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."
"Well, I hate it," Harry said fiercely, "all this noise and show. Why couldn't they have left Pendragon alone? I don't hate it for big places that are, as it were, in the line of march. I suppose that they must move with the day. That is inevitable. But Pendragon! Why—when I was a boy, it was simply a little town by the sea. No one thought about it or worried about it: it was a place wonderfully quiet and simple. It was too quiet for me then; I should worship it now. But I have come back and it has no room for me."
"I haven't known it as long as you," Bethel answered, "but I confess that the very charm of it lies in its contrast. It is invasion, if you like, but for that very reason exciting—two forces at work and a battle in progress."
"With no doubt as to the ultimate victory," said Harry gloomily. "Yes, I see what you mean by the contrast. But I cannot stand there and see them dispassionately—you see I am bound up with so much of it. Those men to-night were my friends when I was a boy. Newsome is the best man that I have ever known, and there is the place; I love every stone of it, and they would pull it down."
They had left the Cove and were pressing up a steep path to the moor. The moon was struggling through a bank of clouds; the wind was whistling over their heads.
Bethel suddenly stopped and turned towards Harry. "Mr. Trojan," he said, "I'm going to be impulsive and perhaps imprudent. There's nothing an Englishman fears so much as impulse, and he is terribly ashamed of imprudence. But, after all, there is no time to waste, and if you think me impertinent you have only to say so, and the matter ends."
Harry laughed. "I am delighted," he began, but the other stopped him.
"No, wait a moment. You don't know. I'm afraid you'll think that I'm absurd—most people will tell you that I am worse. I want you to try to be a friend of mine, at any rate to give me a chance. I scarcely know you—you don't know me at all—but; one goes on first impressions, and I believe that you would understand a little better than most of these people here—for one thing you have gone farther and seen more——"