by Hugh Walpole
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 shel
ves 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. Bet
hel 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.”