"I don't know quite where I am yet," said Ronder, "but I think you'll find me a friend rather than an enemy, Foster."
"I don't care what you are," said Foster. "So far as my feelings or happiness go, nothing matters. But to have Wistons here--in this place.... Oh, what we could do! What we could do!"
He seemed to be lost in a dream. Five minutes later he roused himself to say good-bye. Ronder once more at the top of the stairs felt about him again the strange stillness of the house.
Chapter VIII
Son--Father
Falk Brandon was still, in reality, a boy. He, of course, did not know this and would have been very indignant had any one told him so; it was nevertheless the truth.
There is a kind of confidence of youth that has great charm, a sort of assumption of grown-up manners and worldly ways that is accompanied with an ingenuous belief in human nature, a naïve trust in human goodness. One sees it sometimes in books, in stories that are like a charade acted by children dressed in their elders' clothes, and although these tales are nothing but fairy stories in their actual relation to life, the sincerity of their belief in life, and a kind of freshness that come from ignorance, give them a power of their own.
Falk had some of this charm and power just as his father had, but whereas his father would keep it all his days, Falk would certainly lose it as he learnt more and went more into the world. But as yet he had not lost it.
This emotion that had now gained such control over him was the first real emotion of his life, and he did not know in the least how to deal with it. He was like a man caught in a baffling fog. He did not know in the least whether he were in love with this girl, he did not know what he wanted to do with her, he sometimes fancied that he hated her, he could not see her clearly either mentally or physically; he only knew that he could not keep away from her, and that with every meeting he approached more nearly the moment when he would commit some desperate action that he would probably regret for the rest of his life.
But although he could not see her clearly he could see sharply enough the other side of the situation--the practical, home, filial side. It was strange how, as the affair advanced, he was more and more conscious of his father. It was as though he were an outsider, a friend of his father's, but no relation to the family, who watched a calamity approach ever more closely and was powerless to stop it. Although he was only a boy he realised very sufficiently his father's love for him and pride in him. He realized, too, his father's dependence upon his dignity and position in the town, and, last and most important of all, his father's passionate devotion to the Cathedral. All these things would be bruised were he, Falk, involved in any local scandal. Here he saw into himself and, with a bitterness and humility that were quite new to him, despised himself. He knew, as though he saw future events passing in procession before him, that if such a scandal did break out he would not be able to stay in the place and face it--not because he himself feared any human being alive, but because he could not see his father suffer under it.