughed.
"We're absurd, aren't we, Trojan?" he said.  "But don't neglect us
altogether.  Even absurdity is refreshing sometimes."

But Harry went up the hill with a happier heart than he had had since
he entered Pendragon.

That promise of adventure had been fulfilled.




CHAPTER VI

Randal was only at "The Flutes" two days, but he effected a good deal
in that time.  He did nothing very active--called on Mrs. le Terry and
rode over the Downs once with Robin--but he managed to leave a flock of
very active impressions behind him.  That, as he knew well, was his
strong point.  He could not be with you a day without vaguely, almost
indistinctly, but nevertheless quite certainly, influencing your
opinions.  He never said anything very definite, and, on looking back,
you could never assert that he had positively taken any one point of
view; but he had left, as it were, atmosphere--an assurance that this
was the really right thing to do, this the proper attitude for correct
breeding to adopt.  It was always, with him, a case of correct
breeding, and that was why the Trojans liked him so very much.
"Randal," as Clare said, "knew so precisely who were sheep and who were
goats, and he showed you the difference so clearly."

Whenever he came to stay some former acquaintances were dropped as
being, perhaps, not quite the right people.  He never said that any one
was not the right person, that would be bad breeding, but you realised,
of your own accord, that they were not quite right.  That was why the
impression was so strong--it seemed to come from yourself; your eyes
were suddenly opened and you wondered that you hadn't seen it before.

He said very little of Trojan people this time; the main result of his
visit was its effect on Harry's position.

Had you been a stranger you would have noticed nothing; the motto of
the gentleman of good breeding is, "The end and aim of all true
opinions is the concealing of them from the wrong person."

Randal was exceedingly polite to Harry, so polite that Robin and Clare
knew immediately that he disapproved, but Harry was pleased.  Randal
spoke warmly to Robin.  "You are lucky to have such a father, Bob; it's
what we all want, you and I especially, a little fresh air let into our
Cambridge dust and confusion; it's most refreshing to find some one who
cares nothing about all those things that have seemed to us, quite
erroneously probably, so valuable.  You should copy him, Robin."

But Robin made no reply.  He understood perfectly.  There had been some
qualities in his father that he had, deep down in his nature, admired.
He had seemed to be without doubt a man on whom one could rely in a
tight corner, and in spite of himself he had liked his father's
frankness.  It was unusual.  There was always another meaning in
everything that Robin's friends said, but there was never any doubt
about Harry.  He missed the fine shades, of course, and was lamentably
lacking in discrimination, but you did know where you were.  Robin had,
almost reluctantly, admired this before the coming of Randal.  But now
there could be no question.  When Randal was there you had displayed
before you the complete art of successful allusion.  Nothing was ever
directly stated, but everything was hinted, and you were compelled to
believe that this really was the perfection of good breeding.  Robin
admired Randal exceedingly.  He took his dicta very seriously and
accepted his criticism.  The judgment of his father completed the
impression that he had begun to receive.  He was impossible.  Randal
was going by the 10.45, and he would walk to the station.

"A whiff of fresh air, Robin, is absolutely essential.  You must walk
down with me.  I hate to go, Miss Trojan."

"Very soon to return, I hope, Mr. Randal," answered Clare.  She liked
him, and thought him an excellent influence for Robin.

"Thank you--it's very kind--but one's busy, you know.  It's been hard
enough to snatch these few days.  Besides, Robin isn't alone in the
same way now.  He has his father."

Clare made no reply, but her silence was eloquent.

"I'm sorry for him, Miss Trojan," he said.  "He is, I'm afraid, a
little out of it.  Twenty years, you know, is a long time."

Clare smiled.  "He is unchanged," she said.  "What he was as a boy, he
is now."

"He is fortunate," Randal said gravely.  "For most of us experience has
a jostling series of shocks ready.  Life hurts."

He said good-bye with that air of courtly melancholy that Clare admired
so much.  He shook Harry warmly by the hand and expressed a hope of
another meeting.

"I should be delighted," Harry said.  "What sort of time am I likely to
catch you in town?"

But Randal, alarmed at this serious acceptance of an entirely ironical
proposal, was immediately vague and gave no definite promise.  Harry
watched them pass down the drive, then he turned back slowly into the
house.

It was one of those blue and gold days that are only to be realised
perfectly in Cornwall--blue of the sky and the sea, gold on the roofs
and the rich background of red and brown in the autumn-tinted trees,
whilst the deep green of the lawns in front of the house seemed to hold
both blues and golds in its lights and shadows.  The air was perfectly
still and the smoke from a distant bonfire hung in strange wreaths of
grey-blue in the light against the trees, as though carved delicately
in marble.

Randal discussed his prospects.  He spoke, as he invariably did with
regard to his past and future, airily and yet impressively: "I don't
like to make myself too cheap," he said.  "There are things any sort of
fellow can do, and I must say that I shrink from taking bread out of
the mouths of some of them.  But of course there are things that one
_must_ do--where special knowledge is wanted--not that I'm any good,
you know, but I've had chances.  Besides, one must work slowly.
Style's the thing--Flaubert and Pater for ever--the doctrine of the one
word."

Robin looked at him with admiration.

"By Jove, Randal, I wish I could write; I sometimes feel quite--well,
it sounds silly--but inspired, you know--as if one saw things quite
differently.  It was very like that in Germany once or twice."

"Ah, we're all like that at times," Randal spoke encouragingly.  "But
don't you trust it--an _ignis fatuus_ if ever there was one.  That is
why we have bank clerks at Peckham and governesses in Bloomsbury
writing their reminiscences.  It's those moments of inspiration that
are responsible for all our over-crowded literature."

They had chosen the path over the fields to the station, and suddenly
at the bend of the hill the sea sprang before them, a curving mirror
that reflected the blue of the sky and was clouded mistily with the
gold of the sun.  That sudden springing forward of the sea was always
very wonderful, even when it had been seen again and again, and Robin
stopped and shaded his eyes with his hand.

"It's fine, isn't it, Randal?" he said.  "One gets fond of the place."

He was a little ashamed to have betrayed such feeling and spoke
apologetically.  He went on hurriedly.  "There was an old chap in
Germany--at Worms--who was most awfully interesting.  He kept a little
bookshop, and I used to go down and talk to him, and he said once that
the sea was the most beautiful dream that the world contained, but you
must never get too near or the dream broke, and from that moment you
had no peace."

Randal looked at Robin anxiously.  "I say, old chap, this place is
getting on your nerves; always being here is bad for you.  Why don't
you come up to town or go abroad?  You're seedy."

"Oh, I'm all right," Robin said, rather irritably.  "Only one wonders
sometimes if--" he broke off suddenly.  "I'm a bit worried about
something," he said.

He was immediately aware that he had said nothing to Randal about the
Feverel affair and he wondered why.  Randal would have been the natural
person to talk to about it; his advice would have been worth having.
But Robin felt vaguely that it would be better not.  For some strange
reason, as yet unanalysed, he scarcely trusted him as he had done in
the old days.  He was still wondering why, when they arrived at the
station.

They said good-bye affectionately--rather more affectionately than
usual.  There was a little sense of strain, and Robin felt relieved
when the train had gone.  As he hurried from the platform he puzzled
over it.  He could hold no clue, but he knew that their friendship had
changed a little.  He was sorry.

As he turned down the station road he decided that life was becoming
very complicated.  There was first his father; that oughtn't in the
nature of things to have complicated matters at all--but it was
complicated, because there was no knowing what a man like that would
do.  He might let the family down so badly; it was almost like having
gunpowder in your cellar.  Randal had thought him absurd.  Robin saw
that clearly, and Randal's opinion was that of all truly sensible
people.  But, after all, the real complication was the Feverel affair.
It was now nearly ten days since that terrible evening and nothing had
happened.  Robin wasn't sure what _could_ have happened, but he had
expected something.  He had waited for a note; she would most assuredly
write and her letter would serve as a hint, he would know how to act;
but there had been no sign.  On the day following the interview he had
felt, for the most part, relief.  He was suddenly aware of the burden
that the affair had been, he was a free man; but with this there had
been compunction.  He had acted like a brute; he was surprised that he
could have been so hard, and he was a little ashamed of meeting the
public gaze.  If people only realised, he thought, what a cad he was,
they would assuredly have nothing to do with him.  As the days passed,
this feeling increased and he was extremely uncomfortable.  He had
never before doubted that he was a very decent fellow--nothing,
perhaps, exceptional in any way, but, judged by every standard, he
passed muster.  Now he wasn't so sure, he had done something that he
would have entirely condemned in another man, and this showed him
plainly and most painfully the importance that he placed on the other
man's opinion.  He was beginning to grow his crop of ideas and he was
already afraid of the probable harvest.

That his affection for Dahlia was dead there could be no question, but
that it was buried, either for himself or the public, was, most
unfortunately, not the case.  He was afraid of discovery for the first
time in his life, and it was unpleasant.  Dahlia herself would be
quiet; at least, he was almost sure, although her outbreak the other
evening had surprised him.  But he was afraid of Mrs. Feverel.  He felt
now that she had never liked him; he saw her as some grim dragon
waiting for his inevitable surrender.  He did not know what she would
do; he was beginning to realise his inexperience, but he knew that she
would never allow the affair to pass quietly away.  To do him justice,
it was not so much the fear of personal exposure that frightened him;
that, of course, would be unpleasant--he would have to face the
derision of his enemies and the contempt of those people whom formerly
he had himself despised.  But it was not personal contempt, it was the
disgrace to the family; the house was suddenly threatened on two
sides--his father, the Feverels--and he was frightened.  He saw his
name in the papers; the Trojan name dragged through the mud because of
his own folly--Oh! it must be stopped at all costs.  But the
uncertainty of it was worrying him.  Ten days had passed and nothing
was done.  Ten days, and he had been able to speak of it to no one; it
had haunted him all day and had spoiled his sleep; first, because he
had done something of which he was ashamed, and secondly, because he
was afraid that people might know.

There were the letters.  He remembered some of the sentences now and
bit his lip.  How could he have been such a fool?  She must give them
back--of course she would; but there was Mrs. Feverel.

The uncertainty was torturing him--he must find out how matters were,
and suddenly, on the inspiration of the moment, he decided to go and
see Dahlia at once.  Things could not be worse, and at least the
uncertainty would be ended.  The golden day irritated him, and he found
the dark gloom of the Feverels' street a relief.  A man was playing an
organ at the corner, and three dirty, tattered children were dancing
noisily in the middle of the road.  He watched them for a moment before
ringing the bell, and wondered how they could seem so unconcerned, and
he thought them abandoned.

He found Dahlia alone in the gaudy drawing-room.  She gave a little cry
when she saw who it was, and her cheeks flushed red, and then the
colour faded.  He noticed that she was looking ill and rather untidy.
There were dark lines under her eyes and her mouth was drawn.  There
was an awkward pause; he had sat down with his hat in his hand and he
was painfully ill at ease.

"I knew you would come back, Robin," she began at last.  "Only you have
been a long time--ten days.  I have never gone out, because I was
afraid that I would miss you.  But I knew that you would be sorry after
the other night, because you know, dear, you hurt me terribly, and for
a time I really thought you meant it."

"But I do mean it," Robin broke in.  "I did and I do.  I'm sorry,
Dahlia, for having hurt you, but I thought that you would see it as I
do--that it must, I mean, stop.  I had hoped that you would understand."

But she came over and stood by him, smiling rather timidly.  "I don't
want to start it all over again," she said.  "It was silly of me to
have made such a fuss the other night.  I have been thinking all these
ten days, and it has been my fault all along.  I have bothered you by
coming here and interfering when I wasn't really wanted.  Mother and I
will go away again and then you shall come and stay, and we shall be
all alone--like we were at Cambridge.  I have learnt a good deal during
these last few days, and if you will only be patient with me I will try
very hard to improve."

She stood by his chair and laid her hand on his arm.  He would have
thrilled at her touch six months before--now he was merely impatient.
It was so annoying that the affair should have to be reopened when they
had decided it finally the other night.  He felt again the blind,
unreasoning fear of exposure.  He had never before doubted his bravery,
but there had never been any question of attack--the House had been, it
seemed, founded on a rock, he had never doubted its stability before.
Now, with all the cruelty of a man who was afraid for the first time,
he had no mercy.

"It is over, Dahlia--there is no other possibility.  We had both made a
mistake; I am sorry and regret extremely if I had led you to think that
it could ever have been otherwise.  I see it more clearly than I saw it
ten days ago--quite plainly now--and there's no purpose served in
keeping the matter open; here's an end.  We will both forget.  Heroics
are no good; after all, we are man and woman--it's better to leave it
at that and accept the future quietly."

He spoke coldly and calmly, indeed he was surprised that he could face
it like that, but his one thought was for peace, to put this spectre
that had haunted him these ten days behind him and watch the world
again with a straight gaze--he must have no secrets.

She had moved away and stood by the fireplace, looking straight before
her.  She was holding herself together with a terrible effort; she must
quiet her brain and beat back her thoughts.  If she thought for a
moment she would break down, and during these ten days she had been
schooling herself to face whatever might come--shame, exposure,
anything--she would not cry and beg for pity as she had done before.
But it was the end, the end, the end!  The end of so much that had
given her a new soul during the last few months.  She must go back to
those dreary years that had had no meaning in them, all those
purposeless grey days that had stretched in endless succession on to a
dismal future in which there shone no sun.  Oh! he couldn't know what
it had all meant to her--it could be flung aside by him without regret.
For him it was a foolish memory, for her it was death.

The tears were coming, her lips were quivering, but she clenched her
hands until the nails dug into the flesh.  The sun poured in a great
flood of colour through the window, and meanwhile her heart was broken.
She had read of it often enough and had laughed--she had not known that
it meant that terrible dull throbbing pain and no joy or hope or light
anywhere.  But she spoke to him quietly.

"I had thought that you were braver, Robin.  That you had cared enough
not to mind what they said.  You are right: it has all been a mistake."

"Yes," he said doggedly, without looking at her.  "We've been foolish.
I hadn't thought enough about others.  You see after all one owes
something to one's people.  It would never do, Dahlia, it wouldn't
really.  You'd never like it either--you see we're different.  At
Cambridge one couldn't see it so clearly, but here--well, there are
things one owes to one's people, tradition, and, oh! lots of things!
You have got your customs, we have ours--it doesn't do to mix."

He hadn't meant to put it so clearly.  He scarcely realised what he had
said because he was not thinking of her at all; it was only that one
thing that he saw in front of him, how to get out, away, clear of the
whole entanglement, where there was no question of suspicion and
possible revelation of secrets.  He was not thinking of her.

But the cruelty of it, the naked, unhesitating truth of it, stung her
as nothing had ever hurt her before--it was as though he had struck her
in the face.  She was not good enough, she was not fit.  He had said it
before, but then he had been angry.  She had not believed it; but now
he was speaking calmly, coldly--she was not good enough!

And in a moment her idol had tumbled to the ground--her god was lying
pitifully in the dust, and all the Creed that she had learnt so
patiently and faithfully had crumbled into nothing.  Her despair
seemed, for the moment, to have gone; she only felt burning
contempt--contempt for him, that he could seem so small--contempt for
herself, that she could have worshipped at such altars.

She turned round and looked at him.

"That is rather unfair.  You say that I am not your equal socially.
Well, we will leave it at that--you are quite right--it is over."

He lowered his eyes before her steady gaze.  At last he was ashamed; he
had not meant to put it brutally.  He had behaved like a cad and he
knew it.  Her white face, her hands clenched tightly at her side, the
brave lift of her head as she faced him, moved him as her tears and
emotions had never done.

He sprang up and stood by her.

"Dahlia, I've been a brute, a cad--I didn't know what I had said--I
didn't mean it like that, as you thought.  Only I've been so worried,
I've not known where to turn and--oh, don't you see, I'm so young.  I
get driven, I can't stand up against them all."

Why, he was nearly crying.  The position was suddenly reversed, and she
could almost have laughed at the change.  He was looking at her
piteously, like a boy convicted of orchard-robbing--and she had loved
him, worshipped him!  Five minutes ago his helplessness would have
stirred her, she would have wanted to take him and protect him and
comfort him; but now all that was past--she felt only contempt and
outraged pride: her eyes were hard and her hands unclenched.

"It is no good, Robin.  You were quite right.  There is an end of
everything.  It was a mistake for both of us, and perhaps it is as well
that we should know it now.  It will spare us later."

So that was the end.  He felt little triumph or satisfaction; he was
only ashamed.

He turned to go without a word.  Then he remembered--"There are the
letters?"

"Ah! you must let me keep them--for a memory."  She was not looking at
him, but out of the window on to the street.  A cab was slowly crawling
in the distance--she could see the end of the driver's whip as he
flicked at his horses.

"You can't--you don't mean----?"  Robin turned back to her.

"I mean nothing--only I am--tired.  You had better go.  We will write
if there is anything more."

"Look here!"  Robin was trembling from head to foot.  "You must let me
have them back.  It's serious--more than you know.  People might see
them and--my God! you would ruin me!"

He was speaking melodramatically, and he looked melodramatic and very
ridiculous.  He was crushing his bowler in his hands.

"No.  I will keep them!"  She spoke slowly and quite calmly, as though
she had thought it all out before.  "They are valuable.  Now you must
go.  This has been silly enough--Good-bye."

She turned to the window and he was dismissed.  His pride came to the
rescue; he would not let her see that he cared, so he went--without
another word.

She stood in the same position, and watched him go down the street.  He
was walking quickly and at the same time a little furtively, as though
he was afraid of meeting acquaintances.  She turned away from the
window, and then, suddenly, knelt on the floor with her head in her
hands.  She sobbed miserably, hopelessly, with her hands pressed
against her face.

And Mrs. Feverel found her kneeling there in the sunlight an hour later.

"Dahlia," she said softly, "Dahlia!"

The girl looked up.  "He has gone, mother," she said.  "And he is never
coming back.  I sent him away."

And Mrs. Feverel said nothing.




CHAPTER VII

There were times when Harry felt curiously, impressively, the age of
the house.  It was not all of it old, it had been added to from time to
time by successive Trojans; but there had, from the earliest days, been
a stronghold on the hill overlooking the sea and keeping guard.

He had had a wonderful pride in it on his return, but now he began to
feel as though he had no right in it.  Surely if any one had a right to
such a heritage it was he, but they had isolated him and told him that
he had no place there.  The gardens, the corners and battlements of the
house, the great cliff falling sheer to the sea, had had no welcome for
him, and when he had claimed his succession they had refused him.  He
was beginning to give the stocks and stones of the House a personal
existence.  Sometimes at night, when the moon gave the place grey
shadows and white lights, or in the early morning when the first birds
were crying in the trees and the sea was slowly taking colour from the
rising sun, in the perfect stillness and beauty of those hours the
house had seemed to speak to him with a new voice.  He imagined,
fantastically at times, that the white statues in the garden watched
him with grave eyes, wondering what place he would take in the
chronicles of the House.

It was Sunday afternoon, and he was alone in the library.  That was a
room that had always appealed to him, with its dark red walls covered
from floor to ceiling with books, its wide stone fireplace, its soft,
heavy carpets, its wonderfully comfortable armchairs.  It seemed to him
the very perfection of that spirit of orderly comfort and luxurious
simplicity for which he had so earnestly longed in New Zealand.  He sat
in that room for hours, alone, thinking, wondering, puzzling, devising
new plans for Robin's surrender and rejecting them as soon as they were
formed.

He was sitting by the fire now, hearing the coals click as they fell
into the golden furnace that awaited them.  He was comparing the
incidents of the morning with those of the preceding Sunday, and he
knew that things were approaching a crisis.  Clare had scarcely spoken
to him for three days.  Garrett and Robin had not said a word beyond a
casual good-morning.  They were ignoring him, continuing their daily
life as though he did not exist at all.  He remembered that he had felt
his welcome a fortnight before a little cold--it seemed rapturous
compared with the present state of things.

They had driven to church that morning in state.  No one had exchanged
a word during the whole drive.  Clare had sat quietly, in solemn
magnificence, without moving an eyelid.  They had moved from the
carriage to the church in majestic procession, watched by an admiring
cluster of townspeople.  He had liked Clare's fine bearing and Robin's
carriage; there was no doubt that they supported family traditions
worthily, but he felt that, in the eyes of the world, he scarcely
counted at all.  It was a cold and over-decorated church, with an air
of wealth and lack of all warm emotions that was exactly characteristic
of its congregation.  Harry thought that he had never seen a gathering
of more unresponsive people.  An excellent choir sang Stainer in B flat
with perfect precision and fitting respect, and the hymns and psalms
were murmured with proper decorum.  The clergyman who had come to tea
on the day after Harry's arrival preached a carefully calculated and
excellently worded sermon.  Although his text was the publican's "Lord,
be merciful to me, a sinner," it was evident that his address was
tinged with the Pharisee's self-congratulations.

A little gathering was formed in the porch after the service, and Mrs.
le Terry, magnificent in green silk and an enormous hat, was the only
person who took any interest in Harry, and she was looking over his
head during the conversation in order, apparently, to fix the attention
of some gentleman moving in the opposite direction.

At lunch Harry had made a determined effort towards cheerfulness.  He
had learnt that heartiness was bad manners and effusion a crime, so he
was quiet and restrained.  But his efforts failed miserably; Robin
seemed worried and his thoughts were evidently far away, Clare was
occupied with the impertinence of some stranger who had thrust himself
into the Trojan pew at the last moment, and Garrett was repeating
complacently a story that he had heard at the Club tending to prove the
unsanitary condition of the lower classes in general and the
inhabitants of the Cove in particular.  After lunch they had left him
alone; he had not dared to petition Robin for a walk, so, sick at heart
and miserably lonely, he had wandered disconsolately into the library.
He had taken from one of the shelves the volume T-U of _The Dictionary
of National Biography_, and had amused himself by searching for the
names of heroes in Trojan annals.

There was only one who really mattered--a certain Humphrey Trojan,
1718-1771; a man apparently of poor circumstances and quite a distant
cousin of the main branch, one who had been in all probability despised
by the Sir Henry Trojan of that time.  Nevertheless he had been a
person of some account in history and had, from the towers of the
House, watched the sea and the stars to some purpose.  He had been
admitted, Harry imagined, into the sacred precincts after his
researches had made him a person of national importance, and it was
amusing to picture Sir Henry's pride transformed into a rather
obsequious familiarity when "My cousin, Humphrey, had been honoured by
an interview with his Majesty and had received an Order at the royal
hand"--amusing, yes, but not greatly to the glory of Sir Henry.  Harry
liked to picture Humphrey in his days of difficulty--sturdy,
persevering, confident in his own ability, oblivious of the cuts dealt
him by his cousin.  Time would show.

He let the book fall and gazed at the fire, thinking.  After all, he
was a poor creature.  He had none of that perseverance and belief in
his own ultimate success, and it was better, perhaps, to get right out
of it, to throw up the sponge, to turn tail, and again there floated
before him that wonderful dream of liberty and the road--of a
relationship with the world at large, and no constraint of family
dignity and absurd grades of respectability.  Off with the harness; he
had worn it for a fortnight and he could bear it no longer.  Bethel was
right; he would follow the same path and find his soul by losing it in
the eyes of the world.  But after all, there was Robin.  He had not
given it a fair trial, and it was only cowardice that had spoken to him.

The clock struck half-past three and he went upstairs to see his
father.  The old man seldom left his bed now.  He grew weaker every day
and the end could not be far away.  He had no longer any desire to
live, and awaited with serene confidence the instant of departure,
being firmly convinced that Death was too good a gentleman to treat a
Trojan scurvily, and that, whatever the next world might contain, he
would at least be assured of the respect and deference that the present
world had shown him.  His mind dwelt continually on his early days,
and, even when there was no one present to listen, he repeated
anecdotes and reminiscences for the benefit of the world at large.  His
face seemed to have dwindled considerably, but his eyes were always
alive--twinkling over the bedclothes like lights in a dark room.  His
mouth never moved, only his hand, claw-like and yellow as parchment,
clutched the bedclothes and sometimes waved feebly in the air to
emphasise his meaning.  He had grown strangely intolerant of Clare, and
although he submitted to her offices as usual, did so reluctantly and
with no good grace; she had served him faithfully and diligently for
twenty years and this was her reward.  She said nothing, but she laid
it to Harry's charge.

Sir Jeremy's eyes twinkled when he saw his son.  "Hey, Harry, my
boy--all of 'em out, aren't they?  Devilish good thing--no one to worry
us.  Just give the pillows a punch and pull that table nearer--that's
right.  Just pull that blind up--I can't see the sea."

The room had changed its character within the last week.  It was a
place of silences and noiseless tread, and the scent of flowers mingled
with the intangible odour of medicine.  A great fire burnt in the open
fireplace, and heavy curtains had been hung over the door to prevent
draughts.

Harry moved silently about the room, flung up the blind to let in the
sun, propped up the pillows, and then sat down by the bed.

"You're looking better, father," he said; "you'll soon be up again."

"The devil I will," said Sir Jeremy.  "No, it's not for me.  I'm here
for a month or two, and then I'm off.  I've had my day, and a damned
good one too.  What do you think o' that girl now, Harry--she's
fine--what?"

He produced from under the pillow a photograph, yellow with age, of a
dancer--jet-black hair and black eyes, her body balanced on one leg,
her hands on her hips.  "Anonita Sendella--a devilish fine woman, by
gad--sixty years ago that was--and Tom Buckley and I were in the
running.  He had the money and I had the looks, although you wouldn't
think it now.  She liked me until she got tired of me and she died o'
drink--not many like that nowadays."  He gazed at the photograph whilst
his eyes twinkled.  "Legs--by Heaven! what legs!" He chuckled.
"Wouldn't do for Clare to see that; she was shaking my pillows this
mornin' and I was in a deuce of a fright--thought the thing would
tumble out."

He lay back on his pillows thinking, and Harry stared out of the
window.  The end would come in a month or two--perhaps sooner; and
then, what would happen?  He would take his place as head of the
family.  He laughed to himself--head of the family! when Clare and
Garrett and Robin all hated him?  Head of the family!

The sky was grey and the sea flecked with white horses.  It was
shifting colours to-day like a mother-of-pearl shell--a great band of
dark grey on the horizon, and then a soft carpet of green turning to
grey again by the shore.  The grey hoofs [Transcriber's note: roofs?]
of the Cove crowded down to the edge of the land, seeming to lean a
little forward, as though listening to what the sea had to say; the
sun, breaking mistily through the clouds, was a round ball of dull
gold--a line of breakwater, far in the distance, seemed ever about to
advance down the stretch of sea to the shore, as though it would hurl
itself on the cluster of brown sails in the little bay, huddling there
for protection.  Head of the House!  What was the use, when the House
didn't want him?

His father was watching him and seemed to have read his thoughts.
"You'll take my place, Harry?" he said.  "They won't like it, you know.
It was partly my fault.  I sent you away and you grew up away, and
they've always been here.  I've been wanting you to come back all this
time, and it wasn't because I was angry that I didn't ask you--but it
was better for you.  You don't see it yet; you came back thinking
they'd welcome you and be glad to see you, and you're a bit hurt that
they haven't.  They've been hard to you, all of 'em--your boy as well.
I've known, right enough.  But it cuts both ways, you see.  They can't
see your point of view, and they're afraid of the open air you're
letting in on to them.  You're too soft, Harry; you've shown them that
it hurts, and they've wanted it to hurt.  Give 'em a stiff back, Harry,
give 'em a stiff back.  Then you'll have 'em.  That's like us Trojans.
We're devilish cruel because we're devilish proud; if you're kind we
hurt, but if you do a bit of hurting on your own account we like it."

"I've made a mess of it," Harry said, "a hopeless mess of it.  I've
tried everything, and it's all failed.  I'd better back out of it--"
Then, after a pause, "Robin hates me----"

Sir Jeremy chuckled.

"Oh no, he doesn't.  He's like the rest of us.  You wanted him to give
himself away at once, and of course he wouldn't.  They're trying you
and waiting to see what you'll do, and Robin's just following on.
You'll be all right, only give 'em a stiff back, the whole crowd of
'em."

Suddenly his wrinkled yellow hand shot out from under the bedclothes
and he grasped his son's.  "You're a damned fine chap," he said, "and
I'm proud of you--only you're a bit of a fool--sentimental, you know.
But you'll make more of the place than I've ever done, God bless you--"
after which he lay back on his pillows again, and was soon asleep.

Harry waited for a little, and then he stole out of the room.  He told
the nurse to take his place, and went downstairs.

It was four o'clock, and he was going to tea at the Bethels'.  He had
been there pretty frequently during the past week--that and the Cove
were his only courts of welcome.  He knew that his going there had only
aggravated his offences in the eyes of his sister, but that he could
not help.  Why should they dictate his friends to him?

The little drawing-room was neat and clean.  There were some flowers,
and the chairs and sofa were not littered with books and needlework and
strange fragments of feminine garments.  Mrs. Bethel was gorgeous in a
green silk dress and the paint was more obtrusive than ever.  Her eyes
were red as though she had been crying, and her hair as usual had
escaped bounds.

Mary was making tea and smiled up at him.  "Shout at father," she said.
"He's downstairs in the study, browsing.  He'll come up when he knows
you are here."

Harry went to the head of the stairs and called, and Bethel came
rushing up.  Sunday made no difference to his clothes, and he wore the
grey suit and flannel collar of their first meeting.

His greeting was, as ever, boisterous.  "Hullo! Trojan! that's
splendid!  I was afraid they'd carry you off to that church of yours or
you'd have a tea-party or something.  I'm glad they've spared you."

"No, I went this morning," Harry answered, "all of us solemnly in the
family coach.  I thought that was enough for one day."

"We used to have a carriage when papa was alive," said Mrs. Bethel,
"and we drove to church every Sunday.  We were the only people beside
the Porsons, and theirs was only a pony-cart."

"Well, for my part, I hate driving," said Mary.  "It puts you in a bad
temper for the sermon."

"Let's have tea," said Bethel.  "I'm as hungry as though I'd listened
to fifty parsons."

And, indeed, he always was.  He ate as though he had had no meal for a
month at least, and he had utterly demolished the tea-cake before he
realised that no one else had had any.

"Oh, I say, I'm so sorry," he said ruefully.  "Mary, why didn't you
tell me?  I'll never forgive myself----" and proceeded to finish the
saffron buns.

"All the same," said Mary, "we're going to church to-night, all of us,
and if you're very good, Mr. Trojan, you shall come too."

Harry paused for a moment.  "I shall be delighted," he said; "but where
do you go?"

"There's a little church called St. Sennan's.  You haven't heard of it,
probably.  It's past the Cove--on a hill looking over the sea.  It's
the most tumble-down old place you ever saw, and nobody goes there
except a few fishermen, but we know the clergyman and like him.  I like
the place too--you can listen to the sea if you're bored with the
sermon."

"The parson is like one of the prophets," said Bethel.  "Too strong for
the Pendragon point of view.  It's a place of ruins, Trojan, and the
congregation are like a crowd of ancient Britons--but you'll like it."

Mrs. Bethel was unwontedly quiet--it was obvious that she was in
distress; Mary, too, seemed to speak at random, and there was an air of
constraint in the room.

When they set off for church the grey sky had changed to blue; the sun
had just set, and little pink clouds like fairy cushions hung round the
moon.  As they passed out of the town, through the crooked path down to
the Cove, Harry had again that strong sense of Cornwall that came to
him sometimes so suddenly, so strangely, that it was almost mysterious,
for it seemed to have no immediate cause, no absolute relation to
surrounding sights or sounds.  Perhaps to-night it was in the misty
half-light of the shining moon and the dying sun, the curious stillness
of the air so that the sounds and cries of the town came distinctly on
the wind, the scent of some wild flowers, the faint smell of the
chrysanthemums that Mary was wearing at her breast.

