by Hugh Walpole
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, H
arry 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.”