The Wooden Horse

by Hugh Walpole

Meanwhile there was Robin—and he had been spending several very unhappy days. In the gloom of his room, alone and depressed, he had been passing things in review. He had never hitherto felt any very burning desire to know how he stood with the world; at school and Cambridge he had not thought at all—he had just, as it were, slid into things; his surroundings had grouped themselves of their own accord, making a delicately appreciative circle with no disturbing element. His friends had been of his own kind, the things that he had wished to do he had done, his thoughts had been dictated by set forms and customs. This had seemed to him, hitherto, an extraordinarily broad outlook; he had never doubted for a moment its splendid infallibility. He applied the tests of his set to the world at large, and the world conformed. Life was very easy on such terms, and he had been happy and contented.

His meeting with Dahlia had merely lent a little colour to his pleasant complacency, and then, when it had threatened to become something more, he had ruthlessly cut it out. This should have been simple enough, and he had been at a loss to understand why the affair had left any traces. Friends of his at college had had such episodes, and had been mildly amused at their rapid conclusion. He had tried to be mildly amused at the conclusion of his own affair, but had failed miserably. Why? ... he did not know. He must be sensitive, he supposed; then, in that case, he had failed to reach the proper standard.... Randal was never sensitive. But there had been other things.

During the last week everything had seemed to be topsy-turvy. He dated it definitely from the arrival of his father. He recalled the day; his tie was badly made, he remembered, and he had been rather concerned about it. How curious it all was; he must have changed since then, because now—well, ties seemed scarcely to matter at all. He saw his father standing at the open window watching the lighted town.... "Robin, old boy, we'll have a good time, you and I..."—and then Aunt Clare with her little cry of horror, and his father's hurried apology. That had been the beginning of things; one could see how it would go from the first. Had it, after all, been so greatly his father's fault? He was surprised to find that he was regarding his uncle and aunt critically.... It had been their fault to a great extent—they had never given him a chance. Then he remembered the next morning and his own curt refusal to his father's invitation—"He had books to pack for Randal!" How absurd it was, and he wondered why he should have considered Randal so important. He could have waited for the books.

But these things depended entirely on his own sudden discovery that he had failed in a crisis—failed, and failed lamentably. He did not believe that Randal would have failed. Randal would not have worried about it for a moment. What, then, was precisely the difference? He had acted throughout according to the old set formula—he had applied all the rules of the game as he had learnt them, and nevertheless he had been beaten. And so there had crept over him gradually, slowly, and at last overwhelmingly, the knowledge that the world that he had imagined was not the world as it is, that the people he had admired were not the only admirable people in it, and that the laws that had governed him were only a small fragment of the laws that rule the world.

When this discovery first comes to a man the effect is deadening; like a ship that has lost its bearings he plunges in a sea of entangled, confused ideas with no assurances as to his own ability to reach any safe port whatever. It is this crisis that marks the change from youth to manhood.

Three weeks ago Robin had been absolutely confident, not only in himself, but in his relations, his House and his future; now he trusted in nothing. But he had not yet arrived at the point when he could regard his own shortcomings as the cause of his unhappiness; he pointed to circumstances, his aunt, his uncle, Dahlia, even Randal, and he began a search for something more reliable.

Of course, his aunt and uncle might have solved the problem for him; he had not dared to question them and they had never mentioned the subject themselves, but they did not look as though they had succeeded—he fancied that they had avoided him during the last few days.

The serious illness of his grandfather still further complicated matters; he was not expected to live through the week. Robin was sorry, but he had never seen very much of his grandfather; and it was, after all, only fitting that such a very old man should die some time; no, the point really was that his father would in a week's time be Sir Henry Trojan and head of the House—that was what mattered.

Now his father was the one person whom he could find no excuse whatever for blaming. He had stood entirely outside the affair from the beginning, and, as far as Robin could tell, knew nothing whatever about it. Robin, indeed, had taken care that he should not interfere; he had been kept outside from the first.

No, Robin could not blame his father for the state of things; perhaps, even, it might have been better if his advice had been asked.