"By Jove, it's Cornwall," he said, drawing a great breath.  He was
walking a little ahead with Mary, and he turned to her as she spoke.
She was walking with her head bent, and did not seem to hear him.
"What's up?" he said.

"Nothing," she answered, trying to smile.

"But there is," he insisted.  "I'm not blind.  I've bored you with my
worries.  You might honour me with yours."

"There isn't anything really.  One's foolish to mind, and, indeed, it's
not for myself that I care--but it's mother."

"What have they done?"

"They don't like us--none of them do.  I don't know why they should; we
aren't, perhaps, very likeable.  But it is cruel of them to show it.
Mother, you see, likes meeting people--we had it in London, friends I
mean, lots of them, and then when we came here we had none.  We have
never had any from the beginning.  We tried, perhaps a little too hard,
to have some.  We gave little parties and they failed, and then people
began to think us peculiar, and if they once do that here you're done
for.  Perhaps we didn't see it quite soon enough and we went on trying,
and then they began to snub us."

"Snub you?"

"Yes, you know the kind of thing.  You saw that first day we met
you----"

"And it hurts?"

"Yes--for mother.  She still tries; she doesn't see that it's no good,
and each time that she goes and calls, something happens and she comes
back like she did to-day.  I don't suppose they mean to be unkind--it
is only that we are, you see, peculiar, and that doesn't do here.
Father wears funny clothes and never sees any one, and so they think
there must be something wrong----"

"It's a shame," he said indignantly.

"No," she answered, "it isn't really.  It's one's own fault--only
sometimes I hate it all.  Why couldn't we have stayed in London?  We
had friends there, and father's clothes didn't matter.  Here such
little things make such a big difference"--which was, Harry reflected,
a complete epitome of the life of Pendragon.

"I'm not whining," she went on.  "We all have things that we don't
like, but when you're without a friend----"

"Not quite," he said; "you must count me."  He stopped for a moment.
"You _will_ count me, won't you?"

"You realise what you are doing," she said.  "You are entering into
alliance with outcasts."

"You forget," he answered, "that I, also, am an outcast.  We can at
least be outcasts together."

"It is good of you," she said gravely; "I am selfish enough to accept
it.  If I was really worth anything, I would never let you see us
again.  It means ostracism."

"We will fight them," he answered gaily.  "We will storm the camp"; but
in his heart he knew that their stronghold, with "The Flutes" as the
heart of the defence, would be hard to overcome.

They climbed up the hill to the little church with the sea roaring at
their feet.  A strong wind was blowing, and, for a moment, at a steep
turn of the hill, she laid her hand on his arm; at the touch his heart
beat furiously--in that moment he knew that he loved her, that he had
loved her from the first moment that he had seen her, and he passed on
into the church.

It was, as Bethel had said, almost in ruins--the little nave was
complete, but ivy clambered in the aisles and birds had built their
nests in the pillars.  Three misty candles flickered on the altar, and
some lights burnt over the pulpit, but there were strange half-lights
and shadows so that it seemed a place of ghosts.  Through the open door
the night air blew, bringing with it the beating of the sea, and the
breath of grass and flowers.  The congregation was scanty; some
fishermen and their wives, two or three old women, and a baby that made
no sound but listened wonderingly with its finger in its mouth.  The
clergyman was a tall man with a long white beard and he did everything,
even playing the little wheezy harmonium.  His sermon was short and
simple, but was listened to with rapt attention.  There was something
strangely intense about it all, and the hymns were sung with an
eagerness that Harry had never heard elsewhere.  This was a contrast
with the church of the morning, just as the Cove was a contrast with
Pendragon; the parting of the ways seemed to face Harry at every moment
of his day--his choice was being urgently demanded and he had no longer
any hesitation.

Newsome was there, and he spoke to him for a moment on coming out.
"You'll be lonely 'up-along,'" he said; "you belong to us."

They all four walked back together.

"How do you like our ancient Britons?" said Bethel.

"It was wonderful," said Harry.  "Thank you for taking me."

They were all very silent, but when they parted at the turning of the
road Bethel laughed.  "Now you are one of us, Trojan.  We have claimed
you."

As he shook Mary's hand he whispered, "This has been a great evening
for me."

"I was wrong to grumble to you," she answered.  "You have worries
enough of your own.  I release you from your pledge."

"I will not be released," he said.

That night Clare Trojan, before going to bed, went into Garrett's room.
He was working at his book, and, as usual, hinted that to take such
advantage of his good-nature by her interruption was unfair.

"I suppose to-morrow morning wouldn't do instead, Clare--it's a bit
late."

"No, it wouldn't--I want you to listen to me.  It's important."

"Well?"  He seated himself in the most comfortable chair and sighed.
"Don't be too long."

She was excited and stood over him as though she would force him to be
interested.

"It's too much, Garrett.  It's got to stop."

"What?"

"Harry.  Some one must speak to him."

Garrett smiled.  "That, of course, will be you, Clare--you always do;
but if it's my permission that you want you may have it and welcome.
But we've discussed all this before.  What's the new turn of affairs?"

"No.  I want more than your permission; we must take some measures
together.  It's no good unless we act at once.  Miss Ponsonby told me
this afternoon--it has become common talk--the things he does, I mean.
She did not want to say anything, but I made her.  He goes down
continually to some low public-house in the Cove; he is with those
Bethels all day, and will see nothing of any of the decent people in
the place--he is becoming a common byword."

"It is a pity," Garrett said, "that he cannot choose his friends
better."

"He must--something must be done.  It is not for ourselves only, though
of course that counts.  But it is the House--our name.  They laugh at
him, and so at all of us.  Besides, there is Robin."

Garrett looked at his sister curiously--he had never seen her so
excited before.  But she found it no laughing matter.  Miss Ponsonby
would not have spoken unless matters had gone pretty far.  The Cove!
The Bethels!  Robin's father!

For, after all, it was for Robin that she cared.  She felt that she was
fighting his battles, and so subtly concealed from herself that she
was, in reality, fighting her own.  She was in a state of miserable
uncertainty.  She was not sure of her father, she was not sure of
Robin, scarcely sure of Garrett--everything threatened disaster.

"What will you do?"  Garrett had no desire that the responsibility
should be shifted in his direction; he feared responsibility as the
rock on which the ship of his carefully preserved proprieties might
come to wreck.

"Do?  Why, speak--it must be done.  Think of him during the whole time
that he has been here--not only to Pendragon, but to us.  He has made
no attempt whatever to fit in with our ways or thoughts; he has shown
no desire to understand any of us; and now he must be pulled up, for
his own sake as well as ours."

But Garrett offered her little assistance.  He had no proposals to
offer, and was barren of all definite efforts; he hated definite lines
of any kind, but he promised to fall in with her plans.

"I will come down to breakfast," she said, "and will speak to him
afterwards."

Garrett nodded wearily and went back to his work.  On the next morning
the crisis came.

Breakfast was a silent meal at all times.  Harry had learnt to avoid
the cheerful familiarity of his first morning--it would not do.  But
the heavy solemnity of the massive silver teapot, the ham and cold game
on the sideboard, the racks of toast that were so needlessly numerous,
drove him into himself, and, like his brother and son, he disappeared
behind folds of newspaper until the meal was over.

Clare frequently came down to breakfast, and therefore he saw nothing
unusual in her appearance.  The meal was quite silent; Clare had her
letters--and he was about to rise and leave the room, when she spoke.

"Wait a minute, Harry.  I want to say something.  No, Robin, don't
go--what I'm going to say concerns us all."

Garrett remained behind his newspaper, which showed that he had
received previous warning.  Robin looked up in surprise, and then
quickly at his father, who had moved to the fireplace.

"About me, Clare?"  He tried to speak calmly, but his voice shook a
little.  He saw that it was a premeditated attack, but he wished that
Robin hadn't been there.  He was, on the whole, glad that the moment
had come; the last week had been almost unbearable, and the situation
was bound to arrive at a crisis--well, here it was, but he wished that
Robin were not there.  As he looked at the boy for a moment his face
was white and his breath came sharply.  He had never loved him quite so
passionately as at that moment when he seemed about to lose him.

Clare had chosen her time and her audience well, and suddenly he felt
that he hated her; he was immediately calm and awaited her attack
almost nonchalantly, his hand resting on the mantelpiece, his legs
crossed.

Clare was still sitting at the table, her face half turned to Harry,
her glance resting on Robin.  She tapped the table with her letters,
but otherwise gave no sign of agitation.

"Yes--about you, Harry.  It is only that I think we have reason--almost
a right--to expect that you should yield a little more thoroughly to
our wishes.  Both _Garrett_"--this with emphasis--"and myself are sure
that your failing to do so is only due to a misconception on your part,
and it is because we are sure that you have only to realise them to
give way a little to them, that I--we--are speaking."

"I certainly had not realised that I had failed in deference to your
wishes, Clare."

"No, not failed--and it is absurd to talk of deference.  It is only
that I feel--we all feel"--this with another glance at Robin--"that it
is naturally impossible for you to realise exactly what are the things
required of us here.  Things that would in New Zealand have been of no
importance at all."

"Such as----?"

"Well, you must remember that we have, as it were, the eyes of all the
town upon us.  We occupy a position of some importance, and we are
definitely expected to maintain that position without lack of dignity."

"Won't you come to the point, Clare?  It is a little hard to see----"

"Oh, things are obvious enough--surely, Harry, you must see for
yourself.  People were ready to give you a warm welcome when you
returned.  I--we--all of us, were only too glad.  But you repulsed us
all.  Why, on the very day after your arrival you were extremely--I am
sorry, but there is no other word--discourteous to the Miss Ponsonbys.
You have made your friends almost entirely amongst the fisher class, a
strange thing, surely, for a Trojan to do, and you now, I believe,
spend your evenings frequently in a low public-house resorted to by
such persons--at any rate you have spent them neither here nor at the
Club, the two obvious places.  I am only mentioning these things
because I think that you may not have seen that such matters--trivial
as they may seem to you--reflect discredit, not only on yourself, but
also, indirectly, on all of us."

"You forget, Clare, that I have many old friends down at the Cove.
They were there when I was a boy.  The people in Pendragon have changed
very largely, almost entirely.  There is scarcely any one whom I knew
twenty years ago; it is, I should have thought, quite natural that I
should go to see my old friends again after so long an absence."

He was trying to speak quietly and calmly.  His heart was beating
furiously, but he knew that if he once lost control, he would lose,
too, his position.  But, as he watched them, and saw their cold,
unmoved attitude his anger rose; he had to keep it down with both hands
clenched--it was only by remembering Robin that the effort was
successful.

"Natural to go and see them on your return--of course.  But to return,
to go continually, no.  I cannot help feeling, Harry, that you have
been a little selfish.  That you have scarcely seen our side of the
question.  Things have changed in the last twenty years--changed
enormously.  We have seen them, studied them, and, I think, understood
them.  You come back and face them without any preparation; surely you
cannot expect to understand them quite as we do."

"This seems to me, I must confess, Clare, a great deal of concern about
a very little matter.  Surely I am not a person of such importance that
a few visits to the Cove can ruin us socially?"

"Ah! that is what you don't understand!  Little things matter here.
People watch, and are, I am afraid, only too ready to fasten on matters
that do not concern them.  Besides, it is not only the Cove--there are
other things--there are, for instance, the Bethels."

At the name Robin started.  He liked Mary Bethel, had liked her very
much indeed, but he had known that his aunt disapproved of them and had
been careful to disguise his meetings.  But the instant thought in his
mind concerned the Feverels.  If the Bethels were impossible socially,
what about Dahlia and her mother?  What would his aunt say if she knew
of that little affair?  And the question which had attacked him acutely
during the last week in various forms hurt him now like a knife.

He watched his father curiously.  He did not look as if he cared very
greatly.  Of course Aunt Clare was perfectly right.  He had been
selfishly indifferent, had cared nothing for their feelings.  Randal
had shown plainly enough how impossible he was.  Indeed the shadow of
Randal lurked in the room in a manner that would have pleased that
young gentleman intensely had he known it.  Clare had it continually
before her, urging her, advising her, commanding her.

At the mention of the Bethels, Harry looked up sharply.

"I think we had better leave them out of the discussion."  His voice
trembled a little.

"Why?  Are they so much to you?  They have, however, a good deal to do
with my argument.  Do you think it was wise to neglect the whole of
Pendragon for the society of the Bethels--people of whom one is an
idler and loafer and the other a lunatic?"  Clare was becoming excited.

"You forget, Clare, that I first met them in your drawing-room."

"They were there entirely against my will.  I showed them that quite
distinctly at the time.  They will not come again."

"That may be.  But they are, as you have said, my friends.  I cannot,
therefore, hear them insulted.  They must be left out of the
discussion."

On any other matter he could have heard her quietly, but the Bethels
she must leave alone.  He could see Mary, as he spoke, turning on the
hill and laying her hand on his arm; her hair blew in the wind and the
light in her eyes shone under the moon.  He had for a moment forgotten
Robin.

"At any rate, I have made my meaning clear.  We wish you--out of regard
for us, if for no other reason--to be a little more careful both of
your company and of your statements.  It is hard for you to see the
position quite as we do, I know, but I cannot say that you have made
any attempt whatsoever to see it with our eyes.  It seems useless to
appeal to you on behalf of the House, but that, too, is worth some
consideration.  We have been here for many hundreds of years; we should
continue in the paths that our ancestors have marked out.  I am only
saying what you yourself feel, Garrett?"

"Absolutely."  Garrett looked up from his paper.  "I think you must
see, Harry, that we are quite justified in our demands--Clare has put
it quite plainly."

"Quite," said Harry.  "And you, Robin?"

"I think that Aunt Clare is perfectly right," answered Robin coldly.

Harry's face was very white.  He spoke rapidly and his hand gripped the
marble of the mantelpiece; he did not want them to see that his legs
were trembling.

"Yes.  I am glad to know exactly where we stand.  It is better for all
of us.  I might have taken it submissively, Clare, had you left out
your last count against me.  That was unworthy of you.  But haven't
you, perhaps, seen just a little too completely your own point of view
and omitted mine?  I came back a stranger.  I was ready to do anything
to win your regard.  I was perhaps a little foolishly sentimental about
it, but I am a very easy person to understand--it could not have been
very difficult.  I imagined, foolishly, that things would be quite
easy--that there would be no complications.  I soon found that I had
made a mistake; you have taught me more during the last fortnight than
I had ever learnt in all my twenty years abroad.  I have learnt that to
expect affection from your own relations, even from your son, is
absurd--affection is bad form; that, of course, was rather a shock.

"You have had, all of you, your innings during the last fortnight.  You
have decided, with your friends, that I am impossible, and from that
moment you have deliberately cut me.  You have driven me to find
friends of my own and then you have complained of the friends that I
have chosen.  That is completed--in a fortnight you have shown me,
quite plainly, your position.  Now I will show you mine.  You have
refused to have anything to do with me--for the future the position
shall be reversed.  I shall alter in no respect whatever, either my
friendships or my habits.  I shall go where I please, do what I please,
see whom I please.  We shall, of course, disguise our position from the
world.  I have learnt that disguise is a very important part of one's
education.  Our former relations from this moment cease entirely."

He was speaking apparently calmly, but his anger was at white-heat.
All the veiled insults and disappointments of the last fortnight rose
before him, but, above all, he saw Mary as though he were defending
her, there, in the room.  He would never forgive them.

Clare was surprised, but she did not show it.  She got up from the
table and walked to the door.  "Very well, Harry," she said, "I think
you will regret it."

Garrett rose too, his hand trembling a little as he folded his
newspaper.

"That is, I suppose, an ultimatum," he said.  "It is a piece of
insolence that I shall not forget."

Robin was turning to leave the room.  Harry suddenly saw him.  He had
forgotten him; he had thought only of Mary.

"Robin," he whispered, stepping towards him.  "Robin--you don't think
as they do?"

"I agree with my aunt," he said, and he left the room, closing the door
quietly behind him.

Harry's defiance had left him.  For a moment the only thing that he saw
clearly in a world that had suddenly grown dark and cold was his son.
He had forgotten the rest--his sister, Mary, Pendragon--it all seemed
to matter nothing.

He had come from New Zealand to love his son--for nothing else.

He had an impulse to run after him, to seize him, and hold him, and
force him to come back.

Then he remembered--his pride stung him.  He would fight it out to the
end; he would, as his father said, "show them a stiff back."

He was very white, and for a moment he had to steady himself by the
table.  The silver teapot, the ham, the racks of toast were all
there--how strange, when the rest of the world had changed; he was
quite alone now--he must remember that--he had no son.  And he, too,
went out, closing the door quietly behind him.




CHAPTER VIII

Some letters during this week:--


23 SOUTHWICK CRESCENT, W.,
  _October_ 10, 1906.

My dear Robin--I should have written before, I am ashamed of my
omission, but my approaching departure abroad has thrown a great many
things on my hands; I have a paper to finish for Clarkson and an essay
for the _New Review_, and letter-writing has been at a standstill.  It
was delightful--that little peep of you that I got--and it only made me
regret the more that it is impossible to see much of you nowadays.  I
cannot help feeling that there is a danger of vegetation if one limits
oneself too completely to a provincial life, and, charming though
Cornwall is, its very fascination causes one to forget the importance
of the outer world.  I fancied that I discerned signs that you yourself
felt this confinement and wished for something broader.  Well, why not
have it?  I confess that I see no reason.  Come up to London for a
time--go abroad--your beloved Germany is waiting for you, and a year at
one of the Universities would be both amusing and instructive.  These
are only suggestions; I should hesitate to offer them at all were it
not that there has always been such sympathy between us that I know you
will not resent them.  Of course, the arrival of your father has made
considerable difference.  I must say, honestly, that I regretted to see
that you had not more in common.  The fault, I expect, has been on both
sides; as I said to you before, it has been hard for him to realise
exactly what it is that we consider important.  We--quite mistakenly
possibly--have come to feel that certain things, art, literature,
music, are absolutely essential to us, morally and physically.

They are nothing at all to him, and I can quite understand that you
have found it difficult--almost impossible--to grasp his standpoint.  I
must confess that he did not seem to me to attempt to consider yours;
but it is easy, and indeed impertinent, to criticise, and I hope that,
on the next occasion of your writing, I shall hear that things are
going smoothly and that the first inevitable awkwardnesses have worn
off.

I must stop.  I have let my pen wander away with me.  But do consider
what I said about coming up to town; I am sure that it is bad for you
in every way--this burial.  Think of your friends, old chap, and let
them see something of you.--Yours ever,

LANCELOT RANDAL.



"THE FLUTES," PENDRAGON,
  _October_ 12, 1906.

My dear Lance--Thanks very much for your letter.  This mustn't pretend
to be anything of a letter.  I have a thousand things to do, and no
time to do them.  It was very delightful seeing you, and I, too, was
extremely sorry we could not see more of you.  My aunt enjoyed your
visit enormously, and told me to remind you that you are expected here,
for a long stay, on your return from Germany.

Yes, I was worried and am still.  There are various things--"it never
rains but it pours"--but I cannot feel that they are in the least due
to my vegetating.  I haven't the least intention of sticking here, but
my grandfather is, as you know, very ill, and it is impossible for me
to get away at present.

Resent what you said!  Why, no, of course not.  We are too good friends
for resentment, and I am only too grateful for your advice.  The
situation here at this moment is peculiarly Meredithian--and, although
one ought perhaps to be silent concerning it, I know that I can trust
you absolutely and I need your advice badly.  Besides, I must speak to
some one about it; I have been thinking it over all day and am quite at
a loss.  There was battle royal this morning after breakfast, and my
father was extremely rude to my aunt, acting apparently from quite
selfish motives.  I want to look at it fairly, but I can, honestly, see
it in no other light.  My aunt accused him of indifference with regard
to the family good name.  She, quite rightly, I think, pointed out that
his behaviour from first to last had been the reverse of courteous to
herself and her friends, and she suggested that he had, perhaps,
scarcely realised the importance of maintaining the family dignity in
the eyes of Pendragon.  You remember his continual absences and the
queer friendships that he formed.  She suggested that he should modify
these, and take a little more interest in the circle to which we,
ourselves, belong.  Surely there is nothing objectionable in all this;
indeed, I should have thought that he would have been grateful for her
advice.  But no--he fired up in the most absurd manner, accused us of
unfairness and prejudice, declared his intention of going his own way,
and gave us all his congé.  In fact, he was extremely rude to my aunt,
and I cannot forgive him for some of the things that he said.  His
attitude has been absurd from the first, and I cannot see that we could
have acted otherwise, but the situation is now peculiar, and what will
come of it I don't know.  I must dress for dinner--I am curious to see
whether he will appear--he was out for lunch.  Let me have a line if
you have a spare moment.  I scarcely know how to act.--Yours,

ROBERT TROJAN.



23 SOUTHWICK CRESCENT, W.,
  _October_ 14, 1906.

Dear Robin--In furious haste, am just off and have really no time for
anything.  I am more sorry than I can say to hear your news.  I must
confess that I had feared something of the kind; matters seemed working
to a climax when I was with you.  As to advice, it is almost
impossible; I really don't know what to say, it is so hard for me to
judge of all the circumstances.  But it seems to me that your father
can have had no warrant for the course that he took.  One is naturally
chary of delivering judgment in such a case, but it was, obviously, his
duty to adapt himself to his environment.  He cannot blame you for
reminding him of that fact.  Out of loyalty to your aunt, I do not see
that you can do anything until he has apologised.  But I will think of
the matter further, and will write to you from abroad.--In great haste,
your friend, LANCELOT RANDAL.



"THE FLUTES," PENDRAGON, CORNWALL,
  _October_ 13, 1906.

Dear Miss Feverel--I must apologise for forcing you to realise once
more my existence.  Any reminder must necessarily be painful after our
last meeting, but I am writing this to request the return of all other
reminders of our acquaintance that you may happen to possess; I enclose
the locket, the ring, your letters, and the tie that you worked.  We
discussed this matter the other day, but I cannot believe that you will
still hold to a determination that can serve no purpose, except perhaps
to embitter feelings on both sides.  From what I have known of you I
cannot believe that you are indulging motives of revenge--but,
otherwise, I must confess that I am at a loss.--Expecting to receive
the letters by return, I am, yours truly,

ROBERT TROJAN.



9 SEA VIEW TERRACE, PENDRAGON, CORNWALL,
  _October_ 14, 1906.

Dear Mr. Trojan--Thank you for the locket, the ring, and the letters
which I have received.  I regret that I must decline to part with the
letters; surely it is not strange that I should wish to keep
them.--Yours truly, DAHLIA FEVEREL.



"THE FLUTES,"
  _October_ 15, 1906.

What do you mean?  You have no right to them.  They are mine.  I wrote
them.  You serve no purpose by keeping them.  Please return them at
once--by return.  I have done nothing to deserve this.  Unless you
return them, I shall know that you are merely an intriguing--; no, I
don't mean that.  Please send them back.  Suppose they should be
seen?--In haste, R. T.



9 SEA VIEW TERRACE, PENDRAGON, CORNWALL,
  _October_ 15, 1906.

My decision is unalterable.

D. F.



But Dahlia sat in the dreary little drawing-room watching the grey sea
with a white face and hard, staring eyes.

She had sat there all day.  She thought that soon she would go mad.
She had not slept since her last meeting with Robin; she had scarcely
eaten--she was too tired to think.

The days had been interminable.  At first she had waited, expecting
that he would come back.  A hundred impulses had been at work.  At
first she had thought that she would go and tell him that she had not
meant what she said; she would persuade him to come back, She would
offer him the letters and tell him that she had meant nothing--they had
been idle words.  But then she remembered some of the things that he
had said, some of the stones that he had flung.  She was not good
enough for him or his family; she had no right to expect that an
alliance was ever possible.  His family despised her.  And then her
thoughts turned from Robin to his family.  She had seen Clare often
enough and had always disliked her.  But now she hated her so that she
could have gladly killed her.  It was at her door that she laid all the
change in Robin and her own misery.  She felt that she would do
anything in the world to cause her pain.  She brooded over it in the
shabby little room with her face turned to the sea.  How could she hurt
her?  There were the others, too--the rest of the family--all except
Robin's father, who was, she felt instinctively, different.  She
thought that he would not have acted in that way.  And then her
thoughts turned back to Robin, and for a moment she fancied that she
hated him, and then she knew that she still loved him--and she stared
at the grey sea with misery in her heart and a dull, sombre confusion
in her brain.  No, she did not hate Robin, she did not really want to
hurt him.  How could she, when they had had those wonderful months
together?  Those months that seemed such centuries and centuries away.
But, nevertheless, she kept the letters.  Her mother had talked about
them, had advised her to keep them.  She did not mean to do anything
very definite with them--she could not look ahead very far--but she
would keep them for a little.

When she had seen Robin's handwriting again it had been almost more
than she could bear.  For some time she had been unable to tear open
the envelope and speculated, confusedly, on the contents.  Perhaps he
had repented.  She judged him by her own days and nights of utter
misery and knew that, had it been herself, they would have driven her
back crying to his feet.  Perhaps it was to ask for another interview.
That she would refuse.  She felt that she could not endure another such
meeting as their last; if he were to come to her without warning, to
surprise her suddenly--her heart beat furiously at the thought; but the
deliberate meeting merely for the purpose of his own advantage--no!

She opened the letter, read the cold lines, and knew that it was
utterly the end.  She had fancied, at their last meeting, that her
love, like a bird shot through the heart, had fallen at his feet, dead;
then, after those days of his absence, his figure had grown in her
sight, glorified, resplendent, and love had revived again--now, with
this letter she knew that it was over.  She did not cry, she scarcely
moved.  She watched the sea, with the letter on her lap, and felt that
a new Dahlia Feverel, a woman who would traffic no longer with
sentiment, who knew the world for what it was--a hard, merciless prison
with fiends for its gaolers--had sprung to birth.

She replied to him and showed her mother her answer.  She scarcely
listened to Mrs. Feverel's comments and went about her daily affairs,
quietly, without confusion.  She saw herself and Robin like figures in
a play--she applauded the comedy and the tragedy left her unmoved.
Robin Trojan had much to answer for.

He read her second letter with dismay.  He had spent the day in
solitary confinement in his room, turning the situation round and round
in his mind, lost in a perfect labyrinth of suggested remedies, none of
which afforded him any outlet.  The thought of exposure was horrible;
anything must be done to avoid that--disgrace to himself was bad
enough; to be held up for laughter before his Cambridge friends,
Randal, his London acquaintances--but disgrace to the family!  That was
the awful thing!

From his cradle this creed of the family had been taught him; he had
learnt it so thoroughly that he had grown to test everything by that
standard; it was his father's disloyalty to that creed that had roused
the son's anger--and now, behold, the son was sinning more than the
father!  It was truly ironic that, three days after his attacking a
member of the family for betraying the family, he himself should be
guilty of far greater betrayal!  How topsy-turvy the world seemed, and
what was to be done?

The brevity and conciseness of Dahlia's last letter left him in no
doubt as to her intentions.  Breach of Promise!  The letters would be
read in court, would be printed in the newspapers for all the world to
see.  With youth's easy grasping of eternity, it seemed to him that his
disgrace would be for ever.  Beddoes' "Death's Jest-book" was lying
open on his knee.  Wolfram's song--

  Old Adam, the carrion crow,
      The old crow of Cairo;
  He sat in the shower, and let it flow
    Under his tail and over his crest;
        And through every feather
        Leaked the wet weather;
  And the bough swung under his nest;
  For his beak it was heavy with marrow.
    Is that the wind dying?  Oh no;
  It's only two devils, that blow
  Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
      In the ghost's moonshine--

had always seemed to him the most madly sinister verse in English
literature.  It had been read to him by Randal at Cambridge and had had
a curious fascination for him from the first.  He had found that the
little bookseller at Worms had known it and had indeed claimed Beddoes
for a German--now it seemed to warn him vaguely of impending disaster.

He did not see that he himself could act any further in the matter; she
would not see him and writing was useless.  And yet to leave the matter
uncertain, waiting for the blow to fall, with no knowledge of the
movements in the other camp, was not to be thought of.  He must do
something.

The moment had arrived when advice must be taken--but from whom?  His
father was out of the question.  It was three days since the explosion,
and there was an armed truce.  He had, in spite of himself, admired his
father's conduct during the last three days, and he was surprised to
find that it was his aunt and uncle rather than his father who had
failed to carry off the situation.  He refused as yet to admit it to
himself, but the three of them, his aunt, his uncle, and himself, had
seemed almost frightened.  His father was another person; stern, cold,
unfailingly polite, suddenly apparently possessed of those little
courtesies in which he had seemed before so singularly lacking.  There
had been conversation of a kind at meals, and it had always been his
father who had filled awkward pauses and avoided difficult moments.
The knowledge, too, that his father would, in a few months' time, be
head of the house, was borne in upon him with new force; it might be
unpleasant, but it would not, as he had formerly fancied, be ludicrous.
A sign of his changed attitude was the fact that he rather resented
Randal's letter and wished a little that he had not taken him into his
confidence.

Nevertheless, to ask advice of his father was impossible.  He must
speak to his uncle and aunt.  How hard this would be only he himself
knew.  He had never in their eyes failed, in any degree, towards the
family honour.  From whatever side the House might be attacked, it
would not be through him.  There was nothing in his past life, they
thought, at which they would not care to look.

He realised, too, Clare's love for him.  He had known from very early
days that he counted for everything in her life; that her faith in the
family centred in his own honour and that her hopes for the family were
founded completely in his own progress--and now he must tell her this.

He could not, he knew, have chosen a more unfortunate time.  The House
had already been threatened by the conduct of the father; it was now to
totter under blows dealt by the son.  The first crisis had been severe,
this would be infinitely more so.  He hated himself for the first time
in his life, and, in doing so, began for the first time to realise
himself a little.

Well, he must speak to them and ask them what was to be done, and the
sooner it was over the better.  He put the Beddoes back into the shelf,
and went to the windows.  It was already dark; light twinkled in the
bay, and a line of white breakers flashed and vanished, keeping time,
it seemed, with the changing gleam of the lighthouse far out to sea.
His own room was dark, save for the glow of the fire.  They would be at
tea; probably his father would not be there--the present would be a
good time to choose.  He pulled his courage together and went
downstairs.

As he had expected, Garrett was having tea with Clare in her own
room--the Castle of Intimacy, as Randal had once called it.  Garrett
was reading; Clare was sitting by the fire, thinking.

"She will soon have more to think about," thought Robin wretchedly.

She looked up as he came in.  "Ah, Robin, that's splendid!  I was just
going to send up for you.  Come and sit here and talk to me.  I've
hardly seen you to-day."

She had been very affectionate during the last three days--rather too
affectionate, Robin thought.  He liked her better when she was less
demonstrative.

"Where have you been all the afternoon?"

"In my room.  I've been busy."

"Tea?  You don't mind it strong, do you, because it's been here a good
long time?  Gingerbread cake especially for you."

But gingerbread cake wasn't in the least attractive.  Beddoes suited
him much better:--

    Is that the wind dying?  Oh no;
  It's only two devils, that blow
  Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
    In the ghost's moonshine.


"Do you know Beddoes, aunt?"

"No, dear.  What kind of thing is it?  Poetry?"

"Yes.  You wouldn't like it, though----only I've been reading him this
afternoon.  He suited my mood."

"Boys of your age shouldn't have moods."  This from Garrett.  "I never
had."

Robin took his tea without answering, and sat down on the opposite side
of the fire to his aunt.  How was he to begin?  What was he to say?
There followed an awful pause--life seemed to have been full of pauses
lately.

