Hugh Walpole

“ You are taking everything from me—when you rob a girl of her love, of her heart, you leave her nothing. If you go now, I don't care what happens to me—death—or worse, That's how you make a bad woman, Robin. Taking her love from her and then letting her go. You are taking her soul!"
But he placed her gently aside. "Nonsense, Dahlia," he said. "You are excited to-night. You exaggerate. You will meet a man much worthier than myself, and then you will see that I was right." ”

“ 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." ”

“ Hope that had been slowly dying revived again. If Robin really cared for Germany like that, then they had something in common. With that spark a fire might be kindled. A red-gold haze as of fire burnt in the night sky, over the town. Stars danced overhead, a little wind, beating fitfully at the window, seemed to carry the light of the moon in its tempestuous track, blowing it lightly in silver mists and clouds over the moor. The Wise Men were there, strong and dark and sombre, watching over the lighted town and listening patiently to the ripple and murmur and life of the sea at their feet. ”

“ Harry went softly to the window and drew back a corner of the blind. The dawn was gradually revealing the forms and colours of the garden, and in the grey, misty light things were mysterious and uncertain; like white lights in a dusky room the two white statues shone through the mist. At that strange hour they seemed in their right atmosphere; they seemed to move and turn and bend—he could have fancied that they sailed on the mist—that, for a moment, they had vanished and then that they had grown enormous, monstrous. ”

“ He was growing quite red at the thought of his possible failure. The things in the room annoyed him—the everlasting rustling on the mantelpiece—a staring photograph of Mr. Feverel, deceased, that seemed to follow him, protestingly, round and round the room—a corner of a dusty grey road seen dimly through dirty window-panes; why did people live in such a place—or, rather, why did such people live at all?—and to think that it was people like that who dared to threaten Trojan honour! How could Robin have been such a fool! ”

“ Harry went on, as though pursuing his own train of thought. "He can't last much longer, and when he goes I shall miss him terribly. We have understood each other during this fortnight as we never did in all those early years. Sometimes I funk it utterly—following him with all of them against me."
"Why, no," she cried. "It's splendid. You are in power. They can do nothing, and Robin will come round when he sees how you face it out. Why, I expect that he's coming already. I've faced things out here all these years, and you dare to say that you can't stand a few months 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. ”

“ Randal's suit was dark blue and he wore a black tie; Harry became suddenly conscious of his daring green and, taking his tea, went and sat in the window and watched the town. The first white colours of the young moon, slipping from the rosy-grey cloud, touched faintly the towers of the ruined church on the moor; he fancied that he could just see the four stones shining darkly grey against the horizon, but it was difficult to tell in that mysterious half-light. Robin was sitting under the lamp by the door. ”

“ But then she remembered some of the things that he had said, some of the stones that he had flung. She was not good enough for him or his family; she had no right to expect that an alliance was ever possible. His family despised her. And then her thoughts turned from Robin to his family. She had seen Clare often enough and had always disliked her. But now she hated her so that she could have gladly killed her. It was at her door that she laid all the change in Robin and her own misery. She felt that she would do anything in the world to cause her pain. ”

“ He could see, in imagination, the great white-and-pink china pot-pourri bowls standing at the corner of the stairs—nothing was changed.
The blue drawing-room was deserted when he entered it—only the blaze of the electric light, the golden flame of the log-fire in the great open fireplace, and the solemn ticking of the gold clock that had stood there, in the same place of honour, for the last hundred years. He passed over to the windows and flung them open; the hum of the town came, with the cold night air, into the room. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first crisis had been severe, this would be infinitely more so. He hated himself for the first time in his life, and, in doing so, began for the first time to realise himself a little.
Well, he must speak to them and ask them what was to be done, and the sooner it was over the better. He put the Beddoes back into the shelf, and went to the windows. It was already dark; light twinkled in the bay, and a line of white breakers flashed and vanished, keeping time, it seemed, with the changing gleam of the lighthouse far out to sea. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ For at the moment of his death would come the crisis—the question of the new rule. At one time it had seemed certain that Robin would be king, with herself a very vigilant queen-regent. But now that was all changed. Harry had come home, and it was into his hands that the power would fall.
She had often wondered that she knew her father so little. He had always been difficult to understand; a man of two moods strongly opposed—strangely taciturn for days together, and then brilliantly conversational, amusing, and a splendid companion. ”

