"I'm worse to-day," said Sir Jeremy, looking at Harry, "and I'll be off
under a month."
He seemed rather pathetic--the brave look had gone from his eyes, and
his face and hands were more shrivelled than ever. He gave the
impression of cowering in bed as though wishing to avoid a blow. Harry
was with him continually now, and the old man was never happy if his
son was not there. He rambled at times and fancied himself back in his
youth again. Harry had found his father's room a refuge from the
family, and he sat, hour after hour, watching the old man asleep,
thinking of his own succession and puzzling over the hopeless tangle
that seemed to surround him. How to get out of it! He had no longer
any thought of turning his back; he had gone too far for that, and they
would think it cowardice, but things couldn't remain as they were.
What would come out of it?
He had, as Robin had said, changed. The effect of the explosion had
been to reveal in him qualities whose very existence he had formerly
never expected. He even found, strangely enough, a kind of joy in the
affair. It was like playing a game. He had made, he felt, the right
move and was in the stronger position. In earlier days he had never
been able to quarrel with any one. Whenever such a thing had happened,
he had been the first to make overtures; he hated the idea of an enemy,
his happiness depended on his friends, and sometimes now, when he saw
his own people's hostility, he was near surrender. But the memory of
his sister's words had held him firm, and now he was beginning to feel
in tune with the situation.
He watched Robin furtively at times and wondered how he was taking it
all. Sometimes he fancied that he caught glances that pointed to
Robin's own desire to see how _he_ was taking it. Once they had passed
on the stairs, and for a moment they had both paused as though they
would speak. It had been all Harry could do to restrain himself from
flinging his arms on to his son's shoulders and shaking him for a fool
and then forcing him into surrender, but he had held himself back, and
they had passed on without a word.
After all, what children they all were! That's what it came
to--children playing a game that they did not understand!
"I wish it would end," said Sir Jeremy; "I'm getting damned sick of it.
Why can't he take you out straight away, and be done with it? Do you
know, Harry, my boy, I think I'm frightened. It's lying here thinking
of it. I never had much imagination--it isn't a Trojan habit, but it
grows on one. I fancy--well, what's the use o' talking?" and he sank
back into his pillows again.
The room was dark save for the leaping light of the fire. It was
almost time to dress for dinner, but Harry sat there, forgetting time
and place in the unchanging question, How would it all work out?
"By Gad, it's Tom! Hullo, old man, I was just thinking of you. Comin'
round to Horrocks' to-night for a game? Supper at Galiani's--but it's
damned cold. I don't know where that sun's got to. I've been
wandering up and down the street all day and I can't find the place.
I've forgotten the number--I can't remember whether it was 23 or 33,
and I keep getting into that passage. There I am again! Bring a
light, old man--it's so dark. What's that? Who's there? Can't you
answer? Darn you, come out, you----" He sat up in bed, quivering all
over. Harry put his hand on his arm.
"It's all right, father," he said. "No one's here--only myself."
"Ugh! I was dreaming--" he answered, lying down again. "Let's have
some light--not that electric glare. Candles!"
Harry was sitting in the corner by the bed away from the fire. He was
about to rise and move the candles into a clump on the mantelpiece when
there was a tap on the door and some one came in. It was Robin.
"Grandfather, are you awake? Aunt Clare told me to look in on my way
up to dress and see if you wanted anything?"
The firelight was on his face. He looked very young as he stood there
by the bed. His face was flushed in the light of the fire. Harry's
heart beat furiously, but he made no movement and said no word.
Robin bent over the bed to catch his grandfather's answer, and he saw
his father.
"I beg your pardon." he stammered. "I didn't know----" He waited for
a moment as though he were going to say something, or expected his
father to speak. Then he turned and left the room.
"Let's have the candles," said Sir Jeremy, as though he had not noticed
the interruption, and Harry lit them.
The old man sank off to sleep again, and Harry fell back into his own
gloomy thoughts once more. They were always meeting like that, and on
each occasion there was need for the same severe self-control. He had
to remind himself continually of their treatment of him, of Robin's
coldness and reserve. At times he cursed himself for a fool, and then
again it seemed the only way out of the labyrinth.
His love for his son had changed its character. He had no longer that
desire for equality of which he had made, at first, so much. No, the
two generations could never see in line; he must not expect that. But
he thought of Robin as a boy--as a boy who had made blunders and would
make others again, and would at last turn to his father as the only
person who could help him. He had fancied once or twice that he had
already begun to turn.
Well, he would be there if Robin wanted him. He had decided to speak
to Mary about it. Her clear common-sense point of view seemed to
drive, like the sun, through the mists of his obscurity; she always saw
straight through things--never round them--and her practical mind
arrived at a quicker solution than was possible for his rather
romantic, quixotic sentiment.