Clare was watching him anxiously.  How had his father's outbreak
affected him?  She was afraid, from little things that she had seen,
that he had been influenced.  Harry had been so different those last
three days--she could not understand it.  She watched him eagerly,
hungrily.  Why was he not still the baby that she could take on her
knees and kiss and sentimentalise over?  He, too, she fancied, had been
different during these last days.

"More tea, Robin?  You'd better--it's a long while before dinner."

"No, thanks, aunt.  I--that is--well, I've something I wanted to say."

He turned round in his chair and faced the fire.  He would rather not
look at her whilst he was speaking.  Garrett put down his book and
looked up.  Was there going to be more worry?  What had happened lately
to the world?  It seemed to have lost all proper respect for the Trojan
position.  He could not understand it.  Clare drew her breath sharply.
Her fears thronged about her, like shadows in the firelight--what was
it? ...  Was it Harry?

"What about, Robin?  Is anything the matter?"

"Why, no--nothing really--it's only--that is--Oh, dash it all--it's
awfully difficult."

There was another silence.  The ticking of the clock drove Robin into
further speech.

"Well--I've made a bit of a mess.  I've been rather a fool and I want
your advice."

Another pause, but no assistance save a cold "Well?" from Garrett.

"You see it was at Cambridge, last summer.  I was an awful fool, I
know, but I really didn't know how far it was going until--well, until
afterwards----"

"Until--after what?" said Garrett.  "Would you mind being a little
clearer, Robin?"

"Well, it was a girl."  Robin stopped.  It sounded so horrible, spoken
like that in cold blood.  He did not dare to look at his aunt, but he
wondered what her face was like.  He pulled desperately at his tie, and
hurried on.  "Nothing very bad, you know.  I meant, at first, anyhow--I
met her at another man's--Grant of Clare--quite a good chap, and he
gave a picnic--canaders and things up the river.  We had a jolly
afternoon and she seemed awfully nice and--her mother wasn't there.
Then--after that--I saw a lot of her.  Every one does at Cambridge--I
mean see girls and all that kind of thing--and I didn't think anything
of it--and she really _seemed_ awfully nice then.  There isn't much to
do at Cambridge, except that sort of thing--really.  Then, after term,
I came down here, and I began to write.  I'm afraid I was a bit silly,
but I didn't know it then, and I used to write her letters pretty
often, and she answered them.  And--well, you know the sort of thing,
Uncle Garrett--I thought I loved her----"

At this climax, Robin came to a pause, and hoped that they would help
him, but they said no word until, at last, Garrett said impatiently,
"Go on."

"Well," continued Robin desperately, "that's really all--" knowing,
however, that he had not yet arrived at the point of the story.
"She--and her mother--came down to live here--and then, somehow, I
didn't like her quite so much.  It seemed different down here, and her
mother was horrid.  I began to see it differently, and at last, one
night, I told her so.  Of course, I thought, naturally, that she would
understand.  But she didn't--her mother was horrid--and she made a
scene--it was all very unpleasant."  Robin was dragging his
handkerchief between his fingers, and looking imploringly at the fire.
"Then I went and saw her again and asked her for--my letters--she said
she'd keep them--and I'm afraid she may use them--and--well, that's
all," he finished lamely.

He thought that hours of terrible silence followed his speech.  He sat
motionless in his chair waiting for their words.  He was rather glad
now that he had spoken.  It had been a relief to unburden himself; for
so many days he had only had his own thoughts and suggestions to apply
to the situation.  But he was afraid to look at his aunt.

"You young fool," at last from Garrett.  "Who is the girl?"

"A Miss Feverel--she lives with her mother at Sea view Terrace--there
is no father."

"Miss Feverel?  What!  That girl!  You wrote to her!  You----"

At last his aunt had spoken.  He had never heard her speak like that
before--the "You!" was a cry of horror.  She suddenly got up and went
over to him.  She bent over him where he sat, with head lowered, and
shook him by the shoulder.

"Robin!  It can't be true--you haven't written to that girl!  Not
love-letters!  It is incredible!"

"It is true--" he said, looking up.  "Don't look at me like that, Aunt
Clare.  It isn't so bad--other fellows----" but then he was ashamed and
stopped.  He would leave his defence alone.

"Is that all?" said Garrett.  "All you have done, I mean?  You haven't
injured the girl?"

"I swear that's all," Robin said eagerly.  "I meant no harm by it.  I
wrote the letters without thinking I----"

Clare stood leaning on the mantelpiece, her head between her hands.

"I can't understand it.  I can't understand it," she said.  "It isn't
like you--not a bit.  That girl and you--why, it's incredible!"

"That's only because you had your fancy idea of him, Clare," said
Garrett.  "We'd better pass the lamentation stage and decide what's to
be done."

For once Garrett seemed practical; he was pleased with himself for
being so.  It had suddenly occurred to him that he was the only person
who could really deal with the situation.  Clare was a woman, Harry was
out of the question, Robin was a boy.

"Have you spoken to your father?" he asked.

"No.  Of course not!" Robin answered, rather fiercely.  "How could I?"

Clare went back to her chair.  "That girl!  But, Robin, she's
plain--quite--and her manners, her mother--everything impossible!"

It was still incredible that Robin, the work of her hands as it were,
into whom she had poured all things that were lovely and of good
report, could have made love to an ordinary girl of the middle
classes--a vulgar girl with a still more vulgar mother.

But in spite of her vulgarity she was jealous of her.  "You don't care
for her any longer, Robin?"

"Now?--oh no--not for a long time--I don't think I ever did really.  I
can't think how I was ever such a fool."

"She still threatens Breach of Promise," said Garrett, whose mind was
slowly working as to the best means of proving his practical utility.
"That's the point, of course.  That the letters are there and that we
have got to get them back.  What kind of letters were they?  Did you
actually give her hopes?"

Robin blushed.  "Yes, I'm afraid I did--as well as I can remember, and
judging by her answers.  I said the usual sort of things----"  He
paused.  It was best, he felt, to leave it vague.

But Clare had scarcely arrived at the danger of it yet--the danger to
the House.  Her present thought was of Robin; that she must alter her
feelings about him, take him from his pedestal--a Trojan who could make
love to any kind of girl!

"I can't think of it now," she said; "it's confusing.  We must see
what's to be done.  We'll talk about it some other time.  It's hard to
see just at present."

Garrett looked puzzled.  "It's a bit of a mess," he said.  "But we'll
see----" and left the room with an air of importance.

Robin turned to go, and then walked over to his aunt, and put his hand
on her sleeve.

"Don't think me such a rotter," he said.  "I am awfully sorry--it's
about you that I care most--but I've learnt a lesson; I'll never do
anything like that again."

She smiled up at him, and took his hand in hers.

"Why, old boy, no.  Of course I was a little surprised.  But I don't
mind very much if you care for me in the same way.  That's all I have,
Robin--your caring; and I don't think it matters very much what you do,
if I still have that."

"Of course you have," he said, and bent down and kissed her.  Then he
left the room.




CHAPTER IX

"I'm worse to-day," said Sir Jeremy, looking at Harry, "and I'll be off
under a month."

He seemed rather pathetic--the brave look had gone from his eyes, and
his face and hands were more shrivelled than ever.  He gave the
impression of cowering in bed as though wishing to avoid a blow.  Harry
was with him continually now, and the old man was never happy if his
son was not there.  He rambled at times and fancied himself back in his
youth again.  Harry had found his father's room a refuge from the
family, and he sat, hour after hour, watching the old man asleep,
thinking of his own succession and puzzling over the hopeless tangle
that seemed to surround him.  How to get out of it!  He had no longer
any thought of turning his back; he had gone too far for that, and they
would think it cowardice, but things couldn't remain as they were.
What would come out of it?

He had, as Robin had said, changed.  The effect of the explosion had
been to reveal in him qualities whose very existence he had formerly
never expected.  He even found, strangely enough, a kind of joy in the
affair.  It was like playing a game.  He had made, he felt, the right
move and was in the stronger position.  In earlier days he had never
been able to quarrel with any one.  Whenever such a thing had happened,
he had been the first to make overtures; he hated the idea of an enemy,
his happiness depended on his friends, and sometimes now, when he saw
his own people's hostility, he was near surrender.  But the memory of
his sister's words had held him firm, and now he was beginning to feel
in tune with the situation.

He watched Robin furtively at times and wondered how he was taking it
all.  Sometimes he fancied that he caught glances that pointed to
Robin's own desire to see how _he_ was taking it.  Once they had passed
on the stairs, and for a moment they had both paused as though they
would speak.  It had been all Harry could do to restrain himself from
flinging his arms on to his son's shoulders and shaking him for a fool
and then forcing him into surrender, but he had held himself back, and
they had passed on without a word.

After all, what children they all were!  That's what it came
to--children playing a game that they did not understand!

"I wish it would end," said Sir Jeremy; "I'm getting damned sick of it.
Why can't he take you out straight away, and be done with it?  Do you
know, Harry, my boy, I think I'm frightened.  It's lying here thinking
of it.  I never had much imagination--it isn't a Trojan habit, but it
grows on one.  I fancy--well, what's the use o' talking?" and he sank
back into his pillows again.

The room was dark save for the leaping light of the fire.  It was
almost time to dress for dinner, but Harry sat there, forgetting time
and place in the unchanging question, How would it all work out?

"By Gad, it's Tom!  Hullo, old man, I was just thinking of you.  Comin'
round to Horrocks' to-night for a game?  Supper at Galiani's--but it's
damned cold.  I don't know where that sun's got to.  I've been
wandering up and down the street all day and I can't find the place.
I've forgotten the number--I can't remember whether it was 23 or 33,
and I keep getting into that passage.  There I am again!  Bring a
light, old man--it's so dark.  What's that?  Who's there?  Can't you
answer?  Darn you, come out, you----"  He sat up in bed, quivering all
over.  Harry put his hand on his arm.

"It's all right, father," he said.  "No one's here--only myself."

"Ugh!  I was dreaming--" he answered, lying down again.  "Let's have
some light--not that electric glare.  Candles!"

Harry was sitting in the corner by the bed away from the fire.  He was
about to rise and move the candles into a clump on the mantelpiece when
there was a tap on the door and some one came in.  It was Robin.

"Grandfather, are you awake?  Aunt Clare told me to look in on my way
up to dress and see if you wanted anything?"

The firelight was on his face.  He looked very young as he stood there
by the bed.  His face was flushed in the light of the fire.  Harry's
heart beat furiously, but he made no movement and said no word.

Robin bent over the bed to catch his grandfather's answer, and he saw
his father.

"I beg your pardon."  he stammered.  "I didn't know----"  He waited for
a moment as though he were going to say something, or expected his
father to speak.  Then he turned and left the room.

"Let's have the candles," said Sir Jeremy, as though he had not noticed
the interruption, and Harry lit them.

The old man sank off to sleep again, and Harry fell back into his own
gloomy thoughts once more.  They were always meeting like that, and on
each occasion there was need for the same severe self-control.  He had
to remind himself continually of their treatment of him, of Robin's
coldness and reserve.  At times he cursed himself for a fool, and then
again it seemed the only way out of the labyrinth.

His love for his son had changed its character.  He had no longer that
desire for equality of which he had made, at first, so much.  No, the
two generations could never see in line; he must not expect that.  But
he thought of Robin as a boy--as a boy who had made blunders and would
make others again, and would at last turn to his father as the only
person who could help him.  He had fancied once or twice that he had
already begun to turn.

Well, he would be there if Robin wanted him.  He had decided to speak
to Mary about it.  Her clear common-sense point of view seemed to
drive, like the sun, through the mists of his obscurity; she always saw
straight through things--never round them--and her practical mind
arrived at a quicker solution than was possible for his rather
romantic, quixotic sentiment.

"You are too fond of discerning pleasant motives," she had once said to
him.  "I daresay they are all right, but it takes such a time to see
them."

He had not seen her since the outbreak, and he was rather anxious as to
her opinion; but the main thing was to be with her.  Since last Sunday
he had been, he confessed to himself, absurd.  He had behaved more in
the manner of a boy of nineteen than a middle-aged widower of
forty-five.  He had been suddenly afraid of the Bethels--going to tea
had seemed such an obvious advance on his part that he had shrunk from
it, and he had even avoided Bethel lest that gentleman should imagine
that he was on the edge of a proposal for his daughter's hand.  He
thought that all the world must know of it, and he blushed like a girl
at the thought of its being laid bare for Pendragon to laugh and gibe
it.  It was so precious, so wonderful, that he kept it, like a rich
piece of jewellery, deep in a secret drawer, over which he watched
delightedly, almost humorously, secure in the delicious knowledge that
he alone had the key.  He wandered out at night, like a foolish
schoolboy, to watch the lamp in her room--that dull circle of golden
light against the blind seemed to draw him with it into the intimacy
and security of her room.

On one of his solitary afternoon walks he suddenly came upon her.  He
had gone, as he so often did, over the moor to the Four Stones; he
chose that place partly because of the Stones themselves and partly
because of the wonderful view.  It seemed to him that the whole heart
of Cornwall--its mystery, its eternal sameness, its rejection of
everything that was modern and ephemeral, the pathos of old deserted
altars and past gods searching for their old-time worshippers--was
centred there.

The Stones themselves stood on the hill, against the sky, gaunt, grey,
menacing, a landmark for all the country-side.  The moor ran here into
a valley between two lines of hill, a cup bounded on three sides by the
hills and on the fourth by the sea.  In the spring it flamed, a bowl of
fire, with the gorse; now it stood grim and naked to all the winds,
blue in the distant hills, a deep red to the right, where the plough
had been, brown and grey on the moor itself running down to the sea.

It was full of deserted things, as is ever the way with the true
Cornwall.  On the hill were the Stones sharp against the sky-line;
lower down, in a bend of the valley, stood the ruins of a mine, the
shaft and chimney, desolately solitary, looking like the pillars of
some ancient temple that had been fashioned by uncouth worshippers.  In
the valley itself stood the stones of what was once a chapel--built,
perhaps, for the men of the desolate mine, inhabited now by rabbits and
birds, its windows spaces where the winds that swept the moor could
play their eternal, restless games.

On a day of clouds there was no colour on the moor, but when the sun
was out great bands of light swept its surface, playing on the Stones
and changing them to marble, striking colour from the mine and filling
the chapel with gold.  But the sun did not reach that valley on many
days when the rest of the world was alight--it was as if it respected
the loneliness of its monuments and the pathos of them.

Harry sat on the side of the hill, below the Stones, and watched the
sea.  At times a mist came and hid it; on sunny days, when the sky was
intensely blue, there hung a dazzling haze like a golden veil and he
could only tell that the sea was there by the sudden gleam of tiny
white horses, flashing for a moment on the mirror of blue and shining
through the haze; sometimes a gull swerved through the air above his
head as though a wave had lost its bounds and, for sheer joy of the
beautiful day, had flung itself tossing and wheeling into the air.

But to-day was a day of wind and rapidly sailing clouds, and myriads of
white horses curved and tossed and vanished over the shifting colours
of the sea; there were wonderful shadows of dark blue and purple and
green of such depth that they seemed unfathomable.

Suddenly he saw Mary coming towards him.  A scarf--green like the green
of the sea--was tied round her hat and under her chin and floated
behind her.  Her dress was blown against her body, and she walked as
though she loved the battling with the wind.  Her face was flushed with
the struggle, and she had come up to him before she saw that he was
there.

"Now, that's luck," she said, laughing, as she sat down beside him;
"I've been wanting to see you ever since yesterday afternoon, but you
seemed to have hidden yourself.  It doesn't sound a very long time,
does it?  But I've something to tell you--rather important."

"What?" He looked at her and suddenly laughed.  "What a splendid place
for us to meet--its solitude is almost unreal."

"As to solitude," she said calmly, pointing down the valley.  "There's
Tracy Corridor; it will be all over the Club to-night--he's been
watching us for some time"; a long thin youth, his head turned in their
direction, had passed down the footpath towards its ruined chapel, and
was rapidly vanishing in the direction of Pendragon.

"Well--let them," said Harry, shrugging his shoulders.  "You don't
mind, do you?"

"Not a bit," she answered lightly.  "They've discussed the Bethel
family so frequently and with such vigour that a little more or less
makes no difference whatsoever.  Pendragon taboo! we won't dishonour
the sea by such a discussion in its sacred presence."

"What do you want to tell me?" he asked, watching delightedly the
colour of her face, the stray curls that the wind dragged from
discipline and played games with, the curve of her wrist as her hand
lay idly in her lap.

"Oh, it'll keep," she said quickly.  "Never mind just yet.  Tell me
about yourself--what's happened?"

"How did you know that anything had?" he asked.

"Oh, one can tell," she answered.  "Besides, I have felt sure that it
would, things couldn't go on just as they were----" she paused a moment
and then added seriously, "I hope you don't mind my asking?  It seems a
little impertinent--but that was part of the compact, wasn't it?"

"Why, of course," he said.

"Because, you know," she went on, "it's really rather absurd.  I'm only
twenty-six, and you're--oh!  I don't know _how_ old!--anyhow an elderly
widower with a grown-up son; but I'm every bit as old as you are,
really.  And I'm sure I shall give you lots of good advice, because
you've no idea what a truly practical person I am.  Only sometimes
lately I've wondered whether you've been a little surprised at my--our
flinging ourselves into your arms as we have done.  It's like
father--he always goes the whole way in the first minute; but it isn't,
or at any rate it oughtn't to be, like me!"

"You are," he said quietly, "the best friend I have in the world.  How
much that means to me I will tell you one day."

"That's right," she said gaily, settling herself down with her hands
folded behind her head.  "Now for the situation.  I'm all attention."

"Well," he answered, "the situation is simple enough--it's the next
move that's puzzling me.  There was, four days ago, an explosion--it
was after breakfast--a family council--and I was in a minority of one.
I was accused of a good many things--going down to the Cove, paying no
attention to the Miss Ponsonbys, and so on.  They attacked me as I
thought unfairly, and I lost control--on the whole, I am sure, wisely.
I wasn't very rude, but I said quite plainly that I should go my own
way in the future and would be dictated to by no one.  At any rate they
understand that."

"And now?"

"Ah, now--well--it's as you would expect.  We are quite polite but
hostile.  Robin and I don't speak.  The new game--Father and Son; or
how to cut your nearest relations with expedition and security."  He
laughed bitterly.

"Oh, I should like to shake him!" she cried, sitting up and flinging
her arms wide, as though she were saluting the sea.  "He doesn't know,
he doesn't understand!  Neither himself nor any one else.  Oh, I will
talk to him some day!  But, do you know," she said, turning round to
him, "it's been largely your fault from the beginning."

"Oh, I know," he answered.  "If I had only seen then what I see now.
But how could I?  How could I tell?  But I always have been that kind
of man, all my days--finding out things when it's too late and wanting
to mend things that are hopelessly broken.  And then I have always been
impulsive and enthusiastic about people.  When I meet them first, I
mean, I like them and credit them with all the virtues, and then, of
course, there is an awakening.  Oh, you don't know," he said, with a
little laugh, "how enthusiastic I was when I first came back."

"Yes, I do," she answered; "that was one of the reasons I took to you."

"But it isn't right," he said, shaking his head.  "I've always been
like that.  It's been the same with my friendships.  I've rated them
too highly.  I've expected everything and then cried like a child
because I've been disappointed.  I can see now not only the folly of
it, but the weakness.  It is, I suppose, a mistake, caring too much for
other people, one loses one's self-respect."

"Yes," she said, staring out to sea, "it's quite true--one does.  The
world's too hard; it doesn't give one credit for fine feelings--it
takes a short cut and thinks one a fool."

"But the worst of it is," he went on ruefully, "that I never feel any
older.  I have those enthusiasms and that romance in the same way now
at forty-five--just as I did at nineteen.  I never could bear
quarrelling with anybody.  I used to go and apologise even when it
wasn't my fault--so that, you see, the present situation is difficult."

"Ah, but you must keep your end up," she broke in quickly.  "It's the
only way--don't give in.  Robin is just like that.  He is self-centred,
all shams now, and when he sees that you are taken in by them, just as
he is himself, he despises you.  But when he sees you laugh at them or
cut them down, then he respects you.  I'm the only person, I think,
that knows him really here.  The others haven't grasped him at all."

"My father grows worse every day," Harry went on, as though pursuing
his own train of thought.  "He can't last much longer, and when he goes
I shall miss him terribly.  We have understood each other during this
fortnight as we never did in all those early years.  Sometimes I funk
it utterly--following him with all of them against me."

"Why, no," she cried.  "It's splendid.  You are in power.  They can do
nothing, and Robin will come round when he sees how you face it out.
Why, I expect that he's coming already.  I've faced things out here all
these years, and you dare to say that you can't stand a few months of
it."

"What have you faced?" he asked.  "Tell me exactly.  I want to know all
about you; you've never told me very much, and it's only fair that I
should know."

"Yes," she said gravely, "it is--well, you shall!--at least a part of
it.  A woman always keeps a little back," she said, looking at him with
a smile.  "As soon as she ceases to be a puzzle she ceases to interest."

She turned and watched the sea.  Then, after a moment's pause, she said:

"What do you want to know?  I can only give you bits of things--when,
for instance, I ran away from my nurse, aged five, was picked up by an
applewoman with a green umbrella who introduced me to three old ladies
with black pipes and moustaches--I was found in a coal cellar.  Then we
lived in Bloomsbury--a little house looking out on to a little green
park--all in miniature it seems on looking back.  I don't think that I
was a very good child, but they didn't look after me very much.  Mother
was always out, and father in business.  Fancy," she said, laughing,
"father in business!  We were happy then, I think, all of us.  Then
came the terrible time when father ran away."

"Ah, yes," Harry said, "he told me."

"Poor mother! it was quite dreadful; I was only eight then, and I
didn't understand.  But she sat up all night waiting for him.  She was
persuaded that he was killed, and she was very ill.  You see he had
never left any word as to where he was.  And then he suddenly turned up
again, and ate an enormous breakfast, as though nothing had happened.
I don't think he realised a bit that she had worried.

"It was so like him, the naked selfishness of it and the utter
unresponsibility, as of a child.

"Then I went to school--in Bloomsbury somewhere.  It was a Miss Pinker,
and she was interested in me.  Poor thing, her school failed
afterwards.  I don't know quite why, but she never could manage, and I
don't think parents ever paid her.  I had great ideas of myself then; I
thought that I would be great, an actress or a novelist, but I got rid
of all that soon enough.  I was happy; we had friends, and luxuries
were rare enough to make them valuable.  Then--we came down here--this
sea, this town, this moor--Oh! how I hate them!"

Her hands were clenched and her face was white.  "It isn't fair; they
have taken everything from me--leisure, brain, friends.  I have had to
slave ever since I came here to make both ends meet.  Ah! you never
knew that, did you?  But father has never done a stroke of work since
he has been here, and mother has never been the same since that night
when he ran away; so I've had it all--and it has been scrape, scrape,
scrape all the time.  You don't know the tyranny of butter and eggs and
vegetables, the perpetual struggle to turn twice two into five, the
unending worry about keeping up appearances--although, for us, it
mattered precious little, people never came to see if appearances were
kept.

"They called at first; I think they meant to be kind, but father was
sometimes rude and never seemed to know whether he had met a person
before or no.  Then he was idle, they thought, and they disliked him
for that.  We gave some little parties, but they failed miserably, and
at last people always refused.  And, really, it was rather a good
thing, because we hadn't got the money.  I suppose I'm a bad manager;
at any rate, whatever it is, things have been getting worse and worse,
and one day soon there'll be an explosion, and that will be the end.
We're up to our eyes in debt.  I try to talk to father about it, but he
waves it away with his hand.  They have, neither of them, the least
idea of money.  You see, father doesn't need very much himself, except
for buying books.  He had ten pounds last week--housekeeping money to
be given to me; he saw an edition of something that he wanted, and the
money was gone.  We've been living on cabbages ever since.  That's the
kind of thing that's always happening.  I wanted to talk to him about
things this morning, but he said that he had an important engagement.
Now he's out on the moor somewhere flying his kite----"

She was leaning forward, her chin on her hand, staring out to sea.

"It takes the beans out of life, doesn't it?" she said, laughing.  "You
must think me rather a poor thing for complaining like this, only it
does some good sometimes to get rid of it, and really at times I'm
frightened when I think of the end, the disgrace.  If we are proclaimed
bankrupts it will kill mother.  Father, of course, will soon get over
it."

"I say--I'm so sorry."  Harry scarcely knew what to say.  She was not
asking for sympathy; he saw precisely her position--that she was too
proud to ask for his help, but that she must speak.  No, sympathy was
not what she wanted.  He suddenly hated Bethel--the selfishness of it,
the hopeless egotism.  It was, Harry decided, the fools and not the
villains who spoilt life.

"I want you to do me a favour," he said.  "I want you to promise me
that, before the end actually comes, if it is going to come, you will
ask me to help you.  I won't offer to do anything now--I will stand
aside until you want me; but you won't be proud if it comes to the
worst, will you?  Do you promise?  You see," he added, trying to laugh
lightly, "we are chums."

"Yes," she answered quietly, "I promise.  Here's my hand on it."

As he took her hand in his it was all he could do to hold himself back.
A great wave of passion seized him, his body trembled from head to
foot, and he grew very white.  He was crying, "I love you, I love you,
I love you," but he kept the words from his lips--he would not speak
yet.

"Thank you," was all that he said, and he stood up to hide his
agitation.

For a little they did not speak.  They both felt that, in that moment,
they had touched on things that were too sacred for speech; he seemed
so strong, so splendid in her eyes, as he stood there, facing the sea,
that she was suddenly afraid.

"Let us go back," she said.  They turned down the crooked path towards
the ruined chapel.

"What was the news that you had for me?" he asked suddenly.

"Why, of course," she answered; "I meant to have told you before."
Then, more gravely, "It's about Robin----"

"About Robin?"

"Yes.  I don't know really whether I ought to tell you, because, after
all, it's only chatter and mother never gets stories right--she manages
to twist them into the most amazing shapes."

"No.  Tell me," he insisted.

"Well--there's a person whom mother knows--Mrs. Feverel.  Odious to my
mind, but mother sees something of her."

"A lady?"

"No--by no means; a gloomy, forbidding person who would like to get a
footing here if she could, and is discontented because people won't
know her.  You see," she added, "we can only know the people that other
people don't know.  This Mrs. Feverel has a daughter--rather a pretty
girl, about eighteen--I should think she might be rather nice.  I am a
little sorry for her--there isn't a father.

"Well--these people have, in some way, entangled Robin.  I don't quite
know the right side of it, but mother was having tea with Mrs. Feverel
yesterday afternoon and that good woman hinted a great deal at the
power that she now had over your family.  For some time she was
mysterious, but at last she unburdened herself.

"Apparently, Master Robin had been making advances to the girl in the
summer, and now wants to back out of it.  He had, I gather, written
letters, and it was to these that Mrs. Feverel was referring----"

Harry drew a long breath.  "I'm damned," he said.

"Oh, of course, I don't know," she went on; "you see, it may have been
garbled.  Mrs. Feverel is, I should think, just the person to hint
suspicions for which there's no ground at all.  Only it won't do if
she's going to whisper to every one in Pendragon--I thought you ought
to be warned----"

Harry was thinking hard.  "The young fool," he said.  "But it's just
what I've been wanting.  This is just where I can come in.  I knew
something has been worrying him lately.  I could see it.  I believe
he's been in two minds as to telling me--only he's been too proud.
But, of course, he will have to tell some one.  A youngster like that
is no match for a girl and her mother of the class these people seem to
be.  He will confide in his aunt--"  He stopped and burst into
uncontrollable laughter.  "Oh!  The humour of it--don't you see?
They'll be terrified--it will threaten the honour of the House.  They
will all go running round to get the letters back; that girl will have
a good time--and that, of course, is just where I come in."

"I don't see," said Mary.

"Why, it's just what I've been watching for.  Harry Trojan
arrives--Harry Trojan is no good--Harry Trojan is despised--but
suddenly he holds the key to the situation.  Presto!  The family on
their knees----"

Mary looked at him in astonishment.  It was, she thought, unlike him to
exult like this over the misfortunes of his sister; she was a little
disappointed.  "It is really rather serious," she said, "for your
sister, I mean.  You know what Pendragon is.  If they once get wind of
the affair there will be a great deal of talk."

"Ah, yes!" he said gravely.  "You mustn't think me a brute for laughing
like that.  But I'm thinking of Robin.  If you knew how I cared for the
boy--what this means.  Why, it brings him to my feet--if I carry the
thing out properly."  Then quickly, "You don't think they've got back
the letters already?"

"They haven't had time--unless they've gone to-day.  Besides, the
girl's not likely to give them up easily.  But, of course, I don't
really know if that's how the case lies--mother's account was very
confused.  Only I am certain that Mrs. Feverel thinks she has a pull
somewhere; and she said something about letters."

"I will go at once," Harry said, walking quickly.  "I can never be
grateful enough to you.  Where do they live?"

"10 Seaview Terrace," she answered.  "A little dingy street past the
church and Breadwater Place--it faces the sea."

"And the girl--what is she like?"

"I've only seen her about twice.  I should say tall, thin, dark--rather
wonderful eyes in a very pale face; dresses rather well in an aesthetic
kind of way."

He said very little more, and she did not interrupt his thoughts.  She
was surprised to find that she was a little jealous of Robin, the
interest in her own affairs had been very sweet to her, the remembrance
of it now sent the blood to her cheeks, but this news seemed to have
driven his thought for her entirely out of his head.

Suddenly, at the bend of the little lane leading up to the town, they
came upon her father, flying a huge blue kite.  The kite soared above
his head; he watched it, his body bent back, his arm straining at the
cord.  He saw them and pulled it in.

"Hullo!  Trojan, how are you?  You ought to do this.  It's the most
splendid fun--you've no idea.  This wind is glorious.  I shan't be home
till dark, Mary----" and they left him, laughing like a boy.  She gave
him further directions as to the house, and they parted.  She felt a
little lonely as she watched him hurrying down the street.  He seemed
to have forgotten her completely.  "Mary Bethel, you're a selfish pig,"
she said, as she climbed the stairs to her room.  "Of course, he cares
more about his son--why not?"  But nevertheless she sighed, and then
went down to make tea for her mother, who was tired and on the verge of
tears.




CHAPTER X

As he passed through the town all his thoughts were of his splendid
fortune.  This was the very thing for which he had been hoping, the key
to all his difficulties.

The dusk was creeping down the streets.  A silver star hung over the
roofs silhouetted black against the faint blue of the night sky.  The
lamps seemed to wage war with the departing daylight; the after-glow of
the setting sun fluttered valiantly for a little, and then, yielding
its place to the stronger golden circles stretching like hanging moons
down the street, vanished.

The shops were closing.  Worthley's Hosiery was putting up the shutters
and a boy stood in the doorway, yawning; there had been a sale and the
shop was tired.  Midgett's Bookshop at the corner of the High Street
was still open and an old man with spectacles and a flowing beard stood
poring over the odd-lot box at 2d. a volume by the door.

The young man who advised ladies as to the purchase of six-shilling
novels waited impatiently.  He had hoped to be off by six to-night.  He
had an appointment at seven--and now this old man....  "We close at
six, sir," he said.  But the old gentleman did not hear.  He bent lower
and lower until his beard almost swept the pavement.  Harry passed on.

All these things passed like shadows before Harry; he noticed them, but
they fitted into the pattern of his thoughts, forming a frame round his
great central idea--that at last he had his chance.

