by Hugh Walpole
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 duri
ng 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?”