The Wooden Horse

by Hugh Walpole

She stood by his chair and laid her hand on his arm. He would have thrilled at her touch six months before—now he was merely impatient. It was so annoying that the affair should have to be reopened when they had decided it finally the other night. He felt again the blind, unreasoning fear of exposure. He had never before doubted his bravery, but there had never been any question of attack—the House had been, it seemed, founded on a rock, he had never doubted its stability before. Now, with all the cruelty of a man who was afraid for the first time, he had no mercy.

"It is over, Dahlia—there is no other possibility. We had both made a mistake; I am sorry and regret extremely if I had led you to think that it could ever have been otherwise. I see it more clearly than I saw it ten days ago—quite plainly now—and there's no purpose served in keeping the matter open; here's an end. We will both forget. Heroics are no good; after all, we are man and woman—it's better to leave it at that and accept the future quietly."

He spoke coldly and calmly, indeed he was surprised that he could face it like that, but his one thought was for peace, to put this spectre that had haunted him these ten days behind him and watch the world again with a straight gaze—he must have no secrets.

She had moved away and stood by the fireplace, looking straight before her. She was holding herself together with a terrible effort; she must quiet her brain and beat back her thoughts. If she thought for a moment she would break down, and during these ten days she had been schooling herself to face whatever might come—shame, exposure, anything—she would not cry and beg for pity as she had done before. But it was the end, the end, the end! The end of so much that had given her a new soul during the last few months. She must go back to those dreary years that had had no meaning in them, all those purposeless grey days that had stretched in endless succession on to a dismal future in which there shone no sun. Oh! he couldn't know what it had all meant to her—it could be flung aside by him without regret. For him it was a foolish memory, for her it was death.

The tears were coming, her lips were quivering, but she clenched her hands until the nails dug into the flesh. The sun poured in a great flood of colour through the window, and meanwhile her heart was broken. She had read of it often enough and had laughed—she had not known that it meant that terrible dull throbbing pain and no joy or hope or light anywhere. But she spoke to him quietly.

"I had thought that you were braver, Robin. That you had cared enough not to mind what they said. You are right: it has all been a mistake."

"Yes," he said doggedly, without looking at her. "We've been foolish. I hadn't thought enough about others. You see after all one owes something to one's people. It would never do, Dahlia, it wouldn't really. You'd never like it either—you see we're different. At Cambridge one couldn't see it so clearly, but here—well, there are things one owes to one's people, tradition, and, oh! lots of things! You have got your customs, we have ours—it doesn't do to mix."

He hadn't meant to put it so clearly. He scarcely realised what he had said because he was not thinking of her at all; it was only that one thing that he saw in front of him, how to get out, away, clear of the whole entanglement, where there was no question of suspicion and possible revelation of secrets. He was not thinking of her.

But the cruelty of it, the naked, unhesitating truth of it, stung her as nothing had ever hurt her before—it was as though he had struck her in the face. She was not good enough, she was not fit. He had said it before, but then he had been angry. She had not believed it; but now he was speaking calmly, coldly—she was not good enough!

And in a moment her idol had tumbled to the ground—her god was lying pitifully in the dust, and all the Creed that she had learnt so patiently and faithfully had crumbled into nothing. Her despair seemed, for the moment, to have gone; she only felt burning contempt—contempt for him, that he could seem so small—contempt for herself, that she could have worshipped at such altars.