There was no fear in his mind that he would not get the letters.  There
was, of course, the chance that Clare had been before him, but then, as
Mary had said, she had scarcely had time, and it was not likely that
the girl would give them up easily.  It was just possible, too, that
the whole affair was a mistake, that Mrs. Feverel had merely boasted
for the sake of impressing old Mrs. Bethel, that there was little or
nothing behind it, but that was unlikely.

He had formed no definite decision as to the method of his attack; he
must wait and see how the land lay.  A great deal depended on the
presence of the mother--the girl, too, might be so many different
things; he was not even certain of her age.  If there was nothing in
it, he would look a fool, but he must risk that.  A wild idea came into
his head that he might, perhaps, find Clare there--that would be
amusing.  He imagined them bidding for the letters, and that brought
him to the point that money would be necessary--well, he was ready to
pay a good deal, for it was Robin for whom he was bidding.

He found the street without any difficulty.  Its dinginess was obvious,
and now, with a little wind whistling round its corners and whirling
eddies of dust in the road, its three lamps at long distances down the
street, the monotonous beat of the sea beyond the walls, it was
depressing and sad.

It reminded him of the street in Auckland where he had heard the
strange voice; it was just such another moment now--the silence bred
expectancy and the sea was menacing.

"I shall get the shivers if I don't move," he said, and rang the bell.

The slatternly servant that he had expected to see answered the bell,
and the tap-tap of her down-at-heels slippers sounded along the passage
as she departed to see if Mrs. Feverel would see him.

He waited in the draughty hall; it was so dark that coats and hats
loomed, ghostly shapes, by the farther wall.  A door opened, there was
sound of voices--a moment's pause, then the door closed and the maid
appeared at the head of the stairs.

"The missis says you can come up," she said ungraciously.

She eyed him curiously as he passed her, and scented drama in the set
of his shoulders and the twitch of his fingers.

"A military!" she concluded, and tap-tapped down again into the kitchen.

A low fire was burning in the grate and the blind napped against the
window.  The draught blew the everlastings on the mantelpiece together
with a little dry, dusty sound like the rustle of a breeze in dried
twigs.

Mrs. Feverel sat bending over the fire, and he thought as he saw her
that it would need a very great fire indeed to put any warmth into her.
Her black hair, parted in the middle, was bound back tightly over her
head and confined by a net.

She shook hands with him solemnly, and then waited as though she
expected an explanation.

Harry smiled.  "I'm afraid, Mrs. Feverel," he said, "that you may think
this extraordinary.  I can only offer as apology your acquaintance with
my son."

"Ah yes--Mr. Robert Trojan."

Her mouth closed with a snap and she waited, with her hands folded on
her lap, for him to say something further.

"You knew him, I think, at Cambridge in the summer?"

"Yes, my daughter and I were there in the summer."

Harry paused.  It would be harder than he expected, and where was the
daughter?

"Cambridge is very pleasant in the summer?" he asked, his resolution
weakening rapidly before her impassivity.

"My daughter and I found it so.  But, of course, it depends----"

It depended, he reflected, on such people as his son--boys whom they
could cheat at their ease.  He had no doubt at all now that the mother
was an adventuress of the common, melodrama type.  He suspected the
girl of being the same.  It made things in some ways much simpler,
because money would, probably, settle everything; there would be no
question of fine feelings.  He knew exactly how to deal with such
women, he had known them in New Zealand; but he was amused as he
contemplated Clare's certain failure--such a woman was entirely outside
her experience.

He came to the point at once.

"My being here is easily explained.  I learn, Mrs. Feverel, that my son
formed an attachment for your daughter during last summer.  He wrote
some letters now in your daughter's possession.  His family are
naturally anxious that those letters should be returned.  I have come
to see what can be done about the matter."  He paused--but she said
nothing, and remained motionless by the fire.

"Perhaps," he said slowly, "you would prefer, Mrs. Feverel, to name a
possible price yourself?"

Afterwards, on looking back, he felt that his expectations had been
perfectly justified; she had, up to that point, given him every reason
to take the line that he adopted.  She had listened to the first part
of his speech without remark; she must, he reflected afterwards, have
known what was coming, yet she had given no sign that she heard.

And so the change in her was startling and took him utterly by surprise.

She looked up at him from her chair, and the thin ghost of a smile that
crept round the corners of her mouth, faced him for a moment, and then
vanished suddenly, was the strangest thing that he had ever seen.

"Don't you think, Mr. Trojan, that that is a little insulting?"

It made him feel utterly ashamed.  In her own house, in her
drawing-room, he had offered her money.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered.

"Yes," she answered slowly.  "You had rather misconceived the
situation."

Harry felt that her silences were the most eloquent that he had ever
known.  He began to be very frightened, and, for the first time,
conceived the possibility of not securing the letters at all.  The
thought that his hopes might be dashed to the ground, that he might be
no nearer his goal at the end of the interview than before, sharpened
his wits.  It was to be a deal in subtlety rather than the obvious
thing that he had expected--well, he would play it to the end.

"I beg your pardon," he said again.  "I have been extremely rude.  I am
only recently returned from abroad, and my knowledge of the whole
affair is necessarily very limited.  I came here with a very vague idea
both as to yourself and your intentions.  In drawing the conclusions
that I did I have done both you and your daughter a grave injustice,
for which I humbly apologise.  I may say that, before coming here, I
had had no interview with my son.  I am, therefore, quite ignorant as
regards facts."

He did not feel that his apology had done much good.  He felt that she
had accepted both his insult and apology quite calmly, as though she
had regarded them inevitably.

"The facts," she said, looking down again at the fire, "are quite
simple.  My daughter and your son became acquainted at Cambridge in May
last.  They saw a great deal of each other during the next few months.
At the end of that time they were engaged.  Mr. Robert Trojan gave us
to understand that he was about to acquaint his family with the fact.
They corresponded continually during the summer--letters, I believe, of
the kind common to young people in love.  Mr. Robert Trojan spoke
continually of the marriage and suggested dates.  We then came down
here, and, soon after our arrival, I perceived a change in your son's
attitude.  He came to see us very rarely, and at last ceased his visits
altogether.  My daughter was naturally extremely upset, and there were
several rather painful interviews.  He then wrote returning her letters
and demanding the return of his own.  This she definitely refused.
Those are the facts, Mr. Trojan."

She had spoken without any emotion, and evidently expected that he
should do the same.

"I have come," he said, "on behalf of my son to demand the return of
those letters."

"Demand?"

"Naturally.  Letters, Mrs. Feverel, of that kind are dangerous things
to leave about."

"Yes?"  She smiled.  "Dangerous for whom?  I think you forget a little,
Mr. Trojan, in your anxiety for your son's welfare, my daughter's side
of the question.  She naturally treasures what represents to her the
happiest months of her existence.  You must remember that your son's
conduct--shall I call it desertion?--was a terrible blow.  She loved
him, Mr. Trojan, with all her heart.  Is it not right that he should
suffer a little as well?"

"I refuse to believe," he answered sharply, "that this is all a matter
of sentiment.  I regret extremely that my son should have behaved in
such a cowardly and dastardly manner--it has hurt and surprised me more
than I can say--but, were that all, it were surely better to bury the
whole affair as soon as may be.  I cannot believe that you are keeping
the letters with no intention of making public use of them."

"Ah," said Mrs. Feverel, "I wonder."

"Hadn't we better come to a clear understanding, Mrs. Feverel?" he
asked.  "We are neither of us children, and this beating about the bush
serves no purpose whatever.  If you refuse to return the letters, I
have at least the right to ask what you mean to do with them."

"Here is my daughter," she answered, "she shall speak for herself."

He turned round at the sound of the opening door, and watched her as
she came in.  She was very much as he had imagined--thin and tall,
walking straight from the hips, giving a little the impression that she
was standing on her toes.  Her eyes seemed amazingly dark in the
whiteness of her face.  She seemed a little older than he had
expected--perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six.

She looked at him sharply as she entered and then came forward to her
mother.  He could see that she was agitated--her breath came quickly,
and her hands folded and unfolded as though she were tearing something
to pieces.

"This," said Mrs. Feverel, "is my daughter, Mr. Trojan.  My dear, Mr.
Henry Trojan."

She bowed and sat down opposite her mother.  He thought she looked
rather pathetic as she faced him; here was no adventuress, no schemer.
He began to feel that his son had behaved brutally, outrageously.

Mrs. Feverel rose.  "I will leave you, my dear.  Mr. Trojan will tell
you for what he has come."

She moved slowly from the room and Harry drew a breath of relief at her
absence.  There was a moment's pause.  "I hope you will forgive me,
Miss Feverel," he said gently.  "I'm afraid that both your mother and
yourself must regard this as impertinent, but, at the same time, I
think you will understand."

She seemed to have regained her composure.  "It is about Robin, I
suppose?"

"Yes.  Could you tell me exactly what the relations between you were?"

"We were engaged," she answered simply, "last summer at Cambridge.  He
broke off the engagement."

"Yes--but I understand that you intend to keep his letters?"

"That is quite true."

"I have come to ask you to restore them."

"I am sorry.  I am afraid that it is a waste of time.  I shall not go
back on my word."

He could not understand what her game was--he was not sure that she had
a game at all; she seemed very helpless, and, at the same time, he felt
that there was strength behind her answers.  He was at a loss; his
experience was of no value to him at all.

"I am going to beg you to alter your decision.  I am pleading with you
in a matter that is of the utmost importance to me.  Robin is my only
son.  He has behaved abominably, and you can understand that it has
been rather a blow to me to return after twenty years' absence and find
him engaged in such an affair.  But he is very young, and--pardon
me--so are you.  I am an older man and my experience of the world is
greater than yours; believe me when I say that you will regret
persistence in your refusal most bitterly in later years.  It seems to
me a crisis--a crisis, perhaps, for all of us.  Take an older man's
word for it; there is only one possible course for you to adopt."

"Really, Mr. Trojan," she said, laughing, "you are intensely serious.
Last week I thought that my heart was broken; but now--well, it takes a
lot to break a heart.  I am sure that you will be glad to hear that my
appetite has returned.  As to the letters--why, think how pleasant it
will be for me to sentimentalise over them in my old age!  Surely, that
is sufficient motive."

She was trying to speak lightly, but her lip quivered.

"You are running a serious risk, Miss Feverel," he answered gravely.
"Your intention is, I imagine, to punish Robin.  I can assure you that
in a few years' time he will be punished enough.  He scarcely realises
as yet what he has done.  That knowledge will come to him later."

"Poor Robin!" she said.  "Yes, he ought to feel rather a worm now; he
has written me several very agitated letters.  But really I cannot help
it.  The affair is over--done with.  I regard the letters as my
personal property.  I cannot see that it is any one else's business at
all."

"Of course it is our business," he answered seriously.  "Those letters
must be destroyed.  I do not accuse you of any deliberate malicious
intentions, but there is, as far as I can see, only one motive in your
keeping them.  I have not seen them, but from what I have heard I
gather that they contain definite promise of marriage.  Your case is a
strong one."

"Yes," she laughed.  "Poor Robin's enthusiasm led him to some very
violent expressions of affection.  But, Mr. Trojan, revenge is sweet.
Every woman, I think, likes it, and I am no exception to my sex.
Aren't you a little unfair in claiming all the pleasure and none of the
pain?"

"No," he answered firmly.  "I am not.  It is as much for your own sake
as for his that I am making my claim.  You cannot see things in fair
proportion now; you will bitterly regret the step you contemplate
taking."

"Well, I am sure," she replied, "it is very good of you to think of me
like that.  I am deeply touched--you seem to take quite a fatherly
interest."  She lay back in her chair and watched him with eyes half
closed.

He was beginning to believe that it was no pose after all, and his
anger rose.

"Come, Miss Feverel," he said, "let's have done with playing--let us
come to terms.  It is a matter of vital importance that I should
receive the letters.  I am ready to go some lengths to obtain them.
What are your terms?"

She flushed a little.

"Isn't that a little rude, Mr. Trojan?" she said.  "It is of course the
melodramatic attitude.  It was not long ago that I saw a play in which
letters figured.  Pistols were fired, and the heroine wore red plush.
Is that to be our style now?  I am sorry that I cannot oblige you.
There are no pistols, but I will tell you frankly that it is no
question of terms.  I refuse, under any circumstances whatever, to
return the letters."

"That is your absolute decision?"

"My absolute decision."

He got up and stood, for a moment, by her chair.

"My dear," he said, "you do not know what you are doing.  You are
disappointed, you are insulted--you think that you will have your
revenge at all costs.  You do not know now, but you will discover
later, that it has been no revenge at all.  It will be the most
regretted action of your life.  You have a great chance; you are going
to throw it away.  I am sorry, because you are not, I think, at all
that sort of girl."  He paused a moment.  "Well, there is no more to be
said.  I am sorry as much for your sake as my own.  Good-bye."

He moved to the door.  The disappointment was almost more than he could
bear.  He did not know how strong his hopes had been; and now he must
return with things as they were before, with the added knowledge that
his son had behaved like a cad, and that the world would soon know.

"Good-bye," he said again and turned round towards her.

She rose from her chair and tried to smile.  She said something that he
could not catch, and then, suddenly, to his intense astonishment, she
flung herself back into her chair again, hid her face in her hands, and
burst into uncontrollable tears.  He stood irresolute, and then came
back and waited by the fireplace.  He thought it was the most desolate
thing that he had ever known--the flapping of the blind against the
window, the dry rustling of the leaves on the mantel-piece, only
accentuated the sound of her sobbing.  He let her cry and then, at
last--"I am a brute," he said.  "I am sorry--I will go away."

"No."  She sat up and began to dry her eyes with her handkerchief.
"Don't go--it was absurd of me to give way like that; I thought that I
had got over all that, but one is so silly--one never can tell----"

He sat down again and waited.

"You see," she went on, "I had liked you, always, from the first moment
that I saw you.  You were different from the others--quite
different--and after Robin had behaved--as he did--I distrusted every
one.  I thought they were all like that, except you.  You do not know
what people have done to us here.  We have had no friends; they have
all despised us, especially your family.  And Robin said--well, lots of
things that hurt.  That I was not good enough and that his aunt would
not like me.  And then, of course, when I saw that, if I kept the
letters, I could make them all unhappy--why, of course, I kept them.
It was natural, wasn't it?  But I didn't want to hurt you--I felt that
all the time; and when I saw you here when I came in, I was afraid,
because I hardly knew what to do.  I thought I would show you that I
wasn't weak and foolish as you thought me--the kind of girl that Robin
could throw over so easily without thinking twice about it--and so I
meant to hold out.  There--and now, of course, you think me hateful."

He sat down by her and took her hand.  "It's all rather ridiculous,
isn't it?" he said.  "I'm old enough to be your father, but I'm just
where you are, really.  We've all been learning this last
fortnight--you and Robin, and I--and all learning the same thing.  It's
been a case," he hesitated for a word, "of calf-love, for all three of
us.  Don't regret Robin; he's not worth it.  Why, you are worth twenty
of him, and he'll know that later on.  I'm afraid that sounds
patronising," he added, laughing.  "But I'm humble really.  Never mind
the letters.  You shall do what you like with them and I will trust
you.  You are not," he repeated, "that sort of girl.  Why, dash it!" he
suddenly added, "Robin doesn't know what he has lost."

"Ah!" she said, blushing, "it wouldn't have done.  I can see that
now--but I can see so many things that I couldn't see before.  I wish I
had known a man like you--then I might have learnt earlier; but I had
nobody, nobody at all, and I nearly made a mess of things.  But it
isn't too late!"

"Too late!  Why, no!" he answered.  "I'm only beginning now, and I'm
forty-five.  I, too, have learned a lot in this fortnight."

She looked at him anxiously for a moment.  "They don't like you, do
they?  Robin and the others?"

"No," he answered; "I don't think they do."

"I know," she said quickly; "I heard from Robin, and I'm sorry.  You
must have had a bad time.  But why, if they have been like that, do you
want the letters?  They have treated us both in the same way."

"Why, yes," he answered.  "Only Robin is my son.  That, you see, is my
great affair.  I care for him more than for anything in the world, and
if I had the letters----"

"Why, of course," she cried, "I see--it gives you the pull.  Why, how
blind I've been!  It's splendid!"  She sprang up, and went to a small
writing-desk by the window; she unlocked a drawer and returned with a
small packet in her hand.  "There," she said, "there they are.  They
are not many, are they, for such a big fuss?  But I think that I meant
you to have them all the time--from the first moment that I saw you.  I
had hoped that you would ask for them----"

He took the letters, held them in his hand for a moment, and then
slipped them into his pocket.

"Thank you," he said, "I shall not forget."

"Nor I," she answered.  "We are, I suppose, ships that pass in the
night.  We have just shared for a moment an experience, and it has
changed both of us a little.  But sometimes remember me, will you?
Perhaps you would write?"

"Why, of course," he answered, "I shall want to know how things turn
out.  What will you do?"

"I don't know.  We will go away from here, of course.  Go back to
London, I expect--and I will get some work.  There are lots of things
to do, and I shall be happy."

"I hope," he said, "that the real thing is just beginning for both of
us."

She stood by the window looking out into the street.  "It makes things
different if you believe in me," she said.  "It will give one courage.
I had begun to think that there was no one in the world who cared."

"Be plucky," he said.  "Work's the only thing.  It is because we've
both been idle here that we're worried.  Don't think any more of Robin.
He isn't good enough for you yet; he'll learn, like the rest of us; but
he'll have to go through something first.  You'll find a better man."

"Poor Robin," she said.  "Be kind to him!"

He took her hand for a moment, smiled, and was gone.  She watched him
from the window.

He looked back at her and smiled again.  Then he passed the corner of
the street.

"So that's the end!"  She turned back from the window.  "Now for a
beginning!"




CHAPTER XI

Garrett Trojan had considered the matter for two days and had come to
no conclusion.  His manner of considering anything was peculiar.  He
loved procrastination and coloured future events with such beautiful
radiancy that, when they actually came, the shock of finding them only
drab was so terrible that he avoided them altogether.  He was, however,
saved from any lasting pain and disappointment because he had been
given, from early childhood, that splendid gift of discovering himself
to be the continual hero of a continual play.  It was not only that he
could make no move in life at all without being its hero--that, of
course, was pleasant enough; but that it was always a fresh discovery
was truly the amazing thing.  He was able to wake up, as it were, and
discover afresh, every day of his life, what a hero he was; this was
never monotonous, never wearisome.  He played the game anew from day to
day--and the best part of the game was not knowing that it was a game
at all.

It must be admitted that he only maintained the illusion by keeping
somewhat apart from his fellow-men--too frequent contact must have
destroyed his dreams.  But his aloofness was termed preserving his
individuality, and in the well-curtained library, in carpet-slippers
and a smoking-jacket, he built his own monument with infinite care
before an imaginary crowd in an imaginary city of dreams.

There were times, of course, when he was a little uneasy.  He had heard
men titter at the Club: Clare had, occasionally, spoken plain words as
to his true position in the House, and he had even, at times, doubts as
to the permanent value of the book on which he was engaged.  During
these awful moments he gazed through the rent curtain into a valley of
dead men's bones ruled by a dreary god who had no knowledge of Garrett
Trojan and cared very little for the fortunes of the Trojan House.

But a diligent application to the storehouses of his memory produced
testimonials dragged, for the most part, from reluctant adherents which
served to prove that Garrett Trojan was a great man and the head of a
great family.

He would, however, like some definite act to prove conclusively that he
was head.  He had, at times, the unhappy suspicion that an outsider,
regarding the matter superficially, might be led to conclude that Clare
held command.  He found that if he interfered at all in family matters
this suspicion was immediately strengthened, and so he confined himself
to his room and watered diligently the somewhat stinted crop of
Illusions.

Nevertheless he felt the necessity of some prominent action that would
still for ever his suspicions of incompetence, and would afford him a
sure foundation on which to build his palace of self-complacency and
personal appreciation.  During his latter years he had regarded himself
as his father's probable successor.  Harry had seemed a very long way
off in New Zealand, and became, eventually, an improbable myth, for
Garrett had that happy quality bestowed on the ostrich of sticking his
head into the sand of imagination and boastfully concluding that facts
were not there.  Harry was a fact, but by continuously asserting that
New Zealand was a long way off and that Harry would never come back,
Harry's existence became a very pleasant fairy-story, like nautical
tales of the sea-serpent and the Bewitching Mermaid.  They might be
there, and it was very pleasant to listen to stories about them, but
they had no real bearing on life as he knew it.

Harry's return had, of course, shattered this bubble, and Garrett had
had to yield all hopes of eventual succession.  He had, on the whole,
borne it very well, and had come to the conclusion that succeeding his
father would have entailed the performance of many wearisome duties;
but that future being denied him, it was more than ever necessary to
seize some opportunity of personal distinction.

The discussion as to the destruction of the Cove had seemed to offer
him every chance of attaining a prominent position.  The matter had
grown in importance every day.  Pendragon had divided into two separate
and sharply-distinguished camps, one standing valiantly by its standard
of picturesque tradition and its hatred of modern noise and
materialism, the other asserting loudly its love of utility and
progress, derisively pointing the finger of scorn at old-world
Conservatism run mad and an incredible affection for defective
drainage.  Garrett had flung himself heart and soul (as he said) into
the latter of these parties, and, feeling that this was a chance of
distinction that fortune was not likely to offer him again in the near
future, appeared frequently at discussions and even on one occasion in
the Town Hall spoke.

But he was surprised and disappointed; he found that he had nothing to
say, the truth being that he was much more interested in Garrett than
in the Cove, and that his audience had come to listen to the second of
these two subjects rather than the first.  He found himself shelved; he
was most politely told that he was not wanted, and he retired into his
carpet-slippers again after one of those terrible quarters of an hour
when he peeped past the curtain and saw a miserable, naked puppet
shivering in a grey world, and that puppet was Garrett Trojan.

Then suddenly a second opportunity presented itself.  Robin's trouble
was unexpectedly reassuring.  This, he told himself, was the very
thing.  If he could only prove to the world that he had dealt
successfully with practical matters in a practical way, he need never
worry again.  Let him deal with this affair promptly and resourcefully,
as a man of the world and a true Trojan, and his position was assured.
He must obtain the letters and at once.  He spent several pleasant
hours picturing the scene in which he returned the letters to Robin.
He knew precisely the moment, the room, the audience that he would
choose--he had decided on the words that he would speak, but he was not
sure yet as to how he would obtain the letters.

He thought over it for three days and came to no conclusion.  It ought
not to be difficult; the girl was probably one of those common
adventuresses of whom one heard so often.  He had never actually met
one--they did not suit carpet-slippers--but one knew how to deal with
them.  It was merely a matter of tact and _savoir-faire_.

Yes, it would be fun when he flourished the letters in the face of the
family; how amazed Clare would be and how it would please Robin!--and
then he suddenly awoke to the fact that time was getting on, and that
he had done nothing.  And, after all, there were only two possible
lines of action--to write or to seek a personal interview.  Of these he
infinitely preferred the first.  He need not leave his room, he could
direct operations from his arm-chair, and he could preserve that
courtesy and decorum that truly befitted a Trojan.  But he had grave
fears that the letter would not be accepted; Robin's had been scorned
and his own might suffer the same fate--no, he was afraid that it must
be a personal interview.

He had come to this conclusion reluctantly, and now he hesitated to act
on it; she might be violent, and he felt that he could not deal with
melodrama.  But the thought of ultimate victory supported him.  The
delicious surprise of it, the gratitude, the security of his authority
from all attack for the rest of his days!  Ah yes, it was worth it.

He dressed carefully in a suit of delicate grey, wearing, as he did on
all public occasions, an eyeglass.  He took some time over his
preparations and drank a whisky and soda before starting; he had
secured the address from Robin, without, he flattered himself, any
discovery as to the reason of his request.  10 Seaview Terrace!  Ah
yes, he knew where that was--a gloomy back street, quite a fitting
place for such an affair.

He was still uncertain as to the plan of campaign, but he could not
conceive it credible that any young woman in any part of the British
Empire would stand up long against a Trojan--it would, he felt certain,
prove easy.

He noticed with pleasure the attention paid to him by the down-at-heels
servant--it was good augury for the success of the interview.  He
lowered his voice to a deep bass whilst asking for Miss Feverel, and he
fixed his eyeglass at a more strikingly impressive angle.  He looked at
women from four points of view, and he had, as it were, a sliding scale
of manners on which he might mark delicately his perception of their
position.  There was firstly the Countess, or Titled Nobility.  Here
his manner was slightly deferential, and at the same time a little
familiar--proof of his own good breeding.

Secondly, there was the Trojan, or the lady of Assured Position.  Here
he was quite familiar, and at the same time just a little
patronising--proof of his sense of Trojan superiority.

Thirdly, there was the Governess, or Poor Gentility Position.  To
members of this class he was affably kind, conveying his sense of their
merits and sympathy with their struggle against poverty, but
nevertheless marking quite plainly the gulf fixed between him and them.

Fourthly, there were the Impossibles, or the Rest--ranging from the
wives of successful Brewers to that class known as Unfortunate.  Here
there was no alteration in his manner; he was stern, and short, and
stiff with all of them, and the reason of their existence was one of
the unsolved problems that had always puzzled him.  This woman would,
of course, belong to this latter class--he drew himself up haughtily as
he entered the drawing-room.

Dahlia Feverel was alone, seated working in the window.  Life was
beginning to offer attractions to her again.  The thought of work was
pleasing; she had decided to train as a nurse, and she began to see
Robin in a clear, true light; she was even beginning to admit that he
had been right, that their marriage would have been a great mistake.
The announcement of Garrett Trojan took her by surprise--she gathered
her work together and rose, her brain refusing to act consecutively.
He wanted, of course, the letters--well, she had not got them....  It
promised to be rather amusing.

And he on his side was surprised.  He had expected a woman with
frizzled hair and a dress of violent colours; he saw a slender, pale
girl in black, and she looked rather more of a lady than he had
supposed.  He was, in spite of himself, confused.  He began hurriedly--

"I am Mr. Garrett Trojan--I dare say you have heard of me from my
nephew--Robin--Robert--with whom, I believe, you are acquainted,
Miss--ah--Feverel.  I have come on his behalf to request the return of
some letters that he wrote to you during the summer."

He drew a breath and paused.  Well, that was all right anyhow, and
quite sufficiently business-like.

"Won't you sit down, Mr. Trojan?" she said, smiling at him.  "It is
good of you to have taken so much trouble simply about a few
letters--and you really might have written, mightn't you, and saved
yourself a personal visit?"

He refused to sit down and drew himself up.  "Now I warn you, Miss
Feverel," he said, "that this is no laughing matter.  You are doing a
very foolish thing in keeping the letters--very foolish--ah! um!  You
must, of course, see that--exceedingly foolish!"

He came to a pause.  It was really rather difficult to know what to say
next.

"Ah, Mr. Trojan," she answered, "you must leave me to judge about the
foolishness of it.  After all, they are my letters."

"Pure waste of time," he answered, his voice getting a little shrill.
"After all, there can be no question about it.  We _must_ have the
letters--we are ready to go to some lengths to obtain them--even--ah,
um--money----"

"Now, Mr. Trojan," she said quickly, "you are scarcely polite.  But I
am sure that you will see no reason for prolonging this interview when
I say that, under no circumstances whatever, can I return the letters.
That is my unchanging decision."

He had no words; he stared at her, dumb with astonishment.  This open
defiance was the very last thing that he had expected.  Then, at last--

"You refuse?" he said with a little gasp.

"Yes," she answered lightly, "and I cannot see anything very
astonishing in my refusal.  They are my property, and it is nobody
else's business at all."

"But it is," he almost screamed.  "Business!  Why, I should think it
was!  Do you think we want to have a scandal throughout the kingdom?
Do you imagine that it would be pleasant for us to have our name in all
the papers--our name that has never known disgrace since the days of
William the Conqueror?  You can have," he added solemnly, "very little
idea of the value of a name if you imagine that we are going to
tolerate its abuse in this fashion.  Dear me, no!"

He was growing quite red at the thought of his possible failure.  The
things in the room annoyed him--the everlasting rustling on the
mantelpiece--a staring photograph of Mr. Feverel, deceased, that seemed
to follow him, protestingly, round and round the room--a corner of a
dusty grey road seen dimly through dirty window-panes; why did people
live in such a place--or, rather, why did such people live at all?--and
to think that it was people like that who dared to threaten Trojan
honour!  How could Robin have been such a fool!

So, feeling that the situation was so absurd that argument was out of
place, he began to bluster--

"Come now, Miss Feverel--this won't do, you know! it won't really.
It's too absurd--quite ridiculous.  Why, you forget altogether who the
Trojans are!  Why, we've been years and years--hundreds of years!  You
can't intend to oppose institutions of that kind!  Why--it's
impossible--you don't realise what you're doing.  Dear me, no!  Why,
the whole thing's fantastic--" and then rather lamely, "You'll be
sorry, you know."

She had been listening to him with amusement.  It was pleasant to have
the family on its knees like this after its treatment of her.  He was
saying, too, very many of the things that his brother had said, but how
different it was!

"You know, Mr. Trojan," she said, "that I can't help feeling that you
are making rather a lot of it.  After all, I haven't said that I'm
going to do anything with the letters, have I?--simply keep them, and
that, I think, I am quite entitled to do.  And really my mind won't
change about that--I cannot give them to you."

"Cannot!" he retorted eagerly.  "Why, it's easy enough.  You know, Miss
Feverel, it won't do to play with me.  I'm a man of the world and
fencing won't do, you know--not a bit of it.  When I say I mean to have
the letters, I mean to have them, and--ah, um--that's all about it.  It
won't do to fence, you know," he said again.

"But I'm not fencing, Mr. Trojan, I'm saying quite plainly what is
perfectly true, that I cannot let you have the letters--nothing that
you can say will change my mind."

And he really didn't know what to say.  He didn't want to have a
scene--he shrunk timidly from violence of any kind; but he really must
secure the letters.  How they would laugh at the Club!  Why, he could
hear the guffaws of all Pendragon!  London would be one enormous scream
of laughter!--all Europe would be amused! and to his excited fancy Asia
and Africa seemed to join the chorus!  A Trojan and a common girl in a
breach of promise case!  A Trojan!

"I say," he stammered, "you don't know how serious it is.  People will
laugh, you know, if you bring the case on.  Of course it was silly of
him--Robin, I mean.  I can't conceive myself how he ever came to do
such a thing.  Boys will be boys, and you're rather pretty, my dear.
But, bless me, if we were to take all these little things seriously,
why, where would some of us be?"  He paused, and hinted impressively at
a hideous past.  "You _are_ attractive, you know."  He looked at her in
his most flattering manner--"Quite a nice girl, only you shouldn't take
it seriously--really you shouldn't."

This manner of speech was a great deal more offensive than the other,
and Dahlia got up, her cheeks flushed--

"That is enough, Mr. Trojan.  I think this had better come to an end.
I can only repeat what I have said already, that I cannot give you the
letters--and, indeed, if I had ever intended to do so, your last
speech, at least, would have changed my mind--I am sorry that I cannot
oblige you, but there is really nothing further to be said."

He tried to stammer something; he faced her for a moment and
endeavoured to be indignant, and then, to his own intense astonishment,
found that he was walking down the stairs with the drawing-room door
closed behind him.  How amazing!--but he had done his best, and, if he
had failed, why, after all, no other man could have succeeded any
better.  And she really was rather bewitching--he had not expected
anything quite like that.  What had he expected?  He did not know, but
he thought of his softly-carpeted, nicely-cushioned room with
pleasurable anticipation.  He would fling himself into his book when he
got back ... he had several rather neat ideas....  He noticed, with
pleasure, that the young man standing by the door of Mead's Groceries
touched his hat very respectfully, and Twitchett, his tailor, bowed.
Come, come!  There were a few people left who had some sense of Trojan
supremacy.  It wasn't such a bad world!  He would have tea in his
room--not with Clare--and crumpets--yes, he liked crumpets.

