by Hugh Walpole
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 tho
se 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.