by Hugh Walpole
“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 th
e 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.