Dahlia went back to her work with a sigh.  What, she wondered, would be
the next move?  It had not been quite so amusing as she had expected,
but it had been a little more exciting.  For she had a curious feeling
in it all, that she was fighting Harry Trojan's battles.  These were
the people that had insulted him just as they had insulted her, and now
they would have to pay for it, they would have to go to him as they had
gone to her and crawl on their knees.  But what a funny situation!
That she should play the son for the father, and that she should be
able to look at her own love affair so calmly!  Poor Robin--he had
taught her a great deal, and now it was time for him to learn his own
lesson.  For her the episode was closed and she was looking forward to
the future.  She would work and win her way and have done with
sentiment.  Friendship was the right thing--the thing that the world
was meant for--but _Love_--Ah! that wounded so much more than it
blessed!

But she was to have further experiences--the Trojan family had not done
with her yet.  Garrett had been absent barely more than half an hour
when the servant again appeared at the door with, "Miss Trojan, Miss
Dahlia, would like to see yer and is waiting in the 'all."  Her hand
twitching at her apron and mouth gaping with astonishment testified to
her curiosity.  For weeks the house had been unvisited and now, in a
single day--!

"Show her up, Annie!"

She was a little agitated; Garrett had been simple enough and even
rather amusing, but Clare Trojan was quite another thing.  She was,
Dahlia knew, the head of the family and a woman of the world.  But
Dahlia clenched her teeth; it was this person who was responsible for
the whole affair--for the father's unhappiness, for the son's
disloyalty.  It was she who had been, as it were, behind Robin's
halting speeches concerning inequality and one's duty to the family.
Here was the head of the House, and Dahlia held the cards.

But Clare was very calm and collected as she entered the room.  She had
decided that a personal interview was necessary, but had rather
regretted that it could not be conducted by letter.  But still if you
had to deal with that kind of person you must put up with their
methods, and having once made up her mind about a thing she never
turned back.

She hated the young person more bitterly than she had ever hated any
one, and she would have heard of her death with no shadow of pity but
rather a great rejoicing.  In the first place, the woman had come
between Clare and Robin; secondly, she threatened the good name of the
family; thirdly, she was forcing Clare to do several things that she
very much disliked doing.  For all these reasons the young person was
too bad to live--but she had no intention of being uncivil.  Although
this was her first experience of diplomacy, she had very definite ideas
as to how such things ought to be conducted, and civility would hide a
multitude of subtleties.  Clare meant to be very subtle, very kind,
and, once the letters were in her hand, very unrelenting.

She was wearing a very handsome dress of grey silk with a large picture
hat with grey feathers: she entered the room with a rustle, and the
sweep of the skirts spoke of infinite condescension.

"Miss Feverel, I believe--" she held out her hand--"I am afraid this is
a most unceremonious hour for a call, and if I have interrupted you in
your work, pray go on.  I wouldn't for the world.  What a day, hasn't
it been?  I always think that these sort of grey depressing days are so
much worse than the downright pouring ones, don't you?  You are always
expecting, you know, and then nothing ever comes."

Dahlia looked rather nervous in the window, and on her face there
fluttered a rather uncertain smile.

"Yes," she said, a little timidly; "but I think that most of the days
here are grey."

"Ah, you find that, do you?  Well, now, that's strange, because I must
say that I haven't found that my own experience--and Cornwall, you
know, is said to be the land of colour--the English Riviera some,
rather prettily, call it--and St. Ives, you know, along the coast is
quite a place for painters because of the colour that they get there."

Dahlia said "Yes," and there was a pause.  Then Clare made her plunge.

"You must wonder a little, Miss Feverel, what I have come about.  I
really must apologise again about the hour.  But I won't keep you more
than a moment; and it is all quite a trivial matter--so trivial that I
am ashamed to disturb you about it.  I would have written, but I
happened to be passing and--so--I came in."

"Yes?" said Dahlia.

"Well, it's about some letters.  Perhaps you have forgotten that my
nephew, Robert Trojan, wrote to you last summer.  He tells me that you
met last summer at Cambridge and became rather well acquainted, and
that after that he wrote to you for several months.  He tells me that
he wrote to you asking you to return his letters, and that you,
doubtless through forgetfulness, failed to reply.  He is naturally a
little nervous about writing to you again, and so I thought that--as I
was passing--I would just come and see you about the matter.  But I am
really ashamed to bother you about anything so trivial."

"No," answered Dahlia, "I didn't forget--I wrote--answered Robin's
letter."

"Ah! you did?  Then he must have misunderstood you.  He certainly gave
me to understand----"

"Yes, I wrote to Robin saying that I was sorry--but I intended to keep
the letters."

Clare paused and looked at her sharply.  This was the kind of thing
that she had expected; of course the young person would bluff and stand
out for a tall price, which must, if necessary, be paid to her.

"But, Miss Feverel, surely"--she smiled deprecatingly--"that can't be
your definite answer to him.  Poor Robin!--surely he is entitled to
letters that he himself has written."

"Might I ask, Miss Trojan, why you are anxious that they should be
returned?"

"Oh, merely a whim--nothing of any importance.  But Robin feels, as I
am sure you must, that the whole episode--pleasant enough at the time,
no doubt--is over, and he feels that it would be more completely closed
if the letters were destroyed."

"Ah! but there we differ!" said Dahlia sharply.  "That's just what I
don't feel about it.  I value those letters, Miss Trojan, highly."

Now what, thought Clare, exactly was she?  Number One, the intriguing
adventuress?  Number Two, the outraged woman?  Number Three, the
helpless girl clinging to her one support?  Now, of Numbers One and Two
Clare had had no experience.  Such persons had never come her way, and
indeed of Number Three she could know very little; so she escaped from
generalities and fixed her mind on the actual girl in front of her.
This was most certainly no intriguing adventuress.  Clare had quite
definite ideas about that class of person; but she very possibly was
the outraged female.  At any rate, she would act on that conclusion.

"My dear young lady," she said softly, "you must not think that I do
not sympathise.  I do indeed, from the bottom of my heart.  Robin has
behaved abominably, and any possible reparation we, as a family, will
gladly pay.  I think, however, that you are a little hard on him.  He
was young, so were you; and it is very easy for us--we women
especially--to mistake the reality of our affection.  Robin at any rate
made a mistake and saw it--and frankly told you so.  It was
wrong--very; but I cannot help feeling--forgive me if I speak rather
plainly--that it would be equally wrong on your part if you were to
indulge any feeling of revenge."

"There is not," said Dahlia, "any question of revenge."

"Ah," said Clare brightly, "you will let me have the letters, then?"

"I cannot," Dahlia answered gravely.  "Really, Miss Trojan, I'm afraid
that we can gain nothing by further discussion.  I have looked at the
matter from every point of view, and I'm afraid that I can come to no
other decision."

Clare stared in front of her.  What was to be her next move?  Like
Garrett, she had been brought to a standstill by Dahlia's direct
refusal.  Viewing the matter indefinitely, from the security of her own
room, it had seemed to her that the girl would be certain to give way
at the very mention of the Trojan name.  She would face Robin--yes,
that was natural enough, because, after all, he was only a boy and had
no knowledge of the world and the proper treatment of such a case--but
when it came to the head of the family with all the influence of the
family behind her, then instant submission seemed inevitable.

Clare was forced to realise that instant submission was very far away
indeed, and that the girl sitting quietly in the window showed little
sign of yielding.  She sat up a little straighter in her chair and her
voice was a little sharper.

"It seems then, Miss Feverel, that it is a question of terms.  But why
did you not say so before?  I would have told you at once that we are
willing to pay a very considerable sum for the return of the letters."

Dahlia's face flushed, and after a moment's pause she rose from her
chair and walked towards Clare.

"Miss Trojan," she said quietly, "I have no intention of taking money
for them--or, indeed, of taking anything."

"I'm sure," broke in Clare, flushing slightly, "_I_ had no intention
of----"

"Ah--no, I know," went on Dahlia.  "But it is not, I assure you, a case
for melodrama--but a very plain, simple little affair that is happening
everywhere all the time.  You say that you cannot understand why I
should wish to keep the letters.  Let me try and explain, and also let
me try and urge on you that it is really no good at all trying to
change my mind.  It is now several days since I had my last talk with
Robin, and I have, of course, thought a good deal about it--it is
scarcely likely that half-an-hour's conversation with you will change a
determination that I have arrived at after ten days' hard thinking.
And surely it is not hard to understand.  Six months ago I was happy
and inexperienced.  I had never been in love, and, indeed, I had no
idea of its meaning.  Then your nephew came: he made love to me, and I
loved him in return."

She paused for a moment.  Clare looked sympathetic.  Then Dahlia
continued: "He meant no harm, no doubt, and perhaps for the time he was
quite serious in what he said.  He was, as you say, very young.  But it
was a game to him--it was everything to me.  I treasured his letters, I
thought of them day and night.  I--but, of course, you know the kind of
thing that a girl goes through when she is in love for the first time.
Then I came here and went through some bad weeks whilst he was making
up his mind to tell me that he loved me no longer.  Of course, I saw
well enough what was happening--and I knew why it was--it was the
family at his back."

A murmur from Clare.  "I assure you, Miss Feverel."

"Oh yes, Miss Trojan, you don't suppose that I cared for you very much
during those weeks.  I suffered a little, too, and it changed me from a
girl into a woman--rather too quickly to be altogether healthy,
perhaps.  And then he came and told me in so many words.  I thought at
first that it had broken my heart; a girl does, you know, when it
happens the first time, but you needn't be afraid--my heart's all
right--and I wouldn't marry Robin now if he begged me to.  But it had
hurt, all of it, and perhaps one's pride had suffered most of all--and
so, of course, I kept the letters.  It was the one way that I could
hurt you.  I'm frank, am I not?--but every woman would do the same.
You see you are so very proud, you Trojans!

"It is not only that you thank God that you are not as other men, but
you are so bent on making the rest of us call out 'Miserable sinner!'
very loudly and humbly.  And we don't believe it.  Why should we?
Everybody has their own little bits o' things that they treasure, and
they don't like being told that they're of no value at all.  Why, Miss
Trojan, I'm quite a proud person really--you'd be surprised if you
knew."

She laughed, and then sat down on the sofa opposite Clare, with her
chin resting on her hand.

"So you see, Miss Trojan, it's natural, after all, that I kept the
letters."

Clare had listened to the last part of her speech in silence, her lips
firmly closed, her hands folded on her lap.  As she listened to her she
knew that it was quite hopeless, that nothing that she could ever say
would change the young person's mind.  She was horribly disappointed,
of course, and it would be terrible to be forced to return to Robin,
and tell him that she had failed: for the first time she would have to
confess failure--but really she could not humble herself any longer:
she was not sure that, even now, she had not unbent a little more than
was necessary.  If the young person refused to consider the question of
terms there was no more to be said--and how dare she talk about the
Trojans in that way?

"Really, Miss Feverel, I scarcely think that it is necessary for us to
enter into a discussion of that kind, is it?  I daresay you have every
reason for personal pride--but really that is scarcely my affair, is
it?  If no offer of money can tempt you--well, really, there the matter
must rest, mustn't it?  Of course I am sorry, but you know your own
mind.  But that you should think yourself insulted by such an offer is,
it seems to me, a little absurd.  It is quite obvious what you mean to
do with them."

Dahlia smiled.

"Is it?" she said.  "That is very clever of you, Miss Trojan.  I am
sorry that you should have so much trouble for such a little result."

"There is no more to be said," answered Clare, moving to the door.
"Good morning," and she was gone.

"Oh dear," said Dahlia, as she went back to the window, "how unpleasant
she is.  Poor Robin!  What a time he will have!"

For her the pathos was over, but for them--well--it had not begun.




CHAPTER XII

The question of the Cove was greatly agitating the mind of Pendragon.
Meetings had been held, a scheme had been drawn up, and it would appear
that the thing was settled.  It had been conclusively proved that two
rows of lodging-houses where the Cove now stood would be an excellent
thing.  The town was over-crowded--it must spread out in some
direction, and the Cove-end was practically the only possible place for
spreading.

The fishery had been declining year by year, and it was hinted at the
Club that it would be rather a good thing if it declined until it
vanished altogether; the Cove was in no sense of the word useful, and
by its lack of suitable drainage and defective protection from weather,
it was really something of a scandal,--it formed, as Mr. Grayseed, pork
butcher and mayor of the town, pointed out, the most striking contrast
with the upward development so marked in Pendragon of late years.  He
called the Cove an "eyesore" and nearly proclaimed it an "anomaly"--but
was restrained by the presence of his wife, a nervous woman who
followed her husband with difficulty in his successful career, and
checked his language when the length of his words threatened their
accuracy.

The town might be said to be at one on these points, and there was no
very obvious reason why the destruction of the Cove should not be
proceeded with--but, still, nothing was done.  It was said by a few
that the Cove was picturesque and undoubtedly attracted strangers by
the reason of its dirty, crooked streets and bulging doorways--an odd
taste, they admitted, but nevertheless undoubted and of commercial
importance.  On posters Pendragon was described as "the picturesque
abode of old-time manners and customs," and Baedeker had a word about
"charming old-time byways and an old Inn, the haunt, in earlier times,
of smugglers and freebooters."  Now this was undoubtedly valuable, and
it would be rather a pity were it swept away altogether.  Perhaps you
might keep the Inn--it might even be made into a Museum for relics of
old Pendragon--bits of Cornish crosses, stones, some quaint drawings of
the old town, now in the possession of Mr. Quilter, the lawyer.

The matter was much discussed at the Club, and there was no doubt as to
the feeling of the majority; let the Cove go--let them replace it with
a smart row of red-brick villas, each with its neat strip of garden and
handsome wooden paling.

Harry had learnt to listen in silence.  He knew, for one thing, that no
one would pay very much attention if he did speak, and then, of late,
he had been flung very much into himself and his reserve had grown from
day to day.  People did not want to listen to him--well, he would not
trouble them.  He felt, too, as Newsome had once said to him, that he
belonged properly to "down-along," and he knew that he was out of touch
with the whole of that modern movement that was going on around him.
But sometimes, as he listened, his cheeks burned when they talked of
the Cove, and he longed to jump up and plead its defence; but he knew
that it would be worse than useless and he held himself in--but they
didn't know, they didn't know.  It enraged him most when they spoke of
it as some lifeless, abstract thing, some old rubbish-heap that
offended their sight, and then he thought of its beauties, of the
golden sand and the huddling red and grey cottages clustering over the
sea as though for protection.  You might fancy that the waves slapped
them on the back for good-fellowship when they dashed up against the
walls, or kissed them for love when they ran in golden ripples and
softly lapped the stones.

On the second night after his visit to Dahlia Feverel, Harry went down,
after dinner, to the Cove.  He found those evening hours, before going
to bed, intolerable at the House.  The others departed to their several
rooms and he was suffered to go to his, but the loneliness and
dreariness made reading impossible and his thoughts drove him out.  He
had lately been often at the Inn, for this was the hour when it was
full, and he could sit in a corner and listen without being forced to
take any part himself.  To-night a pedlar and a girl--apparently his
daughter--were entertaining the company, and even the melancholy sailor
with one eye seemed to share the feeling of gaiety and chuckled
solemnly at long intervals.  It was a scene full of colour; the lamps
in the window shone golden through the haze of smoke on to the black
beams of the ceiling, the dust-red brick of the walls and floor, and
the cavernous depths of the great fireplace.  Sitting cross-legged on
the table in the centre of the room was the pedlar, a little, dark,
beetle-browed man, and at his side were his wares, his pack flung open,
and cloths of green and gold and blue and red flung pell-mell at his
side.  Leaning against the table, her hands on her hips, was the girl,
dark like her father, tall and flat-chested, with a mass of black hair
flung back from her forehead.  No one knew from what place they had
come nor whither they intended to go--such a visit was rare enough in
these days of trains--and the little man's reticence was attacked again
and again, but ever unsuccessfully.  There were perhaps twenty sailors
in the room, and they sat or stood by the fireplace watching and
listening.

Harry slipped in and took his place by Newsome in the corner.

"I will sing," said the girl.

She stood away from the table and flung up her head--she looked
straight into the fire and swayed her body to the time of her tune.
Her voice was low, so that men bent forward in order that they might
hear, and the tune was almost a monotone, her voice rising and falling
like the beating of the sea, with the character of her words.  She sang
of a Cornish pirate, Coppinger, "Cruel Coppinger," and of his deeds by
land and sea, of his daring and his cleverness and his brutality, and
the terror that he inspired, and at last of his pursuit by the king's
cutter and his utter vanishing "no man knew where."  But gradually as
her song advanced Coppinger was forgotten and her theme became the
sea--she spoke like one possessed, and her voice rose and fell like the
wind--all Time and Place were lost.  Harry felt that he was unbounded
by tradition of birth or breeding, and he knew that he was absolutely
as one of these others with him in the room--that he felt that call of
those old gods just as they did.  The girl ceased and the room was
silent.  Through the walls came the sound of the sea--in the fire was
the crackling of the coals, and down the great chimney came a little
whistle of the wind.  "A mighty fine pome 'tis fur sure," said the
white-bearded sailor solemnly, "and mostly wonderful true."  He sighed.
"They'm changed times," he said.

The girl sat on the table at her father's side, watching them
seriously.  She flung her arms behind her head and then suddenly--

"I can dance too," she said.

They pulled the table back and watched her.

It was something quite simple and unaffected--not, perhaps, in any way
great dancing, but having that quality, so rarely met with, of being
exactly right and suited to time and place.  Her arms moved in ripples
like the waves of the sea--every part of her body seemed to join in the
same motion, but quietly, with perfect tranquillity, without any sense
of strain or effort.  The golden lamps, the coloured clothes, the
red-brick floor, made a background of dazzling colour, and her black
hair escaped and fell in coils over her neck and shoulders.

Suddenly she stopped.  "There, that's all," she said, binding her hair
up again with quick fingers.  She walked over to the sailors and talked
to them with perfect freedom and ease; at last she stayed by the
handsomest of them--a dark, well-built young fellow, who put his arm
round her waist and shared his drink with her.

Harry, as he watched them, felt strangely that it was for him a scene
of farewell--that it was for the last time that the place was to offer
him such equality or that he himself would be in a position to accept
it.  He did not know why he had this feeling--perhaps it was the talk
of the Club about the Cove, or his own certain conviction that matters
at the House were rapidly approaching a crisis.  Yes, his own protests
were of no avail--things must move, and perhaps, after all, it were
better that they should.

Bethel came in, and as usual joined the group at the fire without a
word; he looked at the pedlar curiously and then seemed to recognise
him--then he went up to him and soon they were in earnest conversation.
It grew late, and at the stroke of midnight Newsome rose to shut up the
house.

"I will go back with you," Bethel said to Harry, and they walked to the
door together.  For a moment Harry turned back.  The girl was bending
over the sailor--her arms were round his neck, and his head was tilted
back to meet her mouth; the pedlar was putting his wares into his pack
again, but some pieces of yellow and blue silk had escaped him and lay
on the floor at his feet; down the street three of the sailors were
tramping home, and the chorus of a chanty died away as they turned the
corner.

The girl, the pedlar, the colours of the room, the vanishing song,
remained with Harry to the end of his life--for that moment marked a
period.

As he walked up the hill he questioned Bethel about the pedlar.

"Oh, I had met him," he said vaguely.  "One knows them all, you know.
But it is difficult to remember where.  He is one of the last of his
kind and an amusing fellow enough----"  But he sighed--"I am out of
sorts to-night--my kite broke.  Do you know, Trojan, there are times
when one thinks that one has at last got right back--to the power, I
mean, of understanding the meaning and truth of things--and then,
suddenly, it has all gone and one is just where one was years ago and
it seems wasted.  I tell you, man, last night I was on the moor and it
was alive with something.  I can't tell you what--but I waited and
watched--I could feel them growing nearer and nearer, the air was
clearer--their voices were louder--and then suddenly it was all gone.
But of course you won't understand--none of you--why should you?  You
think that I am flying a kite--why, I am scaling the universe!"

"Whatever you are doing," said Harry seriously, "you are not keeping
your family.  Look here, Bethel, you asked me once if I would be a
friend of yours.  Well, I accepted that, and we have been good friends
ever since.  But it really won't do--this kind of thing, I mean.
Scaling the universe is all very well, if you are a single man--then it
is your own look-out; but you are married--you have people depending on
you, and they will soon be starving."

Bethel burst out laughing.

"They've got you, Trojan!  They've got you!" he cried.  "I knew it
would come sooner or later, and it hasn't taken long.  Three weeks and
you're like the rest of them.  No, you mustn't talk like that, really.
Tell me I'm a damned fool--no good--an absolutely rotten type of
fellow--and it's all true enough.  But you must accept it at that.  At
least I'm true to my type, which is more than the rest of them are, the
hypocrites!--and as to my family, well, of course I'm sorry, but
they're happy enough and know me too well to have any hope of ever
changing me----"

"No--of course, I don't want to preach.  I'm the last man to tell any
one what they should do, seeing the mess that I've made of things
myself.  But look here, Bethel, I like you--I count myself a friend,
and what are friends for if they're not to speak their minds?"

"Oh!  That's all right enough.  Go on--I'll listen."  He resigned
himself with a humorous submission as though he were indulging the
opinions of a child.

"Well, it isn't right, you know--it isn't really.  I don't want to tell
you that you're a fool or a rotter, because you aren't, but that's just
what makes it so disappointing for any one who cares about you.  You're
letting all your finer self go.  You're becoming, what they say you
are, a waster.  Of course, finding yourself's all right--every man
ought to do that.  But you have no right to throw off all claims as
completely as you have done.  Life isn't like that.  We've all got our
Land of Promise, and, just in order that it may remain, we are never
allowed to reach it.  Whilst you are lying on your back on the moor,
your wife and daughter are killing themselves in order to keep the home
together--I say that it is not fair."

"Oh, come, Trojan," Bethel protested, "is that quite fair on your side?
Things are all right, you know.  They like it better, they do really.
Why, if I were to stay at home and try to work they'd think I was going
to be ill.  Besides, I couldn't--not at an office or anything like
that.  It isn't my fault, really--but it would kill me now if I
couldn't get away when I want to--not having liberty would be worse
than death."

"Ah, that's yourself," said Harry.  "That's selfish.  Why don't you
think of them?  You can't let things go on as they are, man.  You must
get something to do."

"I'm damned if I will."  Bethel stopped short and stretched his arms
wide over the moor.  "It isn't as if it would do them any good, and it
would kill me.  Why, one is deaf and blind and dumb as soon as one has
work to do.  I'm a child, you know.  I've never grown up, and of course
I hadn't any right to marry.  I don't know now why I did.  And all you
people--you grown-ups--with your businesses and difficult pleasures and
noisy feasts--of course you can't understand what these things mean.
Only a few of you who sit with folded hands and listen can know what it
is.  I saw a picture once--some people feasting in a forest, and
suddenly a little faun jumped from a tree on to their table and waited
for them to play with him.  But some were eating and some drinking and
some talking scandal, and they did not see him.  Only a little boy and
an old man--they were doing nothing--just dreaming--and they saw him.
Oh!  I tell you, the dreamer has his philosophy and creed like the rest
of you!"

"That's all very well," cried Harry.  "But it's a case of bread and
butter.  You will be bankrupt if you go on as you are!"

"Oh no!" Bethel laughed.  "Providence looks after the dreamers.
Something always happens--I know something will happen now.  We are on
the edge of some good fortune.  I can feel it."

The man was incorrigible--there was no doubt of it--but Harry had
something further to say.

"Well, I want you to let me take a deeper interest in your affairs.
May I ask your daughter to marry me?"

"What?  Mary?"  Bethel stopped and shouted--"Why!  That's splendid!  Of
course, that's what Providence has been intending all this time.  The
very thing, my dear fellow----" and he put his arm on Harry's
shoulder--"there's no one I'd rather give my girl to.  But it's nothing
to do with me, really.  She'll know her mind and tell you what she
feels about it.  Dear me!  Just to think of it!"

He broke out into continuous chuckles all the way home, and seemed to
regard the whole affair as a great joke.  Harry left him shouting at
the moon.  He had scarcely meant to speak of it so soon, but the
thought of her struggle and the knowledge of her father's utter
indifference decided matters.  He went back to the house, determining
on an interview in the morning.

Mary meanwhile had been spending an evening that was anything but
pleasant--she had been going through her accounts and was horrified at
what she saw.  They were badly overdrawn, most of the shops had refused
them further credit, and the little income that came to them could not
hope to cover one-half of their expenses.  What was to be done?  Ruin
and disgrace stared them in the face.  They might borrow, but there was
no one to whom she could go.  They must, of course, give up their
little house and go into rooms, but that would make very little
difference.  She looked at it from every point of view and could think
of no easier alternative.  She puzzled until her head ached, and the
room, misty with figures, seemed to swim round her.  She felt cruelly
lonely, and her whole soul cried out for Harry--he would help her, he
would tell her what to do.  She knew now that she loved him with all
the strength that was in her, that she had always loved him, from the
first moment that she had known him.  She remembered her promise to him
that she would come and ask for his help if she really needed it--well,
perhaps she would, in the end, but now, at least, she must fight it out
alone.  The first obvious thing was that her parents must know; that
they would be of any use was not to be expected, but at least they must
realise on what quicksands their house was built.  They were like two
children, with no sense whatever of serious consequences and penalties,
and they would not, of course, realise that they were face to face with
a brick wall of debts and difficulties and that there was no way
over--but they must be told.

On the next morning, after breakfast, Mary penned her mother into the
little drawing-room and broached the subject.  Mrs. Bethel knew that
something serious was to follow, and sat on the edge of her chair,
looking exactly like a naughty child convicted of a fault.  She was
wearing a rather faded dress of bright yellow silk and little yellow
shoes, which she poked out from under her dress every now and again and
regarded with a complacent air.

"They are really not so shabby, Mary, my dear--not nearly so shabby as
the blue ones, and a good deal more handsome--don't you think so, my
dear?  But you say you want to talk about something, so I'll be
quiet--only if you wouldn't mind being just a little quick because
there are, really, so many things to be done this morning, that it
puzzles me how----"

"Yes, mother, I know.  But there is something I want to say.  I won't
be long, only it's rather important."

"Yes, dear--only don't scold.  You look as if you were going to scold.
I can always tell by that horrid line you have, dear, in your forehead.
I know I've done something I oughtn't to, but what it is unless it's
those red silks I bought at Dixon's on Friday, and they were so cheap,
only----"

"No, mother, it's nothing you've done.  It's rather what I've done, or
all of us.  We are all in the same boat.  It's my managing, I suppose;
anyhow, I've made a mess of it and we're very near the end of the rope.
There doesn't seem any outlook anywhere.  We're overdrawn at the bank;
they won't give us credit in the town, and I don't see where any's to
come from."

"Oh, it's money!  Well, my dear, of course it is provoking--such a
horrid thing to have to worry about; but really I'm quite relieved.  I
thought it was something I'd done.  You quite frightened me; and I'm
glad you don't mind about the red silks, because it really was tempting
with----"

"No, dear, that's all right.  But this is serious.  I've come to the
end and I want you to help me.  Will you just go through the books with
me and see if anything can be done?  I'm so tired and worried.  I've
been going at them so long that I daresay I've muddled it.  It mayn't
be quite so hopeless as I've made out."

"The books!  My dear Mary----"  Mrs. Bethel looked at her daughter
pathetically.  "You know that I've no head for figures.  Why, when
mother died at home--we were in Chertsey then, Frank and Doris and
I--and I tried to manage things, you know, it was really too absurd.  I
used to make the most ridiculous mistakes and Frank said that the
village people did just what they liked with me, and I remember old
Mrs. Blenkinsop charging me for eggs after the first month at quite an
outrageous rate because----"

"Yes, mother, I know.  But two heads are better than one, and I am
really hopelessly puzzled to know what to do."  Mary got up and went
over to her mother and put her arm round her.  "You see, dear, it is
serious.  There's no money at all--less than none; and I don't know
where we are to turn.  There's no outlook at all.  I'm afraid that it's
no use appealing to father--no use--and so it's simply left for us two
to do what we can.  It's frightening always doing it alone, and I
thought you would help me."

"Well, of course, Mary dear, I'll do what I can.  No, I'm afraid that
it would be no good appealing to your father.  It's strange how very
little sense he's ever had of money--of the value of it.  I remember in
the first week that we were married he bought some book or other and we
had to go without quite a lot of things.  I was angry then, but I've
learnt since.  It was our first quarrel."

She sighed.  It was always Mrs. Bethel's method of dealing with any
present problem to flee into the happy land of reminiscence and to stay
there until the matter had, comfortably or otherwise, settled itself.

"But I shouldn't worry," she said, looking up at her daughter.  "Things
always turn up, and besides," she added, "you might marry, dear."

"Marry!"  Mary looked up at her mother sharply.  Mrs. Bethel looked a
little frightened.

"Well, you will, you know, dear, probably--and perhaps--well, if he had
money----"

"Mother!"  She sprang up from her chair and faced her with flaming
cheeks.  "Do you mean to say that they are talking about it?"

"They?  Who?  It was only Mrs. Morrison the other day, at tea-time,
said--that she thought----"

"Mrs. Morrison?  That hateful woman discussing me?  Mother, how could
you let her?  What did she say?"

"Why, only--I wish you wouldn't look so cross, dear.  It was nothing
really--only that Mr. Trojan obviously cared a good deal--and it would
be so nice if----"

"How dare she?" Mary cried again.  "And you think it too, mother--that
I would go on my knees to him to take us out of our trouble--that I
would sweep his floors if he would help the family!  Oh!  It's hateful!
Hateful!"

She flung herself into a chair by the window and burst into tears.
Mrs. Bethel stared at her in amazement.  "Well, upon my word, my dear,
one never knows how to take you!  Why, it wasn't as if she'd said
anything, only that it would be rather nice."  She paused in utter
bewilderment and seemed herself a little inclined to cry.

At this moment the door opened--Mary sprang up.  "Who is it?" she asked.

"Mr. Henry Trojan, miss, would like to come up if it wouldn't----"

"No.  Tell him, Jane, that----"

But he had followed the servant and appeared in the doorway smiling.

"I knew you wouldn't mind my coming unconventionally like this," he
said; "it's a terrible hour in the morning--but I felt sure that I
would catch you."

He had seen at once that there was something wrong, and he stopped
confusedly in the doorway.

But Mrs. Bethel came forward, smiling nervously.

"Oh, please, Mr. Trojan, do come in.  We always love to see you--you
know we do--you're one of our real friends--one of our best--and it's
only too good of you to spare time to come round and see us.  But I am
busy--it's quite true--one is, you know, in the morning; but I don't
think that Mary has anything very important immediately.  I think she
might stop and talk to you," and in a confusion of tittered apologies
she vanished away.

But he stood in the doorway, waiting for Mary to speak.  She sat with
her head turned to the window and struggled to regain her self-command;
they had been talked about in the town.  She could imagine how it had
gone.  "Oh! the Bethel girl!  Yes, after the Trojan money and doing it
cleverly too; she'll hook him all right--he's just the kind of man."
Oh! the hatefulness of it!

"What's up?"  He came forward a little, twisting his hat in his hands.

"Nothing!"  She turned round and tried to smile.  Indeed she almost
laughed, for he looked so ridiculous standing there--like a great
schoolboy before the headmaster, his hat turning in his hands; or
rather, like a collie plunging out of the water and ready to shake
himself on all and sundry.  As she looked at him she knew that she
loved him and that she could never marry him because Pendragon thought
that she had hooked him for his money.