"You are too fond of discerning pleasant motives," she had once said to
him. "I daresay they are all right, but it takes such a time to see
them."
He had not seen her since the outbreak, and he was rather anxious as to
her opinion; but the main thing was to be with her. Since last Sunday
he had been, he confessed to himself, absurd. He had behaved more in
the manner of a boy of nineteen than a middle-aged widower of
forty-five. He had been suddenly afraid of the Bethels--going to tea
had seemed such an obvious advance on his part that he had shrunk from
it, and he had even avoided Bethel lest that gentleman should imagine
that he was on the edge of a proposal for his daughter's hand. He
thought that all the world must know of it, and he blushed like a girl
at the thought of its being laid bare for Pendragon to laugh and gibe
it. It was so precious, so wonderful, that he kept it, like a rich
piece of jewellery, deep in a secret drawer, over which he watched
delightedly, almost humorously, secure in the delicious knowledge that
he alone had the key. He wandered out at night, like a foolish
schoolboy, to watch the lamp in her room--that dull circle of golden
light against the blind seemed to draw him with it into the intimacy
and security of her room.
On one of his solitary afternoon walks he suddenly came upon her. He
had gone, as he so often did, over the moor to the Four Stones; he
chose that place partly because of the Stones themselves and partly
because of the wonderful view. It seemed to him that the whole heart
of Cornwall--its mystery, its eternal sameness, its rejection of
everything that was modern and ephemeral, the pathos of old deserted
altars and past gods searching for their old-time worshippers--was
centred there.
The Stones themselves stood on the hill, against the sky, gaunt, grey,
menacing, a landmark for all the country-side. The moor ran here into
a valley between two lines of hill, a cup bounded on three sides by the
hills and on the fourth by the sea. In the spring it flamed, a bowl of
fire, with the gorse; now it stood grim and naked to all the winds,
blue in the distant hills, a deep red to the right, where the plough
had been, brown and grey on the moor itself running down to the sea.
It was full of deserted things, as is ever the way with the true
Cornwall. On the hill were the Stones sharp against the sky-line;
lower down, in a bend of the valley, stood the ruins of a mine, the
shaft and chimney, desolately solitary, looking like the pillars of
some ancient temple that had been fashioned by uncouth worshippers. In
the valley itself stood the stones of what was once a chapel--built,
perhaps, for the men of the desolate mine, inhabited now by rabbits and
birds, its windows spaces where the winds that swept the moor could
play their eternal, restless games.
On a day of clouds there was no colour on the moor, but when the sun
was out great bands of light swept its surface, playing on the Stones
and changing them to marble, striking colour from the mine and filling
the chapel with gold. But the sun did not reach that valley on many
days when the rest of the world was alight--it was as if it respected
the loneliness of its monuments and the pathos of them.
Harry sat on the side of the hill, below the Stones, and watched the
sea. At times a mist came and hid it; on sunny days, when the sky was
intensely blue, there hung a dazzling haze like a golden veil and he
could only tell that the sea was there by the sudden gleam of tiny
white horses, flashing for a moment on the mirror of blue and shining
through the haze; sometimes a gull swerved through the air above his
head as though a wave had lost its bounds and, for sheer joy of the
beautiful day, had flung itself tossing and wheeling into the air.
But to-day was a day of wind and rapidly sailing clouds, and myriads of
white horses curved and tossed and vanished over the shifting colours
of the sea; there were wonderful shadows of dark blue and purple and
green of such depth that they seemed unfathomable.
Suddenly he saw Mary coming towards him. A scarf--green like the green
of the sea--was tied round her hat and under her chin and floated
behind her. Her dress was blown against her body, and she walked as
though she loved the battling with the wind. Her face was flushed with
the struggle, and she had come up to him before she saw that he was
there.
"Now, that's luck," she said, laughing, as she sat down beside him;
"I've been wanting to see you ever since yesterday afternoon, but you
seemed to have hidden yourself. It doesn't sound a very long time,
does it? But I've something to tell you--rather important."
"What?" He looked at her and suddenly laughed. "What a splendid place
for us to meet--its solitude is almost unreal."
"As to solitude," she said calmly, pointing down the valley. "There's
Tracy Corridor; it will be all over the Club to-night--he's been
watching us for some time"; a long thin youth, his head turned in their
direction, had passed down the footpath towards its ruined chapel, and
was rapidly vanishing in the direction of Pendragon.
"Well--let them," said Harry, shrugging his shoulders. "You don't
mind, do you?"
