The Wooden Horse

by Hugh Walpole

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 during 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.