"Yes--there is something.  What is it?"  He had come forward and taken
her hands.

But she drew them away slowly and sat down on the sofa.  "I'm tired,"
she said a little defiantly, "that's all--you know if you will come and
call at such dreadfully unconventional hours you mustn't expect to find
people with all the paint on.  I never put mine on till lunch----"

"No--it's no good," he answered gravely.  "You're worried, and it's
wrong of you not to tell me.  You are breaking your promise----"

"I made no promise," she said quickly.

"You did--that day on the moor.  We were to tell each other always if
anything went wrong.  It was a bargain."

"Well, nothing's wrong.  I'm tired--bothered a bit--the old
thing--there's more to be bought than we're able to pay for."

"I've come with a proposition," he answered gravely.  "Just a
suggestion, which I don't suppose you'll consider--but you might--it is
that you should marry me."

It had come so suddenly that it took her by surprise.  The colour flew
into her cheeks and then ebbed away again, leaving her whiter than
ever.  That he should have actually said the words made her heart beat
furiously, and there was a singing in her ears so that she scarcely
heard what he said.  He paused a moment and then went on.  "Oh!  I know
it's absurd when we've only known each other such a little time, and
I've been telling myself that again and again--but it's no good.  I've
tried to keep it back, but I simply couldn't help it--it's been too
strong for me."

He paused again, but she said nothing and he went on.  "I ought to tell
you about myself, so that you should know, because I'm really a very
rotten type of person.  I've never done anything yet, and I don't
suppose I ever shall; I've been a failure at most things, and I'm
stupid.  I never read the right sort of books, or look at the right
sort of pictures, or like the right sort of music, and even at the sort
of things that most men are good at I'm nothing unusual.  I can't
write, you know, a bit, and in my letters I express myself like a boy
of fifteen.  And then I'm old--quite middle-aged--although I feel young
enough.  So that all these things are against me, and it's really a
shame to ask you."

He paused again, and then he said timidly, bending towards her--

"Could you ever, do you think, give me just a little hope--I wouldn't
want you to right away at once--but, any time, after you'd thought
about it?"

She looked up at him and saw that he was shaking from head to foot.
Her pride was nearly overcome and she wanted to fling herself at his
feet, and kiss his hands, and never let him go, but she remembered that
Pendragon had said that she was catching him for his money; so, by a
great effort, she stayed where she was, and answered quietly, even
coldly--

"I am more honoured, Mr. Trojan, than I can tell you by your asking me.
It is much, very much more than I deserve, and, indeed, I'm not in the
least worthy of it.  I'm sorry, but I'm afraid it's no good.  You see
I'm such a stupid sort of girl--I muddle things so.  It would never do
for me to attempt to manage a big place like 'The Flutes'--and then I
don't think I shall ever marry.  I don't think I am that sort of girl.
You have been an awfully good friend to me, and I'm more grateful to
you than I can say.  I can't tell you how much you have helped us all
during these last weeks.  But I'm afraid I must say no."

The light from the window fell on her hair and the blue of her dress--a
little gold pin at her throat flashed and sparkled; his eye caught it,
and was fixed there.

"No--don't say actually no."  He was stammering.  "Please--please.
Think about it after I have gone away.  I will come again another day
when you have thought about it.  I'm so stupid in saying things--I
can't express myself; but, Miss Bethel--Mary--I love you--I love you.
There isn't much to say about it--I can't express it any better--but,
please--you mustn't say no like that.  I would be as good a husband to
you as I could, dear, always.  I'm not the sort of fellow to change."

"No"--she was speaking quickly as though she meant it to be final--"no,
really, I mean it.  I can't, I can't.  You see one has to feel certain
about it, hasn't one?--and I don't--not quite like that.  But you are
the very best friend that I have ever had; don't let it spoil that."

"Perhaps," he said slowly, "it's my age.  You don't feel that you could
with a man old enough to be your father.  But I'm young--younger than
Robin.  But I won't bother you about it.  Of course, if you are
certain----"

He rose and stumbled a moment over the chair as he passed to the door.

"Oh!  I'm so sorry!" she cried.  "I----" and then she had to turn to
hide her face.  In her heart there was a struggle such as she had never
faced before.  Her love called her a fool and told her that she was
flinging her life away--that the ship of her good fortune was sailing
from her, and it would be soon beyond the horizon; but her pride
reminded her of what they had said--that she had laid traps for him,
for his money.

"I am sorry," she said again.  "But it must be only friendship."

But she had forgotten that although her back was turned he was towards
the mirror.  He could see her--her white face and quivering lips.

He sprang towards her.

"Mary, try me.  I will love you better than any man in God's world,
always.  I will live for you, and work for you, and die for you."

It was more than she could bear.  She could not reason now.  She was
only resolved that she would not give way, and she pushed past him
blindly, her head hanging.

The drawing-room door closed.  He stared dully in front of him.  Then
he picked up his hat and left the house.

She had flung herself on her bed and lay there motionless.  She heard
the door close, his steps on the stairs, and then the outer door.

She sprang to the window, and then, moved by some blind impulse, rushed
to the head of the stairs.  There were steps, and Mrs. Bethel's voice
penetrated the gloom.  "Mary, Mary, where are you?"

She crept back to her room.

He walked back to "The Flutes" with the one fact ever before him--that
she had refused him.  He realised now that it had been his love for her
that had kept him during these weeks sane and brave.  Without it, he
could not have faced his recent troubles and all the desolate sense of
outlawry and desolation that had weighed on him so terribly.  Now he
must face it, alone, with the knowledge that she did not love him--that
she had told him so.  It was his second rejection--the second flinging
to the ground of all his defences and walls of protection.  Robin had
rejected him, Mary had rejected him, and he was absolutely, horribly
alone.  He thought for a moment of Dahlia Feverel and of her desertion.
Well, she had faced it pluckily; he would do the same.  Life could be
hard, but he would not be beaten.  His methods of consolation, his
pulling of himself together--it was all extremely commonplace, but then
he was an essentially commonplace man, and saw things unconfusedly, one
at a time, with no entanglement of motives or complicated searching for
origins.  He had accepted the fact of his rejection by his family with
the same clear-headed indifference to side-issues as he accepted now
his rejection by Mary.  He could not understand "those artist fellows
with their complications"--life for him was perfectly straight-forward.

But the gods had not done with his day.  On the way up to his room he
was met by Clare.

"Father is worse," she said quickly.  "He took a turn this morning, and
now, perhaps, he will not live through the night.  Dr. Turner and Dr.
Craile are both with him.  He asked for you a little while ago."

She passed down the stairs--the quiet, self-composed woman of every
day.  It was characteristic of a Trojan that the more agitated outside
circumstances became the quieter he or she became.  Harry was Trojan in
this, and, as was customary with him, he put aside his own worries and
dealt entirely with the matter in hand.

Already, over the house, a change was evident.  In the absolute
stillness there could be felt the presence of a crisis, and the
monotonous flap of a blind against some distant window sounded clearly
down the passages.

In Sir Jeremy's room there was perfect stillness.  The two doctors had
gone downstairs and the nurse was alone.  "He asked for you, sir," she
whispered; "he is unconscious again now."

Harry sat down by the bed and waited.  The air was heavy with scents of
medicine, and the drawn blinds flung grey, ghost-like shadows over the
bed.  The old man seemed scarcely changed.  The light had gone from his
eyes and his hand lay motionless on the sheets, and his lips moved
continually in a never-ceasing murmur.

Suddenly he turned and his eyes opened.  The nurse moved forward.
"Where's Harry?"  He waved his arm feebly in the air.

"I'm here, father," Harry said quietly.

"Ah, that's good"--he sank back on the pillows again.  "I'm going to
die, you know, and I'm lonely.  It's damned gloomy--got to die--don't
want to--but got to."

He felt for his son's hand, found it, and held it.  Then he passed off
again into half-conscious sleep, and Harry watched, his hand in his
father's and his thoughts with the girl and the boy who had rejected
him rather than with the old man who had accepted him.




CHAPTER XIII

Meanwhile there was Robin--and he had been spending several very
unhappy days.  In the gloom of his room, alone and depressed, he had
been passing things in review.  He had never hitherto felt any very
burning desire to know how he stood with the world; at school and
Cambridge he had not thought at all--he had just, as it were, slid into
things; his surroundings had grouped themselves of their own accord,
making a delicately appreciative circle with no disturbing element.
His friends had been of his own kind, the things that he had wished to
do he had done, his thoughts had been dictated by set forms and
customs.  This had seemed to him, hitherto, an extraordinarily broad
outlook; he had never doubted for a moment its splendid infallibility.
He applied the tests of his set to the world at large, and the world
conformed.  Life was very easy on such terms, and he had been happy and
contented.

His meeting with Dahlia had merely lent a little colour to his pleasant
complacency, and then, when it had threatened to become something more,
he had ruthlessly cut it out.  This should have been simple enough, and
he had been at a loss to understand why the affair had left any traces.
Friends of his at college had had such episodes, and had been mildly
amused at their rapid conclusion.  He had tried to be mildly amused at
the conclusion of his own affair, but had failed miserably.  Why? ...
he did not know.  He must be sensitive, he supposed; then, in that
case, he had failed to reach the proper standard....  Randal was never
sensitive.  But there had been other things.

During the last week everything had seemed to be topsy-turvy.  He dated
it definitely from the arrival of his father.  He recalled the day; his
tie was badly made, he remembered, and he had been rather concerned
about it.  How curious it all was; he must have changed since then,
because now--well, ties seemed scarcely to matter at all.  He saw his
father standing at the open window watching the lighted town....
"Robin, old boy, we'll have a good time, you and I..."--and then Aunt
Clare with her little cry of horror, and his father's hurried apology.
That had been the beginning of things; one could see how it would go
from the first.  Had it, after all, been so greatly his father's fault?
He was surprised to find that he was regarding his uncle and aunt
critically....  It had been their fault to a great extent--they had
never given him a chance.  Then he remembered the next morning and his
own curt refusal to his father's invitation--"He had books to pack for
Randal!"  How absurd it was, and he wondered why he should have
considered Randal so important.  He could have waited for the books.

But these things depended entirely on his own sudden discovery that he
had failed in a crisis--failed, and failed lamentably.  He did not
believe that Randal would have failed.  Randal would not have worried
about it for a moment.  What, then, was precisely the difference?  He
had acted throughout according to the old set formula--he had applied
all the rules of the game as he had learnt them, and nevertheless he
had been beaten.  And so there had crept over him gradually, slowly,
and at last overwhelmingly, the knowledge that the world that he had
imagined was not the world as it is, that the people he had admired
were not the only admirable people in it, and that the laws that had
governed him were only a small fragment of the laws that rule the world.

When this discovery first comes to a man the effect is deadening; like
a ship that has lost its bearings he plunges in a sea of entangled,
confused ideas with no assurances as to his own ability to reach any
safe port whatever.  It is this crisis that marks the change from youth
to manhood.

Three weeks ago Robin had been absolutely confident, not only in
himself, but in his relations, his House and his future; now he trusted
in nothing.  But he had not yet arrived at the point when he could
regard his own shortcomings as the cause of his unhappiness; he pointed
to circumstances, his aunt, his uncle, Dahlia, even Randal, and he
began a search for something more reliable.

Of course, his aunt and uncle might have solved the problem for him; he
had not dared to question them and they had never mentioned the subject
themselves, but they did not look as though they had succeeded--he
fancied that they had avoided him during the last few days.

The serious illness of his grandfather still further complicated
matters; he was not expected to live through the week.  Robin was
sorry, but he had never seen very much of his grandfather; and it was,
after all, only fitting that such a very old man should die some time;
no, the point really was that his father would in a week's time be Sir
Henry Trojan and head of the House--that was what mattered.

Now his father was the one person whom he could find no excuse whatever
for blaming.  He had stood entirely outside the affair from the
beginning, and, as far as Robin could tell, knew nothing whatever about
it.  Robin, indeed, had taken care that he should not interfere; he had
been kept outside from the first.

No, Robin could not blame his father for the state of things; perhaps,
even, it might have been better if his advice had been asked.

But everything drove him back to the ultimate fact from which, indeed,
there was no escaping--that there was every prospect of his finding
himself, within a few weeks' time, the interesting centre of a common
affair in the Courts for Breach of Promise; and as this ultimate issue
shone clearer and clearer Robin's terror increased in volume.  To his
excited fancy, living and dead seemed to turn upon him.  Country
cousins--the Rev. George Trojan of West Taunton, a clergyman whose
evangelical tendencies had been the mock of the House; Colonel Trojan
of Cheltenham, a Port-and-Pepper Indian, as Robin had scornfully called
him; the Misses Trojan of Southsea, ladies of advanced years and
slender purses, who always sent him a card at Christmas; Mrs. Adeline
Trojan of Teignmouth, who had spent her life in beating at the doors of
London Society and had retired at last, defeated, to the provincial
gentility of a seaside town--Oh!  Robin had laughed at them all and
scorned them again and again--and behold how the tables would be
turned!  And the Dead!  Their scorn would be harder still to bear.  He
had thought of them often enough and had long ago known their histories
by heart.  He had gazed at their portraits in the Long Gallery until he
knew every line of their faces: old Lady Trojan of 1640, a little like
Rembrandt's "Lady with the Ruff," with her stern mouth and eyes and
stiff white collar--she must have been a lady of character!  Sir
Charles Trojan, her son, who plotted for William of Orange and was
rewarded royally after the glorious Revolution; Lady Gossiter Trojan, a
woman who had taken active part in the '45, and used "The Flutes" as a
refuge for intriguing Jacobites; and, best of all, a dim black picture
of a man in armour that hung over the mantel-piece, a portrait of a
certain Sir Robert Trojan who had fought in the Barons' Wars and been a
giant of his times; he had always been Robin's hero and had formed the
centre of many an imaginary tapestry worked by Robin's brain--and now
his descendant must pay costs in a Breach of Promise Case!

They had all had their faults, those Trojans; some of them had robbed
and murdered with little compunction, but they had always had their
pride, they had never done anything really low--what they had done they
had done with a high hand; Robin would be the first of the family to
let them down.  And it was rather curious to think that, three weeks
ago, it had been his father who was going to let them down.  Robin
remembered with what indignation he had heard of his father's visits to
the Cove, his friendship with Bethel and the rest--but surely it was
they who had driven him out!  It was their own doing from the first--or
rather his aunt and uncle's.  He was beginning to be annoyed with his
aunt and uncle.  He felt vaguely that they had got him into the mess
and were quite unable to pull him out again; which reflection brought
him back to the original main business, namely, that there was a mess,
and a bad one.

It was one of his qualities of youth that he could not wait; patience
was an utterly unlearned virtue, and this desperate uncertainty, this
sitting like Damocles under a sword suspended by a hair, was hard to
bear.  What was Dahlia doing?  Had she already taken steps?  He watched
every post with terror lest it should contain a lawyer's writ.  He had
the vaguest ideas about such things ... perhaps they would put him in
prison.  To his excited fancy the letters seemed enormous--horrible,
black, menacing, large for all the world to see.  What had Aunt Clare
done?  His uncle?  And then, last of all, had his father any suspicions?

Whether it was the London tailor, or simply the reassuring hand of
custom, his father was certainly not the uncouth person he had seemed
three weeks ago; in fact, Robin was beginning to think him rather
handsome--such muscles and such a chest!--and he really carried himself
very well, and indeed, loose, badly-made clothes suited him rather
well.  And then he had changed so in other ways; there was none of that
overwhelming cheerfulness, that terrible hail-fellow-well-met kind of
manner now; he was brief and to the point, he seldom smiled, and surely
it wasn't to be wondered at after the way in which they had treated him
at the family council a week ago.

There had been several occasions lately on which Robin would have liked
to have spoken to his father.  He had begun, once, after breakfast, a
halting conversation, but he had only received monosyllables as a
reply--the thing had broken down painfully.  And so he went down to his
aunt.

It was her room again, and she was having tea with Uncle Garrett.
Robin remembered the last occasion, only a week ago, when he had made
his confession.  He had been afraid of hurting his aunt then, he
remembered.  He did not mind very much now ... he saw his aunt and
uncle as two people suddenly grown effete, purposeless, incapable.
They seemed to have changed altogether, which only meant that he was,
at last, finding himself.

There hung a gloom over Clare's tea-table, partly, no doubt, because of
Sir Jeremy--the old man with the wrinkled hands and parchment face
seemed to follow one, noiselessly, remorselessly, through every passage
and into every room ... but there was also something else--that tension
always noticeable in a room where people whose recent action towards
some common goal is undeclared are gathered together; they were waiting
for some one else to make the next move.

And it was Robin who made it, asking at once, as he dropped the sugar
into his cup and balanced for a moment the tongs in the air: "Well,
Aunt Clare, what have you done?"

She noticed at once that he asked it a little scornfully, as though
assured beforehand that she had done very little.  There was a note of
antagonism in the way that he had spoken, a hint, even, of challenge.
She knew at once that he had changed during the last week, and again,
knowing as she did of her failure with the girl, and guessing perhaps
at its probable sequence, she hated Harry from the bottom of her heart.

"Done?  Why, how, Robin dear?  I don't advise those tea-cakes--they're
heavy.  I must speak to Wilson--she's been a little careless lately;
those biscuits are quite nice.  Done, dear?"

"Yes, aunt--about Miss Feverel.  No, I don't want anything to eat,
thanks--it seems only an hour or so since lunch--yes--about--well,
those letters?"

Clare looked up at him pleadingly.  He was speaking a little like
Harry; she had noticed during the last week that he had several things
in common with his father--little things, the way that he wrinkled his
forehead, pushed back his hair with his hand; she was not sure that it
was not conscious imitation, and indeed it had seemed to her during the
last week that every day drew him further from herself and nearer to
Harry.  She had counted on this affair as a means of reclaiming him,
and now she must confess failure--Oh! it was hard!

"Well, Robin, I have tried----"  She paused.

"Well?" he said drily, waiting.

"I'm afraid it wasn't much of a success," she said, trying to laugh.
"I suppose that really I'm not good at that sort of thing."

"At what sort of thing?"

He stood over her like a judge, the certainty of her failure the only
thing that he could grasp.  He did not recognise her own love for him,
her fear lest he should be angry; he was merciless as he had been three
weeks ago with his father, as he had been with Dahlia Feverel, and for
the same reason--because each had taken from him some of that armour of
self-confidence in which he had so greatly trusted; the winds of the
heath were blowing about him and he stood, stripped, shivering, before
the world.

"She was not good at that sort of thing"--that was exactly it, exactly
the summary of his new feeling about his aunt and uncle; they were not
able to cope with that hard, new world into which he had been so
suddenly flung--they were, he scornfully considered, "tea-table"
persons, and in so judging them he condemned himself.

"I'm so very sorry, dear.  I did my very best.  I went to see
the--um--Miss Feverel, and we talked about them.  But I'm afraid that I
couldn't persuade her--she seemed determined----"

"What did she say?"

"Oh, very little--only that she considered that the letters were hers
and that therefore she had every right to keep them if she liked.  She
seemed to attach some especial, rather sentimental value to them, and
considered, apparently, that it would be quite impossible to give them
up."

"How was she looking--ill?"  It had been one of Robin's consolations
during these weeks to imagine her pale, wretched, broken down.

"Oh no, extremely well.  She seemed rather amused at the whole affair.
I was not there very long."

"And is that all you have done?  Have you, I mean, taken any other
steps?"

"Yes--I wrote yesterday morning.  I got an answer this morning."

"What was it?" Robin spoke eagerly.  Perhaps his aunt had some surprise
in store and would produce the letters suddenly; surely Dahlia would
not have written unless she had relented.

Clare went to her writing-table and returned with the letter, held
gingerly between finger and thumb.

"I'm afraid it's not very long," she said, laughing nervously, and
again looking at Robin appealingly.  "I had written asking her to think
over what she had said to me the day before.  She says:


"'DEAR Miss TROJAN--Surely the matter is closed after what happened the
other day?  I am extremely sorry that you should be troubled by my
decision; but it is, I am afraid, unalterable.--Yours truly,

D. FEVEREL.'"


"Her decision?" cried Robin quickly.  "Had she told you anything?  Had
she decided anything?"

"Only that she would keep the letters," answered Clare slowly.  "You
couldn't expect me, Robin dear, to argue with her about it.  One had,
after all, one's dignity."

"Oh! it's no use!" cried Robin.  "She means to use them--of course,
it's all plain enough; we've just got to face it, I suppose"; and then,
as a forlorn hope, turning to his uncle--

"You've done nothing, I suppose, Uncle Garrett?"

His uncle had hitherto taken no part in the discussion, but sat intent
on the book that he was reading.  Now he answered, without looking up--

"Yes--I saw the girl."

"You saw her?" from Clare.

"What!  Dahlia!" from Robin.

"Yes, I called."  He laid the book down on his knee and enjoyed the
effect of his announcement.  He could be important for a moment at any
rate, although he must, with his next words, confess failure, so he
prolonged the situation.  "Some more tea, Clare, please, and not quite
so strong this time--you might speak about the tea--why not make it
yourself?"

She took his cup and went over to the tea-table.  She knew how to play
the game as well as he did, and she showed no astonishment or vulgar
curiosity, but if he had succeeded where she had failed she must change
her hand.  She had never thought very much about Garrett; he was a
thorough Trojan--for that she was very grateful, but he had always been
more of an emblem to her than a man.  Now if he had got the letters she
was humiliated indeed.  Robin would despise her for having failed where
his uncle had succeeded.

"Well, have you got them?"

Robin bent forward eagerly.

"No, not precisely," Garrett answered deliberately.  "But I went to see
her----"

"With what result?"

"With no precise result--that is to say, she did not promise to
surrender them--not immediately.  But I have every hope----"  He paused
mysteriously.

"Of what?"  If his uncle had really a chance of getting them, he was
not such a fool after all.  Perhaps he was a cleverer man than one gave
him credit for being.

"Well, of course, one has very little ground for any real assertion,
but we discussed the matter at some length.  I think I convinced her
that it would be her wisest course to deliver up the letters as soon as
might be, and I assured her that we would let the matter rest there and
take no further steps.  I think she was impressed," and he sipped his
tea slowly and solemnly.

"Impressed!  Yes, but what has she promised?" Robin cried impatiently.
He knew Dahlia better than they did, and he did not feel somehow that
she was very likely to be impressed with Uncle Garrett.  He was not the
kind of man.

"Promised?  No, not a precise promise--but she was quite pleasant and
seemed to be open to argument--quite a nice young person."

"Ah! you have done nothing!"  There was a note of relief in Clare's
exclamation.  "Why not say so at once, Garrett, instead of beating
about the bush?  There is an end of it.  We have failed, Robin, both of
us; we are where we were before, and what to do next I really don't
know."

It was rather a comfort to drag Garrett into it as well.  She was glad
that he had tried; it made her own failure less noticeable.

Robin looked at both of them, gloomily, from the fireplace.  Aunt
Clare, handsome, aristocratic, perfectly well fitted to pour out tea in
any society, but useless, useless, useless when it came to the real
thing; Uncle Garrett and his eyeglass, trying to make the most of a
situation in which he had most obviously failed--no, they were no good
either of them, and three weeks ago they had seemed the ultimate
standard by which his own life was to be tested.  How quickly one
learnt!

"Well, what is to be done?" he said desperately.  "It's plain enough
that she means to stick to the things; and, after all, there can only
be one reason for her doing it--she means to use them.  I can see no
way out of it at all--one must just stand up to it."

"We'll think, dear, we'll think," said Clare eagerly.  "Ideas are sure
to come if we only wait."

"Wait!  But we can't wait!" cried Robin.  "She'll move at once.
Probably the letters are in the lawyer's hands already."

"Then there's nothing to be done," said Garrett comfortably, settling
back again into his book--he was, he flattered himself, a man of most
excellent practical sense.

"No, it really seems, Robin, as if we had better wait," said Clare.
"We must have patience.  Perhaps after all she has taken no steps."

But Robin was angry.  He had long ago forgotten his share in the
business; he had adopted so successfully the rôle of injured sufferer
that his own actions seemed to him almost meritorious.  But he was very
angry with them.  Here they were, in the face of a family crisis,
deliberately adopting a policy of _laissez-faire_; he had done his best
and had failed, but he was young and ignorant of the world (that at
least he now admitted), but they were old, experienced, wise--or, at
least, they had always seemed to him to stand for experience and
wisdom, and yet they could do nothing--nay, worse--they seemed to wish
to do nothing--Oh! he was angry with them!

The whole room with its silver and knick-knacks--its beautifully worked
cushions and charming water-colours, its shining rows of complete
editions and dainty china stood to him now for incapacity.  Three weeks
ago it had seemed his Holy of Holies.

"But we can't wait," he repeated--"we can't!  Don't you see, Aunt
Clare, she isn't the sort of girl that waiting does for?  She'd never
dream of waiting herself."  Dahlia seemed, by contrast with their
complacent acquiescence, almost admirable.

"Well, dear," Clare answered, "your uncle and I have both tried--I
think that we may be alarming ourselves unnecessarily.  I must say she
didn't seem to me to bear any grudge against you.  I daresay she will
leave things as they are----"

"Then why keep the letters?"

"Oh, sentiment.  It would remind her, you see----"

But Robin could only repeat--"No, she's not that kind of girl," and
marvel, perplexedly, at their short-sightedness.

And then he approached the point--

"There is, of course," he said slowly, "one other person who might help
us----"  He paused.

Garrett put his book down and looked up.  Clare leaned towards him.

"Yes?"  Clare looked slightly incredulous of any suggested remedy--but
apparently composed and a little tired of all this argument.  But, in
reality, her heart was beating furiously.  Had it come at last?--that
first mention of his father that she had dreaded for so many days.

"I really cannot think----" from Garrett.

"Why not my father?"

Again it seemed to Clare that she and Harry were struggling for Robin
... since that first moment of his entry they had struggled--she with
her twenty years of faithful service, he with nothing--Oh! it was
unfair!

"But, Robin," she said gently--"you can't--not, at least, after what
has happened.  This is an affair for ourselves--for the family."

"But _he_ is the family!"

"Well, in a sense, yes.  But his long absence--his different way of
looking at things--make it rather hard.  It would be better, wouldn't
it, to settle it here, without its going further."

"To _settle_ it, yes--but we can't--we don't--we are leaving things
quite alone--waiting--when we ought to do something."

Robin knew that she was showing him that his father was still outside
the circle--that for herself and Uncle Garrett recent events had made
no difference.

But was he outside the circle?  Why should he be?  At any rate he would
soon be head of the House, and then it would matter very little----

"Also," Clare added, "he will scarcely have time just now.  He is with
father all day--and I don't see what he could do, after all."

"He could see her," said Robin slowly.  He suddenly remembered that
Dahlia had once expressed great admiration for his father--she was the
very woman to like that kind of man.  A hurried mental comparison
between his father and Uncle Garrett favoured the idea.

"He could see her," he said again.  "I think she might like him."

"My dear boy," said Garrett, "take it from me that what a man could do
I've done.  I assure you it's useless.  Your father is a very excellent
man, but, I must confess, in my opinion scarcely a diplomat----"

"Well, at any rate it's worth trying," cried Robin impatiently.  "We
must, I suppose, eat humble pie after the things you said to him, Aunt
Clare, the other day, but I must confess it's the only chance.  He will
be decent about it, I'm sure--I think you scarcely realise how nasty it
promises to be."

"Who is to ask?" said Garrett.

"I will ask him," said Clare suddenly.  "Perhaps after all Robin is
right--he might do something."

It might, she thought, be the best thing.  Unless he tried, Robin would
always consider him capable of succeeding--but he should try and
fail--fail!  Why, of course he would fail.

"Thank you, Aunt Clare."  Robin walked to the door and then turned:
"Soon would be best"--then he closed the door behind him.

His father was coming down the stairs as he passed through the hall.
He saw him against the light of the window and he half turned as though
to speak to him--but his father gave no sign; he looked very
stern--perhaps his grandfather was dead.

The sudden fear--the terror of death brought very close to him for the
first time--caught him by the throat.

"He is not dead?" he whispered.

"He is asleep," Harry said, stopping for a moment on the last step of
the stairs and looking at him across the hall--"I am afraid that he
won't live through the night."

They had both spoken softly, and the utter silence of the house, the
heaviness of the air so that it seemed to hang in thick clouds above
one's head, drove Robin out.  He looked as though he would speak, and
then, with bent head, passed into the garden.

He felt most miserably lonely and depressed--if he hadn't been so old
and proud he would have hidden in one of the bushes and cried.  It was
all so terrible--his grandfather, that weighty, eerie impression of
Death felt for the first time, the dreadful uncertainty of the Feverel
affair, all things were quite enough for misery, but this feeling of
loneliness was new to him.

He had always had friends, but even when they had failed him there had
been behind them the House--its traditions, its records, its
history--his aunt and uncle, and, most reassuring of all, himself.

But now all these had failed him.  His friends were vaguely
unattractive; Randal was terribly superficial, he was betraying the
House; his aunt and uncle were unsatisfactory, and for himself--well,
he wasn't quite so splendid as he had once thought.  He was wretchedly
dissatisfied with it all and felt that he would give all the polish and
culture in the world for a simple, unaffected friendship in which he
could trust.

"Some one," he said angrily, "that would do something"--and his
thoughts were of his father.

It was dark now, and he went down to the sea, because he liked the
white flash of the waves as they broke on the beach--this sudden
appearing and disappearing and the rustle of the pebbles as they turned
slowly back and vanished into the night again.

He liked, too, the myriad lights of the town: the rows of lamps, rising
tier on tier into the night sky, like people in some great amphitheatre
waiting in silence for the rising of a mighty curtain.  He always
thought on these nights of Germany--Germany, Worms, the little
bookseller, the distant gleam of candles in the Cathedrals, the flash
of the sun through the trees over the Rhine, the crooked, cobbled
streets at night with the moon like a lamp and the gabled roofs
flinging wild shadows over the stones ... the night-sea brought it very
close and carried Randal and Cambridge and Dahlia Feverel very far
away, although he did not know why.

He watched the light of the town and the waves and the great flashing
eye of the lighthouse and then turned back.  As he climbed the steps up
the cliff he heard some one behind him, and, turning, saw that it was
Mary Bethel.  She said "Good-night" quickly and was going to pass him,
but he stopped her.

"I haven't seen you for ages, Mary," he said.  He resolved to speak to
her.  She knew his father and had always been a good sort--perhaps she
would help him.

"Are you coming back, Robin?" she said, stopping and smiling.  There
was a lamp at the top of the cliff where the road ran past the steps,
and by the light of it he saw that she had been crying.  But he was too
much occupied with his own affairs to consider the matter very deeply,
and then girls cried so easily.

"Yes," he said, "let us go round by the road and the Chapel--it's a
splendid night; besides, we don't seem to have met recently.  We've
both been busy, I suppose, and I've a good deal to talk about."

"If you like," she said, rather listlessly.  It would, at least, save
her from her own thoughts and protect her perhaps from the ceaseless
repetition of that scene of three days ago when she had turned the man
that she loved more than all the world away and had lied to him because
she was proud.

And so at first she scarcely listened to him.  They walked down the
road that ran along the top of the cliff and the great eye of the
lighthouse wheeled upon them, flashed and vanished; she saw the room
with its dingy carpet and wide-open window, and she heard his voice
again and saw his hands clenched--oh! she had been a fine fool!  So it
was little wonder that she did not hear his son.