"Not a bit," she answered lightly. "They've discussed the Bethel
family so frequently and with such vigour that a little more or less
makes no difference whatsoever. Pendragon taboo! we won't dishonour
the sea by such a discussion in its sacred presence."
"What do you want to tell me?" he asked, watching delightedly the
colour of her face, the stray curls that the wind dragged from
discipline and played games with, the curve of her wrist as her hand
lay idly in her lap.
"Oh, it'll keep," she said quickly. "Never mind just yet. Tell me
about yourself--what's happened?"
"How did you know that anything had?" he asked.
"Oh, one can tell," she answered. "Besides, I have felt sure that it
would, things couldn't go on just as they were----" she paused a moment
and then added seriously, "I hope you don't mind my asking? It seems a
little impertinent--but that was part of the compact, wasn't it?"
"Why, of course," he said.
"Because, you know," she went on, "it's really rather absurd. I'm only
twenty-six, and you're--oh! I don't know _how_ old!--anyhow an elderly
widower with a grown-up son; but I'm every bit as old as you are,
really. And I'm sure I shall give you lots of good advice, because
you've no idea what a truly practical person I am. Only sometimes
lately I've wondered whether you've been a little surprised at my--our
flinging ourselves into your arms as we have done. It's like
father--he always goes the whole way in the first minute; but it isn't,
or at any rate it oughtn't to be, like me!"
"You are," he said quietly, "the best friend I have in the world. How
much that means to me I will tell you one day."
"That's right," she said gaily, settling herself down with her hands
folded behind her head. "Now for the situation. I'm all attention."
"Well," he answered, "the situation is simple enough--it's the next
move that's puzzling me. There was, four days ago, an explosion--it
was after breakfast--a family council--and I was in a minority of one.
I was accused of a good many things--going down to the Cove, paying no
attention to the Miss Ponsonbys, and so on. They attacked me as I
thought unfairly, and I lost control--on the whole, I am sure, wisely.
I wasn't very rude, but I said quite plainly that I should go my own
way in the future and would be dictated to by no one. At any rate they
understand that."
"And now?"
"Ah, now--well--it's as you would expect. We are quite polite but
hostile. Robin and I don't speak. The new game--Father and Son; or
how to cut your nearest relations with expedition and security." He
laughed bitterly.
"Oh, I should like to shake him!" she cried, sitting up and flinging
her arms wide, as though she were saluting the sea. "He doesn't know,
he doesn't understand! Neither himself nor any one else. Oh, I will
talk to him some day! But, do you know," she said, turning round to
him, "it's been largely your fault from the beginning."
"Oh, I know," he answered. "If I had only seen then what I see now.
But how could I? How could I tell? But I always have been that kind
of man, all my days--finding out things when it's too late and wanting
to mend things that are hopelessly broken. And then I have always been
impulsive and enthusiastic about people. When I meet them first, I
mean, I like them and credit them with all the virtues, and then, of
course, there is an awakening. Oh, you don't know," he said, with a
little laugh, "how enthusiastic I was when I first came back."
"Yes, I do," she answered; "that was one of the reasons I took to you."
"But it isn't right," he said, shaking his head. "I've always been
like that. It's been the same with my friendships. I've rated them
too highly. I've expected everything and then cried like a child
because I've been disappointed. I can see now not only the folly of
it, but the weakness. It is, I suppose, a mistake, caring too much for
other people, one loses one's self-respect."
"Yes," she said, staring out to sea, "it's quite true--one does. The
world's too hard; it doesn't give one credit for fine feelings--it
takes a short cut and thinks one a fool."
"But the worst of it is," he went on ruefully, "that I never feel any
older. I have those enthusiasms and that romance in the same way now
at forty-five--just as I did at nineteen. I never could bear
quarrelling with anybody. I used to go and apologise even when it
wasn't my fault--so that, you see, the present situation is difficult."
"Ah, but you must keep your end up," she broke in quickly. "It's the
only way--don't give in. Robin is just like that. He is self-centred,
all shams now, and when he sees that you are taken in by them, just as
he is himself, he despises you. But when he sees you laugh at them or
cut them down, then he respects you. I'm the only person, I think,
that knows him really here. The others haven't grasped him at all."
"My father grows worse every day," 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."
"What have you faced?" he asked. "Tell me exactly. I want to know all
about you; you've never told me very much, and it's only fair that I
should know."
"Yes," she said gravely, "it is--well, you shall!--at least a part of
it. A woman always keeps a little back," she said, looking at him with
a smile. "As soon as she ceases to be a puzzle she ceases to interest."