“ He had not known that he could have felt it so much—that absolute rejection of him by everything in which he had trusted; but he would mind these things no longer—he would even try not to mind Robin! That would be hard, and as he thought of it even now for a moment tears had filled his eyes. That, however, was cowardice. He must fling away the hopes of twenty years and start afresh, with the knowledge won of his experience and the strength that he had snatched from his wounds. ”

“ Things could not be worse, and at least the uncertainty would be ended. The golden day irritated him, and he found the dark gloom of the Feverels' street a relief. A man was playing an organ at the corner, and three dirty, tattered children were dancing noisily in the middle of the road. He watched them for a moment before ringing the bell, and wondered how they could seem so unconcerned, and he thought them abandoned.
He found Dahlia alone in the gaudy drawing-room. She gave a little cry when she saw who it was, and her cheeks flushed red, and then the colour faded. ”

“ His father would be certain to arrive at the very moment when one tie was on and the other not yet on, which meant that Robin would be late; and if there was one thing that a Trojan hated more than another it was being late. With many people unpunctuality was a fault, with a Trojan it was a crime; it was what was known as an "odds and ends"—one of those things, like untidiness, eating your fish with a steel knife and wearing a white tie with a short dinner-jacket, that marked a man, once and for all, as some one outside the pale, an impossible person. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Cove had meant a great deal to him when a boy—mystery, romance, pirates and smugglers, strange Cornish legends of saints and sinners, knights and men-at-arms. The little inn, "The Bended Thumb," with its irregular red-brick floor and its smoke-stained oaken rafters, had been the theatre of many a stirring drama—now it was to be pulled down. It was a wonderfully beautiful morning, and the little, twisting street of the Cove seemed to dance with its white shining cobbles in the light of the sun. It was mysterious as ever, but colours lingered in every corner. ”

“ In the white pebbles, the golden sand, the curling grey smoke of the Cove, he had formed pictures that had lightened many dreary and lonely hours in Auckland. He was to come back; away from that huge unwieldy life in which comfort had no place and rest was impossible, back to all the old things, the wonderful glorious things that meant home and tradition and, above all, love. ”

“ The night-sounds were strangely musical. Cries that were discordant in the day mingled now with the running of distant water, the last notes of some bird before it slept, the measured harmony of a far-away bell, the gentle rustle of some arrival in the thickets; the voice that could not be heard in the noisy chatter of the day rose softly now in a little song of the night and the dark trees and the silver firelight of the stars.
And it was all very romantic, of course. Harry Trojan had flung his cares behind him and stepped over the soft turf of the lawns, a free adventurer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Robin is my only son. He has behaved abominably, and you can understand that it has been rather a blow to me to return after twenty years' absence and find him engaged in such an affair. But he is very young, and—pardon me—so are you. I am an older man and my experience of the world is greater than yours; believe me when I say that you will regret persistence in your refusal most bitterly in later years. It seems to me a crisis—a crisis, perhaps, for all of us. Take an older man's word for it; there is only one possible course for you to adopt. ”

“ Sir Jeremy said nothing. He lay there without moving; Clare untied the napkin, and put back the medicine, and wheeled the chair into a sunnier part of the room and away from the window.
"You must get on with Harry, Clare," he said suddenly, sharply.
"Why, yes," she answered, laughing a little uneasily. "Of course we get on. Only his way of looking at things was always a little different—even, perhaps, a little difficult to understand"; and then, after a little pause, "I am stupid, I know. It was always hard for me to see like other people." ”