But Robin had at last an audience and he knew no mercy.  All the
agitation of the last week came pouring forth--he lost all sense of
time and place; he was at the end of the world addressing infinity on
the subject of his woes, and it says a good deal for his vanity and not
much for his sense of humour that he did not feel the lack of
proportion in such a position.

"It was a girl, you know--perhaps you've met her--a Miss
Feverel--Dahlia Feverel.  I met her at Cambridge and we got rather
thick, and then I wrote to her--rot, you know, like one does--and when
I wanted to get back the letters she wouldn't let me have them, and
she's going to use them, I'm afraid, for--well--Breach of Promise!"

He paused and waited for the effect of the announcement, but it never
came; she was walking quickly, with her head lifted to catch the wind
that blew from the sea--he could not be certain that she had heard.

"Breach of Promise!" he repeated impressively.  "It would be rather an
awful thing for people in our position if it really came to that--it
would be beastly for me.  Of course, I meant nothing by it--the
letters, I mean--a chap never does.  Everybody at Cambridge talks to
girls--the girls like it--but she took it seriously, and now she may
bring it down on our heads at any time, and you can't think how beastly
it is waiting for it to come.  We've done all we could--all of us--and
now I can tell you it's been worrying me like anything wondering what
she's done.  My uncle and aunt both tried and failed; I was rather
disappointed, because after all one would have thought that they would
be able to deal with a thing like that, wouldn't one?"

He paused again, but she only said "Yes" and hurried on.

"So now I'm at my wits' end and I thought that you might help me."

"Why not your father?" she said suddenly.

"Ah! that's just it," he answered eagerly.  "That's where I wanted you
to give me your advice.  You see--well, it's a little hard to
explain--we weren't very nice to the governor when he came back
first--the first day or two, I mean.  He was--well, different--didn't
look at things as we did; liked different things and had strong views
about knocking down the Cove.  So we went on our way and didn't pay
much attention to him--I daresay he's told you all about it--and I'm
sorry enough now, although it really was largely his own fault!  I
don't think he seemed to want us to have much to do with him, and then
one day Clare spoke to him about things and asked him to consider us a
little and he flared up.

"Well, I've a sort of idea that he could help us now--at any rate,
there's no one else.  Aunt Clare said that she would ask him, but you
know him better than any of us, and, of course, it is a little
difficult for us, after the way that we've spoken to him; you might
help us, I thought."

He couldn't be sure, even now, that Mary had been listening--she looked
so strange this evening that he was afraid of her, and half wished that
he had kept his affairs to himself.  She was silent for a moment,
because she was wondering what it was that Harry had really done about
the letters.  It was amusing, because they obviously didn't know that
she had told him--but what had he done?

"Do you want me to help you, Robin?" she asked.

"Yes, of course," he answered eagerly.  "You know him so well and could
get him to do things that he would never do for us.  I'm afraid of him,
or rather have been just lately.  I don't know what there is about him
exactly."

"You want me to help you?" she asked again.  "Well then, you've got to
put up with a bit of my mind--you've caught me in a bad mood, and I
don't care whether it hurts you or not--you're in for a bit of plain
speaking."

He looked up at her with surprise, but said nothing.

"Oh, I know I'm no very great person myself," she went on
quickly--almost fiercely.  "I've only known in the last few weeks how
rotten one can really be, but at least I have known--I do know--and
that's just what you don't.  We've been friends for some time, you and
I--but if you don't look out, we shan't be friends much longer."

"Why?" he asked quietly.

"You were never very much good," she went on, paying no attention to
his question, "and always conceited, but that was your aunt's fault as
much as any one's, and she gave you that idea of your family--that you
were God's own chosen people and that no one could come within speaking
distance of you--you had that when you were quite a little boy, and you
seem to have thought that that was enough, that you need never do
anything all your life just because you were a Trojan.  Eton helped the
idea, and when you went up to Cambridge you were a snob of the first
order.  I thought Cambridge would knock it out of you, but it didn't;
it encouraged you, and you were always with people who thought as you
did, and you fancied that your own little corner of the earth--your own
little potato-patch--was better than every one else's gardens; I
thought you were a pretty poor thing when you came back from Cambridge
last year, but now you've beaten my expectations by a good deal----"

"I say----" he broke in--"really I----" but she went on unheeding--

"Instead of working and doing something like any decent man would, you
loafed along with your friends learning to tie your tie and choosing
your waistcoat-buttons; you go and make love to a decent girl and then
when you've tired of her tell her so, and seem surprised at her hitting
back.

"Then at last when there is a chance of your seeing what a man is
like--that he isn't only a man who dresses decently like a tailor's
model--when your father comes back and asks you to spend a few of your
idle hours with him, you laugh at him, his manners, his habits, his
friends, his way of thinking; you insult him and cut him dead--your
father, one of the finest men in the world.  Why, you aren't fit to
brush his clothes!--but that isn't the worst!  Now--when you find
you're in a hole and you want some one to help you out of it and you
don't know where to turn, you suddenly think of your father.  He wasn't
any good before--he was rough and stupid, almost vulgar, but now that
he can help you, you'll turn and play the dutiful son!

"That's you as you are, Robin Trojan--you asked me for it and you've
got it; it's just as well that you should see yourself as you are for
once in your life--you'll forget it all again soon enough.  I'm not
saying it's only you--it's the lot of you--idle, worthless, snobbish,
empty, useless.  Help you?  No!  You can go to your father yourself and
think yourself lucky if he will speak to you."

Mary stopped for lack of breath.  Of course, he couldn't know that
she'd been attacking herself as much as him, that, had it not been for
that scene three days ago, she would never have spoken at all.

"I say!" he said quietly, "is it really as bad as that?  Am I that sort
of chap?"

"Yes.  You know it now at least."

"It's not quite fair.  I am only like the rest.  I----"

"Yes, but why should you be?  Fancy being proud that you are like the
rest!  One of a crowd!"

They turned up the road to her house, and she began to relent when she
saw that he was not angry.

"No," he said, nodding his head slowly, "I expect you're about right,
Mary.  Things have been happening lately that have made everything
different--I've been thinking ...  I see my father differently...."

Then, "How could you?" she cried.  "_You_ to cut him and turn him out?
Oh!  Robin! you weren't always that sort----"

"No," he answered.  "I wasn't once.  In Germany I was different--when I
got away from things--but it's harder here"--and then again
slowly--"But am I really as bad as that, Mary?"

Sudden compunction seized her.  What right had she to speak to him?
After all, he was only a boy, and she was every bit as bad herself.

"Oh!  I don't know!" she said wearily.  "I'm all out of sorts to-night,
Robin.  We're neither of us fit to speak to him, and you've treated him
badly, all of you--I oughtn't to have spoken as I did, perhaps; but
here we are!  You'd better forget it, and another day I'll tell you
some of the nice things about you----"

"Am I that sort of chap?" he said again, staring in front of him with
his hand on the gate.  She said good-night and left him standing in the
road.  He turned up the hill, with his head bent.  He was scarcely
surprised and not at all angry.  It only seemed the climax to so many
things that had happened lately--"a snob"--"a pretty poor thing"--"You
don't work, you learn to choose your waistcoat-buttons"--that was the
kind of chap he was.  And his father: "One of the finest men there
is----"  He'd missed his chance, perhaps, he would never get it again!
But he would try!

He passed into the garden and fumbled for his latch-key.  He would
speak to his father to-morrow!

Mary was quite right ... he _was_ a "pretty poor thing!"




CHAPTER XIV

That night was never forgotten by any one at "The Flutes."  Down in the
servants' hall they prolonged their departure for bed to a very late
hour, and then crept, timorously, to their rooms; they were extravagant
with the electric light, and dared Benham's anger in order to secure a
little respite from terrible darkness.  Stories were recalled of Sir
Jeremy's kindness and good nature, and much speculation was indulged in
as to his successor--the cook recalled her early youth and an
engagement with a soldier that aroused such sympathy in her hearers
that she fraternised, unexpectedly, with Clare's maid--a girl who had
formerly been considered "haughty," but was now found to be agreeable
and pleasant.

Above stairs there was the same restlessness and sense of uneasy
expectancy.  Clare went to bed, but not to sleep.  Her mind was not
with her father--she had been waiting for his death during many long
weeks, and now that the time had arrived she could scarcely think of it
otherwise than calmly.  If one had lived like a Trojan one would die
like one--quietly, becomingly, in accordance with the best traditions.
She was sure that there would be something ready for Trojans in the
next world a little different from other folks' destiny--something
select and refined--so why worry at going to meet it?

No, it was not Sir Jeremy, but Robin.  Throughout the night she heard
the clocks striking the quarters; the first light of dawn crept timidly
through the shuttered blinds, the full blaze of the sun streamed on to
her bed--and she could not sleep.  The conversation of the day before
recalled itself syllable for syllable; she read into it things that had
never been there and tortured herself with suspicion and doubt.  Robin
was different--utterly different.  He was different even from a week
ago when he had first told them of the affair.  She could hear his
voice as he had bent over her asking her to forgive him; that had
seemed to her then the hour of her triumph--but now she saw that it was
the premonition of defeat.  How she had worked for him, loved him,
spoilt him; and now, in these weeks, her lifework was utterly undone.
And then, in the terrible loneliness of her room, with the darkness on
the world and round her bed and at her heart, she wept--terrible,
tearless sobbing that left her in the morning weak, unstrung, utterly
unequal to the day.

This conversation with Robin had also worried Garrett.  The consolation
that he had frequently found in the reassuring comforts of his study
seemed utterly wanting to-night.  The stillness irritated him;  it
seemed stuffy, close, and he had an overmastering desire for a
companion.  This desire he conquered, because he felt that it would be
scarcely dignified to search the byways of the house for a friend; but
he listened for steps, and fancied over and over again that he heard
the eagerly anticipated knock.  But no one came, and he sat far into
the night, fancying strange sounds and trembling at the dark; and at
last fell asleep in his chair, and was discovered in an undignified
position on the floor in the early morning by the politely astonished
Benham.

But it was for Harry that the night most truly marked a crisis.  He
spent it in vigil by the side of his father, and watched the heavy
passing of the hours, like grey solemn figures through the darkened
room.  The faint glimmer of the electric light, heavily shaded, assumed
fantastic and portentous shapes and fleecy enormous shadows on the
white surface of the staring walls.  Strange blue shadows glimmered
through the black caverns of the windows, and faint lights came from
beneath the door, and hovered on the ceiling like mysteriously moving
figures.

Sir Jeremy was perfectly still.  Death had come to him very gently and
had laid its hand quietly upon him, with no violence or harshness.  It
was only old age that had greeted him as a friend, and then with a
smile had persuaded him to go.  He was unconscious now, but at any
moment his senses might return, and then he would ask for Harry.  The
crisis might come at any time, and Harry must be there.

He felt no weariness; his brain was extraordinarily active and he
passed every incident since his return in review.  It all seemed so
clear to him now; the inevitability of it all; and his own blindness in
escaping the meaning of it.  It seemed now that he had known nothing of
the world at all three weeks ago.  Then he had judged it from his own
knowledge--now he saw it in many lights; the point of view of Robin, of
Dahlia Feverel, of Clare, of Sir Jeremy, of Bethel, of Mary--he had
arrived at the great knowledge that Life could be absolutely right for
many different sorts of people--that the same life, like a globe of
flashing colours, could shine into every corner of obscurity, gleaming
differently in every different place and yet be unchangeable.
Murderer, robber, violator, saint, priest, king, beggar--they were all
parts of a wonderful, inevitable world, and, he saw it now, were all of
them essential.  He had been tolerant before from a wide-embracing
charity; he was tolerant now from a wide-embracing knowledge: "Er
liebte jeden Hund, und wünschte von jedem Hund geliebt zu sein."

They had all learnt in that last three weeks.  Dahlia Feverel would
pass into the world with that struggle at her heart and the strength of
her victory--his father would solve the greatest question of
all--Robin!  Mary!  Clare!--they had all been learning too, but what it
was that they had learnt he could not yet tell; the conclusion of the
matter was to come.  But it had all been, for him at least, only a
prelude; he was to stand for the world as head of the House, he had his
life before him and his work to do, he had only, like Robin, just "come
of age."

He did not know why, but he had no longer any doubt.  He knew that he
would win Robin, he knew that he would win Mary; up to that day he had
been uncertain, vacillating, miserable--but now he had no longer any
hesitation.  The work of his life was to fit Robin for his due
succession, and, please God, he would do it with all his heart and soul
and strength; there was to be no false sentiment, no shifting of
difficult questions, no hiding from danger, no sheltering blindly under
unquestioned creeds, no false bids for popularity.

Robin was to be clean, straight, and sane, with all the sturdy
cleanliness and strength and sanity that his father's love and
knowledge could give him.

Oh! he loved his son!--but no longer blindly, as he had loved him three
weeks ago ... and so he faced his future.

And of Mary, too, he was sure.  He knew that she loved him; he had seen
her face in the mirror as her lips had said "No," and he saw that her
heart had said "Yes."  With the new strength that had come to him he
vowed to force her defences and carry her away....  Oh! he could be any
knight and fight for any lady.

But as he sat by the bed, watching the dawn struggle through the blinds
and listening to the faint, clear twittering of birds in the grey,
dew-swept garden--he wished that he could tell his father of his
engagement.  He wondered if there would be time.  That it would please
the old man he knew, and it would seal the compact, and place a secret
blessing on their married life together.  Yes, he would like to tell
him.

The clocks struck five--he heard their voices echo through the house;
and, at the last, the tiny voice of the cuckoo clock sounded and the
little wild flap of his wings came quite clearly through the silence;
his voice was answered by a chorus from the garden, the voices of the
birds seemed to grow ever louder and louder; in that strange dark room,
with its shaded lights and heavy airs, it was clear and fresh like the
falling of water on cold, shining stone.

Harry went softly to the window and drew back a corner of the blind.
The dawn was gradually revealing the forms and colours of the garden,
and in the grey, misty light things were mysterious and uncertain; like
white lights in a dusky room the two white statues shone through the
mist.  At that strange hour they seemed in their right atmosphere; they
seemed to move and turn and bend--he could have fancied that they
sailed on the mist--that, for a moment, they had vanished and then that
they had grown enormous, monstrous.  He watched them eagerly, and as
the light grew clearer he made them out more plainly--the straight,
eager beauty of the man, the dim, mysterious grace of the woman.
Perhaps they talked in those early hours when they were alone in the
garden; perhaps they might speak to him if he were to join them then.
Then he fancied that the mist formed into figures of men and women; to
his excited fancy the garden seemed peopled with shapes that increased
and dwindled and vanished.  Round the statues many shapes gathered; one
in especial seemed to walk to and fro with its face turned to the
house.  It was a woman--her grey dress floated in the air, and he saw
her form outlined against the statue.  Then the mist seemed to sweep
down again and catch the statues in its eddies and hide them from his
gaze.  The dawn was breaking very slowly.  From the window the sweep of
the sea was, in daylight, perfectly visible: now in the dim grey of the
sky it was hidden--but Harry knew where it must be and watched for its
appearance.  The first lights were creeping over the sky, breaking in
delicate tints and ripples of silver and curving, arc-shaped, from the
west to the east.

Where sky and sea divided a faint pale line of grey hovered and broke,
turning into other paler lights of the most delicate blue.  The dawn
had come.

He turned back again to the garden and started with surprise: in the
more certain light there was no doubt that it was a woman who stood
there by the statues, guarding the first early beauties of the garden.
Everything was pearl-grey, save where, high above the water of the
fountain that stood in the centre of the lawn, the sky had broken into
a little lake of the palest blue and this was reflected in the still
mirror of the fountain--but it _was_ a woman.  He could see the outline
of her form--the bend of her neck as she turned with her face to the
house, the straight line of her arms as they tell at her sides.  And,
as he looked, his heart began to beat thickly.  He seemed to recognise
that carriage of the body from the hips, the fling-back of the head as
she stared towards the windows.

The light of the dawn was breaking over the garden, the chorus of the
birds was loud in the trees, and he knew that it was no dream.

He glanced for a moment at his father, and then crept softly from the
room.  He found one of the nurses making tea over a spirit-lamp in the
dressing-room and asked her to take his place.

The house was perfectly silent as he opened the French window of the
drawing-room and stepped on to the lawn.  The grass was heavy with dew
and the fresh air beat about his face; he had never known anything
quite so fresh--the air, the grass, the trees, the birds' song like the
sound of hidden waters tumbling on to some unseen rock.

Her face was turned away from him and his feet made no sound on the
grass.  He came perfectly silently towards her, and then when he saw
that it had indeed been no imagination but that it was reality, and
when he knew all that her coming there meant and what it implied, for
moment his limbs shook so that he could scarcely stand.  Then he
laughed a little and said "Mary!"

She turned with a little cry, and when she saw who it was the crimson
flooded her face, changing it as the rising sun was soon to change the
grey of the sea and the garden.

"Oh!" she cried, "I didn't know--I didn't mean.  I----"

"It is going to be a lovely day," he said quietly, "the sun will be up
in a moment.  I have been watching you from my father's window."

"Oh!  You mustn't!" she cried eagerly.  "I thought that I was
safe--absolutely; I was here quite by chance--really I was--I couldn't
sleep, and I thought that I would watch the sunrise over the sea--and I
went down to the beach--and then--well, there was the little wood by
your garden, and it was so wonderfully still and silent, and I saw
those statues gleaming through the trees, and they looked so beautiful
that I came nearer.  I meant to come only for a moment and then go away
again--but--I--stayed----"

But he could scarcely hear what she said; he only saw her standing
there with her dress trembling a little in the breeze.

"Mary," he said, "you did not mean what you told me the other day?"

She looked at him for a moment and then suddenly flung out her hands
and touched his coat.  "No," she answered.

For a moment they were utterly silent.  Then he took her into his arms.

"I love you!  How I love you!"

Her hair was about his face, for a moment her face was buried in his
coat, then she lifted it and their lips met.

He shook from head to foot, he crushed her to him, then he released her.

She glanced up at him with her hand still touching his coat and looked
into his eyes.

"I will love you and serve you and honour you always," she said.  She
took his arm and they passed down the lawn and watched the light
breaking over the sea.  The sky was broken into thousands of fleecy
clouds of mother-of-pearl--the sea was trembling as though the sun had
whispered that it was near at hand, and, on the horizon, the first bars
of pale gold heralded its coming.

"I have loved you," he said, "since the first moment that I saw you--I
gave you tea and muffins; I deserted the Miss Ponsonbys in order to
serve you."

"And I too!" she answered, laughing.  "I could not eat the muffin for
love of you, and I was jealous of the Miss Ponsonbys!"

"Why did you turn me out the other day?"

"They had been talking--mother and the others; and I was hurt terribly,
and I thought that you would hear what they had said and would think,
perhaps, that it was true and would despise me.  And then after you had
gone, I knew that nothing in the world could make any difference--that
they could say what they pleased, but that I could not live without
you--you see I am very young!"

"Oh, and I am so old, dear!  You mustn't forget that!  Do you think
that you could ever put up with any one as old as I am?"

She laughed.  "You are just the same age as myself," she cried.  "You
will always be the same age, and I am not sure but I think that you are
younger----"

And suddenly the sun had risen--a great ball of fire changing all the
blue of the sky to red and gold, and they watched as the gods had
watched the flaming ruin of Valhalla.

But the daylight drove them to other thoughts.

"I must go back," she said.  "I will go down to the shore and perhaps
will meet father.  Oh! you don't know what I have suffered during these
last few days.  I thought that perhaps I had driven you away and that
you would never come back--and then I had a silly idea that I would
watch your windows--and so I came----"

"Why!  I have watched yours!" he cried--"often!  Oh! we will have some
times!"

"But you must remember that there will be three of us," she answered.
"There is Robin!"

"Robin!  Why, it will be splendid!  You and Robin and I!"

"Poor Robin----"  She laughed.  "You don't know how I scolded him last
night.  It was about you and I was unhappy.  He is changing fast, and
it is because of you.  He has come round----"

"We have all come round!" cried Harry.  "He and you and I!  Oh! this is
the beginning of the world for all of us--and I am forty-five!  Will
you write to me later in the day?  I cannot get down until to-night.
My father is very ill--I must be here.  But write to me--a long
letter--it will be as though you were talking."

She laughed.  "Yes, I'll write," she cried; then she looked at him
again--"I love you," she said, as though she were reciting her faith,
"because you are good, because you are strong, because--oh! for no
reason at all--just because you are you."

For a moment they watched the sea, and then again he took her in his
arms and held her as though he would never let her go--then she
vanished through the trees.

The house was waking into life as he re-entered it; servants were astir
at an early hour: he had been away such a little time, but the world
was another place.  Every detail of the house--the stairs, the hall,
the windows, the clocks, the pot-pourri scent from the bowls of dried
roses, the dance of the dust in the light of the rising sun, was
presented to him now with a new meaning.  He was glad that she had
stayed with him such a little while--it made it more precious, her
coming with the shadows in that grey of breaking skies and a mysterious
plunging sea, and then vanishing with the rising sun.  Oh! they would
come down to earth soon enough!--let him keep that kiss, those few
words, her last smile as she vanished into the wood, like the visible
signs of the other world that had, at last, been allowed to him.  The
vision of the Grail had passed from his eyes, but the memory of it was
to be his most sacred possession.

He went to his room, had a bath, and then returned to his father; of
course, he could not sleep.

Clare, Garrett, and Robin met at breakfast with the sense of
approaching calamity heavy upon them.  As far as Sir Jeremy himself was
concerned there was little real regret--how could there be?  Of course,
there was the sentiment of separation, the breaking of a great many
ties that had been strong and traditional; but it was better that the
old man should go--of that there was no question.  Sir Jeremy himself
would rather.  No, "Le roi est mort" was easy enough to say, but how
"Vive le roi" stuck in their throats.

Garrett hinted at a wretched night, and quoted Benham on the dangers of
an arm-chair at night-time.

"Of course, one had been thinking," he said vaguely, after a melancholy
survey of eggs and bacon that developed into resignation over dry
toast--"there was a good deal to think about.  But I certainly had
intended to go to bed--I can't imagine what----"

Robin said nothing.  His mind was busy with Mary's speech of the night
before; his world lay crumbled about him, and, like Cato, he was
finding a certain melancholy satisfaction in its ruins.  His thoughts
were scarcely with his grandfather; he felt vaguely that there was
Death in the house and that its immediate presence was one of the
things that had helped to bring his self-content about his ears.  But
it was of his father that he was thinking, and of a certain morning
when he had refused a walk.  If he got a chance again!

Clare looked wretched.  Robin thought that she had never seemed so ill
before; there was, for the first time, an air of carelessness about
her, as though she had flung on her clothes anyhow--something utterly
unlike her.

"I am going to speak to Harry this morning," she said.

Garrett looked up peevishly.  "Scarcely the time, Clare.  I should say
that it were better for us to wait until--well, afterwards.  There is,
perhaps, something a little indecent----"

"I have considered the matter carefully," interrupted Clare decisively.
"This is the best time----"

"Oh, well, of course.  Only I should have thought that I might have had
just a little say in the matter.  I was, after all, originally
consulted as well as yourself.  I saw the girl, and was even, I might
venture to suggest, with her for some time.  But, of course, a mere
man's opinion----"

"Oh, don't be absurd, Garrett.  It is I that have to ask him--it is
pretty obvious that I have every right to choose my own time."

"Oh!  Please, don't let me interfere--only I should scarcely have
thought that this was quite the moment when Harry would be most
inclined to listen to you."

"If we don't ask him now," she answered, "there's no knowing when we
shall have the opportunity.  When poor father is gone he will have a
great deal to settle and decide; he will have no time for anything at
all for months ahead.  This morning is our last chance."

But she had another thought.  Her great desire now was that he should
try and fail; that he would fail she was sure.  She was eagerly
impatient for that day when he must come to them and admit his failure.
She looked ahead and fashioned that scene for herself--that scene when
Robin should know and confess that his father was only as the rest of
them; that their failure was his failure, their incapacity his
incapacity--and then the balance would be restored and Robin would see
as he had seen before.

"Coffee, Robin?  It's quite hot still.  I saw Dr. Brady just now.  He
says that there is no change, nor is there likely to be one for some
hours.  You're looking tired, Robin, old boy.  Have you been sleeping
on the floor, too?"

"No!"  He looked up and smiled.  "But I was awake a good bit.  The
house is different somehow, when----"

"Oh yes, I know.  One feels it, of course.  But eating's much the best
thing for keeping one's spirits up.  I suppose Harry is coming down.
Just find out from Benham, will you, Wilder, whether Mr. Henry is
coming down?"

The footman left the room, returning in a moment with the answer that
Mr. Henry was about to come down.

Garrett moved to the door, but Clare stopped him.

"I want you, Garrett--you can bear me out!"

"I thought that my opinion was of so little importance," he answered
sulkily, "that I might as well go."

But he sat down again and buried himself in his paper.

They waited, and Robin made mental comparisons with a similar scene a
week before; there were still the silver teapot, the toast, the
ham--they were all there, and it was only he himself who had altered.
Only a week, and what a difference!  What a cad he had been! a howling
cad!  Not only to his father, but to Dahlia, to every one with whom he
had had to do.  He did not spare himself; he had at least the pluck to
go through with it--_that_ was Trojan.

At Harry's entrance there was an involuntary raising of eyebrows to
see, if possible, how _he_ took it; _it_ being his own immediate
succession rather than his father's death.  He was grave, of course,
but there was a light in his eyes that Clare could not understand.  Had
he some premonition of her request?  He apologised for being late.

"I have been up most of the night.  There is no immediate danger of a
change, but we ought, I think, to be ready.  Yes, the toast, Robin,
please--I hope you've slept all right, Clare?"

How quickly he had picked up the manner, she reflected, as she watched
him!  But of course that was natural enough; once a Trojan, always a
Trojan, and no amount of colonies will do away with it.  But three
weeks was a short time for so vast a change.

"No, Harry, not very well--of course, it weighs on one rather."

She sighed and rose from the breakfast-table; she looked terribly tired
and Harry was suddenly sorry for her, and, for the first time since the
night of his return, felt that they were brother and sister; but after
the adventure of the early morning it was as though he were related to
the whole world--Love and Death had drawn close to him, and, with the
sound of the beating of their wings, the world had revealed things to
him that had, in other days, been secrets.  Love and Death were such
big things that his personal relations with Clare, with Garrett, even
with Robin, had assumed their true proportion.

"Clare, you're tired!" he said.  "I should go and lie down again.  You
shall be told if anything happens."

"No, thanks, Harry.  I wanted to ask you something--but, perhaps, first
I ought to apologise for some of the things that I said the other day.
I said more than I meant to.  I am sorry--but one forgets at times that
one has no right to meddle in other people's affairs.  But now
I--we--all of us--want to ask you a favour----"

"Yes?" he said, looking up.

"Well, of course, this is scarcely the time.  But it is something that
can hardly wait, and you can decide about acting yourself----"

She paused.  It was the very hardest thing that she had ever had to do,
and she would never forget it to the day of her death.  But it was
harder for Robin; he sat there with flaming cheeks and his head
hanging--he could not look at his father.

"It is to do with Robin--" Clare went on; "he was rather afraid to ask
you about it himself, because, of course, it is not a business of which
he is very proud, and so he has asked me to do it for him.  It is a
girl--a Miss Feverel--whom he met at Cambridge and to whom he had
written letters, letters that gave the young woman some reasons to
suppose that he was offering her marriage.  He saw the matter more
wisely after a time and naturally wished Miss Feverel to restore the
letters, but this she refused to do.  Both Garrett and myself have done
what we could and have, I am afraid, failed.  Miss Feverel is quite
resolute--most obstinately so.  We are afraid that she may take steps
that would be unpleasant to all of us--it is rather worrying us, and we
thought--it seemed--in short, I determined to ask you to help us.  With
your wider experience you will probably know the best way in which to
deal with such a person."

Clare paused.  She had put it as drily as possible, but it was,
nevertheless, humiliating.

There was a pause.

"I am scarcely surprised," said Harry, "that Robin is ashamed of the
affair."

"Of course he is," answered Clare eagerly, "bitterly ashamed."

"I suppose you made love to--ah--Miss Feverel?" he said, turning
directly to Robin.

"Yes," said Robin, lifting his head and facing his father.  As their
eyes met the colour rushed to his cheeks.

"It was a rotten thing to do," said Harry.

"I have been very much ashamed of myself," answered Robin.  "I would
make Miss Feverel any apology that is in my power, but there seems to
be little that I can do."

Harry said no more.

"I am really sorry," said Clare at last, "to speak about a business
like this just now--but really there is no time to lose.  I am sure
that you will do something to prevent trouble in the Courts, and that
is what Miss Feverel seems to threaten."

"What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"To see her--to see her and try and arrange some compromise----"

"I should have thought that Robin was the proper person----"

"He has tried and failed; she would not listen to him."

"Then I am afraid that she will not listen to me--a perfect stranger
with no claims on her interest."

"It is precisely that.  You will be able to put it on a business
footing, because sentiment does not enter into the question at all."

"Do you want me to help you, Robin?"

At the direct question Robin looked up again.  His father looked very
stern and judicial.  It was the schoolmaster rather than the parent,
but, after all, what else could he expect?  So he said, quite
simply--"Yes, father."

But at this moment there was an interruption.  With the hurried opening
of the door there came the sounds of agitated voices and steps in the
passage--then Benham appeared.

"Sir Jeremy is worse, Mr. Henry.  The doctor thinks that, perhaps----"

Harry hurriedly left the room.  Absolute silence reigned.  The sudden
arrival of the long-expected crisis was terrifying.  They sat like
statues, staring in front of them, and listening eagerly to every
sound.  The monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece was
terrifying--the clock on the wall by the door seemed to run a race.
The "tick-tock" grew faster and faster--at last it was as if both
clocks were screaming aloud.

The room was filled with the clamour, and through it all they sat
motionless and silent.

In a moment Harry had returned.  "All of you," he said quickly--"he
would like to see you--I am afraid----"

After that Robin was confused and saw nothing clearly.  As he crept
tremblingly up the stairs everything assumed gigantic and menacing
shapes--the clock, the pot-pourri bowls, the window-curtains, and the
brass rods on the stairs.  In the room there was that grey half-light
that seemed so terrible, and the spurt and crackle of the fire seemed
to fill the place with sounds.  He scarcely saw his grandfather.  In
the centre of the bed, something was lying; the eyes gleamed for a
moment in the light of the fire, the lips seemed to move.  But he did
not realise that those things were his grandfather whom he had known
for so many years--in another hour he would be dead.

But the things that he saw were the shadows of the fire on the wall,
the dancing in the air of the only lock of hair that Dr. Brady
possessed, the way that Clare's hands were folded as she stood silently
by the bed, Uncle Garrett's waistcoat-buttons that shot little sparks
of light into the room as he turned, ever so slightly, from side to
side.

At a motion of the doctor's, he came forward to bid Sir Jeremy
farewell.  As he bent over the bed panic seized him--he did not see Sir
Jeremy but something horrible, terrible, ghoulish--Death.  Then he saw
the old man's eyes, and they were twinkling; then he knew that he was
speaking to him.  The words came with difficulty, but they were quite
clear--

"You'll be a good man, Robin--but listen to your father--he
knows--he'll show you how to be a Trojan."

For a moment he held the wrinkled, shrivelled hand in his own, and then
he stepped back.  Clare bent down and kissed her father, and then
kneeled down by the bed; Robin had a mad longing to laugh as he saw his
uncle and aunt kneeling there, their heads made enormous shadows on the
wall.