She turned and watched the sea. Then, after a moment's pause, she said:
"What do you want to know? I can only give you bits of things--when,
for instance, I ran away from my nurse, aged five, was picked up by an
applewoman with a green umbrella who introduced me to three old ladies
with black pipes and moustaches--I was found in a coal cellar. Then we
lived in Bloomsbury--a little house looking out on to a little green
park--all in miniature it seems on looking back. I don't think that I
was a very good child, but they didn't look after me very much. Mother
was always out, and father in business. Fancy," she said, laughing,
"father in business! We were happy then, I think, all of us. Then
came the terrible time when father ran away."
"Ah, yes," Harry said, "he told me."
"Poor mother! it was quite dreadful; I was only eight then, and I
didn't understand. But she sat up all night waiting for him. She was
persuaded that he was killed, and she was very ill. You see he had
never left any word as to where he was. And then he suddenly turned up
again, and ate an enormous breakfast, as though nothing had happened.
I don't think he realised a bit that she had worried.
"It was so like him, the naked selfishness of it and the utter
unresponsibility, as of a child.
"Then I went to school--in Bloomsbury somewhere. It was a Miss Pinker,
and she was interested in me. Poor thing, her school failed
afterwards. I don't know quite why, but she never could manage, and I
don't think parents ever paid her. I had great ideas of myself then; I
thought that I would be great, an actress or a novelist, but I got rid
of all that soon enough. I was happy; we had friends, and luxuries
were rare enough to make them valuable. Then--we came down here--this
sea, this town, this moor--Oh! how I hate them!"
Her hands were clenched and her face was white. "It isn't fair; they
have taken everything from me--leisure, brain, friends. I have had to
slave ever since I came here to make both ends meet. Ah! you never
knew that, did you? But father has never done a stroke of work since
he has been here, and mother has never been the same since that night
when he ran away; so I've had it all--and it has been scrape, scrape,
scrape all the time. You don't know the tyranny of butter and eggs and
vegetables, the perpetual struggle to turn twice two into five, the
unending worry about keeping up appearances--although, for us, it
mattered precious little, people never came to see if appearances were
kept.
"They called at first; I think they meant to be kind, but father was
sometimes rude and never seemed to know whether he had met a person
before or no. Then he was idle, they thought, and they disliked him
for that. We gave some little parties, but they failed miserably, and
at last people always refused. And, really, it was rather a good
thing, because we hadn't got the money. I suppose I'm a bad manager;
at any rate, whatever it is, things have been getting worse and worse,
and one day soon there'll be an explosion, and that will be the end.
We're up to our eyes in debt. I try to talk to father about it, but he
waves it away with his hand. They have, neither of them, the least
idea of money. You see, father doesn't need very much himself, except
for buying books. He had ten pounds last week--housekeeping money to
be given to me; he saw an edition of something that he wanted, and the
money was gone. We've been living on cabbages ever since. That's the
kind of thing that's always happening. I wanted to talk to him about
things this morning, but he said that he had an important engagement.
Now he's out on the moor somewhere flying his kite----"
She was leaning forward, her chin on her hand, staring out to sea.
"It takes the beans out of life, doesn't it?" she said, laughing. "You
must think me rather a poor thing for complaining like this, only it
does some good sometimes to get rid of it, and really at times I'm
frightened when I think of the end, the disgrace. If we are proclaimed
bankrupts it will kill mother. Father, of course, will soon get over
it."
"I say--I'm so sorry." Harry scarcely knew what to say. She was not
asking for sympathy; he saw precisely her position--that she was too
proud to ask for his help, but that she must speak. No, sympathy was
not what she wanted. He suddenly hated Bethel--the selfishness of it,
the hopeless egotism. It was, Harry decided, the fools and not the
villains who spoilt life.
"I want you to do me a favour," he said. "I want you to promise me
that, before the end actually comes, if it is going to come, you will
ask me to help you. I won't offer to do anything now--I will stand
aside until you want me; but you won't be proud if it comes to the
worst, will you? Do you promise? You see," he added, trying to laugh
lightly, "we are chums."
"Yes," she answered quietly, "I promise. Here's my hand on it."
As he took her hand in his it was all he could do to hold himself back.
A great wave of passion seized him, his body trembled from head to
foot, and he grew very white. He was crying, "I love you, I love you,
I love you," but he kept the words from his lips--he would not speak
yet.
"Thank you," was all that he said, and he stood up to hide his
agitation.
For a little they did not speak. They both felt that, in that moment,
they had touched on things that were too sacred for speech; he seemed
so strong, so splendid in her eyes, as he stood there, facing the sea,
that she was suddenly afraid.
"Let us go back," she said. They turned down the crooked path towards
the ruined chapel.
"What was the news that you had for me?" he asked suddenly.
"Why, of course," she answered; "I meant to have told you before."
Then, more gravely, "It's about Robin----"
"About Robin?"
"Yes. I don't know really whether I ought to tell you, because, after
all, it's only chatter and mother never gets stories right--she manages
to twist them into the most amazing shapes."
"No. Tell me," he insisted.
"Well--there's a person whom mother knows--Mrs. Feverel. Odious to my
mind, but mother sees something of her."
"A lady?"
"No--by no means; a gloomy, forbidding person who would like to get a
footing here if she could, and is discontented because people won't
know her. You see," she added, "we can only know the people that other
people don't know. This Mrs. Feverel has a daughter--rather a pretty
girl, about eighteen--I should think she might be rather nice. I am a
little sorry for her--there isn't a father.
"Well--these people have, in some way, entangled Robin. I don't quite
know the right side of it, but mother was having tea with Mrs. Feverel
yesterday afternoon and that good woman hinted a great deal at the
power that she now had over your family. For some time she was
mysterious, but at last she unburdened herself.
"Apparently, Master Robin had been making advances to the girl in the
summer, and now wants to back out of it. He had, I gather, written
letters, and it was to these that Mrs. Feverel was referring----"
Harry drew a long breath. "I'm damned," he said.
"Oh, of course, I don't know," she went on; "you see, it may have been
garbled. Mrs. Feverel is, I should think, just the person to hint
suspicions for which there's no ground at all. Only it won't do if
she's going to whisper to every one in Pendragon--I thought you ought
to be warned----"
Harry was thinking hard. "The young fool," he said. "But it's just
what I've been wanting. This is just where I can come in. I knew
something has been worrying him lately. I could see it. I believe
he's been in two minds as to telling me--only he's been too proud.
But, of course, he will have to tell some one. A youngster like that
is no match for a girl and her mother of the class these people seem to
be. He will confide in his aunt--" He stopped and burst into
uncontrollable laughter. "Oh! The humour of it--don't you see?
They'll be terrified--it will threaten the honour of the House. They
will all go running round to get the letters back; that girl will have
a good time--and that, of course, is just where I come in."
"I don't see," said Mary.
"Why, it's just what I've been watching for. Harry Trojan
arrives--Harry Trojan is no good--Harry Trojan is despised--but
suddenly he holds the key to the situation. Presto! The family on
their knees----"
Mary looked at him in astonishment. It was, she thought, unlike him to
exult like this over the misfortunes of his sister; she was a little
disappointed. "It is really rather serious," she said, "for your
sister, I mean. You know what Pendragon is. If they once get wind of
the affair there will be a great deal of talk."
"Ah, yes!" he said gravely. "You mustn't think me a brute for laughing
like that. But I'm thinking of Robin. If you knew how I cared for the
boy--what this means. Why, it brings him to my feet--if I carry the
thing out properly." Then quickly, "You don't think they've got back
the letters already?"
"They haven't had time--unless they've gone to-day. Besides, the
girl's not likely to give them up easily. But, of course, I don't
really know if that's how the case lies--mother's account was very
confused. Only I am certain that Mrs. Feverel thinks she has a pull
somewhere; and she said something about letters."
"I will go at once," Harry said, walking quickly. "I can never be
grateful enough to you. Where do they live?"
"10 Seaview Terrace," she answered. "A little dingy street past the
church and Breadwater Place--it faces the sea."
"And the girl--what is she like?"
"I've only seen her about twice. I should say tall, thin, dark--rather
wonderful eyes in a very pale face; dresses rather well in an aesthetic
kind of way."
He said very little more, and she did not interrupt his thoughts. She
was surprised to find that she was a little jealous of Robin, the
interest in her own affairs had been very sweet to her, the remembrance
of it now sent the blood to her cheeks, but this news seemed to have
driven his thought for her entirely out of his head.
Suddenly, at the bend of the little lane leading up to the town, they
came upon her father, flying a huge blue kite. The kite soared above
his head; he watched it, his body bent back, his arm straining at the
cord. He saw them and pulled it in.
"Hullo! Trojan, how are you? You ought to do this. It's the most
splendid fun--you've no idea. This wind is glorious. I shan't be home
till dark, Mary----" and they left him, laughing like a boy. She gave
him further directions as to the house, and they parted. She felt a
little lonely as she watched him hurrying down the street. He seemed
to have forgotten her completely. "Mary Bethel, you're a selfish pig,"
she said, as she climbed the stairs to her room. "Of course, he cares
more about his son--why not?" But nevertheless she sighed, and then
went down to make tea for her mother, who was tired and on the verge of
tears.