Harry also bent down and kissed his father; the old man held his hand
and kept it--

"I've tried to be a fair man and a gentleman--I've not been a good one.
But I've had some fun and seen life--thank God, I was born a Trojan--so
will the rest of you.  Harry, my boy, you're all right--you'll do.  I'm
going, but I don't regret anything--your sins are experience--and the
greatest sin of all is not having any."

His lips closed--as the fire flashed with the falling of a cavern of
blazing coal his head rolled back on to the pillow.

Suddenly he smiled--

"Dear old Harry!" he said, and then he died.

The shadows from the fire leapt and danced on the wall, and the
kneeling figures by the bed flung grotesque shapes over the dead man.




CHAPTER XV

It was five o'clock of the same day and Harry was asleep in front of
his fire.  In the early hours of the afternoon the strain under which
he had been during the past week began to assert itself, and every part
of his body seemed to cry out for sleep.

His head was throbbing, his legs trembled, and strange lights and
figures danced before his eyes; he flung himself into a chair in his
small study at the top of the West Tower and fell asleep.

He had grown to love that room very dearly: the great stretch of the
sea and the shining sand with the grey bending hills hemming it in;
that view was never the same, but with the passing of every cloud held
new colours like a bowl of shining glass.

The room was bare and simple--that had been his own wish; a photograph
of his first wife hung over the mantelpiece, a small sketch of Auckland
Harbour, a rough drawing of the Terraces before their
destruction--these were all his pictures.

He had been trying to read since his return, and copies of "The Egoist"
and some of Swinburne's poetry lay on the table; but the first had
seemed incomprehensible to him and the second indecent, and he had
abandoned them; but he _had_ made one discovery, thanks to Bethel, Walt
Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"--it seemed to him the greatest book that he
had ever read, the very voicing of all his hopes and ideals and faith.
Ah! that man knew!

Benham came in and drew the curtains.  He watched the sleeping man for
a moment and nodded his head.  He was the right sort, Mr. Harry!  He
would do!--and the Watcher of the House stole out again.

Harry slept on, a great, dreamless sleep, grey and formless as sleep of
utter exhaustion always is; then he suddenly woke to the dim twilight
of the room, the orange glow of the dying fire, and the distant
striking of the hour--it was six o'clock!

As he lay back in his chair, dreamily, lazily watching the fire, his
thoughts were of his father.  He had not known that he would regret him
so intensely, but he saw now that the old man had meant everything to
him during those first weeks of his return.  He thought of him very
tenderly--his prejudices, his weaknesses, his traditions.  It was
strange how alike they all were in reality, the Trojans!  Sir Jeremy,
Clare, Garrett, Robin, himself, the same bedrock of traditional pride
was there, it was only that circumstances had altered them
superficially.  Three weeks ago Clare and he had seemed worlds apart,
now he saw how near they were!  But for that very reason, they would
never get on--he saw that quite clearly.  They knew too well the weak
spots in each other's armour, and their pride would be for ever at war.

He did not want to turn her out--she had been there for all those years
and it was her home; but he thought that she herself would prefer to
go.  There was a charming place in Norfolk, Wrexhall Pogis, that had
been let for years, and there was quite a pleasant little place in
town, 3 Southwick Crescent--yes, she would probably prefer to go, even
had he not meant to marry Mary.  The announcement of that little affair
would be something in the nature of a thunderbolt.

It was impossible for him to go--the head of the House must always live
at "The Flutes."  But he knew already how much that House was going to
mean to him, and so he guessed how much it must mean to Clare.

And to Robin?  What would Robin do?  Three weeks ago there could have
been but one answer to that question--he would have followed his aunt.
Now Harry was not so sure.  There was this affair of Miss Feverel;
probably Robin would come to him about it and then they would be able
to talk.  He had had that very day a letter from Dahlia Feverel.  He
looked at it again now; it said:--


"DEAR MR. TROJAN--Mother and I are leaving Pendragon to-morrow--for
ever, I suppose--but before I go I thought that I should like to send
you a little line to thank you for your kindness to me.  That sounds
terribly formal, doesn't it? but the gratitude is really there, and
indeed I am no letter-writer.

"You met a girl at the crisis in her life when there were two roads in
front of her and you helped her to choose the right one.  I daresay
that you thought that you did very little--it cannot have seemed very
much, that short meeting that we had; but it made just the difference
to me and will, I know, be to me a white stone from which I shall date
my new life.  I am not a strong woman--I never shall be a strong
woman--and it was partly because I thought that love for Robin was
going to give me that strength that it hurt so terribly when I found
that the love wasn't there.  The going of my love hurt every bit as
much as the going of his--it had been something to be proud of.

"I relied on sentiment and now I am going to rely on work; those are
the only two alternatives offered to women, and the latter is so often
denied to them.

"I hope that it may, one day, give you pleasure to think that you once
helped a girl to do the strong thing instead of the weak one.  Of
course, my love for Robin has died, and I see him clearly now without
exaggeration.  What happened was largely my fault--I spoilt him, I
think, and helped his self-pride.  I know that he has been passing
through a bad time lately, and I am sure that he will come to you to
help him out of it.  He is a lucky fellow to have some one to help him
like that--and then he will suddenly see that he has done a rather
cruel thing.  Poor Robin! he will make a fine man one day.

"I have got a little secretaryship in London--nothing very big, but it
will give me the work that I want; and, because you once said that you
believed in me, I will try to justify your belief.  There! that is
sentiment, isn't it!--and I have flung sentiment away.  Well, it is the
last time!

"Good-bye--I shall never forget.  Thank you.--

Yours sincerely,
  DAHLIA FEVEREL."


So perhaps, after all, Robin's mistakes had been for the good of all of
them.  Mistake was, indeed, a slight word for what he had done, and,
thinking of it even now, Harry's anger rose.

And she had been a nice girl, too, and a plucky one.

He had answered her:--


"MY DEAR MISS FEVEREL--I was extremely pleased to get your letter.  It
is very good of you to speak as you have done about myself, but I
assure you that what I did was of the smallest importance.  It was
because you had pluck yourself that you pulled through.  You are quite
right to fling away sentiment.  I came back to England three weeks ago
longing to call every man my brother.  I thought that by a mere smile,
a bending of the finger, the world was my friend for life.  I soon
found my mistake.  Friendship is a very slow and gradual affair, and I
distrust the mushroom growth profoundly.  Life isn't easy in that kind
of way; you and I have found that out together.

"I wish you every success in your new life; I have no doubt whatever
that you will get on, and I hope that you will let me hear sometimes
from you.

"Things have been happening quickly during the last few days.  My
father died this morning; he was himself glad to go, but I shall miss
him terribly--he has been a most splendid friend to me during these
weeks.  Then I know that you will be interested to hear that I am
engaged to Miss Bethel--you know her, do you not?  I hope and believe
that we shall be very happy.

"As to Robin, he has, as you say, been having a bad time.  To do him
justice it has not been only the fear of the letters that has hung over
him--he has also discovered a good many things about himself that have
hurt and surprised him.

"Well, good-bye--I am sure that you will look back on the Robin episode
with gratitude.  It has done a great deal for all of us.  Good luck to
you!--Always your friend,

HENRY TROJAN."


He turned on the lights in his room and tried to read, but he found
that that was impossible.  His eyes wandered off the page and he
listened: he caught himself again and again straining his ears for a
sound.  He pictured the coming of steps up the stairs and then sharp
and loud along the passage--then a pause and a knock on his door.
Often he fancied that he heard it, but it was only fancy and he turned
away disappointed; but he was sure that Robin would come.

They had decided not to dine downstairs together on that evening--they
were, all of them, overwrought and the situation was strained; they
were wondering what he was going to do.  There were, of course, a
thousand things to be done, but he was glad that they had left him
alone for that night at any rate.  He wanted to be quiet.

He had written a letter of enormous length to Mary, explaining to her
what had happened and telling her that he would come to her in the
morning.  It was very hard, even then, not to rush down to her, but he
felt that he must keep that day at least sacred to his father.

Would Robin come?  It was quarter to seven and that terrible sleep was
beginning to overcome him again.  The fire, the walls, the pictures,
danced before his eyes ... the stories of the fishermen in the Cove
came back to him ... the Four Stones and the man who had lost his way
... the red tiles and the black rafters of "The Bended Thumb" ... and
then Mary's beauty above it all.  Mary on the moors with the wind
blowing through her hair; Mary in the house with the firelight on her
face, Mary ... and then he suddenly started up, wide awake, for he
heard steps on the stair.

He knew them at once--he never doubted that they were Robin's.  The
last two steps were taken slowly and with hesitation.

Then he hurried down the passage as though he had suddenly made up his
mind; then, again, there was a long pause before the door.  At last
came the knock, timidly, and then another loudly and almost violently.

Harry shouted "Come in," and Robin entered, his face pale and his hands
twisting and untwisting.

"Ah, Robin--do you want anything?  Come in--sit down.  I've been
asleep."

"Oh, I'm sorry, did I wake you up?  No, thanks, I won't sit down.  I've
got some things I want to say.  I'd rather say them standing up."

There was a long pause.  Harry said nothing and stared into the fire.

"I've got a good lot to say altogether."  Robin cleared his throat.
"It's rather hard.  Perhaps this doesn't seem quite the time--after
grandfather--and--everything--but I couldn't wait very well.  I've been
a bit uncomfortable."

"Out with it," said Harry.  "This time will do excellently--there's a
pause just now, but to-morrow everything will begin again and there's a
terrible lot to do.  What is it?"

Was it, he wondered, Robin's fault or his own that there was that
barrier so strangely defined between them even now?  He could feel it
there in the room with them now.  He wondered whether Robin felt it as
well.

"It is about what my aunt said to you this morning--and other
things--other things right from the beginning, ever since you came
back.  I'm not much of a chap at talking, and probably I shan't say
what I mean, but I will try.  I've been thinking about it all lately,
but what made me come and speak to you was this morning--having to ask
you a favour after being so rude to you.  A chap doesn't like doing
that, and it made me think--besides there being other things."

"Oh, there's no need to thank me about this morning," Harry said drily;
"I shall be very pleased to do what I can."

"Oh, it isn't that," Robin said quickly.  "It isn't about that somehow
that I mind at all now; I have been worrying about it a good bit, but
that isn't what I want to speak about.  I'll go through with it--Breach
of Promise--or whatever it is--if only you wouldn't think me--well,
quite an utter rotter."

"I wish," said Harry quietly, "that you would sit down.  I'm sure that
you would find it easier to talk."

Robin looked at him for a moment and then at the chair--then he sat
down.

"You see, somehow grandfather's dying has made things seem different to
one--it has made one younger somehow.  I used to think that I was
really very old and knew a lot; but his death has shown me that I know
nothing at all--really nothing.  But there have been a lot of things
all happening together--your coming back, that business with
Dahlia--Miss Feverel, you know--a dressing down that I got from Miss
Bethel the other evening, and then grandfather's dying----"

He paused again and cleared his throat.  He looked straight into the
fire, and, every now and again, he gave a little choke and a gasp which
showed that he was moved.

"A chap doesn't like talking about himself," he went on at last; "no
decent chap does; but unless I tell you everything from the beginning
it will never be clear--I must tell you everything----"

"Please--I want to hear."

"Well, you see, before you came back, I suppose that I had really lots
of side.  I never used to think that I had, but I see now that what
Mary said the other night was perfectly right--it wasn't only that I
'sided' about myself, but about my set and my people and everything.
And then you came back.  You see we didn't any of us very much think
that we wanted you.  To begin with, you weren't exactly like my
governor; not having seen you all my life I hadn't thought much about
you at all, and your letters were so unlike anything that I knew that I
hadn't believed them exactly.  We were very happy as we were.  I
thought that I had everything I wanted.  And then you didn't do things
as we did; you didn't like the same books and pictures or anything, and
I was angry because I thought that I must know about those things and I
couldn't understand you.  And then you know you made things worse by
trying to force my liking out of me, and chaps of my sort are awfully
afraid of showing their feelings to any one, least of all to a man----"
Robin paused.

"Yes," said Harry, "I know."

"But all this isn't an excuse really; I was a most awful cad, and
there's no getting away from it.  But I think I began to see almost
from the very beginning that I hadn't any right to behave like that,
but I was obstinate.

"And then I began to get in a fright about Miss Feverel.  She wouldn't
give my letters back, although I went to her and Uncle Garrett and Aunt
Clare--all of us--but it was no good--she meant to keep them and of
course we knew why.  And then, too, I saw at last that I'd behaved like
an utter cad--it was funny I didn't see it at the time.  But I'd seen
other chaps do the same sort of thing and the girls didn't mind, and
I'd thought that she ought to be jolly pleased at getting to know a
Trojan--and all that sort of thing.

"But when I saw that she wasn't going to give the letters back but
meant to use them I was terribly frightened.  It wasn't myself so much,
although I hated the idea of my friends knowing about it all and
laughing at me--but it was the House too--my letting it down so.

"I'd been thinking about you a good bit already.  You see you changed
after Aunt Clare spoke to you that morning and I began to be rather
afraid of you--and when a chap begins to be afraid of some one he
begins to like him.  I got Aunt Clare and Uncle Garrett to go and speak
to Dahlia, and they couldn't get anything out of her at all; so, then,
I began to wonder whether you could do anything, and as soon as I began
to wonder that I began to want to talk to you.  But I never got much
chance; you were always in grandfather's room, and you didn't give me
much encouragement, did you? and then--I began to be awfully miserable.
I don't want to whine--I deserved it all right enough--but I didn't
seem to have a friend anywhere and all my things that I'd believed in
seemed to be worth nothing at all.  Then I wanted to talk to you
awfully, and when grandfather was worse and was dying I began to see
things straight--and then I saw Mary and she told me right out what I
was, and I saw it all as clear as daylight.

"And so; well, I've come--not to ask you to help me about Dahlia--but
whether you'll help me to play the game better.  I wasn't always slack
and rotten like I am now.  When I was in Germany I thought I was going
to do all sorts of things ... but anyhow I can't say exactly all that I
mean.  Only I'm awfully lonely and terribly ashamed; and I want you to
forgive me for being so beastly to you----"

He looked wretched enough as he sat there facing the fire with his lip
quivering.  He made a strong effort to control himself, but in a moment
he had broken down altogether and hid his head in the arm of the chair,
sobbing as if his heart would break.

Harry waited.  The moment for which he had longed so passionately had
come at last; all those weary weeks had now received their reward.  But
he was very tired and he could not remember anything except that his
boy was there and that he was crying and wanted some one to help
him--which was very sentimental.

He got up from his chair and put his hand on Robin's shoulder.

"Robin, old boy--don't; it's all right really.  I've been waiting for
you to come and speak to me; of course, I knew that you would come.
Never mind about those other things--we're going to have a splendid
time, you and I."

He put his arm round him.  There was a moment's silence, then the boy
turned round and gripped his father's coat--then he buried his head in
his father's knees.


Benham entered half an hour later with Harry's evening meal.

"I will have mine here, too, Benham," said Robin, "with my father."

"There is one thing, Robin," said Harry a little later, laughing--"what
about the letters?"

"Oh, I know!"  Robin looked up at his father appealingly.  "I don't
know what you must think of me over that business.  But I suppose I
believed for a time in it all, and then when I saw that it wouldn't do
I just wanted to get out of it as quickly as I could.  I never seem to
have thought about it at all--and now I'm more ashamed than I can say.
But I think I'll go through with it; I don't see that there's anything
else very much for me to do, any other way of making up--I think I'd
rather face it."

"Would you?" said Harry.  "What about your friends and the House?"

Robin flinched for a moment; then he said resolutely, "Yes, it would be
better for them too.  You see they know already--the House, I mean.
All the chaps in the dining-hall and the picture-gallery, they've known
about it all day, and I know that they'd rather I didn't back out of
it.  Besides--" he hesitated a moment.  "There's another thing--I have
the kind of feeling that I can't have hurt Dahlia so very much if she's
the kind of girl to carry that sort of thing through; if, I mean, she
takes it like that she isn't the sort of girl that would mind very much
what I had done----"

"Is she," said Harry, "that sort of girl?"

"No, I don't think she is.  That's what's puzzled me about it all.  She
was worth twenty of me really.  But any decent sort of girl would have
given them back----"

"She has----"

"What?"

"Given them back."

"The letters?"

Harry went to his writing-table and produced the bundle.  They lay in
his hand with the blue ribbon and the neat handwriting, "For Robert
Trojan," outside.

Robin stared.  "Not _the_ letters?"

"Yes--the letters; I have had them some days."

But still he did not move.  "_You've_ had them?--several days?"

"Yes.  I went to see Miss Feverel on my own account and she gave me
them----"

"You had them when we asked you to help us!"

"Yes--of course.  It was a little secret of my own and Miss
Feverel's--our--if you like--revenge."

"And we've been laughing at you, scorning you; and we tried--all of
us--and could do nothing!  I say, you're the cleverest man in England!
Score!  Why I should think you have!" and then he added, "But I'm
ashamed--terribly.  You have known all these days and said nothing--and
I!  I wonder what you've thought of me----"

He took the letters into his hand and undid the ribbon slowly.  "I'm
jolly glad you've known--it's as if you'd been looking after the family
all this time, while we were plunging around in the dark.  What a
score!  That we should have failed and you so absolutely succeeded--"
Then again, "But I'm jolly ashamed--I'll tell you everything--always.
We'll work together----"

He looked them through and then flung them into the fire.

"I've grown up," he suddenly cried; "come of age at last--at last I
know."

"Not too fast," said Harry, smiling; "it's only a stage.  There's
plenty to learn--and we'll learn it together."  Then, after a pause,
"There's another thing, though, that will astonish you a bit--I'm
engaged----"

"Engaged!" Robin stared.  Quickly before his eyes passed visions of
terrible Colonial women--some entanglement that his father had
contracted abroad and had been afraid to announce before.  Well,
whatever it might be, he would stand by him!  It was they two against
the world whatever happened!--and Robin felt already the anticipatory
glow of self-sacrificing heroism.

Harry smiled.  "Yes--Mary Bethel!"

"Mary!  Hurrah!"

He rushed at his father and seized his hand--"You and Mary!  Why, it's
simply splendid!  The very thing--I'd rather it were she than any
one!--she told me what she thought of me the other night, I can tell
you--fairly went for me.  By Jove!  I'm glad--we'll have some times,
three of us here together.  When was it?"

"Oh! only this morning!  I had asked her before, but it was only
settled this morning."

Then Robin was suddenly grave.  "Oh! but, I say, there's Aunt
Clare--and Uncle Garrett!"  He had utterly forgotten them.  What would
they say?  The Bethels of all people!

"Yes.  I've thought about it.  I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid Aunt
Clare won't want to stay.  I don't see what's to be done.  I haven't
told her yet----"

Robin saw at once that he must choose his future; it was to be his aunt
or his father.  His aunt with all those twenty years of faithful
service behind her, his aunt who had done everything for him--or his
father whom he had known for three weeks.  But he had no hesitation;
there was now no question it was his father for ever against the world!

"I'm sorry," he said slowly.  "Perhaps there will be some arrangement.
Poor Aunt Clare!  Did you--tell grandfather?"

"No.  I wanted to, but I had no opportunity.  But he knows--I am sure
that he knows."

Their thoughts passed to the old man.  It was almost as if he had been
there in the room with them, and they felt, curiously, as though he had
at that moment handed over the keys of the House.  For an instant they
saw him; his eyes like diamonds, his wrinkled cheeks, his crooked
fingers--and then his laugh.  "Harry, my boy, you'll do."

"It's almost as if he was here," said Robin.  He turned round and put
his hand in his father's.

"I know he's pleased," he said.

And so it was during the next week, through the funeral, and the
gathering of relatives and the gradual dispersing of them again, and
the final inevitable seclusion when the world and the relations and the
dead had all joined in leaving the family alone.  The gathering of
Trojans had shown, beyond a doubt, that Harry was quite fitted to take
his place at the head of the family.  He had acted throughout with
perfect tact and everything had gone without a hitch.  Many a Trojan
had arrived for the funeral--mournful, red-eyed Trojans, with black
crape and an air of deferential resignation that hinted, also, at
curiosity as regards the successor.  They watched Harry, ready for
anything that might gratify their longing for sensational failure; a
man from the backwoods was certain to fail, and their chagrined
disappointment was only solaced by their certainty of some little
sensation in the announcement of his surprising success.

Of course, Clare had been useful; it was on such an occasion that she
appeared at her best.  She was kind to them all, but at the same time
impressed the dignity of her position upon them, so that they went away
declaring that Clare Trojan knew how to carry herself and was young for
her years.

The funeral was an occasion of great ceremony, and the town attended in
crowds.  Harry realised in their altered demeanour to himself their
appreciation of the value of his succession, and he knew that Sir Henry
Trojan was something very different from the plain Harry.  But he had,
from the beginning, taken matters very quietly.  Now that he was
assured of the affection of the only two people who were of importance
to him he could afford to treat with easy acquiescence anything else
that Fate might have in store for him.  His diffidence, had, to some
extent, left him, and he took everything that came with an ease that
had been entirely foreign to him three weeks before.

Clare might indeed wonder at the change in him, for she had not the key
that unlocked the mystery.  The week seemed to draw father and son very
closely together.  Years seemed to have made little difference in their
outlook on things, and in some ways Robin was the elder of the two.
They said nothing about Mary--that was to wait until after the funeral;
but the consciousness of their secret added to the bond between them.

Clare herself regarded the future complacently.  She was, she felt,
absolutely essential to the right ruling of the House, and she
intended, gradually but surely, to restore her command above and below
stairs.  The only possible lion in her path was Harry's marrying, but
of that there seemed no fear at all.

She admired him a little for his conduct during their father's funeral;
he was not such an oaf as she had thought--but she would bide her time.

At last, however, the thunderbolt fell.  It was a week after the
funeral, and they had reached dessert.  Clare sometimes stayed with
them while they smoked, and, as a rule, conversation was not very
general.  To-night, however, she rose to go.  Her black suited her; her
dark hair, her dark eyes, the dark trailing clouds of her dress--it was
magnificently sombre against the firelight and the shine of the
electric lamps on the silver.  But Harry's "Wait a moment, Clare, I
want to talk," called her back, and she stood by the door looking over
her shoulder at him.

Then when she saw from his glance that it was a matter of importance,
she came back slowly again towards him.

"Another family council?" said Garrett rather impatiently.  "We have
had a generous supply lately."

"I'm afraid this is imperative," said Harry.  "I am sorry to bother
you, Clare, but this seems to me the best time."

"Oh, any time suits me," she said indifferently, sitting down
reluctantly.  "But if it's household affairs, I should think that we
need hardly keep Garrett and Robin."

"It is something that concerns us all four," said Harry.  "I am going
to be married!"

It had been from the beginning of things a Trojan dictum that the
revealing of emotion was the worst of gaucheries--Clare, Garrett, and
Robin himself had been schooled in this matter from their respective
cradles; and now the lesson must be put into practice.

For Robin, of course, it was no revelation at all, but he dared not
look at his aunt; he understood a little what it must mean to her.  To
those that watched her, however, nothing was revealed.  She stood by
the fire, her hands at her side, her head slightly turned towards her
brother.

"Might I ask," she said quietly, "the name of the fortunate lady?"

"Miss Bethel!"

"Miss Bethel!"  Garrett sprang to his feet.  "Harry, you must be
joking!  You can't mean it!  Not the daughter of Bethel at the
Point--the madman!--the----"

"Please, Garrett," said Harry, "remember that she has promised to be my
wife.  I am sorry, Clare----"

He turned round to his sister.

But she had said nothing.  She pulled a chair from the table and sat
down, quietly, without obvious emotion.

"It is a little unexpected," she said.  "But really if we had
considered things it was obvious enough.  It is all of a piece.  Robin
tried for Breach of Promise, the Bethels in the house before father has
been buried for three days--the policy and traditions of the last three
hundred years upset in three weeks."

"Of course," said Harry, "I could scarcely expect you to welcome the
change.  You do not know Miss Bethel.  I am afraid you are a little
prejudiced against her.  And, indeed, please--please, believe me that
it has been my very last wish to go counter in any way to your own
plans.  But it has seemed almost unavoidable; we have found that one
thing after another has arisen about which we could not agree.  Is it
too late now to reconsider the position?  Couldn't we pull together
from this moment?"

But she interrupted him.  "Come, Harry," she said, "whatever we are,
let us avoid hypocrisy.  You have beaten me at every point and I must
retire.  I have seen in three weeks everything that I had cared for and
loved destroyed.  You come back a stranger, and without knowing or
caring for the proper dignity of the House, you have done what you
pleased.  Finally, you are bringing a woman into the House whose
parents are beggars, whose social position makes her unworthy of such a
marriage.  You cannot expect me to love you for it.  From this moment
we cease to exist for each other.  I hope that I may never see you
again or hear from you.  I shall not indulge in heroics or melodrama,
but I will never forgive you.  I suppose that the house at Norfolk is
at my disposal?"

"Certainly," he answered.  Then he turned to his brother.  "I hope,
Garrett," he said, "that you do not feel as strongly about the matter
as Clare.  I should be very glad if you found it possible to remain."

That gentleman was in a difficult position; he changed colour and tried
to avoid his sister's eyes.  After a rapid survey of the position, he
had come to the conclusion that he would not be nearly as comfortable
in Norfolk--he could not write his book as easily, and the house had
scarcely the same position of importance.  He had grown fond of the
place.  Harry, after all, was not a bad chap--he seemed very anxious to
be pleasant; and even Mary Bethel mightn't turn out so badly.

"You see, Clare," he said slowly, "there is the book--and--well, on the
whole, I think it would be almost better if I remained; it is not, of
course, that----"

Clare's lip curled scornfully.

"I understand, Garrett, you could scarcely be expected to leave such
comforts for so slight a reason.  And you, Robin?"

She held the chair with her hand as she spoke.  The fury at her heart
was such that she could scarcely breathe; she was quite calm, but she
had a mad desire to seize Harry as he sat there at the table and
strangle him with her hands.  And Garrett!--the contemptible coward!
But if only Robin would come with her, then the rest mattered little.
After all, it had only been a fortnight ago when he had stood at her
side and rejected his father.  The scene now was parallel--her voice
grew soft and trembled a little as she spoke to him.

"Robin, dear, what will you do?  Will you come with me?"

For a moment father and son looked at each other, then Robin answered--

"I shall be very glad to come and stay sometimes, Aunt
Clare--often--whenever you care to have me.  But I think that I must
stay here.  I have been talking to father and I am going up to London
to try, I think, for the Diplomatic.  We thought----"

But the "we" was too much for her.

"I congratulate you," she said, turning to Harry.  "You have done a
great deal in three weeks.  It looks," she said, looking round the
room, "almost like a conspiracy.  I----"  Then she suddenly broke down.
She bent down over Robin and caught his head between her hands--

"Robin--Robin dear--you must come, you must, dear.  I brought you up--I
have loved you--always--always.  You can't leave me now, old boy, after
all that I have done--all, everything.  Why, he has done
nothing--he----"

She kissed him again and again, and caught his hands: "Robin, I love
you--you--only in all the world; you are all that I have got----"

But he put her hands gently aside.  "Please--please--Aunt Clare, I am
dreadfully sorry----"

And then her pride returned to her.  She walked to the door with her
head high.

"I will go to the Darcy's in London until that other house is ready.  I
will go to-morrow----"

She opened the door, but Harry sprang up--

"Please, Clare--don't go like that.  Think over it--perhaps
to-morrow----"

"Oh, let me go," she answered wearily; "I'm tired."

She walked up the stairs to her room.  She could scarcely see--Robin
had denied her!

She shut the door of her bedroom behind her and fell at the foot of her
bed, her face buried in her hands.  Then at last she burst into a storm
of tears--

"Robin!  Robin!" she cried.




CHAPTER XVI

It was Christmas Eve and the Cove lay buried in snow.  The sea was grey
like steel, and made no sound as it ebbed and flowed up the little
creek.  The sky was grey and snowflakes fell lazily, idly, as though
half afraid to let themselves go; a tiny orange moon glittered over the
chimneys of "The Bended Thumb."

Harry came out of the Inn and stood for a moment to turn up the collar
of his coat.  The perfect stillness of the scene pleased him; the world
was like the breathless moment before some great event: the opening of
Pandora's box, the leaping of armed men from the belly of the wooden
horse, the flashing of Excalibur over the mere, the birth of some
little child.

He sighed as he passed down the street.  He had read in his morning
paper that the Cove was doomed.  The word had gone forth, the Town
Council had decided; the Cove was to be pulled down and a street of
lodging-houses was to take its place.  Pendragon would be no longer a
place of contrasts; it would be all of a piece, a completely popular
watering-place.

The vision of its passing hurt him--so much must go with it; and
gradually he saw the beauty and the superstition and the wonder being
driven from the world--the Old World--and a hard Iron and Steel
Materialism relentlessly taking its place.

But he himself had changed; the place had had its influence on him, and
he was beginning to see the beauty of these improvements, these
manufactures, these hard straight lines and gaunt ugly squares.
Progress?  Progress?  Inevitable?--yes!  Useful?--why, yes, too!  But
beautiful?--Well, perhaps ... he did not know.

At the top of the hill he turned and saluted the cold grey sky and sea
and moor.  The Four Stones were in harmony to-day: white, and
pearl-grey, with hints of purple in their shadows--oh beautiful and
mysterious world!

He went into the Bethels' to call for Mary.  Bethel appeared for a
moment at the door of his study and shouted--

"Hullo!  Harry, my boy!  Frightfully busy cataloguing!  Going out for a
run in a minute!"--the door closed.

His daughter's engagement seemed to have made little difference to him.
He was pleased, of course, but Harry wondered sometimes whether he
realised it at all.

Not so Mrs. Bethel.  Arrayed in gorgeous colours, she was blissfully
happy.  She was at the head of the stairs now.

"Just a minute, Harry--Mary's nearly ready.  Oh! my dear, you haven't
been out in that thin waistcoat ... but you'll catch your death--just a
minute, my dear, and let me get something warmer?  Oh do!  Now you're
an obstinate, bad man!  Yes, a bad, bad man"--but at this moment
arrived Mary, and they said good-bye and were away.

During the few weeks that they had been together there had been no
cloud.  Pendragon had talked, but they had not listened to it; they had
been perfectly, ideally happy.  They seemed to have known each other
completely so long ago--not only their virtues but their faults and
failures.

With her arm in his they passed through the gate and found Robin
waiting for them.

"Hullo! you two!  I've just heard from Macfadden.  He suggests Catis in
Dover Street for six months and then abroad.  He thinks I ought to pass
easily enough in a year's time--and then it will mean Germany!"

His face was lighted with excitement.

"Right you are!" cried Harry.  "Anything that Macfadden suggests is
sure to be pretty right.  What do you say, Mary?"

"Oh, I don't know anything about men's businesses," she said, laughing.
"Only don't be too long away, Robin."

They passed down the garden, the three of them, together.


In Norfolk a woman sat at her window and watched the snow tumbling
softly against the panes.  The garden was a white sea--the hills loomed
whitely beyond--the sky was grey with small white clouds, hanging like
pillows heavily in mid-air.

The snow whirled and tossed and danced.

Clare turned slowly from the windows and drew down the blinds.




THE END




_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_




BOOKS BY HUGH WALPOLE


_NOVELS_

  THE WOODEN HORSE
  MR. PERRIN AND MR. TRAILL
  THE GREEN MIRROR
  THE DARK FOREST
  THE SECRET CITY

_ROMANCES_

  MARADICK AT FORTY
  THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE
  FORTITUDE
  THE DUCHESS OF WREXE


_BOOKS ABOUT CHILDREN_

  THE GOLDEN SCARECROW
  JEREMY


_BELLES-LETTRES_

  JOSEPH CONRAD: A Critical Study











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